Victoria & Abdul (24 page)

Reid decided it was time to go on the offensive against the Munshi. He wanted to show the Queen that Karim was resented not only by her Household, but by his own people as well. He prepared a nine-point dossier on him.
¹

The list of complaints included the fact that he had visited Rome for one night spending £22, that he had complained to the Queen about the position of his railway carriage from Bologna and that the Queen had given directives to Ponsonby that the Munshi could drive with the gentlemen of the Household on occasions. The Munshi had, moreover, apparently refused to allow other Indians in any part of the same railway carriage as himself and deprived Her Majesty’s maids of the bathroom and insisted on having it entirely reserved for himself.

Reid also noted that the Queen’s nurse and her dressers, Mrs Boyd and Mrs Keith, said that the Munshi’s wife and mother-in
law were ‘more degraded and dirty than the lowest labourers in England; spitting all over the carpets. Performing functions in the sitting room, etc.’

Another remark, heard by Arthur Bigge in the English Club, was also noted. Bigge reported that he had overheard a conversation about the Munshi where the gentlemen had remarked on his ‘low appearance’ and said that he was a man ‘who in India would have no place anywhere but with menials’. The Englishmen were much astonished at his being with the Queen and surmised as to the meaning of it and who was responsible.

Reid recorded that when the Munshi had apparently complained to the Queen and to Dosse that the newspapers took too little notice of him, the Queen had responded by immediately sending her dresser, Mrs MacDonald, to Dosse with the command that ‘he was to see that the newspapers took notice of and mentioned the Munshi more frequently!’ The last point revealed more about the Queen than the Munshi.

Reid may have been peeved with the Munshi for personal reasons as well. A few months previously he had written to the Queen asking for a rise in his salary, saying he was quite overworked as he had to look after not just her health but also that of many of the members of staff and servants. The Queen in her reply made no mention of a salary increase, but told Reid that he should not listen to the constant applications made by the other servants as it would wear him out. She informed him that he still had to look after the Indians, who required him for they had ‘different constitutions’, but they were generally well and probably did not trouble him much anyway.
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The Queen had asked him to reduce his extra duties rather than increase his salary. Reid might have felt irritated by the knowledge that the Queen would have reacted differently had the Munshi asked for something. She always put herself out for the smallest request made by him.

The problems with the Munshi carried on after the Royal suite left Florence for Coburg. The Queen was to attend the wedding of her granddaughter Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha with the Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig of Hesse.

The Duke of Coburg informed Ponsonby that ‘nothing would induce him to allow the Munshi to come to the chapel with the Q’s suite for the wedding’. He instructed Ponsonby to tell the Queen this, putting it, if he wished, ‘on the ground of his religion,
if he needed to assign a reason other than the real one’.
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This left the Queen ‘most indignant’ and she did everything she could to get a place for the Munshi with the Household. Negotiations continued for the whole day preceding the wedding and up to the forenoon, but the Duke remained firm. The Queen would not speak to the Duke, her son, personally about it, so the letters and pleas flew through Ponsonby. At last it was arranged that the Munshi would be taken to the gallery in the church by the son of one of the Duke’s gentlemen, the Queen’s condition being that ‘there must be no servants there!’ The Munshi, however, on reaching there, found that he recognised some of the grooms in the balcony. He stalked off in a fury and did not watch the ceremony, writing about it to the Queen who was given the letter after the couple left. She was greatly distressed by the episode and ‘cried a great deal’. The incident became the main source of gossip for the servants and the Household, and Dosse spoke about it to Reid with glee, recalling the ‘discomfiture of the Munshi, but of shame for the Queen’.
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The matter left the Queen more defiant and eager to protect her Munshi. She took the management of Karim’s position out of Ponsonby’s hands and gave it to Condie Stephen, the private secretary of the Duke of Coburg, with special instructions about how the Munshi was to be treated. Karim was now given his own Royal carriage with a footman on the box, and often had Bambridge sitting on his left. ‘He was also invited to the State concerts etc, and was escorted in by Bambridge, but everyone avoided him,’ recorded Reid in his diary.

While the Munshi did indeed invite some of the dislike of others by insisting on having pride of place at all events, it must have been fairly lonely and isolating for him to be the only brown man in a sea of white English aristocracy and European Royalty, all of whom made their opposition to him perfectly clear. The only person who stood by him was the Queen, and he in turn remained devoted to her. Every incident of the Household or her family revolting against her beloved Munshi would see the Queen only more determined to protect him.

Ponsonby, who had borne the brunt of the Coburg melodrama, went on holiday a few weeks later and wrote to Reid: ‘I hope you like your holiday. I do very much and I have been able to forget the Munshi entirely.’

