Letters from India Volume I/From the Hon F H Eden to a Friend 3
My dear,—This is going to be a mere pretence of a letter, for I am doing that most odious of all things, writing a great many letters to a great many unoffending individuals to go by one particular ship; and the aggregate of bore which will in consequence fall upon both writer and reader, is fearful to think of. By the same ship, I have sent you the most frightful little commonplace netting-case you ever saw; in fact, it hardly is a netting-case, but the day we were packing up a box for England, they sent it here with other things for us to look at, and I, thinking of your purse-netting propensities, slipped it in.
Bengal produces nothing pretty; that’s clear! But I have now established a private correspondence with China, which I expect to produce great things. I have a private venture of my own, now, upon the ocean. If the articles should be contraband, it will give an added zest to the transaction. Those clever creatures, the Chinese, only send their worst manufactures out of the country, but now and then a Chinese captain abstracts some article that gives a great idea of the treasures which might be procured there. They make silks with embossed flowers in them, so stiff and grand they would sit up all alone on a chair. To appear in one of those silks would make all the Calcutta ladies fall down in separate fainting fits; because, being in Asia, they think it incumbent upon them to wear only what comes from Europe.
I never look at the thermometer, now, for fear the shock should be too much for me; but whenever I have reason to believe, from my own feelings, that it is not higher than 100°, I will come rustling down in a China silk, with the walk and bearing of a mandarin, and thereby give the Calcutta world the pleasure of a shock.
The tailors who sit stitching at our doors, make our bonnets; and we, who are not above China silks, find them a very easy article of dress to get; in fact, they will soon be the only articles we have to wear, for while this rainy season lasts, the milliners would rather die and be buried in their own tin boxes, than open one to give us out a gown. We heard a great deal before the season began, of the destruction it would bring to us, our birds, our dogs, and iour clothes, but it surpasses all I could imagine. The dogs lay themselves flat down all day and think it too much trouble to walk across the room. We talk of buying some palankeens and hiring some Pariah dogs to carry Chance and the two greyhounds.
Two very meritorious little parrots, the size of sparrows, who always slept hanging by their claws with their heads downwards, have died this week—of apoplexy, I suppose. And a paroquet with a plum-coloured head, who has every merit a paroquet can (and more than most human beings do) possess, is dangerously ill, and has its own doctor attending it twice a day.
Consider my feelings, the other day when I was sitting in my room, with half a dozen birds walking about the table, to see walk in with a large white Persian cat under each arm. ‘There,’ he said with a smile of extraordinary complacency, ‘I have brought you some quite new pets; remarkably handsome animals.’ Two spurious white tigers! in fact, had they been real tigers, the birds and I should have received them better; and the melancholy result is, that our maids, who, like all ladies-maids, have a natural love of cats, have each insisted upon having one. It is the knowledge of that fact which has preyed upon the paroquet’s spirits and is bringing him to an untimely grave.
Oh, my dear! such a beautiful cow’s tail they have just brought me. If you ever have an Alderney cow within reach, cut off its tail, and have it mounted in silver: you will be surprised at its beauty.
Your feathers are written for, up the country; the birds in these parts do not grow them, but I have seen samples of them, and they are very pretty. I wonder whether this will find you in England. I cannot write more, for the ‘Perfect’ sails to-morrow, and I must get one or two more letters done. God bless you, dear! When once you get to England, how you must write.