loose and flowing robes that are only for esoteric disciples; he has
the private _entrée_ at five o'clock tea and hears plans for the
evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He
hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can
give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win
in a canter. You cannot tell him anything he does not know already.

Whenever the Government of India has a merrymaking, he is out on the
trail. At Delhi he was in the thick of the mummery, beaming on
barbaric princes and paynim princesses, blessing banners, blessing
trumpeters, blessing proclamations, blessing champagne and truffles,
blessing pretty girls, and blessing the conjunction of planets that
had placed his lines in such pleasant places. His tight little cob,
his perfect riding kit, his flowing beard, and his pleasant smile were
the admiration of all the Begums and Nabobs that had come to the fair.
The Government of India took such delight in him that they gave him a
gold medal and a book.

With the inferior clergy the Archdeacon is not at his ease. He cannot
respect the little ginger-bread gods of doctrine they make for
themselves; he cannot worship at their hill altars; their hocus-pocus
and their crystallised phraseology fall dissonantly on his ear; their
talk of chasubles and stoles, eastern attitude, and all the rest of
it, is to him as a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. He would
like to see the clergy merely scholars and men of sense set apart for
the conduct of divine worship and the encouragement of all good and
kindly offices to their neighbours; he does not wish to see them
mediums and conjurors. He thinks that in a heathen country their
paltry fetishism of misbegotten notions and incomprehensible phrases
is peculiarly offensive and injurious to the interests of civilisation
and Christianity. Of course the Archdeacon may be very much mistaken
in all this; and it is this generous consciousness of fallibility
which gives the singular charm to his religious attitude. He can take
off his ecclesiastical spectacles and perceive that he may be in the
wrong like other men.

Let us take a last look at the Archdeacon, for in the whole range of
prominent Anglo-Indian characters our eye will not rest upon a more
orbicular and satisfactory figure.

A good Archdeacon, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit gay and bright,
With something of the candle-light.

ALI BABA.




No. V



WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT



[August 30, 1879.]

He is clever, I am told, and being clever he has to be rather morose
in manner and careless in dress, or people might forget that he was
clever. He has always been clever. He was the clever man of his year.
He was so clever when he first came out that he could never learn to
ride, or speak the language, and had to be translated to the
Provincial Secretariat. But though he could never speak an
intelligible sentence in the language, he had such a practical and
useful knowledge of it, in half-a-dozen of its dialects, that he could
pass examinations in it with the highest credit, netting immense
rewards. He thus became not only more and more clever, but more and
more solvent; until he was an object of wonder to his contemporaries,
of admiration to the Lieutenant-Governor, and of desire to several
_Burra Mem Sahibs_[A] with daughters. It was about this time that he
is supposed to have written an article published in some English
periodical. It was said to be an article of a solemn description, and
report magnified the periodical into the _Quarterly Review_. So he
became one who wrote for the English Press. It was felt that he was a
man of letters; it was assumed that he was on terms of familiar
correspondence with all the chief literary men of the day. With so
conspicuous a reputation, he believed it necessary to do something in
religion. So he gave up religion, and allowed it to be understood that
he was a man of advanced views: a Positivist, a Buddhist, or something
equally occult. Thus he became ripe for the highest employment, and
was placed successively on a number of Special Commissions. He
inquired into everything; he wrote hundredweights of reports; he
proved himself to have the true paralytic ink flux, precisely the kind
of wordy discharge or brain hæmorrhage required of a high official in
India. He would write ten pages where a clod-hopping collector would
write a sentence. He could say the same thing over and over again in a
hundred different ways. The feeble forms of official satire were at
his command. [He could bray ironically at subordinate officers. He had
the inborn arrogance required for official "snubbing." Being without a
ray of good feeling or modesty, he could allow himself to write with
ceremonial rudeness of men who in his inmost heart he knew to be in
every way his superiors.] He desired exceedingly to be thought
supercilious, and he thus became almost necessary to the Government of
India, was canonised, and caught up to Simla. The Indian papers
chanted little anthems, "the Services" said "Amen," and the apotheosis
was felt to be a success. On reaching Simla he was found to be
familiar with the two local "jokes," planted many years ago by some
jackass. One of these "jokes" is about everything in India having its
peculiar smell, except a flower; the second is some inanity about the
Indian Government being a despotism of despatch-boxes tempered by the
loss of the keys. He often emitted these mournful "jokes" until he was
declared to be an acquisition to Simla society.

