Twenty-One Days in India; and, The Teapot Series | Page 8

beautifully situated,
overlooking a deep ravine, full of noble pine-trees, and surrounded by
rhododendrons. The verandah is gay with geraniums and tall servants
in Imperial red deeply encrusted with gold. Within, all is very
respectable and nice, only the man is--not exactly vile, but certainly
imperfect in a somewhat conspicuous degree. With the more attractive
forms of sin he has no true sympathy. I can strike no concord with him
on this umbrageous side of nature. I am seriously shocked to discover
this, for he affects infirmity; but his humanity is weak. In his character
I perceive the perfect animal outline, but the colour is wanting; the
glorious sunshine, the profound glooms of humanity are not there.
Such a man is dangerous; he decoys you into confidences. Even Satan
cannot respect a sinner of this complexion,--a sinner who is only
fascinated by the sinfulness of sin. As for my poor host, I can see that
he has never really graduated in sin at all; he has only sought the degree
of sinner honoris causa. I am sure that he never had enough true
vitality or enterprise to sin as a man ought to sin, if he does sin. [Of
course a man ought not to sin; and the nobler sort try to reduce their
sinning to a minimum; but when they do sin I hold that they sin like
men. (I have heard it said that a man should sin like a gentleman; but I
am much disposed to think that the gentleman nature appears in the

non-sinning lucid intervals.)] When I speak of sin I will be understood
to mean the venial offences of prevarication and sleeping in church. I
am not thinking of sheep-stealing or highway robbery. My clever
friend's work consists chiefly in reducing files of correspondence on a
particular subject to one or two leading thoughts. Upon these he casts
the colour of his own opinions, and submits the subjective product to
the Secretary or Member of Council above him for final orders. His
mind is one of the many dense and refractive mediums through which
the Government of India looks out upon India.
From time to time he is called upon to write a minute or a note on some
given subject, and then it is that his thoughts and words expand freely.
He feels bound to cover an area of paper proportionate to his own
opinion, of his own importance; he feels bound to introduce a certain
seasoning of foreign words and phrases; and he feels bound to create, if
the occasion seems in any degree to warrant it, one of those cock-eyed,
limping, stammering epigrams which belong exclusively to the official
humour of Simla. [In writing thus, the figure of another Secretariat
official rises before me with reproachful looks. I see the thought-worn
face of that Secretary to whom the Rajas belong, and who is, in every
particular, a striking contrast with the typical person whose portrait I
sketch. The Secretary in the Foreign Department is a scholar and a man
of letters by instinct. Whatever he writes is something more than
correct and precise--it is impressed with the sweep and cadence of the
sea; it is rhythmical, it is sonorous.]
[But let us return to the prisoner in the dock] I have said that the
Secretary is clever, scornful, jocose, imperfectly sinful, and nimble
with his pen. I shall only add that he has succeeded in catching the tone
of the Imperial Bumbledom; and then I shall have finished my defence.
This tone is an affectation of æsthetic and literary sympathies,
combined with a proud disdain of everything Indian and Anglo-Indian.
The flotsam and jetsam of advanced European thought are eagerly
sought and treasured up. "The New Republic" and "The Epic of Hades"
are on every drawing-room table. One must speak of nothing but the
latest doings at the Gaiety, the pictures of the last Academy, the ripest

outcome of scepticism in the Nineteenth Century, or the aftermath in
the Fortnightly. If I were to talk to our Secretariat man about the
harvest prospects of the Deckan, the beauty of the Himalayan scenery,
or the book I have just published in Calcutta about the Rent Law, he
would stare at me with feigned surprise and horror.
"When he thinks of his own native land, In a moment he seems to be
there; But, alas! Ali Baba at hand Soon hurries him back to despair."
ALI BABA.

No. VI

H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO
[Illustration: THE BENGALI BABOO--"Full of inappropriate words
and phrases."]

[September 13, 1879.]
The ascidian[B] that got itself evolved into Bengali Baboos must have
seized the first moment of consciousness and thought to regret the step
it had taken; for however much we may desire to diffuse Babooism
over the