1851: Calcutta to Sussex
I scarcely know how to begin recounting this journey and arrival in Calcutta, for the reality here has been an onslaught upon every sense and I write with a heart heavy with both dismay and disbelief. The voyage itself was a torment beyond endurance—weeks bottled beneath a relentless sun, the air thick and fouled with the ship’s odours, the ceaseless lurch of the sea sapping every ounce of my resolve. I scarce escaped seasickness to step ashore into a city that is altogether unlike anything I had imagined.
Calcutta assaults one at every turn. The sights are bewildering: streets thronged with crowds so vast and disorderly that every attempt at order seems laughable; colours so vivid and strange, the saris and turbans like a painter’s palette spilled without care; yet amidst this vibrancy rise slums so squalid that no decent English home could countenance them. The endless din—bells, calls, raucous voices and animal sounds—invade what little peace I had hoped for. And the smells, oh, the smells! A mixture of spices, refuse and an unending mingling of elements both sweet and repugnant that cling to one’s skin and garments no matter how often one bathes.
As for touch and taste, the very air suffocates with humidity; my skin is often clammy and uncomfortable beneath the glaring sun. The food is a bewildering array of spices and unfamiliar textures and though the cooks have tried to serve me some semblance of English dishes, my palate rebels. The constant perspiration and the ever-pervading dust make wearing my usual velvet gowns impossible; the fabric wilts and traps heat mercilessly. I am forced instead to wear lighter silks or cottons, fabrics foreign to my tastes and far less luxurious to the touch.
The house I now occupy scarcely feels like a home at all. It is cramped, sun-drenched to the point of glare and far beneath the comforts and elegance of our family estates in England. The servants here are strange to my expectations and the English society I have entered is but a pale shadow of the refinement to which I was accustomed. Here, one finds a low level of social grace, a mix of vacuous chatter and petty ambition among those who, like myself, are expatriates but seem eager to assert whatever small importance their titles or connections afford in this distant outpost.
I confess, Jeanne, that my spirit has been sorely tested. I had envisioned a grand adventure, an opportunity to claim some corner of the world as my own. Instead, I find a world at once chaotic and alien, at odds with every ingrained notion of dignity and taste I hold dear. Yet I write you with hope; hope that time will acclimate me, that I shall find beauty and grace amid this turmoil and perhaps even carve out a place where I can thrive.
Do write soon, my dear cousin. I long to hear the familiar comforts of home and to know that, despite the distance, we remain united in spirit.
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