Page 49 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

to greet us. After that we were prepared for visitors at every main station,
but none appeared. Everyone in the party enjoyed the train journey,
which took about a week.
The visit lasted for over a month and was an unqualified success.
Shaikh Hamed was received in private audience by the King, and I, who
had been created a C.B.E. in the Birthday Honours, attended an Investi­
ture. We had a full programme of official and private functions, including
a dinner given for the Shaikh by Lord Zetland, Secretary of State for
India, where we met many old friends, including Sir Percy Cox and
Lord Lloyd, who the Shaikh persistently addressed as ‘Lloyd George’,
though there was no resemblance between them. We did the London
season very thoroughly, going to Ascot, Trooping the Colour, Aldershot
Tattoo, polo at Hurlingham, Hendon Flying Display and a visit to the
Queen Mary at Southampton. Unfortunately the Shaikh wore a new pair
of shoes and after walking for what seemed like miles up and down the
decks he was reduced to lameness. An item on the Government pro­
gramme was ‘Ballets de Monte Carlo’ where we saw Scheherazade. The
. Shaikh might well have said, like Queen Victoria, ‘We arc not amused.’
1 This exotic representation of fun in the harem while the master was
absent was, under the circumstances, an unfortunate choice. At Madame
Tussaud’s he stood for some time in contemplation of the effigies of
King Henry VTII, surrounded by his wives, ‘The King,’ as the Shaikh
said, ‘who chopped off the heads of his wives when they bored him.’
I hastened to assure him that this happened many, many years ago.
The Shaikh did not bet at the dog racing at Wembley, but he picked
* book, then another; more and more books were showered on him and
the winners with such skill that we, who backed his fancy, had a profit­
able evening. I took him to Lincoln College, Oxford, which was my own
college. While he was being shown round by E. C. Marchant, the Sub-
Rector, he said to him, ‘You used to teach my Adviser, now he teaches
me what you taught him.* We visited Huntley and Palmer’s biscuit
factory at Reading. After sampling quantities of biscuits the Shaikh was
asked to choose a selection so that a crate could be sent to him at Bahrain.
I, too, was invited to choose a selection. The two cases of biscuits were
: • shipped, but I never saw mine. Both cases were delivered to the palace
and by the time that I returned nothing remained of my carefully chosen
samples. I have always regretted this! The Shaikh attended the sports at
my son’s preparatory school at Brighton, which was a great feather in the
cap of a small boy of seven years old. At the Tower of London we drank
coffee in the Governor’s house. The Shaikh asked who was the original
of a portrait in the hall. I rathfcr enjoyed being able to tell him that it was
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my great-uncle, Field Marshal Sir Richard Dacrcs, who was at one time
Governor of the Tower.
We went to Edinburgh and then returned to London; the people of
Edinburgh were less accustomed to Oriental potentates than the
Londoners and every morning there were crowds waiting outside the
hotel to see the Shaikh. He made a fine appearance in his vivid robes with
gold sword, dagger and head circlet; sometimes he wore a scarlet under-
robe and a white cloak, or dark crimson under a brown cloak em­
broidered in gold, and the Arab members of his suite were equally colour­
ful. At a banquet which was given for him by the Lord Provost of
Edinburgh the Shaikh was very startled when two pipers, whose entry
he had not noticed, suddenly started playing behind his chair. But he
liked the music and after we returned to Bahrain I made enquiries about
pipes from a firm in India. The firm’s reply was a typical Babu letter, part
of which was as follows: ‘We have to conclude that you have started
Brass Band, but Bagpipes Band is cheaper and most of the British and
Indian Infantries like this much. The gorgeous and sonorous tunes, de­
claring and petting the soldiers for Bravery produce effective and joyful
feelings, and after all it is as cheap as any thing.’
We were entertained by Colonel Gordon Loch, who had been Political
Agent at Bahrain, at The Binns, a fine old castle near Linlithgow. On the
way there we stopped in Linlithgow to meet the Provost and other
dignitaries. The schoolchildren had been given a holiday to see the
Shaikh and he was immediately surrounded by hundreds of small boys
and girls waving autograph books. Rather laboriously he signed one
if the police had not rescued him he would have spent the rest of the day
signing the autograph books. He returned to Bahrain by the same route,
staying a few days in Paris and in Istanbul; I travelled with him as far as
Hyder Pasha, where I said good-bye to him on the Taurus Express, en
route for Baghdad, then I returned to England to complete my leave.
Nineteen thirty-seven was a year of progress made possible by the
certainty of revenue from oil and by the Shaikh’s desire, after his visit to
England, to modernize Bahrain and to improve the health of his people.
Malaria was rampant, especially in the villages where the anopheles
mosquito bred in choked water-channels and stagnant pools in the date-
gardens and in big earthenware water-jars, which were never emptied,
in every house. I obtained the services of Major Afridi, an anti-malaria
expert in the service of the Indian Government. He prepared a report
showing how we could reduce and finally eradicate malaria in Bahrain.
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