The Fishing Fleet

by Anne de Courcy

  For the State Procession she and Sylvia had good seats outside the Fort, with overhead shelter. ‘It started at 11.30 and took two and a half hours to pass. The King, looking rather small and insignificant, rode between Field Marshals, just in front of the Queen’s carriage, and behind for miles and miles stretched native troops and English Lancers and Dragoons, in all their varied brilliance of uniforms, with the sun glinting on swords and gold trappings.’ Two days before Durbar Day, there was a State Church Parade – ‘miles and miles of troops in white helmets and scarlet tunics and many coloured uniforms and a long line of red carpet to the dais where the King and Queen sat throughout the service’.

  Then came Durbar Day itself. The huge arena was lined with thousands upon thousands of people in brilliant uniforms. The procession was headed by trumpeters, glittering with gold thread and blowing silver trumpets, on grey horses, and heralds – ‘like walking kings of cards’. The King and Queen, in robes of purple velvet and diamond crowns, drove in open carriages escorted by the Imperial Cadet Corps, the sons of maharajas, rajahs and the highest nobles. ‘Their uniform is quite lovely – white tunics with lots of gold lace, pale blue and gold scarves round their waists with a pale blue turban with lots of gold, gold aigrettes,’ wrote Maude Bingham, another guest at the durbar. ‘They all rode fine horses so it was one of the finest sights of the entry . . . retainers carrying flags, musical instruments, arms of all sorts – old guns, blunderbusses, muskets, bayonet guns. The Begum of Bhopal, the only woman who reigned over a princely state, got an ovation. Her retainers were in brown with white and gold sashes and brown, white and gold turbans. She was strictly veiled, only little eyeholes.’

  Arriving at the Durbar Pavilion to a 101-gun salute and a feu de joie, the King and Queen proceeded along a red carpet, gold and crimson umbrellas held over their heads and eight little pages holding their purple velvet trains, with Lords Durham and Shaftesbury walking backwards in front of them the whole way. Inside the pavilion was a raised dais; here the King and Queen sat on solid gold thrones beneath a crimson canopy held up by ropes of gold, with the Viceroy and Lady Hardinge and other important people on their right and left. Several small pages, the sons of rajahs, stood on the steps of the dais, as the native princes came up one by one to pay homage; the elderly Maharaja of Kashmir, in black silk and gold, kissed his sword three times, then laid it at the King’s feet.

  It was at this durbar that it was announced that the seat of government would now be Delhi rather than Calcutta. ‘The transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi . . . was an absolute surprise and one heard whispers of approval and disapproval going on all round,’ recorded Maude Bingham, noting that ‘Everything was so well arranged we got our motor in half an hour and were back at our hotel by 3.30!! That was far better than getting away from the Opera at home! The crowd, we were told, trooped on to the ground afterwards in thousands to kiss the red carpet and ground on which they [the King and Queen] had trod.’

  The hierarchy of the Raj was so well established that even Lord Dufferin, who loved parties – at one fancy dress ball he dressed up so successfully as an Arab that even his wife failed to recognise him – found himself writing to a friend: ‘It is an odd thing to say but dullness is certainly the characteristic of an Indian Viceroy’s existence. All the people who surround him are younger than himself; he has no companions or playfellows; even the pretty women who might condescend to cheer him it is better for him to keep at a distance.’

  For a viceregal couple, the pomp and circumstance with which they were surrounded could at times be overwhelming; when the little Curzon daughters went out with their flock of attendants, a special policeman was deputed to carry their dolls. All the principal viceregal servants wore scarlet and gold; the men who waited at table had long red cloth tunics, white trousers, bare feet, white or red and gold sashes wound round their waists and white turbans, with gold-embroidered waistcoats for the higher-ranked ones and a ‘D’ and a coronet embroidered on the chests of the lower ones. ‘All the “housemaids” are men with long red tunics, turbans and gold braid – oh! so smart – while every now and then a creature very lightly clad in a white cotton rag makes his appearance and seems to feel as much at home here as his smarter brethren do,’ noted Lady Dufferin in 1884. ‘He is probably a gardener and he most likely presents you with a bouquet of violets.’

