Agra, Sunday, December 29, 1839.

I HAVE let a week pass by this time, partly because, since we have been here, we have given a ball and four large dinners, seen a great many sights, had a ball given to us and a dÉjeÛner at the Taj, and also that an awful change has taken place in our plans, one that it makes me sick to think of. We are going to stay here for the next ten months: ——, to whom G. offered the Lieutenant-Governorship, and who knew all his plans, and who had acuteness enough to carry them on, began by accepting, and ended by declining in consequence of ‘domestic calamities which he was unable to explain.’ They say that Mrs. —— is gone out of her mind. I really think it must have been at the notion of coming here. It is too late in the year to make any new arrangements, and there is so much of importance likely to occur in the PunjÂb where old Runjeet is a sad loss, and so much to watch over in Affghanistan, that G. decided on staying himself. Such a shock and such trouble! We have at least three houses to build here for the European servants, the baboos, &c., and a house to repair for the aides-de-camp. Agra is avowedly the hottest place in India, and everybody says this is the hottest house in Agra, so there is a whole army of engineers now beginning to see what can be done to build up verandahs, and to make ventilators, and to pretend to make the hot winds bearable. There are in India two regular parties, one preferring Bengal with the hot days and the damp and the sea-breeze blowing at night, and the other standing up for their hot winds, twenty degrees hotter, but dry. I have never varied in thinking the account of them terrific. From the end of March to the middle of June, they blow unceasingly, night and day. Nobody stirs out, and all night the tatties are kept wet, and thermantidotes (great winnowing machines) are kept turning to make a little cool air. The windows are never opened, and they say that, at midnight, if you were to go out, it feels like going into a furnace. However, those who are all for the provinces say, the wind is dry and not unwholesome, and that as long as you do not attempt to go out of the house, you do not suffer from the heat. It is a regular strict imprisonment. Calcutta is bad, but there we had a regular evening drive, and Government House was really cool at night; then in case of illness there was the sea at hand, but here, if any of us are ill, of course there is no escape. Even natives cannot travel in the hot winds. The discomfiture is general. Most of our goods are half-way to Calcutta. The native servants, who thought they were within reach of their wives and families after two years’ absence, are utterly desperate.

Mr. A. has thrown up his place, and goes down to Calcutta. Mrs. S. plods back to Simla with her children, and leaves her husband here. Mrs. H. ditto, and I think those two ladies are rather pleased, it forces them to keep their boys another year in the country. Z. has been ill since we came here, but the day this shock was communicated to him, he got up electrified, dressed himself, and came to my room to bemoan his particular hard fate, so like Narcissus Fripps. ‘I really am quite overset—I have not an idea what to do—I am so afraid of the hot winds, and this is such a place! no society whatever! Now at Calcutta I really should have enjoyed myself.’ This was said with an air of great interest.

I saw my opportunity and put it to him, that the hot winds were very bad for the attacks he is subject to, that Dr. D. had always wished him to go home, and that he might now have a medical certificate, which would save his paying his own passage, &c. And so he took the right turn, went straight to the doctor’s tent, and came back to say that he had decided to go home. It really is the best thing he can do, and Dr. D. says it is the only chance of his getting well.

We still go to Gwalior, and go back into camp on Thursday; we shall be nearly a month away, and we leave X. behind, with Giles and all the carpenters and tailors of the establishment to make up beds, furniture, &c., for we have nothing but small camp beds, which are not endurable in heat.

Monday, December 30.

You cannot conceive what a pretty fÊte they gave us at the Taj, or how beautiful it looked by broad daylight.

The whole society, with our camp, was just one hundred people, and we dined in what had once been a mosque, but it was desecrated many years ago. Still I thought it was rather shocking our eating ham and drinking wine in it, but its old red arches looked very handsome.

