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diff --git a/13068-0.txt b/13068-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47114ab --- /dev/null +++ b/13068-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5132 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13068 *** + +TWENTY-ONE DAYS IN INDIA + +Or, The Tour Of Sir Ali Baba K.C.B. + +and THE TEAPOT SERIES + +by + +GEORGE R. ABERIGH-MACKAY +Sometime Principal of the Rajkumar College Indore + +Ninth Edition with New Illustrations and Elucidations + +1914 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: THE TRAVELLING M.P.--"The British Lion rampant."] + + + + +PUBLISHERS' PREFACE + + +In this edition it has been considered advisable to reproduce, +verbatim, only the "Twenty-one Days" as originally published in +_Vanity Fair_, the additional series of six included in several +editions of the book issued after the Author's death being omitted. + +The twenty-one papers in question have been supplemented by +contributions to _The Bombay Gazette_, which appeared in that daily +newspaper during the whole of the year 1880, the year before the +Author's death, under the _nom de plume_ of "Our Political Orphan;" +and the Publishers beg to tender their best thanks to the proprietors +of that newspaper for the permission thus generously accorded for +their present reproduction. + +In carrying out the work of revision many passages previously omitted +have been restored to the text. To render such readily apparent to the +reader, they have in every case been enclosed in [] brackets. + +A new series of illustrations has been specially prepared for this +edition by Mr. George Darby of Calcutta, and the Publishers venture to +think he has succeeded in a marked degree in embodying in his sketches +the spirit of the Author's subjects. + +In conclusion it has been the aim of the Publishers to render this new +edition of a great work by a very gifted writer as perfect as possible +and worthy of acceptance as a standard Anglo-Indian classic. + +LONDON + +September, 1910. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PREFACE + + I. WITH THE VICEROY + + II. THE A.-D.-C.-IN-WAITING, AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD + + III. WITH THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF + + IV. WITH THE ARCHDEACON, A MAN OF BOTH WORLDS + + V. WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT + + VI. H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO + + VII. WITH THE RAJA + + VIII. WITH THE POLITICAL AGENT, A MAN IN BUCKRAM + + IX. WITH THE COLLECTOR + + X. BABY IN PARTIBUS + + XI. THE RED CHUPRASSIE; OR, THE CORRUPT LICTOR + + XII. THE PLANTER; A FARMER PRINCE + + XIII. THE EURASIAN; A STUDY IN CHIARO-OSCURO + + XIV. THE VILLAGER + + XV. THE OLD COLONEL + + XVI. THE CIVIL SURGEON + + XVII. THE SHIKARRY + +XVIII. THE GRASS-WIDOW IN NEPHELOCOCCYGIA + + XIX. THE TRAVELLING M.P., THE BRITISH LION RAMPANT + + XX. MEM-SAHIB + + XXI. ALI BABA ALONE; THE LAST DAY + + * * * * * + +EXTRACTS FROM "SERIOUS REFLECTIONS AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS" + +BY "OUR POLITICAL ORPHAN" + +_Bombay Gazette Press_, 1881. + + + + +THE TEAPOT SERIES: + + SOCIAL DISSECTION + + SAHIB + + THE GRYPHON'S ANABASIS + + THE ORPHAN'S GOOD RESOLUTIONS + + SOME OCCULT PHENOMENA + + * * * * * + +ELUCIDATIONS + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS: + + THE TRAVELLING M.P. + + THE A.D.C. IN WAITING + + THE ARCHDEACON + + THE BENGALI BABOO + + THE POLITICAL AGENT + + THE RED CHUPRASSIE + + THE PLANTER + + THE EURASIAN + + THE OLD COLONEL + + THE GRASS-WIDOW + + + + +No. I + + + +WITH THE VICEROY + + +[August 2, 1879.] + +It is certainly a little intoxicating to spend a day with the Great +Ornamental. You do not see much of him perhaps; but he is a Presence +to be felt, something floating loosely about in wide epicene +pantaloons and flying skirts, diffusing as he passes the fragrance of +smile and pleasantry and cigarette. The air around him is laden with +honeyed murmurs; gracious whispers play about the twitching bewitching +corners of his delicious mouth. He calls everything by "soft names in +many a mused rhyme." Deficits, Public Works, and Cotton Duties are +transmuted by the alchemy of his gaiety into sunshine and songs. An +office-box on his writing-table an office-box is to him, and it is +something more: it holds cigarettes. No one knows what sweet thoughts +are his as Chloe flutters through the room, blushful and startled, or +as a fresh beaker full of the warm South glows between his amorous eye +and the sun. + + "I have never known + Praise of love or wine + That panted forth a flood of twaddle so divine." + +I never tire of looking at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous +from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He +is a veiled prophet. [He wears many veils indeed.] He who is the axis +of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is absolutely and +necessarily withdrawn from all knowledge of India. He lisps no +syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian +life is known to him; all our delightful provinces of the sun that lie +off the railway are to him an undiscovered country; Ghebers, Moslems, +Hindoos blend together in one indistinguishable dark mass before his +eye, [in which the cataract of English indifference has not been +couched; most delightful of all--he knows not the traditions of +Anglo-India, and he does not belong to the Bandicoot Club, St. James's +Square!] + +A Nawab, whom the Foreign Office once farmed out to me, often used to +ask what the use of a Viceroy was. I do not believe that he meant to +be profane. The question would again and again recur to his mind, and +find itself on his lips. I always replied with the counter question, +"What is the use of India?" He never would see--the Oriental mind does +not see these things--that the chief end and object of India was the +Viceroy; that, in fact, India was the plant and the Viceroy the +flower. + +I have often thought of writing a hymn on the Beauty of Viceroys; and +have repeatedly attuned my mind to the subject; but my inability to +express myself in figurative language, and my total ignorance of +everything pertaining to metre, rhythm, and rhyme, make me rather +hesitate to employ verse. Certainly, the subject is inviting, and I am +surprised that no singer has arisen. How can any one view the +Viceroyal halo of scarlet domestics, with all the bravery of coronets, +supporters, and shields in golden embroidery and lace, without +emotion! How can the tons of gold and silver plate that once belonged +to John Company, Bahadur, and that now repose on the groaning board of +the Great Ornamental, amid a glory of Himalayan flowers, or blossoms +from Eden's fields of asphodel, be reflected upon the eye's retina +without producing positive thrills and vibrations of joy (that cannot +be measured in terms of _ohm_ or _farad_) shooting up and down the +spinal cord and into the most hidden seats of pleasure! I certainly +can never see the luxurious bloom of the silver sticks arranged in +careless groups about the vast portals without a feeling approaching +to awe and worship, and a tendency to fling small coin about with a +fine mediæval profusion. I certainly can never drain those profound +golden cauldrons seething with champagne without a tendency to break +into loud expressions of the inward music and conviviality that simmer +in my soul. Salutes of cannon, galloping escorts, processions of +landaus, beautiful teams of English horses, trains of private saloon +carriages (cooled with water trickling over sweet jungle grasses) +streaming through the sunny land, expectant crowds of beauty with +hungry eyes making a delirious welcome at every stage, the whole +country blooming into dance and banquet and fresh girls at every step +taken--these form the fair guerdon that stirs my breast at certain +moments and makes me often resolve, after dinner, "to scorn delights +and live laborious days," and sell my beautiful soul, illuminated with +art and poetry, to the devil of Industry, with reversion to Sir John +Strachey. + +How mysterious and delicious are the cool penetralia of the Viceregal +Office! It is the censorium of the Empire; it is the seat of thought; +it is the abode of moral responsibility! What battles, what famines, +what excursions of pleasure, what banquets and pageants, what concepts +of change have sprung into life here! Every pigeon-hole contains a +potential revolution; every office-box cradles the embryo of a war or +dearth. What shocks and vibrations, what deadly thrills does this +little thunder-cloud office transmit to far-away provinces lying +beyond rising and setting suns! Ah! Vanity, these are pleasant +lodgings for five years, let who may turn the kaleidoscope after us. + +A little errant knight of the press who has just arrived on the +Delectable Mountains, comes rushing in, looks over my shoulder, and +says, "A deuced expensive thing a Viceroy." This little errant knight +would take the thunder at a quarter of the price, and keep the Empire +paralytic with change and fear of change as if the great +Thirty-thousand-pounder himself were on Olympus.--ALI BABA. + + + + +No. II + + + +THE A.D.C.-IN-WAITING + + +AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD + + + +[Illustration: THE A.D.C.-IN WAITING--"An arrangement in scarlet and +gold."] + + + +[August 9, 1879.] + +The tone of the A.D.C. is subdued. He stands in doorways and strokes +his moustache. He nods sadly to you as you pass. He is preoccupied +with--himself, [some suppose; others aver his office.] He has a +motherly whisper for Secretaries and Members of Council. His way with +ladies is sisterly--undemonstratively affectionate. He tows up rajas +to H.E., and stands in the offing. His attitude towards rajas is one +of melancholy reserve. He will perform the prescribed observances, if +he cannot approve of them. Indeed, generally, he disapproves of the +Indian people, though he condones their existence. For a brother in +aiguillettes there is a Masonic smile and a half-embarrassed +familiarity, as if found out in acting his part. But confidence is +soon restored with melancholy glances around, and profane persons who +may be standing about move uneasily away. + +An A.D.C. should have no tastes. He is merged in "the house." He must +dance and ride admirably; he ought to shoot; he may sing and paint in +water-colours, or botanise a little, and the faintest aroma of the +most volatile literature will do him no harm; but he cannot be allowed +preferences. If he has a weakness for very pronounced collars and +shirt-cuffs in mufti, it may be connived at, provided he be honestly +nothing else but the man in collars and cuffs. + +When a loud, joyful, and steeplechasing Lord, in the pursuit of +pleasure and distant wars, dons the golden cords for a season, the +world understands that this is masquerading, skittles, and a joke. One +must not confound the ideal A.D.C. with such a figure. + +The A.D.C. has four distinct aspects or phases--(1) the full summer +sunshine and bloom of scarlet and gold for Queen's birthdays and high +ceremonials; (2) the dark frock-coats and belts in which to canter +behind his Lord in; (3) the evening tail-coat, turned down with light +blue and adorned with the Imperial arms on gold buttons; (4) and, +finally, the quiet disguises of private life. + +It is in the sunshine glare of scarlet and gold that the A.D.C. is +most awful and unapproachable; it is in this aspect that the splendour +of vice-Imperialism seems to beat upon him most fiercely. The Rajas of +Rajputana, the diamonds of Golconda, the gold of the Wynaad, the opium +of Malwa, the cotton of the Berars, and the Stars of India seem to be +typified in the richness of his attire and the conscious superiority +of his demeanour. Is he not one of the four satellites of that Jupiter +who swims in the highest azure fields of the highest heavens? + +Frock-coated and belted, he passes into church or elsewhere behind his +Lord, like an aërolite from some distant universe, trailing cloudy +visions of that young lady's Paradise of bright lights and music, +champagne, mayonnaise, and "just-one-more-turn," which is situated +behind the flagstaff on the hill. + +The tail-coat, with gold buttons, velvet cuffs, and light blue silk +lining, is quite a demi-official, small-and-early arrangement. It is +compatible with a patronising and somewhat superb flirtation in the +verandah; nay, even under the pine-tree beyond the _Gurkha_ sentinel, +whence many-twinkling Jakko may be admired, it is compatible with a +certain shadow of human sympathy and weakness. An A.D.C. in tail-coat +and gold buttons is no longer a star; he is only a fire-balloon; +though he may twinkle in heaven, he can descend to earth. But in the +quiet disguises of private life he is the mere stick of a rocket. He +is quite of the earth. This scheme of clothing is compatible with the +tenderest offices of gaming or love--offices of which there shall be +no recollection on the re-assumption of uniform and on re-apotheosis. +An A.D.C. in plain clothes has been known to lay the long odds at +whist, and to qualify, very nearly, for a co-respondentship. + +In addition to furnishing rooms in his own person, an A.D.C. is +sometimes required to copy my Lord's letters on mail-day, and, in due +subordination to the Military Secretary, to superintend the stables, +kitchen, or Invitation Department. + +After performing these high functions, it is hard if an A.D.C. should +ever have to revert to the buffooneries of the parade-ground or the +vulgar intimacies of a mess. It is hard that one who has for five +years been identified with the Empire should ever again come to be +regarded as "Jones of the 10th," and spoken of as "Punch" or "Bobby" +by old boon companions. How can a man who has been behind the curtain, +and who has seen _la première danseuse_ of the Empire practising her +steps before the manager Strachey, in familiar chaff and talk with the +Council ballet, while the little scene-painter and Press Commissioner +stood aside with cocked ears, and the privileged violoncellist made +his careless jests--how, I say, can one who has thus been above the +clouds on Olympus ever associate with the gaping, chattering, +irresponsible herd below? + +It is well that our Ganymede should pass away from heaven into +temporary eclipse; it is well that before being exposed to the rude +gaze of the world he should moult his rainbow plumage in the Cimmeria +of the Rajas. Here we shall see him again, a blinking _ignis fatuus_ +in a dark land--"so shines a good deed in a naughty world" thinks the +Foreign Office.--ALI BABA. + + + + +No. III + + + +WITH THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF + + + +[August 16, 1879.] + +At Simla and Calcutta the Government of India always sleeps with a +revolver under its pillow--that revolver is the Commander-in-Chief. +There is a tacit understanding that this revolver is not to be let +off; indeed, sometimes it is believed that this revolver is not +loaded. + +[The Commander-in-Chief has a seat in Council; but the Military Member +has a voice. This division of property is seen everywhere. The +Commander-in-Chief has many offices; in each there is someone other +than the Commander-in-Chief who discharges all its duties. + +What does the Commander-in-Chief command? Armies? No. In India +Commanders-in-Chief command no armies. The Commander-in-Chief only +commands respect.] + +The Commander-in-Chief is himself an army. His transport, medical +attendance, and provisioning are cared for departmentally, and watched +over by responsible officers. He is a host in himself; and a corps of +observation. + +All the world observes him. His slightest movement creates a molecular +disturbance in type, and vibrates into newspaper paragraphs. + +When Commanders-in-Chief are born the world is unconscious of any +change. No one knows when a Commander-in-Chief is born. No joyful +father, no pale mother has ever experienced such an event as the +birth of a Commander-in-Chief in the family. No Mrs. Gamp has ever +leant over the banister and declared to the expectant father below +that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a +Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief +dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; +dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and +chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than +ever, rides with the mockery of despair on his coffin. + +On Sunday evening, after tea and catechism, the Supreme Council +generally meet for riddles and forfeits in the snug little cloak-room +parlour at Peterhoff. "Can an army tailor make a Commander-in-Chief?" +was once asked. Eight old heads were scratched and searched, but no +answer was found. No sound was heard save the seething whisper of +champagne ebbing and flowing in the eight old heads. Outside, the wind +moaned through the rhododendron trees; within, the Commander-in-Chief +wept peacefully. He felt the awkwardness of the situation. [He thought +of Ali Musjid, and he thought of Isandula; he saw himself reflected in +the mirror, and he declared that he gave it up.] An aide-de-camp stood +at the door hiccupping idly. He was known to have invested all his +paper currency in Sackville Street; and he felt in honour bound to say +that the riddle was a little hard on the army tailors. So the subject +dropped. + +A Commander-in-Chief is the most beautiful article of social +upholstery in India. He sits in a large chair in the drawing-room. +Heads and bodies sway vertically in passing him. He takes the oldest +woman in to dinner; he gratifies her with his drowsy cackle. He says +"Yes" and "No" to everyone with drowsy civility; everyone is +conciliated. His stars dimly twinkle--twinkle; the host and hostess +enjoy their light. After dinner he decants claret into his venerable +person, and tells an old story; the company smile with innocent joy. +He rejoins the ladies and leers kindly on a pretty woman; she forgives +herself a month of indiscretions. He touches Lieutenant the Hon. +Jupiter Smith on the elbow and inquires after his mother; a noble +family is gladdened. He is thus a source of harmless happiness to +himself and to those around him. + +If a round of ball cartridge has been wasted by a suicide, or a pair +of ammunition boots carried off by a deserter, the Commander-in-Chief +sometimes visits a great cantonment under a salute of seventeen guns. +The military then express their joy in their peculiar fashion, +according to their station in life. The cavalry soldier takes out his +charger and gallops heedlessly up and down all the roads in the +station. The sergeants of all arms fume about as if transacting some +important business between the barracks and their officers' quarters. +Subalterns hang about the Mess, whacking their legs with small pieces +of cane and drinking pegs with mournful indifference. The Colonel +sends for everyone who has not the privilege of sending for him, +and says nothing to each one, sternly and decisively. The Majors +and the officers doing general duty go to the Club and swear before +the civilians that they are worked off their legs, complaining +fiercely to themselves that the Service is going, &c. &c. The +Deputy-Assistant-Quartermaster-General puts on all the gold lace he is +allowed to wear, and gallops to the Assistant-Adjutant-General--where +he has tiffin. The Major-General-Commanding writes notes to all his +friends, and keeps orderlies flying at random in every direction. + +The Commander-in-Chief--who had a disturbed night in the train--sleeps +peacefully throughout the day, and leaves under another salute in the +afternoon. He shakes hands with everyone he can see at the station, +and jumps into a long saloon carriage, followed by his staff. + +"A deuced active old fellow!" everyone says; and they go home and dine +solemnly with one another under circumstances of extraordinary +importance. + +The effect of the Commander-in-Chief is very remarkable on the poor +Indian, whose untutored mind sees a Lord in everything. He calls the +Commander-in-Chief "the Jungy Lord," or War-Lord, in contradistinction +to the "Mulky-Lord," or Country-Lord, the appellation of the Viceroy. +To the poor Indian this War-Lord is an object of profound interest and +speculation. He has many aspects that resemble the other and more +intelligible Lord. An aide-de-camp rides behind him; hats, or hands, +rise electrically as he passes; yet it is felt in secret that he is +not pregnant with such thunder-clouds of rupees, and that he cannot +make or mar a Raja. To the Raja it is an ever-recurring question +whether it is necessary or expedient to salaam to the Jungy Lord and +call upon him. He is hedged about with servants who will require to be +richly propitiated before any dusky countryman [of theirs, great or +small,] gets access to this Lord of theirs. Is it, then, worth while +to pass through this fire to the possible Moloch who sits beyond? Will +this process of parting with coin--this Valley of the Shadow of +Death--lead them to any palpable advantage? Perhaps the War-Lord with +his red right hand can add guns to their salute; perhaps he will speak +a recommendatory word to his caste-fellow, the Country-Lord? These are +precious possibilities. + +A Raja whom I am now prospecting for the Foreign Office asked me the +other day where Commanders-in-Chief were ripened, seeing that they +were always so mellow and blooming. I mentioned a few nursery gardens +I knew of in and about Whitehall and Pall Mall. H.H. at once said that +he would like to plant his son there, if I would water him with +introductions. This is young 'Arry Bobbery, already favourably known +on the Indian Turf as an enterprising and successful defaulter. + +You will know 'Arry Bobbery, if you meet him, dear Vanity, by the +peculiarly gracious way in which he forgives and forgets should you +commit the indiscretion of lending him money. You may be sure that he +will never allude to the matter again, but will rather wear a piquant +do-it-again manner, like our irresistible little friend, Conny B----. +I don't believe, however, that Bobbery will ever become a +Commander-in-Chief, though his distant cousin, Scindia, is a General, +and though they talk of pawning the 'long-shore Governorship of Bombay +to Sir Cursinjee Damtheboy.--ALI BABA. + + + + +No. IV + + + +WITH THE ARCHDEACON + + + +A MAN OF BOTH WORLDS + + + +[Illustration: THE ARCHDEACON--"A man of both worlds."] + + + +[August 23, 1879.] + +The Press Commissioner has been trying by a strained exercise of his +prerogative to make me spend this day with the Bishop, and not with +the Archdeacon; but I disregard the Press Commissioner; I make light +of him; I treat his authority as a joke. What authority has a pump? Is +a pump an analyst and a coroner? + +Why should I spend a day with the Bishop? What claim has the Bishop on +my improving conversation? I am not his sponsor. Besides, he might do +me harm--I am not quite sure of his claret. I admit his superior +ecclesiastical birth; I recollect his connection with St. Peter; and I +am conscious of the more potent spells and effluences of his +shovel-hat and apron; but I find the atmosphere of his heights cold, +and the rarefied air he breathes does not feed my lungs. Up yonder, +above the clouds of human weakness, my vertebræ become unhinged, my +bones inarticulate, and I collapse. I meet missionaries, and I hear +the music of the spheres; and I long to descend again to the circles +of the everyday inferno where my friends are. + + "These distant stars I can forego; + This kind, warm earth, is all I know." + +I am sorry for it. I really have upward tendencies; but I have never +been able to fix upon a balloon. The High Church balloon always seems +to me too light; and the Low Church balloon too heavy; while no +experienced aeronaut can tell me where the Broad Church balloon is +bound for; thus, though a feather-weight sinner, here I am upon the +firm earth. So come along, my dear Archdeacon, let us have a stroll +down the Mall, and a chat about Temporalities, Fabrics, "Mean Whites," +and little Mrs. Lollipop, "the joy of wild asses." + +An Archdeacon is one of the busiest men in India--especially when he +is up on the hill among the sweet pine-trees. He is the recognised +guardian of public morality, and the hill captains and the +semi-detached wives lead him a rare life. There is no junketing at +Goldstein's, no picnic at the waterfalls, no games at Annandale, no +rehearsals at Herr Felix von Battin's, no choir practice at the church +even, from which he can safely absent himself. A word, a kiss, some +matrimonial charm dissolved--these electric disturbances of society +must be averted. The Archdeacon is the lightning conductor; where he +is, the leaven of naughtiness passes to the ground, and society is not +shocked. + +In the Bishop and the ordinary padre we have far-away people of +another world. They know little of us; we know nothing of them. We +feel much constraint in their presence. The presence of the +ecclesiastical sex imposes severe restrictions upon our conversation. +The Lieutenant-Governor of the South-Eastern Provinces once complained +to me that the presence of a clergyman rendered nine-tenths of his +vocabulary contraband, and choked up his fountains of anecdote. It +also restricts us in the selection of our friends. But with an +Archdeacon all this is changed. He is both of Heaven and Earth. When +we see him in the pulpit we are pleased to think that we are with the +angels; when we meet him in a ball-room we are flattered to feel that +the angels are with us. When he is with us--though, of course, he is +not of us--he is yet exceedingly like us. He may seem a little more +venerable than he is; perhaps there may be about him a grandfatherly +air that his years do not warrant; he may exact a "Sir" from us that +is not given to others of his worldly standing; but there is +nevertheless that in his bright and kindly eye--there is that in his +side-long glance--which by a charm of Nature transmutes homage into +familiar friendship, and respect into affection. + +The character of Archdeacons as clergymen I would not venture to touch +upon. It is proverbial that Archidiaconal functions are Eleusinian in +their mysteriousness. No one, except an Archdeacon, pretends to know +what the duties of an Archdeacon are, so no one can say whether these +duties are performed perfunctorily and inadequately, or scrupulously +and successfully. We know that Archdeacons sometimes preach, and that +is about all we know. I know an Archdeacon in India who can preach a +good sermon--I have heard him preach it many a time, once on a benefit +night for the Additional Clergy Society. It wrung four annas from +me--but it was a terrible wrench. I would not go through it again to +have every living graduate of St. Bees and Durham disgorged on our +coral strand. + +From my saying this do not suppose that I am Mr. Whitley Stokes, or +Babu Keshub Chundra Sen. I am a Churchman, beneath the surface, though +a pellicle of inquiry may have supervened. I am not with the party of +the Bishop, nor yet am I with Sir J.S., or Sir A.C. I abide in the +Limbo of Vanity, as a temporary arrangement, to study the seamy side +of Indian politics and morality, to examine misbegotten wars and +reforms with the scalpel, Stars of India with the spectroscope, and to +enjoy the society of half-a-dozen amusing people to whom the Empire of +India is but a wheel of fortune. + +I like the recognised relations between the Archdeacon and women. They +are more than avuncular and less than cousinly; they are tender +without being romantic, and confiding without being burdensome. He has +the private _entrée_ at _chhoti hazri_, or early breakfast; he sees +loose and flowing robes that are only for esoteric disciples; he has +the private _entrée_ at five o'clock tea and hears plans for the +evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He +hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can +give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win +in a canter. You cannot tell him anything he does not know already. + +Whenever the Government of India has a merrymaking, he is out on the +trail. At Delhi he was in the thick of the mummery, beaming on +barbaric princes and paynim princesses, blessing banners, blessing +trumpeters, blessing proclamations, blessing champagne and truffles, +blessing pretty girls, and blessing the conjunction of planets that +had placed his lines in such pleasant places. His tight little cob, +his perfect riding kit, his flowing beard, and his pleasant smile were +the admiration of all the Begums and Nabobs that had come to the fair. +The Government of India took such delight in him that they gave him a +gold medal and a book. + +With the inferior clergy the Archdeacon is not at his ease. He cannot +respect the little ginger-bread gods of doctrine they make for +themselves; he cannot worship at their hill altars; their hocus-pocus +and their crystallised phraseology fall dissonantly on his ear; their +talk of chasubles and stoles, eastern attitude, and all the rest of +it, is to him as a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. He would +like to see the clergy merely scholars and men of sense set apart for +the conduct of divine worship and the encouragement of all good and +kindly offices to their neighbours; he does not wish to see them +mediums and conjurors. He thinks that in a heathen country their +paltry fetishism of misbegotten notions and incomprehensible phrases +is peculiarly offensive and injurious to the interests of civilisation +and Christianity. Of course the Archdeacon may be very much mistaken +in all this; and it is this generous consciousness of fallibility +which gives the singular charm to his religious attitude. He can take +off his ecclesiastical spectacles and perceive that he may be in the +wrong like other men. + +Let us take a last look at the Archdeacon, for in the whole range of +prominent Anglo-Indian characters our eye will not rest upon a more +orbicular and satisfactory figure. + + A good Archdeacon, nobly planned + To warn, to comfort, and command; + And yet a spirit gay and bright, + With something of the candle-light. + + ALI BABA. + + + + +No. V + + + +WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT + + + +[August 30, 1879.] + +He is clever, I am told, and being clever he has to be rather morose +in manner and careless in dress, or people might forget that he was +clever. He has always been clever. He was the clever man of his year. +He was so clever when he first came out that he could never learn to +ride, or speak the language, and had to be translated to the +Provincial Secretariat. But though he could never speak an +intelligible sentence in the language, he had such a practical and +useful knowledge of it, in half-a-dozen of its dialects, that he could +pass examinations in it with the highest credit, netting immense +rewards. He thus became not only more and more clever, but more and +more solvent; until he was an object of wonder to his contemporaries, +of admiration to the Lieutenant-Governor, and of desire to several +_Burra Mem Sahibs_[A] with daughters. It was about