British Ceylon Through A Family Lens 1850-1950

 Introduction
​British Governors relied on mostly unsalaried Mudaliyars (leaders) from select families who exchanged service for land grants.^[1]  Educated in public schools Mudaliyars’ Anglophile sons increasingly inhabited a Jane Austenian lifeworld, particularly as they donned European attire in the middle of the nineteenth century. Unfolding around them was a countervailing Buddhist revival associated with Sinhala cultural resurgence. [2]

Chitty Family in 1899 … Standing L-R = Christian, Wilfred, George Snr, Marian, Charles ….. Sitting L-R = Mitzi, Rose, Maude, Laura, James

 

Colombo Chetty 

Accountant in the Court of Kandy

After 1850 residents of Kotahena and Mutwal saw (1) themselves as Ceylonese with expectations of freedom; (2) education and public service as means of advancement; (3) leafy suburbs with modern homes in Kurunduwatte and Kollupitiya to be attractive. Families mastered the art of cultivating wealth, prestige, and influence through education, intergenerational friendships, strategic marriages, and service to the Crown. There is a view that ‘[t]he leaders of the elite were firmly ensconced in a vision of a better place for themselves under the benign eyes of the British Raj’[3]. Sir Christofel Obeysekera, lamenting circa 1930 that Colombo Chetties had withdrawn from public service, suggested ‘inspiring those that remain …to properly educate themselves…without forgetting that other communities of the same plane as yours, are your best friends’.[4]  Franchise, sought in the twentieth century, was soon linked to free education. Looking back at a century of change through the lens of one family may appear distinctly out of place today when proficiency has replaced prestige in pursuit of power. However, discussion of variations in pursuit of education and politics in the Chitty family adds a little piece to the jigsaw puzzle of social history.

Ancestors 

Accounts about Colombo Chetties have been described as an unstructured ‘pot pourri which presents legends, fables and facts … which may not relate to the …community as we know them — dating say from Dutch times.’ Proof is sought ‘they were an identifiable collectivity, both in their own estimation and in the understandings of articulate and powerful others (Portuguese, Sinhala kings and elites) in Portuguese Ceilão’.[5] Going back to Rajasinha II ^nd each of us has thousands of ancestors. Yet we only discern imprints on the tracks of time. Others are absent in narratives about valour, wealth, rank, influence, prestige, or even infamy. Mudaliyars are remembered, the abject and ordinary forgotten. Two centuries from today thousands of descendants will identify Anura Kumara Dissanayake as their ancestor. Nilaperumal a.k.a. Kalukapuge (late 15th /early 16th C.) is described as the Bandaranaike clan’s founder. Obeysekeras identify Portuguese Naval Lieutenant Owen Fernandez (circa) 1630) – named Obeysekera (or ‘your leader’) by a Buddhist priest. Aserappas look back to Tandava Aserappa, a ship owner, with Persian roots, who sailed from Nagapatnam around 1653. Ondaatjes record Michael Jurie Ondaatje, the King of Tanjore’s physician, summoned (1659) by Dutch Governor Adrian Van der Meyden. Don Adrian Wijeysinghe Jayawardene, President J.R. Jayawardene’s ancestor (b.1768) is identified as a Colombo Chetty with partial Persian roots.

Linguistically proficient influencers (often Brahmans, Chetties, or Nayaks) -who facilitated operations of colonists, East India company factors, and governors – were called dubashes.[6] Chetties were South and Southeast Asian mercantile groups from southern Indian principalities, originally from India’s north and northeast. Several were Mudaliyars in Portuguese Ceilão – Christian and Hindu. Chetty was a postnominal in Dutch times – as in Aserappa Chetty, Casie Chetty, Coenje Chetty, Christenty Christfel Chetty, Colaas Chetty, Fernando Ondaatje Chetty, and Rodrigo Chetty.[7]  Interestingly Aserappa uses the terms Ceylon Chetties and Ceylon Christian Chetty Community in 1930.[8]

