Government House, February 23, 1837.
Fanny and set off last Monday week, Feb. 13, and write in ecstasies about the camp life. Fanny says she is hungry all day long, and never slept so well in her life, and their tents are not hot; so I really hope it will answer, and I think it must be a very amusing change. The only danger is the weather, which is much changed for the worse the last three days; however, I have got her Sunday letter, which does not complain, and Sunday was a broiling day at Barrackpore. Everybody was ill at church, and there are no punkahs up, and we are still in our silk gowns from dread of the eight months of white muslin that are coming on. Perhaps when we get into hot weather trim, and the servants consent to shut all the glass windows, it may do better; but the heat has begun a month earlier than usual. It can hardly have thought we had not enough of it.
I thought I should want a friend when Fanny was out, to come for half-an-hour occasionally, and I had not a notion where to turn for one, but by great luck I find that my extra letter to Fanny just fills up the time in which we should be sitting together, and the rest of the time I am very glad to be busy in my own room. Besides George does not mind my going to sit in his room occasionally, and the days that the Council make him too late for luncheon he always comes up to my room for it.
I did rather an amusing thing last week. I went to see the Burra Bazaar, a narrow sort of street, Cranbourne Alley squeezed almost close and flat, and inhabited by jewellers, shawl merchants, turban binders, &c. I went with Mr. , his daughter, and Mr. in their little palanquin carriage, partly because it would have been thought incorrect if any of the Government House servants had been seen there (Lady William Bentinck went to see it in the same way), and also that the shopkeepers would have charged four times as much for their goods to any of our family. It was very amusing to see my servants when Captain said none of them were to go with me. They evidently felt that a mad patient was escaping from her keepers, and my jemadar ventured to represent that he ought to go with me, which is very unusual with a native servant. We went off alone, however, and had to walk down the narrowest alleys, and then to go up to the housetops of such wretched-looking houses, where the owners were sitting smoking, or asleep, and out of their dirty-looking thatched tenements they produced such shawls, gold brocades that were thicker than the doors of their transparent houses, and the men that sold them leoked as if they were cut out of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ The jewellers’ shops are disappointing, except that they produce out of some odd corner of their dresses handfuls of diamonds and pearls; but they have nothing set nicely. I never go to any of these sights without wishing for Landseer, or Wilkie. There is something about natives so ultra-picturesque, they would make the fortunes of an artist.
We are going to make up a small party to the Botanical Garden on Saturday. I have asked three young ladies and their beaux and two couples, and all our own gentlemen mean to go, and St. Cloud and his myrmidons will go down by water in the morning, and cook us a dinner somehow. The natives with four bricks and a little charcoal make excellent kitchens out of doors, and we shall have the band sent down too, and I dare say it will be very pleasant on the water at night, and the moon is the only good thing I know in India.
Yours most affectionately,
E. E.