43-677: The Jewel in the Crown is a 1966 novel by Paul Scott that begins his Raj Quartet . The four-volume novel sequence of the Quartet is set during the final days of the British Raj in India during the Second World War . The novel is written in the form of interviews and reports of conversations or research and other portions are in the form of letters ( epistolary form ) or diary entries. The novel focuses on
86-496: A public school that Daphne's own brother attended. Hari speaks only English, but his father's financial collapse and suicide obliged Hari to return to India. Daphne learns to despise the attitudes of the English in India and also grows to love Hari. Subsequent to Kumar's arrest and Daphne's association with him, the local police superintendent, Ronald Merrick, becomes infatuated with Daphne. Merrick, of lower-middle-class English origin,
129-577: A collection of three religious poems entitled I, Gerontius , as part of the Resuram Series of pamphlets. He wrote for Country Life and The Times . His work was included in Poetry Quarterly and the poetry anthology Poems of this War (1942). In 1948 he published Pillars of Salt in a collection of Four Jewish Plays. After demobilisation in 1946, Scott was employed in the two small publishing houses, Falcon Press and Grey Walls Press, headed by
172-429: A full biography of Scott in 1991. Janis Haswell edited a two-volume collection of Scott’s letters; Volume I, The Early Years (1940–1965) covers the military period of his life and the first stage of his career, before the quartet of novels was published. Volume II, The Quartet and Beyond (1966–1978) covers the end of his life. In Torquay in 1941 Scott met and married his wife Penny (born Nancy Edith Avery in 1914). At
215-421: A last ditch effort to found a career as a successful novelist and solvency. He drew there material for his next five novels, all set in India during and immediately after World War II, in the period leading to independence and Partition . For him, the British Raj was his extended metaphor. He wrote "I don't think a writer chooses his metaphors. They choose him." Probably only an outsider could have commanded
258-470: A notable literary agent, before deciding to write full time from 1960. In 1964 he returned to India for a research trip, though he was struggling with ill health and alcoholism. From the material gathered he created the novels that would become The Raj Quartet . In the final years of his life he accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Tulsa , where much of his private archive is held. Paul Scott
301-440: A whole, where her case has become a cause célèbre . Unknown to Hari, Daphne is pregnant; the child's paternity is impossible to determine, but she considers the child to be Hari's. She returns to her aunt, Lady Manners, to give birth, but a pre-existing medical condition results in her death. Lady Manners takes the child, Parvati, to Kashmir. Parvati's physical resemblance to Hari satisfies Lady Manners and Lady Chatterjee that Hari
344-402: Is a French phrase in common usage in English. Since it has been fully adopted into English and is included unitalicized in English dictionaries, it is not normally italicized despite its French origin. It has been noted that the public attention given to a particular case or event can obscure the facts rather than clarify them. As one observer states, "The true story of many a cause célèbre
387-409: Is a smaller town about 75 miles away. Mayapore, although not the capital of the province, is a relatively large city, with a significant British presence in the cantonment area, where native Indians are not permitted to live. Across the rail lines lies the “black town,” where the native population resides. There is also a Eurasian Quarter, the residence of the mixed-race ( Anglo-Indian ) population of
430-596: Is a thoughtful and tasteful writer, even though he has never achieved the readership some of his books have deserved and many of the reviewers have indicated." In a 2017 article in The New York Times , Isaac Chotiner called Scott's achievement "was to tell this story largely from the British point of view, and to do so not merely without illusions, but with astonishing acuity and grace." Paul Mark Scott Paul Mark Scott (25 March 1920 – 1 March 1978)
473-534: Is located in northern India, shares characteristics with Punjab and the United Provinces . The names of places and people suggest a connection to Bengal , for example Mayapore is similar to Mayapur in West Bengal ; however, the physical characteristics place the setting in north-central India, rather than in northeast India. The province has an agricultural plain and, in the north, a mountainous region. Dibrapur
SECTION 10
