From the train to Rangoon, you see very little of the country: we felt
rather unhappy in it after the comfort of the steamer. A native
stationmaster lost half our luggage for us--vowed he'd put it on board.
I knew that he knew that he had not done so, but I could do nothing. It
was glaringly hot at the station; several Europeans wore black
spectacles, and I had to do the same, for needle like pains ran through
my eyes since the day on the snipe jheel at Bhamo.
The first part of the journey was smooth enough, but bless me! they
brought up the Royal train from Rangoon at ten miles an hour faster than
we travel down! How uneasily must have lain a head that is to wear a
crown.
We couldn't sleep at night for the carriage seemed to be going in every
direction at once--waggled about like a basket, and we shook so much we
laughed at a mosquito that aimed at a particular feature. But in the
early morning we did actually sleep for a little, and about 4 or 5 A.M.
were awakened, for tea, and plague inspection at 6 A.M., about two hours
before getting into Rangoon!--a plague on tea and inspectors at that
hour of the morning!
It wasn't pure joy that journey. Ah! and it was sad too, getting to the
cultivated plains round Rangoon--eternal rice fields and toiling
Indians--uglier and uglier as we neared civilisation. The saddest sight
of all, the half-bred Burman and Indian woman or man--the woman the
worst; with, perhaps, a face of Burmese cast, over-shadowed with the
hungry expression of the Indian, and a black thin shank and flat foot
showing under the lungy, where should be rounded calf and clean cut
foot. We may be great colonists we Britons, but I fear our stocking
Burmah with scourings from India is only great as an evil.
Now I will pass Rangoon in my journal. We stayed a day or two at a
lodging in a detached teak villa in a compound which contained native
servants, and crows _ad nauseum_--it was dull, stupid and dear, and we
were sorry we had not gone to the hotel, and our greatest pleasure was
visiting the Shwey Pagoda again, and the greatest unpleasantness was
getting on board the British India boat the "Lunka" for Calcutta. We
were literally bundled pell mell on board, some twenty passengers and
baggage, and some five hundred native troops all in a heap in the waist
on top of us--what a miserable muddle. The French passengers smiled
derisively at the inefficacy or rather total absence of any system of
embarkation of passengers, and the Americans opened their eyes! Always
they repeat on board--"Why, you first class passengers don't pay us." On
the Irrawaddy river boats they say this too, but they make you jolly
comfortable for all that.
It was six hours of struggle, mostly in the sun, before I got our things
into our cabin, and half our luggage lay on deck for the night with
natives camping on it! The officers on board were very pleasant and
agreeable, as they were on board the last British India boat we were on,
but the want of method in getting passengers and their baggage off the
wharf and into boats and on board was almost incredible....[38] There
was a vein of amusement, I remember, when I can get my mind off the
annoying parts of our "Embarkation." I got a chanter from a Chinese
pedlar in the street in the morning--heard the unmistakeable reedy notes
coming along the street as I did business in the the cool office of
Messrs Cook & Co., and leaving papers and monies went and met the
smiling Chinese pedlar of sweetmeats who sold me his chanter. The
position of the notes is the same as on our chanter, and the fingering
is the same; afterwards on board when I played a few notes on it the
beady black eyes of the Ghurkas in the waist sparkled, and they pulled
out their practice chanters from their kit at once--and there we
were!--and the long-legged, almond-eyed Sikhs on their baggage looked on
in languid wonder.
[38] Getting off at Calcutta was indescribable--if possible worse than
the embarkation--_a sauve qui peut_.
Would you like a description of Calcutta? I wish I could give it. It was
a little different from what I expected, smaller, and yet with ever so
much more life and bustle on the river than I'd expected. Commerce
doesn't go slow on account of heat, and here, as in Burmah, I was
surprised to see so much picturesque lading and unlading of cargoes
going on by the river banks, and the green grass and trees running from
the banks into the town. But we will jump Calcutta, I think, it is too
big an order; but before going on may I say that the architecture is, to
my mind, better than it is said to be. In Holdich's "India" it is
unfavourably compared with that in Bombay, but do you know, I almost
prefer the classic style of Calcutta to the scientific rococco Bombay
architecture, but I offer this opinion with the greatest diffidence, for
I know the author of "India" is an artist--still--"I know what I like,"
as the burglar said when he took the spoons.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BENARES.--One evening we took train from Calcutta to Benares. Flat
fields of white poppies were on either side, and English park-like
scenes, without the mansions, and we thanked our stars we had not to
live in what the Norse call "Eng" or meadow land.
The things of interest in Benares are in order--first the Ghats, then a
river called the Ganges, and the monkey temple; of course there are a
great many natives, but from a cursory impression of the faces in the
crowds, I think they rank after the monkeys.
