The Days Before Yesterday Part 12

Calcutta is fortunate in having so fine a lung as the great stretch of the Maidan. It has been admirably planted and laid out, with every palm of tree of aggressively Indian appearance carefully excluded from its green expanse, so it wears a curiously home-like appearance. The Maidan is very reminiscent of Hyde Park, though almost double its size. There is one spot, where the Gothic spire of the cathedral emerges from a ma.s.s of greenery, with a large sheet of water in the foreground, which recalls exactly the view over Bayswater from the bridge spanning the Serpentine.

Considering that Calcutta Cathedral was built in 1840; that it was designed by an Engineer officer, and not by an architect; that its "Gothic" is composed of cast-iron and stucco instead of stone, it is really not such a bad building. The great size of its interior gives it a certain dignity, and owing to the generosity of the European community, it is most lavishly adorned with marbles, mosaics, and stained gla.s.s. It possesses the finest organ in Asia, and a really excellent choir, the men Europeans, the boys being Eurasians. These small half-castes have very sweet voices, with a curious and not unpleasing metallic timbre about them. At evening service in the cathedral, should one ignore such details as the rows of electric punkahs, the temperature, and the dingy complexions of the choir-boys, it was almost impossible to realise that one was not in England. I had been used to singing in a church choir, and it was pleasant to hear such familiar cathedral services as Garrett in D, Smart in F, Walmisley in D minor, and Hopkins in F, so perfectly rendered seven thousand miles away from home, thanks to that excellent musician, Dr. Slater, the cathedral organist.

St. Andrew's Scottish Presbyterian Church stands in its own wooded grounds in which there are two large ponds, or, as Anglo-Indians would put it, it stands in a compound with large tanks. The church is consequently infested with mosquitoes. The last time that I was in Calcutta, the Gordon Highlanders had just relieved an English regiment in the fort, and on the first Sunday after their arrival, four hundred Gordons were marched to a parade service at St. Andrew's. The most optimistic mosquito had never in his wildest dreams imagined such a succulent banquet as that afforded by four hundred bare-kneed, kilted Highlanders, and the mosquitoes made the fullest use of their unique opportunity. Soon the church resounded with the vigorous slapping of hands on bare knees and thighs, as the men endeavoured to kill a few of their little tormentors. The minister, hearing the loud clapping, but entirely misapprehending its purport, paused in his sermon, and said, "My brethren, it is varra gratifying to a minister of the Word to learn that his remarks meet with the approbation of his hearers, but I'd have you remember that all applause is strictly oot of place in the Hoose of G.o.d."

The Gordon Highlanders were originally raised by my great-grandfather, the fourth Duke of Gordon, in 1794, or perhaps more accurately, by my great-grandmother, Jean, the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon. d.u.c.h.ess Jean, then in the height of her beauty, attended every market in the towns round Gordon Castle, and kissed every recruit who took the guinea she offered. The French Republic had declared war on Great Britain in 1793, and the Government had made an urgent appeal for fresh levies of troops. d.u.c.h.ess Jean, by her novel osculatory methods, raised the Gordons in four months. My father and mother were married at Gordon Castle in 1832, and the wedding guests grew so excessively convivial that they carried everything on the tables at the wedding breakfast, silver plate, gla.s.s, china, and all, down to the bridge at Fochabers, and threw them into the Spey. We may congratulate ourselves on the fact that it is no longer inc.u.mbent on wedding guests to drink the health of the newly married couple so fervently, and that a proportional saving in table fittings can thus be effected.

Barrackpore, the Viceroy's country place, is unquestionably a pleasant spot, with its fine park and famous gardens. Like the Maidan in Calcutta Barrackpore is a very fairly successful attempt at reproducing England in Asia. With a little make-believe and a determined attempt to ignore the grotesque outlines of a Hindoo temple standing on the confines of the park, and the large humps on the backs of the grazing cattle like the steam domes on railway engines, it might be possible to imagine oneself at home, until the illusion is shattered in quite another fashion. There is an excellent eighteen-hole golf course in Barrackpore park, but when you hear people talking of the second "brown" there can be no doubt but that you are in Asia. A "green" would be a palpable misnomer for the parched gra.s.s of an Indian dry season, still a "brown" comes as a shock at first. The gardens merit their reputation. There are innumerable ponds, or "tanks," of lotus and water-lilies of every hue: scarlet, crimson, white, and pure sky-blue, the latter an importation from Australia. When these are in flower they are a lovely sight, and perhaps compensate for the myriads of mosquitoes who find in these ponds an ideal breeding-place, and a.s.sert their presence day and night most successfully. There are great drifts of Eucharis lilies growing under the protecting shadows of the trees along shady walks, and the blaze of colour in the formal garden surrounding the white marble fountain in front of the house is positively dazzling. The house was built especially as a hot-weather residence, and as such is not particularly successful, for it is one of the hottest buildings in the whole of India. The dining-room is in the centre of the house, and has no windows whatever; an arrangement which, though it may shut out the sun, also excludes all fresh air as well.

