to Mr. Cyper Redalf, who has been restored to consciousness, and who
still is the object of general sympathy; for it is not until the
disturbance in the distinguished foreigner's nerve aura has amounted
to a psychic cyclone that the company perceive his interesting
condition, and begin to look for a manifestation. The hopes of some
fondly turn to raps, others desire the pressure of a spirit hand, or
the ringing of a bell, or the levitation of furniture, or the sound of
a spirit voice, the music of an immaterial larynx. Dinner is soon
forgotten; the thing has become a _séance_, hands are joined, the
lights are instinctively lowered, and the whole company, following an
irresistible impulse, march round and round the room, and then out
into the darkness after the soul-stirred foreigner, after the
foreigner of distinction. Is it unconscious cerebration that leads
them to the potato-plot, or is it the irresistible influence of some
Supreme Power, something more occult and more interesting than God,
that compels them to fall on their knees, and grub with their hands in
the recently manured potato-bed? I must leave this question
unanswered, as a sufficiently occult explanation does not occur to me:
but suffice it to say that this search after truth, this burrowing in
the gross earth for some spiritual sign, appears to me a spectacle at
once inspiring and touching. It seems to me that human life has seldom
had anything more beautiful and more ennobling to show than these
postmaster-generals, boards of revenue, able editors, and foreigners
of distinction asking Truth, the Everlasting Verity, for a sign and
then searching for it in a potato-field. In this glorious quest every
circumstance demands our respectful attention. They search on their
hands and knees in the attitude of passionate prayer; they search in
the dark; they seize the dumb earth with delirious fingers; they knock
their heads against one another and against the dull, hard trunks of
trees. Still they search: they wrestle with the Earth: she must yield
up her secrets. Nor will Earth deny to them the desired boon. Theirs
is the true spirit of devout inquiry, and they are persons of
consideration in evening-dress. Nature will unveil her charms. Earth
with the groans of an infinite pain, a boundless travail, yields up
the gingham umbrella.
We will not intrude upon their immediate rapture as they carry their
treasure away with loving hands; but it is necessary to note the means
taken to prove, for the satisfaction only of a foolish and unbelieving
world, the supernatural nature of the phenomenon. The umbrella is
examined under severe test conditions: it is weighed in a vacuum, and
placed under the spectroscope. It is found to be porous and a
conductor of heat; but it is not soluble in water, though it boils at
500° Fahr. To demonstrate the absence of trickery or collusion
everyone turns up his sleeves and empties his waistcoat pockets. There
is no room for sleight of hand in presence of this searching
scientific investigation. The umbrella _is_ certainly _not_ a
supposititious animal; yet it is the umbrella of Mr. Cyper Redalf's
boyhood. No one can doubt this who sees him clasp it in a fond
embrace, who sees him shed burning tears on its voluminous folds.--THE
ORPHAN.
ELUCIDATIONS
No. 1
WITH THE VICEROY
The late Edward Robert Bulwer, First Earl of Lytton (1831-1891),
Viceroy and Governor-General of India from April 12, 1876, to June 8,
1880, is here depicted from the superficial point of view of his
character as a man, a poet, and a statesman generally current at the
time.
Lord Lytton was thoroughly unconventional in all his manners and
moods, and in his methods of conducting the affairs of his great
office.
As a boy of seven he was already scribbling verses; and he wrote a
poem, "The Prisoner of Provence," which turns upon the famous story of
the Man in the Iron Mask, only two or three months before his death.
In fact, all through Lord Lytton's distinguished career, as his father
had done before him, he found recreation in change of employment. As
forcibly and eloquently stated by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in
her introduction to the 1894 edition of his Selected Poems, "The minds
of both were ceaselessly active, and they turned without a pause from
one kind of thought and business to another as readily as they turned
from either to easy, disengaged conversation. Had the rival calls of
his many-sided intellect been at variance, the poet in my father would
always have had the preference."
Ali Baba, it may be taken for granted, did not intend to characterise
as "a flood of twaddle" the whole of Lord Lytton's verse. Poetry
which, as far as published up to 1855, called forth from Leigh Hunt
warm praise for its beauties and mercy for its defects, in these words
embodied in a letter to Mr. John Forster, the friend and biographer of
Charles Dickens.--
"I have read every bit of Owen Meredith's [his now
well-known pseudonym] volume, and it has left me in a state
of delighted admiration. He is a truly musical, reflecting,
impassioned and imaginative poet, with a tendency to but one
of the faults of his contemporaries and that chiefly in his
minor pieces--I mean the doing too much, and the giving too
much importance and emphasis to every fancy and image that
comes across him, so that his pictures lose their proper
distribution of light and shade, nay, of distinction between
great and small. On his greatest occasions, however, he can
evidently rid himself of this fault."
