WRITING about South Africa and my restless indulgence in travel
generally recalls to my mind rather an interesting fact. And it is this—I
once played in no fewer than twenty of the world's principal cities within
the space of twelve months. Beginning in America with San Francisco, I
came east to Chicago, Detroit, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, then
went north to Montreal and Winnipeg; sailed home and played London,
Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. October saw me on my way to
India's coral strand—an old hymn-book phrase which has never quite left my
mind. Although I played practically all the Indian cities I only include
Calcutta in this list; later I found myself in Hongkong and Shanghai. Then
down to Singapore in the Straits Settlements (or, to give them their right
title the Federated Malay States) and so on to Sydney, Melbourne, and
Adelaide. If any artiste in the world can beat this little record he is
welcome. Not a bad year's "sight-seeing" you will admit. And everywhere I
went I did a job of work just to keep the pot boiling, if you understand
me. I always say that a man enjoys touring the world far better when he is
able to pick up his bite and sup as he goes along! And if luckily, he
comes home with a shilling or two in his waistcoat pocket so much the
better still! This trip of mine to the Orient I had long and keenly
looked forward to. I wanted to see whether the Mediterranean was really
blue; I wanted to sail down the Red Sea —slit in two so that the
Israelites could make their escape "out of the house of bondage"; I wanted
to set foot in In dia, that storied land of mystery and romance first
focussed on my mind by the vivid essays of Tom Macaulay
on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. How I had longed, as a boy, to have the
opportunity of viewing the "barren rocks of Aden" (subject of one of our
very best and liveliest bap- pipe tunes); of gazing on the peerless Taj
Mahal at Agra; of wandering in historic Lucknow and noting the road by
which "brave Havelock and His Highlanders" came to the rescue of the
beleagured Britishers at the time of the Mutiny; of seeing the "dawn come
up like thunder out o' China 'cross the bay." Well, all these dreams were
realized on this trip of mine in 1925.
Earlier
in these memoirs I think I said that I would like to write a book about
Australia. I would like even better to write a book about India. But the
objections I perceived in writing about Australia would hold quite as
pointedly in any serious attempt on my part to write about India. So I
will only give you some fragmentary impressions of my experiences in, and
my thoughts on, the most fascinating country in all the world.
I started my Indian tour at Bombay. The moment I
stepped on the stage for my first performance I sensed the eternal glamour
of the East. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling. Hundreds of
beautiful Parsee ladies were in the stalls and circle. Their picturesque
dress and their flashing jewels helped to make up a scene the like of
which I had never beheld from the stage of any theatre in the world. It
almost took my breath away by its sheer colourfulness and opulence. Even
while I was singing my mind was flitting back to the pages of the Arabian
Nights. And if the scene inside the theatre made such an impression on me
what can I say of my first visit to the home of a great Indian prince, the
Nizam of Hyderabad? This famous and enlightened potentate has, I believe,
many stately palaces but none can surely be more lovely than that which he
has on Malabar Hill on the outskirts of, and above, Bombay! Lady Lauder
and I were invited to dinner there. We thought we had indeed been
transplanted into fairyland with all its per- fect embellishments of
glinting moonbeams, waving palms, gorgeous flowers and multi-coloured
electric lights. It was so amazingly wonderful that we were almost afraid
to speak —and break the spell!
The Governor of
Bombay, Sir Leslie Wilson, invited us to the Residency; indeed everywhere
we went in India I was royally entertained and could not have made the
acquaintance of this romantic land under better conditions. At Calcutta I
attended the Christmas Party given by the Earl of Read ing, the Viceroy,
and also had the satisfaction of backing the winner of the Viceroy's Cup
at the Races. Orange Wilham, the horse in question, was favourite and I
remember how very disappointed I was at only getting a few rupees in
return for the half-crown I had invested after being assured that William
was a "dead cert." This was the only time in my life that I gambled on a
race-course so I can say with truth that I have never yet backed a loser!
