An English Girl's First Impressions of Burmah Part 7

The European population of Remyo is small, consisting in fact of but four resident ladies, and some dozen resident males; but despite their limited number they form a very friendly and independent little community. Among them are to be found the usual types of Anglo Indian society, but they display characteristics not met with among the dwellers in larger stations.

Remyo is so entirely cut off from civilisation, that the inhabitants must of necessity depend solely upon themselves for amus.e.m.e.nt, and as entertainments, at which one would invariably meet the same half-dozen guests are apt to become a trifle monotonous, the ladies, deprived of this usual mode of killing time, are compelled to devote themselves to domestic pursuits rather more than is the custom of most Anglo Indians.

The comparative coolness of the climate (Remyo being 3,500 feet above sea level) is conducive to such occupations, and whereas in Rangoon, or Mandalay, housekeeping duties are reduced to a minimum, in Remyo, the ladies, having nothing else to do, engage themselves thus with a zeal and energy worthy of a Dutch housewife.

But, poor souls, they are terribly handicapped!

In the first place, they are mostly unaccustomed to housekeeping themselves; secondly, the servants and household are quite unaccustomed to being "kept"; and thirdly, it is practically impossible for a mistress to do her own marketing unless she possess an unusual knowledge of the language.

She may resolutely keep accounts, lock up stores, walk about all morning in an ap.r.o.n, with a large bunch of keys, and have long confidential conversations with the cook; but in spite of all these possibilities she can only play at housekeeping; the Cook and Head Boy are the real managers of the establishment, and they regard the well meant efforts of their mistress with the kindly amus.e.m.e.nt one would extend to a child "keeping house." A Remyo lady's morning interview with her cook, usually a Madra.s.see, is an amusing interlude.

Neither fish nor joints can be procured in the native bazaar, so the poor housekeeper is often at her wits' end to introduce variety into her evening menu.

She begins cheerfully: "Well cook, what have we for dinner to-night?"

Cook replies laconically, "Chicken."

"Chicken," repeats the mistress doubtfully, "yes, perhaps that will do.

Did you kill it yesterday?"

"No! missis, not killed yet."

"Oh cook!" in a tone of stern reproach, "missis told you always to kill it the day before, why have you not done so?"

Cook shelters himself behind an unintelligible answer in a mixture of Hindustani and "Pigeon English," and after an unsuccessful attempt to understand him, his mistress is forced to pa.s.s from the subject, with a rebuke which he receives with a reproachful look. "Now," she continues, "what have you for soup?"

"Chicken" is again the prompt reply.

"Is there really nothing else?" demands the mistress uneasily.

"No, there is nothing else."

"Well," hopefully, "you must make a very nice little side dish (entree), what can we have?"

"Nice bit of grilled chicken," suggests cook cheerfully.

"Oh no cook," she cries in despair, "we can't have more chicken."

"What would missis like then?"

Missis has not the vaguest idea of any possible suggestion, so diffidently agrees that perhaps chicken will be nice. She asks about the savoury, but seeing the word "chicken" again hovering on cook's lips, decides to make the savoury herself, and turns to receive the daily accounts.

Then cook rattles off a long account of his expenditure, which his mistress duly enters in her book, fondly hoping that he isn't charging her more than double the cost of each article, but having no means of discovering the truth.

Once or twice, on visits to the bazaar, we asked the price of various things, and triumphantly confronted the cook with the result of our researches, but he was never in the least disconcerted, and at once entered into a long, unintelligible, and quite irrefutable explanation as to why the article was cheaper on that particular day than on any other. It is quite impossible to upset the cheerful sang froid of a Madra.s.see.

Native servants have the reputation of being most faithful to their master, and perhaps they deserve the character, for they allow no one else to cheat him (unless they get the lion's share of the spoil), but they consider it their special prerogative to cheat him themselves at every opportunity.

A scolding from a mistress makes little impression on a Madra.s.see servant,--he receives it with an air of gentle reproach, while he most persistently denies the offence, whatever it may be, from a bad dinner, to a broken plate or an undelivered message. It is only the master, who, by a wealth of strong language, and judiciously directed remarks, concerning the origin, parents, and relations of the guilty one, can hope to make the slightest impression upon the impervious native mind.

A further difficulty for the young and ardent housekeeper is the number of servants in her establishment. One man is engaged to sweep the floor, another to dust the furniture, one to fetch the water, a second to pour it into the bath, one to lay the knives and forks, and a companion to hand the plates, and so on through every department of the household work.

This divided duty is exceedingly convenient to the servants, for if anything be wrong the fault can always be laid on the absent one, or a scolding delivered to one can be pa.s.sed on almost unlimitedly until everyone has enjoyed an opportunity of relieving his feelings. But it is inconvenient for a mistress; such a delay is caused in carrying out an order. For example, if a jug of water be spilled, a first servant picks up the jug, a second dries the table cloth, a third dries the table, a fourth mops up the water from the floor, a fifth rearranges the furniture, a sixth carries out the empty jug, and a seventh fetches the water to refill it.

All orders are delivered to the Head Boy, a most important and dignified personage, and he transmits them through the various ranks of his underlings until they reach the servant whose duty it is to carry them out. During the transmission through so many channels, of course the orders become hopelessly mixed.

We had only fourteen servants, as our house was not large! A few of them, such as the cook, sais, and butler had definite duties, the remainder seemed to be chiefly engaged in getting in one another's way and quarrelling. But I suppose the work of the house could not have been carried on without them, though their number was distinctly inconvenient.

