“We both continue excellently well, and persist in defying the foul cholera and all other tropical maladies. The hot season has passed, and the rains are setting in, rendering the air more temperate. We now occasionally enjoy a cool fresh breeze. A few days since I felt gay enough to fetch a walk in the evening, and got well ducked for my reward; also an appetite for dinner. Apropos, I rejoice to see that feeding is assuming the high place among the sciences which was always its legitimate right.
‘Oh Dick! you may talk of your writing and reading,
Your logic and Greek, but there’s nothing like feeding.’
Dr. Kitchener has borrowed the most erudite and savoury parts of his two books from the ‘Almanach des Gourmands,’ a work well worthy of being placed in the hands of the rising generation as a standard book; I am sure it would be a perfect Kurān for an English lady. But, alas! in this savage place, dindon aux truffes, omelette soufflée, vol au vent à la financière, coquille de volaille, pâté de Strasbourg, exist but in name. The thousand temptations which fascinate the eye and distract the choice in a French carte à dîner, rarely, very rarely appear. The beef of to-day succeeds to the mutton of yesterday; none of those ‘coruscations of genius, breaking like lightning from a cloud,’ which must now so frequently illumine the horizon of the London mahogany. But all is tame and unvaried, and man remains here comparatively dead to one of the noblest ends of his creation. I endeavour to struggle against this lifeless life by anticipating the time when I shall return to Europe, at the proper gourmand age of forty-five, with a taste corrected by experience, and a mouth open as day to melting delicacies.
“Oct.—We have heard with sorrow of the death of Lord Byron; the other evening, as we were driving past a Greek chapel on the banks of the Hoogly, prayers were being offered for the repose of the soul of the departed. We cannot join with the yelpers who cry him down on the score of his immorality; the seed he sowed must have fallen upon a soil villainously bad to have brought forth nothing but an unprofitable harvest. Mr. Hunt is publishing a translation of a work capable of producing more evil than any of his lordship’s—Voltaire’s ‘Dictionnaire Philosophique’ to wit. What is the correct story about the Memoirs? Are we to believe the papers?
“The cold weather has now begun. We have weddings and rumours of weddings. The precipitate manner in which young people woo and wed is almost ridiculous; the whole affair, in many cases, taking less than a month. Many young gentlemen become papas before they have lawfully passed their years of infancy. Marrying and giving in marriage is, in this country, sharp, short, and decisive; and where our habits are necessarily so domestic, it is wonderful how happily the people live together afterwards.
“Dec.—The races are beginning, the theatre in high force, fancy-dress balls and dinner-parties on the tapis, water-parties to the botanical gardens, and I know not what. My beautiful Arab carries me delightfully; dove-like, but full of fire.
“We shake off dull sloth, rise early, and defy the foul fiend. Many a nail is extracted, by this delightful weather, from our coffins. Calcutta opens her palaces, and displays hospitality, after a fashion which far outdoes that of you cold calculating islanders. And there is such a variety in our pastimes, and the season is so short,—about four months,—that we have no time to ‘fall asleep in the sameness of splendour.’
“We were glad to hear our friend would not come out to India. It is a pity that men like him should be sacrificed—and for what? To procure a bare subsistence; for the knack of fortune-getting has been long since lost. Show me the man in these latter days who has made one,—always provided he be no auctioneer, agent, or other species of leech,—and we will sit down and soberly endeavour to make one for ourselves.