Around the World with a King

by William N. Armstrong

  While driving through the city of Maulmain we noticed a bridal reception of the lower class in a very humble dwelling. The mother of the bride displayed an enormous brass ring worked through her nose and covering her chin, while silver rings encircled her ankles above her bare feet. The fashion seemed to run among the females of using these large and inconvenient ornaments in the noses, ears, and about the ankles. Our native driver described the marriage ceremony. We halted for a moment before the house and watched the wedding feast.

  The King directed the driver to call the bride. She came forward modestly, and the guests followed her to our carriage. The King handed her an English sovereign. She took it, looked at it with surprise, bowed to the ground, and returned to the house with a dowry from a king.

  We returned to the steamer, and now were transferred to the steamer "Pemba," which was about to leave for Rangoon and Calcutta. A Sikh soldier, in a white turban, brought a message from Colonel Duff, the Civil Commandant of the province, stating that he had heard of the King's presence and wished to pay him an official visit. He arrived shortly afterward. The King relieved him from embarrassment by stating that he had for the time assumed his incognito character, and he alone was responsible for any neglect to tender civilities to himself.

  After leaving Maulmain the steamer anchored for a few hours in the Irrawaddy, at Rangoon. The British Commissioner, Mr. Barnard, took us ashore in his launch, and offered to the King the usual military reception, which he declined; but we had tiffin in the Commandant's residence. We drove to the Buddhist pagodas on the rising ground above the city; the domes of the temples glittered in the sunlight; their large number was the evidence of the thriving condition of Buddhism. By the side of these temples are English houses, English street signs, and everywhere the deep prints of the British trail. In the public schools the English language is taught, and the Burmese children, now British subjects, take Western ideas and learn something of the great nations.

  Those who advocate the "emancipation of women" will find in Burmah the most advanced thought. Here it has reached giddy heights, for custom and law decree that a woman shall choose her own husband. I could obtain no explanation of the rise of this practice, which clearly dethrones the sovereignty of man. The men who appeared on the streets did not have an abject look, and it is possible that this reversal of the order of things has promoted domestic happiness. Occasionally we saw men with signs on their foreheads, produced by ochres; these we assumed to be members of the despised class who never had an offer of marriage.

  We remained in the Government Residence for one night, and on the next day left for Calcutta. It was the anniversary of the Queen's birthday. All Asia knew it. The wings of the morning had taken the news to the uttermost parts. On the Irrawaddy was the noise of guns, and dense clouds of smoke from salutes, as on the Thames or the Mersey. One reflects that the empire of Alexander the Great was a kitchen-garden in comparison with these vast possessions of the Queen.

  The British Commissioner in this place was also a quiet, kind, plainly dressed man, and yet, with the touch of his finger on a button, he could summon fleets and armies. He and the other men of the admirable Civil Service are content to rule millions of people without "squeezing them," as the Chinese say, and in middle life they retire on their pensions to the beautiful homes of England.

  A British wag had told the Burmese that the foreign King was a cannibal, and on his departure from home had eaten a fat Chinaman for whom he had paid three hundred rupees. At the landing a large crowd gathered to see one of the anthropophagi, and no doubt the story will pass down for generations, of the appearance in Burmah of this well-dressed man-eater, the sultan of some country beyond the sea, but so renowned that even the British saluted him with many guns.

  The steerage or forward deck of the steamer was occupied by many types of the Eastern races, Chinese, Malays, Mohammedans, and Hindus. The most picturesque character of these was the Mohammedan at his evening prayers; grand in his devotions, but perhaps with a Pharisaical conceit in his own impressive gymnastics. As the Koran forbids him a closet, he takes space wherever he is and fashions an effective environment. An American would say he preferred a five-acre lot for his communion with Allah. As the sun went down in a ball of fire, an-lslamite stepped to a clear space on deck and carefully laid down his cheap blanket, slowly adjusted his fez cap, and faced the setting sun, which was in the direction of Mecca Raising his arms high, he was motionless for a moment; then, slowly kneeling, with his eye fixed on the sun and his lips in motion, he again stood like a statue. He then touched the deck three times with his forehead, and remained in this suppliant attitude while he repeated some ritual. Raising himself again slowly to his full stature, with his eyes closed and his hands clasped on his breast, he stood motionless, muttering his Arabic prayer: "God is great! God is great! "Once more, grandly, gracefully, leisurely, he prostrated himself, rose again slowly, repeated in Arabic, "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet!" then gathered up his blanket, glanced around at his audience, and "closed the show." Perhaps there was more of heredity than sincerity in his devotions; perhaps his motives were mixed and beyond analysis. Did Longfellow interpret his supplications:

