‘S.’

Nothing is known of the pseudonymous writer ‘S’ (fl. 1899) who published C. P. Pieces and other Verse in 1899. Some of the poems it contained had appeared previously in the Pioneer newspaper of Allahabad, and the ‘C. P.’ of the title presumably refers to the nearby administrative district of the Central Provinces, now part of Madhya Pradesh. The volume is dedicated, in verse, to the ‘Englishmen’ engaged in the business of governing India, among whose number the author counts himself: To you I sing; and, from the task Of actions vast and projects vaster, Could you but spare (’tis all I ask) One half-hour for a poetaster – Accept the little book I bring, And, as the page you swiftly scan, Forgive the faults of me, who sing, A humble member of your clan, Sons of the sabre and the pen, Scions of Empire, Englishmen! (p. 5). In the main part of the volume, the ‘C. P. Pieces’ cover an assortment of topics drawn from the landscape and history of the Central Provinces. The first three poems take as their topic the folklore and history associated with the river Nerbudda (or Narmada), ending with a meditation on the ruins of the Gond palace of Ramnagar. Others focus on the daily life of the British working in the area: the task of the Famine Relief Officer provides the subject of two of the poems included here. ‘The Thug’s Prayer’ looks back to an earlier period in the history of the area, when central India in the 1830s was characterized by W. H. Sleeman as the hunting-ground of thug gangs; his sensational accounts of their rituals and predatory practices underlie their representation in this poem. The second section of the book is devoted to the miscellaneous ‘Other Verse’; many of these are comic representations of aspects of British life in India, while others, again, look to the history of India. Of the three included here, ‘Nicholson’s Grave’ revisits the events of the Indian Mutiny, now forty years in the past, through the monument 334raised to one of the British heroes of the conflict. Another building, the ruined ‘Kutub Minar’, recalls the Islamic rulers of India who preceded the British. Finally, the events of Mutiny are again brought to life in a poem to the Rani of Jhansi, an enduring figure in the history and mythology of 1857: she was held responsible by many among the British for permitting, or encouraging, the killing of British prisoners, but also remembered as a charismatic figure who fought on horseback alongside her troops, and died in battle.