Pinjore, Sunday, Nov. 3, 1839.
YES! we are in for it now. All the old discomfort, and worse; for we left the nice autumnal air blowing at the Fir Tree, with the fern waving and the trees looking red, and brown, and green, and beautiful—and now we are in all our old camel-dust and noise, the thermometer at 90° in the tents, and the punkah going. We received the officers of the escort and their wives, after church, which was hot work, but I am rather glad we have so many ladies in camp: it makes it pleasanter for the gentlemen, and at the different stations it is very popular. Last year there were only F. and me. In ten days, when we shall have a fresh cavalry regiment, there will be at least twenty, and about twelve of them dancers, which is lucky, for we hear of an awful number of balls in prospect.
They were a ladylike set that we saw to-day; one of them a striking likeness of you—a thing that I deny to everybody else, but still I do see it; and perhaps it is better than nothing.
Munny Majra, Monday, Nov. 4.
We began riding part of the march to-day, and the horses go very well, considering they have had a rest for seven months. My horse is such an angel! I really like him with a sort of minor Chance sentiment.
Umballa, Thursday, Nov. 7.
E. N. and Mr. G. met us this morning, and rode in with us, and in the afternoon we went to see E. N.’s house, which he has furnished very nicely, quite in his mother’s style.
A Captain B. arrived from Cabul, with one or two others, and are to march with us to Kurnaul. They all deny the report of the army ever having suffered further distress than a want of wine and cigars, and they are all looking uncommonly fat.
Captain D., of G.’s body-guard, brought back three of the sheep with which he left us last year, and the 16th are bringing back in safety their pack of foxhounds. That does not look like having undergone great privation. Captain B. brought me two shawls from Sir W. C., very pretty ones—at least we should have thought them so, before we were spoiled by plenty.
Shah-i-bad.
Mrs. B. arrived last night to meet her husband. She did not know he was come, so she went straight to E. N.’s bungalow—the usual method with ladies travelling dâk—and he found her there when he went home from dinner.
He said he had given up the house to her and gone into a tent, and that the two little children had arrived with their dear little stomachs much discomposed by the journey, and had spoilt the sofa whose cover I had admired in the morning.
This was the place where I bought my little girls last year, and it is a curious coincidence, that their nominal father, who went to the Punjâb and took service with Shere Singh, has left him, and arrived at this place last night, found Rosina’s tent, woke her up in the middle of the night, and the little girls too, and cried and sobbed and kissed the children, and wanted very much to have them back again. They are so afraid he will carry them off, that they will not lose sight of Rosina for a moment. Shere Singh gave this man a rupee a day to teach his cook English cookery like ours. The man had only waited at our table, so his imitation of an Englishcuisinemust have been faint and nasty.
Thanjou, Saturday, Nov. 9.
The dear overland post came in just as we came off the march, and were sitting in front of the tents, sipping gritty tea, dusty up to the eyes, and with a wretched ‘up-before-breakfast’ feeling, which evinces itself in different manners: X. and Z. sneeze at each other; W. O. smokes a double allowance; F. suffers from hunger; I yawn; G. groans and turns black; the doctor scolds C. because the road was dusty, and A. rushes off to business; but thisbad bitwas cut short by that packet.
I know so well all you say, dearest, about thesewearyfeelings of life; not that you have any right to them, because you have so many young lives growing up round you—first volumes of novels that you ought to carry on to third volumes.
I have a right to feel vapid and tired and willing to lie down and rest; for during the last four years my life has been essentially an artificial life; and, moreover, from my bad health it is physically fatiguing, and I feel I am flagging much more than I ever expected to do. I should like to see you and to be at home again; but I have no wish to begin a fresh course of life—not from any quarrel with it, for I know nobody who is in fact more spoiled, as far as worldly prosperity goes. I never wish for a thing here that I cannot have, and G., who has always been a sort of idol to me, is, I really think, fonder of me than ever, and more dependent on me, as I am his only confidant. I feel I am of use to him, and that I am in my right place when I am by his side. Moreover, his government here has hitherto been singularly prosperous and his health very good, so that there is nothingoutwardto find fault with, and much to be thankful for. Still, I have had enough of it, and as people say in ships, there is a difficulty in ‘carrying on.’
‘My blood creeps now only in drops through its courses, and the heart that I had of old, stirs feebly and heavily within me.’ It is the change from youth to age, and made in unfamiliar scenes, so that it is the more felt. I never had any opinion of
The glories serenely adorning the close of our day,The calm eve of our night;....
The glories serenely adorning the close of our day,The calm eve of our night;....
The glories serenely adorning the close of our day,The calm eve of our night;....
and never wanted the caution,—
Nor from the dregs of life hope to receiveWhat the first sprightly runnings would not give.
Nor from the dregs of life hope to receiveWhat the first sprightly runnings would not give.
Nor from the dregs of life hope to receiveWhat the first sprightly runnings would not give.
The dregs never held out any promise, but the first sprightly runnings gave a good deal more happiness than people generally allow. I am quite sure that you and I feel unusually detached from the future, from having enjoyed our young days so eagerly.
They were very happy lives; and very often, when I am too tired to do anything else, I can think over particular days, with nothing but high spirits to recommend them, that are still quite refreshing. Days when we were making rush-mats in the garden; then your first ‘coming out’ at Oxford, with Lady Grenville; the day Mr. C. gave me my parrot, in what we called a gold cage; then, later on, visits to Longleat, and a sort of humble adoration of Lady B. and Lady G.; and then, of all the fortnights in life I should like to do over again, that fortnight at Burgh; —— —— meeting us on his little black pony, as you brought me back from Thames Ditton, and giving me some heath and some bluebells; and then the fun of peering out of your window, to see him on the lawn. I could draw his picture now quite easily. Then there were some good passages at Neasdon, when T. and E. were such dear, little, small things; so stupid of them to grow up—they should never have consented to pass four years old. However, it is of no use going over these things; only, when you say you are rather tired, I merely answer—so am I!
God bless you, dearest. In two days we shall be at Kurnaul, where we shall halt the rest of the week; such a dusty, hot place. I never meant when I started in life to march three times through Kurnaul. However, it is all on the way home.
Camp, Kurnaul, Nov. 13, 1839.
WEarrived here yesterday morning, and it is horrible to think how by constantly campaigning about we have become ‘Kurnaul’s tired denizens.’ This is the third time we have been here; the camp is always pitched in precisely the same place; the camp followers go and cook at their old ashes; Chance roots up the bones he buried last year; we disturb the same ants’ nests; in fact, this is our ‘third Kurnaul season,’ as people would say of London or Bath.
We had the same display of troops on arriving, except that a bright yellow General N. has taken his liver complaint home, and a pale primrose General D., who has been renovating for some years at Bath, has come out to take his place. We were at home in the evening, and it was an immense party, but except that pretty Mrs. J. who was at Simla, and who looked like a star amongst the others, the women were all plain.
I don’t wonder that if a tolerable-looking girl comes up the country that she is persecuted with proposals.There were several gentlemen at Kurnaul avowedly on the look-out for a wife.
