# Three Years in Europe, 1868 to 1871/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V.
England, May to December 1836.
On the 15th April 1886, I left Calcutta for London. Eighteen years ago I had performed the same voyage;—eighteen years! The Voyage.What a large slice out of one's brief life. What a number of events have crowded themselves within these 18 years of my life, what great changes have transpired since I last left my home, almost like a truant in pursuit of adventure! In 1868, I had left my home impelled by an ambition which was rashness; and staked my future, staked all on success in an almost impossible undertaking. I acted as only a young man can act, utterly uncertain as to my chances, as to my prospects, as to my future! But success like charity covers all sins, and success had crowned my undertaking.
Now in 1886, I left Calcutta with greater assurance as to the present, with greater confidence as to the future. But the cares and responsibilities of life had increased, not decreased with added years. I was not alone now, but my wife and four little ones accompanied me in my present voyage. The children gazed on the blue ocean and on every port that we touched at with much the same elasticity and buoyancy of feelings that I had felt in my first journey. To shew them a little of European life and civilization, to enable them to look around them a little in ​this great world of ours, was mainly the object of this my second visit to Europe. And my brother too was with us, now on his first visit to Europe. And no pilgrim to Jerusalem or anchorite to Jaggannath ever wended his way with a keener ardour than what impelled him at this period of his life to visit the Eldorado of his dreams, the Europe of to-day.
Madras has very little to shew to visitors except the People's Park and the collection of animals there; but my children gazed on the luxuriant foliage and soft verdure of Ceylon with the keen rapture which many an older traveller has felt when first visiting this gem of the tropic. Heckel, the great German admirer of Darwin, calls Ceylon a paradise on earth, and many other travellers whom I have met, have also expressed a similar opinion. Among other places in Colombo I visited a Buddhist temple, and had the satisfaction of speaking with the learned priest in Sanscrit during our short interview.
In the Indian Ocean we saw a number of whales, spouting water high in the air. These whales are neither so large nor so valuable as the whales which are sought for with so much eagerness in Northern latitudes.
Aden pleased my children more than I had expected. The bleak and towering rocks of the place and the narrow pass through which we drove were new sights to them. The tanks were of course visited.
I passed through the Suez Canal now for the first time. When I went to Europe last in 1868, the Suez Canal.Canal had not been ​opened. What facilities have been given to trade by this great work of the great Frenchman! The P. and O. Company's steamers were about the only steamers by which one could go from India to Europe in the olden days;—what a number of new companies have been started since the opening of the Canal!
The Canal is nearly 90 miles long, and the Canal dues are very heavy and must bring a large profit to the shareholders. The rate is I think 10 Franks for each ton of cargo and for each passenger. A steamer taking 5,000 tons of cargo pays therefore 50,000 Franks, or £2,000 Stirling! And there is scarcely a day that several steamers are not passing through the Canal.
Among the steamers that we passed by in the Canal, I will mention one. It was a Japanese Man-or-War,—entirely manned and officered by the Japanese. Among all the nations of Asia the Japanese are the only people who are keeping abreast of European civilization; and they are doing so by their energy and honest work, and by their freely adopting whatever is good and great in modern civilization. As I am writing these lines I see a correspondence in the "Times" of the 27th December last on the subject which is so interesting that I venture to make a few extracts.
"When the Japanese Government embarked, after the revolution of 1868, on the path of reform, which they have ever since steadily pursued, they looked to the West for capable instructors, and consequently about 1870 began an influx of Europeans into the Japanese service. ​* * The army was under French instructors, while the naval commission was British. Education generally was in the hands of Americans; Engineering, mining and the like were taught in a college manned by Englishmen, while the medical school was taught by Germans. * * For six or seven years this distribution continued; but by that time the Japanese began to feel able to walk in some measure alone. * * The Japanese were learning their work from Europeans in Japan, and they had studied independently abroad (in Europe,) so that in the course of 8 or 10 years a new generation had arisen which was fairly capable of doing most of the work which had hitherto been performed by strangers. The places of highly paid Europeans were taken by Japanese."
And now a representative assembly and parliamentary institutions will be granted to the people in 1889, on the German model, and Germans are specially in favor in Japan to help in the Inauguration of the scheme. Young nations are thus rapidly acquiring the civilization and the free institutions of the West,—almost before our eyes!
Malta with its fine harbour and its quaint streets going up and down, and its fine cathedral pleased us all. We passed Gibralter by day-light and had a smooth voyage over the Bay of Biscay,—and at last we touched at Plymouth. How lovely the green and sloping hills of Devonshire looked from the sea, how beautiful the wooded hills and gentle valleys, how picture-like the houses on the shore! It was English scenery and no mistake, and the hearts of the Englishmen and Englishwomen on ​board bounded at the sight of their country after their long absence in India or in Burma. There were a District officer and a planter from Assam,—there were a clergyman and his wife and a young lady from Burma, there were another clergyman and wife and three children hailing from Travancore, and there were a telegraph superintendent and his wife and infant son from Northern India. These and all the other passengers had formed a very pleasant party on board, and we all had a very pleasant time of it during the voyage.
We left Plymouth on the morning of the 25th May, and on the evening of the 26th, I saw the lighted shops and the busy streets and the well known houses and squares of old London again!
For days together after my arrival in London I felt as one feels on revisiting an old friend. Every familiar place that I visited, the very streets and squares in which I walked, London University College.brought back vividly to my mind the days of my first sojourn in London, eighteen years ago! Old associations and memories came to me, and I felt at times as if I was the careless youngster again,—as if a wide gulf of eighteen years with their weary weight of work and cares and responsibilities had not severed me from the days of my early youth! I walked by the well known streets and squares and circuses and crescents of London, and scarcely believed that I did not revisit them in a dream! I went to a house near Russell Square where I had lived for a year. The good old lady of the boarding house whom I had known so well was dead, ​and the house had changed hands. I went to another house near the Primrose Hill, where I had lived for over a year. My old landlady in that house had a daughter of about eight years who must be a woman of 25 or 26 now! But I could find no trace of the landlady or her daughter there,—the people who occupied the house knew nothing of them. But no place in London had stronger associations for me than the University College where I had studied so long under some of the ablest of professors and best of men that I have known anywhere. Many a dark, misty, rainy day in autumn, many a frosty, wintry day had I passed in that gloomy Gower Street, under that dark pile of buildings which I now revisited again after so many years. I knew the Philosophy class and the Mathematics class well. I knew where I had worked in the Electricity laboratory, and where I had studied Sanscrit under that eminent German scholar now no more. And above all I knew the English literature class and the genial, good-hearted, noble-souled Professor who is still the Professor in that subject. He had been a real friend to us at a time when we needed friendly assistance and help,—and a better man I have never met since.
I need hardly say that I took an early opportunity to see Professor Henry Morley to pay to him that homage of respect and affection which I have ever felt for him. A friend who was the companion of my studies in those days, and who is now on furlough like myself went with me, and I cannot say how happy we felt to see the old man again among his books. Age had slightly ​tinged his hair with snow, and added a wrinkle or two on his face, but had not wiped away one single trace of that goodness and genial heartiness which was stamped on his face. He received us, I need scarcely say, with the heartiness which is a part of him, and we talked of olden days and events long since past. I had done well under his instructions eighteen years ago, and he remembered that very well. Not a little amusement was therefore caused when talking of English literature I made a stupid error! I shall never forget the good humoured laugh with which he rebuked me for having forgotten his lessons now so completely!
He asked us to his house, which was as familiar to us as our own during our first sojourn in London. We met a large party there, and his wife received us with the same kind courtesy which we had always received at her hands before. We went down to the "work shop,"—the library filled with books, where we had laboured during many a wintry night before, and altogether we passed a very pleasant evening.
He invited us also to a meeting in the University Hall of which he was president. The wedding or union between the University College Club and the University Hall Club was to be celebrated; there was a dinner, which was followed by a discussion on Government by the Opinions of the Majority. Students freely took their share in this discussion. In all the English Colleges, students learn the art of political discussions during their college career, opinions are freely discussed and ventilated, and educated Englishmen thus learn in their ​early years to take that intelligent interest in politics which marks them all through life. Gladstone and Salisbury won their first laurels in political discussions in the debating rooms of Oxford.