  When the Viceroy was guest rather than host, there was even more of a scramble to get things right and maintain the rigid security then enforced. When Lord Minto paid a visit to the Governor of Bombay in 1909, Jim Du Boulay, Chief Executive of the Bombay Presidency, wrote: ‘I have to spend weary and useless hours in examining and correcting programmes for his official arrival and for the arrival and reception of various Chiefs [Princes] who count their guns and watch their ceremonies with lynx eyes.’

  Jim’s wife Freda described the measures taken for the Viceroy’s safety. ‘This place is arranged as though we were going to be besieged: sixty-two policemen in the grounds, two companies of soldiers on guard. Quantities of native and English detectives and some of the bodyguard, while there are boats rowing round the whole place on the three sides of the grounds which overlook the sea. My room and the verandas round Lady Eileen Elliot’s [the eldest Minto daughter] and Lady Antrim’s, who are in the same block with me, have sentries all day and all night, and as the heat is intense and I am obliged to open all the windows and doors, there is nothing the sentries can’t tell you about the details of my toilette.’

  What struck her even more forcibly were the intricacies of the caste system. ‘One “caste” arranges the flowers, another cleans the plate, a third puts the candles in the candlesticks but a fourth lights them; one fills a jug of water while it requires either a higher or a lower man to pour it out. The man who cleans your boots would not condescend to hand you a cup of tea, and the person who makes your bed would be dishonoured were he to take any other part in doing your room. The consequence is that, instead of one neat housemaid at work, when you go up to “my lady’s chamber” you find seven or eight men in various stages of dress each putting a hand to some little thing which needs to be done.’

  Others had no difficulty enjoying the lavish hospitality of the Sovereign’s representative. Ruby Madden, for whom who wore what – in particular herself – was central to any evening’s entertainment, adored these evenings. ‘Wore my white crepe de chine, with white roses and fern leaves in my hair. Captain Cameron looked a dear in the mess kit of the Imperial Cadet Corps, dark blue shell jacket with pale blue facings and overalls with white cloth stripe and narrow blue one. The same on the cap, with a wide top.’

  After the Byculla Ball on 18 February 1903, she described gardens ‘lit up like fairyland and flowers and palms banked everywhere. About 400 people were there but dancing was quite easy in the huge dining room. There were some lovely frocks, Lady Jenkins’s the most wonderful from Paris! White chiffon embroidered with green and purple grapes and jewelled to represent dewdrops . . . I had the whole twenty-three dances booked almost at once and had some good turns with Mr Scott.’ As Mr Scott was ostensibly the cavalier servente of a predatory married woman this must have been particularly satisfactory, especially when, at a reception at Government House, ‘Mr Basil Scott and I sat on a sofa and talked until it was time to go home. Mrs Chitty was there too but he must have given her the slip!’

  Little changed through the years, least of all the ceremonial surrounding viceroys and governors, and the preoccupation with how to dress for one of these important dinners or receptions. In 1931 Meriel McKnight, visiting family friends Lady Noyes and her husband Sir Frank, a member of the Viceroy’s Council in Delhi, was writing of a viceregal garden party on 15 November 1931:

  ‘Enid [Lady Noyes] wore a Wedgwood blue georgette with silvery embroideries, a large and becoming black hat and light stockings and shoes. F had the grey morning suit and a fascinating grey topper, a white slip in his waistband and spats. I put on the cream lace, with my black
hat and shoes and Enid lent me a black georgette sunshade so I was quite happy and never thought about myself the whole time. The dresses were mostly of the patterned georgette or lace with coatees . . . We processed up a marble staircase having been directed that way by a friendly aide-de-camp in navy blue and gold braid (coats to the knee).’

  Lutyens’s great palace, the largest residence of any head of state in the world, was a truly imperial building, with its grilles, dome, fountains, statues of elephants, loggias and courtyards. On the stairs, as Merial entered, were ‘men in scarlet-coated uniform and turbans with pikes standing at intervals like blocks of wood, they are not supposed to move their eyes, all Indians.’

