Notes: 

1.  The reader will observe that the lady’s name is spelt Sumroo in the heading and Sombre in the text.  The form Samru, or Shamru, transliterates the Hindustani spelling.

2.  The author means General Regholini who was in the Begam’s service at the time of her death. (N.W.P.  Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 295.) The church, or cathedral, was consecrated in 1822, and coat 400,000 rupees.  A portrait of the General, from Sardhana, is now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, which also possesses a portrait of the Bishop.

The best account of Begum Sumroo is to be found in A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindustan, 1804-14, by A. D. = Ann Deane (1823).  Walter Scott introduces more than one of the stories about the Begum into The Surgeon’s Daughter (1827), e.g.:  “But not to be interred alive under your seat, like the Circassian of whom you were jealous,” said Middlemas, shuddering (vol. 48, Black’s ed. of the novels, p. 382).

3.  The Begam’s benefactions are detailed post.

4.  ’This remarkable woman was the daughter, by a concubine, of Asad Khan, a Musalman of Arab decent settled in the town of Kutana in the Meerut district.  She was born about the year A.D. 1753 [see post.] On the death of her father, she and her mother became subject to ill-treatment from her half-brother, the legitimate heir, and they consequently removed to Delhi about 1760.  There she entered the service of Sumru, and accompanied him through all his campaigns.  Sumru, on retiring to Sardhana, found himself relieved of all the cares and troubles of war, and gave himself entirely up to a life of ease and pleasure, and so completely fell into the hands of the Begam that she had no difficulty in inducing him to exchange the title of mistress for that of wife.’ (E.  T. Atkinson in N.W.P.  Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 95.  The authorities for the history of Begum Samru are very conflicting.  Atkinson has examined them critically, and his account probably is the best in existence.) An anonymous pamphlet published apparently at Sardhana and sent to the editor anonymously long ago, gives the name of the Begam’s father as ’Lutf Ali Khan, a decayed nobleman of Arabian descent’ living at Kotana.  Some writers state that the Begam was a dancing girl, and was bought by Sumroo.  Her name was Zeb-un-nissa.

5.  This first wife died at Sardhana during the rainy season of 1838.  She must have been above one hundred years of age; and a good many of the Europeans that he buried in the Sardhana cemetery had lived above a hundred years. [W.  H. S.] She was a concubine, named Baha Begam. (N.W.P.  Gazetteer, vol. iii, p. 96.)

6.  His name is spelt Reinhard on his tombstone, as in the text.  It is also spelt Renard.  According to some authorities, his birthplace was Treves, not Salzburg.  He is said to have been a butcher by trade, and certainly deserted from both the French and the English services.