CHAPTER XXXIX
Thursday, May 30, 1839.
OUR steady doctor gave his ball last night. He was asked for one by Mrs. L., and found it an easier way of returning civilities than giving a number of dinners.
Wright and I have been down two or three times to arrange his house, and put up his curtains, and he had enclosed all his verandahs with branches of trees and flowers, so that it really looked very pretty. He is very popular from his extreme good-nature in attending anybody that wants him; he never takes any fee, and he takes a great deal of pains with his patients, and, moreover, he is a really well-informed man, and liked in society. So everybody whom he asked to his ball made a point of going, and they actually danced from eight at night till five in the morning; and they said it was one of the gayest balls ever seen.
Saturday, June 1.
We had our tableaux last night, and they were really beautiful. I am quite sorry they are over. We had each of them three times over, but still it is like looking at a very fine picture for two minutes and then seeing it torn up. Mrs. K. as Queen Elizabeth, dragging in Mrs. N. as Amy Robsart, was one of the best; and Medora lying dead, and the Corsair in his ‘helpless, hopeless brokenness of heart,’ was also beautiful, but in fact they all were so, and G. is walking up and down his room this morning, wishing they would be so good as to do it all over again. The enthusiasm of the audience was unbounded. C. recitatived Lord Byron’s words for the Corsair, but wrote songs for Kenilworth; the last, alluding to Amy’s death, ‘He comes too late,’ was worthy of Mrs. Arkwright. After the tableaux were over, W. O. gave his first entertainment, a small supper, to Mrs. K., Mrs. L., Mrs. V., Mrs. N., and all the aides-de-camp and one or two gentlemen, and, as the ladies would not go unless F. and I were there, we went down to his bungalow at eleven, leaving G. to see our guests out. W.’s supper went off remarkably well, and his house looked very pretty. St. Cloup thought he had better give a look at the supper, and when I told him we were going, he said, ‘Oh! alors il faut que M. le Capitaine fasse un peu de dépense. Je vais pourvoir à tout cela.’ The dresses were magnificent last night, and W. O. looked very well in his corsair’s dress. Mrs. N. is not rich, so I make an excuse of her kindness in acting to send her a green satin pelisse, as Amy’s ‘sea-green mantle,’ and a very handsome lace dress with a satin slip from G.
Monday, June 3.
G. has had letters from the army up to May 7. The Shah seems to be as quietly and comfortably settled as if he had never left his kingdom, and Sir J. Keane writes most cheerfully about the army, makes very light of the loss of cattle, and says the soldiers were never so healthy. There has been on an average one-third fewer in hospital than is usual in cantonments, and very few deaths.
The followers of the sirdars were reduced to one hundred, and the sirdars so unpopular that two of our regiments were gone to fetch them in, almost more as guards than anything else. G. and I have been riding about the last three days with Mr. A., looking at the Dispensary and the Asylum and a Serai, the three charities of Simla. The Dispensary has been built from the proceeds of our fancy fair last year, and opened by Dr. D., who attends there every morning, and it does so much good that I am quite heartened up into trying another fancy fair this year, and am going to send out the circulars this blessed day. It is an odd list of patients at the Dispensary. There is a Thibet Tartar woman with a Chinese face, and a rheumatic daughter, and there are people from Ladakh, and Sikhs and mountaineers, and quantities of little black babies to be vaccinated. I have not an idea what to do for the sale. The trick of the drawings to produce such an immense sum cannot be tried again.
Wednesday, June 5.
This must go, dearest, G. says – where to, I have not an idea, but I know it will never reach you: it is like going to call upon you, when you are out, which under present circumstances would be uncommonly disagreeable. But no steamer can go for two months, so we must hazard something by that stupid, old-fashioned sailing apparatus.
We are all quite well, and the climate quite beautiful – a leetle too hot, but not worse than an English August day. Mr. L. gave another fancy ball last night, and yesterday morning we had a deputation from the Station to ask us for a day on which they are to give us a ball. We named June 18 (Waterloo and all that), and that is to close the season, and then we are to take to the rains for three months.
Saturday, June 8.
