Marjorie, born in 1911, belonged to the generation in-between the Burghers in Chapter 4 and the Burghers described in this chapter. Her opportunities in education, employment,
socialisation and marriage were restricted because she completed her education before World War II.
Her sisters, five and thirteen years younger, benefited from the opening-up of Burgher society during the war when servicemen from Europe, North America, India and Africa arrived to fight the Japanese. Many servicemen were billeted in Colombo and the major towns. The new-age Burgher girls were in demand. They learned marketable office skills, easily obtained paid employment outside the home and were no longer dependent on their parents. They socialised at public facilities with men who were not Burghers, were often of a different class, did not have a 'background', had no family histories and were from countries and places of which the parents had an incomplete knowledge. All this took place without chaperones, without parental permission and often without even parental knowledge.
Marjorie missed this exciting new world. She grew up in an age when 'boys' did not whistle at her, were not permitted to speak to her without a formal introduction and were not allowed to court her without permission from her parents. The man had to be a 'good' Burgher and his intentions had to be honourable and that meant marriage. This is Marjorie's story.
I was born in 1911 and we lived in Maradana in a house with an open verandah. We had five servants for the seven people in our family. There was the servant boy who did the sweeping and dusting, making the beds and all that sort of thing. Then there was the ayah who looked after my younger sister, a cook-
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woman who did all the cooking, a rickshaw man who took me to school and a carter who looked after the bull and the buggy cart and took us out when we went out as a family. The servants quarters and the animal quarters were as big as the main house. We had a cow that gave us our milk, the bull for the cart, a dog, fowls to lay eggs and for the pot, and turkeys. We had a large clump of cactus in our garden and one day one of the turkeys got lost. We thought it had been stolen but some weeks later it re- appeared with a brood of chicks in tow. It had made its nest in the bunch of cactus. Many houses, but not all of them, used to have large gardens and kept cows, chickens and transport animals in those days.
The Sinhalese ate with their fingers. We thought of our servants as servants, not as friends. We treated our servants better than the Sinhalese who treated them as inferior and a separate people. Each caste employed its own. A Goigama caste person would not work for a Karawa caste person. I once engaged a girl from upcountry but when I got to Colombo my other servants refused to allow her to come into the house. She was a beautiful girl of the Rodiya caste so the other servants would not let her even touch a cup or plate or anything and I had to send her home. The other servants said they would leave if she remained. Having both Sinhalese and Tamil servants was not a problem until after the troubles in 1958.
We always felt very secure in those days because most officials were Burghers and nobody would trouble us by stealing or cheating. Burghers were in positions of authority in the police, post office, customs, railways, government offices and shops. We always knew someone or knew of someone who could get things fixed. The Sinhalese were angry that we had so many jobs in the departments like the customs, police, excise, postal, railway and in the banks and mercantile offices.
Later we went to live in Mutwal and I used to go to Bishops College in a buggy cart. It took one hour. There were 176 girls in school, half of them were Burgher and the other half were mainly rich Christian Sinhalese. There were only three Tamil girls. At school I studied in English and the subjects were British and world history, but not Ceylon history, world geography and that included Ceylon geography. I did not study Sinhalese but the Sinhalese girls could do so if they wished. I think we could have studied Sinhalese but no Burghers did that.
I went to Bishops College up to the first term in the Senior Cambridge class. Then my parents took me out because they said my youngest sister had to start school. From then I stayed at home and occupied myself with sewing. I was also good at painting and had learnt some cooking when I was young. My father was a sanitary inspector so he would not eat anything that was not cooked. If a fresh malung (salad) or sambol (fresh coconut with spices) was required, then I had to make it because he would not trust the cook-woman to be clean and germ-free.
I never thought of wearing a saree because that was not for us, that was for the Sinhalese. My father would have blown up if I even thought of it because I would be insulting him. When I was a child, I did not play with Sinhalese or Tamil children. It did not enter my mind to even think of Sinhalese and Tamil boys. Tamils anyway were very few in Colombo in those days. My brothers would come with their Sinhalese friends from school on bicycles. I would be on the verandah and I would immediately run into the house. The other boys
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never were allowed into our house. It was only later that I realised those boys wanted an introduction to me but that was not possible because we all knew that my parents would not permit me to marry anyone other than a Burgher. It was made clear to us than we should not even think of it because it would be unsuitable. Later those boys said they were in love with me but my brother said he would not introduce us because it would be a useless thing. There was a Sinhalese who wrote to my father with a proposal saying he had land and a farm at Kelaniya but my father threw away the letter. I don't know who he was or if I had ever noticed him and only heard of it many years later.
Private courtship was not possible. We always had to be in a crowd. The only boys we had the opportunity to meet were the cousins and sometimes their cousins. Before the war, the girls were only allowed to go out with boys from families the parents knew. Outsiders were not allowed into the group. Burgher marriages were not arranged by the parents but they had great influence on who was good enough. My father had boarded at my mother-in-law's place when he was going to school and that's how he got to know and become engaged to my mother. My husband was my cousin. My mother would send me to his parents' house because they made clothes for me. I went there from the time I was twelve and got married when I was twenty-six. It was not considered wrong for Burghers to marry first cousins. It was the easy way to meet and be accepted. It was not easy to get to know a strange Burgher.