The bedrooms extend up through two storeys, and are so extremely lofty that one has the sensation of sleeping in a lift-shaft. Apart from its heat, the house has a dignified old-world air about it, with vague hints of Adam decoration in its details.

The establishment of Government House consisted of five hundred and twenty servants, all natives, so it could not be termed short-handed.

With so many men, the apparently impossible could be undertaken. Lord Lansdowne left Calcutta for Barrackpore every Sat.u.r.day afternoon. As soon as we had gone into luncheon at Calcutta on the Sat.u.r.day, perfect armies of men descended on the private part of the house and packed up all the little things about the rooms into big cases. An hour later they were on their way up the river by steamer, and when we arrived at Barrackpore for tea, the house looked as though it had been lived in for weeks, with every object reposing on the tables in precisely the same position it had occupied earlier in the day in Calcutta. Late on Sunday night this process was reversed for the return journey at seven on Monday morning. The Viceroy had a completely fitted-up office in his smart little white-and-gold yacht, and was able to get through a great deal of work on his voyage down the Hooghly before breakfast on Monday mornings. A conscientious Viceroy of India is one of the hardest-worked men in the world, for he frequently has ten hours of office work in the day, irrespective of his other duties.

An enormous banyan tree stands on the lawn at Barrackpore. I should be afraid to say how much ground it covers; perhaps nearly an acre, for these trees throw down aerial suckers which form into fresh trunks, and so spread indefinitely. Lady Lansdowne thought she would have a bamboo house built in this great banyan tree for her little daughter, the same little girl for whom I had built the snow-hut at Ottawa, for she happens to be my G.o.d-daughter. It was to be a sort of "Swiss Family Robinson" tree-house, infinitely superior to the house on the tree-tops of Kensington Gardens, which Wendy destined for Peter Pan. The house was duly built, with bamboo staircases, and little fenced-off bamboo platforms fitted with seats and tables, at different levels up the tree. The Swiss Family Robinson would have gone mad with jealousy at seeing such a desirable aerial abode, so immeasurably preferable to their own, and even Wendy might have felt a mild pang of envy. When the house was completed, one of the Aides-de-Camp inspected it and found a snake hanging by its tail from a branch right over one of the little aerial platforms. He reported that the tree was full of snakes. The risk was too great to run, so prompt orders were given to demolish the house, and the little girl never enjoyed her tree-top playground.

The Viceroy's State elephants were all kept at Barrackpore, and the elephant-lines had a great attraction for children, especially for a small great-nephew of mine, now a Lieut.-Colonel, and the father of a family, then aged six. The child was very fearless, but the only elephant he was allowed to approach was a venerable tusker named "Warren Hastings," the very identical elephant on which Warren Hastings made his first entry into Calcutta. "Warren" was supposed to be nearly 200 years old, and his temper could be absolutely relied on. It is curious that natives, in speaking of a quiet, good-tempered animal, always speak of him as "poor" (gharib). The little boy was perpetually feeding Warren Hastings with oranges and bananas, and the two became great friends. It was a pretty sight seeing the fearless small boy in his white suit, bare legs, and little sun-helmet, standing in front of the great beast who could have crushed him to a wafer in one second, and ordering him in the vernacular, with his shrill child's voice, to kneel. It was a more curious sight seeing the huge animal at once obey his little mentor, and, struggling with the infirmities and rheumatic joints of old age (to which, alas! others besides elephants are subject), lower himself painfully on to his knees. "Salaam karo"

("Salute me"), piped the white child, and the great pachyderm instantly obeyed, lifting his trunk high in salute; which, if you think it out, may have a certain symbolism about it.

It was the same small boy who on returning to England at the age of seven, after five years in India, looked out of the windows of the carriage with immense interest, as they drove through London from Charing Cross station. "Mother," he piped at length, "this is a very odd country! All the natives seem to be white here."

My little great-nephew was immensely petted by the native servants, and as he could speak the vernacular with greater ease than English, he picked up from the servants the most appalling language, which he innocently repeated, entailing his frequent chastis.e.m.e.nt.