During Lord Lytton's Indian career, those who were on political or
self-interested grounds opposed to his policy--and there were many
such--were wont, as recorded by his daughter, to attempt to discredit
the statesman by reiterating that he was a poet.
As a matter of fact, Aberigh Mackay's acquaintance with Lord Lytton's
poetry was mainly, if not entirely, based upon a volume edited by N.A.
Chick, and published in Calcutta in 1877, quaintly entitled: "The
Imperial Bouquet of Pretty Flowers from the Poetical Parterre of
Robert Lord Lytton, Viceroy and Governor-General of India."
Our Author's knowledge of Lord Lytton's Indian Administration was
necessarily based upon the views--_pro_ and _con_--expressed by the
daily newspaper writers of the period, who wrote, of course,
uninitiated in political affairs as a rule, and without those full
expositions now embodied in many notable recent publications, official
and other, foremost among which we would cite Lady Betty Balfour's
History of his Indian Administration, published in 1899, and her
edition of her father's personal and literary letters, issued in two
vols. in 1906.
Verily "Time tries All," and an impartial and notable summary of Lord
Lytton's services to his country, written by the Reverend W. Elvin, is
engraven on the monument to his memory in the crypt of St. Paul's
Cathedral, which was designed and partially carried out by the
sculptor, Mr. Gilbert.
+HE WAS A DIPLOMATIST RICK IN THE QUALITIES, OFFICIAL, AND SOCIAL, BY
WHICH AMITY WITH FOREIGN NATIONS IS MAINTAINED.+
+A VICEROY INDEPENDENT IN HIS VIEWS, RESOLUTE IN ACTION, LOOKING
FORWARD TO THE FUTURE.+
+A POET OF MANY STYLES, EACH THE EXPRESSION OF HIS HABITUAL THOUGHTS.+
+A MAN OF SUPERIOR FACULTIES HIGHLY CULTIVATED BE LITERATURE, ARDENT
IN HIS AFFECTIONS, TENDER AND GENEROUS IN ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF
LIFE, LAVISH IN HIS COMMENDATION OF OTHERS, AND HUMBLE IN HIS ESTIMATE
OF HIMSELF.+
As a good example of Lord Lytton's independent views, and tenderness
and generosity in all the circumstances of life, the following
incident may be quoted:--
Among many changes in Indian administration which he initiated, and
which were severely decried at the time, but the benefits of which
experience has amply vindicated, was the amalgamation of Oudh with, or
rather annexation to, the North-Western Provinces, the final
arrangements being completed at the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi on
January 1 1877, with the concurrence--which he had sought
previously--of all the principal Talukdars of Oudh there assembled.
The great pageant at Delhi (which formed the subject of Ali Baba's
first contribution to _Vanity Fair_, and which he attended officially
as the Guardian of the Raja of Rutlam), so far from being a mere empty
show, as then decried by his political foes, enabled the Viceroy to
settle, promptly and satisfactorily by personal conferences, a great
many important administrative questions. All as recorded by him in his
narrative letter of December 23, 1876, to January 10, 1877, to her
late Majesty Queen Victoria, which embraced events at Delhi, Pattiala,
Umballa, Aligurh, and Agra.
Among the Oudh officials who were dispossessed of their appointments
in 1877, some of them with but scanty compensation, was the late Mr.
(afterwards Sir) E.N.C. Braddon, a kinsman of the novelist, who held
the appointment of Superintendent of Stamps, Stationery, and
Registration at Lucknow. Mr. Braddon was an uncovenanted servant of
comparatively short service, and eligible for s very moderate
compensation. Lord Lytton, unsolicited, took up his case, overruled
various objections, obtained liberal terms for Mr. Braddon by which he
was able to resign his appointment and proceed to Tasmania, where he
entered political life, rising to be Premier and afterwards
Agent-General for that Colony in London, and ultimately obtaining, in
1891, his K.C.M.G.
