Perhaps it may be convenient to explain briefly the official relation which exists between the Viceroy of India and the Members of his Council. All the orders of the Government of India issue in the name of the Viceroy, and the language of the official letters is so couched, that the uninstructed public believe that each subject has received the personal consideration of the Viceroy. But in reality, the work that comes before the Government of India is divided into several departments—the Political, Financial, Home, Legislative, Military, and so on. The Viceroy usually takes direct cognisance of only one department, viz. the Political; a separate Member of Council has the immediate control of each of the other departments. The official papers are submitted to the Viceroy and to each member of the Council in boxes, after they have been duly cooked and noted on by the departmental secretary and his underlings. In all ordinary matters of business, the member in charge of the department passes his own orders, which is usually done by signing his initials in approval of the secretary’s proposals, and these orders issue in the Viceroy’s name. In any difficult or doubtful cases, the member directs that the papers are to be circulated to the Viceroy and his colleagues, and under this division of labour the work of the country is easily carried on. Subjects on which there is any considerable difference of opinion, or of very great importance, are reserved for oral discussion by the Viceroy and his colleagues at their weekly or special meetings in the Council Chamber. As the Viceroy is held to be personally responsible to Parliament for the administration of India, his opinions usually prevail in Council, and those Councillors who are wise in their generation concur with their lord and master, whilst there remains to the unconvinced and independent Councillor the privilege of recording his dissent, for his own satisfaction, and sometimes in the pleasing hope that his minute may be laid before Parliament and read by a sympathising British public. Notwithstanding all this, there are some who have entertained a doubt whether the use of each member of the Council is altogether equivalent to the amount of his salary, and have accordingly dared to recommend the abolition of some of these appointments. But such persons are obviously little better than heretics and infidels.
If we have not put a very high estimate on the social value of the Member of the Council during his sojourn in Calcutta, let us try to depict him as he dwells in his distant mountain home at Simla. Here he lives a sort of suburban life, sometimes physically, sometimes metaphorically, in the clouds. Doubtless there are some glorious days and even weeks of fine weather at Simla, and the change of climate to the hills at first seems delicious to those who have come up from a long and hot journey by the railway, or who have been detained by their duty in the plains until the hot winds and all the horrors of the hot season have begun. But if Simla has its advantages, it also has its serious drawbacks. There is seldom a visitor who has not promptly to summon the aid of the doctor, and only last year the chemists’ shops were almost cleared out of all their stores of chlorodyne. The highly rarefied air at an elevation of 7,000 feet above the level of the sea affects the circulation and breathing of almost all new comers, and those who have any organic affection are likely to suffer very seriously, unless they are exceedingly prudent. It is not, therefore, quite a perfect paradise. And there are many days when the clouds seem to come down upon the mountains, and the thick mists roll up from the valleys to meet the clouds, and you cannot see your next neighbour’s house, or even the trees of your own garden. Then, too, the rain descends furiously, and rattles upon the wooden or corrugated iron roofs of the houses with a deafening noise. A flash of lightning dazzles your eyes, and the sharp crack like a pistol-shot tells you how near to you it passed, followed by an awful crash of thunder, which echoes and reechoes from every neighbouring mountain and valley. In such a scene as this, you may perceive, if a lucid interval permits it, the Member of Council riding home from a meeting at the Viceroy’s residence, looking like a bathing-machine man, and caparisoned from head to foot in drenched waterproof garments. Riding, however, is an exercise not always congenial to the age of a Member of Council; and in this case he has to be carried in a sort of sedan-chair, locally known as a jhompon, with which four or more hill-men toil along, groaning and grunting and perspiring, partly from the weight of their burthen, and partly from the heat of the coarse but bright-coloured clothes which they wear as their master’s livery. There is a sort of grim satisfaction in seeing the sleek Member of Council exposed to some discomfort from the weather, as he must go to his Council meeting, whatever the state of the weather may be. This, however, fortunately for him, happens only about once a week. On other days he is master of the situation, and can sit over his fireside, with his office-boxes round him, regardless of the elements. If the weather is fine, he will walk out on the Mall, with his pony or jhompon in attendance, and escorted by one or more of his scarlet-coated satellites. He may loiter about his garden, or he may look on at a lawn-tennis party, or he may go so far as to have a party for lawn-tennis at his own house. But even at Simla the Member of Council is not much given to hospitality. It was said of a certain legislative member, who shall be nameless (and it is now an old tale), that the smoke was never seen to come out of his kitchen-chimney after his own frugal mid-day meal had been prepared. There is, perhaps, something to be said on behalf of the Legislative Member, as he is usually an elderly barrister of great but previously unappreciated ability, who is sent out to India by some political friend to make what money and reputation he can in the five years for which his appointment lasts. There have been brilliant exceptions to this rule within the last half-century, but we need not dwell upon these details. We regret to have to come to the conclusion, speaking broadly, that the Member of Council, whether it be at Simla or Calcutta, is too frequently a social failure, and, as has been already imperfectly suggested, sometimes almost an official nonentity, or at the best a sort of political paradox.
