by Emily Hahn
Marian Imhoff, though still young when she married the second time, was twice as old as Catherine Noël Worlée, who was wedded in the same year, before her fifteenth birthday. Mademoiselle Worlée, though her people were (it is believed) French, was born in the Danish colony of Tranquebar, on the coast of Coromandel. Later the Worlée family moved to Chandernagore, the French colony near Calcutta, and there she grew up in her father’s house, no doubt sighing for the great world, until George François Grand came from Calcutta and married her and took her back to his own place. Even for the eighteenth century fourteen seems a shockingly young age at which a European girl should have married. But life in tropical countries ripens women early, and all the records about her indicate that Mrs. Grand looked and behaved like a full-grown woman when she came to Calcutta with her bridegroom.
All this took place, as I have said, about the time of the Hastings-Imhoff wedding, but Catherine’s ceremony must have been, in comparison, a humble affair which attracted little attention in the settlement. Her husband George Grand was a Swiss who had English connections and who had, through them, obtained the chance so much sought after by young men on the Continent, to come East in John Company’s employ. All his experience among the British had never perfected his English, which if we judge from his memoirs was to remain through his life rather Gallic in style.
Grand was a big, strapping fellow, inclined to put on weight. Like Karl von Imhoff he had come out to India originally as a military cadet, and again like Imhoff he had left the military as soon as he could. But he did not desert the company: he became a writer in their civil service. Barwell, Hastings’s colleague, seems to have been his special patron. When Grand wanted to marry, Barwell got him a good appointment on the Salt Committee, so it would be hardly fair to call him an office boy, but among the company officials he was still small fry. He was probably noticed in Calcutta, if at all, because of his wife’s remarkable beauty.
Catherine was truly striking; of good height, with delicate, perfect features, and a great mass of yellow hair, which unlike Marian’s was dutifully powdered and controlled. (Catherine usually observed the little conventions of dress, though not always the big ones of morals.) She had one of those innocent sweet faces and a lovely childish smile. Before the debacle, everyone seems to have agreed that she and her husband were happy together.
Now enters that villain Philip Francis, the scourge of Hastings. It would be difficult to find a man whose appearance and temperament better suited the role of seducer. Junius was not only alert in politics and a brilliant writer; he was also good-looking and something of a dandy. At the dangerous age of thirty-eight he was living alone in Calcutta: his wife remained in England, minding the five children and rightly suspecting the worst of his morals. He wrote long affectionate letters to her at first, but after a couple of years the correspondence flagged somewhat, for he was a busy man, what with his campaign against Hastings and his card playing. He took cards seriously, and there was good reason for that; he made a fortune out of gambling in Calcutta. In fact he made much more that way than he did out of the company, though he was one of their better-paid men.
Busy as he was, however, he was not too busy for love. Junius’s linen and ruffles were snowy, his figure tall and imposing in the tight breeches of the period, his dark eyes compelling, and his conceit unbounded. He had a droll, mocking, flattering, Irish way with women. Poison he may have been to the governor general, but he was just the man to sweep a child bride off her feet.
Something about India is very aphrodisiac. Perhaps it’s the climate, as some aver, or it may be the highly spiced food, or the ever-present examples of Hindu religious art with their sex motifs, or the heavy scent of night flowers, or all these things together. Whatever it is, even the British in India often behave in most un-British fashion, and Catherine Grand was not British to begin with.
Francis must have decided to seduce the pretty creature as soon as he set eyes on her. Nor could he have been the only man in Calcutta to entertain the idea. It was a notorious fact that unattached men in India were apt to make passes at practically every lady, married or single, they came across, and then Mrs. Grand was so very attractive! Most ladies soon learned from experience how to parry these sudden attacks, or if they did not parry them they were discreet in their acceptance, and usually succeeded in not being caught out. Mrs. Grand was an exception. Either she was too young to manage properly the feat of rejecting Francis, or—a more likely alternative—she wanted to be ruined by him. He was very important. He was considered a desirable figure by most women, and he must have fairly shone in comparison with Grand. Perhaps it was not much fun anyway, being married to Grand.
