ABSTRACT
Edwin Arnold’s (1832–1904) occupations for most of his career were journalism and poetry, but it was as a school-teacher that he travelled to India. He arrived in Bombay in November 1857, armed with an MA from the university of Oxford, a wife (Catherine Biddulph) whom he had married two years previously, their baby, and a few years’ experience as second English master at King Edward VI School in Birmingham. His wife’s connections had already proved useful: her brother, General John Lester, had used his influence to obtain for Arnold the post of principal at the Deccan Sanskrit College, in Poonah. He remained at the College for four years, during which he studied Sanskrit, Turkish and Persian. In 1861, Catherine’s health deteriorated, and the family left India. Taking up residence in England, Arnold became leader writer of the Daily Telegraph; in 1873, he was promoted to the role of chief editor. In that capacity, according to the ‘Memoir’ of his life later published by his son, E. L. Arnold, he was responsible for some of the most striking journalistic enterprises of the day, including Henry Morton Stanley’s expedition along the Congo river – Stanley named one of its tributaries after him (p. 9). He received a knighthood in 1887, and retired from his editorial duties in 1889, but retained a connection with the paper until 1899. He travelled widely in these last decades, lecturing in the USA and visiting Japan as well as making a return visit to India and Sri Lanka in 1886. At the end of his life, according to his son, he declared that ‘I find I have never really cared for anything but India, and Piccadilly’ (p. 6).