But it is not intellectual attainments only that are attended to in the English Colleges. Englishmen delight in manly sports, in cricketing, boating and the like. A few days ago there was the annual tournament at Lawn Tennis between the University College and the King's College in London. We were sitting in the University Hall when the result was reported, the King's College had been soundly beaten.
While speaking of the University College I must not omit to speak of another true friend whom we knew before but who is now no more. A true friend of India, a ripe Sanscrit scholar, Professor Goldstucker, had received us warmly and befriended us during our first sojourn in London. We passed by his house where we had passed so many hours with him, and the recollections of his sincere and earnest endeavours for our good, his humorous sayings, his droll arguments and even his friendly and well meaning remonstrances came vividly to our minds. His valuable notes on Sanscrit grammar are still in my possession,—all the more valuable because those excellent notes have never yet been published.
The part of London from Lincoln's Inn fields past the new law courts to the Strand, Middle Temple.the Middle Temple and the right down to the Thames is redolent of legal associations!
Belonging to the Middle Temple myself I naturally ​felt a greater interest in that institution than in the others, and I took my people to see its ancient halls and gardens. We crossed the Strand near the Temple Bar, removed since I was student here and replaced by a monument to mark this ancient limit of the City. We went through the narrow lane
"Traversed so oft, "In my life's morning march, when my bosom was young."
and we came to the stately ancient hall where we had our dinners along with venerable Benchers and rising Barristers and Students like ourselves,—imbibing with our substantial dinners those legal associations with which the atmosphere was supposed to be full! And in those good old days, these dinners (besides attendance at certain lectures) were considered a sufficient qualification for a young man to be called to the Bar! Coats of Arms of valiant knights decorated the walls, painted windows threw a dim light on the floor, royalty looked down benignantly from the ancient oil paintings, and the great old oaken wall, supposed to have been a trophy from one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, threw an air of solemnity over the ancient and venerable hall.
I took my wife thence to the library and we looked down from the window of that hall on the busy Thames crowded with traffic. The gardens and the different courts of the Middle Temple are pleasant and green. In the Fountain Court I called on a friend whom I had known eighteen years ago. He was a young barrister then, full of academical and legal honors, but struggling hard for a footing in the great arena of London where so ​many struggle in vain and are lost. The young Scotchman succeeded better with his sharp intelligence and his untiring perseverance,—he is now known as the author of some of the best standard works on law, and he has forced his way into the Parliament where he honestly labours, as opportunity occurs, for the good of the dumb millions of India. As I was sitting in his chambers one morning, and he was listlessly opening the covers on his table, he was suddenly struck by one letter which he handed over to me. It was a whip from the liberal leaders,—underlined four or five times, and demanding his attendance in the house on the same night as the division on the Irish Question was likely to take place. I attended the house during the animated Irish debates on one or two nights,—but of this I will speak further on.
I asked him about another friend of our olden days, Mr. S. who also used often to dine with us in the Middle Temple Hall. And on more than one occasion Mr. and Mrs. S. had formed a party with us for an excursion on the Thames or elsewhere. I was grieved to learn that Mr. S. was dead; eighteen years had passed since my last visit to England, and many who were then living are now no more.
But I need not tire my reader with any further account of my old friends whom I now met again, or of those whom I did not meet.
Let me talk now of something practical,—and House-keeping in House-keeping.London is certainly intensely practical as every one has found who has tried it.
​During my previous sojourn in London I lived as a student, sometimes in lodging houses and for sometime in a boarding house. The landlady of a boarding or a lodging house engages the house from the owner, engages cook and servants, and looks after the food and the cooking, and the lodger therefore has no bother whatever except paying weekly for his room and attendance and food.
As I was going to live in London now for some months with my wife and children, I thought it would be more comfortable if we took lease of a house, engaged our own servants and ordered our own food. Families taking a house for years, generally take it unfurnished, and buy their own furniture,—but as our stay was to be only for some months, we took a furnished house. We looked at the advertisements in the papers, consulted some house-agents, and saw a large number of furnished houses before we finally made up our mind. At last we did make a selection, took lease of the house for three months, and early in June we removed to our new quarters, not far from the Kensington Gardens, where our children could often go of an afternoon to run about and play.
So far so good. But our work was not half done yet. Of houses there are plenty in London,—to get proper servants is the great difficulty. The education of the lower classes, and the opening up of new industries have unsettled the old relations between masters and servants all over the world. In India, Hindu matrons complain that it is daily becoming more difficult to get proper female servants who will do their work obediently and cheerfully, and English ladies complain bitterly of the laziness and ​disobedience and impertinence of Ayas and Khansamas. But both the Hindu matron and the Mem Saheb would, I fancy, have more patience with the state of things in India after they have tried house-keeping in London for some time. Ladies who have passed the best part of their lives in London complain that they have never known a time when it was more difficult to get good servants, and to get them to do their work properly, than it is now. The cook who gets her 22 or 24 pounds the year (besides food which comes to more) will nevertheless persist in making her dishonest gains by secret arrangements with the butcher or the green grocer; and the housemaid who gets her £18 or 20 a year (besides food) will grumble at her work, and will certainly throw up her appointment in disdain unless she is allowed to have her "outing" every Sunday afternoon, to see her friends or meet her sweetheart. Our difficulties can easily be conceived, when English ladies always living in London feel and bitterly complain of these troubles.
In olden times, when you wanted a servant, you would speak to your milkman or your green grocer about it, and he would send you a decent girl whom he knew and could recommend. But these primitive ways have been done away within these days of advertisements and Registry offices. Now-a-days servants put in advertisements in papers stating their age and qualifications, and you may make a selection from these advertisements and then send for them with testimonials. Or you may put an advertisement in the papers describing the kind of servants you want and the wages you are willing to offer, and you ​will receive shoals of letters in reply, from which you may make a selection. Or, lastly, you can apply to the Servant Registry Offices, where servants arc often in attendance, and make your selection on the spot. In any case, however, it is better not to rely on the written certificates shewn by the servants, but to call on some of the ladies under whom they were previously employed, and so get a correct account of their character and usefulness.
It was sometime before my wife could suit herself to a proper servant, and as luck would have it we applied to more than one Registration office. A description of one will suffice. It was a Registration office on a large scale, and as we entered, we saw about fifty or more damsels waiting in the spacious room! And like Haroun al Rashid of old, walking through the slave markets of Bagdad, we were to make a selection among these fair candidates! The process is a very neat one. You pay your five shillings on entering the office, and tell the proprietor the sort of servant you want, mentioning age and qualifications, and the wages you are willing to offer. You are then taken to a side room, and girls answering to your description are then sent to you from the great hall, one after the other, till you have suited yourself. And in about five minutes' conversation,, you are expected to know whether the servant appearing before you, then for the first time, will suit you or not. If for any reason the servant whom you select does not join, or if her character does not appear satisfactory to you from enquiries you subsequently make, you may come to the office again, and make fresh selections till you are suited. No ​fresh payments are required for this, but the money you have paid at first is never returned to you whether you are ultimately suited or not.
Well, after one or two disappointments, we succeeded in getting a good-natured and willing servant who joined us forthwith. In the meantime the cook, whom we had brought with us when coming to the new house, had been fretting and grumbling, had taken a drop too much, and had at last cleared out bag and baggage, much to our relief. To get a new cook on a moment's notice is not an easy thing in London, and for some days we were regaled with dinners of which the less I speak the better. The Registry office process had again to be gone through until we suited ourselves to a steady cook who knew something of her trade.
If servants give you trouble in London, trades-people give you none, and the arrangement with them is a very convenient one. Before you have removed to your new house, the trades-people of the neighbourhood manage to know of your expected arrival, and they try hard to secure your custom. The butchers, the bakers, the grocers, the fishmongers, the fruiterers, and green grocers and the dairies of the neighbourhood send you their cards and call on you and beg you for your custom. After a little inquiry you make your selections, and the trades-people at once begin to supply you with the various articles. The butcher's man comes to you every morning to inquire what meat and how much you will require for the day, and brings the same at the stated hour. The milkman brings the quantity of milk you require every morning, ​or morning and afternoon as you may wish. The baker sends you the loaves you require daily, the fishmonger sends you fish, the poultryman sends you poultry, and the grocer sends you stores according to orders. Your eggs and bacon and butter and all daily supplies come to your house every day without trouble and without fail, and your servant has not to step out of the door to buy a single thing from the shops. Once a week the tradesmen send you their bills, which you settle after checking.
