Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  I wish I had preserved a more minute recollection of my first Bombay impressions; they were very vivid at the time, and I remember being struck with surprise that all accounts of India that had ever fallen in my way were so meagre, when materials new and strange were in such abundance. I must brush up memory a bit, try to carry myself back to all the incidents of that interesting time.

  The youth of the women, and the beauty of the greater part of them, is one very distinguishing feature of the society; the cheerful spirits of all, gentlemen and ladies, is quite remarkable, to be accounted for, probably, by the easy circumstances of almost all, and the Occupation of their time. There are no idlers in India. Every man has his employment; he may do it well or ill, but he has it there to do, a business hour recurring with every day, releasing him every afternoon, and well and regularly paid the first of every month. The women must attend to their households and their nurseries with watchful care, or they will rue it, and tho’ some may neglect their duties more or less, none can avoid them. Then it is the most sociable country in the world, truly hospitable. Every body is acquainted, every door is open, literally as well as figuratively, there is an ease, a welcome, a sort of family feel among these Colonists in a strange land that knits them altogether very pleasantly. There are gradations in the scale of course, and very rigidly observed too, the ladies in particular preserving carefully their proper position. The Governour does for King, his suite for Court, the Commander in Chief and his suite almost as grand; then the 3 members of Council and their 3 wives! very grand indeed. An Admiral, or rather Head of the Navy. All the Civilians according to seniority, all the military according to their rank; the Judges of the Supreme Court, Officials pertaining thereto; barristers, Merchants—rather below par, with one or two exceptions; attorneys thought little of; Indian Navy ditto; Royal Navy in great repute when a stray vessel came in. A few French and Americans admitted. And several of the natives quite in fashion; rich Parsees, and one or two Hindus. All these elements shook up together very cordially, and there was an undergrouping of lower caste, native and foreign, all in their peculiar costumes, which, with the singular vehicles, the strange scenery, the ocean, and the cloudless sky, made a succession of pictures that would have enchanted an artist eye.

  As soon as all the Dignitaries and all the undignified had paid their visits, and what a crowd collected in our Aunt Caroline’s fine hall, daily, for a fortnight, my Mother and I had to return this attention. Mary was excused on account of her approaching marriage, which ceremony indeed interrupted our civilities; but we got thro ‘as many calls as we could, as soon as we had unpacked our finery. My father very wisely built a carriage expressly for this sunny clime, with open sides shaded by Venetians and a double roof, with a space between the outer leather and the inner cork. It was a delightful contrivance; we never felt baked in it, tho’ to say truth it was always disagreeable to me to drive out in the glare of the mid day.

  People lived about in so scattered a manner it took us a long time to get thro’ our roster of several hundreds. Very few inhabited the Fort; a few had cool dwellings on Rampart Row, but only a few. Bungalows on the Esplanade were much more in favour, oddly enough, for they were far from being cool or pretty; they were set down in a long row surrounded by dingy palisades, giving to each house of sticks and mats a bare compound—as the space we should use for garden is called. As these rickety residences cannot be lived in during the rains, they get rather rough usage twice a year, on being first set up, and then pulled down, and few people beautify them with a shrubbery for this space of time. The few tents sprinkled about look prettier, tho’ they could not be so comfortable.

  The pleasantest houses are those dotted all over the plain and on every rising ground and along the Breach Candi road by the sea, with gardens round them like Camballa, and some little attempt at permanence of construction. The whole scene is very beautiful, the whole style very attractive, and the life, but for the exhausting midday heat, would be very agreeable.

  My sister’s marriage was a grand affair. I don’t remember how many people my Aunt thought it necessary to invite to the breakfast; there were above 20 present at the Ceremony in the Cathedral. We had such a Cousinhood at the Presidency, and Mr Gardiner and Uncle Edward had so many friends, and there were my father’s brother judges, etc. Good Mr Carr, now the Bishop, married them.

