Miss Eden's Letters

Marching disagrees so much with me, that by the doctor’s advice, and George’s desire, I leave the camp at Agra, and go straight down to Calcutta, where I hope to be the middle of February. George does not expect to be there before the 1st of April, but I rather hope he will, driven by the heat, cut off some of his tour as the time draws nearer. We have been joined on the march by several officers returning from Cabul, and very flourishing they look, and they cannot make out that their sufferings have been what the papers tried to make out. Captain Dawkins, of Lord Auckland’s Bodyguard, who has been through the campaign with a regiment to which he lawfully belongs, has come back looking fatter than most Falstaffs, and he brought back three of the sheep which he left with us at Ferozepore last year, so that danger of starving was not great.

God bless you, dearest Theresa. This is a very stupid letter, but then it is better than none, which is what I have had from you. And you cannot imagine how hot it is. Your most affectionate

E. EDEN.

CHAPTER XII

1840-1842

Miss Eden to Mr. C. GrevilleBARRACKPORE,March 13, 1840.

MY DEAR MR. GREVILLE, I give it up; I succumb; I see clearly I was all wrong; generally am, quite mistaken, very sorry, very stupid, etc. But you and every friend I have will do me the justice to say that since the first year we passed here I have mentioned openly that I was regularly twaddling, that I hardly remembered a proper name, and never knew what was meant for jest or earnest. I have written it home twenty times, and it is not a complaint peculiar to me, but common to everybody who has passed a hot season or two in India. Their brains are fairly stewed down into a harmless jelly; and it is a merciful dispensation that, as they have not bodily strength to laugh at a joke, they have not wit left to understand one. I still think that your irony was too fine even for England – I mean, I might have been puzzled there; here, of course, I took it all au pied de la lettre. I should not have minded it so much, if just at the moment when George had hazarded himself in a line that must have ended in success or in impeachment, he had not been turned upon by almost all the Indian authorities, and every paper without exception. I did not care for their opinions, wretched little buzzings of Indian mosquitoes, but when an imposing English hornet came down upon me with the same small Toryisms, as I thought, I could not stand it. However, I see it all clearly now, so let us make it up. “Hostess, I forgive thee: look to thy servants. Wash thy face. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me.”

I rather expect the next overland may bring out a copy of William’s book; it is just the sort of thing which will make a great sensation here. Everybody makes a point of fainting away if their names are mentioned in the public prints; they have simple hysterics if they are merely mentioned in a list of passengers by a steamer, etc.; but if their names are coupled with a comment on their conduct or promotion, they fall into a dream. Therefore a book upon a subject that may be connected with politics, by a Military Secretary to the Governor-General, will be too much for their nerves. I depend upon your Preface for annihilating them. We are really looking to it with great anxiety, and considerable prospect of amusement. The papers will wrangle for a month if you have made any mistake as to the various members of the Singh family, of which they know nothing themselves. Then the Prinsep,482 who wrote a book about Runjeet, which you have probably made use of, is now a Member of Council, the greatest bore Providence ever created, and so contradictory that he will not let anybody agree or differ with him. If you have made any use of his book, I mean solemnly to assert that I know from the best authority you have never heard of it or him, that it was a great pity you had not, etc.

Your friendship with Mary [Drummond] is certainly rather funny, but once begun, I think it will go on progressing. Please to let me know if you see the slightest inkling of a flirtation for either of the girls. They are the greatest dears I know, and though I had rather they should not marry till next year, that I may be by to approve, still I should like to hear of it too.

We came up here this week to see if it were cooler than Calcutta (vain idea!), and to receive the visits of the station, which, as there are eight regiments at Barrackpore, were numerous and dull. We had two hours of fat generals and yellow brigadiers clanking in and out of the room yesterday; but one visit was rather amusing. The lady was like Caroline Elliot in her young days; married to come out here; landed a month ago; is in perfect horror at India; and evidently the poor husband has lost any charm he ever might have had by his guilt in inveigling her out here. I asked if she had got into her own house yet. “I have not seen a house at Barrackpore. Tweddell has taken a barn for me, but I am not in my own barn yet.” “Have you found a good Ayah? She would help you.” “I have got some black things Tweddell calls servants. I do not understand a word they say.” She said she went to bed immediately after dinner, and I asked if she dined late. “How can I tell? There is no difference in the hours. Always shut up in a prison to be stung by mosquitoes. And then Tweddell told me I should be a little Eastern Queen. Oh, if I could go back this last year.” She was dressed up to the last pitch of the last number of the Journal de Modes, which, poor girl, will not be of much use at Barrackpore, where the officers are too poor even to dine with each other; and I own, I think Tweddell has a great deal to answer for, and is answering for his sins in a wearisome life. But to the by-standers who have not seen a fresh English girl nor a hearty English aversion for some years, she was an amusing incident.

