Letters from India Volume II/To the Countess of Buckinghamshire 1
My dearest Sister,—This a line, not to count, nor to have anything in it, as Fanny wrote to you three days ago, but it is a mere ebullition thrown out on the arrival of your case of ribbons. I suppose if you had ransacked London you could not have thought of anything so entirely acceptable. I give you tremendous credit for the idea, but still, you know, without detracting from your talents, there was a certain degree of luck in hitting on this ‘great grand’ ribbon grievance. I thought last week whether it would not be advisable to send away all my seven hurkarus, because they had hunted all through Calcutta without being able to find a white belt. And in a country where we live in white muslin what was I to do? My waist might have taken to growing large. If I had come home looking like the Duchess of Canvizaro you would not have known me. Independent of the pleasure of receiving this little unexpected parcel, which dropped in at luncheon time, the real lady’s-maid delight with which Wright and Jones are dividing the spoil is worth seeing. The doors of my room are open to Wright’s, so I have a full view of them dividing, and probably wrangling, and my two tailors, in an attitude of deep veneration, holding two yard measures before them. They have just come in with an amiable little tartness in their voices about a piece of primrose sarcenet ribbon, ‘which would be an excellent trimming for a bonnet, but does not rightly belong to either lot.’ I hope they did not mean to have it themselves, for, like Alexander, I drew my rusty pair of scissors, black with the rust of the last damp week, and hacked the Gordian primrose ribbon in two. Hastings must be much altered since our time, but I have not had time to study those two little prints yet. I am so glad your last letter told us something about Dandy. You should descend more into those minute particulars. Chance is remarkably well, thank you; he never has had a fit since that one last year, and is now lying on my sofa on his back, with his four legs up in the air, reposing after his bath. I always put him after luncheon into the great tub of water that stands in my bath-room, and he swims about in it, and then I pick him out and put him all wet and sloshy on a table under the punkah, and that keeps him cool for the afternoon. I would advise you to try that with Dandy when your thermometer is 110°, which it is now in the shade, not in the house. But do you hear the thunder? That promises the beginning of the rains, of great importance to everybody, but particularly to the poor natives. The quantity of rice for which they usually gave one rupee now costs three, and the fish in the tanks are all dead, and, as most of them earn about five rupees a month and live entirely on rice and fish, they are in great distress and dying very much of cholera.
God bless you, my particularly dear sister! I think there is some fun in sending such trash as this all across the seas—enough to make a ship sink to think of it.