Part 14 (2/2)
CHAPTER XXIII
4th.--Half-an-hour's drive across the town brought us to the harbour, and then we had a hot walk to the end of the wharf. Such a struggle there was at the slip down to the small boats; four or five boats were trying to land natives, and at the same time as many were trying to take pa.s.sengers and natives off. It would have been impossible for a single lady. The native police in neighbourhood were of no use. I'd have thought British port authorities would have done something better. We rowed out to the steamer in the middle of harbour, our four rowers bucking in for a place, and scrambled on to the s.h.i.+p's gangway, without any attention from anyone on board. Other boats with native pa.s.sengers trying to scramble over us required a shove and a heave or two on my part to keep them off. I'd made a great effort to secure berths clearly and distinctly at the British India S. S. Agency, made various expeditions to the agents to see that all was right, but when we got to our cabin some young men were also allotted berths in it. They were most polite, but all the same it was uncomfortable for them and for us to have all their belongings moved.
... Four was the hour to sail. Now it is six and no sign of up anchor.
But why hurry? There is life enough to study for weeks, the main deck a solid ma.s.s of natives, all sitting close as penguins or guillemots, each family party on a tiny portion of deck, with their mats and tins and bra.s.s pots beside them, and what a babble! and pungent smell of South Indian humanity.
The sun goes down and Madras resolves itself into a low coast line, purple against streaks of orange and vermilion: some palms and a few chimney stalks break the level of houses and lower trees. The _Renown_ lies near us waiting to go for the Prince to convoy him to Rangoon; its white hull looks green against the orange sunset.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
There was nothing but necessity made the old settlers drop anchor here; a bend of the Silvery Cooum[18] gave them slight protection inland, but there was nothing in the way of roads or shelter. The sandy coast is dead straight. They did not know the qualities of the surf at first. Two experienced men were sent ash.o.r.e from the ”Globe” in 1611, and were promptly swamped and one nearly drowned; that was further up this Coromandel coast, when the Company was only beginning to try to find footing here. It was not till 1639 that they bought the land where Madras stands to-day, for the Company. These old fellows coming back to-day from the sea would not see any great change in the appearance of the land; the trail of smoke going levelly south-west from a tall smoke stalk would be the most conspicuous change.
[18] The Cooum is silvery to look at, but it is by its smell that people remember it.
Two steamers lie near us, just heaving perceptibly, as if breathing before taking the high road. Outside it blows a very little, a warm, damp wind; there will be a roll in the Bay of Bengal and we will head into it, and the natives' jollity will change to moans. I should think the s.h.i.+p's boats in emergency could hold a sixth of them. I hear there are some 2500, the three decks are choked with them fore and aft. Our tiny saloon and cabins are right astern and to port and starboard, and forward of it, are these natives; we are only separated from them by a board or two with a port-holes in it, and, the difference of fare! We pay ninety rupees each to Rangoon and they pay one each; if we open our port we might as well be all together, except that they get the first of the air. Unless we keep the blind pulled, night and day, we are subjected to ”their incorrigible stare,” which the Portuguese pioneers found so remarkable; their odour and noise is intolerable. For my _Boy_ I've paid twelve rupees, and he has the same deck s.p.a.ce as the other natives, that is, barely sufficient room to lie down in. The only deck s.p.a.ce we first cla.s.s pa.s.sengers have, is above the saloon, where the second cla.s.s deck is, on the P. & O., a nice enough place if it wasn't overlooked by the natives amids.h.i.+p, and over-smelt by the whole 2500 coolies. Fortunately to-day, the 6th, there's a lovely north-east breeze which takes away some of the monkey-house smell and noise. We count that there are forty natives in each of the two alleyways on either side of our cabins, so eighty rupees (a rupee is 1s. 4d.), less profit to the Company, and we could all have been decently comfortable. But even without moving them, one A.B. told off to keep them quiet would have allowed us to sleep at night.
Sunday morning.--All night, all day, whiffs of pure north-east air, and solid native; alternating, and all the time rising and falling, shouting, singing, arguing, quarrelling.
Heaven be thanked we have a pleasant enough company among ourselves, and the natives don't intrude more than parts of their bodies into the saloon doors and ports when the squeeze at the outside gets very strong, but they gaze stolidly on us at meals through the ports and doors!
It is pleasant enough on deck this Sunday afternoon under the awning. We have a piano in the middle of the deck, and a Captain in the East Yorks is playing--he was one of the men who so politely, in fact anxiously, vacated the cabin he found occupied by a married couple; four men play bridge near us, and as we are not a large company we have all got to know each other--the common infliction of the native crowd makes a bond of sympathy.