I can sympathise with the child there, for at the age of nine, in Dublin, I became seized with an intense but short-lived desire to enlist as a trumpeter in a Lancer regiment. Seeing one day a real live, if diminutive, Lancer trumpeter listening to the band playing in the Castle yard, I ran down and consulted him as to the best means of attaining my desire. The small trumpeter was not particularly intelligent, and was unable to help me. Though of tender years, he was regrettably lacking in refinement, for his conversation consisted chiefly of an endless repet.i.tion of three or four words, not one of which I had ever heard before. Carefully treasuring these up, as having a fine martial smack about them suitable to the military career I then proposed embracing, I, in all innocence, fired off one of the trumpeter's full-flavoured expressions at my horror-stricken family during luncheon, to be at once ordered out of the room, and severely punished afterwards. We all know that "what the soldier said" is not legal evidence; in this painful fashion I also learnt that "what the trumpeter said" is not held to be a valid excuse for the use of bad language by a small boy.

In the late autumn of 1890 Admiral Sir Edmund Fremantle brought his flagship, the Boadicea, right up the Hooghly, and moored her alongside the Maidan. The ship remained there for six weeks, the Admiral taking up his quarters at Government House. My sister Lady Lansdowne had a mistaken weakness for midshipmen, whom she most inappropriately termed "those dear little fellows." At that time midshipmen went to sea at fifteen years of age, so they were much younger than at present. As these boys were constantly at Government House, four of us thought that we would lend the midshipmen our ponies for an early morning ride. The boys all started off at a gallop, and every one of them was bolted with as soon as he reached the Maidan. As they had no riding-breeches, their trousers soon rucked up, exhibiting ample expanses of bare legs; they had no notion of riding, but managed to stick on somehow by clinging to pommel and mane, banging here into a sedate Judge of the High Court, with an apologetic "Sorry, sir, but this swine of a pony won't steer;"

barging there into a pompous Anglo-Indian official, as they yelled to their ponies, "Easy now, dogs-body, or you'll unship us both;"

galloping as hard as their ponies could lay legs to the ground, cannoning into half the white inhabitants of Calcutta, but always with imperturbable good-humour. When their panting ponies tried to pull up to recover their wind a little, these rising hopes of the British Navy kicked them with their heels into a gallop again, shouting strange nautical oaths, and grinning from ear to ear with delight, until finally four ponies lathered in sweat, in the last stages of exhaustion, returned to Government House, and four dripping boys alighted, declaring that they had had the time of their lives in spite of a considerable loss of cuticle. It was the same at the dances at Government House. The smart young subalterns simply weren't in it; the midshipmen got all the best partners, and, to do them justice, they could dance very well. They started with the music and whirled their partners round the room at the top of their speed, in the furnace temperature of Calcutta, without drawing rein for one second until the band stopped, when a dishevelled and utterly exhausted damsel collapsed limply into a chair, whilst a deliquescent bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned youth, with a sodden wisp of white linen and black silk round his neck to indicate the spot where he had once possessed a collar and tie, endeavoured to fan his partner into some semblance of coolness again.

Lady Lansdowne having invited eight midshipmen to spend a Sunday at Barrackpore, they arrived there by launch with a drag net, which the Viceroy had given them leave to use on the largest of the ponds. My sister at once set them down to play lawn-tennis, hoping to work off some of their superfluous energy in this way. In honour of the occasion, the midshipmen had extracted their best white flannels from their chests, and they proceeded to array themselves in these. The Boadicea, however, had been two years in commission, the flannels were two years old, and the lads were just at the age when they were growing most rapidly. They squeezed themselves with great difficulty into their shrunken garments, which looked more like tights than trousers, every b.u.t.ton and seam obviously strained to the bursting point, and set to work playing tennis with their accustomed vigour. Soon there was a sound of rending cloth, and the senior midshipman, a portly youth of Teutonic amplitude of outline, lay down flat on his back on the lawn. A minute later there was a similar sound, and another boy lay down on his back and remained there, and a third lad quickly followed their example. A charming lady had noticed this from the verandah above, and ran down in some alarm, fearing that these young Nelsons had got sunstrokes. Somewhat confusedly they a.s.sured her that they were quite well, but might they, please, have three rugs brought them. Otherwise it was impossible for them to move. With some difficulty three rugs were procured, and, enveloped in them, they waddled off to their bungalow to a.s.sume more decent apparel. A few minutes later there were two more similar catastrophes (these garments all seemed to split in precisely the same spot), and the supply of rugs being exhausted, these boys had to retreat to their bungalow walking backwards like chamberlains at a Court function. After luncheon, in the burning heat of Bengal, most sensible people keep quiet in the shade, but the midshipmen went off to inspect the great tank, and to decide how they should drag it.

