White Mughals (97 page)

With it came an official certificate, also dated 20 June 1801, computing the length of William’s service in India to date. It stated that he had been admitted as a cadet on 26 September 1771, resigned 18 December 1783; was readmitted 25 July 1785, and that he had therefore spent a total of twenty-nine years, eight months and twenty-four days in India, on the basis of which the Company intended to calculate his pension. OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F227/25, p.30, 20 June 1801, Lord Wellesley to William Kirkpatrick.

There are pictures of Mama Barun and her formidable colleague Mama Champa surviving from an album of Henry Russell’s in the India Office (OIOC, Add Or. 1946, 1947). As well as commanding the Zuffur Plutun, and acting as MCs during the durbar, they were put in charge of sensitive state matters regarding women, such as searching
zenanas
for stolen jewels and conducting the inquiry into the scandal of the brazier who claimed that James Kirkpatrick had abducted his wife. In the pictures both women are wearing the same court uniform of flowing white robes with gilt edges worn over a pink
choli
and covered with strings of pearls; but they are very different figures, and the artist has almost caricatured these differences. Mama Champa is a tall, large-breasted and large-bottomed woman shown in her late fifties with powerful, masculine hands and an extremely fearsome expression on her face. Mama Barun is a little older, and more stooped and emaciated, with her face speckled by smallpox; but she is made to appear wise and canny, with a hooked nose and the hint of a smile at the edges of her mouth. She holds a kerchief in one hand and a narcissus in the other, while on her head she wears a loose turban. Neither woman has her face covered. According to the
Tarikh i-Yadgar i-Makhan Lal
: ‘Mama Champa was a purchased slave girl. She was the nurse of His Highness. As she was very intelligent, therefore His Highness of Illuminated Glory entrusted many of the works of state to her. Her monthly salary from twelve rupees was raised up to rupees forty and she was awarded a palanquin. She was also granted the land of Champ Paith. His Highness arranged her marriage with Fojdar Khan, who is the master of elephant fighting in Hyderabad. Fojdar Khan was also honoured with the military command of the late His Highness [Nizam Ali Khan]. Mama Champa died in the year 1237 A.H./1821 A.D.’

Alams
were usually either tear-shaped, or fashioned in the form of a hand. They are often highly ornate and beautiful objects, and the best of them are among the greatest masterpieces of medieval Indian metalwork. Chroniclers speak of gold
alams
studded with gems, but most of those that survive are cast either in bronze or silver. According to the most literate of all the art historians of the Deccan, the late Mark Zebrowski, ‘the most remarkable thing [about
alams
] is the spell of mystery and miracle they cast upon the spectator. Islam abhors idols, but these banners are objects of devotion with their outstretched protective hands or writhing bands of serpents intertwined with snake-like Arabic script. Their power is immense … [and they] move the strongest men to tears … They remind one of the statues and crucifixes in Catholic churches completely covered in purple cloth during the sorrowful period of Lent, to be uncovered at long last only at Easter, on the Day of Resurrection. They are symbols of pain, death and rebirth. ’ See Mark Zebrowski,
Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India
(London, 2000).

From which, of course, the modern English word ‘juggernaut’ derives, though a belching lorry does little honour to the intricately carved chariot of Puri after which it is named.

Shushtari was not being completely accurate here. There was a tradition of the Nizam distributing
naan
bread and
halwa
to the poor on the fifth and also the tenth day of Muharram, after the singing of the last
marsiyas
of the year, while on the same days the women of Hyderabad would set up stalls to distribute milk, sherbet and scented water while their menfolk gave out money and clothes. Moreover, free food was available throughout Muharram at the Hussaini Alam shrine, thanks to the endowment left for this purpose by a Qu’tb Shahi queen whose son was carried off by a mad elephant during the celebrations, and who vowed to feed the poor of the city if he was brought back safely. Two hundred years later the free
langar
was still being distributed according to her wishes. Ghulam Husain Khan went as far as suggesting that ‘for nine days there is nothing but this rushing from one langar to the next, all spectators, rich and poor, Hindu and Muslim alike abandoning all their worldly pursuits and busying themselves only with mourning and free meals’. Nevertheless, in the eyes of Shushtari, the giving of food and alms was clearly a less central part of the festivities in Hyderabad than in Iran.

