For nearly three years my Kitmitghar, as that functionary is called,
was cook, butler, and factotum of my then small bachelor establishment
in India. A cunning concocter of mulligatawnies, curries, and
chutnies—as cunning a hand too in ‘cooking’ his daily bazaar accounts,
adding annas and pice, for his own particular benefit, to the prime
cost of as many articles as possible. Mildly remonstrated with, and
petty larceny hinted at, his honest indignation would be aroused.
‘Master tink I cheat,’ he would say; ‘master can inquire bazaar-mans;’
well knowing, the rogue, the moral and almost physical impossibility of
‘master’—a swell in his way—going to the distant market in a broiling
sun, and finding out the ruling prices of flesh and fowl.
This worthy, whose original cognomen of _Mootoosammy_ was shortened
into ‘_Sam_’ for convenience and euphony sakes, was a Tamil from
the Malabar Coast. _Au reste_, a dark, handsome, stoutly-built,
clean-looking native, on whose polished skin water and coarse country
soap were evidently no strangers. In his early youth, fated to earn his
own living, he had been ejected from the paternal hut and placed as a
_chokerah_ or dressing-boy to a fiery and impecunious lieutenant of
infantry; and under the fostering care of that impetuous and coinless
officer, his indoctrination into the art and mystery of a valet had
been advanced and improved by sundry ‘lickings,’ and by frequent
applications to his ebon person of boot-heels, backs of brushes, and
heavy lexicons of the English and Hindustani languages. This education
completed, and when he had learned to appreciate the difference between
uniform and mufti, mess-dress and parade-dress, and indeed to master
the intricacies of his employer’s scanty wardrobe—_non sine lacrymis_,
not without ‘howls’—then he emerged from dressing-boyhood, was promoted
_matie_ or under-butler, and got translated into more pretentious
bungalows than those of indigent subalterns. By-and-by further
preferment awaited him; he became _kitmitghar_ (major-domo) in the
households of unmarried civilian or military swells, and thenceforward
led a life free from kicks and cuffs, canes and whips, and impromptu
missiles snatched from toilet or study tables. I have said advisedly
‘unmarried,’ for except under financial difficulties, Sam would not
take service with the Benedicts of Indian society, and the actual
presence or possible advent of a wife was the signal for his departure.
‘Plenty too much bodder wid lady; too much want ebery day, ebery day
measure curry stuff, oil, ghee [butter]; too much make say always dis
ting too dear, dat ting too dear; too much trouble take count. Now,
Colonel Sahib he good man; he call, he say: “Sam! how much this week
you eespend? [spend].” He just look book; he give rupee; no one single
word _bobberee_ [fuss] make.’ And so, for a palpable reason, my worthy
cook-butler eschewed those households where a better-half took the
reckoning.
English, after the rickety fashion of a Madrassee, Sam spoke fairly
enough; he also read and wrote the language, the latter accomplishment
phonetically, but yet sufficiently near to the rules of orthography to
make you fully understand and pay for ‘tirty seers wrice’ as thirty
seers (measures) of rice. What if he did elect to spell rice with a
_w_? Is it not recorded that an eminent member of a large mercantile
firm, in days long gone by, invariably included an _h_ in the word
sugar? And is it not also chronicled how he chastised almost to the
death his son and heir for omitting that letter when invoicing a cargo
of best Jamaica moist? If then Blank Blank, Esq. of the city of London
opined that sugar required an _h_, why not the same liberty as regards
the _w_ to Mootoosammy of the city of Madras?
A sad waverer in religious opinions Master Sam, I fear. A very Pharisee
of a Hindu, a rigid stickler for the worship of Vishnu or Siva on the
high-days and holidays of those deities, when his forehead and arms
would be spotted and streaked with coloured ashes, his garments would
smell of saffron and sandal-wood, his English diminutive name would be
put aside for its more lengthy and sonorous native patronymic, and he
would be off to the temple to make _poojah_ (prayer) to his _swamis_
(gods). But yet, somehow or other, all these symptoms and signs of
Hinduism would disappear at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsuntide. At those
seasons of the Christian year, Sam was no longer Mootoosammy, but Sam
pure and simple. No more the believer he in the Vedahs and Shastras,
but a pinner of faith on Aves and Credos; no _poojah_ for him now in
the temple, but crossings and genuflections in the little chapel of
the station. Not a trace in these days of idolatrous scents clinging
to cloths and turban, or of ‘caste’ marks disfiguring brow or limb.
