I never see him at Calcutta except in a crowd. In short, Barrackpore is, I see, to save me from India. I believe the Aides-de-Camp and secretaries all detest it, but there is no necessity to know that. George has made William Osborne Military Secretary, which gives him a very good income, and plenty to do. He has talent enough for anything, luckily likes occupation, and is very happy. Captain Grey is living with us, but the Jupiter sails the end of next week. I am afraid he will have a tiresome journey home; he takes back many more soldiers than the ship can conveniently hold, and not only that, but such quantities of wives and children.
I hope you have written to me; you would if you knew the ravenous craving for letters that possesses the wretches who are sent here. They are the only things to care for; you cannot mention a name that will not interest me, whereas I can never find one that you have ever heard before. Fanny desires me to say she wears your brooch constantly. I need not mention that of my dear bracelet. I hope in a few weeks we shall find something to send home, but hitherto we have found nothing but very dear French goods. Please write.
Give my love to your brother George when you see him or write to him. Now that I am dead and buried I sit in my hot grave and think over all the people I liked in the other world, and I find nobody that I knew had more community of interests and amusements with their kind. I often long for a laugh and talk with him, but it would be too pleasant for the climate.
Tell me an immense deal about yourself, and do write, there’s a duck. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to Lady Campbell
Government House, Calcutta,August 16, 1836.
MY DEAREST PAM, Your long, dear letter has actually found its way here – came in last week quite by itself, having travelled 15,000 miles with nobody to take care of it, and it arrived feeling quite well and not a bit altered since it left you. I cannot sufficiently explain the value of a letter here; rupees in any number could not express the sum which a letter is worth, and I do not know how to make you understand it. But, you see, the scene in India is so well got up to show off a letter.
I was suddenly picked up out of a large collection of brothers, sisters, and intimate friends, with heaps of daily interests and habits of long standing, devoted to the last night’s debate and this morning’s paper, detesting the heat of even an English summer, worshipping autumn, and rather rejoicing in a sharp East wind, with a passion for sketching in the country, and enjoying an easy life in town – with all this we are sent off out of the reach of even letters from home, to an entirely new society of a most second-rate description, – to a life of forms and Aides-de-Camp half the day, and darkness and solitude the other half – and to a climate!!
Topics of interest we have none indigenous to the soil. There is a great deal of gossip, I believe, but in the first place, I do not know the people sufficiently by name or by sight to attach the right history to the right face, even if I wanted to hear it, and we could not get into any intimacies even if we wished it, for in our despotic Government, where the whole patronage of this immense country is in the hands of the Governor-General, the intimacy of any one person here would put the rest of the society into a fume, and it is too hot for any super-induced fuming…
The real calamity of the life is the separation from home and friends. It feels like death, and all the poor mothers here who have to part from their children from five years old to seventeen are more to be pitied than it is possible to say. And the annoyance of the life is the climate. It is so very HOT, I do not know how to spell it large enough.
Now I have stated our grievances, I must put all the per contras lest you should think me discontented. First, George is as happy as a King; then our healths, as I said before, are very good, though we look like people playing at Snap-dragon – everybody does. And though it is not a life that admits of one doing much active good, some is always possible in this position, and then it is a life of great solitude, which is wholesome.
Then, as a set-off to discomforts peculiar to the climate, we have every luxury that the wit of man can devise, and are gradually acquiring the Indian habit of denying ourselves nothing, which will be awkward. I get up at eight, and with the assistance of Wright and my two black maids – picturesque creatures as far as white muslin and scriptural-looking dresses can make ugly women – contrive to have a bath and to be dressed, and to order dinner by nine, when we meet in the great hall for breakfast.
When I describe my life, you must take for granted the others are all much the same, except that His Excellency’s tail is four times longer than ours at least. Well, I have all my rooms shut up and made dark before I leave them, and go out into my passage, where I find my two tailors sitting cross-legged, making my gowns; the two Dacca embroiderers whom I have taken into my private pay working at a frame of flowers that look like paintings; Chance, my little dog, under his own servant’s arm; a meter with his broom to sweep the rooms, two bearers who pull the punkahs; a sentry to mind that none of these steal anything; and a Jemadar436 and four Hurkarus,437 who are my particular attendants and follow me about wherever I go – my tail. These people are all dressed in white muslin, with red and gold turbans and sashes, and are so picturesque that when I can find no other employment for them I make them sit for their pictures.
