The Mussaul, or Man of Lamps.
The Mussaul’s name is Mukkun, which means butter, and of this commodity I believe he absorbs as much as he can honestly or dishonestly come by. How else does the surface of him acquire that glossy, oleaginous appearance, as if he would take fire easily and burn well? I wish we could do without him! The centre of his influence, a small room in the suburbs of the dining-room, which he calls the dispence, or dispence-khana, is a place of unwholesome sights and noisome odours, which it is good not to visit unless as Hercules visited the stables of Augeas. The instruments of his profession are there, a large handie full of very greasy water, with bits of lemon peel and fragments of broken victuals swimming in it, and a short, stout stick, with a little bunch of foul rag tied to one end of it. Here the Mussaul sits on the ice numda while we have our meals, and as each plate returns from the table, he takes charge of it, and transfers to his mouth whatever he finds on it, for he is of the omnivora, like the crow. Then he seizes his weapon of offence, and, dipping the rag end into the handie, gives the plate a masterly wipe, and lays it on the table upside down, or dries it with a damask table napkin. The butler encourages him for some reason to use up the table napkins in this way. I suppose it is because he does not like to waste the dhobie on anything before it is properly soiled. When the Mussaul has disposed of the breakfast things in this summary way, he betakes himself to the great work of the day, the polishing of the knives. He first plunges the ivory handles into boiling water, and leaves them to steep for a time, then he seats himself on the ice again, and, arranging a plank of wood in a sloping position, holds it fast with his toes, rubs it well with a piece of bath brick, and commences to polish with all the energy which he has saved by the neglect of other duties. Hour after hour the squeaky, squeaky, squeaky sound of that board plays upon your nerves, not the nerves of the ear, but the nerves of the mind, for there is more in it than the ear can convey. Every sight and every sound in this world comes to us inextricably woven into the warp which the mind supplies, and, as you listen to that baleful sound, you seem to feel with your finger points the back of each good, new knife getting sharper and sharper, and to watch its progress as it wears away at the point of greatest pressure, until the end of the blade is connected with the rest by a narrow neck, which eventually breaks, and the point falls off, leaving the knife in that condition so familiar to us all, when the blade, about three inches long, ends in a jagged, square point, the handle having, meanwhile, acquired a rich orange hue. Oh, those knives! those knives!
Etymologically Mukkun is a man of lamps, and, when he has brushed your boots and stowed them away under your bed, putting the left boot on the right side and vice versa, in order that the toes may point outwards, as he considers they should, then he addresses himself to this part of his duty. Old Bombayites can remember the days of cocoanut, when he had to begin his operations during the cold season by putting a row of bottles out in the sun to melt the frozen oil; but kerosine has changed all that, and he has nothing to do but to trim the wick into that fork-tailed pattern in which he delights, and which secures the minimum of light with the maximum destruction of chimneys, to smear the outside of each lamp with his greasy fingers, to conjure away a gallon or so of oil, and to meet remonstrance with a child-like query, “Do I drink kerosene oil?” Then he unbends, and gives himself up to a gentle form of recreation in which he finds much enjoyment. This is to perch on a low wall or big stone at the garden gate, and watch the carriages and horses as they pass by. Other Mussauls, ghorawallas, and passing ice coolies stop and perch beside him, and sometimes an ayah or two, with a perambulator and its weary little occupant, grace the gathering. I suppose the topics of the day are discussed, the chances of a Russian invasion, the dearness of rice, and the events which led to the dismissal of Mr. Smith’s old Mussaul Canjee. Then the time for the lighting of lamps arrives, and Mukkun returns to his duties.
You might not perhaps suspect it, but Mukkun is a prey to vanity. The pure oily transparency of his Italian complexion commands his admiration, and he thinks much of those glossy love-locks which emerge from his turban and curl in front of his ears. Several times a day he goes into his room to contemplate himself in a small hand mirror, and to wind up the love-locks on his finger. Poor Mukkun has, indeed, a very human side, and the phenomenon which we recognise as our Mussaul is not the whole of him. By birth he is an agriculturist, and there is in the environs of Surat a little plot of land and a small dilapidated hut in one corner of it, overgrown with monstrous gourds, which he thinks of as home, sweet home. There are his young barbarians all at play, but he, their sire, is forced to seek service abroad because, as he practically expresses it, the produce of his small field is not sufficient to fill so many bellies. But, wherever he wanders, his heart—for he has a heart—flutters about that rickety hut, and as he sits polishing your boots of a morning, you may hear him pensively humming to himself:—
Beatus ille qui, procul negotiis,
Ut prisca gens mortalium,
Paterna rura bobus exercet suis,
Solutus omni fœnore.
He puts a peculiar pathos into the last line, for he is grievously haunted by an apparition in the form of an old man with a small red turban, gold earrings, and grey beard parted in the middle, who flourishes a paper in his face and talks of the debtors’ gaol; and hints that he will have the little house and field near Surat. Mukkun first fell into the net of this spider many years ago, when he wanted a few hundred rupees to enable him to celebrate the marriage of his little child. He signed a bond for twice the amount he received then, and it continues to increase from year to year, though he has paid the principal twice over in interest; at least he thinks he has, but he is not a good accountant. Every now and then he is required to sign some fresh document, of the contents of which he knows nothing, but the effect of which is always the same—viz., to heap up his liabilities and rivet his fetters more firmly, and punctually on pay day every month, the grim old man waylays him and compels him to disgorge his wages, allowing him so much grain and spices as will keep him in condition till next pay day. In a word, Mukkun is a slave. Yet he does not jump into the garden well, nor his quietus make with a bare bodkin. No, he plods through life, eats his rice and curry with gusto, smokes his cigarette with satisfaction, oils his lovelocks, borrows money from the cook to buy a set of silver buttons for his waistcoat, and when he tires of them, pawns them to pay for a velvet cap on which he has set his heart. In short, he behaves à la Mukkun, and no insight is to be had by examining his case through English spectacles; but it is our strange infirmity, being the most singular people on earth, to regard ourselves as typical of the human race, and ergo to conclude that what is good for us cannot be otherwise than good for all the world. Hence many of our anti-tyranny agitations and philanthropies, not always beneficial to the subjects of them, and also many of our misplaced sympathies. We see a spider eating a fly, and long to crush the spider, while we shed a tear for the fly. But the spider is much the higher animal of the two. It labours long hours laying out a net, and then waits all day for the fruit of its toil. Insects are caught and escape again, the net gets broken, and when, after many disappointments, the spider secures a fat fly, what advantage does it derive? A meal; just what the fly got by sitting in a pit of manure and sipping till it could sip no more. Doom that fly to the life which the spider leads, and it would drown itself in your milk jug on the spot, unable to bear up under such a weight of care and toil. In this parable the fly is Mukkun and the spider is Shylock, and my sympathies are not wholly given to the former. I quite admit that Shylock worries him cruelly, and if he had not given hostages to fortune, he would abscond with a light heart to some distant station where he might forget his old debts and contract new ones. But this is not the alternative before him. The alternative is to take care of his money, not to buy things which he cannot afford, to do without the silver buttons, and postpone the velvet cap, all which would put a strain on his mental and moral constitution, under which he would wear out in a week. He must find some other modus vivendi than that. If he had lived in the world’s infancy, he would have sold himself and his family to someone who would have fed him and clothed him, and relieved him of the cares of life. But Britons never, never, never shall be slaves, and under our rule Mukkun is forced to share that disability; so he attains his end in an indirect way, and lives thereafter in such happiness as nature has given him capacity to enjoy. Shylock will neither put him into gaol nor seize his field. We do not send our milch cow to the butcher. Shylock owns a hundred such as he, and much trouble they give him.
