I have luckily got a good house though up so late in the season. Brougham’s mountain train went down and he vacated this and was glad to get a tenant for the other half of the season so I only pay half the rent. Hawes is near this and another young fellow of the Guides. Hawes rides with Mrs Mundy every evening — the place is pretty full and pretty dull, nothing going on. Edwardes and Chamberlain are here. They are supposed to be busy answering questions about the native army and its organisation. If you come up here remember that I have a little room at your disposal. This is the high road to Cashmere and I propose to pay that unhappy valley a visit in the autumn. What say you, have you ever been this pilgrimage? In case it is necessary before you go home our spare room is not the sort of place that one would ask you to in the plains, but here the case is very different. They say the climate after the rains is magnificent and the scenery is certainly very grand and beautiful.
I suppose I will soon hear from you on some subjects that I have broached. I have often intended writing to ask you if any notice had been taken of the strong terms in which I mentioned you in the despatch I wrote for Kissengunge for it is very unfair that the only officer who was selected out of many that behaved so well and in such a trying affair and on so grand an occasion should be passed over in silence, and it surely can’t be a reason that my insignificance should be an excuse for not rewarding your gallantry. Sincerely yours, D.D. Muter
Murree, 10th July ’58
My dear Shebbeare,
I am happy to tell you that I have ascertained you were amongst the subalterns recommended for reward in the list sent by Sir A. Wilson which was supported by Sir C. Campbell. As a subaltern I expect you can get nothing but I hope that on obtaining your captaincy you will be at once promoted. R. Lawrence is harping on the old strain and writes upon the laudable and valuable service of his contingent. They may have done a great deal, but I cannot find any one to say so who did not belong to them. Like most forces of native allies I take them to have been a nuisance but I do not wish to say so publicly and hope I shall not be obliged to do so.
Yours sincerely,
H.W. Norman
Norman, Henry Wylie (1826—1904) entered the Indian army at the age of seventeen. He went through the second Sikh campaign and having attracted the favourable notice of Sir Colin Campbell, was selected by him to accompany an expedition against the Afridis in 1850 as officiating brigade major. He served in numerous frontier expeditions between 1850 and 1854, and in the suppression of the Sonthal rebellion of 1855—6. In the Mutiny campaign he was constantly engaged, being present at the siege of Delhi, the relief of Lucknow and a number of other affairs. As assistant deputy adjutant-general of the Delhi Field Force, he was one of the leading spirits of the siege, and afterwards became its chief chronicler. Altogether he was mentioned twenty-five times in despatches. He afterwards became assistant military secretary for Indian affairs at the Horse Guards, military secretary to the government of India, military member of the Viceroy’s Council and member of the Secretary of State for India’s Council. He had a distinguished career as a colonial governor and in 1893 he was offered the viceroyalty of India, but, after first accepting, declined it. In 1902 he was made a field marshal. He died in 1904. (Memoirs of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wylie Norman, 1908)
Goozaira, July 20th, 1858
My dear Mother,
By Harry’s letter received this morning I am sorry to find that you had received no letter from me for two mails. I have only missed one mail since I have been at Goozaira so I don’t understand this. It is rather difficult when letters are posted from this place: as sometimes it is safe to send them by the quickest route via Agra and Indore and sometimes not, so one of my letters may have been late. There is a rumour today that it is the ‘latest safe day via Mooltan’ so I write although I believe that three days hence would be soon enough.
Everything is pretty quiet in India just now. The rains have set in all over the country and prevent the movement of troops. What arrangements will be made after their cessation I cannot guess. I hope we will be able to get down to join some part of the Army, but I think it is doubtful. However, they may want pioneers and then we must go.
The dullness of this station in the hot weather is scarcely to be described and in the cold weather it is disagreeable enough although one can find amusement in shooting. If, as I hear, our Delhi prize money is likely to turn out well, my prospects of paying you a visit as soon as furlough is opened is very much improved. I can’t take more than six months leave to England without giving up my appointment and under common circumstances I should hesitate to spend the large sum of money which my passage to and fro would cost on a six month trip, but if we get good prize money I shall not care about doing so. I should only have four months in England, a short enough holiday after fifteen years of regimental duty in India! but I got my staff employ through luck in being in Delhi at the right time, and not through any interest, and it is very possible that if I gave it up I might never get another. However, furlough will scarcely be open for a year and we cannot tell what may ‘turn up’ in that time. Harry is kind enough to send me Punch and The Times occasionally. I have been very thankful for them but we have now arranged a sort of club and take Punch, the Illustrated News and the Evening Mail ourselves. To add to the other horrors of Goozaira our beer has now run out and we can get no more at present, a lively prospect for the rest of the hot weather! How dreadfully slow the proceedings of parliament on the India Question are! I am afraid we may linger on in suspense for the next five years. I suppose the Government ‘dodges’ it to get through the session safely. It is quite impossible not to laugh at the nonsense talked on the subject by people who know nothing about it. Mr Layard is the laughing stock of India! I must close now, Believe me dear mother, your ever affectionate son Robert H. Shebbeare
In the autumn of 1858 Robert Shebbeare went on sick leave to Simla, suffering from the persistent fever and headaches he had noted before and which were eventually to kill him in China; from the note below one can assume that he was being treated for malaria, of which there are several forms.
