We anchored at Gardenrich, four miles below Calcutta. Nothing gave
me more trouble during my travels than finding lodgings, as it was
sometimes impossible by mere signs and gestures to make the natives
understand where I wanted to go. In the present instance, one of
the engineers interested himself so far in my behalf as to land with
me, and to hire a palanquin, and direct the natives where to take
me.
I was overpowered by feelings of the most disagreeable kind the
first time I used a palanquin. I could not help feeling how
degrading it was to human beings to employ them as beasts of burden.
The palanquins are five feet long and three feet high, with sliding
doors and jalousies: in the inside they are provided with
mattresses and cushions, so that a person can lie down in them as in
a bed. Four porters are enough to carry one of them about the town,
but eight are required for a longer excursion. They relieve each
other at short intervals, and run so quickly that they go four miles
in an hour or even in three-quarters of an hour. These palanquins
being painted black, looked like so many stretchers carrying corpses
to the churchyard or patients to the hospital.
On the road to the town, I was particularly struck with the
magnificent gauths (piazzas), situated on the banks of the Hoogly,
and from which broad flights of steps lead down to the river.
Before these gauths are numerous pleasure and other boats.
The most magnificent palaces lay around in the midst of splendid
gardens, into one of which the palanquin-bearers turned, and set me
down under a handsome portico before the house of Herr Heilgers, to
whom I had brought letters of recommendation. The young and amiable
mistress of the house greeted me as a countrywoman (she was from the
north and I from the south of Germany), and received me most
cordially. I was lodged with Indian luxury, having a drawing-room,
a bed-room, and a bath-room especially assigned to me.
I happened to arrive in Calcutta at the most unfavourable period
possible. Three years of unfruitfulness through almost the whole of
Europe had been followed by a commercial crisis, which threatened
the town with entire destruction. Every mail from Europe brought
intelligence of some failure, in which the richest firms here were
involved. No merchant could say, "I am worth so much;" - the next
post might inform him that he was a beggar. A feeling of dread and
anxiety had seized every family. The sums already lost in England
and this place were reckoned at thirty millions of pounds sterling,
and yet the crisis was far from being at an end.
Misfortunes of this kind fall particularly hard upon persons who,
like the Europeans here, have been accustomed to every kind of
comfort and luxury. No one can have any idea of the mode of life in
India. Each family has an entire palace, the rent of which amounts
to two hundred rupees (20 pounds), or more, a month. The household
is composed of from twenty-five to thirty servants; namely - two
cooks, a scullion, two water-carriers, four servants to wait at
table, four housemaids, a lamp-cleaner, and half-a-dozen seis or
grooms. Besides this, there are at least six horses, to every one
of which there is a separate groom; two coachmen, two gardeners, a
nurse and servant for each child, a lady's maid, a girl to wait on
the nurses, two tailors, two men to work the punkahs, and one
porter. The wages vary from four to eleven rupees (8s. to 1 pounds
2s.) a month. None of the domestics are boarded, and but few of
them sleep in the house: they are mostly married, and eat and sleep
at home. The only portion of their dress which they have given to
them is their turban and belt; they are obliged to find the rest
themselves, and also to pay for their own washing. The linen
belonging to the family is never, in spite of the number of
servants, washed at home, but is all put out, at the cost of three
rupees (6s.) for a hundred articles. The amount of linen used is
something extraordinary; everything is white, and the whole is
generally changed twice a day.
Provisions are not dear, though the contrary is true of horses,
carriages, furniture, and wearing apparel. The last three are
imported from Europe; the horses come either from Europe, New
Holland, or Java.
In some European families I visited there were from sixty to seventy
servants, and from fifteen to twenty horses.
In my opinion, the Europeans themselves are to blame for the large
sums they have to pay for servants. They saw the native princes and
rajahs surrounded by a multitude of idle people, and, as Europeans,
they did not wish to appear in anyway inferior. Gradually the
custom became a necessity, and it would be difficult to find a case
where a more sensible course is pursued.
It is true that I was informed that matters could never be altered
as long as the Hindoos were divided into castes. The Hindoo who
cleans the room would on no account wait at table, while the nurse
thinks herself far too good ever to soil her hands by cleaning the
child's washing-basin. There may certainly be some truth in this,
but still every family cannot keep twenty, thirty, or even more
servants. In China and Singapore, I was struck with the number of
servants, but they are not half, nay, not a third so numerous, as
they are here.
