SAMBO
HE had but one shirt and it was very ragged. He washed it every few
nights after dark. He was too young for a coolie, and too old for a
chokera. When I was cross with him I called him “coolie,” and he hung
his head. When I was pleased with him I called him “chokera,” and he
looked up and smiled. We never could pronounce his name. It is not the
custom in India to call your native servants by name, but we quarrelled
with the custom. Failing to gain the mastery over his proper
appellation, my children called him “Sambo”—perhaps partly because that
was something like his name, and partly because they had some inherited
memory of darkie servants on their great-great-grandfather’s plantation.
I paid him three annas a day. His duties were various. He did errands
with a fair degree of precision, but never with celerity. He fed the
pets and the chickens. He helped the other servants a very little. He
played with and waited on the children. In that he excelled.
We were keeping house on the hills. We were within a stone’s throw of a
railway station; but we were miles from the nearest European. At first
there were four of us; my two children and I, and their nurse, who was
also my housekeeper and rock of defence. We needed an additional servant
to do indefinite scraps of work. The Hindoo stationmaster recommended
Sambo, and Sambo was engaged.
He had less knowledge of English than any one else I ever met who
attempted to speak it. When he was frightened he forgot the little
English he did know. And he almost always was frightened—at least, when
he first came to us. He developed and improved amazingly under kindness,
as almost all natives do.
When he had been with us a few days, he ran to me crying bitterly that
the “chota sahib” had struck him. My small boy and he had been playing
horse, and my son had been either so careless or so naughty as to strike
Sambo too hard. I made the child give Sambo an anna of his pocket-money,
for indemnity. Sambo was delighted. A few days after, I caught him
trying to induce his young master to repeat the blow for which he had,
on a former occasion, been so handsomely recompensed. I informed them
both that when the next blow was struck I should “cut” Sambo’s pay and
my youngster’s pocket-money, one half-anna each, and present the anna to
the mallie’s children. I hope that my little one never again struck
Sambo; if he did, Sambo never told on him.
I was giving Sambo a severe scolding one afternoon about his appearance.
One shoulder was out of his shirt, one arm was half bare, and the skirt
of his shirt hung about his bare brown legs like a coarse fringe. In
India one grows accustomed to the nude, as one does in the Pitti Palace
or in the Vatican itself. But one likes to draw the line somewhere with
one’s personal attendants. I had often spoken to Sambo about his
rapidly-diminishing garment, and thought his disregard of what I had
said impertinent. So now I spoke very sharply, and he slunk away. The
dhursies, who were sitting on one end of the verandah, looked after him
and laughed. They were both sleek and fat and amply clad. My ayah was at
the other end of the verandah building brick houses for my baby. She
rose quietly and came to me. “Memsahib,” she said softly, but with the
confidence of a conscious favourite, “no scold Sambo, no be angry. He
got one shirt—no more. Not Sambo fault. He so poor. His grandmother so
old—so poor. Sambo no father—no mother.” Then she went back to her
“missie baba.” When my ayah told me anything I knew that it was true. It
is not “correct” in India to let your conscience prick you about
anything in connection with the natives. But I have never been correct,
and I hope I never shall be. I looked from the dhursies, who were making
my boy a dozen new white suits, to the other end of the verandah. We
were on the hills, living quite out of the world, but my baby’s little
white frock had pale-blue shoulder-knots. She had whole blue socks on
her little pink feet. And the dainty frock itself was the second she had
worn that day. I went inside. Sambo was sitting on the ground, outside
the nursery door, trying to mend his tatters. He had borrowed a needle
and thread from my housekeeper. I called her to me, and we put our heads
together. We found some Roman shirts and togas in one of our boxes. They
had originally been worn by gentlemen of artistic temperament, residing
in Melbourne, who had impersonated Roman senators for the nominal
honorarium of two shillings a night. The shirts and togas were made of
unbleached calico, and were bordered with red, or blue, or yellow. They
were all too large for Sambo. Our Victorian “captain of the supers” had
been particular as to height, and Sambo was only fourteen. I made the
dhursies put away their work and alter the six best shirts for Sambo. I
meant it kindly, but I almost killed him. The night they were finished,
he lay awake until morning, crying for joy, crying himself almost into a
fever. I gave him the togas to match the shirts and he was very proud. I
gave him two huge tartans that had done duty in _Rob Roy_. The natives
came for miles to see the memsahib who had given her chokera “six shirt,
six sari, and two shawl.” Dear old Ayah was as delighted as Sambo,
though she had children of her own to whom I had usually given all our
discarded garments.