Such is the man I am with to-day. His house is beautifully situated,
overlooking a deep ravine, full of noble pine-trees, and surrounded by
rhododendrons. The verandah is gay with geraniums and tall servants in
Imperial red deeply encrusted with gold. Within, all is very
respectable and nice, only the man is--not exactly vile, but certainly
imperfect in a somewhat conspicuous degree. With the more attractive
forms of sin he has no true sympathy. I can strike no concord with him
on this umbrageous side of nature. I am seriously shocked to discover
this, for he affects infirmity; but his humanity is weak. In his
character I perceive the perfect animal outline, but the colour is
wanting; the glorious sunshine, the profound glooms of humanity are
not there.

Such a man is dangerous; he decoys you into confidences. Even Satan
cannot respect a sinner of this complexion,--a sinner who is only
fascinated by the sinfulness of sin. As for my poor host, I can see
that he has never really graduated in sin at all; he has only sought
the degree of sinner _honoris causa_. I am sure that he never had
enough true vitality or enterprise to sin as a man ought to sin, if he
does sin. [Of course a man ought not to sin; and the nobler sort try
to reduce their sinning to a minimum; but when they do sin I hold that
they sin like men. (I have heard it said that a man should sin like a
gentleman; but I am much disposed to think that the gentleman nature
appears in the non-sinning lucid intervals.)] When I speak of sin I
will be understood to mean the venial offences of prevarication and
sleeping in church. I am not thinking of sheep-stealing or highway
robbery. My clever friend's work consists chiefly in reducing files of
correspondence on a particular subject to one or two leading thoughts.
Upon these he casts the colour of his own opinions, and submits the
subjective product to the Secretary or Member of Council above him for
final orders. His mind is one of the many dense and refractive mediums
through which the Government of India looks out upon India.

From time to time he is called upon to write a minute or a note on
some given subject, and then it is that his thoughts and words expand
freely. He feels bound to cover an area of paper proportionate to his
own opinion, of his own importance; he feels bound to introduce a
certain seasoning of foreign words and phrases; and he feels bound to
create, if the occasion seems in any degree to warrant it, one of
those cock-eyed, limping, stammering epigrams which belong exclusively
to the official humour of Simla. [In writing thus, the figure of
another Secretariat official rises before me with reproachful looks. I
see the thought-worn face of that Secretary to whom the Rajas belong,
and who is, in every particular, a striking contrast with the typical
person whose portrait I sketch. The Secretary in the Foreign
Department is a scholar and a man of letters by instinct. Whatever he
writes is something more than correct and precise--it is impressed
with the sweep and cadence of the sea; it is rhythmical, it is
sonorous.]

[But let us return to the prisoner in the dock] I have said that the
Secretary is clever, scornful, jocose, imperfectly sinful, and nimble
with his pen. I shall only add that he has succeeded in catching the
tone of the Imperial Bumbledom; and then I shall have finished my
defence.

This tone is an affectation of æsthetic and literary sympathies,
combined with a proud disdain of everything Indian and Anglo-Indian.

The flotsam and jetsam of advanced European thought are eagerly sought
and treasured up. "The New Republic" and "The Epic of Hades" are on
every drawing-room table. One must speak of nothing but the latest
doings at the Gaiety, the pictures of the last Academy, the ripest
outcome of scepticism in the _Nineteenth Century_, or the aftermath in
the _Fortnightly_. If I were to talk to our Secretariat man about the
harvest prospects of the Deckan, the beauty of the Himalayan scenery,
or the book I have just published in Calcutta about the Rent Law, he
would stare at me with feigned surprise and horror.

"When he thinks of his own native land,
In a moment he seems to be there;
But, alas! Ali Baba at hand
Soon hurries him back to despair."

