Sahib (56 page)

I
F DRINK WAS ONE
major preoccupation for officers and men in British India, women were certainly another. Here the picture is rich and complex, for attitudes to sexual relationships were not simply the result of changing views in Britain, but had a profound effect on cultural interchange in India itself. Although there were many monkish warriors who mortified the flesh with long rides or cold baths, the majority of British officers and men in India found sexual abstinence an unreasonable challenge. A growing minority married European women; some, notably officers and a minority of NCOs whose circumstances permitted it, took
bibis,
or Indian mistresses (although, as we shall soon see, the term often meant a good deal more than this); others sought solace with prostitutes, who themselves varied from beautiful, accomplished (and costly) nautch-girls to worn, hard-working (and economical) women in regimental brothels. Attitudes changed as the period went on, and the arrival of growing numbers of European women, linked with other factors such as the rise of muscular Christianity and the increasing efforts of missionaries, helped widen that thread of cultural apartheid that, broad or narrow, was always woven into British India.

The Georgians could be extraordinarily relaxed about sexual matters. In 1783 William Hickey, who had just spent upwards of 12,000 rupees on furnishing his new property in Calcutta, set up house with his companion Charlotte:

Upon thus settling in town it became necessary for her to go through a disagreeable and foolish ceremony, in those time always practiced by newcomers of the fair sex, and which was called ‘setting-up’, that is the mistress of the house being stuck up, fully dressed, in a chair at the head of the best room, (the apartment brilliantly lighted), having a female friend placed on each side, thus to receive the ladies of the settlement, three gentlemen being selected for the purpose of introducing the respective visitors, male and female, for every lady that called was attended by at least two gentlemen … A further inconvenience attended this practice, which was the necessity of returning every one of the visits thus made.
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However, the fact that Hickey and the beautiful Charlotte were not actually married did not much matter. Nor was Hickey’s reputation ruined when, after Charlotte’s untimely death at the age of twenty-one, he installed the ‘plump and delightful’ Jemdanee as his
bibi
in 1790, writing how he:

had often admired a lovely Hindostanee girl who sometimes visited Carter [a house guest of Hickey’s] at my home, who was very lively and clever. Upon Carter’s leaving Bengal I invited her to become an inmate with me, and from that time to the day of her death Jemdanee, which was her name, lived with me, respected and admired by all my friends by her extraordinary sprightliness and good humour. Unlike the women in general in Asia she never secluded herself from the sight of strangers; on the contrary, she delighted in joining my male parties, cordially joining in the mirth which prevailed, though she never touched wine or spirits of any kind.
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In 1796 she happily told him ‘that she was in a family way, expressing her earnest desire that it might prove “a chuta William Saheb”’. She died in childbirth, and Hickey, rake that he was, bitterly regretted the loss of ‘as gentle and affectionately attached a girl as ever man was blessed with’. The following year their little William ‘suddenly became seriously indisposed’ and, ‘notwithstanding the professional abilities and indefatigable exertions of Dr Hare … ’, died after ten days’ illness, ‘and thus was I deprived of the only living memento of my lamented favourite Jemdanee’.
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A chronicler described Edith Swan-neck, the consort of King Harold, killed at Hastings in 1066, as his ‘wife in the Danish manner’;
bibis
were wives in the Indian manner, and the word subsumes a shade of meaning from mistress to wife. There was no civil marriage in India, and it was impossible for Christian men to marry non-Christian women in church: many
bibis
were, however, married to British husbands according to Hindu or Moslem rites. Their union was regarded as wholly legitimate by their families, and they supported their husbands with a courage and dignity which deserves to be remembered.

Captain Hamish McPherson, for instance, was killed in action commanding his Bahawalpur troops while helping Herbert Edwardes against Mulraj at the battle of Sadusam. McPherson’s men were ‘tolerably well equipped’, observed a Company’s officer, ‘having a band and colours’. McPherson’s Moslem wife had him buried in a splendid tomb, with an inscription that a proud Scotsman would have appreciated:

Hamish McGregor McPherson of Scotland

Killed in battle at the head of his Regiment

While fighting against the Dewan Mool Raj

At Siddhoosam, near Multan, on the

1st July, 1848
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Relationships between European men and Indian women of one sort or another were inevitable, especially given the small numbers of European women in India, though one acid-tongued observer described those ‘memsahibs’ in India as ‘underbred and over-dressed’, and that the men were ‘in general what a Hindoo would call a higher caste than the women’.
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In 1808, the genial Dr Josiah Ridges, surgeon to 2nd Battalion 2nd BNI
(Jansin ki Pultan,
Johnson’s Regiment, to its friends), told a subaltern that abstinence was bad for him and ‘local arrangements’ were therefore essential. He himself lived with his
bibi,
Lutchimai, and was grateful for

a good rough—and a fat a—e – an old man like me needs something to stimulate him into action. She will I fear be getting too fast hold of my attachments by and bye, but never
such a torment as Begum was, this I am determined to guard against.
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In the last twenty years of the eighteenth century it had been regarded as entirely normal for one of the Company’s officials or military officers to maintain his own
zenana,
and in his
East India Vade Mecum,
published in 1810, Thomas Williamson helpfully told youngsters just what they might expect such an establishment to cost them. In 1810 it took about 40 rupees per month to keep a
bibi
while a truly spectacular night with a
nickee
or dancing-girl, who for this sort of expenditure might be expected to show a good deal more than a few deft steps, could cost as much as 1,000 rupees. One major ended up with a
zenana
of sixteen Indian women, for each
bibi
required two or three attendants, with an allowance for betel nut, tobacco, clothes and shoes.

It did not stop at
zenanas.
Many British officers and officials took to smoking the hookah. It became increasingly popular in the eighteenth century, partly because it required an extra servant, the
hookahburdar,
and was thus a visible symbol of its user’s wealth: in 1778 its use was described as ‘universal’. One contemporary tells us how:

The gentlemen introduce their hookahs and smoak in the Company of ladies and … the mixture of sweet-scented Persian tobacco, sweet herbs, coarse sugar, spice etc, which they inhale, comes through clean water and is so very pleasant that many ladies take the tube and draw a little of the smoak into their mouths.
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This sort of smoking also had gently erotic overtones, for a lady might offer a gentleman a refreshing puff from the mouthpiece of her own hookah. The company relaxing after dinner would be entertained by nautch-girls, and British affection for the spectacle continued even after there were enough European women in India to permit mixed dancing. And if the hookah could be mildly erotic, nautch-girls went a good deal further, with ‘languishing glances, wanton smiles, and attitudes not quite consistent with decency … ’.
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But the nautch would eventually lose its special appeal
and become something of a tourist attraction, when the barriers of race went up.

While some local women were regarded as little more than what a later age would call ‘comfort girls’, others were emphatically not. It was easiest for the military adventurers to blur the cultural boundaries. Claude Martin was French by birth, and probably joined the British army after the fall of Pondicherry in 1761. He finished up running the arsenals of Oudh, enjoying the local rank of major general but the pay of a captain. However, he was well paid by the nawab, took a commission on all the arsenal’s purchases, made a good deal of money from indigo cultivation, and perhaps more by loaning money and keeping valuables in safe custody for a cracking 12 per cent per annum. He had a palace in Lucknow and a country house on the River Gumti, both full of paintings, books, manuscripts and beautiful furniture. Martin kept four Eurasian girls in his
zenana,
and had the usual staff of eunuchs and slaves. Most of his staggering fortune – he died in 1800 worth 33
lakhs
of rupees – was used to create the two La Martinière establishments for orphans, one in Lucknow and the other in Lyons.

William Linnaeus Gardner, born in 1770, was a nephew of Alan, 1st baron Gardner, an admiral in the Royal Navy, and, after attaining the rank of captain in the Bengal army, he took service with the Maratha chief Holkar. Gardner tells us how he met his future wife.

When a young man I was entrusted to negotiate a treaty with one of the native princes of Cambay. Durbars and consultations were continually held. During one of the former, at which I was present, a curtain near me was gently pulled aside, and I saw, as I thought, the most beautiful black eyes in the world. It was impossible to think of the treaty: those bright and piercing glances, those beautiful dark eyes continually bewildered me.

