Empress

by Miles Taylor

  The Blot on the Queen’s Head

  No one was keener on the title of Empress of India than the queen. By 1876, her eldest daughter was a crown princess imperial, her second son had married into the Russian imperial family, and her eldest son and heir had just returned from a hugely successful royal tour of India, which had all the trappings of an imperial procession. Across Europe she could survey a world in which since Albert’s death kingdoms had given way to empires: in Germany, Italy, Portugal (Brazil) and until recently France. Imperial rivalry struck hardest nearest to home, as Queen Victoria’s correspondence with her daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, attests. In 1873 mother and daughter bickered over whether the Prussians in Germany or Englishmen in the east were the worst offenders.3 So when Disraeli came up with a plan to give her a new title in India, he met with support. Of the proposed forms of title suggested by Disraeli she preferred ‘Queen-Empress’ or at least a separation of the two, for while India was a dependency Britain was an ancient kingdom. She also returned to her long-held wish that dukedoms be created for the colonies, positions to be held by her sons.4 Disraeli consulted with his lord chancellor, Hugh Cairns, about how the announcement might be made. A senior Indian official looked into the implications of the proposed title in India.5 Referring to the precedent of the Act of Union in Ireland (when the monarch’s title had last been altered) Disraeli warned that it ‘must be an affair of legislation & not of prerogative’. He told the queen that it would be mentioned in the royal speech at the beginning of the new session with a ‘short act’ to follow.6

  The act may have been intended to be short, but the debate over the next three months was drawn out and acrimonious. Unveiling the government’s intentions on 17 February, Disraeli caught the House of Commons by surprise. He avoided spelling out what the new title would be, claimed some change had been considered by Lord Derby’s Cabinet back in 1858, and made loose references to the royal prerogative, clearly irking some of the Liberal opposition.7 In the days that followed confusion grew over the wording of the title, concern lest the colonies misunderstood its implications, and disapproval that the form was un-English, conjuring up connotations of the French empire of Bonapartism, or, even more ominous, Russian despotism. Robert Lowe, the liberal maverick who had scuppered his own party’s reform bill ten years earlier, led the line.8 Disraeli expressed his surprise to the queen over the opposition. Backdoor channels were opened with the Liberal leadership, via Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll. That only made matters worse, for when the Liberal leadership did meet, they were united in their disapproval of the bill. Disraeli was authorised by the queen to consult further with the opposition over the wording of the title, but still their criticism was not assuaged. The queen grew more irate by the day. Told of the Liberals’ inflexibility, she sent a note in blue pencil to Henry Ponsonby, her private secretary: ‘The Queen must insist on Empress of India as she has constantly been styled so + it suits Oriental ideas.’9 She turned to Theodore Martin, Albert’s biographer, asking him to find someone to write to the newspapers making it clear that she wanted the new title. However, newspaper opinion moved speedily in the opposite direction. By the time the bill re-emerged for its full second reading in the Commons three weeks later, a full-scale crisis was under way.10

  A further bombshell dropped on the eve of the debate. It was rumoured that the queen herself did not want the title, that it was being imposed on her by Disraeli. To contain the damage as much as possible, Queen Victoria agreed that Disraeli could tell Parliament that a change to her domestic title of Queen had never been intended, and that her sons need not take colonial titles ‘habitually’.11 Still the opposition continued. Disraeli was accused of not consulting the other colonies, nor making any enquiries in India. As to the title, critics argued that there were no precedents for a dual appellation: ‘queen’ must ordinarily give way to ‘empress’. Disraeli and his colleagues brazened it out, rejecting claims that they wished to ‘sultanise’ British government in India and denying that there would need to be a huge recall of currency. They cast around for existing usages of the title.12 Going into the second week of the debate in committee, Disraeli produced a trump card. A schoolchild had found that her geography book referred to the title, as did Whitaker’s Almanack.13 Nothing annoyed the opposition quite as much as these cheeky revelations and they pushed for a division which the government narrowly won. So the bill limped through to its committee stages in the Lords where further obstacles awaited. Lord Shaftesbury pressed for a different title – ‘Lady Paramount’ and our ‘Sovereign Lady’ were proffered but ignored – and the bill was squeezed through.14

