The viceroy occupies a chateau called the Viceregal Lodge, perched upon a hill overlooking the town, and from his porches commands as grand a mountain landscape as you could wish to see.  The Viceregal Lodge, like the government-house in Calcutta, was designed especially for its purpose and is arranged for entertainments upon a broad scale.  The vice-queen takes the lead in social life, and no woman in that position has ever been more competent than Lady Curzon.  There is really more society at Simla than in Calcutta.  It is the Newport of India, but fortunately for the health of those who participate, it is mostly out of doors.  The military element is large enough to give it an athletic and sporting character, and to the girls who are popular a summer at Simla is one prolonged picnic.  There are races, polo, tennis, golf, drives, rides, walks, garden parties and all sorts of afternoon and morning functions.  F. Marion Crawford describes the gayeties of Simla in “Mr. Isaacs,” the first and best novel he ever wrote, and gives a graphic account of a polo match in which his hero was knocked off his horse and had his head bathed by the young lady he was in love with.  Kipling has given us a succession of pictures of Simla society, and no novel of Indian life is without a chapter or two on it, because it is really the most interesting place in all the empire.

If you want to get a better idea of the place and its attractions than I can give, read “Mr. Isaacs.”  Many of its incidents are drawn from life, and the hero is a Persian Jew of Delhi, named Jacobs, whose business is to sell precious stones to the native princes.  Crawford used to spend his summers at Simla when he was a reporter for the Allahabad Pioneer, and made Jacobs’s acquaintance there.  His Indian experiences are very interesting, and he tells them as well as he writes.  When he was quite a young man he went to India as private secretary for an Englishman of importance who died over there and left him stranded.  Having failed to obtain employment and having reached the bottom of his purse, he decided in desperation to enlist as a private soldier in the army, and was looking through the papers for the location of the recruiting office when his eye was attracted by an advertisement from the Allahabad Pioneer, which wanted a reporter.  Although he had never done any literary work, he decided to make a dash for it, and became one of the most successful and influential journalists in India until his career was broken in upon by the success of “Mr. Isaacs,” his first novel, which was published in England and turned his pen from facts to fiction.