We arrived on a feast day with the golden beauty of Burmah and its
people fresh in our minds, and found these natives were painting the
town red. They slopped a liquid the colour of red ink over their
neighbours' more or less white clothes, and threw handfuls of vermilion
powder over each other--an abominable shade of vermilion--so roads and
people and sides of houses were all stained with these ugly colours; in
fact, at the Ghats or terraces at the river side, where many thousands
were congregated, the air was thick with the vermilion dust. From the
water's edge up the steps to the palaces and temples and houses at the
top, the terraces swarmed with thousands of people, and the talk and
mirthless laughter rose and fell like the continuous clamour from a
guillemot rookery.
The scenes we met in the streets were only to be described in language
of the Elizabethan period. If to-day at home we pass obscurantism for
morality, the Indian does the reverse; he tears the last shreds from our
ideas of what Phallic worship might once have been.
I think the Ghats are the most nauseating place in the world; there, is
Idolatry, in capital letters--the most terrible vision that a mind
diseased could picture in horrible nightmare! for you see thousands of
inferior specimens of men and women dabbling in the water's edge, _doing
all and every particular of the toilet in the same place almost touching
each other_, and right amongst them are dead people in pink or white
winding sheets being burned, and the ashes and half-burned limbs being
shoved into the water--and I forgot--there's a main sewer comes into the
middle of this.
We got on to a boat with a cabin on it, and sat on its roof on decrepit
cane chairs, and the rowers below with makeshift oars gradually pulled
us up and down the face of the Ghats--what oars, and what a ramshackle
tub of a boat--too old and tumble-down for a fisherman's hen run at
home.
Holy Gunga! What a crowd of men and women line the edge of these steps
knee deep in the water, and babble and jabber and pray, day after day,
and pretend to wash themselves, without soap! Only one man of the
thousands I saw was proportionably shaped; and one woman was white, an
Albino, I wish I could forget her bluey whiteness! and I saw boys doing
Sandow exercises, evidently trying to bring up their biceps--poor little
devils--how can they? They haven't time--they will be married and
reproducing other little fragilities like themselves, before they are
out of their teens!
The monkey temple is full of monkeys, and they have less apish
expressions than the priests. The Prince of Wales saw it the patron told
me, and added, "Princess give handsome presents--also Maharajahs--from
100 rupees to 50." So I gave one, very willingly, to get out, and
thought it cheap at the price. Besides the nastiness of the monkeys,
there was much blood of sacrifices drying on the ground and altars, and
this was covered with flies; there are some abominable rites in this
temple, but they are now _not supposed_ to sacrifice children.
Perhaps it was because I was tired with sight-seeing, perhaps because
the Ghats are really so terrible that I felt their picturesqueness was
lost on me, so I told my guide to direct my rowers' little energy
towards the far side of the river where there are no houses, and there
is quiet and clean river sand.
[Illustration]
On the sands we found a fakir had established his camp--quite a low
church fellow, I suppose, to the Brahmin mind. He sat over against this
sacred Benares, and told those freethinkers, who came across at times,
that his was the only one and true religion, and that the Phallic
saturnalia on the opposite shore was damned, and the Ganges water was of
no use whatever in the way of religion.
His camp covered an acre of sand and was fenced with cane, and he had
camels and cows and many followers, and though they had only one yellow
waist-cloth between them all, which he wore, he must have been well
enough off to provide the loaves and fishes for so many. He sat all the
time with his legs crossed, and read Sanskrit in a low, very well
modulated voice, whilst people from far and near came and bowed, and
sometimes, if they were worthy, touched his feet, and he would give them
a little look from his quiet intense eyes, and the least inclination of
his head, a movement and look a king might have envied, it was at the
same time so reserved and yet graciously beneficent. His hair and beard
were long and slightly curling and tawny at the ends, and his face was
dusted with grey ash which emphasised his rather potent eyes. His
features in profile were pure Greek, and on his low forehead there was a
touch of gold. His particular followers or disciples had the silly
expression of a mesmerist's subjects; they sat in the dust stark naked
and unashamed, and looked happy and exceedingly foolish.
The way this fakir made money I was told, is simplicity itself; he
merely gives a pass with his hand above his head, and lo there is a
sovereign in his palm, or he makes a pass at his toe and there is
another!
My Mohammedan guide, who told me about this fakir, was rather a fine
specimen and had read much; and though he did not belong to the same
church as the fakir, he held him in great respect, and he told me very
seriously--that he could raise the dead--he knew a man who knew another
man who had actually seen it done!
