Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life Part 10

CHAPTER VII

VOYAGE TO INDIA--HYDERABAD

I must go back a little in these mixed memories to record our early acquaintance with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who afterwards became one of our great friends. I believe that I first met him at Lady St. Helier's (then Lady Jeune) at a luncheon or party in 1886. We asked him to dinner at 3 Great Stanhope Street, and he accepted--and we also asked the Jeunes. Mr.

Chamberlain, though this was about the time that he split with Gladstone over Home Rule, was still regarded as a dangerous Radical, and was by no means universally met in Conservative houses. As it happened he arrived at our dinner a little before the Jeunes. As they were announced I went to the drawing-room door to meet them and she stopped me, and said in a low voice before entering the room, "You are coming to dine with me on such a date--shall you mind meeting Mr. Chamberlain?" (She had quite forgotten our meeting at her house.) "He is in the house," was my reply--whereat she gasped and nearly fell backwards. I well recollect the stern disapproval of our old-fashioned Tory butler Freeman. He showed it in his manner, though he did not venture at the moment to put it into words--but a few days afterwards we had another dinner at which were present some of our regular--and I am sure highly respectable--friends. The following morning Freeman said to me solemnly, "We had a very nice dinner last night."

"Yes," said I, "I think it went off very well." "_All very nice people_,"

he added with marked emphasis, and left me to digest the unspoken rebuke.

Freeman was a great character and his comments were apt to be amusing. The year after this incident Lord Robert Cecil spent a Sunday at Osterley, and after the party had left on Monday Freeman informed me that there was only one thing that had troubled him. In reply to my rather anxious inquiry as to what had gone wrong he said: "That fine young fellow Lord Salisbury's son did not hold himself up properly. I spoke to his servant about it, and he said it was his book. I said our young lord [Villiers] is very clever, but I hope he will hold himself up." Poor Freeman! he was rather a rough diamond in some respects, but one of the best and most faithful of servants. He caught a chill and died early in 1894, soon after our return from Australia.

[Sidenote: HADJI PETROS]

To return to Mr. Chamberlain. Though already twice a widower he was still regarded politically as a young man, and I remember the American Minister Mr. Phelps a.s.suring me that he had watched in the House of Commons Mr.

Gladstone snub Chamberlain in a way that he was convinced had a good deal to do with his breach with the Liberal party. I doubt that being more than a very secondary cause, but I perfectly recall the acrimonious tone in which Mr. Chamberlain early in our acquaintance commented on the way in which politicians were treated "because they were young." Anyhow, Mr.

Chamberlain not only a.s.serted himself as worthy of all consideration politically, but he rapidly discarded socially his stern views of those whom he had formerly stigmatised as "lilies of the field." The late Sir Cecil Spring Rice once told me that he and Mr. Chamberlain had been thrown together a good deal on some occasion in America, and the latter had confided to him that he had really believed that the so-called "upper cla.s.ses" were, taken as a whole, the idle, selfish, self-indulgent, and generally pernicious people whom he had denounced, but that when he came to know them he realised that they were a very different set of individuals. I have always held that Mr. Chamberlain was an honest man, and that when people accused him of changing his coat his changes were the result of conviction. He once said to me that he had invariably held that the people ought to have what they really wanted, and that more than once he had discovered that he was mistaken in what he had previously imagined to be their desires, and that then he was willing to follow their lead.

