But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour;
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now ....
Our tents are played upon by the flickering shadows of the vast
pipal-tree that rises in a laocoön tortuosity of roots out of an old
well. The spot is cool and pleasant. Round us are picketed elephants,
camels, bullocks, and horses, all enjoying the shade. Our servants are
cooking their food on the precincts; each is busy in front of his own
little mud fireplace. On a larger altar greater sacrifices are being
offered up for our breakfast. A crowd of nearly naked Bheels watch the
rites and snuff the fragrant incense of venison from a respectable
distance. Their leader, a broken-looking old man, with hardly a rag
on, stands apart exchanging deep confidences with my friend the
Shikarry. This old Bheel is girt about the loins with knives, pouches,
powder-horns, and ramrods; and he carries on his shoulder an aged
flintlock. He looks old enough to be an English General Officer or a
Cabinet Minister; and you might assume that he was in the last stage
of physical and mental decay. But you would be quite wrong. This old
Bheel will sit up all night on the branch of a tree among the horned
owls; he will see the tiger kill the young buffalo tied up as a bait
beneath; he will see it drink the life-blood and tear the haunch; he
will watch it steal away and hide under the _karaunda_ bush; he will
sit there till day breaks, when he will creep under the thorn jungle,
across the stream, up the scarp of the ravine, through the long grass
to the sahib's camp, and give the word that makes the hunter's heart
dance. From the camp he will stride from hamlet to hamlet till he has
raised an army of beaters; and he will be back at the camp with his
forces before the sahib has breakfasted. Through the long heats of the
day he will be the life and soul of the hunt, urging on the beaters
with voice and example, climbing trees, peeping under bushes, carrying
orders, giving advice, changing the line, until that supreme moment
when shots are fired, when the rasping growl tells that the shots have
taken effect, and when at length the huge cat lies stretched out dead.
And all this on a handful of parched grain!
[Is this nothing?
Why then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing, Ali Baba's nothing.]
My friend the Shikarry delights to clothe himself in the coarse
fabrics manufactured in gaol, which, when properly patched and
decorated with pockets, have undoubtedly a certain wild-wood
appearance.
As the hunter does not happen to be a Bheel with the privileges of
nakedness conferred by a brown skin, this is perhaps the only
practical alternative. If he went out to shoot in evening clothes, a
crush hat, and a hansom cab, the chances are that he would make an
example of himself and come to some untimely end. What would the
Apollo Bundar say? What would the Bengali Baboo say? What would the
sea-aye-ees say? Yes, our hunter affects coarse and snuffy clothes;
they carry with them suggestions of hardship and roughing it; and his
hat is umbrageous and old.
As to the man under the hat, he is an odd compound of vanity,
sentiment, and generosity. He is as affected as a girl. Among other
traits he affects reticence, and he will not tell me what the plans
for the day are, or what _khabbar_[W] has been received. Knowing
absolutely nothing, he moves about with a solemn and important air,
[as if six months gone with a _bandobast_[X]]; and he says to me,
"Don't fret yourself my dear fellow; you'll know all about it time
enough. I have made arrangements." Then he dissembles and talks of
irrelevant topics transcendentally. This makes me feel such a poor
pen-and-ink fellow, such a worm, such a [Famine-commissioner, such a]
Political Agent!
With this discordant note still vibrating we go in to breakfast; and
then, dear Vanity, he _bucks_ with a quiet, stubborn determination
that would fill an American editor or an Under-Secretary of State with
despair. [His lies are really that awful (as the Press Commissioner
would say) which you couldn't tell as what he was joking, or
inebriated, or drawing your leg.] He belongs to the twelve-foot-tiger
school; so, perhaps, he can't help it.
If the whole truth were told, he is a warm-hearted, generous, plucky
fellow, with boundless vanity and a romantic vein of maudlin sentiment
that seduces him from time to time into the gin-and-water corner of an
Indian newspaper. Under the heading of "The Forest Ranger's Lament,"
or "The Old Shikarry's Tale of Woe," he hiccoughs his column of sickly
lines (with St. Vitus's dance in their feet), and then I believe he
feels better. I have seen him do it; I have caught him in criminal
conversation with a pen and a sheet of paper; bottle at hand--
A quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
In appearance he is a very short man with a long black beard, a
sunburnt face, and a clay pipe. He has shot battalions of tigers and
speared squadrons of wild pig. He is universally loved, universally
admired, and universally laughed at.
