Owing to the Durbar, dinner was served at a late hour in the State dining-room, a spacious apartment in white and gold. At one end hung full-length portraits of our host and hostess in the gorgeous robes they wore at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in the celebrations in London. Table and sideboard shone with massive silver cups won at race-meetings and shows by the horses of the Cooch Behar stable. Native servants in scarlet and gold waited on the guests; but with all the luxury of a banquet served on silver there was no formality about the meal. The Maharajah and his sons had changed their magnificent attire for a comfortable native dress; and listening to their conversation in colloquial English on polo, shooting, and London theatrical gossip it was hard to realise that an hour before they had been playing their picturesque parts in such a stately Oriental pageant. All the family generally used English as their speech. The boys had been educated at Eton; and Victor, in addition, had done a course at an American University.
After dinner we adjourned to the Durbar Hall again to witness from the galleries a nautch; and real Indian dancing is a spectacle of which the European soon has his fill. And somewhere about three o'clock in the morning, fatigued with the monotonous chant and the lazily moving fat figures of the nautch girls, overpowered by the heated atmosphere heavy with scent, I gladly hailed the suggestion of Prince Rajendra to escape from it all and go for a mad rush in his motor-car through the surrounding country in the brilliant moonlight. His brothers followed us in their cars. Nautches and motor-cars, the brilliant spectacle of the Durbar and these Eton-bred Indian Princes; what a fantastic medley it all seemed! And the swift sweep through the park in the cool morning air back to an Indian palace and a guest-chamber fitted like the best bedroom in a European hôtel de luxe. But when next day I left, in response to an urgent message bidding me come to shoot a tiger near Buxa, even the prospect of the sport scarcely reconciled me to quitting the lavish hospitality of my hosts.
The Maharajah of that day is unfortunately no longer alive. The descendant of a hill race, he had all the fighting spirit of his ancestors who left their mountains to carve out a kingdom for themselves among the unwarlike dwellers of the Bengal plains. He took part in the Tirah Campaign with our troops, and held the rank of colonel in our Indian Cavalry. A sportsman, he was regarded throughout India, that land of sportsmen, as one of the best authorities in the world on big-game shooting. He had not his equal in the art of managing a beat with elephants; and it was a marvellous sight to see him working a long line of them through thick jungle with the skill of a M.F.H. with his hounds in covert. He was a splendid horseman. Excelling in all games, he brought up his sons in the love of sport and athletics and made them fine polo players, first-class cricketers and footballers and crack shots. But, in addition, he was an extremely clever and well-read man and a most interesting talker. He had been everywhere, seen everything, and knew most of the interesting personalities of the day. His hospitality was proverbial. In his residences in Calcutta and Darjeeling, in his Palace of Cooch Behar, he kept open house. His courtesy and charm of manner endeared him to all who knew him.
On my first visit to Cooch Behar in response to an invitation of His Highness, Creagh and I were met at the railway station by Captain Denham White, then temporarily acting civil surgeon of the State. He drove us through the town which, though small, is well planned. The streets are broad, well laid, and shaded with trees. In the centre of it lies a large square tank or pond surrounded by roads bordered by public and official buildings. Here afterwards I often saw the invalid permanent civil surgeon, for whom Captain White was then acting, sitting in a chair on the bank fishing, with a table beside him on which his servant laid his tea. And undisturbed by the endless procession of bullock carts, coolies, and natives of all ages, the old doctor sat and cast his line, hooking some extraordinary large fish at times.
The poorer houses of the town were built on posts with bamboo walls and thatched roofs, similar to the Filipino dwellings in Manila, cool and airy and far healthier than the awful abodes of the lower classes in an English city. Cooch Behar could boast a fine college, a good civil hospital and quite a comfortable prison. I visited it once and found the thieves, highway robbers, and murderers, anything but miserable despite their chains, making soda water, grinding corn, cultivating vegetables or eating better and more plentiful meals than they had ever got in their own homes.
Beyond the town we drove through the open tree-shaded park to the palace, a long two-storied building with arcaded verandas above and below. It was shaped like a T laid on its side; and at the junction of the two strokes was the portico leading to a large hall, off which opened the great Durbar room surmounted by its lofty white dome. On the left of the entrance, as one approached, were, on both stories, the long series of guest-chambers. On the right along the lower veranda was the State dining-room. Off the entrance hall to the right a broad staircase led to the upper story. Its walls were crowded with trophies of sport which had fallen to the Maharajah's rifle all over the world. Heads of bison, Indian and Cape buffaloes, moose, wapiti, sambhur, cheetal and roe deer from Germany—relics of many lands. To the right lay the State drawing-room and the splendidly appointed billiard-room carpeted with the skins of tigers. It occupied the front end of the short stroke of the T, and so from its windows and doors gave a fine view over the park on three sides, which made it a popular apartment for the afternoon tea rendezvous with the ladies of the family and their European guests. Behind, lay the private apartments of His Highness, the Maharani and her daughters, from the flat roofs above which, reached by a small staircase, one could see for many miles over the flat country beyond the English-like park. From here the Maharani could look down unseen, for in deference to the customs of her husband's subjects she and her daughters were purdah in the State outside the palace, and watch her sons playing football with the Cooch Behar team in the annual association tournament for a cup given by His Highness. The ground was situated in the park close under the walls of the building.
At the time of this visit the Maharajah was the only member of the family in Cooch Behar. He had issued invitations to a dinner-party in our honour that evening, at which we met his staff and some of the principal gentlemen of his State. He joined us at dinner himself; for, being a follower of the Bramo Samaj faith, he had no religious prejudices that prevented him from eating with Europeans. I have hunted, shot, played polo and pigsticked with Hindu Princes who yet could not sit down at the same table with me when I dined at their palaces. At most they entered the room when dinner was over and filled a glass of wine to drink our Sovereign's health. But this meal in Cooch Behar was enlivened for me by the interesting conversation of my host, whom I was meeting for the first time. The State Band played outside the dining-room. After dinner we adjourned to the billiard-room or made up a bridge table. The Maharajah was practically the first Indian Prince to adopt English customs and was a frequent visitor to England, where he and his consort were great favourites of the late Queen Victoria. For her and the then reigning monarch King Edward VII. he entertained the warmest personal regard and admiration; and his loyalty to the British rule was founded on his sincere conviction of the benefits it conferred on India. I remember that during dinner that night he said to me:
"If ever, during my lifetime, the British quitted India, my departure would precede theirs; for this would be no country to live in then. Chaos, bloodshed and confusion would be its lot."
I drew him out on the subject of big-game shooting, of which few men living knew more, and listened with interest to his tales of shikar. Then the conversation ranged to art, the theatre, war, and politics; and on each he could speak entertainingly. He was deeply interested in developing the resources of his State and was anxious to introduce scientific methods among his farmers. Among other plans he was anxious to improve the quality of the native tobacco grown largely in the State, and had got for the purpose the best species of American and Turkish plants. His third son Victor, after finishing his course at an American University, was sent to Cuba to inspect the plantations and factories, and study the methods in use there.
On the following day my subaltern and I were obliged to set our faces towards Buxa again; and it seemed like turning our backs on civilisation when we left the luxury of Cooch Behar Palace behind us and wended our way to our solitary little Station in the hills.