CHAPTER XXXV
Kurnaul, Thursday, Feb. 28, 1839.
WE came in this morning with the usual fuss of a cantonment. I always dread coming back to the two or three regiments we have met before, because they are all so excessively astonished we do not know them all again. That would not be possible, but at the same time I feel that it is very stupid I should never know one. This time there is a hope – I always know Colonel S., because he has only one arm; and two of the other regiments went with us to the Punjâb, so we have not had time quite to forget them. L. E. and Z. have evidently ‘had it out,’ and L. E. has conquered. He was quite as firm as his natural gentleness would allow, at luncheon-time, about all his arrangements. He had heard of a new horse that would be worth looking at. He had sold a pony, found a coachmaker, chosen a lining, rather thought we must have a new open carriage, had made arrangements for leaving here my elephant, which has got a rheumatic fever and can’t move any one of its poor dear lumps of legs without screaming.
In short, Z. was defeated with great loss. This place looks quite as ugly as it did last year; all barracks and plain, and not a tree in sight. I cannot think how people bear their cantonment life so well as they do.
We have been setting ourselves up with mourning here, for poor – , and collected all the black goods in the place, consisting of four pairs of black gloves, with a finger or so missing, and a pair of black earrings, which I thought a great catch; and so they were, in fact – I was caught quite out. They had evidently been made for the Indian market, and had only mock hinges and clasps. Nobody could wear them; but they are nice earrings if there were any way into them.
Friday.
We had an immense party last night. There are between sixty and seventy ladies living here – most of them deserted by their husbands, who are gone to Cabul; and they generally shut themselves up, but last night they all agreed to come out. There were some very pretty people among them; that little woman who marched with us last year, and whom we called ‘the little corpse,’ came out again more corpse-like than ever. The aides-de-camp had been agreeing in the morning to draw lots which of them should dance with her, but afterwards settled it was the business of the junior aide-de-camp; so they introduced Captain Z. to her, and he is in such a rage this morning.
I am sorry to say we heard of an accident to W. O. to-day. We hope it may turn out very slight, but it is alarming to think what it might have been. He and the K.s had just arrived at Mazuffernuggur, and he was driving their carriage, when a sudden jolt threw him first on the horses and then under the wheel, which went over him just above the left hip. No bone was touched, and there was evidently no internal injury, and General K. said he had had as yet no fever, but of course he must be laid up for a time, and probably will have to give up his shooting party, which will be a sad blow, after having taken so much trouble to organise it.
It must have been a frightful accident to see. ‘Mon Dieu! ce que c’est que de nous,’ as that old housekeeper at the Château de Bilhère used to say in her odd pâtois. An inch more or less might have been fatal to dear W.
Saturday, March 2.
W. has had a good deal of fever in the night, but wonderfully little pain. The shooting party is, however, quite out of the question; and as the K.s must be longing to go on with their expedition, we all thought it better that F. should go to take care of W. It is about forty-five miles from here, and it takes about twenty-four hours to lay a dâk for that short distance, and then you only average about three miles an hour. One longs for a chaise and four and an inn under these circumstances. A railroad we cannot even understand with our limited locomotive capacities. F. has sent off her tents and baggage, and will go to-morrow with Jones and P. to take care of them. I think poor W. must want some of his own family. G. and F. went to the Station ball last night. F. says there never was anything so amusing as the speeches. A long one about G., and another about F. and me – what we had done for society – added to its gaiety, and raised its tone, &c. &c. I should have thought it was all the other way – that society had lessened our gaiety, and lowered our tone; but who knows? there is a change somewhere, it appears.
Sunday, March 3.
A very good account of W. this morning; he writes a few lines himself: the next thing will be that he will go out shooting, so it is lucky F. will be there to stop him. G. had another great dinner yesterday, and then we went to a play that the privates of the artillery had got up, supposing, or rather ‘knowing that we were very fond of theatricals.’ They acted very well last year, but this was very much after the fashion of Bottom the Weaver and Snug.
I only stayed through half of it, but F. said the second farce was worse than the first.
F. and P. set off at half-past three to-day. He drove her in his buggy the first sixteen miles, which will save her part of a long dâk journey. She will not have quite thirty miles of palanquin, and will arrive about seven to-morrow morning.
Thanesir, Tuesday, March 6.
We left Kurnaul yesterday morning rather late (at least we call half-past six very late), for there was to be a great procession. All the colonels and various others insisted on riding half-way with G., so he cantered along in the sun, looking very hot, and very much obliged to them, and casting longing looks at the open carriage at his side. All our aides-de-camp turned back to pass another day at Kurnaul from the half-way halt. Q. alone, guarded by his engagement to Miss U., was enabled to go on steadily to take care of the camp. I never saw anything so happy as the aides-de-camp were at Kurnaul; flirting with at least six young ladies at once, visiting and luncheoning all the morning; then our band played on the course in the afternoon; then there were dinners, balls, plays, &c., and they always contrived to get a late supper somewhere, so as to keep it up till four in the morning. I dare say after four months of marching, during which time they have scarcely seen a lady, that it must be great fun to come back to the dancing and flirtation, which is, as we all know, very considerable amusement at their age. I often think that with us their lives must be necessarily dull and formal. Colonel T. had asked them all to dinner and music, and they have all come back to-day, having had a charming evening.
