WHEN WE WERE
STROLLING PLAYERS IN THE EAST
[Illustration: MRS. MILN AS DESDEMONA. _Frontispiece._]
WHEN WE WERE
STROLLING PLAYERS
IN THE EAST
BY
LOUISE JORDAN MILN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
153-157 FIFTH AVENUE
1896
TO MY FATHER
WHOSE LOVE NEVER FAILED ME
AND WHO NEVER MISUNDERSTOOD ME
I dedicate this Volume
IN connection with this volume I have several words of thanks to write.
My first and best thanks are due to the editors of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ and of the _Pall Mall Budget_. Their kindness has enabled me to
reprint here several articles that have previously appeared in one or
both of their papers. And to the generosity of the editor of the _Pall
Mall Budget_ I owe five of the illustrations appearing here.
“Oriental Nuptials” have appeared in _The Lady_, the editor of which
paper kindly allows me to here use them.
Messrs. Bourne and Shepherd of Calcutta have generously granted me
permission to reproduce three of their copyrighted photographs.
Messrs. Skeen of Colombo have kindly permitted me to use two of their
copyrighted views of Ceylon.
Several of the Burmese photographs have been collected for me in Burmah,
and sent me by William Miller, Esq., of Rangoon. I am peculiarly obliged
to Mr. Miller, because he found time in the press of grave official
duties to take so much trouble for one who had not then the pleasure of
his acquaintance.
L. J. M.
LONDON, _31st May 1894_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE ORIENT 1
CHAPTER II
ANDREW 12
CHAPTER III
OUR DAY OUT 19
CHAPTER IV
MY FIRST ’RICKSHAW RIDE 26
CHAPTER V
IN THE BURRA BAZAAR 35
CHAPTER VI
A CHRISTMAS DINNER ON A ROOF 55
CHAPTER VII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES—A HINDOO BURNING GHÂT 62
CHAPTER VIII
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS—A HINDOO MARRIAGE 70
CHAPTER IX
KING THEEBAW’S STATE BARGE 80
CHAPTER X
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES—BURMESE BURIALS 87
CHAPTER XI
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS—BURMESE BRIDALS 93
CHAPTER XII
A JAUNT IN A HOUSE-BOAT THROUGH THE HOME 100
OF THE WILD WHITE ROSE
CHAPTER XIII
AN OPIUM DEN IN SHANGHAI 112
CHAPTER XIV
MEMORIES OF HONG-KONG 120
CHAPTER XV
A GLIMPSE OF CANTON 131
CHAPTER XVI
CHINESE PRISONERS 151
CHAPTER XVII
THE CHINESE NEW YEAR 157
CHAPTER XVIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES—CHINESE COFFINS 164
CHAPTER XIX
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS—CHINESE ESPOUSALS 173
CHAPTER XX
CHINESE SHOES 180
CHAPTER XXI
JAPANESE TOUCH 188
CHAPTER XXII
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO—MRS. 196
KEUTAKO
CHAPTER XXIII
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO—THE 206
COUNTESS OYAMA AND MRS. URIU
CHAPTER XXIV
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO—MADAME 214
SANNOMIYA
CHAPTER XXV
TOM STREET 223
CHAPTER XXVI
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES—A JAPANESE FUNERAL 235
CHAPTER XXVII
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS—JAPANESE WEDLOCK 241
CHAPTER XXVIII
BAMBOO 249
CHAPTER XXIX
ON THE HIMALAYAS 255
CHAPTER XXX
MY AYAH 265
CHAPTER XXXI
SAMBO 275
CHAPTER XXXII
HOW WE KEPT HOUSE ON THE HILLS 288
CHAPTER XXXIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES—THE PARSI TOWERS OF 298
SILENCE
CHAPTER XXXIV
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS—A PARSI WEDDING 306
CHAPTER XXXV
AT SUBATHU WHERE THE BAGPIPES PLAY AND 315
THE LEPERS HIDE
CHAPTER XXXVI
IN THE OFFICERS’ MESS 322
CHAPTER XXXVII
AT THE MOUTH OF THE KHYBER PASS 328
CHAPTER XXXVIII
AN IMPROMPTU DINNER PARTY IN THE PUNJAB 335
CHAPTER XXXIX
SALAAM! 341
Glossary 349
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LOUISE JORDAN MILN _Frontispiece
_
STREET SCENE IN COLOMBO _To face 9
page_
NATIVES WEAVING MATS IN CEYLON " 25
DELHI NAUTCH GIRL " 56
KING THEEBAW’S STATE BARGE " 80
BURMESE POSTURE GIRLS " 85
PAGODA NEAR MANDALAY " 88
BAND AT A BURMESE THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE " 90