You get the best of every kind of food in London if you will only pay for it. Beef and mutton are a shilling to 14d. the pound, and seldom have I tasted such splendid meat anywhere in the continent as I had every day in our house in London. Good rich milk, better than you get at any price in Calcutta, is 2d. the quart. Poultry is dear, a good fowl is 3s. 6d., or 4s. 6d., partridges and pheasants you get only in season. You get better fish in London than in the seaside places where fish is caught! And the butter and eggs are all of the best quality.
But the costliness of washing in London surpasses everything else. The arrangements are of course perfect. The laundress drives to your house in her pony cart every Saturday with your clothes which you take over after comparing with your list. And then she drives over again on Monday to take away the soiled clothes. She is always punctual, in all weathers, and you have nothing to complain of about her except her charges! To wash a shirt with collar attached she charges you 4d. or 4 1/2d. i.e., about 5 annas in Indian money! A shirt washed three times costs a Rupee! Our weekly washing bill ​came about 20 shillings a week, i.e. about sixty Rupees the month in Indian money! The trades-people's bill came to about £7 weekly, i.e. over four hundred Rupees the month in Indian money. And the house-rent, exclusive of gas and water rates, came to 3 Guineas weekly or say two hundred Rupees a month in Indian money. The servant's wages including those of a governess came to about one hundred Rupees monthly. Thus there was a fixed expenditure of Rs. 800; and if £3 a week or Rs. 200 a month be added to this for extras, the expenditure comes up to Rs. 1000 a month, for one family of six people! I am afraid to add what travelling and children's dresses &c., cost me during my stay in England!
One more particular, and I have done with the account of our house-keeping. I wished to secure the services of a governess or a lady companion for my wife. Well, there are lady companions! There has been a great deal of correspondence in the London papers this year about the position and prospects of governesses and lady companions. One class of correspondents represent them as well-educated, well-born, hard-working, deserving women,—ladies in the truest sense of the word,—whom poverty alone has compelled to seek a livelihood by serving others, and who are treated with insolence and contumely by those who employ them. Another class of correspondents represent them as dainty things, more given to complain than to work, more given to gadding about and shopping than honestly working at home and minding the children. ​I have no doubt there are governesses and lady companions answering to both these descriptions, and I will leave my readers to guess which species and genus of companion it was my wife's lot to get.
We were now fairly settled down, and I put two elder girls to school.
We were not very long in London before my children had seen all the sights of London. The Tower of London with its high historic associations going back nearly a thousand years, Sights of London.and with the memories of Russell and Sidney and Raleigh, of Jane Grey and Anne Boleyn;—the lofty St. Paul's church with the tombs of England's greatest soldier and England's greatest sailor, Wellington and Nelson;—the great Parliament House looking down on the Thames and associated with all that is sturdy and noble and free in the nation's character;—the Westminister Abbey with the graves of England's crowned heads and men of genius;—these and all other sights of London were duly visited. I have seen the Pantheon in Paris and the church of Santa Croce in Florence, but I know of no place on earth where the admirer of great men feels more subdued with awe and veneration than the Westminister Abbey. I saw some new monuments of men who were still living when I was in England last. Charles Dickens has been buried not far from the monuments of Shakespeare and Byron, of Macaulay and Thackeray. Darwin sleeps not far from the monument of Sir Isaac Newton, and a monument to Longfellow has been erected near those of Dryden and ​other poets. I also noticed another thing which I did not notice, and which I believe was not generally known to the visitors of the Abbey, 16 or 18 years ago. The Chapter House of the Abbey is a solemn and dimly lighted place with stony seats along the walls for the ancient monks to sit and hold their Chapter. A notice issued by the late Dean Stanley informs the public that it was in this small and obscure corner of the Abbey that the House of Commons held its sittings for three hundred years up to the time of the Tudors, and the first foundations of the free and noble English constitution were laid!
Other places were also duly visited. The Crystal Palace is a sight which children are never tired of seeing, and the splendid shops with which it is crowded, the beautiful gardens by which it is surrounded, and the illuminations and fireworks given on two nights in the week, add to the attractions of the place. Madame Tussaud's figures were a source of surprise and infinite pleasure to my children. The Albert Palace was also visited, but the Colonial and Indian Exhibition was the most attractive of the sights in London. As a sight the Indian Court far surpassed the other Courts; and backward as India is in machinery and in practical and useful modern products, her ancient arts, her exquisite workmanship in gold, silver and ivory, and her fabrics of fine texture and unsurpassed beauty, are still the wonder of the modern world, and were the theme of unbounded admiration among hundreds of thousands of English ladies who visited these Courts.
​We also visited some places out of London. We spent a pleasant summer's day in the beautiful gardens at Kew, and were pleased to see in the great glass houses the palms and bamboos of our native land. We spent one afternoon at Richmond too, taking a boat and rowing up the Thames, which is exceedingly pretty here. I took my children too, one day to Windsor Palace, and they were highly pleased to see the Waterloo Chamber and other State Chambers and the Queen's apartments. And from the lofty tower of the palace we looked down on the Eton College and on the fine country and wooded hills which stretch all round. The most impressive thing, however, in the palace is the Memorial Chapel which the Queen has dedicated (and decorated at her own expense) to the memory of her departed husband, and where her darling son too, who died a few years ago, lies buried. Not far from this chapel is a monument to the memory of the late Prince Imperial of France who died fighting England's battles in far Zululand.
Among the sights of London I must not forget to mention that wonderful institution which is the pride of England, and with which my brother, who is something of an antiquarian, was more pleased than almost with anything else he saw in London. One can spent days and days strolling through the British Museum, and everything he sees excites his interest and adds to his knowledge. The marbles and beautiful sculpture of ancient Greece recall the days when European civilization was still in its infancy,—when a handful of people in the south-eastern corner of Europe were carefully nursing the ​light of civilization which now illumines all the world. Still more ancient are the Assyrian and Babylonian stone figures and winged lions,—with those wonderful cuneiform inscriptions which it was the triumph of modern research to decypher. How wonderful the history of this discovery! At the commencement of this century it was not even known that these arrow heads were a written alphabet! And when that discovery was made it was not known how those letters should be read, whether from right to left or from top to bottom! Slowly and patiently did the antiquarians conquer these and similar difficulties one after the other, until that strange character was strange no more and records of the old Assyrian kings shed a flood of light on the history of the almost forgotten past. Some of these inscriptions are of an age, a thousand or twelve hundred or even fourteen hundred years before Christ,—a date when the faintest day-light of civilization had not yet dawned on the remotest corner of Europe. But what is this date again, compared to the antiquities of the remarkable land of the Nile? Strange stones with strange hieroglyphics, two thousand and two thousand five hundred years before Christ, crowd these halls of the British Museum. Imagination can scarcely compass the ancient age of the Sisostrises of Egypt with their wonderful civilization and religion. An Aryan race too had developed a civilization of their own in that ancient age, four thousand years ago, on the banks of the Indus, and chanted those beautiful hymns to the rising sun and to the raging storm which are now the oldest heritage of the Aryan nations of the earth. But the Hindus ​unfortunately left no stone records of their ancient civilization,—and the oldest stone monuments of India are coeval with the Buddhist revolution, 500 B. C. But I must extricate myself from these disgressions, and also give up the subject of the British Museum on which volumes could be written.
Among the churches of London which we visited, I will mention only one. It is a church not far from the Tottenham Court Road and is called All Saint's church, if I remember rightly. Churches.The Princess of Wales with her children often comes to this church, and happened to be there on the day that we went there. I had seen her eighteen years ago, and it is remarkable how much of her grace and beauty she still retains. Her daughters are also graceful and beautiful, and have the complexion of the family. The service was not overlong and the music was imposing. A crowd had collected outside the church to see the royal family step into their carriages, and the party drove away to Marlborough House immediately after the service was over.
I had heard so much of Mr. Spurgeon of the Tabernacle and of Dr. Parker of the City Temple that I went to both these places. I liked the delivery of Mr. Spurgeon. He speaks in a candid manly tone to the thousands of his fellow men and women who listen to him, pointing out to them in simple homely and dignified language the errors to which all of them are liable, and the means which they should adopt for their welfare. Every word that he speaks comes from his heart, and ​goes straight to the heart of his listeners, and this is the secret of his oratory and of the remarkable success which has attended his long and useful career.
