One last look

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Notes

 William Lamb Melbourne was the British Prime Minister in 1834, and from 1835 to 1841. William IV (1765–1837) was King of England from 1830 to 1837. It was just two years after the Oliphants’ arrival in India that William IV was succeeded on the throne by his niece, Queen Victoria.

 Fanny Park, wife of a civil servant, and Fanny and Emily Eden, who, just like Eleanor and Harriet, accompanied their brother George in 1835 as Governor-General to Calcutta. See Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque. Fanny is the Pilgrim, but we do not know if she came to India in search of the picturesque or for other, more personal reasons. The novel traces her transformation from an ordinary middle-class Englishwoman, or as the Indians addressed them, a memsahib, to a passionate lover of the country and people of India. Fanny Eden's and Emily Eden's journals and writings are, respectively, Tigers, Durbars and Kings: Fanny Eden's Indian Journals, and Up the Country: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. Both books describe a two-and-a-half-year journey with an entourage of 12,000. Susanna Moore lists several other books under her Acknowledgments including Janet Dunbar's Golden Interlude.

 First formed in 1747, Afghanistan was seen as a bridge between India and the Middle East, but Britain failed to gain control of it in a series of wars known as the Afghan Wars (1838–42, 1878–80, 1919), which were prompted by the British desire to prevent the expansion of Russian influence towards India. The third Afghan War resulted in the country's independence (1921). See David Crystal, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

 Susanna Moore, One Last Look (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 108; all subsequent references are cited in the text.

 Pathan is a member of a Pashto-speaking people of Afghanistan and North Pakistan. Syce refers to a groom for horses.

 Betel nut, the fruit of the betel palm, is chewed with leaves by some Southeast Asian peoples as a mild masticatory stimulant. In fact, any foreigner coming to India for the first time will be surprised by the red coloured pavements from the spat-out betel juice.

 But one never knows. See H. D. S. Greenway, “A Time for Peacemaking: The Hopeful Dance of India and Pakistan,” in which we read: “Some of the best news this year has come from the Indian subcontinent, as its two nuclear powers, who have fought three wars and nearly went to war again two years ago, now seem to be almost competing in who can move faster to repair half a century of hostility . … For all the uncertainties ahead, however, prospects are good for understanding between these two nuclear antagonists, and that is good news indeed” (International Herald Tribune, 29 December 2003, 8). And again: “Islamabad, Pakistan. The leaders of India and Pakistan met on Monday for the first time in more than two years and pledged to continue efforts to repair relations after their nuclear-armed countries went to the brink of war in 2002” (International Herald Tribune, 6 January 2004, 1).

 The Taj Mahal (Persian, “best of buildings”), the famous mausoleum in Agra, was built c.1630–48 by Shah Jahan for his favourite wife.