Some More Lamp-posts, or Another Lamp-post Post (if you will)

The Hensley Photo Library, University of Chicago, is a rich collection of photographs of Calcutta from 1943-44. They are a delight to browse through anyway. After the lamp-post in one of the photographs caught my eye, I kept looking for more varieties in each photograph.

Yes, the sign-board says Bombay, but this is obviously from Calcutta. The archivist also says so.

The first one is of the Howrah Station. The second is at Sealdah. Are the lamp-posts different because they are meant to light up different kinds of spaces? The first sheds light on rickhsaw or other public transport stands, while the latter is street-lighting. The Sealdah Station looks very different now. I do not know how and when the transition took place. It seems Hensley may have caught another photographer in the act: what else could the person squatting in the foreground be doing?

This early morning scene echoes the lamp-post in the first photograph (in this post). You can almost smell the groggy freshness in the air. For the lamp too it seems too early to raise its head up absolutely straight. It's lazily tilted. Donkeys have become a rare sight in the city. A few days back I heard that the last donkey in Shantiniketan has died. Which broke my heart. Urbanisation and mechanisation are difficult conditions to survive in for a creature whose breeding, I suppose, came out of a largely utilitarian motive. Apart from carrying sundry load, they were also useful to dhoba-s or launderers (which may well be the subject of this photograph). They aren't very popular otherwise, are they? But they aren't even close to being endangered, and that is a relief.

The last three here are all from the Tram Terminus. The first one has two lamps to a pole, while the other two have four to a pole. The last photograph I found quite striking, what with the monsoon clouds in the background.

P. T. Nair tells us that while Harrison Road was the first to receive electric lighting around the turn of the century, it was not until 1914 that major sections of the city came to be illuminated thus. With an increase in the number of buses and trams plying the roads, the CESC started paying greater attention to street-lighting around 1927. Up until the 1950s, we are told, there were 4 classes of electric lights: i) 75 watt single lamps for very narrow passages; ii) 100 watt single lamps for lanes with little motor traffic; iii) 3-75 watt cluster lamps for roads with moderate traffic; and iv) 3-100 watt cluster lamps for major roads where the traffic was heavy. The height of the last type would range between 25 and 30 feet, and they would be separated from each other by about 150 ft.

Hope you have fun going through the rest of the photographs in the Collection.

"Sans Souci"

You may be wondering why I have so little to say that is original. The happy reason is that, contrary to expectations with which I too had set out, there is a great deal that has been written about the city. If it isn't "primary research" I usually prefer to cite or even quote from my source. Paraphrasing, unless the text itself is confusing, seems a little lame, and I can't possibly assume an authoritative voice when I'm culling facts from elsewhere.

First of all, let me share the scanned image of the daguerreotype (somewhere Plato is turning in his...grave?) of the "Sans Souci" Theatre referred to in my earlier post. ["The "Sans Souci" Theatre of Calcutta. c. 1840. Photo: Siddhartha Ghosh. The earliest known example of a daguerreotype picture taken in Calcutta, which has survived only as a reproduction."]

When I was discussing the problem (of sharing or not) with my father, he suggested that I take a look at his copy of the St Xavier's College Centenary: 1960. The first article, "From Theatre to College" offered three interesting images and a bit of history. I find the language a little difficult to follow, especially since rhetorical flourishes often get the better of clarity. Some of the historical facts are clearly presented, while others not so. For the foundation story of the college, I think it worth going back to Radharaman Mitra (earlier referred to). He tells us:

A group of English Jesuits came to Calcutta on 8 October 1834 and established on 1 July 1835 the first St Xavier's College on Portuguese Church Street. In 1838 it was shifted to 3 Park Street, to a rented house. From there it moved again to 28 Chowringhee Road, to another rented house, in January 1841.
Trouble ensued between this group and Vicar Apostolic Carew. They closed down the college and left India in 1845. In September 1849 Carew purchased the building that currently houses St Xavier's College, which earlier used to be the "Sans Souci" Theatre, on premises numbers 10 and 11. Currently this is 30 Park Street. In the next month he transferred St John's College (of his own establishment) from its Entally premises to the Park Street address. He died in 1855 and the college shut down shortly afterwards.
A renewed appeal persuaded a group of Belgian Jesuits to come and work in India. On 28 November 1859, some of them arrived in Calcutta. They established St Xavier's College on 16 January 1860. Another version claims that St John's College did not in fact shut down in 1855. It lingered on and was rechristened and inaugurated as St Xavier's College on 16 January. (My translation.)

The essay in the Centenary volume quotes one Father Shea, who describes the old theatre:

...a showy building, with all sorts of what in theatrical language are called 'properties', and something like an acre of ground. The building is oblong; a good deal of it is devoted to a very fine portico and entrance hall. The audience part has the ordinary horse-shoe wall for the support of the boxes, etc., and this cannot be got rid of. You may easily imagine how much room is thus lost. The theatre was adapted to its present purpose in the following manner. A floor was raised about 12 or 13 feet from the ground, and the regions, commonly supposed to be the abode of ghosts and blue-fire, to which wicked barons and villains in general are consigned, are now a boy's purgatory - schoolrooms and so forth.

