From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 5

I find it impossible to remember nearly all I have seen and heard in one of these bustling days; I should think that even a resident, long familiar with all these everyday common sights that are so new and interesting to us, could barely remember the ceremonies of one day in connection with the Royal Visit.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I remember a dock was opened to-day, and we were favoured with tickets which gave us an admirable view. Again there were shears, at the bottom of a place like a Greek theatre, very large shears this time, and a stone suspended from them. The Prince and Princess came down a wide flight of steps to a platform with two thrones on it. Behind them at the top of the steps were splendid Ionic pillars and a pediment swagged with great wreaths of green. The Prince was followed by officers and ladies and leading Bombay citizens mixed with only a few Indian princes. Sir Walter Hughes of the Harbour Trust presented a magnificent piece of silver in the shape of a barque of the time of Charles II., with high stem and forecastle and billowy sails, guns, ports, standing rigging, and running gear complete, including waves and mermaids, and all made in the School of Art here to Mr Burns' instructions. We sat opposite, in half circles of white uniforms and gay parasols and dresses and dreams of hats. Behind us and all around and outside the enclosure were thousands of natives in thousands of colours. There were speeches, of course, and the Prince touched a b.u.t.ton and the stone descended into the bowels of the earth and made the beginning of the new dock.

Then everyone got their carriages, gharries, bicycles, pony carts, dog carts or whatever they came in, as best they could, and we all went trotting, cantering, jambing, galloping, go-as-you-please down the central thoroughfare between high houses of semi-European design, with verandahs and balconies full of natives. The crowds on the pavement stood four or five deep all the way, and hung in bunches on the trees, some in gay dresses, others naked, brown and glistening against the dusty fig trees, stems, and branches. You saw all types and colours, one or two seedy Europeans amongst them, and Eurasians of all degrees of colour, one, a beautiful girl of about twelve I saw for a second as we pa.s.sed; she had curling yellow hair and white skin, might have sat for one of Millais pictures, and she looked out from the black people with very wide blue eyes, at the pa.s.sing life of her fathers. Most of us made for the Yacht Club for tea on the lawn; for the Prince, it had been said, was to visit it informally, so all the seats and tables on the lawn were booked days before!

It was rather pretty there; I should not wonder that Watteau never actually saw anything so beautiful. There were, such elegant ladies and costumes, and such an exquisite background, the low wall and the soft colour of the water beyond; the colour calm water takes when you look to the East and the sun is setting behind you, the colour of a fish's silver. And the lawn itself was fresh green; trees stood over the far end of the Club House, and under these the band played. When the lights began to glow along the sea wall and in the Club, and under the trees to light the music, the Prince and the Princess, with Lady Ampthill and Lord Lamington, came and walked up and down and spoke to people, and all the ladies stood up from their tea tables as they pa.s.sed, and I tell you it was good; such soft glowing evening colours and gracious figures, such groups there were to paint--my apologies for the hasty attempt herewith. The Prince you may discover in grey frock-coat speaking to the Bandmaster of the 10th Hussars, the Princess and Lady Ampthill near.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I've worked at Sat.u.r.day's pictures and Sunday's and written my journal, and seen Royal sights all day till now, and _opus terrat_ and it is late and hot, and the mosquitos tune up--the beast that is least eating the beast that is biggest; the beast that is biggest to sleep if it may.

CHAPTER X

... Went this morning with Krishnaswami of Madras--Krishna is my "Boy,"

and is aged about forty--to Army and Navy Stores for clothes. The thinnest I could get at home feel very thick and hot here in this hot November. I'd also to get photograph films, and guitar strings, and blankets for the Boy against the cold weather--just now the mere thought of a blanket grills one's mind--also to book shops to get books about India, which I am pretty sure never to have time to read. In my innocence tried to get my return tickets on P. & O. changed to another line, and signally failed to do so. Then drew a little and loafed a good deal on the Bundar watching the lateen-rigged boats. These boats take pa.s.sengers to Elephanta or go off to the ships in the Bay with cargoes of brightly coloured fruits. The scene always reminds me of that beautiful painting by Tiepolo of the landing of Queen Elizabeth in our National Gallery--I daresay one or two Edinburgh people may know it. The boats are about twenty feet long with narrow beam. Figures in rich colours sit under the little awnings spread over the stern; the sailors are naked and brown, and pole the boats to their moorings with long, glistening bamboos, which they drive into the bottom and make fast at stem and stern. It is pleasant to watch the play of muscle, and att.i.tudes, and the flicker of the reflected blue sky on their brown perspiring backs as they swarm up the sloping yards and cotton sails to brail up. No need for anatomy here, or at home for that matter; if an artist can't remember the reflected blue on warm damp flesh, he does not better matters by telling us what he has learned of the machinery inside--that is, of course, where Michael Angelo did not quite pull it off.

