I have had a delightful fishing day; at an early hour found myself again
at the shore, nominally to paint, but in truth because it was hot and
stuffy in town, and the thought of the surf and clear air made the beach
irresistible. A rickshaw man used his legs to take me to the sands edge;
and they were empty as yesterday of all but the few fishermen and their
families. The colour effect, however, was not so brilliant, but was
pleasant enough--the sky soft grey and the water grey too, but
colourful--the heat enough to cook one!
[Illustration]
I watched the young idea learning surf rafting--a study fascinating
enough for a whole day--a tiny imp with a great pointed log, and the
white breakers for playthings. He sat on its stern, his knees and toes
on the sand, and held its stem seawards till the inrush of shallow
white-laced water was deep enough to float it and take his little
anatomy a voyage of a few yards on the sloping outrush, then he jumped
off and waited till the surf brought his black ship back. With what
quickness he noted the exact moment to run in and catch its stem, and
slew it round so that it would broach ashore on its side, and how neatly
he avoided being caught between it and the sand. The fishermen's boats,
or catamarans as they are called here, though they have no resemblance
to the Colombo catamaran, are made of four of these pointed logs tied
side by side. I suppose this little chap was playing at his future work.
He had made a little collection on the dry sand of two or three
shell-fish and beasts that burrow in the sand, and whenever he went to
sea, three crows stalked up to these, when he would leave the log and
scamper after them, then run back all over dry sand and tumble into the
surf again, to come up laughing and wet and shining like copper--I
should say it was nicer than being at school.
[Illustration]
Two of his clothless seniors came in, as I sketched, from the deep swell
outside the surf, through the breakers slanting-wise. It was a treat to
see them paddling their four logs, almost side on to the breaking surf,
where our boats could not safely venture; one knelt behind on the thick
ends of the two prolonged middle logs, the other amidship--their heads
only showed above a breaker, the next moment they were on its crest, the
surf foaming over their knees--down again into another hollow, then up,
and with a surge the lumber drove its nose on the sand, the stern threw
up, and the two nipped into the water at either end; another surge swung
the stern round, and shoved the raft broadside on far up the sand, and
they were landing their nets--all done as easily as you could pull up a
dog-cart and step out! Of course they are not inconvenienced with
clothes, and the water and sands are both comfortably warm; the little
difficulty must be to jump at the right time and place, so as to avoid
being thrown off, and getting rolled under the logs. Bow seemed to hop
off in front and to the outside a little, just before she touched, and
Stroke a half a second later, but the manoeuvre was too quick for me
to follow more than one of the men's actions exactly.
Whilst I watched this extremely rapid landing, my acquaintances of
yesterday were pulling at the long ropes from either end of the Seine
net, which was extended very far out at sea. When the ends were within
fifty yards of the shore the knowing old seniors went tumbling through
the surf, and kept swimming and splashing to frighten the fish from the
mouth of the V shape into the bag in the middle; the women folk and
children tailed on to the ropes along with the men, joking and laughing,
for their men out in the water told them there were lots of fish! You
did not need to know Tamil or Telugu to learn this, the delight was so
evident--It was evidently to be the catch of the season! The excitement
and movement grew splendid as the bag, still a few yards from shore, was
throttled in some way under water. First a small outer bag was pulled
ashore, then a bigger one holding the day's catch, a Scotch cartload of
fish--a bumper bag. They were all so pleased and jolly, and were puffing
and panting and wet with the last struggle to get the fine-meshed bag
through the surf. When it was opened like a great brown purse, there lay
the wealth of the Bay of Bengal! in silver and blue and rose and
yellow. About half the fish were pure silver, the rest violet, emerald
green, pure blue, and some red like mullet, with lemon yellow fins, and
the colour of the brown men and the women's faded draperies round the
glittering haul was delicious. The wrangling, not Billingsgate at
all--milder even than Parliamentary--was loud enough, and continuous. I
left them taking away the fish in baskets, and freshly minted money
never looked so beautiful. How they divided I couldn't tell; it seemed
as if each helped himself or herself as each thought fit.
