When we entered a Chinese lady who was about to become a priestess, was clasping her hands together in prayer on the stage, and singing a doleful song.
Again and again during the hour we stayed the mournful wail reappeared at different periods, and we were told that it was the favourite opera air of the Chinese. The dialogues and singing are carried on in falsetto, and the high-pitched nasal twang is most unpleasant to hear. The dresses are very beautiful, all made of valuable embroideries, and those that were brought up to us to see had no tinsel about them, but small looking-glasses instead, let in to brighten them on the stage. All the time during the nasal song of the priestess lady, which lasted an interminable time, people were walking casually across the stage, and the imagination has to be highly exalted to recognize that a man throwing his leg in the air represents mounting and riding on horseback. The Chinese are great adepts in tumbling, and certainly it was difficult to conceive how the man we saw, mounted on the top of three tables and one chair, could throw himself over backwards, turn a somersault in the air, and land on his feet without breaking his back. The tumbling was interpolated in the middle of the play, but it did not matter as there were no acts, and no dropping of the curtain.
The story rambled on about an emperor that was taken captive. A lady who was about to become a fish and return to the sea, gave her husband a charm by which he would be able to release the emperor. Then followed his appearance and the declaration of his mission before the chief Mandarins. The same story often lasts several weeks and it is wonderful how the interest is maintained, especially considering that the play is spoken in Mandarin, the dialect of the upper classes, and which is not understood by the lower. The dark and dirty pit, with one light, was empty, but it would fill up towards twelve o'clock, we were told, and the play is going on from the afternoon till two or three in the morning. Most of the theatres are now "starring," or giving public performances in the streets. The last we saw of the play was a free fight with a man left dead on the stage. Some one considerately went and fetched a pillow to place under his head to make him more comfortable, and after a decent lapse of time he got up and walked off the stage!
In an inner room off the gallery we were taken to see some opium-smoking. The process of preparing the opium is lengthy. It is held over a lamp on a piece of wire till it frizzles and swells into a bubble, and it is then manipulated on the outside of the ivory, before being plugged into the small hole. The woman, who was one of the actresses, drew at it gently, exhaling the smoke through the nostrils. The Chinese meanwhile stood round in an admiring group. They are delighted when strangers come to see their theatre, as was evinced by the preparations and curiosity shown about us, and by the heads peeping round the corner of the gallery.
We had but a short night's rest, for we had to be up at five the following morning.
By six we were driving out fifteen miles to breakfast with the Maharajah[4] of Johore, in a carriage he had sent for us. A malarious mist rose from the town of Singapore beneath us. The road into the country was alive with bullock carts, and natives with their bamboo baskets bringing in produce for the town market. The flat road is hard and smooth, and the cocoa-nut palms and bamboo groves made us feel as if we were driving through a beautiful garden for nearly two hours.
We arrived at the Tibrau, or the old Straits, the route formerly taken by steamers going to China and Japan. The placid sheet of water puzzled us at first as to whether it was lake or river, for the wooded banks and promontories closing in around, made it seem unlike the "wide salt sea." A collection of huts were here, built on piles placed in the water. It seems strange why, with so much dry land at his disposal, John Chinaman should choose to erect his tenement hanging over the water. The low white building opposite with the red-tiled roof was Istana.
The Maharajah's steam-launch took us across the Straits and landed us under the gilded pagoda, ornamented with the crescent and the star, the Maharatic emblems of royalty. His Highness's secretary met us, and we walked across the road and up some steps to the garden, for it is not in any way fenced off from the road. The palace of Istana has two stories, and the broad verandahs and balconies surrounding it give to it many a broad shadow and cool depth. The entrance is a marble hall open on two sides, through which you look down a vista of little domes and arches of a pale blue tint. Up and down the archway on the other side paces the sentry, clad in loose brown holland uniform and gaiters, with a red fez and orange fringe.
The Maharajah of Johore is a man of about fifty years of age, with iron-grey hair and whiskers, and a full oriental face. He is Maharajah, or Great Rajah, because he governs his princedom of Johore without the assistance of a resident. He was dressed in a loose English gentleman's shooting suit, but wore the silk sarong, twisted round underneath the coat, and a braided smoking-cap. Six magnificent diamond and emerald rings glittered on the fingers of one hand, and six ruby and diamond on the other. The Maharajah has been a great traveller, and speaks English fairly well, though understanding it better. He intends to visit England again next year. Istana was hastily built for the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, but it shows no traces of this. On the marble staircase hangs a portrait of Mr. Gladstone, whom the Maharajah learnt to admire, he says, during his last visit to England. The drawing-rooms are dark and handsome. Rows of lovely Japanese vases, with their own peculiar dull colours of brick-red, olive-green, and dull blue, line the room. A wonderful collection of Japanese spears and swords inlaid with mother-of-pearl, are arranged on the walls of an outside balcony or corridor, and all these the Maharajah brought back from his recent tour in Japan.
In the ball-room are full-length portraits of the Queen and Prince Albert, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, with two smaller portraits of George I. and II. over the door. The bedrooms were like any that you would find in an English country-house.