Some of the Agra people are too strict to dance, and as much walking is difficult in the plains, it is lucky the afternoon did not hang very heavily; but the garden is very prettily laid out, and W. O. challenged a fat Mr. N., an old acquaintance, to play at hop-scotch with all their old Westminster rules. W. is wonderfully active still at all those games, and plays at them with very good grace, and it was great fun to see Mr. N., who is the image of Pickwick and dresses like him, hopping and jumping and panting after him. It kept everybody in a roar of laughter for an hour, and filled up the afternoon very well. No; the more our plan of staying here is canvassed the worse it is—the mere precautions that are to be taken, show what those horrible hot winds are to be. However, I believe, as they all say, the best way is not to think of them more than can be helped. The weather is fine now. But what I do think of, morning, noon, and night, is the utter impossibility of our going home now in 1841. It is too sore a subject to write about, and it had much better be left untouched, for fear it should establish itself into a fact, but I always foresaw those horrid secretaries would work it out if they could.

I am in that mood that I should almost be glad if the Sikhs, or the Russians, or anybody, would come and take us all. It would be one way out of the country. Captain C. has got an excellent appointment at Lucknow, but he will not leave us till after Gwalior, as he thinks he may be of use, as X. must stay here to build and superintend. Captain C. has thoroughly earned his appointment by four years’ constant service, but he is the last of the original set, and we are all very unhappy at his going, he is the most thorough gentleman in mind, and very clever and original. He has always been a great favourite with G., and as I think Mr. D. might accidentally fall in with Allan C. or find an opportunity of seeing him, perhaps he would mention how well his son is thought of, and how well he is now settled. Captain X. bore his disappointment wonderfully well, and has been very amiable in many respects. G. offered him a smaller place, which might just have enabled him to marry, but when he found Z. was going as well as Captain C., he thought we should be having so many strangers at once, just as we were settling in a new place and to a new sort of life, that he would not leave us. I really do not know what we could have done without him at this moment. He is ordering all the new buildings, buying furniture in all directions, and ordering up everything from Calcutta, where he had just provided for our return. Agra produces nothing, there is no shop, and so few Europeans that I suppose the box wallahs find no trade, so we have been obliged to send to Calcutta for mats for the floors, musquito curtains, even common pins.

Tuesday, Dec. 31.

I went early this morning with Mr. H. and —— to see the Female Orphan School. We saw the boys last week—there are 150 boys and 130 girls who were picked up at the time of the famine two years ago, starving and with no relations. The boys are learning all sorts of trades; and as we are detained here another year, I thought it would be better to send my two little girls to the other school for the time, if they will let me have them again, to take to Mrs. Wilson. There is a German missionary and his wife at the head of this school. He speaks Hindoostanee tolerably, but she speaks no English and very little Hindoostanee; however, there is another woman to assist, and they seem to make it out very tolerably, and they are an interesting looking young couple, with such soft German voices. Rosina took Ameeum and Jehurun there after breakfast, and stayed great part of the day with them, but they all three did nothing but cry, though the old body is very sensible about them, and thinks it better they should go. Poor little things! I am sorry to lose them; they were such funny little animals, and used to imitate Wright and Rosina in trying to dress me, and really made themselves useful on the march. Z. is taking home a parcel to you—two of my sketch-books, which I want you to keep for me; the others are unluckily on the river on their way to Calcutta. Then, a parcel directed to you, in which there are two half shawls, embroidered all over, really about the prettiest things I have seen, which it appeared Wright had procured from Delhi for T. and E. She thought they would be very suitable for two young ladies going out. I thought they were too expensive presents for her to send, and F. and I tried to persuade her out of it, but she said she had got them on purpose, so there they are; and for fear you should be jealous, I have sent you a green worked Delhi scarf. Also, in a little box directed to R., there are two press papiers, a marble tortoise, and a marble book—Agra works, which I send T. and E. F. has sent the girls some rings; so what you are to wring from Z. when he arrives, are two sketch-books, a parcel of shawls, and a little box of rings, all directed to you; and these two marble things in the parcel to R.