The space to which I have limited myself in these Memoirs will not admit
a minute account of all I saw, heard, said, and did, during my months
sojourn at Barrackpore; it will, therefore, suffice if I touch lightly
on a few prominent characters and occurrences illustrative of Indian
life, during this period of my griffinage.
“Tom,” said I, as we left the colonel’s bungalow, “do tell me who that
fine dark damsel was, with the ring in her nose, of whom we had a
glimpse from behind the curtain.”
“Why, that’s the native commandant,” said Tom.
“Nonsense,” said I; “what do you mean?”
“Why, I mean that the colonel commands the regiment, and she commands
the colonel.”
“Ha! ha! well, that’s made out logically enough, certainly; but in that
way I suspect you’d have no difficulty in proving a peticoatocracy all
the world over: man, good easy soul, fancies himself a free agent, puffs
and struts, and is but a puppet after all, of which woman pulls the
strings, and yet these provoking creatures are always complaining of
want of power and due influence.”
“Well done, Frank; ably put, my boy. I see you’re as great an inductive
philosopher as ever; it’s a true bill though; the strongest fortress,
too, has its weak points. There’s the colonel, for example, a
deeply-read man, understands everything, from metaphysics to a red
herring; will touch you off a page of Xenophon, or a chapter of
Sanscrit, with perfect ease; a man who has thought and read, and read
and thought, in that Fortunatus’ cap and those curly-toed slippers of
his, for the last thirty years, in all the leisure of camp and
out-station, fort and jungle; brave as a lion, generous as a prince, and
in most matters firm as a rock; and yet that little Delilah can wheedle
and wind him round her finger as she pleases. She makes half the
promotions in the regiment, I am told; and no one better than blacky
understands the value of back-stairs influence, and the mode of working
it successfully. But by all accounts these are the men who square best
with Jack Sepoy’s notions of a proper commander; these are the men whom
they would go to the devil to serve; who know how to treat them in their
own way, and not your pipe-clay, rigid disciplinarians, who would
utterly extinguish the native in the soldier, who make fine troops for a
parade, but bad ones for the tug of war, or when their loyalty is
assailed. It’s splendid to hear the colonel talk to the Jacks; he
understands them thoroughly; can make them roar with laughter, or shake
in their shoes, as he pleases; true it is, if you would govern men
effectually, it must be through the medium of their peculiar feelings
and prejudices, and not by taking the bull by the horns.”
As he said this, we drove into a pretty extensive compound, and drew up
before a large puckha-house, with a bevy of servants and orderlies in
the verandah; this was the residence of the general commanding, to whom
I was presented in due form.
Tom next took me to the adjutant’s, and the rest of his
brother-officers, of whom he promised to give me some account on a
future occasion, and then we went home to tiffin.
In the evening we had a delightful ride in the Governor-General’s park,
and as we wheeled along through its mazy rounds, saw all the beau monde
of Barrackpore, as also my friend’s innamorata, with whom we had some
very lively conversation, as we drove slowly alongside the barouche in
which, with a party, she was taking the air.
Having visited the menagerie in the park, stirred up the tigers, and
plagued the monkeys a little, we drove to Colonel Lollsaug’s.
The colonel gave us an excellent dinner, wine admirably cooled, foaming
pale ale—India’s prime luxury—and some capital home-fed mutton. There
were five or six officers present, and the conversation, which was
unrestrained and agreeable, turned upon old recollections of former
stations; on the prospect of promotion and war or rather war and
promotion, for such is their natural order; and gave me a greater
insight into what was passing in the Indian military world than I had
yet enjoyed.
Being young, and a griffin, I thought it was better for me to listen
than to be prominently loquacious; and it was fortunate that I adopted
this conclusion, for, amongst other topics, the extreme forwardness and
assurance of the youth of the present—_i.e._ of that day—was discussed
with much animation.
