without any thought replied, ‘I’ll be master of that house and garden yet before I leave India.’ … Just thirty two years after, I took possession of the house No 46, where I have established the Bon Accord Rope Works.
When his regiment disembarked, Forbes-Mitchell was pleased to see that fellow Scots ‘who had long been exiled from home’ forced beer on the thirsty warriors, ‘and the Highlanders required but little pressing, for the sun was hot, and, to use their own vernacular, the exercise “made them gey an drauthy”’.50
Calcutta, the capital of British India until its replacement by New Delhi in 1911, became the liveliest of Indian cities. Captain Alexander Hamilton complained, however, that its origins were unpropitious:
The English settled there about the year 1690 … Mr Job Charnock, then being the Company’s agent in Bengal, had liberty to settle an Emporium in any part of the River’s side below Hughly [Hooghly], and for the sake of a large shady tree chose that place, tho’ he could not have chosen a more unhealthful place on the whole river; for three miles to the North Eastward is a saltwater lake that overflows in September and October and then prodigious numbers of fish resort thither, but in November and December, when the floods are dissipated these fish are left dry and with their putrefaction affect the air with stinking vapours, which the North-East Winds bring with them to Fort William, that they cause a yearly Mortality.
The fort itself, in the most literal sense of one of the key bastions of British rule in India, followed the best principles of artillery fortification:
Fort William was built in a regular Tetraon of brick and mortar called Puckah, which is a composition of brick-dust, Lime Molasses and cut hemp and is as hard and tougher than firm stone or brick, and the town was built without Order as the Builders thought most convenient for their own Affairs, everyone taking in what ground most pleased them for gardening so that in most houses you must pass through a Garden into the House, the English building near the River’s side and the natives within land … About fifty yards from Fort William stands the Church built for the pious charity of Merchants residing there … 51
Robert Clive described Calcutta as:
One of the most wicked places in the Universe. Corruption, Licentiousness and a want of Principle seem to have possessed the Minds of all Civil Servants, by frequent bad examples they have grown callous, Rapacious and Luxurious beyond Conception. 52
In 1856 Ensign Charles MacGregor remarked that he thought Calcutta was ‘not much of a place. It is all very well if you like balls, and that sort of thing.’53 The capture of the city by Suraj-ud-Daula in 1756 was only a brief check to its rise; Mrs Sherwood recalled:
The splendid sloth and the languid debauchery of European Society in those days – English gentlemen, overwhelmed with the consequences of extravagance, hampered by Hindoo women and by crowds of olive-coloured children, without either the will or the power to leave the shores of India … Great men ride about in state coaches, with a dozen servants running before or behind them to bawl out their titles; and little men lounged in palanquins or drove a chariot for which they had never intended to pay, drawn by horses which they had bullied or cajoled out of the stables of wealthy Baboos.54
Minnie Wood was unhappily married to an officer in the Company’s service. She had no idea of the hardships of life in India, and he wrongly thought that he had married an heiress. In 1856 she wrote home to her mother in England:
I do not like Calcutta at all – the smells are awful, indeed I do not see one redeeming quality in the place. The country round is very pretty, but the Indians and their habits are disgusting. It is nothing uncommon to see a man stark naked begging, as do boys who run by the side of our carriage.55
Most newly arrived officers were housed in the barracks or in the casemates of Fort William: Henry Havelock found the barracks so crowded in 1823 that subalterns were lodged two to a room. Fred Roberts’s father, commanding the Lahore Division, advised him to put up at a hotel until ordered to report to the Bengal Artillery depot at Dum Dum. He felt lonely because his comrades from the steamer had all gone off to barracks, and:
was still more depressed later on by finding myself at dinner tête à tête with a first-class specimen of the results of an Indian climate. He belonged to my own regiment, and was going home on a medical certificate, but did not look as if he would ever reach England.56
He was shocked to find that:
The men were crowded into badly ventilated buildings, and the sanitary arrangements were as deplorable as the state of the water supply. The very efficient scavengers were the large birds of prey called adjutants, and so great was the dependence placed on exertions of these unclean creatures that any injury done to them would be treated as gross misconduct. The natural result of this state of affairs was endemic sickness, and a death-rate of over ten per cent per annum.
Once the East India Company’s rule had extended into Bengal, new arrivals did not stay in Calcutta for long. The Company’s young officers were quickly posted off to learn their trade. Ensign MacGregor went to 40th BNI at Dinapur:
I play rackets and ride, and in fact take an immense lot of exercise. We have got a gymnasium in our compound, and leaping-poles, dumb-bells, &c, besides single-staves and foils. I declare life would be intolerable if it was not for something of that kind. Unless you can do something … India is the slowest place in the world, not even excluding Bognor. However, with all these things I manage to get on very well. Tomorrow I begin those delightful drills. I look forward to them with such joy.57
Exercise was welcome, for most travellers had put on weight during the long passage from England, as Lieutenant Bayley of HM’s 52nd Light Infantry wrote of his arrival in 1853:
We used to watch the men at their dinners, and they were so well and plentifully supplied that, in spite of their sea-appetite, many could not get through their rations … and I shall never forget the appearance of the detachment on our arrival in India, when their canvas suits were laid aside, and they tried to button their coatees. Half of them could not be got to meet round the waist.
Soldiers who arrived in Calcutta in drafts were taken by steamer to Chinsurah, the depot for British units serving in Bengal. John Pearman, who reached India in October 1845, recalled how:
We had a parade at 10 am, got white clothing served out, took our sea clearance money, and like soldiers, went off at once to spend it. At night we could not sleep, what with the heat and the noise the jackals made. In the morning before it was light the black men came into the rooms, which are very large open rooms, only iron and wood rails for walls. They sat at the foot of your bedstead with a large earthen vessel on their heads, holding two or three gallons, calling out ‘Hot coffee, Sahib.’ This was done so much that my comrade, by name Makepiece but wrongly named, threw a boot at the poor fellow, broke the vessel and the hot coffee ran down his body, but did not scald him. Of course Makepiece had to pay for the coffee.58
Journeys further up the Ganges were often difficult, as Gunner Richard Hardcastle of the Royal Horse Artillery discovered in 1857:
Nov 27th: Succeeded in getting off the sand at about 6pm yesterday having