In Rangoon, where servants abound, it would be easy to dismiss and engage a dozen a day, but not so in the remoter stations. The natives of India will not leave the plains unless a strong inducement be offered, and the Burmese much prefer not to work, if they can live without doing so. Burmans are usually excellent servants, but they are slow to learn to speak English, and the young housekeeper, who has probably been accustomed to English, or at least Hindustani-speaking servants in Rangoon, experiences great difficulty in making herself understood.

All our servants, with the exception of the cook, were Burmese, and when my brother happened to be away, and the cook was not at hand to interpret, we felt particularly helpless. Messages brought at such a time had to go undelivered, and many a struggle have I had to understand Po Sin's wants, or to make him understand mine. Housekeeping under such disadvantages is not a happy undertaking.

Another way of pa.s.sing time in which we indulged, was cooking. It was cooking under difficulties, for the most important part (the baking) had perforce to be entrusted to the tender mercies of the cook, no one else being capable of understanding his intricate oven. And the cook, jealous of our trespa.s.s on his prerogative, almost invariably served up our cakes in the guise, either of soft dough, or of black cinders.

The chief objects of our cooking experiments were cakes and savouries.

We neither of us knew very much about cooking, but we had cookery books, and did what we could, supplying the place of the innumerable ingredients we did not possess, with any we happened to have on hand.

The result was usually distasteful.

I made cakes with exceeding great vigour and confidence during almost the whole of my stay, but n.o.body ate them save myself from bravado, the dogs from greed, and unsuspecting strangers from innocence.

Cake making was a fashionable subject of conversation at the ladies'

"five o'clocks" in Remyo, and everyone gave everyone else recipes. I was astonished to hear my sister (whom I knew to be almost entirely ignorant upon such subjects) glibly confiding recipes for all sorts of things, on one of these occasions. I taxed her with the matter later, but she explained that it was the fashion to give recipes, and so long as she was careful to include an ingredient or two, impossible to obtain, she could safely trust that no one would find her out.

There is one shop in Remyo in addition to the native Bazaar, and the ladies usually pay it a daily visit, in order, I suppose, to add realism to their pretence of housekeeping.

The method adopted on these occasions is remarkable. No one expects to find anything she really wants in the shop, as it is kept by a native of India, but she begins hopefully asking for various articles, each demand being greeted by a shake of the head. She then asks the shopkeeper what he does happen to sell, at which he appears doubtful, but suggests some useless thing such as antimaca.s.sars. The purchaser at length makes a tour of the shop, picks out the least useless article she can find, and bears it home in triumph.

The unwise thing to do, is to order an article from Rangoon or Mandalay.

One is indeed lucky if it arrives within twelve months after being ordered, and without an expenditure of all one's powers of sarcasm in letters of remonstrance, and a fortune in stamps.

Firstly, there will be received about a dozen letters, with intervals of four days or so between each, demanding fresh descriptions and explanations of the desired article. Then, when more specific description is an impossibility, letters for money will arrive; a request for a rupee for carriage, another request for five annas for something else, for half a rupee that has been overlooked in the first account, and so on for four weeks more. Then the article is announced to be upon the way, but it does not arrive. More letters bring to light the fact that it is lost; has most mysteriously disappeared; cannot be traced anywhere.

New people come upon the scene. Letters from carriers and agents arrive.

Weeks elapse, still the article cannot be found. Another is in course of construction, when it is suddenly discovered that by some strange oversight the original was overlooked, never sent off at all, and is still reposing in the same tiresome shop. At length the once desired purchase arrives, but the purchaser has now long ceased to feel any interest in it whatever.

The inhabitants of Remyo live together in apparent peace and friendliness, but there is between them one never ending source of rivalry, _i.e._ their gardens.

Gardening is one of the most fashionable employments in Remyo. Everyone has a garden, though the uninitiated would probably not recognise the fact, and the amount of time, thought, and energy expended thereon is worthy of better results than those I beheld.

For the "Remyoans" are ambitious folk, and are not content with the flowers, plants and natural products of the country. Their desire is to have a real English garden, and with this end in view, they sow innumerable seeds, set many bulbs, rake, dig and water (or superintend these operations) till life is a burden both to themselves and to their servants. Possibly, I did not remain long enough, but the results I saw were not satisfactory; it required a great stretch of imagination to mark any resemblance between a large bare compound covered with coa.r.s.e jungle gra.s.s, dotted about with flat grey-soiled beds containing a few withered looking plants (half-a-dozen violets perhaps, and a haggard sunflower), and an English garden. Perhaps long absence from home had dulled their recollection of gardens in England.

We were specially unlucky in our garden. Had we been content to confine our efforts to plants in pots and boxes (as did some of our wiser neighbours) we might have been fairly successful. But visions of rose gardens, artistically laid out beds, and mossy violet covered dells dazzled us, and our ambitions in this direction were boundless.

The coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, the poor soil, and the persistent reappearances of unsightly jungle weeds in all sorts of unexpected places should have daunted us, but we had souls above such trifles. Directly we had formed our plans we set to work, scorning the advice of more experienced people, and disregarding all considerations of prepared beds, manure, and seasons. We marked out several intricately shaped beds, dug them up, lightly scattered some good soil over the top, and proceeded to sow our seed with hearty good will.

The first difficulty we met with was with regard to arrangement. Each of us had a favourite plan, the abandonment of which no arguments on the part of the others could persuade. At length, after much useless discussion, we decided each to go our own way, sow our seed where we chose, and leave it to Nature to settle the difficulty. This was so far satisfactory, tho' we felt anxious when we found that nasturtiums had been sown on the top of daffodil bulbs, and one poor little bed of pansies had a border of sweet peas and sunflowers.