These winged horses were images whose artistic ancestry goes back to the images of flying horses and winged bulls in ancient Assyria and Persia. They were sanctified in Islam as being images of the mount who took the Prophet Mohammed on his night journey from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to heaven and back again. They are usually shown with crowns, a woman’s head, a deer’s feet and a peacock’s breast and tail. In an image of the Muharram processions in Patna at this period, now in the India Office, pairs of huge flying horses support the
ta’ziya
shrines, and are themselves carried on poles by teams of devotees turned for the day into voluntary palanquin-bearers.

Fanny was later sent to England to be educated, which means she must almost certainly have had some English blood, and so was in all probability William’s daughter—as would seem to be implied by James calling her ‘your darling little Fanny’. OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.73, 10 December 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

Mir Jehangir Ali Khan, Rais ul-Mulk, Sulaiman Jah, was born in 1793 and died in 1862. He was the Nizam’s seventh son, out of eight. (Nizam Ali Khan also fathered twelve daughters.)

Adoption was a common practice in princely India, and rulers without an heir frequently adopted one. It was however unusual for a princely ruler to give his son for adoption to a non-royal, and a measure of the deep trust and affection felt by the Nizam for his oldest and closest adviser, Aristu Jah.

Kirkpatrick’s descendants also own a second Venkatchellam image, of the young Prince Sulaiman riding out with a company, perhaps on a hunting expedition.

Sahib Begum was the title given to Fyze by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam.

The
dak
(as it is usually spelled) was the Indian despatch system, adopted by the British from the Mughals. It comprised a network of interlocking runners and horses.
^‡
James’s former Assistant (later Sir John Malcolm, though he was at this period usually referred to as ‘Boy’ Malcolm), now the Governor General’s Private Secretary, was passing through Hyderabad on his way to Bombay. His feelings at being turned into a purveyor of Mughal women’s bangles and trinkets are not recorded. He did however remain friends with Fyze after the delivery, and many years later, on a visit to Hyderabad in 1818, recorded: ‘I paid a visit to Fyze Begum, the celebrated lady of the late General Palmer, and was received with Oriental magnificence.’ See J.W. Kaye,
The Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm GCB
(2 vols, London, 1856), Vol. 2, p.163.

James was beginning to suspect—correctly as it turned out—that two members of his own staff, Thomas Sydenham and Captain William Hemming, the commander of his bodyguard, were not as loyal as they professed to be, and these appear to be the characters ‘about yourself’ that his brother William is referring to in this letter. On 17 December 1801 James had written to William in cipher: ‘A variety of concurring circumstances compel me, however reluctantly, to doubt the sincerity of Sydenham’s professions of regard for me. He is at all events, to say nothing more, a young man whose self-sufficiency & presumption keep full race with his abilities … My worthy friend Brunton cautioned me long ago to be wary of him, and I wish I had paid more implicit attention than I have done to his friendly caution … ’ OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.292.

In other words, Vigors was buying supplies cheaply in the bazaar and charging the Nizam for them at a much higher rate, so grossly inflating his expenses claims, and his personal profits.

The Commercial Treaty of April 1802 laid down that free transit of all goods was now permitted between Company territory and that belonging to the Nizam, all local duties were to be abolished, and a flat rate of 5 per cent would be paid on all goods imported into the territories of either party.

Nothing at all is known about where William was sent to school prior to Woolwich; but when his Anglo-Indian cousins—the children of his aunt Nur Begum (Fyze’s sister)—arrived in London a little later, they attended two small private schools in London: Miss Eliza Barker’s School in Hammersmith for the girls, and Mr Clarke’s for the boys. It is quite possible that Mr Clarke’s was where William was educated, and that Nur placed her son Charles in the school following recommendations from her sister Fyze. General Palmer’s mother, his first wife Sarah, and his two daughters from his first marriage were all living at Greenwich at this time, intermittently supported by the General, and as Woolwich is immediately adjacent to Greenwich it seems unlikely that they would not have looked after William while he was in London, in the same way as the Handsome Colonel took in all his Indian grandchildren, legitimate, illegitimate, English and Anglo-Indian. If so, it is interesting to speculate how the General’s Creole first wife, Sarah, treated the son of his Indian second wife, Fyze. The Royal Military Academy was founded in the Woolwich Arsenal buildings in 1721. Vanbrugh’s celebrated domes—once regarded as the epitome of Englishness—have recently been shown to have been heavily influenced by the Mughal domes of the Muslim-style mausolea built for Indianised East India Company factors at Surat, where Vanbrugh worked for two years as a young man, and where, in his spare time, he would go off to sketch the tombs and local palace architecture. (For Mr Clarke’s school, see the box ‘London Receipts’ in the de Boigne archive, Chambéry. For Sarah in Greenwich, and William’s attempts to get David Anderson to send her some money, see Anderson Papers, BL Add Mss 45,427, p.203, March 1792, Gualiar. For Woolwich Military Academy and the Royal Arsenal see Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (eds),
The London Encyclopaedia
(London, 1983). For Vanbrugh in Surat see Christopher Ridgeway and Robert Williams (eds),
Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture in Baroque England
(London, 1999).

