CHAPTER XXXIII
Saturday, Jan. 26, 1839.
WE made our march this morning, but found all the people who had been obliged to come on last night so knocked up that I have persuaded G. to give up his intention of marching to-morrow. We seldom have marched on Sunday, and this is a bad time to begin. In short, it was nearly impossible. The sergeant who lays out the advanced camp is in bed with fever from fatigue.
Wednesday, Jan. 30.
It is four days since I have been able to write. I was ‘took so shocking bad’ with fever on Sunday, caught, it is supposed, at that river-side – that eternal Gugga. Captain L. E. was seized just in the same way, and several of the servants, so we all say we caught it there; but it is all nonsense – every inch of the plains in India has its fever in it, only there is not time to catch them all. I think the Gugga fever is remarkably unpleasant, and I did not know that one head and one set of bones could hold so much pain as mine did for forty-eight hours. But one ought to be allowed a change of bones in India: it ought to be part of the outfit. I hope it is over to-night; but as things are, I and L. E., with Captain C. and the doctor, are going straight to Hansi to-morrow – only a short march of ten miles, thereby saving ourselves two long marches of sixteen miles, which G. makes to Hissar, and giving ourselves a halt of three days to repair our shattered constitutions.
It is so absurd to hear people talk of their fevers. Mr. M. was to have joined us a month ago, but unfortunately caught ‘the Delhi fever’ coming up: he is to be at Hansi. Z. caught the ‘Agra fever’ coming up; hopes to be able to join us at Hansi, but is doubtful. Then N., our Hansi magistrate, looks with horror at Hansi: he has suffered and still suffers so much from ‘that dreadful Hansi fever.’ I myself think ‘the Gugga fever’ a more awful visitation, but that is all a matter of opinion. Anyhow, if N. wished us to know real hardship, fever in camp is about the most compendious definition of intense misery I know. We march early each morning; so after a racking night – and I really can’t impress upon you the pain in my Indian bones – it was necessary at half-past five – just when one might by good luck have fallen asleep – to get up by candle-light and put on bonnet and cloak and – one’s things in short, to drive over no road. I went one morning in the palanquin, but that was so slow, the carriage was the least evil of the two. Then on arriving, shivering all over, we were obliged to wait two hours till the beds appeared; and from that time till ten at night, I observed by my watch that there was not one minute in which they were not knocking tent-pins, they said into the ground, but by mistake they all went into my head – I am sure of it, and am convinced that I wear a large and full wig of tent-pins. Dr. D. put leeches on me last night, and I am much better to-day. L. E. is of course ditto: the Gugga fevers are all alike.
Hansi, Friday, Feb. 1.
I went to sleep at last last night, and am much better to-day; but I see what N. means about Hansi. Such a place! – not, poor thing! but that it may be a charming residence in fine weather; but we have had such a wet day. It began to pour in the night. I am very glad I resisted G.’s offer of giving me half the horses and the shut carriage, for I suspect even with all the horses they will have had some difficulty in making out their long march. Such a road as ours was! – nearly under water. I started in my palanquin, but after the first three miles the bearers could hardly get on at all: they stuck and they slipped, and they helped each other into holes and handed each other out again, but altogether we did not get on. Captain P. was to have driven me the last half of the way in his buggy; and as his elephant was like my bearers – slipping and sticking – we sent on one of the guards for the buggy, and contrived to get on very well in that. When we came to what is nominally called ‘the ground,’ it looked like a very fine lake, in which my tent and the durbar tent and Dr. D.’s were all that were not standing in the water. P. and the jemadar carried me in a chair into mine, and there I was left alone in my glory. He and L. E. took the durbar tent, their own tents having a foot of water in them.
