The morning after our arrival at Kedgeree I arose early, and, on coming
on deck, found the weather perfectly calm, and presenting a striking
contrast to its appearance on the previous day. A burning Bengal sun,
however, shone around in all its glory, and was reflected with painful
and dazzling brightness from the now unruffled surface of the Hooghly.
Boats, to me of singularly novel and picturesque forms—some thatched,
others open, and all with long galley-like prows and sterns—were moving
here and there, mingled with market-boats, laden with fruit and
vegetables, and light and graceful dingies, or fishing-canoes, floating
down with their outspread nets and dusky crews on the gentle undulations
of the falling tide. Near us, ships of various descriptions were riding
at anchor, from the stately Indiaman of those days, with her double tier
of ports, and looking like a seventy-four, to the Arab grab and
country-coaster.
This was a day of considerable bustle and excitement. The passengers
were looking up their baggage, getting out their letters, or despatching
special messengers to their friends in Calcutta. Boats from the
presidency were continually arriving alongside, freighted principally
with baboos or circars, good-looking fellows for the most part, with
huge green or yellow curly-toed shoes, and flowing muslin robes, as
light as the gossamer, and white as swans’-down. Some came to secure
constituents; others were deputed by merchants or parties interested in
the ship or passengers; and not a few keen-witted fellows, like my
friend Ramee Sawmee Dabash, were on the look-out for “pigeons.” With all
these arrivals, our deck began to assume a very lively and animated
appearance.
I could not help being forcibly struck with the marked dissimilarity
between the two races, who, here respectively the subjects of a common
power, and from the antipodes, were engaged in objects of mutual
interest, or busy in the exchange of friendly greetings. There stood the
sturdy Englishman, with his ruddy face, iron muscles, and broad
shoulders, strong in his straightforward hyperborean honesty; before
him, like some delicate spaniel, or Italian greyhound, coaxing a bluff
old Jowler of a mastiff, were the wily Asiatics, chattering and
salaaming, fearful to offend, their slender and supple limbs all in
motion, and supplying by quickness and address the want of energy and
boldness.
The family union, which had now for five months so pleasantly subsisted
between our party on board, was about to be dissolved, and already were
their thoughts and feelings on the wing, impatient for other scenes and
objects. The cup of pleasure is seldom unalloyed, and with mine, at that
moment, mingled a drop of bitterness, as I thought that an important
scene of my life was about to close for ever, and that many of the
actors in it, with whom I had so pleasantly “strutted my hour,” I might
never see again. To think that we are leaving even an inanimate object
for ever is a painful thought, but it acquires almost a solemnity when
man, “the mind, the music, breathing from his face,” is the being we are
now about to quit. Honest McGuffin, methought, have I heard your broad
Scotch for the last time? Grinnerson, my merry wag, will you roast me no
more? Gillans, bluntest of seamen, will thy hoarse voice, in the
midnight watch, never again startle my ear, when through the shrouds
(rudest of Æolians) the rough winds pipe their wild accompaniment? And,
oh! Jemmy Ducks, thou Pariar of the _Rottenbeam Castle_, thou great
conservator of chickens, shall I never again see thee scramble over the
hen-coops, or be more enlivened with a pleasant vision of thy tarred and
ragged breeks? _Sic transit gloria mundi!_
As a party of us, including the second mate, were chattering and
laughing on the deck about noon, our attention was suddenly attracted to
a handsome pinnace, with green sides and venetians, and of a light and
beautiful rig, gliding down the river, with all sail loosened, which,
however, the light winds had barely power to distend. As it approached,
we observed an old gentleman, and a numerous group of attendants on the
chut or roof. Marpeet immediately observed that we were about to be
visited by one of the Calcutta big wigs; and Grinnerson, applying the
glass to his eye, exclaimed, after a little reconnoitring and slapping
his leg with delight,
“By the piper that played before Moses, if it isn’t that old Tartar,
General Capsicum; he’ll keep us all alive if he comes on board.”
The general was seated in an easy chair, smoking a magnificent hooka,
the silver chains and other brilliant appendages of which were
conspicuous even at a distance. Altogether, with his troop of
attendants, he looked not a little like the chief of Loochoo, as
depicted in Captain Hall’s voyage to that interesting island. Of the
liveried and whiskered group about him, one swung a huge crimson silk
punkah, or fan, with a silver handle, the end of which rested on the
deck; a second held an umbrella of the same colour over his head; two
more worked chowries, or whisks, to keep off the flies; and behind his
chair stood his pipeman, or hookhaburdar, a black-bearded fellow, with
his arms folded, and looking as grave and solemn as a judge. At the back
of all these again, and forming a sort of rear-guard, were a body of
mace-bearers and silver-stick men, awaiting the slightest order of the
chief. Well, this is something like Eastern magnificence, indeed,
thought I—_nil desperandum_—“Frank Gernon, hold up your head; you may be
a nabob yet.”