Statement of the case of Lieutenant R.H. Shebbeare, commanding 15th Punjab, age 31 years.
Temperament. Sanguineous
Habits. Temperate
Period of service. 14 and a half years
Leave of absence. None.
Lt. Shebbeare was exposed during the whole hot season of 1857 in the operations against Delhi, and suffered at frequent intervals from severe fever accompanied with head symptoms. In October last year he was ordered to Lahore where he remained until January. Whilst there he had little or no fever, but on being ordered to Goozaira and remaining exposed in tents until the end of May, fever returned and he continued to have constant and severe attacks until the beginning of August, when at the recommendation of his medical officer he obtained 60 days privilege leave and proceeded to Simla.
For a considerable time after his arrival here, in fact until the beginning of the present month, the fever attacks were of frequent occurrence and he had gained nothing by the change. It was then checked for about a fortnight but, I regret to say, has again returned and within the last ten days he has had four severe attacks, one of which was more severe than usual.
I do not consider him now at all free from it nor do I under the above circumstances consider him in a fit condition to proceed to the plains, and therefore I would advise his getting an extension of one month for the purpose of getting as much change as possible by marching about in the hills.
The treatment has been that usually adopted in such cases, large doses of quinine, aperients etc.
Signed A.C.C. De Renzey, assistant surgeon in joint charge, Simla.
Professor Nicholas Burgess, formerly of the Royal Defence Medical College, London, has kindly supplied the following note:
From what you said, I am fairly certain that the problem was caused by malaria, the type caused by Plasmodium vivax which was very common in India a
nd SE Asia at that time.
Typical symptoms are as follows: after an incubation period of a week to several months from the time of being bitten by a female anapholes mosquito, there is an abrupt onset of cold chills and shivering (usually starting about midday to early afternoon and lasting about an hour), followed by fever, headache, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain (lasting 4—6 hours), and then drenching sweats for 1—2 hours as the temperature falls. Relapses may occur weeks or months later in treated cases, but at regular intervals of three days in untreated cases. Common long term effects are enlargement of the spleen and sometimes its fatal rupture, and acute liver failure. (See also Robert Shebbeare’s letter of 10th August, 1860.)
Quinine has been used in the treatment of malaria for hundreds of years, long before anyone knew what caused the disease. The relationship between the causative organism and the mosquito was only confirmed at the end of the 19th century. There are annually still over 4 million deaths worldwide from the disease.
Camp Nawabgunge,
On the road between Cawnpore and Lucknow. November 17th, 1858
My dear Harry,
I have just heard that we must write today to be in time for the mail, so here goes just to let you know what I am doing. We marched from Cawnpore on the 18th and were stopped here by an order from Lucknow. There is a rebel called Benee Madho about the country here who can’t be caught. I say ‘about the country’ advisedly for we hear of him twenty-nine miles to the south one day and ten miles to the north the next and sometimes he is reported in two places at once, so we get knocked about a good deal and catch nothing. The C-in-C is somewhere close at hand and also a column under Colonel Eveleigh, but Benee has given them all the slip, and is now reported to be away towards Baraitch. The fact is it is difficult to get information about him as the people are friendly to him and he can of course spread false reports as to his whereabouts with great ease. I should like to catch the beast! What may become of us if Colonel Eveleigh’s column returns, as seems probable, I can’t say. There will be more troops here than are required so some of us will move off I suppose, but in what direction it is impossible to say.
I have no news for you and am up to my elbows in monthly returns, muster rolls etc. so can’t write more.
Believe me, yours affectionately
Robert H. Shebbeare
To Henry F. Shebbeare 5, New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, London
Camp near Lucknow, January, 30th, 1859
My dear Harry,
I write this on the paper you were kind enough to send me. It is very jolly, and I am thankful for it. I am very much disgusted to find by my mother’s letter of December 16th that some of my letters have miscarried. I hope that they have reached you ere this, at any rate you ought to have received my letters from Cawnpore and Nawabgunge. I think I wrote from Lucknow last month but I am not certain.
