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Title: The Story of Madras
Author: Glyn Barlow
Release Date: September 14, 2008 [EBook #26621]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Chepauk Palace.
(Southern half)]
THE
STORY OF MADRAS
BY
GLYN BARLOW, M.A.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, MADRAS
1921
* * * * *
PREFACE
This little book is not a "History of Madras," although it contains a
good deal of Madras history; and it is not a "Guide to Madras,"
although it gives accounts of some of the principal buildings in the
city. The book will have fulfilled its purpose if it helps the reader
to realize that the City of Madras is a particularly interesting
corner of the world. This fact is often forgotten; and even many of
the people who live in Madras itself, and who are aware that Madras
has played an important part in the making of India's history, are
strangely uninterested in its historic remains. They are eloquent
perhaps in denouncing the heat of Madras and its mosquitoes and the
iniquities of its Cooum river; but they have never a word to say on
its enchanting memorials of the past. Madras has memorials indeed.
Madras is an historical museum, where the sightseer may spend many and
many an hour--in street and in building--studying old-world exhibits,
and living for the while in the fascinating past. Madras is not an
ancient city; its foundation is not ascribed to some mythic king who
ruled in mythic times; it has no hoary ruins, too old to be historic
and too legendary to be inspiring. But Madras is old enough for its
records to be romantic, and at the same time is young enough for its
earliest accounts of itself to be--not unsatisfying fables, but
interesting fact. The story of Madras fills an absorbing page of
history, and the sights of Madras are well worthy of sympathetic
interest--especially on the part of those whose lines of life are cast
in the historic city itself or within the historic presidency of which
it is the capital.
In the following pages certain places and events have been briefly
described more than once with different details; any such repetitions
are due to the fact that the Story of Madras has been told in a series
of vignettes, appertaining to particular buildings or particular
conditions, and each vignette had to be complete in itself. It is
hoped that such repetitions will be of familiar interest, rather than
tedious.
In respect of the facts that are recorded, apart from general history,
I am indebted principally to the valuable Records of Fort St. George,
which the Madras Government have been publishing, volume by volume,
during several years, and which I have studied with interest since the
first volume appeared. Of other works that I have consulted, I must
specially mention Colonel Love's "Vestiges of Madras," which is a very
mine of information.
G.B.
MADRAS, 1921.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAP.
I. BEFORE THE BEGINNING 1
II. THE BEGINNING 5
III. FORT ST. GEORGE 9
IV. DEVELOPMENT 18
V. 'THE WALL' 25
VI. EXPANSION 35
VII. OUTPOSTS 41
VIII. THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 47
IX. ROMAN CATHOLIC MADRAS 56
X. CHEPAUK PALACE 63
XI. GOVERNMENT HOUSE 69
XII. MADRAS AND THE SEA 78
XIII. THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 87
XIV. HERE AND THERE 101
XV. 'NO MEAN CITY' 111
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHEPAUK PALACE _Frontispiece_
PAGE
MAP OF MADRAS, ABOUT 1710 10
CORRESPONDING MAP, 1921 11
CLIVE'S HOUSE 16
A BIT OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL 26
CENTRAL GATE OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL 28
A MAGAZINE IN THE BLACK TOWN WALL 30
'THE OLD AND THE NEW' 32
MAP OF MADRAS 36
SAN THOMÉ FORT 42
EGMORE FORT (SIDE VIEW) 44
REMAINS OF THE EGMORE FORT 46
ST. MARY'S, FORT ST. GEORGE 49
GOVERNMENT HOUSE, MADRAS 74
THE SEA GATE 80
THE COMPANY'S FLAG 81
SURF-BOAT 83
UNIVERSITY SENATE HOUSE 96
PACHAIYAPPA'S COLLEGE 97
DOVETON PROTESTANT COLLEGE 98
ST. GEORGE'S CATHEDRAL 102
ST. ANDREW'S (THE 'KIRK') 104
ST. THOMÉ CATHEDRAL 106
* * * * *
CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES
The East India Company established A.D. 1600
First English settlement, at Masulipatam 1611
Site of Madras acquired by Mr. Francis Day 1639
The acquisition confirmed at Chandragiri by the Hindu
'Lord of the Carnatic' 1639
The Hindu lord of the Carnatic (the Raja of Chandragiri)
dethroned by the Mohammedan Sultan of Golconda 1646
The Company secure from Golconda a fresh title to their
possessions
The Sultan of Golconda dethroned by the Moghul
Emperor, Aurangzeb, who appoints a 'Nawab of the
Carnatic' 1687
The Company secure from a representative of the Emperor
a fresh title to their possessions
Da-ud Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic, invests Madras for
three months, and is finally bought off 1702
In Europe, England and France are engaged in the War
of the Austrian Succession 1740-1748
Dupleix, who is possessed with the idea of making France
politically influential in India, is appointed Governor of
Pondicherry 1742
In the war in Europe he sees an opportunity for fighting
the English in India, and French forces under LaBourdonnais
capture Madras 1746
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by which Madras is restored to
the English 1748
Two Carnatic princes quarrel for the Nawabship 1749
The French and the English in South India join in the
quarrel on opposite sides. In the name of the claimant
whom the English supported, Clive captures Arcot,
the capital of the Carnatic, and then defends the town
against the rival claimant and his French supporters 1749
The French are defeated in the open field, and the
struggle is at an end 1752
In Europe, England and France are engaged in the Seven
Years' War 1756-1763
In India, Count Lally besieges Madras unsuccessfully for
more than two months A.D. 1758-1759
The English defeat the French at Wandiwash 1760
The English capture Pondicherry 1761
Treaty of Paris, by which Pondicherry is restored to the
French 1763
(The town was captured again in 1786 and in 1803).
Haidar Ali makes himself Sultan of Mysore about 1760,
and reigns till his death, which occurred in 1781
Tipu, his son, succeeds him, and reigns till he is slain in
defending his capital, Seringapatam, against an assault
by the English 1799
(Madras was frequently disturbed by the raids of the
father and of the son; and Tipu's death relieved
the townsmen of constant anxiety.)
The Supreme Court of Judicature established at Madras 1801
In default of an heir, the Carnatic 'lapses' to the Company 1855
The Madras Railway opened for traffic 1856
The Indian Mutiny 1857-1859
The Madras University instituted 1857
The High Court established 1861
* * * * *
ERRATUM
On page 1, _for_ 'Madraspatnam' _read_ 'Madraspatam.'
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
Three hundred years ago, Madras, under the name of 'Madraspatnam' was
a tiny rural village on the Coromandel Coast. Scattered about in the
neighbourhood there were other rural villages, such as Egmore, Vepery,
and Triplicane, which are crowded districts in the great city of
Madras to-day. In Triplicane there was an ancient temple, a centre of
pilgrimage, dating, like many village temples in India, from very
distant times; this was the Parthasarathy temple, which is the
'Triplicane Temple' still. A little fishing village called Kuppam,
lying directly on the seashore, sent out, even as Kuppam does now, its
bold fishermen in their rickety catamarans in perilous pursuit of the
spoils of the sea. There was one small town in the neighbourhood,
namely, the Portuguese settlement at Mylapore, where the tall façades
of the several churches, peeping over the trees, formed a land-mark
for the Portuguese ships that occasionally cast anchor in the roads.
Such was the scene in 1639, the year in which our story of Madras begins.
The Portuguese had already been in India for nearly a century and a half;
and under their early and able viceroys they had made themselves powerful.
The stately city of Goa was the capital of their Indian dominions, and they
had settlements at Cochin, Calicut, Mylapore, and elsewhere. But the
influence of the Portuguese was now on the wane. For nearly a century they
had been the only European power in India and the Eastern seas; but
merchants in other European countries had marked with jealous eyes the rich
profits that the Portuguese derived from their Eastern traffic, and
competitors appeared in the field. First came the Dutch, who in India
established themselves at Pulicat, some twenty-five miles north of
Mylapore. Holland had lately thrown off the yoke of Spain, and was full of
new-born vigour; and Dutch trade in the East--chiefly in the East India
Islands--was pushed with a rancorous energy that roused the vain
indignation of the decadent Portuguese. Six years later, in 1600, came the
English. The English traders were employees of the newly-established East
India Company, and were sent out to do business for the Company in the
East; and they had to face the opposition of the Dutch as well as of the
Portuguese. Their earliest enterprise was in the East India Islands, and it
was eleven years before they gained their first footing in India, at
Masulipatam. Here they established an agency and did very considerable
business; later they formed a fortified sub-agency at Armagaum, a good way
down the coast, not far from Nellore. At first their fortunes went well;
but local rulers exacted ruinous dues, and at Armagaum in particular the
local ruler, alarmed at the influence that the English merchants had
gained, set himself so seriously to the work of handicapping their trade
that Mr. Francis Day, the Company's representative at Armagaum and a member
of the Masulipatam Council, proposed to the Council that he should be
allowed to seek a field for commercial enterprise more favourable than
either Armagaum or Masulipatam. To Mr. Francis Day was committed the
business of finding a suitable spot for a fresh settlement.
It was an important commission. The East India Company's existence
depended entirely upon the profits of their trade. The Company's
enterprise at Armagaum was hopeless; at Masulipatam it was very
unsatisfactory; and Mr. Francis Day was appointed to find a place
where the commercial prospects would be bright.
It should always be remembered that the East India Company was
established purely as a commercial association, with its head office
in London, and that its employees in India were men with business
qualifications, appointed to carry on the Company's trade. The prime
concern even of an Agent or a Governor was the making of good bargains
on the Company's behalf--and sometimes on his own--getting the best
prices for European broadcloths and brocades, and buying as cheaply as
possible Indian muslins and calicoes and natural produce, for
exportation to London, where they were sold at a large profit. Any
fighting in which the Company's servants engaged was merely incidental
to the pursuit of business in a land in which the ruling sovereigns,
as well as the many small chiefs, were constantly at war. It is a
maxim that 'Trade follows the Flag;' but in the case of India the Flag
has followed Trade.
It is as a commercial man, therefore, that we must picture Mr. Francis
Day setting out on his commercial mission; but it can be imagined that
the English merchant, starting on an expedition in which he would be
likely to seek personal interviews with rajas and nawabs and bid for
their favour, set out in such style as would do the Company credit. In
our mind's eye we picture Master Francis Day, Chief of Armagaum,
standing on the deck of one of the Company's vessels lying at anchor
in the Armagaum roads, and receiving his colleagues' farewells. His
garb is that of a substantial merchant in the days of King Charles I.
It has none of the extravagances that were the fashionable
affectations of gay Cavaliers, but its sobriety makes it none the less
smart. He wears a purple doublet and hose, a broad white collar edged
with lace, and a gracefully-short black-velvet cloak. Curly hair
falls beneath his broad-brimmed black hat, but not in long and scented
ringlets such as were trained to fall below the shoulders of
fashionable gallants at King Charles's court. He is in every way a
fitting representative of the Honourable Company.
The bo'sun has piped his whistle, and the last good-byes have been
said. The anchor's weighed, and the white sails are spread to the
breeze. Master Day waves his hand to his colleagues in the surf-boat
which is taking them shoreward, and the ship is headed to the south.
The expedition is important--yes, and it was much more important than
Master Day imagined; for something more serious than profits on muslin
and brocade was on the anvil of fate.
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING
Mr. Francis Day was not sailing southward without definite plans. As
the result of enquiries for a promising spot for a new settlement, it
was his purpose to see if there was a favourable site in the
neighbourhood of the old established Portuguese settlement at
Mylapore. The Portuguese authorities at Mylapore, with whom Mr. Day
seems to have corresponded, were not unwilling to have English
neighbours. The ill-success of the English merchants at Masulipatam
had probably allayed any fears that they would be formidable rivals to
Portuguese trade at Mylapore; and furthermore the Portuguese welcomed
the idea of European neighbours who would be at one with them in
opposition to the forceful Dutchmen at Pulicat, up the coast, who
showed no respect, not even of a ceremonious kind, for any vested
interests--commercial or administrative--to which the Portuguese laid
claim.
So Mr. Francis Day's vessel, standing no doubt well out to sea as it
sailed past the foreshore of the Pulicat lagoon with its unfriendly
Dutchmen, kept its course till the Mylapore churches were sighted and
showed that the place where the first inquiries were to be made had
been reached. The sails were furled and the anchors were dropped, and
we may imagine that a salute was fired in honour of the King of
Portugal, and was duly acknowledged.
It was in winter that Mr. Francis Day arrived--a time of the year when
Madras looks its best and when the sea-horses are not always at their
wildest tricks; and Mr. Francis Day landed without accident, and was
pleased with the scene. There are always breakers, however, on the
Coromandel Coast, and Mr. Day found the landing so exciting that in
his report to the Council at Masulipatam he wrote of 'the heavy and
dangerous surf'. But after an inspection of the surroundings he was
satisfied with the conditions; he considered that at the mouth of the
Cooum river there was an advantageous site for a commercial
settlement; and the local ruler, the Naik of Poonamallee, following
the advice of the Portuguese authorities, encouraged him in the idea
of an English settlement within the Poonamallee domain.
It is not surprising that Mr. Francis Day was pleased with what he
saw; for Madras is not without beauty. In those idyllic days,
moreover, the Cooum river, which was known then as the Triplicane
river--and which even to-day can be beautiful, although for the
greater part of the year it is no more than a stagnant ditch--must
have been a limpid water-way; and to Mr. Francis Day, seeing it in
winter, in which season the current swollen by the rain sometimes
succeeds in bursting the bar, it must have appeared almost as a noble
river, rushing down to the great sea--a river such as might well have
deserved the erection of a town on its banks. The fact that the
Portuguese had been at Mylapore for more than a century showed that a
settlement was full of promise--and the more so for men with the
energy of the English Company's representatives; and the conditions
were such that Mr. Francis Day felt himself justified in entering into
negotiations with the Naik for the grant of an estate extending five
miles along the shore and a mile inland.
The negotiations were successful: but the Naik was subordinate to the
lord of the soil, the Raja of Chandragiri, who was the living
representative of the once great and magnificent Hindu empire of
Vijianagar; and any grant that was made by the Naik of Poonamallee
had to be confirmed by the Raja if it was to be made valid. Two or
three miles from Chandragiri station, on the Katpadi-Gudur line of
railway, is still to be seen the Rajah-Mahal, the palace in which the
Raja handed to Mr. Francis Day the formal title to the land. The
palace still exists, and it is a fine building, though partly in
ruins. It is constructed entirely of granite, without any woodwork
whatsoever; but its abounding interest lies not in its structure but
in the fact that it was in this palace that the British Empire in
India may be said to have been begotten.
There is no little interest in the thought that it was the Raja of
Chandragiri that delivered the deed of possession to Mr. Francis Day.
The Raja was an obscure representative of a magnificent Indian Empire
of the past; Mr. Francis Day was an obscure representative of a
magnificent Indian Empire that was yet to be; and the document that
the Raja handed to Mr. Francis Day was in reality a patent of Empire,
transferred from Vijianagar to Great Britain. It was at Chandragiri
that the British Empire in India was begotten; it was at Madras that
the British Empire was born.
Mr. Francis Day had fulfilled his mission. He had secured territory
where the conditions seemed to give promise of success; and his work
was approved. His superior officer, Mr. Andrew Cogan, Agent at
Masulipatam, came away from Masulipatam to take charge of Madras, and
with the co-operation of Mr. Francis Day he set about the development
of the Company's new possession.
Of Mr. Francis Day's personal history we know little or nothing except
that he was one of the Company's employees, and that he founded first
an unsuccessful settlement at Armagaum--represented to-day by no more
than a lighthouse--and afterwards a successful settlement at Madras.
Later he was put in charge of the second settlement that he had
founded, but he was relieved of, or resigned, the office at the end of
a year. He then went to the Company's head-quarters at Bantam, in
Java, and afterwards to England. What finally became of him is
apparently unknown.
It would probably be difficult to say whether Mr. Francis Day was a
great man with great ideals, or was merely a shrewd man of business,
reliable for an important commercial mission. Remembering that the
Company was strictly a commercial concern, we may think it likely
that, in fixing upon Madras as a site for the Company's business, he
was guided almost entirely by the question of trade-profits, and that
in his mind's eye there were no prophetic visions of imperial glory.
And it has been asked indeed whether or not he really chose well in
choosing Madraspatnam by the Triplicane river as the site of the
proposed new settlement; for there are those who have argued that the
prosperity of Madras has been due to dogged British enterprise and
placid Indian co-operation, not to natural advantages, and that Madras
has prospered in spite of Madras. We must bear in mind, however, the
limited geographical knowledge of the times and the limitations to Mr.
Francis Day's choice; and, whatever the verdict may be, the fact
remains that the Madraspatnam of Mr. Francis Day's selection is now a
vast city, and that the Empire of India which was born at Chandragiri
is now a mighty institution.
CHAPTER III
FORT ST. GEORGE
When the tract of land at Madras had been formally acquired, the
European colony at Armagaum was forthwith shipped thereto (February,
1640). According to accounts, the colony, with Mr. Andrew Cogan at the
head, assisted by Mr. Francis Day and perhaps another chief official,
included some three or four British 'writers,' a gunner, a surgeon, a
garrison of some twenty-five British soldiers under a lieutenant and a
sergeant, a certain number of English carpenters, blacksmiths and
coopers, and a small staff of English servants for kitchen and general
work.
'Madras was a sandy beach ... where the English began by erecting
straw huts.' So says an old-time chronicle,[1] the work of an early
resident of Madras; and, if we take the word 'straw' in a broad sense,
we can easily conceive the scene. In Madras the bamboo and the palmyra
grow in abundance, furnishing materials for the quick provision of
cheap and commodious accommodation; and we can picture the pilgrim
fathers of Madras camped in palmyra-thatched mat-sheds on the north
bank of the Cooum river, near the bar, the while that the houses
within the plan of the fort are being built.
[Footnote 1: The chronicle was written by Manucci, an Italian doctor
of an adventurous disposition, who, after varied and surprising
experiences in northern India, settled down in Madras in 1686, and
married a Eurasian widow. 'Manucci's Garden,' where he lived, covered
a large area which is now occupied by a number of the houses at the
Law College end of Popham's Broadway, on the side that is nearest the
sea. The garden was watered by a stream that used to flow where the
Broadway tram-lines now hold their course. _Vide_ map, p. 10.]
[Illustration: MADRAS about 1710, A.D.]
[Illustration: Modern map (approximate) corresponding to the foregoing
map. (1) Old black Town is no more. (2) the Fort was extended about
1750. To provide ground, the Cooum was diverted. (3) The sea has
receded.]
The 'sandy beach' has been waked from its longaeval placidity. Trains
of bullock-carts are lumbering along new-made tracks, bringing stone
and laterite and bricks and timber from various centres; and endless
files of coolies, with baskets on their heads, are bringing sand from
the summer-dry edges of the bed of the Cooum river. In the foreground
of the picture, scores of chattering village-labourers, from
Triplicane and other hamlets hard by, are working under the directions
of the mechanical employees of the Company, chipping stone, mixing
lime, sawing timber, carrying bricks and stones and mortar, or laying
them adroitly in place, with little dependence on line and level.
In the course of a few months the buildings were sufficiently advanced
for occupation. The main building was the 'factory,' which formerly
signified a mercantile office; and it was here that the Company's
chief officials, who were styled 'factors' (agents), assisted by
writers and apprentices, transacted the Company's business, and were
also lodged. Included amongst the buildings were warehouses for the
Company's goods, and also barrack-like residences for the Company's
subordinate British employees, civil and military, according to their
rank.