I must note the afternoon of this delightful day, though noting these
"first impressions" of India seems rather a big order; for each day
seems so full of delightfully new experience, and fascinating sights,
that I am sure you see in one day here--at least a _nouveau_ does--more
interesting things than one could in a week in Europe.
... Our civil servant friend, who paints like Sam Bough, asked us to see
his bungalow on the Adyar River, also to look at sketches. We drove
three miles on a broad road under banyan trees and palms with patches of
corn and native huts, and an occasional bright dress and brass bowl of a
woman showing between the dark stems, and pulled up at half-a-dozen
bungalows by mistake, and left cards at others, to the owners of which
we had introductions, and after a considerable hunt turned up at the
bungalow we aimed at. Here were open views, in front the Adyar River and
the many-arched Elphinston Bridge, and palm groves, and down the river
to the left, the sand bar across its mouth, and to the right views of
the river's many windings in palm groves. Such a place, with the feeling
of the sea being within reach, would make me, I think, tolerate living
in Madras for a little. We had a great causerie over pictures of home
scenes, and of many places in India. Then we got into a double-scull
Thames boat and slipped away down towards the bar with wind and
current--extremely delightful, I thought it, getting into such a
well-appointed boat on such a pretty piece of river. As we sailed fish
played round us; some, like bream or silvery perch, skipped out of the
water in a series of leaps like miniature penguins! The wind fell and we
rowed, down to the sand spit and heard the surf on the other side and
got out and felt that we were at last actually on "India's Coral
Strand." There were pretty delicately coloured shells, and here and
there a pale pink convolvulus growing low, with grey-green leaves. The
river just managed to cut its way through the sand-bar into the surf;
beyond it, three or four miles to the north, we could see the two spires
in Madras above the palms, St Thome's and St Mary's in the Fort; to the
south-west, the sand and palms and the line of surf stretched in
perspective till they faded together on the horizon.
[Illustration]
As the sun got low the sky became gorgeous red--what tropical colour
there was--the hard sand flushed and paled, yellow to brown in a long
waving ribband at the edge of the receeding wave, then turned lavender
laced with dull foam, as the first of the following breakers came
running up, wetting the sand again to renew the golden glow. The outer
sea and the horizon were purple and the white of the surf seemed almost
green against the orange and red of the sky. Our friends told me they
often came to this beach; and as they are artists, that is not to be
wondered at: and I suppose some Madras people occasionally come down the
river from the boat club a mile or two above, to picnic. I saw two men
in flannels and two ladies--very fair ladies they were too--in the
flattering twilight; when a white dress turns the colour of a violet
shell, and muslins die like a dream into the soft colours of the sand,
and pale faces flush with the golden glow of the setting sun. We lost no
pity on those exiles and their wandering on this foreign strand. A
native or two passed; nice and easy it is for them getting along the
coast to Madras! They just walked up the river a few yards and walked
in, swam across and down stream, waded out on the far side, and never as
much as shook themselves.
We shoved off again when the sky was positively burning with colour,
hoisted our sail, and with a light sea breeze went up river towards the
darkening groves of palms, guiding ourselves by the afterglow and the
glint of a new moon, and lights from the few bungalows on shore.
As we sail we plan to return some day and do up one of these old Arabian
Night bungalows. They look almost palatial with their terraces and
flight of steps from the river and white pillars showing in the pale
moonlight with dark palms and trees over them. They at the same time
suggest something of Venice, and of the Far East. They would need
repair, but rents are low.
It gets darker and we have difficulty in picking up marks--first the
rock on our right from which we go dead across stream, to the high palm
just visible against the night sky; then up stream a bit, and across to
avoid shoals. We row, for the wind has fallen away. Every now and then
our blades touch gravel, and twice we go right aground and have to
shove off. Fish jump round us; two come in forward, pretty little
silvery fellows with a potent smell of herring, one big fellow surges
nearly ashore. As the boat-house and club lights appear we go hard and
fast on to a bank, and a native wayfarer fording the river in the dark,
whom we mistake for a Club servant expecting us, is ordered to shove us
off, which he does and goes on his way without a word--"the gentle
Hindoo" again.
