“A Formidable Warrior of Rewa” by Mortimer Menpes, R. I.

A Formidable Warrior of Rewa

Mortimer Menpes

1903

Watercolor

Source: The Durbar, facing p. 172

“The spiky armour of this old gentleman rattled as he walked like a lot of kitchen utensils.”

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Perhaps the most imposing spectacle of all as it swept past was Rewa. This was quite a gorgeous clump. First came a banner of vivid emerald- green, followed by a warrior on an elephant smothered with huge metal spikes. There were spikes on his breastplate, spikes on his back, spikes on his head, spikes everywhere a most ferocious- looking creature ! Fancy butting into him un- awares on a dark night 1 He seemed every now and then to suffer from a spasm, and the metal spikes rattled almost like kitchen utensils. His was the only figure that might have verged on the ridiculous this spiky warrior's. He shook himself violently as he passed us and blew out his moustache. He knew us, for I had had a long sitting from him only the day before. Close behind him followed a line of elephants a jumble of jewel-studded howdahs, cloth of gold sweeping the ground, and mahuts in red with pink turbans. One had barely time to take this in before a silver palanquin in the shape of a lion, carried by men in dust-coloured clothes, passed, quickly followed by Rewa irregular troops in green and yellow uniforms and a vivid blue which, amid other conditions, you would have condemned as mercantile. [82-83]Michael Lewis

Bibliography

Menpes, Mortimer. The Durbar. Text by Dorothy Menpes. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1903. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of California at Los Angeles Library. Web. 27 May 2017.

Last modified 30 May 2017