The Discomforts of Empire: Emily Eden?s Life in India, 1836-1842 
 
by 
 
Amy Marie Christiansen 
 
 
 
 
A thesis submited to the Graduate Faculty of 
Auburn University 
in partial fulfilment of the 
requirements for the Degre of 
Master of Arts 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
August 4, 2012 
 
 
 
 
Keywords: Emily Eden, physical comfort, psychological discomfort, India, nabob, ninetenth 
century 
 
 
Copyright 2012 by Amy Marie Christiansen 
 
 
Approved by: 
 
Christopher J. Ferguson, Chair, Asistant Profesor of History 
Donna Bohanan, Profesor of History 
Rupali Mishra, Asistant Profesor of History 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ii 
Abstract 
 
 
 This thesis discusses the physical and psychological discomforts of Emily Eden, 
an English aristocrat, during her life in India from 1836 to 1842. I argue that the comforts 
Eden identified during her early life in England defined how she interacted in India with 
her new surroundings, climate, and separation from family and friends. Eden believed 
that comfort was based in the pleasure and privileges of home as wel as modes of life. 
When her comforts of home were compromised in India, the ?hot land of strangers,? 
Eden clung to her identity as an aristocratic British woman. Physicaly, the Indian climate 
impacted Emily?s comforts and influenced her daily routine and activities like gardening, 
the experience of indoor and outdoor spaces, and interactions with the landscape and the 
picturesque scenery. The separation from family and friends, the apparent loss of her 
identity due to the lack of political influence, isolation from other Europeans, and her 
own perceived Indianization afected Emily psychologicaly. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 iii 
Acknowledgments 
 
 
 This thesis would never have ben completed without the guidance and suport of 
Dr. Christopher Ferguson, the best major profesor anyone could ever ask for. You read 
my awkward sentences, my continual use of pasive voice, and the many bizare 
mispeled words, and stil believed I was capable of completing this thesis. Thank you 
for everything you have done for me; I apreciate it more than words can say. I would 
also like to thank two remarkable profesors, Dr. Donna Bohanan and Dr. Rupali Mishra, 
for their notable involvement as comite members. I am truly grateful for al of their 
insights, criticisms, and encouragement.   
 Without a doubt, I would like to thank my mother, Helen Malin-Christiansen, and 
my grandparents, Edwin and Gloria Malin. Their love, compasion, and endles suport, 
both emotional and financial, have helped me through the unnerving proces which is 
graduate school and writing a thesis. I would also like to acknowledge my very own 
?Auburn family? who have sen me through the trials and tribulations of the past two 
years. What started as an after-clas lunch quickly developed into countles memories, 
inside jokes, and writing sesions. Thank you so unbelievably much Hayden McDaniel, 
John ?Jackie? Laman, Leah Craig, and Jesica Hils, for enduring the best and worst 
times of graduate school with me. 
 
 
 iv 
 I would have never finished my thesis or even made it to graduate school at Auburn 
without the encouragement of my two favorite undergraduate profesors, Dr. Alison 
Bruey and Dr. Elizabeth Furdel. You both had an enormous impact on my historical 
interests and intelectual self-worth. Thank you for believing in me at a time when I did 
not believe in myself. Also, thank you to Austin Rocket Whitsel for conducting research 
for me at Johns Hopkins University, I am truly grateful. Finaly, to my friend, confident, 
and coleague, Kyle Fortenbery, without your dedication to history and higher education, 
I would not have completed this thesis or degre. Thanks buddy! 
 
 v 
Table of Contents 
 
 
Abstract....................................................................................................................................ii 
Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................iii 
List of Abbreviations................................................................................................................v 
Introduction..............................................................................................................................1 
Chapter 1: ?Ploughing the Ocean?: England, India, and the Voyage abroad the Jupiter..........14 
 Preconceptions of India .............................................................................................16 
 Life in England .........................................................................................................22 
 Preparation for the Jupiter...........................................................................................24 
 Farewels from Portsmouth  .......................................................................................29 
Chapter 2:  ?To Rack and Ruin?: India and the Physical Comforts and Discomforts of 
Daily Routine, Climate, and Housing .....................................................................................33 
 
 Climate ......................................................................................................................35 
 Daily Routine ............................................................................................................40 
 Gardens, Landscape, and the Picturesque ...................................................................43 
 Housing, Gender, and Airing......................................................................................49 
Chapter 3: ?To Dream of England?: Separation, Identity Loss, and Isolation in the 
Subcontinent  .........................................................................................................................53 
 
 Leters, Print Culture, and Material Goods ................................................................55 
 Clas, Race, and Civilization  .....................................................................................65 
 Indianization ..............................................................................................................75 
 
 vi 
 Isolation......................................................................................................................81 
 Britishnes and Politics ..............................................................................................86 
 Conclusions................................................................................................................89 
Bibliography  .........................................................................................................................92 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 vii 
List of Abbreviations 
 
 
EIC East India Company   
LFI Leters from India eds. Emily Eden and Eleanor Eden. London: Bentley, 
  1872. 
MEL Mis Eden?s Leters, ed. Violet Dickinson. London: MacMilan and Co., 
  Limited, 1919. 
UTC Emily Eden. Up the Country: Leters Writen to Her Sister from the Upper 
 Provinces of India. London: R. Bentley, 1866.
1 
 
Introduction 
 
On March 24, 1836, Emily Eden, an unmaried aristocratic English woman, wrote a leter 
from the Government House in Barackpore, India to her dear friend, Mrs. Theresa 
Lister, who was living in England. In the leter, Emily used a phrase that encapsulated 
how Eden interacted with and experienced India during her travels, from 1836 to 1842. 
Emily described how she had arived in ?a hot land of strangers.?
 1
 This phrase, ?hot land 
of strangers? expresed how an elite British woman like Emily Eden could experience 
India during the early ninetenth century. As recorded in her leters, Emily experienced 
India primarily as a series of daily discomforts. To many Britons, India was sen as a 
place of death, a place of foreign unfamiliar populations, and, as the stereotyped ?other,? 
a strange land.
2
 For Eden, however, these ideas were subsumed within the broader 
concept of comfort. 
 The 1830s and 1840s were an unstable time for British imperial policy in India. 
Decades before the Indian Rebelion of 1857 and the establishment of the British 
government as total sovereign over it, India was stil a batleground betwen East India 
Company (EIC) officials and Indian princes vying for teritorial lands. It was also the 
time when E.M. Collingham argues the British official was undergoing a transformation 
from the eightenth-century ?nabob? into the late ninetenth-century ?sahib.? In the early 
                                                
1
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 263-264. 
2
 John Barel, The Infection of Thomas De Quincey (New Haven: Yale University Pres, 
1991), 190; Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 43. 
 
 2 
ninetenth-century, the image of the nabob was as a flamboyant, efeminate, and wealthy 
East India Company servant, usualy of European descent. Open to the influences of 
Indian culture, social life, and traditions, nabobs often incorporated those aspects into 
their self-identity.
3
 The nabob became aclimatized to South Asian mannerisms such as 
smoking the hookah, dresing in native clothes, and watching nautch dances. With the 
rise of evangelicalism and changes in the EIC and government power in India, however, 
the nabob was no longer viewed as an aceptable model for Anglo-Indian identity in the 
ninetenth century. Thus, the late ninetenth-century saw the development of the sahib, a 
sober, bureaucratic representative of the Crown.
4
 The sahib was a ?distancing mechanism 
to separate Briton from India, and the Anglo-Indian body increasingly came to serve as 
an active principle demarcating clas as wel as racial boundaries.?
 5
 
 At this time, the majority of Britons in India were young men looking for the 
reward of status and riches through Company service. Few British women lived in India, 
except for the smal community of oficer?s wives and a few female servants. Emily Eden 
was thus unique in India; she was English, a woman, as wel as unmaried, and 
aristocratic and did not match the standard demography of colonial personnel. Looking at 
her collections of leters offers a new perspective on British women travelers and how 
they could perceive their status in the subcontinent. The correspondence shows the 
                                                
3
 E.M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj c. 1800-1947, 
(Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2001), 3. 
4
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 3. 
5
 Ibid, 150. 
 
 3 
diferent world in which a member of the social elite, sister to the Governor-General, was 
acesible and moved in during her stay. Thus, exploring Emily Eden?s experiences in 
India through her collections of leters demonstrates why India for her represented a ?hot 
land of strangers? and further develops the discourse on early ninetenth-century British 
imperial history. 
 Emily Eden was born on March 3, 1797, at Old Palace Yard, Westminster, the 
tenth of the fourten children of Wiliam Eden and Eleanor Eliot. Her father, Wiliam, 
and mother, Eleanor, came from politicaly active families. Wiliam Eden himself had a 
carer as an ambasador in several countries and her mother?s family history lay in 
colonial service. Wiliam became a close colleague of Wiliam Pit the Younger during 
Lord Shelburne?s ministry in 1783, as they agred on most topics such as the economy 
and finance.
6
 In May 1793, after retiring from diplomatic service, he acepted the British 
peerage of Baron Auckland of West Auckland.
7
 His second son, George, became the 
second Lord Auckland upon his death in 1814. Eleanor?s brother, Lord Minto, was also a 
former Governor-General of India. 
 The Eden siblings created further political connections through their appointments 
and achievements. George found a seat on Lord Grey?s cabinet as president of the Board 
of Trade in 1830, as wel as serving as First Lord of the Admiralty to Lord Melbourne 
                                                
6
 Lionel J. Trotter, The Earl of Auckland (Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 1893), 10-11. 
7
 ?Eden, Wiliam, first Baron Auckland (1744?1814),? Stephen M. Le in Oxford 
Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Mathew and Brian Harison (Oxford: 
OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, ay 2009, 
http:/ww.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8459 (acesed July 7, 2012). 
 
 4 
four years later.
8
 Even the Eden females brought political atention to the family as the 
objects of other men?s afections. It was known that Wiliam?s eldest daughter, who 
eventualy maried the Earl of Buckinghamshire, was ?Pit?s first and only love.?
9
 
Acording to rumors, Emily herself was one of the objects of Lord Melbourne?s 
afections, although she did not reciprocate, writing, ?I can derive but litle vanity from 
Lord Melbourne?s admiration. I stand very low in the list of his loves.?
10
 Emily was more 
than just an object of afection, however, throughout her life, Eden was her brother?s 
political adviser, a lively participant in Whig political circles, and received solicitations 
for advice from Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston.
11
 Thus, Emily was acustomed to 
being in a large network of family, friends, politicians, and near connections who 
participated in Whig politics, elite social circles, and colonial endeavors.
12
 
 Like politics, education was important to the Eden family. In the early 1800s, 
Eleanor hired tutors to educate Emily and her siblings. By age eleven she later claimed, 
she knew ? the Memoires de Retz, Shakespeare, and a great part of the Bible, almost by 
heart.?
13
 As Emily was a young woman of means, she became very connected in the 
political and social circles of London. Lord Melbourne, for example, as observed above, 
                                                
8
 Trotter, The Earl of Auckland, 11. 
9
 Ibid, 11. 
10
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, 30 Grosvenor Stret, Thursday [January 1832], MEL, 216. 
11
 Indira Ghose, Women Travelers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze 
(Delhi: Oxford University Pres, 1998), 72. 
12
 Janet Dunbar, Golden Interlude: The Edens in India 1836-1842 (Gloucester: Alan 
Sutton, 1955), ix. 
13
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Hertingfordbury, Monday, September, 1826, MEL, 107. 
 
 5 
was one of her closest and dearest friends. Indeed, rumors circulated that they were going 
to be engaged and maried, but, after some confusion, her father caled it of. After the 
death of her father and mother in the late 1810s, Emily and her younger sister, Fanny, 
moved to London and lived with their bachelor brother, George, Lord Auckland, in his 
Grosvenor Stret house. 
 George and Emily had a close and afectionate sibling relationship that ultimately 
meant that Emily acompanied George to India when he was appointed Governor-
General in 1835. King Wiliam IV even acknowledged the siblings? closenes, ?His 
Majesty has long been aware of the sincere atachment which exists betwen Lord 
Auckland and his amiable Sisters, and of his anxiety for their Welfare and happines, and 
he gives him credit for this exemplary feature of his character.?
14
 
 As a wel educated member of the social elite, Emily left behind an imense 
collection of primary source materials such as leters, drawings, lithographs, and two 
novels that were saved, edited, and published in the ninetenth and early twentieth 
centuries. The first publication occurred shortly after her return from India in 1843. 
Emily had some of her sketches and watercolors created into lithographs for a 
compilation titled, Portraits of the Princes and People of India, which included images of 
young rajas, atendants, and other miscelaneous people and events from India. Emily 
                                                
14
 King Wiliam IV to Mis Eden, Windsor Castle, September 26, 1835, MEL, 259. 
 
 6 
also wrote two short novels that commented on the social behaviors of her time, The 
Semi-Detached House (1859) and The Semi-Atached Couple (1860).
15
 
 The richest material Eden left behind for historians, however, was her copious 
correspondence. In 1866, Emily published her first volume of leters, Up the Country: 
Leters Writen to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. The volumes include 
leters from her travel excursion ?up the country? from Calcutta to Simla. In a leter 
writen to her nephew, Wiliam in 1866, Eden noted her own censorship in these 
volumes, ?Many pasages of this Diary, writen solely for the amusement of my own 
family, have of course been omited; but not a word has been added to descriptions which 
have litle merit, but that they are true and that they were writen on the spot.?
16
 
 Acording to her niece, Eleanor Eden, the popularity and succes of Up the 
Country was so great that she urged Emily to publish more materials from her time in 
India.
17
 In the late 1860s, Emily?s poor health undermined her ability to prepare the 
leters for publication. Therefore, Eleanor caried out the arangement of leters with 
direction and support from her aunt. Eleanor wrote in the preface to Leters from India, 
?My Aunt frequently, however, expresed her desire that I should continue the work at 
                                                
15
 Paul Schlueter, and June Schlueter, An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers (New 
York: Garland, 1988), 216. 
16
 Emily Eden to Lord Wiliam Godolphin Osbourne, Dedication, Eden Lodge, 
Kensington Gore, May, 1866, in UTC, v. 
17
 Eleanor Eden, Bournemouth, November 1871, LFI, preface. 
 
 7 
some future period.?
18
 Leters from India appeared in 1872, thre years after Emily?s 
death. A final volume of leters, which range in date from her early childhood to her 
travels in India, Mis Eden?s Leters, was published in 1919 by another relative, her great 
niece, Violet Mary Dickinson. Acording to Violet, Mis Eden?s Leters was published in 
response to the interest created by the Life and Leters of the Fourth Earl of Clarendon 
(1913), which had included some of Emily?s leters to Lord Clarendon, one of her closest 
friends. 
 These leters provide a wealth of information on Emily Eden?s life in England and 
India, giving details on how she understood and viewed her world. In previous 
scholarship, historians have used Eden?s writing as a source of smal anecdotes for their 
historical arguments, simplified into one-liners in a larger text.
19
 Eden has also been 
treated as a subject of biography, such as in Janet Dunbar?s work, Golden Interlude: The 
Edens in India 1835 -1842 that ?sets a detailed acount of the Indian adventure against 
the background of the Eden family.?
20
 This thesis does not simply detail the ?Indian 
adventure? and family background but goes beyond the scope of biography to show how 
the concept of comfort impacted Emily Eden?s life, culture, and mannerisms. 
 Despite the editing by herself and her nieces, who removed whole leters and 
excised damaging remarks, Emily Eden?s writings stil revealed a variety of continuous 
                                                
18
 Eleanor Eden, Bournemouth, November 1871, LFI, preface. 
19
 For two examples, se: Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest 
in the East, 1750-1850 (New York: Knopf, 2005), 307-308, 310-311; Linda Colley, 
Captives (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 357, 366. 
20
 Dunbar, Golden Interlude, jacket. 
 
 8 
themes. Her leters actively portrayed the importance of comfort in her daily life in both 
Britain and India. This demonstrates that comfort was an important concept in the life of 
an aristocratic English woman during the ninetenth century and that it played a central 
role in conditioning Eden?s response to India and its people. Beyond the typical 
biography, this thesis is the first systematic study of Emily Eden and her entire published 
correspondence that analyzes the role of comfort in the life of a ninetenth-century 
aristocratic woman. 
 The word comfort derives from the medieval French word, conforter or confort, 
meaning physical and emotional support.
21
 As John Crowley notes, before the middle of 
the eightenth century, comfort usualy had medicinal or nutritional connotations.
22
 
Developing slowly through the centuries, the term comfort developed new connotations 
of moral and emotional support.
23
 Comfort was thus an established term in the medieval 
period; but it did not gain widespread usage until the eightenth century. Around 1700, 
comfort acquired a new physical meaning that related to the relationship betwen the 
body, material culture, and the environment.
24
 The increase in domestic material 
                                                
21
 Ibid, 4. 
22
 John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern 
Britain and Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Pres, 2001), 4. 
23
 Crowley further explains, For centuries, "comfort" had primarily meant moral, 
emotional, spiritual, and political support in dificult circumstances. To be "comfortles" 
had meant being "without anything to alay misfortune," and "discomfort" involved 
felings of "sorrow," "melancholy," and "gloom" rather than physical iritability. John E. 
Crowley, ?The Sensibility of Comfort,? The American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 
1999), 751. 
24
 Crowley, ?The Sensibility of Comfort?, 750-751. 
 
