Some officer at Ghazeepore sent us yesterday two young bears, two fawns, and a very young mouse-deer; the united ages of the whole set could not make a month. The bears were the size of Chance and very like him. One fawn died, but the other and the mouse-deer I am trying to rear by means of a teapot and some milk. The little mouse-deer stands very comfortably in my hand; when full grown they are about the height of Chance, with such slender limbs and beautiful black eyes. It is a pity I cannot send you some.
Did I ever mention that I sent some more tortoises by the Duke of Devonshire’s gardener, who went home in the ‘Zenobia’? He will leave them in Grosvenor Place. There are two different kinds; the spotted are very pretty, and thcir skulls are sometimes set as bracelets.
I went on Friday evening to the cathedral to hear the Bishop preach a funeral sermon for the Bishop of Madras—that excellent Corrie who appears in ‘ Henry Martyn’s Life,’ and in all other good Indian memoirs. He and his wife have both died at Madras within the last few months.
We went again to the cathedral, that George might hear the Bishop, but he did not preach. A Mr. S gave us such a bad sermon. It is very odd how many bad sermons there are in the world, and they are much worse in this climate; like meat, or milk, or anything else, they won't keep at all, and if they run to length when the thermometer is near 90°, as it was in church yesterday, you cannot imagine how one carps at the slightest tautology.
I had such a pretty present to-day of little marble figures from Gyah. It is a famous place for cutting stone and marble, and I am thinking of sending the models I have made lately up there and getting them cut in stone. I have just finished one of Fairy and her puppies as a surprise for .
I always try, if I can, to pick up anything out of this dull life that is sufficiently different from English life to amuse you—something that has what Jacquemont calls a ‘couleur locale.’ I had two people sent to me yesterday by two ladies who thought I should like to sketch them—one a Malay in a beautiful dress, the other a man who is employed to find out domestic thefts. Mrs. had lost a trinket and sent for this man, and he performed all sorts of odd incantations amongst her servants, and then gave them rice to eat, and the thief is never able to swallow the rice. The truth is that the servants are naturally timid, and the thief, from fright, cannot chew the rice, which requires a great deal of moisture, and then the other servants oblige him to confess, so that the conjurer hardly ever fails. The mere sight of him would frighten me into confession, and I was obliged to send for Captain , who sketches too, to be with me. The man’s hair has never been cut since he was born, and hangs in long grey ropes all over him. He sat huddled up in a scanty drapery, rolling his immense eyes from side to side and muttering to himself. You will see my sketch of him soon, as we are expecting Captain Chads every day, and he is to take home my drawings.
Another domestic event in the morning was unlike England, though it happens constantly here. Captain had turned off one of the servants for being absent three weeks without leave, and these dismissed people, after moaning and sighing about the gates of Government House for a week, if they find Captain inexorable, generally contrive to come to me; and, if they can, they bring a train of the old servants to beg for them, and they cry like children and fling themselves on the floor and knock their heads against it; though I have now forewarned my jemadar that he must condition with all his petitioners that they are to stand up and speak out in a manly way, or I cannot see them. They have a way when they are in disgrace of spreading their turbans about them, that I think remarkably interesting, and it does just as well as if I understood every word of their apologies. This man yesterday, besides an interesting discomposed turban and a train of yellow servants with clasped hands, looking as if they were all going to be hanged, brought his old mother to cry for him. It is not very common to see a native female (not a servant), and this old creature was huddled up in her dirty veil, and hideous as all the native women I have met with, but her feet and hands were the most curious things. Very few English children of seven years old would have such small feet, and so narrow and beautifully shaped. There is no such thing as a large foot in this country, but such small ones as these I never beheld. I had a great mind to ask her for them, and she looked such an old dry thing that I think she might have unscrewed them and taken them off. They would have been invaluable to Chantry. ‘If the Lady Sahib will just write down that Sahib is to exqueese this poor fellah, he say he will do just the same thing for ever again,’ the jemadar interpreted. It ended, as it always does, in their having their own way. At first Captain said he could not exqueese him, and then the old mother touched his heart as she did mine, and so he told them (to excuse his weakness) that, to oblige me, he would let him off with the loss of a month’s wages. One reason why they are attached to Government House is, that it is one of the few houses in Calcutta where they are not beaten. It is quite horrible and disgusting to see how people quietly let out that they are in the habit of beating these timid, weak creatures, and very few of the natives seem to know that they can have redress from a magistrate; but I hope they are beginning to find it out.
My dear, I wish you were here, though it would only be another good article thrown away; but still we could understand each other.
We dined early on Wednesday, and came up in the evening, so as to have an additional day here, as it is Passion Week, and for the same reason I persuaded George to excuse us any company. We have had two such beautiful storms, that sounded as if they ought to cool the air; but it was ‘all sound and fury,’ &c. There were hailstones as big as pigeon’s eggs, and the thermometer at 90° while they were falling. Either it is a much hotter season or we feel it more than we did the first year, which they say is generally the case; but both George and I are desperate about the heat. It is impossible to stir out till it is dark. Fanny is beginning to find it hot in the tents, and I wish they were safely home now; they will be back this day week.
We had a good sermon on Good Friday, and another to-day, but the heat at the altar was beyond anything; there was no punkah there, and there are no glass windows to this church, so the hot air came pouring in as if we were in an oven, and I saw two or three people obliged to go away from the altar quite faint, and come back again as it came round to their turn.
George’s new school has been open this last fortnight, and some of the little native boys already read a fable in one syllable. It is astonishing how quick they are when they choose to learn. I have an idea of giving the monitors, when they have any, a muslin dress apiece. At present the school, though composed of boys of a very good caste, is very slightly clothed, if at all.
I have not written to by this ship, which hurts my feelings, but they said it would not go till the end of the week. Will you tell her so? There will be another ship. in ten days. God bless you, my dear!