# The Spoilt Child/Preface

PREFACE.
The author of this novel, Babu Peary Chand Mitter, was born in the year 1814.
He represented the well-educated, thoroughly earnest, and courteous Bengali gentleman of the old school.
His life was devoted to the good of his fellow-countrymen, and he was especially eager in the cause of female education. In the preface to one of his works, written with that object in view, he writes:— "I was born in the year 1814. While a pupil of the Páthshálá at home, I found my grandmother, mother, and aunts reading Bengali books. They could write in Bengali and keep accounts. There were no female schools then, nor were there suitable books for the females. My wife was very fond of reading, and I could scarcely supply her with instructive books. I was thus forced to think how female education could be promoted in a substantial way. The conclusion I came to was that, unless womanhood were placed on a spiritual basis, education would never be productive of real good. For the furtherance of this end I have been humbly working."
Amongst the books he published with this end in view are the "Ramaranjika," the "Abhedi," and the "Adhyátwiká." The "Ramaranjika" deals with female education under different aspects, and gives examples drawn from the lives of eminent Englishwomen, as well as biographical ​sketches of distinguished Hindu women, drawn from history and tradition. Of the "Abhedi" the author says:— "It is a spiritual novel in Bengali, in which the hero and heroine have been described as earnest seekers after the knowledge of the soul, and as obtaining spiritual light by the education of pain." Of the "Adhyátwiká," the author tells us:— "It brings before its readers the conversation and manners of different classes of people, in different circumstances, which have been pourtrayed in different styles, and which may perhaps be useful to foreigners wishing to acquire a colloquial knowledge of the Bengali language."
Babu Peary Chand Mitter was a man who keenly felt the evils in society around him, and he used his pen in the cause of temperance and the purity of the domestic circle as against drunkenness and debauchery; amongst his writings having this object in view is the "Mada Kháoya bara dáya," or "The great evils of dram-drinking." It is a novel marked by great humour, and shows the author to have been a satirist of no mean power.
Besides these novels he wrote "The Life of David Hare" both in Bengali and in English. He also contributed essays to The Calcutta Review, and an American publication called The Banner of Light, besides writing articles for the Agri-Horticultural Society of India.
Babu Peary Chand Mitter died in 1883.
The novel "Alaler Gharer Dulál," or "The Spoilt Darling of an Ill-regulated House," was written more than forty years ago, and was very well received, as the criticisms of the day show. The Calcutta Review of the day says:— "We hail this book as the first novel in the Bengali language. Tek Chand Thakur has written a tale the like of which is not to be found within the entire range of Bengali literature. Our author's quiet humour reminds us of Goldsmith, while his livelier passages bring ​to our recollection the treasures of Fielding's wit. He seems to be familiar with Defoe, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, and other masters of fiction."
Other critics of the day compared him to a Molière or a Dickens.
Mr. John Beames, in his "Modern Aryan Languages of India," writes:— "Babu Peary Chand Mitter, who writes under the nom de plume of Tek Chand Thakur, has produced the best novel in the language 'Alaler Gharer Dulál.' He has had many imitators, and certainly stands high as a novelist. His story might fairly claim to be ranked with some of the best comic novels in our own language for wit, spirit, and clever touches of nature. He puts into the mouth of each of his characters the appropriate method of talking, and thus exhibits to the full the extensive range of vulgar idioms which his language possesses."
In an introductory essay on Bengali novels, in his translation of Babu Bunkim Chandra Chatterjee's novel "Kopal Kundala," Mr. Phillips writes:— "The position and character of Bengali literature is peculiar. A backward people have, so to speak, rushed into civilization at one bound: old customs and prejudices have been displaced, uno ictu, by a state of enlightenment and advanced ideas. The educated classes have suddenly found themselves face to face with the richest gems of Western learning and literature. The clash of widely divergent stages of civilization, the juxtaposition of the most advanced thought with comparative barbarism, has produced results which, though perhaps to be expected, are somewhat curious. If one tries to close a box with more than it can hold the lid may be unhinged,—new wine may burst old bottles. The colliding forces of divergent stages of civilization have produced a literature that for want of a better ​expression may be called a hybrid compromise between Eastern and Western ideas. So we find that the Bengali novel is to a great extent an exotic. It is a hot-house plant which has been brought from a foreign soil; but even crude imitations are better than the farragos of original nonsense, lists of which appear from time to time in the pages of the Calcutta Gazette.
The above remarks are merely general, and there exist, of course, bright and notable exceptions, among whom may be mentioned the names of Peary Chand Mitter (the father of Bengali novelists), Bunkim Chandra Chatterjea, Romesh Chandra Dutt, and Tarak Nath Ganguli.
The 'Alaler Gharer Dulál' of Peary Chand Mitter may be called a truly indigenous novel, in which some of the reigning vices and follies of the time are held up to scorn and derision. A deep vein of moral earnestness runs through all the writings of Peary Chand Mitter, and he takes the opportunity to interweave with the incidents of his story disquisitions on virtue and vice, truthfulness and deceit, charity and niggardliness, hypocrisy and straightforwardness. Not only general vices, such as drinking and debauchery, but particular customs, such as a Kulin's marrying a dozen wives, and living at their expense, are condemned in no measured terms. The book is written in a plain colloquial style, which, combined with a quiet humour, procured for it a considerable degree of popularity."
