Letters from India Volume II/To a Friend 4
I see the ‘Kyte,’ with my last journal to you carefully shipped, is still in the river, and I hope the deceiving captain, who advertised his departure some days ago, will bring up my journal to the present day. Of course he will; he must feel that I should have gone on writing if he had not declared he was sailing, and, as an honourable man, I trust to him the account of the last five days.
Fanny and I agreed to come up here yesterday, as there have been two, or three thunder-storms, and ‘the rains have begun,’ as they say here with vast importance. The change of temperature is perfectly delicious, and I love the rains; but I think they are shabby concerns compared to our April showers. They are really not at all better, but they say we have been unlucky in them; but they bring several advantages besides coolness. The grey cloudy sky is such a blessing. We came up in the ‘Soonamookie’ at three in the afternoon—the first time we have been out at that hour for many months—and we had all the advantage of the black clouds without the rain which they had at Calcutta. We rather speculated on coming up quite alone, as we had taken this extra day; but Major and the Doctor thought that would be wrong, and we found them waiting to go with us. Fanny had the headache, but I took Chance and her deer and a volume of Mrs. Hemans, and established myself in the garden, and told all the servants to go and sit down at a little distance, that I might fancy myself ‘alone in the country’ and ‘sitting out reading,’ as if it were the Temple Walk at Eden Farm, or the lawn at Bower Hall, and altogether it was rather a pleasant hour; somewhat melancholy and exciting, but the birds made a nice ramageing sort of noise, and it was a beautiful mackerel sort of sky (like Juba’s sky), and the trees looked happy after the rain, and that dear Mrs. Hemans! I dote on that book. She just said the things I was thinking. I hardly know whether I was thinking the book or reading my thoughts; it all amalgamated so dreamily, and you and Eden Farm, and ‘youth and home, and that sweet time’ when we were all together and all happy, or unhappy, but still together. All this was floating about me, and I had a considerable mind to cry about it, but then two little paroquets began screaming in a tamarind-tree, and there was a strong perfume of exotic flowers—Indian white blossoms that were dropping on the grass—and then I saw eleven of those white eastern figures whom I had told to sit down, all squatting cross-legged most obediently, but with their black eyes fixed on me, and I scorned to waste any English tears on such an eastern scene. So I looked at Chance, who was jumping about in the tank, trying to catch a gold-coloured frog, and I thought that he and ourselves were much alike. We are living in a marsh catching gold frogs, and then I thought how pleasant it would be if you would just come and sit down and talk over Mrs. Hemans with me. I actually put marks for the particular sentence we should talk over, or that I should like to send to you.
Look on me thus, when hollow praise
Hath made the weary pine
For one true tone of other days,
One glance of love like thine!
In vain! in vain!
Those lines take my fancy prodigiously. It is so stupid not to have written them first, and I want your ‘true tones’ dreadfully.
‘If my sister were near me now, I should lay my head down upon her shoulder and cry like a tired child. The time of year makes one so long for the far-away.’
‘I am reconciling myself to many things in my changed situation, which at first pressed upon my heart with all the weight of a Switzer’s home-sickness. Amongst these is the want of hills. Oh! this waveless horizon.’
What fond, strange yearnings from the soul’s deep cell
Gush for the faces we no more shall see!
How are we haunted in the wind’s low tone
By voices that are gone!
Looks of familiar love that never more,
Never on earth, our aching eyes shall greet,
Past words of welcome to our household door,
And vanished smiles and sounds of parted feet,
Spring mid the murmurs of thy flowering trees.
Why, why revisit’st thou these?
Good lines! and it was great luck to meet with them at that moment, and I still think this morning it would be a want of confidence not to mention them to you. I made several sage original reflections besides all these quotations—one, that in this relaxing climate, where nobody has any nerves or spirits, it is lucky we can go out so little. ‘The common sun, the air, the skies,’ are too much for us, they are very affecting. Then, that as we must live in the house and in the dark, it was good economy of Providence to make Bengal so hideous. If it were beautiful nobody could see it, and, as it is a frightful plain, it is perhaps advantageous to see so little of it.
George and and Sir Willoughby Cotton, with some of the aides-de-camp, arrived yesterday, and the rain is gone off, and they are all hotter and more miserable than ever here. Not Sir Willoughby nor George. I think the men of that age certainly think and care less, much less, about their personal comforts than the cabriolet young men of the present day. I have thought so for some years.
Fanny and I and Major Byrne went out on the elephants. We are trying some new howdahs for the march, and I think I am satisfied with the alterations that have been made in mine, though I could invent something better; but the very best howdah on the very best elephant will, I think, reduce anybody to a shapeless and boneless lump in about six miles of travelling. I expect to walk my march. A palanquin looks like a coffin, the elephant shakes, and I am grown afraid of my horse. The carriages go with us, but there are few roads on which they can be used. I have had a long letter from Miss Fane, giving such a beautiful account of Simlah.