From the very beginning the settlement was called Fort St. George, but
it was several years before the buildings were surrounded by a high
and fortified wall. It was in no spirit of military aggression that
the Company's agents enclosed their settlement with a bastioned
rampart, from whose battlements big cannon frowned on all sides round.
The Company's representatives were 'gentle merchaunts,' to whom peace
spelt prosperity; but the times were lawless, and the gentle merchants
were wise enough to recognize that days might come when it would be
necessary to defend their merchandise and themselves, as well as the
town of Madras, from the roving robber or the princely raider or the
revengeful trade-rival, and that military preparedness was a dictate
of prudence. The days came!
On such occasions the excitement in Fort St. George must have been
great. We can imagine the anxiety with which, when the sentry gave the
alarm, the gentle merchants climbed upon the walls and looked out at
the horsemen that were to be descried in the distance, and asked one
another disconsolately whether it was in peace or in war that they
came. A brief notice of some of the occasions on which the Fort was in
danger will be interesting.
Some fifty years after the Fort had been founded, a party of soldiers
under the Commander-in-Chief of the Mohammedan King of Golconda
pursued some of the King's enemies into Madras, "burning and Robbing
of houses, and taking the Companies Cloth and goods," whereupon the
Governor of the Fort sent them word that "he would use means to force
them out of the Towne: Uppon which they retreated out of shott of the
Fort." They returned, however, with additional strength, and for eight
months they besieged the stronghold, but without success; and then
they wearied of their hopeless endeavour, and marched away.
Later, a Dutch force, supported by Mohammedan cavalry, besieged San
Thomé, which was then in the hands of the French; and for the purpose
of the siege they occupied Triplicane village, mounting their cannon
within the walls of Triplicane Temple, which they used as a fort.
During the several weeks of the siege of San Thomé a powerful Dutch
squadron blockaded the coast of Madras; and, as Britain and Holland
were at war in Europe, there was constant anxiety in Fort St. George;
but the Dutchmen contented themselves with the capture of San Thomé,
and were prudent enough to let Fort St. George alone.
In the days of Queen Anne, Da-ud Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic, at the
head of a large force, was reported to be marching to Madras. In Fort
St. George there was much anxiety as to the purpose of his visit, and
'By order of the Governor and Council' various protective measures
were immediately proclaimed. The proclamation is to be found in full
in the Company's Minutes; and we find an amusing reminder of the
Company's mercantile _raison d'être_ in the fact that immediately
after the military edicts comes the order 'That all the Company's
cloth be brought from the washers, washed and unwashed, to prevent its
being plundered.' The Nawab came, and he uttered threats, but he was
mollified with luxurious entertainment. Inviting himself and his dewan
and his chamberlain to dinner with the Governor and Councillors in the
Fort, he was received with imposing honours, and was feasted in the
Council Chamber at a magnificent banquet. The minutes relate that
after dinner he was "diverted with the dancing wenches," and finally
he got "very Drunk." At breakfast the next day in the Company's
'Garden,' His Highness again got "very drunk and fell a Sleep;" and a
few days later he marched his army away. In his sober moments,
however, he had been slyly measuring the Company's strength; and six
months later he came back with a larger force, and blockaded Madras.
He plundered all that he could, and on one occasion his spoil included
"40 ox loads of the Company's cloth." For more than three months the
blockade continued, and the Company's trade was entirely stopped, and
provisions in Madras were exceedingly scarce. Da-ud Khan, eventually
wearying of the unsuccessful siege, named the price that would buy him
off; and the Council, fearing the wrath of the Directors at the loss
of their trade, were glad to come to terms. The Company's Minute on
the occasion is a brief but exultant record: 'The siege is raised!'
In 1746 there was a siege of a more serious sort. England and France
were at war in Europe, and suddenly a squadron of French ships
appeared off Fort St. George. After a week's siege, the English
merchants capitulated to superior force, and they were all sent to
Pondicherry as prisoners, and the French flag waved over Madras; but
by the treaty which ended the war, Madras was restored to the Company.
Twelve years later Madras was once more besieged by the French, but
unsuccessfully, and eventually the French leaders marched their forces
away, quarrelling among themselves over their ill-success.
On several occasions, bodies of horsemen in the service of the
adventurous Haidar Ali of Mysore, raided the country almost up to the
Fort ditch, and were sometimes to be seen shaking their spears in
defiance at the sentries on its walls.
These were not the only occasions on which Fort St. George was
assailed, but they suffice to show how necessary it was that the
Company's employees and their wares should be housed within the walls
of a fort.
Fort St. George in the beginning was very small. Its external length
parallel with the seashore was 108 yards, and its breadth was 100
yards. When White Town, which grew up around it, was fortified, there
was 'a fort within a fort' (_vide_ Map, p. 10); but eventually the
inner wall was demolished. At various times the outer wall has been
altered, but the Fort as we have it to-day is the selfsame Fort St.
George nevertheless, a glorious relic of bygone times, and verily a
history in stone.
The gates of Fort St. George open towards main thoroughfares of
Madras, and it is permitted to anybody to pass in and out; but it is
not visited nearly so much as its historic associations deserve. Let
us pass within, and see if we cannot catch something like inspiration
from the scene where so much history has been made, and where a great
Empire was born.
[Illustration: CLIVE'S HOUSE]
An old-world feeling comes over us directly we leave the highroad and
make our way down the sloped passage and across the drawbridge over
the moat, past the massive gates and under the echoing tunnel that
leads through the mighty walls. Within we see the parapets on which in
bygone days the cannon thundered at the foe. We pass on into the great
spaces of the Fort; and in our imagination we can people them with
ghosts of the illustrious--or notorious--dead. It was here that, in
the reign of King James the Second, Master Elihu Yale assumed the
Governorship of Madras, did hard work in the Company's behalf but also
made a large fortune for himself, lost his son aged four, quarrelled
long and bitterly with his councillors, and was at last superseded. It
was here that Robert Clive, aged nineteen, newly arrived from
England, entered upon his duties as an apprenticed writer in the
Company's service, at a salary of five pounds per annum; it was here,
in St. Mary's Church, eight years later, when he had won his first
laurels, that he married the sister of one of the fellow-writers of
his griffinhood; and it was here, in 'Clive's House,' which is still
to be seen (now the Office of the Accountant-General), that he lived
with his wife. The ancient Council Chamber is replete with historic
associations; and St. Mary's Church offers material for many
researchful and meditative visits. The streets have history in their
names. 'Charles and James Street,' for example, which is a present-day
combination of two streets of yore, is jointly commemorative of the
days of the Merry Monarch and of his royal but unfortunate brother.
Enough! It is not my purpose to produce a guide-book to Madras, but to
promote an appreciation of the historic interests of the city; and I
take it that the reader has realized that Fort St. George is
interesting indeed.
CHAPTER IV
DEVELOPMENT
When an English colony had settled down in Fort St. George, it was
only to be expected that a town would spring up outside. The personal
necessities of the numerous colonists had to be supplied, and
purveyors and bazaarmen and workmen made themselves readily available
for the supply. The requirements in respect of the Company's
mercantile business were yet greater. The Company's agents wanted not
only native employees in their office--'dubashes' and 'shroffs' and
clerks and interpreters and porters and peons, but they also wanted
wholesale buyers of the cloth and other articles that they imported
from England for sale, and also merchants who could supply them with
large quantities of the Indian wares that the Company exported to
England; and they were able to get the men that they wanted.
A crowd attracts a crowd; and when once a town has begun to grow, it
goes on growing of its own accord; and ten years after the acquisition
of Madras, the population of the town was estimated at as many as
15,000 souls. The Fort itself, moreover, had to be enlarged; for the
growth of the Company's business meant that more and more factors and
writers had to be brought out from England, and more and more
warehouses had to be provided for the multiplied wares; and, moreover,
the increasing lawlessness of the times necessitated a larger
garrison. Outside the Fort, Indian and other immigrants flocked from
near and far to settle down within the Company's domains, looking for
profit under the white men's protection; and, with their enterprising
spirit, they played no small part in the development of Madras.
The town that grew up outside the little fort was divided into two
sections--'the White Town' and 'the Black Town.' The boundaries of
White Town corresponded roughly with what are now the boundaries of
Fort St. George itself. The original Black Town--'Old Black
Town'--covered what is now the vacant ground that lies between the
Fort and the Law College, and included what are now the sites of the
Law College and the High Court (_vide_ Map, p. 10). The inhabitants of
White Town included any British settlers not in the Company's service
whose presence the Company approved, also all approved Portuguese and
Eurasian immigrants from Mylapore, and a certain number of approved
Indian Christians. White Town indeed was sometimes called the
'Christian Town.' Black Town was the Asiatic settlement. The great
majority of the original Indian settlers were not Tamilians but
Telugus--written down as 'Gentoos' in the Company's Records.
The Company's agents encouraged people of various races to reside in
Madras; and the names of some of the streets and districts of the town
are interesting testimonies as to the variety of the people who came.
Armenian Street--which began as an Armenian burial-ground (_vide_ Map,
p. 10)--is an example. Armenians from Persia, like their
fellow-countrymen the Parsees, have a racial gift for commerce; and
Armenian merchants had been in India long before the English arrived.
Enterprising Armenian merchants settled in Madras in its early days to
trade with the English colonists, and the Company's agents were glad
to have as middlemen such able merchants who were in close touch with
the people of the land. The most celebrated of the earlier Armenians
in Madras was Peter Uscan, Armenian by race but Roman Catholic in
religion, who lived in Madras for more than forty years, till his
death there in 1751, at the age of seventy. He was a rich and
public-spirited merchant. He built the Marmalong Bridge over the Adyar
river, on one of the pillars of which a quaint inscription is still to
be read, and he left a fund for its maintenance; he also renewed the
multitude of stone steps that lead up to the top of St. Thomas's
Mount. His inscribed tomb is to be seen in the churchyard of the
Anglican Church of St. Matthias, Vepery, which in olden days was the
churchyard of a Roman Catholic chapel. Within the last half-century
the Armenian community in Madras has been rapidly declining, as the
result, probably, of inability to cope with the hustling style of
commercial competition in these latter days; and only a very few
representatives of the race are now to be seen in the city.
In Mint Street there is a small enclosure which is the remains of what
was once a Jewish cemetery of considerable size; and the graves that
are still to be seen are interesting reminders of the fact that in
bygone times there was a Hebrew colony in Madras. In more than one of
the Company's old records the Jews in Madras are referred to as being
rich men, some of whom held positions of high civic authority. Some of
them were English Jews, and others were Portuguese; and most of them
were diamond merchants, on the look-out for diamonds from the mines of
Golconda, which were formerly very productive. The English Jews
exported diamonds to England, and imported silver and coral to Madras;
coral was in great demand in India, and was sent out by Jewish firms
in London. There is still a 'Coral Merchants' Street' in Madras, a
continuation of Armenian Street, and it is a living reminder of the
old Jewish colony. The Golconda mines eventually ceased to be
productive, and Jewish diamond merchants are no longer to be seen in
the city, and the Jewish colony has long since disappeared. Jews are
notorious all the world over as money-lenders, and it may perhaps be
wondered why none of them survived as money-lenders in Madras; but the
fact that Coral Merchants' Street is now the habitat of Nattukottai
Chetties, who are past-masters in the art of money-lending, suggests
that even the Jews were unable to compete with Madras sowcars in the
business of usury, and that the Chetties displaced the Jews who used
to live in the street. The little Jewish cemetery in crowded Mint
Street is an interesting spot. One of the antique tomb-stones has been
caught in the branch of a tree and has been lifted high in air, and is
a quaint sight; and the deserted little Hebrew graveyard itself is
symbolic of the dispersion of the ancient people.
It is a curious fact that the Company's employees in South India never
spoke of Indian Mohammedans as Mohammedans or as Moslems or as
Mussalmans, but always as 'Moors.' It is thus that the name of 'Moor
Street' is to be accounted for. The original 'Moors Street' was a
street in which Mohammedans used to live, and the fact that one
particular street in a large city should have borne such a name is
evidence of another fact, namely, that in the earlier years of Madras
very few Mohammedans resided in the town. It should be remembered that
Madraspatnam, Triplicane, Egmore, and the other hamlets that went to
make up the city of Madras were all of them Hindu villages; and it was
only now and again that Mohammedans, in some capacity or another,
found their way into the town. In the earlier years of Madras a single
mosque sufficed for all the few Mohammedans therein. The mosque was
located in 'Moors Street' in old Black Town, a street that was the
predecessor of the 'Moor Street' of to-day. It was not till nearly
fifty years after the acquisition of the site of Madras that a second
mosque was built--in Muthialpet; and these two small mosques supplied
Mohammedan requirements for many years. The fact is that Madras was so
frequently troubled by successive Mohammedan enemies--the King of
Golconda; Da-ud Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic; Haidar Ali, Sultan of
Mysore; his son Tipu, and others--that the Company was disposed to
regard all 'Moors' with mistrust, so much so that they discouraged
Mohammedan residents; and a measure was passed with the special
intention 'to prevent the Moors purchasing too much land in the Black
Town.' There are large crowds of Mohammedans in Madras now, grouped
especially in Chepauk and the adjoining Triplicane and Royapettah; and
this is due to the fact that in later days Nawab Walajah of Arcot, who
was friendly to the English, came and settled down in Madras. He built
Chepauk Palace for his residence, and the many Mohammedans who
followed him into the city formed the nucleus of a large Mohammedan
colony.
The name 'China Bazaar' appears early in the Madras Records; and it
would seem to have been the place where Chinese crockery was on sale.
Whether or not the salesmen were Chinese immigrants I cannot say; but
the fact that another street in Madras bears the name of 'Chinaman
Street' suggests that there was at one time a colony of pig-tailed
yellow-men in the city. The supposition is not unlikely, for China was
included within the sphere of the Company's commercial operations,
with Madras as the head-quarters of the trade, and ships of the
Company plied regularly between China and Madras. Tea was one of the
articles of trade, but Chinese crockery was in great demand in India,
and ship-loads of cheap China bowls and plates and dishes were
imported; and valuable specimens of Chinese porcelain were highly
esteemed by wealthy Indians--so much so that it is on record that one
of the Moghul emperors had a slave put to death for having
accidentally broken a costly China dish which the emperor particularly
admired.
As the Company's trade was very largely in cloth, it can be understood
that the Company's agents were eager to induce spinners and weavers to
settle in Madras, so that cloth might be bought for the Company at the
lowest possible prices from the weavers direct. Elihu Yale, who was
one of the early Governors of the Fort, imported some fifty
weaver-families and located them in 'Weavers' street', the street that
is now known as Nyniappa Naick Street, in Georgetown. Some twenty-five
years later, Governor Collet established a number of imported weavers
in the northern suburb of Tiruvattur, in a village that was given the
name 'Collet Petta' in the Governor's honour--a name that degenerated
into 'Kalati Pettah'--'Loafer-land'--its present appellation. There
was still a demand for more weavers, and eventually a large vacant
tract was marked out as a 'Weavers' Town,' under the name of Chindadre
Pettah--the modern Chintadripet. In order to attract weavers, houses
were built at the Company's expense, which weavers were permitted to
occupy as hereditary possessions. It was formally decreed that "None
but Weavers, Spinners, and other persons useful in the Weaving trade,
Painters (i.e. designers of patterns for chintz), Washers (bleachers),
Dyers, Bettleca-merchants (beetle-sellers), Brahmins and Dancing
women, and other necessary attendants on the pagoda (erected in the
settlement) shall inhabit the said town." In Chintadripet to-day there
are still many spinners and weavers; and one of the sights in
Chintadripet--growing gradually more rare--is the spectacle of
primitively-clad urchins or grown men spinning in the streets with
primitive gear and in primitive fashion; and it is interesting to
recall the fact that this has been going on in Chintadripet for nearly
two centuries--an industry which the Company established.
Washermanpet is another such locality. It was not so called, as many
people imagine, for being a land of dhobies (male laundresses). In the
Company's vocabulary a 'washerman' was a man who 'bleached' new-made
cloth; and the Company employed a number of bleachers. The bleaching
process needed large open spaces--washing-greens--on which the cloth
could be laid out in the sun to be bleached; and Washermanpet covered
a considerable area.
A great many more of the streets and districts of Madras have history
in their names; but the few that we have dealt with suffice to
exemplify the manner of the expansion of the city of Madras. We can
picture the rustic suppliers crowding into the city to sell the
produce of their fields; we can picture the humble weavers migrating
into the city with their wives and their children, and with their pots
and their pans and their quaint machines, in response to the Company's
tempting invitation; we can picture the small tradesmen and the small
mechanics setting up their humble shops in the new city in which they
believed that fortunes were to be made. And in the higher grades of
life we can picture the grave Armenian merchants, the submissive Jews,
the mistrusted 'Moors,' and others seeking interviews with Stuart or
Georgian-garbed factors of the Company, and eager all of them to turn
the Company to profitable account.
CHAPTER V
'THE WALL'
Skirting a thoroughfare in Old Jail Street, in North Georgetown, is
still to be seen a part of 'the Wall' that protected Black Town in
bygone days. This interesting remnant of the Wall of Madras might
before long have been levelled to the ground, either by successive
monsoons or by philistine contractors in want of 'material;' but, with
a happy regard for a relic of Old Madras, the Madras Government have
recently undertaken the task of preserving the ruin, which they have
officially declared an 'historic memorial.'
The 'Wall of Madras' is worthy of a meditative visit, but, in order
that the meditation may be on an historic basis, it is necessary to
know something about the Wall itself.
We have seen that when the Company established themselves at Madras,
in 1639, they first built a small fort for the protection of
themselves and their goods. Around the walls of the Fort a number of
Christians--English and Portuguese and Eurasians--settled down, and
what was called 'White Town' came into being. Within a term of years
this White Town was itself enclosed within fortified walls, which were
finally identical with the wall round Fort St. George to-day. There
was thus 'a fort within a fort;' but in course of time the inner wall
was pulled down.
Immediately outside the northern wall of White Town lay Black Town,
inhabited by Indians--employees and purveyors of the Company, as well
as merchants, shop-keepers, industrialists, and the rest. It should be
borne in mind that the site of this original Black Town was
altogether different from the site of the later Black Town, the
'Georgetown' of to-day. Old Black Town, as already explained, extended
from the northern wall of the Fort to what is now called the Esplanade
Road, and it covered the ground that is now taken up by the Wireless
Telegraph enclosure, the grounds of the High Court, and those of the
Law College (_vide_ map, p. 10).
Black Town was at first without any wall, and, as the times were
unsettled, the place was exposed to the serious danger of being raided
by any adventurous band of marauders. Very soon, however, a beginning
was made of enclosing the town with a mud wall; and in the reign of
Queen Anne a wall was built with masonry. Meanwhile, moreover,
numerous houses and streets had sprung up outside the wall, on the
site of the Georgetown of to-day.
[Illustration: A BIT OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL]
In 1746 the French captured Fort St. George; and they destroyed not
only the Black Town Wall but also Black Town itself. It was a
disastrous episode in the history of Madras. For six years the English
and the French had been at war in Europe, and the relations between
the English and French colonists in India were naturally strained; but
they were settlers within the dominions of Indian rulers, and,
although both the English and the French had ships and soldiers for
the protection of their settlements, they realized that they were not
at liberty to make war upon each other. The settlers, moreover, were
employees of mercantile companies, working for dividends; and war,
with its calamitous expenditure, was not within their design. But
Dupleix, the talented French Governor of Pondicherry, had ambitious
ideas for the extension of French influence in India, and, in defiance
of Indian rulers, war broke out. In the beginning there were several
engagements at sea between a French squadron under Labourdonnais and
an English squadron under Captain Peyton. The English squadron was
worsted, and had to put into Trincomalee Harbour, in Ceylon, to refit.
