CALCUTTA : A Poem, by an Ingenious Gent

(to be interwoven by and with the contributions of a still more Ingenious Gent)

1

While George, One More, and yet Another; sat
On England's throne—thick-skulled, or mad, or fat—
The merchants flocked to harvest golden grain
From sweated labour on this sweltering plain,
And since the Law is never absent long
From any place where bribes and graft belong,
Soon the forensic wig and legal wit
Jointly astound the rude Calcutta cit,
And soon there tower above the meaner fry,
Two figures like the sons of Anak high:
Chambers and Jones now legal shoulders rub,
Talking of London, Garrick, and 'The Club'.
To Bengal, almost then the whole world's end
They came, who shared Sam Johnson as a friend.
Often they'd heard those ponderous periods roll,
To castigate some poor presumptuous soul,
Who, venturing to contradict, soon lay
Stunned by a phrase that knocked his wits away.
In Jones the lawyer and the scholar meet—
Pundits and pleaders for his claims compete,
He'll quote you Blackstone, or the Ramayana,
And talk of Torts—or argue for Nirvana.

Still the faint savour of the period lingers,
Our mind caressing with its urbane fingers,
And so we feel, as down the streets we stroll
Calcutta has an eighteenth-century soul.
Despite the shabbiness, there's still the pride
That can the Goth and untaught boor deride—
The reasoned view, the philosophic mind
We seek so often, and so rarely find—
If in Calcutta these are quite as rare
As in the Mile End Road, or Berkeley Square,
Yet something still remains to touch our heart,
The architect with his enduring art
Has graced Calcutta with Palladian themes.
Exiled, but dreaming still Vitruvian dreams,
Lieutenant Agg of Royal Engineers
Found he had time for two diverse careers
And sometimes left his pontoons in the lurch
To rush off and design the city church,
Till Warren Hastings the foundation lays
And portico'd St John's proclaims his praise.

Across Dalhousie Square how graceful stands
St Andrews! where Geneva gown and bands
Make clear to all that here's no pagan popery,
Nor whining Methodism and soft-soapery
Nor yet the Church of England, bland and Broad,
But worship of the good old dour Scots Lord.
Poor Major Forbes (who fell for Pugin's guile
And talked of aumbries, and The Pointed Style)
With lots of cash from pious merchants' pockets
Built the Cathedral, full of quirks and crockets,
In, as the guide tells in its choice narrations
"The Indo-Gothic style with variations".

2

To view 'this classic' in its strangest flower
And spend a charming melancholy hour,
Come now with us and take an evening stroll
And make Old Park Street Cemetery our goal,
Much praised by Summerson, and all the clev-
Er young men who write in the Arch Rev,
How Betjeman's pen, and Piper's curious brush
Would catch the moment when the evening hush
Descends upon the Cemetery! The gloom
Of twilight gathers round each classic tomb.
Now is mortality made still more solemn,
Deep-etched the shade of architrave and column;
The ponderous pyramids, the vaulted domes
Where bats and night-fowl make their dismal homes,
Now huddle close in fearful serried ranks,
Wreathed in the vapour from contiguous tanks,
The eye can scare descry the pious screed
Graved deep for all posterity to read,
Yet glimpses darkly, in some dreary grot
A statue by by the younger Westmacott.

Crouching upon the jutting pediment,
The monkey tribe, like fiends by Satan sent
To catch some dead late merchant's wandering ghost
Scream shrill abuse and make their chattering boast.
Great bats go swooping through the mirky air
While on the ground dank toads hop everywhere.
In short, here all the atmosphere complete
Has got Otranto and Udolpho beat;
Blair, with 'The Grave', now takes a a second place,
And Young's 'Night Thoughts' can hardly show their face.

But yet is there, in these surroundings drear,
One spot where falls the sentimental tear,
Where by Rose Aylmer's tomb we pause and hand a
Heart-felt bouquet to Walter Savage Landor,
Who, loving her, to cheat pale Death's designs,
Made her immortal in eight yearning lines.

3

Here in the shadow of the pipal trees
Victorian merchants took their ample ease,
Ionic porticos verandas graced
And classic pediments proclaim their taste.
Roman in mould the British Empire stood
Approved by God in condescending mood,
But now the stucco cracks, the paint is peeling,
Rats gnaw the floor and fungus stains the ceiling:
Death's in the sky and ruin's in the air—
The houses (and the Empire) need repair.