That Mrs. —— we always called ‘the little corpse’ is still at Kurnaul. She came and sat herself down by me, upon which Mr. K., with great presence of mind, offered me his arm, and asked if I would not like to walk, and said to G. he was taking me away from that corpse. ‘You are quite right,’ G. said; ‘it would be very dangerous sitting on the same sofa; we don’t know what she died of.’
G. gives a greatmandinner to-day, which is refreshing to his womenkind, who may dine quietly in their own tents.
Friday, Nov. 15.
There were some races early yesterday morning, to which they expected us to go; so I got up early and went with G., and luckily they were more amusing than most Indian races. Captain Z. revels in a halt at a great station, calls at everybody’s house, eats everybody’s breakfast, and asks himself to dinner everywhere; also rides everybody’s horses, and as, when he is well fed and thickly clothed, he weighs about four pounds, he is a valuable jockey, and he won two races to his great delight.
The last race was run by fifteen of the grasscutters’ ponies, ridden by their owners. These ponies are always skeletons, and their riders wear no great quantity of drapery, partly because they have no means of buying it, and then it is not their custom. They ride without saddles, and go as fast as they can, with their legs and arms flying in the air, looking likespiders riding on ants. One pony which was not particularly lame, was reckoned so very superior, that all the other riders insisted on his carrying two grasscutters, so the poor animal cantered in with two men on his back. I was so sleepy at the ball last night; I had sat two hours by K., knowing I should have to go in to supper with him, and at last, in a fit of desperation, asked Colonel L., one of our camp, to give me his arm. He is a regular misanthrope, and a professed woman-hater, and never even will call on us, though he has to come to the house every day to see G., and he looked astounded at my assurance; however, he bore it very well, and was rather pleasant in a bitter kind of way. We did not get home till past one. To-day we have a small dinner, chiefly of people who have come into camp from a distance.
Sunday, Nov. 17.
We left Kurnaul yesterday morning. Little Mrs. J. was so unhappy at our going, that we asked her to come and pass the day here, and brought her with us. She went from tent to tent and chattered all day, and visited her friend Mrs. ——, who is with the camp. I gave her a pink silk gown, and it was altogether a very happy day for her, evidently. It ended in her going back to Kurnaul on my elephant with E. N. by her side, and Mr. J. sitting behind, and she had never been on an elephant before, and thought it delightful. She is very pretty, and a good little thing, apparently, but they are very poor, and she is very young and lively, and if she falls into bad hands, she would soon laugh herself into foolish scrapes. At presentthe husband and wife are very fond of each other, but a girl who marries at fifteen hardly knows what she likes.
Paniput, Tuesday, Nov. 19.
I am so tired of being always at Paniput; are not you tired of hearing of it? We are constantly dropping in there. There is one European living here, a Mr. ——, the image of Jenkins, the dancing-master, for which simple reason we have always liked him. He has no other striking merit, but there is a halo of ‘Prince of Wales’s step’ and ‘the slow movement’ floating round him which is rather interesting.
We went to see his gaol, two miles off, and the first shower of rain of the season chose to come just as we were half-way there, on the elephants. A howdah is a sort of open cage without a top, and nobody had thought of a cloak, so it was a pleasant expedition. Paniput has had several famous battles fought at, or near it, and there is a grand tradition of one battle where 200,000 men fought on each side, and four were left alive. That is something like fighting; but happily it is not true.
Friday, Nov. 22.
We have had two or three most uneventful marches, and Sergeant H., who goes on the day before, always sends back the same report, ‘Road rough and very dusty,’ or to vary it, ‘Road very rough and dusty.’ However, we are always able to ride half of the way, which is a great help.
To-day we came over a wretched road and a bridge with one arch broken and no parapet, and as SergeantH. reported, ‘Bridge in a worse state, if possible, than last year; quite unsafe for the carriage.’ After we come in to camp, we generally all sit in front of the tents and drink tea. The gentlemen come and ask for a cup and talk over the disasters of the road, and it is rather a gossiping time; particularly when enlivened by Mr. S., who is always like a sharp contradictory character in a farce, but before he has had his breakfast he is perfectly rabid. To-day he began as usual.
‘How slowly you must have come.’
‘The road was so bad,’ I said.
‘Yes, so everybody chooses to say. I thought it the best road we have had, much better than any of C.’s famous smooth roads.’
‘Did you come safely over that bridge?’
‘What was to hinder me? I cannot think why people find fault with that bridge, one of the best bridges I ever saw.’
‘Except that it has a broken arch and no parapet,’ I suggested.
‘Well! nobody wants to drive on a parapet. I think parapets are perfectly useless.’
Then C.’s palanquin went by, and as he was standing with us, Mr. S. took the opportunity of asking, ‘What wretches of children are those, I wonder?’ ‘Mine,’ said C., ‘or you would have had no pleasure in asking.’
It was such nonsense! Little ‘Missey C.’ is the smallest, prettiest little fairy I ever saw, and the pet of the whole camp; they are really beautiful children, and S. knew the palanquin perfectly. I told himat last he was just what our governess used to call ‘a child that had got out of bed the wrong way,’ and recommended his having his breakfast as soon as possible, and he owned, he thought it advisable himself.
Delhi, Monday, Nov. 25.
I am glad to be at dear Delhi again; it is the only place in the plains I have ever seen worth looking at, and it looks grander and more ‘great Babylonish’ than ever. We arrived on Saturday morning and rode in through an immense crowd, for besides all the regiments here, people have come from all parts just to ask for what they can get; appointments are filled up in November, because all the sick people who have been knocked up by the hot season get their furloughs for going home.
G. hates Delhi from the very circumstance of all these applicants. We had an immense party on Saturday evening, and nobody but ourselves knows who composed it.
There were young ladies from Meerut come for the chance of two balls, and all the ladies of our camp, and a great many from Kurnaul, and several young civilians who really had come in from their solitary stations to look for wives.
F. has caught such a cold she cannot go out. We never can settle whether we would rather have a slight illness, or go through all the festivities of a Station.
F. has not tried it before, but she now thinks she prefers the cold, only she has too much pain in her bones.
The people will not tempt us with many pretty things to buy, or else we have grown particular.
Tuesday, Nov. 26.
We had a great dinner yesterday, and G. and I went to the Station ball, which was very well managed. I do not know why one ball should be better than another; as far as the dinners are concerned, I think they are all equally tiresome, but balls do differ.
This was a verydancingbusiness, and we did not get away till one. It went on till three, and I have been obliged to represent to ourengagedaides-de-camp how very wrong it is of them to dance three times with the same girl—such a waste of time to all parties.
P. is quite altered since he has been engaged, and will talk and joke and dance in the mostdébonnairmanner. I suggested to him the propriety of my writing to Miss S. about his dancing three times with the same young lady, but he says he danced once under Captain L. E.’s name, and that he got up early to write an account of himself to ‘Clarissa’ this morning, mentioning that he had no pleasure in society whatever!
I have just been to ask G. to give F. and me two rings on which we have fixed our small affections, to which he was quite agreeable; but he had a lavish idea about buying for us two diamond bracelets, that a man from Lucknow has brought. I think that would be rather indefensible. However, they are gone to be valued.
