Saturday, Oct. 20, 1838.

I THINK it looks ill, that I have let a whole week go by without a touch of Journal; but nothing particular has happened, and it does not mean any coldness, you know, dearest. I have spent a week more of the time I am to be away from you, so I could not be better employed.

Monday we gave a dinner, Tuesday we dined at the R.s. Met Mrs. —— and a newly-married couple, the husband being an object of much commiseration. Not but what he is very happy, probably, but he married the very first young lady that came up to the hills this season; she was ‘uncommon ordinary’ then, and nothing can look worse, somehow, than she does now. I dare say she is full of merit, but I merely wish to observe, for the benefit of any of your sons who may come out to India, that when they have been two or three years in a solitary station they should not propose to the very first girl they see. However, I dare say the ——s are very happy, as I said before.

We had such an excellent play last night, or rather two farces, acted chiefly by Captains X. and M., and Mr. C., and by Captain Y., one of Sir G.’s aides-de-camp. Captain X. is really quite as good as Liston, and I think he ought to run over a scene or two every evening for our diversion. It is supposed that R. was never seen to laugh till he cried before, which he certainly did last night. It is astonishing how refreshing a real, good laugh is. I have not had so good a one for ages.

Tuesday, Oct. 23.

The work of packing progresses, and there are no bounds to the ardour with which everybody labours to make us uncomfortable. This day fortnight we are to be in our wretched tents—that is, if we really do not find ourselves unequal to the shock at last. There was an idea that coolies enough could not be raised at last, as everybody goes away at the same time, so instead of 3,000 at once, we have 1,000 three times over, and as soon as they have taken one set of camel trunks to the plains they come back for another, so we spread our discomfort thus over a wide surface. I have succumbed to such a temptation to-day—I wish I had not, and yet I am glad I did—a large gold chain, two yards long, of the purest Indian gold. I could not let it escape me, and yet I know I should like to have the money to spend at Lahore.

Wednesday, Oct. 24.

To-day was a day of mysteries for Simla. R. came to breakfast with us, and did half an hour’s business with G., and that put his family into a fever. News had arrived yesterday that the Persians had abandoned the siege of HerÂt, and so the ——s fancied that the Cabul business would be now so easy, that R. would not go in person.

G. and I were walking in the evening and met the ——s, who said they had never passed such a day of curiosity, evidently thinking, poor new-married dears, that they were not going to part for ten years. Mrs. —— said to G.: ‘Now, for once, Lord A., tell us a secret; what did R. go to you about?’ ‘Why, he came,’ G. said, ‘to ask where we bought our potatoes, they are so remarkably good.’ The other mystery was, that Captain Y. said he had been eight hours trying to prevent two gentlemen from fighting, and we cannot think of any fightable people at Simla. You never saw so lovely an ornament as a great Lucknow merchant brought yesterday. A bunch of grapes made up of twenty-seven emeralds, the smallest emerald the size of a marble, and all of such a beautiful colour; there are large pearls between each, and it is mounted on a plain green enamel stalk. It looks like the fruit in Aladdin’s garden. We want G. to buy it for his parting present to Runjeet Singh. They were to have exchanged rings, and a ring, one single diamond without a flaw, valued at 1,600l., was to have come up from Calcutta this week, but it has been stolen from the dÂk. It was insured, but still it was a pity such a good diamond should be lost.

Friday, Oct. 26.

We rode to Mr. B.’s yesterday, knowing that otherwise that bunch of grapes would be slurred over, and not even mentioned to us. I began by saying, we thought it beautiful, and just the present for a great potentate, upon which B. said: ‘Yes, it is almost too expensive, but I was thinking of asking his lordship to let me present it to Shah Soojah.’ Luckily, that was too much even for G., and he said: ‘No, if I allow it to be bought at all, it could only be for a Governor-General to give away; besides, we are going to give Shah Soojah a kingdom, which is quite enough without any presents.’

‘A defeat,’ I thought, and Mr. B. looked as if emerald grapes were remarkably sour, and on our ride home G. said he meant to take them for Runjeet Singh.

Tuesday, Oct. 30.

G. took a fancy on Saturday to go, after dinner, to play at whist with Sir G. R., so we all jonpauned off, and very cold it is at night in those conveyances. The cold brought a bilious attack I had been brewing, to a crisis, and I had one of the worst headaches I ever had in my life, on Sunday, and could not sit up for a moment. It is the first day’s ailment I have had since the week we came to Simla, and very lucky that it came before we go into camp. This day week we start. ‘No ind to my sufferens!’ as some novel says.

