[Illustration: Griffin Marching to Join.]
MEMOIRS OF A GRIFFIN
OR,
A CADET’S FIRST YEAR IN INDIA.
BY
CAPTAIN BELLEW.
_ILLUSTRATED FROM DESIGNS BY THE AUTHOR._
A New Edition.
LONDON
W. H. ALLEN & CO., LTD., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
PUBLISHERS TO THE INDIA OFFICE.
1891.
TO
MAJOR-GEN. SIR ROBERT CUNLIFFE, BART., C.B.,
OF
ACTON PARK, DENBIGHSHIRE, LATE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF THE BENGAL ARMY,
IN WHOSE DEPARTMENT THE AUTHOR HAD FOR SOME YEARS THE HONOUR TO SERVE,
THIS LITTLE WORK
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, AS A MARK OF HIS SINCERE ESTEEM.
PREFACE.
Good wine, says the proverb, needs no bush; on the same principle, some
will think that a book, if readable, may dispense with a preface. As a
general rule this may be true, but there are occasions, and I take leave
to deem this one of them, when, from the peculiar nature of the subject,
a few preliminary observations, by creating a clear and possibly a
pleasant understanding between the author and the gentle reader, may not
be unacceptable or out of place. In the following little narrative, in
which I have blended fact and fiction—though always endeavouring to keep
the _vraisemblable_ in view—my object has been to depict some of those
scenes, characters, and adventures, which some five-and-twenty or thirty
years ago a “jolly cadet”—alias a Griffin—was likely to encounter,
during the first year of his military career; men, manners, and things
in general have, since that period, undergone considerable changes;
still, in its main features, the sketch I have drawn, admitting its
original correctness, will doubtless apply as well to Griffins in the
present mature age of the century, as when it was in its teens. The
Griffin, or Greenhorn, indeed, though subject, like everything else, to
the external changes incident to time and fashion, is, perhaps,
fundamentally and essentially, one of the “never ending, still
beginning” states, or phases of humanity, destined to exist till the
“crash of doom.”
The characters which I have introduced in my narrative (for the most
part as transiently as the fleeting shadows of a magic lantern across a
spectrum) are all intended to represent respectively classes having more
or less of an Oriental stamp, some still existing unchanged—others on
the wane—and a few, I would fain hope, who, like the Trunnions and
Westerns (_parva componere magnis_) of the last age have wholly
disappeared before the steadily increasing light of knowledge and
civilization—influences destructive of those coarse humours, narrow
prejudices, and eccentric traits, which, however amusing in the pages of
the novelist, are wondrously disagreeable in real life. It is true, the
gradual disappearance of these coarser features imposes on the painter
of life and manners the necessity of cultivating a nicer perception—of
working with a finer pencil, and of seizing and embodying the now less
obvious indications of the feelings and passions—the more delicate
lights and shades of mind and character—but still in parting in a great
measure with the materials for coarse drollery and broad satire, the
world perhaps on the whole will be a gainer; higher feelings will be
addressed than those which minister to triumph and imply humiliation:
for though ’tis well to laugh at folly and expose it—’twere perhaps
better to have no folly or error to laugh at and expose.
In the following pages, my wish has been to amuse, and where I
could—without detriment to the professedly light and jocular character
of the work—to instruct and improve. To hurt or offend has never entered
into my contemplation—if such could ever be my object, I should not do
it under a mask.
I deem it necessary to make this observation _en passant_, lest, like a
young officer I once heard of in India, who, conscience-stricken on
hearing some of his besetting sins, as he thought, pointedly denounced,
flung out of the church, declaring “there was no standing the chaplain’s
personalities,” some of my readers should think that I have been taking,
under cover, a sly shot at themselves or friends. That the characters
lightly sketched in these Memoirs have been taken from life—_i.e._, that
the ideas of them have been furnished by real personages—I in some
measure candidly allow, though I have avoided making the portraits
invidiously exact; as in a dream, busy fancy weaves a tissue of events
out of the stored impressions of the brain, so, of course, the writer of
a story must in like manner, though with more congruity, arrange and
embody his scattered recollections, though not necessarily in the exact
shape and order in which the objects, &c., originally presented
themselves. Moreover, I believe I may safely add, that the originals of
my sketches have, for the most part, long since brought “life’s fitful
fever” to a close.
