“The speech affected me almost to tears, and it seemed to affect the Nizam, whose answer, drawn up for him by Seyd Huseyn, was almost inaudible. He behaved, however, with considerable dignity during the rather trying quarter of an hour when, seated on his throne by Lord Ripon’s side and girt by that nobleman with a new diamond-hilted sword, put on on the wrong side, he waited to be photographed, for such was the banal termination. Swords also were given to Salar Jung, Peishkar, and Kurshid Jah, the latter’s with an ivory hilt, reminding one of a large paper cutter, perhaps lest he should go home and commit suicide with it, for he must have been very angry. I hear the poor Peishkar was so utterly confounded that he walked home immediately after the ceremony without waiting for his carriage, and was picked up somewhere in the street by his servants, having lost his way. But this may be an exaggeration. Lord Ripon has a pleasant voice speaking, but his style is that of a sermon, which, however, suited the occasion, and all the Hyderabadis, except the disgraced nobles, seemed delighted with him. I believe this appointment of Salar Jung to be generally popular. But Rasul Yar Khan told me there were some who were not best pleased.
“Then we drove back to Mrs. Clerk’s, where the Commissioner-in-Chief and Sir Frederick Roberts were also invited to luncheon. Sir Donald Stewart is a dear old fogey, but with wits enough to appreciate Colonel Moore, and Sir Frederick is a gallant officer of the unostentatious, strictly professional type. I like them both. We stayed there the afternoon, and went in the evening to a great banquet at the Palace, in the new part of it, which is extremely handsome and built in excellent taste only about twenty years ago by an Italian architect. The illuminations, both in the Palace and in the city, and for miles round, surpass anything I ever saw attempted in Europe, even at Paris in the palmy days of the Empire. There were at least two hundred guests at this dinner, which was held in a very long hall. Anne was taken in by the Viceroy, but I had to shift for myself, and was fortunate enough to get hold of Seyd Ahmed, the Persian attaché and translator of the Foreign Office, an Afghan with whom I had a most instructive conversation. He had been educated by some missionaries at Peshawar, and is to a certain extent denationalized, but is a good Sunni, and seems still fond of his own people. He was employed in that mission to Shere Ali which was refused admittance to Ali Musjid. I asked him his candid opinion about the Afghan War, and he said he could not approve it either at the time or now, though Shere Ali had brought it on himself by intriguing with the Russians. He said, moreover, that any Mohammedans who might have pretended to me that they approved the war were hypocrites, for all were strongly against it. The Mohammedans of India were, nevertheless, loyal as a body, though not all. They were so from interest. He lamented the quarrels which divided them, and was sure I was doing a good work in bringing them together. If they only were united, and knew their strength, the Government would be obliged to do something for them. But they were far from united. He did not approve of Seyd Ahmed of Aligarh, though far from a bigot. He had been brought up an utter bigot till he went to school at Peshawar, but now his ideas were changed. He also told me he had travelled with Major Napier in Persia, and corroborated much of what Malkum Khan had told me of the Persians. He was of opinion that they were doomed to fall to Russia, they were so much diminished in numbers, only three to five millions in a territory as large as India. Afghanistan was far more prosperous. He would not hear of his countrymen being treacherous, except to Englishmen, who they thought were spies, or in cases of blood feuds among themselves. He thought I might travel safely among them, and the best way to go would be through Persia. He had heard Malkum Khan’s history, much as I had heard it from Malkum Khan himself. I met Vikar-el-Omra after dinner, who seemed in his old friendly mood. I asked him how he liked the new political arrangement, and he said he thought he did, but Salar Jung was very young to be Diwan. I believe his idea had been a council of seven, with himself as one of them. So he is naturally a little disappointed. I told him I thought the success or non-success of Salar Jung would depend mainly on the kind of advice given him by the Resident. We slept at Bolarum.