THERE are a number of ways of furnishing a house in Calcutta. I, who have known the ins and outs of the place for twenty odd years, have learned the unsatisfactoriness of all of them, and am prepared to explain. You can be elaborately done up by a fine belati upholsterer, who will provide you with spindle-legged chairs in velvet brocade, and Æsthetic window curtains with faded pink roses on them, everything only about six months behind the London shops, with prices however considerably in advance. This way is popular with Viceroys. Or you may go to the ordinary shops and get Westbourne Grove sorts of things only slightly depreciated as to value and slightly enhanced as to cost, paying cash—a way usually adopted by people of no imagination. Or you may attend the auction sale that speeds the departure of some home-going memsahib, and buy her effects for a song: but that must be at the beginning of the hot weather, when the migration of memsahibs occurs. Or you can go to Bow Bazar, where all things are of honourable antiquity, and there purchase pathetic three-legged memorials of old Calcutta, springless oval-backed sofas that once upheld the ponderous dignity of the East India Company, tarnished mirrors which may have reflected the wanton charms of Madame Le Grand. Baboos sell them, taking knowledge only of their outward persons and their present utility; and they stand huddled in little hot low-roofed shops, intimate with the common teak-wood things of yesterday, condescending to gaudy Japanese vases and fly-blown coloured prints and cracked lamps and mismatched crockery. Bow Bazar is not always bad and it is always cheap, granting some previous experience of baboo morals, and the proprietors charge you nothing for the poetry of your bargain. They set it off, perhaps, against necessary repairs. This is not a popular way, as the baboos will testify, but it is a pleasing one, and it is the way the Brownes took in the main, supplementing these plenishings with a few from the China Bazar, where a multitude of the almond-eyed sell you wicker chairs and tables.

It is a divinely simple thing to furnish a house in India. It must be cleaned and it must be matted. This is done in a certain number of hours while you sleep, or ride, or walk, or take your pleasure, by a God of Immediate Results, whom you colloquially dub the “bearer,” working through an invisible agency of coolies. Then you may go and live in it with two chairs and a table if you like, and people will only think you have a somewhat immoderate hatred of hangings and furniture and other obstacles to the free circulation of air. This you might easily possess to an extreme, and nobody will consider you any the worse for it. I should have added an “almirah” to the list of your necessaries, however. You would be criticised if you had not one or more almirahs. An almirah is a wardrobe, unless it contains shelves instead of hooks, and then it is a tall cupboard with doors. Almirahs, therefore, receive all your personal property, from a dressing-gown to a box of sardines, and it is not possible to live decently or respectably in India without them. But the rest is at your good pleasure, and nobody will expect you to have anything but plated forks and bazar china. Outward circumstance lies not in these things, but in the locality of your residence and the size of your compound. If you wish to add to your dignity, buy another pony; if you wish to enhance it, let the pony be a horse and the horse a Waler. But think not to aggrandize yourself in the eyes of your fellow Anglo-Indians by treasures of Chippendale or of SÈvres, by rare tapestries or modern masters, or even a piano. Dust and the mosquitoes and the monsoon war against all these things; but chiefly our inconstancy to the country. We are in conscious exile here for twenty or twenty-five years, and there is a general theory that it is too hot and too expensive to make the exile any more than comfortable. Beside which, do we not pass a quarter of our existence in the cabins of the P. and O.? But I must not digress from the Brownes’ experiences to my own opinions.

The Brownes’ ticca-gharry turned into Bow Bazar out of Chowringhee, out of Calcutta’s pride among her thoroughfares, broad and clean, and facing the wide green Maidan, lined with European shops, and populous with the gharries^[17] of the sahibs, into the narrow crookedness of the native city, where the proprietors are all Baboo This, or Sheik That, who sit upon the thresholds of their establishments smoking the peaceful hubble-bubble, and waiting until it please Allah or Lakshmi to send them a customer. Very manifold are the wants that Bow Bazar provides for, wants of the sahib, of the “kala sahib,”^[18] of its own swarming population. You can buy a suit of clothes there—oh, very cheap—or a seer of rice; all sorts of publications in English, Bengali, and Urdu; a beautiful oil painting for a rupee, a handful of sticky native sweetmeats for a pice. You can have your beard shaved, your horoscope cast, your photograph taken, all at a rate which will deeply astonish you. There is a great deal of noise in the Bow Bazar, coming chiefly from strenuous brown throats, a great deal of dust, a great number and variety of odours. But there the sahiblok, in the midst of luxury, can enjoy economy—and you can’t have everything.

