The Magnificent Montez | Page 9

lbs. of wax candles and several bottles of ink." Nothing, however, about red-tape.
A helpful hint furnished by Miss Roberts was that "A lady on ship-board, spruced up for the Park or the Opera, would only be an object of ridicule to her experienced companions. Frippery which would be discarded in England is often useful in India. Members of my sex," she adds, "who have to study economy, can always secure bargains by acquiring at small cost items of fashion which, while outmoded in London, will be new enough by the time they reach Calcutta."
A lady with such sound views on managing the domestic budget as Miss Emma Roberts should not have remained long in single blessedness.
II
Those were not the days of ocean greyhounds, covering the distance between England and India in a couple of weeks. Nor was there then any Suez Canal route to shorten the long miles that had to be traversed. Thus, when Lola and her spouse embarked from England in an East Indiaman, the voyage took nearly five months to accomplish, with calls at Madeira, St. Helena, and the Cape, before the welcome cry, "Land Ahead!" was heard and anchor was dropped at Calcutta.
Lola's first acquaintance with India's coral strand had been made as a child of five. Now she was returning as a married woman. Yet she was scarcely eighteen. She did not stop in Calcutta long, for her husband's regiment was in the Punjaub, and a peremptory message from the brigadier required him to rejoin as soon as possible. It was at Kurnaul (as it was then spelled) that Lola began her experience of garrison life. Among the other officers she met there was a young subaltern of the Bengal Artillery, who, in the years to come, was to make a name for himself as "Lawrence of Lucknow."
The year 1838 was, for both the Company's troops and the Queen's Army, an eventful one where India was concerned. During the spring Lord Auckland, the newly-appointed Governor-General, hatched the foolish and ill-conceived policy which led to the first Afghan war. His idea (so far as he had one) was, with the help of Brown Bess and British bayonets, to replace Dost Muhammed, who had sat on the throne there for twenty years without giving any real trouble, by an incompetent upstart of his own nomination, Shah Shuja.
Lieutenant James's regiment, the 21st Bengal Native Infantry, was among those selected to join the expeditionary force appointed to "uphold the prestige of the British Raj"; and, as was the custom at that time, Lola, mounted on an elephant (which she shared with the colonel's better half), and followed by a train of baggage camels and a pack of foxhounds complete, accompanied her husband to the frontier. The other ladies included Mrs. McNaghten and Mrs. Robert Sale and the Governor-General's two daughters. It is just possible that Macaulay had a glimpse of Lola, for a contemporary letter says that "he turned out to wish the party farewell."
The "Army of the Indus" was given a good send off by a loyal native prince, Ranjeet Singh (the "Lion of the Punjaub"), who, on their march up country, entertained the column in a rest-camp at Lahore with "showy pageants and gay doings," among which were nautch dances, cock-fights, and theatricals. He meant well, no doubt, but he contrived to upset a chaplain, who declared himself shocked that a "bevy of dancing prostitutes should appear in the presence of the ladies of the family of a British Governor-General." Judging from a luscious account that Lola gives of a big durbar, to which all the officers and their wives were bidden, these strictures were not unjustifiable. Thus, after Lord Auckland ("in sky blue inexpressibles") and his host had delivered patriotic speeches (with florid allusions to the "British Raj," the "Sahib Log," and the "Great White Queen," and all the rest of it) gifts were distributed among the assembled company. Some of these were of an embarrassing description, since they took the form of "beautiful Circassian slave maidens, covered with very little beyond precious gems." To the obvious annoyance, however, of a number of prospective recipients, "the Rajah was officially informed that English custom and military regulations alike did not permit Her Majesty's warriors to accept such tokens of goodwill."
But, if they could not receive them, the guests had to make presents in turn, and Ranjeet Singh for his part had no qualms about accepting them. With true Oriental politeness, and "without moving a muscle," he registered rapture at a "miscellaneous collection of imitation gold and silver trinkets and rusty old pistols offered him on behalf of the Honourable East India Company."
A correspondent of the Calcutta Englishman was much impressed. "The particular gift," he says, "before which the Maharajah bent with the devotion of a preux chevalier