But for the true Anglo-Indian type of brat, at all points a complete
"torn-down," "dislikeable and rod-worthy," as Mrs. Mackenzie describes
it, there is nothing among nursery nuisances comparable to the
Civil-Service child of eight or ten years, whose father, a "Company's
Bad Bargain," in the Mint, or the Supreme Court, or the Marine Office,
draws _per mensem_ enough to set his brat up in the usual servile
surroundings of such small despots. Deriving the only education it ever
gets directly from its personal attendants, this young monster of bad
temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in
overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has
acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence.
It bullies its _bhearer_; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it
surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its
mouth with hot curry, and bawls; it indulges in horrid Hindostanee
songs, whereof the burden will not bear translation; it insults whatever
is most sacred to the caste attachments of its attendants; the Moab of
ayahs is its wash-pot, over an Edom of bhearers will it cast out its
shoe; it slaps the mouth of a gray-haired _khansaman_ with its slipper,
and dips its poodle's paws in a Mohammedan _kitmudgar's_ rice; it
calls a learned Pundit an _asal ulu_, an egregious owl; it says to
a high-caste _circar_, "Shut up, you pig!" and to an illustrious
_moonshee_, "_Hi, toom junglee-wallah!_" Whereat its fond mamma, to whom
Bengalee, Hindostanee, and Sanscrit are alike sealed books of Babel,
claps the hands of her heart, and crying, _Wah, wah!_ in all the
innocence of her philological deficiency, blesses the fine animal
spirits of her darling Hastings Clive.
"_Soono_, you _sooa_, _loom kis-wasti omara bukri_ not bring?" says
Hastings Clive, whose English is apt to figure among his Hindostanee
like Brahmins in a regiment of Sepoys,--that is, one Brahmin to every
twenty low-caste fellows.
_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough_.--Wellesley dear, _do_ listen to that
darling Hastings Clive, how sweetly he prattles! What _did_ he say then?
If one could _only_ learn that delightful Hindostanee, so that one could
converse with one's dear Hastings Clive! _Do_ tell me what he said.
_The Hon. Wellesley Gough, of the Company's Bad Bargains_.--Literally
interpreted, my dearest Maud, our darling Hastings Clive sweetly
remarked, "I say, you pig, why in thunder don't you fetch my goat into
the parlor?"
_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough, of the Hon. Mr. Wellesley Gough's Bad
Bargains_.--Oh, _isn't_ he clever?
_Hastings Clive_.--_Jou_, you _haremzeada_! _Bukri na munkta,
nimuk-aram_!
_The Hon. Wellesley Gough_.--My love, he says now, "Get out, you
good-for-nothing rascal! I don't want that goat here."
_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough_.--Oh, _isn't_ he clever?
What dreadful crime did you commit in another life, O illustrious
Moonshee, that you should fall now among such thieves as this horrid
Hastings Clive?
"Sahib, I know not. _Hum kia kurrenge? kismut hi_: What can I do? it is
my fate."
Hastings Clive has a queer assortment of pets, first of which are
the bushy-tailed Persian kittens, hereinbefore mentioned. When, in
Yankee-land, some lovelorn Zeekle is notoriously sweet upon any Huldy of
the rural maids,--when
"His heart keeps goin' pitypat,
And hern goes pity Zeekle,"--
when she is
"All kind o' smily round the lips,
And teary round the lashes,"--
it is usual to describe his condition by a feline figure; he is said
to "cuddle up to her like a sick kitten to a hot brick." But the sick
Oriental kitten, reversing the Occidental order of kitten things,
cuddles up to a water-monkey, and fondly embraces the refreshing
evaporation of its beaded bulb with all her paws and all her bushy tail.
The Persian kitten stands high in the favor of Hastings Clive.
Hastings Clive has a whole array of parroquets and hill-mainahs, which,
as they learned their small language from his peculiar scurrilous
practice, are but blackguard birds at best. He also rejoices in many
blue-jays, rescued from the Ganges, whereinto they were thrown as
offerings to the vengeful Doorga during the barbarous _pooja_ celebrated
in her name. Very proud, too, is Hastings Clive of his pigeons,--his
many-colored pigeons from Lucknow, Delhi, and Benares; an Oudean
bird-boy has trained them to the pretty sport of the Mohammedan princes,
and every afternoon he flies them from the house-top in flashing flocks,
for Hastings Clive's entertainment.
Hastings Clive has toys, the wooden and earthen toys for which Benares
was ever famous among Indian children,--nondescript animals, and as
non-descript idols,--little Brahminee bulls with bells, and artillery
camels, like those at Rohilcund and Agra,--Sahibs taking the air in
buggies, country-folk in hackeries, baba-logue in gig-topped ton-jons.
