On his leisurely journey “Up the Country,” Auckland was to be accompanied by his two waspish but adoring unmarried sisters, Emily and Fanny Eden, his pompous and pernickety Political Secretary, Macnaghten, and various other viceregal officials, attachés, wives and babies as well as Macnaghten’s notoriously bossy and demanding wife, Frances, and her entourage of a Persian cat, a rosy parakeet and five attending ayahs.