Sambo was slowly emerging from a frightened, almost useless encumbrance,
into a cheerful, moderately useful servant, when he met with a shocking
misfortune. It completely unnerved him, and threatened to set him back
three months in his development. We were living at Khandalah. Most of
our provisions came from Bombay. We sent, however, to Lanaulie—a
distance of four miles—for soda, lemonade, butter, and anything of
which we ran short. Sometimes we took Lanaulie in in our afternoon
drive. Sometimes we sent Sambo. He would take an empty box three feet by
two by three on his head, and march off cheerfully enough, returning a
few hours later with the things I wanted. We always gave him a list and
the money. One Saturday we discovered as late as three o’clock that we
were out of sugar, butter, tea, and some other articles which were, to
our pampered European palates, necessities. “We must send Sambo on the
train,” I said, “else he’ll be too late.” The little general store at
which we dealt closed at six. Because the boy was to go luxuriously on
the train, I made out rather a long order. I gave him six annas and a
ten-rupee note, saying, “Tie the ten rupees up tight, and buy your
ticket out of the six annas.” Sambo went,—but he failed to return. I
had told him he might come back by train. Travelling in India is not
expensive. When it is done third-class it is decidedly cheap. We were
living on the line between Poona and Bombay, and the trains were
frequent. He should have been back at five. At six we wondered. At seven
we were a little anxious. At eight I had my dinner, minus sugar, butter,
and a few other incidentals. Ayah sat on the floor sewing buttons on to
the children’s clothes; her face was drawn and stern. Just when dinner
was over, Sambo rushed in. “Memsahib! Memsahib!” he cried, and fell at
my feet. He had thrown his box down at the door. It was empty. My bearer
and the khitmatgar dragged him to his feet. His big thick lips were
quite white, and they were trembling piteously. Every vein on his body
showed white and rigid against his black skin. It was a long time before
we could get him to speak a word. When at last he did speak, it was in
Hindustani. Ayah translated, and with unconcealed anger, though she
scarcely lifted her eyes from her work. “He say man no give tings
memsahib want. He no have money. He lose ten rupee. He say he pray
memsahib not beat hard.” Ayah evidently repeated the last sentence
reluctantly.
“Tell him that European women do not strike servants,” I said grandly.
The unwonted occurrence had drawn all the servants to the door. At my
remark they burst into concerted laughter. It is not Anglo-Indian
etiquette for a servant to laugh at a memsahib; yet my servants, who
were fairly well bred, laughed now; even my own “boy,” who was usually a
model of propriety. The cook, a dignified old Goanese, who took many
liberties because he knew he was the best _chef_ between Poona and
Bombay, took a step forward. “Memsahib,” said the old fellow, “vera much
memsahib, European beat plenty—plenty hard.”—“Then tell him that I
don’t,” I said rather shortly, and went out. To do myself justice I was
very angry. It was too late to send anywhere for what I required.
Moreover, that ten-rupee note had been my last one; and my next letter
from my husband in Calcutta was not due until Tuesday. And in Khandalah
there were neither banks nor pawnshops.
Sambo came to me at five every morning, and went home at eight or nine
at night. That night Ayah said to me, “Sambo not come back morning
morrow. He thief. He too frightened.” I had a long talk with the
European woman who has for years shared all my ups and downs, nursing my
babies, keeping my accounts, mending my gowns, and doing me a hundred
other loving services. We didn’t know what to think. The ten rupees were
gone, and at an inconvenient moment. But we were in doubt whether Sambo
had lost or stolen them.
When I woke in the morning Sambo was stealing about the house doing his
work with trembling hands. His big, soft eyes were very red. When I saw
that he had come back I was sure that he was innocent of any worse fault
than carelessness. My housekeeper went to the stationmaster, from whom
Sambo had bought his ticket, and to the storekeeper in Lanaulie. Neither
could give any conclusive testimony. He had bought his ticket out of the
six-anna piece. He had handed in my order at the little store; it was
then that he had discovered, or seemed to discover, his loss. He had
cried and seemed very terrified. He had spent hours hunting for the
note. I thought it greatly to his credit that he had come back to me; he
could so easily have disappeared. But he had been careless, and I more
than half suspected him of having shown the note on the train, in a
moment of boyish braggadocio. I told him that night that I should cut
his pay an anna a day until he had paid back the ten rupees. He seemed
to think my decision a kind one. The next morning he came to the
bungalow a little late, and he had an ugly scar upon his back. I
ascertained with some difficulty that the scar was his grandmother’s
autograph. It was the only one she knew how to write, and she had
inscribed it upon her grandson’s back with a stick, because he had
brought home two annas instead of three. I sent the bearer for a gharri.
When it came I took Ayah with me, and went in search of the grandmother.