On the other hand, I did not like the preacher of the City Temple. He no doubt feels his subject and speaks with feeling, but there is something theatrical in his delivery which I do not like. I have often noticed this theatrical attitude in speakers, both religious and political, and it has its effect with listeners, but I could never reconcile myself to it even when the speech was otherwise excellent.
I need hardly say that we went to many of the principal theatres of London. Irving's Faust at the Lyceum was the rage of the season, Theatres, Tournaments, Races &c.but I must say I was disappointed with it. As a scenic representation it was the finest thing I had ever seen or ever expect to see on the stage; nothing can surpass the marvellous spectacle of the Hell-scene with its sulphurous fires and yelling demons. But the acting did not seem to me of a very high order. Irving acted the part of Mephistopheles, of course with all the appearance of that deliberate wickedness and that ironical sneer at goodness which befit that character.
I was also disappointed with Mrs. Langtry in her performance of the "Lady of Lyons." She was elegant and dignified of course, and sustained her part well, but she did not give any indication of that power which marks the true actress. I was disappointed too a little, I must confess, with what I saw of her grace and beauty, ​probably because I had heard so much of it before. She was certainly a good figure with a pretty face and very pretty eyes, but no one would think she was one of the "Professional Beauties" of England, unless one was told so.
I was not disappointed with the American actor Wilson Barrett who acted at the Princes. He acted with great power, and quite came up to my expectations.
But the finest thing on the stage in London now is the Mikado! The story is of course nonsense, as it is intended to be, but the music is simply wonderful, and sustains and even adds to the reputation which Sullivan has already acquired by his wonderfully popular pieces acted before.
But there were other things going on around us which had far greater interest for me than theatres or even musical concerts. A great many races and tournaments are held in and about London in the summer season which a stranger will do well to see. I had seen the Derby Race, and also the Cambridge and Oxford boat race during my previous sojourn in England, but there were a great many other things which I had not seen.
The Wimbledon camp of exercise is held once in the year, and soldiers and volunteers and others compete for prizes. The meet continues for a fortnight, during which various prizes are competed for. The Prince and Princess of Wales appeared on the last day and distributed the prizes and then the camp was closed. What interested me most was the Lawn Tennis match between the celebrated players Renshaw and Lawford. I watched the ​game with great interest, Lawford is the stronger man and played very well, but was not so uniformly steady as Renshaw, and lost a game which he had almost won by one or two bad hits in the end. Renshaw won by sheer steadiness and his unwearied skill.
There were also some military exercises performed by soldiers in the great Agricultural Hall near King's Cross. The great hall can accommodate fifteen thousand visitors,—but every bench and every seat was full, and thousands paid their entrance and watched the exercises standing. We were in this latter category, but by the courtesy of a Policeman, (which there is a means of securing in London as elsewhere in the world) we had very good places given to us, and watched the exercises with great interest. Among other feats performed, a temporary bridge was thrown up hastily over a stream and a fort on the opposite bank was carried against a furious cannonade! The most remarkable thing, however, was the degree to which war horses have been trained. They were made to lie on the ground and remained quietly in that position under peals of cannon!
It was equally interesting to watch the Eton and Harrow Cricket Match in Lord's grounds in London. The best families in England send their sons to Eton and to Harrow for education, and when the champion players from these schools come to their annual tournaments in London, it can easily be conceived there is a great gathering to see the performance of the boys. The friends and relations of the young champions came in thousands in their swell carriages with their tiffin baskets and their ​champagne,—and in every respect it was a gala day in honor of the boys. Every possible encouragement is given to manly games and manly exercises in the schools and colleges of England; the champion cricket player of Eton or Harrow is idolized far more than the best boy at the examination; and the winners of the University Boat race are the national heroes for the year! Why should education be conducted otherwise in our own country,—why should we he ever taught to think of examination honors and scholarships?
There are finer and more gorgeous sights in the world than the Henley Regatta, but I doubt if there is any sight more exquisitely pretty, more charming to the mind and the eye! Ostensibly the people collect to see some races on the Thames at Henley, but the thing has grown into a national institution, and the people come more to enjoy a holiday than to see the races. The river is lined on both sides with "house boats" beautifully decorated with green leaves and flowers, with flags and festoons which charm the eye. Families and parties come in these boats with their luncheons and dinners, and make themselves merry and happy. Smaller parties in holiday attire hire small bouts for the day or by the hour, and row up and down the river which presents a very picturesque scene. Friends meet friends unexpectedly in the midst of this crowd of holiday-makers. On the lovely and sloping banks, tents are pitched under shady trees or in lovely avenues, and for miles together the scene is one of joy and festivity.
It is impossible within the limits of a few pages to ​give an account of even the principal sights in and about London, and I will only mention a few more at random. We visited the academy which this year contains a very fair collection of good pictures without any one of striking merit. Some of Alma Tadema's pictures were much appreciated by the visitors. Lord Ripon's portrait was hung among other portraits exhibited this year. The National Gallery of London contains a good collection of the Old Italian and Flemish and Dutch masters, but it cannot bear comparison with the superb collections in Paris, Dresden and Florence which I have since visited. The British masters from Hogarth downwards are of course well represented, but the British school of painting has never taken its rank along side of the continental schools spoken of above, and is hardly considered as good as the French. Hogarth, the greatest of the British masters, is great, however, in caricature, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, though a great painter, is far behind the old continental masters. Wilkie's simple scenes of home life are good, Landseer excells in horses and dogs and Turner in scenes.
Strolling through the Kensington gardens, which were not far from our house, we often passed the Kensington Palace where the young Victoria was The Streets of London.sleeping on that eventful morning when messengers came and waked her and informed her that she was Queen! The Palace has long ceased to be a royal residence. Further down is the beautiful Albert Memorial,—one of the most beautiful monuments erected in modern ​times, and near it is the great Albert Hall. Turning eastwards we strolled down to the Hyde Park, and along the Rotten Row which is the great promenade and drive of the beauty and fashion and wealth of London as the Eden Gardens and the Strand are in Calcutta. Issuing cut of the Park by the Hyde Park Corner, we turned into the Green Park, and then on into St. James's Park where stands the Queen's modern town residence, the Buckingham Palace. It is a fine palace and was commenced in the time of George IV. and completed in the present reign. We issued out of the Park near the historic St. James's Palace which is now used only for State receptions and ceremonials and passed by the Marlborough House, the residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Thence walking down the Pall Mall we often strolled down to Trafalgar Square and thence down the Parliament Street. The whole of this place is historic. On our left is the great Whitehall building, and in front of it is the place where the unfortunate Charles I. was executed. Next to Whitehall is the loftier modern building, the India Office and Foreign Office, and in front of it is the historic Parliament of England with its great tower and clock visible from a distance of miles up and down the Thames. Near the Parliament House is the Westminister Abbey of which I have spoken before.
Far up in the north of London too we often strolled in the Regent's Park and by the Primrose Hill, and my children were delighted to see the Zoological Gardens of London in the Regent's Park. The customary ride ​on elephants, though not new to my children, was not omitted.
To the "City" too we sometimes directed our steps, either along Oxford Street and Holborn, or by Regent's Street and Strand and Fleet Street. These two routes meet at Cheapside, near St. Paul's Church, and the finest shops of London,—some of world-wide celebrity,— are along these two routes. Mappin and Webb the great men for electroplate things, Parkins and Gotto the great stationers, Henry Heath the hatter, and a host of large and well known establishments are in Oxford Street. Regent's Street blazes with ladies' costumes of every conceivable fashion and fabulous prices! Liberty displays there his Rampur Chuddar and Tussar silks and oriental fabrics, Peter Thompson shews his mantles and costumes of the latest fashion, Jay displays his mourning costumes and the fur shops are full of valuable furs. Further down, from the Trafalgar Square, is the Strand, the fashionable West End of London of the 17th century, and now known for its beautiful shops. The Strand leads to the new Law Courts and the Middle Temple and then on to Fleet Street where Johnson and his library friends used to assemble in the 18th century and where the principal London Newspapers have their offices now.