The Club boat-house is a perfect treat! By the lamplight I am sure I saw
a score of double sculls, sixes, and possibly eights, and skiffs and
punts--all sorts of river boats, and as far as I could see, all in
order; the men who have both such a Club and boat-house are to be
envied. The Club-house was a dream of white Georgian architecture,
veiled in moonlight amongst great trees and palms. There were high
silvery white pillars (Madras is famous for its marble white stucco) and
terraces and wide steps and yellow light coming from tall open jalousies
under verandahs. Winding paths led up to it, and along one of these we
followed a native, who swung a lamp near the ground in case of snakes.
In the Club were rooms for dining, reading, and dancing, all in the same
perfect Georgian style.
I would have liked to stay, to see the dance that was going to begin,
but it was late, and we were in flannels, and were three miles from
home. The ball-room was entirely to my taste, an oval, with white
pillars round it reflected in a light-coloured polished floor, overhead
a domed roof with chrystal chandeliers, and smaller crystal lights round
the sides.
On the road home we met motors, dog-carts, and men and ladies going to
the dance; the motor dust here is twenty times thicker than at home; for
half-a-mile after you pass a motor you see nothing--can't open your eyes
in fact--then came a series of Rembrandts, in wayside lamplit stalls,
and home to mosquitoes and late dinner.
31st December, Sunday.--Spent forenoon writing letters and working up
sketches, and to make all smooth went to two churches and two temples in
the afternoon; a fairly good ending to the year. The first temple, a
pile of architecture of debased wedding-cake style, thick with
innumerable elastic-legged, goggled-eyed, beastly, indecent Hindoo
divinities. Thence to a Roman Catholic church in St Thome, the old
Portuguese quarter--very pretty and simple in appearance. The half near
the altar full of veiled European nuns in white and buff dresses. Nearer
the door, where we sat, were native women and children, mostly in red, a
few of them with antique European black bonnets and clothes; and in
their withered old faces you could imagine a strain of the early
Portuguese settlers. The altar was, as usual, in colours to suit the
simple mind; the Madonna in blue and white and gold with a sweet
expression of youth and maternity, her cheeks were like china, and she
dandled the sweetest little red-haired baby in a nest of gold rays, all
against a rocky background. How telling the fair Viking type of baby
must be to these little black-eyed, wondering worshippers, far more
fascinating and wonderful, I am sure, than their miraculous six-armed
gods. There were real roses too, such numbers of them, and altogether a
good deal of somewhat gim-crack effect, but the whole appealed to me,
for at least the idea of material beauty was recognised, and for a
minute I forgot all the ugliness (= Evil) that our churches have caused,
and the good (= Beauty) they have destroyed, and bowed and crossed
myself like my neighbours. Then we drove to another church near the sea,
St Thomes. The bones of St Thomas of the New Testament are said to be
buried here. We only looked into it; it was finely built, and inside at
the moment was almost as empty as a Protestant church on a week-day.
There was but one devotee, a black woman, confessing to a half-black
man. We shuddered and escaped, and drove a few yards and saw "The seas
that mourn, in flowing purple of their Lord forlorn,"--the wide long
stretch north and south of white sand, and the log surf rafts, and the
dark fishermen going up and down on the blue swell--and didn't we draw a
breath of relief of God's pure air.
