As a daughter of the Viceroy, Lady Elisabeth Bruce, known in the family as Bessie, was in the highest echelon of the Fishing Fleet. She was pretty, modest, self-contained, helpful to her mother in her public duties and a companion to her father on his walks What made her unusual was a great power of observation, put to good use in the comprehensive diaries she kept from the moment she came out to India. The husband who eventually captured her heart was, in the best tradition of viceregal circles, one of His Ex’s household.
Bessie arrived in Bombay in January 1894, aged sixteen and a half. As her father, the 9th earl of Elgin, was the incoming Viceroy, they were received with much pomp and ceremony. Brought up in Scotland, Bessie was amazed by the contrast. ‘It is a new wonderful undreamt of land . . . a few minutes ago, along a scarlet carpet spread from the bungalow to the chief entrance [of Government House] passed a little procession. H[is] E[xcellency], supported on each side by two attendants dressed in scarlet, holding brass clubs; followed by Her E. in a low dress, with a man carrying a parasol over her head. She wore the tiara, the diamond necklace, two diamond bracelets, her diamond ring and the Fleur de Lys, on a plain black gown, which suited her very well.’
It was an effective introduction to the formality and grandeur that would henceforth surround the Elgins and the impressionable Bessie realised this at once – even in her private diary she refers to her father and mother as ‘His Ex.’ and ‘Her Ex.’, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to remember that she is talking of much-loved parents.
Before they set off for Calcutta, then the seat of government, there were visits, and a state banquet and reception. Bessie, still in the schoolroom at sixteen, did not attend but kept a watchful and admiring eye on the clothes. It was an era when in the evening silks and satins predominated, ‘jewels’ usually meant diamonds, and feathers, lace and flowers were the accepted accessories. Her mother ‘looked beautiful’ in a white silk dress with bunches of purple anemones, pearls and diamonds and Bessie’s young cousin, Elsie Bruce, wore ‘a bride’s white satin dress’.
Elsie was an unabashed member of the Fishing Fleet: before leaving England she had announced her intention of marrying within the year. She had come out as lady-in-waiting to the Vicereine. The Viceroy’s staff was of course much larger – a Military Secretary, a Medical Adviser and various ADCs, about four at a time, officers seconded from their regiments, with the honorary rank of captain, and a Private Secretary, a twenty-nine-year-old civil servant called Henry Babington Smith. He was a rising star; he was also extremely good-looking and, as Bessie was to learn later, a wonderful dancer.
The viceregal party arrived in Calcutta on 27 January 1894 to a huge reception, ‘troops, colours, a dazzling and most orderly crowd, from which came a kind of low buzzing that rolled on with the procession (the people here never shout, they only salaam and smile), shops were closed, every balcony crowded, the body guard and volunteers following H.E.s carriage rattling their swords . . .’. They were met by the outgoing Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, who led them through the marble halls with their chandeliers and busts of Roman emperors (captured from the French) but, regretting the absence of the electric light she was used to, Bessie noted that ‘there does not seem to be much likelihood of our having other light than parafine [sic] lamps and candles’.
A ceremony that deeply impressed this young Scots girl was the reviewing of the Bodyguard, the Viceroy’s personal corps, ‘at the beginning by daylight, at the end the lances were glittering in the moonbeams. It looked such a perfect little regiment, as divided into six columns, with the sergeants in front; they moved round their reviewing field, then passed in single file before His E.’s carriage, the first five officers with swords, which they lowered as a salute; the two British captains have a leopard skin over the saddle and have horse clothes beautifully embroidered in thick gold thread; they themselves have white helmets, & in every thing else resemble other soldiers; all officers’ horses have a red tassel underneath the chin. It was quite wonderful to see them keep in line so beautifully & manage their horses so well, when they had become impatient from waiting such a long time.’ Unfortunately, her father was very tired after long hours in Council and ‘his carriage being stationed under a tree, the mosquitoes fell upon him in droves’.
