Joyce james

1891 · 189414 — Lucknow: Printed at the N. N. Sivapuri Press 1891. Siege of Lucknow from the most exposed post - an Indian Rebellion eyewitness account of extraordinary rarity First and only edition - signed by the author on the last page - of this detailed firsthand account of the defence of Lucknow written by Matthew Rutland Joyce 1828-1911 in Uncovenanted Service the lower echelons of the ICS in the Judicial Garrison. Only the second recorded copy the Oxford University copy apparently lacking the initial leaf with excerpted passages from Tennyson's "The Defence of Lucknow". Joyce prefaces his narrative by explaining that it was written "for the information of those of my relatives and friends who were battling for their lives in other parts of the country or who were too young to remember". With no pretensions to being a "faithful history" of the period it is "simply a chronicle of such occurrences within the Residency defences. as memory retained and can be interesting to none but those few active participants in the great struggle who yet survive" p. i. The story which follows is all the more fascinating for its personlalized focus naming many of the most familiar names but introducing a cast of lesser-known characters to the famous story further broadening and humanizing the standard narrative. Presented in diary form the text follows Joyce through the preparation of the defences his training with an antiquated Brown Bess for the volunteer infantry brushes with death from both fever and enemy fire to the final relief and evacuation of the Residency "There was some confusion and heartaches in the matter packing up our belongings for the orders were peremptory that nothing but things necessary were to be taken out; and it certainly went against the grain to leave behind cherished articles". Joyce is a lively and personable storyteller his recollections of "the eternal din of musketry" of the rebels'' profligate firing the privations of the diminishing rations and the imminent threat of death are recounted in vivd vernacular style and his tales are often self-deprecating. In recounting what was despite his many "narrow escapes" "first and only" wound he explains how he would not have alluded to it "had there not been so much of the ludicrous about it". During the assault on Phillips's Garden which was being menaced by a rebel battery Joyce crafts himself "a capital loop-hole embrasure fashion" out of "substantial bricks" on top of the mud-brick wall overlooking the position. The result being much admired. While on watch he spots movement at the gun and foolishly fires off a round in the hope of "staying their purpose for a moment of two" which of course registers the rebels' aim and the gun was "presently laid and discharged". Joyce dives behind the wall for cover the shot clips the masonry of the house behind the shock dislodging the topmost bricks of his loop-hole which fell on his "bowed head and laid it open causing all over and inside it a sensation such as I had never felt before" pp. 71-3. Joyce was on the staff of the Judicial Garrison the Judicial Commissioner's Kutchery or Court House post a very exposed position during the siege. He and his brother Richard Christopher who served with the volunteer cavalry "Radcliffe's Horse" covering the withdrawal from the debacle at Chinhut were in the Uncovenanted Service a perhaps under-represented group in the history of British India. Originally introduced to offer opportunities for Indians or Anglo-Indians to join the Indian Civil Service covering key but less specialized administrative roles at commensurately lower salaries and with thinner employment rights the service had already began to attract a wider constituency before the expansion of the post-Rebellion government. By the 1880s voices were being raised on their behalf in the parliament to secure a levelling up of the benefits for their vital contributions to the increasingly complex bureaucracy of the Raj. Joyce was born in Agra post-Rebellion he was for a time curator of the Lucknow Museum and the donor of a number of specimens to the natural history section he was buried in the Residency Cemetery Lucknow. Beyond this we have been unable to trace earlier family connections with India and unfortunately within the text he tells us little of his background. Small octavo pp. ii iv 119 1. Original printed covers pebble-grain cloth backstrip. Externally overall a little browned rubbed and soiled but no loss of text to the covers endpapers browned; text toned but cleaned and sound; overall a surprisingly well preserved copy very good. hardcover