ne of the Hindustani professors at
Hertford, now the Hukeem's dewan,[2] and bears, I believe, a very
respectable character.)' The authoress makes no reference to Hakim
Mehndi, nor to the fact that she and her husband were in his employment.

The cause of her final departure from India is stated by W. Knighton in a
highly coloured sketch of court life in the days of King Nasir-ud-daula,
_The Private Life of an Eastern King_, published in 1855. 'Mrs. Meer
Hassan was an English lady who married a Lucknow noble during a visit to
England. She spent twelve years with him in India, and did not allow him
to exercise a Moslem's privilege of a plurality of wives. Returning to
England afterwards on account of her health, she did not again rejoin
him.'[3] The jealousy between rival wives in a polygamous Musalman
household is notorious. 'A rival may be good, but her son never: a rival
even if she be made of dough is intolerable: the malice of a rival is
known to everybody: wife upon wife and heartburnings'--such are the common
proverbs which define the situation. But if her separation from her
husband was really due to this cause, it is curious that in her book she
notes as a mark of a good wife that she is tolerant of such arrangements.
'She receives him [her husband] with undisguised pleasure, although she
has just before learned that another member has been added to his
well-peopled harem. The good and forbearing wife, by this line of conduct,
secures to herself the confidence of her husband, who, feeling assured
that the amiable woman has an interest in his happiness, will consult her
and take her advice in the domestic affairs of his children by other wives,
and even arrange by her judgement all the settlements for their marriages,
&c. He can speak of other wives without restraint--for she knows he has
others--and her education has taught her that they deserve her respect in
proportion as they contribute to her husband's happiness.'[4]

It is certainly noticeable that she says very little about her husband
beyond calling him in a conventional way 'an excellent husband' and 'a
dutiful, affectionate son'. There is no indication that her husband
accompanied her on her undated visit to Delhi, when she was received in
audience by the King, Akbar II, and the Queen, who were then living in a
state of semi-poverty. She tells us that they 'both appeared, and
expressed themselves, highly gratified with the visit of an English lady,
who c