One of the Viceroy’s chief recreations was to go for long walks, often accompanied by Bessie and only marred by the standing regulation that a policeman had to accompany the Viceroy whenever he went for a walk. Fortunately, the officer concerned was thoughtful and empathetic: ‘such a nice man, who so entirely understands what a disagreeable thing it must be to be constantly dogged in this way that when we stand still, he hides behind a tree, or pretends to be near us by accident, in such a way that H.E. has said several times that he does not care how many policemen are behind him’.
An important feature of the household was the viceregal band, which played at dinner and at dances, and followed the Viceroy up to Simla when he moved there for the summer. Mercifully, rehearsals were conducted some way away; after the arrival of the Elgins the band began to practise playing reels.
Soon the hot weather began. By 2 March, with the heat increasing daily yet the routine remaining as rigid as ever, ‘when the gong rang, panting forms in muslin, flannelette or silk gathered in the Throne Room for luncheon, which is still supplied with roast beef and boiled puddings, like on a day of 0° at home . . .’. It was a relief to Bessie when, on the evening of 9 March, she set out on the thousand-mile train journey to Simla in the company of her two younger sisters, Christian and Veronica, two ADCs, their governess, a ladies’ maid, countless Indian servants and two dogs, arriving there three days later.
Bessie’s days in Simla were strictly organised. She worked with her governess and sisters in the schoolroom from eight until nine in the morning, followed by breakfast, then an outing, usually in rickshaws, from ten until half past eleven. After this there was more schoolroom work until 1.45; then came luncheon, more work from three until five, the end of the schoolroom day. In the evening the young ladies were taught tennis by the ADCs, with the rickshaw men as ball boys ‘who will on no account lend each other a ball and sometimes nearly fight’.
Sometimes the girls ‘had dinner with the gentlemen’ (the four young ADCs and Henry Babington Smith) and afterwards danced – reels, polkas, valses – ending up with the full curtsey they would have to make to their father on formal occasions. There were visits to The Retreat, the Viceroy’s weekend cottage in Mashobra, six miles from Simla and a thousand feet higher, in spring surrounded by banks of violets in the pine woods, wild roses and pale pink and white begonias. Here there were walks, scrambling over the rocks, more tennis and in the evenings teaching the ADCs the Scottish dances the Elgin family loved and in which the young men had to be proficient for the Simla Season about to begin.
After Simla, with its greater freedom, the viceregal household with the Government of India in its train returned to Calcutta, arriving on 15 December 1894. There were reviews, investitures, parades and a formal visit from the Maharaja of Mysore. ‘His Excellency looked very well in white silk stockings and white knickerbockers instead of trousers. Her Excellency stood beside him in dark blue velvet with her diamonds . . . all the dresses were like long dinner gowns; only one or two had court trains; very many had a veil and feathers.’
The relentless round continued, with entertaining, church parades, a garden party on 27 December and an evening party where H.E. and his hostess sat on a sofa on a dais ‘quite commanding everything, with their feet on a large tiger skin’. There was a fancy dress ball, a state ball, grand dinners at Government House every Thursday, as the heat gradually grew worse: on 19 March the garden party at Government House ‘fortunately did not last long as the rain began and there was a great deal of lightning all evening I hope a storm will come; it might clear away the smallpox which is so bad’.
Bessie was lucky enough to leave again for Simla on 22 March, staying en route at Lucknow, where ‘the mosquitoes were quite dreadful, they sing and buzz round one’s head all evening’, reaching Simla after sunset on 29 March, where it was very cold, followed by rain and thunder for the next few days. As the weather warmed, there were expeditions, the usual round of formal entertaining, dancing after dinner with the ADCs and Henry Babington Smith and, sometimes, games. ‘Mr B.S. played backgammon with me & I lost three times & went to bed. It is such a very nice game – he plays very well indeed.’ The summer was notable for the arrival of a primitive telephone service, beset with unlikely teething troubles – a bell that would not stop ringing at the other end, ‘ear tubes’ that did nothing but crackle and the need sometimes to shout at the top of one’s voice.