The Chitty Family shares an antecedent with Allegakones, Candappas, Casinaders, Kadirgamars, Muthukumarus, Sethukavelars, Somanaders, and Tambimuttus – Udayappa Chetty of Cuddlelore, eleven miles south of French Pondicherry. A dubash, Udayappa traded with Kandy under the protection of Rajasinha II.[9]  His son Francesco moved to Batticaloa after the Dutch captured the Fort in 1636. Some dubashes financed governors’ personal projects and played roles in famine relief, such as in 1687 and 1688, when Udayappa may have procured Kandyan grain for British troops. A contact in Rajasinha’s Court would have helped, such as the accountant in a watercolour (1825) by Hippolyte Silvaf [sic] housed in the Albert and Victoria Museum. See also Silvaf’s 1839 cartoon of a Colombo Chetty.

Udayappa was not a ‘Colombo Chetty’. Some descendants joined Christian Chetties of different origins who later became Colombo Chetties, perhaps when ‘the once-picturesque costumes of the Chetties had given way to the more modern, tailored suits of Bond Street’.[10]

MODERN CHITTY FAMILY

The modern Chitty family was founded by the wealthy Christian Chitty (d.1899?)  and his French Huguenot wife, the beautiful blue-eyed Matilda Augusta Morrel aka Mitzi (d. 1917)[11]. Their romance and marriage in 1860[12] blended conservative values in education and progressive practices apropos marriage. I draw on recollections of two granddaughters—Lylie Chitty (d.o. James Chitty) and her cousin Laurel Tambimuttu (d.o. Laura Chitty) and other records. There are tales of shipwrecks, French military officers, aristocratic roots, French Royalists exiled to Ile St Maurice in Napoleonic times, property in France, and an elopement.

A great grandson of E.R. Tambimuttu has discussed the role of education for the Tambimuttus.[13] Approaches to women’s education of sons and sons-in-law of Christian and Mitzi were somewhat Kantian and van Schurmanian respectively, though they would not have used these labels. I admire Immanuel Kant’s (1724- -1804) critique of pure reason and deontology but not his relegation of women to excellent household management.[14] In contrast Dutchwoman Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678), – artist, poet, classicist and philosopher – argued aged nineteen in favour of education in science and letters for women.[15] Christian and Mitzi did not seek matriculation for their children, though two sons trained for the Bar. Many other landed families were committed to higher education though, like the Chitty children, theirs’ were taught by governesses. Lives of landed families in Kotahena and Mutwal resonated with those in Jane Austen novels. Ladies managed large households. Children rode horses, played tennis and croquet, and engaged in artistic pursuits such as painting, crocheting, singing, and playing musical instruments. Self-rule advocate Charles Ambrose Lorenz (1829-1871) promoted a ‘Ceylonese’ identity at the time in The Ceylon Examiner, which he co-owned.

Hybridity is a universal entropic feature; I am averse to criticising any identity within or without an ‘Eur-Asian’ or other intercontinental spectrum.[16] A French-Ceylonese marriage accentuated the Chitty’s hybridity. They were modern in not being wedded to arranged marriages, or a particular community. The eldest child, Marion, married David Jansz, a Dutch Burgher lawyer. James and younger brothers George Edmund Snr. (my grandfather) and Wilfred, married Colombo Chetties. Charles married a Kandyan. Three sisters married Tamils. Laura and Maude married the Brothers Tambimuttu – The Hon. E.R. (advocate, legislative and state council member) and Rev. J.R. respectively. Younger sister Rose married Dr. E.V. Ratnam (doctor, hospital owner, and Colombo municipal council member). The Tambimuttu’s father, a descendant of Udayappa Chetty, headed St. Andrew’s School in Batticaloa. Around 1880, visiting from Colombo, Bishop Reginald Copleston (1845-1925) was impressed by E.R. and sponsored him at St. Thomas’ College, Mutwal.[17] J.R. followed soon after. The brothers were captivated by Laura and Maude Chitty when the sisters alighted from a four-in-hand carriage in the churchyard of St. Thomas’ Church, Gintupitiya. Romance ensued. Later, threatening to elope, Laura (aged thirty-three) married E.R. following Christian’s death. Maude (aged thirty-eight) married J.R. when he became Incumbent of Christ Church, Tangalle.

