Love Conquers Nothing

by Emily Hahn

  As for Hastings’s passion for Marian, I am sure people suspected it and commented upon it, because of the Imhoffs’ stay in Hastings’s house. I am equally sure they suspected him of passion for various other ladies in the community as well. The main idea was to have an item of gossip; likely or unlikely made no difference. Colony gossip is catholic. Nobody escapes. The truth is told sometimes, but that is simply by the law of averages. The ladies tittered and whispered about Marian to their hearts’ content, but they were courteous to her, and probably felt no real indignation.

  Nor could Marian have worried very much about it, because Hastings was obviously a good man to have captivated. He would not let her down, and he was marked out for power and success. Imhoff’s wife may not have been infatuated with the little scanty-haired fellow, but she felt genuine satisfaction in having acquired such valuable property.

  In India a year is not a long time; yet not a year went by before Karl von Imhoff grew discontented with Madras. We can speculate if we wish on why he determined to go alone to Bengal to further his fortunes. Perhaps he was convinced that his wife preferred Hastings to himself. Brokenhearted, he may have gone away to lick his wounds, though as Marian rejoined him later, according to plan, this seems doubtful. Perhaps Hastings quite cynically paid him to go, and Karl as cynically agreed, but this too is doubtful, for the same reason: Marian rejoined him. It seems more likely that he was a restless soul, who became quite simply fed up with Madras and sought further adventure elsewhere. Perhaps he wasn’t fond enough of his wife to take her along; his wife and child aren’t every man’s chosen companions for adventure. Judging from a letter of introduction to a friend in Calcutta which Hastings gave him when he set out for Madras, Marian’s two men were on good terms, and Hastings was not reputedly a hypocrite, no matter what else his enemies called him.

  “In my last I desired you to take the trouble to enquire for a lodging for a Mr. Imhoff, who proposes to try his fortune as a miniature painter in Bengal. Mr. Imhoff is a shipmate of mine, an officer of some rank in the German service, sent hither with great expectations as a cadet with a family, and must have starved had he not, happily, been qualified to seek a livelihood in a more profitable employment. He has had some success here, having taken off the heads of half the settlement, but he must soon be aground.”

  So Baron Karl von Imhoff went to Calcutta and Marian stayed behind. It looked to the gossips like an open-and-shut case, a game which Hastings had won. But they could not be sure. Marian may have been brazening it out, but she did not behave like a guilty woman. Imhoff, from all reports, was not behaving like a wronged husband. On the contrary, from Calcutta he actually sent Hastings a miniature portrait of Marian, which the council member had commissioned him to paint. Could such blandly peaceful behavior betoken a scandal and a quarrel? Not in 1771, when outraged husbands were prone to fight duels.

  Still, the talk went on, a flood of lightly venomous chitchat which did small harm, for there were then no gossip columns in India (though one was to be launched ten years later). Who in Britain cared about the morals of a German lady in Madras?

  Even Anglo-Indian tongues were stilled, or at least slowed down, when Marian after ten months calmly packed her effects and with her small son set off to rejoin Karl in Calcutta. Such a move was a major operation; people did not travel lightly in eighteenth-century India. It meant that the Imhoff marriage was not, after all, on the rocks. It meant a definite farewell to Hastings. And at this stage of the leisurely game it also meant that Marian’s reputation was still intact. Very likely that is why it was done; very likely she and Warren Hastings renounced each other for what they decided was their own good. Or perhaps there was as yet no love affair to renounce, though such a supposition borders closely on the romantically unreal. We can rest assured that the Madras gossips who had driven Marian away gave them no benefit of the doubt.

  Hastings, if not Marian herself, must have suffered deeply when she went. It is a pity Marian has left no letters or journal to give us a hint of her state of mind. Was she distressed by her position? We cannot but wonder. During the year Imhoff was away did she fancy she was being snubbed whenever she went out for her evening drive? Did she imagine that this lady or that had not bowed to her with her customary warmth? If so, she gave no hint of her feelings; Hastings’s devotion helped her to face the world with calm. Her cool composure convinced the onlookers that Imhoff was a complacent husband.

  The mental processes of lovers run to type. “It can’t be wrong. Not a feeling like mine.” When difficulties are vanquished by what the world calls chance, lovers hail their luck as a special manifestation of Providence’s intentions for them as favored individuals. In London the company’s directors may have thought they were being mere practical men of business when they appointed Hastings Governor of Bengal and told him to move forthwith to Calcutta. But Hastings, sorrowful and lonely in Madras, must have taken his appointment as the benevolent work of his fate and Marian’s together. They had fought against it, they had tried to be good according to their lights, but it was no use. In spite of Imhoff, Marian was meant by Fate to be his. “It can’t be wrong. Not a feeling like this.”

  So Hastings went to Calcutta.

  He found Imhoff under difficulties, as he always seemed to be when no protector stood ready to shoulder his financial burdens. Life in Calcutta was much like that in Madras, but it cost more, and the people of Imhoff’s circle were fond of gaming. Like the Imhoffs, Hastings took up residence in the suburb of Alipore, and though his young German friends did not move in with him lock, stock, and barrel as they had done in Madras, he began helping with the rent and other expenses of their house as a matter of course.