Catherine appears for the first time in Junius’s journal only a little while before the crisis. Writing of a ball he had given the night before, which everyone in Calcutta attended (including the Hastings couple), he quoted the simple Latin tag, “Omnia vincit amor.”
Immediately thereafter he added the unrelated and unromantic words, “Job for Wood, the salt agent,” which somewhat spoils the sinister quality of the Latin, but there it is for what it is worth. Whether you admire him or not, Francis was always a practical man: love for him never conquered politics.
A fortnight later he had something really interesting to put in his journal. It is a pity that he didn’t go into more detail, though God knows the whole affair was detailed to the last tiny item in court and in public before it was settled. One would like to have more of it in his own words. “At night the diable à quatre at the house of G. F. Grand, Esq.,” wrote Philip Francis, and that was all. It is from other sources that we learn what he meant. He had been caught poaching in that house, and there was the devil, not to mention Grand, to pay.
This is how it all happened. That evening Grand went out without his wife, as was his custom once a fortnight, to play cards at the house of a Mr. Le Gallais. Fully to understand and to imagine the subsequent occurrences one must remember how badly lit, according to our standards, were the houses of those days. As for the highways, they were not illuminated at all. The roads and the countryside, even between residences, were pitch dark.
At Mr. Le Gallais’s house the evening’s gambling went on like every other card party until the gentlemen called a halt for supper. They were just sitting down to it when an Indian, recognized by the surprised Mr. Grand as one of his own servants, came running in and breathlessly demanded his master. He blurted out as much as he knew.
Sahib must come home quickly, he said. Sahib’s upper servant, or jemadar, had captured Mr. Philip Francis skulking about the house, and was even then hanging onto him with the greatest difficulty.
Times have changed in India, and today a Calcutta domestic would know better than thus tactlessly to proclaim that his master was a cuckold. It is to be doubted, too, if a servant of today would dare to apprehend his mistress’s lover. He would understand that northern Europeans are not like Indians. He would realize that, in their strange code, the tomcat on the tiles, even the pussy he is after have their rights of privacy. Grand’s servants, being less sophisticated than ours, behaved as though their sahib were another Oriental. However, in their defense it must be stated that Grand reacted just as the servants would expect a right-minded Bengali of property to do.
Picture the scene in the flickering candlelight: the dining room full of startled gentlemen in their fine laced clothes, the servant in his great turban, panting, his eyes rolling in not unpleasant excitement, Grand starting up with a cry of “Sacred Blue!” or words to that effect, spilling his wine, and the Le Gallais servants crowding from all directions to stand outside the open door and watch the white men’s reception of this interesting news item.
Poor Grand rushed into the night. None of the other guests came with him, for he had not requested them to do so. It was obvious to all that this was a moment which called for the most exquisite tact. But on his way home, having had time to think a little, the Swiss recollected that he did not have
his sword with him. He stopped at the house of his friend Major Palmer, borrowed the necessary weapon, and also brought Palmer along to act as second for the duel which was under the circumstances de rigueur. After all this it was distinctly a letdown, when he arrived home, to find that the villain had escaped.
Yet the cage was by no means empty. Upstairs, Catherine was wringing her hands and weeping noisily. This, however, was unimportant; her husband had no time to discuss matters with Catherine. In the entrance room was a throng of men to deal with; not only his own Indian servants, but quite a number of Europeans. Inexplicably, sitting resignedly in the jemadar’s grip was—no, not his betrayer Philip Francis, but Philip Francis’s good friend Mr. George Shee, looking very silly. It was all most peculiar. Standing in a crowd about the group were Mr. Shore, Mr. Archdekin, Mr. Ducarel from across the road, and Mr. Keble from next door.
A surprising number of persons seemed to have been in Francis’s confidence on the subject of this seduction. A veritable mob of gentlemen had been hovering about all the evening on the outskirts of the scene, like the male chorus in Faust who wait in the wings while Marguerite, onstage, is being tempted. In short, neighbors and friends there were in plenty, but of Francis Mr. Grand could find no trace, unless one counts the ladder.