 Moving from Cottonchina to Cinnamon Gardens

‘Cottonchina’, the Mutwal-Kotahena ward of Colombo, hosted celebrated properties. The fourteen-acre Elie House property once belonged to Lorenz. A later owner, Mudaliyar Tudor Rajapakse, leased it in 1898 to Maha Mudaliyar Sir Solomon Bandaranaike whose son S.W.R.D. was born there in 1889. As discernible in his memoir Remembered Yesterdays, Sir Solomon who abandoned Elie House in 1903 when it was requisitioned for a reservoir, significantly enhanced his family’s prestige. Later, S.W.R.D., in tune with public sentiment of an expanded national electorate, converted prestige into political power. James Weinman (1860-1933) referred to Udagaha Walauwa, Solomon Bandaranaike’s residence, locating it at 42 Silversmith Street, at the time, further down from another notable property, Hill Castle– residence of James de Alwis, brother-in-law of Harry Dias and father-in-law of J.P. Obeysekera.[18]

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, an article entitled “Bandaranaike Mawatha: Glimpse into its Glorious Past” (Ceylon Today, May 5, 2020) caught my attention. It described 42 Silversmith Street as one of the grandest houses in Colombo and Solomon Bandaranaike’s favourite townhouse; and the ancestral Udagaha Walauwa, where in 1876, Solomon’s father celebrated the announcement of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. No. 40 was identified as Mudaliyar J.M.P. Peiris’s residence, No. 41 as the Congress Hall, and No. 5 as Christoffel Obeysekera’s Hill Castle. The article contradicted Remembered Yesterdays where Sir Solomon tracks his residential history. His days at St. Thomas’ College, Mutwal, began as a dayboy living with his uncle Canon Dias. He next lived at Green Lodge, a paternal property on Skinner’s Road South, Paradise Garden. Following this, he was boarded at St. Thomas’, returning to Green Lodge circa 1890, aged twenty-eight. He resided at Summer Hill, Mutwal home of elder sister Mrs. J.P. Obeysekera, before moving in 1898 to Elie House, only to leave Elie House for Horagolla in 1903. He next mentions Silversmith Street in 1914.

Soon after reading the article in Ceylon Today, I stumbled on an Order Nisi dealing with the deceased estate of James Chitty of 42 Silversmith Street (Ceylon Government Gazette March 22, 1901). When Christian Chitty passed away circa December 1899 the law of primogeniture made James Chitty sole beneficiary of Christian’s estate. With James dying soon after on March 5, 1901, primogeniture made George Chitty Snr. the beneficiary. In the Order Nisi George Snr. sought letters of administration for James’ estate naming those entitled to make challenges as James’ children—Pearle, Vivienne, and Lylie; Christian’s widow Mitzi; Mitzi’s children Maude, Rose, and Charles, all residing at 42 Silversmith Street, identified as James’ residence. Also named were Laura, married to E.R. Tambimuttu and living in Maradana; Marian, married to David Jansz, residing in Matara; and Willy, married to Antonina Candappa who lived in Chetty Street, Kotahena.

Emily Maude, Rose Beatrice and Laura Sophie Chitty 1899

The testamentary matter was brought before Felix Reginald Dias, District Judge, on March 14, 1901. Dias, a cousin of Sir Solomon and two years senior to James at St. Thomas’s, was also the great-grandfather of my childhood friend and neighbour Gitendra (Git) Wickremasinghe when I lived at The Rotunda, in the 1950s. Git, a member of the Bandaranaike clan, identified a house in a 1930s photograph of the Nomads Tennis Club as likely to be 42 Silversmith Street. I believe Sir Solomon moved into it circa 1910.  The Nomads Club sought to engender advantageous marriages for its youthful members.  Sir Solomon having sold 42 Silversmith Street circa the late 1930s the club met according to Git on the tennis courts at The Rotunda.

