But let us go into the house and pay our respects to the lady. A sable attendant (as the novels say) is asleep in the verandah, and is with some difficulty aroused—“Mem sahib hai?” Is the lady in? “Han, sahib,”—Yes, sir. You send in your card, for no native can be entrusted with the task of pronouncing English surnames, and a story is told of a new arrival ignorant of this fact who, desiring the native footman to announce him as the Honourable Hastings Sahib, to distinguish him from a Mr. Hastings who was not Honourable, was considerably disconcerted at being announced as Horrible Estink Sahib.
The man has returned and says we are to go in; so we enter and find the lady (looking very like most English ladies, only perhaps rather paler), seated in the drawing-room, the punkah swinging violently, for it is the hot weather. You see the room is a good-sized one, at least 20 feet high, with six or eight doors in it, all indispensable for ventilation; the floor covered with China matting which is cooler than a carpet; not too much furniture in it, for that would make it look hot, but a piano, books, and flowers at least, and a few pictures on the wall. The master of the house is not visible; he is either at his office, working in a room crowded with natives and the thermometer at 96°, or taking it easy in his own room, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, smoking, and reading or writing. We sit down and talk to the lady about the dreadful heat of the weather, the chance of her going to the hills, the good looks of the last arrived young lady in the station, the dinner party at the Brigadier’s the night before, and the chances of getting up private theatricals next cold weather.
If she is very civil, she may ask us to stay to tiffin, when we are regaled with salmon from England, in hermetically sealed tins, curry and rice generally very good, and Bass’s pale ale, invariably termed beer in India; after this, we take our leave; the lady probably takes her siesta, and then in the evening goes out for a drive to the band and returns to dinner.
As to your own mode of life, if you are a sensible man, you will always rise early in the hot weather, say at five o’clock, and get a walk or ride in the cool of the morning, coming home before seven to what is called “little breakfast,” where you drink tea and eat fruit if there is any, or iced mangoe fool; after which, you had better read or write till it is time for regular breakfast, and then go away to your office. Men holding official positions get a pretty good spell of desk-work every day; they are far better off than those who are not forced to work hard, for the heat is so enervating that it is very difficult to work as an amateur.
If you can get a month’s holiday, of course you run up to the hills, where at an elevation of 7000 feet above the sea level, you find yourself in a charming climate and beautiful scenery. The Governor-General and all the heads of departments go up now regularly for six months out of the twelve, like sensible men, for which they get well abused by the press, the editors being obliged to stay in the hot plains. Men who can afford it send their wives and children up every hot weather, and run up there when they can get short leave. It is expensive work, but if you want to keep your children alive, there is no resource but the hills or England; they wither and die in the plains like plucked flowers.
In the cold weather, life is much better; the absentees return from the hills and society rouses itself up for a little gaiety. If you are a sportsman, you can generally get shooting of some sort, and occasionally fishing, or you may have a spell of life in tents, and go about like the patriarchs of old, literally “with your flocks and your herds and your little ones,”—for you take every single thing with you, and travel at the rapid pace of ten or twelve miles a day. The duplicate tents go on the previous night on bullock-carts, or camels, and when you ride to your new camp in the morning, you find them ready pitched under a clump of trees, and breakfast waiting; after which you set to your work as if at home. The tent you have slept in was struck when you started, and travels on during the day at the rate of a mile an hour, for bullocks won’t be hurried and the roads are not over good. In the evening, the elders of the village come and pay their respects to you, chat about the state of the crops, or the amount of fever in the district, which generally results in a request to you for some medicine, especially quinine. You may go out for an hour or two into the neighbouring sugar or mustard fields, and knock over some peafowl or partridge; after which it is time for dinner, and then cold enough for a camp fire. There are few who do not enjoy camp life, for a time at least; when you have to go about alone, i.e. with no fellow-countryman, and may not hear your own language spoken for four or five months together, it is apt to get monotonous.
No one, as I have said, makes fortunes in India now, the time has gone by; salaries are higher than in England, of course, but the expenses are enormous. The nabob of the old novels, with a yellow face like a baboon and a dried-up liver, passionate in temper, telling impossible tiger stories, and suddenly turning up in England with a hookah, two or three black servants, and several lakhs of rupees for the hero and heroine—is a thing of the past. His successor was dear old Colonel Newcome in fiction, or better still, Henry and John Lawrence, James Outram, Herbert Edwardes, John Nicholson, Henry Durand, and men of that stamp, in reality, wise in council, resolute in action, God-fearing always, with duty ever present before them as the one motive of their lives; strong men to whom both their countrymen and native subjects looked up, as worthy to rule and to be obeyed.
It may be useful if I say a word as to the cost of living in India; this has, doubtless, greatly increased within the last ten years, but of course admits of very varied estimate according to a man’s tastes and idiosyncrasies. I have known a subaltern live on 150 rupees a month, which may be set down as the smallest possible sum for a single man, and if you double that sum a young man should live comfortably on it, without being able to indulge in any extravagancies. Many young married couples live on this, but they must exercise great self-denial to do so, and this of course is for current expenditure, and makes no allowance (in their case at least) for first cost of furniture, horses, travelling expenses, &c. The unit of coinage is the rupee, which, though nominally worth 2s., is practically given wherever you would in England give 1s., or even sometimes 6d. But, although this is the case, there is some compensating advantage in the fact, that there is not much temptation to extravagance in India, and that social life in the up-country stations is on an easy and natural footing that prevents any foolish ostentation on the one hand, or on the other, any inability to mix in society on the ground of not being able to afford it. This arises from two causes: First, that few men in India have private fortunes, and anyone may know the amount of his neighbour’s income by simple reference to the pay code. Secondly, that the society, except in a few large places, is so limited that everyone who can make himself or herself agreeable is welcome on that account, and can enjoy hospitality freely without an uneasy sense of obligation arising from inability to return it in kind. On the whole, I think Anglo-Indian society is pleasant and agreeable; few men suffer from ennui, or think everything a bore; most of the men are interested in their work and talk a certain amount of shop—not more so, I think, than other men; there are plenty of book clubs at all stations, and most people read a good deal; there are few stations at which sport of some kind is not procurable for those who have leisure for it; and those who can get two or three months’ leave to travel in Cashmere or the Himalayahs will certainly not sigh for Switzerland or the Alps.
While I am on the subject of society, let me disabuse you of the notion still prevailing in the minds of many respectable people, as well as second-rate novelists, that ladies in India are different from their English sisters, and that, when young, they are shipped over to the East like figs, to the market of Hymen. Such fables belong only to the time when every Indian was a nabob, with no liver to speak of, and the complexion of a China orange. Young ladies now go to India, I assure you, for the same reason that other young ladies stay in England,— because their fathers and mothers are there; and stray females, bent on an independent matrimonial cruise, are, alas! things of the past. On the other hand, while the one terrible drawback of Anglo-Indian life is the continual separation of husband and wife, parents and children, I am bold enough to say that those social relations—the former, at any rate—are stronger even than in England, if only on this account, that each is less independent of the other than at home. If Damon and Phyllis have had a quarrel, Damon can’t go to his club, nor Phyllis run to her mamma, to make matters worse; and when each has cooled or sulked a little, Damon remembers the terrible time when they said good-bye to their little ones at Southampton, and Phyllis recalls the intense pleasure of again meeting her husband, after that cruel illness which sent her home when he could not go with her; so they kiss and make friends, and resolve to keep their tempers in better check in future.