Kootûb, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 1839.
WEmade this our first march, as most of the camp have not seen it. It is the most magnificent pillar, I suppose, in the world, and looks as if it had been built yesterday; but all the fine ruins about it have crumbled away sadly, even since we were here two years ago.
Those diamond bracelets were not worth half what the man asked for them, which I am rather glad of, as I think it would have been a waste of money, and we do not want more trinkets.
G. and I had to go last night to a play, got up by amateurs, which was rather a failure, because the chief character did not happen to know a single word of his part, and that put out all the others, but they thought it rather good themselves.
This morning the General insisted on having all the troops paraded at six in the morning, and so, as F. still has her cold, and G. hates being left by himself, I had to ride out of camp. It was nearly dark, and they fired the salutes right into the horses’ faces, and then poked their colours into their eyes, and drummed ‘God save the King’ into their ears, all which induced them to prance. I thought it rather dangerous, very noisy, and extremely tiresome, and I could not think of a word to say to General M. that I had not said at least eight times over in the last three days, so I was glad when he thought he had convoyed us out of his grounds, and if we ever go back to Delhi again I hope there willbe a new General, so that the same topics may serve me again and look fresh.
I had a great mind to tell him that I felt very ill, which was quite true, but as the water at Delhi is invariably a rank poison that would have been nothing new.
Bullumghur, Friday, Nov. 29.
We had made a pretty arrangement yesterday to go to a small private camp at Toglichabad; a very old town with some splendid ruins about it, and there had been a road made for us, and supplies sent; but then F.’s cold was still bad, and my Delhi illness was worse than ever, so we gave it up, though it looked inconsistent and foolish after all the fuss that had been made, and X. says there was a quantity to see and sketch. I have only been able to make four sketches since we left Simla, for dearth of subjects; but I am glad we did not go, I had such a headache. Half the camp was poisoned at Delhi.
Sunday, Dec. 1.
We are all well again; and just think of the pleasure of the October mail arriving this morning, only a fortnight after the last. G. has a letter of the 16th, only just six weeks old, but there is some mistake about yours and the letters of the family in general. They are sent off a fortnight too soon: at least we always have public letters and papers dated a fortnight later, and those newspapers, besides taking off the edge of the news for half the next month, put me in a fright. I am so afraid, after hearing that you were well and prosperous the 8th of September, of finding in the‘Morning Chronicle’ of October 12th, that C. D., Esq., who lives not 100 miles from Newsalls, was taken before the magistrates for beating M. his wife, and tearing her hair and her best shawl; or else that your new house in Stratton Street had been burnt down before you could insure it, and that you had lost your little all, and perhaps were found begging in the streets, surrounded by your nine children, and causing an obstruction at Hyde Park Corner. Do you know, that whenever I read a heap of English papers at once, ‘indeed, indeed I’m very very sick,’ there is such a quantity of crime. This time the cruelty to children and apprentices has put me in a frenzy, and there are at least eight exemplary wives murdered by their husbands, and one murderer gets off with six months’ imprisonment, because his lawyer chooses to make a pert attack on Lord ——, which pleases the Recorder—so like English justice. I am also very low about politics. I hate all those last changes, and I wish the Whigs would go quietly and respectably out in a body, and leave the Tories and Radicals to fight it out.
Wednesday, Dec. 4.
Last night, when we were playing at whist, I saw X. fidgeting about behind G.’s chair with a note in his hand, and began to think you were ill, and had sent for me to your tent, or something of that sort; but it turned out to be an express with another little battle, and a most successful one. The Khan of Khelât was by way of being our ally and assistant, and professing friendship; did himself the pleasure of cutting off the supplies of the army when it was on itsway to Cabul; set his followers on to rob the camp; corresponded with Dost Mahomed, &c.
There was no time to fight with him then, and I suppose he was beginning to think himself secure; but G. directed the Bombay army, on its way home, to settle this little Khelât trouble. General —— was led to suppose his place was not a strong one, and took only 1,000 men with him, but he found Khelât a very strong fort with plenty of guns, and the Khan at the head of 2,000 soldiers. It was all done in the Ghuznee manner—the gates blown in and the fort stormed—but the fighting was very severe. The Khan and his principal chiefs died sword in hand, which was rather too fine a death for such a double traitor as he has been; and one in six of our troops were either killed or wounded, which is an unusual proportion. They found in the town a great many of our camels and much of the property that had been pillaged from the army. Also there will be a great deal of prize money. Another man has been put on the Khelât throne, so that business is finished.
Bindrabund, Saturday, Dec. 7.
This is a famous Hindu place, and we have come a march out of the way to look at it, partly because there is a great deal to see, and then that the sepoys and half our camp may perform their devotions. The Hindu devotions are always inexplicable, except in the simple fact that the Brahmins cheat them out of a quantity of money, and our Mussulmaun servants cannot be sufficiently contemptuous to-day as to the state of affairs.
Monkeys and peacocks are sacred here, and consequently abound; and then they have a tradition that Krishna (who seems to have been a larking sort of Apollo) played various pranks here, and, amongst other little jokes, stole all the clothes of the wives of the cowherds when they went into the river to bathe, and carried them to the top of a tree, to which they were obliged to come and beg, before he would give them back. He is adored here for the delicacy of this freak, and a temple has been built to commemorate it.
We went yesterday to visit all the temples and ruins under the guidance of ——, who led us quite wrong and wasted our time at modern temples, when we wanted to see the old ruins, but he rather made up for it by taking us in boats on the Jumna to look at the ghauts. However, the whole thing was done in state, with tribes of elephants, and dust, and all the camp, and the secretaries, who never let us say or see anything comfortably; so F. and I settled to stay behind to-day, when the camp moved, and to pass our morning in an old Jain temple of singular beauty, red granite magnificently carved, but the roof and half the heads of the statues were knocked off by Aurungzebe in a fit of Mussulmaun bigotry. X. and P. stayed with us, and we all settled ourselves in different corners of the building, with a quantity of grains and sweetmeats in the middle, to keep the monkeys quiet. Our breakfast was laid out in a sort of side aisle of grotesque Hindu columns, and at each column was a servant with a long stick keeping off the monkeys from the tea and chocolate. One very enterprising monkey rushed down and carried off my Indian rubber, which is a great loss tome, and I trust it disagreed with him. It was an elaborate building to sketch, and we were nearly four hours about it, but we all succeeded more or less; and it was so cool and dark in the temple, it made it quite a pleasant morning, to say nothing of a brass antique teapot and some lovely little brass goats which X. bought for me coming back.
Muttra, Sunday, Dec. 8.
We came on in the evening to camp, and found G. at a durbar receiving a Vakeel from the Bhurtpore Rajah and a visit from Luckund Chund, the richest banker in India. He has two millions of money in Company’s paper at Calcutta, and only draws the interest once in four years. He is a jeweller also by trade, and has some very handsome emeralds in camp to dispose of. He brought 101 trays of presents, which gladdened Mr. C.’s heart. We had a large congregation this morning, as there is a troop of artillery here, and the English soldiers looked so well and homelike at church.
