bearing him to a career of the greatest glory and the
greatest obloquy; not only was it carrying him to a grandeur and a fall
almost unparalleled in the history of men who were not monarchs. On
board the "Duke of {256} Grafton" Warren Hastings was to meet with one
of the most serious influences of his life. We have already seen how
Hastings had married, had been a father, and how wife and children had
passed out of his life and left him alone. Hastings was a man of
strong emotions. Now he met a woman who awoke all the strongest
emotions of his nature and won his devotion for the rest of his life.
The Baroness von Imhoff was a young, beautiful, attractive woman,
married to a knavish adventurer.

It is certain that she and Hastings felt a warm attachment for each
other; it seems certain that Imhoff connived at, or at least winked at,
the attachment. It may be that the understanding between Hastings and
Imhoff was in this sense honorable--that the Baron was willing to free
his wife from an unhappy union that she might form a happy union. It
may be that Hastings's passion was indeed, in Macaulay's fine phrase,
"patient of delay." The simple facts that call for no controversy are
that Hastings met the Baroness von Imhoff in 1769; that eight years
later, in 1777, Imhoff, with the aid of Hastings's money, obtained his
divorce in the Franconian Courts, and that the woman who had been his
wife became the wife of Hastings. She made him a devoted wife; he made
her a devoted husband. Hastings was never a profligate. In an age
that was not remarkable for morality his life was apparently moral even
to austerity. His relationships with the Imhoffs constitute the only
charge of immorality that has been brought against him, and the charge,
at least, is not of the gravest kind. If Anglo-Indian society was at
first inclined to be uncharitable, if the great ladies of its little
world held aloof in the beginning from the Baroness von Imhoff, her
marriage with Hastings seems to have restored her to general favor and
esteem.

[Sidenote: 1771--Hastings's great administrative qualities]

Warren Hastings found plenty of work cut out for him on his return to
India. He had his own ideas, and strong ideas, about the necessity for
reforms. He was much opposed to the policy of sending out as
secretaries to the local governments men who were without local
experience and therefore less likely to take a warm interest {257} in
the Compan