He is generous to a fault. All the young fellows for miles round owe
him money. He would think there was something wrong if they did not
borrow from him; and yet, somehow, I don't think that he is very well
off. There is nothing in his bungalow but guns, spears, and hunting
trophies; he never goes home, and I have an idea that there is some
heavy drain on his purse in the old country. But you should hear him
troll a hunting song with his grand organ voice, and you would fancy
him the richest man in the world, his note is so high and triumphant!
So when in after days we boast
Of many wild boars slain,
We'll not forget our runs to toast
Or run them o'er again;
And when our memory's mirror true
Reflects the scenes of yore,
We'll think of _him_ it brings to view,
Who loved to hunt the boar.
ALI BABA, K.C.B.
No. XVIII
THE GRASS-WIDOW IN NEPHELOCOCCYGIA
[Illustration: THE GRASS WIDOW--"Sweet little Mrs. Lollipop."]
Her bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne?
[December 6, 1879]
Little Mrs. Lollipop has certainly proved a source of disappointment
to her lady friends. They have watched her for three seasons going
lightly and merrily through all the gaieties of Cloudland; they have
listened to the scandal of the cuckoos among the pine-trees and
rhododendrons, but they have not caught her tripping. Oh, no, they
will never catch her tripping. She does not trip for their amusement:
perhaps she trips it when they go on the light fantastic toe, but
there is no evidence; there is only a zephyr of conjecture, only the
world's low whisper not yet broken into storm--not yet.
Yes, she is a source of disappointment to them. They have noted her
points; her beauty has burned itself into their jealousy; her merry
laugh has fanned their scorn; her bountiful presence is an affront to
them, as is her ripe and lissom figure. They pronounce her morally
unsound; they say her nature has a taint; they chill her popularity
with silent smiles of slow disparagement. But they have no
particulars; their slander is not concrete. It is an amorphous
accusation, sweeping and vague, spleen-born and proofless.
She certainly knows how to dress. Her weeds sit easily and smoothly on
their delightful mould. You might think of her as a sweet, warm statue
painted in water-colours. (Who wouldn't be her Pygmalion?) If she adds
a garment it is an improvement; if she removes a garment it is an
improvement; if she dresses her hair it is better; if she lets it fall
in a brown cascade over her white shoulders it is still better; when
it is yet in curl-papers it is charming. If you smudge the tip of her
nose with a burnt cork the effect is irresistible; if you stick a
flower in her hair it is a fancy dress, a complete costume--she
becomes Flora, Aurora, anything you like to name. Yet I have never
clothed her in a flower, I have never smudged her nose with a burnt
cork, I have never uncurled her hair. Ali Baba's character must not go
drifting down the stream of gossip with the Hill Captains and the
Under-Secretaries. But I hope that this does not destroy the argument.
The argument is that she is quite too delightful, and therefore blown
upon by poisonous whispers.
Her bungalow is an Elysium, of course; it is a cottage with a
verandah, built on a steep slope, and buried deep in shrubbery and
trees. Within all is plain, but exquisitely neat. A wood fire is
burning gaily, and the kindly tea-tray is at hand. It is five o'clock.
Clean servants move silently about with hot water, cake, &c. The
little boy, a hostage from papa in the warm plains below, is sitting
pensive, after the fashion of Anglo-Indian children, in a little
chair. His bearer crouches behind him. The unspeakable widow, in a
tea-gown dimly splendid with tropical vegetation in neutral tints,
holds a piece of chocolate in her hand, while she leans back in her
fauteuil convulsed with laughter. (It is not necessary to say that Ali
Baba is relating one of his improving tales.) How pretty she looks,
showing her excellent teeth and suffused with bright warm blushes,
[which, I beg leave to explain, proceed from drinking hot tea and
indulging in immoderate laughter, not from listening to A.B.'s
improving tales!] As I gaze upon her with fond amazement, I murmur
mechanically:--
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A tea-pot's hum shall soothe my ear,
A widowy girl, that likes me still,
With many a smile shall linger near.
