Letters from India Volume II/From the Hon F H Eden to Blank 4
I never knew anything half so infamous as this. I have not had a week’s rest since I sent away ten letters to the mother country (I trust she looked upon them all as daughters), and now George says, exactly as if he were saying nothing particular, ‘If you mean to write by the overland, you had better begin directly, for I shall be sending off a packet in a few days.’ If! the monster! His natural affections evidently blunted, if not destroyed! writing probably upon public grounds, never thinking—or if thinking never minding—how much he interferes with our system of private correspondence.
We are expecting your July letters every day. I think you have been rather long without a government, for it is quite clear neither Whigs nor Tories are really governing. Why don’t you do as we do when things are at a standstill—go and take a city? Leominster is famous for its carpets; so is Cabul. Go and take Leominster.
There is an awful number of morning visitors just now upon the break-up of the rains. We regulate all we do in India by the weather; the morning visiting result is amongst the most painful.
We are in such a way; the July letters won’t come, and have been due these ten days. And people have brought forward a horrible idea—that there is war in Egypt, and that all the letters are stopped and will have to go back to England, and then round by the Cape, in which case we shall hear something of you this time twelvemonth. I now know in its fullest extent what is meant by the ‘horrors of war,’ but I don’t remember ever reading in history of anything so bad. From all you were made to swallow last year about the Punjâb, I expect you to have the most profound interest about its state, now Kurruck is reigning and Runjeet and his unhappy wives reduced to ashes. is to return from Lahore to-day, and the only interesting bit of Indian history I have yet got at is the account his letters give of the state of things there. Kurruck, who is next door to an idiot, sits at the durbar with those magnificent pearls of Runjeet’s, which he has recovered from the Brahmins, hanging round his neck. Our friend Shere Singh, having a sort of idea that he might like the throne himself, for a time kept aloof; then, having extracted a guarantee of safety, came and threw himself at Kurruck’s feet; ‘upon which,’ one of the Lahore papers says, ‘the Maharajah lifted Shere Singh into his lap, and they both sobbed plentifully;’ and, moreover, Kurruck has given Shere an immense sum of money, which will dry his tears effectually. The old fakeer who used to translate for Runjeet translates for Kurruck, and habitually calls him the ocean of sense and talent.’ Kurruck’s eldest son, Noor Mahal, has a great army at his command, and is young and clever. Great fears were entertained by the chiefs of his entrance into the city; the coronation was hurried over the day before his arrival. He was supposed also to hate the English, and his entrance was to be a crisis. However, his first step was to send to and Mr. , who is with him, that he meant to visit them in their tents, which astonished all his own adherents. He turned out particularly pleasant, and, says, ‘contrives, in the most gentlemanlike way, to transfer to his father all the attention paid to himself;’ for the chiefs are apt to forget the Kurruck at his own durbar and hustle him about more than is respectful. In the meantime it is supposed that he means to displace Dhian Singh, the prime minister, and let his father keep the throne while he governs in his name.
The old fakeer the other day observed confidently that even if Noor Mahal were to shut up the ‘ocean of sense and talent,’ he would be just as happy as if he were at large. I don’t think you can get down more just now, or I would tell you about little Pertâb and Shere Singh; but I think it right to keep up your Punjâb history to a certain degree.
I am tired of calling upon you for sympathy about my pets, and if ever I have any more I sha’n’t tell you about them; but Mattie sickened in real earnest last week, and, though the only two doctors the hills possess attended her, and though her strength was kept up for six days by having meat jelly put down her throat, she died as all dogs born in India will die—before they are two years old. I am in a state of desolation for want of her, for she had the most exclusive attachment to me. The dogs brought out here from England live if they are kept from the sun, but not ten in a hundred live two years that are born here.
In five weeks we go down to those dreadful plains. What a bore! God bless you, dearest!