Kitabı oku: «Up the Country», sayfa 24

CHAPTER LI

Monday, Jan. 12, 1840.

WE dined with Colonel J. yesterday. He lives, I believe, quite in the native style, with a few black Mrs. J.’s gracing his domestic circle when we are not here, but he borrowed St. Cloup and our cooks to dress the dinner, and it all went off very well. That little Mrs. T. looked very pretty, but Captain T. planted himself opposite to her, and frowned whenever she tried to talk, but he did not quite stop her, and another week of society would, I expect, enable her to frown again. We went to Scindia’s durbar to-day. The palace was three miles off, and we had to set off at three on elephants, and the heat and the dust and the crowd were something inconceivable, but it was a curious show. The durbar was very orderly and handsome. G. and Scindia sat together on a gold throne with a canopy, and F. and I on two silver chairs next to G., and down each side of the room were his sirdars on one side and our officers on the other. After we had sat about ten minutes, the negotiations began for our going to see the ranee, and there were many preliminaries to arrange, and at last we condescended to walk through the two rooms that led to the zenana, for fear any of the bearers should catch a glimpse of anything, and no aide-de-camp was to go for the same reason, so we walked off with Mrs. H. We had sent the two ayahs there in the morning, as Mrs. H. does not speak the language very well. Some female slaves met us at the first door, and then some cousins of the rajah’s; in the next room two stepmothers, and then an old grandmother, and at the door of her own room was the little ranee, something like a little transformed cat in a fairy tale, covered with gold tissue, and clanking with diamonds. Her feet and hands were covered with rings fastened with diamond chains to her wrists and ankles. She laid hold of our hands and led us to her throne, which was like the rajah’s, without a canopy, and her women lifted her up, and we sat on each side of her, and then all the relations sat in two rows on chairs, and looked uncomfortable, and the nautch girls began dancing. The ranee is only eight years old, and is the sister of his first wife, on whom he doted, and on her death-bed she made him promise to marry this child. She was so shy, she would hardly let us see her face, but the old women talked for her, and the presents filled up the time, for the rajah had ordered that she should put all the jewellery on us with her own little hands. I had a diamond necklace and a collar, some native pearl earrings that hung nearly down to the waist, and a beautiful pair of diamond bracelets, and the great article of all was an immense diamond tiara. I luckily could not keep this on with a bonnet. They were valued altogether at 2,400l., the mere stones. F.’s were of different shapes, some very pretty, but not so costly, but altogether it was an immense prize for the Company. Then we had a bale of shawls, and the ayahs got six shawls, and Mrs. H. a necklace, and besides all the diamonds, they hung flowers all over us. We must have looked like mad tragedy queens when we came out, but everybody was transmogrified in the same way. Some years ago, it might have made us laugh, but W. and Mr. A., with great necklaces of flowers on, led us gravely back to our silver chairs, and there was G., sitting bolt upright, a pattern of patience, with a string of pearls as big as peas round his neck, a diamond ring on one hand and a large sapphire on the other, and a cocked hat embroidered in pearls at his side. We came home through a grand illumination, and were thoroughly tired at last.

Tuesday, Jan. 13.

Scindia returned G.’s visit to-day, and the ceremonies were much the same, and I think our presents were almost handsomer than his. G. asked him to come for a secret conference into the shawl tent with silver poles that Runjeet gave us, and in that was the gold bed inlaid with rubies, also Runjeet’s, on which they both sat, with B. and A., Colonel J. on one side and the rajah’s two ministers on the other. It looked mysterious and conspiring, and the rajah’s followers were in a horrid state of alarm; they said their king had been carried off, and had no guards, and perhaps never would be let out again. G. and the rajah transacted a little real business, and then G. got up and asked him to accept the tent and the bed, which quite delighted him, and he went away.

