Thursday, Jan. 2, 1840.
I went yesterday evening to see my children, who seemed quite reconciled
to their fates, and were stuffing rice and curry in large handfuls. Mrs.
L., the matron, said they did not take to the other children, but
pottered after her wherever she went. Rosina went to bid them good-bye,
and was quite satisfied with their treatment.
We marched fifteen miles this morning over a very heavy road. The
mornings are very cold now before the sun rises, but the rest of the day
is very fine. They are luckily making a great deal of ice this year.
Large fields are covered with very shallow porous saucers, which hold a
very little water, and when the thermometer comes down to 36° this turns
into very thin ice, and the people collect it and pound it; they reckon
that about one-third is available in the hot weather, and it is a great
comfort.
Dholepore, Saturday, Jan. 4.
The Dholepore Rajah came to fetch G. in this morning. He seems to run to
size, in everything; wears eight of the largest pearls ever seen; rides
the tallest elephant; his carriage has two stories and is drawn by six
elephants, and he lives in a two-storied tent--ricketty, but still
nobody else has one so large. He is one of the potentates who undertake
to feed all our camp gratis, which is a popular measure with the sepoys
and servants. Scindia, the Gwalior Rajah, is encamped on the other side
of the river, about five miles off, and G. reckons that he will have
about two durbars a day for the next fortnight. He had two to-day--one
for Dholepore himself, and another for Scindia's Vakeel. The Mahrattas
are a very ragamuffin-looking race. E. is the Gwalior resident, and is
on the same fat scale with everything else, except little Violet Snook,
who is trotting about the street very busily. It is rather curious that
the camp should contain three officers rejoicing in the names of Violet
Snook, Gandy Gaitskell, and Orlando Stubbs. Are they common names in
England? Gandy Gaitskell we are uncommonly intimate with; he is always
on guard, and always dining here. Orlando Stubbs is a novelty.
Sunday, Jan. 5.
The officers of the Gwalior contingent sent to ask when they could call,
and I thought it would be good for their morals to say that church began
at eleven, and we could see them afterwards. They live five miles off,
so Colonel E. gave them a breakfast before church, and when I went out
this morning early, they were all arriving, and Violet Snook was rushing
in and out in a violent state of excitement, receiving his brother
officers, shaking hands, and bowing and ordering, and in short it was
quite pleasant to see a Violet with such spirits, and a Snook with such
manners. They all came after church, and seemed a gentleman-like set. I
think if I were a soldier, I should like to belong to a local corps, or
a contingent; they all wear such pretty fancy dresses.
Monday, Jan. 6.
This has been a day of durbars for G., which is a sad waste of time.
Scindia, the Gwalior Rajah, came in the morning to pay his visit. G.
sent a deputation yesterday to compliment him, and they had, as usual
with these great native princes, to take off their shoes on going in.
The rajah himself takes off his own shoes, and Europeans keep on their
hats if they take off their shoes. In fact, they do not really take them
off; they put stockings over them.
Scindia was four hours coming five miles to G.'s durbar this morning.
Natives think it a mark of dignity to move as slowly as possible. How
going down to Windsor by railroad would disgust them! And C., L. E., and
P., who had been sent to fetch him, were nearly baked alive on their
elephants. On the return he was polite enough to dismiss them after they
had gone two hundred yards, or they would have had four hours more. He
is young, very black, and not good-looking, but it is impossible to look
at _him_, on account of his pearls. He wears three large ropes, or
rather cables, of pearls, and those round his throat are as big as
pigeons' eggs, larger than Runjeet's famous pearls. His courtiers are
not ill off in matter of jewels, particularly emeralds. In the afternoon
G. went to return the Dholepore Rajah's visit, and see some fireworks,
&c., &c. F. and I agreed not to go, as it was four miles off, and the
Mahrattas are not pleasant natives. We went up a little hill near the
camp, from which the procession looked very pretty, and then we had the
advantage of righting a bit of wrong. Two of our band and an
artilleryman had got into a quarrel with the priests of a little mosque
on this hill, and were beating them, and the natives came rushing to us
for protection. The Europeans were evidently in the wrong, and they ran
off instantly, but I sent the jemadar to say I wanted them particularly,
and it was so funny to hear their broad Irish. 'That native, me lady,
abused me shockingly--words I could not be shocking you with repeating;
and as I cannot speak a word of their language, I _bet_ him well!' 'But
how do you know he was abusing you, if you do not know a word of his
language?' 'Oh, me lady, there could be no mistake; his abuse was so
shocking, worse luck for me that I could not answer.' 'Besides, I
translated,' one of our little band-boys said; and then the natives
produced a stick they had broken on him, and the Europeans picked up a
great stone they declared had been thrown at them, but they could not
help laughing themselves at that, it was so obviously untrue. And so it
ended in my telling the priests to come to camp with their complaint
to-morrow, and telling the band to go home, and be ready to play at
dinner; but there was something rather pleasant in this Irish quarrel.
