CHAPTER XLVII
Kootûb, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 1839.
WE made this our first march, as most of the camp have not seen it. It is the most magnificent pillar, I suppose, in the world, and looks as if it had been built yesterday; but all the fine ruins about it have crumbled away sadly, even since we were here two years ago.
Those diamond bracelets were not worth half what the man asked for them, which I am rather glad of, as I think it would have been a waste of money, and we do not want more trinkets.
G. and I had to go last night to a play, got up by amateurs, which was rather a failure, because the chief character did not happen to know a single word of his part, and that put out all the others, but they thought it rather good themselves.
This morning the General insisted on having all the troops paraded at six in the morning, and so, as F. still has her cold, and G. hates being left by himself, I had to ride out of camp. It was nearly dark, and they fired the salutes right into the horses’ faces, and then poked their colours into their eyes, and drummed ‘God save the King’ into their ears, all which induced them to prance. I thought it rather dangerous, very noisy, and extremely tiresome, and I could not think of a word to say to General M. that I had not said at least eight times over in the last three days, so I was glad when he thought he had convoyed us out of his grounds, and if we ever go back to Delhi again I hope there will be a new General, so that the same topics may serve me again and look fresh.
I had a great mind to tell him that I felt very ill, which was quite true, but as the water at Delhi is invariably a rank poison that would have been nothing new.
Bullumghur, Friday, Nov. 29.
We had made a pretty arrangement yesterday to go to a small private camp at Toglichabad; a very old town with some splendid ruins about it, and there had been a road made for us, and supplies sent; but then F.’s cold was still bad, and my Delhi illness was worse than ever, so we gave it up, though it looked inconsistent and foolish after all the fuss that had been made, and X. says there was a quantity to see and sketch. I have only been able to make four sketches since we left Simla, for dearth of subjects; but I am glad we did not go, I had such a headache. Half the camp was poisoned at Delhi.
Sunday, Dec. 1.
We are all well again; and just think of the pleasure of the October mail arriving this morning, only a fortnight after the last. G. has a letter of the 16th, only just six weeks old, but there is some mistake about yours and the letters of the family in general. They are sent off a fortnight too soon: at least we always have public letters and papers dated a fortnight later, and those newspapers, besides taking off the edge of the news for half the next month, put me in a fright. I am so afraid, after hearing that you were well and prosperous the 8th of September, of finding in the ‘Morning Chronicle’ of October 12th, that C. D., Esq., who lives not 100 miles from Newsalls, was taken before the magistrates for beating M. his wife, and tearing her hair and her best shawl; or else that your new house in Stratton Street had been burnt down before you could insure it, and that you had lost your little all, and perhaps were found begging in the streets, surrounded by your nine children, and causing an obstruction at Hyde Park Corner. Do you know, that whenever I read a heap of English papers at once, ‘indeed, indeed I’m very very sick,’ there is such a quantity of crime. This time the cruelty to children and apprentices has put me in a frenzy, and there are at least eight exemplary wives murdered by their husbands, and one murderer gets off with six months’ imprisonment, because his lawyer chooses to make a pert attack on Lord – , which pleases the Recorder – so like English justice. I am also very low about politics. I hate all those last changes, and I wish the Whigs would go quietly and respectably out in a body, and leave the Tories and Radicals to fight it out.
Wednesday, Dec. 4.
Last night, when we were playing at whist, I saw X. fidgeting about behind G.’s chair with a note in his hand, and began to think you were ill, and had sent for me to your tent, or something of that sort; but it turned out to be an express with another little battle, and a most successful one. The Khan of Khelât was by way of being our ally and assistant, and professing friendship; did himself the pleasure of cutting off the supplies of the army when it was on its way to Cabul; set his followers on to rob the camp; corresponded with Dost Mahomed, &c.
There was no time to fight with him then, and I suppose he was beginning to think himself secure; but G. directed the Bombay army, on its way home, to settle this little Khelât trouble. General – was led to suppose his place was not a strong one, and took only 1,000 men with him, but he found Khelât a very strong fort with plenty of guns, and the Khan at the head of 2,000 soldiers. It was all done in the Ghuznee manner – the gates blown in and the fort stormed – but the fighting was very severe. The Khan and his principal chiefs died sword in hand, which was rather too fine a death for such a double traitor as he has been; and one in six of our troops were either killed or wounded, which is an unusual proportion. They found in the town a great many of our camels and much of the property that had been pillaged from the army. Also there will be a great deal of prize money. Another man has been put on the Khelât throne, so that business is finished.