Did you know much of Lord Jocelyn483 at home? He has seen his Agra and Delhi since he left us, is now doing a bit of tiger-shooting, and then is coming down as fast as he can to join this Chinese expedition. His regiment does not go, but George has got Captain Bethune to take him as a guest. I think I should like to go marauding to Canton. We found at Calcutta a box of bronze curiosities, etc., that we had ordered before this little painful misunderstanding with Lin, etc., and they give a great idea of what might be picked up by an experienced plunderer. Yours ever,

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Mr. C. GrevilleBARRACKPORE,Sunday, April 19, 1840.

MY DEAR MR. GREVILLE, The March overland is just come in, and they say that if we send an express to Calcutta, to overtake the other express which was going off with George’s despatches this afternoon, everything will come straight at Bombay. In my own mind I see nothing but a long train of innocent Bengalese running after each other, each with a letter in his hand, the thermometer at 150, and the head man of the train waving the small quantity of muslin he deigns to wear to a distant puff of smoke in the Bay of Bengal.

However, as our friendship has had such a frightful secousse and wants steadying, I pay you every possible little attention, so I write this hurried line to say that the few letters which have yet arrived, and two stray papers, all speak in the highest tones of The Book, and of its success, and how well it is got up, and we are longing for a copy of it, and George is politically at ease from its being spoken of as a personal narrative, and altogether it seems like an amusing incident. William is full of gratitude for all the trouble you have taken about it.

We have subsided from the interests of Afghan politics into the daily difficulties of keeping ourselves from being baked alive. I may say we have risen to this higher pursuit, for it is much the more important of the two, and of much more difficult achievement. China promises to be amusing; they are arming themselves and fitting up little innocent American ships, and collecting war junks; and my own belief is that they are so conceited and so astucious that they will contrive some odd way of blowing up all our 74’s with blue and red fireworks, take all our sailors and soldiers prisoners, and teach them to cut out ivory hollow balls.

Lord Jocelyn is staying with us, but will sail in about ten days in the Conway. He goes merely as a volunteer with representatives of the Dragoons, and George has arranged that he is to be passed into any ship that is likely to see most service. He has great merit in the ardour with which he looks about for information and for service, and I hope the Chinese will not take him prisoner.

So the dear little Queen is now Mrs. A. C. I hope she will be happy; and they may say what they like of her, but she certainly contrives to conduct herself wonderfully, through a great many trying ceremonies, – never awkward, and yet just shy enough, and I like her so for being so affectionate to Aunt Adelaide.

Pray tell Mrs. Drummond I have had her letter and Theresa’s journal, much to my heart’s content, and I would have written her another line, but I am horrified at the price of letters. Not but what I guessed my journal would cost a great deal too much – but £2. 8. 0! I am horrified in the English sense. Here that would be dog cheap – 24 rupees. I never speak to anybody for less.

The long hand of my watch caught in the other, and the watchmaker charged 20 rupees for bending it up a hair’s breadth. But still, £2. 8. 0 for a letter! I flatter myself your office pays for this. Good-bye. Ever yours,

E. EDEN.Miss E. Eden to Mr. C. GrevilleCALCUTTA,July 6, 1840.

My dear Mr. Greville, At last a copy of The Court and Camp has reached Calcutta, and was picked up by an alert Aide-de-Camp, who was in the shop when it arrived. It is immensely well got up, and altogether, I think, a pretty little book, and more of a book than I expected. It is a pity more copies did not come by one ship, for there are quantities bespoken. But in the meanwhile everybody is borrowing this, and they all delight in the introductory chapter, because, of course, not one of them has the least idea of the history of the Sikhs as connected with India, nor of India as connected with anything else, so they are all delighted at learning it so cheaply, and they look upon you as a prodigy of Eastern learning. There are one or two misprints in the book, which do very well for England, but is the sort of thing they will take up here, where their intellects are below mistake par, but just up to a misprint; and I should imagine that the Agra Akbar will wonder at the ignorance of the aristocracy who can call a thermantidote a phermantidote, and that the Delhi Gazette, which is courtly, will say it ought to be phermantidote, and that they could give the Greek derivation, only they have no Greek type.