It provides an excellent photograph(?) of the premises, apparently taken in 1846. The "Sans Souci" building is still extant - you can identify it by the columns in the front. I wonder what the towering structure we are seeing in the background is. If I'm not getting the direct all wrong, we could be looking at St Paul's Cathedral. The Cathedral, it appears, was completed in 1847, but the spire could easily have been constructed a year earlier. This of course would be the old spire, modelled on the Norwich Cathedral, which broke as a result of the earthquake in 1934. (The new one was inspired by the "Bell Harry" Tower of Canterbury Cathedral.) I can't think of any other building of similar eminence in that direction with respect to St Xavier's College.

The article also says that the good Father H. Depelchin, "that shameless beggar", turned the fortunes of the school in the mid-1860s. The next bit is only by way of annotating the very interesting photograph that follows. "A British Company of buses had been started in Calcutta. It failed for want of travelling public. Fr. Depelchin acquired three of the conveyances for the paltry sum of Rs 400/-. They began going round, morning and evening, a moving advertisement to the spirit of enterprise of St Xavier's."

The other illustration in the volume that I found rather interesting is this "Sketch of the Old "Sans Souci" Theatre, about 1850." I admit that the angle is fairly obvious for viewing a building, but you will see that it matches line for line the daguerreotype from Sri Siddhartha Ghosh's collection. Could this be a hand-drawn reproduction of a mechanically produced daguerreotype image that had been taken four years earlier?

Updates, or Filling a Few Gaps

I found a significant entry on Fenwick (about whom I had expressed curiosity earlier) in Samir Raychowdhury's Shābek Kolkatar Rastar Itihash (Kolkata: Puja Foundation, 1997).

Edward Fenwick was a fortune-hunter. After arriving in Calcutta in 1764 he found employment as a clerk with the Company. The following year he was sent to Midnapur. What he got embroiled in exactly is unknown, but for one reason or another, within a couple of years he was removed from the Treasury to the Secretary’s Office. In 1768 he was accused of passing on classified information to Mr. Bolt. Bolt wrote a book based on these facts. The allegation caused him to be sacked (Fort William and India House Letters, Vol. 5, 1767-69). After a fairly long period of joblessness he was re-employed in May 1772. His monthly salary was Rs 5. But the very next year he lost his job again. The few years of his life that can be marked off as happy were between 1775 and 1782. During this period he was a member of the Revenue Board and he was in charge of some logistics in the court of law. He was getting a salary of Rs 800 per month. Following this he joined the Provincial Council as the third member, and he was later promoted to the highest possible post in Dinajpur. He did not spend much time in Dinajpur. He was transferred to Calcutta. It was during this stay that he made his acquaintance with William Hickey. (My translation.)

The entry goes on to quote in Bangla translation from Hickey's memoirs, to which we can come later. I am paraphrasing from the same book: It appears that the Company of Cotton and Mayer used to outsource some work to Hickey, who made great profit by it. Soon the company entered naval trade with China and Malay, having purchased three ships, and having made Hickey their guarantor. Hickey learnt soon after that one of the ships had been lost at sea to a tempest and that the duo was planning a furtive escape from India. He went to court and got the two arrested. He also withdrew his signature from the guarantor's bond. Poor Fenwick arrived as the saviour and took his place. Meanwhile the said duo did make their escape, leaving Fenwick in what can only be described as a pickle. He found himself behind bars. Fenwick may also have entered into business with the Nawab of Arcot.

It was with the profits he made from these enterprises, augmented by the Company funds, that he tried to set up the Bazar. He is also to be thanked for setting up the roads that lead up to the Bazar. He was dismissed by the Company on 17 April 1795. He rapidly lost all his wealth and was rendered utterly destitute. The Company took pity on him and started giving him a small pension. In 1812 it was discovered that he had utterly lost his sanity, and the Company gave him the whole salary he was entitled to. He did not live much long after and the exact date of his death is not known.

A rather sad story there.The following is an excerpt from Memoirs of William Hickey edited by Alfred Spencer:

A fête-champetre announced as to be given by Mr. Edward Fenwick, a gentleman high in the Civil Service, entirely engaged the public attention and conversation during the greater part of the month of May. It was intended to be celebrated at his country house, situated upon the banks of the river, in Garden Reach, about five miles from Calcutta, which thentofore had been the property and place of residence of my esteemed friends Mr. and Mrs. Lacam. The gardens were to be brilliantly illuminated with many thousand coloured lamps; an eminent operator in fireworks had been brought down from Lucknow to display his talents; the company to appear in fancy dresses, those that chose it to wear masks. Ranges of tents were fixed in different parts of the gardens, wherein tables were laid covered with all the dainties the best French cooks could produce, for the accommodation of three hundred persons, besides which every room in the house was stored with refreshments of every sort and kind; different bands of martial music were stationed in several parts of the gardens, and also in the house, with appropriate and distinct performers for the dancers. The last two miles of the road were lighted up with a double row of lamps on each side, making every object clear as day. In short, nothing could exceed the splendour of the preparations for this rural entertainment.