this time that he +is supposed to have written an article published in some English +periodical. It was said to be an article of a solemn description, and +report magnified the periodical into the _Quarterly Review_. So he +became one who wrote for the English Press. It was felt that he was a +man of letters; it was assumed that he was on terms of familiar +correspondence with all the chief literary men of the day. With so +conspicuous a reputation, he believed it necessary to do something in +religion. So he gave up religion, and allowed it to be understood that +he was a man of advanced views: a Positivist, a Buddhist, or something +equally occult. Thus he became ripe for the highest employment, and +was placed successively on a number of Special Commissions. He +inquired into everything; he wrote hundredweights of reports; he +proved himself to have the true paralytic ink flux, precisely the kind +of wordy discharge or brain hæmorrhage required of a high official in +India. He would write ten pages where a clod-hopping collector would +write a sentence. He could say the same thing over and over again in a +hundred different ways. The feeble forms of official satire were at +his command. [He could bray ironically at subordinate officers. He had +the inborn arrogance required for official "snubbing." Being without a +ray of good feeling or modesty, he could allow himself to write with +ceremonial rudeness of men who in his inmost heart he knew to be in +every way his superiors.] He desired exceedingly to be thought +supercilious, and he thus became almost necessary to the Government of +India, was canonised, and caught up to Simla. The Indian papers +chanted little anthems, "the Services" said "Amen," and the apotheosis +was felt to be a success. On reaching Simla he was found to be +familiar with the two local "jokes," planted many years ago by some +jackass. One of these "jokes" is about everything in India having its +peculiar smell, except a flower; the second is some inanity about the +Indian Government being a despotism of despatch-boxes tempered by the +loss of the keys. He often emitted these mournful "jokes" until he was +declared to be an acquisition to Simla society. + +Such is the man I am with to-day. His house is beautifully situated, +overlooking a deep ravine, full of noble pine-trees, and surrounded by +rhododendrons. The verandah is gay with geraniums and tall servants in +Imperial red deeply encrusted with gold. Within, all is very +respectable and nice, only the man is--not exactly vile, but certainly +imperfect in a somewhat conspicuous degree. With the more attractive +forms of sin he has no true sympathy. I can strike no concord with him +on this umbrageous side of nature. I am seriously shocked to discover +this, for he affects infirmity; but his humanity is weak. In his +character I perceive the perfect animal outline, but the colour is +wanting; the glorious sunshine, the profound glooms of humanity are +not there. + +Such a man is dangerous; he decoys you into confidences. Even Satan +cannot respect a sinner of this complexion,--a sinner who is only +fascinated by the sinfulness of sin. As for my poor host, I can see +that he has never really graduated in sin at all; he has only sought +the degree of sinner _honoris causa_. I am sure that he never had +enough true vitality or enterprise to sin as a man ought to sin, if he +does sin. [Of course a man ought not to sin; and the nobler sort try +to reduce their sinning to a minimum; but when they do sin I hold that +they sin like men. (I have heard it said that a man should sin like a +gentleman; but I am much disposed to think that the gentleman nature +appears in the non-sinning lucid intervals.)] When I speak of sin I +will be understood to mean the venial offences of prevarication and +sleeping in church. I am not thinking of sheep-stealing or highway +robbery. My clever friend's work consists chiefly in reducing files of +correspondence on a particular subject to one or two leading thoughts. +Upon these he casts the colour of his own opinions, and submits the +subjective product to the Secretary or Member of Council above him for +final orders. His mind is one of the many dense and refractive mediums +through which the Government of India looks out upon India. + +From time to time he is called upon to write a minute or a note on +some given subject, and then it is that his thoughts and words expand +freely. He feels bound to cover an area of paper proportionate to his +own opinion, of his own importance; he feels bound to introduce a +certain seasoning of foreign words and phrases; and he feels bound to +create, if the occasion seems in any degree to warrant it, one of +those cock-eyed, limping, stammering epigrams which belong exclusively +to the official humour of Simla. [In writing thus, the figure of +another Secretariat official rises before me with reproachful looks. I +see the thought-worn face of that Secretary to whom the Rajas belong, +and who is, in every particular, a striking contrast with the typical +person whose portrait I sketch. The Secretary in the Foreign +Department is a scholar and a man of letters by instinct. Whatever he +writes is something more than correct and precise--it is impressed +with the sweep and cadence of the sea; it is rhythmical, it is +sonorous.] + +[But let us return to the prisoner in the dock] I have said that the +Secretary is clever, scornful, jocose, imperfectly sinful, and nimble +with his pen. I shall only add that he has succeeded in catching the +tone of the Imperial Bumbledom; and then I shall have finished my +defence. + +This tone is an affectation of æsthetic and literary sympathies, +combined with a proud disdain of everything Indian and Anglo-Indian. + +The flotsam and jetsam of advanced European thought are eagerly sought +and treasured up. "The New Republic" and "The Epic of Hades" are on +every drawing-room table. One must speak of nothing but the latest +doings at the Gaiety, the pictures of the last Academy, the ripest +outcome of scepticism in the _Nineteenth Century_, or the aftermath in +the _Fortnightly_. If I were to talk to our Secretariat man about the +harvest prospects of the Deckan, the beauty of the Himalayan scenery, +or the book I have just published in Calcutta about the Rent Law, he +would stare at me with feigned surprise and horror. + + "When he thinks of his own native land, + In a moment he seems to be there; + But, alas! Ali Baba at hand + Soon hurries him back to despair." + + ALI BABA. + + + + +No. VI + + + +H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO + + +[Illustration: THE BENGALI BABOO--"Full of inappropriate words and +phrases."] + + + +[September 13, 1879.] + +The ascidian[B] that got itself evolved into Bengali Baboos must have +seized the first moment of consciousness and thought to regret the +step it had taken; for however much we may desire to diffuse Babooism +over the Empire, we must all agree that the Baboo itself is a subject +for tears. + +The other day, as I was strolling down the Mall, whistling Beethoven's +9th Symphony, I met the Bengali Baboo. It was returning from office. I +asked it if it had a soul. It replied that it had not, but some day it +hoped to pass the matriculation examination of the Calcutta +University. I whistled the opening bars of one of Cherubini's +Requiems, but I saw no resurrection in its eye, so I passed on. + +[I have just procured an adult specimen of the Bengali Baboo (it was +originally the editor of the _Calcutta Moonshine_), and I have engaged +an embryologist, on board wages, to examine and report upon it. + +I once found George Bassoon weeping profusely over a dish of +artichokes. I was a little surprised, for there was a bottle close at +hand and he had a book in his hand. I took the book. It was not +Boccaccio; it was not Rabelais; it was not even Swinburne. I felt that +something must be wrong. I turned to the title-page. I found it was a +poem printed for private circulation by the _Government of India_. It +was called "The Anthropomorphous Baboo subtilised into Man."] + +When I was at Lhassa the Dalai Lama told me that a virtuous +cow-hippopotamus by metempsychosis might, under unfavourable +circumstances, become an undergraduate of the Calcutta University, and +that, when patent-leather shoes and English supervened, the thing was +a Baboo. [This sounds very plausible; but how about the prehensile +tail which the Education Department finds so much in the way of +improvement, which indeed is said to preclude all access to the +Bengali mind, and which can grasp everything but an idea, even an +inquisitorial schoolmaster? "Hereby hangs a tail" is a motto in which +Edward Gibbon had no monopoly.] + +I forget whether it was the Duke of Buckingham, or Mr. Lethbridge, or +General Scindia--I always mix up these C.I.E.'s together in my mind +somehow--who told me that a Bengali Baboo had never been known to +laugh, but only to giggle with clicking noises like a crocodile. Now +this is very telling evidence, because if a Baboo does not laugh at a +C.I.E. he will laugh at nothing. The faculty must be wanting. + +[The Raja of Fattehpur, Member of the Legislative Council, and +commonly known as "Joe Hookham," says that fossil Baboos have been +found in Orissa with the cuckoo-bone, everything that a schoolmaster +could wish. Now "Joe" is a palæontologist not to be sneezed at. This +confirms the opinion of General Cunningham that the mounted figure in +the neighbourhood of Lahore represents a Bengali washerwoman riding to +the _Ghât_ to perform a lustration. Because unless the _os coccyx_ +were all right it would be as difficult to ride a bullock as to get +educated by the usual process.] + +When Lord Macaulay said that what the milk was to the cocoanut, what +beauty was to the buffalo, and what scandal was to woman, that Dr. +Johnson's Dictionary was to the Bengali Baboo, he unquestionably spoke +in terms of figurative exaggeration; nevertheless, a core of truth +lies hidden in his remark. It is by the Baboo's words you know the +Baboo. The true Baboo is full of words and phrases--full of +inappropriate words and phrases lying about like dead men on a +battlefield, in heaps to be carted away promiscuously, without +reference to kith or kin. You may turn on a Baboo at any moment and be +quite sure that words, and phrases, and maxims, and proverbs will come +gurgling forth, without reference to the subject or to the occasion, +to what has gone before or to what will come after. Perhaps it was +with reference to this independence, buoyancy, and gaiety of language +that Lord Lytton declared the Bengali to be "the Irishman of India." + +You know, dear Vanity, I whispered to you before that the poor Baboo +often suffers from a slight aberration of speech which prevents his +articulating the truth--a kind of moral lisp. Lord Lytton could not +have been alluding to this; for it was only yesterday that I heard an +Irishman speak the truth to Lord Lytton about some little matter--I +forget what; cotton duty, I think--and Lord Lytton said, rather +curtly, "Why, you have often told me this before." So Lord Lytton must +be in the habit of hearing certain truths from the Irish. + +It was either Sir Andrew Clarke, Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, or Sir +Some-one-else, who understands all about these things, that first told +me of the tendency to Baboo worship in England at present. I +immediately took steps, when I heard of it, to capitalise my pension +and purchase gold mines in the Wynaad and shares in the Simla Bank. +(Colonel Peterson, of the Simla Fencibles, supported me gallantly in +this latter resolution.) The notion of so dreadful a form of fetishism +establishing itself in one's native land is repugnant to the feelings +even of those who have been rendered callous to such things by seats +in the Bengal Legislative Council. [I refuse to believe that the +Zoological Society has lent its apiary to this movement. It must have +been a spelling-bee your informant was thinking of. + +Talking of monkey-houses reminds me of] Sir George Campbell, who took +such an interest in the development of the Baboo, and the selection of +the fittest for Government employment. He taught them in +debating-clubs the various modes of conducting irresponsible +parliamentary chatter; and he tried to encourage pedestrianism and +football to evolve their legs and bring them into something like +harmony with their long pendant arms. You can still see a few of Sir +George's leggy Baboos coiled up in corners of lecture-rooms at +Calcutta. The Calcutta Cricket Club used to employ one as permanent +"leg." [The Indian Turf Club used to keep a professional "leg," but +now there are so many amateurs it is not required.] + +It is the future of Baboodom I tremble for. When they wax fat with new +religions, music, painting, Comédie Anglaise, scientific discoveries, +they may kick with those developed legs of theirs, until we shall have +to think that they are something more than a joke, more than a mere +_lusus naturæ_, more than a caricature moulded by the accretive and +differentiating impulses of the monad[C] in a moment of wanton +playfulness. The fear is that their tendencies may infect others. The +patent-leather shoes, the silk umbrellas, the ten thousand horse-power +English words and phrases, and the loose shadows of English thought, +which are now so many Aunt Sallies for all the world to fling a jeer +at, might among other races pass into _dummy soldiers_, and from dummy +soldiers into trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so on, out of the +province of Ali Baba and into the columns of serious reflection. Mr. +Wordsworth and his friends the Dakhani Brahmans should consider how +painful it would be, when deprived of the consolations of religion, to +be solemnly repressed by the _Pioneer_--to be placed under that +steam-hammer which by the descent of a paragraph can equally crack the +tiniest of jokes and the hardest of political nuts, can suppress +unauthorised inquiry and crush disaffection. + +At present the Baboo is merely a grotesque Bracken shadow, but in the +course of geological ages it might harden down into something +palpable. It is this possibility that leads Sir Ashley Eden to advise +the Baboo to revert to its original type; but it is not so easy to +become homogeneous after you have been diluted with the physical +sciences and stirred about by Positivists and missionaries. "I would I +were a protoplastic monad!" may sound very rhythmical, poetical, and +all that; but even for a Baboo the aspiration is not an easy one to +gratify.--ALI BABA. + + + + +No. VII + + + +WITH THE RAJA + + + +[September 20, 1879.] + +Try not to laugh, Dear Vanity. I know you don't mean anything by it; +but these Indian kings are so sensitive. The other day I was +translating to a young Raja what Val Prinsep had said about him in his +"Purple India"; he had only said that he was a dissipated young ass +and as ugly as a baboon; but the boy was quite hurt and began to cry, +and I had to send for the Political Agent to quiet him and put him to +sleep. When you consider the matter philosophically there is nothing +_per se_ ridiculous in a Raja. Take a hypothetical case: picture to +yourself a Raja who does not get drunk without some good reason, who +is not ostentatiously unfaithful to his five-and-twenty queens and his +five-and-twenty grand duchesses, who does not festoon his thorax and +abdomen with curious cutlery and jewels, who does not paint his face +with red ochre, and who sometimes takes a sidelong glance at his +affairs, and there is no reason why you should not think of such a one +as an Indian king. India is not very fastidious; so long as the +Government is satisfied, the people of India do not much care what the +Rajas are like. A peasant proprietor said to Mr. Caird and me the +other day, "We are poor cultivators; we cannot afford to keep Rajas. +The Rajas are for the Lord Sahib." + +The young Maharaja of Kuch Parwani assures me that it is not +considered the thing for a Raja at the present day to govern. "A +really swell Raja amuses himself." One hoards money, another plays at +soldiering, a third is horsey, a fourth is amorous, and a fifth gets +drunk; at least so Kuch Parwani thinks. Please don't say that I told +you this. The Foreign Secretary knows what a high opinion I have of +the Rajas, and indeed he often employs me to whitewash them when they +get into scrapes. "A little playful, perhaps, but no more loyal Prince +in India!" This is the kind of thing I put into the Annual +Administration Reports of the Agencies, and I stick to it. Playful no +doubt, but a more loyal class than the Rajas there is not in India. +They have built their houses of cards on the thin crust of British +Rule that now covers the crater, and they are ever ready to pour a +pannikin of water into a crack to quench the explosive forces rumbling +below. + +The amiable chief in whose house I am staying to-day is exceedingly +simple in his habits. At an early hour he issues from the zenana and +joins two or three of his thakores, or barons, who are on duty at +Court, in the morning draught of opium. They sit in a circle, and a +servant in the centre goes round and pours the _kasumbha_[D] out of a +brass bowl and through a woollen cloth into their hands, out of which +they lap it up. Then a cardamum to take away the acrid after-taste. +One hums drowsily two or three bars of an old-world song; another +clears his throat and spits; the Chief yawns, and all snap their +fingers, to prevent evil spirits skipping into his throat; a late +riser joins the circle, and all, except the Chief, give him +_tazim_--that is, rise and salaam; a coarse jest or two, and the party +disperses. A crowd of servants swarm round the Chief as he shuffles +slowly away. Three or four mace-bearers walk in front shouting, "Raja, +Maharaja salaamat ho; niga rakhiyo!" ("Please take notice; to the +King, the great King, let there be salutation!") A confidential +servant continually leans forward and whispers in his ear; another +remains close at hand with a silver tea-pot containing water and +wrapped up in a wet cloth to keep it cool; a third constantly whisks a +yak's tail over the King's head; a fourth carries my Lord's sword; a +fifth his handkerchief; and so on. Where is he going? He dawdles up a +narrow staircase, through a dark corridor, down half-a-dozen steep +steps, across a courtyard overgrown with weeds, up another staircase, +along another passage, and so to a range of heavy quilted red screens +that conceal doors leading into the female penetralia. Here we must +leave him. Two servants disappear behind the _parda_ with their +master, the others promptly lie down where they are, draw the sheets +or blankets which they have been wearing over their faces and feet, +and sleep. About noon we see the King again. He is dressed in white +flowing robes with a heavy carcanet of emeralds round his neck. His +red turban is tied with strings of seed pearls and set off with an +aigrette springing from a diamond brooch. He sits on the Royal +mattress, the _gaddi_.[E] A big bolster covered with green velvet +supports his back; his sword and shield are gracefully disposed before +him. At the corner of the _gaddi_ sits a little representation of +himself in miniature, complete even to the sword and shield. This is +his adopted son and heir. For all the queens and all the grand +duchesses are childless, and a little kinsman had to be transplanted +from a mud village among the cornfields to this dreamland palace to +perpetuate the line. On the corners of the carpet on which the _gaddi_ +rests sit thakores of the Royal house, other thakores sit below, right +and left, forming two parallel lines, dwindling into sardars, palace +officers, and others of lower rank as they recede from the _gaddi_. +Behind the Chief stand the servants with the emblems of royalty--the +peacock feathers, the fan, the yak tail, and the umbrella (now +furled). The confidential servant is still whispering into the ear of +his master from time to time. This is durbar. No one speaks, unless to +exchange a languid compliment with the Chief. Presently essence of +roses and a compound of areca nut and lime are circulated, then a huge +silver pipe is brought in, the Chief takes three long pulls, the +thakores on the carpet each take a pull, and the levée breaks up amid +profound salaams. After this--dinner, opium, and sleep. + +In the cool of the evening our King emerges from the palace, and, +riding on a prodigiously fat white horse with pink points, proceeds to +the place of carousal. A long train of horsemen follow him, and +footmen run before with guns in red flannel covers and silver maces, +shouting "Raja Maharaja salaamat," &c. The horsemen immediately around +him are mounted on well-fed and richly-caparisoned steeds, with all +the bravery of cloth-of-gold, yak-tails, silver chains, and strings of +shells; behind are troopers in a burlesque of English uniform; and +altogether in the rear is a mob of caitiffs on skeleton chargers, +masquerading in every degree of shabbiness and rags, down to nakedness +and a sword. The cavalcade passes through the city. The inhabitants +pour out of every door and bend to the ground. Red cloths and white +veils flutter at the casements overhead. You would hardly think that +the spectacle was one daily enjoyed by the city. There is all the +hurrying and eagerness of novelty and curiosity. Here and there a +little shy crowd of women gather at a door and salute the Chief with a +loud shrill verse of discordant song. It is some national song of the +Chiefs ancestors and of the old heroic days. The place of carousal is +a bare spot near a large and ancient well out of which grows a vast +pipal tree. Hard by is a little temple surmounted by a red flag on a +drooping bamboo. It is here that the _Gangôr_[F] and _Dassahra_[F] +solemnities are celebrated. Arrived on the ground, the Raja slowly +circles his horse; then, jerking the thorn-bit, causes him to advance +plunging and rearing, but dropping first on the near foot and then on +the off foot with admirable precision; and finally, making the white +monster, now in a lather of sweat, rise up and walk a few steps on his +hind legs, the Raja's performance concludes amid many shouts of wonder +and delight from the smooth-tongued courtiers. The thakores and +sardars now exhibit their skill in the _manége_ until the shades of +night fall, when torches are brought, amid much salaaming, and the +cavalcade defiles, through the city, back to the palace. Lights are +twinkling from the higher casements and reflected on the lake below; +the _gola_[G] slave-girls are singing plaintive songs, drum and conch +answer from the open courtyards. The palace is awake. The Raja, we +will romantically presume, bounds lightly from his horse and dances +gaily to the harem to fling himself voluptuously into the luxurious +arms of one of the five-and-twenty queens, or one of the +five-and-twenty grand duchesses; and they stand for one delirious +moment wreathed in each other's embraces-- + + While soft there breathes + Through the cool casement, mingled with the sighs + Of moonlight flowers, music that seems to rise + From some still lake, so liquidly it rose, + And, as it swell'd again at each faint close, + The ear could track through all that maze of chords + And young sweet voices these impassioned words-- + +"Ho, you there! fetch us a pint of gin! and look sharp, will you!" + + For who, in time, knows whither we may vent + The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores + This gain of our best glory shall be sent, + To enrich unknowing nations with our stores! + What worlds in the yet unformèd Orient + May come refined with accents that are ours! + +But, dear Vanity, I can see that you are impatient of scenes whose +luxuries steal, spite of yourself, too deep into your soul; besides, I +dread the effect of such warm situations on a certain Zuleika to whom +the note of Ali Baba is like the thrice-distilled strains of the +bulbul on Bendemeer's stream. So let us electrify ourselves back to +prose and propriety by thinking of the Political Agent; let us plunge +into the cold waters of dreary reality by conjuring up a figure in +tail-coat and gold buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the romantic +and picturesque Raja, G.C.S.I., amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from +the gallery of "Vive M. le Raja; vive la bagatelle!" + +So say we, in faint echoes, defying the anathemas of the Foreign +Office. Do not turn this beautiful temple of ancient days into a mere +mill for decrees and budgets; but sweep it and purify it, and render +it a fitting shrine for the homage and tribute of antique +loyalty--"that proud submission, that subordination of the heart which +kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted +freedom." With tail-coat and cocked-hat government "the unbought grace +of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment +and heroic enterprise is gone."--ALI BABA. + + + + +No. VIII + + + +WITH THE POLITICAL AGENT + + + +A MAN IN BUCKRAM + + + +[Illustration: THE POLITICAL AGENT--"A man in buckram."] + + + + +[September 27, 1879.] + +This is a most curious product of the Indian bureaucracy. Nothing in +all White Baboodom is so wonderful as the Political Agent. A near +relation of the Empress who was travelling a good deal about India +some three or four years ago said that he would rather get a Political +Agent, with raja, chuprassies,[H] and everything complete, to take +home, than the unfigured "mum" of Beluchistan, or the sea-aye-ee +mocking bird, _Kokiolliensis Lyttonia_. But the Political Agent cannot +be taken home. The purple bloom fades in the scornful climate of +England; the paralytic swagger passes into sheer imbecility; the +thirteen-gun tall talk reverberates in jeering echoes; the chuprassies +are only so many black men, and the raja is felt to be a joke. The +Political Agent cannot live beyond Aden. + +The Government of India keeps its Political Agents scattered over the +native states in small jungle stations. It furnishes them with +maharajas, nawabs, rajas, and chuprassies, according to their rank, +and it usually throws in a house, a gaol, a doctor, a volume of +Aitchison's Treaties, an escort of native Cavalry, a Star of India, +an assistant, the powers of a first-class magistrate, a flag-staff, +six camels, three tents, and a salute of eleven or thirteen +guns. In very many cases the Government of India nominates +a Political Agent to the rank of Son-to-a-Lieut.-Governor, +Son-in-Law-to-a-Lieut.-Governor, Son-to-a-member-of-Council, or +Son-to-an-agent-to-the-Governor-General. Those who are thus elevated +to the Anglo-Indian peerage need have no thought for the morrow what +they shall do, what they shall say, or wherewithal they shall be +supplied with a knowledge of Oriental language and occidental law. +Nature clothes them with increasing quantities of gold lace and starry +ornaments, and that charming, if unblushing, female--Lord Lytton begs +me to write "maid"--Miss Anglo-Indian Promotion, goes skipping about +among them like a joyful kangaroo. + +The Politicals are a Greek chorus in our popular burlesque, "Empire." +The Foreign Secretary is the prompter. The company is composed of +nawabs and rajas (with the Duke of Buckingham as a "super"). Lord +Meredith is the scene-shifter; Sir John, the manager. The Secretary of +State, with his council, is in the stage-box; the House of Commons in +the stalls; the London Press in the gallery; the East Indian +Association, Exeter Hall, Professor Fawcett, Mr. Hyndman, and the +criminal classes generally, in the pit; while those naughty little +Scotch boys, the shock-headed Duke and Monty Duff, who once tried to +turn down the lights, pervade the house with a policeman on their +horizon. As we enter the theatre a dozen chiefs are dancing in the +ballet to express their joy at the termination of the Afghan War. The +political _choreutæ_ are clapping their hands, encouraging them by +name and pointing them out to the gallery. + +The government of a native state by clerks and chuprassies, with a +beautiful _fainéant_ Political Agent for Sundays and Hindu festivals, +is, I am told, a thing of the past. Colonel Henderson, the imperial +"Peeler," tells me so, and he ought to know, for he is a kind of +demi-official superintendent of Thugs and Agents. Nowadays, my +informant assures me, the Political Agents undergo a regular training +in a Madras Cavalry Regiment or in the Central India Horse, or on the +Viceroy's Staff, and if they have to take charge of a Mahratta State +they are obliged to pass an examination in classical Persian poetry. +This is as it ought to be. The intricacies of Oriental intrigue and +the manifold complication of tenure and revenue that entangle +administrative procedure in the protected principalities, will unravel +themselves in presence of men who have enjoyed such advantages. + +When I first came out to this country I was placed in charge of three +degrees of latitude and eight of longitude in Rajputana that I might +learn the language. The soil was sandy, the tenure feudal +(_zabardast_,[I] as we call it in India), and the Raja a lunatic by +nature and a dipsomaniac by education. He had been educated by his +grandmamma and the hereditary Minister. I found that his grandmamma +and the hereditary Minister were most anxious to relieve me of the +most embarrassing details of government, so I handed them a copy of +the Ten Commandments, underlining two that I thought might be useful, +and put them in charge. They were old-fashioned in their methods--like +Sir Billy Jones; but the result was admirable. In two years the +revenue was reduced from ten to two lakhs of rupees, and the +expenditure proportionately increased. A bridge, a summer-house, and a +school were built; and I wrote the longest "Administration Report" +that has ever issued from the Zulmabad Residency. When I left money +was so cheap and lightly regarded that I sold my old buggy horse for +two thousand rupees to grandmamma, with many mutual expressions of +good-will--through a curtain--and I have not been paid to this day. +But since then the horse-market has been ruined in the native states +by these imperial _mélas_[J] and durbars. A poor Political has no +chance against these Government of India people, who come down with +strings of three-legged horses, and--no, I won't say they sell them to +the chiefs--I should be having a commission of my _khidmatgars_[K] +sitting upon me, like poor Har Sahai, who was beaten by Mr. Saunders, +and Malhar Rao Gaikwar, who fancied his Resident was going to poison +him. + +I like to see a Political up at Simla wooing that hoyden Promotion in +her own sequestered bower. It is good to see Hercules toiling at the +feet of Omphale. It is good to see Pistol fed upon leeks by +Under-Secretaries and women. How simple he is! How boyish he can be, +and yet how intense! He will play leap frog at Annandale; he will +paddle about in the stream below the water-falls without shoes and +stockings; but if you allude in the most distant way to rajas or +durbars, he lets down his face a couple of holes and talks like a +weather prophet. He will be so interesting that you can hardly bear +it; so interesting that you will feel sorry he is not talking to the +Governor-General up at Peterhoff. + +[But I feel that an Agent to the Governor-General is looking over my +shoulder, so perhaps I had better stop; though I know two or three +things about Politicals.]