Ahmed (commonly called in our Household as the Sergeant Major) cannot get on with Abdul, whom he is jealous of. One must go, so Ahmed, whose health is bad, goes. We want to let him down easily, and are trying to get him employment at Hyderabad. Hearing that Abdul can bear arms, Ahmed asks, and the Queen hopes he can get it.1
With the troublesome issue of Husain resolved, it was time once again to sail to Europe for the spring break. The Queen would go to Grasse this year, an attractive floral town in the foothills of the Alps, fifteen kilometres from the coast. She was returning to the Riviera after an absence of four years and took over the whole of the Grand Hotel for her entourage of forty people, which included her retinue of Indian servants. The Standard newspaper reported cynically about the preparations: ‘It will require dexterous management to find accommodation for the whole of the royal party in the Grand Hotel, although it is a very large building, as special arrangements have to be made for the pampered Indian domestics who Her Majesty insists on carrying about with her.’2 Seventy-six boxes and horses and carriages were sent on ahead to await the arrival of the Queen.3 The donkey and donkey cart went too, the Queen finding the latter convenient for travelling around the grounds. The crossing to Cherbourg was smooth and the Queen enjoyed her Hindustani lessons with Karim on board the Victoria and Albert.
The Indian attendants were now placed in the fourth carriage from the Queen on the Royal train, next only to the carriage carrying the Household, much to the jealousy of the other staff. On the way from Cherbourg to Grasse, the Queen’s journey was held up following an incident. The Standard newspaper carried the report from its Paris correspondent:
Some forty miles from Cherbourg the alarm bell was rung, and the train was of course, immediately pulled up, and the officers rushed to find out what had happened. It was discovered that one of the Hindoo servants in the suite had been amusing himself by handling the alarm signals, which is conspicuously putup in every carriage, and accidentally set it in operation. The authorities were greatly relieved at finding it was only a false alarm and the train sped on its way.
The reporter used ‘Hindoos’ as a generic name for Indians, as the attendants were, of course, all Muslims. No doubt Karim – in charge of all the Indian attendants – would have had a stern word with the errant servant who had stopped the Queen’s train.
The Queen had chosen Grasse on the recommendation of her daughter Princess Louise, who had told her about the beautiful gardens set out by Alice de Rothschild in the Villa Victoria near the hotel. The Queen’s day would begin after breakfast with the Hindustani lessons and the usual chat and gossip with Abdul Karim. This would be followed by her looking through her letters and boxes (which were brought to her every two weeks from London) and then a round of the gardens in the donkey chair.
While she was at Grasse the Queen had a visit from the errant Maharajah Duleep Singh, her previous ward. Some months ago, he had written to her begging forgiveness for all the wrongful acts he had committed against the British government over the last few years. The Maharajah had written to Lord Cross: ‘I write to express my great respect for my past conduct towards Her Majesty, the Queen Empress of India. I humbly ask Her Majesty to pardon me, and I trust entirely to the clemency of the Queen. Should her Majesty grant me pardon, I promise obedience to her wishes for the future.’
