I read JG Farrell’s Troubles a dozen years ago and enjoyed it, particularly Farrell’s descriptions of food. All that I remember now, aside from the food bits, is something disgusting in a chamber pot and the main character, in a state of mild and indecisive unhappiness, mixed with confusion - either mine or his - wandering about a lot in the gardens of a hotel, in or just outside a small town in Ireland.
In The Siege of Krishnapur, Farrell abandons the damp decay of rural Ireland in favour of an imaginary outpost of Empire during the Indian Mutiny. Farrell, I think, viewed most human behaviour as folly and, perhaps to ensure the reader understands that the enterprise that is the brief presence of the British in Krishnapur is part of that folly, he begins the book by showing the reader Krishnapur as it is now, long after the Indian Mutiny. His opening pages provide a wonderfully evocative description of what travellers would see when approaching what is left of Krishnapur from a plain to its east. By the time he brings the reader close to the settlement, it becomes clear that Krishnapur is now totally deserted. It “has the air of a place you might see in a melancholy dream”.
Skilfully Farrell moves from this introduction back into a past where Krishnapur is a hub of British activity. He assembles a cast of vivid characters, about whom he seems to feel no particular affection - the two doctors who are opposed in their approaches to treating cholera and one of whom is described much later as “the best of us all. The only one who knew what he was doing”; the phrenology-obsessed Magistrate; Fleury, the semi-intellectual, who is useless and, in his attitudes to women, reminded me of the men in Women Know Your Limits; Harry, the less well-educated soldier, who Fleury “always condescended to think rather dull”, but who turns out to be an infinitely more useful person to have around than Fleury himself; the Padre, who I suspect Farrell intended should be laughable but I found admirable in the circumstances; and, above all, the Collector, a true Victorian, a man who has never forgotten the several “ecstatic summer days” he spent at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, marvelling at the engineering feats and models of possible inventions on display. Among the things he admired were a model of a train that would lay down its own track as it progressed; and drinking glasses with separate compartments inside them so that somehow a drink becomes more fizzy for the person drinking it.
The Collector’s walls are “thickly armoured with paintings” and among his favourite possessions are a marble bas-relief called The Spirit of Science Conquers Ignorance and Prejudice and a small sculpture called Innocence Protected by Fidelity, “a scantily clothed young girl, asleep with a garland of flowers in her lap; beside her a dog had its paw on the neck of a gagging snake which had been about to bite her.” At the start of the book the Collector compares himself to the Magistrate and feels satisfaction that, unlike the Magistrate, he, the Collector, is a whole man. “For science and reason is not enough”, he thinks, “A man must also have a heart and be capable of understanding the beauties of art and literature.”
For a time, all is well in the little island of Victorian civilisation that is Krishnapur. Not even the faintest glimmer of doubt has entered the mind of any of the enclave’s inhabitants about their mission in India. The Collector, at the pinnacle of Krishnapur society, is the only one who seems concerned by certain small but strange incidents involving chapatis, but not enough to have his faith shaken. He remains in love with statistics - “At the thought of statistics, The Collector …felt his heart quicken with joy…Nothing was able to resist statistics, not even Death itself” - and strong in the conviction that anything and anywhere, including the entire Indian nation, can and should be wrangled into leading a Victorian life.
The story of the book is the story of the destruction of Krishnapur and of its inhabitants’ illusions, most particularly those of the Collector. The Collector is forced to recognise “that there was a whole way of life of the people in India which he would never get to know and which was totally indifferent to him and his concerns.” His beloved sculptures and models from the Great Exhibition - and, indeed, everything material he holds dear - are swept away, some used as reinforcements to crumbling battlements, some simply smashed in weeks of fighting. The accoutrements of civilisation - fine clothing, cleanliness, decent burial - all vanish so quickly it is impossible not to recognise the flimsiness of the edifice in which the faith of the Collector and his companions has been placed.
However, at the end of the book, for most of them, the effect of the experience is more or less fleeting. “It is surprising how quickly the survivors returned to the civilised life they had been living before”, Farrell tells us, “Only sometimes in dreams the terrible days of the siege, which were like the dark foundation of the civilised life they had returned to, would return years later to visit them: then they would awake, terrified and sweating, to find themselves in white starched linen, in a comfortable bed, in peaceful England”.
But the Collector absorbs the meaning of what he has experienced and consequently he does not adjust so easily after the experience he has been through in India. He sees things with new eyes:
“Crossing for the last time that stretch of dusty plain which lay between Krishnapur and the railhead, the Collector experienced more strongly than ever before the vastness of India; he realised then, because of the widening perspective, what a small affair the siege of Krishnapur had been, how unimportant, how devoid of significance.”
Back at home he takes “to pacing the streets of London, very often in the poorer areas, in all weathers, alone, seldom speaking to anyone but staring, staring as if he has never seen a poor person in his life before.”
Meeting Fleury by chance one day, he stops and they chat.
“Culture is a sham”, the Collector tells Fleury, “It’s a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness.”
Fleury tries to argue and to persuade the Collector of the importance of ideas.
“Oh, ideas … said the Collector dismissively”.
Farrell ends with speculation about the Collector, speculation that highlights the mystery, even absurdity, of most human endeavour and of life itself, (Farrell's central theme):
“The years go by and the Collector undoubtedly felt, as many of us feel, that one uses up so many options, so much energy, simply in trying to find out what life is all about. And as for being able to do anything about it well … Perhaps by the very end of his life, in 1880, he had come to believe that a people, a nation, does not create itself according to its own best ideas, but is shaped by other forces, of which it has little knowledge.”
Reading these words, I had assumed that Farrell was elderly when he wrote his novels and they were the result of years of experience. In fact, he died after falling while fishing on a cliff in Ireland at the age of only 43. The admirable richness of his imagination is everywhere on display in The Siege of Krishnapur, together with a wonderful skill at telling an interesting story and weaving it with wit and intelligence. I find it hard to discover that he was so young and a missed footing robbed us of more work by him.