--SIR ALI BABA, K.C.B.[L] + + + + +No. IX + + + +WITH THE COLLECTOR + + + +[October 4, 1879.] + +Was it not the Bishop of Bombay who said that man was an automaton +plus the mirror of consciousness? The Government of every Indian +province is an automaton plus the mirror of consciousness. The +Secretariat is consciousness, and the Collectors form the automaton. +The Collector works, and the Secretariat observes and registers. + +To the people of India the Collector is the Imperial Government. He +watches over their welfare in the many facets which reflect our +civilisation. He establishes schools and dispensaries [for their +children], gaols [for their troublesome relations and neighbours], and +courts of justice [for the benefit of their brothers who can talk and +write]. He levies the rent of their fields, he fixes the tariff, and +he nominates to every appointment, from that of road-sweeper or +constable, to the great blood-sucking officers round the Court and +Treasury. As for Boards of Revenue and Lieutenant-Governors who +occasionally come sweeping across the country, with their locust hosts +of servants and petty officials, they are but an occasional nightmare; +while the Governor-General is a mere shadow in the background of +thought, half blended with "John Company Bahadur" and other myths of +the dawn. + +The Collector lives in a long rambling bungalow furnished with folding +chairs and tables, and in every way marked by the provisional +arrangements of camp life. He seems to have just arrived from out of +the firmament of green fields and mango groves that encircles the +little station where he lives; or he seems just about to pass away +into it again. The shooting-howdahs are lying in the verandah, the +elephant of a neighbouring landowner is swinging his hind foot to and +fro under a tree, or switching up straw and leaves on to his back, a +dozen camels are lying down in a circle making bubbling noises, and +tents are pitched here and there to dry, like so many white wings on +which the whole establishment is about to rise and fly away--fly away +into "the district," which is the correct expression for the vast +expanse of level plain melting into blue sky on the wide +horizon-circle around. + +The Collector is a bustling man. He is always in a hurry. His +multitudinous duties succeed one another so fast that one is never +ended before the next begins. A mysterious thing called "the Joint" +comes gleaning after him, I believe, and completes the inchoate work. + +The verandah is full of fat black men in clean linen waiting for +interviews. They are bankers, shopkeepers, and landholders, who have +only come to "pay their respects," with ever so little a petition as a +corollary. The chuprassie-vultures hover about them. Each of these +obscene fowls has received a gratification from each of the clean fat +men; else the clean fat men would not be in the verandah. This import +tax is a wholesome restraint upon the excessive visiting tendencies of +wealthy men of colour. [Several little groups of] brass dishes filled +with pistachio nuts and candied sugar are ostentatiously displayed +here and there; they are the oblations of the would-be visitors. The +English call these offerings "dollies"; the natives _dáli_. They +represent in the profuse East the visiting cards of the meagre West. + +Although from our lofty point of observation, among the pine-trees, +the Collector seems to be of the smallest social calibre, a mere +carronade, not to be distinguished by any proper name; in his own +district he is a Woolwich Infant; and a little community of +microscopicals,--doctors, engineers, inspectors of schools, and +assistant magistrates, look up to him as to a magnate. + +They tell little stories of his weaknesses and eccentricities, and his +wife is considered a person entitled "to give herself airs" (within +the district) if she feels so disposed; while to their high dinners is +allowed the use of champagne and "Europe" talk on æsthetic subjects. +The Collector is not, however, permitted to wear a chimney-pot hat and +gloves on Sunday (unless he has been in the Provincial Secretariat as +a boy); a Terai hat is sufficient for a Collector. + +A Collector is usually a sportsman; when he is a poet, a +co-respondent, or a neologist it is thought rather a pity; and he is +spoken of in undertones. Neology is considered especially +reprehensible. The junior member of the Board of Revenue, or even the +Commissioner of a division (if he be _pukka_)[M], may question the +literal inspiration of Genesis; but it is not good form for a +Collector to tamper with his Bible. A Collector should have no leisure +for opinions of any sort. + +I have said that a Collector is usually a sportsman. In this capacity +he is frequently made use of by the Viceroy and long-shore Governors, +as he is an adept at showing sport to globe-trotters. The villagers +who live on the borders of the jungle will generally turn out and beat +for the Collector, and the petty chief who owns the jungle always +keeps a tiger or two for district officers. A Political Agent's tiger +is known to be a domestic animal suitable for delicate noble Lords +travelling for health; but a Collector's tiger is often [believed to +be almost] a wild beast, although usually reared upon buffalo calves +and accustomed to be driven. [Of course the tiger which the Collector +and his friends shoot is quite an inferior article; a fierce, roaming +creature that lives upon spotted deer when it can get them, but is +often quite savage from hunger.] The Collector, who is always the most +unselfish and hospitable of men, only kills the fatted tiger for +persons of distinction with letters of introduction. Any common jungle +tiger, even a man-eater, is good enough for himself and his friends. + +The Collector never ventures to approach Simla, when on leave. At +Simla people would stare and raise their eye-brows if they heard that +a Collector was on the hill. They would ask what sort of a thing a +Collector was. The Press Commissioner would be sent to interview it. +The children at Peterhoff would send for it to play with. So the +clodhopping Collector goes to Naini Tal or Darjiling, where he is +known either as Ellenborough Higgins, or Higgins of Gharibpur in +territorial fashion. Here he is understood. Here he can bubble of his +_Bandobast_,[N] his _Balbacha_[O] and his _Bawarchikhana_;[P] and here +he can speak in familiar accents of his neighbours, Dalhousie Smith +and Cornwallis Jones. All day long he strides up and down the club +verandah with his old Haileybury chum Teignmouth Tompkins; and they +compare experiences of the hunting-field and office, and denounce in +unmeasured terms of Oriental vituperation the new sort of civilian who +moves about with the Penal Code under his arm and measures his +authority by statute, clause, and section. + +In England the Collector is to be found riding at anchor in the +Bandicoot Club. He makes two or three hurried cruises to his native +village, where he finds himself half forgotten. This sours him. The +climate seems worse than of old, the means of locomotion at his +disposal are inconvenient and expensive; he yearns for the sunshine +and elephants of Gharibpur, and returns an older and a quieter man. +The afternoon of life is throwing longer shadows, the Acheron of +promotion is gaping before him; he falls into a Commissionership; +still deeper into an officiating seat on the Board of Revenue. +_Facilis est descensus, etc._ Nothing will save him now; +transmigration has set in; the gates of Simla fly open; it is all +over. Let us pray that his halo may fit him.--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. X + + + +BABY IN PARTIBUS + + + +[October 11, 1879.] + +The Empire has done less for Anglo-Indian Babies than for any class of +the great exile community. Legislation provides them with neither +rattle nor coral, privilege leave nor pension. Papa has a Raja and +Star of India to play with; Mamma the Warrant of Precedence and the +Hill Captains; but Baby has nothing--not even a missionary; Baby is +without the amusement of the meanest cannibal. + +Baby is debarred from the society of his compatriots. His father is +cramped and frozen with the chill cares of office; his mother is +deadened by the gloomy routine of economy and fashion; custom lies +upon her with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life; the +fountains of natural fancy and mirth are frozen over; so Baby lisps +his dawn pæans in soft Oriental accents, wakening harmonious echoes +amongst those impulsive and impressionable children of Nature that +masque themselves in the black slough of Bearers and Ayahs; and Baby +blubbers in Hindustani. + +These Ayah and Bearer people sit with Baby in the verandah on a little +carpet; broken toys and withered flowers lie around. They croon to +Baby some old-world _katabaukalesis_, while beauty, born of murmuring +sound, passes into Baby's eyes. The squirrel sits chirruping +familiarly on the edge of the verandah with his tail in the air and +some uncracked pericarp in his uplifted hands, the kite circles aloft +and whistles a shrill and mournful note, the sparrows chatter, the +crow clears his throat, the minas scream discordantly, and Baby's +soft, receptive nature thus absorbs an Indian language. Very soon Baby +will think from right to left, and will lisp in the luxuriant bloom of +Oriental hyperbole. [Presently, when Baby grows a little older, Baby +will say to the Bearer, through his sweet little nose, "Arreh! Ulu ka +bacha, tu kya karta hai?" Which being interpreted, is, "Ah! Child of +night's sweet bird, what dost thou now?" Afterwards Baby will learn to +say many other things which it is not good to repeat here.] + +In the evening Baby will go out for an airing with the Bearer and Ayah +people, and while they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on +kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will listen to the extensile +tale of their simple sorrows. He will hear, with a sigh, that the +profits of petty larceny are declining; he will be taught to regret +the increasing infirmities of his Papa's temper; and portraits in +sepia of his Mamma will be observed by him to excite laughter mingled +with dark impulsive words. Thus there will pass into Baby's eyes +glances of suspicious questionings, "the blank misgivings of a +creature moving about in worlds not realised." + +In the long summer days Baby will patter listlessly about the darkened +rooms accompanied by his suite, who will carry a feeding bottle--Maw's +Patent Feeding Bottle--just as the Sergeant-at-Arms carries the mace; +and, from time to time, little Mister Speaker will squat down on his +dear little hams and take a refreshing pull or two. At breakfast and +luncheon time little Mister Speaker will straggle into the +dining-room, and fond parents will give him a tidbit of many soft +dainties, to be washed down with brandy and water, beer, sherry, or +other alcoholic draught. On such broken meals Baby is raised. + +The little drawn face, etiolated and weary-looking, recommends sleep; +but Baby is a bad sleeper. The Bearer-in-waiting carries about a small +pillow all day long, and from time to time Baby is applied to it. He +frets and cries, and they brood over him humming some old Indian song, +["Keli Blai," or "Hillu Milli Pania"]. Still he turns restlessly and +whimpers, though they pat him and shampoo him, and call him fond names +and tell him soothing stories of bulbuls and flowers and woolly sheep. +But Baby does not sleep, and even Indian patience is exhausted. Both +Ayah and Bearer would like to slip away to their mud houses at the +other end of the compound and have a pull at the fragrant _huqqa_ and +a gossip with the _saices;_[Q] but while _Sunny Baba_ is at large, and +might at any moment make a raid on Mamma, who is dozing over a novel +on a spider-chair near the mouth of the thermantidote, the Ayah and +Bearer dare not leave their charge. So _Sunny Baba_ must sleep, and +the Bearer has in the folds of his waist-cloth a little black fragment +of the awful sleep-compeller, and Baby is drugged into a deep uneasy +sleep of delirious, racking dreams. + +Day by day Baby grows paler, day by day thinner, day by day a stranger +light burns in his bonny eyes. Weird thoughts sweep through Baby's +brain, weird questions startle Mamma out of the golden languors in +which she is steeped, weird words frighten the gentle Ayah as she +fondles her darling. The current of babble and laughter has almost +ceased to flow. Baby lies silent in the Ayah's lap staring at the +ceiling. He clasps a broken toy with wasted fingers. His Bearer comes +with some old watchword of fun; Baby smiles faintly, but makes no +response. The old man takes him tenderly in his arms and carries him +to the verandah; Baby's head falls heavily on his shoulder. + +The outer world lies dimly round Baby; within, strange shadows are +flitting by. The wee body is pressing heavily upon the spirit; Baby is +becoming conscious of the burthen. He will be quiet for hours on his +little cot; he does not sleep, but he dreams. Earth's joys and lights +are fast fading out of those resilient eyes; Baby's spirit is waiting +on the shores of eternity, and already hears "the mighty waters +rolling evermore." + +The broken toys are swept away into a corner, a silence and fear has +fallen upon the household, black servants weep, their mistress seeks +refuge in headache and smelling salts, the hard father feels a +strange, an irrepressible welling up of little memories. He loves the +golden haired boy; he hardly knew it before. If he could only hear +once more the merry laugh, the chatter and the shouting! But he cannot +hear it any more; he will never hear his child's voice again. Baby has +passed into the far-away Thought-World. Baby is now only a dream and a +memory, only the recollection of a music that is heard no more. Baby +has crossed that cloudy, storm-driven bourn of speculation and fear +whither we are all tending. + + A few white bones upon a lonely sand, + A rotting corpse beneath the meadow grass, + That cannot hear the footsteps as they pass, + Memorial urns pressed by some foolish hand + Have been for all the goal of troublous fears, + Ah! breaking hearts and faint eyes dim with tears, + And momentary hope by breezes framed + To flame that ever fading falls again, + And leaves but blacker night and deeper pain, + Have been the mould of life in every land. + +Baby is planted out for evermore in the dank and weedy little cemetery +that lies on the outskirts of the station where he lived and died. +Those golden curls, those soft and rounded limbs, and that laughing +mouth, are given up to darkness and the eternal hunger of corruption. +Through sunshine and rain, through the long days of summer, through +the long nights of winter, for ever, for ever, Baby lies silent and +dreamless under that waving grass. The bee will hum overhead for +evermore, and the swallow glance among the cypress. The butterfly will +flutter for ages and ages among the rank flowers--Baby will still lie +there. Come away, come away; your cheeks are pale; it cannot be, we +cannot believe it, we must not remember it; other Baby voices will +kindle our life and love, Baby's toys will pass to other Baby hands. +All will change; we will change. + + Yet, darling, but come back to me; + Whatever change the years have wrought, + I find not yet one lonely thought + That cries against my wish for thee. + + ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XI + + + +THE RED CHUPRASSIE + +OR, THE CORRUPT LICTOR[R] + + + +[October 18, 1879.] + +The red chuprassie is our Colorado beetle, our potato disease, our +Home ruler, our cupboard skeleton, the little rift in our lute. The +red-coated chuprassie is a cancer in our Administration. To be rid of +it there is hardly any surgical operation we would not cheerfully +undergo. You might extract the Bishop of Bombay, amputate the Governor +of Madras, put a seton in the pay and allowances of the +Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and we should smile. + +The red chuprassie is ubiquitous; he is in the verandah of every +official's house in India, from the Governor-General downwards; he is +in the portico of every Court of Justice, every Treasury, every Public +Office, every Government School, every Government Dispensary in the +country. He walks behind the Collector; he follows the conservancy +carts; he prowls about the candidate for employment; he hovers over +the accused and accuser; he haunts the Raja; he infests the tax-payer. + +He wears the Imperial livery; he is to the entire population of India +the exponent of British Rule; he is the mother-in-law of liars, the +high-priest of extortioners, and the receiver-general of bribes. + +Through this refracting medium the people of India see their rulers. +The chuprassie paints his master in colours drawn from his own black +heart. Every lie he tells, every insinuation he throws out, every +demand he makes, is endorsed with his master's name. He is the +arch-slanderer of our name in India. + +[He is not an individual--he is a member of a widely rammified +society.] There is no city in India, no mofussil-station, no little +settlement of officials far up country, in which the chuprassie does +not find sworn brothers and confederates. The cutcherry clerks and the +police are with him everywhere; higher native officials are often on +his side. + +He sits at the receipt of custom in the Collector's verandah, and no +native visitor dare approach who has not conciliated him with money. +The candidate for employment, educated in our schools, and pregnant +with words about purity, equality, justice, political economy, and all +the rest of it, addresses him with joined hands as "Maharaj," and +slips silver into his itching palm. The successful place-hunter pays +him a feudal relief on receiving office or promotion, and benevolences +flow in from all who have anything to hope or fear from those in +power. + +[Illustration: THE RED CHUPRASSIE--"The corrupt lictor."] + +In the Native States the chuprassie flourishes rampantly. He receives +a regular salary through their representatives or vakils at the +agencies, from all the native chiefs round about, and on all occasions +of visits or return visits, durbars, religious festivals, or public +ceremonials, he claims and receives preposterous fees. The Rajas, +whose dignity is always exceedingly delicate, stand in great fear of +the chuprassies. They believe that on public occasions the chuprassies +have sometimes the power of sicklying them o'er with the pale cast of +neglect. + +English officers who have become de-Europeanised from long residence +among undomesticated natives, or by the habitual performance of petty +ceremonial duties of an Oriental hue, employ chuprassies to aggrandise +their importance. They always figure on a background of red +chuprassies. Such officials are what Lord Lytton calls White Baboos. + +[Mr. Whitley Stokes, in his own artless way, once proposed legislating +against chuprassies, I am told. His plan was to include them among the +criminal classes, and hand them over to Major Henderson, the +Director-General of Thuggee and Dacoity; but this functionary, viewing +the matter in a different light, made some demi-official +representation to the Legal Member under the pseudonym of "Walker," +and the subject dropped.] + +A great Maharaja once told me that it was the tyranny of the +Government chuprassies that made him take to drink. He spoke of them +as "the Pindarries of modern India." He had a theory that the small +pay we gave them accounted for their evil courses. A chuprassie gets +about eight pounds sterling a year. He added that if we saw a +chuprassie on seven rupees a month living overtly at the rate of a +thousand, we ought immediately to appoint him an _attaché_ or put him +in gaol. + +I make a simple rule in my own establishment of dismissing a +chuprassie as soon as he begins to wax fat. A native cannot become +rich without waxing fat, because wealth is primarily enjoyed by the +mild Gentoo as a means of procuring greasy food in large quantities. +His secondary enjoyment is to sit upon it. He digs a hole in the +ground for his rupees, and broods over them, like a great obscene +fowl. If you see a native sitting very hard on the same place day +after day, you will find it worth your while to dig him up. Shares in +this are better than the Madras gold mines. + +In early Company days, when the Empire was a baby, the European +writers[S] regarded with a kindly eye those profuse Orientals who went +about bearing gifts; but Lord Clive closed this branch of the +business, and it has been taken up by our scarlet runners or verandah +parasites, in our name. Now, dear Vanity, you may call me a +Russophile, or by any other marine term of endearment you like, if I +don't think the old plan was the better of the two. We ourselves could +conduct corruption decently; but to be responsible for corruption over +which we exercise no control is to lose the credit of a good name and +the profits of a bad one. + +[Old qui-hyes tell you that there are three things you cannot separate +from an "Indian"--venality, perjury, and rupees. Now I totally +disagree with the old qui-hyes. In secret I am a great admirer of the +Indian, and publicly I always treat him with respect. I have such a +regard for him that I never expose him to temptation. I pay him well, +I explain to him my eccentric opinions about receiving bribes, and I +remind him of the moral and electrifying properties of the different +species of cane which Nature has so thoughtfully provided nearly +everywhere in India. The consequence is that my chuprassies do not +soil their hands with spurious gratifications, and figuratively +describe me as their father and mother.] + +I hear that the Government of India proposes to form a mixed committee +of Rajas and chuprassies to discuss the question as to whether native +chiefs ever give bribes and native servants ever take them. It is +expected that a report favourable to Indian morality will be the +result. Of course Raja Joe Hookham will preside.--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XII + + + +THE PLANTER + + + +A FARMER PRINCE + + +[Illustration: THE PLANTER--"A farmer prince."] + + + +[October 25, 1879] + +The Planter lives to-day as we all lived fifty years ago. He lives in +state and bounty, like the Lord of Burleigh. He lives like that fine +old English gentleman who had an old estate, and who kept up his old +mansion at a bountiful old rate. He lives in a grand wholesale manner; +he lives in round numbers; he lives like a hero. Everything is Homeric +about him. He establishes himself firmly in the land with great joy +and plenty; and he gathers round him all that makes life full-toned +and harmonious, from the grand timbre of draught-ale and the +organ-thunder of hunting, to the piccolo and tintinnabulum of Poker +and maraschino. His life is a fresco-painting, on which some Cyclopæan +Raphaelite has poured his rainbows from a fire-engine of a hundred +elephant-power. + +We paltry officials live meanly in pen-and-ink sketches. Our little +life is bounded by a dream of promotion and pension. We toil, we +slave; we put by money, we pinch ourselves. We are hardly fit to live +in this beautiful world, with its laughing girls and grapes, its +summer seas, its sunshine and flowers, its Garnet Wolseleys and +bulbuls. We go moping through its glories in green spectacles, +befouling it with our loathsome statistics and reports. The sweet air +of heaven, the blue firmament, and the everlasting hills do not +satisfy our poisoned hearts; so we make to ourselves a little tin-pot +world of blotted-paper, debased rupees, graded lists, and tinsel +honours; we try to feed our lungs on its typhoidal effluvia. Aroint[T] +thee, Comptroller and Accountant-General with all thy grisly crew! +Thou art worse than the blind Fury with the abhorred shears; for thou +slittest my thin-spun pay-wearing spectacles, thrice branded varlet! +[There is a lily on my brow with anguish moist and fever-dew, and on +my cheeks a fading rose fast withereth too, and for these emblems of +woe thou shalt have to give an answer.] + +Dear Vanity, of course you understand that I do not allude to the +amiable old gentleman who controls our Accounts Department, who is the +mirror of tenderness. The person I would impale is a creation of my +own wrath, a mere official type struck in frenzied fancy, [at a moment +when Time seems a maniac scattering dust, and Life a Fury slinging +flame]. + +Let us soothe ourselves by contemplating the Planter and his generous, +simple life. It calms one to look at him. He is something placid, +strong, and easeful. Without wishing to appear obsequious, I always +feel disposed to borrow money when I meet a substantial Planter. He +inspires confidence. I grasp his strong hand; I take him +(figuratively) to my heart, while the desire to bank with him wells up +mysteriously in my bosom. + +He lives in a grand old bungalow, surrounded by ancient trees. Large +rooms open into one another on every side in long vistas; a broad and +hospitable-looking verandah girds all. Everywhere trophies of the +chase meet the eye. We walk upon cool matting; we recline upon +long-armed chairs; low and heavy punkahs swing overhead; a sweet +breathing of wet _khaskhas_ grass comes sobbing out of the +thermantidote; and a gigantic but gentle _khidmatgar_ is always at our +elbow with long glasses on a silver tray. This man's name is Nubby +Bux, but he means nothing by it, and a child might play with him. I +often say to him in a caressing tone, "_Peg lao_";[U] and he is +grateful for any little attention of this sort. + +It is near noon. My friend Mr. Great-Heart, familiarly known as "Jamie +Macdonald," has been taking me over the factory and stables. We have +been out since early morning on the jumpiest and beaniest of Waler +mares. I am not killed, but a good deal shaken. The glass trembles in +my hand. I have an absorbing thirst, and I drink copiously, almost +passionately. My out-stretched legs are reposing on the arms of my +chair and I stiffen into an attitude of rest. I hear my host splashing +and singing in his tub. + +Breakfast is a meal conceived in a large and liberal spirit. We pass +from dish to dish through all the compass of a banquet, the diapason +closing full in beer. Several joyful assistants, whose appetites would +take first-class honours at any university or cattle show, join the +hunt and are well in at the beer. What tales are told! I feel glad +that Miss Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Mary Somerville, and Dr. Watts are +not present. I keep looking round to see that no bishop comes into the +room. It is a comfort to me to think that Bishop Heber is dead. I gave +up blushing five years ago when I entered the Secretariat; but if at +this moment Sir William Jones were to enter, or Mr. Whitley Stokes +with his child-like heart and his Cymric vocabulary, I believe I +should be strangely affected. + +The day welters on through drink and billiards. In the afternoon more +joyful Planters drop in, and we play a rubber. From whist to the polo +ground, where I see the merry men of Tirhoot play the best and fastest +game that the world can show. At night carousals and potations pottle +deep. Next morning sees the entire party in the _khadar_[V] of the +river, mounted on Arabs, armed with spears, hunting Jamie Macdonald's +Caledonian boar. These Scotchmen never forget their nationality. + +And while these joyful Planters are thus rejoicing, the indigo is +growing silently all round. While they play, Nature works for them. So +does the patient black man; he smokes his _huqqa_ and keeps an eye on +the rising crop. + +You will have learnt from Mr. Caird that indigo grows in cakes (the +ale is imported); to his description of the process of manufacture I +can only add that the juice is generally expressed in the vernacular. +You give a cake of the raw material to a coloured servant, you stand +over him to see that he doesn't eat it, and your assistant canes him +slowly as he squeezes the juice into a blue bottle. Blue pills are +made of the refuse; your female servants use aniline dyes; and there +you are. If any one dies in any other way you can refuse him the rites +of cremation; fine him four annas; and warn him not to do it again. +This is a burning question in Tirhoot and occasions much litigation. + +Jamie Macdonald has now a contract for dyeing the Blue ribbons of the +Turf; Tommy Begg has taken the blue boars and the Oxford Blues; and +Bobby Thomas does the blue-books and the True Blues. It may not be +generally known that the aristocracy do not employ aniline dyes for +their blue blood. The minor Planters do business chiefly in blue +stockings, blue bonnets, blue bottles, blue beards, and blue coats. +For more information of this kind I can only refer you to Mr. Caird +and the _Nineteenth Century_. + +Some Planters grow tea, coffee, lac, mother-of-pearl, pickles, +poppadums and curry powder--but now I am becoming encyclopædic and +scientific, and trespassing on ground already taken up by the Famine +Commission. + +Fewer Planters are killed now by wild camels who roam over the mango +fields, but a good deal of damage is still done to the prickly +pear-trees. Mr. Cunningham has written an interesting note on this. +Rewards have still to be offered for dead tigers and persons who have +died of starvation. "When the Government will not give a doit to +relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian."-- +ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XIII + + + +THE EURASIAN + + + +A STUDY IN CHIARO-OSCURO + + + +[Illustration: THE EURASIAN--"A study in chiaro oscuro."] + + + +[November 1, 1879.] + +The Anglo-Indian has a very fine eye for colour. He will mark down +"one anna in the rupee" with unerring certainty; he will suspect +smaller coin. He will tell you how he can detect an adulterated +European by his knuckles, his nails, his eyebrows, his pronunciation +of the vowels, and his conception of propriety in dress, manner, and +conduct. + +To the thorough-bred Anglo-Indian, whose blood has distilled through +Haileybury for three generations, and whose cousins to the fourth +degree are Collectors and Indian Army Colonels, the Eurasian, however +fair he may be, is a _bête noir_. Mrs. Ellenborough Higgins is always +setting or pointing at black blood. + +And sometimes the whitey-brown man is objectionable. He is vain, apt +to take offence, sly, indolent, sensuous, and, like Reuben, "unstable +as water." He has a facile smile, a clammy hand, a manner either +forward or obsequious, a mincing gait, and not always the snowiest +linen. [In very dangerous cases he has a peculiar smell.] + +Towards natives the Eurasian is cold, haughty, and formal; and this +attitude is repaid, with interest, in scorn and hatred. There is no +concealing the fact that to the mild Gentoo the Eurasian is a very +distasteful object. + +But having said this, the case for the prosecution closes, and we may +turn to the many soft and gentle graces which the Eurasian develops. + +In all the relations of family life the Eurasian is admirable. He is a +dutiful son, a circumspect husband, and an affectionate father. He +seldom runs through a fortune; he hardly ever elopes with a young lady +of fashion; he is not in the habit of cutting off his son with a +shilling; and he is an infrequent worshipper in that Temple of +Separation where _Decrees Nisi_ sever the Gordian knots of Hymen. + +As a citizen he is zealously loyal. He will speak at municipal +meetings, write letters about drainage and conservancy to the papers, +observe local holidays in his best clothes, and attend funerals. + +The Eurasian is a methodical and trustworthy clerk, and often occupies +a position of great trust and responsibility in our public offices. He +is not bold or original, like Sir Andrew Clarke; or amusing, like Mr. +Stokes; but he does what work is given him to do without overstepping +the modesty of nature. + +[Most Eurasians are Catholics; but some belong to the small Protestant +heresies and call themselves Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and what not. +To whatever creed they attach themselves, they are faithful and +devoted; but the pageantry, the music, the antiquity, and the mystery +of the ancient Church, draw forth, with the most potent spells, the +fervour of their warm, emotional natures. They are never sceptical: +the harder a doctrine is to believe the more they like it; the more +improbable a tradition is the more tenaciously they cling to it. They +are attracted by the supernatural and the horrible; they would not +bate a single saint or devil of the complete faith to rescue all the +truths of modern science from the ban of the Church.] + +The Eurasian girl is often pretty and graceful; and, if the solution +of India in her veins be weak, there is an unconventionality and +_naïveté_ sometimes which undoubtedly has a charm; and which, my dear +friend, J.H----, of the 110th Clodhoppers (Lord Cardwell's Own +Clodhoppers) never could resist: "What though upon her lips there hung +the accents of the tchi-tchi tongue." + +A good many Eurasians who are not clerks in public offices, or +telegraph signallers, or merchants, are loafers. They are passed on +wherever they are found, to the next station, and thus they are kept +in healthy circulation throughout India. They are all in search of +employment on the railway; but as a provisional arrangement, to meet +the more immediate and pressing exigencies of life, they will accept a +small gratuity, [or engage themselves in snapping up unconsidered +trifles]. They are mainly supported by municipalities, who keep them +in brandy, rice, and railway-tickets out of funds raised for this +purpose. Workhouses and Malacca canes have still to be tried. + +Bishop Gell's plan for colonising the Laccadives and Cocos with these +loafers has not met with much acceptance at Simla. The Home Secretary +does not see from what Imperial fund they can be supplied with +bathing-drawers and barrel-organs; but the Home Secretary ought to +know that there is a philanthropic society at Lucknow of the +disinterested, romantic, Turnerelli type, ready to furnish all the +wants of a young colony, from underclothing to Eno's fruit salt. + +A great many wise proposals emanate from Simla as regards some +artificial future for the Eurasian. One Ten-thousand-pounder asks +Creation in a petulant tone of surprise why Creation does not make the +Eurasian a carpenter; another looks round the windy hills and wonders +why somebody does not make the Eurasian a high farmer. The shovel hats +are surprised that the Eurasian does not become a missionary, or a +schoolmaster, or a policeman, or something of that sort. The native +papers say, "Deport him"; the white prints say, "Make him a soldier"; +and the Eurasian himself says, "Make me a Commissioner, or give me a +pension." In the meantime, while nothing is being done, we can rail at +the Eurasian for not being as we are. + + "Let us sit on the thrones + In a purple sublimity, + And grind down men's bones + To a pale unanimity." + +There is no proper classification of the mixed race in India as there +is in America. The convenient term _quadroon_, for instance, instead +of "four annas in the rupee," is quite unknown; the consequence is +that every one--from Anna Maria de Souza, the "Portuguese" cook, a +nobleman on whose cheek the best shoe-blacking would leave a white +mark, to pretty Miss Fitzalan Courtney, of the Bombay Fencibles, who +is as white as an Italian princess--is called an "Eurasian." + +"Do you know, dear Vanity, that it is not impossible that King Asoka +(of the Edict Pillars), the 'Constantine of Buddhism,' was an +Eurasian? I have not got the works of Arrian, or Mr. Lethbridge's +'History of the World' at hand, but I have some recollection of +Sandracottus, or one of Asoka's fathers or grandfathers, marrying a +Miss Megasthenes, or Seleucus. With such memories no wonder they call +us 'Mean Whites.'"--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XIV + + + +THE VILLAGER + + "Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego" (like the + Famine Commissioners) "incredibiliter delector." + + +[November 8, 1879.] + +I missed two people at the Delhi Assemblage of 1877. All the gram-fed +secretaries and most of the alcoholic chiefs were there; but the +famine-haunted villager and the delirium-shattered, opium-eating +Chinaman, who had to pay the bill, were not present. + +I cannot understand why Viceroys and English newspapers call the +Indian cultivator a "riot." He never amounts to a riot if you treat +him properly. He may be a disorderly crowd sometimes; but that is only +when you embody him in a police force or convert him into cavalry. The +atomic disembodied villager has no notion of rioting, _ça-ira_ +singing, or any of the tomfooleries of revolution. These pastimes are +for men who are both idle and frivolous. When our villager wants to +realise a political idea, he dies of famine. This has about it a +certain air of seriousness. A man will not die of famine unless he be +in earnest. + +Lord Bacon's apothegm was that _Eating maketh a full man_; and it +would be better to give the starving cultivator Bacon than the report +of that Commission (which we cannot name without tears and laughter) +which goes to work on the assumption that _writing maketh a full +man_--that to write over a certain area of paper will fill the +collapsed cuticles of the agricultural class throughout India. + +When [Sir Richard Temple] first started the idea of holding famines, I +proposed that he should illustrate his project by stopping the pay and +allowances of the Government of India for a month. But he did not +listen to my proposal. People seldom listen to my proposals; and +sometimes I think that this accounts for my constitutional melancholy. + +You will ask, "What has all this talk of food and famine to do with +the villager?" I reply, "Everything." Famine is the horizon of the +Indian villager; insufficient food is the foreground. And this is the +more extraordinary since the villager is surrounded by a dreamland of +plenty. Everywhere you see fields flooded deep with millet and wheat. +The village and its old trees have to climb on to a knoll to keep +their feet out of the glorious poppy and the luscious sugar-cane. +Sumptuous cream-coloured bullocks move sleepily about with an air of +luxurious sloth; and sleek Brahmans utter their lazy prayers while +bathing languidly in the water and sunshine of the tank. Even the +buffaloes have nothing to do but float the livelong day deeply +immersed in the bulrushes. Everything is steeped in repose. The bees +murmur their idylls among the flowers; the doves moan their amorous +complaints from the shady leafage of pipal trees; out of the cool +recesses of wells the idle cooing of the pigeons ascends into the +summer-laden air; the rainbow-fed chameleon slumbers on the branch; +the enamelled beetle on the leaf; the little fish in the sparkling +depths below; the radiant kingfisher, tremulous as sunlight, in +mid-air; and the peacock, with furled glories, on the temple tower of +the silent gods. Amid this easeful and luscious splendour the villager +labours and starves. + +Reams of hiccoughing platitudes lodged in the pigeon-holes of the Home +Office by all the gentlemen clerks and gentlemen farmers of the world +cannot mend this. While the Indian villager has to maintain the +glorious phantasmagoria of an imperial policy, while he has to support +legions of scarlet soldiers, golden chuprassies, purple politicals, +and green commissions, he must remain the hunger-stricken, overdriven +phantom he is. + + While the eagle of Thought rides the tempest in scorn, + Who cares if the lightning is burning the corn? + +If Old England is going to maintain her throne and her swagger in our +vast Orient she ought to pay up like a--man, I was going to say; for, +according to the old Sanscrit proverb, "You can get nothing for +nothing, and deuced little for a halfpenny." These unpaid-for glories +bring nothing but shame. + +But even the poor Indian cultivator has his joys beneath the clouds of +Revenue Boards and Famine Commissions. If we look closely at his life +we may see a soft glory resting upon it. I am not Mr. Caird, and I do +not intend entering into the technical details of agriculture--"_Quid +de utilitate loquar stercorandi?_"--but I would say something of that +sweetness which a close communion with earth and heaven must shed upon +the silence of lonely labour in the fields. God is ever with the +cultivator in all the manifold sights and sounds of this marvellous +world of His. In that mysterious temple of the Dawn, in which we of +noisy mess-rooms, heated courts, and dusty offices are infrequent +worshippers, the peasant is a priest. There he offers up his hopes and +fears for rain and sunshine; there he listens to the anthems of birds +we rarely hear, and interprets auguries that for us have little +meaning. + +The beast of prey skulking back to his lair, the stag quenching his +thirst ere retiring to the depths of the forest, the wedge of wild +fowl flying with trumpet notes to some distant lake, the vulture +hastening in heavy flight to the carrion that night has provided, the +crane flapping to the shallows, and the jackal shuffling along to his +shelter in the nullah, have each and all their portent to the +initiated eye. Day, with its fierce glories, brings the throbbing +silence of intense life, and under flickering shade, amid the soft +pulsations of Nature, the cultivator lives his daydream. What there is +of squalor, and drudgery, and carking care in his life melts into a +brief oblivion, and he is a man in the presence of his God with the +holy stillness of Nature brooding over him. With lengthening shadows +comes labour and a re-awaking. The air is once more full of all sweet +sounds, from the fine whistle of the kite, sailing with supreme +dominion through the azure depths of air, to the stir and buzzing +chatter of little birds and crickets among the leaves and grass. The +egret has resumed his fishing in the tank where the rain is stored for +the poppy and sugarcane fields, the sand-pipers bustle along the +margin, or wheel in little silvery clouds over the bright waters, the +gloomy cormorant sits alert on the stump of a dead date-tree, the +little black divers hurry in and out of the weeds, and ever and anon +shoot under the water in hot quest of some tiny fish; the whole +machinery of life and death is in full play, and our villager shouts +to his patient oxen and lives his life. Then gradual darkness, and +food with homely joys, a little talk, a little tobacco, a few sad +songs, and kindly sleep. + +The villages are of immemorial antiquity; their names, their +traditions, their hereditary offices have come down out of the dim +past through countless generations. History sweeps over them with her +trampling armies and her conquerors, her changing dynasties and her +shifting laws--sweeps over them and leaves them unchanged. + +The village is self-contained. It is a complete organism, protoplastic +it may be, with the chlorophyll of age colouring its institutions, but +none the less a perfect, living entity. It has within itself +everything that its existence demands, and it has no ambition. The +torment of frustrated hope and of supersession is unknown in the +village. We who are always striving to roll our prospects and our +office boxes up the hill to Simla may learn a lesson here: + + Sisyphus in vita quoque nobis ante oculos est + Qui petere a populo fasces sævasque secures + Imbibit et semper victus tristisque recedit. + Nam petere imperium quod inanest nec datur umquam, + Atque in eo semper durum sufferre laborem, + Hoc est adverse nixantem trudere monte + Saxum quod tamen e summojam vertice rusum + Volvitur et plani raptim petit sequora campi. + +In this idyllic existence, in which, as I have said, there is no +ambition, several other ills are also wanting. There is, for instance, +no News in the village. The village is without the pale of +intelligence. This must indeed be bliss. Just fancy, dear Vanity, a +state of existence in which there are no politics, no discoveries, no +travels, no speculations, no Garnet Wolseleys, no Gladstones, no +Captain Careys, no Sarah Bernhardts! If there be a heaven upon earth, +it is surely here. Here no Press Commissioner sits on the hillside +croaking dreary translations from the St. Petersburg press; here no +_Pioneer_ sings catches with Sir John Strachey in Council. But here +the lark sings in heaven for evermore, the sweet corn grows below, and +the villager, amid these quiet joys with which the earth fills her +lap, dreams his low life.--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XV + + + +THE OLD COLONEL + + + +[Illustration: THE OLD COLONEL--"Ripening for pension."] + + +"Kwaihaipeglaoandjeldikaro"--_Rigmarole Veda._ + + + +[November 15, 1879.] + +The old Indian Colonel ripening for pension on the shelf of General +Duty is an object at once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession has +ebbed away from him, and he lies a melancholy derelict on the shore, +with sails flapping idly against the mast and meaningless pennants +streaming in the wind. + +He has forgotten nearly everything he ever learnt of military duty, +and what he has not forgotten has been changed. It is as much as he +can do to keep up with the most advanced thoughts of the Horse Guards +on buttons and gold lace. Yet he is still employed sometimes to turn +out a guard, or to swear that "the Service is going," &c.; and though +he has lost his nerve for riding, he has still a good seat on a +boot-lace committee. + +He is a very methodical old man. He rises at an early hour, strolls +down to the club on the Mall--perhaps the Wheler Club, perhaps some +other--has his tea, newspaper, and gossip there, and then back to his +small bungalow, [where he turns out his servants for swearing parade. +Each one gets it pretty hot; and then breakfast]. After breakfast he +arrays himself for the day in some nondescript white uniform, and with +a forage cap stuck gaily on one side of his head, a cheroot in his +mouth, and a large white umbrella in his hand, he again sallies forth +to the Club. An old horse is led behind him. + +Now the serious business of life again begins--to get through the day. +There are six newspapers to read, twelve pegs to drink, +four-and-twenty Madras cheroots to smoke, there is kindly tiffin to +linger over, forty winks afterwards, a game of billiards, the band on +the Mall, dinner, and over all, incessant chatter, chatter, old +scandal, old jokes, and old stories. Everyone likes the old Colonel, +of course. Everyone says, "Here comes poor old Smith; what an infernal +bore he is!" "Hulloa, Colonel, how are you? glad to see you! what's +the news? how's exchange?" + +The old Colonel is not avaricious, but he saves money. He cannot help +it. He has no tastes and he draws very large pay. His mind, therefore, +broods over questions relating to the investment of money, the +depreciation of silver, and the saving effected by purchasing things +at co-operative stores. He never really solves any problem suggested +by these topics. His mind is not prehensile like the tail of the +Apollo Bundar; everything eludes its grasp, so its pursuits are +terminable. The old Colonel's cerebral caloric burns with a feeble +flicker, like that of Madras secretariats, and never consumes a +subject. The same theme is always fresh fuel. You might say the same +thing to him every morning, at the same hour till the crack of doom, +and he would never recollect that he had heard your remark before. +This certainly must give a freshness to life and render eternity +possible. + +The old Colonel is not naturally an indolent man, but the prominent +fact about him is that he has nothing to do. If you gave him a +sun-dial to take care of, or a rain-gauge to watch, or a secret to +keep, he would be quite delighted. I once asked Smith to keep a secret +of mine, and the poor old fellow was so much afraid of losing it that +in a few hours he had got everybody in the station helping him to keep +it. It always surprises me that men with so much time on their hands +do not become Political Agents. + +Sometimes our old Colonel gets into the flagitious habit of writing +for the newspapers. He talks himself into thinking that he possesses a +grievance, so he puts together a fasciculus of lop-sided sentences, +gets the ideas set straight by the Doctor, the spelling refurbished +by the Padré, and fires off the product to the _Delhi Gazette_ +or the _Himalayan Chronicle_. Then days of feverish excitement +supervene, hope alternating with fear. Will it appear? Will the +Commander-in-Chief be offended? Will the Government of India be angry? +What will the Service say? + +The old Colonel is always rather suspicious of the great cocked-hats +at head-quarters. He knows that to maintain an air of activity they +must still be changing something or abolishing something, and he is +always afraid that they will change or abolish him. But how could they +change the old Colonel? In a regiment he would be like Alice in +Wonderland; on the Staff he would be like old wine in a new bottle. +They might make him a K.C.B., it is true; but he does not belong to +the Simla Band of Hope, and stars must not be allowed to shoot madly +from their sphere. As to abolishing the old Colonel, this too presents +its difficulties, for Sir Norman Henry and all the celebrated +cocked-hats at home and abroad look upon the Indian Staff Corps as +Pygmalion looked on his Venus. They dote on its lifeless charms, and +(figuratively) love to clasp it in their foolish arms. [Now the old +Colonel is the trunk of this Frankenstein--to change the scene. So we +must not abolish the old Colonel.] + +It is better to dress him up in an old red coat, and strap him on to +an old sword with a brass scabbard, that he may stand up on high +ceremonials and drink the health of the good Queen for whom he has +lived bravely through sunshine and stormy weather, in defiance of +epidemics, retiring schemes and the Army Medical Department. It is +good to ask him to place his old knees under your hospitable board, +and to fill him with wholesome wine, while he decants the mellow +stories of an Anglo-India that is speedily dissolving from view. + +The old Colonel has no harm in him; his scandal blows upon the +grandmothers of people that have passed away, and his little +improprieties are such as might illustrate a sermon of the present +day. [A rabbit might play with him if there were no chutni lying +about.] + +But you must never speak to him as if his sun were setting. He is as +hopeful as a two-year-old. Every Gazette thrills him with vague +expectations and alarms. If he found himself in orders for a Brigade +he would be less surprised than anyone in the Army. He never ceases to +hope that something may turn up--that something tangible may issue +from the circumambient world of conjecture. But nothing will ever turn +up for our poor old Colonel till his poor old toes turn up to the +daisies. This change only, which we harshly call "Death," will steal +over his prospects; this new slide only will be slipped into the magic +lantern of his existence, accompanied by funeral drums and slow +marching. + +Soon we shall hardly be able to decipher his name and age on the +crumbling gravestone among the weeds of our horrible station +cemetery--but what matters it? + + "For his bones are dust, + And his sword is rust, + And his soul is with the saints, we trust." + + ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XVI + + + +THE CIVIL SURGEON + + +"Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it." + + + +[November 22, 1879.] + +Perhaps you would hardly guess from his appearance and ways that he +was a surgeon and a medicine-man. He certainly does not smell of +lavender or peppermint, or display fine and curious linen, or tread +softly like a cat. Contrariwise. + +He smells of tobacco, and wears flannel underclothing. His step is +heavy. He is a gross, big cow-buffalo sort of man, with a tangled +growth of beard. His ranting voice and loud familiar manner amount to +an outrage. He laughs like a camel, with deep bubbling noises. Thick +corduroy breeches and gaiters swaddle his shapeless legs, and he rides +a coarse-bred Waler mare. + +I pray the gods that he may never be required to operate upon my eyes, +or intestines, or any other delicate organ--that he may never be +required to trephine my skull, or remove the roof of my mouth. + +Of course he is a very good fellow. He walks straight into your +drawing-room with a pipe in his mouth, bellowing out your name. No +servant announces his arrival. He tramples in and crushes himself into +a chair, without removing his hat, or performing any other high +ceremonial. He has been riding in the sun, and is in a state of +profuse perspiration; you will have to bring him round with the +national beverage of Anglo-India, a brandy-and-soda. + +Now he will enter upon your case. "Well, you're looking very blooming; +what the devil is the matter with you? Eh? Eh? Want a trip to the +hills? Eh? Eh? How is the bay pony? Eh? Have you seen Smith's new +filly? Eh?" + +This is very cheerful and reassuring if you are a healthy man with +some large conspicuous disease--a broken rib, cholera, or toothache; +but if you are a fine, delicately-made man, pregnant with poetry as +the egg of the nightingale is pregnant with music, and throbbing with +an exquisite nervous sensibility, perhaps languishing under some vague +and occult disease, of which you are only conscious in moments of +intense introspection, this mode of approaching the diagnosis is apt +to give your system a shock. + +Otherwise it may be bracing, like the inclement north wind. But, +speaking for myself, it has proved most ruinous and disastrous. Since +I have known the Doctor my constitution has broken up. I am a wreck. +There is hardly a single drug in the whole pharmacopoeia that I can +take with any pleasure, and I have entirely lost sight of a most +interesting and curious complaint. + +You see, dear Vanity, that I don't mince matters. I take our Doctor as +I find him, rough and allopathic; but I am sure he might be improved +in the course of two or three generations. We may leave this, however, +to Nature and the Army Medical Department. Reform is not my business. +I have no proposals to offer that will accelerate the progress of the +Doctor towards a higher type. + +Happily his surgical and medicinal functions claim only a portion of +his time. He is in charge of the district gaol, a large and +comfortable retreat for criminals. Here he is admirable. To some eight +or nine hundred murderers, robbers, and inferior delinquents he plays +the part of _maître d'hôtel_ with infinite success. In the whole +country side you will not find a community so well bathed, dressed, +exercised, fed and lodged as that over which the Doctor presides. You +observe on every face a quiet, Quakerish air of contentment. Every +inmate of the gaol seems to think that he has now found a haven of +rest. + + If the sea-horse on the ocean + Own no dear domestic cave, + Yet he slumbers without motion + On the still and halcyon wave; + If on rainy days the loafer + Gamble when he cannot roam, + The police will help him so far + As to find him here a home. + +This is indeed a quiet refuge for world-wearied men; a sanctuary +undisturbed by the fears of the weak or the passions of the strong. +All reasonable wants are gratified here; nothing is hoped for any +more. The poor burglar burdened with unsaleable "grab" and the +reproaches of a venal world sorrowfully seeks an asylum here. He +brings nothing in his hand; he seeks nothing but rest. He whispers +through the key-hole-- + + + Nil cupientium + Nudus castra peto. + +Look at this prisoner slumbering peacefully beside his _huqqa_ under +the suggestive bottle tree (there is something touching in his +selecting the shade of a _bottle_ tree: Horace clearly had no _bottle_ +tree; or he would never have lain under a strawberry (and cream) +tree). You can see that he has been softly nurtured. What a sleek, +sturdy fellow he is! He is a covenanted servant here, having passed an +examination in gang robbery accompanied by violence and prevarication. +He cannot be discharged under a long term of years. Uncovenanted +pilferers, in for a week, regard him with respect and envy. And +certainly his lot is enviable; he has no cares, no anxieties. Famine +and the depreciation of silver are nothing to him. Rain or sunshine, +he lives in plenty. His days are spent in an innocent round of duties, +relieved by sleep and contemplation of [Greek: to on]. In the long +heats of summer he whiles away the time with carpet-making; between +the showers of autumn he digs, like our first parents, in the Doctor's +garden; and in winter, as there is no billiard-table, he takes a turn +on the treadmill with his mates. Perhaps, as he does so, he recites +Charles Lamb's Pindaric ode:-- + + Great mill! + That by thy motion proper + (No thanks to wind or sail, or toiling rill) + Grinding that stubborn-corn, the human will, + Turn'st out men's consciences, + That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet + As flour from purest wheat, + Into thy hopper. + +Yet sometimes a murmur rises like a summer zephyr even from the soft +lap of luxury and ease. Even the hardened criminal, dandled on the +knee of a patriarchal Government, will sometimes complain and try to +give the Doctor trouble. But the Doctor has a specific--a brief +incantation that allays every species of inflammatory discontent. +"Look here, my man! If I hear any more of this infernal nonsense, I'll +turn you out of the gaol neck and crop." This is a threat that never +fails to produce the desired effect. To be expelled from gaol and +driven, like Cain, into the rude and wicked world, a wanderer, an +outcast--this would indeed be a cruel ban. Before such a presentiment +the well-ordered mind of the criminal recoils with horror. + +The Civil Surgeon is also a rain doctor, and takes charge of the +Imperial gauge. If a pint more or a pint less than usual falls, he at +once telegraphs this priceless gossip to the Press Commissioner, +Oracle Grotto, Delphi, Elysium. This is one of our precautions to +guard against famine. Mr. Caird is the other. + +[I was once in a very small station where our Civil Surgeon was an +Eurasian. He was a pompous little fellow, but a capital doctor, +gaoler, and metereologist. + + "Omnis Aristippum decint, color et status, et res." + +We liked him so much that we all got ill; crime increased, the gaol +filled, and no one ever passed the rain-gauge without either emptying +it or pouring in a brandy-and-soda. With women and children he was a +great favourite; for he had not become brutalised by familiarity with +suffering in hospitals. His heart was still tender, his voice soft, +and he had a gentle way with his hands. I never knew anyone who was so +unwilling to inflict pain; yet he was not unnerved when it had to be +done. But, poor little physician! he was not able to cure himself when +fever laid her hot hand on him. He tried to go on with his work and +live it down; but the recuperative forces of Nature were weak within +him, and he died. "The good die first, and those whose hearts are dry +as summer dust burn to the socket." Our cow-buffalo doctor is still +alive, I fear.]