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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
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Seitenzahl: 126
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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TWENTY-ONE DAYS IN INDIA
George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
LACONIA PUBLISHERS
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Copyright © 2017 by George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
No. I. THE VICEROY.
No. II. THE A.D.C.-IN-WAITING.
No. III. THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.
No. IV. THE ARCHDEACON,
No. V. THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT.
No. VI. H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO.
No. VII. THE RAJA.
No. VIII. THE POLITICAL AGENT,
No. IX. THE COLLECTOR.
No. X. BABY IN PARTIBUS.
No. XI. THE RED CHUPRASSIE;
No. XII. THE PLANTER;
No. XIII. THE EURASIAN;
No. XIV. THE VILLAGER.
No. XV. THE OLD COLONEL.
No. XVI. THE CIVIL SURGEON.
No. XVII. THE SHIKARRY.
No. XVIII. THE GRASS-WIDOW IN NEPHELOCOCCYGIA.
No. XIX. THE TRAVELLING M.P,
No. XX. MEM-SAHIB.
No. XXI. ALI BABA ALONE;
TWENTY-ONE DAYS
IN INDIA,
OR THE
TOUR OF SIR ALI BABA, K.C.B.
BY
GEORGE ABERIGH-MACKAY.
THIRD EDITIONREVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE
THE FOLLOWING PAPERS WERE ORIGINALLY written, as will be gathered from the text, for Vanity Fair.
Indore,October 1880.
NO. I. THE VICEROY.
IT IS CERTAINLY A LITTLE intoxicating to spend a day with the Great Ornamental. You do not see much of him perhaps; but he is a Presence to be felt, something floating loosely about in wide pantaloons and flying skirts, diffusing as he passes the fragrance of smile and pleasantry and cigarette. The air around him is laden with honeyed murmurs; gracious whispers play about the twitching, bewitching corners of his delicious mouth. He calls everything by “soft names in many a mused rhyme.” Deficits, Public Works, and Cotton Duties are transmuted by the alchemy of his gaiety into sunshine and songs. An office-box on his writing-table an office-box is to him, and it is something more: it holds cigarettes. No one knows what sweet thoughts are his as Chloe flutters through the room, blushful and startled, or as a fresh beaker full of the warm South glows between his amorous eye and the sun.
“I have never knownPraise of love or wineThat panted forth a flood of sweetness so divine.”
I never tire of looking at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He is a veiled prophet. He who is the axis of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is necessarily screened from all knowledge of India. He lisps no syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian life is known to him; all our delightful provinces of the sun that lie off the railway are to him an undiscovered country; Ghebers, Moslems, Hindoos blend together in one dark indistinguishable mass before his eye.
A Nawab, whom the Foreign Office once farmed out to me, often used to ask what the use of a Viceroy was. I do not believe that he meant to be profane. The question would again and again recur to his mind, and find itself on his lips. I always replied with the counter question, “What is the use of India?” He never would see—the Oriental mind does not see these things—that the chief end and object of India was the Viceroy; that, in fact, India was the plant and the Viceroy the flower.
I have often thought of writing a hymn on the Beauty of Viceroys; and have repeatedly attuned my mind to the subject; but my inability to express myself in figurative language, and my total ignorance of everything pertaining to metre, rhythm, and rhyme, make me rather hesitate to employ verse. Certainly, the subject is inviting, and I am surprised that no singer has arisen. How can anyone view the Viceroyal halo of scarlet domestics, with all the bravery of coronets, supporters, and shields in golden embroidery and lace, without emotion! How can the tons of gold and silver plate that once belonged to John Company, Bahadur, and that now repose on the groaning board of the Great Ornamental, amid a glory of Himalayan flowers, or blossoms from Eden’s fields of asphodel, be reflected upon the eye’s retina without producing positive thrills and vibrations of joy (that cannot be measured in terms of ohm or farad) shooting up and down the spinal cord and into the most hidden seats of pleasure! I certainly can never see the luxurious bloom of the silver sticks arranged in careless groups about the vast portals without a feeling approaching to awe and worship, and a tendency to fling small coin about with a fine medieval profusion. I certainly can never drain those profound golden cauldrons seething with champagne without a tendency to break into loud expressions of the inward music and conviviality that simmer in my soul. Salutes of cannon, galloping escorts, processions of landaus, beautiful teams of English horses, trains of private saloon carriages (cooled with water trickling over sweet jungle grasses) streaming through the sunny land, expectant crowds of beauty with hungry eyes making a delirious welcome at every stage, the whole country blooming into dance and banquet and fresh girls at every step taken—these form the fair guerdon that stirs my breast at certain moments and makes me often resolve, after dinner, “to scorn delights and live laborious days,” and sell my beautiful soul, illuminated with art and poetry, to the devil of Industry, with reversion to the supreme secretariat.
