The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-07-24 00:00:00

SUPPLEMENT TO
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AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

the state and prospects of this fine territory, which
contains about 250,000 square miles of flat and fertile
land, plentifully watered by tributaries to the Ganges,
and its natural advantages he represents as great.
He also acquired much intimate familiarity with men
and manners, as these are to be met with in Lucknow,
the capital of the kingdom, from the monarch and his
immediate ministers down to the meanest sufferers
from their despotic ralacity. Both these species of
knowledge he imparts With a liberal hand, although,
so far as we can judge, seemingly in a spirit of candid
impartiality. As a wh)le the book possesses much
interest, and is very abusing ; in point of fact, it
reads like an eastern tal3, and, in this latter respect,
may challenge comparison with many portions of the
" Arabian Nights," particularly in the delineations of
individual portraiture, and in the fascinating descrip-
tions of scenery. The author draws largely upon the
members of the Royal Household for his sketches of
character, several of whom are delineated with great
skill and masterly decision. Of these members, one,
the King's barber, a real subject of history, is so gra-
phically disposed of, that, in point of finish and expres-
sion, it may safely be placed side by side with any of
the cabinet portraits vrhich decorate the galleries of
the " Thousand and One Tales." The sketch is as
follows, and may be called—

THE KING OF OIIDE'S BLE,BEIL

The barber was the greatest man of the five. His influence
was far greater than the native prime minister, or Nawab.
He was known to be an especial favourite, and all men paid
court to him. His history; truly and honestly written, would
form one of the oddest chapters of human life. All that I
knew of him was this :—He had come out to Calcutta as
cabin-boy in a ship. Having been brought up as a hair-
dresser in London, he had left his ship, on arriving in Calcutta,
to resume his old business He was successful ; he pushed
and puffed himself into notoriety. At length he took to going
up the river with European merchandise for sale ; he became,
in fact, what is called there a river-trader. Arrived at Luck-
now, he found a resident—not the same who was there when
I entered the king's service—anxious to have his naturally lank
hair curled like the governor-general's. The governor-general
was distinguished by his ringlets; and the governor-general
is, of course, `the glass of fashion and the mould of form' in
India. The resident would be like him; and the river-trader
was not above resuming his old business. Marvellous was the
alteration he made in the resident's appearance ; and
so the great saheb himself introduced the wonder-working
barber to the king. That resident is in England now, and
writes BI.P. after his name. The king had peculiarly lank,
straight hair ; not the most innocent approach to a curl had
ever been seen on it. The barber wrought wonders again, and
the king was delighted. Honours and wealth were showered
upon the lucky coiffeur. He was given a title of nobility.
Sofrus Khan (` the illustrious chief') was his new name, and
men bowed to him in Oude. The whilom cabin-boy was a
man of power now, and wealth was rapidly flowing in upon
him. The king's favourite soon becomes wealthy in a native
state. The barber, however had other sources of profit open
to him besides bribery : he supplied all the wine and beer used
at the king's table. Every European article required at court
came through his hands, and the rupees accumulated in thou-
sands. ' What shall be done unto the man whom the king
delighteth to honour ?' is a question as apt now in every
oriental court as it was when the Jewish queen recorded it.
Nussir put no bounds to the honours he heaped upon the
fascinating barber ; unlimited confidence was placed in him.
By small degrees he had at last become a regular guest at the
royal table, and sat down to take dinner with the king as a
thing of right ; nor would his majesty taste a bottle of wine
opened by any other hands than the barber's. So afraid was
his majesty of being poisoned by his own family, that every
bottle of wine was sealed in the barber's house before being
brought to the king's table ; and before he opened it, the little
man looked carefully at the seal to see that it was all right.
He then opened it, and took a portion of a glass first, before
filling one for the king. Such was the etiquette at the royal
table when I first took my place at it. The confidence reposed
in the favourite was, of course, soon known over India, or at
all events in Bengal. The ' low menial,' as the Calcutta
Review called him, was the subject of squibs, pasquinades, and
attacks, and satirical verses without number ; and marvellously
little did the low menial care what they said of him, as long
as he accumulated rupees. They had the wit and the satire,
and he had the money ; so far he was content. Of the news-
papers, the most incessant in its attacks on the barber was the
Agra Uckbar, a paper since defunct. Shortly before I left
Lucialow, he employed a European clerk in the resident's