Duke, Rev. Archibald

One of the clergymen present at the Clerical meeting at Milby Vicarage. "A very small man with a sallow and somewhat puffy face, whose hair is brushed straight up, evidently with the intention of giving him aheight somewhat less disproportionate to his sense of his own importance than the measure of five feet three accorded him by an oversight of nature. This is the Rev. Archibald Duke, a very dyspeptic and evangelical man, who takes the gloomiest view of mankind and their prospects, and thinks the immense sale of the Pickwick Papers, recently completed, one of the strongest proofs of original sin. Unfortunately, though Mr. Duke was not burdened with a family, his yearly expenditure was apt considerably to exceed his income; and the unpleasant circumstances resulting from this, together with heavy meat breakfasts, may probably have contributed to his desponding views of the world generally." In the lists of originals made in Nuneaton after the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, the original of the Reverend Archibald Duke was the Reverend Mr. Hoke. (See Olcott, George Eliot, p. 14.)

<em>The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton</em>

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