Mukkun lives in dread of the devil. Nothing will induce him to pass at night by places where the foul fiend is known to walk, nor will he sleep alone without a light.
The Hamal.
The Hamal is a creature which gets up very early in the morning, before anyone is out of bed, and opens the doors and windows with as much noise as may be. He leaves the hooks unfastened, that a feu-de-joie may celebrate the advent of the first gust of wind. He drops the lower bolts of the doors, so that they may rake up the matting every time they are opened. Then he proceeds to dust the furniture with the duster which hangs over his shoulder. He does this because it is his duty, and with no view to any practical result; consequently it never occurs to him to look at what he is doing, and you will afterwards find curiously shaped patches of dust which have escaped the sweep of his “towal.” He next turns his attention to the books in the bookcase, and we are all familiar with his ravages there. He is usually content to bang them well with his duster, but I refer to high days, when he takes each book out and caresses it on both sides, replacing it upside down, and putting the different volumes of each work on different shelves. All this he does, not of malice, but simply because ’tis his nature to. He does not disturb the cobwebs on the corners of the bookcase, because you never told him to do so. As he moves grunting about the room, the duster falls from his shoulder, and he picks it up with his toes to avoid the fatigue of stooping. When all the dusting is done, and the table-covers and ornaments are replaced, then he proceeds to shake the carpets and sweep the floor, for it is one of his ways, when left to himself, to dust first and sweep after. Finally he disposes of the rubbish which his broom has collected, by stowing it away under a cupboard, or pushing it out over the doorstep among the ferns and calladiums.
Such is the Hamal in his youth, and as he grows older he gets more so. About middle life he sets hard, like plaster of Paris, his senses get obfuscated, and a shell appears to form on the outside of his intellect, so that access to his understanding becomes very difficult. Sometimes his temper also grows crabbed, and noli me tangere writes itself distinctly across the mark of his god on his old brow. A Hamal in this phase is the most impracticable animal in this universe. When found fault with, he never answers back, but he enters on a vigorous conversation with himself, which is like a tune on a musical box, for it must be allowed to go until it runs itself out; nothing short of smashing the instrument will stop it. How well I remember one veteran of this type, from whose colloquies with his own soul I gathered that he had been fifty-six years in gentlemen’s service, and never served any but gentlemen until he came to me. He computed his age, I think, at seventy-two, and asked leave to attend the funeral of his grandfather. Sometimes, happily, the Hamal’s senility takes the direction of benevolence. Who does not know the benign, stupid old man, with his snowy whiskers and kindly smile, which seems to grow kindlier with every tooth he loses!
It is a practical question whether you should endure the Hamal, or address yourself to the task of his reformation, and I am content to make myself singular by advocating the latter for two reasons; firstly, because he cannot be endured; secondly, because I cherish a fantastic faith in his reformability,—at least if you take him in his youth, before he has set. I believe we fail to cure him either because we do not try, or because we dismiss him before we succeed. Another great impediment to success in this enterprise is the foolish habit of getting wrathful. An untimely explosion of wrath will generally blow a sensitive Hamal’s wits quite out of his own reach, and of course, out of yours; or, if he is of the stolid sort, he will set it down as a phenomenon incidental to sahebs, but without any bearing on the matter in hand, and he will go on as before. Besides, a state of indignation is very detrimental to your own command of the language, and if you could in cold blood take your “Forbes” and study some of the sentences which you fulminated in your ebullitions of anger, you would cease to wonder that the subject of them was such an idiot.
Hum roz roz hookum day,
Tum roz roz hookum nay,
Ooswasty lukree—(whack, whack)
went home, I have no doubt, but it is the gift of few to be at once so luminous and so forcible. Try handling your Hamal in another way. Call him mildly—a mild tone thaws his understanding—and say to him, “Look here, my son. Do you see this gold writing on the backs of these books? For what purpose is it?” He will reply, “Who knows?” Then you can proceed, “That writing is the mark by which you may know the head of any book. Now consider, should a book stand on its head?” If he replies, “How should a book stand on its head?” then you are getting access to his intelligence, and may lead him on gradually to the conclusion that, whenever he puts a book into the shelves, he should make it stand so that the writing on the back of it may be uppermost. I tell you he will beam with intelligence, and rise earlier next morning to put his new learning into practice. After a few days he will forget and relapse into his old ways, but you must have patience.
After all, I think we could put up with the Hamal if only he would not try to think. This is his crowning vice. In vain I try to impress upon him that I engaged him to obey orders, and would rather do the thinking myself. Every now and then, at some particular phase of the moon, he sets his intellect in operations and the consequences are, as the Brahmin boy described the result of his examination, “appalling.” It was our Hamal’s duty to fill the filter, and at a time when the water was very bad, orders were given that it should be boiled before being filtered. One day, my wife saw the Hamal in the act of filling the filter, and it occurred to her to warn him to let the water cool first, lest he might crack the filter. “Oh yes,” said he, “I thought of that. After boiling the water, I cool it down by mixing an equal quantity of cold water with it, and then I put it into the filter.”
In Bombay, since hard times set in, the offices of Hamal and mussaul have got a little mixed, and a man will show you characters testifying that he has served in both capacities. Such a man is, properly speaking, simply a mussaul who has tried to do the Hamal’s work. The cleaner of furniture and the lighter of lamps and washer of plates and dishes cannot change places or be combined. I have read that the making of one English pin employs nine men, but it is a vain boast. The rudiments of division of labour are not understood in Europe. In this country every trade is a breed. Rama is by birth a cleaner of furniture. This kind of employment came into the country with our rule, so that the domestic Hamal, who is an offshoot of the palkee hamal, or “bearer,” has not had time to become what fanciers would call a permanent strain, and you will find that you can convert Rama into a chupprasse, a malee, or even a ghorawalla, but into a mussaul never. He is a shoodra, sprung from the feet of Brahma, and the Brahman, who sprung from the head of the same figure, despises him, but not with that depth of contempt with which he himself despises the mussaul, who is an outcast, and sprang from nowhere in particular. He cannot conceive that thirty generations of washing could purify the descendants of Mukkun so that he might touch them and not be unclean. You, his master, rank theoretically with Mukkun, and he will neither touch your meats nor the plate off which you have eaten them. He will keep your house clean, and even perform some personal services, for he has a liberal mind, and is there not also a toolsee plant in a pot on a kind of earthen altar in front of his hut, before which he performs purificatory ceremonies every morning? And does he not bathe after leaving your presence before he eats? If you pass by the clean place where he is about to cook his food in the morning, you will see a large pot of water on the fire. When this gets warm—for Rama is not a Spartan—he will stand on a smooth stone, as sparingly clad as it is possible to be, and pour the water on his head, polishing himself vigorously as it runs down his limbs; then, after dressing his long hair and tying it in a knot on the top of his head, he will sit down to eat, in a place by himself, with the feeling that he has warded off defilement from that which goeth in at his mouth. That which goeth out of his mouth gives him no concern.
