IV. OXFORD
As it was Long Vacation at Oxford, and I could not take rooms at once in Trinity College, where my name had been put down, it was necessary to place me somewhere out of mischief. At the intervention of friends, a certain Doctor Greenhill agreed to lodge and coach me till the opening term. The said doctor had just married a relation of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, and he had taken his bride to Paris, in order to show her the world and to indulge himself in a little dissecting. Meanwhile I was placed pro tem. with another medical don, Dr. Ogle, and I enjoyed myself in that house. The father was a genial man, and he had nice sons and pretty daughters. As soon as Dr. Greenhill returned to his house in High Street, Oxford, I was taken up there by my father, and was duly consigned to the new tutor. Mr. Du Pré vanished, and was never seen again.
The first sight of Oxford struck me with a sense of appal. "O Domus antiqua et religiosa," cried Queen Elizabeth, in 1664, standing opposite Pembroke College, which the Dons desecrated in 1875. I could not imagine how such fine massive and picturesque old buildings as the colleges could be mixed up with the mean little houses that clustered around them, looking as if they were built of cardboard. In after days, I remembered the feeling, when looking at the Temple of the Sun in Palmyra, surrounded by its Arab huts, like swallows' nests planted upon a palace wall. And everything, except the colleges, looked so mean.
The good old Mitre was, if not the only, at least the chief hostelry of the place, and it had the outward and visible presence of a pot-house. The river with the classical name of Isis, was a mere moat, and its influent, the Cherwell, was a ditch. The country around, especially just after Switzerland, looked flat and monotonous in the extreme. The skies were brown-grey, and, to an Italian nose, the smell of the coal smoke was a perpetual abomination. Queer beings walked the streets, dressed in aprons that hung behind, from their shoulders, and caps consisting of a square, like that of a lancer's helmet, planted upon a semi-oval to contain the head. These queer creatures were carefully shaved, except, perhaps, a diminutive mutton-cutlet on each side of their face, and the most serious sort were invariably dressed in vestibus nigris aut sub fuscis.
Moreover, an indescribable appearance of donnishness or incipient donnishness pervaded the whole lot. The juniors looked like schoolboys who aspired to be schoolmasters, and the seniors as if their aspirations had been successful. I asked after the famous Grove of Trinity, where Charles I. used to walk when tired of Christ Church meadows, and which the wits called Daphne. It had long been felled, and the ground was covered with buildings.
At last term opened, and I transferred myself from Dr. Greenhill to Trinity College.
Then my University life began, and readers must be prepared not to be shocked at the recital of my college failures, which only proves the truth of what I said before, that if a father means his boy to succeed in an English career, he must put him to a preparatory school, Eton or Oxford, educate him for his coming profession, and not drag his family about the Continent, under governesses and tutors, to learn fencing, languages, and become wild, and to belong to nowhere in particular as to parish or county.
In the autumn term of 1840, at nineteen and a half, I began residence in Trinity College, where my quarters were a pair of dog-holes, called rooms, overlooking the garden of the Master of Balliol. My reception at College was not pleasant. I had grown a splendid moustache, which was the envy of all the boys abroad, and which all the advice of Drs. Ogle and Greenhill failed to make me remove. I declined to be shaved until formal orders were issued to the authorities of the college. For I had already formed strong ideas upon the Shaven age of England, when her history, with some brilliant exceptions, such as Marlborough, Wellington, or Nelson, was at its meanest.
[Sidenote: Practical Jokes.]
As I passed through the entrance of the College, a couple of brother collegians met me, and the taller one laughed in my face. Accustomed to continental decorum, I handed him my card and called him out. But the college lad, termed by courtesy an Oxford man, had possibly read of duels, had probably never touched a weapon, sword or pistol, and his astonishment at the invitation exceeded all bounds. Explanations succeeded, and I went my way sadly, and felt as if I had fallen amongst épiciers. The college porter had kindly warned me against tricks played by the older hands, upon "fresh young gentlemen," and strongly advised me to "sport my oak," or, in other words, to bar and lock my outer door. With dignity deeply hurt, I left the entrance wide open, and thrust a poker into the fire, determined to give all intruders the warmest possible reception. This was part and parcel of that unhappy education abroad. In English public schools, boys learn first "to take," and then "to give." They begin by being tossed, and then by tossing others in the blanket. Those were days when practical jokes were in full force. Happily it is now extinct. Every greenhorn coming to college or joining a regiment, was liable to the roughest possible treatment, and it was only by submitting with the utmost good humour, that he won the affection of his comrades, and was looked upon as a gentleman. But the practice also had its darker phase. It ruined many a prospect, and it lost many a life. The most amusing specimen that I ever saw was that of a charming youngster, who died soon after joining his Sepoy regiment. The oldsters tried to drink him under the table at mess, and had notably failed. About midnight, when he was enjoying his first sleep, he suddenly awoke and found a ring of spectral figures dancing round between his bed and the tent-walls. After a minute's reflection, he jumped up, seized a sheet, threw it over his shoulders, and joined the dancers, saying, "If this is the fashion I suppose I must do it also." The jokers, baffled a second time, could do nothing but knock him down and run away.
The example of the larky Marquis of Waterford, seemed to authorize all kinds of fantastic tricks. The legend was still fresh, that he had painted the Dean of Christ Church's door red, because that formidable dignitary had objected to his wearing "pink" in High Street. Another, and far more inexcusable prank, was his sending all the accoucheurs in the town, to the house of a middle-aged maiden lady, whose father, a don, had offended him. In the colleges they did not fly at such high game, but they cruelly worried everything in the shape of a freshman. One unfortunate youth, a fellow who had brought with him a dozen of home-made wine, elder and cowslip, was made shockingly tight by brandy being mixed with his port, and was put to bed with all his bottles disposed on different parts of his person. Another, of æsthetic tastes, prided himself upon his china, and found it next morning all strewed in pieces about his bed. A third, with carroty whiskers, had them daubed with mustard, also while in a state of insensibility, and had to have them fall, yellow, next morning under a barber's hands.
I caused myself to be let down by a rope into the Master of Balliol's garden, plucked up some of the finest flowers by the roots, and planted in their place great staring marigolds. The study of the old gentleman's countenance when he saw them next morning was a joy for ever. Another prank was to shoot with an air-cane, an article strictly forbidden in college, at a brand-new watering-pot, upon which the old gentleman greatly prided himself, and the way which the water spirted over his reverend gaiters, gave an ineffable delight to the knot of mischievous undergraduates who were prospecting him from behind the curtain. I, however, always had considerable respect for the sturdy common sense of old Dr. Jenkins, and I made a kind of amends to him in "Vikram and the Vampire," where he is the only Pundit who objected to the tiger being resurrectioned. Another neat use of the air-cane, was to shoot the unhappy rooks, over the heads of the dons, as they played at bowls; the grave and reverend signiors would take up the body, and gravely debate what had caused the sudden death, when a warm stream of blood, trickling into their shirts, explained it only too clearly. No undergraduate in college could safely read his classics out loud after ten o'clock p.m., or his "oak" was broken with dumb-bells, and the dirty oil lamp, that half lit the stairs, was thrown over him and his books.
[Sidenote: Friends.]
I made amends to a certain extent for my mischief by putting my fellow-collegians to bed, and I always maintain that the Welshmen were those who gave me the most trouble.
The Oxford day, considered with relation to the acquisition of knowledge, was a "fast" pure and simple--it began in the morning with Chapel, during which time most men got up their logic. We then breakfasted either in our rooms, or in large parties, where we consumed an immense quantity of ham, bacon, eggs, mutton chops, and indigestible muffins. We then attended a couple of lectures, and this was Time completely thrown away. We were then free for the day, and every man passed his time as he best pleased. I could not afford to keep horses, and always hated the idea of riding hired hacks. My only amusements therefore were walking, rowing, and the school-at-arms. My walks somehow or other always ended at Bagley Wood, where a pretty gypsy girl (Selina), dressed in silks and satins, sat in state to receive the shillings and the homage of the undergraduates. I worked hard, under a coach, at sculling and rowing; I was one of the oars in the College Torpid, and a friend and I challenged the River in a two-oar, but unfortunately both of us were rusticated before the race came off.
My friend in misfortune belonged to an eminent ecclesiastical family, and distinguished himself accordingly. Returning from Australia, he landed at Mauritius without a farthing. Most men under the circumstances would have gone to the Governor, told their names, and obtained a passage to England. But the individual in question had far too much individuality to take so commonplace a step. He wrote home to his family for money, and meanwhile took off his coat, tucked up his sleeves, and worked like a coolie on the wharf. When the cheque for his passage was sent, he invited all his brother coolies to a spread of turtle, champagne, and all the luxuries of the season, at the swell hotel of the place, and left amidst the blessings of Shem and the curse of Japhet. Another of my college companions--the son of a bishop, by-the-by--made a cavalry regiment too hot to hold him, and took his passage to the Cape of Good Hope in an emigrant ship. On the third day he brought out a portable roulette table, which the captain sternly ordered off the deck. But the ship was a slow sailer, she fell in with calms about the Line, and the official rigour was relaxed. First one began to play, and then another, and at last the ship became a perfect "hell." After a hundred narrow escapes, and all manner of risks by fire and water, and the fists and clubs of the enraged losers, the distinguished youth landed at Cape Town with almost £5000 in his pocket.
[Sidenote: Fencing-rooms.]
The great solace of my life was the fencing-room. When I first entered Oxford, its only salle d'armes was kept by old Angelo, the grandson of the gallant old Italian, mentioned by Edgeworth, but who knew about as much of fencing as a French collegian after six months of salle d'armes. He was a priggish old party too, celebrated for walking up to his pupils and for whispering stagely, after a salute with the foil, "This, sir, is not so much a School of Arms as a School of Politeness." Presently a rival appeared in the person of Archibald Maclaren, who soon managed to make his mark. He established an excellent saloon, and he gradually superseded all the wretched gymnastic yard, which lay some half a mile out of the town. He was determined to make his way; he went over to Paris, when he could, to work with the best masters, published his systems of fencing and gymnastics, and he actually wrote a little book of poetry, which he called "Songs of the Sword." He and I became great friends, which friendship lasted for life. The only question that ever arose between us was touching the advisability or non-advisability of eating sweet buns and drinking strong ale at the same time. At the fencing-rooms I made acquaintance, which afterwards became a life-long friendship, with Alfred Bates Richards. He was a tall man, upwards of six feet high, broad in proportion, and very muscular. I found it unadvisable to box with him, but could easily master him with foil and broadsword. He was one of the few who would take the trouble to learn. Mostly Englishmen go to a fencing school, and, after six weeks' lessons, clamour to be allowed to fence loose, and very loose fencing it is, and is fated always to be. In the same way, almost before they can fix their colours they want to paint tableaux de genre, and they have hardly learnt their scales, when they want to attempt bravura pieces. On the Continent men work for months, and even years, before they think themselves in sight of their journey's end. A. B. Richards and I often met in after life and became intimates.[1] His erratic career is well known, and he died at a comparatively early age, editor of the Morning Advertiser. He had raised the tone of the Licensed Victuallers' organ to such a high pitch that even Lord Beaconsfield congratulated him upon it.
A. B. Richards was furious to see the treatment my services received; he always stood up bravely for me--his fellow-collegian, both with word and pen--in leaders too.
[Sidenote: Manners and Customs--Food and Smoking.]
The time for "Hall," that is to say for college dinner, was five p.m., and the scene was calculated to astonish a youngster brought up on the Continent. The only respectable part of it was the place itself, not a bad imitation of some old convent refectory. The details were mean in the extreme, and made me long for the meanest table d'hôte. Along the bottom of the Hall, raised upon a dwarf dais, ran the high table, intended for the use of fellows and fellow-commoners. The other tables ran along the sides. Wine was forbidden, malt liquor being the only drink. The food certainly suited the heavy strong beers and ales brewed in the college. It consisted chiefly of hunches of meat, cooked after Homeric or Central African fashion, and very filling at the price. The vegetables, as usual, were plain boiled, without the slightest aid to digestion. Yet the college cooks were great swells. They were paid as much as an average clergyman, and put most of their sons into the Church. In fact, the stomach had to do the whole work, whereas a good French or Italian cook does half the work for it in his saucepans. This cannibal meal was succeeded by stodgy pudding, and concluded with some form of cheese, Cheshire or double Gloucester, which painfully reminded one of bees'-wax, and this was called dinner. Very soon my foreign stomach began to revolt at such treatment, and I found out a place in the town, where, when I could escape Hall, I could make something of a dinner.
The moral of the scene offended all my prepossessions. The fellow-commoners were simply men, who by paying double what the commoners paid, secured double privileges. This distinction of castes is odious, except in the case of a man of certain age, who would not like to be placed in the society of young lads. But worse still was the gold tuft, who walked the streets with a silk gown, and a gorgeous tassel on his college cap. These were noblemen, the offensive English equivalent for men of title. Generosus nascitur nobilis fit. The Grandfathers of these noblemen may have been pitmen or grocers, but the simple fact of having titles, entitled them to most absurd distinctions. For instance, with a smattering of letters, enough to enable a commoner to squeeze through an ordinary examination, gold tuft took a first class, and it was even asserted that many took their degrees by merely sending up their books. They were allowed to live in London as much as they liked, and to condescend to college at the rare times they pleased. Some Heads of Colleges would not stoop to this degradation, especially Dean Gaisford of Christ Church, who compelled Lord W---- to leave it and betake himself to Trinity; but the place was, with notable exceptions, a hotbed of toadyism and flunkeyism. When Mr. (now Sir Robert) Peel first appeared in the High Street, man, woman, and child stood to look at him because he was the son of the Prime Minister.
After dinner it was the custom to go to wine. These desserts were another abomination. The table was spread with a vast variety of fruits and sweetmeats, supplied at the very highest prices, and often on tick, by the Oxford tradesmen,--model sharks. Some men got their wine from London, others bought theirs in the town. Claret was then hardly known, and port, sherry, and Madeira, all of the strong military ditto type, were the only drinks. These wines were given in turn by the undergraduates, and the meal upon meal would have injured the digestion of a young shark. At last, about this time, some unknown fellow, whose name deserved to be immortalized, drew out a cigar and insisted on smoking it, despite the disgust and uproar that the novelty created. But the fashion made its way, and the effects were admirable. The cigar, and afterwards the pipe, soon abolished the cloying dessert, and reduced the consumption of the loaded wines to a minimum.
But the English were very peculiar about smoking. In the days of Queen Anne it was so universal that dissident jurymen were locked up without meat, drink, or tobacco. During the continental wars it became un-English to smoke, and consequently men, and even women, took snuff. And for years it was considered as disgraceful to smoke a cigar out of doors as to have one's boots blacked, or to eat an orange at Hyde Park Corner. "Good gracious! you don't mean to say that you smoke in the streets?" said an East Indian Director in after years, when he met me in Pall Mall with a cigar in my mouth. Admiral Henry Murray, too, vainly endeavoured to break through the prohibition by leading a little squad of smoking friends through Kensington Gardens. Polite ladies turned away their faces, and unpolite ladies muttered something about "snobs." At last the Duke of Argyll spread his plaid under a tree in Hyde Park, lighted a cutty pipe, and beckoned his friends to join him. Within a month every one in London had a cigar in his mouth. A pretty lesson to inculcate respect for popular prejudice!
After the dessert was finished, not a few men called for cognac, whisky, and gin, and made merry for the rest of the evening. But what else was there for them to do? Unlike a foreign University, the theatre was discouraged; it was the meanest possible little house, decent actors were ashamed to show themselves in it, and an actress of the calibre of Mrs. Nesbitt appeared only every few years. Opera, of course, there was none, and if there had been, not one in a thousand would have understood the language, and not one in a hundred would have appreciated the music. Occasionally there was a concert given by some wandering artists, with the special permission of the college authorities, and a dreary two hours' work it was. Balls were unknown, whereby the marriageable demoiselles of Oxford lost many an uncommon good chance. A mesmeric lecturer occasionally came down there and caused some fun. He called for subjects, and amongst the half-dozen that presented themselves was one young gentleman who had far more sense of humour than discretion. When thrown into a deep slumber, he arose, with his eyes apparently fast closed, and, passing into the circle of astonished spectators, began to distribute kisses right and left. Some of these salutations fell upon the sacred cheeks of the daughters of the Heads of Houses, and the tableau may be imagined.
[Sidenote: Drs. Newman and Pusey.]
