Observations on the Mussulmauns of India | Page 3

British territory, and in 1824 he was living in
magnificent style at Fatehgarh. In that year Bishop Heber visited
Lucknow and received a courteous letter from the Nawab inviting him
to his house at Fatehgarh. He gave the Bishop an assurance 'that he had
an English housekeeper, who knew perfectly well how to do the
honours of his establishment to gentlemen of her own nation. (She is, in
fact, a singular female, who became the wife of one of the Hindustani
professors at Hertford, now the Hukeem's dewan,[2] and bears, I
believe, a very respectable character.)' The authoress makes no
reference to Hakim Mehndi, nor to the fact that she and her husband
were in his employment.
The cause of her final departure from India is stated by W. Knighton in
a highly coloured sketch of court life in the days of King
Nasir-ud-daula, The Private Life of an Eastern King, published in 1855.
'Mrs. Meer Hassan was an English lady who married a Lucknow noble

during a visit to England. She spent twelve years with him in India, and
did not allow him to exercise a Moslem's privilege of a plurality of
wives. Returning to England afterwards on account of her health, she
did not again rejoin him.'[3] The jealousy between rival wives in a
polygamous Musalman household is notorious. 'A rival may be good,
but her son never: a rival even if she be made of dough is intolerable:
the malice of a rival is known to everybody: wife upon wife and
heartburnings'--such are the common proverbs which define the
situation. But if her separation from her husband was really due to this
cause, it is curious that in her book she notes as a mark of a good wife
that she is tolerant of such arrangements. 'She receives him [her
husband] with undisguised pleasure, although she has just before
learned that another member has been added to his well-peopled harem.
The good and forbearing wife, by this line of conduct, secures to
herself the confidence of her husband, who, feeling assured that the
amiable woman has an interest in his happiness, will consult her and
take her advice in the domestic affairs of his children by other wives,
and even arrange by her judgement all the settlements for their
marriages, &c. He can speak of other wives without restraint--for she
knows he has others--and her education has taught her that they deserve
her respect in proportion as they contribute to her husband's
happiness.'[4]
It is certainly noticeable that she says very little about her husband
beyond calling him in a conventional way 'an excellent husband' and 'a
dutiful, affectionate son'. There is no indication that her husband
accompanied her on her undated visit to Delhi, when she was received
in audience by the King, Akbar II, and the Queen, who were then living
in a state of semi-poverty. She tells us that they 'both appeared, and
expressed themselves, highly gratified with the visit of an English lady,
who could explain herself in their language without embarrassment, or
the assistance of an interpreter, and who was the more interesting to
them from the circumstance of being the wife of a Syaad'.[5]
From inquiries made at Lucknow it has been ascertained that Mir
Hasan 'Ali had no children by his English wife. By one or more native
wives he had three children: a daughter, Fatimah Begam, who married
a certain Mir Sher 'Ali, of which marriage one or more descendants are
believed to be alive; and two sons, Mir Sayyid 'Ali or Miran Sahib, said

to have served the British Government as a Tahsildar, whose grandson
is now living at Lucknow, and Mir Sayyid Husain, who became a
Risaldar, or commander of a troop, in one of the Oudh Irregular
Cavalry Regiments. One of his descendants, Mir Agha 'Ali Sahib,
possesses some landed property which was probably acquired by the
Risaldar. After the annexation of Oudh Mir Hasan 'Ali is said to have
been paid a pension of Rs. 100 per mensem till his death in 1863.
It is also worthy of remark that she carefully avoids any reference to the
palace intrigues and maladministration which prevailed in Oudh during
the reigns of Ghazi-ud-din Haidar and Nasir-ud-din Haidar, who
occupied the throne during her residence at Lucknow. She makes a
vague apology for the disorganized state of the country: 'Acts of
oppression may sometimes occur in Native States without the
knowledge even, and much less by the command of, the Sovereign
ruler, since the good order of the government mainly depends on the
disposition of the Prime Minister for the time being'[6]--a true remark,
but no defence for the conduct of the weak princes who did nothing to
suppress corruption and save their subjects from oppression.
Little is known of the