I think George will find Calcutta so extravagantly hot that perhaps he will consent to go home sooner. That would be very satisfactory. The deaths there have been very numerous this year. Almost all the few people we knew intimately in the two years we were there, are dead—and almost all of them young people.
Do you remember my writing to you about poor Mrs. Beresford’s death? He is here now with a second wife, twenty years younger than himself, to whom he engaged himself three months after the first wife’s death; never told anybody, so we all took the trouble of going on pitying him with the very best pity we had to spare! Such a waste!
What became of your second book? I cannot even see it amongst the advertisements. I am disconsolate that we have had the last number of Pickwick, the only bit of fun in India. It is one of the few books of which there has been a Calcutta reprint, lithographs and all. I have not read it through in numbers more than ten times, but now it is complete I think of studying it more correctly.
Mention much about your children when you write. I find the letters in which my friends tell me about themselves and their children are much pleasanter than mere gossip. They really interest me—there is the difference between biography and history. My best love to your mother, and remember me to Mr. L. It is very odd how easily I can bring your face to mind when I think of you. Some faces I cannot put together at all cleverly, but I see you quite correctly and easily. Don’t alter, there’s a dear. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to Mr. C. Greville.
SIMLA,
June 10, 1838.
A letter from you of November (this being the 10th of June) has just come dropping in quite promiscuous. Though I have had one of a later date, yet this has made me laugh and has put me in the mood to write to you forthwith.
Your remarkably immoral views as to the mischief that religion does in a country were wrong in the abstract, but they unfortunately just chimed in with some views his Lordship had been worried into taking, and he is quite delighted to have a quotation from your letter to act as motto to one of his chapters. Here we have such a medley of faiths. The Hindus convey a pig carefully cut up into a Muhammedan Mosque, whereupon the Mussulmanns cut up the Hindus. Then again the Mussulmanns kill a cow during a Hindu festival, and the Hindus go raving mad. Then an unsensible man like Sir P. Maitland refuses to give the national festivals the usual honours of guns, drums, etc., which they have had ever since the English set foot in India. In short, there is an irritation kept up on the plea of conscience, where the soothing system would be much more commendable and much easier.
I must say that, except in the Upper Provinces, where once or twice we have met with some violent petitioners, the Hindus and Mussulmans live most peaceably; so that they have separate cooking-places, and that the Hindu’s livery Tunic is made to button on the right shoulder and the Mussulman’s on the left, they ask no other differences. We have about an equal number of each in our household, and in Bengal they are all very friendly together.