ABSTRACT
Constance or ‘Eka’ Gordon Cumming (1837-1924) belonged to an aristocratic, wealthy Scottish family. She was a prodigious traveller and writer (Robinson 1990: 93-5), the twelfth child in a family of 14, who spread themselves across the globe. One of her brothers lived in India, another in Sri Lanka. The latter died in Batticaloa just two years before she first touched the island on her maiden overseas trip to India via Egypt in 1868. At that point, Sri Lanka hit her as an earthly paradise, an image not lost in her later writing. In the 1870s, she returned for two years at the invitation of the Bishop of Colombo, Hugh W. Jermyn (Bishop between 1871 and 1875), who had been her parish priest in Scotland. They were two years of privileged treatment and extensive travel, with the Bishop and his daughter, and occasionally the Governor.
