Agra, Wednesday, Dec. 18.
We came here yesterday and went off the same afternoon to see the Taj, which is quite as beautiful, even more so, than we had expected after all we have heard, and as we have never heard of anything else, that just shows how entirely perfect it must be. You must have heard and read enough about it, so I spare you any more, but it really repays a great deal of the trouble of the journey. We passed the day in the tents, as they were more convenient for G.’s levée, and in the afternoon came on to this delightful house, which was Sir Charles Metcalfe’s and is now Mr. H.’s, who has good-naturedly entrenched himself in one wing and settled us in the rest. It is beautifully furnished, and so clean and quiet. I really love it—it is so pleasant not to feel dusty.
Friday, Dec. 20.
We went yesterday to see Secundra, where Akbar is buried, and his tomb of beautiful white marble is up four stories of grotesque buildings, well worth seeing; so much so that, as G. had a durbar to-night and could not go out, F. and I went back alone, and had rather a rest, in sketching there, for two hours, but it is impossible to make anything of these elaborate Mogul buildings, they are all lines and domes, and uncommonly trying to the patience. We are attempting to buy Agra marbles and curiosities, but somehow cannot find many, and those we ordered before we came down are not half done, but they will be very pretty. I have got two little tombs, facsimiles of Shah Jehan’s and his wife’s, with all the same little patterns inlaid. Valuable—but I wish they were not quite so dear. We were at home on Thursday night—there seem to be a great many people at Agra. Mrs. H., who was a Miss A., is very pretty and nice. We stay here till the 1st, and this fortnight of rest from tents is a great comfort. My small health is uncommonly good just now.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Agra, Sunday, December 29, 1839.
I HAVE let a week pass by this time, partly because, since we have been here, we have given a ball and four large dinners, seen a great many sights, had a ball given to us and a déjeûner at the Taj, and also that an awful change has taken place in our plans, one that it makes me sick to think of. We are going to stay here for the next ten months: ——, to whom G. offered the Lieutenant-Governorship, and who knew all his plans, and who had acuteness enough to carry them on, began by accepting, and ended by declining in consequence of ‘domestic calamities which he was unable to explain.’ They say that Mrs. —— is gone out of her mind. I really think it must have been at the notion of coming here. It is too late in the year to make any new arrangements, and there is so much of importance likely to occur in the Punjâb where old Runjeet is a sad loss, and so much to watch over in Affghanistan, that G. decided on staying himself. Such a shock and such trouble! We have at least three houses to build here for the European servants, the baboos, &c., and a house to repair for the aides-de-camp. Agra is avowedly the hottest place in India, and everybody says this is the hottest house in Agra, so there is a whole army of engineers now beginning to see what can be done to build up verandahs, and to make ventilators, and to pretend to make the hot winds bearable. There are in India two regular parties, one preferring Bengal with the hot days and the damp and the sea-breeze blowing at night, and the other standing up for their hot winds, twenty degrees hotter, but dry. I have never varied in thinking the account of them terrific. From the end of March to the middle of June, they blow unceasingly, night and day. Nobody stirs out, and all night the tatties are kept wet, and thermantidotes (great winnowing machines) are kept turning to make a little cool air. The windows are never opened, and they say that, at midnight, if you were to go out, it feels like going into a furnace. However, those who are all for the provinces say, the wind is dry and not unwholesome, and that as long as you do not attempt to go out of the house, you do not suffer from the heat. It is a regular strict imprisonment. Calcutta is bad, but there we had a regular evening drive, and Government House was really cool at night; then in case of illness there was the sea at hand, but here, if any of us are ill, of course there is no escape. Even natives cannot travel in the hot winds. The discomfiture is general. Most of our goods are half-way to Calcutta. The native servants, who thought they were within reach of their wives and families after two years’ absence, are utterly desperate.
Mr. A. has thrown up his place, and goes down to Calcutta. Mrs. S. plods back to Simla with her children, and leaves her husband here. Mrs. H. ditto, and I think those two ladies are rather pleased, it forces them to keep their boys another year in the country. Z. has been ill since we came here, but the day this shock was communicated to him, he got up electrified, dressed himself, and came to my room to bemoan his particular hard fate, so like Narcissus Fripps. ‘I really am quite overset—I have not an idea what to do—I am so afraid of the hot winds, and this is such a place! no society whatever! Now at Calcutta I really should have enjoyed myself.’ This was said with an air of great interest.
I saw my opportunity and put it to him, that the hot winds were very bad for the attacks he is subject to, that Dr. D. had always wished him to go home, and that he might now have a medical certificate, which would save his paying his own passage, &c. And so he took the right turn, went straight to the doctor’s tent, and came back to say that he had decided to go home. It really is the best thing he can do, and Dr. D. says it is the only chance of his getting well.
We still go to Gwalior, and go back into camp on Thursday; we shall be nearly a month away, and we leave X. behind, with Giles and all the carpenters and tailors of the establishment to make up beds, furniture, &c., for we have nothing but small camp beds, which are not endurable in heat.