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 Mr. Dickens Goes to 
 The Play 
 
 By 
 
 Alexander Woollcott 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 New York and London 
 
 Ube TknicUerbocfter ipress 
 1922
 
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 A 4 
 
 Copyright, 1922 
 
 by 
 
 Alexander Woollcott 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 
 /T,^
 
 To 
 KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
 
 My dear Kate Douglas Wiggin: 
 
 Surely it is unnecessary to explain why, of all the 
 books I might possibly provoke, this one must needs 
 especially be dedicated to you — you who rode with Mr. 
 Dickens to Portland long ago and told him why you 
 liked "David Copperfield" best of all and what parts of 
 his novels were rather dull and why your yellow dog 
 was named Pip and how your other dog (who had 
 fought with Pip in your garden) was, inevitably, named 
 Mr. Pocket. 
 
 Nor need there be any explaining of a Dickens book 
 compiled by one who was brought up on his stories. 
 Without them I should hardly have had the key to all 
 that my grandfather and my mother were wont to say 
 across the head of this young Brooks of Sheffield. One 
 of the last memories I have of my grandfather is of an 
 autocrat of nearly ninety years, sitting fiercely on the 
 vine-hung verandah of his old house down in Jersey. 
 In his declining years he had relinquished little by little 
 the supervision of his farm and his factory. But he 
 still kept an eye on those hollyhocks of his. And no 
 sooner did he suspect the roaming chickens of having 
 designs on them, than up would go his cane in the
 
 vi To Kate Douglas Wiggin 
 
 fashion of a war-club and down the steps he would 
 charge, roaring as he went (to summon aid from what- 
 ever stray grandchildren might be within earshot): 
 "Janet, Donkeys!" 
 
 But I should, perhaps, tell how this fresh gathering 
 of the Dickens material came about. It really happened 
 last Christmas Eve; when, in the early afternoon, I 
 encountered on Fifth Avenue the redoubtable J. M. 
 Kerrigan of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Kerrigan 
 always has to stop and think when you ask him what 
 country he is in and he has a delightful way of never 
 being committed to any destination. Therefore he 
 was all in readiness when I suggested that we make the 
 round of the studios, he to sing Christmas Waits for our 
 drinks. He sang many old snatches that afternoon. 
 
 So it was twilight when, in high good humor, we 
 reached my quarters at last, where I went to work on 
 the tying up of some Christmas parcels and Kerrigan, 
 infected by the spirit of the day, groped instinctively 
 for my set of Dickens on the darkened shelves. I have 
 an indistinct recollection that I caught him looking 
 disappointedly for Micawber in ' ' Dombey and Son ." I 
 remember for sure that just when I was lording it over 
 the fellow because he had never made the acquaintance 
 of my friend, Mr. Wopsle, he countered by introducing 
 me to Dullborough Town, which, in all its charm and 
 prophetic humor, had escaped me until that day. Said 
 Kerrigan :
 
 To Kate Douglas Wiggin vii 
 
 "Isn't it a cruel pity that all this Dickens talk and 
 streeleen on the theatre is not caught up in one volume 
 where a man could be finding it of a fine Christmas 
 afternoon?" 
 
 Some days later, I poked about in the library in quest 
 of such a book and there was none. So here it is. I 
 hand it to you, knowing you will find pleasure in it, 
 because so many parts of it are beautiful. 
 
 I remember, after a matinee of "Justice" in which the 
 audience's interest in Mr. Barrymore's performance had 
 been shared by an equally striking and much more 
 emotional performance in the proscenium box by an 
 actress of note, Barry more vowed he had never dared 
 dream he would one day star with her in New York. 
 And I rather suspect Mr. Dickens never guessed he 
 would one day write a book in collaboration with 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Alexander Woollcott. 
 
 New York, 1922
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Immortals ....... 3 
 
 The Thwarted Actor . . . . .12 
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Letters ... 33 
 
 I, The Macready Letters .... 37 
 
 IL Miscellaneous Letters .... 57 
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels ... 83 
 
 The Vincent Crummles Company . . . 133 
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens . , . 223 
 
 Sleight of Hand ...... 237 
 
 iz
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dickens in Full Make-Up . Frontispiece 
 
 (From the Shaw Collection) 
 
 Sir Henry Irving as Jingle .... 6 
 
 Charles Dickins (1839) 12 
 
 (Outline of the Painting by Maclise) 
 
 Dickens as Playwright . . . . .16 
 
 (From the Shaw Collection) 
 
 Dickens as Stage Manager .... 20 
 
 (From the Manuscript in the Widener Library. Harvard 
 University) 
 
 Relic of Dickens the Stage Manager . . 22 
 
 (From the Widener Library, Harvard University) 
 
 Macready as Alfred Evelyn . . . .46 
 
 A Dramatization of "A Tale of Two Cities" at 
 
 the Lyceum Theatre, London, 1860 . 224 
 
 (From the Shaw Collection) 
 
 The Second Presentation of "Pickwick Club," 
 
 Royal City of London Theatre, March 28, 
 
 1837. This Rare Bill Advertises the Second 
 
 Performances of the Second Version of the 
 
 "Pickwick Papers," the First Version being 
 
 THAT OF William Leman Rede at the Adelphi 
 
 in October, 1836 230 
 
 (From the collection of Milton J. Stone, President of the 
 Boston Branch of the "Dickens Fellowship") 
 
 Boz's Juba Showbill ..... 234
 
 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play
 
 THE IMMORTALS 
 
 IN the writings of the younger critics and in the small 
 talk of the younger playwrights, there is evidence 
 from time to time of a notion that the theatre of today 
 is something quite apart from the theatre of our grand- 
 fathers. You will hear them speaking of the old days 
 with a wondering pity, as of a remote and rather fabu- 
 lous time and quite as though Ibsen had definitely 
 and finally exorcised some grotesque spirit from the 
 playhouse. It is true that the slamming of Nora's 
 door jarred the house and startled a thousand drowsy 
 fellows into a new wakefulness, but, as with the fleeing 
 Peter Pan when the nursery window was nipped shut 
 after him, so here too, perhaps, something was left 
 behind. 
 
 When a younger worker in the theatre is caught red- 
 handed in the act of speaking of naturalism as something 
 invented in the spring of 1896 it is well to take him aside 
 and reread him Hamlet's advice to the players. And it 
 is well occasionally to take all of them by the scruffs of 
 their necks and set them down at the feet of that Eng- 
 
 3
 
 4 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 lishman who wrote of the theatre of tener and with more 
 insight than any one else of his century or ours. 
 
 Turn to his pages and find again how changeless the 
 theatre is. Somehow within its gates time and place 
 lose something of their force. The American adrift in 
 the streets of Paris or Vienna may be conscious of an 
 alien world jostling all around him, but once he crosses 
 the theatre's threshold, he sniffs a familiar aroma and 
 hears a familiar overtone which tell him that here at 
 last is something akin to what he had known back home. 
 Like the gypsies, the people of the stage really know no 
 country, nor can it ever be said of any one of them that 
 he belongs to this decade or that. They all stand a little 
 apart, unfused with the life of the community surround- 
 ing them, untouched by the passing years, ageless while 
 the world grows old and tired. 
 
 That is why the mummers of Dickens are, in some 
 ways, more vivid and more contemporary than any of 
 his people. Mrs. Gamp, Sam Weller, Uriah Heep, even 
 Trabb's boy, may be receding ever so slowly toward the 
 horizon of the quaint and the half-believable. But not 
 Miss Henrietta Petowker of the Theatre Royal, Drury 
 Lane, "the only sylph who could stand upon one leg 
 and play the tambourine on her other knee, like a 
 sylph." Not Mr. Wopsle of London and Elsinore. 
 That is why as his motley pageant swaggers by — fading 
 ingenues, embittered translators, wily bill-posters, 
 despondent critics, soiled supernumeraries and all —
 
 The Immortals 5 
 
 it is easy for you to remember some perfect counterpart 
 of each and every one encountered the day before on 
 Broadway or the Strand. 
 
 Indeed, if some fatuous publisher were ever to order 
 a revision of Dickens in order to bring his tales of the 
 theatre up to date, what could one add? And what 
 could one leave out? Not thrice-gifted Snevellicci's 
 scrap-book of press notices, accidentally left lying 
 around to catch the eye of her handsome caller. Not 
 (while the memory of wartime pilfering is with us yet) 
 the producer who enriched his repertoire by translating 
 pieces from the foreign stage, renaming them and pre- 
 tending blandly that they were creatures of his own 
 teeming brain. 
 
 Not the Crummleses, bless them — neither the per- 
 manently arrested girlishness of Miss Ninetta of that 
 tribe, nor the fire and the glint that were in each 
 Crummies eye when word spread backstage from the 
 stalls that a London manager was out front, the dread 
 London manager, who was seen to smile broadly at the 
 antics indulged in by some paltry comedian during Mrs. 
 Crummles's biggest scene. Can't you picture the black 
 look Mr. Crummies gave the wretched offender then 
 and there and the week's notice he gave him as soon as 
 the curtain was down? 
 
 It is preposterous to suggest of Mrs. Crummies that 
 she has passed away. A deathless lady, she, and one 
 of a throng of immortals. That complete Dickensian,
 
 6 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 G. K. Chesterton, has spoken of Dickens as the last of 
 the great mythologists, one who sent out into the world 
 a troupe of fairies, fairies like Sam Weller and Mr. Pick- 
 wick, fairies because you cannot, by any feat of the 
 imagination, think of them as having died. If you go 
 in the right spirit any night now to an inn at some Eng- 
 lish crossroads, says Chesterton, and sit you down over 
 a mug of ale, as like as not the door will swing wide and 
 in will come Mr. Pickwick, spectacles, neckerchief, 
 gaiters and all. And any visitor to New York, loitering 
 along Forty-fourth Street on any pleasant afternoon, is 
 only too likely to encounter Mrs. Crummies out for the 
 air — Mrs. Crummies treading the pavement as if she 
 were going to immediate execution, with an animating 
 consciousness of innocence and that heroic fortitude 
 which virtue alone inspires. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Crummies. Her husband saw her first 
 standing upon her head on the butt-end of a spear, 
 surrounded with blazing fireworks. *'Such grace!" 
 he used to say afterwards, "Coupled with such dignity! 
 I adored her from that moment." 
 
 And all of us have met that changeless camp follower 
 — Mr. Waldengarver's dresser, the one who could see the 
 performance of "Hamlet" only in terms of his own part 
 in it, and who, watching from the wings during the mur- 
 der of Polonius, felt that his star might have made more 
 of his stockings. "You're out in your reading of Ham- 
 let, Mr. Waldengarver, when you get your legs in profile."
 
 Sir Henry Irving as "Jingle"
 
 The Immortals 7 
 
 Memories of countless rag-tag-and-bobtail produc- 
 tions in our own time are stirred by that performance 
 of "Hamlet." 
 
 On our arrival in Denmark [said Pip], we found the King 
 and Queen of that country elevated in two armchairs on a 
 kitchen table holding a court. The whole of the Danish 
 nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in 
 the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable 
 Peer with a dirty face, who seemed to have risen from the 
 people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in 
 its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on the 
 whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood 
 gloomily apart and I could have wished that his curls and 
 forehead had been more probable. 
 
 And there is something quite painfully reminiscent 
 about that after-theatre supper when Pip and Herbert 
 took the aforesaid fellow-townsman out for cakes and 
 ale, and, until 2 in the morning, listened (for lack of a 
 chance to get a word in edgewise) to an account of the 
 Waldengarver success and a development of the Walden- 
 garver plans. 
 
 I forget in detail what they were [Pip said afterward], 
 but I have a general recollection that he was to begin by 
 reviving the Drama and to end with crushing it; inasmuch 
 as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a 
 chance or hope. 
 
 Reminiscent, too, of something within the experience 
 of all of us is David's jarring drop to the gray, gritty 
 hubbub of the streets, a descent which is part of the
 
 8 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 aftermath of every true adventure at the play. And 
 Dickens's own memories of the theatre in Dullborough 
 Town, where he went as a small boy and where he 
 learned as from a page of English history how the wicked 
 King Richard slept in wartime on a sofa much too small for 
 him and how fearfully his conscience troubled his boots. 
 
 Above all, the theatre of today can hardly disown the 
 play ordered by Mr. Crummies to be written around 
 the new pump and washtubs he had just acquired for 
 his company. 
 
 Nor Nicholas's wonderment as to how he could 
 introduce a pas de deux for Folair and the Phenomenon 
 in the scene where Folair as the attached servant is 
 turned out of doors with the wife and child, goes with 
 them into poor lodgings and refuses to take any wages. 
 The neophyte adaptor could not for the life of him see 
 how a dance could be managed. 
 
 " Why, isn't it obvious? " reasoned Mr. Lenville. " Gad- 
 zooks, who can help seeing the way to do it.? — you astonish 
 me! You get the distressed lady, and the little child, and 
 the attached servant, into the poor lodgings, don't you? — 
 Well, look here. The distressed lady sinks into a chair, and 
 buries her face in her pocket-handkerchief — ' What makes 
 you weep, mama? ' says the child. ' Don't weep, mama, or 
 you'll make me weep too ! ' — ' And me !' says the faithful 
 servant, rubbing his eyes with his arm. ' What can we do 
 to raise your spirits, dear mama?' says the little child. 
 'Aye, what can we do?' says the faithful servant. 'Oh, 
 Pierre!' says the distressed lady; ' would that I could shake 
 off these painful thoughts!' — 'Try, ma'am, try,' says the
 
 The Immortals 9 
 
 faithful servant; 'rouse yourself, ma'am; be umused.' — 'I 
 will,' says the lady, ' I will learn to suffer with fortitude. 
 Do you remember that dance, my honest friend, which, in 
 happier days you practiced with this sweet angel? It never 
 failed to calm my spirits then. Oh ! let me see it once again 
 before I die ! ' — There it is — cue for the band, before I die, — 
 and off they go. That's the regular thing; isn't it. 
 Tommy?" 
 
 " That's it," replied Mr. Folair. " The distressed lady, 
 overpowered by old recollections, faints at the end of the 
 dance, and you close in with a picture." 
 
 How that little ninety-year-old twinge of dramatic 
 criticism does keep bobbing up in the present-day ob- 
 servations! As when Mr. Zangwill, contemplating a 
 comedy about a serio-comic governess, designed a 
 heroine with a tendency to stop short (right in the 
 dining room or on the street or anywhere) and give 
 imitations. You see, he had written the piece in the 
 hope that Cissie Loftus would play the leading role. 
 Or, when Ethel Watts Mumford wrote a comedy about 
 a little exile returning to America from a Continental 
 school, where, among other accomplishments, she had 
 developed some skill at toe dancing. Back home in a 
 great, austere mansion on Long Island, whenever she 
 felt blue, an orchestra would pipe up providentially in 
 the next room and she (shod, as it happened, in ballet 
 shoes) would cheer herself up by a good, heart-warming 
 pas seul. That was in a play called "Just Herself," 
 written, or at least rewritten, for Lydia Lopokova.
 
 lo Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 And then there is that story they tell of the English 
 comedy, wherein the distressed heroine, having fled for 
 some reason to Buenos Aires and been pursued there by 
 a lecherous and importunate bandit, finally called out: 
 "Nay, sir, I cannot yield to your desires, but instead I 
 will try to give you my impression of Miss Edna May in 
 *The Belle of New York.'" 
 
 And then there are the Curdles, who are with us yet. 
 
 "It's not as if the theatre was in its high and palmy 
 days," said Mrs. Curdle a century ago. "The drama 
 is gone, perfectly gone." 
 
 "As an exquisite embodiment of the poet's vision," 
 said Mr. Curdle, "and a realization of human intellect- 
 uality, guilding with refulgent light our dreamy 
 moments, and laying open a new and magic world before 
 the mental eye, the drama is gone, perfectly gone." 
 
 Who will deny that Mr. Curdle is writing dramatic 
 criticism here or in England today and that Mrs. Curdle 
 is a member of the Drama League? But, there, that 
 shelf of Dickens bristles with texts for every writer on 
 the theatre. Poke your nose into any one of half a 
 dozen volumes and find again how essentially change- 
 less the theatre is. Read Mr. Dickens and rediscover, 
 if you will, its Peter Pantheism. And your own. 
 
 In the pages that follow, then, are assembled for your 
 convenience most of what he wrote about the theatre 
 in his books and much of what he wrote in his letters — 
 together with some stray clippings from fugitive papers
 
 The Immortals n 
 
 and a sample of his playwriting for your amusement. 
 Also an account of the plays which, to his great pain, 
 they made from his novels and some study of the sup- 
 pressed actor in him which kept cropping out to upset 
 his orderly life and distress his orderly friends. It is the 
 theatre of his day and ours, recorded from the stalls, 
 from the pit, from the wings and from what he himself 
 once called "the yellow eye of an actor." Implicit in 
 that record is some of the best dramatic criticism in the 
 language.
 
 THE THWARTED ACTOR 
 
 pHARLES DICKENS was the most successful and 
 immeasurably the most far-reaching writer born 
 of modern England. From his own country in his own 
 day and from readers in scattered lands the world 
 around came an instant and heart-warming response 
 to his genius which has been matched in the experience 
 of no other writer. That response was not only imme- 
 diate but personal and affectionate to a degree that only 
 Kipling has since approached and then only under 
 special circumstances and for but a little while. It was 
 an interested affection that swirled and billowed around 
 Dickens all his days on earth and filled those days 
 with a sort of festive hubbub that was most dear to 
 him. 
 
 And yet he was never quite happy in his work. He 
 was the most fecund and rewarded of novelists, but it 
 did not content him to be a novelist. There was that 
 in him which could not be satisfied by a writer's career 
 at all. It is impossible to explore far in the half- 
 shrouded byways of Dickens without surprising again 
 and again this secret of his heart — that he wanted to be 
 
 12
 
 A''i 
 
 
 r 
 
 r 
 
 / 
 
 \\^ 
 
 V 
 
 
 / 'Ms. 
 
 :^:'v^ 
 
 VfJ 
 
 ■>^' \' 
 
 /: 
 
 / ~''^. 
 
 Charles Dickens (1839) 
 (Outline of the Painting by Maclise)
 
 The Thwarted Actor 13 
 
 an actor. Of course he himself used to speak lightly 
 and a little sheepishly of his youthful aspirations for the 
 stage, as of something boyish and amusing enough when 
 viewed in kindly retrospect. Yet these aspirations, or 
 rather the sources of them, never really left him and 
 that they were fermenting away inside him always is 
 readable between the lines even of that eminently dis- 
 creet but only half -comprehending man Friday of his — 
 John Forster. 
 
 It would have been idle to expostulate with him that 
 he could and did reach a far wider audience than any 
 actor might aspire to. It would have been idle to point 
 out how all over England and America and Australia, 
 readers of his, great folk and mean folk, queens and 
 miners and scrubwomen and doctors of philosophy, 
 were laughing and weeping at the promptings of his 
 written word. He knew that well enough. He knew 
 it. But he did not feel it. He did not hear them 
 laugh, did not see them cry. All the genius poured into 
 "Copperfield" or the tale of Tiny Tim could not bring 
 him the warm, human satisfaction of visible and audible 
 appreciation which was his friend Macready's nightly 
 portion, that really precious reward which only in their 
 more toplofty moments do the actors affect to disprize 
 as when the late Lawrence Barrett, sighing with the 
 extra profundity of a bogus melancholy, would murmur: 
 *'What are we poor players but sculptors whose lot it is 
 night after night to carve statues in snow. "
 
 14 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Had Dickens lived in the twentieth century, the 
 Freudians, taking one shrewd, amused, infuriatingly 
 perspicacious look at him, would have analyzed him on 
 the spot. They would have noted his clumsy efforts at 
 playwriting, his adoration of Macready, his wistful 
 loiterings at the stage-door, of which the faint, unmis- 
 takable aroma was ever the breath of his nostrils, and 
 his disarming readiness to laugh and cry at the most 
 ordinary of performances in any theatre. They would 
 have noted his pantomimic gyrations when in the 
 throes of composition. They would have known that 
 the young novelist who walked the night-mantled 
 streets of Paris in an agony of sympathy for the dying 
 Paul Dombey was a sidetracked actor. They would 
 have noted his own incongruous capacity for self-pity, 
 his grotesque sensitiveness to the most piddling of 
 criticism, his comically transparent excuses for appear- 
 ing in amateur dramatics, his gallant and undeniably 
 Thespian appearance and his flamboyant raiment, 
 geranium in the buttonhole, brilliantine on the hair, 
 rings on the fingers and all, which distressed his sedate 
 friends but satisfied something within him. They 
 would have noted all these things and published in some 
 obscure journal an article written to demonstrate that 
 Mr. Dickens was suffering from an exhibition complex. 
 This would have maddened him. He would have 
 dictated sixteen furious letters demanding retraction, 
 growing the redder in the face as he paced the floor
 
 The Thwarted Actor 15 
 
 because he would have known that it was all quite true. 
 That half-smothered desire gnawed at him through all 
 the years of his growth until at last it found an outlet 
 which brought him peace. 
 
 Charles Dickens's dealings with the established pro- 
 fessional theatre were irregular, apprehensive and 
 finally vanquishing, except, of course, that he went 
 a-playgoing in whatever town he visited, whether or 
 not he knew the language and whether or not the bills 
 held forth the slightest promise of something worth a 
 whole evening of a lucid adult's leisure. Even in the 
 days when he was working at that blacking-factory, and 
 earning six shillings a week, you would have seen him in 
 his white hat, little jacket and corduroy trousers, march- 
 ing up to the ticket booth of some show-van that lay 
 temptingly across his homeward path and boldly 
 planking down some considerable fraction of his income 
 for an hour of contraband entertainment. 
 
 Earlier even than that began the itch to write for the 
 stage, for the first works of his pen were tragedies 
 written for performance at home in a nursery packed 
 to the doors with children dragged in from the neighbor- 
 hood to listen to him. " Misnar, or the Sultan of India," 
 now unhappily lost to posterity, was one of these. It 
 was an itch that troubled him off and on for many 
 years, finding expression in several comedies and bur- 
 lettas, some of which were produced with moderate 
 success in the days before his name had a little magic
 
 1 6 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 for the summoning of an audience. Specifically, these 
 were a two-act burletta called "The Strange Gentle- 
 man"; a comic opera libretto called "The Village 
 Coquettes"; a one-act burletta entitled "Is She His 
 Wife? Or, Something Singular"; a short farce, "The 
 Lamplighter"; another (written with Mark Lemon) 
 called "Mr. Nightingale's Diary" and a five-act drama- 
 tization of "No Thoroughfare" which he and Wilkie 
 Collins managed between them. Today none of them 
 has any existence in the theatre and none of them has 
 any interest for the Dickensian, except as a curiosity. 
 It should be remembered, however, that they were 
 written in what were the dark days of the English 
 theatre, despite all the glamor lent to those days by 
 the backward glances of George Henry Lewes when, in 
 the fifties, he was, like most dramatic critics before his 
 time and after, earnestly engaged in lamenting the 
 decline of the drama. In that period, Dickens wrote 
 several plays that are now dead. But then no other 
 Englishman in that period wrote a play which is now 
 alive. 
 
 That he never succeeded in writing a play which 
 could serve his beloved Macready was a genuine and 
 unassuaged disappointment to him. His reverence for 
 that towering figure of the English stage was a thing 
 which time and his own surpassing success never 
 tarnished. To Macready he dedicated "Nicholas 
 Nickleby." And for Macready 's eyes he poured out
 
 St.tf ames's 'M^^SK^Theaf re. 
 
 HEr . H ARLE V, 
 
 STAG E-.^,1 NAG ER, ' 
 
 BIS BENEFIT 
 
 This Evening, MONDAY^ march 13th, 1837, 
 
 OBvhuh occaaiun »ill tie pt'rloriufMt^ 
 
 ■J... \<.. w .• ,u u.tBOZ. 
 
 \% SHE im WIFE ? 
 
 Or, SOniETHING SINGULAR ! 
 
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 Mr HARIiEY 
 
 hr. PlMwiCK 
 
 Make hia First Visit 
 
 TO THE ST- JAmES'S THEATRE. 
 
 At^i r^lrttp, ill ^ ■*(*■. i(h Air. In 
 
 EXPERIENCES 
 
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 MOITED eXPfhsLY FORHUI KY HIS alOBSifRE* 
 
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 GiilLi y l.s, iid- -Second f^sica hi. 
 
 Dickens as Playwright 
 (From the Shaw Collection)
 
 The Thwarted Actor 17 
 
 letters a little warmer in their aflFection than any others 
 which his hospitable heart dictated. I suspect that this 
 chafed Forster just a little and that he was more than a 
 little exasperated by his knowledge that his hero's 
 thoughts followed Macready around the world because 
 Macready represented an achievement that Dickens 
 half-consciously envied. 
 
 That Dickens was a natural-born leading man, no 
 one could doubt who has studied the portraits of him, 
 especially the winning Maclise study which caught him 
 in the beauty and but half-conquered diffidence of his 
 youth, the portrait which Thackeray found so amazing 
 a likeness, "the real identical man Dickens, the inward 
 as well as the outward of him." There, visible enough, 
 were genteel comedy in the walk and manner, juvenile 
 tragedy in the eye and touch-and-go farce in the laugh. 
 
 And that Dickens had made one direct bid for a place 
 in the ranks at Covent Garden is a matter of record. 
 Years afterwards, he harked back for Forster 's benefit 
 to that attempt : 
 
 I wrote to Bartley, who was stage-manager, and told 
 him how young I was, and exactly what I thought I could 
 do; and that I believed I had a strong perception of char- 
 acter and oddity, and a natural power of reproducing in my 
 own person what I observed in others. This was at the time 
 when I was at Doctors'-commons as a shorthand writer for 
 the proctors. And I recollect I wrote the letter from a little 
 oflBce I had there, where the answer came also. There must 
 have been something in my letter that struck the authorities,
 
 i8 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 for Bartley wrote me almost immediately to say they were 
 busy getting up the Hunchback (so they were) but that they 
 would communicate with me again, in a fortnight. Punc- 
 tual to the time another letter came, with an appointment 
 to do anything of Mathew's I pleased before him and 
 Charles Kemble, on a certain day at the theatre. My sister 
 Fanny was in the secret, and was to go with me to play the 
 songs. I was laid up when the day came, with a terrible 
 bad cold and an inflammation of the face; the beginning, by 
 the bye, of that annoyance in one ear to which I am subject 
 to this day. I wrote to say so and added that I would re- 
 sume my application next season. I made a great splash in 
 the gallery soon afterwards; the Chronicle opened to me; I 
 had a distinction in the little world of the newspaper, 
 which made one like it; began to write; didn't want money; 
 had never thought of the stage but as a means of getting it; 
 gradually left off turning my thoughts that way, and never 
 resumed the idea. I never told you this, did I? See how 
 near I may have been to another sort of life. 
 
 Years later, when he was reading an ignominiously 
 rejected farce by Bartley, he thought he detected some 
 struggling recognition and connection stirring up within 
 the subconsciousness of that manager. "But,'* he 
 added cheerfully, *'it may have been only his doubts of 
 that humorous composition." 
 
 When in the letter just quoted, Dickens said that he 
 had never thought of the stage except as a means of 
 getting money, he was saying what, by every evidence 
 furnished in the acts and works of his life, we know was 
 flagrantly untrue. And furthermore who cannot see 
 that he was saying it because it was not true.f* And
 
 The Thwarted Actor 19 
 
 knowing all he did know of Dickens's theatrical impulses, 
 the bland Forster still had the hardihood to say that 
 Dickens, in his rebellion against the labor and penury 
 which were the lot of a law court-reporter, had at- 
 tempted to escape that drudgery "even" in the direc- 
 tion of the stage. That word "even" crept into that 
 sentence, from the same deprecatory impulse which 
 later bade Forster describe Dickens's outbursts of 
 amateur dramatics as "Splendid Stroking." 
 
