However, in the excitement of taking up their new quarters at Dinapore, these evil omens were, no doubt, forgotten. Pretty women were rare in India in those days, and Mrs. Gilbert received (from the men, at all events) a right royal welcome. She was acclaimed queen of the station, and, as her husband, the Ensign, became, of course, a person of consequence. This was better than Ireland, after all. Dinapore was a fairly lively spot, and regimental society was not overshadowed, as at Calcutta, by the magnates of Government House. So Lola's mother flirted and danced, while Lola herself was petted by grey-haired generals and callow subs., and Lola's father began to dream of a[Pg 7] captaincy. One day, in the early part of 1824, his place at the mess-table was vacant. The doctor looked in, and said "Cholera," and a few faces blanched. Craigie, the Ensign's best friend, hurried to his bedside. The dying man was
5
speechless, but conscious. Beckoning to his friend, he placed his weeping wife's hand in his, and, having thus conveyed his last wish,
died.
Lola was left fatherless before she was seven years old. She and her mother, she tells us, were promptly taken charge of by the wife of General Brown.
"The hearts of a hundred officers, young and old, beat all at once with such violence, that the whole atmosphere for ten miles round fairly throbbed with the emotion. But in this instance the general fever did not last long, for Captain Craigie led the young widow Gilbert to the altar himself. He was a man of high intellectual accomplishments, and soon after this marriage his regiment was ordered back to Calcutta, and he was advanced to the rank of major."
We are thus able to identify Lola's stepfather with John Craigie of the Bengal Army, who was gazetted Captain on 11th May 1816, and Major, 18th May 1825. Four years later he attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.[2] He seems to have been a generous, warm-hearted man, who never forgot the trust placed in him by his dying friend at Dinapore. To him Lola was indebted for such education as she received in India. That was not of a very thorough character. With a mother who, we learn, was passionately fond of society and amusement, little Miss Gilbert must have passed most of her time in the company of ayahs and orderlies,[Pg 8] picking up the native tongue with the facility which distinguished her in after life, and domineering tremendously over idolatrous sepoys and dignified khansamahs. I can imagine her on the knees of veterans at her father's table, delighting them with her beauty, and still more with her boldness and childish ready wit. Of course, His Excellency (Lord William Bentinck) would take notice of the pretty, pert child of handsome Mrs. Craigie, and it is not to be wondered at that all her life she should hanker after the atmosphere of a court, remembering the viceregal glories at Calcutta.
It seems to have dawned upon Mrs. Craigie, not very long after her second marriage, that her daughter was, to use a common expression, running wild. A little discipline, it was felt, would do her good. It was decided to send her home to her stepfather's relatives at Montrose. With screams, sobs, and wild protests, the eight-year-old girl accordingly found herself torn from the redcoats and brown faces that she loved, once more to undertake that terrible four months' journey to a land which she had probably completely forgotten.
The contrast between Calcutta, the gorgeous city of palaces, and Montrose, the dour, wintry burgh among the sandhills by the northern sea, must have chilled the heart of the passionate child. Yet she does not seem in after life to have thought with any bitterness of the place, and speaks with respect, if not affection, of her new guardian, Major Craigie's father. She writes:--
"This venerable man had been provost of Montrose for nearly a quarter of a century, and the dignity of his profession, as well as the great respectability of[Pg 9] his family, made every event connected with his household a matter of some public note, and the arrival of the queer, wayward, little East Indian girl was immediately known to all Montrose. The peculiarity of her dress, and I dare say not
a little eccentricity in her manners, served to make her an object of curiosity and remark; and very likely she perceived that she was somewhat of a public character, and may have begun, even at this early age, to assume airs and customs of her own."
That is, indeed, very likely. Further information concerning our heroine's stay at Montrose we have little. She does not seem to have retained any very vivid impressions of her childhood. One of the few events in the meagre history of the little Scots town she was privileged to witness--the erection of the suspension bridge from Inchbrayock over the Esk. Here it was, too, that she formed that friendship with the girl, afterwards Mrs. Buchanan, which was destined to form her greatest consolation in the evening of her days. The Craigies were strict Calvinists, and some of her biographers have assumed, in consequence, that they must have treated the child with rigour and inspired her with a distaste for religion. She never said so, as far as I can ascertain. On the contrary, throughout her life she evinced a marked bias in favour of Protestantism, which is quite as compatible with an erotic temperament as was the zeal
for Catholicism displayed by the favourite mistress of Charles II.
Her parents, says Lola, being somehow impressed with the idea that she was being petted and spoiled (by the gloomy Calvinists aforesaid), she was removed to the family of Sir Jasper Nicolls, of London. It is to be[Pg 10] observed that neither now nor after do we hear of her father's relatives, who one would suppose to have been her proper guardians. This circumstance certainly discountenances the theory of Edward Gilbert's exalted parentage. Sir Jasper Nicolls, K.C.B., Major-General, was succeeded by Major-General Watson in the command of the Meerut Division in 1831, in which year it may be presumed he returned to England, and took his friend Craigie's stepdaughter under his wing. Like most Indian officers, he preferred to spend his pension out of England, and gladly hurried his girls off to Paris to complete their education. They missed the July Revolution by a year; but all France was presently ringing with the exploits of the brave Duchesse de Berry, who became the idol of the pensionnats. To Lola, no doubt, she seemed
a heroine worthier of imitation than the young Princess Alexandrina Victoria, who was just then touring her uncle's dominions. The romantic fever was at its height in Paris. To her schoolfellows the beautiful Anglo-Indian girl, with her Spanish name and ancestry, must have appeared a new edition of De Musset's "Andalouse." The influences about her at this time tended to stimulate all that was
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romantic and adventurous in her temperament, and determined, perhaps, her action in the first great crisis of her life.
[Pg 11]
II
A RUNAWAY MATCH
It was now fifteen years since Mrs. Craigie had visited England, and rather more than ten since she had seen her daughter. She had been made aware that Lola's beauty far exceeded the promise of her childish years, and this she took care to make known to all the eligible bachelors of Bengal. The charms of the erstwhile pet of the 44th were eagerly discussed by men who had never seen her. Lonely writers in up-country stations brooded on her perfections, as advertised by Mrs. Craigie, and came to the conclusion that she was precisely the woman wanted to convert their secluded establishments into homes. It was difficult to get a wife of the plainest description in the India of William IV.'s day, and the competition for the hand of the unknown beauty oversea was proportionately keen. If marriage by proxy were recognised by English law Lola's fate would have been sealed long before she was aware of it. From a worldly point of view the most desirable of these ardent suitors was Sir Abraham Lumley, whom our heroine unkindly describes as a rich and gouty old rascal of sixty years, and Judge of the Supreme Court in India. We see that in that rude age it was not the cus-tom to speak of sexagenarians as in the prime of life. To the venerable[Pg 12] magistrate Mrs. Craigie promised her daughter in marriage. Remembering the hard times she had gone through with her first husband, the penniless ensign, and forgetting, as we do when
past thirty, how those hardships were lightened by love, she no doubt felt that she had acted extremely well by her daughter. Women's ideas on the subject of marriage are usually absolutely conventional, and since unions between men of sixty and girls of eighteen are not condemned