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Deeper Than Indigo: Tracing Thomas Machell, forgotten explorer Paperback – July 27, 2017

by Jenny Balfour Paul (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 55 ratings
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The author’s quest begins when the word ‘indigo’ draws her to the illustrated journals, now in the British Library, of Victorian explorer Thomas Machell. She finds her life to have striking echoes of his, not least his travels to and within India, a career in indigo, and a passion for journal writing. She is also intrigued by his aspiration to write ‘a novel in the form of an autobiography’ and by his quirky watercolor sketches. Machell of Crackenthorpe, born in 1824, first demonstrated his yearning for adventure when only twelve, and at sixteen left the family rectory to follow his dream of traveling to the East. By chance, he witnessed many important historical events, including the infamous ‘First Opium War’ and the ‘Indian Mutiny’. He spent most of his adult life in India; the author follows him to indigo plantations of rural Bengal and Bangladesh, to coffee estates in Kerala’s Malabar Hills, to unexplored regions of central India and to the city of Calcutta. Machell also traveled up the Indus River to Kashmir and the North-West Frontier and undertook an intrepid sea voyage with Muslim merchants. When the author voyages aboard the last freighter to take passengers from UK to India, she faces the same threat of pirate attack in the Red Sea as Machell. She also follows in his wake by cargo ship to the most remote Polynesian islands, setting for his passionate love affair, and she seeks his colorful descendants in the New World. This remarkable tale of East-West connections brings to life the untold story of a spirited outsider at the height of the British Raj. Serendipity, intuition and an enchanting relationship, as well as the author’s quest to uncover the missing years of Machell’s life, give this book its magical extra dimension. Thomas Machell, explorer, writer and artist, was born near York in 1824. As a teenager he sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to India and on to China where he experienced the ‘First Opium War’. His next voyage was around Cape Horn to the Polynesian Islands of the Marquesas, on a ship carrying coal and guano. Returning to India, he worked in indigo in Bengal, coffee in Kerala and with bullock transport in central India. He also traveled up the Indus to the North-West Frontier and Kashmir and in the Arab world by land and by sea with Muslim merchants. He died in India in 1864, aged 39.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    326 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Medina Publishing
  4. Publication date
    July 27, 2017
  5. Dimensions
    5.25 x 1.25 x 7.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1909339539
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1909339538
  8. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
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Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The author’s alliance with Thomas is an amazing and magical thing…this book must at all costs be read, because the author’s voice – her passion and her mission – is utterly captivating."
Gillon Aitken, Aitken Alexander Associates

"A deeply moving, totally enchanting account of a great metaphysical mystery."
A N Wilson

"… the story of a forgotten pioneer whose startling diaries shed a surprisingly progressive light on European colonialism."
Hannah Finch, Western Morning News

About the Author

Jenny Balfour Paul A writer, artist, international lecturer and intrepid traveller, she is author of two books on Indigo, and numerous other writings.

She was consultant curator for the Whitworth Art gallery’s 2007 touring exhibition ‘Indigo, a Blue to Dye For’ and consultant for two documentary films.

Jenny is an Honorary Research Fellow at Exeter University; a Fellow of London’s Royal Geographical Society and Royal Asiatic Society and New York’s Explorers Club; and President of the UK’s Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.