James’ wife, mother of Lylie and her sisters Viva and Pearle, died in May 1890 when Lylie was fifteen months. When James died Lylie was two and her sisters, Viva and Pearle, were three and five respectively. Interestingly Lylie, born at 42 Silversmith Street in 1898, and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who lived there possibly after 1910, are seated next to each other in this photograph from circa 1936.

Following their marriage, George Snr. and his bride, Mabel (Pullenayagam) who hailed from The Ark in Chilaw, became guardians of Lylie and her sisters. The family moved from Kotahena around 1807 to houses in Ward Place (Gladysville and Deepdene) in succession. President J.R. Jayawardene revealed that his bride Elena and he lived in Deepdene as newly-weds in 1935.[19] The Chittys maintained The Ark and Hornby in Chilaw, the latter sited next door to the Corea’s ‘Sigiriya’ where Mahatma Gandhi once stayed. After James died, the court assigned the house to George Chitty Snr. who renamed it Courtview. It was leased to the Chilaw Post Office, circa 1940. I viewed its twin turrets from the Puttalam Road in the 1950s. While photographs are elusive, Geoffrey Bawa recalled that he drew inspiration from Courtview in remodelling Sunethra Bandaranaike’s smaller stables as a residence.

The Chittys moved in 1917 into their modern custom-built Stafford House on a twelve-acre property.  The main house, outhouses, and stables were at the Kynsey Road end and warehouses of Chitty & Co. were at the Norris Canal Road end. Stafford House was home to Lylie Chitty and her sisters, and later to George Chitty Snr.’s children, some other nieces, a governess, a lawyer’s clerk, as well as domestic, stable and garden staff. Without foresight of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family over-extended itself with coconut plantations, three carriages, Australian horses, Minerva and Chenard Walcker automobiles, and a rickshaw. Arnold Wright’s research of Ceylonese houses in 1906 predated Stafford House. The house is not in Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, but there is reference to George Chitty Snr. as an advocate and landowner. His known plantations were located around Bangadeniya Station, at Kusalai, Mandaline, Rajakaduluwa, and Villatava.

Education

The ‘van Schurmanian’ E.R. Tambimuttu’s daughter, Laurel, was among the first five women admitted to University College, graduating in economics. Two sons of E.V. Ratnam became doctors. The ‘Kantian’ George Chitty Snrs.’ nieces, and daughters, did not attend university. According to Laurel, initially boarded at Bishop’s College, Lylie and her sisters were removed from Bishops in their teens to be taught by a series of governesses. Attributing intelligence and beauty to them Laurel regretted further education had not been a consideration. She believed that had Lylie been allowed to study further she would have been a star.[20] She likely meant an academic or professional star rather than the scintillating star Lylie came to be – known as ‘the lady with the diamond in her nose’ –  in the diplomatic firmament. Lady Lylie Corea neé Chitty offers an example of how charisma and social capital could transcend higher education at the time. Her own account aligns with Laurel Casinader’s observations about limitations placed on her education. Despite her own modest assessment of her skills, she was a legendary diplomatic hostess – with leading families among her friends in New York:

I saw it in the Life Magazine, one full page with my picture… and only at the bottom there was ‘Lady Corea, she is known as the lady with the diamond in her nose’… asked what my hobbies [were]… I would always say my hobby is browsing about…I was not good at anything… I knew a very little of everything…the Acheson’s, the Rockefellers, they were our greatest friends.[21]

Marriage and Society

Laurel recounted that post-World War I, wives of high-ranking English administrative officials began showing interest in Ceylonese.  Laurel and Lylie often were guests at the Governor’s House. She recalled in a memoir that Sir Sydney Bell, a British engineer working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, who regularly transited through Colombo, befriended them, likely at soirée at the Governor’s House. Virginia Woolf’s sister-in-law, Bella, Lady Southorn, encouraged then Legislative Council member E.R. Tambimuttu to allow Laurel and Lylie (staying with Aunt Laura at the time) to join the Girl Guides in connection with Prince George’s visit to Ceylon in May 1925. However, the socially conservative E.R. was adamant that they should not hold up staves for the Prince of Wales to walk under, saying, “No girls of mine are going to hold a stick over any man’s head except their husbands.” [22]

