Thursday, Jan. 9.
We left Dholepore this morning, and had great difficulty in coming along; the road for four miles was through a narrow sandy ravine. Scindia’s camp moved yesterday, and his goods had only got through the pass at eight last night, and that owing to P.’s working all day. Our hackeries that left camp at one yesterday are not come in at one to-day; they had stuck in all the narrow places, and there was a dead camel here, and a dead bullock there, and an elephant had killed a man somewhere else, and in short it was a bad pass. Now, to answer your letter. I hope dear E. is better, as you do not say he is not. How you do rush about on those railways! You put me quite out of breath.
Gwalior, Saturday, Jan. 10.
We have had more letters by the second express, many of them written since the news of Ghuznee had been known. The Gwalior rajah met us this morning, rather to our discomfiture, as F. and I had meant to come on quietly in the carriage, but the roads were so narrow and his train so wide, that we were obliged to get on our elephants. He rides the largest elephant in India; it is nearly twelve feet high, and G.’s, which is generally thought a large one, looked like a little pony, and, what was worse, was so afraid of the rajah’s, that it was ten minutes before they could be driven close enough to allow of G.’s getting safely into the rajah’s howdah. I always think that a very unpleasant part of the ceremony, to say nothing of the little French embrace that follows. The Mahratta horsemen are striking-looking people in their gold dresses, with their very long spears; and altogether it was a very pretty sight, but the rajah stuck to his dignified rule of going as slow as possible, and we were just an hour and a quarter going the last two miles, though he should consider that after eight o’clock, every hour of his horrid sun is of the highest importance. Gwalior is a picturesque-looking place, a fort on a rock, which, after all the flat plains, looks distinguished.
Sunday, Jan. 11.
We received all the ladies belonging to the Gwalior contingent yesterday, and the officers, only sixteen altogether, and four ladies, two of them uncommonly black, and the third, Captain —— remembers as a little girl running about barracks, a soldier’s daughter, but she was pretty, and, by dint of killing off a husband, or two, she is now at nineteen the wife of a captain here. I should think she must look back with regret to her childish plebeian days. The husband interrupts her every time she opens her lips, and she had not been here two minutes, before he said in a gruff tone, ‘Come, Ellen,’ and carried the poor little body off.
We have had no service to-day for want of Mr. Y. We went this evening to see the fort and palace, and very beautiful it was, so like Bluebeard’s abode. As the elephants plodded up one steep flight of steps after another, with the castle still frowning over our heads, D., who is not imaginative nor jocose, said, ‘I cannot help thinking sister Anne must be looking out for us,’ and we all agreed that she must. There is a beautiful old temple in the fort—one mass of carving; and I should like to pick out a few chimney-pieces for Kensington Gore from the carved stones that are tumbling about these old places.
CHAPTER LI.
Monday, Jan. 12, 1840.
WE dined with Colonel J. yesterday. He lives, I believe, quite in the native style, with a few black Mrs. J.’s gracing his domestic circle when we are not here, but he borrowed St. Cloup and our cooks to dress the dinner, and it all went off very well. That little Mrs. T. looked very pretty, but Captain T. planted himself opposite to her, and frowned whenever she tried to talk, but he did not quite stop her, and another week of society would, I expect, enable her to frown again. We went to Scindia’s durbar to-day. The palace was three miles off, and we had to set off at three on elephants, and the heat and the dust and the crowd were something inconceivable, but it was a curious show. The durbar was very orderly and handsome. G. and Scindia sat together on a gold throne with a canopy, and F. and I on two silver chairs next to G., and down each side of the room were his sirdars on one side and our officers on the other. After we had sat about ten minutes, the negotiations began for our going to see the ranee, and there were many preliminaries to arrange, and at last we condescended to walk through the two rooms that led to the zenana, for fear any of the bearers should catch a glimpse of anything, and no aide-de-camp was to go for the same reason, so we walked off with Mrs. H. We had sent the two ayahs there in the morning, as Mrs. H. does not speak the language very well. Some female slaves met us at the first door, and then some cousins of the rajah’s; in the next room two stepmothers, and then an old grandmother, and at the door of her own room was the little ranee, something like a little transformed cat in a fairy tale, covered with gold tissue, and clanking with diamonds. Her feet and hands were covered with rings fastened with diamond chains to her wrists and ankles. She laid hold of our hands and led us to her throne, which was like the rajah’s, without a canopy, and her women lifted her up, and we sat on each side of her, and then all the relations sat in two rows on chairs, and looked uncomfortable, and the nautch girls began dancing. The ranee is only eight years old, and is the sister of his first wife, on whom he doted, and on her death-bed she made him promise to marry this child. She was so shy, she would hardly let us see her face, but the old women talked for her, and the presents filled up the time, for the rajah had ordered that she should put all the jewellery on us with her own little hands. I had a diamond necklace and a collar, some native pearl earrings that hung nearly down to the waist, and a beautiful pair of diamond bracelets, and the great article of all was an immense diamond tiara. I luckily could not keep this on with a bonnet. They were valued altogether at 2,400l., the mere stones. F.’s were of different shapes, some very pretty, but not so costly, but altogether it was an immense prize for the Company. Then we had a bale of shawls, and the ayahs got six shawls, and Mrs. H. a necklace, and besides all the diamonds, they hung flowers all over us. We must have looked like mad tragedy queens when we came out, but everybody was transmogrified in the same way. Some years ago, it might have made us laugh, but W. and Mr. A., with great necklaces of flowers on, led us gravely back to our silver chairs, and there was G., sitting bolt upright, a pattern of patience, with a string of pearls as big as peas round his neck, a diamond ring on one hand and a large sapphire on the other, and a cocked hat embroidered in pearls at his side. We came home through a grand illumination, and were thoroughly tired at last.