Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/44

HIS BIBTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY EDUCATION. 35 THE LIFE OF Mr, WOOMES CHUNDER BONNERJEE, Barrister-ai-Law, Calcutta. CHAPTER I. HIS BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY EDUCATION. The remarkable history of the life of this great Brahmin jurist and lawyer, who now deservedly stands foremost and first in the rank of the Indian advocates now practising in the High Court of Calcutta, is as suggestive and instructive, as any that is to be found in the pages of European biography. Mr. W. C. Bonnerjee was, like Lord Eldon, an indifferent and capricious, rather than a studious boy in his youth ; a great scapegrace at school, for he once ran away from home to Raneegunj, and one of his favourite pursuits in life was to attend theatres and to take part in theatrical shows. How this theatre-loving, indifferent schoolboy became the Stand- ing Counsel to the Government of India, we shall describe hereafter. We now proceed to say something of his ancestors. Mr. Bonnerjee. comes from a very respectable Koolin Brahmin family who early settled at Baganda, some 16 miles to the west of the town of Howrah. His grandfather, Pitambur Bonnerjee came to Calcutta and settled there. He was at first a school-master, and then became Banian of Messrs. C ollier Bird & Co., a ttorneys of the Supreme Court of "TJalcutta. He had a country house at Kidderpur in the suburbs, where his grand-son Mr. W. C. Bonner ee the second son of his eldest son was born on the 291th December 1844. On his mother's side, Mr. Bonnerjee is descended from the renowned Sanskrit scholar and philosopher, Pandit Juggonath Turkopunchanun of Tribeny in the District of Hoogly, for his mother is