Letters from India Volume I/From Hon Emily Eden to Blank
Got up with half a headache for want of sleep; the Brahminee kites and the crows and the pariah dogs all croaked and cawed and howled all night. George held a durbar, which means in common sensible parlance, that the native princes and noblesse came to see him. They bring him offerings—some of them he said offered him what looked like two half-sovereigns, which he touches, but is not allowed to pocket, and he gives some of them a dress of honour, and they go out and put it on and come back, and then he gives them pawn to eat and pours a little attar of roses over their hands, and then they go. There were so many who came that he said Captain , who acts as his interpreter, whispered to him not to tilt the bottle of attar of roses quite so much, for fear it should not last. I think the East India Company must be charmed with such economy. We never got a sight of the durbar, though often half-way down the passage, being always turned back by fresh arrivals. We had above 100 visitors this morning, sometimes as many as thirty at once in the room. Captain Macgregor was quite tired of announcing them, and almost as much puzzled as we were with some of their names. I actually cried with fatigue and headache after it was all over.
At 3 p.m. we embarked in the ‘Soonamookie’ for Barrackpore; there was some air on the river, and it was pleasant to be going into the country; but, by way of passing a quiet day, we took with us Captain Chads of the ‘Andromache,’ and a young Wilmot Horton, one of the midshipmen, Captain Blackwood of the ‘Hyacinthe,’ Captain Grey, and three of his midshipmen, which, with our own household, made up a party of sixteen. However, I went fast asleep the instant we got on board, so they did not hurt me; but I saw nothing of the river in consequence. Our own servants, including the bargemen and the kitchen-servants, were all either in the steamer that towed us, or in the state barges, and they were rather more than 400 people—such a simple way of going to pass two nights in the country. We arrived before 5 p.m. Barrackpore is a charming place, like a beautiful English villa on the banks of the Thames—so green and fresh; the house is about the size of Cashiobury, to all appearance, but it just holds George, Fanny, and me, the rest of the party all sleep in thatched cottages built in the park; the drawing and dining-rooms are immense, and each person requires two or three rooms besides a bath in this country, so as to be able to change rooms from the sun. We were carried round the gardens, which are delightful, and I see that this place might console me for half the week at Calcutta. The elephants were brought out, and most of the party got on them, but they looked so large I did not like it. Captain Chads is a very pleasant man, so simple and straightforward, which is a merit here. Captain Chads has a young Disbrowe with him, and we have sent to ask him to dine with us on Saturday and go with us to the Opera.
George held a military levee, and all the field-officers came on to us afterwards; but they were not above thirty, and it was soon over. Wrote up my journal. Mr. Pelham arrived to luncheon on his way to Benares—a hurried journey he is making while the ‘Jupiter’ is refitting, and which all old Indians look upon as madness at this time of the year. He is very delicate, and it will be lucky if he has no illness on the road. Captain Grey is in despair at hearing that the regiment he is to take from Ceylon, and which he thought would consist of 250 men, is 400 strong. Altogether the officers and their families amount to forty-six people without counting their servants.
George and I had a long ride on an elephant, and it was much less rough than I expected. Captain Byrne told me the housekeepership of our house was vacant, and recommended its being given to Wright, who is to have charge of all the linen and furniture, and is paid rather more than 100l. a year. I offered it to her, and at first she refused it, and cried a great deal, and said she was not in want of money, and had come out solely on my account; and if this was to prevent her taking charge of me, she would rather have nothing to do with it. And I promised she should take as much charge of me as she liked, and that nobody else should dress me; and for all the rest she can give her own directions as to my gowns and frills, and will soon be glad enough to have the labour taken off her hands.
Got up at five in the morning—the jackals made such a noise all night. They very often walk through the passages of the bungalows, but never attack anybody. At six we were all on board the ‘Soonamookie,’ and it was really a cool, delicious morning. Breakfasted at Government House; went up to dress, as Captain Byrne had had notice of various introductions—and from that time till luncheon the room has been full, and now I am come back to put up this letter and go to sleep.