From St. Paul's Church, where the two routes meet, we went down the Cheapside into the heart of the City. Of all the sights of London I know of none so striking, so really wonderful, as the miles of rich and magnificent shops one sees along the streets,—as the sea of busy ​human life which ebbs and flows from morning to evening along the sleepless thoroughfares! And now we were in the "City,"—the heart of London! There is the Bank of England,—the greatest of banks in the world,—and the narrow crowded streets of the city are lined with other banks too numerous to mention. There is the Mansion House, there the Guildhall, and not far is the General Post Office,—also the Old Bailey the grim historic prison of London,—but now no longer used as such. When we speak of London as the modern Babylon, as the modern Rome,—we use words which do not sufficiently indicate its vastness or its importance. For Rome and Babylon were as nothing compared to this wilderness of houses and shops and thoroughfares,—this ocean of human life called London. One can walk for hours and hours,—amazed at this bewildering scene around him. Hundreds of cabs and hansoms drive past him, huge omnibuses filled inside and outside clatter along the stony streets every minute, waggons of every conceivable shape and size pass by him laden with goods, a continuous and mighty stream of human population is surging past him along the footpaths, while below the streets, below the houses and shops and thoroughfares, the under-ground railway trains are running every five minutes with lightning speed, carrying there hundreds and thousands of passengers, as if the streets and thoroughfares above were not spacious enough for the mighty human stream flowing through this vast metropolis!
Rome had her colisium which could hold eighty or a hundred thousand people to witness the gladiator combats ​on festive occasions. How many colisiums are filled nightly in this modern Rome,—how many on modern festive days, i.e., Bank Holidays? I reckoned up the number from the papers on one Bank holiday. The Exhibition had about 75,000 visitors, the Crystal Palace about 50,000, the Albert Palace about 50,000, the Aquarium, I believe, about 20,000, the Alexandra Palace about as many, and the Windsor Palace, the Kew Gardens the Hampton Court and Bushy Park and such places outside London attracted about a hundred thousand. I cannot guess how many thousands crowded to the numberless theatres and music halls and public places of amusement the same evening! The total would come to half a million or more of men and women who spent their money for entertainment on one holiday! And yet this does not represent the population of London,—for the millions of the working classes who swarm the by-lanes and dirty streets of London, who people that portion of the town called the East End, from the City as far east as the docks,—they had no money to spend, and could seek no entertainment except by a stroll in the Parks or the public gardens. Imagination can scarcely compass the vastness of modern London whose population exceeds that of the whole of Scotland or the kingdom of Holland, whose traffic and trade are almost fabulous, and whose wealth as displayed in the miles and miles of the richest shops in every direction and in every part of the town, are almost beyond the dreams of Alladdin!
And yet there is a shady side to this picture. The cry ​of depression in trade has gone on increasing year after year and the "better times" so hopefully prophesied and wished for have not come. Depression in Trade.There is capital in the country which can find no investment, there are goods produced year after year which find no market, there are millions of English labourers in the towns and in the country willing to work for their bread, but who can find no work and are on the brink of starvation. This is a real and a serious evil, and it seems to be a growing one also. The misery and destitution of these people occasionally find vent in acts of violence. The poor unemployed met in the Hyde Park and issued in a procession causing much destruction of property in London last February, and they threatened to issue again in a procession along with the Lord Mayor's show this November. Englishmen feel the gravity of this evil,—but they can scarcely imagine a remedy.
Clear-sighted if somewhat pessimist thinkers and writers offer an explanation which is sufficiently intelligible, though one is loth to accept it as correct. They say that the insular position of England, her comparative freedom from revolutions and foreign invasions, and the wonderful enterprise of her sons gave them a start in the commerce of the world which cannot for ever be maintained. For a time Englishmen monopolized the carrying trade of the world, they manufactured goods for the great marts of the world, and they alone reaped the profits of this wonderful monopoly. Population multiplied accordingly in England more rapidly than anywhere else in Europe, and far exceeded what the ​produce of the little island could support. But this monopoly could not last for ever. Other nations have waked to a consciousness of the benefits of trade,—steady hard-working nations like the Germans, who deserve to succeed, are competing with Englishmen all over the world, are cutting out the English abroad and even in England. London tradespeople complain with a bitterness which one can understand, that in London itself there are a hundred thousand Germans who have ousted so many Englishmen from work, who are daily ousting more because they can live on so much less than Englishmen of the same class. Frugal, abstemious, almost stingy in their habits, the Germans work hard and spend little,—while even the London shop boy has not yet learnt to save, but must needs enjoy his holiday and spend his little savings with his chums or his sweetheart in the Crystal Palace. Abroad there is the same competition, continental labour is cheaper, continental goods compete with English goods even in English colonies and sell cheaper! At the same time all over Europe,—the French, the Germans and other nations are protecting their home industries against English products by heavy protective import duties, and England vainly asks them to be free traders and to repeal these duties. The United States do just the same thing and even the English Colonies, Canada, Cape Colony and the Australian States protect their own goods and keep out English products by heavy duties, and England cannot ask them to repeal such duties as she has made India do. Thus the circle of foreign markets is gradually contracting, ​the competition of other nations in the old markets is increasing, and even in England, foreign labourers are cutting out Englishmen. Hence the permanent depression in trade and manufacture so bitterly complained of, and hence two millions of people who found employment before can find none now, and avenge their misery and destitution by occasional acts of violence which can do them no good. The best days of England are past,—argue these thinkers,—and England must accept the inevitable, and must be content with her fair share of trade among the countries of the earth.
It is impossible to say how much truth there is in these statements, but one hears them constantly now adays in England, and from men engaged in business in London and in other mercantile towns. I was particularly struck with such remarks openly expressed in Bristol where I went in response to an invitation sent by the Colonial and Indian Reception. After a hearty reception and magnificent oration the Colonial and Indian visitors were allowed to inspect most of the great manufactories of the place. In course of conversation with several persons connected with large firms, I was struck with the uniformly pessimist views which they all expressed. "Do not think," one of them told me, "from the pompous reception we have given you that we are doing well. On the contrary times were never harder than now. Our ships remain in our harbours, our manufactures find no market, our men are unemployed. And what is more, we do not see any prospect of fresh openings to our trade. All the markets are glutted, all nations are competing." ​In a speech which one of the speakers made after a sumptuous dinner, he openly alluded to this subject, and gave a hint that the Australian States might in course of time repeal some of their duties and so admit English products. I shall never forget the manly tone in which two speakers—one from Victoria and one from Melbourne—replied to this quiet hint. The speaker from Victoria went so far as to say that he was primarily responsible for the imposition of those duties in his State, and defended them as absolutely necessary for the protection of home industries. The Melbourne speaker replied also in a similar tone and asked permission to manage their own affairs in their own way, as that was the truest way to prosperity for every nation. No English speaker replied to these remarks.
Agricultural distress is as great as the distress in towns. Farms are becoming less and less paying, because foreign corn can be imported into England and sold at a less price than what the English produce can sell for. The only way to prevent this would be to impose a protective duty on foreign corn, to re-impose corn laws, in fact, which free-trading England can never do. For the exclusion of foreign corn from the market would immediately send up the price of bread,—and while the growers would gain by this, the vast majority of Englishmen who are not agriculturists but labourers and consumers would suffer. England is a free-trader through self-interest, as other nations having large agricultural populations, and with manufacturing industry less developed, reject free-trade through self interest. To ​exclude foreign corn is therefore out of the question,—and the importation of such corn is making cultivation less and less paying in England. Lands are going out of cultivation, farms are being given up, and agricultural labourers find the same difficulty in finding work that their town brethren are suffering from.
One resource only remains,—emigration. But even this resource is limited. German and Swedish emigrants who can live cheaper than Englishmen are emigrating in much larger numbers to the United States. Their Colonies, Australia and Canada, have their own people to provide for and do not like English emigrants swamping their countries. This Colonial jealousy against English emigration seems to be growing, and I see a letter in a recent number of the "Times" from Lord Carnarvon, warning the Government against sanctioning any scheme of State Emigration without consulting the wishes of the Colonies beforehand. Among the many difficult political and social problems of the day there is none more difficult and more serious than of the destitution of those who can find no work, and the ablest statesmen of England have hitherto failed to propose an adequate remedy for it.