Thereupon Labourdonnais, after making quick preparations at
Pondicherry, sailed for Madras; and the alarm in the Fort and in the
city must have been great when his ships appeared off the coast and
proceeded to bombard the settlement. His guns, however, did but little
damage, and the citizens woke up the next morning to find, to their
great content, that the enemy had sailed away during the night.
Meanwhile Captain Peyton, having repaired his ships, was unaware of
what had happened at Madras, and sailed from Ceylon to Bengal, without
touching at Fort St. George. Possibly he was lured to Bengal by bogus
messages of French origin; for, as soon as he was out of the way,
Labourdonnais reappeared off Madras, better prepared than before.
Having succeeded in landing a considerable force, he erected batteries
on shore and from various points he bombarded White Town, which was
now the actual Fort St. George. At the end of an unhappy seven days
the garrison capitulated. The French marched into the Fort, and all
the English residents, civil and military--including the Governor and
the Members of Council, and also Robert Clive, who was then a young
clerk--were sent to Pondicherry as prisoners of war.
For nearly three years the French flag flew over Fort St. George,
until, in accordance with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, made between
the combatants in Europe, Madras was restored to the Company.
[Illustration: CENTRAL GATE OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL]
During their occupation the French had made great changes. Feeling the
necessity of strengthening their position, their military commanders
realized what had apparently not been recognized by the Company's
employees, untrained in war--namely that a weak-walled native town
lying right against the northern wall of Fort St. George was a
serious danger. The houses offered convenient cover for any enemies
that might attack the Fort; and, moreover, any disaffected or venal
townsman was in a position to give the assailants valuable help. The
French Governor set himself, therefore, to the deliberate destruction
of Black Town. He first destroyed the Town Wall, and then--for a
distance of 400 yards from the northern wall of White Town, or the
present Fort St. George--he demolished every house. The area that is
now represented by the Wireless Telegraph Station and the grounds of
the High Court thus became an open space. Meanwhile they constructed a
moat and glacis round the walls of White Town, which, with certain
alterations, are the moat and glacis of Fort St. George to-day.
The Records express the melancholy interest with which the Company's
employees, when they re-entered Madras, took note of the changes that the
enemy had made in the familiar settlement. The Councillors apparently
conceived that it was in a wanton spirit of destruction that the greater
part of Black Town had been wiped out; for they formally decided that the
streets that had been destroyed should be rebuilt. It may be supposed
however, that their military advisers counselled them otherwise; for, so
far from the old houses being rebuilt, those that had been left standing
were destroyed. The open space was allowed to remain; and 'New Black
Town'--the modern 'Georgetown'--began to be developed. It continued to be
called 'Black Town' until the visit of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King
George V) to Madras in 1906 when it was formally re-named
'Georgetown'--ostensibly in Prince George's honour, but in reality to meet
the wishes of a number of the residents who sought an opportunity of
getting rid of what they regarded--quite reasonably--as an objectionable
name for the locality in which their lot was cast. The disappearance of the
historic name is a matter for historic regret, but a concession had to be
made to the intelligible wishes of residents.
[Illustration: A MAGAZINE IN THE BLACK TOWN WALL]
The Company, bearing in mind that the French had been able to capture
Madras, realized that it was necessary to strengthen the defences of
Fort St. George and also to provide adequate protection for the new
native city that had grown up outside the Fort's protective walls and
was absolutely without defence. The defences of the Fort were taken in
hand at once, though the work was by no means completed; and the
Directors in England readily sanctioned the construction of a wall
round New Black Town. It was well that the security of the Fort was
looked to without any long delay; for in 1758, a large French army
under Count Lally besieged the Fort again--but so unsuccessfully that,
after sixty-seven days of persistent endeavour, they beat a sudden
retreat. It was a good many years, however, before the building of
the wall round Black Town was taken seriously in hand--and then only
because the Company had been given a succession of sharp warnings that
it was absolutely necessary that new Black Town should be protected.
The French themselves had given the first warning during the siege
under Count Lally; for, although they were powerless against the Fort,
they were able to enter Black Town without opposition, and they made
use of some of the houses for the purpose of the siege. The next
warning was given a few years later when Tipu, the son of Haidar Ali,
Sultan of Mysore, after ravaging the country round Madras, came so
near to the city itself that parties of his horsemen were scampering
about in the suburb of Chintadripet. Tipu's raid induced the Company
to bring forth the approved but long-shelved plans for a wall round
Black Town; but there was still much more discussion than work. The
Company needed yet another awakening; and they got a stern one two
years later. We quote the story from the Company's official records,
published by the Madras Government. It is contained in a minute in the
official Diary of Fort St. George, dated the 29th of March, 1769,
which runs as follows:--
About 8 o'Clock this morning several Parties of the Enemy's
(Haidar Ali's) horse appeared in the Bounds of this Place at
St. Thomé and Egmore, from which latter place some guns were
fired at them.... At eleven o'Clock a fellow was caught
plundering at Triplicane and brought into Town, who gave
Intelligence that Hyder himself was on the other side of St.
Thomé with the greatest part of his horse. In the afternoon
Advice came that the Enemy's horse were moving from St.
Thomé round to the Northward with a design, as was supposed,
to make an attempt on the Black Town.
It would have been difficult to have defended the unwalled town; and
on the following day the Council of Fort St. George sent Mr. DuPre,
Chief Councillor and succeeding Governor, to Haidar Ali's camp, on
the other side of the Marmalong Bridge, to come to terms with the
invader; and within three days a treaty had been made. The treaty,
said Mr. DuPre, writing to a friend, "will do us no honor: yet it was
necessary, and there was no alternative but that or worse."
After this humiliation the building of the Wall was regarded as a
pressing necessity; and within a year the work was practically
finished.
[Illustration: 'THE OLD AND THE NEW'
Corner of the Medical School built into a portion of the Black Town
Wall.]
It was well indeed that the work was done; for a few years afterwards,
on the 10th of August, 1780, Haidar's cavalry raided San Thomé and
Triplicane, killing a number of people; and the terror in Black Town
was so great that crowds of the inhabitants took flight. Fortunately,
however, the Governor was able to issue the following notification for
the reassurance of the public:--'A sufficient number of guns have been
mounted on the Black Town wall,' and 'nothing has been omitted that I
can think of for the security of the Black Town.' Haidar was not
sufficiently venturesome to attack the fortified town; but the terror
of the inhabitants was by no means at an end; for a little later came
the disastrous news that a British force sent out to meet the invader
had been cut to pieces at Conjeevaram. Eventually, however, the
Mysoreans were defeated, and the treaty of peace was a triumph for the
Company.
The long delay in the building of the Wall was chiefly due to the fact
that the representatives of the Company, being commercial men,
naturally gave their chief attention to the Company's mercantile
business, and were apt to disregard the immediate necessity of
expensive schemes which the Company's military officers put forward as
strategic requirements. When the Wall was first talked about, after
the recovery of Madras from the French, the Directors in England, who
always kept a tight hand on the Company's purse-strings, declared that
the inhabitants of Black Town ought to be made to pay for the cost of
their own defences, and should be taxed accordingly; and the name of
the 'Wall Tax Road,' which runs alongside the Central Station to the
Salt Cotaurs, is a standing reminder of the Directors' decree, while
the road itself is an indication of the alignment of the western wall.
The people protested indignantly against being taxed for the purpose,
and, as a matter of fact, the representatives of the Company in India
doubted whether they would be within their legal rights in compelling
them to pay; and the tax was never actually levied. What with the Wall
Tax Road on the west and the seashore on the east, the existing
remains on the north, and the Esplanade on the south, it is not
difficult to form a general idea of the direction of the four sides of
the wall within which the later Black Town was enclosed.
Such is the story of 'The Wall;' and the remains are an interesting
relic of lawless times when at any minute it was possible that crowds
of terror-stricken folk would suddenly be pouring through the
gateways of the city at the alarming news that strange horsemen were
dashing here and there in one or another of the suburbs, demanding
money and jewels from the people and slaughtering unhappy individuals
who tried to evade a response.
CHAPTER VI
EXPANSION
We have seen that the Company were careful to develop both White Town
and Black Town. They were not content, however, with mere
developments, for they took pains also to extend their territorial
possessions.
The strip of land that was acquired by Mr. Francis Day was not large.
Roughly, it extended along the seashore from the mouth of the Cooum to
an undefined point beyond the present harbour, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Cassimode, and inland as far as what was called the
North River, which is now represented by Cochrane's Canal--the canal
that runs between the Central Station and the People's Park. It will
be interesting to note how some of the various other parts of the
present city came into the Company's possession.
[Illustration: MADRAS (APPROXIMATELY)]
On several occasions the representatives of various dynasties that
were successively supreme over Madras made grants of additional land
to the Company. The village of Triplicane was the first
addition,----some twenty years after the acquisition of Madras. The
village was granted by the representative of the Mohammedan King of
Golconda, for an annual rent of Rs. 175, which ceased to be paid when
the Golconda dynasty shortly afterwards came to an end. Later, in
compliance with a petition by Governor Elihu Yale to the Emperor
Aurangzeb, the Company received a free grant of 'Tandore (Tondiarpet),
Persewacca (Pursewaukam), and Yegmore (Egmore).' Still later, in the
reign of Aurangzeb's son and successor, the village of Lungambacca
(Nungumbaukam), now the principal residential district of Europeans in
Madras, was granted to the Company, together with four adjoining
villages, for a total annual rent of 1,500 pagodas (say Rs. 5,250).
The Emperor's officers argued that the rent ought to have been larger,
but the Company, conforming to the spirit of corruption that was in
fashion, were wily enough to send by a Brahman and a Mohammedan
conjointly a sum of Rs. 700 'to be distributed amongst the King's
officers who keep the Records, in order to settle this matter.' The
village of Vepery--variously called in olden documents Ipere, Ypere,
Vipery, and Vapery--lay between Egmore and Pursewaukam; and the
Company, being naturally desirous of consolidating their territory,
proceeded at once to try to obtain a grant of the place; but
successive efforts on the part of Governor Elihu Yale came to naught;
and it was not till much later (1742) when the Nawab of Arcot was lord
of the soil, that Vepery was acquired from the Nawab. The manner of
its acquisition is interesting. The preceding Nawab had just been
murdered, and the Carnatic army disowning the ambitious rival who had
murdered him, proclaimed the dead Nawab's son as his successor. The
new Nawab was but a youth, and he was residing at the time in one of
the big houses in Black Town. The Company were politic enough to
celebrate the lad's accession with grand doings. They escorted him in
a splendid procession to the Company's Gardens, which were situated
along the bank of the river Cooum, where the General Hospital and the
Medical College now stand. In the Gardens there was a fine house,
containing a spacious hall, which the Company had specially designed
for great occasions; and there the lad's accession was formally
announced; and finally he was escorted in procession back to his
dwelling. The Company profited by their politic demonstration; for, in
return for their courtesies to the young Nawab, the lad gratified
their desires by making them a rent-free grant of the village of
Vepery, and also of Perambore and other lands. It may be added that
the boy-king was unfortunate; for he was murdered within two years of
his accession, at the instance of the man who had murdered his father.
San Thomé was acquired in 1749; and the story of the acquisition is
not without interest. The names 'San Thomé' and 'Mylapore' are often
used as alternative designations for one and the same locality; but in
bygone days the two names represented quite different places. Mylapore
was a very ancient Indian town, which seems to have been in existence
long before the birth of Christ. San Thomé was a seventeenth century
Portuguese settlement close by. It is an old tradition that St. Thomas
the Apostle was martyred just outside Mylapore; and when the
Portuguese first came to India some of them visited Mylapore to look
for relics of the saint. They found some ruined Christian churches,
and also a tomb which they believed to be the tomb of St. Thomas; and
soon afterwards a Portuguese monastery was established on the spot. A
Portuguese town grew up around the monastery; and in course of time
the town became a commercial centre, and was surrounded with a
fortified wall, and was the Portuguese settlement of San Thomé, over
against the Indian town of Mylapore. An Italian dealer in precious
stones who visited India in the sixteenth century wrote of San Thomé
that it was 'as fair a city' as any that he had seen in the land; and
he described Mylapore as being an Indian city surrounded by its own
mud wall. Mylapore was thus in effect the Black Town of San Thomé; but
in later days the two towns were combined. When the English came to
Fort St. George, the power of the Portuguese was already waning; and
the development of the influence of the English at Madras meant a
further lessening of the influence of the Portuguese at San Thomé;
and it was a natural consequence that San Thomé, including Mylapore,
became a prey to successive assailants. Its first captor was the lord
of the soil, the Mohammedan King of Golconda. Next, the French took it
from Golconda; and two years later Golconda, with the help of the
Dutch, recaptured it from the French. The Dutch were content with a
share of the plunder for their reward, and left Golconda in
possession. On the self-interested advice of the English at Fort St.
George, Golconda destroyed the fortifications. He then put the town up
for sale. The Company were prepared to buy it, and so were the
Portuguese; but a rich Mohammedan named Cassa Verona found favour with
Golconda's Moslem officials, and secured the town on a short lease.
Next it was leased to the Hindu Governor of Poonamallee; and then for
a big price it went back again to the Portuguese. Towards the end of
the seventeenth century the great Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb dethroned
the lord of the soil, the King of Golconda; and, although the
Portuguese were not turned out of San Thomé, it was now a part of the
Moghul Empire, and was put in charge of a Moslem ruler. After
Aurangzeb's death, the Moghul Empire broke up, and the Nawab of Arcot
eventually became independent, and San Thomé was part of his
dominions. In 1749, when Madras, after the French occupation, was
restored to the English by an order from Paris, in accordance with the
treaty of Aix la Chapelle, Dupleix at Pondicherry was bitterly
disappointed at the rendition, and he formed designs for the
acquisition of San Thomé for France, as a set-off for the loss of
Madras. The English at Fort St. George had information of his schemes,
and, being in no way desirous of having aggressive Frenchmen for close
neighbours, they forestalled Dupleix by persuading the Nawab to make
the Company a grant of 'Mylapore, _alias_ St. Thomé,' on condition
that the Company should undertake to help the Nawab with men and
money whenever he should call upon them to do so. It was thus that San
Thomé became a British possession; and, although it was afterwards
ravaged successively by the French under Count Lally and by Haidar Ali
of Mysore, it has remained a British possession ever since.
We have said enough to show the manner in which the different parts of
the modern city of Madras came into the hands of the English. The
methods were not always wholly admirable; but we must remember that
the East India Company was a mercantile association, fighting for its
existence under diamond-cut-diamond conditions; and we must remember
also that, although its representatives at Madras were sent out to
India not to rule but to earn dividends for the shareholders, yet the
Company's rule over Madras was so upright that crowds of people were
continually flocking into Madras to enjoy its benefits.
CHAPTER VII
OUTPOSTS
The suburban lands which were successively granted to the Company were
not protected either by the walls of Fort St. George or by the walls
of Black Town, and it was accordingly necessary that special means
should be adopted for their defence. The Company's military engineers
devised the erection of small suburban forts ('redoubts'),
block-houses, and batteries, which were to be mounted with cannon and
to be in charge of an appropriate garrison, and were to serve as
outposts for the protection of the outlying quarters of the city.
On the northern side of Black Town the batteries and block-houses were
linked together by a thick-set hedge of palmyras, bamboos,
prickly-pear, and thorny bushes, such that neither infantry nor
cavalry could force a way through. Later it was decreed that the
'Bound Hedge,' as it was called, should be extended so as to encircle
the whole city. The work, however, was never completed, for as late as
1785 an influential European inhabitant of Madras, addressing the
Government on the subject of the insecurity of the city, wrote:--
"Was the Bound Hedge finished, no man could desert. No Spy
could pass; provisions would be cheap. All the Garden
Houses, as well as thirty-three Square Miles of Ground,
would be in security from the invasions of irregular Horse."
Of the suburban fortifications the two largest were at Egmore and at
San Thomé. Next in size were those at Nungumbaukam and at Pursewaukam.
Of smaller works there were many. Of the fortifications at
Nungumbaukam and at Pursewaukam all traces have disappeared; but of
the larger ones at San Thomé and at Egmore interesting remains are
still to be seen.
[Illustration: San Thomé Fort.
A PORTION OF THE EXTENSIVE RUINS IN THE GROUNDS OF 'LEITH CASTLE,' SAN
THOME]
The remains of the San Thomé Redoubt stand within the grounds of
'Leith Castle,' a house that lies south of the San Thomé Cathedral.
The remains are ruins, but the massive walls fifteen feet high and
three feet thick, are suggestive of the purpose for which the redoubt
was built. The 'Records' show that the San Thomé Redoubt, built in
1751, was a very complete fortification, with a moat forty feet wide,
a glacis, and all the other works that are usual in respect of a well
appointed building of the kind. That it was of a large size is to be
seen in the fact that, when the French under Count Lally were
besieging Madras, an English officer was officially directed 'to stay
in St. Thomé Fort with the Europeans belonging to Chingleput, four
Companies of sepoys, and fifty horse.'
The Egmore Redoubt was a good deal older than that of San Thomé. It
was constructed in the days of Queen Anne. It was intended, of course,
for the special protection of Egmore; but in those distant days when
trips to the hills were unknown, even Egmore was a health-resort in
respect of the crowded Fort St. George, and it was officially reported
that the Egmore Redoubt might 'serve for a convenience for the sick
Soldiers when arrived from England, for the recovery of their health,
it being a good air.' The Egmore Redoubt was evidently a need; for the
'Records' tell us that on various occasions its guns were fired at the
enemy. The enemy were for the most part horsemen of Haidar Ali or of
Tipu, his son and successor; and in 1799 the year in which Tipu was
killed, the need for the Redoubt disappeared. Adjoining the precincts
of the Redoubt were the premises of the Male Asylum, an Anglo-Indian
Orphanage, which required to be extended, and in the following year
the Madras Government gave the Redoubt to the Asylum, and the two
premises were turned into a common enclosure. In the beginning of the
present century the Directors of the Asylum sold their Egmore estate
to the South Indian Railway Company and removed to new premises in the
Poonamallee road; and what remains of the Egmore Redoubt is now the
habitation of some of the Railway employees.
[Illustration: THE EGMORE FORT (SIDE VIEW)]
The remains are of quaint interest. At some date or another the
authorities of the Asylum had an upper story added to one of the
military buildings, with the result that there is the strange
spectacle of a row of windowed chambers on the top of a buttressed and
battlemented wall, windowless and grim. The upper story has been built
into the battlements in such a manner that the outline of the
battlements is still clearly visible, and the building is a composite
reminder of old-time war and latter-day peace. The whole of the
lower part of the building, with its massive walls and its frowning
aspect, is of curious and suggestive interest; and the ground around,
which is extensively bricked, is a reminder of the fact that the
Redoubt in its original form was large indeed. The place provides
interesting material for antiquarian speculation.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE EGMORE FORT.
