Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/114

 in the Indian Ocean and to Bengal," wrote of the Governor at Calcutta as living in a house on the Esplanade, "handsome, but by no means equal to what it ought to be for a personage of so much importance." This house on the Esplanade was figured in a coloured engraving, one of a set published by Baillie in 1794, which shows it to have stood at the junction of Government Place East and the Esplanade. The house faced the Esplanade, which at that time ran continuously from Dhurrumtolla Street to the river, and it could only have been by a stretch of courtesy that the gallant visitor described it as "handsome."

As shown in the engraving, it was an ordinary house of two storeys, with a closed verandah on the upper floor and an arched one below. On the balustraded terrace was a single room with a sloping roof, apparently a wooden structure. At either end of the house was a wing in which were probably the A.D.C.'s and other officers' quarters. These wings formed a courtyard in front of the house, from which two square pillared gateways opened on to the Esplanade, and between them ran a low masonry wall surmounted by a light wooden railing. The house was so small that all public entertainments given by the Governor were held at the Court House, which was long the centre of Calcutta social gatherings; and so pinched