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CHAPTER III
MADRAS CATHEDRAL AND CONGREGATION
It is prudent to live on good terms with one’s cook, with ballad-mongers, with doctors, with magicians, with the rulers of one’s country, with rich people, and with obstinate folk.–Sloka.
My husband was gazetted to the joint chaplaincy at St. George’s Cathedral in Madras, an appointment he held for eighteen months. His colleague was the archdeacon, with whom he divided the duty. The bishop assisted whenever he was in residence, but he was away on tour for more than half the year.
St. George’s Cathedral is one of the most beautiful buildings in India. It was erected in 1815–16 on Choultry Plain.
This plain in the eighteenth century was an open tract of land lying between the fort and the jungle that extended to St. Thomas’s Mount. The early occupants of Fort St. George, never free from fear of land attacks, were careful to keep the plain open and clear of any undergrowth that might form cover for an enemy. The country must have presented a very different appearance from that which it now has with its beautiful avenues and wooded compounds. It was the French who caused the most uneasiness. They threatened more than once to become a serious rival to the English Company on the Coromandel Coast, and in 1746 were actually in possession of the fort itself. Again, in 1758, they were before the
