THE ENGLISH IN INDIA.
AS THEY ARE, AND ARE REPRESENTED.
BY ONE OF THEM.
Notwithstanding the number of years that had elapsed since India became, to use the common stilted phrase, the brightest jewel in the crown of England, and notwithstanding the astounding amount of oriental knowledge displayed at times by honourable members during debates, that country with its varied inhabitants is still, to all intents and purposes, a terra incognita to the majority of Englishmen. The constitutional, skinny Frenchman, attenuated to the last degree by his diet of soup maigre and frogs, but still full of dancing jerking life, and compounded of shrugs and grimaces, has almost deserted the stage, but the conventional yellow nabob, with "half a heart, and little more than half a liver," is still typical to no small portion of our countrymen of their brothers and cousins in India Occasionally we are pourtrayed in darker colours, as when a popular play-writer represents systematic seduction and wide-spread immorality as the main features of Anglo-Indian society. This ignorance and misrepresentation is not likely to be removed by the attempts of recent travellers to describe things as they are in India. Indeed, Mr. Minturn's book "New York to Delhi," is almost the only lately published work of the kind that can be recommended as containing at all a fair or trustworthy account. For the most part other writers seem to have gone to India with fixed ideas and prejudices, that influenced-perhaps unconsciously-the point of view from which they regarded what went on around them. Such men have no idea of the amount of harm they do, and the pain they give by their careless misrepresentations.
The popular idea of Anglo-Indians, partly gleaned from various books of travel, partly the result of traditions dating from the time of Warren Hastings' trial, and in a great measure the result of recollections of the Arabian Nights, is that they live in Bungalows (generally supposed to be palaces), surrounded by all the accessories of oriental splendour. Fountains with pleasing murmur scatter cooling spray over the marble pavement, while troops of dusky white-clad servants stand near with watchful regard awaiting the nod of their master, who, buried in a pile of yielding cushions, gently breathes forth the fumes of perfumed tobacco from a jewelled hookah. At a sign from him cool sherbet and "the weepings of the Shiraz vine" are brought by the ready attendants, and when in the evening he issues forth, gilded palanquins and a proud array of noble Arabian horses await his languid choice. Some such idea as this, though never perhaps expressed in so many words, have numbers of people at home formed of the mode of live of their countrymen whose lot it is to pass their lives in India. Let us in the interests of truth and reality describe a subaltern's bungalow as it really is, and let those whom our picture offends by its pre-Raphaelite ugliness, reconcile themselves to it by the reflection that it is faithful as a general typical representation.
Imagine then a low two-roomed cottage, with a verandah in front, in which in an American chair, with his legs resting on the arms, sits a gentleman placidly smoking a cheroot and reading. If you go inside you find in the first room a table littered over with magazines, books, writing materials, cheroot cases, and a Hindustani dictionary. Two chairs and a hard sofa complete the furniture of the room, unless a gun in the corner and some deer or tiger skins on the matted floor may also be comprehended under that designation. On entering the other room you see some three or four boxes arranged along the wall, a low bedstead in the middle, a large copper basin in the corner on a triangular stand, and a chest of drawers “contrived a double debt to pay,” the top of which has been ingeniously converted into a toilet table, and support a small looking-glass and a pair of brushes.
Around these wonders as you cast a look
you are probably astonished by a shout from the verandah of “Bo—o—o—oy,” which is again and again repeated with startling energy. On going out to see what the matter is, you find that the owner of the palatial residence just described wants a light for his cheroot, or perhaps a bottle of soda water, and is endeavouring to rouse up a servant. As all the domestics are fast asleep in small huts at some distance from the bungalow, with doors and windows tight shut, this is a task of no little difficulty, and cannot be accomplished without a considerable expenditure of breath. Perseverance is however rewarded at length, and a very sleepy looking servant comes up with his turban all awry, and brings what is required, on which his master returns to his former occupation with unruffled composure.
The chief divisions of Anglo-lndian society are two, the official and non-official classes. The latter find their position now very different from what it was in the days when John Company was a first-class trader, as well as prince, and was more jealous of his monopoly than of his seignorial rights. No longer scouted and hunted down as “interlopers,” merchants and other gentlemen unconnected with the government service take their proper place in society, on which they are beginning to exercise a good deal of influence, though petty jealousy is not yet quite extinct. There will be no small debt of gratitude due to them, if, by their instrumentality, the spirit of officialism (if we may use such a word) is shattered; for that spirit has hitherto been the bane of Indian society. Where the majority are in one particular service they naturally endeavour to make the members of that service the aristocracy, and to consider rank in it as giving a claim to equal rank in society, just as in “Pickwick,” Lady Clubber, whose husband was, as commissioner, head of the dock-yard, took telescopic views of the inferior officials’ families through her eye-glass, while they in their turn “stared at Mrs. Somebody else, whose husband was not in the dock-yard at all.” This feeling has been carried to a most absurd extent in India, especially by the fair sex. It will hardly be believed that we have heard of one lady deliberately cutting another in government house, though she knew her well, and was ready to meet her on intimate terms elsewhere; but in the sacred precincts of the Gubernatorial