Last month, Endpapers surveyed the short but crowded career of the Scottish surgeon John Gilchrist at Fort William College; this month, we look at one of his students, the enigmatic Henry Sargent. Curiously, his name turns up repeatedly in histories of Bengali literature as the Bengali translator of the first book of Virgil’s Latin epic Aeneid, published by the Mission Press of Serampore in 1810. The name of one Monckton, who is supposed to have translated The Tempest into Bengali, also appears in his company.

Over time, both translations acquired a kind of mythic status, since no one seems to have seen them. Monckton’s Tempest continues to elude discovery, but the resurfacing of Sargent’s Aeneid in 2010—a whole two centuries after it was published—supplies a missing link in the history of early Bengali prose, between William Carey, Ramram Basu and Rammohan Roy, on the one hand, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar on the other. Frustratingly, little is known about Sargent, but whatever little we know is utterly tantalizing.

According to India Office Records, Henry Sargent was born to John and Charlotte Sargent of Woolavington, Sussex, and baptized on 7 November 1788. He joined the Bengal Civil Service as a writer in 1806. And died at the Cape of Good Hope on 24 April 1834. At the time of his death, he was senior merchant in the civil service.

The earliest reference to Sargent is found in the 1809 records of Fort William College. He appears to have done brilliantly in the examinations and public disputations that year. This was all the more creditable since he appears to have been something of a slacker in his early years at the college.

Thomas Roebuck, a chronicler of the college’s early history, remarked: “Mr Sargent holds the first place in Hindoostanee, the first in Bengalee, and is reported proficient in Muhratta, being the only Student who has presented himself for examination in that language. Mr Sargent was admitted to College in November, 1806, but…the acquirements which I have now stated, are the fruits only of the last year’s study, I would not recall the low standard of Mr. Sargent’s former acquisitions, both in Persian and Hindoostanee, if the defects of the preceding period did not now redound to the credit of the following."

At the annual prize-giving ceremony at the college, Sargent was singled out for praise by governor general Lord Minto: “It must be considered as a remarkable feature of the present examination, and may, perhaps, be thought to form an area in the studies of Fort William, if not in the literature of Asia, that Mr Sargent has qualified himself to translate four books of Virgil’s Aeneid into the language of Bengal, and has performed the work in a manner to merit the highest commendation of those who are competent to judge of it."

How good was Sargent’s Bengali? Nothing short of brilliant, on the evidence of the one book that was published. Remember, this was likely a term paper for Sargent in the Bengali department, headed by the gifted linguist and father of Bengali printing, William Carey. It was Carey’s Mission Press at nearby Serampore which published the book in 1810, but they seem to have lost interest in it immediately, not bothering to mention it even once in the copious archives.

After Fort William College, mentions of Sargent are almost impossible to come by. In April 1818, a notice is issued in the Calcutta Gazette, under the hand of one H. Sargent, acting secretary, salt department. In October 1822, he can be seen making enquiries about the tonnage of goods laden at Diamond Harbour. On 8 January the following year, he is reported as having married Miss Fanny Jane Palmer, daughter of John Palmer, at the St John’s Cathedral of Calcutta. In June 1823, his name turns up in a Grand Jury of the Supreme Court in Calcutta. In January 1830, a letter under his hand to the then governor general in council, William Bentinck, concerning the purchase of salt, appears among the East India Company papers.

On Christmas Eve 1833, Sargent was granted furlough to travel to the Cape of Good Hope for health and boarded the vessel St George. He died in Cape Town the following year, at the age of 45. Thus passed Henry Sargent, a forgotten pioneer of Bengali prose.

Endpapers is a monthly column on obscure books and forgotten writers.

Abhijit Gupta teaches English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and is director, Jadavpur University Press.

Also Read Abhijit’s previous Lounge column

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