Miss Eden's Letters

No wonder the ship is so light, we have actually ate it a foot out of the water since we left the Cape. “Nasty Beasts,” as Liston says. Your lively imagination will immediately guess how bad the butter is, and I mention the gratifying fact that two small pots of Guava Jelly and the N.E. Monsoon sprung up on Monday, and we hope their united forces may carry us to the Sandheads.

I never could like a sea life, nor do I believe that anybody does, but with all our grumbling about ours, we could not have been 19 weeks at sea, with so few inconveniences. Captain Grey is an excellent seaman, and does more of the work of his ship than is usual. The officers and midshipmen have acted several times for our diversion, and remarkably well.

The serious drama, Ella Rosenberg, was enough to kill one. Ella’s petticoats were so short, and her cap with her plaits of oakum always would fall off when she fainted away, and a tall Quartermaster, who acted the confidant, would call her Hella, and never caught her in time!

Some of the sailors were heard talking over the officers’ acting, and saying, “They do low comedy pretty well, but they do not understand how to act the gentleman at all.”

How little we thought in old Grosvenor Street days, when we sat at the little window listening to the organ-man playing “Portrait charmant” while the carriage was adjusting itself at the door, that we should be parted in such an out-sea-ish sort of way. That in the middle of February, when we ought to be shivering in a thick yellow fog, George and I should be established on a pile of cushions in the stern window of his cabin, he without his coat, waistcoat, and shoes, learning Hindoostanee by the sweat of his brow. I, with only one petticoat and a thin dressing-gown on, a large fan in one hand and a pen in the other, and neither of us able to attend to our occupations because my little black spaniel will yap at us, to make us look at the shark which is playing “Portrait charmant” to two little pilot-fish close under the window.

I should like to go back to those Grosvenor St. days again. I have had so much time for thinking over old times lately, that I never knew my own life thoroughly before. I can quite fancy sometimes that if we could think in our graves (and who knows), my thoughts would be just what they are now – the same vivid recollections of former friends and scenes, and the same yearning to be with them again. There is hardly anything you and I have talked over, that has not come to life in my mind again, and I could wring my hands, and tear my hair out, to go back and do it all over again.

The cottage at Boyle Farm, W. de Roos’s troubles, Henry Montagu, the Sarpent,430 even that old Danford431 with the wen, Mrs. Shepherd and the Hossy Jossies. Dear me! Did I ever have jollier days with anybody or love anybody better?

Do write and tell me all about yourself now, and your children – I don’t half know them. There is a tassel of small ones, like the tassel at the end of a kite’s tail, that I know nothing about – not even their names. Tell me all their histories. There is an Emily,432 I know. What shall I send her from Calcutta if we ever arrive there? It is now five months since we have been travelling away from letters, and I feel such hot tears come into my eyes when I think of…

Monday, February 29, 1836.– I thought we should have been coming home with our fortunes made by this time, but we are still within a hundred miles of the Sandheads. At this precise moment we are at anchor in green water, so different to the deep blue sea, near some shoals, which is advantageous, because we can pick up our petticoats and pick our way to land.

Thursday. In the Hooghly.– At last, by dint of very great patience and very little wind, we have arrived, got the pilot on board early yesterday morning, saw Saugur, which looks as if it had been gnawed to the bone by the tigers that live on it. We are surrounded by boats manned by black people, who, by some strange inadvertance, have utterly forgotten to put on any cloaks whatever. We have a steamer towing us, a civil welcome from Sir C. Metcalfe;433 a Prince of Oudh, who has been deposed by an undutiful nephew, and deprived of several lacs of rupees, asking for his Excellency, well knowing that the first word even in Hindoostanee is valuable, which is so much his Excellency’s opinion, that he wisely refuses to hear it, and, above all, we have received a profusion of letters from home, ten fat ones for my own share. Nothing unpleasant in them, which, considering some are dated five weeks after we left England, is something to be thankful for.

