It was in the magazine supplement of one of the country’s leading newspapers that I read this rather curious sentence the other day. Discussing famous Indian diamonds, the writer mentions the 410-carat Regent Diamond and says “It touches the lives of Napoleon and a man called Pitts (sic), whose grandson gave Pittsburg (sic) its name:”. “A man called Pitts,” forsooth! And to think a subeditor of a leading daily let that pass!
Be that as it may, it gives me the opportunity to talk once again about Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras for a record period (1698-1709), grandfather and great-grandfather of two historic Prime Ministers of Britain, and the subject of one of my favourite ditties. The ditty first composed by Alexander Pope appeared in his Moral Essays and goes:
Asleep and naked, as an Indian lay,
An honest factor stole a gem away;
He pledged it to a Knight; the Knight had wit,
So kept the diamond and the rogue was bit.
In popular recitations of the time, however, the last line went “So robbed the robber and was rich as Pitt.” The lines may not have been exactly speaking the truth, but Governor Pitt’s dealings in the whole affair of the Pitt Diamond, (Miscellany, October 8, 2007), which later became known as the Regent Diamond, may not have been particularly scrupulous. Certainly it contributed significantly to his family fortune and enabled him and his three sons to become Members of Parliament, believe it or not, simultaneously! That fortune no doubt played a role too in a grandson, William, the I Earl of Chatham, becoming Prime Minister of Britain twice and a great-grandson, William the second, repeating the feat. The former, known as Pitt the Elder and The Great Commoner (for refusing a title for ages), gave Pittsburgh its name while the latter tried to prevent the loss of the American colonies. Both descended from Thomas Pitt’s eldest son, Robert Pitt of Madras.
The story of the Pitt Diamond is well known, so I summarise. Found by a worker in the Golconda Mines, it was secreted by him — in a self-inflicted wound in his leg, it is alleged — and then stolen from him by the skipper of the ship he was trying to flee aboard. After having disposed of the finder, who had requested him to sell the stone and share the windfall, the sea-captain, no sooner he anchored in Madras, sold the diamond for £1000 to a local diamond merchant, Jamchand (I wonder whether there is a descendant around). Jamchand then began negotiating with a Governor who had made a fortune as an interloper (a trader without a Government licence, which was why he was also known as ‘Pirate’ Pitt). A lot of hard, not to say ugly, bargaining followed before Pitt acquired the diamond for 48,000 pagodas (approximately £ 20,000 then).
In 1702, Governor Pitt sent the diamond ‘Home’ through his son Robert who was a licensed free trader in Madras. Pitt’s letters to his sons in England thereafter were focussed obsessively on their ensuring the safety of the diamond. On his return to England, he began to look for a buyer for the diamond, while he kept buying large properties in Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Cornwall and London. Eventually, he found a buyer, the Regent of France. The price they settled on was £135,000, much less than what Pitt was asking, but still a substantial sum for a diamond that had been cut to 135 carat. The ‘Regent’, once pledged by Napoleon to raise funds for his army, is now on display in the Louvre in Paris.
Sadly, ‘Pirate’ Pitt is today remembered — if at all he is remembered — for the story of his diamond and not “for his qualities as an administrator” when his unprecedented terms of eleven years (as Governor) proved to be the golden age of (Olde) Madras in respect of the development of trade and increase of wealth,” as stated by that leading historian of Olde Madras, Lt. Col. H.D. Love.
A house with history
I recently came across some correspondence in the Mylapore Times about a house in Mandaveli called Admiralty House. How it got its name, I’m not very sure but a succession of tenants has retained the name for a house with a history that doesn’t seem to include any naval connection.