 It wasn't a very good living [Dickens himself observed of 
 the reportorial work] (though not a very bad one) and was 
 wearily uncertain; which made me think of the Theatre in 
 quite a business-like way. I went to some theatre every 
 night, with very few exceptions, for at least three years; 
 really studying the bills first, and going to where there was 
 the best acting; and always to see Mathews whenever he 
 played. I practised immensely (even such things as walking 
 in and out, and sitting down in a chair) : often four, five, six 
 heurs a day; shut up in my own room or walking about in 
 th« fields. I prescribed to myself, too, a sort of Hamilton- 
 ian system for learning parts; and learnt a great number. I 
 haven't even lost the habit now, for I knew my Canadian 
 ps.rts Immediately, though they were new to me. I must 
 have done a great deal : for, just as Macready found me out, 
 they used to challenge me at Braham's; and Yates, who was 
 knowing enough in those things, wasn't to be parried at all. 
 
 All of which is quoted at length, less for the specific 
 information it adds, than to ask if it does not suggest 
 something untold, some color for the legend that, at an 
 unchronicled time and place, Dickens did vanish into
 
 20 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the personnel of a stock company and try his luck as an 
 actor. Of course that legend took on the accent of 
 certainty in the minds of those players at Portsmouth 
 who, after "Nicholas Nickleby," suspected that the 
 world was laughing at them and who would have it 
 that this Dickens came down there as a would-be-actor 
 and made a sorry mess of it. There is, of course, the 
 specific tradition that he went on unannounced one 
 night during the run of his own piece, *'The Strange 
 Gentleman." 
 
 But it was rather as an amateur that these instincts 
 of his found their earlier outlet. He never missed a 
 chance at such indulgence, organizing special companies, 
 pretending to be a little bored by them and ending 
 always by directing them himself and attending fever- 
 ishly to the smallest detail of back-stage management. 
 It was a part of him to plunge with passionate earnest- 
 ness into these exhausting enterprises, glowering at the 
 more trivial associates who could not, by mere per- 
 suasion, be led into taking seriously the exactions of 
 rehearsal and the true agony of performance. 
 
 Note the fine and familiar mixture of relish and ex- 
 asperation in this mid-rehearsal scrawl to the amused 
 Macready. "I never in my life saw a place in such a 
 state or had to do with such an utterly careless and 
 unbusiness-Iike set of dogs as my fellow-actors." He 
 excepted two, but not Forster, who was engrossed in the 
 role of Kitely. "So far as he is concerned," Dickens
 
 r 
 
 3n lirmrmbrancr ov riii: lai'k mr. douglas jerroi.d. 
 
 >{ 
 
 COMMIITKES "H'Ri;, OAl.LEHY OF ILLUSTHATl'JN. 
 KEOKST STKKET. * 
 
 ^ - ... * 
 
 
 ^A-.-^ Sl^a^C. 
 
 
 
 / X 
 
 -^^■-^ J.. -^-^ <c^ /^y^^/i^ cc^U^^i^^ 
 
 / 
 
 
 Dickens as Stage-Manager 
 
 (From the Manuscript in the Widener Library, Harvard College)
 
 The Thwarted Actor 21 
 
 added sourly, "there is nothing in the world but Kitely 
 — there is no world at all; only a something in its place 
 that begins with a K and ends with a Y" — a minor note 
 which does not, by the way, find place in Forster's 
 biography, nor did Mamie Dickens and Georgina 
 Hogarth think it nice to print it in their collection of 
 their father's letters. 
 
 It was Dickens who would draw up the rules against 
 talking in the wings, Dickens who blasted the negligent 
 in memorizing, Dickens who wrote out with his own 
 hand the calls and music cues and property lists. Stray 
 leaves from this old book of his life are treasured now 
 in the manuscript collections of the world. 
 
 To embark from time to time on such undertakings, 
 he had, of course, to down the questionings in his own 
 mind, the fretting of his anxious publishers and the 
 disconcerting suspicions of his friends, who knew well 
 enough what old impulses he was obeying. Above all, 
 he had to trump up some excuse for publication. For 
 it is not given to the Anglo-Saxon to be able to say 
 frankly : " It is my desire to get up on a lighted platform 
 and make an exhibition of myself, but I cannot do it in 
 a vacuum. I need someone to watch me. Please come 
 and watch me." I remember how, in my Sophomore 
 days at Hamilton College, we organized a dramatic 
 club, engaged a theatre and then were assailed with 
 misgivings which overhung us like a depressing cloud 
 until we hit upon the happy notion of giving our per-
 
 22 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 formance for the benefit of some local work, it mattered 
 not what. There we were, quite unconsciously invent- 
 ing out of our own needs, an old thing — a familiar thing 
 to Dickens, certainly, who, for his adventures on the 
 boards, always managed to contrive some plausible 
 cause outside the desires of his own heart. Even when 
 he worked up a monster benefit for poor Leigh Hunt and 
 was bereft of his cause by an unexpected eleventh-hour 
 pension for that gratified beneficiary, he was only 
 momentarily baflfled. 
 
 How good an actor he was, it is diflBcult to tell from 
 the written criticism. ''Assumption," he wrote, *'has 
 charms for me so delightful — I hardly know for how 
 many wild reasons — that I feel a loss of, Oh, I can't say 
 what exquisite foolery, when I lose a chance of being 
 someone not in the remotest degree like myself." (It 
 is, perhaps, worth noting that he invariably used the 
 word "assumption" to cover all activity of disguise or 
 impersonation. This parenthesis is a cross-reference to 
 the phrase, "the Datchery assumption" in his own com- 
 ment on "Edwin Drood" and is tucked in here for the 
 benefit of the Edwin Druids.) Leigh Hunt wrote that 
 Dickens's Bobadil (in Jonson's "Every Man in His 
 Humor") had " a spirit in it of intelligent apprehension 
 beyond anything the existing stage has known." But 
 Hunt's partiality might well have been challenged. 
 And Victoria, who worked up a considerable trepidation 
 over his performance of Wardour in Wilkie Collins 's
 
 
 
 <7ZC. 
 
 I 4' '^*-6. ^ . . J 
 
 Relic of Dickens, the Stage-Manager 
 (From the Widener Library, Harvard College)
 
 The Thwarted Actor 23 
 
 "The Frozen Deep," declared that no professional ac- 
 tor then living could have matched him. But somehow 
 one distrusts Her Majesty's aesthetic judgments. How- 
 ever, it is not a bad guess that Dickens was an excellent 
 actor, eloquent, picturesque, moving. And it is my 
 own that had not chance otherwise canalized his great 
 genius, he would have been the overtowering actor of 
 Nineteenth Century England. Which would have been 
 a pity. 
 
 But the final and only satisfying outlet for all these 
 impulses was found by another means. That means 
 was foreshadowed in his early craving to read his manu- 
 scripts aloud. He took a genuine enough interest, in all 
 conscience, in the sales of his stories as their serial parts 
 appeared, and the rise and fall of those sales was a sure 
 barometer to his spirits. But he wrote not with any 
 such vague and impersonal audience in mind. He wrote 
 for the friend he was going to corner and read his piece 
 to. It was, let us say, Macready's laughter or Macready's 
 tears he hoped to invoke. Indeed, all of this aspect of 
 Charles Dickens lies back of a single sentence he once 
 wrote as a postscript to a letter dispatched from Lon- 
 don to his wife at the time when the ** Christmas Carol " 
 was still in manuscript. "If," he said, "you had seen 
 Macready last night, undisguisedly sobbing and crying 
 on the sofa as I read, you would have felt, as I did, what 
 a thing it is to have power." 
 
 An incident that attended the issue of "The Chimes"
 
 24 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 is most revealing. In the midst of a long, self-imposed 
 exile on the Continent, he had written that less-per- 
 sistent of his Christmas stories and, shipping the manu- 
 script on to London, was trusting to Forster's fidelity 
 to revise the proof. 
 
 It was on the eve of publication — early in the Winter 
 of 1844-1845 — that he suddenly announced a clandes- 
 tine trip to London, a flying-trip, that was to be im- 
 parted only to his cronies and which was to last only a 
 week. Of course Forster wrote back that it would tire 
 him out, that it would cost too much, that it could not 
 possibly be kept secret, etc., etc. And, of course, 
 Dickens paid no attention. 
 
 I am still in the same mind about coming to London 
 [he replied]. Not because the proofs concern me at all 
 (I should be an ass as well as a thankless vagabond if they 
 did) but because of that unspeakable restless something 
 which would render it almost as impossible for me to re- 
 main here and not see the thing complete, as it would be 
 for a full balloon, left to itself, not to go up. 
 
 And later in the same letter out plumped the whole 
 truth. 
 
 Shall I confess to you, I particularly want Carlyle above all 
 to see it before the rest of the world, when it is done; and 
 I should like to inflict the little story on him and on dear old 
 gallant Macready with my own lips, and to have Stanny 
 and the other Mac sitting by. Now, if you was a real gent, 
 you'd get up a little circle for me, one wet evening, when I 
 come to town: and would say: "My boy (Sir, you will have
 
 The Thwarted Actor 25 
 
 the goodness to leave those books alone and to go down- 
 stairs — What the Devil are you doing? And mind, sir, 
 I can see nobody — Do you hear? Nobody. I am particu- 
 larly engaged with a young gentleman from Asia) — My 
 boy, would you give us that little Christmas book (a little 
 Christmas book of Dickens's, Macready, which I'm anxious 
 you should hear); and don't slur it, now, or be too fast, 
 Dickens, please." — I say, if you was a real gent, something 
 to this efiFect might happen. I shall be under sailing orders 
 the moment I have finished. And I shall produce myself 
 (please God) in London on the very day you name. For one 
 week : to the hour. 
 
 And so it came to pass. 
 
 From that reading of "The Chimes" came many things. 
 The transition from private readings to public readings 
 given for charity, and thence to public readings given 
 for the lining of his own bottomless purse, was gradual 
 but inevitable. Forster saw it coming and in a sort of 
 panic amassed all the arguments against so undignified 
 a procedure and so wearing an undertaking. He was 
 careful that Dickens should hear of the distinguished 
 ladies who labored "under the impression that it was 
 to lead to the stage ( ! ." The scandalized italics and the 
 exclamation points (both of them) are Forster's. Fors- 
 ter has recorded his own opposition in these words: 
 
 It was a substitution of lower for higher aims; a change to 
 commonplace from more elevated pursuits; and it had so 
 much of the character of a public exhibition for money as 
 to raise, in the question of respect for his caUing as a writer, 
 a question also of respect for himself as a gentleman.
 
 26 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 But do you quite consider that the public exhibition of 
 oneself takes place equally, whosoever may get the money? 
 [Dickens replied]. And have you any idea that at this 
 moment — this very time — half the public at least supposes 
 me to be paid? My dear F., out of the twenty or five-and- 
 twenty letters a week that I get about Readings, twenty 
 will ask at what price, or on what terms, it can be done. The 
 only exceptions, in truth, are when the correspondent is a 
 clergyman, or a banker, or the member for the place in 
 question. 
 
 So it went back and forth, all the friends deploring 
 this new misconduct of his, Dickens himself inwardly 
 determined to go through with it. He reared a hundred 
 specious excusete. He laid his intentions to make an 
 exhibition of himself to the widest miscellany of causes. 
 To the melancholy of his home (from which his dis- 
 carded wife had just moved out for good and all), to 
 the numerical strength of his children, which could 
 hardly be denied. He would sign a contract for each 
 new course of readings, protesting all the while that the 
 work was torment to him, that he longed to stay by his 
 own fireside, that nothing but need of money could in- 
 duce him to go and so forth and so forth, with never a 
 single mention of the real reason which skulked always 
 in the background, and is visible there even to this day. 
 But the letters he wrote home from his journeys shone 
 with a new content. There was his public all about him, 
 within sight of his own eyes, within touch of his own 
 hands. The sense of them crowding the halls to suf-
 
 The Thwarted Actor 2^ 
 
 focation and hanging breathless on his performances 
 warmed his heart as nothing had ever warmed it. 
 
 When the boots at Morrison's heard that his Irish 
 hall was packed, he cried, "The Lard be praised for the 
 honor o' Dooblin." When a woman approached him in 
 York, it would be to say, "Mr. Dickens, will you let me 
 touch the hand that has filled my house with friends.''" 
 How he loved it ! He might write in advance that only 
 the hope of gain that would make him "more inde- 
 pendent of the worst," could make him face the travel 
 and exertion and absence — that a journej^ overseas 
 would be "penance and misery." But, from overseas, 
 he could not help writing, proudly, defensively, reveal- 
 ingly: 
 
 I have now read in New York City to 40,000 people and 
 am quite as well known in the streets there as I am in Lon- 
 don. People will turn back, turn again and face me, and 
 have a look at me, or will say to one another "look here, 
 Dickens coming." But no one ever stops me or addresses 
 me. Sitting reading in the carriage outside the New York 
 post-office while one of the staff was stamping the letters 
 inside, I became conscious that a few people who had been 
 looking at the turn-out had discovered me within. On 
 my peeping out good-humoredly, one of them (I should say 
 a merchant's book-keeper) stepped up to the door, took off 
 his hat, and said in a frank way: "Mr. Dickegs, I should 
 very much like to have the honor of shaking hands with 
 you" and, that done, presented two others. Nothing could 
 be more quiet or less intrusive. In the railway cars, if I 
 see anybody who clearly wants to speak to me, I usually
 
 28 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 anticipate the wish by speaking myself. If I am standing on 
 the brake outside (to avoid the intolerable stove) people 
 getting down will say with a smile: "As I am taking my 
 departure, Mr. Dickens, and can't trouble you for more than 
 a moment, I should like to take you by the hand, sir." And 
 so we shake hands and go our ways. 
 
 The interminable lines at his box-offices, the queue that 
 slept all night on the street in Brooklyn, for instance, 
 gave him a joy that had nothing whatever to do with 
 the dollars they were waiting to deposit to his account. 
 
 The career that really began with the reading of "The 
 Chimes" to the little circle in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 brought him in huge sums of money and reestablished 
 his friendship with America. Doubtless, it measurably 
 shortened his days on earth but it satisfied at last the 
 thing within him which had remained unsatisfied ever 
 since that broken appointment between the debonair 
 young reporter and the manager of Covent Garden long 
 before. 
 
 They were not quite like anything the world had seen 
 before or anything the world has seen since — those 
 readings, which, literally, were not readings at all. A 
 little like some courtyard or hearth-side performances 
 of the old jongleurs, perhaps, and more than a little 
 like the latter-day appearances of Ruth Draper, who, as 
 Dickens could, can by virtue of her own vivid self and 
 her extraordinary mimetic gift, crowd an empty, 
 sceneless stage with a host of her own imagining. But
 
 The Thwarted Actor 29 
 
 about them the half-admiring, half-grudging Carlyle 
 shall say the last word here, Carlyle who, under date 
 of April 29, 1863, made this report: 
 
 I had to go yesterday to Dickens's Reading, 8 p.m., 
 Hanover Rooms, to the complete upsetting of my evening 
 habitudes and spiritual composure. Dickens does do it 
 capitally, such as it is; acts better than any Macready in the 
 world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic theatre visible perform- 
 ing under one hat, and keeping us laughing — in a sorry way 
 some of us thought — the whole night. He is a good creature 
 too, and makes fifty or sixty pounds by each of these 
 readings.
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Letters 
 
 31
 
 THE STAGE IN DICKENS'S 
 LETTERS 
 
 npHE letters and portions of letters which follow 
 have been chosen from the great volume of 
 Dickens's correspondence, most of which has, at one 
 time or another, been published or partly published. 
 First, in this arrangement of them, come selections from 
 his letter's to Macready, offered here not merely because 
 they are abuzz with his interest in the theatre but be- 
 cause they reveal again and again the object of his 
 greatest affection among the men whom he came to 
 know. 
 
 It has been necessary to go back of the familiar re- 
 cord in the official family edition of his letters and in the 
 often cryptic pages of Forster's biographj\ When 
 Mamie Dickens and Georgina Hogarth (his eldest 
 daughter and his sister-in-law) edited their great man's 
 abundant correspondence, there were many passages 
 and often whole letters which were omitted out of dis- 
 cretion, out of timidity, or out of consideration for 
 Dickens's reputation for refined and amiable speech. 
 For example, in a familiar letter written to Macready 
 on November 1, 1854, and touching on a civilian phe- 
 
 3 33
 
 34 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 nomenon of the Crimean War quite recognizable to 
 anyone who was ahve in the years from 1914 to 1918, 
 you will read this delightful paragraph: 
 
 " is getting a little too fat, but appears to be 
 
 troubled by the great responsibility of directing the whole 
 war. He doesn't seem to be quite clear that he has got 
 the ships into the exact order he intended, on the sea 
 point of attack at Sebastopol." But it is when you go 
 to the letter itself in the manuscript vault of the Mor- 
 gan Library in New York that you find why the name 
 was omitted. It was omitted because the name was 
 Forster. 
 
 It is not so easy to see why the woman referred to in 
 another letter as "a very bad actress" should have been 
 veiled for posterity. It was Ristori. Occasionally, the 
 consideration shown was rather for Dickens himself, 
 as where they changed his "bawdy" to "beastly" and, 
 in the same letter — the 1841 Macready letter given here 
 — they omitted bodily the penultimate paragraph. 
 And of course such a letter as the one given here under 
 the presumptive date of 1840 would find no place at all 
 among the oflScial memorials. The omissions are sup- 
 plied for these pages from the originals which the late 
 Pierpont Morgan collected. 
 
 The other letters added are a miscellany of informal 
 dramatic criticism which he would broadcast after any 
 trip to the threatre at home or abroad.
 
 I. The Macready Letters 
 
 35
 
 I. THE MACREADY LETTERS 
 
 THE ASPIRING PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 Doughty Street, 1838. 
 
 I have not seen you for the past week, because I hoped 
 when we next met to bring "The LampHghter" in my hand. 
 It would have been finished by this time, but I found my- 
 self compelled to set to work first at the "Nickleby," on 
 which I am at present engaged, and which I regret to say — 
 after my close and arduous application last month — I find 
 I cannot write as quickly as usual. I must finish it, at 
 latest, by the 24th (a doubtful comfort!), and the instant 
 I have done so I will apply myself to the farce. I am afraid 
 to name any particular day, but I pledge myself that you 
 shall have it this month, and you may calculate on that 
 promise. I send you with this a copy of a farce I wrote for 
 Harley when he left Drury Lane, and in which he acted for 
 some seventy nights. It is the best thing he does. It is 
 barely possible you may like to try it. Any local or tempo- 
 rary allusions could be easily altered. 
 
 Believe me that I only feel gratified and flattered by your 
 inquiry after the farce, and that if I had as much time as I 
 have inclination, I would write on and on and on, farce after 
 farce and comedy after comedy, until I wrote you something 
 that would run. You do me justice when you give me credit 
 for good intentions; but the extent of my good-will and 
 
 37
 
 38 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 strong and warm interest in you personally and your great 
 undertaking, you cannot fathom nor express. 
 Believe me, my dear Macready, 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 P.S. For Heaven's sake don't fancy that I hold "The 
 Strange Gentleman" in any estimation or have a wish upon 
 the subject. 
 
 THE DISCOURAGED PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 48 Doughty Street, 1838. 
 
 I can have but one opinion on the subject — withdraw the 
 farce at once, by all means. 
 
 I perfectly concur in all you say, and thank you most 
 heartily and cordially for your kind and manly conduct, 
 which is only what I should have expected from you; 
 though, under such circumstances, I sincerely believe there 
 are few but you — if any — who would have adopted it. 
 
 Believe me that I have no other feeling of disappoint- 
 ment connected with this matter but that arising from the 
 not having been able to be of some use to you. And trust 
 me that if the opportunity should ever arrive, my ardour 
 will only be increased — not damped — by the result of this 
 experiment. 
 
 A DEDICATION 
 
 Broadbtairs, 1839. 
 
 Let me prefix to the last number of " Nickleby," and to the 
 book, a duplicate of the leaf which I now send you. Believe 
 me that there will be no leaf in the volume which will afford 
 me in times to come more true pleasure and gratification, 
 than that in which I have written your name as foremost 
 amongst those of the friends whom I love and honour. Believe 
 me, there will be no one line in it conveying a more honest truth
 
 The Macready Letters 39 
 
 or a more sincere feeling than that which describes its dedi- 
 cation to you as a slight token of my admiration and regard. 
 
 So let me tell the world by this frail record that I was a 
 friend of yours, and interested to no ordinary extent in your 
 proceedings at that interesting time when you showed them 
 such noble truths in such noble forms, and gave me a new 
 interest in, and associations with, the labours of so many 
 months, 
 
 I write to you very hastily and crudely, for I have been 
 very hard at work, having only finished to-day, and my 
 head spins yet. But you know what I mean. I am then 
 always. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Macready, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 P.S.— (Proof of Dedication enclosed): "To W. C. 
 Macready, Esq., the following pages are inscribed, as a slight 
 token of admiration and regard, by his friend, the Author." 
 
 WITH A COPY OF "NICHOLAS NICKLEBY" 
 
 Doughty Stheet, 1839. 
 
 The book, the whole book, and nothing but the book (ex- 
 cept the binding, which is an important item), has arrived at 
 last, and is forwarded herewith. The red represents my 
 blushes at its gorgeous dress; the gilding, all those bright 
 professions which I do not make to you; and the book itself, 
 my whole heart for twenty months, which should be yours 
 for so short a term, as you have it always. 
 
 WHEREIN MR. FORSTER APPEARS TO HAVE MADE A SCENE 
 
 Monday, August 17th (probably 18-10) 
 
 What can I say to you about last night! Frankly, 
 nothing. Nothing can enhance the estimation in which I 
 hold you, or the affectionate and sincere attachment I bear
 
 40 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 towards you, my dear friend — and not even your manly 
 and generous interposition can make me eloquent upon a 
 subject on which I feel so deeply and singly. 
 
 I am very much grieved, and yet I am not penitent and 
 cannot be, reason with myself as I will. With all the 
 regard I have for Forster, and with all the close friendship 
 between us, I cannot close my eyes to the fact that we do not 
 quarrel with other men; and the more I think of it, the more 
 I feel confident in the belief that there is no man, alive or 
 dead, who tries his friends as he does. I declare to you 
 solemnly, that when I think of his manner (far worse than 
 his matter) I turn burning hot and am ashamed and in a 
 manner degraded to have been the subject of it. 
 
 I have found the soul of goodness in this evil thing at all 
 events, and when I think of all you said and did, I would not 
 recall (if I had the power) one atom of my passion and im- 
 temperance, which carried with it a breath of yours. 
 
 THE PROMISE OF APPLAUSE 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, Tuesday, November 23d. 
 
 My dear Macready, 
 
 Please be an out and out villain tonight. 
 
 Faithfully yours always, 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 MR. DICKENS LETS OFF STEAM 
 
 Broadstairs, 1841. 
 
 I must thank you most heartily and cordially, for your 
 kind note relative to poor Overs. I can't tell you how glad 
 I am to know that he thoroughly deserves such kindness. 
 
 What a good fellow Elliotson is. He kept him in his room 
 a whole hour, and has gone into his case as if he were Prince 
 Albert; laying down all manner of elaborate projects and 
 determining to leave his friend Wood in town when he him-
 
 The Macready Letters 41 
 
 self goes away, on purpose to attend to him. Then he 
 writes me four sides of paper about the man, and says he 
 can't go back to his old work, for that requires muscular 
 exertion (and muscular exertion he mustn't make). What 
 are we to do with him? He says: " Here's five pounds for 
 the present." 
 
 I declare before God that I could almost bear the Jones's 
 for five years out of the pleasure I feel in knowing such 
 things, and when I think that every dirty speck upon the 
 fair face of the Almighty's creation, who writes in a filthy, 
 bawdy newspaper; every rotten-hearted pander who has 
 been beaten, kicked, and rolled in the kennel, yet struts it in 
 the editorial "We," once a week; every vagabond that an 
 honest man's gorge must rise at; every live emetic in that 
 noxious drug-shop the press, can have his fling at such men 
 and call them knaves and fools and thieves, I grow so vicious 
 that, with bearing hard upon my pen, I break the nib down, 
 and, with keeping my teeth set, make my jaws ache. 
 
 How Abraham must be smoothing his etherial robes to 
 make a warm place in his bosom for the Protestant cham- 
 pions of this time! What joy in Holy Heaven when the 
 angels look down on Sunday mornings and read in bright 
 blue letters that Mr. Westmacott takes their part ! Fancy 
 the Standard, and the Morning Post, the Age, the Argus 
 and the Times all on the side of Christ. Celestial Host! 
 
 I have put myself out of sorts for the day and shall go 
 and walk unless the direction of this sets me up again. On 
 second thoughts, I think it will. 
 
 SPEAKING OF NATURALISM 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1842. 
 
 You pass this house every day on your way to or from 
 the theatre. I wish you would call once as you go by, and 
 soon, that you may have plenty of time to deliberate on
 
 42 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 what I wish to suggest to you. The more I think of Mars- 
 ton's play, the more sure I feel that a prologue to the pur- 
 pose would help it materially, and almost decide the fate of 
 any ticklish point on the first night. Now I have an idea 
 (not easily explainable in writing but told in five words), 
 that would take the prologue out of the conventional dress 
 of prologues, quite. Get the curtain up with a dash, and 
 begin the play with a sledge-hammer blow. If on considera- 
 tion, you should think with me, I will write the prologue. 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 To Mr. Marston's Plat of "The Patrician's Daughter." 
 
 No tale of streaming plumes and harness bright 
 Dwells on the poet's maiden harp to-night; 
 No trumpet's clamour and no battle's fire 
 Breathes in the trembling accents of his lyre; 
 Enough for him, if in his lowly strain 
 He wakes one household echo not in vain; 
 Enough for him, if in his boldest word 
 The beating heart of man be dimly heard. 
 
 Its solemn music which, like strains that sigh 
 Through charmed gardens, all who hearing die; 
 Its solemn music he does not pursue 
 To distant ages out of human view; 
 Nor listen to its wild and mournful chime 
 In the dead caverns on the shore of Time; 
 But musing with a calm and steady gaze 
 Before the crackling flames of living days. 
 He hears it whisper through the busy roar 
 Of what shall be and what has been before. 
 Awake the Present! shall no scene display 
 The tragic passion of the passing day? 
 Is it with Man, as with some meaner things. 
 That out of death his single purpose springs? 
 Can his eventful life no moral teach 
 Until he be, for aye, beyond its reach? 
 Obscurely shall he suffer, act, and fade, 
 Dubb'd noble only by the sexton's spade? 
 Awake the Present! Though the steel-clad age
 
 The Macready Letters 43 
 
 Find life alone within its storied page. 
 
 Iron is worn, at heart, by many still — 
 
 The tyrant Custom binds the serf-like will; 
 
 If the sharp rack, and screw, and chain be gone. 
 
 These later days have tortures of their own; 
 
 The guiltless writhe, while Guilt is stretched in sleep. 
 
 And Virtue lies, too often, dungeon deep. 
 
 Awake the Present! what the Past has sown 
 
 Be in its harvest garner'd, reap'd, and grown! 
 
 How pride breeds pride, and wrong engenders wrong. 
 
 Read in the volume Truth has held so long. 
 
 Assured that where life's flowers freshest blow. 
 
 The sharpest thorns and keenest briars grow. 
 
 How social usage has the pow'r to change 
 
 Good thoughts to evil; in its highest range 
 
 To cramp vhe noble soul, and turn to ruth 
 
 The kindling impulse of our glorious youth. 
 
 Crushing the spirit in its house of clay. 
 
 Learn from the lessons of the present day. 
 
 Not light its import and not poor its mien; 
 
 Yourselves the actors, and your homes the scene. 
 
 TO MACREADY IN AMERICA 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1844. 
 
