Chapter XIX: At the Court of His Highness the Rajah of Nabha

His Highness the Rajah of Nabha is a noble old Sikh chieftain, distinguished among the native rulers of India, although his territory, one of the Phulkian States, is but small. Through the kindness of the Punjab Government and of His Highness, I was given an opportunity of visiting the little court.

To reach Nabha, my train from Lahore was the Bombay mail, and I have rarely seen greater confusion at any railway station than reigned upon its arrival. Every class of carriage was already full, yet there were a number of first-class passengers waiting with title to berths booked in advance as well as second and third-class ticket-holders. The train was already of the maximum size permitted and, after half an hour's uncertainty, a third-class carriage was actually emptied of its fifty or more occupants, taken off the train and replaced by an empty first-class coach. Few more striking instances could be found of purse privilege. It would {267} correspond in England with the dumping on a Crewe platform of the third-class passengers by the Scotch express from Euston to make room for first-class passengers waiting for the train at Crewe. It was not a case of native and foreign, or English and Oriental,--for plenty of native gentlemen travel first-class and it simply meant that having a seat in a third-class carriage in India does not insure your finishing the journey by the train in which you started.

My servant was left behind on this occasion and was consequently not forthcoming when I reached Nabha Station in the morning. Poor faithful Tambusami had not understood whither we were bound, but for some reason or other thought it might be Patiala, and when I returned to Lahore three days later I found him weeping on the platform after vain endeavours to track me.

At Nabha I was met by three of the Rajah's ministers and driven in a luxurious victoria to a large guest-house painted red and blue and standing in quite beautiful grounds. A pair of horses drew the victoria, but a kind of wagonette which followed with my luggage was pulled by two camels which always have rather a circus air in harness.

The red brick-work of the building was all picked out with white, like the walls of a doll's house, and on each side of the wide arch at the {268} entrance there was a life-size painting of a turbaned soldier presenting arms.

His Highness's private secretary could not speak English, and a native gentleman, Mr Hira Singh, who was a schoolmaster in the town, had been deputed to attend me as interpreter during my stay.

I was taken first into the reception-hall, which was hung with small portraits in gouache of former rajahs and famous Sikh monarchs, such as the Rajah Bhagwan Singh (the late Rajah of Nabha), the late Rajah Ragh Bir Singh of Sandoor and the Maharajah Ranjeet Singh, who was painted in a green dress with a halo round his head and mounted upon a brown horse. In large letters on one wall appeared the motto:--

"May God increase your prosperity."

Breakfast was served me in a large room adjoining the great hall. Over the carpet a white drugget was spread and the chairs were all covered in pink chintz.

Mr Hira Singh suggested that I must need some rest and should sleep awhile, so I was taken to my bedroom which was another large apartment. It was a blend of the genuinely Oriental and the Tottenham Court Road. The washstand was humbly and yet aggressively British, while the wide bed was gorgeously {269} upholstered and covered with a beautiful silk coverlet of canary yellow, and was furnished with two tiny hard cushions or pillows in the middle, as well as an ample allowance for the head. I was certainly tired with the journey and nothing loth to lie down. Outside one of the open doors of the room I could see the red-and-blue lance pennon of a sentry appearing and reappearing as he passed to and fro in the sunlight. His footsteps were quite noiseless, and wondering whether after all it was the real sentry or one of the painted ones from the archway wall I fell fast asleep to wake an hour later and find that Sirdar Bishan Singh, Vakil to the political agent of the Phulkian States, a stout, pleasant-looking little man, and Sirdar Jawala Singh, His Highness's minister of finance, taller and darker, were patiently waiting for me in the reception-room, sitting side by side on chairs, with their feet primly together and silently looking before them.

His Highness had graciously consented to give me an hour's sitting the next morning, and these gentlemen had come to drive me to the palace where the painting was to be done to choose a position of suitable lighting. So down I walked again by the five long steps between the blue columns and out through the archway to the victoria, and the painted sentries were still presenting arms and the live one stood at {270} attention. We drove first to the Diwan Khana by the Winter Palace, and going up a long flight of steps to an upper quadrangle I was shown the rooms of the State Treasury and the old heavily-bound boxes containing the wealth of Nabha.