She is involved in research into dyes recovered from shipwrecks, is a partner in ‘Silk Road Connect’, an educational initiative launched by cellist Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project in New York in 2009, and promotes revivals of natural dyes throughout the world.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1909339563
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Medina Publishing; Reprint edition (July 27, 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 326 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1909339539
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1909339538
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.53 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1.25 x 7.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 55 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
55 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Judith Frater
5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting and mind expanding read!
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2021
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I'm not a history buff, but the unusual format of this book drew me in... and then there were the wonderful first hand experiences woven in. I won't give spoilers but the story gains momentum and then pulls you right down into its depths. Highly recommended.
One person found this helpful
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Barbara
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful journey into the blue
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2016
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I just finished reading Deeper Than Indigo and absolutely loved it. What a journey, what a saga, what an odyssey Jenny Balfour Paul has lived! And bravo to her for making it all so interesting to her fortunate readers. She has led such a brave, adventuresome and thoughtful life. I love the way she parallels her own life with that of her earlier compatriot. The story of indigo has always fascinated me. Paul has been my mentor through that journey, and now she has included the personal side which I fine just as fascinating.
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book.
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2019
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This was a very interesting book, not only about indigo, but about the life of an obscure explorer, if you will. It is rather eerie how the author and the explorer intertwined.
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Ann Graham
5.0 out of 5 stars Indigo gal
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2015
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The author clearly has spent her professional life fully researching indigo, it's origins and history. Terrific book for dyers and those wishing to understand the social and political context of growing indigo.
4 people found this helpful
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Alison Mercer
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for the armchair traveller
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2015
Deeper than Indigo is the perfect escapist read for an armchair traveller on a winter's night, a treasure trove full of nuggets of gold. It's the account of a mission bordering on obsession: the writer's quest in search of Thomas Machell, an open-minded and artistic Victorian rector's son who roamed the world to seek his fortune and to prove himself to his family, determined to overcome the physical disability with which he was born.
Thomas kept detailed journals describing his travels, and Jenny Balfour Paul makes inspired use of his words to recreate his life in vivid detail and to relay his adventures and the enlightenment and suffering they brought him. All this is illuminated by her own travels in Thomas's footsteps, as she conjures up a vivid succession of times, places and perspectives framed by her own experience.
Over the years Jenny leaves no stone unturned as she researches Thomas's life and times and seeks out points of connection with him, whether it's visiting his childhood home in Yorkshire or searching out his grave in India. Deeper than Indigo offers historical fact aplenty, along with reflections and reminiscence, literary, philosophical and religious quotations and aphorisms, and beautiful illustrations and photographs, all woven together with an intuitive, personal touch.
Jenny is a natural storyteller, as I realised when I saw her speak about Deeper than Indigo at North Cornwall Book Festival, and she skilfully draws together the contrasting threads of Thomas's life and her own. So, for example, we move between Thomas’s first sea voyage in 1840 and his first sight of the Orient - Madras at dawn - and Jenny as an 18-year-old setting out on the hippie trail in 1970. She crosses the Turkish border into Iran in a Land Rover with its engine patched up with poached eggs, and later sees the Bamiyan Buddhas: 'The fate awaiting this wonder of the world was as inconceivable to me as it would have been to travellers in centuries past.' Thomas witnesses death by drowning and fever, and soon sees military action, witnessing the brutality of the Opium Wars between Britain and China.
Thomas goes on to become an indigo planter; indigo is an interest that he and Jenny share across the centuries, and she touches briefly on her extensive travels to research indigo and preserve knowledge of its use as a dye - 'to such places as south-west China, Tokushima Island in Japan, the Dogon cliffs of Mali near Timbuktu, and back to India'. The lonely end of Thomas's story in India is tempered by Jenny's journey to the New World to meet some of his surviving relatives; she is given a warm welcome and finds out about others in the family who share Thomas’s questioning and observant approach to life, including a Theosophist artist and an aeronautical engineer who worked for NASA.
Jenny quotes John le Carre in the first chapter of Deeper than Indigo: 'the purpose of life is to make sure our origins are not our destinies'. Thomas could have settled for a quiet existence in the English countryside, but even though he loved his family home he was driven to make a life for himself far from the landscape of his birthplace. However far he travelled, Thomas could not escape history - but looking back on his life as readers, knowing what he could never know and seeing how the past survives in the present, it almost feels as if we can.
8 people found this helpful
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Brenda S. Osborn
5.0 out of 5 stars Research and Passion
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2019
Jenny Balfour Paul is certainly known for her extensive research in the cultures who have used indigo dyes since ancient times. Her account of this particular man who settled in India and became involved in the production of indigo dye during the colonial period in the late 19th c. brings this brief history to life. The book turns a historical moment into a combination of memoir/travelogue/history. Ms. Balfour Paul has given us a thorough understanding of life in colonial India, the human price of war, a moving look at how lives lived centuries apart can overlap and intermingle. On so many levels it is a marvelous read and an entertaining way to learn about this moment in history.
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Seventh Heaven
5.0 out of 5 stars A magical journey
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2016
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Magical Journey
BySeventh Heavenon 6 January 2016

