April 7.
This must go to-morrow. Simla is still like Major Waddell, ‘all that is brave, generous, and true.’ G. and I took such a nice ride yesterday round the highest mountain, to which is given the sublime name of Jacko; but Jacko is a grand animal. You may be quite comfortable about our healths here, as far as climate goes; it is quite perfection, and altogether the Himalayas are sweet pretty little hills. I have just unpacked your picture, which has been four months in a camel trunk, and is more like you than ever.
CHAPTER XVII.
Simla, Good Friday, April 13, 1838.
I HAD better make a beginning at last. A heap of sea letters came this morning, and, amongst others, one of your dear books which I have been pining for, and a Journal from E. to me, and from T. to F., of the 20th of January, and Mr. D.’s to me the same date; so now I begin to know all about you again—your young days of 1837, and your old age of 1838. I begin to catch an idea of your character—but the state of confusion I have been in for four days between these two packets! There was Miss Ryder the Second reigning in the schoolroom, and I without an idea whether the usurper Capplische had been dethroned and beheaded, or whether it had been a regular succession, a natural death of Capplische, and a young Ryder mounting the throne in right of her descent.
Then Charley was going back to Eton. I never knew you thought of sending him there at all. I went all about the house, asking about him and his school. The old khansamah could not recollect; the jemadar thought it must be just what the Lady Sahib thought; the aides-de-camp would ‘write and ask at once’ (their favourite phrase), but still it was not clear—and now I have your letter of reasons and intentions. Then Newsalls had become ‘home,’ your shell, your manor-house, and you had never explained it to me. Now that I see the damask bed-room, and the girls’ rooms, and the library, I am better, though I still think it would have been a delicate attention if you had described cursorily my room. A southern aspect you will of course attend to; I shall be chilly! This dear Simla! it snowed yesterday, and has been hailing to-day, and is now thundering, in a cracking, sharp way that would be awful, only its sublimity is destroyed by the working of the carpenters and blacksmiths, who are shaping curtain rods and rings all round the house. It has been an immense labour to furnish properly. We did not bring half chintz enough from Calcutta, and Simla grows rhododendrons, and pines, and violets, but nothing else—no damask, no glazed cotton for lining—nothing. There is a sort of country cloth made here—wretched stuff, in fact, though the colours are beautiful—but I ingeniously devised tearing up whole pieces of red and of white into narrow strips, and then sewing them together, and the effect for the dining-room is lovely, when supported with the scarlet border painted all round the cornice, the doors, windows, &c.; and now everybody is adopting the fashion.
Another grievance that took Wright and me by surprise was, that of all our head tailors whom we had brought from Calcutta, none had ever seen the drapery of a curtain. Bengal has no curtains; so Wright had to cut out everything herself. It is in these times of emergency that the value of the European servants rises. Giles has nailed up every curtain himself. G. has made over to him the care of the garden, and he is perfectly happy with it, and in a state of the greatest importance. ‘I hope we may have rain to-night, ma’am, and I can bring a few asparagus from my garden; and perhaps you will just look at these tickets. I can manage common things, but my lord’s hard names for flowers quite puzzle me.’ The kitchen garden is at least half a mile off, down one of the steepest hills, and Giles has been to tell me that unless he has a pony he really cannot be as much in the garden as he should wish. His horse was left with Webb. I have told him to ride for the present a pony that was sent to G. by one of the hill rajahs, one of what we in our patois call the Mizzer horses, and I fondly hope that if old B. sees Giles on it, he will roll down a precipice with the shock. He will think we are going to appropriate the Mizzers.
This is the first day I have been out of my room, or hardly out of bed, for a week.
April 22.
I am quite well again now, thank you, and have begun riding and walking again, and the climate, the place, and the whole thing is quite delightful, and our poor despised house, that everybody abused, has turned out the wonder of Simla. We brought carpets, and chandeliers, and wall shades (the great staple commodity of India furniture), from Calcutta, and I have got a native painter into the house, and cut out patterns in paper, which he then paints in borders all round the doors and windows, and it makes up for the want of cornices, and breaks the eternal white walls of these houses. Altogether it is very like a cheerful middle-sized English country-house, and extremely enjoyable. I do not mean to think about the future (this world’s future) for six months. It was very well to keep oneself alive in the plains by thinking of the mountains, or to dream of some odd chance that would take one home—there is no saying the odd inventions to go home that I had invented—but now I do not mean to be imaginative for six months.