AT THE COURT OF HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHA
His Highness the Rajah of Nabha is a noble old Sikh chieftain,
distinguished among the native rulers of India, although his
territory, one of the Phulkian States, is but small. Through the
kindness of the Punjab Government and of His Highness, I was given an
opportunity of visiting the little court.
[Illustration: HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHA.]
To reach Nabha, my train from Lahore was the Bombay mail, and I have
rarely seen greater confusion at any railway station than reigned
upon its arrival. Every class of carriage was already full, yet
there were a number of first-class passengers waiting with title to
berths booked in advance as well as second and third-class
ticket-holders. The train was already of the maximum size permitted
and, after half an hour's uncertainty, a third-class carriage was
actually emptied of its fifty or more occupants, taken off the train
and replaced by an empty first-class coach. Few more striking
instances could be found of purse privilege. It would {267}
correspond in England with the dumping on a Crewe platform of the
third-class passengers by the Scotch express from Euston to make room
for first-class passengers waiting for the train at Crewe. It was
not a case of native and foreign, or English and Oriental,--for
plenty of native gentlemen travel first-class and it simply meant
that having a seat in a third-class carriage in India does not insure
your finishing the journey by the train in which you started.
My servant was left behind on this occasion and was consequently not
forthcoming when I reached Nabha Station in the morning. Poor
faithful Tambusami had not understood whither we were bound, but for
some reason or other thought it might be Patiala, and when I returned
to Lahore three days later I found him weeping on the platform after
vain endeavours to track me.
At Nabha I was met by three of the Rajah's ministers and driven in a
luxurious victoria to a large guest-house painted red and blue and
standing in quite beautiful grounds. A pair of horses drew the
victoria, but a kind of wagonette which followed with my luggage was
pulled by two camels which always have rather a circus air in harness.
The red brick-work of the building was all picked out with white,
like the walls of a doll's house, and on each side of the wide arch
at the {268} entrance there was a life-size painting of a turbaned
soldier presenting arms.
His Highness's private secretary could not speak English, and a
native gentleman, Mr Hira Singh, who was a schoolmaster in the town,
had been deputed to attend me as interpreter during my stay.
I was taken first into the reception-hall, which was hung with small
portraits in gouache of former rajahs and famous Sikh monarchs, such
as the Rajah Bhagwan Singh (the late Rajah of Nabha), the late Rajah
Ragh Bir Singh of Sandoor and the Maharajah Ranjeet Singh, who was
painted in a green dress with a halo round his head and mounted upon
a brown horse. In large letters on one wall appeared the motto:--
"May God increase your prosperity."
Breakfast was served me in a large room adjoining the great hall.
Over the carpet a white drugget was spread and the chairs were all
covered in pink chintz.
Mr Hira Singh suggested that I must need some rest and should sleep
awhile, so I was taken to my bedroom which was another large
apartment. It was a blend of the genuinely Oriental and the
Tottenham Court Road. The washstand was humbly and yet aggressively
British, while the wide bed was gorgeously {269} upholstered and
covered with a beautiful silk coverlet of canary yellow, and was
furnished with two tiny hard cushions or pillows in the middle, as
well as an ample allowance for the head. I was certainly tired with
the journey and nothing loth to lie down. Outside one of the open
doors of the room I could see the red-and-blue lance pennon of a
sentry appearing and reappearing as he passed to and fro in the
sunlight. His footsteps were quite noiseless, and wondering whether
after all it was the real sentry or one of the painted ones from the
archway wall I fell fast asleep to wake an hour later and find that
Sirdar Bishan Singh, Vakil to the political agent of the Phulkian
States, a stout, pleasant-looking little man, and Sirdar Jawala
Singh, His Highness's minister of finance, taller and darker, were
patiently waiting for me in the reception-room, sitting side by side
on chairs, with their feet primly together and silently looking
before them.
His Highness had graciously consented to give me an hour's sitting
the next morning, and these gentlemen had come to drive me to the
palace where the painting was to be done to choose a position of
suitable lighting. So down I walked again by the five long steps
between the blue columns and out through the archway to the victoria,
and the painted sentries were still presenting arms and the live one
stood at {270} attention. We drove first to the Diwan Khana by the
Winter Palace, and going up a long flight of steps to an upper
quadrangle I was shown the rooms of the State Treasury and the old
heavily-bound boxes containing the wealth of Nabha.
