Letters from India Volume II/The Hon F H Eden to a Friend
My dearest ,—This is the hopeless experiment we all weakly make of sending letters overland, but I am not going to say much to you, because I am just sending you off a regular book of a letter by sea, the sort of thing you will never get through but then ‘it shows my devotion.’ I am also sending you, at last, those herons’ feathers. They came to me, as you will see, in two round ostentatious cases. I grumbled over them for a week, because I think they look rather like crows’ feathers fainted away. However, when I was ejaculating over them, and showing them to Emily, sneering a great deal at clever , and a great deal at you for thinking those could be what you wanted, his jemadars made a dart at them, expressed many Eastern signs of admiration and astonishment, and said that except Runjeet Singh nobody ever had such. From which I judge that you and he must be very much alike in your ways. Lady William Bentinck had some, and wore them with a turban and a diamond; the jemadars evidently thought it was a grand moment for her, and said, ‘I suppose it only Lady Bentinck who wear these in England.’ In the meantime I do not know their price, but I should think not above 500,000 rupees; of course, no object to you. Perhaps they may be less; indeed, I have a notion that Major mentioned fifty rupees as their probable price. I will honestly let you know. I have put in some black feathers with a white stripe. You need have no scruple about letting me give you them; they are like those the natives wear in their turbans at the Mohurram festival, with silver tassels at the end of each feather to make them droop. Runjeet and Lady L, your two congenial souls, would put diamonds, and you owe it to them to do the same thing.
Talking of Runjeet, the man has been marrying his heir to his niece, and anything like the splendour of the proceedings I have never heard of. 300,000 people followed the procession, and he gave a rupee to each. He had all his troops manceuvred before Sir H. Fane and there were 5,000 chiefs, all in different armour—some in splendid chain, armour; and, as they galloped by, they all threw rupees on a particular spot on a carpet. The bride’s dowry was eleven elephants richly caparisoned—that is, with quantities of jewels, 101 camels, and so on, besides shawls and jewels without end.
Runjeet was told that we were very sorry this marriage did not take place next year, when we should be up the country, and he sent word that every fête should be repeated if we would promise to come. The fêtes lasted a fortnight, and have cost more lacs of rupees than I dare tell you. I fancy he is a great man. I wonder he does not turn us all out of the country. It turns out, too, that he is quite a chicken—only fifty-two years old.