  For so very pretty a girl as Mary then was, so beautiful a woman as she became, there never was a less interesting, I was going to say a plainer, Bride. Her dress was heavy and unbecoming, and a very large veil, the gift of Mr Norris, hid all of her face except the large nose, the feature that had been best concealed. She was perfectly silent before the ceremony and equally silent after it, self possessed all through. She bowed without smiling when her health was drank and she went off with her husband in her new carriage to Salsette as if she had been going out just to take a drive with me.

  I never pretended to understand Mary; what she felt, or whether she felt, nobody ever knew when she did not choose to tell them. Like Jane, and I believe like myself, what she determined on doing she did, and well, without fuss, after conviction of its propriety. One thing is certain, she married a most estimable man; and she made a most happy marriage, and whatever she felt towards him the day she became his Wife, she was afterwards truly attached to him and she valued him to the end of her days as he deserved.

  We had had plenty to do, she and I, preparing for this event, for Mary, not content with her outfit, ordered considerable additions to her wardrobe, such things as she and our Aunt Caroline considered indispensible in her new position—near £100 my father had to pay. Then there were toilette requisites, a carriage, liveries, horses, servants, linen etc., on Mr Gardiner’s part, all to be chosen by her. A friend, Mr Elliot, lent them or rented to them his furnished house at Bycullah, which saved them both trouble and expense, he Mr Elliot being ill and ordered to the Neilgherries; still there were many little matters to settle, and we had no help from my father and mother. They were completely absorbed in the same sort of affairs of their own. Really it was amusing to see persons of their age, who had kept house for so many years, and had full experience of such business, so completely occupied with every the minutest detail of their Bombay establishment. Their house, its situation, furniture, number of servants, etc., one could understand would require attention; but the shape of the turbans, the colour of the cumberbands, their width, the length of the robes of the Chobdars, all these minutiae received the greatest consideration. I declare I don’t believe the Secretaries to the Government gave half so much thought to their minutes of council. Mr Gardiner and Mary made much shorter work of it, but then certainly they had not so much to do. I had no sinecure listening to both parties, and Aunt Caroline’s comments besides.

  A short honeymoon satisfied our lovers; they returned after a retirement of 10 days, and then began a round of entertainments to the newly married pair. Every incident was seized on by the community to give excuse for party giving. There was so little to interest any one going forward at any time, the mails being infrequent then, that we all gladly turned attention to the trifles which filled up our lives for want of better things. An Indian life is very eventless; very dull it was to me after Mary married and John left us. Uncle Edward continued so unwell after losing the gout that he was recommended to try a year at the Neilgherries; John went there with them, proceeding afterwards from there by Bangalore to Madras and so to Calcutta, his nomination being to Bengal.

  My father and Mother and I removed on their departure to the Retreat, a very fine house belonging to one of the Cowajees, badly situated at the foot of a wooded hill, which intercepted the sea breeze, and on the edge of a tank that overwhelmed us with mosquitoes. We had a large and pretty garden divided into three; one part, round two sides of the house, filled with shrubs and flowers, a piece of higher ground beyond, ending in a long terrace where I liked to walk on moonlight nights, tho ‘I never sat in a Belvidere two storeys high over look
ing the road at the end of it, and a rose field of the small single Atta rose, the perfume from which was delightful. The house itself was a palace; a broad gravel terrace surrounded it, with several flights of broad steps at intervals leading down to the road or the gardens. Upon this terrace the verandah of course opened, and into the Verandah opened all the rooms of the ground floor; the centre hall was 60 or 70 feet long, and of sufficient width to allow of three square rooms being partitioned off each end of it; the three at one side we called Drawing rooms. We ate in the hall; at the other side, one room was a spare bedroom, the other my father’s study with a bath room thro’ it, and the middle room held a very handsome staircase leading up to my Mother’s apartment and mine, both were alike composed of three pieces, bedroom, dressing room, wardrobe room which was dark, and contained the large tin cases in which we kept our dresses safe from insects. There were bath rooms and a connecting Verandah in which our Ayahs slept and our tailors worked. Over the hall and Drawing rooms there was no second storey.

