Part 1 — NOS. 10, 20 AND 35

BABY IN PARTIBUS

This sketch, which may well be termed a beautiful lament over poor Baby, has brought back vividly to many a one touching recollections: a picture in fact which appealed, and continues to appeal, to an audience infinitely wider than that of Anglo-India. The same may be said of the sketches "The Grass-Widow," p. 139; "Mem-Sahib," p. 157, by many considered the best sketch of all; and "Sahib," p. 181. All of them full of that pathos and tenderness akin to, but yet differing widely from, the bantering style of the others, which are also full of allusions and covert references to individuals and affairs of the Anglo-India of thirty years ago.

In "Sahib," however, there are traits of character and other touches taken from the life of one who was—among many other features—a "merry Collector," not yet forgotten by a rapidly decreasing circle of contemporaries. While time and ameliorated conditions have changed the "loathsome Indian cemetery" into something of a garden in which Ali Baba our friend in common would have rejoiced.

No. 11

THE RED CHUPRASSIE

Alas! the Red Chuprassie is still a rift in the lute of Indian administration; a reform in Chuprassies would doubtless be more beneficial to India than any wonder-working nostrum—such as Advisory Councils or extended Legislative Councils.

The cry for reform in Chuprassies, or in other words the underlings of many Departments, is a very old one. Ali Baba's denunciation of the "Red Chuprassie" powerfully expands that one by Sir Alfred Lyall, where in his poem of The Old Pindaree, written in 1866, the "belted knave" is associated with the "hungry retainers" and others forming the camp establishment of an official on tour.

Ali Baba's practice of adequate payment, which he states—in a spirit of banter—to be potent to remove temptation to bribery and corruption, has received attention in connection with recent ameliorations of the terms of subordinate service in India, and it is believed has met with a certain amount of success.

The well-meant but not altogether satisfactory trial of the Gaikwar of Baroda, by a mixed tribunal of Indian Nobles and highly placed British officials, which took place during Lord Northbrook's viceroyalty, is alluded to in the conclusion of the article; in which the Anglo-Indian soubriquet for a subservient person—Joe Hookham, literally jaisa hukam = as may be ordered—is also introduced.

No. 12

THE PLANTER

It is now upwards of thirty years since this genial picture of a veritable "Farmer Prince" was painted—in bold and broad outline, of course. The years that have passed bringing in their train many altered conditions, the most important of all, perhaps, being the replacing of a natural vegetable dye such as indigo by chemically produced substitutes.

Probably in a few more years the still remaining features of the Bengal indigo planter's off duty life as depicted by Ali Baba will have quite disappeared, unless the substitution of sugar planting for that of indigo now receiving considerable attention in various Bengal, and more particularly Tirhoot, districts prove a success.

Anyway, the Macdonalds, the Beggs, and the Thomases, names now, as formerly, prominently identified with the great indigo industry, have been assured of continual remembrance. So prominent, in fact, has the Scotch element among planting families always been that it is said that if any one present at a race, polo, or Christmas week gathering were to shout out "Mac!" from the verandah of the Tirhoot Club, every face in the crowd would be simultaneously turned towards the speaker.

The bantering allusion to "Mr. Caird and The Nineteenth Century," applies to that great authority on many and very varied agricultural subjects, the late Sir James Caird, who died in 1892. In 1878-79 he was deputed to India by the Secretary of State as a member of the Indian Famine Commission called into being by the Strachey Brothers; the general impressions then formed by a six months' tour through India being embodied in the series of articles, entitled "Notes by the Way in India; the Land and the People," which appeared from July to October, 1879, in The Nineteenth Century magazine, thereafter in book form in 1883, and in an augmented form as a third edition in 1884.

For a detailed account of a Bengal indigo planter's life, mainly confined, however, to the processes and surroundings of planting and manufacture, there is no more valuable record than the late Colesworthy Grant's well illustrated book, "Rural Life in Bengal," which was published in 1860. In that work may be found a drawing of "Mulnath House," a glorified illustration of the fast disappearing surroundings of a Lower Bengal planter's residence.

No. 13

THE EURASIAN

In November, 1879, when this "Study in chiaro-oscuro" was published, renewed attention was being directed to the Eurasian community in India, mainly by the discussions in all circles aroused by the publication of the late Archdeacon Baly's Bengal Social Science Association Paper of May in the same year, which dealt with the employment, inter alia, of Europeans of mixed parentage in India; a question which still engages the anxious consideration of many Indian statesmen. Ali Baba's "Study" is not an ill-natured summary of the widespread discussions of 1879, but indeed as far back as 1843, the late John Mawson in his paper, "The Eurasian Belle," which first appeared in the Calcutta newspaper, The Bengal Hurkaru, had approached the social and domestic side of the question, and to some extent may be said to have anticipated Ali Baba.