But much more various and entertaining, though frailer, are his Calcutta
toys, of paper, clay, and wax,--hunting-parties in bamboo howdahs, on
elephants a foot high, that move their trunks very cunningly,--avadavats
of clay, which flutter so naturally, suspended by hairs in bamboo cages,
that the cats destroy them quickly,--miniature palanquins, budgerows,
bungalows, and pagodas, all of paper,--figures in clay of the different
castes and callings, baboos, kitmudgars, washermen, barbers,
tailors, street-waterers, box-wallahs, (as the peddlers are called,)
nautch-girls, jugglers, sepoys, policemen, doorkeepers, dog-boys,--all
true to the life, in costume, attitude, and expression.
Statedly, on his birth-day, the Anglo-Indian child is treated to a
_kat-pootlee nautch_, and Hastings Clive has a birth-day every time he
conceives a longing for a puppet-show; so that our wilful young friend
may be said to be nine years, and about nineteen kat-pootlee nautches,
old.
To make a birth-day for Hastings Clive, three or four _tamasha-wallahs_,
or show-fellows, are required; these, hired for a few rupees, come from
the nearest bazaar, bringing with them all the fantastic apparatus of a
kat-pootlee nautch, with its interludes of story-telling and jugglery.
A sheet, or table-cloth, or perhaps a painted drop-curtain, expressly
prepared, is hung between two pillars in the drawing-room, and reaches,
not to the floor, but to the tops of the miniature towers of a silver
palace, where some splendid Rajah, of fabulous wealth and power, is
about to hold a grand _durbar_, or levee. All the people, be they
illustrious personages or the common herd, who assist in the ceremony,
are puppets a span long, rudely constructed and coarsely painted, but
very faithful as to costume and manners, and most dexterously played
upon by the invisible tamasha-wallahs, whom the curtain conceals.
A silver throne having been wheeled out on the portico by manikin
bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as
many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes
forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden
state; a manikin _hookah-badar_, or pipe-server, and a manikin
_chattah-wallah_, or umbrella-bearer, take up their wooden position
behind, while a manikin _punkah-wallah_ fans, woodenly, his manikin
Highness, and the manikin courtiers dance wooden attendance around. Then
manikin ladies and gentlemen come on manikin elephants and horses and
camels, or in manikin palanquins, and alight with wooden dignity at the
foot of the palace stairs, taking their respective orders of wooden
precedence with wooden pomposities and humilities, and all the manikin
forms of the customary bore. The manikin courtiers trip woodenly
down the grand stairs to meet the manikin guests with little wooden
Orientalisms of compliment, and all the little wooden delicacies of
the season; and they conduct the manikin Sahibs and Beebees into
the presence of the manikin Rajah, who receives them with wooden
condescension and affability, and graciously reciprocates their wooden
salaams, inquiring woodenly into the health of all their manikin
friends, and hoping, with the utmost ligneous solicitude, that they have
had a pleasant wooden journey: and so on, manikin by manikin, to the
wooden end. Of course, much desultory tomtomry and wild troubadouring
behind the curtain make the occasion musical.
The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue.
In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and
nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender
babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and
amber-studded. Behind these, on high chairs, are the striplings of three
years and upward, vociferous and kicking under the hand-punkahs of
their patient bhearers. Tall fellows are these bhearers, with fierce
moustaches, but gentle eyes,--a sort of nursery lions whom a little
child can lead. On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in a
sort of short chemises, silver-bangled as to their wrists and ankles,
and already with the caste-mark on the foreheads of some of them,--shy,
demure younglings, just learning all the awful significance of the word
_Sahib_, who have been brought from mysterious homes by fond ayahs, and
smuggled in through back-stairs influence, or boldly introduced by the
durwan under the glorifying patronage of that terrible Hastings Clive.
Back of all are Dhobee, the washerman, and Dirzce, the tailor, and
Mehter, the sweeper, and Mussalehee, the torch-boy, and Metranee, the
scullion,--and all the rest of the household riff-raffry. There is much
clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that
Hastings Clive's birth-day is at least one good result of his being born
at all.
The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native
festivals. The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun,
when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the
_mhindee_, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water
fired from busy little squirts. During the illumination of the Duwallee,
they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search
in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never
blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good
luck for the rest of his life.
These are the traditional sports of the baba-logue; but they are
ingenious in inventing others, wherein, from time to time, the imitative
faculty, of the native child especially, is tragically manifested.
