Who’s that man? Wales, Empire and a painting in ‘Glamorgan Building’ / Pwy yw’r dyn hwn? Cymru, yr Ymerodraeth a darlun yn ‘Adeilad Morgannwg’

In this post, Marion Löffler, Reader in West History, talks about a painting and her historical detective work to find the story behind the figure in Indian dress.

In 1997, Cardiff University bought Cardiff County Hall, built in 1912 and now known as Glamorgan Building. The building came with the oil painting ‘Banquet Given by Marylebone Reformers, December 1^st 1847’ by Charles Compton (1828–1884), which now hangs in its grand ‘Committee Room 1’. An explanatory bronze plaque explains that it was ‘Deposited by the Council of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire’, and names seven men, all central to aspects of Victorian Welsh culture, economy and politics. It was assumed that future Welsh viewers would be keen to identify them.

Entertaining the men assembled for the dinner is Ellis Roberts or ‘Eos Meirion’, Harpist to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. Facing him is John Jones or ‘Talhaiarn’, multiple eisteddfod winner and poster boy of Welsh romantic poetry, then working for London architectural firm Scott and Moffat. Addressing the banquet is the reformist Whig MP Sir Benjamin Hall of Llanover, husband to prominent cultural patron Lady Augusta Hall and the organiser of the banquet. He is flanked on his left by Lord Dudley Stuart (1837–1854), youngest son of the first Marquess of Bute John Stuart, husband of Napoleon Bonaparte’s daughter and MP for Marylebone. To his right sits the linen draper John Williams, the newly elected MP for Macclesfield. On the right-hand side of the painting, arrows point to architect John Prichard, who restored Llandaff Cathedral, ‘standing at back’, and ‘in shadow’ to John Nixon, who hailed from northern England, but became a pioneer of steam coal mining in south Wales.

Prominent in the foreground, however, is a seated figure who provides a much-needed splash of colour in a sea of black-suited men. Wearing a red silk stole – formal Indian elite attire –over his suit jacket, and a green turban, he sits comfortably, a smile inviting us to know him. I have always asked myself who this mystery man was and how he came to be in a painting celebrating Welsh and Whig political successes at the centre of the Empire. Curiosity turned into detective work when I attended a workshop on ‘Decolonising Glamorgan Building’ in November 2023 and attempted to explain the painting to non-historians.

Since Sir Benjamin Hall is central to the dinner and the image, my first thoughts turned to two Indian visitors to his home Llanover Court and the Cymreigyddion Eisteddfod celebrations held between 1837 and 1853, because Sir Benjamin and Lady Augusta Hall were among their main sponsors. Thanks to Lady Llanover’s close links with the Prussian ambassador to Queen Victoria’s court Christian von Bunsen, the couple’s homes in Llanover and London attracted international scholars, diplomats and nobility from Europe and the British Empire. In 1842, Lady Llanover only secured a visit from the nephew of Zamindar Dwarkanauth Tagore (1795–1846), founder of the Calcutta Union bank and of the first Indian-British joint company ‘Carr, Tagore and Company’, but was delighted to welcome the man himself in 1845. Zamindar Dwarkanauth Tagore had first visited Britain three years earlier. Queen Victoria had noted that he spoke ‘very good English’ and was a ‘very intelligent, interesting man’, while the ‘Court and Ton’ column of the Illustrated London News obsessively reported on this ‘Indian prince-banker’. When Tagore visited Wales in 1845, speeches and poetry competitions similarly celebrated him as a ‘Hindustani Prince’ who united the ‘Himalayan borderland’ of the British Empire with its western extreme under the sign of their beloved Queen Victoria. The Illustrated London News, fascinated by eisteddfod proceedings in Wales depicted the Welsh as harpists in druidic garb and Tagore as an exotic figure at the centre of festivities.

The connection between Dwarkanauth Tagore and Sir Benjamin Hall, one of ‘Reformers’ mentioned on the plaque, MP for Marylebone from 1837–1859, and lynchpin of an international hub linking south Wales to Victoria’s court and the imperial parliament appeared obvious. There was but one problem. Tagore had died by the time the dinner was held. An obituary and portrait of the ‘Hindoo of powerful mind and princely soul’ had appeared in the Illustrated London News on 8 August 1846, and since the banquet in the painting took place on 1 December 1847, he could not have attended. It was back to the drawing board for me, and detective work that has yielded a perhaps even more stirring story.

Searching for reports of the dinner produced some disappointing finds at first. As the image below indicates, The Satirist or Censor of the Times called the banquet a ‘coterie of Taffies, Marrowbone “westrymen” and a junta of electors’, satirising the successes of Welsh self-made men by mocking the Welsh of Benjamin Hall’s toast, and by alluding to John Williams being ‘in trade’, rather than living of inherited money.

