Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 8 November 1887.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 11).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: Unreprinted and unrecorded. ‘His Excellency’ is the blasé, courtly and unflappable Lord Dufferin. The occasion of RK's comic piece is the state tour that Dufferin made to the frontier stations in the west of India (now Pakistan), including Karachi, the Bolan, Lahore, Peshawar and other points, from 3 November to 15 December. At Karachi, Dufferin received several deputations concerning the railway then being sought by the Karachi merchants. Lady Dufferin, who accompanied the Viceroy, wrote that Karachi ‘has a railway question … The address at the station was full of it, and all other addresses have continued to be full of it’ (Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, Our Viceregal Life in India, 1884–1888, new edn, London, 1893, p. 324). What was said to the Viceroy in Karachi is reported in more detail in the CMG, 14 November 1887. He was presented with ‘an address of welcome’ in which the municipal authorities referred to the falling off in the trade of Karachi, and to the fact that, for want of more extended railway communication, the trade of Karachi was doomed to recurrent periods of stagnation. They regretted to learn that their representations regarding the Hyderabad–Pashpadra Railway had not been favourably received by His Excellency's government.

No doubt the immediate impulse for the piece was given by a telegraphic item in the CMG of 7 November describing an excited meeting in Karachi and its resolutions regarding the railway question, the first of which resolved ‘That the Viceroy be requested to receive a Deputation on the subject of railway extension.’

but there was no charming with “Smiles and soap.” On the contrary they held a public meeting and demanded the head of T.C.H. in a waste-paper basket. The meeting were unanimously of opinion that “he who was responsible for the statement that two and two were anything other than four was totally unfit to live.” This resolution together with the others, appeared in most of the leading newspapers, and was finally laid on H[is]. E[xcellency].'s table

“Most embarrassing!” said His Excellency unofficially to the Keeper of the Conscience. “Where's Karachi?” “Don't know.