Up the country Book

These journal letters of Emily Eden re-creates a world for us now, that has of course completely disappeared. All the small domestic goings on you might expect of a Governor-General's camp, as they travel the country of India, servant punishments, visits to Maharajas, the heat, the disappointment of letters having not arrived. Delightfully there are many which the reader might not have expected also, a pet squirrel, a shawl obession, the purchase of a couple of orphans, the painting of a picture of the young Queen Victoria whom E E had never seen, to present to a Maharaja. Emily Eden is witty, intelligent and sharp, her observations of people and places brilliantly acute. I find it wonderful really that a middle aged lady in 1838 could sit under canvas writing her journal letters home to England, and that I now all these years later can read about the peculiar converstaion she has just had with an indian servant, and how she longs for England. Thank goodness people like Emily Eden had the foresight to write and publsih such things, for without them, us readers wouldn't get to visit half the places we do.