White Mughals
Page 34
Believe me, Dear Sir, with the greatest regard & respect always your faithful & obliged friend and servant—
Wellesley85
By the time William received the letter, the order had already arrived in Hyderabad for Lieutenant Colonel Bowser and Major Orr to head straight for Madras to report to Lord Clive on a matter of the greatest secrecy and importance. Unknown to James, his investigations of the Subsidiary Force had brought down on his head the most serious threat yet to his life and career in India.
By the time he became aware that things were amiss towards the end of November, the investigation was already well under way.
VII
At the very end of December 1801-the most beautiful time of year in the Deccan, when the light is oblique, the evenings cool and the shadows long—William and Fyze Palmer finally packed up their household and set off for the last time from the Residency in Pune, heading off towards Hyderabad by the old Golconda road.
Their convoy moved slowly down through the then thickly wooded foothills of the Western Ghats, and out into the open farmland that lay in the plains beyond: rich, well-watered black earth where bullocks ploughed flat fields edged with palm groves and mango orchards. By 4 January 1802, the Palmers had made good progress and reached the dusty cotton-town of Tuljapur on the border with the Nizam’s dominions. James was there to meet them, but Khair un-Nissa stayed behind in the newly completed mahal at the Hyderabad Residency. There was a good reason for this: though James had yet to tell anyone about it, Khair was now five months pregnant with their second child.1
Pune had been the Palmers’ home for four years, and the elegant British Residency at the confluence of the rivers Moota and Mula, opposite the ghats where sati (widow burning) was performed, was filled with the treasures they had accumulated in the course of their life together in Lucknow, Delhi, Agra and Pune itself. Yet even by the standards of the time the Palmers travelled heavily, and James was astonished by the sheer number of bullock carts, transport cattle, elephants, baggage camels, syces, sepoys, bearers and Fyze’s ‘dozen females’ (presumably her attendants) that turned up at the Maratha—Hyderabad border.2
The Palmers had originally planned to spend only a week or so resting in Hyderabad, before continuing their journey to Calcutta overland along the new military road which had recently been constructed up the length of the east coast. But so well did the two families get on, and so well matched were both the men and the women, that James tried to persuade his guests to stay on, arguing that if they waited for spring they could then catch a fast boat from Masulipatam and reach Calcutta just as quickly, and with much less effort, than by lumbering slowly over the Eastern Ghats. The General was won over, and in the end he and Fyze did not set off on the road again until April had come, and with it the height of the summer heat.3
Over their three months together Fyze and Khair un-Nissa struck up a close friendship, despite the fifteen-year difference in their ages. They spent their days in each other’s company, and in that of Sharaf un-Nissa, playing with Khair’s little boy Sahib Allum, now one year old and, according to James, beginning ‘to prattle very prettily’.4 Fyze introduced Khair un-Nissa to her twenty-two-year-old son William, for whom James had found a job in the Nizam’s irregular cavalry, while Khair introduced Fyze to the women of both the Minister’s and the Nizam’s zenanas. With them came Fanny Khanum, Fyze’s adopted daughter, who was probably the General’s child by a concubine whom Fyze had taken into the family, as was the tradition at that period in both East and West.eu
