Twenty-one Days in India/21
No. XXI.
ALI BABA ALONE;
THE LAST DAY.
"Now the last of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last is dead.
Rise, memory, and write its praise."
How shall I lay this spectre of my own identity? Shall I leave it to melt away gracefully in the light of setting suns? It would never do to put it out like a farthing rushlight after it had haunted the Great Ornamental in an aurora of smiles. Is Ali Baba to cease upon the midnight without pain? or is he to lie down like a tired child and weep out the spark? or should he just flit to Elysium? There, seated on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Dian's (no allusion to little Mrs. Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains wonderous and the parle of voices thunderous, some wag might scribble on his door, "Here lies Ali Baba," as if glancing at his truthfulness. How is he to pass effectively into the golden silences? How is he to relapse into the still-world of observation? Would four thousand five hundred a month and Simla do it, with nothing to do and allowances, and a seat beside those littered under the swart Dog-Star of India? Or is it to be the mandragora of pension, that he may sleep out the great gap of ennui between this life and something better? How lonely the Government of India would feel! How the world would forget the Government of India! Voices would ask:—
"Do ye sit there still in slumber
In gigantic Alpine rows?
The black poppies out of number
Nodding, dripping from your brows
To the red lees of your wine—
And so kept alive and fine.
How doth the greedy K.C.B.
Delight to brag and fight,
And gather medals all the day
And wear them all the night.
The fear of being out-medalled and out-starred stings him.
Thus the desire to go hustling up the hill to the Temple of Fame with the other starry hosts impels him forward. If you mix yourself up with K.C.B.'s and raise your platform of ambition, you are just where you were at the A B C of your career. Living on a table-land, you experience no sensation of height. For the intoxicating delight of elevation you require a solitary pinnacle, some lonely eminence. Aut Cæsar, aut nullus; whether in the zenith or the nadir of the world's favour.
But how much more comfortable in the cold season than the chill splendours of the pinnacles of fame, where "pale suns unfelt at distance roll away," is a comfortable bungalow on the plains, with a little mulled claret after dinner. Here I think Ali Baba will be found, hidden from his creditors, the reading world, in the warm light of thought, singing songs unbidden till a few select cronies are wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears they heeded not—before the mulled claret.
To this symposium the A.-D.-C.-in-Waiting has invited himself on behalf of the Empire. He will sing the Imperial Anthem composed by Mr. Eastwick, and it will be translated into archaic Persian by an imperial Munshi for the benefit of the Man in Buckram, who will be present. The Man in Buckram, who is suffering from a cold in his heart, will be wrapped up in himself and a cocked hat. The Press Commissioner has also asked for an invitation. He will deliver a sentiment:—"Quid sit futuram eras fuge quærere." A Commander-in-Chief will tell the old story about the Service going to the dogs; after which there will be an interval of ten minutes allowed for swearing and hiccuping. The Travelling M.P. will take the opportunity to jot down a few hasty notes on Aryan characteristics for the Twentieth Century before being placed under the table. The Baboo will subsequently be told off to sit on the Member's head. During this function the Baboo will deliver some sesquipedalian reflections in the rodomontade mood. The Shikarry will then dawdle over a twelve-foot-tiger story, while Mrs. Lollipop tells a fib and makes tea; and Ali Baba (unless his heart be too full of mulled claret) will make a joke. The company will break up at this point, after receiving a plenary dispensation from the Archdeacon.
Under such influences Ali Baba may become serious; he may learn from the wisdom of age and be cheered by the sallies of youth. But little Mrs. Lollipop can hardly be called one of the Sallies of his youth. Sally Lollipop rose upon the horizon of his middle age. She boiled up, pure blanc-mange and roses, over the dark brim of life's afternoon, a blushing sunrise, though late in dawning, and most cheerful. Sometimes after spending an afternoon with her, Ali Baba feels so cheered that the Government of India seems quite innocent and bright, like an old ballerina seen through the mists of champagne and lime light. He walks down the Mall smiling upon foolish Under-Secretaries and fat Baboos. The people whisper as he passes, "There goes Ali Baba"; and echo answers "Who is Ali Baba?" Then a little wind of conjecture breathes through the pine-trees and names are heard.
It is better not to call Ali Baba names. Nothing is so misleading as a vulgar nomenclature. I once knew a man who was called "Counsellor of the Empress" when he ought to have had his photograph exposed in the London shop-windows like King Cetewayo, K.C.M.G. I have heard an eminent Frontier General called "Judas Iscariot," and I myself was once pointed out as a "Famine Commissioner," and afterwards as an expurgated edition of the Secretary to the Punjab Government. People seemed to think that Ali Baba would smell sweeter under some other name. This was a mistake.
Almost everything you are told in Simla is a mistake. You should never believe anything you hear till it is contradicted by the Pioneer. I suppose the Government of India is the greatest gobemouche in the world. I suppose there never was an administration of equal importance which received so much information and which was so ill-informed. At a bureaucratic Simla dinner-party the abysses of ignorance that yawn below the company on every Indian topic are quite appalling!
I once heard Mr. Stokes say that he had never heard of my book on the Permanent Settlement; and yet Mr. Stokes is a decidedly intelligent man, with some knowledge of Cymric and law. I daresay now if you were to draw off and decant the law on his brain, it would amount to a full dose for an adult; yet he never heard of my book on the Permanent Settlement. He knew about Blackstone; he had seen an old copy once in a second-hand book shop; but he had never heard of my work! How loosely the world floats around us! I question its objective reality. I doubt whether anything has more objectivity in it than Ali Baba himself. He was certainly flogged at school. Yet when we now try to put our finger on Ali Baba he eludes the touch; when we try to lay him he starts up gibbering at Oabul, Lahore, or elsewhere. Perhaps it would be easier to imprison him in morocco boards and allow him to be blown with restless violence round about the pendant world, abandoned to critics: whom our lawless and uncertain thoughts imagine howling.
London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13, Waterloo Place, S.W.