Our band played again yesterday at their new place, and it is a most successful attempt for the good of society, very much aided yesterday by the goodness of the strawberry ice. The weather is so dry and hot that Giles allowed us to have as many strawberries as could be picked, as they are all dying away. The strawberries here are quite as fine as in England, but they last a very short time. I never saw anything so pretty as the shrubs are just now. Both pink and white roses in large masses, and several other quite new shrubs. When we were riding yesterday we saw some coolies in the road with boxes on their heads, and I said, ‘Let us go to them and persuade them that one of those boxes is ours;’ and when we rode up there was one directed to G. We made sure it contained those bonnets of Mr. D.’s, which we have been looking for so long, but it turned out to be books, and a very neat selection—Ernest Maltravers, the Vicar of Wrexhill, Uncle Horace, Kindness in Women, &c., and some very amusing magazines.
We had read the Vicar of Wrexhill last week; I think it such a clever book, though wicked. Those bonnets must come at last. I never see those coolies come trotting along, having traversed half India, unwatched and unguarded, without having the greatest respect for their honesty and perseverance. They get about three rupees per month (six shillings), or sometimes four, for walking six hundred miles with a heavy box on their heads.
Saturday, June 9.
We went to the play last night. There is a little sort of theatre at Simla, small and hot and something dirty, but it does very well. Captain N. got up a prospectus of six plays for the benefit of the starving people at Agra, and there was a long list of subscribers, but then the actors fell out. One man took a fit of low spirits, and another who acted women’s parts well would not cut off his mustachios, and another went off to shoot bears near the Snowy Range. That man has been punished for his shilly-shallying; the snow blinded him, and he was brought back rolled up in a blanket, and carried by six men also nearly blind—he was entirely so for three days, but has recovered now. Altogether the scheme fell to the ground, which was a pity, as the subscriptions alone would have ensured 30l. every night of acting to those poor people. So when the gentlemen gave it up, the ‘uncovenanted service’ said they wished to try. The ‘uncovenanted service’ is just one of our choicest Indianisms, accompanied with our very worst Indian feelings. We say the words just as you talk of the ‘poor chimney-sweepers,’ or ‘those wretched scavengers’—the uncovenanted being, in fact, clerks in the public offices. Very well-educated, quiet men, and many of them very highly paid; but as many of them are half-castes, we, with our pure Norman or Saxon blood, cannot really think contemptuously enough of them. In former days they were probably a bad class, but now a great many Europeans have been driven, by the failures of the banks here, to take that line, and amongst them are several thorough gentlemen. There were at least fifty of them in one camp attached to Government, and I never saw better behaved people. Some had horses, some gigs, and some their nice little wives in their nice little palkees; two wives and two families packed up together, for economy, with the two husbands riding by the side of the carriage. And then in the evening we used to hear A. and B., &c., disputing and lamenting that they could not allow Mr. V. and Mr. Z., and so on, to sit down in their presence. Well! I dare say it is all right, or at least we are all equally wrong, for they are not allowed to enter Government House; and I see how it would be impossible to ask a white Mr. and Mrs. Smith, though they are better looking than half the people we know, without hurting the feelings of a half-black Mr. Brown. Even at the theatres they have distinct places. Now they have wisely taken to the stage, a great many of the gentry were even above going to see them act. However, we went, and lent them the band, and the house was quite full—and they really acted remarkably well, one Irishman in particular. There is a son of Mr. F.’s amongst them. We always in camp used to call him Sophia; he looked like an actress dressed up in men’s clothes—little ringlets, and a little tunic, and a hat on one side. They have got Sophia to act their heroines, and she looks quite at her ease restored to her female style of dress, and is, I dare say, equally a good clerk in General C.’s office. The play was over soon after ten.
Wednesday, June 13.
The weather is very hot here now, much hotter than an English summer; at least nobody can go out after seven or before six, and the nights are very close; but of course everybody says it is a most extraordinary season, as they always do in India. It must end in rain soon; if it does not, the famine of this unfortunate country will be worse than ever. Captain M. and Mr. B. have both been ill with the dreadful heat at Adeenanuggur, and Dr. D. seems very anxious to get them away from there. I am quite sorry for the doctor. He left his little terrier here at his own house; it was a particularly clever little dog, and he doted on it, and there is very little doubt that it was eaten up, but whether by leopard or hyena remains a mystery. He will be wretched about it, and it places the happiness of the owners of little dogs generally on a wretchedly insecure footing.
We have had a slight disturbance in our household, the first serious one since we sent away those servants at Benares for taking presents. This time it was rather our fault. The Puttealah Rajah always sends, with his fruit and vegetables, various bottles, some containing rose water, and the others some sort of spirits. We ought to have broken the last, but we told the native servants to divide everything amongst them, and one of the kitmutgars, who got for his share a bottle of these spirits, asked some of the others to dine with him, took great care to drink nothing but water himself, and persuaded two others to get very drunk with what he called sherbet, and then they began to quarrel. It is such an extreme disgrace for a Mussulman to be drunk, and so degrading in the eyes of all the others, that J. turned them off forthwith. I was against it, as it had been a trick upon them, and partly our fault, but I only insisted on the giver of the feast being turned off too. As these men have only four shillings a week for themselves and families, of course they can save nothing, and if they are turned away at a distance from home they really may die of starvation. They went crying about for three or four days, and tried Giles and Wright, who could not interfere; and at last they watched me into my room yesterday, and came with two or three of the head servants to speak for them. I never can resist them; they cry, and knock their heads against the ground, and always make use of such touching expressions—that they are so very wicked, and so very unhappy, and that God forgives everybody their faults, and that they must and will die if they are not forgiven. However, I was very firm, and said I knew it was no use asking Major J., and that I never could look upon them again as respectable servants, and that none of the old servants ever gave them such an example, and would not like to associate with them. But then the old ones turned against me; and then I said, I would give them money to take them home, and then they cried still more about the disgrace; so at last I said I would ask Major J., though I was sure it was of no use, &c. Sometimes he does take it amiss; but this time he said, in his own diplomatic way, that in fact he had sent them to me, for he knew I should not resist their grief, and as he had sent them away he did not know how otherwise to help them. Giles, to whose department they belong, had been miserable about them.
CHAPTER XIX.
Saturday, June 14, 1838.
MY last Journal departed this life on Tuesday last, and since then we have had almost unceasing rain, with a great deal of thick white fog, which I rather affection; it somehow has a smell of London, only without the taste of smoked pea-soup, which is more germane to a London fog, and consequently to my patriotic feelings. The rain last night washed down one house, and killed the man in it; and the roads have been carried down into the valleys, and the rocks washed into the roads, so that somehow our geography is not so clear as it was; but still it is cool, and what else is there that signifies in India?