Burma Sahib: A Personal (Re)View

It was with great expectation that I sat down to read Paul Theroux’s latest novel, Burma Sahib, the story of Eric Blair’s experience as a colonial policeman during the 1920s. A much experienced and admired master of the art of travel writing, who better to breathe life into the historical setting, landscape and people of the period? Considering his formative experiences, including working as a volunteer with the Peace Corps, in post-colonial Africa during the 1960s, Theroux seemed uniquely positioned for the job. He too had been determined to become a novelist and George Orwell had been his literary model from the beginning. Blair, fresh from Eton and temperamentally unsuited to his chosen career in the service of the British empire, was in good hands it seemed.

Would most people choosing to read this historical novel know the broader brushstrokes of the story? That Blair served in the Indian Imperial Police in the 1920s and his experiences during this scantily documented period influenced some of his most important work: “A Hanging” (1931); Burmese Days (1934); “Shooting an Elephant” (1936); and the biographical second half of The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). Or would a large percentage of Theroux’s readers be ignorant of the source material? It is an interesting question, especially when considering reader responses to the novel. There would be few who knew that six months before he died Orwell had been visited by his publisher, Fredric Warburg, and told him that he had in mind “a nouvelle of 30,000 to 40,000 words” which he intended to be “a novel of character rather than of ideas, with Burma as background”. He only managed to draft a few pages of A Smoking Room Story before his death; but it suggests how fundamentally important his experiences in Burma were to his own identity. Theroux understands this, as we can see from his choice of quote from Burmese Days, as the epigraph:

There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed for ever.

I was very keen to see how Theroux’s treatment would unfold. Any fair-minded reader could predict that my high expectations, impossibly optimistic and maybe a little unreasonable, were unlikely to be met! However, I was very consciously looking forward to identifying Theroux’s sources and hoping he had continued to stay-up to date with our evolving biographical understanding of Orwell, especially during the 1920s. How would he weave the senior officers of the Indian Imperial Police, Jacintha Buddicom, Eric Seeley, Christopher Hollis, Roger Beadon, Elisa Maria Langford Rae, Captain Robinson and a host of other people we suspect Orwell knew into the narrative, if at all? What would he do with that “elephant” and the “hanging”?

Opening the book, I recognised the map of Burma (c. 1920) from Jeffrey Meyers’s, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of his Generation (2000). The first words in my edition of that biography of Orwell is a quote from Paul Theroux:

The book is admirable for its portrayal of Orwell the man and writer – dark, disturbed, obsessing, contrary – a much more helpful and believable portrait than the many that depict him as St George. This book is both moving and edifying.

Flicking to the back of Burma Sahib, Meyers was thanked in the acknowledgements. One imagines, considering their vintage, they are probably friends. There are no other biographers listed, no hints or notes about sources. It is not unusual for a historical novelist to omit sources – but I felt a little disappointed. Jeffrey Meyers has published as recently as 2021 on Orwell and Burma, in London Magazine. It makes sense that Theroux would call on him, as he has been writing about Eric Blair’s Burmese experiences since at least 1972, believing himself to have been (in 2000) “the first Orwell scholar to visit that country”. He seems unaware, though, that Japanese scholars, including Makoto Koizumi and Yasuo Oi, have been visiting and writing about Blair’s life in Burma since the 1970s. Kentaro Oishi made five trips during the 20^th century researching the writer.

But I digress.

Theroux’s narrative opens gently with Eric Blair – wearing a “creamy, new-looking linen jacket, baggy gray trousers, and scuffed plimsolls” – steaming to Rangoon on the Herefordshire and murmuring emotionally to himself the line from Kipling, “’Somewheres east of Suez’”. In the first few pages, Theroux manages to have the other passengers notice Blair’s solitariness, Eton tie, mentions the Wall Game and name-checks John Crace, Gow, Hollis, Runciman and Orwell’s sisters (Marjorie and Avril) without saying much at all. I know it is irrelevant nit-picking, but Theroux incorrectly describes Orwell’s father retiring as an “Opium Agent Fourth Class” (and towards the end of the novel writes that Richard W. Blair is now a “Subdeputy Opium Agent, Grade 4”). Where this information was sourced is unclear. Blair retired as a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent, First Grade.