Duleep Singh had been living in Paris ever since he was arrested at Aden and prevented from returning to India in 1886. He had tried to link up with the Russians and the Irish in his attempt to regain the throne of Punjab and the prized Koh-i-Noor, declaring that he would shed his last drop of blood in liberating his beloved subjects. ‘I know Sri Sutt Gooroo will help me. I shall free them from the English yoke,’ wrote Singh.4 It had all come to nought however. The Russians had lost interest and stopped funding him. His protector, Katkoff, had died and the Prince had suffered a massive stroke that had left him half paralysed. The Prince then asked his son, Prince Victor, to write to the Queen on his behalf:
It seems to me now that it is the will of God that I should suffer injustice at the hands of your people. I can find no one to curse Great Britain, and in spite of all her faults and her injustices, God blesses and makes her Great, and when I look at her, I feel that, in fighting against your country, I have been fighting against God. I would return to England if I were assured of your free pardon.5
The Queen pardoned him in August 1890, after Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, agreed to it. Cross wrote to Duleep Singh telling him that provided he remained obedient to the Queen and agreed to regulate his movements with the instructions that would be issued to him, ‘Her Majesty, by the advice of her Ministers, has been graciously pleased to accord to you the pardon that you have sought’.6 The meeting in the Grand Hotel in Grasse, a few months after she had pardoned him, went off reasonably well, though it left the Queen rather drained emotionally. She recorded in her Journal:
He is nearly paralysed down his left side. He was in European clothes with nothing on his head and, when I gave him my hand he kissed it and said ‘Pray excuse my kneeling’. His 2nd son Frederick, who has a very amiable countenance, came over from Nice with him. I made the poor broken down Maharajah take a seat and almost immediately afterwards he broke into a most violent fit of weeping. I took and stroked his hand, and he became calmer and said ‘Pray excuse me and forgive my grievous faults’ to which I replied ‘that is all forgiven and past’. He complained of his health and said he was a poor broken down man. After a few minutes talk about his sons and daughters, I wished him goodbye and went upstairs again, very thankful that this painful interview was well over. He was to have some refreshments and then drive back to Nice.7
The Queen, a strict moralist, had however refused to receive Duleep Singh’s second wife, his former mistress Ada Douglas Wetherill, on the grounds that he was living with her when he was still married to his first Maharani. The Queen had been very fond of Duleep Singh’s first wife, Maharani Bamba, and disapproved of Duleep Singh’s disregard for her. With the painful chapter of Duleep Singh resolved, the Queen spent a few more relaxed weeks in Grasse, even buying a she-ass for her donkey chair. The she-ass would travel back with her to England and give welcome relief to Pierrot, the Queen’s Scottish donkey, who was getting on in years.
The Munshi’s fame had by now spread in Britain. His name figured regularly in the Court Circulars as he accompanied the Queen and attended royal dinners, levees and theatricals. The circulars would always mention him as ‘the Queen’s principal Indian secretary’, along with the rest of her suite. Muslims living in Britain wanted to see the man who walked in the charmed Royal circle and was so close to the Queen. It was a custom with Karim and the Indian attendants that after the holy month of Ramadan – throughout which they would observe their strict fast – they would go to the Shah Jahan mosque in Woking to pray at Id. The mosque in Surrey, about thirty miles west of London, had been built in 1889 by an orientalist named Dr Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, born of Jewish parents in Hungary, who had lived for several years in Istanbul, London and India and was a professor of Arabic and Islamic law. In 1883 he had acquired the site of the Royal Dramatic College, a large Victorian building in extensive grounds in Woking, and started the Oriental Institute there. With funding from the Begum of Bhopal, a purpose-built mosque was soon constructed on the site, complete with pillars and a dome. Designed to look somewhat like the Brighton Pavilion, it became the first mosque to be built in Britain, and the first outside Moorish Spain in Europe.
The custom of Id prayers at the Woking mosque was followed by Karim every year, and The Birmingham Daily Post observed in an article in May 1891 that ‘they are met on the occasion by Mohammedans from all parts of England, who come to see the Munshi and join him in prayer’. The Munshi, who was a Hafiz (one who has memorised the entire Quran) was also invited to conduct the prayers at the mosque.
There is evidence that Indians travelling in Britain were often curious to see the Munshi and many wrote to him
and visited him. Some came to him for help. One of these visitors was Raj Bahadur, cousin of Jawaharlal Nehru (later to become India’s first Prime Minister) and nephew of Motilal Nehru (Jawaharlal’s father). He was the son of Bansidhar Nehru, second brother of Motilal Nehru. Raj Bahadur’s aunt, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (Jawaharlal’s sister), recorded in her memoir The Scope of Happiness that Raj Bahadur was an adventurer and had left home at a young age, leaving his wife and daughter to be looked after by the joint family. He wandered around Europe and America and, finding himself in straitened financial conditions, wrote to the Munshi and became acquainted with him. He even got employment under him for some time.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit had been told this story by her father Motilal Nehru. Later she became India’s High Commissioner in London and wrote:
I tried to check on this during my years in London, but all I could find out was that young Indians did go to the Munshi from time to time, probably to help or be helped by him, but there were no names available. Anyway, it’s a nice story.
