St Johns Presentation

Summary

Sunday morning, 9 October 1814. Fits of sun between scudding clouds, and the party carried to St John’s by palanquin through the humid streets of White Town — a piece of England dropped into the tropics, classical portico and square steeple, cool and dim inside and smelling of beeswax, old wood and mildew, with punkahs hauled by ropes through the walls to move the heavy air.

Meg had made the morning non-negotiable: Pastor Jessop reads the newcomers from the chancel, and anyone absent when he does it is known to be absent by Tuesday.

When Jessop rose and read the names — the Wentworth sisters, Frederick Cavendish, Katherine Ward, and the Vicomte Adrien de Montferrand, a Frenchman — every head in the congregation turned.

Context

The second half of Calcutta’s cataloguing machinery. The clerk’s ledger at Chandpal Ghat recorded their arrival on Saturday; the chancel announced it to the people who matter on Sunday.

Outcome & Consequences

• Every cover in the party is now on the public record, spoken aloud to the whole settlement, and none of them has been tested.
• Adrien was named as a Frenchman to a British congregation in the middle of a British war establishment.
• Meg walked the party through the pew hierarchy: the Governor General’s empty seat at the front, senior council ranked behind it, and Ashworth among them — the man whose table they would sit at that same evening.
• The party saw the Surlish marriage work. Sophia waved warmly at Meg; Surlish turned his profile toward her and she went still and faced front. Offered free, witnessed by everyone, and the first crack in a household the investigation will need.
• Surlish himself never turned around. No contact made.
• A Bishop of Calcutta is being sent out by Parliament — a shift from Company rule toward direct Crown oversight, which the Company finds worrying and some regard as opportunity.
• The Courtneys (Edmund Courtney, Harriet Courtney) and the Pelhams (Roderick Pelham, Anne Pelham) were pointed out by Meg in passing — the former as twenty-six-year residents, the latter as seated rather above their rank (Sir Roderick sits forward of where his seniority entitles him, which Lady Anne arranged).