But we did not see the treasury of crown jewels, and that was a disappointment, for in mass and richness it ranks only second in India. By mistake we were taken to see the new palace instead, and we used up the last remnant of our spare time there. It was a pity, too; for the new palace is mixed modern American-European, and has not a merit except costliness. It is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of place. The architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the suppression of the Thugs; they had their merits. The old palace is oriental and charming, and in consonance with the country. The old palace would still be great if there were nothing of it but the spacious and lofty hall where the durbars are held. It is not a good place to lecture in, on account of the echoes, but it is a good place to hold durbars in and regulate the affairs of a kingdom, and that is what it is for. If I had it I would have a durbar every day, instead of once or twice a year.
The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is European. He has been in Europe five times. People say that this is costly amusement for him, since in crossing the sea he must sometimes be obliged to drink water from vessels that are more or less public, and thus damage his caste. To get it purified again he must make pilgrimage to some renowned Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His people are like the other Hindoos, profoundly religious; and they could not be content with a master who was impure.
We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and the silver one—they seemed to be six-pounders. They were not designed for business, but for salutes upon rare and particularly important state occasions. An ancestor of the present Gaikwar had the silver one made, and a subsequent ancestor had the gold one made, in order to outdo him.
This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of Baroda, which was of old famous for style and show. It used to entertain visiting rajahs and viceroys with tiger-fights, elephant-fights, illuminations, and elephant-processions of the most glittering and gorgeous character.
It makes the circus a pale, poor thing.
(FE)
I had worried that Mark Twain’s Grand Tour of India seemed a bit light on the maharaja audiences. One of the richest of them, actually the second richest and by general consent the most enlightened, was that of Baroda, in the modern state of Gujarat, where Sayajirao III, the Maharaja of Gwaekor, ruled in fabulous splendor and general munificence. As Twain noted: “This is indeed one of the oldest of the princedoms of India, and has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and splendors, and for the wealth of its princes.” His full form and title was His Highness Farzand-i-Khas-i-Daulat-i-Inglishia, Shrimant Maharaja Sir Sayajirao III, Gaekwad, Sena Khas Khel Shamsher Bahadur, Maharaja of Baroda, GCSI, GCIE, KIH. He had been on the throne for twenty years when Twain met him and in that time had just finished building the amazingly ornate, massively overwrought Laxmi Vilas Palace in the then-fashionable Moghul-British Indo-Saracenic style. It was four times the size of Buckingham Place and was said to have cost £200,000, a staggering sum considering that the labor was practically free. Perhaps he considered £200,000 was a sensible amount for a palace-cum-safe in which to keep his £3,000,000 (worth £12 million and £180 million today respectively) collection of jewelry—a collection which included the famous Brazilian diamond, the Star of the South and no fewer than four carpets made of pearls with diamonds, rubies and emeralds sewn into the silk. Every time the maharaja or maharini left or entered the palace the household guard, with their white breeches, blue and gold jackets and black boots, would strike up the Baroda anthem. By the time of Twain’s lecture tour he had already visited Europe five times—no small undertaking in itself—and in his library were several of Twain’s books among many thousand others. Twain observed: “The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is European. He has been in Europe five times. People say that this is costly amusement for him, since in crossing the sea he must sometimes be obliged to drink water from vessels that are more or less public, and thus damage his caste. To get it purified again he must make pilgrimage to some renowned Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His people are like the other Hindoos, profoundly religious; and they could not be content with a master who was impure.” The maharaja sent his personal representative, his Vakeel, Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, to Bombay to persuade Twain—for the princely sum of 1,000 rupees—to lecture in the Durbar Hall at Laxmi Vilas Palace. Twain was then shown the maharaja’s two palaces: the older Makapura Palace, now purloined by the Indian Air Force for knocking its officers into shape, and the newer Laxmi Vilas Palace where he was to lecture later that day. He much preferred the former, which he found “oriental and charming”, and damned the latter as being without merit “except for its costliness”. He saw the silver and gold cannons built by successive maharajas in a gilded display of one-upmanship, which “seemed to be six-pounders. They were not designed for business, but for salutes upon rare and particularly important state occasions. This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of Baroda, which was of old famous for style and show. It used to entertain visiting rajahs and viceroys with tiger-fights, elephant-fights, illuminations, and elephant-processions of the most glittering and gorgeous character.” Although the Laxmi Vilas Palace was “not a good place to lecture in, on account of the echoes, it is a good place to hold durbars in and regulate the affairs of a kingdom, and that is what it is for. If I had it I would have a durbar every day, instead of once or twice a year.” Baroda made a deep impression on Twain, who thought it all “intensely Indian, crumbly and mouldering and immemorially old”; I can echo that impression having, like Twain, arrived here from downtown Bombay and cantonment Pune—this for the first time on his Tour and indeed on our Re-Tour was “India”.
Laxmi Vilas Palace
By I, Bracknell, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2386722
Nazarbaug Palace
http://www.historyofvadodara.in/nazarbaug-palace/