Letters from India Volume I/To a Friend 13
I long very much to hear from you after you have had one or two of these long letters; first to know whether they are entirely ruinous? Some people say that they cost nothing, some that they cost a fortune; but then nobody here knows anything—poor baked creatures! Secondly, how tiresome they are? And, thirdly, how many of them come to hand? I think I see you saying to Sister, ‘I am rather tired of Calcutta and Barrackpore, and the heat and the natives, aren’t you? I wish they could write about something else.’ It is all so tiresome in doing, that in telling, I cannot imagine what it may be; but then it is all ‘the fault of them wot transported us here;’ and bad as the climate is, our healths are all very good. Mine is much better than usual. Moore is the only great sufferer; he has had one bad illness after another ever since we left England; but Dr. Drummond says, and, indeed, everybody sees, by his own fault. He will go out in the sun, even in the middle of the day, and he never is quiet for a moment; but he has had a very serious illness in consequence the last week, and is frightened now, and will be quieter.
We have been here nearly four months—the third part of a year, the twelfth part of four years. These calculations I make for you, as they are difficult to people not in the hourly habit of them.