Captain D. went to live with his brother, who has a bungalow here, which he very kindly offered me. It is pouring so again to-night that I wish I had taken it; but then if I had carried off the cook and the dining-tables and the lamps, &c., I thought the aides-de-camp would be wretched, and L. E. is not well enough to go out; but to be sure, these tents! If it were not for the real misery to so many people, the incidents of the day would have been rather amusing. There is not of course a tent for the servants, so they are living in the khenauts (the space between the outer covering and the lining of our three tents), and there are thirty sleeping in my outer room, if room it may be called. The difficulties went on increasing. W.’s greyhounds, ten of them, were standing where his tent (now at Hissar) usually is, and the men said they would die, so we put them in the khenauts and told the dogs that they must not bark and the men that they must not cough, and hitherto they have been very quiet. My syce came to tell P. that my horse was not used to stand out all day in the rain, and that if it did Mr. Webb would kill him. I should assist at the execution, though how the poor syce could help it I don’t quite see. I would have given Orelio my own blankets willingly and put him to bed with my own nightcap on, but unluckily the bed did not come till the afternoon, and was then a perfect sponge. However, we lodged the horse somehow. Then F. had two Barbary goats, which she had ordered on the lemur’s death, thinking they were pretty, soft, hairy things, instead of which there arrived two days ago, large, smooth, bleak-looking English goats. However, she told me to take the greatest care of them when they came up. At twelve, a coolie without a stitch of clothes on, walked in with a Barbary kid on his back, stiff and stark. No interpreter at hand, so where the mother was remained a mystery. F. might have fancied to her dying hour that I had let her Barbary goats die – nobody ever thinks their children or pets are properly taken care of; so I set off rubbing, and made my two boys, Soobratta and Ameer, rub the kid too, and we poured hot things down its throat. We should have been worth millions to the Humane Society, but the kid would not come to. Then I made them dig a hole in the outer tent and put charcoal in it, and when it was quite hot we took out the charcoal and put in the kid – just like singeing a pig; but it was a bright idea, and quite cured it. Just as we had got the little brute on its legs, the mother was brought in, and we went through the same process with her. When they were quite well, they were also sent to sleep in the khenauts.
The bandsmen, who are chiefly Europeans, came to say they had no shelter. ‘Sleep in the khenauts,’ was the only answer; and we gave them what remained of our dinner, for the kitchen was under water. Mr. – arrived, and I asked him to dinner too. It is fine to-day, and the tents came up in the middle of the night. We have got a paper of the 24th November, so the overland has arrived, and G. will bring us some letters to-morrow.
Saturday, Feb. 2.
And he has brought plenty – your’s and E.’s Journals amongst others.
Mahem, Tuesday, Feb. 5.
I was taken with a worse attack of ague than ever as I was writing to you on Saturday, and was obliged to go to bed for two days. Luckily, it went off just before marching time yesterday morning, and I am taking narcotine at all convenient hours. I believe it is a remedy that has been invented in this country – at all events introduced – by Dr. O’Shaughnessy. Dr. D. has tried it in many cases, and it has never failed where the patients can bear it, but it makes many people quite giddy and delirious. I do not mind it at all, and am much better to-day. Two of our bearers, old servants, are dying of cholera from that last wetting.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Wednesday, Feb. 6, 1839.
ANOTHER rainy night, and we have come on to another sloppy encampment, and I am sorry to say those bearers, and two more, have died of cholera to-day – all owing to the wet, Dr. D. says. The magistrate here has politely offered us his house to-morrow, and as Captain P. sends back word he cannot find dry ground for half the dripping tents, U. Hall will be a God-send.
Thursday, Feb. 7.
Dear U.! such a nice, dry, solid house. I suppose it would strike us as small on common occasions, but it looks to me now like the dryest, best built, most solid little palace I ever inhabited, what people call ‘quite Palladian.’ I rather like hitting myself a good hard knock against the thick solid walls, and then the pleasure of walking along the hard floor without fur slippers and without hearing the ground squelch! The quiet, too, is worth its weight in gold (though how it is to be weighed I don’t quite know).
F. and W. went out coursing this evening. G. was detained by letters just as he and I were going out, so I thought it would be polite and sent to ask U. to go out with X. and me; and he brought me a little wooden cup of his own turning, with which I was obliged to be quite delighted, in fact I was; it was a very good little cup, and then he said, ‘I did it from recollection of the famous vase in the Vatican. Does it remind you of Rome?’ I could luckily say I had never been there, but I am not very sure that that little box-wood cup and the mud walls of U.’s house would naturally have brought Rome into my mind.
Sunday Evening, Feb. 10.
We went into our tents again on Friday, with a long march of fifteen miles. The tents were still damp. By twelve o’clock I began to shiver, tried to go out in the afternoon and came back in a regular shake, had a horrid night, and after yesterday morning’s march was obliged to go to bed again with violent head-ache and fever. It has gone off this afternoon, and the day’s halt has been a great mercy; but Dr. D. says he does not think I shall get well in a camp, it disagrees so utterly with me. G. has ascertained there are four good rooms in the Residency at Delhi, which is never occupied now, so X. has gone on with my furniture and servants, and to-morrow I am going to drive straight on there; the camp will come to Delhi on Tuesday. I shall only be half a mile from them, but out of the noise and in a dry house. I have grown just like that shaking wife of ‘Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaws.’
