When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

Mayonnaise salad. (No mess cook can make that as well as I can.)

Ices. Creams. Sweets. (The Indians excel at making them.)

Fruit.

Coffee.

But two items I hadn’t selected were provided us—one by the khansamah, one by that fickle purveyor, Fate. The khansamah enlivened us with the worst champagne I have ever tasted. We couldn’t drink it, but it gave us a theme for small-talk. And we pretended to prefer claret. Fate’s contribution was a nastier one; for like the Egyptians of old we had a death’s head at our feast. About an hour before we expected our friends, I heard the rapid canter of a horse, and my ayah, who was sitting on the verandah, exclaimed, “Lal coatie sahib!” The natives have only this one term for all British soldiers. No matter what their uniforms, they are all “red coats.” We were the only guests in the hotel, so I ran out. Yes, the rider was one of the boys we were expecting later. I had always seen him so jolly; but now he looked very worn and white. “I have come to ask you to excuse me to-night,” he said. “I have been all the afternoon with a poor chap—a private—who has just died. Cholera! It was very tough. I feel a bit done.” But I vetoed that. It was the time of all times when an English boy needed a little cheering.

It was a very grave little dinner-party when we sat down; the spirit of cholera was with us. Oh! what precautions you would all take, here in London, if you knew of cholera half that I know! How I wish that I could voice some sharp word of warning that the mothers of England would heed! My servants think me a bit mad and very troublesome. But I know what I know. I have paid a terrible price for my knowledge. And so I insist, and see that they obey. All our garbage is burned. Our drinking water is boiled. We smell of carbolic from cellar to attic. And in the nursery there is a bottle of chlorodyne, a flask of brandy, and mustard and linen ready for plasters. Cholera is very quick. It must be fought quickly or in vain.

Yes, we began our meal very gravely. But English soldiers are taught the courage of cheerfulness, and we were not gloomy, though my husband and I were leaving on the morrow, perhaps never again to see the three soldier boys we liked so much; and for them that morrow held the dreaded possibility of “cholera camp.” The champagne helped us to be almost merry, though not in a conventional way. It is remarkable what vile champagne is sold in the East and with the very best labels! The khansamah was very quaint as bottle after bottle was opened, amid an expectant silence that was not broken by a pop or a fizz. “It was always the way with the best champagne,” he assured us. “The very best champagne never jumped about like a nautch-girl. It was all good wine, not half of it bad gas. Such champagne the ‘sahibs’ did not often see.” He was in despair when the “sahibs” would not drink it; he was in downright distress the next morning when my husband declined to pay for it. “He must pay—indeed he had paid the Parsi from whom he had procured it, and he could not get back his many rupees. He had procured it with great difficulty. It had been wanted for the Maharajah of Kapurthala. He was a most poor man, and he had sold the memsahib a priceless dog for so few rupees. He wept at our feet.” We were really rather fond of the khansamah, and we knew that we had only paid treble for a huge half-bred bull-dog that I had fancied for my children; so the bill was paid less the price of one of the half-dozen bottles that had been opened.

The following letter reached us a few days before we sailed from Karachi. It is one of the most valued things in my cabinet of curios:⁠—

Hakin Raig, Mannigar Imperial Hotel,

Rpindi, 14/8/1892.