My dearest Sister,
I am going to run off a few short letters to-day and to-morrow, just to show what I would have done, if letters would ever go—but they won’t. They say there is an accumulation of three months’ letters lying at Bombay. There has been a monsoon, and a want of coals, and a burst boiler, and every sort of excuse. I wish, when you are driving about, you would just call at the dockyards[C] in your neighbourhood, and mention that we are not at all satisfied with the steamers they send us out; that you think yourself, their last bowsprits are a shame to be seen, and you might add, that if you do not get your letters a little more regularly, you really must speak about employing some other cast-iron men. Somehow, out of four steamers at Bombay, there has not been one available, and we are now expecting our letters of June by some Arab proa, or some sailing-vessel. We may expect, I fancy, with a witness! I have not much news for you, as I doubt (though I think you a wonderfully clever woman) whether you are quite up to the nuances of the Cabul and Candahar politics.
[C] Woolwich.
We gain one little good by this war. The army cannot muster at Ferozepore till the 20th of November, and Sir G. R. wishes G. not to meet Runjeet Singh till he can escort him at the head of 10,000 men, so that gives us three more cool weeks here, and takes off three very hot weeks of the plains. The heat subsides about December. F. and I shall be the only ladies in the whole camp. All our own ladies stay up here, bored to death to be without their husbands, but they would be still more bored if they had to drag their children through another long march. Besides, there are great difficulties this time for tents, carriages, &c., and then it is to be hoped we shall make a much shorter journey, and come up here again.
It has rained without ceasing since I wrote last—an excellent thing for India, and not so unpleasant for us as it sounds.
When I say ‘without ceasing,’ it very often stops raining for half an hour in the afternoon, and then the drip and the fog do not count.
We all get on our ponies the moment it is fair, and go cantering past each other, saying, ‘How delightful to be out again,’ and ‘I think we shall get wet’—and then that is enough exercise for two days. It is supposed the rains are breaking up now, as we have had three fine evenings, one of which we devoted to dropping in after dinner familiarly at the Commander-in-chief’s, to have tea and a rubber of whist.
Don’t you see how free-and-easy that looked? Three jonpauns—like upright coffins—rushing rapidly through the bazaar, with a long train of torch-bearers and hirkarus and three aides-de-camp, in full uniform, all ‘dropping in.’ G. and I, and Sir G. R. and Colonel U., always play at whist, and the others at a round game which is much livelier. I rather like whist, and think it will be one of the small vices of my old age.
I have been doing a quantity of drawings for the fancy sale. I wish you could buy some. There is a Mr. —— here who draws beautifully, and he is doing a picture for me of three of the fattest objects in nature—my pony, Chance, and Chance’s boy. I do not mean Chance’s own man, but his footboy, the boy who cleans his shoes and whets his razors. He was one of the skeletons whom the servants picked up in the starving districts, and, like most of those skeletons, the reaction has been frightful, and the little wretch is such an extraordinary figure, particularly seen in profile, that he makes everybody laugh. It will be a curious picture; and I never saw anything so well done as the pony.
I mentioned our fleas to you, I think, in my last letter. They are worse than ever, and bestow their liveliest attentions on W. and me. For the last three nights we have neither of us had any sleep, and the more the rooms are cleaned and worried the livelier the fleas are.