BURMESE MOTHER AND CHILD " 94
BURMESE MUSICIANS " 97
BHÂMO WOMEN " 99
CITY WALL, OLD SHANGHAI " 112
CHINESE ACTORS " 136
FOOCHOW SINGING GIRLS " 169
CHINESE MUSICIANS " 184
MRS. KEUTAKO’S DAUGHTER " 200
DANJERO IN HIS FAVOURITE RÔLE
DANJERO IN EUROPEAN COSTUME } 209
DANJERO AS I KNEW HIM
MRS. KEUTAKO’S BABY " 224
HINDOO COOLIE WOMEN WITH LOADS OF BAMBOO " 249
FAN PALM AT SINGAPORE " 255
NATIVES READING AT PENANG " 256
HILL PEOPLE—BHOOTEAS AND NEPAULESE " 264
A THORNLESS BLACK BLOSSOM " 273
H.H. THE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA ON HIS " 320
FAVOURITE RACER
AFREDEEDS AT THE KHYBER PASS " 329
IDOLS IN A SIAMESE PAGODA " 341
CHAPTER I
MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE ORIENT
TO travel far and wide—out of the beaten paths, and to enjoy it, is to
have a great career. I know no other impersonal delight that is so
endless as the delight of learning new places. To see new flora, a new
type of people having new customs, and then to realise that it is
Damascus or Kabul, Calcutta or Canton,—a place which has been to you
all your life a meaningless dot on a map, but is now—and for ever will
be to you—a vivid, vital reality,—that is an exquisite pleasure, a
twofold pleasure, for while it fires your intellect, it feeds your
artistic sense, your love of the picturesque.
I take it for granted that you have a love of the picturesque. If I am
wrong, you would better close my little book, and try to change it for
another. For you will think me a bit mad, and we shan’t get on together
at all.
I love the East—genuinely and intensely—I love every inch of it. There
are occasional bits of the landscape that are uninteresting, but the
people are always charming. They are often lovable. They are invariably
quaint and interesting.
I remember saying to my husband, when we had been in the East two days,
“I can never be grateful enough for having come to this wonderful
Orient.” Days passed into weeks. Weeks stretched into months. Months
lengthened into years. With every passing hour my gratitude grew. We are
back in London now, and the East is a memory; but I am grateful still,
and shall be always.
For people who long to see the Eastern wonderland and can’t, I have a
big pity. For people who could go, but don’t care to, I have a huge
contempt.
My father—a delightful fellow-traveller, and the dear chum of my
girlhood—my father and I had planned to see the East together. But we
never did. My husband and I saw all the East together. Every day as we
went farther and farther into those wonderful countries we said one to
the other, “If he were only with us!”
We had been playing some time in Australia, and when we began to fear
lest we had worn out our welcome, our thoughts turned to London, the
actor’s Mecca. But I begged that we might go to dear old England by a
very roundabout way. It turned out a very roundabout way indeed. We were
tempted to go from place to place. We were detained in Japan by
business. We were held in India by illness. We went all over the East.
And when we “came home” a year ago, my boy knew a little Chinese, a
little Japanese, and very much Hindustani.
We reached Colombo at daylight. When I woke I had that strange sensation
to which, become as old a traveller as one may, one never gets quite
used—the sensation of being in a boat that is at anchor after weeks of
incessant motion. The noise was indescribable. The _Valetta_ was going
on to London, and they were already coaling. I climbed up to the
port-hole and looked out. The coaling was going on farther down. As far
as I could see, were native boats that would have made Venice gaudier
when Venice was gay with the glory of coloured gondolas. Some of them
reminded me of the birch-bark canoes that dart up and down the St.
Lawrence, some were shaped like Spanish caravels, some were Egyptian in
outline. But all were Oriental in colour; and all were manned by
Cingalese—the first Oriental people I had ever seen _en masse_.
