Simla, May 23, 1839. A LETTER to you which is to go by the Persian Gulf only departed to-day, and I believe there will be no regular steamer for nearly six weeks. A sad interruption to our little communications. A few days after my letter to you was sealed, G. got the official accounts of the taking of Candahar, or rather how Candahar took Shah Soojah, and would have him for its King. There never was anything so satisfactory. I hope M. and Lord M. will have received and shown you the copies of Sir A. Burnes’s letters; it was such a picturesque description of the business. M. wrote me a very good account of it. He says:—‘Five days ago we poor politicals were assailed from all quarters, from the commander-in-chief to the lowest ensign. They were all exclaiming how we had deceived them; that we had given out that Shah Soojah would be received by the chiefs and people of his country with open arms; that the resources of the country would be laid open to the British army—instead of which, he was opposed by his own countrymen; no chiefs came near him; the army was starving in a land of milk and honey; in fact, we had deceived ourselves, and that Shah Soojah’s cause was impossible. A little patience, and the fallacy of these sentiments would be proved. The sirdars left their late capital with scarcely two hundred followers; their most confidential servants deserted them, for to the last their measures were most oppressive, and they ‘The populace are the finest race of Asiatics I have seen; the men tall and muscular, the women particularly fair and pretty, and all well dressed. It seems as if we had dropped into paradise. ‘The country that we have been traversing for two months is the most barren and desolate eye ever rested on; not a tree nor a blade of grass to be seen; we were constantly obliged to make marches of twenty miles to find water; the hills were only huge masses of clay. The contrast now is great; the good things of this life are abundant; luxurious crops, which will be ready for the sickle in three or four weeks; extensive plains of green sward for the cattle; endless gardens and orchards; the rose-trees grow wild, eight or ten feet high; fruits of all kinds; rivulets flow through the ‘The people are all at their occupations as usual, and seem to have perfect confidence in us. The natives all agree in saying that Dost Mahommed, upon hearing of his brothers having fled, will follow their example, &c. I am very happy in my appointment, and I feel I have a great deal more to say to you, but this must go.’ Poor M.! In to-day’s Calcutta paper there is the death of his pretty little sister, who came out not two years ago; she very nearly died during the first hot season, and now has been carried off by a return of the same fever. Certainly this public news is very satisfactory; the whole thing done without bloodshed; and the effect on the people here is wonderful; the happiness of the wives is very great: they see, with their mind’s eye, their husbands eating apricots and drinking acid sherbet, and they are satisfied. Our ball to-morrow will be very gay, and I have just written to P. to stick up a large ‘Candahar’ opposite the other illuminations. Saturday, May 25. The Queen’s ball ‘came off’ yesterday with great success. We had had, the beginning of the week, three days of rain, which frightened us, because it is a rain that nothing can stand. It did us one good deed on Monday—washed away the twenty-four people who were coming to dine with us, which was lucky, as the greater part of the dinner prepared for them was also washed away by the rain breaking the skylight in the Twenty years ago no European had ever been here, and there we were, with the band playing the ‘Puritani’ and ‘Masaniello,’ and eating salmon from Scotland, and sardines from the Mediterranean, and observing that Sunday, May 26. The aides-de-camp are about as much trouble to me as so many grown-up sons. That sedate Captain P. followed me to my room after breakfast, and thought it right to mention that he had proposed to Miss S. on Thursday, and had been accepted, and that the aunt was agreeable, and that he had written to the stepfather, Colonel ——, for his consent, which he had no reason to doubt, &c., and that he hoped I would not mention it to anybody but Lord A., as they were exceedingly desirous Captain L. E. should not know it, but Mrs. S. wished I should be told. If the kitchen poker or church steeple had gone and proposed, it would not have been more out of character, P. has always seemed so very indifferent and cold to ladies; though ever since we have been here, we have observed how altered he was, and what high spirits he was in; and then I met him the other day carrying a little nosegay to Stirling Castle, which looked suspicious and unnatural. Still the shock was great, and the only He cannot marry for a year at soonest, even if Colonel —— consents then; but she is only eighteen, and her father will not let the elder one marry till she is twenty. P. is going away next week on an official tour to Cashmere, a sort of scientific survey which G. wants him to make, and he is to be away four months. That business was settled, and after luncheon L. E. came, very unhappy in his mind—and thought I must have observed it. He had been on the point of proposing to Miss A. S., when he had been intercepted by the astute aunt, who said she could not but observe his attentions, and thought it as well to mention that A. was engaged. He said, so he had heard, but he did not believe it, and thereupon wrote to the aforesaid A., and brought me his letter and her answer, and his letter to the stepfather and the aunt’s letter to him, and he thought that with my knowledge of the world, I could tell him whether it did not appear that she was only sticking to her engagement because she thought it right, &c. I could not possibly flatter him. She is a pretty-looking girl, who has evidently fretted herself into bad health because Colonel —— would not consent to her marriage with a Mr. ——, she being eighteen, and her lover the same age. As she has never heard from the Wednesday, May 29. We had a theatrical dinner yesterday, and a rehearsal of our new tableaux, which promise to be very successful. Six from the ‘Corsair,’ and five from ‘Kenilworth.’ We had them at night to try how Gulnare would look with her lamp going to visit Conrade; and I had another grand idea, of a trap-door, down which Amy Robsart is supposed to have fallen, at least four inches, so that she must have had every bone in her body smashed; and Varney with a torch looking into it, and Leicester and Trevilian in despair, made it a most awful business. The rehearsal was rather amusing; all the gentlemen in their common red coats, and a pretty Mrs. V., supposed to be Medora, was sitting with the shovel in her hand, and said in such a quiet way, ‘This is, in fact, a guitar;’ which, as she is dreadfully shy, and not given to speak at all, was one of the best jokes she ever made. |