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THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
----------
A SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by
Ourselves. With 111 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75
cents; cloth, $1.75.
“Widely read and praised on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, with
scores of illustrations which fit the text exactly and show the mind of
artist and writer in unison.”—New York Evening Post.
“It is to be doubted whether another book can be found so thoroughly
amusing from beginning to end.”—Boston Daily Advertiser.
“For sparkling wit, irresistibly contagious fun, keen observation,
absolutely poetic appreciation of natural beauty, and vivid
descriptiveness, it has no recent rival.”—Mrs. P. T. BARNUM’S Letter to
the New York Tribune.
“A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed,
difficult to find.”—St. Louis Republic.
AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON. With 80 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND.
12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50.
“One of the most naïve and entertaining books of the season.”—New York
Observer.
“The raciness and breeziness which made ‘A Social Departure,’ by the
same author, last season, the best-read and most-talked-of book of
travel for many a year, permeate the new book, and appear between the
lines of every page.”—Brooklyn Standard-Union.
“So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an
American, has never before been written.”—Philadelphia Bulletin.
----------
D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THEY CAME IN LITTLE STRAGGLING STRINGS AND BANDS. P 43.]
THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB
by
SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN
Author of
A Social Departure, An American Girl In London, etc.
With Illustrations by F. H. Townsend
[Illustration:Decoration]
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1893
Copyright, 1893,
by D. Appleton and Company.
Electrotyped and Printed
at the Appleton Press, U. S. A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
-------
They came in little straggling Frontispiece
strings and bands
Cups of tea 3
Young Browne’s tennis 5
Her new field of labour 15
Aunt Plovtree 19
Initial letter 24
Initial letter 49
Uncertain whether she ought to 57
bow
“It’s just the place for 63
centipedes”
Initial letter 68
“A very worthy and 79
hard-working sort”
“What is this?” said Mrs. 87
Browne
Chua 94
An accident disclosed them 96
Mr. Sayter 136
Mr. Sayter gave Mrs. Browne 138
his arm
Mrs. Lovitt 151
Initial letter 156
The ladies went most securely 159
Initial letter 168
Mr. Jonas Batcham, M. P. 175
Three others much like himself 187
A sudden indisposition 191
Initial letter 193
Their hats 210
Initial letter 214
“Halma” 222
Miss Josephine Lovitt 225
Initial letter 234
Mr. Week slept on a bench 243
He stood upon one leg 252
Initial letter 260
Initial letter 278
He asked nothing of the 282
Brownes
The snows 291
“Liver complications—we all 297
come to it”
She has fallen into a way of 309
crossing her knees in a low
chair
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB.
-------
CHAPTER I.
HELEN FRANCES BROWNE was formerly a Miss Peachey. Not one of the
Devonshire Peacheys—they are quite a different family. This Miss
Peachey’s father was a clergyman, who folded his flock and his family in
the town of Canbury in Wilts, very nice people and well thought of, with
nice, well-thought-of connections, but nothing particularly aristocratic
amongst them, like the Devonshire Peacheys, and no beer.
The former Miss Peachey is now a memsahib of Lower Bengal. As you
probably know, one is not born a memsahib; the dignity is arrived at
later, through circumstances, processes, and sometimes through foresight
on the part of one’s mamma. It is not so easy to obtain as it used to
be. Formerly it was a mere question of facilities for transportation,
and the whole matter was arranged, obviously and without criticism, by
the operation of the law of supply. The necessary six months’ tossing
fortune in a sailing ship made young ladies who were willing to
undertake it scarce and valuable, we hear. We are even given to
understand that the unclaimed remnant, the few standing over to be more
deliberately acquired, after the ball given on board for the
facilitation of these matters the night succeeding the ship’s arrival in
port, were held to have fallen short of what they reasonably might have
expected. But that was fifty years ago. To-day Lower Bengal, in the cold
weather, is gay with potential memsahibs of all degrees of attraction,
in raiment fresh from Oxford Street, in high spirits, in excellent form
for tennis, dancing, riding, and full of a charmed appreciation of the
“picturesqueness” of India.
[Illustration: GOT MIDDLE-AGED LADIES OF WILTSHIRE CUPS OF TEA.]
They come from the East and from the West, and from school in Germany.