Our play last night went off beautifully. I do not know when I have seen better acting, and Mrs. C. really acts as if she had done nothing else all her life. I suppose it is easier in a room with carpets and chairs, and doors and windows, and then she has been brought up in France, and has the quiet self-possession of a French actress, and her arms are always in the right place, and she does not seem to think about acting; then she sings very well and looked very handsome, so that altogether, to Anglo-Indians, who never see female parts acted except by artillerymen or clerks, it was a great pleasure.
We made such pretty scenery, too, with a lattice window, and some steps and a few shrubs and plenty of curtains. After the play they danced five or six quadrilles, had some supper, and went off, all pleased; and they want more of these evenings, but it is thundering and pouring to-day, and it is no use attempting to give parties in the rains. I wish my drawing paper would not begin to spoil already, but it is turning into blotting paper. Luckily I cannot find anything to draw just now. It has occurred to me that when we go home I shall not be able to show you what an Indian woman is like, and to be sure we have seen very few; but some of the Paharee women are very pretty, who go about the hills cutting grass and wood. I met some yesterday and asked them to come and be sketched, and they said they would, but they have never arrived. Some of the nautch-girls in the bazaar are very pretty, and wear beautiful ornaments, but it is not lawful to look at them even for sketching purposes, and indeed, Mr. N., one of the magistrates, has removed them all from the main street, so the bazaar is highly correct, but not half so picturesque as last year. There are very few children ever to be seen in it. Natives who come to open shops, &c., never bring their families, from the impossibility of moving women in a sufficiently private manner, and I very often think that an English village with women and children walking about must be a pretty sight. They do go about, don’t they? I forget. Poor Mrs. – , who had a shocking confinement in our camp last year, has had a worse now; for thirty-six hours Dr. D; could not leave her for a moment, and for twelve it was not possible to know whether she were alive – no pulse, and quite cold. We had made all arrangements for putting off our party yesterday, but she rallied in the afternoon, and is going on well now. I never saw Dr. D. quite overset before, nor indeed the least perturbed but he fairly burst out crying when he came to my room on his way home, and said he did not think anything could induce him to go through such horrors again; and it was very unlucky that, just as he was so thoroughly worn out, a poor Paharee was brought into the Dispensary almost crushed by a tree falling on him, and Dr. D. had to go and cut off his leg before he went home. I rather wonder how surgeons enough can be found for all the pains and aches of this world.
Wednesday, June 12.
Captain P. goes off early to-morrow on an official tour to Cashmere, and will be away five months. He and Miss S. take it very quietly, but they looked rather unhappy last night.
He had brought me in the morning some Berlin work which the two sisters had done for the fancy fair, and which they had sold to him in advance for a mere trifle, and he wanted to know if it were the right price. I thought it very right in the romantic view of the case, but very wrong as touching the interests of the poor Dispensary. I told Miss A. S. (the sister-in-law as is to be) that I should like to buy some of their work at a dearer rate, and she said there would be plenty, ‘but at present I am working a table-cover for Captain P.’ Then she asked if I wanted any polished pebbles – ‘I have a great many, but I have given the best to Captain P.,’ just the sort of way in which people make a fuss with their brothers-in-law at first. It goes off, does it not, Mr. D.?
Saturday, June 15.
We have been a long time without letters, and nobody knows when we shall have any again. There are several stories left hanging on something which ought to have been cleared up a long time ago, and never will be now – poor L. E. L.’s death! We have heard twice from you since the first account, and it never appeared whether Maclean was ‘a brute of a husband,’ or she, poor thing! very easily excited. Then, that Baily, the supposed murderer(?), we never could find the end of that story.
I went out pleasantly yesterday evening, quite a new idea; but as we have so much to do for the little amusements of other people, I thought I might as well for once amuse myself, so I went after dinner to see Mr. and Mrs. C., and I was to lie on the sofa and they were to sing, and so they did, beautifully, all sorts of things; she sings equally well in five languages, French, English, German, Italian, and Hindustani, and Mr. C. sings anything that is played to him without having any music. Altogether it was very pleasant, which was lucky, for I meant to be at home at eleven, a very undue hour for Simla, and a violent thunderstorm came on which seemed to be splitting the hills into small shreds, so I could not get home till one, which Wright thought very shocking. I cannot imagine when we go home how we are to get back to reasonable hours.
CHAPTER XL
Wednesday, June 19, 1839.