I think you ought to feel a sort of paternal interest in the Sikh dynasty, and would like to know that Kharak Singh484 still retains the name of King, and Mr. Clerk (the Governor-General’s agent) says that Noormahal’s attentions to his father in public increase in proportion as he deprives him of all power. He says Noormahal all through the Durbar is occupied in wiping the dust from Kharak’s band, when not a particle has settled, or with a Chowry in driving away flies from his father’s hand, which they never approach, and that Kharak, though a fool, is wise enough not to like these demonstrations of tenderness.

The fleet left Singapore for Macao on the 30th May; the fear of bad weather prevented their waiting any longer for Admiral Elliot. William Osborne and Lord Jocelyn seemed very well satisfied with their accommodation in the Conway, and were gone on in her. William asked some of the Chinese at Singapore whether their way of making war was like ours, and they said, “Much the same, only more guns and less drum.” He asked what they thought of the steamers, which were, in fact, quite new to them, and they said, “Oh, plenty at Pekin; only little smaller.” I am in a horrid mood of mind at all these requisitions from home that are to keep us here another year; and have turned rank Tory on the spot, and can think of nothing but the quickest means of turning the Ministry out, and then of rushing down to the river-side and beckoning to the first ship. But surely we never shall be kept here. I don’t think the people at home have an idea what a place it is, but they will know hereafter, if they go on behaving so in this life. And as for the idea that any Governor-General is to stay till everything is quite quiet and peaceable in this great continent, you might as well ask the fish to stay in the frying-pan till they have put out the fire.

There always must be some great piece of work in hand here. In the meantime, life is passing and friends are dying, and we are becoming so old that it will be impossible to take up the thread of existence again with the young things like the Drummonds, etc., whom I had looked upon as the supports of my old age. It will never do to stay.

We are to have at dinner to-day a son of Theodore Hook’s, just arrived. He does not look as if he could improvise, or do much better if he provised; but I never saw the father, so he may look stupid, too, without being so. I see there are two of T. Hook’s novels published lately, and trust the son may have partially brought them out.485

I have become a great whist player upon the one-eyed monarch principle. Nobody else can play at all, and when the Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief dine together, it is obvious that they must have their rubber, and so I and the Aide-de-Camp or the Doctor play with them. Can’t you see the sort of thing? Shocking whist, but it helps the evening through. I play much better than Sir Jasper,486 but worse, George says, than anybody else he ever saw. Ever yours,

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Lady CampbellCALCUTTA,July 17, 1840.

MY DEAREST PAM, Your friend Mr. Taylor arrived this week with the letter you gave him ten months ago – perhaps not bad travelling for a letter of introduction, though not exactly rapid as a means of receiving intelligence. However, a letter’s a letter, and I am the last person in the world to complain.

George has seen your Taylor, and says he is very promising, and I have asked him to Barrackpore for love of you and in the strongest reliance on your Edward’s487 judgment. Otherwise, there is a brother of his in this country now (thank goodness up the country) that used to drive me demented – just the opposite to all you say of your friend – not good-looking, not a “chap” at all, and rather a black sheep – though, poor man, I should not say so. But you cannot imagine the provocation of his manner or the excess of his conceit. It induced a freezing sort of snappishness in oneself that was, however, utterly unavailing; it only made him more affable and jocose. And, to crown all, he shaved his head after a fever, or his doctor shaved it to tease him, or something of that sort, and he came dancing about in a little velvet skull-cap.

I think my health has been so good this year at Calcutta because Pearce Taylor was not there.

