As usual, after a ship sails, or, rather, while it is clearing, I rest from a journal a week, and write up all my other letters; but to-day, being the 2nd of September, and your own particular birthday, I think it due to myself to begin writing to you again, because without your birthday I never should have had you; and if I had not had you, I never should have been parted from you; and if I were not parted from you, I should not have had that constant craving to write to you.
I left off on Tuesday, the 22nd of August, when we had our French play in the evening. We dined early, and drove after dinner, and then dressed for the play. I never saw a prettier theatre than we had, with scenes, and a place for the orchestra, and a dressing-room on each side, and beautifully lighted up, because one of the great lustres of the ball-room happened to hang right in the middle of the stage. We had L’Affaire d’Honneur and Vatel, which last was acted quite as well as I ever saw it in Paris or London. Nothing could go off better, and it is the first attempt we have made at amusing others which has amused us. I take it more than half the audience did not understand French, but those that did, laughed a little more in consequence, to show their superiority. It was really refreshing to hear those dear little cracked vaudeville airs—they are so merry and so un-languid. The actors had a supper after the play, and, as Mars told me, sang ‘des couplets charmants á l’honneur de milord.’ But the gaiety of the supper was checked by the actresses fainting away, owing to the heat and the fatigue of dressing.
On Wednesday, the 24th, we were not tired, or headached, because we had not been bored. Thursday, the 25th, we had an immense levee of those who did not come to the play, to show that they still visited us though we are so wicked, and of those who did, to say they were extremely amused, and should go on visiting us, because we are so pleasant. Captain sailed for China with Captain Stanley, and we do not expect him back for three months. He is very much reduced by his illness. We went up to Barrackpore in the evening.
Captain went to pass the day at the villa of Dwarkanauth Tagore, that native we went to see, who is the only man in the country who gives pleasant parties. He asked his guests to bring either drawing materials or music with them, and his best pictures were put out for them to copy; and there were musical instruments, with only one professional man to keep them all going. Some gentlemen sang, some played the flute, violin, &c. &c. Captain made an excellent copy of a Prout. There were ices and luxuries, and, when he came away, the ladies were arriving to join their husbands at dinner. In this country, where nobody can go out in the open air, there is some merit in finding a new way of passing a day in the house.
We had such a crowd this morning, amongst others two Germans, a man and his wife, who are just come down the Euphrates, she being the first woman who has ever taken that route. They say they were travelling, and were robbed of all their papers, money, and clothes, by two highly accomplished swindlers who joined them. (‘Pauline’ still declares they were much too gentlemanlike to mean really to rob them, and she still expects to have her boxes, trinkets, &c. forwarded to her from the other side of Persia.) Colonel Chesney found them in this condition, and helped them with means to come on to Calcutta, where Mr. means to set up as a doctor on the homœopathic system. They have been through all sorts of adventures. She has travelled disguised as a man, and then as a Circassian woman, and was nearly shipwrecked; and in the meanwhile there are great suspicions that, though their hardships are true, their story is not, and that they are Russian spies coming to see how to take our India. We shall be sold for slaves in Kamtschatka at last. I do not believe our adventures are half over. We went up to Barrackpore in the evening.