Cecilia de Roos’s434 marriage; and poor old Lady Salisbury,435 it somehow seems as if nothing but fire could destroy her. I am going down to look over the box that contains the dresses in which we are to appear at our first Drawing-room to-morrow, and my blonde gown may, and in all probability will, come out quite yellow and fresh-patterned by the cockroaches. Your most affectionate

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Mrs. ListerBARRACKPORE,March 24, 1836.

MY DEAREST THERESA, In the utter bewilderment in which I live, from having more to do in the oven than I could get through comfortably in a nice bracing frost, I quite forget whether I wrote to you on my first arrival. I sent off so many letters, necessarily precisely like one another, that I have forgotten all about them, except that they announced our arrival after a five months’ voyage, and that we were in all the nervousness of a first arrival in a hot land of strangers.

We have been here three weeks to-day, and are so accustomed to our way of life that I cannot help thinking we have been here much longer, and that it is nearly time to go home again. It is an odd dreamy existence in many respects, but horribly fatiguing realities breaking into it. It is more like a constant theatrical representation going on; everything is so picturesque and so utterly un-English. Wherever there is any state at all it is on the grandest scale. Every servant at Government House is a picture by himself, in his loose muslin robes, with scarlet and gold ropes round his waist, and his scarlet and gold turban over masses of black hair; and on the esplanade I hardly ever pass a native that I do not long to stop and sketch – some in satin and gold, and then perhaps the next thing you meet is a nice English Britschka with good horses driven by a turbaned coachman, and a tribe of running footmen by its side, and in it is one of the native Princes, dressed just as he was when he first came into the world, sitting cross-legged on the front seat very composedly smoking his hookah.

Then, after passing a house that is much more like a palace than anything we see in England, we come to a row of mud-thatched huts with wild, black-looking savages squatting in front of them, little black native children running up and down the cocoa-trees above the huts, and no one appearance of civilization that would lead one to guess any European had ever set foot on the land before. The next minute we may come to a palace again, or to a regiment of Sepoys in the highest state of discipline, or to a body burning on the river-shore, or another body floating down the river with vultures working away at it. Then, if George is with us, we may meet a crowd of white-muslined men who begin by knocking their heads against the ground, and then give their long petitions (asking for some impossibility) in the Hindustani language, or else an English petition, which is apparently a set of words copied from some dictionary. No sense whatever – otherwise an excellent petition.

I have described our Calcutta house and household so often that I cannot do it again. It is all very magnificent, but I cannot endure our life there. We go there on Monday morning before breakfast. We have great dinners of 50 people, “fathers and mothers unknown,” to say nothing of themselves. Every Monday and Wednesday evening Fanny and I are at home to anybody who is on what is called the Government House List. What that is I cannot say; the Aides-de-Camp settle it between them, and if they are the clever young men I hope they are, they naturally place on it the ladies most agreeable to themselves.

On Thursday morning we also receive any people who chance to notify themselves the day before. The visiting-time is from ten to one in the mornings, and we found it so fatiguing to have 100 or 120 people at that time of day that we have now chosen Tuesday evenings and Thursday mornings, and do not mean to be at home the rest of the week. There are schools to visit, and ceremonies half the week. Yesterday we had an examination at Government House of the Hindu College, and the great banqueting-hall was completely filled with natives of the higher class. Some of the boys in their gorgeous dresses looked very well, reciting and acting scenes from Shakespeare. It is one of the prettiest sights I have seen in Calcutta. On Thursday afternoon we always come here, and a prodigious pleasure it is. It feels something like home. It is sixteen miles from Calcutta, on the river-side. A beautiful fresh green park, a lovely flower-garden, a menagerie that has been neglected; but there is a foundation of a tiger and a leopard and two rhinoceros’, and we can without trouble throw in a few light monkeys and birds to these heavy articles. It is much cooler here, and we can step out in the evening and walk a few hundred yards undisturbed.

Then, though we ask a few of the magnates of the land, and a wife or a daughter or so each time, they are lodged in separate bungalows in the park, and never appear but at luncheon and dinner, and are no trouble. We are so many in the family naturally, that seven or eight more or less make no difference at those times, and I take a drive or a ride on the elephant alone with George very regularly.

