Letters from India Volume II/From the Hon F H Eden to a Friend 2
As usual, dearest, your No. Eleven followed No. Ten, just as it ought, three weeks after. I wish you would send your Board of Admiralty to instruct our Board of Admiralty, who send their ships without regard to the date of our letters.
To be sure I can get you a stone, or stones for 20l. which will be worth having if I take my time about it. In three months we make what Lord M would call ‘our progress’ up the country, and Delhi is the place for precious-stone merchants, who all come flocking to the camp. There are all sorts of curiosities to be found there, and, in fact, none here except at five times their worth; so I will wait to spend your substance till I get there.
My dear, the King of Oude is dead! I think I see you start, and at once embrace all the political importance of such an event. Then, rousing yourself from mightier thoughts, you will rush to order your Court mourning. We talk of it mysteriously, because we talk of all Indian affairs mysteriously. We almost think it indiscreet of any public character to do so public a thing as to die; and we have been in a state of the highest indignation because our old Begum, evidently a superior woman, seeing the throne empty and comfortable-looking, seated herself and a little adopted boy upon it, and there reigned for half an hour, when we, in our usual despotic manner, went and took her off, and, an enemy says, plundered the throne of its jewels. This is formally denied, but to-day being Tuesday, when people come to see us in the evening, I expect to see George and the members of the Council appear with diamonds and pearls stitched on their coats instead of buttons.
We have found out a remarkably harmless old man, whom we call the right heir, and have seated him on the throne. If he will do all we tell him, he will probably be allowed to reign as despotically as he pleases.
What a country we live in! And what a tragedy might have taken place in my room two nights ago! There is a little lory sleeps in my dressing-room on a stand. It is only inferior in merit to the lamented feathered angel for whom you and Lord are trying to concoct a name. It is not his habit to scream, and he woke me by screaming supernaturally. My gazelle bounded against the mosquito—house, and an opaque body jumped out of the window. Such a situation! Gazelle stamped about for the remainder of the night, and my lory had lost twenty feathers, for the ayah counted them and would not be comforted. Ever since, the house has been haunted day and night by a monkey. There is no peace, no safety. The sentinels are baffled, for it comes in at the windows. An aide-de-camp is woke by finding it dancing at the foot of his bed, another by hearing him chattering by the side of it. It has broken some of my china cups and has carried off bodily our little French servant's large green parrot; that makes me shudder for my lory. Unless the monkey can be caught or killed, George must abdicate and go home; life is not worth having on such terms.