You may want to look up the rest of Hickey's account of how he had gotten drunk at a party earlier that evening, and how he reached Fenwick's party completely sloshed, after an accident or two.

____

In other news, on my way to the West Bengal State Archives, I picked up from a College Street second-hand bookstore this Big Book with nice illustrations and photographs, titled Changing Visions, Lasting Images: Calcutta through 300 Years, edited by Pratapaditya Pal. There are several very interesting essays in the volume, including one on the Indo-American trade - which is something I am personally interested in because of my area of research. In an article by Siddhartha Ghosh, "Early Photography in Calcutta" I found a lovely photograph of the Sans Souci theatre (earlier mentioned). The caption reads: "The "Sans Souci" Theatre of Calcutta. c. 1840. Photo: Siddhartha Ghosh. The earliest known example of a daguerreotype picture taken in Calcutta, which has survived only as a reproduction."

Somewhere near Beckbagan

"Where's a camcorder when you need one?" - The Mask

There are times when one sorely misses the regular, still camera too. Part of this lack has been plugged by the cell-phone cameras. Very handy, but the quality is frustrating. The same Nokia Asha 311 that was used to click the photograph of the lamp-post had to be called in to action again while I was on my way to Peter Cat for dinner with my good friend Arnab Chakraborty. The two girls, as you can make out, were seated in this huge stage/truck. Probably on the way home, judging by the way in which they kept to one corner of it. It was a very strange spectacle. The vehicle-turned-stage. The stage-turned-vehicle. And this kid who was selling balloons of various shapes, at a traffic signal. He managed to sell two eventually: one red heart-shaped, another green spherical. I thought of cropping it at first, but then I decided that there was much going on in the frame that wasn't on my mind when I clicked the photograph.

Finick Bazar Street

The fact that the Fenwick Bazar Street exists was beyond doubt. I was positive that I had read it somewhere and even a plan of the New Market shows it running adjacent to the present-day compound. I thought I had a fair idea of where it is, but I just wanted some confirmation from the Street itself.

Fenwick's Bazar (I am yet to discover the origin of the name) used to be where the New Market is today. The New Market, of course, was built in 1874. We find some references to Fenwick's Bazar in reports through out the 19th century. It was probably demolished in favour of something more sanitised because, as I understand, it had acquired a reputation for being shabby and unclean. Fires in the area seem to have been quite common. The Asiatic Annual Register, for instance, notes in 1804 the incident of a Fire.

A fire, which at first excited considerable alarm, broke out on Saturday evening, in the neighbourhood of Fenwick's Bazar, Chouringhee. It originated, we here, [sic] from a bheesty, who was piping sorrow away, with a chillum of Bang; and carelessly laid the contents, after he had done, against a hut: however, before it could be subdued, upwards of one hundred straw and other houses, were reduced to ashes.

In November 1843 (I am not absolutely sure of the year) another conflagration commenced "at the bazar and huts immediately behind the Chowringhee-road. It was bounded on the South by Fenwick's buildings, on the north by the Jaun Bazar, on the west by the Ouchterlony monument, and on the east by Wellesly street." It appears that several hundred huts and houses were destroyed by this fire.

The 1828 map of Calcutta, prepared for the use of the Lottery Committee, surveyed by I. A. Schalch, with additions from the survey by Capt. J. Prinsep shows the Bazar. This is from a photograph I took of the map, which is there in the National Library:

It appears under controversial circumstances in a report in Allen's Indian Mail on February 24, 1873. It may be a reference to the area, not the market, and I am not at all certain of when the building was broken down. The New Market seems to have been inaugurated on January 1, 1874. The report may also have been from a different time, published on the said date. It appears that the Commissioner of Police at Calcutta, one Mr Wauchope, made a claim that "will seem to many a direct attack upon a pet article of our [British] moral creed." He argued against the notion that crime rates were directly related to presence of liquor shops, and indeed of liquor consumption. He furnishes a list of comparisons: Burra Bazar, which has 31 liquor shops has a lower crime rate compared to Colootollah, which has only 7. Colinga with 6, "has a criminal population as large in proportion as Fenwick Bazar with thirty-one shops of the same kind." He also claimed '[t]hat the most successful dacoit he ever knew "never tasted liquor"'. Is there a half-appreciative note in the way they say "most successful dacoit"?

A few days back, actually almost a week back, while I was waiting for an appointment with probably the only Churrack Sanyasi in town, I took it upon myself to find traces of the Street. I think it's a nice gesture to commemorate the Bazar with an underexposed street name. At first I couldn't see any of the houses or bigger shops which gave out their address as "Fenwick Bazar Street." There's a liquor shop right where the Street meets Lindsay Street, which gives the address as L. Lindsay Street. It could either mean 'lower' or 'little', and may actually be a legitimate street name also. I asked around a bit but no one seemed to know. May be it was a bad day for street name enthusiasts or the wise elderly. Closer inspection and a second semi-resigned walk revealed a couple of small shops which confessed to being located on the said street. They spelt it as 'Finick Bazar Street', which I later realized, is probably a transcription from Bengali of the pronunciation of 'Fenwick.'