Eighteen years ago I was present at an election in England in which the liberal party triumphantly came into office, beating the conservatives on an Irish Question. Election of 1886.In the present year the Liberal party was as signally beaten,—also on an Irish Question. I was able to find admittance into the House when the debate on the Home Rule Bill was still ​going on, and I shall never forget the vehemence with which the different speakers and the different parties spoke for or against the scheme. The Irish speakers were furious against the opponents of the Bill, and language was used in the House which would have brought discredit on a third-rate municipal meeting in Bengal! I watched with special interest the great leaders of the House. What a change in Mr. Gladstone since I had seen him in the House in 1869. He looked very old now and feeble. He stooped a little when he stood and when he spoke in reply to a certain question, his voice was so hoarse that I could hardly follow what he said. And yet even now, his voice regains its power and its ring on great occasions.
Opposite him,—conspicuous among the conservative ranks sate little Churchill, twirling his moustache as he eyed his opponents as if in disdain! I have never heard Churchill speak. I should like to hear him.
Joseph Chamberlain sat behind Gladstone, and not far from him,—looking wonderfully young and wonderfully cool and self-possessed! The Irish speakers were furious in their attacks on him, imputing his secession to personal pique and ambition, while they respected Hartington's conduct as due to honest difference in opinion. But Chamberlain was a match for them all,—he looked at them through his eye-glass,—smiling contemptuously at their violent attacks.
The Houses of Parliament.
​opponent in those days. Fawcett's erect form and manly demeanour and voice were familiar to the House, and I had the rare privilege of his personal acquaintance and friendship during my first sojourn in England. John Bright too, whose personal acquaintance I had also cultivated in years past, seldom appears in the House of Commons now.
The discussion on the Home Rule Bill went on night after night, and various rumours went the round of the clubs, (where I frequently went) regarding the probable result at the division. It was whispered at one time that Chamberlain knew what he was about, that he had his leader under his foot, and would trample on him in order to rise! Then came the rumour that it was all up with Chamberlain, and his game was lost,—that the "old Parliamentary Hand"—Gladstone had managed his case well and was sure of a majority of 20 at least at the division! After Chamberlain's great speech the rumour changed again, and Gladstone's best friends did not know whether he would have the majority in his side. And the Gladstonites were again in high spirits when Gladstone winded up the long discussion with his magnificent speech making the ancient roof of the House ring again with all his old power of voice and eloquence. The division followed, and Gladstone and his party lost.
Almost instantaneously preparations were made by both parties for the approaching election. Election scenes have been described a hundred times by the ablest English writers from Charles Dickens downwards, ​and do not require to be retold by me! I was in the Deptford election where Lal Mohan Ghose appeared as a candidate. I was present at a stirring speech which Ghose made to his constituents and which awakened great enthusiasm in his favour. And I shall never forget the lively scene that I witnessed on the election day! The whole town had been placarded by bills for the one candidate or the other, throngs of people crowded the streets, absorbed with that one great topic, bevies of fair ladies drove about, canvassing for Mr. Evelyn or Mr. Ghose, and the conservative and the liberal head offices were crowded with men, busy from morn to dewy eve! The candidates themselves, who had been canvassing since a few days before, drove about the streets the best part of this eventful day. Ghose had his daughter and another lady in his carriage, and Mr. Evelyn had some ladies in his. Once the two carriages approached each other, where I was standing, when by accident or by intention they turned and went different ways! Ghose got bespattered with mud once when driving through the conservative side of the town, and Mr. Evelyn got a similar compliment paid to him when driving through liberal ranks! In our country the Police would have interfered! A carriage which Mrs. Gladstone had lent for the use of Mr. Ghose for the occasion was constantly in use during the whole day, and another carriage,—which a large placard shewed was Salisbury's—was equally conspicuous near the conservative office.
Up to the evening we did not know and could not guess the result. The next day we saw in the papers ​that Ghose had been defeated by a large majority,—larger than that by which he had been beaten on the previous occasion. Mr. Evelyn had got less votes than he had on the previous occasion,—shewing that Ghose's defeat was not owing to an increase of strength in the conservative cause, but to a division in the liberal ranks through which many liberals abstained from voting at all! The same reason which had been disastrous to the liberal cause all over the country, led also to Mr. Ghose's defeat this time. Many liberals in England are not yet willing to give Ireland a home rule even in purely Irish matters,—and they voted for a unionist liberal candidate when there was one in the field, or abstained from voting altogether. Hence a vast unionist majority all over the country.
But one need not be a prophet to see that Ireland shall have some kind of a home rule before long. When 85 or 90 out of about a hundred Irish members in the House of Commons demand a local legislative body for purely local matters,—the only possible alternatives are, either to grant the demand, or (as the "Daily News" puts it,) to govern Ireland as India is governed,—without regard to the nation's wishes. This latter course is impossible in a free country, and the former course therefore is the only possible one. Gladstone with his vast experience and his wonderful clear-sightedness sees this only some years before the majority of Englishmen will come to see it.
And is it a bold prophecy to make that the time is not far distant,—that some of our young men may ​live to see it,—when it will be considered unwise to govern any country or any people without consulting the people's wishes, without some kind of representative institutions? Men in power at the present day will laugh at the idea,—but nevertheless the wave of liberal opinions in England is advancing with a rapidity which is remarkable and significant. Measures which were considered radical fifteen years ago are now considered practicable or even not advanced enough, and conservatives in the present day are, it is a well known fact, purloining and adopting one by one those measures which liberals twenty years ago could only broach as ideas. The conservatives cannot help themselves,—they must either do this or go to the wall,—for the nation wants these measures. And in no respect is the advance of these liberal ideas more conspicuous than in respect of the relation of England with her dependencies. Many of us who are young and even many of us now in their middle age will probably live to see the day when the people of India will have a constitutional means of expressing their views on the administration of their country, when their views will to a large extent shape that administration, and when their hands will to a great extent practically manage that administration. The divine right of conquerors will be as obsolete a phrase in the political dictionary of the twentieth century as the divine right of kings is in the nineteenth, and the people of India will be proud of their connection with England, as the sons of Englishmen in Australia or Canada.
I had visited Cambridge during my last sojourn in ​England, hut not Oxford. Soon Oxford.after the election was over, I went over with my brother to see that classical town on the Thames which is here called the Isis. Historical associations have always a charm for me and there is no town in England so redolent of historical associations as Oxford. The three celebrated martyrs of English history, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer suffered in this town, the ancient Baliol College is still there, a stone in front of it marks the spot where Cranmer was burnt, and the very window from which the Master of Baliol looked out to enjoy the sight is still shewn to visitors. Baliol College was founded in the 13th century. King James I. of Scotland when a prisoner was educated here, and a number of scholarships tenable by Scotchmen only have always attracted a number of Scotch students to this college. Adam Smith and Sir William Hamilton and other great Scotchmen were educated here. Merton College was also founded in the 13th century; while the University College,—or at least some sort of educational and religious institution on the site of that College—is said to have existed from the time of Alfred the Great! A beautiful monument of Sir William Jones the first of English Antiquarians is to be found in this College.
The beautiful Magdalen College is associated with the fame of Addison, and a shady avenue which was the favorite walk of that essayist is still pointed out as Addison's walk. Christ Church contains the finest hall in Oxford, and it was in this hall that king Charles I. of England held his parliament when in Oxford. Altogether ​there are 19 Colleges and 5 Halls in Oxford, and each one of these has its ancient history, its revered names, its hallowed associations!
But there are other things in Oxford besides the Colleges which are worth seeing. The beautiful but unfortunate, Amy Robsart lies buried in St. Mary's Church. Who that has read that most gorgeous of romances,—Scott's Kenilworth,—can stand and comtemplate this almost sacred spot without a mist in his eyes?
Of the museums the Ashmolean is very interesting, and we saw there a piece of stone with hieroglyphic inscriptions which antiquarians pronounce to be four or five thousand years before Christ;—i. e., anterior to the creation of the world if the Jewish chronology were correct! Through the kindness and courtesy of Mr. Tylor whose well known work on "Primitive Culture" I had read with profound interest when a student, we visited another new museum in Oxford, and were delighted to see in it some samples of the Arani or sacred fire-wood from the friction of which our ancient Vedic Rishis used to produce the sacrificial fire, four thousand years ago!
While in Oxford we did not fail to pay our respects to that ripe scholar and profound thinker Professor Max Müller who has devoted his life-time to the study of India, and whose warm and almost affectionate regard for India would alone command our gratitude and esteem. He received us with that kindness and courtesy which are a part of him, and for the best part of a summer evening I listened to his views on various subjects in which I felt deep interest. The next morning he looked up in the ​hotel where we were stopping, and he took us to the world-renowned Bodleyan Library where he shewed us many manuscripts which had the utmost interest for me. Among the many other places in Oxford which he shewed us, I must not forget to mention the Clarendon Press, one of the largest presses in the world! One-half of the establishment is devoted to the printing of Bibles in all the known languages of the world! The other half is for the printing of other books, including Sanscrit works and works on Sanscrit literature.