As I sat on the parapet a beautiful emerald fish some four feet long came sailing beneath my feet in the yellowish water; a little boy shouted with glee, and a brown naked boatman tried to gaff it, then a brilliant b.u.t.terfly, velvet black and blue, fluttered through the little fleet; and with the colours of the draperies, of peaceful but piratical looking men, the lateen sails, and sunlight and heat, it all felt "truly Oriental." To bring in a touch of the West, one of the "Renown's" white and green launches with bra.s.s funnels rushed up and emptied a perfect cargo of young Eastern princes in white muslins, and pink, orange, and green turbans with floating tails to them. They clambered up the stone slip with their bear leader and got into carriages with uniformed drivers, six or more into each carriage quite easily; the basket trick seems nothing to me now--they were such slips of lads--but what colour!

At lunch we talked with Miss M. She gave us the latest ship news about our late fellow pa.s.sengers--the mutual interest has not quite evaporated yet--gave us news of the ladies who had come out to be married. She had asked one of these as they came off the ship into the tender what it was she carried so carefully, and the reply was, "My wedding cake," and of a poor man, she told us, who came on at Ma.r.s.eilles bringing out his fiancee's trousseau, and who found on his arrival here, he had utterly lost it! What would the latter end of that man be; would she forgive?

Could she forget? It was said that another lady, finding the natives were in the habit of going about without clothes, booked a return pa.s.sage by the next ship.

Here is a jotting at this same landing place of the Prince and Princess going off to the Guard Ship, but I am so sorry it is not reproduced in colour. They were to have gone to the Caves of Elephanta across the bay, but had not time. They apparently go on and on, without any "eight hour" pause, through the procession of engagements--it must be dreadfully fatiguing.

You see three Eurasians in foreground of the sketch, one of them with almost white hair and white skin, and freckles and blue eyes, he might be Irish or York shire. The two younger boys are, I think, his brothers--they have taken more after their mother. All three are nervous and excited watching for the Prince. They are neatly dressed in thin clothes, through which their slightly angular figures show, and have nervous movements of hand to mouth, and quick gentle voices, slightly staccato, what is called "chee chee," I believe.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Beyond the boys you see a Parsi woman looking round. They are conspicuous people in Bombay by their look of intense harmlessness. The men are very tidy and wear what they probably would describe as European clothes, trousers and long cutaway coats and white turndown collars.

Some have grey pot hats, with a round moulding instead of a brim, but their ordinary hat is something like a mitre in black lacquer, and it does suggest heat! They all have very brainy-looking heads from the youth upwards, and wear gla.s.ses over eyes that have no quickness--as if they could count but couldn't see--and they constantly move their long, weakly hands in somewhat purposeless angular fashion; the women with similar movements frequently pat their front hair which is plastered down off their foreheads, and shade their eyes with their hands at a right angle to their wrists.

I suppose they and the Bengalis are the backbone of Indian mercantile business. Yet in "India," by Sir Thomas Holdich, I read that out of the population of 287,000,000 the Parsis do not number even one-tenth of a million. It seems to me that we have the Parsi woman's type at home in some of our old families, as we have remains of their Zoroastrian fire-worship. I've seen one or two really beautiful and highly cultured, but the average is just a little high-shouldered and floppy, and their noses answer too closely to Gainsborough's description of Mrs Siddons'.

Mrs Siddons is just the Parsi type glorified.

We went to the ladies gymkana to-day more for the sake of the drive, I think, than for anything else--with the utmost deference to ladies, they can be seen at home--a few people played Badminton by lamplight; it was dusky, damp, and warm, and heavy matting hung round the courts. Outside an orange sunset shone through palm stems, and flying foxes as big as fox terriers pa.s.sed moth-like within arms length. From the height we were on we looked down over the Back Bay, and far below in the twilight we could make out the lights from a few boats on the sand, and fishermen's lamps flickered across the mud flats, and from far out in the west a light kept flashing from an island that was the haunt of pirates the other day. Two more lights we saw were glowing to the south-east in Bombay itself--one, the light of the native fair, and a slight glow from the remains of the Bombay and Baroda Railway Offices, a great domed building that burned up last night after the illuminations.

It was madness to cover public buildings with open oil lamps and leave them to be looked after by natives--this huge Taj hotel, dry as tinder outside, a complexity of dry wooden jalousies and balconies, was covered with these lights and floating flags--how it didn't go off like a squib was a miracle. I saw one flag gently float into a lamp, burn up and fall in flaming shreds and no one was the wiser or the worse. The faintest breath of air one way or the other and the other flags would have caught fire, and in a second it would have run everywhere.