"For instance," he said, "I thought the country wanted Secular Education and therefore advocated it, but experience showed me that this was not the case and I therefore ceased to support it." Of course this principle may be pushed too far. A statesman ought to have some convictions from which he cannot and will not depart, but it would be absurd to say that a man entering political life is bound to have a cut-and-dried programme which nothing will make him modify. Moreover Mr. Chamberlain had grown up in a narrow commercial circle, and larger knowledge of men and manners was bound to widen his views. On the first occasion that he stayed with us at Osterley in June 1887 and June 1888 his daughter Miss Beatrice Chamberlain came with him. I see by our old Visitors' Book that we had some very good Conservatives to meet them--in 1888 Lady Lathom and her daughter Maud, George Curzon, Lord and Lady Kintore, Sir John Stirling Maxwell, and my husband's cousin, Prince Louis Esterhazy. I have been told that more than one person first saw Mr. Chamberlain rowing on the Lake at Osterley in a tall hat and with a pipe in his mouth! I rather think that it was at a garden party. In 1888 just after the death of the Emperor Frederick almost everyone appeared in mourning, which somebody said made it look like a funeral wake tempered with strawberries. Poor Beatrice Chamberlain, however, appeared in a sort of plaid gown which made her very unhappy. She confided to Lady Lathom that she had just returned from France and had not known that people were wearing mourning--moreover she belonged to some society in Birmingham (a very sensible one) which agreed not to wear mourning except for quite the nearest relatives. She was afraid we might think that her clothes were due to her Radical principles, which we certainly did not. She became a very talented and distinguished woman, and her death, a few years ago, was a loss to many good causes. I was much touched by a letter which she wrote me after my husband died in 1915 in which she said that he and I had been kind to her "particularly in the long-ago days when I, not so very young, but so very raw, was keeping house for papa and came with him into this strange, unknown, and uncharted world of London." We had done little enough, and it was very nice of her to preserve such a recollection for over a quarter of a century.

Next year when Mr. Chamberlain stayed with us he had married the charming Miss Endicott, now Mrs. Carnegie, but I shall have more to say of them both later on.

[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FOR INDIA]

I must now record some recollections of the first of our three visits to India.

The idea of such a journey arose from my seeing Mr. Robert Bourke in a hansom as I was driving late in the season of 1886. He waved to me and I stopped to hear what he had to say. "I want to talk to you and Jersey,"

said he. "Very well," I said; "come down to Osterley and you will find us both at such a time." It was accordingly arranged, and he told us that Lord Salisbury had offered him the Government of Madras. He was somewhat upset, as he had been Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs when Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State for that Department, and when the latter became Prime Minister Mr. Bourke thought that he ought to have had higher promotion, and regarded this offer rather as exile. However, on talking it all over he began to paint the gubernatorial glories in more roseate hues, and my husband and I both recommended him to accept, as we neither of us thought in our hearts that he was likely to attain Cabinet rank in England. Then he said, "If I go, will you come out and stay with me?" It was a new but attractive project, and we gave a provisional promise which we fulfilled in the autumn of 1888. My parents undertook to keep an eye on the younger children and to have them at Stoneleigh for part of our absence--it was arranged that Villiers should join us when his Christmas holidays began, and the Eton authorities consented that he should miss the following term as it was thought that India would be equally educational.

We accordingly took our pa.s.sages on the P. and O. _Arcadia_, which left Ma.r.s.eilles on Friday, October 26th. My brother Dudley and Mr. Charles Buller sailed in the same ship, which was a new one and had improvements then reckoned very novel. For instance, it had electric light, which had not yet been installed in all the P. and O. fleet. There were about 240 first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers--some entertaining ones among them, including Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Captain Hext, who was Director of Indian Marine, and Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Leigh. In the second saloon was the theosophist Colonel Olcott--an odd mixture of philanthropy and humbug--but discussions with him often served to pa.s.s the time. One was not allowed to ask a second-saloon pa.s.senger for meals, but we had permission for him to come and talk to us, and also to give two theosophical lectures in the first-cla.s.s saloon. I shall have more to say of him at Madras--but the inner meaning of theosophy is so often discussed that I insert here the way in which he presented it as I noted in my journal after one of his lectures given when we were nearing Port Said:

"Colonel Olcott gave a lecture on the Theosophical Society of which he is President. The Society has its headquarters in Madras"

(N.B.--really at Adyar near Madras) "and has three chief objects--Universal Brotherhood, Study of ancient oriental texts, Investigation of hidden psychical forces. It admits members of any religion, but requires universal toleration. Practically its own tenets are Buddhist, that being rather a philosophy than a religion.