Fenwick Bazar Street (facing Lindsay Street)

Two bazars

In the City project, the area I am concentrating on is the market-place. I'm not sure what I'll have to say if you ask, 'so what about it?' I met this nice gentleman at the races (yes! more on that later) who offered to take me around a couple of markets today. We went to the Chitpur new bazar and to Galiff Street. The Chitpur new bazar belongs to the Mullicks who also own the Marble Palace, that was made by Raja Rajendra Mullick (1819-1887). My guide is related to the family in some way, I think. As for Galiff Street, I had heard stories of the pet trade, but seeing it and being there was more horrific than I had imagined it to be. Here are some photographs from today's excursion.

'Notun Bajar' at Chitpur

Fish market inside the Notun Bajar 

Man sitting at one of the entrances to the Fish market

Afternoon nap in the Vegetable courtyard 

Kartik yo!

The gentleman wearing the punjabi on the left is of the Mullick family.
He still comes to the market daily to look after the books.

And now we come to Galiff Street.

Galiff Street Market 

Fish

You can see a cock-fight or two if you're (un)lucky or if you are willing to sponsor
your very own. You can buy your own fighter cocks at around Rs 1500 a piece.

A trained rooster with its owner/trainer (not sure, though)

The whole picture

What struck me is how the idea of "Bird Lovers" is conflated with
the idea of owning or keeping as pet.  Open defiance.

A Little Detour

I decided to deviate a little from writing on Calcutta and to briefly revisit Venice. This has a Bengali connection, however. (Given that I haven't visited too many cities, I won't be able to put off writing about Calcutta too much even if I wanted to. So this is only a small deviation, I promise.)

On the way to Trieste, where I was headed for the Joyce Summer School, I had to go via Venice (simply because the airfare is cheaper that way.) A friend of mine later asked why, if I were going to visit one Italian city besides Trieste, I didn't choose Florence. There are all these paintings to look at, and the Italian Renaissance, and the civic designing, so on and forth. I think I would still have chosen Venice over Florence if we didn't have to factor in the price of tickets, but since one can never trust oneself about situations where grapes may just be sour, I didn't answer. The reason why I think I'd have preferred this is that - apart from the fact that Venice has always fascinated most of us from childhood - I was more fascinated by Venice as a city for its daily life, for the topography, and for the gondolas. Besides, most Bengalis, I believe, will have surrendered bits of their unarticulated wanderlust to Shakti's words:

মনে কি তোমার এখনো লাগে নি দোলা
     চিল্কার জলে ভাসালাম গণ্ডোলা
      জ্যোৎস্না হয়েছে ঘোর
শুধু দাঁড় বলে - রুপোর পাহাড় - তুমি চোর আমি চোর!
...
  তুমি চলে গেলে পশ্চিম থেকে পুবে
  এ-ভুবনময়, বলেছিলে বেয়াকুবে-
    কল্পনা তব পাতা
সেই সত্যই প্রাণপণ - আমি পড়ে আছি কলকাতা!
(Sincere apologies for not being able to attempt a translation. I would appreciate it if anyone did, or could refer me to one.)

So as to not lose sight of what I had set out to write of, let us head back to Piazza San Marco. After entering the Piazza from the Academia side, if you turn right at the Campanile, you find yourself approaching the Grand Canal. In defence of my attempting to write about Venice, let me quote another author, Henry James, who felt a similar need to defend his account. (I thank Aveek Sen for introducing me to James on Venice, among other things.)

There is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to say.

After evening settles down and the sun sinks behind Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, the Piazza and the entire stretch along the Canal, up to the Arsenal and a little beyond, lend themselves to a great show of human life. It is easy to lose oneself in the middle of all this. The gelato along the way isn't the best, but when you look left you can see the Bridge of Sighs, so named by one Lord Byron. I heard this theory about Byron, which I found rather funny but interesting: after he decided that he had to flee England, he chose Venice because while moving around in Gondolas, his, well, Byronic image would suffer least because of his limp, otherwise evident in his walk. Among other things, Byron set his poem "Beppo" in Venice. My two favourite passages from the poem do not sadly reflect his love for Venice, but I think I'll indulge anyway.

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all.

I love how he allows the phonetics to reflect his point about the smoothness of Italian and the harshness of English in the lines where he is describing the languages respectively. And here's the second bit:

'Tis said that their last parting was pathetic,
As partings often are, or ought to be,
And their presentiment was quite prophetic,
That they should never more each other see,
(A sort of morbid feeling, half poetic,
Which I have known occur in two or three,)
When kneeling on the shore upon her sad knee
He left this Adriatic Ariadne.