The Body-guards.
Our Chupprassees are the outward expression of our authority, and the metre-gauge of our importance. By them the untutored mind of the poor Indian is enabled to estimate the amount of reverence due to each of us. This is the first purpose for which we are provided with Chupprassees. The second is that they may deliver our commands, post our letters, and escort the coming generation of Government servants in their little perambulators. As the number required for the first purpose usually far exceeds the number required for the second, there is danger of Satan finding mischief for their idle hands to do, and it becomes our duty to ward off this danger by occupying their hands with something which is not mischief. This we do faithfully, and the Chupprassee always reminds me of those tools we see advertised, which combine hammer, pincers, turnscrew, chisel, foot-rule, hatchet, file, toothpick, and life preserver. Mrs. Smart bewailed the bygone day when every servant in her house was a Government Chupprassee except the khansamah and a Portuguese ayah. I did not live in that day, but in my own I have seen the Chupprassee discharge many functions. He is an expert shikaree, sometimes a good tailor or barber, not a bad cook at a pinch, a handy table boy, and, above all an unequalled child’s servant. There can be little doubt, it the truth were told, that Little Henry’s bearer was a Chupprassee. He also milks the cow, waters the garden, catches butterflies, skins birds, blows eggs, and runs after tennis balls. If you ask himself what his duties are, he will reply promptly that it is his duty to wear the sircar’s belt and to “be present.” And the camel is not more wonderfully fitted for the desert than is Luxumon for the discharge of these solemn responsibilities. He is like a carriage clock, able to sleep in any conceivable position; and such is his mental constitution that, when not sleeping, he is able to “be present” hour after hour without feeling any desire for change of occupation. Ennui never troubles him, time never hangs heavy on his hands; he sits as patiently as a cow and chews the cud of pan suparee, and he bespatters the walls with a sanguinary pigment produced by the mastication of the same. He needs no food, but he goes out to drink water thirty-five times a day, and, when he returns refreshed, a certain acrid odour penetrates every crevice of the house, almost dislodging the rats and exterminating the lesser vermin. To liken it to the smell of tobacco would give civilized mankind a claim against me for defamation of character.
I will sketch my ideal of a model Chupprassee. He is a follower of the Prophet, for your Gentoo has too many superstitions and scruples to be generally useful. He parts his short black beard in the middle and brushes it up his cheek on either side, the ends of his moustache are trimly curled, he wears his turban a little on one side, carries himself like a soldier, and is always scrupulously clean. He comes into your presence with a salutation which expresses his own dignity, while it respects yours. He wishes to know whether the protector of the poor has any commands for his slave. When you intimate your wishes he responds with a formula which is the same for all occasions—“Your Lordship’s commands shall be executed.” And they are executed. If he knows of difficulties or impossibilities, he keeps them to himself. Alas! this is an ideal, how antipodal sometimes to the real! I am thinking of the gigantic Sheikh Mahomed, with his terrible beard and womanly voice, who would convey my commands to a menial of lower degree and return in five minutes to detail the objections which that person had raised. Another type of Mahomedan Chupprassee, whom we see is to abhor, expresses his opinion of himself by letting half a yard of rag hang down from his turban behind. He calls himself a Syed and, perhaps, on account of the sanctity implied in this, forbears to wash himself or his clothes. This man is clever, officious, familiar, servile, and very fond of the position of umbrella-bearer in ordinary to your person: therefore, transfer him to the personal staff of some native dignitary, where he will be appreciated. If my model does not suit you, there are many types to choose from. We have the lofty and sonorous Purdaisee, the Rajpoot, son of kings, the Bhundaree, or hereditary climber of palm trees, the Israelite, the low caste, useful, intelligent Mahar, and many more. Even the Brahmin in this iron age becomes a Chupprassee. But three-fourths of all our belted satellites come from one little district south of Bombay, known to our fathers as Rutnagherry, re-christened Ratnagiri by the Hon. W. W. Hunter, C.I.E., A.B.C., D.E.F., etc. Every country has its own special products; the Malabar Coast sends us cocoanuts and pepper; artichokes come from Jerusalem; ducks, lace, cooks, and fiddlers from Goa. So Rutnagherry produces pineapples and Mahrattas, and the Mahrattas do not eat the pineapples. Till quite recently they employed themselves exterminating each other, burning each other’s villages and crops, and inventing new ways of torturing old men to make them confess where their money was buried. We have stopped these practices without stopping the religious arrangements for keeping up the supply of the race; so the Mahratta marries, as in duty bound, and multiplies, and then casts about for some way of maintaining his growing family; and our Chupprassee system, looked at politically, is a grand escape pipe. Pandurang Huree gives the Mahrattas the palm, as liars, over all the other races of India. He may be right, but where excellence is so universal, comparison becomes doubly odious. Some Mahrattas put rao after their names and treat themselves with much respect, especially if they can grow a little island of whisker on each cheek and run the moustache into it. These men differ from common Mahrattas in the same way as Mr. Wilberforce Jones, or Mr. Palmerston Smith, differs from the ordinary run of Joneses and Smiths.
