The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan
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William Makepeace Thackeray >> The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan
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7 This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1911 John Murray edition.
THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES OF MAJOR GAHAGAN
CHAPTER I
"Truth is strange,
Stranger than fiction."
I think it but right that in making my appearance before the public
I should at once acquaint them with my titles and name. My card,
as I leave it at the houses of the nobility, my friends, is as
follows:-
MAJOR GOLIAH O'GRADY GAHAGAN, H.E.I.C.S.,
Commanding Battalion of
Irregular Horse,
AHMEDNUGGAR.
Seeing, I say, this simple visiting ticket, the world will avoid
any of those awkward mistakes as to my person, which have been so
frequent of late. There has been no end to the blunders regarding
this humble title of mine, and the confusion thereby created. When
I published my volume of poems, for instance, the Morning Post
newspaper remarked "that the Lyrics of the Heart, by Miss Gahagan,
may be ranked among the sweetest flowrets of the present spring
season." The Quarterly Review, commenting upon my "Observations on
the Pons Asinorum" (4to, London, 1836), called me "Doctor Gahagan,"
and so on. It was time to put an end to these mistakes, and I have
taken the above simple remedy.
I was urged to it by a very exalted personage. Dining in August
last at the palace of the T-l-r-es at Paris, the lovely young Duch-
ss of Orl-ns (who, though she does not speak English, understands
it as well as I do), said to me in the softest Teutonic, "Lieber
Herr Major, haben sie den Ahmednuggarischen-jager-battalion
gelassen?" "Warum denn?" said I, quite astonished at her R-l H-
ss's question. The P-cess then spoke of some trifle from my pen,
which was simply signed Goliah Gahagan.
There was, unluckily, a dead silence as H.R.H. put this question.
"Comment donc?" said H.M. Lo-is Ph-l-ppe, looking gravely at Count
Mole; "le cher Major a quitte l'armee! Nicolas donc sera maitre de
l'Inde!" H. M- and the Pr. M-n-ster pursued their conversation in
a low tone, and left me, as may be imagined, in a dreadful state of
confusion. I blushed and stuttered, and murmured out a few
incoherent words to explain--but it would not do--I could not
recover my equanimity during the course of the dinner; and while
endeavouring to help an English duke, my neighbour, to poulet a
l'Austerlitz, fairly sent seven mushrooms and three large greasy
croutes over his whiskers and shirt-frill. Another laugh at my
expense. "Ah! M. le Major," said the Q- of the B-lg-ns, archly,
"vous n'aurez jamais votre brevet de Colonel." Her M-y's joke will
be better understood when I state that his Grace is the brother of
a Minister.
I am not at liberty to violate the sanctity of private life, by
mentioning the names of the parties concerned in this little
anecdote. I only wish to have it understood that I am a gentleman,
and live at least in DECENT society. Verbum sat.
But to be serious. I am obliged always to write the name of Goliah
in full, to distinguish me from my brother, Gregory Gahagan, who
was also a Major (in the King's service), and whom I killed in a
duel, as the public most likely knows. Poor Greg! a very trivial
dispute was the cause of our quarrel, which never would have
originated but for the similarity of our names. The circumstance
was this: I had been lucky enough to render the Nawaub of Lucknow
some trifling service (in the notorious affair of Choprasjee
Muckjee), and his Highness sent down a gold toothpick-case directed
to Captain G. Gahagan, which I of course thought was for me: my
brother madly claimed it; we fought, and the consequence was, that
in about three minutes he received a slash in the right side (cut
6), which effectually did his business:- he was a good swordsman
enough--I was THE BEST in the universe. The most ridiculous part
of the affair is, that the toothpick-case was his, after all--he
had left it on the Nawaub's table at tiffin. I can't conceive what
madness prompted him to fight about such a paltry bauble; he had
much better have yielded it at once, when he saw I was determined
to have it. From this slight specimen of my adventures, the reader
will perceive that my life has been one of no ordinary interest;
and, in fact, I may say that I have led a more remarkable life than
any man in the service--I have been at more pitched battles, led
more forlorn hopes, had more success among the fair sex, drunk
harder, read more, been a handsomer man than any officer now
serving Her Majesty.
When I first went to India in 1802, I was a raw cornet of
seventeen, with blazing red hair, six feet four in height, athletic
at all kinds of exercises, owing money to my tailor and everybody
else who would trust me, possessing an Irish brogue, and my full
pay of 120l. a year. I need not say that with all these advantages
I did that which a number of clever fellows have done before me--I
fell in love, and proposed to marry immediately.