It was to Lord Lytton's personal action--in the face of would-be
obsequious apathy in certain quarters--that Aberigh-Mackay, the
youngest on the list, was nominated a Fellow of the Calcutta
University in 1880, an honour usually reserved for officials of high
standing. He then availed himself of that status to bring about the
affiliation of the Rajkumar College at Indore to the same University,
with, as a matter of course, the concurrence of the Syndicate.
No. 2
THE A.-D.-C.-IN-WAITING
We have here an admirable summary of the highly important personal
duties of a tactful A.D.C. to an Indian Viceroy. Not the least
important being the superintendence of the Invitation Department. It
was in this very connection that an A.D.C. to an Indian Governor,
fresh from a West Indian appointment and Society somewhat on "Tom
Cringle's Log" conditions, by issuing invitations to a _Quality
Dance_, gave rise, in Southern India, to a social commotion which
reacted very unfavourably as regards the efficient working of various
departments of his Chief's general administration.
In pre-Mutiny days in India an officer who could not carve meat and
fowl well had a very poor chance of such an appointment. Happily the
institution of _à la Russe_ fashions in the service of the table has
or many years past rendered such qualifications unnecessary.
To the regret of a very wide circle, the "loud, joyful and
steeplechasing Lord "--the late Lord William Beresford--alluded to by
Ali Baba, died in England in 1900. From 1875 to 1881 he was A.D.C. to
Viceroys of India, and it was in the "distant wars" of the Jowaki
expedition, 1877-8, in the Zulu War, 1879, where he gained the
Victoria Cross, and in the Afghan War, 1880, that his military career
was spent.
From 1881 to 1894 Lord William Beresford very ably served Viceroys of
India as their Military Secretary. Services which were admirably
summed up by a speaker on Dec. 30, 1893, when he was entertained at a
farewell dinner at the Town Hall, Calcutta, by 180 friends, who
declared that "he had raised the office to a science, and himself from
an official into an institution, and acquired a reputation absolutely
unique."
The voluminous and noteworthy annals of Indian sport can show no
keener sportsman and successful rider of steeplechases and polo
player. He won the Viceroy's Cup six times and many other principal
events at race-meetings in India.
In 1894 Lord William retired from India, and in England maintained a
renowned racing stable, being in addition one of the first to own
American horses and employ American jockeys.
No. 3
WITH THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
An exceedingly important change affecting the power and functions of
the Indian Commander-in-chief, together with various other reforms in
the military administration of India, were all anticipated,
foreshadowed, and--it is believed--largely helped on by this very
paper, and others under the general heading of _Things in India_,
contributed by Ali Baba to _Vanity Fair_ during 1879.
Ali Baba, unlike some others that might readily be cited, would
doubtless have been foremost in according most generous
acknowledgments to the services in the cause of Indian Army reform,
rendered in past days by many great Commanders-in-Chief in India.
Chief among such men might be cited Sir Charles James Napier
(1782-1853), the conqueror of Scinde, who in 1849 returned to India,
nominated by the Duke of Wellington to deal with the crisis caused by
the Sikh campaign. Arriving in Calcutta on the 6th May, he at once
assumed the command, the term of service of Lord Gough, who had
brought the campaign to a successful end, being concluded. Napier's
too short administration of little over eighteen months was rather
judicial than military, but he effected many reforms on the parade
ground and in cantonments.
The newspapers of the day eagerly chronicled the records of the
proceedings in which he vigorously combated the vices of intoxication,
gambling, insubordination, and other crimes and misdemeanours, both in
officers and men of the Queen's and Company's forces alike.
It was during his command that separate barrack-room accommodation was
provided for married soldiers. The state of affairs hitherto
prevailing may well be imagined by an inspection of the barrack life
pictures and caricatures of artists such as Ramberg, Gillray,
Rowlandson, and others.
He also founded Soldiers' Institutes, and encouraged soldiers in the
Queen's army to rear such pets as monkeys and parrots by regulations
for their transport on route and transfer marches, which afforded
material for many humorous sketches and paragraphs in the pages of
_The Delhi Punch_. Wise and considerate regulations which are
continued in the existing concessions as to the carriage of "soldiers'
pets" by troop trains and homeward-bound Indian transports.
Colonel R.H. Vetch (_Dictionary of National Biography_) admirably sums
up Napier's character by recording of him that "his disregard of
luxury, simplicity of manner, careful attention to the wants of the
soldiers under his command, and enthusiasm for duty and right won him
the admiration of his men. His journals testify to his religious
convictions, while his life was one long protest against oppression,
injustice and wrongdoing. Generous to a fault, a radical in politics,
yet an autocrat in government, hot-tempered and impetuous, he was a
man to inspire strong affection or the reverse, and his enemies were
as numerous as his friends."
