Among other places in Madras I visited one of the little Pompeiian houses in Blacktown, which I have already described—where a Hindu acquaintance, a small contractor, is living: a little office, then a big room divided in two by a curtain—parlor in front and domestic room behind—all cool and dark and devoid of furniture, and little back premises into which I did not come. He is an active-minded man, and very keen about the Indian Congress to which he was delegate last year, sends hundreds of copies of the Hindu and other “incendiary” publications about the country each week, and like thousands and hundreds of thousands of his fellow-countrymen to-day, has learnt the lessons taught him by the British Government so well that the one thing he lives for is to see electoral and representative institutions embedded into the life of the Indian peoples, and the images of Vishnu and Siva supplanted in the temples by those of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.
While I was there two elderly gentlemen of quite the old school called—innocent enough of Herbert Spencer and of cloth coats and trousers—with their white muslins round their bodies, and red shawls over their shoulders, and grey-haired keen narrow faces and bare shins and horny feet, which they tucked up onto their chairs as they sat; but with good composed unhurried manners, as all Easterns of the old school seem to have. This habit of the mild Hindu, of tucking his feet under him, is his ever-present refuge in time of trouble or weariness; at the railway station or in any public place you may see him sitting on a seat, and beneath him, in the place where his feet ought to be, are his red slippers; but of visible connection between them and his body there is none—as if he had already severed connection with the earth and was on the way toward heaven.
Calcutta.—Arrived 6th Feb., about 4 p.m.—steaming all day since dawn up the Hooghly, 130 miles from the light-boat at its mouth to Calcutta—a dismal river, with dismal flat shores, sandy and dry in places and only grown with scrub, in others apparently damp, to judge by the clumps of bamboo; landscape often like Lincolnshire, trees of similar shape, stacks of rice-straw looking just like our stacks, mud and thatch villages; in other places the palmyra and coco-nut palm; and doubtless in parts wild tangles and jungles haunted by tigers; aboriginal boats going up and down; and the Hooghly narrowing at last from four or five miles near its mouth to half a mile at the Howrah bridge of boats.
Nearing Calcutta brick-kilns and the smoky tall chimneys of civilisation appear along the banks, and soon we find ourselves among docks and wharfs, and a forest of shipping alongside of a modern-looking city (that part of it).
Calcutta is built on a dead flat. There is a considerable European quarter of five-storied buildings, offices, warehouses, law-courts, hotels, shops, residences, wide streets and open spaces, gardens, etc.; after which the city breaks away into long straggling lines of native dwellings—small flat-roofed tenements and shops, crowded bazaars and tram-lines—embedding almost aboriginal quarters, narrow lanes with mere mud and tile cabins—labyrinths where a European is stared at.
The white dome of the Post Office, like a small St. Paul’s, dominates the whole riverside city with its crowded shipping and animated quays—fit symbol of modern influences. Round no temple or mosque or minster does the civilising Englishman group his city, but round the G.P.O. It would almost seem, here in Calcutta, as if the mere rush of commercial interests had smashed up the native sanctions of race and religion. The orderly rigor of caste, which is evident in Madras, is not seen; dress is untidy and unclean, the religious marks if put on at all are put on carelessly; faces are low in type, lazy, cunning, bent on mere lucre. The Bengali is however by nature a versatile flexile creature, sadly wanting in backbone, and probably has succumbed easily to the new disorganising forces. Then the mere mixture of populations here may have a good deal to do with it. A huge turmoil throngs the bazaars, not only Bengalis, but Hindustanis, Mahomedans, Chinese, and seedy-looking Eurasians—in whom one can discern no organising element or seed-form of patriotism, religion, or culture (with the exception perhaps of the Chinese). It seems to be a case of a dirty Western commercialism in the place of the old pharisaism of caste and religion, and it is hard to say which may be the worst.