ALI BABA.




No. VI



H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO


[Illustration: THE BENGALI BABOO--"Full of inappropriate words and
phrases."]



[September 13, 1879.]

The ascidian[B] that got itself evolved into Bengali Baboos must have
seized the first moment of consciousness and thought to regret the
step it had taken; for however much we may desire to diffuse Babooism
over the Empire, we must all agree that the Baboo itself is a subject
for tears.

The other day, as I was strolling down the Mall, whistling Beethoven's
9th Symphony, I met the Bengali Baboo. It was returning from office. I
asked it if it had a soul. It replied that it had not, but some day it
hoped to pass the matriculation examination of the Calcutta
University. I whistled the opening bars of one of Cherubini's
Requiems, but I saw no resurrection in its eye, so I passed on.

[I have just procured an adult specimen of the Bengali Baboo (it was
originally the editor of the _Calcutta Moonshine_), and I have engaged
an embryologist, on board wages, to examine and report upon it.

I once found George Bassoon weeping profusely over a dish of
artichokes. I was a little surprised, for there was a bottle close at
hand and he had a book in his hand. I took the book. It was not
Boccaccio; it was not Rabelais; it was not even Swinburne. I felt that
something must be wrong. I turned to the title-page. I found it was a
poem printed for private circulation by the _Government of India_. It
was called "The Anthropomorphous Baboo subtilised into Man."]

When I was at Lhassa the Dalai Lama told me that a virtuous
cow-hippopotamus by metempsychosis might, under unfavourable
circumstances, become an undergraduate of the Calcutta University, and
that, when patent-leather shoes and English supervened, the thing was
a Baboo. [This sounds very plausible; but how about the prehensile
tail which the Education Department finds so much in the way of
improvement, which indeed is said to preclude all access to the
Bengali mind, and which can grasp everything but an idea, even an
inquisitorial schoolmaster? "Hereby hangs a tail" is a motto in which
Edward Gibbon had no monopoly.]

I forget whether it was the Duke of Buckingham, or Mr. Lethbridge, or
General Scindia--I always mix up these C.I.E.'s together in my mind
somehow--who told me that a Bengali Baboo had never been known to
laugh, but only to giggle with clicking noises like a crocodile. Now
this is very telling evidence, because if a Baboo does not laugh at a
C.I.E. he will laugh at nothing. The faculty must be wanting.

[The Raja of Fattehpur, Member of the Legislative Council, and
commonly known as "Joe Hookham," says that fossil Baboos have been
found in Orissa with the cuckoo-bone, everything that a schoolmaster
could wish. Now "Joe" is a palæontologist not to be sneezed at. This
confirms the opinion of General Cunningham that the mounted figure in
the neighbourhood of Lahore represents a Bengali washerwoman riding to
the _Ghât_ to perform a lustration. Because unless the _os coccyx_
were all right it would be as difficult to ride a bullock as to get
educated by the usual process.]

When Lord Macaulay said that what the milk was to the cocoanut, what
beauty was to the buffalo, and what scandal was to woman, that Dr.
Johnson's Dictionary was to the Bengali Baboo, he unquestionably spoke
in terms of figurative exaggeration; nevertheless, a core of truth
lies hidden in his remark. It is by the Baboo's words you know the
Baboo. The true Baboo is full of words and phrases--full of
inappropriate words and phrases lying about like dead men on a
battlefield, in heaps to be carted away promiscuously, without
reference to kith or kin. You may turn on a Baboo at any moment and be
quite sure that words, and phrases, and maxims, and proverbs will come
gurgling forth, without reference to the subject or to the occasion,
to what has gone before or to what will come after. Perhaps it was
with reference to this independence, buoyancy, and gaiety of language
that Lord Lytton declared the Bengali to be "the Irishman of India."

You know, dear Vanity, I whispered to you before that the poor Baboo
often suffers from a slight aberration of speech which prevents his
articulating the truth--a kind of moral lisp. Lord Lytton could not
have been alluding to this; for it was only yesterday that I heard an
Irishman speak the truth to Lord Lytton about some little matter--I
forget what; cotton duty, I think--and Lord Lytton said, rather
curtly, "Why, you have often told me this before." So Lord Lytton must
be in the habit of hearing certain truths from the Irish.

