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LANG, JOHN (1817-1864), first native-born Australian novelist, was born at Parramatta, probably in 1817. He was educated at Sydney College, and is mentioned in the chapter “My School Days” in Rolf Boldrewood’s In Bad Company and Other Stories. Lang could hardly, however, have been at the school with T. A. Browne (“Rolf Boldrewood”), as Browne was not born until 1826. Lang went to Cambridge in 1838 and after qualifying as a barrister returned to Australia. In 1842 at a public meeting he seconded a motion proposed by W. C. Wentworth, that the Crown be petitioned to grant the colony a representative assembly. A few months later he went to India and was successful as a barrister. He became a journalist and in 1845 established a paper, the Mofussilite, at Meerut. He also wrote some novels which appeared serially in the Mofussilite and in Fraser’s Magazine. These began to be published in book form in 1853, The Wetherbys and Too Clever by Half appearing in that year, followed by Too Much Alike (1854), The Forger’s Wife (1855), Captain Macdonald (1856), Will he Marry Her (1858), The Ex-Wife (1858), My Friend’s Wife (1859), The Secret Police (1859), and Botany Bay; or True Stories of the Early Days of Australia (1859). Some of these were very popular and were often reprinted, the twelfth edition of Too Clever by Half appearing in 1878. Botany Bay has been reprinted several times, sometimes under the titles of Clever Criminals, or Remarkable Convicts. Fisher’s Ghost reprints 10 of the 13 stories of Botany Bay. Lang also published Geraldine, A Ballad in 1854, and in 1859 Wanderings in India and other Sketches reprinted from Household Words. He visited London in 1859, and was for a short time at Calcutta where he issued the Optimist. He died at Mussoorie, India, on 20 August 1864.
Source: Dictionary of Australian Biography.
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British India has been glorified by the deeds of many great statesmen and heroic and skilful generals, but her list of eminent literati is comparatively short. A man, therefore, of literary fame, or even of literary notoriety, cannot pass that bourne whence no traveller returns without calling forth something beyond the common obituary record in a country like British India, in which an author of any pretension is still a rara avis. The death of John Lang has furnished a subject for columns of biographical memoranda and an editorial comment in the Indian papers. His name was not altogether unknown even to English readers; for his various novels—“The Wetherbys,” “The ex-Wife,” “The Forger's Wife,” “The Secret Police,” “Too Clever by Half,” “Will He Marry Her?” “Too Much Alike; or, the Three Calendars”—originally published as serials, some of them in Fraser's Magazine, and others in the Mofussilite, are all printed in a cheap form for railway reading; so that travellers in every part of the kingdom who have cast their eyes over the bookstalls are all more or less familiar with the name of the author and the titles of his works, even when they may not have read a page of their interiors. Mr. Lang was the author of a play called “Plot and Passion.” It was pruned and revised by Douglas Jerrold and Tom Taylor, and was brought out at one of the London theatres. John Lang was the son of an officer of the 50th Regiment, Military Secretary to General Lauchlin, Governor of New South Wales, where the subject of this sketch was born in the year 1816. He was originally educated for the bar, but he had a strong fancy for the sea, and was for some time a midshipman on board the Warspite, a line-of-battle ship. He subsequently resumed his legal studies. In 1837 he went to England to finish his education at Cambridge. At the age of twenty-four he went to Australia, where, it is said, he for some time held the acting appointment of Attorney-general. In 1842 he went to India, and endeavoured to get into practice at the Calcutta bar; but, to the best of our knowledge or remembrance, he was for some reason or other unsuccessful. Though a very sharp and clever man undoubtedly, we are inclined to think he never had any real liking or peculiar fitness for his profession, which demands a steadiness of purpose, and a closeness of application to dry details, which were not amongst his characteristic qualities. We give no credit to the story that Lord Dalhousie was “so extremely partial to him” that his lordship expressed a desire to recommend Mr. Lang for an Indian judgeship; and the friend who narrates this anecdote admits that the idle free life which Mr. Lang had led unfitted him for such an appointment. It is added that he had the impudence to ask his lordship of what particular offence he had been guilty that so degrading an offer should be thrust upon him. Another story of a similar character, and equally apocryphal, is told of him. When the State prisoner Moolraj Mooltan was prosecuted, the Government, it is said, asked him to plead for the accused; he demanded a fee of two lakhs. The Government offered one lakh. Mr. Lang declined it, adding that he was a professional barrister-at-law, and not a cats-meat-man, who might be beaten down in his charges. These were, perhaps, mere after-dinner anecdotes from Mr. Lang’s own lips. There is not always truth in wine. Mr. Lang felt himself more at home when he deserted the bar for the press, and became editor of the Mofussilite. Here he was eminently successful. His articles were spicy and piquant, and personal and powerful. He purchased the Mofussilite, and soon made the paper a valuable property; but it is said that latterly he so neglected it, and left the editorial department so much to feebler hands, that its subscription list was reduced from 2,000 to 200. His contributors were quite as venomous and personal as himself, but they had no share of his ready wit and freshness and force of style. Mr. Lang was once punished for a malignant libel by a heavy fine and a month's imprisonment in the Calcutta jail. His most partial friends must admit that he was a bad-natured writer, but he is said to have been a good-natured man, though passionate and impulsive, and always getting into awkward scrapes and personal disputes, in which he was generally in the wrong, because he was rash and reckless; and if he was very warm-hearted, he was, also, very hot-headed. We never heard of but one success of his at the bar, and that was the famous case of Lalla Jotee Persaud, the Government commissariat contractor. The Government, unwilling to pay his heavy bill for supplies, had the meanness to attempt to evade the debt by charging the Lalla with fraud and conspiracy. The case was a simple and easy one, and Mr. Lang undertook and carried it through with complete success. The Government was compelled to settle the account against it, and the grateful Lalla Jotee Persaud presented Mr. Lang with a fee of two lacs of rupees.
