MY KITMITGHAR ‘SAM.’

For nearly three years my Kitmitghar, as that functionary is called, was cook, butler, and factotum of my then small bachelor establishment in India. A cunning concocter of mulligatawnies, curries, and chutnies—as cunning a hand too in ‘cooking’ his daily bazaar accounts, adding annas and pice, for his own particular benefit, to the prime cost of as many articles as possible. Mildly remonstrated with, and petty larceny hinted at, his honest indignation would be aroused. ‘Master tink I cheat,’ he would say; ‘master can inquire bazaar-mans;’ well knowing, the rogue, the moral and almost physical impossibility of ‘master’—a swell in his way—going to the distant market in a broiling sun, and finding out the ruling prices of flesh and fowl.

This worthy, whose original cognomen of Mootoosammy was shortened into ‘Sam’ for convenience and euphony sakes, was a Tamil from the Malabar Coast. Au reste, a dark, handsome, stoutly-built, clean-looking native, on whose polished skin water and coarse country soap were evidently no strangers. In his early youth, fated to earn his own living, he had been ejected from the paternal hut and placed as a chokerah or dressing-boy to a fiery and impecunious lieutenant of infantry; and under the fostering care of that impetuous and coinless officer, his indoctrination into the art and mystery of a valet had been advanced and improved by sundry ‘lickings,’ and by frequent applications to his ebon person of boot-heels, backs of brushes, and heavy lexicons of the English and Hindustani languages. This education completed, and when he had learned to appreciate the difference between uniform and mufti, mess-dress and parade-dress, and indeed to master the intricacies of his employer’s scanty wardrobe—non sine lacrymis, not without ‘howls’—then he emerged from dressing-boyhood, was promoted matie or under-butler, and got translated into more pretentious bungalows than those of indigent subalterns. By-and-by further preferment awaited him; he became kitmitghar (major-domo) in the households of unmarried civilian or military swells, and thenceforward led a life free from kicks and cuffs, canes and whips, and impromptu missiles snatched from toilet or study tables. I have said advisedly ‘unmarried,’ for except under financial difficulties, Sam would not take service with the Benedicts of Indian society, and the actual presence or possible advent of a wife was the signal for his departure. ‘Plenty too much bodder wid lady; too much want ebery day, ebery day measure curry stuff, oil, ghee [butter]; too much make say always dis ting too dear, dat ting too dear; too much trouble take count. Now, Colonel Sahib he good man; he call, he say: “Sam! how much this week you eespend? [spend].” He just look book; he give rupee; no one single word bobberee [fuss] make.’ And so, for a palpable reason, my worthy cook-butler eschewed those households where a better-half took the reckoning.

English, after the rickety fashion of a Madrassee, Sam spoke fairly enough; he also read and wrote the language, the latter accomplishment phonetically, but yet sufficiently near to the rules of orthography to make you fully understand and pay for ‘tirty seers wrice’ as thirty seers (measures) of rice. What if he did elect to spell rice with a w? Is it not recorded that an eminent member of a large mercantile firm, in days long gone by, invariably included an h in the word sugar? And is it not also chronicled how he chastised almost to the death his son and heir for omitting that letter when invoicing a cargo of best Jamaica moist? If then Blank Blank, Esq. of the city of London opined that sugar required an h, why not the same liberty as regards the w to Mootoosammy of the city of Madras?

A sad waverer in religious opinions Master Sam, I fear. A very Pharisee of a Hindu, a rigid stickler for the worship of Vishnu or Siva on the high-days and holidays of those deities, when his forehead and arms would be spotted and streaked with coloured ashes, his garments would smell of saffron and sandal-wood, his English diminutive name would be put aside for its more lengthy and sonorous native patronymic, and he would be off to the temple to make poojah (prayer) to his swamis (gods). But yet, somehow or other, all these symptoms and signs of Hinduism would disappear at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsuntide. At those seasons of the Christian year, Sam was no longer Mootoosammy, but Sam pure and simple. No more the believer he in the Vedahs and Shastras, but a pinner of faith on Aves and Credos; no poojah for him now in the temple, but crossings and genuflections in the little chapel of the station. Not a trace in these days of idolatrous scents clinging to cloths and turban, or of ‘caste’ marks disfiguring brow or limb. Dole in hand—obtained either from pickings at master’s ’counts or from bazaar-man’s dustoor (custom)—he is off to join Father Chasuble’s small flock, and to bow down and formalise with the best or worst of that good priest’s congregation. I really think and believe, that to secure a holiday and an ‘outing,’ Sam would have professed himself a Mohammedan during the Ramadan, a Hebrew during the Passover, a Heathen Chinee during the feast of Lanterns, and a Buddhist during the Perihara or other high-jinks of the yellow-robed priests of Gautama Buddha.

