Meerut is a large European station – a quantity of barracks and white bungalows spread over four miles of plain. There is nothing to see or to draw.
George had a levée in the morning and audiences all day, and would not go out any more. F. and I went in the tonjauns wherever the bearers chose to convey us, and that happened to be to the European burial-ground. We could not discover any one individual who lived to be more than thirty-six. It may give Lady A. D. pleasure to know that Sir R.’s first wife is certainly dead and buried – at least she is buried – under a remarkably shabby tomb. People here build immense monuments to their friends, but Sir R. cut his wife off with a small child’s tombstone.
Wednesday, Feb. 7.
There now! there is the overland post come, of December 1st, with a letter from R. and one from Mr. D., both to George. It is a great thing to know you were all well at that time, but still it is very mortifying not to have any letters addressed to our noble selves. It falls so flat. I had long ago given up any sea letters, but we kept consoling ourselves with the notion of this overland business – that is, I never did; I always said we should not have our proper complement of letters, so I am not the least surprised, for I am confident that we have been here at least fifteen years, and are of course forgotten; but still it is very shocking, is not it? Lady G. used to write, but she has given it up too. I do not know what is to be done; and I consider it rather a grand trait of character that I go writing on as much as ever, considering it is six months and four days since the date of your last letter. The post brought in plenty of papers, and the Queen’s visits to Guildhall and to Covent Garden are very interesting. I think politics look ugly enough.
We had a very large party last night – the two large tents quite full of nice-looking people – and they danced away very merrily.
Meerut, Sunday, Feb. 11.
We have had so much to do I could not write. But first and foremost we have had some letters of September by the ‘Zenobia’ and the ‘Royal Saxon:’ not a line from you – you evidently have a little pet ship of your own; and but one from L., one from Lady G., &c.: in short, a good provision, but I still wish yours would come to hand. These are five months old, but that is not so bad.
We have had a ball on Wednesday from the artillery; a play on Thursday by amateurs – ‘Rob Roy’ – and ‘Die Vernon’ acted by a very tall lancer with an immense flaxen wig, long ringlets hanging in an infantine manner over his shoulders, short sleeves, and, as Meerut does not furnish gloves, large white arms with very red hands. Except in Calcutta, such a thing as an actress does not exist, so this was thought a very good ‘Die Vernon;’ but I hear that ‘Juliet’ and ‘Desdemona’ are supposed to be his best parts. Friday, the station gave us a ball, which was very full. There were two Miss – s come out from England to join a married sister, the wife of an officer in the lancers. She is very poor herself, but has eight sisters at home, so I suppose thought it right to help her family; and luckily, I think, they will not hang long on her hands. They are such very pretty girls, and knowing-looking, and have brought out for their married sister, who is also very pretty, gowns and headdresses like their own. The three together had a pretty effect. They are the only young ladies at the station, so I suppose will have their choice of three regiments; but it is a bad business when all is done. They arrived just in time for this gay week, which will give the poor girls a false impression of the usual tenor of their lives. The only other unmarried woman also appeared for the first time as a lady. Her father has just been raised from the ranks for his good conduct. The poor girl was very awkward and ill-dressed, but looked very amiable and shy. I went and sat down by her, and talked to her for some time; and her father came the next day to G. and said he felt so grateful for the notice taken of his daughter. The poor girl evidently did not know how to dance.
Yesterday George gave another great dinner, at which we did not appear. I don’t think I ever felt more tired, but the weather is grown very warm again; and then, between getting up early when we are marching, and sitting up late at the stations, I am never otherwise than tired. We went to the church to-day instead of having service at home. It is rather a fine sight, as General N.’s ‘sax and twenty thoosand men’ were there. He is the Governor of the district, a good-natured old man, but he has quite lost his memory, and says the same thing ten times over, and very often it was a mistake at first. George asked him how many men he had at Meerut; he said, ‘I cannot just say, my Lord; perhaps sax and twenty thoosand’ – such a fine army for a small place.
Tuesday, Feb. 13.
We were to have left Meerut to-day, but I was obliged to tell George that no human strength could possibly bear the gaieties of yesterday, and a march of sixteen miles at four this morning.
