Part 16 (1/2)
There was a beautiful thing in the reception Shamiana, but you had to have your eye lifting to note it. As you entered this tent from the town side, there were on either side three tiers of Burmese ladies sitting one above the other, their faces becomingly powdered with yellowish powder, and their eyebrows strongly pencilled, and they each had a yellow orchid in their black hair, and their dresses were of silks of infinite variety of tint--primrose, rose, and delicate white--”soft as puff, and puff, of grated orris root” and they glittered with diamonds and emeralds, and each held a silver bowl marvellously embossed, filled with petals of flowers and gold leaf. Their att.i.tudes were studied to their finger tips, and as the Prince and Princess went out they stood and dropped a shower of petals before them.
The arrangements for the procession through the streets were perfect, and the crowds in the streets were great! and best of all were the groups of Burmese country people coming in to town in their bullock carts, the rough dry wood of the wheels and arched sun-bitten covers in such contrast to the family parties tucked up inside, in their short white jackets and skirts and kilts of brightly coloured silks. How happy they are, old and young--you begin to wish you had been born a Burman when you hear their laughter and jollity. But I fear we will soon change all that with our Progress and Law of orderly grab and necessary ugliness. Everyone is on the move but the priests, for they do not take part in worldly affairs.
There was a garden party at Government House in the afternoon. G. and her hosts went. I was told I positively must not go without a frock-coat and top hat, so I stayed at home. It is pretty far East here, so frock-coats and toppers are necessary, at Bombay they are still worn occasionally; there you might have seen Royalty at a garden party actually chatting to men in pith helmets and tussore silks--gone at the knee at that!
In the evening the park and lake were beautifully lit up, and a local shower of rain came, just in time to put out half the lamps on the trees, so there was not too much light, as I am sure there would have been had some not been extinguished; but everyone moaned--said it was ”so sad” and ”you should have seen it last time.” There must have been a vast concourse of people. We were in the Boat Club grounds, and it was damp and hot. We waited about the lawn at the water's edge, and people chatted and smoked away the evening. Everyone seemed very jolly, and to know everybody else, and we were given the names of many people and the letters after their names; they all had them, but one would need to live in official circles for a long time to learn their meanings.
I thought of Whistler's ”Cremorne Gardens” and his ”Valparaiso,” for this was such a night effect as he could have painted, and so I thought of The M'Nab's saying, ”The night is the night if the men were the men.”--someone, a Neish perhaps, may see the connection of ideas here, I admit it is slight.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The Prince and Princess were floated across the calm water of the lake in a fairy galley all over lamps. I made a jotting from recollection, so I will put it in here. It had three spires and each spire had seven roofs tapering to a Hte, and two great heads of paper geese were at the bow, and hundreds of glowing lamps lit the Royal suite on board. Besides the great state barge there were many boats fancifully decorated with glowing arrangements of lamps and flowers. The prettiest, I thought, a great water lily with a dainty little Burmese girl in green (”The jewel in the lotus”) in its petals, posturing and singing. The heavy white petals in lamplight and rosy lights in the reddish buds and leaves against the dark water were charming, and the Burman in charge, with the usual red strip of cloth round his black hair, brown face, and white jacket, caught a little of the warm light and so blended into the picture. Burmese crews in dug-out war canoes, towed the Royal barge across the lake, and as each canoe crossed the paths of light reflected from the illuminated boats, the figures paddling stood out clearly and were then lost in darkness. They sang in full chorus with a reed piping between each line, liquid quiet music; who was it said--like the sound of gra.s.s growing? For a moment the charm was broken by the bra.s.s band behind us beginning, but mercifully some one stopped it, and the Royal pa.s.sengers landed to gentle native music.
[Ill.u.s.tration: H.R.H. Prince and Princess of Wales landing at the Boat Club, Rangoon]
Here is, as nearly as possible, in colour, what I remembered of the Prince and Princess landing on the lawn, and neither more nor less, I hope--but one is so apt to put in more from careless habits of accuracy--to count the spokes of the moving wheel.
The words the crews sang were of ”Our King Emperor, who is of the lineage of World Emperors (Mandat), and who on the l.u.s.trous throne of Britain was crowned.” They compare our King to the resplendent Indian sun; ”Our King Emperor” begins each stanza with the catch of the stroke, or rather, the dig of the paddle. ”Our King Emperor, who enjoys his Imperial pleasures in the golden palace[23] in London, and with especially distinguished intellectual powers rules over a kingdom whose inhabitants are like the Nimmanarati G.o.ds delighting in self created pleasures.... The ill.u.s.trious Royal couple come from the palace of flowers over distant seas in the _Renown_ surrounded on all sides by the blue expanse of wave after wave, through the Indian Empire escorted by Guards of honour, and amidst echoes of the Royal salute from the Artillery.... For long life extending over a hundred years for our sovereign's heir-apparent and for his Royal consort, the Princess of Wales, who is like a wreath of the much prized Tazin (orchid) flowers on a bed of roses....” It is pretty in bits, I think, the blue expanse, wave after wave, and the wreath of Tazin on a bed of roses quite take my fancy.