I never before or since met any man into whose household death was so constantly making inroads, and strange to say, carrying away the same individual. I suppose that, on a rough estimate, all Sam’s kith and kin died at least twice during the thirty months or so that he was in my service.

‘Master please’—thus Sam howling and weeping after his kind—‘scuse [excuse] me. Gib tree day leave go Madras; too much trouble my house. My poor old mudder—booh! ooh!—plenty long time sick; master know well; too much old got; die last night. Booh! ooh! o-o-g-h!’

‘Why, what tomfoolery is this?’ I reply. ‘Your mother dead! Dead again! Why, man, how can that be? Four months ago you came and told me your mother was dead; you got four rupees advance; you went off, leaving the boy to do your work, and put me to no end of inconvenience. How can the old woman be dead again?’

But the fellow is not the least put out, and is quite equal to the ‘fix.’ ‘Master Sahib,’ he says, ‘I beg you scuse me. Sahib quite wrong. That time you speak I get leave, not my mudder—my wife’s mudder die. Master can look book!’

This random shot anent the ‘book’ alludes to my diary, in which the disbursement of the money has been entered, but not of course the casualty in his family. But I don’t lose the hint nevertheless, and I jot down a memorandum for future reference, should occasion require.

Then Sam goes on: ‘I no tell lie, sar. Plenty true; too much bobberee my house make. My fader gone Mysore’——

‘Why, bless my heart!’ I put in, ‘you told me ages ago your father died of cholera in Masulipatam.’

‘No, sar,’ says Sam; ‘never, sar! My grand-fader, scuse me. My wife she catch bad fever. No one single person my home got, make funeral-feast. Please, my master, advance half-month’s pay; gib four days’ leave. I too much hurry come back.’ Then he falls down, clasps my feet, calls me his father, brother; gets my consent to be absent, handles the rupees, and is off like a shot; not of course to his mother’s obsequies, for the old harridan has either been buried or burned years ago, or even now is all alive and kicking; but to some spun-out native theatricals, nautch, or tamasha (entertainment) in Black Town, where he feasts, drinks, and sleeps, and for a week at least I see his face no more.

History repeats itself; so does Sam. Months and months have passed; I am away from the neighbourhood of the Presidency town, and on the cool Neilgherry Hills. Enters one morning my man into my sitting-room, a letter in his hand, written in Tamil, and which he asks me to read, well knowing that I can’t, that except a very few of the commonest words of the language, which I speak with an uncertain not to say incorrect idea of their meaning, the tongue of his forebears, scriptural and oral, is to me Chaldee or Arabic.

‘Well! what’s up now?’ I say ‘Ennah?’ airing one of the expressions I know.

‘Master can see self. My uncle he send chit [note]; just now tappal-man [postman] bring. He write, say: “Sam! you plenty quick come Madras.” He put inside letter one five-rupee government note. Sahib can see. He tell me no one minute lose; take fire-road [railway]; too soon come; plenty, plenty trouble. My mudder dead.’

‘You awful blackguard!’ I exclaim. ‘Your mother dead—dead again! Look here—look here!’ And I turn up my diary and shew him, under date August 9, 186-, nearly two years past and gone: ‘Sam’s mother reported dead for the second time by Sam, &c.’

Then he slinks away discomfited; and I hear him in his smoky kitchen growling and grumbling, and no doubt anathematising me and mine past, present, and future.

