When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

A woman—a woman whose mind and whose personality were on a larger scale than mine—wrote to me from America, “What a privilege to be alone with the mountains!” I held it more a privilege to be alone with the natives, to study them, and to learn them, as I hope I did a little.

My stay in Khandalah increased wonderfully my already large respect for the natives. My servants behaved beautifully. Each little duty was as exactly performed as if we had been living en régale in Calcutta or Bombay. Every petty little Eastern ceremony was punctiliously performed.

Every meal was as formally served and as carefully prepared as if we had been in Calcutta, and a dozen people coming to dinner. Each morning my favourite flowers were freshly gathered into the vases. None of my likes and dislikes were ever forgotten by my faithful brown friends. Ayah I loved best of all. I used to abuse the dhursies, and fly into a weekly fury with the dhobie. She was a wretch! The cook and I had sundry squabbles, but I adored his dishes, and that made him adore me. Methu, my own boy, was a perfect servant, save for a habit he had of stealing beverage, and the mallie was a perfect mother to me.

I believe that I was once or twice unkind to the dhute wallah, but he was always unkind to me; so I forgive myself.

Sambo crept slowly into my good graces; and I wish I had them, one and all, here in London. I hope they are all hale and hearty in their pretty hillside huts, and I send them my salaams.

We had incredibly little furniture in our bungalow, but we had a wealth of pretty, filmy draperies. We had precious things from China and Japan,—had them in cabinets well above the children’s heads. And our garden was an Oriental paradise—a perfumed dream of plenty and of matchless loveliness. I used to lie for hours in a hammock, watching the stars, listening to the jackals, smelling the fresh ottar of the rose trees, dreaming my woman’s dreams and perhaps companioning myself with a cigarette, or perhaps my pet monkeys lay asleep in my arms. Sometimes my hammock swung low with the added weight of my bairns; but not often at night. They used to fall asleep with the sun; for from sunrise till sunset they chased and rolled through the scented tangles of our wonderful garden. They were always entirely safe, though great green snakes and jackals were common, and panthers and tigers not over rare. Our great dog never left them,—nor did Ayah nor Sambo. All those three were faithful unto death, and Nizam, the dog, was decidedly clever.

I learned to read in Khandalah. I spent a great deal of my childhood in my father’s library. I grew up among books, the spoiled child, the companion of a booky man. But it was in Khandalah—alone on the Indian hills, at the edge of the Indian jungle, that I learned how great is the privilege of reading—that I learned to reverence books and to handle them with devout fingers. I had many books with me. Some were old friends; some had been selected for me by the best read man and the most comprehensively minded I ever knew. But in Khandalah I learned even a greater joy than the joy of reading. I learned the joy of living: I learned what a privilege it is to live.

Yes, I who have always loved life, I across whose life an everlasting shadow had fallen—the shadow of a little grave—learned in my hill solitude what a good thing it was to be alive. I should not have liked it for ever; but for six months it was ideal. “Could you have endured it alone?” a friend has asked me. Ah! I don’t know. I had my babies, and their nurse who is my dear friend, and sometimes I had my husband. I fear that I could endure but little alone. I am not self-reliant. A few nights ago I read in a London paper, “There is nothing on earth so lonely as a lonely woman.” I think that I have never read anything truer. I would rather be a confirmed invalid—yes, and a bedridden one—than a lone woman. But if I were a lone woman (which, to be frank, I can’t for a moment imagine myself) I would rather face my loneliness alone, in just such an Indian bungalow—alone, but for native servants and books and flowers and pet animals. I was not alone in Khandalah; but society in every ordinary sense I had none. Yet I was never once lonely. And when I ought to have gone to Bombay, I sent my nurse, and curled myself up in my hammock.

It is a privilege to be alone with Nature. Yes, and it is also a privilege, a great privilege, sometimes to be alone with one’s self.

Yes, it was a charming existence—ours at Khandalah. We were as free, as untrammelled by artificialities, as out of the world, as if we had been gipsies living in a tent. And yet we were as comfortable, our little ménage was as well ordered, as if we had been domiciled in the best of hotels. Our omelets were always perfect; our gravies were never insipid; our pièce de résistance was always done to a turn; our entrées were always pretty, as well as toothsome; and our table was invariably a thing of beauty.