The stewardess knocked. “Would I come into the nursery?” (as we called
our children’s cabin), “the children absolutely refused to be dressed.”
I threw on a dressing-gown and crossed the narrow passage. My two elder
babies were crowding each other from the port-hole, and the
four-month-old bairn was kicking and clutching at the kind hands that
were trying to dress her. Outside, beneath the port-hole, was a small
native boat. It was full of fruit which the natives were reaching up to
my eager-handed children. Another boat, laden with shells, was trying to
push the fruit boat away. A dozen other boats were crowded about these
two, and fifty Cingalese were crying—“Buy, buy, buy!” I threw out a bit
of silver in payment for the bananas and oranges my infants were
devouring. I took a firm clutch of their night gowns and pulled them
down. The stewardess closed the port-hole, and we three women gradually
persuaded the three babies into their different costumes. The children
were taken on deck, where their father was. I went back to my cabin to
dress. A Cingalese man had his head thrust well inside my port-hole. His
fine aquiline features were covered-with a rich brown skin. His long
black hair was twisted into a small but prominent knob at the back of
his square head. In the knob was thrust eight inches of convex
tortoise-shell, which in the bright sunshine of the early morning
sparkled like a queen’s coronet.
“Salaam, beautiful English lady!” he cried before my astonishment had
let me speak; “I bring you many beautiful silk—much beautiful sapphire,
pearls, not white as your neck, but white as the neck of another.” He
threw a square foot of morocco at my naked feet. I picked it up to throw
it back, but it opened and I held it a moment. I had seen the
Mediterranean when it was good-humoured, and the sky in Italy. I never
saw blue until I looked into that leather casket of rings. Oh! those
sapphires, cunningly relieved here and there by a glinting cat’s-eye, or
a gleaming pearl!
“Go away,” I said, handing up the box, “I’m not dressed.”
“Beautiful English lady, buy,” he replied, ignoring his gems. I glanced
into the diminutive P. and O. mirror. My nose was sunburnt; my hair was
in curl papers. I have seen uglier women, but not many. That naturally
annoyed me.
“Take your rubbish away,” I said sharply. “I don’t want. I’ve no money.”
The first statement was untrue. I did want them. Only a blind woman
could look on Ceylon sapphires without longing to wear them. With the
poetic sense peculiar to the East, it was my last and true statement
that he disregarded.
“Lady take one ring, two ring, six ring. I come hotel get money.”
“I’m going to London,” I said, lying glibly. I was anxious to get on
deck. I wanted to dress.
“Lady send me money from London. I trust. No English sir, no English
madame, cheat poor native man.”
I have heard English honour upheld in Westminster. I have heard it
praised directly and indirectly by almost all the peoples in Europe and
in America. But, to me, this was the establishment of English honour.
And it was so all over the East. I was not an Englishwoman, but I was
the next best thing, the wife of an Englishman, and I could buy on
credit half the curios in the East, if I wished.
At last I induced my Cingalese friend to carry his sapphires to a more
hopeful port-hole. I dressed and went on deck. One of my little ones
crept to me. She had a huge bunch of blossom in her wee hands. Some of
the flowers I had seen in famous conservatories. Half of them I had
never seen. They were massed together—white, red and yellow, no half
colours! They were tightly bound into a stupid graceless bunch, stiffly
bordered by thick leaves, but from them rose a perfume heavy as incense,
sweet as sandal-wood. One of my baby’s many admirers had given them to
her. He had bought them for two annas. The vendor had cheated him into
paying double price.
The deck was thronged with native merchants and was vocal with hubbub.
At a short distance from the _Valetta_ a dozen native boys were paddling
a frail little craft. “Throw away, sir; throw money, sir. I dive, sir—I
dive.” And dive they did, invariably bringing up the silver in their
triumphant mouths. They dived and swam and rose like nimble, black
flying-fish. Hundreds of coolies were bringing big baskets of coal up
the ship’s sides. They were as quick as monkeys and far noisier.
I sank into my steamer chair. In a moment I was surrounded. Three
Cingalese men planted themselves complacently at my feet. Their
attendant coolies followed with their wares. One man had photographs.