Upon the arrival of the pinnace within a very short distance of the
ship, the old gentleman, assisted by his obsequious attendants, arose
from his chair, and moving to the verge of the roof or poop, with a gait
almost as unsteady as the toddle of an infant, gave us a full view of
about as odd a figure as can well be imagined. In height, he was below
the middle size, and as thin and shrivelled as an old baboon, to the
physiognomy of which animal his own bore no inconsiderable resemblance;
indeed, till I saw him, I never thought much of Lord Monboddo’s theory.
He wore a red camlet raggie, or Swiss jacket, with blue collar and
facings, which hung in bags about him, and a white waistcoat, wide open,
from which a volume of frill protruded. His nether man was encased in a
pair of tight nankeens, buttoned at the ancle (a singular perversity
common to old gentlemen whose calves have gone to grass), and which
exhibited the extraordinary slenderness of his frail supporters in a
very striking point of view. A queue (the general being one of the “last
of the pigtails”), a round hat of black silk, a good deal battered, with
a bullion loop and button, completed the outward appearance of the
Bengal veteran, who soon, however, satisfied us that, spite of
appearances, he was, as Grinnerson said, a stout-hearted old fellow,
with plenty of pluck and mental vigour still about him; one of whom it
might be said, that “E’en in his ashes glowed their wonted fires.”
When pretty close, the little old man, from whom a squeaky and faltering
treble might have been expected, astonished us by shouting out, in a
stentorian voice, and with a tone and accent smacking strongly of the
“first gem of the sea,”
“Is that the _Rottenbame Castle_, sur?”
Being answered in the affirmative, he continued, “Is Captain McGuffin on
board, sur?”
McGuffin, who by this time had come to the side, replied to this
question himself. Taking off his hat, and waving it, he said,
“Hoo air ye, general? I’m glad to see you, sir, luking sae weel. Will
you come on board, sir?”
“Hah! McGuffin, is that you? How are you, my good sur?” returned the
general, raising his hat, too, with all the dignity of the old school,
or of the guardsman at Fontenoy. “Sorry to see you in this ugly pickle,
though. Have you got my Cordalia on board?” alluding to his daughter, a
widow lady, one of our passengers from Madras, and who, at this instant,
having heard of her father’s arrival, rushed to the side, and kissing
one hand with _empressement_, whilst she waved her handkerchief in the
other, soon afforded him satisfactory evidence of her existence.
After some little trouble, the pinnace was safely moored alongside, and
the old general securely, though with equal difficulty, and a few
volleys of abuse to his servants, deposited by instalments on the deck.
Here, however, he appeared in some danger of suffocation, from the
vigorous embraces of the buxom young widow, who yielding to the impulses
of natural feeling, and regardless of standers-by, rushed into his arms,
and kissed him with the warmest affection, knocking off his hat by the
collision, and exhibiting to our view the generals venerable head, white
with the snows of seventy or eighty winters.
Here, then, in the shrivelled old soldier standing before me, I beheld a
warrior of the days of Clive, a last representative, probably, of a
generation long gone down to the dust, whose thoughts, dress, and
manners so essentially differed from our own, and who (all honour to
their three-cornered hats and big waistcoats!) had baffled the Indian in
the field and the cabinet, and laid the foundation of this proud
dominion, on which I was about to set foot. I looked on him with that
respect with which we contemplate a grey ruin of other days, with its
silent courts, its “banquet-hall deserted,” and all its glorious
associations, and which long has withstood the tempests of the world.
[Illustration: General Capsicum on Board the “Rottenbeam Castle.”]
After retiring to the cuddy, and some private conversation with his
daughter, the general again came on deck, and had a renewed round of
handshaking with the captain, and some other of his acquaintance, whom
he expressed himself as devilish glad to see in India again, “the best
country in the whole world, by all that’s good!” He concluded with a
look redolent of gunpowder and hair-triggers, though half jocular, “And
where is the man that will say me nay?” It was obvious at a glance the
general was what an old Scotch author calls
A fiery Ettercap, a fractious chiel;
As hot as ginger and as true as steel;
with not a little of that _refined savageism_ in him, which exalts the
_duello_ into the first accomplishment of a gentleman.