From Bombay we sailed north to Karachi and then by
railroad across the great Sind Desert to Quetta, then down to Lahore,
Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, and Cawnpore. At each of these places I played in
the evenings and devoted my days to wandering round the city and studying
Indian life at close quarters. And an altogether fascinating study this
is. The inscrutability of a million years is in every solemn face one
sees. Occasionally one meets with a smile—as, for instance, when I slipped
up one sultry afternoon on an unusually muddy bit of the Ganges at Benares
and very nearly tumbled into the Sacred River—but, speaking generally, the
natives are mostly of a grave and serious mien. Time doesn't seem to count
with them at all. They are never in a hurry. They take life very leisurely
indeed. Yet they can work to beat the band
when necessary. Give the shoemaker, the tailor, or the shirtrnaker, or the
dressmaker—they will turn up at your bedroom door in the hotel, from
nowhere it would seem, immediately you have told the head porter that you
want their services—an article to copy and it will be returned to you in a
few hours with its new replica down to the last stitch and with shade,
shape, and style perfectly reproduced. I have ordered boots and shoes
simply by giving an old pair and saying "the same" and been amazed,
astounded, at the fidelity of the work and the matching of the material
employed. Lady Lauder handed over an old dress as an example of the kind
of thing she desired after selecting the silk from which the new garment
was to be made. She forgot that in the old one the sleeves had had a
slight tuck in them on account of being a trifle too long. Back came the
new dress next day with the tucks in the same place and each stitch
reproduced in the most exact fashion! One of the male members of our
variety party thought he would like a new suit. So he passed over an old
one to the trousers of which there had been a slight accident
necessitating a patch on the seat. Imagine his horror—and mirth at the
same time—when the native suavely presented him with a new suit and
triumphantly pointed out how careful he had been to put the patch in the
same place as before.
But if the Indians are
tremendously slick in making boots, shoes, and wearing apparel they must
spend years over some of the exquisite articles they turn out in the way
of fine art. At Delhi I purchased several curios in ivory which must have
taken the craftsmen who made them incalculable hours, to say nothing of
almost inconceivable care. I often take one of these wonderful things into
my hands today and speculate as to how it was produced at all—never mind
how long it occupied the genius responsible for its existence. It is a
carved ivory ornament no bigger than a golf ball but inside it are
fourteen other balls all differently carved and each one completely
distinct from the other. There is absolueiy no crack or join in the
outside ball. Now ask yourself how this is done, by what magic instruments
the task must have been accomplished and how many years the cunning hands
laboured to bring this mystery to perfection! Lahore is one of the
great art-craft centres of India. Its bazaars are crowded with the output
of supreme artistes in brass, silver, and gold, and inlaid ornaments such
as tables, trays, cigar-boxes, lamps, screens, desk and table decorations.
One is lost in profound admiration for the men, women and boys who give
these rare treasures to the world at prices which appear to be altogether
ridiculous in relation to the work so lovingly, so meticulously, put into
them. I can truthfully say that the bazaars at Lahore are the only places
of merchandise in the world where I have not tried to beat a salesman down
when buying an article that appealed to me! I hadn't the heart. My own
view about these Indian craftsmen is that they must spend their lives
doing the wonderfut work they do for the mere love of creating beautiful
things. Their material wants are small. Give them a handful of rice and
they work until they are tired. Then some more rice and they start all
over again. Another rest, more rice, and more work. What a life! But after
all, is ours any better? I am not certain that it is.
Throughout my travels in India I made constant and
persistent inquiry as to where I could see the famous rope trick. Like
every other man in the world I had heard about this, the most unique feat
in the repertoire of the Eastern juggler and I would have given a good
deal (I can't just say off-hand how much I would have given!) to see this
trick performed before my own eyes. But I met with no success. Many people
told me that they themselves had seen the performance, or knew people who
had, but in all the months I spent in the country I did not come across
one fakir carrying a rope and attended by a wee black boy. I saw many
snake-charmers, all of whom gave me the creeps by their uncanny command
over deadly cobras and other vipers and I also saw, in Calcutta near the
entrance to the Zoological gardens (one of the best zoos in the world, I
should say) a fasting man lying on iron spikes which would most assuredly
have cut to ribbons any skin not trained to this ordeal from birth, so to
speak. But of the world-famous rope-trick—not a vestige.
