eggs, hung casually from the brass hooks, side by side with glittering ropes of uncut emeralds, peardrop diamonds and balas rubies.
Some of the diamonds had obviously been sent to Europe, probably to Amsterdam, to be recut, and very splendid they looked. But many of them were table-cut in the old way, and I remember one fabulous sword-belt that was fashioned from wide links of solid gold, each one measuring at least three inches by six, and of a gold so pure that the rows of large diamonds that had been set into it had been hammered into holes gouged out of the soft metal, before being sliced level with the flat surface of the links. Every diamond was roughly the size of my thumbnail, butthough the thing must have been very nearly priceless, the stones, in that setting, lost most of their brilliance and might just as well have been pieces of glass.
It was the sheer casualness with which they were treated that impressed me more than the beauty or value of the jewels. The matter-of-fact manner in which incalculable riches and beauty were carelessly laid out on that unstained and unpolished kitchen table or casually slung on cheap brass hooks. Yet they would have made even the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London look unimportant by contrast. *
Oh, the jewels that were once the glory of India! Where are they now, I wonder? â now that the princes have been deprived of their tides and revenues, and many have been left penniless? So many great names have become no more than the names of towns to which the package tours dispatch their streams of camera-carrying tourists. âWhere has all the splendour gone? Gone to tourists, every one! Oh will we never learn â¦â
No, of course we wonât. We never do; until itâs too late!
One evening we were invited to Jai Vilas, the Maharajahâs city palace, to see a famous conjuror who was visiting Gwalior, and I was bitterly disappointed to find that the palace was not in the least like the ones I had seen in Jaipur and Agra, and in the Lai Khila at Delhi. It was a curious western-style mock-up that suggested an over-decorated wedding cake, and was full of European furniture and fittings which included a huge cut-glass fountain, exactly like an immense cruet, in one of the white marble entrance halls.
The palace had, in fact, been built in a tearing hurry in the seventies of the previous century, in anticipation of a visit by Queen Victoriaâs eldest son, the future King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales. It was designed by an amateur architect, one Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Michael Filose, a one-time British-Indian Army officer who had left the army to enter the service of the state. The Colonel, whose family roots were Italian, obviously had grand ideas; though unfortunately, European rather than Indian ones. But the interior of the palace could not have been more impressive. Cinderella and her prince would have felt truly at home in that vast expanse of shimmering gold. Gold-leaf, gold brocade, gold-platedthis and that, and glittering crystal chandeliers as far as the eye could see. It took your breath away. As for the conjuror, he, too, was out of this world.
Tacklowâs pal, the eccentric old Scindia of Gwalior, had died in 1925, and our host that evening was the Regent, since the heir, H. H. George Jeewaji Rao Scindia Bahadur, was still not of age, though he and his sister, Mary (they had been named after George V and Queen Mary), came in to shake hands with us and to watch the show. They were as charming a pair of children as you could wish to see, and so plainly dressed that they might have been the offspring of any commoner, if it had not been for the fact that each was wearing a short necklace of the largest and most lustrous pearls that I had ever seen; each pearl quite literally the size of a pigeonâs egg and, unbelievably, casually strung on the type of cheap tinsel ribbon that could be bought in almost any bazaar for considerably less than an
Some of the diamonds had obviously been sent to Europe, probably to Amsterdam, to be recut, and very splendid they looked. But many of them were table-cut in the old way, and I remember one fabulous sword-belt that was fashioned from wide links of solid gold, each one measuring at least three inches by six, and of a gold so pure that the rows of large diamonds that had been set into it had been hammered into holes gouged out of the soft metal, before being sliced level with the flat surface of the links. Every diamond was roughly the size of my thumbnail, butthough the thing must have been very nearly priceless, the stones, in that setting, lost most of their brilliance and might just as well have been pieces of glass.
It was the sheer casualness with which they were treated that impressed me more than the beauty or value of the jewels. The matter-of-fact manner in which incalculable riches and beauty were carelessly laid out on that unstained and unpolished kitchen table or casually slung on cheap brass hooks. Yet they would have made even the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London look unimportant by contrast. *
Oh, the jewels that were once the glory of India! Where are they now, I wonder? â now that the princes have been deprived of their tides and revenues, and many have been left penniless? So many great names have become no more than the names of towns to which the package tours dispatch their streams of camera-carrying tourists. âWhere has all the splendour gone? Gone to tourists, every one! Oh will we never learn â¦â
No, of course we wonât. We never do; until itâs too late!
One evening we were invited to Jai Vilas, the Maharajahâs city palace, to see a famous conjuror who was visiting Gwalior, and I was bitterly disappointed to find that the palace was not in the least like the ones I had seen in Jaipur and Agra, and in the Lai Khila at Delhi. It was a curious western-style mock-up that suggested an over-decorated wedding cake, and was full of European furniture and fittings which included a huge cut-glass fountain, exactly like an immense cruet, in one of the white marble entrance halls.
The palace had, in fact, been built in a tearing hurry in the seventies of the previous century, in anticipation of a visit by Queen Victoriaâs eldest son, the future King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales. It was designed by an amateur architect, one Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Michael Filose, a one-time British-Indian Army officer who had left the army to enter the service of the state. The Colonel, whose family roots were Italian, obviously had grand ideas; though unfortunately, European rather than Indian ones. But the interior of the palace could not have been more impressive. Cinderella and her prince would have felt truly at home in that vast expanse of shimmering gold. Gold-leaf, gold brocade, gold-platedthis and that, and glittering crystal chandeliers as far as the eye could see. It took your breath away. As for the conjuror, he, too, was out of this world.
Tacklowâs pal, the eccentric old Scindia of Gwalior, had died in 1925, and our host that evening was the Regent, since the heir, H. H. George Jeewaji Rao Scindia Bahadur, was still not of age, though he and his sister, Mary (they had been named after George V and Queen Mary), came in to shake hands with us and to watch the show. They were as charming a pair of children as you could wish to see, and so plainly dressed that they might have been the offspring of any commoner, if it had not been for the fact that each was wearing a short necklace of the largest and most lustrous pearls that I had ever seen; each pearl quite literally the size of a pigeonâs egg and, unbelievably, casually strung on the type of cheap tinsel ribbon that could be bought in almost any bazaar for considerably less than an
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