White Mughals (68 page)

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.’
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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.
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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,

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’.
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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,

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

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 can 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.
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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.’
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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... ’
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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.
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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,