  "Allah gives light in the darkness,

  Allah gives rest from pain;

  Cheeks that are white with weeping,

  Allah paints red again."

  The Chinese, Hindus, and Malays looked with indifference upon the Mohammedans at their prayers. A century before, these men of different religions would have been at one another's throats, with their intolerance and hatred. But at the masthead was the flag which they all knew too well meant law and order. If it were written in the Gospels," Go ye and keep the peace among all nations," the British were surely filling the commandment.

  We entered the muddy waters of the Hooghly on the third day. As the ocean blue shaded off into the water of the earth-coloured stream, there was a sudden cry from the Hindus on the forward deck, "Ganga! Ganga!" ("The Ganges! The Ganges!") They stretched out their arms toward the sacred river which flows by the sacred city of Benares.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Reception at Calcutta — The English Civil Service — The Secret of Britain's Power in India — The American Negro Problem Compared with Race Problems in the East — The Reign of the "Plug" Hat — An Ex — King of Oude — Circumventing the King — Babu Literature — Robert Again Seeks to Rise to His Hereditary Level — Leave Calcutta for Bombay — Cooling the Train — Desolation of the Country — Need of Irrigation — An Indian Statesman's Views on European Civilisation — The King Creates a New Order of Merit — The Sacred City of Benares — Visit the Temples and the River — The Monkey Temple and the Imperturbable Goat — Priestly Logic — Reception at Bombay — Parsees — The Towers of Silence — Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's Magnificent Residence.

  BEFORE we were anchored off Calcutta, Mr. Macaulay, a relative of the historian, and one of the Secretaries for the great Province of Bengal, with Mr. Kirch of the Civil Service, boarded our steamer bearing an invitation from Sir Astley Eden, the Governor, to the King, asking him to be his guest at Darjeeling, some distance from the city of Calcutta. At this season of the year the Viceroy removes his residence to Simla, in order to avoid the heat of the plains, and the British residents remove to the mountains. The vice-regal court is also transferred to Simla, and the social life of the court is suspended in Calcutta. As our stay in India would be brief, it forbade our accepting any special hospitality from the Viceroy, though it was cordially tendered. The King was already tired of Oriental life and was anxious to see Europe. He did not take any interest in the great problems of the Orient. The scenes and incidents of the tour were merely toys, and he was now a little tired of them unless he secured decorations of the military Orders, which he could exhibit when he reached home.

  We were therefore provided with lodgings in a hotel in the city. The King declined the usual royal salute and a military parade, which were offered. The wea
ther was warm, and he preferred to be in his pajamas. The representatives of the government treated him with much courtesy and maintained as much ceremony about him as he would permit.

  These quiet, able, well-trained, and unassuming Englishmen in plain clothing, members of the Civil Service, were the rulers of the sixty millions of inhabitants of the Province of Bengal. They were capable of the vast responsibilities which form the English inheritance in India. The time had passed for the making of vast fortunes out of the people by arbitrary exactions. Indian rulers had now become voluntary exiles from England, who expected, after a sufficiently long and honourable service, to retire to quiet English homes; though if they chose they could be petty despots over two hundred and fifty millions of people. Around our table were seated these strong, incorruptible men, close students of political science, familiar with the native languages. Yet this British rule rested on a mine of physical force which, if the natives knew how to explode it, would not leave a vestige of British power. I asked Mr. Macaulay how fifty thousand British soldiers kept these two hundred and fifty millions in order. He replied, "They cannot agree among themselves; if they did, our rule would end instantly." Caste and religion with these millions is above loyalty to a common country. Mohammedans and Hindus cannot keep step to the same national anthem. The organising brain of the Briton, who knows the force of these racial antagonisms, thus keeps one fifth of the human race in order with little more than a policeman's club. Americans say that their own negro civilisation is one of the chief problems of the century. The eight millions of American negroes speak the English language, outwardly conform to Christian doctrine, and have the habit of subservience to the stronger race, which is more effective than the force of law. The task of controlling and moulding these eight millions of simple blacks, important as it is, is a bagatelle in comparison with the greater task of reconstructing the defective civilisation of two hundred and fifty millions of people whose thought and literature are full of force, but are suffering from the dry rot of ancient and unchangeable customs and habits.