At supper we were introduced to his wife, and also his daughter. The latter had been married a few years back, and had the same intellectual cast of countenance as her father. Her husband asked me to luncheon the next day and this was the last time that I saw her beautiful but pale face, and her meek and sunken eyes. Those pale features struck me then; three months after I was shocked to learn of her death.
We were also introduced to several other people in Oxford so that our short stay there was a round of visits and of invitations. We returned to London, and shortly after left for a tour in Norway and Sweden of which an account will be found in another Chapter.
On our return from Norway I wished to take my family to some place outside London, as London becomes uncomfortably hot by the middle of August. Sea-side.This remark sounds strange from one coming from India, but the discomfort one feels in London is none the less. The houses and rooms there are small, there is little or no ​compound, and there are no punkhas or other contrivances for making the house cool; so that at a temperature of 85° one feels as uncomfortable in London as he does at a temperature of 100° in Calcutta. The London season is over by the middle of July, and there is an annual flight of those who can afford it to country places or the sea-side, to Scotland, Switzerland or other countries.
I had thoroughly enjoyed my stay in sea-side places during my last sojourn in England, and so I wished to take my family to the sea-side. It was sometime however, before I could make up my choice, and it was the beginning of September before we actually left London. I had seen most of the finest sea side places in the south coast of England—from Hastings and Eastbourne and Brighton in Kent and Sussex to that lovely spot Torquey, situated on the blue Torbay, with its back-ground of those rich green glens which form the charm of Devonshire scenery. But I wanted to take my family to a quieter place than these, a place where my children would be more at home, strolling on the sands or on the green south downs of England.
At last we selected Littlehampton, partly because it is a very quiet place with a lovely sea beach and interesting country—towns like Arundel not far from it, and partly because we were specially recommended to a very respectable and comfortable boarding house there. And we did find the boarding house comfortable. Never did we pass a pleasanter time, or feel more at home, than during the three weeks that we passed there, strolling in ​the sands or in the neighbouring villages from morning to sunset. There were some other people also living in the same boarding house, among them a young barrister and his very amiable wife, and a well-to-do merchant and his better half, also an amiable person in spite of her weakness for fine, dresses and trinkets! My wife made very good friends with them all, and passed a very happy time, occasionally making excursions to neighbouring places.
Among the excursions that we made from Littlehampton I will mention one or two. The excursion to Arundel was exceedingly pleasant. The Arundel Castle, one of the oldest in England, was of course duly inspected; the new and magnificent cathedral built by the Duke of Norfolk (a Roman Catholic) was visited; and the drive through the lovely park of the Duke, with herds of deer grazing therein, was delightful indeed. An excursion to Brighton was more interesting to my children than to myself,—they were pleased to see this great and fine town on the sea, and they were delighted to see the famous Brighton aquarium with its strange Octopus and other animals! More interesting still was our excursion to the Isle of Wight. Going to Portsmouth by rail we crossed over to Ryde in a steamer, and then had a drive from the pier to the town in a train moved by electricity! There we all went into a hotel, and after the inner man was thoroughly refreshed (a very important matter when one is travelling for enjoyment,) we took an open carriage and had a long drive to Cowes and to Carisbrooke and back. We drove through miles ​and miles of the Queen's private property,—large oak forests and extensive fields under cultivation; we saw the Osborne Palace from a distance and drove past the Prince of Wales's property, and visited the church which the Queen attends when she is at Osborne. We then drove to the town of Cowes and thence on to the historic castle of Carisbrooke where king Charles I. was kept a prisoner. My daughters saw with great interest the famous window through which the king is said to have attempted his escape, and from the top of the watch-tower we had an extensive view of the country all round. It was nearly evening before we could return to Ryde, and it was night before we came back to Littlehampton.
No excursions, however, that we made were more pleasant than our daily strolls on the sand. I had not taken a sea bath for years past. When I first jumped into the limpid and cool water, I felt I had never had a more luxurious bath in my life! My children too enjoyed their sea baths, while the two youngest of them were busy the whole day long with their spades and their buckets—building castles on the sand, only to be washed away when the tide returned! Musicians with their organs discoursed "sweet" music on the beach, one Italian girl sang in her sweet native tongue, and itinerant photographers went about photographing parties as they basked lazily on the beach. My children thought it was a grand opportunity and had themselves photographed, but as they had happened to pay the honest artist in advance, it was long, and after much difficulty ​that they got the photographs at last. And such specimens of the art of photography they were!
Our strolls into neighbouring villages and through country scenes along green lanes were, if possible, still more pleasant. My children were specially fond of plucking blackberries from the hedges as we passed, but these hedges were so often laid under contribution by the village children in the course of each day that the crop of blackberries though profuse, was scarcely equal to the demand! We passed by country mills, walked over pasture fields, visited village churches, and went through little villages and had altogether a happy time of it. We visited a well-known hot-house in the vicinity; the proprietor's niece took us through all the glass houses where the fruits hung in lovely bunches and in rich profusion; and we bought and tasted some of the finest grapes that I have tasted anywhere.
Thus our time wore on until the first cold days of Autumn set in. It was too cold now to continue our sea bathing, and even our strolls became less and less frequent, especially in the cool evenings. It was time, we thought, to shift elsewhere.
Out of the three weeks that my family passed in Littlehampton, I passed one in the west of England. The trip was not of my own seeking, West England.but was undertaken in compliance with invitations from the Colonial and Indian Reception Committee. I had not come to England in connection with the exhibition, nor had I entered my name as a visitor in the book kept for that ​purpose in the Exhibition rooms. Nevertheless the members of the Committee had somehow heard of my arrival in England, and were kind enough to send invitations to join the several trips to the various large towns of England where the Colonial and Indian visitors were incited and heartily and hospitably received. I was unable to accept any one of these because I had made up my mind to visit Norway during the time that these receptions were going on. On my return from Norway, however, I found I was in time to accept one set of invitations at least, and that was to the ancient towns of Bristol, Bath and Wells. Soon after our coming to Littlehampton, therefore, I left my family there and went to Bristol.
I cannot describe the magnificent reception which was given to us in all these ancient towns. The Colonials and Indians were received as the sons of old England, visiting the old country from the ends of the earth. The streets were decorated with flags and banners, with fantastic wreaths and bunting; deputations waited at Railway Stations to receive us; carriages were in attendance to drive us to the hotels or lodgings assigned to us; and the streets and house-windows poured forth their tens of thousands of eager spectators who cheered us as we passed. Invitations to luncheons, dinners, balls, suppers and music parties showered upon us during our stay in these towns; all the great places of industry and manufacture were opened for our inspection; the ancient churches and cathedrals and Roman remains and interesting monuments were shown ​and explained to us; and drives were arranged to show us not only the towns but all the country round. Carriages were placed at our disposal all the day long; and policemen waited at the doors of the places which we were to visit, to move the crowd, open the carriage-doors and show us in. The entire reception-business was arranged with a thoroughness, and with a degree of hearty hospitality which must have created a deep impression on the mind of every visitor, from whatever colony or dependency he may have come.
In fact, these receptions were in furtherance of the great idea which underlay the exhibition itself. England is great,—not as a military power in Europe,—but in her colonies. To display in a focus as it were the vast resources of her various colonies, to display to Europe and to the world the strength which she derives from her connection with various nations to the ends of the world, and to draw closer the bonds of sympathy and fellow-feeling which bind these colonies to her,—this was the idea of the Exhibition,—and of the reception of the Indian and Colonial visitors. England desired that these visitors should go back to their countries full of sympathy and affection for her, and every English town, I may say every alderman and mayor in every corporation, worked nobly towards this common end. Hence the almost princely hospitality with which the visitors were treated.
