Camp, Kurnaul, March 5, 1838.
It goes much against the grain with me to begin a fresh Journal on half
a sheet, but it is an odd time for writing, so I must take what I can
get and be thankful. The things are all put away for the night under the
sentries. G. is sitting down to a dinner of forty men in red coats,
'fathers and mothers unknown.' F., W., and I have devoured such small
cheer as St. Cloup would allow the kitmutgar to pick up from the outside
of the kitchen at an early hour. W. O. is this moment gone off for his
three weeks' tiger-shooting; and now there is just one hour before I
need dress for the station ball, so that I devote to writing to you. We
could not help laughing at our private dinner, considering what people
say of the luxuries of the East, and of the state in which the
Governor-General lives. The dinner was very good, thanks to its being
stolen from St. Cloup's best company preparations; but we were in a
small empty tent, lighted up by two candles and one night-lamp. The
whole number of leaves of the dining-table were apparently wanted in the
large tent, for they had given us a borrowed camp-table, two very dirty
deal boards, covered with the marks of old slops, and of the _rounds_ of
glasses. I am sure at any of the London gin-palaces the scavengers would
have grumbled at the look of it; and our three coffee-cups, with a plate
of biscuits for Chance in the centre, did not look handsome. The purdahs
were all up, as the evening is hot, so outside we had a good view of
the kettle boiling for tea on some sticks of charcoal, and the bearers
washing up the dirty plates and keeping the pariah dogs from helping
themselves. W.'s dhoolie, a sort of bed on poles, was waiting for him in
the distance, with two irregular horsemen for an escort. Altogether, I
think a Blackheath gipsy would have sneered at us; but otherwise,
nothing was absolutely wanting. I came back to my tent meaning to write
to you, but found, as I told you, everything whisked off, except one
table and my sofa; and that has now been carried away to serve as a bed
for a Mr. ----, who has come dâk sixty miles on some business with G.
I can hardly write because I am in the middle of 'Lamb's Life and
Letters'--such a nice book! I quite dread going on with it for fear of
finishing it. It sometimes does almost as well as you to talk with for
five minutes. I like the way in which he goes on revelling in a bad
joke, making nonsense by the piece; and there are such good little bits
of real feeling. 'All about you is a threadbare topic. I have worn it
out with thinking; it has come to me when I have been dull with
anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it, than to
have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much.' Such a jewel
of a man to have put that into words, and it is so true! I often find
myself _saucing_ up my distaste for the present with regret for the
past, and so disguising a little discontent with a great deal of
sentiment; but yet that is rather unfair too, for I really should not
mind India if you and three or four others were here. The discontent
with it arises a great deal from want of the old familiar friends.
However, we have at last done two years of it. I believe it has taken us
forty English years to do these two Indian ones; but still it shows what
time and longevity will effect. Mr. Y. brought rather an interesting
individual to my tent this morning, a Christianised Indian; he has been
a strict Christian for nearly twenty-three years, and last year the
Bishop ordained him. He was a Brahmin of the highest class, and is a
very learned man. I asked him how his conversion began, whether from
discontent with his own belief, or from the persuasions of others; and
he said he was dissatisfied with his own superstitions, and got a copy
of Henry Martyn's translation of St. John, and then of the Acts, and
then went back to the rest of the Bible. Mrs. Sherwood, who lived at
Meerut, was afterwards his chief instructress, and he speaks of her with
the greatest gratitude. He keeps a school now, which is attended by
about forty children, but he does not think he has made any real
converts. I wish he could have spoken English: I wanted to know more
about it all. He was here a long time, and I did rather a
highly-finished picture of him, thinking the old Bishop would like it.
He is rather like Sidney Smith blackened, and laughed about as heartily
as Sidney would have done at his own picture.
Tuesday, March 6.
