BIB_ID
246793
Accession number
MA 4735
Creator
Ayres, Philip Burnard Chenery, 1840-1899.
Display Date
undated.
Credit line
Gift of Herbert Cahoon, 1993.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 26.7 x 21.4 cm
Notes
The fragment is undated. According to a memorial pamphlet published on his death in 1899, Ayres served as surgeon to the Eastern Bengal Railway and subsequently as a civil surgeon in Kushtia, Bangladesh in the late 1860s and early 1870s, suggesting that this letter may be from this period.
No place of writing is given. References to the "Dacca Brass Band" and a singer from Calcutta may indicate that it was written in or near Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Ayres's correspondent has not been identified. Ayres gives his name at the end of the letter as "T. [or J.] Mowat Esq M.D."
Illustrated with three pen-and-ink drawings of a boat ride; the bridegroom, the guests and the dancers in the nautch house; and Ayres and Page having a meal on-board.
No place of writing is given. References to the "Dacca Brass Band" and a singer from Calcutta may indicate that it was written in or near Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Ayres's correspondent has not been identified. Ayres gives his name at the end of the letter as "T. [or J.] Mowat Esq M.D."
Illustrated with three pen-and-ink drawings of a boat ride; the bridegroom, the guests and the dancers in the nautch house; and Ayres and Page having a meal on-board.
Provenance
Herbert Cahoon.
Summary
Describing a journey by boat and the arrival of himself and a companion named "Page" at the site of a wedding celebration; describing a "Nautch House" filled with "gorgeous chandeliers and hundreds of candels [sic]"; commenting on performances by the "Dacca Brass Band" and "the sweetest songstress in Calcutta"; describing the entrance of the bridegroom who "was seated on an ottoman well provided with cushions & scent bottles of silver fillagree [sic] work, and a handsome hooka"; listing the food served for dinner; adding that, after dinner, two girls came out to dance: "at any rate thats what I suppose they did but they did not move their feet a great deal, the most energetic motions taking place in the region of the seat of honor"; writing that he and Page then went to sleep and woke up to a "chota haziri" (for "Chhota haazri," an early morning meal) of spiced tea and biscuits; describing the next leg of their journey: "Night came on and so did a storm and the wet came through the roof and we lay on the bank all night. Morning came, we reached the Railway just in time to loose [sic] a train and have to wait six hours for the mail and amuse ourselves washing shaving & dressing and eating the rest of the twelfth cake, with two bottles of Stout"; writing that they "at last got home, vowing we would not go that distance to see a Nautch in the rains again."
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