Very early after her arrival in India, as stated in a previous chapter, the Natives seemed disposed to credit Miss Tucker with an astonishing number of years; but too much must not be thought of this. It arose from the fact that a grey-haired English lady out there is a complete rara avis—a sight seldom to be seen. Miss Wauton’s first impressions of her, jotted down as follows, do not give the impression of a very old lady, dearly as Charlotte Tucker loved to describe herself in those terms: ‘Tall, slight, with lofty brow, sparkling eye, face constantly beaming with love and intelligence; genius in every look; figure frail and fairy-like, agile and graceful; very brisk movements and light tread.’ Hardly like a hundred years old! After a few years had passed she did no doubt age rapidly.
Mention has several times been made of Miss Tucker’s readiness to give; and when one recalls the abounding generosity of her father, not to speak of the story of her grandmother on the Boswell side giving away to a beggar the last coin in the house, one can hardly be surprised at the generous tendencies of Charlotte Tucker’s character. She had the gift of liberality by inheritance; and she cultivated her gift as a matter of principle. Giving was at all times a real delight to her. A quotation on this subject from Mr. Beutel may well come in here:—
‘Miss Tucker was always very liberal. Wheresoever there was need or distress that she heard of, she gave substantial help immediately. I well remember, for instance, after I had taken over charge of the Boys’ Orphanage, one time there were between thirty and forty boys to be fed and clothed, and no money left in hand. As soon as Miss Tucker heard of it, she immediately sent me £10; and I must confess such a blessing rested on that money, that I never came into similar straits during the twelve years that I had charge of the Boys’ Orphanage.
‘And again, before we settled at Clarkabad, there was a great scarcity of grain, in consequence of the failure of crops among the Zamindars. They had very little to eat, and no seed-corn to sow. All wanted some help, and I had no money in hand.... When Miss Tucker heard of it, immediately she sent us Rs.300; and our greatest need was at an end.
‘Again, in 1889, when a dear friend of mine, Pastor and Teacher in the United States of North America, with whom I had come out to India in 1869, had decided to return to India as a Missionary, in order to join and to help me in the multifarious work at Clarkabad, and he found that the money in hand was insufficient to pay for his and his family’s voyage from Germany, and Miss Tucker heard of it, she immediately sent me £100, with the direction to forward that sum to him, on condition that he had not left Germany again for America. This, however, had already taken place in the meantime, and the money was returned to her.
‘Again, in 1892, after we had returned to Kotgur, where there was a great scarcity in the district, and many poor people had hardly one meal a day to eat, and Miss Tucker heard that I gave relief work to some forty or fifty people, she sent me another Rs.100.’
These are merely a few among innumerable instances which might be quoted; though generally the gifts were so quietly bestowed that few or none except the recipient knew about the matter. It was not, however, only in money that she was generous. The very necessaries sent for her own use, the very clothes sent for her own wear, would be given freely away to the first person who seemed in need of them. Mrs. Hamilton, learning something of this, at one time tried in despair calling her gifts ‘loans,’ in the hope that they might be thus secured for Charlotte Tucker’s own benefit. In later years, when a parcel arrived from England, Miss Tucker would sometimes not allow her Missionary companions to see what it contained, that she might feel more free to give away as she felt disposed.
The Rev. Robert Clark speaks of Miss Tucker as ‘an English Christian Faqir,’—a curious use of the term, which he applies also to one or two other Missionaries. The original idea of ‘Christian Faqirs,’ sometimes referred to in Miss Tucker’s own letters, was of Native Faqirs, who, on becoming Christians, kept still to their old mode of life, going about as before, teaching Christianity instead of false religions, and not begging any longer, but receiving a small sum for their support from Englishmen. Mr. Clark, in speaking of A. L. O. E., doubtless uses the word in reference to her peculiar mode of entering into Indian ways, Indian customs, Indian thoughts,—as, for instance, sitting on the floor among them, instead of on a chair, travelling in an ekka like them, and so far as she was able living their life,—as well as to the rigid simplicity and self-denial which she cultivated.
After alluding to the manner of her earlier English life, and contrasting it with the manner of her existence at Batala, where ‘two chairs were placed on two sides of a table in a large and almost unfurnished room,’ Mr. Clark continues: ‘Miss Tucker ate very little. She always told us to tell her beforehand if we were going to see her, in order that she might have something to place before us. There was then no railway; and everything had to be brought from Amritsar once or twice a week. The bread often became very hard. She sometimes said, “Do try this piece; it seems a little softer.” Her guests were thinking all the time of her tender gums, and of her teeth which were no longer young.’
On first going to Batala Charlotte Tucker had had the idea in her mind of inaugurating there a sort of ‘Zenana’ of maiden Missionary ladies,—a close retreat, from which the foot of Man should be utterly and always excluded. Probably this was part of her desire to imitate the ways of Natives. Some judicious combating was needed to break her loose from it; though when once a gentleman-Missionary had actually arrived, theories went down before the spirit of hospitality.