Our 'Lodge' at Dalhousie

The lodge in this charming view is the summer retreat of the Urmstons at Dalhousie, India. Amateur artist Henry Brabazon Urmston served in the Bengal Army 1847–74. He held various positions, including Assistant Commissioner in the Punjab with special duty in Kashmir during 1857, and Deputy Commissioner in Peshawar, Bannu, Sialkot, Amritsar and Rawalpindi.

In 1850 he married Harriett Elizabeth Hughes (1828–1897)—possibly the women at the right of the picture—who had arrived in India earlier that year as a Christian missionary, a calling to which she was to devote her life in both India and later in the UK. Her mission was not to the people of India, but initially to the wives of the soldiers. Her meetings attracted the husbands too and she was known as 'Holy Mary'. After their return to the UK in 1875 due to ill health, she spent years—unusually for a woman—preaching in support of the Zenana Bible and Medical Missionary Society.

The child at the left is likely one of their daughters; the Urmstons had eight children—in 1861 they would have had two daughters aged eight and three.