Sunday (the 8th) was a great day for bathing in the river. I did not know that the Hooghly was for such purposes considered to be a part of the Ganges, but it appears that it is; and owing to an important and rare astronomical conjunction, announced in the almanacs, bathing on that day was specially purificatory. In the morning the waterside was thronged with people, and groups of pilgrims from a distance could be seen coming in along the roads. Wherever the banks shelved down to the water, or the quays and river-walls allowed, huge crowds (here mostly dressed in unbleached cotton, with little color) could be seen preparing to bathe, or renewing themselves afterwards—beggars at all the approaches spreading their cloths on the ground to catch the scanty handfuls of rice thrown to them; everywhere squatted, small vendors of flowers for offerings, or of oil, or sandalwood paste for smearing the body with after the bath, or of colored pigments for painting sect-marks on the forehead; strings of peasants followed by their wives and children; old infirm people piloted by sons and daughters; here a little old woman, small like a child, drawn in a clumsy wooden barrow to the waterside; there a horrible blind man with matted hair, squatted, yelling texts from the holy books; here family groups and relatives chatting together, or cliques and clubs of young men coming up out of the water—brass pots glancing, and long hair uncurled in the wind. If you imagine all this taking place on a fine summer’s day somewhere a little below London Bridge, the scene would hardly be more incongruous than it is here by the handsome wharfs of Calcutta Strand, under the very noses of the great black-hulled steamships which to-day perhaps or to-morrow are sailing for the West.
The evening before the festival I went with Panna Lall B. to a European circus which happened to be in the place—same absurd incongruity—dense masses of “oysters” perched or sitting cross-legged on their benches—their wraps drawn round them, for the night was really cold—watching under the electric light the lovely and decidedly well-developed Miss Alexandra in tights performing on the trapeze, or little “Minnie” jumping through rings of flame. Considering that, except among the poorest classes (peasants, etc.), the Bengalis keep their women closely shut up, and that it is a rare thing to see a female (unless it be a child or old woman) in the streets of Calcutta—a scene of this kind at the circus must cause a sufficient sensation; and indeed the smile which curled the lips of some of these rather Mephistophelean spectators was something which I shall not easily forget.
But the mass of the people of India must be wretchedly poor. These half-starved peasants from the surrounding country wandering about—their thin thin wives and daughters trailing after them, holding on to the man’s unbleached and scanty cotton cloth—over the maidan, through the Asiatic Museum, through the streets, by the riverside—with gaping yet listless faces—are a sad and touching sight; yet it only corroborates what I have seen in other parts. “Wide and deepening poverty all over the land, such as the world has never before seen on so vast a scale,” says Digby; and with some testimony to show that the people in the native states are in a better condition than those under our organisation. Even if the poverty is not increasing (and this is a matter on which it is most difficult to form a definite opinion), there seems to be no evidence to show that it is decreasing. The famines go on with at least undiminished severity, and the widespread agricultural paralysis is by no means really compensated by a fallacious commercial prosperity, which in the larger centres is enriching the few at the expense of the many.
After watching these pathetic crowds on Sunday, I went the next day to a meeting of the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund for the Medical Education of Indian Women—a well-meant movement, which after being launched with all advantages and éclat has only met with moderate success. A very varied spectacle of dress and nationality. Rajahs and native chiefs of all sorts of hues and costumes; yellow silk tunics figured with flowers, flowing purple robes, dainty little turbans over dark mustachioed faces, sprays and feathers of diamonds; English ladies in the pink of fashion, military uniforms, and the Viceroy and Lady Lansdowne in the centre in quiet morning costume. The English speakers belauded the native chiefs present, and the native chiefs complimented the English ladies; but after the spectacle of the day before the general congratulations fell rather flat upon me, nor did they appear to be justified by the rather melancholy and inefficient appearance of the bevy of native women students and nurses present. Sir Chas. Elliott, the Lieut.-Governor, made a kindly speech, which left on one the unpleasant impression that one sometimes gets from those big-brained doctrinaire persons whose amiability is all the more hard and narrow-minded because it is so well-intentioned. Lord Lansdowne underneath an exterior (physical and mental) of decadent aristocracy seems to have just a spark of the old English high-caste ruling quality about him—which was certainly good in its time, but will be of little use I fear to the half-starved peasants of to-day.