Sons, Servants and Statesmen (29 page)

When the message was delivered, her reaction was swift. She lost her temper, rose from her chair and angrily swept everything off her writing table on to the floor. This stalemate was only brought to an end when Lord Salisbury persuaded her that the French, being a somewhat odd race, would not understand the Munshi’s position. If he accompanied her, he might be exposed to insults. She gave in, but with bad grace. While he did not accompany her entourage to the Côte d’Azure, he turned up soon afterwards. His friend Rafiuddin Ahmed, who had tried and failed to become a lawyer and was now calling himself a journalist, joined him, but the household objected to his presence so strongly that the Queen was obliged to ask Ahmed to leave.

The household were determined to get rid of the Munshi. Reid warned the Queen that people in high places were saying that the only charitable explanation of her extraordinary obsession with her Indian servant was that she was no longer quite sane. He feared that a time might come when, for the sake of her good name, he might find it necessary for him as her doctor to announce that she had indeed gone mad. It was a brave thing for him to say to her face, but, unpalatable as it was, she apparently took his words seriously – for the time being.

Next Dr Reid spoke firmly to the Munshi, accusing him of dishonesty, lying about his origins and education, telling the Queen that in India no receipts were ever given for money and that therefore he did not need to give any, and having certain letters of the Queen’s in his possession which he was refusing to give up. If the Munshi did not stop his double-dealing and curb his pretensions, the doctor would feel himself obliged to reveal to her the full extent of his duplicity.

If he had hoped for any results after his interview with the Queen, he was to be disappointed. She insisted that the household had all behaved disgracefully, that the Munshi was to be treated with all due respect, that her gentlemen were not to go talking about such a painful subject either among themselves or with those from outside, and, above all, that they must not unite with the household against one person.

Frederick Ponsonby said wearily that all of them had done their best, but the Queen declared that they were all racially prejudiced and jealous of the Munshi. The Queen’s views were in fact well ahead of their time. Her positive discrimination in having Indian members of the household contrasted impressively with the record of Queen Elizabeth II, whose reign over a multi-racial Britain at the millennium was in no way reflected in her household, which had not one secretary, equerry or household servant of Asian or Afro-Caribbean background.
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But the gentlemen of Victoria’s household still tried to get rid of the Munshi and telegraphed the Viceroy in India for any further information about his background and anything that might make his position untenable. Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales was on holiday in Cannes. He had become increasingly alarmed about the harm which his mother’s obsession with the Munshi was doing the monarchy, especially in jubilee year. He sent for Reid to ascertain the extent of the situation and assured him that he was prepared to support the gentlemen in any reasonable moves they might need to take, and to intervene personally if necessary.

The Queen enlisted the help of her grandson-in-law Prince Louis of Battenberg. As a member of the family who owed much of his current standing in public life to her intervention, particularly with regard to his joining the English Navy as a young man despite his German birth, and as the husband of her granddaughter Princess Victoria, she was sure he would support her. She sent him to tell her gentlemen, through Sir Arthur Davidson, the groom-in-waiting, that they must ‘associate more’ with the Munshi. He did so with some reluctance, only to find the household up in arms and threatening to resign if she insisted on pressing the matter. Endless conferences between various senior officers of the household followed. The result was akin to a nervous breakdown on the Queen’s part. She finally admitted to Dr Reid that she had been foolish in acceding to her Indian servant’s constant requests.

A few days later, when Reid told the Queen he had received a letter from Sir Edward Bradford, Chief of Police for London, about the Munshi’s complicity in the somewhat suspect Muslim Patriotic League affairs, she broke down, admitted ‘she had played the fool about the Munshi, begged to be “let down easily” and promised to do what they wanted, though not abruptly, for fear of any scandal’.
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Yet it was not enough to prevent ‘a very excited interview’ between the sovereign and her doctor a day or two later, in which he firmly warned her that the only reasonable excuse that could be given was that Her Majesty was not sane, and that the time would come when he would find it necessary, for her memory and reputation, to say so, ‘and that is a nice position to be in’.
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It had no lasting effect. Having evidently slept on the problem, the Queen continued to insist that the Munshi was to be treated with all due respect, and that the household should not continue talking about this ‘painful subject’ among themselves or with others. The court realised that it was no use: Her Majesty would not change her view that they were all racially prejudiced, and that they were all jealous of the Munshi.

That summer, the Queen wanted to confer on the Munshi the Membership of the Royal Victorian Order. He had already been honoured with the CIE, or a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire. Once again, the household were angered by this rank favouritism, and Sir James Reid was again prevailed on to speak to the equally weary Lord Salisbury on the matter. The Prime Minister advised her that to honour the Munshi in this way would look like favouritism towards her Muhammadan subjects and cause jealousy among the Hindus. This reasoning apparently convinced her.

