Letters from India Volume II/From the Hon F H Eden to a Friend 7
I sent you off a large book seven weeks ago, with the full expectation that by this time it would be crossing the line. I have just heard by chance that the man (the monster!) who took charge of it is still at Calcutta. That shows a depraved taste when he might be on his way to England, besides utter want of principle as to carrying books. I have nearly finished another, and shall send it off in a fortnight, on a fresh plot, and these are merely a few extraneous words to keep you quiet in the meantime—or rather unquiet—constantly writing. I say everything in those journals there is to be said, and have strong suspicions that they must be intensely tiresome and the sketches supremely ridiculous. I am driven into sketching figures because the country is so ugly, and I dare say their arms go where their legs ought to be; and now I am taking to colour them—I, who never handled a colour before—and I think I see you in fits of laughing over the result. generally sends in the figure to draw, and he goes into strong hysterics at my efforts. They rather impose upon George. Nevertheless keep them for me till I come home; I dare say then I shall like to look at them.
You see we are at Delhi. I think when I was in England I had some dim notion of Delhi as a city at the farthest possible point of the world from that where we happened to be born, full of fine buildings and people with conical hats. I will not write about the buildings twice, but I think it as well to mention that the people do not wear conical hats. Our tents swarm all day with merchants, who cover the carpets with jewels; but they want money for them, and much money.
I am still very low at having left Gazelle at Meerut with Captain C., but then I think of him carried over the hills in a hyena’s mouth and am comforted. It is longer than usual since I have heard from you, but the ships come in very shortly. God bless you, dearest!