  Word quickly spread that Marian bore a special relationship to the governor. Here as in Madras nobody snubbed her because of it, at least not openly. Calcutta was tolerant, and hers was not by any means the only bit of scandal in the town.

  A few months after Hastings arrived there came a letter from London which must have gone a long way to confirm his belief, if it had needed confirming, that Destiny was shaping his ends just as he wanted them shaped. For Imhoff, in so cavalierly quitting his cadetship, had displeased the company directors and they were out for his blood.

  Every so often they had to grow tough with young men who, like the baron, took jobs and got themselves sent to India at company expense, only to break the contract as soon as it suited them. In a general roundup the directors now wrote sharply to Hastings about Imhoff and other company men as well.

  “You ought to have sent them home immediately. And, as we are determined wholly to discountenance this practice, we do hereby direct that if Messrs. Imhoff and Dupuy do still refuse to serve in the Military, that you do send them home by the first ship.…”

  Neither Hastings nor Imhoff could have been staggered with surprise by this letter. They probably understood each other and had realized earlier that the directors might very well take this attitude. But letters took so long to come and go that Imhoff had already had two years’ grace, enough to have given him a trial in Calcutta, enough for a volatile man to grow tired of the place.

  He refused, of course, to serve in the military. He would return to Germany. This time there was no suggestion whatever that Marian go back with him. When the public substitution of her male protectors should take place was by now an academic question. She was Hastings’s, and as soon as the law made it possible they would be married.

  Had the baroness been English, this arrangement could not have been made without difficulty. Fortunately for appearances—though appearances under the circumstances were the last things the trio could afford to worry about—German divorce laws were much easier than British. A British divorce could only be got if one party to the marriage was unfaithful. A German divorce was very much an opposite thing; it was awarded without trouble and fuss if both parties agreed they were temperamentally unsuited. Marian had only to make it clear to the court in Franconia, Imhoff’s native
district, that she and her husband were not living together and had no intention of again living together, and she would be declared not so much divorced as unmarried, for the marriage would be annulled. Imhoff was to take home her statement of refusal to cohabit with him and turn it in to the court.

  The little boy Charles went with his father. It was not necessarily that Marian wanted to get rid of this reminder of her marriage, but it has always been the custom in India to send children of his age home to Europe, out of the dangers of climate and disease.

  All these details were arranged between husband and lover. They left no written record of their decisions, but we know that Hastings took on the financial responsibility of the children, and did well by them. It is very likely that he gave Imhoff money with which to start out afresh in Germany. Rumor says ten thousand pounds, but rumor is monotonously fond of that round sum when speaking of Hastings’s payments to relatives and dependents. We don’t know how much money was given, or when, or where. And we must also, however regretfully, discard the scandalously attractive story that Marian was won from her husband as a wager at cards, one of the wilder theories bruited about during Hastings’s impeachment, years later.

  The Imhoff divorce sounds an altogether modern arrangement, but some of its factors fell short of modernity. There was no Reno where Marian could repair for six weeks to finish the job tidily. She was out in India, thousands of miles away from her home or Hastings’s, and the decree was years in coming through. She had to go on living, ostensibly alone, until then.

  If Marian had been a heroine in a novel, her position would have been piteous and dramatic. People would have spat at her in the Calcutta streets, or at the very least refused to allow their children to associate with her. In real life, nothing of the sort occurred. In public everyone pretended the conventions were being observed, and if in private they found titillation in the scandal for a while, the thrill ultimately wore out, which is what usually happens to scandals in high places and small communities. That Marian was the governor’s girl friend was undeniable. But she was also a lady, living in her own house. She observed appearances. Everyone had already met her before her husband went away; they could hardly drop her now. Besides, what was one to do with a woman in a constricted place like Calcutta if one didn’t accept her presence at parties?

  A good deal of fuss has been made over a few words one of Hastings’s associates wrote, referring to Marian. He was talking, as it happened, not about Hastings’s private life, but about Nuncomar (Nanda Kumar), a Brahman rajah who had been convicted of forgery and publicly executed in accordance with the severe English law of the day. Feeling ran very high over this execution; later it was one of the most telling points made by the prosecutors in Hastings’s trial at home.

  Hastings’s correspondent warned him that his food might be poisoned by some Indian in revenge. He must take precautions: “… let your fair female friend or some trustworthy European oversee everything you eat while in the cooking room.”

  Difficult as it may be for us to credit, it was the phrase “fair female friend” which set Victorian writers by the ears; they said it was offensive and that Hastings should have resented it. Hastings, representative of a more hearty age, would have stared at the suggestion, as do we. We may object on different grounds; it sounds, perhaps, too arch. But neither Marian nor Hastings, as far as we know, took exception to it.