The days passed with their storms, mists, rain, brilliant sunshine, visits to Mashobra, walks, the household’s discovery that their servants were much better at using the telephone than they were themselves and, for Bessie, the planning, rehearsing and performing of an eighteenth-century gavotte with her sister, two friends and the male members of the household. There was also the incipient idea of a flower collection, that typical pastime of Victorian young ladies, which would have an unexpected outcome for Bessie.
They left Simla in late October 1895, returning to Calcutta via several states, travelling in the Viceroy’s special train. In the first coach, the Royal Saloon, sat H.E., in the second Royal Saloon were Bessie, her mother and an English maid, then came coaches devoted to dining and cooking, followed by those for the staff; in the final five carriages the first two were for the sixty-odd servants, the last three for luggage and horses. They wound up at Poona – more ceremony, parades, reviews and a grand ball – followed by another train journey to visit the Nizam of Hyderabad, supposed to have 800 wives, who gave a dinner for 360 in their honour.
Back in Calcutta, Bessie’s father finally succumbed to one of the illnesses that then abounded in India (classified by the viceregal doctor as a chill on the liver). Combined with the poor health of her mother, who had suffered from chronic fatigue, headaches and general malaise since arriving in India, this made for a depressing Christmas. Towards the end of January 1896, with both Excellencies still ill, they were ordered that universal Victorian panacea, ‘sea air’, in the form of a cruise on the SS Warren Hastings, leaving Bessie as the nominal hostess in Government House – a challenge indeed to an eighteen-year-old girl.
Fortunately (for Bessie) the death of Prince Henry of Battenburg, husband of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Beatrice, meant that Court mourning was announced soon after her first dinner party and this put an end to all formal entertaining – but did not prevent a visit to a museum with two friends and Henry Babington Smith. ‘Then we had tea in Mr B.S.’s room and he showed us his microscope which is a Christmas present. It is most interesting, & I do not at all like hearing it called a toy; it is a real instrument . . .’. A few days later she joined her parents on the Warren Hastings cruise; by the time of the final return to Calcutta in early February, her father had completely recovered; and on 27 March they left for Simla again. Here, for the first time, she danced at the state ball, though retiring from it early.
But the past two years had been so punctuated by illness of one sort or another, afflicting everyone from the Viceroy down, that sporadic sickness had come to be taken for granted. The ADCs suffered everything from sunburn, inflamed mosquito bites and injuries from polo and the newly fashionable sport of bicycle riding, to fevers of different sorts; the Vicereine was never really well and even the robust Bessie herself was sometimes under the weather. Finally, after another exhausting tour of the princely states, with its accompanying succession of formal dinners, hours watching parades and reviews and the entertainment of various worthy dignitaries, with the Vicereine newly pregnant and the Viceroy in poor health and with a broken finger, the viceregal party arrived back at Calcutta on 10 December 1896.
It heralded the most important year of Bessie’s life – a true Victorian courtship that concluded in a happy marriage.
The Calcutta Season began well for her, with a new ADC, Lord Burford (‘very shy’), at Government House to greet them. At first, Lord Burford seemed to hold the inside track. When he was in waiting for the first time Bessie found him ‘very pleasant to speak to’. He told her he had to look out for orchids and carpets to take home, quests that undoubtedly appealed to her. The first major ceremony was a levée on 17 December, with H.E. in his uniform with blue Star of India ribbon and his stars, the men in full dress processing into the Throne Room.
Then, on Saturday 19 December, came a Drawing Room, the equivalent of the Queen’s Court at home, where presentations took place, dreaded by Bessie as her first Court. She had a new dress for it, blue satin, with spangled net on the bodice and she was instructed by the dressmaker that to suit the new fashions she should wear her hair in a little bundle high on her head, with a rose or a small comb as ornament – only married women could wear whole coronets of flowers. Her sister Christian wore white satin trimmed with white violets and Her Ex. a long skirt of shot mauve and maize-coloured brocade with a crystal fringe round the bodice, a broad band of purple velvet across the shoulder and sleeves of diamond-spangled net. With it, she wore a diamond necklace; and collar and three diamond stars on the velvet band.
