Chapter 9
Chapter 9
On Indian Soil
William Carey sat at the desk in his cabin, turning the piece of paper in his hand over and over. Every few minutes he looked down and reread the words written on it. He hardly had to, though; he could recite them by heart:
If any subject of His Majesty, not being lawfully licensed, should at any time repair to or be found in the East Indies, such persons were to be declared guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor, and be liable to fine and imprisonment….
As well, William had written on the page the text of an order issued by the rulers of British-controlled India. He reread those words, too:
Every commander of a vessel arriving in India is to give to their pilot a faithful return of all passengers on board, and stating whether or not they have a license from the East India Company.
Government of India, 1789
William wasn’t sure what to do. He could not ask Captain Christmas to lie for him, nor could he risk being sent back to England. There had to be another way, but what was it?
As he mulled over the group’s predicament, an idea popped into his mind. He quickly read the words of the government decree one more time. The answer had been there all along. It had just taken him a while to see it! Captain Christmas had to declare all passengers on board. But what if a passenger, or group of passengers, was to disembark before the ship took on a pilot? There was nothing in the decree that said that a passenger had to wait for a pilot to come aboard before disembarking. William smiled to himself. That was his answer. Quickly, he stood up and went to find Captain Christmas. Four hours later, the eight members of the missionary party were secretly hoisted over the side of the ship into a small native boat called a pansi.
The plan was for the group to meet up with Captain Christmas and the Kron Princessa Maria in Calcutta, where she would be docked for several days before heading farther upriver to Serampore.
The tide was with them as they began the journey up the Hooghly River. William was fascinated with everything he saw along the riverbanks. The women, many of them balancing baskets on their heads, wore brightly colored long dresses called saris. The gathered skirts swished gently as the women walked along. The men, on the other hand, had turbans wrapped around their heads, and they wore wide, floppy cotton pants called pajamas. William felt as if he’d walked into the pages of an adventure story.
Finally, when the tide turned and the pansi could no longer make headway against the strong current, the boatman told Dr. Thomas they would have to stop and begin their journey again in six hours, when the tide had turned in their favor.
William could scarcely believe it when he was at last standing by the side of the river with both feet planted firmly on Indian soil. The pansi had tied up beside a village marketplace, and William gazed at the amazing sight—like nothing he had ever seen in England. All around him, merchants sat or squatted next to large, flat baskets filled with vegetables and fruits, most of which he had never seen before. Other merchants were selling dried fish, and still others sold brass and silverware, bright-colored cotton fabrics, sandals, and some things he had no idea what possible use they were for. Around the merchants, people milled, bartering for a fair price for the goods they wanted to buy. The air in the marketplace was also filled with odors. Some were pungent and repulsive, but others were sweet and inviting. Some of the smells William recognized, but there were many he did not.
Within minutes, a crowd had gathered around them. Brown hands reached out to pinch little Jabez’s cheeks and poke at the older boys. Dolly drew back, afraid of what might happen next. But there was nothing to be afraid of; it was just that most of the people had never before seen a white woman and her children alone without servants.
As the crowd gathered, William desperately wanted to preach to the assembled people, but he hadn’t yet learned enough Bengali. Instead, he urged Dr. Thomas to preach. For the next three hours, that’s exactly what Dr. Thomas did. As Dr. Thomas spoke, the residents of the village listened carefully. And when Dr. Thomas had said all he had to say, several people in the crowd brought a meal of curried vegetables and rice, proudly arranged on plantain leaf plates, for them all to eat. The villagers laughed among themselves as William, Dolly, and Kitty tried eating with their fingers for the first time. The visitors made quite a mess. The three oldest Carey boys, though, seemed to enjoy the new eating style, which brought a welcome change from the knives and forks they’d had to eat with at the captain’s table aboard ship.
When they had all finished eating, William continued exploring the marketplace while Dr. Thomas answered the village residents’ questions. Before William had run out of things to see, the boatmen yelled that the tide had turned and it was time to get under way again. Everyone climbed back in the pansi and continued on upriver toward Calcutta. As the missionaries cast off from the jetty, several people from the village yelled out that they would be welcome back anytime.
Back in the pansi, William and Dr. Thomas discussed their first missionary experience. William was thrilled at how long the Hindu people had stood and listened to the gospel message being preached, and he marveled at the intelligent questions they asked afterward. Over the next two days, the same scene repeated itself three more times in other villages before the pansi finally reached Calcutta.