This dull, monotonous life was varied in my case by an occasional dinner with families whose acquaintance I had made in the town. At Dr. Greenhill's I once met at dinner Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Newman and Dr. Arnold. I expected great things from their conversation, but it was mostly confined to discussing the size of the Apostles in the Cathedral of St. Peter's in Rome, and both these eminent men showed a very dim recollection of the subject. I took a great fancy to Dr. Newman, and used to listen to his sermons, when I would never give half an hour to any other preacher. There was a peculiar gentleness in his manner, and the matter was always suggestive. Dr. Newman was Vicar of St. Mary's, at Oxford, and used to preach, at times, University sermons; there was a stamp and seal upon him, a solemn music and sweetness in his tone and manner, which made him singularly attractive, yet there was no change of inflexion in his voice; action he had none; his sermons were always read, and his eyes were ever upon his book; his figure was lean and stooping, and the tout ensemble was anything but dignified or commanding, yet the delivery suited the matter of his speech, and the combination suggested complete candour and honesty; he said only what he believed, and he induced others to believe with him.[2] On the other hand, Dr. Pusey's University sermons used to last for an hour and a half; they were filled with Latin and Greek, dealt with abstruse subjects, and were delivered in the dullest possible way, and seemed to me like a mauvais rêve or nightmare.
[Sidenote: Began Arabic.]
At Dr. Greenhill's, too, I met Don Pascual de Gayangos, the Spanish Arabist. Already wearying of Greek and Latin, I had attacked Arabic, and soon was well on in Erpinius's Grammar; but there was no one to teach me, so I began to teach myself, and to write the Arabic letters from left to right, instead of from right to left, i.e. the wrong way. Gayangos, when witnessing this proceeding, burst out laughing, and showed me how to copy the alphabet. In those days, learning Arabic at Oxford was not easy. There was a Regius Professor, but he had other occupations than to profess. If an unhappy undergraduate went up to him, and wanted to learn, he was assured that it was the duty of a professor to teach a class, and not an individual. All this was presently changed, but not before it was high time. The Sundays used generally to be passed in "outings." It was a pleasure to get away from Oxford, and to breathe the air which was not at least half smoke.
Another disagreeable of Oxford was, the continuous noise of bells. You could not make sure of five minutes without one giving tongue, and in no part of the world, perhaps, is there a place where there is such a perpetual tinkling of metal. The maddening jangle of bells seems to have been the survival of two centuries ago. In 1698 Paul Heutzner wrote: "The English are vastly fond of great noises that fill the air, such as the firing of cannon, drums, and the ringing of bells, so that it is common for a number of them that have got a 'glass' in their heads, to go up into some belfry, and ring the bells for hours together for the sake of exercise."
A favourite Sunday trip used to be to Abingdon, which, by the wisdom of the dons in those days, was the railway station of Oxford. Like most men of conservative tendency, who disliked to move quiet things, who cultivated the status quo, because they could hardly be better off, and might be worse off, and who feared nothing more than innovations, because these might force on enquiring into the disposal of the revenues and other delicate monetary questions, they had fought against the line with such good will, that they had left it nearly ten miles distant from the town. Their conduct was by no means exceptional; thousands did the same. For instance, Lord John Scott, determined to prevent the surveyor passing through his estate, engaged a company of "Nottingham Lambs," and literally strewed the floor of the porter's lodge with broken surveying instruments. Mrs. Partington cannot keep out the tide with her rake, and the consequence was that Oxford was obliged to build a branch line, and soon had to lament that she had lost the advantage of the main line.
The Rev. Thomas Short was at that time doing Sunday duty at Abingdon. He was not distinguished for ability as a college tutor, but he was a gentlemanly and kind-hearted man; he was careful not to be too sharp-eyed when he met undergraduates at Abingdon. They generally drove out in tandems, which the absurd regulations of the place kept in fashion, by forbidding them. No one would have driven them had they not possessed the merits of stolen fruit. I, having carefully practised upon "Dobbin" in my earlier days, used thoroughly to enjoy driving. In later years I met with my old tutor, the Rev. Thomas Short, who lived to a great age, and died universally respected and regretted by all who knew him.[3]
At last the lagging autumnal term passed away, and I went up to my grandmother and aunts in Great Cumberland Place. It was not lively; a household full of women only, rarely is.
The style of Society was very promiscuous. The Rev. Mr. Hutchins, the clergyman under whom the family "sat" in the adjoining Quebec Chapel, introduced me to the eccentric Duke of Brunswick, who used to laugh consumedly at my sallies of high spirits. Lady Dinorben, with whom Mrs. Phayre still lived, gave me an occasional invitation. The aunts' near neighbours were old General Sutherland of the Madras Army, whose son Alick I afterwards met in the Neilgherry Hills. Mr. Lawyer Dendy was still alive, and one of his sons shortly after followed me to India as a Bombay civilian. Another pleasant acquaintance was Mrs. White, wife of the colonel of the 3rd Dragoons, whose three stalwart sons were preparing for India, and gave me the first idea of going there. A man who dances, who dresses decently, and who is tolerably well introduced, rarely wants invitations to balls in London, and I found some occupation for my evenings.
[Sidenote: Play.]
But I sadly wanted a club, and in those days the institution was not as common as it is now. At odd times I went to the theatres, and amused myself with the humours of the little "Pic" and the old Cocoa-Nut Tree. But hazard is a terrible game. It takes a man years to learn it well, and by that time he has lost all the luck with which he begins. I always disliked private play, although I played a tolerable hand at whist, écarté, and piquet, but I found it almost as unpleasant to win from my friends as to lose to my friends. On the other hand, I was unusually lucky at public tables. I went upon a principle, not a theory, which has ruined so many men. I noted as a rule that players are brave enough when they lose, whereas they begin to fear when they win. My plan, therefore, was to put a certain sum in my pocket and resolve never to exceed it. If I lost it I stopped, one of the advantages of public over private playing; but I did not lay down any limits to winning when I was in luck; I boldly went ahead, and only stopped when I found fortune turning the other way.
[Sidenote: Town Life--College Friends.]
My grandmother's house was hardly pleasant to a devoted smoker; I was put out on the leads, leading from the staircase, whenever I required a weed. So I took lodgings in Maddox Street, and there became as it were a "man about town." My brother Edward joined me, and we had, as the Yankees say, "A high old time." It appeared only too short, and presently came on the Spring Term, when I returned to my frouzy rooms in Trinity College; and I had not formed many friendships in Trinity itself. It had made a name for fastness amongst the last generation of undergraduates, and now a reaction had set in. They laughed at me, at my first lecture, because I spoke in Roman Latin--real Latin--I did not know the English pronunciation, only known in England. The only men of my own college I met in after life, were Father Coleridge, S.J., and Edward A. Freeman, of Somerleaze, the historian.
Mrs. Grundy had then just begun to reign, inaugurated by Douglas Jerrold with "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" This ancient genitrix highly disapproved of my foreign ways, and my expressed dislike to school and college, over which I ought to have waxed sentimental, tender, and æsthetic; it appeared to her little short of blasphemy. I had a few friends at "Exeter," including Richards, and three at Brasenose, then famous for drinking heavy beers and ales as Bonn or Heidelberg, especially on Shrove Tuesday, when certain verses chaffingly called the "Carmen seculare" used to be sung. But I delighted in "Oriel," which, both as regards fellows and undergraduates, was certainly the nicest college of my day. There I spent the chief part of my time with Wilberforce, Foster, and a little knot, amongst whom was Tom Hughes (afterwards Tom Brown). We boxed regularly, and took lessons from Goodman, ex-pugilist and pedestrian, and actual tailor, who came down to Oxford at times. We had great fun with Burke--the fighting man--who on one occasion honoured Oxford with his presence. The "Deaf 'un," as he was called, had a face that had been hammered into the consistency of sole-leather, and one evening, after being too copiously treated, he sat down in a heavy armchair, and cried out, "Now, lads! half a crown a hit." We all tried our knuckles upon his countenance, and only hurt our own knuckles.
Balliol (it was chiefly supplied from Rugby) then held her head uncommonly high. As all know, Dr. Arnold had made the fortune of Rugby, and caused it to be recognized among public schools. During his early government the Rugbyites had sent a cricket challenge to Eton, and the Etonians had replied "that they would be most happy to send their scouts;" but as scholarship at Eton seemed to decline, so it rose in Rugby and Oxford. Scholarship means £ s. d. At Balliol I made acquaintance with a few men, whose names afterwards made a noise in the world. They all belonged to a generation, collegically speaking, older than myself. Coleridge (now Lord Coleridge) was still lingering there, but he had taken his bachelor's degree, and his brother, afterwards a Jesuit and author of many works, was a scholar at Trinity. Ward of Balliol, who also became a Catholic, was chiefly remarkable for his minute knowledge of the circulating library novels of the Laura-Matilda type. He suffered from insomnia, and before he could sleep, he was obliged to get through a few volumes every night. Lake of Balliol, then a young don, afterwards turned out a complete man of the world; and there is no need to speak of Jowett, who had then just passed as B.A., and was destined to be Master of Balliol.
[Sidenote: Coaching and Languages.]
Oxford between 1840 and 1842 was entering upon great changes. The old style of "fellow," a kind of survival of the Benedictine monks, was rapidly becoming extinct, and only one or two remained. Men who lived surrounded by their books on vertical stands, were capable of asking you if "cats let loose in woods would turn to tigers," and tried to keep pace with the age by reading up the Times of eight years past. But a great deal of reform was still wanted. Popular idea about Oxford was, that the Classic groves of Isis were hotbeds for classical Scholasticism, whilst Cambridge succeeded better in Mathematics, but I soon found out that one would learn more Greek and Latin in one year at Bonn and Heidelberg than in three at Oxford. The college teaching, for which one was obliged to pay, was of the most worthless description. Two hours a day were regularly wasted, and those who read for honours were obliged to choose and to pay for a private coach. Amongst the said coaches were some drôles, who taught in very peculiar ways, by Rhymes, not always of the most delicate description. One celebrated coach, after lecturing his blockheads upon the subject, we will say, of Salmanizer, would say to them, "Now, you fellows, you'll forget in a day everything that I've been teaching you for the last hour. Whenever you hear this man's name, just repeat to yourselves ---- and you'll remember all about it."
The worst of such teaching was, that it had no order and no system. Its philology was ridiculous, and it did nothing to work the reasoning powers. Learning foreign languages, as a child learns its own, is mostly a work of pure memory, which acquires, after childhood, every artificial assistance possible. My system of learning a language in two months was purely my own invention, and thoroughly suited myself. I got a simple grammar and vocabulary, marked out the forms and words which I knew were absolutely necessary, and learnt them by heart by carrying them in my pocket and looking over them at spare moments during the day. I never worked more than a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that the brain lost its freshness. After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a week, I stumbled through some easy book-work (one of the Gospels is the most come-atable), and underlined every word that I wished to recollect, in order to read over my pencillings at least once a day. Having finished my volume, I then carefully worked up the grammar minutiæ, and I then chose some other book whose subject most interested me. The neck of the language was now broken, and progress was rapid. If I came across a new sound like the Arabic Ghayn, I trained my tongue to it by repeating it so many thousand times a day. When I read, I invariably read out loud, so that the ear might aid memory. I was delighted with the most difficult characters, Chinese and Cuneiform, because I felt that they impressed themselves more strongly upon the eye than the eternal Roman letters. This, by-and-by, made me resolutely stand aloof from the hundred schemes for transliterating Eastern languages, such as Arabic, Sanscrit, Hebrew, and Syriac, into Latin letters, and whenever I conversed with anybody in a language that I was learning, I took the trouble to repeat their words inaudibly after them, and so to learn the trick of pronunciation and emphasis.
The changes which followed 1840 made an important difference in the value of fellowships. They were harder to get and harder to keep. They were no longer what the parlous and supercilious youth defined them, "An admirable provision for the indigent members of the middle classes." The old half-monk disappeared, or rather he grew his moustachios, and passed his vacations "sur le Continong." But something still remains to be done. It is a scandal to meet abroad in diplomacy, and other professions, a gentleman belonging to the bene nati, bene vestiti, modice docti of "All Souls'," drawing, moreover, his pay for doing nothing. The richest University in the world is too poor to afford the host of professors still required, and it is a disgrace that an English University, whose name means the acquisition of universal knowledge, should not be able to teach Cornish, Gaelic, Welsh, and Irish, the original languages of the island. Again, the endowment of research, a sine quâ non, is simply delayed because money is not forthcoming. A little sensible economy would remedy this, and make Oxford what she ought to be, a Seat of Learning--not, as the old fellows of Christ Church define it, "A place to make rather ignorant gentlemen." The competition fellowships at Oxford were started in 1854, which changed the whole condition of things.
During this term I formally gave up my intention to read for a first class. Aut primus aut nullus was ever my motto, and though many second-class men have turned out better than many first-class men, I did not care to begin life with a failure. I soon ascertained the fact that men who may rely upon first classes are bred to it from their childhood, even as horses and dogs are trained. They must not waste time and memory upon foreign tongues. They must not dissipate their powers of brain upon anything like general education. They may know the -isms, but they must be utterly ignorant of the -ologies; but, above all things, they must not indulge themselves with what is popularly called "The World." They must confine themselves to one straight line, a college curriculum, and even then they can never be certain of success. At the very moment of gaining the prize their health may break down, and compel them to give up work. I surprised Dr. Greenhill by my powers of memory when I learned Adam's "Antiquities" by heart. But the doctor, who had not taken a class himself, threw cold water on my ambition--perhaps the best thing he could do--and frankly told me that, though I could take a first class, he could by no means answer that I would. The fellows of Trinity were nice gentlemanly men, but I by no means wished to become one of the number. My father had set his heart upon both sons being provided for by the Universities, and very often "when fathers propose, sons dispose."
My disgust at the idea of University honours was perhaps not decreased by my trying for the two scholarships, and failing to get them.
[Sidenote: Latin--Greek.]
I attributed my non-success at University College (where I was beaten by a man who turned a chorus of Æschylus into doggerel verse) chiefly to my having stirred the bile of my examiners with my real (Roman) Latin. At times, too, the devil palpably entered into me, and made me speak Greek Romaically by accent, and not by quantity, even as they did and still do at Athens. I had learnt this much from one of the Rhodo-Kanakis Greek merchants at Marseille, so that I could converse in Latin and Greek as spoken as well as ancient Latin and Greek.
The history of the English pronunciation of Latin is curious. In Chaucer it was after the Roman fashion, in Spencer the English A appears, and the change begins to make itself felt under the succession of Queen Elizabeth. It is most probable that this was encouraged by the leaders of education, in order more thoroughly to break with Rome. The effect was, that after learning Greek and Latin for twenty years, a lad could hardly speak a sentence, because he had never been taught to converse in the absurdly called Dead Languages, and if he did speak, not a soul but an Englishman could understand him. The English pronunciation of Latin vowels, happens to be the very worst in the world, because we have an O and an A which belongs peculiarly to English, and which destroys all the charms of those grand-sounding vowels.
Years after I was laughed at at Oxford, public opinion took a turn, and Roman pronunciation of Latin was adopted in many of the best schools. I was anxious to see them drop their absurd mispronunciation of Greek, but all the authorities whom I consulted on the subject, declared to me that schoolmasters had quite enough to do with learning Italianized Latin, and could not be expected to trouble themselves with learning Athenianized Greek. I had another most quixotic idea, which was truly breaking one's head against a windmill. I wanted the public to pronounce Yob for Job, Yericho for Jericho, Yakoob for Jacob, and Yerusalem for Jerusalem. The writers of the Anglican version, must certainly have intended this, and it is inconceivable how the whole English public dropped the cognate German pronunciation of J, and took to that of France and Italy.
[Sidenote: Holidays.]
At last the dreary time passed away, and a happy family meeting was promised. My father brought my mother and sister from Pisa to Wiesbaden in Germany, and we boys, as we were still called, were invited over to spend the Long Vacation. We were also to escort Mrs. D'Aguilar, who with two of her daughters were determined to see the Rhine. One of the girls was Emily, who died soon. The other was Eliza, who married a clergyman of the name of Pope, and whose son, Lieutenant Pope of the 24th Queen's, died gallantly at Isandula; though surrounded by numbers, he kept firing his revolver and wounding his enemies, till he received a mortal wound by an assegai in the breast. This was on January 22nd, 1879. In the end of 1875 he came to Folkestone, to take leave of my wife and me, who were going out to India. We both liked him very much.