The fakir sat on a little dais in front of a hut with an awning over
him. He passed word to a satellite in a cloak that he would be pleased
were I to land, and I told my guide to tell him I would be pleased to
alight from my ramshackle tub and make his portrait, and he gently
inclined his head, so I descended from my barge roof, and stood opposite
him on the sand and drew, and after half-an-hour or so he saw that I was
tired standing and sent for a seat, but I of course could not change my
point of view, and no doubt his followers wondered why I bothered
standing in the sun when I might have easily sat in the shade and done
nothing. Next day I went on the river and stopped in passing his place
and showed him the coloured portrait, of which he gently expressed his
approval and signified that he would be pleased to accept a copy. So I
made one, and it is now glazed and framed and worshipped by his
disciples. He gave me his blessing in exchange--he did not make any
passes for sovereigns--but he gave me a seed or two to eat for a
particular purpose, and there is no result so far--and though he did not
convert me I left him with a certain respect for his great dignity of
manner, and for his evident desire and ability to obtain power over
men's minds. Perhaps with all his study and knowledge he still wonders
why a man should stand some hours in the heat playing with pencil and
paper and water colours. I am told he believes in only one god,
unfortunately I forget which; but there are 333,000,000 gods in India,
so perhaps it's a matter of no great consequence to them, or the Deity,
or us.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
One is conscious at Benares just now of a pervading effort to
proselytise. There is this fakir on one side of the river with his
troop, covering their nakedness with a little dust and ashes, and
priests of all kinds and the populace painting themselves red on the
other side; then there is Mrs Besant running some new sort of Hindooism
or "damned charlatanism," as Lafcadio Hearn would have put it. And there
are various Scottish and English Church Missions making special efforts
to secure converts, but they pay far more than my fakir does per
head--soul I mean. The fakir has secured two hundred recognised converts
and disciples in his own camp; he, however, has the advantage over other
missionaries in his method, which I have described, of obtaining
supplies. Each disciple costs him only one rupee per day, so my guide
tells me, and he says he is absolutely reliable; so they must do
themselves well. If I stayed a few days longer I'd start some new
philosophy myself, or revive an old one. And now I think of it, I
believe mine once floated would knock all the others endways--to begin
with I'd have my Benares or Mecca in some art bohemia, and I'd raise a
blue banner inscribed with the word BEAUTY in gold, and that would be
the watchword.... No one to enroll who could not make, say a decent
rendering of the Milo in sculpture or drawing--or write or play....
[Illustration: A Fakir at Benares]
Our places of study would be the churches that are empty during the
week--we surely could not be refused the use of them for the five or six
days they are not used! the last half of the sixth day would give us
time to remove all our beautiful things, so they would be the same as
usual on Sundays--nothing like detail in going in for a scheme of this
kind. And he or she who could produce something beautiful in either
sculpture, colour, music, or being, or even making a hat, would be high
in the priesthood, and might receive offerings of food and raiment in
return for instruction given (like the Burmese Phoungies from the
general public), so the general public would obtain merit, and men like
Sargent (if they could drop their academical degrees), La Touche,
Anglada Camarassa, Sarolea, Sidannier would be very high in the
priesthood; and we'd have Velasquez and Whistler, Montecelli and the
like for saints and--I see I have left no place for scientists and
musicians. But we'd have heaps of room for them, of course.
This isn't all nonsense you know!--in fact it is possibly all sense. I'd
like to see the philosophy carried out experimentally say for three
years in a bad district, such as between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood.
I believe the people would look handsomer and happier than they are at
present after the second year. Given Beauty for our standard and first
goal, Goodness, Mercy, Courage, Manliness, and Womanliness, and good
looks, would surely follow, and the Creator might be trusted for the
rest.
I am positively anxious, in the present condition of things, about what
will happen when some of us come to the gates of Heaven.--I very much
doubt if a knowledge of the ten Commandments will pass us in--and even
if we do get in, and secure a mansion, and it is really as beautiful as
described, how uncomfortable many of us will feel who have not been made
familiar with the subject of beauty below! I fear there may be awkward
questions put about what we have learned besides the ten Commandments;
we may be asked what we have observed of God's works. For example, "What
is the colour of wood smoke across a blue sky," or "the colour of white
marble against a yellow sunset." Perhaps you may be passed in with even
a solfeggio, but just think!--suppose you are asked to "describe the
most expressive movement in the action of a man throwing a stone," or
"how many heads there are in the Milo!"...
Such philosophising is quite the thing here at Benares--everyone does.
