in the center of a park called "Belvedere," just outside the city.
There are few finer country homes in England, and associated with
it are many historical events. Upon a grassy knoll shaded by
stately trees occurred the historic duel between Warren Hastings,
then governor general of India, and Mr. Francis, president of
the council of state. They quarreled over an offensive remark
which Mr. Francis entered in the minutes of the council. Hastings
offered a challenge and wounded his antagonist, but the ball was
extracted and the affair fortunately ended as a comedy rather
than a tragedy.
There are many fine shops in Calcutta, for people throughout
all eastern India go there to buy goods just as those in the
northwestern part of the United States go to Chicago, and in the
eastern states to Boston, Philadelphia or New York. Of course, the
Calcutta shops are not so large and do not carry such extensive
stocks as some dealers in our large cities, because they are almost
entirely dependent upon the foreign population for patronage, and
that is comparatively small. The natives patronize merchants
of their own race, and do their buying in the bazaars, where the
same articles are sold at prices much lower than those asked
by the merchants in the foreign section of the city. This is
perfectly natural, for the native dealer has comparatively little
rent to pay, the wages of his employes are ridiculously small and
it does not cost him very much to live. If a foreigner tries to
trade in the native shops he has to pay big prices. Foreigners who
live in Calcutta usually send their servants to make purchases,
and, although it is customary for the servant to take a little
commission or "squeeze" from the seller for himself, the price
is much lower than would be paid for the same articles at one
of the European shops.
Occasionally you see American goods, but not often. We sell India
comparatively little merchandise except iron and steel, machinery,
agricultural implements, sewing machines, typewriters, phonographs
and other patented articles. One afternoon four naked Hindus went
staggering along the main street in Calcutta carrying an organ made
by the Farrand Company of Detroit, which has considerable trade
there. American pianos are widely advertised by one of the music
dealers. The beef packing houses of Chicago send considerable
tinned meat to India, and it is quite popular and useful. Indeed,
it would be difficult for the English to get along without it,
because native beef is very scarce. It is only served at the
hotels one or twice a week. That is due to the fact that cows
are sacred and oxen are so valuable for draught purposes. Fresh
beef comes all the way from Australia in refrigerator ships and
is sold at the fancy markets.
The native bazaars are like those in other Indian cities, although
not so interesting. Calcutta has comparatively a small native
trade, although it has a million of population. The shops of
Delhi, Lahore, Jeypore, Lucknow, Benares and other cities are
much more attractive. In the European quarter are some curio
dealers, who stop there for the winter and go to Delhi and Simla
for the summer, selling brocades, embroideries, shawls, wood and
ivory carvings and other native art work which are very tempting
to tourists. Several dealers in jewels from Delhi and other cities
spend the holidays in order to catch the native princes, who
are the greatest purchasers of precious stones in the world.
Several of them have collections more valuable and extensive than
any of the imperial families of Europe. Prices of all curios,
embroideries and objects of art are much higher in Calcutta than
in the cities of northern India, and everybody told us it was
the poorest place to buy such things.
The most imposing building upon the Chowringhee, the principal
street, is the Imperial Museum, which was founded nearly a hundred
years ago by the Asiatic Society, and was taken over by the
government in 1866. It is a splendid structure around a central
quadrangle 300 feet square with colonnades, fountains, plants and
flowers. Little effort has been made to obtain contributions from
other countries, but no other collection of Indian antiquities,
ethnology, archæology, mineralogy and other natural sciences can
compare with it. It is under the special patronage of the viceroy,
who takes an active interest in extending its usefulness and
increasing its treasures, while Lady Curzon is the patroness of
the school of design connected with it. In this school about three
hundred young men are studying the industrial arts. Comparatively
little attention is given to the fine arts. There are a few native
portrait painters, and I have seen some clever water colors from
the brushes of natives. But in the industrial arts they excel,
and this institute is maintained under government patronage for
the purpose of training the eyes and the hands of designers and
artisans. In the same group of buildings are the geological survey
and other scientific bureaus of the government, which are quite
as progressive and learned as our own. A little farther up the
famous street are the headquarters of the Asiatic Society, one of
the oldest and most enterprising learned societies in the world,
whose journals and proceedings for the last century are a library
in themselves and contain about all that anybody would ever want
to know concerning the history, literature, antiquities, resources
and people of India. Here also is a collection of nearly twenty
thousand manuscripts in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Hindustani
and other oriental languages.
