White Mughals

by William Dalrymple

  For the last few years Henry Russell had been enveloped in the Mughal society of Hyderabad. Now he found himself warming to the pleasures of a busy and very British Presidency town like Madras. He was after all intelligent, good-looking and rich; in short a thoroughly desirablebachelor. This was something he was himself only too well aware of: ‘I see that the people at Madras have marked me as an eligible object,’ he wrote a few weeks after his arrival, ‘and that they observe rather minutely to whom my attentions are principally pointed; but I am thoroughly on my guard and always take care to divide my civilities equally.’58

  By March, Henry was boarding with James Kirkpatrick’s aunt and uncle, the Petries, while he looked around rather half-heartedly for a house of his own. His letters are now full of dinners, races and horses: ‘The Madras plate was won by McDowell’s Bacchus, a small bay horse that he got out of Abdool Luteef,’ he tells Charles in one letter, adding with some pride, ‘With the exception of the three parties Mrs Petrie had at home, I have dined out every night since I arrived here, and frequently I have had three or four invitations for the same day. The dinners are generally pretty good, everybody appears anxious to be as civil and attentive as they possibly can... ’59

  In this social swirl, Russell made friends quickly, and took an especial liking, somewhat surprisingly, to the odious Mrs Samuel Dalrymple who had accompanied James on his last boat journey to Calcutta: ‘Mrs Dal is my prime favourite,’ Russell told his brother, ‘but I occasionally throw a handkerchief at another object … ’ As the weeks went by, he threw himself deeper and deeper into the round of parties and dances, and by mid-April wrote to Charles to tell him he had never been happier, or felt more properly appreciated.im At long last he was receiving the attentions and respect that he had been brought up by his adoring father to believe were his by right: ‘I become more pleased with Madras every day,’ he wrote,and the more I see of the society and the people, the more I like them. My situation and my connexions (shall I add my manner and my appearance?) naturally contribute to ensure me a kind and general reception … In the gaiety and dissipation of an extensive society I do not think that I ever enjoyed myself so much as now I do at Madras. When I find myself laughing, and flirting, and entering heartily into all the fun that is going on, I almost forget the solemn reserve and steadiness of the Secretary. The Dalrymples and all my old friends tell me that I am the most altered being in the world, and Gould says that nothing can be more unlike what I am to the sullen, silent politician that was described to him in Bengal. I now dance, and drink, and laugh and dress, and crack jokes …

  He then makes what is his first reference to the Begum for several weeks:However, lest you should entertain any apprehensions of it leading me by the road of flirtation to the temple of love, it may be as well to assure you that my prudence and caution on that subject are unabated, and that any change in my views and sentiments on such a point I should consider a deplorable one indeed. My affections are not, I believe, very easily engaged; but when once fixed, they are steady; and from the quarter where they are at present fixed, I think it would be difficult, I might almost say impossible, to detach them.60

  Khair had been receiving the odd message from Henry ever since they parted company, but with each month that passed, his letters to Masulipatam were becoming increasingly irregular. Soon there began the first of a succession of complaints from Khair that she was being neglected, complaints that Russell, characteristically, sidestepped, putting the blame on his younger brother and on Sharaf un-Nissa: ‘Be very particular too in mentioning me in all your letters to the Begum;’ he tells Charles,and when you next write say that I am sorry to perceive, from the letters I have lately received from her, that she imputes my silence to forgetfulness. That, she ought to know and believe, is impossible, and she only gives me pain in saying so. She hears of my being well, just as satisfactorily through you as she could hear it from a letter written by any common hand [i.e. professional Persian letter-writer] I could put up here; and it is by no means difficult to imagine that I find it impracticable to get at once a person I could employ to write confidential letters for me.