In Colonel Kilbaugh he recognized an old friend and brother campaigner,
and right cordial was the greeting between them. A tremendous refighting
of battles would then and there have taken place, it was quite clear,
had time allowed of it; unless, upon the principle that two negatives
make an affirmative, they should have neutralized their kindred
_fortes_. The general, amongst his peculiarities of the old school,
swore like a trooper; indeed, so free was his indulgence in that once
fashionable, but now, amongst gentlemen, exploded vice, that had he been
in England, he would doubtless have been liable to an indictment from
the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for profane swearing.
“By G——, you’re looking well, though, Kilbaugh, d——d well, upon my soul;
you’ve taken a new laise of your existence since you went home.”
“Why, eh—yes,” said the little colonel, pulling up his collar-gills
complacently, and looking extremely large for his size, “we are
certainly a new man, general; nothing like a few hogsheads of Cheltenham
waters for setting a dyspeptic man on his legs again.”
“Indeed, then that’s true; but, Kilbaugh, though you and I have had some
rale plissant days together in old times—eh?—you didn’t trouble the
water much then by G——, and liked your glass as well as any of us, and
(with a palpable wink) that same _minus_ the g, too—_minus_ the g—eh?
ha, ha, ha!”
With this, he made a pass at the ex-resident’s ribs with his extended
finger, which the other dexterously avoided, though with a complacent
chuckle which shewed that he was not displeased at this allusion to his
youthful frolics.
“Well,” continued the general, “you’ll put up at my place, and I’ll give
you a cast in the pinnace. By-the-bye, you liked a good bottle of beer,
Kilbaugh, I remember right well, and just now I can give you one, a rale
foamer; got in a splendid batch lately; it is from Bell, and by G—— it
bears a bell, too.”
So he rattled on; and the ex-resident having signified his acceptance of
the general’s offer, the trio, after a hearty leave-taking, were soon on
board the pinnace, and on their way to Calcutta.
This was the first time I had seen the Mohamedan domestics of this part
of India, and I was agreeably struck by their handsome and manly
appearance, and the becoming costume of those in the old general’s
suite. Their turbans, vests, loose _pajammas_ or trousers, and
_kummerbunds_ or girdles, set off by their crimson belts and metal
badges, and their massive silver batons, gave them a very striking and
picturesque appearance, enhanced by luxuriant beards or mustachios,
large eyes, and high features.
There are some strange anomalies attendant on the march of civilization,
and none more so, perhaps, than the indifference, or rather want of real
taste, which nations in a high state of refinement evince in regard to
costume. Whether it is that scientific pursuits, and the busy
occupations of the thoughts on matters of high social, moral, political,
and commercial interest, leave no time for men to study the graces of
attire, or that such a study is really unworthy of, or incompatible
with, cultivated minds, or, as the Quakers think, unfavourable to
morality, certain it is that the art of decorating the person does not
keep pace with other improvements.
Our commander (finding he could not leave Kedgeree till the following
morning), Marpeet, Grundy, and I, accepted the obliging invitation of
Capt. Grogwell, of the _Rohomany_ barque, country trader, a friend of
the captain, to accompany him in his vessel, then under weigh for
Calcutta.
“I can give you a glass of grog, gentlemen, and a bit of curry, and
there’s my cabin for you to turn into if you should stay with me
overnight,” said the frank and good-humoured sailor; “but,” added he,
“there’s no time to be lost for those that go, as the tide’s already on
the turn.”
A few bags and boxes were soon stowed in Captain Grogwell’s boat, and
after many warm adieus from our friends on board, and the expression of
mutual hopes that we should meet again in Calcutta, off we pushed for
the _Rohomany_ barque.
As we approached her, two or three bronzed faces, surmounted by straw
hats, rose above the side, and were directed expectantly towards us,
whilst the whistling pipe of the serang, or native boatswain, announced
the skipper’s approach alongside. We mounted through a bevy of the sable
crew, and soon stood on the deck of the country ship, just arrived from
a voyage to the Eastern Islands.
“Welcome on board the _Rohomany_, gentlemen, where I hope you will make
yourselves at home and comfortable,” said Captain Grogwell. “My first
officer, Mr. Dobbs, gentlemen,” he continued, presenting a tall, brawny,
and fine-countenanced man. Mr. Dobbs made his best leg; was glad to see
us on board.
The lascars now began to weigh the anchor to a wild and not unmusical
chant, with an agreeable chorus of _Ya Ullahs!_ All was soon bustle, the
anchor a-peak, and the mates shouting forth their commands in the most
extraordinary lingo that ever grated “harsh music” on my ears.
“Trinkum Garvey de man,” said one; “Garvey brass trinkum de man,” roared
another; whilst Mr. Dobbs, in a tremendous fury (why I knew not), and
stamping like a madman, sung out “Chop and string your goosey, and be
d——d to you all.”
