Towards the end of those fifteen years resolution and untiring energy triumphed; and from the age of about thirty Mr. Tucker’s rise to a good position was steady.
In 1792 he became a member of the Bengal Civil Service. In 1809 he was made Secretary in the Public Department. But he had had heavy work and many troubles, and his health began to fail; so the following year, after a quarter of a century of unbroken exile, he set off for England, carrying with him Government testimonials, couched in the warmest terms. These testimonials spoke of his ‘long and meritorious services,’ of his ‘peculiar abilities,’ of his ‘talents and acquirements of the highest order,’ of his ‘unwearied diligence,’ of his ‘unimpeached integrity.’ All this, of one who, twenty-five years before, had landed on Indian shores an almost penniless adventurer, without so much as a definite plan of what to do with himself and his energies!
That very year he was engaged, and the year after he was married, to Jane Boswell, daughter of a Mr. Robert Boswell of Edinburgh, who was related to the well-known biographer of Dr. Johnson. The Boswell family was known to have first settled in Berwickshire as far back as in the days of William Rufus, and afterwards in Fifeshire and Ayrshire at Balmute and Auchinleck. Mr. Robert Boswell’s grandmother, Lady Elisabeth Bruce, was a daughter of the first Earl of Kincardine. Mr. Boswell was a devotedly good and also an able man; a minister, not in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, but in some smaller religious body; and his death took place in a somewhat tragic manner, before the date of his daughter’s marriage to Mr. Tucker. While preaching, he quoted the text which begins, ‘All flesh is as grass——,’ and as he uttered the words he fell back, dead!
A characteristic anecdote is told of his wife,—A. L. O. E.’s grandmother. She had a large family, and was badly off. One day a poor woman applied to her for help; and Mrs. Boswell called out to her daughter Jane, to know what money they happened to have in hand. ‘Only one seven-shilling piece,’ was the answer. Mrs. Boswell’s voice sounded distinctly,—‘Give it, then; give it to the woman.’ ‘But, dear mamma, there is no more money in the house,’ remonstrated Jane. More decisively still came the response, ‘Give it, then; give it to the woman.’ And given it was. The story almost inevitably recalls that of the Widow’s Mite; even though from certain points of view one is dubious as to the wisdom of the act.
Despite the poverty of the family Mrs. Boswell’s daughters settled well in life. One married Mr. Egerton of the High Court in Calcutta; one married Dr. Roxburgh; one married General Carnegie; one married Mr. Anderson; one only, Veronica by name, remained unmarried; and Jane became the wife of Henry St. George Tucker. She was at that time a gentle and beautiful girl of about twenty-one, while Mr. Tucker was already over forty.
Early in the following year, 1812, they went out to India together; and his delight was great in returning to the country where he had toiled so long, and had made many friends. This time, however, his stay in the east was to be brief.
His first child, Henry Carre, was born that same year; and two years later came his eldest daughter, Sibella Jane. Also in 1814 fell the blow of his Mother’s death, over which, strong man that he was, he wept passionately. Then his wife’s health seemed to be seriously failing; and this decided him to leave the land of his adoption, throwing up all prospects in that direction. In 1815, the first year of European peace, at the age of forty-five, he ‘retired from the active service of the Company,’ travelling by long sea with his invalid wife and his two little ones, and spending some time at the Cape by the way. Before they arrived in England another little one, Frances Anne, had been added to their number.
A home was found in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh; and for some years, till 1819 or 1820, he was well content to remain there, living a quiet home-life, with a little family growing around him. Two more boys came, George William and Robert Tudor,—the former dying in babyhood, the latter growing up to be slain in the Indian Mutiny. Losing the infant George was a dire trouble to his parents; and Mrs. Tucker, believing that he had succumbed to the keen cold of Edinburgh, was never at rest in her mind until the northern home had been exchanged for one in the south. Such a change was not to be accomplished in a day, but in the course of time it came about; and meanwhile the remaining children were a constant source of interest and delight. The ‘baby’ at this date was Robert; afterwards a very favourite elder brother of A. L. O. E. His children, known in the family by the name of ‘The Robins,’ became in later years as her own.
Mr. Tucker could not long remain contented without definite work. He was still in the prime of life, still under fifty; and an eager desire took hold of him to enter public life once more, to serve again his own country, as well as the eastern land of his adoption. These purposes he thought might best be carried out by his becoming, if possible, one of the Directors of the East India Company. For the fulfilment of his desire—a desire, not for gain or wealth or position, but for the means of doing good—he had to wait a considerable time. He had indeed to wait until his next little daughter, Charlotte Maria, was five years old. Then, at length, he was appointed Director; one of the Twenty-four who, in those days, practically ruled India. Thereafter his influence was steadfastly exerted in the direction of a wise and righteous government of the dark millions of Hindustan; the land in which he had spent a quarter of a century of his life, and to which afterward not only all his five sons went, but one of his five daughters also, in the advanced years of her life.