Echoes from old Calcutta : being chiefly reminiscences of the days of Warren Hastings, Francis and Impey / by H.E. Busteed.

  • Henry Elmsley Busteed
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Echoes from old Calcutta : being chiefly reminiscences of the days of Warren Hastings, Francis and Impey / by H.E. Busteed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/436
    PREFACE. Calcutta itself—on these points, from a period not very long lifter the occurrence of the notorious calamity. 1 have to express my thanks to ISIajor AV. Antrohus Ilohvell, recently residing in Caiuula, now in Jamaica, for kindly placing at my disposal photographs of two old family portraits, of his great-grandfather. One of these has been reproduced for this volume. The ])hotograph of the other (a picture of great historical interest, in which the chief survivor of the Black Hole is seen superintending the erection of a monument to his “fellow-sufferers”) did not take in all the figures and details, and for this and other reasons was, I regret, considered not well adapted for reproduction on a small scale. The frequent topogra})hical allusions throughout the book show that it was originally written for Calcutta readers especially. Though it professes to be mainly a mere gossiping volume of light reading, dealing chiefly with social Anglo-Indian life during a very interesting period in the last century, let me venture to say that I have spared no effort to at least try to make it historically accu- rate—«o far as it goes—even in trivial details. The materials for the following sketches have been gathered in many instances from perishable sources not easily accessible, such as old graveyards, decaying newspapers and records, and similar chronicles, which Father Time and his devastating allies seem to devour more hungrily in India than anywhere else, to the irreparable loss of the searcher after trustworthy historical evidence. AVherever 1 could find a cotemporary authority (even though comparatively obscure) which the ravages of the white ants and the dani]), &c., had still spared, I have made use of it in preference to any other. “ The only history worth reading is that written at the time of wliich it treats; the liistory of what was done and seim, heard out of the mouths of those who did and saw. One fre.sh draught of such history is worth more than a thousand volumes of abstracts and reasonings and su])positions and theories” (Buskin). 1888. 11. E. B.