We passed through the native bazaar, and found her in a miserable little
native hut. It was a chill, cool day. She lay half asleep upon the mud
floor of her “home.” She was as ragged and far filthier than Sambo had
been when I first saw him. The skin hung in thick wrinkles, half
clinging to, half falling from, her bent bones. Her dark-red gums were
toothless. In one palsied hand she grasped a stout stick. On her narrow
forehead, beneath her scant gray hair, a circle of white paper and a
daub of red paint denoted I know not what length of performed prayer and
caste altitude. A brightly-burnished chattee stood in one corner. The
woman and the chattee were all the room contained; and it was the only
room in the house. I had come with big wrath in my heart. It was gone.
Her poverty, her misery, had scarred Sambo’s back—not she. “Why does
she sleep?” I asked Ayah. “Because she has no rice to eat,” was the
answer. We went back to the bazaar. I bought fifteen pounds of rice for
a rupee, and a big bag of gram for three annas, a bottle of milk for one
anna, a packet of curry ingredients for two annas, six eggs, a few
plantains, a loaf of bread, some firewood, a box of matches, a few
simple cooking utensils, a bar of soap, a pair of cheap blankets, and a
chicken. A chicken sounds rather lavish, but it only cost two annas. I
have bought them in India for less. When we went back, Ayah lit a fire,
and then we woke the old woman. She ate ravenously, though she seemed
scarcely to have strength to eat at all. And I wondered what moment of
distress had given her the sudden power to deal her grandson so cruel a
blow. She had, however, the strength to thank me abundantly. I left a
few small coins with her; bade Ayah tell her that if she never beat
Sambo again she should be helped, and drove home through the soft, sweet
twilight. Please don’t think that I am a philanthropist. I am not. I am
a woman, and, like most women, very selfish. But I had tinned asparagus
and a glass of very good claret for my dinner that night; and I should
have lost half the flavour of the one and the bouquet of the latter had
I not known that one old bag of Hindoo bones was no longer cold and
famished. After dinner, out amid my little paradise of Indian flowers, I
enjoyed the perfumed Indian night and the cup of coffee that Sambo
brought me far more because I had arranged that, while he was in my
service, his back should not again ache so cruelly. I gained among the
simple natives the reputation of great generosity. And any European who
fails to buy that reputation at the cost of a few wisely-spent rupees
foregoes one of the greatest charms of an Indian sojourn.
A few days before Christmas my husband came home from Calcutta. The day
of his arrival I saw Ayah and Sambo consulting together anxiously. I
asked Ayah what the matter was. I thought her answer very naïve and
droll: “We say is your sahib nice sahib? Will us like your sahib?”—“I
hope so,” I said cheerfully. Ayah shook her head sadly and replied, “Me
like no sahib.” I noticed, however, that all the other servants and even
the mallie’s family, who lived in a hut near by, seemed greatly elated.
It appears that they thought it far more of a social distinction to be
the servants of a sahib than to be those of a memsahib. But Ayah did not
like men, and poor Sambo had had so uncomfortable a life that he dreaded
any new development.
My husband came at twilight. He was followed by six or seven coolies;
for he had brought every one in my little establishment something. Sambo
was very amazed. He had never dreamed of such a home-coming. After
dinner all hands were called in to help to undo the parcels. Sambo sat
on the floor, a useless heap of round-eyed boy. For my four-year-old son
there was a big, ventilated wooden house. When it was opened a pair of
beautiful little monkeys were disclosed. Sambo uttered a quick little
cry of joy, and said something in excited Hindustani. Ayah was always my
interpreter, perhaps because, after Sambo, she knew less English than
any servant I had. She translated now: “Sambo say he feed monkeys, he
wash monkeys, he be very good to monkeys.” And he kept his word. He was
a most devoted valet to our mischievous pets. A few days ago, the
monkey, whom I still have, seemed a little ill. I sent for the
monkey-keeper at the Zoo. He remarked upon the beautiful condition of
“Ned’s” coat and skin. “It’s had fine care when it was little, mum;” and
he was quite right. Sambo had given it the best care.
A great big doll was in the next parcel. It had a fine satin frock, and
could open and close its eyes in a most seductive way. Ayah’s heart
warmed to the sahib at the sight, and she gathered baby and doll into
one delighted embrace. When she realised that the sahib had brought her
a silver bangle, she crept over and kissed my dress. My husband made
Ayah many a little gift after that. She would always say, “Salaam,
sahib,” and then seize upon and kiss some part of my raiment. I used to
tease her by telling her that she ought to kiss her master’s coat sleeve
instead of mine; but though she grew really fond of him, she was always
horrified at my suggestion.
When Sambo saw the fine red and gold turban that had been brought to him
from Calcutta, he wiped his eyes. When the last parcel was undone, the
newly-arrived master made the servants stand in a line against the wall.
There were fourteen of them; they were all smilingly anticipant of
something pleasant; all except Sambo—he was horribly frightened. Each
servant was asked in a stern tone if he or she had been good and served
the memsahib well. They all said they had, except poor Sambo. He was one
of those people who, Mr. Middlewick tells us, always “wept when they was
spoke to harsh.” Then into each expectant hand was put a rupee. Sambo
had never had an entire rupee before. I think it dawned upon him, as he
stood looking at it, that his new sahib was a jolly, fun-loving fellow,
and the kindest master in the world.