In those days travellers took the steamer from London Bridge, dropped quietly down the Thames, and, gaining varied information about the places on both sides of it, dined as usual on a boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce, and roast ribs of beef with horse-radish, and slept as best they could in the close boxes called berths or on deck; if the steamer was in decent order, and there was not too much head wind, they could be in the Scheldt next morning.
Our little party passed a day at Antwerp, which looked beautiful from the river. The Cathedral tower and the tall roofs and tapering spires of the churches around it made a matchless group. We visited the fortifications, which have lately done such good work, and we had an indigestion of Rubens, who appeared so gross and so fleshy after the Italian school. Mrs. D'Aguilar was dreadfully scandalized, when, coming suddenly into a room, she found her two nephews at romps with a pretty little soubrette, whose short petticoats enabled her to deliver the sharpest possible kicks, while she employed her hands in vigorously defending her jolly red cheeks. The poor lady threw up her hands and her eyes to heaven when she came suddenly upon this little scene, and she was even more shocked when she found that her escort had passed the Sunday evening in the theatre.
From Antwerp we travelled to Bruges, examined the belfry, heard the chimes, and then went on to Cologne. A marvellous old picturesque place it was, with its combination of old churches, crumbling walls, gabled houses, and the narrowest and worst-paved streets we had ever seen. The old Cathedral in those days was not finished, and threatened never to be finished. Still there was the grand solitary tower, with the mystical-looking old crane on the top, and a regular garden growing out of the chinks and crannies of the stonework. Coleridge's saying about Cologne, was still emphatically true in those days, and all travellers had recourse to "Jean Marie Farina Gegenüber." What a change there is now, with that hideous Gothic railway bridge, and its sham battlements, and loopholes to defend nothing, with its hideous cast-iron turret over the centre of the church, where the old architect had intended a light stone lantern-tower, with the ridiculous terrace surrounding the building, and with the hideous finials with which the modern German architects have disfigured the grand old building!
[Sidenote: The Rhine to Wiesbaden.]
At Cologne we took the steamer and ran up the river. A far more sensible proceeding than that of these days, when tourists take the railway, and consequently can see only one side of the view. The river craft was comfortable, the meals were plentiful, the Piesporter was a sound and unadulterated wine, and married remarkably well with Knaster tobacco, smoked in long pipes with painted china bowls. The crowd, too, was good-tempered, and seemed to enjoy its holiday. Bonn, somehow or other, always managed to show at least one very pretty girl, with blue porcelain eyes and gingerbread-coloured hair. Then came the Castle Crag of Drachenfels and the charming Siebengebirge, which in those days were not spoiled by factory chimneys. We landed at Mainz, and from there drove over to the old Fontes Mattiace, called in modern day Wiesbaden.
It has been said that to enjoy the Rhine one must go to it from England, not the other way from Switzerland; and travellers' opinions are very much divided about it, some considering it extremely grand, and others simply pretty. I was curious to see what its effect upon me would be after visiting the four quarters of the globe; so, in May, 1872, I dropped down the river from Basle to the mouth. The southern and the northern two-thirds were uninteresting, but I found the middle as pretty as ever, and, in fact, I enjoyed the beautiful and interesting river more than when I had seen it as a boy.
I found the middle, beginning at Bingen, charming. Bishop Hatto's Tower had become a cockneyfied affair, and the castles, banks, and islands were disagreeably suggestive of Richmond Hill. But Drachenfels, Nonnenswerth, and Rolandseck, were charming, and I quite felt the truth of the saying, that this is one of the paradises of Germany. At Düsseldorf the river became old and ugly, and so continued till Rotterdam.
Wiesbaden in those days was intensely "German and ordinary," as Horace Walpole says. It was a kind of Teutonic Margate, with a chic of its own. In the days before railways, this was the case with all these "Baths," where people either went to play, or to get rid of what the Germans call eine sehr schöne corpulenz, a corporation acquired by stuffing food of three kinds, salt, sour, or greasy, during nine or ten months of the year. It was impossible to mistake princely Baden-Baden and its glorious Black Forest, for invalid Kissingen or for Homberg, which combined mineral waters and gambling tables. Wiesbaden was so far interesting that it showed the pure and unadulterated summer life of middle-class Germans. There you see in perfection the grave blue-green German eye.
You are surprised at the frequency of the name of Johann. Johann was a servant; Johannes, a professor; Schani, a swell; Jean, a kind of fréluqué; Hans, a peasant; and Hansl, a village idiot. Albrecht, with flat occiput, and bat-like ears, long straight hair and cap, with unclean hands, and a huge signet ring on his forefinger, with a pipe rivalling the size of a Turkish chibouque, took his regular seat on one of the wooden benches of the promenade, with Frau Mutter mending his stockings on one side, and Fraülein Gretchen knitting mittens on the other. This kind of thing would continue perhaps for ten seasons, but on the eleventh you met Albrecht, au petit soins, with Mütze as his bride, and Gretchen being waited upon by her bridegroom Fritz, and then everything went on as before. Amongst the women the kaffee-gesellschaft flourished, when coffee and scandal took the place of scandal and tea, the beverage which I irreverently call "chatter-water." The lady of the house invites two or three friends to come and bring their work and drink a cup of coffee. Before the hour arrives the invitations most likely number twenty. They dress in afternoon promenade toilette, which was very unadorned at Wiesbaden, and they drop in one by one--much kissing and shaking of hands and uncloaking; then each one pulls out knitting, or various pieces of work, which are mutually admired, and patterns borrowed, and then they fall to upon children, servants, toilettes, domestic economy, and the reputations of such of their friends as are not there. This goes on for hours, only interrupted by the servant wheeling in a table covered with coffee, cakes, sweetmeats, jam, and kugelhupf.
In the evening there was often a dance at the Kursaal--admirable waltzing, and sometimes quadrilles with steps. Here the bald old Englishman, who in France would collect around him all the old ladies in the room to see him dance, was little noticed. The hearty and homely Germans danced themselves, even when they had grey hair.
Our family found a comfortable house at Wiesbaden, and the German servants received the "boys," as we were still called, with exclamations of "Ach! die schöne schwarze kinder." We paid occasionally furtive visits to the Kursaal, and lost a few sovereigns like men. But our chief amusement was the fencing-room. Here we had found new style of play, with the schläger, a pointless rapier with razor-like edges. It was a favourite student's weapon, used to settle all their affairs of honour, and they used it with the silly hanging guard. Some of them gave half an hour every day to working at the post, a wooden pillar stuck up in the middle of the room and bound with vertical ribbons of iron.
When we were tired of Wiesbaden, we amused ourselves with wandering about the country. We visited the nearer watering-places. The first was Schwalbach, "the Swallows' Brook," where the rusty waters turned all our hair red. We then went off to Schlangenbad, "the Snakes' Bath," whose Kalydor made the Frenchman fall in love with himself. These waters had such a reputation, that one lady (of course she was called a Russian Princess) used to have them sent half across Europe for daily use.
In those days there were not many English in these out-of-the-way places, and the greater number were Oxford and Cambridge men. They were learning German and making the most extraordinary mistakes. One gentleman said that the German particles were difficult, but he made a great confusion of the matter. Amongst others, there were the daughters of Archbishop Whately, at that time very nice girls. We then returned to Wiesbaden, and went over to Heidelberg, which is so charmingly picturesque. Here we found a little colony of English, and all fraternized at once.
[Sidenote: The Nassau Brigade.]
We "boys" wanted to enter one of the so-called brigades, and chose the Nassau, which was the fightingest of all. An Irish student, who was one of the champions of the corps, and who had distinguished himself by slitting more than one nose, called upon us, and, over sundry schoppes of beer, declared that we could not be admitted without putting in an appearance at the Hirschgasse. This was a little pot-house at the other side of the river, with a large room where monomachies were fought. The appearance of the combatants was very ridiculous. They had thick felt caps over their heads, whose visors defended their eyes. Their necks were swathed in enormous cravats, and their arms were both padded, and so were their bodies from the waist downwards. There was nothing to hit but the face and the chest. That, however, did not prevent disagreeable accidents. Sometimes too heavy a cut went into the lungs, and at other times took an effect upon either eye. But the grand thing was to walk off with the tip of the adversary's nose, by a dexterous upward snick from the hanging guard. A terrible story was told of a duel between a handsome man and an ugly man. Beauty had a lovely nose, and Beast so managed that presently it was found on the ground. Beauty made a rush for it, but Beast stamped it out of all shape. There was a very little retreating in these affairs, for the lines were chalked upon the ground. The seconds stood by, also armed with swords and protected with masks, to see that there was nothing like a sauhieb or unfair cut. A medical student was always present, and when a cut went home, the affair was stopped to sew it up. Sometimes, however, the artery shrank, and its patient was marked with a cross, as it was necessary to open his cheek above and below in order to tie it up.
A story is told of a doctor who attended a students' duel, when the mask fell, and one of them lost his nose. The doctor flew at it and picked it up, and put it in his mouth to keep it warm, whipped out his instruments, needle and thread, and so skilfully stitched on the nose, and stopped it with plaster, that the edges united, and in a few weeks the nose was as handsome and useful as ever.
We boys did not see the fun of this kind of thing, and when our Irish friend told us what the ordeal was, we said that we were perfectly ready to turn out with foils or rapiers, but that we could not stand the paddings. Duels with the broadsword, and without protection, were never fought except on desperate occasions. Our friend promised to report it to the brigade, and the result was that some time afterwards we were introduced to a student, who said that he knew a little fencing, and should like to try a botte with us. We smelt a rat, as the phrase is, and showed him only half of what we could do. But apparently that was enough, for our conditions were not accepted, and we were not admitted into the Nassau Brigade.
At Heidelberg I told my father that Oxford life did not in any way suit me. I pleaded for permission to go into the Army, and, that failing, to emigrate to Canada or Australia. He was inexorable. He was always thinking of that fellowship. Edward, too, was deadly tired of Dr. Havergal, and swore that he would rather be a "private" than a fellow of Cambridge. However, he was sent nolens volens to the University on the Cam, and there he very speedily came to grief. It was remarked of him, before the end of the first term, that he was never seen at Chapel. His tutor sent for him, and permitted himself strong language on this delinquency. "My dear sir," was the reply, "no party of pleasure ever gets me out of bed before ten o'clock, and do you really, really think that I am going to be in Chapel at eight o'clock?" "Are you joking, or is that your mature decision?" said the tutor. "My very ripest decision," said Edward, and consequently he was obliged to leave college without delay.
When the visit was over, and the autumnal term was beginning, I left Germany and steamed down the Rhine. Everything that I saw made me less likely to be pleased at the end of my journey. However, there was no choice for it. I arrived in London, and found my grandmother and aunts still at the seaside, in a house over the cliff at Ramsgate. Ramsgate I rather liked. There were some very handsome girls there, the Ladies P----t, and the place had a kind of distant resemblance to Boulogne. The raffles at the libraries made it a caricature of a German Bath. I wandered about the country; I visited Margate, where the tone of society was perfectly marvellous, and ran about the small adjacent bathing-places, like Broadstairs and Herne Bay. This brought on the time when I was obliged to return to Oxford.
I went there with no good will, and as my father had refused to withdraw me from the University, I resolved to withdraw myself.
[Sidenote: The Straws that broke the Camel's Back.]
My course of action was one of boyish thoughtlessness. Reports of wine-parties were spread everywhere, whispers concerning parodies on venerable subjects, squibs appeared in the local papers--in those days an unpardonable offence--caricatures of Heads of Houses were handed about, and certain improvisations were passed from mouth to mouth. I had a curious power of improvising any number of rhymes, without the slightest forethought; but the power, such as it was, was perfectly useless to me, as it was accompanied with occasional moments of nervousness, when I despaired, without the slightest reason whatever, of finding the easiest rhyme. Probably the professional Italian, who declaims a poem or a tragedy, labours under the perfect conviction that nothing in the world can stop him. And then it is so much easier to rhyme in Italian than in English; so my efforts were mostly confined to epigrams and epitaphs, at wines and supper-parties, and you may be sure that these brilliant efforts did me no good.
This was the beginning of the end. My object was to be rusticated, not to be expelled. The former may happen in consequence of the smallest irregularity, the latter implies ungentlemanly conduct. I cast about in all directions for the safest line, when fortune put the clue into my hands. A celebrated steeplechaser, Oliver the Irishman, came down to Oxford, and I was determined to see him ride. The collegiate authorities, with questionable wisdom, forbad us all to be present at the races, and especially at what they called "the disgraceful scenes of 'race ordinaries.'" Moreover, in order to make matters sure, they ordered all the undergraduates to be present at the college lecture, at the hour when the race was to be run.
A number of high-spirited youngsters of the different colleges swore that they would not stand this nonsense, that it was infringing the liberty of the subject, and that it was treating them like little boys, which they did not deserve. Here, doubtless, they were right. But, well foreseeing what would be the result, they acted according to the common saying, "In for a penny, in for a pound;" so the tandem was ordered to wait behind Worcester College, and when they should have been attending a musty lecture in the tutor's room, they were flicking across the country at the rate of twelve miles an hour. The steeplechase was a delight, and Oliver was very amusing at the race ordinary, although he did not express much admiration for the riding of what he called "The Oxford lads."
[Sidenote: Rusticated.]
Next morning there was eating of humble-pie. The various culprits were summoned to the Green Room and made conscious of the enormity of the offence. I secured the respect of the little knot by arguing the point with the college dignitaries. I boldly asserted that there was no moral turpitude at being present at a race. I vindicated the honour and dignity of collegiate men by asserting that they should not be treated as children. I even dropped the general axiom "that trust begets trust," and "they who trust us elevate us." Now, this was too much of a good thing, to commit a crime, and to declare it a virtuous action. Consequently, when all were rusticated, I was singled out from the Hoi polloi, by an especial recommendation not to return to Oxford from a Rus. Stung by a sense of injustice, I declared at once that I would leave the college, and expressed a vicious hope, that the caution-money deposited by my father would be honestly returned to him. This was the climax. There was a general rise of dignitaries, as if a violent expulsion from the room was intended. I made them my lowest and most courtly bow, Austrian fashion, which bends the body nearly double, wished them all happiness for the future, and retired from the scene. I did not see Oxford again till 1850, when, like the prodigal son, I returned to Alma Mater with a half-resolution to finish my terms and take my bachelor degree.[4] But the idea came too late. I had given myself up to Oriental studies, and I had begun to write books. Yet I was always glad, during my occasional visits home, to call at my old college, have a chat with the Reverend and Venerable Thomas Short, and to breakfast and dine with the dons who had been bachelors or undergraduates at the time of my departure.
The way in which I left Oxford was characteristic of the rest. One of my rusticated friends, Anderson of Oriel, had proposed that we should leave with a splurge--"go up from the land with a soar." There was now no need for the furtive tandem behind Worcester College. It was driven boldly up to the college doors. My bag and baggage were stowed away in it, and with a cantering leader and a high-trotting shaft-horse, which unfortunately went over the beds of the best flowers, we started from the High Street by the Queen's Highway to London, I artistically performing upon a yard of tin trumpet, waving adieu to my friends, and kissing my hand to the pretty shop-girls. In my anger I thoroughly felt the truth of the sentiment--
"I leave thee, Oxford, and I loathe thee well, Thy saint, thy sinner, scholar, prig, and swell."
Alfred Bates Richards, Dick's college mate, wrote in after years: "It is a curious reflection at school for any boy or any master, 'What will become of the boy? Who will turn out well? who ill? Who will distinguish himself? who will remain in obscurity? Who live? who die?' I am sure, though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us foresaw his future greatness, nor knew what a treasure we had amongst us."
[1] He began and wrote the "Career of R. F. Burton," printed by Waterlow, and brought it up to 1876. We deeply regretted him.--I. B.
[2] Richard always said that if all Catholics were like Dr. Newman, nearly every thinking person would become Catholic.--I. B.
[3] I can remember, in later years, Richard going to see him, and when he was so old he had almost to be supported, gazing at him with affection and moist eyes.--I. B.
[4] How often I have heard him regret that he did not do this, and I can testify that at the bottom of his heart he loved Oxford, but he could not obey his father, and also carry out the destiny for which he was best fitted and obliged to follow.--I. B.