But how to overcome the difficulty?--It is true that I loved Julia
Jowler--loved her to madness; but her father intended her for a
Member of Council at least, and not for a beggarly Irish ensign.
It was, however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of
the "Samuel Snob" East Indiaman, Captain Duffy) with this lovely
creature, and my misfortune instantaneously to fall in love with
her. We were not out of the Channel before I adored her,
worshipped the deck which she trod upon, kissed a thousand times
the cuddy-chair on which she used to sit. The same madness fell on
every man in the ship. The two mates fought about her at the Cape;
the surgeon, a sober pious Scotchman, from disappointed affection,
took so dreadfully to drinking as to threaten spontaneous
combustion; and old Colonel Lilywhite, carrying his wife and seven
daughters to Bengal, swore that he would have a divorce from Mrs.
L., and made an attempt at suicide; the captain himself told me,
with tears in his eyes, that he hated his hitherto-adored Mrs.
Duffy, although he had had nineteen children by her.
We used to call her the witch--there was magic in her beauty and in
her voice. I was spell-bound when I looked at her, and stark
staring mad when she looked at me! O lustrous black eyes!--O
glossy night-black ringlets!--O lips!--O dainty frocks of white
muslin!--O tiny kid slippers!--though old and gouty, Gahagan sees
you still! I recollect, off Ascension, she looked at me in her
particular way one day at dinner, just as I happened to be blowing
on a piece of scalding hot green fat. I was stupefied at once--I
thrust the entire morsel (about half a pound) into my mouth. I
made no attempt to swallow, or to masticate it, but left it there
for many minutes, burning, burning! I had no skin to my palate for
seven weeks after, and lived on rice-water during the rest of the
voyage. The anecdote is trivial, but it shows the power of Julia
Jowler over me.
The writers of marine novels have so exhausted the subject of
storms, shipwrecks, mutinies, engagements, sea-sickness, and so
forth, that (although I have experienced each of these in many
varieties) I think it quite unnecessary to recount such trifling
adventures; suffice it to say, that during our five months' trajet,
my mad passion for Julia daily increased; so did the captain's and
the surgeon's; so did Colonel Lilywhite's; so did the doctor's, the
mate's--that of most part of the passengers, and a considerable
number of the crew. For myself, I swore--ensign as I was--I would
win her for my wife; I vowed that I would make her glorious with my
sword--that as soon as I had made a favourable impression on my
commanding officer (which I did not doubt to create), I would lay
open to him the state of my affections, and demand his daughter's
hand. With such sentimental outpourings did our voyage continue
and conclude.
We landed at the Sunderbunds on a grilling hot day in December
1802, and then for the moment Julia and I separated. She was
carried off to her papa's arms in a palankeen, surrounded by at
least forty hookahbadars; whilst the poor cornet, attended but by
two dandies and a solitary beasty (by which unnatural name these
blackamoors are called), made his way humbly to join the regiment
at headquarters.
The -'th Regiment of Bengal Cavalry, then under the command of
Lieut.-Colonel Julius Jowler, C.B., was known throughout Asia and
Europe by the proud title of the Bundelcund Invincibles--so great
was its character for bravery, so remarkable were its services in
that delightful district of India. Major Sir George Gutch was next
in command, and Tom Thrupp, as kind a fellow as ever ran a Mahratta
through the body, was second Major. We were on the eve of that
remarkable war which was speedily to spread throughout the whole of
India, to call forth the valour of a Wellesley, and the indomitable
gallantry of a Gahagan; which was illustrated by our victories at
Ahmednuggar (where I was the first over the barricade at the
storming of the Pettah); at Argaum, where I slew with my own sword
twenty-three matchlock-men, and cut a dromedary in two; and by that
terrible day of Assaye, where Wellesley would have been beaten but
for me--me alone: I headed nineteen charges of cavalry, took
(aided by only four men of my own troop) seventeen field-pieces,
killing the scoundrelly French artillerymen; on that day I had
eleven elephants shot under me, and carried away Scindiah's nose-
ring with a pistol-ball. Wellesley is a Duke and a Marshal, I but
a simple Major of Irregulars. Such is fortune and war! But my
feelings carry me away from my narrative, which had better proceed
with more order.
