THE PRINCE'S PRESENTS.
SINCE the days when the gifts which the Queen of the South brought to King Solomon were unpacked in the Court of the House of Cedar, and the unladen camels dipped their nostrils in the Jordan, the presents of princes to princes have been sug- gestive at once of wonder and of weariness. What on earth did the princes of old times, who could not shunt these tremendous appendages to their State into public museums—with gentlemen in charge who know all about everything, and can explain their possessions to them—do with their legions of meta- phorical white elephants ? Did they bury them in cellars, after the clever fashion of the Curators of the inconvenient treasures of the British Museum, or judiciously utilise them in the discharge of cognate obligations of their own? Practical considerations of this kind are irresistible, when one takes in, with a gasp, the general effect of the two galleries at South Kensington de- voted to the exhibition of the gorgeous objects known, by a popular inversion of facts, as "the Prince's Presents." The picturesque view of the splendid display comes later, and, indeed, a little laggingly, for all the knowledge and all the taste so conspicuous in the arrangement of the col- lection cannot disguise the hopeless ugliness of the galleries —remains of the old, roofed-in prison-yards of the Inter- national Exhibition building—and the positive prose of the black-glazed stands and cases. The philosophic visitor would, of course, prepare himself for the supreme expression of India at the top of the stairs, by a careful study of the fine Museum on the ground-floor, and evolve everything below into everything above ; but the visitor for whose notions " The Arabian Nights " are chiefly responsible has visions of something between the cave of which All Baba had a private view, and the bazaar at Cairo, which no
two artists or travel-writers ever yet represented similarly, but which, all artists and travel-writers assure people who have not the smallest chance of seeing it, is the only real epitome of Eastern life left in the world. It is a little shock to be involun- tarily reminded of selections from the Regent-Street and Bond- Street show-rooms, but the magician's tub must be somewhere handy, and that splendid bit of musnud furniture hanging on the plastered wall, thickly woven of rich, rough silk, of gorgeous tints, guiltless of glare, with knotted, sweeping fringes, can be nothing less than Prince Hassan's carpet. If one might be set down by its agency in an Indian palace, adorned with all the exotic treasures trimly ticketed off here, what exquisite pleasure it would be to arrange and study some of them, but also with what genuine satisfaction one would throw some others out of window. A silver tea-service of the Swami pattern—which ought to be ashamed of itself—should go first. Indeed, the silver objects generally, except a few in fila- gree, of uncorrupted native design, are superlatively hideous ; the mixture of rough execution with designs of surpassing vulgarity (one crooked salver is neatly copied from the lodging-house anti-macassar model) is grotesquely ugly. Some silver candelabra, evidently copied from the commonest English metal-ware, and trimmed with fringes of pendent fishes, purely native ; a flower- vase of barbarous construction, beginning at the base with lotos flowers and leaves, straggling into bulrushes, and branching off into polished bison-horns, with hideous little red-velvet crowns on their ends, the centre-piece being a common English glass ; muffineers, egg-cups, and claret-jugs,which prove to what base uses the precious metals may be put ; a common-shaped butter-dish, with a prowling cheetah, true to the life, replacing the traditional cow on the lid; and a really humorous teapot, are among the most glaring examples of the mischief which Western " art " is doing in India. The latter object is of massive, chased silver, of the model of the immortal teapot which brought about the rupture between Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig, but it is apparently being run away with by a pair of bird's feet. These incongruous sup- porters are admirably expressive, and were probably a felicitous after-thought of the native artist, disconcerted by the melancholy rim of the original. Of course, one expects gold and silver cigar- cases to be ugly everywhere, and is tolerant of bad art when the object is one whose use is foreign to Indian habits, and which has no association for the Indian mind ; but we need not have poisoned their very lotos, and turned their once graceful star- boxes and rose-water bottles into things which suggest the fancy articles in the temporary shops at Margate, or " a present from Shamtown." Several frightful specimens have beautiful, irregular, pearl fringes hanging to them, and the finest silver wire is used to emulate the familiar willow of English and German basket- work. Amid all this tasteless rubbish, however, one may find some gems fit for the Indian palace of one's fancy, even before one reaches the exquisite enamels, and the arms, so harmoniously delightful to the imagination, in their splendid inutility ;—a spice-box, with strutting peacocks ; a beautiful water-bottle stand, composed of three graceful camels' necks ; a silver tumbler, from Kutch, with marvellous tracery ; ex- quisite trays and goblets, in " the red, red gold" of Cash- mere ; a betel-box, with a lion on its lid, just dashed with a few red drops ; and many a graceful atar-dan of the true Indian pattern, with slender gold neck, and pendent chains, contrasting with the horrid wine-jugs of English shape, with native-designed snake handles, the finely-worked reptile- head unmeaningly protruded above the fiat, silver lid. A beautiful gold sword-stick from Kambroog has climbing apes and forest foliage upon it which one might study for an hour, and two silver elephants from Bankipore, with cunning ruby eyes, and ironical howdahs, formed of complacent, couchant tigers, com- ment severely upon an astonishing tea-service, in which the " pieces " are composed of fat birds with ivory corks in the middle of their backs, and their beaks stretched to screaming width. But these are not the worst. A silver dessert-service, which hails from Dharwar, is too terrible to contemplate,—one has to refresh one's mind after it, with another look at the beau- tiful gilded silver work from Cashmere.