We went to our ball last night--it was pretty; the room was hung round
with such profusion of garlands and a sort of stage, on which there were
green arches decked out with flowers; but what particularly took my
fancy was a set of European soldiers dressed up for the night as
footmen, _real red plush trousers_, with blue coats and red collars, and
white cotton stockings, and powdered heads, and they carried about trays
of tea and ices. After the turbaned heads and 'the trash and tiffany,'
as Hook says, with which we are surrounded, you cannot conceive what a
pleasant English look this gave to the room. Such fat, rosy English
footmen! It is very odd how sometimes the sudden recurrence of some
common English custom shows the unnatural state of things in which we
live--that red plush! it was just like Rousseau's 'Voilà de la
pervenche,' only not quite so romantic. To-day, before I was dressed,
Rosina said that G.'s nazir wanted to speak to me, and I found him in my
tent at the head of at least a hundred yards of 'trash and tiffany,'
come to hope I would ask my lord to stay another day, as to-morrow is
the great Mussulman holiday--they call it their Buckra Eed, or sounds to
that effect; and it is, in fact, a commemoration of Abraham offering up
Isaac, only they do it in honour of Ishmael. Nothing can be more
inconvenient, but I never can refuse the nazir anything, he looks so
timid and gentlemanlike; so I went to G. with the deputation, and we
have altered all our plans, and may have to march on Sunday to make up
for it. A shocking sacrifice of Christianity to Mahomedanism! only, as I
said before, I cannot refuse the nazir; and also, the servants have in
general borne the march very well, and deserve some consideration. We
have written now to revive a play the privates of the Artillery had
wanted to act, and which we had declined for want of time to go and see
it.
Camp, one march from Kurnaul, Thursday, March 8.
I took Mrs. A. out in the carriage on Tuesday evening, and after I had
taken her home, I was caught in a regular storm of dust, what they call
a dry storm here, much worse than a thick London fog. The syces walked
before the horses feeling their way, and hallooing because the
postilions could not see them; and as it was, I came in at the wrong end
of the camp with the syces missing. W. tried to go out to dinner, but
could not find his way.
We went to the play last night, 'Tekeli,' and it really was wonderfully
well acted. They did much better than the gentlemen amateurs at Meerut,
and, except that the heroines were six feet high and their pink
petticoats had not more than three breadths in them, the whole thing was
well done: the scenery and decorations were excellent, and all got up by
the privates. There was one man who sang comic songs in a quiet,
dawdling way that Matthews could not have surpassed. It was all over by
nine o'clock. We marched very early this morning, as it was a sixteen
miles' march, which is always a trial to the servants and to the
regiment, the sun is so hot now after eight. The sergeant who sends back
reports of the road the evening before, always writes them in rather a
grand style, and he put down to-day: 'First and second mile good; at the
third mile, bridge over the canal which requires the greatest
precaution--the _roaring sluices_ may alarm the horses.' I wish you had
seen the 'roaring sluices,' something like the cascades we used to build
when we were children in the ditch at Elmer's End, but hardly so
imposing. Sergeant ---- is so unused to the slightest inequality either
of land or water, that it astounds him. The servants enjoyed their
holiday thoroughly. They all put off their liveries and went round the
camp to make their little compliments, which they do in very good taste,
and the old khansamah made a sort of _chapel_ of the hangings of tents,
and there was one of their priests in the centre reading the Koran, and
between four and five hundred of them kneeling round, all looking so
white and clean in their muslin dresses. I really think they are very
good people, they are so very particular about their prayers.
Friday, March 9.
We had our overland packet of December 27 yesterday. There never was
anything so praiseworthy as the regularity of that Overland Mail lately,
but where are your letters? You must send them to China with directions
to climb over the wall and post on to Simla, or to 'try New South Wales,
or Tartary.' I heard from R. and M. and L. all up to Christmas, and you
are still at August 5th. It is very odd, because I am confident you
write, but I should like to know what you write. We have heard from Mr.
D. much later than from you.