A Woman of Many Strands
Romila Thapar
THE JOURNALS OF HONORIA LAWRENCE, INDIA OBSERVED 1823-54 by John Lawrence Hodder and Stoughton, 1981, 253 pp., £10.95
March-April 1981, volume 5, No 3/4

This is not a plain tale from the Raj even though it is the journal of the wife of a British officer serving in India. The touch of the mem-sahib is inevitable since Honoria Lawrence was one; how­ever, it remains a mere streak in an otherwise rich and complex personality and it is the individual who comes through strongly in the pages of the journal. She is a woman of many strands and if her husband was regarded as someone rather special then she has claims to the same regard in her own right.Honoria Lawrence did not come out on the ‘fishing fleet’ in search of a husband as did so many other mem­sahibs. Her marriage to Henry Lawrence was the culmination of a nine-year court­ship carried out over a long distance. Being obviously an intelligent woman, she understood her husband’s work rather more fully than did many of her contemporaries.

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