We had such a frightful thunder-storm last night for three hours, with rain that might have drowned us all; I never heard such a clatter. Our tents stood it very well, but a great many tents were beat down, and all the servants’ tents were full of water. Luckily, this advanced camp escaped great part of the storm, and the tents are much drier than those we left. This is not good weather for ague; it goes lingering on, and they say will do so, till I get to the hills. I keep very quiet, but I shall be glad to be settled at Simla. You know I never could quite understand the Psalms, but I see what David means when he says, ‘Woe is me that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have my habitation in the tents of Kedar.’ Mesech I think he was wrong about. I should have no objection to dwell with him in a good house of his own, but the tents of Kedar are decidedly very objectionable and ‘woe-is-me-ish;’ double-poled tents, I have no doubt, and lined with buff and green.
Sunday, Feb. 24.
The idea of the December mail arriving this morning! letters of the 26th, less than two months old.
‘Oliver Twist’ we have read, doled out in monthly parts nearly to the end, and I like it very much—but ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ still better. We have left off there, at Miss Petowker’s marriage, and Mrs. Crummles’ walking tragically up the aisle ‘with a step and a stop,’ and the infant covered with flowers. There never was such a man as Dickens! I often think of proposing a public subscription for him—‘A tribute from India’—and everybody would subscribe. He is the agent for Europe fun, and they do not grow much in this country.
Paniput, Tuesday.
We are progressing every day, but this is the same road we passed over last year, so if there had been anything to say about it, you would not wish me to say it twice over. Mr. —— is with us, remarkably dull; but since I have got him to tell me anecdotes of the Delhi royal family shut up in their high walls, and of all the murders he has known, or suspected, I think the time passes pleasantly, and he goes away early.
I am much better, and began dining down again yesterday, and the weather has changed, which they say is to blow away all fevers; but Dr. D. says the hospital is quite full, and the deaths amongst the servants this year have been quite lamentable.
Gornadar, Wednesday, Feb. 27.
L. E. and Z. nearly had a tiff to-day. L. E. has taken charge of the stables since Captain M. went away, and as there are sometimes from sixty to a hundred horses there, while presents are going on from native princes on the march, besides all our own horses, it is like a little regiment occasionally, and L. E. is very gentle and quiet in his manner to the syces and with Webb.
Captain Z. came into my tent this morning and flung himself into my arm-chair—Mr. D.’s chair, that sacred piece of furniture. I thought it an odd measure, but could not help it, and he began: ‘I was just going to say—what a delicious chair this is! such a spring!—I was just going to say that I have been talking to Webb about your open carriage. I understand you want it up here. I think of sending it to Dehra, for, as I told Webb, the oxen can bring it back from Barr,’ &c. I looked rather frosty, and said I would think about it and let him know, and put it off; and then he launched out about Paul de Cocq’s novels, still seated on that much-loved chair—‘my goods, my property, my household stuff.’ As soon as he was gone, I got hold of X., who said he too had been surprised, but thought that perhaps Captain L. E., who is acting for W. in his absence, might have found he had too much to do, and so had made over the stables to Z.