I MUST tell you for the children’s sake such a touching trait of my flying squirrel. It is the most coaxing animal I ever saw, and lives in my room without any cage, or chain, and at night I always shut him up in a little bath-room, leaving the sitting-room and the dressing-room between him and me. I was woke two nights ago by this little wretch sitting on my pillow and licking my face. I thought it was a rat at first, and did not like it; indeed I did not like it much better when I found it was the squirrel. I called up Wright, who carried him back to his room, where she found he had broken a pane of glass, got out into the garden, where he had never been before, and come in through the window of my dressing-room. I always have it open, as the nights are very hot, and I try to expect that the air will come into the bedroom, and that the thieves will not come further than the dressing-room. Wright would not believe that he had really been so clever; however, she stopped up the broken pane and shut all the doors, and a quarter of an hour after, I heard another little scratch, and there he was again patting my ear, so then I gave it up, wrapped him in the mosquito net, and let him sleep there the rest of the night. But it must have been pretty to see him hopping through the garden and finding his own way in. We went last night to the ball given to us by the Station: it was not at all a fatiguing evening, and it is the last for some time.
Friday, June 21.
I have been carrying on a suit in Colonel – ’s very unjust court for an unfortunate native tailor, attached to our house, who cannot get a small debt paid that has been due to him for a year; and these horrid magistrates are worse, if you can conceive such a thing, than common English magistrates – worse than that Blackheath man who interfered with William the pedestrian, and whom we burnt in effigy on the lawn at Eden Farm; these men spited this poor tailor, because, finding they would not hear him, he gave a petition to G. Then the magistrates found they must attend to him, so they made him come every day to their court, and at the end of the day said they had not time to summon the debtor, and he must come again. They did this four days running, which is ruin to a native who just lives on his day’s work. So I went to G. again, and he wrote a thundering note to them, and an hour after they sent the man his debt – but they are two extraordinary individuals. Our old khansamah said that the chief native officers of their court had threatened him that, if he would not give them twenty-five rupees apiece, they would summon his wife to appear in court, which is the greatest disgrace can befal a Mussulmaunee, and a complete loss of caste. Nobody would believe the old man’s story at first, but I sent him to Captain B., who heard his story, found he had plenty of witnesses, and took him up to the court. Mr. – , the second magistrate, wrote word to Captain B. that ‘the case had been fully proved, and your old khansamah comes out with flying colours.’ This sounded very well, as it was always supposed that no servant from the plains could get any justice against – and – ’s officers, and we were rather proud of it, but I bethought myself yesterday that we had never heard what became of the culprits, so I got G. to write and say that as Mr. – had been so kind as to offer an English translation of the proceedings, I should be very much obliged to him for it; and there came such a paper – such a bit of real magistracy! ‘The court cannot deny that the case has been fully proved;’ just as if they ought to deny it; but as it was a delicate matter interfering with officers so immediately connected with themselves, they did not know what punishment to inflict, and had taken bail of the principal offender, and there he is acting still as vakeel of the court, and extorting bribes from every wretched native that comes for justice – very few do come here. G. was in such a rage, and wrote a minute on their paper that they will not forget, and is sending the whole thing to the principal court at Delhi. It is horrible to think how this class of Europeans oppresses the natives; the great object of the Government being to teach them reliance on English justice, and the poor natives cannot readily understand that they are no longer under their own despotic chiefs. They will be a long time understanding it here.
Sunday, June 23.
I went before breakfast yesterday with Captain L. E. and Captain Z. down to Annandale, where he had sent tents the day before. F. came in the middle of the day, and we stayed till the cool of the evening. I wanted to sketch the children sleeping under the little cascades of water which fall upon their heads. All the babies of the valley are brought up in that fashion, and some of them have great hollows at the top of their heads. It was very hot in the valley, but it was rather a nice way of passing the day, and we got home just as a great storm began.
Thursday, June 27.
I did not think of sending this for ages, but the Calcutta authorities have fitted out a Chinese clipper to go to the Persian Gulf, and seem to think the letters may be in England in three months. My Journal may be a help to them; for if you observe, our mutual Journals go safely, so I let them have it from pure kindness. It is the only letter I send, and nobody seems to guess when we can write again, not for two months certainly, so do not fidget about us. We are all well and prosperous.
