The Indian Equator Read online

  Title Page

  THE INDIAN EQUATOR

  Mark Twain’s India Revisited

  By

  Ian Strathcarron

  Publisher Information

  First published in 2013 by

  Signal Books Limited

  36 Minster Road

  Oxford

  OX4 1LY

  www.signalbooks.co.uk

  Digital Edition converted and published by

  Andrews UK Limited 2013

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Copyright © F&J Productions Ltd, 2013

  The right of Ian Strathcarron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. The whole of this work, including all text and illustrations, is protected by copyright. No parts of this work may be loaded, stored, manipulated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher, on behalf of the copyright owner.

  Prologue

  “Dear me! It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it.”

  Mark Twain, Following the Equator

  As noted below in a series of clippings from The New York Times, Mark Twain’s publishing company was declared bankrupt in 1894. Although he was under no legal obligation to pay off any of the company’s debts of $250,000 - about $4,000,000 in today’s money - he felt a moral obligation to pay them in full.

  By then fifty-eight years old, his plan was to raise funds by two means: a worldwide lecture tour and a subsequent book about the tour. The one hundred-date lecture tour, which took him across North America, to Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, South Africa and England, lasted from July 1895 to July 1896. On tour he took extensive notes, which in late 1896 and early 1897 in London he turned into the book. It was published as Following the Equator in New York and More Tramps Abroad in London in November 1897. The mission was successful and a year later all his debts were repaid. >Mark Twain, 1894<

  Two years later he wrote, “How I did loathe that journey around the world! - except the sea-part and India.” Although he was only in India for just over two months his exploits and observations there take up forty percent of the book - and by common consent are by far the best and liveliest part of it.

  He loved India and its exotic splash of humanity then; I’m sure he would love it still; I certainly did as I followed him around that extraordinary country, truly a country without padding.

  The New York Times

  May 10, 1894

  CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.’S AFFAIRS

  The Liabilities Placed at About $80,000 - “Mark Twain” Sails for Europe

  Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain) senior partner of the publishing house of Charles L. Webster & Co., sailed for Europe yesterday on the steamship New York. Before his departure Mr. Clemens held an extended conference with Bainbridge Colby, the assignee of the company. Later, Mr. Colby made the following statement:

  “The liabilities of the firm will not exceed $80,000. The largest claim against the company is one for $25,000. There is no truth whatever in the report that Mrs. U. S. Grant has a large sum of money due here on the Grant “Memoirs.” Her claim will not exceed a few hundred dollars. I am convinced there is only one way to realize on the assets of the Webster Company, and that is to sell them in the usual course of business. I still have hopes that some plan may be perfected which will make it possible to sell the stock which is on hand without resorting to such a costly alternative as an assignee’s sale.

  “Mr. Clemens feels keenly the condition in which his affairs are involved, and whatever the result of the plan which he has adopted for the working up of the assets and the continuation of contracts, I do not think that he will consider himself relieved of the moral obligation to repay his creditors.”

  Mr. Colby said Mr. Clemens sailed for Europe to be absent indefinitely. He has a number of important engagements abroad, but will return at once should there by any need here for his presence.

  The New York Times

  September 19, 1894

  BUSINESS TROUBLES

  The schedules of Charles L. Webster & Co., book publishers at 67 Fifth Avenue, in which firm Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”) and Frederick J. Hall are the partners, were filed yesterday. They show liabilities of $94,191, nominal assets of $122,657, actual assets of $69,164, less $15,000 hypothecated to the United States National Bank, and net actual assets of $54,164.

  There are more than 200 creditors scattered all over the United States. Among the creditors are: Mount Morris Bank, $29,500; United States National Bank, $15,000; George Barrow, Skaneateles, N. Y., $15,420; S. D. Warren & Co., Boston, $6,332; Jenkins & McCowan, $5,363; Thomas Russell & Son, $4,623. There is due for royalties: Estate of U. S. Grant, $2,216; Col. F. D. Grant, $727; estate of Gen. P. H. Sheridan, St. Paul, Minn., $374; Mrs. E. B. Custer, London, $1,825.

  The New York Times

  July 12, 1895

  EXAMINING MARK TWAIN’S ASSETS

  Supplementary Proceedings on a Judgment Resulting from Failure of C. L. Webster & Co. - Mr. Clemens in Poor Health

  Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain,) the humorist, was yesterday examined in supplementary proceedings at the office of his lawyers, 40 Wall Street. Mr. Clemens was a partner in the publishing house of Charles L. Webster. The firm was organized in 1885, failed in 1890, was reorganized, and failed again in April 1894, with assets of $25,000, and liabilities of $80,000. The firm published Grant’s Memoirs, and made a success of it, but in the late business depression the firm became embarrassed.

  The examination of Mark Twain yesterday was upon a judgment against him and Frederick J. Hall, another member of the firm, that Thomas Russell & Sons, printers of 34 New Chambers Street, obtained in the sum of $5,046.83. Upon the return of the execution unsatisfied, Justice Patterson issued an order for the examination of Messrs. Clemens and Hall.