 9 
possesions during the consumer revolution of the eightenth century acelerated its use 
in the vernacular and refashioned the diference betwen luxury and necesity. Physical 
comfort ?was a natural motive for new consumption paterns.? New furnishings, 
conveniences, and furniture meant to promote bodily comfort rapidly made their way into 
households.
25
 Standards of living improved to the extent that previous luxury goods now 
came to be viewed as necesities.
26
 The concept of comfort was also closely asociated 
with the emerging notions of privacy and intimacy.
27
 Although the culture of comfort 
developed during the eightenth century, the ninetenth century realized its impact on 
society and lifestyles and can be sen in this microhistory of Emily Eden and her acount 
of her time in India. 
 The Oxford English Dictionary defines comfort as ?strengthening; 
encouragement, incitement; aid, succour, support, countenance,? but Emily Eden?s 
definition of comfort was far more complex.
28
 In 1807, Robert Southey observed, of the 
English, 
There are two words in their language on which these people pride 
themselves, and which they cannot be translated. Home is the one, by 
which an Englishman means his house..The other word is comfort; it 
means al the enjoyments and privileges of home; and here I must confes 
                                                
25
 Donna J. Bohanan, Fashion Beyond Versailes: Consumption and Design in 
Sevententh-Century France (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 2012), 74-
75. 
26
 Crowley, ?The Sensibility of Comfort,? 752. 
27
 Bohanan, Fashion Beyond Versailes, 75. 
28
 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. ?Comfort, n.? 
http:/ww.oed.com.spot.lib.auburn.edu/view/Entry/36890?rskey=J9MMzX&result=1&i
sAdvanced=false#eid [acesed April 12, 2012] 
 
 10 
that these proud islanders have reason for their pride. In their social 
intercourse and their modes of life they have enjoyments which we never 
dream of.
29
 
 
Like Southey, based on her discussion in leters, Eden agred that comfort meant ?al the 
enjoyments and privileges of home? as wel as ?their social intercourse and their modes 
of life.?
30
 To Eden, her aristocratic understanding necesitated comfort in her life. 
Without her physical and psychological comforts, Eden?s identity as an aristocratic 
British woman was compromised. She became ?un-English? without the ?enjoyments 
and privileges? of her home and the comfort they brought her.
31
 
 By looking at Emily Eden?s leters through the lens of comfort, this thesis aserts 
that several diferent scholarly arguments from imperial historiography are connected. 
For some historians, climate, by creating lethargy and stagnation, had a major impact on 
British rule in India due to its negative efects on Indian as wel as European 
constitutions, which indicated inferiority in the eyes of Europeans.
32
 As Mark Harison 
argues, Europeans looked at the relation of their bodies with the Indian climate in 
diferent times of history depending on political circumstances.
33
 Eden and her discussion 
of her discomforts in the climate of India addresed the early ninetenth century view of 
that time period and its political factors determined the importance of weather stricken 
                                                
29
 Quoted in John E. Crowley, ?The Sensibility of Comfort,? 749. 
30
 Ibid, 749. 
31
 Ibid, 749. 
32
 Mark Harison, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British 
Imperialism in India, 1600-1850 (New Delhi: Oxford University Pres, 1999), 13, 17. 
33
 Harison, Climates and Constitutions, 20-21. 
 
 11 
bodily relations. Atached to the climate is the understanding that the physical body ?was 
central to the colonial experience? as the site of social structures and societal paterns.
34
 
E.M. Collingham thus argues that the study of the British body in India can trace shifts in 
lifestyles such as the shift from the eightenth-century nabob, who openly identified with 
Indian culture, to the sahib, bounded off from Indian influence by the change in private 
practices.
35
 Emily demonstrated this shift in the definition of the British body and 
Britishnes in India through her discussion of Anglo-Indian civilization and the 
discomfort she felt with the proximity of perceived ?oriental despotism? to her English 
lifestyle. 
 Comfort offers an overarching structure through which to group these diferent 
arguments, especialy when looking at the way in which Europeans, in particular the 
British, designated themselves as diferent than their other imperial counterparts. In his 
seminal work, Orientalism, Edward W. Said designated the Orient?s place in the 
European cultural experience.
36
 He argued that the ?Orient? was an image of the ?Other? 
and it helped define itself as the contrasting idea to Europe.
37
 Like Said, Mary Louise 
Prat explores the interactions and distinctions betwen Europe and their conquered 
empires. Prat discusses transculturation, meaning how subjugated groups select and 
invent from materials transmited to them by a dominant culture, as a phenomenon of the 
                                                
34
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 2. 
35
 Ibid, 3. 
36
 Said, Orientalism, 1. 
37
 Ibid, 1-2. 
 
 12 
contact zone, the space of colonial encounters.
38
 Eden?s interaction with Indian peoples in 
those contact zones demonstrated the ongoing Anglo-Indian relations defined by 
?coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict.?
39
 As a British aristocrat living in 
India, the discomfort Eden felt at the interaction with South Asian cultures exemplifies 
Prat?s theory on contact zones. 
 Emily Eden?s notion of comfort and its role in understanding her time in India are 
explored in thre chapters. Chapter One, ?Ploughing the Ocean?: England, India, and the 
Voyage abroad the Jupiter, summarizes Eden?s daily activities and the lifestyle that 
defined her comfort level while in England and examines the transitioning sea voyage on 
board the Jupiter in light of the expected discomforts of India.
 40
 Chapter Two, ?To Rack 
and Ruin: India and the Physical Comforts and Discomforts of Daily Routine, Climate, 
and Housing,? discusses the physical discomforts Eden experienced in India, particularly 
those caused by the climate.
 41
 Chapter Thre, ?To Dream of England: Separation, 
Identity Loss, and Isolation in the Subcontinent,? addreses her psychological 
discomforts, such as separation from family and friends back in England.
 42
  
 This thesis thus discusses the physical and psychological discomforts of Emily 
Eden during her stay in India from 1836 to 1842. It argues that the comforts Eden 
                                                
38
 Mary Louise Prat, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: 
Routledge, 1992), 6. 
39
 Ibid, 6. 
40
 From The Hon. Emily Eden To ?., Calcutta, Friday, December 31, 1841, LFI, 276. 
41
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Barackpore, July 19, [1836], LFI, 186. 
42
 From The Hon. Emily Eden To ?., Calcutta, Friday, December 31, 1841, LFI, 275. 
 
 13 
identified in England during her early life would define how she interacted in India with 
the new surroundings, climate, and distance. Eden treasured the comforts and enjoyments 
of social intercourse and her modes of life.
43
 But, when her comforts were compromised 
during her stay in India, the ?hot land of strangers,? Eden clung to her identity as an 
aristocratic British woman for stability. 
                                                
43
 Crowley, ?The Sensibility of Comfort,? 749. 
 
 14 
Chapter 1 
?Ploughing the Ocean?: England, India, and Voyage abroad the Jupiter 
 
Emily Eden was thirty-nine years old when part of the Eden family, including George, 
Fanny, and their nephew, Wiliam Osbourne, boarded the Jupiter and began their journey 
to live in India for six years. She had never traveled, let alone lived, as far away from 
Britain as India in al of those thirty-nine years. Eden knew, however, that she needed to 
prepare, both physicaly and psychologicaly, for the discomforts of the sea journey as 
wel as the cultural transitions that would occur in India. With Emily?s identity strongly 
grounded in her own Englishnes and English notions of comfort, the voyage and 
inevitable arival in India became dificult for her to acept. While on board the Jupiter, 
Eden wrote about her struggle with these changes in comfort, 
That in the middle of February, when we ought to be shivering in a thick 
yelow fog, George and I should be established on a pile of cushions in the 
stern window of his cabin, he without his coat, waistcoat, and shoes, 
learning Hindoostanee by the sweat of his brow. I, with only one peticoat 
and a thin dresing-gown on, a large fan in one hand and a pen in the 
other.
44
 
 
For Emily, the sea voyage and the expectations of life in India chalenged al of her 
previous British habits, comforts, and routines. In a July 1835 leter to Lady Campbel, 
Eden wrote further about the loss of her English comforts while in India, ?Besides, what 
is there to say, ?God?s wil be done.? It al comes to that. I certainly look at the climate 
                                                
44
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, N. Lat. 17, Long. 21, February 18, 1836, MEL, 261. 
 
 15 
with dread, and to the voyage with utter aversion.
 
Then, we leave a very happy existence 
and then, worst of al, we leave my sisters and a great many friends.?
45
 For Emily, the 
voyage ensured the loss of her physical English comforts and distanced her from her 
social and political lives. Socialy, Emily relied on her family and friends for knowledge 
of ?the latest books, the newest plays, the most up-to-date fashions and, above al, the 
current gossip.?
46
 At the end of the estimated five-month sea journey, Eden?s lifestyle 
vanished and the discomforts of a new Indian life of heat, humidity, and isolation 
replaced it. 
 This chapter discusses the preparation of the Eden family for travel to India, as 
wel as noting Emily?s preconceived notions of Anglo-Indian life. Life on board the 
Jupiter and the transition to the foreign climate and destinations gave Emily an indication 
of what her life in India would entail. Her discomforts with India and the British Empire 
first developed in Britain and on board the Jupiter. Understanding this development wil 
help reinforce the arguments in the succeding chapters on physical and psychological 
comforts and discomforts in Anglo-Indian society. 
 
 
 
 
                                                
45
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Admiralty, July 1835, MEL, 252. 
46
 Julia Keay, With Passport and Parasol (London: BC, 1989), 10. 
 
 16 
Preconceptions of India 
 
 In 1834 when Emily Eden?s brother, George Eden, also known as Lord Auckland, 
told her that his work might be taking them to India, Emily thought it a dangerous 
asertion, and a potentialy catastrophic event; nothing was further from her mind than 
the thought of foreign travel, especialy to India.
47
 Emily laughed that ?Botany Bay 
would be a joke to it. There is a decent climate to begin with, and the fun of a litle felony 
first.?
48
 In contrast, it would be a punishment to be forced to go to India. In reference to 
the five-month sea voyage, Emily complained she ?would not do it for ?1000 per day.?
49
 
But shortly thereafter George was informed of the cancelation of the trip due to the 
collapse of the Whig government and the removal of Lord Melbourne as Prime 
Minister.
50
 George?s dreams of India were crushed and Emily was happy and relieved. 
 Emily?s happines and pleasure at the thought of not going to India was so 
extreme she had to hide her thankfulnes from George, who was disappointed in the 
decision: ?We have esquiv?d India, a constant source of pleasure to me, though I keep it 
snug, as he is rather disappointed at having mised it, so I must not sem so thankful as I 
am.?
51
 Luckily for George, it would be Emily who was ultimately disappointed. By April 
                                                
47
 Keay, With Passport and Parasol, 8. 
48
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Ham Common, Monday evening, October 28, 1834, MEL, 
245. 
49
 Ibid, 245. 
50
 Keay, With Passport and Parasol, 9. 
51
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Admiralty, Monday, November 23, 1834, MEL, 249. 
 
 17 
1835, Lord Melbourne was once again Prime Minister, ?and within two weks of taking 
office he ofered George a new post ? as Governor-General of India.?
52
 The choice to 
give George the post was to replace Lord Heytesbury, the candidate of the short-lived 
Tory administration. George?s income drasticaly increased from ?2800 a year in office at 
the Board of Trade to ?25,000 salary for the governorship. Although criticized in his role 
as First Lord of the Admiralty due to his unpopular manners and terible public speaking 
skils, George Eden made an impecable impresion upon his arival in Calcutta in 
1836.
53
 T. B. Macaulay acknowledged George?s personal improvements in awkwardnes 
but noted he never did master his inability to speak in public.
54
 
 In July 1835, George Eden took the oficial title of Governor-General of India, an 
appointment that kept the Eden siblings in India for six years. Emily noted the unpleasant 
adjustment to her friend Lady Pamela Campbel in July 1835, writing that ?George wrote 
to tel you of the awful change in our destination, and I have been so worried, and have 
had so much to do with seing and hearing the representations of friends, and taking 
leave of many who are gone out of town and whom I shal never se again, that I could 
not write.?
55
 What Emily, like George and Fanny, ?found almost unbearable was the 
                                                
52
 Keay, With Passport and Parasol, 9. 
53
 ?Eden, George, earl of Auckland (1784?1849),? P. J. Marshal in Oxford Dictionary of 
National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Mathew and Brian Harison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); 
online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, 
http:/ww.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8451 (acesed July 6, 2012). 
54
 Ibid, (acesed July 6, 2012). 
55
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Admiralty, July 1835, MEL, 252. 
 
 18 
prospect of such a long separation from the friends, sisters and brothers to whom they 
were devotedly atached.?
56
 
 The Eden children ? George, Emily, and Fanny ? were from an aristocratic 
Whig family and they were acustomed to being a part of a large, supportive family of 
sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, with whom they kept in touch by visits and 
regular correspondence.
57
 The sisters, Emily and Fanny ?were cultivated women who led 
a very full and happy existence, moving in the highest society, on terms of close 
friendship with the prominent Whig families, and taking pleasure in frequent visits to 
Bowood and Longleat, Chatsworth and Knowsley and many other great country-
houses.?
58
 George?s ?appointment to India put an end to this pleasant, stimulating life.?
59
 
Not only did moving to India mean removing Emily from the comfort of home and her 
family, it entailed physical discomforts like ?the five-months? voyage under sail, [and] 
the extreme heat in which they would have to live for five or six years.?
60
 
 Even before the mention or prospect of George becoming Governor-General, 
Emily had developed many preconceived notions about India and what traveling there 
would entail. In her leters, Emily first mentioned her asumptions in 1820 to Mis 
Viliers, ?Have you sen your Eliotts? for I am anxious to know what India has done for 
them. It is a dangerous experiment, they get so stufed with otto of roses, sandal-wood 
                                                
56
 Dunbar, Golden Interlude, ix. 
57
 Ibid, ix. 
58
 Ibid, ix. 
59
 Ibid, ix. 
60
 Ibid, ix. 
 
 19 
and sentiment, they never come quite right.?
61
 Based on this excerpt, Eden believed India 
negatively afected the Eliotts; that they never came ?quite right,? meaning the Indian 
culture, which included otto of roses and sandal-wood, warped their English 
sensibilities.
62
 Her inferences suggest her own sense of the inferiority and hazardous 
environment of Indian society, that it was ?a dangerous experiment? to travel there.
63
 
 In the 1830s, when Emily found herself traveling there, she wrote a leter to Lady 
Campbel about her previous aversions to India and she optimisticaly admited, ?as 
other people have liked India and have come back to say so, perhaps we shal do the 
same.?
64
 Lady Campbel wrote back suggesting her own notions of India, ?How litle did 
I imagine when I read of India, and looked on those hot, misty, gorgeous Indian views, 
that I should ever garner up part of my heart there.?
65
 In contrast to Emily?s notions about 
the dangers of India, her friend thought India was hot, misty, and gorgeous.
66
 Lord 
Melbourne also gave Emily an acount of India with some advice as wel, ?Then God 
bles you- as to health, let us hope for the best. The climate of the East Indies very often 
re-establishes it.?
67
 
 Although her life in India was the first time Eden went beyond the British Isles, it 
was not her first time to experience the British Empire. In 1827, George suggested a 
                                                
61
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Grosvenor Stret, Monday [1820], MEL, 62. 
62
 Ibid, 62. 
63
 Ibid, 62. 
64
Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Admiralty, July 1835, MEL, 252. 
65
 Lady Campbel to Mis Eden, Carton, September 1, 1835, MEL, 255. 
66
 Ibid, 255. 
67
 Lord Melbourne to Mis Eden, South Stret, September 24, 1835, MEL, 258. 
 
 20 
summer tour of Ireland to Emily and she hesitated on the expense and journey. She wrote 
about the travel notion, 
He had invented such a good plan, that he and I should take Fanny to 
Knowsley, deposit her there, cross over to Ireland, make a litle tour there, 
se Pamela, come back by Stackpole, se Elizabeth, and then go to 
Norman Court and the Grange for our shooting. It was a prety idea of his, 
but then he is naturaly a great dear. However this strikes me as rather an 
expensive journey, so I do not pres it, and if he has thought beter of it, I 
shal encourage his more economical thoughts. If not, I shal be very 
glad.
68
 
 
With the expectation to se her dear friend, Lady Campbel, Eden agred to travel to 
Ireland with George. She spent most of her six weks? time in the houses and company of 
close family friends such as Lady Glengal and Lady Campbel. She also spent time on 
tour with George to places like Mount Shannon and Cahir where she drew many 
sketches.
69
 At many instances, Emily enjoyed the Irish scenery and the visit, she wrote to 
a friend in England, ?Altogether I liked Cahir. Kilarney was one of the most satisfactory 
visits we paid; the lakes far surpased even the extravagant expectation I had formed, and 
then the Kenmares are such charming people.?
70
 
 While Emily?s experience with Ireland during those six weks was pleasant, her 
overal opinion of Ireland and the Irish was quite diferent. She commented on the Irish 
during their stay with Lady Glengal, 
                                                
68
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Bigods, Esex, Wednesday, July 1827, MEL, 137. 
69
 is Eden to is Viliers, Stackpole, Pembrokeshire, Saturday, November 3, 1827, 
MEL, 149. 
70
 Ibid, 150. 
 