The search yielded only one factual report. The Norfolk News of 4 December 1847 carried a short article which also listed some of those who had attended. Last on the list was a man the paper called ‘Runjo Bapogee’. The connection between Benjamin Hall and the Indian attendee of the banquet was not cultural, but political. The mystery man was Sardar (General) Rango Bapuji Gupte. He was in England to campaign on behalf of Pratap Singh Bhonsle, the last Chatrapati (Ruler) of the Maratha Empire. Having surrendered his territories after the third Anglo-Maratha War, Pratap Bhonsle was reduced to the status of Raja of Satara under the East India Company. He fell victim to further political campaign against him, which resulted in his deposition and exile in 1839. The East India Company replaced him with his younger brother Shahaji Bhonsle, who was judged easier to control.

Sardar Rango Bapuji Gupte spent fourteen years in London pursuing a diplomatic campaign of parliamentary petitioning an lobbying for the re-instatement of Pratap Bhonsle, which brought him into close contact with reformist Whig MPs, such as Hall and Dudley. His campaign ended when both Pratap and Shahaji Bhonsle died within months of each other in 1848. In the absence of heirs recognised under British law, their territories ‘fell back’ to the East India Company. Rango Bapuji Gupte returned to India in the early 1850s, where he is said to have masterminded the Indian Uprising of 1857. Escaping arrest on 5 July 1857, he disappeared, a romantic mythical figure in the history of the Indian independence movement.

Rango Bapuji Gupte pensively looks at us from his place at this banquet given by prominent Welsh politicians and attended by the harpists and poets representing Welsh national culture. Like other contemporary representations of dignitaries from India and other parts of the Empire, the young English artist casts him as an exotic figure, set apart from all around him and peripheral to the action in the picture. In the history of Satara and of the Indian independence movement, Rango Bapuji Gupte is central, though. The Char Bhinti memorial which overlooks Satara city in Maharashtra state commemorates his name alongside those of his fellow freedom fighters of 1857.

Rango Bapuji Gupte, then, creates a direct link between Cardiff University’s Glamorgan Building and the living memory of those fighting for Indian independence. He speaks to us more than 125 years after the banquet he attended, and hopefully enjoyed.

Marion Löffler, School of History Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University

Pwy yw’r dyn hwn? Cymru, yr Ymerodraeth a darlun yn ‘Adeilad Morgannwg’

Compton, Charles; Banquet Given by Marylebone Reformers; Cardiff University; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/banquet-given-by-marylebone-reformers-159202

Ym 1997, prynwyd gan Brifysgol Caerdydd adeilad a adnabyddir nawr fel ‘Adeilad Morgannwg’ ac a adeiladwyd yn Neuadd Cyngor Caerdydd ym 1912. Daeth yr adeilad â darlun olew mawr, ‘Banquet Given by Marylebone Reformers, December 1^st 1847’, gan Charles Compton (1828–1884). Erbyn hyn, mae’r llun yn addurno’r siambr foethus ‘Ystafell Pwyllgor 1’. Esbonia plac efydd ei fod wedi gosod yno gan ‘Council of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire’, gan enwi saith dyn yn y llun, pob un yn ganolog i ddiwylliant, economi neu wleidyddiaeth Cymru Oes Victoria. Tybiwyd y byddai Cymry’r dyfodol yn awyddus i’w hadwaen.

Adlonnir y boneddigion yn y wledd gan Ellis Roberts (‘Eos Meirion’) telynor i’w Mawrhydi Tywysog Cymru. Yn nes ato ac yn ei wynebu mae John Jones ((‘Talhaiarn’)), enillydd sawl gystadleuaeth eisteddfodol ac eilun darllenwyr barddoniaeth Gymraeg rhamantus. Roedd ar y pryd yn gweithio i gwmni penseiri ‘Scott and Moffat’ yn Llundain. Yn ganolog ac yn traddodi araith, saif Sir Benjamin Hall o Lanofer, AS a Chwig y blaid ddiwygio. Yn ŵr i’r noddwr diwylliannol pwysig Arglwyddes Augusta Hall, fe oedd wedi trefnu’r dathliad. I’r chwith iddo eistedda’r Arglwydd Dudley Stuart (1837–1854), gŵr merch Napoleon Bonaparte, mab ifancaf John Stuart, Marchwas cyntaf Bute, ac AS dros Marylebone. I’r dde iddo, gwelir y gwerthwr llieiniau John Williams, sydd newydd ei ethol yn AS dros Macclesfield. Ar ochr dde y llun, ceir arwyddion yn pwyntio at John Prichard, y pensaer a ail-adeiladodd Eglwys Gadeiriol Llandaf ‘standing at back’; ac ‘in shadow’, John Nixon, a ddaeth o ogledd Lloegr i droi yn arloeswr cloddi glo ager yn ne Cymru.