The Kron Princessa Maria arrived soon after them, and the missionaries were able to collect their belongings and say farewell to Captain Christmas.
While the Carey family waited with their pile of belongings in an English-style tea shop near the Calcutta docks, Dr. Thomas went off in search of his wife and daughter. He was gone two hours before he returned with good news. His wife and daughter were both safe and well and living in a house they had rented near the center of town. In addition, Dr. Thomas brought back several servants to carry their belongings to the house where they could all stay.
After winding their way through streets lined with mud brick buildings and numerous bazaars and marketplaces, they came to a very English-looking street lined with trees on both sides. They stopped in front of house number 43. Dr. Thomas rang the doorbell. William could hear the sound echoing inside the house. Within moments, a servant swung the large wooden front door open. Behind the servant stood Mrs. Thomas and Eliza.
An hour later, after a change of clothes, the whole group was reunited in the parlor around a large mahogany table. They sipped tea and swapped stories of their trips from England and told of how they had entered India without a license. Mrs. Thomas explained that one of her friends was the wife of a high-ranking government officer, and since she and Eliza were traveling alone without Dr. Thomas, the officer had arranged a special entry permit for them both and had even loaned them the money to set up house.
As the reunited group talked, servants scurried in and out, bringing sandwiches and pots of tea. With each new pot of tea, one of the women servants would stretch out her arms to relieve Dolly of having to hold Jabez. Instead of handing him over, however, Dolly clung to her baby more tightly.
Despite his wife’s fears, William was glad to be in India. He was also glad to see Dr. Thomas reunited with his family. But something bothered him about it all. He had come to India to share the gospel message with those who lived in the villages dotted across the landscape. He hoped the plush surroundings and servants were not the way Mrs. Thomas expected to live now that they had all arrived. Apart from anything else, they didn’t have the money to support such a lifestyle!
By the next morning, Mrs. Thomas had directed the servants to unpack all the clothing trunks, and the boys were running up and down the stairs and in and out of the back veranda, happy to be on dry land again.
As the boys scurried about, William sat on the veranda examining a hibiscus. He marveled at the flower’s intricate structure as he peered at it through his magnifying glass. As he studied the flower, he heard the front doorbell ring and then footsteps on the marble floor. Several minutes later, Dr. Thomas called his name. William took one last glance at the beautiful bloom under his magnifying glass and then headed inside. Waiting in the hallway was a tall Indian man wearing a white turban, green tunic, and white pants. The man bowed politely when he saw William.
“There you are,” said Dr. Thomas with a beaming smile. “This is Ram Boshu, one of the three converts I told you so much about.”
William’s face lit up with a broad smile.
“It is an honor to meet you, sir,” said Ram in perfect English. “As soon as I heard Dr. Thomas was back, I came to find my honored friend right away.”
The three men went into the library to talk further. William pulled from his pocket a letter to Ram from the missionary society committee back in England. As Ram Boshu read the letter, his eyes filled with tears.
“I am not worthy to receive such kind Christian greetings,” he confessed. “Since you left me, Dr. Thomas, I have been under much pressure from my family. They are always asking me to worship the family gods with them. After many weeks of serving Jesus Christ, I gave in and went with them to the temple. And now I am not worthy.”
While dismayed that Ram had gone back to his Hindu gods, William and Dr. Thomas felt that he sounded genuinely sorry over his actions. And since he spoke such good English, William asked him to become his munshi, or language teacher.
Now that he had someone to help him with the Bengali language, William was anxious to get on with the business of being a missionary. In his book, Enquiry, he had laid out principles for missionary work, and now it was time to put them into practice. First, he had to find a way to live as simply as possible among the Indian people, and second, he needed a way to support himself so that money could be freed up for the missionary society committee to send out more missionaries.
William knew it would take a while for this to happen, but the first step was to sell the goods they had brought to India. Dr. Thomas had previously assured him that the metal goods and lengths of woolen fabric could easily be sold to raise the one hundred fifty pounds it would cost them to live simply for a year. However, in the time that Dr. Thomas had been away from India, there had been a glut on the market of the very items William had brought, and so the sale of the goods raised nowhere near the amount of money expected.
It took only two weeks for the missionary group to realize that their money was going too quickly. They would have to rethink their plans. After much discussion, and over the protest of all three women, it was decided that they would move to the Portuguese settlement of Bandel, thirty miles farther on up the Hooghly River from Calcutta, where living costs would be much lower.