 21 
I never saw such a jaunting-car nation. The middle ranks sem to live in 
those vehicles, and the common people pas their days apparently siting 
smoking at the doors of their cabins, the children with hardly as much 
cloathes on as a decent savage wears. Such groups we saw to-day! I fel 
much more in a foreign country than I should at Calais, and am only 
preserved from that ilusion by the whistling of ?Chery-Ripe? which al 
the litle naked Lazaroni keep up.
71
 
 
Much like the caricatures of the Irish as the not fully civilized simianized agitator from 
mid century Victorian England and Scotland, Emily ilustrated her belief in the 
savagenes of the lower clas Irish in this pasage.
72
 Like her discomfort with the 
clothing choices of many South Asians, Eden believed the lower clases of Irishmen to be 
savages due to their lack of clothing and overal habits, ?the children with hardly as much 
cloathes on as a decent savage.?
73
 Emily stated in the years after her return from India 
that ?I quite agre with Carlyle, who says: ?If the Irish were not the most degraded 
savages on earth, they would blush to find themselves alive at al, instead of asking for 
means to remain so.?
74
 Eden?s experience with the Irish in the British Isles prefigured her 
view of other imperial colonies and their inhabitants, whom Emily would also consider 
uncivilized. These notions of Ireland and her belief in the savagenes of the Irish initiated 
Eden?s understanding of and aversions to British colonies, especialy once she interacted 
with the people of India.  
                                                
71
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Dublin, Monday, September 17, 1827, MEL, 144. 
72
 L. Pery Curtis Jr., Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature 
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Pres, 1997), xxxi. 
73
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Dublin, Monday, September 17, 1827, MEL, 144. 
 
74
 Mis Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis, Admiralty, Friday [April 1848], MEL, 375. 
 
 22 
Life in England 
 
 Despite her aversion to leaving England for foreign travel, it was Emily?s love 
and dedication to her brother George that convinced her to acompany him to India. 
When living at the Admiralty house in London, Emily showed her devotion to George by 
minimizing her own health problems, writing that ?one thing is quite certain, I could not 
have lived here without George, so I may be very thankful that my health has been so 
good this year that I have no dificulty on that acount, as to going with him.?
75
 Their 
bond was even recognized by King Wiliam IV in a leter to Emily on the announcement 
of their journey, ?His Majesty is not surprised that Mis Eden and her sister should have 
determined to acompany so afectionate a Brother even to so remote a destination, and 
He is sensible how much their Society must contribute to his comfort.?
76
 
 From the time of their parents? deaths in the late 1810s, Emily and Fanny lived 
with George and he ?depended on them to manage the domestic side of his life.?
77
 The 
sisters became companions to their brother; they created a home environment and tended 
to domestic duties in the household. But it was Emily who was closest to George and had 
maintained a devoted relationship with him since their childhood. From her brother?s 
early political carer to his succesful promotion to ?First Lord of the Admiralty,? Emily 
                                                
75
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Admiralty, July 1835, MEL, 252. 
76
 King Wiliam IV to Mis Eden, Windsor Castle, September 24, 1835, MEL, 259. 
77
 Dunbar, Golden Interlude, x. 
 
 23 
had acted as George?s companion and hostes.
78
 Again, King Wiliam IV acknowledged 
the siblings and their personal connections, ?His Majesty has long been aware of the 
sincere atachment which exists betwen Lord Auckland and his amiable Sisters, and of 
his anxiety for their Welfare and happines, and he gives him credit for this exemplary 
feature of his character.?
79
 
 When George traveled around England for work or pleasure, Emily acompanied 
him on the journey, kept the house while he was away, or ventured to his side when he 
was distresed. In 1828, when George was Auditor of the Acounts for Grenwich 
Hospital, a man named Austin had ?defaulted from Grenwich Hospital, after having 
cheated it a great amount? leaving George in a precarious state. Ultimately, George 
turned to his sister, Emily, for help in the situation, as she noted, ?like a sensible man, he 
sent for me to keep up his spirits.?
80
 Then in 1831, when Emily was living in Grenwich 
Park, there was a commotion over Lord Russel?s Reform Bil. Fearing for George?s 
safety, Emily wrote, ?London has been an ugly looking sight. We drove up to it most 
days to se George and to take him down to the House, because I like to se him safe 
thro? the crowd.?
81
 When George became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1834, Emily 
went with him to stay in London. She stated, ?We went on Tuesday to se the Admiralty, 
                                                
78
 Keay, With Passport and Parasol, 9-10. 
79
 King iliam IV to Mis Eden, Windsor Castle, September 24, 1835, MEL, 259. 
80
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Eastcombe, August 31, 1828, MEL, 165. 
81
 is Eden to rs. Lister, Grenwich Park, [October or November], 1831, MEL, 212. 
 
 24 
and I believe we shal be moving into it the end of next wek..but stil I cannot fancy 
being much atached to any London house.?
82
 
 Emily?s daily routine in England included the activities of leter writing, 
visitations and social outings, sketching, reading, gardening, and shopping. Her daily 
activities were so extensive and time consuming that on one Friday afternoon Emily 
would ?take leave to the Copleys, finish up the House Acounts, claim y alowance, 
pay my bils, lock up the tea and sugar, look over the House Linen, go to the Play? as 
wel as ?cal on Lady Grantham.?
83
 She led a life of routine, much like this Friday 
afternoon, based on ease and ritual comforts. 
 
Preparation for the Jupiter 
 
Physical preparation for the sea journey and stay in India included purchases like muslin 
and linen, but it also included the preparation of their cabins in their ship, the Jupiter. The 
Eden family found it necesary to conduct inspections of their living quarters, to ensure 
that the cabins provided the standard of comfort they were used to at home. On one of the 
final visits to the Jupiter before their voyage, Emily stated that they gave Captain Grey 
their ?final directions about our cabins? a shelf here and a hook there, and more means 
of thorough ventilation, and beter beds for the maids, and so on. It is al, I dare say, as 
                                                
82
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Grosvenor Stret, 1834, MEL, 235-236. 
83
 is Eden to Mis Viliers, Bigods, Esex, Wednesday, July 1827, MEL, 136. 
 
 25 
comfortable as a ship can be.?
84
 Comfort was a high priority considering the distance and 
projected five-month duration of the journey aboard ship. Thus shopping for necesities 
and luxury goods, as wel as critiquing the cabin conditions in order to have a 
comfortable trip, was necesary for the Eden family, and especialy so for Emily. 
 Shopping for clothing and physical comforts were not the only preparations Emily 
made for the journey. For Emily, psychological arangements also were made to maintain 
her established comfort level. One of these comforts involved the ability to physicaly se 
and talk with family and friends on a daily basis. To survive so far from England, Emily 
needed some sort of psychological reminder of her family and friends. Since she would 
be in India for six years, she saw these reminders as necesary for her psychological 
comfort, to ease her inability to se and interact with them. 
Portraits and sketches thus became necesary objects for Emily?s comfort. She 
needed these objects around to create a sense of nostalgia for her home.
 85
 As Clare Petit 
acknowledges, ?things? took on an extra burden of significance, and many women 
depended on the direct touch of a physical object to remind them of their home.
86
 Emily 
aranged for sketches to be done of her friends and family to take with her to India. In a 
July 1835 leter to Lady Campbel, Emily wrote, ?My present aim in writing is to ask 
                                                
84
 Mis Eden To A Friend, October [?], 1835, LFI, 1-2. 
85
 Susan M. Stabile, Memory?s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in 
Eightenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornel University Pres, 2004), 13. 
86
 Clare Petit, ?Peggotty's Work-Box: Victorian Souvenirs and Material Memory,? 
RaVour, Universit? de Montr?al, 2009 http:/id.erudit.org/iderudit/029896ar (acesioned 
June 16, 2012) 
 
 26 
whether there is not anybody in or near Dublin who can make a sketch of you, something 
in the Edridge or Slater line, not very extravagant in price, and if you do not mind, siting 
for it for me.?
87
 Lady Campbel responded, ?I fear there is no good sketcher in Dublin, 
but there is a man who does paint something like a miniature, and does catch a likenes, 
and it shal be done for you next wek, my darling.?
88
 
 In another leter to a friend, Emily explained how she displayed portraits while on 
board the Jupiter, ?And so God bles you, my dearest friend, and tel the chicks that their 
picture hangs at the foot of my bed, and is a great comfort to me.?
89
 Emily?s sister, 
Fanny, also participated in collecting portraits for the journey. In one leter to a friend, 
Fanny wrote, ?I look at your unfortunate picture swinging opposite to me, and fel 
remorseful that I should have placed your innocent, dumb likenes in such a situation; 
and then, I don?t know where you, the real living woman, are. Nobody can have been 
anywhere as long as we have been on board this ship.?
90
 Two days later, Emily wrote to a 
friend, expectantly, ?I hope you have sat for your picture again, and I wish?would 
devote 7s. 6d. to me, and send me out his picture. I never did a wiser thing than carying 
off those litle sketches..George and I were looking at Mr.??s picture last night with the 
                                                
87
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Admiralty, [August] 1835, MEL, 253-254. 
88
 Lady Campbel to Mis Eden, Carton, September 1, 1835, EL, 255. 
89
 Eden to A Friend, Funchal, October 14, 1835, LFI, 13. 
90
 From the Hon. F. H. Eden To A Friend, The ?Jupiter? at Sea, December 12, 1835, LFI, 
43. 
 
 27 
greatest satisfaction. He looks very sensible stil, though he is at the Cape.?
91
 For Emily, 
carying portraits and litle sketches of loved ones was an imense comfort; ?I never did 
a wiser thing.?
92
 
 Each object became a souvenir for her family and friends, to keep the absent or 
distant person in Eden?s memory and physical presence.
93
 Emily gathered and exchanged 
portraits, pieces of hair, and other material objects to substitute for distant family 
members and dear friends. As Susan Stabile argues, ?Objects embody memories that 
might otherwise remain dormant or forgotten.?
94
 Emily did not want to forget her 
memories or friendships during their stay in India. She wanted physical reminders to keep 
her memories close and intact. 
 Like the comforts of having a physical likenes and reminders of her friends, such 
as those of Lady Campbel or of her extended family, Emily exchanged other physical 
objects that would provide sensual remembrances of them, like clippings or pieces of 
hair. In October 1835, Emily wrote, ?I enclose Fanny?s hair. George?s was cut this 
morning, but the result was only a litle black dust; so I must cut off a bit close to his 
head when he is busy and not atending.?
95
 In one of Emily?s last leters before sailing for 
India, she included the postscript, ?This is George?s hair- al I could cut, at its greatest 
                                                
91
 From Hon. Emily Eden To A Friend, Cape of Good Hope, Monday, December 14, 
1835, LFI, 53. 
92
 Ibid, 53. 
93
 Stabile, Memory?s Daughters, 14-15. 
94
 Ibid, 133. 
95
 Eden to A Friend, October 1835, LFI, 3. 
 
 28 
length.?
96
 One of Lady Campbel?s leters from Carton, similarly asked Emily to, ?Send 
me a bit of your hair, my darling, and always bear me in your ?heart of hearts, as I do 
thee, Horatio.??
97
 
 Contemplating separation from family and friends made Emily worry about losing 
contact due to distance and uneven leter arivals. After visiting the Jupiter, she reflected, 
?I sometimes sit in blank despair, and wonder ?quite posed as to what I am to do 
without you al ?not to be able to sit down and scratch off a line to you &c.; and then I 
fel as if I could cut somebody?s throat quite through- a sort of savage relief; in short, like 
?the Young Duke,? ?depend on it, I am on the point of doing something desperate.?
98
 
Emily and her friends used material goods to keep friendships alive as wel as to develop 
and foster intimacy before traveling the distance to India. Her friend, Mrs. Lister, sent 
Emily a bracelet, ?but everyday my heart grows more sore, and I look at the great 
despondency to an utter separation from such kind friends as mine have proved 
themselves..and your bracelet wil then be an actual comfort to me.?
99
 
 Portraits and bracelets were not the only material objects Emily and her friends 
used to demonstrate commitment. The sharing of books showed appreciation and support 
for the Eden?s journey to India. In a leter to Emily, Lord Melbourne noted that, ?very 
few events could be more painful to me than your going..I send you a Milton, which I 
                                                
96
 Mis Eden to A Friend, October 3, 1835, 12 o?clock, [1835], LFI, 7. 
97
 Lady Campbel to Mis Eden, Carton, September 1, 1835, MEL, 255. 
98
 Eden To A Friend, October 1835, LFI, 2. 
99
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Admiralty, September 1835, MEL, 257. 
 
 29 
have had a long time, and often read in. I shal be most anxious to hear from you and 
promise to write.?
100
 These initial exchanges of presents before the Edens? journey to 
India ilustrate the intense need and comfort of material goods in reminding Emily of her 
friendships and connections to England. Acording to Julia Keay, the real calamity of 
traveling to India for Emily ?was the prospect of being separated from her friends and 
family.?
101
 These presents became reminders of home as wel as memorabilia of certain 
individuals or events. The goods would travel with her to India, and by carying them 
with her, she was comforted by their representations of family and friends. The comforts 
of home were a necesity and thus Emily brought her friends with her to India. 
 
Farewels from Portsmouth 
  
By September 30, 1835, after several days of oficial farewel visits and other 
preparations in London, the Eden family, including George, Emily, Fanny, and their 
sister Charlotte?s son, Wiliam Godolphin Osbourne, ?traveled down to Portsmouth and 
put up in an inn, where they had to endure the usual drawback of inn beds- insects of no 
pleasing description.?
102
 After some days of waiting for the wind to change, on October 
3, Emily wrote, ?The wind is fair, and we shal be off in an hour. It is a hurried job, and 
the sea looks more wicked and good-for-nothing than ever; but if we are realy to go, I 
                                                
100
 Lord Melbourne to Mis Eden, South Stret, September 24, 1835, MEL, 258. 
101
 Keay, With Passport and Parasol, 10. 
102
 Dunbar, Golden Interlude, 13. 
 
 30 
suppose there is no use in putting it off..My health is very much improved.?
103
 Emily 
was finaly leaving England for the discomforts of India. 
 Comfort for Eden was not just about collecting material objects like portraits and 
clothes, but it was about her asociation with people as wel. Included in the entourage 
was their private physician, Dr. Drummond, six personal servants, George?s valet, Mars, 
and another atendant, Giles, Emily?s maid, Wright, her ayah, Rosina, and a French negro 
cook, St. Cloup. The entourage also included several animals and pets. Her nephew, 
Wiliam Osbourne, brought six hunting greyhounds, and Emily transported her soon-to-
be infamous King Charles spaniel, Chance, along for the six years in India. 
From the moment Emily boarded the Jupiter, transitions occurred in which she 
realized that her life in India would not be the same as in England. From the time of 
George?s job announcement to the preparation for the journey, Emily started to realize 
that she would physicaly be at sea for five months and would arive at an unfamiliar 
destination, not England, not home. She connected her expected physical discomforts 
from the Indian climate with the possible psychological discomforts of being away from 
home, family, and friends as wel as from English culture, landscape, and society. 
 Although the transition from her English comforts to the discomfort of India was 
drasticaly apparent during the sea voyage, Eden had a friendly face to subdue her 
worries. Her dog, Chance, was a unique vehicle through which Eden could cling to her 
Englishnes while stil surrounded by the new climate, society, and routines of India. She 
                                                
103
 Mis Eden to A Friend, October 3, 1835, 12 o?clock, [1835], LFI, 6-7. 
 
 31 
saw Chance as a true comfort and a companion; his presence brought about memories of 
home as wel as lesened her anxiety due to separation from family and friends in 
England. By the turn of the ninetenth century, there developed ?a warm atitude towards 
dogs? that ?spread through al clases of society.?
104
 Companionship was now their main 
function, as opposed to using dogs to perform esential economic functions. Acording to 
Katherine Rogers, dogs ?were acepted as beloved members of the family? and an 
individual could ?expres deep afection for one?s dog.?
105
 Emily wrote once after 
Chance?s death, ?As for ever caring for a dog as I did for poor dear Chance, the thing is 
impossible. I do not believe there ever was so clever a dog, and very few equaly clever 
men; and then, after eight years of such a rambling life, we have had so many 
recollections in common, and he was such a wel-known character in India.?
106
 
 Although Chance helped Emily cope with the transition betwen England and 
India, Eden stil agonized over the discomforts awaiting her upon their arival in Calcutta. 
She wrote to her friend while off the coast of Africa, 
 I shal leave the rest of my paper for the chance of something to 
tel you which is not about the ?Jupiter,? and, besides, I always fel low the 
days we land. 
 It sems that we have gone so far, and been through so much, and 
only to come amongst strangers at last; and we cannot even hope to find a 
leter, or a word about anybody we care for, but are stil to go farther and 
hear les. It is horrid, and makes me fel utterly desperate at times. It is 
                                                
104
 Katharine M. Rogers, First Friend: A History of Dogs and Humans (New York: St. 
Martin?s Pres, 2005), 108. 
105
 Rogers, First Friend, 108. 
106
 Mis Eden to the Countes of Buckinghamshire, Calcutta, April 6, 1841, MEL, 337. 
 
 32 
clearly not quite so good as being dead, as that is a separation without 
oblivion.
107
 
 
As Emily stated in a later leter from India, her main concerns regarding her comforts 
away from England involved the separation from family and friends and the heat from the 
climate, reflecting the continued theme of displacement among strangers and the need for 
familial connection. Upset by the journey that only brought her ?to come amongst 
strangers at last,? Eden loathed the lack of communication from England, which made 
her fel ?utterly desperate at times.?
108
 
 Unfortunately for Emily, the Jupiter arived in the rivers near Calcutta on her 
birthday, March 3, 1836. Oficialy arived in India, Emily began her thirty-ninth year in 
the ?hot land of strangers,? without the abundance of family and friends she would have 
had in England, and brought to a climate where mosquitoes often made a meal of her. 
Eden?s life on board the Jupiter helped her transition to the foreign climate and had given 
her an indication of the new discomforts that awaited her. The succeding chapters 
further discuss the importance of physical and psychological comforts and discomforts 
during Emily?s time in India. 
 
