CHAPTER XXXVI.
Simla, Tuesday, March 19, 1839.
DON’T you see, that now I am come back to Simla, a Journal will be out of the question; nothing to put into it.
‘Pillicock sits on Pillicock’s hill, Halloo Loo! Loo!’ (which I take to be a prophecy of our playing at Loo every evening.) We came up in two days from Barr, a very fatiguing business at all times, though Mrs. A. had sent me down a hill dhoolie, in which I could lie down, but it makes all one’s bones ache to be jolted in a rough sedan for eight hours. The second day it poured till we came within sight of Simla, and with a sharp east wind from the mountains, the misery of all the dripping Bengalee servants was inconceivable. The gentlemen looked unhappy enough, as the hill ponies make slow work of the journey; and Dr. D. had a violent fit of ague before we arrived at Hurripore. X. abjures the aide-de-camp on these hill excursions, and appears ‘en blouse,’ a mixture of ‘a brave Belge’ and a German student.
We found Simla very white with snow; the thermometer had been 91° in our tents that day week. But I do not think it at all uncomfortably cold here. Giles had preceded us by two days, and had got all the curtains up and the carpets down, and the house looked more comfortable than ever. It is a jewel of a little house, and my own room is quite overcoming; so light and cheerful, and then all the little curiosities I have accumulated on my travels have a sweet effect now they are spread out. The only misfortune of my room is, that a long insect, much resembling a gudgeon on six legs, has eaten up your picture frame: the picture I took with me in my writing-desk, knowing that the gudgeon would have eaten that forthwith, but the frame, in an unguarded moment, I trusted to his honour, and this is the result. However, the glass he could not digest, and a wooden frame our own carpenter can make.
F. left W. O. after his first day’s tiger-shooting, and in marching up from Seharunpore with the K.s and Mrs. L., W. actually shot a tiger ten days after he had been run over, and he writes me word to-day that he is quite strong again, and that they had killed eight tigers in five days. One tiger got on an island about the size of the table, with a swamp all round it, that the elephants could not pass. The jungle was set on fire, and W. says it was beautiful to see him try to fight the fire with his paws, but when he found he could not conquer it, he charged the elephants, and was shot on the head of W.’s elephant.
Saturday, March 23.
We have had a little more snow and a great deal more rain, but now the weather is beautiful, and the servants are beginning to thaw and to move about. F. has had two dreadful days of rain in camp—a warning to her, and she says she is beginning to give up her love of tents. Q. is gone down to Barr to fetch her up the hill, but she will not now be here till Monday.
We have not had a great many visitors. There are forty-six ladies and twelve gentlemen, independent of our party, and forty more ladies and six more gentlemen are expected shortly, so how any dancing is to be managed at our parties we cannot make out. The aides-de-camp are in despair about it; they are all dancers, and they have engaged a house for the Miss S.s and their aunt quite close to ours—‘Stirling Castle,’ a bleak place that nobody will live in, and that in general is struck by lightning once a year; but then it is close by, and then they want a ball. They have got A. and all our married gentlemen to promise to dance every quadrille, but still we can’t make out more than twelve couple, and it will be dull for the sixty who look on. They are writing to their friends in the plains, and asking eligible young officers to come up and lodge with them. E. N. has settled to come here instead of going to Mussooree, and had taken a house and was to board with us; but Mr. J. has written to ask him to live with him—he must dance. ‘At all events,’ said X. as we were riding home, ‘those two little windows in the gable end of Stirling Castle look well, and when two little female forms are leaning out of them, I can conceive nothing more interesting.’ Our band twice a week is to be a great resource. G. bought W. O.’s old house, and has made it over to the aides-de-camp, which saves them some money, and in the grounds belonging to it we have discovered a beautiful little terrace for the band, and the others have persuaded P., who is ‘laying out the grounds,’ to arrange a few pretty paths for two, and also to make the gates so narrow that jonpauns cannot come through them, so that the ladies must be handed out and walk up to the music.
Tuesday.