One had Point de Galle lace and chicken work. One had tortoise-shell and
ebony. All had sapphires, cat’s-eyes, and moonstones. Every passenger on
deck was surrounded by just such a brown coterie.
Colombo itself we saw but indifferently. A few houses and myriad
cocoanut trees, that was all; but around us were anchored the ships of a
dozen flags. If I remember, the only men-of-war were three or four funny
little Japanese warships.
After a hasty breakfast, which even the children were too excited to
eat, we went on shore. What a wonderland! The grass was the crisp green
of eternal summer. The intense sunshine was pouring mercilessly down.
But native men and women were walking leisurely along, with bare heads,
and apparently cool skins. A horribly deformed boy rushed at us with a
prayer for bukshish. My husband sprang between him and me. But, though I
did not know it, I had, for the first time, seen a leper. I was destined
to see lepers all over India, and a year or more later, in Subathu, I
learned to go among them quietly if not quite calmly. As for the cry of
bukshish, which was the first native word I heard in the East, it was
also the last. I heard it incessantly for two years and more. The
peoples among whom we went spoke Hindustani, Gujarati, Tamul, Marahti,
and a dozen other tongues, but they all cried “Salaam, memsahib.
Bukshish! Bukshish!”
It was only a stone’s throw to the large, pleasant hotel. The manager
was waiting for us; and with him was an ayah, who had been engaged as an
assistant nurse, by our advance agent. What a splendidly handsome woman
she was! A long, straight piece of striped silk was wrapped about her
hips and fell nearly to her ankles. A short Cingalese jacket, made of
white lawn and edged with lace, covered her bosom. Her arms and neck and
feet were gleaming, black and bare. And between her short white jacket
and her low red skirt was an interspace of four or more inches of black
plumpness. Her magnificent black hair was carefully braided, and the
long braids were artistically gathered together by a beautiful silver
pin, which also fastened a red rose. She wore a string of big gold beads
about her neck. She gave a shrewd look at my sturdy little flock.
“Salaam, memsahib,” she cried, showing all her large perfect teeth. “Two
baba not walk!” She seized upon the smaller of the two and led the way
to our rooms. That very afternoon the elder baby walked, for the first
time, and after that very rarely asked to be carried. If the ayah
repented her choice of babies she gave no sign, but abode by her first
selection.
It was in Colombo that I first ate curry that was nearly perfect. In
Colombo I ate a dozen fruits I had never eaten before. The hotel was
very pleasant. The rooms were large and shady, and they were—what,
alas! we were not always to find them in the East—sweetly clean. There
was a wonderful garden at the back of the hotel, from which the mallie
used to gather me a great bunch of strange, graceful, scarlet flowers.
And yet there never seemed a flower the less. Alas! the flowers of the
East
spring up, bloom, bear, and wither
In the same hour.
The quiet, respectful, ready Oriental service was delightful. And it was
adequate, which Eastern service is not always, for it was under
efficient European supervision.
The verandah of the hotel was a great cool place. It was pleasant to sit
there when the heat of the day had broken a bit—to sit there and write
chits for iced lemon drinks or claret cup, and watch the deft Indian
jugglers, and barter with the persistent natives for lace and
embroideries, for silks and pongées, for silver belts and for gems. Two
Mahommedans had the privilege of spreading their wares on one end of the
verandah. And the others were allowed to come upon the verandah with a
small quantity of things. They were not allowed to over-pester you,
which made shopping on the hotel verandah far pleasanter than shopping
in the shops.
But the hotel, pleasant as it was, was merely a European incident,—it
was no part of Colombo the native, Colombo the picturesque, though some
of the native colour and bits of the native picture were necessarily
included in its background.
The first thing we did in Colombo, after we had had a rest and
interviewed a dhobie, was to inspect the theatre. The second was to take
a long drive.
We drove some distance, indeed, to the theatre. We drove by the
barracks, and the bagpipes of the Gordon Highlanders squeaked out that
the Campbells were coming. We drove by native shops, where tiger skins
from the thick jungles and rich rugs from Persia were hung outside, and
where delicately wrought gold and silver ware gleamed in the windows.
The proprietors of these shops invariably rushed out and threw
themselves in front of our steed, who was, by the way, far from fiery.
