Authors, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Eden, Emily, 1797-1869 -- Correspondence
At ten o’clock, Fanny and William and I went to a little sailing-boat he
has here, and we should have sailed, and it would have been cooler if
there had been any air. But there was a lovely moon, and the Hoogly is a
handsome bit of river, and we floated about for an hour, and then went
to bed. And so ends that eventful day.
We are all very well, though I have been rather ailing for ten days, but
in a general way you are quite right; I _have_ very much better health
here than I had at home. So all my abuse of the climate is gratuitous;
I do not owe it any spite, except for being so very disagreeable. I
trust there is a letter from you somewhere on the sea. George has sent
for this, so God bless you. I have not time to read it over. Yours ever,
E. EDEN.
_Miss Eden to Mr. C. Greville._
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
_Sept. 11, 1837_.
MY DEAR MR. GREVILLE, George says he thinks I ought to write to you,
which is rather an impertinent thought of his, because he does not know
that I have not been writing to you every day, and he does not know that
I have nothing to say, and that out of that nothing I have already
furnished him with eight letters for this overland post. But he says
there is 3/4 of an hour yet before the last Bombay dawdle goes.
Three-quarters of an hour for the preparation of a letter that is to
travel 15,000 miles!
I am not going to comment on the dear young Queen; that I have done in
the other letters. But I never think of anything else, and we are all
dying of fevers brought on by court mourning, and curiosity coming on
the rainy season. Our own approaching journey[448] is one other great
interest, and we all declare we are packing up. It is almost as
fatiguing lying on the sofa and wondering what is to become of all one’s
property as actually packing up, and may perhaps by perseverance produce
some result. But hitherto I have not done more than that personally. The
faithful Byrne, and the rest of his staff, have gradually removed many
of the comforts, and in two days the band and the horses and most of the
servants depart, and, as William Osborne observes with real
consternation, we shall not have above eight servants apiece left to
wait on us.
Certainly some of the arrangements are amusing. I asked Byrne just now
what our Ayahs (or black Lady’s Maids) were allowed to put their
travelling-gear in. “Half a camel!” he said, with an air of reproach at
such desperate ignorance. “Oh, half a camel _apiece_,” I said, looking
intelligent, and laying an emphasis on _apiece_ as if that had been my
doubt, and you know one hears such strange stories of camels carrying a
supply of water for their own private drinking, quite honestly, though
they have drunk it already, that I was ready to believe the Ayah, veils
and bangles, travelled the same way. But Byrne obligingly added that
each camel carried two trunks, one of which each Abigail might claim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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