Miss Eden's Letters

by Emily Eden

BARRACKPORE,
March 24, 1836.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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