  He goes on to say that Khair is clearly lonely in her mother’s absence in Hyderabad, and says that Charles should tell Sharaf un-Nissa to hurry back to her daughter’s side in Masulipatam: ‘She promised me to stay only a month at Hyderabad, and you must insist on her leaving in the beginning of April. Do not, on any account, permit her to remain beyond that time, even if she should express a desire to do so.’61

  But despite his protestations to the contrary, there is no doubt that Khair was indeed beginning to move from the centre of Russell’s world. It was not just that she appears increasingly infrequently in his letters; there is also a measure of conscious disengagement: when Charles writes to tell his brother that there has been a dispute over the seizure of Bâqar Ali Khan’s property—presumably it has been resumed by Mir Alam’s government following the old man’s death—Henry counsels him not to get involved: ‘I do most strongly insist that no consideration whatever may induce you to intervene, on any occasion, on behalf of any member of her family. You would not do so without being liable to a charge of impropriety.’62

  Henry also fails to react with proper sympathy when Charles and Sharaf un-Nissa both write to tell him that the latter has failed in her attempt to persuade Mir Alam to revoke Khair’s banishment. This was a heartbreaking moment for both mother and daughter, the confirmation of all they had feared; but Russell takes it all easily in his stride. Referring to Sharaf’s news he remarks merely:Her letter was a very good one. It appears she has been kindly received by all those on whose kindness she places any value; and as the coldness and inattention with which the Meer treated her seem not to have given any pain, I am glad that she has been furnished with so strong a practical proof of the insurmountable objections that exist against her daughter’s return to Hyderabad. I hope you will take an opportunity of impressing this deeply on her mind, and of inducing her to believe that the Meer still regards even her, as well as her daughter, with sentiments of such virulent and restless asperity as to render their permanent Residence at Hyderabad a source of the most alarming and serious danger to them both.63

  In a later letter, after Sharaf un-Nissa has headed back to Masulipatam to break the news of Mir Alam’s decision to Khair, Russell merely observes: ‘I am glad that Shurfoon Nifsa Begum has returned to Masulipatam. The man’s conduct towards her has been perfectly consistent, and therefore ought not to cause surprise … [and confirms] the necessity of [the Begum] remaining at Masulipatam … I think it was discernable [in advance] that the Meer should treat her as he has always done.’64

  So saying, Russell returns to describing his Madras social life. And as the rounds of parties continue, one figure in particular takes the place of Khair in his correspondence: a beautiful, rich Anglo-Portuguese merchant’s daughter. Her name was Jane Casamajor.

  Jane is first mentioned as a friend of Thomas Sydenham’s younger brother George: ‘If George Sydenham is arrived [in Hyderabad],’ Henry writes to Charles in March 1808, ‘tell him that Jane Casamajor has been alarmingly ill indeed; and though better today, is not yet even pronounced to be out of danger.’65

  When she recovers, Russell goes to see her: ‘Yesterday I called at the Casamajors to congratulate them on the recovery of Jane … [She] looked delicate and feeble … [and] has been very ill indeed … I believe that for several days her medical attendant thought it very precarious which way it would terminate.’66 Jane eventually made a full recovery, and as March gives way to April she takes up an increasingly large amount of space in Henry’s letters. She is, he assures Charles, ‘an extremely fine girl and the family is altogether the best at Madras’; but he quickly adds that

  none of their weapons are sharp enough to graze even the surface of my heart … I am thoroughly on my guard and always take care to divide my civilities equally so as to prevent them from suspecting that I have a decided preference for
anybody … At a very pleasant dance at Mrs Oakes’s the other night I divided myself between Mrs Dal[rymple] and Jane—while I was with Mrs Dal nobody seemed to observe me particularly; but when I went to Jane, and after flirting an hour with her, handed her to Tupper, I saw a number of sly enquiring looks directed towards me; and the next day a number of people asked me very significantly if I did not think Jane Casamajor a very charming girl.67