I never see him at Calcutta except in a crowd. In short, Barrackpore is, I see, to save me from India. I believe the Aides-de-Camp and secretaries all detest it, but there is no necessity to know that. George has made William Osborne Military Secretary, which gives him a very good income, and plenty to do. He has talent enough for anything, luckily likes occupation, and is very happy. Captain Grey is living with us, but the Jupiter sails the end of next week. I am afraid he will have a tiresome journey home; he takes back many more soldiers than the ship can conveniently hold, and not only that, but such quantities of wives and children.

I hope you have written to me; you would if you knew the ravenous craving for letters that possesses the wretches who are sent here. They are the only things to care for; you cannot mention a name that will not interest me, whereas I can never find one that you have ever heard before. Fanny desires me to say she wears your brooch constantly. I need not mention that of my dear bracelet. I hope in a few weeks we shall find something to send home, but hitherto we have found nothing but very dear French goods. Please write.

Give my love to your brother George when you see him or write to him. Now that I am dead and buried I sit in my hot grave and think over all the people I liked in the other world, and I find nobody that I knew had more community of interests and amusements with their kind. I often long for a laugh and talk with him, but it would be too pleasant for the climate.

Tell me an immense deal about yourself, and do write, there’s a duck. Your most affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady CampbellGovernment House, Calcutta,August 16, 1836.

MY DEAREST PAM, Your long, dear letter has actually found its way here – came in last week quite by itself, having travelled 15,000 miles with nobody to take care of it, and it arrived feeling quite well and not a bit altered since it left you. I cannot sufficiently explain the value of a letter here; rupees in any number could not express the sum which a letter is worth, and I do not know how to make you understand it. But, you see, the scene in India is so well got up to show off a letter.

I was suddenly picked up out of a large collection of brothers, sisters, and intimate friends, with heaps of daily interests and habits of long standing, devoted to the last night’s debate and this morning’s paper, detesting the heat of even an English summer, worshipping autumn, and rather rejoicing in a sharp East wind, with a passion for sketching in the country, and enjoying an easy life in town – with all this we are sent off out of the reach of even letters from home, to an entirely new society of a most second-rate description, – to a life of forms and Aides-de-Camp half the day, and darkness and solitude the other half – and to a climate!!

Topics of interest we have none indigenous to the soil. There is a great deal of gossip, I believe, but in the first place, I do not know the people sufficiently by name or by sight to attach the right history to the right face, even if I wanted to hear it, and we could not get into any intimacies even if we wished it, for in our despotic Government, where the whole patronage of this immense country is in the hands of the Governor-General, the intimacy of any one person here would put the rest of the society into a fume, and it is too hot for any super-induced fuming…

The real calamity of the life is the separation from home and friends. It feels like death, and all the poor mothers here who have to part from their children from five years old to seventeen are more to be pitied than it is possible to say. And the annoyance of the life is the climate. It is so very HOT, I do not know how to spell it large enough.

Now I have stated our grievances, I must put all the per contras lest you should think me discontented. First, George is as happy as a King; then our healths, as I said before, are very good, though we look like people playing at Snap-dragon – everybody does. And though it is not a life that admits of one doing much active good, some is always possible in this position, and then it is a life of great solitude, which is wholesome.

Then, as a set-off to discomforts peculiar to the climate, we have every luxury that the wit of man can devise, and are gradually acquiring the Indian habit of denying ourselves nothing, which will be awkward. I get up at eight, and with the assistance of Wright and my two black maids – picturesque creatures as far as white muslin and scriptural-looking dresses can make ugly women – contrive to have a bath and to be dressed, and to order dinner by nine, when we meet in the great hall for breakfast.

