The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

THE cold weather is not a season of unqualified delight in Calcutta, in spite of the glorious coming of the Raj into his winter palace, and the consequent nautch. The cold weather has its trifling drawbacks. The mosquitoes and the globe-trotters are so bad then, that some people have been known to prefer the comparative seclusion they enjoy when the thermometer stands at 103° in the shade, when the mosquitoes have gone to the Hills, pursuing the fat of the land, and the globe-trotters to northern latitudes seeking publishers.

It may be set down as an axiom that the genus globe-trotter is unloved in Calcutta. It may also be set down as an axiom that it is his own fault, for reasons that may appear. But there are globe-trotters and globe-trotters, and of some the offence is venial—nothing more, perhaps, than that they make the hotels uncomfortable, and put up the price of native curiosities. And some are amusing in their way, and some bring English conversation with them; and I have known one to be grateful for such poor favours as he received, but he was not a globe-trotter that took himself seriously. It is also possible, I believe, if one lives in India long enough, to come across a globe-trotter who is modest and teachable, but we have been out here only twenty-two years, and I am going home without having seen one.

The Parliamentary globe-trotter represents the species which has impressed itself most upon Anglo-India. He has given a character and a finish, as it were, to the whole genus. He has made himself so prevalent and of such repute that, meeting any stalwart stranger of cheerful aggressive countenance at His Excellency’s board, we are apt to inquire amongst ourselves, “of what district?” hoping for reasons private to Anglo-India, that it may not be a Radical one. The initials “M. P.” have become cabalistic signs. They fill us with the memory of past reproaches, and the certainty of coming ones. They stand for much improper language, not entirely used in India. They inspire a terrible form of fear, the apprehension of the unknown, for the potentials of the globe-trotting M. P. are only revealed in caucus, the simple Anglo-Indian cannot forecast them. Regularly with December he arrives, yearly more vigorous, more inquisitive, more corpulent, more disposed to make a note of it. We have also noticed an annual increase in his political importance, his loquacity, and his capacity to be taken in, which he would consider better described as ability to form an independent opinion. At this moment we are looking forward to the last straw in the shape of Lord Randolph Churchill.

Mr. Jonas Batcham, M. P., was not so great a man as Lord Randolph Churchill when he arrived in Calcutta last cold weather; what he may have become since, by the diligent use of his Indian experiences and information collected “on the spot,” I have no means of knowing. George Browne’s father was one of Mr. Batcham’s constituents, and this made Mr. Batcham willing to stay with the Brownes while he was inspecting Calcutta, and collecting advice to offer to the Viceroy. He kindly put up with them for several weeks, and when he went away he gave four annas to the sweeper.

Mr. Batcham occasionally described himself as one of the largest manufacturers in the north of England, and though the description leaves something to be desired, it does suggest Mr. Batcham. He was large, imposing in front, massive in the rear. He was gray-whiskered, of a rubicund countenance, of a double chin. He wore a soft felt hat a little on one side, and his hands in his pockets, a habit which always strikes me as characteristic of a real manufacturer. He was very well informed—they all are. He had a suave yet off-hand manner, a business-like smile, a sonorous bass voice, and a deep, raging and unquenchable thirst for facts.

Mr. Batcham was very much aware of his value to the Brownes as a new arrival from England—a delicate appreciation of himself, which is never wanting to a globe-trotter. Mr. Batcham blandly mixed himself up with the days when people came round the Cape in a sailing-ship, or across the sands of Suez on a camel, and invested himself with all the sentimental interest that might attach to a fellow-countryman discovered in the interior of Bechuanaland. A generous philanthropic instinct rose up and surged within him as he thought, in the midst of his joyful impressions of the tropics, how much pleasure his mere presence was probably imparting. He almost felt at moments as if he had undertaken this long, arduous, and expensive journey in the interest of the Brownes as well as those of his constituents.

The great concourse of his kind in the hotels, the telegrams in the morning’s Englishman, the presence of overland cheese, the electric light, and the modern bacteriologist, should have rebuked this pretension somewhat, but it is doubtful if anything could do that. “I saw both your parents before I sailed,” said Mr. Batcham, in liberal compensation, as it were, for his first dinner, “and left them quite well.” And when young Browne replied that since then he was sorry to say his mother had had a bad attack of bronchitis, however, by the last mail they had heard she was getting over it, the damper was only momentary, and Mr. Batcham proceeded to inform them that Parnell was dead.

Oh, he was sufficiently communicative, that Batcham, sufficiently willing to impart his impressions, as expansive, by the time they got to the joint, as ever you liked. He had a certain humorous perception of what was expected of him. As a “globe-trotter,” he was familiar with the expression, and applied it to himself jovially without shame. The perception was incomplete, and therefore did not make Mr. Batcham uncomfortable. However, he understood perfectly that globe-trotters as a class were frequently and prodigiously taken in. Acting upon this, Mr. Batcham made his incredulity the strong point of his intelligence, and received certain kinds of information with an almost obvious wink. That very first night at dinner, he proclaimed himself to the Brownes a person who could not be imposed upon—useless to try. “Coming down from Benares,” said Mr. Batcham, “I travelled with a couple of men who said they were indigo planters, and so they may have been for all I know. Anyhow they spotted me to be a globe-trotter—said they knew it by the kind of hat I wore—and then they proceeded to fill me up about the country. One fellow said he didn’t own a yard of indigo land himself; always got the peasants to grow it for him; and the other went into some complicated explanation of how blue indigo was got by squeezing green leaves. All sorts of yarns they told me. How the natives wouldn’t eat factory sugar, because they believed it defiled in the preparation, but preferred drain water to any other. How a Hill woman would make nothing of carrying me on her back a thousand feet steady climbing. How in the part of the country we were going through, it was so hot in June that men had servants to drench them with water in the middle of the night regularly. I saw they were enjoying it, so I let them go on—in fact I rather drew them out, especially about indigo. Took it all in and cried for more, as the babies do for patent medicine. Then when we got out at the station here I said, ‘Thank you gentlemen, for all the “information” you have given me. It has been very entertaining. Of course you will understand, however, that I don’t believe a word of it. Good morning!’ I fancy those two indigo planters will hesitate before they tackle their next globe-trotter. I never saw men look more astonished in my life.”

“I should think so!” exclaimed young Browne; “what they told you was wholly and literally true.”