I.

_Of the beginning of Things--Of the Taj and the Globe-Trotter--The

Young Man from Manchester and certain Moral Reflections._

Except for those who, under compulsion of a sick certificate, are flying

Bombaywards, it is good for every man to see some little of the great

Indian Empire and the strange folk who move about it. It is good to

escape for a time from the House of Rimmon--be it office or

cutchery--and to go abroad under no more exacting master than personal

inclination, and with no more definite plan of travel than has the

horse, escaped from pasture, free upon the country side. The first

result of such freedom is extreme bewilderment, and the second reduces

the freed to a state of mind which, for his sins, must be the normal

portion of the Globe-Trotter--the man who “does” kingdoms in days and

writes books upon them in weeks. And this desperate facility is not as

strange as it seems. By the time that an Englishman has come by sea and

rail _via_ America, Japan, Singapore, and Ceylon to India, he can--these

eyes have seen him do so--master in five minutes the intricacies of the

_Indian Bradshaw_, and tell an old resident exactly how and where the

trains run. Can we wonder that the intoxication of success in hasty

assimilation should make him overbold, and that he should try to

grasp--but a full account of the insolent Globe-Trotter must be

reserved. He is worthy of a book. Given absolute freedom for a month the

mind, as I have said, fails to take in the situation and, after much

debate, contents itself with following in old and well-beaten

ways--paths that we in India have no time to tread, but must leave to

the country-cousin who wears his _pagri_ tail-fashion down his back, and

says “cabman” to the driver of the ticca-ghari.

Now Jeypore from the Anglo-Indian point of view is a station on the

Rajputana-Malwa line, on the way to Bombay, where half an hour is

allowed for dinner, and where there ought to be more protection from the

sun than at present exists. Some few, more learned than the rest, know

that garnets come from Jeypore, and here the limits of our wisdom are

set. We do not, to quote the Calcutta shopkeeper, come out “for the

good of our ’ealth,” and what touring we accomplish is for the most part

off the line of rail.

For these reasons, and because he wished to study our winter birds of

passage, one of the few thousand Englishmen in India, on a date and in a

place which have no concern with the story, sacrificed all his

self-respect and became--at enormous personal inconvenience--a

Globe-Trotter going to Jeypore, and leaving behind him for a little

while all that old and well-known life in which Commissioners and Deputy

Commissioners, Governors and Lieutenant-Governors, Aides-de-Camp,

Colonels and their wives, Majors, Captains and Subalterns after their

kind move and rule and govern and squabble and fight and sell each

other’s horses, and tell wicked stories of their neighbours. But before

he had fully settled into his part or accustomed himself to saying

“Please take out this luggage” to the coolies at the stations, he saw

from the train the Taj wrapped in the mists of the morning.

There is a story of a Frenchman “who feared not God, nor regarded man,”

sailing to Egypt for the express purpose of scoffing at the Pyramids

and--though this is hard to believe--at the great Napoleon who had

warred under their shadow! It is on record that that blasphemous Gaul

came to the Great Pyramid and wept through mingled reverence and

contrition, for he sprang from an emotional race. To understand his

feelings, it is necessary to have read a great deal too much about the

Taj, its design and proportions, to have seen execrable pictures of it

at the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition, to have had its praises sung by

superior and travelled friends till the brain loathed the repetition of

the word, and then, sulky with want of sleep, heavy-eyed, unwashen and

chilled, to come upon it suddenly. Under these circumstances everything

you will concede, is in favour of a cold, critical and not too impartial

verdict. As the Englishman leaned out of the carriage he saw first an

opal-tinted cloud on the horizon, and later certain towers. The masts

lay on the ground, so that the splendour seemed to be floating free of

the earth; and the mists rose in the background, so that at no time

could everything be seen clearly. Then as the train sped forward, and

the mists shifted and the sun shone upon the mists, the Taj took a

hundred new shapes, each perfect and each beyond description. It was the

Ivory Gate through which all good dreams come; it was the realization of

the “glimmering halls of dawn” that Tennyson sings of; it was veritably

the “aspiration fixed,” the “sigh made stone” of a lesser poet; and

over and above concrete comparisons, it seemed the embodiment of all

things pure, all things holy and all things unhappy. That was the

mystery of the building. It may be that the mists wrought the witchery,

and that the Taj seen in the dry sunlight is only as guide books say a

noble structure. The Englishman could not tell, and has made a vow that

he will never go nearer the spot for fear of breaking the charm of the

unearthly pavilions.

