Behind the Scenes Minis: Fascinating Dean

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. I feel like I almost coughed in the middle of saying that we spent the whole week talking about Dean Muhammad. Yeah, he's pretty interesting. I was so fascinated. I was especially fascinated by all the arts in London and Brighton and having the first Indian restaurant and having these steambaths. I simultaneously hate how much weird quackery there is in the world that takes advantage of people, but also, boy do I love go into a spa. Had I lived in England in you know, the eighteenth early nineteenth century and also had money to do so, I can tell you I would have been in bath. I would have been in Brighton. I would have been having like all the massages and all the steam baths and all of everything. I know this is not for you. It stresses me out just thinking about it, which is counter to the goal. I'm the opposite. I'm like, think of all the things I could be doing while I'm lying here, dear, Yet me like I can be making a dress. My brain is just like, no, don't lie down. Something that occurred to me very important question in my mind as I was working on that part of this episode is do you think that Lydia Bennett went to Dean Muhammed's baths and Brighton before she ran off to a lope. Sadly, the answer is probably not, because I'm pretty sure it was a year after that book came out that his first actual baths of his own opened, and I was like, ah, bummer, I was just imagining a whole Now we're gonna have to write some fan fiction about Lydia Bennett and Pride and Prejudice and her time in Brighton. Anyway, there are two things that stand out to me in this story, Okay. One is the sort of strange scenario of him leaving home to be a camp follower. Mm hmm, just because in some ways it's so relatable, right, Like, so many people that I know, including to some degree myself, leave home to start their lives and their parents feel somehow wronged by that, and it's oh, sure, it's just a conflicted thing that I'm like, this has been going on forever. Yeah, yeah, and it's strange that he articulates that conflict, like it's not something that I am accustomed to seeing anybody from history talk about quite so frankly, like my mom was really sad, but I was really happy. I don't, you know. It's it sounds like the writing of somebody from like nineteen eighty three, nineteen ninety six, like any any recent thing of like I don't this sucks, I want and need this, but also I don't want to make this person miserable. But I can't live my life and not make them miserable. Right, that's just again so relatable that I was like, hmm, yeah, he was also, I mean, he was a child when that happened, and so part of me wonders how much of it was like the childhood fantasy of like running away to join the circus, and you know, I don't I don't really know, since he was writing all of that as an adult looking back on his childhood, right as, I don't really know, was there another thing that you had that struck you? Now? The other thing that I love about his story is just his resiliency and capability of just like Okay, well I'm just gonna pivot. What else can I do ye am, I good a lot? Yeah, Like all right, oh well, now I'm gonna I'm gonna join the military now because that seems like the next obvious step. I want to stay with my friend. Yeah, oh, I guess now I'm gonna become, you know, a massage therapist of sorts. All right, I did that exact thing. I did a whole career change to be a massage therapist at one point. I mean, I think most of us have done multiple career changes. I know I have, But it is just kind of fascinating because he was so he did so well in so many different things. Yeah. Yeah, even the restaurant, which wasn't a financial success. It seems like people really thought it was a good restaurant, right, And it was really some decades after that before Indian cuisine or sort of Indian British fusion cuisine in England really took off. It was sort of a little early for all of that when he was actually running that restaurant. Something that struck me about his travels of Dean maham it when I got into it, I mean I knew that every description I had read of it had framed it as like a travel book, but the fact that it was about his time with the army. I expected there to be more more armies military and that's there's like really not There's just whole letters that are just devoted to like this is how this is how the Muslims do marriage, This is how the Muslims do like has how the Muslims feel about death, Like this is what this landscape looks like. This is how beautiful this city is. This is how amazing and learned and groundbreaking India was in the past, and like now we're in this place where that empire is fracturing. Like so much of it about was about all of this other stuff. There's an incredibly long passage about how to trap and train an elephant, which because you know, like the Indians or elephants were a big part of sort of military units and in parts of India and just just elephants in general. So interesting, so much of it, and he was clearly writing about a place that he really loved and thought was beautiful and thought was important and thought was something that the people who were visiting it should know more about before they got there. Yeah, but then it has this underpinning of also seeming to really support British colonial in trade efforts there, which makes it then complicated. One of the things that I've really tried to do on the show and especially in more recent years, is like just to try to draw from people's own words as much as possible, especially when we're talking about people whose experiences and perspectives are so different from yours and mind right, and this is an example of how that can be really complicated sometimes because yeah, you have this perspective of an Indian man living in Ireland and then England, but like also supporting a colonial effort that a lot of other people were resisting, and that just makes it complicated. Yeah, it's also one of those things I always have that moment of I don't know if cringiness is the right word. It's kind of too of the day, but like it's a thing where you always go, oh, I just know this gut you who's against people in India by saying like, no, your fellow countryman thinks we're great. Ye Oh, I don't, Yeah, I don't. I don't know if it really got because there were four hundred and fifty copies printed. As far as I know, that was the only print run, so it's not like this is a giant runaway restseller. So it's like, I don't know how much attention it got beyond affluent people in England, Ireland, Scotland, like places in that immediate area, like right, but then aren't those exactly the people that would have power? Yeah? Then those are the people like he's specifically writing it for those same folks who might be going to India for whatever reason. Yeah, it's a little tricky. I found him so fascinating though, and so many things like so many, so many firsts, and also so much which just brighten wellness time. Right, so yeah, also too many Janes? Yeah, or possibly only one. Well, it's interesting because I hadn't really thought about it while I was reading this over initially, but when we were recording, when we start to list the births of his children, Oh right, they come so far after when he most of them come so far after when he and Jane number one or possibly only got married, that that to me seems like a clue that there might have been a second Jane. Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think, as I understand it, the references that suggest there's a second Jane are like later obituaries of some of their descendants and obituaries are tricky to take as accurate sources for a number of reasons. Yes, but as I understand, it's like there's not a clear answer one way or the other. And I don't know whether they had other children earlier in the marriage that didn't survive. So yeah, it's just a lot that's really unclear. There so many James, so many James. Yeah, so yeah, I am glad I got to spend so much time reading about Indian food and spies. I don't know what else to say about that. Just marvelous, Yeah, mardelous. Yeah. So Happy Friday, everybody. Whatever's happening over the weekend. I hope it's great. We will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will be back with a brand new episode on Monday. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.