They all make their salaam and we proceed to breakfast which is in an immense marble hall, and is generally attended by the two Aides-de-Camp in waiting, the doctor, the private Secretary, and anybody who may be transacting business at the time… At six the whole house is opened, windows, shutters, etc., and carriages, horses, gigs, phaetons, guards, all come to the door, and we ride or drive just as we like, come home in time to dress for an eight o’clock dinner, during which the band plays. We sit out in the verandah and play at chess or écarté for an hour, and at ten everybody goes to bed.
The week is diversified by a great dinner of fifty people on Monday; on Tuesday we are at home, which was originally meant for a sort of evening visiting, but it is turned into a regular dance, as the hotter it is the more they like dancing. Thursday mornings, Fanny and I are also at home from ten to twelve for introductions, people landing or coming from up the country, and for any others of society who wish to see us.
It is very formal and very tiresome. They look very smart, come in immense numbers, sit down for five minutes, and, if there are forty in the room at once, never speak to each other. But it is a cheap way of getting through all the visiting duties of life at one fell swoop. On Thursday evenings we used to go to Barrackpore to stay till the following Monday, but now we only go once a fortnight. We are an immense body to move if it happens to be a pouring day – about four hundred altogether.
Barrackpore is a really pretty place. I am making such a garden there, my own private one, for there is a lovely garden there already, but a quarter of a mile from the house, and nobody can walk half a quarter of a mile in this country.
It seems so odd to have everything one wants, doesn’t it, Pam? I wanted a vase for fish in my garden; a civil engineer put up two.
The other day we ordered the carriage at an undue hour, and there were no guards, and there was such a fuss about it – the Military Secretary writing to the Captain of the Body Guards, and he blaming the Aide-de-Camp in waiting; and I thought of the time when the hackney coach adjusted itself to the Grosvenor Street door, and of William de Roos’s sending Danford away from the play that the hack might seem an accident, as if the carriage had not come.
Those were the really jolly days. I wish we could go back to them. You cannot imagine how I enjoyed your history of your children, those are the letters to send to India. Other people or papers tell public news. What a pleasure it is to have a letter!
I am so glad you like Lord Morpeth,438 I always did love him; I wish you would tell him to write to me in that odd cramped hand. Poor Mrs. Beresford, she goes on Wednesday next; I shall be glad when she is safely off. She takes a box for you, with a gown George gives you which I thought would be useful for your Castle drawing-rooms, and some handkerchiefs William sends you, which I have had worked for him by an old native, with a long white beard, who works like an angel. I mean to send my godchild a present the next opportunity. Yours,
E. E.
Miss Eden to Mrs. Lister
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,August 24, 1836.
MY DEAREST THERESA. After I wrote you that long letter of upbraiding for never having written to me, your Edinburgh letter, which had reached the respectable age of ten months, was forwarded to me, it having been mislaid with a large packet of other letters, and remained four months in the Custom House! So pleasant when one is almost stamping with impatience for letters – or rather, would be so, if the climate did not prevent those active expressions of feeling.
I think I told you how the American edition of Dacre439 had been one of my first purchases here, and I read it over with considerable pleasure. I do not know exactly what I mean, but I do not think you and your book are like each other. I do not mean any disparagement to either; there may be a very pretty fair mother with a very pretty dark child, both good in their way, but not like, and I cannot put your voice to any of the sentences in your book, or say to any part of it, “So like Theresa!” I am glad of that. I hate those banale likenesses of books to their author. Why did you not tell me the name of your new book? I daresay everybody has read it and discussed it in England, and I don’t know its name. And to think of you writing about it in that vague way to me, 15,000 miles off!
The English editions of novels are to be had here for about three guineas apiece. They charge rupees for shillings, and a rupee is about two shillings and a penny. I have bought quantities of American editions of English books; but then it is a bore waiting till a work is two years old before one reads it. The Americans are valuable creatures at this distance. They send us novels, ice, and apples – three things that, as you may guess, are not indigenous to the soil. I own, I think the apples horrid, they taste of hay and the ship, but the poor dear yellow creatures who have been here twenty years, and who left their homes at an age when munching an unripe apple was a real pleasure, and who have never seen one since, fly at this mucky fruit and fancy themselves young and their livers the natural size, as they eat it. The first freight of apples the Americans sent covered the whole expense of the ship’s passage out.