No, dearest, I never blame you for not writing. I always feel that I know you just the same as ever, and that it is not your fault if your children take up all your time. I only regret that the world should be such a very large, thick, slice of bread, and that butter should be so scarce that they should have been obliged to spread us at the two opposite ends. We should have been much happier in the same butter-boat, but I suppose it could not be helped. My side of the bread too, is turned to the fire and I am half-roasted, which, if I do not write twice to your once, is my set off against the claims of your children.

I have always wondered how much you liked Mrs. Fane. You mentioned her in one letter as liking her very much, and she is a good-natured little woman, but not one of us, is she, Pam? I think she must have felt Sir Henry’s death.488 He was always very kind to her in his way, without putting her at her ease.

Our George has done very well in India, has he not? You know we always thought highly of him even in his comical dog days… Now I think he has done enough, and might as well go home, but none of the people at home will hear of it, and this month’s despatches have made me desperate. Moreover, I cannot stay away another year from Mary and her girls, and fifty others. I do not like anybody here, and if we try to get up a shade more intimacy with any lady, then all the others are cross, and her husband or brother wants something, and that makes a story, and so on.

William Osborne is gone with the China expedition, which is a sad loss to poor Fanny. However, I believe that will be a very short business, and that he will soon be back again. The Chinese have already begun to say they hope there will be much talkee before fightee, which does not promise much fightee. William says that at Singapore they saw quantities of little dogs fattening regularly in coops for the table, and their captain’s steward was looking at them, which gave Lord Jocelyn and himself an alarm about their future dinners.

Your little picture is still such a pleasure to me. Mind you keep like it, that I may know you again. None of the children know me, which is shocking and foolish. Your most affectionate

E. E.Lady Campbell to Miss EdenDUBLIN,September 27, 1840.

Just so my darling. I am rather glad you wrote before you saw the Taylor I sent, for fear he should be a beast in spite of Edward’s good word. Emmy, this other year seems harder to swallow than all the rest. But I will not touch upon it; it is too raw. There has been a talk of our asking for something in India; I thought it just probable that we might pass each other at sea! However, we should have to leave so many children they said it would not pay, and I could have hugged them. One man I can scarce bear to look at who put it into Sir Guy’s head at first, and how much we were to lay by, and how charming the climate was, and how I should marry my daughters!

Yes, Sir Guy’s Fanny is married and very happy. Captain Harvey489 is a very handsome, nice person; they have not much money at present, but that cannot be helped. Pam490 has been with her for the last month at Carlisle, where Fanny is quartered. Pam was very ill with ague, so I sent her to the Napiers. She comes back to me next week. I long to show her to you – not for the beauty, for she is no beauty, tho’ nice-looking. But, Emmy, she is quite, quite one of us – I need not explain how pleasant, how good, how full of sense and fun. She is such a comfort to me.

The next, Georgina,491 is very pretty and very dear, but not so gentle and patient as Pam.

I had my sailor boy for two blessed months. This boy, Guy,492 came home so improved, so gentle and affectionate, and delightful from sea. I felt so thankful, as I rather feared the sea. It is a dreadful life to be the mother of a sailor; so hard to bear. Wind always to me was a sad sound, but now I can hardly help crying. All the rest are good little nice things, and I have no governess, so I have a good deal of their company more or less. We are quaking for the Brevet, but I will not entertain you with my hopes and fears, and want of pence, or what you call Pice, don’t you?..

I like Lord Ebrington, and he seems to like you all so much. I get on much better with him than with Lord Normanby. However, he does not give dinners and balls and parties enough, and the trade complain. Dear Lord Morpeth is coming to dine with me to-day, and won’t we talk of you? He is such a charming person, and my most particular friend. You gave him to me, you know, when you went away. Mary will have told you how we had settled I was to go over and see her. Her girls are so nice, and she herself dearer than ever, and all the better from going out more. For a little while she really ensconced herself inside the high wire nursery fender, and one saw her in the uncomfortable way in which when we were bairns you may remember we used to see the fire, never getting at it enough. I was sorry she gave up poor Grosvenor Place. I like all those old Grosvenors; I could have cried when I looked at No. 30! Du reste, I rather like getting old; there is wonderful repose in it; it saves one so much trouble – so much of the work done. I am so glad you are getting fat, so am I, and I combine also the grey hair which you mention George has assumed. I am very grey; fat and grey sounds like an old cat, but what does it signify? when once we meet, how young we shall feel then. Emmy, do you remember your aversion to mittens? My dear, I was in advance of my age. When I wore them, like Bacon and Galileo I appealed to posterity, and posterity made haste, and everybody wears mittens, morning, noon, and night. The only chance you have is, that they will have burnt out before you come back, and my hair too. Everybody lisse and banded, and they little know that George and I were the only two people that wore close heads in our day.