There is comparatively little poverty in Calcutta, considering
the enormous population and the conditions in which they live.
There are, however, several hundred thousand people who would
starve to death upon their present incomes if they lived in the
United States or in any of the European countries, but there it
costs so little to sustain life and a penny goes so far that
what an American working man would call abject destitution is
an abundance. Give a Hindu a few farthings for food and a sheet
of white cotton for clothing and he will be comfortable and
contented.
The streets of Calcutta, except in a limited portion of the native
section of the city, are wide, well paved, watered and swept. There
is an electric tramway system with about twenty miles of track,
reaching the principal suburbs, railway stations and business
sections, and whether Moline (Ill.) got it from Calcutta or Calcutta
borrowed the idea from Moline, both cities use the same method
of laying the dust. The tramway company runs an electric tank
car up and down its tracks several times a day, throwing water
far enough to cover nearly the entire street. Other streets,
where there are no tracks, are sprinkled by coolies, who carry
upon their backs pig skins and goat skins filled with water and
squirt it upon the ground through one of the legs with a twist of
the wrist as ingenious and effective as the method used by Chinese
laundrymen in sprinkling clothes. No white man can do either. The
Hindu sprinkler is an artist in his line, and therefore to be
admired, because everybody who excels is worthy of admiration,
no matter what he is doing. The street sprinklers belong to the
very lowest caste; the same caste as the garbage collectors and
the coolies that mend the roads and sweep the sidewalks, but
they are stalwart fellows, much superior to the higher class
physically, and as they wear very little clothing everybody can
see their perfect anatomy and shapely outlines.
Much of the road mending in India is done by women. They seem
to be assigned to all the heavy and laborious jobs. They carry
mortar, and bricks and stone where new buildings are being erected;
they lay stone blocks in the pavements, hammer the concrete with
heavy iron pestles, and you can frequently see them walking along
the wayside with loads of lumber or timber carefully balanced on
their heads that would be heavy for a mule or an ox. Frequently
they carry babies at the same time; never in their arms, but swung
over their backs or astride their hips. The infant population of
India spend the first two or three years of their lives astride
somebody's hips. It may be their mother's, or their sister's,
or their brother's, but they are always carried that way, and
abound so plentifully that there is no danger of race suicide
in that empire.
Next to the Sikh soldier, the nattiest native in India is the
postman, who is dressed in a blue uniform with a blue turban of
cotton or silk cloth to match, and wears a nickel number over
his forehead with the insignia of the postal service, and a girdle
with a highly ornamental buckle. The deliveries and collections
are much more frequent than with us. It is a mortification to
every American who travels abroad to see the superiority of the
postal service in other countries. That is about the only feature
of civil administration in which the federal government of the
United States is inferior, but, compared with India, as well
as the European countries, our Postoffice Department is not up
to date. You can mail a letter to any part of Calcutta in the
morning and, if your correspondent takes the trouble, he can
reach you with a reply before dinner. The rates of postage on
local matter and on parcels are much lower than with us. I can
send a package of books or merchandise or anything else weighing
less than four pounds from Calcutta to Chicago for less than
half the charge that would be required on a similar package from
Evanston or Oak Park.