We are all so grieved to-day for poor Mrs. Beresford, whom you may remember as a Miss Sewell, going out with Mrs. Hope. Colonel Beresford is the Military Secretary to Sir H. Fane,440 and came here just a year ago. She has always declared the climate disagreed with her, and as she hated this place and its inhabitants, they did not like her, and said her ailments were all fancy. I never thought so; and she has proved the climate really disagreed with her, by having a violent fever that has lasted two months. The doctors said there was nothing for it but a return to England. Colonel Beresford came out with Sir H. Fane by way of bettering his fortunes, but as they have been here only a year, they have not yet got over the expense of coming out, so there was nothing for it but her going alone. She is one of those people entirely dependent on her husband’s care. I hardly know such another attentive servant as he is to her – weighed her medicines, carried her about, etc. – in short, been what she could not find here for millions – an excellent English nurse.
On Tuesday she was to have gone on board, and I wrote to offer her carriage, assistance, etc., and got back a wretched note from him saying a sudden and rapid change had come on, and she was not expected to live an hour. However, she has lived on, and the doctors still say that, though they do not think she can live, the only chance for it will be going to sea; so she is to be carried on board this afternoon with her little girl, who is a dear little thing, but wants a cool climate too. I cannot imagine a more painful time for Colonel Beresford than the next few months, for as he is obliged to go up the country with the Commander-in-Chief, and The Perfect, her ship, may not speak another till they get to the Cape, it may be six months before he hears if she survives the first week of change. If she does, I think she will recover. I am so sorry for them; and here, where we are a limited set who know each other at all, one thinks more of these stories.
I never could take to the Calcutta society, even if there were any, but there is not. Almost everybody who was here when we landed five months ago are gone either home or up the country. They come to Calcutta because they are on their way out to make their fortunes, or on their way home because they have made them, or because their healths require change of station, and they come here to ask for it.
To-day was our receiving day. We receive visits from eleven to one every Thursday morning, and out of seventy or eighty people there were few who were not new introductions. “Have you been here long?” “Only just landed from the Marianne Webb– a tiresome voyage.” “Did you suffer much at sea?” And so on. “Did you come in the same ship?” “No, we are just come from Lucknow.” And then there comes all the story about the hot winds up the country, and whether it is worse or better than Bengal. So tiresome! I rather like to see the new arrivals, if they do not put off calling for more than a week, as they arrive with a little pink colour in their cheeks which lasts nearly ten days, but I heard one of our visitors to-day, who has been in India twenty years, declare seriously that he hated that colour; he thought it looked unnatural and like a disease. I begin to see what he means.
God bless you, dearest Theresa. I want to send this by The Perfect, and am so tired with our visits I cannot write any more. I hope you have written again and sent yours. I hoped to send you something pretty by this ship, but (it is not a mere façon de parler) in this rainy season there is not an item of any description to be bought in Calcutta. Nobody opens even the packages that arrive by mistake, as twenty-four hours spoils everything, but when the cold weather begins, they say that the merchants will have plenty of scarfs, silks, etc., from China and up the country. I want something Indian. We have written to China for any or everything, in the meantime. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to –
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,November 3, 1836.
Your last letter came to me by a Liverpool ship, so I think it right to write by the same conveyance, and the more so because our stock of London ships is low. Only one in the river, and she came only two days ago, and I suppose it will be six weeks before she will be well stocked with mosquitoes and cockroaches, and quite comfortable for passengers again.
It is what is by courtesy called the “cold weather” now, and it is charming to see some of the old Indians wrapped up in rough white great-coats, rubbing their withered hands, and trying to look blue, not being aware that their orange skins turn brown when there is the least check of circulation. You have no idea what sallow figures we all are, and I mention it now because in another year I suppose the real Indian blindness will have come over me, and I shall believe we are all our natural colour.
The new arrivals sometimes stagger us, but we simply say, “How coarse!” and wait with confidence for the effects that three weeks’ baking will have, and a delicate tender yellow is the sure result.
With all the fine cold weather they talk of, I have not been able yet to live five minutes, night or day, without the punkah, and we keep our blinds all closed as long as there is a ray of sun. I do not mean to deny that the weather is not improved, but when the chilly creatures who have passed forty years here say triumphantly, “This must remind you of an English November,” they really do great injustice to my powers of recollection. I should like to show them a good Guy Fawkes, with the boys purple with cold, beating their sides, and the squibs and crackers going fizzing along on the frosty ground.