State Councillors and wives circa 1936 …. clockwise from left = Lady Mallika Jayatilaka, Don Stephen Senanayake, Philip Gunawardene. Sirima Bandaranaike, Sir John Kotelawala, SWRD Bandaranaike, Lady Lylie Corea nee Chitty, Sir Baron Jayatilleke, Molly Senanayake, Sir Claude Corea

L-R = Doris Chitty, Georgie Wadsworth, Lady Lylie Corea, Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawela, Rajah Ratnagopal, Sir Claude Corea … in London 1955

Lylie and her sisters’ and their cousins’ marriages were not arranged. Laurel aged twenty-two wed Justin Casinader, another descendant of Udayappa Chetty, circa 1925. Pearle, aged twenty-eight, married T.V. Saravanamuttu around 1923. Viva, aged seventeen, married Shelton Storer circa 1914. Lylie, aged thirty-seven, married Sir Claude Corea in 1936. His first wife died in 1922.

Service
Laurel’s mother, Laura, and George Edmund de Silva’s (1879-1950) wife Agnes Marian de Silva neé Nell (1885-1961) of the Women’s Franchise Union argued before the Donoughmore Commission on Constitutional Rights for voting rights for women. Agnes was a niece of Lorenz.  Laurel served as Executive Vice President of the International Alliance of Women, an institutional descendant of suffragette movements. The friendship between the Chittys and de Silvas endured across generations. The husbands of Agnes and Lylie were in the Cabinet in 1936. Agnes’s daughter, Minette, was a lifelong friend of Lylie Chitty.[23]

George Chitty Snr. practiced law until circa1922 when, aged 51, he retired to run his plantations and business. The conversation around George Snr. was related to freedom. Elder sister Laura was a suffragette.  Her husband and that of George’s niece Lylie were in the legislature – as were several of his closest friends. His obituary (1947) noted his friendship with prominent freedom fighters E.W. Perera, C.E. Corea, the Jayawardene brothers, and the lawyer Douglas de Saram. His pallbearers included Sir Gerard Wijeykoon, the first president of the Senate; Dr. Frank Gunasekera, deputy president of the Senate; H.V. Perera KC; and S.J.K. Crowther, editor of the New Daily. I have seen a record of George Snr. being an attendee at one of Armand de Souza’s speeches on reform. A retiring personality may have kept him away from public service, but he engaged in community service through his church affiliation. The wives of George Chitty Snr. and George Chitty Jnr. were active on YWCA and Church committees in first half of the 20^th Century. Colombo Chetties ‘contributed by way of social service programs.’[24]

Christian Chitty  … and his bust

 

Conclusion

George Chitty Snr. and his descendants were quick to embrace many aspects of modern life: new neighbourhoods, contemporary houses, new technology, and marriage practices. They remained conservative about higher education and political engagement, unlike similar families. They generally avoided government positions. That members of political families married Chittys while the latter had limited direct involvement in politics themselves might be construed as reflecting a strategic approach to maintaining influence and connections without taking political sides. However, none of the marriages with political families were arranged.

George Snrs.’ descendants’ conservatism about the attendance of universities, much less pursuit of academic careers, persisted to my generation. I was not pushed toward civil service, medical, legal, or corporate positions, growing up in my family. This could have been an extension of the retreat from public service observed by Christophel Obeysekera in 1930. I surmise that Chetty families were satisfied with inherited landholdings and did not think of trading service for land. Also, the Chitty Family belonged at the fin-de-siecle to a lingering antiquated lifeworld more akin to that of Jane Austen’s literary time than the infant 20^th Century, one that became unsustainable as the century grew old.  I was aware that I was swimming against the current in my family in seeking a university education and a career in government service, though I was in two minds about these paths. I ended up as a professor.