We had a dinner at General N.’s of seventy people – ‘sax and twenty thoosand,’ I believe, by the time the dinner lasted – but it was very well done. Mrs. N. is a nice old lady, and the daughter, who is plain, shows what birth is: she is much the most ladylike-looking person here. When the dinner was over – and I have every reason to believe it did finish at last, though I cannot think I lived to see it – we all went to the ball the regiment gave us. I look upon it as some merit that I arrived in a state of due sobriety, for old General N.’s twaddling took the turn of forgetting that he had offered me any wine, and every other minute he began with an air of recollection, ‘Well, ma’am, and now shall you and I have a glass of wine together?’ The ball was just like the others, but with a great display of plate at supper, and the rooms looked smarter.
Tell E. Mrs. B. is our ‘Dragon Green,’ only she does not imitate us with that exquisite taste and tact which the lovely Miss Green displays. I bought a green satin the other day from a common box-wallah who came into the camp; – how she knows what we buy we never can make out, but she always does – and the next day she sent her tailor to ask mine for a pattern of the satin, that she might get one like it from Calcutta. The same with some fur F. bought. I found some turquoise earrings last week, which I took care not to mention to her, but yesterday the baboo of Mr. B.’s office stalked into my tent with a pair precisely the same, and a necklace like that I bought at Lucknow, and said his ‘Mem Sahib’ (so like the East Indians calling their ladies ‘Mem Sahibs’) had sent him to show me those, and ask if they were the same as mine. Having ascertained that the earrings were double, and the necklace four times, the price of mine, I said they were exactly similar, and that I approved of them very much. I hope she will buy them.
We saw a great deal of Captain C. at Meerut, and he would have been very happy if he had not thought Chance grown thin. F. left with him her tame deer, which is grown up and becoming very dangerous. It is a pity that tame deer always become pugnacious as soon as their horns come through.
I treated myself to such a beautiful miniature of W. O. There is a native here, Juan Kam, who draws beautifully sometimes, and sometimes utterly fails, but his picture of William is quite perfect. Nobody can suggest an alteration, and as a work of art it is a very pretty possession. It was so admired that F. got a sketch of G. on cardboard, which is also an excellent likeness; and it is a great pity there is no time for sitting for our pictures for you – but we never have time for any useful purpose.
Camp, Delhi, Feb. 20.
This identical Delhi is one of the few sights, indeed the only one except Lucknow, that has quite equalled my expectations. Four miles round it there is nothing to be seen but gigantic ruins of mosques and palaces, and the actual living city has the finest mosque we have seen yet. It is in such perfect preservation, built entirely of red stone and white marble, with immense flights of marble steps leading up to three sides of it; these, the day we went to it, were entirely covered with people dressed in very bright colours – Sikhs, and Mahrattas, and some of the fair Mogul race, all assembled to see the Governor-General’s suwarree, and I do not think I ever saw so striking a scene. They followed us into the court of the temple, which is surmounted by an open arched gallery, and through every arch there was a view of some fine ruins, or of some part of the King of Delhi’s palace, which is an immense structure two miles round, all built of deep red stone, with buttresses and battlements, and looks like an exaggerated scene of Timour the Tartar, and as if little Agib was to be thrown instantly from the highest tower, and Fatima to be constantly wringing her hands from the top of the battlements. There are hundreds of the Royal family of Delhi who have never been allowed to pass these walls, and never will be. Such a melancholy red stone notion of life as they must have! G. went up to the top of one of the largest minarets of the mosque and has been stiff ever since. From there we went to the black mosque, one of the oldest buildings in India, and came home under the walls of the palace. We passed the building in which Nadir Shah sat for a whole day looking on while he allowed his troops to massacre and plunder the city. These eastern cities are so much more thickly inhabited than ours, and the people look so defenceless, that a massacre of that sort must be a horrible slaughter; but I own I think a little simple plunder would be pleasant. You never saw such an army of jewellers as we have constantly in our tents. On Saturday morning I got up early and went with Major J. to make a sketch of part of the palace, and the rest of the day was cut up by jewellers, shawl merchants, dealers in curiosities, &c. &c., and they begin by asking us such immense prices, which they mean to lower eventually, that we have all the trouble of seeing the things twice.