Nervous though she was, Bessie was able to train her observant eye on the presentations. ‘They say the fashionable curtsey is an athletic-looking bob but when some people attempt this their knees give way and they either sway a good deal or seem to be sitting on the ground for a second. It also adds greatly to the graceful curtsey if the head is well held; some keep their eyes fixed on the ground as before a shrine and others fix them on Their Exes.’
Christmas Eve was spent peacefully at Barrackpore, and the family lunched by themselves under the banyan tree. But there was one drawback to alfresco meals: ‘The hawks and kites are growing much tamer. One of them carried off HE’s beef just as it was being put on the table; after which he ordered men with sticks to stand near to guard the table and the stove.’
By now their social circle was much enlarged. Both older sisters, very well liked, were quite different in looks and personality, Christian much shorter and, as described by her cousin, ‘soft and fluffy & always laughing & talking a great deal’, whereas ‘Bessie is tall and quiet and has a dignified way of doing things, especially evening things’. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, ‘Bessie’s chief friends are among the ladies, the men out here do not like her style as much as C’s on the whole’. But in the race to the altar, Bessie would be an easy victor.
In the middle of the social season, then in full swing – a Christmas party for eighty-four children, boys’ presents in one bran tub, girls’ in another, nine stockings for the gentlemen of the household hung on a line, photographs, parades, reviews and a state ball – while H.E. coped with famine and restlessness, there was news that shook them all. The Warren Hastings, on which Bessie and her parents had cruised and which had taken home the outgoing Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, had gone down. Most of them knew the ship and no one could talk of anything else. Fortunately, there had been minimal loss of life.
That January, 1897, the Warren Hastings had left Cape Town bound for Mauritius with 993 passengers, including the headquarters and four companies of the 1st Battalion, The King’s Royal Rifle Corps. At 2.20 a.m. on 14 January, eight miles off-course and steaming at full speed, in pitch darkness and pouring rain, she ran straight into the rocks on the coastline of the French island of Réunion.
There she stuck fast, allowing time for the troops to fall in below decks without noise and in perfect order and at 4 a.m. the captain ordered the troops to begin leaving the ship down rope ladders slung from the bows; as the Warren Hastings appeared so firmly stuck, his intention was to leave the disembarkation of the women and children until daybreak, when it would be easier and safer for them.
However, twenty minutes later the ship suddenly began to list badly so the captain hastily ordered the men to stand fast while the women, children and sick were helped off the ship. As the position on board became ever more dangerous, the men were told to scramble ashore as best they could. By 5.30 a.m. all the troops were on land – later, even some of the baggage was recovered. Miraculously, only two lives were lost: two Indian members of the crew (no lascar could swim). The French on the island rallied round and soon the passengers boarded another ship for the final 125 miles to Mauritius. But the Warren Hastings was gone for good; for many, it was almost like losing a friend. ‘I always felt that ship was alive,’ said one of her captains.
With her mother’s health never good and her confinement nearing, Bessie found herself thrust into the role of hostess. She carried it off with grace and dignity but hardly had time to think of anything else. Once more in Simla, she enjoyed its familiarity and charm – and a new and enjoyable prospect opened up before her. As she wrote to her Aunt Louisa on 21 April: ‘Now I will tell you something very serious; I am learning Latin with Mr B.S.’
Henry Babington Smith had offered to help Bessie with her flower collection and, as she told her Aunt Louisa: ‘It was so impossible to remember the names of the flowers we collected that I asked him if he did not think the best plan would be to learn Latin. He said it would help me and I said – half in fun – that he would have to correct my exercises. He said he would – quite seriously – and then bought the books. So I began at the end of the Calcutta time. Then, coming up while we marched, he used to give me Latin sentences out of his head . . . it is so much more interesting to have a subject like that to talk about with people to whom one cannot make the usual society conversation because it has been all said years ago. And he is most clever when he teaches . . .’.
