Letters from India Volume I/To the Countess of Buckinghamshire 2
(Finished August 9, 1836.)
My dearest i ster,—There are no ships going, from the ridiculous reason that none have come in, but I go on writing all the same. The overland despatch, which came in last week, has been a shocking blow to us—knocked us down flat. It had every merit that an overland mail should have; it came in less than two months from London to Calcutta—the first time such a thing has ever happened. It brought accounts that our arrival here was known the 3rd of June; it brought merchants’ answers to letters that were written only four months ago, but not a single line from any human being to us. ‘Ça casse bras et jambe,’ as Potier used to say; and from the stray papers that have been lent to us, we have collected garbled accounts of most interesting events. Mrs. S. V’s death I always expected, and it is one of the few cases in which one feels almost secure that it is a change to blessedness. Such a really good life, and there are so few, that it certainly is pleasure rather than pain to think that the race is actually run and won. You have no idea how awful it is to receive a pile of English papers for two months, without letters to break what is to come, or to state it at once; but we go from paper to paper, looking at the list of deaths, not knowing what a day may bring forth. It is horrid!
I have nothing particularly new to say, though of course you are interested in the least details of the interesting people with whom we live. The rains have turned out a total failure, there has not been a drop for the last ten days, and we are steaming up the slop we made at first. However, the evenings are cooler than in the hot season, and the skies wonderfully beautiful.
I think you would like to know about my garden. It is turning out very pretty, though the plants do not grow up in a night, as I thought they would, but they have done a great deal in six weeks. Do you know the Gloriosa superba?—a fine invention, and it grows almost wild here. We cannot achieve a cowslip, and nobody has ever seen a daisy, but the yucca (I do not know how it is spelt—a sort of aloe I mean), with its thousands of white bells, grows along the sides of every road, and lovely it looks. Then there are roses all the year round here; that is some compensation. My garden is really pretty, but as I mean to make a sketch of it for you, whenever it is cool enough to sketch, I won’t describe it. I have had a sort of altar built in the middle of it, in imitation of one I saw at the head of a ghaut, the vase thereof to be filled with flowers. It was finished the hot day we were at Barrackpore. The natives do those things beautifully, and make them smooth and shining, like marble, with a composition they call chunam. My altar was built, and covered with all sorts of pretty ornaments; the three stark-naked savages who had put it up were admiring their work and putting a finishing touch here and there, when there came on one of those storms of rain which last ten minutes, and flood the whole place. The water filled the chinks of the new brickwork, and the altar fell quietly down like a card-house, and was all single bricks again. George was looking out of the window, and had the fun of seeing it. I have given general directions to be called when such a catastrophe is likely to occur, as no fun must be wasted here. The natives very quietly set to work and built it all up again. I see the danger of this life will be the habit of fancying one may have anything one wants (except fresh air and friends). If twenty-four gardeners will not make a new garden, forty-eight will. Before I thought of this altar I had asked a Captain Fitzgerald, who is called a civil engineer, for a plan of a chunam vase for fish and water-lilies, and he is such a very civil engineer that he has not only made a beautiful design, but is putting up two of the vases, one on each side of my altar: but I try to remember that when we go back to Knightsbridge, I must haggle prodigiously about the price of a dozen iron sticks for the garden.
For a Calcutta amusement I have set up pigeons in my balcony. Major Byrne gave me six beautiful pigeons, all manner of colours, and I have had part of my balcony netted over, and keep them there; and as they all fight it is a constant diversion to keep the peace and to feed them all. It seems odd to require these diversions, but the sun now sets so late that we can barely be out an hour. We cannot go till 6.15, and till that time we are from 9 a.m., when we breakfast, obliged to fill up the time for ourselves. Fanny and I sit together in the morning, but absolute solitude is quite necessary, great part of the day, for everybody; and one’s eyes grow tired of reading and drawing, and then Fanny takes to her parrots and paroquets, and I am able to offer a pea to a pigeon.
This letter is now a week old (August 8), and we have had seven days of dreadful weather, hot and vapoury, and not a breath of air nor a drop of rain, and everybody says it is very odd and very shocking, but just what they told us to expect the end of September; but that, I take the liberty to remark, is no reason why we are to suffer from it the begining of August. Poor little Chance feels it dreadfully, and I am afraid is not long for this world. He has had two fits this week, which is the sure sign, in this country, of a dog not being able to bear the climate. has taught him such quantities of odd tricks, and he is so unlike anything else here, that he will be a dreadful loss to the whole family. There is no such thing as a small dog to be seen here. I took him last night to sleep in my mosquito-house, that he might have the advantage of the punkah. Could you make such a sacrifice for Dandy? But neither he nor anything else can breathe at night, just now, without a punkah, so I am obliged to help him.
We are, happily, all well, though there has been a great deal of illness in Calcutta; the doctors say their list has trebled the last fortnight. Sir H. Fane has been one of the worst cases, but he is out of danger, and goes off to the Sandheads in one of our boats to-morrow. That is always the final cure, and I take it to be a thorough punishment for the folly of being ill. People generally go in the pilot vessels, which are swarming with cockroaches; and they cruise about, for ten days, in the roughest of seas, but come back pretty well. Though people have very violent illnesses here, and those that are well, look about as fresh as an English corpse, yet I do not think the mortality is greater than in any other country, and the old-fashioned days of imprudence about health are quite as much gone by as the times of great extravagance. People save their money, and don’t go out in the sun.
Wright has been laid up with erysipelas in her foot. Rosina is an excellent old creature, yet she is sometimes ten minutes trying to put the eye into the hook instead of the hook into the eye; and in the morning, when I say I will wear my blue muslin, she brings out my pink satin with short sleeves, and says, ‘Dees blue gown the Lady Sahib mean?’ She gave a cunning wink yesterday when I asked how Wright was: ‘She cry because me dress her lady; but never mind, she can’t dress lady without her foot, poor ting. When foot get well, she dress lady again, and me hold pins.’ I asked her how Chance was after his physic: ‘Oh! so crass, so crass! when Jimhoe (that is Chance’s servant) pour castor oil down, me tell Jimhoe, “You no go home while Chance ill;” and he say, “Oh, no, on no account!” he set by Chance all day.’ The only amusing thing I have here is their broken English.
God bless you, my very dear sister. I wish I was not so oppressed with the tiresomeness of my own letters. I think I won't write any more, but just drive quietly to East Combe, sit down in the breakfast-room on that low chair, take the ‘Favourite of Nature’ out of that bookcase over the fireplace, open the window wide open for some real fresh air, and have a good gossip while you arrange your flowers. Oh dear, dear but it is no use talking; only I do live in England for hours together, though you don’t perceive me.