--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XVII + + + +THE SHIKARRY + + + +[November 29, 1879.] + +I have come out to spend a day in the jungle with him, to see him play +on his own stage. His little flock of white tents has flown many a +march to meet me, and have now alighted at this accessible spot near a +poor hamlet on the verge of cultivation. I feel that I have only to +yield myself for a few days to its hospitable importunities and it +will waft me away to profound forest depths, to the awful penetralia +of the bison and the tiger. Even here everything is strange to me; the +common native has become a Bheel, the sparrowhawk an eagle, the grass +of the field a vast, reedy growth in which an elephant becomes a mere +field mouse. Out of the leaves come strange bird-notes, a strange +silence broods over us; it is broken by strange rustlings and cries; +it closes over us again strangely. Nature swoons in its glory of +sunshine and weird music; it has put forth its powers in colossal +timber and howling beasts of prey; it faints amid little wild flowers, +fanned by breezes and butterflies. + +My heart beats in strange anapæsts. This dream world of leaf and bird +stirs the blood with a strange enchantment. The Spirit of Nature +touches us with her caduceus:-- + + Fair are others, none behold thee; + But thy voice sounds low and tender + Like the fairest, for it folds thee + From the sight, that liquid splendour; + And all feel, yet see thee never, + As I feel now .... + +Our tents are played upon by the flickering shadows of the vast +pipal-tree that rises in a laocoön tortuosity of roots out of an old +well. The spot is cool and pleasant. Round us are picketed elephants, +camels, bullocks, and horses, all enjoying the shade. Our servants are +cooking their food on the precincts; each is busy in front of his own +little mud fireplace. On a larger altar greater sacrifices are being +offered up for our breakfast. A crowd of nearly naked Bheels watch the +rites and snuff the fragrant incense of venison from a respectable +distance. Their leader, a broken-looking old man, with hardly a rag +on, stands apart exchanging deep confidences with my friend the +Shikarry. This old Bheel is girt about the loins with knives, pouches, +powder-horns, and ramrods; and he carries on his shoulder an aged +flintlock. He looks old enough to be an English General Officer or a +Cabinet Minister; and you might assume that he was in the last stage +of physical and mental decay. But you would be quite wrong. This old +Bheel will sit up all night on the branch of a tree among the horned +owls; he will see the tiger kill the young buffalo tied up as a bait +beneath; he will see it drink the life-blood and tear the haunch; he +will watch it steal away and hide under the _karaunda_ bush; he will +sit there till day breaks, when he will creep under the thorn jungle, +across the stream, up the scarp of the ravine, through the long grass +to the sahib's camp, and give the word that makes the hunter's heart +dance. From the camp he will stride from hamlet to hamlet till he has +raised an army of beaters; and he will be back at the camp with his +forces before the sahib has breakfasted. Through the long heats of the +day he will be the life and soul of the hunt, urging on the beaters +with voice and example, climbing trees, peeping under bushes, carrying +orders, giving advice, changing the line, until that supreme moment +when shots are fired, when the rasping growl tells that the shots have +taken effect, and when at length the huge cat lies stretched out dead. +And all this on a handful of parched grain! + + [Is this nothing? + Why then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing; + The covering sky is nothing, Ali Baba's nothing.] + +My friend the Shikarry delights to clothe himself in the coarse +fabrics manufactured in gaol, which, when properly patched and +decorated with pockets, have undoubtedly a certain wild-wood +appearance. + +As the hunter does not happen to be a Bheel with the privileges of +nakedness conferred by a brown skin, this is perhaps the only +practical alternative. If he went out to shoot in evening clothes, a +crush hat, and a hansom cab, the chances are that he would make an +example of himself and come to some untimely end. What would the +Apollo Bundar say? What would the Bengali Baboo say? What would the +sea-aye-ees say? Yes, our hunter affects coarse and snuffy clothes; +they carry with them suggestions of hardship and roughing it; and his +hat is umbrageous and old. + +As to the man under the hat, he is an odd compound of vanity, +sentiment, and generosity. He is as affected as a girl. Among other +traits he affects reticence, and he will not tell me what the plans +for the day are, or what _khabbar_[W] has been received. Knowing +absolutely nothing, he moves about with a solemn and important air, +[as if six months gone with a _bandobast_[X]]; and he says to me, +"Don't fret yourself my dear fellow; you'll know all about it time +enough. I have made arrangements." Then he dissembles and talks of +irrelevant topics transcendentally. This makes me feel such a poor +pen-and-ink fellow, such a worm, such a [Famine-commissioner, such a] +Political Agent! + +With this discordant note still vibrating we go in to breakfast; and +then, dear Vanity, he _bucks_ with a quiet, stubborn determination +that would fill an American editor or an Under-Secretary of State with +despair. [His lies are really that awful (as the Press Commissioner +would say) which you couldn't tell as what he was joking, or +inebriated, or drawing your leg.] He belongs to the twelve-foot-tiger +school; so, perhaps, he can't help it. + +If the whole truth were told, he is a warm-hearted, generous, plucky +fellow, with boundless vanity and a romantic vein of maudlin sentiment +that seduces him from time to time into the gin-and-water corner of an +Indian newspaper. Under the heading of "The Forest Ranger's Lament," +or "The Old Shikarry's Tale of Woe," he hiccoughs his column of sickly +lines (with St. Vitus's dance in their feet), and then I believe he +feels better. I have seen him do it; I have caught him in criminal +conversation with a pen and a sheet of paper; bottle at hand-- + + A quo, ceu fonte perenni, + Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis. + +In appearance he is a very short man with a long black beard, a +sunburnt face, and a clay pipe. He has shot battalions of tigers and +speared squadrons of wild pig. He is universally loved, universally +admired, and universally laughed at. + +He is generous to a fault. All the young fellows for miles round owe +him money. He would think there was something wrong if they did not +borrow from him; and yet, somehow, I don't think that he is very well +off. There is nothing in his bungalow but guns, spears, and hunting +trophies; he never goes home, and I have an idea that there is some +heavy drain on his purse in the old country. But you should hear him +troll a hunting song with his grand organ voice, and you would fancy +him the richest man in the world, his note is so high and triumphant! + + So when in after days we boast + Of many wild boars slain, + We'll not forget our runs to toast + Or run them o'er again; + + And when our memory's mirror true + Reflects the scenes of yore, + We'll think of _him_ it brings to view, + Who loved to hunt the boar. + + ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XVIII + + + +THE GRASS-WIDOW IN NEPHELOCOCCYGIA + + + +[Illustration: THE GRASS WIDOW--"Sweet little Mrs. Lollipop."] + + + +Her bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne? + + + +[December 6, 1879] + +Little Mrs. Lollipop has certainly proved a source of disappointment +to her lady friends. They have watched her for three seasons going +lightly and merrily through all the gaieties of Cloudland; they have +listened to the scandal of the cuckoos among the pine-trees and +rhododendrons, but they have not caught her tripping. Oh, no, they +will never catch her tripping. She does not trip for their amusement: +perhaps she trips it when they go on the light fantastic toe, but +there is no evidence; there is only a zephyr of conjecture, only the +world's low whisper not yet broken into storm--not yet. + +Yes, she is a source of disappointment to them. They have noted her +points; her beauty has burned itself into their jealousy; her merry +laugh has fanned their scorn; her bountiful presence is an affront to +them, as is her ripe and lissom figure. They pronounce her morally +unsound; they say her nature has a taint; they chill her popularity +with silent smiles of slow disparagement. But they have no +particulars; their slander is not concrete. It is an amorphous +accusation, sweeping and vague, spleen-born and proofless. + +She certainly knows how to dress. Her weeds sit easily and smoothly on +their delightful mould. You might think of her as a sweet, warm statue +painted in water-colours. (Who wouldn't be her Pygmalion?) If she adds +a garment it is an improvement; if she removes a garment it is an +improvement; if she dresses her hair it is better; if she lets it fall +in a brown cascade over her white shoulders it is still better; when +it is yet in curl-papers it is charming. If you smudge the tip of her +nose with a burnt cork the effect is irresistible; if you stick a +flower in her hair it is a fancy dress, a complete costume--she +becomes Flora, Aurora, anything you like to name. Yet I have never +clothed her in a flower, I have never smudged her nose with a burnt +cork, I have never uncurled her hair. Ali Baba's character must not go +drifting down the stream of gossip with the Hill Captains and the +Under-Secretaries. But I hope that this does not destroy the argument. +The argument is that she is quite too delightful, and therefore blown +upon by poisonous whispers. + +Her bungalow is an Elysium, of course; it is a cottage with a +verandah, built on a steep slope, and buried deep in shrubbery and +trees. Within all is plain, but exquisitely neat. A wood fire is +burning gaily, and the kindly tea-tray is at hand. It is five o'clock. +Clean servants move silently about with hot water, cake, &c. The +little boy, a hostage from papa in the warm plains below, is sitting +pensive, after the fashion of Anglo-Indian children, in a little +chair. His bearer crouches behind him. The unspeakable widow, in a +tea-gown dimly splendid with tropical vegetation in neutral tints, +holds a piece of chocolate in her hand, while she leans back in her +fauteuil convulsed with laughter. (It is not necessary to say that Ali +Baba is relating one of his improving tales.) How pretty she looks, +showing her excellent teeth and suffused with bright warm blushes, +[which, I beg leave to explain, proceed from drinking hot tea and +indulging in immoderate laughter, not from listening to A.B.'s +improving tales!] As I gaze upon her with fond amazement, I murmur +mechanically:-- + + Mine be a cot beside the hill; + A tea-pot's hum shall soothe my ear, + A widowy girl, that likes me still, + With many a smile shall linger near. + +I have been asked to write a philosophical minute on the mental and +moral condition of delightful Mrs. Lollipop's husband, who lives down +in the plains. I have been requested by the Press Commissioner to +inquire in Government fashion, with pen and ink, as to whether the +complaisant proprietor of so many charms desires to have a recheat +winded in his forehead, and to hang his bugle in an invisible +baldrick; whether it is true in his case that Love's ear will hear the +lowest cuckoo note, and that Love's perception of gossip is more soft +and sensible than are the tender horns of cockled snails. Towards all +these points I have directed my researches. I have resolved myself +into a Special Commission, and I have sat upon grass-widowers _in +camera_. If I sit a little longer a Report will be hatched, which, of +course, I shall take to England, and when there I shall go to the +places of amusement with the Famine Commission, and have rather a good +time of it. Already I can see, with that bright internal eye which +requires no limelight, grim Famine stalking about the Aquarium after +dinner with a merry jest preening its wings on his lips. + +But what has all this talk of country matters to do with little Mrs. +Lollipop? Absolutely nothing. She thinks no ill of herself. She is the +most charitable woman in the world. There is no veil of sin over her +eye; no cloud of suspicion darkens her forehead; no concealment feeds +upon her damask cheek. Like Eve she goes about hand in hand with her +friends, in native innocence, relying on what she has of virtue. Sweet +simplicity! sweet confidence! My eagle quill shall not flutter these +doves. + +Have you ever watched her at a big dance? She takes possession of some +large warrior who has lately arrived from the battle-fields of Umballa +or Meerut, and she chaperones him about the rooms, staying him with +flagons and prattling low nothings. The weaker vessel jibs a little at +first; but gradually the spell begins to work and the love-light +kindles in his eye. He dances, he makes a joke, he tells a story, he +turns round and looks her in the face. He is lost. That big centurion +is a casualty; and no one pities him. "How can he go on like that, +odious creature!" say the withered wall-flowers, and the Hill Captains +fume round, working out formulae to express his baseness. But he is +away on the glorious mountains of vanity; the intoxicating atmosphere +makes life tingle in his blood; he is an [Greek: aerobataes], he no +longer treads the earth. In a few days Mrs. Lollipop will receive a +post-card from the Colonel of her centurion's regiment. + +MY DEAR MRS. + + Lollipop, dic, per omnes + Te deos oro, Robinson cur properes amando + Perdere? cur apricum + Oderit campum, patiens pulveris atque solis. + + Yrs. Sincy. + + HORACE FITZDOTTREL. + +Ten to one an Archdeacon will be sent for to translate this. Ten to +one there is a shindy, ending in tea and tearful smiles; for she is +bound to get a blowing up. + +After what I have written I suppose it would be superfluous to affirm +with oaths my irrefragable belief in Mrs. Lollipop's innocence; it +would be superfluous to deprecate the many-winged slanders that wound +this milk-white hind. If, however, by swearing, any of your readers +think I can be of service to her character, I hope they will let me +know. I have learnt a few oaths lately that I reckon will unsphere +some of the scandal-mongers of Nephelococcygia. I had my ear one +morning at the keyhole when the Army Commission was revising the +cursing and swearing code for field service.--(Ah! these dear old +Generals, what depths of simplicity they disclose when they get by +themselves! I sometimes think that if I had my life to live over again +I would keep a newspaper and become a really great General. I know +some five or six obscure aboriginal tribes that have never yet yielded +a single war or a single K.C.B.) + +But this is a digression. I was maintaining the goodness of Mrs. +Lollipop--little Mrs. Lollipop! sweet little Mrs. Lollipop! I was +going to say that she was far too good to be made the subject of +whisperings and innuendoes. Her virtue is of such a robust type that +even a Divorce Court would sink back abashed before it, like a guilty +thing surprised. Indeed, she often reminds me of Cæsar's wife. + +The harpies of scandal protest that she dresses too low; that she +exposes too freely the well-rounded charms of her black silk +stockings; that she appears at fancy-dress balls picturesquely +unclothed--in a word, that the public sees a little too much of little +Mrs. Lollipop; and that, in conversation with men, she nibbles at the +forbidden apples of thought. But all this proves her innocence, +surely. She fears no danger, for she knows no sin. She cannot +understand why she should hide anything from an admiring world. Why +keep her charms concealed from mortal eye, like roses that in deserts +bloom and die? She often reminds me of Una in Hypocrisy's cell. + +I heard an old Gorgon ask one of Mrs. Lollipop's _clientèle_ the other +day whether he would like to be Mrs. Lollipop's husband. "No," he +said, "not her husband; I am not worthy to be her husband-- + + "But I would be the necklace + And all day long to fall and rise + Upon her balmy bosom + With her laughter or her sighs; + And I would lie so light, so light, + I scarce should be unclasped at night." + +That old Gorgon is now going through a course of hysterics under +medical and clerical advice. Her ears are in as bad a case as Lady +Macbeth's hands. Hymns will not purge them.--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XIX + + + +THE TRAVELLING M.P. + + + +THE BRITISH LION RAMPANT + + + +[December 13, 1879.] + +There is not a more fearful wild fowl than your travelling M.P. This +unhappy creature, whose mind is a perfect blank regarding +_Faujdari_[Y] and _Bandobast_,[Z] and who cannot distinguish the +molluscous Baboo from the osseous Pathan, will actually presume to +discuss Indian subjects with you, unless strict precautions be taken. + +When I meet one of these loose M.P.'s ramping about I always cut his +claws at once. I say, "Now, Mr. T.G., you must understand that, +according to my standard, you are a homunculus of the lowest type. +There is nothing I value a man for that you can do; there is nothing I +consider worth directing the human mind upon that you know. If you ask +for any information which I may deem it expedient to give to a person +in your unfortunate position, well and good; but if you venture to +argue with me, to express any opinion, to criticise anything I may be +good enough to say regarding India, or to quote any passage relating +to Asia from the works of Burke, Cowper, Bright, or Fawcett, I will +hand you over to Major Henderson for strangulation, I will cause your +body to be burnt by an Imperial Commission of sweepers, and I will +mention your name in the _Pioneer_." + +In dangerous cases, where a note-book is carried, your loose M.P. must +be made to reside within the pale of guarded conversation. If you are +wise you will speak to him in the interrogative mood exclusively; and +you will treat his answers with contumelious laughter or disdainful +silence. + +About a week after your M.P. has landed in India he will begin his +great work on the history, literature, philosophy and social +institutions of the Hindoos. You will see him in a railway carriage +when stirred by the [Greek: oistros] studying Forbes's Hindustani +Manual. He is undoubtedly writing the chapter on the philology of the +Aryan Family. Do you observe the fine frenzy that kindles behind his +spectacles as he leans back and tries to eject a root? These pangs are +worth about half-a-crown an hour in the present state of the book +market. One cannot contemplate them without profound emotion. + +The reading world is hunger-bitten about Asia, and I often think I +shall take three months' leave and run up a _précis_ of Sanskrit and +Pali literature, just a few folios for the learned world. Max Müller +begs me to learn these languages first; but this would be a toil and +drudgery, whereas to me the pursuit of literary excellence and fame is +a mere amusement, like lawn-tennis or rinking. It is the fault of the +age to make a labour of what is meant to be a pastime. + + Telle est de nos plaisirs la surface légère; + Glissez, mortels, n'appuyez pas. + +The travelling M.P. will probably come to you with a letter of +introduction from the last station he has visited, and he will +immediately proceed to make himself quite at home in your bungalow +with the easy manners of the Briton abroad. He will acquaint you with +his plans and name the places of interest in the neighbourhood which +he requires you to show him. He will ask you to take him, as a +preliminary canter, to the gaol and lunatic asylum; and he will make +many interesting suggestions to the civil surgeon as to the management +of these institutions, comparing them unfavourably with those he has +visited in other stations. He will then inspect the Brigadier-General +commanding the station, the chaplain, and the missionaries. On his +return--when he ought to be bathing--he will probably write his +article for the _Twentieth Century_, entitled "Is India Worth +Keeping?" And this ridiculous old Shrovetide cock, whose ignorance and +information leave two broad streaks of laughter in his wake, is turned +loose upon the reading public! Upon my word, I believe the reading +public would do better to go and sit at the feet of Baboo Sillabub +Thunder Gosht, B.A. + +What is it that these travelling people put on paper? Let me put it in +the form of a conundrum. _Q._ What is it that the travelling M.P. +treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? _A._ +Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the +griffin, India steams up in poetical mists, illusive, fantastic, +subjective, ideal, picturesque. The adult _Qui Hai_ attains to prose, +to stern and disappointing realities; he removes the gilt from the +Empire and penetrates to the brown ginger-bread of Rajas and Baboos. +One of the most serious duties attending a residence in India is the +correcting of those misapprehensions which your travelling M.P. +sacrifices his bath to hustle upon paper. The spectacled people +embalmed in secretariats alone among Anglo-Indians continue to see the +gay visions of griffinhood. They alone preserve the phantasmagoria of +bookland and dreamland. As for the rest of us:-- + + Out of the day and night + A joy has taken flight: + Baboos and Rajas and Indian lore + Move our faint hearts with grief, but with delight + No more--oh, never more! + +It is strange that one who is modest and inoffensive in his own +country should immediately on leaving it exhibit some of the worst +features of Arryism; but it seems inevitable. I have met in this +unhappy land, countrymen (who are gentlemen in England, Members of +Parliament, and Deputy Lieutenants, and that kind of thing) whose +conduct and demeanour while here I can never recall without tears and +blushes for our common humanity. My friends witnessing this emotion +often suppose that I am thinking of the Famine Commission. + +[I am an Anglo-Indian cherishing many a burning Anglo-Indian +prejudice, and I should be sorry if from what I have written here it +does not sufficiently appear that I cherish a burning prejudice +against the British Tourist in India, who comes out to get up India +and to do India; not against the tourist who comes out to shoot or to +play the fool in a quiet unostentatious way.] + +As far as I can learn, it is a generally received opinion at home that +a man who has seen the Taj at Agra, the Qutb at Delhi, and the Duke at +Madras, has graduated with honours in all questions connected with +British interests in Asia; and is only unfitted for the office of +Governor-General of India from knowing too much.--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XX + + + +MEM-SAHIB + + + + "Her life is lone. He sits apart; + He loves her yet: she will not weep, + Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep + He seems to slight her simple heart. + + "For him she plays, to him she sings + Of early faith and plighted vows; + She knows but matters of the house, + And he, he knows a thousand things." + +[December 20, 1879.] + +I first met her shepherding her little flock across the ocean. She was +a beautiful woman, in the full sweetness and bloom of life. [The +mystery of early wifehood and motherhood gave a pensiveness to her +soft eyes; but her voice and manner disclosed the cheerful confidence +of perfect health and a pure heart.] Her talk was of the busy husband +she had left, the station life, the attached servants, the favourite +horse, the garden, and the bungalow. Her husband would soon follow +her, in a year, or two years, and they would return together; but they +would return to a silent home--the children would be left behind. She +was going home to her mother and sisters; but there had been changes +in this home. So her thoughts were woven of hopes and fears; and, as +she sat on deck of an evening, with the great heart of the moon-lit +sea palpitating around us, and the homeless night-wind sighing through +the cordage, she would sing to us one of the plaintive ballads of the +old country, till we forgot to listen to the sobbing and the trampling +of the engines, and till all sights and sounds resolved themselves +into a temple of sentiment round a charming priestess chanting low +anthems. She would leave us early to go to her babies. She would leave +us throbbing with mock heroics, undecided whether we should cry, or +consecrate our lives to some high and noble enterprise, or drink one +more glass of hot whiskey-and-water. She was kind, but not +sentimental; her sweet, yet practical "good-night" was quite of the +work-a-day world; we felt that it tended to dispel illusions. + +She had three little boys, who were turned out three times a day in +the ultimate state of good behaviour, tidiness, and cleanliness, and +who lapsed three times a day into a state of original sin combined +with tar and ship's grease. These three little boys pervaded the +vessel with an innocent smile on their three little faces, their +mother's winning smile. Every man on the ship was their own familiar +friend, bound to them by little interchanges of biscuits, confidences, +twine, and by that electric smile which their mother communicated, and +from which no one wished to be insulated. Yes, they quite pervaded the +vessel, these three little innocents, flying that bright and friendly +smile; and there was no description of mischief suitable for three +very little boys that they did not exhaust. The ingenuity they +squandered every day in doing a hundred things which they ought not to +have done was perfectly marvellous. Before the voyage was half over we +thought there was nothing left for them to do; but we were entirely +mistaken. The daily round, a common cask would furnish all they had to +ask; to them the meanest whistle that blows, or a pocket-knife, could +give thoughts that too often led to smiles and tears. + +Their mother's thoughts were ever with them; but she was like a hen +with a brood of ducklings. They passed out of her element, and only +returned as hunger called them. When they did return she was all that +soap and water, loving reproaches, and tender appeals could be; and as +they were very affectionate little boys, they were for the time +thoroughly cleansed morally and physically, and sealed with the +absolution of kisses. + +I saw her three years afterwards in England. She was living in +lodgings near a school which her boys attended. She looked careworn. +Her relations had been kind to her, but not warmly affectionate. She +had been disappointed with the welcome they had given her. They seemed +changed to her, more formal, narrower, colder. She longed to be back +in India; to be with her husband once more. But he was engrossed with +his work. He wrote short letters enclosing cheques; but he never said +that he missed her, that he longed to see her again, that she must +come out to him, or that he must go to her. He could not have grown +cold too? No, he was busy; he had never been demonstrative in his +affection; this was his way. And she was anxious about the boys. She +did not know whether they were really getting on, whether she was +doing the best for them, whether their father would be satisfied. She +had no friends near her, no one to speak to; so she brooded over these +problems, exaggerated them, and fretted. + +The husband was a man who lived in his own thoughts, and his thoughts +were book thoughts. The world of leaf and bird, the circumambient +firmament of music and light, shone in upon him through books. A book +was the master key that unlocked all his senses, that unfolded the +varied landscape, animated the hero, painted the flower, swelled the +orchestra of wind and ocean, peopled the plains of India with +starvelings and the mountains of Afghanistan with cut-throats. Without +a book he moved about like a shadow lost in some dim dreamland of +echoes. + +Everyone knew he was a scholar, and his thoughts had once or twice +rung out to the world clear and loud as a trumpet-note through the +oracles of the Press. But in society he was shy, awkward, and uncouth +of speech, quite unable to marshal his thoughts, deserted by his +memory, abashed before his own silences, and startled by his own +words. Any fool who could talk about the legs of a horse or the height +of the thermometer was Prospero to this social Caliban. + +He felt that before the fine instincts of women his infirmity was +especially conspicuous, and he drifted into misogyny through +bashfulness and pride; and yet misogyny was incompatible with his +scheme of life and his ambition. He felt himself to be worthy of the +full diapason of home life; he desired to be as other men were, +besides being something more. + + [Greek: Kakon gynaikes all' homos, o daemotai, + Ouk estin oikein oikian aneu kakou. + Kai gar to gaemai, kai to mae gaemai, kakon.] + +So he married her who loved him for choosing her, and who reverenced +him for his mysterious treasures of thought. + +There was much in his life that she could never share: but he longed +for companionship in thought, and for the first year of their married +life he tried to introduce her to his world. He led her slowly up to +the quiet hill-tops of thought where the air is still and clear, and +he gave her to drink of the magic fountains of music. Their hearts +beat one delicious measure. Her gentle nature was plastic under the +poet's touch, wrought in an instant to perfect harmony with love, or +tears, or laughter. To read aloud to her in the evening after the +day's work was over, and to see her stirred by every breath of the +thought-storm, was to enjoy an exquisite interpretation of the poet's +motive, like an impression bold and sharp from the matrix of the +poet's mind. This was to hear the song of the poet and Nature's low +echo. How tranquilising it was! How it effaced the petty vexations of +the day!--"softening and concealing; and busy with a hand of healing." + + Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, + Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per æstum + Dulcis aquæ saliente sitim restinguere rivo. + +But with the advent of babies poetry declined, and the sympathetic +wife became more and more motherly. The father retired sadly into the +dreamland of books. He will not emerge again. Husband and wife will +stand upon the clear hill-tops together no more. + +Neither quite knows what has happened; they both feel changed with an +undefined sorrow, with a regret that pride will not enunciate. She is +now again in India with her husband. There are duties, courtesies, +nay, kindnesses which both will perform, but the ghost of love and +sympathy will only rise in their hearts to jibber in mockery words and +phrases that have lost their meaning, that have lost their +enchantment. + + "O love! who bewailest + The frailty of all things here, + Why choose you the frailest + For your cradle, your home, and your bier? + + "Its passions will rock thee + As the storms rock the raven on high; + Bright reason will mock thee + Like the sun from a wintry sky. + + "From thy nest every rafter + Will rot, and thine eagle home + Leave thee naked to laughter + When leaves fall and cold winds come." + + ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +No. XXI + + + +ALI BABA ALONE + + + +THE LAST DAY + + + + "Now the last of many days, + All beautiful and bright as thou, + The loveliest, and the last is dead, + Rise, memory, and write its praise." + + + +[December 27, 1879.] + +How shall I lay this spectre of my own identity? Shall I leave it to +melt away gracefully in the light of setting suns? It would never do +to put it out like a farthing rushlight after it had haunted the Great +Ornamental in an aurora of smiles. Is Ali Baba to cease upon the +midnight without pain? or is he to lie down like a tired child and +weep out the spark? or should he just flit to Elysium? There, seated +on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Dian's (no allusion to little +Mrs. Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains wonderous and the +parle of voices thunderous, some wag might scribble on his door, "Here +lies Ali Baba"--as if glancing at his truthfulness. How is he to pass +effectively into the golden silences? How is he to relapse into the +still-world of observation? Would four thousand five hundred a month +and Simla do it, with nothing to do and allowances, and a seat beside +those littered under the swart Dog-Star of India? Or is it to be the +mandragora of pension, that he may sleep out the great gap of _ennui_ +between this life and something better? How lonely the Government of +India would feel! How the world would forget the Government of India! +Voices would ask:-- + + Do ye sit there still in slumber + In gigantic Alpine rows? + The black poppies out of number + Nodding, dripping from your brows + To the red lees of your wine-- + And so kept alive and fine. + +Sometimes I think that Ali Baba should be satisfied with the +oblivion-mantle of knighthood and relapse into dingy respectability in +the Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he has taken to wearing +stars the accompanying itch for blood and fame has come:-- + + How doth the greedy K.C.B. + Delight to brag and fight, + And gather medals all the day + And wear them all the night. + +The fear of being out-medalled and out-starred stings him:-- + + [Consimili ratione ab eodem sæpe timore + Macerat invidia, ante oculos ilium esse polentem, + Illum aspectari, claro qui incedit honore, + Ipsi se in tenebris volvi cænoque queruntur + Insereunt partim statuarum et nominis ergo.] + +Thus the desire to go hustling up the hill to the Temple of Fame with +the other starry hosts impels him forward. If you mix yourself up with +K.C.B.'s and raise your platform of ambition, you are just where you +were at the A B C of your career. Living on a table-land, you +experience no sensation of height. For the intoxicating delights of +elevation you require a solitary pinnacle, some lonely eminence. Aut +Cæsar, aut nullus; whether in the zenith or the Nadir of the world's +favour. + +But how much more comfortable in the cold season than the chill +splendours of the pinnacles of fame, where "pale suns unfelt at +distance roll away," is a comfortable bungalow on the plains, with a +little mulled claret after dinner. Here I think Ali Baba will be +found, hidden from his creditors, the reading world, in the warm light +of thought, singing songs unbidden till a few select cronies are +wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears they heeded not--before the +mulled claret. + +To this symposium the A.