 You know all the news, and you know I love you; so 
 I no more know why I write than I do why I "come round" 
 after the play to shake hands with you in your dressing 
 room. I say come, as if you were at this present moment 
 the lessee of Drury Lane, and had — with a long face on one 
 hand, — elaborately explaining that everything in creation is 
 a joint-stock company on the other, inimitable B. by the 
 
 fire, in conversation with . Well-a-day! I see it all, and 
 
 smell that extraordinary compound of odd scents peculiar 
 to a theatre, which bursts upon me when I swing open the 
 little door in the hall, accompanies me as I meet perspiring 
 supers in the narrow passage, goes with me up the two 
 steps, crosses the stage, winds round the third entrance P. S. 
 as I wind, and escorts me safely into your presence, where I
 
 44 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 find you unwinding something slowly round and round your 
 chest, which is so long that no man can see the end of it. 
 
 Oh that you had been at Clarence Terrace on Nina's 
 birthday! Good God, how we missed you, talked of you, 
 drank your health, and wondered what you were doing! 
 Perhaps you are Falkland enough (I swear I suspect you of 
 it) to feel rather sore — just a little bit, you know, the merest 
 trifle in the world — on hearing that Mrs. Macready looked 
 brilliant, blooming, young, and handsome, and that she 
 danced a country dance with the writer hereof (Acres to 
 your Falkland) in a thorough spirit of becoming good hu- 
 mour and enjoyment. Now you don't like to be told that? 
 Nor do you quite like to hear that Forster and I conjured 
 bravely; that a plum-pudding was produced from an empty 
 saucepan, held over a blazing fire kindled in Stanfield's hat 
 without damage to the lining; that a box of bran was 
 changed into a live guinea-pig, which ran between my god- 
 child's feet, and was the cause of such a shrill uproar and 
 clapping of hands that you might have heard it (and I dare- 
 say did) in America; that three half-crowns being taken from 
 Major Burns and put into a tumbler glass before his eyes, 
 did then and there give jingling answers to the questions 
 asked of them by me, and knew where you were and what 
 you were doing, to the unspeakable admiration of the whole 
 assembly. Neither do you quite like to be told that we are 
 going to do it again next Saturday, with the addition of 
 demoniacal dresses from the masquerade shop; nor that 
 Mrs. Macready, for her gallant bearing always, and her best 
 sort of best affection, is the best creature I know. Never 
 mind; no man shall gag me, and those are my opinions. 
 
 My dear Macready, the lecturing proposition is not to be 
 thought of. I have not the slightest doubt or hesitation in 
 giving you my most strenuous and decided advice against it. 
 Looking only to its effect at home, I am immovable in my 
 conviction that the impression it would produce would be
 
 The Macready Letters 45 
 
 one of failure, and reduction of yourself to the level of those 
 who do the like here. To us who know the Boston names 
 and honour them, and who know Boston and like it (Bos- 
 ton is what I would have the whole United States to be), 
 the Boston requisition would be a valuable document, of 
 which you and your friends might be proud. But those 
 names are perfectly unknown to the public here, and would 
 produce not the least effect. The only thing known to the 
 public here is, that they ask (when I say "they" I mean the 
 people) everybody to lecture. It is one of the things I 
 ridiculed in "Chuzzlewit." Lecture you, and you fall into the 
 roll of Lardners, Vandenhoffs, Eltons, Knowleses, Bucking- 
 hams. You are off your pedestal, have flung away your glass 
 slipper, and changed your triumphal coach into a seedy old 
 pumpkin. I am quite sure of it, and cannot express my 
 strong conviction in language of sufficient force. 
 
 "Puff-ridden!" why to be sure they are. The nation is a 
 miserable Sinbad, and its boasted press the loathsome, foul, 
 old man upon his back, and yet they will tell you, and pro- 
 claim to the four winds for repetition here, that they don't 
 heed their ignorant and brutal papers, as if the papers could 
 exist if they didn't heed them ! Let any two of these vaga- 
 bonds, in any town you go to, take it into their heads to 
 make you an object of attack, or to direct the general at- 
 tention elsewhere, and what avail those wonderful images of 
 passion which you have been all your life perfecting ! 
 
 I have sent you, to the charge of our trusty and well- 
 beloved Golden, a little book I published on the 17th of 
 December, and which has been a most prodigious success — 
 the greatest, I think, I have ever achieved. It pleases me 
 to think that it will bring you home for an hour or two, and 
 I long to hear you have read it on some quiet morning. Do 
 they allow you to be quiet, by-the-way? "Some of our 
 most fashionable people, sir," denounced me awfully for 
 liking to be alone sometimes.
 
 46 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Now that we have turned Christmas, I feel as if your face 
 were directed homewards, Macready. The downhill part of 
 the road is before us now, and we shall travel on to mid- 
 summer at a dashing pace; and please Heaven, I will be at 
 Liverpool when you come steaming up the Mersey, with 
 that red funnel smoking out unutterable things, and your 
 heart much fuller than your trunks, though something 
 lighter! If I be not the first Englishman to shake hands 
 with you on English ground, the man who gets before me 
 will be a brisk and active fellow, and even then need put his 
 best leg foremost. So I warn Forster to keep in the rear, or 
 he'll be blown. 
 
 WHILE REHEARSING A JONSON COMEDY 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1845. 
 
 Between you and me and that post which is in everybody's 
 confidence I don't think it's a very good part and I think the 
 comedy anything but a very good play. It is such a damned 
 thing to have all the people perpetually coming on to say 
 their part without any action to bring 'em in, or to take 'em 
 out, or keep 'em going. 
 
 FROM ONE DANDY TO ANOTHER 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1845. 
 
 You once — only once — gave the world assurance of a 
 waistcoat. You wore it, sir, I think, in "Money." It was 
 a remarkable and precious waistcoat, wherein certain 
 broad stripes of blue or purple disported themselves as by a 
 combination of extraordinary circumstances, too happy to 
 occur again. I have seen it on your manly chest in private 
 life. I saw it, sir, I think, the other day in the cold light of 
 morning — with feelings easier to be imagined than described. 
 Mr. Macready, sir, are you a father? If so, lend me that
 
 ALFRED EVELYN.. IN "MONEY". 
 
 l,„am 't/iA./tr.. m-W-nl I ■ *'M- /.tit .""' * 
 
 Macready as Alfred Evelyn
 
 The Macready Letters 47 
 
 waistcoat for five minutes. I am bidden to a wedding 
 
 (where fathers are made), and my artist cannot, I find (how 
 
 should he?), imagine such a waistcoat. Let me show it to 
 
 him as a sample of tastes and wishes; and — ha, ha, ha, ha! — 
 
 eclipse the bridegroom! 
 
 I will send a trusty messenger at half -past nine precisely, 
 
 in the morning. He is sworn to secrecy. He durst not for 
 
 his life betray us, or swells in ambuscade would have the 
 
 waistcoat at the cost of his heart's blood. 
 
 Thine, 
 
 The Unwaistcoated One. 
 
 TO OLD PARR 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1847. 
 
 I am in the whirlwind of finishing a number with a crisis 
 in it; but I can't fall to work without saying, in so many 
 words, that I feel all words insufficient to tell you what I 
 think of you after a night like last night. The multitude of 
 new tokens by which I know you for a great man, the 
 swelling within me of my love for you, the pride I have in 
 you, the majestic reflection I see in you of all the passions 
 and affections that make up our mystery, throw me into a 
 strange kind of transport that has no expression but in a 
 mute sense of an attachment, which, in truth and fervency, 
 is worthy of its subject. 
 
 What is this to say! Nothing, God knows, and yet I 
 cannot leave it unsaid. 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 P. S. — I never saw you more gallant and free than in the 
 gallant and free scenes last night. It was perfectly captivat- 
 ing to behold you. However, it shall not interfere with my 
 determination to address you as Old Parr in all future 
 time.
 
 48 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 TO MRS. MACREADY AFTER THE MACREADY-FORREST 
 RIOTS IN ASTOR PLACE 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1849. 
 
 When I came home to dinner yesterday afternoon, I found 
 an American paper from Macready. In the first transports 
 of my unbounded indignation, I was coming up to you : but 
 I thought, on cooler reflection, that there was no reason why 
 I should worry you, in the joyful prospect of his immediate 
 return, with my feelings anent the New Yorkers. 
 
 But this I must say — that the scene astounds even me. 
 I know perfectly well that many things may take place in 
 the first city of the United States which could not possibly 
 occur in a remote nook of any other country in the world, 
 but the bestiality of the business, and the incredible base- 
 ness of that public opinion to which Mr. Clarke (whoever he 
 is) deferred when he apologized for his engagement, I regard 
 as a positive calamity to the rational freedom of men. To 
 Macready it signifies nothing except that it takes him out of 
 that damnable jumble (you'll excuse me) of false pretensions 
 and humbugs, a week or so sooner. And that's a good thing 
 for all of us. 
 
 It strikes me that we ought to have a dinner to him here — 
 just large enough for the proceedings to be made public and 
 no larger — in which this thing should be properly noticed 
 and a reasonable expression of gentlemanly disgust given 
 vent to. 
 
 AN ACTOR'S PORTION 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 1851. 
 
 I cannot forbear a word about last night. I think I have 
 told you sometimes, my much-loved friend, how, when I was 
 a mere boy, I was one of your faithful and devoted ad- 
 herents in the pit; I believe as true a member of that true 
 host of followers as it has ever boasted. As I improved my-
 
 The Macready Letters 49 
 
 self and was improved by favouring circumstances in mind 
 and fortune, I only became the more earnest (if it were 
 possible) in my study of you. No light portion of my life 
 arose before me when the quiet vision to which I am be- 
 holden, in I don't know how great a degree, or for how 
 much — who does? — faded so nobly from my bodily eyes 
 last night. And if I were to try to tell you what I felt — of 
 regret for its being past for ever, and of joy in the thought 
 that you could have taken your leave of me but in God's own 
 time — I should only blot this paper with some drops that 
 would certainly not be of ink, and give very faint expression 
 to very strong emotions. 
 
 Chateau des Moulineaux, Boulogne, 1853. 
 
 We are living in a beautiful little country place here, 
 where I have been hard at work ever since I came, and am 
 now (after an interval of a week's rest) going to work again 
 to finish " Bleak House." Kate and Georgina look forward, 
 I assure you, to their Sherborne visit, when I — a mere for- 
 lorn wanderer — shall be roaming over the Alps into Italy. 
 I saw "The Midsummer Night's Dream" of the Opera 
 Comique, done here (very well) last night. The way in 
 which a poet named Willyim Shay Kes Peer gets drunk in 
 company with Sir John Foil Stayffe, fights with a noble 
 knight, Lor Latimeer (who is in love with a maid of honour 
 you may have read of in history, called Mees Oleevia), 
 and promises not to do so any more on observing symptoms 
 of love for him in the Queen of England, is very remarkable. 
 Queen Elizabeth, too, in the profound and impenetrable dis- 
 guise of a black velvet mask, two inches deep by three 
 broad, following him into taverns and worse places, and 
 enquiring of persons of doubtful reputation for "the sublime 
 Williams," was inexpressibly ridiculous. And yet the non- 
 sense was done with a sense quite admirable.
 
 50 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 AFTER THE COVENT GARDEN FIRE 
 
 49 Champs Elts^es, Paris, 1856. 
 
 You should have seen the ruins of Covent Garden Thea- 
 tre! I went in the moment I got to London — four days 
 after the fire. Although the audience part and the stage 
 were so tremendously burnt out that there was not a piece 
 of wood half the size of a lucifer match for the eye to rest on, 
 though nothing whatever remained but bricks and smelted 
 iron lying on a great black desert, the theatre still looked so 
 wonderfully like its old self grown gigantic that I never saw 
 so strange a sight. The wall dividing the front from the 
 stage still remained, and the iron pass-doors stood ajar in 
 an impossible and inaccessible frame. The arches that sup- 
 ported the stage were there, and the arches that supported 
 the pit; and in the centre of the latter lay something like 
 a Titanic grape-vine that a hurricane had pulled up by the 
 roots, twisted, and flung down there; this was the great 
 chandelier. Gye had kept the men's wardrobe at the top of 
 the house over the great entrance staircase; when the roof 
 fell in it came down bodily, and all that part of the ruins was 
 like an old Babylonic pavement, bright rays tesselating the 
 black ground, sometimes in pieces so large that I could 
 make out the clothes in the "Trovatore." 
 
 I should run on for a couple of hours if I had to describe 
 the spectacle as I saw it, wherefore I will immediately 
 muzzle myself. All Parisian novelties you shall see and 
 hear for yourself. 
 
 ON MACREADY'S REMARRIAGE 
 
 Tavistock House, 1860. 
 
 I am heartily glad (and not much surprised) to get your 
 letter. You knew that my confidence in you was great as 
 my love for you, and I am thoroughly persuaded that you 
 are right. It is inexpressibly delightful and interesting to
 
 The Macready Letters 51 
 
 me, to picture you in a new life and movement and hope 
 and pleasure about you. This feeling springs up in me for 
 your sake, and for the sake of your children, too. More- 
 over, I do not believe that a heart like yours was made to 
 hold so large a waste-place as there has been in it. And this 
 consideration, as one in the eternal nature of things, I put 
 first of all. 
 
 God bless you, and God bless the object of your choice! 
 Your letter came with the sunshine of the Spring morning, 
 and shone in my heart quite as naturally and cheerily. I 
 have been to Gad's Hill and back, since I received it, and 
 everything has looked the fresher for it in my sight. 
 
 Ever, my dear friend. 
 
 Your most affectionate, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 Aha ! — w^hat do you say now to those noble remarks I was 
 making at Forster's the other day, about the stout English- 
 men all over the world who are always young? I feel a 
 grin of intolerable (except to me) self-complacency mantle 
 all over me as I think of my wisdom. 
 
 Office of "All the Year Round," 1863. 
 
 I have just come back from Paris, where the readings — 
 "Copperfield," "Dombey" and "Trial," and "Carol" and 
 "Trial" — have made a sensation which modesty (my na- 
 tural modesty) renders it impossible for me to describe. You 
 know what a noble audience the Paris audience is? They 
 were at their very noblest with me. 
 
 I was very much concerned by hearing hurriedly from 
 Georgy that you were ill. But when I came home at night, 
 she showed me Katie's letter, and that set me up again. 
 Ah, you have the best of companions and nurses, and can 
 afford to be ill now and then for the happiness of being so 
 brought through it. But don't do it again yet awhile for 
 all that.
 
 52 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Regnier desired to be warmly remembered to you. He 
 looks just as of yore. 
 
 Paris generally is about as wicked and extravagant as in 
 the days of the Regency. Madame Viardot in the " Orphee," 
 most splendid. An opera of "Faust," a very sad and noble 
 rendering of that sad and noble story. Stage management 
 remarkable for some admirable, and really poetical, effects 
 of light. In the more striking situations, Mephistopheles 
 surrounded by an infernal red atmosphere of his own. Mar- 
 guerite by a pale blue mournful light. The two never 
 blending. After Marguerite has taken the jewels placed in 
 her way in the garden, a weird evening draws on, and the 
 bloom fades from the flowers, and the leaves of the trees 
 droop and lose their fresh green, and mournful shadows 
 overhang her chamber window, which was innocently bright 
 and gay at first. I couldn't bear it, and gave in completely. 
 
 Fechter doing wonders over the way here, with a pic- 
 turesque French drama. Miss Kate Terry, in a small part 
 in it, perfectly charming. You may remember her making a 
 noise, years ago, doing a boy at an inn, in "The Courier of 
 Lyons "? She has a tender love-scene in this piece, which is 
 a really beautiful and artistic thing. I saw her do it about 
 three in the morning of the day when the theatre opened, 
 surrounded by shavings and carpenters, and (of course) 
 with that inevitable hammer going; and I told Fechter: 
 "That is the very best piece of womanly tenderness I have 
 ever seen on the stage, and you'll find that no audience can 
 miss it." It is a comfort to add that it was instantly seized 
 upon, and is much talked of. 
 
 Stanfield was very ill for some months, then suddenly 
 picked up, and is really rosy and jovial again. Going to see 
 him when he was very despondent, I told him the story of 
 Fechter's piece (then in rehearsal) with appropriate action; 
 fighting a duel with the washing-stand, defying the bed- 
 stead, and saving the life of the sofa-cushion. This so
 
 The Macready Letters 53 
 
 kindled his old theatrical ardour, that I think he turned the 
 corner on the spot. 
 
 With love to Mrs. Macready and Katie, and (be still my 
 heart!) Benvenuta, and the exiled Johnny (not too atten- 
 tive at school, I hope?), and the personally-unknown young 
 Parr, 
 
 Ever, my dearest Macready, your most affectionate, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 NIBLO'S GARDEN 
 
 Springfield, Mass., 1868. 
 
 To pass from Boston personal to New York theatrical, I 
 will mention here that one of the proprietors of my New 
 York hotel is one of the proprietors of Niblo's, and the most 
 active. Consequently I have seen the "Black Crook" and 
 the " White Fawn," in majesty, from an armchair in the first 
 entrance, P. S., more than once. Of these astonishing 
 dramas, I beg to report (seriously) that I have found no 
 human creature "behind" who has the slightest idea what 
 they are about (upon my honour, my dearest Macready!), 
 and that having some amiable small talk with a neat little 
 Spanish woman, who is the premiere danseuse, I asked her, 
 in joke, to let me measure her skirt wdth my dress glove. 
 Holding the glove by the tip of the forefinger, I found the 
 skirt to be just three gloves long and yet its length was much 
 in excess of the skirts of two hundred other ladies, whom 
 the carpenters were at that moment getting into their 
 places for a transformation scene, on revolving columns, on 
 wires and "travellers" in iron cradles, up in the flies, down 
 in the cellars, on every description of float that Wilmot, 
 gone distracted, could imagine!
 
 II. Miscellaneous Letters 
 
 55
 
 11. MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS 
 
 After "The Village Coquettes" 
 
 To John Hullah. 1836. 
 
 Have you seen The Examiner? It is rather depreciatory 
 of the opera; but, like all inveterate critiques against 
 Braham, so well done that I cannot help laughing at it, for 
 the life and soul of me. I have seen The Sunday Times, 
 The Dispatch, and The Satirist, all of which blow their critic 
 trumpets against unhappy me most lustily. Either I must 
 have grievously awakened the ire of all the "adaptors" 
 and their friends, or the drama must be decidedly bad. I 
 haven't made up my mind yet which of the two is the fact. 
 
 The Exorbitant Dramatist 
 
 To J. P. Barley. 1837. 
 
 I have considered the terms on which I could afford just 
 now to sell Mr. Braham the acting copyright in London of an 
 entirely new piece for the St. James's Theatre; and I could 
 not sit down to write one in a single act of about one hour 
 long, under a hundred pounds. For a new piece in two acts, 
 a hundred and fifty pounds would be the sum I should re- 
 quire. 
 
 I do not know whether, with reference to arrangements 
 that were made with any other writers, this may, or may 
 not, appear a large item. I state it merely with regard to 
 the value of my own time and writings at this moment. 
 
 57
 
 58 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 The Old Furor 
 
 To Professor Felton. Montreal, 18^2. 
 
 I would give something .... if you could stumble 
 into that very dark and dusty theatre in the day-time (at 
 any minute between twelve and three), and see me with my 
 coat off, the stage manager and universal director, urging 
 impracticable ladies and impossible gentlemen on to the very 
 confines of insanity, shouting and driving about, in my own 
 person, to an extent which would justify any philanthropic 
 stranger in clapping me into a strait-waistcoat without 
 further inquiry, endeavouring to goad H. into some dim and 
 faint understanding of a prompter's duties, and struggling 
 in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and inex- 
 tricable entanglement of speech and action as you would 
 grow giddy in contemplating. . . . This kind of volun- 
 tary hard labour used to be my great delight. The furor 
 has come upon me again, and I begin to be once more of 
 opinion that nature intended me for the lessee of a national 
 theatre, and that pen, ink, and paper have spoiled a manager. 
 
 An Unborn Play 
 
 To Douglas J err old. Devonshire Terrace, 18^3. 
 
 Yes, you have anticipated my occupation. Chuzzlewit 
 be hanged — high comedy and five hundred pounds are the 
 only matters I can think of. I call it "The One Thing 
 Needful; or, the Part is Better than the Whole." Here are 
 the characters: 
 
 Old Febrile Mr. Farren 
 
 Young Febrile (his son) Mr. Howe 
 
 Jack Hessians (his friend) Mr. W. Lacy 
 
 Chalks (a landlord) Mr. Gough 
 
 Hon. Harry Staggers Mr. Mellon 
 
 Sir Thomas Tip Mr. BucJcstone
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 59 
 
 Swig Mr. Webster 
 
 The Duke of Leeds Mr. Coutts 
 
 Sir Smiven Growler Mr. Macready 
 
 SERVANTS, GAMBLERS, visitors, etc. 
 
 Mrs. Febrile Mrs. Glover 
 
 Lady Tip Mrs. Humby 
 
 Mrs, Sour Mrs. Clifford 
 
 Fanny Miss A . Smith 
 
 One scene, where Old Febrile tickles Lady Tip in the ribs, 
 and afterwards dances out with his hat behind him, his 
 stick before, and his eye on the pit, I expect will bring the 
 house down. There is also another point — where old Fe- 
 brile, at the conclusion of his disclosure to Swig, rises and 
 says, "And now, Mr. Swig, tell me, have I acted well?" 
 and Swig says, " Well, Mr. Febrile, have you ever acted ill.'' " 
 which will carry off the piece. 
 
 I walk up and down the street at the back of the theatre 
 every night, and peep in at the green-room window, thinking 
 of the time when "Dick-ens" will be called for by excited 
 hundreds, and won't come — till Mr. Webster (half Swig and 
 half himself) shall enter from his dressing-room, and quell- 
 ing the tempest with a smile, beseech that wizard if he be 
 in the house (here he looks up at my box), to accept the 
 congratulations of the audience and indulge them with a 
 sight of the man who had got five hundred pounds in money, 
 and it's impossible to say how much in laurels. Then I 
 shall come forward and bow, once, twice, thrice — 
 roars of approbation. Barvyo! brarvo! Hooray! 
 hoorar! hooroar! — one cheer more — and asking Webster 
 home to supper, shall declare eternal friendship for that 
 public-spirited individual, which Talfourd (the vice) will 
 echo with all his heart and soul, and with tears in his eyes, 
 adding in a perfectly audible voice, and in the same breath.
 
 6o Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play- 
 that "he's a very wretched creature, but better than Ma- 
 cready any way, for he wouldn't play Ion when it was given 
 to him." After which he will propose said Macready's 
 health in terms of red-hot eloquency. 
 
 I am always, my dear Jerrold, faithfully your friend, 
 
 The Congreve of the 19th Century. 
 (Which I mean to be called in the Sunday papers.) 
 P. S. — I shall dedicate it to Webster, beginning: 
 "My dear Sir — When you first proposed to stimulate 
 the slumbering dramatic talent of England, I assure you I 
 had not the least idea, etc., etc., etc." 
 
 England on the French Stage 
 
 To Forster. 18Jf7. 
 
 "Clarissa Harlowe" is still the rage. There are some 
 things in it rather calculated to astonish the ghost of Rich- 
 ardson, but Clarissa is very admirably played (by Rose 
 Cheri), and dies better than the original, to my thinking; 
 but Richardson is no great favourite of mine, and never 
 seems to me to take his top-boots off, whatever he does. 
 Several pieces are in course of representation, involving rare 
 portraits of the English. In one, a servant, called "Tom 
 Bob," who wears a particularly English waistcoat, trimmed 
 with gold lace and concealing his ankles, does very good 
 things indeed. In another, a Prime Minister of England, 
 who has ruined himself by railway speculations, hits off 
 some of our national characteristics very happily, frequently 
 making incidental mention of " Vishmingster," "Regeen 
 Street," and other places with which you are well ac- 
 quainted. "Sir Fakson" is one of the characters in another 
 play — "English to the Core"; and I saw a Lord Mayor of 
 London at one of the small theatres the other night, looking 
 uncommonly well in a stage-coachman's waistcoat, the
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 6i 
 
 Order of the Garter, and a very low-crowned, broad- 
 brimmed hat, not unhke a dustman. 
 
 At the Opera in Rome 
 To Forster. Rome, 1853. 
 
 All the seats are numbered arm-chairs, and you buy your 
 number at the pay-place, and go to it with the easiest direc- 
 tion on the ticket itself. We were early, and the four places 
 of the Americans were on the next row behind us — all 
 together. After looking about for some time, and seeing 
 the greater part of the seats empty (because the audienc^ 
 generally wait in a cafFe which is part of the theatre), 
 one of them said, "Waal I dunno — I expect we ain't no caU 
 to set so nigh to one another neither — will you scatter 
 Kernel, will you scatter sir?" — Upon this the Kernel "scat- 
 tered " some twenty benches off; and they distributed them- 
 selves (for no earthly reason apparently but to get rid of 
 one another) all over the pit. As soon as the overture began, 
 in came the audience in a mass. Then the people who had 
 got numbers into which they had "scattered" had to get out 
 of them; and as they understood nothing that was said to 
 them, and could make no reply but "A-mericani," you may 
 imagine the number of cocked hats it took to dislodge them. 
 At last they were all back into their right places, except one. 
 About an hour afterwards when Moses ("Moses in Egypt" was 
 the opera) was invoking the darkness, and there was a dead 
 silence all over the house, unwonted sounds of disturbance 
 broke out from a distant corner of the pit, and here and 
 there a beard got up to look. "What is it now, sir?" said 
 one of the Americans to another; — "some person seems to 
 be getting along, again streem." "Waal sir," he replied, 
 "I dunno. But I expect 'tis the Kernel sir, a holden on." 
 So it was. The Kernel was ignominiously escorted back to 
 his right place, not in the least disconcerted, and in per- 
 fectly good spirits and temper. The opera was excellently
 
 62 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 done, and the price of the stalls one and threepence English. 
 At Milan, on the other hand, the Scala was fallen from its old 
 estate, dirty, gloomy, dull, and the performance execrable. 
 
 Marionettes 
 
 To Forster. Rome, 1853. 
 
 It was a wet night, and there was no audience, but a 
 party of French oflBcers and ourselves. We all sat together. 
 I never saw anything more amazing than the performance — 
 altogether only an hour long, but managed by as many as 
 ten people, for we saw them all go behind, at the ringing of a 
 bell. The saving of a young lady by a good fairy from the 
 machinations of an enchanter, coupled with the comic busi- 
 ness of her servant Pulcinella (the Roman Punch) formed 
 the plot of the first piece. A scolding old peasant woman, 
 who always leaned forward to scold and put her hands in the 
 pockets of her apron, was incredibly natural. Pulcinella, 
 so airy, so merry, so life-like, so graceful, he was irresistible. 
 To see him carrying an umbrella over his mistress's head in 
 a storm, talking to a prodigious giant whom he met in the 
 forest, and going to bed with a pony, were things never to 
 be forgotten. And so delicate are the hands of the people 
 who move them, that every puppet was an Italian, and did 
 exactly what an Italian does. If he pointed at any object, 
 if he saluted anybody, if he laughed, if he cried, he did it as 
 never Englishman did it since Britain first at Heaven's com- 
 mand arose — arose — arose, &c. There was a ballet after- 
 wards, on the same scale, and we came away really quite 
 enchanted with the delicate drollery of the thing. French 
 more than ditto. 
 
 A French Conjuror 
 
 To Forster. Boulogne, 1851^. 
 