When the Nawab, Shumsh-ud-deen, was hung at Delhi for hiring a _sowar_
to assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country
population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of
a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the
Black Douglas, in whose name poor _ryots'_ wives scared refractory brats
into trembling obedience. Not far from Delhi was a village school, where
were many small boys,--so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,--to whom "the
news of the day" was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were
tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their
hands, the cry was, "What shall we play next?" And one daring little
fellow--whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told
how the Nawab met his _kismut_ (his fate) so quietly, that the
gold-embroidered slippers did not fall from his feet--cried, "Let us
play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall
be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the
magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and
the priests."
_Acha, acha!_--"Good, good!" they all cried. "Let us play the Nawab's
kismut! let us hang the Nawab! And Mungloo--he that is more clever than
all of us--he that is cunning as a Thug--Mungloo shall be the Nawab!"
So they began with the murder of the Commissioner; and he who personated
Kurreim Khan, the assassin, played so naturally, that he sent the
Commissioner screaming to his mother, with an arrow sticking in his
arm. Then they arrested Kurreim Khan, and his accomplice, Unnia, a
_mehwatti_, who turned king's evidence, and betrayed the sowar; and
having tried and condemned Kurreim Khan, they would have hung him on the
spot; but, being but a little fellow, he became alarmed at the serious
turn the sport was taking, although he had himself set so sharp an
example; so he took nimbly to his heels, and followed his young friend,
the Commissioner.
Then Unnia told how the Nawab had paid Kurreim Khan blood-money, because
Shumsh-ud-deen did so hate Fraser Sahib. Whereupon Metcalfe Sahib, a
little naked fellow, just the color of an old mahogany table, sent his
sepoys and had the Nawab dragged, in all his ragged breech-cloth glory,
to the bar of Sahib justice. In about three minutes, the Nawab was
condemned to die,--condemned to be hung by an outcast sweeper. But, in
consideration of his exalted rank, they consented that he should wear
his slippers, and ride to the place of execution, smoking his hookah;
and Mungloo acknowledged the Sahib's magnanimity by proudly inclining
his head, like a true Nawab, with a dignified "_Acha!"_ Then two members
of the court-martial, who lived nearest at hand, ran home, and quickly
returned, one with his father's slippers, the other with his mother's
hubble-bubble; and having tied the slippers, that were a world too big,
on Mungloo's little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he
might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village
_hurkaru_, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on
his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking
his hubble-bubble,--and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real
Nawab, "as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every day of his
life,"--to the place of execution, an old saul-tree with low limbs.
Then, having taken the rope with which the hurkaru's mail-bag was lashed
to his buffalo, they slipped a noose over the Nawab's head, made the
other end fast to the lower limb of the saul-tree, and led away the
buffalo.
Little Mungloo, who was cunning as a Thug, acted with surprising talent;
in fact, some of the Sahibs thought he rather overdid his part, for he
dropped his hubble-bubble almost awkwardly, and even kicked,--which the
real Nawab had too much self-respect to do,--so that he sent one of
his slippers flying one way, and the other another. But he choked, and
gasped, and showed the whites of his eyes, and turned black in the face,
and shivered through all his frame, so very naturally, that his admiring
companions clapped their hands vehemently, and cried, _Wah, wah!_ with
all their little lungs. _Wah, wah!_ they screamed,--_Wah khoob tamasha
kurta hi! Phir kello, Mungloo! Bahoot ucchi-turri nuhkul, kurte ho
toom!_ "Bravo! Bravo! Such fun! Do it again, Mungloo,--do it again! it
takes you!" Certainly Mungloo did it to the life,--for he was dead.
* * * * *
To conclude now with a specimen of the tales with which the native
story-tellers entertain little heathens on street-corners.
There was once a bastard boy, the son of a Brahmin's widow; and he was
excluded from a merry wedding-feast on account of his disgraceful birth.
With a heart full of bitterness, he prayed to Siva for comfort or
revenge; and Siva, taking pity on him, taught him the mystic _mantra_,
or incantation, called Bijaksharam,--_Shrum, hrim, craoom, hroom, hroo_.
So the boy went to the door of the apartment where the wedding guests
were regaling themselves and making merry; and he pronounced the mantra
backwards,--_Hroo, hroom, craoom, hrim, shrum_. Immediately the fish,
and the cucumbers, and the mangoes, and the pumplenoses took the shape
of toads, and jumped into the faces of the guests, and into their bosoms
and laps, and on the floor. Then the boy laughed so loud, that the
astonished guests knew it was he who had conjured them; so they went to
the door and let him in, and set him at the head of the table. Then the
boy was satisfied, and uttering the mantra aright, he conjured the toads
back into the dishes again; and they all lay down in their places, and
became fish, and cucumbers, and mangoes, and pumplenoses, just as if
nothing had happened.
Glory to Siva!