We went on to see a much more interesting little durbar. G. had all the old soubadars and havildars of the regiments that have been with us, all through this march, and some of the body-guard, and gave them each a gun and a pair of shawls. One old fellow has been fifty-eight years in the service, and would tell his story here: he had been at Java in Lord Minto’s time, and so on, and he had five medals to show, another had four; they are all most respectable natives. Their great desire was that G. should pour attar on their hands, with his own hand, which is a great distinction; and altogether it was a very touching sight, and has pleased all the troops very much.

We had a great dinner of all the officers afterwards, which luckily was not formal; as there was a Mr. V., a cousin of Lady B.’s, who sings beautifully, without accompaniment, and filled up the evening very pleasantly.

Wednesday.

The camp moved three miles to-day, that G. might be nearer the garden-house where the rajah was to give him a dinner, and we came over such roads! I wonder the carriage stood it. The dinner was all in the native style, but would have been eatable, G. says, only he was on so high a chair that he never could pick up a morsel from the table. The rajah sent F. and me some dinner – three kids roasted whole, and covered with gold and silver leaf, a deer, and about fifty dishes of sorts, much to the delight of the servants. Wright and Jones with Rosina went to take our return presents to the little ranee, and were charmed with their visit.

Thursday.

G. went to a long tiresome review to-day, and F. and C. went with Captain X., Mr. H., and Dr. D. to visit Donheit Rao’s tomb. The baizee baee erected it fifteen years ago. There is a black marble figure of him, dressed in the same sort of gold stuff he always wore, and with all his jewels on, and as, being of black marble, he cannot go to Mahadeo’s temple to say prayers, Mahadeo is brought and put on a table before him. Food is served up to him three times a day, and there is a nautch going on while he is supposed to eat. They were nautching all the time we were there, and I think the marble man liked it. The baee endowed the tomb with five villages, and the Brahmins in attendance eat up the food the marble man leaves. It has made rather a good sketch. G. said, while the review was going on, the sirdar who had been with us came and reported that the ladies had been to the tomb and had been so much pleased that they made a drawing of it, and that they had returned safely to camp, and the maharajah sent his compliments, and said he was glad to hear of our safety. I never felt much afraid, did you? but then I have sketched before, and know what it is.

Friday, Jan. 17.

I declare I think Scindia a very nice young man, likely to turn out well. There is an enamelled little box of spices that comes every day with the uneatable food he sends for luncheon, and I took it up one day and commented upon its beauty. I suppose our servants told his, for to-day Colonel E. arrived with Bajee Rao and another Vakeel, who had brought the little spice-box in a palanquin, with a message from the rajah that he heard I had admired it, and that he had sent it as a private present to me, that if the Company were to have it, he did not give it at all, but that Colonel E. was to arrange so that I should have it. G. has paid its value to the Company, which is the simplest arrangement, though he hardly ever will give leave to have anything bought by private contract, but in this instance where there was no return present he did. Colonel E. is very angry that it should be paid for because it was entirely a private present, but I see the value of the rule. It was very good-natured of the rajah to think of it, and I shall keep my little spice-box with a tender recollection of him, to say nothing of its being a lovely little article, per se.

Saturday, Jan. 18.

I should like to have kept this open till your letter arrived, but G. seems to think the great packet may not come till to-morrow. Still, I think I won’t send it. G. may be wrong, everybody is occasionally. In the meantime, I beg to say we have left Gwalior, and I shall have nothing to see, or say, till we get back to Calcutta. So you need hardly read the next journal – it will be so very heavy.

W. and I got up by a wrong gun this morning, one of Scindia’s. There is no carriage road, so we all travel separately in tonjauns, or on elephants, or horses or anyhow; and after I had set off in a great fuss at being so late, G.’s first gun fired. I found W. scrambling along on a pony, under the same delusion; and we got in here an hour before the others, riding the last six miles as hard as we could. I was glad to be in soon, the weather is so very hot. It has been cold for about three weeks this year. – God bless you! I have been trying to read over my journal and have stuck in it. What very heavy reading it is!

Jan. 20.