It may be, too, that each must view the Taj for himself with his own

eyes; working out his own interpretation of the sight. It is certain

that no man can in cold blood and colder ink set down his impressions if

he has been in the least moved.

To the one who watched and wondered that November morning the thing

seemed full of sorrow--the sorrow of the man who built it for the woman

he loved, and the sorrow of the workmen who died in the building--used

up like cattle. And in the face of this sorrow the Taj flushed in the

sunlight and was beautiful, after the beauty of a woman who has done no

wrong.

Here the train ran in under the walls of Agra Fort, and another

train--of thought incoherent as that written above--came to an end. Let

those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and

thenceforward be dumb. It is well on the threshold of a journey to be

taught reverence and awe.

But there is no reverence in the Globe-Trotter: he is brazen. A Young

Man from Manchester was travelling to Bombay in order--how the words

hurt!--to be home by Christmas. He had come through America, New

Zealand, and Australia, and finding that he had ten days to spare at

Bombay, conceived the modest idea of “doing India.” “I don’t say that

I’ve done it all; but you may say that I’ve seen a good deal.” Then he

explained that he had been “much pleased” at Agra, “much pleased” at

Delhi and, last profanation, “very much pleased” at the Taj. Indeed he

seemed to be going through life just then “much pleased” at everything.

With rare and sparkling originality he remarked that India was a “big

place,” and that there were many things to buy. Verily, this Young Man

must have been a delight to the Delhi boxwallahs. He had purchased

shawls and embroidery “to the tune of” a certain number of rupees duly

set forth, and he had purchased jewellery to another tune. These were

gifts for friends at home, and he considered them “very Eastern.” If

silver filigree work modelled on Palais Royal patterns, or aniline blue

scarves be “Eastern,” he had succeeded in his heart’s desire. For some

inscrutable end it has been decreed that man shall take a delight in

making his fellow-man miserable. The Englishman began to point out

gravely the probable extent to which the Young Man from Manchester had

been swindled, and the Young Man said:--“By Jove! You don’t say so. I

hate being done! If there’s anything I hate it’s being done!”

He had been so happy in the “thought of getting home by Christmas,” and

so charmingly communicative as to the members of his family for whom

such and such gifts were intended, that the Englishman cut short the

record of fraud and soothed him by saying that he had not been so very

badly “done” after all. This consideration was misplaced, for, his peace

of mind restored, the Young Man from Manchester looked out of the window

and, waving his hand over the Empire generally, said:--“I say! Look

here! All those wells are wrong you know.” The wells were on the wheel

and inclined plane system; but he objected to the incline, and said that

it would be much better for the bullocks if they walked on level ground.

Then light dawned upon him, and he said:--“I suppose it’s to exercise

all their muscles. Y’know a canal horse is no use after he has been on

the tow path for some time. He can’t walk anywhere but on the flat

y’know, and I suppose it’s just the same with bullocks.” The spurs of

the Aravalis, under which the train was running, had evidently suggested

this brilliant idea which passed uncontradicted, for the Englishman was

looking out of the window.

If one were bold enough to generalise after the manner of

Globe-Trotters, it would be easy to build up a theory on the well

incident to account for the apparent insanity of some of our cold

weather visitors. Even the Young Man from Manchester could evolve a

complete idea for the training of well-bullocks in the East at

thirty-seconds’ notice. How much the more could a cultivated observer

from, let us say, an English constituency blunder and pervert and

mangle! We in this country have no time to work out the notion, which is

worthy of the consideration of some leisurely Teuton intellect.

Envy may have prompted a too bitter judgment of the Young Man from

Manchester; for, as the train bore him from Jeypore to Ahmedabad, happy

in “his getting home by Christmas,” pleased as a child with his Delhi

atrocities, pink-cheeked, whiskered and superbly self-confident, the

Englishman, whose home for the time was a dâk bungaloathesome hotel,

watched his departure regretfully; for he knew exactly to what sort of

genial, cheery British household, rich in untravelled kin, that Young

Man was speeding. It is pleasant to play at globe-trotting; but to enter

fully into the spirit of the piece, one must also be going home for

Christmas.