Sun in the Morning by Elizabeth Cadell - a novel based on her youth in India

Title: Sun in the Morning
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: Thorndike Press, large print paperback, 1978 (originally published in 1950)
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: India, early 20th century

Description: The narrator and her two older sisters live with their father in one of five houses on Minto Lane in Calcutta, 1913. She is eager to know the colorful De Souza family – the mother is a dressmaker and the eight children are lively and engaged in many pursuits – which eventually happens but most of her time is spent with the other neighbors, specifically two girls who become lifelong friends, Poopy Delacourt and Marise Andros. Although an ayah is often trailing behind them, the girls have an amazing amount of freedom to explore when not attending the local convent school. The sisters and their family prepare for a visit to England in 1914, which is unexpectedly prolonged when the Great War begins, but they return to India in 1920. During those years, they grew up and due to Calcutta’s dearth of eligible young women are now highly in demand. Poopy and Marise also return to Calcutta and they are happily reunited. All three go to Darjeeling with a family friend, where local society finds them and Poopy and Marise fall in love.

My Impression: This book appears to be much more of a memoir than Cadell’s other work, although there are great similarities to A Lion in the Way, published many years later in 1982, which I recently reviewed and is also based on Cadell's early life.   Like the nameless heroine of this book, Cadell was born in 1903 in Calcutta, India. During WWI, she studied music in London, but refused a musical career and returned to India that was changing and rejecting Britain’s rule. Sun in the Morning ignores the political atmosphere and focuses more on growing up. The heroine’s sisters are critical of the unfortunately-nicknamed Poopy for having an expressionless face and seem unimpressed she has returned to their lives:

Poopy and I met every day and talked all day. My sisters admitted that she had grown very pretty; that her hair, a mass of soft, fair curls, was unusual and effective, that her figure was good; but they regretted that the years had not taught her how to use her face muscles or keep her clothes in order. Pleats still came out, shoulder straps fell down, suspenders snapped. Before I had said two sentences to Poppy I was offering her a safety pin.

This made me laugh because criticizing each other’s friends is something sisters sometimes find irresistible! Cadell’s sisters were twins so she was probably used to being the odd one out and, at the end of the book, everyone except the narrator is paired off. She complains to her father that nothing will ever be the same and he tries to argue her out of this belief and thinks he has succeeded:

“One thing,” I said at last, “you’ll have to admit. I’ll see Poppy and I’ll see Marise, but it’ll never be quite the same again, will it?”

“Well, perhaps not,” said my father.

“And in time they’ll be much more interested in their husbands, won’t they, than in me?

“Well, yes.”

“And in their homes and their babies?”

“Naturally.”

“So that all this – the happy childhood and girlhood and all – it’s over. It’s finished, and nobody knows what’s ahead, do they?”

“True.”

“And however many friends I make, they’ll never be what Poopy and Marise were?”

“Well, no.”

“And whatever’s ahead will be different, won’t it? I mean, getting married is all right but it’s a responsibility, isn’t it, and thinking about bringing up children, and it’s never quite what you say – carefree – any more, is it?”

“Well . . . no.”

“And so everything is over, in a way, isn’t it?”

“Well . . . yes.”

I rose and dusted off my skirt. “That’s what I said,” I said.

It is so Cadell that she can make a melancholy commentary like this very funny! Her heroines may be quiet but they don’t like to lose an argument.  And I remember feeling exactly this way the week I graduated from college.

This is my nineteenth book in the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader.  There is another book about India called The Sun in the Morning - it is the first volume of M.M. Kaye's (of The Far Pavilions fame) fascinating three-volume memoir, which I also recommend to those interested in this period.

Links: The book is back in print and available via Amazon * WorldCat

Source: InterLibrary Loan