One most extraordinary thing I did see, however, and
this was a fakir at Bombay between whom and a little bird, of the size and
colour of a canary, there existed a communion little short of marvellous.
The fakir rested with his back against the Gateway of India, the
magnificent arch erected at Bombay to commemorate the landing of the King
and Queen at the time of the Durbar some years ago, and sent his little
feathered companion on repeated journeys through the air to the open
windows of the Taj Mahal Hotel opposite. The bird would alight on the
window-sill and flutter and bow until the guest inside threw out a coin to
its master. This done it would fly back and alight on the latter's
shoulder or thumb. Here, in response to music played on a funny mouth
instrument by the fakir the bird would perform all manner of quaint and
amusing antics. Whenever a head appeared at any of the hotel windows the
man would sound some understood note or two on his flute and away went the
feathered messenger to ask for alms at close quarters. Between bird and
master there appeared to be the most perfect understanding. I watched them
for hours and never got tired of a sight so unusual and interesting.
During my stay in Calcutta I was the guest of my old
friend Sir Alexander Murray, one of the great merchant princes of India.
To his mansion came many of the leading Britishers and Americans in the
city and I was splendidly entertained by tales of life, commerce and
money-making in Bengal. Several old friendships begun in Scotland were
renewed in Calcutta, which is one of the happy hunting grounds of Dundee
men in search of "suer." The jute industry in Calcutta is closely allied
with the same business in Dundee. In the old days the men from Tayside
practically dominated the jute mills on the banks of the Hooghly and
dozens of great fortunes were made at a time when Indian labour was much
cheaper than it is today. I don't want to be unkind but I have a suspicion
that not a few of the noble mansions in West Ferry—just outside of Dundee
and reputed to be one of the wealthiest suburbs in the British Empire—were
built, partly, at least, on the results of infant labour in the jute mills
of India. In recent years the jute profits have not been so large although
the war gave many Dundee men another chance both at home and abroad. But
to their eternal credit be it said hundreds of the young Scots in India
hastened home the minute war broke out and sacrificed fine prospects of
fortune for the almost even-money chance of death or wounds on the field
of battle. I knew quite a number of these gallant Scotto-Indians who went
to France and Flanders to return no more.
His
excellency Lord Lyttleton, the Governor of Bengal, came to the theatre and
brought with him their royal high nesses Prince and Princess Arthur of
Connaught who were on a visit to the country. They all came to my
dressing- room afterwards and we had a long chat about India and our
various impressions. I told them that if I lived to be a thousand I could
never hope to see a more magnificent scene than that of the Vice Regal
procession to the races a few days previously. All the colour and romance
and mystery of India were concentrated in that pageant of black and white,
red and gold, splendour. And with that remark I must leave Calcutta.
At Rangoon, where I have several very dear personal
friends, I remained for ten days. This city of the golden pagodas is the
capital of Burma and rich, not only in everything that pertains to the
East, but in commerce and industry. While at Rangoon I had a cordial
invitation to visit the palace of Ling Sing, a Chinese gentleman who is
known all over India as the Sugar King. He has many other business
interests and is reputed to be one of the richest Chinamen in the world.
Judging by his home on the outskirts of Rangoon I can easily believe it.
It is the last word in Eastern opulence. Mr. Ling Sing--I sincerely hope I
am spelling his name correctly—completely knocked the wind out of my sails
when I was introduced to him by breaking out with, "Man, Harry, it's a
braw, bricht moonlicht nicht, the nicht, is it no? Hooch, aye!" He spoke
the Scottish dialect like a native of Stirling. I am not readily "stumped"
but I con- fess that on this occasion I stood and stared "like ony gumph"
scarcely crediting the evidence of my ears. Thoroughly enjoying my
discomfiture Ling Sing started to laugh and added further to my
bewilderment by remarking, "Say, Harry, ma cock, hoo wad ye like me to gie
ye a blaw on the pipes—'The seventy-ninth's Farewell' or 'The Haughs o'
Cromdale' ?" And without further ado he proceeded to seize a set of
bagpipes from a table in the corner of the room and "tune up."