It was either Sir Andrew Clarke, Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, or Sir
Some-one-else, who understands all about these things, that first told
me of the tendency to Baboo worship in England at present. I
immediately took steps, when I heard of it, to capitalise my pension
and purchase gold mines in the Wynaad and shares in the Simla Bank.
(Colonel Peterson, of the Simla Fencibles, supported me gallantly in
this latter resolution.) The notion of so dreadful a form of fetishism
establishing itself in one's native land is repugnant to the feelings
even of those who have been rendered callous to such things by seats
in the Bengal Legislative Council. [I refuse to believe that the
Zoological Society has lent its apiary to this movement. It must have
been a spelling-bee your informant was thinking of.

Talking of monkey-houses reminds me of] Sir George Campbell, who took
such an interest in the development of the Baboo, and the selection of
the fittest for Government employment. He taught them in
debating-clubs the various modes of conducting irresponsible
parliamentary chatter; and he tried to encourage pedestrianism and
football to evolve their legs and bring them into something like
harmony with their long pendant arms. You can still see a few of Sir
George's leggy Baboos coiled up in corners of lecture-rooms at
Calcutta. The Calcutta Cricket Club used to employ one as permanent
"leg." [The Indian Turf Club used to keep a professional "leg," but
now there are so many amateurs it is not required.]

It is the future of Baboodom I tremble for. When they wax fat with new
religions, music, painting, Comédie Anglaise, scientific discoveries,
they may kick with those developed legs of theirs, until we shall have
to think that they are something more than a joke, more than a mere
_lusus naturæ_, more than a caricature moulded by the accretive and
differentiating impulses of the monad[C] in a moment of wanton
playfulness. The fear is that their tendencies may infect others. The
patent-leather shoes, the silk umbrellas, the ten thousand horse-power
English words and phrases, and the loose shadows of English thought,
which are now so many Aunt Sallies for all the world to fling a jeer
at, might among other races pass into _dummy soldiers_, and from dummy
soldiers into trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so on, out of the
province of Ali Baba and into the columns of serious reflection. Mr.
Wordsworth and his friends the Dakhani Brahmans should consider how
painful it would be, when deprived of the consolations of religion, to
be solemnly repressed by the _Pioneer_--to be placed under that
steam-hammer which by the descent of a paragraph can equally crack the
tiniest of jokes and the hardest of political nuts, can suppress
unauthorised inquiry and crush disaffection.

At present the Baboo is merely a grotesque Bracken shadow, but in the
course of geological ages it might harden down into something
palpable. It is this possibility that leads Sir Ashley Eden to advise
the Baboo to revert to its original type; but it is not so easy to
become homogeneous after you have been diluted with the physical
sciences and stirred about by Positivists and missionaries. "I would I
were a protoplastic monad!" may sound very rhythmical, poetical, and
all that; but even for a Baboo the aspiration is not an easy one to
gratify.--ALI BABA.




No. VII



WITH THE RAJA



[September 20, 1879.]

Try not to laugh, Dear Vanity. I know you don't mean anything by it;
but these Indian kings are so sensitive. The other day I was
translating to a young Raja what Val Prinsep had said about him in his
"Purple India"; he had only said that he was a dissipated young ass
and as ugly as a baboon; but the boy was quite hurt and began to cry,
and I had to send for the Political Agent to quiet him and put him to
sleep. When you consider the matter philosophically there is nothing
_per se_ ridiculous in a Raja. Take a hypothetical case: picture to
yourself a Raja who does not get drunk without some good reason, who
is not ostentatiously unfaithful to his five-and-twenty queens and his
five-and-twenty grand duchesses, who does not festoon his thorax and
abdomen with curious cutlery and jewels, who does not paint his face
with red ochre, and who sometimes takes a sidelong glance at his
affairs, and there is no reason why you should not think of such a one
as an Indian king. India is not very fastidious; so long as the
Government is satisfied, the people of India do not much care what the
Rajas are like. A peasant proprietor said to Mr. Caird and me the
other day, "We are poor cultivators; we cannot afford to keep Rajas.
The Rajas are for the Lord Sahib."