It professes, however, to a.s.sist its members to the better comprehension of the esoteric or underlying significations of their respective religions."

Colonel Olcott himself was a Buddhist, and moreover laid claim to certain powers of healing, which I should imagine, in so far as they were effectual, were a kind of faith healing; he went beyond M. Coue, as he declared that he had healed a blind man! Mrs. Gerard Leigh gravely asked him one day whether he could give her something to protect her against spooks, as she often had to stay in a house which she believed to be haunted. "Give me something you are accustomed to wear," he said, and she handed him a ring. He stared at it, and said, "If you could see--you would see two rays" (blue rays I think he said) "going from my eyes into this ring." "What will it do?" she asked. "Well," was the answer, "it will be like a hand laid on your head to protect you." If she remembered it next time a spook was about, I feel sure that it was most effectual. "Your ring," he said to one of us, "came out of a jeweller's shop--mine came out of a rose," and told us a pleasing legend of how his sister held a rose and Madame Blavatsky conjured a ring out of it.

[Sidenote: COL. OLCOTT AND PROF. MAX MULLER]

He had very exalted philanthropic views, and long afterwards, when he was in England, Professor Max Muller told me that he had said to him, "Colonel Olcott, with all your fine ideas for doing good how can you lend yourself to that nonsense of broken tea-cups and so on?" "And," continued Max Muller, "he looked down through his funny blue spectacles and answered, 'All religions must be manured'--which surely gave away the whole show."

Colonel Olcott was extremely anxious to enlist me as a member of the Theosophical Society, a.s.suring me that he only wanted my signature to a doc.u.ment which he would keep privately, "not for publication." What good it would do him in that case is not very apparent, but the net was spread in vain in the sight of the bird as far as I was concerned. Years afterwards he reappeared at Sydney and renewed his appeal in the following pathetic--but still unsuccessful--verses:

"_To our Lady of Leigh_ Only a paper, A very short paper, An innocent paper, My lady, to sign, Expressing your int'rest, Your broad-minded int'rest, Your psychical int'rest, In this work of mine.

Sign: I entreat you, Bishops will greet you, Clergy beseech you, Lady, to join This league confraternal To seek the eternal-- _Not_ the infernal-- Basis of truth!

H. S. O."

SYDNEY, 7th May 1891.

Another, still more generally interesting, fellow-voyager on the _Arcadia_ was, as already mentioned, Sir Samuel Baker, who, with his intrepid wife, was making one of his frequent journeys to India. He enlivened many hours which might have proved tedious by stories of his African adventures, and was always surrounded by an interested circle of listeners. He told how on his expedition to the sources of the White Nile he had met two tattered figures which proved to be Speke and Grant coming back from tracing that part of the river which flowed from the Victoria Nyanza. They urged him to continue his undertaking as they said that if he also found the source he was seeking "England will have done it"--and she did. He asked them to come into his camp--but they hung back--and when he asked why they explained that they heard he had Mrs. Baker with him, and were in such rags that they did not like to present themselves before a lady!

Nevertheless they were induced not to treat the desert like a London drawing-room, and the lady laughed and mended their clothes for them. Sir Samuel loved to tell stories of his wife's heroism and self-possession in more than one critical juncture. With all her adventures she had remained a very simple and charming woman.

[Sidenote: SIR SAMUEL BAKER]

When we were pa.s.sing the Arabian Coast of the Gulf of Suez Sir Samuel Baker pointed out Mount Sinai, though some people pretend that you can only see its whereabouts--not the Mountain itself. He told us a great deal of Moses' adventures--from Josephus, I believe--but he also said that he himself had seen all the Plagues of Egypt, though he said that for "lice"

one should read "ticks"! We asked how about the Darkness? He said he had been in a Khamsin wind when for twenty minutes you could not see the flame of a candle close by; and as for the "first-born," when plague or cholera swept off families they only cared about the first-born, the second- or third-born did not count. He and Lady Baker were also very amusing about the visits to Egypt of the Princess of Wales and the Empress Eugenie respectively.

