Oakfield, or, Fellowship in the East

Front matter

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Preface

TO

Since the first publication of this book, it has been my fortune to see and hear several criticisms of it, both of praise and blame. There is one of these which I feel bound to notice. It has been asserted, I must say to my no small surprise, that Oakfield is an attack upon that distinguished service to which I have the honour to belong ; and furthermore, I have heard it said, that such an attack, if made at all, should not be anonymous. This is something more than a criticism ; it is an accusation; and, as such, I am glad to have this opportunity of answering it.

In the first place, whatever sting there may have been in the word “anonymous,” is drawn by the titlepage of the present edition. I did not think it necesx PREFACE TO TUE sary to publish my name in the first instance, partly because, in the case of a work professing to be a novel, it seemed superfluous to do so; but still more because I did not wish that a name, for the sake of which I have so frequently met with kindness, should be in any degree compromised by any performance of mine. But when once the charge “ anonymous attack” has been so much as hinted at, this consideration must give place to the yet higher one of self-respect. This attack, then, if such it be, is, at any rate, no longer anonymous; but I deny that it is an attack at all, at least upon the Bengal army. I deny that the Cades and Staffords represent that army, as confidently as I affirm that they form therein a distinct, a disgraceful, though, I trust, a diminishing class. It is a libel upon the profession to say that a man who tries to expose its black sheep is, therefore, the accuser of the whole service. I repeat what I said before,—that I have not consciously alluded to any particular individual, or any particular regiment ; but I know that every officer in the Bengal army who reads Oakfield will feel that he recognises the class of character there delineated; and I believe also that a great many will feel, that to say or write, or do anything which may help to display such characters in their true colours, is to be not the calumniator, but

SECOND EDITION. xi the sincere friend, of the army. Nor can it be considered presumption for any man to lend a hand to such a task. It is no very presumptuous flight into the region of high morality to express contempt for those gross and flagrant forms of stupid vice which have been utterly expelled from the society of English gentlemen at home, but which still linger, though I believe rapidly on the decline, in corresponding circles in India.

I have been told, however, that this class is the exception, not the rule. I know it: my business lay with the exception. It surely is superfluous to say that the class alluded to is absolutely distinct from that high and honourable body of Indian officers who have so justly won for the Indian army its great reputation. These will understand me when I say, that whatever accusation may be contained in Oakfield, is directed not against our service, but against that wretched class of men who are its disgrace, and our common enemies ; who regard our noble profession not as furnishing a pledge and security for the honour of its members, but rather as affording a justification and excuse for license; who denounce uprightness as folly, gentlemanly principle as cant, and common decency as methodism.

Believing that such men exist in our ranks, and xi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

that with regard to them I have said nothing more than every honest man in the army will approve, I have no wish to conceal my name, conscious as I am that I could return to India to-morrow and look my friends and brother officers in the face, and feel that I had in no way injured, but rather done them service.

Fox How, Ambleside, May, 1854.

“ Tell me not in mournful numbers

“ Life is but an empty dream !

* For the soul is dead that slumbers, “ And things are not what they seem.

“« Life is real! Life is earnest !

“ And the grave is not its goal ;

“ Dust thou art, to dust returnest, ‘““ Was not spoken of the soul.

“ Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

“ Ts our destined end or way ;

“ But to act that each to-morrow

‘« Finds us farther than to-day.” LonereLiow.

OAKFIELD,

OR

FELLOWSHIP IN THE EAST.