V. GOING TO INDIA
Arriving in London, I was received by the family harem with some little astonishment, for they already knew enough of "terms" to be aware that the last was unfinished. I was quite determined to have two or three days in peace, so I thoroughly satisfied all the exigencies of the position by declaring that I had been allowed an extra vacation for taking a double-first with the very highest honours. A grand dinner-party was given, quite the reverse of the fatted calf. Unfortunately, amongst the guests was the Rev. Mr. Phillips, a great friend of mine, who grinned at me, and indirectly ejaculated, "Rusticated, eh?" The aunts said nothing at the time, but they made inquiries, the result of which was a tableau.
This Phillips was the brother of Major-General Sir B. T. Phillips, who served long and well in the Bengal army, was rather a noted figure as a young-old man in London, and died in Paris in 1880.
You will say that these are wild oats with a vengeance, but most thus sow them, and it is better that they should sow them in early youth. Nothing is more melancholy than to see a man suddenly emancipated from family rule, and playing tricks when the heyday is passed. Youth is like new wine that must be allowed to ferment freely, or it will never become clear, strong, and well flavoured.
[Sidenote: He gets a Commission and begins Hindostani.]
I was asked what I intended to do, and I replied simply that I wished to go into the Army, but that I preferred the Indian service, as it would show me more of the world, and give me a better chance of active service. There was no great difficulty in getting a commission. The Directors were bound not to sell them, but every now and then they would give a nomination to a friend, and my friend did not throw away the chance. My conviction is that the commission cost £500.
It was arranged that I should sail in the spring, and meanwhile I determined to have a jolly time. I made a number of new acquaintances, including old Mr. Varley, the artist, of whom I was very fond. He had just finished a curious book that he called "Zodiacal Physiognomy," in order to prove that every man resembled, after a fashion, the sign under which he was born. Readers will kindly remember, that in the old Zodiacs, all the figures were either human or bestial. Mr. Varley was a great student of occult science, and perhaps his favourite was astrology. It is curious how little London knows of what goes on in the next-door house. A book on "Alchemy" was printed, and the curious fact came out, that at least one hundred people in London were studying the philosopher's stone.
Mr. Varley drew out my horoscope, and prognosticated that I was to become a great astrologer; but the prophesy came to nothing, for, although I had read Cornelius Agrippa and others of the same school at Oxford, I found Zadkiel quite sufficient for me. Amongst the people that I met was the Rev. Robert, popularly called Satan Montgomery, who had come up from Scotland deadly tired of Glasgow punch, and was making a preaching campaign. He had written a quantity of half-nonsense verses, which were very much admired by his feminine devotees, and which were most savagely mangled by Lord Macaulay in the Quarterly. He was an effective figure in the pulpit; he had a very pale face, and tolerably straight features, very black hair, and very white hands, with a large diamond and a very white pocket-handkerchief.
He had, to a marvellous extent, what is vulgarly called the "gift of the gab;" he spoke for an hour without a moment's hesitation. But there was something solid below all this froth, and he had carefully read up all the good old theological works. The women, including the aunts, went literally mad; they crowded the little Gothic chapel, they mobbed as he came in and went out, and they literally overwhelmed him with slippers, chest-protectors, and portable articles to administer the Sacrament. His reign was short; he married, came up to London, took a chapel, subsided into the average popular preacher, and soon died. Amongst others that I met was a certain Robert Bagshaw from Calcutta, who was destined afterwards to marry my aunt Georgina Baker. I managed to offend him very much. He was rather boasting of a new dress-coat, when I delicately raised the tail, and said, "You don't mean to say that you call this a coat?"
With all this wasting of time, I kept my eye steadily fixed upon the main chance. I gave up boxing at Owen Swift's, and fencing at Angelo's, and spent all my spare time in learning Hindostani with old Duncan Forbes. A very curious old Scotchman it was. He had spent a year or so in Bombay, and upon the strength of it, he was perfect master of Oriental languages. He had two passions: one was for smoking a huge meerschaum, stuffed with the strongest possible tobacco, and the other was for chess, concerning which he published some, at that time, very interesting and novel studies.
Perhaps his third passion was not quite so harmless; it was simply for not washing. He spoke all his Eastern languages with the broadest possible Scotch accent; and he cared much more for telling anecdotes, than for teaching. However, he laid a fair foundation, and my then slight studies of Arabic, secured me the old man's regard. He published a number of books, and he certainly had not the suaviter in modo. He attacked Eastwick, the Orientalist, in the most ferocious style.
[Sidenote: He goes to be sworn in at the India Office.]
Presently the day came when I was to be sworn in at the India House. In those days the old building stood in Leadenhall Street, and gave Thackeray a good opportunity of attacking it as the "Hall of Lead;" a wonderful dull and smoky old place, it was, with its large and gorgeous porter outside, and its gloomy, stuffy old rooms inside, an atmosphere which had actually produced "The Essays of Elia." In those days it kept up a certain amount of respect for itself. If an officer received a gift of a sword, he was conducted by the tall porter to the general meeting of the Directors, and duly spoken to and complimented in form; but as times waxed harder, the poor twenty-four Kings of Leadenhall Street declined from Princes into mere Shayhks. They actually sent a Sword of Honour to one of their officers by a street messenger, and the donee returned it, saying, he could, not understand the manner of the gift; and so it went on gradually declining and falling, till at last the old house was abandoned and let for offices. The shadowy Directors flitted to the West End, into a brand-new India House, which soon brought on their Euthanasia.
My bringing-up caused me to be much scandalized by the sight of my future comrades and brother officers, which I will presently explain. The Afghan disaster was still fresh in public memory. The aunts had been patriotic enough to burst into tears when they heard of it; and certainly it was an affecting picture, the idea of a single Englishman, Dr. Brydone, riding into Jellalabad, the only one of thirteen thousand, he and his horse so broken as almost to die at the gates.
Poor General Elphinstone, by-the-by, had been my father's best man at his marriage, and was as little fitted for such field service, as Job was at his worst. Alexander Burns was the only headpiece in the lot. He had had the moral courage to report how critical the position was; but he had not the moral courage to insist upon his advice being taken, and, that failing, to return to his regiment as a Captain.
MacNaghten was a mere Indian civilian. Like too many of them, he had fallen into the dodging ways of the natives, and he distinctly deserved his death. The words used by Akbar Khan, by-the-by, when he shot him, were, "Shumá mulk-e-má mí gírid" ("So you're the fellow who've come to take our country").
But the result of the massacre was a demand for soldiers and officers, especially Anglo-Indians. Some forty medical students were sent out, and they naturally got the name of the "Forty Thieves." The excess of demand explained the curious appearance of the embryo cadets when they met to be sworn in at the India House. They looked like raw country lads, mostly dressed in home-made clothes, and hair cut by the village barber, country boots, and no gloves. So, my friend, Colonel White's son, who was entering the service on the same day, and I looked at one another in blank dismay. We had fallen amongst young Yahoos, and we looked forward with terror to such society. I was originally intended for Bengal, but, as has been seen, I had relations there. I was not going to subject myself to surveillance by my uncle by marriage, an old general of invalids. Moreover, one of my D'Aguilar cousins was married to a judge in Calcutta. I was determined to have as much liberty as possible, and therefore I chose Bombay. I was always of opinion that a man proves his valour by doing what he likes; there is no merit in so doing when you have a fair fortune and independent position, but for a man bound by professional ties, and too often lacking means to carry out his wishes, it is a great success to choose his own line and stick to it.
The next thing to do was to obtain an outfit. This was another great abuse in those days. As the friends of the Directors made money by the cadets' commissions to the friends, the friends made money by sending them to particular houses. The unfortunate cadets, or rather their parents, were in fact plundered by everything that touched them. The outfit, which was considered de rigueur, was absurdly profuse. Dozens upon dozens of white jackets and trousers, only fit to give rheumatism--even tobacco, niggerhead, and pigtail, as presents for the sailors. Even the publishers so arranged that their dictionaries and grammars of Hindostani should be forced upon the unhappy youths.[1] The result was absolutely ridiculous. As a rule, the bullock trunks were opened during the voyage, the kit was displayed, and on fast ships it was put down as a stake at cards. Stories are told of sharp hands landing in India after winning half a dozen outfits, which literally glutted the market. Guns, pistols, and swords, and saddles were of the most expensive and useless description, and were all to be bought much better, at a quarter the price, in any Indian port.
The average of the voyage lasted four months. Two or three changes of suits only, were necessary, and the £100 outfit was simply plunder to the outfitter.
An unusual article of outfit was ordered by me, and that was a wig from Winter in Oxford Street. In early life I found the advantage of shaving my head, enabling me to keep it cool, when it was usually in the other condition.
An old Joe Miller was told in Bombay about a certain Duncan Grey, a Scotch doctor, who was famous for selling hog-mane ponies to new-comers. He was in medical attendance upon the cadets, and took the opportunity of pocketing his wig, and persuading them that shaved heads were the official costume. He accompanied them for the first official visit, and as they were taking off their caps he whipped on his wig, and presented to the astonished Commanding Officer half a dozen utterly bald pates, which looked as if they belonged to as many lunatics.
My only companion was a bull-terrier of the Oxford breed, more bull than terrier. Its box-head and pink face had been scratched all over during a succession of dog-fights and various tussles with rats. It was beautifully built in the body, and the tail was as thin as a little finger, showing all the vertebræ. The breed seems to have become almost extinct, but I found it again at Oxford when I went there in 1850. The little brute bore a fine litter of pups, and died in Gujarat, as usual with every sign of old age, half-blind eyes, and staggering limbs. The pups grew up magnificently. One, which rejoiced in the name of Bachhûn, received the best of educations. He was entered necessarily on mice, rats, and Gilahris, or native squirrels, which bite and scratch like cats. He was so thoroughly game, that he would sally out alone in the mornings, and kill a jackal single-handed. He was the pride of the regiment, and came as usual to a bad end. On one of my journeys, dressed as a native, I had to leave him behind in charge of my friend Dr. Arnold, surgeon of the regiment. Dr. Arnold also, when absent, confided him to the care of a brother-medico, Dr. Pitman, who had strict opinions on the subject of drugs. The wretch actually allowed the gallant little dog to die of some simple disease, because he would not give him a dose of medicine belonging to the Company.
[1] Our boxes were stuffed with Wellington's despatches, Army Regulations, Mill's ponderous "History of India," and whatever the publisher chose to agree upon with the outfitter.
VI. MY PUBLIC LIFE BEGINS
"Wanted: Men. Not systems fit and wise, Not faiths with rigid eyes, Not wealth in mountain piles, Not power with gracious smiles, Not even the potent pen; Wanted: Men.
"Wanted: Deeds. Not words of winning note, Not thoughts from life remote, Not fond religious airs, Not sweetly languid prayers, Not love of scent and creeds; Wanted: Deeds.
"Men and Deeds. Men that can dare and do; Not longing for the new, Not pratings of the old: Good life and action bold-- These the occasion needs, Men and Deeds." ----DUNCAN MACGREGOR.
The next thing was to choose a ship, and the aunts were directed by their friend of the commission, to the John Knox (Captain Richard B. Cleland), sailing barque, belonging to Messrs. Guy and Co. I was to embark at Greenwich; the family harem went down with me. I was duly wept over, and I dropped down the river with the scantiest regret (except for my relatives) for leaving Europe, on June 18th, 1842.
My companions were Ensign Boileau, of the 22nd Regiment, Ensign Thompson, of the Company (line), and Mr. Richmond, going out to a commercial house in Bombay.[1]
There was an equal number of the other sex--a lady calling herself Mrs. Lewis, and three sturdy wives of sergeants. Fortunately also, there were three native servants who spoke Hindostani.
[Sidenote: The Voyage and Arrival.]
The voyage began as usual by a straight run down the Channel, and a June weather passage along the coasts of Europe and Africa. There were delays in the Doldrums and calms near the Line. Neptune came on board as usual, but there was very little fun, the numbers being too small. At such times troubles are apt to break out on board. The captain, Richard Cleland, was one of the best seamen that ever commanded a ship, yet his career had been unlucky--as Vasco da Gama said to Don Manoel, "Men who are unfortunate at sea should avoid the affairs of the sea." He had already lost one ship, which was simply ill-fortune, for no seaman could be more sober or more attentive to his duty. He managed, however, to have a row on board, called upon the cadets to load their pistols and accompany him to the forecastle, where he was about to make a mutineer a prisoner. These were very disagreeable things to interfere with, and the Supreme Court of Bombay always did its best to hang an officer if a seaman was shot on these occasions; one man in particular had a narrow escape.
The discipline on the ship was none of the best. Captain Cleland had begun early, and determined to establish a raw, and invited me to put on the gloves with him. The result was that the tall lanky Scotchman, who was in particularly bad training, got knocked into a cocked hat. Then arose the usual troubles amongst the passengers. Normally on such voyages, all begin by talking together, and end by talking with themselves. Of course there were love passages, and these only made matters worse. The chief mate, a great hulking fellow, who ought to have hit like Tom Spring, but whose mutton fist could not dent a pat of butter, was solemnly knocked down on quarter-deck for putting in his oar. Then followed a sham duel, the combatants being brought up at midnight, and the pistols loaded with balls of blackened cork instead of bullets. During the day there were bathings along the ship in a sail, to keep out the sharks; catching of sharks and flying-fish, and massacring of unhappy birds. I, however, utilized my time by making the three native servants who were on board, talk with me, and by reading Hindostani stories from old Shakespeare's text-book. I made a final attempt to keep up musical notation, and used the flageolet to the despair of all on board; but the chief part of my time was passed in working at Hindostani, reading all the Eastern books on board, gymnastics, and teaching my brother youngsters the sword. There was also an immense waste of gunpowder, for were not all these young gentlemen going out to be Commanders-in-Chief?
The good ship John Knox ran past the Cape in winter, and a magnificent scene it was. Waves measuring miles in length came up from the South Pole, in lines as regular as those of soldiers marching over a dead plain. Over them floated the sheep-like albatrosses, whom the cadets soon tired of shooting, especially when they found that it was almost impossible to stuff the bird. The little stormy petrels were respected, but the Cape pigeons were drawn on board in numbers, with a hook and a bit of bait. Nothing could be brighter than the skies and seas, and the experience of what is called "a white gale" gave universal satisfaction. It came down without any warning, except ploughing up the waters, and had not Captain Cleland been on deck and let go his gear, most of the muslin would have been on the broad bosom of the Atlantic.
There was little interest in sailing up the eastern coast of South Africa. We saw neither the coast nor Madagascar, but struck north-east for the western coast of India. The usual tricks were played upon new-comers. They had been made to see the Line by a thread stretched over a spy-glass, and now they were told to smell India after a little oil of cloves had been rubbed upon the bulwarks!
When the winds fell, the cadets amused themselves with boarding the pattymars, and other native craft, and went ferreting all about the cabins and holes, to the great disgust of the owners. They gaped at the snakes, which they saw swimming about, and were delighted when the John Knox, one fine night, lumbered on her way through nets and fishing stakes, whose owners set up a noise like a gigantic frog concert. Next morning, October 28th, the Government pilot came on board; excited questions were put to him, "What was doing in Afghanistan? What of the war?" At his answer all hopes fell to zero. Lord Ellenborough had succeeded Lord Auckland. The avenging army had returned through the Khaybar Pass. The campaign was finished. Ghuzni had fallen, the prisoners had been given up. Pollock, Sale, and Pratt had been perfectly successful, and there was no chance of becoming Commanders-in-Chief within the year.
I never expected to see another Afghan War, and yet I did so before middle age was well over.
"Thy towers, Bombay! gleam bright, they say, Against the dark blue sea,"
absurdly sings the poet. It was no picture like this we saw on the morning of the 28th of October, 1842, when our long voyage ended. The bay so celebrated appeared anything but beautiful. It was a great splay thing, too long for its height, and it had not one of the beautiful perpendiculars that distinguish Parthenope.
The high background is almost always hid by the reek that rises during the day, and the sun seems to burn all the colour out of the landscape. The rains had just ceased, yet the sky seemed never clear, and the water wanted washing. After this preliminary glance, the companions shook hands, and, not without something of soreness of heart, separated, after having lived together nearly five months. I went to the British Hotel in the Fort, then kept by an Englishman named Blackwell, who delegated all his duty to a Parsee, and never troubled himself about his guests. A Tontine Hotel had been long proposed, but there is a long interval between sayings and doings in India. The landing in a wretched shore-boat at the unclean Apollo Bunder, an absurd classicism for Palawa Bunder, was a complete disenchanter. Not less so to pass through the shabby doorway in the dingy old fortifications, which the Portuguese had left behind them when the island was ceded to Charles II. The bright Towers were nowhere, and the tower of a cathedral that resembled a village church, seemed to be splotched and corroded as if by gangrene.