How mysterious and delicious are the cool penetralia of the Viceregal Office! It is the sensorium of the Empire; it is the seat of thought; it is the abode of moral responsibility! What battles, what famines, what excursions, of pleasure, what banquets and pageants, what concepts of change have sprung into life here! Every pigeon-hole contains a potential revolution; every office-box cradles the embryo of a war or dearth. What shocks and vibrations, what deadly thrills does this little thunder-cloud office transmit to far-away provinces lying beyond rising and setting suns. Ah! Vanity, these are pleasant lodgings for live years, let who may turn the kaleidoscope after us.
A little errant knight of the press who has just arrived on the Delectable Mountains, comes rushing in, looks over nay shoulder, and says, “A deuced expensive thing a Viceroy.” This little errant knight would take the thunder at a quarter of the price, and keep the Empire paralytic with change and fear of change as if the great Thirty-thousand-pounder himself were on Olympus.
NO. II. THE A.D.C.-IN-WAITING.
AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD.
THE TONE OF THE A.D.C. is subdued. He stands in doorways and strokes his moustache. He nods sadly to you as you pass. He is preoccupied with—himself. He has a motherly whisper for Secretaries and Members of Council. His way with ladies is sisterly—undemonstratively affectionate. He tows up rajas to H.E., and stands in the offing. His attitude towards rajas is one of melancholy reserve. He will perform the prescribed observances, if he cannot approve of them. Indeed, generally, he disapproves of the Indian people, though he condones their existence. For a brother in aiguillettes there is a Masonic smile and a half-embarrassed familiarity, as if found out in acting his part. But confidence is soon restored with melancholy glances around, and profane persons who may be standing about move uneasily away.
An A.D.C. should have no tastes. He is merged in “the house.” He must dance and ride admirably; he ought to shoot; he may sing and paint in water-colours, or botanise a little, and the faintest aroma of the most volatile literature will do him no harm; but he cannot be allowed preferences. If he has a weakness for very pronounced collars and shirt-cuffs in mufti, it may be connived at, provided he be honestly nothing else but the man in collars and cuffs. When a loud, joyful, and steeplechasing Lord, in the pursuit of pleasure and distant wars, dons the golden cords for a season, the world understands that this is masquerading, skittles, and a joke. One must not confound the ideal A.D.C. with such a figure.
The A.D.C. has four distinct aspects or phases—(1) the full summer sunshine and bloom of scarlet and gold for Queen’s birthdays and high ceremonials; (2) the dark frock-coat and belts in which to canter behind his Lord; (3) the evening tail-coat, turned down with light blue and adorned with the Imperial arms on gold buttons; (4) and, finally, the quiet disguises of private life.
It is in the sunshine glare of scarlet and gold that the A.D.C. is most awful and unapproachable; it is in this aspect that the splendour of vice-imperialism seems to beat upon him most fiercely. The Rajas of Rajputana, the diamonds of Golconda, the gold of the Wynaad, the opium of Malwa, the cotton of the Berars, and the Stars of India seem to be typified in the richness of his attire and the conscious superiority of his demeanour. Is he not one of the four satellites of that Jupiter who swims in the highest azure fields of the eastern heavens?
Frock-coated and belted, he passes into church or elsewhere behind his Lord, like an aerolite from some distant universe, trailing cloudy visions of that young lady’s Paradise of bright lights and music, champagne, mayonnaise, and “just-one-more-turn,” which is situated behind the flagstaff on the hill.