The best time for a stranger to visit Calcutta is during holiday
week, for then the social season is inaugurated by a levee given
by the viceroy, a "drawing-room" by the vice-queen and a grand
state ball. The annual races are held that week, also, including
the great sporting event of the year, which is a contest for a
cup offered by the viceroy, and a military parade and review
and various other ceremonies and festivities attract people from
every part of the empire. The native princes naturally take this
opportunity to visit the capital and pay their respects to the
representative of imperial power, while every Englishman in the
civil and military service, and those of social or sporting
proclivities in private life have their vacations at that time
and spend the Christmas and New Year's holidays with Calcutta
friends. Moreover, the fact that all these people will be there
attracts the tourists who happen to be in India at the time, for
it gives them a chance to see the most notable and brilliant
social features of Indian life. Hence we rushed across the empire
with everybody else and assisted to increase the crowd and the
enthusiasm. Every hotel, boarding-house and club was crowded.
Every family had guests. Cots and beds were placed in offices
and wherever else they could be accommodated. Tents were spread
on the lawn of the Government House for the benefit of government
officials coming in from the provinces, and on the parade grounds
at the fort for military visitors. The grounds surrounding the
club houses looked like military camps. Sixteen tents were placed
upon the roof of the hotel where we were stopping to accommodate
the overflow.
Good hotels are needed everywhere in India, as I have several
times suggested, and nowhere so much as in Calcutta. The government,
the people and all concerned ought to be ashamed of their lack of
enterprise in this direction, and everybody admits it without
argument. There is not a comfortable hotel in the city, and while
it is of course possible for people to survive present conditions
they are nevertheless a national disgrace. Calcutta is a city of
more than a million inhabitants. Among its residents are many
millionaires and other wealthy men. It is frequently called "the
city of palaces," and many of the private residences in the foreign
quarter are imposing and costly. Hence there is no excuse but
indifference and lack of public spirit.
The Government House, which is the residence of the viceroy,
is one of the finest palaces in the world, and in architectural
beauty, extent and arrangement surpasses many of the royal residences
of Europe. None of the many palaces in England and the other
European capitals is better adapted for entertaining or has more
stately audience chambers, reception rooms, banquet halls and
ballrooms. It is truly an imperial residence and was erected more
than a hundred years ago by Lord Wellesley, who had an exalted
appreciation of the position he occupied, and transplanted to
India the ceremonies, formalities and etiquette of the British
court. The Government House stands in the center of a beautiful
garden of seven acres and is now completely surrounded and almost
hidden by groups of noble trees so that it cannot be photographed.
It is an enlarged copy of Kedlestone Hall, Derbyshire, and consists
of a central group of state apartments crowned with a dome and
connected with four wings by long galleries.
The throne-room is a splendid apartment and the seat of the mighty
is the ancient throne of Tipu, one of the southern maharajas,
who, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, gave the
British a great deal of trouble until he was deprived of power.
The banquet hall, the council chamber, the ballrooms and a series
of drawing rooms, nearly all of the same size, are decorated in
white and gold, and each is larger than the east room in the
White House at Washington. The ceilings are supported by rows of
marble columns with gilded capitals, and are frescoed by famous
artists. The floors are of polished teak wood; the walls are
paneled with brocade and tapestries, and are hung with historical
pictures, including full length portraits of the kings and queens
of England, all the viceroys from the time of Warren Hastings,
and many of the most famous native rulers of India. In one of the
rooms is a collection of marble busts of the Cæsars. These, with
a portrait of Louis XV. and several elaborate crystal chandeliers,
were loot of the war of 1798, when they were captured from a
ship which was carrying them as a present from the Emperor of
France to the Nyzam of Hyderabad.
The palace cost $750,000 and the furniture $250,000, more than
a hundred years ago, at a time when money would go three times
as far as it does to-day. Lord Wellesley had lofty ideas, and
when the merchants of the East India Company expressed their
disapproval of this expenditure he told them that India "should
be governed from a palace and not from a counting-house, with
the ideas of a prince and not those of a retail dealer in muslin
and indigo."