I was spell-bound. Sure enough this extraordinary
Chinaman started to play the famous air he had first mentioned. Not only
so but he began the "waggle walk" of the real Scottish piper. What could I
do but jump in behind him and march round, chest expanded, eye flashing,
and droning out the melody familiar to me since childhood? Afterwards Ling
Sing explained the apparently insoluble mystery. He was not a MacDonald
posing as a Chinaman but a genuine native of the Flowery Land. But his
father, the original Sugar King, had always had a great admiration for
Scots people and when Ling was yet a little boy he was sent to Dollar
Academy, in Clackmannanshire, where he remained for several years and
absorbed the customs, the language, and the characteristics of his
schoolmates so thoroughly that he was more Scot than anything else by the
time his education was finished and he had (almost regretfully) to return
to the East! I asked him where he learned to play the pipes. "Oh," he
replied, "I was so good at them that they made me Pipe-Major of the
Academy pipe-band!" And then we sat down to birds'-nest soup and to eat
rice and chicken with chopsticks! On leaving the palace Ling Sing slapped
me on the back and remarked, in impeccable Scottish accent, "Well, well,
Harry, guid nicht an' joy be wi' ye! It's been like a breath o' the purple
heather to hae ye here. Hastye back again, laddie! Here's to us! Wha's
like us? Damn the yin!" So saying he handed me a Deoch-an-Doris, took one
himself, and Harry Lauder and Ling Sing, grand Scots both, parted the best
of friends and cronies.
Afterwards, down to
the Federated Malay States, perhaps the richest country on the face of the
globe. They tell me that there is sufficient wealth in the Straits
Settlements to pay the British National Debt twice over. In fact I heard
so much of the actual and potential wealth of places like Penang, Kuala
Lumpur, Port Swetenham, and Singapore that I had serious thoughts of
disbanding my company and starting in on my own in an effort to get a bit
before it was all gone! But I found so many Scotsmen scattered over the
place that I decided the task would be stiffer than it looked on the
surface! You may be pretty sure that if there are Kemps, and Symes, and
McNeills, and Carmichaels, and Forbes, and McLarens in the Malay States
they are not going to let a newcomer butt in without making him scratch
hard for his whack! Again I listened to what some people think the most
fascinating of human stories—the tales of poor men who struck the country
in past years and got away with colossal fortunes. The history of the
rubber and tin industries of Malay is full of romance—and, of course, of
tragedy. Take the case of the young Glasgow man who discovered a tin mine
up-country and got several of his Glasgow friends to finance him in its
exploitation. That was about twenty years ago. Every man who stuck to his
original small holding in the company is now rich beyond the proverbial
dreams of avarice—a word I don't like and have never quite understood! Or
the case of the young Tayside broker in Singapore who has made three
fortunes in rubber, lost them all, and is now building up another. Renang
and Singapore—these have been names to conjure with in financial circles
for many years and so far as I am able to judge the opportunities still
offered all over the Malay States are well worth the attention of young
Britishers of determination and the capacity to grasp a chance when it
comes along. I spent many pleasant days on the
rubber plantations and in the tin mining districts in the different States
of the Peninsula and was intensely interested in the men and the methods
employed in both great industries. More than once I thought how fortunate
it was for Britain that she had a possession like Malay to help us pay our
American debts. Without the world's best tin and rubber territory we might
just as well sign over the British Empire, lock stock and barrel, to Wall
Street—perhaps! And then again—perhaps not!
