Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan | Page 3

inequality. The English verse is sometimes
exquisite; at other times the rules of our prosody are absolutely ignored,
and it is obvious that the Hindu poetess was chanting to herself a music
that is discord in an English ear. The notes are no less curious, and to a
stranger no less bewildering. Nothing could be more naïve than the
writer's ignorance at some points, or more startling than her learning at
others. On the whole, the attainment of the book was simply astounding.
It consisted of a selection of translations from nearly one hundred
French poets, chosen by the poetess herself on a principle of her own
which gradually dawned upon the careful reader. She eschewed the
Classicist writers as though they had never existed. For her André
Chenier was the next name in chronological order after Du Bartas.
Occasionally she showed a profundity of research that would have done
no discredit to Mr. Saintsbury or "le doux Assellineau." She was ready
to pronounce an opinion on Napol le Pyrénéan or to detect a plagiarism
in Baudelaire. But she thought that Alexander Smith was still alive, and
she was curiously vague about the career of Saint Beuve. This
inequality of equipment was a thing inevitable to her isolation, and
hardly worth recording, except to show how laborious her mind was,
and how quick to make the best of small resources.
We have already seen that the "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields"

attracted the very minimum of attention in England. In France it was
talked about a little more. M. Garcin de Tassy, the famous Orientalist,
who scarcely survived Toru by twelve months, spoke of it to Mlle.
Clarisse Bader, author of a somewhat remarkable book on the position
of women in ancient Indian society. Almost simultaneously this volume
fell into the hands of Toru, and she was moved to translate it into
English, for the use of Hindus less instructed than herself. In January,
1877, she accordingly wrote to Mlle. Bader requesting her
authorization, and received a prompt and kind reply. On the 18th of
March Toru wrote again to this, her solitary correspondent in the world
of European literature, and her letter, which has been preserved, shows
that she had already descended into the valley of the shadow of death:--
Ma constitution n'est pas forte; j'ai contracté une toux opiniâtre, il y a
plus de deux ans, qui ne me quitte point. Cependant j'espère mettre la
main à l'[oe]uvre bientôt. Je ne peux dire, mademoiselle, combien votre
affection,--car vous les aimez, votre livre et votre lettre en témoignent
assez,--pour mes compatriotes et mon pays me touche; et je suis fière
de pouvoir le dire que les héroines de nos grandes épopées sont dignes
de tout honneur et de tout amour. Y a-ti-il d'héroine plus touchante,
plus aimable que Sîta? Je ne le crois pas. Quand j'entends ma mère
chanter, le soir, les vieux chants de notre pays, je pleure presque
toujours. La plainte de Sîta, quand, bannie pour la séconde fois, elle
erre dans la vaste forêt, seule, le désespoir et l'effroi dans l'âme, est si
pathétique qu'il n'y a personne, je crois, qui puisse l'entendre sans
verser des larmes. Je vous envois sous ce pli deux petites traductions du
Sanscrit, cette belle langue antique. Malheureusement j'ai été obligée
de faire cesser mes traductions de Sanscrit, il y a six mois. Ma santé ne
me permet pas de les continuer.
These simple and pathetic words, in which the dying poetess pours out
her heart to the one friend she had, and that one gained too late, seem as
touching and as beautiful as any strain of Marceline Valmore's
immortal verse. In English poetry I do not remember anything that
exactly parallels their resigned melancholy. Before the month of March
was over, Toru had taken to her bed. Unable to write, she continued to
read, strewing her sick-room with the latest European books, and

entering with interest into the questions raised by the Société Asiatique
of Paris in its printed Transactions. On the 30th of July she wrote her
last letter to Mlle. Clarisse Bader, and a month later, on the 30th of
August, 1877, at the age of twenty-one years, six months, and
twenty-six days, she breathed her last in her father's house in
Maniktollah Street, Calcutta.
In the first distraction of grief it seemed as though her unequalled
promise had been entirely blighted, and as though she would be
remembered only by her single book. But as her father examined her
papers, one completed work after another revealed itself. First a
selection from the sonnets of the Comte de Grammont, translated into
English, turned up, and was printed in a Calcutta magazine; then some
fragments of an English story, which were printed in another Calcutta
magazine. Much more important, however,