We had a mild excitement in the Gulf of Aden when a man played the "Boulanger" hymn during dinner. No one now would recognise the "Boulanger"

hymn, as the hero of the black horse is forgotten, but then the Germans hissed and the French applauded. The captain was appealed to, and sent word to "tell the man to stop that noise"--a message which the steward delivered too accurately to please the performer!

I do not describe any of the sights which we saw either at the Ports or at sea, much as they thrilled such unaccustomed oriental travellers as ourselves. Most people now are familiar with the voyage either from personal experience or from oral or written descriptions. I have made it several times since, and, bad sailor as I am, only wish I were young enough to undertake it again. Our cicerones treated us mercifully, but I believe some greenhorns are not so fortunate. I heard of one youth who was warned in advance that the sailors and others were sure to try to take him in. He was told several facts concerning the places and people which they pa.s.sed--these he absolutely refused to believe. At last someone pointed out rocks in the sea near Suez and said, "Those are the wheels of Pharaoh's chariots." "Ah, that I know is true," said the youth, "for it's in the Bible."

We arrived at Bombay on the morning of November 10th, and were as delighted as are most visitors with the glitter and glow of the city with its swarming and varied population. The Yacht Club was a cool and pleasant resort--and we visited the Arab horse-market, the Towers of Silence, and other well known sights. Particularly were we impressed with the curious Caverns on the Island of Elephanta, with the gigantic figures carved in high relief. Few could help being awed by the three immense heads joined together in the Central Division of the great Central Hall, representing Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu. I was specially interested in the designs representing the story of the favourite Hindu deity Ganpati or Ganesha.

You see the marriage of his parents Siva and Parvati, his birth, and a battle among the G.o.ds and demons in the course of which he had his head cut off. His irate mother subst.i.tuted an elephant's head and declared that she, the Mother of Nature, would upset everything unless G.o.ds and men worshipped him in this guise--and he now appears as G.o.d of Wisdom. Another version is that Siva himself cut off his son's head, mistaking him for an intruder in his mother's apartments. However that may be, the lower cla.s.s of Hindu have adopted him as a favourite deity, and we were told of a great festival in February when they flock to the Caves with offerings of coco-nuts, rice, and leaves.

Our travelling-companion Captain Hext was most kind to us in Bombay, and a Pa.r.s.ee, Mr. Allbless, showed us something of the life of that community.

[Sidenote: MAHABLESHWAR]

From Bombay, after a night at Poona, we went to Mahableshwar to stay with our kind friends, Lord and Lady Reay, he being at that time Governor of the Bombay Presidency. We left the train at Wathar and a drive of about five hours through magnificent scenery brought us to our destination soon after seven in the evening of November 14th. We were greatly struck by the huge square-topped mountains towering in giant terraces above fertile, well-watered valleys. The soil was generally deep brown or deep red. As darkness came on we saw quant.i.ties of fire-flies amongst the luxuriant vegetation. Next morning the view from the house across the valley to a gigantic square-topped mountain beyond was so dazzling as almost to take away one's breath. Few things are so impressive as to arrive after dark at an unknown dwelling, and to awaken in the morning to a new world of glorious scenery quivering in sunshine and colour. I recall two instances of the same awaking to the joy of natural beauty previously unsuspected--once at Glengariff and once at Mahableshwar. The soft radiance of Southern Ireland was very different from the almost violent colouring of India, but the sudden delight was the same.

We spent a very happy six days at Mahableshwar and saw all sorts of interesting people and places, including the haunts of the great Mahratta Chieftain Sivaji. Our introduction to Indian hill-life could not have been made under pleasanter auspices nor with kinder hosts.

