Up the Country

CHAPTER LIII

THIS is our great place of dispersion. G., A., and Mars start to-morrow for Calcutta, Lord Jocelyn for Agra, C. for Lucknow, and we on our march to Allahabad. M., H., and Colonel E. take up G.’s dâk the next day – that is, they inherit his bearers and follow him as fast as they can, and the rest of the camp go with us. We found Mrs. C., Mrs. N., and the Y.s, all in their separate boats at the ghaut here, which was a curious coincidence, as everybody started on a different day, and a great delight to X.

Lord Jocelyn passed two hours in my tent, talking over old days. He is very amusing and pleasant, and rubs up a number of London recollections.

We all had an early dinner at three, and then he started in a dhoolie. There were no spare palanquins in camp, and a dhoolie is a sort of bed with red curtains, that sick soldiers are carried in, very light, but squalid-looking.

The street was full of officers, and soldiers, and servants; everybody in camp assembled to wish G. good-bye, and Lord Jocelyn came out in a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, with a cigar and a volume of a French novel, and took possession of this wretched bed, and seemed quite delighted with it. His servant followed on a camel. G. and A. then set off in the shut carriage, which is to take them two stages, Mars with palanquins having gone on in the morning. G.’s going is a great grief. It is somehow impossible to live without him here, and then India is such a horrid place. People who care about each other never ought to part for a day; it is all so uncertain, and communication is so difficult. F. and H. made a short march of five miles, just across the Jumna, and C. came on with all the rest and passed the evening with us, and then set off for his appointment at Lucknow. He is a great loss in every way, and has been with us for four years nearly. M., Colonel E., and H. we left on the other bank; they are to follow G. to-morrow.

Captain D. is in a considerable fuss. Colonel – seems never to have recollected that though so many individuals have left the camp, their property and servants remain there, just the same, and that the public officers, with all the clerks, must march on; so there is the same want of sentries. He ordered off half of the regiment that had come to escort us to Allahabad, and Colonel B., who only joined last night, sent word that he had only 300 men to do the work of 1,000. The sentries are withdrawn from all the private tents, and all the silver howdahs and waggon loads of shawls, jewellery, arms, &c., of the Tosha Khanna, are brought into the middle of the street. I should have liked to have robbed it for fun; in the first place, for the value of the goods, and then it would have put D., L., and the baboo into such a state of horror.

Nobody was robbed but Mr. – , who always is, and looks as if he always must be; he seems so helpless, and dangles his hands about in a pair of bright yellow gloves, quite new, and too large for him, and says, ‘It is very odd how the devils of dacoits persecute me.’

The other day they stole his horse: he had put five police to guard it, and the thief just cut the ropes, jumped on its back, and rode off, and has never been heard of since. It is very convenient stealing a white horse in this country, because the natives always paint them, sometimes in stripes like zebras, and sometimes in zigzags, and always give them scarlet, or orange tails, and orange legs; so they disguise a stolen one instantly.

Mr. T. is such a prim boy; he is very gentlemanlike-looking, and seems very amiable, but he is certainly prim. His uniform is so stiff he cannot turn his head round, and he talks poetically whenever he does speak.

F. declares he quoted to-day something from Mr. Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ I wish when he gives us his arm that he would shut it up again. He sticks it out almost akimbo, so that it is impossible to hook on with any certainty.

We have halted here to-day to allow more troops to come and protect the general property.

I heard from G. from Futtehpore. He says he can sleep very well in his palanquin; he might call it rather a slow conveyance, but thinks of us marching, and blesses his own fate. Mr. Beechey, the painter at Lucknow, sent me to-day a miniature of G., done by a native from his picture. It is a shocking caricature, but a very little would make it like. I can make the alteration myself; and if I can get it smoothed up at Calcutta, I will send it home, and the girls can hang up ‘the devoted creature’ in their room. Mr. Beechey says he has sent me the original sketch in oils to Calcutta. It was an excellent picture, and I hope he has not touched it since.

I heard again from G. from Allahabad; in fact, he is very little in his palanquin. All the magistrates and collectors of the different districts had placed their carriages and buggies at his disposal along the road that they knew he must go; so he gets on very fast, and then rests all the hot part of the day in a bungalow, which gives time for his palanquin to come up. He had gone thirty miles at one spell in a carriage drawn by four camels.

I have missed three days. They are all so exactly alike and so more than ever tiresome now G. is gone; I cannot get on at all without him. There is nobody else in this country who understands me, and you keep standing there such miles off, that you are not of the least use when I want you most. Then your letters did not come last month. You cannot imagine what companions your letters are, and I want one so very much just now.

We have come back to-day, to one of our early halting places two years ago, so that looks as if we really were coming to an end of our wanderings in the wilderness, and I am sure it is high time we did. All the chairs and tables are tumbling to pieces, the china is all cracked, the right shoe of my only remaining pair has sprung a large hole, the brambles that infest the jungles where we encamp have torn my gown into fringes, so that I look like a shabby Pharisee, and my last bonnet is brown with dust. I am obliged to get Wright to darn a thing or two surreptitiously; the tailors think it wrong and undignified to mend. Altogether I can conceive nothing pleasanter than coming to a completely fresh set out at Calcutta.