The Diwan Khana itself is used for durbars, and the whole of the upper part of the great room is one continuous forest of chandeliers, mostly of green cut glass. On the walls of this Durbar Hall I noticed four beautiful old miniature portraits of rajahs, with real pearls fitted in for necklets and precious stones and gems on the horses' trappings as in eikons of the Greek Church and a painting of a feast, larger, but worked in the same style as the miniatures. The building was erected in the time of the Maharajah Jaswan Singh of Nabha, and the very florid carpets were certainly not of any earlier date.

As we drove away I saw many pigeons and green parrots about the walls of the Winter Palace, and noticed that all over the building niches had been left for the birds.

Mr Hira Singh told me that the population of Nabha town is over 15,000 and that it is "quite a busy city" with steam cotton-mills (I had seen the tall chimneys near the railway station). The city gateways I passed through are quite stately buildings and in an upper {271} chamber of each gateway, with its silk covering hanging out over the window-sill, is kept a copy of the sacred _Granth_ of the Sikhs.

Driving through part of the city and out again we passed a Hindoo temple with a spacious tank, over one end of which spread the twisting branches of a beautiful "beri" tree, and before long came to Elgin House, a newer building than the Winter Palace, with a very large Durbar Hall, having at one end a painting of Queen Victoria. It was here that the sitting was to take place, and after choosing a suitable position in which His Highness's gold chair of state might be placed ready I went over the rooms of Elgin House and also upon the roofs of the upper storeys.

The Vakil showed me the chief treasures with great pride, but among them all there was not a single beautiful thing of native craftsmanship. Instead of this there were huge modern German vases--pictures sliced into one another by a mechanical trick, so that as you moved along in front, the Princess of Wales changed gradually into the Prince. Mechanical singing-birds of most expensive accomplishment were made to warble for my delectation and greatest of all wonders at the Court of Nabha, a clock-work group of figures behaved quite like real people and a band of musicians played operatic airs while a ballet dancer stood tiptoe on one {272} leg. The mechanical singing-birds had already made me think of Hans Andersen's story of the nightingale, and here was the heroine of another of his tales re-created after the burning she endured with her beloved tin soldier as devotedly as any Hindoo widow of suttee days.

The formal gardens were pleasantly arranged, but managed to avoid the beauty of an Oriental Bagh without achieving that of the European style they sought to imitate. The proportions were good, but there was no grass and one longed vainly for spaces of lawn or greensward to contrast with the elaborate carpet bedding.

On leaving Elgin House we drove to the Gurdwara of Baba Ajabal Singh. A tall and handsome black-bearded priest of thirty-two years showed us over the building, but what most interested me was a wild-looking figure I saw hanging about the cloisters. He was armed with a sword and dressed entirely in black garments, with a huge black turban twisting in and out of steel circlets and irons, and bound over and round in its turn by a metal chain. This was an Akali, one of that still privileged sect of fighting fanatics who became famous in Ranjeet Singh's time under the daring and picturesque "Gardana Sahib"--Alexander Gardner (born on the shores of Lake Superior in 1785).

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I had heard that the Akalis wear blue garments to perpetuate the memory of the blue clothes the Guru Govind Singh wore as a disguise, on the occasion of an escape from Moghul soldiers, and part of which he gave to one of his disciples to found a new order--that of the Akalis in question, but this man's habiliments were as black as a crow's feathers. Like their famous Rajah, Ranjeet Singh himself, this latter-day specimen of the bhang-drinking cut-and-thrust "immortals" had only one eye, and I asked whether he had by chance lost its fellow in a fight. "I have never had a chance of a fight," said the Akali--adding consistently with the tenets of his sect--"if I did I would never give in." While we were talking a thin old Sikh limped towards us; he had once been taller than the average man, but was now bent and emaciated with constant opium-eating. Mr Hira Singh told me that he took one "masha" (equal to 16 grains) at a time and took it twice in every twenty-four hours. The old rascal, his deep brown eyes twinkling, put to me a special petition that the Government should grant to all real opium eaters a large quantity gratis at regular intervals to make them happy. He said also, on my asking him what he dreamed about--"In my dreams I think of the Creator, and I feel very earnest to go to a better field and to fight there," which, as I was {274} assured the man was an abandoned scoundrel, may be taken as Oriental humour expressed with an eye to backsheesh.