This ladder played an important part as evidence in the court proceedings, later on. From the report we learn that it had been made that very day, fruit of Francis’s and Shee’s combined genius. An affair of split bamboo which was light and collapsible, it could be used, and in fact was used, to scale the wall which surrounded the Grand dwelling. Francis and Shee, after designing it and ordering it manufactured by a carpenter in Shee’s employ, had dined. Then, having made all their plans, they set out gaily with the ladder and carried it to the Grands’. They arrived well after Grand had set out for his card party. This of course was deliberate timing and not lucky chance.
It is evident that Catherine did not expect any visitors, and had prepared herself for a quiet, solitary evening. She sent her ayah to fetch a candle, announcing that she and the woman would sit up together until her bedtime amusing themselves with talk and parlor games. The ayah lingered belowstairs to cut some betel nut for herself, after having transmitted the order for the candle. A male servant went out of the house to the storeroom, in the back, to get the candle. On returning through the courtyard he saw the ladder leaning against the inner side of the wall and naturally paused to examine it.
In the house, in the meantime, the ayah returned with leisurely step to her memsahib’s room. There she found the door locked. When she tried it and got no response she presumed Catherine was angry with her for some reason. The country-bred French girl was probably capricious and spoiled. The ayah went below again, philosophically enough, to join the other servants until her mistress’s storm of temper should blow over.
Out in the courtyard, the manservant with the candle studied the strange contraption against the wall and decided it was suspicious. He called the jemadar, who agreed that it was very suspicious indeed. In fact, the jemadar carried it away and locked it up. They were still standing in the yard discussing the matter when they were interrupted by agitated noises and squawkings among the servants in the house. Then a European, Francis himself, suddenly loomed up in the dark and accosted them. Had Catherine, then, rejected him? This seems very likely, considering the brevity of all the foregoing proceedings chez Grand.
The Indian servants, who of course knew all the Europeans in the colony, recognized the intruder. That Francis was an important man they were aware, but he had no right in their master’s courtyard nevertheless, and he spoke with a peremptoriness which under the circumstances they did not like. “Give me my thing,” he said, in broken vernacular.
The servants hesitated, glancing at each other.
“I will give you money,” said Francis. “I’ll make you great men.”
He delivered quite an oration, all in all, now demanding his ladder, now telling them who he was and how important. He might possibly have talked his way out of it at this rate had not Mrs. Grand added her voice to the clamor by calling from her window, ordering the servants to let the sahib go away. That settled Francis’s fate with the men. Never let it be said that they had obeyed a mere woman. Laying forceful hands upon the member of the Supreme Council of the East India Company, the Indians dragged him into their master’s house and sent a messenger to Le Gallais’s card party.
After that everything seems to have got confused. The jemadar clung to his captive’s arm, but the captive struggled. It was dark in the house; everyone on the staff was far too excited to think of supplying candles. Then Francis suddenly whistled piercingly, and Shee, who had heard the uproar from the beginning and prudently rushed across the road to collect Shore and Ducarel, led a rescuing party of Europeans through the front door. In the scuffle the jemadar seems to have lost his grip for a moment. He grabbed and caught hold again, but when the lights went up at last he found himself clutching not Francis but Shee. Francis, practical as always, had retired from the scene and gone home.
The jemadar must have been furious. He was certainly in no mood to release the deputy captive, though plenty of people begged him to. One by one and then all together, the white gentlemen attempted to cozen and bribe him, to no avail. George Shee actually went so far as to give him three gold mohurs, which the jemadar accepted without letting go. So there they were, still arranged in the same group, when Grand came home. It was not an easy situation to laugh off, any way one looks at it.