 You are to observe that he was with the company, not in 
 the least removed from them; and that we occupied the
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 63 
 
 front row. He brought in some writing paper with hira 
 when he entered, and a black-lead pencil; and he wrote some 
 words on half-sheets of paper. One of these half-sheets he 
 folded into two, and gave to Catherine to hold. Madame, 
 he says aloud, will you think of any class of objects? I have 
 done so, — Of what class, Madame? Animals. Will you 
 think of a particular animal, Madame? I have done so, — 
 Of what animal? The Lion. — Will you think of another 
 class of objects, Madame? I have done so. — Of what class? 
 Flowers. — The particular flower? The Rose. — Will you 
 open the paper you hold in your hand. She opened it, and 
 there was neatly and plainly written in pencil. — the lion. 
 THE ROSE. Nothing whatever had led up to these words, 
 and they were the most distant conceivable from Catherine's 
 thought when she entered the room. He had several com- 
 mon school-slates about a foot square. He took one of them 
 to a field-officer from the camp, decore and what not, who 
 sat about six from us, with a grave, saturnine friend next 
 him. My General, says he, will you write a name on this 
 slate, after your friend has done so? Don't show it to me. 
 The friend wrote a name, and the General wrote a name. 
 The conjuror took the slate rapidly from the officer, threw 
 it violently down on the ground with its written side to the 
 floor and asked the officer to put his foot upon it, and keep 
 it there: which he did. The conjuror considered for about 
 a minute, looking devilish hard at the General. — My Gen- 
 eral, says he, your friend wrote Dagobert, upon the slate 
 under your foot. The friend admits it. — And you, my 
 General, wrote Nicholas. General admits it, and everybody 
 laughs and applauds. — My General, will you excuse me, if 
 I change that name into a name expressive of the power of 
 a great nation, which in happy alliance with the gallantry 
 and spirit of France will shake that name to its centre? 
 Certainly I will excuse it. — My General, take up the slate 
 and read. General reads: Dagobert, Victoria. The first
 
 64 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 in his friend's writing; the second in a new hand. I never 
 saw anything in the least like this; or at all approaching to 
 the absolute certainty, the familiarity, quickness, absence 
 of all machinery, and actual face-to-face, hand-to-hand 
 fairness between the conjuror and the audience, with which 
 it was done. I have not the slighest idea of the secret. — 
 Once more. 
 
 He was blinded with several table napkins, and then a 
 great cloth was bodily thrown over them and his head too, 
 so that his voice sounded as it he were under a bed. Per- 
 haps half a dozen dates were written on a slate. He takes 
 the slate in his hand, and throws it violently down on the 
 floor, as before, remains silent a minute, seems to become 
 agitated and bursts out thus: "What is this I see? A great 
 city, but of narrow streets and old-fashioned houses, many 
 of which are of wood, resolving itself into ruins! How is 
 it falling into ruins? Hark! I hear the crackling of a great 
 conflagration, and looking up, I behold a vast cloud of flame, 
 and smoke. The ground is covered with hot cinders too, 
 and people are flying into the fields and endeavouring to 
 save their goods. This great fire, this great wind, this roar- 
 ing noise! This is the great fire of London, and the first 
 date upon the slate must be one, six, six, six, — the year in 
 which it happened!" And so on with all the other dates. 
 There ! 
 
 A Friendly Critic 
 
 To John Saunders. Tavistock House, 185^.. 
 
 I have had much gratification and pleasure in the receipt 
 of your obliging communication. Allow me to thank you for 
 it, in the first place, with great cordiality. 
 
 Although I cannot say that I came without any preposses- 
 sions to the perusal of your play (for I had favourable in- 
 clinings towards it before I began), I can say that I read it
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 65 
 
 with the closest attention, and that it inspired me with a 
 strong interest, and a genuine and high admiration. The 
 parts that involve some of the greatest difficulties of your 
 task appear to me those in which you shine most. I would 
 particularly instance the end of Julia as a very striking 
 example of this. The delicacy and beauty of her redemption 
 from her weak, rash lover, are very far indeed beyond the 
 range of any ordinary dramatist, and display the true 
 poetical strength. 
 
 As your hopes now centre in Mr. Phelps, and in seeing the 
 child of your fancy on his stage, I will venture to point out 
 to you not only what I take to be very dangerous portions of 
 "Love's Martyrdom" as it stands, for presentation on the 
 stage, but portions which I believe Mr. Phelps will speedily 
 regard in that light when he sees it before him in the persons 
 of live men and women on the wooden boards. Knowing 
 him, I think he will be then as violently discouraged as he is 
 now generously exalted; and it may be useful to you to be 
 prepared for the consideration of those passages. 
 
 I do not regard it as a great stumbling-block that the 
 play of modern times best known to an audience proceeds 
 upon the main idea of this, namely, that there was a hunch- 
 back who, because of his deformity, mistrusted himself. 
 But it is certainly a grain in the balance when the balance 
 is going the wrong way, and therefore it should be most 
 carefully trimmed. The incident of the ring is an insignifi- 
 cant one to look at over a row of gaslights, is difficult to 
 convey to an audience, and the least thing will make it 
 ludicrous. If it be so well done by Mr. Phelps himself as to 
 be otherwise than ludicrous, it will be disagreeable. If it be 
 either, it will be perilous, and doubly so, because you revert 
 to it. The quarrel scene between the two brothers in the 
 third act is now so long that the justification of blind passion 
 and impetuosity — which can alone bear out Franklyn, 
 before the bodily eyes of a great concourse of spectators,
 
 66 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 in plunging at the life of his own brother — is lost. That the 
 two should be parted, and that Franklyn should again drive 
 at him, and strike him, and then wound him, is a state of 
 things to set the sympathy of an audience in the wrong 
 direction, and turn it from the man you make happy to the 
 man you leave unhappy. I would on no account allow the 
 artist to appear attended by that picture more than once. 
 All the most sudden inconstancy of Clarence I would soften 
 down. Margaret must act much better than any actress I 
 have ever seen, if all her lines fall in pleasant places; there- 
 fore, I think she needs compression too. 
 
 All this applies solely to the theatre. If you ever revise 
 the sheets for readers, will you note in the margin the broken 
 laughter and the appeals to the Deity.? If, on summing 
 them up, you find you want them all, I would leave them 
 as they stand by all means. If not, I would blot accordingly. 
 
 It is only in the hope of being slightly useful to you by 
 anticipating what I believe Mr. Phelps will discover — or 
 what, if ever he should pass it, I have a strong conviction 
 the audience will find out — that I have ventured on these 
 few hints. Your concurrence with them generally, on re- 
 consideration, or your preference for the poem as it stands, 
 cannot in the least afiPect my interest in your success. On 
 the other hand, I have a perfect confidence in your not tak- 
 ing my misgivings ill ; they arise out of my sincere desire for 
 the triumph of your work. 
 
 On Goldsmith 
 
 To de Cerjat. Tavistock House, 1855. 
 
 Let me recommend you, as a brother-reader of high dis- 
 tinction, two comedies, both Goldsmith's — "She Stoops to 
 Conquer" and "The Good-natured Man." Both are so 
 admirable and so delightfully written that they read wonder- 
 fully. A friend of mine, Forster, who wrote "The Life of
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 67 
 
 Goldsmith," was very ill a year or so ago, and begged me to 
 read to him one night as he lay in bed, "something of Gold- 
 smith's." I fell upon "She Stoops to Conquer," and we 
 enjoyed it with that wonderful intensity, that I believe he 
 began to get better in the first scene, and was all right again 
 in the fifth act. 
 
 An Englishman Abroad 
 To Miss Hogarth. Paris, 1855. 
 
 The theatres are not particularly good, but I have seen 
 Lemaitre act in the most wonderful and astounding man- 
 ner. I am afraid we must go to the Opera Comique on 
 Sunday. To-morrow we dine with Regnier, and to-day with 
 the Oliffes. 
 
 "La Joie fait Peur," at the Frangais, delighted me. Ex- 
 quisitely played and beautifully imagined altogether. 
 Last night we went to the Porte St. Martin to see a piece 
 (English subject) called "Jane Osborne," which the char- 
 acters pronounce " Ja Nosbornne." The seducer was Lord 
 Nottingham. The comic Englishwoman's name (she kept 
 lodgings and was a very bad character) was Missees Christ- 
 mas. She had begun to get into great difficulties with a 
 gentleman of the name of Meestair Cornhill, when we were 
 obliged to leave, at the end of the first act, by the intoler- 
 able stench of the place. The whole theatre must be stand- 
 ing over some vast cess-pool. It was so alarming that I 
 instantly rushed into a cafe and had brandy. 
 
 My ear has gradually become so accustomed to French, 
 that I understand the people at the theatres (for the first 
 time) with perfect ease and satisfaction. I walked about 
 with Regnier for an hour and a half yesterday, and received 
 many compliments on my angelic manner of speaking the 
 celestial language. There is a winter Franconi's now, high 
 up on the Boulevards, just like the round theatre on the 
 Champs Ely sees, and as bright and beautiful. A clown
 
 68 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 from Astley's is all in high favour there at present. He 
 talks slang English (being evidently an idiot), as if he felt 
 a perfect confidence that everybody understands him. His 
 name is Boswell, and the whole cirque rang last night with 
 cries for Boz Zwillll! Boz Zweellll! Boz Zwuallll! etc., 
 etc., etc., etc. 
 
 On Frederic Lemaitre 
 
 To Forster. Paris, 1855. 
 
 Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw, I saw last 
 night at the Ambigu. They have revived that old piece, 
 once immensely popular in London under the name of 
 THIRTY YEARS OF A gambler's LIFE. Old Lcmattrc plays 
 his famous character, and never did I see anything in art, 
 so exaltedly horrible and awefull. In the earlier acts he was 
 so well made up, and so light and active that he really looked 
 sufficiently young. But in the last two, when he had grown 
 old and miserable, he did the finest things, I really believe, 
 that are within the power of acting. Two or three times, a 
 great cry of horror went all round the house. When he met, 
 in the inn-yard, the traveller whom he murders, and first 
 saw his money, the manner in which the crime came into 
 his head — and eyes — was as truthful as it was terrific. 
 This traveller, being a good fellow, gives him wine. You 
 should see the dim remembrance of his better days that 
 comes over him as he takes the glass, and in a strange, dazed 
 way makes as if he were going to touch the other man's, or 
 do some airy thing with it; and then stops and flings the 
 contents down his hot throat, as if he were pouring it into 
 a limekiln. But this was nothing to what follows after he 
 has done the murder, and comes home, with a basket of 
 provisions, a ragged pocket full of money, and badly-washed 
 bloody right hand — which his little girl finds out. After the 
 child asked him if he had hurt his hand, his going aside, 
 turning himself round, and looking over all his clothes for
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 69 
 
 spots, was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really scared 
 one. He called for wine, and the sickness that came upon 
 him when he saw the colour, was one of the things that 
 brought out the curious cry I have spoken of, from the au- 
 dience. Then he fell into a sort of bloodly mist, and went on 
 to the end groping about, with no mind for anything, ex- 
 cept making his fortune by staking this money, and a faint 
 dull kind of love for the child. It is quite impossible to satis- 
 fy one's-self by saying enough of this magnificent perform- 
 ance. I have never seen him come near its finest points, 
 in anything else. He said two things in a way that alone 
 would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his 
 wife, when he has exultingly shewn her the money and she 
 has asked him how he got it — "I found it" — and the other 
 to his old companion and tempter, when he was charged by 
 him with having killed that traveller, and suddenly went 
 headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 
 "It wasn't I who murdered him — it was 'Misery!'" And 
 such a dress; such a face; and above all, such an extraordi- 
 nary guilty wicked thing as he made of a knotted branch of a 
 tree which was his walking-stick, from the moment when 
 the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write 
 pages about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. 
 He got half-boastful of that walking-staff to himself, and 
 half-afraid of it; and didn't know whether to be grimly 
 pleased that it had the jagged end, or to hate it and be 
 horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the inn-yard, 
 drinking with the traveller; and this horrible stick got 
 between them like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers 
 the uses he could put the money to. 
 
 At "Orestes" 
 To Forster. Paris, 1855. 
 
 Nothing have I ever seen so weighty and so ridiculous. 
 If I had not already learnt to tremble at the sight of classic
 
 70 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 drapery on the human form, I should have plumbed the ut- 
 most depths of terrified boredom in this achievement. The 
 chorus is not preserved otherwise than that bits of it are 
 taken out for characters to speak. It is really so bad as to 
 be almost good. Some of the Frenchified classical anguish 
 struck me as so unspeakably ridiculous that it puts me on 
 the broad grin as I write. 
 
 Next week we are to have at the Ambigu "Paradise Lost," 
 with the murder of Abel and the Deluge. The wildest 
 rumours are afloat as to the undressing of our first parents. 
 
 At "Paradise Lost" 
 
 To Forster. Paris, 1855. 
 
 We were rung in (out of the cafe below the Ambigu) at 
 8, and the play was over at half -past 1 ; the waits between 
 the acts being very much longer than the acts themselves. 
 The house was crammed to excess in every part, and the 
 galleries awful with Blouses, who again during the whole of 
 the waits, beat with the regularity of military drums the 
 revolutionary tune of famous memory — Ca Ira! The play 
 is a compound of "Paradise Lost" and Byron's "Cain" and 
 some of the controversies between the archangel and the 
 devil, when the celestial power argues with the infernal in con- 
 versational French, as "Eh bien! Satan, crois-tu done que 
 notre Seigneur t'aurait expose aux tourments que t'endures 
 a present sans avoir prevu, &c. &c." are very ridiculous. 
 All the supernatural personages are alarmingly natural (as 
 theatre nature goes), and walk about in the stupidest way. 
 Which has occasioned Collins and myself to institute a per- 
 quisition whether the French ever have shown any kind of 
 idea of the supernatural; and to decide this rather in the 
 negative. The people are very well dressed, and Eve very 
 modestly. All Paris and the provinces had been ransacked 
 for a woman who had brown hair that would fall to the
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 7i 
 
 calfs of her legs — and she was found at last — at the Odeon, 
 There was nothing attractive until the 4th act, when there 
 was a pretty good scene of the children of Cain dancing in, 
 and desecrating a temple while Abel and his family were 
 hammering hard at the Ark, outside, in all the pauses of the 
 revel. The Deluge in the fifth act was up to about the mark 
 of a drowning scene at the Adelphi; but it had one new 
 feature. When the rain ceased, and the Ark drove in on the 
 great expanse of water, then lying waveless as the mists 
 cleared and the sun broke out, numbers of bodies drifted up 
 and down. These were all real men and boys, each sepa- 
 rate, on a new kind of horizontal float. They looked horrible 
 and real. Altogether, a really dull business; but I dare say 
 it will go for a long while. 
 
 When Playwriting was a Game of Tag 
 
 To Forster. Paris, 1855. 
 
 As I have no news I may as well tell you about the tag 
 that I thought so pretty to the MSmoires du Diable; in 
 which piece by the way, there is a most admirable part, 
 most admirably played, in which a man says merely "Yes" 
 or "No" all through the piece, until the last scene. A cer- 
 tain M. Robin has got hold of the papers of a deceased 
 lawyer, concerning a certain estate which has been swindled 
 away from its rightful owner, a Baron's widow, into other 
 hands. They disclose so much roguery that he binds them 
 up into a volume lettered Memoir es du Diable. The 
 knowledge he derives from these papers not only enables 
 him to unmask the hypocrites all through the piece (in an 
 excellent manner), but induces him to propose to the 
 Baroness that if he restores to her her estate and good 
 name — for even her marriage to the deceased Baron is 
 denied — she shall give him her daughter in marriage. The 
 daughter herself, on hearing the offer, accepts it; and a part
 
 72 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 of the plot is her going to a masked ball to which he goes as 
 the Devil, to see how she like him (when she finds, of course, 
 that she likes him very much). The country people 
 about the Chateau in dispute, suppose him to be really the 
 Devil, because of his strange knowledge, and his strange 
 comings and goings; and he, being with this girl in one of its 
 old rooms, in the beginning of the 3d act shows her a little 
 coffer on the table with a bell in it. "They suppose," he 
 tells her, "that whenever this bell is rung, I appear and 
 obey the summons. Very ignorant, isn't it.'* But, if you 
 ever want me particularly — very particularly — ring the little 
 bell and try." The plot proceeds to its development. The 
 wrongdoers are exposed; and the missing document, prov- 
 ing the marriage, is found; everything is finished; they are 
 all on the stage; and M. Robin hands 'he paper to the 
 Baroness. "You are reinstated in your rights, Madame; 
 you are happy; I will not hold you to a compact made when 
 you didn't know me; I release you and your fair daughter; 
 the pleasure of doing what I have done is my sufficient re- 
 ward; I kiss your hand and take my leave. Farewell!" 
 He backs himself courteously out ; the piece seems concluded, 
 everybody wonders, the girl (little Mdlle. Luther) stands 
 amazed; when she suddenly remembers the little bell. In 
 the prettiest way possible, she runs to the coffer on the 
 table, takes out the little bell, rings it, and he comes rushing 
 back and folds her to his heart. I never saw a prettier thing 
 in my life. It made me laugh in that most delightful of 
 ways with the tears in my eyes; so that I can never forget it, 
 and must go and see it again. 
 
 RisTORi AS "Medea" 
 
 To Forster. Paris, 1855. 
 
 In the day entertainments and little melodrama theatres 
 of Italy, I have seen the same thing fifty times, only not at 
 once so conventional and so exaggerated. The papers have
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 73 
 
 all been in fits respecting the sublimity of the performance, 
 and the genuineness of the applause — particularly of the 
 bouquets; which were thrown on at the most preposterous 
 times in the midst of agonizing scenes, so that the characters 
 had to pick their way among them, and a certain stout gentle- 
 man who played King Creon was obliged to keep a wary 
 eye all night on the proscenium boxes, and dodge them 
 as they came down. How Scribe who dined here next day 
 (and who follows on the Ristori side, being offended, as every- 
 body has been, by the insolence of Rachel), could not resist 
 the temptation of telling us that, going round at the end 
 of the first act to offer his congratulations, he met all the 
 bouquets coming back in men's arms to be thrown on again 
 in the second act, . . . By the bye, I see a fine actor 
 lost in Scribe, In all his pieces he has everything done in his 
 own way; and on that same night he was showing what 
 Rachel did not do, and wouldn't do, in the last scene of 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur, with extraordinary force and intens- 
 ity. 
 
 Long before "Secret Service" 
 
 To Mark Lemon. Paris, 1856. 
 
 In a piece at the Ambigu, called the "Rentree a Paris," a 
 mere scene in honour of the return of the troops from the 
 Crimea the other day, there is a novelty which I think it 
 worth letting you know of, as it is easily available either 
 for a serious or a comic interest — the introduction of a 
 supposed electric telegraph. The scene is the railway term- 
 inus at Paris, with the electric telegraph-office on the 
 prompt side, and the clerks with their backs to the audience 
 — much more real than if they were, as they infallibly would 
 be, staring about the house — working the needles; and the 
 little bell perpetually ringing. There are assembled to 
 greet the soldiers, all the easily and naturally imagined 
 elements of interest — old veteran fathers, young children,
 
 74 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 agonized mothers, sisters and brothers, girl lovers — each 
 impatient to know of his or her own object of solicitude. 
 Enter to these a certain marquis, full of sympathy for all, 
 who says: "My friends, I am one of you. My brother has 
 no commission yet. He is a common soldier. I wait for 
 him as well as all brothers and sisters here wait for their 
 brothers. Tell me whom you are expecting." Then they 
 all tell him. Then he goes into the telegraph-office, and 
 sends a message down the line to know how long the troops 
 will be. Bell rings. Answer handed out on slip of paper. 
 " Delay on the line. Troops will not arrive for a quarter of 
 an hour." General disappointment. "But w^e have this 
 brave electric telegraph, my friends," says the marquis. 
 "Give me your little messages, and I'll send them off." 
 General rush round the marquis. Exclamations: "How's 
 Henri?" "My love to Georges"; "Has Guillaume forgotten 
 EUse?" "Is my son wounded?" "Is my brother pro- 
 moted?" etc., etc. Marquis composes tumult. Sends mes- 
 sage — such a regiment, such a company — "Elise's love to 
 Georges." Little bell rings, slip of paper handed out — 
 "Georges in ten minutes will embrace his Elise. Sends her 
 a thousand kisses." Marquis sends message — such a regi- 
 ment, such a company — "Is my son wounded?" Little 
 bell rings. Slip of paper handed out — "No. He has not 
 yet upon him those marks of bravery in the glorious service 
 of his country which his dear old father bears" (father being 
 lamed and invalided). Last of all the widowed mother. 
 Marquis sends message — such a regiment, such a company 
 — "Is my only son safe?" Little bell rings. Slip of paper 
 handed out — "He was first upon the heights of Alma." 
 General cheer. Bell rings again, another slip of paper 
 handed out. "He was made a sergeant at Inkermann." 
 Another cheer. Bell rings again, another slip of paper 
 handed out. " He was made colour-sergeant at Sebastopol." 
 Another cheer. Bell rings again, another slip of paper
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 75 
 
 handed out. "He was the first man who leaped with the 
 French banner on the Malakhoff tower." Tremendous 
 cheer. Bell rings again, another slip of paper handed out. 
 "But he was struck down there by a musket-ball, and — 
 Troops have proceeded. Will arrive in half a minute after 
 this." Mother abandons all hope; general commiseration; 
 troops rush in, down a platform; son only wounded, and 
 embraces her. 
 
 As I have said, and as you will see, this is available for any 
 purpose. But done with equal distinction and rapidity, 
 it is a tremendous effect, and got by the simplest means in 
 the world. There is nothing in the piece, but it was im- 
 possible not to be moved and excited by the telegraph part 
 of it. 
 
 A Contretemps at Covent Garden 
 To Mary Boyle. Office of "All the Year Round," 1860. 
 
 I pass my time here (I am staying here alone) in working, 
 taking physic, and taking a stall at a theatre every night. 
 On Boxing Night I was at Covent Garden. A dull panto- 
 mime was "worked" (as we say) better than I ever saw a 
 heavy piece worked on a first night, until suddenly and 
 without a moment's warning, every scene on that immense 
 stage fell over on its face, and disclosed chaos by gaslight 
 behind! There never was such a business; about sixty 
 people who were on the stage being extinguished in the most 
 remarkable manner. Not a soul was hurt. In the uproar, 
 some moon-calf rescued a porter pot, six feet high (out of 
 which the clown had been drinking when the accident 
 happened), and stood it on the cushion of the lowest pro- 
 scenium box, P. S., beside a lady and gentleman, who were 
 dreadfully ashamed of it. The moment the house knew that 
 nobody was injured, they directed their whole attention to 
 this gigantic porter pot in its genteel position (the lady and 
 gentleman trying to hide behind it), and roared with laugh-
 
 76 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 ter. When a modest footman came from behind the curtain 
 to clear it, and took it up in his arms Hke a Brobdingnagian 
 baby we all laughed more than ever we had laughed in our 
 lives. I don't know why. 
 
 We have had a fire here, but our people put it out before 
 the parish-engine arrived, like a drivelling perambulator, 
 with the beadle in it, like an imbecile baby. Popular opin- 
 ion, disappointed in the fire having been put out, snow- 
 balled the beadle. God bless it! 
 
 Over the way at the Lyceum, there is a very fair Christ- 
 mas piece, with one or two uncommonly well-done nigger 
 songs — one remarkably gay and mad, done in the finale to 
 a scene. Also a very nice transformation, though I don't 
 know what it means. 
 
 The poor actors waylay me in Bow Street to represent 
 their necessities ; and I often see one cut down a court when 
 he beholds me coming, cut round Drury Lane to face me, 
 and come up towards me near this door in the freshest and 
 most accidental way, as if I was the last person he expected 
 to see on the surface of this globe. The other day there thus 
 appeared before me (simultaneously with a scent of rum in 
 the air) one aged and greasy man, with a pair of pumps 
 under his arm. He said he thought if he could get down to 
 somewhere (I think it was Newcastle), he would get "taken 
 on" as Pantaloon, the existing Pantaloon being "a stick, 
 sir — a mere muff." I observed that I was sorry times were 
 so bad with him. '*Mr. Dickens, you know our profession, 
 sir — no one knows it better, sir — there is no right feeling in 
 it. I was Harlequin on your own circuit, sir, for five-and- 
 thirty years, and was displaced by a boy, sir! — a boy!" 
 
 An Old Problem 
 
 To Bulwer-Lytton. Gad's Hill 1862. 
 
 I have considered your questions, and here follow my 
 replies.
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 77 
 
 1. I think you undoubtedly have the right to forbid the 
 turning of your play into an opera. 
 
 2. I do not think the production of such an opera in the 
 slightest degree likely to injure the play or to render it a 
 less valuable property than it is now. If it could have any 
 effect on so standard and popular a work as "The Lady of 
 Lyons," the effect would, in my judgment, be beneficial. 
 But I believe the play to be high above any such influence. 
 
 3. Assuming you do consent to the adaptation, in a 
 desire to oblige Oxenford, I would not recommend your 
 asking any pecuniary compensation. This for two reasons: 
 firstly, because the compensation could only be small at the 
 best; secondly, because your taking it would associate you 
 (unreasonably, but not the less assuredly) with the opera. 
 
 The only objection I descry is purely one of feeling. 
 Pauline trotting about in front of the float, invoking the 
 orchestra with a limp pocket-handkerchief, is a notion that 
 makes goose-flesh of my back. Also a yelping tenor going 
 away to the wars in a scena half-an-hour long is painful to 
 contemplate. Damas, too, as a bass, with a grizzled bald 
 head, blatantly bellowing about 
 
 Years long ago. 
 
 When the sound of the drum 
 First made his blood glow 
 
 With a rum ti tum tum — 
 
 rather sticks in my throat; but there really seems to me to 
 be no other objections if you can get over this. 
 
 On Historical Plays 
 To Charles Fechier. Paris, 1862. 
 
 I have read "The White Rose" attentively, and think it 
 an extremely good play. It is vigorously written with a 
 great knowledge of the stage, and presents many striking 
 situations. I think the close particularly fine, impressive, 
 bold, and new.
 
 78 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 But I greatly doubt the expediency of your doing any 
 historical play early in your management. By the words 
 "historical play," I mean a play founded on any incident in 
 English history. Our public are accustomed to associate 
 historical plays \\'ith Shakespeare. In any other hands, I 
 believe they care very little for crowns and dukedoms. 
 What you want is something with an interest of a more 
 domestic and general nature — an interest as romantic as you 
 please, but having a more general and wider response than a 
 disputed succession to the throne can have for Englishmen 
 at this time of day. Such interest culminated in the last 
 Stuart, and has worn itself out. It would be uphill work to 
 evoke an interest in Perkin Warbeck. 
 
 I do not doubt the play's being well received, but my fear 
 is that these people would be looked upon as mere abstrac- 
 tions and would have but a cold welcome in consequence 
 and would not lay hold of your audience. Now, when you 
 have laid hold of your audience and have accustomed them 
 to your theatre, you may produce "The White Rose," with 
 far greater justice to the author, and to the manager also. 
 Wait. Feel your way. Perkin Warbeck is too far removed 
 from analogy with the sympathies and lives of the people 
 for a beginning . 
 
 The Playreader 
 
 To Forster. London, 1864- 
 
 I have been cautioning Fechter about the play whereof 
 he gave the plot and scenes to B; and out of which I have 
 struck some enormities, my account of which will (I think) 
 amuse you. It has one of the best first acts I ever saw; but 
 if he can do much with the last two, not to say three, there 
 are resources in his art that / know nothing about. When 
 I went over the play this day week, he was at least 20 min- 
 utes, in a boat, in the last scene, discussing with another 
 gentleman (also in the boat) whether he should kill him or
 
 Miscellaneous Letters 79 
 
 not; after which the gentleman dived overboard and swam 
 for it. Also, in the most important and dangerous parts of 
 the play, there was a young person of the name of Pickles 
 who was constantly being mentioned by name, in conjunc- 
 tion with the powers of light or darkness; as " Great Heaven ! 
 Pickles?"— "By Hell, 'tis Pickles!"— "Pickles? a thousand 
 Devils ! "— " Distraction ! Pickles? " 
 
 Again the Playreader 
 
 To Charles Fechter, Gad's Hilh 1866, 
 
 This morning I received the play to the end of the tele- 
 graph scene, and I have since read it twice. 
 