By now, even the Queen was beginning to realise that her devoted Indian servant was not totally blameless. If he was attracting such hostility, surely there was something in the comments being made against him. Yet to admit that he was in the wrong would have meant losing face in front of her household, and she did not wish to give the impression – no matter how true it might have been – that she was afraid of him. The more she favoured and protected him, the more he took advantage of the situation, and the more his bullying and insolence increased.

In October 1897 a large photograph was published in the
Daily Graphic
, showing the Munshi standing by the Queen while she sat at her table, signing documents. Underneath it ran the caption: ‘The Queen’s Life in the Highlands, Her Majesty receiving a lesson in Hindustani from the Munshi Hafiz Abdul Karim C.I.E.’ Reid discussed the photograph with the Queen, who was uncomfortable about the matter and felt she had been made to look foolish. That week Reid interviewed the photographer, who told him that the Munshi himself had ordered its publication.

Another round of ‘painful interviews’ ensued, especially after the furious Munshi resented Reid’s discussing the matter with the photographer. The Queen realised that she had made a mistake, writing Reid a fourteen-page letter which started with her admission that she was ‘terribly annoyed and upset by all this stupid business which unfortunately I am to blame for, and regret extremely’.
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The persistent aggravation was telling on Reid, who was feeling gravely put upon in having to deal with matters far beyond the call of normal duty. In severe pain as a result of a boil on his right thigh, and worried almost beyond endurance, after a sleepless night he wrote a letter of resignation. Thankfully, the Queen must have sensed how upset he was and changed her attitude towards him for the better, evidently realising that she dare not lose him; the letter was never sent.

By early 1898, the relationship between Queen and Indian servant was fraying at the edges. Both were beginning to raise their voices to each other, and her dresser noted in February that he shouted at her, after which she wrote him a long letter about it. Lord Salisbury remarked that Her Majesty could always get rid of the Munshi if she really wanted to – but such an outcome seemed most unlikely. He firmly believed that ‘she really likes the emotional excitement, as being the only form of excitement she can have’.
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There was another, stronger, underlying reason. The Queen would not be dictated to, as she had made plain during one of the ‘Brown rows’. Nobody, whether family, government or household, was going to tell her whom she should employ or even have as friends and confidants. To her, it was a person’s character which was important, not their position in the social hierarchy, let alone their racial origins or the colour of their skin. She also had a keen sense of fair play and the British instinct for championing the underdog, which was perhaps more than could be said of many of those around her.

In fact, if the Munshi was not blue-blooded, this could be a positive virtue. Queen Victoria was not going to place her blind trust exclusively in aristocrats or courtiers. She would defend those in whom she placed her trust to the last breath in her body against any unfounded charges which she believed to be based on prejudice or jealousy, hence her spirited rebuff to those who dared to hint that he had probably stolen her jewellery for financial gain. While she knew that the Munshi, like John Brown, was only human and had his faults like anyone else, she must have felt a certain inward delight in forcing family and household to accept a man whom they hated or despised. Any attempts to poison her mind against him backfired with a vengeance. Only a decade or so later, others would find a similar parallel in the relationship between her granddaughter, Empress Alexandra of Russia, and the Russian peasant Grigori Rasputin.

The Munshi remained in Queen Victoria’s service for the remaining three years of her life. After her last holiday in Cimiez, her problems with the household regarding his presence diminished. Like John Brown, he proved himself a faithful companion in a way that nobody from her household or family ever could be.

Additionally, she had a vested interest in not wishing to lose face. After having braved a solid coalition of opposition from her household and their evident determination to try to force him out, either by shaming him into leaving or blackening him so much to the Queen that she would give in and dismiss him – both campaigns on their part proving counter-productive – she would have lost face had she given in to them. For better or worse, she had no alternative but to retain his services until he decided to leave of his own accord, something he was unlikely to do, or until she decided she had really had enough of him, another unlikely scenario.

In time, Sir James Reid would also cause his employer some, but only temporary, distress – if for a very different reason. Unlike John Brown, he was not destined to remain a bachelor for life. At the age of forty-nine he fell in love with Susan Baring, a ladyin-waiting at court and niece of Lady Ponsonby. What began as friendship rapidly blossomed, and on 24 July 1899 he proposed to her. Normally so understanding in many personal matters, the Queen had an uncommonly proprietorial attitude where bachelors and spinsters in her employ suddenly announced that they intended to get married. Naturally, Reid ensured that she was among the first to be informed. She was ‘much less ferocious about it’ than he and his affianced ever expected, but she asked them to refrain from announcing the news or telling the other members of the household, at Osborne at the time, for a few days.
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They had to wait for a full month before they were allowed to make the news public. Moreover, they had to agree to ‘the Queen’s Regulations’. Certain conditions had to be observed scrupulously once they were married, regarding the times of day he was in attendance on the Queen, times of year when they could go on holiday and where the future Mrs Reid could and could not go when they were at Windsor. He was still required to come round after breakfast to see what the Queen needed and be back before luncheon. Moreover, while Mrs Reid might occasionally visit his room, ‘this must not interfere with his other duties’.
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