Still, Shee, supported by his companions, did his best to laugh it off with appropriate nonchalance. In eager chorus they explained everything to the master of the house. It had been nothing more than a prank, they said, a boyish prank. Francis had been a bit the worse for wine, and everyone knew how he was when he was that way—sportive. The visit had not been arranged in advance: the lady of course knew nothing about it. There had been neither seduction nor rape. The lady was blameless. Everyone was blameless. Mr. Grand was uninjured. Everyone was uninjured. It was all nothing, absolutely nothing. The best thing Mr. Grand could do would be to shrug shoulders, accept apologies, and forget.
Mr. Grand would not accept this point of view. Mr. Grand’s honor was smirched and he would have satisfaction. In spite of all the gentlemen’s blandishments—and to tell the truth they had not really expected to succeed in convincing him—he sent off Palmer forthwith to the secretary’s house with a challenge to a meeting.
There was nothing at all surprising in this challenge. It was quite conventional, but Mr. Francis’s reaction did mildly astonish the group, hardened though most of them were to misbehavior. To quote Grand’s version:
“His reply was laconic and easy. It was couched on these terms: That conscious of having done me no injury, and that I laboured under a complete mistake, he begged leave to decline the proposed invitation, and that he had the honour to remain my most obedient, etc., etc.”
Even we, posterity, feel some surprise. We may find it difficult to appreciate all the subtle shades of an affair of honor, but we know the general outlines. Gentlemen of those days were not supposed to refuse such a challenge. No one among Francis’s apologists, and he has many, has ever really explained this breach of etiquette. Junius was not inalterably opposed to dueling; we have for witness the famous occasion later, when he challenged Hastings.
I think the explanation lies in snobbery. Francis considered Hastings a worthy opponent, a social equal, whereas Grand was not. Grand was just a funny Frenchman or something of the sort, who couldn’t even talk good English, let alone keep the affections of his wife. To fight a duel with such a figure of fun would lower a man. The fellow had been encouraged too much, that was it, in this ridiculous settlement where every Jack thought himself as good as his master. Standards relaxed in Calcutta, but he, Philip Francis, would not be a party to this ridiculous performance. The very thought of it made him cross.
Later he was accustomed to swear on
his honor as a gentleman that Grand had no grievance against him anyway, technically speaking. There had been no adultery, nothing to warrant a duel. Admittedly Francis had made illegal entry into the house; admittedly he had entertained the worst intentions. But the lady had been coy, though no doubt that was because she was terrified of discovery and not from disinclination. Besides, he argued, there had simply been no time to seduce her, because of the ayah’s interrupting knock on the door.
Unfortunately for Francis, these protests were ineffectual. In the suit for damages which Grand promptly brought against him, judgment was against Lothario. And, to use an old-fashioned phrase, how! Mrs. Grand’s honor must have been of a rare and wonderful sort, for its worth to Mr. Grand was estimated at fifty thousand sicca rupees. In sterling that would be more than five thousand pounds, a tidy sum today, and it was far tidier in 1779.
“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.” The Justices must have decided it was not a time for niggling adjectives. Virtuous or not, Mrs. Grand sold at a high figure.
George François Grand, having made his fortune thus unexpectedly, put it in his pocket and tactfully withdrew from the scene, though not forever. He was to turn up again at intervals in Catherine’s life, for unlike Baron von Imhoff, who settled and used to advantage the money he got for his wife, Grand did not prosper in his other investments. And yet he did found the indigo industry in India, from which others have reaped fortunes.
Three months after the trial Francis claimed his dearly bought property from her father’s house at Chandernagore, whither she had fled, and installed her in a house at Hooghly, upriver from Calcutta. Considering the circumstances, according to the usage of the day, this was exactly what he should have done. In fact, with the exception that he refused Grand’s challenge, his actions throughout this whole affair, reprehensible as we may think them, were at least thoroughly conventional. Junius was never a man to fly against convention in the larger sense of the term. That is, he was a conventional seducer. Society does not really condemn such sins as most society commits: Calcutta people recognized this law-abiding trait in Francis and appreciated it. A more antisocial type than Junius might have taken Mrs. Grand into his own house and told the world to go hang. Not so Francis.
