1851: Sussex to Calcutta
How your letter filled me with such vivid and overwhelming imagery—I read it twice, each time feeling as if I were beside you, yet repulsed and disoriented by the very world you describe. Your candour in sharing the hardships and discomforts of Calcutta moves me deeply and I can only imagine how ill-fitted you feel against such a riot of sights, sounds and smells so unlike our orderly English countryside. I am grateful, above all, for your safety, though I grieve at the squalor and disappointment that greet you far from the comforts you deserve.
Your description of that horrid voyage, the perilous journey inland and the strange customs and people you have encountered leaves me full of questions I beg you to answer in your next letter. How do you endure the climate so different from ours? Does your home, wretched though you find it, offer you moments of peace untainted by the foreign tumult?
I wonder also about the English community you have entered in Calcutta. You mention its low level of social grace; do these expatriates cling tightly to one another despite their coarseness? Are there any semblances of the gentility that we prize so highly or is the empire’s outpost a reflection of the distance from home and the challenge to civility they face? How do you endure their company and what hopes have you for making India your true home?
Write soon, Cordelia and do not forget that even across oceans my thoughts remain with you. I pray that with time you may find your new world less alien and that happiness may fill the spaces between the strangeness.
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