  Mr. Clemens returned from Europe about six weeks ago and went to Elmira. He was there served with the order for the examination, and came here yesterday morning.

  Bainbridge Colby, assignee of the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., said that Mr. Clemens had lost all of his money trying to keep the firm solvent, and that in its failure he had lost everything.

  When the firm needed money and Mr. Clemens had no more to give it, Mrs. Clemens made loans, until, at the time of the failure, it owed her $70,000. For this she has never made a claim against the firm’s assets.

  With the exception of Russell & Sons, the creditors of the firm have taken no action against Mr. Clemens, knowing that Mr. Clemens will do what he can to pay them in full.

  At the time of the failure, Mr. Clemens became ill through worrying over his business affairs, and has not yet fully regained his health. If he regains his health sufficiently he will start West. He expects to leave Vancouver Aug. 16, on a lecture tour around the world, that he contemplates making.

  The New York Times

  August 17, 1895

  MARK TWAIN’S PLAN OF SETTLEMENT

  Samuel L. Clemens Proposed to Pay the Indebtedness of His Firm with Proceeds of Lectures and Book

  VANCOUVER, B. C., Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain,) who is leaving for Australia, made a signed statement today concerning the purposes of his worldwide lecture tour and his business troubles, in part, as follows:

  “I intend the lectures, as well as the property, for the
creditors. The law recognizes no mortgage on a man’s brain, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the rules of insolvency and start free again for himself; but I am not a business man; and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less than a hundred cents on the dollar, and its debts never outlaw.

  “I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm, whose capital I furnished. If the firm had prospered, I should have expected to collect two-thirds of the profit. As it is, I expect to pay all the debts. My partner has no resources, and I do not look for assistance from him. By far the largest single creditor of this firm is my wife, whose contributions in cash, from her private means, have nearly equaled the claims of all the others combined. In satisfaction of this great and just claim, she has taken nothing, except to avail herself of the opportunity of retaining control of the copyrights of my books, which, for many easily understood reasons, of which financial ones are the least, we do not desire to see in the hands of strangers. On the contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the obligations due to the rest.

  “The present situation is that the wreckage of the firm, together with what money I can scrape together with my wife’s aid, will enable me to pay the other creditors about 50 per cent of their claims. It is my intention to ask them to accept that as a legal discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other 50 per cent. as fast as I can earn it. From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I am confident that, if I live I can pay off the last debt within four years, after which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and unencumbered start in life.

  “I do not enjoy the hard travel and broken rest inseparable from lecturing, and, if it had not been for the imperious moral necessity or paying these debts, which I never contracted but which were accumulated on the faith of my name by those who had a presumptive right to use it, I should never have taken to the road at my time of life. I could have supported myself comfortably by writing, but writing is too slow for the demands that I have to meet. Therefore I have begun to lecture my way around the world. I am going to Australia, India and South Africa, and next year hope to make a tour of the great cities of the United States. In my preliminary run through the smaller cities on the northern route, I have round a reception the cordiality of which has touched my heart and made me feel how small a thing money is in comparison with friendship.

  “I meant, when I began, to give my creditors all the benefit of this, but I begin to feel that I am gaining something from it, too, and that my dividends, if not available for banking purposes, may be even more satisfactory than theirs.”

  Names

  I am using “Mark Twain” throughout the book rather than dipping in and out of Sam Clemens because it was as Mark Twain that Sam Clemens made the Grand Tour of India.

  Accompanying him throughout were his wife of twenty-six years Livy and their twenty-two-year-old daughter Clara, only ever known as Mrs. and Miss Clemens, along with his tour manager, Carlyle G. Smythe[1] and bearer Satan. To simplify matters, when they are all together, I’ve called them “the Twain party”.

  I have mostly used the place names as found in Mark Twain’s time, although I also use Mumbai and Kolkata to refer to the modern-day cities. Bombay is still known as Bombay to many of its inhabitants anyway, some of whom point out that the main enthusiasts for the Mumbai version of Bombay are local politicians; by Bombaying the citizens do protest. Delhi is still Delhi, although in Twain’s time New Delhi had yet to be built; he was in what is now Old Delhi. Calcutta is now Kolkata but the Bengalis pronounce it somewhere in between so either version is easily accepted on the ground. Benares had yet to become Varanasi but the local people still call the Ganges front area, which was in Twain’s time most of the city, Benares. I found that while the sign on the front of the train said “Varanasi” most passengers reckoned they were going to Benares. Cawnpore has become Kanpur and hasn’t improved with the name change. Baroda is now called Vadodara but again is still widely known as Baroda, not least by those that live there. Lastly, Poona has become Pune but is still pronounced Poona.