The Lansdownes spent a week here. She is looking well, and in much better spirits, and her countenance so much softer and gentler, that I think her more loveable than I ever knew. I never knew how much I loved her till I was with her in her grief.493 Louisa494 looking well for her, and ready to talk and be pleased. Lord Lansdowne rather older. I was wondering what made him look so well and distinguished and conversable, and I found he was set off by Lord Charlemont, who rejoices in a brown natural hair wig, which made Lord Lansdowne in his nice grey hair look quite beautiful.

I have got a nice two-year-old495 baby just pour me désennuyer; such a nice duck! The youngest after six girls. Pam says he is doomed to wear all the old bent bonnets out, and accordingly I found him in the hay with a bonnet on.

Tuesday, September 20, 1840.

I wrote all this Sunday and I must just add one word. Lord Morpeth dined here early with me and the children, and was to start by the eleven o’clock train to the packet for to sail for England to attend the Cabinet Council, as we vulgar imagine, upon peace or war, rien que ça. However, my delicacy was such I did not pump at all. He is a real good soul, and I have scruples about pumping him. Old Berkeley Square I always make a point of pumping till the handle has come off in my hand often, but very little water ever! Yours ever,

PAMELA CAMPBELL.Miss Eden to the Countess of BuckinghamshireCALCUTTA,January 15, 1841.

MY DEAREST SISTER, After a long cessation all our letters came to hand – all from September to November 4th. You had been doing your Mimms, which I never think sounds comfortable. Indeed, I remember seeing the place once and thinking it very melancholy, damp, and dead-leafish.

Yes, as you say, as long as Chance is alive there is a wall between Dandy and death; but then you know spaniels live longer than terriers, and at all events it would be a sort of preparation to Dandy to insinuate to him that Chance has lost his last tooth, which the faithful Jimmund, his servant, has had set in a silver ring.

You have never mentioned that you have a new clergyman of the name of Hazlewood at Greenwich. You never tell me anything in confidence whatever, after so many years; and after all, I don’t see the use of making such a mystery of it. “But I have often observed a little spirit of nonsense and secrecy,” as Mrs. Norris says, about your clergyman, that I would advise you to get rid of. Your Hazlewood (you see I know his real name) is brother to our Captain Hazlewood, commonly called Harum Scarum. Hazlewood Scarum got a letter by this last post saying: “Lady Buckinghamshire, who is a constant attendant at my church, is, I find, a sister of Lord Auckland’s. You cannot imagine how much I wish to make her acquaintance. I think our mutual interests in India,” etc., etc.

Probably by this time you may have seen him. Our Hazlewood is going home next week in the Hardwick. The wounds he received at Ghazni496 were very severe; and he rattles about, and dances and rides, and proposes and breaks off his engagements, and altogether he has never let himself get well, and has suffered so much from his arm lately that his general health is beginning to give way, and Doctor Drummond has ordered him home. A man who goes home on a medical certificate has his passage paid by the liberal Company, and gets £50 a year while he is in England; so that upon the whole a slight wound is not such a bad thing. I am rather on the look-out for a generous adversary who will wound me just up to the pitch of being ordered home, and having my passage paid, but not a bit more. Poor Hazlewood’s is much more than that; but the voyage will probably set him up, though he will never have the use of his arm again. As he will go to Greenwich to see his brother, I have given him a line to you. It will not entail upon you more than a dinner, and he is a very good-humoured, obliging creature, and not at all vulgar. There is not the slightest chance of his spoiling the view at Eastcombe by setting that little wretched stream the Thames on fire; though I have no doubt he will try, as he always must be busy about something. He may give you a flourishing account of us, as we are all going on very well, I think.