Lola Montez

years after, was under the rule of John Company. Collectors and writers of the Jos. Sedley type were still able to shake the pagoda tree, and Englishmen in outlying provinces of

njit Singh ruled in the Punjaub, the Baluchis in Scinde; there was yet a king in Oude and a rajah at Nagp?r. Slavery was only abolished in the British dominions that very yea

. You travelled wherever possible by river, in boats called budgerows, which had not increased in speed since Ensign Gilbert's day. Going up the Ganges you might have seen the Danish flag waving over Serampore. If you were in a hurry and could afford it, you travelled dak-that is, in a palanquin, carried by four bearers, who were changed at each stage like posting-ho

ard them sing while carrying an English clergyman who could not have weighed less than two hun

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y bone in his reverence's body, keeping chorus all the time of '

and character of their burden. I remember to have been exceedingly amused

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nder the burden; but a gentleman of my acquaintance, who had been carried too slowly, as he thought, only gave them two annas apiece. The consequence was that during the next stage the men not only went faster, but they made him l

demned the poor efforts at relaxation made by officers and their wives. Dances and amateur theatricals were often the subject of censure from the pulpit. So the men fell back on brandy pawnee, loo, and tiger-shooting. The women were worse off. To the Honourable Emily Eden

-three hours out of the twenty-four; and the one hour that they are out is only an airing just where the roads are watered. They have no gardens, no villages, no poor people, no school

passag

from its unwholesomeness. She detests what she has seen of India, and evidently begins to think 'papa and mamma' were right in withholding for a year their consent to her marriage. I think she wishes they had held out another month. There is another, Mrs. --, who is only fifteen, who married when we were at the Cape, ... and went straight on to her husband's station, where for five months she had never seen a European. He was out surveying all day, and they lived in a tent. She ha

brilliance of the capital, and accompanied her husband most reluctantly, to Karnál, a town between Delhi and Simla, on the Jumna Canal. The place is no longer a military station. At this juncture, happily for us, a flood of light is poured upon Lola's character and his

th Septemb

g home on sick leave. Mrs. C. nursed him and took care of him, and took him to see her daughter, who was a girl of fifteen [sic] at school. He told her he was engaged to be married, consulted her about his prospects, and in the meantime privately married this girl at school. It was enough to provoke any mother, but as it now cannot be helped, we have all been trying to persuade her for the last year to make it up, as she frets dreadfully about her only child. She has withstood it till now, but at last consented to ask them for a month, and they arrived three days ago. The rush on the road was remarkable, and one or two of the ladies we

, 10th S

nd does not look so old, and when one thinks that she is married to a junior lieutenant in the Indian army fifteen years older than herself, and that th

pe of a little gaiety at the end of the rains; and then the fancy fair has had a great rep

y, 11th S

l anywhere, there were so many pretty people. The retired wives, now that their husbands are on the mar

pected to keep in seclusion while their hu

16th Se

of being at the only public room, which is a broken, tumble-down place, it is to be

y, 18th S

dship, which is always a great relief at these balls; and every individual at Simla was there. There was a supper room for us, made up of velvet and gold hangings belonging to the Dur

27th Se

ty, is an immense sum. X. and L. and a Captain C. were disguised as gipsies, and the most villainous-looking set possible; and they came on to the fair, and sang an excelle

ters, and the luncheon was very good fun.... The afternoon ended with races-a regular racing-stand, and a very tolerable course for the hills; all the gentlemen in satin jackets and jockey caps, and a weighing stand-in short, everything got up regularly. Everybody likes these out-of-door amusements at this time of y

y, 15th

re say suffered agonies from cramp. C. said we saw them amazingly divided between the necessity of listening to George [Lord Auckland], and their native feelings of not seeming surprised, and their curiosity at men and women

with her mother-partly, it seems, through the kindly intervention of the Governor-General's sister, and partly, as she afterwards declared, thr

m Karnál, under date

rose General D., who has been renovating some years at Bath, has come out to take his place. We were at home in the evening, and it was an

is still at Karnál. She came and sat herself down by me, upon which Mr. K., with great presence of mind, offered me his arm, and said to George that he was

, 17th

gown, and it was altogether a very happy day for her evidently. It ended in her going back to Karnál on my elephant, with E. N. by her side and Mr. James sitting behind, and she had never been on an elephant before, and thought it delightful. She is very pretty, and a good little