East of Suez / Ceylon, India, China and Japan

by Frederic Courtland Penfield

Viewed superficially, Calcutta looks like a prosperous city in Europe, perhaps in England; but rear streets and suburbs are as filthy and congested as any town in vast India. What the average tourist beholds is spick and span in a modern sense; and what he doesn't see is intensely Asiatic, with all that the word can mean. Being a city of extremes, the visitor may be brought to his front windows by the warning cries of the footmen of a sojourning maharajah driving in state to a function, while through the rear windows float the plaintive notes of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayers from the minaret of a Mohammedan mosque close by.

The Indian metropolis presents an array of fine homes, bungalows and stucco villas, put up when the rupee was worth two shillings and a penny, wherein unhappiness may now dwell, because the rupee has depreciated to a shilling and fourpence. The parade of fashion on the Maidan late in the afternoon presents every variety of equipage and livery known to the East, The horse-flesh of Calcutta is uniformly fine. Better animals than are daily grouped around the band stand, or along the rail of the race-course, cannot be found short of Europe. The viceroy is often seen driving a mail phaeton, preceded by two native lancers and followed by four others. The automobile has many devotees in Calcutta, and bicycle-riding natives are everywhere. The babu is exceedingly fond of wheeling on the Maidan whenever he can escape from his account books. Nearly every carriage on the Maidan in the afternoon has two men on the box and two footmen behind, all gorgeously dressed—servants are cheap in India. At sundown nowadays half the pianos in Chowringee—where Calcutta's officials and prosperous commercial people reside—seem to be playing airs from American light operas, and not infrequently a regimental band compliments the United States by playing "Hiawatha" or one of Sousa's compositions.

It is compensating to a person burdened with the habit of wondering where words come from, to discover that Dum-dum is a suburb of Calcutta, and is important as a military post and as the seat of an ammunition factory and arsenal.

SHIPPING ON THE HOOGHLY, CALCUTTA

The sights of Calcutta are unimportant. The general post-office occupies the site of the native prison whose horrors of the Black Hole stain chapters of Indian history; and a description of the burning of human bodies on the bank of the Hooghly, and of the animal sacrifices at the old Hindu temple at Khali-ghat, would be disagreeably gruesome. The gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort William impresses the casual spectator. The zoölogical

garden is conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have been fitly described as of two kinds—bad and adjectively bad. All that interests the visitor within the modern capital of ancient India is the movement of official and social life, and the parade of races forming the population of the marvelous, mysterious country.

There, across the esplanade, with imposing gates and approaches, is Government House, winter seat of the Viceroy of India—whose most distinguished incumbent in recent years was His Excellency the Right Honorable the Baron Curzon of Kedleston, P. C., G. M. S. I., G. M. I. E., etc., etc. Few traveling Americans had the time to speak of him in a manner honoring all these designations. Visitors from Chicago used to refer to him, it was claimed, with naïve simplicity as "Mary Leiter's husband," and let it go at that. A person of extraordinary ability was this husband of an American queen, and it is generally believed that he may some day be prime minister of England. The viceroyship is the highest appointive office in the world. Its compensation is the equivalent of $80,000 per annum, but the allowances for entertaining European functionaries, an army of native servants, and a stableful of horses and elephants for State ceremonials, swells the amount two or threefold. Both at Government House in Calcutta and at the summer home in Simla the viceroy is surrounded by a court equalled in splendor by few royalties in Europe. Compared with the increment and disbursements of India's viceroy, those of the President of the United States appear insignificant. But oriental show and parade are expensive, so expensive in fact, that a viceroy is forced to make liberal drafts upon his private purse.

India may have had as capable rulers in the past as Lord Curzon, but rarely one more tactful or courageous, and never one having the assistance of a vicereine possessing the charm and lovable qualities of the late Lady Curzon. Her splendid work in behalf of the natives, especially the women, endeared her to all Indians. The Delhi durbar in 1903 honored Edward VII in a degree unsurpassed, but was a greater personal triumph for Viceroy Curzon and his accomplished consort from Chicago. His administration had many perplexing situations to deal with and one of them forced his resignation. The constant nightmare of a viceroy of India is famine, and twice Lord Curzon had to deal with this—one visitation alone cost the Indian Government fifty million pounds sterling. His understanding of frontier technicalities, and the ways and wiles of native rulers—none too loyal to British rule, assisted mightily in the successful administration of his high office. Under the Curzons' régime Government House balls and garden parties were counted the most brilliant occurring in the East.