Calcutta and Bombay are strangely different--so different that they can
only be contrasted. Bombay, first and foremost, has the sea, and I can
think of nothing more lovely than the sunsets that one watches from the
lawn of the Yacht Club or from the promenade on Warder Road. Calcutta
has no sea--nothing but a very difficult tidal river. Calcutta, again,
has no Malabar Hill. But then Bombay has no open space to compare
with the Maidan; and for all its crowded bazaars it has no street so
diversified and interesting as Harrison Road. It has no Chinatown. Its
climate is enervating where that of Calcutta, if not bracing--and no
one could call it that--at any rate does not extract every particle of
vigour from the European system.
But the special glory of Calcutta is the Maidan, that vast green space
which, unlike so many parks, spreads itself at the city's feet. One
does not have to seek it: there it is, with room for every one and a
race-course and a cricket-ground to boot. And if there is no magic in
the evening prospect such as the sea and its ships under the flaming
or mysterious enveiling sky can offer to the eye at Bombay, there is a
quality of golden richness in the twilight over Calcutta, as seen across
the Maidan, through its trees, that is unique. I rejoiced in it daily.
This twilight is very brief, but it is exquisite.
It is easier in Calcutta to be suddenly transported to England than
in any other Indian city that I visited. There are, it is true, more
statues of Lord Curzon than we are accustomed to; but many of the homes
are quite English, save for the multitude of servants; Government House,
serene and spacious and patrician, is a replica of Kedlestone Hall in
Derbyshire: the business buildings within and without are structurally
English, and the familiar Scotch accent sounds everywhere; but the
illusion is most complete in St. John's Church, that very charming,
cool, white and comfortable sanctuary, in the manner of Wren, and in St.
Andrew's too. Secluded here, the world shut off, one might as well be
in some urban conventicle at home on a sunny August day, as in the
glamorous East. St. John's particularly I shall remember: its light, its
distinction, its surrounding verdancy.