A Reluctant Memsahib tells the story of Sarah's great-grandmother Isabel Richards, who travelled out to India with her husband Harry and their four young daughters in 1904, when Harry was appointed to the Viceroy’s Council.

Sarah is the third generation in her family to attend Downe House and shared her time here with five of her cousins. Two of Isabel’s daughters who travelled out to India, Audrey and Enid (DH 1919), later attended Downe House when the school was based in Charles Darwin’s house in Kent. Sarah’s great aunt Audrey Richards (DH 1917) was amongst Olive Willis’ earliest pupils. After completing a degree in Natural Sciences at Newham College, Cambridge, Audrey returned to teach at Downe House for a year. She completed her doctorate in Anthropology at LSE and went on to become a pioneering and highly respected academic, facing down the male chauvinism of the time, to become Director of the African Studies Centre at Cambridge University and the first woman to be President of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

It was finding her great aunt Audrey’s notes for a book about Isabel and Harry and their time in India that inspired Sarah to take up Audrey’s idea and write A Reluctant Memsahib.

Sarah explains: “I was sorting through family papers and found not only literally hundreds of letters that my great grandmother Isabel wrote to her mother back in London but also notes from my great aunt Audrey, with her ideas for a book about the extraordinary time Isabel and her husband Harry had while in India. I had the idea to write the book when I had to stop work, as my son became seriously ill while at school. I finished it just two months before he died. For that reason, it holds a special meaning to me.”

Sarah was one of the first children in the UK to be diagnosed with Dyslexia, or ‘word blindness’ as it was called then. She gradually learned ways around her dyslexia and now sees her neurodiversity as a positive in her life. She has had a successful career in media, communications and marketing and now works in charity. Sarah is married and has two daughters and a daughter in law.

“Strangely enough I ended up spending much of my working life writing, first as a very junior journalist and then as a PR/communications professional, rising to work for Saatchi’s and becoming a director and MD of top London agencies. I discovered (the hard way) that none of that prepares you for writing a book!”

At the Court of the Viceroy – Based on the diaries and letters of Isabel Richards

Sarah’s great grandmother Isabel is a lively correspondent with an eye for detail, and an ear for social nuance. She wrote over 500 letters to her mother documenting her insights. This unique correspondence provides a ringside view of the key players and events over five years, which were amongst the most significant in the history of the British Raj with an impact still felt in India today.

Isabel’s letters and diaries provide a totally fresh impression of the extraordinary way the British Empire conducted itself. Not having worked their way up the ladder of the Indian Civil Service, the young couple, Isabel and Harry, were totally unprepared for life at the very top echelons of the highly structured and deeply conservative British Raj. Seen through the fresh eyes of a liberally educated, middle-class London woman, she offers a first-hand account of Curzon’s battles with the India Office and Kitchener, and the hugely negative impact he had on Indians, which strengthened demands for Independence and helped set India on the road to partition. She takes nothing for granted and describes frankly what she saw, most especially the extraordinary social demands her husband’s role imposed on her, and her struggle to balance this with her expectations as a mother.

“A family of educators and women campaigners”

Isabel Richards (nee Bulter) came from a family of women campaigners who prized education for women. Her aunt was social reformer and women’s emancipationist Josephine Butler (1828-1906). Another aunt was the niece of famous author Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849), and another, Agnata Ramsay (1867-1931), was awarded the highest first in Classics in 1887 (Girton, Cambridge), above all the men.

It's no surprise then that Isabel raised her four girls to be independent-minded. They were each given a good education, Audrey and Enid here at Downe House. Born into the generation which was to be devasted by the First World War, her daughters were consequently not constrained to follow the preordained path of marriage or caring for aging parents. Instead, as Sarah says, they became “four splendidly individual and robust ladies … bright, humorous, genteelly determined, open-minded” who were a source support and inspiration to their families for generations to come.

As well as Isabel’s illustrious daughter Audrey, her eldest, Gwynedd, joined the Red Cross early in 1918, working in France and Cologne. She was one of the first to study social work at the LSE, and during the Second World War lived and worked in Bermondsey, caring for people made homeless, especially children. She went on to work with both Save the Children and Bernado’s, where she set up the first formalised national adoption service in 1948. With just one assistant she covered the whole country and within six months had found 1,780 families ready to adopt and foster orphaned children.

Isabel’s other daughter Enid, the second to attend Downe, married Geoffrey Faber, founder of Faber & Faber. Enid read manuscripts and proposed novels for publication and became a close confidante of T. S. Elliot, before serving as director at Faber and Faber during the 1960s and 70s.

Isabel’s youngest daughter Katherine supported her husband, Chief Legal Adviser at the Foreign Office, William Eric Beckett, through WW2, the peace negotiations, Nuremberg, the creation of the UN and the International Court of Justice at The Hague.  He was a major force behind the the creation of the concept of universal human rights, contributing to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950).

A woman’s perspective on the British Raj

Isabel’s incredible story, A Reluctant Memsahib, is a poignant evocation of a time of great change, as well as a touching family portrait of a generation of trailblazing women. Sarah’s book about her great grandmother shares the story of one of the unknown figures in history, who’s plot is on the sidelines, but which helps to build a more accurate and complete picture of the times in which she lived.