A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil Part 25

Leaving the station high on the left, we dipped in a most puzzling manner down a slope through a fine wood giving magnificent views towards the hills of our beloved Kashmir, and presently came to "Sunny Bank," whence a steep road seemed to run sharply hack and up to Murree itself. It was late, and both we and our unfortunate horses were tired, but a hasty peep into the little inn showed it to be quite impossible as a lodging, and a biting wind sent us shivering down the hill as fast as might be to seek rest and warmth at Tret.

The good greys took us down the eleven miles in a very short time, and we pulled up at the dak bungalow at 7.30, having been just twelve hours doing the forty miles from Kohala.

The dak bungalow and all the compound in front was crowded, detachments _en route_, from Murree to Pindi having halted here for the night. Hesketh was lucky enough to share a room with a brother Lancer, and a mixed bag of Gunners and Hussars made up a cheery dinner-table.

The only member of the party showing signs of collapse was the unfortunate Freddie, who, shaken up in his small cage for three days in an ekka, seemed in piteous plight, feathers (what there were of them) ruffled and unkempt, and eyes dim and half closed. Poor dear, it was only sleep he wanted, for next morning he showed up, as his fond owner remarked, "bright as a b.u.t.ton!"

_12th_.--The road from Tret to Pindi seemed tame to us, but probably charming to the horses, first down a few gently sloping hills, and then for the remainder of its six-and-twenty miles it wound its dull and dusty length along the level.

We halted for our last picnic lunch in a roadside garden full of loquat trees and big purple hibiscus. The only curious thing here was a pi-dog which refused to eat cold duck! Certainly it was a _very_ tough duck, but still, I do not think a pi-dog should he so fastidious.

A few more level dusty miles, and we rattled into Rawal Pindi, where, after depositing our sick man safely in his own mess precincts, we proceeded to ensconce ourselves in Flashman's Hotel, which is certainly far better than the Lime Tree, where we stayed before. Indian hotels are about the worst in the world. We have sampled rough dens in Spain, in Tetuan, and in Corsica--especially in Corsica, but then they are unpretentious inns in unfrequented villages, whereas in India you find in world-famous cities such as Agra or Delhi the most comfortless dens calling themselves hotels--hotels where you hardly dare eat half the food for fear of typhoid, and will not eat the rest because it is so unsavoury!

It may be argued that the hotels, if bad, are cheap, and that one cannot reasonably expect much in return for five or six rupees per day; it seems, however, that in a country where food and labour cost next to nothing, a good landlord should be able to "do" his customers well upon five rupees, and make a substantial profit into the bargain.

Probably, as the facilities for travel are rapidly increasing, and India is now as easy to reach as Italy was in days not so long by, the hotels will soon improve. Hospitality, which is still to-day greater in the East than in our more selfish Western regions, and which has, until quite recently, obviated for strangers and pilgrims the necessity for hotels, is now unable to cope with the increasing flood of visitors and wanderers; as the need becomes more pressing, so will the supply, consequent upon the demand, improve both in quality and quant.i.ty; and we have already heard of the new Taj Mahal Hotel at Bombay, the fame of which has been trumpeted through India, and which is said to rival in luxury the palaces of Ritz!

The real and serious difficulty, and one which at present seems insurmountable, is to secure cleanliness and safety in that Augean stable--the cook-house. Until the native can be brought to understand the inadvisability of using tainted water and unclean utensils, and of permitting the ubiquitous fly to pervade the larder--until, I say, that millennium can be attained, the danger of enteric and other ills will always be very great in Indian hotels.

_Friday, October_ 13.--Lunch with Dr. Munro, who surprised us somewhat by having married a wife since we played golf and bridge together at Gulmarg only a few weeks ago. Tea, a farewell repast with our invalid--who goes before a medical board in a few days, and who will then be doubtless sent home on long sick leave--and the despatch of our heavy luggage direct to Bombay, occupied us pretty fully for the day; and in the evening, after dinner, we took up our residence in a carriage drawn up in a siding to be attached to the 6.30 mail in the morning. Our last recollection of Pindi was a vision of the faithful Ayata, paid, tipped, and provided with a flaming "chit," flapping along the road in the bright moonlight, with all his worldly possessions, _en route_ for Abbotabad and home.

