Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

To the same.

London: August 1857.

I hope you really did arrive in Boston safe and sound. Our parliament is at last going away. Indian news appears to create no sort of alarm, scarcely so much as anxiety; for one reason, people must take their holiday even from their anxieties. The atrocities are of course felt pretty strongly.

This town is hot, dusty, and of ill-odour, and very different from Westmoreland, where we were together last.

September 3.

News from India, I think, is getting to be felt more seriously.

October 31.

Well, Delhi is taken, which is a happy thing, though one dreads to hear of the details. Captures of cities are horrible at the best, and this cannot have been at the best, with wild Sikhs, and no quarter, and a wealthy and luxurious metropolis.

If you have read the letters in the ‘Times,’ you will have noticed Indophilus, i.e. Sir Charles Trevelyan (who ought, in proper Greek, to call himself Philindus; Indophilus would be more properly ‘beloved of the Hindoos’). Leadenhall Street is full of the humane feeling, and would back up Lord Canning’s proclamation, and Mr. Grant’s Allahabad releases, with all its influence. It may be right, but it is not discreet; it is not possible yet to enforce clemency. They should have waited till Delhi had fallen, and Lucknow been relieved. So, at least, we think here. The Company, however, is sadly at a discount, and will have hard work to maintain any of its power. The War Department, I believe, is very hard upon it. Sir Robert Vivian, who commanded the Turkish Contingent, and who is one of the directors appointed by the Crown, spoke the other day of the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi as a thing that ought to have been put down at once. He believes there was no sort of general conspiracy on foot, and urges the irregular and utterly indiscreet way in which the regiments have mutinied, here and there, and at the worst chosen times and places. Neill commanded a brigade under him in the Crimea. He quite disapproved of Neill’s outrages on the caste feeling at Cawnpore. I confess I don’t. I think we may break down caste one way or other, and ally ourselves with the Sikhs and the Buddhists of Nepaul, &c., whose religions are reasonable and comparatively unceremonial.

I don’t believe Christianity can spread far in Asia unless it will allow men more than one wife, which isn’t likely yet, out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin touch-not-and-taste-not, and I-am-holier-than-thou-because-I-don’t-touch-and-taste, may be got rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallised theism, out of which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the central negro.