12 sept 2005

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The Hindu
Metro Plus
Madras Miscellany

Monday, Sep 12, 2005

Ravi Varma midst the Masons

S. MUTHIAH

A NEW LOOK The Freemasons Hall

There was a delightful cartoon I saw the other day. It featured a child looking rather upset after its birthday party was over and wondering, "Appa, how come I get to celebrate my birthday for only one day while Chennai gets to celebrate it for a whole week?" Indeed, Madras's celebration went on into a second week and I was present at what might have been the last of the celebratory occasions, a get-together by the Freemasons to remember the founding of the city.

That was my first visit to the Freemasons' hall on Commander-in-Chief Road, and I found its interior rather splendid after some meticulously executed restoration. But more than the restoration — which reflected that the City in parts is at last catching on to the idea of wanting to care for its living heritage — I was happy to make two discoveries during my visit.

One was a Ravi Varma portrait — — adding one more to the few Ravi Varma originals in the city that I know of — and the other that the Masons have long had a connection with St. George's School and Orphanage, the ancient organisation still having a representative on the School's Board of Management.

There's quite a treasure-house of antiquities in the Hall, ranging from portraits in oils and photographs of the Grand Masters who have headed the organisation in South India from the 1780s to the antique Master's chairs, other furniture and the ornamentation in the three Temples the Hall houses, all carefully preserved.

Amongst those portraits is one of Lord Ampthill, Governor of Madras 1901-1906. Ampthill, the son of the diplomat Lord Odo Russell, was the Private Secretary of Joseph Chamberlain, a major figure in late 19th Century British politics, and father of Neville Chamberlain, a latter Prime Minister. Joseph Chamberlain of Birmingham, who was president, Board of Trade and later Colonial Secretary, was best known for his advocacy of the British Empire becoming a united trading block. Lord Ampthill acted as Viceroy in 1904 when Lord Curzon was on Home Leave. I, however, remember Ampthill for having been an enthusiastic patron of Raja Ravi Varma, that great artist who might be considered the father of Modern Indian Art. To find Ampthill painted by Ravi Varma was, therefore, a happy discovery.

It was in 1873 that Ravi Varma came to the art world's attention when he was awarded the First Prize for his "Nair Lady at her Toilet" at the Madras Fine Arts exhibition. Prize followed prize at subsequent Madras exhibitions - and so did the patronage of the Governors of Madras. In the 1904 exhibition, by when his exhibits were not for competition, Ravi Varma exhibited a striking portrait of Lady Ampthill. The next year, he exhibited at the Madras show the portrait of Lord Ampthill in his Masonic regalia. The Governor invited him to accompany him and the Prince of Wales (later to be King George V) to Mysore and paint the highlights of a visit where royalty entertained royalty. One of the most memorable pictures that came out of that tour was the impressionistic "Mysore Khedda".

Ravi Varma died in October 1906. By then, Lord Ampthill had returned to England but he wrote from there to Ravi Varma's son, "A more gentle, kindly, courteous nature I have never known, and added to that there were the lofty ideas and pure motives which inspired him in the Art to which he devoted his life which so much resultant benefit to Indian life. It would be difficult to ever estimate the influence for good which your father's paintings, widely popularised as they were, had among all kinds and conditions of your countrymen. They spread a refined taste in Art and they must have done much to influence religious thought... "

Indeed, recognition of that has been emerging in the last couple of years to judge by the several books on Raja Ravi Varma that have been coming out.

The St. George's connection

Adjacent to the Ampthill painting in the Freemasons' Hall is a burst of Sir Archibald Campbell, Governor of Madras 1786-90. It was Sir Archibald and Lady Campbell who were responsible for the founding of the Male and Female Orphans' Asylums. Both evolved from the school for orphans founded in St. Mary's in the Fort in the 1680s and which became St. Mary's Charity School in 1715.

Encouraged by Lady Campbell, the Rev. Wilhelm Gericke founded the Female Orphans' Asylum in 1787 and this was followed by the Male Orphans' Asylum, headed by Dr. Andrew Bell, who introduced in it the gurukulamsystem of education that he, later, in the 1790s, introduced in Britain with fair success as the Madras System of Education. The two orphanages were run separately in which was known as the Egmore Redoubt, the small fort to the rear of what is now the Egmore Railway Station. In 1871/2, the two orphanages were merged together with St. Mary's Charity School and became known as the Civil Orphans' Asylum. In 1904, the Asylum moved into Conway Gardens, opposite where Pachaiyappa's College now is. And in 1954, it took the name by which it is today known, St. George' Higher Secondary School and Orphanage.

Given its roots, this is the oldest Western style school in the country. And given the Campbell Masonic connection, it is no surprise that the Freemasons of Madras have long been associated with the running of this institution.

The postman knocks

Reader K. Selvam reminds me that the YMCA building (Miscellany, September 5) was the first building built of stone in Madras. From what the experts tell me, it would probably be more accurate to say it was the first building in Madras to be cladded with stone. It was red sandstone mined near Madras - in Tada, I'm told, but I'm unable to locate the village - that was used as cladding on masonry walls.

* Teak (Miscellany, August 29) seems to have stirred the interest of several readers. One tells me that teak has been used in India for more than 2000 years (still no answers to where and how it came from) and that many temples in South India have teak beams over 1000 years old. Tectona grandis(teak, to you and me) is hard, does not warp, split, crack or decay, and is resistant to termites. Citing several sources, Selvam says they are unanimous that it was the most popular timber used for shipbuilding.

* Reader K.V.S. Krishnan reminds me that the oldest teak plantation in the world was in Nilambur in Kerala, planting having taken place in 1840. The harvest cycle used to be 50-70 years, but modern agro-techniques have brought it down to 20-30 years.

I recall Nilambur for another plantation crop: rubber. It was in 1878 that Ceara rubber seedlings from the Kew Gardens in England were introduced in the Nilambur teak plantations to be followed by 28 Hevea rubber seedlings from the Peradeniya Gardens in Ceylon. The rubber seeds had been smuggled to Kew by Henry Alexander Wickham, a smalltime planter in Brazil, at the urging of Clements R. Markham of the India Office. Wickham smuggled out of Brazil 70,000 rubber seeds in a shipment in 1876 and these were germinated in Kew, less that 3000 seedlings sprouting. But these seedlings were the beginnings of the whole rubber industry in Asia. He was given a knighthood - for breaking Brazilian law, it must be presumed.

Krishna, narrating his personal experience with teak, adds that he was in charge of removing a 20-acre coppice of 25-year-old teak trees in Carady Goody Estate, opened out by R.H. Goldies in Vandiperiyar in the 1860s and taken over by A.V. Thomas & Co. in 1941/2. The old dead roots/stumps, Krishnan recalls, were of four-four and-a-half feet diameter and when uprooted were sold to cartwheel makers in Cumbum. He particularly remembers one huge teak root that took 100 man-days to uproot. It was of diameter 6 feet and length 10 feet and weighed 7 to 8 tonnes. "It could not be lifted into a lorry and was left on the roadside in 1975, at the time I left the company." Teak trees like that one, I'm told, are no longer found in India.