IN this year Haidar Beg gave his daughters in marriage to Makhdum Bakhsh, Sarfaráz Beg, and others, his four nephews. As they were his relatives, he made great efforts to add to the public importance and lustre of his sons-in-law. To each of them, notwithstanding their worthlessness and open disobedience, he assigned troops and public offices, and, as he thought, established their fortunes. As it happened, however, after his death, they proved wholly improvident, and fell so low through poverty that they used to pay court to Tikait Rai’s clerks.
About this time the sordidness of Haidar Beg and his breaches of faith with me, led me to leave Lucknow and make my first visit to Calcutta. Haidar Beg, in accordance with the saying that “conscience doth make cowards of us all,*” grew alarmed and sent Tafazzul Husen Khán to Calcutta, ostensibly as an agent of the Wazír, but really to frustrate me or hold me in check. So we arrived in Calcutta within twenty days of each other. I may mention in passing that the Khán had gone to Calcutta with Major Palmer, and had taken up his residence there when Haidar Beg visited that city. At the instigation of the latter he resigned the Company’s service and returned with him to Lucknow. But Haidar Beg, as his habit was, chose to treat the Khán with distrust and neglect, until my movements drove him to make this appointment and satisfy all the Khán’s demands.