MY DEAR MR. GREVILLE, I am grieved you were so troubled with the gout when you wrote, as I have never been of the opinion that a fit of gout is a matter of that perfect indifference which people who are not sufferers from it claim to assert. I think you had better come out as Lord Auckland’s successor, if you cannot come and visit us. Nobody has the gout in India. I suppose it is _perspired_ out of them. And even General Elphinstone,[499] who was a wretched victim to it when we met him going up to Meerut--almost the worst I ever saw--has, I hear, lost it quite during the hot season. He is going to succeed Sir W. Cotton[500] in Afghanistan, and does not like it on account of the cold climate.... Ever yours most truly, E. E. _Miss Eden to the Countess of Buckinghamshire._ BARRACKPORE, _February 6, 1841_. MY DEAREST SISTER, I am just come back from doing a bit of duty, so I may as well try whether writing to you will not be a bit of pleasure in this dark half-hour before dressing. The little Nawâb of Moorshedabad has anchored his fleet of boats just in front of this house, on his way up the river home. He is the convoy of the late lamented Captain Showers, who has gone and married himself to a very plain, unpleasant young lady, and has consequently left us, and George has given him the care of this boy’s education. George took the little Nawâb a drive, and I have been, with Rosina[501] as an interpreter, to see the Begum in her Pinnace, and it strikes me that it is very lucky I was not born a Mussulmannee. I am sure if they shut me up in that fashion I should have got into a thousand scrapes, and probably some very bad ones; and moreover, I should have gone out of my mind with bore and heat. She was in the centre cabin of the Pinnace, with three or four antechambers made of curtains, so arranged that there was no possibility of her being seen when one was opened. All the jalousies of the cabin were shut, and it was so dreadfully hot that I was obliged to ask for a breath of air; and then there was such a fuss: Captain Macintosh and the boats that brought my servants requested to keep off--sentries on deck thrown into a fuss--and then when a fishing-boat came by, such a rush to shut up one wretched bit of blind which nobody could see through--and if they had, I think they would have been very much disappointed. “I am not the lovely girl I was,” and the Begum, though rather pretty, is so extremely small I don’t think they could see her at all without a glass. Her women were shut up in another dark cabin, and her visible attendants were all of that class (saving your presence) who are allowed to wait on Eastern ladies.