ON THE HIMALAYAS
FROM Tokio we turned back. Again we stayed in Yokohama, in Kobe, and
stopped just long enough to play once in Nagasaki. We spent some time at
Hong-Kong. At Penang our boat waited a day, and our English friends came
aboard to wish us God-speed. The man we had known best and liked most
was not among them. I had named him “Saint of the Camera.” He was a
capital amateur photographer, and had tramped about Penang most
generously for me when we had been there before, and had fed with
innumerable pretty photographs my insatiable craving for “views.” I
asked where he was. Alas! he was in the English Hospital, fighting a
desperate fight with the fever-fiend.
“I wish that you were as rich as Monte Christo,” I had said to my
husband the first evening that we were in Penang.
“Why?” he said, as in duty bound.
“Because then you could buy me this island, and we would stay here for
ever.”
“Oh, would we? Well, then, I’m glad that I’m considerably less well off
than Monte Christo,” said mine lord, who decidedly prefers Europe to
Asia.
Penang is said by some authorities to be the site of the Garden of Eden.
Certainly no paradise could be lovelier. Nature laughs and revels in
Penang; and there, too, is native life most varied, most picturesque. A
dozen different races live in Penang. Their places of worship, their
houses, their garments, are insistently differentiated. Penang is one
big garden of exotics; among them, we found one sweet home-rose—the
rose of English hospitality. From Penang we went to Singapore.
I have no pleasanter memories than my memories of Singapore. No place
could be more beautiful, nor more interesting; and I thought that
nowhere in the East was there such pleasant European society. And surely
no other spot on earth is such a paradise of fruit.
Singapore is a place of splendid varieties. It is the island of a great
future.
The Malays are perhaps the least vivid feature of Singapore. They are an
inoffensive people, but not, I thought, as interesting as the other
Oriental peoples. Chinese industry and European intelligence were the
great motive powers at Singapore.
Tanglin, outside the town of Singapore, is an ideal barrack. It was a
soldier’s paradise I thought.
Singapore, with its wonderful mixture of races, was strangely
fascinating, even to people who had been through the East rather
exhaustively; but I doubt if we should remember Singapore half so
pleasantly, did we not remember it as the residence of Sir Charles
Warren.
If I felt free to glide into purely personal reminiscences, I should
record of Singapore that there we greatly liked a man, and greatly
thanked a host.
On our way to China we had spent a month or more in Singapore. Now we
passed a few more pleasant weeks there. Then came a few sad days in
Rangoon and a memorable passage back to Calcutta. It was late in July
and the elements were in indescribable confusion. Only an expert could
tell which was sky and which was sea. And neither sea nor sky could have
been uglier.
[Illustration: NATIVES READING AT PENANG. _Page 256._]
We lost a great number of sheep overboard in the storm; and I, too, very
nearly went overboard. I should have deserved my fate; but the poor
innocent sheep did not deserve theirs. Yet perhaps it is pleasanter to
die by drowning than by slaughter. I love the deck of a boat, but I hate
the “down below.” I never go below more than is absolutely necessary.
But on this trip I had my own way once too often. I don’t know how I had
inveigled the Captain, but I had. My steamer chair was lashed to the
hatch. I was snug and dry under my rugs. The ship rolled and pitched
splendidly, the rain rushed down in nasty torrents, and the salt spray
curled and split into a hundred whipcords, before it struck my face.
The Captain and my captain came up every few moments to reason with me
and to invite me down, but I shook my wilful head at them. The night,
the storm, and the fresh, angry air, seemed to me far more pleasant than
the close, warm, sociable saloon would have been.
About ten o’clock John came up and made, with difficulty, his frightened
way to my side.
“Master say you want something? Please he like come bring you down. It
is very late.”
“All right, I’ll come down with you, John,” I said.
“Oh no, memsahib, please not,” cried John, “Master be very angry. It
want two gentlemen help you this bad night.”
Some imp of contrariness possessed me. I was cross at having to go down
at all; and I answered John roughly. “Bring the rugs,” I said, “and I’ll
come by myself, if you are afraid to help me.” Poor John, he was afraid
to help himself; and, in sooth, we had a very staggery time of it
between the steamer chair and the gangway. But we grasped the brass rod
at last and went slowly, and, as I thought, surely down. How often we
are most in danger when we think that danger is over! I was on the last
step when a lurch more tremendous than all the tremendous others tore
the brass rod from my hand, and I lay across the saloon doorway, a
rather mangled mass of wilful woman.
I had interrupted a game of whist. I was rather badly hurt, but they
were all very good to me; even the Captain and the long-suffering
husband, both of whom I had defied by staying on deck, through the
storm, and both of whom I had disobeyed by coming below without their
help.