General E. passed through camp to-day in his palanquin, and stopped for two hours and came to see us. I recollect him so well with the F.s and G.s as ‘Elphy Bey,’ and never had made out it was the same man till a sudden recollection came over me a week ago. He is in a shocking state of gout, poor man! – one arm in a sling and very lame, but otherwise is a young-looking general for India. He hates being here, and is in all the first struggles of ‘a real ancient Briton.’ (Don’t you remember how you and I were ‘ancient Britons’ always, when we fell into foreign society?) He is wretched because nobody understands his London topics, or knows his London people, and he revels in a long letter from Lord W. He thought G. very much altered since he had seen him, and G. thought the same of him. I suppose it will be very dreadful when we all meet. ‘Oh! my coevals, remnants of yourselves,’ I often think of that. What sort of a remnant are you? I am a remnant of faded yellow gingham.

General E. said, ‘It seems odd that I have never seen A. since we were shooting grouse together, and now I had to ask for an audience and for employment. I got a hint, and rather a strong one, from the Governor-General to take Delhi in my way to Meerut, and to look at the troops there and be active in my command.’ He went off with a heavy heart to his palanquin, which must be a shaky conveyance for gout. One sees how new arrivals must amuse old Indians. He cannot, of course, speak a word of Hindoostanee, neither can his aide-de-camp. ‘My groom is the best of us, but somehow we never can make the bearers understand us. I have a negro who speaks English, but I could not bring him dâk.’ I suppose he means a native; but that is being what the ‘artful dodger’ in ‘Oliver Twist’ would have called ‘jolly green.’ He can hardly have picked up a woolly black negro who speaks Hindoostanee. I wish I knew.

We have halted here for Sunday under a few trees, which they call Kutoghun. I don’t see any houses within ten miles.

We were met this morning by two Shuter sirwars, bringing invitations from the serious party at Allahabad to a fancy fair and a supper, and from the wicked set, to a ball and a supper, and begging us to name our own days. We have but Thursday and Friday, and it is rather hard, after a long march and before an early boat, to put in these gaieties. However, we cannot help it, but have declined both the suppers.

There! we arrived yesterday; the last time in my natural life in which I will make a long dusty journey before breakfast – at least, that is my hope, my intention, and my plot; of course I may be defeated in after years.

The camp is breaking up fast; camp followers asking for rupees in every direction; a fleet of boats loaded, and more wanted; all useless horses and furniture are being sold off by Webb at the stables; and to-morrow, of all this crowd which still covers five acres, there will be nothing left but Captain C. alone in his tent.

The fancy fair looked pretty in the evening – very ‘Vicar of Wrexhillish,’ such a mixture of tracts and champagne, &c., but the cheapest shop I have been in in India. We brought home nearly a carriage-full of goods, which will do to give to the servants. To-night there is the ball. We have written to beg it may be early, and we go on board the budgerows to sleep, and they take us down to the steamer to-morrow. X. and fourteen boats’-load of trunks went this morning, and there are about thirty-five more to make their way to Calcutta without steam – carriages, horses, &c. – which will arrive about a fortnight after us.

I heard from G. about 250 miles from Calcutta: quite well, and delighted with his rapid travelling – four miles an hour!

CHAPTER LIV

I SENT off my last letter from Allahabad, and it is almost hard upon you to begin again; it must be such dull reading just now. Our Allahabad ball was what they considered brilliant, seeing that it brought out their whole female society except two, who were very ill, and there were four dancing ladies and four sitters-by.

They were kind enough to give us supper early, where I can always console myself with mulligatawny soup (I think it so good – don’t you?), and then F. and I came off to our separate budgerows. G. is in a great state of popularity in the Upper Provinces; all these people talked of him with such regard and admiration, and he had evidently exerted himself to talk very much during the four days he passed here, without the least idea, poor innocent man! how everything he said, was to be repeated. I heard from him near Burdwan; they are out of carriage roads, but he still likes the palanquin, and slept very well. He and A. took a long walk in the morning while Mars cleared up the palanquins for the day, and then another in the evening while he made them up for the night. They have lived on their cold provisions and seltzer-water and tea, and slept as much as they could. They passed through a jungle where a man had been killed by a tiger some time ago, so the bearers thought it necessary to make a great noise, and fire matchlocks constantly, and make a boy walk before, playing on a fife. G. says, they may have saved his life, but they spoiled his night.

Our budgerows were very comfortable, but somehow I was just as sea-sick as if mine were the Jupiter. We got down to the flat by three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, and found O. Giles had arranged everything very comfortably. We have sent for letters.

We got no letters, but Captain F., who had been waiting a day and a half to see us, came on board with some newspapers and two very pretty sandal-wood boxes he has had made for us. He looks very happy, and G., who stayed at his house on the way down, was quite delighted with his look of comfort, and the way in which his house was fitted up. A retired aide-de-camp always carries off very genteel notions of setting up house. We have seen it in several instances.

