ABSTRACT
Mrs J. C. Maitland, in her Letters from Madras, quotes an Indian newspaper's account of a ball at Government House in the eighteen-thirties: 'The Nawab entered with a grand suwarree of a hundred guards, and a hundred lanterns all in one line, and appeared like a man of penetration. As the most traditional city of British India, it was fitting that Madras should have possessed the most traditional of Government Houses: the finest surviving example of a 'garden house', the country residence of a rich or important European, or Indian of European tastes, in the eighteenth century. The house was enlarged by George Pigot's successor, the notorious Nabob Sir Thomas Rumbold, and again by the military engineer, Archibald Campbell, who was Governor from 1785 to 1789. The improvements of Lord Clive and John Goldingham extended beyond the house to the grounds, which were landscaped in accordance with fashionable taste.
