Up the Country

Yesterday we started at half-past five in the carriage, came five miles to the foot of the hills; then the gentlemen got on the ponies, and F. and I into our jonpauns, which might just as well be called tonjauns – they are the same sort of conveyances, only they swing about more, and look like coffins. The mountaineers run up the hills with them in a wonderful manner. We were two hours going up precipices which, as Vivian Grey says, ‘were completely perpendicular, but with perhaps a slight incline inwards at the bottom,’ and then we reached Colonel G.’s bungalow at Mussoorie. Such a view on all sides of it! Nothing could be grander – good fires burning – and a nice sharp wind blowing. Pleasant!

We found our Bengalee servants, who had come on the day before, very miserable. They had slept in the open air and were starved with the cold, and were so afraid of the precipices that they could not even go to the bazaar to buy food. I dare say to people who have never even seen the smallest rise in the ground, not even a molehill, these mountains must be very terrific.

While she was dressing me, Rosina was mimicking F.’s jemadar, who is in a particular state of fear. ‘There was poor Ariff, he buy great stick, and he put stick out so, and then he put his foot by it, and then he say, “Oh! what me do next, me tumble if me move me stick or me foot."’ I thought we should have been alarmed by what Miss T. said of her fears, but we went out on our ponies in the evening and cantered along the paths quite easily, though it is ugly looking down. One stumble, and horse and all must roll down out of sight. But, to be sure, how beautiful the hills are! I am certain I shall grow strong again in a week at Simla, and as for ever being well in the plains, that is an evident impossibility, so far as I am concerned.

Mussoorie, Monday, March 19.

We went to the little Mussoorie church yesterday morning. The bearers are steady men, I have no doubt, but still I wish they would not race with each other; for at the sharp corners where they try to pass, the outer jonpaun hangs over the edge, and I don’t altogether like it. In the afternoon we took a beautiful ride up to Landour, but the paths are much narrower on that side, and our courage somehow oozed out; and first we came to a place where they said, ‘This was where poor Major Blundell and his pony fell over, and they were both dashed to atoms,’ – and then there was a board stuck in a tree, ‘From this spot a private in the Cameronians fell and was killed.’ Just as if there were any use in adding that he was killed, if he fell – anybody might have guessed that. Then – , who lived up here for three years, said he would take us home by a better path, and unluckily it was a worse one, and we had to get off our ponies and lead them, and altogether I felt giddy and thought much of poor Major Blundell! But it is impossible to imagine more beautiful scenery. This morning we went to breakfast with Colonel M. and saw the whole extent of the snowy range, and very fine it is. It is a clever old range to have kept itself so clean and white for 5,000 years. As we came back we met Mars, who is quite happy here, with Ariff after him. I asked him what he was doing. ‘Je veux absolument faire monter ce pauvre Ariff là haut.’ – ‘Do you like going, Ariff?’ I said. – ‘No, ladyship.’ – ‘Don’t you think the hills very beautiful?’ – ‘No, ladyship, very shocking;’ and he made a face of such utter nausea it was impossible to help laughing. Mars said afterwards that Ariff flung himself on the ground and declared nothing should induce him to take another step. My jemadar in consequence was particularly puffed up about it, though I believe he disliked his walk quite as much. ‘I been to the Hospital, been to Macdonald Sahib, been everywhere where ladyship has been. Poor Ariff, he fear much!’ and he walked out with a smile of self-complacency at his superior courage.

Rajpore, Wednesday, March 21.

We came down from Mussoorie Monday afternoon with great success, but the change in an hour from cold to heat made us all deaf to begin with, and half the servants were sick, and in the middle of the night I took one of my attacks of spasms. I always think Dr. D. in his heart must wish that they would begin twelve hours sooner. He always has to get up at one in the morning, and the spasm lasted till past three – such an inconvenient time when we have to march at half-past five. I really thought this time I should not have been able to go on, but somehow it always can be done when it cannot be helped; and as all the tents were ready at the next station, I went for the first time in a palanquin – it saves the trouble of dressing, and I just moved from the bed into it. G. went out shooting again this morning on positive information of a tigress and three cubs, but as usual they could not be found. However, they have had some very good shooting.

Thursday, March 22.

We had a great deal of rain last night; and so when we came to cross the Jumna this morning it was not fordable, and there never was such a mess – only three boats for all our camp. Two poor men were drowned in the night trying to swim over, and one or two camels were carried away, but found again. Then the road was so bad the carriage was not available, and I came part of the way on the elephant, which, as I was not strong, shook me to atoms. We crossed at last, and then it appeared that everything had been drenched in the night, and there was not a bed nor a sofa to lie down on. Luckily, Rosina lent me her charpoy, a sort of native couch, and Dr. D. got a medicine chest, and gave me some laudanum, and now I am better again; but of all the troubles in life for ‘an ailing body,’ I think a march the most complete. It is a pouring day, but luckily very cool. Chance has been very ill for the last week, and I have made him over to-day to the surgeon of the body-guard, who has bled him, and says he can cure him.