Altogether a very different character from that which all and sundry
are warned to avoid by the--to a great extent--satirical word-picture
recorded by Ali Baba.
No. 4
WITH THE ARCHDEACON
In this article Ali Baba has pourtrayed with infinite skill and
geniality the many-sided character of the late Joseph Baly, M.A., who
was Archdeacon of Calcutta from 1872 until he retired from India in
1883. Appointed to the Bengal Ecclesiastical establishment in 1861,
Mr. Baly served as Chaplain at Sealkote, Simla, and Allahabad until
1870, when, while on furlough in England, he acted as Rector of
Falmouth until 1872. In 1885 he was appointed chaplain at the church
in Windsor Park, built by Queen Victoria, in which appointment he died
in 1909, aged eighty-five.
From the commencement of his Indian career the Reverend gentleman
interested himself in that burning question of the employment of the
Anglo-Indian and Eurasian community of India; a large indigenous and
permanent element in the population, the disposal of which is still a
question of very great public importance, and its practical solution a
pressing necessity. The Archdeacon had this question, paraphrased by
Ali Baba as that of the "Mean Whites," greatly at heart, and the
conclusions he arrived at and suggestions made by him from time to
time, ably and vigorously summarized in a paper he read before the
Bengal Social Science Association on May 1st, 1879, in Calcutta, were
productive of considerable good.
Archdeacon Baly's predecessor was the Venerable John Henry Pratt, an
attached friend of Aberigh-Mackay's father, to whom his book, _From
London to Lucknow_, published in 1860, was "affectionately inscribed."
Certain traits in the character of this Archdeacon known to Ali Baba
by tradition are pourtrayed in the concluding portion of the paper.
No. 5
WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT
This article is of a composite nature. At the time it was published in
1879, the foreign policy of Lord Lawrence was a burning question, and
in connection with the Afghan War then running its course, renewed
attention was directed to the two essays, "Masterly Inactivity" and
"Mischievous Activity," first published in _The Fortnightly Review_ in
December 1869, and March 1870, respectively, by a comparatively young
Bengal Civilian, the late J.W.S. Wyllie, C.S.I. (1835-1870). Beyond
the fact that these essays and certain other papers by the same
brilliant author on the subject of the policy of the Indian Government
with independent principalities and powers beyond the bounds of India
were probably in Ali Baba's mind, the character of the supercilious
Secretary was very remote from that of Mr. Wyllie.
The typical person held up to derision by Ali Baba has been oft times
decried as one very detrimental to good government in India, where a
personal and absolute rule must needs obtain for some time to come. By
none more pointedly than by the present Secretary of State for India
when addressing his constituents at Arbroath on October 21, 1907, when
he informed them that "India is perhaps the one country--bad manners,
overbearing manners are very disagreeable in all countries--India is
the only country where bad and overbearing manners are a political
crime." Or, as a prominent Mohammedan in India very well said, "When
the English govern from the heart they do it admirably; when they try
to be clever, they make a mess of it."
In the restored passage on p. 35 there is delineated a Secretary in
striking contrast to the other. The Secretary in the Foreign
Department referred to was the late Mr. le Poer Wynne, under whom
Aberigh-Mackay had worked at Simla in 1870.
No. 6
H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO
Ali Baba avowedly treats the Bengali Baboo merely as a being "full of
inappropriate words and phrases ... and the loose shadows of English
thought." Such being the case, it must never be forgotten that he is
the product, in every sense of the word, of British modes of purely
secular education. Modes which, eminently at the present time, are
being gravely called in question.
All of which has been more lately elaborated by "F. Anstey," _i.e._
Mr. Thomas Anstey Guthrie, in the persons of "Baboo Jabberjee, B.A."
and "A Bayard from Bengal."
The broad results of purely secular and mainly literary education
might in fact be quite fairly summed up in the reproachful words of
Caliban--
"You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse."
Aberigh-Mackay devoted his life in India to counteract the effects of
purely literary instruction, which he persistently deprecated; and the
last thirty years have undoubtedly witnessed many advances in the same
direction, tending to the material progress of India.
Ali Baba trembled for the future of Baboodom, that its tendencies as
he depicted them might infect others who might pass, through various
stages, into "trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so on, out of the
province of Ali Baba and into the columns of serious reflection."