 I clearly see the ground of Mr. Boucicault's two objec- 
 tions; but I do not see their force. 
 
 First, as to the writing. If the characters did not speak 
 in a terse and homely way, their idea and language would be 
 inconsistent with their dress and station, and they would 
 lose, as characters, before the audience. The dialogue 
 seems to be exactly what is wanted. Its simplicity (par- 
 ticularly in Mr. Boucicault's part) is often very effective; 
 and throughout there is an honest, straight-to-the-purpose 
 ruggedness in it, like the real life and the real people. 
 
 Secondly, as to the absence of the comic element. I 
 really do not see how more of it could be got into the story, 
 and I think Mr. Boucicault underrates the pleasant effect of 
 his own part. The very notion of a sailor, whose life is not 
 among those little courts and streets, and whose business 
 does not lie with the monotonous machinery, but with the 
 four wild winds, is a relief to me in reading the play. I am 
 quite confident of its being an immense relief to the audience 
 when they see the sailor before them, with an entirely differ- 
 ent bearing, action, dress, complexion even, from the rest 
 of the men. I would make him the freshest and airiest sailor 
 that ever was seen; and through him I can distinctly see my 
 way out of "the Black Country" into clearer air. (I speak
 
 8o Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 as one of the audience, mind.) I should like something of 
 this contrast to be expressed in the dialogue between the 
 sailor and the Jew, in the second scene of the second act. 
 Again, I feel Widdicomb's part (which is charming, and 
 ought to make the whole house cry) most agreeable and 
 welcome, much better than any amount in such a story, of 
 mere comicality. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say that the play is done with a mas- 
 ter's hand. Its closeness and movement are quite surprising. 
 Its construction is admirable. I have the strongest belief 
 in its making a great success. But I must add this proviso : 
 I never saw a play so dangerously depending in critical 
 places on strict natural propriety in the manner and perfec- 
 tion in the shaping of the small parts. Those small parts 
 cannot take the play up, but they can let it down. I would 
 not leave a hair on the head of one of them to the chance of 
 the first night, but I would see, to the minutest particular, 
 the make-up of every one of them at a night rehearsal. 
 
 Of course you are free to show this note to Mr. Bouci- 
 cault, and I suppose you will do so; let me throw out this 
 suggestion to him and you. Might it not ease the way with 
 the Lord Chamberlain's Office, and still more with the 
 audience, when there are Manchester champions in it, if 
 instead of "Manchester" you used a fictitious name? 
 When I did "Hard Times" I called the scene CoketowTi. 
 Everybody knew what was meant, but every cotton-spin 
 ning town said it was the other cotton-spinning town.
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 
 
 8l
 
 THE STAGE IN DICKENS'S 
 NOVELS 
 
 Astley's 
 
 WE never see any very large, staring, black Roman 
 capitals, in a book, or shop-window, or placarded 
 on a wall, without their immediately recalling to our mind* 
 an indistinct and confused recollection of the time when we 
 were first initiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We 
 almost fancy we see the pin's point following the letter, to 
 impress its form more strongly on our bewildered imagina- 
 tion; and wince involuntarily, as we remember the hard 
 knuckles with which the reverend old lady who instilled 
 into our mind the first principles of education for ninepence 
 per week, or ten and sixpence per quarter, was wont to poke 
 our juvenile head occasionally, by way of adjusting the 
 confusion of ideas in which we were generally involved. 
 The same kind of feeling pursues us in many other instances, 
 but there is no place which recalls so strongly our recollec- 
 tions of childhood as Astley's. It was not a "Royal Am- 
 phitheatre" in those days, nor had Ducrow arisen to shed 
 the light of classic taste and portable gas over the sawdust of 
 the circus; but the whole character of the place was the 
 same, the pieces were the same, the clown's jokes were the 
 same, the riding-masters were equally grand, the comic 
 performers equally witty, the tragedians equally hoarse, 
 and the " highly -trained chargers" equally spirited. Astley's 
 has altered for the better — we have changed for the worse. 
 
 83
 
 84 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Our histrionic taste is gone, and with shame we confess, that 
 we are far more delighted and amused with the audience, 
 than with the pageantry we once so highly appreciated. 
 
 We like to watch a regular Astley's party in the Easter or 
 Midsummer holidays — pa and ma, and nine or ten children, 
 varying from five foot six to two foot eleven : from fourteen 
 years of age to four. We had just taken our seat in one of 
 the boxes, in the centre of the house, the other night, when 
 the next was occupied by just such a party as we should 
 have attempted to describe, had we depicted our beau ideal 
 of a group of Astley's visitors. 
 
 First of all, there came three little boys and a little girl, 
 who, in pursuance of pa's directions, issued in a very audible 
 voice from the box-door, occupied the front row; then two 
 more little girls were ushered in by a young lady, evidently 
 the governess. Then came three more little boys, dressed 
 like the first, in blue jackets and trousers, with lay-down 
 shirt-collars: then a child in a braided frock, and high state 
 of astonishment, with very large round eyes, opened to their 
 utmost width, was lifted over the seats — a process which 
 occasioned a considerable display of little pink legs — then 
 came ma and pa, and then the eldest son, a boy of fourteen 
 years old, who was evidently trying to look as if he did not 
 belong to the family. 
 
 The first five minutes were occupied in taking the shawls 
 off the little girls, and adjusting the bows which ornamented 
 their hair; then it was providentially discovered that one of 
 the little boys was seated behind a pillar and could not see, 
 so the governess was stuck behind the pillar, and the boy 
 lifted into her place. Then pa drilled the boys, and directed 
 the stowing away of their pocket-handkerchiefs, and ma 
 having first nodded and winked to the governess to pull the 
 girls' frocks a little more off their shoulders, stood up to 
 review the little troop — an inspection which appeared to 
 terminate much to her own satisfaction, for she looked with
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 85 
 
 a complacent air at pa, who was standing up at the further 
 end of the seat. Pa returned the glance, and blew his nose 
 very emphatically; and the poor governess peeped out from 
 behind the pillar, and timidly tried to catch ma's eye, with a 
 look expressive of her high admiration of the whole family. 
 Then two of the little boys who had been discussing the 
 point whether Astley's was more than twice as large as 
 Drury Lane, agreed to refer it to "George" for his decision; 
 at which "George," who was no other than the young 
 gentleman before noticed, waxed indignant, and remon- 
 strated in no very gentle terms on the gross impropriety of 
 having his name repeated in so loud a voice at a public 
 place, on which all the children laughed very heartily, and 
 one of the little boys wound up by expressing his opinion, 
 that "George began to think himself quite a man now," 
 whereupon both pa and ma laughed too; and George (who 
 carried a dress cane and was cultivating whiskers) muttered 
 that "William always was encouraged in his impertinence"; 
 and assumed a look of profound contempt, which lasted the 
 whole evening. 
 
 The play began, and the interest of the little boys knew no 
 bounds. Pa was clearly interested too, although he very 
 unsuccessfully endeavoured to look as if he wasn't. As for 
 ma, she was perfectly overcome by the drollery of the prin- 
 cipal comedian, and laughed till every one of the immense 
 bows on her ample cap trembled, at which the governess 
 peeped out from behind the pillar again, and whenever she 
 could catch ma's eye, put her handkerchief to her mouth, 
 and appeared, as in duty bound, to be in convulsions of 
 laughter also. Then when the man in the splendid armour 
 vowed to rescue the lady or perish in the attempt, the little 
 boys applauded vehemently, especially one little fellow w^ho 
 was apparently on a visit to the family, and had been carry- 
 ing on a child's flirtation, the whole evening, with a small 
 coquette of twelve years old, who looked like a model of
 
 86 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 her mamma on a reduced scale; and who, in common with 
 the other Httle girls (who, generally speaking, have even 
 more coquettishness about them than much older ones), 
 looked very properly shocked, when the knight's squire 
 kissed the princess's confidential chambermaid. 
 
 When the scenes in the circle commenced, the children 
 were more delighted than ever; and the wish to see what was 
 going forward, completely conquering pa's dignity, he stood 
 up in the box, and applauded as loudly as any of them. 
 Between each feat of horsemanship, the governess leant 
 across to ma, and retailed the clever remarks of the children 
 on that which had preceded : and ma, in the openness of her 
 heart, offered the governess an acidulated drop, and the 
 governess, gratified to be taken notice of, retired behind 
 her pillar again with a brighter countenance: and the whole 
 party seemed quite happy, except the exquisite in the back 
 of the box, who, being too grand to take any interest in the 
 children, and too insignificant to be taken notice of by any- 
 body else, occupied himself, from time to time, in rubbing 
 the place where the whiskers ought to be, and was com- 
 pletely alone in his glory. 
 
 We defy any one who has been to Astley's two or three 
 times, and is consequently capable of appreciating the per- 
 severance with which precisely the same jokes are repeated 
 night after night, and season after season, not to be amused 
 with one part of the performances at least — we mean the 
 scenes in the circle. For ourself, we know that when the 
 hoop, composed of jets of gas, is let down, the curtain drawn 
 up for the convenience of the half-price on their ejectment 
 from the ring, the orange-peel cleared away, and the saw- 
 dust shaken, with mathematical precision, into a complete 
 circle, we feel as much enlivened as the youngest child 
 present; and actually join in the laugh which follows the 
 clown's shrill shout of "Here we are!" just for old acquaint- 
 ance' sake. Nor can we quite divest ourself of our old feel-
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 87 
 
 ing of reverence for the riding-master, who follows the clown 
 with a long whip in his hand, and bows to the audience with 
 graceful dignity. He is none of your second-rate riding- 
 masters in nankeen dressing-gowns, with brown frogs, but 
 the regular gentleman-attendant on the principal riders, 
 who always wears a military uniform with a table-cloth 
 inside the breast of the coat, in which costume he forcibly 
 reminds one of a fowl trussed for roasting. He is — but why 
 should we attempt to describe that of which no description 
 can convey an adequate idea? Everybody knows the man, 
 and everybody remembers his polished boots, his graceful 
 demeanour, stiff, as some misjudging persons have in their 
 jealousy considered it, and the splendid head of black 
 hair, parted high on the forehead, to impart to the counte- 
 nance an appearance of deep thought and poetic melancholy. 
 His soft and pleasing voice, too, is in perfect unison with his 
 noble bearing, as he humours the clown by indulging in a 
 little badinage; and the striking recollection of his own 
 dignity, with which he exclaims, "Now, sir, if you please, 
 inquire for Miss Woolford, sir," can never be forgotten. 
 The graceful air, too, with which he introduces Miss Wool- 
 ford into the arena, and, after assisting her to the saddle, 
 follows her fairy courser round the circle, can never fail to 
 create a deep impression in the bosom of every female 
 servant present. 
 
 When Miss Woolford, and the horse and the orchestra, all 
 stop together to take breath he urbanely takes part in some 
 such dialogue as the following (commenced by the clown) : 
 "I say, sir!" — "Well, sir?" (it's always conducted in the 
 politest manner) — "Did you ever happen to hear I was in 
 the army, sir?" — "No, sir." — "Oh, yes, sir — I can go 
 through my exercise, sir." — "Indeed, sir!" — "Shall I do it 
 now, sir?" — "If you please, sir; come, sir — make haste" 
 (a cut with the long whip, and "Ha' done now — I don't 
 like it," from the clown). Here the clown throws himself on
 
 88 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the ground, and goes through a variety of gymnastic con- 
 vulsions, doubling himself up, and untying himself again, 
 and making himself look very like a man in the most hope- 
 less extreme of human agony, to the vociferous delight of the 
 gallery, until he is interrupted by a second cut from the 
 long whip, and a request to see "what Miss Woolford's 
 stopping for?" On which, to the inexpressible mirth of the 
 gallery, he exclaims, "Now, Miss Woolford, what can I 
 come for to go, for to fetch, for to bring, for to carry, for to 
 do for you, ma'am?" On the lady's announcing with a 
 sweet smile that she wants the two flags, they are, with 
 sundry grimaces, procured and handed up; the clown 
 facetiously observing after the performance of the latter 
 ceremony — "He he, oh! I say, sir. Miss Woolford knows 
 me; she smiled at me." Another cut from the whip, a burst 
 from the orchestra, a start from the horse, and round goes 
 Miss Woolford again on her graceful performance, to the 
 delight of every member of the audience, young or old. The 
 next pause affords an opportunity for similar witticisms, the 
 only additional fun being that of the clown making ludicrous 
 grimaces at the riding-master every time his back is turned; 
 and finally quitting the circle by jumping over his head, 
 having previously directed his attention another way. 
 
 Did any of our readers ever notice the class of people, who 
 hang about the stage-doors of our minor theatres in the 
 day-time? You will rarely pass one of these entrances 
 without seeing a group of three or four men conversing on 
 the pavement, with an indescribable public-house-parlour 
 swagger, and a kind of conscious air peculiar to people of 
 this description. They always seem to think they are ex- 
 hibiting; the lamps are ever before them. That young 
 fellow in the faded brown coat, and very full light green 
 trousers, pulls down the wristbands of his check shirt, as 
 ostentatiously as if it were of the finest linen, and cocks the 
 white hat of the summer-before-last as knowingly over his
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 89 
 
 right eye, as if it were a purchase of yesterday. Look at the 
 dirty white BerUn gloves, and the cheap silk handkerchief 
 stuck in the bosom of his threadbare coat. Is it possible to 
 see him for an instant, and not come to the conclusion that 
 he is the walking gentleman who wears a blue surtout, clean 
 collar, and white trousers, for half an hour, and then shrinks 
 into his worn-out scanty clothes: who has to boast night 
 after night of his splendid fortune, with the painful con- 
 sciousness of a pound a week and his boots to find; to talk 
 of his father's mansion in the country, with a dreary recol- 
 lection of his own two-pair back, in the New Cut; and to be 
 envied and flattered as the favoured lover of a rich heiress, 
 remembering all the while that the ex-dancer at home is in 
 the family way, and out of an engagement? 
 
 Next to him, perhaps, you will see a thin pale man, with a 
 very long face, in a suit of shining black, thoughtfully knock- 
 ing that part of his boot which once had a heel, with an ash 
 stick. He is the man who does the heavy busmess, such as 
 prosy fathers, virtuous servants, curates, landlords, and so 
 forth. 
 
 By the way, talking of fathers, w^e should very much like 
 to see some piece in which all the dramatis personse were 
 orphans. Fathers are invariably great nuisances on the 
 stage, and always have to give the hero or heroine a long 
 explanation of what was done before the curtain rose, usu- 
 ally commencing with "It is now nineteen years, my dear 
 child, since your blessed mother (here the old villain's voice 
 falters) confided you to my charge. You were then an 
 infant," &c., &c. Or else they have to discover, all of a 
 sudden, that somebody whom they have been in constant 
 communication with, during three long acts, without the 
 slightest supicion, is their own child, in which case they 
 exclaim, "Ah! what do I see? This bracelet! That smile! 
 These documents ! Those eyes ! Can I believe my senses? — 
 It must be!— Yes— it is, it is my child!"— "My father!"
 
 90 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 exclaims the child ; and they fall into each other's arms, and 
 look over each other's shoulders, and the audience give 
 three rounds of applause. 
 
 To return from this digression, we were about to say that 
 these are the sort of people whom you see talking, and 
 attitudinising, outside the stage-doors of our minor theatres. 
 At Astley's they are always more numerous than at any 
 other place. There is generally a groom or two, sitting on 
 the window-sill, and two or three dirty shabby-genteel men 
 in checked neckerchiefs, and sallow linen, lounging about, 
 and carrying, perhaps, under one arm, a pair of stage shoes 
 badly wrapped up in a piece of old newspaper. Some years 
 ago we used to stand looking, open-mouthed, at these men, 
 with a feeling of mysterious curiosity, the very recollection 
 of which provokes a smile at the moment we are writing. 
 We could not believe that the beings of light and elegance, 
 in milk-white tunics, salmon-coloured legs, and blue scarfs, 
 who flitted on sleek cream-coloured horses before our eyes 
 at night, with all the aid of lights, music, and artificial 
 flowers, could be the pale, dissipated-looking creatures we 
 beheld by day. 
 
 We can hardly believe it now. Of the lower class of actors 
 we have seen something, and it requires no great exercise 
 of imagination to identify the walking gentleman with the 
 "dirty swell," the comic singer with the public-house 
 chairman, or the leading tragedian with drunkenness and 
 distress; but these other men are mysterious beings, never 
 seen out of the ring, never beheld but in the costume of gods 
 and sylphs. With the exception of Ducrow, who can 
 scarcely be classed among them, who ever knew a rider at 
 Astley's, or saw him but on horseback? Can our friend in 
 the military uniform, ever appear in threadbare attire, or 
 descend to the comparatively un-wadded costume of every- 
 day life? Impossible! We cannot — we will not — believe it. 
 
 From "Sketches by Boz."
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 91 
 
 Private Theatres 
 
 "richard the third. — duke of glo'ster, 2z; earl of 
 richmond, 1/.; duke of buckingham, 156'.; catesby, 12s.; 
 
 TRESSEL, lOs. Qd.; LORD STANLEY, 5s.; LORD MAYOR OF 
 LONDON, 25. 6d." 
 
 Such are the written placards wafered up in the gentle- 
 men's dressing-room, or the green-room (where there is any), 
 at a private theatre; and such are the sums extracted from 
 the shop-till, or overcharged in the office expenditure, by the 
 donkeys who are prevailed upon to pay for permission to 
 exhibit their lamentable ignorance and boobyism on the 
 stage of a private theatre. This they do, in proportion to 
 the scope afforded by the character for the display of their 
 imbecility. For instance, the Duke of Glo'ster is well 
 worth two pounds, because he has it all to himself; he must 
 wear a real sword, and what is better still, he must draw it 
 several times in the course of the piece. The soliloquies 
 alone are well worth fifteen shillings ; then there is the stab- 
 bing King Henry — decidedly cheap at three-and-sixpence, 
 that's eighteen-and-sixpence; bullying the coffin-bearers — 
 say eighteen-pence, though it's worth much more — that's a 
 pound. Then the love scene with Lady Ann, and the bustle 
 of the fourth act can't be dear at ten shillings more — that's 
 only one pound ten, including the "off with his head!" — 
 which is sure to bring down the applause, and it is very 
 easy to do — "Orf with his ed" (very quick and loud; — 
 then slow and sneeringly) — "So much for Bu-u-u-ucking- 
 ham!" Lay the emphasis on the "uck;" get yourself gradu- 
 ally into a corner, and work with your right hand, while 
 you're saying it, as if you were feeling your way, and it's 
 sure to do. The tent scene is confessedly worth half-a- 
 sovereign, and so you have the fight in, gratis, and every- 
 body knows what an effect may be produced by a good com- 
 bat. One — two — three — four — over; then, one — two — three
 
 92 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 — four — under; then thrust; then dodge and slide about; 
 then fall down on one knee; then fight upon it, and then get 
 up again and stagger. You may keep on doing this, as long 
 as it seems to take — say ten minutes — and then fall down 
 (backwards, if you can manage it without hurting yourself), 
 and die game: nothing like it for producing an effect. They 
 always do it at Astley's and Sadler's Wells, and if they don't 
 know how to do this sort of thing, who in the world does? 
 A small child, or a female in white, increases the interest of a 
 combat materially — indeed, we are not aware that a regular 
 legitimate terrific broadsword combat could be done with- 
 out ; but it would be rather difficult, and somewhat unusual, 
 to introduce this effect in the last scene of Richard the Third, 
 so the only thing to be done is, just to make the best of a bad 
 bargain, and be as long as possible fighting it out. 
 
 The principal patrons of private theatres are dirty boys, 
 low copying-clerks in attorneys' offices, capacious-headed 
 youths from city counting-houses, Jews whose business, as 
 lenders of fancy dresses, is a sure passport to the amateur 
 stage, shop-boys who now and then mistake their masters' 
 money for their own; and a choice miscellany of idle vaga- 
 bonds. The proprietor of a private theatre may be an ex- 
 scene-painter, a low coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed 
 eighth-rate actor, a retired smuggler, or uncertificated 
 bankrupt. The theatre itself may be in Catherine Street, 
 Strand, the purlieus of the city, the neighbourhood of Gray's 
 Inn Lane, or the vicinity of Sadler's Wells; or it may, per- 
 haps, form the chief nuisance of some shabby street, on the 
 Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge. 
 
 The lady performers pay nothing for their characters, and 
 it is needless to add, are usually selected from one class of 
 society; the audiences are necessarily of much the same 
 character as the performers, who receive, in return for their 
 contributions to the management, tickets to the amount of 
 the money they pay.
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 93 
 
 All the minor theatres in London, especially the lowest, 
 constitute the centre of a little stage-struck neighbourhood. 
 Each of them has an audience exclusively its own; and at 
 any you will see dropping into the pit at half-price, or swag- 
 gering into the back of a box, if the price of admission be a 
 reduced one, divers boys of from fifteen to twenty-one years 
 of age, who throw back their coat and turn up their wrist- 
 bands, after the portraits of Count D'Orsay, hum tunes and 
 whistle when the curtain is down, by way of persuading the 
 people near them, that they are not at all anxious to have it 
 up again, and speak familiarly of the inferior performers as 
 Bill Such-a-one, and Ned So-and-so, or tell each other how a 
 new piece called The Unknown Bandit of the Invisible 
 Cavern, is in rehearsal ; how Mister Palmer is to play The 
 Unknown Bandit; how Charley Scarton is to take the part 
 of an English sailor, and fight a broadsword combat with 
 six unknown bandits, at one and the same time (one theatri- 
 cal sailor is always equal to half a dozen men at least) ; how 
 Mister Palmer and Charley Scarton are to go through a 
 double hornpipe in fetters in the second act; how the inte- 
 rior of the invisible cavern is to occupy the whole extent of 
 the stage; and other town-surprising theatrical announce- 
 ments. These gentlemen are the amateurs — the Richards, 
 Shylocks, Beverleys, and Othellos — the Young Dorntons, 
 Rovers, Captain Absolutes, and Charles Surfaces — of a 
 private theatre. 
 
 See them at the neighbouring public-house or the theatri- 
 cal coffee-shop ! They are the kings of the place, supposing 
 no real performers to be present; and roll about, hats on one 
 side, and arms a-kimbo, as if they had actually come into 
 possession of eighteen shillings a week, and a share of a 
 ticket night. If one of them does but know an Astley's 
 supernumerary he is a happy fellow. The mingled air of 
 envy and admiration with which his companions will regard 
 him, as he converses familiarly with some mouldy-looking
 
 94 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 man in a fancy neckerchief, whose partially corked eye- 
 brows, and half -rouged face, testify to the fact of his having 
 just left the stage or the circle, sufficiently shows in what 
 high admiration these public characters are held. 
 
 With the double view of guarding against the discovery of 
 friends or employers, and enhancing the interest of an as- 
 sumed character, by attaching a high-sounding name to its 
 representative, these geniuses assume fictitious names, 
 which are not the least amusing part of the play-bill of a 
 private theatre. Belville, Melville, Treville, Berkeley, 
 Randolph, Byron, St. Clair, and so forth, are among the 
 humblest; and the less imposing titles of Jenkins, Walker, 
 Thomson, Barker, Solomons, &c. are completely laid aside. 
 There is something imposing in this, and it is an excellent 
 apology for shabbiness into the bargain. A shrunken, faded 
 coat, a decayed hat, a patched and soiled pair of trousers — 
 nay, even a very dirty shirt (and none of these appearances 
 are very uncommon among the members of the corps 
 dramatique) , may be worn for the purpose of disguise, and 
 to prevent the remotest chance of recognition. Then it 
 prevents any troublesome inquiries or explanations about 
 employment and pursuits; everybody is a gentleman at 
 large for the occasion, and there are none of those unpleas- 
 ant and unnecessary distinctions to which even genius must 
 occasionally succumb elsewhere. As to the ladies (God bless 
 them), they are quite above any formal absurdities; the 
 mere circumstance of your being behind the scenes is a 
 sufficient introduction to their society — for of course they 
 know that none but strictly respectable persons would be 
 admitted into that close fellowship with them, which acting 
 engenders. They place implicit reliance on the manager, 
 no doubt; and as to the manager, he is all affability when he 
 knows you well, — or, in other words, when he has pocketed 
 your money once, and entertains confident hopes of doing 
 so again.
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 95 
 
 A quarter before eight — there will be a full house to-night 
 — six parties in the boxes, already; four little boys and a 
 woman in the pit; and two fiddles and a flute in the orches- 
 tra who have got through five overtures since seven o'clock 
 (the hour fixed for the commencement of the performances), 
 and have just begun the sixth. There will be plenty of it, 
 though, when it does begin, for there is enough in the bill to 
 last six hours at least. 
 
 That gentleman in the white hat and checked shirt, brown 
 coat and brass buttons, lounging behind the stage-box on the 
 O. P. side, is Mr. Horatio St. Julien, alias Jem Larkins. His 
 line is genteel comedy — his father's, coal and potato. He 
 does Alfred Highflier in the last piece, and very well he'll do 
 it — at the price. The party of gentlemen in the opposite 
 box, to whom he has just nodded, are friends and supporters 
 of Mr. Beverley (otherwise Loggins), the Macbeth of the 
 night. You observe their attempts to appear easy and 
 gentlemanly, each member of the party, with his feet cocked 
 upon the cushion in front of the box ! They let them do these 
 things here, upon the same humane principle which permits 
 poor people's children to knock double knocks at the door 
 of an empty house — because they can't do it anywhere else. 
 The two stout men in the centre box, with an opera-glass 
 ostentatiously placed before them, are friends of the pro- 
 prietor — opulent country managers, as he confidentially 
 informs every individual among the crew behind the curtain 
 — opulent country managers looking out for recruits; a 
 representation which Mr. Nathan, the dresser, who is in the 
 manager's interest, and has just arrived with the costumes, 
 offers to confirm upon oath if required — corroborative 
 evidence, however, is quite unnecessary, for the gulls be- 
 lieve it at once. 
 
 The stout Jewess who has just entered is the mother of 
 the pale bony little girl, with the necklace of blue glass beads, 
 sitting by her; she is being brought up to "the profession."
 
 96 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Pantomime is to be her line, and she is coming out to-night, 
 in a hornpipe after the tragedy. The short thin man beside 
 Mr. St. JuHen, whose white face is so deeply seared with the 
 small-pox, and whose dirty shirt-front is inlaid with open- 
 work, and embossed with coral studs like ladybirds, is the 
 low comedian and comic singer of the establishment. The 
 remainder of the audience — a tolerably numerous one by 
 this time — are a motley group of dupes and blackguards. 
 
 The foot-lights have just made their appearance: the 
 wicks of the six little oil lamps round the only tier of boxes 
 are being turned up, and the additional light thus afforded 
 serves to show the presence of dirt, and absence of paint, 
 which forms a prominent feature in the audience part of the 
 house. As these preparations, however, announce the 
 speedy commencement of the play, let us take a peep "be- 
 hind," previous to the ringing-up. 
 
 The little narrow passages beneath the stage are neither 
 especially clean nor too brilliantly lighted ; and the absence 
 of any flooring, together with the damp mildewy smell 
 which pervades the place, does not conduce in any great 
 degree to their comfortable appearance. Don't fall over 
 this plate basket — it's one of the "properties" — the caldron 
 for the witches' cave; and the three uncouth-looking figures, 
 with broken clothes-props in their hands, who are drinking 
 gin-and-water out of a pint pot, are the weird sisters. This 
 miserable room, lighted by candles in sconces placed at 
 lengthened intervals round the wall, is the dressing-room, 
 common to the gentlemen performers, and the square hole 
 in the ceiling is the trap-door of the stage above. You will 
 observe that the ceiling is ornamented with the beams that 
 support the boards, and tastefully hung with cobwebs. 
 