Friday, March 23.

We must luckily halt here three days, for half the people and things are still on the other bank. I am better to-day, and Chance is in a more hopeful state. As you will hear from us several times by the overland packet before this comes to hand, I may as well send this off without coming to the interesting crisis of Chance’s fate; but as the inflammation in his dear little chest is supposed to be subdued, you may feel tolerably easy. I, as usual, wind up with the observation that your last letter was dated August 5 – seven months and three weeks old.

CHAPTER XVI

Camp, Nahun, March 26, 1838.

I SENT off my last Journal from Rajghaut, March 23. We got all our goods over the river on Friday evening, and marched Saturday, 24th. The regiment and the cavalry went the straight road, and we made an awfully long march of seventeen miles towards the hills. It was the last day of the dear open carriage, which has been the only comfort of my life in this march. Nothing is so tiresome as all the miserable substitutes for it – three miles of elephant and four of tonjaun, and then a pony. Both men and cattle get so tired in a long march, or when they are employed every day. The road is very pretty all through the Dhoon, and much cooler than the plains. Chance is better, thank you. I knew you would feel anxious about him. His constitution is dreadfully Indianised; but perhaps the hills, and a judicious change of diet, may be of use. However, he is done for as an English dog; he is just the sort of dog you see at Cheltenham.

We came up to Nahun yesterday morning by means of elephants and jonpauns. The road was very steep, but nothing like that to Mussoorie. The Rajah of Nahun met us at the last stage, and came up the hill with us to-day. He has his palace at the top, a sort of hill fort, and about 100 soldiers – imitations of our soldiers – and a band of mountaineers, who played ‘God save the Queen’ with great success. He is one of the best-looking people I have seen, and is a Rajpoot chief, and rides, and hunts, and shoots, and is active. Nothing can be prettier than the scenery, and altogether Nahun is the nicest residence I have seen in India; and if the rajah fancied an English ranee, I know somebody who would be very happy to listen to his proposals. At the same time, they do say that the hot winds sometimes blow here, and that his mountains are not quite high enough; and those points must be considered before I settle here.

This morning we have been to see the palace, which is an odd collection of small rooms, painted and gilded in curious patterns – of course, no tables and chairs; and indeed the only piece of furniture in the house was an English barrel-organ, and in one of the rooms downstairs there was a full-grown tiger, tolerably tame, and a large iron pot full of milk for his dinner.

Naramghur, March 28.

We rejoined the other camp this morning. We came down the mountains from Nahun on Monday afternoon with great success as far as we were concerned, but a great many of the camels suffered from it, and we passed several utterly unable to move. G. and I rode the last five miles. By remaining at Nahun till the afternoon, we reduced ourselves to one tent – all the others were obliged to go on for to-day’s use, and there is something particularly uncomfortable in a general tent.

One chair and table for G. at one end, with a supply of office boxes, two sofas for F. and me, with a book a-piece, and two cane chairs for A. and B., each pretending to read, but looking uncomfortable and stiff. I missed my old parasol about three days ago, and discovered to-day that Jimmund had applied to my jemadar for it, because he thought Chance’s ailments were brought on by the sun; and Wright says she passed him to-day marching down the hill with Chance in one hand and the parasol held over him with the other – a pretty idea. This morning I came on in the palanquin, a wretched substitute for the carriage, but anything is better than sitting bolt upright before breakfast – in fact, it is quite impossible.

W. has had great sport at last – at least, everybody says it is great sport. I cannot imagine anything more unpleasant. They found six tigers at once in a ravine. Two charged W.’s elephant, and three General E.’s; one of them disturbed a hornet’s nest, and W. says he has since taken fifty stings out of his face. The bank of the ravine gave way, and he and his elephant came down within a yard of one tiger, which was however too much wounded to do any harm. Altogether the party have killed eight, and are coming back very much delighted with having been very nearly eaten up, and then stung to death.

Raepore, Thursday, March 29.

Only five more days. I get such fits of bore with being doddled about for three hours before breakfast in a sedan-chair, that I have a sort of mad wish to tell the bearers to turn back and go home, quite home, all the way to England. I wonder if I were to call ‘coach’ as loud as I could, if it would do any good. It would be a relief to my feelings. An unfortunate Brahmin came to Dr. D. at Nahun in the most horrible state of agony, from that disease of which poor Mr. – died. Dr. D. had him carried down, and yesterday he attempted the cure. Anything so horrible as the man’s screams I never heard; indeed, I thought it was some animal, and sent out to ask what was the matter. It was the longest and worst operation Dr. D. said he ever witnessed, but the man insisted on it. His family have cut him off, but if he lives, it will be very easy to give him all he wants. He is very ill, and had to be carried on thirteen miles in a dhoolie.

Friday, March 30.

