THE DELHI TERRITORY
1829-1846
John Lawrence, in company with his elder brother Henry, entered in 1829
upon his new life, beginning with a five months’ voyage through the
Atlantic and Indian Oceans. On this voyage he suffered severely from
sea-sickness, and the suffering was protracted over several weeks. This
must have aggravated any constitutional tendency to nervous irritability
in his head. He landed at Calcutta in February, 1830, just when the cool
season was over and the weather was growing warmer and warmer till it
attained the heat of early summer. Then he passed through the rainy
period of midsummer, which in those latitudes always had a depressing
effect on him as on many others. He was an ordinarily good student in
the College of Fort William--the official name whereby the stronghold of
Calcutta is called. He mixed but little in the society of the capital,
and pined for his English home, fancying that poverty there would be
better than affluence in the East; he even allowed himself to be
dominated by this sort of home-sickness, for the first and last time in
his life. However, after sojourning for a few months in Calcutta, and
passing the examination in the vernacular of Upper India, he asked for
and obtained an appointment at Delhi, partly because his brother Henry
was serving in the Artillery at Kurnal in that neighbourhood, partly
also because the far-off frontier had a fascination for him as for many
others. In those days a journey from Calcutta to Delhi (now accomplished
by railway within three days) often occupied nearly three months by boat
on the Ganges; but by travelling in a palanquin he traversed the
distance, about eleven hundred miles, within three weeks.
Arrived at Delhi, in 1830, he felt that happy revulsion of thought and
sentiment which is well known to many who have passed through similar
circumstances. He had not only landed on a strange and distant shore,
but had advanced many hundred miles into the interior of the country. He
had thus, so to speak, cut his cables and cast away home-sickness,
treasuring the memory of the former existence in the sunniest corner of
his heart, but bracing and buckling himself to the work of the new
existence. This work of his, too, was varied and intensely human in its
interests. Its nature was such as made him anxious to learn, and yet the
learning was extraordinarily hard at first. His dormant energies were
thus awakened, as he dived deep into the affairs of the Indian people,
listened to their petitions, guarded their rights, collected the taxes,
watched the criminal classes, traced out crime, regulated the police.
The work was in part sedentary, but it also afforded him healthy
exercise on foot and on horseback, as he helped in supervising the
streets, the drains, the roads, and the municipal institutions of all
sorts in a great city and its neighbourhood.
He was, moreover, impressed deeply by imperial Delhi itself as one of
the most noteworthy cities in the world, and as
“The lone mother of dead empires.”
The matchless palace of the Great Mogul overhanging the river Jumna, the
hall of audience, the white marble mosque, a veritable pearl of
architecture, the great city mosque, probably the finest place of
worship ever raised by Moslem hands, the ruins outside the walls of
several capitals belonging to extinct dynasties, doubtless affected his
imagination in some degree. But he was too much pre-occupied by work to
regard these things as they would be regarded by artists or
antiquarians. Nevertheless his native keenness of observation served him
well even here, for he would describe the structural merits of these
noble piles, the clean cutting of the red-sandstone and the welding
together of the massive masonry. He was more likely to observe fully the
geographical situation, which gave commercial and political importance
to the city in many ages, and preserved it as a capital throughout
several revolutions. In the intervals of practical business he must have
noticed the condition of the Great Mogul, whom the British Government
then maintained as a phantom sovereign in the palace. But he could not
have anticipated the position of fell activity into which this very _roi
fainéant_ was fated to be thrust some twenty-seven years later. It will
be seen hereafter that the local knowledge which he thus gained of
Delhi, served him in good stead during the most critical period of his
after-life.
In 1834 he was placed in temporary charge of the district of Paniput, in
a vast plain that stretches along the western bank of the Jumna. His
being after only four years’ service entrusted, as acting Magistrate and
Collector, with the command of a district containing some thousands of
square miles and some hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, was a proof
of the early reputation he had won as a capable officer and
well-informed administrator. At Paniput he controlled, as a superior,
much the same work as that which he had performed as a subordinate at
Delhi. That which he had learnt by laborious self-instruction on a
smaller scale, he was now to practise on a larger. The area being
extensive, and rapidity of movement being essential to the maintenance
of a personal control over affairs, he used to ride on horseback over
his district from end to end. Every arduous or dangerous case, fiscal or
criminal, he would keep in his own hands; though even in these early
days he trusted his subordinates when trustworthy, and made them do
their duty as he did his. He did not, indeed, adorn all that he touched,
but he stamped on it the mark of individuality. The natives soon learnt
to regard him as the embodiment of British justice. The various sections
of the population, the evil-disposed or the industrious, the oppressor
or the oppressed, the suppliant for redress or the hardened
wrong-doer,--all in their respective ways felt his personality. The good
officers in India live, move and have their being among the people, and
such was his daily routine. He could not fail, moreover, to be moved by
the historic traditions of Paniput--the scene of the Mahabhârat, that
antique epic of the Hindoos; the victory of the young Akber, the first
of the Great Moguls; the Persian invasion under Nâdir Shah; the rout of
the Mahrattas under Ahmed Shah the Afghan: especially must the tragic
and touching incidents of the Mahratta disaster have appealed to
susceptibilities such as his.