  For the ball, which was a masquerade, Russell had got Charles to send him some of James Kirkpatrick’s old Mughal robes, which James had kept at the Begum’s house in the old city and which he appears to have worn when he came to relax there, and also at informal occasions at court.68 There had been moments in Russell’s past when it seemed he might have followed James in his journey across cultures; but in the end he was a very different man to his principal. Moreover, and crucially, he was from a very different generation. James was among the last of the English officials in India who found it possible to truly cross cultures. The new Imperial ideas that Wellesley imported from England—ideas which Henry Russell had absorbed when he first arrived in Calcutta—made it increasingly difficult for individuals to make the leap from Britain to India, from Georgian to Mughal, from Christianity to Islam. India was no longer a place to embrace and to be transformed by; instead it was a place to conquer and transform. The British attitudes to Indians and Indian culture that Russell absorbed in the Calcutta of 1800 were never entirely shaken off by his time at James’s side in Hyderabad. James had worn his Mughal clothes for everyday use around the Residency and for his other life in Khair un-Nissa’s deorhi in the old city; now Russell wore them merely as fancy dress. In the brief period separating the two men, an important historical line had been crossed.

  Shortly after the ball, Russell writes that he has not visited Jane for nearly a week: ‘Excepting once in the evening on the Mount Road, I have not seen Jane since I went there last Sunday. This is Friday. Is not my self command wonderful? But perhaps I shall call there tomorrow morning. It is surely the pleasantest home in Madras... ’69

  By the middle of May, rumours about Russell and Jane have reached Charles in Hyderabad, and he writes to his brother to ask if there is any basis in the stories doing the rounds. Henry is horrified, and asks for more information about the detail of this gossip: ‘I am now placed in a most cruel and painful predicament; and if her feelings and pride are half so great as mine are I am sure she must feel as distressed as I do’ at these stories in circulation, he writes. He goes on to deny having given Jane any grounds for believing he would marry her, and says the rumours Charles has been hearing are wholly incorrect:You say that you hear that, wherever I dine, Jane Casamajor is invited, that wherever I dance she is my partner; and that in short we are scarcely on any occasion separated from each other … I shall easily be able to convince you that there is no [basis for any of these stories] … But how, you will say, if this be correct, is it possible that the report of my having formed an attachment for Jane should have become so prevalent? In the easiest way of the world. My youth, my connexions, my circumstances, and my situation all concur to point me out as the most eligible man in the place (don’t laugh) for a woman to marry; and people suppose, naturally enough, that if I admire any lady, I must of course admire the girl who generally speaking is the most admired by everybody else … to a girl who like Jane who has (whether deservedly or not) the reputation of a leading belle, it is sufficient for me to be a little attentive to set the place agog and to make everybody say it will certainly be a match.70

  Only a week later, Russell’s tone is very different, and he finally admits what has been obvious to everyone in Madras for months. In the middle of a letter to Charles he suddenly bursts out: ‘Jane! Dear Jane! What shall I say of her? That I feel my danger growing more imminent every day, and that the swain who deliberates is undone. When I am absent from her I feel that an immediate permanent separation would ultimately eradicate any affection I have formed for her; but in her presence, I am conscious of the influence of a fascination which is altogether irresistible. Of such a separation I see no Prospect.’ He tells his brother of a dinner party the night before: ‘I said nothing with my tongue that could appear like Love; but I fear my eyes and my manners were beyond my control and that they may have betrayed to anybody who would take the trouble to observe them, that I was far from being insensible to the charms of my companion … the truth of the matter is that I am in Love... ’

  As for the Begum, Henry’s mind was clearly made up: ‘If anything comes of this flirtation,’ he tells Charles breezily, ‘I shall request you to take Masulipatam in your way, as you come here; and will, before that time, write to you fully on that subject. The duty you will have to discharge will, I fear, be a very painful and distressing one; but for my sake I am sure you will undertake it.’71

  Painful and distressing it certainly would be. But not for Henry Russell. The following evening, less than two months after he first met her, he asked Jane Casamajor to marry him.

  One month later, on around 20 June 1808, Charles Russell set off from Hyderabad on yet another errand for his brother. This time, however, the task in hand involved a rather longer journey, and a rather more upsetting business, than the fetching and packing of Hyderabadi women’s garments, a task on which he had been intermittently engaged on his brother’s behalf for the past two years. His job now was to go to Masulipatam and break the news of Henry and Jane’s marriage to Khair un-Nissa, a woman he had yet to meet, but with whom (again at his brother’s request) he had been corresponding every three days or so since January.

