From Edinburgh to India & Burmah

by W. G. Burn Murdoch

We shoved off again when the sky was positively burning with colour, hoisted our sail, and with a light sea breeze went up river towards the darkening groves of palms, guiding ourselves by the afterglow and the glint of a new moon, and lights from the few bungalows on shore.

As we sail we plan to return some day and do up one of these old Arabian Night bungalows. They look almost palatial with their terraces and flight of steps from the river and white pillars showing in the pale moonlight with dark palms and trees over them. They at the same time suggest something of Venice, and of the Far East. They would need repair, but rents are low.

It gets darker and we have difficulty in picking up marks—first the rock on our right from which we go dead across stream, to the high palm just visible against the night sky; then up stream a bit, and across to avoid shoals. We row, for the wind has fallen away. Every now and then our blades touch gravel, and twice we go right aground and have to shove off. Fish jump round us; two come in forward, pretty little silvery fellows with a potent smell of herring, one big fellow surges nearly ashore. As the boat-house and club lights appear we go hard and fast on to a bank, and a native wayfarer fording the river in the dark, whom we mistake for a Club servant expecting us, is ordered to shove us off, which he does and goes on his way without a word—"the gentle Hindoo" again.

The Club boat-house is a perfect treat! By the lamplight I am sure I saw a score of double sculls, sixes, and possibly eights, and skiffs and punts—all sorts of river boats, and as far as I could see, all in order; the men who have both such a Club and boat-house are to be envied. The Club-house was a dream of white Georgian architecture, veiled in moonlight amongst great trees and palms. There were high silvery white pillars (Madras is famous for its marble white stucco) and terraces and wide steps and yellow light coming from tall open jalousies under verandahs. Winding paths led up to it, and along one of these we followed a native, who swung a lamp near the ground in case of snakes. In the Club were rooms for dining, reading, and dancing, all in the same perfect Georgian style.

I would have liked to stay, to see the dance that was going to begin, but it was late, and we were in flannels, and were three miles from home. The ball-room was entirely to my taste, an oval, with white pillars round it reflected in a light-coloured polished floor, overhead a domed roof with chrystal chandeliers, and smaller crystal lights round the sides.

On the road home we met motors, dog-carts, and men and ladies going to the dance; the motor dust here is twenty times thicker than at home; for half-a-mile after you pass a motor you see nothing—can't open your eyes in fact—then came a series of Rembrandts, in wayside lamplit stalls, and home to mosquitoes and late dinner.

31st December, Sunday.—Spent forenoon writing letters and working up sketches, and to make all smooth went to two churches and two temples in the afternoon; a fairly good ending to the year. The first temple, a pile of architecture of debased wedding-cake style, thick with innumerable elastic-legged, goggled-eyed, beastly, indecent Hindoo divinities. Thence to a Roman Catholic church in St Thomé, the old Portuguese quarter—very pretty and simple in appearance. The half near the altar full of veiled European nuns in white and buff dresses. Nearer the door, where we sat, were native women and children, mostly in red, a few of them with antique European black bonnets and clothes; and in their withered old faces you could imagine a strain of the early Portuguese settlers. The altar was, as usual, in colours to suit the simple mind; the Madonna in blue and white and gold with a sweet expression of youth and maternity, her cheeks were like china, and she dandled the sweetest little red-haired baby in a nest of gold rays, all against a rocky background. How telling the fair Viking type of baby must be to these little black-eyed, wondering worshippers, far more fascinating and wonderful, I am sure, than their miraculous six-armed gods. There were real roses too, such numbers of them, and altogether a good deal of somewhat gim-crack effect, but the whole appealed to me, for at least the idea of material beauty was recognised, and for a minute I forgot all the ugliness (= Evil) that our churches have caused, and the good (= Beauty) they have destroyed, and bowed and crossed myself like my neighbours. Then we drove to another church near the sea, St Thomés. The bones of St Thomas of the New Testament are said to be buried here. We only looked into it; it was finely built, and inside at the moment was almost as empty as a Protestant church on a week-day. There was but one devotee, a black woman, confessing to a half-black man. We shuddered and escaped, and drove a few yards and saw "The seas that mourn, in flowing purple of their Lord forlorn,"—the wide long stretch north and south of white sand, and the log surf rafts, and the dark fishermen going up and down on the blue swell—and didn't we draw a breath of relief of God's pure air.

There was a log craft at the surf edge, with a kid playing beside it, his reflection perfect in the long backwash. His father talked in a strange tongue to me, and I looked at the swell and considered, and saw black men out beyond the surf, and none of them apparently drowned, or in fear of sharks, so I left shoes and socks with G. and our coachman to look after her, and the syce to look after the carriage, and tucked up trousers and away we went together, my heart in my mouth! What joy—bang into and over the first breaker. I'd nearly to stand upright to keep my waist dry, and down and up again—the movement quick and exhilarating; over two other breakers and we were away on the open rollers, and able to look round to the distant shore, where G. sat with my sketch-book and a gallery of brown figures. We paddled along to another craft out at sea that had pulled up its net. Two men were in it, and we made fast to it till they cleared the fish out of the net, and we took them in a matting bag on to our raft, where the water washed over them, and we took them ashore. It was curious to see how neatly and ably these men could haul a net and clear it of fish on four submerged logs—they could move about, stand and walk from one end of the logs to the other with freedom. With the net on board the logs were almost entirely submerged. Running ashore is the most sporting part of the procedure; we paddled along slanting towards the beach, waiting for the ninth wave to pass, then went straight for the sand for all we were worth, and got in in great style; I must say I nearly lost my balance landing, there were so many natives wading out to bear a hand that my eye wandered—but what a craft for the purpose! I vow no boat I ever saw of the size could come on to hard sand with such a surf behind and not break and throw you out. It is really a sport with a capital S, though, as far as I can hear, white people don't go in for it, perhaps because it is said—on what authority I do not know—that the sharks prefer white people to the natives! The natives who swim in the surf apparently are not touched by them, yet you see no Europeans bathing on what I should think would be a delightful shore for bathing once you had got accustomed to diving through the surf. If I go surf-logging again I will take a change of trousers—Got on shoes, the natives standing three deep to see the Sahib get sand off his feet, extremely curious but quite polite. The rupee I gave my man pleased him very much, and the others all wanted to take me out again, or at least to have a rupee too. They were a nicer, bolder-looking lot of men than those in the town by a very long chalk.

We then went to another temple that was also worth seeing. There is a tank near it that would be beautiful, but for a monumentally ugly iron railing that has recently been put round it. It is distinctly British—who on earth did it? We were fortunate, for just before coming to the tank and temple, a christening party of Hindoos in their best clothes, with yellow flowers in black hair, and priests with long chanters and tom-toms playing, came out of some houses as we were passing. In a loosely formed procession they proceeded very slowly to the temple, the principals in a closed brougham in the middle. It was just like one of Tadema's pictures on the move—barring the brougham! The players led the way in white, with the dark wood chanters mounted with silver bells and mouthpieces, and made music with a little of the twang of our pipe chanter, but without the continuity and lift or crisp grace-notes. Young girls, with their faces tinted yellow with saffron, followed in dull red dresses. Behind the procession were classical-looking houses, and over these appeared palms and banyan trees; but in the middle was the prosaic old Waler, and the hired brougham, which was very distressing, for otherwise the subject was evidently "artistic," and combined just the proportions of sentiment and positive colour, which would have insured for its faithful depiction, a warm reception at any of our Royal Academical Exhibitions—the man in the street could see that!