-D.-C.-in-Waiting has invited himself on +behalf of the Empire. He will sing the Imperial Anthem composed by Mr. +Eastwick, and it will be translated into archaic Persian by an +imperial Munshi for the benefit of the Man in Buckram, who will be +present. The Man in Buckram, who is suffering from a cold in his +heart, will be wrapped up in himself and a cocked hat. The Press +Commissioner has also asked for an invitation. He will deliver a +sentiment:--"Quid sit futurum eras fuge quærere." A Commander-in-Chief +will tell the old story about the Service going to the dogs; after +which there will be an interval of ten minutes allowed for swearing +and hiccuping. The Travelling M.P. will take the opportunity to jot +down a few hasty notes on Aryan characteristics for the _Twentieth +Century_ before being placed under the table. The Baboo will +subsequently be told off to sit on the Member's head. During this +function the Baboo will deliver some sesquipedalian reflections in the +rodomontade mood. The Shikarry will then tell the twelve-foot-tiger +story. Mrs. Lollipop will tell a fib and make tea; and Ali Baba +(unless his heart is too full of mulled claret) will make a joke. The +company will break up at this point, after receiving a plenary +dispensation from the Archdeacon. + +Under such influences Ali Baba may become serious; he may learn from +the wisdom of age and be cheered by the sallies of youth. But little +Mrs. Lollipop can hardly be called one of the Sallies of his youth. +Sally Lollipop rose upon the horizon of his middle age. She boiled up, +pure blanc-mange and roses, over the dark brim of life's afternoon, a +blushing sunrise, though late to rise, and most cheerful. Sometimes +after spending an afternoon with her, Ali Baba feels so cheered that +the Government of India seems quite innocent and bright, like an old +ballerina seen through the mists of champagne and limelight. He walks +down the Mall smiling upon foolish Under Secretaries and fat Baboos. +The people whisper as he passes, "There goes Ali Baba"; and echo +answers "Who is Ali Baba?" Then a little wind of conjecture breathes +through the pine-trees and names are heard. + +It is better not to call Ali Baba names. Nothing is so misleading as a +vulgar nomenclature. I once knew a man who was called "Counsellor of +the Empress" when he ought to have had his photograph exposed in the +London shop-windows like King Cetewayo, K.C.M.G. I have heard an +eminent Frontier General called "Judas Iscariot," and I myself was +once pointed out as a "Famine Commissioner," and afterwards as an +expurgated edition of the Secretary to the Punjab Government. People +seemed to think that Ali Baba would smell sweeter under some other +name. This was a mistake. + +Almost everything you are told in Simla is a mistake. You should never +believe anything you hear till it is contradicted by the _Pioneer_. I +suppose the Government of India is the greatest _gobemouche_ in the +world. I suppose there never was an administration of equal importance +which received so much information and which was so ill-informed. At a +bureaucratic Simla dinner-party the abysses of ignorance that yawn +below the company on every Indian topic are quite appalling! + +I once heard Mr. Stokes say that he had never heard of my book on the +Permanent Settlement; and yet Mr. Stokes is a decidedly intelligent +man, with some knowledge of Cymric and law. I daresay now if you were +to draw off and decant the law on his brain, it would amount to a full +dose for an adult; yet he never heard of my book on the Permanent +Settlement. He knew about Blackstone; he had seen an old copy once in +a second-hand book shop; but he had never heard of my work! How +loosely the world floats around us! I question its objective reality. +I doubt whether anything has more objectivity in it than Ali Baba +himself. He was certainly flogged at school. Yet when we now try to +put our finger on Ali Baba he eludes the touch; when we try to lay him +he starts up gibbering at Cabul, Lahore, or elsewhere. Perhaps it is +easier to imprison him in morocco boards and allow him to be blown +with restless violence round about the pendant world, abandoned to +critics: whom our lawless and uncertain thoughts imagine howling. + +[Ali Baba! I know not what thou art, but know that thou and I must +part; and why or where and how we met, I own to me's a secret yet. Ali +Baba, we've been long together through pleasant and through cloudy +weather; 'tis hard to part when things are dear, bar silver, piece +cloth, bottled beer, then steal away with this short warning: choose +thine own winding-sheet, say not good-night here, but in some brighter +binding, sweet, bid me good morning.]--ALI BABA, K.C.B. + + + + +EXTRACTS FROM _SERIOUS REFLECTIONS AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS_. + +BY "OUR POLITICAL ORPHAN." + +_The Bombay Gazette Press_, 1881. + +No. XXXIV + + + +THE TEAPOT SERIES + + + +SOCIAL DISSECTION + + + +[January 5, 1880.] + + + +GOSSIP I. + +MY DEAR MRS. SMITH, + +I cannot understand why Mrs. Smith, with her absurd figure--for really +I can apply no other adjective to it--should wear that most absurdly +tight dress. Some one should tell her what a fright it makes of her. +She is nothing but convexities. She looks exactly like an hour-glass, +or a sodawater machine. At a little distance you can hardly tell +whether she is coming to you, or going away from you. She looks just +the same all round. People call her smile sweet; but then it is the +mere sweetness of inanity. It is the blank brightness of an empty +chamber. She sheds these smiles upon everyone and everything, and they +are felt to be cold like moonshine. Speaking for myself, these +_eau-sucré_ smiles could not suckle my love. I would languish upon +them. My love demands stronger drink. Mrs. Smith's features are good, +no doubt. Her eyes are good. An oculist would be satisfied with them. +They have a cornea, a crystalline lens, a retina, and so on, and she +can see with them. This is all very satisfactory, I do not deny, as +far as it goes. Physiologically her eyes are admirable; but for +poetry, for love, or even for flirting, they are useless. There is no +significance in them, no witchery, no suggestiveness. The aurora of +beautiful far-away thoughts does not coruscate in them. Her eyelids +conceal them, but do not quench them. They would be nothing for +winking, or tears. If she winked at me, I should not jump into the +air, as if shot in the spine, with my blood tingling to my +extremities; my heart would not beat like a side-drum; my blushes +would not come perspiring through my whiskers. Her winking would +altogether misfire. Why? Because her winking would be physiological +and not erotic. If you ever learnt to love her, it would not be for +any lovelight in her eye; it would never be the quick, fierce, hot, +biting electric passion of the fleshly poets, it would be what a +chemist might call the "eremacausis" kindled by habit. Mrs. Smith's +tears are quite the poorest product of the lachrymal glands I have +ever seen. They are simply a form of water. They might dribble from an +effete pump; they might leak from a worn-out _mashq_.[AA] I observe +them with pity and regret. Their drip has no echo in my bosom; it +produces no stalactites of sympathy in my heart. + +I have often been told that her nose was good--and good it +unquestionably is--good for blowing; good for sneezing; good for +snoring; good for smelling; a fine nose for a catarrh. But who could +play with it? Who could tweak it passionately, as a prelude to +kissing? Who could linger over it tenderly with a candle, or a lump of +mutton fat, when cold had laid its cruel hand upon it? It is not +tip-tilted like a flower; it is not whimsical with some ravishing and +unexpected little crook. It is straight, like a mathematical line. But +it has no parts. Her cheeks are round and fair. Each has its dimple +and blush. They are thoroughly healthy, Mrs. Smith's digestion is +unexceptionable. You might indicate the contour of these cheeks with a +pair of compasses; you might paint them with your thumb. Poor Mrs. +Smith's talk, or babble rather, is of her husband, her children, her +home. It is a mere purring over them. She never cuts them to pieces, +and holds them up to scorn and mockery. She never penetrates their +weaknesses. She does not even understand that Smith is a common-place, +stereotyped kind of fellow, exactly like hundreds of other men in his +class. She does not appear to notice the ghastly defects in his +education, tastes, and character, which gape before all the world +else. She does not see that he is without the _morbidezza_ of culture; +that he finds no _appogiatura_ in art; that he never rises at +midnight, amid lightning and rain, to emit an inarticulate cry of +æsthetic anguish in some metrical construction of the renaissance +period. She does not miss in him that yearning after the unattainable, +which in some mysterious wise fills us with a mute despair; which has +in it yet I know not what of sweetness amid the delirious aspirations +with which it distracts us. She cannot know, with her base instincts +dragging her down to the hearth-level of home and child, the material +gracelessness of her husband, equally incapable of striking an +Anglo-Saxon, or a mediæval attitude; and with his blood flushed, +healthy face unable to realize in his expression that divine sorrow +which can alone distinguish the man of culture from ordinary +Englishmen, or the anthropoid apes. She will never know what vibrates +so harshly on us--the want of feeling for colour which is displayed in +the coarse tone of his brown hair. So in regard to her children, the +mind of Mrs. Smith is quite uncritical. Look at that baby, like a +thousand other babies you see every day. It has not a single +idiosyncrasy on which anyone above the intellectual level of a +_crétin_ could hang an affection. Its porcine eyes twinkle dimly +through rolls of fat; it splutters and puffs, and its habits are +simply abominable. What a gross home for that life's star, which hath +had elsewhere its setting and cometh from afar! The star is quenched +in fat; it has exchanged the music of the spheres for a hideous +caterwauling! Yet Mrs. Smith loves that child, and gobbles over it, +descending to its abysses of grossness. + +Her house is one of many in a long unlovely street; it is furnished +according to the most corrupt dictates of bestial Philistinism--that +is, with a view to comfort. There are no subtle harmonies in the +papers and chintzes; there are no hidden suggestions of form and tone +in the cornices and bell handles; all is barren of proportion, +concord, and meaning. Still, this poor woman, with her inartistic eye +and foolish heart, loves this wretched shelter, and would pour out her +idiotic tears if she were leaving it for Paradise. + +But if we descend from our aesthetic heights to the lowly level of the +biped Smith, we may see Mrs. S. in a totally different atmosphere, and +certain lights and shadows will play about her with a radiance not +altogether without beauty. She is a single-minded woman, anxious to +make her husband and children comfortable and happy in their +home,--and dreaming of nothing beyond this. She is full of homely +wisdom; a hundred little economies she practises with forethought and +unwearying assiduity tend to make her husband and children love her +and regard her as a paragon of domestic policy. Her husband's +affection and her children's affection are all the world to her; music +and painting and poetry, Mr. Ruskin, Phidias, Praxiteles, Holman Hunt, +and Mr. Whistler pale away into shadows of shadows in presence of the +indications of love she receives from that baby. And this intense +single-minded love elevates her within its own compass. She sees in +that baby's eyes the light that never was on sea or land, the +consecration and the mother's dream. She broods over it till she +effects for it in her own maternal fancy an apotheosis; and round its +image in her heart there glows a bright halo of poetry. She sees +through the fat. The grossness disappears before her rapt gaze. There +remains the spirit from heaven:-- + + Sweet spirit newly come from Heaven + With all the God upon thee, still + Beams of no earthly light are given + Thy heart e'en yet to bless and fill. + Thy soul a sky whose sun has set, + Wears glory hovering round it yet; + And childhood's eve glows sadly bright + Ere life hath deepened into night. + +So with the husband; so with the home; a glory gathers round them, +which she alone, the intense worshipper, sees; and this unæsthetic +Mrs. Smith, altogether unsatisfactory to the artistic eye, most +practical, most commonplace, carries within her some of the Promethean +flame, and is worthy of that halo of homely joy and affection with +which she is crowned. + + + + +No. XXXV + + + +SAHIB + + + +[February 19, 1880.] + +I first met him driving home from cutcherry in his buggy. He was a fat +man in the early afternoon of life. In his blue eyes lay the mystery +of many a secret salad and unwritten milk-punch; but though he smoked +the longest cheroots of Trichinopoly and Dindigul, his hand was still +steady and still grasped a cue or a long tumbler, with the unerring +certainty of early youth and unshaken health. + +Of an evening he would come over to my bungalow in a friendly way; he +would "just drop in," as he used to say, in his pleasant offhand +fashion, and he would irrigate himself with my brandy and soda, amid +genial smiles and a brandishing of his long cheroot, playfully +indicating his recognition of a stimulant with which he had been long +acquainted. + +As he began to glow with conversation and brandy, he would call for +cards and play écarté with me, until the room gradually resolved +itself into one of the circles of some Californian Inferno, with a +knave of spades digging the diamonds out of my heart and clubbing my +trumps. + +He would leave me throbbing with the eructation of oaths and the +hollow aching of an empty purse, and uncertain whether to give up +cards and liquor for hymns and Government paper or whether to call him +back and take fortune by storm. But he had gone off with a resolute +"good night" that tended to dispel illusions; he had gone to his own +No. 1 Exshaw and his French novels, which he read as he lay on his +solitary bachelor couch. + +Yes,--his bachelor couch, for he was not married. He had loved much +and often. He had loved a great many people in different stations of +life, but they did not marry him. He was, upon the whole, glad that +they did not marry him; for they were often married to other people, +and he would have been lonely with one, dissatisfied with two, and +embarrassed with more; so he continued his austere bachelor life; and +always tried to love unostentatiously somebody else's wife. + +He loved somebody else's wife, because he had no wife of his own, and +the heart requires love. It was very wrong of him to love somebody +else's wife, and to sponge thus on affections which belonged to +another; but then he had nothing puritanical or pharisaical in his +nature; he was too highly cultivated to be moral, and arguing the +point in the mood of sweet _Barbara_, he had often succeeded in +persuading pretty women that he did right in loving them, though their +household duties belonged to another. + +I have said that he was too highly cultivated to be religious. He was +exceedingly emotional and intellectual; and the procrustean bed of a +creed would have been intolerable torture to him. Life throbbed around +him in an aurora of skittles. The world of morality only raised a +languid smile, or tickled an appetite pleased with novelty. An +archdeacon, or a book of sermons delighted him. He would play with +them and ponder over them, as if they were old china, or curious +etchings. But he was never profane, especially before bishops, or +children, and he always went to church on Sunday morning. + +He went to church on Sunday morning, because it was quaint and +old-fashioned to do so, and because he loved to see the women of his +acquaintance in their devotional moods and attitudes. There was hardly +any mood or attitude in which he did not love to see a woman, partly +because he was full of human sympathy and tenderness, and partly for +other reasons. I suppose he was a student of human nature, though he +always repudiated the notion of being a student of anything. He said +that life was too short for serious study, and that every kind of +pursuit should be tempered with fooling; while to prevent fooling +becoming wearisome it should always be dashed with something earnest, +as the sodawater is dashed with brandy, or the Government of India +with Mr. Whitley Stokes. + + Nigrorum memor, dum licet, ignium, + Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem: + Dulce est desipere in loco. + +But besides being a man of pleasure and a capital billiard player, he +was a Collector in the North-Western Provinces--a man who sat at the +receipt of custom under a punkah, and read his _Pioneer_. The Lord +High Cockalorum at Nynee Tal, Sir Somebody Thingmajig,--I am speaking +of years ago--did not like him, I believe; but nobody thought any the +worse of him for this; and although he continued to be a Collector +until the shades of evening, when all his contemporaries had retired +into the Dreamland of Commissionerships, he still loved and was loved; +and to the very last he read his French novels and quoted Horace, +sitting peacefully on the bank while the stream of promotion rolled +on, knowing well that it would roll on _in omne ævum_, and not caring +a jot whether it did, or did not. What was a seat at the Sadr +Board[BB] to him, a seat among the solemn mummies of the service? He +would not object to lie in the same graveyard with them; but to sit at +the same board while this sensible warm motion of life still continued +was too much; this could never be. He belonged to a higher order of +spirits. As a boy he had not bartered the music of his soul for +Eastern languages and the Rent Law; and as an old man he would not sit +in state with corpses faintly animated by rupees. + +To the last he mocked promotion; he mocked, till the dread mocker laid +mocking fingers on his liver, and till gibe and laughter were silenced +for evermore. So the Collector died, the merry Collector; and "where +shall we bury the merry Collector?" became the last problem for his +friends to deal with. I was in far away lands at the time with another +friend of his--we mourned for the Collector. + +We would have buried him in soft summer weather under sweet arbute +trees, near the shore of some murmuring Italian sea. The west wind +should whisper its grief over his grave for ever:-- + + "Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams + The blue Mediterranean, where he lay + Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, + Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, + And saw in sleep old palaces and towers + Quivering within the wave's intenser day, + All overgrown with azure moss and flowers." + +Blue-eyed girls have bound his dear head with garlands of the amorous +rosemary. The echoes of sea-caves would have chanted requiems until +time should be no more. Embalmed in darkness the nightingale would +nightly for ever pour forth her soul in profuse strains of +inconsolable ecstasy; by day the dove should moan in the flickering +shade until the sun should cease to roll on his fiery path:-- + + "Where through groves deep and high, + Sounds the far billow, + Where early violets die under the willow. + There, through the summer day, + Cool streams are laving; + There, while the tempests sway, + Scarce are boughs waving; + There thy rest should'st thou take, + Parted for ever, + Never again to wake: never, O never!" + +With tender hand we would have traced on his memorial urn some +valediction--not without hope--of love and friendship. + +It was otherwise. He was buried during a dust-storm in a loathsome +Indian cemetery. No friend stood by the grave. A hard priest +reluctantly pattered an abbreviated service: and people whispered that +it was not well with the Collector's soul. He is now forgotten. + +But, dear friend, thy memory blossoms in my heart for ever, thy merry +laugh will still sound in my ear:-- + + "Abiding with me till I sail + To seek thee on the mystic deeps, + And this electric force, that keeps + A thousand pulses dancing, fail." + + + + +No. XXXVIII + + + +THE GRYPHON'S ANABASIS + + + +[March 29, 1880.] + + +For some days the moustaches had been assuming a fiercer curl; more +and more troopers had been added to the escort; the Lord whispered in +the unreluctant ear softer and softer nothings; the scarlet runners +bowed lower and lower; and it was rumoured that the Lord had given the +Gryphon a pot of his own club-mutton hair-grease. It would be a halo. +This development of glory must have a limit: a feeling got abroad that +the Gryphon must go. + +The Commander-in-Chief would come up to him bathed in smiles and say +nothing; at other times with tears in his eyes he would swear with far +resounding, multitudinous oaths to accompany the Gryphon. One day +Wolseley's pocket-book and a tooth-brush would be packed in tin; next +day they would be unpacked. The vacillation was awful; it amounted to +an agony; it involved all the circles; the newspapers were profoundly +moved. + +The Gryphon starts. Editors forget their proofs; Baboos forget Moses; +mothers forget their cicisbeos. The mind of Calcutta is turned upon +the Gryphon. + +A thousand blue eyes and ten thousand black focus him. He takes his +seat. A double-first class carriage has been reserved. The +Superintendent-General of Balloons and Fireworks appears on the +platform: the Gryphon steps out, takes precedence of him, and then +returns to his carriage. The excitement increases. Pre-paid telegrams +are flashed to Bombay, Madras, Allahabad, and Lahore; the engine +whistles "God save the Queen-Empress and the Secretary to the Punjab +Government;" and the train pours out its glories into the darkness. + +My Lord is deeply stirred. He believes the Asian mystery has been +solved. He returns to Government House and gives vent to his +overwrought feelings in smoke--Parascho cigarettes; then he telegraphs +himself to sleep. Dreams sweep over him, issuing from the fabled gates +of shining ivory. + +Meanwhile the Gryphon speeds on, yearning like a god in pain for his +far-away aphelion in Kabul. Morning bashfully overtakes him; and the +train dances into stations festooned with branches of olive and palm. +A _feu-de-joie_ of champagne corks is fired; special correspondents in +clean white trousers enliven the scene; Baron Reuter's ubiquitous +young man turns on rapturous telegrams; and a faint smile dawns darkly +on the Gryphon's scorn-worn face. + +Merrily shrieks the whistling engine as the Punjab comes sliding down, +the round world to welcome its curled darling. It spurns with +contemptuous piston the vulgar corn-growing provinces of Couper; it +seeks the fields that are sown with dragon's teeth; it hisses forward +with furious joy, like the flaming chariot of some Heaven-booked +Prophet. Already Egerton anticipates its welcome advent. He can hardly +sit still on his pro-consular throne; he smiles in dockets and +demi-officials; he walks up and down his alabaster halls, and out into +his gardens of asphodel, and snuffs the air. It is redolent with some +rare effluvium; pomatum-laden winds breathe across the daffadown +dillies from the warm chambers of the south. A cloud crosses His +Honour's face, a summer cloud dissolving into sunshine. "It is the +pomade of Saul:--but it is our own glorious David whose unctuous curls +carry the Elysian fragrance." Then taking up his harp and dancing an +ecstatic measure, he sings-- + + "He is coming, my Gryphon, my swell; + Were it ever so laden with care, + My heart would know him, and smell + The grease in his coal-black hair." + +The whole of the Punjab is astir. Deputy Commissioners, and Extra +Assistant Commissioners, and Kookas, and Sikhs, and Mazhabi-Sikhs +crowd the stations; but the Gryphon passes fiercely onwards. The light +of battle is now in his eye; he is in uniform; a political sword hangs +from his divine waist; a looking-glass poses itself before him. Life +burns wildly in his heart: time throbs along in hot seconds; Eternity +unfolds around her far-receding horizons of glory. + +The train emits telegrams as it hurls itself forward: "the Gryphon is +well:--he is in the presence of his Future:--History watches him:--he +is drinking a peg:--the _Civil and Military Gazette_ has caught a +glimpse of him:--glory, glory, glory, to the Gryphon, the mock turtle +is his wash-pot, over Lyall will he cast his shoe." + +Earthquakes are felt all along the line from Peshawar to Kabul. +Strings of camels laden with portmanteaus stretch from the rising to +the setting sun. The whole of the Guides and Bengal Cavalry have +resolved themselves into orderlies, and are riding behind the Gryphon. +Tens of thousands of insurgents are lining the road and making holiday +to see the Gryphon pass. + +Kabul is astir. Roberts, with bare feet and a rope round his neck, +comes forward, performs _Kadambosi_ and presents the keys of Sherpur +to the Gryphon, who hands them graciously to his Extra Assistant +Deputy Khidmatgar General. The wires are red hot with messages: "The +Gryphon is taking a pill; the Gryphon is bathing; the Gryphon is +breakfasting; the Gryphon is making a joke; the Gryphon has been +bitten by a flea; the wound is not pronounced dangerous, he is +recovering slowly:--Glory, glory to the Gryphon--Amen, amen!"-- +YOUR POLITICAL ORPHAN. + + + + +No. XXXIX + + + +THE ORPHAN'S GOOD RESOLUTIONS + + + +[June 8, 1880.] + + Part I.--Persons I will try to avoid. + " II.--Things I will try to avoid. + " III.--Habits I will try to avoid. + " IV.--Opinions I will try to avoid. + " V.--Circumstances I will try to avoid. + + * * * * * + + + + +PART I.