The Queen was a great traveller. She enjoyed nothing more than sitting in her train and watching the countryside go by. She loved her visits to Europe, despite her advancing years, and always managed to pack in several engagements and meet her extended family. Barely a month after returning from Grasse, she left for Balmoral. The entourage travelled from Windsor to Derby and then to Ballater on 21 May 1891. The Munshi now travelled in luxury, solely occupying the whole of the fifth carriage on the Royal train, according to the Court Circular in The Times. His pre-eminent position in the Court can be judged by the fact that the adjoining fourth carriage had in it only the four senior-most members of the Household: Dr Reid, Alick Yorke, Lord Edward Pelham Clinton, Master of the Household, and Maurice Muther.
A document showing the arrangement of the Royal train carriages.
At Balmoral, the Queen often took her Hindustani lessons in the Summer Cottage within the grounds of the estate, a short distance from the castle. She would drive out in her carriage, the Munshi walking behind. The Queen enjoyed the company of the Indian Princes, like the Maharajah of Cooch Behar and the Maharajah of Kapurthala, who dropped in to see her over the summer in Balmoral. The Indian Royals always excited the reporters and locals on account of their exotic clothes. A reporter from the Dundee Evening Telegraph, who was going to see a production of Mikado at Balmoral, ran into one of the Royal carriages with outriders taking an Indian Prince to the station from Balmoral. He wrote next day: ‘The bright turbans of the Prince and his people are to be seen for a mile or so as we look back, adding their “iota” to the rich colouring.’8
The Queen had by now begun to plan an extension to Osborne House to accommodate a special Indian room to be named the Durbar Room. The sixty-foot long, thirty-foot wide and twenty-foot-high room was to be built adjacent to the pavilion and used as the much-needed Banqueting Room. It would be connected to the main house by a long corridor called the Indian corridor, where the Queen planned to have portraits of her favourite Indians on the wall, busts that she had commissioned and some of her prized Indian crafts. She had already met the architect, Bhai Ram Singh, Master of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore, who had been recommended to her by Sir Lockwood Kipling, Curator of the Lahore Museum and father of Rudyard Kipling. Lockwood Kipling had been commissioned by several Indian Princes to build an Indian-style Billiard Room in Bagshot Park, the Royal hunting lodge eleven miles from Windsor, as a special wedding present for Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, and the Duchess, Princess Louise. The Queen had seen the Billiard Room and always wanted an Indian room herself. The decorations for the room were all made in India and the walls and ceiling faced with wooden panels carved by craftsmen in Lahore. It was Bhai Ram Singh who had created and executed the designs at Bagshot and had travelled with Kipling to England to see the installation of the room. When the Queen contemplated the Indian room at Osborne, Lockwood Kipling suggested that she employ Bhai Ram Singh to supervise the work. Owing to the high cost of bringing in decorators from India, it was decided that Singh would create the designs and supervise their craftsmanship by British craftsmen, though both the Queen and Princess Louise privately had their doubts about whether they would be able to carry out the work to the same standard.
Eventually, the plaster decorations were made by George Jackson and Sons from London. Princess Louise suggested that the fireplace have as its centrepiece a peacock, as a direct link to the famous peacock throne of the Mughal emperors. By February 1891, Ram Singh had already prepared some ‘brilliant drawings’ and had shown them to Kipling. By April, work began in earnest to build the room of the Queen’s dreams. Here in the Durbar Room, she recreated the India that she could not visit. The ceilings and walls of the room were covered in ornate plaster carvings that resembled the architecture of both Mughal India and the Hindu temples of Rajasthan. The minstrel’s gallery was decorated with wooden jali (latticed) work completing the effect of a Rajasthani haveli or palace.