_The building is in the Male Asylum Road, and is now the residence of
some railway employees. Its upper part has been built upon a
battlemented wall, and doors have been let into the wall. The outlines
of the original wall and of some of the battlements can be easily
traced._]
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT
St. Mary's Church within the walls of Fort St. George is the oldest
Protestant church in India, and, except for some of the oldest bits of
the Fort walls, it is the oldest British building in Madras city, and
even in India itself. It dates from 1680.
When Madras was rising upon its foundations, the Company's employees
were not only without a church but also without a pastor; for the
Company did not think it necessary to go to the expense of providing a
chaplain for so small a community. But it was an age in which
religious services on Sunday were seldom neglected; and it may be
conceived that, in default of a chaplain at Fort St. George, the
Governor himself or his delegate read the Church Service on Sunday
morning and evening, in the hearing of the assembled employees of the
Company, and perhaps also some selections from the published sermons
of distinguished Elizabethan divines.
In the Portuguese settlement of San Thomé there were numerous Roman
Catholic priests, and some of them ministered to the numerous
Portuguese and other Roman Catholic residents of White Town around
Fort St. George, as also of Black Town close by. So numerous indeed
were the Roman Catholic residents of White Town within three years of
the foundation of the Fort that the Governor permitted a French priest
to build a chapel in the Town. It was thus not a little anomalous that
in a British settlement, founded under the auspices of such a
redoubted antipapist as Queen Elizabeth, there was a Roman Catholic
church with a priest in charge, yet neither a church nor a pastor of
the established religion.
In 1645, however, the Company's Agent at Fort St. George forwarded to
higher authority "a petition from the souldiers for the desireing of a
minister to be here with them for the maintainance of their soules
health;" and in the following year a chaplain was sent out. There was
still no Protestant church, but the celebration of religious services
was held in careful regard; for the chaplain read morning and evening
prayers every day of the year in a room in the Fort appointed for the
purpose, and it was compulsory upon all the youthful employees of the
Company to attend regularly, under the penalty of a fine.
Chaplains came and chaplains went, and for some sixteen years they
continued their ministrations in the room in the Fort. A small church
was then built; but, with the Company's developing trade, the
population of White Town increased so rapidly that before long the
little church was too small for the number of the worshippers. When
Mr. Streynsham Master, after a long term of years in the Company's
service, was appointed Governor of Madras, one of his first acts was
the circulation of a voluntary subscription paper for the building of
a church that should be worthy of the Company's rapidly developing
South Indian possession. He headed the list with a subscription of a
hundred pagodas (Rs. 350), a sum which represented much more than it
does now; for it was more than Mr. Streynsham Master's pay for a whole
month as Governor of Madras. Subscriptions from the Councillors, as
well as from the factors and writers and apprentices, were
proportionately big; and on the 28th of October, 1680, St. Mary's
Church was solemnly opened, and the guns of the Fort roared forth loud
volleys in honour of the event. The steeple and the sanctuary were
added later; but, for the rest, the present church, except for
details, is the very same church that was built some two hundred and
fifty years ago, in the reign of Charles II.
[Illustration: ST. MARY'S, FORT ST. GEORGE.]
It is interesting to note that the church at Madras was built during a
period when in London a great many churches were being built--or
rebuilt--after the Great Fire. Church-building was in vogue, with the
distinguished Sir Christopher Wren as the builder in chief; and it is
not unlikely that what was being done so energetically in London was
one of the influences that inspired Mr. Streynsham Master to be so
earnest over a scheme for building a church in Madras. It may be
noted, moreover, that St. Mary's Church within the Fort at Madras is
of a style that was very much in fashion in London at the time.
In deciding to build a new church, the Governor and his colleagues
realized that if ever the Fort should be bombarded, a shot from the
enemy's guns was as likely to fall upon the church as upon a fortified
bastion; so the roof of the church was made 'bomb-proof,' in
preparation for possibilities. Events proved the reasonableness of the
measure; for on more than one occasion the church was a factor in war.
In 1746, when the French were besieging Fort St. George, the British
defenders lodged their wives and children and their domestic servants
in the bomb-proof church, and they took refuge there themselves in the
intervals of military duty. During the three years that they occupied
Madras, the French, fearing that they might be besieged in their turn,
used the bomb-proof church as a storehouse for grain and as a
reservoir for drinking-water. The church organ they sent off to
Pondicherry as one of the spoils of war.
At the end of the war Madras was restored to the Company, but a few
years later the Fort was besieged by the French again. During the
interval, some of the houses had been made bomb-proof, and in these
the women and children were lodged, but St. Mary's Church was used as
a barrack, and its steeple as a watch-tower. Lally, the French
commander, failing to capture Madras, had to march away with his hopes
baffled; but, notwithstanding its bomb-proof roof, the church, as also
its steeple, had been badly damaged during the destructive siege, and
the necessary repairs were considerable.
A few years later the English had their revenge. They captured
Pondicherry, and they destroyed its fortifications. They recovered,
with other things, the organ that had been looted from St. Mary's;
but, as a new one had in the meanwhile been obtained for St. Mary's,
the recovered instrument was sent to a church up-country. According
to accounts, moreover, they took toll for the Frenchmen's loot by
sending to St. Mary's from one of the churches in Pondicherry the
large and well-executed painting of the 'Last Supper,' which is still
to be seen in the church. The origin of the picture is not known for
certain; but it is believed with reason to be a fact that it was a
spoil of war from Pondicherry on one or another of the three occasions
on which that town was captured by the British.
The stray visitor who wanders round St. Mary's without a guide is apt
to be astonished at what he sees in the churchyard. A multitude of old
tomb-stones, of various ages and with inscriptions in various tongues,
lie flat on the ground, as close to one another as paving-stones, in
such fashion that the visitor must wonder how there can be sufficient
room for coffins below. As a matter of fact, the coffins and their
contents are not there, and the inscriptions of 'Here lyeth' and 'Hic
jacet' are not statements of facts. The explanation is an interesting
story, which is worth the telling.
In the Company's early days, the 'English Burying Place,' (_vide_ Map,
p. 10) lay a little way outside the walls of White Town, in an area
which is now occupied by the Madras Law College with its immediate
precincts. Later, when a wall was built round old Black Town, the
Burial Ground was included within the enclosure of the wall. An
English cemetery in a corner of an Indian town was not likely to be
treated with any particular respect; and on various counts the
'English Burying Place' was a sadly neglected spot. Nearly every
Englishman that died in Madras was an employee of the Company, and was
a bachelor, without any relatives in India to mourn his loss. His
colleagues gave him a grand funeral; but his death meant promotion for
some of those selfsame colleagues, and his place in the Company's
service was filled up by an official 'Order' on the following day. A
big monument in the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar ugliness was
piously built over his remains, and possibly there was genuine regret
at a good fellow's loss; but water is less thick than blood, and there
was no near one or dear one in India to take affectionate care of the
big tomb; so it was left to itself to be taken care of by the people
of Black Town. An unofficial description of Madras dated 1711 speaks
of the 'stately Tombs' in the English cemetery, and an official Record
of the same year speaks of the unhallowed uses to which the stately
tombs were put. The Record says that "Excesses are Comitted on
hallowed ground," and that the arcaded monuments were "turned into
receptacles for Beggars and Buffaloes." We have seen in a previous
chapter that the French, when they captured Madras, demolished the
greater part of old Black Town together with its wall, and that the
English, when they were back in Madras, completed the work of
demolition. In the two-fold destruction, both French and English had
sufficient respect for the dead to leave the tombs alone. But, now
that Black Town was gone, the big tombs were the nearest buildings to
the walls of White Town and Fort St. George; and when the French under
Lally besieged Madras a few years later, they used the 'stately Tombs'
as convenient cover for their attack on the city. The cemetery now was
a receptacle not for beggars and buffaloes but for soldiers and guns.
The siege lasted sixty-seven days, during which the cemetery was a
vantage ground for successive French batteries. It is therefore not to
be wondered at that when Count Lally had raised the unsuccessful
siege, the authorities at Fort St. George decided that the 'stately
tombs' were to disappear. The tombs themselves were accordingly
destroyed, but the slabs that bore the inscriptions were laid in St.
Mary's churchyard. At a later date some of them were taken up and were
removed to the ramparts, for the extraordinary purpose of 'building
platforms for the guns,'[2] but eventually they were restored to the
churchyard and were relaid as we see them to-day.
[Footnote 2: Rev. F. Penny's _Church in Madras_, vol. i, p. 366.]
When the burying ground was dismantled, two of its monuments were
allowed to remain. They are still to be seen on the Esplanade, outside
the Law College, and the inscriptions can still be read; and the two
tombs are interesting memorials of the past. One is a tall,
steeple-like structure, which represents a woman's grief for her first
husband, and for her child by her second. Her first husband was Joseph
Hynmers, Senior Member of Council, who died in 1680, her second was
Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras, whom she married six months after the
death of her first. When her little son David died at the age of four,
she had him buried in her first husband's grave. The other monument
covers a vault which holds the remains of various members of the
Powney family, a name which figured freely in the list of the
Company's employees throughout the eighteenth century. When the
cemetery was dismantled, members of the Powney family were still in
the Madras service, and it was doubtless in respect for their feelings
that the vault was not disturbed.
It may be added that amongst the gravestones that pave the ground
outside St. Mary's Church there are several that record the death of
Roman Catholics. It is supposed that they were taken from the
graveyard of the Roman Catholic church in White Town, which was
demolished by the Company when they recovered Madras after the French
occupation.
Although the gravestones around St. Mary's Church bear the names of
persons who were buried elsewhere, there are memorials within the
church itself which mark the actual resting-place of mortal remains.
Most of the monuments in St. Mary's are of historic interest, and
it is fascinating indeed to stroll round the building and study
Storied urn or animated bust;
but it is noteworthy that no inscription records the very first burial
within the walls of the church. It is noteworthy too that the
forgotten grave was not the grave of an obscure person, but of Lord
Pigot, Governor of Madras; and, in view of the extraordinary
circumstances of his death, the first burial is the most notable of
all.
George Pigot was sent out to Madras as a lad of eighteen, to take up
the post of a writer in the Company's service. He worked so well that
he rose rapidly, and at the early age of thirty-six he was appointed
Governor of Madras. It was in the middle of his eight years'
governorship that the French under Lally besieged Madras for
sixty-five days; and Governor Pigot's untiring energy and skilful
measures were prime factors in the successful defence. After the war
he did great things for the development of Madras; and when he
resigned office at the age of forty-five and went to England, the
strenuous upholder of British honour in the East was rewarded with an
Irish peerage. Well would it have been for Lord Pigot if he had
settled down for good on his Irish estate! But twelve years later he
accepted the offer of a second term of office as Governor of Madras.
It is not infrequently the case that a man who has been eminently
successful in office at one time of his career fails badly if after a
long interval he accepts the same office again. Times have altered and
methods that were successful before are now out of date. In Lord
Pigot's case the conditions at the time of his second appointment were
very different from those at the time of the first. On the first
occasion he had risen to office with colleagues who had been his
companions in the service. On the second occasion he was sent out to
Madras as an elderly nobleman selected for the job, and as a stranger
to his colleagues, who moreover were particularly given to factious
disputes. It is not unlikely too that Lord Pigot himself had become
touchy and overbearing in his declining years. Any way, he quarrelled
with his Councillors almost immediately, and within six or seven
months there had been some very angry scenes. He had been accustomed
to being obeyed, and in his wrath at being obstinately resisted he
went to the length of ordering the arrest not only of some of the
leading members of Council but also of the Commander-in-Chief. The
Councillors check-mated the Governor's order by arresting the
Governor! It was a daring proceeding. He was arrested one night after
dark, while driving along a suburban road on his imagined way to a
friendly supper, and he was sent as a prisoner to a house at St.
Thomas's Mount. He was in captivity for some nine months, while the
triumphant Councillors were representing their case to the Directors
in England; and then he died, in Government House, Madras, to which
when he fell ill he had been transferred. It is on record that his
remains were specially honoured with burial within St. Mary's
Church--the first burial within the building--but no permanent
memorial was raised to the unhappy Governor's memory; and the
particular spot where he was buried is only a matter of conjecture.
St. Mary's Church is less than 250 years old. Compared with hundreds
of the grey-walled or ivy-covered churches in England, St. Mary's at
Madras is prosaically new; but it is of exceeding interest
nevertheless. Madras itself is a great and historic city, which owes
its existence to British enterprise, with Indian co-operation, and St.
Mary's Church, as the oldest British building therein, is the earliest
milestone of progress. It is not a church that is best visited, like
Melrose Abbey, 'in the pale moonlight,' but in the bright daylight,
when the inscriptions on the tomb-stones without and on the monuments
within can be clearly read.
CHAPTER IX
ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS
When the English first came to Madras, there were numerous Roman
Catholic churches in the neighbouring Portuguese settlement of San
Thomé, but there were none within the tract of land that Mr. Francis
Day acquired in the Company's behalf. When, therefore, at the
Company's invitation, a number of Portuguese from San Thomé, both
pure-blooded and mixed, came and settled down in the Company's White
Town, they were necessarily compelled to resort to the ministrations
of Portuguese priests who belonged to the San Thomé Mission; and
within a year of the foundation of Fort St. George, the Portuguese
missionaries built a church in the outskirts of the British
settlement. This was the Church of the Assumption, which stands in
what is still called 'Portuguese Street' in Georgetown, and is
therefore a building of historic note. To the Company's
representatives the ministrations of Portuguese priests to residents
of Madras were objectionable; for the relations between Madras and San
Thomé were by no means friendly. It is true that when Mr. Francis Day
was treating for the acquisition of a site, the Portuguese at Mylapore
had furthered his efforts; but such a mark of apparent good will was
no more than the outcome of Portuguese hostility to the Dutch; for
they hoped that the English at Madras would be powerful allies with
themselves against the aggressive Hollanders. As soon, however, as
Madras had begun to be built and English trade to be actively pushed,
jealousies arose and disagreements occurred; and the Company's
representatives chafed at the idea that Portuguese priests should be
the spiritual advisers of residents of Madras.
In 1642, when Madras was in its third year, a certain Father Ephraim,
a French Capuchin, chanced to set foot in Madras. Father Ephraim had
been sent out from Paris as a missionary to Pegu; and he had travelled
across India from Surat to Masulipatam, where, according to his
instructions, he was to have secured a passage to Pegu in one of the
Company's ships. His information was out of date; for the Agency had
lately been transferred from Masulipatam to Madras, and the Company's
ships for Pegu were sailing now from Madras instead of from
Masulipatam; so Father Ephraim journeyed southward from Masulipatam to
look for a vessel at the new settlement. At Madras no vessel was
starting immediately, and Father Ephraim had to bide his time.
Meanwhile he made himself useful by ministering to the Roman Catholics
of the place. Official and other documents show that Father Ephraim
was a very devout and a very able man. He was 'an earnest Christian,'
'a polished linguist,' able to converse in English, Portuguese and
Dutch, besides his own French, and he was conversant with Persian and
Arabic. He had the charm of attractive friendliness, which is so
common with Frenchmen, and he captivated all with whom he conversed.
The Portuguese and other Roman Catholic inhabitants of Madras, to whom
the Company's disapproval of the ministrations of Portuguese priests
had been a frequent source of trouble, formally petitioned Father
Ephraim to settle down in the city; and the Governor in Council,
greatly preferring a French priest to a Portuguese and thoroughly
approving of Father Ephraim personally, supported the petition with a
formal order that, if the priest would stay, a site would be provided
on which he might build a church for his flock. Father Ephraim himself
was not unwilling to stay, but he was under orders for Pegu, and,
furthermore, Madras was within the diocese of San Thomé, and the
Bishop was not likely to approve of a scheme in which the
ministrations of his own priests would be set at naught in favour of a
stranger. The Company, however, was influential. A reference was made
to Father Ephraim's Capuchin superiors in Paris, and they approved of
his remaining in Madras; another reference was made to Rome, asking
that the British territory of Madras should be ecclesiastically
separated from the Portuguese diocese of Mylapore, and the Pope issued
a decree to that effect.
A site for a church, as also for a priest's house, was provided in
White Town, within the Fort St. George of to-day, and a small church,
dedicated to St. Andrew, was built; and for a good many years it was
the only church of any kind in the settlement.
The Portuguese ecclesiastics of Mylapore were never reconciled to this
ecclesiastical separation of Madras, and when Father Ephraim went by
invitation to Mylapore to discuss certain ecclesiastical business, he
was forthwith arrested, clapped in irons, and shipped off to Goa and
lodged in the prison of the Inquisition. The Governor of Fort St.
George took the matter in hand, but Father Ephraim was in prison more
than two years before he was eventually released and sent back to
Madras.
Later, Father Ephraim rebuilt St. Andrew's Church on a larger plan,
and the building was opened with ceremony; and Master Patrick Warner,
the Company's Protestant Chaplain at Fort St. George, complained
indignantly to the Directors in England that Governor Langhorn had
celebrated the popish occasion with the 'firing of great guns' and
with 'volleys of small shot by all the soldiers in garrison.'
Father Ephraim had already built a church in old Black Town, which
seems to have stood somewhere within what is now the site of the High
Court. Another French Capuchin had meanwhile come to Madras to help
him in his ministrations to his ever-increasing flock; so the church
in Black Town had its regular pastor.
After more than fifty years of self-sacrificing work in Madras, Father
Ephraim died of old age, sincerely esteemed by all who knew him.
Some years after his death St. Andrew's was again rebuilt, and it was
now a large edifice, with a high bell-tower, and a small churchyard
around. In the suburban district of Muthialpet there was also a
'Portuguese Burying Place,' which is now the 'compound' of the Roman
Catholic Cathedral and its associated buildings in Armenian Street;
and a small church stood within this enclosure. Adjoining the
Portuguese Burying Place was the 'Armenian Burying Place,' which is
now the enclosure of the Armenian church; and it was the Armenian
Burying Place that gave the name to the street.
When Madras was captured by the French, there were people who said
that the French priests in Madras had given information to their
countrymen; and three years later, when Madras was restored to the
Company, the Governor in Council confiscated St. Andrew's church. A
reference to the Directors in England as to what they were to do with
the confiscated building brought back the very decisive reply that
they were "immediately on the receipt of this, without fail to
demolish the Portuguese Church in the White Town at Madras, and not
suffer it to stand." The church was demolished accordingly, as also a
Roman Catholic chapel in Vepery. The church in old Black Town had
already been demolished by the French when they destroyed the greater
part of old Black Town itself; and, in accordance with another edict
of the Directors in England, by which the Company's representatives in
Madras were "absolutely forbid suffering any Romish Church within the
bounds, or even to suffer the public profession of the Romish
religion," Roman Catholicism was altogether scouted in Madras.
Twenty-five years later, the English troops, after defeating the
French in various engagements, captured Pondicherry and demolished its
fortifications; and the peace of Paris left the French in India
powerless. With the danger of French aggression removed for good, the
Company were less intolerant of the religion which Frenchmen
professed; and a few years later they paid the Capuchin priests some
Rs. 50,000 as compensation for the destruction of the church in White
Town and of the chapel in Vepery.
With funds thus in their hands, the Capuchin fathers set about
building a new church in the 'Burying Place.' This new church, which
they built in 1775, was the edifice which is now the Roman Catholic
Cathedral in Armenian Street. On the gate-posts appears the date 1642,
but this was the year in which the Company made a grant of the land
for a Roman Catholic Cemetery and in which Father Ephraim arrived and
the Madras Mission began, and is not the date of the building of the
present church or of its predecessor. The Capuchin missionaries
continued in charge of Roman Catholic affairs in Madras until 1832, in
which year they were put under episcopal jurisdiction.