Monday, Feb. 11.
I made out my double march most successfully with three relays of horses. X. rode out to the other camp to show me the way in; he had had all the broken windows glazed, and Mrs. B. had sent curtains; the rooms look very clean and nice. The house stands in a small shady park, with a nice garden, and the quiet is delightful. I went to sleep directly after breakfast, and am better, thank you. W. came on to Delhi to set all his shooting expedition going, and he dines here with X. and Dr. D., who are encamped in the court-yard, and they will drink tea with me. I often think of former days and of being ill at Bower Hall and at Langley, with you and L. taking all the trouble of it, and that it is done in a different method now – X. coming in when I am in my dressing-gown on the sofa, to ask about the numberless articles that a crowded camp necessitates, and saying, ‘I have had relays of bearers for Rosina, because I should like her to be there with me, that she may show me how to arrange your rooms; and is there any particular diet the khansamah should provide? I shall send on the young khansamah, he says he knows what you like; and when I am gone, Captain L. E. begs you will send to him, if you think of anything that will make you more comfortable.’
It is very good of them, poor dears! and I think I give them a great deal of trouble; but then I never meant when I came into the world to be nursed by all these young gentlemen. It cannot be helped; everything in India must be done by men. Giles is very useful on these occasions, and what people do without an English man-servant, I can’t guess.
Tuesday, Feb. 12.
This must go. Such a volume! it may as well go to the Admiralty. G. and F. arrived at the camp this morning, and F. is sitting here. They are only half a mile off, but Dr. D. has made up his mind that I shall not go near the camp till all parties and dinners are over. G. is going to drive me out this afternoon.
Residency, Delhi, Monday, Feb. 18.
I have been staying here a week to-day, with some degree of success, though I had a great deal of fever yesterday. F. went over yesterday with three or four of the sketching gentlemen to the Kootûb, and comes back to-morrow. Dr. D. would not let me go when it came to the time, and indeed it was impossible, as it turned into a fever day, but I should have liked to see it again. I heard from F. to-day, and she says it is more beautiful than ever, and that they shall stay till to-morrow afternoon, for they have found such quantities of sketching to do. It is certainly the place in the plains I should like to live at. It has a feeling about it of ‘Is not this great Babylon?’ all ruins and desolation, except a grand bit or two of magnificence kept up by the king. Then, in the modern way there are nice drives, and a considerable congregation of shawl merchants and jewellers. Our agate mania still continues, and there is no end to the curiosities that have been brought to light, or the price to which they have risen. They have been a great amusement, as I have not been able to sketch, and altogether this is rather a comfortable life for India. F. comes here for two hours in the morning. Captain X. and Dr. D. superintend breakfast and luncheon. At four, G. always comes, and we take a drive, and then, after six, I grow feverish and am glad to be quiet till bed-time; and there is a little undercurrent all the morning of W. O. and Captain L. E., and agates and presents of flowers, &c. Major J. and Captain T. have come over to see us; indeed the whole plain is dotted with the tents of people who have come to see G.; he says he never had so many applicants before.
Tuesday, Feb. 19.
W. set off this morning on his tiger-shooting expedition. It has failed in some respects. General E. is ordered off to join Sir S. R. at Bombay, and G. cannot give leave to a Mr. H. here, who is a great tiger-hunter; but he has a chance of another friend, and our native ally, Hindû Rao, is going with him, or rather after him, for he says he cannot possibly leave Delhi till the Lord Sahib goes, and every afternoon Hindû Rao comes to the door with the carriage, and trots by its side all the way, in his purple satin dress, and with his spear and shield. He says he knows G. likes him, and he also knows the reason – that he has nothing to ask for. He is very rich, and manages his money very well; and he likes G., because he says ‘he is real gentleman, as well as a Governor-General, and treats other people as if they were gentlemen too.’
Such a tea-pot to-day! – green serpentine, with a running pattern of small rubies set in it. Much too lovely!
F. came back this afternoon, rather tired, but says the ruins are all beautiful.
Wednesday.