When I describe my life, you must take for granted the others are all much the same, except that His Excellency’s tail is four times longer than ours at least. Well, I have all my rooms shut up and made dark before I leave them, and go out into my passage, where I find my two tailors sitting cross-legged, making my gowns; the two Dacca embroiderers whom I have taken into my private pay working at a frame of flowers that look like paintings; Chance, my little dog, under his own servant’s arm; a meter with his broom to sweep the rooms, two bearers who pull the punkahs; a sentry to mind that none of these steal anything; and a Jemadar436 and four Hurkarus,437 who are my particular attendants and follow me about wherever I go – my tail. These people are all dressed in white muslin, with red and gold turbans and sashes, and are so picturesque that when I can find no other employment for them I make them sit for their pictures.

They all make their salaam and we proceed to breakfast which is in an immense marble hall, and is generally attended by the two Aides-de-Camp in waiting, the doctor, the private Secretary, and anybody who may be transacting business at the time… At six the whole house is opened, windows, shutters, etc., and carriages, horses, gigs, phaetons, guards, all come to the door, and we ride or drive just as we like, come home in time to dress for an eight o’clock dinner, during which the band plays. We sit out in the verandah and play at chess or écarté for an hour, and at ten everybody goes to bed.

The week is diversified by a great dinner of fifty people on Monday; on Tuesday we are at home, which was originally meant for a sort of evening visiting, but it is turned into a regular dance, as the hotter it is the more they like dancing. Thursday mornings, Fanny and I are also at home from ten to twelve for introductions, people landing or coming from up the country, and for any others of society who wish to see us.

It is very formal and very tiresome. They look very smart, come in immense numbers, sit down for five minutes, and, if there are forty in the room at once, never speak to each other. But it is a cheap way of getting through all the visiting duties of life at one fell swoop. On Thursday evenings we used to go to Barrackpore to stay till the following Monday, but now we only go once a fortnight. We are an immense body to move if it happens to be a pouring day – about four hundred altogether.

Barrackpore is a really pretty place. I am making such a garden there, my own private one, for there is a lovely garden there already, but a quarter of a mile from the house, and nobody can walk half a quarter of a mile in this country.

It seems so odd to have everything one wants, doesn’t it, Pam? I wanted a vase for fish in my garden; a civil engineer put up two.

The other day we ordered the carriage at an undue hour, and there were no guards, and there was such a fuss about it – the Military Secretary writing to the Captain of the Body Guards, and he blaming the Aide-de-Camp in waiting; and I thought of the time when the hackney coach adjusted itself to the Grosvenor Street door, and of William de Roos’s sending Danford away from the play that the hack might seem an accident, as if the carriage had not come.

Those were the really jolly days. I wish we could go back to them. You cannot imagine how I enjoyed your history of your children, those are the letters to send to India. Other people or papers tell public news. What a pleasure it is to have a letter!

I am so glad you like Lord Morpeth,438 I always did love him; I wish you would tell him to write to me in that odd cramped hand. Poor Mrs. Beresford, she goes on Wednesday next; I shall be glad when she is safely off. She takes a box for you, with a gown George gives you which I thought would be useful for your Castle drawing-rooms, and some handkerchiefs William sends you, which I have had worked for him by an old native, with a long white beard, who works like an angel. I mean to send my godchild a present the next opportunity. Yours,

E. E.Miss Eden to Mrs. ListerGOVERNMENT HOUSE,August 24, 1836.

MY DEAREST THERESA. After I wrote you that long letter of upbraiding for never having written to me, your Edinburgh letter, which had reached the respectable age of ten months, was forwarded to me, it having been mislaid with a large packet of other letters, and remained four months in the Custom House! So pleasant when one is almost stamping with impatience for letters – or rather, would be so, if the climate did not prevent those active expressions of feeling.

I think I told you how the American edition of Dacre439 had been one of my first purchases here, and I read it over with considerable pleasure. I do not know exactly what I mean, but I do not think you and your book are like each other. I do not mean any disparagement to either; there may be a very pretty fair mother with a very pretty dark child, both good in their way, but not like, and I cannot put your voice to any of the sentences in your book, or say to any part of it, “So like Theresa!” I am glad of that. I hate those banale likenesses of books to their author. Why did you not tell me the name of your new book? I daresay everybody has read it and discussed it in England, and I don’t know its name. And to think of you writing about it in that vague way to me, 15,000 miles off!

