IN OCTOBER 1856, the wife of the Governor General of India noted her satisfaction with recent changes at Government House in Calcutta: “I believe it would look rather nice even as an English country-house, so marvelously is it improved by 450 yards of rose-chintz, a great many arm-chairs, small round tables, drawings etc., and flowerpots in number” (Allen 34). Having arrived in Calcutta in February of that year, Lady Charlotte Canning wasted no time in transporting Victorian upper-class domestic style to a key spot on Britain’s nineteenth-century imperial map. As several recent examinations of the role of Victorian women in the work of empire have shown us, although Lady Canning’s lavish transformation of colonized space into something resembling a Derbyshire drawing-room could not be matched by lower-ranked Englishwomen who accompanied their military and civilian husbands to outposts of empire — 450 yards is a lot of chintz and the Queen had personally despatched some Royal family portraits to Calcutta to assist Lady Canning in her interior decoration — they too did their English domesticating bit. Among other things, these women grew pansies in Simla, served afternoon tea in Ceylon, and arranged croquet parties in Jamaica. They were also faced with less pleasant tasks, as one learns from the memoirs of Harriet Tytler, who accompanied her husband on various military postings in India during the 1840s and 50s. Tytler buried several children, dead of non-treatable illnesses, endured the killing climate of Dacca, and survived the siege of Delhi in 1857.