Up the Country: Letters to her sister from the Northern Provinces of India

3.7/5 ( ratings)

In 1837 Emily Eden’s brother George, Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India, embarked upon the diplomatic initiative that four years later culminated in the catastrophe of the First Anglo-Afghan War. On the long, arduous Progress from Calcutta to Simla and back he took with him Emily, their sister Fanny, countless British East India Company officers and officials, and 12,000 soldiers, servants and bearers. Up the Country was not meant to be published; it eventually was, almost 25 years after its writing, from Miss Eden’s simple desire that the manner and style of the great spectacle should not be forgotten.

Emily acted as de facto consort to the Governor-General, so had a close-up view of the rajahs and warlords with whom Lord Auckland did business along the way. They were thoroughly alien to a refined and educated Englishwoman, but she had instinctive appreciation of their customs and culture, as well as occasional frank distaste. She was fully conscious of the fine line the English needed to tread in a land to which they had not been invited, but hugely enjoyed the frequent exchanges of marvellous gifts, which she was never allowed to keep.

A beautifully descriptive writer with a sense of the absurd and a light touch, who years later found success as a novelist in the class of Jane Austen, Emily Eden breathes life into a varied and colourful cast that as well as kings and princes includes eccentric clergymen, obstreperous servants, liverish generals, exotic dancers and her pet dog’s own small retinue.

The antithesis of the stereotypical English, she would have been the most congenial of travelling companions, and Up the Country is a wonderfully entertaining journal.