Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 by George Otto Trevelyan (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

“Was there ever a more appropriate quotation? I believe that nobody on either side of the controversy found out a text so much to the purpose as one which I cited to the Council of India, when we were discussing this business: ‘If this be a question of words, and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.’ But though, like Gallio, I drove them and their petitions from my judgment seat, I could not help saying to one of the missionaries, who is here on the Hills, that I thought it a pity to break up the Church of Tanjore on account of a matter which such men as Swartz and Heber had not been inclined to regard as essential. ‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘the sooner the Church of Tanjore is broken up the better. You can form no notion of the worthlessness of the native Christians there.’ I could not dispute this point with him; but neither could I help thinking, though I was too polite to say so, that it was hardly worth the while of so many good men to come fifteen thousand miles over sea and land in order to make proselytes, who, their very instructors being judges, were more children of hell than before.”

Unfortunately Macaulay’s stay on the Neilgherries coincided with the monsoon. “The rain streamed down in floods. It was very seldom that I could see a hundred yards in front of me. During a month together I did not get two hours’ walking.” He began to be bored, for the first and last time in his life; while his companions, who had not his resources, were ready to hang themselves for very dulness. The ordinary amusements with which, in the more settled parts of India, our countrymen beguile the rainy season, were wanting in a settlement that had only lately been reclaimed from the desert; in the immediate vicinity of which you still ran the chance of being “trod into the shape of half a crown by a wild elephant, or eaten by the tigers, which prefer this situation to the plains below for the same reason that takes so many Europeans to India; they encounter an uncongenial climate for the sake of what they can get.” There were no books in the place except those that Macaulay had brought with him, among which, most luckily, was Clarissa Harlowe. Aided by the rain outside, he soon talked his favourite romance into general favour. The reader will consent to put up with one or two slight inaccuracies in order to have the story told by Thackeray.

“I spoke to him once about Clarissa. ‘Not read Clarissa!’ he cried out. ‘If you have once read Clarissa, and are infected by it, you can’t leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot season in the Hills; and there were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had Clarissa with me; and, as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe, and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace. The Governor’s wife seized the book; the Secretary waited for it; the Chief justice could not read it for tears.’ He acted the whole scene; he paced up and down the Athenaeum library. I dare say he could have spoken pages of the book; of that book, and of what countless piles of others!”

An old Scotch doctor, a Jacobin and a free-thinker, who could only be got to attend church by the positive orders of the Governor-General, cried over the last volume until he was too ill to appear at dinner. [Degenerate readers of our own day have actually been provided with an abridgment of Clarissa, itself as long as an ordinary novel. A wiser course than buying the abridgment would be to commence the original at the Third volume.

In the same way, if anyone, after obtaining the outline of Lady Clementina’s story from a more adventurous friend, will read Sir Charles Grandison, skipping all letters from Italians, to Italians, and about Italians, he will find that he has got hold of a delightful, and not unmanageable, book.] The Chief Secretary,—afterwards, as Sir William Macnaghten, the hero and the victim of the darkest episode in our Indian history,—

declared that reading this copy of Clarissa, under the inspiration of its owner’s enthusiasm, was nothing less than an epoch in his life. After the lapse of thirty years, when Ootacamund had long enjoyed the advantage of a book-club and a circulating library, the tradition of Macaulay and his novel still lingered on with a tenacity most unusual in the ever-shifting society of an Indian station.

“At length Lord William gave me leave of absence. My bearers were posted along the road; my palanquins were packed; and I was to start next day; when an event took place which may give you some insight into the state of the laws, morals, and manners among the natives.

“My new servant, a Christian, but such a Christian as the missionaries make in this part of the world, had been persecuted most unmercifully for his religion by the servants of some other gentlemen on the Hills. At last they contrived to excite against him (whether justly or unjustly I am quite unable to say) the jealousy of one of Lord William’s under-cooks. We had accordingly a most glorious tragicomedy; the part of Othello by the cook aforesaid; Desdemona by an ugly, impudent Pariah girl, his wife; Iago by Colonel Casement’s servant; and Michael Cassio by my rascal. The place of the handkerchief was supplied by a small piece of sugar-candy which Desdemona was detected in the act of sucking, and which had found its way from my canisters to her fingers. If I had any part in the piece, it was, I am afraid, that of Roderigo, whom Shakespeare describes as a ‘foolish gentleman,’ and who also appears to have had ‘money in his purse.’