Soon we heard loud shoutings from the direction of the tank, and saw a long string of native servants carrying brown chatties of hot water towards the pond. We found that the courteous House-Baboo had informed the midshipmen that the holes in the banks of the tank were the winter rest-places of cobras. It then occurred to the boys that it would be capital fun to pour hot water down the holes, and to kill the cobras with sticks as they emerged from them. It was a horribly dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt, for, one bad shot, and the Royal Navy would unquestionably have had to mourn the loss of a promising midshipman in two hours'

time. When we arrived the snake-killing was over, and the boys were all refreshing themselves with large cheroots purloined from the dining-room on their behalf by a friendly kitmutgar. The dragging of the tank was really a wonderful sight. As the net reached the far end it was one solid ma.s.s of great shining, blue-grey fish, of about thirty pounds weight each. The most imaginative artist in depicting the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" never approached the reality of Barrackpore, or pictured such vast quant.i.ties of writhing, silvery finny creatures. They were a fish called cattla by the natives, a species of carp, with a few eels and smaller fish of a bright red colour thrown in amongst them. I could never have believed that one pond could have held such incredible quant.i.ties of fish. The Viceroy, an intrepid pioneer in gastronomic matters, had a great cattla boiled for his dinner. The first mouthful defeated him; he declared that the consistency of the fish was that of an old flannel shirt, and the taste a compound of mud and of the smell of a covered racquet-court. A lady insisted on presenting the midshipmen with two dozen bottles of a very good champagne for the Gun-room Mess. In the innocence of her heart she thought that the champagne would last them for a year, but on New Year's Eve the little lambs had a great celebration on board, and drank the whole two dozen at one sitting. As there were exactly eighteen of them, this made a fair allowance apiece; they all got exceedingly drunk, and the Admiral stopped their leave for two months, so we saw no more of them. They were quite good boys really though, like all their kind, rather over-full of high spirits.

As is well known, Queen Victoria celebrated her seventieth birthday by commencing the study of Hindustani under the tuition of a skilled Moonshee. At the farewell audience the Queen gave my sister, Her Majesty, on learning that Lady Lansdowne intended to begin learning Hindustani as soon as she reached India, proposed that they should correspond occasionally in Urdu, to test the relative progress they were making. Every six months or so a letter from the Queen, beautifully written in Persian characters, reached Calcutta, to which my sister duly replied. In strict confidence, I may say that I strongly suspect that Lady Lansdowne's letters were written by her Moonshee, and that she merely copied the Persian characters, which she could do very neatly. The Arabic alphabet is used in writing Persian, with three or four extra letters added to express sounds which do not exist in Arabic; it is, of course, written from right to left. I had an hour and a half's daily lesson in Urdu from an efficient, if immensely pompous, Moonshee, but I never attempted to learn to read or write the Persian characters.

I do not think that any one who has not traversed the plains of Northern Indian can have any idea of their deadly monotony. Hour after hour of level, sun-baked wheat-fields, interspersed with arid tracts of desert, hardly conforms to the traditional idea of Indian scenery, nor when once Bengal is left behind is there any of that luxuriant vegetation which one instinctively a.s.sociates with hot countries. In bars in the United States, any one wishing for whisky and water was (I advisedly use the past tense) accustomed to drain a small tumbler of neat whisky, and then to swallow a gla.s.s of water. In India everything is arranged on this principle; the whisky and the water are kept quite separate. The dead-flat expanse of the Northern plains is unbroken by the most insignificant of mounds; on the other hand, in the hills it is almost impossible to find ten yards of level ground. In the same way during the dry season you know with absolute certainty that there will be no rain; whilst during the rains you can predict, without the faintest shadow of doubt, that the downpour will continue day by day.

Personally, I prefer whisky and water mixed.

