Emily Eden

“ Besides a mysterious veneration for a letter, which all natives have, the idea of being asked after by a little English boy and my nephew, quite enchanted her. She is very much (as all the uneducated natives are) like a child of three years old in feelings and intellect, and she asked to see Willie’s letter, and to be shown her name, and she, of course, turned it topsy-turvy, and kissed it and cried over it, and then went all over the house to tell all the servants that a little English boy, the Lord Sahib’s nephew, had written about her ”

“ My dearest Mary,—We sent off yesterday to the ‘Tamerlane,’ which sails in a few days, a most important box addressed to the care of Captain Grindlay, containing all sorts of odds and ends addressed to various people; and, amongst others, there is a small parcel for you, which will puzzle you unless this explanation precedes it. Your Willie, in his letter to me, asked ‘How is your black maid?’ and I told Rosina one of my little nephews had written to ask after her. ”

“ We came up to Barrackpore last night, and are preparing this morning for a party to the Barrackporeans. There are not ladies enough belonging to the station to dance, but we have got a conjuror, who has been acting at Calcutta with great success, to come for the might. They say he is a very vulgar man ”

“ I have sent you a pair of silver earrings, made as the natives wear them, and a little pair of silver bracelets for Emily. They bend into any shape. About ten of these bracelets on each arm are literally the only clothes worn by the native children till they are seven or eight years old, with perhaps a silver chain round each ankle; and when they are married, which they are at five, or six years old, a large gold ring is put through the noses of the little girls.
I wish I could find anything to send Willie, but I shall in time. I could find heaps of beautiful birds ”

“ My particular object in running off a line is to tell Robert that his protégé of a barber, whom he recommended to Mars, has been this very day engaged to be hairdresser and barber to the King of Oude, at a salary of four hundred rupees (40l.) per month, with presents to about the same amount and, if he becomes a favourite, the certainty of making his fortune. ”

“ Even George has given up gardening as a bad job. I must say, after we have abused the weather so much, that the change the last week has been quite delightful. The evenings are quite cool, partly from very thick fog ”