There was a log craft at the surf edge, with a kid playing beside it,
his reflection perfect in the long backwash. His father talked in a
strange tongue to me, and I looked at the swell and considered, and saw
black men out beyond the surf, and none of them apparently drowned, or
in fear of sharks, so I left shoes and socks with G. and our coachman to
look after her, and the syce to look after the carriage, and tucked up
trousers and away we went together, my heart in my mouth! What joy--bang
into and over the first breaker. I'd nearly to stand upright to keep my
waist dry, and down and up again--the movement quick and exhilarating;
over two other breakers and we were away on the open rollers, and able
to look round to the distant shore, where G. sat with my sketch-book and
a gallery of brown figures. We paddled along to another craft out at sea
that had pulled up its net. Two men were in it, and we made fast to it
till they cleared the fish out of the net, and we took them in a matting
bag on to our raft, where the water washed over them, and we took them
ashore. It was curious to see how neatly and ably these men could haul a
net and clear it of fish on four submerged logs--they could move about,
stand and walk from one end of the logs to the other with freedom. With
the net on board the logs were almost entirely submerged. Running ashore
is the most sporting part of the procedure; we paddled along slanting
towards the beach, waiting for the ninth wave to pass, then went
straight for the sand for all we were worth, and got in in great style;
I must say I nearly lost my balance landing, there were so many natives
wading out to bear a hand that my eye wandered--but what a craft for
the purpose! I vow no boat I ever saw of the size could come on to hard
sand with such a surf behind and not break and throw you out. It is
really a sport with a capital S, though, as far as I can hear, white
people don't go in for it, perhaps because it is said--on what authority
I do not know--that the sharks prefer white people to the natives! The
natives who swim in the surf apparently are not touched by them, yet you
see no Europeans bathing on what I should think would be a delightful
shore for bathing once you had got accustomed to diving through the
surf. If I go surf-logging again I will take a change of trousers--Got
on shoes, the natives standing three deep to see the Sahib get sand off
his feet, extremely curious but quite polite. The rupee I gave my man
pleased him very much, and the others all wanted to take me out again,
or at least to have a rupee too. They were a nicer, bolder-looking lot
of men than those in the town by a very long chalk.
We then went to another temple that was also worth seeing. There is a
tank near it that would be beautiful, but for a monumentally ugly iron
railing that has recently been put round it. It is distinctly
British--who on earth did it? We were fortunate, for just before coming
to the tank and temple, a christening party of Hindoos in their best
clothes, with yellow flowers in black hair, and priests with long
chanters and tom-toms playing, came out of some houses as we were
passing. In a loosely formed procession they proceeded very slowly to
the temple, the principals in a closed brougham in the middle. It was
just like one of Tadema's pictures on the move--barring the brougham!
The players led the way in white, with the dark wood chanters mounted
with silver bells and mouthpieces, and made music with a little of the
twang of our pipe chanter, but without the continuity and lift or crisp
grace-notes. Young girls, with their faces tinted yellow with saffron,
followed in dull red dresses. Behind the procession were
classical-looking houses, and over these appeared palms and banyan
trees; but in the middle was the prosaic old Waler, and the hired
brougham, which was very distressing, for otherwise the subject was
evidently "artistic," and combined just the proportions of sentiment and
positive colour, which would have insured for its faithful depiction, a
warm reception at any of our Royal Academical Exhibitions--the man in
the street could see that!
[Illustration]
Then home by the wide Marina, and the promenading Eurasians, and
well-to-do traders in carriages. The official people _must_ all be at
the Club and Gymkhana, or at Church. For choice I like the beach in the
morning, the wide sweep of ocean, the full sun on the endless sandy
shores, and the solitude.
This is a jotting, reduced by reproduction, of a native fishing in the
surf--all that I have "creeled" to-day.
... By Jove--it's ten minutes to the New Year--time to think of our
friends and relations, who will be sitting down to lunch and thinking of
us; and toasting us for a certainty. So, in the words of the song, of
which these are all I know--
"Here's another kind love,
Here's another kind love,
Here's a health to everybody."
But first we must toast "Relations and Friends," and then "The Memory of
the Dead and the Health of the Living," which being done, properly and
in order, we may go to the window to hear the bells of St Giles and the
cheering at the Cross.... Ah! but it is too far.