In 1891 the Viceroy had selected the k.u.maon district for his usual official spring tour, and all arrangements had been made for this. As my sister was feeling the heat of Calcutta a great deal, she and I preceded the Viceroy to Naini Tal in the k.u.maon district, as it stands at an alt.i.tude of 6500 feet. The narrow-gauge railway ends at KathG.o.dam, fifteen miles from Naini Tal, and the last four miles to the hill-station have to be ridden up, I should imagine, the steepest road in the world. It is like the side of a house. People have before now slipped over their horses' tails going up that terrific ascent, and I cannot conceive how the horses' girths manage to hold. Naini Tal is a delightful spot, with bungalows peeping out of dense greenery that fringes a clear lake. As in most hill-stations, the narrow riding tracks are scooped out of the hillsides with a perpendicular drop of, say, 500 feet on one side. These khudd paths, in addition to being very narrow, are so precipitous that it takes some while getting used to riding along them. A rather tiresome elderly spinster had come up to Naini Tal on a visit to a relative, and was continually bewailing the dangers of these khudd paths. She had hoped, she declared, to put on a little flesh in the hills, but her constant anxiety about the khudds was making her thinner than ever. A humorous subaltern, rather bored at these continual laments, observed to her: "At all events, Miss Smith, you'll have one consolation. If by any piece of bad luck you should fall over the khudd, you'll go over thin, but you'll fall down plump--a thousand feet."

The very evening that Lord Lansdowne arrived for his projected tour, the news of a serious outbreak in Manipur was telegraphed. The Viceroy at once decided to abandon his tour and to proceed straight to Simla, to which the Government offices had already moved, and where his presence would be urgently required. Lord William Beresford, the Military Secretary, a prince of organisers, at once took possession of the telegraph wires, and in two hours his arrangements were complete--or as an Anglo-Indian would put it, "he had made his bundobust." The Viceroy and my sister were to leave next morning at 6 a.m., and Lord William undertook to get them to Simla by special trains before midnight. He actually landed them there by 11 p.m.--quite a record journey, for Naini Tal is 407 miles from Simla, of which 75 miles have to be ridden or driven by road and 66 are by narrow-gauge railway, on which high speeds are impossible. There were 6500 feet to descend from Naini, and 6000 feet to ascend to Simla, but in India a good organiser can accomplish miracles.

The Viceroy's tour being abandoned, Colonel Erskine, the Commissioner for the k.u.maon district, invited me to accompany him on his own official tour. It was through very difficult country where no wheeled traffic could pa.s.s, so we were to ride, with all our belongings carried by coolies. I bought two hill-ponies the size of Newfoundland dogs for myself and my "bearer," and we started. The little animals being used to carrying packs, have a disconcerting trick of keeping close to the very edge of the khudd, for experience has taught them that to b.u.mp their load against the rock wall on the inner side gives them an unpleasant jar. These little hill-ponies are wonderfully sure-footed, and can climb like cats over dry water-courses piled with rocks and great boulders, which a man on foot would find difficult to negotiate.

The rhododendrons were then in full flower, and the hills were one blaze of colour. We were always going up and up, and as we ascended, the deep crimson rhododendron flowers of Naini Tal gradually faded to rose-colour, from rose-colour to pale pink, and from pink to pure white. It was a perfect education travelling with Colonel Erskine, for that shrewd and kindly old Scotsman had spent half his life in India, and knew the Oriental inside out. The French have an expression, "se fourrer dans la peau d'autrui," "to shove yourself into another person's skin," and therefore to be able to see things as they would present themselves to the mind of a man of a different race and of a different mentality, and from his point of view. All young diplomats are enjoined to cultivate this art, and some few succeed in doing so.

Colonel Erskine had it to perfection. On arriving in a village he would call for a carpet, and a dirty cotton dhuree would be laid on the round. He would then order a charpoy, or native bed, to be placed on the carpet, and he would seat himself on it, and call out in the vernacular, "Now, my children, what have you to tell me?" All this was strictly in accordance with immemorial Eastern custom. Then the long line of suppliants would approach, each one with a present of an orange, or a bunch of rhododendron flowers in his hand. This, again, from the very beginning of things has been the custom in the East (cf.

2 Kings, chap. viii, vers. 8, 9: "And the King said unto Hazael, Take a present in thine hand, and go, meet the man of G.o.d.... So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him"). Colonel Erskine was a great stickler for these presents, and as they could be picked off the nearest rhododendron bush, they cost the donor nothing.