The gharri wallah and the sais gave us no help. They sat and waited
developments as patiently as did the horse itself. We tried abusing the
over-solicitous merchants. But they were impervious to abuse. We found
that there was one way and one way only of effecting our escape, namely,
by committing perjury. We took their cards and vowed we would return in
one hour, to their particular shop and to none other.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN COLOMBO _Page 9._]
And so we, at last, escaped—escaped into a native street. Shall I ever
forget it! Hut huddled against hut, where the streets were thick with
dwellings. In the front of almost every hut was a booth—a booth piled
with grains or fruits or any of a hundred other articles of diet, all
equally unknown to us. Potatoes and bananas were the only things I
recognised. Oh yes! and pumpkins. In each booth sat a salesman or woman.
Sometimes it was a nearly naked coolie—as often it was a carefully
dressed Cingalese woman. In every instance there was a pair of primitive
scales, and, usually, a customer or two. Farther out, the streets grew
more sylvan. There were more cocoanut trees and fewer houses. There were
no more shops. Here and there a native squatted upon the ground, waiting
to sell a trayful of violently coloured cakes and sweetmeats, or drinks
from greasy-looking bottles that were filled with crudely-hued liquids.
We passed a thousand-stemmed banyan tree. A pretty Tamul mother sat in
its shade nursing a rolly-poly black baby. A few feet from her were two
yellow-clad priests of Buddha, telling their beads.
We drove by a quiet, irregular, silver lake. We drove through a tangle
of tropical undergrowth and Eastern flowers. Here and there the cocoanut
trees lifted their supreme heads, and now and again the laughing faces
of brown babies peeped out at us from the thick of the bamboo.
We came to the theatre all too soon, for our delight with this old
world, so new to us, had quite superseded our professional anxiety. But
the theatre was a pleasant surprise.
It was pretty—decidedly pretty, and new. We opened it, if I
remember—at least professionally. The auditorium was a large high room,
beautifully finished with teak-wood. I sat down while my husband gave
some directions about scenery. At least fifty coolies were working in
their slow, noisy way. They ought to have worked more quickly, for they
were encumbered by an absolute minimum of clothing.
We went back to the gharri. We drove through some pretty, unkept
gardens, where the air reminded me of my grandmother’s best cupboard, it
was so heavy with the smell of cinnamon and nutmegs, and of cloves. That
is one of the disadvantages of having lived in the West. Such vulgar
utilitarian comparisons suggest themselves.
Children ran after us, throwing flowers and fruit into my lap and
screaming to my husband for bukshish. It was amusing at first; but it
grew wearying. If they had varied it a bit, by offering him a flower or
begging from me a pice. But that never occurred to them. It is a very
sophisticated Cingalese indeed who ever suspects a woman of having any
money. The late gloaming fell upon us, and we could no longer see the
full details of the beauty that surrounded us. As the last of the colour
faded with which the sunset echoed the beauty of Ceylon, we found
ourselves at the door of a Buddhist temple. As my husband lifted me out
of the gharri, I noticed that he was softly quoting a lovely line from
_The Light of Asia_. He was interrupted by a sudden rush of humanity.
Three buxom girls had dashed from an adjacent hut. They threw themselves
literally upon him, with a nice Oriental disregard of my presence. My
husband shook himself, but not free, and used a word that is not in the
purists’ lexicon. I must own I felt a little perturbed. Andrew (my
husband’s Cingalese boy, of whom more anon) relieved the embarrassment.
“No harm, sahib—no harm,” he said. “Hers want bukshish.”
The Buddhist temple was novel, and weird in the dim light. The grotesque
figures of Buddha were huge, crudely shaped, glaringly coloured, and
shockingly disproportioned. But the priest who constituted himself our
cicerone was very wonderful. He spoke only fairish English. But he
explained Buddhism so clearly, so concisely, and withal so
picturesquely, that we felt we had learned more of it in that one hour
spent with him than we had learned before from many earnestly read
books.
We drove home through the tender starlight. The flowers were hidden,
like high-caste Hindoo women, behind the purdah of the dark. But the
damp night dews had distilled the tender leaves of the cinnamon trees,
and the air was superlatively sweet.
We went into the hotel a little tired, but very pleased with our first
day in the Orient, and very content that it was almost dinner time.