eir, of Nathaniel Gaskell
of Manchester. Robert was their eldest son. With his five sisters, all
of whom were married in due time, he ever maintained the most
affectionate relations. His only brother survived to 1825.

Young Clive was the despair of his teachers. Sent from school to school,
and for only a short time at the Merchant Taylors' school, which then as
now had a high reputation, he neglected his books for perilous
adventures. But he was not so ignorant as his biographers represent. He
could read Horace in after life; and he must have laid in his youth the
foundation of that clear and vigorous English style which marked all his
despatches, and made Lord Chatham declare of one of his speeches in the
House of Commons that it was the most eloquent he had ever heard. From
his earliest years, however, his ambition was to lead his fellows; but
he never sacrificed honour, as the word was then understood, even to the
fear of death. At eighteen he was sent out to Madras as a "factor" or
"writer" in the civil service of the East India Company. The detention
of the ship in Brazil for nine months enabled him to acquire the
Portuguese language, which, at a time when few or none of the Company's
servants learned the vernaculars of India, he often found of use. For
the first two years of his residence he was miserable. He felt keenly
the separation from home; he was always breaking through the restraints
imposed on young "writers"; and he was rarely out of trouble with his
fellows, with one of whom he fought a duel. Thus early, too, the effect
of the climate on his health began to show itself in those fits of
depression during one of which he afterwards prematurely ended his life.
The story is told of him by his companions, though he himself never
spoke of it, that he twice snapped a pistol at his head in vain. His one
solace was found in the governor's library, where he sought to make up
for past carelessness by a systematic course of study. He was just of
age, when in 1746 Madras was forced to capitulate to Labourdonnais
during the War of the Austrian Succession. The breach of that
capitulation by Dupleix, then at the head of the French settlements in
India, led Clive, with others, to escape from the town to the
subordinate Fort St David, some 20 m. to the south. There, disgusted
with the state of affairs and the purely commercial duties of an East
Indian civilian, as they then were, Clive obtained an ensign's
commission.