#1732876188267516-450: Is never made manifest in the evidence given or in the advocates' orations, but might be recovered from these old papers when the dust of ages has rendered them immune from scandal". In French, one of the meanings of cause is a legal case , and célèbre means "famous". The phrase originated with the 37-volume Nouvelles Causes Célèbres , published in 1763, which was a collection of reports of well-known French court decisions from
559-506: Is resentful of the privileged English "public school" class and contemptuous of Indians. Hari thus represents everything that Merrick hates. After Daphne and Hari make love in a public park, the Bibighar Gardens, they are attacked by a mob of rioters who by chance witnessed their lovemaking. Hari is beaten and Daphne is raped repeatedly. Knowing that Hari will be implicated in her rape, Daphne swears him to silence regarding his presence at
602-573: The British Council . He worked in an upstairs room at his home in Hampstead overlooking the garden and Hampstead Garden Suburb woodland. He supplemented his earnings from his books with reviews for The Times , the Times Literary Supplement , New Statesman and Country Life . Scott's daughter noted, "It was as if he had exiled himself to the one room where there was nothing but
645-683: The Conservative MP Peter Baker . In 1950 Scott joined Pearn, Pollinger & Higham as a literary agent (later to split into Pollinger Limited and David Higham Associates) and subsequently became a director. He was described as caring and dedicated in his work: "a prince among agents". Whilst there, authors he covered included Arthur C. Clarke , Morris West , M. M. Kaye , Elizabeth David , Mervyn Peake and Muriel Spark . One biographer notes that as an agent, Scott "sheltered nervous talents, supported frail ones, pruned back bogus growth, detected and cherished genuine achievement in
688-477: The 17th and 18th centuries. While English speakers had used the phrase for many years, it came into much more common usage after the 1894 conviction of Alfred Dreyfus for espionage during the cementing of a period of deep cultural ties with a political tie between England and France, the Entente Cordiale . Both attracted worldwide interest and the period of closeness or rapprochement officially broadened
731-715: The British Intelligence Department. He trained as a private in Torquay with the 8th Battalion, the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) . During this time two of his aunts were killed in an air raid. He had been initially appalled by what he found on the subcontinent—by the heat, dust, poverty, disease, and overcrowding, above all by the imperial attitudes of the British—but over the next three years he fell deeply in love with India. Biographer Hilary Spurling In 1943, at
774-509: The Crown , the first novel of what was to become The Raj Quartet (1966). The remaining novels in the sequence were published over the next nine years: The Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971) and A Division of the Spoils (1975). Scott wrote in relative isolation and only visited India twice more during the genesis of The Raj Quartet , in 1968 and in 1972, latterly for
817-767: The age of 22, Scott was posted as a commissioned officer in the British Indian Army , and he sailed on the Athlone Castle from Liverpool that year. He quickly came down with amoebic dysentery , not diagnosed until 1964. The disease may have had some effect on his character and writing. He joined the Indian Army Service Corps and became familiar with life at hill stations such as Abbottabad and Murree . He made many close friendships with Indian comrades, and literary portraits of his friends appear in his works from this point. He later helped to organise
860-506: The all-time best British television programmes. It was also adapted as a nine-part BBC Radio 4 dramatisation under its original title in 2005. While Scott was teaching creative writing at the University of Tulsa in 1976, he arranged to sell his private correspondence to that university's McFarlin Library, thus making available some 6,000 personal letters. The materials begin in 1940, when Scott
903-450: The authorities by refusing to say anything, even in his own defence (he has been sworn to secrecy by Daphne, and he honours that pledge to the letter). Because the authorities cannot successfully prosecute him for rape, they instead imprison him under a wartime law as a suspected revolutionary. And Daphne's refusal to aid a prosecution for rape leads to her being reviled and ostracized by the British community of Mayapore and of British India as
SECTION 20
#1732876188267946-455: The city. Daphne Manners, who has lost her immediate family in England, comes to India to live with her only remaining family member, Lady Manners. Lady Manners sends her to Mayapore to stay with her Indian friend, Lady Chatterjee. While staying with Lady Chatterjee, whom she calls "Auntie Lili," Daphne meets Hari Kumar. He is an Indian who was brought up in England and educated at Chillingborough,