There was a young army surgeon on board; I forget his name, but I shall
always remember him. He had been invalided home from Mandalay. He was
seriously ill; but he left his state-room and came to mine. I shall
never forget how very ill he looked as he bent over my rather badly cut
eye. I am sure that he was far worse than I was, but he saved me from
the full consequences of my folly; and he looked so very white and spent
that I forgot to moan, and let my fancy wander to a score of
battlefields where unselfish medicos have won their Victoria Crosses;
and before my mind had quite come back my eye was mended.
Our second season in Calcutta was delightful, but warm. “Cinch, cinch,”
was our constant cry; which meant that we wanted the punkah-wallahs to
pull harder.
Punkahs are the puissant antidotes of the Indian climate. They are not
always needed, nor everywhere; but when they are needed, they are needed
badly! There are two kinds of punkahs—hand punkahs, and the long canvas
punkahs that hang from the ceiling and are pulled by the coolies, who
sit in the hall or in an outer room. The hand punkahs are huge fans,
made of palm leaves, and swung near your face, by the tireless arms of
indefatigable punkah-wallahs.
Some of the hand punkahs are very beautiful. In Calcutta, at the
theatre, I was kept cool by the breath of a big Egyptian-shaped thing
that was inlaid with bits of brilliantly-hued glass. In Rawal Pindi I
was cooled by the breeze of a square of scented grass. In Patiala the
servants of the Maharajah fanned me with wire-outlined, leaf-fringed,
sandalwood-sprinkled ovals of crimson silk.
In every part of India I bought, for a few pies, in the native bazaars,
the common fans of the people. I don’t suppose that my entire collection
cost me ten pounds. But to me they are full of interest and of story,
those crude fans of the Asiatic populace. That plaited, vivid one means
Allahabad to me. That little, useless-looking, spangled one I bought
almost at the base of Mount Everest. There was small need for fans
there; but fans are a matter of course in Asia, and custom is greater
than necessity. For every Oriental city or town in which I have slept I
have a fan.
The genii of this world are limited in number. I knew one of them in
Calcutta; he was an old, poor Hindoo. He had his price (as most of us
have); and it was two annas from sunrise to sunrise. I gave him three
annas, and only claimed his services from 8 P.M. till 12 P.M. I think he
loved me. He could only do one thing, but he did it perfectly. Our
second season in Calcutta was, beyond expression, hot. It was indecently
hot. But, whatever the rest of the world suffered, from 8 P.M. until
midnight I was cool and happy. To write more correctly, I was cooled and
kept happy. The one thing that my meagrely-clad brown genius could do,
was fan; and he did it. From the moment I stepped from the gharri into
the stage doorway of the Theatre Royal, Calcutta, I was surrounded by
the perfection of breeze.
There were moments incidental to my changes of costume when I had to
temporarily banish him from my dressing-room. He always resented this;
he seemed to feel it a reflection upon his fanning. To tell the truth, I
often felt rather supercilious; for, though he never ceased to fan me,
he was more often asleep than awake. I usually had to waken him before I
ejected him.
We played _The Lights o’ London_ in terrible weather. My third dress was
a warm gray gown, and over it I wore a warmer gray cloak and hood. I
don’t know how the old man managed it, but he did manage always to crawl
behind the canvas rocks; and while I sat, a melting mass of cross
feminality, he fanned and fanned me. When I moved, he moved; wherever I
stood, he stood behind me; and whether the audience appreciated or
underrated my genius, he never ceased to fan me. A friend, a dear
friend, was kind enough to tell me that in Bombay I played Bess Marks
very much worse than I had in Calcutta. I attributed it entirely to the
absence of my punkah-wallah.
I have never had a more devoted servant. When he could not by any
possible contrivance fan me, he used to go and fan my husband. I wonder
if he had read a book entitled, _Love me, Love my Husband_.
When we went into the Punjab, the punkahs—the big punkahs swung from
the ceiling—that had been a luxury became a necessity. Not a necessity
to comfort, but to life. But before we went into the Punjab we went up
on the Himalayas.
My lines of life have crossed and recrossed the globe, up and down. I
shall always think of the Himalayas as Nature’s masterpiece. I shall not
try to describe them: my failure would be too great.
We crept to the Himalayas from Calcutta—crept through pleasant, native
places, across the Ganges, up the most wonderful of railways. It seems
profane to speak of man’s achievement and of the Himalayas at the same
time; but the difficulties that Nature has thrown in the way of the
Darjeeling railway make its accomplishment a thing sublime. Engineering
may have had greater triumphs, but it has had none that are more greatly
displayed.
Our train turned upon itself and crossed its own tracks like a mad,
hunted thing. It seemed to take most desperate chances; but still it
went on and up; and man’s mind triumphed over Nature’s matter.