Although it's a little sad that it rhymes with "her sad knee" (or is it self-parodic?), I don't think I've read many epithets that compare with "this Adriatic Ariadne." Also, it's funny how two of the three poetry excerpts that I chose deal with parting.

After dark, the Piazza San Marco, and indeed most other streets of Venice become the hunting-ground for pedlars who sell various kinds of things. Aprons with the torso of Michelangelo's David printed in such a way that it'll fit in exactly with one's otherwise fully-clad body are just the beginning. No, to be honest, that is quite high up in the fantastic items list. Then there are people selling splat-toys, that is, strange jelly-like blobs which go splat in amusing shapes when you throw them hard at some surface. There are the rose pedlars, who try to sell long-stem roses especially to women. There are t-shirt stalls which have t-shirts with Homer Simpson standing in as Vitruvian Man (which, incidentally, is kept in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice). Henry James summed it up a hundred and thirty years ago:

The canals have a horrible smell, and the everlasting Piazza, where you have looked repeatedly at every article in every shop-window and found them all rubbish, where the young Venetians who sell bead bracelets and "panoramas" are perpetually thrusting their wares at you, where the same tightly-buttoned officers are for ever sucking the same black weeds, at the same empty tables, in front of the same cafés - the Piazza, as I say, has resolved itself into a magnificent tread-mill.

It must have changed, because I didn't notice the horrible smell, and the Piazza didn't strike me as a tread-mill. I developed an obsession with the sight of these young men, most of whom are Bangladeshi. I spoke to a few and all of them claim to hail from Dhaka. They are desperately fond of striking up conversations in Bangla. If they think that someone looks Indian, they'll try a Hindi greeting. If the potential customer seems to take notice, they'll try to narrow it down by slipping in a Bangla phrase. If it fails, Hindi it is. If the Bangla phrase is successfully recognised, they will start a conversation. It's a strange and melancholy job, this. Most people will make you feel like you are non-existent and may be they will be in history. Perhaps someone somewhere is documenting this diaspora. But think of the ones who sell these fluorescent parachute-like things at 2 euro a piece. We introduce ourselves as Doctors, Lawyers, Joyce scholars. They can say, we light up the night at Piazza San Marco. Here are a three photographs I took of these guys.

Lamp-post

If I am to believe my sources, I spent my first years in a house in Dhakuria. There are pictures of me in a house, but who is to tell it is the same one I am given to believe I was living in. The birth certificate, of course, mentions only the hospital. Be that as it may, I remember the days - as I am sure many of us do - when the streets around our house weren't so well-lit as they are today. It is tempting to embark on a history of street-lighting in Calcutta. P. Thankappan Nair has a wonderful section in his Calcutta Municipal Corporation at a Glance, but that can be reserved for another day, another discussion.

For now let me share this one photograph I clicked on my mobile camera today. Between Maharaj Thakur Road and Dhakuria Station Road there are several narrow lanes which run parallely (I didn't know until now that 'parallely' isn't a legitimate word)...so, narrow lanes which run parallel. One of these is the Kali Bari Lane, which I happened to take tonight on my way back. This is a few steps into the lane.

I am not sure if this was the only street lamp the lane had at one time or whether, when they were being replaced by the new ones, some nostalgic soul left this single lamp-post behind. It reminded me of Wall-E and EVE. (Ooh, did the worker who left it behind also defy orders from above, favouring sentiment? No. I'm romanticizing.) These lamps sometimes had wire-grid baskets to prevent the light-bulbs from getting borrowed. In the background you can see the Indian Oil building towering. The change in the colour of street lights is also visible. The main road is amber. This lane is white, fluorescent. I realized while passing through the lane that this is also where our old car mechanic, Rishi, had his workshop. Our Standard Super 10 or after that the Fiat Premier Padmini would occasionally force us to take a detour on our way to some place or the other, to stop here for some minor repair-work. I remember being told-off once when, while the Fiat (or was it the Super 10?) was malfunctioning somewhere near Gariahat (Ghatak Bari to be precise) and my father was trying his best to fix it, I was restricting my contribution to wisecracking. I had just started reading Hergé's Quick and Flupke series, and, drawing on recently acquired vocabulary, I was calling the car "Double Trouble".

Sir Rowland Macdonald Stephenson and Calcutta Railways

Sir Rowland Macdonald Stephenson is a name familiar to most railway enthusiasts in Calcutta. Or is it? Just to be sure: he was the first Managing Director of the East India Railway Company, which was founded in 1845 and is responsible for the first railway lines connecting the Eastern and Northern parts of India. The first train to run in India, as we of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education learnt from our history books, covered a distance of roughly 21 miles in little less than an hour, between Bombay and Thane. In 1845 London-based publishers Kelly & Co. brought out a Report upon the Practicability and Advantages of the Introduction of Railways into British India, with "copies of miscellaneous correspondence; and documents with plans and sketches in illustration" by R. Macdonald Stephenson, C.E. As the title page informs us, the author was also Associate and Corresponding Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and member of the Asiatic Society and of the Bengal Agricultural and Horticultural Society. Seems like a colourful chap.

