An Account of a Journey in Kashmir by David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer and Letters from Emily Overend Lorimer to her Parents sent from Bahrain and Kerman [‎583v] (1188/1291)

Of course again it would have taken Swedes with their entire
ignorance of the country and its condition* to make any such promise
to each other. The other officers who have died or been killed
out here have all had to be embalmed and transported home at Immense
cost —to the Persian Govt. l.e. the British taxpayer. In this case
Dr. Dodson refused to make himself responsible for the embalming.
Of course natives do embalm after a fashion, for they are very fond
of aarrying thetr dead to Kerbela, but it is rather a crude process
and not wholly satisfactory, at least to European nostrils. Anyhow,
in this case embalming was out of the question, and the only other
resource was cremation. But with the state of local feeling towards
cremation, you can picture how distasteful to all other Europeans
was the idea of their amateur bonfire. Their first idea was to
have it in their own garden, but happily the Hindus'description of
what the process was really like where proper kilns and apparatus
were lacking deterred them from that and they carried out their
operations in the desert at some little distance. Had they per
sisted in the first plan there would almost certainly have been some
sort of riot from the outraged neighbourhood.
To return to Tues. morning, I arrived at the Bank House before
anyone was properly up, and Mrs. T. was greatly relMved to see me.
Her hasty return with a visitor in the midst of the servants’ Spring
Cleaning had naturally rather disconcerted the normal household arran
gements, and she was very thankful to hand over to me the care of
the poor little wife fchile she herself acted Martha round the house
Nothing more brave than Madame Ronne could you imagine; it really is
one of the most amazing things of this amazing life how people rise
to great calamity. With her hospital experience, she had of course
expected the worst more or less, and no doubt the same experience
robbed the illness itself of some of its horrorsip but Just think of
the poor little creature barely 7 months married, out in a foreign
country without any of the comforts and conveniences whimh are
everyday necessaries at home, scarcely able to talk one word to the
nurses and doctors and without another woman of her own nationality
near her. it was wonderful how collected she was and how grate-ful,
womaniike able to appreciate all the little sacrifices that everyone
had been making for her and her husband, Mrs. Taylor’s loan of the cor^
e i c * 4 Sh e was greatly pleased with the flowers to which she
pointed saying thank you ver’ much, my man much like". With
fjgns we could talk a little and after breakfast I volunteered to
take her back again to the Swedes’ house to allow Mrs. T. to finish
SLod-? 1 ? 6, v. 7? went round and found the Invaluable and ubiquitous
-tss Ret.!ey busily attending on the surviving invalid (who is doing
-r.f+1 *-p Madam © R.had with her own hands performed all the last
h f r 5^ band before leaving the house the day before, and
havi^ I™ 1 ??? n 2 W ^ t ° + 1:)e done * 1 could not be rauch ftel P not
?mrnn g fl^Wi att f nd f d such a moment before, but I donned a big
ron acco^ing to instructions and made myself as useful as I could.
When there was nothing more to be done in the sick room, we