Driving back to the guest-house we passed an arena where wrestling matches are held, with six circular tiers of high stone steps as seats for the spectators, and a square "loge" built in the middle of one side for the notables, and here is conducted the only physical "fighting" that takes place at Nabha nowadays. The day of the Akalis is over, and while their brother Sikhs make some of the best material in the Indian Army, the devotees of this narrow sect have become wandering mendicants, privileged to carry warlike weapons, and truculently direct in their demands for alms.

The portrait sitting was fixed for eight o'clock the next morning, and ten minutes before his time the noble old Rajah stepped from his carriage and walked almost jauntily up the steps of Elgin House, where I was already installed with palette and canvas.

Gorgeously apparelled in a costume that was like a kiss between two halves of the Arabian Nights, and wearing upon pale greenish silk a galaxy of decorations which included the G.C.I.E. for his part in the last Afghan War (he is now an honorary Colonel in the British Army) and stars and medals from many great Durbars, the Chief of Nabha wore at the same time an air of vigour {275} and joy in life that made the years sit lightly on his shoulders, years that a wrinkled forehead declared numerous.

One of his ministers told me through Mr Hira Singh that at the last Delhi Durbar His Highness had delighted every one by the spirited and boyish way in which he had galloped his horse along in front of the assembled princes. May he appear as hale and vigorous at the Durbar of December next!

After he had shaken hands with me and beamed cordial smiles, we walked through the Durbar hall to the room where I had set up my easel, and the Rajah sat, as arranged, in a chair of gilded brass with lion arms, and directed his gaze at a particular flower vase upon which we had fixed to keep his head in correct position for the portrait. The pupils of his eyes were brown, with a faint grey rim, and he had long waving moustaches as well as a long yellowish white beard. He carried a sword with scabbard of pale green and gold, a steel mace with spherical head, and a contrivance by which, when a catch was pressed at the end of the handle, a number of short sharp blades started out from the head, and also a steel trident of new pattern. The old man was bent upon having as many arms about him as possible, and sent for a large shield of black metal with four bright bosses and a crescent, a favourite {276} rifle and another trident sceptre, so that I had all I could do to dispose these about him in such a way that he could sit comfortably and keep his head still. He seemed especially proud of the mace with the trick knives, and after explaining the mechanism to me with gusto he continued at intervals during the sitting to manipulate it, at which the whole court laughed heartily. They were grouped on either side in all the glory of official costume and included the Commander-in-Chief, who came to England for the Coronation of Edward VII., the Foreign Minister, the Finance Minister, the Chief Justice, the Medical Adviser, and various generals and councillors.

To paint a portrait in an hour! Well, I was not sorry that His Highness had arrived before the arranged time, and that I had already set my palette, and though it would have been intensely interesting to have talked with the Chief of Nabha through the excellent interpreter, when once the weapons were arranged to incommode him as little as possible, I went at the painting with the fury of an Akali and contented myself with smiling appreciatively at his occasional ejaculations.

Every now and then he made a peculiar coughing noise, which began softly and rose to a crescendo, sounding as formidable as the traditional catchwords of the giant of the bean-stalk. {277} It was like "ahum, ahum, ahum--ahhum," and kept his ministers in lively attention.

As nine o'clock struck (for there were clocks at Nabha as well as at Elsinore) I laid down my palette and am glad to say His Highness expressed with Eastern courtesy great delight at the sketch.

Before going he sent for his favourite grand-child, Sirdar Fateh Singh, a boy of about twelve years of age, who shook hands frankly with me. On hearing that I must positively leave Nabha that afternoon--in spite of his kindly pressure to stay at least a fortnight--the Rajah gave orders for the finest of his State elephants to be sent round to the guest-house that I might see an ingenious device by which fountains of water from a hidden tank played from the front of his head to lay the dust. The elephant, unlike his vigorous old master, is weak and ailing, but I found him still a magnificent beast and arrayed even more gorgeously than lilies in sunlight-carrying scores of crystal lamps as well as the fountains.

Mechanical arrangements of all kinds seemed specially to delight the Rajah and he again showed me one of the singing birds I had seen the previous day. Just before leaving Elgin House His Highness paid me the pretty compliment of asking if he might have permission to go.

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