Great stories are told of the receptions, levees and balls that
were given in the days of the East India Company, but they could
not have been more brilliant than those of to-day. The Government
House has never been occupied by a viceroy more capable of assuming
the dignities and performing the duties of that office than Lord
Curzon, and no more beautiful, graceful or popular woman ever sat
upon the vice-queen's throne than Mary Leiter Curzon. No period
in Indian history has ever been more brilliant, more progressive
or more prosperous than the present; no administration of the
government has even given wider satisfaction from any point of
view, and certainly the social functions presided over by Lord
and Lady Curzon were never surpassed. They live in truly royal
style, surrounded by the ceremonies and the pomp that pertain to
kings, which is a part of the administrative policy, because
the 300,000,000 people subject to the viceroy's authority are
very impressionable, and measure power and sometimes justice and
right by appearances. Lord and Lady Curzon never leave the palace
without an escort of giant warriors from the Sikh tribe, who wear
dazzling uniforms of red, turbans as big as bushel baskets, and
sit on their horses like centaurs. They carry long spears and
are otherwise armed with native weapons. Within the palace the
same formality is preserved, except in the private apartments
of the viceroy, where for certain hours of every day the doors
are closed against official cares and responsibilities, and Lord
and Lady Curzon can spend a few hours with their children, like
ordinary people.
The palace is managed by a comptroller general, who has 150 servants
under him, and a stable of forty horses, and relieves Lady Curzon
from the cares of the household. Lord Curzon is attended by a
staff of ministers, secretaries and aids, like a king, and Lady
Curzon has her ladies-in-waiting, secretaries and aids, like a
queen. People who wish to be received at Government House will
find three books open before them in the outer hall, in which
they are expected to inscribe their names, instead of leaving
cards. One of these books is for permanent residents of Calcutta,
another for officials, and another for transient visitors, who
record their names, their home addresses, their occupations,
the time they expect to stay in Calcutta, and the place at which
they may be stopping. From these books the invitation lists are
made out by the proper officials, but in order to secure an
invitation to Lady Curzon's "drawing-room" a stranger must be
presented by some person of importance who is well known at court.
At 9 o'clock those who have been so fortunate as to be invited
are expected to arrive. They leave their wraps in cloakrooms in
the basement, where the ladies are separated from the gentlemen
who escort them, because the latter are not formally presented
to the vice-queen, but they meet again an hour or so later in
the banquet hall after the ceremony is over.
The ladies pass up two flights of stairs into waiting-rooms in the
third story of the palace, pursuing a rather circuitous course over
about half the building, guided by velvet barriers and railings,
and at each comer stands an aide-de-camp or a gentleman-in-waiting,
to answer inquiries and give directions to strangers. When the
anteroom is at last reached, the ladies await their turns, being
admitted to the audience chamber in groups of four. They are
given a moment or two to adjust their plumage, and then pass
slowly toward the throne, upon which Lady Curzon is seated. The
viceroy, in the uniform and regalia of a Knight of the Garter,
stands under the canopy by her side. There is no crowding and
pushing, such as we see at presidential receptions at Washington
and often at royal functions in Europe, but there is an interval
of twenty-five or thirty feet between the guests. After entering
the room each lady hands a card upon which her name is written
to the gentleman-in-waiting, and, as she approaches the throne
he pronounces it slowly and distinctly. She makes her courtesies
to the viceroy and his lady, and then passes on. There is no
confusion, no haste, no infringement of dignity, and each woman
for the moment has the entire stage to herself.
On either side of the throne are gathered, standing, many native
princes, the higher officers of the government and the army,
the members of the diplomatic corps and other favored persons,
with their wives and daughters, and their costumes furnish a
brilliant background to the scene. The rest of the great audience
chamber, blazing with electric lights, is entirely empty. The
viceroy greets every lady with a graceful bow, and Lady Curzon
gives her a smile of welcome. The government band is playing
all this time in an adjoining room, so that the music can be
only faintly heard, and does not interfere with the ceremony,
as is so often the case elsewhere.
