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David Durance
Eldon Pike is a scholar and literary critic who studies Flora Crewe’s poetry. He interviews Eleanor Swan and compiles Flora’s letters to her for his book The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe, and then he goes to Jummapur with Dilip in an ill-fated attempt to learn more about Flora’s life and Nirad Das’s nude portrait of her. Eleanor is convinced that he is also writing Flora’s biography, but he never confirms or denies this. Throughout the play, he gives context to the other characters’ references and actions by reading out his footnotes—which are sometimes illuminating, but more often irrelevant or outright wrong. Indeed, his footnotes demonstrate how staid, academic approaches to art often compromise the rich emotion that makes it so valuable, and they show the risks of remembering artists primarily as vessels for their art rather than the way their friends and relatives remember them: as people. Meanwhile, Pike’s struggle to adapt to India during his trip shows how the colonial power imbalance between Britain and India continues decades after independence, primarily because of the economic gulf between Indians (who were colonized and exploited for hundreds of years) and British people (who largely benefited from that process). Finally, Pike’s exclusive focus on Flora’s poetry—at the expense of Das’s painting and the political context surrounding both—shows how academia often reproduces Eurocentric narratives about art and history.
Eldon Pike Quotes in Indian Ink
The Indian Ink quotes below are all either spoken by Eldon Pike or refer to Eldon Pike. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 1 Quotes
The Shepperton garden is now visible. Here, MRS SWAN and PIKE are having tea while occupied with a shoebox of Flora’s letters.
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FLORA And it’s called a duck bungalow …”
MRS SWAN Dak bungalow.
FLORA “… although there is not a duck to be seen.”
She disappears into the bathroom with her suitcase.
MRS SWAN Dak was the post; they were post-houses, when letters went by runner.
IKE Ah …
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PIKE “Perhaps my soul will stay behind as a smudge of paint on paper, as if I’d always been here, like … Radha?”
MRS SWAN Radha.
PIKE “—the most beautiful of the herdswomen, undressed—”
MRS SWAN (Interrupting, briskly) Well, the portrait, as it happens, is on canvas and Flora is wearing her cornflower dress.
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ANISH Oh … yes. Yes, I am a painter like my father. Though not at all like my father, of course.
MRS SWAN Your father was an Indian painter, you mean?
ANISH An Indian painter? Well, I’m as Indian as he was. But yes. I suppose I am not a particularly Indian painter … not an Indian painter particularly, or rather …
MRS SWAN Not particularly an Indian painter.
ANISH Yes. But then, nor was he. Apart from being Indian.
MRS SWAN As you are.
ANISH Yes.
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Act 2 Quotes
The case was dismissed on a technicality, and the policemen were awfully sweet, they got me away through the crowd in a van. My sister was asked to leave school. But that was mostly my own fault—the magistrate asked me why all the poems seemed to be about sex, and I said. “Write what you know”—just showing off. I was practically a virgin, but it got me so thoroughly into the newspapers my name rings a bell even with the wife of a bloody jute planter or something in the middle of Rajputana, damn, damn, damn, no, let’s go inside.
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PIKE Do you think he had a relationship with Flora Crewe?
DILIP But of course—a portrait is a relationship.
PIKE No, a relationship.
DILIP I don’t understand you.
PIKE He painted her nude.
DILIP I don’t think so.
PIKE Somebody did.
DILIP In 1930, an Englishwoman, an Indian painter … it is out of the question.
PIKE Not if they had a relationship.
DILIP Oh … a relationship? Is that what you say? (Amused) A relationship!
PIKE This is serious.
DILIP (Laughing) Oh, it’s very serious. What do you say for—well, for “relationship?”
PIKE Buddies. (Dilip almost falls off his chair with merriment.) Please, Dilip …
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Codswallop! Your “house within a house,” as anyone can see, is a mosquito net. And the book is Emily Eden, it was in her suitcase. Green with a brown spine. You should read the footnotes!
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It’s no go the records of the Theosophical Society, it’s no go the newspaper files partitioned to ashes … All we want is the facts and to tell the truth in our fashion … Her knickers were made of crêpe-de-Chine, her poems were up in Bow Street, her list of friends laid end to end … weren’t in it for the poetry. But it’s no go the watercolour, it’s no go the Modigliani … The glass is falling hour by hour, and we’re back in the mulligatawny … But we will leave no Das unturned. He had a son.
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Quite possibly. Or with Captain Durance. Or His Highness the Rajah of Jummapur. Or someone else entirely. It hardly matters, looking back. Men were not really important to Flora. If they had been, they would have been fewer. She used them like batteries. When things went flat, she’d put in a new one … I’ll come to the gate with you. If you decide to tell Mr Pike about the watercolour, I’m sure Flora wouldn’t mind.