That Brahmin is better, and Dr. D. thinks he will live. We had a melancholy letter to-day, with an account of poor Mr. S.’s death. He died of abscess on the liver – of India, in fact. I think his health had begun to fail before we left Calcutta, but we had not heard of his being ill till a week ago. I am very sorry on all accounts. He was an excellent man, and very much to be loved; and then she is left with eleven children, of whom three only are provided for. It is melancholy to think how almost all the people we have known at all intimately have in two years died off, and that out of a small society. None of them turned fifty; indeed, all but Mr. S. between thirty and forty. Mr. C., who is with us, was saying yesterday that he had been stationed a few years ago at Delhi. ‘I liked it; we were a very large party of young men, but I am the only survivor.’ And he is quite a young man.

That Brahmin is very much better, and Dr. D. has no doubt he will recover. The Brahmins’ diet leaves them so little susceptible of fever, that if they do not sink under an operation they recover rapidly. G. held a sort of durbar to-day, in which he gave the soubadars (or native officers) of the regiment which has escorted us, shawls and matchlocks, the same to the cavalry, and to the native officers of our bodyguard. They have all conducted themselves most irreproachably during this long march, and they are a class of men who ought to be encouraged. There were about thirty of them in all; and at the end, after praising them and their respective colonels, he poured attar on their hands and gave them paun, which they look upon as the greatest distinction.

They were extremely pleased, and all our servants were quite delighted, and said that ‘our lordship was the first that had ever been so good to natives.’ I am glad it went off so well, for the idea, between ourselves, was mine; and as there is a great jealousy and great fear about liberality, it was disapproved of at first by the authorities, but G. took to it after a day or two, and I mentioned it surreptitiously to – , who manages that part of the department. G. is quite of opinion that there is too much neglect of meritorious natives, and that it is only marvellous our dominion over them has resisted the system of maltreatment, which was even much more the fashion than it is now. Even now it is very painful to hear the way in which even some of the best Europeans speak to those Rajpoot princes, who, though we have conquered them, still are considered as kings by their subjects, and who look like high-caste people.

Sabathoo, Monday, April 2.

On Saturday evening, at Pinjore, we gave a farewell dinner to all the camp, and went after dinner to some beautiful gardens belonging to the Puttealah rajah. He is not here himself, but he had had these gardens lit up for us, and the fountains were playing, and all the best nautch-girls had been sent from Puttealah, and altogether it was a very magnificent fête.

People may abuse nautching, but it always amuses me extremely. The girls hardly move about at all, but their dresses and attitudes are so graceful I like to see them. Their singing is dreadful, and very noisy.

We went on to Barr the next afternoon; it is such a hot place that we wished to have as few hours of it as possible. We found – nearly exhausted by the labour of passing on our goods; every camel trunk takes on an average eight men, and we have several hundred camel trunks of stores alone. Colonel T., the political agent, had, however, arrived with a reinforcement of coolies, and everything was progressing. That Brahmin is so much better that Dr. D. sent him home from here, and we gave him all that he required for his expenses. We were called at half-past three this morning – is not that almost too shocking? human nature revolts from such atrocities – and at four we were all stowed away in our jonpauns and jogging by torchlight up some perpendicular paths, which might be alarming, but I could not keep awake to see.

We were four hours coming to Sabathoo. Colonel T. provided us with a house. We have had sundry alarms that our beds were gone straight to Simla. Some of the servants knocked up, but upon the whole it has been a less alarming expedition than Sir G. K. said we should find it. Colonel T. has asked all Sabathoo, consisting of nine individuals, to meet us, which we could have spared, considering we are to be up at half-past three again to-morrow.

Simla, April 3.

Well, it really is worth all the trouble – such a beautiful place – and our house, that everybody has been abusing, only wanting all the good furniture and carpets we have brought, to be quite perfection. Views only too lovely; deep valleys on the drawing-room side to the west, and the snowy range on the dining-room side, where my room also is. Our sitting-rooms are small, but that is all the better in this climate, and the two principal rooms are very fine. The climate! No wonder I could not live down below! We never were allowed a scrap of air to breathe – now I come back to the air again I remember all about it. It is a cool sort of stuff, refreshing, sweet, and apparently pleasant to the lungs. We have fires in every room, and the windows open; red rhododendron trees in bloom in every direction, and beautiful walks like English shrubberies cut on all sides of the hills. Good! I see this is to be the best part of India.

April 7.

This must go to-morrow. Simla is still like Major Waddell, ‘all that is brave, generous, and true.’ G. and I took such a nice ride yesterday round the highest mountain, to which is given the sublime name of Jacko; but Jacko is a grand animal. You may be quite comfortable about our healths here, as far as climate goes; it is quite perfection, and altogether the Himalayas are sweet pretty little hills. I have just unpacked your picture, which has been four months in a camel trunk, and is more like you than ever.

CHAPTER XVII

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.