Calcutta, 1824: “The City of Palaces” by James Atkinson

“The City of Palaces” begins with a reflection on the rise and fall of empires. In this context, the British empire is described as having surpassed all previous empires, such as Rome, Babylon, and Carthage, in strength and expansion. The poem continues by recounting the personal experiences of the poetic voice when they first entered Calcutta. After arriving by boat in the city, the voice reflects on their first chaotic impressions from its inhabitants “whose noise and tumult momently increased; / They looked as if from Bedlam just released” (p. 6, ll. 22f.). Apart from the noise and busyness, the newly-arrived voice, most likely a new Company recruit, is captivated by the “pomp of spires / And palaces, to view like magic brought; / All glittering in the sun-beam. […]” (p. 7, ll. 29–31). Even the cemetery perimeters in Park Street appear “not in sepulchral gloom, / But as gay temple, tower, light obelisk, or dome” (p. 8, ll. 62f.), underlining that life and death are celebrated equally in Calcutta. The seeming visual splendour of the city’s imperial architecture is disturbed by the sight of corpses floating in the River Hugli, much to the disgust of the poetic voice, who questions why death and squalor should coexist unopposed next to such splendour. This ambivalence of splendour and squalor is one central theme that recurs throughout the poem: celebrations of British imperial conquest are mixed with darker, more sombre notes when it comes to the personal fates of Company employees. Already at the beginning, the poem asks the readers to enjoy the pleasantries of Calcutta, which is compared to the mythical garden of the Hesperides, while they can, despite a possibly fatal outcome: “Thou’rt on the brink of death, luxuriate on thy bane.” (p. 6, l. 18). As the exploits and career options of EIC employees are described in length throughout the following stanzas, a more negative depiction prevails towards the end of the poem, as Calcutta is likened to a vampiric entity feeding on its British inhabitants, who are bound to meet a premature, often disease-induced, death. This culminates in the final stanza:

Day after day our eyes behold the wreck

Of human life—the same sad mortal end;

We see the same funereal trappings deck

The cold remains of enemy and friend;

[…]

Our footing fails upon the brink—tis o’er—

Cut off at once from life—we breathe—we feel no more. (p. 30, ll. 451–459).

 

Among the large number of poems written by EIC employees in India, Atkinson’s “City of Palaces” stands out — beyond its considerable length of fifty-one stanzas — for two reasons. The first is the larger significance of what Atkinson’s poem and his characterization of Calcutta epitomize in terms of content and the overarching relevance of the city for British India: on the level of content, Calcutta itself is described as the “nurse of opulence and vice / Thou architect of European fame” (p. 14, ll. 154f.). Going further in the characterization of Calcutta as an imperial centre, the poetic voice declares:

Yes, thou’rt a little London in Bengal,

A microcosm; loose, and yet compact;

A snug epitome, a capital

Concentring every folly; brief, abstract,

The essence of all worldliness, in fact

A wonder, formed like island on the main

Amidst a sea of pagans, to exact

Allegiance from their millions, not in vain,

For intellect hath power, to bind as with a chain (p. 15, ll. 172–180).

Going beyond its content, the poem itself can be read as an epitome of British imperial presence and a survey of British perceptions of India in the early nineteenth century. As such, the poem gives a sweeping overview of all the impressions—visual, auditive, and olfactory—that visitors to the city would encounter. It also reflects on the larger role of the British imperial presence in Bengal. By referring back to well-known examples from classical antiquity, it seeks to explain British expansion as well as the customs and belief systems of the native population. In addition, by focussing on the personal fates of Company employees and their premature death as a common occurrence, it also takes stock of the personal cost, on the British side, entailed in the rising significance of Calcutta as an imperial centre. The result is a deeply ambivalent picture of the city and British imperial presence, although the empire as a whole remains unquestioned. These reflections on Calcutta’s role within the empire challenge common notions of a stark metropole-periphery dichotomy. Rather, they suggest a permeable and malleable boundary between metropole and colonial periphery, defined by a constant flow of goods, people, and, ultimately, texts and ideas between London and Calcutta, England and Bengal.

 

Secondly, “The City of Palaces” illustrates how EIC poets writing in India adapted accepted metropolitan poetic conventions and formal arrangements to their own colonial contexts. In terms of formal stanza structure and overarching themes, Atkinson’s poem imitates Lord Byron’s mock-epic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818) which, along with his satire Don Juan (1819–1824) and other pieces, proved to be wildly popular with readers in British India. Calcutta newspapers even reprinted full cantos of Don Juan as soon as they reached Bengal. By imitating Byron’s Childe Harold, “The City of Palaces” sends its readers on a similar pilgrimage, this time through the city of Calcutta, while evoking the same feelings of exile and disaffection that are central to Childe Harold. The familiar Byronic protagonist is transposed to a new setting in India in the form of an anonymous but similarly disaffected young EIC employee, disillusioned with his position and his bleak financial prospects despite a rigorous training at the EIC college at Haileybury. As the overall formal structure and thematic outlook of Byron’s poem is retained after this process of transposition, readers would have immediately recognized this particular formal arrangement, already ordering their reading experience and expectations tied to Atkinson’s work.

 

Following Indian independence, Calcutta’s colonial sobriquet has been replaced by the more current “City of Joy”. Nevertheless, Atkinson’s poem was a small but important element in contributing to the perception of Calcutta, in the eyes of his nineteenth-century contemporaries, as the second city in the empire after London, as reflected in its evocative epithet “City of Palaces”. On a much broader scale, Atkinson’s poem and its ambivalent position towards British presence in Bengal encapsulate the significant role of colonial poetry for imperial subjects in the anglophone world. Verse provided poets and audiences with an accepted and recognizable form of literary expression that enabled an affective relationship between them and their nation and empire in order to negotiate their evolving sense of Britishness. The results could in turn range from poetic celebrations to damning critiques of the imperial project, while simultaneously allowing for ambivalent responses to imperial expansion, as highlighted by James Atkinson’s poetic depiction of Calcutta.