BANGALORE—THE ENGLISH CANTONMENT.
About a mile distant from the old fort and city of Bangalore are the English cantonment and modern native town. Conceive a field or parade-ground a mile and a half in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth, lined on each side by avenues of large beautiful trees, overshadowing the encircling footpath and carriage-drive. Along the southern boundary of this parade-ground are the houses and shops of the Europeans and Eurasians; whilst to the north are lines of barracks for both European and native troops, from the midst of which rises prominently the tower of St Andrew’s Church, which is, or was, the finest and highest building in Bangalore. Many are the beautiful roads stretching away from this parade-ground into the country, where are the picturesque dwelling-houses of civilians and officers, whose encircling gardens all the year round are in perpetual bloom—for Bangalore, though in a tropical region, has an Italian climate. The fortunate Europeans who are stationed there are not scorched up by the terrible heat under which their unlucky countrymen must swelter at Madras and in the southern plains; and Christmas comes to them at Bangalore, not wreathed with snowflakes and pendent with icicles, as it does to us, but beautiful with roses and variegated garlands of flowers.
It was rather a novel thing for my friends Dr Norman Macleod and Dr Watson to be taken on a New-year’s day, as I took them in 1868, to a magnificent show of flowers and fruits in the ‘Lall-baugh’ Gardens of Bangalore. In his usual happy style, the celebrated Norman thus relates his visit: ‘The European quarter is as different from the Pettah as Belgravia is from the east end of London. Here the houses are in their own compounds with shrubs and flower-gardens quite fresh and blooming. Open park-like spaces meet the eye everywhere, with broad roads as smooth and beautiful as the most finished in England. Equipages whirl along, and ladies and gentlemen ride by on horseback. One catches a glimpse of a church tower or steeple; and these things, together with the genial air, make one feel once more at home; at all events, in a bit of territory which seems cut out of home and settled in India. There are delightful drives, one to the Lall-baugh laid out in the last century by Hyder Ali. Our home feeling was greatly intensified by attending a flower-show. There was the usual military band; and crowds of carriages conveyed fashionable parties to the entrance. Military officers and civil servants of every grade were there, up to Mr Bowring, Chief Commissioner of Mysore. The most remarkable and interesting spectacles to me were the splendid vegetables of every kind, including potatoes which would have delighted an Irishman; leeks and onions to be remembered, like those of Egypt; cabbages, turnips, cauliflowers, peas, beans, such as England could hardly equal; splendid fruit, apples, peaches, oranges, figs, and pomegranates; the display culminating in a magnificent array of flowers, none of which pleased me more than the beautiful roses, so redolent of home. Such were the sights of a winter’s day at Bangalore.’
Around the English cantonment, more especially on the north side of it, is the modern town of Bangalore, containing about sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly Tamulians, the descendants of those native camp-followers and adherents who accompanied the British forces from Madras and the plains of the Carnatic when they conquered and took possession of the land. There are likewise at Bangalore a goodly number of English and Irish pensioners, who have chosen rather to abide in India than come back to this country; and certainly, with scanty means, they are better off there in a warm and genial clime than they would be here, with our long and dreary cold and icy winters. And when those pensioners are sober and industrious, they have abundant opportunities in India to enable them to support themselves and their families in great comfort, and even to become what we Scotch people call ‘bein folk.’ I could give many pleasing instances from amongst them of ‘success in life.’ I knew three Scotch gentlemen who were highly respected bank agents, and who had gone to India as artillerymen in the Honourable East India Company’s service. But although it be thus a pleasant fact that many of our pensioned soldiers have done well and prospered in India, yet it is melancholy to relate that a goodly portion of them are sadly wanting in sobriety and industry, and consequently their continued stay in that country is not for good, but for evil. So impressed was I with this that, when asked by a high military official for my opinion as to whether the government ought to give greater encouragement to the time-served soldiers to settle permanently in India, I at once and decidedly said No; because, when freed from military discipline, their lives too frequently were such that they lowered the prestige of the English name, and helped to injure the salutary respect which the natives have hitherto had for their white-faced rulers.
