To return to the swimming pools. Certainly there is nothing so exhilarating as a swim in the open air; but among the changes due to the British Raj and the consequent copying of European fashions, one of the greatest drawbacks to Indian women must be the loss of their fine water gardens. Indeed, in India we all lose by the neglect of Indian garden art, but none of us lose more of health, delight, and happiness than the gentle purdah ladies, whose lives are, in truth, rather cramped by contact with our ideas when this entails the loss of their beautiful terraced roofs and pavilions, and the introduction of the open, exposed garden which they cannot enjoy. A recent instance will illustrate my meaning. On the outskirts of a famous Indian city, not far away from the old Mughal gardens in which I was sketching, fine new buildings for a girls school were about to be opened. The school was a strictly purdah school-a comparatively new idea. The daughters and future wives of the Indian rulers and nobles were to be educated there, and fitted to become in after life good and helpful companions to their husbands and sons. By the particular advice of our wise Queen-Empress, their own best traditions and customs were in all cases to be adhered to. The opening ceremony was made an event of special importance. Princesses and officials wives were gathered to meet the great lady who had snatched one day from a long round of other duties in order to be present. One could imagine how beautiful and useful the buildings to be opened might be-an Indian garden of girls; a modern maidens palace, such as the garden-bower of Kadambari, the Gandharva Princess. One could picture the dark arched entrance; the main building with its cool fountain court and airy terraced roof; the pavilions and class-rooms built against the high enclosing garden- walls; the swimming pool and the swings; the cypress walks, the squares of flowers and fruit trees, the plots laid out in grass for games,-the whole comPining to unite the best of Indian and English common-sense and art with the pleasant freedom of complete security. And the reality ? It was a large, solid, red-brick building of the British public institute order, with praiseworthy 'Indian' trimmings by way of decoration, but with little Indian feeling; low walls, a gravel sweep, a dry, bare-looking garden, the whole surrounded with hideous matting screens-for was not this a school for purdah girls?