  The fuss continued. As the queen left for the Continent, and Parliament went into recess for the Easter break, public meetings were held up and down the country. The republican movement, dormant since the beginning of the decade, revived. Joseph Cowen, the Newcastle MP, was its figurehead, and James Thomson, the poet, added his own indictment.15 Within a few weeks, a humorous pamphlet, The Blot on the Queen’s Head, dashed off pseudonymously by Edward Jenkins, the MP for Dundee, was a runaway bestseller, its circulation passing the 100,000 mark by the end of the year, its catchy title giving Punch and other satirists copy for weeks on end.16 Debate outside Parliament ranged from practical suggestions about titles to lurid prophecies of Britain becoming a despotism. Disraeli was the focal point of the attacks. Anti-Semitic caricatures of Disraeli reached a crescendo, but any form of eastern derogation fitted the bill. He was portrayed as a sultan, a Russian who would turn the Brighton pavilion into the Kremlin and a Jewish pedlar encouraging Victoria to trade in her English crown for the new imperial one.17

  Disraeli had badly misjudged the mood of the country, and the temper of the queen. Between one viceroy and the next he had not sought out opinion in India, and only seems to have confided in his colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon, once his course was decided. The clamour did not die down. Both sides toyed with extraordinary means to achieve their ends. The radical MP Henry Fawcett announced his intention to push for a compromise title, the ‘Queen of India’, on the resumption of Parliament. According to Disraeli, the Liberal leadership contemplated holding a Privy Council meeting in the queen’s absence and coming out in support of Fawcett. The queen suggested a counter move: she could summon a quick Council immediately on her return to formalise the title. Neither ruse materialised. However, the Royal Titles Act had to be accompanied by a proclamation, specifying the wording of the new royal style in all future foreign and colonial diplomacy.18 Again, Disraeli slipped up, confirming that the imperial title would not be used in the United Kingdom. However, he made no mention of its possible application to other colonies and dependencies. This gave the opposition a further opportunity to derail the bill.19 No one, it seemed, was really happy with the imperial turn. Far from triumphing with the Royal Titles bill, at each stage Disraeli brought further unpopularity to his government. In the years that followed, the title was not only not used in Britain but disowned altogether. The slightest intrusion of ‘empress’ into domestic usage prompted hostility in the House of Commons.20 Empire was not for the absent-minded British. Disraeli had also managed to offend the queen. She passed from curiosity as to why the change was necessary to outrage that it should provoke so much opposition. Having endured such a rough ride at home, the new title would be puffed up as much as possible in India. For that the government turned to the new viceroy, Lord Lytton.

  The Imperial Assemblage

  Robert Bulwer-Lytton was not an automatic choice as the next viceroy of India. It was a shock to Lytton as well. He explained to Disraeli that he lacked the requisite knowledge, possessing an ‘absolute ignorance of all facts and questions concerning India’.21 Plucked from the diplomatic pool, he was the famous son of an even more famous father, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist. Lytton had served abroad at Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna and Athens, postings as notable for the amount of poetry he produced under the nom-de-plûme of Owen Meredith as for any
great policy successes.22 Nonetheless, a career spent in the capitals of Continental Europe, witnessing the demise of the French and Austrian empires, and the advent of the German, was a not inappropriate preparation for India. Lytton had been present at the height of Louis Napoleon’s imperial pageantry in France. He witnessed the crushing of the German princes during the Schleswig-Holstein crisis of 1864, and the breakaway of the Hungarian nobility from the Austrian empire. In a pair of articles published in the early 1870s he indicated the moral to be learned from the recent history of the Continent. Britain’s European neighbours, he observed, had failed to cultivate and maintain the dynastic and monarchical principle, and so keep the loyalty of princes and nobility. France’s ‘middle-class monarchy’ had been a sham, lacking national sentiment. Germany had become a militarised bureaucracy.23 Lytton also made some interesting contacts in his diplomatic travels. In Athens in 1863 he met Ernest Renan, the controversial author of The Life of Jesus (1863) and champion of the French national revival. Lytton was disappointed by Renan. Another French man of letters in Athens impressed him more: Arthur de Gobineau, the race theorist. Lytton reviewed his Traité des écritures cunéiformes in 1867, dwelling particularly on Gobineau’s revelations about the role of talismans and symbols in the ‘eastern mind’.24 Some of these ideas stayed with Lytton, resurfacing on his arrival in India.