As further evidence, if such were wanting, of the popularity of this novel, it may be mentioned that it has been dramatized, having been published in the form of a natak or play, by Babu Hira Lall Mitter.
The leading characteristics of the novel, as they have appeared to the translator, are the humour, pathos, and satire that pervade almost every page of it.
​The humour, though it may occasionally be broad, can never be called coarse, and much of it is the cultured humour that might be expected from a writer well acquainted with his own ancient classics. If Thackeray is the type of the cultured humorist of the West, Peary Chand Mitter is the type of the cultured humorist of the East.
The pathos is especially noticeable in some of the scenes which the author has pourtrayed for us with such vivid reality where the poor are brought before us. We see the utter dependence of the poor upon the generosity of the rich, a generosity that is rarely appealed to in vain: there is pathos too in the scene that brings before us the ryot and his landlord; and in the scenes in the zenana and the bathing-ghât where we have an insight into the lives and the thoughts of both the upper and lower classes of the women of the country. There is a deep pathos in the scene that brings before us the old man at Benares, spending the evening of his days in reading and meditation, in "The Holy City:" it is a scene that gives us an insight into the deeper religious side of the Hindu character.
The satire is only merciless where it is directed against the vices of drinking and debauchery, or against the custom of the much marrying of Kulins, or the marrying of old men to young girls, or solely for money. In other cases it is not unkindly, especially where it is directed against that not uncommon failing both in the West and the East, which Shakespeare has immortalized as "too much respect upon the world," and which is largely exhibited in the East in the form of lavish expenditure, regardless of debt, upon social and religious ceremonies.
Amongst other characteristics of this novel may be noted that deep vein of moral earnestness, already ​ferred to, which runs through the whole book, and which is chiefly exhibited in the form of moral reflections, such as are so common in many of the Sanscrit tales.
Dramatic vividness is another noticeable feature of the book: a few strokes of the pen suffice to bring before us, as living realities, characters that are drawn from every class of life, and scenes that deal with almost every incident of life in Bengal. In fact a far more vivid picture of social life in Bengal, both in its inner and outer aspects, is presented to us in the pages of this book, than is presented in the pages of many books purporting to give us an account of that life.
And, with this dramatic vividness, there is a general faithfulness to reality that will be appreciated by those who have lived for any time amidst the scenes described; for, though the book describes life in Bengal as it appeared to the eyes of an acute observer writing more than forty years back, the picture, in its general outlines, is as true of the life of the people now as it was then.
Another noticeable feature of the book is the rhythmic flow which marks its language. This is a feature which appears to characterize all books written for the people in the language best understood of the people, no matter what that language is.
As regards the language in which Peary Chand Mitter wrote this novel, the Calcutta Review of the day writes:—“Endowed, as he was, with strong common sense, as well as high culture, he saw no reason why this idol of unmixed diction should receive worship at his hands, and he set about writing 'Alaler Gharer Dulál' in a spirit at which the Sanscritists stood aghast, and shook their heads. Going to the opposite extreme in point of style, he vigorously excluded from his works, except on very rare occasions, every word and phrase that had a learned ​appearance. His own works suffered from the exclusion, but the movement was well-timed. He scattered to the winds the time-honoured commonplaces, and drew upon nature and life for his materials. His success was eminent and well-deserved."
One feature that has especially struck the translator in transferring this novel from its original Bengali into English, is that he has found it necessary to omit nothing, on the score of indelicacy, or bad taste,—a remark which could not be made of every Bengali novel. The author has written with the maxim of the old Roman satirist ever before his eyes,—maxima debetur puero reverentia.
The translator has had three classes of readers before his eyes, in making this translation.
It seemed to him that so excellent a picture of social life in Bengal could not but be interesting to those Englishmen and Englishwomen who are interested in the lives of their fellow-subjects in India.
It also occurred to him that as the rising generation of Bengalis no longer read Bengali literature as of old, it might interest them to see, in an English dress, a novel that has been so popular amongst their older compatriots.
English students of the Bengali language and its literature may also find the translation of use, as it has been made literal as far as was possible.
The task of translation, though it has been a pleasant one, has not been easy, owing to the many difficulties in the way of adequately rendering into English, without the qualities of the original suffering in the transfer, a book so essentially colloquial and idiomatic in style and character. The fact that Professor Cowell at one time contemplated a translation of this novel, but abandoned the idea owing to this very difficulty, has made the translator still more diffident of success, and he can only ​leave it to the indulgence of his Bengali readers to decide how far he has succeeded in his translation, in doing justice to the spirit of the original.
The translator's thanks are due to Babu Mohiny Mohun Chatterjea, Solicitor, Calcutta, for his kindness in revising the translation for him, and to Babu Amrita Lall Mitter, the Honorary Secretary to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Calcutta, and son of the author, for allowing him to publish it.