Bombay was in those days the most cosmopolitan City in the East, and the Bhendi Bazaar, the centre of the old town, was the most characteristic part of all--perhaps more characteristic than were those of Cairo or Damascus. It was marvellously picturesque with its crowds of people from every part of the East, and its utter want of what is called civilization, made it a great contrast to what it became a score of years afterwards. Englishmen looked at it with a careless eye, as a man scours his own property, but foreigners (Frenchmen like Jacquemont, and Germans like Von Orlich) were delighted with its various humours, and described them in their most picturesque style. Everything looked upon a pauper scale.
The first sight of a Sepoy nearly drove me back to the John Knox. I saw an imitation European article; I saw a shako, planted on the top of a dingy face, and hair as greasy as a Chinese's. The coat of faded scarlet seemed to contain a mummy with arms like drumsticks, and its legs, clad in blue dungaree, seemed to fork from below its waist; and yet this creature in his national dress, was uncommonly picturesque, with his long back hair let down, his light jacket of white cotton, his salmon-coloured waistcloth falling to his ankles, in graceful folds, and his feet in slippers of bright cloth, somewhat like the piéd d'ours of the mediæval man-at-arms. The hotel was an abomination. Its teas and its curries haunted the censorium of memory for the rest of man's natural life. The rooms were loose boxes, and at night intoxicated acquaintances stood upon chairs and amused themselves by looking over the thin cloth walls. I stood this for a few days till I felt sick with rage. I then applied to the garrison surgeon, in those days Dr. J. W. Ryan, popularly known as Paddy Ryan.[2] He was a good-natured man; he enquired copiously about my Irish relations and connections, knew something of Lord Trimleston, and removed me from the foul hotel, to what in those days was called the Sanitarium.
[Sidenote: The Sanitarium.]
The Sanitarium was a pompous name for a very poor establishment. About half a dozen bungalows of the semi-detached kind, each with its bit of compound or yard, fronted in a military line Back Bay, so famous for wrecks. The quarters consisted of a butt and ben, an outer room and an inner room, with unattached quarters for servants. They were places in which an Englishman tolerably well off would hardly kennel his dogs, and the usual attendants were lizards and bandicoot rats. As each tenant went away he carried off his furniture, so it was necessary to procure bed, table, and chairs. That, however, was easily done by means of a little Parsee broker, who went by the name of "The General," and who had plundered generations after generations of cadets. He could supply everything from a needle to a buggy, or ten thousand rupees on interest, and those who once drank his wine never forgot it. He was shockingly scandalized at the sight of my wig. Parsees must touch nothing that come from the human body.
[Sidenote: His Moonshee.]
He recommended as moonshee, or language-master, a venerable old Parsee priest, in white hat and beard, named Dosabhai Sohrabji, at that time the best-known coach in Bombay. Through his hands also generations of griffins have passed. With him, as with all other Parsees, Gujarati was the mother tongue, but he also taught Hindostani and Persian, the latter the usual vile Indian article. He had a great reputation as a teacher, and he managed to ruin it by publishing a book of dialogues in English and these three languages, wherein he showed his perfect unfitness. He was very good, however, when he had no pretensions, and in his hands I soon got through the Akhlak-i-Hindi and the Tota-Kaháni. I remained friends with the old man till the end of his days, and the master always used to quote his pupil, as a man who could learn a language running.
The Sanitarium was not pleasantly placed. In latter days the foreshore was regulated, and a railroad ran along the sea. But in 1842 the façade was a place of abominations, and amongst them, not the least, was the Smashán, or Hindú burning-ground. The fire-birth was conducted with very little decency; the pyres were built up on the sands, and heads and limbs were allowed to tumble off, and when the wind set in the right quarter, the smell of roast Hindú was most unpleasant. The occupants of the Sanitarium were supposed to be invalids, but they led the most roystering and rackety life. Mostly they slept in the open, under mosquito-curtains, with a calico ceiling, and a bottle of cognac under the bed. One of these, who shall be nameless, married shortly after, and was sturdily forbidden by his wife to indulge in night draughts when he happened to awake. He succumbed, but pleaded permission to have an earthen gugglet of pure water. The spouse awoke one night in a state of thirst, which she proceeded to quench, and was nearly choked by a draught of gin-and-water compounded in what are called nor'-wester proportions, three of spirit to one of water. One of the invalids led me into all kinds of mischief, introducing me to native society of which the less said the better.
The Governor of Bombay at the time was Colonel Sir George Arthur, Bart, K.C.H., who appears in "Jack Hinton, the Guardsman." He was supposed to be connected with the Royal Family through George IV., and had some curious ideas about his visitors "backing" from the "Presence." The Commander-in-Chief was old Sir Thomas Macmahon, popularly called "Tommy." He was one of the old soldiers who had served under the Duke of Wellington, who had the merit of looking after his friends, as well as looking up his enemies; but he was utterly unfit for any command, except that of a brigade. It would be impossible to tell one tithe of the stories current about him. One of his pet abominations was a certain Lieutenant Pilfold, of the 2nd Queen's, whose commanding officer, Major Brough, was perpetually court-martialling. Pilfold belonged to that order of soldiers which is popularly called "the lawyer," and invariably argued himself out of every difficulty. Pilfold was first court-martialled in 1840, then 1841, and 1844, when, after being nearly cashiered, he changed into a regiment in Australia, and died. At last he revenged himself upon the Commander-in-Chief by declaring that "as hares go mad in March, so Major-Generals go mad in May"--the day when "Tommy" confirmed one of the court-martials, that was quashed from home.
[Sidenote: Indian Navy.]
The Bombay Marine, or, as the officers preferred it to be called, "The Indian Navy," had come to grief. Their excellent superintendent, Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, was a devoted geographer; in fact, he was the man who provoked the saying, "Capable of speaking evil, even of the Equator." Under his rule, when there was peace at sea, the officers were allowed ample leave to travel and explore in the most dangerous countries, and they did brilliant service. Their names are too well known to require quotation. But Sir Charles was succeeded by a certain Captain Oliver, R.N., a sailor of the Commodore Trunnion type, and a martinet of the first water. He made them stick to their monotonous and wearisome duties in the Persian Gulf, and in other places, popularly said to be separated by a sheet of brown paper. He was as vindictive as he was one-ideaed, and the service will never forget the way in which he broke the heart of an unfortunate Lieutenant Bird.
[Sidenote: English Bigotry.]
Captain Cleland, of the John Knox, had introduced me to his sister, Mrs. Woodburn, who was married to an adjutant of the 25th Regiment of Sepoys, and she kindly introduced me to Bombay society. I stood perfectly aghast in its presence. The rank climate of India, which produces such a marvellous development of vegetation, seems to have a similar effect upon the Anglo-Indian individuality. It shot up, as if suddenly relieved of the weight with which society controls it in England. The irreligious were marvellously irreligious, and the religious no less marvellously religious. The latter showed the narrowest, most fanatic, and the most intolerant spirit; no hard-grit Baptist could compare with them. They looked upon the heathen around them (very often far better than themselves) as faggots ready for burning.[3] They believed that the Parsees adored the sun, that the Hindús worshipped stocks and stones, and that the Mohammedans were slaves to what they called "the impostor Mahomet." They were not more lenient to those of their own blood who did not run on exactly the same lines with them. A Roman Catholic, as they called him, was doomed to perdition, and the same was the case with all non-church-going Protestants. It is hardly to be wondered at if, at times, they lost their wits. One man, who was about the wildest of his day, and who was known as the "Patel" of Griffin-gaon, suddenly got a "call." He used to distinguish himself by climbing a tree every morning, and by shouting with all his might, "Dunga Chhor-do, Jesus Christ, Pakro," meaning, "Abandon the world, and catch hold of the Saviour." This lasted for years, and it ended in his breaking down in the moral line, and dying in a mad-house.
The worst of all this was, that in 1842, there were very few white faces in Bombay, and every man, woman, and child knew his, her, or its religious affairs, as well as their own. It was, in fact, a garrison, not a colony. People lived in a kind of huge barracks. Essentially a middle-class society, like that of a small county town in England, it was suddenly raised to the top of a tree, and lost its head accordingly. Men whose parents in England were small tradesmen, or bailiffs in Scotland, found themselves ruling districts and commanding regiments, riding in carriages, and owning more pounds a month than their parents had pounds a year. Those who had interest, especially in Leadenhall Street, monopolized the best appointments, and gathered in clans at the Residency, as head-quarters were called. They formed the usual ring--a magic circle into which no intruder was admitted, save by the pain fort et dure of intermarriage. The children were hideously brought up, and, under the age of five, used language that would make a porter's hair stand on an end. The parents separated, of course, into cliques. At that time Bombay was ruled by two Queens, who in subaltern circles went by the name of "Old Mother Plausible," and "Old Mother Damnable."
To give a taste of "Mother Damnable's" quality: I had been waltzing with a girl, who, after too much exertion, declared herself fainting. I led her into what would at home be called the cloak-room, fetched her a glass of water, and was putting it to her lips, when the old lady stood at the door. "Oh dear! I never intended to interrupt you," she said, made a low bow, and went out of the room, positively delighted. "Mother Plausible's" style was being intensely respectable. She was terribly "exercised" about a son at Addiscombe, and carefully consulted every new cadet about his proficiency in learning. "But does he prefer the classics?" she asked a wild Irishman. "I don't know that he does," was the answer. "Or mathematics?" The same result. "Or modern languages?" "Well, no!" "Then what does he do?" "Faix," said the informant, scratching his head for an idea, "he's a very purty hand at football."
But it was not only Society that had such an effect upon me. I found the Company's officers, as they were called, placed in a truly ignoble position. They had double commissions, and signed by the Crown, and yet they ranked with, but after, their brothers and cousins in the Queen's service. Moreover, with that strange superciliousness, which seems to characterize the English military service, and that absence of brotherhood which distinguishes the Prussian and Austrian, all seemed to look down upon their neighbours. The Queen's despised the Company, calling them armed policemen, although they saw as much, if not much more service, than the Queen's in India. The Artillery held its head above the Cavalry, the Cavalry above the Line, and, worse still, a Company's officer could not, except under very exceptional circumstances, rise above a certain rank. Under the circumstances, I ventured to regret that I had not entered the Duke of Lucca's Guards. India had never heard of the Duke of Lucca, or his Guards, and when they heard the wild idea--
"Their inextinguished laughter rent the skies."
For instance, they had no hopes of becoming local Commanders-in-Chief, and the General Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies was carefully put out of their reach. None but Englishmen would have entered such a service under such conditions. A French piou-piou, with his possible marshal's bâton in his knapsack, would have looked down upon it with contempt; but England, though a fighting nation, is not a military people, or rather was not until Louis Napoleon made it necessary that they should partially become so. At the end of six weeks or so, I received orders to join my regiment, which was then stationed at Baroda, in Gujarat. In those days there were no steamers up the coast, and men hired what were called pattymars.[4] As the winds were generally northerly, these tubs often took six weeks over what a civilized craft now does in four days.
[Sidenote: Engages Servants.]
The happy family embarked from Bombay. I preferred engaging Goanese-Portuguese servants, as they were less troublesome than Hindús and Mussulmans. I had engaged an excellent buttrel, named Salvador Soares, who was major domo over the establishment, for at that time a subaltern never had less than a dozen servants. The sail northwards, with all its novelties, was delightful, and I made a point of landing every evening to see all that I could see upon the way. And so I had my first look at Bassein, Broach, and Surat, the latter a kind of nursery of the Anglo-Indian Empire. After a fortnight or so the pattymar reached the Tankaria-Bunder, the mud-bank where travellers landed to reach Baroda. Then came the land march of four days, which was full of charms for a Griffin. I had utterly rejected the so-called Arab horses--bastard brutes from the Persian Gulf--which were sold at the Bombay bomb-proofs then at extravagant prices of five hundred rupees, now doubled, and had contented myself with Kattywar horses. This was a bright dun, with black stripes and stockings, a very vicious brute, addicted to all the sins of horseflesh, but full of spirit as a thoroughbred. Master and horse got on thoroughly well, and the gallant animal travelled everywhere, till it was killed on the Neilgherry Hills by a heavy fall on its side on the slippery clay. The marching was at the rate of about twelve or fifteen miles a day, and the leisure hours gave ample opportunity of seeing everything on and off the road.
To the traveller from Europe, Gujarat in winter was a novel spectacle. The ground, rich black earth, was almost flat, and was covered with that vivid leek-like verdigris green, which one associates with early spring in the temperates. The little villages, with their leafy huts, were surrounded and protected by hedge milk-bush, green as emeralds, and nothing could be more peaceful or charming than the evening hour, when the flocks and herds were returning home, and the villagers were preparing for supper and sleep, with a sky-blue mist overhanging the scene. A light veil, coloured like Damascene silver, hung over each settlement, and the magnificent trees, compared with which the oaks in Hyde Park appeared like shrubs, were tipped by peacocks screaming their good-night to the sun. How curious that the physiologist will assert that the nose has no memory! That light cloud was mostly composed of cow-chips smoke, and I could never think of Gujarat without recalling it; even the bazar always suggested spices and cocoa-nut oil.
Again I was scandalized by the contrast of the wretched villages under English rule, and those that flourished under the Gaikwar. After the boasting of Directorial speeches, and their echoes in the humbug press, I could not understand this queer contrast of fiction and fact. I made inquiries about it from every one, and immensely disgusted the Company's Resident, Mr. Boyd, by my insistence, but a very few weeks explained the matter to me. The Anglo-Indian rule had no elasticity, and everything was iron-bound; it was all rule without exception. A crack young Collector would have considered himself dishonoured had he failed to send in the same amount of revenues during a bad season, as during the best year. It was quite different with the natives. After a drought or an inundation, a village would always obtain remission of taxes, it being duly understood that a good harvest would be doubly taxed, and this was the simple reason why the natives preferred their own to foreign rule. In the former case they were harried and plundered whenever anything was to be got out of them, but in the mean time they were allowed to make their little piles. Under the English they were rarely tortured, and never compelled to give up their hardly won earnings, but they had no opportunity of collecting the wherewithal for plunder.
[Sidenote: Reaches Baroda--Brother Officers.]
On the fourth day I arrived at my head-quarters, Baroda, and found myself lodged in the comfortless travellers' bungalow. Here I was duly inspected by my brother officers--Major H. James, then commanding the 18th Bombay Native Infantry, Captain Westbrooke, second in command, Lieutenant MacDonald, who was married, Lieutenant and Adjutant Craycroft, Lieutenant J. J. Coombe, Ensign S. N. Raikes, and Assistant-Surgeon Arnott, and a few others present. One wing of the corps, containing a greater number of officers, had been stationed for some time at Mhow, on the borders of the Bengal Presidency, and the rest, as usual in those days, were on the Staff, that is, on detached employment, some in Civil employ, and others in the Corps called Irregulars.
[Sidenote: Mess.]
The first night at Mess was an epoch, and the old hands observed that I drank no beer. This was exceptional in those days. Malt liquor had completed the defeat of brandy pawnee and the sangaree (sherry, etc., with water, sugar, and spices) affected by a former generation, and beer was now king. The most moderate drank two bottles a day of strong bottled stuff supposed to have been brewed by Bass and Allsopp, but too often manipulated by the Parsee importer. The immoderate drank a round dozen, not to speak of other liquors. The messes in those days were tolerably rich, and their godowns, or stores, generally contained a fair supply of port, sherry, and Madeira. "Drink beer, think beer" is essentially true in India. Presently the bloating malt liquor began to make way for thin French wines, claret, and Burgundy, and a quarter of a century afterwards, the Anglo-Indian returned to brandy pawnee with a difference. The water was no longer plain water, but soda-water, that is, carbonic-acid gas pumped into well water, and every little station had its own manufactory. Consequently the price declined from eighteenpence to twopence a bottle, and most men preferred the "peg," as it is called, which is probably one of the least harmful. I adhered manfully to a couple of glasses of port a day. Paddy Ryan at Bombay had told me that the best tonic after fever, was a dozen of good port. I soon worked out the fact, that what would cure fever, might also prevent it, and consequently drank port as a febrifuge. It was the same with me on the West Coast of Africa, where during four years of service I came off well, when most other men died.
[Sidenote: Drill.]
