Session 06 Hewitts Bad Advice Draft
Advice freely given, and never once asked for, to a young gentleman bound for India — as delivered on the Cairo–Suez road, September 1814.
On Freddy’s appointment
“Board of Control, is it? My dear boy. I’ll tell you what Cannon Row is — it’s a great many gentlemen who have never smelt the Hooghly, writing instructions to gentlemen who have. Read your dispatches, nod at them, and do precisely as the Company factor on the spot tells you — which is to say me, or a man like me. Whitehall governs India the way a coachman governs the weather.”
On making a fortune
“You’ve come at the right time and no mistake. Shake the pagoda tree, Cavendish — stand under it and hold out your hat. Five years, a good banian, and you’ll come home and buy a county. I did it, and I am not, whatever they say of me, a clever man.”
On servants and language
“You’ll keep forty of them and know the names of none. Never learn a word of the Hindoostanee — it only encourages the beggars to talk back, and there is nothing so tiresome as a bearer with opinions. Point. Shout. They understand a raised voice and they understand silver, and there is not a third thing worth saying to them.”
On not paying your people
“And never — never — settle with your banian on the quarter-day. Keep him a little hungry and you keep him honest. A native who is paid up is a native who is thinking about leaving.”
On health
“The secret of the country is brandy, morning and night, and a flannel band about the belly against the night air. Touch no fruit, touch no river water, and never, on your life, bathe more than your face — it opens the pores and lets the miasma straight in. I have buried men who bathed. I have never once buried a drinker.”
On the rains
“And don’t let them frighten you about the rains. A fortnight of grey and a bit of damp in June. Keep your boots oiled and it’s nothing at all.”
On religion and caste
“You’ll hear a great deal of nonsense about their castes and their customs and which of them may eat what. Ignore all of it. Hindoo, Mussulman — it is one people and one word for it, and that word is native. The missionaries will tell you different, but the missionaries are the worst thing to happen to this country since the Mahrattas, and I’d hang the lot.”
On firmness
“I’ll give you a piece of real advice, worth more than all the rest. There was a zemindar upcountry short on his revenue three seasons running — sad case, wife, the usual. Well. You cannot make an example of a man by asking him. We took the roof off his house and sat in his fields until he found the money — and do you know, he found it. They always find it. Firmness, Cavendish. It is the only kindness they respect.”
“The famine year, now — 'seventy, before your time — that was when a man with a little rice and a little nerve could set himself up for life. I hadn’t been born, more’s the pity — but my old chief had. Bought low, held it, sold high. Sharp as a tack, that man. Died a baronet.”
Between gentlemen
“You’ll want a bibi, naturally — a native woman for the house. Everyone does, and a great deal more sense than pining after some memsahib who’ll die of the first fever. Only keep it businesslike. When the time comes to marry properly, or come home, you settle a small sum and there’s an end of it — the woman, the children, all of it, clean. I did, and I’ve not given it a second thought. You take my meaning. A man can’t afford to be sentimental about that sort of thing.”
“And here’s a thing worth knowing, between gentlemen. A native’s word carries no weight — not in law, not anywhere that signifies. So if a banian should find himself a little short in a dealing with you, and complains of it — well, who is going to take his oath against yours? Nobody sensible. I don’t say cheat a man. I say the door opens one way only, and a wise fellow knows which side of it he stands on. You’d do the same. Any sensible man would.”
On a man’s people
“I had a bearer once — good runner, dropped dead on the road to Murshidabad. Heat, his heart, who’s to say. The other men wanted to stop and see to him. Well, you can’t, can you? Stop for one and you’ve a mutiny of malingerers by nightfall. On we went. Sounds hard — but you’ll have been out here a month and you’ll understand me directly. It’s the only way the thing works at all.”
See also: Gerald Hewitt · Session 06 - The Locked Room · Wadi al Tih