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 [‎519v] (1060/1291)

H.B.M. Consulate,
K SR M A N .
27 - IS - 13
XLIV.
Such a lot of really valuable material has ,;ot lost by my
not havln «5 had time to rrlte a Diary at any len^ht for sfcme trl’ir; /
that I must take time by the r 'orelock and iiet iuickly started this
week. TThrt a time we have been having \
Two days before Christmas we were both wishing It could be
deleted from the Calendar and feeling In very low s l^tts about It
and yet ’^hen it came r, e enjoyed it hugely and were able to rise to
the thoroughly festive feeling after all. It was a horrid rush
though. There Is so much that you cannot do too long beforehand
And as if domestlcend internal affairs v^ere not enough to occupy y***
in the last two or three days we -ere saddled with a lot of other
’-ork. You know all the fag poor Lock has had over his Trade
Report trying to reduce the statistics to some sort of order, and
if not to accuracy to some soaat^of probability. It has taken al£
^ his snare moment© nor some months and after several ’redactions’
had at last een put Into shape and committed to Fatty to get
ready for his postm Lock was particularly anxious to get it
out of the house efore Christmas especially as it is already
months late. Well it came back at la’t frfom Fatty’s hands
so disgracefully type-written that e had to sit down and divide 1
up and re-do the whole thing our two solves. Now typing tables
of statistics is work with which one could in a short lime become
very neat but which experimentally "or amateurs Is no Joke, and
we raced against time for several days. The^eastly thing was
triumphantly rosted “t last on Christmas Sve, but poor Lock spent
almost 11 his birthday speechlessly bent over it .’
And all the ’holly-hanging’ etc. in which one looks for some
ssl tance from the great male mind ict to mention its hammers
and tacks had to be done by this poor child singlehanded.
However, Christmas saw us ready and the rooms very gay. Cypress
branches which are a very pretty d rk green and make excellent
clumps though# they are too stiff to hang gracefully were massed
on the mantelpieces and poised - very precariously — behind
pictures etc. As the cypress green is rather dark I relieved
the masses of it by trotting out Mother’s beautiful artificial
flowers and dotting them here and there. I also plundered
the greenh use and got a lot of geraniums, the Nawab An honorific title; an official acting as a provincial deputy ruler in South Asia; or a significant Muslim landowner in nineteenth century India. sent some bea
utiful narcissus and the gard ner was able to ind long sprays
of green rose leaves ^hich make a very pretty green. On the
table I put two vases of narcissus end in the ventre my four deep
red roses almost buried in real leaves so that they even took
in the gardener and he Jealously said ’’rthere did you get those
beautiful roses, Khanum ? ’ And thereupon approaeged to smell
them to the immense delight of the other servants.
The lunch table was well on the way to being laid when we had
to mount our bicycles and fly off to Church for 10. 3D. We got batiC
Just in time for me to put the finishing touches to everything.
Our first guests, a shade early, arrived at the door while I was l
still cl d in my apron and cycling dress. Lock however was read
and I did not let my elf be fussed, out ran off to change with