 
 
                                                
107
 From Hon. Emily Eden To A Friend, Cape of Good Hope, Monday, December 14, 
1835, LFI, 52-53. 
108
 Ibid, 52. 
 
 33 
Chapter 2 
?To Rack and Ruin?: India and the Physical Comforts and Discomforts of Daily Routine, 
Climate, and Housing
109
 
 
For Emily Eden, discomfort defined her experience in India for six long years. In India, 
Eden detected two major types of discomfort, ?The real calamity of the life is the 
separation from home and friends. It fels like death?And the annoyance of the life is 
the climate. It is so very HOT, I do not know how to spel it large enough.?
110
 Emily thus 
identified two types of discomfort: the psychological anguish of being far from family 
and friends and the physical nuisance of the Indian climate. This chapter examines the 
later, the physical displeasure of the Indian climate and its impact on Eden?s activities 
and daily routine. It was so hot in India that Eden wrote once, ?My drawings are al 
blistered, my books al mildewed, my gowns al spotted- in short, everything is going to 
rack and ruin.?
111
 The Indian climate created intense discomforts for Eden, such as 
blistered drawings or spotted gowns, that often afected her physical body and the 
material objects that she used on a daily basis. Thus, this chapter explores how the Indian 
climate impacted Emily Eden?s physical comforts and its influence on her daily routine 
                                                
109
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Barackpore, July 19, [1836], LFI, 186. 
110
 is Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
268. 
111
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Barackpore, July 19, [1836], LFI, 186. 
 
 34 
and activities like gardening, the experience of indoor and outdoor spaces, and Eden?s 
interaction with the landscape and the picturesque scenery. 
 In India, Eden?s daily routines included many of the activities that had contributed 
to her sense of comfort back in England. She wrote leters, read books, sketched, as wel 
as purchased and wore diferent clothing articles, especialy shawls. Although Eden 
transfered these activities from England, the afects of India and its climate also 
produced new behaviors and actions to include in her daily routine. Due to the intense 
heat and high temperatures, Eden had to participate in airing, an activity that occurred 
around dusk or at night, the only time many British women were alowed to get fresh air 
and walk about without weakening their English constitutions in the Indian sun. 
 Eden also learned how to use new technologies for comfort from the heat. 
Punkahs, an early type of fan worked by Indian servants, became a new method of 
cooling for Eden?s daily routine in India; the fans were esential for her physical comfort. 
Although Eden did routinely participate in airing, she was blesed by her aristocratic 
status to have servants cary her from destination to destination, in palanquins and 
howdahs. Thus, Emily Eden adjusted her daily routine, expectations, and activities to fit 
India and its physical surroundings. This chapter demonstrates the way these adaptations 
contributed to Eden?s sense of comfort and discomfort during her time in India through 
the lens of her daily routines, the climate, and the household and housing. 
 
 
 
 35 
Climate 
 
 As stated earlier, in a leter to her friend, Lady Campbel, Eden noted the two 
major annoyances of India, the separation from family and friends and the climate.
112
 The 
Indian climate and its efect on her physical bodily discomforts was, oftentimes, the 
major topic of her leters to family and friends in England. In India, the climate was the 
source of her primary physical discomforts especialy during her first years in the 
Subcontinent. The climate was indeed the real annoyance of her life in India, as 
Jagmohan Mahajan observes in his work on Eden.
113
 
 E.M. Collingham argues that, ?The British experience of India was intensely 
physical.?
114
 This was certainly true for Eden, where physical neds oftentimes 
interupted any activity or interaction. The heat in India was so intense for Eden that she 
refered to the country as an ?oven? on multiple occasions. In an early reflective moment, 
Eden noted, ?I thought the physical discomforts of the ship very great, but then I did not 
know what this oven was.?
115
 The aspects of the Indian climate that produced such a 
negative response included the high temperatures, raised humidity levels, dust storms, 
and, above al else, that the Indian climate was the opposite of an English climate. 
                                                
112
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
268. 
113
 Jagmohan Mahajan, The Grand Indian Tour: Travels and Sketches of Emily Eden 
(New Delhi: anohar Publishers and Distributors Ltd, 1996), 22. 
114
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 1. 
115
 From The Hon. Emily Eden To ?, Thursday, April 7, [1836], LFI, 135. 
 
 36 
 The climate not only afected her physical comforts, but it afected her daily 
routine in India. Before Eden did anything, she anticipated how the climate would afect 
that action by checking the thermometer. In one instance, when a cariage turned over on 
the road, Eden wrote, ?We were al asiduously fanning ourselves when the acident 
happened, but no fan would have helped us after that. Think of jumping out of a cariage 
in a hurry with the thermometer at 95.?
116
 Eden also kept track of how the Indian climate 
afected her belongings with heat damage and insect manifestations. Many of her 
portraits, shawls, and other material objects were damaged due to the insects and the sun: 
The degre of destructivenes of this climate it is impossible to calculate, 
but there is something ingenious in the manner in which the climate and 
the insects contrive to divide the work. One cracks the bindings of the 
books, the other eats up the inside; the damp turns the satin gown itself 
yelow, and the cockroaches eat up the net that trims it; the heat splits the 
ivory of a miniature, and the white maggots eat the paint; and so they go 
on helping each other and never mising anything.
117
 
 
 The climate also afected Eden?s daily participation in social activities like going 
to church, visiting with guests, as wel as her own private routines such as sleping and 
going outside for air. When Eden mentioned church sermons and church events, she 
always included a description of her physical discomforts involving the heat. The 
contents of one short leter on August 7, 1836, for example, stated, ?Was so hot that 
nobody could go to morning church, and in the evening we went to the Fort Church, 
which was like a ketle of boiling water; but Mr.? simered out an excelent sermon 
                                                
116
 Mis Eden to Mr. C. Grevile, Barackpore, April 17, 1837, MEL, 286. 
117
 From The Hon. E. Eden To ?, Government House, 1837, (Begun October 25, ended 
October 30), LFI, 101-102. 
 
 37 
while we were stewing.?
118
 Again, on Easter Sunday in 1837, Eden described the church 
as an oven due to the intense Indian heat, ?there was no punkah there, and there are no 
glas windows to this church, so the hot air came pouring in as if we were in an oven, and 
I saw two or thre people obliged to go away from the altar quite faint.?
119
 
 Sleping in the Indian climate was also dificult for Eden. Most nights were 
acompanied by strong heat waves that barely cooled with the punkahs running. Many 
times, nights of poor slep, ilnes, and other discomforts from the weather, made the 
Eden family travel to cooler climates for relief and a quick trip away from the ?damp 
furnace? of Calcutta.
120
 In one excursion to the Sandheads, Eden wrote about these 
travels, 
being tired of bad nights and hot hands and living in my own room, I look 
to the real Indian cure of going down to the Sandheads, and though I am 
only thirty miles from Calcutta, yet I declare I think I fel beter-?a litle 
puckish or so? and not so hot. This sort of fever has been in every house 
in Calcutta and Barackpore. They say it was nearly as bad last rainy 
season, only that we did not think about it, as it was our first year and we 
had our English healths. Poor innocents! but it is worse this year from the 
rain having failed. The air is so hot and steamy and the tanks do not fil, so 
that the atmosphere is muddy and bad, and altogether it has been much 
like an influenza in London, and whatever they do lose they never 
regain.
121
 
                                                
118
 Emily Eden To A Friend, Sunday, August 7, [1836], LFI, 215. 
119
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Barackpore, Easter Sunday, 26, [1837], LFI, 339. 
120
 From The Hon F.H. Eden To A Friend, Government House, October 17, 1837, LFI, 
97. 
121
 From The Hon. E. Eden To ?, ?Enterprise? Steamer, Friday, August 6, 1837, LFI, 71-
72. 
 
 38 
 India itself proved to be a torment to the British body; al the senses were 
asaulted by the heat, dust, and dirt.
122
 In many cases, the torments of the body, physical 
discomforts, and agonies from disease brought the threat of death. Death was ever present 
in the minds of British colonists in India as wel as their families back in Britain. By the 
1830s, most Europeans ?anticipated that the young man or woman who sailed for India 
would return, if at al, a shadow of their former self.?
123
 Emily contemplated this threat 
before she arived in India, inded going so far as to predict her own death. In a July 1835 
leter, she told her friend, Lady Campbel, ?I have been so worried, and have had so much 
to do with seing and hearing the representations of friends, and taking leave of many 
who are gone out of town and whom I shal never se again.?
124
 
 Even if a British colonist escaped death or serious ilnes, Collingham notes that 
al Europeans ?were believed to undergo a subtle constitutional transformation? as a 
result of time overseas.
125
 Ninetenth-century medical orthodoxy believed that ?the heat 
of the Indian climate over-stimulated the organs of the body resulting in sluggishnes and 
congestion.?
126
 Europeans commonly asumed that the ?lethargy? was the consequence 
of prolonged exposure to the climate.
127
 Thus, many individuals worried that their 
delicate constitutions would resemble the climate in which they lived and they would 
                                                
122
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 1. 
123
 Harison, Climates and Constitutions,19. 
124
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Admiralty, July 1835, MEL, 252. 
125
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 2. 
126
 Ibid, 2. 
127
 Harison, Climates and Constitutions, 13. 
 
 39 
then undergo the transformation.
128
 Eden, herself, claimed to observe this subtle 
constitutional transformation and sluggishnes afecting her own body. She often refered 
to her yelowing appearance and inability to acomplish any activity due to the heat?s 
efects. Eden stated, for example, 
You have no idea what salow figures we al are, and I mention it now 
because in another year I suppose the real Indian blindnes wil have come 
over me, and I shal believe we are al our natural colour..The new 
arivals sometimes stagger us, but we simply say, ?how coarse!? and wait 
with confidence for the efects that thre weks? baking wil have, and a 
delicate tender yelow is the sure result.
129
 
 
In a leter to her sister, the Countes of Buckinghamshire, Eden again refered to the 
yelowing of European skins, ?We look like so many yelow demons, and my individual 
appearance is even more finished than the others, for Friday night happened to be 
particularly hot, and the bearers who were pulling my punkah fel aslep- the first time it 
has happened, I must say.?
130
 For Eden, the perceived constitutional transformation from 
the Indian climate was not subtle in any sense and had a major afect on her comfort level 
while living in India. 
 The discomfort of sluggishnes induced by the Indian climate often revealed itself 
in Eden?s leters when she discussed her daily activities. In many cases, the heat impaired 
her ability to draw, read, and write, her thre most favorite activities. She commented on 
the life and activities of English women, ?The life of ladies in India is a wearisome one 
                                                
128
 Ibid, 13. 
129
 Mis Eden to ?, Government House, November 3, 1836, MEL, 275. 
130
 is Eden To The Countes of Buckinghamshire, Government House, September 27, 
1836, LFI, 237. 
 
 40 
for them- so many hours in which the house must be shut up, nothing to do, and no 
strength to do it with.?
131
 In a leter to Mrs. Lister, a family friend, Eden spoke of other 
heat-related maladies that afected her physical abilities, ?Intelect and memory both are 
impaired, and imagination utterly baked hard, but I can answer questions when they are 
not very dificult, and if they are put to me slowly and distinctly.?
132
 
 Emily Eden was ?utterly baked hard,? and turned ?yelow? due to the relentles 
torture from the heat and climate in India; her garments were spotted, her household shut 
up, her books mildewed. As Collingham has argued, Eden?s experience of India was 
intensely physical and she loathed the discomforts caused by its climate. But she 
controlled the calamity of the climate by understanding her physical comforts and needs 
within the subcontinent. Emily Eden adjusted her daily routine, expectations, and 
comforts to fit India and its physical surroundings. 
 
Daily Routine 
 
 In India, as the Governor-General?s sister, Eden had a diferent daily routine than 
most British visitors and inhabitants in Calcutta. Her status and prestige as George?s 
sister made her ?royalty? among the inhabitants of Calcutta and the East India Company 
officials pasing through the city. But that also meant that Eden had to participate in 
                                                
131
 From Hon. Emily Eden To ?, Barackpore, Friday, March 18, [1836], LFI, 110. 
132
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Government House, January 25, 1837, MEL, 280. 
 
 41 
social events and government activities to please the Governor-General?s constituency. 
On any given day, Emily began her morning with breakfast, followed by a visiting time 
for Calcutta residents, EIC oficials, and other varied individuals. Many times, Emily 
claimed, she and her sister Fanny would spend thre hours interacting with as many as 
one hundred people every morning.
133
 
 The afternoon activities varied by day, from staying in Government House for 
some quiet alone time, to visits to Mrs. Wilson?s Orphan Asylum and royal estates like 
Runjet Singh?s palace, or to tending the garden. At night, the Eden family went out into 
Calcutta and atended bals, dinners, and the theatre. But Emily Eden also always created 
time in her routine for some of the daily comforts and leisure activities she had pursued in 
Great Britain. These activities reminded her of her Englishnes and her domestic duties as 
a woman. They provided a means by which Eden conformed to the dominant idea of 
separate spheres, where the woman stays home tending to the household while the man 
works for the family outside the home. 
 In England, as previously observed, Eden had regularly made time for reading, 
writing, and drawing as wel as a myriad of other activities like gardening, shopping, and 
other social pursuits. In India, however, these activities were dependent on the climate 
and her duties as EIC ?royalty.? Thus, Eden created time for her physical comforts within 
her routine on a daily basis to keep her sanity, maintain her sense of Englishnes, and 
                                                
133
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 265. 
 
 42 
avoid any discomforts from the heat. For one day in 1836, Eden described al of these 
during her daily routine: 
We had a great many visitors imediately after breakfast, both male and 
female. The aides-de-camp hand in the ladies and give them chairs, and if 
there are more in the room at once than we can conveniently atend to, 
they stay and talk to them; if not, they wait outside and hand the ladies out 
again. The visits are not long; but I hope they wil not al compare notes as 
to what we have said. I know some of my topics served many times over. 
Visits are al over at 12:30 A.M. [P.M.], on acount of the heat. We 
luncheon at 2 P.M. (the people wil cal it tifin), and then al go off to our 
own rooms, take off our gowns, and set the punkahs going, take up a book, 
and I for one shal generaly go to slep, judging from the experience of 
the last thre days. At 5:30 P.M. everybody goes out.
134
 
 
Thus, the leters offer a detailed acount of the days Eden spent in India, where she dealt 
with the Government House routine while simultaneously trying to find physical comfort 
in the Indian heat and act on her English urge to read. But one of the greatest sources of 
comfort wherever she was in India was writing leters. Eden wrote leters to family and 
friends in the morning, noon, and night, whether residing at Government House, or 
Barackpore, or while traveling on her nephew?s boat, the Soonamookie. Overal, Emily 
Eden?s daily routines in India determined her level of discomfort from one day to the 
next, and understanding these routines can help define her threshold as it pertains to 
physical comfort.  
 
 
 
                                                
134
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Monday, March 7, [1836], LFI, 86. 
 
 43 
Gardens, Landscape, and the Picturesque 
 
 Physical comfort for Emily Eden went beyond the daily activities and routine of 
India. Comfort was not just found in physical objects like a pearl necklace or leter from 
one of her sisters, but in the physicality of the landscape and the visual arts. Emily Eden 
rejoiced in the interaction she had with the natural and created landscape (informed by 
the idea of the picturesque), and her ability to draw, sketch, or paint regularly. While in 
India, Eden found the landscape of Simla particularly mesmerizing, the Indian people 
picturesque, and their gardens comforting. 
 Gardens were another aspect of English culture that Eden continued to enjoy 
while living in India. In the ninetenth century, the garden ?implied continuity with the 
past as wel as membership within the exclusive club of Englishnes, and it set in place 
value systems with significant ideological importance.?
135
 Gardens also created a space 
where men and women could met in ?complimentary tranquility? and ignore gender 
roles and connotations by engaging in an earthly and physical activity.
136
 Thus, Eden 
used gardens as a means by which to secure her Englishnes while living in the 
subcontinent of India. At each of their houses, in Calcutta, Barackpore, and Simla, 
George and Emily made sure they had a garden, visited several palaces, gardens, or 
                                                
135
 Anne Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity: The Competing Styles of 
Garden Design, 1870-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2002), 4. 
136
 Leonore Davidof and Catherine Hal, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the 
English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Pres, 1987), 
374. 
 