It might perhaps have been more correct, according to the official table of precedence, to have given priority of mention to the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors of Provinces. But for the present we will consider that the Governors of Madras and Bombay are, after their kind, though less in degree, analogous in their own kingdoms to the Viceroy. The Lieutenant-Governors of provinces, on the other hand, stand out with a stronger sense of personality, and in the case of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal the position becomes more accentuated, partly from the vast importance of the charge, and partly from the more immediate contact in which the Lieutenant-Governor is placed as regards the Viceroy when the latter is in residence in Calcutta.
It may be new to some people to be told that in Calcutta there are at times no less than five “Lord Sahebs,” as the natives call them. There is the great Lord Saheb, i.e. H.E. the Viceroy. There is the little Lord Saheb, i.e. the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. There is the Lord Saheb of Calcutta—at least, that was the title in use when Sir Stuart Hogg was Lord Mayor of Calcutta. There are also the Military Lord Saheb or Commander-in-Chief, and the Lord Padre Saheb, i.e. the Bishop. But of all these several lords it turns out that the little lord, i.e. the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, is of most importance, at least for social purposes, in the eyes of the Calcutta community. The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, since the creation of the appointment in 1853–54, has always been a distinguished member of the local Civil Service, with two notable exceptions—when the political and personal connections of Sir George Campbell and Sir Richard Temple caused them to be foisted on a province with which they had little or no previous official connection.
The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal rules over a kingdom containing so many thousands of square miles, and so many millions of people, that no person of reasonable intellectual capacity ever tries to recollect the actual figures. His dominions are not quite so extensive as the British realms, on which it is said that the sun never sets; but the sun gets up a long time earlier in the eastern portion of the Bengal province than it does in the western portion of it, so huge is the extent of the territory. As to the millions of people, it is more easy to talk or write of them than to form a correct conception of them. You may understand that there are probably a million of mites round a well-kept cheese. But there are nearly fifty districts, or cheeses, each with its million of mites, under the care and custody of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and even this estimate inadequately represents the full number of his subjects. And yet, if it can be believed, there is not one of these many million mites who is not able and authorised to represent to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal any personal grievance or injustice from which this individual mite believes himself to be suffering. And, as a fact, not a day passes on which considerable numbers of these mites do not address the Lieutenant-Governor directly by letter, representing their personal wants and grievances. In a large number of their cases an inquiry is made by the Lieutenant-Governor to ascertain if the grievance is real, and if it has not already received due attention from the proper authorities; or the complainant is put in communication with the local officers who are competent to deal in the first instance with the subject of his grievance.
The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal does not, however, always repose upon a bed of roses, and the head that wears a crown usually finds some thorns in it. However, let us consider the good side as well as the less favourable side of the case. The Lieutenant-Governor has a salary of £10,000 a year to begin with, and he has also the privilege of making a monthly contingent bill, as it is called, in which certain items vaguely called sumptuary expenses are charged upon the public revenues. He has a private secretary and one or more A.D.C.’s at his disposal, and occasionally a special physician to look after his health. He is provided with two official residences—one called “Belvedere,” in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, and the other called “The Shrubbery,” in the mountain station of Darjeling. He has a splendid yacht or state barge at his disposal, in which he can traverse the rivers that intersect his dominions, where railways and ordinary roads do not provide the means of communication. He has his special trains and state carriages on the railways. He has an escort of irregular cavalry whenever he takes his walks, or rides, or his carriage-drives, abroad; and his gates are guarded by sentries, both native soldiers and policemen. His scarlet-coated satellites are only less numerous than those which may be seen on the Viceroy’s establishment. In short, though he is called the little lord, in contrast with the great lord or Viceroy, he is so much alike in all his surroundings that Pompey is very like Cæsar, and Cæsar is very like Pompey, but particularly Pompey.
