The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
me at Mess—then reduced to eight members besides myself—and the Assistant-Surgeon Arnott put me in the way of lodging myself. The regimental Mess, with its large cool Hall and punkahs, its clean napery and bright silver, its servants each standing behind his master's chair, and the cheroots and hookahs which appeared with the disappearance of the "table"-cloth, was a pleasant surprise, the first sight of comfortable home-life I had seen since landing at Bombay. Not so the Subalterns' bungalow, which gave the idea of a dog-hole at which British Ponto would turn up his civilized nose. The business of the day was mainly goose-step and studying the drill book, and listening to such equivocal words of command as "Tandelees" (stand at ease) and "Fiz-bagnat" (fix bayonets). Long practice with the sword, which I had began seriously at the age of twelve, sometimes taking three lessons a day, soon eased my difficulties, and led to the study of native swordsmanship, whose grotesqueness and buffoonery can be rivalled only by its insufficiency.1
The wrestling, however, was another matter, and not a few natives in my Company had at first the advantage of me, and this induced a trial of Indian training, which consisted mainly of washing down balls of Gur (unrefined sugar) with bowls of hot milk hotly spiced. The result was that in a week I was blind with bile. Another set of lessons suggested by common sense, was instruction by a chábuhsawar, or native jockey. All nations seem to despise one another's riding, and none seem to know how much they have to learn. The Indian style was the merit of holding the horse well in hand, making him bound off at a touch of the heel, stopping him dead at a hand gallop, and wheeling him round as on a pivot. The Hindú will canter over a figure-of-eight, gradually diminishing the dimensions till the animal leans over at an angle of 45°, and throwing himself over the off side and hanging by the heel to the earth, will pick up sword or pistol from the ground. Our lumbering chargers brought us to notable grief more than once in the great Sikh War. And as I was somewhat nervous about snakes, I took lessons of a "Charmer," and could soon handle them with coolness.
The Bibi (white woman) was at that time rare in India; the result was the triumph of the Búbú (coloured sister). I found every officer in the corps more or less provided with one of these helpmates.
We boys naturally followed suit; but I had to suffer the protestations of the Portuguese padre, who had taken upon himself the cure and charge of my soul, and was like a hen who had hatched a duckling. I had a fine opportunity of studying the pros and cons of the Búbú system.
Pros: The "walking dictionary" is all but indispensable to the Student, and she teaches him not only Hindostani grammar, but the syntaxes of native Life. She keeps house for him, never allowing him to save money, or, if possible, to waste it. She keeps the servants in order. She has an infallible recipe to prevent maternity, especially if her tenure of office depends on such compact. She looks after him in sickness, and is one of the best of nurses, and, as it is not good for man to live alone, she makes him a manner of home.
The disadvantages are as manifest as the advantages. Presently, as overland passages became cheaper and commoner, the Bibi won and the Búbú lost ground. Even during my day, married men began, doubtless at the instance of their wives, to look coldly upon the half-married, thereby showing mighty little common sense. For India was the classic land of Cicisbeism, where husbands are occupied between ten a.m. and five p.m. at their offices and counting-houses, leaving a fair field and much favour to the sub unattached, and whose duty often keeps the man sweltering upon the plains, when the wife is enjoying the somer-frisch upon "the Hills." Moreover, the confirmed hypocrite and the respectable-ist, when in power, established a kind of inquisitorial inquiry into the officer's house, and affixed a black mark to the name of the half-married. At last the Búbú made her exit and left a void. The greatest danger in British India is the ever-growing gulf that yawns between the governors and the governed; they lose touch of one another, and such racial estrangement leads directly to racial hostility.
