The Fishing Fleet

by Anne de Courcy

  It heralded the most important year of Bessie’s life – a true Victorian courtship that concluded in a happy marriage.

  The Calcutta Season began well for her, with a new ADC, Lord Burford (‘very shy’), at Government House to greet them. At first, Lord Burford seemed to hold the inside track. When he was in waiting for the first time Bessie found him ‘very pleasant to speak to’. He told her he had to look out for orchids and carpets to take home, quests that undoubtedly appealed to her. The first major ceremony was a levée on 17 December, with H.E. in his uniform with blue Star of India ribbon and his stars, the men in full dress processing into the Throne Room.

  Then, on Saturday 19 December, came a Drawing Room, the equivalent of the Queen’s Court at home, where presentations took place, dreaded by Bessie as her first Court. She had a new dress for it, blue satin, with spangled net on the bodice and she was instructed by the dressmaker that to suit the new fashions she should wear her hair in a little bundle high on her head, with a rose or a small comb as ornament – only married women could wear whole coronets of flowers. Her sister Christian wore white satin trimmed with white violets and Her Ex. a long skirt of shot mauve and maize-coloured brocade with a crystal fringe round the bodice, a broad band of purple velvet across the shoulder and sleeves of diamond-spangled net. With it, she wore a diamond necklace; and collar and three diamond stars on the velvet band.

  Nervous though she was, Bessie was able to train her observant eye on the presentations. ‘They say the fashionable curtsey is an athletic-looking bob but when some people attempt this their knees give way and they either sway a good deal or seem to be sitting on the ground for a second. It also adds greatly to the graceful curtsey if the head is well held; some keep their eyes fixed on the ground as before a shrine and others fix them on Their Exes.’

  Christmas Eve was spent peacefully at Barrackpore, and the family lunched by themselves under the banyan tree. But there was one drawback to alfresco meals: ‘The hawks and kites are growing much tamer. One of them carried off HE’s beef just as it was being put on the table; after which he ordered men with sticks to stand near to guard the table and the stove.’

  By now their social circle was much enlarged. Both older sisters, very well liked, were quite different in looks and personality, Christian much shorter and, as described by her cousin, ‘soft and fluffy & always laughing & talking a great deal’, whereas ‘Bessie is tall and quiet and has a dignified way of doing things, especially evening things’. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, ‘Bessie’s chief friends are among the ladies, the men out here do not like her style as much as C’s on the whole’. But in the race to the altar, Bessie would be an easy victor.

  In the middle of the social season, then in full swing – a Christmas party for eighty-four children, boys’ presents in one bran tub, girls’ in another, nine stockings for the gentlemen of the household hung on a line, photographs, parades, reviews and a state ball – while H.E. coped with famine and restlessness, there was news that shook them all. The Warren Hastings, on which Bessie and her parents had cruised and which had taken home the outgoing Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, had gone down. Most of them knew the ship and no one could talk of anything else. Fortunately, there had been minimal loss of life.

  That January, 1897, the Warren Hastings had left Cape Town bound for Mauritius with 993 passengers, including the headquarters and four companies of the 1st Battalion, The King’s Royal Rifle Corps. At 2.20 a.m. on 14 January, eight miles off-course and steaming at full speed, in pitch darkness and pouring rain, she ran straight into the rocks on the coastline of the French island of Réunion.

  There she stuck fast, allowing time for the troops to fall in below decks without noise and in perfect order and at 4 a.m. the captain ordered the troops to begin leaving the ship down rope ladders slung from the bows; as the Warren Hastings appeared so firmly stuck, his intention was to leave the disembarkation of the women and children until daybreak, when it would be easier and safer for them.

  However, twenty minutes later the ship suddenly began to list badly so the captain hastily ordered the men to stand fast while the women, children and sick were helped off the ship. As the position on board became ever more dangerous, the men were told to scramble ashore as best they could. By 5.30 a.m. all the troops were on land – later, even some of the baggage was recovered. Miraculously, only two lives were lost: two Indian members of the crew (no lascar could swim). The French on the island rallied round and soon the passengers boarded another ship for the final 125 miles to Mauritius. But the Warren Hastings was gone for good; for many, it was almost like losing a friend. ‘I always felt that ship was alive,’ said one of her captains.

