IN VICTORIA’S INDIA

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 3

IN VICTORIA’S INDIA

Memoirs of * Bengal Civilian. By John Beames. Chatto and Windiu. 307 pp. Index

He had just completed the work, when “up dashed Mr Richard Temple, Cominis, sinner of Lahore. He wore a helmet with gorgeous scarlet and gold turban; his huge and hideous moustaches stuck out in stiff points, in imitation of the Emperor Napoleon in, whom he fancied, he resembled. He was, in fact, an ugly like, ness of Punch’s caricatures of that sovereign. He told me to go back to my station and would do the rest. He was found standing in s picturesque attitude, giving the last touches to the word as the colonel, followed by his regiments, arrived on the bank. He was asked to dine at the mess that night, where they drank his health, and the colonel reported the important service he had done. He received the thanks of the lieutenantGovernor. My name was not even mentioned.” Such are. the scorns that patient merit takes.

The word “civilian” used in the title of this book is defined in the “Shorter Ox. ford Dictionary’’ as one who studies or has studied the Civil Law. The author of these memoirs served af a magistrate in Bengal from 1860 to 1893. and, for several reasons, what he has written would be hard to match. He was an accurate observer and he gives an interesting picture of Indian life during the Utter half of the Victorian period. The generally level tone of his prose helps to guarantee the faithfulness of the narrative, although this does not mean that the style is pedestrian—far from it. The book reveals the measure that would be expected from a man of sound sense and good education. Everything he says is worth attending to, particularly as an experience like his can never be repeated. The India Beames as a young man went out to serve will perhaps strike some readers as still being the India that Thackeray had in mind in the first part of “The Newcomes.” For instance in Calcutta he at once took rooms in a good boardinghouse, which was favoured by bachelors of all ages. These places were always kept by women of the middle class. "Of those whom I have known most were widows, one was the widow of a pilot, another of an indigo planter, a third of a captain in the merchant service. These good ladies are very kind to young bachelors, look after them when ill, get their clothes made and mended, help them to get servants, talk the language for them to natives, and generally do their best to give a home-like tone to their establishments." As for the Civil Service, it was considered the preserve of a self-contained aristocracy “We were invited everywhere and dined ou‘ three or four times a week besides numerous lunch and garden parties. Mamas angled for us for their daughters, for, as the phase then went, we were ‘worth three hundred a year dead or alive’.” (The civilians pay began at £3OO a year and the widow’s pension was fixed at the same figure.) Beames began his official life as assistant commissioner of the district of Gujrat, some 70 miles beyond Lahore on the way to Peshawar. “My work consisted in trying petty cases of assault, theft and the like; and equally petty civil suits in which the village money lenders sued peasants for small debts. I had also to visit the gaol twice a week and .see that everything was in order. There was no law in the Punjab in those days. Our instructions were to decide all cases by the light of common sense and our own sense of what was just and right,” Outside official duties the magistrate’s life was varied and often exciting. When the Afghans began extended raiding over the North West Frontier, Beames had to make a bridge of boats over the Cherab river to expedite the passage of the 7th Dragoons.

In 1860 he married, but was far from settling down, for he changed districts and duties times without number. For instance, at the end of 1864 he was informed that “the whole of the left wing of the Bhutan field force will pass through your district. You must feed them and find carriages for their baggage and ammunition. Any expense you may incur will be sanctioned; but you will not be forgiven if a single soldier or a single bag of grain is delayed for a day on the route . . .”

Tlie memoirs are rich in portraits, some of them rather surprising. Of John Lawrence Beames writes. “He was a rough, coarse man, in appearance more like a ‘navvy’ than a gentleman. His ideal of a district officer was a hard, active man in boots and breeches, who almost lived in the saddle, worked all day and nearly all night, whose whole establishment consisted of a camp bed, an odd table and chair and a small box of clothes such as could be slung on a camel . . . Elmslie, one of my Haileybury comrades, imprudently brought a piano to the Punjab with him. Such refinement was unpardonable, and poor Elmslie was moved five times from one end of the Punjab to the other in two years. ‘l’ll smash his piano for him,’ John Lawrence is reported to have said when he first heard of such a degradation as a Punjab officer having a piano.”

John Beames was long remembered in India as a linguist. Even before he went to Bengal he was an accomplished Persian scholar. His publications included a comparative grammar of the “Modern Aryan languages of India,” “Outlines of Indian Philology” and a “Grammar of the Bengali language.” The last named was still being used as a text book as late as 1922 by Indian Civil Service probationers posted to that province. The memoirs are edited by the author’s grandson, who has himself served as a civil servant in Bengal The publishers, in their turn, have spared no pains to make the appearance of the volume worthy of its contents.