  Lytton’s appointment was made public in March 1876, as he travelled east, meeting by arrangement the returning Prince of Wales on board the Serapis. Reaching Calcutta in the middle of April, he declared to Disraeli that he intended to announce the proclamation of the queen’s new title with ‘much theatrical effect & political significance’. To the queen he was even more grandiose. He promised ‘to give every possible éclat to the queen’s assumption of a title, which conspicuously places Her authority upon that ancient throne of the Moguls, with which the imagination and traditions of your Majesty’s Indian subjects associate the splendour of supreme power’.25 By the beginning of May his plans for a great assembly of Indian princes had taken shape, and his officials set to work on the details of what would be prove to be the most spectacular ceremonial occasion of the British Raj to date.

  For someone who was by his own admission an Indian novice, Lytton had moved quickly. The ink had barely dried on the Royal Titles Act at home, yet Lytton set to his task with guile and ingenuity. Whilst he was ably assisted by his colleagues, the inspiration was all his own. Lytton had two main aims. First, he wanted to make up for the damage done at home to the queen’s new title from the opposition speeches, by evoking what he called the ‘enthusiasm of the Asiatic mind’. Left to itself, he told Lord Salisbury, Indian political sentiment was dumb and insensate. Basing his notions on what he called ‘a careful study of the native character’, Lytton’s plan was to reach out to the princes and chiefs of India, who had been unduly neglected by the British. Here was a great ‘feudal aristocracy’ which might be flattered into loyalty to British rule by appropriate titles, gifts and displays. Salisbury, whose family had been flattering English royalty for over 300 years, thought it all a good idea. In this way, Lytton assured the queen, British India might avoid the fate of crumbling empires such as the Austrian.26 Secondly, Lytton wanted to make a display of the overwhelming military power of British India, to send out a message to Russia in particular, but also to the other European powers, who might be counting on the instability of the Ottoman Empire to further their eastern spheres of influence. Invitations to the January meeting would be sent out to the French and Portuguese envoys in India.27

  Plans for the proclamation meeting, or durbar as it was known initially, took shape over the next three months. It was all done in secret, lest the newspapers of both countries pour further scorn on the imperial project. The details were finalised on 10 August at the second of two special viceregal council meetings. The date for the occasion, 1 January 1877, was settled early on, although plans for a three-day holiday extravaganza were soon scaled back because of famine conditions in the south and west of India. The venue was only agreed at an advanced stage of the discussions. Bombay was still being considered as a possibility in late July, but logic suggested somewhere more northern and central: Agra, Jabalpur or Delhi, and the latter was deemed by far the best because of ‘accessibility by railway, command of space for encampments, and historical associations’.28 Once Delhi was chosen, more detailed consideration was given as to how the city, still battle-scarred from the rebellion almost twenty years previously, might be made over for the occasion. Lytton took two key decisions. The first located the meeting on a plain to the north-west of the city, effectively the same position from which the British forces had mounted the siege of Delhi in the summer of 1857. The choice was dictated mainly by geography, but also by history. The kidney shape of the site enveloped and looked down on the city. Secondly, keen to secure the attendance of Muslim princes at the durbar – especially the Nizam of Hyderabad, whose failure to meet with the Prince of Wales at Bombay in 1875 still prickled – Lytton proposed returning the Fatehpuri Masjid and Zeenat-ul Masjid mosques in Delhi to their rightful owners. In an even more calculated move, he contributed to the repairs of the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in Delhi, and part of the planned route of the procession to the durbar meeting. These gestures were not just for local consumption. Lytton also had one eye on the unfolding tensions in Constantinople. It was reported to Lytton that the Muslim community in Bombay was especially supportive of the anti-Russian stance taken by Disraeli in the crisis.29