From Port Swetenham we sailed along the coast to Singapore on a lovely
little steamer named the King. The Captain of this ship was a splendid
Highlander of the name of MacGregor, who courteously welcomed every
individual passenger as he stepped off the gangway on to the deck. He had
such a pronounced accent that I asked him what part of the Rob
Roy-territory he hailed from. "Alas, an' alack, Sir Harry," he answered.
"I have never seen the dear land of my fathers and my dreams. I was born
in New Zealand. All my life has been spent in these tropical seas. But
soon I hope to retire and the first thing I shall do will be to go 'home'
to Scotland and see the hills and the streams and the villages my father
and mother loved so devotedly." These words were spoken in the soft, warm
accents of the true Highlander and I could scarcely believe that the
speaker had not been brought up in Callender or Baiquidder. He astonished
me still further by telling me that "he had the full Gaelic" and though my
knowledge of this language is small he was overjoyed when I said a few
Gaelic words to him and volubly answered me in the same tongue. In his
cabin he, like Ling Sing, had a set of bagpipes and he and I played many a
tune on them during the passage. Some months afterwards I was shocked
beyond measure to read in a New Zealand paper that Captain MacGregor had
been brutally murdered by one of his own crew who had suddenly gone mad. I
tell you this story as another example of the extraordinary way love of
country is embedded strong in the hearts of people of Scottish descent
even in cases where they have never set eyes on the "land of brown heath
and shaggy wood." There is a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye as I
write this little story of Captain MacGregor of the S.S. Kiang. I cannot
help it. I am not ashamed of it. The emotion springs from that ineffable,
intangible, but tremendously real thing called Scottish sentiment.
Here is another little cameo almost on a par with the
tale of the Gaelic-speaking skipper who had only in his dreams "beheld the
Hebrides." In our variety company we had a handsome young man called
George Greig. He and his wife played Hawaiian melodies on ukuleles and
also sang duets of life and love in the South Seas. Greig's grandfather
had been a rover in his boyhood, after running away from school in
Aberdeen. Latterly he settled down on Fanning Island and became the
accepted king of that lonely sea-girt spot of land. He married a
full-blooded Hawaiian girl and they had six sons, on all of whom the
father bestowed good Scottish christian names. When the British Government
wanted to take over Fanning Island for a cable station the Greig family
sold out their rights and they all retired to New Zealand. How George came
to join our company as an assisting artiste I don't know but there he was,
and speaking good "Scotch" all the time with a slight American accent.
At Shanghai we had to get our passports viséd for
Manila. When Tom Valiance went up to the American Consulate for his, Lady
Lauder's, and mine, he took George Greig with him. Tom had no trouble,
naturally, but when the official came to deal with the copper-coloured
Greig certain slight difficulties developed.
"What nationality?" snaps out the official.
"Scottish," promptly responds George.
"Guess
you're the first coloured Scot I've met!" comments the Consul's clerk.
"Where do you hail from?"
"Tanning Island,"
says Greig. "Never heard of it! Where the
hell's that?"
"South Pacific!"
"A copper-coloured Scot from Fannin' Island in the
South Pacific! Wal, now, can you beat it?" But Greig got his passport and
in it his nationality is described as Scottish, much to his satisfaction!
I played Hongkong and Shanghai in, China and had great
receptions and huge audiences at both places. But the recent Chinese
trouble was just breaking out at Shanghai when I struck China so we cut
our visit short. Tom saw a lot more of this town than I did because he got
in tow with a British detective who promised to give him an exciting time
among some of the gambling dens and opium-smoking resorts. Tom assured me
that the first tour round was most interesting, the second rather exciting
and the third absolutely hair-raising. On the last occasion they hit up
against some pretty tidy gun-play. The detective had his hat shot off his
head and Tom swears that had he not been a fast runner he would certainly
have finished his world-travels in the Chinese quarter of Shanghai that
night. In spite of the British boycott, in full swing about the time of
our visit, I did not find the Chinese shopkeepers and hawkers at all
unwilling to sell Nance and I all the fancy goods we wanted. We sent home
to Dunoon large crates of art-work, ivory and ebony ornaments, bedspreads
and other articles which must have taken years of painstaking and
amazingly talented labour to produce. I must also hand it to the Chinese
shirt and suit-makers as the world's best craftsmen in their own
particular spheres of action. Some of the shirts they made for me in
Shanghai I am still wearing. They are cool in warm weather and hot in cold
weather. I cannot, unfortunately, say the same about their tussore suits.
