Letters from India Volume I/To a Sister 1
My dearest , Here we are becalmed, the sea looking like a plate of silver that has been cleaned by a remarkably good under-butler. He has not left a spot on it. The sky is nearly as clear, and the thermometer is at 88° under the awning, and the nights are as hot as the days. Rather bad! but that is what we came for partly. We had great luck on our voyage till within the last sixteen days, and during that time we have not made 300 miles; still as long as we had any wind, even though we could not do more by constant tacking than keep our own ground, it was not so hot as in this stagnant calm; and this heat will have prepared us so well for Calcutta that we might almost be allowed to go there now. We are within six days’ run of it all the time, which is provoking. However we are all remarkably well, even to Mars, who has been very seriously ill since we left the Cape, but has rallied completely.
We do what we can to vary the days: try to catch fish, in which we never succeed, except that two days ago we caught a great shark; and five minutes after half the ship’s company jumped overboard for a swim, and took Chance with them. He little thought when Mr. M. transplanted him from the shades of Windsor that he should swim twice a day in the Indian Ocean; that it would be a bet that the third lieutenant should jump off the chains with him under his arm, and that one of the midshipmen would bring him up the ship’s side in his mouth, which was the case yesterday.
We have had some very good theatricals; the theatre closing with a song by Mr. Pelham, ‘Here’s a health to Lord Auckland, God bless him!’ and ending with cheers from all the sailors.
Drawing is my chief occupation, and working Fanny’s, and she plays at chess with ; and we all read and grumble and cannot find enough to drink, and so on; and then whenever I can get to sleep I dream without ceasing, chiefly of Eden Farm, but very often of Langley, and I have walked with you over the Cross Walk and down the Hedge Walk quite as often the last three months as ever we did in our dear, happy, young days; and sometimes I wake up crying and sometimes arguing, and I was determined to write to you to-day, because last night you were so obstinate about the key of the gate; and I burst out laughing, because you came back quite angry and hot, and said a paper key was of no use. George says he dreams quite as much and as childishly, and that he sees the Grenvilles coming in their great green coach, and Mrs. Wickham gets out of it and pursues him into the shrubbery. It is very odd, but the instant one’s mind is left to its own control it rushes back to young days and childish interests; they have made so much more impression than all the graver realities since.
Well, I never expected that on February 15th I should be sitting writing to you 14,000 miles off, and writing with great difficulty, because I am so very hot, though I have taken off my gown and am sitting on a pile of cushions in the stern window of George’s cabin, and with a large fan in one hand. George is in his shirt and trousers, without shoes, sitting on the other half of the sofa, learning his Hindoostanee grammar, and we neither of us can attend to what we are about, because Chance keeps yapping at us to look at a large shark that, with two beautiful pilot fish, is swimming under the window, much nearer to us than the organ-man now under your window is to you. When we sat giggling for days together on the lawn at Langley, we never expected to be parted so entirely and in such an outlandish or outseaish way.
We had a little breeze two days ago that has advanced us sixty miles, but it has been a dead calm again the last twenty-four hours. There is a brig in sight, and if it should be homeward bound this will be packed up and forwarded.
We never saw any more of that brig, but we got into the N.W. monsoon on the evening of the 14th, and have had three days’ excellent sailing, 150 miles a day, and the sea as smooth as the Thames. We are now only 350 miles from the Sandheads, and had expected to be there on Saturday evening, but the wind has fallen very light again, and we shall hardly have the pilot on board before Monday. The time of the pilot’s arrival decides all our bets and lotteries. We shall not come to an anchor for twenty-four hours after that, and in the meanwhile Sir C. Metcalfe will hear per telegraph that we are coming, and will have time to pack up his little goods and tidy up Government House for us. If he is wise, he will send down a few armed boats to take and sink us. If he is civil, he will send one steamboat to take us and part of our baggage up the river; if he is very civil, he will send two steamers who will tow the ‘Jupiter’ up with all that it contains, which I hope will be the case, as the officers are all anxious to take us right up to Calcutta, and to have the fun of the first arrival; and if he is very civil indeed, he will order in half a pound of tea and a pound of sugar, and a loaf, &c., for our refreshment, otherwise it will be very unpleasant to roam about that great barrack the first evening, with 200 strange servants laughing in Hindoostanee at us, and nothing to eat. That is my notion of our arrival. Or if we arrive the 24th we shall find the ball for the Queen’s birthday going on at Government House, and shall have to begin skipping about in our old ship dresses.
I have nothing to say, as you may observe, but I must mention that everything that was given us when we came away has turned out useful, more especially your six bottles of arrowroot. I should not have survived the voyage without them. As long as my sea-sickness lasted arrowroot was the only thing I liked, and since that I have gone on with it regularly for luncheon, as I never have taken to meat at all. When anybody has been ill I have made a civility to them of a little arrowroot, but otherwise none of our party like it, so I have actually devoured the six bottlesful myself.
Still a foul wind, and we are not much nearer than we were four days ago. We tack every four hours, but gain very little by it. However, it is delicious weather—the nights are almost cold. We have come to our last sheep, and have but one pig and six geese left—no coffee, no marmalade, and no porter; and, as I said above, my arrowroot is at its last spoonful. Shocking hardships! We are all put on a short allowance of water, which is much more than we can drink; but next week, when we come to salt meat, and a still shorter allowance of water, the hunger and thirst will just match. Nobody now presumes to say when we shall arrive, and they are all becoming impatient. In the midshipmen’s birth the freehold of two dirty shirts for one clean one has been offered and refused, and the instant it grows dusk, they all appear in their hot blue clothes, white trowsers are become so scarce.
To recur to what I was saying of useful presents—I thought Mr. C.’s ‘Pompeii’ a beautiful book, but that it would appear only on state occasions, whereas it has been in constant use. The captain wanted me to paint a large flying figure for the steerage—we found a pattern in ‘Pompeii;’ a figure of Jupiter was wanted—there he is in ‘Pompeii;’ some of the officers who dine with us are too shy to speak in the evening—they all look at ‘Pompeii.’ ’s ‘Schiller’ is my constant study. The sailors sing Scotch songs in the evening, and I found them in Burns.
At last, dearest , here we are, after seventy-two days out of sight of land. We got up this morning with a lovely jungle in sight. However, we are not particular about the quality, so as it be land; and now every moment is interesting. Last night the fun began. We fired a gun, and burnt blue lights ; an hour after, the man at the masthead saw the light vessel; at two in the morning the pilot came onboard. This morning we saw land, and now the steamers are in sight, not only coming to tow us up to Calcutta, but bringing the ‘Zenobia,’ which is to take our letters to England; and also, best of all, bringing us heaps of letters, which the pilot says are waiting for us, some of as late a date as November 11. Only conceive the delight of it—it brings such hot tears into my eyes!—we shall have news of you all five weeks after we left you, and that is about twenty-one weeks ago. We are all well, and all writing like mad people. The pilot says we had been given up for lost at Calcutta; the steamers have been looking for us for three weeks. John Elliot waited some time to see us, but gave it up, and has gone home.
God bless you and yours, ! and only keep writing. Tell me quantities of stories about all the children, who will otherwise grow up, and I shall know nothing about them.