We give a great ball on Monday night, to which the whole English society is asked, and a concert on Wednesday, to which the native princes will come; and we mean to refuse all visits that week and the following week, and to have two days regularly advertised for receiving anybody who likes to come. To-night we make what the newspapers call ‘the first public appearance of the Governor-General and his family at the Opera.’ The heat, I take it, surpasses all description; but I hardly see how it is to be worse in one place than another.
I finished and sent off, per ‘Robert,’ my Journal up to March 12th, last night. We went to the old church, to hear a charity sermon from Archdeacon Dealtry for Mrs. Wilson’s Native Orphan School—a very good sermon—and, as all the punkahs were put up, the church was not so hot as I have felt it in London. Our new coach has come into play and looks very handsome. (Some of the servants are sneezing so while I write. I hate that pretension of catching cold in this climate.) A quiet day—we gave up our evening airing in consideration of the day; but I think that is a good habit we must give up, as it is difficult to live here without that hour of air, and there is no other means of getting out. George tried to walk with us to the stables; but we were all tired before we reached the entrance-gate, at least two hundred hot yards off, and when we got there the sentry would not let us out. Whereupon all our tails began screaming at him for the indignity of not knowing the Burra Sahib, and of not letting him through his own gate; to which the sentry replied that he knew him very well, and that he expected the Burra Sahib would make him a corporal for being so strict upon guard. However we got out, and then found such a crowd of natives with petitions to present, that we were very glad to get in again, and would have given the sentry a lieutenant-colonelcy, if he had asked it, to let us in. We had no strangers at dinner. Visited George in his room, and he rehearsed the speech to Sir C. Metcalfe which he is to make to-morrow, and I acted Sir Charles, and stood steady to have the red ribbon put on me.
After breakfast we all made ourselves as smart as we could, and and Mr. Colvin, as military and private secretaries, went, with all our carriages, to pilot Sir Charles and his suite. We did not ask anybody to the morning ceremony, but asked what they call the ‘Government House List’ to a ball in the evening, and advertised that any ladies or gentlemen who wished to be present in the morning would be admitted. The immense ball-room was completely filled by ten o’clock in the morning. We all met in my sitting-room and as soon as Sir Charles was in sight, stalked solemnly off in a grand procession of aides-de-camp, silver-sticks, peacocks’ feathers, &c., with Captains Grey and Chads tacked on. George took his place on a sort of a throne, and we on each side of him with a circle of other ladies, and Sir Charles was walked up the room, looking ready to hang himself, and then George got up and began. He said, ‘Sir Charles Metcalfe,’ in rather a tremulous tone; but after the first six words he seemed quite at his ease, spoke loud enough to be heard all over the room, and really made a beautiful speech. Several ladies near us, friends of Sir Charles Metcalfe, were crying, and there were two or three attempts at applause, which were soon checked as highly incorrect. Sir Charles’s answer was shorter, but remarkably good, though he was really so much affected by the whole thing that he could hardly speak. In short, we all began the day thinking it would be a ludicrous ceremony, and it turned out very interesting, and moreover had an excellent effect for George, as we heard from all quarters. It was rather good fun, the officers of the ‘Jupiter’, who were dispersed in different parts of the room, coming with the remarks they had overheard. I heard one man saying, ‘But why the d—l is he not always speaking? It is so pleasant to listen to him.’
We had a rest from twelve o’clock till dinner-time and dressed after dinner for the ball. We had the floor chalked with Sir Charles Metcalfe’s arms. There was a sitting-down supper for 650 people, and about 1,000 came to the ball. We went in after they were all assembled, and then the dancing began directly. I never saw such a ball-room as that at Government House, and the banqueting-rooms below are just as fine. The ladies were all well dressed, but there is very little beauty amongst them; still, what they want in looks they make up in activity. I suppose it was a gay ball; and, in point of decoration, George, who was quite proud of it, said it would have been talked of for a year in London. The supper was so very well arranged. It was all the merit of that excellent Captain Byrne. Sir C. Metcalfe advised our not retiring till everybody was gone, and the consequence was that I grew very tired, and began to feel ill before I went to bed.