To the kind care of the public I now consign the “Griffin,” particularly
to that portion of it connected with India, a country where my best days
have been spent, the scene of some of my happiest hours, as alas! of my
severest trials and bereavements; hoping, on account of his “youth,”
they will take him under their especial protection. To the critics I
also commend him, trusting, if they have “any bowels,” that they will,
for the same reason, deal with him tenderly.
London—queen of cities!—on sympathetic grounds, I hope for your
munificent patronage. Griffins[1] are your supporters, then why not
support my “Griffin?”
If encouraged by the smiles of a “discriminating public,” I may, at some
future period, impart the late Brevet Captain Gernon’s post-griffinish
experiences amongst Burmahs, Pindaries, and “Chimeras dire,” with his
“impressions of home,” as contained in the remaining autobiography of
that lamented gentleman, who sunk under a gradual decay of nature and a
schirrous liver, some time during the last hot summer.
It is proper I should state that these Memoirs, in a somewhat different
form, first saw the light in the pages of the _Asiatic Journal_.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Mr. Cadet Gernon, anxious to discover a Royal Bengal Tiger, falls
in with a Bear 60
General Capsicum on board the _Rottenbeam Castle_ 66
Griff, on Landing, besieged by Baboos 74
Returning from the Hog hunt 151
Ensign Rattleton receiving Morning Reports from the Fat Lord and
the Red Lion 177
The Native Court-Martial 202
Griffin Mudlarking in the Jheels 246
Colonel Heliogabalus Bluff and Orderly taking Morning Stroll 253
Griffin Marching to Join in Patriarchal Style 336
The Last Night of his Griffinage—Marpeet Royal 372
MEMOIRS OF A GRIFFIN.
CHAPTER I.
Pleasant days of my Griffinhood!—green oasis of life’s desert
waste!—thoughtless, joyous, happy season, when young Hope told “her
flattering tale,” and novelty broke sweetly upon a heart unsated by the
world, with what fond and regretful emotions do I now look back upon you
through the long, dim, dreary vista of five-and-twenty years!
But I think I hear a raw reader exclaim, “Griffins!—are there griffins
in the East?” “Assuredly, sir. Did you never hear of the law of
Zoroaster quoted in _Zadig_, by which griffins’ flesh is prohibited to
be eaten? Griffins are so common at the different presidencies of India
that nobody looks at them, and most of these animals are very tame.” I
will not, however, abuse the traveller’s privilege.
_Griffin_, or more familiarly a _Griff_, is an Anglo-Indian cant term
applied to all new-comers, whose lot has been cast in the “gorgeous
East.” Whether the appellation has any connection with the fabulous
compound, the gryps or gryphon of armorial blazoning, is a point which I
feel myself incompetent to decide.[2] A griffin is the Johnny Newcome of
the East, one whose European manners and ideas stand out in ludicrous
relief when contrasted with those, so essentially different in most
respects, which appertain to the new country of his sojourn. The
ordinary period of griffinhood is a year, by which time the _novus
homo_, if apt, is supposed to have acquired a sufficient familiarity
with the language, habits, customs, and manners of the country, both
Anglo-Indian and Native, so as to preclude his making himself supremely
ridiculous by blunders, _gaucheries_, and the indiscriminate application
of English standards to states of things to which those rules are not
always exactly adapted. To illustrate by example:—a good-natured
Englishman, who should present a Brahmin who worships the cow with a
bottle of beef-steak sauce, would be decidedly “griffinish,”
particularly if he could be made acquainted with the nature of the gift;
nevertheless, beef steak, _per se_, is an excellent thing in an
Englishman’s estimation, and a better still with the addition of the
before-mentioned condiment. But to return to our subject.
