CHAPTER XVI.
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 itis, 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 thelaudator 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 tothe top of his bent, never contradicted—moneyad 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 theirchagrin 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, wouldhave 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 adirgee(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? howI 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 Tominstanter.
“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 Barrackporegupand 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 thenonchalanceimaginable. “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 Iammarried, 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 longbrass 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 thingsecundum 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 thecontrary. 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’tbe 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.