Having passed in review, the guests return to the other part of
the palace by a different course than that through which they
came, and find their escorts awaiting them in the banquet hall.
When the last lady has been presented, the viceroy and Lady Curzon
lead the way to the banquet hall, where a sumptuous supper is
spread, and the gentlemen are allowed to share the festivities.
The formalities are relaxed, and the hosts chat informally with
the guests.
[Illustration: THE PRINCES OF PEARLS]
It is a very brilliant scene, quite different from any that may
be witnessed elsewhere, particularly because of the gorgeous
costumes and the profusion of jewels worn by the native princes.
At none of the capitals of Europe can so magnificent a show of
jewels be witnessed, but the medals of honor and decorations
which adorn the breasts of the bronzed soldiers are more highly
prized and usually excite greater admiration, for many of the
heroes of the South African war were serving tours of duty in
India when we were in Calcutta.
The viceroy's levee is exclusively for gentlemen. No ladies are
expected, and a similar ceremony is carried out. It is intended to
offer an annual opportunity for the native princes, and officials
of the government, officers of the army, the Indian nobility and
private citizens of prominence to pay their respects and offer
their congratulations to their ruler and the representative of
their king, and at 9 o'clock on the evening appointed, two days
later than Lady Curzon's reception, every man of distinction in
that part of the world appears at the palace and makes his bow
to the viceroy as the latter stands under the canopy beside the
throne. It might be a somber and stupid proceeding but for the
presence of many natives in their dazzling jewels, picturesque
turbans and golden brocades, and the large contingent of army
officers, with their breasts covered with medals and decorations.
This reception is followed a few days later by a state ball,
which is considered the most brilliant function of the year in
India. Invitations are limited to persons of certain rank who
have been formally presented at Government House, but Lady Curzon
is always on the lookout for her fellow countrymen, and if she
learns of their presence in Calcutta invitations are sure to reach
them one way or another. She is a woman of many responsibilities,
and her time and mind are always occupied, but few Americans
ever visit Calcutta without having some delightful evidence of
her loyalty and thoughtfulness.
There were many other festivities for celebrating the New Year.
All the English and native troops in the vicinity of Calcutta
passed in review before the viceroy and Lord Kitchener, who is
the commander-in-chief of the forces in India.
In one of the parks in the city was a native fair and display
of art industries, and at the zoological gardens the various
societies of the Roman Catholic church in Calcutta held a bazaar
and raffled off many valuable and worthless articles, sold barrels
of tea and tons of cake, and sweetmeats to enormous crowds of
natives, who attended in their holiday attire. There was a pyramid
of gold coins amounting to a thousand dollars, an automobile,
a silver service valued at $1,000, a grand piano, a carriage
and span of ponies, and various other prizes offered in the
lotteries, together with dolls and ginger-cake, pipes and cigar
cases, slippers, neckties, pincushions and other offerings to
the god of chance. Fashionable society was attracted to the fair
grounds by a horse and dog show, and various other functions
absorbed public attention.
The great sporting event of the year in India is a race for a
big silver cup presented by the viceroy and a purse of 20,000
rupees to the winner. We took an interest in the race because Mr.
Apgar, an Armenian opium merchant, who nominated Great Scott, an
Austrian thoroughbred, has a breeding farm and stable of 200 horses,
and everything about his place comes from the United States. He
uses nothing but American harness and other accoutrements, and
as a natural and unavoidable consequence Great Scott won the cup
and the purse very easily, and his fleetness was doubtless due
to the fact that he was shod with American shoes. The programme
showed that about half the entries were by natives. His Royal
Highness Aga Khan, the Nawab of Samillolahs; Aga Shah; our old
friend of the Chicago exposition, the Sultan of Johore, and His
Highness Kour Sahib of Patiala, all had horses in the big race.
Some of these princes have breeding stables. Others import English,
Irish, Australian, American and Arabian thoroughbreds. There was
no American horse entered for the viceroy's cup this year, but
Kentucky running stock is usually represented.