Letters from India Volume I/From the Hon Emily Eden to a Friend
I am dreadfully perplexed as to whom I ought to address in your family, because I am in a fright for fear and should be at all remiss in their letters, which are very valuable; and yet, as for spinning three answers to the same family out of my exhausted brain, it is totally impossible—the largest spiders, such as we grow here, could not do it.
We have bought some beautiful Chinese drawings on rice paper, some like your butterflies, and some figures that are lovely, and I sent for a Chinese painting-box, meaning to paint some on English paper. (The Chinese have taken to draw on our paper.) However, when the box came, I found that there are so few hours here of open windows that I have little time even for common drawing, so I just tried what it would do, made a beautiful butterfly, and now send the box to ; she might paint on silk with it. She must wet the colours, and then put a little spoonful of them in the mortar and pestle them about, which in a cool climate is charming exercise, and then put the colour on the paper as thick as possible. The brushes are very good for all drawing. I have had a large collection given me, and use nothing else. There are also in the large packing-box some talc figures, which came to George amongst some other goods he bought, and he thought they might amuse your children. I think there is a set of the Government House servants among them; but I am not quite sure, as we have had so many of these talc figures brought us that I do not know which is gone where.
Mr. and Mrs. Robertson are going off directly to the Cape on account of his health, but it will be just as good for her. Everybody is at their yellowest, because the rains have been a failure, and August has turned out as ill as September. It is just what Dr. told us about September, which is not nice, but true, that it feels like living in a hot poultice; and he says that the cold weather, which people make a fuss about, is like a cold one. Everybody almost has been ill except us.