Babington Smith was indeed a clever young man. His father was a lawyer and mathematician, one of his brothers became an MP and the other Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. He had been educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Classics, as did so many of the upper echelons of the Home and Indian Civil Service. Before joining the Elgin household, he had been Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Goschen. Born on 19 January 1863, he was now thirty-four to Bessie’s nineteen – an age difference that would have seemed perfectly unexceptionable at the time.
Bessie, who as deputy hostess for her mother often found conversation difficult in the limited society of Simla, where everyone knew each other and the constraints of her position prevented too much freedom of opinion, frequently found the postbag contained more original and interesting news. On the same day that her father received a letter from the Queen and a cheque from New York for the Famine Fund, she heard from a friend at Jhabrapathan. ‘The people there are so unsettled that 300 troops have just been sent to keep them quiet. The other day a panther was caught which had eaten three children; Major Jennings wanted it to be shot or sent to the Zoological Gardens, but the people would not listen and said that as it was a man-eater it must be trampled to death by the state elephants. All the parents of the eaten children looked on . . .’.
Her flower collection was now of paramount interest. On May Day ‘Mr B.S. told me that we ought to make a list of all the flowers we have collected and print it. That means a good deal of work, for they must all be arranged in families, and I have been trying to begin it today . . . Next morning Mr B.S. came up to the sitting room and told me how to write out the list; each family must be on a different sheet, & only one side of the sheet may be written upon. At present I know of 38 families but there must be a great many more.’
Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of this absorbing project. On 10 May she was explaining to Aunt Louisa that she was giving up her music lessons, because of the heavy demands on her time made by her flower collection (which she drew and painted). ‘We have only one more spring here and the collection must be as good as possible.’ Often they thought they had found a new specimen but with most bushes with white flowers looking the same in the distance, she and Mr Babington Smith necessarily had to walk to them all to inspect them at close quarters. However, two new ones were discovered.
Henry Babington Smith was clearly determined to capitalise on Bessie’s enthusiasm and, he hoped, growing interest in him. As she told her aunt: ‘Mr B.S. means to add an account of our walks round Simla (100 he thinks will do). It ought to be rather interesting but it means a great deal of work for him and I cannot think how he is able to do it beside all his real business. But he is . . . altogether growing so friendly that I almost think he is a friend; shall I tell you why? Because the other day, at dinner, he told me something about other people – and in Simla, from a man like that, this means a good deal . . .’.
She also spoke of how her Latin was progressing – or rather, of her Latin teacher. ‘He takes so much trouble and is very clever in the way he teaches; he never grows angry, he only sometimes smiles when a thing is wrong and that makes one sorry; and he is not frightening . . .’.
The Season continued with the state garden party, races at the end of May, the state ball and state dinner party the following week (moved from Thursday to Tuesday to allow the Eton dinner to take place correctly on the Fourth of June for the twenty-three Old Etonians then in Simla).
On Tuesday 22 June, the day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrated in Simla as everywhere else under British rule, the weather was appalling. Rain poured into the rickshaws, thunder roared in the hills round about and, as there was no awning leading to the town hall entrance, most people got soaked. It did not stop Bessie recording the highlights of the ceremony, such as the presentation of gifts. ‘Some of the caskets were very handsome, some were in embroidered bags, one only in a large envelope. Many of the deputations came from Bombay, two or three from Calcutta, one from Lahore, others from Benares, Allahabad etc. There was a good deal of draught and wind and poor Lady Cohen arrived saying that she had her feet soaked and she had only just got out of bed, where she had been for four days with a sore throat; and Lady White was wet and many others.’
Jubilee honours and knighthoods were bestowed. ‘Mr B.S. is made CSI [Order of the Star of India, ranked above the Order of St Michael and St George in the British honours system]. He certainly deserves it,’ wrote Bessie warmly, ‘for he works so very hard.’
