The Company he kept
Richard Terrell
A VERY INGENIOUS MAN: CLAUDE MARTIN IN EARLY COLONIAL INDIA by Rosie Llewellyn Jones OUP, New Delhi, Rs 325, £15.95, pp.24I he career of Major General Claude Martin, spanning the 65 years from his birth in Lyons in 1735 to his death in Lucknow in 1800, coincided with the Seven Years War (1756-1763), the French Revolution and the opening years of the Napoleonic Wars, not exactly humdrum features of modern history.
The author of this fine biography is dedi- cated to the theme of Indo-British history within a specific epoch; but readers of The Spectator will not include many familiar with the name of Claude Martin. Most biographies are read by people concerned with the human predicament itself and the extent to which the qualities of a personali- ty are fostered or frustrated by the milieux of any epoch. It is gratifying to write about this study because coverage in The Specta- tor should prompt readers to turn now to Claude Martin, who richly deserves their attention.
In his biography Clive of India (p. 122), Nirad Chaudhuri wrote:
'With respect to all forms of money-making, fair or foul, England and India stood at opposite poles. . . In England. . . an accept- ed form was to use money to gain . .. politi- cal power. In India it lay in using political power for personal monetary gain'. This was universally regarded in India as the main use of political power.
That perception is the key to our under- standing of Clive, Warren Hastings, Claude Martin, hundreds of servants of the East India Company and virtually all the prince- ly rulers of India in the past millennium.
Martin belonged to a world of typical Lyons vocations, vinegar, mustard, brandy and silk men of trade. In 1851 he joined the army of the Compagnie des Indes Ori- entales as a private and sailed for Pondichery with an assembly of riff-raff and gentlemen like many others before and after him.
During the siege of Pondichery he and others surrendered and offered their ser- vices to the East India Company. British commanders soon recognised the talents of young Martin, whose career became mete- oric, as a leader of men, a skilled surveyor, civil engineer, builder of fine palaces, an excellent school (still flourishing)and forti- fications, a town planner and a diplomat. Lucknow still owes most of its main features to the achievement of one man.
On the side, apart from making a for- tune by methods typical of the epoch, he had many Indian and Eurasian mistresses, all of whom loved him despite his physical condition. Together with some venereal complaint, he suffered with prostate blockage and bladder stone. He seems to have been the only man ever known to operate upon himself surgically and suc- cessfully by methods shuddering to con- template and boldly described by the author. A really splendid book.
The only fault is in the sub-title. No part of the Indian sub-continent was ever a 'colony'. I very much doubt if the author herself could have been responsible for this blob.
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