I was duly introduced to the drill-ground, where I had not much to learn. Yet I studied military matters with all my might, for the ominous words "tail of the Afghan storm" were in many men's mouths. I had taught myself, with the assistance of books, the mysteries of goose-step and extension movements, and perpetual practice with the sword had made the other manœuvres easy to me. Having lodged myself in what was called a bungalow, a thatched article not unlike a cowshed, and having set up the slender household, I threw myself with a kind of frenzy upon my studies. I kept up the little stock of Arabic that I had acquired at Oxford, and gave some twelve hours a day to a desperate tussle with Hindostani. Two moonshees barely sufficed for me. Sir Charles J. Napier in 1842 was obscurely commanding at Poonah. Presently he was appointed to the Command in Sind, and all those who knew the old soldier looked forward to lively times. Brevet-Major Outram, of the 23rd N.I., had proceeded to England on December 13th, 1842, and had returned to India in February, 1843. This rapid movement also had an ominous sound. The military day was then passed in India as follows:--
Men rose early, for the sun in India keeps decent hours (not like the greater light in England, which in summer seems to rise shortly after midnight, and in winter shortly before noon). The first proceeding was a wash in cold water and a cup of tea. After that the horse was brought round saddled, and carried the rider to the drill-ground. Work usually began as soon as it was light, and lasted till shortly after sunrise. In the Bengal Presidency the officers used to wash their teeth at three a.m., and scarcely ever saw the face of the sun. Consequently the Qui-hyes, or Bengalis, died like sheep upon a march where much exposure was necessary.
In India the sun requires a little respect. It is not wise, for instance, to wade through cold water with the rays beating upon the upper part of the body, but it is always advisable to accustom one's self to sunshine. After the parade was over, the officers generally met at what was called a coffee shop, where one of the number hung out Choti-hazri or little breakfast--tea or café au lait, biscuit, bread and butter, and fruit. After that, the heavy work of the day being done, each proceeded to amuse himself as he best could; some to play at billiards, others for a day's sport.
Some few youths in the flush of Griffinhood used to mount their tattoos (ponies) and go out "peacocking," that is to say, calling upon officers' wives. With the usual Indian savoir vivre, visiting hours were made abominable. Morning calls began at eleven o'clock, when the beau sexe was supposed to be in war-paint, and ended at two, when it was supposed to sit down to tiffin. The ride through the burning sun, followed by a panting ghorewalla, and the self-preservation in a state of profuse perspiration, were essentials of peacocking, which soon beat off the most ardent admirers of the white fair sex. The latter revenged itself for anything like neglect in the most violent way, and the consequence was that, in those days, most men, after their first year, sought a refuge in the society of the dark fair. Hence in the year of grace 1842 there was hardly an officer in Baroda who was not more or less morganatically married to a Hindí or a Hindú woman. This could be a fertile ground for anecdote, but its nature forbids entering into details.
These irregular unions were mostly temporary, under agreement to cease when the regiment left the station. Some even stipulated that there were to be no children. The system had its advantages and disadvantages. It connected the white stranger with the country and its people, gave him an interest in their manners and customs, and taught him thoroughly well their language. It was a standing joke in my regiment that one of the officers always spoke of himself in the feminine gender. He had learnt all his Hindostani from his harem. On the other hand, these unions produced a host of half-castes, mulattos, "neither fish nor fowl, nor good red herring," who were equally despised by the races of both progenitors.
[Sidenote: Pig-sticking.]
Baroda was not a great place for pig-sticking. The old grey boars abounded, but the country was too much cut up by deep and perpendicular hillocks, which were death to horse and man. I invested in an old grey Arab, which followed the game like a bloodhound, with distended nostrils, and ears viciously laid back. I began, as was the cruel fashion of the day, by spearing pariah dogs for practice, and my first success brought me a well-merited accident. Not knowing that the least touch of the sharp leaf-like head is sufficient to kill, I made a mighty thrust with my strong-made bamboo shaft, which was carried under the arm, Bombay fashion, not overhand, as in Bengal. The point passed through the poor brute and deep into the ground. The effect of the strong elastic spear was to raise me bodily out of the saddle, and to throw me over the horse's head. It was a good lesson for teaching how to take first blood. The great centres for pig-sticking were in the Deccan and in Sind. The latter, however, offered too much danger, for riding through tamarisk bushes is much like charging a series of well-staked fishing-nets. Baroda, however, abounded in wild beasts; the jackals screamed round the bungalows every night, and a hyæna once crossed, in full day, the parade ground. One of the captains (Partridge) cut it down with his regimental sword, and imprudently dismounted to secure it. The result was a bite in the arm which he had reason long to remember.
[Sidenote: Sport.]
The sport all about Baroda was excellent, for in the thick jungle to the east of the City, tigers were to be shot, and native friends would always lend their elephants for a day's work. In the broad plains to the north, large antelopes, called the nilghai, browsed about like cows, and were almost as easy to shoot, consequently no one shot them. It was different with the splendid black buck, sly and wary animals, and always brought home in triumph. Cheetahs, or hunting leopards, were also to be had for the asking. As for birds, they were in countless numbers, from the huge adjutant crane, and the sáras (antigoni), vulgarly called Cyrus Gries antigone, which dies if its mate be shot, and the peacock, which there, as in most parts of India, is a sacred bird, to the partridge, which no one eats because it feeds on the road, the wild duck, which gives excellent shooting, and the snipe, equal to any in England. During the early rains quails were to be shot in the compounds, or yards, attached to the bungalows. In fact, in those days, sensible men who went out to India took one of two lines--they either shot, or they studied languages.
Literature was at a discount, although one youth in the Bombay Rifles was addicted to rhyme, and circulated a song which began as follows:--
"'Tis merry, 'tis merry in the long jungle grass, When the Janwars around you fly, To think of the slaughter that you will commit, On the beasts that go passing by"--
this being the best stanza of the whole.
The 18th Bombay Infantry was brigaded with the 4th Regiment, alias Rifles, under the command of Major C. Crawley. These Sepoys, in their dingy green uniform, which seemed to reflect itself upon their chocolate-coloured cheeks, looked even worse than those dressed in red.
There was also a company called Golandaz, a regular native artillery, commanded by a Lieutenant Aked. Gunners are everywhere a peculiar race, quite as peculiar as sailors. In India they had the great merit of extreme attachment to their weapons, which, after a fashion, they adored as weapons of destruction. "One could hit a partridge with a gun like this," said a pink-faced youngster to a grizzly old cannonier. "A partridge!" cried the veteran. "This does not kill partridges; it smashes armies, slaughters Cities, and it would bring down Shiva himself." And in Baroda City the Gaikwar had two guns, to which regular adoration was offered. They were of massive gold, built around steel tubes, and each was worth about £100,000. Yet the company of Native Artillery was utterly absurd in European eyes. Nothing more beautiful than the Gujarat bullocks, with their noble horns and pure white coats. Europe has seen them in the cascine of Tuscany. But it was truly absurd to see these noble animals dragging a gun into position at a shambling and dislocated trot. Satirical subalterns spoke of the "cow batteries." In these days all, of course, are horsed.
[Sidenote: Society.]
There was no such thing as society at Baroda. The Station was commanded by an old Brigadier, named Gibbons, who had no wife, but a native family. He was far too infirm to mount a horse; he never received, ignored dinners either at home or abroad, and lived as most General Officers did in those days. But he managed to get into a tremendous row, and was removed from his Command for losing his temper, and beating a native Chief of the Bazar about the head, with a leg of mutton.
Hospitalities used to be exchanged between the corps on certain ceremonious occasions, but a Mess dinner was the extent of sociability. As in all small Societies, there were little tiffs, likings, and dislikings. But the age of duelling had passed away, especially after the fatal affairs of Colonel Fawcet of the 55th Regiment, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Monro.
[Sidenote: Feeding.]
A most pernicious practice, common in those days, was that of eating "tiffin"--in other words, a heavy luncheon--at two, which followed the normal breakfast, or pakki-hazri, at nine. Tiffin was generally composed of heavy meats and the never-failing curry, washed down with heavy bottled beer, was followed by two or three Manilla cheroots, and possibly by a siesta. Nothing could be more anti-hygienic than this. It is precisely the same proceeding by which the liver of the Strasbourg goose is prepared for pâté de foie gras. The amount of oxygen present in the air of India, is not sufficient to burn up all this carbon, hence the dingy complexions and the dull dark hair which distinguished Anglo-Indians on their return home. I contented myself with a biscuit and a glass of port, something being required to feed the brain, after the hard study of many hours.
The French in India manage these things much better. They keep up their natural habits, except that they rise very early, take a very light meal, chiefly consisting of café noir, and eat a heavy breakfast at eleven. Between that and dinner, which follows sunset, they rarely touch anything, and the consequence is that they return with livers comparatively sound. But Anglo-Indian hours of meals were modelled upon those of England, and English hours are laid down by the exigencies of business. Hence the Briton, naturally speaking, breakfasts at nine. As he rises late and has little appetite at that hour, he begins the work of the day upon such a slender basis as tea, bread and butter, an egg, or a frizzle of bacon. It was very different in the days of Queen Elizabeth, as certainly the beefsteaks and beer produced a stronger race. But in those days all rose early and lived much in the open air.
During the fine weather there was generally something to do on the parade ground, shortly before sunset, after which the idlers mounted their nags and took a lazy ride. The day ended at Mess, which was also characteristically Indian. It was a long table in the Mess bungalow, decorated with the regimental plate, and surmounted by creaking punkahs, that resembled boards horizontally slung, with a fringe along the lower part. A native, concealed behind the wall, set these unpleasant articles in movement, generally holding the rope between two toes. At the top of the table sat the Mess President, at the bottom the Vice, and their duty was to keep order, and especially to prevent shop-talking. The officers dressed like so many caterpillars in white shell-jackets, white waistcoats, and white overalls, were a marvellous contrast to the gorgeous Moslem Khidmatgars, who stood behind them, with crossed arms, turbans the size of small tea-tables, waist-shawls in proportion. The dinner consisted of soup, a joint of roast mutton at one end, and boiled mutton or boiled fowls at the other, with vegetables in the side dishes. Beef was never seen, because the cow was worshipped at Baroda, nor was roast or boiled pork known at native messes, where the manners and customs of the unclean bazar pig were familiar to all, and where there were ugly stories about the insults to which his remains were exposed on the part of the Mohammedan scullions. At times, however, a ham made its appearance, disguised under the name of "Wilayati Bakri," Anglicè "Europe mutton."
This substantial part of the dinner always concluded with curry, accompanied by dry fish, Bombay ducks, and papris (assafœtida cake). Anglo-Indians appreciate curry too much to allow it, as in England, to precede other dishes, and to rob them of all their flavour. After this came puddings and tarts, which very few men touched, as they disagreed with beer, and cheese, which was a universal favourite. Coffee, curious to say, was unknown, ice was rare, except at the Residency, and tin vegetables, like peas and asparagus, had only lately been invented. Immediately after cheese, all lit their cigars, which in those days were invariably Manillas. They cost only twenty rupees a thousand, so few were driven to the economy of the abominable Trichinopoly, smoked in Madras. Havanas were never seen, pipes were as little known, and only the oldsters had an extensive article, with a stand two feet high and a pipe twenty feet long, in which they smoked a mixture called Guraku. This was a mingling of tobacco, with plantains, essence of roses, and a dozen different kinds of spices, that gave a very peculiar perfume. The Hookah was, however, then going out of fashion, and presently died the death. It is now as rarely seen in Anglo-India, as the long chibouque at Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Nautch.]
The Mess dinner sometimes concluded with a game of whist, but a wing of a native Corps had not officers enough to make it interesting. After a quantum sufficit of cheroots and spirits and water, the members of the Mess broke up, and strolled home, immensely enjoying the clear moonlight, which looked as if frost were lying on the emerald green of Gujarat. On festive occasions there was a Nach, which most men pronounced "Nautch." The scene has often been described in its picturesque aspect. But it had a dark side. Nothing could be more ignoble than the two or three debauched and drunken musicians, squealing and scraping the most horrible music, and the figurantes with Simiad or apish faces, dressed in magnificent brocades, and performing in the most grotesque way. The exhibition gave one a shiver, yet not a few of the old officers, who had been brought up to this kind of thing, enjoyed it as much as the Russians, of the same epoch, delighted in the gypsy soirées of Moscow, and ruined themselves with Madeira and Veuve Clicquot.
It was very different during the rains, which here, as in most parts of the western lowlands of India, were torrential, sometimes lasting seven days and seven nights, without an hour's interruption. The country was mostly under water, and those who went to Mess had to protect themselves with waterproofs; and if they wished to save their horses from the dangerous disease called barsáti, had to walk to and fro with bare legs and feet.
[Sidenote: Reviews.]
This even tenor of existence was varied by only two things. The first was the annual reviews, when old General Morse came over from Ahmedabad to inspect the Corps, preparations for which ceremony had been going on for a couple of months. These old officers were greatly derided by the juniors, chiefly because their brains seemed to have melted away, and they had forgotten almost everything except drill, which they had learnt in their youth. This old General in particular prided himself upon his Hindostani, and suffered accordingly. "How would you say 'Tell a plain story,' General?" "Maydan-ki bát bolo"--which means, "Speak a word of a level country."
[Sidenote: Races.]
Another great event were the annual Races. Even here, however, there was a division of the small Society. They were encouraged by the Company's Resident, Mr. Boyd, and by Major Henry Corsellis, who had come up with his wife to take command of the regiment. They were discouraged, on the other hand, by Major Crawley, of the 4th Rifles, who invariably had a picnic during the Race week. The reason, however, was not "principle," but some quarrel about an old bet. I was one of the winners at the Welter Stakes, having beaten an experienced rider, Lieutenant Raikes.
The state of things at Baroda was not satisfactory. The French govern their colonies too much, the English too little. The latter, instead of taking their stand as the Masters, instead of declaring, Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas, seemed, in Baroda at least, to rule on sufferance: they were thoroughly the Masters of the position; they could have superseded the Gaikwar, or destroyed the town in a week. But the rule of the Court of Directors was not a rule of honour.
The officers in Cantonments, distant only half an hour's ride from the Palace, were actually obliged to hire rámosis (Paggis) to protect their lives and properties. These men were simply professed thieves, who took blackmail to prevent their friends and relations from plundering. In the bungalows, on the borders of the camp, a couple of these scoundrels were necessary. In two bungalows, officers had been cut down, and the one in which I lived showed, on the door-lintel, sabre cuts. Officers were constantly robbed and even murdered when travelling in the districts, and the universally expressed wish was, that some Director's son might come to grief, and put an end to this miserable state of things. Now, these things could have been put a stop to by a single dispatch of the Court of Directors to the Resident at Baroda. They had only to make the Gaikwar and the Native Authorities answerable for the lives and property of their officers. A single hanging and a few heavy fines would have settled the business once and for ever; but, I repeat, the Government of the Court of Directors was not a rule of honour, and already the hateful doctrine was being preached, that "prestige is humbug."
[Sidenote: Cobden and Indian History.]
The officers marvelled at the proceedings of their Rulers, and marvelled without understanding things. Little could they know what was going on at home. Here Mr. Richard Cobden, one of the most single-sided of men, whose main strength was that he embodied most of the weakness, and all the prejudice, of the British middle-class public, was watching the affairs of India with a jealous and unfriendly eye, as a Military and Despotic Government, as an acquisition of impolitic violence and fraud, and as the seat of unsafe finance. India appeared to him utterly destitute of any advantage either to the natives or to their foreign masters.
He looked upon the East India Company in Asia as simply monopoly, not merely as regards foreigners, but against their own countrymen. He openly asserted that England had attempted an impossibility in giving herself to the task of governing one hundred millions of Asiatics. Rumours of an Asiatic war were in the air, especially when it was known that Lieut.-Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly had been foully murdered by the Amir of Bokhara. He declared (as if he had been taken into supernatural confidence), that God and His visible Natural Laws have opposed insuperable obstacles to the success of such a scheme. His opinion as a professional reformer was, that Hindostan must be ruled by those that live on that side of the globe, and that its people will prefer to be ruled badly by its own colour, kith, and kin, than subject itself to the humiliation of being better governed by a succession of transient intruders from the Antipodes. He declared that ultimately, of course, Nature (of which he knew nothing) will assert the supremacy of her laws, and the white skins will withdraw to their own latitudes, leaving the Hindús to the enjoyment of the climate, for which their dingy skins are suited.
