Twenty-One Days in India; and, The Teapot Series | Page 7

a gold
medal and a book.
With the inferior clergy the Archdeacon is not at his ease. He cannot
respect the little ginger-bread gods of doctrine they make for
themselves; he cannot worship at their hill altars; their hocus-pocus and
their crystallised phraseology fall dissonantly on his ear; their talk of
chasubles and stoles, eastern attitude, and all the rest of it, is to him as a
tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. He would like to see the clergy
merely scholars and men of sense set apart for the conduct of divine
worship and the encouragement of all good and kindly offices to their
neighbours; he does not wish to see them mediums and conjurors. He
thinks that in a heathen country their paltry fetishism of misbegotten
notions and incomprehensible phrases is peculiarly offensive and
injurious to the interests of civilisation and Christianity. Of course the
Archdeacon may be very much mistaken in all this; and it is this
generous consciousness of fallibility which gives the singular charm to
his religious attitude. He can take off his ecclesiastical spectacles and
perceive that he may be in the wrong like other men.
Let us take a last look at the Archdeacon, for in the whole range of
prominent Anglo-Indian characters our eye will not rest upon a more
orbicular and satisfactory figure.
A good Archdeacon, nobly planned To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit gay and bright, With something of the candle-light.
ALI BABA.

No. V

WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT

[August 30, 1879.]
He is clever, I am told, and being clever he has to be rather morose in
manner and careless in dress, or people might forget that he was clever.
He has always been clever. He was the clever man of his year. He was
so clever when he first came out that he could never learn to ride, or
speak the language, and had to be translated to the Provincial
Secretariat. But though he could never speak an intelligible sentence in
the language, he had such a practical and useful knowledge of it, in
half-a-dozen of its dialects, that he could pass examinations in it with
the highest credit, netting immense rewards. He thus became not only
more and more clever, but more and more solvent; until he was an
object of wonder to his contemporaries, of admiration to the
Lieutenant-Governor, and of desire to several Burra Mem Sahibs[A]
with daughters. It was about this time that he is supposed to have
written an article published in some English periodical. It was said to
be an article of a solemn description, and report magnified the
periodical into the Quarterly Review. So he became one who wrote for
the English Press. It was felt that he was a man of letters; it was
assumed that he was on terms of familiar correspondence with all the
chief literary men of the day. With so conspicuous a reputation, he
believed it necessary to do something in religion. So he gave up
religion, and allowed it to be understood that he was a man of advanced
views: a Positivist, a Buddhist, or something equally occult. Thus he
became ripe for the highest employment, and was placed successively
on a number of Special Commissions. He inquired into everything; he
wrote hundredweights of reports; he proved himself to have the true
paralytic ink flux, precisely the kind of wordy discharge or brain
hæmorrhage required of a high official in India. He would write ten
pages where a clod-hopping collector would write a sentence. He could
say the same thing over and over again in a hundred different ways.
The feeble forms of official satire were at his command. [He could bray
ironically at subordinate officers. He had the inborn arrogance required

for official "snubbing." Being without a ray of good feeling or modesty,
he could allow himself to write with ceremonial rudeness of men who
in his inmost heart he knew to be in every way his superiors.] He
desired exceedingly to be thought supercilious, and he thus became
almost necessary to the Government of India, was canonised, and
caught up to Simla. The Indian papers chanted little anthems, "the
Services" said "Amen," and the apotheosis was felt to be a success. On
reaching Simla he was found to be familiar with the two local "jokes,"
planted many years ago by some jackass. One of these "jokes" is about
everything in India having its peculiar smell, except a flower; the
second is some inanity about the Indian Government being a despotism
of despatch-boxes tempered by the loss of the keys. He often emitted
these mournful "jokes" until he was declared to be an acquisition to
Simla society.
Such is the man I am with to-day. His house is