  With her mother’s health never good and her confinement nearing, Bessie found herself thrust into the role of hostess. She carried it off with grace and dignity but hardly had time to think of anything else. Once more in Simla, she enjoyed its familiarity and charm – and a new and enjoyable prospect opened up before her. As she wrote to her Aunt Louisa on 21 April: ‘Now I will tell you something very serious; I am learning Latin with Mr B.S.’

  Henry Babington Smith had offered to help Bessie with her flower collection and, as she told her Aunt Louisa: ‘It was so impossible to remember the names of the flowers we collected that I asked him if he did not think the best plan would be to learn Latin. He said it would help me and I said – half in fun – that he would have to correct my exercises. He said he would – quite seriously – and then bought the books. So I began at the end of the Calcutta time. Then, coming up while we marched, he used to give me Latin sentences out of his head . . . it is so much more interesting to have a subject like that to talk about with people to whom one cannot make the usual society conversation because it has been all said years ago. And he is most clever when he teaches . . .’.

  Babington Smith was indeed a clever young man. His father was a lawyer and mathematician, one of his brothers became an MP and the other Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. He had been educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Classics, as did so many of the upper echelons of the Home and Indian Civil Service. Before joining the Elgin household, he had been Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Goschen. Born on 19 January 1863, he was now thirty-four to Bessie’s nineteen – an age difference that would have seemed perfectly unexceptionable at the time.

  Bessie, who as deputy hostess for her mother often found conversation difficult in the limited society of Simla, where everyone knew each other and the constraints of her position prevented too much freedom of opinion, frequently found the postbag contained more original and interesting news. On the same day that her father received a letter from the Queen and a cheque from New York for the Famine Fund, she heard from a friend at Jhabrapathan. ‘The people there are so unsettled that 300 troops have just been sent to keep them quiet. The other day a panther was caught which had eaten three children; Major Jennings wanted it to be shot or sent to the Zoological Gardens, but the people would not listen and said that as it was a man-eater it must be trampled to death by the state elephants. All the parents of the eaten children looked on . . .’.

  Her flower collection was now of paramount interest. On May Day ‘Mr B.S. told me that we ought to make a list of all the flowers we have collected and print it. That means a good deal of work, for they must all be arranged in families, and I have been trying to begin it today . . . Next morning Mr B.S. came up to the sitting room and told me how to write out the list; each family must be on a different sheet, & only one side of the sheet may be written upon. At present I know of 38 families but there must be a great many more.’

  Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of this absorbing project. On 10 May she was explaining to Aunt Louisa that she was giving up her music lessons, because of the heavy demands on her time made by her flower collection (which she drew and painted). ‘We have only one more spring here and the collection must be as goo
d as possible.’ Often they thought they had found a new specimen but with most bushes with white flowers looking the same in the distance, she and Mr Babington Smith necessarily had to walk to them all to inspect them at close quarters. However, two new ones were discovered.

  Henry Babington Smith was clearly determined to capitalise on Bessie’s enthusiasm and, he hoped, growing interest in him. As she told her aunt: ‘Mr B.S. means to add an account of our walks round Simla (100 he thinks will do). It ought to be rather interesting but it means a great deal of work for him and I cannot think how he is able to do it beside all his real business. But he is . . . altogether growing so friendly that I almost think he is a friend; shall I tell you why? Because the other day, at dinner, he told me something about other people – and in Simla, from a man like that, this means a good deal . . .’.

  She also spoke of how her Latin was progressing – or rather, of her Latin teacher. ‘He takes so much trouble and is very clever in the way he teaches; he never grows angry, he only sometimes smiles when a thing is wrong and that makes one sorry; and he is not frightening . . .’.

  The Season continued with the state garden party, races at the end of May, the state ball and state dinner party the following week (moved from Thursday to Tuesday to allow the Eton dinner to take place correctly on the Fourth of June for the twenty-three Old Etonians then in Simla).