Bindrabund, Saturday, Dec. 7.
This is a famous Hindu place, and we have come a march out of the way to look at it, partly because there is a great deal to see, and then that the sepoys and half our camp may perform their devotions. The Hindu devotions are always inexplicable, except in the simple fact that the Brahmins cheat them out of a quantity of money, and our Mussulmaun servants cannot be sufficiently contemptuous to-day as to the state of affairs.
Monkeys and peacocks are sacred here, and consequently abound; and then they have a tradition that Krishna (who seems to have been a larking sort of Apollo) played various pranks here, and, amongst other little jokes, stole all the clothes of the wives of the cowherds when they went into the river to bathe, and carried them to the top of a tree, to which they were obliged to come and beg, before he would give them back. He is adored here for the delicacy of this freak, and a temple has been built to commemorate it.
We went yesterday to visit all the temples and ruins under the guidance of – , who led us quite wrong and wasted our time at modern temples, when we wanted to see the old ruins, but he rather made up for it by taking us in boats on the Jumna to look at the ghauts. However, the whole thing was done in state, with tribes of elephants, and dust, and all the camp, and the secretaries, who never let us say or see anything comfortably; so F. and I settled to stay behind to-day, when the camp moved, and to pass our morning in an old Jain temple of singular beauty, red granite magnificently carved, but the roof and half the heads of the statues were knocked off by Aurungzebe in a fit of Mussulmaun bigotry. X. and P. stayed with us, and we all settled ourselves in different corners of the building, with a quantity of grains and sweetmeats in the middle, to keep the monkeys quiet. Our breakfast was laid out in a sort of side aisle of grotesque Hindu columns, and at each column was a servant with a long stick keeping off the monkeys from the tea and chocolate. One very enterprising monkey rushed down and carried off my Indian rubber, which is a great loss to me, and I trust it disagreed with him. It was an elaborate building to sketch, and we were nearly four hours about it, but we all succeeded more or less; and it was so cool and dark in the temple, it made it quite a pleasant morning, to say nothing of a brass antique teapot and some lovely little brass goats which X. bought for me coming back.
Muttra, Sunday, Dec. 8.
We came on in the evening to camp, and found G. at a durbar receiving a Vakeel from the Bhurtpore Rajah and a visit from Luckund Chund, the richest banker in India. He has two millions of money in Company’s paper at Calcutta, and only draws the interest once in four years. He is a jeweller also by trade, and has some very handsome emeralds in camp to dispose of. He brought 101 trays of presents, which gladdened Mr. C.’s heart. We had a large congregation this morning, as there is a troop of artillery here, and the English soldiers looked so well and homelike at church.
Goverdun, Monday, Dec. 9.
These have been very good sight-seeing days, and I think I like Hindus just now better than Mussulmauns. They consider trees sacred, and that makes their country so much prettier. We went to a beautiful tomb this afternoon surrounded by old temples and tombs belonging to the Bhurtpore Rajah. The inside of one temple is painted with the original siege of Bhurtpore and Lord Lake running away – the Europeans were originally painted running away without their heads, but that has been rectified. Then we went to what they call a chuttree, or something of that kind, a place where there has been a suttee, and there are some lovely temples built over the ashes. There never is time enough for sketching, which is a pity.
CHAPTER XLVIII
Dieg, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1839.
THE Bhurtpore Rajah came out to meet G. to-day with a pretty retinue, odd-looking carriages and horses covered with gold, but he is a fat, hideous young man himself. We went in the afternoon to see the palace at Dieg, which the rajahs used to live in before the siege of Bhurtpore, but they make no use of it now, which is a pity. The gardens are intersected in all directions by fountains, and the four great buildings at each side of the garden, which make up their palaces, are great masses of open colonnades with baths, or small rooms screened off by carved white marble slabs, and the fountains play all round the halls, so that even in the hot winds, Mr. H. says, it is cool in the centre of these halls. It was a very pretty sight to-day, from the crowds of people mixed up with the spring of the waters; and the Mahrattas wear such beautiful scarlet turbans covered with gold or silver cords, that they showed it off well.
There is a Colonel E. come into camp to-day: he is the Resident at Gwalior, and is come to fetch us. He is about the largest man I ever saw, and always brings his own chair with him, because he cannot fit into any other. He has lived so entirely with natives that I fancy he very seldom sits on a chair at all, and I suppose he is, as – says, very shy of white females, for it was impossible to get an answer from him. It is a curious fact that the very * * *
Khoomberee, Wednesday, Dec. 11.
