CHAPTER LIV
Benares, Monday, Feb. 17, 1840.
I SENT off my last letter from Allahabad, and it is almost hard upon you to begin again; it must be such dull reading just now. Our Allahabad ball was what they considered brilliant, seeing that it brought out their whole female society except two, who were very ill, and there were four dancing ladies and four sitters-by.
They were kind enough to give us supper early, where I can always console myself with mulligatawny soup (I think it so good – don’t you?), and then F. and I came off to our separate budgerows. G. is in a great state of popularity in the Upper Provinces; all these people talked of him with such regard and admiration, and he had evidently exerted himself to talk very much during the four days he passed here, without the least idea, poor innocent man! how everything he said, was to be repeated. I heard from him near Burdwan; they are out of carriage roads, but he still likes the palanquin, and slept very well. He and A. took a long walk in the morning while Mars cleared up the palanquins for the day, and then another in the evening while he made them up for the night. They have lived on their cold provisions and seltzer-water and tea, and slept as much as they could. They passed through a jungle where a man had been killed by a tiger some time ago, so the bearers thought it necessary to make a great noise, and fire matchlocks constantly, and make a boy walk before, playing on a fife. G. says, they may have saved his life, but they spoiled his night.
Our budgerows were very comfortable, but somehow I was just as sea-sick as if mine were the Jupiter. We got down to the flat by three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, and found O. Giles had arranged everything very comfortably. We have sent for letters.
Ghazeepore, Feb. 18.
We got no letters, but Captain F., who had been waiting a day and a half to see us, came on board with some newspapers and two very pretty sandal-wood boxes he has had made for us. He looks very happy, and G., who stayed at his house on the way down, was quite delighted with his look of comfort, and the way in which his house was fitted up. A retired aide-de-camp always carries off very genteel notions of setting up house. We have seen it in several instances.
G. has had a levée, and begun his little dinners, and was received very brilliantly at Calcutta.
We stuck on a sand-bank to-day for seven hours, or rather our steamer did, and we left her, and floated independently down in the flat to a safe place, till she could pick us up. We suppose the other steamer is sticking in the same place, as she has not come up to-night.
Wednesday, Feb. 19.
A jewel of a man in a small boat came floating up with a yellow dâk packet in his hand, which he put on board – two letters from G. and W. O.
The wind is so high, it blew us on another bank to-day, and upset all the furniture. It was just like being at sea, and the river is so full of sand-banks, we have anchored till the wind goes down. I wish it would only mind what it is about, for it is uncommonly cool and pleasant, if it would only be a thought less violent.
Friday, Feb. 21.
Nothing of the other steamer. The ‘Duke of Buccleuch’ has been lost off the sand-banks, the passengers all saved, but I expect my box of clothes, which was to come this month, was in her. She has generally brought boxes for us. We were aground again for three hours to-day, and the Hindus all went on shore to cook their dinners; but the wind was so high they could not make the fire burn, and the captain called them back just as their dinners were half-cooked. It makes them wretched, poor people! A Hindu will only cook once in twenty-four hours, and then, if any accident happens, if a dog, or a Christian touches their food, or even passes too near it, they throw it all away and go without. Our Hindus would not try to cook again to-night when we came to anchor, and they may not eat in a boat.
Saturday, Feb. 22.
We stopped at Monghyr to-day for coals. We found plenty of letters there. G. says it will be quite necessary for W. O. to go to China; but there will be nothing for the troops to do, so that he may return in four months, and will just escape the hot season. My poor box is at the bottom of the sea. Cockerell and Co. have signified as much to G., and they think there was also a box for F. I particularly grudge the gown Lady G. worked for me. I was wishing to see it so much. It is an inconvenient loss, for if we arrive on Saturday, as we expect, I shall have no bonnet to go to church in on Sunday, and I have been embittering my loss by reading over M. E.’s list of pretty things. However, if one is to have a loss, a box of clothes is the most reparable, and I must try to fit myself out at Calcutta for the rest of the time we are in India. This shipwreck will be my ‘Caleb Balderstone’s’ great fire; much shabbiness may be excused thereby. The second steamer came in just as we left Monghyr, but not in time for us to speak to any of them.
Wednesday, Feb. 26.
We have gone on, sometimes sticking on a bank for an hour, sometimes not able to make the post town we wished to arrive at, but we generally make seventy, or eighty miles a day, very satisfactorily, and have almost always picked up a letter from G. or W. Last night we exerted ourselves amazingly, stuck up sails, went on in the dark, tried to sit as lightly and as pleasantly as possible on the water, in hopes of arriving at Commercolly, where we counted on finding the overland letters. We succeeded in reaching Commercolly, and there found the dâk baboo with two Calcutta newspapers for us, and not a line for anybody. Now we have left the short cut to Calcutta, there is so little water, and are going round by the Sunderbunds, where we shall see nothing but trees and jungle for four days; the fifth I hope we shall arrive at Calcutta. It is becoming so hot.
Cuhia.
This is a collection of native huts, where there is a deposit of coals, but there was also a dear native baboo who stepped out with a parcel of letters, one from G., saying that the December overland had arrived, but as he did not think there was any chance of the letters finding us, he had only sent one or two; and he mentioned any little news he had collected.
He was quite right in his principle, but as the letters have found us, what a pity he did not send your packet, which he mentions.
It is a horrid thing; a great liberty; but G., in his Grand Mogul way, opens all our letters, and is evidently revelling in yours and the girls’ journals. Indeed, he says so; and adds he is so hurried and worried he had not time to find the journals. Such impertinence!
Barackpore, Friday, March 13.
There! this is not a journal this tune; it must turn into a letter, for I have had no time. We arrived at Calcutta late in the evening of Sunday, the 1st March. We ran down a native boat in the dark, and got a great fright from the screaming of the men, who were however all picked up immediately, and natives, one and all, can swim for two or three hours without fear.
We found W. O. in his dressing-gown, and G. in bed; however, he got up and came to us; he complains of being very much over-worked, and of being over-bitten by the musquitoes. They are dreadful; still there is something in the cleanliness and solidity of the house, and in its space, that looks very attractive after the tents and boats. It is lucky we have had that march as a set-off, otherwise the change from Simla would be too shocking.
Do not you remember the story my father used to tell us, when we were children, of how his friend the old Duke of Marlborough went to dine with a neighbour, a poor clergyman, whose house was small, whose fires were low, and whose dinner was bad, and when the Duke drove back to Blenheim and entered that magnificent hall, he said with a plaintive sigh, ‘Well! home is home, be it never so homely.’ So say I, on coming back to this grand palace, from those wretched tents, and so shall I repeat with still greater unction when we arrive at our dear little villa at Kensington Gore. If it should please God that we ever do so, mind that you and your girls are on the lawn to greet us.