On The Road To The Town, I Was Particularly Struck With The Magnificent Gauths (Piazzas), Situated On The Banks Of The Hoogly, And From Which Broad Flights Of Steps Lead Down To The River. Before These Gauths Are Numerous Pleasure And Other Boats.

The most magnificent palaces lay around in the midst of splendid gardens, into one of which the palanquin-bearers turned, and set me down under a handsome portico before the house of Herr Heilgers, to whom I had brought letters of recommendation.

The young and amiable mistress of the house greeted me as a countrywoman (she was from the north and I from the south of Germany), and received me most cordially. I was lodged with Indian luxury, having a drawing-room, a bed-room, and a bath-room especially assigned to me.

I happened to arrive in Calcutta at the most unfavourable period possible. Three years of unfruitfulness through almost the whole of Europe had been followed by a commercial crisis, which threatened the town with entire destruction. Every mail from Europe brought intelligence of some failure, in which the richest firms here were involved. No merchant could say, "I am worth so much;" - the next post might inform him that he was a beggar. A feeling of dread and anxiety had seized every family. The sums already lost in England and this place were reckoned at thirty millions of pounds sterling, and yet the crisis was far from being at an end.

Misfortunes of this kind fall particularly hard upon persons who, like the Europeans here, have been accustomed to every kind of comfort and luxury. No one can have any idea of the mode of life in India. Each family has an entire palace, the rent of which amounts to two hundred rupees (20 pounds), or more, a month. The household is composed of from twenty-five to thirty servants; namely - two cooks, a scullion, two water-carriers, four servants to wait at table, four housemaids, a lamp-cleaner, and half-a-dozen seis or grooms. Besides this, there are at least six horses, to every one of which there is a separate groom; two coachmen, two gardeners, a nurse and servant for each child, a lady's maid, a girl to wait on the nurses, two tailors, two men to work the punkahs, and one porter. The wages vary from four to eleven rupees (8s. to 1 pounds 2s.) a month. None of the domestics are boarded, and but few of them sleep in the house: they are mostly married, and eat and sleep at home. The only portion of their dress which they have given to them is their turban and belt; they are obliged to find the rest themselves, and also to pay for their own washing. The linen belonging to the family is never, in spite of the number of servants, washed at home, but is all put out, at the cost of three rupees (6s.) for a hundred articles. The amount of linen used is something extraordinary; everything is white, and the whole is generally changed twice a day.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 153 of 364
Words from 78775 to 79293 of 187810