The day in Cantonment-way is lively. It began before sunrise on the parade-ground, an open space, which any other people but English would have converted into a stronghold. Followed, the baths and the choti-hazri, or little breakfast, the munshi (language-master), and literary matters till nine o'clock meal. The hours were detestable, compared with the French system—the déjeuner à la fourchette, which abolished the necessity of lunch; but throughout the Anglo-American world, even in the places worst adapted, "business" lays out the day. After breakfast, most men went to the billiard-room; some, but very few, preferred "peacocking," which meant robing in white-grass clothes and riding under a roasting sun, as near the meridian as possible, to call upon "regimental ladies," who were gruff as corporals when the function was neglected too long. The dull and tedious afternoon again belonged to munshi, and ended with a constitutional ride, or a rare glance at the band; Mess about seven p.m., possibly a game of whist, and a stroll home under the marvellous Gujarat skies, through a scene of perfect loveliness, a paradise bounded by the whity-black line.
There was little variety in such days. At times we rode to Baroda City, which seemed like a Mansion, to which the Cantonment acted as porter's Lodge. "Good Water" (as the Sanskritists translate it) was a walled City, lying on the north bank of the Vishwamitra river, and containing some 150,000 souls, mostly hostile, who eyed us with hateful eyes, and who seemed to have taught even their animals to abhor us. The City is a mélange of low huts and tall houses, grotesquely painted, with a shabby palace, and a Chauk, or Bazar, where four streets meet. At times H.M. the Gaikwar would show us what was called sport—a fight between two elephants with cut tusks, or a caged tiger and a buffalo—the last being generally the winner—or a wrangle between two fierce stallions, which bit like camels. The cock-fighting was, however, of a superior kind, the birds being of first-class blood, and so well trained, that they never hesitated to attack a stranger. An occasional picnic, for hunting, not society, was a most pleasant treat. The native Prince would always lend us his cheetahs or hunting leopards, or his elephants; the jungles inland of the city swarmed with game, from a snipe to a tiger, and the broad plains to the north were packs of nilghai and the glorious black buck. About twenty-eight miles due east, rises high above the sea of verdure the picturesque hill known as Pávangarh, the Fort of Eolus, and the centre of an old Civilization. Tanks and Jain temples were scattered around it, and the ruins of Champenír City cumbered the base. In a more progressive society, this place, 2500 feet high, and cooler by 18° to 20° F., would have become a kind of sanitarium. But men, apparently, could not agree. When the Baroda races came round, Major C. Crawley, commanding the 4th Bombay Rifles, used, in consequence of some fancied slight, to openly ride out of cantonment; and Brigadier Gibbons, the commander, did nothing for society. But the crowning excitement of the season was the report of Sir Charles Napier's battle of Miani (February 21st), followed by the affair of Dubba (March 25th), the "tail of the Afghan War." The account seemed to act as an electric shock upon the English frame, followed by a deep depression and a sense of mortal injury at the hands of Fate in keeping us out of the fray.
At length, in April, 1843, I obtained two months' leave of absence to the Presidency, for the purpose of passing an examination in Hindostani. The function was held at the Town Hall. Major-General Vans-Kennedy presided, a queer old man as queerly dressed, who had given his life to Orientalism, and who had printed some very respectable studies of Hinduism. The examining munshi, Mohammed "Mucklá," was no friend to me, because I was coached by a rival, old Dosabhai, yet he could not prevent my distancing a field of eleven. This happened on May 5th, and on May 12th I had laid in a full supply of Gujarati books, and set out by the old road to rejoin.
If Baroda was dull and dreary during the dries, it was mortal during the rains. I had been compelled to change my quarters for a bigger bungalow, close to the bank of the nullah which bounded the camp to the east and fed the Vishwamitra. It was an ill-omened place; an English officer had been wounded in it, and the lintel still bore the mark of a sabre which some native ruffian had left, intending to split a Serjeant's head. Other quarters in the cantonment were obliged to keep one ramosi, alias Paggi, a tracker, a temporarily reformed thief who keeps off other thieves; my bungalow required two. An ignoble position for a dominant race, this openly paying blackmail and compounding felony. The rule of the good Company was, however, not a rule of honour, but of expediency,