Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/85

 a journal of his adventures, which included the recapture of Calcutta and subsequent fighting. Of the refugees at Fulta, he wrote: "They were crowded together in the most wretched habitations, clad in the meanest apparel, surrounded by sickness and disease;" in spite of which miseries he speaks of their cheerfulness and courage as admirable. That they were by no means a prey to despair and lethargy is proved by the fact that several marriages took place in the forlorn little community. "The mutter of the dying never spoiled the lovers' kiss."

One of these marriages was that of Warren Hastings with his first wife, a lady who was long thought to have been the widow of Captain Campbell, who was killed by an accident a few days before the recovery of Calcutta. The Rev. H. B. Hyde, whose painstaking researches have thrown much light on the social history of Calcutta, found that this identification of the first Mrs. Hastings was a mistake, and that the lady was the widow of Captain John Buchanan, who, after assisting in the defence of Calcutta with much courage and ability, died in the Black Hole. His widow and baby-girl were among the refugees who escaped to Fulta, and Mr. Hyde considers it probable that Hastings married her there, and that the ceremony was