The campaign against the Munshi was spreading outside the close walls of the Royal family and Household. With leakages to the press and gossip in gentlemen’s clubs, the matter was now beginning to appear in newspaper columns as well. The Munshi had a friend, Rafiuddin Ahmed, a lawyer and a journalist who wrote a piece praising the Munshi and the Queen’s virtue of racial tolerance in the
Westminster Gazette
. It immediately evinced a response in the letters column:

Sir, – Rafiuddin Ahmed endeavours to show the cause why a native of India of the lower middle-class should be treated on an equality with the nobility of England. The Queen has an undoubted right to favour whom she likes, but is it not going too far when she expects her guests to associate with a man who is greatly their inferior, in rank at any rate? Perhaps Mr Rafiuddin Ahmed imagines that the unsophisticated and gullible radical believes a Munshi to be a prince or something of that sort in ‘them foreign parts’, but he knows, and I know, the intrinsic value of one in India. Mr Ahmad [sic] is perfectly aware of the fact that if his countryman was at this moment in his native city of Lahore he would most probably be sitting on a high stool in a government office, copying letters, or engaged in some such commendable but scarcely princely task on a stipend of 50s or 100s per mensem at the outside, and that if he ever had the good fortune to attend a Lieutenant-Governor’s levee – leaving out of the question any Viceregal affair – his only means of doing so would be to enlist himself as a table servant.

I wonder what the Hyderabad nobles would say if the Nizam were to import a Board School assistant – whose position is far above a Munshi’s – and expect them to play Tom, Dick and Harry with him. And the Nizam’s in only a petty State. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Gore Ouseley Notting Hill April 5
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The Munshi was horrified at this public denunciation of his status and let the Queen know how he felt about it. The Queen, ever protective, scratched an angry note to Ponsonby:

The Queen wrote rather in a hurry when she mentioned to him the stupid ill natured Article or rather letter about the poor good Munshi and she wd. wish to observe that to make out that he is
low
is really
outrageous
and in a country like England quite out of place – She has known 2 Archbishops who were the sons respectively of a Butcher and a Grocer … Abdul’s father saw good and honourable service as a Dr. and he (Abdul) feels cut to the heart at being spoken of. It probably comes from some low jealous Indians or Anglo-Indians … The Queen is so sorry for the poor Munshi’s sensitive feelings.
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Ponsonby wrote wearily to his wife: ‘As long as it was English or European work I got on fairly. But these Injuns are too much for me.’
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Though aware of the Household’s antagonism to him, the Munshi had no idea that a dossier was being prepared on him. The complaints against him kept building up. In June, Ponsonby received a letter from Florence Hammond, a maid in Karim’s household, who said that the Munshi had treated her ‘unfairly’ and that she was anxious to leave his service as soon as possible.
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Florence said she had agreed to work for the Munshi for £20 a year, a sum less than she had accepted before, but had taken the job after he told her in an interview that it would be increased after the first four months. However, when she reminded him after the period, he said he had no recollection of having said such a thing. She wrote:

I have to pay my own laundry expenses here, so my salary at the end of the year would amount to about £15 … but the Munshi’s code of honour being such a peculiar one that it not only allows him to break his word, but also open and read all through a letter addressed to me, and as he has also been very rude, I am naturally anxious to leave his house as soon as possible.

The letter was filed away by Reid as another example of the Munshi’s unacceptable behaviour and unpopularity.

The Munshi’s high annual expenditure on the maintenance of Frogmore Cottage also became an issue, and the Master of the Household sent a memo to the Lord Chamberlain bringing to
his notice the ‘constant charge in excess of the usual expenditure … on the furnishing and maintenance of Frogmore Cottage for the Munshi’. He pointed out that it had been agreed that after the initial expenses of refurbishing, the Munshi’s residence would not cost more than £50 a year and that the housekeeper, Mrs Barnes, would receive £6 per annum for looking after it whenever Karim and his family were away.
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This, however, was being clearly exceeded by the Munshi, who had spared no expense in redecorating his house and maintaining it at a high cost. He lived in style, decorating his house with exotic Indian artefacts and the numerous gifts that he had received from Royal visitors.

To the Queen, nevertheless, the Munshi remained faultless. She was delighted to receive his birthday card on 24 May 1894 and marveled at how well his English had come along. He had written:

Munshi Abdul Karim presents his humble duty to your Majesty and humbly offers my best wishes for this day. I and my family pray for your Majesty’s long life and happiness. They hope they will be able to see many many returns of this day.

I am your Majesty’s most humble and obedient servant,

M. H Abdul Karim.

There were no spelling errors in the card. Either the Munshi’s English had improved remarkably or he had a little help from his friend Rafiuddin in drafting the letter.

In August 1894 the Court Circular of
The Times
noted that Karim was invited in the Royal circle for a dinner party thrown in Osborne for the German Emperor, attended by the Prince of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught and several other dignitaries.

That October in Balmoral, Dr Reid found himself spending most of his time attending on the Munshi’s wife. It wasn’t easy for the doctor to treat the lady who remained in purdah. He recorded how he had felt her pulse for the first time, ‘she being covered up in bed with hand projecting!’
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For nearly three weeks the doctor walked to Karim Cottage twice a day to see her and reported later that she was finally improving. The Munshi’s wife had a nurse in constant attendance. Reid also learnt from Alexander Profeit that the Munshi planned to publish two volumes of his memoirs in January the following year. He spoke immediately to Harriet Phipps about it, both of them agreeing that it ‘must somehow be
prevented’. The fact that no such volume was published meant the Household managed to successfully kill the project.