Emily Eden - Up the Country

I SENT off one journal to you two days ago from a place that, it since appears, was called Bheekee. Yesterday we started at half-past five, as it was a twelve miles’ march, and the troops complain if they do not get in before the sun grows hot, so we had half an hour’s drive in the dark, and F. rode the last half of the way. I came on in the carriage, as I did not feel well, and one is sick and chilly naturally before breakfast. Not but that I like these morning marches; the weather is so English, and feels so wholesome when one is well. The worst part of a march is the necessity of everybody, sick or well, dead or dying, pushing on with the others. Luckily there is every possible arrangement made for it. There are beds on poles for sick servants and palanquins for us, which are nothing but beds in boxes. I have lent mine to Mrs. C. G. and I went on an elephant through rather a pretty little village in the evening, and he was less bored than usual, but I never saw him hate anything so much as he does this camp life. I have long named my tent ‘Misery Hall.’ F. said it was very odd, as everybody observed her tent was like a fairy palace.

‘Mine is not exactly that,’ G. said; ‘indeed I call it Foully Palace, it is so very squalid-looking.’ He was sitting in my tent in the evening, and when the purdahs are all down, all the outlets to the tents are so alike that he could not find which crevice led to his abode; and he said at last, ‘Well! it is a hard case; they talk of the luxury in which the Governor-General travels, but I cannot even find a covered passage from Misery Hall to Foully Palace.’

This morning we are on the opposite bank of the river to Allahabad, almost a mile from it. It will take three days to pass the whole camp. Most of the horses and the body-guard are gone to-day, and have got safely over. The elephants swim for themselves, but all the camels, which amount now to about 850, have to be passed in boats: there are hundreds of horses and bullocks, and 12,000 people.

I am sure it would have done Mrs. Trimmer’s heart good to see them all on the beach this evening. I thought of her print of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea – a skimpy representation, but it was the first idea we had of that event. The picture at Stafford House enlarged my notions, and now I think I have come to the real thing, and indeed am a Red Sea Israelite myself.

We crossed the river at seven yesterday morning. The Ganges and Jumna join each other here, and this junction makes the water so uncommonly precious and sacred, that Hindus come here from all parts of the country on pilgrimage. The rich Hindus at a great distance buy the water, and we met strings of pilgrims yesterday carrying jars of it, with which they will travel farther south than Calcutta.

We were met at the ghaut by a large collection of residents. I hate a great station, and Allahabad has a very modern, uninteresting, sandy look about it.

Foully Palace looked particularly unhappy this morning. G.’s furniture, somehow, was deluged, and his whole stock of comfort amounted to one cane chair and a table, and he called us all in to see his eastern luxury. I handsomely offered to lend him the armchair Mr. D. gave me, and which is so continually my companion, ‘my goods, my chattels, my household stuff,’ that I had no doubt it was in ‘Misery Hall.’ I told my little ameer to give it to the Lord Sahib, but he told me afterwards, ‘Ladyship’s chair in river too, but me find arm-chair in other tent, and me put Lord Sahib in it.’ I think I see him fixing G. in his chair. Mine is quite safe, I am happy to say.

In the afternoon G. and I, and a Mr. B., rather a clever man, went to see some tombs about three miles off. You know the sort of people who have tombs worth seeing – ‘Shah Houssein,’ or ‘Nour Jehan,’ or words to that effect.

However, the tombs were there, and F. and I stayed there sketching till it was quite dusk, and kept the carriage, and G. and Mr. B. and Captain M. rode home such a roundabout way that dinner was cold before they got back.

We had church in camp again yesterday. We received visitors on Saturday evening instead of the morning, by way of an experiment, and it answered much better. It all comes more in the natural way of work than in the heat of the day, and we had the band, and tea, and negus, and sandwiches. It was a regular party, much larger than I expected; the great durbar tent was quite full, and they are a more fashioned -looking set here. By coming in the evening G. sees them, which they prefer, and which, strange to say, he likes too. We have thirty-five of them at dinner to-day, and thirty-seven to-morrow. On Thursday they give us a ball, and on Saturday we depart.

Lucknow and Agra were to have been the two incidents of the journey that were to make up for the bore of all the rest. Lucknow has been cut off, because the King cannot meet the Governor-General, and B. cannot reconcile himself to such a breach of etiquette, the poor old man being bedridden. Agra, they say, is in a state of famine and scarcity. If so, of course it would be very wrong to take our great camp there. So we shall not see the Taj – the only thing that, all Indians say, is worth looking at.

Here there is a sort of Dowager Queen of the Gwalior country; her style and title being ‘the Baiza Baee.’ She is very clever, has been handsome, and, some say, is beautiful still. She cannot endure being only a Dowager Baiza Baee; and being immensely rich, she has been suspected of carrying on intrigues amongst her former subjects. She has always been visited by all great potentates, but B. chose to say that neither G. nor we should go to see her. She took this dreadfully to heart, and has been sending ambassadors and letters and presents without end, and asserted that she would be disgraced for ever if she were so slighted. Then B. went to see her himself, and was either talked over, or was ashamed of always putting spokes in everybody’s wheel; he is a spoke himself and nothing else. Now he wants G. to go: however, he cannot get out of his lordship’s head what he has put into it, and G. will not go, but is going to send us – just the very thing Spoke wanted to prevent.

I am so glad, though it is a great deal of trouble to us; but I am glad out of spite.

Our great dinner yesterday went off very well. For the first time since we left Calcutta, indeed almost since we left England, I made yesterday a nice little solitary expedition. G. was gone to the native schools and jails, and F. and W. were out riding. I always have more or less of a headache the day that English letters arrive; they put me in a fuss, even if they are all right; so I thought it would be very nice to escape all companions except Chance, and I told my jemadar to have the tonjaun at the wrong side of the tent, stepped into it, and made them carry me three miles off in search of a very eligible flame-coloured idol, which I had marked down as a good sketch the day we landed. The bearers carry one very fast for that sort of distance, and Chance runs along by the chair in a very satisfactory manner. I am afraid the jemadar thought it an improper and undignified proceeding, for he fetched out every servant I have of the walking character, seventeen scarlet men in all; and the poor hirkarus, who have sat cross-legged for the last two years, ran on first as hard as they could, screaming to everybody to get out of the way. Chance thought it excellent fun, and barked all the time. We passed by the camp of the Nawâb of Banda, who is come to visit G., and has a camp as large as ours, with such strange-looking painted horses pawing about it. I found my idol, made a lovely coloured sketch with quantities of Venetian red, and got back just as it grew dark.