... After the Ladies Club, pegs and billiards inside the Yacht Club, the Bombay ladies outside on the green lawn at tea, gossip, hats, local affairs, and Imperialism, and beyond them the ships of the fleet picked out with electric lights along the lines of their hulls and up masts and funnels like children's slate drawings.

It was interesting to come from the street and the crowds of Parsis and natives all so slenderly built and watch the British youth in shirt sleeves and thin tweeds playing billiards--they were not above the average physique of their cla.s.s, mostly young fellows who had already been through campaigns--and you noted the muscles showing through their thin clothes and compared them with native figures, and it did not seem surprising that one of them could keep in order quite a number of such wisps as the billiard markers for example. But up north they say the natives are stronger and bigger than here.

Every now and then a boy pa.s.sed round bags of chalk on hot water enamelled plates to dry the players' hands and cues, which gives one an idea of the damp heat of Bombay.

... Now my friend says he's off to dress, and we go into the dressing-room--that is a sight for a nouveau! Dozens of dark men in white linen clothes and turbans are waiting on these little chaps from home, as they drop in. They are tubbed and towelled, shirts studded and put on, and are fitted without hardly lifting a hand themselves till they put the finishing touch to hair and moustache at the gla.s.ses and dressing-tables that are fixed round the pillars--sounds like effeminacy, but it is not, for it is far more tiring for a man to be dressed here by two skilful servants than it is to dash into his clothes at home by himself. If you were to dress here without help you might as well have dropped into your bath all standing, you would be so wet and uncomfortable; but all the same I think it is stupid the way we people cling to a particular style of evening dress regardless of circ.u.mstances.

Then home to the Taj in the dusk through a crowd of natives jammed tight on the Bundar, all looking one way breathlessly at the fleet's fireworks and search-lights. You touch them on the shoulder and say, "With your leave," and they make way most politely, and you wonder if it is because you are British or because they have bare toes.

I went to the theatre in the evening, a native Theatre Royal. None of my relations or friends seemed interested, so I availed myself of the kind offer of guidance given me by a fellow artist, an amateur painter, but a professional cutter of clothes. I expected something rather picturesque, possibly rather squalid, but found it intensely interesting and characteristic and very clean, a cross-between a little French theatre, say in Monte Parna.s.se, and one of the lesser London theatres. The acting was French in style and expressive, and full of humour and frankness, and there was a quaint decorative style in all the tableaux and in the actors' movements that made me think rather of Persian figures in decorations than of India. There was a parterre and a wide gallery, in which we got back seats; the audience were all men and well-dressed, and laughed heartily at the points. These I was fortunate enough to have most patiently described to me by a Syrian who sat beside me, apple-faced and beaming, pleased with the play and himself as interpreter. Besides his valued a.s.sistance, I had from the doorkeeper a resume of the plot printed in English; my acquaintance was less fortunate, for, owing to the house being full, we had to separate to get seats, and I fear he lost a good deal of the interest. The Syrian gave me the strong points of the different actors, and told me that he himself was an importer of gold leaf and thread; he had, I think, one of the jolliest faces I have ever seen. The most simple and telling effect was when the Prime Minister found his young master sickened of love for a beautiful lady, and sent to the bazaar for musicians and dancers; they came and arranged themselves facing the audience in the front of the stage in a perfectly decorative arrangement, struck in a moment. Every turn of hand and poise of body and arrangement of colour suggested the smiling figures you see on Persian illuminations. I forgot the effect on the Prince--I wonder he didn't die before we left; he had been acting hours before we came, and we only saw a portion of the play--left at twelve, and must have been there three hours! As we drove home the bazaars were still busy. One street struck me as peculiarly quiet. There were j.a.ps at balconies of low two-storied doll-houses, silhouetted against lamplight which shone through their red fans and pink kimonos, and other shabby houses with spindle-shanked darker natives, in white draperies, also some larger people dimly seen, on long chairs, who my friend said, were probably French--European at least. One or two groups of rather orderly sailors, and a soldier or two, were all the people on the street, and the only sound was "Come eer', come eer'" from the balconies in various accents. The Edinburgh cafe I noticed, loomed large and dark and very respectable looking in the middle of the street. I suppose you could get drinks there on week days; my companion, the cutter, did not take any drinks, so I think he must be thinking of marriage. He was very interested in Art--what a bond that is, wider than freemasonry, what good fellows artists are to each other the world over--till they become a.s.sociates. This tailor was turned out of London by the aliens; he spoke gently and pathetically of the way the unscrupulous and insinuating foreigner works out the home-bred honest man from London. "If all was known," he said, "aliens would be restricted;" and Blessed are the meek, I thought, for they shall inherit the earth--if they only live long enough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lord Minto's Landing in India.]