On these visits Fanny, who must then have been aged about ten, played happily with Prince Sulaiman Jah, the Nizam’s nine-year-old son.ev After the Palmers had set off to Calcutta, James wrote to William, ‘Pray do not omit presenting my kindest remembrances to Fyze and her little daughter by adoption, with whom the little Prince Sulaiman Jah5 was so smitten, that he himself begged the females of my family to intercede on his behalf. They all join in sending kind wishes to Fyze … ’6 Later, James talked of Fanny as she ‘whom the young Prince Sulaiman Jah wished for his bride. By the bye, the impression she made was deeper than could be supposed, as he never fails to ask after her.’7 At the end of April, after Fanny had recovered from a serious illness, James promised the General that Khair would pass the news of her recovery on to Aristu Jah’s women, and assured him that Fanny’s ‘rapid improvements when mentioned by my family in their occasional visits to the Minister’s, will fire the breast of her young princely lover’.8
A miniature by the Hyderabad court artist Venkatchellam of the young Sulaiman Jah, with his younger brother Kaiwan Jah, still remains in the possession of James and Khair’s descendants. It shows the two boys, aged about seven and eight, sitting on superbly inlaid chairs on a marble terrace next to the Hussain Sagar lake, being fanned by barefoot attendants. Sulaiman Jah wears a suit of child’s toy armour; Kaiwan Jah, Nizam Ali Khan’s youngest son, who was given to Aristu Jah to adopt following the death of the latter’s only son in 1795, wears orange pyjamas, is hung with pearls and holds a sarpeche.ew Presumably Sulaiman Jah was regularly brought to the Minister’s zenana to play with his younger brother Kaiwan, and it was no doubt there that Fanny and Fyze first met the young prince.ex
The friendship between Khair and Fyze grew very deep indeed. They had much in common: both were of Persian extraction and spoke Persian as their first language; both were second-generation immigrants to India who had grown up with fathers in senior positions in the armies of Shi’a Indian courts, and with local Indian mothers. Moreover, both had faced the same challenges in that they had fallen in love with, and eventually married, Englishmen from a very different world to their own. Fyze perhaps acted as older, wiser adviser to Khair, but she was clearly as fond of Khair un-Nissa as Khair was of her. From the day the Palmers left Hyderabad, letters and parcels passed between the two women, both of whom were literate and keen letter-writers.9 Although their letters have since disappeared—or in the case of Khair un-Nissa’s apparently been deliberately destroyed10—something of their contents can be gauged from the accompanying letters written by their husbands, most of which are still intact.
Two days after Fyze and the General had left for the coast, James was writing that ‘My little Boy’s Mother and Grandmother return with interest and affectionate ardour the kisses imprinted on their infant in the name of Begum [Fyze], to whom I beg my best remembrances.’11 The following morning Khair un-Nissa, attended by James and her mother Sharaf un-Nissa, and presumably also by Dr Ure, gave birth to a baby girl. James recorded the exact time and date on a small scrap of paper that he kept next to the piece on which he had recorded Sahib Allum’s birth only thirteen months previously:On Friday the
9 th (ninth) of April
AD 1802 answering
to the 5th Zehidge A.H
1216, between 8 9 clock
in the morning a
Daughter was born to
Me in my House at
The Residency (Hyderabad)
She has been named
By her female parents
Noor oon Nissa
—Saheb Begum12
Noor un-Nissa means ‘the Light of Women’; the title Sahib Begum, ‘Lady of High Lineage’, was a reference to the child’s godmother, Fyze.ey Soon James was ending a letter to the General with the postscript: ‘The females of my family all join in [sending their] kind wishes to Fyze, including her little namesake Sahib Begum who is improving daily.’13 A few days later James was telling William that ‘my family here both great and small are all well, and as many as can speak for themselves, beg to be remembered most kindly to Fyze, for whom the young Begum has made up a set of choorys [bangles] which I propose forwarding under cover to you, when I have got a smaller sett ready for my little ward [Fanny Khanum]’.