Yesterday we went to the church built by Colonel Skinner. He is a native of this country, a half-caste, but very black, and talks broken English. He has had a regiment of irregular horse for the last forty years, and has done all sorts of gallant things, had seven horses killed under him, and been wounded in proportion; has made several fortunes and lost them; has built himself several fine houses, and has his zenana and heaps of black sons like any other native. He built this church, which is a very curious building, and very magnificent – in some respects; and within sight of it there is a mosque which he has also built, because he said that one way or the other he should be sure to go to heaven. In short, he is one of the people whose lives ought to be written for the particular amusement of succeeding generations. His Protestant church has a dome in the mosque fashion, and I was quite afraid that with the best dispositions to attend to Mr. Y., little visions of Mahomet would be creeping in. Skinner’s brother, Major Robert Skinner, was the same sort of melodramatic character, and made a tragic end. He suspected one of his wives of a slight écart from the path of propriety – very unjustly, it is said – but he called her and all his servants together, cut off the heads of every individual in his household, and then shot himself. His soldiers bought every article of his property at ten times its value, that they might possess relics of a man who had shown, they said, such a quick sense of honour.
G. and I took a drive in the evening all round the cantonments, and there is really some pretty scenery about Delhi, and great masses of stone lying about, which looks well after those eternal sands.
In the afternoon we all (except G., who could not go, from some point of etiquette) went to see the palace. It is a melancholy sight – so magnificent originally, and so poverty-stricken now. The marble hall where the king sits is still very beautiful, all inlaid with garlands and birds of precious stones, and the inscription on the cornice is what Moore would like to see in the original: ‘If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this, it is this!’
The lattices look out on a garden which leads down to the Jumna, and the old king was sitting in the garden with a chowrybadar waving the flies from him; but the garden is all gone to decay too, and ‘the Light of the World’ had a forlorn and darkened look. All our servants were in a state of profound veneration; the natives all look upon the King of Delhi as their rightful lord, and so he is, I suppose. In some of the pavilions belonging to the princes there were such beautiful inlaid floors, any square of which would have made an enviable table for a palace in London, but the stones are constantly stolen; and in some of the finest baths there were dirty charpoys spread, with dirtier guards sleeping on them. In short, Delhi is a very suggestive and moralising place – such stupendous remains of power and wealth passed and passing away – and somehow I feel that we horrid English have just ‘gone and done it,’ merchandised it, revenued it, and spoiled it all. I am not very fond of Englishmen out of their own country. And Englishwomen did not look pretty at the ball in the evening, and it did not tell well for the beauty of Delhi that the painted ladies of one regiment, who are generally called ‘the little corpses’ (and very hard it is too upon most corpses) were much the prettiest people there, and were besieged with partners.
CHAPTER XIII
The Kootûb, Wednesday, Feb. 23, 1838.
WELL, of all the things I ever saw, I think this is the finest. Did we know about it in England? I mean, did you and I, in our old ancient Briton state, know? Do you know now, without my telling you, what the Kootûb is? Don’t be ashamed, there is no harm in not knowing, only I do say it is rather a pity we were so ill taught. I have had so many odd names dinned into me during the countless years I seem to have passed in this country, that I cannot remember the exact degree of purity of mind (which enemies may term ignorance) with which I left home; but after all that had been said, I expected the Kootûb would have been rather inferior to the Monument. One has those little prejudices. It happens to be the Monument put at the top of the column in the Place Vendôme, and that again placed on a still grander base. It is built of beautiful red granite, is 240 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, and carved all over with sentences from the Koran, each letter a yard high, and the letter again interlaced and ornamented with carved flowers and garlands; it is between six and seven hundred years old, and looks as if it were finished yesterday, and it stands in a wilderness of ruins, carved gateways, and marble tombs, one more beautiful than the other.
