1804.

During this residence in Calcutta, Charles Metcalfe became reverentially attached to Lord Wellesley; and the GovernorGeneral, upon his part, conceived an interest in the young civilian which was never weakened by years. By this time the Governor-General had begun to discern that there was but little sympathy between him and the masters whom he served. His cherished scheme of the Calcutta College* soon excited opposition, which became more vehement as the project developed itself; and soon other acts, little appreciated in Leadenhall-street, increased the bitterness of the feud. But there was at least one man in the Court of Directors who recognised the great qualities of Lord Wellesley, and was well inclined to support him. This was Charles Metcalfe's father; a fact known to the Governor-General, which tended to increase the favour with which he regarded his young assistant. He knew that Metcalfe was eager to be up and doing; and so, in the full assurance that there was the right stuff in the youth, the Governor-General sent him to the great centre of action in the country between the Jumna and the Ganges.

For the "great game" had now commenced. General Lake's army had taken the field; and in the spring of 1804, Charles Metcalfe was appointed Political Assistant to the Commanderin-Chief, and despatched to join the army at head-quarters. On his way thither, travelling in a palanquin, he was set upon by a party of armed robbers, who despoiled him of everything that was worth taking, and well-nigh deprived him of his life. Abandoned by his bearers, he made an effort single-handed to resist his assailants; but, severely wounded and faint from loss of blood, he was compelled to desist from the encounter. Then staggering into the jungle, he laid himself down on the bank of a river, whilst the thieves were collecting their spoil. He has himself recorded how, as he lay there, he thought of

*The suppression by the East India Company of the College of Fort William, in Bengal, as designed by Lord Wellesley, was followed by the institution of Haileybury College, in Hertfordshire. The majority of the Directors recognised the virtue of the preliminary training, but thought that England was a better place for it than India, and that it would be better for the young writers to go out to India at a more advanced

age. But meanwhile the feeling in Calcutta against the opposition of the Court had grown very strong-how strong may be gathered from a letter in the Appendix, addressed by the Reverend David Brown to Mr. Charles Grant. They were friends and close correspondents; but Mr. Brown, who had been appointed Principal of the College, was in the matter an earnest Wellesleyite.

home and of his parents, and how at that very time they might be at Abingdon races. But he recovered strength enough to return to his palanquin to find the robbers departed, and his bearers returned. So he ordered them to proceed to Cawnpore.

There, under the careful and affectionate ministrations of his aunt, Mrs. Richardson, he soon recovered from his wounds, and proceeded to join the camp of the Commander-in-Chief. The General was a fine old soldier; but he had his weaknesses, and among them an habitual contempt for civilians; and, indeed, for much penmanship of any kind. He had an emphatic formula by which he expressed to those beneath him his desire that they should mind their fighting and not their writing. The presence in his camp of a boy-civilian, fresh from Government House, rather irritated him; and, perhaps, the members of his Staff humoured the old soldier by sneering at the noncombatant clerk, who shared the pleasant excitements but not the dangers of the campaign. Young Metcalfe got some inkling of this, and quietly bided his time. An opportunity soon came. The army was before the strong fortress of Deeg. The storming party was told off, and the non-combatant clerk volunteered to accompany it. He was one of the first to enter the breach. This excited the admiration of the old General, who made most honourable mention of him in his despatch; and, ever afterwards, throughout the campaign, spoke of him as his "little stormer."

1805.

It was soon after this that Colonel Malcolm joined the camp Visit to Holof the Commander-in-Chief, and took young Metcalfe into his kar's camp. councils. The war was then nearly over, for the treasury was well-nigh empty, and the Company were on the verge of bankruptcy. There was, however, one last blow to be struck. Holkar was still in an attitude of hostility; but when the British troops drove him, as before narrated, across the Sutlej, and he was at last compelled to accept the terms offered to him by our Government, the "little stormer" was sent to convey to the Mahratta chief the assurances of our friendship and good will. He spoke modestly of this mission, and said that his task was an easy one; but it required both temper

1805.

and tact, especially as the celebrated Pathan leader, Ameer
Khan, was present at the meeting, and inclined to be insolent
to the boyish English diplomatist, who had not by any means
an imposing personal presence, and whose countenance could
scarcely by any effort be made to discard its habitual expres-
sion of cheerfulness and benignity. "The conduct of Holkar
and his chiefs," he wrote to a young friend in Calcutta, "was
equally expressive of the highest delight, and made my mission
a very pleasing and happy business. My task was easy, being
in its nature only to convey assurances of friendship. . . . It
was my duty to urge his immediate departure from the Pun-
jab on his return to Malwa. I got from him a promise to
move on the 13th, which he maintained to my surprise. His
appearance is very grave, his countenance expressive, his
manners and conversation easy. He had not at all the ap-
pearance of the
savage we knew him to be. The same counte-
nance, however, which was strongly expressive of joy when I
saw him, would look very black under the influence of rage,
or any dark passions. A little lapdog was on his musnud-
a strange playfellow for Holkar. The jewels on his neck were
invaluably rich. . . . All his chiefs were present. Ameer
Khan is a blackguard in his looks, and affected, on the occa-
sion of my reception, to be particularly fierce, by rubbing his
coat over with gunpowder, and assuming in every way the air
of a common soldier. But for his proximity to Holkar he
would have passed for one. I consider his behaviour to have
been affectation. He had the impudence to ask from me my
name, which must have been known to him; and his conduct
was so evidently designed to bring himself into notice, that I
felt gratification in disappointing the unknown impudent,
and, answering plainly to his question, I turned from him and
continued a good-humoured conversation with Holkar and
Bhao Buskur. I was better pleased that I did so, when I
learnt his name, for he had on a late occasion behaved with
egregious impertinence. I have been very much gratified
with the accidental mission, because, though of no importance,
it is a little distinction. Lord Lake has made use of it to say
more in my favour than I ever deserved, in a despatch to the
Governor-General."