How uniformly does ambition rule us all! The young rao, fired by the hope of wearing a belt, makes a bold resolve to leave his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers, their wives and children, his uncles, aunts, and cousins, and the little hut in which they have all lived so happily since he was a little, naked, crawling thing, dressed in a silver rupee. He looks for the last time on the buffalo and the lame pariah dog, ties up his cooking pots and a change of raiment in a red handkerchief, and starts on foot, amid the howling of females, for the great town, a hundred miles away, where the brother-in-law of his cousin’s wife’s uncle is on the personal staff of the Collector. He fears that the water of the place may not suit his constitution, but he risks that and other unknown perils. Arriving at his destination, he works his interest by quartering himself on his influential connection, who, finding that an extra seer of rice has to be boiled for every meal, leaves no stone unturned to find employment for him. First a written petition is drawn up by the local petition writer, in the following terms “Most Honoured and Respected Sir,—Although I am conscious that my present step will apparently be deemed an unjustifiable and unpardonable one, tantamounting to a preposterous hardihood in presuming to trespass (amidst your multifarious vocations) on your valuable time, yet placing implicit reliance on your noble nature and magnanimity of heart, I venture to do so, and ardently trust you will pardon me. Learning that a vacancy of a sepoy has occurred under your kind auspices, I beg most respectfully to tender my services for the same, and crave your permission to invite your benign attention to the episodes of my chequered life, though of a doleful and sombre nature, and concatenation of melancholy events that have made their visitations. My eldest brother died one year since, leaving an heritage of a relict and two female issues to bemoan and lament his premature and irreparable loss. And two months since my revered parent paid debt of nature, at 2 p.m. on 15th February, A.D. 18–, thus leaving the entire burden of 13 (thirteen) souls on my individual shoulders, which, in my present and forlorn circumferences, I am unable to cope with. I, therefore, throw myself on your benevolent clemency and humane consideration, and implore you to confer the vacancy in question which will enable me to meet the daily unavoidable returning requisites of domestic life in all their varied ramifications, and relieve a famishing family from the jaws of penury and privation. By thus delivering me from an impending impossibility most prejudicial to my purse resources, you will confer on your humble servant a boon which will be always vivid on the tablet of my breast, never to be effaced until the period that I am sojurning on the stage of this sublunary world’s theatre.” The petition goes on to explain that all the unhappy petitioner’s efforts to earn an honest livelihood by the perspiration of his brow have been frustrated owing to the sins committed by his soul in a former birth, and ends with religious reflections and prayers. While this is presented to the Collector, the candidate stands under a tree at some distance and rehearses, with palpitating heart, the salaam he will make if admitted to the august presence. Life and death seem to hang on the impression which may be produced by that salaam. But the cousin’s wife’s uncle’s brother-in-law sets other machinery in motion. He humbles himself and makes up an old quarrel with the Naik; he flatters the butler till that great man is pleased and promises his influence; and he wins the Sheristedar’s vote by telling him earnestly that all the district knows he is virtually the Collector and whatever he recommends is done. Nor is the ayah forgotten, for the ayah has access to the madam, and by that route certain shameful matters affecting a rival candidate will reach the saheb. Now, supposing that the sins of a former birth fail to checkmate all these machinations, and that the new arrival actually finds himself swimming in the unfathomed bliss of a belt with a brass plate, and a princely income of seven Queen’s rupees every month, who could foretell that almost before a year has passed he will again be floundering in the mire of disappointed ambition? Yet so it is. He hears of another Chupprassee with only eleven months’ service against his twelve, who has been promoted to eight rupees, and immediately the canker of discontent eats into his heart. Later on he finds that the cup of his happiness will never be quite full until he gets ten rupees a month, and when he has reached that giddy height, he will see dawning on his horizon the strange and beautiful hope that he may be a Naik. It is a desperate ambition—
“He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
The highest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.”
Subordinate Chupprassees will slight his authority, his fellow Naiks will disparage him, disappointed rivals will send in anonymous petitions accusing him of all manner of villanies of which he is not guilty, and, worse still, revealing the little briberies and oppressions of which he is not innocent. But who of us learns wisdom in these matters? The Naik soon comes to feel that if justice were done to merit, he would be a Havildar. After he has attained that proud distinction, he retires to “husband out life’s taper at its close” in the same old hut, amidst the same conglomerate of relations, but nephews and nieces, and grandchildren have taken the place of uncles and aunts and parents. The buffalo and the pariah dog are apparently the same. Then the whole range of official machinery is put in motion to reward his long and faithful services, and the Governor in Council grants him the maximum pension of four rupees a month, subject to the approval of the Viceroy, and he spends his few remaining days in gratitude to the Sircar. But one thing rankles in his mind. Babajee, not nearly so good-looking a fellow as himself, rose to be a Jemadar.
Ambition has, however, another more golden career for an enterprising and ingenious Chupprassee; for is he not the portal through which the humble petitioner may have access to the Collector, whose smile is prosperity and his frown destruction? And must not the hinges of the portal be oiled that they may open smoothly? Therefore, the inimitable Sir Ali Baba made a point of dismissing a Chupprassee whenever he began to grow fat, and he was wise, but in applying the rule you must have regard to the man’s rank. The belt of an ordinary peon may range from twenty to thirty inches according to length of service, promotion to a Naik’s position will add about three inches, a Havildar will run to thirty-six or thirty-seven, and a Jemadar must have something crabbed in his disposition if he does not attain to forty-two inches. These are normal measurements,—they consistent with strict integrity as understood in the East. By the blessing of good temper and an easy life they may be slightly exceeded, but the itching palm brings on a kind of dropsy easily recognisable to the practised eye. I have seen an unjust Jemadar who might have walked with Sir John Falstaff.
Falstaff: My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.
Pistol: Two yards, and more.
That Dhobie!
I am an amateur philosopher and amuse myself detecting essence beneath semblance and tracing the same principle running through things the outward aspect of which is widely different. I have studied the Dhobie in this spirit and find him to be nothing else than an example of the abnormal development, under favourable conditions, of a disposition which is not only common to humanity, but pervades the whole animal kingdom. A puppy rending slippers, a child tearing up its picture books, a mungoose killing twenty chickens to feed on one, a freethinker demolishing ancient superstitions, what are they all but Dhobies in embryo? Destruction is so much easier than construction, and so much more rapid and abundant in its visible results, that the devastator feels a jubilant joy in his work, of which the tardy builder knows nothing. As the lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and wreaked his rage upon shirt and trowser and coat, and coat and trowser and shirt. Then he has wrung them as if he were wringing the necks of poultry, and fixed them on his drying line with thorns and spikes, and finally he has taken the battered garments to his torture chamber and ploughed them with his iron, longwise and crosswise and slantwise, and dropped glowing cinders on their tenderest places. Son has followed father through countless generations in cultivating this passion for destruction, until it has become the monstrous growth which we see and shudder at in the Dhobie.
But I find in him, at least, an illustration of another human infirmity. He takes in hand to eradicate the dirt which defiles the garment. But the one is closely mingled with the very fibres of the other, the one is impalpable, the other bulky and substantial, and so the torrent of his zealous rage unconsciously turns against the very substance of that which he set himself lovingly to purge and restore to its primitive purity. Indeed, I sometimes find that, while he has successfully wrecked the garment, he has overlooked the dirt! Greater and better men than the Dhobie are employed in the same way.