Goverdun, Monday, Dec. 9.
These have been very good sight-seeing days, and I think I like Hindus just now better than Mussulmauns. They consider trees sacred, and that makes their country so much prettier. We went to a beautiful tomb this afternoon surrounded by old temples and tombs belonging to the Bhurtpore Rajah. The inside of one temple is painted with the original siege of Bhurtpore and Lord Lake running away—the Europeans were originally painted running away without their heads, but that has been rectified. Then wewent to what they call a chuttree, or something of that kind, a place where there has been a suttee, and there are some lovely temples built over the ashes. There never is time enough for sketching, which is a pity.
Dieg, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1839.
THEBhurtpore Rajah came out to meet G. to-day with a pretty retinue, odd-looking carriages and horses covered with gold, but he is a fat, hideous young man himself. We went in the afternoon to see the palace at Dieg, which the rajahs used to live in before the siege of Bhurtpore, but they make no use of it now, which is a pity. The gardens are intersected in all directions by fountains, and the four great buildings at each side of the garden, which make up their palaces, are great masses of open colonnades with baths, or small rooms screened off by carved white marble slabs, and the fountains play all round the halls, so that even in the hot winds, Mr. H. says, it is cool in the centre of these halls. It was a very pretty sight to-day, from the crowds of people mixed up with the spring of the waters; and the Mahrattas wear such beautiful scarlet turbans covered with gold or silver cords, that they showed it off well.
There is a Colonel E. come into camp to-day: he is the Resident at Gwalior, and is come to fetch us. He is about the largest man I ever saw, and always bringshis own chair with him, because he cannot fit into any other. He has lived so entirely with natives that I fancy he very seldom sits on a chair at all, and I suppose he is, as —— says, very shy of white females, for it was impossible to get an answer from him. It is a curious fact that the very * * *
Khoomberee, Wednesday, Dec. 11.
I would give anything to know what curious fact I was going to tell you. You neverwillknow it now, that is certain. To finish off Colonel E., I must mention that the officer who commands his escort is called Snook, and that his godfathers, to make it worse, called him Violet. He is a little man, about five feet high, and is supposed to have called out three people for calling him Snooks instead ofSnook. I am giving up my plan of leaving G. at Agra. He has cut off a month of his tour, and means to go straight to Calcutta from Gwalior, which is seven marches longer than my road, and with six days there, he would only be thirteen days later than me; the old khansamah has set his face steadily against it. He says, I have no business to leave the Lord Sahib, and that if I take away one steamboat full of baggage and servants, he cannot make show enough at Gwalior. Moreover, I am so well this year, I have no excuse for idleness, when it would be so generally inconvenient; and I do not like to leave G. and F. for two months, now that it only saves thirteen days. We shall all be at Calcutta by the first of March now.
Bhurtpore, Thursday, Dec. 12.
We had some cheeta hunting on the way here. Antelopes abound, there are hundreds of them to be seen at a time; the cheetas are put in carts like the common hackeries the natives use, and which the antelopes are accustomed to see, so they do not get much out of the way, and when the cart is within 400 yards, the cheeta’s hood is taken off, and he makes two or three bounds and generally knocks down the antelope. If he fails after a few bounds, he gets disgusted and comes back to the cart. There were two or three good chases this morning but no antelope killed, which was rather a blessing. We went so much out of the road, that the regiments and all their baggage got before us, and we could not go on in the carriage, and had to ride seven miles which I thought long. The Bhurtpore Rajah came to the durbar in the afternoon. He is the ugliest and fattest young man I ever saw. A small face that takes up the usual space of the chin, and all the rest is head. He is very black, marked with the small-pox, and can hardly waddle for fat, and is only twenty-one. He was just six years old when Lord Combermere put him on his throne.
Bhurtpore, Friday, Dec. 13.
The rajah is supposed to have the best shooting in India, and was to give G. the most delightful sport, so there was such a fuss to be off at six in the morning, and such a tribe of elephants, and such jealousy as to who was to go, and how many, and perhaps a slight wonder as to how all the game was to be disposed of; and they were out five hours, and came back in a frenzy;G. having shot one quail and a wild cat, and some one else a partridge, and another had seen a hare, and the rajah had said at the end that he hoped the Lord Sahib was ‘bhote razee,’ which means more than quite delighted with his day’s sport. I think he must be facetious though he does not look so. Mr. R. stayed behind to let F. and me see some hawking, and we took Mrs. C. and Mrs. R. and several of the officers and went into a boat with a large raised platform, and the men with hawks went wading into the water and put up wild ducks which the hawks invariably caught. We could not complain of want of sport, but it is rather a butchering business.
Futtehpore-Sickrey, Saturday, Dec. 14.
We went to a beautiful fête last night, I never saw such illuminations anywhere. The whole town for two miles was lit up with straight rows of lamps, and at the palace there was a square of lights with four great arches three stories high, with doors and windows all built of lamps. The whole thing was very well ordered.
The rajah took G. into an immense hall fitted up in the oddest way with French chandeliers of green and purple and yellow glass, as thick as they could be hung. Looking-glasses, and old-fashioned mirrors, and English prints on the wall. At the end there was the ‘chamber of daïs,’ very much painted and gilded, and raised three steps, and there we were all ‘set of a row,’ G. on one side of the rajah and I on the other, and all our party in chairs, and his prime minister in the centre. All round the hall were the officers of the escort and their wives, and the Bhurtpore chiefs, and in the middle a very select assembly of nautch-girls. I never saw soorderly a native party. The rajah was very nervous at first, and his wide black face full of twitches, but Mr. H. says he was very much pleased with the success of his party, as it is the first time he has ever seemed to act for himself. It is always a dull job, except that I like to look at the nautching, which bores most people. The prime minister’s little boy was introduced, a deformed little animal, and G. gave him a diamond ring, which was unexpected and well taken.
Then after G.’s trays of presents were taken away, there came in six for me and six for F. of rather nice little articles, dressing gowns of cloth of gold lined with cashemere, ivory chowries and fans, silver tissue for turbans—very pretty pickings if they had been private presents, but I saw C. twisting his moustaches in agonies, because they were not intrinsically worth the diamond rings we gave in exchange. I fancied the Rajah smelt very strongly of green fat, and as it was past eight, and we are used to early dinners in camp, I thought in my hunger, what a pity it was that we had not brought St. Cloup, who in half-an-hour would have warmed the rajah up into excellent turtle soup. We had a march of seventeen miles this morning, the longest we have ever had, so of course the wheel of the carriage locked, before we had gone a hundred yards. We have never had an accident before, this year. Webb had gone on with the key, so we took refuge on two elephants and jogged on four miles, and then overtook our tonjauns into which F. and I subsided. Then Mr. H. came up driving Captain Z. in his buggy and set him down in the road and took me. Ten minutes after, Dr. D. caught up F. and drove her on. Mr. H. and I drove wildlyon, looking for a conveyance for G. and thought ourselves uncommonly clever in overtaking and bringing together four of our carriage horses, and the palanquin carriage which is drawn by bullocks when it is not wanted, and then we found that the pole was sent on in a cart, and there was nothing but the bullock yoke, so we drove on discomfited. Then we came to an empty buggy and put a trooper to guard it and sent another back to tell G. it was there, but it turned out that it belonged to —— of the body guard, who has been in constant scrapes and is under arrest, so G. could not well take that. However, H. found his own horse for him, and altogether we got into camp in very good time, but half the people came in late with all sorts of difficulties. Camp conveyances are very good for ten or twelve miles, but always fail on a long march; the bearers get tired and out of sorts. We pass Mrs. ——, your likeness, every morning, with her bearers guarded by two sepoys, because they will put down the tonjaun and run away.