...

On the restoration of peace, Mr. Metcalfe was appointed an

Assistant to the Resident at Delhi, where the Mogul Em- 1806-1807. peror, Shah Allum, old, blind and infirm, still maintained the The Delhi Asshadowy pageantry of a Court. The Resident was Mr. Seton, sistantship. a civilian of the old school, whose chief characteristic was an overflowing courtesy and politeness, which sometimes wholly swept away all the barriers of sound sense and discretion, and exposed him to not unmerited derision. In any other man, the strong expressions of admiration with which he spoke of young Metcalfe's genius, might have been regarded as indications of discernment and prescience. But on the lips of Seton the language of flattery was habitual, and Metcalfe attached but little value to the praise of a superior, who had been represented in a caricature of the day as saluting Satan with a compliment, and wishing "long life and prosperity to His Majesty." This weakness had unfortunately free scope for exercise at Delhi, where exaggerated respect was shown by Seton to the Mogul. Metcalfe often remonstrated against this, and by his remonstrances greatly perplexed the Resident, who could not show all the deference he wished both to his old charge and his young friend. Metcalfe was soon sick of the ungenial work, which was even less profitable than it was pleasant. "I am with respect to health," he wrote in June, 1807, "as well as usual, and that, I thank God, is very well; in spirits, too, pretty well; and though the place is very dull, and I myself am no great enlivener of society, never fail to be merry on a favourable opportunity. I am tired of business, and long to have less to do—the nearest to nothing the better. . . . And now comes the dreadful tale. My finances are quite ruined, exhausted beyond any reasonable hope of repair. You know that I am very prudent; prudence is a prominent feature in my character; yet, ever since I came to this Imperial station, I have gradually been losing the ground which I had gained in the world, and at length I find myself considerably lower than the neutral situation of having nothing, and without some unlooked-for and surprising declaration of the fates in my favour, I see nothing but debt, debt, debt, debt after debt before me." But deliverance soon came. Certain new duties were imposed upon him, and his allowances were consequently increased. As these duties were of an administrative rather than a diplomatic character, the arrangement did

1808.

The mission to
Lahore.

not much please him; but he found consolation in the means. it afforded him of extricating himself from debt. He determined to convert this addition to his salary into a sinkingfund for the payment of his debts; and resolutely adhering to the design, he paid off his debts to the last sixpence without any foreign aid, and soon laid the foundation of a fortune.

He was now on the high road to promotion. Some at least of the day-dreams of the Eton cloisters were about to be realised. There was, or there was supposed to be, a conjuncture which demanded the best services of all the best men in

the country. The apprehensions which sent Malcolm to Persia, and Elphinstone to Caubul, suggested the expediency of a mission to Lahore; and Metcalfe was selected to conduct it. In these days, it is no greater feat to go from Delhi to Lahore than to go from London to Scarborough. But in 1808 the Punjab was almost a terra incognita to us. We knew little or nothing of the "strange sect of people called the Sikhs." Some tidings had reached us of the rising power of a chief named Runjit Singh, who was rapidly consolidating by not the most scrupulous means an empire on the banks of the Hyphasis and the Hydaspes. In pursuance of the comprehensive scheme of defensive policy, which the rumoured designs of the French and Russian Emperors compelled us to initiate, Lord Minto determined to secure the good offices of the ruler of the Punjab, and to bind him to us by treaty-obligations. For this work he selected Mr. Metcalfe; and seldom or never before had a mission of so much delicacy and difficulty been entrusted to so young a man.

Charles Metcalfe was only twenty-three years of age-an age at which at the present day many civilians of the new school first set their faces towards the East-when he went forth on this embassy to the Court of Runjit Singh. On the 1st of September, 1808, the mission crossed the Sutlej. On the 12th, Runjit Singh, who had been flitting about in a somewhat erratic fashion, as though he could hardly make up his mind how to act, received the English officers at Kussoor. It is not the custom in these cases to go to business at once. The first visits of Oriental diplomacy are visits of courtesy and congratulation. It is a kind of diplomatic measuring of swords before the conflict commences. "The Rajah," wrote Metcalfe,