_Sat.u.r.day, October_ 14.--A prodigious amount of banging, whistling, and yelling seemed to be necessary before we could be coupled up to the early train, and sent flying towards Lah.o.r.e. It was impossible to sleep, and I was peacefully watching the landscape as it slid past, first in the pink flush of early dawn, and gradually losing colour as the sun, gaining in strength, reduced everything to a white hot glow, when, sc.r.a.ping and b.u.mping into a wayside station, we were suddenly informed that, owing to hot bearings or heated axles or something, we must quit our carriage at once, and so, half dressed and wholly wrathful, we were shot out on a hot and exceedingly gritty platform, with our hand luggage and bedding all of a heap, and with the whole length of the train to traverse to attain our new carriage. Sabz Ali being curled up asleep in an "intermediate," was all unwitting of this upheaval. The officials were impatient, and so Jane and I were in a thoroughly unchristian frame of mind by the time we were stowed, hot and greatly fussed, into a stifling compartment, whose dust-begrimed windows long withstood all endeavours to open them.

We reached Lah.o.r.e about noon, and, having some six hours to dispose of there, we spent them in calm contemplation, sitting on the verandah of Nedou's Hotel. It was really too hot to think of sight-seeing.

_Thursday, October 19_.--Another night in the train brought us to Delhi at dawn, and we drove up to the execrable caravansary of Mr. Maiden. I do not propose to write much about Delhi. Every one who has been in India has visited the capital of the Moguls, whose wealth of splendid buildings would alone have rendered it a supreme attraction for the sight-seer, even had it not played the part it did in the Mutiny, and been memorable as the scene of the storming of the Kashmir Gate and the death of John Nicholson.

We, personally, carried away from Delhi an uncomfortable sense of disappointment. It was very hot, and Jane fell a victim to the heat or something, and took to her bed in the comfortless hotel, while I prowled sadly about the baking streets, and tried to work up an enthusiasm which I did not feel.

As soon as Jane was fit, we joined forces with a young fellow-countryman and his sister, who were the only other English people in the hotel, and drove out to see the Kutab Minar. On arrival we found a comfortable dak bungalow, and, having made an excellent breakfast, sallied forth to view the Kutab. May I confess that I was again a little disappointed? I do not really know exactly why, but the great tower, whose fluted shaft, dark red in the sunglow, shoots up some 270 feet into the air, did not appeal to me.

It is like no other column--it is unique, marvellous,--but it leaves me cold.

The splendid arch of the screen of the old temple, and the lovely columns of the Jain temple opposite, attracted me far more than the Kutab Minar.

Jane and young Buxton went off to see a native jump down a well fifty feet deep for four annas. The performance sounded curious, but unpleasant. The sightseers were much impressed! Meanwhile, Miss Buxton and I discovered a very modern and exceedingly hideous little Hindu temple, painted in the most appalling manner--altogether a gem of grotesqueness, and truly delightful and refreshing.

Tea in front of the dak bungalow, in a corner blazing with "gold mohurs"

and rosy oleanders, while the driver and the syce harnessed the lean pair of horses, a final visit to the Kutab and the great arch, and we fared back over the eleven b.u.mpy miles that lay between us and Delhi.

A good deal of my spare time, while Jane was _hors de combat_, was spent in the jewellers' shops of the Chandni chowk, the princ.i.p.al merchants'

quarter of Delhi. I do not think that anything very special in the way of a "bargain" is to be obtained by the amateur, although stones are undoubtedly cheaper than in London. I saw little really fine jewellery, probably because I was obviously unlikely to be a big buyer, but many good spinels, dark topaz, and rough emeralds. The stones I wanted I failed to get. Alexandrites were not, and pink topaz scarce and dear. The dealers generally tried to sell pale spinels as pink topaz. Peridot are cheaper, I think, at home, and certainly in Cairo, and the only amethysts worth looking at are sent out from Germany. The pale ones of the country come from Jaipur. By-the-bye, the best-coloured amethysts I ever remember seeing were in Clermont Ferrand.

Delhi has always been connected with gems in my mind. I am not certain why.