  ‘We reached the Library with books, chairs done in tomatoey-coloured leather of the loveliest shade, marble inlaid yellow floor, a huge globe at which we whiled away the time until we were called into procession’, she wrote. ‘Their Excellencies stood in the Durbar Hall, a really magnificent marble circular hall with a dome that can be opened to the sky. It is open by arches to the surrounding corridors in which stood scarlet soldiers etc. You walked down two steps on to the floor.

  ‘[Their Excellencies] were standing in front of gilded chairs with servants and aides behind, he was in morning dress and she in a gay flowered chiffon and hat to match. Our names were read out. E and F had a most warm welcome and quite a stoppage of the procession to hear of their time at home. Then my name rang out and I had to step forward, shake hands with him first and curtsey and about three steps further and the same with her. They were most cordial . . . the band in scarlet coats and white topis were playing pretty well all the time in the garden but as we went in they were on the balcony behind the Durbar Hall so that our procession was done to soft music. Their Exes came down into the garden and talked to the people.’

  Punctually at 5.45 Their Excellencies walked up the centre of the garden path, preceded by two aides-de-camp and followed by another, through their lined-up guests, bowing to them all and saying goodbye. The male guests bowed, the women bobbed a half-curtsey. When they reached the door of the house the viceregal couple stood there while God Save the King was played, then turned and walked indoors – the signal for their guests to leave. This took time, as although it was only a comparatively small party, there were many cars.

  Protocol was just as evident at a dinner party on 28 November. ‘We were received at the door by ADCs who showed us the way to remove our coats. Then we sailed up the marble staircase with the gorgeous bodyguard on either side and along corridors to show the way – black top boots, white trousers, scarlet coats to the knee and huge black, blue and gold turbans on top. We went into the drawing room and by degrees were all ranged on one side …’.

  When the Viceroy gave a state banquet, formality was even greater. Behind each chair the length of the huge table a servant stood motionless, his hands raised to his forehead in salute until the Viceroy took his seat. With their evening dresses, women wore long white kid gloves almost to the shoulder, with a row of pearl buttons at the wrist; during dinner itself, these buttons were undone, the hand slipped through the opening and, if possible, the flapping empty ‘hand’ of the glove tucked back into the glove arm. It was the same at balls at which the Viceroy was present, with the difference that once the viceregal couple had left or retired, ladies were permitted to pull off their long gloves, usually with a sigh of relief. When the Vicereine swept up the ladies at the end of dinner, each as she left had to make a full curtsey in the doorway to the Viceroy,* who had risen to his feet and made her a ‘Court bow’ (from the neck only) in response.

  It could be said that the Viceroy’s House in Delhi, Lutyens’s grandly impressive creation, demanded the splendour and state that attended the Viceroy: it was larger than Versailles, with a porch capable of receiving a ruler on his biggest elephant, howdah on top, thirty-seven splashing fountains and wonderful gardens that required a staff of more than 450 (some of them simply to keep birds away). Inside was a hundred-foot dining room where, in Lord Irwin’s day, dessert was served on the priceless gold plate he had brought with him. Even the door handles, shaped like resting lions with crowns on their heads, exuded imperial opulence, while behind the scenes it resembled a small self-contained city, with its own bakery, tailor’s shop, dispensary, operating theatre and hospital ward; outside was a swimming pool, a nine-hole golf course, cricket pitch, eight tennis courts and stables and kennels for the horses and hounds of the Royal Delhi Hunt.

  ‘One would mount the long flight of red stone steps,’ wrote Bethea Field when asked to dinner there. ‘Steps flanked by the troops of the Viceroy’s bodyguard – Sikhs in their glorious uniform with silver spurs on their high boots, beards perfectly trimmed into a band under the chin for no Sikh may cut his hair. Such handsome dark faces and above, a turban of pale blue muslin so perfectly wound that each fold was exactly half an inch above the other. They stood, with their lances at rest, as still as statues. They may have cast an eye at the British women and their low bosom dresses beneath them but it was not obvious.