Merahoon, Monday.
It was lucky we had our halt at Futtehpore-Sickrey. Except Delhi, it is the most interesting place we have seen, and there is more to sketch, and in these hurried journeys I do not think it any sin to sketch on Sunday. There is a tomb of marble here, carved like lace—it would make such a splendid dairy for Windsor Castle, it looks so cool and so royal—and there is a beautiful gateway, the arch of which is ninety feet high; and then there are some remains of the Emperor Akbar, which give a good idea of the magnificent fellow he was.The throne in which he sat to hear petitions stands in the centre of a hall, with a cross of stone balconies abutting from it, to four open arches. His ministers were placed at each end of that cross, their seats looking out on the courts below, so any grievance that was statedtothem, oragainstthem, they were obliged to announce at the full extent of their voices, else the emperor could not hear them, and the petitioner below was made certain that his grievance was rightly stated. This throne, &c., is most beautifully carved, as you will see whenever I send my sketch books home. There is also a lovely carved room, all over European devices, supposed to have been built by the directions of a favourite wife, whom he imported from Constantinople. In the centre of the court, apucheeseeboard (pucheesee is a sort of chess) is laid out in squares of marble, and there is a raised seat on which Akbar sat and played the games; thepieceswere all female slaves splendidly dressed, and whoever won carried off the sixteen ladies.
Agra, Wednesday, Dec. 18.
We came here yesterday and went off the same afternoon to see the Taj, which is quite as beautiful, even more so, than we had expected after all we have heard, and as we have never heard of anything else, that just shows how entirely perfect it must be. You must have heard and read enough about it, so I spare you any more, but it really repays a great deal of the trouble of the journey. We passed the day in the tents, as they were more convenient for G.’s levée, and in the afternoon came on to this delightful house, which was Sir Charles Metcalfe’s and is now Mr. H.’s, who has good-naturedlyentrenched himself in one wing and settled us in the rest. It is beautifully furnished, and so clean and quiet. I really love it—it is so pleasant not to feel dusty.
Friday, Dec. 20.
We went yesterday to see Secundra, where Akbar is buried, and his tomb of beautiful white marble is up four stories of grotesque buildings, well worth seeing; so much so that, as G. had a durbar to-night and could not go out, F. and I went back alone, and had rather a rest, in sketching there, for two hours, but it is impossible to make anything of these elaborate Mogul buildings, they are all lines and domes, and uncommonly trying to the patience. We are attempting to buy Agra marbles and curiosities, but somehow cannot find many, and those we ordered before we came down are not half done, but they will be very pretty. I have got two little tombs, facsimiles of Shah Jehan’s and his wife’s, with all the same little patterns inlaid. Valuable—but I wish they were not quite so dear. We were at home on Thursday night—there seem to be a great many people at Agra. Mrs. H., who was a Miss A., is very pretty and nice. We stay here till the 1st, and this fortnight of rest from tents is a great comfort. My small health is uncommonly good just now.
Agra, Sunday, December 29, 1839.
IHAVElet a week pass by this time, partly because, since we have been here, we have given a ball and four large dinners, seen a great many sights, had a ball given to us and a déjeûner at the Taj, and also that an awful change has taken place in our plans, one that it makes me sick to think of. We are going to stay here for the next ten months: ——, to whom G. offered the Lieutenant-Governorship, and who knew all his plans, and who had acuteness enough to carry them on, began by accepting, and ended by declining in consequence of ‘domestic calamities which he was unable to explain.’ They say that Mrs. —— is gone out of her mind. I really think it must have been at the notion of coming here. It is too late in the year to make any new arrangements, and there is so much of importance likely to occur in the Punjâb where old Runjeet is a sad loss, and so much to watch over in Affghanistan, that G. decided on staying himself. Such a shock and such trouble! We have at least three houses to build here for the European servants, the baboos, &c., and a house to repair for the aides-de-camp. Agra is avowedly the hottest place in India, and everybody says this is the hottest house in Agra, so there is a whole army of engineers now beginning to see what can be done to build up verandahs, and to make ventilators, and to pretend to make the hot winds bearable. There are in India two regular parties, one preferringBengal with the hot days and the damp and the sea-breeze blowing at night, and the other standing up for their hot winds, twenty degrees hotter, but dry. I have never varied in thinking the account of them terrific. From the end of March to the middle of June, they blow unceasingly, night and day. Nobody stirs out, and all night the tatties are kept wet, and thermantidotes (greatwinnowingmachines) are kept turning to make a little cool air. The windows are never opened, and they say that, at midnight, if you were to go out, it feels like going into a furnace. However, those who are all for the provinces say, the wind is dry and not unwholesome, and that as long as you do not attempt to go out of the house, you do not suffer from the heat. It is a regular strict imprisonment. Calcutta is bad, but there we had a regular evening drive, and Government House was really cool at night; then in case of illness there was the sea at hand, but here, if any of us are ill, of course there is no escape. Even natives cannot travel in the hot winds. The discomfiture is general. Most of our goods are half-way to Calcutta. The native servants, who thought they were within reach of their wives and families after two years’ absence, are utterly desperate.
Mr. A. has thrown up his place, and goes down to Calcutta. Mrs. S. plods back to Simla with her children, and leaves her husband here. Mrs. H. ditto, and I think those two ladies are rather pleased, it forces them to keep their boys another year in the country. Z. has been ill since we came here, but the day this shock was communicated to him, he got up electrified, dressed himself, and came to my room to bemoan hisparticularhard fate, so like Narcissus Fripps. ‘I really am quite overset—I have not an idea what to do—I am so afraid of the hot winds, and this is such a place! no society whatever! Now at Calcutta I really should have enjoyed myself.’ This was said with an air of great interest.
I saw my opportunity and put it to him, that the hot winds were very bad for the attacks he is subject to, that Dr. D. had always wished him to go home, and that he might now have a medical certificate, which would save his paying his own passage, &c. And so he took the right turn, went straight to the doctor’s tent, and came back to say that he had decided to go home. It really is the best thing he can do, and Dr. D. says it is the only chance of his getting well.
We still go to Gwalior, and go back into camp on Thursday; we shall be nearly a month away, and we leave X. behind, with Giles and all the carpenters and tailors of the establishment to make up beds, furniture, &c., for we have nothing but small camp beds, which are not endurable in heat.
Monday, December 30.
You cannot conceive what a pretty fête they gave us at the Taj, or how beautiful it looked by broad daylight.