I have half a dozen of these stored away somewhere and will never wear
them out unless I go back for long spells to the warm climates for which
they are so admirably suited. I must see if I cannot sell them, even at a
loss, to some traveller of my stocky build setting sail for the Orient!
And I'll throw in my sun-helmet free. Now then, what offers?
I should have visited Yokohama but the appalling
earthquake of the year before had practically wiped out the Japanese city
and my tour of Asia came to an end with a farewell concert at Kowloon,
just across the bay from Hongkong. This is one of the most beautifully
situated towns I have ever seen in all my world roamings. There are lots
of Scottish and English people both in Hongkong and Kowloon and when I
sailed away for Manila hundreds of them assembled on the pier and sang
"Will Ye No Come Back Again?"
The Philippine
Islands was another part of the world I was most anxious to see and when
Ted Carroll was mapping out my Eastern trip I told him to make certain of
taking in Manila. He did so and the result was a most interesting ten days
in America's greatest overseas possession. Like many more people I had
imagined the Philippines to be a few small islands somewhere—it really did
not matter where!—between China and Australia. I knew that cigars came
from there and that was about all! Actually there are over three thousand
islands in the group with a total area of something like a hundred and
twenty thousand square miles—almost as big as Great Britain and Ireland
even throwing in the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and the Greater and
Lesser Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde! I tell you it was an eye- opener to
me because I thought that all the worth-while islands in the world
belonged to us! The city of Manila, with its quarter of a million
inhabitants, fascinated me greatly by reason of its lovely buildings,
luxurious hotels, and the almost eternal sunshine in which it is bathed.
American enterprise and American capital have done much to develop the
Philippines but the thing which has done more for the islanders themselves
than any other is the fact that they bred a world's champion boxer in the
late Pancho Villa!
We went one night to the
local Stadium where we saw a couple of fights, in one of which the
redoubtable Pancho was a competitor. He had by this time won the
championship by defeating our own Jimmie Wilde. His reception was
terrific; the natives went absolutely mad with enthusiasm. I have never
seen an audience so alert to follow every move in a boxing ring. They were
like so many needles and, their excitement communicating itself to the
ordinary visitors, I found myself jumping and squirming about with every
left- hook or upper-cut or solar-plexus punch delivered by the fighters.
The Manila Stadium must have been built by a Londoner for it is an exact
replica of the Ring, in Black- friars Road, London, only ten times larger.
Every young Philippino wants to become a professional boxer. When Pancho
Villa died the entire nation went into mourning.
I had hoped to spend a happy day or two with my old
friend General Leonard Wood, the Governor General of the Islands, but his
excellency had been called home on important business to Washington.
However, he left me a letter of good-will, expressing the hope that Nance
and I would enjoy ourselves in Manila and indicating some of the plans he
had made for our entertainment before leaving. During the war days General
Wood and I had made frequent appearances on public platforms in America
and I formed a very high estimate of his character and cultured
attainments. All the distinguished Americans and prominent Scots and
Englishmen in the islands vied with each other in extending hospitality to
my party. Mr. Kennedy, one of the leading bankers, gave a banquet in my
honour and Mr. Scott, the managing director of a large firm of wood
exporters, pre sented me with sufficient Philippine mahogany to make a
parquet floor for my hail and study in Lauderdale, Dunoon. I may be wrong
in describing this beautiful wood as mahogany but in any case it is very
lovely, has a delightful odour which never quite disappears, and every
time I walk across it at home my mind goes back to the glorious Philippine
Islands and the many kind friends I have out there beneath the ever-blue
sky of the sun-kissed Pacific.
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