“13th Jan.—I was nervous all day yesterday at getting no answer from Lord Ripon. But at dinner last night the post arrived, with a most gracious letter, which makes me feel ashamed of my own violent one. I shall now leave the matter entirely in his hands, and I am glad of it, for it might interfere with my larger plans to have to fight a newspaper battle on such a field.
“Since writing this, Lyall has spoken to me also about the Patna business, and tells me Lord Ripon has sent him a copy of my letter, and begged him to urge on me the excision of such portions of it as treat the general question, because, Lyall says, if it were brought forward in that form just now, there would be a terrible row all over India, and it would upset Lord Ripon altogether. He has had a terribly hard time lately, and another angry question would be too much for him. He said he could promise me on Lord Ripon’s part, that if I would rewrite the letter in this sense, Lord Ripon would see justice done in the matter. He was not a man to do less than justice, and he, Lyall, would advise that Dr. K. be brought down to Patna to apologize to the Mohammedan gentleman, and that an order should be issued to the Railway Company for the better protection of natives. Of course I readily agreed to all this, and have now rewritten the public letter, and posted it, with a private one of thanks, to Lord Ripon. Nothing could have been better. But Lyall charges me I should tell no man—no Englishman that is—for I have already shown my first letter to several Mohammedans, and sent a copy of it to Villayet Ali. Rajah Amir Hassan called on his way to Lucknow, where we are to stay with him.
“In the afternoon we went with Mohammed Kazim, a friend of Ferid-ed-Din, to see some villages across the river, and saw also the Hindu pilgrims encamped in the river bed, at the junction of the waters. I feel in high spirits to-day at things having gone so exactly as I intended them to do in connection with the Patna incident. I could not really have published the first letter at a moment like this, and now Lord Ripon is under an obligation to me, and I shall have a right to speak about the university.
“Another long talk with Lyall. He told me that the Ceylon authorities had telegraphed about me to those of Bengal, and I fancy, though he did not say so, that he has been instructed to look pretty closely after me. It is also evident that Ferid-ed-Din has been warned not to go too far; and Lyall advised me to allow myself to be directed by Rajah Amir Hassan at Lucknow, as to whom to see and not to see, which means that he, too, has been warned to keep me out of dangerous company. I have been very frank with Lyall about my plans and ideas. Government opposition now would only strengthen me with the Mohammedans. They would do far better to help than to hinder me, for my ideas do not really run counter to any liberal interpretation of the continuance of British rule in India. Lyall, as a man, is everything that is charming and sympathetic; as an official he has graduated in a thoroughly bad school. It was he who, more than any one else, ruined Salar Jung’s administration in Hyderabad, and he admitted nearly as much to me. Salar Jung, he said, presumed upon the fact of his good government to claim what he could not get, that is, independence of the Paramount Power. There were certain things which the Government of India would always insist upon advising about, and having its advice followed. But Salar Jung did not see this. He thought he could rely on his own cleverness, and extra-official sympathy in England. But this could not be allowed. On that point he agreed with Lytton that Salar Jung was a dangerous man. It was not part of the Imperial policy that the Berar provinces should ever be restored.
“14th Jan.—The ‘Pioneer,’ instead of publishing the account of the meeting at the Mayo Hall, has printed a vicious little paragraph, saying that the natives of Patna regard me as a paid spy of the English Government. This is too much, and I expostulated with Lyall about it on the ground that the ‘Pioneer’ is a semi-official journal, a fact which, with certain qualifications, he admitted, and sent at once for N., the sub-Editor—Allen, the Editor, being away. After a sermon from Lyall, N. was shown in to me, a lackadaisical youth in a check suit, apparently still in his teens, and so frightened he could hardly speak or find his way to a chair. I was sorry for the boy, and dealt with him mildly when he stammered an excuse that the paragraph had been inserted as a joke, and he promised repentance, and to print the address verbatim as well as my speech, and also to print, when it should arrive, any letter from the Patna Mohammedans. Lyall tells me he is a youth who spends his time playing lawn tennis, and picks up his information in such places. They make use of him, however, to insert communiqués (one of them was Cordery’s explanation a few days ago), and Colvin is thick with Allen, the Editor, lodging, I understand, in the same house with him at Calcutta. Colvin, he says, has always worked the press. He himself has made the rule only to work anonymously to the extent of writing articles he was prepared, if challenged, to avow. But he is of opinion it is best to keep out of it altogether. It is Colvin, no doubt, who has prompted the spiteful tone of the ‘Pioneer’ towards myself. But how ridiculously these newspapers rule the world.