The Government Gazette published on 24 August 1844 the correspondence (deemed to be of great public importance by the Deputy Governor of Bengal) between Stephenson and Fredrick James Halliday. Stephenson had written a letter in July 1844 pointing out the advantages of laying down rail tracks in British India. The Government, he says, would gain equally with the public, and "[t]hat the subject is one of paramount importance to the best interests of the country, and calculated in a military as well as a commercial point of view to be productive of the most beneficial results." He asks to what extent he can expect the support of Government in this regard. The capital, Stephenson claims, can be raised in London and he asks that the ground or land that will be required be granted, and that the Government appoint a proportion of the Directors. Like a paranoid student writing a research proposal he also clarifies certain points (paragraph no. 7, to be precise) five days after sending the first letter.

The Honourable Deputy Governor of Bengal informed him that it is not in his power to "authorise a Rail Road Company to treat for the purchase of land, as for a public object", but that he would be happy to help out with the legislative work if a company with sufficient capital were to be floated. (The Under-Secretary at the time was Cecil Beadon, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, after whom the street and the 'Row' were named.)

Several letters were exchanged between Stephenson and various eminent citizens of Calcutta. Some of the correspondents were engineers, some were members of the administration, and some capitalists. Baboo Mutty Loll Seal appears to be one of the few 'native' correspondents. In the letter 26 August 1844 he expresses unreserved enthusiasm for the project, declining, however, to become "one of a Local Committee of Management" for shortage of time. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the Calcutta Trader's Association responded positively too.

The correspondents offered more than just their opinions. By September 1844 Mutty Loll Seal had also mailed Stephenson a list of the estimated quantities of stable articles of commerce that were imported "into Calcutta from Hindostan", from both the west and the east of Ghazeepore. J. Macintosh of Messrs Burn & Co. would send him "eight specimens of country wood", namely Teak ("the best wood I know in any country"), Saul, Sissoo, Toon, Soondree, Red Jarroll, Gimiblar and Poon. A series of questions were answered by one Prince Dwarkanauth Tagore: "What is the extent of the present trade in coal between Burdwan and Calcutta, by the Damooda?" Reply: "About twenty lakhs of maunds. The present collieries are capable of producing fifty." "What quantity lost, stolen, or wasted in transitu?" Reply: "Twenty per cent at least." So on and forth. The following excerpt(s), which deal with means of travelling from Calcutta to Benares, I found particularly interesting.

So far so good. I think that we would all acknowledge with a certain degree of respect the good work that Stephenson had accomplished. But just when you're beginning to relax, to sit back and say, "Ah, here's a sensible fellow if I ever saw one", The Calcutta Review prompts you to review your judgement.

From the March 1856 issue comes an account of The World's Highway, published by John Weale in London. The publication is a collection of the correspondence (again!) between the aforementioned Stephension and various others whom he has entrapped in his wild scheme. Besides, the author provides a helpful framework and glowing encomium to Stephenson. I will sit back and quote happily.

This gentleman, whose biography will one day give to the world a new instance of what may be achieved by energy and purpose, had watched from 1835 the progress of international communication with the East. He had seen the long-continued and strenuous effort of the commercial world to accelerate the communication.

So what did Stephenson conceive of, that his energy and purpose may fulfil?

His idea was briefly this. He conceived it possible to girdle the world with an iron chain, to connect Europe and Asia from their furthest extremities by one colossal railway. A portion of this scheme is still too far in the future for us to do more than indicate its vastness. The remainder, all that falls within our scope, was to connect so much of the two continents as should enable a locomotive to travel from Calcutta to London with but two breaks, one at the Straits, and one at the Dardanelles.

Reminded me of Puck.

I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes. (A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.i)

৭ নম্বর আপ, হাওড়া-লন্ডন এক্সপ্রেস, ছাড়ছে ৯টা বেজে ৩০ মিনিট-এ। It is not an easy task, (you don't say!) for "[i]t crosses pathless deserts, passes regions inhabited only by tribes whose hand has been against every man since Ishmael became a warrior." The rhetoric is profoundly moving, and at a distance, comical. Take this passage for instance:

It was on these plains that the earliest of the great monarchies of the earth were founded. It was through them that Alexander marched to the conquest of the Asiatic world. They are, too, the scene of no insignificant portion of Biblical history. One-half of us when we hear of the Euphrates, think of the garden of Eden, of the flaming sword, off [sic] the four rivers which enclosed the dwelling-place of our first parents. The idea of a Railway through all this, of locomotives crossing the Euphrates, of embankments on the plains of Mesopotamia, of a station by the gates of Bagdad, of a Telegraph in the streets where good Haroun Alraschid wandered late, seems to most of us ludicrously incongruous.

...The world is but a little place after all, when viewed with the eyes of engineers instead of those of historians…A Railway from Athens to Sparta would not reach from Calcutta to Raneegunge.

Even more heart-warming is the solution the author offers to the minor problem of finding labour.