We dragged one of the tanks yesterday, because the fish are all dying for want of water, and the native servants begged hard for some fish; all their food is so dear. It is always a pretty sight. There were at least 200 of them crowding round, and Mars and Giles and Webb (the coachman) trying, by the help of chokeydars (the Government House policemen), to keep some order in the distribution. The fish are enormous; many of them weighed more than twenty pounds. Major Byrne and I went and surveyed the stores, and the beds, and the tables for our tents. It is an awful job to undertake, I should think, for those that have the trouble of it. Jones and Wright are just to go in our palanquins when we are on the elephants, and to change when we want to change. Major Byrne thinks it much the best plan. Giles and Mars will have ponies, and, as we only travel ten miles a day, it cannot hurt them. St. Cloud is so important to our happiness, that we shall all join to carry him on a queen’s cushion if he insists on it, and he has a palanquin.
We have had two such storms to-day and yesterday, which have flooded the whole park; and though they have prevented our going out, yet they make the temperature very nice and cool.
A good sermon from Mr. , and in the afternoon a remarkably pleasant surprise. George got a despatch from the India House while I was sitting in his room with one newspaper of the 14th of March. The despatch, as usual, contained comments on the King of Oude, and the Ameers, and the Putiallah Rajah, and the salt duties. The most interesting sentence was an intimation that we should have a new dinner service in due time. But this professed to be the sole result of the steamer whose progress we have been watching with intense interest. Then came on another thundering storm, and our Sunday afternoon was assuming a gloomy appearance, when one of the excellent guards came galloping through the rain with a second packet, sent express—the repentance and after-thought of the steamer—and I received your long letter of March 4, with several others; so this gave quite another turn to the afternoon, and kept us in reading till dinner-time.
Never mind what people tell you about the books you send. The last set that came by the ‘A. Robertson’ are our chief occupation; now Lady M. Montagu and Mrs. Hemans have given one a very pleasant week, and I have not even wished to begin any of the novels. These good supplies of books you have sent us lately have made a material difference in my life. In the number of lonely hours here a want of books is such a misfortune. The very trashy novels of the day we do not care much about, but any by good authors, or those that you have read and liked yourself are very acceptable. I wish you would say more about the ‘Pickwicks;’ we are all so fond of them. Are we wrong?
We had another frightful storm yesterday at Barrackpore, and I retract my contemptuous opinion of the tropical storms; and at dinner we had the same attack of white ants we had one day last year, only worse. They drove us out of the dining-room into the dark, but soon spread all over the house, and we had at last to set off in the rain for Calcutta. The diningroom is larger than Willis’s Room at Almack’s, and I am not exaggerating when I say that there was not a place in it where we could step without crushing twenty of these creatures, which are much larger than common flies. They shake off their wings after they have been five minutes in the house, and all the white marble tables were quite brown and covered some depth with these discarded wings. We have only seen this twice, but it has made me believe all the odd stories about ants that Mrs. Carmichael told in her book on the West Indies.
We had our dinner at the Bishop’s yesterday; he is such a good-natured old man; it is impossible not to like him. He had asked all his other guests at half-past seven, and we were to come at eight, and he had been sitting, they said, half-an-hour downstairs, for fear of not meeting George on the steps. He asked fifty-four people into a room that was meant to hold forty, but luckily it was a cool, rainy evening, and his dinner and establishment were much better than any I have seen.
We are all in a horrid way about the ice, which oozed out yesterday; and no signs of an American ship; and the water we drink would make very good tea as far as warmth goes, but the Bishop had persuaded the ice managers to give him the last little scrapings of ice, on the plea of our dining there.
The Bishop showed us his house after dinner. He has got the best library in India, and I borrowed some good books from him.
We had only a small dinner yesterday, for a wonder; but we are very forward in our lessons, and then, in this absence of ice, great dinners are so bad. Everything flops about in the dishes, and the wine and water is so hot, and a shocking thing is that a great ship was seen bottom upwards at the mouth of the river, supposed to be ° an American, and consequently the ice-ship.
We had again immense quantities of visitors this morning, and I came up after luncheon to this place in the ‘Soonamookie.’ We have made several nice cabins in the boat; and I took possession of mine; and one of the excellent domestics took a great hand-punkah—things that stand on the ground, and which they twirl round after a fashion of their own, and it gives more air than anything—and I enjoyed a remarkably pleasant slumber, which nothing disturbed but the fact that little tumbled down on his nose, or over it, or something, and very naturally cried for half-an-hour.