The whole society, with our camp, was just one hundred people, and we dined in what had once been a mosque, but it wasdesecratedmany years ago. Still I thought it was rather shocking our eating ham and drinking wine in it, but its old red arches looked very handsome.
Some of the Agra people are too strict to dance, and as much walking is difficult in the plains, it is lucky the afternoon did not hang very heavily; but the garden is very prettily laid out, and W. O. challenged a fat Mr. N., an old acquaintance, to play at hop-scotch with all their old Westminster rules. W. is wonderfully active still at all those games, and plays at them with very good grace, and it was great fun to see Mr. N., who is the image of Pickwick and dresses like him, hopping and jumping and panting after him. It kept everybody in a roar of laughter for an hour, and filled up the afternoon very well. No; the more our plan of staying here is canvassed the worse it is—the mere precautions that are to be taken, show what those horrible hot winds are to be. However, I believe, as they all say, the best way is not to think of them more than can be helped. The weather is fine now. But what Idothink of, morning, noon, and night, is the utter impossibility of our going home now in 1841. It is too sore a subject to write about, and it had much better be left untouched, for fear it should establish itself into a fact, but I always foresaw those horrid secretaries would work it out if they could.
I am in that mood that I should almost be glad if the Sikhs, or the Russians, or anybody, would come and take us all. It would be one way out of the country. Captain C. has got an excellent appointment at Lucknow, but he will not leave us till after Gwalior, as he thinks he may be of use, as X. must stay here to build and superintend. Captain C. has thoroughly earned his appointment by four years’ constant service, but he is the last of the original set, andwe are all very unhappy at his going, he is the most thorough gentleman in mind, and very clever and original. He has always been a great favourite with G., and as I think Mr. D. might accidentally fall in with Allan C. or find an opportunity of seeing him, perhaps he would mention how well his son is thought of, and how well he is now settled. Captain X. bore his disappointment wonderfully well, and has been very amiable in many respects. G. offered him a smaller place, which might just have enabled him to marry, but when he found Z. was going as well as Captain C., he thought we should be having so many strangers at once, just as we were settling in a new place and to a new sort of life, that he would not leave us. I really do not know what we could have done without him at this moment. He is ordering all the new buildings, buying furniture in all directions, and ordering up everything from Calcutta, where he had just provided for our return. Agra produces nothing, there is no shop, and so few Europeans that I suppose the box wallahs find no trade, so we have been obliged to send to Calcutta for mats for the floors, musquito curtains, even common pins.
Tuesday, Dec. 31.
I went early this morning with Mr. H. and —— to see the Female Orphan School. We saw the boys last week—there are 150 boys and 130 girls who were picked up at the time of the famine two years ago, starving and with no relations. The boys are learning all sorts of trades; and as we are detained here another year, I thought it would be better to send my two little girls to the other school for the time, if theywill let me have them again, to take to Mrs. Wilson. There is a German missionary and his wife at the head of this school. He speaks Hindoostanee tolerably, but she speaks no English and very little Hindoostanee; however, there is another woman to assist, and they seem to make it out very tolerably, and they are an interesting looking young couple, with such soft German voices. Rosina took Ameeum and Jehurun there after breakfast, and stayed great part of the day with them, but they all three did nothing but cry, though the old body is very sensible about them, and thinks it better they should go. Poor little things! I am sorry to lose them; they were such funny little animals, and used to imitate Wright and Rosina in trying to dress me, and really made themselves useful on the march. Z. is taking home a parcel to you—two of my sketch-books, which I want you to keep for me; the others are unluckily on the river on their way to Calcutta. Then, a parcel directed to you, in which there are two half shawls, embroidered all over, really about the prettiest things I have seen, which it appeared Wright had procured from Delhi for T. and E. She thought they would be very suitable for two young ladies going out. I thought they were too expensive presents for her to send, and F. and I tried to persuade her out of it, but she said she had got them on purpose, so there they are; and for fear you should be jealous, I have sent you a green worked Delhi scarf. Also, in a little box directed to R., there are two press papiers, a marble tortoise, and a marble book—Agra works, which I send T. and E. F. has sent the girls some rings; so what you are to wring from Z. when hearrives, are two sketch-books, a parcel of shawls, and a little box of rings, all directed to you; and these two marble things in the parcel to R.
Thursday, Jan. 2, 1840.
IWENTyesterday evening to see my children, who seemed quite reconciled to their fates, and were stuffing rice and curry in large handfuls. Mrs. L., the matron, said they did not take to the other children, but pottered after her wherever she went. Rosina went to bid them good-bye, and was quite satisfied with their treatment.
We marched fifteen miles this morning over a very heavy road. The mornings are very cold now before the sun rises, but the rest of the day is very fine. They are luckily making a great deal of ice this year. Large fields are covered with very shallow porous saucers, which hold a very little water, and when the thermometer comes down to 36° this turns into very thin ice, and the people collect it and pound it; they reckon that about one-third is available in the hot weather, and it is a great comfort.
Dholepore, Saturday, Jan. 4.
The Dholepore Rajah came to fetch G. in this morning. He seems to run to size, in everything; wears eight of the largest pearls ever seen; rides the tallest elephant; his carriage has two stories and is drawn by six elephants, and he lives in a two-storiedtent—ricketty, but still nobody else has one so large. He is one of the potentates who undertake to feed all our camp gratis, which is a popular measure with the sepoys and servants. Scindia, the Gwalior Rajah, is encamped on the other side of the river, about five miles off, and G. reckons that he will have about two durbars a day for the next fortnight. He had two to-day—one for Dholepore himself, and another for Scindia’s Vakeel. The Mahrattas are a very ragamuffin-looking race. E. is the Gwalior resident, and is on the same fat scale with everything else, except little Violet Snook, who is trotting about the street very busily. It is rather curious that the camp should contain three officers rejoicing in the names of Violet Snook, Gandy Gaitskell, and Orlando Stubbs. Are they common names in England? Gandy Gaitskell we are uncommonly intimate with; he is always on guard, and always dining here. Orlando Stubbs is a novelty.
Sunday, Jan. 5.
The officers of the Gwalior contingent sent to ask when they could call, and I thought it would be good for their morals to say that church began at eleven, and we could see them afterwards. They live five miles off, so Colonel E. gave them a breakfast before church, and when I went out this morning early, they were all arriving, and Violet Snook was rushing in and out in a violent state of excitement, receiving his brother officers, shaking hands, and bowing and ordering, and in short it was quite pleasant to see a Violet with such spirits, and a Snook with such manners. They all came after church, and seemed a gentleman-likeset. I think if I were a soldier, I should like to belong to a local corps, or a contingent; they all wear such pretty fancy dresses.
Monday, Jan. 6.
This has been a day of durbars for G., which is a sad waste of time. Scindia, the Gwalior Rajah, came in the morning to pay his visit. G. sent a deputation yesterday to compliment him, and they had, as usual with these great native princes, to take off their shoes on going in. The rajah himself takes off his own shoes, and Europeans keep on their hats if they take off their shoes. In fact, they do not really take them off; they put stockings over them.
