LORD CURZON'S LAST WORK
NEARLY twenty-five years ago Lord Curzon began to write a book on Government House, Calcutta and Barrackpore. He was in themiddle of the correction of the proofs when he died. It is an addition to the sadness of his death that he could not see the completed volumes. They would have delighted his fastidious taste. His own wise words are most admirably " advantaged " by illustration and type.
The work grew under his hand and became in the end a history of Governor-Generals and Viceroys not less than of Government House ; but the book begins at home ; ,and no other person in the world could have written it. Incident- ally it will be news to many readers that the term Viceroy, first used by Queen Victoria in 1858, " has no statutory sanction and is the result merely of usage and convention." Government House at Calcutta, the finest within the Empire, was copied from Lord Curzon's own ancestral honie at Kedles- ton, in Derbyshire, and is an example of the very best-Adam
work. The imitator had the genius to sec that the design Was peculiarly fitted for the East. The transference of the Government in 1912 from Calcutta to , migration Which Ldrd Curzon belieired to be a radical mistake—gives added historic value to the description of the' deserted nest ; and indeed of its oCcupanti. An era ended round about that date.
To most readers perhaps the men will seem more vital than the place. Their careers are.sketched with genuine historical imagination, but one sees all of them, like characters in a'. Hardy -novel, inseparable from their environment. It is' a real advantage to the book, though it may militate against its immediate vogue, that it omits all the more recent crises and contains scarcely more than a reference to any living persons. Among the few modern instances is the statement that Lord Kitchener—whose one-time duel with Lord Curzon arose over the most crucial weakness in our administration. of India—had a great ambition to become Viceroy, and would probably have been selected, if it had not been for the opposition of Lord Morley, who regarded him as an unfit person for so. high a function.. It is a double statement that many Anglo-Indians will find. hard to credit. At that- it may be left. It is one of the only polemical assertions in a succession of admirably considered judgments.
- The splendour and hardships of the Viceroy's service are perhaps a little too portentously emphasized ; but a proper-, sense of the gorgeous immensity of India gives meaning and intention to every page of the two volumes. For Lord Curzon has written a romance as well as a history. His own very youthful imagination was drawn towards India by . the knowledge that Government House and his boyish home were related ; and this magnet drew him finally to the place of his ambition. It is a theme apt to the novelist's hand. Lord Curzon saw India as a pageant unrolled on that stage ; and his own native appreciation of ceremonial dignity lends him, so to say, the right stage-craft. When from all the actors in a roll, more famous for good government than any dynasty in history, he selects Hastings and Dalhousie as supreme benefactors, we feel that this is commendation indeed ; and when amid the many gloomy forecasts of British rule in India he still foresees opportunity for Viceroys of high force and character to impress their influence even on a native democracy, the prognostic is heartening. Even if Lord Curzon had not been a good historian by intellect and training, so genuine an inspiration must have produced an exceptional work.
Previous page