All this was the regular Free-trade bosh, and the Great Bagsman would doubtless have been thunderstruck, had he heard the Homeric shouts of laughter with which his mean-spirited utterances were received by every white skin in British India. There was not a subaltern in the 18th Bombay N.I. who did not consider himself perfectly capable of governing a million Hindús. And such a conviction realizes itself--
"By the sword we won the land, And by the sword we'll hold it still;"
for every subaltern felt (if he could not put the feeling into words) that India had been won, despite England, by the energy and bravery of men like himself. Every history tells one so in a way that all can understand. The Company began as mere traders, and presently they obtained the right of raising guards to defend themselves. The guards naturally led to the acquisition of territory. The territory increased, till its three centres, Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, became centres of little Kingdoms.
The native Princes were startled and frightened. They attacked their energetic neighbours, with more or less success, and the intruders became more intrusive than before. Next day they began to elect Governors, and Governor-Generals. Whenever a new man was sent out from England, the natives, after the fashion of their kind, thought that they saw an opportunity, and, losing their fear of the old Governor, declared war against the new one. The latter assembled an army, and duly reported the fact home. It took from eight to nine months before the document was received and answered. The general tone of the reply was a fierce diatribe against territorial aggrandizement, but in the mean time a great battle or two had been fought, a province had been conquered and duly plundered, and a large slice of territory had been added to Anglo-Indian rule. This is the way in which British Empire in the East arose, and probably this was the least objectionable way. For when the Company rose to power, it began to juggle native Princes out of their territory, to deny the right of adopting a sacred privilege amongst the Hindús, and to perpetrate all kinds of injustice. A fair example was the case of the Rajah of Patara, and the same proceedings in Oudh, led to the celebrated Mutiny in 1857, and nearly wrecked British dominion in India.
At last a bright day dawned. The whole of the little Cantonment was electrified by the news of the battle of Meeanee, which had been fought on February 21st, 1843. After a number of reverses truly humiliating to British self-esteem, the Sun of Victory had at last shone upon her bayonets. Sir Charles Napier had shown that, with a little force of mixed Englishmen and Sepoys, he could beat the best and bravest army that any Native Power could bring into the field. It was a gallant little affair, because the few white faces had done nearly the whole work. The Sepoys, as usual, had behaved like curs, and five of their officers had been killed, to one of the Queen's service.
Then, on March 25th, followed the battle of Dabba, and Sind fell into the power of the English, and Major Outram returned to England on April 1st. Then arose the great quarrel between the two great men. The general opinion of the time was, that the Bayard of India, as his future enemy had called him, wished himself to depose the Ameers, and resented the work being done by another. His (Major Outram's) own writings show, that he found them unfitted to rule, and that he had proposed the most stringent remedies. But when these were carried out by another man, he ranged himself in the ranks of the opposition. Sir Charles Napier and his free-spoken brother, Sir William, had been bitterly opposed to the twenty-four little Kings in Leadenhall Street, and had never hesitated to express their opinions. One of their energetic dicta was, that every rupee has a blood-spot on it, and that wash as you will, the cursed spot will not out. Talking of which, by-the-by, I, in one of those pungent epigrams, which brought me such abundance of "good will (?)," wrote as follows, referring to the £60,000 which Sir Charles Napier cleared by way of prize money:--
"Who, when he lived on shillings, swore Rupees were stained with Indian gore, And 'widows' tears' for motto bore, But Charley?
"And yet who, in the last five years, So round a sum of that coin clears, In spite of 'gore' and 'widows' tears,' As Charley?"
Major Outram again left India for England. The Court of Directors persuaded him to become their champion, against their old enemy, Sir Charles Napier. The latter was very strong, for he was thoroughly supported by the new Governor-General (Lord Ellenborough), in opposition to all others, and thoroughly identified himself with the Army, and the Army adored him accordingly. One of his sayings, "Kacheri (or Court-House) hussar," alluding to the beards or the mustachios of the civilians, caused a perfect tornado of wrath amongst the black coats of India. He was equally free-spoken in his condemnation of the politicals. The Court of Directors did not dare to recall him at once, but they riled with impotent rage.
[Sidenote: Somnath Gates.]
Amongst other cabals that they brought against him was the affair of the Somnath Gates. Few people understood the truth of the question in that day, and most who did, have not forgotten it. These famous doors, which had been carried off in the year A.D. 1023 from a Hindú temple in Gujarat by the great warrior, Mahmoud of Ghazni, had been matters of dispute years before Lord Ellenborough's time. As early as 1831, when Shah Shuja was in treaty with Runjeet Singh, of the Panjab, for aid to recover his throne, one of the conditions of the latter, was the restoration of the Gates of Somnath. Probably the Rajah, like the Governor-General, was utterly ignorant of the fact that the ruins of the Moon Temple have entirely perished. On that occasion, however, the Shah reminded the Hindú of an old prophesy which foreboded the downfall of the Sikh empire, or the withdrawal of the Gates from the warrior's tomb at Ghazni. They were removed to India at the end of 1842, and in September, 1843, the Sikh empire practically collapsed with the murder of Sher Singh--a curious case of uninspired prophecy. The Gates were removed by General Mott, acting under the orders of the Governor-General, on March 10th, 1843; they were deposited in Agra, where they were kept, and may even now be kept, in an old palace in the Fort, formerly used as an arsenal by the British.[5] The venerable relics ought long ago to have been sent to the South Kensington Museum.
[Sidenote: Outram and Napier.]
The feud between Sir Charles Napier and Major Outram, divided Western Anglo-India into two opposing camps. Major Outram belonged to a family of mechanics, from whose name came the tramways, and he had begun his service in the Bombay marine. He was presently transferred to the Native Infantry, and carved out a career for himself. His peculiar temperament gave him immense power amongst the wild Bhíls and other tribes, whom he had been sent, as it were, to civilize. He was a short, stout man, anything but prepossessing in appearance, but of immense courage and most violent temper. A story is told concerning him and his brother, who, in a dispute at a tiger-hunt, turned their rifles against each other. He hated to be outdone, or even to be equalled. On one occasion, when he found a man who could spring into the lake, off the house terrace, like himself, he made a native raise him upon his shoulders, and so managed to outdo the rival jumper. He was immensely generous and hospitable, living quite in the native way, with a troupe of Nach girls to pass the evening. He always acted upon impulse, and upon generous impulses. On one occasion, when marching past, at the head of his troops, he was grossly insulted by a villager, whereupon he turned to and administered condign chastisement to the villagers. When transferred to Sind, he had denounced the Ameers in the severest way; in fact, his account of them, as political, seemed to justify their being dethroned. But, as I said, when that operation was performed by another than himself, he suddenly turned round and denounced the deed. He was a Scotchman, and was by no means wanting in that canniness which teaches a man which side his bread carries the butter. He was thoroughly impressed with the axiom that "bluid is thicker than water," and always promoted, if he could, the interests of a countryman, to the detriment of others. Sir Charles Napier, on the other hand, belonged to that exceptional order of Scotchmen, who are chiefly remarkable for having nothing of the Scotchman about them. He was utterly deficient in prudence, he did not care a fig how many enemies he made, and his tongue was like a scorpion's sting. He spoke of Sir James Hogg as "that Hogg," alluding to the Hindostani word suar ("pig"), one of the most insulting words in the language. He spoke of Dr. Buist, a Scotch editor at Bombay, as "the blatant beast of the Bombay Times." In fact, he declared war to the knife.
On the other hand, Outram's friends were not idle. He had a large party of his own. Men liked his courage, his generosity, his large-heartedness, and his utter disregard for responsibility. He could also write, in a dull, thick style, it is true, but thoroughly intelligible to the multitude, and quite unlike the style, like polished steel, that was so doughtily used by Sir William Napier. Become a politician, the "Bayard" did not improve; in fact, two or three dodges were quoted about him which added very little to his reputation. I had no reason to like him. In his younger days, thirsting for distinction, Outram was ambitious to explore the Somali country, then considered the most dangerous in Africa, but when I proposed to do so, he openly opposed me. This was, however, perhaps natural, as he was then commanding at Aden.
As soon as I had passed my drill I was placed in charge of a Company, and proceeded to teach what I had just learnt. I greatly encouraged my men in sword exercise, and used to get the best players to my quarters for a good long bout every day. The usual style in India is a kind of single-stick, ribbonded with list cloth, up to the top, and a small shield in the left hand. The style of work seems to have been borrowed from the sword-dance of some civilized people, like the Bactrian-Greeks. The swordsman begins with "renowning it," vapouring, waving his blade, and showing all the curious fantasie that distinguish a Spanish Espada. Then, with the fiercest countenance, he begins to spring in the air, to jump from side to side, to crouch and to rush forwards and backwards, with all the action of an excited baboon. They never thought of giving "point:" throughout India the thrust is confined to the dagger. The cuts, as a rule, were only two--one in the shoulder, and the other, in the vernacular called kalam, at the lower legs. Nothing was easier than to guard these cuts, and to administer a thrust that would have been fatal with steel. I gave a prize every month, to the best swordsman, wrestler, and athlete, generally some gaudy turban. But, although I did my best, I never could teach them to use a foil.
[Sidenote: He learns Indian Riding and Training.]
These proceedings excited not a little wonder amongst my brother subs, but much more when I sent for a Chábu Sawar, or native jockey, and began to learn the Indian system of riding, and of training the horse. As a rule, this was absurdly neglected in India. Men mostly rode half-broken Arabs, and many an annual review showed the pleasant spectacle of a commanding officer being run away with in one direction, and the second in command in another. And when it came to meeting Indians in the field, the Englishman was at a terrible disadvantage. An old story is told of an encounter between an Indian and English cavalry officer, who had been offended by the remarks of the former. They charged, sword in hand, in presence of their regiments, and both were equally skilful in parrying the enemy's attack; presently, however, the Britisher found himself in a fix, the native with his sharp light blade having cut the horse's reins, without hurting either horse or man. This is a favourite native ruse. Whereupon the English officer drew his pistol and disloyally shot the Indian, who in his lingering illness, which ended fatally, declared that he never meant to hurt the English officer, but only to prove his own words, that he was not his equal in swordsmanship or horsemanship. Light chains were afterwards adopted to accompany the leather bridle. The English officer deeply regretted the event, and it was hushed up; but such acts are never quite buried.
A similar manslaughter took place during one of the Sind campaigns. An officer, who shall be nameless, attacked a Beluch chief, who, being mounted upon a tired mare, made no attempt to fly. The Englishman, who had some reputation as a swordsman, repeatedly bore down upon him, making a succession of cuts, which the opponent received upon his blade and shield. At last, being unable to win fairly, the Englishman, who is now high in command, drew his pistol and shot him, and, curious to say, was not court-martialled!
[Sidenote: Passes Exams. in Hindostani.]
At last I considered myself thoroughly qualified to pass in Hindostani, and in early April, 1843, obtained leave from the Commander-in-Chief to visit Bombay for the purpose of examination. I made the same march from Baroda to Tankaria-Bunder, and then found a pattymar for Bombay. The sail southwards, despite the extraordinary heat of the season, was perfectly charming. The north-east monsoon, about drawing to its end, alternated with the salt sea-breeze and the spicy land-breeze, the former justly called "The Doctor." The sky was deep blue, unflecked by a single cloud, and the sea bluer, still hardly crisped by the wind. There was perfect calm inside and outside the vessel. No posts and no parades. The living was simple enough, consisting chiefly of rice, curry and chapatís, with the never-failing tea and tobacco. Tea in India is better than in England, although of inferior quality, because it has less sea voyage. The native servants, however, have a peculiar way of brewing it, and those who have once drunk a sneaker, or double-sized cup, full of Indian tea, will never forget it. Sensible men, therefore, brew their tea for themselves.
Despite landing almost every evening, the voyage down coast occupied only six or seven days. This time I hired a tent, with the aid of the old Parsee General, and pitched in the Strangers' Lines. They extended southwards from the Sanitarium, along the shore of Back Bay, and were not, as now, huddled up into a little space on the other side of the road. With the assistance of old Dosabhai Sohrabji I worked up the last minutiæ of the language, and on May 5th appeared in the Town Hall, where the examinations were held.
These were not without a certain amount of difficulty. The candidate was expected to make a written translation, to read and translate vivâ voce from a native book, to read a written letter, often vilely scrawled, and to converse with the moonshee, Mohammed Makba, a Concani Mussulman, whose son I afterwards met in 1876. I was fortunate in my examiner. Captain Pope, who formerly held that position, had been made Assistant-Commissary-General, and could no longer indulge his pet propensity of plucking candidates. The committee was composed of Major-General Vans-Kennedy and three or four nobodies. The former was an Orientalist after a fashion, knew a great deal of books, and much more of native manners and customs. In fact, he lived in their society, and was, as usual, grossly imposed upon. Whenever a servant wanted "leave," he always begged permission to leave a badli, or substitute, to do his work, and when number one returned, number two remained. Consequently, the old man was eaten up by native drones. He lived amongst his books in a tumble-down bungalow, in a tattered compound, which was never repaired, and he had a slight knowledge of Sanscrit and Arabic, an abundant acquaintance with Hindostani and Persian, and general Oriental literature.
The one grievance of his life was his treatment by Sir John (afterwards Lord) Keane. This Western barbarian came out to India when advanced in years, and, imbued with a fine contempt "of the twenty-years-in-the-country-and-speak-the-language man," he could not understand what was the use of having officers who did nothing but facilitate the study of Orientalism, and he speedily sent off Colonel Vans-Kennedy to join his regiment. The latter was deeply in debt, as usual, under his circumstances; his creditors tolerated him at the Presidency, where they could lay ready claws upon his pay, but before he could march up country, he was obliged to sell, for a mere nothing, his valuable library of books and manuscripts, which had occupied him a lifetime in collecting. He was a curious spectacle, suggesting only a skeleton dressed in a frock-coat of worn-out blue cloth uniform, and he spoke all his languages with a fine broad lowland accent, which is, perhaps, Orientally speaking, the best.
I passed my examination the first of twelve. Next to me was Ensign Robert Gordon, of the 4th Bombay Rifles, and Ensign Higginson, of the 78th Highlanders. The latter brought to the Examination Hall one of the finest Irish brogues ever heard there. I had been humble enough before I passed, but, having once got through, I was ready to back my knowledge against the world. This was no great feat on my part, as I had begun Arabic at Oxford, and worked at Hindostani in London, and on board the ship, and had studied for twelve hours a day at Baroda. Before I quitted the Presidency, I had an unpleasantness with a certain Dr. Bird, a pseudo-Orientalist, who, after the fashion of the day, used the brains of moonshee and pandit to make his own reputation. I revenged myself by lampooning him, when, at the ripe age of forty-five, he was about to take to himself a spare-rib. The line began--
"A small grey bird goes out to woo, Primed with Persian ditties new; To the gardens straight he flew, Where he knew the rosebud grew." $/
We afterwards met in London, and were very good friends.
Dr. Bird only regretted that he had wasted his time on native languages, instead of studying his own profession. He practised medicine for a short time in London, and died.
I left Bombay on May 12th, and rejoined my regiment just before the burst of the south-west monsoon. This was a scene that has often been described in verse and prose. It was a prime favourite with the Sanscrit poets, and English readers are familiar with it through Horace Hayman Wilson's Hindú theatre. But the discomforts of the season in a cowshed-like bungalow were considerable; you sat through the day in a wet skin, and slept through the night with the same. The three months were an alternation of steaming heat and damp, raw cold.
The rains are exceptionally heavy in Gujarat, and sometimes the rainpour lasted without interval for seven days and seven nights. This is mostly the case in the lowlands of India, especially at Bombay and other places, where the Gháts approach the coast. Throughout the inner plateau, as at Poonah, the wet season, which the Portuguese call winter, with its occasional showers and its bursts of sunshine, is decidedly pleasant. The brown desolation of the land disappears in a moment, and is replaced by a brilliant garb of green. The air is light and wholesome, and the change is hailed by every one; but at Baroda there were torments innumerable. The air was full of loathsome beings, which seemed born for the occasion--flying horrors of all kinds, ants and bugs, which persisted in intruding into meat and drink. At Mess it was necessary to have the glasses carefully covered, and it was hardly safe to open one's mouth. The style of riding to a dinner has been already described. There was no duty, and the parade-ground was a sheet of water. Shooting was impossible, except during the rare intervals of sunshine; and those who did not play billiards suffered from mortal ennui.