  I don’t mean to imply that there was never any criticism of Mrs. Imhoff, or that a few cats did not scratch. Lady Impey did. She was wife to Sir Elijah Impey of the Supreme Council, a body sent out by company headquarters to check up on some of Hastings’s actions, which were being reported on, adversely, at home. The case of Nuncomar was one of those under examination. (As it turned out later, Impey became one of Hastings’s most valuable supporters.) Because of her husband’s position, Lady Impey was one of the few women in the settlement who would dare to criticize Hastings’s fair female friend. Another voice which sometimes made itself heard, though more slyly, was Philip Francis’s; Francis was secretary to the Supreme Council, and, like the Impeys, was privileged. But nearly everyone else in the town depended either directly or by relationship on the governor general, and so, in spite of Mrs. Grundy, Marian was in a strong position.

  Moreover, she did not flounce about in an irritatingly conspicuous manner during those months of uncertainty. She was intelligent enough to wait in patience for her triumph. Conscious of insecurity, she minded her manners. As poor little Mrs. Imhoff, the governor’s mistress, she was more popular among the other European women than she was ever again to be when she was Mrs. Hastings the governor’s wife. In her equivocal situation she maintained a measure of humility which was later lost.

  The divorce decree was slow in coming through the Franconia courts; even after it was granted, news of the event did not arrive in Calcutta for two more years. However, all was settled and everyone was duly notified at last, in 1777, and then Hastings was legally united with his beloved Marian. The wedding interested everyone in the colony, of course, but one cannot suppose they were unduly excited by it after all that time. Lady Impey was not pleased, if we believe Philip Francis’s journal, which goes as follows:

  July 9: News of lmhoff’s divorce, and hopes of her marriage with Hastings.

  July 12: The Chief Justice very low. His lady enraged at the match and distressed about the future visits.

  N.B. The dames for a long time were bosom friends.

  July 24: An entertainment made on purpose this night at the Governor’s to effect a reconciliation between Lady Impey and Madame Chapusettin; the former sends an excuse. A mortal disappointment.

  July 26: Sup at Impeys’. Her ladyship swears stoutly that Madame Imhoff shall pay her the first visit—an idea which I don’t fail to encourage.

  July 29: Mrs. Imhoff sups at Lady Impey’s by way of submission.

  We have mentioned Francis, and we must go on with the subject. Nor will we be able to dismiss him after the first explanation, for Philip Francis even now, though he has been dead more than a century, cannot be ignored. Warren Hastings could bear rueful witness that he always made his mark.

  Since his day it has been all but proved that he was “Junius,” that brilliant secret figure who set London by the ears with his anonymous letters in print. Whatever political figure Junius attacked had reason to regret it, but he seems never to have discovered a foe worthy of his serious efforts until he gave up his appointment in the War Office, joined the East India Company, and came out to Calcutta with the Supreme Council. In India, Francis seems to have felt that he found his life’s work at last. Hastings was his natural prey. Hastings aroused his rage, which he thought was righteous indignation, and his jealousy, which he would have called crusading fervor. One scarcely knows exactly why the two men were so antipathetic. It could not have been a case of hate at first sight; Philip Francis had made up his mind well in advance of first sight that Hastings must be got rid of. Admittedly, all members of the Supreme Council approached their host the governor general in Calcutta with a certain amount of cautious reserve; had they not come out to investigate certain allegations against him? But it was Francis above all who seemed to have ready prepared in his soul a great accretion of gall. On the subject of the execution of Nuncomar, Francis had espoused the cause of the dead Brahman before he read any of the reports on the spot. His was a complicated character, not easy to understand. I hesitate to say flatly that all he really wanted was to oust Hastings and take his place. Other things came into the matter. Francis’s excellent opinion of his own capabilities played an important part in the war which he waged within the company. He would never have reasoned simply thus: “Room for ME; make way for ME.” His was a more roundabout approach: “This man Hastings is unworthy. I, on the other hand, am very worthy indeed. It is not selfishness that urges me on to compass his destruction. I am Fate. I am Detachment. I am Genius. I am water finding its own level. Hastings must drown, for the good of humanity.”r />
  Junius would have argued that Hastings was a monster ready-made. His later reports to Burke and others, when he returned to England more than ever envenomed by having been checked in his ambitions, said exactly that. But nowadays we get a different picture from our place in the audience. We see a tempestuous, brilliant but malicious man pitting himself out of pure ambition against a sober, solider fellow who is at first surprised by the attack and then by degrees rendered formidable in his resistance. Francis never achieved what he wanted, but from the very beginning he called attention to himself by virtue of the attempt. There are more ways than one of becoming prominent. In every council discussion, on every possible occasion, Francis attacked and obstructed Hastings. It was war, civil war. Those who fell into line with the secretary became known, inevitably, as “Franciscans.”

  The reader must not suppose that any of these official struggles carried over into social life. People were formal in those days, and kept their worlds separate. Hastings and Francis met each other a dozen times a week at this dinner and that ball; they entertained each other regularly in their own homes. They had to maintain appearances. Had they and their associates behaved otherwise in Calcutta, life would have been insupportable. Hastings’s marriage took place, as it happened, close upon the heels of a particularly lively set-to in council, during which Francis had entertained reasonable hopes of turning the governor-general out of office. The fact that he was disappointed would not have made Junius’s temper any sweeter, but he proffered his congratulations in a handsome way nevertheless. Characters and morals may have deteriorated swiftly in Calcutta’s heat, but for the most part manners remained.