--BAD COMPANY. + + + +PERSONS I WILL TRY TO AVOID. + + + +1. + +He has a villa in the country; but his place of business is in town; +somewhere near Sackville Street. Vulgarity had marked him for her own +at an early age. She had set her mark indelibly on his speech, his +manners, and his habits. When ten years old he had learned to aspirate +his initial vowels; when twelve he had mastered the whole theory and +practice of eating cheese with his knife; at seventeen his mind was +saturated with ribald music of the Vaudeville type. + +Reader, you anticipate me? You suppose I refer to one of Mr. +Gladstone's new Ministers, or to one of Lord Beaconsfield's new +Baronets? + +You are, of course, mistaken. My man is a tailor; one of the best +tailors in the world. He has made hundreds of coats for me; and he has +sent me hundreds of circulars and bills. + +Now, however, he has lost my address, and there seems a coolness +between us. We stand aloof; the scars remaining. + +His name is Sartor, and I owe him a good deal of money. + + + +2. + +He is always up to the Hills when the weather is unpleasant on the +plains. Butterfly-collecting, singing to a guitar passionate songs of +love and hate, and lying the live-long day on a long chair with a long +tumbler in his hand, and a volume of Longfellow on the floor, are his +characteristic pursuits. It is needless to say that he is the +Accountant-General, and the last man in the world to suppose that I +have given myself ten days' privilege leave to the Hills on urgent +private affairs,--_affairs de coeur_, and _affairs de rien_, of sorts. + + + +3. + +His head is shaved to the bone; his face, of the Semitic type, is most +sinister, truculent, and ferocious; his filthy Afghan rags bristle +with knives and tulwars. He carries five or six matchlocks under one +arm, and a hymn book, or Koran, under the other. He is in holy +orders--a Ghazi! A pint, or a pint and a half, of my blood, would earn +for him Paradise, with sharab, houris, and all the rest of it. + + + +4. + +He was once an exceedingly pleasant fellow, full of talk and anecdote. +We were at school together. He was captain of our eleven and at the +head of the sixth form. I looked up to him; quoted him; imitated him; +lent him my pocket money. Afterwards a great many other people lent +him their money too, and played _écarté_ with him; yet at no period of +his life was he rich, and now he is decidedly poor. Still the old love +of borrowing money and playing _écarté_ burns hectically in his bosom, +and with years a habit of turning up the king has grown upon him. No +one likes to tell him that he has acquired this habit of turning up +the king; he is so poor! + + + +5. + +She was rather nice-looking once, and I amused myself with fancying +that I loved her. She was to me the summer pilot of an empty heart +unto the shores of nothing. It was then that I acquired that facility +in versification which has since so often helped to bind a book, or +line a box, or served to curl a maiden's locks. She, learned reams of +those verses by heart, and still repeats them. Her good looks and my +illusions have passed away: but those verses--those thrice accursed +verses, remain. How they make my ears tingle! How they burn my cheeks! +Will time, think you, never impair her infernal memory? + + + +6. + +I lisp a little, it is true; but, thank goodness, no longer in +numbers. I only lisp a little when any occasion arises to utter +sibilant sounds; on such occasions this little girl, the only child of +her mother, and she a widow, mimics my infirmity. The widow is silly +and laughs nervously, as people with a fine sense of humour laugh in +church when a book falls. This laugh of the widow is not easy to bear; +for she is pretty. Were she not pretty her mocking child would come, I +ween, to some untimely end. + + + +7. + +My Lord is, more or less, admired by two or three young ladies I know; +and when he puts his arm round my neck and drags me up and down a +crowded ball-room I cannot help wishing that they were in the pillory +instead of me. I really wish to be polite to H.E., but how can I say +that I think he was justified in finessing his deficit and playing +surpluses? + +How can I agree with him when he says that Abdur Rahman will come +galloping in to Cabul to tender his submission as soon as he receives +Mr. Lepel Griffin's photograph neatly wrapped up in a Post Office +Order for two lakhs of rupees? And then that Star of India he is +always pressing on me! As I say to him,--what should I do with it? + +I can't go hanging things round my neck like King Coffee Calcalli, or +the Emperor of Blue China. + +But soon it will not be difficult for me to avoid my Lord: for + + "Sic desideriis icta fidelibus + Quærit patria Cæsarem." + + + +8. + +He still smiles when we meet; and I don't think any the less of him +because he was called "Bumble" at school and afterwards made Governor +of Bombay. Men drift unconsciously into these things. But when I +happen to be near him he has a nervous way of lunging with his stick +that I can't quite get over. They say he once dreamt that I had poked +fun at him in a newspaper; and the hallucination continues to produce +an angry aberration of his mind, coupled with gnashing of the teeth +and other dangerous symptoms. + + + +9. + +He is a huge gob of flesh, which is perhaps animated dimly by some +spark of humanity smouldering filthily in a heart cancerous with +money-grubbing. His whole character and mode of life stink with +poisonous exhalations in my moral nostrils. Nature denounces, in her +loud commination service, his clammy hand, his restless eye, his +sinister and bestial mouth. Why should he waken me from the dreams of +literature and the low music of my own reflections to disgorge from +the cesspool of his mind the impertinent questions and the loathsome +compliments which form his notion of conversation? He has come to "pay +his respects." I abhor "his respects." He is rich:--What is that to +me? He is powerful with all the power of corruption: I scorn his +power, I figuratively spit upon it. He is perhaps the man whom the +Government delights to honour. More shame to the Government! A bully +at home, and a tyrant among his own people, on all sides dastardly and +mean, he is a bad representative of a gentle and intellectual race, +that for its heroic traditions, its high thoughts, its noble language +and its exquisite urbanity has been the wonder of the whole world +since the dawn of history. + + + +10. + +A cocked hat, a tailcoat with gold buttons and a rapier:--"See'st thou +not the air of the court in these enfoldings? Hath not his gait in it +the measure of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odour from him? +Reflects he not on thy baseness court-contempt?" Observe how +mysterious he is: consider the secrets burning on his tongue. He is +all asides and whispers and winks and nods to other young popinjays of +the same feather. He could tell you the very brand of the pills the +Raja is taking: he receives the paltriest gossip of the Nawab's court +filtered through a lying vakeel. Ten to one he carries in his pocket a +cipher telegram from Simla empowering him to confer the title of +_Jee_[CC] on some neighbouring Thakor. Surely it is no wonder that he +believes himself to be the hub of creation. Within a radius of twenty +miles there is no one even fit to come between the wind and his +nobility. If he should ever catch hold of you by the arm and take you +aside for a moment from the madding crowd of a lawn-tennis party to +whisper in your ear the arrival of a complimentary _Kharita_ and a +pound of sweetmeats from the Foreign Office for the Jam of Bredanbatta +you should let off smiles and blushes in token of the honour and glory +thus placed at your credit. + + + +11. + +All Assistant-Magistrates on their first arrival in this country, +stuffed like Christmas turkeys with abstracts and notes, the pemmican +of school-boy learnings, are more or less a weariness and a bore; but +the youth who comes out from the admiring circle of sisters and aunts +with the airs of a man of the world and the blight of a premature +_ennui_ is peculiarly insufferable. Of course he has never +known at home any grown-up people beyond the chrysalis stage of +undergraduatism, except to receive from them patronising hospitalities +and little attentions in the shape of guineas and stalls at the opera, +such as good-natured seniors delight to show to promising young +kinsmen and friends. Yet his talk is of the studio, the editor's room, +and the club; it is flavoured with the _argot_ of the great world, the +half world and Bohemia; he flings great names in your face, dropping +with a sublime familiarity the vulgar prefixes of "Mr." and "Lord," +and he overwhelms you with his knowledge of women and their wicked +ways. Clever Ouida, with her tawdry splendours, her guardsmen, her +peers, her painters and her Aspasias, and the "society papers," with +their confidences and their personalities, have much to answer for in +the case of this would-be man of the world. + + + + +No. XL + + + +SOME OCCULT PHENOMENA + + + +[October 21, 1880.] + +There were thirteen of them, and they sat down to dinner just as the +clock in the steeple chimed midnight. The sheeted dead squeaked and +gibbered in their graves; the owl hooted in the ivy. "For what we are +going to receive may the Secret Powers of Nature and the force of +circumstances make us truly thankful," devoutly exclaimed the domestic +medium. The spirits of Chaos and Cosmos rapped a courteous +acknowledgment on the table. _Potage à la sorcière_ (after the famous +recipe in Macbeth) was served in a cauldron; and while it was being +handed round, Hume recited his celebrated argument regarding miracles. +He had hardly reached the twenty-fifth hypothesis, when a sharp cry +startled the company, and Mr. Cyper Redalf, the eminent journalist, +was observed to lean back in his chair, pale and speechless. His whole +frame was convulsed with emotion; his hair stood erect and emitted +electro-biological sparks. The company sat aghast. A basin of soup +dashed in his face and a few mesmeric passes soon brought him round, +however; and presently he was able to explain to the assembled +carousers the cause of his agitation. It was a recollection, a tender +memory of youth. The umbrella of his boyhood had suddenly surged upon +his imagination! It was an umbrella from which he had been parted for +years: it was an umbrella round which had once centred associations +solemn and mysterious. In itself there had been nothing remarkable +about the umbrella. It was a gingham, conceived in the liberal spirit +of a bygone age; such an umbrella as you would not easily forget when +it had once fairly bloomed on the retina of your eye; yet an everyday +umbrella, a commonplace umbrella half a century ago; an umbrella that +would have elicited no remark from our great-grandmothers, hardly a +smile from our grandmothers; but an umbrella well calculated to excite +the affections and stimulate the imagination of an impulsive, +high-spirited, and impressionable boy. It was an umbrella not easily +forgotten; an umbrella that necessarily produced a large and deep +impression on the mind. + +All present were profoundly moved; a feeling of dismay crept over +them, defacing their festivity. Tears were shed. Only from one pair of +damp eyes did any gleam of hope or comfort radiate. + +A distinguished foreigner, well known in the uttermost spirit-circles, +wiped from his brow drops of perspiration which some dream had +loosened from his brain. He felt the tide of psychic force beating +upon the high shores of his heart. He was conscious of a +constitutional change sweeping like a tempest over his protoplastic +tissue. He felt that the secret fountains of his being were troubled +by the angel of spirit-rapping, and that his gross, unbelieving +nature stepped down, bathed, and was healed. The Moses of the +spirit-wilderness struck the rock of his material life, and occult +dynamics came welling forth from the undiscovered springs of +consciousness. His mortal statics lost their equilibrium in a general +flux of soul. A cyclone raged round his mesmeric aura. He began to +apprehend an epiphany of electro-biological potentiality. The fierce +light that never was in kerosine or tallow dawned round him; matter +melted like mist; souls were carousing about him; the great soul of +nature brooded like an aurora of clairvoyance above all; his awful +mediumhood held him fiercely in her mystic domination; and things grew +to a point. From the focus of the clairvoyant aurora clouds of +creative impulse gathered, and sweeping soulward were condensed in +immaterial atoms upon the cold peaks of Purpose. Thus a spiritual +gingham impressed upon his soul of souls a matrix, out of which, by a +fine progenitive effort, he now begets and ejects a materialized +gingham into a potato-plot of the garden without. + +The thing is patent to all who live above the dead-level of vulgar +imbecility. No head of a department could fail to understand it. +Indeed, to such as live on the uplands of speculation, not only is the +process lucid in itself, but it is luciferous, illuminating all the +obscure hiding-places of Nature. It is the magic-lantern of creation; +it is the key to all mysticism, to the three-card trick, and to the +basket-trick; it sheds a glory upon thimble-rigging, a halo upon +legerdemain; it even radiates vagabond beams of splendour upon +pocket-picking and the cognate arts. It explains how the apples get +into the dumpling; how the milk comes out of the cocoanut; how the +deficit issues from the surplus; how matter evolves itself from +nothing. It renders the hypothesis of a First Cause not only +unnecessary, but exquisitely ludicrous. Under such dry light as it +offers to our intelligence the whole epos of Christianity seems a +vapid dream. + +But I anticipate conclusions. We must go back to the dinner-party and +to Mr. Cyper Redalf, who has been restored to consciousness, and who +still is the object of general sympathy; for it is not until the +disturbance in the distinguished foreigner's nerve aura has amounted +to a psychic cyclone that the company perceive his interesting +condition, and begin to look for a manifestation. The hopes of some +fondly turn to raps, others desire the pressure of a spirit hand, or +the ringing of a bell, or the levitation of furniture, or the sound of +a spirit voice, the music of an immaterial larynx. Dinner is soon +forgotten; the thing has become a _séance_, hands are joined, the +lights are instinctively lowered, and the whole company, following an +irresistible impulse, march round and round the room, and then out +into the darkness after the soul-stirred foreigner, after the +foreigner of distinction. Is it unconscious cerebration that leads +them to the potato-plot, or is it the irresistible influence of some +Supreme Power, something more occult and more interesting than God, +that compels them to fall on their knees, and grub with their hands in +the recently manured potato-bed? I must leave this question +unanswered, as a sufficiently occult explanation does not occur to me: +but suffice it to say that this search after truth, this burrowing in +the gross earth for some spiritual sign, appears to me a spectacle at +once inspiring and touching. It seems to me that human life has seldom +had anything more beautiful and more ennobling to show than these +postmaster-generals, boards of revenue, able editors, and foreigners +of distinction asking Truth, the Everlasting Verity, for a sign and +then searching for it in a potato-field. In this glorious quest every +circumstance demands our respectful attention. They search on their +hands and knees in the attitude of passionate prayer; they search in +the dark; they seize the dumb earth with delirious fingers; they knock +their heads against one another and against the dull, hard trunks of +trees. Still they search: they wrestle with the Earth: she must yield +up her secrets. Nor will Earth deny to them the desired boon. Theirs +is the true spirit of devout inquiry, and they are persons of +consideration in evening-dress. Nature will unveil her charms. Earth +with the groans of an infinite pain, a boundless travail, yields up +the gingham umbrella. + +We will not intrude upon their immediate rapture as they carry their +treasure away with loving hands; but it is necessary to note the means +taken to prove, for the satisfaction only of a foolish and unbelieving +world, the supernatural nature of the phenomenon. The umbrella is +examined under severe test conditions: it is weighed in a vacuum, and +placed under the spectroscope. It is found to be porous and a +conductor of heat; but it is not soluble in water, though it boils at +500° Fahr. To demonstrate the absence of trickery or collusion +everyone turns up his sleeves and empties his waistcoat pockets. There +is no room for sleight of hand in presence of this searching +scientific investigation. The umbrella _is_ certainly _not_ a +supposititious animal; yet it is the umbrella of Mr. Cyper Redalf's +boyhood. No one can doubt this who sees him clasp it in a fond +embrace, who sees him shed burning tears on its voluminous folds.--THE +ORPHAN. + + + + +ELUCIDATIONS + + + +No. 1 + + + +WITH THE VICEROY + +The late Edward Robert Bulwer, First Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), +Viceroy and Governor-General of India from April 12, 1876, to June 8, +1880, is here depicted from the superficial point of view of his +character as a man, a poet, and a statesman generally current at the +time. + +Lord Lytton was thoroughly unconventional in all his manners and +moods, and in his methods of conducting the affairs of his great +office. + +As a boy of seven he was already scribbling verses; and he wrote a +poem, "The Prisoner of Provence," which turns upon the famous story of +the Man in the Iron Mask, only two or three months before his death. +In fact, all through Lord Lytton's distinguished career, as his father +had done before him, he found recreation in change of employment. As +forcibly and eloquently stated by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in +her introduction to the 1894 edition of his Selected Poems, "The minds +of both were ceaselessly active, and they turned without a pause from +one kind of thought and business to another as readily as they turned +from either to easy, disengaged conversation. Had the rival calls of +his many-sided intellect been at variance, the poet in my father would +always have had the preference." + +Ali Baba, it may be taken for granted, did not intend to characterise +as "a flood of twaddle" the whole of Lord Lytton's verse. Poetry +which, as far as published up to 1855, called forth from Leigh Hunt +warm praise for its beauties and mercy for its defects, in these words +embodied in a letter to Mr. John Forster, the friend and biographer of +Charles Dickens.-- + + "I have read every bit of Owen Meredith's [his now + well-known pseudonym] volume, and it has left me in a state + of delighted admiration. He is a truly musical, reflecting, + impassioned and imaginative poet, with a tendency to but one + of the faults of his contemporaries and that chiefly in his + minor pieces--I mean the doing too much, and the giving too + much importance and emphasis to every fancy and image that + comes across him, so that his pictures lose their proper + distribution of light and shade, nay, of distinction between + great and small. On his greatest occasions, however, he can + evidently rid himself of this fault." + +During Lord Lytton's Indian career, those who were on political or +self-interested grounds opposed to his policy--and there were many +such--were wont, as recorded by his daughter, to attempt to discredit +the statesman by reiterating that he was a poet. + +As a matter of fact, Aberigh Mackay's acquaintance with Lord Lytton's +poetry was mainly, if not entirely, based upon a volume edited by N.A. +Chick, and published in Calcutta in 1877, quaintly entitled: "The +Imperial Bouquet of Pretty Flowers from the Poetical Parterre of +Robert Lord Lytton, Viceroy and Governor-General of India." + +Our Author's knowledge of Lord Lytton's Indian Administration was +necessarily based upon the views--_pro_ and _con_--expressed by the +daily newspaper writers of the period, who wrote, of course, +uninitiated in political affairs as a rule, and without those full +expositions now embodied in many notable recent publications, official +and other, foremost among which we would cite Lady Betty Balfour's +History of his Indian Administration, published in 1899, and her +edition of her father's personal and literary letters, issued in two +vols. in 1906. + +Verily "Time tries All," and an impartial and notable summary of Lord +Lytton's services to his country, written by the Reverend W. Elvin, is +engraven on the monument to his memory in the crypt of St. Paul's +Cathedral, which was designed and partially carried out by the +sculptor, Mr. Gilbert. + ++HE WAS A DIPLOMATIST RICK IN THE QUALITIES, OFFICIAL, AND SOCIAL, BY +WHICH AMITY WITH FOREIGN NATIONS IS MAINTAINED.+ + ++A VICEROY INDEPENDENT IN HIS VIEWS, RESOLUTE IN ACTION, LOOKING +FORWARD TO THE FUTURE.+ + ++A POET OF MANY STYLES, EACH THE EXPRESSION OF HIS HABITUAL THOUGHTS.+ + ++A MAN OF SUPERIOR FACULTIES HIGHLY CULTIVATED BE LITERATURE, ARDENT +IN HIS AFFECTIONS, TENDER AND GENEROUS IN ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF +LIFE, LAVISH IN HIS COMMENDATION OF OTHERS, AND HUMBLE IN HIS ESTIMATE +OF HIMSELF.+ + +As a good example of Lord Lytton's independent views, and tenderness +and generosity in all the circumstances of life, the following +incident may be quoted:-- + +Among many changes in Indian administration which he initiated, and +which were severely decried at the time, but the benefits of which +experience has amply vindicated, was the amalgamation of Oudh with, or +rather annexation to, the North-Western Provinces, the final +arrangements being completed at the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi on +January 1 1877, with the concurrence--which he had sought +previously--of all the principal Talukdars of Oudh there assembled. + +The great pageant at Delhi (which formed the subject of Ali Baba's +first contribution to _Vanity Fair_, and which he attended officially +as the Guardian of the Raja of Rutlam), so far from being a mere empty +show, as then decried by his political foes, enabled the Viceroy to +settle, promptly and satisfactorily by personal conferences, a great +many important administrative questions. All as recorded by him in his +narrative letter of December 23, 1876, to January 10, 1877, to her +late Majesty Queen Victoria, which embraced events at Delhi, Pattiala, +Umballa, Aligurh, and Agra. + +Among the Oudh officials who were dispossessed of their appointments +in 1877, some of them with but scanty compensation, was the late Mr. +(afterwards Sir) E.N.C. Braddon, a kinsman of the novelist, who held +the appointment of Superintendent of Stamps, Stationery, and +Registration at Lucknow. Mr. Braddon was an uncovenanted servant of +comparatively short service, and eligible for s very moderate +compensation. Lord Lytton, unsolicited, took up his case, overruled +various objections, obtained liberal terms for Mr. Braddon by which he +was able to resign his appointment and proceed to Tasmania, where he +entered political life, rising to be Premier and afterwards +Agent-General for that Colony in London, and ultimately obtaining, in +1891, his K.C.M.G. + +It was to Lord Lytton's personal action--in the face of would-be +obsequious apathy in certain quarters--that Aberigh-Mackay, the +youngest on the list, was nominated a Fellow of the Calcutta +University in 1880, an honour usually reserved for officials of high +standing. He then availed himself of that status to bring about the +affiliation of the Rajkumar College at Indore to the same University, +with, as a matter of course, the concurrence of the Syndicate. + + + + +No. 2 + + + +THE A.-D.-C.-IN-WAITING + +We have here an admirable summary of the highly important personal +duties of a tactful A.D.C. to an Indian Viceroy. Not the least +important being the superintendence of the Invitation Department. It +was in this very connection that an A.D.C. to an Indian Governor, +fresh from a West Indian appointment and Society somewhat on "Tom +Cringle's Log" conditions, by issuing invitations to a _Quality +Dance_, gave rise, in Southern India, to a social commotion which +reacted very unfavourably as regards the efficient working of various +departments of his Chief's general administration. + +In pre-Mutiny days in India an officer who could not carve meat and +fowl well had a very poor chance of such an appointment. Happily the +institution of _à la Russe_ fashions in the service of the table has +or many years past rendered such qualifications unnecessary. + +To the regret of a very wide circle, the "loud, joyful and +steeplechasing Lord "--the late Lord William Beresford--alluded to by +Ali Baba, died in England in 1900. From 1875 to 1881 he was A.D.C. to +Viceroys of India, and it was in the "distant wars" of the Jowaki +expedition, 1877-8, in the Zulu War, 1879, where he gained the +Victoria Cross, and in the Afghan War, 1880, that his military career +was spent. + +From 1881 to 1894 Lord William Beresford very ably served Viceroys of +India as their Military Secretary. Services which were admirably +summed up by a speaker on Dec. 30, 1893, when he was entertained at a +farewell dinner at the Town Hall, Calcutta, by 180 friends, who +declared that "he had raised the office to a science, and himself from +an official into an institution, and acquired a reputation absolutely +unique." + +The voluminous and noteworthy annals of Indian sport can show no +keener sportsman and successful rider of steeplechases and polo +player. He won the Viceroy's Cup six times and many other principal +events at race-meetings in India. + +In 1894 Lord William retired from India, and in England maintained a +renowned racing stable, being in addition one of the first to own +American horses and employ American jockeys. + + + + +No. 3 + + + +WITH THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF + +An exceedingly important change affecting the power and functions of +the Indian Commander-in-chief, together with various other reforms in +the military administration of India, were all anticipated, +foreshadowed, and--it is believed--largely helped on by this very +paper, and others under the general heading of _Things in India_, +contributed by Ali Baba to _Vanity Fair_ during 1879. + +Ali Baba, unlike some others that might readily be cited, would +doubtless have been foremost in according most generous +acknowledgments to the services in the cause of Indian Army reform, +rendered in past days by many great Commanders-in-Chief in India. + +Chief among such men might be cited Sir Charles James Napier +(1782-1853), the conqueror of Scinde, who in 1849 returned to India, +nominated by the Duke of Wellington to deal with the crisis caused by +the Sikh campaign. Arriving in Calcutta on the 6th May, he at once +assumed the command, the term of service of Lord Gough, who had +brought the campaign to a successful end, being concluded. Napier's +too short administration of little over eighteen months was rather +judicial than military, but he effected many reforms on the parade +ground and in cantonments. + +The newspapers of the day eagerly chronicled the records of the +proceedings in which he vigorously combated the vices of intoxication, +gambling, insubordination, and other crimes and misdemeanours, both in +officers and men of the Queen's and Company's forces alike. + +It was during his command that separate barrack-room accommodation was +provided for married soldiers. The state of affairs hitherto +prevailing may well be imagined by an inspection of the barrack life +pictures and caricatures of artists such as Ramberg, Gillray, +Rowlandson, and others. + +He also founded Soldiers' Institutes, and encouraged soldiers in the +Queen's army to rear such pets as monkeys and parrots by regulations +for their transport on route and transfer marches, which afforded +material for many humorous sketches and paragraphs in the pages of +_The Delhi Punch_. Wise and considerate regulations which are +continued in the existing concessions as to the carriage of "soldiers' +pets" by troop trains and homeward-bound Indian transports. + +Colonel R.H. Vetch (_Dictionary of National Biography_) admirably sums +up Napier's character by recording of him that "his disregard of +luxury, simplicity of manner, careful attention to the wants of the +soldiers under his command, and enthusiasm for duty and right won him +the admiration of his men. His journals testify to his religious +convictions, while his life was one long protest against oppression, +injustice and wrongdoing. Generous to a fault, a radical in politics, +yet an autocrat in government, hot-tempered and impetuous, he was a +man to inspire strong affection or the reverse, and his enemies were +as numerous as his friends." + +Altogether a very different character from that which all and sundry +are warned to avoid by the--to a great extent--satirical word-picture +recorded by Ali Baba. + + + + +No. 4 + + + +WITH THE ARCHDEACON + +In this article Ali Baba has pourtrayed with infinite skill and +geniality the many-sided character of the late Joseph Baly, M.A., who +was Archdeacon of Calcutta from 1872 until he retired from India in +1883. Appointed to the Bengal Ecclesiastical establishment in 1861, +Mr. Baly served as Chaplain at Sealkote, Simla, and Allahabad until +1870, when, while on furlough in England, he acted as Rector of +Falmouth until 1872. In 1885 he was appointed chaplain at the church +in Windsor Park, built by Queen Victoria, in which appointment he died +in 1909, aged eighty-five. + +From the commencement of his Indian career the Reverend gentleman +interested himself in that burning question of the employment of the +Anglo-Indian and Eurasian community of India; a large indigenous and +permanent element in the population, the disposal of which is still a +question of very great public importance, and its practical solution a +pressing necessity. The Archdeacon had this question, paraphrased by +Ali Baba as that of the "Mean Whites," greatly at heart, and the +conclusions he arrived at and suggestions made by him from time to +time, ably and vigorously summarized in a paper he read before the +Bengal Social Science Association on May 1st, 1879, in Calcutta, were +productive of considerable good. + +Archdeacon Baly's predecessor was the Venerable John Henry Pratt, an +attached friend of Aberigh-Mackay's father, to whom his book, _From +London to Lucknow_, published in 1860, was "affectionately inscribed." +Certain traits in the character of this Archdeacon known to Ali Baba +by tradition are pourtrayed in the concluding portion of the paper. + + + + +No. 5 + + + +WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT + +This article is of a composite nature. At the time it was published in +1879, the foreign policy of Lord Lawrence was a burning question, and +in connection with the Afghan War then running its course, renewed +attention was directed to the two essays, "Masterly Inactivity" and +"Mischievous Activity," first published in _The Fortnightly Review_ in +December 1869, and March 1870, respectively, by a comparatively young +Bengal Civilian, the late J.W.S. Wyllie, C.S.I. (1835-1870). Beyond +the fact that these essays and certain other papers by the same +brilliant author on the subject of the policy of the Indian Government +with independent principalities and powers beyond the bounds of India +were probably in Ali Baba's mind, the character of the supercilious +Secretary was very remote from that of Mr. Wyllie. + +The typical person held up to derision by Ali Baba has been oft times +decried as one very detrimental to good government in India, where a +personal and absolute rule must needs obtain for some time to come. By +none more pointedly than by the present Secretary of State for India +when addressing his constituents at Arbroath on October 21, 1907, when +he informed them that "India is perhaps the one country--bad manners, +overbearing manners are very disagreeable in all countries--India is +the only country where bad and overbearing manners are a political +crime." Or, as a prominent Mohammedan in India very well said, "When +the English govern from the heart they do it admirably; when they try +to be clever, they make a mess of it." + +In the restored passage on p. 35 there is delineated a Secretary in +striking contrast to the other. The Secretary in the Foreign +Department referred to was the late Mr. le Poer Wynne, under whom +Aberigh-Mackay had worked at Simla in 1870. + + + + +No. 6 + + + +H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO + +Ali Baba avowedly treats the Bengali Baboo merely as a being "full of +inappropriate words and phrases ... and the loose shadows of English +thought." Such being the case, it must never be forgotten that he is +the product, in every sense of the word, of British modes of purely +secular education. Modes which, eminently at the present time, are +being gravely called in question. + +All of which has been more lately elaborated by "F. Anstey," _i.e._ +Mr. Thomas Anstey Guthrie, in the persons of "Baboo Jabberjee, B.A." +and "A Bayard from Bengal." + +The broad results of purely secular and mainly literary education +might in fact be quite fairly summed up in the reproachful words of +Caliban-- + + "You taught me language; and my profit on't + Is, I know how to curse." + +Aberigh-Mackay devoted his life in India to counteract the effects of +purely literary instruction, which he persistently deprecated; and the +last thirty years have undoubtedly witnessed many advances in the same +direction, tending to the material progress of India. + +Ali Baba trembled for the future of Baboodom, that its tendencies as +he depicted them might infect others who might pass, through various +stages, into "trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so on, out of the +province of Ali Baba and into the columns of serious reflection." + + + + +No. 7 + + + +WITH THE RAJA + +In this article we have a vivid picture--mainly--of a type of Indian +Noble it was Aberigh-Mackay's aim and life's work in India to avoid +creating. That too from the beginning of his career, but more +especially in the training, and that not merely in book-learning, he +initiated and earned on up to the last days of his life within and +without the Residency College at Indore. To paraphrase the language of +the then recently appointed Agent to the Governor-General for Central +India--Sir Lepel Griffin--in his first Administrative Report, that for +1880-1881, the happy effects of the training some of the leading +Chiefs of Malwa received under Aberigh-Mackay were visible in the +improved administration of their States. The most notable instance, +the Governor-General's Agent points out, being observable in Rutlam. +His Highness the "Rajah Saheb having conducted the Government with +such ability and success as would do credit to the ablest +administrators." + +It is well worthy of special notice that the Rajah of Rutlam had been, +from a period several years antecedent to Aberigh-Mackay's coming to +Indore, his special ward. + +Most effectually did Aberigh-Mackay, one of the best all-round +sportsmen that Modern India ever saw, counteract the "prodigiously fat +white horse with pink points" tendencies of any of his _alumni_. The +description of the