Mr. Lang’s novels are light and amusing, excellent railway reading, but they give him no station in the literature of his country. But for a sort of brilliant flippancy, and for gay and easy humour, and forcible satire, and pungent personality, his editorial writings were unrivalled in British India.
Mr. Lang has left a wife and three grown up children. His wife was the sister of Mr. Justice Peterson, of the Calcutta High Court. His eldest son is a lisutenant in the Royal Artillery. Mr. Lang died at Mussoorie, in his forty-eighth year, The immediate cause of his death was an attack of bronchitis, but he had long been reduced to a skeleton, and, latterly could not write an article or undergo any physical effort without stimulants, and pouring gurrahs of cold water on his head. At a post mortem examination (which Mr. Lang had himself desired in the event of his death), the fact was elicited that his brain, though healthy, was nine ounces less in weight than the average weight of the brains of ordinary men. This fact is curious, for John Lang, though he may not have been a man of genius, was, unquestionably, a man of very remarkable powers and great readiness and versatility of mind. He was not, however, what some of his admirers describe him to have been, “a man of gigantic intellect.” He seems, with all his failings, to have been very warmly beloved by many intimate friends, and though he had obtained by his fierce personalities, when he had the editorial pen in his hands, the character of a most unamiable writer, he is said, in private life, to have been a warm-hearted and generous companion—
“The best-natured man with the worst-natured muse.”
It would be unjust to his memory if we were to pass over the anecdote of his having plunged into the sea on his passage out to India to save a little child that had fallen overboard. He saved the child’s life, but not without great risk to his own, for he was a quarter of an hour in the water, and was not, as we have heard, a good swimmer.
Source: Allen’s Indian Mail - Thursday 20 October 1864.
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(From the Mofussilite.)
At Mussoorie, on the 20th of August, at half-past ten o’clock in the morning, the spirit of John Lang passed away from this world. The sad fact will excite the deepest sorrow in many a heart; for, with all his human frailties, John Lang was a man made to be truly loved.
Hundreds of his friends in England, in Australia, and in India, will, on reading these lines, deplore, with heartfelt grief, tho loss of one of Nature's most gifted sons,—a man truly remarkable for the highest qualities of human intellectuality.
On the 12th of May last he left Meerut, for change of air to the Hills. On the 20th of June change of air to attacked with bronchitis. From this attack he had almost recovered; but its effects had gradually induced extreme debility and lassitude which to have been the immediate cause of his death. In spite of his sufferings, very anxious hopes were entertained of his ultimate recovery,—the more confidently because those around him, well knew, from former experiences, his strange powers of endurance and vitality. His best and dearest friends, however, seemed unable, (perhaps because unwilling), to accept the stern fact of his approaching dissolution. Although he was extremely enfeebled, and the ardour and vivacity of his mind unquestionably subdued, yet the ravages of diseases had failed to produce great changes in that remarkable countenance;—and it was only when a sudden crisis at last occurred, and he sank into a placid swoon, that all doubt as to his real condition was removed. His cares and pains were then at an end;—and, as the rays of the morning sun, gilding the Himalayan heights around, shone broadly into his apartment, John Lang expired painlessly.
He died pressing the hand of a friend. He died with those around him, who, in the tenderness of deep love and friendship, reverently closed his eyes in death.
For ever that great spirit is still. For ever rests that gigantic intellect, which, in India, made the name of John Lang a household word,—the talisman which evoked a pleasureable smile whenever it was uttered, and which ensured to its owner a heartfelt welcome everywhere.