Ond yn amlwg iawn ar flaen y llun, gwelwn ddyn di-enw, sy’n tasgu fflachiad prin o liw i’r môr o siwtiau du’r ciniawyr eraill. Mae’n gwisgo stôl sidan coch – arwydd ei fod yn perthyn i rengoedd bonheddig yr India – dros ei siaced siwt, a phen dorch gwyrdd. Ymddengys yn gyfforddus yn eistedd yno, ei wên fach yn ein gwahodd i’w nabod. Ers talwm, rwyf wedi rhyfeddu pwy oedd y dirgel-dyn hwn, a sut y daeth i fod mewn cinio a darlun sy’n dathlu llwyddiannau Cymry blaenllaw yng nghanol yr Ymerodraeth. Trodd y chwilfrydedd yn waith ditectif wedi imi fynychu gweithdy ar ‘Decolonising Glamorgan Building’ ym mis Tachwedd 2023 a cheisio esbonio’r darlun i bobl nad oeddent yn  haneswyr.

Gan fod yr Arglwydd Benjamin Hall yn ganolog i’r cinio a’r delwedd, naturiol oedd dechrau drwy ystyried dau ymwelydd o’r India i Lys Llanofer ac Eisteddfodau’r Fenni, a gynhaliwyd rhwng 1837 a 1853. Bu’r Arglwydd Benjamin a’r Arglwyddes Augusta o Lanofer yn noddwyr blaenllaw i’r eisteddfodau hyn. Diolch i gysylltiadau agos Arglwyddes Llanofer â llysgennad Prwsia i Lys y Frenhines Victoria, Christian von Bunsen, croesawyd i gartrefi’r teulu yn Llanofer a Llundain ysgolheigion, diplomyddion a boneddigion lu o Ewrop a’r Ymerodraeth Brydeinig. Ym 1842, llwyddodd Arglwyddes Llanofer i ddenu nai  Zamindar Dwarkanauth Tagore (1795–1846), sylfaenydd banc y Calcutta Union a ‘Carr, Tagore and Company’, y cwmni Indiaidd-Brydeinig cyntaf. Ym 1845, bu wrth ei bodd i groesawu’r dyn mawr ei hun. Roedd Zamindar Dwarkanauth Tagore wedi ymweld â Phrydain am y tro cyntaf tair blynedd ynghynt. Nodai’r Frenhines Victoria ei fod yn siarad ‘very good English’ ac yn ddyn deallusol a diddorol. Roedd colofn ‘Court and Ton’ yr Illustrated London News yn adrodd yn aml ar yr ‘Indian prince-banker’ hwn. Tebyg roedd dathliadau yn ystod ei ymweliad â Llanofer ym 1845. Fe’i ddisgrifiwyd yn ‘Dywysog Hindwstani’, un oedd wedi uno’r ‘Himalaya’, pegwn dwyreiniol yr Ymerodraeth Brydeinig â’i ‘gorllewin pell’ o dan arwydd yr annwyl Frenhines Victoria. I’w darllenwyr arluniodd yr Illustrated London News yr eisteddfod a fynychwyd gan Tagore fel gŵyl ddieithr-ddwyreiniol, y telynorion yn ymddangos megis derwyddon, a ffigwr ecsotig Tagore yn ganolbwynt i’r cyfan.

Tybiais, felly, fod y cysylltiad rhwng Zamindar Dwarkanath Tagore â’r Arglwydd Benjamin Hall yn glir, gan fod yr olaf yn un o’r mawrion ar y plac, yn AS dros Marylebone o 1837–1859, ac yn ganolbwynt rhwydwaith rhyngwladol a gyfunai de Cymru â llys Victoria a’r senedd Ymerodrol. Gwaetha’r modd, bu farw Tagore cyn y cinio yn y llun yn Adeilad Morgannwg. Ymddangosodd ysgrif goffa a llun o’r ‘Hindoo of powerful mind and princely soul’ yn yr Illustrated London News ar 8 Awst 1846. Gan fod y wledd wedi ei chynnal ar 1 Rhagfyr 1847, doedd dim ffordd y gallai fod wedi mynychu. Bu’n rhaid imi ddechrau o’r dechrau, ond darganfyddais hanes sydd yn ysgogi’r meddwl hyd yn oed ymhellach.