On arriving, I say, at our barracks at Dum Dum, I for the first
time put on the beautiful uniform of the Invincibles: a light blue
swallow-tailed jacket with silver lace and wings, ornamented with
about 3,000 sugar-loaf buttons, rhubarb-coloured leather
inexpressibles (tights), and red morocco boots with silver spurs
and tassels, set off to admiration the handsome persons of the
officers of our corps. We wore powder in those days; and a
regulation pigtail of seventeen inches, a brass helmet surrounded
by leopard skin, with a bearskin top and a horsetail feather, gave
the head a fierce and chivalrous appearance, which is far more
easily imagined than described.
Attired in this magnificent costume, I first presented myself
before Colonel Jowler. He was habited in a manner precisely
similar, but not being more than five feet in height, and weighing
at least fifteen stone, the dress he wore did not become him quite
so much as slimmer and taller men. Flanked by his tall Majors,
Thrupp and Gutch, he looked like a stumpy skittle-ball between two
attenuated skittles. The plump little Colonel received me with
vast cordiality, and I speedily became a prime favourite with
himself and the other officers of the corps. Jowler was the most
hospitable of men; and gratifying my appetite and my love together,
I continually partook of his dinners, and feasted on the sweet
presence of Julia.
I can see now, what I would not and could not perceive in those
early days, that this Miss Jowler--on whom I had lavished my first
and warmest love, whom I had endowed with all perfection and
purity--was no better than a little impudent flirt, who played with
my feelings, because during the monotony of a sea voyage she had no
other toy to play with; and who deserted others for me, and me for
others, just as her whim or her interest might guide her. She had
not been three weeks at headquarters when half the regiment was in
love with her. Each and all of the candidates had some favour to
boast of, or some encouraging hopes on which to build. It was the
scene of the "Samuel Snob" over again, only heightened in interest
by a number of duels. The following list will give the reader a
notion of some of them:-
1. Cornet Gahagan . . . Ensign Hicks, of the Sappers and Miners.
Hicks received a ball in his jaw, and was half choked by a quantity
of carroty whisker forced down his throat with the ball.
2. Captain Macgillicuddy, B.N.I. Cornet Gahagan. I was run
through the body, but the sword passed between the ribs, and
injured me very slightly.
3. Captain Macgillicuddy, B.N.I. Mr. Mulligatawny, B.C.S., Deputy-
Assistant Vice Sub-Controller of the Boggleywollah Indigo grounds,
Ramgolly branch.
Macgillicuddy should have stuck to sword's play, and he might have
come off in his second duel as well as in his first; as it was, the
civilian placed a ball and a part of Mac's gold repeater in his
stomach. A remarkable circumstance attended this shot, an account
of which I sent home to the "Philosophical Transactions:" the
surgeon had extracted the ball, and was going off, thinking that
all was well, when the gold repeater struck thirteen in poor
Macgillicuddy's abdomen. I suppose that the works must have been
disarranged in some way by the bullet, for the repeater was one of
Barraud's, never known to fail before, and the circumstance
occurred at seven o'clock. {1}
I could continue, almost ad infinitum, an account of the wars which
this Helen occasioned, but the above three specimens will, I should
think, satisfy the peaceful reader. I delight not in scenes of
blood, Heaven knows, but I was compelled in the course of a few
weeks, and for the sake of this one woman, to fight nine duels
myself, and I know that four times as many more took place
concerning her.
I forgot to say that Jowler's wife was a half-caste woman, who had
been born and bred entirely in India, and whom the Colonel had
married from the house of her mother, a native. There were some
singular rumours abroad regarding this latter lady's history: it
was reported that she was the daughter of a native Rajah, and had
been carried off by a poor English subaltern in Lord Clive's time.
The young man was killed very soon after, and left his child with
its mother. The black Prince forgave his daughter and bequeathed
to her a handsome sum of money. I suppose that it was on this
account that Jowler married Mrs. J., a creature who had not, I do
believe, a Christian name, or a single Christian quality: she was
a hideous, bloated, yellow creature, with a beard, black teeth, and
red eyes: she was fat, lying, ugly, and stingy--she hated and was
hated by all the world, and by her jolly husband as devoutly as by
any other. She did not pass a month in the year with him, but
spent most of her time with her native friends. I wonder how she
could have given birth to so lovely a creature as her daughter.
This woman was of course with the Colonel when Julia arrived, and
the spice of the devil in her daughter's composition was most
carefully nourished and fed by her. If Julia had been a flirt
before, she was a downright jilt now; she set the whole cantonment
by the ears; she made wives jealous and husbands miserable; she
caused all those duels of which I have discoursed already, and yet
such was the fascination of THE WITCH that I still thought her an
angel. I made court to the nasty mother in order to be near the
daughter; and I listened untiringly to Jowler's interminable dull
stories, because I was occupied all the time in watching the
graceful movements of Miss Julia.
