Mussoorie: Look for Mussoorie’s origins, and find them rooted in the period that began at the end of the Gurkha War in 1815. An Irishman, Captain Young, who commanded the first Sirmur Battalion (later the First Gurkha’s) built himself a shooting lodge in Landour, at the other end of the station. It is named after the Mansur shrub corianca nepalensis which grows in abundance here.
Early in 1834, a Scotsman, John Mackinnon, a retired army schoolmaster, moved his private school from Meerut to the hill station and the Mussoorie Seminary was the first English medium school in the Himalayas. Of course, other educational institutions came up later, turning this place into a vast center of education that boasted of some of the most outstanding schools anywhere in the subcontinent. No wonder the place is called the ‘Edinburgh of India.’
In 1849, Mackinnon downed his shutters to turn to start a brewery. Afterward, the twenty-six-acre Grant Lodge, above the Library became Maddock’s School when the Chaplain of Christ Church, invited his brother from England to run it. However, by 1866, it had run out of steam and ended up being sold to the Church of England for 12000-pounds sterling.
Three years later with Rev Arthur Stokes at the helm, it was known as Stokes School - a very pucca affair - with high fees. In the initial days, boys finishing from here found ready employment in the civil services, the police, the survey, and others regularly entered the Thomson College of Civil Engineering in Roorkee.
Illustrious alumni? If that is what you want, they include Sir William Wilcox who built the Aswan Dam; another C. M. Gregory, who built many of India’s earliest and largest railway bridges. Others amongst them were boys from the Skinner and Corbett families.
Faced with a dropping enrolment, the archdeacons of Calcutta and Lucknow decided that it would be safer to wind up the senior school and shift the preparatory school to the Abbey. Obviously, for the school, the writing on the wall was loud and clear.
However, by now, it was felt that the place really needed a luxury hotel. Cecil D. Lincoln, a barrister from Lucknow, acquired the grounds of the Maddock’s School in 1885 to erect buildings over five years. He named it after the thirteenth-century Fayrest Manor of Savoy, in France.
In the once-upon-a-time days, the only way to get here was the bridle path from Rajpur. Men and materials arrived on horseback, while ladies and children were carried up in ‘jhampanies’ a rough sling ideal for travel in the hills. Of course, braver spirits walked seven miles from Rajpur via Jharipani and Barlowganj.
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Those pioneers brought everything up the sharp ramp of Rajpur: massive Victorian or Edwardian furniture, grand pianos, billiard tables, rotund barrels of beer, and crates of champagne – all the things that go to make a great hotel. Soon after, it was well-known throughout the British Empire just like the Raffles in Singapore, the Imperial in Japan, and the Peninsula in Hong Kong.
‘The Savoy has sprung, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Mussoorie School,’ remarked a local scribe. In March 1906, the hotel was ready for the royal visit of Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales (later Queen Mary) who attended a garden party on the grounds of the Savoy. Impressed by the sight of the two great deodars – over three hundred years old - in front of the hotel, she went planted a tree at Christ Church, near the hotel.
Hardly had the royal visitor left, when Mussoorie was rocked by the Kangra Earthquake. Many buildings in the hill station were badly damaged, and Savoy too lost its turrets. It closed down for repairs and reopened in 1907 when electricity came. Prior to that, the chandeliers in the ballroom and dining room were lit with candles while spirit lamps brightened the kitchen.
After World War, I, in the ‘merry twenties’ Savoy entered its halcyon and most popular days. In the ballroom, the Savoy orchestra played every night as couples danced setting the floor on fire as they jived, jitterbugged, rock and rolled, swung, waltzed, fox-trotted, and tangoed. Jazz legends like Rudy Cotton fell in love with Mussoorie.
Fabulously wealthy Indian princess and their retinues took over the whole wings of the hotel, throwing lavish parties and fancy-dress balls. Hustlers, agents, artists, con men, musicians, strippers, and belly dancers all arrived in Savoy, by now famous for its beauty contests.
‘There is a hotel in Mussoorie (the Savoy)’ wrote the travel writer Lowell Thomas in The Land of the Black Pagoda, ‘where they ring a bell just before dawn so that the pious may say their prayers and the impious, get back to their own beds.’
While holidaying in the hills, Rai Bahadur Kirparam of Karachi, bought the twenty-one-acre complex in 1946. The Savoy Visitor’s Register is full of famous names if that is what you are looking for. You can begin with Nehrus, Motilal and Jawaharlal, and Indira Gandhi. Their Holinesses the Dalai and Panchem Lama. Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia. His Majesty the King of Nepal, His Imperial Majesty the Shah of Iran, His Majesty the Crown Prince of Laos, Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, and many more.
A Savoy Café existed for many years on the first floor of the abutting Mussoorie Library (estd.1843).
Through its archway have come emperor and clown, going from door to door, from transept to transept, from corridor to lounge, from ballroom to balcony, tracing a century here and a generation there, in pillar and arch, vault and buttress. They have all ended up where it begins: at the rosewood entrance which throws its massive arch to span the corridor. Inside lies hidden a treasure trove of memories.
Stand a while under these soaring deodars and listen to the soughing of the breeze. These trees stand as mute witnesses to the history of the hill station – they have been here a long time, even before the hill station had a name. On the ground below them were the tennis courts where some of India’s leading tennis stars once tried their hands on its hard courts. For others, the Savoy has always been a hot favourite for film shootings.
In 1946, Rai Bahadur Capt. Kirpa Ram took over the hotel from Cecil D. Lincoln which later devolved to his son, Anand K. Jauhar. In 2004 it changed hands when R. P. Singh and K. K. Kaya, industrialists took over the reins.
The present owners are keen to preserve the past, but they are also looking to the future. Guests, after all, want more than history and atmosphere; they want to enjoy their holiday. Mussoorie has a tradition of fun and frolic. That tradition continues. With something of the old spirit and something of the new, the Savoy carries on, as it relives those days of wine and roses, once more.
