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The Angel of Lucknow, the Hero of Halifax: A Nova Scotian Musical Response to the Indian Mutiny of 1857–58*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2014
Abstract
Although only a minor conflict from today's perspective, the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857–58 inspired a massive outpouring of popular culture responses in Victorian Britain. One of the most frequently used texts was the legend of Jessie Brown, a Scottish maiden who became a heroine during the siege of Lucknow. This fabulous tale was retold and memorialized throughout British theatres, music halls and private homes. Jessie Brown also inspired ‘Dinna You Hear It’, a little-known parlour song that was composed by James Ross and Louis Casseres and published by E.G. Fuller in Halifax, Nova Scotia, around 1858. This article examines the historical circumstances that led to this song's creation and the appeal that this text would have held for the residents of a small colonial city. Halifax may have been a remote corner of the Empire, far removed from the battlefields of India, but Nova Scotians nonetheless shared Britons’ horror and intrigue over the Mutiny – a fascination that was heightened by the fact that Nova Scotia could claim a distinct connection to the victory at Lucknow. By examining the creative and commercial factors that led the authors of ‘Dinna You Hear It’ to produce their own musical setting of the Jessie Brown legend for the Halifax public, this study of a rare Nova Scotian music publication asserts the important role sheet music played within the process of cultural exchange that bridged colony and metropole throughout the nineteenth century.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014
Footnotes
*
I would gratefully like to acknowledge the support and advice of my PhD thesis supervisor Robin Elliott, whose Canadian Music History seminar provided the impetus for me to embark on the archival treasure hunt that started this project. I also extend a hearty thank-you to David Gramit for the insight he has offered me throughout the development of this article, and for encouraging me to contribute to this special issue on music in Canada. Thanks are due to Karen Smith of the Dalhousie University Archives and the staff of Library and Archives Canada for their assistance in locating ‘Dinna You Hear It’, and also to the staff of the University of Toronto Media Commons. Previous versions of this paper were given at the 2010 Society of American Music Conference in Ottawa and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music Colloquim Series (March 2010); I thank my colleagues, as well as the reviewers for this journal, for their feedback and suggestions. The research for this project was funded by a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, and for that I that I gratefully thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
References
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3 These musical works are briefly mentioned in Mukharji, Projit Bihari, ‘Jessie's Dream at Lucknow: Popular Memorializations of Dissent, Ambiguity and Class in the Heart of Empire’, Studies in History 24/1 (2008): 77–113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 103–8. See also Scott, Derek B., The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour 2nd ed. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)Google Scholar: 177, for another brief reference to Blockley's parlour ballad.
4 Rules of the Harmonic Society, Names of Members, &c. (Halifax: Compton & Bowden, 1858): p. 7. Documents of the Halifax Harmonic Society, Akins Collection, AK F90 H22 1858, Nova Scotia Archives. See also Boyd, Michelle, ‘Music and the Making of a Civilized Society: Musical Life in Pre-Confederation Nova Scotia’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2011)Google Scholar: 369.
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15 Regarding the Crimean War, Ian Ross Robertson writes that some minority portions of Nova Scotia's immigrant population, namely the Irish Roman Catholics, were unsympathetic to the British war effort, but many other colonials expressed their support through ‘ardent declarations and symbolic gestures of loyalty.’ The response to the Indian Mutiny was similar. See ‘The 1850s: Maturity and Reform,’ in The Atlantic Region to Confederation: A History, ed. Phillip A. Buckner and John G. Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994): 333–59, here 341.
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18 The letter, dated October 1857, was sent by Thomas Q. Finnis to Nova Scotia's Lieutenant-Governor, Gaspard LeMarchant, with the request that it be distributed to the public. It was printed repeatedly in both the British Colonist and the Acadian Recorder throughout the month of November.
19 Mukharji, , ‘Jessie's Dream at Lucknow’, 78–79 Google Scholar and 106–109.
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23 Halifax Morning Sun, 3 May 1858, page unknown. Found on Patrick O'Neill's Halifax Newspapers, an online database <http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/Calendars/search.html>, accessed June 2011.
24 Acadian Recorder, 1 May 1858, 2.
25 This performance starred Boucicault's wife, Agnes Robertson, as Jessie, and she had debuted this role several months earlier at the play's premiere in New York City in February 1858.
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30 Of course the colonial news reported only the atrocities on the British in India; the atrocities inflicted by the British army were overlooked or framed as acts of valour.
31 Acadian Recorder, 28 November 1857, 2. Miss Wheeler's attack and subsequent suicide made her one of the Mutiny's most recognizable heroines. Alison Blunt writes that ‘[Wheeler's] feminine and moral strength was enhanced rather than undermined by killing several Indians before killing herself’. See Blunt, , ‘Embodying War: British Women and Domestic Defilement in the Indian “Mutiny”, 1857–8’, Journal of Historical Geography 26/3 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 403–28, here 413. Blunt argues that women in general occupied a symbolic role in the Mutiny, and that Mutiny discourse often represented the conflict as an attack on British domesticity.
32 Acadian Recorder, 1 August 1857, 1.
33 Acadian Recorder, 12 September 1857, 2.
34 British Colonist, 5 December 1857, 2.
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37 Acadian Recorder, 9 January 1858, 2; British Colonist, 19 January 1858, 2.
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47 Britain's main military base on the North Atlantic, Halifax's Citadel Hill had been occupied by two Highland regiments in the 1850s: the 42nd Royal Highlander Regiment (1851–52), and the 72nd Duke of Albany's Highlanders (1851–54). See Cameron Pulsifer, ‘A Highland Regiment in Halifax: The 78th Regiment of Foot and the Scottish National/Cultural Factor in Nova Scotia's Capital, 1869–71’, in Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory: Scotia and Nova Scotia c. 1700–1990, ed. Marjory Harper and Michael E. Vance (Halifax: The Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies, 1999): 141–156, here 144.
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