“Colonel Gardner has, of course, adopted many of the opinions and ideas of the people with whom he has passed so great a portion of his time, and in his mode of living he may be termed half an Asiatic; this, however, does not prevent him from being a most acceptable companion to the European residents, who take the greatest delight in his society whenever he appears among them. His autobiography would be a work of the highest value, affording a picture of Indian manners and Indian policy, with which few besides himself have ever had an opportunity of becoming so intimately acquainted. As he is still in the prime and vigour of existence, we may hope that some such employment of these piping times of peace may be suggested to him, and that he may be induced to devote the hours spent in retirement at Khāsgunge, to the writing or the dictation of the incidents of his early life. In looking back upon past events, the Colonel occasionally expresses a regret that he should have been induced to quit the king’s service, in which, in all probability, he would have attained the highest rank; but, eminently qualified for the situation in which he has been placed, and more than reconciled to the destiny which binds him to a foreign soil, the station he occupies leaves him little to desire; and he has it in his power to be still farther useful to society by unlocking the stores of a mind fraught with information of the highest interest.”
1835, March 5th.—Two letters having appeared in the “Mofussul Akhbar,” a provincial paper, Colonel Gardner published this answer:—
“To the Editor of the Mofussul Akhbar.
“Dear Sir,—In your paper of the 28th ultimo, just received, I find I have been unwillingly dragged from my obscurity by the author of ‘Sketches of Living Remarkable Characters in India.’ This I should not have noticed, but for a mistake or two that it is my duty to correct. In the first place, it was Colonel Casement who ordered me, and instructed me in his name, to attempt the negotiation for the surrender of the garrison of Komalmair. I obeyed his order successfully, only demurring at the sum demanded, 30,000 rupees, which, for so weak a garrison, I considered extravagant: but the resident Colonel Tod arrived at this stage of the business with superior diplomatic power. Colonel Casement was no longer consulted, and my poor rushlight was hidden under a bushel. But who can feel any thing against the author of such a splendid and correct work as ‘Rajustan?’ The writer of the extract has probably mistaken Komalmair for the Fort of Rampoora,—where, under the instructions of Colonel Vauzemen, the negotiation for the evacuation was entirely entrusted to me; and, for the sum of 7000 rupees, a siege was prevented at a very advanced season of the year, when, as General Ouchterlony wrote to me, he would otherwise have been obliged to order the battering-train from Agra.
“When I made my escape, as detailed, by swimming the Taptee, it was from the tender mercies of the gentle Brahman, our late pensioner Emurt Row’s force, by whom I was then in close confinement, and not from Holkar.
“I fear I must divest my marriage with her highness the Begam of a great part of its romantic attraction, by confessing that the young Begam was only thirteen years of age when I first applied for and received her mother’s consent; and which marriage probably saved both their lives. Allow me to assure you, on the very best authority, that a Moslem lady’s marriage with a Christian, by a Cazee, is as legal in this country as if the ceremony had been performed by the Bishop of Calcutta; a point lately settled by my son’s marriage with the niece of the Emperor, the Nuwab Mulka Humanee Begam; and that the respectability of the females of my family amongst the natives of Hindostān has been settled by the Emperor many years ago, he having adopted my wife as his daughter; a ceremony satisfactorily repeated by the Queen, on a visit to my own house in Delhi. I can assure my partial sketcher, that my only daughter died in 1804, and that my grand-daughters, by the particular desire of their grandmother, are Christians. It was an act of her own, as by the marriage agreement, the daughters were to be brought up in the religion of the mother; the sons in that of your
“Very obedient, humble servant,
“W. L. G⸺.”
“Khasgunge, 5th March, 1835.”
Colonel Tod, in a letter to the editor of “the Asiatic Journal,” thus speaks of Colonel Gardner:—“A day or two previous to this number (of your journal) being lent me, an intimate friend of Colonel Gardner’s spent the evening with me; and as it is almost impossible that any two men, at all acquainted with his diversified life, could talk of him without expressing a wish that he would become his own biographer,—the subject being started, we mutually agreed, that, qualified in every way as he is for the task, the result would be both interesting and instructive. Amongst other remarks, I observed that, although he was well known to me by character, and I had to bear testimony to the brave conduct of a part of his corps, attached to me in 1817; the only time I ever had the pleasure of seeing him was the day following the surrender of Komulmér, when he dined with me.