By the end of April, Khair had made still more choories for her friend, and James wrote to William that ‘as I find the choorys for Fyze and your little darling are not admissible in the dawke,ez I shall commit th
em to the charge of [John] Malcolm and request you will assure the Begum with my best remembrances of my readiness to furnish her with further supplies as occasions may offer.‡ There are four setts for her, and two for Fanny Khanum.’14
So strong was Khair un-Nissa’s relationship with Fyze that it outlasted her marriage to James, and many years later, as Khair lay dying, Fyze was beside her bed, holding her hand. Six weeks after Khair’s death, according to James’s Assistant Henry Russell, Fyze was still, ‘I fear, in great distress … She says she has lost the only real friend she ever had; and I suspect from what I have heard of her disposition and habits, that it is truly the case … ’15
James and the General also got on as well as, if not better than, both had hoped and expected. They visited court together, went hawking and hunting, and spent long nights talking over their mutual despair at the direction in which Wellesley was taking the Company in India. When the General finally left Hyderabad, James wrote him an emotional letter, telling him of the ‘gloom and vacuity’ into which he had fallen since his departure, and of the ‘gratitude and exultation’ the memory of their friendship brought to him.16
James also sent Palmer a revealing letter that openly acknowledged the degree to which both men had become Indianised. Soon after he left, James wrote to advise him that ‘With regard to your eventual intention respecting a trip to England … I am not sure that your well wishers—that is those who wish you many long years of life and happiness—would rejoice at such a measure, after a residence of more than half your life in the sultry climes of India.’17 At this stage, he gives no hint as to exactly what his worries for the General are; but in a later letter he enlarges on this: ‘I am glad to hear that your darling little Fanny Khanum is to be sent to England,’ he wrote towards the end of the year, ‘but I cannot say I am quite reconciled to the idea of your accompanying her, and I do not know if it depended on me, whether I should not vote for you in preference some snug sinecure in this country where you have passed so large a portion of your life. Recollect my dear friend, that you were long ago yourself doubtful how far you could stand the rigour of an English summer , how then can you think of braving an English winter?’18
James, it seems, was thoroughly convinced that the General no longer truly belonged to Britain: India was now his real home, and as far as James was concerned, it would only lead to trouble and serious health problems if he were to return to the West. This was a very different attitude to that of the late-nineteenth-century sahib dreaming of drizzle in Tunbridge Wells while complaining about the bloody awful climate in India. In James’s view, his friend had much more to fear from the chill winds of a British midwinter. India had transformed both him and his friend, the old General. It was one thing for the children to go back to Europe to get a good education; it was quite another for him or Palmer to retire there.19 Possibly James also wanted to protect the eccentric old General from the taunts he suspected a white Mughal such as he might attract in the crowded streets of Piccadilly.
The letters James wrote to Palmer show his love, respect and concern for his friend, and these were feelings that the General clearly reciprocated. The Palmers had come to stay at a particularly stressful and upsetting time for James, and their presence calmed and cheered him at one of his lowest points. James had first learned that he was in trouble with Calcutta again when William sent him a frantic note in cipher at the end of October 1801. William had given his word to Wellesley that he would not tell James of the secret investigation about to convene in Madras, but his note was intended to alert his brother to the fact that something was afoot without explicitly mentioning the Clive Enquiry. The letter contained none of William’s usual gossip, but went—starkly—straight to the point: ‘My dear James,’ it read,When I lately put a question to you respecting the state of your intercourse with a certain female you satisfied yourself with answering that I might be perfectly easy on that subject. This, though not an explicit answer, I construed into such an appearance as I wished for.
I trust I did not deceive myself on this occasion: yet it would be a great comfort to me to know for certain that the woman in question does not now and has not at any time lived with you.
My solicitude on this subject is not idle. You have enemies. Who they are God knows—where they are is not difficult to guess [i.e. in the Subsidiary Force cantonments]. Whether in writing or in conversation, on whatever subject, I must relate personally to yourself to be at this time peculiarly guarded, reserved and temperate as well as collected. When I recommend reserve I mean especially those about yourself.fa
Perhaps those who I have above called enemies might more correctly be called idle babblers. But whichever they be, caution & reserve become equally necessary.20
A day later, James received another, more explicit, warning from an anonymous friend in Calcutta: yet again, now for the third time, his relationship with Khair un-Nissa was under detailed investigation. This time, though, James was to play no part in the inquiry; indeed instructions had been issued that he should not even be informed of the existence of the proceedings.