A young Englishman beside me is overhauling Madras B. A. Exam, papers, and works hard, so that he may have a clear holiday in Burmah. He hands me some of the papers to read, essays on Edwin Harrison's ”Life of Ruskin.” They are both funny and pathetic; we laughed at the absurd jumble of ideas in some, and felt sorry that natives should have to study the thoughts and sayings of a man, who, after all, did not himself understand the very simple beauties of a Whistler. Then I dropped on an essay, eight pages foolscap, in scholarly handwriting, with perfect grasp of subject, and concentrated, pithy expression. I could with difficulty accept the a.s.surance that it was written by a Madra.s.see and not by some famous essayist! So, perhaps, if one Eastern can grasp Ruskin's best thoughts it may be worth the effort of trying to teach thousands who can't? Is it not folly, this anglicising of the Indians, Irish, and Scots by the English schoolmaster, who knows as little of Sanscrit as of Erse Scottis or gaelic; calls England an island! and wishes to teach everyone ”The ode to a Skylark,” ”Silas Marner,”[19] and ”Tom Browne's Schooldays.” (My own dear countrymen you will not be taken in by this chaff for ever, will you?) Why not study Campbells tales in gaelic, or Sir David Lindsay, or the Psalms by Waddell or Barbeurs Bruce.
[19] Prescribed by Indian university curriculum.
Just to make the groups on deck complete we ought to have children playing, but there are none with us, their route lies always westwards; they would be a pretty foil to the serious restfulness of the deck scene. Now a lady sings ”Douglas tender and true,” and sings it so well, we could weep were we not so near port; a group in the stern beside the wheel watches a glorious sunset, which fills the s.p.a.ce we sit in under the awning with a dull red and across the light a missionary paces, aloof and alone; a melancholy stooping silhouette against the glorious afterglow--to and fro--to and fro--a lanky, long-haired youth, his hands behind his back, looking into his particular future, a life devoted to convert the gracious, charitable followers of Gautauma Buddha to--his reading of Christ's simple teaching.
CHAPTER XXIV
RANGOON GYMKHANA
[Ill.u.s.tration]
January 7th.--We danced--I danced with ladies in Gainsborough hats, their feathers tickling my eye, in pork pie hats, and Watteaus, and picture hats like sparrows' nests; and there were little dumpy ladies and tall, stately, Junos, _i.e._, compared with Eastern women. And it was so funny to see men in suits of blue serge, tweeds, or tussore silk, whirling round with ladies in muslins of every lovely colour. If the men had only worn bowlers and smoked cigars, how it would have taken me back to student days in Antwerp at Carnival time, not so jolly of course, but very different from anything at home. And how stately are the club-rooms--really they are well off these relations of ours ”Out East”--don't believe their groans altogether! it is hot now, they say, but look at the fun they have, especially ladies. There are ladies'
billiard-rooms, card-rooms, music-rooms, reading-rooms inside, and outside, lawns and flowers and attendants to fetch and carry, and swains to admire them, and they have latest dresses, dances, b.a.l.l.s, riding, tennis all the time, and Royalties and Viceroys at intervals. Compare this to the humdrum life of our women in Scotland with their brothers and cousins, ”A wede awa” to the uttermost ends of the Empire, and never a Viceroy or Royalty of any description to show above their level horizon--that is intolerable.
Then home to dinner, very full of interest and wonder at the sights of the day, and scribbled the above dance scene, and dressed and walked over the way in the soft dust in the soft moonlight and dined with friends and relations, and talked in the dark teak-wood bungalow of other friends and relations and home things, and looked at curios and sketches; and little lizards looked out at us from the walls, and a huge piebald fellow up in the shadows of the wooden roof, a foot and a half long if an inch, a _Chuck-Tu_, didn't frighten our hosts in the least!
Then across the strip of moonlit, to sleep my lone, under the hospitable teak roof-trees of ”a Binning!”
Here there seems to be a hiatus in these notes of mine--it is rather a jump from the British India steamer to a Gymkhana dance? But such a break gives relief to the mind, and has sometimes even a dramatic effect. I have twice observed such breaks in journals; the first in Edinburgh, in the journal of the City Clerk. The break occurs when the Provost and Clerk lay cold on Floddon Field, and the entries are taken up in a new hand with a minute which begins--”Owing to a rumour of a disaster in the south.” The second break, I saw the other day in the Madras records. It occured when the French called at Fort George in 1746. The break in my journal is simply the result of yesterday being so full of interest that I did not write up till this forenoon, after a pause for rest and refreshment.
So to hark back. The landing at Rangoon and coming up the river was the best part of the journey from Madras. For descriptions of coming up the Rangoon river see other writers. G. and I had been kept awake for several nights by the natives[20] and finally had to shut our port and s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour or two of sleep without air so as to be without noise,--this after various expeditions to try and quiet the beasts outside, but nothing but drowning would have stopped their horrid exuberance.
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