The idea of a sort of federation of all these colonies and dependencies with England was in the heart of hosts and guests alike, and was expressed forcibly in ​many an eloquent speech which followed sumptuous repasts. Of course there are practical difficulties in the way of such a federation, for free nations in the far ends of the earth will not tax themselves to help England in a European war in which they have no interest,—and a federation which does not mean co-operation in war and in peace, is scarcely worthy of the name. But these practical difficulties did not find expression in eloquent after dinner speeches, though responsible statesmen feel their force. So long as the liberal party was in power, conservatives delighted to blame Mr. Gladstone for not doing something towards this federation. By a strange irony of fate the conservative party came into power soon after, and Lord Salisbury with his "spirited" policy has not found it possible to organize the much coveted federation.
The favorite topic both of speeches and of conversations during these days was this idea of federation. To allow each colony and dependency to manage her own affairs, and yet to string them together by some sort of a common bond of union,—this was the great idea which inspired every one. I am not wise enough to be able to guess what the upshot of this great but hitherto impracticable idea will be, but whatever the upshot may be, every true Indian hopes and trusts that India too will be admitted into this noble federation with England on the same terms, or as nearly the same terms with the other colonies as possible, and that the day is not far distant when she too will have at least a voice and a hand in the management of her own affairs. ​Every true-hearted Englishman desires this as much as Indians themselves.
I can only briefly allude to some of the numerous sights which we were shown in these places. The cathedral of Bristol is an ancient and imposing building, but the church of St. Mary Redcliffe is perhaps finer, and is associated with the fame of that boy poet Chatterton. It was in this church that he pretended to have found the poems which he published as Rowley's, and a monument has been erected here in the churchyard to his memory. Savage, the poet who died in Bristol while imprisoned for debt, is buried in St. Peter's Church. But the most interesting monument in Bristol for an Indian is the tomb of the Raja Ram Mohan Roy, which I had visited with feelings of respect and veneration, sixteen years ago.
Clifton is the finest part of Bristol; and the Clifton suspension bridge over the deep Avon, banked on both sides by high wooded hills, is a fine sight. We were also shown some of the finest manufactories in this busy town. We visited with a large soap and candle manufactory, a great tobacco manufactory,—one of the largest and best known in Europe,—some galvanized iron manufactories, and a place for making wire nets. The machinery in this last place is splendid, and there is one machine in the tobacco manufactory which knocks off about 240 cigarettes in an hour.
Bath is one of the prettiest and finest towns in England, and is embosombed within an amphitheatre of beautiful green hills, some of which are wooded. Its ​streets are cleanly and spacious, its houses are fine and comfortable, and its history is associated with the memories of the greatest names in England. For Bath was the great health-resort and the fashionable retreat of the last century, and Dr. Johnson and his friends, Sir Walter Scott and some other eminent Scotchmen, the great Pitt and Lord Clive and a host of other great men lived here.
Bath was a fashionable health-resort in Roman times, and the citizens are deservedly proud of the ancient Roman Baths and antiquities which have recently been discovered and which were explained to us at great length. The Abbey Church of Bath is a fine structure, and is known as the "lantern of West England" for its many beautiful windows. When coming out of this church I met an old acquaintance of mine, an Indian Civilian whom I had not seen for fifteen years! He is making a home for himself in the healthy and beautiful suburbs of Bath, which are a favorite resort of retired Indians, and he introduced to me his son whom he intends, of course, to get into the Indian Civil Service.
Wells is a much smaller town but is famous for its Cathedral. There was a long dispute (the history of which was explained to us at great length!) as to whether Bath or Wells would be the cathedral town, and the dispute was at last decided in favour of the latter; and the magnificent structure of Wells certainly deserved the honor. Close to it we saw the Bishop's palace,—once an ancient moated castle. From Wells we took a drive to the ruins of the ancient Glastonbury Abbey, which was built on the spot of a more ancient place of worship ​of the ancient Britons. The place is associated with the name of Arthur, and it was in these western confines of England that the Britons made their last stand before the invading Saxons who at last exterminated them, or drove them off to Wales.
Before returning to Littlehampton I paid a hurried visit to that most lovely of English rivers, the Wye, called the "Rhine of England." Within the limited time at my command I could go only as far as the celebrated Tinturn Abbey, the most beautiful ruin in England, and celebrated by Wordsworth in his "Excursion." The scenery here, the wooded hills and rich green glades on both banks, and the beautiful stream between, defy description. On our return we drove as far as Chepston, mostly along the bends of this beautiful river and admirnig its beautiful valley. From Chepston we returned by tram.
On my way back to Littlehampton I visited the famous Cathedral of Salisbury. From Littlehampton I went with my family to spend a fortnight in Paris,—an account of which will be found in another Chapter.
After our visit to Paris it was my intention to make a somewhat long tour into Germany, Austria and Italy. It was impossible for my wife with all the children, one of them only four years, to accompany me in this hurried tour, so that I wished to To London again.leave them in London before starting on my journey. A gentleman whose acquaintance I had made before leaving London expressed himself willing to take my family into his house. He was ​himself a most worthy and good-hearted man and a profound Shakespearian scholar, and his wife whom my wife knew, was a most estimable lady. They had one son employed in the Bank, and another out in India in the Bombay Presidency, and they had a daughter at home, a good-hearted young lady. They had taken a fine and spacious house, not far from the Kensington Gardens. We came over from Paris to London early in October. My two elder girls rejoined their school which had opened after the summer vacation, and I also put my young boy to a Kindergarten school. And early in November I started on my continental tour from which I did not return to London till the middle of December. An account of that tour will be found in another Chapter.
On the 15th December, as I have said before, I returned after my continental tour to London. The public mind was then greatly exercised about two sensational but dirty cases. Two sensational cases.One was the case of Lord Colin Campbell, full details of which were then appearing in the daily papers. This was the second case of the kind, the first being that of Sir Charles Dilke. Why are the accounts of the divorce court published for the edification of the public? All English Courts are public courts to be sure,—but surely an exception might be made in the case of divorce courts. No sensational novel of the day is so greedily devoured by the public as were proceedings in these cases, and no reprehensible French novel can be more disgusting than some of the details which came out in these cases. ​What healthy purpose does it answer to publish these details for the perusal of millions of Englishmen and Englishwomen?
The depravity of these cases were exceptional, but what specially struck the public in these cases was the amount of false swearing with which the parties supported their cases. Men and women in respectable positions in life came forward to swear to lies in court, and brought witnesses to support such lies.
Young men who go out to India without much experience of English Courts are often disgusted—and rightly disgusted,—with the perjury committed in Indian Courts, and often judge the nation's character from falsehood uttered in courts. Men, however, who have experience of Courts in England say that the offence is by no means rare here. London newspapers occasionally complain bitterly of the amount of perjury committed daily in the English Country-courts. The parties to a case generally support their respective cases by two entirely different accounts of a disputed transaction,—the court has to decide which is the true version.
Moral—Judge not a people by experience derived in courts.
The period of our stay in Europe was nearly up, and my people were very desirous of seeing a little,—even a week,—of real English Return Home.winter before we left. For we had come to England when the bloom of spring was still in the country and the trees in London and in the country were robed again with new young leaves. We ​had passed the hot days of summer in London and in the sea-side, and the dark cheerless foggy days and frequent rains of autumn had succeeded. Luckily our wish was fulfilled, and we had just a week of real English winter before we left!
On the 16th December it was so foggy at midday that it was necessary to light lamps. The next day it became intensely cold, and it snowed in the evening. A hard frost succeeded which remained for four or five days. Squares and housetops, parks and trees were all white! Evey drop of water in the wayside was frozen into ice, and the cold was intense. In two or three days the Serpentine and other ornamental waters were frozen over, and there was skating in St. James's Park. My children watched the hundreds of skaters with great delight, and every morning we had a walk over the snow covered parks, and occasionally over the frozen waters! My little boy used to put out his tumbler of water outside the window every evening, and the first thing he called for in the morning was his ice!
On the 23rd December we left London. We had no storms in the way, but there was a heavy swell on the sea both in the Bay of Biscay and in the Mediterranean, and our steamer rolled a good deal. We had smooth sea, however, after we left Malta.
In the Red Sea I saw for the first time those large patches of red which have given the sea its name. The color is due to a kind of minute substance of reddish color which floats about sometimes for miles together, but whether it is animal or vegetable substance has not, I ​believe, yet been ascertained. It is not always visible, and I saw it for the first time during my fourth voyage through the Red Sea.
Aden and then green Ceylon and then dreary Madras, and then we were in beloved home again, among dear relations and rejoicing friends! So ends the story of my travels.