Next day there was a reception at Viceregal Lodge, where the newly honoured were congratulated, sometimes with a touch of envious spite. Sir William Bisset was the only ‘honoured’ person Bessie had been able to congratulate but he did not escape scot-free. ‘There are so many “ladies” and so many Sir Williams you can call anyone “Sir William”, somebody said disdainfully; but I think it was from envy; for people seemed as pleased as they might have done 200 years ago before all the democrats and presidents were talked of. However much people may speak, they will always like to be distinguished; and what more so than “Her Ladyship” . . .’.
Wet weather and disturbing events that required the attention of H.E. and his Private Secretary put a temporary stop to the collection of flowers.
At the beginning of June there was an earthquake in Calcutta, which damaged the spire of the cathedral and cracked many houses. Fighting broke out at Malakund, which saw a number of the soldiers depart. Later came news of another outbreak on the frontier, near Peshawar. As the month progressed, half the soldier ADCs left for active service with their regiments.
Although fighting was endemic on the frontier with Afghanistan, when the Pathan tribes revolted in 1897, as Bessie’s diary recorded, British officials and soldiers blamed the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman, for causing the trouble. They thought that, as the self-professed champion of Islam, he had commanded the tribes to undertake holy war against the British and that these calls for jihad might be heard and answered within India and even beyond. Because they ruled more Muslims than any other empire, the British were always very sensitive to any idea of Islamic hostility. At the same time, they wanted to preserve friendship with the Amir, not solely to keep peace in this volatile area but also because of fears of Russian expansion (Kipling’s Great Game).
Even during the work entailed by the fighting on the frontier, the routine and exigencies of life at Viceregal Lodge were maintained – and the flower collection continued. When Henry Babington Smith went off for a few days’ shooting he sent Bessie a collection of flowers from the camp; on his return there was another flower gathering expedition and in October, at Mashobra, ‘Mr B.S. arrived just in time to join the walk after luncheon . . . it was a very delightful evening; the stars were so bright, the Pleiades were rising as we came in.’ And towards the end of November her diary (‘written with a new quill pen!’) records that ‘Mr B.S. sent up the “dedication” he had written for my flower catalogue’, generously allotting all the credit to Bessie.
Back in Calcutta after a tour through Darjeeling, the Season began in earnest with a long levée, and a Drawing Room at which Bessie’s youngest sister Veronica ‘came out’. For her presentation she wore white satin. ‘H.E. wore a white brocade gown with a small Star of India blue silk band round the waist, a panel of the same silk down one side. She had her tiara & her diamond necklaces were hung like chains among the beautiful lace on the bodice.’ Poor Veronica, in a state of quivering nerves, confided that the thing she dreaded most was talking to the ladies after dinner parties. ‘I can hardly think of it, it will be so much more than dreadful from all B. and C. tell me.’ But all passed off satisfactorily and Bessie was able to tell Veronica afterwards that she had looked ‘very stately’.
As the winter rolled on, the words ‘for the last time’ began to be heard: in 1899 Lord Elgin’s term as Viceroy would end and he and his family sail for home.
First, there was an investiture on the evening of 13 January, attended by 1,700 people, a red velvet canopy above the raised throne on which her father sat in front of gold and scarlet embroidered hangings. ‘H.E. wore his blue robe and collar of the Star of India; his two little pages, Jimjack Evans and a son of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, walked behind him. They wore white satin suits, white shoes with blue bows and garters, and black wigs.’ It was a glittering scene, with women in evening dress, sparkling aigrettes and opera cloaks, festooned with diamonds, and uniforms everywhere, the civil dark blue embroidered with gold, the military scarlet. Next day Bessie’s two aunts who had been staying with them left for Darjeeling; their places were taken by other guests. One was a Mr Churchill. ‘He is short, with reddish hair and face, blue eyes – and some of his father’s characteristics.’
