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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2014
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.
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.
1 British Colonist, 4 January 1858, 2.
2 See Gould, Marty, ‘Insurrection and Integration: The Indian “Mutiny” of 1857 and the Theatrical Renegotiation of Ethnic Alterities’, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 66 (2007): 389–411 Google Scholar, here 396.
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.
5 Rules of the Harmonic Society; Documents of the Halifax Harmonic Society.
6 Hilda Gregg, ‘The Indian Mutiny in Fiction’, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Feb. 1897): 218–32, here 219.
7 ‘Sepoy’ is the native term for the European-trained Indian soldiers of the British Army. For recent accounts of this conflict, see Herbert, Christopher, War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, Heathcote, T. A., Mutiny and Insurgency in India 1857–8: The British Army in a Bloody Civil War (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military, 2007)Google Scholar and Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie, The Great Uprising in India, 1857–8: Untold Stories, Indian and British (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2007)Google Scholar.
8 Herbert, , War of No Pity, 5 Google Scholar.
9 Herbert, , War of No Pity, 1–3 Google Scholar.
10 Codell, Julie F., ‘Introduction: Imperial Co-Histories and the British and Colonial Press’, in Imperial Co-Histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press, ed. Julie F. Codell (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003)Google Scholar: 15–26, here 19.
11 Gregg, , ‘The Indian Mutiny in Fiction’, 219 Google Scholar.
12 Herbert, , War of No Pity, 3 Google Scholar.
13 See Mukharji, ‘Jessie's Dream at Lucknow’.
14 By the standards of the Nova Scotian press at that time, a page was a significant amount of space. The British Colonist, the Nova Scotian and the Acadian Recorder were all printed in a four-page format. The first page consisted mainly of advertisements, and sometimes had a column or two concerning significant local events. The second was devoted to the most recent news, local and foreign, with the ‘top stories’ appearing in the left-hand columns. Occasionally news reports would spill onto the third page, which was otherwise used for poetry, fiction and amusing or amazing anecdotes, and for advertising and announcements. The fourth page was reserved for advertisements.
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.
16 British Colonist, 28 November 1857, 2.
17 British Colonist, 26 January 1858, 2.
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.
20 See, for example, British Colonist, 4 January 1858, 3.
21 British Colonist, 29 April 1858, 3.
22 British Colonist, 29 April 1858, 3.
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.
26 Evening Express, 8 November 1858 [Patrick O'Neill's Halifax Newspapers].
27 Gregg, , ‘The Indian Mutiny in Fiction’, 218–219 Google Scholar.
28 Herbert, , War of No Pity, 32 Google Scholar.
29 See Diamond, Michael, Victorian Sensation: or, the Spectacular, the Shocking, and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Anthem, 2003)Google Scholar. Mukharji observes that authors of Jessie Brown texts often enhanced it with other sensational elements; see ‘Jessie's Dream at Lucknow’, 88–93.
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.
35 Acadian Recorder, 5 December 1857, 2.
36 McNeil, Kenneth, ‘“Petticoated Devils”: Scottish Highland Soldiers in British Accounts of the Indian Rebellion’, Prose Studies 23/3 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 77–94. McNeil notes that there is no historical evidence that the sight of the Highlanders actually caused the sepoys to panic, as British newspaper reports suggested (82).
37 Acadian Recorder, 9 January 1858, 2; British Colonist, 19 January 1858, 2.
38 McNeil, , ‘Petticoated Devils’, 78 Google Scholar. MacKenzie, John M., ‘Heroic Myths of Empire’ in Popular Imperialism and the Military, 1850–1950, ed. MacKenzie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992)Google Scholar: 116, posits that it was because of the Mutiny that the Highland soldier became the icon of the British army in the later nineteenth century.
39 See Gould, , ‘Insurrection and Integration’, 389–411 Google Scholar.
40 Gould, , ‘Insurrection and Integration’, 403 Google Scholar.
41 Scott, , The Singing Bourgeois, 93 Google Scholar, and Tawa, Nicholas, Sweet Songs for Gentle Americans: The Parlor Song in America, 1790–1860 (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1980)Google Scholar.
42 The Evening Express, 3 September 1858 [O'Neill's Halifax Newspapers].
43 Tawa, , Sweet Songs, 163 Google Scholar.
44 See Scott, , The Singing Bourgeois, 95 Google Scholar.
45 British Colonist, 4 January 1858.
46 Perhaps Ross and Casseres omitted ‘God Save the Queen’ because Halifax concerts typically included a performance of the national anthem. This theory, however, assumes that ‘Dinna You Hear It’ originated as a concert piece, and still does not account for the absence of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
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.
48 Chakravarty, Gautam, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 5.
49 Herbert, , War of No Pity, 17 Google Scholar; Chakravarty, , The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, 5 Google Scholar; Gould, Marty, ‘Insurrection and Integration’, 390 Google Scholar.
50 Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar: 9.
51 British Colonist, 25 February 1858, 2.
52 Alison Blunt observes that Inglis, along with his wife and children (who were also trapped in Lucknow), became the ‘poster-family of Lucknow, embodying the endurance and fortitude of the Britons displayed during the siege’. See Blunt, , ‘Embodying War’, 420–421 Google Scholar.
53 Robertson, , ‘The 1850s: Maturity and Reform’, 341 Google Scholar. See also Raddall, Thomas H., Halifax: Warden of the North (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 190–191 Google Scholar.
54 British Colonist, 22 December 1857, 2.
55 British Colonist, 22 December 1857, 2.
56 See summary in Beck, J. Murray, Joseph Howe: Volume II. The Briton Becomes Canadian, 1848–1873 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983)Google Scholar: 124.
57 Halifax Morning Sun, 3 May 1858 [O'Neill's Halifax Newspapers].
58 British Colonist, 13 February 1858, 2.