Reference has been made in this chapter and elsewhere to the churches
that were already in existence in Mylapore when the English first
settled in Madras. According to local tradition, the Apostle St.
Thomas made his way to the East, and, after preaching in various parts
of India, settled down in the ancient Hindu town of Mylapore, where he
made numerous converts. The Hindu priests, indignant at the loss of so
many of their clients, sought the missionary's life. The Apostle,
according to the tradition, lived in a small cave on a small hill--the
'Little Mount'--fed by birds and drinking the water of a spring that
bubbled up miraculously within the cave. Driven from the cave, he
fled to another hill, a mile or so away--'St. Thomas's Mount'--where
he was killed with a lance. The dead body was buried at Mylapore. Such
is the story; and in the present-day church on the Little Mount the
visitor is shown a cave which is said to have been the Apostle's
hiding-place; and within the nave of the cathedral at Mylapore he is
shown a hole in the ground--now lined with marble--in which the
Martyr's remains are said to have been buried.
When the Portuguese came to Mylapore in the early part of the
sixteenth century, they built a church upon the ruins of an ancient
church that had enclosed the tomb; and the new church became
eventually the Cathedral of San Thomé. The sixteenth century building
was pulled down in 1893, and the present Cathedral--a handsome Gothic
structure--was built. Mylapore is now a suburb of Madras, and is
within British dominion; but the bishopric, which was originally
supported by the King of Portugal, who had the right of nominating the
bishop, is still supported by the Portuguese Government.
Mylapore has a history of its own that is outside the scope of the
'Story of Madras;' but a few words about the glories of a city that is
now a suburb of Madras will not be out of place.
Mylapore and Madras, standing side by side, are a conjunction of the
old and the young. Mylapore, or Meliapore, the 'Peacock City' of the
ancient Hindu world, has existed for twenty centuries, and perhaps a
great many more; Madras has existed less than three. It was at
Mylapore that, according to tradition, the body of the martyred
Apostle St. Thomas was buried; Mylapore was the birth-place of
Tiruvalluvar, an old and illustrious Tamil author who belonged to the
down-trodden class, and of Peyalvar, an eminent Vaishnavite saint and
writer; it was here that a company of Saivaite saints, Appar and his
fellows, assembled together and wrote their well-known hymns; and it
was here also that Mastan, a renowned Mohammedan scholar, lived and
wrote and died.
Of the ancient glories of Mylapore no vestige remains; but several of
the churches of the Mylapore diocese belong to the sixteenth century,
including the celebrated 'Luz' Church, the Church of the Madre-de-Deus
at San Thomé and the little Church of Our Lady of Refuge between
Mylapore and Saidapet, besides the churches at the Little Mount and
St. Thomas's Mount, of which the latter is a sixteenth-century
development of an old chapel that existed there before the coming of
the Portuguese.
It is of interest to note that there are those who say that a Mylapore
church gave its name to the city of Madras. They say--not, I believe,
without evidence--that the rural village of Madraspatam, where Mr.
Francis Day selected a site for the Company's settlement, had been
colonized by fisherfolk from the parish of the Madre-de-Deus
Church--the Church of the Mother of God--and that the emigrant
fisherfolk called their village by the name of their parish, and that
the name was eventually corrupted into 'Madras.' The origin of the
name 'Madras' is uncertain; and the explanation is at any rate
interesting and not unlikely to be true.
CHAPTER X
CHEPAUK PALACE
Among the interesting buildings in Madras must be included Chepauk
Palace, which was built about a century and a half ago as a residence
for the Nawab of the Carnatic, and which is now the office of the
Board of Revenue. The high wall that enclosed the spacious Saracenic
structure in its palace days has been pulled down, and the public can
now gaze at a building that was once carefully screened from the
public eye, and can enter at will without having to satisfy the
scrutiny of armed men at the gate. A change indeed--from the sleepy
residence of a Muhammadan ruler, with his harem and his idle crowd of
retainers, to bustling offices where a multitude of officials and
clerks are working out the cash accounts of the Government of Madras!
The 'Carnatic' was a dominion that extended over the territory that is
now included in the Collectorates of Nellore, North Arcot, South
Arcot, Trichinopoly, and Tinnevelly. The town of Arcot was the capital
of the dominion, and the Nawab of the Carnatic was sometimes spoken of
as the Nawab of Arcot. Chepauk Palace belongs to the history of the
Carnatic, and a few historical notes will make things clear.
In our first chapter we intimated that Madras, when Mr. Francis Day
acquired it, was within the domain of the disappearing Hindu Empire of
Vijianagar, of which the living representative at the time was the
Raja of Chandragiri, from whom Mr. Francis Day accordingly obtained a
deed of possession. Seven years afterwards, the Raja of Chandragiri
was a refugee in Mysore, driven from his throne by the Muhammadan
Sultan of Golconda, who assumed the sovereignty of Hyderabad and the
Carnatic. The Sultan of Golconda thus became the recognized overlord
of Madras; and the Company were careful to secure from their new
sovereign a confirmation of their possession. But the power of the
Sultan was destined to fall in its turn; for Aurangzeb, the Moghul
Emperor at Delhi, being desirous of uniting all India under Moghul
rule, waged war against the Sultan of Golconda--who, as a Shiah
Mohammedan, was a heretic in Aurangzeb's eyes--and defeated him.
Aurangzeb put Hyderabad under a Nizam whom he named 'Viceroy of the
Deccan' and the Carnatic under a Nawab who was to be subordinate to
the Viceroy. But the Emperor who succeeded Aurangzeb had none of their
predecessors' greatness; and soon after Aurangzeb's death the Nizam of
Hyderabad assumed independence, with the Nawab of the Carnatic as his
vassal.
In 1749 there was a quarrel for the Nawabship. The French at
Pondicherry supported one claimant, and the English at Madras
supported the other. This was the gallant Clive's opportunity.
Exchanging the clerk's pen for the officer's sword, the youthful
'writer' marched with a small force to Arcot and captured it on behalf
of the Company's nominee, and then sustained most heroically a lengthy
siege. Clive triumphed; and Mohammed Ali, otherwise known as Nawab
Walajah, became undisputed Nawab of the Carnatic. Later, with British
support, the Nawab renounced his allegiance to Hyderabad, and reigned
as an independent prince.
In his capital at Arcot, Nawab Walajah, who had many factionary
enemies, would assuredly have found himself in a dangerous centre of
intrigue; but he was wise in his generation; for as soon as he had
gained his independence he sought and obtained from the Governor of
Madras permission to build a palace for himself within the protective
walls of Fort St. George. Arrangements for the work were made; and one
of the streets of the Fort--the street which still bears the name of
'Palace Street'--received its name because it was the street in which
the Nawab's residence was to be built. Eventually, however, the scheme
was set aside; and in the following year the Nawab acquired private
property in Chepauk, and engaged an English architect to build him a
house. Chepauk Palace thus came into existence. The grounds of the
Palace, which the Nawab surrounded with a wall, formed an immense
enclosure, which included a large part of the grounds of Government
House of to-day and a great deal of adjoining land.
Chepauk Palace was the scene of some grand doings in its time; and
soon after it was built the Nawab entertained the Governor of Madras
and his Councillors, one of whom was Mr. Warren Hastings, at 'an
elegant breakfast;' and, when the feast was over, he divided some Rs.
30,000 among his guests. The Governor got Rs. 7,000, and, on a sliding
scale, the Secretaries, who were last on the list, got Rs. 1,000 each.
The relations, however, between Nawab Walajah and a later Governor of
Madras were not so cordial. In 1780 Haidar Ali with an immense army
suddenly invaded the Carnatic, and annihilated a British force that
was sent to oppose him; and Tipu, his son and successor, continued the
campaign. The Company's treasury at Madras was straitened with the
expenses of the war, and the Nawab, whose capital was in the hands of
the enemy, was unable to contribute thereto; but when Tipu was
eventually defeated, the Nawab was induced to assign the control of
the revenues of the Carnatic to the Company. A few months later the
Nawab felt that he had made an unwise bargain, and he declared his
renunciation of the agreement; but Baron Macartney, the newly
appointed Governor of Madras, kept him strictly to his word. The Nawab
wrote various official letters, complaining in one that Lord Macartney
had 'premeditatedly' offered him 'Insults and Indignity,' and in
another that he had shown him 'every mark of Insult and Contempt.' The
Directors in London, expressly declaring their desire to content the
influential Nawab, decided in his favour; whereupon Lord Macartney,
who in the opinion of his friends had been set at naught for the sake
of the wealthy potentate, indignantly resigned the Governorship of
Madras, and went home. Friendly relations between the Nawab and the
Madras Government were thereupon resumed, and when Nawab Walajah died,
at the age of seventy-eight, he was eulogised in an official note in
the _Fort St. George Gazette_.
The career of his son and successor, Umdat-ul-Umara, was less
auspicious. Although his accession was the occasion of friendly
letters between himself and the Government of Madras, the Nawab's
rejection of the Governor's suggestion that the financial arrangements
between himself and the Company should be made more favourable to the
Company irritated the Governor, and the Governor's efforts to induce
the Nawab to change his mind irritated the Nawab. Meanwhile Tipu
Sultan was preparing for another war with the Company, and when, after
a brief campaign, Tipu was killed while fighting bravely in defence of
his capital, it was declared that an examination of Tipu's
correspondence showed that the Nawab of Arcot had been guilty of
treasonable communications with Mysore. It was accordingly resolved
that the Company should assume control of the Carnatic; but, as the
Nawab was seriously ill, nothing was done until his death, when
British troops were sent to occupy Chepauk Palace.
The Nawab's son refused to recognize the Company's right to control
his father's dominions, whereupon the Company set him aside, and put
his cousin on the throne in his stead. The Company were now the actual
rulers of the Carnatic, and the future Nawabs were styled 'Titular
Nawabs.' In 1855 the third of the Titular Nawabs died without any son
to succeed him. Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General of India at the
time, and it was Lord Dalhousie's declared policy that if the ruler of
any native state died without issue, his dominions should formally
lapse to the Company. On this principle the Carnatic now became a
formal part of the British dominions, and the dynasty of the Nawabs
came to an end; Chepauk Palace, which was the personal property of the
Nawabs, was acquired by the Company's Government for a price, and was
eventually turned into Government offices.
The many thousands of Mohammedans, however, who dwelt in the crowded
streets and lanes of Chepauk, and who had looked upon the Nawab as
their religious chief, would have been afflicted at the cessation of
the Carnatic line; and after the Indian Mutiny the Government of
India, respecting Mohammedan sentiment, recognized the succession of
the nearest relative of the late Nawab and obtained for him from the
King of England the hereditary title of Amir-i-Arcot, or 'Prince of
Arcot'--an honorary title but higher than that of Nawab. A sum of Rs.
1,50,000 per annum--(not an excessive sum in relation to the revenues
of the Carnatic, which are now collected by the Madras Government)--is
expended annually in pensions to the Prince and to certain of his
relatives; and he lives in a house called the 'Amir Mahal' (the Amir's
Palace), which was given to him by the Government. The Amir Mahal
stands in spacious grounds in Royapettah. At the principal entrance,
the gate-house is a tall and imposing edifice in red brick. At the
gateway, sentries, armed with old-fashioned rifles, stand--or
sometimes sit--on guard; and the Prince's Band is often to be heard
practising oriental music in the room up above.
Regarded in relation to its history, Chepauk is something more than
'one of the Government buildings on the Marina.' Let us remember that,
when it was enclosed within the walls that are now no more, it was the
home of Mohammedan potentates--sometimes a scene of gorgeous
festivity--sometimes a scene of desperate intrigue. In imagination we
may people the front garden with the gaily-uniformed Body-Guard of the
Carnatic sovereign, mounted on gaily-bridled steeds; and we may see
the Nawab himself coming magnificently down the front steps and
climbing into the silver howdah that is strapped on the back of a
kneeling elephant. A blast of oriental music, and the procession goes
on its way; and we may wonder at which of the tiled windows on the
upper floor the bright eyes of the Lalla Rookhs and the Nurmahals of
Chepauk are slily peeping at the spectacle. The vision vanishes. The
procession now is a procession of clerks to their homes when their
day's work is over; and the music is a ragtime selection by the Band
of the Madras Guards on the Marina, close by, with ayahs and children
around. We are in the twentieth century; but for a moment we have
lived in the past.
CHAPTER XI
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
In the early days of Madras all the employees of the Company, from the
Governor down to the most junior apprentice, lived in common. Their
bedrooms were in one and the same house, and they had their meals at
one and the same table. The house stood in the middle of the Fort, and
was the 'Factory'--a word which, as already explained, was used in
former times to mean a mercantile office, or, as Annandale in his
dictionary defines it, 'an establishment where factors in foreign
countries reside to transact business for their employers;' and the
Factory in Fort St. George was both an office and a home.
The community life, with the common table, was maintained for many
years, but in course of time, when the number of the employees had
greatly increased and some of the senior officials had wives and
children, one man and another were allowed to live in separate
quarters, within the precincts of the Fort; and eventually the common
table, like King Arthur's, was dissolved. Even then, however, and
right on until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the junior
employees had a common mess, and were under something like disciplined
control.
Like all the other buildings inside the Fort and within the walls of
White Town, the Factory--which was sometimes spoken of as 'The
Governor's House'--was without a garden; and it was only to be
expected that the resident employees, most of whom were young men,
should wish for a recreation ground to which they could resort in
their leisure hours. Some of the wealthy private residents of White
Town had shown what could be done; for they had acquired patches of
land outside the walls, which they had enclosed with hedges and
cultivated as gardens, with a house in the middle of each garden, in
which, as either a permanent or an occasional residence, the owner and
his family might hope to find relief from the stuffiness of the
streets of the rapidly developing city. In the 'Records' any such
villa is spoken of as a 'garden-house' and even now in Madras the term
'garden-house' is occasionally used in Indo-English as signifying a
house that stands within its own 'compound,' as distinct from houses
that open directly into the street.
The Company's agents in Madras realized the desirability of laying out
a garden for the recreative benefit of the Company's employees.
Outside the walls, therefore, of White Town they hedged off some eight
acres of land in the locality in which the Law College now stands, and
they cultivated it as a 'Company's Garden;' and within it they built a
small pavilion. We may imagine that in the cool of the evening it was
common for a goodly number of the Company's mercantile employees to
leave their apartments in the Fort and stroll beyond the walls the
short distance to the 'Garden,' which in those early days was
refreshingly near the seashore. In our mind's eye we can blot the Law
College out of the landscape and can see a party of youthful merchants
engaged as energetically as was suitable to the heat of Madras in the
then fashionable game of bowls--or, less energetically but much more
excitedly, gathered in a ring round two cocks that are tearing each
other to pieces--a particularly popular form of 'Sport' in old Madras;
and, although the Directors in London appropriately forbade to their
employees the use of cards or the dice-box, we can espy a
tense-visaged quartet within the shadow of the pavilion with a 'pool'
of 'fanams' (coins worth about 2-½_d_.) on the table, or possibly,
rupees or pagodas, absorbed in a round of ombre or one of the other
card games that were in fashion. The sun has set, and the shadows are
lengthening. A bugle sounds from the Fort; and the employees stroll
back to supper, which, according to an old account, invariably
consisted of 'milk, salt fish, and rice,' but which will be privately
supplemented afterwards with potations of arrack-punch by those who
can afford nothing better and with draughts of sack or canary by those
who can.
In the course of a few years the 'Company's Garden' was spoiled. Black
Town had been springing up close by; and, when a wall was built round
old Black Town, the Company's Garden was unpleasantly included
therein, and the Garden was now in the north-west corner of the Indian
city. Moreover, a part of the Garden had begun to be utilized as a
European burial-ground, and huge funeral monstrosities of the bygone
style had begun to dominate the enclosure.
The Company's agents in Madras felt that a new recreation ground was a
necessity; and they were agreed that there ought to be not merely a
'Company's Garden,' but a 'Company's Garden-House.' They wrote to the
Directors saying that there were occasions on which the Company in
Madras had to entertain 'the King (Golconda) and persons of quality,'
and that they had no building that was suitable for any such
ceremonial proceedings. True there was the Council Chamber in the
Fort, but the Council Chamber was the place where the Company's
mercantile transactions were discussed; and the Chamber, as well as
all the other buildings in the Fort, was closely identified with the
'Factory;' and the Company's chief officials in Madras declared--not,
we may suppose, without regard for their own convenience--that a
stately 'Garden House,' unassociated with ledgers and bills of sale,
ought to be built, in due accord with the stateliness of the Company
itself. Their application for permission to put the work in hand was
met by the Directors in London with the typically frugal reply that
the work might be done but care was to be taken that the Company
should be put to 'no great charge.' Possibly the representatives in
Madras were able to provide additional supplies on the spot, but,
however that may have been, the house was 'handsomely built,' yet
'with little expense to the Company.' The new garden seems to have
comprised the area within which the Medical College and the General
Hospital are now situated. The grounds, which stretched down, even as
now, to the bank of the river, were well laid out, and the Company's
first 'Garden House' was a fine possession.
In 1686 Master William Gyfford, Governor of Fort St. George, had a
fancy for using the Garden House as a private residence for himself.
It is not to be wondered at that he did so; for Master Gyfford, after
twenty-seven years' residence in Madras and more than twenty-seven
years in the East, was in poor health, and lately he had been taken
ill with a 'a violent fitt of the Stone and Wind Collick.' The
gardenless 'Factory' in the Fort was a gloomy apology for a
'Governor's House,' and the crowd of employees that were accommodated
there must have been a serious infliction upon the invalid Governor;
and he found the Garden House an agreeable retreat. In his new
quarters he got better of his illness; and he dwelt there a
considerable time, till in the following year he left Madras for
England for good. The story is interesting, for it records the first
occasion on which a Governor of Madras lived in a separate house
outside the Fort.
On various occasions the Company's 'Garden House,' with its extensive
grounds, was used for public purposes, justifying the plea for its
construction. For example, when the Company received the news of the
accession of King James II, the event was celebrated with brilliant
proceedings at the Garden House. Similarly, at the accession of Queen
Anne 'all Europeans of fashion in the City' were invited to the Garden
House, where they 'drank the Queen's Health, and Prosperity to old
England.' In an earlier chapter we have related how a young Nawab of
Arcot who had just succeeded to his murdered father's throne was
entertained at the Garden House with great doings. Governor Pitt made
great developments in the Gardens, and was another Governor who liked
the Garden House as a residence. An Englishman who was living in
Madras in 1704, when Pitt was Governor, has left an interesting
account of the Garden House as he saw it:--
'The Governor, during the hot Winds, retires to the
Company's new Garden for refreshment, which he has made a
very delightful Place of a barren one. Its costly Gates,
lovely Bowling-Green, spacious Walks, Teal-pond, and
Curiosities preserved in several Divisions are worthy to be
Admired. Lemons and Grapes grow there, but five Shillings
worth of Water and attendance will scarcely mature one of
them.'
Before long it had come to be an unwritten regulation that Governors
at Fort St. George might reside at their choice either in the Fort or
at the Garden House. There came a time, however, when the Governor had
of necessity to betake himself to the Fort; it was the time when the
French were besieging Madras. During the siege the enemy used the
Garden House as a vantage-ground for their big guns; and afterwards,
when they had captured Fort St. George and were in occupation of the
city, they pulled the Garden House down, lest the English, trying
perhaps to recapture the Fort, should be able to use it as a
vantage-ground in their turn.