Shall we venture to tell the truth, and shame the Rajahs and Nawabs, and the public bodies, who are accountable for mon- strosities in the Testimonial department—which culminate in the silver throne, upholstered in crimson, of such unpleasant glare as old India never saw even in a nightmare, and which the Prince must have consigned to the Museum-limbo with feelings of relief and thankfulness—by boldly declaring that a considerable portion of the ponderous show is simply costly trash. Rococo and Renaissance are politer terms, but they are
leas expressive—at least of the feelings of the visitor—who wishes Mrs. Commissioner So-and-So had been, let us mildly say, sent home with the children, before she gave Rummun Lall that rough silver, and those charming novelties in electro-plate, to reproduce at his sweltering leisure in her compound, that they may thereafter pervade the peninsula with a revolutionary influ- ence. It does not help one very much to resort to the jewels. There are beautiful things among them, things which one would expect to be brought in on trays on the heads of slaves, when Aladdin should clap his hands for something du dernier chic in jewellery to relieve the boredom of the Princess Badroulboudour ; ropes of orient pearls—interspersed with amulets of carved emerald, and tasselled with gems—which have shone soft and white upon the dusky necks of Indian ladies for generations past ; jewel- studded waistbelts and gorgeous turban-ornaments, bracelets with gleams like darting flames from the serpent-scales they simulate ; bangles, with bunches of bells attached to them, which remind one of G4r8me's nautch-girls; carbuncles, like congealed wine, and a magnificent long loop of pearls, with a pendant of pear-shaped pearls and emeralds, which might be the -very jewel Prince Camaralzanian pursued so far beyond the back of God-speed ! But there is a plentiful sprinkling of rubbish among the jewellery also ; many of the diamond things, for instance, are pure Palais-Royal, and a lot of huge, tasteless rings occupy a judiciously insignificant corner. Perhaps the ugliest object in jewellery that ever was seen, even in a museum, is a testimonial from Ceylon, a combination of all the precious stones produced by the island—which is the jewel-box of the globe—and next to it the Oudh Crown may claim a place. There's nothing so gaudily hideous in the Tower ; it would have been the very thing for Garrick, in his Richard III. Some lockets, modern and modest, have highly incongruous portraits of sleek and friendly rajahs in them ; and Captain Cuttle's watch has got into the collection, with the picture of a fat friend of the Prince's --the funniest mixture of finery and fierceness—set in the cover. A " nose ornament" from the Punjaub is like a doll's coal-scuttle in thin copper (it is gold), with a pearl rivet and a turquoise hook-handle.
"Textile fabrics" is a harsh and prosaic definition of the rich, and rare, and beautiful things which are just like what Zobeide would have bought in the bazaar, supposing she had sacks of " sequins " and a solvent Caliph in the background. One can see the carefully-selected, strong porter, staggering under his succes- sive loads, whose mere wrapping-cloths are costly stuffs. Nothing would induce us to call the beautiful things by that stern name, if they, too, had not been touched by the insidious deterioration which is spreading over all Indian arts and manufactures. The brilliant aniline dyes—which were for some time the bane of educated eyes, and made women's clothes and household stuffs hideous in this country, until we revolted into neutral tints in gowns and " sad "-coloured " schools " in upholstery—have invaded India, and we find their hard glare in some of the finest and richest stuffs among the Prince's collection. But the shawls 1 the delicious, restful, soft, grey shawls, with their golden borders in the finest embroidery—such work as Queen Titania's bower- maidens might do of afternoons—the shawls of many colours, in- deed, but of exquisite designs, and so harmonious that no spot or line of colour hurts the eye ; the wreathed Dacca muslin, the enviable chogas, the satin pelisses, lined with the softest fur, and more splendid and characteristic than all, the " kincobs " from Benares. There is a feast of beauty, splendour, and association to be enjoyed in this portion of the collec- tion. Among the gifts from Cashmere is a production of native genius more curious than beautiful,—a shawl- map of the city of Srinagar, with the population in the streets and squares. "A lovely river full of fish right through that city flows," and the fish and the boats, very similar in size, are faithfully represented. A presiding tiger, in a suburb, which, like "the Old Shekarry's" friend, he probably " owns," completes the picture. Turban-cloths, scarfs, puggerees, handkerchiefs, caps blazing with gold embroideries, countless rich and beautiful things, fill the huge central cases ; and in a prominent position is a gorgeous square of velvet, superbly embroidered in gold and silver, which is actually ticketed, "Indian anti-macassar." This is a little too much. Let us look at the elephant-cloths ; at the superb silver howdah, like the canopied portion of a State calque ready for " boating down the Bosphorus ;" at the bedsteads of silver and ivory, which convey the Oriental notion of the true British four - poster, and strike the British mind as wanting in solidity ; and at the palanquin in ebony and ivory, with poles terminating in elephants' heads,— a puzzling object, which might be Gulliver's travelling-box idealised, or a handsome Venetian cabinet, deprived of its legs, and decorated with common carriage-lamps. The case of hookahs is quite satisfactory, the Bidri work and Dalbergia wood especially ; and a hookah with silver chains, tasselled with emeralds, is a poem among pipes.
Conspicuously hung in the front of a " textile "stand is a wonder- ful object, which might be a necklace for one of the contemplative red Rameses who sat in the Crystal Palace, with his hands on his knees, in aesthetic and educational times, before the fire. It is like a number of gold-fringed " crackers "—those dismal humours of the ball supper-table—strung together, and peppered with emerald, ruby, and turquoise specks. It is an elephant-collar from Ondh, and how pleasant it would be to see the earth- shaking beast arrayed in it, conscious of his finery, and blinking at it with his wise little eyes !
It is only the general aspect of the collection that one can take in at a first visit, only the leading effect of wealth and colour, of picturesqueness and incongruity. The arms, the enamels, and the carvings in wood and ivory call for more serious attention. They " cannot be tasted in a sip."
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