 44 
menageries around the country. At many rajahs? estates, like that of Ranjit Singh, Eden 
delighted in seing the gardens, ?In the afternoon we went to se the king?s yacht, which 
he had decked out for us, and then his garden. Such a place! the only residence I have 
coveted in India.?
137
 
 In England as wel as India, tending the garden was a family proces and George 
often helped. On several occasions in India Emily received plants from Dr. Walich at the 
Botanical Garden. Then, George and Emily spent their evenings repotting or planting the 
new species just as they did at Grenwich in England. In Grenwich, where George 
worked as an auditor, they lived in ?a very nice house in the park belonging to George?s 
office, with a litle grenhouse next to it.?
138
 Thus, during one summer in India, Eden 
notes the gardening connection betwen England and India and simultaneously shows her 
paradoxical atitude toward the South Asians, 
Dr. Walich, of the Botanical Garden (a great man in botanical history), 
has given me seven hundred plants, which would be exotics of great value 
if we were not acting in that capacity ourselves, and he is come here 
himself this afternoon to se that they are al put in the right 
places..George came out at six. It was great fun giving a poke at the 
bottom of a flower-pot and turning out a nice litle plant- like Grenwich 
days, even though the poor litle flower was received by twelve black 
gardeners very lightly dresed.
139
 
 
For Eden, gardening was a remembrance of their life in England as wel as a way in 
which to stay connected with George, to keep their sibling bond alive while in India. This 
                                                
137
 Cawnpore, Dec. 28, 1837, UTC, 62. 
138
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Grosevnor Stret, November 2, 1828, MEL, 168. 
139
 is Eden To ?., Barackpore, Friday, June 17, [1837], LFI, 52. 
 
 45 
excerpt also demonstrated how Emily felt about the South Asians and their dresing 
habits or as she caled them, the ?twelve black gardeners very lightly dresed.?
140
 To the 
derision of the flowers, scantily dresed men received them, a tragedy in her eyes. In 
another leter, Eden commented that the gardens at Barackpore reminded her of home, of 
England, ?On Thursday afternoon we always come here, and a prodigious pleasure it is. 
It fels something like home.?
141
 Gardens comforted her, fulfiling her desire to remain 
English in a country so far from home. 
 In the late eightenth century, especialy in England, gardens were also sen as an 
aspect of the picturesque, closely connected to the theory of painting.
142
 As an artist, 
Eden often refered to the picturesque and its connection with the landscape, and found it 
reflected in every detail of her life and travels. Primarily used in the ninetenth century 
but developed in the eightenth century, the theory of the picturesque betwen the 
clasical and romantic phases of art.
143
 Coined from the word pitoresco, meaning ?after 
the manner of painters,? the picturesque developed as a means to perceive visual qualities 
in nature and the landscape that painters had previously isolated.
144
 Christopher Hussey 
                                                
140
 Ibid, 52. 
141
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 265-266. 
142
 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (Hamden, 
Connecticut: Archon Books, 1967), 136. 
143
 Hussey, The Picturesque, 2-4. 
144
 Ibid, 17. 
 
 46 
defined the picturesque as ?the characteristics of ..roughnes and sudden variation joined 
to iregularity,? of ?form, colour, lighting, and even sound.?
145
    
 While in India, Emily saw a distinction in the definition of picturesque; Indian 
picturesque scenery was not the same as English picturesque scenery. Although Eden did 
find ?visual qualities in nature? in the landscape of India, she also found exceptions to the 
rule in forms of material culture.
146
 This was especialy the case at Simla, a British hil 
station in the northwest region of the Himalayas, where the Eden family went to escape 
the heat in Calcuta. Most hil stations like Simla ?sought to isolate their seasonal 
residents from India?s harsher features, to offer them a comforting haven for rest and 
recreation.?
147
 The Governor-General?s party, including Emily, spent April to October in 
1838 and 1839 in Simla. 
 Emily expanded the definition of the picturesque beyond the landscape to include 
the South Asian?s decorative clothing while in India. She specificaly thought of 
garments such as sashes with metalic thread woven into them and bejeweled turbans as 
picturesque. She wrote, 
It is more like a constant theatrical representation going on; everything is 
so picturesque and so utterly un-English. Wherever there is any state at al 
it is on the grandest scale. Every servant at Government House is a picture 
by himself, in his loose muslin robes, with scarlet and gold ropes round his 
waist, and his scarlet and gold turban over mases of black hair; and on the 
                                                
145
 Ibid, 14. 
146
 Ibid, 17. 
147
 Kennedy, The Magic Mountains, 2. 
 
 47 
esplanade I hardly ever pas a native that I do not long to stop and sketch- 
some in satin and gold.
148
 
 
 Due to the overwhelming pictorial appearance of some native Indians, in her eyes, 
Emily often asked to sketch or draw anyone she felt complemented her picturesque ideas. 
In August 1836, when the Eden?s were living in Calcutta, Emily noted that, ?These 
people are al dresed in white muslin, with red and gold turbans and sashes, and are so 
picturesque that when I can find no other employment for them I make them sit for their 
pictures.?
149
 Although Eden found ?these people? picturesque, she also considered them 
to be her own to command, teling them to find employment by siting for their 
pictures.
150
 She understood both her and their place in the hierarchy of British India and 
used her status as an aristocrat to channel her voice of command toward the South Asians 
and explore her artist impulses simultaneously. Eden saw her native servants as 
picturesque, ?I looked up in the night, there she was wrapped up in a heap of Indian 
shawls, flat on the ground, with her black arms (covered with bracelets) crossed over her 
head- very picturesque, but rather shocking?
151
 
 While traveling up the country, Eden saw diferent cities, palaces, and forts that 
also had, in her opinion, the picturesque quality. During one day of exploring, Eden noted 
how Indian architecture was picturesque, ?In the afternoon we went to se the opium 
                                                
148
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 264. 
149
 is Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
269. 
150
 Ibid, 269. 
151
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Funchal, Wednesday, October 14, 1835, LFI, 10. 
 
 48 
godown, and then F.,B., and I went in the band boat along the shore to sketch some of the 
old buildings, which are very picturesque here.?
152
 Like many Europeans who viewed 
cemeteries and monuments as picturesque back in England, Eden also admired the 
English graveyards in India for their picturesque qualities, ?We drove to the Military 
Burial Ground, where there are some very prety picturesque monuments I wanted to 
sketch. It was a melancholy sight.? 
153
 A city, Gwalior, was picturesque because it was a 
fort on a rock away from the plains of Calcutta.
154
 Palaces of various Indian princes also 
piqued Eden?s eye toward the picturesque. She routinely wrote of their splendor. ?We 
were al peering out of the window to se the vakeel?s procesion, which was very 
picturesque and theatrical..and on this sublime occasion he did spread at least four yards 
of Venetian carpeting.?
155
 
 In Simla, mountains surrounded the hil station where Eden lived, another key 
element in her definition of picturesque. As stated before, however, she changed her 
definitions for each geographical location she experienced. Emily often compared places 
and degres of picturesque in a location. On April 28, 1838, Emily wrote to Mrs. Lister 
about her disappointment in the Simla mountains, ?These mountains are very beautiful, 
but not so picturesque, I think, as the Pyrenees- in fact they are too gigantic to be 
                                                
152
 Monday, Nov.13, [1837], UTC, 20. 
153
 Saturday, March 26, [1836], LFI, 119. 
154
 Gwalior, Saturday, Jan. 10, [1840], UTC, 372. 
155
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Government House, May 22, 1836, LFI, 163-164. 
 
 49 
sketchable, and there are no waterfals, no bridges, no old corners, that make the Pyrenees 
so picturesque, independent of their ragged shapes.?
156
 
 The picturesque, gardens, and art each impacted Eden?s physical comforts. By her 
experiences in gardens and with the picturesque, she was able to relate her surroundings 
to her previous life in England. Gardens and gardening represented activities Eden 
encountered in England at her family?s country homes as wel as at their house in Simla, 
the Indian hil station known as ?the resort of the rich, the idle, and the invalid.?
157
 As an 
artist, Emily Eden needed the comfort of art and its physical presence in her environment. 
Thus, seing India through the lens of the picturesque made perfect sense to Eden. 
 
Housing, Gender, and Airing 
 
 Housing and the architecture of a household in India difered greatly from 
England. As in England, the architecture of a house reflected one?s rank in society, but 
diferences among the castes created sharp distinctions in their dwelings. Due to the 
higher temperatures, humidity, and general change in climate, Emily?s daily activities 
also changed depending on the household environment. During certain times of the day, 
the servants closed up Government House and the house in Barackpore, the windows 
covered to keep the heat and sun from geting into the house. Due to these enclosures, the 
                                                
156
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Simla, April 28, 1838, MEL, 297. 
157
 Quoted in Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hil Stations and the British Raj 
(Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1996), 22. 
 
 50 
placement of punkahs in the house was necesary to increase circulation of air. As 
previously observed, since the house was primarily the woman?s domain during the 
daytime when the men were at work, the Indian climate forced English woman to be shut 
inside her own homes. 
 Bothered by these changes in her household activities, Eden commented on the 
efect of darknes while being shut in. The darknes and heat from being shut into the 
house made daily activities harder to acomplish. She argued that women lost their 
strength and resolve to perform enial tasks. Emily often stopped drawing due to the 
closed off atmosphere in which she was living. She stated, ?The rooms are so dark I 
cannot draw, and besides it is impossible to sit up on end long together, and then there are 
a thousand interuptions. We are always dresing, too, and though we thought we brought 
out so many gowns, I have not half enough.?
158
 Even when temperatures dropped slightly 
and the weather became cooler, the houses stayed closed up: 
With al the fine cold weather they talk of, I have not been able yet to live 
five minutes, night or day, without the punkah, and we keep our blinds al 
closed as long as there is a ray of sun. I do not mean to deny that the 
weather is not improved, but when the chily creatures who have pased 
forty years here say triumphantly, ?This must remind you of an English 
November,? they realy do great injustice to my powers of recollection.
159
   
 
 Eden believed the Indian climate literaly transformed her body, such as the 
yelowing of skin, and changed her ability to perform daily activities. It also altered her 
relationship with indoor and outdoor spaces. Eden adapted her life to the activity and 
                                                
158
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Monday, March 28, [1836], LFI, 121. 
159
 is Eden to ?, Government House, November 3, 1836, MEL, 275. 
 
 51 
practice of ?airing? outside while she also stayed shut inside, literaly, her households. 
Her personal habits, including the purchasing and wearing of clothing, adjusted to suit 
her physical discomforts. The climate even afected her environmental location since 
Eden and her other family members would escape to Barackpore or travel up the country 
to Simla for the comfortable resemblance of English weather. As Catherine Hal writes 
that the hil stations were ?havens of safety for the British..the standards of home could 
be maintained in what was experienced as a physicaly and moraly corrupting land.?
160
 
 Eden found a solution to the heat, darknes, and physical discomforts through an 
outdoor activity: airing. Airing was an activity Eden and her family often participated in 
to find comfort in the Indian heat. Instead of staying locked up inside the house, Eden and 
usualy her sister Fanny would go for an ?airing?, in other words, the act of walking 
outside when the temperatures were cooler to regain energy. In one leter, Emily said, 
?Fanny and I took an airing quite late. It shows how this climate subdues one to al its 
ridiculous habits, for I should have been ashamed to be caried upstairs in England, and 
never hesitated about it here.?
161
 Eden?s daily routine was positioned around the time of 
these airings and she frequently had to wait for George or Fanny to come back to 
Government House or their house in Barackpore before she could get a change of air. It 
was a social activity where one enjoyed the company of another European. Eden wrote, 
                                                
160
 Catherine Hal, ?Of Gender and Empire: Reflections on the Ninetenth Century,? in 
Gender and Empire, ed. Philipa Levine, (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2004), 74. 
161
 From Hon Emily Eden To ?, Thursday, March 17, [1836], LFI, 108. 
 
 52 
?George came back on Thursday, time enough for me to take my first airing with him.?
162
 
 In the first month of their life in India, Emily wrote a revealing leter to her friend, 
Mrs. Lister, teling of the events and discomforts of her first thre weks there. Eden 
ended the leter by describing one of her main physical discomforts in India. She wrote, 
to give her love to Mrs. Lister?s brother, ?I often long for a laugh and talk with him, but it 
would be too pleasant for the climate.?
163
 Even her sister Fanny acknowledged how the 
Indian climate ruined common pleasantries like talking and moving. Fanny wrote, ?We 
have arived upon the hot season, and at this hours, with the windows and blinds closed, 
and the punkahs going, the slightest exertion, even of moving across the room, is a real 
fatigue.?
164
 
 Although the Eden family gradualy adjusted to the Indian climate by 
acommodating the Indian landscape to their own ideas and maintaining the English habit 
of gardening, it was stil the major physical discomfort for Emily during their residence. 
The heat blistered her drawings, spotted her gowns, and caused her daily routine and 
travel plans to shift in order to acommodate the weather. During certain times of day, 
Emily was shut in her household as a deterent to kep the heat out. Overal, the Indian 
climate impacted every facet of Eden?s life, her physical body, daily routines, interactions 
with indoor and outdoor spaces, as wel as her contact with the landscape and notions of 
the picturesque.
                                                
162
 The Hon. E. Eden To A Friend, Saturday, May 6, [1837], LFI, 8. 
163
 Emily Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, arch 24, 1836, MEL, 267. 
164
 From The Hon. F.H. Eden., Calcutta, March 9, 1836, LFI, 92. 
53 
 
Chapter 3
?To Dream of England?: Separation, Identity Loss, and Isolation in the Subcontinent
165
 
 
As discussed in the previous chapter, the climate of India created most of Emily Eden?s 
physical discomforts during her time in the subcontinent. To transition from what she saw 
as the bracing frost of Britain to the Indian ?oven? physicaly impacted her body, daily 
routines, and other activities.
166
 But physical discomfort was not the only development 
that changed in Eden?s lifestyle while she was in India. As Eden herself claimed, ?the 
real calamity of the life is the separation from home and friends.?
167
 Emily struggled with 
many psychological discomforts in addition to the separation and distance from her 
family and friends. Separation from Britain, from home, and from the familiar was the 
main psychological anxieties Eden managed during her residence in India. 
 The lack of English society and politics, as wel as the tensions created by a 
perceived loss of European identity caused severe distres for Emily. The dearth of other 
Europeans, the ubiquity of Indian servants in her daily life, and the lack of what she 
perceived as civilized society caused Eden to question her European identity and 
contributed to her own sense of Indianization. These were not the only reasons that 
caused Emily to question her identity as a European but the lack of instant 
                                                
165
 From The Hon. Emily Eden To ?., Calcutta, Friday, December 31, 1841, LFI, 275. 
166
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 263. 
167
 is Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
268. 
 
 54 
communication with family and friends in England further produced many psychological 
discomforts in India. Thus, leters became an important device which Eden used to resist 
her own perceived identity loss and distance from Britain. Any writen news, whether a 
short note from her sister or a trashy novel from an English friend, became a cherished 
piece of material that connected her to her English identity and soothed the psychological 
anxieties of being away from family and friends. 
 The disconnection from Britain in distance and time often made Emily explore the 
diminishing qualities of her own identity in India, as a European, as a woman, and as an 
aristocrat. The dearth of Europeans altered societal fashions, and uneven British political 
dominance in India caused Eden to view her life there in self-deprecating ways. This 
chapter wil examine Emily Eden?s psychological discomforts in India caused by 
separation from family and friends, clas hierarchy, social distinction, gender roles, and 
isolation from other Europeans as wel as explore her ambivalence about both the 
apparent loss of an English identity and her lack of political influence. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 55 
Leters, Print Culture, and Material Goods 
 
 Catherine Hal argues that, ninetenth-century Britons believed that ?every family 
should be an empire of love, with the father as monarch, and the woman as queen.?
168
 
Although Emily and George were brother and sister, the Eden family also emulated this 
idea and was indeed one of the many empires of love that created networks of support, 
communication, and afection across the British Isles.
169
 Due to their physical separation 
from each other, the family sought to maintain these efective networks through space 
and time by sending leters through the postal system.
170
 The Eden family was able to 
communicate easily through leters due to the rise of the Royal Mail and the construction 
of turnpikes, road improvements, and carier services that had developed during the 
eightenth century.
171
 
 The growth of empire beyond the British Isles ?made leter-writing a necesity, 
not just a pleasure.?
172
 Thus, when some of the family members traveled to India, the 
Eden family needed to create a new network of communication that extended beyond the 
British Isles. This network needed to extend the ?empire of love? to the far reaches of 
                                                
168
 Catherine Hal, ?The Swet Delights of Home? in A History of Private Life, ed. 
Philippe Ari?s and Georges Duby (Cambridge, Masachusets: Belknap Pres of Harvard 
University Pres, 1987), 50. 
169
 Hal, ?The Swet Delights of Home,? 50. 
170
 Susan E. Whyman, The Pen and the People: English Leter Writers 1660-1800, 
(Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2009), 13. 
171
 Whyman, The Pen and the People, 13. 
172
 Ibid, 13. 
 
 56 
India to maintain familial ties betwen siblings and friends.
173
 It became a necesity to 
write to each other about their mundane activities in order to keep the family together. 
 From the moment Emily arived in the subcontinent, receiving a leter from the 
British Isles became an important event worth waiting for al day. Due to the 
geographical distance from her home, leters took on a special significance for Eden and 
her family in India. They were the only means of communication betwen family and 
friends and became sorts of writen relics, sacred texts. For Emily, leters and the words 
contained within them were much more valuable than any other objects she had in India. 
Leters connected her with her much beloved family, gave her comfort in times of stres 
and fatigue, and momentarily brought her consciousnes out of the ?dreaded India.? 
Emily emphasized the imense value of leters to her friend Lady Campbel: ?I cannot 
sufficiently explain the value of a leter here; rupees in any number could not expres the 
sum which a leter is worth, and I do not know how to make you understand it. But, you 
se, the scene in India is so wel got up to show off a leter.?
174
 To Emily, leters were 
more valuable than money and were a way to ?show off? her British connections in 
Anglo-Indian society.
175
 Leters thus held social value that outweighed simple monetary 
value. 
                                                
173
 Hal, ?The Swet Delights of Home,? 50. 
174
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
267. 
175
 Ibid, 267. 
 