The Diwan Khana itself is used for durbars, and the whole of the
upper part of the great room is one continuous forest of chandeliers,
mostly of green cut glass. On the walls of this Durbar Hall I
noticed four beautiful old miniature portraits of rajahs, with real
pearls fitted in for necklets and precious stones and gems on the
horses' trappings as in eikons of the Greek Church and a painting of
a feast, larger, but worked in the same style as the miniatures. The
building was erected in the time of the Maharajah Jaswan Singh of
Nabha, and the very florid carpets were certainly not of any earlier
date.
As we drove away I saw many pigeons and green parrots about the walls
of the Winter Palace, and noticed that all over the building niches
had been left for the birds.
Mr Hira Singh told me that the population of Nabha town is over
15,000 and that it is "quite a busy city" with steam cotton-mills (I
had seen the tall chimneys near the railway station). The city
gateways I passed through are quite stately buildings and in an upper
{271} chamber of each gateway, with its silk covering hanging out
over the window-sill, is kept a copy of the sacred _Granth_ of the
Sikhs.
Driving through part of the city and out again we passed a Hindoo
temple with a spacious tank, over one end of which spread the
twisting branches of a beautiful "beri" tree, and before long came to
Elgin House, a newer building than the Winter Palace, with a very
large Durbar Hall, having at one end a painting of Queen Victoria.
It was here that the sitting was to take place, and after choosing a
suitable position in which His Highness's gold chair of state might
be placed ready I went over the rooms of Elgin House and also upon
the roofs of the upper storeys.
The Vakil showed me the chief treasures with great pride, but among
them all there was not a single beautiful thing of native
craftsmanship. Instead of this there were huge modern German
vases--pictures sliced into one another by a mechanical trick, so
that as you moved along in front, the Princess of Wales changed
gradually into the Prince. Mechanical singing-birds of most
expensive accomplishment were made to warble for my delectation and
greatest of all wonders at the Court of Nabha, a clock-work group of
figures behaved quite like real people and a band of musicians played
operatic airs while a ballet dancer stood tiptoe on one {272} leg.
The mechanical singing-birds had already made me think of Hans
Andersen's story of the nightingale, and here was the heroine of
another of his tales re-created after the burning she endured with
her beloved tin soldier as devotedly as any Hindoo widow of suttee
days.
The formal gardens were pleasantly arranged, but managed to avoid the
beauty of an Oriental Bagh without achieving that of the European
style they sought to imitate. The proportions were good, but there
was no grass and one longed vainly for spaces of lawn or greensward
to contrast with the elaborate carpet bedding.
On leaving Elgin House we drove to the Gurdwara of Baba Ajabal Singh.
A tall and handsome black-bearded priest of thirty-two years showed
us over the building, but what most interested me was a wild-looking
figure I saw hanging about the cloisters. He was armed with a sword
and dressed entirely in black garments, with a huge black turban
twisting in and out of steel circlets and irons, and bound over and
round in its turn by a metal chain. This was an Akali, one of that
still privileged sect of fighting fanatics who became famous in
Ranjeet Singh's time under the daring and picturesque "Gardana
Sahib"--Alexander Gardner (born on the shores of Lake Superior in
1785).
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I had heard that the Akalis wear blue garments to perpetuate the
memory of the blue clothes the Guru Govind Singh wore as a disguise,
on the occasion of an escape from Moghul soldiers, and part of which
he gave to one of his disciples to found a new order--that of the
Akalis in question, but this man's habiliments were as black as a
crow's feathers. Like their famous Rajah, Ranjeet Singh himself,
this latter-day specimen of the bhang-drinking cut-and-thrust
"immortals" had only one eye, and I asked whether he had by chance
lost its fellow in a fight. "I have never had a chance of a fight,"
said the Akali--adding consistently with the tenets of his sect--"if
I did I would never give in." While we were talking a thin old Sikh
limped towards us; he had once been taller than the average man, but
was now bent and emaciated with constant opium-eating. Mr Hira Singh
told me that he took one "masha" (equal to 16 grains) at a time and
took it twice in every twenty-four hours. The old rascal, his deep
brown eyes twinkling, put to me a special petition that the
Government should grant to all real opium eaters a large quantity
gratis at regular intervals to make them happy. He said also, on my
asking him what he dreamed about--"In my dreams I think of the
Creator, and I feel very earnest to go to a better field and to fight
there," which, as I was {274} assured the man was an abandoned
scoundrel, may be taken as Oriental humour expressed with an eye to
backsheesh.
