Simla, Good Friday, April 13, 1838.
I had better make a beginning at last. A heap of sea letters came this
morning, and, amongst others, one of your dear _books_ which I have been
pining for, and a Journal from E. to me, and from T. to F., of the 20th
of January, and Mr. D.'s to me the same date; so now I begin to know all
about you again--your young days of 1837, and your old age of 1838. I
begin to catch an idea of your character--but the state of confusion I
have been in for four days between these two packets! There was Miss
Ryder the Second reigning in the schoolroom, and I without an idea
whether the usurper Capplische had been dethroned and beheaded, or
whether it had been a regular succession, a natural death of Capplische,
and a young Ryder mounting the throne in right of her descent.
Then Charley was going back to Eton. I never knew you thought of sending
him there at all. I went all about the house, asking about him and his
school. The old khansamah could not recollect; the jemadar thought it
must be just what the Lady Sahib thought; the aides-de-camp would 'write
and ask at once' (their favourite phrase), but still it was not
clear--and now I have your letter of reasons and intentions. Then
Newsalls had become 'home,' your shell, your manor-house, and you had
never explained it to me. Now that I see the damask bed-room, and the
girls' rooms, and the library, I am better, though I still think it
would have been a delicate attention if you had described cursorily my
room. A southern aspect you will of course attend to; I shall be chilly!
This dear Simla! it snowed yesterday, and has been hailing to-day, and
is now thundering, in a cracking, sharp way that would be awful, only
its sublimity is destroyed by the working of the carpenters and
blacksmiths, who are shaping curtain rods and rings all round the house.
It has been an immense labour to furnish properly. We did not bring half
chintz enough from Calcutta, and Simla grows rhododendrons, and pines,
and violets, but nothing else--no damask, no glazed cotton for
lining--nothing. There is a sort of country cloth made here--wretched
stuff, in fact, though the colours are beautiful--but I ingeniously
devised tearing up whole pieces of red and of white into narrow strips,
and then sewing them together, and the effect for the dining-room is
lovely, when supported with the scarlet border painted all round the
cornice, the doors, windows, &c.; and now everybody is adopting the
fashion.
Another grievance that took Wright and me by surprise was, that of all
our head tailors whom we had brought from Calcutta, none had ever seen
the drapery of a curtain. Bengal has no curtains; so Wright had to cut
out everything herself. It is in these times of emergency that the value
of the European servants rises. Giles has nailed up every curtain
himself. G. has made over to him the care of the garden, and he is
perfectly happy with it, and in a state of the greatest importance. 'I
hope we may have rain to-night, ma'am, and I can bring a few asparagus
from my garden; and perhaps you will just look at these tickets. I can
manage common things, but my lord's hard names for flowers quite puzzle
me.' The kitchen garden is at least half a mile off, down one of the
steepest hills, and Giles has been to tell me that unless he has a pony
he really cannot be as much in the garden as he should wish. His horse
was left with Webb. I have told him to ride for the present a pony that
was sent to G. by one of the hill rajahs, one of what we in our patois
call the Mizzer horses, and I fondly hope that if old B. sees Giles on
it, he will roll down a precipice with the shock. He will think we are
going to appropriate the Mizzers.
This is the first day I have been out of my room, or hardly out of bed,
for a week.
April 22.
I am quite well again now, thank you, and have begun riding and walking
again, and the climate, the place, and the whole thing is quite
delightful, and our poor despised house, that everybody abused, has
turned out the wonder of Simla. We brought carpets, and chandeliers, and
wall shades (the great staple commodity of India furniture), from
Calcutta, and I have got a native painter into the house, and cut out
patterns in paper, which he then paints in borders all round the doors
and windows, and it makes up for the want of cornices, and breaks the
eternal white walls of these houses. Altogether it is very like a
cheerful middle-sized English country-house, and extremely enjoyable. I
do not mean to think about the future (this world's future) for six
months. It was very well to keep oneself alive in the plains by thinking
of the mountains, or to dream of some odd chance that would take one
home--there is no saying the odd inventions to go home that I had
invented--but now I do not mean to be imaginative for six months.
Runjeet Singh wants to see Dr. D., and so he is to accompany Mr. ----,
W., and M., who go in about a fortnight, to take G.'s compliments, &c. I
was asking Dr. D. who was to keep in our little sparks of life while he
is away, and he does not seem to know yet.
April 29.
There never was such delicious weather, just like Mr. Wodehouse's gruel,
'cool, but not too cool;' and there is an English cuckoo talking
English--at least, he is trying, but he evidently left England as a
cadet, with his education incomplete, for he cannot get further than
_cuck_--and there is a blackbird singing. We pass our lives in
gardening. We ride down into the valleys, and make the syces dig up wild
tulips and lilies, and they are grown so eager about it, that they dash
up the hill the instant they see a promising-looking plant, and dig it
up with the best possible effect, except that they invariably cut off
the bulb. It certainly is very pleasant to be in a pretty place, with a
nice climate. Not that I would not set off this instant, and go dâk all
over the hot plains, and through the hot wind, if I were told I might
sail home the instant I arrived at Calcutta; but as nobody makes me that
offer, I can wait here better than anywhere else--like meat, we _keep_
better here. All the native servants are, or have been, sick, and I do
not wonder. We have built twenty small houses since we came, and have
lodged fifty of our servants in these outhouses. Still, there were
always a great many looking unhappy, so I got J. to go round to all the
houses and get me a list of all who were settled, and of those whose
houses were not built, and I found there were actually sixty-seven who
had no lodging provided for them. I should like to hear the row English
servants would have made, and these are not a bit more used to rough it.
