The first European settler had reached the Nainital valley in 1841, and more houses, built on plinths, with roofs of corrugated iron painted bright red, had quickly gone up as British soldiers and colonial officials discovered the beauty of the place and its climate. Then on September 18, 1880, the little town was hit by a natural disaster, as heavy rain – over 50 inches in two days – set off a mud-slide which swept away many of the houses and buried most of the shops, a hotel, a Hindu temple and the Assembly Rooms, killing 151 people, including 43 Europeans.
Undeterred, the survivors dug in, but only six months later Christopher Corbett was struck down by a heart attack, and after a few days died, aged 58. His widow Mary Jane had already bought a plot of land on Ayaparta Hill, opposite the scene of the disaster, and now supervised the construction of a dwelling there. A two-storey structure with four bedrooms, it was called Gurney House, and it became the family’s summer home. Nainital was then the summer capital for the British administration of the United Provinces. The Governor would arrive by the end of April, and remain in residence until the end of September. Government House was perched on the summit of Ayaparta Hill, and residential houses clung to the surrounding slopes.
The whole place had a strongly English air, and society was strongly colour-conscious: only privileged Indians were allowed to use the Upper Mall, which connected the ends of the lake. In contrast, Kalahundi had only two white families, and Jim – who at first was looked after by an ayah (or nurse) – grew up with the village boys, speaking Hindi and learning country dialects, so that he became able to communicate with illiterate folk at work and in the hills – an indispensable asset when he went after the man-eating tigers and leopards which were the curse of rural communities.
He loved his mother, and was fascinated to hear how, as a girl of six or seven, she had travelled by bullock cart and boat from Calcutta to the Punjab – a journey of more than 1,000 miles that took several months. In one of his few descriptions of her Jim wrote that “she had the courage of Joan of Arc and Nurse Cavell combined,” and that she was also “as gentle and timid as a dove.” His sister Maggie (known in the family as “Maggs”) gave a fuller account:
In appearance she was very small, with delicate features, lovely colouring and beautiful blue eyes. She was utterly unselfish, and never felt that any self-denial or self-sacrifice on her part was too great where her children were concerned. I have often thought that Jim inherited many of her characteristics: bravery, courage, generosity and kindness combined with a strong sense of duty. In a room set aside for the purpose, she taught the children basic spelling, arithmetic and singing.
Jim had a clear treble voice, which later developed into a tenor – a gift which helped him imitate the calls of birds and animals. Maggie became an accomplished musician, and later taught piano to hundreds of pupils in Nainital. In Kalahundi she ministered tirelessly to the sick, no matter whether they were Christian, Hindu or Moslem; she treated ten or a dozen patients a day for injuries and ailments ranging from malaria to hiccoughs, from ear-ache caused by ticks to gore wounds inflicted by bullocks. She also grew into a botanist of considerable fame in the Kumaon hills, and she loved birds, particularly those of the jungle around the village.
Over a period of ten years Jim went to three different schools in Nainital, among them the Philander Smith College; but the one he liked best was run by the American Methodist Mission, whose teachers introduced him to the adventure stories of James Fenimore Cooper. He read The Last of the Mohicans again and again – and maybe the American’s easy, natural style influenced his own writing later in life. He was often buried in a book, and in the dormitory at boarding school the boys would cluster round his bed while he read aloud to them.
School was tolerable; but he far preferred to be out of doors, for from his earliest days a powerful hunting instinct burned inside him – so much so that he was constantly wandering off into the jungle that surrounded Kaladhungi, often going barefoot to make sure that he could move silently, and to facilitate the climbing of trees – a skill rendered difficult by leather shoes. Later he remarked that being brought up in the hills made him as sure-footed as a goat. His first weapon was a catapult, given him by his brother Tom, to help him recover from a dangerous bout of pneumonia; and with this primitive equipment, he became a deadly shot, killing dozens of small birds which he skinned to mount and add to his collection, or to give to his cousin Stephen Dease, who was writing a book about the birds of Kumaon.
He then graduated to a pellet bow, which had a small square of webbing fixed between its twin strings. This weapon was more powerful than a catapult, but less accurate, and Jim never really liked it. All the same, he became proficient enough with it to defeat the havildar (sergeant) of the Gurkha detachment that guarded the Nainital treasury, in a contest aiming at a matchbox set on a post 20 yards away. When the deficiencies of the pellet bow became too annoying, he made himself a bow and two arrows, basing their design on hints picked up from reading the Fenimore Cooper novels, and setting out to emulate the Red Indian warriors depicted in the books. Conceiving an ambition to be a lumber-man in Canada, he became so skilled with an axe that (it was said) he could split a match-stick.
Excerpted with permission from Hero of Kumaon: The Life of Jim Corbett, Duff Hart-Davis, HarperCollins India.