 The characters in the tragedy are all dressed, and their 
 own clothes are scattered in hurried confusion over the 
 wooden dresser which surrounds the room. That snuff -shop- 
 looking figure, in front of the glass, is Banquo; and the young
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 97 
 
 lady with the Hberal display of legs, who is kindly painting 
 his face with a hare's foot, is dressed for Fleance. The large 
 woman, who is consulting the stage directions in Cumber- 
 land's edition of Macbeth, is the Lady Macbeth of the night; 
 she is always selected to play the part, because she is tall 
 and stout, and looks a little like Mrs. Siddons — at a con- 
 siderable distance. That stupid-looking milksop, with light 
 hair and bow legs — a kind of man whom you can warrant 
 town-made — is fresh caught; he plays Malcolm to-night, 
 just to accustom himself to an audience. He will get on 
 better by degrees; he will play Othello in a month, and in a 
 month more, will very probably be apprehended on a charge 
 of embezzlement. The black-eyed female with whom he is 
 talking so earnestly, is dressed for the "gentlewoman." 
 It is her first appearance, too — in that character. The boy 
 of fourteen who is having his eyebrows smeared with soap 
 and whitening, is Duncan, King of Scotland; and the two 
 dirty men with the corked countenances, in very old green 
 tunics, and dirty drab boots, are the "army." 
 
 "Look sharp below there, gents," exclaims the dresser, a 
 red-headed and red-whiskered Jew, calling through the 
 trap, "they're a-going to ring up. The flute says he'll be 
 blowed if he plays any more, and they're getting precious 
 noisy in front." A general rush immediately takes place to 
 the half-dozen little steep steps leading to the stage, and the 
 heterogeneous group are soon assembled at the side scenes, 
 in breathless anxiety and motley confusion. 
 
 "Now," cries the manager, consulting the written list 
 which hangs behind the first P. S. wing, "Scene 1, open 
 country — lamps down — thunder and lightning — all ready. 
 White?" [This is addressed to one of the army.] "All 
 ready." — " Very well. Scene 2, front chamber. Is the front 
 chamber down?"— "Yes."— "Very well."— "Jones" [to the 
 other army who is up in the flies]. "Hallo!" — "Wind up 
 the open country when we ring up." — "I'll take care." — 
 f
 
 98 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "Scene 3, back perspective with practical bridge. Bridge 
 ready. White? Got the tressels there?"— "All right." 
 
 "Very well. Clear the stage," cries the manager, hastily 
 packing every member of the company into the little space 
 there is between the wings and the wall, and one wing and 
 another. "Places, places. Now then. Witches — Duncan — 
 Malcolm — bleeding officer — where's the bleeding officer? " — 
 "Here!" replies the officer, who has been rose-pinking for 
 the character. "Get ready, then; now. White, ring the 
 second music-bell." The actors who are to be discovered 
 are hastily arranged, and the actors who are not to be dis- 
 covered place themselves, in their anxiety to peep at the 
 house, just where the audience can see them. The bell rings, 
 and the orchestra, in acknowledgment of the call, plays 
 three distinct chords. The bell rings — the tragedy (!) 
 opens — and our description closes. 
 
 From "Sketches by Boz." 
 
 Mrs. Joseph Porter 
 
 Most extensive were the preparations at Rose Villa, Clap- 
 ham Rise, in the occupation of Mr. Gattleton (a stock- 
 broker in especially comfortable circumstances), and great 
 was the anxiety of Mr. Gattleton's interesting family, as 
 the day fixed for the representation of the Private Play 
 which had been "many months in preparation,"approached. 
 The whole family was infected with the mania for Private 
 Theatricals; the house, usually so clean and tidy, was, to 
 use Mr. Gattleton's expressive description, "regularly 
 turned out o' windows;" the large dining-room, dismantled 
 of its furniture and ornaments, presented a strange jumble 
 of flats, flies, wings, lamps, bridges, clouds, thunder and 
 lightning, festoons and flowers, daggers and foil, and various 
 other messes in theatrical slang included under the com- 
 prehensive name of "properties." The bedrooms were
 
 The Stage in Dickens*s Novels 99 
 
 crowded with scenery, the kitchen was occupied by car- 
 penters. Rehearsals took place every other night in the 
 drawing-room, and every sofa in the house was more or less 
 damaged by the perseverance and spirit with which Mr. 
 Sempronius Gattleton, and Miss Lucina, rehearsed the 
 smothering scene in "Othello" — it having been determined 
 that that tragedy should form the first portion of the even- 
 ing's entertainments. 
 
 "When we're a leetle more perfect, I think it will go ad- 
 mirably," said Mr. Sempronius, addressing his corps dra- 
 maiique, at the conclusion of the hundred and fiftieth 
 rehearsal. In consideration of his sustaining the trifling in- 
 convenience of bearing all the expenses of the play, Mr, Sem- 
 pronius hadbeen, in the most handsome manner, unanimously 
 elected stage-manager. "Evans," continued Mr. Gattleton 
 the younger, addressing a tall, thin, pale young gentleman, 
 with extensive whiskers — " Evans, you play Roderigo beauti- 
 fully." 
 
 "Beautifully," echoed the three Miss Gattletons; for Mr. 
 Evans was pronounced by all his lady friends to be "quite 
 a dear." He looked so interesting, and had such lovely 
 whiskers: to say nothing of his talent for writing verses in 
 albums and playing the flute ! Roderigo simpered and bowed. 
 
 "But I think," added the manager, "you are hardly per- 
 fect in the — fall — in the fencing-scene, where you are — you 
 understand.''" 
 
 "It's very difficult," said Mr. Evans, thoughtfully; "I've 
 fallen about a good deal in our counting-house lately, for 
 practice, only I find it hurts one so. Being obliged to fall 
 backward you see, it bruises one's head a good deal." 
 
 "But you must take care you don't knock a wing down,'* 
 said Mr. Gattleton, the elder, who had been appointed 
 prompter, and who took as much interest in the play as the 
 youngest of the company. "The stage is very narrow, you 
 know."
 
 100 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "Oh! don't be afraid," said Mr. Evans, with a very self- 
 satisfied air: "I shall fall with my head 'off,' and then I 
 can't do any harm." 
 
 "But, egad," said the manager, rubbing his hands, "we 
 shall make a decided hit in 'Masaniello.' Harleigh sings 
 that music admirably." 
 
 Everybody echoed the sentiment. Mr. Harleigh smiled, 
 and looked foolish — not an unusual thing with him — 
 hummed "Behold how brightly breaks the morning," and 
 blushed as red as the fisherman's nightcap he was trying on. 
 
 "Let's see," resumed the manager, telling the number on 
 his fingers, "we shall have three dancing female peasants, 
 besides Fenella and four fishermen. Then, there's our man 
 Tom; he can have a pair of ducks of mine, and a check shirt 
 of Bob's, and a red nightcap, and he'll do for another — that's 
 five. In the choruses, of course, we can sing at the sides; 
 and in the market-scene we can walk about in cloaks and 
 things. When the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rush- 
 ing in on one side and out on the other, with a pickaxe, as 
 fast as he can. The effect will be electrical; it will look ex- 
 actly as if there were an immense number of 'em. And in 
 the eruption-scene we must burn the red fire, and upset the 
 tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises — and it's sure to do." 
 
 "Sure! sure!" cried all the performers und voce — and 
 away hurried Mr. Sempronius Gattleton to wash the burnt 
 cork off his face, and superintend the "setting up" of some 
 of the amateur-painted, but never-sufficiently-to-be-ad- 
 mired, scenery. 
 
 Mrs. Gattleton was a kind, good-tempered, vulgar soul, 
 exceedingly fond of her husband and children, and entertain- 
 ing only three dislikes. In the first place, she had a natural 
 antipathy to anybody else's unmarried daughters; in the 
 second, she was in bodily fear of anything in the shape of 
 ridicule; lastly — almost a necessary consequence of this 
 feeling — she regarded, with feelings of the utmost horror, one
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels loi 
 
 Mrs. Joseph Porter, over the way. However, the good 
 folks of Clapham and its vicinity stood very niuch in 
 awe of scandal and sarcasm; and thus Mrs. Joseph Porter 
 was courted, and flattered, and caressed, and invited, for 
 much the same reason that induces a poor author, without 
 a farthing in his pocket, to behave with extraordinary civiUty 
 to a twopenny postman. 
 
 "Never mind, ma," said Miss Emma Porter, in colloquy 
 with her respected relative, and trying to look unconcerned, 
 "if they had invited me, you know that neither you nor 
 pa would have allowed me to take part in such an ex- 
 hibition." 
 
 "Just what I should have thought from your high sense of 
 propriety," returned the mother. " I am glad to see, Emma, 
 you know how to designate the proceeding." Miss P., by- 
 the-bye, had only the week before made "an exhibition" of 
 herself for four days, behind a counter at a fancy fair, to all 
 and every of her Majesty's liege subjects who were disposed 
 to pay a shilling each for the privilege of seeing some four 
 dozen girls flirting with strangers, and playing at shop. 
 
 "There!" said Mrs. Porter, looking out of window; "there 
 are two rounds of beef and a ham going in — clearly for sand- 
 wiches; and Thomas, the pastry-cook, says, there have been 
 twelve dozen tarts ordered, besides blanc-mange and jellies. 
 Upon my word! think of the Gattletons in fancy dresses, 
 too!" 
 
 "Oh, it's too ridiculous!" said Miss Porter, hysterically. 
 
 "I'll manage to put them a little out of conceit with the 
 business, however," said Mrs. Porter, and out she went on 
 her charitable errand. 
 
 "Well, my dear Mrs. Gattleton," said Mrs. Joseph Por- 
 ter, after they had been closeted for some time, and when, 
 by dint of indefatigable pumping, she had managed to ex- 
 tract all the news about the play, "well, my dear, people 
 may say what they please; indeed we know they will, for
 
 102 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 some folks are so ill-natured. Ah, my dear Miss Lucina, 
 how d'ye do? I was just telling your mamma that I have 
 heard it said that " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Mrs. Porter is alluding to the play, my dear," said Mrs. 
 Gattleton; "she was, I am sorry to say, just informing me 
 that " 
 
 "Oh, now pray don't mention it," interrupted Mrs. 
 Porter; "it's most absurd — quite as absurd as young What's- 
 his-name saying he wondered how Miss Carolina, with such 
 a foot and ankle, could have the vanity to play Fenella." 
 
 "Highly impertinent, whoever said it," said Mrs. Gattle- 
 ton, bridling up. 
 
 "Certainly, my dear," chimed in the delighted Mrs. 
 Porter; "most undoubtedly! Because, as I said, if Miss 
 Carolina does play Fenella, it doesn't follow, as a matter of 
 course, that she should think she has a pretty foot; — and 
 then — such puppies as these young men are — he had the 
 impudence to say, that " 
 
 How far the amiable Mrs. Porter might have succeeded in 
 her pleasant purpose, it is impossible to say, had not the 
 entrance of Mr. Thomas Balderstone, Mrs. Gattleton's 
 brother, familiarly called in the family "Uncle Tom," 
 changed the course of conversation, and suggested to her 
 mind an excellent plan of operation on the evening of the 
 play. 
 
 Uncle Tom was very rich, and exceedingly fond of his 
 nephews and nieces : as a matter of course, therefore, he was 
 an object of great importance in his own family. He was 
 one of the best-hearted men in existence: always in a good 
 temper, and always talking. It was his boast that he wore 
 top-boots on all occasions, and had never worn a black silk 
 neckerchief; and it was his pride that he remembered all the 
 principal plays of Shakespeare from beginning to end — and 
 so he did. The result of this parrot-like accomplishment
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 103 
 
 was, that he was not only perpetually quoting himself, but 
 that he could never sit by, and hear a misquotation from the 
 "Swan of Avon" without setting the unfortunate delin- 
 quent right. He was also something of a wag; never missed 
 an opportunity of saying what he considered a good thing, 
 and invariably laughed until he cried at anything that ap- 
 peared to him mirth moving or ridiculous. 
 
 " Well, girls ! " said Uncle Tom, after the preparatory cere- 
 mony of kissing and how-d'ye-do-ing had been gone through 
 — "how d'ye get on? Know your parts, eh? — Lucina, my 
 dear, act ii., scene 1 — place, left — cue — 'Unknown fate,' — 
 What's next, eh? — Go on — 'The Heavens '" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Miss Lucina, "I recollect 
 
 The heavens forbid 
 But that our loves and comforts should increase 
 Even as our days do grow! 
 
 "Make a pause here and there," said the old gentleman, 
 who was a great critic. "'But that our loves and comforts 
 should increase' — emphasis on the last syllable, 'crease,' — 
 loud again, *as our days do grow;' emphasis on days. That's 
 the way, my dear; trust to your uncle for emphasis. Ah! 
 Sem, my boy, how are you?" 
 
 "Very well, thankee, uncle," returned Mr. Sempronius, 
 who had just appeared looking something like a ringdove 
 with a small circle round each eye: the result of his constant 
 corking, "Of course we see you on Thursday." 
 
 "Of course, of course, my dear boy." 
 
 "What a pity it is your nephew didn't think of making 
 you prompter, Mr. Balderstone ! " whispered Mrs. Joseph 
 Porter, "you would have been invaluable." 
 
 "Well, I flatter myself, I should have been tolerably up to 
 the thing," responded Uncle Tom. 
 
 "I must bespeak sitting next you on the night," resumed 
 Mrs. Porter; "and then, if our dear young friends here
 
 104 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 should be at all wrong, you will be able to enlighten 
 me. I shall be so interested." 
 
 "I am sure I shall be most happy to give you any assist- 
 ance in my power." 
 
 "Mind, it's a bargain." 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "I don't know how it is," said Mrs. Gattleton to her 
 daughters, as they were sitting round the fire in the evening, 
 looking over their parts, "but I really very much wish Mrs. 
 Joseph Porter wasn't coming on Thursday. I am sure she's 
 scheming something." 
 
 "She can't make us ridiculous, however," observed Mr. 
 Sempronius Gattleton, haughtily. 
 
 The long-looked-f or Thursday arrived in due course, and 
 brought with it, as Mr. Gattleton, senior, philosophically 
 observed, "no disappointments, to speak of." True, it was 
 yet a matter of doubt whether Cassio would be enabled to 
 get into the dress which had been sent for him from the 
 masquerade warehouse. It was equally uncertain whether 
 the principal female singer would be sufficiently recovered 
 from the influenza to make her appearance; Mr. Harleigh, 
 the Masaniello of the night, was hoarse, and rather unwell, 
 iji consequence of the great quantity of lemon and sugar- 
 candy he had eaten to improve his voice; and two flutes and 
 a violoncello had pleaded severe colds. What of that? the 
 audience were all coming. Everybody knew his part; the 
 dresses were covered with tinsel and spangles; the white 
 plumes looked beautiful; Mr. Evans had practised falling 
 until he was bruised from head to foot and quite perfect; 
 lago was sure that, in the stabbing-scene, he should make "a 
 decided hit." A self-taught deaf gentleman, who had kindly 
 offered to bring his flute, would be a most valuable addition 
 to the orchestra; Miss Jenkins's talent for the piano was too 
 well known to be doubted for an instant ; Mr. Cape had prac- 
 tised the violin accompaniment with her frequently; and
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 105 
 
 Mr. Brown, who had kindly undertaken, at a few hours' 
 notice, to bring his violoncello, would, no doubt, manage 
 extremely well. 
 
 Seven o'clock came, and so did the audience; all the rank 
 and fashion of Clapham and its vicinity was fast filling the 
 theatre. There were the Smiths, the Gubbinses, the Nixons, 
 the Dixons, the Hicksons, people with all sorts of names, 
 two aldermen, a sheriff in perspective. Sir Thomas Glumper 
 (who had been knighted in the last reign for carrying up an 
 address on somebody's escaping from nothing); and last, 
 not least, there were Mrs. Joseph Porter and Uncle Tom, 
 seated in the centre of the third row from the stage; Mrs. 
 P. amusing Uncle Tom with all sorts of stories, and Uncle 
 Tom amusing every one else by laughing most immoder- 
 ately. 
 
 Ting, ting, ting ! went the prompter's bell at eight oclock 
 precisely, and dash went the orchestra into the overture to 
 "The Men of Prometheus." The pianoforte player ham- 
 mered away with laudable perseverance; and the violoncello, 
 which struck in at intervals, "sounded very well, consider- 
 ing." The unfortunate individual, however, who had under- 
 taken to play the flute accompaniment "at sight," found, 
 from fatal experience, the perfect truth of the old adage, 
 "out of sight, out of mind;" for being very near-sighted, 
 and being placed at a considerable distance from his music- 
 book, all he had an opportunity of doing was to play a bar 
 now and then in the wrong place, and put the other per- 
 formers out. It is, however, but justice to Mr. Brown to say 
 that he did this to admiration. The overture, in fact, was not 
 unlike a race between the different instruments; the piano 
 came in first by several bars, and the violoncello next, quite 
 distancing the poor flute; for the deaf gentleman ioo-too'd 
 away, quite unconscious that he was at all wrong, until 
 apprised, by the applause of the audience, that the overture 
 was concluded. A considerable bustle and shuffling of feet
 
 io6 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 was then heard upon the stage, accompanied by whispers 
 of "Here's a pretty go! — what's to be done?" &c. The 
 audience applauded again, by way of raising the spirits of 
 the performers; and then Mr. Sempronius desired the 
 prompter, in a very audible voice, to "clear the stage, and 
 ring up." 
 
 Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again. Everybody sat 
 down; the curtain shook; rose suflBciently high to display 
 several pair of yellow boots paddling about; and there 
 remained. 
 
 Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again. The curtain was 
 violently convulsed, but rose no higher; the audience tit- 
 tered; Mrs. Porter looked at Uncle Tom; Uncle Tom looked 
 at everybody, rubbing his hands, and laughing with perfect 
 rapture. After as much ringing with the little bell as a 
 muflBng boy would make in going down a tolerably long 
 street, and a vast deal of whispering, hammering, and calling 
 for nails and cord, the curtain at length rose, and discovered 
 Mr. Sempronius Gattleton solus, and decked for Othello. 
 After three distinct rounds of applause, during which Mr. 
 Sempronius applied his right hand to his left breast, and 
 bowed in the most approved manner, the manager advanced 
 and said; 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen — I assure you it is with sincere 
 regret, that I regret to be compelled to inform you, that lago 
 who was to have played Mr. Wilson — I beg your pardon. 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, but I am naturally somewhat 
 agitated (applause) — I mean, Mr. Wilson, who was to have 
 played lago, is — that is, has been — or, in other words. La- 
 dies and Gentlemen, the fact is, that I have just received a 
 note, in which I am informed that lago is unavoidably 
 detained at the Post Office this evening. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, I trust — a — a — amateur performance — a — 
 another gentleman undertaken to read the part — request 
 indulgence for a short time — courtesy and kindness of a
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 107 
 
 British audience." Overwhelming applause. Exit Mr. 
 Sempronius Gattleton, and curtain falls. 
 
 The audience were, of course, exceedingly good-hum- 
 oured; the whole business was a joke; and accordingly they 
 waited for an hour with the utmost patience, being enlivened 
 by an interlude of rout-cakes and lemonade. It appeared 
 by Mr. Sempronius's subsequent explanation, that the 
 delay would not have been so great, had it not so happened 
 that when the substitute lago had finished dressing, and 
 just as the play was on the point of commencing, the original 
 lago unexpectedly arrived. The former was therefore com- 
 pelled to undress, and the latter to dress for his part; which, 
 as he found some dijSBculty in getting into his clothes, oc- 
 cupied no inconsiderable time. At last, the tragedy began 
 in real earnest. It went off well enough, until the third 
 scene of the first act, in which Othello addresses the Senate: 
 the only remarkable circumstance being, that as lago could 
 not get on any of the stage boots, in consequence of his 
 feet being violently swelled with the heat and excitement, 
 he was under the necessity of playing the part in a pair of 
 Wellingtons, which contrasted rather oddly with his richly 
 embroidered pantaloons. When Othello started with his 
 address to the Senate (whose dignity was represented by the 
 Duke, a carpenter, two men engaged on the recommenda- 
 tion of the gardener, and a boy), Mrs. Porter found the 
 opportunity she so anxiously sought. 
 
 Mr. Sempronius proceeded: 
 
 "'Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors. 
 My very noble and approv'd good masters. 
 That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter 
 It is most true; — rude am I in my speech '" 
 
 "Is that right?" whispered Mrs. Porter to Uncle Tom. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Tell him so, then."
 
 io8 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "I will. Sem!" called out Uncle Tom, "that's wrong, 
 my boy." 
 
 "What's wrong, uncle?" demanded Othello ^ quite for- 
 getting the dignity of his situation. 
 
 " You've left out something. ' True I have married ' '* 
 
 "Ah, ah!" said Mr, Sempronius, endeavouring to hide his 
 confusion as much and as ineffectually as the audience at- 
 tempted to conceal their half-suppressed tittering, by cough- 
 ing with extraordinary violence 
 
 "'true I have married her; — 
 
 The very head and front of my offending 
 Hath this extent; no more.'" 
 
 {Aside) Why don't you prompt, father?" 
 
 "Because I've mislaid my spectacles," said poor Mr» 
 Gattleton, almost dead with the heat and bustle. 
 
 "There, now it's 'rude am I,'" said Uncle Tom. 
 
 "Yes, I know it is," returned the unfortunate manager, 
 proceeding with his part. 
 
 It would be useless and tiresome to quote the number of 
 instances in which Uncle Tom, now completely in his ele- 
 ment, and instigated by the mischievous Mrs. Porter, cor- 
 rected the mistakes of the performers; suffice it to say that, 
 having mounted his hobby, nothing could induce him to dis- 
 mount; so, during the whole remainder of the play, he per- 
 formed a kind of running accompaniment, by muttering 
 everybody's part as it was being delivered, in an under-tone. 
 The audience were highly amused, Mrs. Porter delighted, 
 the performers embarrassed; Uncle Tom never was better 
 pleased in all his life; and Uncle Tom's nephews and nieces 
 had never, although the declared heirs to his large property, 
 so heartily wished him gathered to his fathers as on that 
 memorable occasion. 
 
 From "Sketches by Boz.**
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 109 
 
 David Copperfield Goes to the Play 
 
 1. At Covent Garden 
 
 Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I 
 infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some 
 stages of the process), I resolved to go to the play. It was 
 Covent Garden Theatre that I chose; and there, from the 
 back of a centre box, I saw Julius Ctesar and the new Pan- 
 tomine. To have all those noble Romans alive before me, 
 and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of 
 being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a 
 most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled reality 
 and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the 
 poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth 
 stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, was 
 so dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of de- 
 light that when I came out into the rainy street, at twelve 
 o'clock at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where 
 I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, 
 splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach- 
 jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world. 
 
 2. Another Night 
 
 Somebody said to me, "Let us go to the theatre, Copper- 
 field!" There was no bedroom before me, but again the 
 jingling table covered with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on 
 my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth op- 
 posite — all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The 
 theatre? To be sure. The very thing. Come along! But 
 they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and turned 
 the lamp off — in case of fire. 
 
 Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. 
 I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, 
 laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went
 
 no Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 down-stairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, some- 
 body fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was 
 Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding 
 myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there 
 might be some foundation for it. 
 
 A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in 
 the streets ! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. 
 I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp- 
 post, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced 
 from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I 
 hadn't had it on before. Steerforth then said, "You are all 
 right, Copperfield, are you not?" and I told him, "Never- 
 berrer." 
 
 A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole place, looked out of the 
 fog, and took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one 
 of the gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful 
 (as I remember in the glimpse I had of him) whether to take 
 the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we were very 
 high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit, 
 that seemed to me to smoke; the people with whom it was 
 crammed were so indistinct. There was a great stage, too, 
 looking very clean and smooth after the streets; and there 
 were people upon it, talking about something or other, but 
 not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance of bright 
 lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in 
 the boxes, and I don't know what more. The whole build- 
 ing looked to me, as if it were learning to swim; it conducted 
 itself in such an unaccountable manner, when I tried to 
 steady it. 
 
 On somebody's motion, we resolved to go down-stairs to 
 the dress-boxes, where the ladies were. A gentleman loung- 
 ing, full dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, 
 passes before my view, and also my own figure at full length 
 in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes, 
 and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels m 
 
 about me crying "Silence" to somebody, and ladies casting 
 indignant glances at me, and — what! yes! — Agnes, sitting 
 on the seat before me, in the same box, with a lady and 
 gentleman beside her, whom I didn't know, I see her face 
 now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible 
 look of regret and wonder turned upon me. 
 
 "Agnes!" I said, thickly, " Lorblessmer ! Agnes!" 
 
 "Hush ! Pray ! " she answered, I could not conceive why. 
 "You disturb the company. Look at the stage!" 
 
 I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something 
 of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at 
 her again by-and-by, and saw her shrink into her corner, 
 and put her gloved hand to her forehead. 
 
 "Agnes!" I said. "I'm afraid you'renorwell." 
 
 "Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood," she returned. 
 "Listen ! Are you going away soon? " 
 
 "Amigoarawaysoo?" I repeated. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to 
 wait, to hand her down-stairs. I suppose I expressed it, 
 somehow; for, after she had looked at me attentively for a 
 little while, she appeared to understand, and replied in a low 
 tone : 
 
 "I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very 
 earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and 
 ask your friends to take you home." 
 
 She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I 
 was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short 
 "Goori!" (which I intended for "Good night") got up and 
 went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the 
 box-door into my bedroom, where Steerforth was with 
 me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling 
 him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring 
 the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine. 
 
 From "David Copperfield."
 
 112 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Frederick Dorrit in the Orchestra Pit 
 
 The old man looked as if the remote high gallery windows, 
 with their little strip of sky, might have been the point of 
 his better fortunes, from which he had descended until he 
 had gradually sunk down below there to the bottom. He 
 had been in that place six nights a week for many years, 
 but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his 
 music-book, and was confidently believed to have never 
 seen a play. There were legends in the place that he had 
 not so much as known the popular heroes and heroines by 
 sight, and that the low comedian had "mugged" at him in 
 his richest manner fifty nights for a wager, and he had shown 
 no trace of consciousness. The carpenters had a joke that 
 he was dead without being aware of it, and the frequenters 
 of the pit supposed him to pass his whole life, night and day, 
 and Sunday and all, in the orchestra. They had tried him 
 a few times with pinches of snuff offered over the rails, and 
 he had always responded to this attention with a momen- 
 tary waking-up of manner that had the pale phantom of a 
 gentleman in it; beyond this he never, on any occasion, 
 had any other part in what was going on than the part 
 written out for the clarionet : in private life, where there was 
 no part for the clarionet, he had no part at all. 
 
 From "Little Dorrit." 
 
 The Waldengarver 
 
 This is the tale told by Pip who had known the Wal- 
 dengarver when, under the humbler name of Wopsle, 
 he was clerk of the church back home. Pip had at- 
 tended for a time a village school somewhat vaguely 
 conducted by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt. The Mr. Wopsle
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 113 
 
 of those days, had, in addition to a Roman nose and a 
 large, shining, bald forehead, "a deep voice which he 
 was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood 
 among his acquaintance that if you could only give him 
 his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he 
 himself confessed that if the Church was 'thrown 
 open,' meaning to competition, he would not despair 
 of making his mark in it. The church not being 
 'thrown open,' he was, as I have said, our clerk. But 
 he punished the Amens tremendously; and when he 
 gave out the Psalm — always giving the whole verse — 
 he looked all around the church first, as much as to 
 say: 'You have heard our friend overhead; oblige me 
 with your opinion of this style.' " Now, lifted by his 
 great expectations, Pip is in London learning to be a 
 gentleman, and on him, much embarrassed, calls his 
 dear Joe Gargery, the blacksmith — awkward, patient, 
 gentle Joe, who, inexplicably, has come up to London 
 in company with Mr. Wopsle. 
 
 1 — The Most Melancholy Dane of All 
 
 This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at 
 eight on Tuesday morning in the hall (it was two feet 
 square, as charged for floorcloth), and Herbert suggested 
 certain things for breakfast that he thought Joe would like. 
 While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being so interested 
 and considerate, I had an odd half -provoked sense of sus- 
 picion upon me, that if Joe had been coming to see him, he 
 wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it. 
 