Driving back to the guest-house we passed an arena where wrestling
matches are held, with six circular tiers of high stone steps as
seats for the spectators, and a square "loge" built in the middle of
one side for the notables, and here is conducted the only physical
"fighting" that takes place at Nabha nowadays. The day of the Akalis
is over, and while their brother Sikhs make some of the best material
in the Indian Army, the devotees of this narrow sect have become
wandering mendicants, privileged to carry warlike weapons, and
truculently direct in their demands for alms.
The portrait sitting was fixed for eight o'clock the next morning,
and ten minutes before his time the noble old Rajah stepped from his
carriage and walked almost jauntily up the steps of Elgin House,
where I was already installed with palette and canvas.
Gorgeously apparelled in a costume that was like a kiss between two
halves of the Arabian Nights, and wearing upon pale greenish silk a
galaxy of decorations which included the G.C.I.E. for his part in the
last Afghan War (he is now an honorary Colonel in the British Army)
and stars and medals from many great Durbars, the Chief of Nabha wore
at the same time an air of vigour {275} and joy in life that made the
years sit lightly on his shoulders, years that a wrinkled forehead
declared numerous.
One of his ministers told me through Mr Hira Singh that at the last
Delhi Durbar His Highness had delighted every one by the spirited and
boyish way in which he had galloped his horse along in front of the
assembled princes. May he appear as hale and vigorous at the Durbar
of December next!
After he had shaken hands with me and beamed cordial smiles, we
walked through the Durbar hall to the room where I had set up my
easel, and the Rajah sat, as arranged, in a chair of gilded brass
with lion arms, and directed his gaze at a particular flower vase
upon which we had fixed to keep his head in correct position for the
portrait. The pupils of his eyes were brown, with a faint grey rim,
and he had long waving moustaches as well as a long yellowish white
beard. He carried a sword with scabbard of pale green and gold, a
steel mace with spherical head, and a contrivance by which, when a
catch was pressed at the end of the handle, a number of short sharp
blades started out from the head, and also a steel trident of new
pattern. The old man was bent upon having as many arms about him as
possible, and sent for a large shield of black metal with four bright
bosses and a crescent, a favourite {276} rifle and another trident
sceptre, so that I had all I could do to dispose these about him in
such a way that he could sit comfortably and keep his head still. He
seemed especially proud of the mace with the trick knives, and after
explaining the mechanism to me with gusto he continued at intervals
during the sitting to manipulate it, at which the whole court laughed
heartily. They were grouped on either side in all the glory of
official costume and included the Commander-in-Chief, who came to
England for the Coronation of Edward VII., the Foreign Minister, the
Finance Minister, the Chief Justice, the Medical Adviser, and various
generals and councillors.
To paint a portrait in an hour! Well, I was not sorry that His
Highness had arrived before the arranged time, and that I had already
set my palette, and though it would have been intensely interesting
to have talked with the Chief of Nabha through the excellent
interpreter, when once the weapons were arranged to incommode him as
little as possible, I went at the painting with the fury of an Akali
and contented myself with smiling appreciatively at his occasional
ejaculations.
Every now and then he made a peculiar coughing noise, which began
softly and rose to a crescendo, sounding as formidable as the
traditional catchwords of the giant of the bean-stalk. {277} It was
like "ahum, ahum, ahum--ahhum," and kept his ministers in lively
attention.
As nine o'clock struck (for there were clocks at Nabha as well as at
Elsinore) I laid down my palette and am glad to say His Highness
expressed with Eastern courtesy great delight at the sketch.
Before going he sent for his favourite grand-child, Sirdar Fateh
Singh, a boy of about twelve years of age, who shook hands frankly
with me. On hearing that I must positively leave Nabha that
afternoon--in spite of his kindly pressure to stay at least a
fortnight--the Rajah gave orders for the finest of his State
elephants to be sent round to the guest-house that I might see an
ingenious device by which fountains of water from a hidden tank
played from the front of his head to lay the dust. The elephant,
unlike his vigorous old master, is weak and ailing, but I found him
still a magnificent beast and arrayed even more gorgeously than
lilies in sunlight-carrying scores of crystal lamps as well as the
fountains.
Mechanical arrangements of all kinds seemed specially to delight the
Rajah and he again showed me one of the singing birds I had seen the
previous day. Just before leaving Elgin House His Highness paid me
the pretty compliment of asking if he might have permission to go.
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