Michael Finglas (see Chapter Three) was an ineffective Irish soldier of fortune whom Aristu Jah brought back from Pune to found a European brigade in Hyderabad as a counterbalance to that of Raymond. His brigade was made up of a roguish bunch of European and American vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells, as well as a fairly sizeable contingent of Anglo-Indians. Finglas himself was ‘possessed of very little talent or education’, according to James, but Aristu Jah liked him and gave him the inappropriate title of Nawab Khoon Khar Jung, ‘the Falcon’. He died on 7 July 1800.

James also worked strenuously to keep William rising in the ranks. On 10 December 1802, for example, he wrote to the General: ‘Your son William is just now on command somewhere. When he returns, which I believe will be soon, I shall exert myself strenuously to get him placed near [the Crown Prince] Secunder Jah.’ OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.73, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

Wellesley seems to have begun philandering even before he reached India, apparently seducing Anne Barnard’s cousin ‘the fair Anne Elizabeth’ on his stopover at the Cape. His gargantuan sexual appetite became a major problem after his return to London, where there was a series of semi-public incidents with prostitutes. Moreover, after his break-up with Hyacinthe he employed a live-in
accoucheur
who provided ‘useful’ services to his seraglio of concubines. It was partly rumours of this sort of thing that in due course blocked Wellesley from becoming Prime Minister: his younger brother Arthur firmly believed that it was his ‘fornication rather than indolence that has kept him out of office … I wish that Wellesley was
castrated
; or that like other people attend to his business and perform too.’ See Iris Butler,
The Eldest Brother
(London, 1973), pp.157, 230, 386.

This was an arrangement not uncommon among Indophile Europeans of the period: the chief general of the Sikh leader Ranjit Singh, Claude Auguste Court, built his residence inside the walled formal garden enclosing Asaf Khan’s tomb by the river Ravi on the edge of Lahore. (A picture of the house is reproduced in Jean-Marie Lafont,
Maharaja Ranjit Singh: Lord of the Five Rivers
(New Delhi, 2002), p.99.) Just outside the walls of Delhi at the same time, Sir David Ochterlony was building a very similar spread of neo-classical bungalows amid the rills of Shah Jehan’s beautiful Shalimar Gardens, the spot where Aurangzeb had been made Mughal Emperor in 1657. Towards the end of his life Ochterlony also began to construct an extraordinary garden tomb in the Mughal garden he had had built for his most senior wife, Mubarak Begum, a short distance from Shalimar Bagh. The Ochterlonys’ tomb is a wonderfully hybrid monument, whose central dome was modelled on that of the Delhi church, St James’s, and was surmounted by a cross, while the side wings are enclosed in a forest of small minarets—the perfect architectural expression of the religious fusion Ochterlony seems to have achieved in his marriage. In the event, Ochterlony died away from Delhi and was buried in Meerut, and the empty tomb was destroyed during the Mutiny, in which Mubarak Begum, by then remarried to a Mughal nobleman, fought on the Mughal side. It is an extraordinary and completely forgotten moment in architectural history: the last of the great Mughal garden tombs—a tradition that reached its finest moment in the Taj Mahal—being built not by the last of the Mughals, but by a Scottish-American general. There is a picture of the tomb in Emily Bayley’s
The Golden Calm: An English Lady’s Life in Moghul Delhi
(London, 1980), p.181.