Most of the baboos waiting outside the two rupee places wore socks and leather shoes and white muslin drapery over which they had a short coat and then the toga-like outer coloured robe. I was thinking of the first scene in Cyrano de Bergerac when I saw someone setting up a stall of mineral waters, but was still more reminded of it when I was admitted before the other doors were opened, and watched a man lighting the lamps in the vast empty theatre.
The interior was arranged very much like most of the London theatres, with a few special differences. There was one row of orchestra stalls, then rows of seats at two rupees, and behind, the "pit" of one rupee places. When their door was opened, the pit crowd came in, laughing and scampering over the benches. I caught sight of my servant, Tambusami, among them. He had bought a grand orange-red scarf with silk flowers on it for this occasion, and with his long black hair tied up behind, had a droll air of vanity mingled with restrained and decorous enjoyment.
Over the pit hung the oil-lamps, but now electric lights flashed out from the ceiling. I had thought at first there was only one floor above the ground level, a tier of loges or boxes (some of which were arranged so that their occupants could lie or sit upon cushions), with a large one in the centre facing the stage. Suddenly I realized that what I had taken to be dark hangings over the lofty wall-space above this tier of boxes was net blind, and a momentary effect of light showed me that behind it zenana ladies, safe in its reticulated seclusion from roving eyes, were examining the house with more eager curiosity than was shown by the male audience.
Behind me a boy brought two baboos some betel (green betel leaves wrapping the crushed areca nut and lime). The orchestra in this theatre was under the boxes to the left of the stalls, and the musicians in white robes were now moving to their places.
The name of the play was Sarola, a serious drama of modern Indian life, and fearfully pathetic—Richepin rather than Balzac—and yet a study of manners. The hero, Shoshifuzu, who has hitherto lived on the bounty of a more prosperous brother, is brought by the meanness and intolerance of that brother's wife to leave his own wife Sarola and their child at home, while he journeys on foot to the distant capital to seek for remunerative employment. The journey itself is full of picturesque incident, but the greatest interest centres in the home of Shoshifuzu, where an ingenious scoundrel, Godadhar, played with great drollery and inimitable skill by Kasi Nath Chatterjee, intercepts all the supplies forwarded by the absent husband. Godadhar has far more real villainy about him than either Jingle or old Eccles, but is yet a low comedy character and is played by Chatterjee with an unction and humour that none but the elder Coquelin could have surpassed.
The day when no woman acted at the native theatres is evidently as much forgotten as it is with us; and Miss Tara Dasse, who played the intensely pathetic part of Sarola with a most tender voice, recalled to a Western mind in a protracted end some of the most appealing deaths of Sarah Bernhardt.
Another evening I went to the Minerva, also a Bengali theatre close to Beadon Square, and saw Dolita Fronini. A gentleman, who introduced himself to me as the stage-manager, came and sat by me for some time, kindly telling me the story of the piece, and for the sake of his new interpretation of "melodrama," as well as for the light thrown on the life of any people by a study of its amusements, I made the following note of his actual words:—
"It is an opera," said the stage-manager, "like full of music and dramatic of course—there are a good many melodies, so you can call it a melodrama. Dolita Fronini is a name according only to the circumstances of the heroine, so that she is not liked by the lover and therefore she is as if a smashed snake. That snake bites very ferociously, and that snake is her. A Bengali baboo went to Bombay to see: and he waited to a friend of his who is a Mahratta, and he has been very carefully taken in to the family and is allowed to wait till he fully sees the Bombay city. And that Dolita Fronini was not named that, but her name was Bilas Bottee. She was a Bengali lady too, long living in Bombay with that Mahratta gentleman and his wife. When the Bengali gentleman was first introduced into the family, he was unaware about the family custom of the Bombay Mahrattas. There is no zenana system with them—their ladies are open to all. This baboo looked at their behaviours with a strange look, because the Bengali family system is the zenana; but that Bilas Bottee, who was an inmate long in the Mahratta house, was a Bram-maker, a follower of Brahma, and she had no zenana system also. This lady Bilas Bottee loved the gentleman, that Bengali baboo, but the baboo loved the Mahratta lady. The Mahratta lady, according to their customs, behaved with the baboo freely. The baboo thought that she loved him, but she did not—she behaved freely, only not with any viciousness. The Mahratta lady explained to the baboo that her husband was examining him about the firmness of his character. When the mystery is all out and the baboo came to understand, Bilas Bottee went away as a mendicant,—Dolita Fronini!"
But the gun, which is the curtain signal at the Minerva, had sounded before this—the opera had begun and a chorus was singing. "They are singing," said the stage-manager, "that you will never see such a city in the world as Bombay. The climate is temperate here, not very bitter wind too, and there is no cold. You ought to come to walk in the morning and the evening in Bombay, and you would forget all about the world, wine is very cheap here, and if you drink a little you will be jolly all about."
Between the acts an old gentleman was introduced to me as a very famous actor—he was a Mr A. Mustaphi, and his greatest role is that of Mirzapha in the historical play, Siraj ud Doulah.