and that is all that is required of a bedroom.
The four houses, as I told you, stand in a compound. It isn't exactly a garden, for there are lots of things in it that we would consider quite superfluous in a self-respecting garden. There is a good tennis lawn, plots of flowers, trimly-kept walks bordered with poinsettias, and trees with white, heavily-scented flowers, and opposite my bedroom is a little stone-paved enclosure where two cows and two calves lead a calm and meditative existence! And further, there are funny little huts scattered about where one catches glimpses of natives at their devotions or slumbering peacefully. Imagine in the middle of a garden at home coming on a cowhouse or a shanty! But this is India.
Boggley conducted me round, both of us talking hard all the time. He had so many questions to ask and I had so much to tell: all the home news and silly little home jokes—Peter's latest sayings—things that are so amusing to tell and to hear but lose all their flavour written. You remember Boggley's wild bursts of laughter? He laughs just the same now, throws his head back and shouts in the most whole-hearted way. We talked from 11 a.m. till tea-time without a break—talked ourselves hoarse and thirsty. After tea we drove on the Maidan, up and down the Red Road in an unending stream of carriages and motors, shabby tikka-gharries and smart little dogcarts (called here tum-tums)—all Calcutta taking the air. One might almost have imagined oneself in the Park, if it had not been that now and again a strange equipage would pass filled with natives, men and boys gorgeous in purple and scarlet and gold, or closed carriages like boxes on wheels, in which sat dark-skinned women demurely veiled. From the Red Road we drove to the Strand, a carriage-way by the river where the great ships lie, and watched the sun set and the spars and masts become silhouetted against the red sky. Then darkness fell almost at once.
My mind was a chaos when I went to bed after my first day in India, and I slept so soundly that when I woke I had no idea where I was. All re-collections of the voyage and arrival were wiped from my memory and I was filled first with vague astonishment and then with horror to find myself surrounded by filmy white stuff through which peered a black face. It was only my ayah, a quaint, small person, wrapped in a white sari, with demure, sly eyes and teeth stained red with chewing betel-nut, looking through the mosquito-curtains to see if the Miss Sahib was awake and would like chota-hazri. She embarrasses me greatly slipping about with her bare feet, appearing when I least expect her or squatting on the floor staring at me fixedly. I know no Hindustani and she knows perhaps three English words, so our conversation is limited. The silence gets so on my nerves that I drop hairbrushes and things to make a little disturbance, and it gives her something to do to pick them up. I must at once learn some Hindustani words such as pink, blue, and green, and then I shall be able to tell Bella what dress to lay out, and her place won't be such a sinecure. I call her Bella because it is the nearest I can get to her name and it has a homely sound.
The rest of my impressions I shall keep for my next letter. I have written this much to give you an idea of my surroundings, and you see I have taken your interest for granted. Are you bored? Of course you will say you are not, but if I could see your face I should know.
The home mail arrives here on Sunday, when people are having what they call a "Europe morning," and have time to read and enjoy their letters. When you wrote you had just had my mail from Marseilles. How far behind you are! It was too bad of me to write such pitiful letters, but I think I was too miserable to pretend. Now I am very well off, and no one could be more utterly thoughtful and kind than old Boggley. I am sure I shall never regret coming to India, and it will be something to dream about when I am a douce Olivia-sit-by-the-fire.
You speak of rain and mud and fog, and it all seems very far away from this afternoon land. The winter will soon pass, and, as you nicely put it, I shall return with the spring.
Calcutta, Nov. 21.
It is the witching hour of 10 a.m. and I am sitting in my little ante-room—boudoir, call it what you will—immersed in correspondence, Boggley, hard-worked man that he is, has departed for his office followed by a kitmutgar carrying some sandwiches and a bottle of soda-water, which is his modest lunch. Really a Government servant's life is no easy one. He is up every morning by six o'clock, and gets a couple of hours' work done before breakfast. His office receives him at ten and keeps him till four, when he comes home and has tea, after which we ride or drive or play tennis somewhere. A look in at the Club for a game of billiards, more work, dinner, and, if we are not going to a dance or any frivolity, a quiet talk, a smoke, a few more papers gone through, bed, and the long Indian day is over. All day chuprassis, like attendant angels, flit in and out bearing piles of documents marked Urgent, which they heap on his writing-table. I begin greatly to dislike the sight of them.
So you see I have of necessity many hours alone, at least I have some, and I would have more if G. didn't live within a few minutes' walk, and every morning, armed with a large green-lined parasol and protected by her faithful topi, come round to pass the time of day with me. Her sister, Mrs. Townley, is a very nice woman and kindness itself to me. I can say, like the Psalmist, that goodness and mercy follow me. I started from London knowing no one, yet in twenty-four hours I was fast friends with G. and afterwards with quite a lot of people on board. I thought when I landed in Calcutta I would be a stranger in a strange land and have no one but Boggley, "instead of which" I have G. quite near, and Mrs. Townley says I must come to them any minute of the day I want to; and there are others equally kind. You don't want me to give you a detailed account of Calcutta, do you? It wouldn't interest you to read it, and it certainly wouldn't interest me to write it. When my friends go wandering and write me home long descriptions of the places of interest (falsely so called) which they visit, I read them—oh! I read them faithfully—but I am sadly bored. Somehow people interest me more than places. That being so, I shall only inflict on you a little of Calcutta. I like it immensely. They laugh at me for saying it is pretty, but I do think it is quite beautiful. It is so much greener than I expected, and I like the broad streets of pillared houses standing in their palm-shaded compounds. The principal street is called Chowringhee, and it has some fine buildings and really excellent shops, where one can buy quite as pretty things as in London, only, of course, they are of necessity more expensive; it costs a lot to bring them out. The Clubs are in this street, the Bengal Club, and the United Service where my brother would even now be leading a comfortable bachelor existence if he hadn't had a bothering sister to provide a habitation for.
Chowringhee faces the Maidan, a very large park containing among other things a race-course, and cricket and football grounds. The word Maidan is Arabic and Persian and Hindustani for an open space, and I hope you like the superior way I explain things to you. You, who can be silent in so many languages, will probably know what Maidan means—but no matter.
This, then, is the European Calcutta, clean and spacious and pleasant, but not nearly so interesting as the native part. Turn down a side street, walk a little way and you are in a nest of mean streets, unpaved, dirty, smelling vilely, lined with open booths, where squat half-naked men selling lumps of sticky sweetmeats and piles of things that look like unbaked scones and other strange eatables; and little naked babies tumble in the dust with goats and puppies. It seems to me that I go about asking "Why?" all day and no one gives me a satisfactory answer to anything. Why, for example, should we require a troop of servants living, as we do, in a kind of hotel? And yet there they are—Boggley's bearer and my ayah—I can see some reason for their presence—a kitmutgar to wait on us at table and bring tea in the afternoon, another young assistant kitmutgar who scurries like a frightened rabbit at my approach, a delightful small boy who rejoices in the name of pani-wallah, whose sole duty is to carry water for the baths, the dhobi who washes our clothes by beating them between two large—and I should say, judging by the state of the clothes, sharp—stones, losing most of them in the process, and a syce or groom for each pony. Seated, as one sometimes sees them, in rows on the steps, augmented by a chuprassi or two, brilliant in uniform they make a sufficiently imposing spectacle. I have few words, but I look at them in as pleasant a way as I know how, partly because I like to be friends with servants, and partly because I'm rather