Such are the consolations of philosophy,
“But there was never yet philosopher
Who could endure the toothache patiently,”
much less the Dhobie. He is not tolerable. Submit to him we must, since resistance is futile; but his craven spirit makes submission difficult and resignation impossible. If he had the soul of a conqueror, if he wasted you like Attilla, if he flung his iron into the clothes-basket and cried Væ victis, then a feeling of respect would soften the bitterness of the conquered; but he conceals his ravages like the white ant, and you are betrayed in the hour of need. When he comes in, limping and groaning under his stupendous bundle, and lays out khamees, pyatloon, and pjama, all so fair and decently folded, and delivers them by tale in a voice whose monotonous cadence seems to tell of some undercurrent of perennial sorrow in his life, who could guess what horrors his perfidious heart is privy to? Next morning, when you spring from your tub and shake out the great jail towel which is to wrap your shivering person in its warm folds, lo! it yawns from end to end. There is nothing but a border, a fringe, left. You fling on your clothes in unusual haste, for it is mail day morning. The most indispensible of them all has scarcely a remnant of a button remaining. You snatch up another which seems in better condition, and scramble into it; but, in the course of the day, a cold current of wind, penetrating where it ought not, makes you aware of what your friends behind your back have noticed for some time, viz., that the starch with which a gaping rent had been carefully gummed together, that you might not see it, has melted and given way. The thought of these things makes a man feel like Vesuvius on the eve of an eruption; but you must wait for relief till Dhobie day next week, and then the poltroon has stayed at home, and sent his brother to report that he is suffering from a severe stomachache. When the miscreant makes his next appearance in person, he stands on one leg, with joined palms and a piteous bleat, and pleads an alibi. He was absent about the marriage of a relation, and his brother washed the clothes. So your lava falls back into its crater, or, I am afraid, more often overflows the surrounding country.
My theory of the Dhobie is a mere speculation, a hypothesis deduced from broad, general principles. I do not pretend to have established it by scientific observation, and am very tolerant towards other theories, especially one which is supported by many competent authorities, and explains the Dhobie by supposing a league between him, the dirzee and the Boy. I think a close investigation into the natural history of the shirt would go far to establish this theory as at least partially true. In spite of the spread of “Europe” shops, the shirt is still abundantly produced from the vernacular dirzee sitting crossed-legged in the verandah, and each shirt will be found to furnish him, on the average, with about a week’s lucrative employment. From his hands it passes to the Dhobie and returns with the buttons wanting, the buttonholes widened to great gaping fish-mouths, and the hems of the cuffs slightly frayed. The last is the most significant fact, because it leads to the discovery of one of those delicate adaptations which the student of nature has so often occasion to admire; for, on examination, we discover that the hem had been made with the least possible margin of cloth, as if to facilitate the process of fraying. As we know that economy of material is not an object with the dirzee, it has been maintained that there is some connection here. Next the shirt passes into the hands of the Boy, who takes his scissors and carefully pares the ragged edges of the cuffs and collar. A few rotations of Dhobie and Boy reduce the cuffs to the breadth of an inch, while the collar becomes a circular saw which threatens to take your head off. Then you fling the shirt to your Boy, and the dirzee is in requisition again. Observation of white trousers will lead to similar results. Between Dhobie’s fury and Boy’s repairs, the ends of the legs retreat steadily upwards to your knees, and by the time the Boy inherits them they are just his length. Remember, I do not say I believe in this explanation of the Dhobie. I give it for what it is worth. The subject is interesting and practical.
Did you ever open your handkerchief with the suspicion that you had got a duster into your pocket by mistake, till the name of De Souza blazoned on the corner showed you that you were wearing someone else’s property? An accident of this kind reveals a beneficent branch of the Dhobie’s business, one in which he comes to the relief of needy respectability. Suppose yourself (if you can) to be Mr. Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which performs at Parsee weddings and on other festive occasions. Noblesse oblige; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill able as your precarious income may be to meet it. In these circumstances a Dhobie with good connections is what you require. He finds you in shirts of the best quality at so much an evening, and you are saved all risk and outlay of capital; you need keep no clothes except a greenish black surtout and pants and an effective necktie. In this way the wealth of the rich helps the want of the poor without their feeling it, or knowing it—an excellent arrangement. Sometimes, unfortunately, Mr. Lobo has a few clothes of his own, and then, as I have hinted, the Dhobie may exchange them by mistake, for he is uneducated and has much to remember; but, if you occasionally suffer in this way, you gain in another, for Mr. Lobo’s family are skilful with the needle, and I have sent a torn garment to the washing which returned skilfully repaired.
I suspect I am getting bitter and ironical, and it will be wise to stop, for we are fickle creatures, the best of us, and it is quite possible that, in the mild twilight of life, in the old country, I shall find myself speaking benevolently of the Dhobie, and secretly wishing I could hear his plaintive monotone again counting out my linen at four rupees a hundred.
The Ayah.
I was roaming among the flower-beds and bowers of a “Peri’s Paradise,” known in Bombay as The Ladies Gymkhana, when I was startled by a voice like the sound of a passionate cart-wheel screaming for grease. “Lub ob my heart,” it cried, “my eshweet, don’t crei! don’t crei!” The owner of the voice was a woman with a negro type of countenance, as far as I remember, but her figure has remained with me better than her face. It was a portly figure, like that of a domestic duck in high condition, and her gait was, as Mr. Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee would say, “well quadrate” to the figure. Engulphed in her voluminous embrace was a little cherub, with golden curls and blue eyes dewy with passing tears—a pretty study of sunshine and shower. The great, bare arms of the pachyderm were loaded with bangles of silver and glass, which jingled with a warlike sound as she hugged her little charge and plastered its pretty cheeks with great gurgling kisses, which made one shudder and think involuntarily of the “slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves of Nile.” Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies. Was there a time when we suffered caresses such as these? What a happy thing it is that Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all that was before. Another question has been stirring in my mind since that scene. What feeling or motive prompted those luscious blandishments? Was it simple hypocrisy? I do not think so. The pure hypocrite is much rarer than shallow people think, and, in any case, there was no inducement to make a display in my presence. What influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great female? A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators. Of course you may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it on at other times. This is plausible, but I suspect that such a case would rather come under the fundamental law that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Let us be charitable and look for better reasons. The mere milk of human kindness explains something, but not enough, and I am inclined to think that the Ayah is the subject of an indiscriminate maternal emotion, which runs where it can find a channel. The effect of culture is to specialise our affections and remove us further and further from the condition of the hen whose philoprogenitiveness embraces all chicks and ducklings; so it may well be that the poor Ayah, who has not had much culture, is better able than you or I to feel promiscuously parental towards babies in general, at least, if she can connect them in any way with herself. Towards babies in the care of another Ayah she has no charity; they are the brood of a rival hen and she would like to exterminate them. Again, we must love and hate, if we live at all. The Ayah’s horizon is not wide, her sentiments are neither numerous nor complex, and her affections are not trained to lay hold of the abstract or the historical. If you question her, you will find that her heart does not bleed for the poor negro, and she is not in the habit of regarding the Emperor Caligula with abhorrence. She has one or two brothers or sisters, but they are far away and have become almost as historical as Caligula. In these circumstances, if she could not feel motherly towards babies, what feeling would be left to her? And, perhaps, if we knew her story, baby has a charm to open up an old channel, long since dry and choked with the sands of a desert life, in which a gentle stream of tenderness once flowed, with “flowerets of Eden” on its banks, and fertilised her poor nature. But we do not know her story. She says her husband is a cook. More about him she does not say, but she hugs “Sunny Baba” to her breast and kisses him and says that nothing shall ever part her from him till he grows to be a great saheb, with plenty of pay, when he will pension her and take care of her in her old age. And her eyes get moist, for she means it more or less; but next day she catches a cold and refuses food, saying that all her bones ache and her head is revolving; then the horror of dying among strangers, “unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,” proves too much for the faithful creature, and she disappears without notice, leaving her darling and its mother to look out for another Ayah.