I have been asked to write a philosophical minute on the mental and
moral condition of delightful Mrs. Lollipop's husband, who lives down
in the plains. I have been requested by the Press Commissioner to
inquire in Government fashion, with pen and ink, as to whether the
complaisant proprietor of so many charms desires to have a recheat
winded in his forehead, and to hang his bugle in an invisible
baldrick; whether it is true in his case that Love's ear will hear the
lowest cuckoo note, and that Love's perception of gossip is more soft
and sensible than are the tender horns of cockled snails. Towards all
these points I have directed my researches. I have resolved myself
into a Special Commission, and I have sat upon grass-widowers _in
camera_. If I sit a little longer a Report will be hatched, which, of
course, I shall take to England, and when there I shall go to the
places of amusement with the Famine Commission, and have rather a good
time of it. Already I can see, with that bright internal eye which
requires no limelight, grim Famine stalking about the Aquarium after
dinner with a merry jest preening its wings on his lips.
But what has all this talk of country matters to do with little Mrs.
Lollipop? Absolutely nothing. She thinks no ill of herself. She is the
most charitable woman in the world. There is no veil of sin over her
eye; no cloud of suspicion darkens her forehead; no concealment feeds
upon her damask cheek. Like Eve she goes about hand in hand with her
friends, in native innocence, relying on what she has of virtue. Sweet
simplicity! sweet confidence! My eagle quill shall not flutter these
doves.
Have you ever watched her at a big dance? She takes possession of some
large warrior who has lately arrived from the battle-fields of Umballa
or Meerut, and she chaperones him about the rooms, staying him with
flagons and prattling low nothings. The weaker vessel jibs a little at
first; but gradually the spell begins to work and the love-light
kindles in his eye. He dances, he makes a joke, he tells a story, he
turns round and looks her in the face. He is lost. That big centurion
is a casualty; and no one pities him. "How can he go on like that,
odious creature!" say the withered wall-flowers, and the Hill Captains
fume round, working out formulae to express his baseness. But he is
away on the glorious mountains of vanity; the intoxicating atmosphere
makes life tingle in his blood; he is an [Greek: aerobataes], he no
longer treads the earth. In a few days Mrs. Lollipop will receive a
post-card from the Colonel of her centurion's regiment.
MY DEAR MRS.
Lollipop, dic, per omnes
Te deos oro, Robinson cur properes amando
Perdere? cur apricum
Oderit campum, patiens pulveris atque solis.
Yrs. Sincy.
HORACE FITZDOTTREL.
Ten to one an Archdeacon will be sent for to translate this. Ten to
one there is a shindy, ending in tea and tearful smiles; for she is
bound to get a blowing up.
After what I have written I suppose it would be superfluous to affirm
with oaths my irrefragable belief in Mrs. Lollipop's innocence; it
would be superfluous to deprecate the many-winged slanders that wound
this milk-white hind. If, however, by swearing, any of your readers
think I can be of service to her character, I hope they will let me
know. I have learnt a few oaths lately that I reckon will unsphere
some of the scandal-mongers of Nephelococcygia. I had my ear one
morning at the keyhole when the Army Commission was revising the
cursing and swearing code for field service.--(Ah! these dear old
Generals, what depths of simplicity they disclose when they get by
themselves! I sometimes think that if I had my life to live over again
I would keep a newspaper and become a really great General. I know
some five or six obscure aboriginal tribes that have never yet yielded
a single war or a single K.C.B.)
But this is a digression. I was maintaining the goodness of Mrs.
Lollipop--little Mrs. Lollipop! sweet little Mrs. Lollipop! I was
going to say that she was far too good to be made the subject of
whisperings and innuendoes. Her virtue is of such a robust type that
even a Divorce Court would sink back abashed before it, like a guilty
thing surprised. Indeed, she often reminds me of Cæsar's wife.
The harpies of scandal protest that she dresses too low; that she
exposes too freely the well-rounded charms of her black silk
stockings; that she appears at fancy-dress balls picturesquely
unclothed--in a word, that the public sees a little too much of little
Mrs. Lollipop; and that, in conversation with men, she nibbles at the
forbidden apples of thought. But all this proves her innocence,
surely. She fears no danger, for she knows no sin. She cannot
understand why she should hide anything from an admiring world. Why
keep her charms concealed from mortal eye, like roses that in deserts
bloom and die? She often reminds me of Una in Hypocrisy's cell.