The sellers of sahib’s furniture have the largest shops in Bow Bazar, and the heaviest stock; they are important among the merchants; they often speak a little English. The baboo to whom the Brownes first addressed themselves had this accomplishment, and he wore the dual European garment of white duck, and a coat. He was a short baboo, very black, with a round face so expressive of a sense of humour that young Browne remarked to Helen privately that he was sure the fellow had some European blood in him, in spite of the colour—no pukka Bengali ever grinned like that!

“What iss it, sir, that it iss your wish to buy?” he inquired. He spoke so rapidly that his words seemed the output of one breath; yet they were perfectly distinct. It is the manner of the native who speaks English, and the East Indians have borrowed it from him.

“Oh! we want to buy a lot of things, Baboo!” said Mr. Browne, familiarly, “at half your regular prices, and a large discount for cash! What have you got? Got any chairs?”

“Oh yess indeed; certainlee! Will you please to come this way?”

“This way” led through a labyrinth of furniture, new and old, of glass and crockery and chipped ornaments, a dusty haven of dismayed household gods. “What have you got in there, Baboo?” asked young Browne, as they passed an almirah revealing rows of tins and labels.

“Stores, sir,—verree best qualitty stores. You can see fo’ you’self, sir—Crosse an’ Blackwell——”

“Oh yes, Baboo! And how long did you say they’d been there?”

“Onlee one month, sir,” the baboo replied, attempting an expression of surprise and injury. “I can tell you the name of the ship they arrived in, sir.”

“Of course you can, Baboo. But never mind. We don’t want any to-day. Let’s see the chairs. Now, Helen,” he continued, as the baboo went on in advance, “you see what we are subject to in this ungodly place. Those pease and gooseberries and asparaguses have probably been in Calcutta a good deal longer than I have. They look like old sojourners; I wouldn’t give them a day under six years. They are doubtless very cheap, but think, Helen, of what might happen to my inside if you gave me green pease out of Bow Bazar!” Mrs. Browne looked aghast. “But I never will, George!” said she, solemnly. And young Browne made her vow it there and then. “There are two or three decent European shops here,” he said, with unction, “where they make a point of not poisoning more people than they can help. You pay rather largely for that comfortable assurance, I believe, but it’s worth having. I’d have more faith in the stability of the family, Helen, if you would promise always to go to them for tinned things.”

Helen promised effusively, and it is to her credit that she always informed young Browne, before consumption, whenever a domestic exigency made her break her word.

They climbed up a dark and winding stair that led out upon a flat roof, crossed the roof and entered a small room, borrowed from the premises of some other baboo. “Hold your skirts well up, Helen; it’s just the place for centipedes,” her husband remarked callously; and Mrs. Browne exhibited a disregard for her ankles that would have been remarkable under any other circumstances.

“Here, you see, sir, all the chairs,” stated the little baboo, waving his hand. “I must tell you, sir, that some are off teak and some off shisham wood. Thee shisham are the superior.”

“You mean, baboo,” said young Browne, seriously, “that the shisham are the less inferior. That’s a better way of putting it, baboo.”

“Perhaps so, sir. Yessir, doubtless you are right, sir. The less inferior—the more grammatical!”

“Precisely. And now about the prices, baboo. What is your exact overcharge for fellows like this? He’s shisham, isn’t he? And he’s about as sound as any of ’em.”

“Best shisham, sir—perfeckkly sound—not secon’ hand—our own make. Feel the weight of thiss, sir!”

“All right, baboo—I know. What’s the price?”

“If thee ladee will just sit down in it for a minit shee will see how comfortable it iss!”

“Trifle no longer, baboo—what’s the dom?”

“The price off that chair, sir, is eight rupees.”

Mr. Browne sank into it with a pretence at gasping. “You can’t mean that, baboo. Nothing like that. Eight rupees! You’re dreaming, baboo. You forget that you only paid two for it. You’re dreaming, baboo—or you’re joking!”

Hurry Doss Mitterjee smiled in deep appreciation of the gentleman’s humour. He even chuckled, with a note of deprecation.