Scindia was four hours coming five miles to G.’s durbar this morning. Natives think it a mark of dignity to move as slowly as possible. How going down to Windsor by railroad would disgust them! And C., L. E., and P., who had been sent to fetch him, were nearly baked alive on their elephants. On the return he was polite enough to dismiss them after they had gone two hundred yards, or they would have had four hours more. He is young, very black, and not good-looking, but it is impossible to look athim, on account of his pearls. He wears three large ropes, or rather cables, of pearls, and those round his throat are as big as pigeons’ eggs, larger than Runjeet’s famous pearls. His courtiers are not ill off in matter of jewels, particularly emeralds. In the afternoon G. went to return the Dholepore Rajah’s visit, and see some fireworks, &c., &c. F. and I agreed not to go, as it was four miles off, and the Mahrattas are notpleasant natives. We went up a little hill near the camp, from which the procession looked very pretty, and then we had the advantage of righting a bit of wrong. Two of our band and an artilleryman had got into a quarrel with the priests of a little mosque on this hill, and were beating them, and the natives came rushing to us for protection. The Europeans were evidently in the wrong, and they ran off instantly, but I sent the jemadar to say I wanted them particularly, and it was so funny to hear their broad Irish. ‘That native, me lady, abused me shockingly—words I could not be shocking you with repeating; and as I cannot speak a word of their language, Ibethim well!’ ‘But how do you know he was abusing you, if you do not know a word of his language?’ ‘Oh, me lady, there could be no mistake; his abuse was so shocking, worse luck for me that I could not answer.’ ‘Besides, I translated,’ one of our little band-boys said; and then the natives produced a stick they had broken on him, and the Europeans picked up a great stone they declared had been thrown at them, but they could not help laughing themselves at that, it was so obviously untrue. And so it ended in my telling the priests to come to camp with their complaint to-morrow, and telling the band to go home, and be ready to play at dinner; but there was something rather pleasant in this Irish quarrel.
Tuesday, Jan. 7.
Well! there never were such times! ‘I am too old entirely for these quick changes,’ as the old nurse says, in Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Ormond,’ but I am glad of this one. G. woke me this morning by poking his headinto the tent and saying, ‘Here is the overland mail come, and all my plans are changed, and we are going down to Calcutta.’ I am so glad; it is all in the way home. I really think (don’t you?) that we shall stick now to our original time of March 1841, and it was quite hopeless a week ago. I think this is a great piece of luck, and feel as if I could do like the native servants. They are all quite mad, flinging themselves on the ground, and throwing off their turbans; and at least twenty of the head servants have been to my tent to ask if it is true, and to say, that they are praying to Allah for ‘Lordship’s health,’ and to thank him for taking them back to their families. If Allah had anything to do with it, I am much obliged to him too, and to Lordship for taking us back toourfamilies. I could not bear Agra, and now everybody owns that the hot winds would have been fearful, but they are all in their separate difficulties. Mr. Y. has left his children at Agra; C. his wife; we have left all our goods, except a small allowance of clothes; the aides-de-camp have all bought buggies and horses, and everybody had taken a house. W. O. spent nearly 1,000l.in preparations and furniture, but a good deal of that may be retrieved. Captain X. luckily came into camp this morning, and is going back to undo all he has done; send off Giles and all the servants we left, and my two little girls, and all our dear boxes. Not that I have ever seen again any box that I ever left behind, in any place in India, and we are so marched and counter-marched, that our property is horribly scattered, but I think there is a chance of bringing it all together at Calcutta. Everything in India always comes down bywater, and as a good large river comes down to Calcutta, it is a possible rendezvous for our things.
Thursday, Jan. 9.
We left Dholepore this morning, and had great difficulty in coming along; the road for four miles was through a narrow sandy ravine. Scindia’s camp moved yesterday, and his goods had only got through the pass at eight last night, and that owing to P.’s working all day. Our hackeries that left camp at one yesterday are not come in at one to-day; they had stuck in all the narrow places, and there was a dead camel here, and a dead bullock there, and an elephant had killed a man somewhere else, and in short it was a bad pass. Now, to answer your letter. I hope dear E. is better, as you do not say he is not. How you do rush about on those railways! You put me quite out of breath.
Gwalior, Saturday, Jan. 10.
We have had more letters by the second express, many of them written since the news of Ghuznee had been known. The Gwalior rajah met us this morning, rather to our discomfiture, as F. and I had meant to come on quietly in the carriage, but the roads were so narrow and his train sowide, that we were obliged to get on our elephants. He rides the largest elephant in India; it is nearly twelve feet high, and G.’s, which is generally thought a large one, looked like a little pony, and, what was worse, was so afraid of the rajah’s, that it was ten minutes before they could be driven close enough to allow of G.’s getting safely into the rajah’s howdah. I always think that a veryunpleasant part of the ceremony, to say nothing of the little French embrace that follows. The Mahratta horsemen are striking-looking people in their gold dresses, with their very long spears; and altogether it was a very pretty sight, but the rajah stuck to his dignified rule of going as slow as possible, and we were just an hour and a quarter going the last two miles, though he should consider that after eight o’clock, every hour of his horrid sun is of the highest importance. Gwalior is a picturesque-looking place, a fort on a rock, which, after all the flat plains, looks distinguished.
Sunday, Jan. 11.
We received all the ladies belonging to the Gwalior contingent yesterday, and the officers, only sixteen altogether, and four ladies, two of them uncommonly black, and the third, Captain —— remembers as a little girl running about barracks, a soldier’s daughter, but she was pretty, and, by dint of killing off a husband, or two, she is now at nineteen the wife of a captain here. I should think she must look back with regret to her childish plebeian days. The husband interrupts her every time she opens her lips, and she had not been here two minutes, before he said in a gruff tone, ‘Come, Ellen,’ and carried the poor little body off.
We have had no service to-day for want of Mr. Y. We went this evening to see the fort and palace, and very beautiful it was, so like Bluebeard’s abode. As the elephants plodded up one steep flight of steps after another, with the castle still frowning over our heads,D., who is not imaginative nor jocose, said, ‘I cannot help thinking sister Anne must be looking out for us,’ and we all agreed that she must. There is a beautiful old temple in the fort—one mass of carving; and I should like to pick out a few chimney-pieces for Kensington Gore from the carved stones that are tumbling about these old places.
Monday, Jan. 12, 1840.