They come to make the acquaintance of their Anglo-Indian fathers and
mothers, to teach the Bible and plain sewing in the Zenanas, to stay
with a married sister, to keep house for a brother who is in the
Department of Police. In the hot weather a proportion migrate northward,
to Darjeeling, or Simla, in the Hills, but there are enough in our midst
all the year round to produce a certain coy hesitancy and dalliance on
the part of pretending bachelors, augmented by the consideration of all
that might be done in England in three months’ “Privilege” leave. Young
Browne was an example of this. There was no doubt that young Browne was
tremendously attracted by Miss Pellington—Pellington, Scott & Co., rice
and coolies chiefly, a very old firm—down from the Hills for her second
cold weather, and only beginning to be faintly spoilt, when it so
happened that his furlough fell due. He had fully intended to “do
Switzerland this time,” but Canbury, with tennis every Wednesday
afternoon at the Rectory, and Helen Peachey playing there in blue and
white striped flannel, pink cheeks and a sailor hat, was so much more
interesting than he had expected it to be, that Switzerland was
gradually relegated five years into the future. After tennis there was
always tea in the drawing-room, and Helen, in the pretty flush of her
exertions, poured it out. Just at first, young Browne did not quite know
which he appreciated most, Helen who poured it out, or the neat little
maid in cap and apron who brought it in—it was so long since he had seen
tea brought in by anything feminine in cap and apron; but after a bit
the little maid sank to her proper status of consideration, and Helen
was left supreme. And Helen Peachey’s tennis, for grace and muscularity,
was certainly a thing to see, young Browne thought. She played in
tournaments while he stood by in immaculate whites with an idle racquet,
and got middle-aged ladies of Wiltshire cups of tea; but she was not
puffed up about this, and often condescended to be his partner on the
Rectory lawn against the two younger Misses Peachey. It made the best
sett that way, for young Browne’s tennis fluctuated from indifferent bad
to indifferent worse, and the younger Misses Peachey were vigorous
creatures, and gave Helen all she could do to win with her handicap.
Mr. Browne—we must really get into the way of giving him his title—was
not naturally prone to depression, rather the reverse; but when the two
Misses Peachey came off victorious he used to be quite uncomfortably
gloomy for a time. Once I know, when he had remarked apologetically to
Helen that he hoped she would have a better partner next time, and she
absent-mindedly returned, “I hope so indeed!” his spirits went down with
a run and did not rise again until somebody who overheard, chaffed Helen
about her blunder and produced gentle consternation and a melting appeal
for pardon. That was at a very advanced stage of these young people’s
relations, long after everybody but themselves knew exactly what would
happen, and what did happen in the course of another week. It was a
triviality, it would have had no place in our consideration of the
affairs of a young man and woman who fell in love according to approved
analytical methods, with subtle silent scruples and mysterious
misunderstandings, in the modern way. I introduce it on its merits as a
triviality, to indicate that George William Browne and Helen Frances
Peachey arrived at a point where they considered themselves
indispensable to each other in the most natural, simple, and unimpeded
manner. I will go so far as to say that if Helen had not been there—if
she had spent the summer with an aunt in Hampshire, as was at one time
contemplated—one of the other Misses Peachey might have inspired this
chronicle. But that is risking a good deal, I know, at the hands of the
critics, and especially perhaps at Helen’s. After all, what I want to
state is merely the felicitous engagement, in July of a recent year, of
Mr. Browne and Miss Peachey. Two tender months later, Mr. Browne sailed
for India again, with a joyful conviction that he had done well to come
home, that somewhat modified his natural grief. Helen remained behind
for various reasons, chiefly connected with the financial future of the
Browne family, and the small part of Calcutta interested in young Browne
found occupation for a few days in wondering what Miss Pellington would
have said if he had proposed to her. There was no doubt as to the point
that he did not. Calcutta is always accurately informed upon such
matters.
[Illustration: YOUNG BROWNE’S TENNIS FLUCTUATED FROM INDIFFERENT BAD TO
INDIFFERENT WORSE.]