They say that the man who built it meant it for one minaret of a mosque – a mosque, you are to understand, always possessing two minarets and three domes. But as some say Kootûb himself built this, and others say that a particular Emperor called Alexander II. has the merit of it, and as nobody knows whether there ever were a Kootûb or an Alexander II., I think it is just possible that we do not know what a man who never was born meant to make of a building that never was built. As it stands it is perfect. We went at six this morning to see a well into which divers are so good as to jump from the height of sixty feet. They seem to fly almost in the air, till they nearly reach the water, and then they join their feet together and go down straight, and the water closes over them. But they come up again, do not be afraid.
We had dispatched all our sights before seven, and had two hours’ good sketching before breakfast, and now it is as hot as ever I felt it in Bengal.
Delhi, Friday, Feb. 25.
Yesterday morning we found there was so much to do and to finish, that we settled to stay on here till Saturday, and to commit the sin for the first time of marching on Sunday, as we have not a day to spare. The heir-apparent of Delhi has been coaxed or threatened into waiting on G., so there was a second durbar to be held to-day, and when it came to the time, the prince had taken to his bed, and had sent for thirteen doctors to say he was too ill to come. However, he changed his mind again and came, and in the meanwhile, half our troops who were out for the durbar were fainting away from the heat. In the afternoon G. had to go and return the visits of the rajahs in the neighbourhood, and we went to see Humayun’s tomb, about six miles off, where we meant to sketch till G. came, but it turned out a failure after all we had heard of it.
However, there were some beautiful white marble tombs in the neighbourhood, carved like lace; and then we went to another well, or rather tank, entirely surrounded by mosques and buildings, on the roofs of which divers were all waiting to jump. We implored and begged they would not take us for the Lord Sahib, and take the fatal plunge in our honour, and the guards went and pushed the crowds off, and declared the Lord Sahib was coming, and we sat down and sketched, and at last, just as we were giving him up, he and all his people arrived, and the divers all bounded off. Some of them jumped from a height of eighty feet, clearing several buildings in their way. It is much the most curious sight I have seen, and I now cannot guess why they did not tumble head over heels twenty times before they reached the water. In the evening we went to a nautch at Colonel Skinner’s. His house is fitted up in the native fashion, and he had all the best singers and dancers in Delhi, and they acted passages out of Vishnu and Brahma’s lives, and sang Persian songs which I thought made a very ugly noise; but Mr. B., who speaks Persian as fluently as English, kept saying, ‘Well, this is really delightful – this I think is equal to any European singing – in fact, there is nothing like it.’
There is nothing like it that I ever heard before, but certainly the words, as he translated them, were very pretty. One little fat nautch girl sang a sort of passionate song to G. with little meaning smiles, which I think rather attracted his lordship, and I thought it might be too much for him if I forwarded to him Mr. B.’s translation. ‘I am the body, you are the soul: we may be parted here, but let no one say we shall be separated hereafter. My father has deserted me; my mother is dead; I have no friends. My grave is open, and I look into it; but do you care for me?’ The dancing is very slow and very dull, but the dresses and ornaments are beautiful.
Saturday, Feb. 26.
We had a melancholy catastrophe last night. There has been a great deal of pilfering in the camp the two last days, which has been the case with every great camp near Delhi, and our people were unluckily more awake than usual. A thief was seen running off with one of the servants’ cooking pots, and pursued. A syce of Mr. T. caught hold of him. The thief turned round and stuck his knife into the man and killed him on the spot. He was dead before they could even fetch Dr. D. The thief is taken, but nobody is ever hanged in this country. Mr. T., who has been agent here for twenty-two years, takes it as a personal affront that we should have been robbed in his district, though I should have thought the affront lay the other way.
Paniput, Feb. 28.