CHAPTER XA

17th.--Everyone on the Apollo Bundar and in Bombay waited for the guns to announce the arrival of the new Viceroy, and for The Mail; to mothers and fathers just out, letters from little ones by the mail was perhaps the more important event. Maharajahs, aide-de-camps, generals, and hosts of officials were all trying to keep cool, to speed the parting Viceroy, and welcome his successor with all proper ceremony. To understand and describe how this was done is beyond my powers, therefore I must content myself with a note here and there. It struck me as improper that the cheers which welcomed the new Viceroy had practically to do duty for the departure of Lord Curzon. They say, "Le roi est mort, vive le Roi," but in this case, "Le Roi" wasn't dead, but on the contrary must have been painfully alive to the sounds of cannons booming and cheers ringing to welcome his successor. I'd have had three or four days decent calm for the Empire to note the departure of so great an actor in its history.

Then, after silence and fasting; fresh paint and flags for the new arrival!

Monday afternoon.--Guns fire, and the new Viceroy on the P. & O. steamer arrives in the bay. As she steams through the fleet, the hot air resounds with thunder of guns, and smoke acc.u.mulates. Now she is pa.s.sing the _Renown_ and _Terrible_, and the smoke hangs so thick that the hills and ships are almost hidden, and you can only see the yellow flashes through the banks of grey smoke.

As Lord Minto landed at the Bundar, the sun was setting and the lamps were lit, and a soft breeze offsh.o.r.e floated out the flags against the glow of the sunset.

18th.--Made a jotting of the departure of Lord Curzon from the Apollo Bundar. It was a very brilliant affair; any number of white uniforms sparkling with gold, and ladies in exquisite dresses, and with cameras with which they shot the departing couple from the stone b.u.t.tresses.

Lady Curzon was in soft silk and muslin crepe-de-chine, I think, a colour between pale green and violet, possibly a little of both. It was a very pretty dress and with a parasol to match. They went down the steps and the red carpet to the cheers of people on the pier. This effective carpet with the white edge has figured a good deal lately in various ceremonies; the Prince and Princess went up and down it, and Viceroys and Vicereines, and many Generals and Maharajahs. It ought to be preserved by the munic.i.p.ality.

I thought I'd condescend just for once to try a photo on this occasion, as Lord Curzon went down the steps to the tender, and I believe I lost in consequence, by the fraction of a second, a mental picture that I'd have treasured for the rest of my days and have possibly reduced to paint. Just as the whole scene was coming to a point when the least movement on the part of the princ.i.p.al figures one way or the other would take away from the effect; when Lord Curzon turned on the landing in the middle of the steps to say farewell, I had to look down at my pesky little camera to pull the trigger! So my mind is left blank just where I know there should be a telling arrangement, just such a moment as that painted in "The Spears," the Breda picture, where the princ.i.p.al actors and the others are caught in the very nick of time--the camera will now rest on the shelf beside a rhyming dictionary and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Lord Curzon said a few words to the people near him before going down the last steps into the launch, and it in the meantime gently and perseveringly smoked the ticket-holders on the b.u.t.tress of the pier opposite us; and we ticket-holders and G. P. on our b.u.t.tress smiled at their pained expressions--our time was to come. It stopped smoking, held its breath as it were, and came slowly under us, and Lady Curzon looked up from under the awning in the stern with a charming smile, and all our topees came off or white gloved hands went up in salute to beautiful white helmets--and our turn came!--the launch gave a snort, and we felt a pleasant, cool rain from condensed steam, and thought it refreshing as it fell on our faces. Then we grinned as we looked at our neighbours; and then realized that we too were black as sweeps, topees, white helmets, and uniforms all covered with a fine black oily rain. I've a new topee to charge against one or other of the Viceroys or Government--General Pretyman hardly looked his name--and during the rest of the function of the return from the Bundar of Lord Minto and his retainers, you could tell by his grey speckled side what position in the preceding function a spectator had occupied. A Parsi, in neat black frock-coat and Brunswick black hat, and dark face, remarked to me with a smile, "You see the advantage of a little colour,"--bit of a wag I thought!

Altogether it was a very A.1. sight the colour Veronesque; the troops, rajahs, beautiful ladies in exquisite latest dresses, and the variety of type, European and native, made a splendid subject for a historical picture.

