The residence is a fine house, not much furnished, but there is a beautiful view from the window, which is uncommon in this country.
We found Rosina and Myra perfectly miserable. They had arrived with all our goods and all our men-servants two days before, and somehow had been particularly helpless, and had not found out where to get their food. Myra, F.’s ayah, is a Portuguese, and can eat anything, and dines after our servants; but Rosina, being a Mussulmaunee, can only eat certain things, and they must be cooked in a brass pot called a ‘lotah;’ and Major J. had told her not to bring her ‘lotah,’ for at the residence they would find everything cooked by Mussulmauns. So she and Myra had wisely sat and cried, instead of going to the bazaar and buying what they wanted. However, the instant we came, they were satisfied they would not be murdered or starved, and they proved themselves excellent ladies’ maids.
We set off early on Wednesday morning in two of the king’s carriages, and saw the tombs of Saadut Ali and his wife. A very fine building, but the wife is not allowed any little tops to the cupola of her tomb, which is mean. Then to ‘Constantia,’ a sort of castle in a fine jungly park, built by an old General La Martine, who came out to India a private soldier, and died worth more than a million. I wish we had come out in those days.
He left his house at Constantia to the public. Any European in want of change of air might go with his family and live there for a month, and beyond the month, unless another family wanted it. This would be a great convenience to the few English in Oude, particularly to poor officers; so of course, for thirty years, the Supreme Court has been doubting whether the will meant what it said it meant, and the house has been going to decay; but it is now decided that people may live there, and it is all to be repaired.
Then we went to Dilkushar, a country palace of the king’s, very pretty, and then to a tomb of a former king, where there are silver tigers as large as life, a silver fish, a silver mosque, and all sorts of curiosities, and priests who read the Koran night and day. Then we came home to breakfast and to rest, and the gentlemen went to the prison to see some Thugs.
You have heard about them before, a respectable body of many thousand individuals, who consider it a point of religion to inveigle and murder travellers, which they do so neatly that ‘Thuggee’ had prospered for 2,000 years before it was discovered.
A Captain G. here is one of its great persecutors officially, but by dint of living with Thugs he has evidently grown rather fond of them, and has acquired a latent taste for strangling. One of the Thugs in the prison told the gentlemen: ‘I have killed three hundred people since I began;’ and another said, ‘I have killed only eighty myself, but my father has done much more.’
Then they acted over amongst themselves a scene of Thuggee. Some of them pretended to be travellers, and the others joined them and flattered them, and asked them to sit down and smoke, and then pointed up to the sun, or a bird; and when the traveller looked up, the noose was round his neck in an instant, and of course, as a real traveller, he would have been buried in five minutes.
Then they threw the noose over one of Colonel L.’s surwars who was cantering by, just to show him how they could have strangled him. I think it is a great shame allowing them to repeat their parts, but they really believe they have only done their duty. They say they would not steal from a house, or a tent, but they have a profession of their own, and all these men regret very much that they cannot teach their sons to walk in the right way.
In the afternoon we went to see the Emaunberra and Rooma Durwanee, two of the most magnificent native buildings I have seen yet. About a week of hard sketching would have been really pleasant amongst them, and we had only half-an-hour. However, we saw a great deal for the time, and we are uncommonly lucky in our weather. It is just right, a sort of spring afternoon; very pleasant.
Friday morning we set off in great state to see Mr. B. (who has come in G.’s place); meet the Prince of Lucknow. It was much the same meeting as that at Cawnpore; but the prince gave us afterwards a breakfast in the palace, which we wanted to see very much, and which was quite as Arabian-Nightish as I meant it to be.
The throne is gold, with its canopy and umbrella and pillars covered with cloth of gold, embroidered in pearls and small rubies. Our fat friend the prince was dressed to match his throne. All his brothers, twenty at least, appeared too – rather ill-conditioned young gentlemen; and there were jugglers and nautch-girls and musicians, all working at their vocations during breakfast.
The late king drank himself to death about six months ago; and then there was a sort of revolution conducted by Colonel L. (who was nearly killed in this palace), by which the present king was placed on the throne; so these are early days for acting royalty. Mr. B. went in to the old king, who is nearly bedridden, and he said he was quite affected by the old man. He translated to him G.’s letter, in which G. said how much he had been pleased with his heir-apparent’s manner, and the old king looked up, and held out his hand to his son, who rose and salaamed down to the ground three times. Mr. B., who is almost a native in language, and knows them thoroughly, said he was quite touched; it is so seldom natives show any emotion of that kind.
There was a fight of wild beasts after breakfast, elephants, rhinoceroses, rams, &c., but we excused ourselves, as there often are accidents at these fights. The gentlemen all went, and so did Giles, and they were quite delighted, and said we ought to have seen it.
In the afternoon we went to see the king’s yacht, which he had decked out for us, and then his garden. Such a place! the only residence I have coveted in India. Don’t you remember where in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ Zobeide bets her ‘garden of delights’ against the Caliph’s ‘palace of pictures?’ I am sure this was ‘the garden of delights!’
There are four small palaces in it, fitted up in the eastern way, with velvet and gold and marble, with arabesque ceilings, orange trees and roses in all directions, with quantities of wild parroquets of bright colours glancing about. And in one palace there was an immense bath-room of white marble, the arches intersecting each other in all directions, and the marble inlaid with cornelian and bloodstone; and in every corner of the palace there were little fountains; even during the hot winds, they say, it is cool from the quantity of water playing; and in the verandah there were fifty trays of fruits and flowers laid out for us, – by which the servants profited. It was really a very pretty sight. Then we went to the stud where the horses were displayed; the most curious was a Cutch horse (Cutch is, I opine, the name of a particular district, but I never ask questions, I hate information). He looked as if he had had a saddle of mutton cut out of his back. They said he was very easy to ride, but apt to stumble.
There was to have been a return breakfast to the heir-apparent at Colonel L.’s on Saturday morning, but that would have made our journey back very late; so it was commuted for some fireworks in the evening. We went back to the palace after dinner, or rather to another palace on the river. On the opposite bank there was an illumination in immense letters, ‘God save George Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India,’ ‘God save the King of Oude,’ and then there was a full stop, and ‘Colonel L., Resident of Lucknow,’ stood alone. Whether he was to be saved or not was not mentioned; it was not very correctly spelt, but well-meant. My jemadar asked me afterwards, ‘Did Ladyship see “God save my Lord?" I thought it very excellent, very neat.’ The river was covered with rafts full of fireworks, and the boats in front were loaded with nautch-girls, who dance on, whether they are looked at or not. The Prince of Orange was charmed with his evening.
CHAPTER X
ANOTHER year! You will be nearly half through it by the time you read this.
I was so obliged to you for those extracts from Charles Lamb. I had seen that about the two hemispheres in some newspaper, and have been longing for the book ever since.
‘Boz’s Magazine’ is disappointing. I wish he would not mix up his great Pickwick name with meaner works. It is odd how long you were writing about Pickwick, and yet I felt all the time, though we are no judges of fun in this place, that it must be everywhere the cleverest thing that has appeared in our time. I had laughed twenty times at that