  Altho ‘the Drawing rooms were only separated by skreens from the hall, we lived in the hall mostly, on account of the current of air thro’ it from its open sides. The kitchens were in a court behind; the stables near them; such of the servants as remained all night slept any where they chose to lay their mats down; they had no bedclothes, neither did they undress. Few of them ate together, the different religions and the different castes of each religion never mixing at meals. They had no settled hours for eating. I used to smell their vegetable curries at all sorts of times, and see piles of white rice, or scones of what looked like barley meal, carried here and there as wanted. The hungry sat in a circle on the ground out of reach of a contaminating presence, dipping their scones or their fingers into the one pot and making a nice mess of it. I have heard of a low caste, or a European, passing between the wind and them making it sinful to finish the polluted repast, which was of course thrown out.

  Our Establishment consisted of a Head Servant, a Parsee, who managed all, hired the rest, marketted, ordered, took charge of every thing, doing it all admirably, and yet a rogue. An under steward or Butler, a Mohammedan, who waited on me; 4 Chobdars, officers of the Supreme Court who attended my father there, waited at meals on him and my mother, and always went behind the carriage; they were dressed in long scarlet gowns edged with gold lace, white turbans, gold belts, and they bore long gilt staves in their hands. The Parsee Head wore a short cotton tunick with a shawl round the waist, silk trowsers, very wide, and the high brown silk cap peculiar to the Parsees. My Mohammedan had a white turban, white tunick, red shawl, and red trowsers, tight to the leg. My father’s valet was a Portuguese Xian in a white jacket and trowsers, European style. Besides these there were 4 Sepoys for going messages, who wore green and red and gold fancifully about their turbans and tunicks—the family livery; two hammauls to clean the house, two bheasties to fetch the water, two men to light the lamps, one water-cooler and butter maker (this last piece of business being done in a bottle on his knee), a gardener, a Cook with an assistant, two dhobees or washermen, and a slop-emptier, all these being Hindus of various castes and going nearly naked, except the cook, who was a Portuguese.

  The Stable establishment was on a similar scale: 2 pair of carriage horses, my father’s riding horse and mine, a coachman, groom to each horse who always ran beside him whether we drove or rode, and a grass cutter for every pair. Wages had need be small in a country where such a retinue was requisite for three people; no one doing more than one particular kind of service renders this mob of idlers a necessity. My Mother had her maid and I had mine, whose daughter also lived with us and was very useful. We hired a tailour when we wanted one, either a mender, or a mantua maker6 or a milliner as required.

  Our life was monotonous. My father and I rose before the sun, an hour or more, by lamplight, groped our way downstairs, mounted our horses, and rode till heat and light, coming together, warned us to return. I then bathed and breakfasted and lay upon the sofa reading till Fatima came to dress me. I always appeared at the family breakfast, tho ‘but for form. My father, who had been hard at work, fasting, made a good meal, and my Mother, only just up, did the same. We had frequently visitors at this hour; after they went my Mother walked about with the hammauls behind her, dusting her china, of which she very soon collected a good stock—calling out to them subhr when she wanted them to go on, and aste when they had omitted a cup or vase, for she never could manage their easy language. I wrote or worked or played and sang while the weather remained tolerably cool. In the hot months I never heard of any one able to do any thing. My father went to Court. When it was not term time, my Mother and I sometimes went in the carriage to pay visits. We very often were amused by receiving presents from the natives, and by the arrival of bhorers to tempt us with the newest fashions just received by ‘a ship come in last night,’ shewn first to us as such great ladies! My father received no presents himself, and permitted us to receive none but fruit and flowers; very valuable ones were at first offered to us but being invariably touched and returned, they soon ceased. The flowers generally came tied up with silver twist in the hands of the gardener, but the fruits, fresh or dried, were always in silver bowls, covered with silver gauze and brought in on the head of the messenger. Lady Hood and, they say, Mrs Blair, used to keep the bowls, but we, better instructed, returned the dull looking precious part of the offering with its dirty bit of covering, quite contented with our simpler share.