It is a fortunate thing for us that the Ayah is able to conceive such a devouring passion for our children, for it appears, from her own statements, that but for this strong tie, nothing would induce her to stay a day in our service where the constant broils with the other servants, into which she is driven by her determination to be faithful to her own mistress, make life almost unbearable to a peaceable woman like her. The chief object of her righteous indignation is the “Bootrail.” She is so reluctant to make any personal complaint, that she would pass over his grudging her a little sugar in her morning tea, but when he takes away a whole cupful for his own children, conscience compels her to tell her mistress. She has often pointed out to him that such conduct is not right, and tried to reason with him, but he only insults her. The cook, being a notorious inebriate, plays into the “Bootrail’s” hand, on condition that the latter will not tell upon him. Why did master send away the dinner last night without touching it? Because the cook was on the floor and the matie had to do the work. Chh! Chh! Chh! It is very shameful and makes her feel so bad. She herself is a teetotaler, as her mistress knows. That night when she was found with a pillow in her arms instead of the baby, singing to it and patting it to sleep, she had been smoking an English cheroot which a friend had given her, and, as she is accustomed only to country tobacco, it went to her head and stupefied her. Nothing would induce her to drink spirits, but the other servants are not like her. The mussaul is not a bad man, but the “Bootrail’s” example infects him too. He barters the kerosine oil at the petty shop round the corner for arrack. As for the hamal, she is tired of fighting with him. From this account of herself you will be able to infer that the Ayah is not a favourite with the other servants; but she is powerful, and so with oriental prudence they veil their feelings. The butler indeed, tries to be proud and risks ruin, but the mussaul truckles to her, and the cook, who can spoil her dinner, and has some control over her, trims between her and the butler. The hamal is impracticable, and the chupprassees adhere to the party in power for the time being.
The Ayah is the “society” newspaper of small stations, and is indispensable. The barber is the general newsagent, and, as we part with our beards in the morning, we learn from him all particulars of the dinner at the general’s last night, and of the engagement that resulted between the pretty Missy Baba and the captain who has been so much about the house; also when the marriage is to take place, if the captain can get out of his debts, the exact amount of which Old Tom knows. He can tell us, too, the reason why she “jawaubed” him so often, being put up to it by her mother in the interests of a rival suitor, and he has authentic information as to the real grounds of the mother’s change of tactics. But Old Tom is himself dependent on Ayahs, and there are matters beyond his range, matters which even in an Indian station cannot reach us by any male channel. They trickle from madam to Ayah, from Ayah to Ayah, and from Ayah to madam. Thus they ooze from house to house, and we are all saved from judging our neighbours by outward appearances.
That scene in the Ladies’ Gymkhana comes back and haunts me. What if the impress of those swarthy lips on that fair cheek are but an outward symbol of impressions on a mind still as fair and pure, impressions which soap and water will not purge away! Yes, it is so. The Ayah hangs like a black cloud over and around the infant mind, and its earliest outlooks on the world are tinted by that medium. It lies with wondering blue eyes watching the coloured toys which she dangles before it, and takes in the elements of form and colour. She pats it to sleep, and, on the borders of dream-land, those “sphere-born, harmonious sisters, voice and verse,” visit it in the form of a plaintive ditty, which has for its simple burden,
Little, little fish
In bitter, bitter oil.
I will not part with one of them for three pice and a half.
As its mind expands, new mysteries of the universe unfold themselves through the same interpreter. It learns to see through the hollowness of promises and threats before it knows the words in which they are framed. With the knowledge of words comes the knowledge of their use as means of concealing the truth and gaining its little ends. Then the painful experience of discipline and punishment reveals the same motherly figure in the new light of a protector and comforter, and it learns to contrast her with the stern persons whom she has taught it to call pa-pa and ma-ma. When they refuse anything on which it has set its childish heart, it knows to whom to go for sympathy. She will console it and teach little artifices, by which it may evade or circumvent them. She supplies discipline of another kind, however, and the yet simple trusting mind of the little Pantheist lives in terror of papa’s red-faced friend with the big stomach, who eats up ten or twelve little children every day, and of the Borah with the great box full of black ants, in which he shuts up naughty boys till the ants pick the flesh from their disobedient bones. When it goes to the bandstand, it gazes from a safe distance on the big drum, full of boys and girls who would not let their hair be combed: it hears their groans at every stroke of the terrible drumstick. Thus the religious side of the tender nature is developed, and Ayah is the priestess. Under the same guidance it will, as it grows older, tread paths of knowledge which its parents never trod. Whither will they lead it? We know not who never joined in the familiar chat of Ayahs and servants, but imagination “bodies forth the forms of things unseen” and shudders. Let us rejoice that a merciful superstition, which regards the climate of India as deadly to European children, will step in and save the little soul. The climate would do it no harm, but there is a moral miasma more baneful than any which rises from the pestilential swamps of the Terai, or the Bombay Flats.
P. S.—I have just taken another look at our present Ayah. She is a little old woman from Goa, with humorous “crow’s feet” at the corners of her kind eyes. She is very retiring and modest, and all the servants seem fond of her. It is evident that nature is various, and we cannot all be types.
R. R. The Pundit.
The Pundit is like duty; his cough rouses us from our beds in the morning like the voice of conscience. Why must we pass examinations? Not that we may know the language of the people, for it is matter of daily observation, that of all the mysteries which perplex the humble mind of the country bumpkin in this land, causing him to scratch his—well, not his head—there is none which he gives up as hopeless sooner than the strange sounds addressed to him by the young saheb who has just passed his higher standard. He joins his palms in loyal acquiescence, and asserts that the gentleman is his father and mother. It was Swift, was it not, who suggested that all high offices of state should be filled by lot, because the result would be on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a broader back than the Prime Minister. No doubt examinations were introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between the train of candidates and the engine of Government. That the examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a necessary modification, without which no room would be left for the play of those kindly feelings for kith and kin which we bitterly nickname nepotism. Under this arrangement I have known a needy nepos of H. E. himself provided with a salary for a whole year, till he could hold the examination at bay no longer, when he evacuated his position and retreated to his friends. Whatever the explanation of the matter may be, it falls to the lot of most of us to experience the Pundit. I may remark here that he is very commonly called a Moonshee, on the same principle on which a horse is not called a cow. The Pundit is not a Moonshee. The Moonshee is a follower of the Prophet and teaches Oordoo, or Hindoostanee, while the Pundit is a Brahmin and instructs you in Marathee or Gujarathee. The Moonshee struggles to get you to disgorge the sound ghain and leads you through the enchanted mazes of the Bagh-o-Bahar; the Pundit distinguishes between the kurmunnee and the kurturree prayog, and has many knotty points of mythology to expound, in order that you may rightly understand his idioms and appreciate his proverbial sayings. Of Pundits there are three species, quite distinct from each other. The first I would recommend if your object should, by any chance, be to learn to speak the language intelligibly; but he knows no English, and you must gird yourself to work if you employ him. This sort of teacher does not suit the tastes of the present generation and is dying out, I think. The second kind is invaluable if your purpose is to pass an examination. He knows English well, dresses smartly, and is altogether a superior sort of person to the last, especially in his own estimation; but appearances are delusive, and the sign that really distinguishes him from other Pundits is that he enjoys in a high degree the esteem and confidence of a native member of the examining body. Another unfailing characteristic of him is that he requires a monstrous monthly stipend and the promise of a handsome douceur if you pass; but then you have the satisfaction of knowing that, if you fulfil the conditions, that happy result is certain. His system leaves no room for failure. Some people regard this man as a myth, but I have had authentic accounts of him from numerous young gentlemen who had failed in their examinations simply, as they themselves assured me, because they did not employ him. The third class consists of young men, aspirants to University honours and others, with some knowledge of English and a laudable desire to improve it by conversation with Englishmen. I do not know for what purpose this sort of Pundit is useful.
