Daily Life During the Indian Mutiny: Personal Experiences of 1857

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distributor, Shabd Sanchar, 1898 - India - 197 pages

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Page 85 - I remember, when in England, in 1860, seeing a large canvas daub in a show at a fair, which was said to represent the Nana, and he really was a terrific embodiment of matted hair, rolling eyes, and cruel teeth. But the reality was extremely unlike the romance. I have heard from several who knew him, and especially Dr. JN Tresidder, who had attended him professionally, that Dhoondoo Punt was an excessively uninteresting person. Between thirty and forty years of age, of middle height, stolid features...
Page 88 - Nana's name became the one to conjure with; but of his individual influence there seems no trace throughout. We know something of what Azimoollah did ; and the hand is not difficult to discover, at times, of Jowala Pershad, Baba Bhut, Tantia Topee, and the rest; but the stolid, discontented figure of the Nana himself remains in the background, rejoicing, doubtless, in the success of the treachery, and gladly consenting, probably, to the cruelty ; but inanimate, incapable of original ideas...
Page 116 - ... of conversation, as one does find oneself when first in the presence of a person of whom one has heard so much. The kindly face, the friendly hand extended, the entire absence of stiffness, or self-consciousness — reminding me greatly, in this noble and natural simplicity, of Mr. Thomason — soon brought re-assurance. He took the trouble to show me a map of Lucknow, and to explain some of the difficulties of reaching the Residency. And never neglecting an opportunity of encouraging what he...
Page 84 - Nana became a scented sybarite, who read Balzac, played Chopin on the piano ; and, lolling on a divan, fanned by exquisite odalisques from Cashmere, had a roasted English child brought in occasionally, on a pike, for him to examine with his pince nez. In England, again, the desire was rather to make out the Nana to have been one of those extraordinary monsters of ferocity and slaughter...
Page 61 - We had, indeed, left General Neill at Allahabad, refusing to believe that Cawnpore was lost. But Havelock knew better. On the 12th of July we started very early, indeed soon after midnight of the llth, and presently we came up with Renaud's detachment. The men were drawn up along the side of the road. I remember being struck, in the moonlight, with the yellow colours of the Sikhs. Then we all marched on together, and at last halted a little short of...
Page 78 - The whole story [he wrote] was so unspeakably horrible that it would be quite wrong in any sort of way to increase the distressing circumstances which really existed. And I may say once for all that the accounts were exaggerated . . . The whole of the pavement was thickly coated with blood.
Page 81 - The well in which are the remains of the poor women and children so brutally murdered by this miscreant, the Nana, will be filled up, and neatly and decently covered over to form their grave : a party of European soldiers will do so this evening, under the superintendence of an officer.
Page 81 - ... .The well . . .will be filled up, and neatly and decently covered over to form their grave... The house in which they were butchered, and which is stained with their blood, will not be washed or cleaned by their countrymen [but by] such of the miscreants as may hereafter be apprehended, who took an active part in the Mutiny, to be selected according to their rank, caste and degree of guilt.
Page 85 - I have heard from several who knew him, and especially Dr. JN Tresidder, who had attended him professionally, that Dhoondoo Punt was an excessively uninteresting person. Between thirty and forty years of age, of middle height, stolid features and increasing stoutness, he might well have passed for the ordinary shop-keeper of the bazaar, had it not been for the Mahratta contour of his turban, of which, however, he did not affect a very pronounced type. He did not speak English, and his habits, if...
Page 73 - ... in a battery, I suddenly saw, far in the distance, a great tongue of fire flung up towards the sky, and immediately afterwards, what looked like a vast black balloon ascended, as if in pursuit of it, showing us, in its dispersion, that it was smoke. Then after a perceptible pause there was a violent explosion, and at the moment I felt a pluck at my knees that made me involuntarily sit tighter. This compression was the passage of the great air-wave, for the Cawnpore Magazine had just been blown...

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