CHAPTER III
AS we were passing a place called Bullhga this morning, we saw an enormous concourse of natives, and it turned out to be a great fair for horses. So we stopped the steamer, and persuaded G. to go on shore, just ‘to go to the fair,’ as we should have done at home, only we sent all the servants with silver sticks, and took our own tonjauns and two of the body-guard, and went in the State barge and with all the aides-de-camp. In short, we did our little best to be imposing, considering that we have only the steamboat apparatus to work with; but we had hardly landed when A. came breathless from the other steamer to say that Mr. B. and Mr. C. were both half mad at the idea of a Governor-General going on shore in this way, and that C. was actually dancing about the deck with rage; and A. wanted us to turn back and give it up. Luckily, G. would not be advised to do this. They said we should be murdered amongst other things; but in my life I never saw such a civil, submissive set of people. Our people and the police of the place walked on first, desiring the crowd to sit down, which they all did instantly, crouching together and making a lane all through the fair. They are civil creatures, and I am very fond of the natives. There were a great many thousands of them, and some beautiful costumes; the bazaars were full of trinkets, and pretty shawls and coloured cottons. We went in our tonjauns, and G. walked till he was tired, which is soon done; and A. left us quite satisfied as to our safety, and almost persuaded it was a dignified measure. We wanted him to tell C. that he had left G. in one of the ‘merry-go-rounds,’ of which there were several, but it was not a subject that admitted of levity. – said the Governor-General should never appear publicly without a regiment, and that there was no precedent for his going to Bullhga fair. I told him we had made a precedent, and that it would be his duty to take the next Governor-General, be he ever so lame or infirm, to this identical fair.
We went this evening to see the Government stud. It was rather fine to see five hundred young horses rush at once out of their stalls, and all kick each other and then run away; but, barring that little incident, both studs on each side of the river are rather tiresome sights – such ugly places!
We arrived at three. Mr. T., the brother of our late dear T., is the Resident here, and lodges us. He had made a ghaut with a flight of steps to his house for our landing, and the 44th Regiment, with their band, were drawn up all round his lawn.
There were two women on the landing-place with a petition. They were Hindu ladies, and were carried down in covered palanquins, and very much enveloped in veils. They flung themselves on the ground, and laid hold of G., and screamed and sobbed in a horrid way, but without showing their faces, and absolutely howled at last, before they could be carried off. They wanted a pardon for the husband of one of them, who, with his followers, is said to have murdered about half a village full of Mussulmans, and these women say he did not do it, but that the Nazir of that village was his enemy, and did the murders, and then laid it on their party. These little traits are to give you an insight into the manners and customs of the East, and to open and improve your mind, &c. After we had made our way through all these impediments, we rested for a time, and then went to see the cantonments, and to evening service, which was read by two of the gentlemen remarkably well. Then we came back to a great dinner, and one of the longest I ever assisted at. I quite lost my head at last, and when second course was put down, asked Mr. T. to give me some wine, thinking it was dessert, and that we might get up and go.
The dinners certainly are endless, and I do not wonder they think us very rapid at Government House. There is sometimes half an hour between the courses. A Mr. S., the judge, sat on one side of me, and after some discourse the man seemed to know his Kent! and I discovered he was one of the George S.’s of E. Visions of country balls and cricket matches came back. He knew Eden Farm and Penge Common; in short, I liked him very much, and I think he too was refreshed with the reminiscences of his youth.
G. went in the morning to see the stud. At eleven we received all the station.
In the afternoon we went to see the opium godown, and then F., B., and I went in the band boat along the shore to sketch some of the old buildings, which are very picturesque here.
All the party out of both steamers dined at Mr. T.’s, and moreover a third steamer came up from Calcutta this morning, containing, amongst other passengers, a Mrs. P. and her pretty little daughter, who are great favourites with all our gentlemen, and they dined and went with us to a ball given by the regiment.
There were great doubts whether a ball could be made out, as the want of ladies in the Mofussil makes dancing rather difficult. However, we took a large party, and the ladies we had seen in the morning all assembled and had raised two or three extras. The mess-room was very prettily illuminated, with G.’s arms painted on the floor, and they gave us a grand supper, so it all did very well. I wish you could have seen the dancers. A Mrs. – , something like Mrs. Glover the actress, only much fatter, with a gown two inches shorter then her petticoat, bounding through every quadrille, with her three grown-up sons dancing round her. She is an exemplary mother, and has been a widow many years, and a grandmother many more; but she never misses a dance!
We did not get home last night till half-past one, and were up at seven to go on board, and we had to go smirking and smiling through all that regiment again, with all the other gentlemen to go to the boat with us; but we may have a rest to-day. It certainly is a hard-working life, is not it? I never get ‘my natural rest,’ as Dandie Dinmont says, in the steamer for noise, and on the shore for work.
I wonder how you would be in this state of life. I often try to fancy you. Sometimes I think you would be amused for about five minutes, but generally I opine you would go raving mad! I constantly long to be in an open carriage with four post-horses, along with G., and that we might drive through a pretty country, and arrive at an inn where nobody could dine with us or ask us to a ball. However, to-morrow we are to get into double state, when we reach our tents, as it is of more importance with the up-country natives; so it is of no use to think of bettering ourselves.
We arrived at Benares at ten, lay to all through the heat of the day, whilst the servants unloaded the flat, and then steamed up within view of the city, as far as the rajah’s country-house, Ramnuggur, and then dropped down again, thereby seeing the whole of the city. The glare was horrible, but the buildings were worth all the blindness that ensued. Such minarets and mosques, rising one above the other to an immense height; and the stone is such a beautiful colour. The ghauts covered with natives, and great white colossal figures of Vishnu lying on the steps of each ghaut. Benares is one of their most sacred places, and they seem to spare no expense in their temples. We mean to keep our steamer here, and to go out sketching in it. But it would take a whole week to draw one temple perfectly; the ghaut where we landed was as pretty a sight as any. All our elephants, two or three hundred baggage camels (they are much larger beasts to live with than I thought), bullock carts without end, and everybody loading every conveyance with everything. There are twenty shooter suwars (I have not an idea how I ought to spell those words), but they are native soldiers mounted on swift camels, very much trapped, and two of them always ride before our carriage. This looks more like the ‘land of the east,’ in all its ways, than anything we have seen.
We landed at five, and drove four miles through immense crowds and much dust to our camp. The first evening of tents, I must say, was more uncomfortable than I had ever fancied. Everybody kept saying, ‘What a magnificent camp!’ and I thought I never had seen such squalid, melancholy discomfort. G., F., and I have three private tents, and a fourth, to make up the square, for our sitting-room, and great covered passages, leading from one tent to the other.
Each tent is divided into bed-room, dressing-room, and sitting-room. They have covered us up in every direction, just as if we were native women; and, besides that, there is a wall of red cloth, eight feet high, drawn all round our enclosure, so that, even on going out of the tent, we see nothing but a crimson wall.
Inside each tent were our beds – one leaf of a dining-table and three cane chairs. Our pittarrahs and the camel-trunks were