Amalia to India, and Countess Octavie accompanies them. All this intelligence is conveyed to Colonel Douglas by a letter from that fascinating marplot the Countess Octavie herself, who is fully bent on achieving the marriage. Colonel Douglas is in despair, but the indomitable Sir Edward again comes to the rescue. He sends Count Elona to Roujah—wherever that place may be!—to meet and detain Mr. Tower and his fair companions; requesting the guardian to remain there for a fortnight, at the end of which time Douglas will be ready to fulfil his engagement. Countess Octavie is not, however, to be deceived by pretexts or delays; she determines to set out for Nerbuddah herself, and discover at once the reason of this singular request, and she hires the ubiquitous Tauly or Nizam to conduct her thither. This faithful servant—who in the heat of the late action had carried off and made prisoner the fakir Souniacy, which accounts for his miraculous disappearance—understanding from a soliloquy of the Countess that she is the enemy of Sir Edward, and that her arrival at Nerbuddah will counteract some of his master’s schemes, leads her into the middle of a forest, and there leaves her in a reservoir for rice. After three hours of solitude, Sir Edward, informed by his servant of her position, flies to her rescue, and remains to guard her from tigers during the night. We have then a picture of a tiger paterfamilias entertaining himself by sporting with his little ones and Madame Tiger in the moonlight. Scenting his human prey, however, the creature endeavours to climb the ladder leading to the rice-loft, and Sir Edward shoots him. He thus saves the Countess Octavie’s life, and behaves with so much chivalrous courtesy, that the feud between them promises to be brought to a conclusion. But other complications shortly afterwards happen, into which we have not space to enter. Mr. Tower, as a specimen of the Scot, deserves some notice. He is a diplomatic fop, divided between “routine” and self-love, and fancies every woman he sees in love with him. This impression is played on by his companions, and in reply to a compliment from Octavie, on his complexion, he answers:
“My father was Scotch, madame; my complexion is hereditary. I could show you in my little dwelling in Bond Street the portraits of my father and grandfather. At sixty years of age they had the faces of cherubim. You know, madame, my grandfather was one of the most admired of men in Scotland. There were thoughts of making a royal page of him. His Christian name was Valentine; Sir Walter Scott clearly indicated him in the Fair Maid of Perth. In London they talked of nobody but Valentine Tower. George IV. wished to see him, and he was presented at Hampton Court. At sixty-five he bet a hundred pounds that he would climb to the top of Arthur’s Seat and write his name there. It happened to be Valentine’s Day—a great festival in Edinburgh as you are aware! He gained his wager, but committing the imprudence of drinking some iced water afterwards, was seized with pleurisy, and died in two days. One may say all Edinburgh mourned for Valentine Tower.”
A most imprudent old gentleman, we must confess, who, to achieve such a perfectly English feat as cutting his name on the rock could undertake such an adventure, and add to it the insanity of drinking iced water during February!
Meantime the story goes briskly on; the Thugs take Count Elona and some Sepoys prisoners, and are about to sacrifice the Pole to the Goddess Deira, whose awful cave-temple is well described, when Tauly, speaking from the idols (disguised as one himself), forbids the deed and releases the prisoner. A final battle with the Thugs takes place, in which the English are victors, and the “Vieux Sing” is made prisoner. They imprison him in the Nabob’s house at Nerbuddah. One thing which is very amusing throughout the book is the exceeding paucity of English soldiers and commanders in the Nizam. Colonel Douglas has only a captain and lieutenant with their men at his command,—a deficiency for which he confidentially blames the English minister to Tauly. Indeed, the English can scarcely be supposed by our neighbours to be very abundant in India, as Miss Arinda for guests at her bal de noces enumerates only—“a Dutch family of three daughters and two sons; a Portuguese family of ten persons; an English family of Clarke, and an American Quaker family called Walles.” Moreover, when introduced to Amalia and the Countess, she thinks them beautiful, but too white”
During a ball (with which the book concludes, as it began), the Thugs make a final attack on the English, having undermined the Nabob’s house, and entered by the opening they have thus effected. However, Sir Edward, warned of danger by Tauly, has posted soldiers outside, who, on the first alarm, are admitted, and succeed in overcoming their insidious foes, and in killing the “Vieux Sing,” whom the Thugs had released during the fearful struggle in the interior of the mansion. Sir Edward meantime places the Countess Octavie in a secure corner, and stands beside her to defend her, “for her sake” refraining from mingling in the fight. This grand act of self-denial wins her, and the volume closes with the approaching marriages of Col. Douglas and Miss Arinda, Count Elona and Amalia, Sir Edward and Octavie.
Wild and strange as is this tale, and singular as are the notions it betrays of English life in India, it is well written, animated, and quite free from the slightest shadow of those objections generally made to French novels. Certainly, Colonel Douglas and Sir Edward are deficient in that high sense of truthfulness which an English soldier would be dishonoured if he were not believed to possess, both in their conduct towards Amalia and in their singular denials of the existence of Thugs, but they are evidently intended by the friendly Monsieur Mery as the ideal of chivalrous gentlemen, and the exceedingly high opinion of the English thus incidentally betrayed is most flattering to our national vanity.
The strange notions of English life in India, the revelation of the idea which the French form of us, and the great animation and interest of the story, setting apart its improbability, make “La Guerre du Nizam” quite worth the perusal of English novel-readers.
If Sir Edward Klerbbs embodies the European notion of an Englishman, with all his faults and eccentricities, we do not wonder that the crowns of Europe, when vacant, are laid at the feet of England’s sons.