 57 
 Leters were more valuable than money to Europeans in the hinterlands of the 
British Empire. Like al leters, their value came from their contents, and, for Emily, any 
piece of information about her family or friends was sacred. When reading a leter about 
the family of Lady Campbel, Emily wrote back to her, ?You cannot imagine how I 
enjoyed your history of your children, those are the leters to send to India. Other people 
or papers tel public news. What a pleasure it is to have a leter!?
176
 Indeed, the value of 
leters was so extreme, that it impacted Eden?s view of India and Indians as an entirety: ?I 
can only calculate how strong my aversion must be to ?the land we live in.? I suppose it is 
partly not feling wel, and partly the fidget for leters: but nobody can be happy in such a 
climate.?
177
 
 Emily was not the only British woman to treasure leters, other women of 
ninetenth century families felt similarly. In a post-script by Clarisa Trant to her brother, 
Thomas, posted in Bengal, Trant insisted that her brother write continuously to her, she 
said, ?P.S. Write by every possible opportunity.?
178
 In another leter, she wrote about her 
cheer at her father?s receipt of numerous leters from Thomas, ?I ran after him into his 
room where I had the happines of seing not only one but five leters make their 
appearance?in al fifty-four pages in my beloved Brother?s handwriting!?Aix no longer 
semed a strange desolate place?it was like Home in comparison of those spots where I 
                                                
176
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
270-271. 
177
 To The Same, Barackpore, Thursday, April 28, [1836], LFI, 148. 
178
 Oct. 15
th
., in The Journal of Clarisa Trant, 1800-1832, eds. Clarisa Sandford Trant 
Bramston and Clara Georgina Luard (London: J. Lan, Bodley Head, 1925), 109. 
 
 58 
had not heard from him.?
179
 Just like Emily Eden, Clarisa Trant experienced the lack of 
familial connection with her brother away in India and found imense pleasure in the 
arival of leters. 
 Enjoyment and pleasure came to Emily from the details of family relations, its 
history, and details about mundane life activities. She acknowledged that although one 
leter barely held the contents of a whole conversation, those words were more valuable 
because of the distance and time betwen the arival of each leter as wel as the 
psychological comfort that it brought her to know only a smal speck of information 
about them. She wrote in a journal entry on Saturday, May 6, 1837 to a friend, 
It is very odd what extraordinary interest those few scratches of black 
liquid on a white pulp can give, because the same number of words said in 
conversation would go a very litle way; and yet one folds up a leter with 
an air of pompous satisfaction, and says, ?Ah! it is very comfortable to 
know al they have been about?- a deception, only I do not mean to se 
through it.
180
 
 
Thus, cheated by distance from home and by the absence of long conversations, Emily 
recognized that any smal amount of ?black liquid on a white pulp? gave her the comfort 
to know her family and friends are in good health and that she knew ?al they have been 
about.?
181
 
 The imperial postal system suffered from mistakes, unreliable transportation, and 
slow routes at the time of the Edens? stay in India. Routes across land and by sea varied 
                                                
179
 May 13., The Journal of Clarisa Trant, 204. 
180
 The Hon. E. Eden To A Friend, Saturday, May 6, 1837, LFI, 9. 
181
 Ibid, 9. 
 
 59 
in their arival times from the British Isles. During the first year of their stay in Calcutta 
and Barackpore, the post took two to thre months to arive from England and many 
leters actualy arived in the correct chronological order. Emily once wrote about the 
speed and acuracy of securing her posts, 
I received your overland leter of April 2 on June 12, which makes us 
positive neighbours again?a mere trifle of time?and as there is an 
overland dispatch going home on Monday, which wil have the honour of 
conveying this, our communication wil be unpleasantly quick. The pen 
with which, like Niobe,
182
 al ink, you last wrote wil hardly be dry before 
you have to begin again. The only fault of these over-land leters is that, 
by going about in that harum-scarum way, they rather spoil- not much but 
just a letle- the merit of those plodding navigation epistles, which come 
in, in their proper course, and find themselves forestaled in most of their 
news.
183
 
 
She also wrote about her anticipation of receiving the post, not just some package from 
Government House but specificaly from England. Emily wrote to her brother, Robert, 
The dawk, as the ignorant creturs cal the post, comes in about half-past 
one at Barackpore; so about that time I established myself and book in his 
Excelency?s room while he was writing, and kept an eye on the door; and 
when the nazir, George?s head servant and a thorough picture of ?a gentle 
Hindu,? came in with a placid smile on his good-looking countenance, I 
guesed he had something beter to give than a common official box. Then 
                                                
182
 Niobe is a figure from Grek mythology known for being the symbol of eternal 
mourning. After bragging about her seven sons and seven daughters at a ceremony, 
Apollo and Artemis kiled them and Niobe fled to Mt. Siplyon where she turned to stone 
that formed a stream from her ceaseles tears. I believe Emily Eden referenced Niobe 
because she wanted her friend?s leters to be unceasing with continual flow of ink. ?The 
pen with which..al ink, you last wrote wil hardly be dry before you have to begin 
again.? Encyclopedia Mythica, s.v.?Niobe.? 
http:/ww.pantheon.org/articles/n/niobe.html [acesed June 2, 2012], Meriam Webster 
Dictionary, s.v. ?Niobe.? http:/ww.meriam-webster.com/dictionary/niobe [acesed 
June 2, 2012] 
183
 Mis Eden to  ?, Barackpore, Friday, June 17, 1837, LFI, 50. Italics in original. 
 
 60 
there was the fun of breaking open Grindlay?s large packages, and sorting 
the contents, and distributing them about the house; and, as luncheon was 
announced, I would not open any of my leters but kept them til I could 
return to my own room and enjoy them at my leisure.
184
 
 
This excerpt from a leter to her brother Robert reveals much about Eden?s relationship 
with the post, the native Indians, and the physical comfort provided by leters. The 
language of the first half of the opening sentence shows Eden?s disdain for the acents of 
the native Indians. Writen against them, ?The dawk, as the ignorant creturs cal the 
post,? testified to her treatment of and expectations for the level of education from her 
Indian servants.
185
 In that excerpt, Eden demonstrated her understanding of hierarchy 
among the Europeans and other peoples in India through a perceived lack of 
understanding about the nature of the postal system. Yet, Eden took the time to learn 
George?s head servant?s mannerisms wel enough to tel he had ?something beter to give 
than a common oficial box.?
186
 Her atention to detail was caused by the excitement of 
an arival of leters. She counted on the post to come daily and needed the comfort of 
those private leters when she could return to her own room and enjoy them at her 
leisure.
187
 
 As their stay in India progresed, the overland leter packages to England became 
slower, making Emily frustrated and uncomfortable at the possible delays or leters lost 
                                                
184
 Mis Eden To The Hon. And Rev. Robert Eden, Barackpore, July 17, 1837, LFI, 66-
67. Italics in original. 
185
 Ibid, 66. Italics in original. 
186
 Ibid, 66-67. 
187
 Ibid, 67. 
 
 61 
along the way. Her sister, Fanny, also commented on the lack of coordination among the 
post in India and its failure in sending their leters home in a consistent manner, ?As 
usual, dearest, your No. Eleven followed No. Ten, just as it ought, thre weks after. I 
wish you would send your Board of Admiralty to instruct our Board of Admiralty, who 
send their ships without regard to the date of our leters.?
188
 
 In the absence of leters ariving on a consistent schedule in India, Eden often 
turned to the collection and circulation of print materials such as books, novels, and any 
other European or American printed literature. Whether purchased in the strets of 
Calcutta, ordered from bookstores in England, or borrowed from friends in India and 
Britain, Eden used print material as a way to remain continualy updated on the fashions 
of England. Prized and treasured by Emily, whichever printed source brought any piece 
of knowledge was beter than none from her beloved country. Thus, Eden found printed 
volumes to be a secondary mode of comfort for filing the time until the mail arived. 
 The purchasing and exchange of books was another medium through which Emily 
stayed in contact with England and its culture. The Eden family often had boxes of books 
shipped from England, and they purchased cheaper editions in India from places like the 
United States of America. Reading was an activity that kept Emily mentaly agile and 
helped pas the time. She read everything and anything she could get her hands on. 
American editions were the cheapest and easiest to come by. She noted, 
                                                
188
 From the Hon. F.H. Eden To A Friend, Government House, July 18, 1837, LFI, 68. 
 
 62 
There are such a good set of American editions of English books 
advertised to-day, that I sent off forthwith and bought Mrs. Butler?s 
Journal and Theresa Lister?s novel, ?Anne Grey,? and one of Lady 
Morgan?s novels and another book, al for ten rupees..I tried at an English 
shop for some books, and they asked 2l. for Poole?s ?Scenes and 
Recollections,? and 3l. for the commonest novels in thre vols..I wish, if 
Mr. Rice has an odd copy of the ?Marquis de Pontanges,? and any other 
recommendable French books, you would buy them and send them out to 
me.
189
 
 
Books were also a means of exchange betwen Europeans in India, specificaly in 
Calcutta society. In one instance, Emily gave one of her sketches as payment to borrow 
several books from a Mr. Trower, 
You wil have heard from us about our books long before this..and our 
appetite for trash becomes daily more diseased and insatiable; so you are 
hereby constituted our book-agent, and you can setle with Rodwel the set 
he is to send..We have read ?Rienzi? and ?Gilbert Gurney,?- thanks to 
Mr.Trower, who belongs to a book-club, and has sacrificed his wek?s 
share of these books to me, because I did a sketch for him.
190
 
 
Emily asked several of her friends and family to ship books down to India so that she had 
the most up-to-date European publications. Staying busy with those publications 
distracted her from other discomforts India created (such as the heat), and Emily similarly 
craved amusements like books to ward of boredom and the discomfort of her physical 
surroundings. Emily once wrote about her circumstances and the misery caused by a lack 
of books to a friend: ?It is of vital importance that we should fed our poor yelow Indian 
minds with constant amusement, so I wish, dear, you would take upon yourself to send 
off a box of the newest publications once in two months, and do not let people scratch 
                                                
189
 Mis Eden To The Same, Wednesday, May 11, [1836], LFI, 160. 
190
 is Eden To A Friend, Government House, July 23, [1836], LFI, 195-196. 
 
 63 
anything out of your list. The more trash the beter.?
191
 For Eden even the ?trashiest? 
English novels offered a potential corrective to the ?yelowing? of the English mind 
caused by the Indian milieu. 
 Leters and books were not the only material goods exchanged betwen Emily and 
her family and friends in the British Isles. They also exchanged decorative acesories 
and articles of clothing, sending both Indian goods to Britain and British goods to India. 
Mrs. Lister sent Emily a bracelet and her sister Fanny a brooch while they were living in 
Barackpore. Fanny shipped feathers and other acesories back to several friends in 
England.
192
 Friends in India like Mrs. C. Eliott gave Eden and her brother George gifts 
on a regular basis, such as a pair of beautiful bracelets.
193
 Eden would often give back to 
her friends; in one instance, she bought a silver-embroidered dres for the Duches of 
Sutherland.
194
 
 Gift exchange was common among her family and friends, but it was also 
common in India where it became a ritual among oficials in the East India Company, 
Europeans travelers, and those involved in busines interactions with Indian rajahs. When 
George Eden held durbars, every official exchanged gifts such as pearls, necklaces, 
diamonds, and other precious materials. Not only did family and friends in both England 
                                                
191
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Thursday, August 11, [1836], LFI, 220. 
192
 From The Hon. F.H. Eden To A Friend, Government House, August 18, 1837, LFI, 
81. 
193
 From The Hon. Emily Eden To ?., Calcutta, Monday, November 14, [1836], LFI, 
256-257. 
194
 Mis Eden To A Friend, Thursday, 9, [1837], LFI, 325. 
 
 64 
and India receive gifts of beautifully decorated materials, but Eden?s dog Chance was 
showered with luxurious goods and acesories: ?there is a native who sels us Chinese 
silks, and I suppose has made a good thing of us, for he made up as a surprise to me a 
coat for Chance, of a broch? gold-coloured satin bound with silver, with a sort of breast-
plate of mock stones set in gold.?
195
 
 Leters, print culture, and material objects comforted Emily and blunted the 
insecurities caused by her separation from England and al that separation implied. 
Leters became a unique and standard form of communication. Any sort of print material 
was a requirement for adequate social inclusion, and material objects also connected 
Eden to England through memory and exchange. These physical forms of remembrance 
soothed Eden?s anxieties and comforted her psyche by their presence in India. But Emily 
also worried about other discomforts that could weaken her identity as an aristocratic 
Englishwoman, such as her own Indianization, interactions with natives, and the loss of 
political influence in India. 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                
195
 Mis Eden To The Countes of Buckinghamshire, Government House, January 27, 
1837, LFI, 300. 
 
 65 
Class, Race, and Civilization 
 
When thinking of India, most eightenth-century Britons had agred that, ?it conjured up 
images of grand Islamic despots ruling tyrannicaly over timid pagans, florid and fanciful 
literature bred under a searing sun, and men corrupted by heat and the harem into 
terminal efeminates.?
196
 India and their ?grand Islamic despots? were thought of in direct 
opposition to the British government and how Europeans defined themselves as rulers.
197
 
The English perceived South Asians and Africans as always inferior to European 
governments due to their ?despotic? law systems, the climate, and their ignorance of 
Christian virtues.
198
 Although Europeans acknowledged the use of ?law? in India, that 
?law? was believed to delay justice and thus was checked and regulated by British rule in 
India.
199
 
 During the eightenth century, the EIC and men like Waren Hastings influenced 
by the Indian culture and thought to be transformed from mercantile British subjects into 
?nabobs,? an image most Britons perceived as open and subject to the efects of 
?despotism.? With the strengthening of British colonial power in its expanding empire 
                                                
196
 Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eightenth-Century India: The British in 
Bengal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2007), 5. 
197
 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 
1994), 7. 
198
 C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 
(London: Longman, 1989), 7. 
199
 Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Form of Knowledge: The British in India 
(Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1996), 62-65. 
 
 66 
and public and parliamentary critique of EIC moral isues, Britons saw the push to 
enhance consciousnes of the new imperial identity, separated from the influence of so-
caled Oriental despotism.
200
 The nabob was created as a fictional character based on the 
reality of most European men?s Anglo-Indian lifestyles. The lifestyle provided a number 
of Company servants with the monetary means to return from India with large fortunes 
and social aspirations.
201
 The established rule of the nabobs, who were considered to be 
influenced by ?native corruption,? and the dramatic teritorial conquests in the 1760s, 
prompted ?a serious rethinking of the very nature of empire? by the end of the century.
202
 
 To redefine the nature of empire meant that the British also needed to understand 
their own identity detached from the Oriental despots of India. As Thomas Metcalf 
writes, ?As the British defined their own identity as a nation in opposition to the world 
outside, so too, more generaly, did they as Europeans, under the influence of the ideals 
of the Enlightenment, announce their own pre-eminence as a ?modern? and ?civilized? 
people.?
203
 As the civilized people, it was the duty of Europeans to conquer and advance 
the Indians, a people they believed were inclined to corruption, extortion, and 
mendacity.
204
 Thus, the methods of previous EIC rulers, whom it was feared had 
established a ?tyranny that exists to the disgrace of this nation,? in the eightenth century 
                                                
200
 Linda Colley, Captives (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 346; Philip Lawson, The 
East India Company: A History (London: Longman, 1993), 119. 
201
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 14. 
202
 Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eightenth-Century India, 5. 
203
 Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 4. 
204
 Ibid, 24. 
 
 67 
were eradicated and the British justified their new rule by the ideas of the Enlightenment 
and its theory of stages of civilization.
205
 By the mid-ninetenth century, the EIC and 
British rulers sought to rid India of the pervasive ?Oriental despotism? of which they had 
been acustomed by imposing European bureaucratic order. As Robert Travers argued, 
?Instead, the British embraced what they hoped would be a new kind of colonial 
despotism, a despotism of law underpinned by racial segregation and the rule of force, 
that would increasingly be justified by Europe?s supposed higher rank on the ladder of 
civilization.?
206
 
 Emily Eden lived in India during the mid-ninetenth century, and she often 
claimed to se and experience the lingering efects of ?Oriental despotism? and observed 
the lack of one established civilization in India. As the sister of the Governor-General, 
Eden also saw the transition of the new British colonial bureaucracy, which was based on 
racial segregation and clas rank ?on the ladder of civilization.?
207
 As the old system of 
government, which involved several components of despotism, was fading away in the 
ninetenth century, this new bureaucracy established itself as the new colonial order. The 
new colonial order intervened ?in maters that were sen as particularly undermining to 
British notions of civilization.?
208
 Thus, this section examines the interactions Eden had 
with clas, race, and civilization in India defined by her own Englishnes, involvement in 
                                                
205
 Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eightenth-Century India, 6. 
206
 Ibid, 29-30. 
207
 Ibid, 29-30. 
208
 Hal, ?Of Gender and Empire,? 53. 
 