Winston Churchill, then in the 4th Hussars, was less kind, writing of his visit to Government House to his mother in dismissive fashion. In his letter of 2 January 1897 he poured scorn on the Liberal-appointed Viceroy and his family. ‘The Elgins are very unpopular out here and make a very poor show after the Lansdownes. The evil that a Radical Government does lives after it. All the great offices of state have to be filled out of the scrappy remnant of the Liberal peers. And so you get Elgin Viceroy. They tell me that they are too stiff and pompous for words – and “Calcutta Society” cannot find an epithet to describe them by.’ (Nevertheless, eight years later, when Churchill was a junior minister in the Liberal Campbell-Bannerman Government, Lord Elgin was his Secretary of State at the Colonial Office.) For Bessie, other things were more interesting than the arrival of a young red-haired subaltern rather too full of himself.
It was clear that Bessie preferred the quieter Henry Babington Smith, and was flattered by his showing her an article in The Times about the new Rowton Houses.* After the great excitement of a total eclipse of the sun on 22 January – the temperature fell by ten degrees and as many Indian spectators who could bathed in the Ganges during the ninety seconds of totality – the next important date, recorded for the first time, was 29 of January: ‘Mr B.S.’s birthday’. To celebrate it, they went to Barrackpore in the afternoon. ‘The mango trees and lilies and violets are so fresh after the rain. H.E. sang some songs after dinner and Mr B.S. gave me two reed pens to draw with.’
By now some of his most trivial remarks were finding their way into the diary. ‘Mr B.S. told me at the dance that his horse shied at the flashes [of lightning] as he came back from dinner at the Fort.’ ‘I showed Mr B.S. a sketch of the blue convolvulus I think of working [embroidering] for the Maharani of Gwalior. He thinks each flower ought to be distinct, and he is right.’ ‘Mr B.S. told me he had been to the place where Tennyson wrote “Flower in the Crannied Wall”.’
On Tuesday 29 March they set off on a final tour that would take them eventually to their last Season in Simla. It began with a journey of two days and three nights in the train to Pathancot on the border of Kashmir, where the railway ended; after this there was a march – in carriages, dandies* and on foot – of over 150 miles through mountainous country to Simla. It was to be completed in about three weeks.
They reached Pathancot early on the morning of Friday 1 April and set off at once to avoid the heat of the day. They stayed in bungalows and small villages or towns on the way; as they gradually climbed from Pathancot’s 1,090 feet, views of the mountains were revealed.
By now ‘Mr B.S.’ was clearly occupying a great many of Bessie’s thoughts; and to judge by his behaviour towards her, the same was true of him. Then came the intimacy of the camp in romantic scenery, with its scarlet-flowered pomegranate trees, ferns, indigo bushes, lime bushes with sweet-smelling leaves and gentians and primulas beside mountain streams – a catalyst for both Bessie and Henry Babington Smith. On Easter morning, after tea at the top of a hill, the two went to look at a nearby small temple, surrounded by fir trees and palms. Here Henry proposed to Bessie and was accepted – although even in her diary he remains ‘Mr Babington Smith’ until the day of the public announcement when, at last, she can allow herself to call him ‘Henry’.
For Bessie, everything now had a rosy glow, from dinner en route with a retired general and his Afghan wife – ‘such a feast! Asparagus, ices, entrees, everything quite as grand as in Simla’ – to a fruitless search for flowers along a hillside path, ‘so we sat down & then the time passed so quickly that we were nearly late for luncheon’.
Once at Simla, the concerns of the world reasserted themselves. Tongues were wagging and though Bessie agreed with her fiancé and her father that the engagement should not be announced until the replies from home had been received, ‘so that it should be clear to all that H.E. is fond of him,’ she found it ‘horrid to be talked about’. She was also worried about deserting her father, to whom she was devoted and, with her mother so constantly ailing, who had come to rely on her companionship.