Awake all night with violent pains, and at six o'clock wrote to George to send for a doctor. I wanted to have Dr. Drummond, from the ‘Jupiter,’ who is an excellent doctor, and suited us all so well that George would have made him his private physician, which would have given him 1,400l. a year; but unfortunately, by some rule about the Company's service, we may not have him, so George sent for a Dr. , a little man, like Moore the poet, who had been dancing about at the ball, and we are to see if we like him. He gave me calomel and opium and came to see me every hour, an attention which is paid to the Governor-General’s family, and is particularly inconvenient, as it seems but civil to invent a new symptom every time he comes. I think my illness was precisely like what I had at Langley, and have had five or six times in my life—very painful spasms, but easily accounted for. However, Wright has had the same sort of thing, and that young W. Horton, who was staying with us; and, in short, it was called ‘the prevailing complaint,’ and so on, and Dr. seemed to treat it very well; but it is horrid work being ill in this country. If the punkah ceased for a moment I felt in such a fever; but they hardly ever do stop.
George went in state to the play. Fanny had so many people in the morning, and was tired and did not go. It was very hot and dull they said.
Still poorly, though better, but stayed in my own room; the heat is awful, and they say unusual for the time of year. George went to the opening of some medical college. It is the oddest thing, and shows what he was predestined for: but he never feels tired, and does not mind the heat, and the mosquitoes don’t bite him, and he goes on working away, filling all the hours fuller than they can hold, and sleeps like a top at night. It is curious!
To-night there was the concert, at which the natives came, besides all the same society that was at the ball. Fanny said there was nothing very splendid about the rajahs. I heard the music in my bedroom, and it did not sound ill. Our own band is a very good one, and plays every evening when we have company. The singers are a Madame St. Nesoni, immensely fat, with a cracked voice—she is their Pasta; there is a Pozzeni, very like Lablache; and a Mrs. Goodall-Atkinson, whom I remember as Miss Goodall, singing away at Drury Lane, but she is a good singer here; and they all ask their twenty guineas a night, as if they really were prima donnas.
We have done now with great fêtes for some time, I think till the hot season is over, six months hence. The climate is much more detestable than I expected, and the evening, which ought to be better than the day, is rather worse. It is not cool, and it is thick with mosquitoes.
George went to see the Botanical Garden, which is on the other side of the river. It fell to ’s turn among the aides-de-camp to attend him, which amused me, as he happens not to know a flower from a leaf; but he does these sort of things very well.
Fanny and I took an airing quite late. It shows how this climate subdues one to all its ridiculous habits, for I should have been ashamed to be carried upstairs in England, and never hesitated about it here. There are always two men with a sort of sedan at the bottom of my stairs in case they are wanted, and my attentive jemadar (how you all live without a jemadar I cannot guess, I think I always must have had one) had them ready at the carriage-door, in consideration of my weak state of health. For the first time since we came, there were only four at dinner—George and Fanny, and Captains Byrne and Macgregor. I went down for an hour in the evening.
The fleet of boats got under weigh at 2.30, when the tide served, and the whole party went, except , who stayed with me, and we drove down late in the evening. Mr. and Mrs. Robertson and their two children, Mr. and Mrs. Colvin (George’s secretary) and their children, Captain Grey and three of his officers, and our own household, all went by water. The drive down was curious: we went through the native part of the town where the people are so thronged that it is difficult to drive through them. Such odd groups squatting at the doors of the huts, and sometimes such handsome wild countenances; then every now and then a Chinese, with his twinkling eyes and yellow face and satin dress, stalking alone amongst those black naked creatures. I believe this whole country and our being here, and everything about it, is a dream. When we got out of the town the road was straight and shady, and a few scattered savages at the doors of their little clay huts, with their boys climbing up the cocoa-trees, were the only human creatures we met. Then we came to a camel by the roadside—the first I had seen, then to two jackals fighting; then, on the road, we saw a very pretty English britscha, which at first feared was as good as ours; it was drawn by beautiful horses in silver harness, and a footman running before it, and sitting cross-legged on the front seat was a rajah, dressed precisely as he was the first moment he came into the world—he had not even a turban on, but his long black hair was hanging on his shoulders. He was smoking his hookah, and seemed to be enjoying his airing very much. I rather envied him, he could not have felt half so feverish as I did with my clothes on.
