WD4465

Unfinished drawing of Elysium Hill at Simla, looking towards Auckland House and the Himalaya, 1838-9.

Inscribed on the original page mount: ‘Emily Eden’.,

Pencil and water-colour; double page 181 by 530 mm. extracted from an album of Eden family interest, including material by Emily’s elder sister Caroline and Lieut. William Eden.

Note: Lord Auckland and his sisters Emily and Frances Eden reached Simla on 3 April 1838, in the course of Auckland’s expedition to the Punjab, and stayed there until November that year before proceeding into the Punjab to meet Ranjit Singh. They returned to Simla in 1839, finally leaving for Calcutta in October that year. In Simla they occupied Auckland House on the top of Elysium Hill, which projects northwards from the Simla ridge below the Jakko hill.

A tract of land, the nucleus of the Simla district, was retained after the expulsion of the Gurkha forces in 1816. The town itself was begun when Lieut. R. Ross, Asst. Political Agent for the Hill States, erected the first cottage in 1819, and three years later his successor Lieut. C.P. Kennedy, built a permanent house, which is the gabled house seen below Auckland House on this same ridge. Godfrey Vigne made a close-up view of the Kennedy house in 1834 as well as a general view of Simla from Jakko, with about 20 houses visible (WD3110, ff. 6 and 9). Capt. Kershaw’s lithograph (P1127) shows the same view as Eden’s, but from a higher vantage point.