I have kept this open for two days, in hopes that the letters would come in, but we have just got all the Galignanis with an announcement from Bombay, that the Falmouth packet is not come at all; and all your letters are there – and everybody’s. It is so disheartening! – We cannot have them for five weeks.

CHAPTER LII

Nuddea Gaon, Thursday, Jan. 23, 1840.

THAT missing Falmouth packet still hangs on my mind, and I cannot digest its loss after three days, which must be very unwholesome. We are poking along the narrow roads and ravines of Bundelcund, always afraid every night that the carriage will not be available, and finding every morning that the rajah of the day (we live in a course of rajahs) has widened the old road, or cut a new one, and picked the stones off the hills and thrown them into the holes; and so, somehow, we come along. We have our old friend, Mr. F., who marched with us two years ago, in camp with his Jhansi rajah, who has met us and been durbared and visited; and a Captain R. with his rajah in prospect; and Colonel E. still here, because we every now and then step over a mile of Gwalior territory; and Colonel H. also, an old friend, and a sad spectacle of what two more years in India have done. This morning we came in on elephants because the Duttyah rajah met G. We arrived all over dust, but still, as I was telling G., the meeting between Dutty and Dusty was tolerably good. Duttyah’s is rather a pretty story. He was picked up ‘a naked, new-born child’ under a tree at this place by the Governor-General’s agent, who was taking his morning’s ride, and who carried the child to the Palace. The old rajah, who had no children, said it was the gift of God, and that he would adopt him; and an adopted son is, with the natives, as good an heir as any other; but sometimes the English Government objects, as territories without an heir fall to the Company. There were ill-natured people who said that the Resident Agent took a paternal interest in the little brown baby, and knew exactly under which tree he was to look for a forsaken child; but I am sure the boy’s look quite disproves that calumny. He is more hideously fat than any boy of fourteen I ever saw; a regular well-fed Hindu. The Government never gave a formal consent to the adoption, but his territory is particularly well-managed by the old prime minister; and so, upon his consent to pay a certain tribute, he was to be publicly received as rajah, to-day, and he and his subjects all mustered in great force, and the old minister was fussing his heart out, to have his fat boy’s elephant at G.’s right hand, and looking very proud of his maharajah. It is very shocking, and I hope it may never be the case in any other country, but we have seen a great many young, petty sovereigns lately, and it is extraordinary how like they all are to the old prime ministers belonging to their fathers. It is rather pleasant for this boy to look at the tree where he was found without a rag on, and to think he has a very large territory with a clear income of £140,000 a year. W. O. left us last Monday evening; he did not mean to stop an hour on the road, and it is horrid to think that he is still going shaking on, with the bearers saying ‘humph! humph! ha! ha!’ which they do without ceasing.

Friday.

Lord Jocelyn, who has been coming across from Bombay to join us through sundry difficulties, writes now from Gwalior, and says that Captain E. is to pass him on to Soonderah, where he hopes we shall have sent horses, &c., and that he will be in camp on Thursday night. His letter did not come till this morning, so he is probably wringing his hands at Soonderah. It is thirty miles off, but we have sent out camels and such of the horses as are not tired with this morning’s march, but the syces cannot walk more than fifteen miles a day. I have been redeeming from the Tosha Khanna (the collection of native presents made to us) two or three articles as recollections of this journey, but they price them ridiculously high out of regard for the Company. I have bought a little ring which Runjeet gave me, a poor diamond, but the only one within my means, for love of the old man; a little diamond cross that was a private gift of Hindu Rao’s, and if we had not been the most scrupulous of people, need not have been given up, and a pair of silver anklets as mere curiosities, that the little ranee gave me. I should have liked one of the King of Lucknow’s presents, but none came within my reach.

Saturday.

This morning there came a letter written on a scrap of brown, native paper, from Lord Jocelyn to G., saying he thought his letter to W. O. had perhaps not been opened, that he was at Soonderah after wandering five hours in the jungles, that he had lost his servant, ‘and I hope your Lordship will have the kindness to send somebody out to look after me, as I cannot make anybody understand a word I say.’