  We were driven by the representative of the court to the pagodas, the forts, the prisons, and the public square, where in the afternoons the English and native residents meet on foot and in carriages. Here we saw the reign of the "plug hat." Neither heat nor other climatic conditions can dethrone it. It goes all over the world, strapped to the wings of British commerce. It is respected as profoundly as the Flag itself, or the Parliament. It is said that a Malay pirate once appeared before a British magistrate, with naked body, but covered with a silk hat, which he claimed was unanswerable testimony to his loyalty to the British crown.

  The King had been advised by some one in Singapore to visit the palace and menagerie of the ex-King of Oude, in the suburbs of Calcutta. This deposed King, with an income from the British government of $500,000 per annum, lived in much splendour with about three hundred wives, but was disreputable and vicious; his pleasure was in collecting wild beasts and in riotous living. Our King wished to see him; but there were political reasons for preventing it. A call by an acknowledged king, with the assent of the British, would, in the minds of the Hindus, be regarded as homage to their own deposed sovereign. The British government would not prevent a call by the Hawaiian monarch upon his deposed brother, but they preferred that he should not honour him. We, the suite, advised the King not to visit him, but his curiosity to see the magnificent establishment made him obstinate, and he resolved to go. We therefore, with a subterfuge, prevented it. We contrived that a message should be brought to us stating that the measles had broken out in the palace of the ex-King. Our royal master recalled the fate of his predecessor in London, the incidents of death,—Sandwiches, etc.,—and he yielded. The success of this subterfuge led us to try another, the story of which will appear later in this memoir. It is a maxim of the Anointed that they are above all law; from this is forced a corollary that those who deal with kings are above all conscience. We confessed our iniquity on reaching home and received the royal pardon.

  To me, the old residences of Clive and Warren Hastings, the empire-builders, were the fascinating spots of Calcutta. These men were the commercial travellers who had taken up the sword as a mere incident of trade, and had opened the way for the expansion of British power over such an enormous portion of the globe as it has since dominated. While George III and Lord North were, through a foolish policy, casting away the American colonies, these soldier-traders were replacing them with a vast empire.

  Several Hindus who had been educated in the English schools applied to the King by letter for appointments in his islands. One of their letters, we were told, was a fair sample of Babu literature:

  "CALCUTTA, May 29, 1887.

  "YOUR MIGHTY EXCELLENCY AND SULTAN:

  "I debase myself to Your Excellency's greatness, to be magnanimous sentiments, to recognise in me capable of labour in mercantile house. I clutch your blessed hand to be encouraged for post of service in your great Empire, to be discharged gloriously by me. Admiration for me is monotonously expressed in letters. I will be honoured to lay with bended knees before your Majestic Excellence.

  "Your most obedient

  "SERVANT."

  A similar example of Babu literature is cited by Lady Dufferin. One of these worthies writes:

  "You are kind to me. May Almighty God give you tit for tat."

  Robert was again the cause of annoyance to us. He made another struggle in Calcutta to rise to his level. He had registered himself in the hotel as "Baron von O——, Equerry in Waiting," and without our knowledge was assigned to fine apartments. A place was made for him by the attendants at the King's table, but, as he did not appear, one of the government staff asked for an explanation. I took him aside and frankly told him the rather romantic story of the valet. During the evening, after the King had retired, I related to these gentlemen our many tribulations with Robert, and they were greatly pleased with the humours of the situation and the fortunes of the Feather Cloak. They admitted that even in the vice-regal court there were incidents equally ludicrous. The genteel appearance, tall figure, brilliant complexion, and excellent speech of the valet had impressed and puzzled these gentlemen.