It was our fourth consecutive Christmas far from home; but we kept high
holiday. That is an easy, inexpensive thing to do in India. There was a
rocking-horse—such a rocking-horse! and a splendid doll’s house. There
was a little gift for each servant, and a small coin, which they liked
even better. After breakfast I called Sambo to me, and gave him ten
rupees. I expected him to cry, but he did not. He looked up with bright
smiling eyes and said, “Sambo love memsahib. Sambo be good. Memsahib
jao, Sambo die.”
We had a grand dinner, and every servant who would take it had all they
could eat and a bottle of beer. Only two refused to break their caste.
The dhursie and the mallie were true to their faith. The next day they
were the only two natives on the place who seemed quite well. The
obvious moral is, that strict religious observance is accepted of the
gods.
I have yet some of the little gifts that our servants gave me and the
children that Christmas. Each of them spent very little, but not one of
them could afford that little. I have never spent a Christmas in the
East, no, nor a birthday, without receiving many tokens of my native
servants’ good-will.
Sambo had strictly Eastern ideas of the relative positions of man and
woman. One day, in the midst of a great romp with the children, my
husband broke a cup belonging to a rare set of old china that had been
given me in Tokio. I shook him. Sambo, who was in the room, covered his
face with his hands and fled, crying, “The sahib will kill the
memsahib!” I think he was relieved when he found that I was permitted to
live yet a little longer. But I fear that he never again felt for his
master entire respect. He said to my nurse, “Hindoo woman shake Hindoo
man, Hindoo man kill Hindoo woman. Little European woman shake big
European man, he laugh. Crab! Crab!” As for me, I had disgraced myself
in his eyes for ever; I should have felt honoured and delighted to have
my best china broken at the dear hand of my lord and master.
In India no “up-to-date” European feeds his servants. You give them from
two annas to eleven annas a day; and you know that two annas a day is a
fortune to a native. You know it, because every European that has lived
in India longer than you tells you so. When we lived on the hills we
kept chickens. A chicken is a luxury in England. In India it is a drug;
but a drug we swallow, because meat is so bad and so scarce. Sambo had a
genius for chickens—I mean an intense sympathy with chickens. It’s the
same thing. He always fed our chickens; we looked on and admired. The
garden about the bungalow looked empty, but when Sambo stepped on to the
verandah with a dish of scraps, and cried, “_Ah! Ah! Ah!_” the garden
swarmed with feathered denizens. One day I threw a crust to a chicken.
We had been lunching, as we often did, on the verandah. When I had gone
to my own room I looked out, and thought I saw Sambo pick up and eat the
crust the fowl had disdained. That gave me a painful thought. I went to
the larder—oh yes, we had one even there—and gathered on to a plate
bits of meat and hunks of et ceteras. I called Sambo and told him to
take the plate of food to the dogs and monkeys. I watched him, and saw
him steal a piece of stale bread from the dish. I called Ayah and
questioned her. She said, “Sambo very hungry, memsahib. He no eat two
days but little I give him. His grandmother very sick. Send no food.”—
“But,” I said, “he has three annas a day.”—“Yes, but two go to man they
debt. One feed grandmother.” They had borrowed, as almost all Indians
do, from a usurer more pitiless than those who, through the columns of
the London dailies, proffer pecuniary accommodation to younger sons and
M.P.’s. Sambo, though well-incomed, from the Anglo-Indian point of view,
was almost starving. The poor old woman, of whom I had thought as being
very comfortable, also was very hungry. After that I fed Sambo, which I
shall always feel was very good of me. He ate so unlimitedly! He ate a
loaf of bread as we eat an apple, and found it an appetiser. He romped
with my children like another child, but watched over them like another
mother.
I noticed one morning that he was trembling. I found that he and the
mistree had been sleeping in the open without a film of cover. I had
thought that I had been very good to all my servants; and two of them
had been shivering with the cold! I gave them two miserable blankets,
and permission to sleep in the henhouse. They thought me kind, and
repaid me a hundredfold, as I have always found that “natives” will.
It is the custom in India to abuse your Indian servants. The dear black
faces of American darkies clustered about my cradle. Perhaps, for that
reason, I found myself very much _en rapport_ with my native servants in
India. I liked them, and I thought I understood them. They seemed to
like and understand me.
Let me crown Sambo! I found out, through the most peculiarly revealed
chain of circumstances, that he had lost, not stolen, the ten-rupee
note; and it made me devoutly thankful that I had not been too hard upon
the black innocent, nor soiled my nice European lips by calling him a
thief.