He came in in the afternoon, and nearly killed Colonel E. and Mr. L. and some of the old Indians who were dining with us by his account of his troubles. ‘They would not give me anything to eat, so I held up a rupee and said “Dood” (milk), and they brought me quantities, but nothing to eat at all, and as I only had six rupees and did not know whether I should not have to pass the rest of my life at Soonderah, I said, “chota pice” (by which he meant small change, but it is as if we were to ask for little farthings); they did not attend, so then I stalked into a kind of guard-house where there were some sepoys, and as they paid no attention to me, I knocked my stick on the table to excite them, and made signs of writing and said “Lord Sahib.” They evidently thought I had no business to write to the Lord Sahib, but at last brought me a stick and a piece of brown paper and I wrote and said “Dâk,” and they brought me a man with letter bags, and I said “Lord Sahib hi” (is the Lord Sahib here)? upon which they all burst out laughing and every time I said it, they all laughed more. Then I said, very majestically “Jow, Jow, Jow,” (which means “go.”) Then I shut my eyes and pretended to go to sleep, and they showed me a shed and I fetched my saddle for a pillow, and went to sleep; but the rats ran over me, so finding my horse was rested, I got on him and rode east, which I knew was your direction and just as the horse refused to move another step met the camels.’

I really think he managed very well considering that the Mahrattas are not in general very civil.

Oorei, Sunday.

We met the little Jhetour rajah this morning: such a pretty boy of twelve years old, and Mr. F. the agent has him constantly with him and teaches him to think for himself, and to be active and has got him to live less in the zenana than most young natives, and he seems lively and intelligent. We halt here a day, that G. may review the new local corps that has been raised in this boy’s territories; they were drawn up in our street this morning, and are fine-looking people. Lord Jocelyn has filled up the day with shooting; there are quantities of deer about, and he had the good luck to kill one.

Tuesday.

We halted at Oorei yesterday, that G. might review those troops, who made a wonderful display, considering that eight months ago they were all common peasants; but natives are wonderfully quick under sharp Europeans, and Captain B., who has been fighting in Spain and is very active, has just hit their fancy. He goes about in a sort of blue and gold fancy dress, and puts himself into a constant series of attitudes.

The weather is so dreadfully hot, much worse than a January in Calcutta, but they say it is always so in Bundelcund. G. and I are quite beat out of riding any part of the march, even before seven o’clock, but F. still rides.

She and G. have gone on arguing to the end about the tents. He says, he should like before he gets into his palanquin, to make a great pyramid of tent pins, and put the flagstaff in the centre, with the tents neatly packed all round, and then set fire to the whole. He thinks it would be an act of humanity, as it would be at least a year before they could be replaced, so that nobody, during that time, could undergo all the discomfort and bore he has undergone. She declares it is the only life she likes, never to be two days in the same place; just as if we ever were in ‘a place.’

CHAPTER LIII

Culpee, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 1840.

THIS is our great place of dispersion. G., A., and Mars start to-morrow for Calcutta, Lord Jocelyn for Agra, C. for Lucknow, and we on our march to Allahabad. M., H., and Colonel E. take up G.’s dâk the next day – that is, they inherit his bearers and follow him as fast as they can, and the rest of the camp go with us. We found Mrs. C., Mrs. N., and the Y.s, all in their separate boats at the ghaut here, which was a curious coincidence, as everybody started on a different day, and a great delight to X.

Thursday, Jan. 30.

Lord Jocelyn passed two hours in my tent, talking over old days. He is very amusing and pleasant, and rubs up a number of London recollections.

We all had an early dinner at three, and then he started in a dhoolie. There were no spare palanquins in camp, and a dhoolie is a sort of bed with red curtains, that sick soldiers are carried in, very light, but squalid-looking.