“It’s too true, I fear,” said the colonel; “they don’t conduct
themselves as the young lads did in my juvenile days. I remember,” said
he, with the regretful air of the _laudator temporis acti_, “when I was
a young man and first came out, we thought it necessary and proper to
exhibit some little deference and respect to our seniors in age and
rank—some reserve and diffidence in our opinions, not, however,
inconsistent with a due degree of firmness and self-respect; but now,
forsooth, your beardless younker, fresh from school, claps you on the
shoulder, and is hail-fellow-well-met with you in an instant, exhibiting
all the confidence of a man of fifty—quite destitute of that
master-charm of modesty, which, in man or woman, takes so powerful a
hold on the affections and good-will.”
These observations, though perhaps true in themselves, I thought a
little ill-timed, and not wholly consistent with his own proceedings.
However, they were cordially assented to by some of the “old hands”
present, particularly by one ill-dressed, caustic, and slovenly old
captain, named Langneb.
“You’re right, colonel, quite right, sir; they’re all major-generals
now, sir, at starting; know everything and care for nobody. There’s
young Snapper, who joined us the other day—an idle, dissipated young
scamp; keeps four horses, gives champagne tiffins, and is spending three
times the amount of his pay—hailed me only last night in the park by my
surname, sir—no prefix, by George! no handle, though I haven’t spoken to
him five times—told me I had got a pretty beast there (meaning my
horse), and asked me for the loan of my buggy to-morrow! What do you
think of that, sir? Never met such a forward, self-sufficient young
fellow in all my life; but he’s going to the dogs as fast as he can.”
“I am afraid he is,” said another; “but there’s some allowance to be
made for him. Thompson, who knows his family at home, tells me he was
brought up by a doating grandmother, who spoilt him, indulged him to the
top of his bent, never contradicted—money _ad libitum_—things all his
own way: hence pride, selfishness, and an inordinate love of pleasure,
the natural results. Never send your children to be brought up by
grandmothers; owing to their unbounded affection, which passes through
the parent as through a lens, they’re sure to spoil them.”
A rubber of whist and a game of chess concluded the evening very
pleasantly at the colonel’s. At parting, he told me with great kindness
that he hoped soon to see me on parade, and that he had desired the
adjutant to take me in hand, and give me a little preliminary
instruction.
The next day Rattleton took me another round of visits to some of the
married men of his acquaintance, many of whom seemed agreeable people,
but possessed of various degrees of refinement; also to the houses of
two or three widow ladies residing at the station, all of whom had
pretty daughters or nieces seeking that which it was natural and proper
they should seek, eligible partners, youthful “John Andersons,” with
whom to jog up the hill of life together.
It was abundantly clear, and I soon discovered, that Rattleton’s little
affair of the heart had got wind pretty extensively, for wherever we
went he had to run the gauntlet of banter and sly innuendo in one shape
or another. Like Mr. Dangle, however, with his “volunteer fatigue” and
“solicited solicitations,” he bore it all very philosophically.
Tom was a handsome fellow, and it was well known that he was to have the
first vacant regimental staff appointment, his aunt being married to a
first cousin of the Governor-General’s military secretary’s second
wife’s first husband. Under these circumstances, my friend ranked as an
“eligible,” and the old ladies could not forgive him altogether for
passing over the more valid claims of their daughters and nieces; and
the daughters and nieces, though they endeavoured to conceal their
chagrin under the guise of a very transparent indifference, were
evidently not a whit more satisfied with Mr. Rattleton’s presumed
election in favour of Miss Julia Heartwell.
The first widow to whom we paid our respects was Mrs. Brownstout; the
relict of a field officer who had fallen a victim to jungle fever
several years before, and who was residing in great respectability on
her pension at Barrackpore, as many other widows did and do. She had
lived for some time in England after her husband’s death, but quitted it
after a time in disgust, finding both climate and people too cold to
suit the warmth of an Indian temperament; her frankness startled folks,
and her unreserved expression of opinion was looked upon, amongst the
worldly-wise, as the evidence of a doubtful sanity.
Of this lady, as one of a class, I must present the reader with a slight
memoir.