The house dates to at least 1892 and it could well be that the chief of naval forces in Madras lived there at some time. Better documented is the fact that this house on Norton Road was bought around 1914 by the Maharajah of Vizianagaram and owned by him for a good part of the 20th Century; for all I know, it could still well be part of that estate, a series of lessees being mentioned. One of the letters I read in that neighbourhood weekly pointed out that it had been occupied by the Admiralty Hotel and had been used in turn by the SBI Training College, a wedding hall, Sun TV, the auction house Murray’s, and nurses as their quarters and that a Hyderabad-headquartered school, Chaitanya, was now moving in.
A response to this letter, which had referred to constant changes in tenancy, seemed to indicate that the spirits were about when it stated, “So far as my knowledge goes, no propitiation has been done.” It is a well-known fact that the Maharajah (or was he Maharajkumar then?) fell off the balcony and died when the campus was that of what has been described as “the grand” Vizianagaram Palace. Mystery surrounded the death at the time and so it remains to this day, though theories are aplenty depending on whom you speak to.
A large and grand wooden coat of arms, befitting the palace, was gifted to the Madras Club some time before Independence and now graces one of its walls.
The gleaming coat of arms is, however, not of the House of Vizianagaram but of the House of Windsor. Another forgotten connection the palace has was with film-maker AV. Meiyappa Chettiar. In his initial days of film-making he had teamed with a Bangalore-based cinema theatre owner, Jayanthilal, and they formed Pragati Pictures. Pragati Pictures leased Admiralty House as its studio in the late 1930s and remained there till 1942 when the Japanese threat to Madras had AVM moving to Karaikudi in 1942. Cinema chronicler Randor Guy describes Admiralty House in these terms: “A palatial building with an impressive flight of steps, tall pillars and high ceilings…” When AVM took the place on long lease, the rent was only Rs. 250 a month, according to Randor! It would be interesting to know what the school is now paying if it is another lessee.
Footnote: The Great House on Charles Street, where Robert Clive lived in the Fort is also known as Admiralty House, the Courts of Admiralty having sat there. Since Governors too had lived there from time to time (including Edward Clive) many in recent years have confused it with Government House in Chepauk and called the house in Government Estate by the name of the building in the Fort.
When the postman knocked...
* Several readers have in recent weeks been sending me pictures out of the past, sometimes with questions, sometimes with tidbits of yesteryear. Today’s picture comes from A K Bashyam, an erstwhile sprinter from the Railways. In sprinting, he was following in the footsteps of his father A B Krishnaswamy (AB) seen in the picture at the finish of a race where, what makes it of interest to me — and to readers, I hope — is the judge, Harry C. Buck, the father of the Indian Olympics movement. In this Olympics year, worth remembering are the significant contributions that Buck made to Indian athletics, basketball and volleyball while at the YMCA College of Physical Education. One of his protégés was AB, with whom he was associated from 1924 to 1960. Krishnaswamy was the coach of the first Indian Railway team to participate in the first World Railways Athletic Meet held in 1969 in Czechoslovakia. All the members of the team returned with medals.
* In Miscellany May 9 I had mentioned a documentary on Subhas Chandra Bose which, according to Prof. Prashant More of Paris and Pondicherry, would provide evidence of Netaji’s last point of departure into mystery being Saigon. Prof. More had in a talk in Madras also stated that the documentary, on which he had helped, would shed new light on the Bose mystery. Prof. More now informs me that the documentary will be aired on Discovery Channel on July 18 at 9 pm. Bose’s chief contact in Saigon had been Prof. More’s grandfather, Leon Prouchandy.
* C G Rishikesh takes me to task for describing IRFCA, the abbreviation of Indian Railway Fans’ Club of America, as an ‘anagram’ (Miscellany, June 27). If you had “inadvertently” used the word for ‘acronym’, “it is not even that, I’m afraid,” he writes. Mea culpa. The Oxford defines ‘acronym’ as a word formed from the initial letters of other words. Question: Were ‘laser’, ‘AIDS’ words before they were acronyms? Would I have then been wrong if I had been less careless and used ‘acronym’ instead of ‘anagram’?