The young Maharaja of Kuch Parwani assures me that it is not
considered the thing for a Raja at the present day to govern. "A
really swell Raja amuses himself." One hoards money, another plays at
soldiering, a third is horsey, a fourth is amorous, and a fifth gets
drunk; at least so Kuch Parwani thinks. Please don't say that I told
you this. The Foreign Secretary knows what a high opinion I have of
the Rajas, and indeed he often employs me to whitewash them when they
get into scrapes. "A little playful, perhaps, but no more loyal Prince
in India!" This is the kind of thing I put into the Annual
Administration Reports of the Agencies, and I stick to it. Playful no
doubt, but a more loyal class than the Rajas there is not in India.
They have built their houses of cards on the thin crust of British
Rule that now covers the crater, and they are ever ready to pour a
pannikin of water into a crack to quench the explosive forces rumbling
below.

The amiable chief in whose house I am staying to-day is exceedingly
simple in his habits. At an early hour he issues from the zenana and
joins two or three of his thakores, or barons, who are on duty at
Court, in the morning draught of opium. They sit in a circle, and a
servant in the centre goes round and pours the _kasumbha_[D] out of a
brass bowl and through a woollen cloth into their hands, out of which
they lap it up. Then a cardamum to take away the acrid after-taste.
One hums drowsily two or three bars of an old-world song; another
clears his throat and spits; the Chief yawns, and all snap their
fingers, to prevent evil spirits skipping into his throat; a late
riser joins the circle, and all, except the Chief, give him
_tazim_--that is, rise and salaam; a coarse jest or two, and the party
disperses. A crowd of servants swarm round the Chief as he shuffles
slowly away. Three or four mace-bearers walk in front shouting, "Raja,
Maharaja salaamat ho; niga rakhiyo!" ("Please take notice; to the
King, the great King, let there be salutation!") A confidential
servant continually leans forward and whispers in his ear; another
remains close at hand with a silver tea-pot containing water and
wrapped up in a wet cloth to keep it cool; a third constantly whisks a
yak's tail over the King's head; a fourth carries my Lord's sword; a
fifth his handkerchief; and so on. Where is he going? He dawdles up a
narrow staircase, through a dark corridor, down half-a-dozen steep
steps, across a courtyard overgrown with weeds, up another staircase,
along another passage, and so to a range of heavy quilted red screens
that conceal doors leading into the female penetralia. Here we must
leave him. Two servants disappear behind the _parda_ with their
master, the others promptly lie down where they are, draw the sheets
or blankets which they have been wearing over their faces and feet,
and sleep. About noon we see the King again. He is dressed in white
flowing robes with a heavy carcanet of emeralds round his neck. His
red turban is tied with strings of seed pearls and set off with an
aigrette springing from a diamond brooch. He sits on the Royal
mattress, the _gaddi_.[E] A big bolster covered with green velvet
supports his back; his sword and shield are gracefully disposed before
him. At the corner of the _gaddi_ sits a little representation of
himself in miniature, complete even to the sword and shield. This is
his adopted son and heir. For all the queens and all the grand
duchesses are childless, and a little kinsman had to be transplanted
from a mud village among the cornfields to this dreamland palace to
perpetuate the line. On the corners of the carpet on which the _gaddi_
rests sit thakores of the Royal house, other thakores sit below, right
and left, forming two parallel lines, dwindling into sardars, palace
officers, and others of lower rank as they recede from the _gaddi_.
Behind the Chief stand the servants with the emblems of royalty--the
peacock feathers, the fan, the yak tail, and the umbrella (now
furled). The confidential servant is still whispering into the ear of
his master from time to time. This is durbar. No one speaks, unless to
exchange a languid compliment with the Chief. Presently essence of
roses and a compound of areca nut and lime are circulated, then a huge
silver pipe is brought in, the Chief takes three long pulls, the
thakores on the carpet each take a pull, and the levée breaks up amid
profound salaams. After this--dinner, opium, and sleep.