G. has had a levée, and begun his little dinners, and was received very brilliantly at Calcutta.

We stuck on a sand-bank to-day for seven hours, or rather our steamer did, and we left her, and floated independently down in the flat to a safe place, till she could pick us up. We suppose the other steamer is sticking in the same place, as she has not come up to-night.

A jewel of a man in a small boat came floating up with a yellow dâk packet in his hand, which he put on board – two letters from G. and W. O.

The wind is so high, it blew us on another bank to-day, and upset all the furniture. It was just like being at sea, and the river is so full of sand-banks, we have anchored till the wind goes down. I wish it would only mind what it is about, for it is uncommonly cool and pleasant, if it would only be a thought less violent.

Nothing of the other steamer. The ‘Duke of Buccleuch’ has been lost off the sand-banks, the passengers all saved, but I expect my box of clothes, which was to come this month, was in her. She has generally brought boxes for us. We were aground again for three hours to-day, and the Hindus all went on shore to cook their dinners; but the wind was so high they could not make the fire burn, and the captain called them back just as their dinners were half-cooked. It makes them wretched, poor people! A Hindu will only cook once in twenty-four hours, and then, if any accident happens, if a dog, or a Christian touches their food, or even passes too near it, they throw it all away and go without. Our Hindus would not try to cook again to-night when we came to anchor, and they may not eat in a boat.

We stopped at Monghyr to-day for coals. We found plenty of letters there. G. says it will be quite necessary for W. O. to go to China; but there will be nothing for the troops to do, so that he may return in four months, and will just escape the hot season. My poor box is at the bottom of the sea. Cockerell and Co. have signified as much to G., and they think there was also a box for F. I particularly grudge the gown Lady G. worked for me. I was wishing to see it so much. It is an inconvenient loss, for if we arrive on Saturday, as we expect, I shall have no bonnet to go to church in on Sunday, and I have been embittering my loss by reading over M. E.’s list of pretty things. However, if one is to have a loss, a box of clothes is the most reparable, and I must try to fit myself out at Calcutta for the rest of the time we are in India. This shipwreck will be my ‘Caleb Balderstone’s’ great fire; much shabbiness may be excused thereby. The second steamer came in just as we left Monghyr, but not in time for us to speak to any of them.

We have gone on, sometimes sticking on a bank for an hour, sometimes not able to make the post town we wished to arrive at, but we generally make seventy, or eighty miles a day, very satisfactorily, and have almost always picked up a letter from G. or W. Last night we exerted ourselves amazingly, stuck up sails, went on in the dark, tried to sit as lightly and as pleasantly as possible on the water, in hopes of arriving at Commercolly, where we counted on finding the overland letters. We succeeded in reaching Commercolly, and there found the dâk baboo with two Calcutta newspapers for us, and not a line for anybody. Now we have left the short cut to Calcutta, there is so little water, and are going round by the Sunderbunds, where we shall see nothing but trees and jungle for four days; the fifth I hope we shall arrive at Calcutta. It is becoming so hot.

This is a collection of native huts, where there is a deposit of coals, but there was also a dear native baboo who stepped out with a parcel of letters, one from G., saying that the December overland had arrived, but as he did not think there was any chance of the letters finding us, he had only sent one or two; and he mentioned any little news he had collected.

He was quite right in his principle, but as the letters have found us, what a pity he did not send your packet, which he mentions.

It is a horrid thing; a great liberty; but G., in his Grand Mogul way, opens all our letters, and is evidently revelling in yours and the girls’ journals. Indeed, he says so; and adds he is so hurried and worried he had not time to find the journals. Such impertinence!

There! this is not a journal this tune; it must turn into a letter, for I have had no time. We arrived at Calcutta late in the evening of Sunday, the 1st March. We ran down a native boat in the dark, and got a great fright from the screaming of the men, who were however all picked up immediately, and natives, one and all, can swim for two or three hours without fear.

We found W. O. in his dressing-gown, and G. in bed; however, he got up and came to us; he complains of being very much over-worked, and of being over-bitten by the musquitoes. They are dreadful; still there is something in the cleanliness and solidity of the house, and in its space, that looks very attractive after the tents and boats. It is lucky we have had that march as a set-off, otherwise the change from Simla would be too shocking.

Do not you remember the story my father used to tell us, when we were children, of how his friend the old Duke of Marlborough went to dine with a neighbour, a poor clergyman, whose house was small, whose fires were low, and whose dinner was bad, and when the Duke drove back to Blenheim and entered that magnificent hall, he said with a plaintive sigh, ‘Well! home is home, be it never so homely.’ So say I, on coming back to this grand palace, from those wretched tents, and so shall I repeat with still greater unction when we arrive at our dear little villa at Kensington Gore. If it should please God that we ever do so, mind that you and your girls are on the lawn to greet us.

1

The head of the Governor-General’s native servants.

2

The Governor-General’s cook.

3

Woolwich.

4

Afterwards the celebrated Lola Montez.