989-512: The demands of practical needs versus the urge to create. Scott worked as an accounts clerk for C. T. Payne and took evening classes in book-keeping and wrote poetry in his spare time. He later noted that the rigid social hierarchies and codes of his suburban childhood he found echoed in British Indian society. Scott was conscripted into the British Army as a private soldier early in 1940, with
1032-735: The logistic support for the Fourteenth Army 's reconquest of Burma . After the fall of Rangoon in 1945 he spent time in Calcutta and Kashmir, later posted to Malaya to end the Japanese occupation; they had, however, already surrendered by the time Scott arrived. In his time away from India he missed the country deeply and longed to return. At the end of the year he rejoined his company at Bihar and sailed back to England, having spent three years in India. During his service, he continued to write poetry. In 1941, before his military posting, Scott had published
1075-565: The long, lucid perspectives he brought to bear on the end of the British raj, exploring with passionate, concentrated attention a subject still generally treated as taboo, or fit only for historical romance and adventure stories... However Scott saw things other people would sooner not see, and he looked too close for comfort. His was a bleak, stern, prophetic vision and, like E. M. Forster's, it has come to seem steadily more accurate with time. Biographer Hilary Spurling During his stay in Bombay he
1118-643: The much greater project of making The Raj Quartet into a major 14-part television series known as The Jewel in the Crown , first broadcast in the United Kingdom in early 1984 and subsequently in the United States and many Commonwealth countries. It was rebroadcast in the UK in 1997 as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Indian independence, and in 2001 the British Film Institute voted it 22nd in
1161-465: The novel is written in the form of interviews and reports of conversations and research from the point of view of a narrator. Other portions are in the form of letters from one character to another or entries in their diaries. Still others take the form of reports from an omniscient observer. The story is set in 1942 in Mayapore, a fictional city in an unnamed province of British India . The province, which
1204-417: The others for rape. She insists that her attackers were peasants and included at least one Muslim (although she was blindfolded, she could tell he was circumcised ) and could not be young, educated Hindus like Hari and his acquaintances who have been taken into custody. The inquest is frustrated when Daphne threatens to testify that, for all she knows, her attackers could have been Englishmen. Hari puzzles
1247-468: The scene. But she does not count on the instincts of Ronald Merrick, who, upon learning of the rape, immediately takes Hari into custody and engages in a lengthy and sadistic interrogation that includes sexual humiliation. Merrick also arrests a group of educated young Indians, including some of Hari's colleagues at the Mayapore Gazette . Daphne steadfastly refuses to support the prosecution of Hari and
1290-424: The singular) is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy , outside campaigning , and heated public debate . The term continues in the media in all senses. It is sometimes used positively for celebrated legal cases for their precedent value (each locus classicus or "case-in-point") and more often negatively for infamous ones, whether for scale, outrage, scandal , or conspiracy theories . The term
1333-399: The tension in himself between the pull of his mother's creative ambition and his father's real world, grounded approach to life. Scott was educated at the private Winchmore Hill Collegiate School, but had to leave early, without any qualifications, as his father's business met financial difficulties. This division from his studies was mirrored through the rest of his life—the battle between
The Jewel in the Crown (novel) - Misplaced Pages Continue
1376-521: The time she was a nurse at the Rosehill Children's Hospital; she later wrote four novels as Elizabeth Avery between 1959 and 1963; she died in 2005. They had two daughters, Carol (born 1947) and Sally (born 1948). Towards the end of his life, Scott stated to his doctor that he was "eating little, sleeping less, and drinking a quart of vodka a day." Writer Peter Green wrote of his meeting with Scott: "In 1975, though still only in his mid-fifties, he
1419-534: The triangle of an English woman, an Indian man, and a British police superintendent, setting up the events of subsequent novels in the series. It is considered Scott's "major work." The title itself, which is also an expression for something most valuable, refers to the fact that India was considered to be the most valuable possession of the British Empire . The plot has direct similarities to the novel A Passage to India by E.M. Forster published in 1924. Much of