The outpouring of grievences and complaints then began, each applicant always ending with the two-thousand-year-old cry of India, "Dohai, Huzoor!" ("Justice, my lord!") The old Commissioner meanwhile listened intently, dictating copious notes to his Brahmin clerk, and at the conclusion of the audience he would cry, "Go, my children. Justice shall be done to all of you," and we moved on to another village. It was very pleasant seeing the patriarchal relations between the Commissioner and the villagers. He understood them and their customs thoroughly; they trusted him and loved him as their official father. I fancy that this type of Indian Civil servant, knowing the people he has to deal with down to the very marrow of their bones, has become rarer of late years. The Brahmin clerk was a very intelligent man, and spoke English admirably, but I took a great dislike to him, noting the abject way in which the natives fawned on him. Colonel Erskine had to discharge him soon afterwards, as he found that he had been exploiting the villagers mercilessly for years, taking bribes right and left. From much experience Colonel Erskine was an adept at travelling with what he termed "a light camp." He took with him a portable office-desk, a bookcase with a small reference library, and two portable arm-chairs.

All these were carried in addition to our baggage and bedding on coolies' heads, for our sleeping-places were seldom more than fifteen miles apart.

The Commissioner's old Khansama had very strict ideas as to how a "Sahib's" dinner should be served. He insisted on decorating the table with rhododendron flowers, and placing on it every night four dishes of Moradabad metal work containing respectively six figs, six French plums, six dates, and six biscuits, all reposing on the orthodox lace-paper mats, and the moment dinner was over he carefully replaced these in pickle-jars for use next evening. We would have broken his heart had we spoiled the symmetry of his dishes by eating any of these.

It takes a little practice to master bills of fare written in "Kitmutar English," and for "Irishishtew" and "Anchoto" to be resolved into Irish-stew and Anchovy-toast. Once when a Viceroy was on tour there was a roast gosling for dinner. This duly appeared on the bill-of-fare as "Roasted goose's pup." In justice, however, we must own that we would make far greater blunders in trying to write a menu in Urdu.

The k.u.maon district is beautiful, not unlike an enlarged Scotland, with deep ravines scooped out by clear, rushing rivers, their precipitous sides clothed with dense growths of deodaras. In the early morning the view of the long range of the snowy pinnacles of the Himalayas was splendid. I learnt a great deal from wise old Colonel Erskine with his intimate knowledge of the workings of the native mind, and of the psychology of the Oriental.

There is something very touching in the fidelity of Indian native servants to their employers. Lady Lansdowne returned to India eighteen years after leaving it, for the marriage of her son (who was killed in the first three months of the war) to Lord Minto's daughter, and I accompanied her. One afternoon all the pensioned Government House servants who had been in Lord Lansdowne's employment arrived in a body to offer their "salaams" to my sister. They presented a very different appearance to the resplendent beings in scarlet and gold whom I had formerly known, for on taking their pension they had ceased troubling to dye their beards, and they were merely dressed in plain white cotton. These grey-bearded, toothless old men with their high, aquiline features (they were nearly all Mohammedans), flowing white garments and turbans, might have stepped bodily out of stained-gla.s.s windows. They had brought with them all the little presents (princ.i.p.ally watches) which my sister had given them; they remembered all the berths she had secured for their sons, and the letters she had written on their behalf. An Oriental has a very long memory for a kindness as well as for an injury done him. Lady Lansdowne, whose Hindustani had become rather rusty, began feverishly turning over the pages of a dictionary in an endeavour to express her feelings and the pleasure she experienced in seeing these faithful retainers again: she wept, and the old men wept, and we all agreed, as elderly people will, that in former days the sun was brighter and life altogether rosier than in these degenerate times. Before leaving, the old servants simultaneously lifted their arms in the Mahommedan gesture of blessing, with all the innate dignity of the Oriental; it was really a very touching sight, nor do I think that the very substantial memento of their visit which each of them received had anything to do with their att.i.tude: they only wished to show that they were "faithful to their salt."

It is difficult to determine the age of a native, as wrinkles and lines do not show on a dark skin. Dark skins have other advantages. One of the European Examiners of Calcutta University told me that there had been great trouble about the examination-papers. By some means the native students always managed to obtain what we may term "advance"

copies of these papers. My informant devised a scheme to stop this leakage. Instead of having the papers printed in the usual fashion, he called in the services of a single white printer on whom he could absolutely rely. The white printer had the papers handed to him early on the morning of the examination day, and he duly set them up on a hand-press in the building itself. The printer had one a.s.sistant, a coolie clad only in loin-cloth and turban, and every time the coolie left the room he was made to remove both his loin-cloth and turban, so that by no possibility could he have any papers concealed about him. In spite of these precautions, it was clear from internal evidence that some of the students had had a previous knowledge of the questions. How had it been managed? It eventually appeared that the coolie, taking advantage of the momentary absence of the white printer, had whipped off his loin-cloth, SAT DOWN ON THE "FORM," and then replaced his solitary garment. When made to strip on going out, the printing-ink did not show on his dark skin: he had only to sit down elsewhere on a large sheet of white paper for the questions to be printed off on it, and they could then easily be read in a mirror. The Oriental mind is very subtle.