In these days he practised himself much in horsemanship, becoming a
strong rider and a good judge of horses; it was truly to be said of him
_gaudet equis canibusque_. He was a keen observer of steers and heifers,
of bullocks for draught and plough. Being fond of animals generally, he
studied their breeding, nurture and training, their temper, habits and
capabilities. Though a stranger to botany as a science, he knew the
local names of every tree and plant. He had a discriminating eye for the
varieties of soil, the qualities of growing crops, the faults and merits
of husbandry. Though not versed in the theory of economic science, he
had an insight into the causes affecting the rise and fall of prices,
the interchange of commodities, the origin and progress of wealth, the
incidence of taxation. He had hardly, indeed, mastered the
technicalities of finance, yet he had a natural bent for figures, and
was a financier almost by instinct.
This was the spring-tide of his public life when he was bursting forth
into vigour of body, soaring in spirit, and rejoicing like a young lion
in healthy strength. Then, too, he was able to withstand the climate all
the year round. For although in summer the sky was as brass, the earth
as iron, the wind as a blast from a furnace, still in winter the
marching in tents was salubrious, the breeze invigorating, the
temperature delicious by day, and the air at night frosty.
After an incumbency of three years at Paniput he was transferred to
Gurgaum, a district south of Delhi. There his work was the same as that
already described, only somewhat harder, owing to the lawless and
intractable habits of some classes among the inhabitants, and because of
drought which visited and distressed that region. Then in 1838 he was
appointed Settlement-Officer of Etawah, a district south-east of Delhi
between the Ganges and the Jumna. In technical or official language, his
settlement-work included the whole scope of landed affairs, in the most
comprehensive as well as in the minutest sense,--the assessment of that
land-tax, which is the main burden of the peasantry and the prime
resource of the State--the cadastral survey of every field in every
village or parish--the adjudication of all disputes regarding the
rights, interests and property in land--the registration of landed
tenures. His duty herein was, of all duties which can be entrusted to a
man in India, the one of most interest and importance, the one which
penetrates deepest into the national life, the one for which the
Government always chooses its most promising officers. This duty,
moreover, universally attractive to the best men throughout India, had
for him especial charms in the districts between the Ganges and the
Jumna. For here he found, in all their pristine and unimpaired vigour,
those Village Communities which have survived the shocks of war and
revolution, and have engaged the thoughts of jurists and philosophers.
His business was to guard the innate and indestructible energy of these
ancient communities, to adapt their development to the wants of the
present time, to fence round their privileges and responsibilities with
all the forms of a civilized administration. The experience thus gained
was to him of unspeakable value in the most arduous passages of his
after life. But though he entered with all his heart and mind into this
work, he felt the district itself to be dull and distasteful after Delhi
and Paniput, and this feeling shows how the antique splendour of the
former and the historic traditions of the latter had affected his
imagination. He could no longer live contentedly unless amidst his
surroundings there were something grand for his mind to feed upon.
However grateful he may have felt to Etawah for the experience it had
given him, he never looked back on the place with pleasure. One
melancholy recollection abided with him, for it was here that he caught
his first serious illness, a violent fever which rapidly reduced him to
the verge of death. By an effort of nature he shook it off and rallied
for a while. Then in the autumn of 1839 he glided, as an invalid in
river-boats, down the Jumna and the Ganges to Calcutta. There he had a
relapse of fever, and decided in the beginning of 1840 to proceed to
England, being entitled to furlough after his active service of ten
years. He arrived in England during June of that year.
The first act in the drama of his public life was thus concluded. He had
done well, he had mastered the details of a difficult profession, in his
own words he “had learnt his business.” He was esteemed by his comrades
and his superiors as a competent officer in all respects; beyond this,
however, nothing more was said or thought of him at that time. All this
has been and yet will be recorded of hundreds of British officers in
India, before or after him, whose names are nevertheless not written in
the roll of fame. _Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi_: indeed many men
as good as he then was are now living and will still live. Furthermore,
many officers have, in the course of their first ten years, shown more
signs of genius, or talent, or statesmanlike accomplishments, than he
had displayed up to this time. When he sailed from Calcutta for England
in 1840 neither he himself nor his friends had, on a retrospect of his
first ten years, formed any idea of the career which he was to run
during his second ten years, and had never, even in day-dreams, caught a
vision of the destiny which awaited him during his third ten years. The
elements of his character were being gradually fused into granitic
consistency. To him was applicable that British metaphor, which though
familiar is never trite because the proofs of its truth are
oft-recurring: the sturdy oak grows slowly, but in proportion to that
slowness is the ultimate strength to bear the weight, withstand the
strain and resist the storm.
