Part 30 (1/2)

”Finally, after a thousand adventures, which he never wrote out, he arrived at the court of Oude, where, by some means, he obtained a captaincy in the royal army, and, what was better, the favor of the king. In 1780 he was commander-in-chief of the native army. But his enterprise did not end here; for he was the king's trusted favorite, and of course he became a millionaire, even though there were no railroad shares in being at that period.

”He brought with him some crude notions of architecture, and he set about reforming that of India. He was not a success in this capacity; and, as my lord says, his work is ridiculed by men of taste. But this appears to have been his only sin; for he used the money he had acc.u.mulated in establis.h.i.+ng schools, now known under the name of La Martiniere, in which thousands of children are educated. As a Frenchman I do not feel at all ashamed of Claude Martine.”

”You need not, Professor,” added the viscount. ”But here we are at the Lucknow station.”

As usual, by the kindness of Lord Tremlyn, everything had been provided for the arrival of the company of tourists. There were carriages and servants, and officers as guides, in attendance. Captain Ringgold was very economical of his time; and, as it was still early in the afternoon, he proposed that the party should visit some of the objects of interest before dinner. The baggage was sent to the hotel, and the carriage proceeded to the Residency, which had been occupied by the official of the British government when the province was under the native ruler. It was in ruins, for it was so left as a memorial of the events of the past.

The city was attacked by the rebels; and the little garrison, with the English people of the town, took refuge in this building. It was a three-story brick house, not at all fit to be used as a fort. The cannon-shot of the besiegers wrecked the building, and many of its defenders, including Sir Henry Lawrence, the commander, perished in the fight.

The visitors looked over the house and its surroundings, and then went to the hotel.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

MORE OF LUCKNOW AND SOMETHING OF BENARES

”I suppose you recall the events of the Mutiny well enough to understand the situation here in 1857,” said Lord Tremlyn the next morning when the company had gathered in the parlor of the hotel. ”But there was no ma.s.sacre here, as in Cawnpore, to impress the facts upon your memory, though many brave men lost their lives in the defence of the place. There were only seven hundred and fifty troops in the town; but Sir Henry Lawrence had done the best he could to fortify the Residency, ill adapted as it was for defensive works.

”An attempt was made to check the advance of the rebels eight miles from the city; but it was a failure, with the small available force, and two days later the enemy attacked the British at the Residency. Three times the brave defenders beat back the a.s.saults of the a.s.sailants. These events on the spot you have visited occurred between the last of May and the first of July. It was not till the twenty-second of September that Havelock and Outram arrived, and captured the Alum-Bagh, which we shall visit this morning. It was a terrible summer that the beleaguered people and their brave handful of soldiers pa.s.sed; and Tennyson has commemorated Lucknow in his immortal verse.

”But the coming of Havelock was not the end; for the rebels besieged the place again, and it was near the middle of November before Sir Colin Campbell arrived, with a considerable force. He captured the Alum-Bagh, and, leaving in it a force of three thousand five hundred men, he escorted the women and children and the civilians to Cawnpore; but returned in March to subdue the rebels. For a week he fought them, drove them from the intrenchments in which they had fortified themselves, and the mutiny was ended, as I related to you on board of your s.h.i.+p.”

The carriages were at the door as soon as the party had breakfasted. They were driven to the cemetery, where they saw the grave of Lawrence, whose memorial is that ”He tried to do his duty.” In the Alum-Bagh, which means the Queen's Garden, was the grave of Havelock. It was here that Outram had his camp and fortifications for the defence of Lucknow during the absence of Campbell.

The Kaiser Bagh, or Caesar's Garden, contains some of the princ.i.p.al sights of the city, which the viscount pointed out and described. It is a forest of domes and cupolas; and the company halted at the pavilion of Lanka, which a French writer called the least ridiculous of the structures in the enclosure, though the professor insisted that it was quite as bad as the worst. It had an abundance of cupolas with arabesque domes; but the edifice looked like a sh.e.l.l, for the veranda, with lofty columns supporting the roof, appeared to take up the greater portion of the enclosed s.p.a.ce.

