Forbes, James, 1749-1819, James Forbes letter, Camp at Bellapoor, 1775 July 30, copied between 1794 and 1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Creator:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819
- Title(s):
- James Forbes letter, Camp at Bellapoor, 1775 July 30
- Date:
- copied between 1794 and 1800
- Classification:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Series:
- Series I: A voyage from England to Bombay with descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America
- Part of Collection:
- volume 8, page 45-48
- Provenance:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Conditions Governing Access:
- The materials are open for research.
- Conditions Governing Use:
- The collection is the physical property of the Yale Center for British Art. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
- Scope and Content:
- Forbes, called to Ragobah’s (Raghunathrao) camp by his official duties, nonetheless admits that the place is “not so dull an inanimate” as one might expect in the rainy season. He then begins to tell a story of a recent “tragedy,” which “I wish I could say…had not existed in real life.” The story begins with Forbes’ explanation that Ragobah’s harem travels with him wherever his army goes. Accordingly, the woman of the harem now live in their own section of the camp, separated from everyone else. Forbes remembers, however, seeing them on horseback during a march, and notes that one in particular caught his eye. It was this woman who struck up an affair with a young soldier, only to be discovered by Ragobah’s attendants. Forbes takes this an occasion for a meditation on human passion: “the passions are much the same in the eastern and western hemisphere: Love perhaps burns here with a fiercer flame; nor can an intrigue be so easily carried on in the Haram of an oriental prince, as in the fashionable circles in Europe.” The couple would have escaped, had not the young soldier returned for his favorite horse. Caught by Ragobah’s guards, the man was sentenced to death, executed, and left exposed by the side of the road. The woman was drowned. Forbes notes that “the still hour of midnight is generally the time for execution among the Asiatics; sometimes the punishment is inflicted with the utmost privacy,” and sometimes it is a public event. In any event, the episode is a testament, in Forbes opinion, the extreme jealousy of the Indians. He closes with a quotation from James Thomson (1700-1748), beginning, “Let barbarous nations, whose inhuman love is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel.” Portions of this text appear in <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 2, pp. 127-128.
- Physical Description:
- 4 pages
- Genre:
- Correspondence , Botanical illustrations, Ornithological illustrations, Travel sketches, Maps, Watercolors (paintings), Drawings (visual works), Engravings (prints), and Portraits
- Subject Terms:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819. Descriptive letters and drawingsForbes, James, 1749-1819. Oriental memoirs
- Associated Places:
- EnglandItalyScotlandWales
- Associated People/Groups:
- East India CompanyForbes, James, 1749-1819
- Finding Aid Title:
- James Forbes archive
- Archival Object:
- https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199749
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199749?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1