This is no place to speak of the marvels of Mogul architecture in Agra and Delhi. I do not believe that there exists in the world a more exquisitely beautiful hall than the Diwan-i-Khas in Delhi palace. This hall, open on one side to a garden, is entirely built of transparent white marble inlaid with precious stones, and with its intricate gilded ceilings, and wonderful pierced-marble screens it justifies the famous Persian inscription that runs round it:

"If heaven can be on the face of the earth, It is this, it is this, it is this."

I always regret that Shah Jehan did not carry out his original intention of erecting a second Taj of black marble for himself at Agra, opposite the wonderful tomb he built for his beloved Muntaz-i-Mahal; probably the money ran out. Few people take in that the dome of the Taj, that great airy white soap-bubble, is actually higher than the dome of St. Paul's. The play of fancy and invention of Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's ma.s.sive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to them that could be conceived.

Lucknow is one of the pleasantest stations in India, with its ring of encircling parks, and the broad, tree-shaded roads of its cantonments, but the pretentious monuments with which the city is studded will not bear examination after the wonders of Agra and Delhi. The King of Oude wished to surpa.s.s the Mogul Emperors by the magnificence of his buildings, but he wished, too, to do it on the cheap. So in Lucknow stucco, with very debased details, replaces the stately red sandstone and marble of the older cities.

In 1890 after a long day's sight-seeing in Lucknow, in the course of which we ascended the long exterior flight of steps of the great Imambarah on an elephant (who proved himself as nimble as a German waiter in going upstairs), Lady Lansdowne and I were taken to the Husainabad just as the short-lived Indian twilight was falling. On pa.s.sing through its great gateway I thought that I had never in my life seen anything so beautiful. At the end of a long white marble-paved court, a stately black-and-white marble tomb with a gilded dome rose from a flight of steps. Down the centre of the court ran a long pool of clear water, surrounded by a gilded railing. On either side of the court stood great clumps of flowering shrubs, also enclosed in gilded railings. At the far end, a group of palms were outlined in jet black against that vivid lemon-coloured afterglow only seen in hot countries; peac.o.c.ks, perched on the walls of the court, stood out duskily purple against the glowing expanse of saffron sky, and the sleeping waters of the long pool reflected the golden glory of the flaming vault above them.

In the hush of the evening, and the half-light, the scene was lovely beyond description, and for eighteen years I treasured in my mind the memory of the Husainabad at sunset as the vision of my life.

On returning to Lucknow in 1906, I insisted on going at once to revisit the Husainabad, though I was warned that there was nothing to see there. Alas! in broad daylight and in the glare of the fierce sun the whole place looked abominably tawdry. What I had taken for black-and-white marble was only painted stucco, and coa.r.s.ely daubed at that; the details of the decoration were deplorable, and the Husainabad was just a piece of showy, meretricious tinsel. The gathering dusk and the golden expanse of the Indian sunset sky had by some subtle wizardry thrown a veil of glamour over this poor travesty of the marvels of Delhi and Agra. So a long-cherished ideal was hopelessly shattered, which is always a melancholy thing.

We are all slaves to the economic conditions under which we live, and the present exorbitant price of paper is a very potent factor in the making of books. I am warned by my heartless publishers that I have already exceeded my limits. There are many things in India of which I would speak: of big-game hunts in a.s.sam; of near views of the mighty snows of the Himalayas; of jugglers and their tricks, and of certain unfamiliar aspects of native life. The telling of these must be reserved for another occasion, for it is impossible in the brief compa.s.s of a single chapter to do more than touch the surface of things in the vast Empire, the origin of whose history is lost in the mists of time.

CHAPTER XI

Matters left untold--The results of improved communications--My father's journey to Naples--Modern stereotyped uniformity--Changes in customs--The faithful family retainer Some details--Samuel Pepys'

stupendous banquets--Persistence of idea--Ceremonial incense--Patriarchal family life--The barn dances--My father's habits--My mother--A son's tribute--Autumn days--Conclusion.