Even a Turk will work if he is well paid, and called an overseer…The climate is thoroughly invigorating, and with the slightest care even Europeans can be employed for seven months in the year in the open air. At all times they can do the work they perform in India, the task of superintendence. For actual labour, we have all the races on the shores of the great inland sea. Fellahs may be hired. Black labour may be purchased from the African coast, and in a few months, 200,000 labourers could be collected ion the Euphrates. For the Southern terminus, we have the men who are now working on the western lines of India, the labourers of Bombay and Cutch, Kattyawar, Guzerate, and Broach. The hordes of Chinese, moreover, who annually swarm off to California and Australia, to Siam and Singapore, can be as easily attracted to the Persian Gulf, and there are no better labourers in the world.

Stephenson's energy, however, is truly admirable. The reports of his travels and persuasions that are published can be used to trace his journey from Paris, to Austria, Germany, and Trieste. He met Prince Metternich, who, after a long interview, "at once understood full benefits to be obtained; promised his aid in all ways." He also went on to meet Prince Callimaki, the Turkish Ambassador in Paris, possibly Prince Schwartzenberg at Vienna, the King of France, and several other named and unnamed dignitaries.

May be it wasn't such a crazy plan after all. Perhaps it seems strange in the age of the aeroplane, when our notions of time and traversal of space have changed greatly. Even so, no harm in registering my own alarm! Let me conclude with this map, demonstrating roughly the route that the train was expected to take.

William Prinsep and the Pujas

The Chowringhee Theatre drawing I referred to my earlier blogpost is how I was introduced to the work of William Prinsep. Let me share a few others by him.

The first one is titled 'Doorgah preparations, opposite to Isherah', painted around 1832. I don't think it's the preparation, really. It's more likely to be the immersion. The discrepancy in the handwriting is also puzzling. Ishurah Ghat is in Barrackpore and Prinsep did a sketch of that too.

This second one is a watercolour, titled 'Europeans being entertained by dancers and musicians in a splendid Indian house in Calcutta.'

The third one is of the 'Mosque on the Corner of Chowringhee Road and the Dhurrumtollah in Calcutta.'

You may notice that at the bottom right corner there is a cluster of people who are carrying a Kali idol. Now, of course, there are lanes radiating out from the mosque lined with shops selling stationery items or Biriyani. The last time I ate at one of these must have been some ten or twelve years back. Chicken Biriyani was priced at Rs 13.

There is a collection available for free viewing online, but it's not comprehensive. One hopes to see the collection some time soon.

Chowringhee Theatre

A few months back, while reading Radharaman Mitra's Kalikata Darpan I came to know why Theatre Road is so named. I didn't know about the 'Chowringhee Theatre' that existed there, or about Mrs Leach. A few hours back I was looking up what is available on the Portuguese presence in Calcutta, and in the process of doing so I stumbled upon a couple of newspaper articles from 1836 about the Chowringhee Theatre. I am posting excerpts from two of the performance reviews that I read.

OTHELLO

                                              Let jealousy
Distil her bane to taint their growing loves!
Light up resentment! fan the dangerous fire
With dark surmises, hints, invented tales
Till it burst all the tender bonds asunder
That knit their souls-Virginia.
This jealousy is for a precious creature.-Winter's Tale

Chowringhee Theatre, Dec. 14.

The amateur who so lately performed the part of Shylock, appeared on this occasion in the character of Othello. It was in the former that Kean made his first appearance on the London Stage, and it was in the latter that he feebly fretted his last hour as an actor, coincident with the close of the real tragedy of his life. In both of these parts he had often electrified the audience with his bursts of passion; but though his Shylock was in many respects a wonderful performance, his jealous Moor was superior, not only to his malignant Jew but to all his other personations. it was by far the greatest triumph of his skill, and singularly well adapted for the full display of his peculiar powers. To have seen Kean in this character is an event in a man's life that can never be forgotten.
…
The character of Iago has been compared with that of Zanga in Young's tragedy of The Revenge. But we might as well compare a Saracen's head on a sign-post with one of Rembrandt's portraits. Hazlitt justly styles it a vulgar caricature. Dr. Gregory in one of his letters informs us that when he was a very young man he used to think Zanga a better drawn character than Iago, but that more knowledge of the world convinced him of his error.
…
His excellence in comedy and farce is well known, but we somewhat doubted his powers in the tragic line; and we never dreamed that he could so ably sustain the difficult part of Iago [actor identified as an "Amateur", "who sometime ago personated Rashleigh Obsaldistone"]. We were far from expecting an entire failure, but little did we expect such great success. It was his very best performance on the Chowringhee Boards. And yet, with all this praise we must caution him against attempting a different department of the tragic drama. Let him not try Othello - he would fail, we think, in the development of overmastering emotion.
…
Can he be angry?…
The emphasis was placed on the word angry, - of course it is the personal pronoun he that should have been made emphatic. There was another error of which the same gentleman was guilty, and while demands particular notice, because it is too common amongst amateur actors. When he described Cassio's dream he accompanied the words "and then did kiss me hard, as if he plucked up kisses by the root, that grew upon my lips", with an explanatory plucking motion of his hand to and from his lips. In the first place Cassio was not supposed to pluck kisses with his hand, but with his lips, and in the second, even if the manual explication had been more correct, it would still have been unnecessary and injudicious.
…
Mrs. Leach as Desdemona was not seen to so much advantage as usual. Her grief wants dignity. It is not womanly, but child-like. Her tender admiration and confiding love in the early scenes were delicately and beautifully true. Mrs. Francis must not be passed over. There was genuine feeling in her deliver of the noble and indignant out-breaks against the Moor and her husband in the concluding scene.
Upon the whole were much gratified with the style in which the Tragedy of Othello was got up on this occasion; and we hope it ail not be long before we see another of Shakespeare's Plays, represented on the Chowringhee Boards. - Ed. Cal. Lit. Gaz.

