Victoria & Abdul (39 page)

In April a son was born to Reid. Fritz Ponsonby jokingly wrote to him asking, ‘Is it true his name is to be Karim Reid!’ In fact, King Edward VII became the godfather of the child and he was christened Edward James.

The Household had been openly hostile to Karim and were keen to restore the old order speedily. They had never understood what the Queen had seen in him. To Fritz Ponsonby, the Munshi was like ‘a sort of pet, like a dog or cat which the Queen will not willingly give up’. The Dean of Westminster, Randolph Davidson, thought she was ‘off her head’ over the Munshi. Lord Salisbury was of the opinion that the Queen enjoyed the spats over the Munshi with her Household because ‘it was the only excitement she had’.

What her family could not comprehend was that the Queen was a born romantic. Beneath the trappings of the monarchy, the formalities of Court life and the prudence she often displayed,
the Queen was never afraid to love and show her affections. The death of her beloved husband had left her lonely and heartbroken. As a Queen she lived in a man’s world and could have few women friends. Her own daughters – Princesses Beatrice and Helena – kept their distance, not even coming to see her through the night or nursing her when she was on her deathbed, a fact noted with disapproval by Reid. Princess Beatrice was often selfish and the Queen had frequently been reduced to tears by her behaviour and demands. Her sons, and grandsons too, gave her endless problems and she had no one to turn to or confide in after Albert’s death. It fell to John Brown to draw her out of her self-imposed isolation, and the Queen soon leaned strongly on him. Brown was devoted to her and she could talk freely to him. More than anything else, he treated her like a woman rather than a Queen, something neither her family nor her Household could do. His death once again robbed her of a companion.

When the Munshi arrived during the Jubilee, his presence lifted her spirits. The Queen took instantly to the handsome twenty-four-year-old Indian and was soon roller-coasting into an Indian wonderland of fragrant curries, bright turbans and the sensuous sound of the Urdu language on Karim’s lips. The Queen sensed a certain depth in Karim and found she could talk to him comfortably despite the language barriers. Karim brought her closer to India, the country that she had always longed to visit. A skilled raconteur, he told the Queen about his country, the religions and the culture. Soon these discussions became more political.

The Queen’s maid of honour, Marie Mallet, observed that the Queen gossiped more with the Munshi than she did with the other ladies in the Household. ‘He is ubiquitous here,’ she noted, ‘and I am for ever meeting him in passages or the garden or face to face on the stairs and each time I shudder more …’
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The Queen’s Munshi was described by the Household as ‘repulsive’ and ‘disagreeable’. Even Henry Ponsonby described him and his relatives as the ‘Black brigade’, forcing the Queen to decree that the word ‘black’ was not to be used with reference to the Munshi and the other Indians.

Lady Curzon, wife of the Viceroy, while on a visit to London, made a few deductions about the Household and the Munshi. She wrote to her husband six months after the Munshi had been banished: ‘The Munshi bogie which had frightened all the
household at Windsor for many years proved a ridiculous farce, as the poor man had not only given up
all
his letters but even the photos signed by the Queen and had returned to India like a whipped hound.’ She also missed the presence of the Indian servants and wrote: ‘All the Indian servants have gone back so that now there is no Oriental picture and queerness at court.’
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Lady Lytton, widow of the former Indian Viceroy Lord Lytton and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, was also perhaps one of the few to be fairly sympathetic to the Munshi. Her granddaughter, Mary Lutyens, later edited her diaries and concluded:

Though one can understand that the Munshi was disliked, as favourites nearly always are, it is difficult to believe that he was ‘so personally repulsive’, for Queen Victoria was as sensitive as any woman to male attraction. One cannot help feeling that the repugnance with which he was regarded by the Household was based mostly on snobbery and colour prejudice. There were few English people in those days who would sit down at table with an Indian were he not a Prince.
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The Munshi was certainly no Prince. He aspired to be a nawab, was proud of the decorations that the Queen bestowed on him and soon became incredibly wealthy, but his low birth and lack of formal education did not win him friends from the upper classes.

Looked down upon by Indian Princes like Sir Pertab, the Maharajah of Jodhpur, and alienated from the other Indian attendants, who were jealous of him, he too cut a lonely figure in the Court, with only the Queen by his side. Their last moments together on that January morning in Osborne, as the Munshi stood praying over the Queen’s coffin, captured a tender story. While the King had summoned the Munshi at the very end to pay his respects to the Queen, purely because he disliked him so vehemently, his action only ensured that the Munshi became the last person to see the Queen alone before the coffin was closed. Inadvertently, Edward VII had scripted the perfect ending.

The Viceroy’s office in Calcutta was flooded with mail. The Queen’s death had led to a clamour for a memorial for her. Lord Curzon wrote to Hamilton that the scores of letters he was
getting from the native societies or individuals all referred to the late Queen as ‘mother’. He was beginning to realise just how much Queen Victoria meant to her Indian subjects.

‘They truly loved her as a mother, even more than they revered her as a Queen,’ he wrote.
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‘All India is seething with a desire to raise some sort of memorial.’ The Viceroy felt the memorial should be some sort of building or structure on a ‘sufficiently noble scale’ that would possess the requisite connections with the Queen’s reign and personality. He felt a central gallery could house the relics of the momentous crises through which the Empire had passed, and capture the ‘thrilling scenes and drastic incidents both of war and peace and the famous men by whom it has been served’. A statue – paid for by public subscription at the time of the Diamond Jubilee – could be placed in the front of the hall.

