MORTALITY AMONG THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF INDIA AND THEIR WIVES.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 75, 23 June 1864, Page 4

MORTALITY AMONG THE GOVER-NORS-GENERAL OF INDIA AND THEIR WIVES.

[From the Daily Telegraph.] A sad figure, draped in mourning, and wearing the ■widow's cap, has just landed upon our shores, leaving in India her noble husband, with whom she shared so many cares and honours, and bringing home thence only a great and lasting sorrow. Touched alike by the dignity of her grief and station, his Majesty the Emperor of the French did not allow this lady to pass through his capital unnoticed, but sent a gentleman of his household to express respectful sympathy with her, and to conduct her a little way on her road to England. The courtesy is one which we are proud to imitate, alike in its sincere and its unobtrusive aspects, for, while we would not permit ourselves to dwell publicly on the personal bereavement of Lady Elgin, we cannot let her arrival among us pass without mark of profound, if restrained, interest. The landing at Dover of her ladyship and suite is the last written chapter of the sad history of the consorts of our Viceroys. Their position in India is a proud one, and such as no Emperor in the world can call it condescension to recognise -with his best attentions. They sail, each with her distinguished lord, to be the Queen Kegent of a continent, over which he is practically a King. No Court in Europe has power over a vaster population, a more magnificent country, than that which these Englishwomen adorn and share ; they are in India the " Lady of the Lord Bahadur," mistresses paramount of society, and to the eyes of the natives, undoubted " Maharanees " — indubitable Empresses. It seems a happy fortune — it is a splendid one ; but look back only through, three such reigns upon the vice-regal throne, and note what is paid for the dazzling honour. Lady Elgin is back among us now, without the beloved presence which so short a time ago, in plenitude of reputation and power, was to her her husband — a higher title than that of Governor-G-eneral in the heart of the faithful wife. The man by whose side she left her country sleeps far away from it now, among the rhododendrons and oaks of the Himalaya. He is one more in the long roll of the English who lie in an Indian grave ; and she one more in the list of those who come back, never to hear the name of the costly country without thinking of the little spot in it which is hers by the title-deed of tears. She survives her husband. Her predecessor iv the saloons of Government House, Lady Canning — the graceful hostess in Calcutta, the accomplished friend of Her Majesty here—died before Lord Canning, adding to his great anxieties for the suppression of the mutiny, the load of an irreparable loss. Lady Canning's predecessor, again — Lord Dalhouaie's amiable wife — departed this life before her husband. Can any incident of domestic loss seem sadder ? She had quitted India, obliged to fly from its cruel sun for her life ; but all too late. Her husband caught the tidings of her death at sea from the hoarse bawling of the newspaper-boys as he drove in the evening along the Strand at Calcutta, and re-entered his palace a lonely man. Three Governors-General, and two Vice-Queens dead in fifteen years — such is the gloomy retrospect suggested by the arrival of Lady Elgin ; that is the price we pay, enviers of England, for the country which we "water with our tears and fertilise with our blood.