 68 
British imperial society, and her notions of both ?despotic rule? and British superiority. 
 The period from 1800 to 1857 saw a gradual consolidation of British power and 
growing community in India.
209
 During the late eightenth century and early ninetenth 
century, the demography of the EIC was labeled as European but diverse in origins 
including Americans, Caribbean blacks, Germans, Swis, and Portuguese as wel as 
sepoys or Indian soldiers.
210
 Most of these Europeans came to India as enlisted soldiers, 
as tenagers, with limited chances of returning home, most likely to die there.
211
 India 
also had a large population of non-commisioned Europeans working in the Company 
presidencies and larger cities.
212
 
 Due to George?s position as Governor-General and the duties that came to her as 
an EIC representative (such as official public appearances), Emily encountered a variety 
of people, European and Indian. Most days, Eden only saw the higher clases of society 
such as the European elites of Calcutta or Indian rajahs and their families. Surounded by 
Indian servants, she also regularly communicated with them, such as her ayah, Rosina. 
On her trips to Calcutta, visits to Indian ruins or royal palaces, or along the road during 
their caravan up the country, however, Eden also came across the poor lower caste people 
of India. The juxtaposition of Indian rajahs and poor natives confused Emily as to the 
level of civilized society in India. 
                                                
209
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 63. 
210
 Colley, Captives, 260. 
211
 Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, 83-83. 
212
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 63. 
 
 69 
 When Emily Eden arived in India she expected change, particularly a hot climate 
and an imediate death. Although the later never occurred and she felt the former 
expectation was justified, India and its people presented Eden with a wider range of 
changes than she had imagined, specificaly in terms of society, civilization, and clas 
interactions. Coming from a higher clas than most Britons who visited or lived in India 
in the early ninetenth century, Eden demonstrated, through the contents of her leters, 
the diferences in Indian clas-consciousnes and civilization of the rajahs, women, and 
natives. Eden expresed this in her description of the Indian population and her reported 
personal contacts with them. At many times, she wrote about the contrasting manners 
betwen British society and that of India, but at certain points Emily also noticed the 
similarities or amalgamations of Indian and British cultures. 
 She wrote about the distinctions betwen the civilizations in Britain and India. 
Eden noted the ?uncivilized? nature of Indians and their enduring customs, that no mater 
the education given to them by the British, infectious Oriental despotism rooted deep into 
their culture and customs: 
Then as to the Hindu College. The boys are educated, as you say, by the 
Government, at least under its active patronage, and they are ?British 
subjects,? inasmuch as Britain has taken India, and in many respects they 
may be caled wel-educated young men; but stil I cannot tel you what 
the wide diference is betwen a European and a Native. An elephant and 
Chance, St.Paul?s and a Baby-Home, the Jerseys and Pembrokes, a 
diamond and a bad flint, Queen Adelaide and O?Connel, London and 
Calcutta, are not further apart, and more antipathetic than those two 
clases. I do not se that any degre of education, or any length of time, 
could bring natives to the pitch of alowing any liberty to their 
wives..They live in mud huts, something like the Irish cabins, and in half 
 
 70 
of that hut these women pas their lives. 
213
 
 
 Even with the guidance of the highly civilized Europeans, Eden aserted the 
unfailing contrast of the uncivilized nature of Indians with the British. As John Stuart 
Mil said in response to the vigorous despotism the British perceived in India, ?it was 
incumbent on a ?more civilized people? to advance the condition of ?a barbarous or semi-
barbarous one.??
214
 Eden?s quotation likewise showed what she saw as the ?more 
civilized people,? the British and their government, advancing the condition of the Indian 
boys at the Hindu College.
215
 But even as the native boys became wel-educated young 
men like Europeans, in Eden?s example, there was no level of education or civilizing that 
could bring the Indians to be respectable like agents of European civilization. She 
condemned their treatment of women and wives as wel as their housing: ?They live in 
mud huts, something like the Irish cabins.?
216
 To Emily, the treatment of women proved 
the ?sense of Asiatic barbarism and venality? in the nature of Indian peoples, and she felt 
the ?need to expunge the most repugnant elements of Indian custom? like many other 
Europeans during the time.
217
 
 In another example, Emily further perpetrated the contemporary British claim that 
elements of Indian custom were uncivilized and barbaric.
218
 On one of the caravan 
                                                
213
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Government House, January 25, 1837, MEL, 281-282. 
214
 Quoted in Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eightenth-Century India, 6. 
215
 Mis Eden to Mrs, Lister, Government House, January 25, 1837, MEL, 281-282. 
216
 Ibid, 281-282. 
217
 Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eightenth-Century India, 107. 
218
 Ibid, 107. 
 
 71 
marches up the country, she detailed the European and ?civilized? customs to which most 
Indians were ignorant, 
I always wonder how ignorant of the ways of the world the inhabitants of 
these solitary valeys can be, and how such ignorance fels. No ?crafty 
boys,? no fashions, no politics, and, I suppose, a primitive religion that 
satisfies them..I imagine half these people must be a sort of vulgar Adams 
and Eves-not so refined, but nearly as innocent.
219
 
 
To Emily, a developed civilization required knowledge of fashions, politics, and a 
modern religion.
220
 As stated by C.A. Bayly, in the eyes of ninetenth-century Europeans 
?cultures atained ?civilisation? by stages of moral awakening and material endeavour.?
221
 
The ?primitive religion? of the Indian population and their ignorance of material fashions 
proved to Eden that they were at the lower stages of civilization, ?a sort of vulgar Adams 
and Eves.?
222
 
 To Eden, the natives lacked civilization and therefore were inferior to Europeans 
in their culture and other societal acts. Emily defined civilization much like the OED, 
?the state or condition of being civilized; human cultural, social, and intelectual 
development when considered to be advanced and progresive in nature.?
223
 European 
society was advanced and progresive with its education, gentility and etiquete, fashion, 
and general social progresion. When she looked at the Indian natives, she saw no 
                                                
219
 Thursday, Sept. 13, [1838], UTC, 162. 
220
 Ibid, 162. 
221
 Bayly, Imperial Meridian, 7. 
222
 Thursday, Sept. 13, [1838], UTC, 162. 
223
 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. ?Civilization, n.? 
http:/ww.oed.com.spot.lib.auburn.edu/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/33584 [acesed May 
15, 2012] 
 
 72 
generalized civilization that included at al levels of society any education or social 
progres. With the requirement of ?fashions,? Emily herself defined civilization, for 
example, as the requirement to wear clothing and cover the body, which many Indians 
did not. She often commented on their lack of cloaks as a sign of uncivilized peoples 
needing to be saved by the superior European clases. While stil on the Jupiter waiting 
to arive in the Hooghly River, Eden wrote, ?We are surrounded by boats manned by 
black people, who, by some strange inadvertence, have utterly forgotten to put on any 
cloaks whatever.?
224
 To her English sensibilities, it was strange to be without clothing, as 
the English were known for their layers of clothing, pelises, muslin dreses, peticoats, 
and proper wear for diferent occasions.
225
   
 Clothing was not the only category in which the Indians did not succesfully fit 
into Eden?s definition of civilization. The housing and shelter of many common Indians 
difered from the grandiose structures of European design. Eden looked at these modest 
structures as uncivilized compared to the English and Indian rajah?s palaces, 
 Then, after pasing a house that is much more like a palace than anything 
we se in England we come to a row of mud-thatched huts in wild, black-
looking savages squating in front of them, litle black native children 
running up and down the cocoa-tres above the huts, and no one 
appearance of civilization that would lead one to gues any European had 
ever set foot on the land before.
226
 
 
The unequal distinction betwen the royal palaces and mud-thatched huts proved to Eden 
                                                
224
 Thursday., In the Hooghly, [1836], MEL, 263. 
225
 Jane Ashelford, The Art of Dres: Clothes and Society 1500-1914 (London: National 
Trust, 1996), 179. 
226
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 264. 
 
 73 
that most natives were uncivilized and in need of European guidance. The English saw 
the Mughal court and government as a type of absolutism, a form of despotic sovereignty 
that was occasionaly barbaric in nature.
227
 This form of barbaric despotism caused a 
displacement in wealth; it was a concept implying ?that no wil, and hence no law, 
existed apart from that of the despot himself.?
228
 Thus, for Eden, the uncivilized 
households of royal palaces and mud-thatched huts proved to be an outcome of Indian 
laws and customs, of ?oriental despotism.? 
 Also commenting on the lack of European presence in the subcontinent, Eden saw 
the lack of civilization, the mud-thatched huts and ?wild black-looking savages,? as a 
duty for the Europeans to undertake. Europeans needed to come to India to bring 
civilization, proper housing, hygiene, and clothing to these wild natives. Again, Eden 
found the image of India, its lack of civilization, and climate repugnant, 
I take al the naked black creatures squating at the doors of their huts in 
such aversion..what with the climate and the strange tres and shrubs, I 
fel al Robinson Crusoe-ish..I can only calculate how strong my aversion 
must be to ?the land we live in.?
229
 
 
Eden?s sister, Fanny, also commented on the aversion to India and its inhabitants and 
said, ?It sometimes strikes me we realy are in what is caled a barbarous country.?
230
 The 
aversion Eden felt was to the nude bodies, strange land, and the feling of psychological 
                                                
227
 Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eightenth-Century India, 106. 
228
 Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 9. 
229
 To The Same, Barackpore, Thursday, April 28, [1836], LFI, 148. 
230
 From The Hon. F. H. Eden To A Friend, Government House, August 18, [1837], LFI, 
82. 
 
 74 
discomfort at the contrasting cultural mannerisms. Eden, as an educated aristocratic 
woman, did not understand how people could live in the environment of ?strange tres 
and shrubs? while ?squating at the doors of their huts.?
231
 To Emily, people should be 
living in houses with more than dirt for floors. Like Eden, most Britons saw colonies like 
India as ?enervated, hierarchical, corporatist, back-ward- and thus inferior.?
232
 
Collectively inferior, the natives were sen by the EIC and the British as the equivalent of 
the ?undeserving poor? in Britain.
233
 Much like Emily?s views of the Irish, who she 
viewed as the most degraded savages on earth, she equaly saw the native Indians as 
uncivilized and inferior due to their sparse clothing and nakednes.
234
 
 Thus, the poor living conditions for the majority of Indians made Eden think of 
her own life in the subcontinent. With the impact of the climate, lack of British society, 
and overal new surroundings, Eden worried about her own aclimatization to Indian 
culture and their uneven civilized demeanors. The repugnance Eden expresed for India, 
Indians, and their living environment made her own sense of physical and psychological 
alterations distresing. Emily thus sought to counterbalance the destruction to her own 
identity by reviling the nature of Indian habits when commenting on their cultural 
practices. 
                                                
231
 To The Same, Barackpore, Thursday, April 28, [1836], LFI, 148. 
232
 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Oxford: 
Oxford University Pres, 2001), 4. 
233
 Cannadine, Ornamentalism, 6. 
234
 Mis Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis, Admiralty, Friday [April 1848], MEL, 375. Emily 
quotes Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 75 
Indianization 
 
Aclimatizing to Indian habits and in physical appearance was a major concern for Eden 
while living in India. One of the ?Indian? habits she noted in her leters was the luxury of 
having everything imaginable to compensate for the climate; ?Then, as a set-off to 
discomforts peculiar to the climate, we have every luxury that the wit of man can devise, 
and are gradualy acquiring the Indian habit of denying ourselves nothing, which wil be 
awkward.?
235
 Luxury was one of the main pursuits of the Anglo-Indian lifestyle of the 
nabob, who consumed lavish food and drink as wel as participated in leisure activities 
like hookah smoking and atending nautch dances.
236
 Although past British officials took 
to the culture and habits of the Indian lifestyle, the early ninetenth century brought with 
it a new tone in imperial rule, in which Europeans began to alienate their bodies from 
those habits, instead trying to maintain a separate identity and rule through diferentiation 
rather than acommodation. To Emily, the transformation and alteration to the Indian 
climate and their habits was appaling. Yet, she confesed, ?but the real truth is, I 
suppose, that we are becoming acclimatised more or les- rather les than more, but stil 
we are becoming blind to our wretched position.?
237
 
 As time progresed and years pased in India, Emily began to believe that her 
                                                
235
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
268. 
236
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 200. 
237
 From The Hon E. Eden To The Countes of Buckinghamshire, Government House, 
May 24, 1837, LFI, 26. 
 
 76 
distance and from British society adapted her to the surroundings, becoming much like 
the native Indian ?savages.? The loss of fashionable society and a clear connection to 
Britain concerned Eden, and thus the loss of her basic British identity created intense 
psychological discomfort. She wrote, ?I am almost certain we are very nearly savages- 
not the least ferocious, not cannibals, not even mischievous- but simply good-natured, 
unsophisticated savages, fond of finery, precious stones and tobaco, quite uninformed, 
very indolent, and rather stupid.?
238
 To Emily, uninformed, sluggish, and stupid were the 
qualities of the uneducated and uncivilized. Those characteristics were not those of an 
Englishwoman. 
 As Emily Eden never wanted to travel to India in the first place, her negative 
felings grew once she arived in India and the scarcity of other European presence 
influenced the psychological discomfort from being away from her British culture. 
During the 1830s and 1840s, British India was stil very much a country based on 
residency towns and impermanent European setlements. Indeed, Calcutta was the most 
transitory of al towns in India; it was the destination for those leaving India or those 
going up the country for hil stations or their residency cities. The nature of this society 
caused Eden great psychological discomfort, 
I never could take to the Calcutta society, even if there were any, but there 
is not. Almost everybody who was here when we landed five months ago 
are gone either home or up the country. They come to Calcutta because 
they are on their way out to make their fortunes, or on their way home 
because they have made them, or because their healths require change of 
                                                
238
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Calcutta, December 29, 1836, MEL, 276. 
 
 77 
station, and they come here to ask for it.
239
 
 
Up until the announcement of George?s appointment as Governor-General in 1835, Emily 
Eden had led a stable English life, surrounded by her family and friends, established in 
her domestic role in the household, and had maintained the code of behavior understood 
in the idea of ?separate spheres? and English identity. Psychologicaly, Eden?s place in 
English society developed out of a permanent clas hierarchy, from birth. Being dropped 
into the contrasting clases of Anglo-Indian society made Eden psychologicaly 
uncomfortable. Emily wrote about the way in which the Indian life caused makeshift and 
temporary housing, ?I hate that part of an Indian life. People are always changing their 
stations, and at every change they sel off everything, because there are no stages, 
wagons, or canals by which even a chair can be transported from one place to another, 
and it is not everybody who can aford a man?s head on which to cary it.?
240
 As Deborah 
Cohen argues, ?For the British..the house could never be merely a machine for living in; 
homes were repositories of feling and personality.?
241
 The transitory nature of houses 
and households in British India thus thoroughly shocked Eden?s domestic sensibilities.
242
 
 The imediate presence of Indian servants in Indian houses and the households of 
Calcutta and Barackpore made Eden?s tensions with her own Indianization more 
uncomfortable. As the nabob became a powerful patriarch in Anglo-Indian households, 
                                                
239
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Government House, August 24, 1836, MEL, 273. 
240
 To The Hon. and Rev. R. Eden, Barackpore, August 18, 1837, LFI, 80. 
241
 Deborah Cohen, Household Gods: The British and Their Possesions (New Haven: 
Yale University Pres, 2006), 185. 
242
 Cohen, Household Gods, 185. 
 
 78 
the British also ?played a part in encouraging and perpetuating the complex of 
diferentiation of domestic servants.?
243
 The EIC officials continued to use the caste 
system among its servants and aranged the British as the highest clas in India, ruling its 
lands and controllable rajahs. As Eden mentioned regularly, she and her family had 
numerous servants in both the households of Calcutta and Barackpore and these servants 
followed her everywhere she went. The constant asistance from servants often annoyed 
Emily, who claimed she wished to be alone and independent. She wrote that she had 
?established myself in the garden, and told al the servants to go and sit down at a litle 
distance, that I might fancy myself ?alone in the country? and ?siting out reading,? as if it 
were the Temple Walk at Eden Farm, or the lawn at Bower Hal, and altogether it was 
rather a pleasant hour.?
244
 
 Wherever Eden was, there were her servants, maids, and bearers. Surrounded by 
Indian servants on a daily basis, Eden never found a moment to be alone. This inability to 
be alone was a diferent kind of discomfort, one that emphasized the lack of European 
society but also made her personality change to suit the smothering nature of EIC rule 
and the methods of the British Empire. On one stormy night, Eden?s servants 
demonstrated this strict suffocating relationship betwen master and servant. After a 
sleples night, Eden just wanted to slep in peace with no interuptions, but her servants 
interupted her slumber and time alone, 
                                                
243
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 18. 
244
 To A Friend, Barackpore, Thursday, June 22, 1837, LFI, 55-56. 
 
 79 
so of course some of the bearers, who slep in the verandah below, began 
to cough out of compliment to the storm..I slept for one hour. And now 
you know what an Indian bad night is. The result was that after luncheon I 
thought I would go to slep, and took of my fril and my sash and let al 
the hooks and eyes loose, and told the servants to kep the pasage quiet 
and not to come in with any notes; and just as I had sunk into a peaceable 
slumber several of them rushed in, announcing the Lord Sahib himself and 
the Lord Padre.
245
 
 
Due to the lack of personal time and constant involvement of her servants in Emily?s 
daily life, she grasped onto those few moments of time when she was alone and could do 
anything she wanted to do. She wrote, ?That is a great comfort to me here, the number of 
hours I can pas alone without any fear of being caled down.?
246
 The inability to be 
alone was another type of discomfort, one that contrasted with her desire for English 
society. 
 While Eden struggled with the involvement of native servants in her own life, she 
also viewed them in diferent capacities in and outside of Government House. On one of 
her early days in India, Eden first noticed the lingering characteristics of eightenth-
century Anglo-Indian life, the intermingling of British civilization with Indian culture. 
She wrote, ?the next thing you met is a nice English Britschka with good horses driven 
by a turbaned coachman, and a tribe of running footmen by its side, and in it is one of the 
native Princes, dresed just as he was when he first came into the world, siting cross-
legged on the front seat very composedly smoking his hookah.?
247
 The ?turbaned coach 
                                                
245
 March 15, 1837, LFI, 329. Italics in original. 
246
 To A Friend, Government House, July 23, [1836], LFI, 197. 
247
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Barackpore, March 24, 1836, MEL, 264. 
 