Since the 13th December we have been out with a column under Major Maynard, H.M. 88th. This column was broken up on the 20th January and since that I have been moving about the country collecting arms and knocking down fortifications. I have special magisterial powers from Mr Montgomery and have a lot of other work to do so do not find much leisure time. It is a beautiful country, perfectly flat and the crops splendid. The forts were chiefly built of mud surrounded by belts of impenetrable bamboo, and through jungle. It is very hard labour getting rid of the latter. I think we shall go into Lucknow in a few days as they want native troops there and we are able to remain there during the hot weather. I am so well now that I see no chance of getting home on medical certificate in the autumn as I had hoped to do, but one must not complain of good health. I don’t see much chance of getting into a house in the hot weather; we shall probably be obliged to build ourselves some sort of sheds and get through the heat the best way we can. I am very much afraid Mr Murray has never received the box I despatched for him. It is very disgusting; I suppose it has gone the same way as Jones’s baggage! I have written all the way down the Mooltan road to agents and merchants but can hear nothing of it as yet. I received a letter from him (dated July) in December. He could not have received it then but I took no notice of the date of the letter at first and wrote off to the agents from whom I can hear nothing. I got a letter from him (the son) dated May on the 8th or 10th of January! What can one do with the posts and roads in such a state? I heartily wish I had had nothing to do with poor Murray’s estate. The bother I had with the accounts was bad enough, and I am out of pocket by their being confused during the first part of our stay in Delhi. All the officers who made purchase at the auction were scattered about and some have been killed and others are in England so I had to pay for them as they should have paid cash, but there was no cash in those days. However I had rather pay the whole than Mr Murray should lose the box. I hope in a few days to know about it however one way or other.
Goodbye, with love to all at home, believe me, yours ever affectionately,
Robert H. Shebbeare
Camp Mahomedabad, about 25 miles from Lucknow. February 29th, 1859
My dear Nelly,
I begin scribbling now so as to have something ready for the mail which ought to leave for Lucknow in a few days. We seldom hear when it is to start until the days before and then there is no time to write comfortably, for if I know that I am obliged to write at a fixed time, it becomes an irksome duty instead of a pleasure.
I have been wandering about this part of the country ever since the 13th December and it is still very pleasant, although the warm weather is coming on apace. I think I shall be recalled to Lucknow in a few days as I wrote to the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner telling him I had finished all the work laid down for me. It is a beautiful country, probably the most fertile part of Oude, as level as a billiard table with immense groves of mango trees and most beautiful crops which are now ripening rapidly. The country people are as civil as they can be and are, I believe, really glad to have come under our rule again, always excepting a few of the most powerful of the large landowners who cannot make so much money by oppression as in the time of the Kings.
I am glad George Baker went to see you, he is really a good lad and a good brave soldier. If you see him again tell him that the horse I bought from him died a month ago, a loss of £80 to me. The worst of it is that depending upon him for my parade work I had sold a very fine young Arab who would have made an excellent charger and am now left in the lurch for horses are difficult to get and the price enormous just now. It is all very fine for Messers Innes and Baker to tell you that I can get fifteen months leave without losing my appointment, they don’t seem to tell you that a medical certificate is necessary to this arrangement. If I get one I shall make a start of course, but at present my health is so alarmingly good that the prospect is poor of getting three doctors to say that it is indispensable that I should go to England! I hope that you won’t apply again to Captain Jones (as mother threatens) for those parcels. He will send them directly he gets his baggage, I’m sure. I am exactly in the same position with regard to poor Murray’s things. I sent them off in July or the beginning of August and they have never reached. I write about them constantly but can find out nothing about them yet. There is a fatality attending all letters connected with the affair too, I believe. A letter from Mr Murray dated July reached me in November. A letter from his son the ADC dated Lucknow, May 1858 reached me in January 1859 and a letter I wrote to him a month ago has probably carried as I can get no answer. I hope the box may turn up shortly, but I can do no more than I have done.
The Government has just sanctioned the establishment of a band in the regiment. I have had one ‘on my own hook’ a long time, but now we get 100 rupees a month and the musicians are paid by the Government, so we shall get on. I have been able to pick up some tolerable musicians and with my old men from the 60ths we make a pretty good noise! When we get in to Lucknow I hope to get one of the bandmasters of the regiment there to look after my boys twice a week or so.
Harris writes me word
that the Delhi Photographs have arrived, so I shall despatch them directly I get in. You will like them very much I think (if they ever reach you!). Am I not writing nicely today? I generally flatter myself that my writing is rather neat, but I have hurt my hand and the pen won’t go straight.
I am glad you all like Hodson’s letters. I have written for them and hope to have them in a few days. I met him first at Umballah and we were very intimate. His wife is gone home. I don’t much like her. She is clever but vulgar and Hodson would have got on much better without her influence. She was very fond of him and that is about all the good I can say for her. I met young Arbuthnot of the 4th Cavalry the other day but had only just time to speak to him. He seems to have a pretty good opinion of himself: but is a gentlemanly, nice-looking lad. Tell Jack I will cultivate his acquaintance when I return to Lucknow.
I have made quite a collection of native arms, swords, matchlocks etc since I have been out. I shall send a few of the best home if possible. I can’t hear anything of Mrs Peskett for the last two months. I get no answers to my letters and don’t know where she is. They were to have paid a visit to Cooksons at Meerut in December or January but I don’t know whether it came off or not. I have been anxious to hear as the poor little boy was very ill when Mrs Peskett last wrote. The cook has just come in to say that he is roasting the sirloin but is unable to give us any horse artillery with it! It is supposed that he means horse-radish. There — now I have a letter ready to send whenever I receive notice of the ‘latest safe day’. Anything more I may find to say must go in a postscript.
Believe me dearest Nelly, your ever affectionate
Robert H. Shebbeare
Indian Mutiny and Beyond Page 13