  We left in the vice-regal car for a journey across India to Bombay by way of Benares. It was plainly furnished; in one of its co-apartments was a large tub into which water was let from a large tank in the roof of the car. Into the window frames were fastened wheels of straw called khuskhus. The wind caused by the motion of the cars caused them to revolve very rapidly. Water trickled down over them in small streams from a tank above, and the resulting evaporation cooled the air within the car. A box filled with ice was stored with the luggage, upon which some Babu had written a direction,-

  "H. M. KING, ESQ.,

  KALAKAUA."

  For some hundreds of miles our course was through arid land, for the monsoon had not come. If irrigation works are constructed through this vast area, and proper fertilisers are used, the population of this portion of India, it is said, may be trebled, and still find sufficient support from the soil. So far as we could see, for a thousand miles, there was nothing but parched fields and no green thing.

  Although we were now travelling in a land where, it is said, famine and misery are the lot of the common people, I recalled the speech of the Nawab Medhi Ali, of Hyderabad, a distinguished Indian statesman, who had recently returned from a visit to England. He spoke with admiration of the industrial power lying in the "two hundred millions of iron men," the steam force of British machinery in the manufacturing districts, and compared it with the conditions of India; but, he said," so far from widespread happiness in England, there is an appearance of poverty more pinching, and a misery more distressing, in a single quarter of London, than can be found in all the Deccan,—yes, it might be safely said, more than in all India." Is, then, the evolution of Christian civilisation in England abnormal and monstrous, or is it essentially the civilisation of France before the Revolution of 1893? I was not su
rprised, therefore, when the King, with his simple Polynesian mind, remarked from time to time that his own native subjects were as happy as any people he met in his travels.

  During the trip through this part of India the King became tired of gazing out of the windows, and for occupation invented a new Order of merit, which he styled the "Order of Kapiolani," his Queen. He said that he desired to confer distinction on several ladies who were famous in literature; he mentioned Miss Bird and Lady Brassey. He had been greatly annoyed by the innumerable requests for his Orders wherever we had been, and he thought a new Order would enable him to make those in existence less common. So, by a stroke of the pen, it was established, and the decorations were at once made in Paris. These he subsequently conferred upon many persons, some of whom received them as just marks of distinction, and some with much gratitude.

  Mr. Dannell, the British Collector of the Province of Benares, met us at the railway station at Benares and invited us to be his guests in the Government House. This invitation was declined, together with his offer of a parade of troops and royal salute, and we lodged in a hotel. The official staff, with some noted natives, called, and during that day and the succeeding one drove us about the sacred city; through the fine grounds of the Maharajah's palace, through narrow streets smelling of all abominations, where multitudes of women of the poorer classes squatted before hovels, with rings of silver or brass around their ankles or riveted through their noses; to the pagodas, temples, and sacred wells, where stench and dirt abounded; to the cow temple, where thirty sacred cows chewed their cuds without prejudice against a religion which filled them with rich provender; to the pen of the blind and sacred bull, who thrust out his tongue for food as the blind beggar holds out his box. We then moved up and down the Ganges in a barge, just beyond the line of the pilgrim bathers, who for a mile along its banks were motionless in the sacred water. Rising from the banks and on the hills above it were the gaudy temples, and on the low brink of the river the crematories, from which the ashes of the dead were flung into the stream. As we rested on the river, before a landscape within which lies the hope and redemption of all Hindu-land, I recalled a fierce debate of my college days, under the elms of Yale, over the question, "Should a Hindu mother obey the dictates of her conscience when it directs her to cast her child into the Ganges?" I was now actually looking upon the banks from which innumerable infants had been flung. If the Hindu mother obeyed her conscience, where was the sin? If the sin lay in her ignorance, was she responsible for light that for her had never shone? The theologists of those early days confidently consigned her to everlasting torments; the theologists of the "higher criticism" now suspend judgment, with less confidence in their knowledge of the moral mystery of this world.