C. sung, and Mrs. C. sung, and there was a harp, and a bride, &c. I wish you could see Mrs. – . She is past fifty – some say near sixty – wears a light-coloured wig with very long curls floating down her back, and a gold wreath to keep it on, a low gown, and she dances every dance; and her forward step, and side step, with an occasional Prince of Wales step, executed with the greatest precision, gave me sentimental recollections of Jenkins, our dancing-master. He would have looked admiringly at Mrs. – ’s performances.
P. got back this afternoon and brought a letter from F., who got over her journey very well. He says W. is really quite well, though very weak; but had begun smoking again, in defiance of the doctor.
They are to begin their march to-morrow, K.s and all together; W. in a palanquin. The K.s must have had a horrid fright; the great jolt that threw him off, shook them so, that they did not think of looking at the coach-box, and only thought the horses were going very wildly. The syces stopped the horses, and then told them that W. was lying in the road. They were luckily close to the tent. He spoke at first and then fainted; but he seems to have suffered very little pain. I hope he will not go out shooting; the heat is very great, and will increase every day.
We are going to halt here to-morrow. It is a famous place for Hindu devotion, I believe the most sacred in India; and all the Hindu sepoys of the escort were very anxious for a halt, and a religious wash in the tank. G. and I stopped on our way in, to see the tomb, which has that famous temple in its centre, and all our bearers and syces rushed down to the water with great ardour. The Hindu religion has two merits – this constant ablution, and the sacredness of their trees. This place is really pretty from the avenues of peepul trees. It is so long since we have seen a tree, that I am quite glad we are going to stay a day with them; but our Mussulmaun followers will spoil them, they say.
Wednesday, March 6.
And so they have. G. and I went on the elephants yesterday evening to see the town with our dear Mr. C., who took us up again at Kurnaul, and J. and Mr. B. and various others. There was a great deal to see, and just as we were turning towards home, we heard a violent émeute, and several Brahmins came running after Mr. C. to say our camel drivers were cutting down the trees, close by their mosque. Mr. C. had in the morning sent sepoys with the camel drivers to prevent it, so he begged G. would go himself to see justice done. It was a wicked scene. About two hundred camel drivers working away, and three of the finest trees reduced to stumps, and about a thousand Brahmins tearing their hair and screaming, without daring to interfere.
We all flew into violent rages. G. sent off Captain Z. with one party of the body-guard, and he captured ten camel drivers and sent them off to the camp. J. always throws out more legs and arms when he talks Hindustani than any other human being, and he looked like an enraged centipede, and finally jumped out of his howdah and began laying about him with one of the despoiled branches. Mr. C. preached with much unction to the Brahmins. Mr. B. looked vinegar at them, but was too Indianised to speak.
The result was, that we took sixteen of the ring-leaders, made them leave all the branches they had cut – so that the poor camels will be starved – and marched home in great glory.
Captain D. has levied a fine of a hundred rupees on the camel men, and paid it to the Brahmins, and as peepul trees grow again and rupees never do, the Brahmins are comforted.
Thursday, March 7.
We marched this morning only eight miles, which is pleasant; and what is still more so is, that there is a dâk bungalow close to our camp quite empty – not a traveller stirring – so I have my furniture put into it, and am comfortable. The heat of the tents the last three days has been dreadful, and when I went down to luncheon just now the thermometer was 91° in the largest and coolest tent. X. and P. had some plans to copy for G., and were so giddy they could not see. Q. had the headache. Z. was in bed with fever. The doctor was simply depressed to that degree he could not speak; and even G. thought it would be as well, if this heat lasted, that Dr. D. should give him a black dose just to put by his bedside. Of course there was no necessity for taking it, but he felt a little odd, and it would be as well to have it at hand. J. came back from luncheon quite charmed with this little bungalow, which is as cool as an English hothouse at least, and looks on some beautiful cornfields, and ‘the browsing camel bells are tinkling’ rather prettily.
