Victoria & Abdul (25 page)

The Queen was a great letter writer. She liked to send written instructions to members of her Household and insisted that they write to her as well. All this meant a lot of paperwork for the Household, but they had no choice. She wrote regularly to the Viceroy, the Secretary of State for India and her extended family. Sitting at her desk – whether it was the brass-edged one in her sitting room which was always cluttered with innumerable trinkets, photos and memorabilia, or the field table under a tent in the gardens – the tiny figure of the elderly Queen could be seen writing endless letters on her black-lined notepaper, underlining some words for emphasis. Her plump fingers would move agitatedly over the paper when she was angry or upset, the rings and bracelets that she always wore glittering as she worked late into the night. She would never go to bed without completing her boxes and often worked for two hours after dinner. Sometimes she would sit late at night and look at the family photographs and those of her Indian servants, and arrange them in the velvet-lined albums. Her favourite was the blue velvet album with gold embossing in which she kept hand-coloured photographs of her Indians.

Over the years, the eyes grew dim and the handwriting virtually illegible, but her enthusiasm for letter-writing never ceased. Helping her with her papers, Karim became a letter-writer himself. He wrote regularly to the Queen and never missed congratulating her for a happy event in her life. Sometimes he would send her an ode, composed by an Urdu poet in India. When he travelled to India on holiday, he wrote to her every day, updating her on all developments.

When a boy was born to the Duke of York, Karim wrote the same night:

Munshi Abdul Karim presents his humble duty to your Majesty and beg [sic] to inform your Majesty that I am extremely pleased to hear this delightful news that the HRH Duchess of York safely delivered of a son tonight. I beg to offer my best congratulations to your Majesty for your Majesty’s great grand child.

Also my wife and mother-in-law beg to offer their congratulations. They are so pleased to hear this good news. We all
pray that God will grant this child long life, and all the happiness to his parents.

I am your Majesty’s

Most humble and obedient servant

M.H. Abdul Karim
¹¹

That year, Karim decided to send a Christmas card to Lord Elgin, who had taken over as the Viceroy of India. He had had the privilege of meeting him at Balmoral the previous year when he came to call on the Queen. Little did Karim know that the card was going to cause a flutter. Karim wrote:

My dear Lord, Your Lordship was pleased to show me much kindness during my interview with you here last year. I hope your Lordship and Lady Elgin are quite well and have enjoyed your visit to the North Western Frontier of India.

I take the liberty of enclosing a Christmas Card, with best wishes for a happy new year and hope the same will meet your gracious acceptance.

With best respects,

I am your Lordship’s,

Very faithfully,

M.H. Abdul Karim.

The card had a handwritten poem which the Viceroy considered most inappropriate. It read:

Flow’ers

Fair as the

Morning light

Wake for you

Tho’ the earth

be white,

With hearts

Of gold,

And a breath of May,

And a wish from

My heart to yours

To day

The poem was by Ellis Walton and the inscription from Karim read: ‘To Wish you a Happy Christmas, from M.H. Abdul Karim, Windsor Castle.’
¹²

The Munshi had no idea that he had overstepped the limits of propriety. He informed the Queen that he had sent a Christmas card and she made enquiries about whether the Viceroy had liked the card, much to the embarrassment of officials at Whitehall, as Lord Elgin firmly refused to acknowledge it.

Meanwhile, there had been a change of guard in the Queen’s Household. Henry Ponsonby had fallen seriously ill over the winter and Arthur Bigge had taken over as acting private secretary to the Queen. Bigge had never taken kindly to the Munshi and had already had a row with the Queen when she had suggested he be allowed to ride in the same carriage as the gentlemen of the Household. Henry Ponsonby’s son, twenty-seven-year-old Frederick (Fritz) Ponsonby, had recently returned from India (where he had been ADC to the Viceroy Lord Elgin) to join the Household as junior equerry to the Queen.

Fritz Ponsonby, too, had had a bruising Munshi experience. He had gone into the Queen’s black book after arguing with her over the official position of the Munshi’s father in India. In 1894, when Fritz was still in India, the Queen had asked him to go and see the Munshi’s father, the ‘Surgeon General’ in Agra. He called on Dr Wuzeeruddin and found that he was not the ‘Surgeon General’, but an ‘apothecary at the jail’, and repeated this to the Queen when he met her in London. The Queen ‘stoutly denied’ it and dismissed him saying he must have ‘seen the wrong man’.
¹³
Fritz continued to insist that he was right. The Queen did not forgive him for several years, such was her passion for the Munshi and his family. She largely ignored him and did not invite him for dinner for a year. Both Bigge and Fritz Ponsonby now became part of the vocal anti-Munshi camp in the Household.

It fell to Fritz Ponsonby to find out about the fate of the Munshi’s Christmas card to Lord Elgin. The junior equerry wrote to the Viceroy. The letter reveals how tangled the politics could get over something as simple as a Christmas card:

The Queen has sent to me and asked me to find out whether you had received the Xmas card from the Munshi. I thought this an excellent opportunity of telling her myself all about the Munshi,
but Bigge, Edwardes and others strongly opposed my doing so as they thought that the Queen would be angry at messages being sent through me, that she would not listen to what I had to say and that it would take away from the effect of your letter.

The Queen’s message to me was that I might find out through anyone on the staff or write straight to you so that if you think it best Babington Smith [personal secretary to the Viceroy] or Durand [also personal secretary to the Viceroy] could write to me a letter that I might show.

Miss Phipps, who is a sort of confidential secretary to the Queen, tells me that Lord Harris and Lord Wenlock returned the Xmas cards at least the Queen told her so. This makes it rather more difficult.