 80 
man? and the ?tribe of running footmen? juxtaposed with the nude native prince smoking 
his hookah furthered showed Emily the drastic efects of ?Asian despotism? and the 
distance it created in the hierarchy of Indian civilization. Events like this, for Eden, 
justified the reasons for British rule in India, the perception that Indians were negatively 
afected by the climate and made into despots. 
 In another leter, Eden mentioned her own servants and their lack of civilized 
activities and developed cultural habits. On one afternoon, the servants brought Eden clay 
figures that she found detestable but she kept the figures for their own appeasement, ?the 
servants al bought horrid clay, mishapen, gaudy-looking figures; and I am sorry to say 
al mine thought it necesary to present me with some, because they thought I liked 
modeling, and my room is full of the most frightful-looking toys, which I dare not 
destroy, as they think them beautiful.?
248
 Although she saw the figures as an uncivilized 
atempt at modeling, in her role as sister to the Governor-General, Emily was required, 
even to her servants, to acept the presents in a sincere manner. As a colonizer, Eden was 
viewed by the public and afected by their discernment. Never alone, the servants knew 
everything about her, which made destruction of the figures unmanageable. Although 
much of the experience of rulers in colonial India involved their isolation from the ruled, 
Indian servants often modified this integral experience of empire by their interaction with 
                                                
248
 From The Hon. Emily Eden To ?., Thursday, November 10., [1836], LFI, 254-255. 
 
 81 
both.
249
 Eden could not reject the clay figures because her servants were actively 
entangled in her private life. 
 
Isolation 
 
Emily and her brother George arived in India in the wake of the late eightenth century 
critique of the EIC and its changes in governance in the early ninetenth century. The 
trial of Waren Hastings and the atacks by Edmund Burke on the extortion, acts of 
bribery, and arbitrary power of the EIC and their nabob rulers in India, led to a drastic 
change in British colonial government standards and procedures.
250
 Acording to 
Nicholas B. Dirks, what occurred in India in the late eightenth century was an ?internal 
revolution? rather than a ?foreign conquest? which needed to escape the EIC?s tarnished 
image of nabobs.
251
 The nabob was a fictional character based on the reality of most 
European men?s Anglo-Indian lifestyles. The life provided a number of Company 
servants to return from India with large fortunes and social aspirations.
252
 
 As the need for rulers instead of merchants became prevalent and long-term 
residence became esential for British survival in India, Britons confronted one of the 
                                                
249
 Ranajit Guha, ?Not at Home in Empire,? Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 
484-485. 
250
 Nicholas B. Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain 
(Cambridge, Mas: Belknap Pres of Harvard University Pres, 2006), 289. 
251
 Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 316. 
252
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 14. 
 
 82 
most important questions facing imperial administrators: how to rule India. Was India to 
remain an ?anomalous empire? without paralel in British history or go the way of North 
America and become a permanent European setlement?
253
 Britain turned away from the 
recognized caricature of the acommodating and influential nabob in the late eightenth 
century to the perceived image of the British sahib, who condemned Indian 
aclimatization and conformed to racial distinctions.
254
 The nabob showed how India was 
diferent from and inferior to Britain with their predisposition to eastern luxury that 
moved hand-in-hand with ?Asiatic despotism.?
255
 These perils of despotism proved to 
British imperial leaders that change and boundaries were necesary in empire building. 
 The rampant fortuneering of the Clive era became les common in the EIC toward 
the end of the eightenth century.
256
 With the administration of Lord Cornwalis in the 
1780s, EIC servants were no longer alowed to acept gifts or engage in private trade as 
before.
257
 Instead the EIC and the British used a magnificent ceremonial ruling style to 
influence the regional native rulers.
258
 After Lord Welesley?s arival in the 1790s, the 
Governor-General position ?acquired semi-royal status, surrounded by the trappings of 
silver-stick bearers, club bearers, fan bearers and sentries in the new seting of 
                                                
253
 Harison, Climates and Constitutions, 111. 
254
 Ibid, 111-112. 
255
 Tilman W. Nechtman, Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eightenth-Century Britain 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2010), 92. 
256
 Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, 82. 
257
 Ibid, 82. 
258
 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 15. 
 
 83 
Government House.?
259
 Emily confirmed this status when she spoke about her brother, 
?We al met in my siting-room and as soon as Sir Charles was in sight, stalked solemnly 
off in a grand procesion of aides-de-camp, silver-sticks, peacocks? feathers, &c., with 
Captains Grey and Chads tacked on. George took his place on a sort of a throne.?
260
 
Display like that of silver-sticks and peacocks? feathers became a requirement for most 
EIC employees. Often times, display overlapped in its functional duty with comfort. 
George?s ?throne? was, in esence, a chair for him to sit upon during the bal that 
evening. The functional duty of the chair was to provide comfort to George but also 
overlapped in its role as an object of display and power, making the Governor-General a 
ceremonial ruler. 
 While in India, Eden responded to the psychological discomforts of the diference 
of gender roles and treatment of native women by writing about her experiences. Emily 
interacted with both European and native Indian women on a daily basis, whether during 
Government House visits, travels to royal palaces, or in their journey up the country to 
Simla. Eden thought that India was no place for any European woman, especialy for the 
young, or recently maried, to live for an extended amount of time. In one leter, Eden 
commented on the lives of two young brides,  
There was a prety Mrs. ? dining here yesterday, quite a child in look, 
who maried just before the ?Repulse? sailed, and landed here about ten 
days ago. She goes on next wek to Memuch, a place at the farthest 
extremity of India, where there is not another European woman..There is 
                                                
259
 Ibid, 15. 
260
 Monday, March 14, [1836], LFI, 103. 
 
 84 
another, Mrs. ?, only fiften, who maried when we were at the Cape, and 
came from there at the same time we did, and went straight on to her 
husband?s station, where for five months she had never sen an 
European..It is an abominable place. I do not mean so much for us, who 
come for a short time and can have a flet, or an army to take us anywhere 
for change of air if we have pains in our sides, but for people who earn 
their bread in India, and must starve if they give it up.
261
 
 
For Eden, clas and longevity of stay were crucial aspects of how Europeans could 
survive and live in India without ?civilized society.? Unfortunately for those two women, 
whose social ranks were much lower than Eden, their stay in India would be abominable 
due to the longevity of their stay, their station?s location ?at the farthest extremity of 
India? and the lack of other Europeans? presence.
262
 
 Not only the dearth of Europeans bothered Emily, but also the lack of European 
women in particular created psychological discomfort for her. Emily believed that she 
and other European women in the British Empire neded to socialize with other European 
women while abroad. During one of the river expeditions to recover her health in the 
cooler climates south of Calcutta, Eden wrote of another experience where one maried 
woman rarely saw another European woman, ?Mrs. Rousseau, the postmistres, sent me a 
basket of fruit and vegetables. I wish she would come herself, as she must want to se 
another European woman.?
263
 Eden even told her family and friends never to let their 
daughters come to India. She wrote, ?It is a melancholy country for wives at the best, and 
                                                
261
 From The Hon. E. Eden To ?., Government House, 1837 (Begun October 25, ended 
October 30.), LFI, 103. Italics in original. 
262
 Ibid, 103. 
263
 Saturday, 7, [1837], LFI, 73. 
 
 85 
I strongly advise you never to let your girls mary an East Indian.?
264
 Eden believed the 
isolation among most European women in the ?melancholy country? of India caused 
major psychological discomforts due to the separation from other European women and 
culture. But Emily was not alone in her felings. Other British women reacted similarly 
to life in India. In another compilation of leters, Clarisa Trant acknowledged the 
cultural shortcomings of India after speaking with a friend and receiving leters from her 
brother, Thomas Abercrombie Trant, stationed in Bengal. She wrote, ?It gave me an 
insight into the Indian world- which I cannot help thinking a very peculiar one..so much 
cultivation of mind amongst the men?so litle amongst the women.?
265
 
 The changes in perception that occurred with the transition in the Anglo-Indian 
lifestyle from nabob to sahib created tensions in the formation of a British identity 
separated from Indian customs. Identities overlapped with young Indian boys educated by 
the government and formed into respectable British men. During the early ninetenth 
century, the EIC and the British government eradicated the perceived influence of 
Oriental despotism from its subjects by creating ?an official clas separated from the 
lures of commerce or entanglement with ?native? life.?
266
 Emily saw this confusion on a 
daily basis, in Government House and when visiting medical colleges and other cities. 
During one visit to the Hindu College in Calcutta, Eden noted this confusion in identities 
                                                
264
 From The Hon. E. Eden To ?., Government House, 1837 (Begun October 25, ended 
October 30.), LFI, 103. 
265
 1822. June to December., The Journal of Clarisa Trant, 99. 
266
 Bayly, Imperial Meridian, 195. 
 
 86 
but made the Indians? inferiority to the British race blatantly clear; ?but stil I cannot tel 
you what the wide diference is betwen a European and a Native? London and 
Calcutta, are not further apart, and more antipathetic than those two clases.?
267
 Emily 
Eden struggled with the perceptions of her own Britishnes and how the isolation from 
other Europeans in India may have contributed to her descent towards Indianization. 
With the threat of Indianization and the dearth of Europeans, Eden experienced the 
transitioning moment in British imperial rule, where the EIC and British government 
were trying to escape the perceived image of oficers as nabobs and despotic rulers by 
creating the representation of a closed, stable colonial bureaucrat. She saw the efects of 
both Oriental despotism and its perceived lack of civilization on the natives, rajahs, and 
the EIC, as wel as its efects on the mision of the British government to ward of those 
corruptive tendencies. Overal, Eden?s psychological discomforts from isolation in India 
were heightened by the separation from her family and friends and the absence of 
Europeans, which created further cultural tensions of identity loss. 
 
Britishnes and Politics 
 
Although the continual leters from family and friends kept Emily involved in some of 
the happenings in England while she was away in India, Eden stil mised the society and 
the influence of her own opinion in the political circles of London. The dearth of 
                                                
267
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Government House, January 25, 1837, MEL, 281-282. 
 
 87 
Europeans in India also meant the absence of colonial commitment to, and clear 
participation in, home politics. Thus, Emily mised the psychological comfort of her 
power and authority among British politicians in London. While in England, Eden 
actively influenced many politicians in Whig politics and the social circles of London. 
During the early decades of the ninetenth century, the ?older modes of political 
expresion and engagement? shaped the political culture of Britain that chalenged the 
involvement of women and their political subjectivities in the political proces.
268
 
Kathryn Gleadle caled these women ?borderline citizens,? their status as political actors 
was often fragile and contingent upon these earlier modes.
269
 With the rise of 
evangelicalism, the changes in citizen?s roles, and the new landscape of opportunity, 
many women participated in public engagements and politics on a day-to-day basis.
270
 
 Emily was one of these women who had political interests and it was one of her 
main pasions in life. It was an activity she could participate in with her brother George 
and a way to stay relevant in the changing social circles of London. In 1826, she wrote to 
her friend, ?You ask if I care about the present state of politics? Why, dear child, I never 
cared for anything half so much in my life,-almost to the pas of being sorry I am out of 
town this wek.?
271
 While in India, her pasion for English politics continued to be a 
major focus for Eden. She satiated herself with every morsel of political gossip and 
                                                
268
 Kathryn Gleadle, Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender and Political Culture in 
Britain, 1815-1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Pres for the British Academy, 2009), 2. 
269
 Gleadle, Borderline Citizens, 2. 
270
 Ibid, 9-10. 
271
 Mis Eden to Mis Viliers, Hertingfordbury, Monday, September 1826, MEL, 107. 
 
 88 
information. Imbedded in her identity as an English aristocratic woman, Emily made 
politics into one of her psychological comforts. In order to maintain her sense of 
Britishnes while living in the ?dreaded India,? she had to stay informed about the 
political parties, the new monarch, and any other scandalous political event that happened 
during those six years away from the Metropole. 
 The lack of political interest among the European society of Calcutta appaled 
Eden. On answering her friend?s questions about her new Indian experiences, Emily 
replied about this outrage, ?They read no new books, they take not the lightest interest in 
home politics, and everything is melted down into being purely local.?
272
 Eden was not 
suited for local politics because she disliked Calcutta society and its estrangement from 
anything English and the loss of British identity among the people. What Emily 
discovered was that politics only became popular when there was a transitioning moment 
or great disrepute. In one instance, Emily noted the revived appeal of English politics to 
Anglo-Indian society, 
You cannot imagine the interest English politics have again become now 
we have the debates to read. I am so proud of our ministers. At this 
distance one ses the thing in an historical point of view, and I cannot help 
thinking they are a wonderful set of men to have brought the country back 
to that pitch of prosperity in which it is, and by such hard labour too.
273
 
 
 Although the discussion of politics may have gone in and out of fashion in 
Calcutta and other European communities in India, Emily could always rely on George to 
                                                
272
 Mis Eden to Mrs. Lister, Government House, January 25, 1837, MEL, 280. 
273
 To ?., Barackpore, Friday, June 17., [1837], LFI, 53. Unknown political debate. 
 
 89 
chat about English politics with her. Whenever alone with George, Eden took the 
opportunity to broach the subject of recent events in English politics, or at least the most 
recent reports within the leters from family and friends in England. Emily wrote once 
about these talks, ?It is odd that whenever George and I are alone we invariably find 
ourselves talking hard English politics-admiration of the prosperity of the country-of his 
Majesty?s ministers, &c. Indian politics are clearly not half so amusing.?
274
 As in 
England, Emily encouraged and helped George in his political positions in London. 
Keping this personal interaction with George while living in India balanced some of 
Emily?s psychological comforts away from Britain. Eden?s English identity developed 
around politics and without the topic, Eden?s psychological discomforts would have 
elevated from its loss. 
 
Conclusions 
 
As John Crowley writes, comfort was something to be learned and expresed, not only 
through the physical aspects of material culture and leisure items, but also through 
emotional responses.
275
 For Emily, psychological discomforts produced an emotional 
reaction triggered by the many efects of living in India. The distance from family and 
friends, isolation from social trends, and cultural aspects of British life severely 
                                                
274
 Wednesday, July 25, [1836], LFI, 201. 
275
 Crowley, The Invention of Comfort, 149. 
 
 90 
discomforted her psyche. The lack of English society as wel as the apparent 
aclimatization to Indian culture caused Eden to believe in the loss of her English 
identity. Afraid of the Indianization of her body and mind, Emily found meaning in the 
receipt of leters from Britain. Leters thus became objects of sentimental value for her to 
cherish just like the discussion of politics with her brother George and other British 
aristocrats. Crowley also argued that comfort was viewed as a sign of social progres.
276
 
In the six years Eden lived in India, she claimed to experience, first hand, the lack of a 
developed ?civilization? among the natives. Social progres was needed in India, Britons 
believed, and Emily?s acounts reflected the European belief in thwarting ?oriental 
despotism? by the subjugation of the Indian people and government, and the justifications 
it provided for imperial expansion. 
 The European perceptions of the Indian environment changed in the early 
ninetenth century from optimism about aclimatization before 1800 to the rejection of it 
and the emergence of ideas of race and the consolidation of colonial rule.
277
 The Indian 
climate and environment impacted every aspect of British imperial development due to 
its contrast with European weather. Eden found India?s heat and high temperatures as a 
profound discomfort to her own English sensibilities. As Crowley notes, ?Historical 
changes in the technology of elementary comforts depended on the existence of a 
fashion-conscious public that was made aware of the dis-comfort of what had previously 
                                                
276
 Ibid, 292. 
277
 Harison, Climates and Constitutions, 2-3. 
 
 91 
been considered functionaly adequate.?
278
 Emily was one of the fashion-conscious 
public that viewed her life through comfort and discomfort, very much aware of her own 
distinctions betwen the physical and psychological divisions. Physicaly, India 
weakened her English constitution and created new modes of transportation and routines 
to subdue the heat. Punkahs became a new part of Eden?s routine that were esential for 
her physical comforts. Due to her status as the Governor-General?s sister and an 
aristocrat, her servants also caried her from destination to destination, in palanquins and 
howdahs. Although Eden was shut in to her household during the hot days, she did 
participate in airing, a walking activity for women that occurred around dusk or at night 
to relieve their discomforts from the climate. 
 To review, as Emily once said of India and her life there, ?The real calamity of 
the life is the separation from home and friends. It fels like death?And the annoyance 
of the life is the climate. It is so very HOT, I do not know how to spel it large 
enough.?
279
 In her leters, Eden never knew how to spel her discomforts large enough. A 
continual theme, Emily demonstrated the impact of physical and psychological comfort 
on the ninetenth-century imperial woman. Indeed, for Emily Eden, comfort engendered 
discomfort and it continualy influenced her life in the ?hot land of strangers.? 
                                                
278
 Crowley, The Invention of Comfort, 291. 
279
 Mis Eden to Lady Campbel, Government House, Calcutta, August 16, 1836, MEL, 
268. Italics and emphasis in original. 
 
 92 
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