Up the Country

I am in that mood that I should almost be glad if the Sikhs, or the Russians, or anybody, would come and take us all. It would be one way out of the country. Captain C. has got an excellent appointment at Lucknow, but he will not leave us till after Gwalior, as he thinks he may be of use, as X. must stay here to build and superintend. Captain C. has thoroughly earned his appointment by four years’ constant service, but he is the last of the original set, and we are all very unhappy at his going, he is the most thorough gentleman in mind, and very clever and original. He has always been a great favourite with G., and as I think Mr. D. might accidentally fall in with Allan C. or find an opportunity of seeing him, perhaps he would mention how well his son is thought of, and how well he is now settled. Captain X. bore his disappointment wonderfully well, and has been very amiable in many respects. G. offered him a smaller place, which might just have enabled him to marry, but when he found Z. was going as well as Captain C., he thought we should be having so many strangers at once, just as we were settling in a new place and to a new sort of life, that he would not leave us. I really do not know what we could have done without him at this moment. He is ordering all the new buildings, buying furniture in all directions, and ordering up everything from Calcutta, where he had just provided for our return. Agra produces nothing, there is no shop, and so few Europeans that I suppose the box wallahs find no trade, so we have been obliged to send to Calcutta for mats for the floors, musquito curtains, even common pins.

Tuesday, Dec. 31.

I went early this morning with Mr. H. and – to see the Female Orphan School. We saw the boys last week – there are 150 boys and 130 girls who were picked up at the time of the famine two years ago, starving and with no relations. The boys are learning all sorts of trades; and as we are detained here another year, I thought it would be better to send my two little girls to the other school for the time, if they will let me have them again, to take to Mrs. Wilson. There is a German missionary and his wife at the head of this school. He speaks Hindoostanee tolerably, but she speaks no English and very little Hindoostanee; however, there is another woman to assist, and they seem to make it out very tolerably, and they are an interesting looking young couple, with such soft German voices. Rosina took Ameeum and Jehurun there after breakfast, and stayed great part of the day with them, but they all three did nothing but cry, though the old body is very sensible about them, and thinks it better they should go. Poor little things! I am sorry to lose them; they were such funny little animals, and used to imitate Wright and Rosina in trying to dress me, and really made themselves useful on the march. Z. is taking home a parcel to you – two of my sketch-books, which I want you to keep for me; the others are unluckily on the river on their way to Calcutta. Then, a parcel directed to you, in which there are two half shawls, embroidered all over, really about the prettiest things I have seen, which it appeared Wright had procured from Delhi for T. and E. She thought they would be very suitable for two young ladies going out. I thought they were too expensive presents for her to send, and F. and I tried to persuade her out of it, but she said she had got them on purpose, so there they are; and for fear you should be jealous, I have sent you a green worked Delhi scarf. Also, in a little box directed to R., there are two press papiers, a marble tortoise, and a marble book – Agra works, which I send T. and E. F. has sent the girls some rings; so what you are to wring from Z. when he arrives, are two sketch-books, a parcel of shawls, and a little box of rings, all directed to you; and these two marble things in the parcel to R.

CHAPTER L

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 1,000l. 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.

CHAPTER LI

Monday, Jan. 12, 1840.

