White Mughals

by William Dalrymple

  Russell went on to say that he had written to the Company’s agent in Masulipatam, Major Alexander, ‘directing him to prepare the best house that can be got for the reception of the Begum, and I shall myself accompany her to Masulipatam. I shall stay there only a few days, to see her comfortably settled, and to make such arrangements as may be necessary for her establishment, and shall then run on by dawke [i.e. as fast as possible] to Hyderabad … I hope I shall get [there] during the first week in May.’

  He also gave detailed instructions to his brother about how he was to break the news to Durdanah Begum without unduly alarming the old lady:The enclosed letter will communicate to the old begum the changes which her daughter and grand daughter have made in their plans; but it would have been improvident to inform her of their real motives. We have therefore imputed it to a whimsical spirit of opposition in the poor little Begum, and have left the letter open, that you may take your line from it. When you have read it, close it and give it to the old lady. You must also make the necessary communication to Capt. Sydenham. I have little doubt that both you and he will approve of the Begum’s determination.

  It is at this stage that a note of ambiguity enters Russell’s letter. Up to now, he seems, like James before him, to have been prepared to risk his career to save his relationship with Khair. He had, after all, stood up to Neil Edmonstone and made the Governor General change his ruling that the Begum should remain in exile in Calcutta. But Henry Russell was a very different man to James Kirkpatrick. He had clearly been flattered by the Begum’s attentions, and had perhaps been mildly surprised to find himself in bed with his former principal’s wife. But there were limits to how far he was prepared to let such considerations get in the way of his career.

  Such was Russell’s conceit that he seemed temperamentally incapable of taking in how culpable he was in the wrecking of Khair’s future: far from dwelling on what he had brought about—the final destruction of her reputation, her banishment and exile—he instead wrote to his brother patting himself on the back and remarking: ‘It will be gratifying to me to reflect that I shall have placed the Begum beyond the Reach of Danger, and myself beyond the necessity of asking favours from Captain Sydenham. I shall now feel perfectly independent of him; and I am sure that nothing will contribute so assuredly of our living on good terms together, as my never having occasion to ask him for anything.’

  Already it was clear that his main concern was less ‘the poor little Begum’ than his own ease and reputation. As he explained to Charles: ‘the interests of both of us [i.e. the two Russell brothers] require that we should adopt the most decisive measures in our power to contradict the reports, whether idle or malicious, which seem to prevail so generally at Hyderabad’.50

  A week later, Russell, Khair and their attendants had arrived back at the hot, humid harbour town of Masulipatam.

  Masulipatam had once been the principal trading station of the Coromandel coast, and in the seventeenth century had grown to become a port of international importance, providing access to the rich bazaars of the kingdom of Golconda at the peak of its power and influence. It was also one of the earliest outposts of both the English and the Dutch East India Companies.ih But it had long been overtaken by both Madras and Vizagapatam, and its fate was sealed after it was sacked and burned to the ground first by Aurangzeb in 1661, then again by the Marathas in a raid in the mid-eighteenth century. It was finally overwhelmed by a cataclysmic cyclone which had swept over its sea walls only seven years before Russell and Khair’s arrival, during the monsoon of 1800.

  By 1807 therefore, this once bustling port had shrunk to a small, ramshackle place, with a crumbling fort, a newly rebuilt English church and a graveyard quickly filling up with the victims of its endemic malarial mosquitoes, inhabitants of the undrained salt marshes to the west of the town.ii Three miles to the south, across the causeway from the English Civil Lines, the port’s deep-water harbour was slowly silting up, and was remarkable now less for its trading than its fishing fleet, after which it had become known locally as Machli-patnam, or Fish Town. The name stuck,ij partly no doubt because of the strong stench generated by the huge catch brought in every morning by the port’s flotilla of small wooden catamaran-canoes, and the overpowering odour of the small fry left out on the sand of its beaches to dry in the sun.