Thus, when Madras was restored to the English, the Garden House had
disappeared, and the only house for Governor Saunders was the original
residence in the middle of the Fort. Governor Saunders, however, was
not content with the walled-in accommodation that the Fort provided
and was unwilling to forgo the residential privileges that his
predecessors had enjoyed; so a private 'garden-house' in Chepauk was
rented in his behalf. It belonged to a Mrs. Madeiros, a rich
Portuguese widow, whose husband, lately deceased, had been a leading
merchant in White Town.
Mrs. Madeiros's house was 'Government House, Madras,' of the present
day. The house, however, has been enlarged and the grounds have been
extended since Governor Saunders lived there as a tenant.
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, MADRAS]
Governor Saunders liked his residence, and, before he had been there a
year, the Company acquired it from the widow, who had no use for it
now that her husband was dead; and the Governor was careful to leave
on record the reason of the acquisition:--
'It having been always usual for the Company to allow the
President a house in the Country to retire to, and Mrs.
Medeiros being willing to dispose of her House, situated in
the Road to St. Thomé, for three thousand five hundred
pagodas (say Rs 12,250), Agreed That it be purchased
accordingly, The Company's Garden-house having been
demolish'd by the French when they were in Possession of
this Place, and Mrs. Medeiros's being convenient for that
Purpose, and on a Survey esteem'd worth much more than the
Sum 'tis offer'd at.'
The Company always enjoyed a good bargain, and Governor Saunders was
justified in thinking that he had made a very good one in respect of
the house; for, a few years later, the house, with certain extensions
and improvements, was written down in the Company's books at a
valuation of nearly four times the price that was paid for it.
We have brought our story down to the acquisition of Government House,
but it remains to relate some of the historic events in which
Government House has figured since it was acquired.
During the second siege of Madras by the French, under Lally, the
besiegers occupied the Garden House, and during their occupation they
did a great deal of wanton damage before they ceased their vain
endeavours. Two years later, however, the English had the enjoyment of
a delicate revenge. They captured Pondicherry and brought Lally to
Madras, where they imprisoned him in the Garden House till a vessel
was available to take him to England. The damage that he had done had
not yet been repaired; and a contemporary Record says that 'Mr. Lally
was lodged in those apartments of the Garden House which had escaped
his fury at the Siege of Madras,' and that in respect of his table he
was allowed to give his own orders 'without limitation of expence,'
with the result that he 'seemed to have intended Revenge by
Profusion.'
A few years later Tipu, Sultan of Mysore, at the head of a body of
horsemen, made a sudden raid on Madras; and the troopers scampered
about the well-laid-out grounds of the Garden House, looting the
villages on either side. According to accounts, Governor Bourchier and
his Councillors were there when the raiders came, and they would
assuredly have been caught had they not managed to make their escape
in a boat that was conveniently tied up on the bank of the Cooum
river.
More than one Governor of Fort St. George has died at Government
House, and it was there that Governor Pigot died in extraordinary
circumstances. The tale has been told in a previous chapter, that Lord
Pigot was arrested by his Councillors, with whom he had quarrelled,
and that he died in confinement in the Garden House.
The reader has yet to be told how the Garden House was finally
transformed into the Government House that we see to-day.
In 1798 Lord Clive, son of the great Robert Clive, was sent out to
India as Governor of Madras. Within the first six months of his
arrival there was the excitement of a war with Mysore, in which the
terrible Tipu Sultan was killed during the assault on his capital.
During the tranquil remainder of his five years in India, Lord Clive
turned his attention to domestic reforms, and amongst them he resolved
that the Garden House should be improved. In an official minute he
wrote:--
'The garden house, at present occupied by Myself, is so
insufficient either for the private accommodation of my
family and Staff, or for the convenience of the public
occasions inseparable from my situation, that it is my
intention to make such an addition to it as may be
calculated to answer both purposes.'
Lord Clive thereupon, in 1801, developed Government House at a cost of
more than Rs. 3 lakhs; and two years later he built the beautiful
Banqueting Hall, at a cost of Rs. 2½ lakhs. The recent fall of
Tipu's capital of Seringapatam was an event that the Banqueting Hall
could appropriately commemorate; and Lord Clive, with pious respect
for his dead father's memory, coupled Plassey with Seringapatam, and
ordered that the fine figure-work on the façade of the hall should be
a commemoration of both victories. In England the Directors of the
Company complained of what they called 'such wasteful extravagance;'
but the developments were a real want, and it is a matter of
present-day satisfaction that the Madras Government have no need to be
acquiring a site now and to be building a new Government House in
these expensive days. Lord Clive was certainly no miser with the
Company's money, for he built also a second Government House--a
'country residence' at Guindy. The 'country residence' was developed
and improved some forty years later by Lord Elphinstone, who was
Governor of Madras in the middle of last century. It is a truly
beautiful house, standing in beautiful grounds; and it has lately been
a proposition that the house at Guindy should be the Governor's only
residence, and that Government House, Madras, should be used for
Government offices.
'Government House, Madras!' To most people it is suggestive of dinner
parties within and garden parties without; and the Banqueting Hall is
suggestive of dances and levees and meetings for good causes. But to
people who can look at Government House, Madras, with an historic
glance it rouses other memories. Within its original walls more than
two centuries ago a belaced Senhor kept Portuguese state. It was here
that Frenchmen were encamped while their guns were fruitlessly
hammering at the walls of Fort St. George. It was here that Lally
lived sumptuously in prison, till he was sent to Europe--eventually to
be executed in Paris for having failed to capture Madras. It was
within these grounds that Tipu's horsemen were scampering about on a
September morning, looking for houses where money or jewels could be
commandeered. It was here that an ennobled Governor of Madras lived in
gilded captivity till death set him free.
CHAPTER XII
MADRAS AND THE SEA
Madras is now a seaport of considerable repute; but it is interesting
to recall the fact that less than forty years ago the city was without
a harbour, and that ships which came there had to anchor out at sea.
In the days of the Company, passengers and cargo had to be landed on
the beach in boats; and, as the waves that chase one another to the
shores of Madras are nearly always giant billows crested with foaming
surf, the passage between ship and shore was not without its
discomforts and also its risks.
Warren Hastings, when he was senior member of the Madras Council and
was in charge of Public Works, wrote it down that he thought it
'possible to carry out a causeway or pier into the sea beyond the
Surf, to which boats might come and land their goods or passengers,
without being exposed to the Surf.' At various times different
engineers devised plans for such a pier as Warren Hastings proposed,
but nothing was actually done, and it was not until the sixties of
last century that a pier was actually made. It was not a stone
causeway such as Hastings seems to have had in his mind, but was a
lighter and likelier structure of wood and iron; and it did excellent
work, making it easy for passengers and cargo to be landed in fair
weather. Madras was still, however, without a harbour; but before many
years a harbour was taken in hand, and in the summer of 1881 its two
arms, enclosing the small pier, were practically finished. There was
much rejoicing; but the congratulations were short-lived, for on a
certain night during the winter of the same year there was a cyclone
off Madras, and the next morning the citizens saw that their harbour
had been wrecked by the devastating waves. It was fifteen years before
the harbour had been restored, upon an improved plan; and even then it
was a poor apology for a haven; for when a storm was expected, ships
were warned to put out to sea, as the cyclone had shown that a stormy
sea was less dangerous than the storm-beaten harbour. Within recent
years, however, the harbour has been so much altered and strengthened
and developed that it is regarded as a splendid piece of engineering,
and shipping business in Madras has benefited greatly. Large vessels
can now lie up against wharves, to discharge or to load their cargo,
and passengers can embark and disembark in comfort, and the increase
in trade has been great. Much watchfulness, however, is still very
necessary; for, on an exciting night a few years ago, part of the
extended harbour-wall was washed away by a storm.
Yes, Madras is an important seaport; yet it is a fact that, except to
men whose business is with the sea, Madras is much less like a seaside
town than it was in its earlier years, and many of the people who live
there seldom see the briny ocean--even though they may sometimes be
reminded of its nearness when in the stillness of the night they hear
'The league-long breakers thundering on the shore.'
For one thing, the greater part of Madras is not so near the sea as it
was in former times; for the southern wall of the harbour has acted as
a breakwater, causing the sea to recede a very long way from the
original shore; and houses in the thoroughfare that is still called
'Beach Road' are now a very long way from the beach, and it is only
from upper stories that the sea in the distance is visible. Southward,
moreover, the magnificent road that is still called the 'Marina' is
fast losing its right to the name; for it is only across a broad
stretch of ever-extending dry sand that the dark blue ribbon of
tropical sea is beheld therefrom.
In earlier days Madras was verily a city of the sea. Both White Town
and Black Town lay directly along the sea-beach, and the coming and
going of the Company's ships were momentous events. Surf-boats used to
land on the beach outside the 'Sea-Gate' of the wave-splashed Fort,
laden with cargo from the Company's ships lying out in the roads; and
the bales were carried through the gateway into the Company's
warehouses within the Fort-walls. The Sea-Gate is still to be seen,
and it still looks towards the sea; but the sea is far away, and the
Sea-Gate is now one of the least used of the entrances to the Fort.
[Illustration: THE SEA GATE.
The sea has now receded afar.]
In former times the Company had a considerable fleet of first-class
sailing-ships, and, owing to the frequency of wars with either the
French or the Dutch, the Company obtained royal permission to equip
their ships as men-of-war armed with serviceable guns, which could be
turned against an enemy if occasion required. The voyage from England
to India was by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and it lasted at least
three or four months, and often very much more. For example, when
Robert Clive came out to India for the first time, the vessel was so
buffeted by contrary winds that the commander thought it best to run
across the Atlantic and let her lie up so long in a South American
port that Clive learned to speak Spanish with considerable fluency;
and it was not till nearly a year after leaving England that the young
writer arrived at Madras.
Furthermore, besides the various adventures that were natural to a
sea-voyage, there was the contingency of a sea-fight, and the
possibility of being taken to Pondicherry or Batavia as a prisoner of
war instead of being landed at Madras as a paid employee of the
'Honourable Company.'
[Illustration: THE COMPANY'S FLAG.]
It was usual for several ships to sail together, for mutual
protection; and passengers had reason to congratulate themselves when
they were eventually landed safe and sound at Madras. It can be
readily imagined that the sight of a vessel of the Company approaching
in the distance caused a stir of excitement amongst the residents of
Fort St. George. There were no telegraphs from other ports to give
previous notice of a vessel's prospective arrival; and the fact that a
ship was at hand was unknown until her flag[3] or her particular rig
was discerned in the distance, or until one of her guns gave notice of
her approach. The comparative regularity, however, of the winds in
Eastern seas caused 'seasons' in which vessels might be expected; and
when a season arrived, the look-out who happened to be on duty on
the Fort flagstaff must have been particularly alert. Ay, and there
must have been much hurrying to and fro in the streets of White Town
when the signal had been given and the news had spread that the sails
of a Company's ship had been sighted, and while the vessel, perhaps
with several consorts, came nearer and nearer, till at last the
anchors were dropped and salutes were exchanged between ship and
shore.
[Footnote 3: 'The flag displayed by the Company's ships bore seven
horizontal red stripes on a white ground, with a St. George's Cross in
the inner top corner.'--_Love_.]
There was good cause for excitement. The ship brought letters from
home--perhaps after several months of no news at all. There were the
private letters that told the news about near ones and dear ones;
there were the official letters that decreed appointments in the
Company's service and promotions and penalties, and dealt with the
Company's business; and there were the 'news-letters'--the
old-fashioned predecessors of the modern newspaper, which were written
by paid correspondents, whose duty it was to give their clients news
of London and of England and of Europe. The news was often astounding,
and was sometimes extraordinarily behind-time. For example, the
Company's employees in India were still professing loyalty to the Most
High and Mighty King James II nearly a twelvemonth after that monarch
had fled to France and had been succeeded by William and Mary; and the
employees at Madras were surprised indeed when a ship arrived one day
from England with the belated news.
The salutes have been fired, and the vessel has been surrounded by a
flotilla of surf-boats and catamarans. The commander and the
passengers are being rowed ashore, and the Governor with his
Councillors, dressed all of them in their smartest official attire,
are waiting on the beach outside the Sea-Gate of the Fort to bid them
a hearty welcome. Amongst the passengers there are probably some
youths who have been posted to Madras either as apprenticed 'writers'
or as military Cadets; and perhaps there is a senior employee who is
returning to India after the rare event of a holiday in England.
Possibly too there are some ladies, either wives of employees who have
been willing to accompany or to follow their husbands to the
mysterious East--or, as was not infrequently the case, young ladies
who, with the consent of the Directors, have been shipped out to India
by their parents or guardians or on their own account, in the hope
that companionable bachelor employees, pining in their loneliness,
will jump at the chance of matrimony.
[Illustration: SURF-BOAT]
The surf-boat comes nearer and nearer; and when it gets among the
breakers there are feminine screams of terror. The alarm is not
without cause; for at one moment the boat is being balanced on the top
of a heaving wave, and the next it is almost lost to sight in a
foaming hollow. The excitement in the tossing boat is tremendous; but
it is brief; for there are only three or four breakers to be
negotiated, and in less than a minute a curling wave has caught the
boat in its clutch and hurls it with a thud into the shallows. Naked
coolies rush forward and lay hold of its sides, lest the backwash
should carry it seaward again; and, with the help of the next wave,
they manage to haul the boat a little further on shore, and the
passengers are able to disembark--splashed, perhaps, but safe and
sound.
When the greetings are over, the Governor leads the way into the Fort,
where a general meal is served and the news is told and the
exclamations of surprise are many. In the evening there is a banquet,
and after the banquet, 'when the gentlemen have finished their wine,'
and have rejoined the ladies, the stately dances of the period are
'performed;' and it is not unlikely that before the assembly breaks
up, some, if not all, of the newly-arrived young ladies have received
and have accepted offers of matrimony; and it is possible that two or
more gallants have had a serious quarrel about this young lady or
that, and even possible that, out of the Governor's sight, swords have
been drawn in her regard.
On the morrow the unloading begins; and for many days a fleet of
surf-boats is busily engaged in bringing ashore the broadcloths and
other English wares which the Company will be able to sell at a large
profit--not forgetting the barrels of canary and madeira and other
luxuries that have been imported both for private consumption and also
for the general table in the Fort. And when the unloading is over and
the ship has been overhauled after her long voyage, the surf-boats
will then be engaged in carrying to the ship the calicoes and other
Indian wares that are to be exported to England for the Company's
profit there.
The sea-trade of Madras is very much greater now than it was in the
days of old. Not a day now passes but at least one steamship glides
into the Madras Harbour, and it is always a much larger vessel than
was the very largest of the sailing-ships that in those bygone times
tacked laboriously to an anchorage in the Madras roads. But the
excitement has disappeared. The steamers come and go with as little
stir--or not so much--as when a tramcar leaves a crowded
street-corner.
In Madras there are still some reminders of the times when nautical
affairs were in more general evidence in Madras than they are now. For
example, the 'Naval Hospital Road' is still the name of a thoroughfare
which leads from the Poonamallee Road, opposite the School of Arts, to
Vepery, and it is a reminder of the fact that there were once upon a
time sufficient naval men in Madras to make a hospital for sick seamen
a necessity. The buildings of the old Naval Hospital still exist; they
are the buildings in the Poonamallee Road opposite the School of Arts.
In the early part of last century the Naval Hospital itself was
abolished, and the buildings were converted into a 'Gun Carriage
Factory'--and this is now no more. It is a good many years indeed
since the Gun Carriage Factory was closed down; and in Madras at this
particular time, when there is a very pressing demand for house
accommodation, many people wonder that such spacious premises in so
busy a quarter of the city should have been lying idle for so long and
are hoping to see them once more serving some useful purpose.
Another reminder of the nautical conditions of those days is to be
found in the existence of an 'Admiralty House.' 'Admiralty House' is a
fine residence in San Thomé, and is now the property of the Raja of
Vizianagram. It was apparently the San Thomé residence of the Admiral
of the East Indian fleet. That official had another residence within
the Fort, which used also to be called 'Admiralty House'--the house
which Robert Clive occupied at the time of his marriage, and which is
now the Accountant-General's office.
We will glance at one more reminder of the nautical Madras of bygone
times. At Royapuram there is a large house which is now styled 'Biden
House,' and is used as a harbour-masters' residence, but which until a
few years ago was called 'The Biden Home' or 'The Sailors' Home.' It
is not an ancient building, but it was nevertheless built in the days
of the sailing-ship, and is a reminder of the times when sailing-ships
used to lie out in the Madras Roads and the 'Sailors' Home' offered
seamen entertainment more physically and morally wholesome than that
which was provided in the low-class hotels and saloons which laid
themselves out for the spoliation of Jack ashore--and of the time when
the wreck of a sailing-ship on the Coromandel coast was not an
uncommon occurrence and parties of distressed seamen were not
infrequently to be seen in Madras, for whom a temporary 'Home' had to
be provided. The 'Old Salt'--the picturesque sea-dog of sailing-ship
days--has disappeared except from story-books--the old-fashioned
seaman with earrings in his ears and a villainous 'quid' in his mouth,
dressed in a blue jersey and the baggiest of blue trowsers, and
lurching as he walked, always 'full of strange oaths', and larding his
speech with nautical jargon. On shore, after a long sea-voyage, and
with money in his pockets, the 'Old Salt' in an Eastern port was not
always a factor for peace and progress. He was not uncommonly too
frequent a visitor at what the Madras Records call the 'punch houses,'
and the Records show that he often caused a disturbance. But he was a
brave fellow, and at sea he did much for England's trade and for
England's greatness. In an Indian seaport he was a picturesque, if
troublesome, personage, and nautical Madras has changed with the Old
Salt's disappearance.
CHAPTER XIII
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS
A tourist who goes the round of Madras must surely be impressed with
the numerous signs of its educational activity. Apart from the
multitude of juvenile schools in every part of the crowded city, the
number of academic institutions is large, and educational buildings
are amongst the most prominent of its edifices. Our tourist, putting
himself in charge of a guide at the Central Station for a drive along
the beautiful Marina, sees a number of academic buildings on his way.
The Medical College is just outside the station yard. The classic
façade of Pachaiyappa's College for Hindus peeps at him gracefully
across the Esplanade. The Law College lifts its Saracenic towers above
him as he passes by. Across the road he sees the collection of
miniature domes and spires and towers that surmount the various
buildings that make up the far-famed Christian College. Driving along
the Marina he sees the Senate House of the Madras University
surmounted by its four squat towers; farther on he sees the staid
Engineering College, and the still staider Presidency College, and,
beyond, the whitewashed buildings of Queen Mary's residential College
for Women; and on his way back by the Mount Road he sees the
Muhammedan College, with its little white mosque and its spacious
playing-fields in the heart of the city. There are yet more colleges
in Madras; and there are also numerous large schools, some of which
are attended by more than a thousand pupils.
Yes, the educational activity in Madras is great; and it is
interesting to reflect that it is a development from very small
educational enterprises in the days when Madras was young.
The initial enterprise was small indeed. The first school in Madras
was the little "public school for children, several of whom are
English", which the French Capuchin priest, Father Ephraim, opened in
his own house in White Town very soon after Madras came into being.
His pupils were mostly Portuguese or Portuguese Eurasians, the
children of Portuguese subjects who had come from Mylapore and who,
for purposes of trade or commerce, had settled down within the English
Company's domain. His English pupils must have been children of the
very few of the Company's civil or military employees that were
married, or of the still fewer English free settlers. Father Ephraim,
who according to accounts was a really learned man, charged no fees,
yet was deeply interested in the welfare of his scholars; and the
little school must have supplied a great want in those far-off days.