I now attacked with renewed vigour the Gujarati language, spoken throughout the country, and by the Parsees of Bombay and elsewhere. My teacher was a Nagar Brahman, named Him Chand. Meanwhile I took elementary lessons of Sanscrit, from the regimental pandit. Every Sepoy Corps, in those days, kept one of these men, who was a kind of priest as well as a schoolmaster, reading out prayers, and superintending the nice conduct of Festivals, with all their complicated observances. Besides these men, the Government also supplied schoolmasters, and the consequence was, that a large percentage of young Sepoys could read and write. I once won a bet from my brother-in-law Stisted, by proving that more men in the 18th Bombay Native Infantry than in the 78th Queen's could read and write. In the latter, indeed, they occasionally had recruits who could not speak English, but only Gaelic.
[Sidenote: Receives the Brahminical Thread.]
Under my two teachers I soon became as well acquainted, as a stranger can, with the practice of Hinduism. I carefully read up Ward, Moor, and the publications of the Asiatic Society, questioning my teachers, and committing to writing page after page of notes, and eventually my Hindú teacher officially allowed me to wear the Janeo (Brahminical thread). My knowledge, indeed, not a little surprised my friend Dr. H. G. Carter, who was secretary to the Asiatic Society at Bombay. On June 26th, 1843, I was appointed interpreter to my regiment, which added something--a few rupees, some thirty a month--to my income. My brother officers now began to see that I was working with an object. When I returned from Bombay, they had been surprised at my instantly resuming work, and not allowing myself a holiday. They grumbled not a little at having so unsociable a messmate.
About that time, too, I began to acquire the ominous soubriquet of "The White Nigger," and what added not a little to the general astonishment was, that I left off "sitting under" the garrison Chaplain, and transferred myself to the Catholic Chapel of the chocolate-coloured Goanese priest, who adhibited spiritual consolation to the bultrels (butlers and head-servants) and other servants of the camp.[6] At length, on August 22nd, 1843, I again obtained leave "to proceed to Bombay to be examined in the Guzerattee language." This time I was accompanied on the journey by Lieutenant R. A. Manson, who was on like business, to the Presidency. The march was detestable. We could hardly ride our horses through the sticky and knee-deep mud of Gujarat. So we fitted up native carts with waterproof tilts, and jogged behind the slow-paced steers on the high-road to Broach. Here we found a detachment of a native Corps, living the usual dull, monotonous life.
Hence we proceeded to Surat, once the cradle of the British power in India, and afterwards doomed to utter neglect. Its masterful position for trade secured it from utter ruin, but no thanks to its rulers. Here we again took a pattymar, and dropped down the river, en route to the Presidency. But this time it was very different voyaging. The south-west monsoon was dead against us, and nothing could be more ominous than the aspect of the weather. We reached Bombay on September 26th, just in time to avoid the Elephanta, or dangerous break up of the rainy monsoon. Little Manson, who had been wrecked when coming out in Back Bay, was in an extreme state of nervousness, and I was prepared for any risk when I saw the last sheets of lightning hung out by the purple-black clouds. The examination took place on October 16th, 1843, again in presence of old General Vans-Kennedy and the normal three or four nobodies, and I again passed first, distancing my rival, Lieutenant C. P. Rigby, of the 16th Bombay N.I. I wished to remain in Bombay to await my regiment, then under orders for Sind, but on the 10th of November I was ordered north, and yet the corps had received orders to march on November 23rd.
The break up of the Cantonment produced all manner of festivities. The two Corps took leave of one another, and passed the last night in the enjoyment of a stupendous Nach, or Nautch.
[Sidenote: On the March.]
A March with a regiment in those days was a pleasure. The first bugle sounded shortly after midnight, and presently came the signal--
"Don't you hear the general say, 'Strike your tents and march away'?"
After a few days' practice, the camp was on the ground and ready packed for starting on carts and camels, within a few minutes. Naturally loose marching was the rule. The men were only expected to keep in Companies, and the officers, with rifles in their hands, rode before, behind, or alongside of them. In this way many a head of game made its appearance at the regimental Mess. The Marches seldom exceeded fifteen miles a day; at the end of the stage the Sepoys were drawn up into line, inspected, and told off to pitching the tents. Breakfast was generally eaten by the officers shortly after sunrise, and the morning air gave fine appetites. The food was generally carried in a dúli, a kind of portable palanquin, primarily intended for the sick and wounded. After the tents were pitched most men were glad to have a short sleep. They assembled again at Tiffin, and its objectionable properties disappeared during the march. They then amused themselves with shooting, or strolling about the country, till Mess hour. The officers' wives were always present at dinner, and no smoking was allowed until they had disappeared. After mess, men were only too glad to turn in, and to get as much sleep as they could before the morning bugle.
The regiment embarked in a native craft at Tankaria-Bunder, and on December 26th, 1843, encamped on the Esplanade, Bombay. They were in the highest spirits, for all expected to see service. The wing from Mhow had been ordered to rejoin head-quarters, and the same was the case with the Staff officers, Captains Jamieson and Partridge, Lieutenants MacDonald, Hough, Compton, and Ensign Anderson. Needless to say that the latter were in high dudgeon at leaving their fat appointments.
[Sidenote: Embarks for Sind.]
On New Year's Day of 1844, the corps embarked on board the H.E.I. Company's steamship Semiramis, generally known as the "Merry Miss." She was commanded by Captain Ethersey, who ended badly. His "'aughtiness," as the crew called it, won him very few friends. And now I come to the time when I began to describe my experiences in print. The first chapter of "Scinde; or the Unhappy Valley" gives a facetious account of this voyage.
On board the Semiramis I made a good friend in Captain Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, who had been transferred from Kandesh, to take charge of the Survey in Lower Sind, by general order of November 23rd, 1843. He was a handsome man in the prime of life, with soft blue eyes, straight features, yellow hair, and golden-coloured beard. Withal he not a little resembled his uncle, "The Magician of the North," of whom he retained the fondest remembrance. He preserved also the trick, wholly unintentional, of the burr and the lisp, the former in the humorous parts, and the latter in the tenderer part of his stories. He was an admirable conversationist, and his anecdotes were full of a dry and pawky humour, which comes from north of the Tweed. Yet, curious to say, when he took pen in hand his thoughts seemed to fly abroad. His lines were crooked, and his sentences were hardly intelligible. Something of this was doubtless owing to his confirmed habit of cheroot smoking, whilst he was writing, but it was eminently characteristic of the man.
Walter Scott was a truly fine character. His manners were those of a gentleman of the Old School, and he never said a disagreeable word or did an ungraceful deed. A confirmed bachelor, he was not at all averse to women's society; indeed, rather the contrary. He was generous, even lavish to the extreme, and he was quite as ready to befriend an Englishman, as a "brither Scot." These two latter qualities seemed to distinguish a high-bred Scotchman, whilst the English and Irish gentleman preserved the characteristics of his nationality, of course refining it and raising it to the highest standard. The Scottish gentleman seems to differ not only in degree, but in kind, and to retain only the finer qualities of his race. This is not speaking of the aristocracy, but of the finer nature, which is the nature of a true gentleman. Whereas the common herd errs in excess of canniness and cautiousness, keeps a keen eye upon the main chance, and distrusts everything and everybody. The select few are rather rash than otherwise, think less of gain than of a point of honour, and seem to believe all other men as true-hearted and high-spirited as themselves, as well as utterly destitute of religious fanaticism.
Walter Scott's favourite reading was old history and romance. He was delighted to meet with a man who was acquainted with Hollingshed and Froissart. Moreover, he had sent to Italy for a series of books upon the canalization of the valley of the Po, and was right glad to find a man who had been in that part of the world, and could assist him by his knowledge of Italian. And I capped the good effect I had upon him, by quoting some of the finest of his uncle's lines, which end with--
"I bless thee, and thou shalt be blessed."
The little voyage, beautiful outside the ship, and stiff and prim within, ended on the fourth day. The Semiramis ran past Manora Head and anchored near the Bar, which in those days was as bad as bad could be. My first impressions of the country, a marvellous contrast to Gujarat and Bombay, were as follows:--
[Sidenote: Karáchi, Sind.]
"In those days Sind was in the most primitive state. The town, or rather village, of Karáchi was surrounded by a tall wall of guy swish, topped with fancy crenelles, and perpendicularly striped with what the Persians call Da mágheh, or nostril holes, down which the besieged could pour hot oil, or boiling water. Streets there were none; every house looked like a small fort, and they almost met over the narrow lanes that formed the only thoroughfares. The bazar, a long line of miserable shops, covered over with rude matting of date leaves, was the only place comparatively open. Nothing could exceed the filthiness of the town; sewers there were none. And the deodorization was effected by the dust. The harbour, when the tide was out, was a system of mud-flats, like the lagoons of Venice, when you approach them by the Murazzi. A mere sketch of a road, which in these days would be called a Frere highway, led from the nearest mud-bank to the Cantonment. The latter was in its earliest infancy. The ground of hard clay was still covered with milk-bush and desert vegetation, and only here and there a humble bungalow was beginning to be built. There was no sign of barracks, and two race-courses were laid out before any one thought of church or chapel.
"Yet Karáchi showed abundant sign of life. Sir Charles Napier thoroughly believed in its future, and loudly proclaimed that in a few years it would take the wind out of Bombay sails. The old Conqueror himself was temporarily staying there. He had his wife and two handsome daughters. His personal staff was composed of his two nephews, Captain William Napier and Lieutenant Byng. In his general Staff he had Major Edward Green, Assistant Adjutant-General, for Quarter-Master-General; Captain MacMurdo, who afterwards married his daughter; a civilian named Brown, alias 'Beer' Brown; Captain Young, of the Bengal army, as his Judge Advocate-General; and Captain Preedy for his Commissary-General. The latter was the son of a violent old officer in the Bombay army, and of whom many a queer story was told. One of them is as follows:--He was dining at a Dragoon mess at Poonah, when they began to sing a song which had been written by an officer of the regiment, and which had for refrain--
'Here's death to those Who dare oppose Her Majesty's Dragoons.'
Old Preedy well knew that in the affair alluded to, the Dragoons, having ventured into a native village, had been soundly thrashed by the villagers. After patiently hearing the song out, he proposed to give the villagers a turn, but he had hardly finished his first verses--
'Success to who Dare to bamboo Her Majesty's Dragoons.'
before he was duly kicked out of the Mess.
"Karáchi was then swarming with troops. The 78th Highlanders were cantoned there, and were presently joined by the 86th, or 'County Down Boys.' Both consumed a vast quantity of liquor, but in diametrically different ways. The kilts, when they felt fou, toddled quietly to bed, and slept off the debauch; the brogues quarrelled and fought, and made themselves generally disagreeable, and passed the night in the guard-house. There was horse artillery and foot artillery, and the former, when in uniform, turned out in such gorgeous gingerbread-gold coats, that gave a new point to the old sneer of 'buying a man at your own price, and selling him at his own,' and there were native regiments enough to justify brigade parades on the very largest scale."
The 18th was presently ordered off to Gharra, a desolate bit of rock and clay, which I described as follows:--
"Look at that unhappy hole--it is Gharra.
"The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels that forms the native village is built upon a mound, the débris of former Gharras, close to a creek which may or may not have been the 'western outlet of the Indus in Alexander's time.' All round it lies a--
'windy sea of land:'--
salt, flat, barren rock and sandy plain, where eternal sea-gales blow up and blow down a succession of hillocks--warts upon the foul face of the landscape--stretching far, far away, in all the regular irregularity of desolation.
"You see the cantonment with its falling brick lines outside, and its tattered thatched roofs peeping from the inside of a tall dense hedge of bright green milk-bush."
We were obliged to pitch tents, for there was no chance of lodging in the foul little village, at the head of the Gharra creek. Under the circumstances, of course, the work was very hard.
A sandstorm astonished an English visitor considerably.
"When we arose in the morning the sky was lowering, the air dark; the wind blew in puffs, and--unusual enough at the time of the year--it felt raw and searching. If you took the trouble to look towards the hills about eight a.m. you might have seen a towering column of sand from the rocky hills, mixed with powdered silt from the arid plains, flying away as fast as it could from the angry puffing Boreas.
"The gale increases--blast pursuing blast, roaring and sweeping round the walls and over the roofs of the houses with the frantic violence of a typhoon. There is a horror in the sound, and then the prospect from the windows! It reminds one of Firdausi's vast idea that one layer has been trampled off earth and added to the coats of the firmament. You close every aperture and inlet, in the hope of escaping the most distressing part of the phenomenon. Save yourself the trouble, all such measures are useless. The finer particles with which the atmosphere is laden would pass without difficulty through the eye of a needle; judge what comfortable thoroughfares they must find the chinks of these warped doors and the crannies of the puttyless munnions.
"It seems as though the dust recognized in our persons kindred matter. Our heads are powdered over in five minutes; our eyes, unless we sit with closed lids, feel as if a dash of cayenne had been administered to them; we sneeze like schoolboys after a first pinch of 'blackguard;' our epidermises are grittier than a loaf of provincial French bread, and washing would only be a mockery of resisting the irremediable evil.
"Now, Mr. Bull, if you wish to let your friends and old cronies at home see something of the produce of the East, call for a lighted candle, and sit down to compose an 'overland letter.' It will take you at least two hours and a half to finish the four pages, as the pen becomes clogged, and the paper covered every few minutes; moreover, your spectacles require wiping at least as often as your quill does. By the time the missive comes to hand it will contain a neat little cake of Indus mud and Scinde sand moulded in the form of paper. Tell Mrs. Bull that you went without your tiffin--lunch I mean--that you tried to sleep, but the novel sensation of being powdered all over made the attempt an abortive one--that it is impossible to cook during a dust-storm--and that you are in for a modification of your favourite 'intramural sepulture,' if the gale continues much longer. However, your days are safe enough; the wind will probably fall about five or six in the afternoon,--it is rare that it does not go down with the sun--and even should it continue during the night, it will be a farce compared to what we are enduring now."
[Sidenote: He passes in Maharátta.]
There was great excitement on June 20th, 1844, when the Sepoys of the 64th Regiment mutinied at Shikapur and beat their officers. The station was commanded by Major-General Hunter, C.B. Most of his experience was in studs. When campaigning with Sir Charles Napier, the latter sent to him for something to eat, and the reply was a ham and a round of press beef. The "devil's brother," as the Sindís called him, cut a slice out of the ham and another out of the beef, and then sent the remainder back to the owner. On June 27th a general order established vernacular examination, making it every officer's duty to learn something more or less of the language. In September I went down to Bombay to pass an examination in Maharátta, and on October 15th I distanced some six competitors.
* * * * *
Richard produced another Chapter on India when he was sick, in 1888, for Mr. Hitchman, which is the one the biographer used, having objected to some of the other parts, whilst I have used the original manuscript just as it was given to me in 1876.
[1] The general orders of the Commander-in-Chief--
"To rank from date of sailing from Gravesend to the ship by which they proceeded in the following order, viz.:--
"Charles Thompson, per barque John Knox June 18, 1842. Richard Francis Burton, per barque John Knox June 18, 1842. The latter appointed to the 14th Regiment B.N.I. Sept. 24, 1842. The latter transferred to 18th B.N.I. Oct. 25, 1842. No. 106, date of arrival at Bombay Oct. 28, 1842."
[2] He was assistant garrison surgeon, serving under Superintendent Surgeon A. C. Kane. The latter's name evidently subjected him to a variety of small witticisms, especially when he was called in to treat a certain A. Bell.
[3] Amongst natives, caste is so powerful in India that it even affects Mlenchha, or outcast races.
[4] For description of pattymar, see "Goa and Blue Mountains," by R. F. Burton.
[5] Colonel Yule gives an illustration of these gates in his second volume of "Marco Polo."
[6] I was at this time a child in the schoolroom; we had no knowledge of each other's existence; I therefore had no part in the matter. He did not tell me of it until we had been married for some time, as he wished, he said, to see if he was paramount in my mind, and that I would make the sacrifice for him, which was necessary for our marriage later on. He then said, "that if a man had a religion, it must be the Catholic; it was the religion of a gentleman--a terrible religion for a man of the world to live in, but a good one to die in." I have often wondered that this step never excited any comment; he wrote of it freely; he spoke of it freely until his latter years; but as he did not like me to do so, I never did. Nobody ever dared to question his action till after he was dead; but when the master-mind, the witty tongue was powerless, when the scathing pen the strong right sword-arm could no longer wield, people fell foul of me for speaking of it as a simple and natural fact. I never called him a devout practical Catholic; I only said he was received into the Church, and that he meant to have its rites at the time of his death.--I. B.