Curzon energetically set about raising funds for the memorial and addressed a large gathering in the Town Hall in Calcutta on 6 February 1901. He recalled the Queen’s great love for India ‘as no other monarch from a motherland had done’, and said the fifteen Governor Generals who had served under her were witness to this love.

The role of Karim in the Queen’s life also proved an effective fund-raiser for Curzon. The Viceroy told the gathered crowds: ‘As we know, she learned the Indian language when already advanced in years. She was never unattended by Indian servants, and we have read that they were entrusted with the last sorrowful office of watching over her body after death.’ Curzon did not name the man who had helped the Queen learn Hindustani and brought her closer to India. Karim was not invited to the function, though funds were being raised on the basis of what he had achieved.

The Viceroy held forth on the Queen’s love for India. He pointed out that in her two Jubilee processions she had decreed that the Indian Princes, and the pick of her Indian soldiers, should ride in her train. He said:

There are many of those Princes, who could testify to the interest she showed in them, to the gracious welcome which she always extended to them when in England, and to the messages of congratulations or sympathy which they often received from her own hand. But it was not to the rich or titled alone that she was
gracious. She was equally a mother to the humble and the poor, Hindu and Mahomedan, man and woman, the orphan and the widow, the outcaste and the destitute. She spoke to them all in the simple language that came straight from her heart and went straight to theirs. And these are the reasons why all India is in mourning today.

The very qualities in the Queen that the Household and the Indian Office had despaired of during her reign were now being used to appeal to the Indians and get them to donate. Barely a few months ago, Curzon had expressed his annoyance at the fuss made over the Maharajah of Kapurthala by the Queen and the fact that she had invited him to Balmoral. ‘It is hopeless for me to endeavour to take a strong line about the unworthy and dissolute members of the princely class, if they receive encouragement and compliance from the Queen at home,’ he had written angrily to Hamilton in November 1900. ‘I am afraid that every Indian prince, whatever his character or personality is invested with a sort of halo in HM’s eyes, and so strong are her sentimental feelings about the matter that I have not of course ventured to say anything about it in writing to her.’
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He had also complained to Hamilton that: ‘At home every man with a turban, a sufficient number of jewels, and black skin is mistaken for a miniature Akbar, and becomes the darling of drawing rooms, the honoured guests of municipalities and the hero of newspapers.’
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Neither had the Household approved of her retinue of Indian servants and her closeness to the Munshi and the trust she placed in him, but these were of no consequence now that the Queen was dead. The fund-raising appeal for her memorial had to rely principally on her love for India and the Indians. Despite a severe famine in India, the cash flowed in. The Maharajah of Gwalior pledged Rs 10 lakhs (Rs 1 million), the Maharajah of Kashmir pledged Rs 15 lakhs (Rs 1.5 million), and the Maharajah of Jaipur pledged Rs 4 lakhs (Rs 400,000) to famine relief and Rs 5 lakhs (Rs 500,000) to the memorial fund.

So quickly were the funds flowing in that a cut-off premium was set at Rs 1 lakh (Rs 100,000) for further donations, though the large amounts already accepted were retained. India was welling with emotion at the Queen’s death and the native Princes
and the principalities were all prepared to stretch themselves for a memorial in her name.

Meanwhile, in London, the fund-raising efforts for a memorial were not going half as well and the King appealed to Indian Princes to bankroll the English memorial. This led to a clash with the Viceroy and Curzon decided to put his foot down, saying the Indian funds should be kept for the Indian memorial. By the end of February the Viceroy had collected Rs 1.6 million from the native Princes, and by March this figure had reached Rs 2.3 million or nearly £170,000.

‘The Indian Empire is held by the British crown, partly by the justice and sanity of our administration, partly by personal loyalty to the Sovereign,’ Curzon wrote to Hamilton. ‘No Sovereign will be well advised who does not extend to the uttermost the influence of the latter factor.’
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Ever since the death of the Queen, the Viceroy had found himself locked in argument with the King and the India Office over what he thought was the excessive exploitation of the native Princes. He vehemently objected to the proposal by the India Office that the Indian Princes be asked to pay their way to attend the King’s Coronation. He had begun to realise how important the goodwill that the Queen had enjoyed was to the Empire and he did not want the new King rocking it. He also objected to the fact that Indians were being asked to pay for the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught to India, and asked Hamilton whether he thought it was ‘possible or practicable to make us pay for our Royal guests whom we did not invite, but who offered themselves here, at the very moment that you are declining to pay for the Indian guests whom you specially invited to England.’
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Instead of the Princes travelling to England at considerable expense to themselves, Curzon felt it was better to hold a grand Coronation Durbar in India which could be attended by the native chiefs. He received the permission to do so, and the Durbar was held in Delhi between December 1902 and January 1903. Curzon took personal interest in everything, from the setting down of the train track and the design of the plaster to the position of the flower beds. A local newspaper reported: ‘Fifty-six native Indian chiefs arrived in an elephant procession with the Duke and Duchess of Connaught acting as representatives for the King. Curzon spoke for 29 minutes and had to speak slowly as there were 13,000 people in the arena.’