Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/144

 and anxieties which, as she sadly complained, "had produced only a long train of blasted hopes and heart-rending disappointments," she published these early letters without apparently correcting her mistaken first impressions, and her statement that she had visited Mrs. Hastings at Belvedere House, about five miles from Calcutta, remained to puzzle and mislead successive generations of Calcutta residents.

Poor Mrs. Fay's "trials" began soon after her arrival in India, when she separated from her husband. Some years later, she, having in the mean time been home to England, returned to Calcutta with an "investment" of millinery and dresses, and two young ladies to assist her in disposing of her wares. She opened her shop in a house at the corner of Church Lane and Hastings Street, which overlooked the churchyard in the rear. This circumstance led to an entry in the Vestry records of St. John's Church, on the subject of a complaint by Mrs. Fay, regarding a boundary wall which shut out light and air from her lower rooms. In this record, dated 13th April, 1789, the house is alluded to as "formerly the Post Office," which gives us the origin of the name of "Old Post Office Street" directly opposite. The Post Office was probably removed from this house on account of its being reduced Rh