Blair arrives in Rangoon and then travels on to Mandalay, where he is to be trained for his police duties. We meet Clyne Stewart, the officer in charge of the training school, one of the many Scots Blair was to meet in Burma. Sir Spencer Harcourt Butler has a walk-on part where he addresses the new recruits, which makes sense, considering Theroux is writing fiction – but I could not escape that he is referencing an error from Meyers’s recent essay on Burma. Butler was not the Governor of Burma when Blair arrived in November 1922. He did make many speeches to fresh recruits but not at the time Theroux suggests. This is when I started to grow concerned at where Theroux was headed. I could accept Clyne as a bit of a caricature but wanted more intellectual depth to his representation of this very significant British administrator:

“As you may know, I’m new at this job. I was appointed just the other day. But I should say that I was just your age when I joined the Civil Service—I was twenty, and green. I learned from the best of our people, some old troopers who remembered the Great Mutiny, which I can say was a baptism of fire for me.” He stroked the silken handkerchief flopping from his pocket. “And a cure for appallingly progressive ideas. What?”

“Yes, sir,” Beadon said, and the others murmured in agreement.

“What is our mission in Burma?” the governor said. “In my view, it is not in aid of the political education of the masses. That is the road to anarchy and upheaval.” He released himself from leaning against his desk and stepped forward until he loomed over the three seated recruits. His open mouth went square. “We are here to bring law and order to parts of barbary, and to maintain that order. At times, as you will see, the present situation taxes human intelligence to the limit.” He paused with his mouth open. Then, “Democracy? I say, democracy?”

He spoke the word sour-mouthed as though naming an affliction, and Blair became attentive for what might come next, though he could not imagine what it might be, certainly not a refutation of the word…

“Above all, let us avoid the pernicious cant of thinking that our mission in Burma is the political education of the masses. Our mission is to conserve, not to destroy, their social organism. With a fertile country, with no pressure of population on subsistence, with few wants, why should the Burman strive or cry out?”

He paused and glanced at Jones, who nodded furiously.

“Here is my point,” the governor said. “For the Burman, progress and the strenuous life have no attraction. We are trying to teach him our ideals, to show him how far superior is our civilization. When we shall have succeeded, we shall have spoiled the pleasantest country and the most delightful people in the world.”

Blair had begun to smile, and seeing him, the governor seemed provoked, continuing with force.

“Political power is to be deposited in the hands of a natural aristocracy, and not—and never!—to be surrendered to the claims of abstract democratic ideals. And you, gentlemen, must help exercise it with justice and mercy.”

With that, he patted the mauve handkerchief at his breast pocket—over his heart—perhaps as an expression of his seriousness, or maybe his palm was damp from the energy of his peroration.

Butler was specifically sent on his second posting to Burma (1923-1927) to implement the democratic Montagu/Chelmsford Reforms, already introduced after World War I in India. He believed in these reforms which laid the framework for a local, representative government – including electorates and ministerial positions for the native population – in preparation for a democratic system with the Burmese in control of Burma within an imperial framework. Butler’s supposed comments on democracy are the complete antithesis of his job description and attitudes towards the local people. Once again, this could possibly be perceived as nit-picking but considering the themes explored in Burmese Days, especially via the racist and ignorant dialogue at the club, it felt like a lost opportunity. Butler is represented stereotypically, inaccurately and without nuance.

As I progressed through the book, it became clear that many of the characters were not historical figures from Orwell’s time in Burma. The novel was more fiction than biography or history. Of course, that is fine but was not what I was looking for – nevertheless.

I did grow excited when Leila Das and her father, appeared in the story. She was the wife of Eric Seeley, Orwell’s contemporary from Eton and to my knowledge has never been mentioned by name anywhere else other than my essay published in George Orwell Studies . Or maybe not. The sentence (“Leila was educated at a convent school in Calcutta—Loreto House on Middleton Row, very posh.”) led me to do some more research without success. Did Theroux make this up – or is it biographically accurate? Theroux does have Blair attend Seeley’s wedding but does not delve deeply into the Christopher Hollis episode, recounted in A Study of George Orwell: The Man and His Works (1956). Hollis meets Blair (and the un-named Seeley) in Rangoon and finds him a completely conventional policeman (and racist). This is a staple of Orwell biographies which needs challenging. Hollis, writing thirty years after his visit to Rangoon, was not a reliable witness! Once again, a lost opportunity for Theroux to add some nuance to the representation of Blair and his peers!