  The Bhorer entered more ostentatiously with a long string of naked porters, each bearing on his head a box. All were set down and opened, and the goods displayed upon the floor, very pretty and very good, and only about double as dear as at home, a rupee for a shilling, about. The native manufacturers are cheap enough, except the shawls; and, by the bye, Mr Gardiner gave me a shawl instead of himself—it cost £100. It is a very good thing to marry the last of a sisterhood, when one meets with such generous brothers in law. At two or rather sooner we had our tiffin, after which one is never disturbed. Particular friends drop in to tiffin sometimes, but they seldom stay long, every body retiring during those hot hours, undressing and sleeping.

  At first we took no luncheon beyond a little fruit and bit of bread, my father having a theory that Brahmin fare was what was suited best to India. Neither would he let me take more than a glass of wine at dinner, none at luncheon, only fruit. Also I had to wait for the family breakfast. I was near dying. Luckily this experiment took place before Uncle Edward’s departure for the Neilgherries and my Aunt interfered. She could not manage all she wished, so she got Dr Eckford at Barra to give a lecture upon the climate of India and European constitutions—and being rather peremptory in their advice, I got for the future rusks and coffee immediately after coming in from my ride in the morning, meat and better beer at luncheon and a glass of sherry on sitting down to dinner. I got so well, quite fat. As I could never sleep in the day without waking with a headache, I always occupied myself one way or another in my room in the afternoons, in my large and airy room with its shaded verandah—undressing, though, which was a great refreshment, wearing only one of my unwashed gingham wrappers, till towards sunset when I took a bath and dressed for the carriage airing, which was never omitted, except in the heaviest days of the rains. It was very pleasant, the drives were beautiful whichever way we went, on the beach, on the Breach Candy road, or the esplanade, and twice a week across the rice fields to Matoonga to listen to the Artillery band, all the Presidency collecting there or on the esplanade. We drove up and down, stopt along side another carriage, sometimes on a cool evening got out and walked to speak to our friends. We were all very sociable, and the Band was delightful, in such good order. The equipages were extraordinary, all the horses fine, but the carriages! very shabby. The smartest soon fades in such a climate; between the heat of one season, the wet of another, the red dust, the insects, the constant use and not much care, the London built carriage makes but a poor figure the second year, and as the renewal of them i
s not always convenient, and a daily airing is essential, they are used in bad enough condition sometimes, nobody seems to mind so it don’t signify.

  On the sun going down, which he does at once like a shot, there is no twilight, the crowd separates, the ladies glad enough of a warm shawl on their dark return home, for it was often very cold driving back over the flats. Then, if we were to pass a quiet evening, a very few minutes prepared us for dinner as we wore very pretty toilettes for our airings; but if, as was generally the case, we were to be in company either at home or abroad till midnight, there was great commotion among the Ayahs to have their preparations completed in time. What Servants these Indians are. My Arab, Fatima, was always ready. The very dress I should have chosen laid out, every suitable addition to it at hand—sark, flowers, gloves, pin, scent, handkerchief, all these, and the curls, which if worn in that hot land must be false, so brightly brushed beside them. She was so quick in her waiting, so gentle, so quiet, so noiseless. There are many drawbacks to an Indian life, but the servants in Bombay are a luxury.

  The society at the time we were there was extremely agreeable. Many of those in high places we had known at home in their less prosperous days. Scotch abounded. My cousins, too, had married well, all the six who had gone out. Poor Kate was dead, the fine girl who had been with us in Edinburgh. I got on well with them and with their husbands, and often spent a morning with them. We used to congregate at Mrs Bax’s with our work in the cool season. Mary Grant and Gregor (one of the Redcastle Grants) lived with us at the Retreat for many months. They had not been good managers and were glad to give up housekeeping for a season. She was very lovely. Mrs Bax uncommonly handsome. Mrs Ward pleased me most, both as to looks and manners; she had married a clever man, and was quite able to profit by the companionship. Little Miss Barra, a good obliging little girl, was quite one of the family party. She came out with us in the Mountstewart Elphinstone, and being motherless, was very grateful to us for taking care of her. So indeed was her father, a queer kind of man, and a good Doctor I may say, for he certainly set me up.