1462-542: The typewriter and the blank page... It was the making of him as a writer, but the unmaking of him as a human being." In 1976 and 1977, the last two years of his life, Scott was invited to be a visiting professor at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma . The financial offer was a great relief after his endless financial anxieties of his writing career. The University of Texas supported the author by offering to buy his manuscripts. His coda to The Raj Quartet , Staying On ,
1505-499: The wildest and most undisciplined bolters." Scott's first novel, Johnny Sahib , met with 17 rejections from publishers. It was eventually released in 1952, coming to win the Eyre & Spottiswoode Literary Fellowship Prize. He continued to work as a literary agent to support his family, but managed to publish regularly. The Alien Sky (US title, Six Days in Marapore ) appeared in 1953, and
1548-778: Was a dying man, and knew it. He was "an alcoholic wreck." Scott's wife Penny had supported him throughout the writing of The Raj Quartet , despite his heavy drinking and violent behaviour, but once it was complete she left him and filed for divorce. In 1977, while he was in Tulsa, Scott was diagnosed with colon cancer . He died at the Middlesex Hospital in London on 1 March 1978. Cause c%C3%A9l%C3%A8bre A cause célèbre ( / ˌ k ɔː z s ə ˈ l ɛ b ( r ə )/ KAWZ sə- LEB( -rə) , French: [koz selɛbʁ] ; pl. causes célèbres , pronounced like
1591-512: Was an English novelist best known for his tetralogy The Raj Quartet . In the last years of his life, his novel Staying On won the Booker Prize (1977). The series of books was dramatised by Granada Television during the 1980s and won Scott the public and critical acclaim that he had not received during his lifetime. Born in suburban London, Scott was posted to India, Burma and Malaya during World War II . On return to London he worked as
1634-489: Was born at 130 Fox Lane in the district of Palmers Green / Southgate , in North London, the younger of two sons. His father, Thomas (1870–1958), was a Yorkshireman who moved to London in the 1920s with family members from Headingley. He was a commercial artist, specialising in drawing for calendars and cards. Scott's mother, Frances, née Mark (1886–1969) was the daughter of a labourer from south London. In later life Scott noted
1677-587: Was enlisted in the British Army, and end only a few days before his death on 1 March 1978. In the David Higham Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin can be found Scott's correspondence with clients Arthur C. Clarke , M. M. Kaye , Muriel Spark , children's author Mary Patchett, Peter Green , Morris West , Gabriel Fielding and John Braine . Hilary Spurling wrote
1720-693: Was followed by A Male Child (1956), The Mark of the Warrior (1958), and The Chinese Love Pavilion (1960). He also wrote radio plays for the BBC: Lines of Communication (1952), Sahibs and Memsahibs (1958) and The Mark of the Warrior (1960). In 1960 Scott walked away from his steady job as an agent and decided to become a full-time author. He played with various geographic settings in Bender (1963) and Corrida at San Feliu 1964) with uneasy results. Funded by his publishers, Heinemann, Scott flew to India in 1964, in
1763-530: Was her biological father. A 1966 book review in Kirkus Reviews called the novel "a slow-moving one, filled with a tremendous number of ideas, views, speculations imposed in an attempt to convey the contradictions between not only England and India, but within India itself, a cosmos in which there are many circles within circles, mystical, social, political." The review summarized, "It is certainly Paul Scott's major work and it has already been established that he
The Jewel in the Crown (novel) - Misplaced Pages Continue
1806-407: Was hosted by Dorothy Ganapathy, whom he was close to for the rest of his life. He spent time in rural Andhra Pradesh with military comrades. His long standing gastric illness was exacerbated by the visit to India, and on his return he had to undergo painful treatment, but afterwards felt better than he had for many years and began to write. In June 1964, aged 43, Scott began to write The Jewel in
1849-703: Was published in 1977, just before his second visit to Tulsa. Staying On won the Yorkshire Post Fiction Award and the Booker Prize in 1977. Scott was too unwell to attend the Booker ceremony in November 1977. Granada Television showed Staying On , with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson as Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy. The success of its first showing in Britain in December 1981 encouraged Granada to embark on
#266733