January 18 Saturday – From FE ch XXXVIII p. 345:

We have been running up the Arabian Sea, latterly. Closing up on Bombay now, and due to arrive this evening.

On board at noon Livy wrote to Susan Crane that they expected to reach Bombay at four. The newspapers reported that both R.S. and Carlyle G. Smythe were aboard. The US Vice-Consul Samuel Comfort and others met the Clemens party upon their arrival. A formal reception was called off at the last minute when the Rosetta arrived hours early. The Clemens party took rooms at the Esplanade Hotel, also known as Watson’s Hotel [Ahluwalia 9].

While approaching Bombay Sam referred to George Bruce Malleson’s The Indian Mutiny of 1857:

“The Indian Mutiny” — Col. G.B. Malleson, C.S.I. Review it. Abuse his spelling of Kahnpur, &c [Gribben 447; NB 36 TS 19].

At the hotel Sam witnessed a scene of abuse that brought vivid images of his boyhood:

Our rooms were high up, on the front. A white man — he was a burly German — went up with us, and brought three natives along to see to arranging things. About fourteen others followed in procession, with the hand-baggage; each carried an article — and only one; a bag, in some cases, in other cases less. One strong native carried my overcoat, another a parasol, another a box of cigars, another a novel, and the last man in the procession had no load but a fan. It was all done in earnestness and sincerity, there was not a smile in the procession from the head of it to the tail of it. Each man waited patiently, tranquilly, in no sort of hurry, till one of us found time to give him a copper, then he bent his head reverently, touched his forehead with his fingers, and went his way….

There was a vast glazed door which opened upon the balcony. It needed closing, or cleaning, or something, and a native got down on his knees and went to work at it. He seemed to be doing it well enough, but perhaps he wasn’t, for the burly German put on a look that betrayed dissatisfaction, then without explaining what was wrong, gave the native a brisk cuff on the jaw and then told him where the defect was. It seemed such a shame to do that before us all. The native took it with meekness, saying nothing, and not showing in his face or manner any resentment. I had not seen the like of this for fifty years. It carried me back to my boyhood, and flashed upon me the forgotten fact that this was the usual way of explaining one’s desires to a slave. …those unresented cuffings made me sorry for the victim and ashamed for the punisher.

That evening, Sam tried to sleep:

Some natives — I don’t remember how many — went into my bedroom, now, and put things to rights and arranged the mosquito-bar, and I went to bed to nurse my cough. It was about nine in the evening. What a state of things! For three hours the yelling and shouting of natives in the hall continued along with the velvety patter of their swift bare feet — what a racket it was! They were yelling orders and messages down three flights. Why, in the matter of noise it amounted to a riot, an insurrection, a revolution. And then there were other noises mixed up with these and at intervals tremendously accenting them — roofs falling in, I judged, windows smashing, persons being murdered, crows squawking, and deriding, and cursing, canaries screeching, monkeys jabbering, macaws blaspheming, and every now and then fiendish bursts of laughter and explosions of dynamite. By midnight I suffered all the different kinds of shocks there are, and knew that I could never more be disturbed by them, either isolated or in combination [FE ch. XXXVIII 348-53].