Mrs. Brownstout, after the loss of her husband, “her poor dear Browny,”
as she always called him, had nobly set her shoulder to the wheel, and,
with all that admirable perseverance quickened by a lively sense of duty
and parental affection, which the sex (and none more so than Indian
widows) thus circumstanced so often exhibit, had fought a stout battle
for her children; for two sons she had obtained military appointments in
India, having (armed with those potent weapons, the prayers of the widow
and the orphan) laid siege to a good-hearted director, and carried him
by storm, after a feeble show of resistance on his part; and for a third
she had obtained the management of an indigo factory.
Of three daughters, one had married a doctor within hail of the Medical
Board, and Lucinda and Maria were still unmarried, though it was
shrewdly suspected they had no intention to die vestal virgins, if it
could be decently avoided.
Mrs. Major Brownstout was rather dark, and in Abyssinia, where bulk and
beauty are synonymous, would have been considered a remarkably fine
woman; but as it was, she exceeded the English standard of beauty by
some five or six stone.
Fatness and good-humour are almost invariably found united, but which is
the cause and which the effect—whether fat breeds good-nature or
good-nature fat—is one of those profound mysteries of nature which old
Burton might decide, but for which I have in vain sought a satisfactory
solution.
Mrs. Brownstout was quick, penetrating, and possessed a large fund of
that frankness and kindliness of heart which I have, in the course of my
Eastern experience, almost invariably found to characterize the ladies
of mixed blood in India.
Society full oft, by its folly, oppression, and prejudice, begets the
faults which it affects to hate and despise; and the fact of any classes
being looked down upon, which is more or less the case as regards the
half-caste or Eurasian throughout India (though less so in Bengal than
in the sister presidencies), has a depressing tendency, which naturally
places individuals of that description in a highly disadvantageous
position, deadening the energies, and preventing that free and natural
play and expansion of the mind and feelings which are ever the results
of knowing that we stand well with the world.
In spite, however, of these sinister influences (having the same origin
with those which actuate our American brethren in their conduct to their
coloured countrymen, and which we so loudly condemn), I must bear my
humble testimony in favour of our Eurasian fellow-subjects, who, far
from combining the vices and defects of both races, as has often been
cruelly and flippantly declared, seem, on the contrary, as far as my
experience goes, from griffinage upwards, to unite with the gentleness,
placability, and fidelity of the native many of the sterling virtues of
the European character, though certainly lacking its strength and
energy.
But iron nerves, in which consists the secret of English superiority,
require regulation as well as the weak and more delicate organizations
of the East; for if the one tends to effeminacy, the other, under the
fancied character of manliness, too often tends to ferocity, and that
one-sided freedom called tyranny. “Call this a land of freedom where a
man mayn’t shoot his own nigger!” said Matthews’ Yankee; and a volume
could not better express that Irish reciprocity of rights which John and
Jonathan are so prone to patronize.—But to return.
This engraftment will probably produce those permanent social, moral,
and political fruits, which there from neither European nor native
singly could be expected.
The English greyhound, taken to India, dies, or loses in time most of
his energy and valuable qualities, and the produce decidedly
degenerates; but the cross with the native dog of that species produces
an animal in which is united the Indianized constitution of the one with
much of the speed and courage of the other.
I am sorry to seek an illustration of my position amongst the lower
order of creation, but it perhaps holds good.
We found Mrs. Brownstout in the act of explaining some mystery of dress
to a _dirgee_ (tailor), a little slender ungirdled shrimp, standing,
scissors in hand, amidst a vast accumulation of muslin and ribbon. One
of the young ladies was penning a billet, the other painting flowers.
“How d’ye do, Rattleton, how d’ye do?” said the old lady, as we entered,
addressing my friend bluntly, who was evidently one of her “boys.” “I
can’t get up to you, you see, so talk to the girls.”
The young ladies, however, arose, and Tom introduced me to them.
On taking my seat they asked me a few common-place questions, such as
how long I had been in India? how I liked it? if I had lately arrived at
Barrackpore? and so forth; to all of which I made suitable replies.
This piece of formality over, the old lady and her daughters, evidently
impatient to unburthen themselves, opened upon Tom _instanter_.
“Well, Rattleton,” said Mrs. B., drily, “what have you been doing with
yourself lately? you have become a perfect stranger. Have you brought us
any news? what is doing in cantonments? who is dead and who is wed?”
