June 29, 1892
Shinigal, Burma
Dear Brother Ambrose,
I'm writing to tell you about the dreadful time I'm having here in Victorian era Burma. I know your friend Turnips has the ability to travel in time. I'm wondering if you could use that somehow to bring me some better gin to the European Club here in Shinigal. As you know I came here to Burma to bring improvement to the lives of the savages. Not just to make them into copy-cat mimics of Europeans, but real progressive improvement. So I came with my copy of Das Kapital cleverly hidden in my copy of the Kipling Reader and Tom Brown's Schooldays. It was always my intention to get these dusky-hewed primitives to liberate themselves from the yoke of their European oppression. I also wanted to come to British India to learn more about the noble Eastern spirituality which seems so much more in tune with the rhythms of the world than our stuffy C. of E. taught to us by Vicar Callaway back home.
Its just that its so hard. For one thing none of the single European gentlemen will leave me alone as the prospects of finding a memsahib in British India are pretty slim unless one of the officer wives's is widowed. For the same reason the European wives are very protective of me and are always trying to fix me up with the right sort of man. I was recently chaperoned on a date with a Reginald Maxwell the leader of the local constabulary and forrest rangers. He was a wonderful sort of chap and all that, but really not the sort you grow close too. A young lady needs to be mindful that it takes more than a bushy mustache to make a man and she can't just go marrying anyone.
I'll add as an aside that it was extremely shocking when Maxwell was cut to pieces with dahs by the relatives of a man Maxwell had to shoot for poaching on Mr. McGreavy's tea plantation. I have to say the club was outraged by this incident. Not because anyone enjoyed Maxwell's company. He was just a "good bloke" to most of the men here but it was because a European--a white person had been killed by the Burmese natives.
Another thing that is hard is the other wives keep a sharp eye on everything I do. In class recently, I was about to explain to the local girls that they should receive equal pay for equal work and the right to vote so as to increase suffrage when Mrs. Hawthorn, the wife of Colonel Hawthorn the district commander, came into my classroom and I had to go back to discussing the finer points of Ivanhoe and the importance of the code of medieval chivalry, as directed by the syllabus. Furthermore, it seems the dirty buggers have no conception whatsoever of an industrial proletariat.
As the months have rolled on I have found myself having to keep up appearances so much that I seem to have very few opportunities to teach the way I came out here from our estate to do. The lack of decent gin is troubling although we manage.
Another headache is that the locals never seem to want to do what you pay them to do. My housekeeper Daw Mya even had the gaul to ask me for an increase of her wages because her father had been arrested in the sweep of troublemakers following Maxwell's death. I showed that ingrate Daw Mya the door just as fast as you can say Jack Robinson. She begged and pleaded with me to keep her on. "No, please Miss Rossaroni, if you fire me I get set on fire" It was all so dreadful. Finally just to shut the poor woman up, I hired her back, but I cut her wages just to let her know who was boss. You can't let these people run roughshod over you or you'll never hear the end of it. Mrs. Hawthorn had the same problem but she actually did fire her housegirl. Funny enough the locals did set fire to that girl so I guess Daw Mya wasn't lying about that. She seems to lie about so much else though that dirty savage.
Anyway, send your love and your finest gin,
Yours always,
Nells,
Miss Nellie Grace Rossaroni