Then the new Viceroy left the Shamiana on the Bundar after making a speech, which I was sorry I did not hear, for I was so engaged looking at things, and longing to have some method of putting down colours without looking at one's hand, as you can touch notes on a musical instrument. Can no inventor make something to do this--something to lie in the palm and bring all colours and divisions of colour ready made to the finger tips so that you might put them down in a revelry of colour as unconsciously and freely as the improvisator can use the notes on the piano to express his feeling.

There is more cheering and more gun firing and carriages dash up to the front of the Shamiana and its white Eastern arches that have done so much service this week, and Lord Minto drives off. It is most interesting seeing the Borderer who is to be Warden of the Indian Peninsula for the next five years. Lady Minto follows, with her daughters behind her. They stand in the full light, white pillars on either side and red light filtering through hangings behind. White uniformed brown-faced officers follow in attendance with glitter of gold and waving white and red feathers. Lady Minto wears a very big wide hat, blue and white ostrich feathers under the brim--her daughters are in bright summery colours; the three drive off in an open carriage with an honoured soldier.

Then soldier after soldier in gay uniforms with floating white and scarlet c.o.c.k feathers drove off in carriages, dog carts, and motors, followed by city officials, Port trustees, doctors, lawyers, and smaller wigs till vanishing point might have been marked, I suppose, by the official artist did the Empire run to such an extravagance. Then more carriages glittering in gold came up, and old, and fat, young, and thin, genial, and haughty Indian princes, covered with gold and jewellery, got in or were helped in, and footmen in gorgeous clothes and bare feet jumped up in front and behind, and off they went, the big princes leading with hors.e.m.e.n and drawn swords behind them. Smaller carriages followed till you come down to victorias with perhaps just one syce.

Then the Poona Horse, beautifully mounted, in dark blue, red, and gold, with drawn swords rode past at a very quick trot, now and then breaking into a canter with a fine jingle and dust that made almost the best part of the show.

I can't say I enjoy this damp warm weather here. It feels all right in the sun out of doors, but indoors after dark and in draughts from punkahs it is horrid. I'd now give a considerable sum for one whole day of twenty-four hours clear Arctic or Antarctic sunny air and snow; one would feel dry then, and lose the cold and fever that sticks to one here. The Turkish bath is the only place you can get really dry in; at one hundred and fifty in the hot room you feel more comfortable than outside at eighty-two. The Turkish bath in the hotel is very nicely fitted up, but the native ma.s.seur wasn't a pleasing experience, his weak chocolate-coloured hands gave me the sensation of the touch of a middling strong eel; his lean, lithe figure and the charms round his neck, and grey hair died brick-red I expect to see again in dreams--a crease in his teeth and venom in his evil eye.

It is curious that though you do not see any sign of this dampness in the air either by day or night, whenever the search lights from the war ships are turned on; you see what appear to be clouds of vapour drifting across the path of light.

At night we drove to Malabar Hill to the new Viceroy's reception, and it was all pretty much the same as going to the reception given by their Royal Highnesses. The air damp, hot, and dusty, and for a long way heavy with the smell of roasting bodies, and this time inscriptions across the lamplit road were changed to "G.o.d bless our new Viceroy;" but we had the same waiting outside Government House, met the same people and heard much the same talk about Lord Curzon's Byculla speech and about this one and the other. "So and so is looking well isn't he?" "Yes, yes--ha, ha--laying it on a bit, isn't he! Must be a stone heavier since his leave--takes his fences though they say like a man. Oh! excellent speech. They must be tired--poor people--hear they were very pleased with our decorations. Well, you know they weren't bad, were they?" Of course the "excellent speech" was Lord Curzon's farewell, and "They"

stands for their Royal Highnesses.

I noticed some Parsi ladies rather better looking than I had already seen. One was really beautiful, allowing a decimal point off her nose.

This beauty moved briskly and firmly and had eyes to see and be seen.

Many of them have slightly hen-like expressions and wear gla.s.ses and carry their shoulders too high. As they are the only native women who appear in public they naturally draw your attention. The Hindoos and Mohammedans shut their women up at home and glower on yours; but the Parsi goes about with his wife and daughters with him in public, and therefore enlists your sympathy. These Parsis were driven from Persia in pre-Mohammedan times by religious persecution. I suppose their belief was akin to our old religion which the masterful Columba rang out of Iona. I don't think I have seen any men on apparently such friendly relations with their women and children. You see them everywhere in Bombay, often in family groups, their expressions beyond being clever, perhaps shrewd, are essentially those of gentlemen and gentlewomen.[6]

The only other native women I have seen have their mouths so horribly red with betel nut and red saliva that you dare not look at them twice, so perhaps it is as well that their absence is so conspicuous.