Dole in hand—obtained either from pickings at master’s ’counts or from
bazaar-man’s _dustoor_ (custom)—he is off to join Father Chasuble’s
small flock, and to bow down and formalise with the best or worst of
that good priest’s congregation. I really think and believe, that to
secure a holiday and an ‘outing,’ Sam would have professed himself a
Mohammedan during the Ramadan, a Hebrew during the Passover, a Heathen
Chinee during the feast of Lanterns, and a Buddhist during the Perihara
or other high-jinks of the yellow-robed priests of Gautama Buddha.
I never before or since met any man into whose household death was so
constantly making inroads, and strange to say, carrying away the same
individual. I suppose that, on a rough estimate, all Sam’s kith and kin
died at least twice during the thirty months or so that he was in my
service.
‘Master please’—thus Sam howling and weeping after his kind—‘scuse
[excuse] me. Gib tree day leave go Madras; too much trouble my house.
My poor old mudder—booh! ooh!—plenty long time sick; master know well;
too much old got; die last night. Booh! ooh! o-o-g-h!’
‘Why, what tomfoolery is this?’ I reply. ‘Your mother dead! Dead
_again_! Why, man, how can that be? Four months ago you came and told
me your mother was dead; you got four rupees advance; you went off,
leaving the boy to do your work, and put me to no end of inconvenience.
How can the old woman be dead again?’
But the fellow is not the least put out, and is quite equal to the
‘fix.’ ‘Master Sahib,’ he says, ‘I beg you scuse me. Sahib quite wrong.
That time you speak I get leave, not _my_ mudder—my _wife’s_ mudder
die. Master can look book!’
This random shot anent the ‘book’ alludes to my diary, in which the
disbursement of the money has been entered, but not of course the
casualty in his family. But I don’t lose the hint nevertheless, and I
jot down a memorandum for future reference, should occasion require.
Then Sam goes on: ‘I no tell lie, sar. Plenty true; too much bobberee
my house make. My fader gone Mysore’——
‘Why, bless my heart!’ I put in, ‘you told me ages ago your father died
of cholera in Masulipatam.’
‘No, sar,’ says Sam; ‘never, sar! My grand-fader, scuse me. My wife she
catch bad fever. No one single person my home got, make funeral-feast.
Please, my master, advance half-month’s pay; gib four days’ leave. I
too much hurry come back.’ Then he falls down, clasps my feet, calls me
his father, brother; gets my consent to be absent, handles the rupees,
and is off like a shot; not of course to his mother’s obsequies, for
the old harridan has either been buried or burned years ago, or even
now is all alive and kicking; but to some spun-out native theatricals,
nautch, or _tamasha_ (entertainment) in Black Town, where he feasts,
drinks, and sleeps, and for a week at least I see his face no more.
History repeats itself; so does Sam. Months and months have passed;
I am away from the neighbourhood of the Presidency town, and on the
cool Neilgherry Hills. Enters one morning my man into my sitting-room,
a letter in his hand, written in Tamil, and which he asks me to
read, well knowing that I can’t, that except a very few of the
commonest words of the language, which I speak with an uncertain not
to say incorrect idea of their meaning, the tongue of his forebears,
scriptural and oral, is to me Chaldee or Arabic.
‘Well! what’s up now?’ I say ‘_Ennah?_’ airing one of the expressions I
know.
‘Master can see self. My uncle he send chit [note]; just now tappal-man
[postman] bring. He write, say: “Sam! you plenty quick come Madras.”
He put inside letter one five-rupee government note. Sahib can see. He
tell me no one minute lose; take fire-road [railway]; too soon come;
plenty, plenty trouble. _My mudder dead._’
‘You awful blackguard!’ I exclaim. ‘Your mother dead—dead again! Look
here—look here!’ And I turn up my diary and shew him, under date August
9, 186-, nearly two years past and gone: ‘Sam’s mother reported dead
for the second time by Sam, &c.’
Then he slinks away discomfited; and I hear him in his smoky kitchen
growling and grumbling, and no doubt anathematising me and mine past,
present, and future.
