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266 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN'
on my mind by the vivid essays of Tom Macaulay on Lord Give and Warren Hastings. How I had longed, as a boy, to have the opportunity of viewing the "barren rocks of Aden" (subject of one of our very best and liveliest bagpipe tunes) ; of gazing on the peerless Taj Mahal at Agra; of wandering in historic Lucknow and noting the road by which "brave Havelock and His Highlanders" came to the rescue of the beleaguered Britishers at the time of the Mutiny; of seeing the "dawn come up like thunder out o' China 'cross the bay." Well, all these dreams were realized on this trip of mine in 1925.
Earlier in these memoirs I think I said that I would like to write a book about Australia. I would like even better to write a book about India. But the objections I perceived in writing about Australia would hold quite as pointedly in any serious attempt on my part to write about India. So I will only give you some fragmentary impressions of my experiences in, and my thoughts on, the most fascinating country in all the world.
I started my Indian tour at Bombay. The moment I stepped on the stage for my first performance I sensed the eternal glamour of the East. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling. Hundreds of beautiful Parsee ladies were in the stalls and circle. Their picturesque dress and their flashing jewels helped to make up a scene the like of which I had never beheld from the stage of any theatre in the world. It almost took my breath away by its sheer colourfulness and opulence. Even while I was singing my mind was flitting back to the pages of the Arabian Nights. And if the scene inside the theatre made such an impression on me what can I say of my first visit to the home of a great Indian prince, the Nizam of Hyderabad? This famous and enlightened potentate has, I believe, many stately palaces but none can surely be more lovely than that which he has on Malabar Hill on the outskirts of, and above, Bombay ! Lady