The Duke of Connaught was then Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Presidency troops. H.R.H. and the d.u.c.h.ess lived near the Reays, and they were also very good to us. Lady Patricia Ramsay was then a most attractive little girl of two years old. The older children were in England. The Duke, here as elsewhere, had a great reputation as a soldier.

When we visited Pertab Ghur, one of Sivaji's thirty-one mountain fortresses, we were told with amazement that the Duke and his officers had lately brought a battery of mule artillery up the steep hill leading thereto. This fort had an arched gateway almost concealed in the hill-side, with a door covered with iron spikes. About fifty people live in the fort, and when they saw the battery approaching they took the soldiers for dacoits and shut the gates against them.

[Sidenote: H.H. THE AGA KHAN]

One visitor to Lord and Lady Reay while we were with them was the Aga Khan, since so widely known, but then a boy of about thirteen who was brought by his uncle to pay his respects to the Governor. The story of his ancestry as told to me at the time was as follows. Some generations ago a Hindu announced a tenth Avatar, or Incarnation, of Vishnu, and persuaded a number of people to give him offerings for the Avatar. At last, however, the devotees became tired of parting with their goods for an unseen deity and insisted that the Avatar should be shown to his disciples. The Hindu agreed, and selected a deputation of two hundred, whom he conducted on a sort of pilgrimage through Northern India seeking for a suitable representative who would consent to play the required part. At last they reached the borders of Persia, and there he heard of a holy man belonging to the then Royal Family who would, he thought, fulfil all the requirements. Before introducing his followers he contrived a private interview with the Imaun (as I believe he was called) and offered to hand over to him all the disciples and their future offerings if he would a.s.sume the character of an Avatar and pretend to have received those already given. The Princely Saint consented on condition that the Hindu believers should become Mohammedans--no doubt this wholesale conversion to the true faith overcame any scruples which he may have felt concerning the requisite trivial deception. Thus arose the sect of the Khojahs, Hindu--or at least Indian--Mohammedans, acknowledging the spiritual headship of this Persian Avatar and his descendants. Some say that this Imaun was one of the tribe or order of the a.s.sa.s.sins of whom the Old Man of the Mountains was chief in the time of the Crusades. It was declared that each head of Aga Khan's family was a.s.sa.s.sinated in turn, and that his life would be sacrificed in due course to make way for his successor. However, I hope that is not true, as I have known him for over thirty years and saw him very much alive not long ago.

When we met at Mahableshwar he was a stout youth with dark eyes and hair and a very composed manner. His father, who had died before our interview, did not want the boy in childhood to know of his semi-divine character as he justly thought that it would not be very good for him, but the boy was too acute to be kept in the dark. His mother was a Persian princess, and he is immensely rich from offerings made to himself and his ancestors.

Even in boyhood he was called "His Highness," that t.i.tle having been given him in 1896--but the rank and salute of a chief of the Bombay Presidency was not granted till 1916, as he is not a territorial prince, but owes his wealth and immense influence to the large numbers both in India and Zanzibar who acknowledge his spiritual sway.

We were told that he sometimes had a milk bath and that his followers were then allowed to drink the milk in which he had bathed! Lord Reay asked whether he would have to fast in Ramadan, but he said not till he was fifteen. I asked what was done to people if they did not keep the fast. He said nothing in India, but in Persia the Moollahs beat defaulters.

When Aga Khan grew up he managed to reconcile his followers to the orthodox Mohammedan faith. He traces his descent from Mohammed's son-in-law Ali. What his private religious views may have been is impossible to say; I should think he was really a Mohammedan, but considered it necessary to allow his followers to regard him as semi-divine. He was supposed in after years to have said to his friends that he could drink wine if he liked because his devotees were made to believe that his throat was so holy that it changed to water on touching it--and he added that "being a G.o.d was not all beer and skittles!" I must say that when he sat near me at dinner at Osterley he did not drink wine.

He was once dining there when in England for King Edward's coronation, and I told him that the Sikh High-Priest was reported to have said that he did not like to be mixed up with "these secular persons" and wanted to hold the robe of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the occasion. Aga Khan comically protested against such an invasion of his ecclesiastical status, and said in that case he should complain to the King and go back to India!