There is not one who has not his own little house at Calcutta, and his
wife to cook for him; so they feel the cold and their helplessness
doubly, but they never complain. We have got them now all under tents,
and their houses will be finished before the rains, but in the meantime
I wonder they are all so patient. We have given several dinners, and one
dance, which was an awful failure, I thought, but they say the Simlaites
liked it. If so, their manners were very deceptive.
Simla, May 7.
We have had the Sikh deputation here for nearly a week. The durbar was
put off from Saturday, as we had on Saturday and Sunday two regular hill
rainy days, an even down-pour, that was a great trial to the flat mud
roofs, and a thick mist quite up to the windows. It is the sort of thing
that lasts for two months during the rains, but it has no business to
come misting into our houses now. However, the clearing up on Sunday was
worth seeing. The hills were so beautiful and purple, and such masses of
white clouds sailing along the valleys. The Sikh deputation came on
Monday. There are six principal people, one of them a young cousin of
Runjeet Singh's, and another a fakeer who is Runjeet's chief confidant
and adviser, and a clever man. He is dressed outwardly as a fakeer ought
to be, in coarse brown cloth; but if that opens a little, there is
underneath a gold dress embroidered in seed pearl. Captain M. and I
arranged the rooms according to our own fancy, and we made out a much
better-looking durbar than when ---- takes our house in hand, and
desecrates it with ugly white cloth, to ensure the natives taking off
their shoes. We covered the rooms with scarlet linen, which looked very
handsome, and equally ensured that etiquette, and saved the appearance
of a drying-ground. It is not like a common durbar for tributaries, who
are dismissed in five minutes, but this lasted an hour. G., in a gilt
chair, in the centre, the six Sikh chiefs and Mr. B. at the right hand,
and all the envoys, forty of them, in full dress and solemn silence, in
a circle all round the room, and in the folding-doors between the two
rooms a beautiful group of twelve Sikhs, who had no claim to chairs, but
sat on the floor. And before this circle G. has to talk and to listen to
the most flowery nonsense imaginable, to hear it translated and
retranslated, and to vary it to each individual. It took a quarter of an
hour to satisfy him about the maharajah's health, and to ascertain that
the roses had bloomed in the garden of friendship, and the nightingales
had sung in the bowers of affection sweeter than ever, since the two
powers had approached each other. Then he hoped that the deputation had
not suffered from the rain; and they said that the canopy of friendship
had interposed such a thick cloud that their tents had remained quite
dry, which was touching, only it did so happen that the tents were so
entirely soaked through that Runjeet Singh had been obliged to hire the
only empty house in Simla for them. Their dresses were beautiful,
particularly the _squatting_ group in the centre, and it is a great pity
there was no painter here.
Wednesday, May 9.
We were at home yesterday evening. I went to see Miss R. in the morning,
and she told me that the ladies at Simla had settled that they would not
dance, because the Sikh envoys were asked, and they had no idea of
dancing before natives. Considering that we ask forty natives to every
dance we give at Calcutta, and that nobody ever cares, it was late to
make any objection; and Miss R. said that she begged to say that being
in deep mourning, and not naturally a dancer, she meant to dance every
quadrille, if there were any difficulty about it, just to show what she
thought of their nonsense. However, they all thought better of it before
the evening. There were only three ladies out of the whole society
absent, and an absolute difficulty about room for the dancers; and our
aides-de-camp had quite a rest, from the ladies being engaged for seven
or eight quadrilles. The Sikhs were very quiet and well-behaved. Two of
them had seen English dancing before, and were aware that the ladies
were ladies, and not nautch-girls; and I hope they explained that
important fact to the others. If not we shall never know it, as there
are hardly any of them that speak even Hindustani. I own, when some of
the dancers asked for a waltz, which is seldom accomplished, even in
Calcutta, I was afraid the Sikhs might have been a little astonished;
and I think Govind Jus gave Golaub Singh a slight nudge as General K----
whisked past with his daughter; but I dare say they thought it pretty.
The victim G. talked to Ajeet Singh viâ Mr. B. all the evening, and
occasionally I tried a little topic to help him, but they would not like
much talk from a woman. The poor ignorant creatures are perfectly
unconscious what a very superior article an Englishwoman is. They think
us contemptible, if anything, which is a mistake. Mr. B. said he had
never met with greater quickness in conversation than in that young
Ajeet Singh. G. said that he regretted his ignorance of their language
prevented his acquiring so much information respecting the maharajah as
he wished, to which Ajeet Singh answered, that the Lord Sahib possessed
the key of all knowledge in his natural talents and sense. I said to Mr.
B., 'Tell them that you are, in fact, Lord A.'s key of knowledge, as you
expound everything to him.' He translated this in his usual literal way,
and Ajeet Singh paid him some compliment in return, and added, 'But
though the rays of the sun strike the earth, it is from the sun itself
that the beam draws its light.' They are all in a horrid fright of their
master, which is not surprising. G. asked their opinion about a boat,
one of the beautiful snake-boats with one hundred rowers which he is
going to build as a present to Runjeet, and he wanted them to say what
colours, ornaments, &c., would please him; but they declined giving any
opinion on a subject that they had not been instructed to speak upon,
and Mr. B. said he actually _heard_ Ajeet Singh's heart beat from fear
that he might be led into any advice that might be repeated to Runjeet.
Amongst the presents they brought there is such a lovely bed, with
silver posts and legs, and yellow shawl curtains and counterpanes, and
just the size for our little rooms at Kensington Gore. They can be had
at Lahore for fifty pounds, and I certainly mean to bring one home. The
silver is laid on very thin, and the shawls are not fine shawls, but the
effect is very pretty.