After another act I was entertained behind the scenes by the actor who was playing the part of the Bengali baboo. He received me in a pale-blue quilted dressing-gown, and wanted me to sketch every member of the company in my notebook. His crowning attention was to send for the scene-painter of the theatre to sit on one side of me for the rest of the evening!
At these theatres I met with extreme courtesy from first to last, and shall long cherish the kind attention of a charming old gentleman from Delhi (to judge by his head-dress) who, speaking little English, showed me the miniatures of his children upon his watch-chain and went out, between the acts, to buy me a little buttonhole of roses.
The mention of roses reminds me to say a few words of the Calcutta Gardens. At one end of the Maidan, beyond the race-course, are the Zoological Gardens laid out, I know not by whom, with very good taste—worthy of Milner or Sir Joseph Paxton. The houses are handsome and commodious, the open air enclosures are both wide and spacious, and there are good collections to fill them. I especially enjoyed watching here a native of the Nepaul Terai, a big one-horned rhinoceros. On the evening of my visit he was energetic and lively after a splash in his tank. There was an irresistible comicality about the great unwieldy brute—a very Falstaff of quadrupeds—trotting at express speed.
"A CHARMING OLD GENTLEMAN FROM DELHI."
But more beautiful is the Kampani Bagan, the botanical garden on the other side of the Hooghly. In that garden there is no traffic and no dust—only a few delicate little Anglo-Indian children taking tea under the giant banyan.
March is the time to see the orchids, of which these gardens have a large variety, but few plants were in flower at the time I was there. The houses are curiously different from such as we know at Kew. They are simply wire frames covered with creepers to keep off greatest heat and heaviest rain—creepers such as the Tinas pora crispa from Java, with its hanging roots. Sometimes the roof is covered with dry palm-leaves (Phoenix sylvestris).
There is one tree in the garden which I think quite as interesting as the world-famous great Banyan—a large handsome tree fifty or sixty feet high, with big leaves. Dr Gage, the Director of the Gardens, told me it is the only specimen of its kind known in the world, and that every leaf shown in European herbaria has come from Kampani Bagan. Unfortunately, the trunk is being honeycombed by big black boring bees (it is dangerous to go up into the tree because of them). This solitary giant is called Anthocephalus macrophyllus. It came many years ago from Abornia, a small island in the Malay Archipelago, and has a flower like a miniature drumstick.
In the palm-house in "Griffith Avenue" I saw some double coconuts (coco de mer) from the Seychelles.