My first introduction to Sam was after this wise. I had come down from
Bombay to Beypore with troops in a small steamer, and Mr Sam, who had
either deserted or been sent away from the Abyssinian Expedition, in
which he had been a camp-follower, was also a passenger in the same
ship. Of this craft a word _en passant_, for I have to this day a
lively and by no means pleasant olfactory recollection of her. She
was the dirtiest vessel in which I ever put foot; guiltless of paint
from keel to truck; all grime, coal-soot, and tar from stem to stern.
She had but recently taken a cargo of mules to Annesley Bay; and but
scant if any application of water and deodorants had followed the
disembarkation of the animals. The ‘muley’ flavour still therefore
clung closely to bulkhead and planking; it hung about cordage and
canvas; it penetrated saloon and sleeping-berth; it even overpowered
the smell of the rancid grease with which pistons and wheels were
lubricated. Worthy Captain B—— the skipper assured us that deck and
hold, sides and bulwarks, had been well scoured in Bombay; but as the
old salt’s views of scrubbing, judging from his personal appearance,
were infinitesimally limited, we opined that the ship’s ablution had
been as little as was that of its commander’s diurnal tub.
But to return to Sam. The poor fellow was wandering about the streets
of Beypore coinless and curry-and-rice-less, when he stumbled upon
me. He was seeking, he told me, from some good Samaritan of an
officer, a free convoy to Madras as his servant; and as I happened
to be in a position entitled to passes for some three or four
followers at government expense, I was enabled to pour oil and wine
into Sam’s wounds, and without even the disbursement to mine host
the assistant-quartermaster-general, of the traditional ‘tuppence,’
to get him across from terminus to terminus—some four hundred long
miles—and without once casting eyes on him. But at Lucifer’s hotel in
Madras where I stayed—— What a memory of mosquitoes, fleas, and other
nimble insects doth it bring! What a night-band of croaking frogs
and howling jackals it kept! What packs of prowling pariah dogs and
daringly thieving crows congregated about its yards and outhouses!
What repulsive nude mendicants and fakeers strolled almost into its
very verandahs! What a staff of lazy sweepers, slow-footed ‘boys,’ and
sleepy punkah-pullers crawled about it generally! And last, though not
least, what a wretched ‘coolie-cook’ superintended its flesh-pots, from
which not even the every-day stereotyped prawn curry, boiled seer-fish,
and grilled _morghee_ (fowl) could creditably and palatably issue. At
this Stygian caravanserai then, Sam, whom I thought I had bid adieu
to for ever and a day on the railway platform, turns up again clean
and smirk, salaams, asks for permanent employment, produces a thick
packet of highly laudatory characters (mostly, I had no doubt, either
fabricated by a native scribe in the Thieves’ Bazaar at Black Town,
or borrowed for the occasion from some other brother-butler), gets
engaged; and from that moment, both figuratively and literally, begins
to eat my salt. Nor did the saline feasting fail to give him a taste
for liquor—for alcoholic, decidedly alcoholic were Sam’s proclivities.
He drank at all times and in all places; but his favourite day and
locality was Tuesday, at the weekly market of the cantonment. Then and
there he imbibed right royally, and staggering home—the coolies with
the supplies following him as tipsy as himself—went straight to his
mat-spread _charpoy_ (bedstead).
‘Hollo, Sam!’ I exclaim; ‘at it again; drunk as usual from _shandy_
[market].’
‘No, shar! Dis time no shrunk! Shun too mush hot! Splenshy head pain
gib! Too mush make shake, sthagger, shar! No, mash-err, no! Sham not
shrunk! Plenty shick! Shmall glass brandy—all right, shar!’
But I decline to add ‘the sum of more to that which hath too much,’ and
I leave Sam to sober himself as he best can, and which, truth to say,
he quickly does.