WE dined with Colonel J. yesterday. He lives, I believe, quite in the native style, with a few black Mrs. J.’s gracing his domestic circle when we are not here, but he borrowed St. Cloup and our cooks to dress the dinner, and it all went off very well. That little Mrs. T. looked very pretty, but Captain T. planted himself opposite to her, and frowned whenever she tried to talk, but he did not quite stop her, and another week of society would, I expect, enable her to frown again. We went to Scindia’s durbar to-day. The palace was three miles off, and we had to set off at three on elephants, and the heat and the dust and the crowd were something inconceivable, but it was a curious show. The durbar was very orderly and handsome. G. and Scindia sat together on a gold throne with a canopy, and F. and I on two silver chairs next to G., and down each side of the room were his sirdars on one side and our officers on the other. After we had sat about ten minutes, the negotiations began for our going to see the ranee, and there were many preliminaries to arrange, and at last we condescended to walk through the two rooms that led to the zenana, for fear any of the bearers should catch a glimpse of anything, and no aide-de-camp was to go for the same reason, so we walked off with Mrs. H. We had sent the two ayahs there in the morning, as Mrs. H. does not speak the language very well. Some female slaves met us at the first door, and then some cousins of the rajah’s; in the next room two stepmothers, and then an old grandmother, and at the door of her own room was the little ranee, something like a little transformed cat in a fairy tale, covered with gold tissue, and clanking with diamonds. Her feet and hands were covered with rings fastened with diamond chains to her wrists and ankles. She laid hold of our hands and led us to her throne, which was like the rajah’s, without a canopy, and her women lifted her up, and we sat on each side of her, and then all the relations sat in two rows on chairs, and looked uncomfortable, and the nautch girls began dancing. The ranee is only eight years old, and is the sister of his first wife, on whom he doted, and on her death-bed she made him promise to marry this child. She was so shy, she would hardly let us see her face, but the old women talked for her, and the presents filled up the time, for the rajah had ordered that she should put all the jewellery on us with her own little hands. I had a diamond necklace and a collar, some native pearl earrings that hung nearly down to the waist, and a beautiful pair of diamond bracelets, and the great article of all was an immense diamond tiara. I luckily could not keep this on with a bonnet. They were valued altogether at 2,400l., the mere stones. F.’s were of different shapes, some very pretty, but not so costly, but altogether it was an immense prize for the Company. Then we had a bale of shawls, and the ayahs got six shawls, and Mrs. H. a necklace, and besides all the diamonds, they hung flowers all over us. We must have looked like mad tragedy queens when we came out, but everybody was transmogrified in the same way. Some years ago, it might have made us laugh, but W. and Mr. A., with great necklaces of flowers on, led us gravely back to our silver chairs, and there was G., sitting bolt upright, a pattern of patience, with a string of pearls as big as peas round his neck, a diamond ring on one hand and a large sapphire on the other, and a cocked hat embroidered in pearls at his side. We came home through a grand illumination, and were thoroughly tired at last.

Tuesday, Jan. 13.

Scindia returned G.’s visit to-day, and the ceremonies were much the same, and I think our presents were almost handsomer than his. G. asked him to come for a secret conference into the shawl tent with silver poles that Runjeet gave us, and in that was the gold bed inlaid with rubies, also Runjeet’s, on which they both sat, with B. and A., Colonel J. on one side and the rajah’s two ministers on the other. It looked mysterious and conspiring, and the rajah’s followers were in a horrid state of alarm; they said their king had been carried off, and had no guards, and perhaps never would be let out again. G. and the rajah transacted a little real business, and then G. got up and asked him to accept the tent and the bed, which quite delighted him, and he went away.

We went on to see a much more interesting little durbar. G. had all the old soubadars and havildars of the regiments that have been with us, all through this march, and some of the body-guard, and gave them each a gun and a pair of shawls. One old fellow has been fifty-eight years in the service, and would tell his story here: he had been at Java in Lord Minto’s time, and so on, and he had five medals to show, another had four; they are all most respectable natives. Their great desire was that G. should pour attar on their hands, with his own hand, which is a great distinction; and altogether it was a very touching sight, and has pleased all the troops very much.

We had a great dinner of all the officers afterwards, which luckily was not formal; as there was a Mr. V., a cousin of Lady B.’s, who sings beautifully, without accompaniment, and filled up the evening very pleasantly.

Wednesday.

The camp moved three miles to-day, that G. might be nearer the garden-house where the rajah was to give him a dinner, and we came over such roads! I wonder the carriage stood it. The dinner was all in the native style, but would have been eatable, G. says, only he was on so high a chair that he never could pick up a morsel from the table. The rajah sent F. and me some dinner – three kids roasted whole, and covered with gold and silver leaf, a deer, and about fifty dishes of sorts, much to the delight of the servants. Wright and Jones with Rosina went to take our return presents to the little ranee, and were charmed with their visit.

Thursday.

G. went to a long tiresome review to-day, and F. and C. went with Captain X., Mr. H., and Dr. D. to visit Donheit Rao’s tomb. The baizee baee erected it fifteen years ago. There is a black marble figure of him, dressed in the same sort of gold stuff he always wore, and with all his jewels on, and as, being of black marble, he cannot go to Mahadeo’s temple to say prayers, Mahadeo is brought and put on a table before him. Food is served up to him three times a day, and there is a nautch going on while he is supposed to eat. They were nautching all the time we were there, and I think the marble man liked it. The baee endowed the tomb with five villages, and the Brahmins in attendance eat up the food the marble man leaves. It has made rather a good sketch. G. said, while the review was going on, the sirdar who had been with us came and reported that the ladies had been to the tomb and had been so much pleased that they made a drawing of it, and that they had returned safely to camp, and the maharajah sent his compliments, and said he was glad to hear of our safety. I never felt much afraid, did you? but then I have sketched before, and know what it is.