“Ah, no, sir! You will pardon me for saying that is a mistake, sir! In bissiness I doo not joke, never! For those chairs I pay seven rupees four annas, sir! It iss a small profit but it iss contentable. I doo not ask more, sir!”

“This is very sad, baboo!” said Mr. Browne seriously. “This is very sad, indeed! I understood that you were a person of probity, who never asked more than a hundred per cent. But I know the value of shisham chairs, and this is four hundred—Oh, very sad, indeed! Now see here, I’ll give you three rupees apiece for these chairs, and take six.”

“Salaam!” said the baboo, touching his forehead with ironical gratitude and pushing back the chair. “Nossir!”

“You may take them at coss price, sir—at seven four you may take them, and I make no profit: but perhaps I get your custom. Take them—seven four!”

Mr. Browne turned away with a slight sigh. “Come along, dear,” he said to his wife, “this man sells only to Rajahs and Members of Council.”

The baboo ignored the pleasantry this time—the moment had come for action. “What do you give, sir?” he said, following them—“for the sake off bissiness, what do you give?”

“Four rupees!”

“Five eight!”

“Four eight, baboo—there!”

“Ah, sir, I cannot. Believe me they coss five eight to buy!”

“Look here, baboo—I’ll give you five rupees apiece for six of those shisham wood chairs, every one as good as this, and I’ll pay you when you send them—that’s thirty rupees—and not another pice! Helen, be careful of these steps.”

“To what address, sir? Will to-morrow morning be sufficient early, sir?”

“George!” exclaimed Helen, as they reached the outer world of Bow Bazar, “what a horrid little cheat of a man! Did you hear him say at first that they cost seven four to make?”

“Oh, my dear,” young Browne responded, superiorly. “That’s a trifle! You don’t know the baboo.”

“Well!” said his wife, admiringly, “I don’t know how you kept your patience, George!”

Whereat Mr. Browne looked still more superior, and informed Mrs. Browne that the only way to deal with these fellows was to chaff ’em; make up your mind in the beginning that you’re going to be done in the eye, and act accordingly. They always score, he added, with true Anglo-Indian resignation.

They bought a table next, from a very fat old gentleman—simply clad—in a beard and a dhoty.^[19] The beard and the dhoty were much the same colour, and both fell so abundantly about his person that it would be difficult to say which was most useful to him as an article of apparel. And his moral obliquity was concealed under more rolls and pads of oily-brown adipose tissue than could often be seen in Bow Bazar. He must have been a rascal, as young Browne said, or being a Hindu he wouldn’t have had a beard.

It was a small mahogany dining table, second-hand, and its owner wanted twenty rupees for it.

“I think,” said young Browne, “that the memsahib might give you fourteen!”

The usual humbly sarcastic salaam—it was a very excellent table—the baboo could not think of parting with it for that.

“All right!” said Mr. Browne, “the memsahib says she won’t give more than fourteen, and that’s very dear. But I’ll make you one offer—just one, mind, baboo! I’ll give you fifteen. Now take it or leave it—one word!”

The baboo salaamed so that his beard swept the ground, and fervently refused.

“Very well, baboo! Now I don’t want it at any price, see if you can bargain with the memsahib.”

“Eighteen rupees, memsahib!” insinuated the old fellow, “very cheap.”

“No, indeed!” Helen exclaimed with indignation, rising to the occasion, “I won’t give you any more than fourteen.”

“Chowdrah rupia, memsahib—fo-teen rupee! But the sahib he offer fifteen!”

“Oh, I don’t want it at all now,” said the sahib, who stood in the door with his back turned and whistled. “Now you must bargain with the memsahib.”

The baboo looked at his customers anxiously for a moment. “For sixteen rupees you take it,” he said.

“Don’t want it,” responded Mr. Browne.

“Alright—for fifteen?”

“Will you give him fifteen, Helen?”

“Certainly not, dear! Fourteen.”

“Fifteen the sahib say he give!” cried the baboo, his beard wagging with righteous reproach. “Take it for fifteen!” But Mr. and Mrs. Browne had made their way out. The baboo followed reminding and entreating for a hundred yards. They were deaf. Then he wheeled round upon them in front. “Very well, you give me fourteen?” The Brownes went back and left their address, which was weak in them, I consider; but I have no doubt that to this day that bearded baboo considers himself an injured person, and the victim of a most disastrous bandobust.^[20]