I have not lived near the camels except at loading time, and had no idea they could be so quiet and merely tinkling. I have made such a nice little purchase to-day – two little girls of seven years old, rather ugly, and one of them dumb. I gave three pounds for the pair – dirt cheap! as I think you will own. They are two little orphans. The natives constantly adopt orphans – either distant relations, or children that they buy – and generally they make no difference between them and their own children; but these little wretches were very unlucky. They belonged to a very bad man, who was serving as a substitute for a sick servant whom we sent back to Calcutta. This man turned out ill and got drunk, upon which all the other Mussulmauns refused to associate with him, and he lost caste altogether. Giles was very anxious to get rid of him, as a drunken Mussulmaun is something so shocking we are all quite affected by it. On Monday he gave us an opportunity to leave him at Kurnaul. I had tried to get hold of these children at Simla, hearing they were very ill-used, and that this man was just going to take them down to Delhi to sell them into the palace, where thousands of children are swallowed up. Luckily, his creditors would not let him go, and I told A. to watch that he did not carry off the little girls; so to-day he sent word I might have them if I would pay his debts, and the baboo has just walked in triumphantly with them. They have not a stitch of clothes on; and one of them is rather an object, the man has beat them so dreadfully, and she seems stupified. I hope to deposit them finally at Mrs. Wilson’s orphanage near Calcutta.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Simla, Tuesday, March 19, 1839.
DON’T you see, that now I am come back to Simla, a Journal will be out of the question; nothing to put into it.
‘Pillicock sits on Pillicock’s hill, Halloo Loo! Loo!’ (which I take to be a prophecy of our playing at Loo every evening.) We came up in two days from Barr, a very fatiguing business at all times, though Mrs. A. had sent me down a hill dhoolie, in which I could lie down, but it makes all one’s bones ache to be jolted in a rough sedan for eight hours. The second day it poured till we came within sight of Simla, and with a sharp east wind from the mountains, the misery of all the dripping Bengalee servants was inconceivable. The gentlemen looked unhappy enough, as the hill ponies make slow work of the journey; and Dr. D. had a violent fit of ague before we arrived at Hurripore. X. abjures the aide-de-camp on these hill excursions, and appears ‘en blouse,’ a mixture of ‘a brave Belge’ and a German student.
We found Simla very white with snow; the thermometer had been 91° in our tents that day week. But I do not think it at all uncomfortably cold here. Giles had preceded us by two days, and had got all the curtains up and the carpets down, and the house looked more comfortable than ever. It is a jewel of a little house, and my own room is quite overcoming; so light and cheerful, and then all the little curiosities I have accumulated on my travels have a sweet effect now they are spread out. The only misfortune of my room is, that a long insect, much resembling a gudgeon on six legs, has eaten up your picture frame: the picture I took with me in my writing-desk, knowing that the gudgeon would have eaten that forthwith, but the frame, in an unguarded moment, I trusted to his honour, and this is the result. However, the glass he could not digest, and a wooden frame our own carpenter can make.
F. left W. O. after his first day’s tiger-shooting, and in marching up from Seharunpore with the K.s and Mrs. L., W. actually shot a tiger ten days after he had been run over, and he writes me word to-day that he is quite strong again, and that they had killed eight tigers in five days. One tiger got on an island about the size of the table, with a swamp all round it, that the elephants could not pass. The jungle was set on fire, and W. says it was beautiful to see him try to fight the fire with his paws, but when he found he could not conquer it, he charged the elephants, and was shot on the head of W.’s elephant.
Saturday, March 23.
We have had a little more snow and a great deal more rain, but now the weather is beautiful, and the servants are beginning to thaw and to move about. F. has had two dreadful days of rain in camp – a warning to her, and she says she is beginning to give up her love of tents. Q. is gone down to Barr to fetch her up the hill, but she will not now be here till Monday.
We have not had a great many visitors. There are forty-six ladies and twelve gentlemen, independent of our party, and forty more ladies and six more gentlemen are expected shortly, so how any dancing is to be managed at our parties we cannot make out. The aides-de-camp are in despair about it; they are all dancers, and they have engaged a house for the Miss S.s and their aunt quite close to ours – ‘Stirling Castle,’ a bleak place that nobody will live in, and that in general is struck by lightning once a year; but then it is close by, and then they want a ball. They have got A. and all our married gentlemen to promise to dance every quadrille, but still we can’t make out more than twelve couple, and it will be dull for the sixty who look on. They are writing to their friends in the plains, and asking eligible young officers to come up and lodge with them. E. N. has settled to come here instead of going to Mussooree, and had taken a house and was to board with us; but Mr. J. has written to ask him to live with him —he must dance. ‘At all events,’ said X. as we were riding home, ‘those two little windows in the gable end of Stirling Castle look well, and when two little female forms are leaning out of them, I can conceive nothing more interesting.’ Our band twice a week is to be a great resource. G. bought W. O.’s old house, and has made it over to the aides-de-camp, which saves them some money, and in the grounds belonging to it we have discovered a beautiful little terrace for the band, and the others have persuaded P., who is ‘laying out the grounds,’ to arrange a few pretty paths for two, and also to make the gates so narrow that jonpauns cannot come through them, so that the ladies must be handed out and walk up to the music.
