Barbara Cartland: The Patient Bridegroom

The Earl of Mayo was the first Viceroy of India to be really loved by the Indian people.

He was not only extremely handsome, tall and broad-shouldered but he had an infectious enthusiasm, a gaiety, and with it a kindness of heart that the Indians found irresistible.

Everything I have written about him in this story is true.

After his death he was always referred to as the ‘Ideal Viceroy’.

I have known three Viceroys.

Lord Curzon, who was brilliant and intelligent, saved for India their beautiful Temples and buildings, which had been neglected for a long time and so were gradually being lost to posterity.

The Marquis of Willingdon had not the qualifications and personality of his predecessor, but he was also charming, everyone liked him, and he became popular with the people.

He was very nearly my father-in-law!

Earl Mountbatten of Burma was the last Viceroy and in many ways resembled the Earl of Mayo.

He was exceedingly handsome, well-built and invariably impressive.

He had the same charm, charisma and enthusiasm for the people he ruled which made them adore him.

Although he went out to give India back to its people, they cried when he left them and paid him the amazing and extraordinary compliment of when he handed them over their own country, they asked him to stay on as their First Governor General.

As Pundit Nehru, the Prime Minister said in his speech at the banquet on the last evening before Mountbatten left,

“ Wherever you have gone you have brought with you solace, hope and encouragement. Is it surprising, therefore, that the people of India love you ?”

“I don’t believe it!”

“I am afraid, my Lord, that is the truth, unpleasant as it may be,” the Solicitor replied.

The Earl of Rayburne could only stare at the man with an expression in his eyes that was even more dramatic than the way he had spoken.

“But surely,” he said after an uncomfortable pause, “you could have written to me.”

“We did not know that things were as bad as they do appear now,” the Solicitor replied, “and in any case. Your Lordship had given Mr. Basil Burne Power of Attorney. Therefore whatever he did was entirely within the Law.”

The Earl could not think of anything to say.

He had come back from India looking forward to living happily on his estate and he had supposed that everything would be exactly the same as when he had left.

His father had died in 1868, and he had come into the title, which was a very old one.

Majestic Rayburne Castle and its huge estate in Oxfordshire was one of the beauty spots of the area.

When Michael Burne left Oxford University he had then joined the Household Brigade in which his family had served for many generations.

He was, however, thrilled and delighted when later in the same year he was asked by his cousin, the new Viceroy of India, to go out and join him.

It had been a great surprise when the Earl of Mayo had been appointed by Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister, after Lord Lawrence’s early retirement from the post.

He was unknown to most of the English people, but Mr. Disraeli was relying, as he had done so often before, on his intuition and it proved to be a stroke of genius.

One thing everyone knew about the Earl of Mayo was that he was a brilliantly successful Master of the Kildare Hunt.

His young relative, Michael Burne, an outstanding horseman, was a frequent visitor to the Earl’s house in Ireland.

In a way Michael closely resembled the Earl, who, tall and broad-shouldered, was a fine figure of a man.

He had both a strong determination to succeed in life and a great sense of humour and his enthusiasm and his gaiety gave him a magnetism that made him friends wherever he went.

To the young Earl of Rayburne, to be in India with a man he greatly admired and whose friendship had coloured his boyhood was an invitation that he could not resist.

As he looked round his broad acres that surrounded Rayburne Castle, everything seemed to be in order.

There appeared to be nothing that especially needed attention and he could see no reason why he should not go to India.

Everything was made easier when his father’s brother, the Honourable Basil Burne, had offered to look after The Castle and the estate in his absence.

“That is very kind of you, Uncle Basil,” he said. “You are quite sure that it will not be a nuisance rather than a pleasure?”

“I think I have been in London long enough,” Basil Burne replied. “It will do me good to be in the country and I can look after everything for you, so you need have no worries when you are in India.”

The Earl then gave him Power of Attorney and set off on a tedious voyage, which took several months as it then meant going round the Cape of Good Hope.

He knew that at the end of it he would find an adventure such as he had never had the opportunity of participating in before.

He arrived in India to find that his relative had already begun to gain a popularity that no previous Viceroy had ever enjoyed.

The Earl of Mayo’s commanding presence, his smile, his joyous vigour and enthusiasm, appealed greatly to the Indians.

They also appreciated the magnificence of his splendid entertainments.

Lord Lawrence had been rather an austere Viceroy and reluctant to spend any money, but the Earl of Mayo and his wife brought back gaiety and glamour to Government House.

The fact that he had appointed a fine young and high-spirited staff made everything seem very much easier than it had been before.

Michael was entranced from the very moment he arrived.

The new Viceroy had been considerably helped by the fact that the Government at home had changed while he was actually on his voyage to Calcutta.

He was a Conservative, of course, like Mr. Disraeli, but a Liberal Government under Mr. William Gladstone had just come into power.

This might have been an embarrassment, but instead it was a help, because the Liberals did not seem inclined to interfere in any way in Indian affairs.

This gave the Viceroy a free hand to pursue his own policies and agenda.

People had sneered at him and said that he would have no idea of how to handle such a large country.

It was, however, his experience in Ireland and his sympathy for the peasants of his own country that made him such an outstanding Viceroy.

He was particularly worried about famine and this was indeed a serious problem that he had already encountered in the ‘Hungry Forties’ in Ireland.

He also wished India to build schools and hospitals as well as railways, canals and more roads and he wanted also to see everything for himself, which was another reason why he had invited his young friend, Michael, to join him.

Much of his travelling about the country was done on horseback.

The only aide-de-camp who could keep up with him was Michael and they often rode eighty miles a day.

Although he was not aware of it at the time, Michael Burne was learning to command people as well as his relative did.

The quality that the Viceroy looked for was, as he put it himself, ‘an enthusiasm which makes a man believe in the possibility of improvement and strives resolutely to obtain it.’

It was not long before Michael developed the same enthusiasm that his Chief possessed so abundantly and he was soon entrusted with difficult assignments that the other aide-de - camps were not keen on undertaking.

Everything seemed to be going well for the first four years of the Viceroy’s reign.

The Earl of Mayo had two more years to serve and it appeared as if he would be, without doubt, the most successful and the most loved Viceroy there had ever been.