Thursday, Nov. 1.

There! now I am quite well again, and in travelling condition; and perhaps, setting off in such good health, marching may not be so fatiguing as it was last year. We have had nothing but take-leave visits the last three days. Mrs. R. sets off to-morrow with her own children and those two little orphaned G.s, whom she is taking to England. The wives to be left here are becoming disconsolate and fractious.

Dear J. left us for good this morning. I do not think he cared much for us; but all the old servants, of whom he has had the care for eleven years, went with all their eastern, devoted-looking ways, and took leave of him and quite overset his nerves, and he went off in a shocking state. After taking leave of F. he quite broke down in G.’s room, and could not come to mine; and my jemadar came in with large tears running down: ‘Major Sahib so unhappy. He say he not able to speak to ladyship—he cry very much!’ I asked if they were all sorry he was going. ‘Yes, very. He very old gentleman at Government House, and know everything, and very just.’ And then, to wind it up with a fine piece of language, ‘he adapt properly well to all lordship’s poor servants.’ What that means I have not a guess, but I think it sounds comfortable; and I see now that the fault of India is that nobody ‘adapts properly well’ to my English feelings.

Sunday, Nov. 4.

After service to-day, the dining-room was given up to Giles and the Philistines, the carpets taken up, and a long country dance formed of the camel trunks and linen-presses that we leave behind; and now we dine and live in the drawing-room, which, without its curtains and draperies, and with its crude folding-doors, looks like half a ball-room at a Canterbury inn. Poor dear house! I am sorry to see it despoiled. We have had seven as good months here as it is possible to pass in India—no trouble, no heat; and if the Himalayas were only a continuation of Primrose Hill or Penge Common, I should have no objection to pass the rest of my life on them. Perhaps you would drive up to Simla on Saturday and stay till Monday.

Monday, Nov. 5.

I had much better not write to-day, only I have nothing else to do; but the September overland post is come (the August is missing), and I always have a regular fit of low spirits that lasts twenty-four hours after that. This is your Newsalls letter, and dear T.’s account of the archery and country balls, and the neighbours; and it all sounds so natural and easy, and I feel so unnatural and so far off. Just as you say, we have been here very little more than half our time, and I am sure it feels and is almost a life.

It will be nearly six years altogether that we shall have been away, if we ever go home again; and that is an immense gap, and coming at a wrong time of life. Ten or fifteen years ago it would have made less difference; your children would still have been children; but now I miss all their youth, and ours will be utterly over. We shall meet again——

I feel so very old, not merely in look, for that is not surprising at my age, and in this country, where everybody looks more than fifty; but just what Lady C. describes in her letter—the time for putting up with discomforts has gone by. I believe what adds to my English letter lowness, is the circumstance that carpets, curtains, books, everything is gone from my room, and I am sitting in the middle of it, on a straw beehive chair, which the natives always use when they do admit a chair, with Chance’s own little chair for my feet, and the inkstand on the ledge of the window. I wish I was at Newsalls. There! now they want my inkstand.

Syree, Tuesday, Nov. 6.

The beginning of a second march, and so I had better put this up and send it. We left poor Simla at six this morning, and if I am to be in India I had rather be there than anywhere. We have had seven very quiet months, with good health and in a good climate, and in beautiful scenery. That is much as times go. As for this march, I cannot say what I feel about it. It began just as it left off.

We arrived to breakfast here, and the coolies have been fractious, and so, when I took off my habit, I had no gown to put on; the right box is not come, and I have no bonnet to put on for the afternoon’s march.

We are in the dÂk bungalow, two whitewashed empty rooms, with streaks of damp and dirt all over them. We have been breakfasting in one, and all the deserting husbands have joined us. To be sure, St. Cloup is a jewel of a cook for this sort of thing. He came here in the night and prepared the breakfast we have had, and the luncheon we are going to have. He is now gone on to Sabathoo, where we shall find dinner, and he meant to go on again at night to the tents, half-way between Sabathoo and the camp, to arrange to-morrow’s breakfast and luncheon. God bless you, dearest M.!

There is a ship lost—‘The Protector’—just in the mouth of the river. It was bringing troops and several passengers, but none whose names we know. There is only one soldier saved out of the whole crew.