which the vernacular dialects of the Provinces do not materially differ. If those observations which I have purposely compressed convince your Lordship of the superior utility of my present pursuits, I may flatter myself I shall experience no difficulty in obtaining a dispensation from military duty at least whilst I continue supernumerary to the Army Establishment. The routine of Garrison duty being altogether incompatible with similar pursuits I may urge my request on different grounds, as the convenience it affords me of indulging my inclination in the research, is my chief if not my sole motive for continuing in a Service, where I have no prospect of attaining beyond the situation of a Subaltern. Should the exemption I most humbly solicit still appear objectionable, I may yet hope your Lordship will not class this application with those which motives of interest or pecuniary convenience may have produced from others. – I have the honour to be. My Lord. Your Lordships most obedt and very humble Servt
A. Hamilton
Calcutta 4th March 1790
P.S. It appears totally superfluous to add that my request does not extend to an exemption from real service, but to the ordinary routine of Garrison duty exclusively.
To
Earl Cornwallis. K. G.”
There is no indication that his application had ever been officially dealt with. From “The Bengal Calendar” and “The Calcutta Monthly Register” of October 1790 we know that:
“Ensign Alexander Hamilton, having received permission to resign the service, at his own request, his name is struck off the list of the army.”
At the end of 1790, the 2nd volume of Asiatick Researches came out. Therein, also the 2nd membership list of the “Asiatic Society”. Instead of “Lieut. Alexander Hamilton” we read now “Alexander Hamilton. Esq.”. Once again, we take the note that he couldn’t have become a Lieutenant if he was permitted to resign the service later as “Ensign Alexander Hamilton”. But these are in fact trifles and still venial sins of “modern history” as a science, as we shall see. “The Bengal Calendar and Almanac” of 1792 did not include, quite logically, the name Alexander Hamilton any more on the list of the military. On the list of the British “civilians”, there is no Alexander Hamilton. What can be concluded from these facts? Anything else than that he had left Bengal? The modern history as a science is however more imaginative.
The language in the application reveals that Alexander Hamilton is shaky, grammatically insufficient and weak in expressions. Where and when could Alexander Hamilton have learned good writing? In the beginning of the 1780s, he is about 20 years old. Probably he has only a simple school education. He does not have any profession yet. Young people with good professional training didn’t generally join the colonial army. It was then sufficiently known that soldiers died early in subtropical India, if they did not die on the voyage itself. They generally didn’t return rich, if they did return at all.
In all probability, Alexander Hamilton does not have much of a choice in Kolkata. Being an ensign, he learns the craft of a soldier who is generally more used to getting orders than to express himself in talking, not to mention in writing. At the end of 1784 he lands in Bengal, doesn’t earn full pay for five long years and remains an ensign.
The life of a soldier doesn’t suit him. He doesn’t see a future in the army. As an ensign, he has to deal with locally recruited mercenaries. He is a mediator between non-English speaking ordinary soldiers and the British officers. Five years in this position might have enabled him to acquire the language of the local soldiers a little more than officers needed it.
Doing this job, he might have discovered his affinity to the local language more than to his duty of an ensign. By 1790, he becomes aware that even with full pay he would continue to be just a ‘Subaltern’ in the infantry. In view of this despairing perspective, he looks out for a “more civilian” work. “Historians” and biographers should have taken note of the real situation. How could an ensign – who was not even on his full salary – afford an Indian “Pandit” (learned persons) to learn the Sanskrit language? Besides, doesn’t the shaky simple English with grammatical and syntactic errors in his application speak for itself?
We have read his application repeatedly in order to be fair to Alexander Hamilton. He doesn’t show off, he is not a cheat, he is not a swindler. In his simplicity, he just becomes a victim of “gossips” on and about Charles Wilkins, that he made a remarkable career only because he had learned the Sanskrit language. And on ‘ample Salary', of course. Europeans in India were money obsessed. So, all those on top there would draw ‚ample Salary’.
We shall deal also with Charles Wilkins in due course. Alexander Hamilton couldn’t possibly have known Charles Wilkins personally in Kolkata. Otherwise he wouldn’t have referred to him wrongly, nor repeatedly referred to ‘court of Directors’, ‘ample Salary’, ‘crisis of last war’, ‘enable him to prosecute that study’, ‘letter from their Chairman’ ,‘congratulating that gentleman’ in connection with Charles Wilkins. These were rather rumours in the air after Charles Wilkins had left Kolkata in 1786.
It is indeed remarkable that Alexander Hamilton did not apply for “funds” for his study of “Sanskrit” – learning the Sanskrit language without private teachers (Pandits) was not feasible – and, applied only to be freed from ordinary routine service. He wanted to take the burden of the private teacher himself. Or he didn’t know yet that he needed a private teacher to learn the Sanskrit language. Does that mean something? What does it mean?
In October 1790, he leaves the army. We are unable to judge whether his decision to leave the army was desperate or courageous or triggered by some realistic desire for a “more civilian” life. The resignation meant also no regular earnings. What does he do? What could he do?
It is certain that he does not get a job as a “writer”, nor works for a business subsidiary in Bengal. In such a case, his name would have been listed in one of the various “registers” in Kolkata. It is beyond doubt that he had not been a regular resident of Kolkata since 1792. If he stayed in India, he would have appeared in one of the “registers” for sure. This is not the case. The other issue is that there is no evidence showing that he returned to England. Does that mean something? What does it mean?
*****
Helmine von Hastfer, we remember her, lived in 1803 in the house of Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel in Paris. Alexander Hamilton lived there too. Rosane Rocher, the only biographer of Alexander Hamilton, has tried to establish with the help of two quotations by Helmine de Chèzy that Alexander Hamilton was married in Kolkata (p. 10):
“In an often quoted passage from her autobiography (p. 270, 2nd volume, Leipzig 1858), she says: ‘The famous Indianist Hamilton who lived many years long in East India and had a native woman as wife and a hopeful son there.’ But she gives much more detailed information in one of her other writings, which is less known (p.86, Freihafen III, 4, 1840): ‘His heart had remained in India, where tender, holy bond made him happy for thirteen years long, he had taken a native for marriage, and a son of her, often he spoke of his bond with this sweet creature, with that, I would like to say, ashamedly emotion and tenderness, which was like an emblem of authenticity of a deep feeling.’”
Rosane Rocher takes these two quotations to construct that Alexander Hamilton was married for 13 years, before he left India. Then she applies her skill and art of reckoning. He could not have reached India before the end of 1783, she maintains. Thereafter he needed some time to marry an Indian woman, so Rosane Rocher. Then she concludes with her inimitable precision that he could not have left India before 1797. We could better quote Rosane Rocher than arouse suspicions