Old Ragunath Rao belonged to the first of these three classes. He knew no English, and he desired to know none, neither English words nor English thoughts. He was an undiluted Brahmin. He had taught a former generation of Anglo-Indians, long since retired, or in their graves, and one or two of these, who were very religious men, had impressed him by their characters so deeply that he always spoke of them with reverence, as not men but divinities. The tide had ebbed away from him, and no one employed him now: he was very poor. His face was heavy, his ears like beef-steaks, with a fringe of long bristles round the edge and a bushy tuft of the same sprouting from the inside. His features were not pleasing, but strongly expressive of character, stubborn Hindoo character, self-disciplined, self-satisfied, and in a set attitude of defence against the invasions of novelty. His athletic intellect was exercised in all manner of curious questions. The only matter about which it never concerned itself was reality, the existence of which he probably doubted. At any rate, he considered truth, right, wrong, to be subjects for speculative philosophy. As a practical man, he had minutely acquainted himself with all the things that behoved to be believed by an orthodox Brahmin, and he was not the man to give way to mere facts. This frame of mind begot in him a large tolerance, for what possible connection could there be between what it became him to believe and what it became you to believe? If his son had turned a Christian, he could have swung him from a tree by his thumbs and toes and flagellated him from below with acute pleasure; but if you expounded Christian doctrines and morals to him, he would listen with profound admiration. A Christian who lived up to his creed he respected unfeignedly. Strange old man! like one of his own idols, not modelled upon anything that is in heaven or on earth. Are they not, he and the idol, the fruit of the same tree?
What memories rise out of their graves at the mention of old Ragunath! Just about a quarter of an hour after his time he comes slowly up the steps, panting for breath, and leaving his shoes at the door, walks in with a quasi courtly salutation. As soon as he can recover his voice, he tells of a hair-breadth escape from sudden death. As he was crossing the road, a carriage and pair bore down on him. He stood petrified with terror, not knowing whether to hurry forward or turn back, but just as the horses were upon him, he made a frantic effort and gained the side-walk! He infers that his time to die had not arrived, and takes the occasion to impart some information about the planets and their influence on human destinies. Then we seat ourselves, and he takes my exercise (translation from Grant Duff), and reads it slowly in a muffled voice, which is forced to make its exit by the nose, the mouth being occupied with cardamoms or betel nut. As he reads he corrects with a pencil, but gives no explanation of his corrections; for you must not expect him to teach: he is a mine simply, in which you must dig for what you want. One thing you may depend on, that whatever you extract from that mine will be worth having, indigenous treasure, current wherever Hindoo thought is moving, very different from the foreign-flavoured pabulum with which your English smattering instructor charges his feeding bottle. The exercise gives Ragunath an opportunity of digressing into some traditional incident of Maratha history which escaped the researches of Mr. Grant Duff, an incident generally in which Maratha cunning (sagacity he calls it) triumphed over English stupidity. After the exercise comes the inevitable petition. I do not remember the subject of it—some grievance no doubt connected with hereditary rights in land—but it matters little; the whole document might as well be a Moabite stone recording the wars of Mesha with Jehoram, for not a letter of it stands out recognisable to my eyes. Indeed, no letter, or word either, stands out at all; the scribe seems never to have lifted his pen from his paper except for ink, and that generally in the middle of a word. However, Ragunath takes the greasy paper from my hand, remarks that the handwriting is good, and starts off reading it, or, I should say, intoning it, on exactly the same principle, viz., never pausing except for breath, and that generally in the middle of a word. Then we read together the “Garland of Pearls,” which he illuminates with notes of his own. Speaking of old age, he remarks that the hair of some men ripens sooner than that of others, but that our heads must all grow grey as our brains get thin. He discourses on anatomy, food, digestion, the advisability of lying down on the left side for twenty minutes after meals, and on many things in heaven and earth which are not dreamed of in our philosophy. As the morning wears on, the old man, who is not accustomed to sitting on chairs, begins to fidget, and shows signs of a desire to gather up his feet into the seat and nurse them. At last drowsiness overtakes him. His eyes are open, but his mind is asleep, and I may do as I please with grammar and idiom: even when I yawn, he omits to snap his fingers and lets the devil skip down my throat. When he awakes he suggests that it is time to stop, and asks leave for the next day, as he has to renew his sacred thread. Poor old Ragunath! I fear he has gone long since to the burning ground on the banks of the Moota Moola.
Before we part let me give you a hint. Always keep a separate chair for your Pundit, one isolated on glass legs, if possible. Even this does not afford complete security, for he now and then detects one of the many insects which you have watched coursing up and down his white scarf, and picking it off with his finger and thumb, puts it on the floor. His creed forbids him to take the life of anything which may possibly be the corporeal habitation of the spirit of one of his deceased ancestors, but these little insects irritate him, so he deports them as we do our loafers.
Hurree, the Dirzee.