  Charles had earlier received a long letter from Henry, telling him that his proposal of marriage had of course been accepted by Jane, and giving him detailed instructions on how he was to deal with the delicate task of informing Khair that she had been abandoned: ‘the task you will have to perform will be arduous and painful; most arduous to you, and most painful to me. But it is necessary.’72 Two days later, obedient as ever, Charles set off to Masulipatam, intending to head on to Madras to meet his future sister-in-law after he had done his brother’s bidding.

  Unknown to Charles as he cantered down the road to the coast, back in Madras there had been a major hitch in Henry’s plans. Quite unexpectedly—at least to Russell—ten days earlier, on 10 June, Jane Casamajor had called him to her house and told him the marriage was off. She gave no reason. Henry returned home, astounded that anyone would or even could turn him down. It was only late the following morning that he remembered that his brother was by now in all probability on his way to Masulipatam to deliver a message that could only come as shattering blow to Khair un-Nissa.

  Rushing to his desk, he quickly wrote out two notes. He sent one to Hyderabad and the other direct to Major Alexander at Masulipatam, with urgent orders that it be given to Mr Charles Russell the minute he arrived in the town. Then he sat down to await what would happen.

  The express letter to Masulipatam read as follows:My dear Charles,

  I have today written a long letter to you at Hyderabad explaining to you, as far as I could explain them in a letter, and indeed as far as I can myself understand them, the circumstances that have suddenly and unexpectedly occurred finally and, I believe, and even hope, irrevocably to break off the match between me and Jane Casamajor.

  I take the precaution of sending these few lines, under cover to Alexander, and I shall desire him to give them to you immediately on your arrival at Masulipatam in order to prevent you from making to the Begum any of the communications described in my long letter of yesterday, in short from saying anything to her about me, except that I am well, that you are coming to pass a month with me and that she may be satisfied, that, notwithstanding that I have not been able to write to her, I still continue to think of her with the former kindness and affection as ever.

  I am vexed that anything should have happened to break off a match, on which I had certainly set my Heart more strongly than I ought in prudence to have done, though not
perhaps as strongly as I originally imagined. It really is a source of vast comfort to have avoided the necessity of conveying to the poor Begum any communication of so very aggravated and painful a nature, as those contained in my letter to you yesterday. Of course it now becomes totally superfluous to take any measures whatever regarding her. She need not, she must not know or suspect that my affections, have ever been diverted from their original direction; and, situated as we now are towards one another, it is better that we should continue on mostly the same footing on which we have hitherto stood.73

  The letter sent to Hyderabad was longer, more leisurely, and a little more self-aware. It was, Henry acknowledged to Charles, ‘impossible to conceal from either you or myself that I am nettled and annoyed at anything like a refusal from any woman whatsoever; but excepting the violence that my pride, or perhaps rather my vanity has sustained, I really am quite astonished at the degree of coldness and apathy with which I have submitted to a separation from a woman to whom I already conceived myself to be irrevocably and eternally united … be that as it may, my vanity is certainly more deeply injured than my heart’.74

  He went on to speculate how it was that Jane could possibly have found it in herself to turn down such a splendid chap as himself. In the course of this passage he reveals one reason why his relationship with the Begum had never developed into the marriage that Khair un-Nissa had clearly hoped for and, at least initially, set her heart on. For Russell explained to Charles that the most likely reason for Jane’s action was that she had been alarmed by his total refusal to tell his father of their forthcoming marriage, which in turn was due to his father’s almost certain refusal to condone it. The reason for this was that Jane had a Malay great-grandmother, and Sir Henry, an ambitious arriviste who had closely orchestrated the careers of all his children, had long made it quite clear to them that he would never agree to any of them marrying anyone ‘contaminated by one streak of black’.75 Henry Russell was deeply in awe of his father, who was evidently a very strong personality. It was out of the question that he could ever have dreamed of marrying Khair un-Nissa if he dared not tell his father even about his relatively uncontroversial match with Jane Casamajor.