I only see the Queen after dinner when she chooses to send for me so that really I have no opportunity of talking to her. I am certain that if the facts of the case were explained to her by you she would understand.
¹⁴

Fritz Ponsonby’s plea was answered. A letter duly arrived from the Viceroy’s office from his private secretary, A. Durand. It declared that the Viceroy had received the Christmas card and did ‘not imagine that any acknowledgment was necessary, or that the Queen would expect him to send one’. He also stated that he need scarcely point out ‘how impossible it would be for an Indian Viceroy to enter into correspondence of this kind’.
¹⁵
The matter simmered for a while, the Viceroy thinking that he should update an official of the India Office at Whitehall about the episode in case the Queen ever raised it again. Tearing himself away from matters of Indian administration, Elgin wrote to Henry Fowler, Secretary of State for India.

Dear Mr Fowler,

I asked Gadley to mention to you some time ago that I had received a Xmas card from the Queen’s Munshi with a covering letter, and that I did not intend to answer, but had asked young Ponsonby, who had been my A.D.C., to say if asked, that I had received it.

I now enclose some correspondence from which you will see that H.M. is somewhat persistent and I ought to add that in a letter to Lady Elgin she enquired if I had received the card. I am
quite ready to write myself if it will do any good. I am, however inclined to doubt it. H.M. would scarcely give up one of her favourite attendants because of anything I could say – and unless she did so little good would result.

If she writes to me direct, not being satisfied with the reply sent through Ponsonby I suppose I should have to speak out plainly, and it is in case this happens that I mention these circumstances – because I should be glad to know the position you and Rosebery [prime Minister] have taken up and be then guided in my own.

Sincerely, Elgin.
¹⁶

Though the Queen would have got an inkling of the Viceroy’s reaction to the card from the letter sent by his private secretary, she did not let the Munshi know about these. He remained blissfully unaware that his card had caused such a furore and had been sent back to Whitehall, where it lay in a government file marked ‘Confidential’.

He celebrated the wedding of Princess Alice (Alix) to the Tsar of Russia in November and sent a wedding present which was personally acknowledged by the Tsar from St Petersburg: ‘The Empress and I express our sincerest thanks for your wedding gift – Nicolas.’
¹⁷

As the year drew to a close, Karim made one of the first of his personal entries in Urdu at the end of the Queen’s Hindustani Journal:

I owe gratitude to God that this auspicious year ended on an extremely happy note and, compared with all previous years, many more happy and memorable occasions took place in it. Firstly, the visit of Her Majesty to Coburg for attending the marriage of Victoria Melita of Saxe Coburg Gotha and Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig of Hesse, and fixing of another marriage there itself, that of Princess Alice (Alix) of Hesse as Tsarevich of Russia which took place with great pomp and show on 26th of November 94. Secondly, the birth of the dear son of the Duke of York. The marriage that took place on 26th November this year occasioned the greatest joy as it led to more love between England and Russia. Her Majesty enjoyed good health in all respects, with the exception of some problem in hearing. But she did not change any of her daily routines and continued writing and reading of
Hindustani which is evident from this book. Hence, I conclude this writing with the prayer that Allah may give Her Majesty as long age as that of Noah. Amen! Amen again!

Humbly Abdul Karim.

It was as if the Queen and Karim had passed the year celebrating births and marriages, the politics of the Court leaving them untouched.

On New Year’s Day, the Queen began her eighth Hindustani Journal. ‘This is my eighth Hindustani lesson book which I began to keep and which I hope to complete happily,’
¹⁸
she wrote in Urdu.

K
nowing that the Queen would stand up for her Munshi at all costs, the Household and some members of the Royal family now began trying to discredit him for his association with fellow Muslim, Rafiuddin Ahmed. Ministers of the Crown and government officials soon became suspicious as well. Rumours were circulating that Rafiuddin had links to radical Muslim groups in Afghanistan and was a spy for the Amir of Afghanistan. Rafiuddin had surfaced in British politics in December 1892 as a journalist and a barrister. Born in 1865 in India and educated at the Deccan College, Poona (present-day Puné), he had travelled to London to study law at King’s College. After a stint at the Middle Temple he was called to the Bar in 1892. He was a member of the Muslim League, a political organisation in India, and published several articles in the
Strand Magazine
,
Pall Mall Gazette
and
Black and White
.

An ambitious man, Rafiuddin had befriended Abdul Karim and through him won access to Queen Victoria. Through her offices and with the help of Karim, he had met the Lord Chancellor. He had managed to charm Victoria who gave him an example of her Hindustani Journal and a photograph of herself, which he published in the
Strand Magazine
in December 1892. The article praised the Queen for finding time to learn an oriental language and for making so much progress in the past three years that she could write a separate diary in the Hindustani language.

‘For the first time in the history of Europe a Sovereign of a Great Power has devoted herself seriously to the literature of the Orient,’
¹
wrote Rafiuddin Ahmed, describing how the
Queen never failed to write her Hindustani diary no matter how much she was under pressure from work or personal anxieties and sorrows. The Queen, pleased with the young man, commissioned Swoboda to paint his portrait. When Britain was having difficulties with Turkey, she sent him as an ambassador to the Turkish Sultan, Abdul Hamid. She even recommended to the Foreign Office that he be appointed to the British Embassy in Constantinople and requested that the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, meet him, writing: ‘I hear that Rafiuddin Ahmed is most anxious to see you. You know how serious for us in India wd. be injustice or supposed injustice on our part towards the Moslems, for I have more Mohammedan subjects than the Sultan. Pray see him as soon as you can.’
²

The British establishment believed that Rafiuddin could be encouraging disenchanted elements in India in the freedom struggle. Discreet enquiries led to a report from the office of Charles A. Bayley, of the Thugee and Dacoity Department in India, who suggested that Rafiuddin may have been an informer who relayed messages to a contact in Calcutta, who forwarded it through various channels to the Amir in Kabul.