At the termination, then, of the above-mentioned period, our griffin, if
he has made the most of his time, becomes entitled to associate on
pretty equal terms with those sun-dried specimens of the _genus homo_,
familiarly called the “old hands:”—subs of fifteen years’ standing;
grey-headed captains, and superannuated majors, critics profound in the
merits of a curry, or the quality of a batch of Hodgson’s pale ale. He
ceases to be the butt of his regiment, and persecutes in his turn, with
the zeal of a convert, all novices not blessed with his modicum of local
experience.
Youth is proverbially of a plastic nature, and the juvenile griffin,
consequently, in the majority of instances, readily accommodates himself
to the altered circumstances in which he is placed; but not so the man
of mature years, to whose moral and physical organization forty or fifty
winters have imparted their rigid and unmalleable influences. Griffins
of this description, which commonly comprises bishops, judges,
commanders-in-chief, and gentlemen sent out on special missions, &c.,
protract their griffinage commonly during the whole period of their stay
in the country, and never acquire the peculiar knowledge which entitles
them to rank with the initiated. The late most excellent Bishop Heber,
for example, who to the virtues of a Christian added all the qualities
which could adorn the scholar and gentleman, was nevertheless an
egregious griffin, as a perusal of his delightful travels in India,
written in all the singleness of his benevolent heart, must convince any
one acquainted with the character of the country and the natives of
India.
Autobiographers love to begin _ab ovo_, and I see no reason why I should
wholly deviate from a custom doubly sanctioned by reason and established
usage. It is curious sometimes to trace the gradual development of
character in “small” as well as in “great” men; to note the little
incidents which often determine the nature of our future career, and
describe the shootings of the young idea at that vernal season when they
first begin to expand into trees of good or evil. In an old manor-house,
not thirty miles from London, on a gloomy November day, I first saw the
light. Of the home of my infancy I remember little but my nursery, a
long, bare, whitewashed apartment, with a tall, diamond-paned window,
half obscured by the funereal branches of a venerable yew-tree. This
window looked out, I remember, on the village churchyard, thickly
studded with the moss-grown memorials of successive generations. In that
window-seat I used to sit for many a weary hour, watching the boys
idling on the gravestones, the jackdaws wheeling their airy circles
round the spire, or the parson’s old one-eyed horse cropping the rank
herbage, which sprouted fresh and green above the silent dust of many a
“village Hampden.” The recollections of infancy, like an old picture,
become often dim and obscure, but here and there particular events, like
bright lights and rich Rembrandt touches, remain deeply impressed, which
seem to defy the effects of time; of this kind is a most vivid
recollection I have of a venerable uncle of my mother’s, an old Indian,
who lived with us, and whose knee I always sought when I could give
nurse the slip. My great uncle Frank always welcomed me to his little
_sanctum_ in the green parlour, and having quite an Arab’s notion of the
sacred rights of hospitality, invariably refused to give me up when
nurse, puffing and foaming, would waddle in to reclaim me. I shall never
forget the delight I derived from his pleasant stories and the white
sugar-candy, of which he always kept a stock on hand. Good old man! he
died full of years, and was the first of a long series of friends whose
loss I have had to lament.
My father was, truly, that character emphatically styled “an Irish
gentleman,” in whom the suavity of the Frenchman was combined with much
of the fire and brilliancy of his native land. Though of an ancient
family, his fortune, derived from an estate in the sister kingdom, was
very limited, the “dirty acres” having somehow or other, from generation
to generation, become “small by degrees, and beautifully less.” He was
of a tender frame, and of that delicate, sensitive, nervous temperament,
which, though often the attendant on genius, which he unquestionably
possessed, little fits those so constituted to buffet with the world, or
long to endure its storms. He died in the prime of manhood, when I was
very young, and left my mother to struggle with those difficulties which
are always incident to a state of widowhood, with a numerous family and
a limited income. The deficiency of fortune was, however, in her case,
compensated by the energies of a masculine understanding, combined with
an untiring devotion to the interest and welfare of her children.