Another historical figure with great potential for Theroux’s story was Captain H.R. Robinson, the opium-addicted ex-soldier, and military police officer. Theroux does have the readers spend some time with this character – but it ultimately goes nowhere interesting. Robinson, who served during World War I and witnessed the last corporal punishment meted out to British Indian troops, became a novitiate Buddhist monk, was heavily tattooed and multi-lingual. Surely it would have been worth mention the tattoos Orwell had stencilled to his knuckles while in Burma – listed in the ‘visible distinguishing marks or peculiarities’ section of his 1936 passport application – or maybe Theroux did not know of them?

Theroux is mostly interested in Orwell’s sex life with prostitutes, Burmese house maids and married women. This seems to be his main thrust with the Robinson character’s interactions with the fictional Blair. The author has clearly read the late Gerry Abbott’s essay hypothesising that “The Poet” in Robinson’s memoir (which Orwell reviewed in 1942) was Eric Blair but did little with it. Theroux repeats an error, found in two other biographies, claiming that Robinson was “cashiered”. He was “axed” but that is a reference to the “Geddes Axe”, a British government decision, slashing funding after the First World War, resulting in the early retirement of service men as a cost-cutting exercise. Once again, a minor, irrelevant issue to the narrative – but certainly another unconvincing episode for anyone interested in truth of the matter.

Mrs Jellicoe, whose husband is “in timber”, is a barely developed but important character. She is completely fictional but one assumes Theroux is referencing very early manuscript drafts for Burmese Days where Orwell has lines about “making love to married women”. One assumes his model for the character, very loosely, is possibly Elisa-Maria Langford Rae. She was the wife of a police colleague who claimed to know Blair, in Insein and Moulmein, where they had “long talks on every conceivable subject”. A little digging and her far more interesting story would have emerged. Not least was that her police officer husband was Eurasian. They had originally married in Scotland and then again in Burma. She had a child in 1926, not long after the time Orwell knew her.

Theroux’s representation of Orwell’s feelings about E.M. Forster’s Passage to India are a bit of a stretch – but defensible. The fictional Blair feels that “the recent Forster novel about India sounded like touristic tosh”. He goes on to tell Mrs Jellicoe that Forster “seems to believe he can see into the heart of a Muslim or a Hindu, and I don’t think that’s possible” but that he “got his sahibs right”. Blair goes on to say that Passage to India is the:

… best novel we’re likely to get for a while. But he doesn’t know what I know. In the police you see the dirty work of empire up close. Forster has never seen a dead man or a dacoit or a rape victim. His India is all about sahibs. It’s a sort of prigs’ paradise.

Orwell reviewed the novel, albeit in the briefest conceivable manner, much more positively than that in 1936 (it had been published immediately prior to “Shooting an Elephant”) saying:

A Passage to India is not the perfect novel about India, but it is the best we have ever had and the best we are likely to get, for it is only by some improbable accident that anyone capable of writing a decent novel can be got to stay in India long enough to absorb the atmosphere.

The last quarter of the Theroux’s novel, which relies heavily on Burmese Days, “A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant”, is pretty pedestrian. He runs through John Flory’s experiences and makes them Blair’s. The resolution is dull, the postscript perfunctory and biographically out-of-date. I found it inexplicable why Burmese Days was trotted out so unimaginatively. Perhaps someone who had not read Orwell’s novel would feel differently? The chapters which featured the character of Thackeray (who has many of Dr. Veraswami’s lines and attributes) are the poorest in the novel. The dialogue is dubious and far too reliant on Burmese Days:

Thackeray became confidential, sharing a secret, saying, “Membership is all I desire. Even if I were elected, I should not of course ever presume to visit club.”

“Not visit?”

“Goodness, no. I would not force myself upon European gentlemen. I would simply pay subscription. That is high enough privilege for Mahadev Thackeray.”

“I’ll make inquiries,” Blair said. “If that is in the Gazette as you say, the members will know about it. And I’ll put your name forward.”

“So kind of you, sahib.”

“But I’m curious—Thackeray, like the writer?”

