Miss Eden to the Countess of Buckinghamshire.
CALCUTTA,
April 6, 1841.
MY DEAREST SISTER, I did not write to you last month. I daresay you never found it out, only I am so honest I tell. But I had a large arrear of friends to bring up, and as Fanny said she had written you a double letter, I thought you would not miss me if “I just stepped out for a bit.”
I am sure you would pity me at this moment. Just fancy yourself trying to be fond of Dandy’s successor, and in the still lower position of finding that successor refusing obstinately to be fond of you. As for ever caring for a dog as I did for poor dear Chance, the thing is impossible. I do not believe there ever was so clever a dog, and very few equally clever men; and then, after eight years of such a rambling life, we have had so many recollections in common, and he was such a well-known character in India. I had no great fancy to have another; but we are alone so many hours of the day that a pet is almost a necessity, and a Doctor Young, who is just come from England, hearing I had lost Chance, very politely sent me a little English spaniel he had brought with him.
The gentlemen all say it is a perfect beauty, with immense ears, and a short nose, and all the right things. It may be so; unluckily it is not even the kind of beauty I admire, and in all other respects I think I may safely say I never hated a small dumb beast so much in all my life. It is wild and riotous and foolish, and whines after its old master half the day; or else runs off like a mad thing, and the servants, who cannot pronounce its name, Duke, are streaming about the house after it, calling Juck, Juck! That name is its only merit. I suppose nobody ever had a dog called Juck before. Everybody says it will grow tame, but I know better. I have had it eight days, and I think in another week it will be lawful to return it to Doctor Young, and say I cannot deprive him of it—such a treasure, such a Juck!
Your account of Dandy barking at the Southwark police particularly amused us. Fanny’s dog flies at all the natives who happen to have stepped out without their clothes just in that way, and George longs to murder him for it, as a dog frightens them out of their senses.
We have just had the very Chinese news that George has anticipated all along—indeed, so certainly, that two months ago he luckily sent his own orders to stop all of the convoy and fleet that C. Elliot had not dispersed. The Emperor would not even listen to that treaty, bad as it was, so now it is a declared war, and the Bogue forts have been taken, which was easily done, as the garrison all ran without firing a shot.
That was what George advised, and indeed ordered as far as he could ten months ago, when the expedition started in full strength. Now the ships are half-dispersed, half-crippled, and an immense proportion of the soldiers dead or disabled, and it is evident that Charles[503] now does not know what to do. In the meanwhile, in his odd mad way, he had sent orders to have Chusan evacuated without waiting for a ratification of the treaty, and he has been obliged to withdraw the few soldiers that had garrisoned Hong Kong, his great hobby of an acquisition, because they were wanted on board ship. So we literally have not an inch of ground or a single thing gained by all this immense expenditure. The Chinese actually ordered us out of Chusan before they would give up one of their few prisoners, and we obeyed. The sort of fun they must make of us.
I have had a line from Mrs. Elliot, who met the news at Singapore and was much out of spirits. But George has not yet heard from Charles. It is lucky he is what he is, totally blind to his own folly, for I am sure half the men in his position would be driven to some act of desperation.
April 14.