Singularly calm and expressive was his countenance in death. So pure and passionless, as if the mind were freed from all its earthly dross. So placid and contemplative; as if the great spirit still animated the image of what was once the delight of a wide circle of friends; and yet something was wanting there, which in its absence, bespoke the sad reality. Insensibily did the words of his favorite poet recur to the memory, in all the distinctness of their awful beauty; matchless lines of pathos, deploring—
“Greece, but living Greece no more.”
Those who looked upon the features of John Lang in death, could not but be struck by the remarkable beauty of that lofty forehead which painters in Europe have admired with ecstasy.
They could but fondly mourn, as they looked, for the last time, on
“That sad shrouded eye,
That fires no, wins not, weeps not now.”
The following is a brief outline of John Lang’s career:—
He was born in Australia, on the 19th December, 1817. He was the posthumous child of Captain Lang, Military Secretary to General Lauchlin Macguaire, Governor of New South Wales. He was educated by Doctor Blande, and gained gold medals and other honors at Sydney College.
In 1829 he entered the Navy, and, on board the Warspite, line-of-battle ship, he went to South America and many other parts of the world.
In 1837 he was sent England to finish his education at Trinity College, Cambridge. During his first year there he gained a Scholarship. He afterwards distinguished himself, in his own peculiar way, by writing a quaint Litany, which was condemned as blasphemous, and, for which he was rusticated for a time. He was, however, afterwards, permitted to finish his terms. On leaving Cambridge, he became the pupil of Mr. (now Judge) Whiteman.
He was called to the Bar on the 20th May 1840, and was one of the most brilliant men of his day at the Temple.
At the early age of twenty-three or twenty-four he went as Attorney General to Australia. He retained that appointment but a short time, and came to India in 1842.
He practised at the Bar in Calcutta until 1845. After this, as his health began to give way, he acceded to the proposal of Colonel Pugh, and started the Mofussilite newspaper in the Upper Provinces.
The Periodical was at first the property of shareholders; after a few years, however, Mr. Lang bought up all the shares, and, in 1849, he became its sole proprietor and Editor.
Before the famous trial of the State prisoner Moolraj, which occurred at Mooltan, he was asked by the Government if he would plead as Counsel for the accused. He offered to do so for two lakhs of rupees. He was invited to accept one lakh instead, but he politely declined the offer, remarking, in his private correspondence on the subject, to the Secretaries of Government, that he was “a professional Barrister-at-Law, and not a catsmeat-man who might be beaten down from his original charges!
In 1850, he gained, for Lalla Jotee Pershaud, his celebrated lawsuit against the Government. For this single success he received the magnificent fee of two lakhs of rupees. The manly fearlessness of Mr. Lang’s speech on this occasion was afterwards laudibly commented on by Lord Brougham in the “House of Lords.”
In 1852 he went to England where he remained only about a year. During this time he wrote in Fraser’s Magazine—“The Forger’s Wife” and “The Wetherbys, Father and Son.” He also republished, from the columns of the Mofussilite, his two novels— “Two clever by half” and “Too much alike or the Three Calendars.”
At the same time he produced a play called “Plot and Passion,” which excited great interest and had a very prolonged run. This production of his pen was pruned and revised by Tom Taylor; and Douglas Jerrold, without being aware of the fact,—with his usual felicity used to say: “the ‘passion’ is unmistakably Lang’s, the ‘plot’ I’ll let Tom have as a present.”
On the 19th December 1853, he again embarked for India. Shortly afterwards the Rani of Jhansi sent her minister to him, inviting him to come and plead a cause for her. He went accordingly, and received, as an acknowledgment for the favor, one thousand guineas in a purse, beside shawls, dresses, golden ornaments, &c. On his journey back from Jhansi he contracted “jungle fever,” which had a disastrous effect on his health, and from which he himself used to say, he never altogether recovered.
In July 1854 he again embarked for England. His health was then so bad, that, in various quarters, he was reported dead; and he used to say that it afforded him very great amusement to read the story of his won virtues and frailties as they were facetiously set down by the Journalists of that day.
From 1854 until 1859 he remained in England and devoted himself to literary labors. During that time he wrote the “Ex Wife”—“Will he marry her?”—“The Secret Police”—“York, you’re wanted, or my Friend’s Wife”—and “Captain MacDonald or Capias Castle.” He also produced, in Household Words,—“Recollections of Botany Bay” and “Wanderings in India.” The latter was written at the request of Mr. Charles Dickens.
He also contributed frequently to the “Times,” the “Globe,” and other leading periodicals; besides throwing off, with scarcely an effort, volumes of Poetry of no mean standard. In 1855 he went on the Continent, and travelled over Italy, Austria, Saxony, Prussia, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Germany.