Profodd chwilio am adroddiadau ar y wledd yn siomedig i ddechrau. Fel y dengys y llun islaw, dychanwyd yr achlysur megis ‘coterie of Taffies, Marrowbone “westrymen” and junta of electors’ gan y Satirist or Censor of the Times, gan gymryd y cyfle i fychanu llwyddiannau’r Cymry a dynion ‘hunanwneuthuredig’ drwy ddynwared Cymraeg yr Arglwydd Benjamin Hall a chyfeirio at y ffaith fod AS John Williams ‘in trade’, yn hytrach na’n byw ar arian y cyn-deidiau.

Ond bues yn ffodus i ddod o hyd i un adroddiad ffeithiol. Ar 4 Rhagfyr 1847, cyhoeddodd y Norfolk News erthygl fer gan restru rhai o’r sawl a fynychodd y cinio. Yn olaf, rhestrwyd dyn a elwid ‘Runjo Bapogee’ gan y papur. Gwleidyddiaeth yn hytrach na diwylliant a gysylltai ef â’r Arglwydd Benjamin Hall, AS. Sardar (Cadfridog) Rango Bapuji Gupte, oedd y dirgel-ddyn, yn Lloegr i ymgyrchu dros adferiad Pratap Singh Bhonsle, Chatrapati (Rheolwr) olaf Ymerodraeth y Maratha. Yn dilyn y trydydd Rhyfel rhwng Cwmni Dwyrain India (yr East India Company) a Maratha, lleihawyd statws Pratap Bhonsle i un Raja Satara o dan goruchwyliaeth Cwmni Dwyrain India. Cynhaliwyd ymgyrchoedd gwleidyddol yn ei erbyn nes  ei ddiorseddu a’i alltudio ym 1839. Yn ei le, dyrchafwyd ei frawd iau Shahaji Bhonsle gan Gwmni Dwyrain India, gan fod yntau yn ufudd i’w dymuniadau.

Treuliodd y Sardar Rango Bapuji Gupte bedair blwyddyn ar ddeg yn Llundain ar ymgyrch diplomyddol o ddeisebu a lobïo’r senedd er mwyn adfer Pratap Bhonsle i’r orsedd, a ddaeth ag ef i gysylltiad ag aelodau seneddol Chwigaidd megis Hall a Dudley. Daeth yr ymgyrch i ben pan fu farw’r ddau, Pratap a Shahaji Bhonsle, o fewn mewn misoedd i’w gilydd ym 1848. Yn absenoldeb etifedd cydnabyddedig o dan y gyfraith Brydeinig ‘adferwyd’ eu tiroedd i Gwmni Dwyrain India. Dychwelodd Rango Bapuji Gupte i’r India yn y 1850au cynnar. Yn ôl hanes y wlad hon, ef oedd un o brif-gynllunwyr Rhyfel Annibyniaeth yr India 1857. Pan geisiwyd ei arestio ar 5 Gorffennaf 1857, diflannodd, gan droi’n ffigwr chwedlonol, rhamantus yn hanes y frwydr dros annibyniaeth i’r India.

Yma yng Nghaerdydd, edrycha Rango Bapuji Gupte arnom yn feddylgar o hyd o’i safle mewn gwledd a drefnwyd gan wleidyddion blaenllaw Cymru ac a fynychwyd gan delynorion a beirdd a gynrychiolai diwylliant cenedlaethol Cymru. Yn debyg i gynrychiolaethau cyfoes eraill o ymwelwyr dyrchafedig o’r India a rhannau o’r Ymerodraeth, portreadir ef gan yr arlunydd ifanc Saesneg fel ffigwr ecsotig, ar wahân i bawb arall ac yn ymylol i orchestion y sawl sy’n ganolog. Yn hanes ardal Satara a’r mudiad dros annibyniaeth yr India mae’n ganolog, serch hynny. Gwelwn ei enw ochr yn ochr â rhai o’i gyd-filwyr ar y gofeb Char Bhinti uwchben dinas Satara yn ardal Maharashtra, sy’n cofio Rhyfel Annibyniaeth 1857.

Mae’r ‘dirgel-ddyn’ Rango Bapuji Gupte, felly, yn ddolen gyswllt uniongyrchol rhwng Adeilad Morgannwg Prifysgol Caerdydd a’r cof byw am y sawl a frwydrodd dros annibyniaeth i’r India. Mae’n siarad â ni mwy na 125 mlynedd wedi’r gwledd, lle cafodd gyfle, gobeithio, i ymlacio am awr yng nghanol ymgyrch gwleidyddol taer.

Marion Löffler, Ysgol Hanes, Archaeoleg a Chrefydd, Prifysgol Caerdydd