  ‘At the top of the long stairway we were greeted by the aides-de-camp. Charming, handsome young men in their various mess dress. They ushered us in to the reception hall where we stood with our backs against the walls to await the arrival of “Their Excellencies”. This was heralded by a fanfare of trumpets from a gallery. We all held our invitation cards and as the aide preceded the Viceroy and his wife round the hall, he took them and announced us – each one. The men bowed and the women curtsied. Then we followed into the Banqueting Hall, each to his or her allotted place.

  ‘The food was handed round by scarlet-clothed Viceregal servants wearing white cotton gloves so as not to offend the Indian guests. At the end of the meal, the Vicereine got up and led out the ladies. She curtsied first to H. E. and then we, in pairs, curtsied as we followed her to the drawing room. It was a time to chat together or pay a visit to the cloakroom. H. E. and the men joined us for coffee and after a decent interval when the sexes interchanged, Their Exes retired. We were given whisky and sodas and relaxed in the care of the aides. Not for too long however. As their glances grew cool, we scampered back down the long red stairway – now no longer guarded by the handsome soldiers, to our cars and our homes.’

  The highlight of the week was the Viceroy’s Ball, with its gorgeous setting – black crystal panels lined the walls of the ballroom, with light brackets of Kashmir crystal carved into tulip shapes – and the presence of the princes, festooned with waist-length ropes of pearls, rubies and emeralds, diamond aigrettes in their jewel-hung turbans, wrists and fingers sparkling with more gems. They were popular with Lady Willingdon (her husband was Viceroy 1931–6), who clapped them on the back and called them by their Christian names.

  One step down from viceregal entertaining was an invitation from one of the governors of the three presidencies (Madras, Bengal and Bombay). Government House in Madras was a huge white colonial building, to which Katherine Welford was often asked, girls being scarce. ‘Dinner there was a very formal occasion. On arrival the car would draw up under a portico and drop us at the foot of shallow red-carpeted stairs leading up to the entrance hall. We would be handed our dance programmes, also a diagram of where we were to be seated, by a servant dressed in white with a scarlet and gold turban and cummerbund. It was always a matter of great interest to see who was going to take you in to dinner, as he would be sitting on your right.

  ‘Then we would be greeted by an ADC and passed on to a reception room to stand in line to shake hands with the Governor [Sir George Stanley, brother of Lord Derby] and his wife, after which they would come round and talk to everyone. I was always impressed how the ADCs – there were three of them – remembered everybody’s name. You always wore long white gloves, with sixteen buttons, for dinner at GH – but then, you always wore stockings when you went out, no matter how hot, and a hat or, quite often, a topi. Bands played Tea for Two, Always, Mountain Greenery on palace lawns.’

  No story of
viceregal entertaining would be complete without mention of the most famous faux pas of the inter-war years. The Viceroy had his own orchestra, which used to play throughout dinner, and once when he recognised a tune but could not put a name to it and nor could anyone else, an ADC was sent to ask the bandmaster for the song’s title. When the ADC came back everyone was talking so he patiently waited his turn. Finally the babble of conversation ceased and the young man seized his chance. Leaning forward and gazing at the Viceroy, he announced into the sudden silence: ‘I Will Remember your Kisses, your Excellency, when you Have Forgotten Mine.’

  10

  ‘I told him it was only the moonlight’

  Courtship

  ‘Broadly speaking, European women in India may be divided into two classes: those who are or have been married, and those who most assuredly will marry,’ wrote Claude Brown in 1927.

  Courtship in the Raj took various forms. From the point of view of the husband-hunting Fishing Fleet girl, single men also fell into two categories: those who had passed the age barrier after which marriage was permitted, and financially possible, and – a much larger category – those who had not.

  As few Raj bachelors were allowed to marry until they were around thirty, husbands were nearly always quite a few years older than their wives, an age difference so usual that at one time its desirability was firmly embedded in the national psyche. ‘You ask my age,’ wrote Lieutenant Leslie Lavie to his fiancée Flossie Ross on 10 February 1896. ‘I was 27 on January 3rd last, so that I’ve got exactly four months the better of you. I suppose this is alright; some people have a fad that the man should be older than the lady, but provided they like one another, I don’t see much what age has to do with it, do you, darling? My mother used to say there should be six or eight years difference, and I’ve had lots of discussions with her about it, without either of us convincing the other …’.