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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2011
Calcutta, April 12, 1863.
Dear Simkins,–The hot weather has set in. These words may convey to you no very definite idea, beyond the general one, of punkahs and iced champagne; but to us they are the earnest of miseries which are unutterable. The amenities of life are over for the year. The last waltz has been danced in the assembly-rooms; the last wicket has been pitched on the cricket ground; the last tiffin eaten in the Botanical gardens; the last couple married in the cathedral, at the very sensible and uncanonical hour of half-past five in the afternoon. People have settled themselves down to be clammy, and gloomy, and hepatic for six grilling months. The younger and more vigorous effloresce with a singularly unpleasant erruption, known as “prickly heat”–a condition which is supposed to be a sort of safety-valve for feverish tendencies, and which, therefore, excites the envy of all who are not so blessed. Conceive a climate such that an exquisitely painful cutaneous disorder is allowed to be a fair subject of congratulation! And in such a plight, amidst a temperature of 97° in the shade and anything from headache to apoplexy in the sun, men are supposed to transact official work from morn till stewy eve. Is it fair to expect high efficiency under such circumstances? Are enlarged views compatible with enlarged livers? No strain is put upon the reflective powers of Strasbourg geese.
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