The street was full of officers, and soldiers, and servants; everybody in camp assembled to wish G. good-bye, and Lord Jocelyn came out in a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, with a cigar and a volume of a French novel, and took possession of this wretched bed, and seemed quite delighted with it. His servant followed on a camel. G. and A. then set off in the shut carriage, which is to take them two stages, Mars with palanquins having gone on in the morning. G.’s going is a great grief. It is somehow impossible to live without him here, and then India is such a horrid place. People who care about each other never ought to part for a day; it is all so uncertain, and communication is so difficult. F. and H. made a short march of five miles, just across the Jumna, and C. came on with all the rest and passed the evening with us, and then set off for his appointment at Lucknow. He is a great loss in every way, and has been with us for four years nearly. M., Colonel E., and H. we left on the other bank; they are to follow G. to-morrow.

Friday, Jan. 31.

Captain D. is in a considerable fuss. Colonel – seems never to have recollected that though so many individuals have left the camp, their property and servants remain there, just the same, and that the public officers, with all the clerks, must march on; so there is the same want of sentries. He ordered off half of the regiment that had come to escort us to Allahabad, and Colonel B., who only joined last night, sent word that he had only 300 men to do the work of 1,000. The sentries are withdrawn from all the private tents, and all the silver howdahs and waggon loads of shawls, jewellery, arms, &c., of the Tosha Khanna, are brought into the middle of the street. I should have liked to have robbed it for fun; in the first place, for the value of the goods, and then it would have put D., L., and the baboo into such a state of horror.

Nobody was robbed but Mr. – , who always is, and looks as if he always must be; he seems so helpless, and dangles his hands about in a pair of bright yellow gloves, quite new, and too large for him, and says, ‘It is very odd how the devils of dacoits persecute me.’

The other day they stole his horse: he had put five police to guard it, and the thief just cut the ropes, jumped on its back, and rode off, and has never been heard of since. It is very convenient stealing a white horse in this country, because the natives always paint them, sometimes in stripes like zebras, and sometimes in zigzags, and always give them scarlet, or orange tails, and orange legs; so they disguise a stolen one instantly.

Mr. T. is such a prim boy; he is very gentlemanlike-looking, and seems very amiable, but he is certainly prim. His uniform is so stiff he cannot turn his head round, and he talks poetically whenever he does speak.

F. declares he quoted to-day something from Mr. Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ I wish when he gives us his arm that he would shut it up again. He sticks it out almost akimbo, so that it is impossible to hook on with any certainty.

Ghautumpore, Sunday, Feb. 2.

We have halted here to-day to allow more troops to come and protect the general property.

I heard from G. from Futtehpore. He says he can sleep very well in his palanquin; he might call it rather a slow conveyance, but thinks of us marching, and blesses his own fate. Mr. Beechey, the painter at Lucknow, sent me to-day a miniature of G., done by a native from his picture. It is a shocking caricature, but a very little would make it like. I can make the alteration myself; and if I can get it smoothed up at Calcutta, I will send it home, and the girls can hang up ‘the devoted creature’ in their room. Mr. Beechey says he has sent me the original sketch in oils to Calcutta. It was an excellent picture, and I hope he has not touched it since.

Jehannabad, Monday, Feb. 3.

I heard again from G. from Allahabad; in fact, he is very little in his palanquin. All the magistrates and collectors of the different districts had placed their carriages and buggies at his disposal along the road that they knew he must go; so he gets on very fast, and then rests all the hot part of the day in a bungalow, which gives time for his palanquin to come up. He had gone thirty miles at one spell in a carriage drawn by four camels.

Futtehpore, Thursday, Feb. 6.

I have missed three days. They are all so exactly alike and so more than ever tiresome now G. is gone; I cannot get on at all without him. There is nobody else in this country who understands me, and you keep standing there such miles off, that you are not of the least use when I want you most. Then your letters did not come last month. You cannot imagine what companions your letters are, and I want one so very much just now.