From Mahableshwar a journey of two days and a night brought us to Hyderabad (Deccan)--where we stayed at the Residency with the Acting-Resident Mr. Howell and his wife. We were enchanted with Hyderabad--a real typical Native State and extraordinarily picturesque. We saw various interesting examples of native life and tradition both in the pauses on our journey and from the train. As we drew near Hyderabad there were numbers of immense syenite stones piled on each other or scattered over the plain. Legend says that when Rama was pursuing the giant Ravana who had carried off Siva he enlisted the aid of the monkey-G.o.d Hanuman and his army to make a bridge to Ceylon. The monkeys carried rocks from the Himalayas, but not unnaturally became pretty tired by the time they reached the Deccan and let a good many fall, which may still be seen scattered about.

[Sidenote: RACES AT HYDERABAD]

Hyderabad is largely Mohammedan, and the Nizam has a considerable army, including a regiment of negro cavalry and a good many Arabs. We were fortunate in seeing a race-meeting the day after our arrival, and this gathering of natives in all their variety of costume and colour was dazzling to our unaccustomed eyes. The populace swarmed in the trees and cl.u.s.tered round the boundary of the course, but even more brilliant were the garments of the native n.o.bles and gentlemen who walked about in the ring and gathered in the grandstand. They wore long coats of every conceivable hue and of rich materials, flowered red and green and gold silk, purple velvet or embroidered white, with gold-worked belts, bright turbans, and sometimes swords. There were little boys gaily dressed like their fathers, riders in white muslin with black and gold turbans, on prancing horses with tails dyed pink, others carrying little flags at the end of spears; Arabs of the Nizam's bodyguard with high boots and green, red, dark-blue, and gold costumes and striped floating round their heads, and the Nizam's syces in yellow and blue.

The Nizam himself, an effete individual, had a red fez, a pearl watch-chain, and dazzling emerald rings, but was otherwise in European dress. Around him were the gentlemen of his Court, salaaming to him and to each other with strictly Oriental etiquette, and mingled with them English officers, ladies and civilians. Flags were flying surmounted by the Union Jack, and a band played, ending up with "G.o.d save the Queen." The jockeys were some English and some native, the owners English, Pa.r.s.ee, and Mohammedan.

A hot Indian sun made the scene glow with golden warmth during the afternoon and with rosy pink as it set in the evening with the unexpected rapidity which is almost startling until use has made it familiar. I was talking a few days later to an Indian gentleman about his visit to England, and he said what he did not like was the light, which interfered with his sleeping. Light is the last thing of which I should have expected England to be accused, but there is in India no great variety in the length of night and day all the year round, so my friend was unaccustomed to the very early dawn of an English summer day. Not long ago I heard of an English coachman employed in America. He, on being asked his opinion of the States, said he did not like two things--they had no twilight and said the Lord's Prayer wrong (i.e. "Who art" instead of "Which art"). It is difficult to satisfy the physical and theological prejudices of an alien in any land.

[Sidenote: H.H. THE NIZAM OF HYDERABAD]

Jersey had been introduced to the Nizam the day following our arrival; I made his acquaintance at the races, but found him singularly lacking in animation. The only occasion on which I saw him aroused to anything like interest was when we went to the Palace to see his jewels. He had wonderful strings of pearls and emeralds, something like a tiara of diamonds for the front of a turban, large single diamonds in rings, one remarkable ruby engraved with the seals of the Moghul emperors, and an uncut diamond valued at 720,000 which was as uninteresting to look at as a pebble picked up on a beach. If I recollect rightly that diamond afterwards played a part in a lawsuit. Jersey said something about black pearls, which he happened to admire. The Nizam did not appear to notice the remark, which was translated to him, but presently made a slight sign, and with the ghost of a smile produced a little calico bag from which he extracted a couple of these gems.