“Written as such, but properly it is Thakre”—and he spelled it — “Marathi name. We have improved it. It is a notable family not in rupees but in caste. Middle initial is K for Keshav.”

“Mind you, I can’t promise you’ll be elected.”

Thackeray’s eyes filled with tears like the liquid eyes of Flo when Blair held her head and crooned at her. “I am not surprised you are nephew of estimable Sahib Limoujeen. Like them, you have embraced Burma.”

What about Blair? It was always going to be tough for Theroux to do anything terribly original as Orwell’s voice, often so conversational in tone, is very familiar to his readers. Theroux’s representation of the young policeman lacks nuance and does not capture this voice successfully. It is all terribly predictable. Where are the ambiguities and complexities?

Theroux’s prose does provide fleeting moments of reading pleasure, and the grossly unpleasant image, conjured by the line “Blair was now as conspicuous and unwelcome as a turd in a punch bowl” made me laugh aloud. His representation of Orwell, the reader, was sound rather than deft or revealing. It was a nice touch to include, as a motif of sorts, the song Bye Bye, Blackbird, that Orwell referenced in A Smoking Room Story. The fictional Blair finds the lines:

No one here can love or understand me

Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me

melancholic and affecting (while he is not dancing a foxtrot at the club).

One of the anticipated pleasures of Burma Sahib had been the prospect of seeing how Theroux managed the material and went where biographers empirically could not to put flesh on Blair’s bones. What we know about Orwell’s experiences in Burma is limited but a writer of Theroux’s calibre could have made so much more of some very tantalising hints and barely discernible relationships. He has missed some of the most interesting, albeit faint, echoes from this period including Orwell’s return from Burma with an engagement ring for Jacintha Buddicom. Why does Theroux leave the railway engineer, George Stuart (and his wife) out of the narrative altogether? A more nuanced Captain Robinson, and a subtler exploration of the impact of Blair’s relationship with Eric Seeley and the Das family – and the Langford-Rae connection – would potentially have made for a more engaging story.

So why bother to write this kind of novel at all? The late Hilary Mantel, in the second of her Reith Lectures (2017), sagely pointed out that authors writing historical fiction “should seek out inconsistencies and gaps” and “make creative use of them”. In that same lecture she posited that writers in this genre should be “wary about the received version” and had responsibilities – to readers and subjects – to “not pass on error”. These are the major flaws in Theroux’s fictional treatment of Eric Blair, the young man born into an Anglo-Indian family. There is little ambiguity or challenge to the limited, conventional view of Orwell’s time in Burma. Cliché and stereotype abound. Theroux is unable to weave the threads into an engaging narrative nor does he use effectively biographical information from the period to craft something new. The individuals listed on the acknowledgements page would have felt the novel was a good publishing venture though!

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ISBN: 9780241998946: Imprint: Hamish Hamilton: Format: Trade Paperback: Pages: 392: RRP: AU$34.99

ISBN: 9780241633342: Imprint: Penguin UK: Format: Hardback: Pages: 400: RRP: £20.00

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REFERENCES

Bowker, Gordon, George Orwell, London: Abacus, 2004

Hollis, Christopher, A Study of George Orwell: The Man and His Works, Racehorse Publishing, 2017

Mantel, Hilary, The Reith Lectures, BBC Radio 4, 2017

Meyers, Jeffrey, “New Light on Burma”, The London Magazine, October-November 2021, pp108-117.

Meyers, Jeffrey, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation, London and New York: W.W. Norton, 2000

Meyers, Jeffrey, “Orwell in Burma,” American Notes & Queries, December 1972, pp. 52-54

Moore, Darcy, “Orwell in Burma: The Two Erics”, George Orwell Studies (2021) Vol. 5, No. 2 pp. 6-24 https://www.academia.edu/49214143/Orwell_in_Burma_The_Two_Erics

Robinson, Captain H.R., A Modern De Quincey: An Autobiography, London: George G. Harrap and Co, 1942

Taylor, D.J., Orwell – The Life, London: Vintage Books, 2004

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Thanks to Mike Macnamara for his intellectual generosity. His biography of Harcourt Butler will be published later in the year.

Darcy Moore’s website can be found here: https://www.darcymoore.net/ and he is on X/Twitter https://twitter.com/Darcy1968