In the cool of the evening our King emerges from the palace, and,
riding on a prodigiously fat white horse with pink points, proceeds to
the place of carousal. A long train of horsemen follow him, and
footmen run before with guns in red flannel covers and silver maces,
shouting "Raja Maharaja salaamat," &c. The horsemen immediately around
him are mounted on well-fed and richly-caparisoned steeds, with all
the bravery of cloth-of-gold, yak-tails, silver chains, and strings of
shells; behind are troopers in a burlesque of English uniform; and
altogether in the rear is a mob of caitiffs on skeleton chargers,
masquerading in every degree of shabbiness and rags, down to nakedness
and a sword. The cavalcade passes through the city. The inhabitants
pour out of every door and bend to the ground. Red cloths and white
veils flutter at the casements overhead. You would hardly think that
the spectacle was one daily enjoyed by the city. There is all the
hurrying and eagerness of novelty and curiosity. Here and there a
little shy crowd of women gather at a door and salute the Chief with a
loud shrill verse of discordant song. It is some national song of the
Chiefs ancestors and of the old heroic days. The place of carousal is
a bare spot near a large and ancient well out of which grows a vast
pipal tree. Hard by is a little temple surmounted by a red flag on a
drooping bamboo. It is here that the _Gangôr_[F] and _Dassahra_[F]
solemnities are celebrated. Arrived on the ground, the Raja slowly
circles his horse; then, jerking the thorn-bit, causes him to advance
plunging and rearing, but dropping first on the near foot and then on
the off foot with admirable precision; and finally, making the white
monster, now in a lather of sweat, rise up and walk a few steps on his
hind legs, the Raja's performance concludes amid many shouts of wonder
and delight from the smooth-tongued courtiers. The thakores and
sardars now exhibit their skill in the _manége_ until the shades of
night fall, when torches are brought, amid much salaaming, and the
cavalcade defiles, through the city, back to the palace. Lights are
twinkling from the higher casements and reflected on the lake below;
the _gola_[G] slave-girls are singing plaintive songs, drum and conch
answer from the open courtyards. The palace is awake. The Raja, we
will romantically presume, bounds lightly from his horse and dances
gaily to the harem to fling himself voluptuously into the luxurious
arms of one of the five-and-twenty queens, or one of the
five-and-twenty grand duchesses; and they stand for one delirious
moment wreathed in each other's embraces--

While soft there breathes
Through the cool casement, mingled with the sighs
Of moonlight flowers, music that seems to rise
From some still lake, so liquidly it rose,
And, as it swell'd again at each faint close,
The ear could track through all that maze of chords
And young sweet voices these impassioned words--

"Ho, you there! fetch us a pint of gin! and look sharp, will you!"

For who, in time, knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
To enrich unknowing nations with our stores!
What worlds in the yet unformèd Orient
May come refined with accents that are ours!

But, dear Vanity, I can see that you are impatient of scenes whose
luxuries steal, spite of yourself, too deep into your soul; besides, I
dread the effect of such warm situations on a certain Zuleika to whom
the note of Ali Baba is like the thrice-distilled strains of the
bulbul on Bendemeer's stream. So let us electrify ourselves back to
prose and propriety by thinking of the Political Agent; let us plunge
into the cold waters of dreary reality by conjuring up a figure in
tail-coat and gold buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the romantic
and picturesque Raja, G.C.S.I., amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from
the gallery of "Vive M. le Raja; vive la bagatelle!"

So say we, in faint echoes, defying the anathemas of the Foreign
Office. Do not turn this beautiful temple of ancient days into a mere
mill for decrees and budgets; but sweep it and purify it, and render
it a fitting shrine for the homage and tribute of antique
loyalty--"that proud submission, that subordination of the heart which
kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom." With tail-coat and cocked-hat government "the unbought grace
of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment
and heroic enterprise is gone."--ALI BABA.




