When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

CHAPTER XXXVIII

AN IMPROMPTU DINNER-PARTY IN THE PUNJAB

We had finished the last of several brief but delightful theatrical engagements in Rawal Pindi—if one may use the phrase “theatrical engagement,” in connection with so small a band of strolling players as we had been. The afternoon train was carrying the last of our little company to Bombay. In twenty-four hours we two were going on—by a pleasantly broken route—to Karachi. But, in the meantime, we are going to give a dinner-party. How it all comes back! We had played Caste the night before, with the kind help of regimental amateurs. Such a funny performance of Caste! (But that’s a story by itself.) At the close of the performance we had asked “Hawtree,” “George D’Alroy,” and the prompter to risk a dinner (so called) with us the next night. “Hawtree” was a popular subaltern in the 60th Rifles; his real name is a grand old English name. The prompter (also in the 60th) was no less a person than the son of his Excellency Lord Roberts. “George D’Alroy” was a young Irishman; his blood and his eyes were very blue, but they were the only blue thing about him. He was a Gordon Highlander, doing special duty at Rawal Pindi. Besides playing “D’Alroy” he had danced and sung “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” between the acts, arrayed in my “Polly” wig, all my jewellery (real and otherwise), and a specially-constructed costume.

India is, par excellence, the land of bad hotels. We were living in Rawal Pindi at one of India’s few not bad hotels. They gave us fruit,—they knew how to cook tomatoes, and (test of tests!) their ice never gave out. But the capable European manager, who had another hostelry at one of the hill stations, was away, and I felt that it behoved my hostess-ship to aid, though not abet, the khansamah.

At five o’clock, when the early Indian sun called softly all men to rise and pay Sabbath worship to lavish Nature, my ayah brought me my chota haziri. Chota haziri means little breakfast. Translated by an unsupervised khansamah or a mean European boarding-house memsahib, it means two small slices of cold toast and one cup of vile tea. But a well-trained ayah translates it: “one cup of good tea, one bunch of black grapes, one Bombay mango, red heart of one melon, and an egg just come.” Indian fruit in the early Indian morning! It is something even to remember it. I had my bath; there are three kinds of baths that can only be properly enjoyed in the Punjab: sun baths, mud baths, and water baths. I got into my gharri—a barouche, if you please, but a very shabby one; with a rather black, rather naked coachman, and a very black, very naked footman; and I was driven to the “bazaar”: driven through green picture bits of landscape, canopied by the marvellous blue of perfect sky, and clothed with the indepreciable silver of Indian lakes, where the pink water-lilies floated: driven through the native streets, with their fascinating panorama that was teeming with life primitive after many centuries,—streets dense with Oriental architecture, some rich, mostly squalid, all graceful—and all having matchless accessories: driven to a “bazaar” that beggars my description, and would, unless you have seen it, overtax your imagination.

It was easy enough to provide myself with the materials for a capital dinner, only, unfortunately, in India at that time of the year the variety was so limited, that, whatever I selected, I might be sure that my guests had eaten of it very recently, and cooked far better than I could offer it to them. For the 60th Rifles have a famous mess, and I can testify that the mess of the Gordon Highlanders is excellent.

I was back at the hotel at eight, and after breakfast I had a confab with the khansamah. I gave him my little menu, and told him what I would cook and what he was to cook. I think that I can write out the menu now, it was one I so often fell back upon in the East:⁠—

Sandwiches of caviare and hard-boiled eggs. Olives.

Tomato soup.

Salmon (tinned, of course). Cucumbers.

Beef-steak. Mushrooms (tinned). Grilled potatoes.

Fricassee of chicken livers and sweetbreads.

Roast pigeons with bread sauce and limes. Baked tomatoes.

Asparagus (tinned, but delicious).

Chicken curry.

Mayonnaise salad. (No mess cook can make that as well as I can.)

Ices. Creams. Sweets. (The Indians excel at making them.)

Fruit.

Coffee.