kingly cavalcade in this article, _vide_ p. 52, +calling forth from John Lockwood Kipling _(Beast and Man in India_, p. +196), a most competent and discriminating authority, the following +eulogy:-- + + "The late Mr. Aberigh-Mackay (Ali Baba of _Vanity Fair_), + one of the brightest and most original, as well as one of + the most generous spirits who ever handled Indian subjects, + has drawn a picture in his _Twenty-one Days in India_ of a + Raja and his Sow[=a]ri [Cavalcade] which could not be + bettered by a hair's breadth." + +Aberigh-Mackay in his earliest writings--_e.g._ when, in describing +_The Great Native Princes_ in his "Handbook of Hindustan," published +in 1875, he enters the "Remark" against the Nawab of Bahawalpur, "A +smart boy of fourteen; a good polo-player"--laid great stress on the +desirability of training all Indian noblemen's sons in horsemanship of +all kinds. That his efforts in this direction were crowned with an +abiding and ever-increasing success is well borne out by the testimony +contained in an article, by Lieutenant E.R. Penrose, 23rd Bengal N.L. +Infantry, accompanying his pictures of "Incidents in the Career of a +Polo-Pony," which appeared in _The Graphic,_ April 10, 1886. +Lieutenant Penrose then wrote:-- + + "Polo is such an institution now in this country, that even + in the remotest station a couple of enthusiasts may be found + who will work heaven and earth to get a game of some sort. I + have lately been stationed at Indore, where there is a + collegiate school for the sons of native Princes and + gentlemen. The head of the college was Mr. Aberigh-Mackay, + the author of that popular book 'Twenty-one Days in India.' + He was a keen polo-player, and quite imbued his pupils with + his ardour, so that, though he is now dead, his memory is + green throughout the whole of Central India. The impetus he + gave the game has lasted, and consequently, with a few of + the senior boys in the school, and some of the men of the + troop of Central Indian Horse (who begin to play almost as + soon as they can sit a horse), we could always get up a + game. Some of the boys are not great riders, but like most + natives they have wonderfully good 'eyes,' and rarely miss + the ball. Polo-ponies come in very usefully in other + ways--such as pig-sticking, for their training makes them so + handy that it is easier to tackle a boar on a polo-pony than + when mounted on a horse. Besides, they are cheap, and the + men can afford a pony where they could not stand the expense + of a horse." + +Another very notable point in this article is the expression of +confidence in the loyalty, as a general rule, of the Nobles of India. +This same belief--nay more, _conviction_--is expressed all through the +writings of Ali Baba. + +At the same time, voice is given to the thought that "they have built +their houses of cards on the thin crust of British Rule that now +covers the crater, and they are ever ready to pour a pannikin of water +into a crack to quench the explosive forces rumbling below," _vide_ p. +48. + +Reuter, in a telegram from Calcutta dated Friday, February 11, 1910, +and printed in but _few_ of the London newspapers of the 14th, informs +us that:-- + + "The leading Nobles and Gentry of Bengal have formed an + Imperial League for the promotion of good feeling between + Indians and the Government, the denunciation of anarchy and + sedition, and the education of the people by means of + lectures and pamphlets in the views of the Government. + + "The Maharajah of Burdwan is president, and Maharajah Sir + Pradyat Tagore secretary of the new league." + +It must of course be borne in mind that since this article was written +by Ali Baba, the formation of the Imperial Service troops, and the +Imperial Cadet corps, furnished and in some cases officered by Indian +Nobles and their sons, many of whom were educated at Delhi and Indore +by Aberigh-Mackay, surely warrants us in believing that more than a +mere "pannikin of water" is _now_ available, if need be. + + + + +No. 8 + + + +WITH THE POLITICAL AGENT + +The position of Political Agent, important though it was in 1879, is +much more so now. The territories of the Indian Princes are being +daily opened up more and more by railways; many of them contain coal, +iron, gold, and other minerals in payable quantities, and the +development of these resources call for very delicate handling in the +matter of friendly advice by Political Agents. + +In recent years, nay, at the present time, loud complaints have been +published, emanating from experienced and unbiassed sources, that the +position of many of the great feudatories of India, who by their +treaty rights are much more allies than subjects of His Majesty the +King-Emperor, has been reduced to that of a mere figure-head, with no +real authority except when they meekly obey the dictation of the +British Resident. + +It is a fact that many of the Political Agents in 1879 were officers +who had served in Madras Cavalry Regiments, the Central India Horse +and other corps, but it is also a fact that many of the most +successful administrators India has ever seen have been +Soldier-Politicals. + +Colonel Henderson, so pleasantly cited by Aberigh-Mackay, and happily +still alive, was himself a Madras Cavalry Officer, who served as +Under-Secretary to the Foreign Department of the Government of India, +as Resident in Kashmir and latterly in Mysore, and Superintendent of +operations for the suppression of Thagi and Dakaiti. + +Our late King's visit to India as Prince of Wales in 1875-6 owed a +good deal of its success to Colonel Henderson, who was special officer +in attendance, and his services in connection therewith were +recognized by a Companionship of the order of the Star of India. It +may also be mentioned here that Aberigh-Mackay became his +Brother-in-law in October, 1873. + + + + +No. 9 + + + +WITH THE COLLECTOR + +In this sketch, warm with local colour, the real pivot of the great +official wheel of Indian administration, "the Collector," is drawn +with the exactness due to his importance. Withal very lifelike and +picturesque in many of its touches. + +Thirty years have of course made great changes in many of the details +of life in the districts of an Indian Province, now as a rule +connected up by lines of railway. Improved leave rules and many other +causes have rendered intercourse with the home country much easier. +Whether or no this far easier intercourse is altogether an advantage +to the rulers and the ruled is what is termed a "burning question" at +the present moment. In a word, that improved communications have not +correspondingly increased our sympathy with a new birth in intellect, +social life, and the affairs of state, all of which are mainly the +results of British rule. + +The functions of a Collector, sketched by Ali Baba in an entertaining +medley, have increased enormously of late years, and the position is +now said to be less desirable than of old, when it was amusingly said +of every member of civilian society, that the verb "to collect" was +conjugated thus: "I am a collector, you are a collector, he should be +a collector, they will be collectors," and so on, _ad infinitum_. + + + + +NOS. 10, 20 AND 35 + + + +BABY IN PARTIBUS + +This sketch, which may well be termed a beautiful lament over poor +Baby, has brought back vividly to many a one touching recollections: a +picture in fact which appealed, and continues to appeal, to an +audience infinitely wider than that of Anglo-India. The same may be +said of the sketches "The Grass-Widow," p. 139; "Mem-Sahib," p. 157, +by many considered the best sketch of all; and "Sahib," p. 181. All of +them full of that pathos and tenderness akin to, but yet differing +widely from, the bantering style of the others, which are also full of +allusions and covert references to individuals and affairs of the +Anglo-India of thirty years ago. + +In "Sahib," however, there are traits of character and other touches +taken from the life of one who was--among many other features--a +"merry Collector," not yet forgotten by a rapidly decreasing circle of +contemporaries. While time and ameliorated conditions have changed the +"loathsome Indian cemetery" into something of a garden in which Ali +Baba our friend in common would have rejoiced. + + + + +No. 11 + + + +THE RED CHUPRASSIE + +Alas! the Red Chuprassie is still a rift in the lute of Indian +administration; a reform in Chuprassies would doubtless be more +beneficial to India than any wonder-working _nostrum_--such as +Advisory Councils or extended Legislative Councils. + +The cry for reform in Chuprassies, or in other words the underlings of +many Departments, is a very old one. Ali Baba's denunciation of the +"Red Chuprassie" powerfully expands that one by Sir Alfred Lyall, +where in his poem of _The Old Pindaree_, written in 1866, the "belted +knave" is associated with the "hungry retainers" and others forming +the camp establishment of an official on tour. + +Ali Baba's practice of adequate payment, which he states--in a spirit +of banter--to be potent to remove temptation to bribery and +corruption, has received attention in connection with recent +ameliorations of the terms of subordinate service in India, and it is +believed has met with a certain amount of success. + +The well-meant but not altogether satisfactory trial of the Gaikwar of +Baroda, by a mixed tribunal of Indian Nobles and highly placed British +officials, which took place during Lord Northbrook's viceroyalty, is +alluded to in the conclusion of the article; in which the Anglo-Indian +soubriquet for a subservient person--Joe Hookham, literally _jaisa +hukam_ = as may be ordered--is also introduced. + + + + +No. 12 + + + +THE PLANTER + +It is now upwards of thirty years since this genial picture of a +veritable "Farmer Prince" was painted--in bold and broad outline, of +course. The years that have passed bringing in their train many +altered conditions, the most important of all, perhaps, being the +replacing of a natural vegetable dye such as indigo by chemically +produced substitutes. + +Probably in a few more years the still remaining features of the +Bengal indigo planter's off duty life as depicted by Ali Baba will +have quite disappeared, unless the substitution of sugar planting for +that of indigo now receiving considerable attention in various Bengal, +and more particularly Tirhoot, districts prove a success. + +Anyway, the Macdonalds, the Beggs, and the Thomases, names now, as +formerly, prominently identified with the great indigo industry, have +been assured of continual remembrance. So prominent, in fact, has the +Scotch element among planting families always been that it is said +that if any one present at a race, polo, or Christmas week gathering +were to shout out "Mac!" from the verandah of the Tirhoot Club, every +face in the crowd would be simultaneously turned towards the speaker. + +The bantering allusion to "Mr. Caird and _The Nineteenth Century_," +applies to that great authority on many and very varied agricultural +subjects, the late Sir James Caird, who died in 1892. In 1878-79 he +was deputed to India by the Secretary of State as a member of the +Indian Famine Commission called into being by the Strachey Brothers; +the general impressions then formed by a six months' tour through +India being embodied in the series of articles, entitled "Notes by the +Way in India; the Land and the People," which appeared from July to +October, 1879, in _The Nineteenth Century_ magazine, thereafter in +book form in 1883, and in an augmented form as a third edition in +1884. + +For a detailed account of a Bengal indigo planter's life, mainly +confined, however, to the processes and surroundings of planting and +manufacture, there is no more valuable record than the late +Colesworthy Grant's well illustrated book, "Rural Life in Bengal," +which was published in 1860. In that work may be found a drawing of +"Mulnath House," a glorified illustration of the fast disappearing +surroundings of a Lower Bengal planter's residence. + + + + +No. 13 + + + +THE EURASIAN + +In November, 1879, when this "Study in chiaro-oscuro" was published, +renewed attention was being directed to the Eurasian community in +India, mainly by the discussions in all circles aroused by the +publication of the late Archdeacon Baly's Bengal Social Science +Association Paper of May in the same year, which dealt with the +employment, _inter alia_, of Europeans of mixed parentage in India; a +question which still engages the anxious consideration of many Indian +statesmen. Ali Baba's "Study" is not an ill-natured summary of the +widespread discussions of 1879, but indeed as far back as 1843, the +late John Mawson in his paper, "The Eurasian Belle," which first +appeared in the Calcutta newspaper, _The Bengal Hurkaru_, had +approached the social and domestic side of the question, and to some +extent may be said to have anticipated Ali Baba. + + + + +NOS. 14 AND 17 + + + +THE VILLAGER AND THE SHIKARRY + +Both of these sketches are examples of what maybe termed Ali Baba's +contemplative mood, the villager's life being revealed to us in all +its pathos and interest, otherwise than through an atmosphere of +statistics and reports--the daily life of probably two hundred million +of the inhabitants of India. + +Aberigh-Mackay early showed in his book "A Manual of Indian Sport," +which, in addition to collecting in small compass lessons taught by +many a noted Indian hunter, contains a great deal of original matter +useful to every would-be sportsman, that he was well fitted to depict +"The Shikarry" in correct and graphic manner and from actual personal +knowledge. + + + + +NOS. 15 AND 16 + + + +THE OLD COLONEL AND THE CIVIL SURGEON + +"The Old Colonel" and "The Civil Surgeon," p. 123, are both types of +characters that have since practically ceased to exist in India, +although fairly numerous in the 1870's. + +"The Old Colonel," a relic of the great changes caused by the +disappearance of many regiments during the Indian Mutiny, and the +alterations in Army organisation due to the introduction of the "Staff +corps" system, has disappeared from the scene, having long since +attained the pensioned rank for which he was ripening when depicted by +Ali Baba. + +As regards "The Civil Surgeon," an entirely new state of conditions +has altered him also. Even, however, in Ali Baba's time it could not +be said--as it was "long ago"--that a medical officer intended for an +Indian career, in order to become perfectly qualified need only sleep +one night on a medicine chest. + +All the same, to those of us who can look back to life in India forty +or fifty years ago, there will surely arise visions of many genial old +colonels and doctors, full of good stories and much sympathy in health +or sickness for those just entering upon an Indian career. + +Captain Atkinson, in his book "Curry and Rice," published at the lime +of the Indian Mutiny, depicted by pen and pencil individuals who in +after years developed into Ali Baba's subjects. Illustrations which +may now surely be regarded as valuable records of past Anglo-Indian +life and character. + + + + +NOS. 19 AND 21 + + + +THE TRAVELLING M.P. AND ALI BABA ALONE + +"The Travelling M.P." requires no elucidation. He is still with us and +has developed greatly during the course of years, in fact, increased +facilities of communication between England and India have much +increased the species. Happily there are correctives in the shape of +adverse votes by constituents which, in some notorious instances at +the last Parliamentary elections, have relieved the situation. + +As to "Ali Baba Alone," nothing could add to the perfect picture +which, among other things, good-naturedly alludes to many surmises and +rumours current at the time as to the identity of the Author, leading +in some cases to public disclaimers by various highly placed officials +and others. + + + + +THE TEAPOT SERIES + + + +"SOCIAL DISSECTION" and "THE ORPHAN'S GOOD RESOLUTIONS" + +These papers when first published in _The Bombay Gazette_ aroused keen +speculation as to their authorship. They are as applicable to Society +everywhere as to that of Anglo-India. Greatly appreciated all over +India, they were, with the others of the series, reprinted in book +form and published shortly before the Author's death in a volume, +entitled "Serious Reflections by a Political Orphan," which has long +been out of print. + + + + +"THE GRYPHON'S ANABASIS" + +The amiable and other idiosyncracies---personal and official--of the +late Sir Lepel Griffin, K.C.S.I., who, born in 1840, died on March 9, +1908, having retired in 1889 from the Bengal Civil Service, which he +entered'in 1860 by open competition, and of which he was a +distinguished ornament, are very well pourtrayed in this article. An +article of very tragic interest, because its publication was the +indirect cause, in all human probability, of the death of its Author. + +This is not the place to recount Sir Lepel Griffin's career in many +high places of Indian administration and diplomacy, latterly more +particularly in the Punjab and Afghanistan. + +Suffice it here to say that in 1880, when Chief Secretary of the +Punjab, a post he had then held for upwards of nine years--earning the +reputation of being the _best_ occupant of that very important and +responsible appointment ever known--Mr. (as he then was) Lepel Griffin +was selected by the Viceroy--Lord Lytton--to proceed to Kabul, and +arrange for its Government as a prelude to the termination of the +British occupation of Afghanistan. + +Under the Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton's successor, the Marquess of +Ripon, and after anxious negotiations, Abdur Rahman was proclaimed +Amir of Afghanistan, July 22, 1880. In a spirit of thoroughly +good-natured banter the Gryphon's veritable "Expedition" from Lahore +to the seat of Government to receive the Viceroy's instructions, and +thereafter Afghanistan-ward to carry them out--made under very +different conditions from that one by Cyrus the younger--is amusingly +pourtrayed. + +Travelling through the provinces then ruled over by the late Sir +George Couper and Sir Robert Egerton respectively, until finally Kabul +is reached, where Sir Frederick Roberts handed over his powers to the +Civil authority, as embodied in the Gryphon. A progress which, as +profusely chronicled by the correspondents of the innumerable +newspapers, British, Indian, and Foreign, attracted to India by the +second Afghan War, is lightly, yet not unkindly, satirized by +Aberigh-Mackay under the _nom de plums_ of "Your Political Orphan." +Who also in this article gave expression to the general impression of +the day, that by entrusting Mr. Lepel Griffin with the direct +negotiations, the position of the then Foreign Secretary to the +Government of India, Mr. (now Sir) Alfred Lyall had been somewhat +ignored. + +Be this as it may, for his undoubtedly great services, in which he was +very greatly aided by his intimate acquaintance with the Persian +language, still the French of Afghanistan and other Central Asian +lands in diplomacy and etiquette, Mr. Griffin was created a K.C.S.I., +and shortly afterwards appointed Governor-General's Agent in Central +India and Resident in Indore--where Aberigh-Mackay was Principal of +the Rajkumar College--the College for the "Sons of Nobles"--the first +"Eton" established under British rule in India. These appointments Sir +Lepel held from 1881 until 1888, when he was appointed Resident at +Hyderabad, the last official position he held in India. + +The article now under elucidation appeared on March 29 1880, in _The +Bombay Gazette_, then edited by the late Mr. Grattan Geary, whose +narrative of a journey from Bombay to the Bosphorus through Asiatic +Turkey, published in 1878, did much to revive and stimulate interest +in those important countries, where happily British trade and other +influences are now being actively commented upon by the press of +Western India, and developed by the merchants of Bombay, Karachi, and +Western India generally. + +Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, the proprietor of _Vanity Fair_, who had +always warmly appreciated the literary work done for him by +Aberigh-Mackay, about this time offered him the editorship of the +paper. This post Aberigh-Mackay had virtually accepted. + +Shortly before Sir Lepel Griffin took up his appointment as +Governor-General's Agent, gossip, more especially at Indore and in +Central and Western India, was very busy with surmises as to the fate +in store for the writer of this article, as well as many other +paragraphs commenting, _inter alia_, upon Afghan affairs, and, _en +passant_ Mr. Lepel Griffin, which had appeared in _The Bombay Gazette_ +from February to December, 1880, under the general heading of "Some +Serious Reflections." These articles, hitherto anonymous, having being +republished in book form, with their authorship avowed, at Bombay in +1880, shortly before the new Resident and Governor-General's Agent +arrived at Indore. + +The gossips were--as is nearly always the case--quite wrong, for one +of the first men to extend a friendly welcome to Aberigh-Mackay when +he arrived at Lahore on the 13th August, 1869, to take up his +appointment of "Manager of the Government Zoological Collection" was +Mr. Lepel Griffin, then the Deputy-Commissioner of the City and +District. + +Afterwards, at Simla and elsewhere, these two kindred spirits--in many +ways--met frequently, and learnt to understand each other thoroughly +well. They also had several common friends, civil, military, and +non-official; and their literary pursuits in historical directions +were also much in sympathy. + +In 1881 they were not fated to meet, although Aberigh-Mackay had taken +immediate steps to endeavour to do so, as soon as he became aware that +a prevalent rumour was abroad to the effect that the Gryphon would--to +use a colloquialism--now make it hot for him. + +Aberigh-Mackay indignantly repelled any such surmises, and laughed to +scorn the idea that Sir Lepel could possibly entertain any revengeful +thoughts of the kind that were anticipated by those who knew +absolutely nothing of the old and existing intimacies of either of the +two men concerned. + +To effectually dispel and give the lie to all such insinuations, he +arranged to postpone his departure for England until after the arrival +of Sir Lepel Griffin at Indore, and then make patent to official and +other society the true inward state of affairs. + +Aberigh-Mackay was a very keen all-round sportsman, and in the first +weeks of December, 1880, had played at Mhow and Indore in the +interesting polo matches between the 29th Regiment and the station of +Indore, both matches being won by Indore, notwithstanding a good fight +by the Regimental team, headed by Major Ruxton. + +On the 7th January, 1881, he read and played with the Chiefs and +Thakores of the Rajkumar class of his College; on the evening of the +8th he played lawn-tennis in the Residency garden, when he caught a +chill. The next day--Sunday--symptoms of tetanus appeared which +created anxiety among his relatives and friends. On Tuesday, the 11th +January, signs of imminent danger became apparent, and at 11 a.m. on +Wednesday, he died, some weeks before the new Governor-General's Agent +arrived at Indore. + +It is a very pleasing fact that the most eloquent and very evidently +heart-felt testimony to the great and abiding worth of Abengh-Mackay's +work at Indore and far beyond, came from the very pen of Sir Lepel +Griffin in his "Report of the Central India Agency for the Year +1881-82," issued in July, 1883, as follows.-- + + 'The death of Mr Aberigh-Mackay was for Central India, an + almost irreparable loss. The patience, tact, and enthusiasm + which he brought to his responsible educational duties were + worthy of all admiration and those young Chiefs who had the + benefit of his guidance will compare most favourably both in + acquirements and manners with any students trained under the + most favourable conditions in the colleges of British India. + It so happened that at the time Mr Mackay was in charge of + the Rajkumar College, a large number of important Chiefs + were minors, including the Rajah of Rutlam, the junior Chief + of Dewar, the Nawab of Jaora, and the two sons of His + Highness the Maharaja Holkar. At present there are no Chiefs + of the first rank in the Residency College. It will be well + if the earnestness and devotion which animated the work of + Mr. Abengh Mackay will be felt by those who succeed him. + +In Elucidation No. 1--"The Viceroy"--Lord Lytton's _personal_ +nomination of Abengh-Mackay to a Fellowship in the Calcutta University +has been referred to. This act of _noblesse oblige,_ in the highest +sense of the term, was happily known to Abengh-Mackay during his +lifetime. + + + + +"SOME OCCULT PHENOMENA" + +In the autumn of 1880 many strange stories were afloat in India +concerning the studies and practices of what is now widely known as +occult science, indulged in and made manifest by the late Madame +Blavatsky, the authoress of _Isis Unveiled,_ who claimed to possess in +a high degree, by nature, those attributes which spiritualists +describe (without professing to understand) as "mediumship". + +Prominent members of Anglo-Indian society associated themselves with +Madame Blavatsky, supported her, and believed in the _bona fides_ of +her powers, derived as Madame declared from Eastern "adepts" in the +science of Yog-Vidya, as this occult knowledge is called by its +devotees. + +A science according to some--to others a mere vulgar imposition--with +which, as maintained by certain renowned Western exponents, Lord +Lytton was well versed and largely imbued, his _imagina-tive_ account +of the achievements accomplished by Vril in the _Coming Race_, being, +according to the school and scholars of Madame Blavatsky, altogether +inspired from that Eastern fount. + +"Mr. Cypher Redalf, the eminent journalist," in the proper person of +Mr. A.P. Sinnett, editor of _The Pioneer_, a daily newspaper published +at Allahabad, and then, as now to an increased degree, the leading +English newspaper in India, printed in that journal an authoritative +statement of various occurrences in Blavatskyian circles at Simla when +Madame was on a visit to Mr and Mrs. Sinnett. + +It is this statement, the outcome of "the true spirit of devout +inquiry ... by persons of consideration in evening dress" which forms +the _leit motif_ of Aberigh-Mackay's powerful satire, in which a +gingham umbrella, "conceived in the liberal spirit of a bye-gone age," +is substituted for an old fashioned breast brooch set round with +pearls, with glass at the front and the back, made to contain hair, +which, long lost, was stated to have been recovered for its owner as a +result of Madame Blavatsky's occult powers. + +Powers made manifest at a dinner in Mr. A.O. Hume's house at Simla on +Sunday the 3rd of October, 1880, at which were present as guests Mr. +and Mrs. Sinnett, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. F. Hogg, Captain P.J. Maitland, Mr. +Davison, Colonel Olcott, and Madame Blavatsky. + +Most of the persons present believed that they had recently seen many +remarkable occurrences in Madame Blavatsky's company, and the +conversation largely turned on occult phenomena, in the course of +which Mrs. Hume was asked by Madame if there was anything she +particularly wished for. After some hesitation Mrs. Hume replied that +she was particularly anxious to recover an old-fashioned brooch she +had formerly possessed, which she had given away to a person who had +allowed it to pass out of her possession. + +The brooch having been minutely described as above, and roughly +sketched, Madame then wrapped up a coin attached to her watch-chain in +two cigarette papers, and put it in her dress, and said that she hoped +the brooch might be obtained in the course of the evening. + +At the close of dinner she intimated to Mr. Hume that the paper in +which the coin had been wrapped was gone. A little later, in the +drawing-room, she said that the brooch would not be brought into the +house, but that it must be looked for in the garden; and then, as the +party went out accompanying her, she stated that she had clairvoyantly +seen the brooch fall into a star-shaped bed of flowers. Mr. Hume led +the way to such a bed in a distant part of the garden, and after a +prolonged and careful search made by lantern light, a small paper +packet, consisting of two cigarette papers and containing a brooch +which Mrs. Hume identified as that which she had originally lost, was +found among the leaves by Mrs. Sinnett. + +All this, and a great deal more, including the conviction of all +present that the occurrence was of an absolutely unimpeachable +character as an evidence of the truth of the possibility of occult +phenomena, being carefully embodied in the published statements, which +had been duly read over to the party and signed. The publication of +the statement aroused a great discussion in the newspapers of the day, +by no means confined to India, and gave a powerful impetus to Madame +Blavatsky's views. + +Mr. Allan Octavian Hume, happily still alive, son of Joseph Hume the +great Radical member of Parliament, created C.B. for his very +distinguished services in the Mutiny, retired from the Indian Civil +Service in 1882 after a notable career in many departments. +Ornithologist, and since his retirement following hereditary instincts +by organizing and supporting the National Congress, and criticizing +much of the policy of the Government of India. + +Mr. Sinnett, the leading actor in the affair described above, not long +after the publication of the Simla narrative, ended his connection +with _The Pioneer_, and may be regarded as one of the leading spirits +of the Theosophical movement, in connection with which he has written +many books, and he now holds high office in the London branch of the +Society. + + + + +NOTES + + + +[A: _Lit. Great Ladies_, i.e. _Wives of Heads of Departments_.] + +[B: _A genus of molluscous animals_.] + +[C: _A primary constituent of matter._] + +[D: _A slightly narcotic mixture_.] + +[E: _Throne_.] + +[F: _Hindu festivals in honour of the Ganges and the War God + respectively_.] + +[G: _Household._] + +[H: _Official messengers._] + +[I: _Lit. high-handed._] + +[J: _Fairs._] + +[K: _Table attendants_.] + +[L: I have assumed the Most Honourable Order of the Bath in + commemoration of the happy termination of the Afghan War.--A.B.] + +[M: _Confirmed in the appointment_.] + +[N: _Settlement of the land revenue_.] + +[O: _Children_.] + +[P: _Kitchen_.] + +[Q: _Grooms._] + +[R: The chuprassies are official messengers, wearing Imperial livery, + who are attached to all civil officers in India.] + +[S: _Civil servants_.] + +[T: _An old English form of avaunt, begone!_ Vide "_Macbeth_," _I. + iii. 6._] + +[U: "_Bring me a brandy and soda._"] + +[V: _Low-lying land_.] + +[W: _News_.] + +[X: _An arrangement, a plan_.] + +[Y: _Criminal cases_.] + +[Z: _Land revenue settlement_.] + +[AA: _A water-carrier's leathern bag._] + +[BB: _Chief Board of Land Revenue in the United Provinces_.] + +[CC: _Equivalent to Sir._] + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13068 *** |