No. VIII



WITH THE POLITICAL AGENT



A MAN IN BUCKRAM



[Illustration: THE POLITICAL AGENT--"A man in buckram."]




[September 27, 1879.]

This is a most curious product of the Indian bureaucracy. Nothing in
all White Baboodom is so wonderful as the Political Agent. A near
relation of the Empress who was travelling a good deal about India
some three or four years ago said that he would rather get a Political
Agent, with raja, chuprassies,[H] and everything complete, to take
home, than the unfigured "mum" of Beluchistan, or the sea-aye-ee
mocking bird, _Kokiolliensis Lyttonia_. But the Political Agent cannot
be taken home. The purple bloom fades in the scornful climate of
England; the paralytic swagger passes into sheer imbecility; the
thirteen-gun tall talk reverberates in jeering echoes; the chuprassies
are only so many black men, and the raja is felt to be a joke. The
Political Agent cannot live beyond Aden.

The Government of India keeps its Political Agents scattered over the
native states in small jungle stations. It furnishes them with
maharajas, nawabs, rajas, and chuprassies, according to their rank,
and it usually throws in a house, a gaol, a doctor, a volume of
Aitchison's Treaties, an escort of native Cavalry, a Star of India,
an assistant, the powers of a first-class magistrate, a flag-staff,
six camels, three tents, and a salute of eleven or thirteen
guns. In very many cases the Government of India nominates
a Political Agent to the rank of Son-to-a-Lieut.-Governor,
Son-in-Law-to-a-Lieut.-Governor, Son-to-a-member-of-Council, or
Son-to-an-agent-to-the-Governor-General. Those who are thus elevated
to the Anglo-Indian peerage need have no thought for the morrow what
they shall do, what they shall say, or wherewithal they shall be
supplied with a knowledge of Oriental language and occidental law.
Nature clothes them with increasing quantities of gold lace and starry
ornaments, and that charming, if unblushing, female--Lord Lytton begs
me to write "maid"--Miss Anglo-Indian Promotion, goes skipping about
among them like a joyful kangaroo.

The Politicals are a Greek chorus in our popular burlesque, "Empire."
The Foreign Secretary is the prompter. The company is composed of
nawabs and rajas (with the Duke of Buckingham as a "super"). Lord
Meredith is the scene-shifter; Sir John, the manager. The Secretary of
State, with his council, is in the stage-box; the House of Commons in
the stalls; the London Press in the gallery; the East Indian
Association, Exeter Hall, Professor Fawcett, Mr. Hyndman, and the
criminal classes generally, in the pit; while those naughty little
Scotch boys, the shock-headed Duke and Monty Duff, who once tried to
turn down the lights, pervade the house with a policeman on their
horizon. As we enter the theatre a dozen chiefs are dancing in the
ballet to express their joy at the termination of the Afghan War. The
political _choreutæ_ are clapping their hands, encouraging them by
name and pointing them out to the gallery.

The government of a native state by clerks and chuprassies, with a
beautiful _fainéant_ Political Agent for Sundays and Hindu festivals,
is, I am told, a thing of the past. Colonel Henderson, the imperial
"Peeler," tells me so, and he ought to know, for he is a kind of
demi-official superintendent of Thugs and Agents. Nowadays, my
informant assures me, the Political Agents undergo a regular training
in a Madras Cavalry Regiment or in the Central India Horse, or on the
Viceroy's Staff, and if they have to take charge of a Mahratta State
they are obliged to pass an examination in classical Persian poetry.
This is as it ought to be. The intricacies of Oriental intrigue and
the manifold complication of tenure and revenue that entangle
administrative procedure in the protected principalities, will unravel
themselves in presence of men who have enjoyed such advantages.