The most grotesque feature was at the entrance. A flight of broad stairs led to the princ.i.p.al floor, over which was extended what looked like an imitation of the Rialto bridge in Venice, with a small temple under the middle arch and at the head of the stairs. The top of the bridge was on a level with the flat roof, and the two side-arches started from the ground.

The building was handsome in some of its details; but the professor said it was an ”abomination,” and Dr. Hawkes called it ”queer.” The various edifices are now occupied by the civil and military officials.

”Where does the name of this place come from?” asked Captain Ringgold.

”Kaiser Bagh seems to be half German.”

”But it is not German,” replied Lord Tremlyn. ”These buildings were mostly erected no farther back than 1850, by Wajid Ali Shah, the King of Oude, who was deposed by the British government in 1856. He called himself Caesar, and Kaiser is simply a corruption of that name, with no German allusion in it.

He was the husband of the Queen of Oude, whose burial-place you saw in Pere-la-Chaise.”

The next visit was to the palace of Claude Martine, a conglomeration of all the styles of architecture ever known, and some that were never heard of.

At first view it looks like a small palace set on the top of a large one.

It is certainly very original and very elaborate. Going to the citadel, they entered by a highly ornamental gateway, which opened to the visitors the view of the vast pile of buildings, in the middle of which is the Imambara. The vastness of the pile presented before them was bewildering, though they had seen so many immense structures that mere size did not now overwhelm them. The Great Imambara is considered the marvel of Lucknow, and should not be confounded with another in the citadel bearing the same general name. To walk around or through this enormous building was simply impossible, and the party contented themselves with a general view from different points. It is located on a lofty terrace; and its long line of walls, crowned with Arabic domes, is very imposing.

”This palace was erected at the close of the last century, by Nawab, with half a yard of other names to fetch up its rear,” said Major Shandon, the military officer who was doing the honors of the city, with a pleasant smile. ”Like many others of the Indian monarchs, he desired to immortalize his name by erecting a monument in his own honor; and he offered a prize for the compet.i.tion of all the architects of India, for one that would surpa.s.s all others. We think he produced a plan that was worth the money he received; though we don't think he surpa.s.sed the Taj, or some other buildings that might be mentioned.”

This immense structure is now a vast a.r.s.enal. The other building, which sometimes robs this one of its honors, is called the Hoosseinabad Imambara; and perhaps the length of the added name may account, to some extent, for the robbery. It is in the citadel, and in sight of its namesake; but the mausoleum, for it is the tomb of Ali Shah, who died in 1841, stands alone; and it does not fatigue the eyes to look at it. It is a light, ethereal sort of structure, and looks like lacework. It is surmounted by a beautiful dome, and the roof bristles with the points of turrets and towers. It contains, besides the tomb of the monarch, a mosque, a bazaar, and a model of the Taj, which make up a sufficient variety for an edifice erected for a tomb.

This temple completed the list marked out for inspection in Lucknow. The party had not supposed there was much of anything here to be seen except the memorials of the Mutiny; and for these alone they would not have missed seeing the historic locality. The rest of the day was devoted to rides through the streets and suburbs of the city. The avenues were wide, the houses neat and commodious, and the gardens laid out with English taste.

The evidences of British thrift were to be seen in many portions of the place.

Lochner's Hotel was their abiding-place, and Major Shandon regaled the party at dinner and in the evening with stories of the place, and proved himself to be a gentleman of ”infinite humor.” The next morning the company took the train for Benares. They were a very sociable party, and preferred the conference carriage to being confined to the smaller compartments. The route was along the Boomtee River at first, which, some one has said, is the crookedest stream in the world, and the scenery was worth looking at.

But as soon as the ladies and gentlemen had satisfied themselves with looking out the windows the commander presented Sir Modava as the ”talkist”