The tail-coat, with gold buttons, velvet cuffs, and light-blue silk lining, is quite a demi-official, small-and-early arrangement. It is compatible with a patronising and somewhat superb flirtation in the verandah; nay, even under the pine-trees beyond the Gurkha sentinel, whence many-twinkling Jakko may be admired; it is compatible with a certain shadow of human sympathy and weakness. An A.D.C. in tail-coat and gold buttons is no longer a star; he is only a fire-balloon; though he may twinkle in heaven, he can descend to earth. But in the quiet disguises of private life he is the mere stick of a rocket. He is quite of the earth. This scheme of clothing is compatible with the tenderest offices of gaming or love—offices of which there shall be no re-collection on the re-assumption of uniform and on re-apotheosis. An A.D.C. in plain clothes has been known to lay the long odds at whist, and to qualify, very nearly, for a co-respondentship.
In addition to furnishing rooms in his own person, an A.D.C. is sometimes required to copy my Lord’s letters on mail-day, and, in due subordination to the Military Secretary, to superintend the stables, kitchen, or Invitation Department.
After performing these high functions, it is hard if an A.D.C. should ever have to revert to the buffooneries of the parade-ground, or to the vulgar intimacies of a mess. It is hard that one who has for five years been identified with the Empire should ever again come to be regarded as “Jones of the 10th,” and spoken of as “Punch” or “Bobby” by old boon companions. How can a man who has been behind the curtain, and who has seen la première danseuse of the Empire practising her steps before the manager Strachey, in familiar chaff and talk with the Council ballet, while the little scene-painter and Press Commissioner stood aside with cocked ears, and the privileged violoncellist made his careless jests—how, I say, can one who has thus been above the clouds on Olympus ever associate with the gaping, chattering, irresponsible herd below?
It is well that our Ganymede should pass away from heaven into temporary eclipse; it is well that before being exposed to the rude gaze of the world he should moult his rainbow plumage in the Cimmeria of the Rajas. Here we shall see him again, a blinking ignis fatuus in a dark land—"so shines a good deed in a naughty world,” thinks the Foreign Office.
NO. III. THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.
AT SIMLA AND CALCUTTA THE Government of India always sleeps with a revolver under its pillow—that revolver is the Commander-in-Chief. There is a tacit understanding that this revolver is not to be let off; indeed, sometimes it is believed that this revolver is not loaded.
The Commander-in-Chief is himself an army. His transport, medical attendance, and provisioning are cared for departmentally, and watched over by responsible officers. He is a host in himself; and a corps of observation.
All the world observes him. His slightest movement creates a molecular disturbance in type, and vibrates into newspaper paragraphs.
When Commanders-in Chief are born the world is unconscious of any change. No one knows when a Commander-in-Chief is born. No joyful father, no pale mother has ever experienced such an event as the birth of a Commander-in-Chief in the family. No Mrs Gamp has ever leant over the banister and declared to the expectant father below that it was “a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief.” Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sobs and wails in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on his coffin.
On Sunday evening, after tea and catechism, the Supreme Council generally meet for riddles and forfeits in the snug little cloak-room parlour at Peterhoff. “Can an army tailor make a Commander-in-Chief?” was once asked. Eight old heads were scratched and searched, but no answer was found. No sound was heard save the seething whisper of champagne ebbing and flowing in the eight old heads. Outside, the wind moaned through the rhododendron trees; within, the Commander-in-Chief wept peacefully. He felt the awkwardness of the situation. An aide-de-camp stood at the door hiccupping idly. He was known to have invested all his paper currency in Sackville Street; and he felt in honour hound to say that the riddle was a little hard on the army tailors. So the subject dropped.
A Commander-in-Chief is one of the most beautiful articles of social upholstery in India. He sits in a large chair in the drawing-room. Heads and bodies sway vertically in passing him. He takes the oldest woman in to dinner; he gratifies her with his drowsy cackle. He says “Yes” and “No” to everyone with drowsy civility; everyone is conciliated. His stars dimly twinkle—twinkle; the host and hostess enjoy their light. After dinner he decants claret into his venerable person, and tells an old story; the company smile with innocent joy. He rejoins the ladies and leers kindly on a pretty woman; she forgives herself a month of indiscretions. He touches Lieutenant the Hon. Jupiter Smith on the elbow and inquires after his mother; a noble family is gladdened. He is thus a source of harmless happiness to himself and to those around him.
