Memoirs of a griffin

by Francis John Bellew

One of the gates of the palace is called the “Delhi Gate,” and in my time a subaltern’s guard was always stationed there. A young sub, on one occasion, at the residency table, I believe, asked a friend to take his turn of duty there. “Excuse me,” said his friend, “I can’t be your delegate (Delhi Gate) to-day.”

One observed that grain in one part of the city sold for so much. “Yes,” replied another, “but that is not the aggregate (Agra Gate) price.”

These samples may suffice.

I soon began to discover the truth of the adjutant’s remark, that Colonel Bobbery was fond of “working the young hands;” for, what with morning and evening drills, parades, and attending guard-mountings, &c., I had little rest or enjoyment. The plain fact was, that I was bent on pleasure and hated duty, and the colonel, by giving me “excess on’t,” i.e. of the latter, seemed injudiciously determined to increase my dislike.

The more I think on my early Indian career, and that of other youths, the more satisfied I am that the sudden transition from school to a state of independence is most injurious to the individual and his future happiness; detrimental to the interest of the state and that of the people we govern; and, in short, that school-boys are not fit to be masters of themselves or to command others.

Nationally, we possess vast science and almost illimitable powers of destruction; and nationally, too, we are respected; but not so much so, I think, individually.

I have met with a great amount of calm, quiet, unprejudiced good sense, much reasonableness and rationality, amongst the natives of India of a certain rank, and, when such are disposed to give you their confidence, nothing is more frequently the subject of remark with them than the amount of power we confide to inexperienced hands—to mere chokras (“boys”), as they term them, and at nothing do they express more surprise.

The natives of India are deeply susceptible of kindness, and possessed, on the whole, of fine and amiable temperaments. If Europeans on all occasions would regard their feelings and prejudices, which they certainly ought to do, considering how strong are their own, I verily believe that they might bind them firmly to us, that is, as far as aliens ever can be bound, and erect our power on the noblest of foundations—their hearts. Still they must never be allowed to think that our kindness springs from fear or weakness.

I am aware that the conduct of the English towards the inhabitants of India is much more conciliating than it was; still, John Bull is ever a rough subject, and too prone to employ the fortiter in re, rather than the suaviter in modo. His pride prevents him from being amiable and conciliating, and however much he may be feared and respected, he has not the good luck to be loved, from the Straits of Calais to the Great Wall of China.

I doubt if, in the present day, such freaks would be tolerated in a commandant as those in which our old buffer was continually wont to indulge, in order to gratify his odd and despotic feelings. Besides abusing the men in the most violent manner (he had a regular ascending scale—a sort of gamut of Galle, i.e. Hindoostanee Billingsgate—on which few could go higher than himself) till they trembled with rage and indignation, he would, when out of humour, carry them straight across the country, formed, in line, in a steeple-chase sort of style, over banks and ditches, through standing corn and ploughed fields, for three or four miles, as the crow flies, in a broiling sun, and then, galloping home, would leave the next in command, or adjutant, to bring them back, covered with dust and drenched with perspiration.