The life of ladies in India is a wearisome one for them—so many hours in which the house must be shut up, nothing to do, and no strength to do it with; and then most of the mothers are either parted from their children, or feeling they are doing wrong by keeping them here. The children show the climate much more than the grown-up people, for at a year old, they have not a tinge of colour in their lips and cheeks, and it grows worse as they grow older.
Much better, and the air is really fresh. We have no trouble with our visitors here. They come to breakfast and go back immediately to their bungalows utterly exhausted, poor things! with the trouble of eating their bread and butter. The breakfasts in India are excellent—fish, curries, omelettes, preserves, fruits, &c. After luncheon we assemble in my room for a little while.
George and I took a drive to Futtyghur, through some pretty lanes. Fanny and went on one of the elephants, and the rest of the society had the other elephants and their own carriages. We had six officers at dinner from Barrackpore.
The chapel at Barrackpore is under repair, so the service is performed now in the large dining-room. There are seven regiments quartered here, so our congregation was very red and clanking.
George and I went out on an elephant, and rode through the cantonments, which are curious to see. The natives make fine-looking soldiers, and, as by their religion and habits they cannot get drunk, they never get into any scrapes. Indeed, the only punishment now is to turn them out of the army, and that is seldom necessary.
There was a thunderstorm in the evening, which cooled the air very much, and the part here is always nice.
Got up at 5.30, and we were all packed up and on board the ‘Soonamookie’ at 6.30. Had coffee, and a nice cool voyage up. George always goes down in the cabin with Mr. Colvin on these occasions and gets through a great deal of writing, and we do not think ourselves bound to be pleasant at these odd hours, but take our books and read. We are two hours going up against tide, and an hour and a half with it. It is all very well managed; our whole household is with us so entirely that our rooms at Calcutta are locked up when we come away and yet, ten minutes after we arrive at Government House, everything is in its place. A hot breakfast (more like a dinner) for eighteen people is on the table, and the servants are as quiet and composed as ever—the immense number of them would only make a confusion in England, but here everyone takes charge of only one thing, and does it thoroughly and exactly to a minute. They have cleared up one doubt I have always tacitly felt; I had an idea, from the noise English servants make, that their feet creaked as well as their shoes—that it was part of a servant’s privilege to have creaking feet, but it is not so. These men have no shoes and stockings, and their feet are quite silent. We had a dinner of forty-four people.
Quantities of visitors till one o’clock. Mrs. Robertson went with us to see Mrs. Wilson’s Native Orphan School. It was a pretty sight, and it is impossible to look at Mrs. Wilson, in her widow’s dress, with her plain, intelligent countenance, without the greatest respect. She has collected 160 of these children; many of them lost their parents in the famine some years ago; many are deserted children. She showed us one little fat lump, about five years old, that was picked up at three-months old, just as two dogs had begun to eat it; the mother was starving, and had exposed it on the river side. She brings the children up as Christians, and marries them to native Christians when they are fifteen years old. One of the little girls presented me with a bunch of flowers she had worked herself, with my name at the back of it.
We dined alone to-day, which means that we were twelve at dinner; but, somehow, that is not the trouble that it would seem to be. It is only for strangers that you are bound to speak and dress.
Forgot to mention yesterday that I got up at 5.30 for our first early ride. George, , Captain Magregor, and I were on our horses at six. One of the horses has not yet arrived, so Fanny and I can only ride alternate days, which is as well to begin with. My horse seems to be a very nice one. Fanny went out this morning. It is dreadful work getting up so early, but the air is really cool then, so we mean to keep it up.
