Saturday, May 25.
The Queen’s ball ‘came off’ yesterday with great success. We had had, the beginning of the week, three days of rain, which frightened us, because it is a rain that nothing can stand. It did us one good deed on Monday—washed away the twenty-four people who were coming to dine with us, which was lucky, as the greater part of the dinner prepared for them was also washed away by the rain breaking the skylight in the dining-room, and plumping down on the table. I went down by myself to Annandale on Thursday evening, to see how things were going on there, and found X., who has been encamped there for three days, walking about very conjugally with Mrs. N, to whom he is engaged. I felt rather de trop as they stepped about with me, showing off the preparations. It was a very pretty-looking fête; we built one temporary sort of room which held fifty people, and the others dined in two large tents on the opposite side of the road, but we were all close together, and drank the Queen’s health at the same moment with much cheering. Between the two tents there was a boarded platform for dancing, roped and arched in with flowers, and then in different parts of the valley, wherever the trees would allow of it, there was ‘Victoria,’ ‘God save the Queen,’ and ‘Candahar’ in immense letters twelve feet high. There was a very old Hindu temple also prettily lit up. Vishnu, or Mahadevi, to whom I believe it really belonged, must have been affronted. The native dealers in sweetmeats came down to sell their goods to the servants and jonpaunees, and C. and X. went round and bought up all their supplies for about twenty rupees for the general good. We dined at six, then had fireworks, and coffee, and then they all danced till twelve. It was the most beautiful evening; such a moon, and the mountains looked so soft and grave, after all the fireworks and glare.
Twenty years ago no European had ever been here, and there we were, with the band playing the ‘Puritani’ and ‘Masaniello,’ and eating salmon from Scotland, and sardines from the Mediterranean, and observing that St. Cloup’s potage à la Julienne was perhaps better than his other soups, and that some of the ladies’ sleeves were too tight according to the overland fashions for March, &c.; and all this in the face of those high hills, some of which have remained untrodden since the creation, and we, 105 Europeans, being surrounded by at least 3,000 mountaineers, who, wrapped up in their hill blankets, looked on at what we call our polite amusements, and bowed to the ground if a European came near them. I sometimes wonder they do not cut all our heads off, and say nothing more about it.
Sunday, May 26.
The aides-de-camp are about as much trouble to me as so many grown-up sons. That sedate Captain P. followed me to my room after breakfast, and thought it right to mention that he had proposed to Miss S. on Thursday, and had been accepted, and that the aunt was agreeable, and that he had written to the stepfather, Colonel ——, for his consent, which he had no reason to doubt, &c., and that he hoped I would not mention it to anybody but Lord A., as they were exceedingly desirous Captain L. E. should not know it, but Mrs. S. wished I should be told. If the kitchen poker or church steeple had gone and proposed, it would not have been more out of character, P. has always seemed so very indifferent and cold to ladies; though ever since we have been here, we have observed how altered he was, and what high spirits he was in; and then I met him the other day carrying a little nosegay to Stirling Castle, which looked suspicious and unnatural. Still the shock was great, and the only thing I could think of at first, was to ask with infinite and mistaken promptitude if she were a nice girl, to which P. naturally answered that of course she was—a very nice girl indeed; and I said I had had no opportunity of speaking to her when she dined here, but that now I should take pains to make her acquaintance. And then we discussed his prospects.
He cannot marry for a year at soonest, even if Colonel —— consents then; but she is only eighteen, and her father will not let the elder one marry till she is twenty. P. is going away next week on an official tour to Cashmere, a sort of scientific survey which G. wants him to make, and he is to be away four months.
That business was settled, and after luncheon L. E. came, very unhappy in his mind—and thought I must have observed it. He had been on the point of proposing to Miss A. S., when he had been intercepted by the astute aunt, who said she could not but observe his attentions, and thought it as well to mention that A. was engaged. He said, so he had heard, but he did not believe it, and thereupon wrote to the aforesaid A., and brought me his letter and her answer, and his letter to the stepfather and the aunt’s letter to him, and he thought that with my knowledge of the world, I could tell him whether it did not appear that she was only sticking to her engagement because she thought it right, &c.
I could not possibly flatter him. She is a pretty-looking girl, who has evidently fretted herself into bad health because Colonel —— would not consent to her marriage with a Mr. ——, she being eighteen, and her lover the same age. As she has never heard from the lover since he joined the army of the Indus, it is very possible he is inconstant, and that is what L. E. goes upon; he does not care how long he waits, &c. (and I think he will have to wait some time), but in the meantime perhaps I would speak to Mrs. S., and above all things Captain P. was not to know. That is always the end of all confidences; and in the meantime, as P. lives in a broad grin, and L. E. in a deep sigh, I should think their secrets will be guessed in a week. Thank goodness, now they are all engaged, except Z., who is not likely to fall in love with anybody but himself.
Wednesday, May 29.
We had a theatrical dinner yesterday, and a rehearsal of our new tableaux, which promise to be very successful. Six from the ‘Corsair,’ and five from ‘Kenilworth.’ We had them at night to try how Gulnare would look with her lamp going to visit Conrade; and I had another grand idea, of a trap-door, down which Amy Robsart is supposed to have fallen, at least four inches, so that she must have had every bone in her body smashed; and Varney with a torch looking into it, and Leicester and Trevilian in despair, made it a most awful business. The rehearsal was rather amusing; all the gentlemen in their common red coats, and a pretty Mrs. V., supposed to be Medora, was sitting with the shovel in her hand, and said in such a quiet way, ‘This is, in fact, a guitar;’ which, as she is dreadfully shy, and not given to speak at all, was one of the best jokes she ever made.