I would give anything to know what curious fact I was going to tell you. You never will know it now, that is certain. To finish off Colonel E., I must mention that the officer who commands his escort is called Snook, and that his godfathers, to make it worse, called him Violet. He is a little man, about five feet high, and is supposed to have called out three people for calling him Snooks instead of Snook. I am giving up my plan of leaving G. at Agra. He has cut off a month of his tour, and means to go straight to Calcutta from Gwalior, which is seven marches longer than my road, and with six days there, he would only be thirteen days later than me; the old khansamah has set his face steadily against it. He says, I have no business to leave the Lord Sahib, and that if I take away one steamboat full of baggage and servants, he cannot make show enough at Gwalior. Moreover, I am so well this year, I have no excuse for idleness, when it would be so generally inconvenient; and I do not like to leave G. and F. for two months, now that it only saves thirteen days. We shall all be at Calcutta by the first of March now.
Bhurtpore, Thursday, Dec. 12.
We had some cheeta hunting on the way here. Antelopes abound, there are hundreds of them to be seen at a time; the cheetas are put in carts like the common hackeries the natives use, and which the antelopes are accustomed to see, so they do not get much out of the way, and when the cart is within 400 yards, the cheeta’s hood is taken off, and he makes two or three bounds and generally knocks down the antelope. If he fails after a few bounds, he gets disgusted and comes back to the cart. There were two or three good chases this morning but no antelope killed, which was rather a blessing. We went so much out of the road, that the regiments and all their baggage got before us, and we could not go on in the carriage, and had to ride seven miles which I thought long. The Bhurtpore Rajah came to the durbar in the afternoon. He is the ugliest and fattest young man I ever saw. A small face that takes up the usual space of the chin, and all the rest is head. He is very black, marked with the small-pox, and can hardly waddle for fat, and is only twenty-one. He was just six years old when Lord Combermere put him on his throne.
Bhurtpore, Friday, Dec. 13.
The rajah is supposed to have the best shooting in India, and was to give G. the most delightful sport, so there was such a fuss to be off at six in the morning, and such a tribe of elephants, and such jealousy as to who was to go, and how many, and perhaps a slight wonder as to how all the game was to be disposed of; and they were out five hours, and came back in a frenzy; G. having shot one quail and a wild cat, and some one else a partridge, and another had seen a hare, and the rajah had said at the end that he hoped the Lord Sahib was ‘bhote razee,’ which means more than quite delighted with his day’s sport. I think he must be facetious though he does not look so. Mr. R. stayed behind to let F. and me see some hawking, and we took Mrs. C. and Mrs. R. and several of the officers and went into a boat with a large raised platform, and the men with hawks went wading into the water and put up wild ducks which the hawks invariably caught. We could not complain of want of sport, but it is rather a butchering business.
Futtehpore-Sickrey, Saturday, Dec. 14.
We went to a beautiful fête last night, I never saw such illuminations anywhere. The whole town for two miles was lit up with straight rows of lamps, and at the palace there was a square of lights with four great arches three stories high, with doors and windows all built of lamps. The whole thing was very well ordered.
The rajah took G. into an immense hall fitted up in the oddest way with French chandeliers of green and purple and yellow glass, as thick as they could be hung. Looking-glasses, and old-fashioned mirrors, and English prints on the wall. At the end there was the ‘chamber of daïs,’ very much painted and gilded, and raised three steps, and there we were all ‘set of a row,’ G. on one side of the rajah and I on the other, and all our party in chairs, and his prime minister in the centre. All round the hall were the officers of the escort and their wives, and the Bhurtpore chiefs, and in the middle a very select assembly of nautch-girls. I never saw so orderly a native party. The rajah was very nervous at first, and his wide black face full of twitches, but Mr. H. says he was very much pleased with the success of his party, as it is the first time he has ever seemed to act for himself. It is always a dull job, except that I like to look at the nautching, which bores most people. The prime minister’s little boy was introduced, a deformed little animal, and G. gave him a diamond ring, which was unexpected and well taken.