  The fishermen here were of the lowest castes, dark-skinned untouchables; the English community was small; and there was no Mughlai society to mention.ik Even the town’s Nawab, James Dalrymple’s brother-in-law, had left the place and settled in the more lively atmosphere of Madras, a hundred miles to the south.51 A Dutch visitor at about this time reported that in addition to the all-pervading smell of fish, the swampy morass outside the city walls emitted an unbearable stench in dry weather, and the heat was so ‘insufferable that one can neither read, nor write, nor think’.52 Masulipatam was, in short, not a place Khair or her mother would ever naturally have chosen to live, which presumably indicated that both women at this stage believed that their exile would be of short duration.

  On arrival, Khair and Russell pitched their tents in a garden belonging to Alexander, the Company’s elderly and rather fussy agent (Russell refers to him in his letters as ‘Old Mother Alexander’), in the shadow of his two-storey mansion. With Alexander’s help they set about trying to find temporary accommodation for Khair, rejecting the Nawab’s house as ‘too extensive’ and settling instead on a more modest bungalow: ‘I hope to settle everything about it in the course of tomorrow,’ wrote Russell, ‘and the next day, and to have the house cleaned out, and prepared for the Begum’s reception, by the first of the month. At all events there is every prospect that she will be comfortably situated; more so perhaps than she would have been at any other place in the Company’s territory... ’

  Yet again, Russell’s tone seems somehow inadequate to the desperation of the occasion. There are no notes of regret, anguish or contrition in his letters, instead merely the passing observation that ‘As far as I can tell the society here is not very good. People live mostly to themselves.’ This was an understatement of the first order: there was not one person in Masulipatam with whom either Begum was likely to make friends. There was nothing to do and little to see. It was hot and it smelt. Russell himself seems to have been anxious to leave the town as quickly as possible, and in his letters at least, spares little time worrying about Khair’s life in such an unpleasant backwater.

  More insensitive still are his remarks to Charles, who had just informed him by despatch that Henry’s bibi in Hyderabad had given birth to a baby girl prematurely, and that the child looked unlikely to survive. Russell’s reaction is chilling: ‘I am sorry for the account you give me of the probability of losing my little girl,’ he writes, ‘but it would be hypocrisy to pretend that it had afflicted me deeply. Even the loss of an infant that we have seen, we lament only in proportion to the love we bear its mother; and the death therefore of a child, whom not only have we never seen, but whose mother was never an object of attachment, cannot be regarded as a misfortune of very serious magnitude.’ Then with barely a pause he continues, having apparently dismissed the bibi, the dying baby girl and Khair from his mind: ‘I have not a book to read in my palanquin between here and Hyderabad. Despatch me one immediately by dawke and if you cannot find a better, send me Madam Europe.’ The letter reveals the small sliver of ice in Russell’s heart, a compound of selfcentredness, conceit and insensitivity, qualities that became increasingly evident in the months to come.

  A week later, Russell had apparently installed the Begum in her new house, looking onto the palms, fishing canoes and breakers of the Coromandel coast; but the only explicit mention he makes of her in his letter to Charles is to note that ‘If I can, I shall dispose of some of my bullocks here. The Begum’s baggage has left a great many unladen, and it would be a needless expense to feed all the bullocks between here and Hyderabad.’53

  The next day he was gone, heading back to Hyderabad as fast as his
palanquin-bearers could carry him. Behind him he left the weeping Begum, in exile, in a strange town, with only her mother for company, and convinced, from a dream she had had, that she and Russell would never meet again.54

  And with that, there is a gap in Russell’s correspondence for eight whole months. There is no indication of how Khair un-Nissa passed the time, what her feelings were, her mood, or her hopes, or her fears; but it is not difficult to imagine them.