Partly, perhaps, because the famous Peac.o.c.k Throne of Shah Jehan stood in the Palace here. I cannot resist giving the description of it in the words of Tavernier, who saw it about 1655, and who describes it as follows:--

"This is the largest throne; it is in form like one of our field-beds, six foot long and four broad. The cushion at the back is round like a bolster; the cushions on the sides are flat. I counted about a hundred and eight pale rubies in collets about this throne, the least whereof weighed a hundred carats. Emeralds I counted about a hundred and forty."

"The under part of the canopy is all embroidered with pearls and diamonds, with a fringe of pearls round about. Upon the top of the canopy, which is made like an arch with four paws, stands a peac.o.c.k with his tail spread, consisting entirely of sapphires and other proper-coloured stones;[1] the body is of beaten gold enchased with several jewels; and a great RUBY upon his breast, to which hangs a pearl that weighs fifty carats. On each aide of the peac.o.c.k stand two nosegays as high as the bird, consisting of various sorts of flowers, all of beaten gold enamelled."

"When the king seats himself upon the throne there is a transparent jewel, with a diamond appendant of eighty or ninety carats weight, encompa.s.sed with rubies and emeralds, so hung that it is always in his eye. The twelve pillars also, that uphold the canopy, are set with rows of fair pearl, round, and of an excellent water, that weigh from six to ten carats apiece."

"At the distance of four feet, upon each side of the throne, are placed two umbrellas, the handles of which are about eight feet high, covered with diamonds, the umbrellas themselves being of crimson velvet, embroidered and fringed with pearl."

"This is the famous throne which Tamerlane began and Shah Jehan finished; and is really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty millions and five hundred thousand livres of our money."

One can picture the enraptured diamond merchant examining this masterpiece of Oriental luxury with awe-struck eye, appraising the size and l.u.s.tre of each gem, and taking the fullest notes with which to dazzle his countrymen on returning to the more prosaic Europe from what was then indeed the "Gorgeous East!" This world-famous throne was seized by Nadir Shah, when he sacked Delhi in 1739, and carried away (together with our Koh-i-noor diamond) into Persia. Dow, who saw the famous throne some twenty years before Tavernier, describes _two_ peac.o.c.ks standing behind it with their tails expanded, which were studded with jewels. Between the peac.o.c.ks stood a parrot, life size, cut out of a single emerald!

_Friday, October_ 20.--Yesterday at 6 A.M. we spurned the dust of Delhi, hot and blinding, from our feet and clambered into the train, which whirled us across the sun-baked plain to Agra.

There has been a woeful shortage of rain in the Punjab and Rajputana, and a famine seems imminent--not a great and universal famine, as, the monsoon having been irregular, only some districts have suffered to a serious extent, and they can be supplied from elsewhere, whereas in the great famine of 1901 the drought parched the whole land, and no help could be given by one State to another, all lying equally under the sun's curse.

Not a great famine, perhaps; yet, to one accustomed to the genial juiciness of the West, the miles and miles of waterless hot plains, stretching away to where the horizon flickered in the glare, the brown and parched vegetation, the lean and hungry-looking cattle, tended by equally lean and famished herds, caused the monotonous view from the carriage windows to be strangely depressing.

This is the very battle-ground of Nature and the British Raj. We have given peace and, to a certain extent, prosperity to the teeming millions of India, and they have increased and multiplied until the land is overburthened, and Nature, with relentless will, bids Famine and Pestilence lay waste the cities and the plains. Then Science, with irrigation works and improved hygiene, strives hard to gain a victory, but still the struggle rages doubtfully.

Agra we liked as much as we disliked Delhi. To begin with creature comforts (and the well-being of the body produces a pair of _couleur de rose_ spectacles for the mental eye), Laurie's Hotel at Agra is very much more comfortable than the den we abode in at Delhi, and after a good tiffin we set forth with light hearts to see the Fort.

This, the acc.u.mulated achievement of the greatest of the Mogul Emperors, is a magnificent monument of their power and pride. The earliest part, built by Akbar, is all of rich red sandstone. The great hall of audience and other portions show his broad-minded tolerance and catholicity of taste in being almost pure Hindu in style and decoration. Later, with Jehangir and Shah Jehan, the high-water mark of sumptuousness was attained in the use of pure white marble, lavishly inlaid with coloured stones.