Tuesday, Jan. 7.
Well! there never were such times! 'I am too old entirely for these
quick changes,' as the old nurse says, in Miss Edgeworth's 'Ormond,' but
I am glad of this one. G. woke me this morning by poking his head into
the tent and saying, 'Here is the overland mail come, and all my plans
are changed, and we are going down to Calcutta.' I am so glad; it is all
in the way home. I really think (don't you?) that we shall stick now to
our original time of March 1841, and it was quite hopeless a week ago. I
think this is a great piece of luck, and feel as if I could do like the
native servants. They are all quite mad, flinging themselves on the
ground, and throwing off their turbans; and at least twenty of the head
servants have been to my tent to ask if it is true, and to say, that
they are praying to Allah for 'Lordship's health,' and to thank him for
taking them back to their families. If Allah had anything to do with it,
I am much obliged to him too, and to Lordship for taking us back to
_our_ families. I could not bear Agra, and now everybody owns that the
hot winds would have been fearful, but they are all in their separate
difficulties. Mr. Y. has left his children at Agra; C. his wife; we have
left all our goods, except a small allowance of clothes; the
aides-de-camp have all bought buggies and horses, and everybody had
taken a house. W. O. spent nearly 1,000_l._ in preparations and
furniture, but a good deal of that may be retrieved. Captain X. luckily
came into camp this morning, and is going back to undo all he has done;
send off Giles and all the servants we left, and my two little girls,
and all our dear boxes. Not that I have ever seen again any box that I
ever left behind, in any place in India, and we are so marched and
counter-marched, that our property is horribly scattered, but I think
there is a chance of bringing it all together at Calcutta. Everything in
India always comes down by water, and as a good large river comes down
to Calcutta, it is a possible rendezvous for our things.
Thursday, Jan. 9.
We left Dholepore this morning, and had great difficulty in coming
along; the road for four miles was through a narrow sandy ravine.
Scindia's camp moved yesterday, and his goods had only got through the
pass at eight last night, and that owing to P.'s working all day. Our
hackeries that left camp at one yesterday are not come in at one to-day;
they had stuck in all the narrow places, and there was a dead camel
here, and a dead bullock there, and an elephant had killed a man
somewhere else, and in short it was a bad pass. Now, to answer your
letter. I hope dear E. is better, as you do not say he is not. How you
do rush about on those railways! You put me quite out of breath.
Gwalior, Saturday, Jan. 10.
We have had more letters by the second express, many of them written
since the news of Ghuznee had been known. The Gwalior rajah met us this
morning, rather to our discomfiture, as F. and I had meant to come on
quietly in the carriage, but the roads were so narrow and his train so
_wide_, that we were obliged to get on our elephants. He rides the
largest elephant in India; it is nearly twelve feet high, and G.'s,
which is generally thought a large one, looked like a little pony, and,
what was worse, was so afraid of the rajah's, that it was ten minutes
before they could be driven close enough to allow of G.'s getting safely
into the rajah's howdah. I always think that a very unpleasant part of
the ceremony, to say nothing of the little French embrace that follows.
The Mahratta horsemen are striking-looking people in their gold dresses,
with their very long spears; and altogether it was a very pretty sight,
but the rajah stuck to his dignified rule of going as slow as possible,
and we were just an hour and a quarter going the last two miles, though
he should consider that after eight o'clock, every hour of his horrid
sun is of the highest importance. Gwalior is a picturesque-looking
place, a fort on a rock, which, after all the flat plains, looks
distinguished.
Sunday, Jan. 11.
We received all the ladies belonging to the Gwalior contingent
yesterday, and the officers, only sixteen altogether, and four ladies,
two of them uncommonly black, and the third, Captain ---- remembers as a
little girl running about barracks, a soldier's daughter, but she was
pretty, and, by dint of killing off a husband, or two, she is now at
nineteen the wife of a captain here. I should think she must look back
with regret to her childish plebeian days. The husband interrupts her
every time she opens her lips, and she had not been here two minutes,
before he said in a gruff tone, 'Come, Ellen,' and carried the poor
little body off.
We have had no service to-day for want of Mr. Y. We went this evening to
see the fort and palace, and very beautiful it was, so like Bluebeard's
abode. As the elephants plodded up one steep flight of steps after
another, with the castle still frowning over our heads, D., who is not
imaginative nor jocose, said, 'I cannot help thinking sister Anne must
be looking out for us,' and we all agreed that she must. There is a
beautiful old temple in the fort--one mass of carving; and I should like
to pick out a few chimney-pieces for Kensington Gore from the carved
stones that are tumbling about these old places.