  The great Indian revolt against British rule that occurred in the summer of 1857 is known to the British as “The Indian Mutiny” and to the Indians as “The First War of Independence”. Neither is really satisfactory: the former is euphemistic and the latter overblown. I’ve called it the Sepoy Uprising because that is what is was, an uprising by Indian soldiers, known as sepoys,[2] against their British colonial rulers. Although the uprising happened 39 years before Mark Twain’s Grand Tour, the heroic legends arising from it and its aftermath had a big effect on him and on the British Raj side of India that he saw.

  Lastly, the word Raj[3] and the concept of India. Strictly speaking, the Raj refers to the direct rule of India by the British Crown from the Sepoy Uprising to Independence, so for the ninety years from 1857 to 1947. For one hundred years before 1857 India was ruled - amazingly enough - by a private stock company, the Honourable East India Company. Nowadays most Indians use the word Raj to describe the whole period of British rule and I’ve followed suit.

  India as we know her today did not really exist as one unified country until the takeover of Goa from the Portuguese in 1961. At the time of Mark Twain’s Grand Tour “India” included what we now call India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Nepal and Burma or Myanmar, and was actually a collection of 560 princely states under British “protection” with the land in between them under direct British control. For the sake of simplicity I’ve called the whole area he visited “India”.

  Money

  There were rupees (Rs.) in India then and there are rupees here now. Like the place names the text has kept with the original values.

  It is always troublesome to compare values over the centuries even without the complication of calculating the changes across currencies. However from Following the Equator, Livy’s letters and historical value websites we can piece together some clues:

  Mark Twain paid his general factotum Rs. 30 a month, which he noted was 27 cents a day or $8 a month. That was “a princely sum for the native switchman on a railway and the native servant in a private family get only Rs. 7 per month, and the farm-hand only 4; $1.75 and $1 per month respectively.”[4]

  This makes Rs. 1 worth US$0.25 at 1896 values, or about US$28 today. Nowadays Rs. 50 is worth a dollar.

  1 Carlyle Greenwood Smythe was 41 at the time of the India tour. Trained as a journalist, after a brief spell in Europe editing the Belgian Times in Brussels he returned to Australia to inherit his father’s lecture management business. Also in their stable were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Annie Besant and Captain Amundsen, amongst others.

  2 From the Urdu sepahi (soldier).

  3 From the Hindi raj (reign).

  4 Like now Westerners were always charged well over the odds, firstly because they could afford it, secondly because it was expected - and as the cost of living is so low most find it fun spreading the wealth around.

  Part One

  “Bewitching Color, Enchanting Color”

  Bombay

  I knew we were going to find someone better than Satan. Mark Twain’s Satan had come to him highly recommended, as indeed had the equally highly recommended bearer before him, the poor old butterfingered and confused Manuel.

  A bearer - or two - was considered essential for all pre-World War 2 travelers in India and every visitor’s first task was the hiring of one. Thus on the Twain party’s second day in Bombay, 19 January 1896, the hapless Manuel was waiting to be interviewed in the lobby of Watson’s Hotel in downtown Bombay. Mark Twain was feeling ill and had confined himself to bed to starve out the bronchial infection he had picked up on the rust bucket steamship Rosetta[1] as she sailed north across the equator from Ceylon. He had six days in which to recover before the first of his three Talks in Bombay, Talks which needed him to be on stag
e, alone and unamplified, for up to an hour and a half. Twain’s wife Livy, his daughter Clara and tour manager Carlyle G. Smythe had left him well wrapped and in peace in their suite of rooms at Watson’s Hotel. On their way out they saw the hapless Manuel waiting in the lobby and sent him up to be interviewed.

  As Twain wrote,

  ...the bearer - a native man-servant - is a person who should be selected with some care, because as long as he is in your employ he will be about as near to you as your clothes. He is messenger, valet, chambermaid, table-waiter, lady’s maid, courier - he is everything.

  In India your day may be said to begin with the bearer’s knock on the bedroom door, accompanied by a formula of, words - a formula which is intended to mean that the bath is ready. It doesn’t really seem to mean anything at all. But that is because you are not used to bearer English. You will presently understand.

  A tall, stooped, rather pathetic old Indian man stood at the end of Mark Twain’s bed and touched his forehead in salute.

  “Manuel,” said the patient, “you are evidently Indian, but you seem to have a Spanish name when you put it all together. How is that?”

  Manuel looked perplexed. “Name, Manuel. Yes, master,” he replied placidly.

  “I know; but how did you get the name?”

  “Oh, yes, I suppose. Think happen so. Father same name, not mother.”

  “Well - then - how - did - your - father - get - his name?” asked Twain with early signs of the exasperation that was to follow.

  “Oh, he Christian - Portygee; live in Goa; I born Goa; mother not Portygee, mother native-high-caste Brahmin - Coolin Brahmin; highest caste; no other so high caste. I high-caste Brahmin, too. Christian, too, same like father; high-caste Christian Brahmin, master - Salvation Army.”