Letters from India Volume II/To the Countess of Buckinghamshire 2
My dearest Sister,—Here we are again at Futtehpore. There is a great red idol thirty feet long lying at the end of the camp, and another sitting up by its side with a new mud head and six new faces since I had the honour of sketching it. It was here where we met the little Prince Henry of Orange, and where he made his first essay at sketching two years ago.
George left us at Culpee a week ago, and will be at Calcutta in five days. George says they are all agreed that a palanquin is even better than a tent, and that a house is the greatest luxury in the world.
We are in a sad way for new books; the last box that came out has, by some mistake, slipped by all the postmasters, and is jogging on at the rate of ten miles a day to Simla, and will have to come back at the same pace. In the meanwhile I have read over the old ones till I should know them by heart if my memory were not gone. I do not think you ever sufficiently appreciated that large edition of St.-Simon in twenty-two volumes. I make it a regular study—a sort of French Boswell, with an occasional touch of Shakespeare in a few court scenes—and am reading it through for about the fourth time. I wish you, who are a French authority, would send me word whether it is not peculiar to him to call a digression, or a long story, or a tiresome sentence une bourre, the evident derivation of our bore. I always wonder why we talk of such a thing being a bore—not at the sentiment. A dumb man marching would be driven into saying ‘What a bore,’ but at the expression. I do think St.-Simon’s account of the court after the death of the first Dauphin is worth any money. I wish I had not read it yesterday; but then, as you say, I can forget it again to-morrow.
Poor old Rosina has been so dreadfully ill. I thought for two days she would have died, but Dr. Drummond thinks the danger is going by to-day. I should be so sorry if anything happened to her, and so would all the house. George’s servants have asked leave to wait on me while he is away, and I am so afraid of his nazir, whom we always call ‘the genteelest of men’ (see Hood), and who is a most distinguished-looking individual, that I have taken to wait on myself. The first morning I asked the nazir to send one of the tribe that follows him—the lowest of course I mean—to fetch a glass of water for Chance, and he brought it himself. I thought I should have fainted away when I saw Chance, who is too idle to sit up, lying lapping out of this glass held by the ‘genteelest of men’ and a well-born Mussulman; I snatched the glass, and scolded the dog, and salaamed the nazir, and ever since I have gone poking about the tent looking for the Kedgeree pot full of water the bearers bring, and if it is not there Chance must just die of thirst.
We have had Lord Jocelyn four days in camp, and it amused him at first, but it had become une bourre, and now he is gone off to see Agra and Delhi and get a little tiger-shooting.
So far so good. The steamer cannot come within twenty miles of this place, the river is so low that we are going down to it in budgerows, and are to go and sleep on board them to-night. Can you imagine our fatigue, though we came in from a long march yesterday morning, to have a fancy fair and supper in the evening, and a ball and supper to-night, and with that the whole camp breaking up, and constant petty arrangements to make or break?
The fancy fair was tiresome, but somehow the cheapest and best ‘Europe shop’ I have seen in the Upper Provinces, and we got home early. To-night we have written to beg they will have supper early, and we go on board from the ball, and then off early to-morrow, and I hope we shall be at Calcutta in fourteen or fifteen days. I heard from George; still delighted with travelling, in fact (how a railroad would laugh!), and with having got away from his tent—not the least tired. says Calcutta is hot, but looking lovely. I can fancy the bright green of Bengal will be very striking after these dusty brown plains, and, at all events, it is satisfactory that the march and George’s absence have interposed to make Calcutta palatable after dear Simla. Our next great packing will be to go home. Fine! but it gives me a decided pain in my stomach to think of it, for fear it should be put off.
God bless you, dearest sister!