  On Tuesday 22 June, the day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrated in Simla as everywhere else under British rule, the weather was appalling. Rain poured into the rickshaws, thunder roared in the hills round about and, as there was no awning leading to the town hall entrance, most people got soaked. It did not stop Bessie recording the highlights of the ceremony, such as the presentation of gifts. ‘Some of the caskets were very handsome, some were in embroidered bags, one only in a large envelope. Many of the deputations came from Bombay, two or three from Calcutta, one from Lahore, others from Benares, Allahabad etc. There was a good deal of draught and wind and poor Lady Cohen arrived saying that she had her feet soaked and she had only just got out of bed, where she had been for four days with a sore throat; and Lady White was wet and many others.’

  Jubilee honours and knighthoods were bestowed. ‘Mr B.S. is made CSI [Order of the Star of India, ranked above the Order of St Michael and St George in the British honours system]. He certainly deserves it,’ wrote Bessie warmly, ‘for he works so very hard.’

  Next day there was a reception at Viceregal Lodge, where the newly honoured were congratulated, sometimes with a touch of envious spite. Sir William Bisset was the only ‘honoured’ person Bessie had been able to congratulate but he did not escape scot-free. ‘There are so many “ladies” and so many Sir Williams you can call anyone “Sir William”, somebody said disdainfully; but I think it was from envy; for people seemed as pleased as they might have done 200 years ago before all the democrats and presidents were talked of. However much people may speak, they will always like to be distinguished; and what more so than “Her Ladyship” . . .’.

  Wet weather and disturbing events that required the attention of H.E. and his Private Secretary put a temporary stop to the collection of flowers.

  At the beginning of June there was an earthquake in Calcutta, which damaged the spire of the cathedral and cracked many houses. Fighting broke out at Malakund, which saw a number of the soldiers depart. Later came news of another outbreak on the frontier, near Peshawar. As the month progressed, half the soldier ADCs left for active service with their regiments.

  Although fighting was endemic on the frontier with Afghanistan, when the Pathan tribes revolted in 1897, as Bessie’s diary recorded, British officials and soldiers blamed the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman, for causing the trouble. They thought that, as the self-professed champion of Islam, he had commanded the tribes to undertake holy war against the British and that these calls for jihad might be heard and answered within India and even beyond. Because they ruled more Muslims than any other empire, the British were always very sensitive to any idea of Islamic hostility. At the same time, they wanted to preserve friendship with the Amir, not solely to keep peace in this volatile area but also because of fears of Russian expansion (Kipling’s Great Game).

  Even during the work entailed by the fighting on the frontier, the routine and exigencies of life at Viceregal Lodge were maintained – and the flower collection continued. When Henry Babington Smith went off for a few days’ shooting he sent Bessie a collection of flowers from the camp; on his return there was another flower gathering expedition and in October, at Mashobra, ‘Mr B.S. arrived just in time to join the walk after luncheon . . . it was a very delightful evening; the stars were so bright, the Pleiades were rising as we came in.’ And towards the end of November her diary (‘written with a new quill pen!’) records that ‘Mr B.S. sent up the “dedication” he had written for my flower catalogue’, generously allotting all the credit to Bessie.

  Back in Calcutta after a tour through Darjeeling, the Season began in earnest with a long levée, and a Drawing Room at which Bessie’s youngest sister Veronica ‘came out’. For her presentation she wore white satin. ‘H.E. wore a white brocade gown with a small Star of India blue silk band round the waist, a panel of the same silk down one side. She had her tiara & her diamond necklaces were hung like chains among the beautiful lace on the bodice.’ Poor Veronica, in a state of quivering nerves, confided that the thing she dreaded most was talking to the ladies after dinner parties. ‘I can hardly think of it, it will be so much more than dreadful from all B. and C. tell me.’ But all passed off satisfactorily and Bessie was able to tell Veronica afterwards that she had looked ‘very stately’.