Having met the author as a student on several occasions, I was curious about the new book that was reviewed in one of the papers and was determined to get hold of a copy. The publisher arranged for a signed copy and it arrived in plenty of time for the Christmas Holidays which were looming. It was the perfect antidote to all the festive excesses! I cannot add much to what the other reviewers have said apart from reiterating that it is a magical book which summons up many genies and keeps you riveted right to the last page. As an academic she attempts to play down the metaphysical side to this story but anybody with interests in quantum physics, reincarnation and spirituality will join all the relevant dots and be moved by this most uplifting story. Thanks Jenny BP for sharing such an intimate journey.
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Christina Sumner
5.0 out of 5 stars Finding Thomas Machell
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2017
This is a beautiful and brave book, a well-researched and wonderfully well-written account of the extraordinary and unnervingly close links, beyond time, between two people with a shared delight in adventurous travel, keeping illustrated diaries, progressive politics - and certainly for indigo. Author Jenny Balfour Paul is herself a world authority on indigo and found the diaries of Thomas Machell by chance in the British Library. She brings Thomas gently into the light of today, interweaving within the parallel context of her own experiences and reflections the remarkable life and contemporary observations of this previously uncelebrated 19th century explorer.
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Top reviews from other countries

Dido Drummond
4.0 out of 5 stars an interesting and intriguing, haunting read
Reviewed in France on March 28, 2020
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What an unusual story - wow, a very intriguing read that ends up creeping into your unconscious and your own life when you're not expecting it, just like Mr Machell himself. Fascinating. It must have been an extraordinary experience to live and write this book...
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Larry from West Sussex
5.0 out of 5 stars Meaningful Coincidences
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2019
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This is a unique and wonderful book, full of meaningful coincidences of a type which have also influenced my life, a fantastic but believable tale of a profound and prolonged experience of connection with someone from the past. (In my case this was also with someone called Thomas, Thomas Merton who died in 1968.) Like Jenny Balfour Paul, I have followed my Thomas to India (and many other places around the world), learning from his experiences and wisdom. Both Thomases appreciated the richness and deep spirituality of foreign races, cultures and religions. My only wish would have been for the Kindle edition of 'Deeper than Indigo' to have included some images of Thomas Machell's sketches, and a copy of the monochrome photo of him in old age that we read about in the final chapter. These can be found in the hardback edition, which I have also purchased and can now vouch for how much the surprisingly fresh and colourful sketches (some also can be found in the paperback and on the British Library website) and the photo of Thomas Machell add to the rich delight of this splendidly detailed and colourful account, both of the adventurer's exceptional life and of the author's equally adventurous quest to uncover it. Highly recommended!
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crafter
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on August 27, 2016
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Very pleased to get this book. Meeting with the author this fall.
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LucyE
5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 26, 2020
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I came across this gem of a book when searching for books on historical indigo planters. I've been researching one of my own ancestors who went (or more likely was sent) to India to make his fortune and ended up in Oude in the manufacture of indigo. I was looking to increase my understanding of what life might have been like back then: this book gave me that and so much more. It covers the author's gradual piecing together of the life and family of a sensitive and often sad and lonely individual, interspersed with her own journey into indigo and travel memories. There are a number of spine-tingling coincidences, which I might have been sceptical about except that I have had a few during the course of my own research. Fascinating to perceive how we can form connections with people from the past.
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bobbie
4.0 out of 5 stars Pack your bags
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 16, 2017
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If you enjoy travelling, this is the book for you. Full of interesting facts and information on off the beaten track destinations. Plus All the history. If you live in Devon there is also local interest.
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