The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal may be said to be the permanent head of the social system in Calcutta. It is to him that the native community especially look as the fountain of honour, and as the dispenser of patronage in his province. Nor are the European portion of the public by any means backward in seeking His Honour’s favour and patronage on behalf of themselves and their young friends and relations who are sent out to India to find a livelihood. It is a fact that there is hardly a member of Her Majesty’s Government or of Her Majesty’s Opposition who has not an application lying before the Lieutenant-Governor for an appointment to be given to some connection or acquaintance. If such applications come all the way from England, it may be imagined how much more numerous they must be from those persons who live in India, and have more or less a personal acquaintance with the Lieutenant-Governor’s existence. For every appointment that he bestows he has the satisfaction of knowing that the old proverb is true, and that whilst the successful candidate is probably ungrateful, there are at least nine other disappointed men who henceforth look upon the Lieutenant-Governor as an enemy. It must not be supposed that the Lieutenant-Governor is unprotected against the swarm of applicants for places and patronage. He has his official secretaries and his private secretaries to guard the outworks, and with good reason “difficiles aditus primos habet.” The inexperienced applicant may be baffled in many ways. He may be informed that he has not applied through the proper channel. He has knocked at the private door when he ought to have gone to the official gateway. If he succeeds in effecting an entrance, and in obtaining an interview with the private secretary, he is met with courteous words, but he must be very fortunate or very strongly backed up if he is permitted to get a glimpse of the Lieutenant-Governor. He is requested to leave his papers and his address, and to await an answer. The young man departs, feeling confident that he has effected a lodgment, and that he has created a favourable impression, and so he goes away with a light heart. He little knows that as soon as his back is turned, the private secretary, in an unimpassioned and business-like manner, passes on the papers to a clerk, with an order, “Give this gentleman our No. 1 form.” There are three or four stereotyped forms of letter in the private secretary’s office ready for issue to all candidates. When a neatly-written letter in a fine official cover stamped “On Her Majesty’s Service,” reaches the candidate’s address, he finds, not the appointment which he coveted, but an intimation that his name will be inserted in the list of candidates for it, and that the Lieutenant-Governor regrets that he can hold out no immediate hopes, &c. &c. There is sometimes an unfortunate person who treasures a letter of this kind, and is weak enough after a short interval to pay a further visit to the private secretary. The result is that he receives a letter in “our form No. 2,” expressing the Lieutenant-Governor’s further regret or surprise at his impatience. If he still persists in his visits, he will eventually receive “our form No. 3,” in which he is informed that the Lieutenant-Governor must decline to see him or to make any further communication to him, and then at last, perhaps, his eyes are opened, and he may go so far as to blame himself for having given the Lieutenant-Governor so much trouble, when in reality the Lieutenant-Governor has, perhaps, heard little more of him than his name.
But there is another class of applicants for appointments and promotion who cannot be disposed of quite so easily. The members of the sacred Civil Service, of which caste the Lieutenant-Governor is himself the chief, are accustomed to think that it is their special privilege, and a duty to themselves, to represent to the Lieutenant-Governor their own claims and their own peculiar fitness for any desirable appointment that is vacant, or likely to become vacant, for many of them are not at all content to wait till the vacancy actually occurs. The Lieutenant-Governor usually submits himself to the ordeal of seeing these candidates, and though it is often a sad waste of his time, it is not always without its uses, for it sometimes enables him to obtain a closer insight into the character of the applicant, and at the same time to pick up some information about local affairs under a new light. Sometimes the Lieutenant-Governor has a plan of admitting visitors of this class to breakfast, and it becomes an interesting speculation for him during breakfast to guess with what particular object each individual has come. This arrangement has also occasionally the happy effect of disconcerting the visitors themselves. Mr. Smith, who has arrived from some remote part of the country especially to urge his claims to some particular appointment, finds, to his disgust and amazement, that Mr. Robinson, the very man whose rivalry he most feared, has also come down from his district obviously with the same intention. In such a case the Lieutenant-Governor has great opportunities, if he is master of the conversation at his breakfast-table, of operating on the feelings of Smith and Robinson whilst the rest of the company are present. When breakfast is over, the Lieutenant-Governor usually retires to his study, and the visitors who wish for a private interview wait on till their turn comes to be ushered into the great man’s presence. We will draw a veil over the scenes which there occur. It is curious to note how strongly the wish is father to the thought, and how each candidate, if cross-examined immediately on his exit from his interview, will be found to have put the construction most favourable to his own desires on the words uttered by the Lieutenant-Governor. Happy is the Lieutenant-Governor who is able to express his meaning clearly and decisively, and at the same time not to wound the susceptibilities of his visitor. But unless the desired appointment has already been promised to another man, it seldom happens that the candidate is willing to persuade himself that he has no chance of success, however kindly and courteously the Lieutenant-Governor may have tried to make this clear to him.
