The Terrible Dénouement
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| General Elphinstone |
In November
1841 Macnaghten was due to leave Kabul to take up the post as Governor of
Bombay. His successor Sir Alexander Burnes was murdered by a mob; there was no
retribution and the rebels were not dispersed.
The
appalling winter weather kept the British force at Kandahar from marching to
Kabul. At the beginning of December, with supplies running low, Macnaghten and
Elphinstone agreed with the rebel chiefs that they would leave Afghanistan and
release Dost Mohammed.
Before the
retreat commenced Macnaghten, suspecting the good faith of the groups he’d
treated with, opened negotiations with a rival Afghan faction, who betrayed him
to Dost Mohammed’s son Akbar Khan and was assassinated on 23rd
December.
Akbar Khan
On the 15th
December 1841 Emily wrote to a friend;
‘We go on very
quietly with little scraps of news from Peshawur, which is on the frontier, and the last place with which we have
any sure communication. Inasmuch as things are not worse they are better, as
the snow, which was beginning to fall, would affect the unhoused assailants
more than our troops in their lines. To-day General Sale forwarded a short
French note from General —, begging for help and ending with 'Nous
sommes dans un péril extrême.'[i]
Elphinstone
refused to seize the citadel and hold out until reinforcements could arrive;
nor would he agree to fight through to Jallalabad. The evacuation of Kabul started on 6th January 1842; the weather was bitter and the
majority of the stores and guns were left behind. The women and children and
some of the officers, including Elphinstone, were given up as hostages and the
troops made their last stand in the pass of Jagdallak.
The Return of Dr Brydon
By the 13th
January, of the 4,500 troops and 12,000 camp followers, only 120 prisoners,
some sepoys and Dr Brydon were left alive, victims of the
bitter cold and the insurrectionists. Brydon arrived alone in Jallalabad to
bring the news of the worst defeat the British Army had ever suffered.
On 29th
January Emily wrote home;
‘The accounts from Cabul are
more distressing and incomprehensible every day. One of Lady —'s simple
good letters have come to hand. She talks with bitter disgust of the cowardice
of the whole proceeding, and says the retreat was to begin the next day, and
her son-in-law, Lieutenant —, who was wounded the other day, adds a note
to the same purpose and says, 'God may help us, for we are not allowed to help
ourselves.'[ii]
The First Afghan War cost the British much prestige in India and George’s
reputation is coloured by the tragedy.
Return to England
Lord Ellenborough
George
wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, but it was now down to his replacement, Lord Ellenborough[iii] to decide on the appropriate actions; a relieving
force marched through the Khyber Pass to find that the garrison at Jallalabad
had defeated its besiegers and that the soldiers at Kandahar were also holding
out.
George’s
tour of duty ended on 28th February 1842 and the Edens left Calcutta
on March 12th after a somewhat harried search for a vessel.
‘We went to the Fort Church
this morning; and in the evening George and I went on board the 'Bucephalus' to
see —'s cabin and —'s. The probability is that we shall go home
in one of these country ships, as no Queen's ship seems to be forthcoming; and
they are, in fact, nearly as comfortable.’[iv]
The
unexpected early arrival of Lord Ellenborough went off better than expected, ‘Lord Ellenborough arrived twelve days ago, and we are all living together and are excessively fond of each other……..He startles people so very much by the extraordinary activity of his English notions; the climate will settle a great many of them, and in the meantime he really is so good-natured and hospitable we are quite touched by it.’ [v]
The journey
home took four months on a ship that Emily claimed housed 80,000 cockroaches.
Home At Last
Upon their
return to England Emily, Fanny and George set up home at Eden Lodge, in
Kensington Gore, where Emily returned to her task as a political hostess. In
1844 Emily published a portfolio of 24 lithographs entitled Portraits of the
Princes and People of India.
Robert Eden
Emily was
bereft when her beloved George died unexpectedly on 1st January 1849
aged 64; he was in his third posting as First Lord of the Admiralty. The
Earldom became extinct and brother Robert took the title that had been his
father’s and George’s before him; Baron Auckland.
Robert was
two years younger than Emily and had been consecrated Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1847[vi]. He was married with
eight children and had been chaplain to William IV and Victoria.
