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“With the most heartfelt joy, my dear Major, I take up my pen to announce to you the happy arrival of the Ramchunder, and the dearest and handsomest little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little Clive is in perfect health. He speaks English wonderfully well. He cried when he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly¹ brought him from Southampton in a postchaise, but these tears in childhood are of very brief duration! The voyage, Mr. Sneid states, was most favourable², occupying only four months and eleven days. How different from that more lengthened³ and dangerous passage of eight months, and almost perpetual sea-sickness, in which my poor dear sister Emma went to Bengal, to become the wife of the best of husbands and the mother of the dearest of little boys, and to enjoy these inestimable blessings⁴ for so brief an interval⁶! She has quitted this wicked and wretched world for one where all is peace. The misery⁷ and ill-treatment which she endured from Captain Case her first odious⁸ husband, were, I am sure, amply repaid, my dear Colonel, by your subsequent affection. If the most sumptuous⁹ dresses which London, even Paris, could supply, jewellery the most costly¹⁰, and elegant lace, and everything lovely and fashionable, could content a woman, these, I am sure, during the last four years of her life, the poor girl had. Of what avail are they when this scene of vanity is closed?

“Mr. Sneid announces that the passage was most favourable. They stayed a week at the Cape¹¹, and three days at St. Helena, where they visited Bonaparte’s tomb (another instance of the vanity of all things!), and their voyage was enlivened off Ascension by the taking of some delicious turtle!

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