  As the winter rolled on, the words ‘for the last time’ began to be heard: in 1899 Lord Elgin’s term as Viceroy would end and he and his family sail for home.

  First, there was an investiture on the evening of 13 January, attended by 1,700 people, a red velvet canopy above the raised throne on which her father sat in front of gold and scarlet embroidered hangings. ‘H.E. wore his blue robe and collar of the Star of India; his two little pages, Jimjack Evans and a son of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, walked behind him. They wore white satin suits, white shoes with blue bows and garters, and black wigs.’ It was a glittering scene, with women in evening dress, sparkling aigrettes and opera cloaks, festooned with diamonds, and uniforms everywhere, the civil dark blue embroidered with gold, the military scarlet. Next day Bessie’s two aunts who had been staying with them left for Darjeeling; their places were taken by other guests. One was a Mr Churchill. ‘He is short, with reddish hair and face, blue eyes – and some of his father’s characteristics.’

  Winston Churchill, then in the 4th Hussars, was less kind, writing of his visit to Government House to his mother in dismissive fashion. In his letter of 2 January 1897 he poured scorn on the Liberal-appointed Viceroy and his family. ‘The Elgins are very unpopular out here and make a very poor show after the Lansdownes. The evil that a Radical Government does lives after it. All the great offices of state have to be filled out of the scrappy remnant of the Liberal peers. And so you get Elgin Viceroy. They tell me that they are too stiff and pompous for words – and “Calcutta Society” cannot find an epithet to describe them by.’ (Nevertheless, eight years later, when Churchill was a junior minister in the Liberal Campbell-Bannerman Government, Lord Elgin was his Secretary of State at the Colonial Office.) For Bessie, other things were more interesting than the arrival of a young red-haired subaltern rather too full of himself.

  It was clear that Bessie preferred the quieter Henry Babington Smith, and was flattered by his showing her an article in The Times about the new Rowton Houses.* After the great excitement of a total eclipse of the sun on 22 January – the temperature fell by ten degrees and as many Indian spectators who could bathed in the Ganges during the ninety seconds of totality – the next important date, recorded for the first time, was 29 of January: ‘Mr B.S.’s birthday’. To celebrate it, they went to Barrackpore in the afternoon.
‘The mango trees and lilies and violets are so fresh after the rain. H.E. sang some songs after dinner and Mr B.S. gave me two reed pens to draw with.’

  By now some of his most trivial remarks were finding their way into the diary. ‘Mr B.S. told me at the dance that his horse shied at the flashes [of lightning] as he came back from dinner at the Fort.’ ‘I showed Mr B.S. a sketch of the blue convolvulus I think of working [embroidering] for the Maharani of Gwalior. He thinks each flower ought to be distinct, and he is right.’ ‘Mr B.S. told me he had been to the place where Tennyson wrote “Flower in the Crannied Wall”.’

  On Tuesday 29 March they set off on a final tour that would take them eventually to their last Season in Simla. It began with a journey of two days and three nights in the train to Pathancot on the border of Kashmir, where the railway ended; after this there was a march – in carriages, dandies* and on foot – of over 150 miles through mountainous country to Simla. It was to be completed in about three weeks.

  They reached Pathancot early on the morning of Friday 1 April and set off at once to avoid the heat of the day. They stayed in bungalows and small villages or towns on the way; as they gradually climbed from Pathancot’s 1,090 feet, views of the mountains were revealed.

  By now ‘Mr B.S.’ was clearly occupying a great many of Bessie’s thoughts; and to judge by his behaviour towards her, the same was true of him. Then came the intimacy of the camp in romantic scenery, with its scarlet-flowered pomegranate trees, ferns, indigo bushes, lime bushes with sweet-smelling leaves and gentians and primulas beside mountain streams – a catalyst for both Bessie and Henry Babington Smith. On Easter morning, after tea at the top of a hill, the two went to look at a nearby small temple, surrounded by fir trees and palms. Here Henry proposed to Bessie and was accepted – although even in her diary he remains ‘Mr Babington Smith’ until the day of the public announcement when, at last, she can allow herself to call him ‘Henry’.