“7th to 15th Jan.—We went to Lucknow, the party here breaking up at the same time, Lyall going on a tour of the province, his wife and daughter to a ball at Lucknow. Mulvi Wahaj-ed-din and about twenty others came to see us off at the station, but we have seen nothing of them, for they won’t come to Government House to be treated like servants. Nothing happened on the journey except that at Cawnpore about one hundred Mohammedans had assembled to see us while the train stopped. One of them recited some verses in Arabic, and an address was promised, but they had had no time, they said, to write one. There are not many Mohammedans at Cawnpore, and only one can speak a little English, so our interview was limited to compliments, bowings, and hand shakings.
“At Lucknow we were received by all the great people, two of the Oude princes, and our host, Rajah Amir Hassan, who drove us to his house in a state carriage and four. He made many apologies to us for the poorness of his abode, which was, in fact, a small palace, and explained that his own palaces had been burned down at the time of the Mutiny, and this house was given him in exchange by the English Government. It was late, and we had no more time than to dine and go to bed, the Rajah dining with us, the first time in his life, he told us, he had ever dined with Europeans, nor had he ever entertained an Englishman in his house.
“16th Jan.—We have had a great deal of conversation with our host, who is a man of much intelligence, though a rather bigoted Shiah. He explained to me the dogmatic differences they had with the Sunnis, the principal of which, he said, was that the Shiahs asserted God’s justice, and that the prophets had been without sin and infallible. He also went through the old discussion about Ali’s succession to the Caliphate with warmth; and told me a number of other curious things connected with his sect. Lucknow is its stronghold in India, as the Court was Shiah during the last eighty years of its existence. We then talked of Hyderabad. Sir Salar Jung had been a great friend of his, and he had recommended Seyd Huseyn to him.
“In the afternoon he drove us round the town and showed us the Imambara, where he said a prayer on the tomb, touching it with his right hand. Also to the Residency ruins, while he told us the history of the Mutiny from his own point of view. His father had sided with the mutineers and been the chief leader of the Shiah faction among them, till the massacres occurred, when he left them in disgust and went to his own fort, at Mahmudabad, where he took ill and died. Twelve of Amir Hassan’s brothers and cousins were shot, blown up, or hanged by the English, and he alone was left, a boy of ten, to be educated by them. All the family property in Lucknow was confiscated and destroyed, for the English destroyed one third of the city, and so he comes in for an inheritance of woe. Looking, however, at the ruins, which are very beautiful, he said: ‘We have agreed to forget our history, and the days of our glory. But the English refuse to forget it. They leave their ruins standing to perpetuate the memory of bloodshed. If I could do it, I would persuade the Lieutenant-Governor to have them razed or rebuilt.’
“The Rajah is only thirty-six years old, but his hair is very gray, and he looks fifty. He complains of his liver, and I have strongly advised him, for the good of his soul and body, to make the land pilgrimage from Kerbela to Mecca, and he says he will certainly do so. He does not go into English society, because he dislikes being disrespectfully treated. The officials are very tyrannical. Of General Barrow he spoke very highly, as of one who had saved them from destruction after the Mutiny, and he showed us a statue of him the Talukdars of Oude are going to set up. He is President of the Talukdars’ Association, and takes considerable part in public affairs, besides having started some indigo factories. Altogether he is a superior man.