But the trumpet of war was soon ringing in our ears; and on the
battle-field Gahagan is a man! The Bundelcund Invincibles received
orders to march, and Jowler, Hector-like, donned his helmet and
prepared to part from his Andromache. And now arose his
perplexity: what must be done with his daughter, his Julia? He
knew his wife's peculiarities of living, and did not much care to
trust his daughter to her keeping; but in vain he tried to find her
an asylum among the respectable ladies of his regiment. Lady Gutch
offered to receive her, but would have nothing to do with Mrs.
Jowler; the surgeon's wife, Mrs. Sawbone, would have neither mother
nor daughter: there was no help for it, Julia and her mother must
have a house together, and Jowler knew that his wife would fill it
with her odious blackamoor friends.
I could not, however, go forth satisfied to the campaign until I
learned from Julia my fate. I watched twenty opportunities to see
her alone, and wandered about the Colonel's bungalow as an informer
does about a public-house, marking the incomings and the outgoings
of the family, and longing to seize the moment when Miss Jowler,
unbiassed by her mother or her papa, might listen, perhaps, to my
eloquence, and melt at the tale of my love.
But it would not do--old Jowler seemed to have taken all of a
sudden to such a fit of domesticity, that there was no finding him
out of doors, and his rhubarb-coloured wife (I believe that her
skin gave the first idea of our regimental breeches), who before
had been gadding ceaselessly abroad, and poking her broad nose into
every menage in the cantonment, stopped faithfully at home with her
spouse. My only chance was to beard the old couple in their den,
and ask them at once for their cub.
So I called one day at tiffin:- old Jowler was always happy to have
my company at this meal; it amused him, he said, to see me drink
Hodgson's pale ale (I drank two hundred and thirty-four dozen the
first year I was in Bengal)--and it was no small piece of fun,
certainly, to see old Mrs. Jowler attack the currie-bhaut;--she was
exactly the colour of it, as I have had already the honour to
remark, and she swallowed the mixture with a gusto which was never
equalled, except by my poor friend Dando a propos d'huitres. She
consumed the first three platefuls with a fork and spoon, like a
Christian; but as she warmed to her work, the old hag would throw
away her silver implements, and dragging the dishes towards her, go
to work with her hands, flip the rice into her mouth with her
fingers, and stow away a quantity of eatables sufficient for a
sepoy company. But why do I diverge from the main point of my
story?
Julia, then, Jowler, and Mrs. J., were at luncheon; the dear girl
was in the act to sabler a glass of Hodgson as I entered. "How do
you do, Mr. Gagin?" said the old hag, leeringly. "Eat a bit o'
currie-bhaut,"--and she thrust the dish towards me, securing a heap
as it passed. "What! Gagy my boy, how do, how do?" said the fat
Colonel. "What! run through the body?--got well again--have some
Hodgson--run through your body too!"--and at this, I may say,
coarse joke (alluding to the fact that in these hot climates the
ale oozes out as it were from the pores of the skin) old Jowler
laughed: a host of swarthy chobdars, kitmatgars, sices, consomahs,
and bobbychies laughed too, as they provided me, unasked, with the
grateful fluid. Swallowing six tumblers of it, I paused nervously
for a moment, and then said -
"Bobbachy, consomah, ballybaloo hoga."
The black ruffians took the hint, and retired.
"Colonel and Mrs. Jowler," said I solemnly, "we are alone; and you,
Miss Jowler, you are alone too; that is--I mean--I take this
opportunity to--(another glass of ale, if you please)--to express,
once for all, before departing on a dangerous campaign"--(Julia
turned pale)--"before entering, I say, upon a war which may stretch
in the dust my high-raised hopes and me, to express my hopes while
life still remains to me, and to declare in the face of heaven,
earth, and Colonel Jowler, that I love you, Julia!" The Colonel,
astonished, let fall a steel fork, which stuck quivering for some
minutes in the calf of my leg; but I heeded not the paltry
interruption. "Yes, by yon bright heaven," continued I, "I love
you, Julia! I respect my commander, I esteem your excellent and
beauteous mother: tell me, before I leave you, if I may hope for a
return of my affection. Say that you love me, and I will do such
deeds in this coming war, as shall make you proud of the name of
your Gahagan."