The dreary waste of a year and four thousand miles that lay between Miss
Peachey and the state of memsahibship was relieved and made interesting
in the usual way by the whole Peachey family. You know what I mean,
perhaps, without details. Miss Kitty Peachey “etched” Kate Greenway
figures on the corners of table napkins, Miss Julia Peachey wrought the
monogram P. M. in the centre of pillow-shams with many frills, their
Aunt Plovtree, widow of a prominent physician of Canbury, at once “gave
up her time” to the adornment of Helen’s future drawing-room in
Kensington stitch, and Mrs. Peachey spent many hours of hers in the
composition of letters to people like John Noble, holding general
councils over the packets of patterns that came by return of post. Mrs.
Peachey was much occupied also in receiving the condolences of friends
upon so complete a separation from her daughter, but I am bound to say
that she accepted them with a fair show of cheerfulness. Mrs. Peachey
declared that she would wait until the time came before she worried. As
to both the wild animals and the climate she understood that they were
very much exaggerated, and, indeed, on account of Helen’s weak throat,
she was quite in hopes the heat might benefit her. And really nowadays,
India wasn’t so very far away after all, was it? It was difficult,
however, even with arguments like these, to reconcile the Canbury ladies
to the hardship of Helen’s fate, especially those with daughters of
their own who had escaped it. Helen listened to the condolences with
bright eyes and a spot of pink on each cheek. They brought her tender
pangs sometimes, but, speaking generally, I am afraid she liked them.
In six months it was positively time to begin to see about the
trousseau, because, as Mrs. Plovtree very justly remarked, it was not
like getting the child ready to be married in England, where one would
know from a pin or a button exactly what she wanted; in the case of
Indian trousseaux everything had to be thought out and considered and
time allowed to get proper advice in. For instance, there was that very
thing they were talking about yesterday—that idea of getting Jaeger all
through for Helen. It seemed advisable, but who knew _definitely_
whether it was! And if there _was_ an unsatisfactory thing in Mrs.
Plovtree’s opinion it was putting off anything whatever, not to speak of
an important matter like this, till the last moment.
The event redounded to the wisdom of Mrs. Plovtree, as events usually
did. It took the Peachey family quite six months to collect reliable
information and construct a trousseau for Helen out of it; six months
indeed, as Mrs. Peachey said, seemed too little to give to it. They
collected a great deal of information. Mrs. Peachey wrote to everybody
she knew who had ever been in India or had relations there, and so did
several friends of the Peacheys, and the results could not have been
more gratifying either in bulk or in variety. As their Aunt Plovtree
said, they really could not have asked for more, indeed they would have
had less difficulty in making up their minds without quite so much.
“_Do_ be advised,” one lady wrote, with impressive underlinings, “and
let her take as little as she can _possibly_ do with. It is impossible
to keep good dresses in India, the climate is simple _ruination_ to
them. I shall never forget the first year of my married life on that
account. It was a _heart-breaking_ experience, and I _do_ hope that
Helen may avoid it. Besides, the _durzies_, the native dressmakers, will
copy _anything_, and do it _wonderfully_ well, at about a fifth of the
price one pays at home.” Which read very convincingly. By the same post
a second cousin of Mrs. Plovtree’s wrote, “If you ask me, I should say
make a special point of having everything in reasonable abundance. The
European shops ask frightful prices, the natives are always
unsatisfactory, and your niece will find it very inconvenient to send to
England for things. My plan was to buy as little as possible in India,
and lay in supplies when we came home on leave!”
“In the face of that,” said Mrs. Plovtree, “what are we to do?”
Ladies wrote that Helen would require as warm a wardrobe as in England;
the cold might not be so great but she would “feel it more.” She must
take her furs, by all means. They wrote also that when they were in
India, they wore nothing more substantial than nun’s veiling, and a
light jacket the year round. They gave her intense directions about her
shoes and slippers—it was impossible to get nice ones in India—they were
made very well and cheaply in the “China bazar”—they lasted for ever if
one took care of them—they were instantly destroyed by mould and
cockroaches when “the rains” came on. She would require a size larger
than usual, on account of the heat; she must remember to take a size
smaller because she would use her feet so little that they would
decrease somewhat, everybody’s did. She must bear one thing in mind,
they were quite two years behind the fashion in India, so that it would
be advisable to date her garments back a little, not to be remarkable.