Since it was much faster to travel by pansi up the river than to go overland to Bandel, the group, joined by Eliza, Mrs. Thomas, and Ram Boshu, found themselves once again on the move. It took three days to cover the distance, but the farther upstream they got, away from the influence of the tide, the faster they were able to go.
Once in Bandel, William and Dr. Thomas, accompanied by Ram Boshu, went in search of a place to live. They found a small but adequate house, which they rented. The six members of the Carey family and Kitty shared one room, the three Thomases shared the second room, and Ram slept in a tiny room at the back of the house that had once been a large cupboard.
As soon as they were settled in, William purchased a map of the area and began planning the trips he and Dr. Thomas would take. The two men bought a small boat, and within a few days, they were off sharing the gospel message in the villages that dotted the banks of the Hooghly River. Wherever they went, crowds, sometimes as large as two or three hundred people, came to hear them. At first, Dr. Thomas did the preaching, but within a week, William could speak the Bengali language well enough to preach by himself. Now he was beginning to feel like a real missionary.
William loved the life of a missionary in Bandel, but it was not to last. The problem was Dr. Thomas. Because Dr. Thomas had lived in India before, William had unwisely left him in charge of the money. But by mid-December, just four weeks after arriving in Bandel, the situation was grim. With eleven mouths to feed, their money was almost completely gone. Something had to be done.
They had set aside a small sum of money to establish a permanent mission station, but no matter how desperate things might get, William and Dr. Thomas had pledged not to touch this money until it was needed for that purpose.
As William pondered what to do, he received a letter from Captain Christmas. The captain had heard of a vacancy for a head gardener at the East India Botanical Gardens in Calcutta. Remembering how much William knew about botany, he had recommended him for the job. The recommendation had been approved, and William Carey could have the job if he wanted it. Better still, the job came with a house! The same day, Dr. Thomas received word that some of his creditors were still after him. It was decided that the whole group would pack up and move back to Calcutta, where William would work as a botanist and Dr. Thomas would open a medical office and earn some money to pay back his creditors. Each family would live separately, and once they were established, they would find ways to continue their missionary work.
It was a great plan. It just didn’t work. When William went to see about the job at the botanical gardens, he was told there had been a misunderstanding and the position had already been given to someone else. Now the Carey family had no place to live and very little money. William wasn’t sure what to do. Thankfully, Ram Boshu did. He had a banker friend who agreed to let the Careys stay in a small garden house on the back of his property in Manicktulla. Manicktulla was in a large swampy area northeast of the city and came complete with malaria-carrying mosquitoes and bands of robbers who roamed the muddy streets. The Careys, though, were never bothered by the robbers, probably because they looked like they had nothing worth stealing.
Soon after arriving in Manicktulla, Dolly, Felix, and William Jr. all became sick with dysentery. As the days dragged on, Dolly and Kitty began to complain about everything. The weather was too hot. They were bored and lonely for English company. The local people frightened them. The language was too hard to learn. The children were restless. Their stomachs couldn’t get used to the steady diet of vegetables and rice, and they wondered why Indians ate chapatis instead of good bread. They also blamed Dr. Thomas for getting them into the mess they were in.
The complaining and questioning went on day and night. In the end, William wrote in his diary: “My wife, and sister too, who do not see the importance of the mission as I do, are continually exclaiming against me…. If my family were but hearty in the work, I should find a great burden removed.”
No matter how poor they were or how desperate their situation, William was grateful that Dr. Thomas had put away a little money for missionary work. He told himself he wouldn’t use the money to buy food for the family but would instead spend it to print Bibles or pay for the setting up of a permanent mission station. This still left William with the problem of how to earn the money needed to feed and keep his family in the meantime. He had to come up with a solution, and fast. It was early January, just two months since they had arrived in India, and already the family was down to its last bag of rice.
Two weeks went by. William stretched the rice as far as it would go, but it was all but gone. Just when he began to despair that they might all starve, Ram Boshu arrived with some good news. His uncle had offered William and his family the use of some land, rent free for three years. The land was located in Dechatta, forty miles east of Calcutta. There William could plant a garden and grow vegetables so that the family could become self-sufficient. But to get the family there and purchase the needed seed and supplies would cost money. However, since the place would serve as a permanent base for his missionary work, William decided to use the money Dr. Thomas had set aside for missionary work. With it he would buy the necessary provisions and pay for the transport of his family to Dechatta. First thing in the morning, he would go to Calcutta to visit Dr. Thomas and collect the money.