A warm altercation is going on in the verandah. A little human animal, with a very large red turban on his little head, stuck full of pins and threaded needles, stands on all fours over a garment of an unmentionable kind, which I recognise as belonging to me, and a piece of cloth lies before him, out of which he has cut a figure resembling the said garment. The scissors with which the operation was performed are still lying open upon the ground before him. His head is thrown so far back that the great turban rests between his shoulder blades, his brow is corrugated with perplexity, his mouth a little open, as if his lower jaw could not quite follow the rest of his upturned face. Hurree cannot know much about toothache. What would I not give for that set of incisors, regular as the teeth of a saw, and all as red as a fresh brick! I suppose the current quid of pan suparee is temporarily stowed away under that swelling in the left cheek, where the fierce black patch of whisker grows. The survival of a partial cheek pouch in some branches of the human race is a point that escaped Darwin. But I am digressing into reflections. To return: a lady is standing over the quadruped and evidently expressing serious displeasure in some form of that domestic language which we call Hindoostanee, with variations. The charge she lays against him seems to be that he has, in disregard of explicit instructions and defiance of common sense, made a blunder to which her whole past experience in India furnishes no parallel, and which has resulted in the total destruction of a whole piece of costly material, and the wreck of a garment for want of which the saheb (that is myself) will be put to a degree of inconvenience which cannot be estimated in rupees, and will most certainly be provoked to an outbreak of indignation too terrible to be described. So little do we know ourselves! I had no idea I harboured such a temper. However, Hurree does not tremble, but pleads that it was necessary to make the garment “leetle silope,” and though he admits that the slope is too great, he thinks the mistake can be remedied, and is pulling the cloth to see if it will not stretch to the required shape. Failing this, he has other remedies of a technical kind to suggest. I do not understand these matters, and cannot interpret his argument, but he puts his fingers on the floor and flings himself lightly to the other side of the cloth, to point out where he proposes to have a “fals hame,” or some other device. She rejects the proposal with scorn, and again impresses him with the consequences of his wicked blunder. At last I am glad to see that a compromise is effected, and the little man settles himself in the middle of a small carpet and locks his legs together so that his shins form an X and he sits on his feet. In this position he will ply his needle for the rest of the day at a rate inversely proportional to the distance of his mistress. When she retires for her afternoon siesta the needle will nap too. Then he will take out a little Vade Mecum, which is never absent from his waistband, and unroll it. It is many-coloured and contains little pockets, one for fragments of the spicy areca, one for the small tin box which contains fresh lime, one for cloves, one for cardamoms, and so on. He will put a little of this and a little of that into his palm, then roll them all up in a betel leaf out of another pocket, and push the parcel into his mouth. Thus refreshed he will go to work again, not, however, upon the garment to which he is now devoted, but upon a roll of coloured stuffs on which he is at the present moment sitting. You see, times are hard and Hurree has a large family, so he is obliged to eke out his salary by contract work for the mussaul. His work suffers from other interruptions. When the carriage of a visitor is heard, he has to awaken the chupprassee on duty at the door, and on his own account he goes out to drink water at least as often as the chupprassee himself. As the day draws near its close, he watches the shadow like a hireling, and when it touches the foot of the long arm chair, he springs to his feet, rolls up his rags and threads into a bundle, and trips gaily out. As he does so you will observe that his legs are bandy, the knees refusing to approach each other. This is the result of the position in which he spends his days.
This is how we clothe ourselves in our Indian empire. Our smooth and comfortable khakee suits, our ample pyjamas, the cool white jackets in which we dine, in this way are they brought about. But you must not allow yourself to think of the Dirzee simply as an agency for producing clothes. Life is not made up of such simplicities. The raison d’être of that mango tree lies without doubt in the chalice of nectar, called “mango fool,” with which Domingo appeases me when he guesses that his enormities have gone beyond the limits even of my endurance; but I see that thirty-seven candidates for the place of the chupprassee who went on leave yesterday have encamped under its shade, that they may watch for my face in the verandah. The trespassing goat also has browsed on its leaves, and from the shelter of its branches the Magpie Robin pours that stream of song which, just before the dawning of the day, in the cloudy border land between sleeping and waking flows over my soul. But I shall never really know the place that tree has filled in my life, unless someone cuts it down and gives me a full view, from my easy chair, of the dirty brick-burners’ hut, with the poisonous film of blue smoke playing over the kiln, and the family of pariah puppies below, sporting with the sun-dried remains of a fowl, which deceased in my yard and was purloined by their gaunt mother. Now let imagination blot out the Dirzee. Remove him from the verandah. Take up his carpet and sweep away the litter. What a strange void there is in the place! Eliminate him from a lady’s day. Let nine o’clock strike, but bring no stealthy footstep to the door, no muffled voice making respectful application for his Kam. From nine to ten breakfast will fill the breach, and you may allow another hour for the butler’s account and the godown; but there is still a yawning chasm of at least two hours between eleven and tiffin. I cannot bridge it. Imagination strikes work. The joyful sound of the Borah’s voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no Dirzee? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is “rank bosh.” She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and just as her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a cough, that his work was finished and he had nothing to do. If she could only do without him, she would send him about his business and be the happiest woman in the world, for she could devote the whole day to music and painting and the improvement of her mind. Of course I assent. That is a very commendable way of thinking about the matter. But, as an amateur philosopher, I warn you never to let yourself get under practical bondage to such notions. I tell you when you betake yourself to music or painting, carpentry or gardening, as a means of getting through the day, you are sapping your mental constitution and shortening your life: unless you are sustained by more than ordinary littleness of mind you will never see threescore and ten. All these things are good in proportion as you have difficulty in finding time for them. When you have to rise early in the morning and work hard to make a little leisure for your favourite hobby, then you are getting its blessing. Now, the Dirzee is not a means of killing time. On the contrary, I see that he compels his mistress to take thought how she may save time alive, if she wishes to get anything done. He hurries the day along and scatters its hours, so that ennui cannot find an empty minute to lurk in. I do not deny that he is the occasion of a few provocations, and the simile of the fly is just; but are not provocations an element in the interest of every pursuit, the pepper which flavours all pleasant occupation? I collect butterflies, and my friends think I am a man to be envied because I have such a taste. Do they suppose a butterfly catcher has no provocations? Was it seventeen or seventy times (I forget) in one page that I laid down my pen, put off my spectacles and caught up my net to rush after that brute of a Papilio polymnestor, who just came to the duranta flowers to flout me and skip over the wall into the next garden? And does anyone but a butterfly hunter know how it feels to open your cabinet drawers just a few hours after the ants have got the news that the camphor is done? Does anyone but an entomologist know the grub of Dermestes intolerabilis? Why should a collection of butterflies be called an object of perennial interest and delight, and the Dirzee an unmitigated provocation? They are both of one family. Nothing is unmitigated in this world.
Maria Graham tells us that in her time “the Dirdjees, or tailors, in Bombay” were “Hindoos of respectable caste,” but in these days the Goanese, who has not capacity to be a butler or cook, becomes a Dirzee, and in Bombay I have seen Bunniah Dirzees. Hurree can hold his own against these, I doubt not, but the advancing tide of civilization is surely crumbling down his foundations. It is not only the “Europe” shop in Bombay that takes the bread out of his month, but in the smallest and most remote stations, Narayen, “Tailor, Outfitter, Milliner, and Dressmaker,” hangs out his sign-board, and under it pale, consumptive youths of the Shimpee caste bend over their work by lamplight, and sing the song of the shirt to the whirr-rr-rr of sewing machines. And as Hurree goes by on his way home, his prophetic soul tells him that his son will not live the happy and independent life which has fallen to his lot. But he has a bulwark still in the dhobie, for the “Tailor and Outfitter” will not repair frayed cuffs, and the sewing machine cannot put on buttons. And Hurree is not ungrateful, for I observe that, when the dhobie delivers up your clothes in a state which requires the Dirzee, the Dirzee always gives them back in a condition which demands the dhobie.