 However, I came into town on the Monday night to be 
 
 8
 
 114 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 ready for Joe, and I got up early in the morning, and caused 
 the sitting-room and breakfast-table to assume their most 
 splendid appearance. Unfortunately the morning was 
 drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact 
 that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, 
 like some weak giant of a Sweep. 
 
 As the time approached I should have liked to run away, 
 but the Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and 
 presently I heard Joe, on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, 
 by his clumsy manner of coming up-stairs — his state boots 
 being always too big for him — and by the time it took 
 him to read the names on the other floors in the course of 
 his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I 
 could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my 
 name, and I afterwards distinctly heard his breathing in 
 at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and 
 Pepper — such was the compromising name of the avenging 
 boy — announced "Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never 
 would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone 
 out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in. 
 
 "Joe, how are you, Joe? " 
 
 "Pip, how AIR you, Pip?" 
 
 With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and 
 his hat put down on the floor between us, he caught both 
 my hands and worked them straight up and down, as if I 
 had been the last-patented Pump. 
 
 "I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat." 
 
 But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a 
 bird's-nest with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with 
 that piece of property, and persisted in standing talking over 
 it in a most uncomfortable way. 
 
 "Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that 
 swelled, and that gentle-folked"; Joe considered a little 
 before he discovered this word; "as, to be sure, you are a 
 honour to your king and country."
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 115 
 
 "And you, Joe, look wonderfully well." 
 
 "Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most. And 
 your sister, she's no worse than she were. And Biddy, 
 she's ever right and ready. And all friends is no backerder, 
 if not no forarder. 'Ceptin' Wopsle: he's had a drop." 
 
 All this time (still with both hands taking great care of 
 the bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the 
 room, and round and round the flowered pattern of my 
 dressing-gown. 
 
 "Had a drop, Joe?" 
 
 "Why, yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the 
 Church and went into the playacting. Which the playacting 
 have likewise brought him to London along with me. And 
 his wish were," said Joe, getting the bird's-nest under his 
 left arm for the moment, and groping in it for an egg with his 
 right; "if no offence, as I would 'and you that." 
 
 I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled 
 playbill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the 
 first appearance, in that very week, of "the celebrated Pro- 
 vincial Amateur of Roscian renown, whose unique perform- 
 ance in the highest tragic walk of our National Bard has 
 lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic 
 circles." 
 
 "Were you at this performance, Joe.''" I inquired. 
 
 "I were," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity. 
 
 "Was there a great sensation?" 
 
 "Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of 
 orange-peel. Partickler when he see the ghost. Though 
 I put it to yourself, sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep 
 a man up to his work with a good hart, to be continiwally 
 cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with 'Amen!' A 
 man may have had a misfortun' and been in the Church," 
 said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling 
 tone, "but that is no reason why you should put him out 
 at such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's
 
 ii6 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 own father cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what 
 can, Sir? Still more, when his mourning 'at is unfortunately 
 made so small as that the weight of the black feathers brings 
 it off, try to keep it on how you may." 
 
 As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a 
 diflBcult vision to realise this same Capital sometimes was, 
 1 put my hands in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in 
 one of them attracted my attention. I opened it and found 
 it to be the playbill I had received from Joe, relative to the 
 celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian renown. "And 
 bless my heart," I involuntarily added aloud/'it's to-night!" 
 
 This changed the subject in an instant, and made us 
 hurriedly resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged 
 myself to comfort and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart 
 by all practicable and impracticable means, and when Her- 
 bert had told me that his affianced already knew me by 
 reputation, and that I should be presented to her, and when 
 we had warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence, 
 we blew out our candles, made up our fire, locked our door, 
 and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and Denmark. 
 
 On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen 
 of that country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen- 
 table, holding a Court. The whole of the Danish nobility 
 were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in the wash- 
 leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer with 
 a dirty face, who seemed to have risen from the people late 
 in life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and 
 a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on the whole a femi- 
 nine appearance. My gifted townsman stood gloomily apart, 
 with folded arms, and I could have wished that his curls and 
 forehead had been more probable. 
 
 Several curious little circumstances transpired as the 
 action proceeded. The late king of the country not only
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 117 
 
 appeared to have been troubled with a cough at the time 
 of his decease, but to have taken it with him to the tomb, 
 and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also 
 carried a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which 
 it had the appearance of occasionally referring, and that, 
 too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place 
 of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality. 
 It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being ad- 
 vised by the gallery to "turn over!" — a recommendation 
 which it took extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of 
 this majestic spirit that whereas it always appeared with an 
 air of having been out a long time and walked an immense 
 distance, it perceptibly came from a closely contiguous 
 wall. This occasioned its terrors to be received derisively. 
 The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no 
 doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to 
 have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to 
 her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a 
 gorgeous toothache), her waist being encircled by another, 
 and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly 
 mentioned as "the kettledrum." The noble boy in the 
 ancestral boots, was inconsistent; representing himself, as it 
 were in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a 
 gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost im- 
 portance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority 
 of whose practised eye and nice discrimination the 
 finest strokes were judged. This gradually led to a want 
 of toleration for him, and even — on his being detected in 
 holy orders, and declining to perform the funeral service — 
 to the general indignation taking the form of nuts. Lastly, 
 Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical madness, that when, 
 in course of time, she had taken off her white muslin scarf, 
 folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who had been long 
 cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the front 
 row of the gallery, growled, "Now the baby's put to bed,
 
 ii8 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 let's have supper ! " Which, to say the least of it, was out of 
 keeping. 
 
 Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents ac- 
 cumulated with playful effect. Whenever that undecided 
 Prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public 
 helped him out with it. As for example; on the question 
 whether 'twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared yes, 
 and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said "toss 
 up for it;" and quite a Debating Society arose. When he 
 asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between 
 earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries of 
 "Hear, hear!" When he appeared with his stocking dis- 
 ordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one 
 very neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got 
 up with a flat iron), a conversation took place in the gallery 
 respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occa- 
 sioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking 
 the recorders — very like a little black flute that had just 
 been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door — 
 he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When 
 he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky 
 man said, "And don't you do it, neither; you're a deal worse 
 than him!" And I grieve to add that peals of laughter 
 greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these occasions. 
 
 But his greatest trials were in the churchyard : which had 
 the appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small 
 ecclesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate 
 on the other. Mr. Wopsle, in a comprehensive black cloak, 
 being descried entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger 
 was admonished in a friendly way, "Look out! Here's the 
 undertaker a coming, to see how you're getting on with your 
 work!" I believe it is well known in a constitutional coun- 
 try that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have returned the 
 skull, after moralising over it, without dusting his fingers on 
 a white napkin taken from his breast; but even that inno-
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 119 
 
 cent and indispensable action did not pass without the 
 comment "Wai-ter!" The arrival of the body for inter- 
 ment (in an empty black box with the lid tumbling open), 
 was the signal for a general joy which was much enhanced 
 by the discovery, among the bearers, of an individual obnox- 
 ious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle 
 through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the or- 
 chestra and the grave, and slackened no more until he had 
 tumbled the king off the kitchen-table, and had died by 
 inches from the ankles upward. 
 
 We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to ap- 
 plaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be per- 
 sisted in. Therefore we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but 
 laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I laughed in spite 
 of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll; and yet 
 I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly 
 fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution — not for old associations' sake, 
 I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, 
 very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which 
 any man in any natural circumstances of life or death 
 ever expressed himself about anything. When the tragedy 
 was over, and he had been called for and hooted, I said to 
 Herbert, "Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him." 
 
 We made all the haste we could down-stairs, but we were 
 not quick enough either. Standing at the door was a 
 Jewish man with an unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, 
 who caught my eyes as we advanced, and said, when we 
 came up with him: 
 
 "Mr. Pip and friend?" 
 
 Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed. 
 
 "Mr. Waldengarver," said the man, "would be glad 
 to have the honour." 
 
 "Waldengarver?" I repeated — when Herbert murmured 
 in my ear, "Probably Wopsle." 
 
 "Oh!" said L "Yes. Shall we follow you?"
 
 120 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "A few steps, please." When we were in a side alley, 
 he turned and asked, "How do you think he looked? — / 
 dressed him." 
 
 I don't know what he had looked like, except a funeral; 
 with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging 
 round his neck by a blue ribbon, that had given him the 
 appearance of being insured in some extraordinary Fire 
 Office. But I said he had looked very nice. 
 
 "When he come to the grave," said our conductor, "he 
 showed his cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, 
 it looked to me that when he see the ghost in the queen's 
 apartment, he might have made more of his stockings." 
 
 I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty 
 swing door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately 
 behind it. Here Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his 
 Danish garments, and here there was just room for us to 
 look at him over one another's shoulders, by keeping the 
 packing-case door, or lid, wide open. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Mr. Wopsle, "I am proud to see you. 
 I hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had 
 the happiness to know you in former times, and the Drama 
 has ever had a claim which has ever been acknowledged, on 
 the noble and the affluent." 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspira- 
 tion, was trying to get himself out of his princely sables. 
 
 "Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver," said the 
 owner of that property, "or you'll bust 'em. Bust 'em, 
 and you'll bust five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never 
 was complimented with a finer pair. Keep quiet in your 
 chair now, and leave 'em to me." 
 
 With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his 
 victim; who, on the first stocking coming off, would cer- 
 tainly have fallen over backward with his chair, but for 
 there being no room to fall anyhow. 
 
 I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play.
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 121 
 
 But then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, 
 and said: 
 
 " Gentlemen, how did it seem to you to go, in front? " 
 
 Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me), 
 "capitally." So I said "capitally." 
 
 "How did you like my reading of the character, gentle- 
 men?" said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with 
 patronage 
 
 Herbert said from behind (again poking me), "massive 
 and concrete." So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, 
 and must beg to insist upon it, "massive and concrete." 
 
 "I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen," said 
 Mr. Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his 
 being ground against the wall at the time, and holding on 
 by the seat of the chair. 
 
 "But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver," said 
 the man who was on his knees, "in which you're out in your 
 reading. Now mind! I don't care who says contrary; I 
 tell you so. You're out in your reading of Hamlet when 
 you get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed, 
 made the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I 
 got him to put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and 
 then at that rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, 
 sir, to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading brought 
 him into profile, I called out, 'I don't see no wafers!' And 
 at night his reading was lovely." 
 
 Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say "a 
 faithful dependent — I overlook his folly;" and then said 
 aloud, "My view is a little too classic and thoughtful for 
 them here; but they will improve, they will improve." 
 
 Herbert and I said together. Oh, no doubt they would 
 improve. 
 
 "Did you observe, gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, 
 "that there was a man in the gallery who endeavoured to 
 cast derision on the service — I mean, the representation?"
 
 122 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed 
 such a man. I added, "He was drunk, no doubt." 
 
 "Oh, dear no, sir," said Mr. Wopsle, "not drunk. His 
 employer would see to that, sir. His employer would not 
 allow him to be drunk." 
 
 "You know his employer?" said I. 
 
 Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; per- 
 forming both ceremonies very slowly. "You must have 
 observed, gentlemen," said he, "an ignorant and blatant 
 ass, with a rasping throat and a countenance expressive of 
 low malignity, who went through — I will not say sustained 
 — the role (if I may use a French expression) of Claudius 
 King of Denmark. That is his employer, gentlemen. Such 
 is the profession!" 
 
 Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been 
 more sorry for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was 
 so sorry for him as it was, that I took the opportunity of 
 his turning round to have his braces put on — which jostled 
 us out at the doorway — to ask Herbert what he thought of 
 having him home to supper? Herbert said he thought it 
 would be kind to do so; therefore I invited him, and he 
 went to Barnard's with us, wrapped up to the eyes, and we 
 did our best for him, and he sat until two o'clock in the 
 morning, reviewing his success and developing his plans. 
 I forget in detail what they were, but I have a general 
 recollection that he was to begin with reviving the Drama, 
 and to end with crushing it; inasmuch as his decease would 
 leave it utterly bereft and without a chance or hope. 
 
 2 — The Decline of the Drama 
 
 I dined long afterwards at what Herbert and I used to 
 call a Geographical chop-house — where there were maps of 
 the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the table- 
 cloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives — to
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 123 
 
 this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the 
 Lord Mayor's dominions which is not Geographical — and 
 wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, 
 and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By-and-by, I roused 
 myself and went to the play. 
 
 There, I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty's 
 service — a most excellent man, though I could have wished 
 his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite 
 so loose in others — who knocked all the little men's hats 
 over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and 
 who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he 
 was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, 
 hke a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a 
 young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the 
 whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last 
 Census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and 
 shake everybody else's, and sing, "Fill, fill!" A certain 
 dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do 
 anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart 
 was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his 
 figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind 
 into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab 
 family having considerable political influence) that it took 
 half the evening to set things right, and then it was only 
 brought about through an honest little grocer with a white 
 hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a 
 gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking every- 
 body down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't 
 confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. 
 Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in 
 with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great 
 power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs 
 were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought 
 the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledg- 
 ment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for
 
 124 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and 
 then cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your 
 Honour, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. 
 Wopsle conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was im- 
 mediately shoved into a dusty corner while everybody 
 danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the 
 public with a discontented eye, became aware of me. 
 
 The second piece was the last new grand comic Christ- 
 mas pantomime, in the first scene of which it pained me to 
 suspect that I detected Mr. Wopsle, with red worsted legs 
 under a highly magnified phosphoric countenance and a 
 shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged in the 
 manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying 
 great cowardice when his gigantic master came home 
 (very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented him- 
 self under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youth- 
 ful Love being in want of assistance — on account of the 
 parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed the 
 choice of his daughter's heart, by purposely falling upon the 
 object in a flour sack out of the first-floor window — sum- 
 moned a sententious Enchanter; and he, coming up from 
 the antipodes rather unsteadily, after an apparently violent 
 journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a high-crowned hat, 
 with a necromantic work in one volume under his arm. The 
 business of this enchanter on earth, being principally to be 
 butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of various 
 colours, he had a good deal of time on his hands. 
 
 From "Great Expectations." 
 
 DULLBOROUGH ToWN 
 
 It lately happened that I found myself rambling about the 
 scenes among which my earliest days were passed; scenes 
 from which I departed when I was a child, and which I 
 did not revisit until I was a man. This is no uncommon
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 125 
 
 chance, but one that befalls some of us any day; perhaps it 
 may not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the 
 reader respecting an experience so familiar and a journey 
 so uncommercial. 
 
 I call my boyhood's home (and I feel like a Tenor in an 
 English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. Most of us 
 come from Dullborough who come from a country town. 
 
 The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fish- 
 monger, who had a compact show of stock in his window, 
 consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps — and I resolved 
 to comfort my mind by going to look at it. Richard the 
 Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared to 
 me there, and had made my heart leap with terror by back- 
 ing up against the stage-box in which I was posted, while 
 struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond. It was 
 within those walls that I had learnt as from a page of English 
 history, how that wicked King slept in war-time on a sofa 
 much too short for him, and how fearfully his conscience 
 troubled his boots. There, too, had I first seen the funny 
 countryman, but countryman of noble principles, in a flow- 
 ered waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it on the 
 ground, and pull off his coat, saying, "Dom thee, squire, 
 coom on with thy fistes then!" At which the lovely young 
 woman who kept company with him (and who went out 
 gleaning, in a narrow white muslin apron with five beautiful 
 bars of five different-coloured ribbons across it) was so 
 frightened for his sake, that she fainted away. Many won- 
 drous secrets of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in 
 that sanctuary : of which not the least terrific were, that the 
 witches in Macbeth bore an awful resemblance to the Thanes 
 and other proper inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good 
 King Duncan couldn't rest in his grave, but was constantly 
 coming out of it and calling himself somebody else. To the 
 Theatre, therefore, I repaired for consolation. But I found 
 very little, for it was in a bad and declining way. A dealer
 
 126 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 in wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into 
 the box-oflSce, and the theatrical money was taken — when it 
 came — in a kind of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer in 
 wine and bottled beer must have insinuated himself under 
 the stage too; for he announced that he had various de- 
 scriptions of alcoholic drinks "in the wood," and there was 
 no possible stowage for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, 
 he was by degrees eating the establishment away to the core, 
 and would soon have sole possession of it. It was To Let, 
 and hopelessly so, for its old purposes; and there had been 
 no entertainment within its walls for a long time except a 
 Panorama; and even that had been announced as "pleas- 
 ingly instructive," and I know too well the fatal meaning 
 and the leaden import of those terrible expressions. No, 
 there was no comfort in the Theatre. It was mysteriously 
 gone, like my own youth. Unlike my own youth, it might 
 be coming back some day; but there was little promise of it. 
 
 From "The Uncommercial Traveller." 
 
 In the French-Flemish Country 
 
 "It is neither a bold nor a diversified country," said I to 
 myself, "this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and 
 a quarter French; yet it has its attractions too. Though 
 great lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, 
 and go puffing off to Paris and the South, to Belgium and 
 Germany, to the Northern Sea-Coast of France, and to 
 England, and merely smoke it a little in passing. Then I 
 don't know it, and that is a good reason for being here; and 
 I can't pronounce half the long queer names I see inscribed 
 over the shops, and that is another good reason for being 
 here, since I surely ought to learn how." In short, I was 
 "here," and I wanted an excuse for not going away from 
 here, and I made it to my satisfaction, and stayed here. 
 
 What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P.
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 127 
 
 Salcy, is of no moment, though I own to encountering that 
 gentleman's name on a red bill on the wall, before I made up 
 my mind. Monsieur P. Salcy, "par permission de M. le 
 Maire," had established his theatre in the whitewashed 
 Hotel de Ville, on the steps of which illustrious edifice I 
 stood. And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged director of such 
 theatre, situate in "the first theatrical arrondissement of the 
 department of the North," invited French-Flemish mankind 
 to come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by 
 his family of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number. 
 "La Famille P. Salcy, composee d'artistes dramatiques, au 
 nombre de 15 sujets." 
 
 There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being 
 irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last 
 Hotel, I made the tour of the little town to buy another. 
 In the small sunny shops — mercers, opticians, and druggist- 
 grocers, with here and there an emporium of religious images 
 — the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives 
 sat contemplating one another across bare counters, while 
 the wasps, who seemed to have taken military possession of 
 the town, and to have placed it under wasp-martial law, 
 executed warlike manoeuvres in the windows. Other shops 
 the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and 
 nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the 
 board of custom. What I sought was no more to be found 
 than if I had sought a nugget of Calif ornian gold : so I went, 
 spongeless, to pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy. 
 
 The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so 
 like one another — fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, 
 and aunts — that I think the local audience were much con- 
 fused about the plot of the piece under representation, and 
 to the last expected that everybody must turn out to be 
 the long-lost relative of everybody else. The Theatre was 
 established on the top story of the Hotel de Ville, and was 
 approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy
 
 128 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 situation, one of the P. Salcy Family — a stout gentleman 
 imperfectly repressed by a belt — took the money. This 
 occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no 
 sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, 
 and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very 
 short song with his eyebrows) apparently the very same 
 identical stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, 
 than everybody rushed out to the paying-place, to ascertain 
 whether he could possibly have put on that dress-coat, that 
 clear complexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in 
 so short a space of time. It then became manifest that this 
 was another stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a 
 belt: to whom, before the spectators had recovered their 
 presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman imper- 
 fectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him. These two 
 "subjects," making with the money-taker three of the an- 
 nounced fifteen, fell into conversation touching a charming 
 young widow; who, presently appearing, proved to be a 
 stout lady altogether irrepressible by any means — quite a 
 parallel case to the American Negro — fourth of the fifteen 
 subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided over the check- 
 department. In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects 
 were dramatically presented, and we had the inevitable 
 Ma Mere, Ma Mere! and also the inevitable malediction 
 d'un pere, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also the 
 inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, 
 who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and 
 choked all at once. The story was wrought out with the 
 help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, a vicious 
 set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing 
 (which arrived by post) from Ma Mere towards the end; 
 the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the 
 stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thou- 
 sand francs per annum and a decoration to the other stout 
 gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an assurance
 
 The Stage in Dickens's Novels 129 
 
 from everybody to the provincial young man that if he were 
 not supremely happy — which he seemed to have no reason 
 whatever for being — he ought to be. This afforded him a 
 final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking all at 
 once, and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted. 
 Audience more attentive and better behaved there could not 
 possibly be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre 
 of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, 
 and the places of first rank a shilling. How the fifteen sub- 
 jects ever got so fat upon it, the kind Heavens know. 
 
 From "The Uncommercial Traveller." 
 
 In an Empty Theatre 
 
 Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was 
 but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came 
 next. Grim and black within, at night, those great dry 
 Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows of faces faded 
 out, the lights extinguished, and the seats all empty. One 
 would think that nothing in them knew itself at such a time 
 but Yorick's skull. In one of my night walks, as the church 
 steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with strokes 
 of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these great 
 deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I 
 groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the 
 orchestra — which was like a great grave dug for a time of 
 pestilence — into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an 
 immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like every- 
 thing else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and 
 space, but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet 
 where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples 
 dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning mountain 
 which threatened to overwhelm them, was now in possession 
 of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait 
 for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed its 
 9
 
 130 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint 
 corpse candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted 
 away. Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my 
 light above my head towards the rolled-up curtain — green 
 no more, but black as ebony — my sight lost itself in a gloomy 
 vault, showing faint indications in it of a shipwreck of can- 
 vas and cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver might, 
 at the bottom of the sea. 
 
 From "The Uncommercial Traveller."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 
 
 131
 
 THE VINCENT CRUMMLES 
 COMPANY 
 
 1. — THE COMPANY OF MR. VINCENT CRUMMLES, AND HIS 
 AFFAIRS DOMESTIC AND PERSONAL 
 
 AS Mr. Crummies had a strange four-legged animal in the 
 inn stables, which he called a pony, and a vehicle of 
 unknown design, on which he bestowed the appellation of 
 four-wheeled phaeton, Nicholas proceeded on his journey 
 next morning with greater ease than he had expected: the 
 manager and himself occupying the front seat: and the 
 Master Crummleses and Smike being packed together be- 
 hind, in company with a wicker basket defended from wet 
 by a stout oilskin, in which were the broad-swords, pistols, 
 pigtails, nautical costumes, and other professional necessaries 
 of the aforesaid young gentlemen. 
 
 The pony took his time upon the road, and — possibly in 
 consequence of his theatrical education — evinced, every now 
 and then, a strong inchnation to lie down. However, Mr. 
 Vincent Crummies kept him up pretty well, by jerking the 
 rein, and plying the whip; and when these means failed 
 and the animal came to a stand, the elder Master Crummies 
 got out and kicked him. By dint of these encouragements, 
 he was persuaded to move from time to time, and they 
 jogged on (as Mr. Crummies truly observed) very comfort- 
 ably for all parties. 
 
 "He's a good pony at bottom," said Mr. Crummies, 
 turning to Nicholas. 
 
 133
 
 134 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 He might have been at bottom, but he certainly was not 
 at top, seeing that his coat was of the roughest and most 
 ill-favoured kind. So Nicholas merely observed that he 
 shouldn't wonder if he was, 
 
 "Many and many is the circuit this pony has gone," said 
 Mr. Crummies, flicking him skilfully on the eyelid for old 
 acquaintance' sake. "He is quite one of us. His mother 
 was on the stage." 
 
 "Was she?" rejoined Nicholas. 
 
 "She ate apple-pie at a circus for upwards of fourteen 
 years," said the manager; "fired pistols, and went to bed 
 in a nightcap; and, in short, took the low comedy entirely. 
 His father was a dancer." 
 
 "Was he at all distinguished?" 
 
 "Not very," said the manager. "He was rather a low 
 sort of pony. The fact is, he had been originally jobbed out 
 by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. He 
 was clever in melodrama too, but too broad — too broad. 
 When the mother died, he took the port-wine business." 
 
 "The port-wine business!" cried Nicholas. 
 
 "Drinking port-wine with the clown," said the manager; 
 "but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the 
 glass, and choked himself, so his vulgarity was the death of 
 him at last." 
 
 The descendant of this ill-starred animal requiring in- 
 creased attention from Mr. Crummies as he progressed in 
 his day's work, that gentleman had very little time for con- 
 versation. Nicholas was thus left at leisure to entertain 
 himself with his own thoughts, until they arrived at the 
 drawbridge at Portsmouth, when Mr. Crummies pulled up. 
 
 "We'll get down here," said the manager, "and the boys 
 will take him round to the stable, and call at my lodgings 
 with the luggage. You had better let yours be taken there 
 for the present." 
 
 Thanking Mr. Vincent Crummies for his obliging oflfer,
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 135 
 
 Nicholas jumped out, and, giving Smike his arm, accom- 
 panied the manager up High Street on their way to the 
 theatre; feeUng nervous and uncomfortable enough at the 
 prospect of an immediate introduction to a scene so new 
 to him. 
 
 They passed a great many bills, pasted against the walls 
 and displayed in windows, wherein the names of Mr. Vin- 
 cent Crummies, and Miss Crummies, were printed in very 
 large letters, and everything else in very small ones; and, 
 turning at length into an entry, in which was a strong smell 
 of orange-peel and lamp-oil, with an under-current of saw- 
 dust, groped their way through a dark passage, and, de- 
 scending a step or two, threaded a little maze of canvas 
 screens and paint-pots, and emerged upon the stage of the 
 Portsmouth Theatre. 
 
 "Here we are," said Mr. Crummies. 
 
 It was not very light, but Nicholas found himself close to 
 the first entrance on the prompt side, among bare walls, 
 dusty scenes, mildewed clouds, heavily daubed draperies, 
 and dirty floors. He looked about him; ceiling, pit, boxes, 
 gallery, orchestra, fittings, and decorations of every kind, — 
 all looked coarse, cold, gloomy, and wretched. 
 
 "Is this a theatre?" whispered Smike, in amazement, 
 "I thought is was a blaze of light and finery." 
 
 "Why, so it is," replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; 
 "but not by day, Smike — not by day." 
 
 The manager's voice recalled him from a more careful 
 inspection of the building, to the opposite side of the pro- 
 scenium, where, at a small mahogany table with rickety 
 legs and of an oblong shape, sat a stout, portly female, 
 apparently between forty and fifty, in a tarnished silk cloak, 
 with her bonnet dangling by the strings in her hand, and 
 her hair (of which she had a great quantity) braided in a 
 large festoon over each temple. 
 
 "Mr. Johnson," said the manager (for Nicholas had given
 
 136 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the name which Newman Noggs had bestowed upon him in 
 his conversation with Mrs. Kenwigs), "let me introduce 
 Mrs. Vincent Crummies." 
 
 "I am glad to see you, sir," said Mrs. Vincent Crummies, 
 in a sepulchral voice. "I am very glad to see you, and still 
 more happy to hail you as a promising member of our corps." 
 
 The lady shook Nicholas by the hand as she addressed 
 him in these terms; he saw it was a large one, but had 
 not expected quite such an iron grip as that with which she 
 honoured him. 
 
 "And this," said the lady, crossing to Smike, as tragic 
 actresses cross when they obey a stage direction, "and this 
 is the other. You too, are welcome, sir." 
 
 "He'll do, I think, my dear?" said the manager, taking 
 a pinch of snuff. 
 
 "He is admirable," replied the lady. "An acquisition, 
 indeed." 
 
 As Mrs. Vincent Crummies recrossed back to the table, 
 there bounded on to the stage from some mysterious inlet, 
 a little girl in a dirty white frock with tucks up to the knees, 
 short trousers, sandaled shoes, white spencer, pink gauze 
 bonnet, green veil and curl papers; who turned a pirouette, 
 cut twice in the air, turned another pirouette, then, looking 
 off at the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to 
 within six inches of the footlights, and fell into a beautiful 
 attitude of terror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of 
 buff slippers came in at one powerful slide, and chattering 
 his teeth, fiercely brandished a walking-stick. 
 