I felt flattered that a creature so lovely as she of those deep black, loving eyes should venture to gaze upon me. To what danger might not the veiled beauty be exposed should the movement of the
purdah
be seen by any of those present at the durbar? On quitting the assembly I discovered that the bright-eyed beauty was the daughter of the prince. At the next
durbar my agitation and anxiety were extreme to again behold the bright eyes that haunted my dreams and my thoughts by day. The curtain was again gently waved, and my fate was decided.
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Gardner married the princess, though she was only thirteen at the time. He refused to fight the British in 1803, and escaped execution by jumping into a river and swimming to safety. Re-entering the Company’s service, he raised the irregular cavalry regiment Gardner’s Horse. His wife bore him two sons and a daughter, and died in August 1835, just six months after Gardner. One of their sons married a niece of the Emperor Akbar Shah, and the other wed an Indian lady who bore him two daughters. One of these married a nephew of the 2nd Lord Gardner, and their son Alan Hyde Gardner succeeded to the title. In 1892 Herbert Compton wrote with evident delight that ‘the present Lord Gardner is a grandson of a prince of Cambay, nephew to a late Emperor of Delhi, and a late king of Oudh’.
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Gardner’s descendants live on as
zamindars
in Uttar Pradesh, though the family barony is now dormant.

Captain Henry Hearsey of the Company’s service married a Jat lady, and their son Hyder Yung Hearsey (his middle name later anglicised to Young), was born in 1782 and entered the Maratha service, leaving it, along with many of his British brother officers, before Assaye. He married a daughter of a deposed prince of Cambay, another of whose daughters had married Gardner, and had a substantial
zenana
into the bargain. Hearsey had a board for the game of
pachesi
(Indian ludo) tattooed on his stomach so that his wives could enjoy a game while he relaxed or, indeed, recovered. One of Hyder Hearsey’s daughters married her step-uncle Lieutenant General Sir John Bennet Hearsey, who himself had both legitimate and illegitimate families. It was Andrew, one of Sir John’s Eurasian sons, who had horse-whipped the editor of the
Pioneer
for a racially offensive article. Given a month’s imprisonment in Allahabad jail, Andrew was then insulted by the governor, a friend of the horse-whipped editor, who sneeringly used the expression ‘half-caste’.

The assault would have been puzzling a century before, there being, as Percival Spear wrote, ‘no very lasting colour prejudice in the early eighteenth century … marriage with coloured women was
accepted as the normal course. Moreover, during most of that period sons of domiciled families were considered to have a moral right to employment.’
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In 1825–28 Philip Meadows-Taylor spent much of his time at William Palmer’s house at Hyderabad. His father, General Palmer,

had been secretary to Warren Hastings, had taken part in the most eventful scenes in early Anglo-Indian history, and had married, as was very usual then, among English gentlemen, one of the princesses of the royal house of Delhi … His grand-looking old mother, the Begum Sahib, blessed me, and tied a rupee in a silk handkerchief round my arm … 

Meadows-Taylor married Palmer’s daughter and there were no raised eyebrows: there would be ten years later.

Whether born in Britain or in India, many officers were comfortably Indianised in their private lives, some wearing ‘banyan’ coats and ‘Moormen’s’ trousers at home, and sometimes outside, and in 1739 a council meeting in Calcutta was held in loose coats, with
hookahburdars
in attendance. In the second half of the eighteenth century many gentlemen dressed entirely in Mughal style, with loose shirts and trousers, embroidered waistcoats and turbans when at home, and it was only in the early nineteenth century that the Company gradually proscribed the practice. As late as the 1840s some of the old warriors of Skinner’s generation could still be seen in Calcutta. Bishop Heber saw General Sir David Ochterlony, victor in the 1816 campaign against the Gurkhas, in retirement. He was ‘a tall, pleasant-looking old man, but so wrapped up in shawls … and a Moghul furred cap, that his face was all that was visible’.
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Sir Charles Metcalfe, a distinguished and talented civil servant, who stood in as Governor-General after the departure of Lord William Bentinck in 1835, had an Indian consort, probably a Sikh lady he had met on a diplomatic mission to Ranjit Singh’s court in 1809. However, she was unable to assume her proper role as Metcalfe’s hostess, and Lady Ryan, wife of the Chief Justice of Bengal, was acknowledged as the head of Calcutta society. But Metcalfe was wholly unrepentant, leading Isabella Fane to tell her aunt that: ‘Sir C has the reputation of not caring for [i.e. not caring about] colour in his little amours’.
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