“I know nothing of buryings or weddings,” said Tom; “they’re grave and
melancholy subjects, about which I do not trouble myself.”
“Well, indeed!” retorted Mrs. Brownstout; “I admire that amazingly; we
all consider you one of the greatest gossips of the station.”
“Perhaps, mamma,” said Miss Lucinda, archly, “Mr. Rattleton is too much
engaged with his own approaching nuptials to think much about those of
other people.”
“Oh, that’s true,” said Mrs. B., with mock gravity; “they say you are
going to get married; is it true, Rattleton?”
“Oh, nonsense! mere Barrackpore _gup_ and scandal; who could have
told you that?”
“Oh, we have had it from the very best authority.”
Tom laughed.
“Well, Mr. Rattleton, when is it to take place?” asked Miss Lucinda,
dipping her brush in her pallet, and touching up her drawing with all
the _nonchalance_ imaginable. “I do so long to know; and who are to be
the bridesmaids? I hope Maria or I shall be admitted to that honour.”
“Oh, yes, when I _am_ married, you shall be the bridesmaid, certainly,
the lady consenting; but that event, I take it, is rather remote. What
on earth should a sub like me do with a wife, who can hardly take care
of himself?”
Many a true word spoken in jest, Mr. Tom, thought I.
“You’ll wait for the vacant interpretership, eh?” said the mamma.
“Well, that’s right, and like a prudent young man.”
“That is an appointment admirably suited for you, Mr. Rattleton; you
speak the language with such fluency and purity,” observed Miss Lucinda.
“Upon my life,” said Tom, “you’re a great quiz; how long, Miss Maria, is
it since your sister became so satirical? but as for the language,”
added Tom, a little piqued, “I don’t think I speak that badly, after
all. Now I appeal to you, Mrs. Brownstout—you’re a judge, and will do me
justice.”
“Why,” said Mrs. B., “pretty well—pretty well, considering you’re almost
a griffin.”
“Oh, yes, you speak it like a native—of England,” added Lucinda,
laughing.
Tom stood this and a good deal more pretty well, being evidently
accustomed to this badinage with the Brownstouts. However, three at once
were too much, and I, being a stranger, was inefficient and dummy.
Tom exhausted his stock of repartee; was “beat to a dead stand-still,”
to borrow the language of the Ring and began, I thought, to look a
little grave and cross. The ladies, consequently, changed the theme, and
the conversation flowed on in a more equable and rational stream.
At length we arose and took our leave, Mrs. Brownstout begging me to
come with Tom and pass the evening with them whenever I felt so
disposed.
The following day, at eleven, Rattleton and I walked over to the
adjutant’s bungalow. I had had two or three days’ law and liberty, and
it was intimated to me by Tom that I must now attend to duty, or expose
myself to be considered one of what are cantly denominated “John
Company’s hard bargains.”
The adjutant was a good-looking young man, of five-and-twenty, somewhat
of an exquisite in dress, with large Cossack trousers (then the
fashion), and long brass spurs, which I thought he clanked rather
ostentatiously.
With all this, however (for the exquisite and the soldier are not
incompatible), Adjutant Wigwell was evidently a zealous officer, proud
of his regiment, and devoted to drill and duty; this I had learnt,
indeed, from recent observation and common report.
We found him amidst a bevy of khote havildars (_i.e._ pay-sergeants),
with the sergeant-major, havildar-major—deeply engaged in the very
important matter of regulating the length of a pouch-strap, the number
of holes it should have, and the precise position of the buckle, and
trying the fit of the same on a stalwart grenadier of some six feet two.
The sergeant-major, a thick-set Englishman, little more than half the
length and twice the breadth of the gigantic sepoy, was in the act of
adjusting it, with the assistance of the havildar-major, the adjutant’s
native right hand in a sepoy regiment.
Adjutant Wigwell received us kindly, shook me by the hand, and begged us
to be seated and amuse ourselves till he had dismissed the business he
was then attending to, which would not detain him a moment. This being
over, he asked me if I had ever been drilled, and knew any thing of the
manual and platoon, &c.; to which questions I was constrained to reply
in the negative.