Alas that three score years and ten should mark the average limit of so
stupendous a triumph! And yet if, as some of us think, man’s mind is but
a form of Nature’s matter, it is only meet that our active, nervous
personalities should be reabsorbed into the great, quiet, placid, potent
whole of Nature.
The colour-rich pen of William Shakespeare would, I think, have found
itself inadequate to paint the scenery through which we passed from the
banks of the Ganges to the base of Mount Everest. All I can say of that
scenery is: It is there; go and see it!
We passed groups of hill people. They were to us a new type of Asiatic
humanity. They reminded us strangely and strongly of our own North
American Indians. They set us thinking. We tried to recall all we had
ever read about the cradle of the Aryan race. We tried to remember the
great racial divisions of humanity. And when we found ourselves in a
fine mental tangle we gave it up, saying, “What a great and undeniable
fact is the brotherhood of all humanity!” and then we ceased to think
and only looked—at Nature. We passed through tea plantations, and
through miles of cochineal and indigo; that relieved our tension and
told us once more that ours was the most practical race in the world;
for the plantations were, almost without exception, owned and managed by
Anglo-Saxons.
Before we reached Darjeeling we had several sunlit views of the far,
snow-covered heights of the great mountains. From Darjeeling we saw them
every day—for at Darjeeling we had only sunshine and good fortune. We
saw Mount Kinchinjunga at sunrise, at sunflood, and at sunset. We could
not see Mount Everest from Darjeeling, but before daylight one morning
we went together on horseback and crept to the base of Mount Everest; we
lifted our faces reverently and looked upon it.
Darjeeling fascinated me as much because of the hill tribes we found
there as for its own wonderful beauty. My husband says that I ruined him
in furs and phulkaris, but he has accused me of ruining him in every
bazaar in the Orient; and now that we are at home in London, he has
quite constituted himself the curator of my curios.
At Darjeeling is one of the lovely homes of those very interesting
people, the Maharajah and Maharanee of Cooch Behar.
The Maharajah of Cooch Behar was the handsomest man I ever saw. But I
did not discover it the first time I saw him. The Maharanee was with
him, and I had no eyes for any one else. The Maharanee of Cooch Behar is
indescribably lovely. No intense poem of old Oriental literature
contains a description of woman’s loveliness, that would be an
exaggeration if it had been written about her Highness. In Calcutta and
in Darjeeling she and her husband came to see us play very often.
Whenever they came, I used to scurry through my changes that I might
stand at the peep-hole and look upon the exquisite Eastern beauty of the
Maharanee. The Maharajah I first saw, without his wife, at the Calcutta
Races; then I realised what a handsome husband his handsome wife had.
Naturally enough, the Cooch Behar children are exceptionally pretty. It
was in Darjeeling that I used to see them. The Maharajah of Cooch Behar
and his wife stand for all that is best and wisest in Indian life. Their
culture is broadly cosmopolitan, their loyalty to their own people is
deep and tireless, but not pedantic nor narrow. They adore and adorn the
country of their birth. They greatly credit the country of their
allegiance.
We went from Darjeeling back to Calcutta. Then we went to Bombay,
stopping a week or more at Allahabad and Jubblepore. I revelled again in
the native quarters; we were made very happy at night in the theatres,
and in the cantonments we met a lot of charming English people. I often
wonder how many thousands of charming English people there are in India.
There are very many, I know.
Bombay I always associate with Tokio and Vienna. They are the three most
lavish cities I have ever seen. And yet, Bombay lacked to me something
of the charm of Calcutta. Bombay is undoubtedly the more beautiful of
the two cities, but it is far the less dense. Humanity fascinates me
more than Nature. I boast of being cosmopolitan. I love several
countries as much as, or more than, my own, and yet, the cosmopolitanism
of Bombay oppressed me. The cosmos seemed to me objectionably
conglomerate. But Bombay was delightful; its shortcomings were very few,
its charms were very, very many. Must I leave Bombay—the Queen of the
Eastern seas—with a sentence? Perhaps as well leave it that way as
another, since I cannot devote the pages of a volume to its praise. The
swarming, native quarters, the beautifully-built European section, the
pretty Parsi women, the changeable silks and the inch-thick rugs of the
borri wallahs, the bright-blue, glistening, dancing bay, the dank
recesses of the Elephanta caves, the vultures on the Parsi Towers of
Silence, call out to me for recognition. But there is a nineteenth
century full to overflowing of tourists to recall them all, better,
perhaps, than I could, but not more lovingly than I should—had I the
space and the power to more than mention them.
If I filled one page with each golden memory I have of the Orient, those
pages would, though they were printed on tissue, make a rather thick
volume.
[Illustration: HILL PEOPLE—BHOOTEAS AND NEPAULESE. _Page
264._]