My first introduction to Sam was after this wise. I had come down from Bombay to Beypore with troops in a small steamer, and Mr Sam, who had either deserted or been sent away from the Abyssinian Expedition, in which he had been a camp-follower, was also a passenger in the same ship. Of this craft a word en passant, for I have to this day a lively and by no means pleasant olfactory recollection of her. She was the dirtiest vessel in which I ever put foot; guiltless of paint from keel to truck; all grime, coal-soot, and tar from stem to stern. She had but recently taken a cargo of mules to Annesley Bay; and but scant if any application of water and deodorants had followed the disembarkation of the animals. The ‘muley’ flavour still therefore clung closely to bulkhead and planking; it hung about cordage and canvas; it penetrated saloon and sleeping-berth; it even overpowered the smell of the rancid grease with which pistons and wheels were lubricated. Worthy Captain B—— the skipper assured us that deck and hold, sides and bulwarks, had been well scoured in Bombay; but as the old salt’s views of scrubbing, judging from his personal appearance, were infinitesimally limited, we opined that the ship’s ablution had been as little as was that of its commander’s diurnal tub.

But to return to Sam. The poor fellow was wandering about the streets of Beypore coinless and curry-and-rice-less, when he stumbled upon me. He was seeking, he told me, from some good Samaritan of an officer, a free convoy to Madras as his servant; and as I happened to be in a position entitled to passes for some three or four followers at government expense, I was enabled to pour oil and wine into Sam’s wounds, and without even the disbursement to mine host the assistant-quartermaster-general, of the traditional ‘tuppence,’ to get him across from terminus to terminus—some four hundred long miles—and without once casting eyes on him. But at Lucifer’s hotel in Madras where I stayed—— What a memory of mosquitoes, fleas, and other nimble insects doth it bring! What a night-band of croaking frogs and howling jackals it kept! What packs of prowling pariah dogs and daringly thieving crows congregated about its yards and outhouses! What repulsive nude mendicants and fakeers strolled almost into its very verandahs! What a staff of lazy sweepers, slow-footed ‘boys,’ and sleepy punkah-pullers crawled about it generally! And last, though not least, what a wretched ‘coolie-cook’ superintended its flesh-pots, from which not even the every-day stereotyped prawn curry, boiled seer-fish, and grilled morghee (fowl) could creditably and palatably issue. At this Stygian caravanserai then, Sam, whom I thought I had bid adieu to for ever and a day on the railway platform, turns up again clean and smirk, salaams, asks for permanent employment, produces a thick packet of highly laudatory characters (mostly, I had no doubt, either fabricated by a native scribe in the Thieves’ Bazaar at Black Town, or borrowed for the occasion from some other brother-butler), gets engaged; and from that moment, both figuratively and literally, begins to eat my salt. Nor did the saline feasting fail to give him a taste for liquor—for alcoholic, decidedly alcoholic were Sam’s proclivities. He drank at all times and in all places; but his favourite day and locality was Tuesday, at the weekly market of the cantonment. Then and there he imbibed right royally, and staggering home—the coolies with the supplies following him as tipsy as himself—went straight to his mat-spread charpoy (bedstead).

‘Hollo, Sam!’ I exclaim; ‘at it again; drunk as usual from shandy [market].’

‘No, shar! Dis time no shrunk! Shun too mush hot! Splenshy head pain gib! Too mush make shake, sthagger, shar! No, mash-err, no! Sham not shrunk! Plenty shick! Shmall glass brandy—all right, shar!’

But I decline to add ‘the sum of more to that which hath too much,’ and I leave Sam to sober himself as he best can, and which, truth to say, he quickly does.