It is interesting indeed to think of that little 'public school;' for
the room in the priest's house was the scene of the very first
beginning of what are now the mighty educational activities of
Madras--an earnest, moreover, of the great things that the Roman
Catholic Church was going to do in the way of education, both for boys
and for girls, in South India.
Father Ephraim's school continued to prosper under his successors, and
in the seventeenth century it was transferred, as a poor-school, to a
building in the grounds of what is now the Roman Catholic Cathedral in
Armenian Street; and in 1875 it was put under the control of the
brothers of St. Patrick, an Irish order of educational monks, and it
became St. Patrick's orphanage. Later the brothers transferred
themselves and their orphanage to the spacious park--Elphinstone
Park--on the southern bank of the Adyar River, the premises which they
occupy still.
For some thirty years the Company took no part in educational work,
and the children of Madras were left entirely to Father Ephraim's
care. Then for two years a certain Master Patrick Warner was the
Company's temporary chaplain of Madras--a conscientious and
uncompromising Protestant minister who wrote some long letters to the
Directors in England denouncing the laxity of the conduct of the
Company's employees and deploring the influence that Roman Catholic
priests had been allowed to obtain in Fort St. George. Finally, he
went back to England, with the threat that he was going to interview
the Directors on various matters pertaining to Madras; and that he
succeeded in making himself heard is to be seen in the fact that in
the following year the Directors sent a Protestant schoolmaster out to
Madras. The letter in which they notified the appointment to the
Governor in Council at Fort St. George was assuredly inspired by
Master Patrick Warner's undoubtedly high-minded representations. They
wrote that, as there were now in Fort St. George 'so many married
families,' they were sending out 'one Mr. Ralph Orde to be
schoolmaster at the Fort ... who is to teach all the Children to read
English and to write and Cypher gratis, and if any of the other
Natives, as Portuguez, Gentues (Telugus),[4] or others will send their
Children to School, we require they be also taught gratis ... and he
is likewise to instruct them in the Principles of the Protestant
religion.' Mr. Ralph Orde arrived by the same ship which brought the
letter, and his arrival (1677) is another notable event in the history
of education in Madras. It was the first beginning of Government
education--the laying of the first stone in what is now such a vast
edifice.
[Footnote 4: In modern Madras the great majority of the Hindu
residents are Tamils; but in the beginning there were very few Tamil
immigrants, and the Hindu residents were nearly all of them Telugus
(Gentoos).]
In appointing a schoolmaster, the Directors meant to do their best for
education in their rising city; for they had [5]engaged no mean
dominie on a menial's pay. In choosing Mr. Ralph Orde they chose a
good man, and they paid him accordingly. He was to dine at the General
Table, and his salary was to be £50 a year, which in those days was no
small sum--more than the salary of some of the Members of Council.
Perhaps, indeed, they got too good a man for the post; for after five
years of educational work in Madras, Mr. Orde complained that his
schoolmastering had been 'much prejudicial to my health,' and he asked
to be relieved of his duties and to be appointed to a post in the
Company's civil service instead. His request was granted. A new
schoolmaster was appointed; and as a 'Civilian' Mr. Orde worked with
such success that in two or three years he was sent to Sumatra to be
the Chief of a factory that he was to found on the west coast of the
island. The ex-schoolmaster would, perhaps, have risen to be Governor
of Madras, but it would seem that life in the East had really been
'much prejudicial to his health,' for he died in Sumatra ten years
after his first arrival in Madras.
In 1688, by virtue of the Company's Royal Charter, a Corporation of
the City of Madras came into being, and it was among their delegated
duties that they should build a school in Black Town for the purpose
of teaching 'Native children to speak, read, and write the English
Tongue, and to understand Arithmetic and Merchants' Accompts.' Three
years later, however, Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras, complained to
the Corporation that, although they had been empowered to levy taxes
on the citizens, they had not so much as thought about building a
school, and had neglected various other civic responsibilities. The
Company--rightly or wrongly--sought to justify their inaction with the
excuse which the Corporation of Madras has--rightly or wrongly--made
for civic inaction so many times since, namely that 'no funds' had
been assigned to them by Government for the works that they were
called upon to undertake. As for taxation, they remarked that the
people in Black Town had not been schooled to civic taxation; and it
is true that any ruthless collection of taxes might have meant
wholesale departures from the city, or at any rate a serious check to
further immigration. So the municipal school for Native children never
came into being.
Meanwhile the Company's free school in White Town, started by Mr.
Orde, continued its work under Mr. Orde's successors; and elementary
instruction was imparted therein to a heterogeneous crowd of
children--English, Eurasians, and Indians--Christians and Hindus.
Eventually the school was put in charge of the chaplain of St. Mary's
Church in the Fort, and the chaplain and his churchwardens agreed in
thinking that such education was not of the kind that a Church should
control, and that it was rather their duty to institute in Madras a
residential free-school for poor Protestant children of British
descent, which should be conducted on the lines of the many 'charity
schools' in England; and in 1715, with the approval of the Directors,
'St. Mary's Church Charity School' was founded. The event is of
particular interest; for St. Mary's Church Charity School developed
later into the 'Male Asylum'--the institution which has done so much
for boys and girls for so many years, and which, after changing its
habitation on various occasions, is now comfortably housed in spacious
premises in the Poonamallee road.
The year 1715 is noteworthy on another account. St. Mary's School
having been founded solely for the benefit of children of European
descent, the native children who had attended the Company's day-school
were deprived of education. The Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge undertook to supply the want, by establishing schools in
Madras for the special benefit of Indian children; and the year 1715,
therefore, is the date which marks the first beginning of the
educational work that English Protestant missionary societies have
done in India. The Society found themselves unable to take up the work
immediately themselves; so they applied to the vigorous Danish
Lutheran Mission at Tranquebar, which was then a Danish settlement;
and a Danish minister was sent to Madras to set things going.
In the course of time Madras had become a much more habitable city
than it had been in its first beginnings, and a much more possible
place of residence for European women. The Company's employees,
therefore, were more and more disposed to matrimony; and, as already
related, the Directors, believing that married men made steadier
employees, had from early times encouraged the nuptial humour by
sending out from England periodical batches of well-connected young
women as prospective brides for employees who lacked either the means
or the inclination to take a trip home to choose partners for
themselves. The number of European fathers and mothers, therefore, in
Madras was continually increasing; and for the education of their
children, as also for that of children of well-to-do Eurasians, there
was need of a different kind of education than the various
free-schools supplied. Home education, with or without paid tutors and
governesses, probably served its turn with some, but it was certain
that sooner or later the private school would come into being.
We are unable to say when the first private school in Madras was
started; but an advertisement in one of the issues of the _Madras
Courier_, in 1790, shows that a private school for boys was started in
that year; and it was probably the first. The enterprising
educationist was Mr. John Holmes, M.A., who opened the 'Madras
Academy' in Black Town for the instruction of boys in 'Reading,
Writing, Arithmetic, History, the use of the Globes, French, Greek,
and Latin.' Other towns in the Madras Presidency had their English
residents, so Mr. Holmes offered to accommodate 'a few Boarders;' and
the offer was found so convenient that certain parents wanted
accommodation for their girls as well as for their boys. Mr. Holmes
was willing to receive all the pupils that he could get; for in an
advertisement two months later he announced that he was going to move
to a larger house in which 'apartments will be allotted for the Young
Ladies entirely removed and separate from the Young Gentlemen.'
The Madras Academy was eminently successful; but the mixed boarding
school was not its most commendable side; and in the following year an
enterprising lady-educationist announced that she was opening in Black
Town a 'Female Boarding School,' in which her young ladies would be
'genteelly boarded, tenderly treated, carefully Educated, and the most
strict attention paid to their Morals,' and the school was to be
conducted as far as possible 'in the manner most approv'd of in
England.' The enterprising lady-educationist was a Mrs. Murray, who
had been a mistress in the Female Asylum. Her syllabus of education
was of a more feminine sort than that which was followed at the Madras
Academy; for, as announced in the prospectus, it included 'Reading and
Writing, the English language and Arithmetic; Music, French, Drawing
and Dancing; with Lace, Tambour, and Embroidery, all sorts of Plain
and Flowered needle-work.' The two syllabuses are interesting
reminders as to what were the usual subjects of education for European
boys and girls a century and a half ago.
Schools, therefore, were available for children of every
class--European and Indian, rich and poor; but the schools for
Indians, conducted either by missionaries or by indigenous teachers,
were of an elementary kind; and, apart from Oriental studies in
indigenous institutions, there was little or nothing in the way of
higher education for Indians either in Madras or anywhere else in
India. This condition was altered, however, during the governorship of
Lord William Bentinck, the magnanimous if not brilliant
governor-general whose term of office lasted for seven years, from
1828 to 1835.
During this period everything favoured educational progress in India.
There was peace in England and there was peace in India. It was a time
of great educational developments in England, as is manifested by the
fact that within this period the London University and Durham
University were opened, and the great British Association for the
Advancement of Science was established. Such conditions in England had
their influence in India, and the more so because Lord William
Bentinck was ardent for progress. The opening of the Madras Medical
College in 1835 was one of the signs of the times. During Lord William
Bentinck's term of office education in India was reformed. Macaulay,
afterwards Lord Macaulay, was an Indian official at the time, and he
penned a notable report on education in India, in which he belittled
vernacular learning and asserted that the Government of India would do
well to discountenance it altogether, and to introduce western
learning and the study of English literature into all schools under
Government control, and to make it a rule that the English language
was to be the only medium of instruction. Whether or not Macaulay's
views were correct, they were adopted by the Government of India, and
Lord William Bentinck issued in 1835 a resolution in accordance
therewith, in which he sought to secure the people's acceptance of
English education for their children by notifying that a knowledge of
English would in future be necessary for admission into Government
service. Government service is particularly coveted in India, and the
resolution encouraged the foundation of schools of a good class in
which special attention would be given to the study of the English
language; and within a few years a number of important educational
institutions had been founded in different parts of India.
In South India the Madras Christian College, called originally 'The
General Assembly's Institution,' was first in the field. It was
founded in 1837, by the Rev. John Anderson, the first missionary that
the Church of Scotland sent out to Madras. The name of the founder is
preserved in the 'Anderson Hall' in one of the college buildings; but
the remarkable progress of the institution has been very specially due
to the untiring energy of the Rev. Dr. Miller, whose statue stands on
the opposite side of the public road. Dr. Miller was Principal for a
number of years, and now (1921) at a great age the venerable
educationist is living in retirement in Scotland.
In 1839, two years after the foundation of the Christian College, the
Roman Catholic Bishop in Madras, Dr. Carew, founded St. Mary's
Seminary, which after forty-five years became St. Mary's College, and
which is now represented by St. Mary's High School for Europeans and
St. Gabriel's High School for Indians.
Two years later, in 1841, the Presidency College had its beginning, in
a rented room in Egmore. At its foundation it was not a Government
institution, but was a public school under the control of governors,
who were chosen from among the leading Europeans and Indians in
Madras, with the Advocate-General as their first president. It was
styled 'The High School of the Madras University,' and it was the
founders' intention that when a college department had been added, the
institution should be called the 'Madras University,' and should apply
for a charter. In the sixties, however, the Madras Government was
considering a scheme of its own for a University of Madras, whereupon
the governors of the 'University High School' transferred their school
to the Government, who called it the 'Presidency College.' The
Presidency College continued to work in the rented building until
1870, when the building that it now occupies was publicly opened by
the Duke of Edinburgh.
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY SENATE HOUSE]
Pachaiyappa's College, a well-known Hindu institution, had its first
beginning in 1842. Like the other colleges in Madras, it began as a
school; the school was called 'Pachaiyappa's Central Institution,' and
was located in Black Town. The present buildings were opened in 1850
by Sir Henry Pottinger, an ex-governor of Madras, amid a large
gathering of leading European and Indian residents; and for a number
of years the annual 'Day' at Pachaiyappa's College was an important
social event. Pachaiyappa was a rich and religious Hindu, who made his
money as a broker in the Company's service, and who died more than a
hundred years ago leaving a lakh of pagodas--some 3½ lakhs of
rupees--for temple purposes. The trustees neglected the provisions of
the will, whereupon the High Court assumed control of the funds,
which under the Court's control rose to the value of nearly Rs. 7½
lakhs. The original amount was set apart for the fulfilment of the
terms of the will, and the surplus was assigned to educational
purposes in Pachaiyappa's name.
[Illustration: PACHAIYAPPA'S COLLEGE.]
The education of girls shared in the development; for in 1842 the
first party of Nuns of the Presentation Order was brought out from
Ireland, and a convent, with a boarding school and an orphanage,--the
'Georgetown Convent' of to-day--was established in Black Town. The
'Vepery Convent School' and some of the other successful convent
schools in Madras are controlled by nuns of the same Order.
Education in India was given further impetus in the time of Lord
Dalhousie. During his term of office (1848-1856) the present system of
education, under a Director of Public Instruction, was introduced, and
Government was empowered to make liberal educational grants, and to
establish universities. The despatch in which the educational
developments were announced has been called 'the intellectual charter
of India.'
[Illustration: DOVETON PROTESTANT COLLEGE]
Various institutions in Madras are representative of this later
development. A Government 'Normal School'--which has grown into the
'Teachers' College' of to-day--was established in 1856, to increase
the number and the efficiency of indigenous teachers; and the Madras
University was incorporated in 1857, for the control and the
development of higher education. Of large high schools still
existing, the Harris High School in Royapettah was founded by the
Church Missionary Society in 1856, for the education of Mohammedan
boys, and was named after Lord Harris, who was Governor of Madras at
the time; and the Hindu High School, in Triplicane, was founded in
1857. Doveton College, Vepery, for Anglo-Indian boys was opened in
1855. It owes its existence to a wealthy Eurasian, Captain John
Doveton, who obtained his Captaincy in the service of the Nizam of
Hyderabad, and who left a large sum of money to an earlier
institution, the Parental Academy, which was afterwards called Doveton
College in the deceased officer's honour. Within later years
philanthropic and enterprising Indians have done much for education,
and numerous schools both for boys and for girls have been established
by their efforts.
An educational building of curious interest is the office of the
Director of Public Instruction, in Nungumbaukam. It is commonly known
as the 'Old College'. In the masonry of a large arch at the entrance,
as well as on another arch within, quaint designs have been
introduced--mysterious faces, and flags, and strange geometrical
figures. The house was the property of a wealthy Armenian merchant
named Moorat, who died more than a hundred years ago; and it may be
supposed that the quaint designs were after the nature of family
memorials. In the early part of last century the Armenian merchant's
son sold the building to Government, who used it as a 'College for
Junior Civilians.' Hence the designation 'Old College'; but the name
does not mean that it was a building in which young civilians were
trained, but means that it was a building in which there were
'colleagues' in residence, or, in other words, that, the 'General
Table' having been dissolved, the 'College' was a mess-house for
junior civilians. Later, its large hall was for many years a
recognized assembly-room for amateur concerts, amateur dramatic
entertainments, and other occasions of social reunion. The quaint
devices on the gates are still preserved, and the name of the old
'College' still survives; but the associations have gone. Not even as
a ghost does the long-robed Armenian merchant tread the floors; the
junior civilians, with their ancient pranks and their antiquated
jests, have departed; in the great hall the lilt of the song and the
frenzy of the fiddles for the dance and the amateur mouthings of the
drama are heard no more. A multitude of turbanned clerks are pouring
forth the blue-black ink from their pens; schoolmasters haunt the
portals to press their claims for educational grants for their own
particular schools; and the click of a chorus of typewriters is the
only music that is borne upon the breeze.
I have told the story of the schools. It is creditable to Madras; for
great things have been done since that first little 'public school'
was opened in the Fort.
CHAPTER XIV
HERE AND THERE
Before closing the story of Madras, it will be well to speak, at least
very briefly, of some of the prominent landmarks of the city that we
have not yet described.
Of churches, we should mention St. George's Cathedral. It was opened
in 1816, not as a cathedral but as an ordinary church; for Madras then
was not a diocese by itself, but was a part of the immense diocese of
Calcutta. The new church was regarded as a necessity; for a great many
'garden houses' had sprung up in and about the Mount Road, in the area
that was called the 'Choultry Plain,' and the Directors of the Company
agreed with representations from Madras that it was undesirable that
English residents within the bounds should be able to stay away from
the Church-services on Sunday with the reasonable excuse that the
nearest Anglican church--St. Mary's in the Fort--was too far away from
their houses for them to be expected to attend. So the new church was
built; and some twenty years later, when Dr. Corrie, Archdeacon of
Calcutta, was consecrated first Bishop of Madras, the church became
'the Cathedral Church of St. George.' St. George's Cathedral is a
stately building, with a spire 139 feet high, and it stands in
spacious grounds. The total cost was more than two lakhs of rupees;
but nobody had to be asked to subscribe, for the money was available
from a peculiar source. It was an age in which State lotteries were in
vogue; Madras had followed the fashion with a series of official
lotteries, and a 'Lottery Fund' had been created from the profits, so
that there was always a good supply of cash available for
extraordinary expenses, such as mending the roads or entertaining
distinguished visitors. It was from the Lottery Fund that the cost of
building St. George's was met.
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE'S CATHEDRAL.]
St. Andrew's Church--most commonly known as 'The Kirk'--was planned
while St. George's was being built; and it is remarkable that it was
not projected sooner than it was. Scotchmen in Madras, as in other
parts of India, apart from Scottish soldiers, have been many; and the
names of a number of Madras roads and houses--such as Anderson Road,
Graeme's Road, Davidson Street, Brodie Castle, Leith Castle, Mackay's
Gardens--are reminders of the fact that not a few of the Scots of
Madras have been influential; and at the time when a second Anglican
church was being built in the city it was suggested to the Directors
of the Company in England that the numerous residents who were
members of the Church of Scotland ought to have a church too. The
Directors, who realized no doubt the desirability of being agreeable
to the many Scots in Madras, one of whom at the time was the Governor
himself, Mr. Hugh Elliot, consented to the suggestion, and in 1815
they sent out a notification that a Presbyterian church was to be
built not only at Madras but also in each of the other Presidency
cities at the Company's expense, and that the Company would maintain a
Presbyterian chaplain at each. The Directors laid down no instructions
as to what was to be the maximum cost of each kirk, but it was
unpretentious buildings that they had in mind. At Bombay a large kirk
was built for less than half a lakh of rupees, but for the kirk at
Madras the Madras Government submitted a bill for nearly Rs. 2¼
lakhs--some Rs. 10,000 more than the total cost of St. George's
Cathedral, and the Directors were indignant. The Kirk, however, had
been built; and it is one of the handsome churches of Madras.[5] It is
a domed building, with a tall steeple over the Grecian façade; and
some of its critics have said that the combination of dome and steeple
gives the edifice a strangely camel-backed appearance; but, however
that may be, the dome adds beauty to the interior. When the Church was
opened, it was found that the dome evoked disturbing echoes, and a
large additional expense had to be incurred to exorcise the wandering
voices. The steeple reaches a height of 166½ feet, which is 27½
feet higher than that of St. George's.
[Illustration: ST. ANDREW'S (THE "KIRK").]
[Footnote 5: Major de Haviland, of the Madras Engineers, built St.
