'Up the Country': Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of IndiaEden, Emily
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'Up the Country': Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India
Eden, Emily
Eden, Emily, 1797-1869 -- Correspondence; India -- Description and travel
There never was such delicious weather, just like Mr. Wodehouse's gruel,
'cool, but not too cool;' and there is an English cuckoo talking
English--at least, he is trying, but he evidently left England as a
cadet, with his education incomplete, for he cannot get further than
_cuck_--and there is a blackbird singing. We pass our lives in
gardening. We ride down into the valleys, and make the syces dig up wild
tulips and lilies, and they are grown so eager about it, that they dash
up the hill the instant they see a promising-looking plant, and dig it
up with the best possible effect, except that they invariably cut off
the bulb. It certainly is very pleasant to be in a pretty place, with a
nice climate. Not that I would not set off this instant, and go dâk all
over the hot plains, and through the hot wind, if I were told I might
sail home the instant I arrived at Calcutta; but as nobody makes me that
offer, I can wait here better than anywhere else--like meat, we _keep_
better here. All the native servants are, or have been, sick, and I do
not wonder. We have built twenty small houses since we came, and have
lodged fifty of our servants in these outhouses. Still, there were
always a great many looking unhappy, so I got J. to go round to all the
houses and get me a list of all who were settled, and of those whose
houses were not built, and I found there were actually sixty-seven who
had no lodging provided for them. I should like to hear the row English
servants would have made, and these are not a bit more used to rough it.
There is not one who has not his own little house at Calcutta, and his
wife to cook for him; so they feel the cold and their helplessness
doubly, but they never complain. We have got them now all under tents,
and their houses will be finished before the rains, but in the meantime
I wonder they are all so patient. We have given several dinners, and one
dance, which was an awful failure, I thought, but they say the Simlaites
liked it. If so, their manners were very deceptive.
Simla, May 7.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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