We have come back to-day, to one of our early halting places two years ago, so that looks as if we really were coming to an end of our wanderings in the wilderness, and I am sure it is high time we did. All the chairs and tables are tumbling to pieces, the china is all cracked, the right shoe of my only remaining pair has sprung a large hole, the brambles that infest the jungles where we encamp have torn my gown into fringes, so that I look like a shabby Pharisee, and my last bonnet is brown with dust. I am obliged to get Wright to darn a thing or two surreptitiously; the tailors think it wrong and undignified to mend. Altogether I can conceive nothing pleasanter than coming to a completely fresh set out at Calcutta.

General E. passed through camp to-day in his palanquin, and stopped for two hours and came to see us. I recollect him so well with the F.s and G.s as ‘Elphy Bey,’ and never had made out it was the same man till a sudden recollection came over me a week ago. He is in a shocking state of gout, poor man! – one arm in a sling and very lame, but otherwise is a young-looking general for India. He hates being here, and is in all the first struggles of ‘a real ancient Briton.’ (Don’t you remember how you and I were ‘ancient Britons’ always, when we fell into foreign society?) He is wretched because nobody understands his London topics, or knows his London people, and he revels in a long letter from Lord W. He thought G. very much altered since he had seen him, and G. thought the same of him. I suppose it will be very dreadful when we all meet. ‘Oh! my coevals, remnants of yourselves,’ I often think of that. What sort of a remnant are you? I am a remnant of faded yellow gingham.

General E. said, ‘It seems odd that I have never seen A. since we were shooting grouse together, and now I had to ask for an audience and for employment. I got a hint, and rather a strong one, from the Governor-General to take Delhi in my way to Meerut, and to look at the troops there and be active in my command.’ He went off with a heavy heart to his palanquin, which must be a shaky conveyance for gout. One sees how new arrivals must amuse old Indians. He cannot, of course, speak a word of Hindoostanee, neither can his aide-de-camp. ‘My groom is the best of us, but somehow we never can make the bearers understand us. I have a negro who speaks English, but I could not bring him dâk.’ I suppose he means a native; but that is being what the ‘artful dodger’ in ‘Oliver Twist’ would have called ‘jolly green.’ He can hardly have picked up a woolly black negro who speaks Hindoostanee. I wish I knew.

Kutoghun, Sunday, Feb. 9.

We have halted here for Sunday under a few trees, which they call Kutoghun. I don’t see any houses within ten miles.

Syme, Feb. 10.

We were met this morning by two Shuter sirwars, bringing invitations from the serious party at Allahabad to a fancy fair and a supper, and from the wicked set, to a ball and a supper, and begging us to name our own days. We have but Thursday and Friday, and it is rather hard, after a long march and before an early boat, to put in these gaieties. However, we cannot help it, but have declined both the suppers.

Allahabad, Friday, Feb. 14.

There! we arrived yesterday; the last time in my natural life in which I will make a long dusty journey before breakfast – at least, that is my hope, my intention, and my plot; of course I may be defeated in after years.

The camp is breaking up fast; camp followers asking for rupees in every direction; a fleet of boats loaded, and more wanted; all useless horses and furniture are being sold off by Webb at the stables; and to-morrow, of all this crowd which still covers five acres, there will be nothing left but Captain C. alone in his tent.

The fancy fair looked pretty in the evening – very ‘Vicar of Wrexhillish,’ such a mixture of tracts and champagne, &c., but the cheapest shop I have been in in India. We brought home nearly a carriage-full of goods, which will do to give to the servants. To-night there is the ball. We have written to beg it may be early, and we go on board the budgerows to sleep, and they take us down to the steamer to-morrow. X. and fourteen boats’-load of trunks went this morning, and there are about thirty-five more to make their way to Calcutta without steam – carriages, horses, &c. – which will arrive about a fortnight after us.

I heard from G. about 250 miles from Calcutta: quite well, and delighted with his rapid travelling – four miles an hour!