Essays by the British Viceroy of India discuss interpreters, customs, tyrants, the installation and abdication of princes, and travel through India.Another version of this book is here: https://book4you.org/book/17253544/590194That version is two pages wide, this is just one.IntroductionElizabeth LongfordIn February 1977 I was sitting on the lawn of Flagstaff House at Barrackpore, beneath the twin shadows of a banyan tree and a statue of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of lndia from 1899 to 190S. At first there seemed nothing unusual about a former viceroy's statue standing on a state lawn against a background of very English looking rosebeds and the distant Hugli river. True I had learned to call Flagstaff House the 'Raj Bhavan' or Governor's House, and the governor and his wife who so kindly entertained me were Mr and Mrs Diaz, distinguished Indians from Goa. And Curzon -let's face it- would have been horrified to think of Indians occupying his delightful little summer residence, just up the river by steam-launch from Calcutta.But there was something else that would have tickled Curzon about that colossal bronze effigy of himself on the lawn. It was the only one. Of course, all the viceregal and other British statues had been removed after Independence from the Maidan in Calcutta and put out to grass in Barrackpore. But Curzon's alone remained on the grass. The rest - admirals, generals, statesmen- were disposed about the shrubberies: here Lord Northbrook, dignified in frock coat and chain but alongside a tall silo; there Lord Montagu of the reformist Montagu-Chelmsford Report, behind a neighbouring hedge, his head bowed as if in sombre thought; even King George V was invisible from the front law. Why Curzon alone in glory?It was the same in Calcutta itself. As I walked round the vast Victoria Memorial museum, which Curzon initiated, a diminutive boy detached himself from the file of his schoolfellows and boldly asked the curator: 'Why here? Why in Calcutta? Why not in Delhi?' To which the curator replied: 'Because Calcutta was still the capital when Lord Curzon built the Victoria Memorial'; adding in my ear, 'Curzon and Warren Hastings are the only two viceroys or governors they now remember.'