But to go back to the people and the Ghats I must--for my own
protection--for some one who reads these notes may have also waded
through the exquisite writing of Pierre Loti on the subject, and may
conclude I am untruthful. He says, he saw on the steps bathing, people
"a la fois sveltes et athletiques," and lovely women, dead and alive,
with clinging draperies that resemble the "Victoire aptere,"--well, I
vow!--I've studied the human form for about twenty-five years and I
repeat that what I say is true, that of the hundreds of men I saw
distinctly of the thousands bathing, I only saw one man passably well
made. I saw very finely built Sikhs from northern India in Burmah, and
others at Madras, but all the people on the banks of the Ganges had
very poor muscular development. And these lovely women whom Pierre Loti
sees in such numbers--they have no calves--whoever saw beauty without
the rudiments of a calf! But perhaps Pierre Loti does; if he can write
about India, sans les Anglais--(he means British[39]) he may fancy
Hamlet without the Prince, or Venus with an Indian shank. But we forgive
him; for that picture, off Iceland, "the stuffy brown lamplit cabin in
the fishing lugger, the tobacco smoke and the Madonna in the corner, and
outside on deck the silvery daylight and the pure air of the Arctic
midnight."
[39] "L'Inde sans les Anglais."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I think military life in Benares must be slow, the soldier seems to have
so much routine work in India when there is no frontier campaign going
on. It must be irksome for anyone fond of fighting. My cousin here (a
Captain) is Cantonment Magistrate, which means he has to turn his sword
into a foot rule and do Government's factory work--lets you a plot of
land for your house and sees your neighbour hangs out his washing in
proper order--then will hang a man for murder or fine another for
selling you goat instead of mutton, and so on and so forth. Multifarious
little things on to many of which might hang a history--for instance
taking a stray bull across the river with the respect due to such a
sacred encumbrance and without hurting the religious feelings of the
Emperor's Hindoo subjects.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Another soldier host we had in India in Delhi--a Fettesian by the way;
in his palace we studied the Red Chuprassie and received an inkling of
how States are governed, and how the hot-bed of Mohammedan and Hindoo
revolution is kept in order. Five to five were his office hours, you
advocates of eight hour bills! In the rest of the twenty-four hours he
was on the alert for sudden duty calls, yet he painted with me after
five, with more keenness than professional artists I know at home.
So within a few months out here I have met more men of arms, art, and
manners than I meet in as many years at home. It is a very sad part this
of our extended Empire--the good men taken from home to the frontiers,
and I don't know that we can afford it. Personally I'd rather have our
little country as it was in the time of James IV.--well defended--with
our good men at home, a chivalrous Court, and the best fleet of the
time, than to be as at present without a name or Court--a milch cow to
the Empire.
I had the pleasure of seeing this host engaged in a congenial duty--that
of raising the statue to Nicholson. We were taken to the spot where he
fell, and saw where Roberts stood, and heard tales of many other great
"Englishmen"--be--dad!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We lived almost on the Ridge and its russet-coloured boulders, and
looked slightly down to Delhi (I'd always pictured the besiegers looking
up at the walls). How astonishingly fresh it all is; the living deadly
interest. Gracious--the stones on the wall haven't yet rolled into the
ditch from the bombarding--you can almost smell the powder smoke in the
air--and it is still hot!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was very hot going to Agra. I've a recollection of the journey which
seems funny now; "When pleasure is, what past pain was." We had been
saving a thirst all morning, and at a junction went absolutely parched
with heat and fatigue for ice and soda, and perhaps a little
mountain-dew, for we were very faint. And there was no soda water!--and
there was no ice!--but there was whisky--and warm lemonade! I'd to
sprint along the metals to our carriage in the white heat, and there got
two bottles of hot soda. So we finally had a little tepid toddy, and sat
and grimly studied our countrymen's expressions as they came into the
restaurant hot and tired, from different trains, and asked for the drink
of our country. You'd have thought they would have sworn, but they did
not, which gives you an idea of the climate; they mostly looked too
tired; at mid-day on an Indian railway one has barely sufficient energy
left to say tut-tut!
[Illustration: A Delhi Street Scene]
Getting near Agra from the plains was very pleasant!--the ground rises a
little and becomes sandier and less cultivated, so the air is clean and
refreshing.
We saw the Taj at first in distance over this almost white sandy soil
and grey ferash bushes--saw it slightly blurred by the quivering heat
off the ground, and against a pale, hot, blue sky, and through thin hot
brown smoke from our engine, and its general outline in the distance was
that of a cruet stand--and as we came within a mile it seemed to be made
of brick, white-washed!
Then we whirled into the station and came out amongst solid Mogul
architecture of dull, red, sandstone--splendidly massive and
simple--what a surprise! Then we visited the Taj Mahal, and ever hence,
I hope the vision of white marble and greenery will be ours!