Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan | Page 4

than any of these was a
complete romance, written in French, being the identical story for
which her sister Aru had proposed to make the illustrations. In the
meantime Toru was no sooner dead than she began to be famous. In
May, 1878, there appeared a second edition of the "Sheaf gleaned in
French Fields," with a touching sketch of her death, by her father; and
in 1879 was published, under the editorial care of Mlle. Clarisse Bader,
the romance of "Le Journal de Mlle. D'Arvers," forming a handsome
volume of 259 pages. This book, begun, as it appears, before the family
returned from Europe, and finished nobody knows when, is an attempt
to describe scenes from modern French society, but it is less interesting
as an experiment of the fancy, than as a revelation of the mind of a
young Hindu woman of genius. The story is simple, clearly told, and
interesting; the studies of character have nothing French about them,
but they are full of vigour and originality. The description of the hero is
most characteristically Indian.--
Il est beau en effet. Sa taille est haute, mais quelques-uns la
trouveraient mince, sa chevelure noire est bouclée et tombe jusqu'à la
nuque; ses yeux noirs sont profonds et bien fendus, le front est noble; la
lèvre supérieure, couverte par une moustache naissante et noire, est
parfaitement modelée; son menton a quelque chose de sévère; son teint
est d'un blanc presque féminin, ce qui dénote sa haute naissance.

In this description we seem to recognize some Surya or Soma of Hindu
mythology, and the final touch, meaningless as applied to an European,
reminds us that in India whiteness of skin has always been a sign of
aristocratic birth, from the days when it originally distinguished the
conquering Aryas from the indigenous race of the Dasyous.
As a literary composition "Mlle. D'Arvers" deserves high
commendation. It deals with the ungovernable passion of two brothers
for one placid and beautiful girl, a passion which leads to fratricide and
madness. That it is a very melancholy and tragical story is obvious
from this brief sketch of its contents, but it is remarkable for coherence
and self-restraint no less than for vigour of treatment. Toru Dutt never
sinks to melodrama in the course of her extraordinary tale, and the
wonder is that she is not more often fantastic and unreal.
But we believe that the original English poems, which we present to the
public for the first time to-day, will be ultimately found to constitute
Toru's chief legacy to posterity. These ballads form the last and most
matured of her writings, and were left so far fragmentary at her death
that the fourth and fifth in her projected series of nine were not to be
discovered in any form among her papers. It is probable that she had
not even commenced them. Her father, therefore, to give a certain
continuity to the series, has filled up these blanks with two stories from
the "Vishnupurana," which originally appeared respectively in the
"Calcutta Review" and in the "Bengal Magazine." These are interesting,
but a little rude in form, and they have not the same peculiar value as
the rhymed octo-syllabic ballads. In these last we see Toru no longer
attempting vainly, though heroically, to compete with European
literature on its own ground, but turning to the legends of her own race
and country for inspiration. No modern Oriental has given us so strange
an insight into the conscience of the Asiatic as is presented in the
stories of "Prehlad" and of "Savitri," or so quaint a piece of religious
fancy as the ballad of "Jogadhya Uma." The poetess seems in these
verses to be chanting to herself those songs of her mother's race to
which she always turned with tears of pleasure. They breathe a Vedic
solemnity and simplicity of temper, and are singularly devoid of that
littleness and frivolity which seem, if we may judge by a slight

experience, to be the bane of modern India.
As to the merely technical character of these poems, it may be
suggested that in spite of much in them that is rough and inchoate, they
show that Toru was advancing in her mastery of English verse. Such a
stanza as this, selected out of many no less skilful, could hardly be
recognized as the work of one by whom the language was a late
acquirement:--
What glorious trees! The sombre saul, On which the eye delights to
rest,-- The betel-nut, a pillar tall, With feathery branches for a crest,--
The light-leaved tamarind spreading wide,-- The pale faint-scented
bitter neem, The seemul, gorgeous as a bride, With flowers that have
the ruby's gleam.
In other passages, of course, the text reads like a translation from some
stirring ballad, and we feel