The English editions of novels are to be had here for about three guineas apiece. They charge rupees for shillings, and a rupee is about two shillings and a penny. I have bought quantities of American editions of English books; but then it is a bore waiting till a work is two years old before one reads it. The Americans are valuable creatures at this distance. They send us novels, ice, and apples – three things that, as you may guess, are not indigenous to the soil. I own, I think the apples horrid, they taste of hay and the ship, but the poor dear yellow creatures who have been here twenty years, and who left their homes at an age when munching an unripe apple was a real pleasure, and who have never seen one since, fly at this mucky fruit and fancy themselves young and their livers the natural size, as they eat it. The first freight of apples the Americans sent covered the whole expense of the ship’s passage out.

We are all so grieved to-day for poor Mrs. Beresford, whom you may remember as a Miss Sewell, going out with Mrs. Hope. Colonel Beresford is the Military Secretary to Sir H. Fane,440 and came here just a year ago. She has always declared the climate disagreed with her, and as she hated this place and its inhabitants, they did not like her, and said her ailments were all fancy. I never thought so; and she has proved the climate really disagreed with her, by having a violent fever that has lasted two months. The doctors said there was nothing for it but a return to England. Colonel Beresford came out with Sir H. Fane by way of bettering his fortunes, but as they have been here only a year, they have not yet got over the expense of coming out, so there was nothing for it but her going alone. She is one of those people entirely dependent on her husband’s care. I hardly know such another attentive servant as he is to her – weighed her medicines, carried her about, etc. – in short, been what she could not find here for millions – an excellent English nurse.

On Tuesday she was to have gone on board, and I wrote to offer her carriage, assistance, etc., and got back a wretched note from him saying a sudden and rapid change had come on, and she was not expected to live an hour. However, she has lived on, and the doctors still say that, though they do not think she can live, the only chance for it will be going to sea; so she is to be carried on board this afternoon with her little girl, who is a dear little thing, but wants a cool climate too. I cannot imagine a more painful time for Colonel Beresford than the next few months, for as he is obliged to go up the country with the Commander-in-Chief, and The Perfect, her ship, may not speak another till they get to the Cape, it may be six months before he hears if she survives the first week of change. If she does, I think she will recover. I am so sorry for them; and here, where we are a limited set who know each other at all, one thinks more of these stories.

I never could take to the Calcutta society, even if there were any, but there is not. Almost everybody who was here when we landed five months ago are gone either home or up the country. They come to Calcutta because they are on their way out to make their fortunes, or on their way home because they have made them, or because their healths require change of station, and they come here to ask for it.

To-day was our receiving day. We receive visits from eleven to one every Thursday morning, and out of seventy or eighty people there were few who were not new introductions. “Have you been here long?” “Only just landed from the Marianne Webb– a tiresome voyage.” “Did you suffer much at sea?” And so on. “Did you come in the same ship?” “No, we are just come from Lucknow.” And then there comes all the story about the hot winds up the country, and whether it is worse or better than Bengal. So tiresome! I rather like to see the new arrivals, if they do not put off calling for more than a week, as they arrive with a little pink colour in their cheeks which lasts nearly ten days, but I heard one of our visitors to-day, who has been in India twenty years, declare seriously that he hated that colour; he thought it looked unnatural and like a disease. I begin to see what he means.

God bless you, dearest Theresa. I want to send this by The Perfect, and am so tired with our visits I cannot write any more. I hope you have written again and sent yours. I hoped to send you something pretty by this ship, but (it is not a mere façon de parler) in this rainy season there is not an item of any description to be bought in Calcutta. Nobody opens even the packages that arrive by mistake, as twenty-four hours spoils everything, but when the cold weather begins, they say that the merchants will have plenty of scarfs, silks, etc., from China and up the country. I want something Indian. We have written to China for any or everything, in the meantime. Your most affectionate