4

Facing the Maidan with its awesome doors
Ghost of Victoria Street, there stands 'The Stores'.
Here the pale memsahib, languid from the heat,
Chaffer for marmalade or potted meat:
Sleep-walking in their Anglo-Indian dream
Choose a new topee or a sun-tan cream.
As fish in tanks, to long confinement grown,
Move in a queer dim cosmos of their own.

5

A famous Temple, raised to Printer's Ink—
The priests that serve it, Thacker Sons & Spink.
The Sacred Books are Kipling's, every one
In all editions that were ever done.
Here 'Old Shikari's' books are really bought
And not just pulped without a second thought.
'With Rod and Gun' in every clime abounds
And 'Ten Years' Hunting with the Poona Hounds'.
Some sex-stuff, too, to titillate the coarse
Scorbutic subaltern of Probyn's Horse;
Phrase-books to teach him how, in Hindustan,
To curse his servants like a gentleman.
Shamefacedly conscious they should not be there
A strayed MacNeice or Auden makes one stare
Wondering in what Calcutta home just now
They think that Eliot's a frightful wow,
And at what dinner tables wild applause
Is given when you quote 'The Orators'.

6

There's no disputing, as the streets you roam,
Here anthropology begins at home—
Half-holy tramps, a wholly sacred cow:
It's like a talkie of 'The Golden Bough'.
See mingle the tall turbaned Punjabis
With most revolting aborigines
Plaid-skirted Muslims quickly hustle past
The twice-born Brahmin of the highest caste
Proud of his sacred lock, he knows he'll meet
No one his peer in this or any street.
Some shops are stinking cupboards in the wall
In which the owner scarce has room to crawl,
Seated cross-legged the glossy leaf he smears
With betel nut that satisfies and cheers
In some mysterious way the Indian taste—
Mouth, lips and teeth stained with this florid paste
He spits with gusto and a half-turned head
Splashing the pavement with true Indian Red,
And one begins to realise what's meant
By talk of of the bright-coloured Orient.
With some vast burden perched upon his head
The coolie pads along with quiet quick tread
While beggars ply their loathsome avocations
With loud and pious ululations.

7

Our Muse will never, since we've known her, try
To make the slightest effort if she's dry
And feels that all the talk of pen and ink
Is hooey if you don't get food and drink,
We don't deny the soundness of her views—
So let's go places with our wanton Muse.
Where shall we dine—Great Eastern or 'The Grand'?
(Twin palaces of India's coral strand).
A cynic told us once that, twixt the two
He made distinction which he swore was true—
'Across the restaurant floor ran', (so he'd tell),
'Beetles in one, in t'other, rats as well'.
The food is good, though, but there's not a chance
To drink with it the gladdening wines of France:
The Burra Sahibs, to drown their business worries
Swill burra pegs down throats well tanned by curries
And quite impervious to the subtler savours
Of wines with all their civilising flavours.
If etiquette demand that wine be taken
They drink the product of some godforsaken
Colonial vine that can at best provide a
Bogus Sauterne that tastes like sweetish cider,
Hock like—we wouldn't write, and scarcely think
What that tastes like; and Médoc, pure red ink.
So if we're wise we'll stick to gin and lime
And gin again, and so to closing time.
One minor bar that here we'd like to mention,
Gave us much solace in our forced detention
Beyond the seas, and helped us to survive—
And that's the Victory Bar (or Joint, or Dive)
Here as the sunset lit up Park Street's length,
We sipped our drinks, and drinking, gained some strength
To talk nostalgically of peace-time days
Or criticise our senior colleagues' ways.

between 1943 and 1945

My Dear Palmes,

Here are my miserable and wholly inadequate contributions to that august and brilliant poem you have written in greater part. I hope they can be worked in appropriately, with clever 'bridge passages' by you to cover the joins. Are there any other bits I said I'd write and haven't? I make my bits about 180 lines all told.

Trader Horne tells me you have all been moved into squalor, save poor Duncan, now incarcerated with the AOC and doubtless muttering, like Lewis, 'Qu'est-ce que j'ai fait d'être si aimé?'

I can't write letters these days. Delhi dries up everything in one. But I wish you could come up here and help to cheer this great suburban dump.

What about pictures for the Poem? If you could get it typed out in its entirety I could concoct some and the whole could then be circulated on a limited distribution. Really of course Thacker's should print it free for us in return for our advt. for them in the text.