On the 27th August 1859 he again embarked for India. On the passage out an episode occurred which beautifully proved John Lang’s high spirited courage and magnanimity.
A child dropped overboard. Without a moment’s hesitation Lang plunged into the deep after the helpless little thing, seized the child and fondly supported it for more than a quarter of an hour in a marvellous way, when a boat reached him and both lives were saved! Such true manly valor as this requires not a word of comment. It was, however, only on a par with the usual generous impulses of John Lang’s great heart.
From 1859 until 1864 he remained at Meerut, conducting the “Mofussilite,” and, as he used to say, enjoyed quiet existence in his little Tusculum there. He had pet animals about him—favorite servants,—and many an admiring friend:—and happy were the days and many were the scenes, when, at his hospitable board, those who knew him and understood him, delighted to look at his genial eye and listen to his marvellous powers of conversation. There was not a subject he could not take up with graceful ease. His wit was ever ready. His marvellous memory continually flashed forth appropriate illustrations from the ancient classics. His appreciation of the beautiful was delightfully conspicuous; and, withal, there was a solidity about his friendship which defied all restraint. Perhaps no trait of his character was more remarkable than this. “Never mind,” he used to say to his friends, “never mind what you do, or what you say, or what you write, I’ll pull you through thick and thin!” He was thus ever displaying, in quaint ways, the confidence of a gigantic intellect and the unselfishness of a truly kind heart. Many remarkable and well known persons were his private friends. In England,—Father Prout, Tom Taylor, Robert Brough, Gilbert á Becket, Mrs. Gaskell, Douglas Jarrold, Albert Smith, the Kelleys, the Keans, Ben Webster, Madame Celeste, Paul Bedford, &c.
In India his friends were innumerable:— Dean Lushington and Dick, Jackson, Torrens, Elliott, Sir William Mansfield, Courtenay, The Thackwells, Fitzroy Somerest, Edmonstone, Wingfield, Wheler, J. O. B. Saunders, Sir Mordant Wells, Fred. Cooper, Robert Spankie, and many, many more. His most favorite writers were:—Voltaire, Volney, Shakespeare, Fielding, Sterne, Canning, Pope, Goldsmith, &c.
He was continually quoting, with a beaming eye, from Juvenal, Persius, and Horace. It may not be generally known, that he was one of the best Persian scholars, that ever came to India. He was remarkable as an amateur actor. Mercutio was his favorite character, with whom he often humourously exclaimed, in a manner which can only be appreciated by those who really knew him:— “If you ask for me to-morrow, you shall find me a grave man!”
His love of children and flowers was very beautiful. He had an excellent musical ear. His talents were marvellously excursive. His memory perfectly wonderful; its natural power enabling him to dispense with the usual drudgery of study and reference. More remarkable than all, perhaps, was his shrewd common sense—his unerring judgment, and his accurate knowledge of Law. Truly to be pitied were those who fell a prey to his powers of vituperation and withering sarcasm. At the same time the readiness with which he extended the hand of friendship to an antagonist, the frankness with which he acknowledged an error, and the efforts he made to repair it, unmistakably indicated the innate goodness of his heart, whilst they were accompanied by a winning fascination of manner which was irresistible.
His unselfishness did not forsake him even in the last days of his illness and suffering.
He had been removed, for more careful treatment, from a public hotel, to the residence of his medical attendant. The house being a very large one, contained, at one extremity, an apartment in which it was proposed a public Ball should be given. He was informed of the fact, and asked if he thought the music would disturb him. His immediate and characteristic reply was:— “God forbid that any human enjoyment should be put a stop to, on my account.”
It was always his wish that a post mortem examination should be made of his body. This was accordingly acted up to, and revealed the striking fact that his brain weighed eight ounces less than the average in the human adult.
It appears, however, that it was peculiarly notable on account of the excess of “grey or cortical substance,” so called, to which the physiologist has traced the seat of thought and intellect.
John Lang now sleeps peacefully in a mountain grave, far from the scenes of his earthly cares and intellectual triumphs. The world’s loftiest mountains now cast their broad and silent shadows over that sacred spot which will often be visited with respect by the stranger and with deep emotion by his friends.
Buried with him, and on is breast, lies the New Testament in Greek—whilst a deep and touching solemnity was conveyed to the heart of the mourner by a few “forget me nots,” which were seen on the pall as it was slowly conveyed to its last resting place,—humble flowers quietly deposited there by a friendly hand, and silently expressive of the last wishes of the Departed.
“Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain
He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell.”
Source: Bombay Gazette, Friday, September 2, 1864