I heard an old Gorgon ask one of Mrs. Lollipop's _clientèle_ the other
day whether he would like to be Mrs. Lollipop's husband. "No," he
said, "not her husband; I am not worthy to be her husband--
"But I would be the necklace
And all day long to fall and rise
Upon her balmy bosom
With her laughter or her sighs;
And I would lie so light, so light,
I scarce should be unclasped at night."
That old Gorgon is now going through a course of hysterics under
medical and clerical advice. Her ears are in as bad a case as Lady
Macbeth's hands. Hymns will not purge them.--ALI BABA, K.C.B.
No. XIX
THE TRAVELLING M.P.
THE BRITISH LION RAMPANT
[December 13, 1879.]
There is not a more fearful wild fowl than your travelling M.P. This
unhappy creature, whose mind is a perfect blank regarding
_Faujdari_[Y] and _Bandobast_,[Z] and who cannot distinguish the
molluscous Baboo from the osseous Pathan, will actually presume to
discuss Indian subjects with you, unless strict precautions be taken.
When I meet one of these loose M.P.'s ramping about I always cut his
claws at once. I say, "Now, Mr. T.G., you must understand that,
according to my standard, you are a homunculus of the lowest type.
There is nothing I value a man for that you can do; there is nothing I
consider worth directing the human mind upon that you know. If you ask
for any information which I may deem it expedient to give to a person
in your unfortunate position, well and good; but if you venture to
argue with me, to express any opinion, to criticise anything I may be
good enough to say regarding India, or to quote any passage relating
to Asia from the works of Burke, Cowper, Bright, or Fawcett, I will
hand you over to Major Henderson for strangulation, I will cause your
body to be burnt by an Imperial Commission of sweepers, and I will
mention your name in the _Pioneer_."
In dangerous cases, where a note-book is carried, your loose M.P. must
be made to reside within the pale of guarded conversation. If you are
wise you will speak to him in the interrogative mood exclusively; and
you will treat his answers with contumelious laughter or disdainful
silence.
About a week after your M.P. has landed in India he will begin his
great work on the history, literature, philosophy and social
institutions of the Hindoos. You will see him in a railway carriage
when stirred by the [Greek: oistros] studying Forbes's Hindustani
Manual. He is undoubtedly writing the chapter on the philology of the
Aryan Family. Do you observe the fine frenzy that kindles behind his
spectacles as he leans back and tries to eject a root? These pangs are
worth about half-a-crown an hour in the present state of the book
market. One cannot contemplate them without profound emotion.
The reading world is hunger-bitten about Asia, and I often think I
shall take three months' leave and run up a _précis_ of Sanskrit and
Pali literature, just a few folios for the learned world. Max Müller
begs me to learn these languages first; but this would be a toil and
drudgery, whereas to me the pursuit of literary excellence and fame is
a mere amusement, like lawn-tennis or rinking. It is the fault of the
age to make a labour of what is meant to be a pastime.
Telle est de nos plaisirs la surface légère;
Glissez, mortels, n'appuyez pas.
The travelling M.P. will probably come to you with a letter of
introduction from the last station he has visited, and he will
immediately proceed to make himself quite at home in your bungalow
with the easy manners of the Briton abroad. He will acquaint you with
his plans and name the places of interest in the neighbourhood which
he requires you to show him. He will ask you to take him, as a
preliminary canter, to the gaol and lunatic asylum; and he will make
many interesting suggestions to the civil surgeon as to the management
of these institutions, comparing them unfavourably with those he has
visited in other stations. He will then inspect the Brigadier-General
commanding the station, the chaplain, and the missionaries. On his
return--when he ought to be bathing--he will probably write his
article for the _Twentieth Century_, entitled "Is India Worth
Keeping?" And this ridiculous old Shrovetide cock, whose ignorance and
information leave two broad streaks of laughter in his wake, is turned
loose upon the reading public! Upon my word, I believe the reading
public would do better to go and sit at the feet of Baboo Sillabub
Thunder Gosht, B.A.