Returning to England during the summer of 1840, he found the home of his
youth at Clifton much altered. His father had passed away, his sister
Letitia had married, but his mother remained to benefit by his
affectionate assistance. Though his health was not re-established, yet
his energy and spirits revived under the European skies, and his
vivacity astonished both friends and acquaintances. He proceeded to
Bonn, and stayed there for a time with his sister-in-law, the wife of
George Lawrence who was in Afghanistan. Then he paid visits in England
and travelled in Scotland and Ireland. In Donegal he was so fortunate as
to meet Harriette, daughter of the Reverend Richard Hamilton, whom he
married in August 1841, thus forming a union of the very happiest
character. He proceeded to the continent of Europe on a wedding-tour,
passing through Switzerland to Italy, and gathered notions, in his
practical way, regarding the policy and strategy of ancient Rome. He
particularly noticed the campaigns of Hannibal, to which he often
alluded in after-life. But the Indian ailments partially reappeared in
the malarious climate of the Roman campagna. At Naples, in the beginning
of 1842, he received news of the disasters at Caubul and hurried home to
England, sorely anxious regarding the captivity of his brother George
amidst the Afghans. In London he had a grave relapse of illness, but was
sufficiently recovered by the autumn to start for India by the overland
route, after bidding a last farewell to his mother.
During his sojourn in England of little more than two years, he left
upon every one who conversed with him a marked impression of his
originality, elasticity, animated conversation, brightness of spirit and
physical force. Those who saw him only when he was well, little thought
how suddenly he could become ill, and--erroneously, alas!--supposed him
to be a man of abounding health as well as strength. None, however,
foresaw his future greatness, or even predicted for him a career more
useful than that which is run by the many able and zealous men who are
found in the Indian service. This failure of prescience is the more
remarkable, because his elder brother Henry had long been designated by
admiring comrades as one of the heroes and statesmen of the future.
He landed with his wife at Bombay towards the end of 1842, and thus
gained his first experience of Western India. Thence he travelled by
palanquin, at the rate of thirty miles a day, over the eight hundred
miles that separated him from Allahabad in the North-Western Provinces
to which he officially belonged. In the beginning of 1843 he marched at
the rate of ten miles a day in tents towards the Delhi territory, where
he was thankful to find employment. The tent-life in the bracing
winter-season of Upper India was very beneficial to him physically, and
he resumed work amidst his early associations in good health. With his
wife and young children he settled down to the routine of public life,
and girded himself for the discharge of ordinary duties. At Kurnal, not
far from Delhi, he made a searching and practical analysis of the causes
which produced a malarious and disabling sickness among the troops
stationed there. In 1844 he was appointed to the substantive post of
Magistrate and Collector of Delhi. While holding this appointment he
laid the foundation of his fortunes in public life. In November, 1845,
he first met the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, who passed through
Delhi to join the army assembling near the Sutlej for the first Sikh
war. His bearing, conversation and subsequent proceedings, made a
lasting impression on the mind of the Governor-General, who ever
afterwards spoke and wrote of him as the ideal of what a civil officer
for India ought to be.
He soon justified by deeds the high estimate thus formed respecting
him, for he was charged with the duty of finding transport for the siege
train with its heavy guns, stores and munitions from Delhi to the
battlefields on the bank of the Sutlej; and this transport was to
consist of four thousand carts with bullocks and drivers complete. He
furnished a signal instance of the manner whereby in India the civil
administration aids the army by providing transport in time of war. Such
transport, in quantities adequate for the service, cannot be obtained
without a really powerful organisation; during public emergency it can
by law be forcibly impressed, but when thus collected it is likely to
prove inefficient unless the civil authority makes such arrangements as
may secure the contentment of those from whom the vehicles and the
animals are hired: in this case his arrangements were practically
perfect. Within a very short time he so managed that all the thousands
of carts should be driven by their owners, who, for good hire, partly
paid in advance, became willing to undertake the service. He despatched
the long-extended train in complete order so that it arrived, without
any straggling or deserting, without the failure of a man, a wheel or a
bullock, in time for the battle of Sobraon. For the first time in his
life a public service had been demanded from him of definite importance,
requiring knowledge of the natives, aptitude for command and power of
organisation. He at once stepped to the very front as if to the manner
born. His capacity, too, was evinced in a large affair, wherein the
Governor-General from personal experience was peculiarly qualified to
adjudge the merit. So when, as a consequence of the war, the
Trans-Sutlej States were shorn from the Sikh kingdom and annexed to the
British dominions, he was appointed by Lord Hardinge to be the
Commissioner and Superintendent of the newly-acquired territory.
He quitted his command at Delhi early in 1846, never dreaming of the
wonderful circumstances in which he was destined to resume it only
eleven short years later in 1857. Those who reflect on the reserve
force, the dormant capacity, the latent energy that existed within him,
might imagine poetically the surging thoughts that made his breast heave
as he drove or rode off from the bank of the Jumna with his face set
towards the bank of the Sutlej. But such was not his manner; if he had
leisure to meditate at all, he would have peered into the future with a
modest even a humble look, anticipating the disappointments rather than
the successes that might be in store for him. On his way, though at the
most favourable season of the year, he was seized with a sharp attack of
cholera. From that, however, he rallied quickly, and crossed the Sutlej
in sufficiently good health, and with buoyant spirits.