When I first came out to this country I was placed in charge of three
degrees of latitude and eight of longitude in Rajputana that I might
learn the language. The soil was sandy, the tenure feudal
(_zabardast_,[I] as we call it in India), and the Raja a lunatic by
nature and a dipsomaniac by education. He had been educated by his
grandmamma and the hereditary Minister. I found that his grandmamma
and the hereditary Minister were most anxious to relieve me of the
most embarrassing details of government, so I handed them a copy of
the Ten Commandments, underlining two that I thought might be useful,
and put them in charge. They were old-fashioned in their methods--like
Sir Billy Jones; but the result was admirable. In two years the
revenue was reduced from ten to two lakhs of rupees, and the
expenditure proportionately increased. A bridge, a summer-house, and a
school were built; and I wrote the longest "Administration Report"
that has ever issued from the Zulmabad Residency. When I left money
was so cheap and lightly regarded that I sold my old buggy horse for
two thousand rupees to grandmamma, with many mutual expressions of
good-will--through a curtain--and I have not been paid to this day.
But since then the horse-market has been ruined in the native states
by these imperial _mélas_[J] and durbars. A poor Political has no
chance against these Government of India people, who come down with
strings of three-legged horses, and--no, I won't say they sell them to
the chiefs--I should be having a commission of my _khidmatgars_[K]
sitting upon me, like poor Har Sahai, who was beaten by Mr. Saunders,
and Malhar Rao Gaikwar, who fancied his Resident was going to poison
him.

I like to see a Political up at Simla wooing that hoyden Promotion in
her own sequestered bower. It is good to see Hercules toiling at the
feet of Omphale. It is good to see Pistol fed upon leeks by
Under-Secretaries and women. How simple he is! How boyish he can be,
and yet how intense! He will play leap frog at Annandale; he will
paddle about in the stream below the water-falls without shoes and
stockings; but if you allude in the most distant way to rajas or
durbars, he lets down his face a couple of holes and talks like a
weather prophet. He will be so interesting that you can hardly bear
it; so interesting that you will feel sorry he is not talking to the
Governor-General up at Peterhoff.

[But I feel that an Agent to the Governor-General is looking over my
shoulder, so perhaps I had better stop; though I know two or three
things about Politicals.]--SIR ALI BABA, K.C.B.[L]




No. IX



WITH THE COLLECTOR



[October 4, 1879.]

Was it not the Bishop of Bombay who said that man was an automaton
plus the mirror of consciousness? The Government of every Indian
province is an automaton plus the mirror of consciousness. The
Secretariat is consciousness, and the Collectors form the automaton.
The Collector works, and the Secretariat observes and registers.

To the people of India the Collector is the Imperial Government. He
watches over their welfare in the many facets which reflect our
civilisation. He establishes schools and dispensaries [for their
children], gaols [for their troublesome relations and neighbours], and
courts of justice [for the benefit of their brothers who can talk and
write]. He levies the rent of their fields, he fixes the tariff, and
he nominates to every appointment, from that of road-sweeper or
constable, to the great blood-sucking officers round the Court and
Treasury. As for Boards of Revenue and Lieutenant-Governors who
occasionally come sweeping across the country, with their locust hosts
of servants and petty officials, they are but an occasional nightmare;
while the Governor-General is a mere shadow in the background of
thought, half blended with "John Company Bahadur" and other myths of
the dawn.

The Collector lives in a long rambling bungalow furnished with folding
chairs and tables, and in every way marked by the provisional
arrangements of camp life. He seems to have just arrived from out of
the firmament of green fields and mango groves that encircles the
little station where he lives; or he seems just about to pass away
into it again. The shooting-howdahs are lying in the verandah, the
elephant of a neighbouring landowner is swinging his hind foot to and
fro under a tree, or switching up straw and leaves on to his back, a
dozen camels are lying down in a circle making bubbling noises, and
tents are pitched here and there to dry, like so many white wings on
which the whole establishment is about to rise and fly away--fly away
into "the district," which is the correct expression for the vast
expanse of level plain melting into blue sky on the wide
horizon-circle around.

The Collector is a bustling man. He is always in a hurry. His
multitudinous duties succeed one another so fast that one is never
ended before the next begins. A mysterious thing called "the Joint"
comes gleaning after him, I believe, and completes the inchoate work.

The verandah is full of fat black men in clean linen waiting for
interviews. They are bankers, shopkeepers, and landholders, who have