Trades and professions in England are almost as completely hereditary as
among the castes of India. The great Franklin derived his “ponderous
strength,” physical if not intellectual, from a line of Blacksmiths, and
I, Frank Gernon, inherit certain atrabilious humours, maternally, from a
long series of very respectable “Qui Hyes.”[3] Yes, my mothers
family—father, grandfather, uncles, and cousins—had all served with
exemplary fidelity that potent merchant-monarch affectionately termed in
India the Honourable John (though degraded, I am sorry to say, into an
“old woman” by his native subjects); they had all flourished for more
than a century under the shade of the “rupee tree,” a plant of
Hesperidean virtues, whose fructiferous powers, alas! have since their
time sadly declined. These, my maternal progenitors, were men both of
the sword and pen; some had filled high civil stations with credit,
whilst others, under the banners of a Clive, a Lawrence, or a Munro, had
led “Ind’s dusky chivalry” to war, and participated in many of those
glorious, but now time-mellowed exploits, from which the splendid fabric
of our Eastern dominions has arisen. This, and other circumstances on
which I shall briefly touch, combined to point my destiny to the
gorgeous East. My mother, for the reasons given, and the peculiar
facilities which she consequently had for establishing us in that
quarter, had from an early period looked fondly to India as the theatre
for the future exertions of her sons. But long before the period of my
departure arrived—indeed I may say almost from infancy—I had been
inoculated by my mother, my great uncle, and sundry parchment-faced
gentlemen who frequented our house, with a sort of Indo-mania. I was
never tired of hearing of its people, their manners, dress, &c., and was
perfectly read on the subject of alligators and Bengal tigers. I used,
indeed, regularly and systematically to persecute and bore every
Anglo-Indian that came in my way for authentic accounts of their history
and mode of destruction, &c. One most benevolent old gentleman, a fine
specimen of the Indian of other days, and a particular friend of my
family, used to “fool us to the top of our bent” in that way. I say us,
for the Indo-mania was not confined to myself.
My mother, too, used to entertain us with her experiences, which served
to feed the ardent longing which I felt to visit the East. How often in
the winter evenings of pleasant “lang syne,” when the urn hissed on the
table, and the cat purred on the comfortable rug, has our then happy
domestic circle listened with delight to her account of that far-distant
land! What respect did the sonorous names of Bangalore and Cuddalore,
and Nundy Droog and Severn Droog, and Hookhaburdar and Soontaburdars,
and a host of others, excite in our young minds! In what happy
accordance with school-boy thoughts were the descriptions she gave us of
the fruits of that sunny clime—the luscious mango—the huge jack—the
refreshing guava—and, above all, the delicious custard-apple, a
production which I never in the least doubted contained the exact
counterpart of that pleasant admixture of milk and eggs which daily
excited my longing eyes amongst the tempting display of a pastry-cook’s
window! Sometimes she rose to higher themes, in which the pathetic or
adventurous predominated. How my poor cousin Will fell by the dagger of
an assassin at the celebrated massacre of Patna; and how another
venturous relative shot a tiger on foot, thereby earning the
benedictions of a whole community of peaceful Hindoos, whose village had
long been the scene of his midnight maraudings: this story, by the way,
had a dash of the humorous in it, though relating in the main to a
rather serious affair. It never lost its raciness by repetition, and
whenever my mother told it, which at our request she frequently did, and
approached what we deemed the comic part, our risibles were always on
full-cock for a grand and simultaneous explosion of mirth.