  When the letters resume, it is January 1808, and Henry Russell is back in Masulipatam for a fortnight’s visit, on his way between Hyderabad and a new posting in Madras. He is flattered and pleased by Khair’s rapturous reception of him: ‘Dear Khyroo is all kindness and attention,’ he tells Charles,and seems quite as much delighted to see me as I am to see her; more so she could not be. She is pleased at my appointment to Madras, because it has offered us the opportunity of meeting; and as we have once met after our separation, she appears to have got rid of her superstitious dread she formerly had, that we were not to meet again. I hope therefore that she will not feel my going to Madras so acutely as she felt my going to Hyderabad, and that she will trust to the same good fortune which has brought us together once, bringing us together again.

  He goes onto the describe the situation of the two Begums:

  I found both the Begum and her mother well. They appear to be in excellent health, the old lady better perhaps than when she first came here; and their spirits are as good as could possibly be expected. The house they moved into after I left them, is a much better one than [that] in which they lived at first. They occupy the upper storey only, which makes them quite private and retired, and gives them the advantage of fresh air and a good prospect: the whole of their lower apartments is appropriated to their baggage and servants; and they have a Havildar’s guards, which while perhaps unnecessary, is so far of use in that it confirms their notion of security.55

  Russell’s letter also inadvertently reveals why he had had to leave Hyderabad. In Masulipatam, where he was staying with an old soldier friend, formerly of the Subsidiary Force, he dines with his host, and later in the fort, and is pleased and evidently surprised to discover that ‘every lady seems anxious to be as attentive as they can; and what is very satisfactory, as far as I can judge from appearances, I am not here a subject of scandal’. This, it is apparent, was a welcome change from Hyderabad, where his position at the Residency had become untenable due to the rumours circulating in both the city and English society about his relationship with the Begum.

  All he now wants in Madras, he says, is ‘to be as quiet as possible, and although I cannot lull the tongue of slander, I will not stimulate it. If any of the reports invented or circulated by my friends at Hyderabad appear to you to be of such a nature that I ought to know them, for the reputation of my conduct on any point relating to the Begum, of course you will mention them to me—otherwise do not say anything about them. They would irritate and vex me without doing any good.’ In the meantime, he is pleased to discover that in Masulipatam ‘every lady appears to take an interest in the Begum, and to speak of her with the greatest respect and consideration’.56

  As for Khair herself, Russell’s letter reveals that she is relieved that she is still getting the money from her estates, and has only one deep desire: that she should get back the portrait of her children, which George Chinnery seems to have borrowed in Calcutta, and which, despite her repeated pleas, he is apparently unwilling to send back to her. Russell asks his brother to write to their father, the Chief Justice, himself then sitting for Chinnery, and to tell him ‘that the Begum is exceedingly anxious to receive the picture and has written to you very urgently on the subject’. There is no indication that Khair has heard a word from her children since they embarked for England two and half years earlier. The picture is still her only link with what she has lost.

  The rest of Russell’s letters from Masulipatam are filled with making plans. Sharaf un-Nissa wants to visit Hyderabad over Muharram to petition Mir Alam on her daughter’s behalf at that most auspicious time of year, and Russell asks his brother to make the necessary arrangements for an escort: ‘She will travel in her palanquin, with a single set of bearers; and as she will be only a few days on the road, she will not encumber herself with any tents or baggage, beyond two or three bungies [wagons].’

  Finally he asks Charles to help him keep in touch with the Begum. He anticipates trouble finding a good Persian munshi in the very English world of Madras, and certainly no one who could safely be entrusted with the delicate task of writing his love letters to the Begum. He is also keen to avoid any cause for scandal in Madras, and therefore asks his brother a favour. In case he finds writing to Khair impossible, could Charles now begin writing to her, passing on his news? He is worried about Khair, and about her spirits, especially once her mother leaves and she is left on her own. If Charles could write,I shall be able to assure the Begum, through you, that I am well, and that my silence does not proceed from any cause that ought to make her uneasy.