“On the evening before my departure my bungalow was besieged by a mob of blackguards. The Native judge came with them. After a most prodigious quantity of jabbering, of which I could not understand one word, I called the judge, who spoke tolerable English, into my room, and learned from him the nature of the case. I was, and still am, in doubt as to the truth of the charge. I have a very poor opinion of my man’s morals, and a very poor opinion also of the veracity of his accusers. It was, however, so very inconvenient for me to be just then deprived of my servant that I offered to settle the business at my own expense. Under ordinary circumstances this would have been easy enough, for the Hindoos of the lower castes have no delicacy on these subjects. The husband would gladly have taken a few rupees, and walked away; but the persecutors of my servant interfered, and insisted that he should be brought to trial in order that they might have the pleasure of smearing him with filth, giving him a flogging, beating kettles before him, and carrying him round on an ass with his face to the tail.

“As the matter could not be accommodated, I begged the Judge to try the case instantly; but the rabble insisted that the trial should not take place for some days. I argued the matter with them very mildly, and told them that I must go next day, and that, if my servant were detained, guilty or innocent, he must lose his situation. The gentle and reasoning tone of my expostulations only made them impudent. They are, in truth, a race so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that they always consider humanity as a sign of weakness. The Judge told me that he never heard a gentleman speak such sweet words to the people. But I was now at an end of my sweet words. My blood was beginning to boil at the undisguised display of rancorous hatred and shameless injustice. I sate down, and wrote a line to the Commandant of the station, begging him to give orders that the case might be tried that very evening. The Court assembled, and continued all night in violent contention. At last the judge pronounced my servant not guilty. I did not then know, what I learned some days after, that this respectable magistrate had received twenty rupees on the occasion.

“The husband would now gladly have taken the money which he refused the day before; but I would not give him a farthing. The rascals who had raised the disturbance were furious. My servant was to set out at eleven in the morning, and I was to follow at two. He had scarcely left the door when I heard a noise. I looked forth, and saw that the gang had pulled him out of his palanquin, torn off his turban, stripped him almost naked, and were, as it seemed, about to pull him to pieces. I snatched up a sword-stick, and ran into the middle of them. It was all I could do to force my way to him, and, for a moment, I thought my own person was in danger as well as his. I supported the poor wretch in my arms; for, like most of his countrymen, he is a chickenhearted fellow, and was almost fainting away. My honest barber, a fine old soldier in the Company’s service, ran off for assistance, and soon returned with some police officers. I ordered the bearers to turn round, and proceeded instantly to the house of the Commandant. I was not long detained here. Nothing can be well imagined more expeditious than the administration of justice in this country, when the judge is a Colonel, and the plaintiff a Councillor. I told my story in three words. In three minutes the rioters were marched off to prison, and my servant, with a sepoy to guard him, was fairly on his road and out of danger.”

Early next morning Macaulay began to descend the pass.

“After going down for about an hour we emerged from the clouds and moisture, and the plain of Mysore lay before us—a vast ocean of foliage on which the sun was shining gloriously. I am very little given to cant about the beauties of nature, but I was moved almost to tears. I jumped off the palanquin, and walked in front of it down the immense declivity. In two hours we descended about three thousand feet. Every turning in the road showed the boundless forest below in some new point of view. I was greatly struck with the resemblance which this prodigious jungle, as old as the world and planted by nature, bears to the fine works of the great English landscape gardeners. It was exactly a Wentworth Park, as large as Devonshire. After reaching the foot of the hills, we travelled through a succession of scenes which might have been part of the garden of Eden. Such gigantic trees I never saw. In a quarter of an hour I passed hundreds the smallest of which would bear a comparison with any of those oaks which are shown as prodigious in England. The grass, the weeds, and the wild flowers grew as high as my head. The sun, almost a stranger to me, was now shining brightly; and, when late in the afternoon I again got out of my palanquin and looked back, I saw the large mountain ridge from which I had descended twenty miles behind me, still buried in the same mass of fog and rain in which I had