Delhi turned out a very unwholesome place. All the servants have been taken with attacks of fever and sickness; the sudden hot days after the cold weather disagree with them. Our camp has grown much larger. There are more hangers-on. Mrs. – has taken charge of a little niece and two nephews who lost their mother suddenly, and she is taking them up to the hills – I never saw such sickly little things. I see another little European girl every morning on the line of march, who has evidently nobody but bearers to take charge of her, probably going up to a school at Mussoorie, where parents who are too poor to send children home now send them. I forget whether I told you a story Mr. T. told me about the way in which children travel here, and which strikes me as very shocking, and would probably strike you more. I believe I have told it to you twice already in hopes of making your motherly hair stand on end. He said a palanquin was brought to his house containing three little children – a little girl nine years old and two smaller brothers. They were going up to Mussoorie, had been travelling three days, and had about a week’s more journey. They had not even their names written on a piece of paper, or a note to the magistrates of the district, but were just passed on from one set of bearers to the other. You know the bearers are changed every eight miles like so many post horses, and it constantly happens on a dâk journey that the bearers get tired, or the fresh set are not at their posts, and the palanquin is put down on the road and the traveller left to help himself. The bearers who brought these children to Mr. T.’s, said they thought the children were tired, and so they had brought them to an European house for a rest. Mr. T. had them washed and dressed, and fed them and kept them half a day, when he was obliged to send them away for fear they should lose their dâk. He said they were very shy, and would hardly speak, but he made out their names and gave them notes to other magistrates, and some months afterwards he saw them at school at Mussoorie; but it is an odd way of sending children to school. I should like to see you packing off your three youngest boys for the chances of these naked half savages taking them and feeding them and looking after them on the road, without even a servant to attend to them.
When we came into camp this morning we found Mr. – , whose turn it had been to come on with the guard of honour, perfectly desperate. His tent had been entirely stripped in the night, he and his bearers remaining in a profound sleep while the thieves cut entirely away one side of the tent, and carried off over his head a large camel-trunk and all his other boxes, with his sword, gun, and pistols. It was a sad loss for a poor lieutenant in the army, but luckily the police recovered most of his things in the course of the day, except, as he says with a most sentimental sigh, ‘a few rings of no value in themselves, but of value to me, and a few chits.’ The magistrate, Mr. – , treats with the greatest contempt the idea of recovering any sentimental goods. ‘I assure you,’ he says, ‘the dacoits at Pannyput have no idea of sentiment.’ Probably not – but that does not console Lieut. – for the loss of his chits.
Kurnaul, March 2.
We arrived here yesterday; a great ugly scattered cantonment, all barracks, and dust, and guns, and soldiers; and G. had a levée in the morning, and we were ‘at home’ in the evening; and the officers of four regiments, with their wives and daughters, all came and danced. The fashions are even again behind those of Delhi. Mrs. V. appeared in a turban made I think of stamped tin moulded into two fans, from which descended a long pleureuse feather floating over some very full sleeves. Mrs. Z. did not aspire to anything fanciful, but was simply attired in a plain coloured gown made of a very few yards of sarcenet. We are going to dine with the General to-day – a dinner of sixty people.
Yesterday as we were stepping over the street to luncheon, there appeared an interesting procession of tired coolies carrying boxes – our English boxes that had come plodding after us from Allahabad. I was in hopes Mr. D.’s bonnets would have come out of one of them, but we heard in the evening that they are at least a month off, and in the meantime the unpacking of these was immense fun. There were two boxes of books, and I had just come to an end of the last set, and now there is Mrs. Gore’s ‘Stokeshill Park,’ and ‘My Aunt Dorothy,’ and some French novels, and, above all, dear Charles Lamb’s Letters, which I have been sighing for and have begun upon instantly. I cannot imagine what number of hill-bearers will take our goods up to Simla. Major J. has written for 1,500, and they are already at work taking the first division of goods up. Our camp will break up almost entirely in a few days. We three, with two aides-de-camp, the doctor, and one secretary, are going through the Dhoon, a sort of route that will not admit of a large party. It is a very pretty road, and likely to be cooler than the actual plains.
The rest of the camp and most of the servants will pursue the straight road. I long to get into the hills more than ever. It is grown so very hot now, quite as bad as Calcutta in May. I believe we shall not be able to take Wright and Jones this route, which will make them very unhappy. St. Cloup told me yesterday that he had at last had a letter from Madame St. Cloup, which had made him very happy, and that she was in an excellent place with a relation of ours. Poor woman! she little knows what a faithless man he is. However, he bought her a beautiful gold chain at Delhi, and he said that now he had had this letter, he had ‘quelque envie de lui acheter des boucles d’oreilles,’ but that he thought it would be better to take them home. It would make her more glad to see him.