Well, time rolled on; I had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, sweet
sixteen, and the ocean of life and adventure lay before me. I stood five
feet nine inches in my stockings, and possessed all the aspirations
common to my age. “Frank, my love,” one day said my mother to me, at the
conclusion of breakfast, “I have good news for you; that most benevolent
of men, Mr. Versanket, has complied with my application, and given me an
infantry cadetship for you; here,” she continued, “is his letter, read
it, and ever retain, as I trust you will, a lively sense of his
goodness.” I eagerly seized the letter, and read the contents with a
kind of ecstasy. It expressed sympathy in my mothers difficulties, and
an invitation to me to come to London and take advantage of his offer.
I will not dwell on the parting scenes. Suffice it to say, that I
embraced those dear objects of my affection, many of whom I was never
destined to embrace again, and bid a sorrowful long adieu to the
parental roof. I arrived in the great metropolis, and prepared for my
outfit and departure. Having completed the former—sheets, ducks, jeans,
and gingerbread, tobacco to bribe old Neptune, brandy to mollify the
sailors, and all _et ceteras_, according to the most approved list of
Messrs. Welsh and Stalker—nought remained but to pass the India House,
an ordeal which I was led to view with an indefinable dread. From whom I
received the information I now forget, though it was probably from some
one of that mischievous tribe of jokers, who love to sport with the
feelings of youth; but I was told that it was absolutely necessary that
I should learn by heart, as an indispensable preliminary to passing, the
“Articles of War and Mutiny Act,” then forming one volume. What was my
state of alarm and despondency as I handled that substantial
yellow-backed tome, and reflected on the task I had to perform of
committing its whole contents to memory in the brief space of one week!
It haunted me in my dreams, and the thought of it, sometimes crossing my
mind whilst eating, almost suspended the power of swallowing. I carried
it about with me whereever I went, applying to it with desperate
determination whenever a leisure moment, of which I had very few, would
admit; but what I forced into my sensorium one moment, the eternal noise
and racket of London drove out of it the next. To cut a long story
short, the day arrived, “the all-important day,” big with my fate. I
found myself waiting in the India House, preparatory to appearing before
the directors, and, saving the first two or three clauses, the “Articles
of War” were to me as a sealed volume. I was in despair; to be disgraced
appeared inevitable. At last came the awful summons, and I entered the
apartment, where, at a large table covered with green cloth, sat the
“potent, grave, and reverend signiors,” who were to decide my fate. One
of them, a very benevolent-looking old gentleman, with a powdered head,
desired me to advance, and having asked me a few questions touching my
name, age, &c., he paused, and, to my inexpressible alarm, took up a
volume from the table, which was no other than that accursed piece of
military codification of which I have made mention. Now, thought I, it
comes, and all is over. After turning over the leaves for some seconds,
he said, raising his head, “I suppose you are well acquainted with the
contents of this volume?” Heaven forgive me! but the instinct of
self-preservation was strong upon me, and I mumbled forth a very
suspicious “Yes.” Ye generous casuists, who invent excuses for human
frailty, plead for my justification. “Well,” continued he, closing the
book, “conduct yourself circumspectly in the situation in which you are
about to enter, and you will acquire the approbation of your superiors;
you may now retire.” Those who can imagine the feelings of a culprit
reprieved, after the fatal knot has been comfortably adjusted by a
certain legal functionary; or those of a curate, with £50 per annum, and
fifteen small children, on the announcement of a legacy of £10,000; or
those of a respectable spinster of forty, on having the question
unexpectedly popped; or, in short, any other situation where felicity
obtrudes unlooked for, may form some idea of mine; I absolutely walked
on air, relieved from this incubus, and gave myself up to the most
delightful buoyancy of spirits. A few days more, and Mr. Cadet Francis
Gernon found himself on board the _Rottenbeam Castle_, steering down
Channel, and with tearful eyes casting a lingering gaze on the shores of
old England.