In another opinion there was this advantage, that in taking a
fashionable trousseau to India, one could rely upon its being the
correct thing for at least two years. The directions in flannel, and
cotton, and linen, were too complicated for precise detail, but they
left equal freedom of choice. And choice was difficult, because these
ladies were all ex-memsahibs, retired after fifteen, twenty, or
twenty-five years’ honourable service, all equally qualified to warn and
to instruct, and equally anxious to do it. They had lived in somewhat
different localities in India, ranging from seven to seven thousand feet
above the level of the sea, in the Northwest provinces, in the Punjab,
in Southern India, in Beluchistan, and none of them had spent more than
an occasional “cold weather” in Calcutta, but this triviality escaped
the attention of the Peachey family, in dealing with the matter. India,
to their imagination, was incapable of subdivision, a vast sandy area
filled with heathen and fringed with cocoanut trees, which drew a great
many young Englishmen away from their homes and their families for some
occult purpose connected with drawing pay in rupees. So the Peacheys put
these discrepancies down to the fact that people had such different
ideas, and proceeded to arrange Helen’s trousseau upon a modification of
all of them. When this was quite done Mrs. Plovtree remarked with some
surprise that with the addition of a few muslin frocks, the child had
been fitted out almost exactly as if she were going to live in England.
There was the wedding dress, which she might or might not wear upon the
occasion, it would be indispensable _after_wards; there was the
travelling dress chosen primarily not to “take the dust” and secondarily
not to show it; two or three gowns of incipient dignity for dinner
parties; two or three more of airier sorts for balls—but at this point I
must refer you to the ladies’ papers. Turn over a few of their pages and
you will see Helen’s trousseau illustrated with skill and imagination,
but with trains, I am bound to add, more prehensile than Helen ever
wore, the habit of the Peachey family being to follow the fashions at a
safe and unaggressive distance. Among the photographs of the brides
which accompany you may even find one fairly like Helen. These young
ladies have always struck me as bearing a charmingly subdued resemblance
to one another, probably induced by the similarly trying conditions
under which their portraits are published. And certainly in the lists of
presents appended you will find many, if not all of those that the Rev.
Peachey packed with his own clerical hands in large wooden boxes, for
consignment to the P. and O., indeed I fancy a discriminating inspection
of the advertisements would reveal most of them. As the Rev. Peachey
himself would say, I need not go into that.
Helen was the first bride that Canbury had contributed to India, in the
social memory. Two or three young men had gone forth to be brokers’
assistants or civil servants or bank clerks, and an odd red-coat turned
up periodically in the lower stratum of society on furlough, bringing
many-armed red and yellow idols to its female relatives; but Canbury had
no feminine connections with India, the only sort which are really
binding. Helen’s engagement had an extrinsic interest therefore, as well
as the usual kind, and Canbury made the most of it. There was the
deplorable fact, to begin with, that she could not be married at home.
Canbury gave a dubious assent to its necessity; everybody had a dim
understanding of the exigencies of “leave,” and knew the theory that
such departures from the orthodox and usual form of matrimonial
proceeding were common and unavoidable. Yet in its heart and out of the
Peachey and Plovtree earshot, Canbury firmly dissented, not without
criticism. Would anybody tell it why they had not gone out together last
year? On the face of it, there could be no question of saving. The young
man was not in debt, and received a salary of five hundred pounds a
year—had not Mr. Peachey’s curate married Jennie Plovtree a month after
they were engaged on two hundred, and no expectations whatever! Or why,
since they had made up their minds to wait, could they not have put it
off another year! Surely in two years Mr. Browne might scrape enough
together to come home again! Canbury thought it possessed a slight
opinion of a young man who could not come after his wife. Privately
Canbury upheld the extremest traditions of chivalry, and various among
Miss Peachey’s young lady friends, quite unconscious of fibbing,
confided to each other that “they wouldn’t be in Helen’s place for
anything.” In the rectory drawing-room, however, these stringencies took
a smiling face and a sympathetic form, sometimes disappearing altogether
in the exaltation of the subject’s general aspects. Helen was told it
was very “brave” of her, and Mrs. Peachey was admired for her courage in
letting her daughter go. At which she and Helen smiled into each other’s
eyes understandingly. Then Canbury began to search the aforesaid
advertisements in the ladies’ papers for mementoes suitable in character
and price, and to send them to the rectory with as hearty wishes for the
happiness of the future Brownes as if they had behaved properly in every
respect.
------------------------------------------------------------------------