I have had two Delhi miniature painters here, translating two of my sketches into ivory, and I never saw anything so perfect as their copy of Runjeet Singh. Azim, the best painter, is almost a genius; except that he knows no perspective, so he can only copy. He is quite mad about some of my sketches, and as all miniatures of well-known characters sell well, he has determined to get hold of my book.
There is a fore-shortened elephant with the Putteealah Rajah in the howdah, that particularly takes his fancy. However, I do not want them to be common, so I cut out of the book those that I wish to have copied, and I never saw a native so nearly in a passion as he was, because he was not allowed the whole book. Their miniatures are so soft and beautiful. F. has had your likeness of my father copied.
Camp, Thursday, Feb. 21.
I was quite sorry to leave the Residency yesterday, all the more so, from my ague having been particularly severe last night; it is very odd that nothing will cure it. However, we shall be at Simla in three weeks, and there was a good deal of rain again last night, which is against ague.
Friday.
We had such a frightful thunder-storm last night for three hours, with rain that might have drowned us all; I never heard such a clatter. Our tents stood it very well, but a great many tents were beat down, and all the servants’ tents were full of water. Luckily, this advanced camp escaped great part of the storm, and the tents are much drier than those we left. This is not good weather for ague; it goes lingering on, and they say will do so, till I get to the hills. I keep very quiet, but I shall be glad to be settled at Simla. You know I never could quite understand the Psalms, but I see what David means when he says, ‘Woe is me that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have my habitation in the tents of Kedar.’ Mesech I think he was wrong about. I should have no objection to dwell with him in a good house of his own, but the tents of Kedar are decidedly very objectionable and ‘woe-is-me-ish;’ double-poled tents, I have no doubt, and lined with buff and green.
Sunday, Feb. 24.
The idea of the December mail arriving this morning! letters of the 26th, less than two months old.
‘Oliver Twist’ we have read, doled out in monthly parts nearly to the end, and I like it very much – but ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ still better. We have left off there, at Miss Petowker’s marriage, and Mrs. Crummles’ walking tragically up the aisle ‘with a step and a stop,’ and the infant covered with flowers. There never was such a man as Dickens! I often think of proposing a public subscription for him – ‘A tribute from India’ – and everybody would subscribe. He is the agent for Europe fun, and they do not grow much in this country.
Paniput, Tuesday.
We are progressing every day, but this is the same road we passed over last year, so if there had been anything to say about it, you would not wish me to say it twice over. Mr. – is with us, remarkably dull; but since I have got him to tell me anecdotes of the Delhi royal family shut up in their high walls, and of all the murders he has known, or suspected, I think the time passes pleasantly, and he goes away early.
I am much better, and began dining down again yesterday, and the weather has changed, which they say is to blow away all fevers; but Dr. D. says the hospital is quite full, and the deaths amongst the servants this year have been quite lamentable.
Gornadar, Wednesday, Feb. 27.
L. E. and Z. nearly had a tiff to-day. L. E. has taken charge of the stables since Captain M. went away, and as there are sometimes from sixty to a hundred horses there, while presents are going on from native princes on the march, besides all our own horses, it is like a little regiment occasionally, and L. E. is very gentle and quiet in his manner to the syces and with Webb.
Captain Z. came into my tent this morning and flung himself into my arm-chair – Mr. D.’s chair, that sacred piece of furniture. I thought it an odd measure, but could not help it, and he began: ‘I was just going to say – what a delicious chair this is! such a spring! – I was just going to say that I have been talking to Webb about your open carriage. I understand you want it up here. I think of sending it to Dehra, for, as I told Webb, the oxen can bring it back from Barr,’ &c. I looked rather frosty, and said I would think about it and let him know, and put it off; and then he launched out about Paul de Cocq’s novels, still seated on that much-loved chair – ‘my goods, my property, my household stuff.’ As soon as he was gone, I got hold of X., who said he too had been surprised, but thought that perhaps Captain L. E., who is acting for W. in his absence, might have found he had too much to do, and so had made over the stables to Z.
Then L. E. arrived, saying he really had been quite annoyed, happened to be particularly fond of horses, had not a bit too much to do, had found Captain Z. the other day giving orders about the relays for the march, and had therefore taken the liberty of calling the four native coachmen together and desiring them never to take orders from anybody but himself. If Lord A. had chosen to ride that morning there would not have been a riding horse on the line of march; but of course if I had told Captain Z. to take charge of the stables, he would give it up, &c. I said I never told anybody anything, and so I suppose they will settle it between them.