Then after G.’s trays of presents were taken away, there came in six for me and six for F. of rather nice little articles, dressing gowns of cloth of gold lined with cashemere, ivory chowries and fans, silver tissue for turbans – very pretty pickings if they had been private presents, but I saw C. twisting his moustaches in agonies, because they were not intrinsically worth the diamond rings we gave in exchange. I fancied the Rajah smelt very strongly of green fat, and as it was past eight, and we are used to early dinners in camp, I thought in my hunger, what a pity it was that we had not brought St. Cloup, who in half-an-hour would have warmed the rajah up into excellent turtle soup. We had a march of seventeen miles this morning, the longest we have ever had, so of course the wheel of the carriage locked, before we had gone a hundred yards. We have never had an accident before, this year. Webb had gone on with the key, so we took refuge on two elephants and jogged on four miles, and then overtook our tonjauns into which F. and I subsided. Then Mr. H. came up driving Captain Z. in his buggy and set him down in the road and took me. Ten minutes after, Dr. D. caught up F. and drove her on. Mr. H. and I drove wildly on, looking for a conveyance for G. and thought ourselves uncommonly clever in overtaking and bringing together four of our carriage horses, and the palanquin carriage which is drawn by bullocks when it is not wanted, and then we found that the pole was sent on in a cart, and there was nothing but the bullock yoke, so we drove on discomfited. Then we came to an empty buggy and put a trooper to guard it and sent another back to tell G. it was there, but it turned out that it belonged to – of the body guard, who has been in constant scrapes and is under arrest, so G. could not well take that. However, H. found his own horse for him, and altogether we got into camp in very good time, but half the people came in late with all sorts of difficulties. Camp conveyances are very good for ten or twelve miles, but always fail on a long march; the bearers get tired and out of sorts. We pass Mrs. – , your likeness, every morning, with her bearers guarded by two sepoys, because they will put down the tonjaun and run away.
Merahoon, Monday.
It was lucky we had our halt at Futtehpore-Sickrey. Except Delhi, it is the most interesting place we have seen, and there is more to sketch, and in these hurried journeys I do not think it any sin to sketch on Sunday. There is a tomb of marble here, carved like lace – it would make such a splendid dairy for Windsor Castle, it looks so cool and so royal – and there is a beautiful gateway, the arch of which is ninety feet high; and then there are some remains of the Emperor Akbar, which give a good idea of the magnificent fellow he was. The throne in which he sat to hear petitions stands in the centre of a hall, with a cross of stone balconies abutting from it, to four open arches. His ministers were placed at each end of that cross, their seats looking out on the courts below, so any grievance that was stated to them, or against them, they were obliged to announce at the full extent of their voices, else the emperor could not hear them, and the petitioner below was made certain that his grievance was rightly stated. This throne, &c., is most beautifully carved, as you will see whenever I send my sketch books home. There is also a lovely carved room, all over European devices, supposed to have been built by the directions of a favourite wife, whom he imported from Constantinople. In the centre of the court, a pucheesee board (pucheesee is a sort of chess) is laid out in squares of marble, and there is a raised seat on which Akbar sat and played the games; the pieces were all female slaves splendidly dressed, and whoever won carried off the sixteen ladies.
Agra, Wednesday, Dec. 18.
We came here yesterday and went off the same afternoon to see the Taj, which is quite as beautiful, even more so, than we had expected after all we have heard, and as we have never heard of anything else, that just shows how entirely perfect it must be. You must have heard and read enough about it, so I spare you any more, but it really repays a great deal of the trouble of the journey. We passed the day in the tents, as they were more convenient for G.’s levée, and in the afternoon came on to this delightful house, which was Sir Charles Metcalfe’s and is now Mr. H.’s, who has good-naturedly entrenched himself in one wing and settled us in the rest. It is beautifully furnished, and so clean and quiet. I really love it – it is so pleasant not to feel dusty.
Friday, Dec. 20.
We went yesterday to see Secundra, where Akbar is buried, and his tomb of beautiful white marble is up four stories of grotesque buildings, well worth seeing; so much so that, as G. had a durbar to-night and could not go out, F. and I went back alone, and had rather a rest, in sketching there, for two hours, but it is impossible to make anything of these elaborate Mogul buildings, they are all lines and domes, and uncommonly trying to the patience. We are attempting to buy Agra marbles and curiosities, but somehow cannot find many, and those we ordered before we came down are not half done, but they will be very pretty. I have got two little tombs, facsimiles of Shah Jehan’s and his wife’s, with all the same little patterns inlaid. Valuable – but I wish they were not quite so dear. We were at home on Thursday night – there seem to be a great many people at Agra. Mrs. H., who was a Miss A., is very pretty and nice. We stay here till the 1st, and this fortnight of rest from tents is a great comfort. My small health is uncommonly good just now.