These are a few specimens. On hearing the last, I certainly was inclined
to think that the death-warrant of one of those _capitol_ birds who feed
on our commons, and on whom our commons feed (excuse the double pun),
had been pronounced. I wish some Oriental philologist would give us a
history of this nautical jargon, which, I take it, is a sort of _olla
podrida_ of Portuguese, Bengalee, and heaven knows what dialects
besides—the _lingua franca_ of the Indian seas. On we glided; passed the
“silver tree,” a singular vegetable production, composed of brick and
mortar; “Diamond Harbour,” another misnomer, but very Golcondahish in
the sound; and finally, a stiff wind setting in dead ahead, found it
impossible to get round a certain peninsula, sometimes called “Hooghly
Point,” but amongst sailors, rejoicing in the less euphonious
appellation of “Point Luff and be d——d.” There was no help for it, so
down went the anchor, and there seemed every prospect of our having to
conjugate the verb _ennuyer_ till a fresh flow of tide and shift of wind
should enable us to pass this most troublesome part of the river, and
the dangerous shoal of the James and Mary. The reader must understand
that all this was before the days of steam.
Leaving the white tavern of Fultah, where the Calcutta _bon vivant_ eats
mango-fish—the whitebait of India,—we soon passed Budge Budge, the scene
of the sailor’s unique exploit—a story too well known, I fancy, to need
repetition here—and in a short time after, on turning “Hangman’s Point”
(where once stood an outpost of civilization), found ourselves opposite
“Garden Reach,” the sylvan vestibule of Calcutta. I have seen few sights
in my wanderings more beautiful and imposing than the approach to this
Petersburgh of the East, this magnificent capital of our Eastern empire.
On the left was the Botanical Garden, with its screen of tall dark
cypress trees; on the right, a long succession of beautiful villas,
situated amidst verdant lawns and park-like pleasure-grounds, sloping
gently down to the water’s edge. Here the eye was caught by some pretty
kiosk or summer-house, like the _lust-haus_ of a Dutch retreat, or such
as we sometimes see in the stately gardens attached to some mansion of
the olden time here at home. There it rested on a ghaut, or flight of
steps leading to the water, with urns or balustrades, before which, in
the mellow _chiar-oscuro_ of some overhanging banyan-tree, lay moored
the elegant covered pleasure-boat of the owner—hurrying through the
grounds, a palankeen would appear, with its scampering bevy of attendant
bearers and running peons, the huge red chattah or umbrella to shield
the master from the sun, when making his _exits_ and _entrées_, bobbing
up and down—standing before many a porticoed mansion, gigs, or other
equipages would appear in waiting, to take the Sahibs to town, or on
their rounds of morning visits, and mingling in pleasing contrast with
the Europeanized character of these beautiful domains, the lofty palm or
kujjoor would here and there raise its head, the perch of a knot of
solemn vultures; or parting the grounds one from another, lofty fences
of the graceful and pensile bamboo, might be seen drooping in rich
clusters, like plumes of ostrich feathers. Numerous boats glided up and
down the river, with here and there a vessel like our own, obeying the
whirling impulses of the tide, and rapidly approaching its
destination—all, in fact, bespoke the close vicinity of a great capital.
The reach nearly past, the proud citadel of Fort William broke in view,
its grinning batteries opening upon us, one after the other, and
affording a lively idea of the sort of gauntlet which an enemy might
reasonably expect, should one sufficiently hardy ever dare to confront
them. Here and there on the long-extended rampart, the sentry “walked
his lonely round,” his musket and bayonet gleaming brightly in the
noontide rays, whilst crowds of natives, passing palankeens, and stately
adjutant birds stalking “in grey attire” on the banks, gave life and
animation to the scene—a few minutes more, and a long forest of
shipping, with masses and lines of stately mansions reposing under the
still calm sky, like some Grecian capital of old, bespoke the City of
Palaces, the proud metropolis of British India.
Here was a sight at which a Briton might honestly exult, and, young as I
was, I gazed with pride on this magnificent creation of my country’s
civilization and power—the point from which she governs the countless
millions of the dependent Empire which Providence, for the wisest of
purposes, has submitted to her benignant sway. Old England! mighty
heart! long may thy vigorous pulsations be thus felt to the utmost
bounds of our earth! Nations, like individuals, have their stages of
existence—their infancy, their manhood, and their decline; some fall
into premature decrepitude and dissolution, and leave but the memory of
evil deeds behind them; whilst others sink in glorious maturity, under
the weight of years and honours, leaving the fruits of a well-spent life
behind them, to be embalmed for ever in the hearts of a grateful
posterity. May such be thy lot, O my country!