  On all these accounts it is particularly desirable that from here forward you should continue to correspond with the Begum as regularly as I did; and although the benefits of such rigid punctuality may sometimes prove troublesome, I am sure you will submit to it for the sake of giving the Begum so much comfort and satisfaction as she will derive from it. I wrote to her every third day, and never on any account allowed an interruption to take place. If I was busy I wrote a single line to say so, and that she always thought enough; and if I was to be out all day on the letter day, I wrote a few lines overnight, saying so, and left them to be despatched by the dawke as usual.

  Let me entreat you, my dearest Charles, to persevere in this plan; and be assured that constant and persevering regularity in correspondence is the greatest blessing you can confer upon an absent friend. Many people neglect to write at all if they are busy, because they think it indispensable to write a long letter; but this a very erroneous idea. A single hearty line on a regular day to say that you are busy, and cannot write more, is infinitely superior in value to the longest letter on a later day. Bear this in mind, and recollect that the Begum is of that frame of mind, and is so situated, that to her of all people in the world, this principle is most peculiarly applicable.

  If he has any trouble, suggests Henry, he should consult Aziz Ullah’s old assistant, the Qazi, who is back at work at the Residency, and who

  knows my plan of correspondence every bit as much as I knew it myself, and can always tell you what I was accustomed to do on any particular occasion. He is also perfectly acquainted too with the terms and modes of address that you ought to use. I have explained all that I have written to you on this subject to the Begum, who desires me just to add a request from her, that whenever my letters for her reach you from Madras, you will despatch them to Masulipatam by the very first dawke without thinking it necessary to detain them until you have prepared a letter from yourself …

  This is a new side to Khair un-Nissa, one we have not seen before. We have seen her strength and resilience, and her warmth and charm; but never has she sounded so vulnerable, so badly in need of reassurance, so badly in need of love.

  And with that, again, Russell is gone, and the curtain descends on both him and the Begum for a further three months.

  When we next catch a glimpse of Russell, he is in the middle of a very different world.

  Madras in 1808 was a somewhat provincial place compared to Calcutta, at least in terms of power and trade; but it nonetheless prided itself on being a politer, more elegant and refined city than its brash, debauched Bengali rival. Its layout was quite different to that of other British cities in India, being spread over a far wider area with low, white, classical garden houses dotted for miles over the plane which lay between the fort and St Thomas’s Mount. As one visitor reported a few years later, few Englishmen lived in Madras proper, instead they preferred ‘country houses scattered for miles through the interior, and even the shopkeepers who ca
n afford it have detached bungalows for their families’. The hub of the city, around the fort, was a no less singular sight. Thirty years earlier, when the artist William Hodges landed on the surf below Fort George, he wrote that its ‘long colonnades, open porticoes and flat roofs offer the eye an appearance similar to what we may conceive of a Grecian city in the age of Alexander. The clear, blue, cloudless sky, the polished white buildings, the bright sandy beach and the dark green sea present a combination totally new to the eye of an Englishman.’

  By 1808 Madras had become famous for its social life, and especially for the fact that there seemed to be a much larger proportion of European women to men than at Calcutta. There was the huge new banqueting hall at the Governor’s House, with an interior so vast that Lord Valentia thought he and his fellow guests ‘looked like pigmies’ as they reeled and waltzed. There was the Madras Hunting Society and the annual races below the Mount; a series of good schools, including ‘a seminary for young ladies modelled on Miss Pinkerton’s in Chiswick Mall’, where classes full of young British memsahibs-to-be were taught ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, history, the use of globes, French, Greek and Latin’. Even the city’s alehouses were relatively respectable places, with pukka names like the Old London Tavern and the King’s Arms. Not far from the elegant spire of St Mary’s, the seventeenth-century fort church, lay for example the celebrated Fort Tavern, which served ‘soups every morning, and dinners dressed on the shortest notice, and the very best wines’. It was a far cry from the pelleting punch-houses of William Hickey’s Calcutta.57il