All the objects for the room, including the lamps, the light-fittings and chairs, were specially designed by Ram Singh and Lockwood. A large carpet from Agra covered the floor and the pottery was made from the Bombay Art School where Kipling had once taught. Even the curtain fabric was printed and embroidered in India. The room was completed by December that year and the Queen was so delighted with it that Ram Singh was invited to stay for five days over Christmas and given a signed photograph and a gold pencil case by the Queen as a Christmas present. The Durbar Room was now used by the Queen as a Banqueting Hall and she had the menu cards made with an Indian theme. With the ornate surroundings, the Indian attendants dressed in their turbans and the menu comprising the steaming hot curries that were always prepared in Osborne for luncheon, visitors would have had the complete oriental experience. The Queen enjoyed presenting this mini-India to visiting Indian Royalty. The Durbar Hall was always splendidly decorated at Christmas and the tableau vivant staged against the elaborate backdrop. Here, surrounded by her family and Indian servants, the elderly Queen lived out her Eastern fantasies.
In the kitchens at Osborne the Indian chefs were a small coterie working alongside, much to the amazement of, the European chefs. One of them, the young Gabriel Tschumi, who had recently arrived from Switzerland to join the Royal kitchens, was fascinated by the abundance of meat and vegetables in the Victorian kitchens as compared to the frugal diet in Europe at the time. Watching the Indian chefs at work left him in awe, and he recalled:
For religious reasons, they could not use the meat which came to the kitchens in the ordinary way, and so killed their own sheep and poultry for the curries [halal]. Nor would they use the curry powder in stock in the kitchens, though it was of the best imported kind, so part of the Household had to be given to them for their special use and there they worked Indian style, grinding their own curry powder between two large stones and preparing all their own flavouring and spices. Two Indian in their showy gold and blue uniforms worn at luncheon always served the curry to Queen Victoria and her guests.9
Menu card at Osborne, which shows a sketch of a pillar with a turbaned man on the top right-hand side.
Interestingly, curry was always served at lunch, never for dinner, as was the practice with the British in India after the Mutiny. To serve curry for dinner would definitely not be de rigeur. French or English cuisine would be the requirement for these occasions. However, it remained a tradition in the last decade of Queen Victoria’s reign that curry would be cooked every day and served, regardless of whether or not her guests ate it. Her grandson, George, would later develop a taste for Madras prawn curry and insisted on always eating a curry with his meals.
The Queen continued to take a keen interest in Indian political developments and followed closely the trouble in Manipur in north-east India where the Senapati was overthrown and an English Resident put in control. She sent several letters through Ponsonby saying that the Prince should not be executed. The religious riots which had occurred in Bombay t
hat year also concerned her. She met Lord Elgin, who had been appointed the new Viceroy of India, and discussed these matters with him before he left England to take up his post. She also told Lord Kimberley, Secretary of State for India, that the religious riots were rather threatening for the future of the country. Clearly under the influence of Karim, she felt that they were ‘directed by the Hindus against the Mohamedans, whom we have to protect as much as we can’.10
The Queen had also sensed in her conversations with Karim that many of the Residents appointed to oversee the administration of the native states by the British government were overbearing in their attitude, and she frequently expressed her concern to Lord Cross about this. The Secretary of State wrote to the present Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne:
I know not where she [the Queen] has got the impression that many of our Residents are rude and overbearing, and I took the opportunity afforded by seeing her constantly here [in Balmoral], of pressing for any instance that had been brought to her notice, but I cd. get no specific case. My own private opinion is that her Indian Munshi tells her that there is in India the greatest devotion to herself and all her family, but at the same time distrust and dislike of the Government, and that the Native chiefs think that the residents are rude and overbearing. I did not like to mention any case in which General Dennehy’s name was concerned, as he is coming here as groom in waiting tomorrow. From former conversations, however, with her, I cannot help thinking that the names of Sir Griffin and Sir A Colvin find no favour in her eyes.11
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