As we wandered through halls and corridors of marble most richly wrought, while the sun-glare outside did but emphasise the cool shade within, or filter softly through the lace-like tracery of pierced white-marble screens, one longed to reclothe these glorious skeletons with all the pomp of their dead magnificence--for one magic moment replace the Great Mogul upon his peac.o.c.k throne, surround him with a glittering crowd of courtiers and attendants, clothe the wide marble floors upon which they stand with richest carpets from the looms of Persia and the North, and drape the tall white columns with rustling canopies of silk.

Before the great audience hall let the bare garden-court again glow with a million blooms; there let the peac.o.c.ks sun themselves, their living jewels putting to shame the gems that burn back from aigrette and from sword-hilt; see and hear the cool waters sparkling once again from their long-dried founts, flashing in the white sunlight, and flowing over ducts cunningly inlaid with zigzag bands to imitate the ripple of the mountain stream.

The dead frame alone is left of all this gorgeous picture. The imperishable marble glows white in the sunlight as it did in the days of Shah Jehan. The great red bastions of the Fort frown over the same placid Jumna, and watch each morning the pearly dome of the Taj Mahal rise like a moon in the dawn-glow, shimmer through the parching glare of an Indian day, and at eve sink, rosy, into the purple shadows of swiftly-falling night, as they did when Shah Jehan sat "in the sunset-lighted balcony with his eyes fixed on the snow-white pile at the bend of the river, and his heart full of consolation of having wrought for her he loved, through the span of twenty years, a work that she had surely accepted at the last."[2]

We spent a long afternoon in the Fort, and drove out finally through the monstrous gateway in a little Victoria, feeling all the time that none but elephants in all their glory of barbaric caparison could pa.s.s through such a portal worthily.

The moon was full almost a week ago, unfortunately, so we determined that, failing moonlight, our first visit to the Taj should be at sunset.

The two miles' drive along an excellent road was delightful, and the approach to the Taj has been laid out with much skill as a beautiful bit of landscape garden. This care is due to Lord Curzon, who has taken Agra and its monuments into his especial keeping.

A very small golf-course has been laid out, and the familiar form of the enthusiast could be seen, blind to everything but the flight of time and his Haskell, hurrying round to save the last of the daylight.

Beneath a tree was laid out a tea equipage, and a few ladies indolently putting showed that, after all, the game was not taken too seriously.

I have no intention of trying to describe the Taj Mahal. The attempt has already been made a thousand times. I may merely remark that the detestable Indian miniatures, and little ivory or marble models that are, alas! so common, are incapable of giving an idea, otherwise than misleading, of this wonderful building, which is not--as they would vainly show it--glaring, staring, and hard, nor does its formality seem other than just what it should be.

As we saw it first--opalescent in the soft, clear light of sunset--the chief impression it made upon us was that of size; for this we were quite unprepared.

As we approached it from the great red entrance arch, along a smooth path bordering the central stretch of still, translucent water, the lovely dome rose fairy-like from the ma.s.ses of trees that, in their turn, formed a background of solemn green for gorgeous patches of colour, in bloom and leaf, which glowed on either side as we advanced.

Ascending a flight of steps to the wide terrace, all of whitest marble, upon which the Taj is raised, we realised that the detail of carving and of inlay was as perfect as the general effect of the whole.

High as my expectations had been raised, I was not disappointed in the Taj, and that is saying much, for one's pre-formed ideas are apt to soar beyond bounds and to suffer the fate of Icarus. At the same time, I cannot agree with Fergusson that the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful building in the world. I do not admit that it is possible to compare structures of such widely divergent types as the Parthenon, the Cathedral of Chartres, the Campanile of Giotto, and the Taj Mahal, and p.r.o.nounce in favour of any one of them. It is as vain as to contend that the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

is a finer poem than Keats' "Eve of St. Agnes," or that the "Erl Konig" is better music than "The Moonlight Sonata."

Perhaps it is not too much to say that it is the loveliest tomb in the world, and the finest specimen of Mohammedan architecture in existence. If I dared to criticise what would appear to be faultless, I should humbly suggest that the four corner minarets are not worthy of the centre building, reminding one rather of lighthouses.

We spent a second day in Agra, revisiting the Fort and the Taj rather than seeing anything new. We could have hired a motor and rushed out for a hurried visit to Fatehpur-Sighri, and there was temptation in the idea; but we decided to content ourselves with the abundant food for eye and mind which we had in these two wonderful buildings, and in the evening we took the train for Jaipur.