We will pass on to another phase of the Lieutenant-Governor’s social influences. As the head of society he is bound to give what are called entertainments—which may be sub-divided into balls, at homes, dinner parties, garden-parties, breakfast parties, picnics, &c. The house called Belvedere, which is the Lieutenant-Governor’s official residence at Calcutta, is a large straggling edifice, having been built from somewhat small beginnings until the additions have almost entirely superseded the original structure. It is, unfortunately, wrongly placed to the wind as regards the reception rooms, and although the south verandahs are delightfully cool when there is a southerly breeze, the suite of the drawing-room and dining-room and ball-room runs from north to south, and is badly ventilated, so that the heat becomes excessive whenever the rooms are crowded for a ball or any other large party. Each Lieutenant-Governor has added to and altered the building, so that its capacity has increased in greater proportion than its architectural beauty; and yet it still remains for another Lieutenant-Governor to devise an entrance-hall worthy of the rest of the building. But on the occasion of the state balls which the Lieutenant-Governor gives on several suitable dates, there is certainly a very brilliant coup d’œil as one looks through the long vista of the rooms thrown open for dancing; and he must be indeed a cynic who cannot enjoy the cool breeze in the south verandah, or the comfortable arrangements on the grand and semi-lighted stone staircase which leads down to the lawn, and to the large pavilions in which supper is sometimes provided, when the time of the year permits. If you are young, and if you have a heart still at liberty, you cannot do better than try and lose it amidst the scented shrubs and plants which surround the cool recesses and sheltered seats so considerately provided for blushing maidens and whispering lovers.
Perhaps some of the most successful entertainments at Belvedere of late years have been the garden-parties held in the afternoon, to which the native nobility and the most influential and wealthy among the Hindoos, Mahomedans, Parsees, Moguls, Burmese, and every other Eastern nationality are invited, in common with all the English ladies and gentlemen of Calcutta. The mixture of Oriental and European costume produces the happiest effect, and exhibits a picturesque scene which could hardly be matched elsewhere. Native gentlemen are rather shy and sensitive, and are always more or less afraid, especially inside a house, of compromising themselves or being somehow compromised, owing to the machinations of the native servants, by contact with some European arrangements of cooking, or other things which are objectionable according to their ideas. But in an open-air garden-party they can wander about without any fear of meeting anything that may be offensive to their caste prejudices. It is much to be regretted that, however well-acquainted he may think himself to be with native habits and feelings, it is almost impossible for an English gentleman to be quite sure that there may not be something in his entertainment for the gratification of native gentlemen which, thanks probably to his own servants, may not be misinterpreted or misunderstood by some of them. But, be this as it may, it is rather difficult for the most fastidious native gentleman to take offence when walking up and down the smooth lawns at Belvedere; and if he diverts his course to seek the tea-tables or the other refreshment tents, he can hardly have anyone but himself to blame. It is very seldom that a Hindoo gentleman takes any refreshment, but some of the Mahomedans occasionally indulge in an ice or a cup of tea. It is very unusual for any native ladies to appear at these garden-parties. There are a few Christian convert ladies who come to them, wearing a sort of English costume, which is, unfortunately, not very becoming to them. Some of the native gentlemen bring their pretty grand-children with them, as has been mentioned in the previous chapter. But the time has not yet come for a native gentleman to bring his wife out on such occasions, although it is noticeable that a native gentleman is usually very willing to be introduced to the English ladies and to shake hands with them. The native gentlemen attach much importance to the shaking of hands, though it is a custom not originally recognised under their own native codes of etiquette. The time is by no means remote when more than one native nobleman of high caste used promptly to wash his hands after shaking hands with an English gentleman, one of his retinue carrying a gold basin and a supply of water to enable his master to get rid of the pollution of the touch of the white man’s hand. But we have been informed that one of the last native noblemen who adopted this practice was cured of it by a sensible Englishman, who, on his part, also produced a servant with a basin and water, and deliberately proceeded to wash his hands in the native nobleman’s presence. But we must return from this digression, and make our parting bow to the Lieutenant-Governor as we retire with the rest of the gay crowd.