ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way the survey interweaves with the picturesque and how the effect of both modes makes Emily Eden, British writer, though unwittingly and sometimes unhappily, a representative of empire, but often a critical one. In Eden's language, though, military displays are often portrayed as "motley processions". Eden may have declared that she never asks questions and that she hates information, but she has written an informed account of the British presence in the Upper Provinces of pre-1857 India. Starting with an overview of the political journey that Eden makes, this chapter moves into the ways she describes India as a giant drawing room and how, in her travels across it, she reveals the manifestations of British imperial might and mishaps. The chapter concludes with a discussion of her reflections on the impact that the British had on India in the intervening quarter century between her time there and the publication of her letters.
