By Molly Groarke, @Molly_Groarke
Agnes Acland was nineteen years old in 1870, when her brothers left Britain to travel overseas. Her eldest brother Charlie, heir to the family fortune and baronetcy, departed on a world tour, travelling as far as Australia and New Zealand. Gib, the brother she was closest to, had a successful military career, stationed first in Dinapore, India, then in Aden, Yemen. Meanwhile, her third brother Arthur was voyaging down the Rhine on a European tour.
While Agnes and her sister May stayed at home, they still played a considerable role in their brothers’ lives and travels as correspondents. A particularly important source that survives is four of Agnes’ copybooks of her letters to Gib. A copybook is a type of notebook with very thin pages that allows its user to duplicate their letter by writing on two sheets at the same time. Thus letter writers could keep a copy of what they had written, without manually copying it out.
Much recent historical scholarship has focussed on the importance of recognising the impact of the British Empire ‘at home’, as well as overseas. Copybooks can be an important source in uncovering this ‘empire at home’ story. Often in UK archives we have letters that were sent from the colonies to Britain, but not from Britain to the colonies. Agnes’ copybooks are doubly important as many letters written by women were not as actively preserved or deemed significant, and tended to be designated in archives as ‘family’ or ‘personal’ rather than ‘political’ or ‘business’ correspondence, which gained more attention.
Immediately obvious from the copybooks is the emotional impact of the separation from her brothers that Agnes feels. She writes on several occasions of feeling ‘brotherless’.[1] She is diligent at remembering Gib’s birthday and anniversaries of departure, such as ‘when you left England for Gibraltar a good many years ago. It sticks in my mind as your first departure’.[2] Equally she looks forward to his return, often enquiring when that will be.[3] The impact of this separation goes both ways; a purpose of the letters is her proving emotional support for Gib. She consoles Gib when he is moved from Dinapore to Aden, a notoriously boring placement, promising to send out ‘a good many books by the steamers’ for him and wishing that ‘I could come out & keep you company’.[4] A regular feature of her letters are idyllic portrayals of domestic life at Killerton House, the family home.[5] Writing descriptive domestic scenes could intend to combat Gib’s homesickness, thus imaginatively connecting different spaces of empire.
A practical purpose of Agnes’ letters was to deliver news from home, what she termed ‘the regular bulletins’.[6] These were primarily updates on the health and activities of various family members and friends, but also included public and political news as Gib had limited access to the ‘English papers’.[7] A succession of Agnes’ letters were wholly preoccupied with news of a huge fire in the local village of Broadclyst, which according to her report burnt down 60 houses leaving 240 people homeless.[8] The Acland family were subsequently significantly involved in the rebuilding of the village and in distributing aid to affected peoples. Another more global event that Agnes tells Gib about is the Dilessi Massacre, the murder of a group of English aristocrats by brigands in Greece, which caused a crisis in Anglo-Greek relations; she lamented ‘to be killed away from those you love, by brigands in a foreign land is indeed sad’.[9] This must have held extra poignance for these separated siblings. Agnes also sent Gib copies of The Spectator regularly. With news from home being at a premium, having family members able to send news would have greatly advantaged Gib. Similarly, there were occasions where Agnes passed on advice from people she met, and she was also instrumental in putting him in touch and liaising meetings with acquaintances and other family members who were travelling nearby. Family networks were thus useful throughout the empire, despite physical separation.
Agnes also learnt a significant amount from Gib’s descriptions of the countries he was in. She describes his descriptions of India as ‘delightful’, ‘vivid’, and ‘absurd’, and expresses an interest in Indian affairs, being ‘ashamed of knowing nothing about Indian history’.[10] Her education through her brothers were from colonisers’ perspectives, and in the copybooks indigenous peoples appear almost exclusively as servants. One possible exception to this was an account she told Gib of how in New Zealand, Charlie had put May in touch with ‘a young Maori lady[,] a protégé of Sir William & Lady Martin of Auckland’.[11] Agnes relays how she writes in ‘capital English’ and ‘tells May her history, & that she is preparing to teach the children of her tribe, whose settlement is not far from Auckland’. This account shows the deep interconnectedness of the different places in empire, where letters formed a web of information exchange that could be politically and culturally powerful.
Note on the sources:
Agnes’ copybooks are currently in a private archive; in lieu of catalogue reference numbers, the dates of the letters, where available, are provided in the endnotes.
[1] 22.6.1871; 5.10.1871.
[2] 6.9.1871.
[3] 29.11.1871.
[4] 18.10.1870.
[5] 22.9.1870.
[6] 15.7.1871.
[7] 23.2.1871.
[8] 27.4.1870
[9] 27.4.1870.
[10] 10.2.1870; 17.11.1870; 11.5.1870.
[11] Third undated letter from the final copybook.
Doing History in Public 