Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/80

 56 BENGALI LITERATURE number of Europeans who lived here was very small and they consisted mostly of officials; for not only was the climate unsuitable to Europeans generally! but the policy of the government also regarded the introduction of free- trade and Europeans to be dangerous to the safety of the newly acquired empire. But whatever might be the reason, there is no gainsaying the fact that most of these Europeans, who had lived here for a long time, had a genuine affection for the country, and some of them went so far as to adopt the manners and customs and even the dress of the Bengali population. Enjoying the ooka, whose “long ornamental snake coiled round and round the rails of the chair” was one of the customs, among others, immortalised by Thackeray, which was long fashionable? with these official and non-official ‘Nabobs’; and it would surprise many a modern reader to learn that it even fascinated the ladies, on whose part “ait was considered a high comp:iment to show a preference for a gentleman by tasting his hooka”. Besides this affection of the early European settlers for their land of adoption, which ও রন দি by prompted them to express themselves occasionally in its language, there were other purely political and utilitarian grounds which ' Cf. Sir Philip Francis’s impressions of his residence in this country, Macaulay, writing after 60 years with the experience of a much improved country, speaks almost in the same strain in his characteris- tically sweeping way. 2 A picture of this custom and manner of life is preserved for us in the pages of the immortal Alaler 0707০) Dulal. We read in Carey’s Dialogues (8rd Ed. 1818, p. 3) that one of the indispensably necessary servant of the Englishman’s household was a hookabardar or a man to prepare his hooka, Stavorinus (vol. i, 345) also relates how on the occasion of his visit to Governor Cartier at Calcutta, he was treated with the hooka at an orientally sumptuous banquet given in his honour, See also Busteed, op. cit. p. 157; Good Old Days, vol. i. 68,