I had hoped to tell of reef-fishing in the West Indies; of surf-riding on planks at Muizenberg in South Africa; of the extreme inconvenience to which the inhabitants of Southern China are subjected owing to the inconsiderate habits of their local devils; of sapphire seas where coco-nut palms toss their fronds in the Trade wind over gleaming-white coral beaches; of vast frozen tracts in the Far North where all animate life seems suspended; of j.a.panese villages clinging to green hill-sides where boiling springs gush out of the cliffs in clouds of steam, and of many other things besides, for it has been my good fortune to have seen most of the surface of this globe. But all these must wait until the present preposterous price of paper has descended to more normal levels.

I consider myself exceptionally fortunate in having lived at a time when modern conveniences of transport were already in existence, but had not yet produced their inevitable results. It is quite sufficiently obvious that national customs and national peculiarities are being smoothed out of existence by facilities of travel. My father and mother, early in their married life, drove from London to Naples in their own carriage, the journey occupying over a month. They left their own front door in London, had their carriage placed on the deck of the Channel steamer, sat in it during the pa.s.sage (what a singularly uncomfortable resting-place it must have been should they have encountered bad weather!), and continued their journey on the other side. During their leisurely progress through France and Italy, they must have enjoyed opportunities of studying the real life of these countries which are denied the pa.s.sengers in a rapide, jammed in amongst a cosmopolitan crew in the prosaic atmosphere of dining and sleeping cars, and scarcely bestowing a pa.s.sing glance on the country through which they are being whirled. Even in my time I have seen marked changes, and have witnessed the gradual disappearance of national costumes, and of national types of architecture. Every capital in Europe seems to adopt in its modern buildings a standardised type of architecture. No sojourner in any of the big modern hotels, which bear such a wearisome family likeness to each other, could tell in which particular country he might happen to find himself, were it not for the sc.r.a.ps of conversation which reach his ears, for the externals all look alike, and even the cooking has, with a greater or less degree of success, been standardised to the requisite note of monotony.

Travellers may be divided into two categories: those who wish to find on foreign soil the identical conditions to which they have been accustomed at home, and those searching for novelty of outlook and novelty of surroundings. The former will welcome the process of planing down national idiosyncrasies into one dead level of uniformity of type, the latter will deplore it; but this, like many other things, is a matter of individual taste.

The ousting of the splendid full-rigged ships by stumpy, unlovely tramp-steamers in the Hooghly River, to which I have already referred, is only one example of the universal disappearance of the picturesque.

In twenty-five years' time, every one will be living in a drab-coloured, utilitarian world, from which most of the beauty and every sc.r.a.p of local colour will have been successfully eliminated. I am lucky in having seen some of it.

I have also witnessed great changes in social habits. I do not refer so much to the removal of the rigid lines of demarcation formerly prevailing in English Society, as to the disappearance of certain accepted standards. For instance, in my young days the possibility of appearing in Piccadilly in anything but a high hat and a tail coat was unthinkable, as was the idea of sitting down to dinner in anything but a white tie. Modern usage has common sense distinctly on its side.

Again, in my youth the old drinking customs lingered, especially at the Universities. Though personally I have never been able to extract the faintest gratification from the undue consumption of alcohol, my friends do not seem to have invariably shared my tastes. I am certain of one thing: it is to the cigarette that the temperate habits of the twentieth century are due. Nicotine knocked port and claret out in the second round. The acclimatisation of the cigarette in England only dates from the "seventies." As a child I remember that the only form of tobacco indulged in by the people that I knew was the cigar. A cigarette was considered an effeminate foreign importation; a pipe was unspeakably vulgar.

In my mother's young days before her marriage, the old hard-drinking habits of the Regency and of the eighteenth century still persisted. At Woburn Abbey it was the custom for the trusted old family butler to make his nightly report to my grandmother in the drawing-room. "The gentlemen have had a good deal to-night; it might be as well for the young ladies to retire," or "The gentlemen have had very little to-night," was announced according to circ.u.mstances by this faithful family retainer. Should the young girls be packed off upstairs, they liked standing on an upper gallery of the staircase to watch the shouting, riotous crowd issuing from the dining-room. My father very rarely touched wine, and I believe that it was the fact that he, then an Oxford undergraduate, was the only sober young man amongst the rowdy troop of roysterers that first drew my mother to him, though he had already proposed marriage to her at a children's party given by the Prince Regent at Carlton House, when they were respectively seven and six years old. My father had succeeded to the t.i.tle at the age of six, and they were married as soon as he came of age. They lived to celebrate their golden wedding, which two of my sisters, the late d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch and Lady Lansdowne, were also fortunate enough to do, and I can say with perfect truth that in all three instances my mother and her daughters celebrated fifty years of perfect happiness, unclouded save for the gaps which death had made amongst their children.