“Well,” said he, smiling, “we must take you in hand a little, and make a
soldier of you. Sergeant-major,” said he, addressing that sturdy little
functionary, standing in the verandah.
“Sir,” said the sergeant, touching his hat, and slipping in.
“Sergeant Giblett,” continued he, “this young gentleman, Mr. Gernon, is
doing duty with us; he will soon have to attend all drills and parades;
but, in the meantime, you must give him a little instruction in
marching, and the manual and platoon, with the other young officers
recently arrived to do duty.”
The sergeant again saluted, and said it should be atended to.
“Rattleton,” said the adjutant, “your men fired badly yesterday; how was
that?”
“Why, I believe it was my fault,” said Tom; “I was nervous, and that
confounded gunpowder, the grains as big as swan-shot, blowing in my face
from the men’s pans, made me more so; however, I must summon my force
next time.”
“Do, my dear fellow,” said the adjutant; “the colonel noticed it, I
assure you, and desired me in a friendly way just to give you a hint.”
“He’s a noble fellow,” said Tom, with warmth, “and I love him; I had
rather have my cheeks excoriated, and my eyes damaged in future, than
give him cause of complaint.”
“Well, that’s all as it should be,” said Wigwell. “Rattleton, your
friend Mr. Gernon had better fall in with your company at parade; it may
be pleasant for him, and you, you know,” added he with a smile, “can
give him the benefit of your experience.”
The next day Tom took me to an unoccupied bungalow, near the lines, used
for various purposes, in order that I might have my first lesson in the
manual and platoon.
We found Sergeant Giblett already there, and talking to several cadets
or ensigns, who seemed much amused, and listening to him attentively.
“And that, as near as I can kal-ki-late, was when I first jined the army
under his Excellency Lifttennant Gineral Lord Lake”—was, however, all we
caught of the yarn.
Rattleton now introduced me to my brother-aspirants for military
glory—beardless tyros, wild as unbroken colts, and all agog for fun and
frolic, in whatever shape it might present itself.
“You’ve never had no instruction in the man’il and plytoon, I think you
said, Sir?” said the sergeant to me, touching his hat.
“You’re quite right; I did say so.”
“Well then, sir, if you please, as it’s the first day, it’ll be jist as
well for you to look on.”
“Now, gin’lemen,” said Sergeant-Major Giblett, dismissing at once his
countenance of colloquial familiarity, and assuming the “wrinkled front”
of stem duty; “now, gin’lemen, if you please—we’re a-losing of time, and
had better begin. I think you’re all here, with the hexception of Mr.
Wildman, and he, I am given to onderstand, is ill-disposed this
morning.”
At this speech one of the young hands in the squad winked to his
neighbour, as much as to say, “Twig the sergeant”—he exploded with
laughter; his next file gave him a jerk or dig with his elbow—he lost
his balance, tumbled against his neighbour, and a general derangement of
the ranks followed.
“Come, gin’lemen, gin’lemen,” said the sergeant, half angry, “this won’t
do—this won’t never do; if I am to teach you your man’l and plytoon, you
must be steady—you must upon my life. Come, tention,” said he, briskly
squaring up, and throwing open his shoulders, as if determined to
proceed to business. “Shoulder! up! Order! up! Onfix bagganets! That’s
all right. Shoulder! up! That won’t do, Mr. Cobbold; you must catch her
up sharper than that. Now, please to look at me, sir,” taking the musket
in hand, and doing the thing _secundum artem_.
Another half-smothered laugh again disturbed the little sergeant’s
self-complacency.
“Oh! this can’t be allowed, gin’lemen. I’ll give it up—I’ll give it up,
I will indeed. I’ll report you all to the adjutant, if this here larking
goes on, I will.”
This threat had a sedative effect on the disorderly rank and file, who
now looked wonderfully demure, though with that mock and constrained
gravity which threatened a fresh outbreak on the next elocutionary
attempt of the self-important sergeant.