This of course greatly alarmed James; but it also made him furious, and he convinced himself that Wellesley was using the affair as a pretext for removing him from office, just as he had removed Palmer, ‘because I have in a late instance not been so pliantly accommodating to his unaccountable political views, as he perhaps thought that he had a right to expect’. By early December he was again considering throwing in the towel, and wrote to William in cipher: ‘Between ourselves I am so disgusted with Lord W[ellesley]’s conduct towards me from first to last that I should be half-tempted to resign my situation at once, were it not for the triumph it would afford a number of conniving and malicious persons, and for it being liable to be attributed to fear of standing an enquiry.’21 In the end, as he told William, he decided to ‘await the announced attack, with the firmness and resignation proceeding from an unconsciousness of having been guilty of anything beyond imprudence’.22
James was especially irritated by the part played in this latest intrusion into his marriage by John Malcolm. The two had got on well when they were together in Hyderabad, and James had helped start Malcolm’s rapid rise five years earlier by asking for him to come to Hyderabad to take up the vacant job of Assistant. The young Scot was talented and ambitious, and had done very well since he left James’s side in 1799; indeed a year previously he had risen to be Wellesley’s Private Secretary. It soon became clear that Malcolm was now the front-runner to replace James at Hyderabad should the investigation go against him. As rumours began to spread, Malcolm wrote a series of letters to William Kirkpatrick explaining his embarrassment at this ‘delicate and distressing’ circumstance which was forcing him to choose between his own self-interest and his loyalty to an old friend. He maintained that he never wanted to be seen as taking advantage of James’s difficulties, and assured William that a promotion to the job of Hyderabad Resident, ‘however great and key in my hopes, will have no charms for me under such circumstances … where I may owe my advancement to the ruin of one friend to whom I owe a thousand obligations [i.e. James] & the distress and misery to another [i.e. William] to whom I am more indebted than I am to any man in the world’.23
To James, however, Malcolm continued to pretend complete ignorance of what was going on, giving him no hint or warning of his fate. This led James to be increasingly suspicious of Malcolm’s friendship and intentions: ‘I have just received [a letter] from Malcolm,’ he reported to William at the end of 1801, ‘who if he knows anything of what is in store for me—and that he should not is scarcely within the bounds of credibility—is surely acting a strange part towards me.’24
To add to James’s worries and growing sensation of isolation, his relations with the soldiers of the Subsidiary Force were at rock bottom. In the cantonments James was now regarded as the enemy: a turncoat Islamophile, who affected ‘ridiculous native dress’ and who had had the gall to question the honesty and probity
of his brother officers. Colonel Vigors, the commander of the Force, had written to James at the end of October challenging him over his inquiries: ‘Hearing that reports have reached you of the inefficient state of the corps, composing the Sub[sidiar]y Force, I have thought it incumbent on myself, and a justice to the Officers commanding these Corps, to inspect them severally, and have now the satisfaction to assure you that they have answered the highest expectations, not only in regard to numbers of effective men … but also to uniformity of dress and proficiency in discipline.’25
Vigors duly invited James to inspect the Force, an offer which James immediately accepted; but the inspection was a disaster. James was not greeted with his usual seventeen-gun salute, no guard of honour was there to receive him, and no Union Flag was raised.26 Worse still, he was treated with disdain by the officers of the men he came to examine. On his return to the Residency he wrote a formal complaint, and copied it to Calcutta. He also picked up his pen to report to William what had happened, informing him that Vigors’s
avarice is of the most extreme and sordid kind, and not to be equalled by his avidity to amass money which by all accounts is boundless. It is the check which I have lately given to this gratification by requiring him to send me a monthly nerak [tariff rate] in order to set some bounds to his enormous and undue bazaar gainsfb that has excited (I have no doubt) the spirit of opposition which lately manifested itself. Though all this is bad enough, yet it is quite venial in comparison with his unreserved disclosure to all who would listen to him of the subject of my late [private] letter, his boastful account of his manly reply, and discussion of various points touching on our relative situations … The Colonel has certainly deceived me not a little.27
Things had not improved by the following spring, and there was an unpleasant incident soon after the Palmers left Hyderabad when James reported that some of the Subsidiary Force officers let it be known that they would be ‘refusing to subscribe to a certain [Regimental] Ball, if I was invited’. Moreover, James’s letters continue to contain frequent references to his enemies in the cantonments, who ‘have been so busy in defaming and misrepresenting me’. He was also aware that these enemies ‘would scarcely have dared, I think, to indulge so freely as [they have done] had not the too prevalent idea of my disgrace and approaching end have encouraged them to perseverance’.28