What is it that these travelling people put on paper? Let me put it in
the form of a conundrum. _Q._ What is it that the travelling M.P.
treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? _A._
Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the
griffin, India steams up in poetical mists, illusive, fantastic,
subjective, ideal, picturesque. The adult _Qui Hai_ attains to prose,
to stern and disappointing realities; he removes the gilt from the
Empire and penetrates to the brown ginger-bread of Rajas and Baboos.
One of the most serious duties attending a residence in India is the
correcting of those misapprehensions which your travelling M.P.
sacrifices his bath to hustle upon paper. The spectacled people
embalmed in secretariats alone among Anglo-Indians continue to see the
gay visions of griffinhood. They alone preserve the phantasmagoria of
bookland and dreamland. As for the rest of us:--
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Baboos and Rajas and Indian lore
Move our faint hearts with grief, but with delight
No more--oh, never more!
It is strange that one who is modest and inoffensive in his own
country should immediately on leaving it exhibit some of the worst
features of Arryism; but it seems inevitable. I have met in this
unhappy land, countrymen (who are gentlemen in England, Members of
Parliament, and Deputy Lieutenants, and that kind of thing) whose
conduct and demeanour while here I can never recall without tears and
blushes for our common humanity. My friends witnessing this emotion
often suppose that I am thinking of the Famine Commission.
[I am an Anglo-Indian cherishing many a burning Anglo-Indian
prejudice, and I should be sorry if from what I have written here it
does not sufficiently appear that I cherish a burning prejudice
against the British Tourist in India, who comes out to get up India
and to do India; not against the tourist who comes out to shoot or to
play the fool in a quiet unostentatious way.]
As far as I can learn, it is a generally received opinion at home that
a man who has seen the Taj at Agra, the Qutb at Delhi, and the Duke at
Madras, has graduated with honours in all questions connected with
British interests in Asia; and is only unfitted for the office of
Governor-General of India from knowing too much.--ALI BABA, K.C.B.
No. XX
MEM-SAHIB
"Her life is lone. He sits apart;
He loves her yet: she will not weep,
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
"For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things."
[December 20, 1879.]
I first met her shepherding her little flock across the ocean. She was
a beautiful woman, in the full sweetness and bloom of life. [The
mystery of early wifehood and motherhood gave a pensiveness to her
soft eyes; but her voice and manner disclosed the cheerful confidence
of perfect health and a pure heart.] Her talk was of the busy husband
she had left, the station life, the attached servants, the favourite
horse, the garden, and the bungalow. Her husband would soon follow
her, in a year, or two years, and they would return together; but they
would return to a silent home--the children would be left behind. She
was going home to her mother and sisters; but there had been changes
in this home. So her thoughts were woven of hopes and fears; and, as
she sat on deck of an evening, with the great heart of the moon-lit
sea palpitating around us, and the homeless night-wind sighing through
the cordage, she would sing to us one of the plaintive ballads of the
old country, till we forgot to listen to the sobbing and the trampling
of the engines, and till all sights and sounds resolved themselves
into a temple of sentiment round a charming priestess chanting low
anthems. She would leave us early to go to her babies. She would leave
us throbbing with mock heroics, undecided whether we should cry, or
consecrate our lives to some high and noble enterprise, or drink one
more glass of hot whiskey-and-water. She was kind, but not
sentimental; her sweet, yet practical "good-night" was quite of the
work-a-day world; we felt that it tended to dispel illusions.
She had three little boys, who were turned out three times a day in
the ultimate state of good behaviour, tidiness, and cleanliness, and
who lapsed three times a day into a state of original sin combined
with tar and ship's grease. These three little boys pervaded the
vessel with an innocent smile on their three little faces, their
mother's winning smile. Every man on the ship was their own familiar
friend, bound to them by little interchanges of biscuits, confidences,
twine, and by that electric smile which their mother communicated, and
from which no one wished to be insulated. Yes, they quite pervaded the
vessel, these three little innocents, flying that bright and friendly
smile; and there was no description of mischief suitable for three
very little boys that they did not exhaust. The ingenuity they
squandered every day in doing a hundred things which they ought not to
have done was perfectly marvellous. Before the voyage was half over we
thought there was nothing left for them to do; but we were entirely
mistaken. The daily round, a common cask would furnish all they had to
ask; to them the meanest whistle that blows, or a pocket-knife, could
give thoughts that too often led to smiles and tears.