“Now, gin’lemen, you’ll please to observe that, when I says
‘Shoulder!’—will you look this way, Mr. Wildgoose, if you please?—when I
says ‘Shoulder!’ you must each take a firm ‘grist’ (grasp) of his piece
(a titter)—just here, about the middle; and when I gives the word ‘Up!’
you must chuck her up sharp. Now, then. ‘Shoulder!’ ‘Grist’ her higher,
Mr. Cobbold. ‘Up!’ That’s it.”
“D——n it, Cobbold, take care what you’re at, man,” exclaimed Cobbold’s
left-hand man, on getting a crack on the head from the said Cobbold’s
awkward shouldering.
“Order! as you were!—What are you doing, sir? That’s not right. When I
says ‘As you were,’ I means ‘As you was;’ that is, as you was
afore—rewerting to your former pisishion. Right about face! That’s it.
Now, gin’lemen, when I says ‘Left about face,’ you’ll please to do jist
the same thing, only directly the _contrary_. Steady, gin’lemen, if you
please—steady! Now march in file—quick march—lock-up step!”
“Brown, mind where you’re treading, man.”
“D——n it, I can’t help it; _don’t_ be so savage.”
“Mark time! that is, keep moving without advancing. Halt front! left
back’ards wheel! Now, gin’lemen, you’ll be pleased to remember that when
I gives the words ‘Quick march!’ you’ll fall back’ards on the pivot
man—that is to say, on the wheeling pint—all one as a gate on its
’inges. Quick march! that’s it, gin’lemen—that’s it.”
In this style the good-humoured but consequential little sergeant was
wont to instruct us in the rudimental part of the glorious art of war.
On breaking off and dismissing the awkward squad the young men composing
it assembled round Sergeant Giblett, who appeared to be a prime
favourite amongst them, and he on his part was evidently so much pleased
with them, that it was obviously with difficulty that his good-nature
allowed him to maintain that dignity which he evidently felt, and which
ought to be the inseparable concomitant of command.
“Well, sergeant, how did I do to-day?”
“Why, sir,” said Giblett, “it’s not my wish to flatter no gin’leman, but
you have sartainly improved in your marchings.”
“And me, sergeant,” said another, “how do I get on?”
“Why, sir, you’ll soon be all right, if you pays a little more
attention.”
“I say, sergeant, what makes you call the musket ‘she?’”
“Why, you know, sir, the firelock among ’Ropeyarn[27] sogers (it’s
different, of coorse, among the Seapies[28]) alw’s goes by the
denomy-nation of Brown Bess, and so we calls it ‘she.’”
“Oh, that’s it, is it, sergeant?”
“Take a glass of grog, Giblett, after your fatigues?”
“Thankye, sir, I don’t care if I do.”
“Here, you bearer, black fellow,” said the donor, “_brandy_, _shrub_,
_pawney_, _sergeant_, _ko do_” (_i.e._, give the sergeant some
brandy-and-water).
Sergeant Giblett took the empty glass, extended his arm in one direction
to have it filled, whilst he turned his head in another; bearer applies
his teeth to the brandy-bottle to get the cork out.
“You were a-axing of me, sir, I think, about the cellybrated battle of
Laswarrie, in which we—that is, the ridg’ment I then belonged to—was
present, under Lifttennant Gineral Lord Lake; yes, that was pretty near
the stiffest business we had. There was the battalions of the French
gineral, Munseer Donothing (Duderneg): and very good troops they was,
though not so good as our Seapies. Hulloa!” he exclaimed, breaking off
in his story, and looking towards the tumbler, which the bearer was busy
in filling, “what’s this here man about?—he’s a-givin me all the bottle
of brandy; here come, you must put some of this back.”
“No, no—nonsense, sergeant,” said the liberal donor, “drink it all—it
won’t hurt you.”
This was just what Sergeant Giblett wanted.
“Well, thankye, sir; but I’m afraid its over strong. Gin’lemen, here’s
towards your very good healths.”
So saying, Giblett drained off the dark potation—a regular
“north-wester”—set down the empty glass, and took his leave, reserving
his “yarn” for another time.