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“Darling, that’s all from Jummapur, because how I’m packed, portrait and all, and Mr Coomaraswami is coming to take me to the station. I’ll post this in Jaipur as soon as I get there. I’m not going to post it here because I’m not. I feel fit as two lops this morning, and happy, too, because something good happened here which made me feel halfway better about Modi and getting back to Paris too late. That was a sin I’ll carry to my grave, but perhaps my soul will stay behind as a smudge of paint on paper, as if I’d always been here, like Radha who was the most beautiful of the herdswomen, undressed for love in an empty house.”
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Eldon Pike Character Timeline in Indian Ink
The timeline below shows where the character Eldon Pike appears in Indian Ink. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1
In England in the 1980s, Eleanor Swan and Eldon Pike sit in a garden with a shoebox of Flora Crewe’s letters to Eleanor. While they...
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...its oil lamp works. She tests the chair, table, and sofa on the verandah. Meanwhile, Eldon Pike calls Flora’s letters a treasure. Eleanor Swan, Flora’s sister, is her only remaining family. Flora...
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Pike explains that he is compiling The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe—but that most of the...
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...with a pen or a typewriter—and she says pen, even though she has no idea. (Pike starts inserting his annotations: Flora only met Wells briefly, for a weekend.) Later, at her...
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...gives her a rough pencil sketch that he did of her. Back in the 1980s, Pike asks Swan if she has the sketch. Swan says no—in fact, Flora only left behind...
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Pike reads another letter. Nirad Das bikes to Flora’s guesthouse with his easel, canvas, and paints....
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...are both Indian painters, so they are alike. Anish pulls out a copy of Eldon Pike’s The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe, then declares that his father painted the portrait on...
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...his drawing of her, and she’s impressed. Swan asks Anish what they should tell Eldon Pike—who she thinks is secretly writing Flora’s biography. She complains that Pike added far too many...
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Decades later, the well-dressed Eldon Pike arrives in modern Jummapur and finds it “vaguely disappoint[ing].” In one of her letters, Flora...
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...find a better angle for the photos, Flora reads from her letters about Das, but Pike interrupts with irrelevant footnotes about Gandhi’s Salt March, the influential Tree family, and Flora’s family...
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Act 2
...two other English couples in the Jummapur Club in 1930, while across the stage Eldon Pike sits on the club’s verandah in the 1980s. The other dancers ask Flora about her...
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In the 1980s, Dilip meets Pike on the verandah. He’s wearing a fine suit and carrying an old, worn-out one with...
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...about withdrawing from India. Servants bring her and Durance their whiskey-sodas, and then Dilip and Pike have dinner in the same club, five decades later.
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Dilip and Pike drink American cola in the Rajah’s palace, which is now a luxury hotel. The Rajah...
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Subadar Ram Sunil Singh turned out to be “a goldmine”—he told Pike and Dilip that Nirad Das was imprisoned for throwing a mango. Pike asks Dilip if...
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Pike asks why Dilip loves English so much, and Dilip replies that English is “a disaster”...
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Pike asks if Dilip thinks Das and Flora had a sexual relationship. Dilip says no—but upon...
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...the cars that goes by. She walks offstage to go sit in it, and Eldon Pike explains that it used to belong to Flora’s ex-fiancé, Augustus de Boucheron (or Perkins Butcher),...
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The Rajah approaches Eldon Pike and they start to chat. (The same actor now represents the original Rajah’s grandson, in...
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...drinking gin-and-tonics in India to avoid malaria. She also reveals that she didn’t tell Eldon Pike about the paintings. Anish remembers receiving the news of his father’s death one Christmas day...
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...that Das has painted a copy of Up the Country on Flora’s pillow, and Eldon Pike drops in with a footnote to explain that Emily Eden wrote Up the Country while...
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At dawn, Flora lies in her bed on one part of the stage while Pike and Dilip come onto another part, drinking and chanting the poem “Bagpipe Music.” Dilip tells...
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...her latest romantic interest, but also that she’s finally leaving Jummapur. (In a footnote, Eldon Pike explains that David Durance died during World War II.) Flora writes that she feels better...
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Decades later, Anish and Mrs. Swan read this same letter. Anish declares that Pike is wrong to insinuate that Flora’s affair was with Durance, because it was really with...
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Anish decides that he won’t tell Eldon Pike about his father’s watercolor of Flora—his father wouldn’t want it publicly mentioned. Anish thanks Swan...
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...not “Mr. Swan.” He invites her to a cricket match. They leave, and then Eldon Pike comes onstage to search for Flora’s grave.
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