But eventually the day dawned, when the gossip and speculation surrounding her ceased. The engagement was announced in the papers on Wednesday 18 May, to be followed by a blizzard of letters of congratulation, all of which had to be answered, although she did manage to escape from time to time for some walks with Henry and a search for more flowers. Finally, after much discussion, it was decided that the wedding should take place in Simla in September rather than wait until they arrived home. For both Bessie and Henry it was a great relief that the engagement would not be prolonged. Her sisters were to be bridesmaids, together with four young friends.
‘Henry looks happy, always, now,’ she wrote to her Aunt Louisa, ‘and has arranged what he is to wear and what to buy. He thinks a frock coat and grey-blue silk tie for the wedding, and a grey or light brown suit for going away. Mother thinks for my going away dress a fawn stuff with a white velvet toque trimmed with fowl’s feathers. Then Mother thinks I should have a tailored gown of dark bluish grey lovat mixture for London and ordinary use here; a little gown of tussore silk trimmed with blue ribbons and insertions . . . Henry wants to give each of the bridesmaids a turquoise brooch.’ (These were made of three interlocking rings, shaped like a trefoil.)
A month before her wedding she was telling Aunt Louisa how fond her parents were of Henry. ‘They love Henry and they are always so pleased to see him . . . I cannot help looking back sometimes and being sorry that for so many years I have often imagined him proud or despising when he was all the time far too good for either. He naturally thinks “the kind thing” which again and again reminds me of father . . . he has decided with Father and Mother that I am not to take his name Babington which is only a Christian name.’
At the opening of the annual Simla Picture Exhibition she and Henry made their first public appearance as a couple. ‘H.E. drove with Her E. and I came after with Henry. He wore grey clothes and I had a white dress with small tan hat trimmed with feathers & a white ribbon to match.’
The next day, at 10.30 in the evening, as her father was playing patience, an office box was brought to him in the drawing room by one of the scarlet-coated orderlies – to disturb H.E. at such a time meant news of great importance. Lord Elgin opened the box and saw therein one telegram. Folding it and clasping it tight he left the room, saying in a low voice as he passed his wife the one word: ‘Curzon!’ Next day the news that Curzon was to succeed him as Viceroy was officially announced.
On Friday 16 September the staff of the Private Secretary’s Office and Printing Press laid on an elaborate entertainment in honour of Bessie and Henry. There were addresses, a concert, snake charmers, a flower boy who sang and presented flowers, songs by the bridesmaids and an appearance by the god and goddess of love. Henry was given a handsome salver, made a graceful reply and then God Save the Queen was sung.
At last the great day dawned. Thursday 22 September was a blue and cloudless day, the church was decorated with bamboos, pampas grass and big white and pink lilies. Bessie wore a white brocade dress draped with old Brussels lace, a Brussels lace veil held in place by a myrtle wreath, a bouquet of lilies and myrtle and the pearl necklace Henry had given her. Bride and groom left the church under the raised swords of a guard of honour from the Punjab Light Horse. The bridal party went to the reception by carriage; everyone else followed by rickshaw or on horseback.* The 700-lb wedding cake, for which 4,000 eggs had been used, was carried round on large silver plates. The presents were admired – the jewellery was not put out but there were three tables of silver things – business was suspended at the Government office and the employees given a half holiday, and the happy couple left at 5.15 in a carriage, to spend their honeymoon half at The Retreat and half at Naldera.
Henry Babington Smith turned out to be a prize Fishing Fleet catch: he went on to become one of the most successful civil servants of his generation, known for his sense of unselfish service. On their return from India he and Bessie were sent immediately to Natal (he went as Treasury Representative in the South African War). There followed a variety of posts, from President of the National Bank of Turkey to Minister Plenipotentiary on Lord Reading’s 1918 visit to the United States. He died at only sixty, loaded with public honours* but declined a peerage because he did not feel rich enough to support it and he wanted his nine children to make their own way in the world. Bessie survived him by more than twenty years but never remarried, dying at sixty-six.