This is our gay season. The Tuesday balls at Government House have become the fashion and are popular with the young ladies, and there is going to be a fancy ball given by the bachelors of Calcutta, which we not only condescend to go to our noble selves, but Fanny and I have organised two quadrilles, dressed them in remarkably unbecoming dresses, assured them that they are quite the right thing, and have made the whole scheme delightful by agreeing to their wish to meet at Government House without their chaperons, and go with us.
My quadrille consists of eight young ladies, and if the care with which I have selected their partners does not settle at least six of them happily, I shall think it a great waste of trouble, red velvet, and blue satin.
Miss Eden to Mrs. Lister
CALCUTTA,December 29, 1836.
MY DEAREST THERESA, Doctor Bramley is sending a little delicate offering in the way of Chinese wood-carving to Lady Morley, so I take that opportunity of sending you a scarf of Dacca muslin, worked at Dacca, and which is considered the best specimen of the kind of thing here; but then we have lost all knowledge of what is really pretty, I believe. I am almost certain we are very nearly savages – not the least ferocious, not cannibals, not even mischievous – but simply good-natured, unsophisticated savages, fond of finery, precious stones and tobacco, quite uninformed, very indolent, and rather stupid.
I wish the holes in my ears were larger, that is all, for I have lately seen in my drives some Burmese with large wedges of amber, or a great bunch of flowers, stuck through the holes of their ears, and I think it has a handsomer effect than our paltry European ear-rings. Besides this silver scarf, I see that I must write to you about Mr. Lister’s appointment441 which I lit upon accidentally in a heap of English papers, and which will, I hope, be a great and permanent addition to your comfort. I cannot say how glad I was to read it; a patent place sounds comfortable, and as all you wanted in life was a little more income, you may guess that I am very really happy one of my best friends should have just what she wanted.
We have no letter of so late a date as the papers, so I must wait for particulars till another ship vouchsafes to sail in.
How odd it will be if we all end our lives comfortable rich old folks and near Knightsbridge neighbours. If we live to come home, we shall be very much better off than we could ever have expected to be, for there is no doubt that the Governor General’s place is well paid. It may well be, for it is a hard-working situation and a cruel climate. But still, it is all very handsomely done on the part of the Company, and it is so new to us to be in a situation in which it is possible to save money, that the result of the month’s House Accounts is a constant surprise to me. Not more surprising than that our House Accounts should be of that extensive nature that it requires a Baboo, an aide-de-camp, and myself, to keep them correctly.
I wonder whether you have seen our Knightsbridge house.442 I hear it is very pretty and I often think what fun it will be settling there.
I should like to know what you think of Mrs. Bramley supposing you know her, because I cannot make out why she does not come out to join her husband. He is a very delightful person, I should say almost without comparison the pleasantest man here, more accomplished and more willing to talk, and with very creditable remains of good spirits. She has a sharp little sister, a Mrs. Cockerell, here, almost pretty and very ill-natured, at least so they say, but we have not found her so the little we have seen of her. She and her husband are going tiger-shooting to the Rajmahal hills, for, impossible as it seems in this endless-looking plain, there are hills, 150 miles off. “Cock Robin” and “Jenny Wren,” as the little Cockerell couple are familiarly termed, make one of these excursions every year, and Fanny and William mean to join the party, with two or three others. It will be a very good change of scene for her, and something out of the common course of life. Travelling in the marching fashion, which is the way they mean to go, is slow but amusing for a little while. Two sets of tents, one to live in on Monday, while the other is carried on twelve miles, so as to be ready on Tuesday. Everybody in India has their own set of servants, who are no more trouble travelling than living at home. They find their own way from station to station, cook for themselves, sleep on the ground, and, in short, are quite unlike the fussy lady’s maid and valet who dispute every inch of the imperial and expect tea, beer, feather beds, etc., at every bad inn on the road. But then, to be sure, it takes about fourteen natives to do the work of one English servant. I suppose William and Fanny could not march without thirty servants of their own, besides guards, elephants, etc. All these, they say, make excellent sketching, which is one of the amusements I look to, when we set off on our great march next year.
I keep up my drawing, but entirely in the figure line, as there is no landscape in Bengal, and also the glare is so great that nobody could draw it if there were; but every servant in the house is a good study, and I shall very soon be sending home some sketches. I wish your book would come out. I want a new novel very much. My best love to Mrs. V. Ever, dearest Theresa, your most affectionate
E. E.