George's on a plan designed by Major Caldwell, his senior in the
service. Major de Haviland both designed the Kirk and built it, and he
devoted himself to his work and was very proud of his creation, which
was nevertheless much criticized by unfriendly critics.]
The Roman Catholic Cathedral at Mylapore has been described on page
61. A sketch of the handsome building is given on the next page.
The High Court, a red Saracenic structure that spreads itself out over
a large area between Georgetown and the Fort, is a modern building. It
was opened within the memory of elderly lawyers of Madras, some of
whom used themselves to practise in the big building which is now the
Collector's Office, opposite the gate of the Port Trust premises, and
which was for many years the habitation of the Supreme Court at
Madras. The present High Court is a mighty monument to the development
of 'The Law' in Madras. In the early days of Fort St. George the
Company administered its own justice to its own people, and the court
was held in a building in the Fort. Punishments in those far-off
times, judicial or otherwise, were usually severe; and the Records
show that even a civil servant of junior rank who gave trouble was
liable to be awarded some such penalty as to sit for an hour or more
on a sharp-backed 'wooden horse,' with or without weights attached to
the delinquent's feet. In the town that grew up outside the Fort,
justice as between natives of the soil was administered by an Indian
_adikhari_, who represented the lord of the soil. As the Company's
influence and authority increased, various courts of law were
created--and the Records show that there were certainly crimes enough
to justify their creation. A large number of the criminal trials in
the earlier years of Madras were in respect of thefts of children, to
sell them as slaves, especially to Dutch merchants along the coast,
where the victims were not likely to be traced. Slavery was a
recognized condition of life in old Madras, as indeed it was in the
whole of Europe; and in the Council-book of Fort St. George there is
still to be seen an Order, dated September 29, 1687, "that Mr. Fraser
do buy forty young Sound Slaves for the Rt. Hon'ble Company," who were
to be made to work as boatmen in the Company's fleet of surf-boats. It
was in reference to a slave that the first case of trial by jury was
held in Madras, in 1665, and it was a _cause célèbre_. The prisoner
was a Mrs. Dawes, who was accused of having murdered a slave girl in
her service. The Governor himself, who, like a doge of Venice, was
both ruler and judge, was on the bench, and the twelve jurymen gave a
unanimous verdict that Mrs. Dawes was 'guilty of the murther, but not
in mannere and forme,' by which they seem to have meant that the
circumstances of the case exonerated her from the capital charge.
Being pressed to give a verdict 'without exception or limitation,'
they brought in a unanimous verdict of 'not guilty,' whereupon the
Governor felt that, although the woman had been guilty of a crime, he
had no help for it but to set her free. He thereupon wrote to the
Directors in England, expressing his disapproval of 'such an
unexpected verdict,' and notifying that in his ignorance of the law
and its formalities he was by no means confident that he had done the
right thing; and the end of it was that the Governor, presumably with
the Directors' approval, created two justices, on whom was thereafter
to fall the responsibility of hearing all such serious cases. Change
upon change! and to-day the Madras High Court, with the various other
courts in different parts of the city, is a very visible symbol of the
serious reality of the administration of justice.
[Illustration: ST. THOME CATHEDRAL.]
The story of the origin of the principal literary and scientific
institutions in Madras is interesting. In the olden times, when there
were no literary or scientific magazines by which an 'exile in the
East' could keep himself in touch with the developments of genius
throughout the world, people in India with literary or scientific
tastes had to be content to gratify their tastes with local
researches, and to depend upon one another for any interchange of
ideas. This meant that old-time literary and scientific societies in
India were naturally more enthusiastic than most such societies in
India are now. Madras indeed has been particularly fortunate in her
time in having had residents who were earnest in cultured pursuits,
and whose work survives, directly or indirectly, at the present day.
For example, it was an old-time Madras Civilian, with a hobby for
astronomy and with a private observatory of his own, that created a
local interest in the science and is thereby to be regarded as the
originator of the Madras Observatory--the first British Observatory in
the East, a famous institution in olden days, which secured for Madras
the honour--which is still hers--of setting the standard of time
throughout the whole of India. The Madras Civilian was Mr. William
Petrie, an extraordinarily versatile genius, who entered the service
as a young man and rose to be a member of the Government, yet managed
to find time for very serious astronomical pursuits in his house at
Nungambaukam. Going home to England on long furlough, Mr. Petrie
allowed the Madras Government to acquire his instruments; and in 1791,
when he came back to Madras, the Madras Observatory was built, with
Mr. Petrie as adviser.
Another enthusiastic scientist in Madras in the same period was Dr.
James Anderson, who, after many years of work in the Company's medical
service, settled down at Madras as 'Physician-General,' on a salary of
£2,500 a year, and devoted himself and a large part of his handsome
salary to botanical pursuits. He acquired in Nungambaukam more than a
hundred acres of land, which included what are now the grounds of the
houses that go by the names of Pycroft's Gardens and Tulloch's
Gardens; and for nearly a quarter of a century, until his death, Dr.
Anderson utilized his leisure in the creation and development of a
useful and ornamental botanical garden. He was most enthusiastic over
his hobby, and he was continually carrying out botanical and
agricultural experiments, of medical or commercial or industrial
value. His grounds were open to the public, and 'Dr. Anderson's
Botanical Gardens' became famous, and were a place of popular resort.
Dr. Anderson died at the age of seventy-two; and in St. George's
Cathedral his memory is graced with a fine statue that was carved by
the most eminent sculptor, Sir Francis Chantrey, and for which his
medical brethren in the Madras Service subscribed. How many years
after his death his gardens continued to exist it might be difficult
to say, but they must have suffered badly from the want of the ardent
botanist's enthusiastic care. But the botanic spirit that Dr. Anderson
had started remained alive in Madras; for in 1835, when, to the regret
of many, his gardens had been split up into building-sites for two
private residences, there was still a sufficient number of botanically
inclined people in the city to found the Agri-Horticultural Society of
Madras, a still-energetic body whose beautiful gardens at Teynampet
deserve to be more generally appreciated by the public than they are.
The Madras Literary Society was founded a good many years ago. Its
work now is that of a circulating library; but in earlier times it was
especially a 'literary society,' and its meetings, at which lectures
were delivered or papers were read and discussed, were crowded
gatherings of the leading Europeans in the city. The original Literary
Society included scientific researches within its scope, and
scientific members used to discourse learnedly on scientific subjects
of topical interest, such as 'The Land-Crabs of Madras,' or
'Prehistoric Tombs in the Salem District,' or 'Gold in the Wynaad of
Malabar.' The name of the Society remains, but the literary and
scientific meetings are no more. The last lecture, if memory fails
not, was delivered in the nineties, and the audience was not large
enough or enthusiastic enough to denote that lectures were any longer
in demand. As a 'Literary Society and Auxiliary of the Royal Asiatic
Society,' the institution has outlived its requirement; but it has a
valuable store of more than 50,000 books, new and old, on all
subjects, and it is continually adding to the number; and, as a
circulating library of a high standard, it fulfils an excellent
literary purpose.
The Madras Museum is a magnificent institution. It is to the Madras
Literary Society that it owes its being; and the Literary Society did
Madras splendid service in the initiation thereof. This was in 1851,
when the Literary Society presented its fine collection of geological
specimens to the Madras Government as the nucleus of the rich and
varied store of treasures that the Madras Museum now displays. The
Government lodged the geological specimens in the 'Collector's
Cutcherry'--a house which forms a part--the oldest part--of the Museum
buildings of to-day. Before the Government acquired the house in 1830
for a Cutcherry, the house had been private property, and, under the
name of the 'Pantheon,' it had been for many years the predecessor of
the Old College as the 'Assembly Rooms', wherein Madras Society had
its balls, its plays, and its big dinners. The name of the old
building still survives in the Pantheon Road, in which the Museum is
situated.
A high circular building on the Marina always attracts a stranger's
attention. It has a curious and interesting history. It is commonly
called 'The Ice-House,' and the name suggests its original purpose. A
number of years ago, when ice-factories had not been started and when
in Madras the luxury of the 'cool drink' was unknown, somebody
conceived the idea of importing ship-loads of blocks of ice from
America. The idea was developed, and about the year 1840 a commercial
scheme took shape. A large circular building was erected close to the
sea-beach as a reservoir for the imported ice, which sailing-ships
brought in huge blocks from the western world; and for a number of
years the scheme was a commercial success. The ice was sold at four
annas a pound, and many people in Madras remember the time when it was
the only ice that was to be had, and large quantities of it were sold.
With the eventual institution of ice-factories, which could supply ice
at a much cheaper rate, the enterprise came to an end, and for a
considerable time the ice-reservoir was out of use. Then somebody
bought it, and put windows into the walls, and turned it into a
residence; and meanwhile, as a result of the construction of the
harbour, the sea receded a long way down the Ice-house shore. As a
residence, however, a house of so strange a shape was not in request;
and eventually some benevolent Hindus turned it into a free hostel for
any preacher or religious teacher of repute, whatever his creed, who
might be temporarily staying in Madras, especially if he felt that he
had a message to deliver to the city. But the reputable prophets who
availed themselves of the proffered hospitality were few; and the
'Ice-house' had a deserted look. A few years ago the Madras Government
acquired it for the excellent purpose of a 'Brahman Widows' Home' for
Brahman girl-widows at school. This is the purpose that it now
fulfils. From Ice-house to child-widows' home! It is a great
transformation--from a house whose chambers were stored with hard
blocks of cold ice to a house whose chambers are aglow with the warmth
of young life! There is room to hope that in course of time the
Child-widows' Home will have outlived its purpose--in the time when
gentler ideals will prevail, and the sorrows of child-widows will have
ceased, and the institution will no longer be a need.
CHAPTER XV
'NO MEAN CITY'
It is less than three hundred years since Mr. Francis Day, seeking a
likely spot for a trading settlement, surveyed the desolate sea-beach
near the mouth of the Cooum, and decided that the settlement should be
there. A few scattered huts on the shore and a few catamarans out at
sea were the only signs of human life, and the breakers that sported
on the beach were the only manifestations of activity. But the years
have gone by--wild times and quiet times, years of war and years of
peaceful progress--and the scene has changed, and great is the
transformation. In place of the scattered huts there are huge
buildings on the beach, and behind them is a great and ever greater
city. The catamarans have not disappeared, but great ships pass to and
fro in the offing or lie within the shelter of the harbour walls. The
little 'Factory' in the Fort, within which the Company transacted its
mercantile business, has gone; but elsewhere in its stead there are
big offices of numerous commercial firms; and, moreover, there are
large 'factories' of the modern kind, such as are denoted by tall
chimneys and the perpetual roar of whirring wheels.
The growth of Madras is a remarkable testimony to British enterprise,
energy, and perseverance, and also to Indian appreciation of the
new-comers and of their methods; and it is a matter of satisfaction
that many illustrious Indians have played an energetic and conspicuous
part in the development of the city and the promotion of its welfare.
In many respects the conditions were altogether unfavorable for the
foundation of a maritime city. There was no natural harbour, and the
breakers beat continually on the shore; and the so-called river was of
little practical use. The nearest Indian towns were a good many miles
away, and the Portuguese merchants in the neighbouring settlement of
Mylapore were commercial rivals, who might have been supposed to have
absorbed all the trade that was to be had. Yet Madras is now a large
city, with more than half a million inhabitants; and its commerce and
its industries have been so successful that its population is still
increasing rapidly. Houses are being built everywhere, yet the demand
increases. Not only are the suburbs being extended, but moreover the
gardens of existing houses are being everywhere divided, so as to
provide further building-sites; and two houses or more now stand
within grounds that were formerly occupied by only one.
But it is well for Madras that, except in respect of some of its
streets and particular localities, it is not a crowded city, and that
there is therefore room for such additions. Madras has been called the
'City of Distances,' and it still deserves the name; for within its
limits there are some magnificent spaces, and in the garden of many a
private house the resident can sit of an evening and imagine himself
in a rural retreat, far from the madding crowd.
Like all cities, Madras has its drab--very drab!--quarters and its
mean--very mean!--and straggling streets. Madras was not laid out on
any definite plan. Like ancient Rome, it had in the beginning to
attract outsiders to come and live there, and outsiders had to be
given much license to do things their own way, and the city was
allowed to grow just as it would; and in respect of many of its parts
there is much room for criticism. But Madras is a fine city
nevertheless, with a number of stately buildings, both public and
private, and with great possibilities; and its 'Marina' can truly be
called magnificent.
But the greatest charm of Madras lies in its history. It was here that
the foundations of the Indian Empire may be said to have been laid.
The history of Madras is not a story of aggressive warfare. The
settlers were gentle merchants, whose weapon was not the sword but the
pen, and whose only desire it was to be left alone to carry on their
business in peace. But the rising city was a continual mark for the
hostility of commercial and political rivals, both European and
Indian. It was a storm-centre, and the storms were often fierce; and
the merchants were often compelled to meet force with force. Moreover,
the merchants were men, and their doings therefore were by no means
always without reproach; but, with due allowance for human weakness,
the history of Madras is a history of which Madras may be proud. The
city has grown from strength to strength, and in its story there is
much inspiration. This little book has merely told the story in part;
but it will have served its purpose if it has in any way helped the
reader to realize that the story of Madras is the story of no mean
city.
INDEX
_The figures refer to the pages_
Admiralty House, 85
Agri-Horticultural Society, 108
Aix-la-Chapelle (Treaty), 28, 39
Amir Mahal, 67
Anderson, Dr. J., 107
Anderson, Rev. J., 95
Appar, 61
Arcot, Siege of, 64
Arcot, Prince of, 67
Armagaum, 2, 5, 9
Armenians, 19, 20
Armenian street, 19, 59
Assumption Church, 56
Aurangzeb, 39, 64
Bantam, 8
Bentinck (Governor-General), 94
Biden House, 86
Black Town (Old), 19, 22, 25, 26, 29
Black Town (New), 29, 31, 32
Bound Hedge, The, 41
Bourchier (Governor), 76
Brahman Widows' Home, 109, 110
Carew (R. C. Bishop), 95
Carnatic, The, 63
Cassa Verona, 39
Chandragiri (Rajah), 6, 7, 63, 64
Chepauk, 22
Chepauk Palace, 22, 63-68
China, 22
China Bazaar, 22
Chintadripet, 23
Christian College, 87, 95
Clive (Governor), 76, 77
Clive, Robert, 17, 28, 64, 81
Cochrane's Canal, 35
Cogan, Andrew, 7, 9
Convent Schools, 97, 98
Cooum River, 6, 9, 12
Coral trade, 20
Corrie, Bishop, 101
Corporation of Madras, 90
Cyclone, 78, 79
Dalhousie (Governor-General), 67, 98
Danish Lutheran Mission, 92
Da-ud Khan, 13, 14, 22
Day, Francis, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 111
De Haviland, Major, 104 (Note)
Diamond trade, 20
Doveton College, 98, 99
Dupleix, 27, 39
DuPre, Mr., 31, 32
Dutch, The, 2, 5, 13, 39, 56
Egmore, 1, 21, 31, (acquisition), 35, 41, (the Egmore Fort), 43-46
Elliot, Hugh (Governor), 103
Elphinstone Park, 38
Engineering College, 87
'English Burying Place', 51, 52
Ephraim, Father, 57-59, 88, 89
'Factory,' The, 12, 69, 71
'Female Boarding School', 93
Flag (E. India Co.), 81
Fort St. George, 12-19, 27, 30
French, The, 14, 15, 26, 27-31, 50
'Garden-Houses', 70
Gentoos (Telugus), 19, 89
Georgetown, 29
Georgetown Convent, 97
Goa, 1, 58
Golconda, King of, 13, 22, 35, 39, 64
Government House, Madras, 74-77
Government House, Guindy, 77
Gyfford (Governor), 72
Haidar Ali, 15, 22, 31-33, 40, 65
Harbour, The, 79
Harris High School, 99
Hastings, Warren, 65, 78
High Court, 104
Hindu High School, 99
Holmes, John, 92, 93
Hyderabad, Nizam of, 64
Hynmers, Joseph, 53
Ice-House, The, 109
Jews in Madras, 20, 21, 25
Kuppam, 1
Labourdonnais, 27
Lally, 30, 31, 40, 50, 75
Langhorn (Governor), 58
Law College, 87
Literary Society, 108
Little Mount, 60, 61
Luz Church, The, 62
Macartney (Governor), 66
Macaulay, 94
Madras Literary Society, 108
Madre-de-Deus Church, 62
Male Asylum, 43, 44, 91
Manucci, 9 (Note)
Marina, The, 79, 87
Marmalong Bridge, 20
Mastan, 62
Masulipatam, 2, 7
Medical College, 87, 94
Miller, Rev. Dr., 95
Mohammed Ali (_See_ 'Walajah'), 64
Mohammedans, 21, 22
Mohammedan College, 87
'Moors', 21, 24
Murray, Mrs., 93
Museum, The, 108, 109
Mylapore, 1, 5, 6, 38, 61 (_See_ also San Thomé)
Nattukottai Chetties, 21
Naval Hospital Road, 85
Nungumbaukam, 37, 41
Observatory, The, 107
'Old College', The, 99, 100
Orde, Ralph, 89, 90
Pachaiyappa's College, 87, 96, 97
Parthasarathy Temple, 1
Petrie, W., 107
Peyton, Capt., 27
Peyalvar, 61
Pitt (Governor), 73
Pondicherry, 15, 20, 21, 60
Poonamallee (Naik), 6, 7
Popham's Broadway, 9 (Note)
Portuguese, The, 1, 2, 5, 6, 39, 56, 58, 112
'Portuguese Burying Place', 59
Pottinger, Sir H., 96
Powney Family, The, 53
Presentation Nuns, 97
Presidency College, 87, 95, 96
Pulicat, 2
Pursewaukam, 35, 41
Queen Mary's College for Women, 87
Rajah Mahal (Chandragiri), 7
Royapettah, 22
St. Andrew's (The 'Kirk'), 103, 104
St. Andrew's Church (R. C.), 58, 59
St. Gabriel's High School, 95
St. George's Cathedral, 101
St. Mary's Cathedral (R. C.), 59, 60
St. Mary's Charity School, 91
St. Mary's Church (Fort), 17, 47-55
St. Mary's High School, 95
St. Matthias's Church, 20
St. Patrick's Orphanage, 88
St. Thomas's Mount, 61, 62
San Thomé, 13, 31, 32,
(acquisition), 38-40,
(redoubt), 43,
Cathedral, 61, 104 (_See_ also 'Mylapore')
Saunders (Governor), 73
Sea-Gate, 80
Senate House, 87, 96
Slavery in Madras, 106
S.P.C.K., 91
Teachers' College, 98
Thomas, St., 38, 60, 61
Tipu Sultan, 31, 43, 65, 66, 75
Tiruvalluvar, 61
Tondiarpet, 35
Trincomalee, 27
Triplicane, 1, 21, 22, 32, (acquisition), 35
Triplicane River, 6, 8 (_See_ 'Cooum')
Triplicane Temple, 1
Umdat-ul-Umara, 66
University of Madras, 66
Uscan, Peter, 19, 20
Vepery, 1, (acquisition), 37-88
Vepery Convent School, 98
Walajah (Nawab), 22, 64-66
Wall Tax Road, 33
Warner, Rev. P., 58, 89
Washermanpet, 24
Weavers' Street, 23
White Town, 19, 25, 27
Widows' Home, The, 109
Yale (Governor), 16, 23, 35, 53, 57, 90
* * * * *
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