In the way of intoxicants nothing came amiss to my man’s unfastidious palate. He had no particular ‘wanity,’ like Old Weller’s friend the red-nosed Shepherd: Henneysey’s brandy, Kinahan’s whisky, Boord’s gin, Bass’s ale, Guinness’s stout, champagne, sherry, claret—all and each were equally acceptable; and failing these European liquors, then the vile palm-toddy and killing mango-spirit of the neighbouring native stills supplied their place. Bar the toddy and mango stuff, which were cheap and easily obtained, Sam did not disburse much for his wine-cellar; master’s sideboard and stores, guard them as he would, came cheaper and handier. Every bottle, somehow or other, got ‘other lips’ than mine and my friends’ applied to it, and its contents went into and warmed other ‘hollow hearts’ than ours. Sam laid an embargo on and helped himself from all. He it is, I fancy, to whom Aliph Cheem alludes in his Lay of Ind entitled The Faithful Abboo, that trusty servant who, habitually stealing his master’s liquor, and accusing his brother-domestics, got caught and half-poisoned by mistaking in his prowls Kerosine for Old Tom. A misadventure not unlike befell Sam; but in that instance he did not ‘strike oil,’ but came upon a very nauseating dose of tartar emetic, and was ‘plenty sick’ and ‘plenty shame’ for some hours after.

Another predilection of my factotum’s was tobacco, which he smoked without ceasing, and without the least regard to quality or fabric. ‘Long-cut or short-cut’ to him ‘were all the same.’ But as I did not happen to be addicted to the ‘nicotian weed’ Sam could not draw on any resources of mine, but had to depend on his own means, supplemented by the surreptitious abstraction of Trichys and Manillas, of Latakia and Bird’s-eye, from the boxes and pouches of my chum and visitors.

Every native gambles; so it could hardly be expected that Sam should differ from his brethren in this respect. In the words of the old ditty anent Ally Croker:

I don’t think he cared much for cards or dice; but the game that he delighted in was played with a red and white checkered square of cloth, and with round pieces like draughtsmen. Whenever the advent of a friend and opportunity served, down the two squatted with this board between their legs, and a pile of copper pieces of money by their sides; and so intent would they be on their play, that nothing short of a gentle kick, or tap on the head, would arouse them to master’s wants and needings.

My readers will naturally inquire why, with all these delinquencies, Sam so long remained my henchman. Well, first, had I discharged him, another and probably greater robber would have stepped into his shoes, and bazaar accounts and inroads on alcohol and tobacco would have remained undiminished. ‘They all do it;’ so better the de’il I knew, than the de’il whose acquaintance I would have to make. Again, Sam had his redeeming points; he was, as I have said before, clean, handy, and deft at the creature comforts, which, having appetisingly compounded, he could serve up with taste and elegance. Then he was a good nurse; and during a serious illness that befell me at one of the vilest stations in Madras, he tended me closely and carefully, keeping a watchful eye and a ready stick on punkah-pullers and wetters of kus-kus tatties (scented grass mats), without the cooling aid of which the heat of that grilling July would have been my death on that fever-bed. Once more, on those military inspections which fell to my lot, and which had to be undertaken partly over the Nizam’s very sandy and rough highways, and in those close comfortless bone-breaking vehicles called byle-nibbs (bullock-carts), my man became invaluable. Seated on the narrow perch alongside the almost garmentless and highly odoriferous native driver, he urged him on by promises of ‘backsheesh’ and cheroots; he helped to whip and tail-twist the slow-footed oxen; he roused up lazy byle-wallahs (bullock-men) sleeping in their hovels, and assisted them in driving from the fields and in yoking to the cart refractory and kicking cattle. He stirred up with the long pole the peons (keepers) in charge of the road-side travellers’ bungalows at which we halted, aiding these officials in chasing, slaughtering, and ‘spatch-cocking’ the ever-waiting-to-be-killed-and-cooked gaunt and fleshless morghee (fowl); he saw that the chatties for the bath were not filled with the very dirtiest of tank water; that the numerous and hard-biting insects, out and taking the air from their thickly populated homes in the crevices of cane-bottomed chair and bedstead, met with sudden and violent death; and lastly, that no man’s hand but his own should be put into master’s money-bag and stores.

But as all things come to an end more or less, so did Sam’s career with me actually terminate. My wife and family came ‘out’ from England. The ‘Mem Saab,’ sometimes even the ‘Missee Saab,’ took bazaar ’count; the current bachelor rates for chillies, cocoa-nuts, first and second sorts wrice, gram, and such-like necessaries underwent a fall. Sam’s occupation and gain were gone. He quitted my homestead under this new and unprofitable régime. ‘I discharge you, sar!’ said he; and away he went, I know not where.