Fanny died
in April of 1849; Emily stayed at Eden Lodge, entertaining friends,
corresponding with friends and writing.
The Author
Emily Eden
In 1859 the
second of Emily’s novels; the Semi-Detached House was published anonymously
having been edited by Lady Teresa Lewis, a friend of Emily’s. Lewis negotiated
a fee of £300[vii].
The Semi-Detached
House tells the story of how the spoilt and pregnant Blanche gets on with her
new socially inferior neighbours, when forced to live in a semi-detached
property while her new husband is away on diplomatic duties in Berlin.
Blanche’s travails while awaiting her husband’s return are intertwined with
three romances.
The lives of
all the local inhabitants are somewhat blighted by news in the local rag;
‘Rumours of all sorts are
rife – a foreign court and a villa not one hundred miles from London are the
scenes of several piquant anecdotes. Whether the last is tenanted by his Lordship’s
wife, or his chére amie we forbear to
say.’[viii]
which causes
much misunderstandings between the various parties; the untangling of which
Emily skilfully sorted so that Blanche and her husband and the three romantic
couples all end happily.
Five years after
Semi was published Anthony Trollope, in his book The Way We Live Now[ix], , echoed one of Emily’s themes. Trollope’s main
character a Jewish banker called Augustus Melmotte bears several similarities
to Emily’s Baron Sampson; being a Jewish banker, having a daughter who does not
fall in love in compliance with her father’s wishes and a fall from grace as
the result of dubious financial practises;
‘”And the rascal [Baron
Sampson] is actually gone – went off while the dancing was going on….he got
into a steamer, and has not been heard of since.”’[x]
But Trollope’s
main character suffers a more violent end;
‘Drunk as he had been – more
drunk as he probably became during the night – still he was able to deliver
himself from the indignities and penalties to which the law might have
subjected him by a dose of prussic acid.’[xi]
Emily was
pleased with the success of ‘Semi’;
‘Semi has had more success than I require, and considerably more
than I expected.’[xii]
Following
the success of the Semi-Detached House the Semi-Attached Couple was published
in 1860 after some re-writing;
‘When I wrote it. I thought
it I thought it a tolerably faithful representation of modern society; but some
young friends………..have read it with the indulgence of happy youth,
condescendingly that it is amusing, inasmuch as it is a curious picture of old
fashioned society.’[xiii]
Both books
were acclaimed for ‘their lively wit and sharp observation’; the similarity to
the novels of Jane Austen being no drawback. Following a period in obscurity
the two novels were reprinted in 1927 by Elkin Matthews, with an introduction
by Anthony Eden.
Emily’s
letters to Mary from India were published in 1867 following the success of the
novels. The book was entitled Up The
Country. Further letters were published in 1869 three years after
Emily’s death. More of Emily’s letters were published by Violet Dickinson[xiv] in 1919 under the title Miss Eden’s
Letters.
Emily died
in 1869, living in Richmond; she was seventy two, having outlived those she
loved best by 20 years. She was buried at Beckenham.
Bibliography
The Last
Mughal – William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury 2006
The
Semi-attached Couple and the Semi-detached House – Emily Eden, Virago 1988
Up the
Country – Emily Eden, Virago 1983
Heaven’s
Command – James Morris[xv], Penguin 1979
The Way We
Live Now – Anthony Trollope, Folio Society 1992
The Age of
Reform – Sir Llewellyn Woodward FBA, Oxford University Press 1997
www.wikipedia.en
[ii]
Ibid
[iii]
Once again there had been a change of ministry and the leader of the
Conservative Party Robert Peel was now Prime Minister
[v]
Ibid
[vii]
Worth in 2011 £24,700.00 using the retail price index or £187,000.00
using average earnings www.measuringworth.com
[viii]
The Semi-detached House – Eden
[ix]
First published in 1874
[x]
Ibid
[xi]
The Way We Live Now - Trollope
[xii]
The Semi-attached Couple and the Semi-detached House – Eden
[xiii]
Preface to The Semi-attached Couple - Eden
[xv]
This edition predates Jan Morris’s change of gender from James
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