A quiet day. At 4 p.m. George and I set off to the Botanical Garden; it is the other side of the river, and four miles off. Our own boat met us at Sir E. Ryan’s, and Lady Ryan went with us. We went to see the Amherstia, a new plant, and quite magnificent. It has flowered for the second time—immense tassels of crimson flowers. I did not see much of the garden, as I was tired, and we are to go again. We had a delicious drive home. Charles Cameron is just as fond of cricket as he was in Eden Farm days, and he and Sir E. Ryan (the Chief Justice) have established a cricket club, and when we drove through their gardens the Calcutta Eleven were playing the officers of the ‘Jupiter’ and the ‘Hyacinthe.’ It looked pretty and English, and brought back visions of Prince’s Plain.
We had another dinner of forty-six people to-day. Mr. Macaulay came to my share at dinner. Just as we were assembling for dinner there came on what they call a ‘north-wester’—a most violent storm of thunder, lightning, and wind, which is at its height in a moment. There were hundreds of white-muslined servants rushing about the house, catching at the blinds and shutters, but everything was blown off the table in an instant. I never heard such a row. It cools the air for three or four days; half our guests were shivering, and borrowing shawls; I thought it charming. The Hindoo College examination, immediately after breakfast, in the Marble Hall at Government House—prizes for the boys; and then they recited English poems, and acted scenes out of Shakespeare. There are forty-five of them, some of the very highest caste, and every respectable native in Calcutta comes to the show. The great shoe question makes a great heart-burning in society. Sir C. Metcalfe never allowed the natives to come with their shoes on. There is a large class here, who say the natives are now sufficiently well-informed to feel the degradation very sensibly, and who wish the natives to adopt European manners as much as possible. George has taken up that opinion, and the charm of being allowed to come before the Governor-General in shoes brought an immense concourse together—such quantities of new stiff European shoes, and many of the men seemed to find it difficult to walk in them. There were some splendid dresses among them, and some beautiful turbans, that would have made Madame Carson’s fortune, but most of them were in white muslin dresses. It was much the prettiest sight I have seen in Calcutta, and the newspapers observed, ‘it was delightful to see the intense interest the Miss Edens evinced in the recitations.’ I am so glad we were intensely interested.
There are constantly little paragraphs about our manners, habits, and customs in the papers, and I cut some out that were very ridiculous to send the children, but I cannot find them.
At 2.30 p.m. we were obliged, by the state of the tide, to set off, but it was not very hot on the river. There had been a great deal of rain in the night—that made a great difference. Mr. Colvin and three of the ‘Jupiter’s’ officers went with us. We all went out on the elephants as soon as we arrived: George and I, and Fanny—two on each. A delicious evening; the contrast with Calcutta more striking than ever.
George and I, and Captain Macgregor and Mr. Lay, went out riding. The horses saw the elephants for the first time, and were very frisky and disagreeable. Captain has the charge of the stables, and George requires twenty horses, but we have not been able to find more than thirteen yet, and he is in such a fuss when the horses are frisky and disagreeable.
Sir Edward and Lady Ryan, and their two daughters, came to stay till Monday. We had six officers from the cantonment at dinner.
Had a long talk with George about furnishing this house. It is in a wretched state, and Mr. ’s armchair, which I intended for my own room, I have actually been obliged to lend to the drawing-room, where everybody makes a rush for it, it is so soft; indeed, the sofas are so wretchedly hard. Had afterwards an hour’s talk with Captain Champneys on the same subject of furnishing, and about our servants’ liveries, and I think I shall have things smartened up in a little while. The furniture here is worse than that of any London hotel; but everything in India is so perishable that one year of neglect may reduce a house to the worst state.
Fanny rode to-day, and lent his horse to his friend Mr. Lay, and took a drive with me. The visitors, between boats, elephants, carriages, palanquins, all took care of themselves; and we mean to keep up that practice of letting our ladies amuse themselves in the afternoon—it saves so much trouble. We drove to the Military Burial Ground, where there are some very pretty picturesque monuments I wanted to sketch. It was a melancholy sight. There is poor Jeffrey Amherst’s monument. We could not find one instance of a death later than twenty-five. Then the monuments are always erected by ‘brother officers,’ or a ‘circle of friends,’ and never by relations:
By stranger's hands his dying eyes were closed,
I could not help thinking. We are much too old to die in India evidently, so do not be alarmed about us.