Friday, Jan. 17.

I declare I think Scindia a very nice young man, likely to turn out well. There is an enamelled little box of spices that comes every day with the uneatable food he sends for luncheon, and I took it up one day and commented upon its beauty. I suppose our servants told his, for to-day Colonel E. arrived with Bajee Rao and another Vakeel, who had brought the little spice-box in a palanquin, with a message from the rajah that he heard I had admired it, and that he had sent it as a private present to me, that if the Company were to have it, he did not give it at all, but that Colonel E. was to arrange so that I should have it. G. has paid its value to the Company, which is the simplest arrangement, though he hardly ever will give leave to have anything bought by private contract, but in this instance where there was no return present he did. Colonel E. is very angry that it should be paid for because it was entirely a private present, but I see the value of the rule. It was very good-natured of the rajah to think of it, and I shall keep my little spice-box with a tender recollection of him, to say nothing of its being a lovely little article, per se.

Saturday, Jan. 18.

I should like to have kept this open till your letter arrived, but G. seems to think the great packet may not come till to-morrow. Still, I think I won’t send it. G. may be wrong, everybody is occasionally. In the meantime, I beg to say we have left Gwalior, and I shall have nothing to see, or say, till we get back to Calcutta. So you need hardly read the next journal – it will be so very heavy.

W. and I got up by a wrong gun this morning, one of Scindia’s. There is no carriage road, so we all travel separately in tonjauns, or on elephants, or horses or anyhow; and after I had set off in a great fuss at being so late, G.’s first gun fired. I found W. scrambling along on a pony, under the same delusion; and we got in here an hour before the others, riding the last six miles as hard as we could. I was glad to be in soon, the weather is so very hot. It has been cold for about three weeks this year. – God bless you! I have been trying to read over my journal and have stuck in it. What very heavy reading it is!

Jan. 20.

I have kept this open for two days, in hopes that the letters would come in, but we have just got all the Galignanis with an announcement from Bombay, that the Falmouth packet is not come at all; and all your letters are there – and everybody’s. It is so disheartening! – We cannot have them for five weeks.

CHAPTER LII

Nuddea Gaon, Thursday, Jan. 23, 1840.

THAT missing Falmouth packet still hangs on my mind, and I cannot digest its loss after three days, which must be very unwholesome. We are poking along the narrow roads and ravines of Bundelcund, always afraid every night that the carriage will not be available, and finding every morning that the rajah of the day (we live in a course of rajahs) has widened the old road, or cut a new one, and picked the stones off the hills and thrown them into the holes; and so, somehow, we come along. We have our old friend, Mr. F., who marched with us two years ago, in camp with his Jhansi rajah, who has met us and been durbared and visited; and a Captain R. with his rajah in prospect; and Colonel E. still here, because we every now and then step over a mile of Gwalior territory; and Colonel H. also, an old friend, and a sad spectacle of what two more years in India have done. This morning we came in on elephants because the Duttyah rajah met G. We arrived all over dust, but still, as I was telling G., the meeting between Dutty and Dusty was tolerably good. Duttyah’s is rather a pretty story. He was picked up ‘a naked, new-born child’ under a tree at this place by the Governor-General’s agent, who was taking his morning’s ride, and who carried the child to the Palace. The old rajah, who had no children, said it was the gift of God, and that he would adopt him; and an adopted son is, with the natives, as good an heir as any other; but sometimes the English Government objects, as territories without an heir fall to the Company. There were ill-natured people who said that the Resident Agent took a paternal interest in the little brown baby, and knew exactly under which tree he was to look for a forsaken child; but I am sure the boy’s look quite disproves that calumny. He is more hideously fat than any boy of fourteen I ever saw; a regular well-fed Hindu. The Government never gave a formal consent to the adoption, but his territory is particularly well-managed by the old prime minister; and so, upon his consent to pay a certain tribute, he was to be publicly received as rajah, to-day, and he and his subjects all mustered in great force, and the old minister was fussing his heart out, to have his fat boy’s elephant at G.’s right hand, and looking very proud of his maharajah. It is very shocking, and I hope it may never be the case in any other country, but we have seen a great many young, petty sovereigns lately, and it is extraordinary how like they all are to the old prime ministers belonging to their fathers. It is rather pleasant for this boy to look at the tree where he was found without a rag on, and to think he has a very large territory with a clear income of £140,000 a year. W. O. left us last Monday evening; he did not mean to stop an hour on the road, and it is horrid to think that he is still going shaking on, with the bearers saying ‘humph! humph! ha! ha!’ which they do without ceasing.