[23] All the Burmese royal residencies were and are still covered with gilding. Shwey or gold, is also a Burmese term for royalty.
The illuminations, like the reedy music, went out slowly, and the bra.s.s band had its turn and pom-pomed away finely, as the Prince and Princess stood a little, on a knoll under the Club trees, in a glow of hundreds of lamps. Their coming down the winding path from the knoll was picturesque. I've a thumb-nail jotting of it, our people's faces on either side were so enthusiastic, and the Prince looked so pleased and the Princess looked so handsome and queenly, and the cheering--each man seemed to think depended on himself alone. It was really very pretty, the ladies' dresses, and uniforms and many black coats and the lamps on the trees made a gay piece of colour. We do s.h.i.+ne on occasions, we people of the Occident, but the Burmese s.h.i.+ne all the time.
17th.--Now we are moving on, up the river, by the Irrawaddy Flotilla Co.
paddle boat, instead of going to Mandalay by train and down by boat as is more customary, this for the reason that all the comfortable bogie carriages are away north with the Prince's following, and night in an old carriage is not to our tastes.
We go south down this Rangoon River a little way, then about sixty miles from the sea, cut across the Delta west by the Ba.s.sein Creek, and get into the navigable Irrawaddy, spending a night on the way tied up in the creek at a place where, I am told, we will probably be attacked by a very powerful tribe of mosquitoes, then next day higher up we will, according to Messrs Cook, see mountains again!
[Ill.u.s.tration: Sunset on the Irrawaddy]
CHAPTER XXVI
17th January.--On the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's S.S. ”Java”--after our British India S.S. experience it is delightful, the quiet utterly soothing. It is hot it is true--hot as in the hot weather they say, but the air is clean on the river.
We are now on the Ba.s.sein Creek, twenty-five miles long, going across the Delta west from Rangoon River to the Irrawaddy to steam up it for five days, tying up at night. It is better even than we were told!
This steamer is long, low, and wide decked, with a nice saloon forward on the upper deck, eight cosy cabins on either side, and a promenade in front of them, on the fo'csle head as it were. Aft, divided from us by the pantry and a wire part.i.tion, there is a long stretch of deck going right to the stern, all covered by a roof; on this deck sit and lie Burmans, singly or in family groups, in pretty silks, on neat mats and mattresses and pillows with tidy little bundles of luggage beside them.
We do not stop steaming to-night, for we have barely enough of the flood to take us over the shallow midway part of the creek, where the east and west tides meet, so as the sun went below the flat sh.o.r.e and reeds, and it grew dark, the search-light on the lower deck was turned on.
Now we have wonderful theatrical pictures continually changing--bluey-green round pictures framed by the night, first on one bank then on the other, as the light sweeps from side to side, and always down its rays a continuous shower of golden insects seems to come rus.h.i.+ng towards us. In the dark behind the lantern, the deck below is crawling with them. The trees we light up on the banks have the green of lime-lit trees on the stage, and the same cut out appearance. Fantastic boats suddenly appear out of the velvet darkness. They have high sterns elaborately carved, and the red teak wood and the brown bodies of the rowers pus.h.i.+ng long oars glow in the halo of soft light; other figures resting on their decks are wrapped up in rose and white and green draperies, and each soft colour is reflected quivering in the ripple from the oars.
By the way, as we slept the Ba.s.sein mosquitoes did come on board, and answered their description--they do raise lumps! Horses have to be kept in meat safes on sh.o.r.e, and they say you can tell a man who has lived in the district years afterwards, by the way he slips into a room sideways, and closes the door after him. Two or three bites make a whole limb swell; therefore travellers, bring mosquito curtains if you travel here for pleasure.
18th.--Fresh--cool--sun--and this is a wide river in Fairyland, for the colours of foliage, water, and sky are too delicate and bright for any real country I have ever seen. Where, in reality, do you see at one glance, delicate spires in gold and white rising from green foliage, and dainty bamboo cottages of matting and teak; and women in colours as gay as b.u.t.terflies, coming from them into the morning sun; and fishermen in hollowed logs with cla.s.sic stems and sterns, their clothing of the colour of China asters, their faces coppery gold, and their hair black as a raven's wing, drawing nets of rusty red, of the tint of birch twigs in winter, out of muddy water enamelled with cerulean.