In a pretty little village near Madras, called Poonamalee, as well as in Bangalore, there dwell very many of those pensioners with their families. I was wont to pay periodical visits to this place on professional duty; and certainly I found it at first not only strange but grotesque to see young men and maidens and numerous children, with faces as black as a minister’s coat, but yet bearing some good old Scottish name, and speaking the English with an accent as if they had been born and bred in the wilds of Lochaber. My beadle, as sable a youth as could be, was a M‘Cormick, and proudly claimed to be an Inverness-shire man. I remember, towards the close of the Mutiny, of driving with my wife, on a moonlight evening through a beautiful ‘tope’ of palm-trees, when suddenly our ears caught the distant strain of the bagpipes. There was no mistaking it; faint though it was, we could distinguish it floating and wailing through the silent night as M‘Clymont’s Lament. Gradually the music became louder, until we were able to discover whence it emanated. I got out of the carriage before an opening in the trees, and winding my way by a narrow path, I came at last to a small bungalow where a man was strutting up and down the veranda playing on a genuine pair of Scottish bagpipes. His garments were white, but his face was perfectly black. He was astonished at my appearance, and so was I at his; and my astonishment was not diminished when in answer to a question as to his name, he replied to me in a pleasant Argyllshire accent: ‘My name is Coll M‘Gregor, sir; and my father was a piper in the forty-second Highlanders, and I believe he came from a place they called Inveraray.’ Poor M‘Gregor! from that night I knew him well. Black though he was, he was a most worthy man; and one of the last sad duties I performed ere leaving India was to visit him when dying in the hospital, and to bury him when dead amongst the sleeping Scotchmen in St Andrew’s churchyard.
In the Illustrated London News there is a picture entitled ‘Recruits’ which gives a very faithful representation of the composition of the British army. A smart recruiting sergeant is leading away captive a batch of young men—the thoughtless, reckless shopboy, the clownish rustic, the discontented artisan, and the downcast ‘young gentleman’ who has wasted his substance in riotous living. The picture rekindles in my memory several instances of the last-mentioned type. In the following stories, it will be seen, from obvious reasons, that where names are mentioned, these are fictitious.
There is a clump of trees in the immediate vicinity of Bangalore which is known as ‘the Dead-man’s Tope.’ In it there is a solitary grave, that of a young Scotchman. For many years the natives alleged that his ‘ghost’ was to be seen walking mournfully amongst the trees, for they said he could not rest until his appointed years had been fulfilled. He had been a corporal in a Scotch regiment stationed in Bangalore, beloved by all his comrades, but unfortunately hated by the sergeant of his company. At last, goaded by the unjust treatment he received from this sergeant, he struck him down in a moment of passion. In those days, discipline was stern; the young corporal was tried, and condemned to be hanged in the presence of the whole garrison. The execution took place; but so great was the feeling against the sergeant, that he had to be sent away from the regiment down to Madras, protected by a military escort. The general officer who told me this story was a witness of this sad scene, and was the interpreter to the native soldiers of the reason of the execution. That young corporal belonged to Glasgow, and was connected with many respectable families in the city.
Here is a happier tale. John Home, after many years’ service in the Honourable Company’s artillery, retired on a pension, and settled at Bangalore. He became editor of a small local paper, and so for a few years was a prominent member of the community. He married, and had an only son. This boy was but an infant when the father died, his death being hastened by intemperate living. On Home’s private writing-desk being opened, his relations found, to their amazement, a sheet of paper with the handwriting of the deceased telling his real name—for Home was a fictitious one he had assumed on his enlistment—and whence he came, and where his relatives were to be found. These disclosures were made, so the paper said, for the only reason that perhaps on some future day they might benefit his boy; and were it not for this hope, the secret would have gone down with him to the grave. Strange to say, not many months elapsed when an advertisement appeared in an Edinburgh paper signed by a legal firm, asking for information about this very man, giving his real name. Of course the Edinburgh gentlemen were at once communicated with; and after all the evidences were submitted, and no doubt well scrutinised, the claim of the widow and her child was acknowledged. The boy was brought home and educated; and I trust still is, what he was a few years ago, the proprietor of a ‘snug little estate.’ Such is some of the romance of the ‘rank and file’ of our army.