Very little is documented about Louis Mandelli, a colonial-era tea planter in Darjeeling whose life remains shrouded in gaps and contradictions. What makes Mandelli particularly intriguing is that he was one of the very few non-British planters in the region, and appears to have been connected, directly or indirectly, to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the revolutionary figure central to the unification of Italy.
Jeff Koehler, in Darjeeling: A History of the World’s Greatest Tea, unravels strands of this complex lineage. He writes that Mandelli’s father, Jerome, came from an aristocratic Maltese family, grew up in Milan, and fled as a young man to South America to join Garibaldi during Uruguay’s civil war (1838–51). Jerome is said to have returned with Garibaldi to fight the Bourbon monarchy in Sicily and southern Italy, helping pave the way for Italian unification. After falling out with his own family, Jerome discarded his father’s surname, Count Castel Nuovo, in favour of his mother’s, Mandelli, which he then passed to his son.
Yet another possibility suggested by Koehler is that Louis himself, rather than his father, fought for Garibaldi as a very young man. The patchy and inconsistent dates in Mandelli’s early life leave the question unresolved, allowing either version to fit the historical timeline.
By 1864, Louis Mandelli had arrived in Darjeeling and taken charge of the Lebong and Minchu tea estate. He married the following year, and soon expanded his responsibilities to include two more estates, Mineral Spring and Chongtong. According to Koehler, Mandelli later became a partner in two additional gardens, one of which was the scenic Kyel Tea Estate. In the 1870s, when a division of the neighboring Lingia estate was gifted to Mary, the owner’s daughter, as a wedding present and merged with Kyel, the new estate was named Marybong, meaning “Mary’s place” in Lepcha.
Despite these successes, Mandelli wrote candidly to a friend that the life of a tea planter was far from pleasant.
Outside his work in the plantations, Mandelli was deeply passionate about birds. He spent considerable time collecting specimens, shooting and skinning some himself, while also preserving those obtained by local collectors on long expeditions into Sikkim, Tibet, and Bhutan.
This interest brought him into contact with Allan Octavian Hume, the then Director-General of Agriculture in India and the country’s leading ornithologist. Hume, later a founder of the Indian National Congress, is often celebrated as the father of Indian ornithology. Yet Mandelli grew to despise him.
By the mid-1870s, Mandelli was struggling with mounting debts and poor yields on his estates. On top of these pressures came a bitter personal conflict with Hume. In a letter written in January 1876, Mandelli vented his anger:
“Yes, Hume is a brute—in fact, I call him a swindler, as far as birds are concerned… What else would be thought of a man who promised to help me… only to take the best and rarest specimens from here, and now leaves me in the lurch, as he has discovered that I am no longer his slave, subservient to his sneaking and bland manner and hypocritical ways?”
Mandelli went on to accuse Hume of exploiting his collection:
“Swindler is too mild a term after having got out from me about 5000 birds and giving in return only about 800—the commonest birds in India—400 of which went down the khud, as they were not worth the carriage.”
By late 1879, Mandelli was no longer managing or owning any of the four gardens with which he had recently been associated. His surviving letters mention little beyond his deteriorating finances, persistent creditors, and failing health.
In 1877, he wrote: “For the last two or three months I have been unwell and troubled with slow fever, cough, deafness.”
The situation only worsened. Burdened by losses, debt, and depression, Louis Mandelli committed suicide in February 1880 at the age of just 46.
After his death, the remainder of his valuable bird collection, his life’s passion, was sold to Allan Octavian Hume.
By,
S.K.Ghising
References
- Jeff Koehler, Darjeeling a history of the world’s greatest tea, Great Britain, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016.
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