Hastings Clive has a queer assortment of pets, first of which are the bushy-tailed Persian kittens, hereinbefore mentioned. When, in Yankee-land, some lovelorn Zeekle is notoriously sweet upon any Huldy of the rural maids,—when
"His heart keeps goin' pitypat,
And hern goes pity Zeekle,"—
when she is
"All kind o' smily round the lips,
And teary round the lashes,"—
it is usual to describe his condition by a feline figure; he is said to "cuddle up to her like a sick kitten to a hot brick." But the sick Oriental kitten, reversing the Occidental order of kitten things, cuddles up to a water-monkey, and fondly embraces the refreshing evaporation of its beaded bulb with all her paws and all her bushy tail. The Persian kitten stands high in the favor of Hastings Clive.
Hastings Clive has a whole array of parroquets and hill-mainahs, which, as they learned their small language from his peculiar scurrilous practice, are but blackguard birds at best. He also rejoices in many blue-jays, rescued from the Ganges, whereinto they were thrown as offerings to the vengeful Doorga during the barbarous pooja celebrated in her name. Very proud, too, is Hastings Clive of his pigeons,—his many-colored pigeons from Lucknow, Delhi, and Benares; an Oudean bird-boy has trained them to the pretty sport of the Mohammedan princes, and every afternoon he flies them from the house-top in flashing flocks, for Hastings Clive's entertainment.
Hastings Clive has toys, the wooden and earthen toys for which Benares was ever famous among Indian children,—nondescript animals, and as non-descript idols,—little Brahminee bulls with bells, and artillery camels, like those at Rohilcund and Agra,—Sahibs taking the air in buggies, country-folk in hackeries, baba-logue in gig-topped ton-jons. But much more various and entertaining, though frailer, are his Calcutta toys, of paper, clay, and wax,—hunting-parties in bamboo howdahs, on elephants a foot high, that move their trunks very cunningly,—avadavats of clay, which flutter so naturally, suspended by hairs in bamboo cages, that the cats destroy them quickly,—miniature palanquins, budgerows, bungalows, and pagodas, all of paper,—figures in clay of the different castes and callings, baboos, kitmudgars, washermen, barbers, tailors, street-waterers, box-wallahs, (as the peddlers are called,) nautch-girls, jugglers, sepoys, policemen, doorkeepers, dog-boys,—all true to the life, in costume, attitude, and expression.
Statedly, on his birth-day, the Anglo-Indian child is treated to a kat-pootlee nautch, and Hastings Clive has a birth-day every time he conceives a longing for a puppet-show; so that our wilful young friend may be said to be nine years, and about nineteen kat-pootlee nautches, old.
To make a birth-day for Hastings Clive, three or four tamasha-wallahs, or show-fellows, are required; these, hired for a few rupees, come from the nearest bazaar, bringing with them all the fantastic apparatus of a kat-pootlee nautch, with its interludes of story-telling and jugglery. A sheet, or table-cloth, or perhaps a painted drop-curtain, expressly prepared, is hung between two pillars in the drawing-room, and reaches, not to the floor, but to the tops of the miniature towers of a silver palace, where some splendid Rajah, of fabulous wealth and power, is about to hold a grand durbar, or levee. All the people, be they illustrious personages or the common herd, who assist in the ceremony, are puppets a span long, rudely constructed and coarsely painted, but very faithful as to costume and manners, and most dexterously played upon by the invisible tamasha-wallahs, whom the curtain conceals.
A silver throne having been wheeled out on the portico by manikin bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden state; a manikin hookah-badar, or pipe-server, and a manikin chattah-wallah, or umbrella-bearer, take up their wooden position behind, while a manikin punkah-wallah fans, woodenly, his manikin Highness, and the manikin courtiers dance wooden attendance around. Then manikin ladies and gentlemen come on manikin elephants and horses and camels, or in manikin palanquins, and alight with wooden dignity at the foot of the palace stairs, taking their respective orders of wooden precedence with wooden pomposities and humilities, and all the manikin forms of the customary bore. The manikin courtiers trip woodenly down the grand stairs to meet the manikin guests with little wooden Orientalisms of compliment, and all the little wooden delicacies of the season; and they conduct the manikin Sahibs and Beebees into the presence of the manikin Rajah, who receives them with wooden condescension and affability, and graciously reciprocates their wooden salaams, inquiring woodenly into the health of all their manikin friends, and hoping, with the utmost ligneous solicitude, that they have had a pleasant wooden journey: and so on, manikin by manikin, to the wooden end. Of course, much desultory tomtomry and wild troubadouring behind the curtain make the occasion musical.