But two items I hadn’t selected were provided us—one by the khansamah, one by that fickle purveyor, Fate. The khansamah enlivened us with the worst champagne I have ever tasted. We couldn’t drink it, but it gave us a theme for small-talk. And we pretended to prefer claret. Fate’s contribution was a nastier one; for like the Egyptians of old we had a death’s head at our feast. About an hour before we expected our friends, I heard the rapid canter of a horse, and my ayah, who was sitting on the verandah, exclaimed, “Lal coatie sahib!” The natives have only this one term for all British soldiers. No matter what their uniforms, they are all “red coats.” We were the only guests in the hotel, so I ran out. Yes, the rider was one of the boys we were expecting later. I had always seen him so jolly; but now he looked very worn and white. “I have come to ask you to excuse me to-night,” he said. “I have been all the afternoon with a poor chap—a private—who has just died. Cholera! It was very tough. I feel a bit done.” But I vetoed that. It was the time of all times when an English boy needed a little cheering.

It was a very grave little dinner-party when we sat down; the spirit of cholera was with us. Oh! what precautions you would all take, here in London, if you knew of cholera half that I know! How I wish that I could voice some sharp word of warning that the mothers of England would heed! My servants think me a bit mad and very troublesome. But I know what I know. I have paid a terrible price for my knowledge. And so I insist, and see that they obey. All our garbage is burned. Our drinking water is boiled. We smell of carbolic from cellar to attic. And in the nursery there is a bottle of chlorodyne, a flask of brandy, and mustard and linen ready for plasters. Cholera is very quick. It must be fought quickly or in vain.

Yes, we began our meal very gravely. But English soldiers are taught the courage of cheerfulness, and we were not gloomy, though my husband and I were leaving on the morrow, perhaps never again to see the three soldier boys we liked so much; and for them that morrow held the dreaded possibility of “cholera camp.” The champagne helped us to be almost merry, though not in a conventional way. It is remarkable what vile champagne is sold in the East and with the very best labels! The khansamah was very quaint as bottle after bottle was opened, amid an expectant silence that was not broken by a pop or a fizz. “It was always the way with the best champagne,” he assured us. “The very best champagne never jumped about like a nautch-girl. It was all good wine, not half of it bad gas. Such champagne the ‘sahibs’ did not often see.” He was in despair when the “sahibs” would not drink it; he was in downright distress the next morning when my husband declined to pay for it. “He must pay—indeed he had paid the Parsi from whom he had procured it, and he could not get back his many rupees. He had procured it with great difficulty. It had been wanted for the Maharajah of Kapurthala. He was a most poor man, and he had sold the memsahib a priceless dog for so few rupees. He wept at our feet.” We were really rather fond of the khansamah, and we knew that we had only paid treble for a huge half-bred bull-dog that I had fancied for my children; so the bill was paid less the price of one of the half-dozen bottles that had been opened.

The following letter reached us a few days before we sailed from Karachi. It is one of the most valued things in my cabinet of curios:⁠—

Hakin Raig, Mannigar Imperial Hotel,

Rpindi, 14/8/1892.

Mr —— Noble sur and gentlamen.

Karachi city.

Sir,—You cutted the hotel Bille 15 Rupees. And you tolded to me I must say to Jamasji he sold me crab wine—and what remark you make of it. I done all arrangements with Jamasji. He said i don’t care. I am not making here myself wine. This fault of the shampain maker. Please hear my prayer—you write noble sur to shampain maker. He live in france his name is Mr. Cliquot. You tell him he sell Jamasji bad wine. And you send me money by m.o. what you like. I pray for twenty rupees. Fifteen you cutted the hotel bill. Five make me present. She is poor man. She will pray for your long life and procespairity.

Yours faithfully

HAKIN RAIG.

Please tell my salam to your noble lady wife with yourself, and say if the dog is well.

We sent him a small money-order, but we haven’t yet written to “Mr. Cliquot, Shampain Maker, France.”

I have just been looking in the last Army List. Neither of the three young soldiers who dined with us a year ago are missing from the noble roll. I am so glad; so many whom we knew and liked in India a year ago are gone. I am personally thankful for every one of those brave lives spared. For if it were not for the never-to-be-for-a-moment forgotten memories of personal sorrows, I should count as the pleasantest days of my life those when we were strolling players in the cantonments of the Punjab. I wonder how many European women there are in London to-day home-sick for India? I know one. And they do say that the Duchess of Connaught knows another. Dear old Punjabi cantonments! Shall I ever see them again?

IDOLS IN A SIAMESE PAGODA. Page 341.