Simla, Monday, July 1.
I sent off a short Journal to you on Saturday, which you will probably never hear of, as in the dearth of Bombay steamers, the Government has been trying a new experiment of taking up a Chinese clipper which will probably be of little use, and they have sent her to Aden with our letters, and have puffed their experiment so successfully that they have actually entrapped me out of a large slice of Journal, so that portion of my life will never be heard of again – ‘a blank, my lord.’
I should not care what becomes of the letters I write, if I could get any to read. This is such a tiresome time of year for that, and I get such yearnings for letters, and such fancies come over me. It seems an odd thing to say to you, but I dare say you have the same thoughts with regard to me, but I sometimes think if anything should have happened to you, what would become of me? and then the thought gets fairly into my head, and runs into all sorts of details, till I cannot get to sleep, and know it is very wrong, and then I ask Dr. D. for a little medicine and I get better, but in the meanwhile it is horrid to be so far off. However, of course you are very well, and so am I; only mind we keep so, because we really must meet again, we shall have so much to say. We heard of dear old Runjeet’s death on Saturday. It took place on the 27th. It is rather fine, because so unusual in the East, that even to the last moment, his slightest signs, for he had long lost his speech, were obeyed. It is almost a pity they were, only that one is glad such a master mind should have its dues to the last; but the despatch says, that on the last day the Maharajah sent for all his famous jewels, his horses with their splendid trappings, the surpêche and pearls given him by G., and ordered them to be sent to different shrines with directions that the Brahmins should pray for him; that Kurruck Singh (the heir) and the sirdars who were sitting round his bed burst into loud lamentations and said, ‘What will become of us if you give everything away?’ and the Maharajah wept, but said it must be so. Then he ordered the Koh-i-noor (the famous diamond) to be sent down to the temple of Juggernaut, but his sirdars again represented that there was not such another diamond in the world, and that the whole wealth of India could not repurchase it, and he consented to let that remain. But the distribution of jewels went on till the evening, and he is supposed, his newswriters say, to have given away the value of two crores of rupees. It is a great pity such a collection of precious stones, quite unequalled, should be dispersed to these shrines, where they will never be seen again. The Rajah Dhian Singh, the prime minister, seems at present to manage everything, and to be in as great favour with Kurruck Singh as he was with the father; and as he is a very superior man, with dominions of his own almost equal to the Punjâb, things may go on quietly if he remains in favour; but young Noor Mahal Singh, Kurruck’s son, is coming back from Peshawur, determined to make himself prime minister to his father, so there may be a danger of a fight. G. declares that no degree of confusion (and I am willing to make as much as possible, if it would be of any use) will keep us here another year, so it is no use blowing up the coals amongst the kings. Our poor fat friend Shere Singh has sent his chief adviser here, to ask protection and advice, and he brought me a very pretty letter from little Pertâb, and I have just been signing a Persian answer to it, and equally pretty, I am confident. I just ran my eye over it to be sure that Mr. C. had expressed my real sentiments, and I think it looked very like them. Shere Singh is in a terrible fright.
Tuesday, July 2.
The accounts from Lahore describe great dismay and real grief amongst Runjeet’s subjects. Two of his ranees have declared their determination to burn themselves with him; but as their stepson Kurruck has implored them not to do so, it is to be hoped they will give it up, if they are sure of kind treatment. I begin to think that the ‘hundred wife system’ is better than the mere one wife rule; they are more attached and faithful.
Wednesday, July 3.
There have been two dry days without fog or rain, so we took advantage of them to be ‘at home’ last night, and the people all came and danced very merrily for two hours, and in the middle of the party, the express with the overland mail arrived – rather a disappointment, as it only comes down to April 15th. I presume your letter is coming, and in the meanwhile you were well to the 15th; but I want your view of things, instead of having to pick them out of “Galignani". Those poor dear ranees whom we visited and thought so beautiful and so merry, have actually burnt themselves; but I am not going to tell you any more about Lahore for the present, as G. gets every day from his native newswriter such quaint and interesting accounts of all the intrigues, and events, and lamentations there, that I will send you the papers – I am sure they will interest you. The death of those poor women is so melancholy, they were such gay young creatures, and they died with the most obstinate courage.