Then followed the arranging for the return of all the participators in this pageant. Happily the Amir considered rain a good omen, and as it rained when he arrived, also when he took his departure, he must have felt he was in luck’s way.
Lord William, Captain Harbord, Mr. Durand, and other high officials drove from the Viceroy’s camp to the Amir’s, preparatory to the final adieu and to inform him of the arrest of Ayab Khan, thereby easing his mind, also the tidings that Her Majesty the Queen-Empress had conferred on him the decoration of the Grand Cross of the Star of India.
The Amir left in the Viceroy’s carriage accompanied by these officers en route for the station with a cavalry escort and body-guard of the King’s Dragoon Guards. The route was lined with troops who presented arms every fifty yards. Then a pleasing little speech from the Amir, and he was on his way back to Kabul.
Lord William had time again now to breathe freely after his hard work, and carried back to India and eventually to his home in England various souvenirs he treasured, presented to him by some of those attending the Durbar as a small appreciation of his untiring efforts for their comfort and pleasure.
Besides the brain work this gathering necessitated the writing it had entailed was enormous. I append a programme drawn up by the Military Secretary for Lord Dufferin’s tour from Simla to Calcutta in 1885, which gives some faint insight into the Military Secretary’s work every day. Also into that of the Viceroy, for at each place mentioned in the programme there were numerous people to be interviewed, some with grievances to be redressed, or petitions of sorts for the consideration of his Excellency. The landowners look forward to these visits as they give them an opportunity of personally explaining their views to their ruler. In addition to all this there are all the local celebrities to be met and have polite nothings said to them, the arranging of which takes some writing, some tact and some talking. It all passes more or less through the hands of the Military Secretary before being placed in the hands of the Viceroy.
Think what the Durbar entailed!
Memo. of Dates of His Excellency the Viceroy’s route from Simla to Calcutta, via Nahun, Dehra, Saharunpore, Delhi, Ulwar, Ajmere, Oodeypore, Indore, Jodhpore, Jeypore, Bhurtpore, Agra, Lucknow, Cawnpore, and Benares.
All this time while Lord William was attending to his duties, his horses were running in different races, but he was not very lucky, the 1884-5 Calcutta Meeting was disastrous, one horse after another going wrong, and Prospero put his lordship’s shoulder out again by falling with him, in spite of which, swathed in bandages, he rode on the second day a very good race on the same animal, it being one of the best races he ever rode, though he did not win.
Calcutta now had a new grand stand, and the races were run in the afternoon instead of the morning, which was a popular innovation. At the Second Calcutta Meeting, Ryder, Lord William’s jockey, also had a nasty fall when riding Euphrates, the grand one-eyed Arab belonging to John Wheal, termed by Mr. Abbott the Father of Indian Trainers, who describing the race says: “Just opposite the Stand, on the other side of the course, Euphrates, being on his blind side and on the extreme inside, perhaps shying from the rush of heels behind him, ran bang into the rails, not only crushing and breaking Ryder’s leg but continuing to press inwards till the woodwork gave way and Ryder from sheer weakness fell off, and Euphrates continuing his mad career must have dashed against a post, for, when caught, it was found he had knocked his only remaining eye out.”