Tuesday.
F. arrived yesterday. W. O. writes word that he has just killed his thirteenth tiger.
Saturday, March 30.
This must go to-day, G. says. It is a shockingly thin concern, but it is not three weeks since the last went, and, as I tell you, a second Simla year journalised would inevitably throw you into a deep slumber.
Simla, Wednesday, April 3, 1839.
I feel rather cold and hungry without my Journal. I have got such a habit of telling you everything, that somehow I cannot hinder myself from bestowing my tediousness upon you. I rather think I am like Mr. Balquwhidder, who found that the older he grew, and the more his memory failed, the more easy it was for him to preach a long sermon, only his congregation would not listen to it. You are my congregation. Our present set of gentlemen are so larking, I hope they will contrive to keep themselves and Simla alive this year. I think I told E. they had advertised a pigeon-shooting match for seven o’clock on the 1st of April, there not being a pigeon within twenty miles of this place.
Mr. C. arrived at the place, which was a mile from any house, armed with two guns, in a regular shooting dress, and followed by three hirkarus to pick up the birds, and he was met by one of X.’s servants with a note, enquiring ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ As he hates getting up before nine, he had some merit in taking it good-humouredly.
There are several very pretty people here, but we can hardly make out any dinners. Most of the ladies send their regular excuse, that they do not dine out while Captain So-and-so is with the army. Very devoted wives, but if the war lasts three years, they will be very dull women. It is wonderful how they contrive to get on together as well as they do. There are five ladies belonging to the regiment, all with families, who have now been living six months in one small house, with only one common sitting-room, and yet they declare they have not quarrelled. I can hardly credit it – can you?
Friday.
The recoil from the plains to the dry, sharp air has a shocking effect on the household. Captain Z. has been very ill since Monday, Captain Q. knocked up with fever, Dr. D. ditto; a very severe case. F.’s ayah tumbled down a hill, and cut her knee dreadfully. Rosina and her husband and ten more servants all ill with fever. Mars a bad headache; Giles ditto. St. Cloup, a confirmed case of liver complaint. That puts us all in a great fuss; the instant he complains we all think of our dinners, and are full of little attentions to him; we are now trying to hope that gout may come out, but the fact is, they have all knocked themselves up by fancying that, because they are in the hills, they may go out in the sun without an umbrella, and nobody ever can, with impunity. If Shakspeare ever said a wrong thing, it was that the sun ‘looks upon all alike.’ It is anything but alike; he looks uncommonly askance at you, and quite full at us. The band played on Wednesday in a new place we have made for it in our garden. Such a view of the snowy range! and such a pretty spot altogether! and all the retired ladies come to solace themselves with a little music, and to take a little tea and coffee and talk a little.
W. O. has killed his seventeenth tiger. I had a letter from him to-day. They had been after a great man-eater, who has carried off seven or eight people lately, and the Thanadars of the villages around had begged them to try and kill it. They took with them a Mr. P., an engineer they found making a bridge, who had never been out hunting before; and lent him an elephant and two guns. The first day they saw the tiger at a great distance, and Mr. A. and W. took care not to fire for fear of losing his track, but they ‘presently heard a tremendous shouting, and bang, bang, with both guns. This was P. at least half a mile off, and on his coming up, he said he had seen the tiger in the distance, and it was “dreadfully exciting work.” The next thing we heard of the tiger was upon my elephant’s head, but he was shaken off directly, and after two or three charges, killed. About five minutes after he was dead, up comes Mr. P. in an awful state of excitement, with a small umbrella neatly folded up in his hands, and carried like a gun. “Am I too late? Is he dead?" “Yes, but where are your guns?" “Good heavens! I thought this was them. I must have thrown them away in my excitement and taken this instead.” And so he had – and both A.’s and my guns which we had lent him were found in the jungles, after some trouble.’
Sunday, April 7.
W. and Mr. A. have at last killed another dreadful tiger, or rather tigress, which they have hunted for and given up several times. She has carried off twenty-two men in six weeks, and while they were at the village, took away the brother of the chief man of the place; took him out of his little native carriage, leaving the bullocks untouched.
They found her lair, and W. says they saw a leg and quantities of human hair and bones lying about it, and they saw her two cubs, but the swamps prevented the elephants going near, and the mahouts would not go, so they gave it up.
But the next day she carried away a boy, and the villagers implored them to try again. They came to the remains of the boy, and at last found the tigress, and brought her out by killing one of her cubs, and then shot her – but the horrid part of the story is that the screams of the boy who was carried off were heard for about an hour, and it is supposed she gave him to her cubs to play with. Such a terrible death! Altogether, W. and Mr. A. (to say nothing of P. and his umbrella) have killed twenty-six tigers – twenty large ones, and six cubs – which is a great blessing for the country they are in.