The second last excerpt found its way into my post simply because it is representative of the kind of detail that one could expect in these reviews. You may find the italicised character names a little disturbing: I decided that I should retain the original formatting as far as possible, because who knows, that too may have a story to tell some day. And here's the second one:

MACBETH

Macbeth was played at Chowringhee on the 25th February. In some respects the performance was decidedly good, but taken as a whole we have seen and we hope to see many better. None of the personages appeared to us quite at home in their parts. The representative of Macbeth presented a studied and elaborated delineation of the character, but to our apprehension it was wanting in intensity and in an adaptation of the voice and exterior to the varied emotion to be painted, and especially was it deficient in that solemn and affecting pathos which in the later scenes compels us in spite of ourselves to sympathise with the murderer. The performance was frequently forceable and at times highly impressive-but it never in our estimation rose to undoubted excellence. Mrs. Leach's Lady Macbeth will not add to her Theatrical reputation, but we are certain it will not detract from it. She has an innate perception of dramatic propriety and talent and perseverance which will always prevent her from sinking below mediocrity. But it is certain that the part of Lady Macbeth is beyond her power. She deserves every credit for the attempt and to say that the performance exhibited no glaring defects but continued to interest the audience to the last, is to praise highly. But something more than the absence of defects and generation of ennui is requisite in a character like Lady Macbeth's and we would counsel Mrs. Leach not to try it again - in a multitude of characters she is really great; but here she is only mediocre.
...
Bengal Herald

On 8 December 1836 there was also a performance of Il Barbiere di Seviglia, which from what I can make out was played by a principally English cast but in the Italian. There are records of several other performances in the same year. I hope to find more in and around the time. What struck me is how on both occasions Mrs. Leach does not seem to have put on inspired performances.

I found this picture on the British Library online gallery. Luckily this is from the 1830s, drawn by William Prinsep (1794-1874), who has drawn several other remarkable sketches. Among the things inscribed on the picture is the statement: "Chowringhee Theatre holds about 800 persons in the boxes and 200 in the pit. Last scene of 'Blind Boy' set-my own drawing WP." Trying to picture Othello being played on this stage. Hmm.

Radharaman Mitra writes in Kalikata Darpan (my translation):

To the South of the Chowringhee Road and Theatre Road crossing, between 1813 and 1839 stood the wooden theatre called 'Chowringhee Theatre'. The greatest female actor of the age, Mrs Esther Leach, made her debut in this Theatre on 27 July 1836, aged only 17. On 31 May 1839 the Theatre got burnt down. Dwarakanath Tagore purchased the land on which it stood at the price of Rs 30,100. It is from this Theatre that the adjacent road got its name.

The Theatre and Mrs Leach share a St. Xavier's connection. Mitra tells us that after the Theatre was burnt down Mrs Leach, with the help of Mr Stocqueler (editor, Englishman) and Lord Auckland (who contributed Rs 16,000), raised funds and built the Sans Souci Theatre at 10 Park Street. It was completed in 1840 and inaugurated a year later.

Sadly, however, within a couple of years of inaugurating her new Theatre, Mrs Leach passed away. On 2 November 1843, while she was playing her part in Handsome Husband, her dress caught fire. She died on the 18th, succumbing to the burns. She was buried at the Bhowanipur Cemetery (perhaps because she was the daughter of Sergeant Major John Leach, Fort William), but her grave bears no marks today. She acquired the epithet "Indian Siddons" and was known "for talent and personal attractions, without a rival, even in England."

Coming back to Othello, the incredible (and by that I don't mean that he lacks credibility) Radharaman Mitra tells us that in 1848, twelve years after the Calcutta Amateurs staged the play at the Chowringhee Theatre, another British company performed the same at Sans Souci. This time round, and Mitra notes this with great excitement, a Bengali gentleman called Vaishnacharan Adhya played the title role on two nights, 17 August and 12 September.

One hopes to find more on the Chowringhee Theatre in the course of time. Perhaps Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage: A Checklist edited by Sukanta da and Dr. Lal will have something to offer. I'll look it up and be back, hopefully.