Burghers had many standards by which they judged people. They would say 'not good enough', or 'not our kind of people', or 'better not marry' and that meant that the man was not a good Burgher to bring into the family and the marriage would not be safe because the man came from a family with a reputation for womanising or drinking, or could not hold down a job, or was not from the right family. In those days if the parents did not know the family they would make inquiries until they got the answers they were looking for. Our Burghers were a small, connected group where everyone knew everyone else or knew someone who knew someone.
Our parents wanted their children, especially the daughters, to marry into a family they knew. There were a lot of unmarried girls who were aunts and spinsters and never mothers. This was because, though there were men who came asking to marry them, the parents would not give permission because the man or the family was not good enough. Daughters would not go against their parents. Men often took many years to become established and afford a wife so if the girl's parents thought he could not support a wife, permission to visit and become engaged was not granted.
Sometimes understandings went on for many years and nothing happened
[eventuated]. Too often the men who came along were not good enough. This rule did not apply to the men. They could choose their own marriage partner and if not accepted they moved on to another. There was one family I knew where no one got married because one child had tuberculosis and after that no other person wanted to marry into that family because it might bring T.B. into the family. That was the society at the time.
My mother did not sew. From the age of eleven I used to sew by turning-out a dress and using that as the pattern. Mother never said it was not good enough. She encouraged me. After doing this for some time I gradually became known as a dressmaker and people came to me. When I was about forty years old I took a course from Good Housekeeping and became a teacher. The major-
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ity of my customers were Burghers but when I had my dressmaking school most of my pupils were Sinhalese.
My mother had a forty-five acre rubber and coconut estate near Galle. A number of Burghers, had estates with rubber, coconut and cinnamon near Galle at that time. Burghers enjoyed themselves too much. They went in for safe
government jobs so when we lost that there was nothing else they could do without experience of something else. Whatever Burghers earned they spent and never saved. My aunt had a bakery and four men used to carry the bread to Galle for sale. I went to Mrs Lucien Jansz for cooking lessons. The only Burghers who had shops were the Pouliers in Bambalapitiya, E.W.Jansz in Wellawatte and the van den Driesens in Borella.
My mother did not socialise much. We were not taken around much so we didn't meet many people. When the gates were closed, no one could come in. It was easy to marry cousins because they were the only boys we got to meet.
The war made the difference. My sisters were five and thirteen years younger and they both were able to remain at school and pass their London matriculation. We all wanted my youngest sister to study medicine because she had the brains but the war broke out and it was easy for the Burgher girls to get good well-paid jobs. Both my sisters, who were much younger than I was, got the opportunity to go out to work and to meet lots of people and form attachments. Going out for work, and earning good incomes, prevented our parents from controlling them closely. We had a large house and had four servicemen boarding there. My sisters would have nothing to do with them and would not even speak to them though they all worked in the Naval Office. The servicemen would push notes under the door of my sisters' bedroom but my sisters would not even read them and put the notes straight into the bin.
Some other Burgher girls did fall into the trap. They thought all Europeans were educated and middle-class because they wore shoes and dressed like us and it was only after they married and went to live with them in their home country that they discovered they were working class and unsuitable.
If we had remained in Ceylon, I would have liked my children to marry Burghers because I feel comfortable with Burghers, they are my community and my friends and by my family marrying Burghers I gain new friends.
However, now they marry outsiders, whether Sinhalese or Australian or other, and I accept it and enjoy the grandchildren. In my time divorce was unheard of, living together was unknown and both were a disgrace not to be contemplated. Divorce had to have a cause, a fault. If you had marital problems and were divorced and were in the public service, you had to leave your job. That was in the early 1930s.
Note 1: When the author of this book was courting the girl who became his wife, the custom was to sit and talk to one another in the varandah, a not very private place. We were fortunate in that she lived in a house with a large garden so, to have some privacy, we would sit in my car in that garden. This privacy was only relative because one servant would be lounging at the front door and another peeping from a window. Signs of physical endearment in public were not acceptable in Burgher or Ceylonese society even as late as the 1950s. When my fiancee's parents thought we had been together long enough, it was heralded by the sound of rattling crockery and cutlery as the dinner table was made ready. That was the signal to join the adults for dinner or leave for home!
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Note 2: The author of this book was recently shown a letter dated 25/4/1917, written by the widowed mother of a young lady to a young man who had requested permission to become engaged to her daughter. The suitor must have been 'our kind of people' because he was successful. The couple were married a month later. This is what the letter said:
Dear Mr. Drieberg; Your letter of 22nd inst. safe to hand and in reply I have to inform you that I have considered over the matter and think it is not right on my part to stand in your way as you have been successful so far in gaining the affection of my
daughter. I have also consulted my son on the matter and we both cordially join in giving our consent to your engagement and trust heavenly blessings will attend you and yours in the future. We wish you health and happiness. I am yours sincerely. Maude.