  Time and place settled, Lytton then spent much time designing the symbolic and decorative aspects of the durbar, above all the measures intended to rope the princes and chiefs into the new imperial order. In some ways, it was business as usual. Lytton continued the traditions of his predecessors. An increase and enhancement of gun salutes was proposed. Existing Indian orders of nobility such as the Star of India were extended. Queen Victoria was particularly keen that the highest tier of the order, the Grand Cross, might be now given to non-Christian princes. Lytton even resurrected another order which no one in London knew anything about – the Order of British India.30 Lytton wanted more. He planned to reconstitute the Indian princes as a new order of aristocracy, for which they would need new titles and heraldry. A ‘herald’s college’ was planned for Calcutta, and, borrowing from the example of fourteenth-century Venice, a Libro d’oro of the native nobility was begun. Banners displaying the shields, arms and colours of each ruling house were ordered for the durbar, initially from Calcutta, but later in the year the Mayo School of Art at Lahore took over the task, with its principal, John Lockwood Kipling, seconded to the viceroy’s staff for the duration of the preparations. Lytton also wanted an Indian privy council composed of senior British officials as well as princes.31 Finally, Lytton commissioned an artist, Val Prinsep, to come out from England to depict for posterity his grand event, paid for by subscriptions from the wealthier princes with copies of his finished work to be then distributed to the VIP guests who attended.32 Traditions were being invented, their provenance as much medieval as Mughal.

  By the middle of September certain features had been amended. The occasion would be an ‘Imperial Assemblage’ and not a durbar. Durbars were held under cover, and no tent could possibly accommodate all those expected to turn up. Lytton also wanted to avoid the exchange of lavish presents that a durbar usually entailed, as well as the petty squabbling over precedence and hierarchy.33 Inducements were offered to minor princes that the Government of India would pay the costs of their travel, and special arrangements were made in Delhi to house the entourages of those coming from afar. The nizam was given Metcalfe House, the former home of the British agent in Delhi, roofless since being stormed by the rebels in 1857, now hastily refurbished for the occasion.34 To encourage more favourable treatment from the newspapers, Indian and European editors were accommodated at government expense as well.35 In addition, to sweeten the proceedings further, acts of grace were planned: the release of prisoner
s and issuing of pardons, the feeding of the poor in the main towns of the presidencies, and government funding for fireworks and illuminations throughout India.36

  The viceroy also inserted the queen more prominently into the event. On Lytton’s initiative, a commemorative coin was designed for distribution. Minted in gold and silver formats, the coin bore the queen’s image together with her new designation ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’ in Persian and Hindi characters, and ‘Empress of India’ in English. Special currency was issued too, comprising annas of the smallest denominations.37 Salisbury explained to Lytton that the Indian translation of the title had taken some time to agree. The Assyrian expert and Indian Council member Sir Henry Rawlinson had advised on the translation, as had another member of the Council, Sir William Muir, an Islamic scholar. ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’ was not without controversy. It was a male title, not a female one. Salisbury, ever the dour pragmatist, said this was because the government did not wish to change the sex on the coinage from one reign to another. The vernacular title also came as a surprise, for Disraeli had been adamant that only the English version, ‘empress’, would be used.38 The queen was unruffled by the name, but more concerned with her image. She vetoed the first two versions of the coin. She thought her nose was too long and forehead too flat, then found her face and cheek ‘too full and heavy’.39 Other items for Lytton’s programme followed. The queen asked that the royal standard be flown at Delhi and on all subsequent such ceremonial occasions. Disraeli requested that a portrait of the queen wearing her imperial crown should be placed in the viceroy’s pavilion. A copy of Heinrich von Angeli’s painting of the queen, completed the previous May, was sent out once a crown and a veil had been added.40 Lytton took up these ideas, and conjured up more of his own. He relaxed his own rules regarding gifts, and ordered British-made watches inlaid with a picture of the queen to be sent out for presentation to the Indian chiefs at the private visits scheduled ahead of the January assemblage. The party planning went on and on. Lytton dreamed up a scheme for a new imperial crown, its jewels to be provided by the leading princely houses of India. He also wanted a philanthropic fund announced in London for hospitals and leper asylums in India: £100,000 was his target.41 Salisbury dissuaded him from the latter, and the new imperial crown was also parked as a luxury and not a necessity. In the thinner air of Simla, the viceroy was letting his imagination run wild. As Disraeli commented, Lytton’s ‘proclamation schemes’ now read like the Arabian nights.42 It was time to come down to the plains and focus on the main show.