WEdined with Colonel J. yesterday. He lives, I believe, quite in the native style, with a few black Mrs. J.’s gracing his domestic circle when we are not here, but he borrowed St. Cloup and our cooks to dress the dinner, and it all went off very well. That little Mrs. T. looked very pretty, but Captain T. planted himself opposite to her, and frowned whenever she tried to talk, but he did not quite stop her, and another week of society would, I expect, enable her to frown again. We went to Scindia’s durbar to-day. The palace was three miles off, and we had to set off at three on elephants, and the heat and the dust and the crowd were something inconceivable, but it was a curious show. The durbar was very orderly and handsome. G. and Scindia sat together on a gold throne with a canopy, and F. and I on two silver chairs next to G., and down each side of the room were his sirdars on one side and our officers on the other. After we had sat about tenminutes, the negotiations began for our going to see the ranee, and there were many preliminaries to arrange, and at last wecondescendedto walk through the two rooms that led to the zenana, for fear any of the bearers should catch a glimpse of anything, and no aide-de-camp was to go for the same reason, so we walked off with Mrs. H. We had sent the two ayahs there in the morning, as Mrs. H. does not speak the language very well. Some female slaves met us at the first door, and then some cousins of the rajah’s; in the next roomtwostepmothers, and then an old grandmother, and at the door of her own room was the little ranee, something like a little transformed cat in a fairy tale, covered with gold tissue, and clanking with diamonds. Her feet and hands were covered with rings fastened with diamond chains to her wrists and ankles. She laid hold of our hands and led us to her throne, which was like the rajah’s, without a canopy, and her women lifted her up, and we sat on each side of her, and then all the relations sat in two rows on chairs, and looked uncomfortable, and the nautch girls began dancing. The ranee is only eight years old, and is the sister of his first wife, on whom he doted, and on her death-bed she made him promise to marry this child. She was so shy, she would hardly let us see her face, but the old women talked for her, and the presents filled up the time, for the rajah had ordered that she should put all the jewellery on us with her own little hands. I had a diamond necklace and a collar, some native pearl earrings that hung nearly down to the waist, and a beautiful pair of diamond bracelets, and the great article of all was an immense diamond tiara. I luckilycould not keep this on with a bonnet. They were valued altogether at 2,400l., the mere stones. F.’s were of different shapes, some very pretty, but not so costly, but altogether it was an immense prize for the Company. Then we had a bale of shawls, and the ayahs got six shawls, and Mrs. H. a necklace, and besides all the diamonds, they hung flowers all over us. We must have looked like mad tragedy queens when we came out, but everybody was transmogrified in the same way. Some years ago, it might have made us laugh, but W. and Mr. A., with great necklaces of flowers on, led us gravely back to our silver chairs, and there was G., sitting bolt upright, a pattern of patience, with a string of pearls as big as peas round his neck, a diamond ring on one hand and a large sapphire on the other, and a cocked hat embroidered in pearls at his side. We came home through a grand illumination, and were thoroughly tired at last.
Tuesday, Jan. 13.
Scindia returned G.’s visit to-day, and the ceremonies were much the same, and I think our presents were almost handsomer than his. G. asked him to come for a secret conference into the shawl tent with silver poles that Runjeet gave us, and in that was the gold bed inlaid with rubies, also Runjeet’s, on which they both sat, with B. and A., Colonel J. on one side and the rajah’s two ministers on the other. It looked mysterious andconspiring, and the rajah’s followers were in a horrid state of alarm; they said their king had been carried off, and had no guards, and perhaps never would be let out again. G. and the rajah transacted a little realbusiness, and then G. got up and asked him to accept the tent and the bed, which quite delighted him, and he went away.
We went on to see a much more interesting little durbar. G. had all the old soubadars and havildars of the regiments that have been with us, all through this march, and some of the body-guard, and gave them each a gun and a pair of shawls. One old fellow has been fifty-eight years in the service, and would tell his story here: he had been at Java in Lord Minto’s time, and so on, and he had five medals to show, another had four; they are all most respectable natives. Their great desire was that G. should pour attar on their hands, with his own hand, which is a great distinction; and altogether it was a very touching sight, and has pleased all the troops very much.
We had a great dinner of all the officers afterwards, which luckily was not formal; as there was a Mr. V., a cousin of Lady B.’s, who sings beautifully, without accompaniment, and filled up the evening very pleasantly.
Wednesday.
The camp moved three miles to-day, that G. might be nearer the garden-house where the rajah was to give him a dinner, and we came over such roads! I wonder the carriage stood it. The dinner was all in the native style, but would have been eatable, G. says, only he was on so high a chair that he never could pick up a morsel from the table. The rajah sent F. and me some dinner—three kids roasted whole, and covered with gold and silver leaf, a deer, and about fifty dishes ofsorts, much to the delight of the servants. Wright andJones with Rosina went to take our return presents to the little ranee, and were charmed with their visit.
Thursday.
G. went to a long tiresome review to-day, and F. and C. went with Captain X., Mr. H., and Dr. D. to visit Donheit Rao’s tomb. The baizee baee erected it fifteen years ago. There is a black marble figure of him, dressed in the same sort of gold stuff he always wore, and with all his jewels on, and as, being of black marble, he cannot go to Mahadeo’s temple to say prayers, Mahadeo is brought and put on a table before him. Food is served up to him three times a day, and there is a nautch going on while he is supposed to eat. They were nautching all the time we were there, and I think the marble man liked it. The baee endowed the tomb with five villages, and the Brahmins in attendance eat up the food the marble man leaves. It has made rather a good sketch. G. said, while the review was going on, the sirdar who had been with us came and reported that the ladies had been to the tomb and had been so much pleased that they made a drawing of it, and that they had returned safely to camp, and the maharajah sent his compliments, and said he was glad to hear of our safety. I never felt much afraid, did you? but then I have sketched before, and know what it is.
Friday, Jan. 17.
I declare I think Scindia a very nice young man, likely to turn out well. There is an enamelled little box of spices that comes every day with the uneatable food he sends for luncheon, and I took it up one dayand commented upon its beauty. I suppose our servants told his, for to-day Colonel E. arrived with Bajee Rao and another Vakeel, who had brought the little spice-box in a palanquin, with a message from the rajah that he heard I had admired it, and that he had sent it as aprivatepresent to me, that if the Company were to have it, he did not give it at all, but that Colonel E. was to arrange so that I should have it. G. has paid its value to the Company, which is the simplest arrangement, though he hardly ever will give leave to have anything bought by private contract, but in this instance where there was no return present he did. Colonel E. is very angry that it should be paid for because it was entirely a private present, but I see the value of the rule. It was very good-natured of the rajah to think of it, and I shall keep my little spice-box with a tender recollection of him, to say nothing of its being a lovely little article,per se.
Saturday, Jan. 18.
I should like to have kept this open till your letter arrived, but G. seems to think the great packet may not come till to-morrow. Still, I think I won’t send it. G. may be wrong, everybody is occasionally. In the meantime, I beg to say we have left Gwalior, and I shall have nothing to see, or say, till we get back to Calcutta. So you need hardly read the next journal—it will be so very heavy.
W. and I got up by a wrong gun this morning, one of Scindia’s. There is no carriage road, so we all travel separately in tonjauns, or on elephants, or horses or anyhow; andafterI had set off in a great fuss at beingso late, G.’s first gun fired. I found W. scrambling along on a pony, under the same delusion; and we got in here an hour before the others, riding the last six miles as hard as we could. I was glad to be in soon, the weather is so very hot. It has been cold for about three weeks this year.—God bless you! I have been trying to read over my journal and have stuck in it. What very heavy reading it is!
Jan. 20.
I have kept this open for two days, in hopes that the letters would come in, but we have just got all the Galignanis with an announcement from Bombay, that the Falmouth packet is not come at all; and all your letters are there—and everybody’s. It is so disheartening!—We cannot have them for five weeks.