I recall my father, Alexis Chitty, showing me Universität Heidelberg on a visit to Germany in 1955. He said he would send me there – but only to gain a schmisse or duelling scar on my ear. When my progressive mother, Doris, wanted to work my father agreed but arranged for her to work in a friend’s travel agency sans emoluments. It is striking how descendants of Chitty ladies who married professionals embraced higher education. Nearly ten medical doctors are descended from sons of Dr. E.V. Ratnam and Rose Chitty.

The character of hybridity remains unhidden. Indeed, as a ten-year old I proudly raised my hand as an ‘other,’ during the class census at Trinity College in 1959. Mitzi and Christian’s descendants have genetic links with a huge number of ethnicities. African American, Chinese, Colombo Chetty, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Goan, Irish, Japanese, Kandyan Sinhalese, Low Country Sinhalese, Moorish, Parsee, Polish, and Tamil. The resultant hybridity resonates well with the multicultural character of Australia.

 

Standing L-to-R = Christian Chitty, unknown, Willy, unknown, Charles (far background), Morell brother, George Snr, Morell brother, unknown, unknown.
Seated L-to-R = unknown, unknown, J. R. Tambimuttu, E. R. Tambimuttu, E. V. Ratnam, James Chitty (circa 1890s)

Lady Lylie and Sir Claude Corea outside 10 Downing Street before dinner  with the British PM circa 1955

Naren Chitty 

ENDNOTES

[1] Andradi, Wijeratne (1967). English educated Ceylonese in the official life of Ceylon from 1865 to 1883, Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of London.

[2] de Silva, Kingsley (1981). A History of Sri Lanka. University of California Press.

[3] Moonesinghe, Vinod (2017). Bracegirdle: The Young Anglo-Australian Behind Sri Lanka’s Independence Struggle RoarMedia, May 21.

[4] Aserappa, Antony (1930). A Short History of The Ceylon Chetty Community, Colombo Catholic Press.

[5] Roberts, Michael (2013). A note. The Colombo Chetties of Sri Lanka:Three Essays by Shirley Pulle Tissera, Thuppahi,  July 14.

[6] Nield-Basu, Susan (1984). The Dubashes of Madras, Modern Asian Studies, I8, I, pp. 1-31.

[7] Dutch Wolvendaal Church Colombo Ceylon, Kabristan Archives 1709.

[8] Aserappa (1930). Opus Citus.

[9] Casinader, Niranjan (2017). Transnationalism, Education and Empowerment: The Latent Legacies of Empire, Routledge, p. 104.

[10] Weinman, James Richard (1927). “Mudaliyardom around Wolfendahl,” Ceylon Morning Leader June 11.

[11] Casinader, Niranjan (2017). pp. 113-114.

[12] Ceylon Almanac (1861). p. 431.

[13] Casinader, Niranjan (2017).

[14] Varden, Helga (2015). Kant and Women. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, p. 25.

[15] Clarke, Desmond M. (2013). “Anna Maria van Schurman and Women’s Education”. Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger. 3 (138). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France: pp. 347–360.

[16] Chitty, Naren (2010). Mapping Asian International Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, 20,2, p. 183.

[17] Casinader, Niranjan (2017). p. 110.

[18] Weinmann (1927). Opus Citus.

[19] Jayewardene, Junius Richard (1991)Videographed interview conducted by the author at Braemer, Ward Place,

[20] .Casinader, Laurel (1986). Memoir (typescript)

[21] Jayewardene (1991). Opus Citus.

[22] Casinader, Laurel. Opus Citus.

[23] De Silva, Minette et al (eds.) (1998). Minette de Silva: The Life and Work of and Asian Woman Architect, Gunaratne Offset Ltd.

[24] Tissera, Shirley Pulle (2007). The Colombo Chetties, https://www.worldgenweb.org/lkawgw/cch2007.htm