No. 7
WITH THE RAJA
In this article we have a vivid picture--mainly--of a type of Indian
Noble it was Aberigh-Mackay's aim and life's work in India to avoid
creating. That too from the beginning of his career, but more
especially in the training, and that not merely in book-learning, he
initiated and earned on up to the last days of his life within and
without the Residency College at Indore. To paraphrase the language of
the then recently appointed Agent to the Governor-General for Central
India--Sir Lepel Griffin--in his first Administrative Report, that for
1880-1881, the happy effects of the training some of the leading
Chiefs of Malwa received under Aberigh-Mackay were visible in the
improved administration of their States. The most notable instance,
the Governor-General's Agent points out, being observable in Rutlam.
His Highness the "Rajah Saheb having conducted the Government with
such ability and success as would do credit to the ablest
administrators."
It is well worthy of special notice that the Rajah of Rutlam had been,
from a period several years antecedent to Aberigh-Mackay's coming to
Indore, his special ward.
Most effectually did Aberigh-Mackay, one of the best all-round
sportsmen that Modern India ever saw, counteract the "prodigiously fat
white horse with pink points" tendencies of any of his _alumni_. The
description of the kingly cavalcade in this article, _vide_ p. 52,
calling forth from John Lockwood Kipling _(Beast and Man in India_, p.
196), a most competent and discriminating authority, the following
eulogy:--
"The late Mr. Aberigh-Mackay (Ali Baba of _Vanity Fair_),
one of the brightest and most original, as well as one of
the most generous spirits who ever handled Indian subjects,
has drawn a picture in his _Twenty-one Days in India_ of a
Raja and his Sow[=a]ri [Cavalcade] which could not be
bettered by a hair's breadth."
Aberigh-Mackay in his earliest writings--_e.g._ when, in describing
_The Great Native Princes_ in his "Handbook of Hindustan," published
in 1875, he enters the "Remark" against the Nawab of Bahawalpur, "A
smart boy of fourteen; a good polo-player"--laid great stress on the
desirability of training all Indian noblemen's sons in horsemanship of
all kinds. That his efforts in this direction were crowned with an
abiding and ever-increasing success is well borne out by the testimony
contained in an article, by Lieutenant E.R. Penrose, 23rd Bengal N.L.
Infantry, accompanying his pictures of "Incidents in the Career of a
Polo-Pony," which appeared in _The Graphic,_ April 10, 1886.
Lieutenant Penrose then wrote:--
"Polo is such an institution now in this country, that even
in the remotest station a couple of enthusiasts may be found
who will work heaven and earth to get a game of some sort. I
have lately been stationed at Indore, where there is a
collegiate school for the sons of native Princes and
gentlemen. The head of the college was Mr. Aberigh-Mackay,
the author of that popular book 'Twenty-one Days in India.'
He was a keen polo-player, and quite imbued his pupils with
his ardour, so that, though he is now dead, his memory is
green throughout the whole of Central India. The impetus he
gave the game has lasted, and consequently, with a few of
the senior boys in the school, and some of the men of the
troop of Central Indian Horse (who begin to play almost as
soon as they can sit a horse), we could always get up a
game. Some of the boys are not great riders, but like most
natives they have wonderfully good 'eyes,' and rarely miss
the ball. Polo-ponies come in very usefully in other
ways--such as pig-sticking, for their training makes them so
handy that it is easier to tackle a boar on a polo-pony than
when mounted on a horse. Besides, they are cheap, and the
men can afford a pony where they could not stand the expense
of a horse."
Another very notable point in this article is the expression of
confidence in the loyalty, as a general rule, of the Nobles of India.
This same belief--nay more, _conviction_--is expressed all through the
writings of Ali Baba.
At the same time, voice is given to the thought that "they have built
their houses of cards on the thin crust of British Rule that now
covers the crater, and they are ever ready to pour a pannikin of water
into a crack to quench the explosive forces rumbling below," _vide_ p.
48.
Reuter, in a telegram from Calcutta dated Friday, February 11, 1910,
and printed in but _few_ of the London newspapers of the 14th, informs
us that:--
"The leading Nobles and Gentry of Bengal have formed an
Imperial League for the promotion of good feeling between
Indians and the Government, the denunciation of anarchy and
sedition, and the education of the people by means of
lectures and pamphlets in the views of the Government.
"The Maharajah of Burdwan is president, and Maharajah Sir
Pradyat Tagore secretary of the new league."