Much is enthusiastically talked about the use of quarter-tones in Indian music. I listened attentively at Lucknow in the hope of hearing some new and extraordinary kind of melody based on these celebrated fractions. But I listened in vain. The scales in which Indian music is written are of quite familiar types. The pentatonic or black-note scale, for example, seems to be a favourite; and any one learned in ancient European music would probably find no difficulty in labelling with their modal names the various melodies of India. The quarter-tone makes its appearance only in the slurred transition from one note of the fundamental scale to another. The sentimental tzigane violinist and the jazz-band player make just as free a use of quarter-tones as do the Indians, and in precisely the same way.
LUCKNOW
There was an All-India Art Exhibition at Lucknow as well as an All-India Musical Conference. Some of the pictures were ancient, some contemporary. The old were not conspicuously interesting specimens, the modern, I regret to say, were incredibly bad. I do not exaggerate when I say that there was no contemporary exhibitor at Lucknow who showed the smallest trace of artistic ability. I can only suppose that, for one reason or another, those Indians who have talent do not become artists. Of the men exhibiting at Lucknow, most, I noticed, were teachers in Government Art Schools and therefore the last people in the world one would expect to be artists. The others were mostly patriotic amateurs who thought that modern India ought to have a national art of its own and had set out to create it. The intention was laudable. But in art, alas, intentions and high moral purpose count for very little. It is the talent that matters, and talent was precisely the thing that none of them possessed.
LUCKNOW
At the Lucknow hotel the coffee, instead of being undrinkable in the familiar Britannic way, was made of chicory. I sipped, and instantaneously all France was present to me—the whole of it at once and through twenty years of history. The Reims of last year with the Chamonix of 1907, Grenoble before the War, Fontainebleau in 1925, Paris at every date from the opening of the Edwardian era onwards. Within its own particular Gallic sphere that drop of liquid chicory was as miraculously efficacious as the Last Trump. The dead sprang to life, were visible and spoke—in French. There was a resurrection of French landscapes and French monuments. Forgotten incidents re-enacted themselves for me, against a trench background: dead pleasures and miseries, dead shames and elations experienced within the boundaries of France, shot up, like so many Jacks-in-the-box from under suddenly lifted tombstones. I finished my breakfast in France and in the past, and walked abroad. At the end of remembered and phantasmal boulevards loomed up the relics of the Indian Mutiny and the gimcrack palaces of the Kings of Oudh. Dark-faced and turbanned, an Indian policeman walked clean through the tenuous ghosts of friends and lovers.
Gradually the resurrected died again; the tombstones closed on graves that were once more tenanted. The present had conquered the past; at an impact from outside the inward world had fallen to pieces. I addressed myself to the enjoyment of immediate pleasures. But I looked forward to to-morrow’s breakfast; the chicory, I felt sure, would repeat the miracle. These resuscitators of the past, these personal Last Trumps may be relied on, if they are not abused, to produce a constant and invariable effect. There is a certain tune (by Sousa, I think) which I can never hear without remembering my convalescence at school after an attack of mumps. I remember myself looking out of a window, and humming the tune, interminably, for hours, feeling as I did so profoundly, but most enjoyably, miserable—goodness knows why.
And then, still more mysteriously moving, there is a certain smell, occasionally mingled with the smoke of autumn bonfires; a smell that is due to the combustion of some exotic rubbish, but rarely mingled with the ordinary muck, and whose identity I have never been able to trace; a strange, sweetish smell, like the unhealthy caricature of a scent; a smell that every time I sniff it reminds me urgently and agonisingly of something in my past life, some cardinal incident, some crisis, some turning point, which I know to be profoundly significant, but which I am chronically unable to recall. What is more irritating than to find a knot in one’s handkerchief, to be reminded that the commission was desperately important, and to find oneself incapable of remembering what it was? I have a feeling that if only I could remember what that bonfire smell reminded me of, I should be perceptibly nearer to solving the problem of the universe. But my best efforts have always proved unavailing. I have a fear that I shall never remember.
DELHI
The Viceroy’s speech at the opening of the Legislative Assembly was mainly official and expository. But it contained a few more moving passages of the few-well-chosen-words variety. His voice trembling—a trifle studiedly—with suppressed emotion, His Excellency professed himself “grieved” that the Indian response to Lord Birkenhead’s “generous gesture” (I think those were the words) had been so inadequate. I have forgotten whether he actually went on to speak about England’s self-appointed task of preparing India for self-government. All that I can be certain of is that the overtones of his speech were loud with the White Man’s Burden.
There was a time when I should have preferred to this rather snuffling enunciation of pious hopes and high ideals a more brutally “realistic” outburst in the manner of Mussolini. But that was long ago. I have outgrown my boyish admiration for political cynicism and am now an ardent believer in hypocrisy. The political hypocrite admits the existence of values higher than those of immediate national, party, or economic interest. Having made the admission he cannot permit his actions to be too glaringly inconsistent with his professed principles. With him there are always “better feelings” to be appealed to. But the realist, the political cynic, has no “better feelings.”
A Mussolinian Viceroy would simply say: “We are here primarily for our own profit, not for that of the inhabitants of the country. We have immense force at our disposal and we propose to use it ruthlessly in order to keep what we have won. In no circumstances will we give away any of our power.” To such a man it is obviously useless to talk about democracy, self-determination, the brotherhood of man. He does not profess to feel the slightest respect for any of these ideas; why should he act as though he did? A politician who professes to believe in humanitarianism can always be reminded of his principles. He may not sincerely or thoroughly believe in them—though no man professes principles in which he has no belief whatever—but having made professions, he is afraid of acting in a manner too wildly inconsistent with them.
The more cant there is in politics, the better. Cant is nothing in itself; but attached to even the smallest quantity of sincerity, it serves like a nought after a numeral, to multiply whatever of genuine goodwill may exist. Politicians who cant about humanitarian principles find themselves sooner or later compelled to put those principles into practice—and far more thoroughly than they had ever originally intended. Without political cant there would be no democracy. Pecksniff, however personally repulsive, is the guardian of private morality. And if it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay—in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
DELHI
Re-reading the preceding paragraph, I wonder why I wrote it. No cant, no democracy: therefore, let there be cant. The implication of course is that democracy is something excellent, an ideal to be passionately wished for. But after all is democracy really desirable? European nations certainly do not seem to be finding it so at the moment. And even self-determination is not so popular as it was. There are plenty of places in what was once the Austrian Empire where the years of Hapsburg tyranny are remembered as a golden age, and the old bureaucracy is sincerely regretted. And what is democracy, anyhow? Can it be said that government by the people exists anywhere, except perhaps in Switzerland? Certainly, the English parliamentary system cannot be described as government by the people. It is a government by oligarchs for the people and with the people’s occasional advice. Do I mean anything whatever when I say that democracy is a good thing? Am I expressing a reasoned opinion? Or do I merely repeat a meaningless formula by force of habit and because it was drummed into me at an early age? I wonder. And that I am able to wonder with such a perfect detachment is due, of course, to the fact that I was born in the upper-middle, governing class of an independent, rich, and exceedingly powerful nation. Born an Indian or brought up in the slums of London, I should hardly be able to achieve so philosophical a suspense of judgment.
DELHI
The Legislative Assembly passes a great many resolutions. The Government acts on about one in every hundred of them. Indians are not very enthusiastic about their budding parliament. It is not, perhaps, to be wondered at. Indian politicians find it useful, I suppose, because they can talk more violently within the Chamber than without. The violent speeches are reported in the press. It is all good propaganda,