The old woman, as I delivered these touching words, stared,
snapped, and ground her teeth, like an enraged monkey. Julia was
now red, now white; the Colonel stretched forward, took the fork
out of the calf of my leg, wiped it, and then seized a bundle of
letters which I had remarked by his side.
"A cornet!" said he, in a voice choking with emotion; "a pitiful
beggarly Irish cornet aspire to the hand of Julia Jowler! Gag--
Gahagan, are you mad, or laughing at us? Look at these letters,
young man--at these letters, I say--one hundred and twenty-four
epistles from every part of India (not including one from the
Governor-General, and six from his brother, Colonel Wellesley)--one
hundred and twenty-four proposals for the hand of Miss Jowler!
Cornet Gahagan," he continued, "I wish to think well of you: you
are the bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man
in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for
Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"--(Here the old rogue
grinned, as if he had made a capital pun.)--"No, no," said he,
waxing good-natured; "Gagy my boy, it is nonsense! Julia love,
retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and
smoke a pipe with me."
I took one: it was the bitterest chillum I ever smoked in my life.
* * *
I am not going to give here an account of my military services;
they will appear in my great national autobiography, in forty
volumes, which I am now preparing for the press. I was with my
regiment in all Wellesley's brilliant campaigns; then taking dawk,
I travelled across the country north-eastward, and had the honour
of fighting by the side of Lord Lake at Laswaree, Degg,
Furruckabad, Futtyghur, and Bhurtpore: but I will not boast of my
actions--the military man knows them, MY SOVEREIGN appreciates
them. If asked who was the bravest man of the Indian army, there
is not an officer belonging to it who would not cry at once,
GAHAGAN. The fact is, I was desperate: I cared not for life,
deprived of Julia Jowler.
With Julia's stony looks ever before my eyes, her father's stern
refusal in my ears, I did not care, at the close of the campaign,
again to seek her company or to press my suit. We were eighteen
months on service, marching and counter-marching, and fighting
almost every other day: to the world I did not seem altered; but
the world only saw the face, and not the seared and blighted heart
within me. My valour, always desperate, now reached to a pitch of
cruelty; I tortured my grooms and grass-cutters for the most
trifling offence or error,--I never in action spared a man,--I
sheared off three hundred and nine heads in the course of that
single campaign.
Some influence, equally melancholy, seemed to have fallen upon poor
old Jowler. About six months after we had left Dum Dum, he
received a parcel of letters from Benares (whither his wife had
retired with her daughter), and so deeply did they seem to weigh
upon his spirits, that he ordered eleven men of his regiment to be
flogged within two days; but it was against the blacks that he
chiefly turned his wrath. Our fellows, in the heat and hurry of
the campaign, were in the habit of dealing rather roughly with
their prisoners, to extract treasure from them: they used to pull
their nails out by the root, to boil them in kedgeree pots, to flog
them and dress their wounds with cayenne pepper, and so on.
Jowler, when he heard of these proceedings, which before had always
justly exasperated him (he was a humane and kind little man), used
now to smile fiercely and say, "D- the black scoundrels! Serve
them right, serve them right!"
One day, about a couple of miles in advance of the column, I had
been on a foraging-party with a few dragoons, and was returning
peaceably to camp, when of a sudden a troop of Mahrattas burst on
us from a neighbouring mango-tope, in which they had been hidden:
in an instant three of my men's saddles were empty, and I was left
with but seven more to make head against at least thirty of these
vagabond black horsemen. I never saw in my life a nobler figure
than the leader of the troop--mounted on a splendid black Arab; he
was as tall, very nearly, as myself; he wore a steel cap and a
shirt of mail, and carried a beautiful French carbine, which had
already done execution upon two of my men. I saw that our only
chance of safety lay in the destruction of this man. I shouted to
him in a voice of thunder (in the Hindustanee tongue of course),
"Stop, dog, if you dare, and encounter a man!"
In reply his lance came whirling in the air over my head, and
mortally transfixed poor Foggarty of ours, who was behind me.
Grinding my teeth and swearing horribly, I drew that scimitar which
never yet failed its blow, {2} and rushed at the Indian. He came
down at full gallop, his own sword making ten thousand gleaming
circles in the air, shrieking his cry of battle.
The contest did not last an instant. With my first blow I cut off
his sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I
said that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six
inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and
delivered "St. George;" my sword caught the spike exactly on the
point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap
and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he wore in his back-
plate. His head, cut clean in two between the eyebrows and
nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one side on each
shoulder, and he galloped on till his horse was stopped by my men,
who were not a little amused at the feat.
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