We want some new books. I am sure Mr. Wilberforce’s Life will be ‘sweet pretty reading.’ I have just re-read Mrs. Hannah More’s Life; that is a jewel of a book both for amusement and for good. I like it much better than I did the first time; and now I have taken for my morning book in bed (I always wake early) dear Madame de Sevigné for the 117th time. It is a very affecting book amongst other merits. She was such a good, warm-hearted woman, and was not loved enough. I wish she was not dead and was here! We rather want more letters about the fashions. I am quite certain, from the unmitigated hatred I feel to the tight bit at the top of my sleeves, that you have all got rid of it, and are swaggering about in the fullest of sleeves again. Indeed, if you are not, it would be only benevolent to say you are!
Letter to J. C., Esq.
Simla, Wednesday, Aug. 22.
This is to be really a short letter, for I have sent off so many that I have not the fraction of a new idea left; but I feel it my duty to encourage you in your excellent habit of writing. The letters do not come, on account of the monsoon; but still I feel confident, from my intimate knowledge of your character, that yours is an excellent habit of writing, when the monsoon does not set itself against it.
I think it has rained incessantly since I wrote to your mother last, and most people have passed their time in mopping up the wet in their houses, but ours has behaved like an angel, and since the first day has never had a leak. The roofs here are all flat, and made of mud beat into a stiff consistency; but when the rain does get through, the drippings are of a muddy nature. Captain M., after moving into every corner of his house, used to write under an umbrella; and Captain B. and his companion Dr. S. have dined every day in their house with umbrellas held over their heads and their dinners. Still, I do not dislike the rain so much as most people do. There is often a fine half-hour before sunset, in which it is easy to take a canter, quite long enough for the exercise of the day; and whenever it is not actually pouring, the hills are perfectly beautiful and the evening skies are not amiss. Then it is always cool, and people should make much of that blessing. We had an arrival two days ago of a box of new books; that is, new to us. You may remember them in the early part of the reign of Victoria the First, but the pleasure of seeing them is very great. I have read all our old ones (and we have a great collection) at least three times over, even including the twenty-one volumes of St. Simon, which I read once on board ship and now again here; and it certainly is a wonderfully amusing book. I must have begun it again if the box had not appeared. To think of our only having yet received in this legal, direct manner, the eighteenth number of Pickwick! We finished it six months ago, because it is printed and reprinted at Calcutta from overland copies. Mais, je vous demande un peu—what should we have done, if we had waited for the lawful supply, to know Pickwick’s end? I see you are making a great fuss about copyrights, &c., which I cannot understand, as we see it only by bits and scraps; but I beg to announce that I am entirely for piracy and surreptitious and cheap editions, and an early American copy of an English novel for three rupees, instead of a late English one at twenty-two shillings. ‘Them’s my sentiments’ for the next three years at least. As it is, I am reading with deep attention ‘Lady Annabella,’ by the author of ‘Constance,’ which was, I remember, a remarkably pretty novel; and so is this, only the heroine will call her mother ‘My lady.’ I keep hoping it is a joke, and pretend to laugh every time it occurs, but it looks frightfully serious at times. Perhaps the fashion of calling one’s mother ‘My lady’ may have come in, though, since my time.
All our plans have come into shape, and rather satisfactorily. We shall not leave this till the first week in November, when the great heat of the plains will be over. We are to meet Runjeet on the 20th, or thereabouts, at Ferozepore, when also the army will be assembled under Sir G. R.
There will be a review of the army before it goes down the river; and though we talk of our interview taking only a fortnight, everybody says we shall be kept there a month. That will luckily not leave us time for a very long march, and the probability is that we shall only go to Agra, and come up here again in March.
CHAPTER XXI.
Journal continued.
Simla, Sunday, Sept. 2, 1838.
THIS is your birthday, and an excellent reason for starting again in my Journal. I wish you a great many of them, dearest; only please to be economical, and don’t spend them lavishly, till I come home to be with you.