In the way of intoxicants nothing came amiss to my man’s unfastidious
palate. He had no particular ‘wanity,’ like Old Weller’s friend the
red-nosed Shepherd: Henneysey’s brandy, Kinahan’s whisky, Boord’s gin,
Bass’s ale, Guinness’s stout, champagne, sherry, claret—all and each
were equally acceptable; and failing these European liquors, then the
vile palm-toddy and killing mango-spirit of the neighbouring native
stills supplied their place. Bar the toddy and mango stuff, which
were cheap and easily obtained, Sam did not disburse much for his
wine-cellar; master’s sideboard and stores, guard them as he would,
came cheaper and handier. Every bottle, somehow or other, got ‘other
lips’ than mine and my friends’ applied to it, and its contents went
into and warmed other ‘hollow hearts’ than ours. Sam laid an embargo
on and helped himself from all. He it is, I fancy, to whom Aliph Cheem
alludes in his Lay of Ind entitled _The Faithful Abboo_, that trusty
servant who, habitually stealing his master’s liquor, and accusing his
brother-domestics, got caught and half-poisoned by mistaking in his
prowls Kerosine for Old Tom. A misadventure not unlike befell Sam;
but in that instance he did not ‘strike oil,’ but came upon a very
nauseating dose of tartar emetic, and was ‘plenty sick’ and ‘plenty
shame’ for some hours after.
Another predilection of my factotum’s was tobacco, which he smoked
without ceasing, and without the least regard to quality or fabric.
‘Long-cut or short-cut’ to him ‘were all the same.’ But as I did not
happen to be addicted to the ‘nicotian weed’ Sam could not draw on any
resources of mine, but had to depend on his own means, supplemented by
the surreptitious abstraction of Trichys and Manillas, of Latakia and
Bird’s-eye, from the boxes and pouches of my chum and visitors.
Every native gambles; so it could hardly be expected that Sam should
differ from his brethren in this respect. In the words of the old ditty
anent Ally Croker:
He’d game till he lost the coat from his shoulder.
I don’t think he cared much for cards or dice; but the game that he
delighted in was played with a red and white checkered square of cloth,
and with round pieces like draughtsmen. Whenever the advent of a friend
and opportunity served, down the two squatted with this board between
their legs, and a pile of copper pieces of money by their sides; and
so intent would they be on their play, that nothing short of a gentle
kick, or tap on the head, would arouse them to master’s wants and
needings.
My readers will naturally inquire why, with all these delinquencies,
Sam so long remained my henchman. Well, first, had I discharged him,
another and probably greater robber would have stepped into his
shoes, and bazaar accounts and inroads on alcohol and tobacco would
have remained undiminished. ‘They all do it;’ so better the de’il I
knew, than the de’il whose acquaintance I would have to make. Again,
Sam had his redeeming points; he was, as I have said before, clean,
handy, and deft at the creature comforts, which, having appetisingly
compounded, he could serve up with taste and elegance. Then he was
a good nurse; and during a serious illness that befell me at one of
the vilest stations in Madras, he tended me closely and carefully,
keeping a watchful eye and a ready stick on punkah-pullers and wetters
of kus-kus tatties (scented grass mats), without the cooling aid of
which the heat of that grilling July would have been my death on that
fever-bed. Once more, on those military inspections which fell to
my lot, and which had to be undertaken partly over the Nizam’s very
sandy and rough highways, and in those close comfortless bone-breaking
vehicles called _byle-nibbs_ (bullock-carts), my man became invaluable.
Seated on the narrow perch alongside the almost garmentless and highly
odoriferous native driver, he urged him on by promises of ‘backsheesh’
and cheroots; he helped to whip and tail-twist the slow-footed oxen; he
roused up lazy _byle-wallahs_ (bullock-men) sleeping in their hovels,
and assisted them in driving from the fields and in yoking to the cart
refractory and kicking cattle. He stirred up with the long pole the
_peons_ (keepers) in charge of the road-side travellers’ bungalows at
which we halted, aiding these officials in chasing, slaughtering, and
‘spatch-cocking’ the ever-waiting-to-be-killed-and-cooked gaunt and
fleshless _morghee_ (fowl); he saw that the chatties for the bath were
not filled with the very dirtiest of tank water; that the numerous
and hard-biting insects, out and taking the air from their thickly
populated homes in the crevices of cane-bottomed chair and bedstead,
met with sudden and violent death; and lastly, that no man’s hand but
his own should be put into master’s money-bag and stores.
But as all things come to an end more or less, so did Sam’s career with
me actually terminate. My wife and family came ‘out’ from England.
The ‘Mem Saab,’ sometimes even the ‘Missee Saab,’ took bazaar ’count;
the current bachelor rates for chillies, cocoa-nuts, first and second
sorts _wrice_, gram, and such-like necessaries underwent a fall. Sam’s
occupation and gain were gone. He quitted my homestead under this new
and unprofitable régime. ‘I discharge you, sar!’ said he; and away he
went, I know not where.