 "They are going through the Indian Savage and the 
 Maiden," said Mrs. Crummies. 
 
 "Oh!" said the manager, "the little ballet interlude. 
 Very good, go on. A little this way, if you please, Mr. 
 Johnson. That'll do. Now!" 
 
 The manager clapped his hands as a signal to proceed, 
 and the savage, becoming ferocious, made a slide towards
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 137 
 
 the maiden; but the maiden avoided him in six twirls, and 
 came down, at the end of the last one, upon the very points 
 of her toes. This seemed to make some impression upon 
 the savage; for, after a little more ferocity and chasing of 
 the maiden into corners, he began to relent, and stroked 
 his face several times with his right thumb and four fingers, 
 thereby intimating that he was struck with admiration of 
 the maiden's beauty. Acting upon the impulse of this 
 passion, he (the savage) began to hit himself severe thumps 
 in the chest, and to exhibit other indications of being 
 desperately in love, which being rather a prosy proceeding, 
 was very likely the cause of the maiden's falling asleep; 
 whether it was or no, asleep she did fall, sound as a church, 
 on a sloping bank, and the savage perceiving it, leant his 
 left ear on his left hand, and nodded sideways, to intimate 
 to all whom it might concern that she was asleep, and no 
 shamming. Being left to himself, the savage had a dance, 
 all alone. Just as he left off, the maiden woke up, rubbed 
 her eyes, got off the bank, and had a dance all alone too — 
 such a dance that the savage looked on in ecstasy all the 
 while, and when it was done, plucked from a neighbouring 
 tree some botanical curiosity, resembling a small pickled 
 cabbage, and offered it to the maiden, who at first wouldn't 
 have it, but on the savage shedding tears relented. Then 
 the savage jumped for joy; then the maiden jumped for 
 rapture at the sweet smell of the pickled cabbage. Then 
 the savage and the maiden danced violently together, and, 
 finally, the savage dropped down on one knee, and the 
 maiden stood on one leg upon his other knee; thus con- 
 cluding the ballet, and leaving the spectators in a state of 
 pleasing uncertainty, whether she would ultimately marry 
 the savage, or return to her friends. 
 
 "Very well indeed," said Mr. Crummies; "bravo!" 
 "Bravo!" cried Nicholas, resolved to make the best of 
 everything. "Beautiful!"
 
 138 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "This, sir," said Mr. Vincent Crummies, bringing the 
 maiden forward, "this is the infant phenomenon — Miss 
 Ninetta Crummies." 
 
 "Your daughter?" inquired Nicholas. 
 
 "My daughter — my daughter," replied Mr. Vincent 
 Crummies; "the idol of every place we go into, sir. We 
 have had complimentary letters about this girl, sir, from the 
 nobility and gentry of almost every town in England." 
 
 "I am not surprised at that," said Nicholas; "she must 
 be quite a natural genius." 
 
 "Quite a !" Mr. Crummies stopped: language was 
 
 not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. 
 "I'll tell you what, sir," he said; "the talent of this child is 
 not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir — seen — to be 
 ever so faintly appreciated. There; go to your mother, my 
 dear." 
 
 "May I ask how old she is?" inquired Nicholas. 
 
 "You may, sir," replied Mr. Crummies, looking steadily 
 in his questioner's face, as some men do when they have 
 doubts about being implicitly believed in what they are 
 going to say. "She is ten years of age, sir." 
 
 "Not more?" 
 
 *'Not a day." 
 
 "Dear me!" said Nicholas, "it's extraordinary." 
 
 It was; for the infant phenomenon, though of short 
 stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had 
 moreover been precisely the same age — not perhaps to the 
 full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but 
 certainly for five good years. But she had been kept up 
 late every night, and put upon an unlimited allowance of gin- 
 and-water from infancy, to prevent her growing tall, and 
 perhaps this system of training had produced in the infant 
 phenomenon these additional phenomena. 
 
 While this short dialogue was going on, the gentleman 
 who had enacted the savage, came up, with his walking
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 139 
 
 shoes on his feet, and his sHppers in his hand, to within a 
 few paces, as if desirous to join in the conversation. Deem- 
 ing this a good opportunity, he put in his word. 
 
 "Talent there, sir!" said the savage, nodding towards 
 Miss Crummies. 
 
 Nicholas assented. 
 
 "Ah!" said the actor, setting his teeth together, and 
 drawing in his breath with a hissing sound, "she oughtn't 
 to be in the provinces, she oughtn't." 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked the manager. 
 
 "I mean to say," replied the other, warmly, "that she is 
 too good for country boards, and that she ought to be in one 
 of the large houses in London, or nowhere; and I tell you 
 more, without mincing the matter, that if it wasn't for envy 
 and jealousy in some quarter that you know of, she would 
 be. Perhaps you'll introduce me here, Mr. Crummies." 
 
 "Mr. Folair," said the manager, presenting him to 
 Nicholas. 
 
 "Happy to know you, sir." Mr. Folair touched the brim 
 of his hat with his forefinger, and then shook hands. "A 
 recruit, sir, I understand.'*" 
 
 "Did you ever see such a set-out as that?" whispered the 
 actor, drawing him away, as Crummies left them to speak 
 to his wife. 
 
 "As what?" 
 
 Mr. Folair made a funny face from his pantomime col- 
 lection, and pointed over his shoulder. 
 
 "You don't mean the infant phenomenon?" 
 
 "Infant humbug, sir," replied Mr. Folair. "There isn't 
 a female child of common sharpness in a charity school, that 
 couldn't do better than that. She may thank her stars she 
 was born a manager's daughter." 
 
 "You seem to take it to heart," observed Nicholas, with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Yes, by Jove, and well I may," said Mr. Folair, drawing
 
 140 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 his arm through his, and walking him up and down the 
 stage. "Isn't it enough to make a man crusty to see that 
 little sprawler put up in the best business every night, and 
 actually keeping money out of the house, by being forced 
 down the people's throats, while other people are passed 
 over? Isn't it extraordinary to see a man's confounded 
 family conceit blinding him, even to his own interest? Why 
 I know of fifteen and sixpence that came to Southampton 
 one night last month, to see me dance the Highland Fling; 
 and what's the consequence? I've never been put up in it 
 since — never once — while the 'infant phenomenon' has 
 been grinning through artificial flowers at five people and a 
 baby in the pit, and two boys in the gallery, every night." 
 
 "If I may judge from what I have seen of you," said 
 Nicholas, "you must be a valuable member of thecompany." 
 
 "Oh!" replied Mr. Folair, beating his slippers together, 
 to knock the dust out; "I can come it pretty well — nobody 
 better perhaps, in my own line — but having such business 
 as one gets here, is like putting lead on one's feet instead of 
 chalk, and dancing in fetters without the credit of it. 
 Holloa, old fellow, how are you?" 
 
 The gentleman addressed in these latter words, was a 
 dark-complexioned man, inclining indeed to sallow, with 
 long thick black hair, and very evident indications (al- 
 though he was close shaved) of a stiff beard, and whiskers of 
 the same deep shade. His age did not appear to exceed 
 thirty, though many at first sight would have considered 
 him much older, as his face was long, and very pale, from 
 the constant application of stage paint. He wore a checked 
 shirt, an old green coat with new gilt buttons, a necker- 
 chief of broad red and green stripes, and full blue trousers; 
 he carried, too, a common ash walking-stick, apparently 
 more for show than use, as he flourished it about, with the 
 hooked end downwards, except when he raised it for a few 
 seconds, and throwing himself into a fencing attitude, made a
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 141 
 
 pass or two at the side-scenes, or at any other object, 
 animate or inanimate, that chanced to afford him a pretty 
 good mark at the moment. 
 
 "Well, Tommy," said this gentleman, making a thrust 
 at his friend, who parried it dexterously with his slipper, 
 "what's the news?" 
 
 "A new appearance, that's all," replied Mr. Folair, 
 looking at Nicholas. 
 
 "Do the honours, Tommy, do the honours," said the 
 other gentleman, tapping him reproachfully on the crown of 
 the hat with his stick. 
 
 "This is Mr. Lenville, who does our first tragedy, Mr. 
 Johnson," said the pantomimist. 
 
 " Except when old bricks and mortar takes it into his 
 head to do it himself, you should add. Tommy," remarked 
 Mr. Lenville. "You know who bricks and mortar is, I sup- 
 pose, sir?' 
 
 "I do not, indeed," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "We call Crummies that, because his style of acting is 
 rather in the heavy and ponderous way," said Mr. Lenville. 
 "I mustn't be cracking jokes though, for I've got a part of 
 twelve lengths here, which I must be up in to-morrow night, 
 and I haven't had time to look at it yet; I'm a confounded 
 quick study, that's one comfort." 
 
 Consoling himself with this reflection, Mr. Lenville drew 
 from his coat-pocket a greasy and crumpled manuscript, 
 and, having made another pass at his friend, proceeded to 
 walk to and fro conning it to himself and indulging occasion- 
 ally in such appropriate action as his imagination and the 
 text suggested. 
 
 A pretty general muster of the company had by this time 
 taken place; for besides Mr. Lenville and his friend Tommy, 
 there were present, a slim young gentleman with weak eyes, 
 who played the low-spirited lovers and sang tenor songs, 
 and who had come arm-in-arm with the comic countryman
 
 142 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 — a man with a turned-up nose, large mouth, broad face and 
 staring eyes. Making himself very amiable to the infant 
 phenomenon, was an inebriated elderly gentleman in the 
 last depths of shabbiness, who played the calm and virtuous 
 old men; and paying especial court to Mrs. Crummies was 
 another elderly gentleman, a shade more respectable, who 
 played the irascible old men — those funny fellows who have 
 nephews in the army, and perpetually run about with thick 
 sticks to compel them to marry heiresses. Besides these, 
 there was a roving-looking person in a rough great-coat, 
 who strode up and down in front of the lamps, flourishing a 
 dress-cane, and rattling away, in an undertone, with great 
 vivacity for the amusement of an ideal audience. He was 
 not quite so young as he had been, and his figure was rather 
 running to seed, but there was an air of exaggerated gentil- 
 ity about him, which bespoke the hero of swaggering 
 comedy. There was, also, a little group of three or four 
 young men, with lantern jaws and thick eyebrows, who were 
 conversing in one corner; but they seemed to be of second- 
 ary importance, and laughed and talked together without 
 attracting any attention. 
 
 The ladies were gathered in a little knot by themselves 
 round the rickety table before mentioned. There was Miss 
 Snevellicci — who could do anything, from a medley dance 
 to Lady Macbeth, and also always played some part in blue 
 silk knee-smalls at her benefit — glancing, from the depths 
 of her coal-scuttle straw bonnet, at Nicholas, and affecting 
 to be absorbed in the recital of a diverting story to her 
 friend Miss Ledrook, who had brought her work, and was 
 making up a ruff in the most natural manner possible. 
 There was Miss Belvawney — who seldom aspired to speak- 
 ing parts, and usually went on as a page in white silk hose, 
 to stand with one leg bent, and contemplate the audience, 
 or to go in and out after Mr. Crummies in stately tragedy — 
 twisting up the ringlets of the beautiful Miss Bravassa, who
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 143 
 
 had once had her likeness taken "in character" by an en- 
 graver's apprentice, whereof impressions were hung up for 
 sale in the pastry-cook's window, and the greengrocer's, and 
 at the circulating library, and the box-office, whenever the 
 announce bills came out for her annual night. There was 
 Mrs. Lenville, in a very limp bonnet and veil, decidedly in 
 that way in which she would wish to be if she truly loved 
 Mr. Lenville; there was Miss Gazingi, with an imitation 
 ermine boa tied in a loose knot round her neck, flogging Mr. 
 Crummies, junior, with both ends, in fun. Lastly, there 
 was Mrs. Grudden in a brown cloth pelisse and a beaver 
 bonnet who assisted Mrs. Crummies in her domestic affairs 
 and took money at the doors, and dressed the ladies, and 
 swept the house, and held the prompt book when everybody 
 else was on for the last scene, and acted any kind of part on 
 any emergency without ever learning it, and was put down 
 in the bills under any name or names whatever, that 
 occurred to Mr. Crummies as looking well in print. 
 
 Mr. Folair having obligingly confided these particulars to 
 Nicholas, left him to mingle with his fellows; the work of 
 personal introduction was completed by Mr. Vincent 
 Crummies, who publicly heralded the new actor as a prodigy 
 of genius and learning. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Miss Snevellicci, sidling 
 towards Nicholas, "but did you ever play at Canterbury?" 
 
 "I never did," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "I recollect meeting a gentleman at Canterbury," said 
 Miss Snevellicci, "only for a few moments, for I was leaving 
 the company as he joined it, so like you that I felt almost 
 certain it was the samej' 
 
 "I see you now, for the first time," rejoined Nicholas 
 with all due gallantry. " I am sure I never saw you before; 
 I couldn't have forgotten it." 
 
 "Oh, I'm sure — it's very flattering of you to say so,'* 
 retorted Miss Snevellicci with a graceful bend. "Now I
 
 144 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 look at you again, I see that the gentleman at Canterbury 
 hadn't the same eyes as you — you'll think nic very foolish 
 for taking notice of such things, won't you?" 
 
 "Not at all," said Nicholas. "How can I feel otherwise 
 than flattered by your notice in any way?" 
 
 "Oh! you men are such vain creatures!" cried Miss 
 Snevellicci. Whereupon, she became charmingly confused, 
 and, pulling out her pocket-handkerchief from a faded pink 
 silk reticule with a gilt clasp, called to Miss Ledrook — 
 
 "Led, my dear," said Miss Snevellicci. 
 
 "Well, what is the matter?" said Miss Ledrook. 
 
 "It's not the same." 
 
 "Not the same what?" 
 
 "Canterbury — you know what I mean. Come here! I 
 want to speak to you." 
 
 But Miss Ledrook wouldn't come to Miss Snevellicci, so 
 Miss Snevellicci was obliged to go to Miss Ledrook, which 
 she did, in a skipping manner that was quite fascinating; 
 and Miss Ledrook evidently joked Miss Snevellicci about 
 being struck with Nicholas ; for, after some playful whisper- 
 ing. Miss Snevellicci hit Miss Ledrook very hard on the 
 backs of her hands, and retired up, in a state of pleasing 
 confusion. 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Vincent Crummies, 
 who had been writing on a piece of paper "we'll call the 
 Mortal Struggle to-morrow at ten; everybody for the pro- 
 cession. Intrigue, and Ways and Means, you're all up in, 
 so we shall only want one rehearsal. Everybody at ten, if 
 you please." 
 
 "Everybody at ten," repeated Mrs. Grudden, looking 
 about her. 
 
 "On Monday morning we shall read a new piece," said 
 Mr. Crummies; "the name's not known yet, but every- 
 body will have a good part. Mr. Johnson will take care 
 of that."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 145 
 
 "Hallo!" said Nicholas, starting, "I " 
 
 "On Monday morning," repeated Mr. Crummies, raising 
 his voice, to drown the unfortunate Mr. Johnson's remon- 
 strance; "that'll do, ladies and gentlemen." 
 
 The ladies and gentlemen required no second notice to 
 quit; and, in a few minutes, the theatre was deserted, save 
 by the Crummies family, Nicholas, and Smike. 
 
 "Upon my word," said Nicholas, taking the manager 
 aside, "I don't think I can be ready by Monday." 
 
 "Pooh, pooh," replied Mr. Crummies. 
 
 "But really I can't," returned Nicholas; "my invention 
 is not accustomed to these demands, or possibly I might 
 produce " 
 
 "Invention! what the devil's that got to do with it!" 
 cried the manager, hastily. 
 
 "Everything, my dear sir." 
 
 "Nothing, my dear sir," retorted the manager, with 
 evident impatience. "Do you understand French?" 
 
 "Perfectly well." 
 
 "Very good," said the manager, opening the table- 
 drawer, and giving a roll of paper from it to Nicholas. 
 " There ! Just turn that into English, and put your name on 
 the title-page. Damn me," said Mr. Crummies, angrily, 
 "if I haven't often said that I wouldn't have a man or 
 woman in my company that wasn't master of the language, 
 so that they might learn it from the original, and play it in 
 English, and save all this trouble and expense." 
 
 Nicholas smiled and pocketed the play. 
 
 "What are you going to do about your lodgings?" said 
 Mr. Crummies. 
 
 Nicholas could not help thinking that, for the first week, 
 it would be an uncommon convenience to have a turn-up 
 bedstead in the pit, but he merely remarked that he had 
 not turned his thoughts that way. 
 
 "Come home with me then," said Mr. Crummies, "and 
 10
 
 146 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 my boys shall go with you after dinner, and show you the 
 most likely place." 
 
 The offer was not to be refused; Nicholas and Mr. 
 Crummies gave Mrs. Crummies an arm each, and walked 
 up the street in stately array. Smike, the boys, and the 
 phenomenon, went home by a shorter cut, and Mrs. 
 Grudden remained behind to take some cold Irish stew and 
 a pint of porter in the box-office. 
 
 Mrs. Crummies trod the pavement as if she were going 
 to immediate execution with an animating consciousness of 
 innocence, and that heroic fortitude which virtue alone in- 
 spires. Mr. Crummies, on the other hand, assumed the 
 look and gait of a hardened despot; but they both attracted 
 some notice from many of the passers-by, and when they 
 heard a whisper of " Mr. and Mrs. Crummies ! " or saw a little 
 boy run back to stare them in the face, the severe expression 
 of their countenances relaxed, for they felt it was popularity. 
 
 Mr. Crummies lived in Saint Thomas's Street, at the 
 house of one Bulph, a pilot, who sported a boat-green door, 
 with window-frames of the same colour, and had the little 
 finger of a drowned man on his parlour mantel-shelf, with 
 other maritime and natural curiosities. He displayed also a 
 brass knocker, a brass plate, and a brass bell-handle, all 
 very bright and shining ; and had a mast, with a vane on the 
 top of it, in his back yard. 
 
 "You are welcome," said Mrs. Crummies, turning round 
 to Nicholas when they reached the bow-windowed front 
 room on the first floor. 
 
 Nicholas bowed his acknowledgments, and was un- 
 feignedly glad to see the cloth laid. 
 
 "We have but a shoulder of mutton with onion sauce," 
 said Mrs. Crummies, in the same charnel-house voice; "but 
 such as our dinner is, we beg you to partake of it." 
 
 "You are very good," replied Nicholas, "I shall do it 
 ample justice."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company i47 
 
 "Vincent," said Mrs. Crummies, "what is the hour?" 
 
 "Five minutes past dinner-time," said Mr. Crummies. 
 
 Mrs. Crummies rang the bell. "Let the mutton and 
 onion sauce appear." 
 
 The slave who attended upon Mr. Bulph's lodgers, dis- 
 appeared, and after a short interval re-appeared with the 
 festive banquet. Nicholas and the infant phenomenon 
 opposed each other at the pembroke-table, and Smike and 
 the Master Crummleses dined on the sofa bedstead. 
 
 "Are they very theatrical people here?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "No," replied Mr. Crummies, shaking his head, "far 
 from it — far from it." 
 
 "I pity them," observed Mrs. Crummies. 
 
 "So do I," said Nicholas; "if they have no relish for 
 theatrical entertainments, properly conducted." 
 
 "Then they have none, sir," rejoined Mr. Crummies. 
 "To the infant's benefit, last year, on which occasion she 
 repeated three of her most popular characters, and also 
 appeared in the Fairy Porcupine, as originally performed by 
 her, there was a house of no more than four pound twelve." 
 
 "Is it possible?" cried Nicholas. 
 
 "And two pound of that was trust, pa," said the phenom- 
 enon. 
 
 "And two pound of that was trust," repeated Mr. 
 Crummies. "Mrs. Crummies herself has played to mere 
 handfuls." 
 
 "But they are always a taking audience, Vincent," said 
 the manager's wife. 
 
 "Most audiences are, when they have good acting — real 
 good acting — the regular thing," replied Mr. Crummies, 
 forcibly. 
 
 'Do you give lesssons, ma'am?" inquired Nicholas. 
 1 do," said Mrs. Crummies. 
 
 "There is no teaching here, I suppose?" 
 
 "There has been," said Mrs. Crummies. "I have ra- 
 
 te '
 
 148 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 ceived pupils here, I imparted tuition to the daughter of a 
 dealer in ships' provision; but it afterwards appeared that 
 she was insane when she first came to me. It was very 
 extraordinary that she should come, under such circum- 
 stances." 
 
 Not feeling quite so sure of that, Nicholas thought it best 
 to hold his peace. 
 
 "Let me see," said the manager cogitating after dinner. 
 "Would you like some nice little part with the infant?" 
 
 "You are very good," replied Nicholas hastily; "but I 
 think perhaps it would be better if I had somebody of my 
 own size at first, in case I should turn out awkward. I 
 should feel more at home perhaps." 
 
 "True," said the manager. "Perhaps you would. And 
 you could play up to the infant, in time, you know." 
 
 "Certainly," replied Nicholas: devoutly hoping that it 
 would be a very long time before he was honoured with this 
 distinction. 
 
 "Then I'll tell you what we'll do," said Mr. Crummies. 
 "You shall study Romeo when you've done that piece — 
 don't forget to throw the pump and tubs in by-the-bye — 
 Juliet Miss Snevellicci, old Grudden the nurse. — Yes, that'll 
 do very well. Rover too; — you might get up Rover while 
 you were about it, and Cassio, and Jeremy Diddler. You 
 can easily knock them off; one part helps the other so much. 
 Here they are, cues and all." 
 
 With these hasty general directions Mr. Crummies thrust 
 a number of little books into the faltering hands of Nicholas, 
 and bidding his eldest son go with him and show where 
 lodgings were to be had, shook him by the hand, and wished 
 him good night. 
 
 There is no lack of comfortable furnished apartments in 
 Portsmouth, and no difficulty in finding some that are pro- 
 portionate to very slender finances; but the former were too 
 good, and the latter too bad, and they went into so many
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 149 
 
 houses, and came out unsuited, that Nicholas seriously 
 began to think he should be obliged to ask permission to 
 spend the night in the theatre, after all. 
 
 Eventually, however, they stumbled upon two small 
 rooms up three pair of stairs, or rather two pair and a ladder, 
 at a tobacconist's shop, on the Common Hard: a dirty 
 street leading down to the dockyard. These Nicholas 
 engaged, only too happy to have escaped any request for 
 payment of a week's rent beforehand. 
 
 "There! Lay down our personal property, Smike," he 
 said, after showing young Crummies downstairs. "We 
 have fallen upon strange times, and Heaven only knows the 
 end of them; but I am tired with the events of these three 
 days and will postpone reflection till to-morrow — if I can." 
 
 2. — OF THE GREAT BESPEAK FOR MISS SNEVELLICCI, AND THE 
 FIRST APPEARANCE OF NICHOLAS UPON ANY STAGE 
 
 Nicholas was up betimes in the morning; but he had 
 scarcely begun to dress, notwithstanding, when he heard 
 footsteps ascending the stairs, and was presently saluted by 
 the voices of Mr. Folair the pantomimist, and Mr. Lenville 
 the tragedian. 
 
 "House, house, house!" cried Mr. Folair. 
 
 "What, ho! within there!" said Mr. Lenville, in a deep 
 voice. 
 
 Confound these fellows! thought Nicholas; they have 
 come to breakfast, I suppose. "I'll open the door directly, 
 if you'll wait an instant." 
 
 The gentlemen entreated him not to hurry himself; and, 
 to beguile the interval had a fencing-bout with their 
 walking-sticks on the very small landing-place: to the 
 unspeakable discomposure of all the other lodgers down- 
 stairs. 
 
 "Here, come in," said Nicholas, when he had completed
 
 150 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 his toilet. "In the name of all that's horrible, don't make 
 that noise outside." 
 
 "An uncommon snug little box this," said Mr. Lenville, 
 stepping into the front room, and taking his hat off, before 
 he could get in at all. "Pernicious snug." 
 
 "For a man at all particular in such matters, it might be 
 a trifle too snug," said Nicholas; "for, although it is, un- 
 doubtedly, a great convenience to be able to reach anything 
 you want from the ceiling or the floor, or either side of the 
 room, without having to move from your chair, still these 
 advantages can only be had in an apartment of the most 
 limited size." 
 
 "It isn't a bit too confined for a single man," returned 
 Mr, Lenville. "That reminds me, — my wife, Mr. John- 
 son, — I hope she'll have some good part in this piece of 
 yours.'' 
 
 "I glanced at the French copy last night," said Nicholas. 
 "It looks very good, I think." 
 
 "What do you mean to do for me, old fellow?" asked Mr. 
 Lenville, poking the struggling fire with his walking-stick, 
 and afterwards wiping it on the skirt of his coat. "Any- 
 thing in the gruff and grumble way?" 
 
 "You turn your wife and child out of doors," said 
 Nicholas; "and in a fit of rage and jealousy, stab your eldest 
 son in the library." 
 
 "Do I though!" exclaimed Mr. Lenville. "That's very 
 good business." 
 
 "After which," said Nicholas, "you are troubled with 
 remorse till the last act and then you make up your mind 
 to destroy yourself. But, just as you are raising the pistol 
 to your head, a clock strikes — ten." 
 
 "I see," cried Mr. Lenville. "Very good." 
 
 "You pause," said Nicholas; "you recollect to have heard 
 a clock strike ten in your infancy. The pistol falls from 
 your hand — you are overcome — you burst into tears, and
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 151 
 
 become a virtuous and exemplary character for ever after- 
 wards." 
 
 "Capital!" said Mr. Lenville: "that's a sure card, a sure 
 card. Get the curtain down with a touch of nature like 
 that — and it'll be a triumphant success." 
 
 "Is there anything good for me?" inquired Mr. Folair, 
 anxiously. 
 
 "Let me see," said Nicholas. "You play the faithful 
 and attached servant; you are turned out of doors with the 
 wife and child." 
 
 "Always coupled with that infernal phenomenon," 
 sighed Mr. Folair; "and we go into poor lodgings, where 
 I won't take any wages, and talk sentiment, I suppose?" 
 
 "Why — ^yes," replied Nicholas: "that is the course of the 
 piece." 
 
 "I must have a dance of some kind, you know," said Mr. 
 Folair. "You'll have to introduce one for the phenomenon, 
 so you'd better make a pas de deux, and save time." 
 
 "There's nothing easier than that," said Mr. Lenville, 
 observing the disturbed looks of the young dramatist. 
 
 "Upon my word I don't see how it's to be done," rejoined 
 Nicholas. 
 
 "Why, isn't it obvious?" reasoned Mr. Lenville. "Gad- 
 zooks, who can help seeing the way to do it? — you astonish 
 me! You get the distressed lady, and the little child, and 
 the attached servant, into the poor lodgings, don't you? 
 — Well, look here. The distressed lady sinks into a chair 
 and buries her face in her pocket-handkerchief — 'What 
 makes you weep, mama?' says the child. 'Don't weep 
 mama, or you'll make me weep too !' — ' And me ! ' says the 
 faithful servant, rubbing his eyes with his arm. ' What can 
 we do to raise your spirits, dear mama?' says the little 
 child. 'Aye, what can we do?' says the faithful servant. 
 'Oh, Pierre!' says the distressed lady; 'would that I could 
 shake off these painful thoughts.' — 'Try, ma'am, try,' says
 
 152 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the faithful servant; 'rouse yourself, ma'am; be amused.* — 
 'I will,' says the lady, 'I will learn to suffer with fortitude. 
 Do you remember that dance, my honest friend, which, in 
 happier days, you practised with this sweet angel? It never 
 failed to calm my spirits then. Oh ! let me see it once again 
 before I die ! ' — There it is — cue for the band, before I die, — 
 and off they go. That's the regular thing : isn't it, Tommy? " 
 
 "That's it," replied Mr. Folair. "The distressed lady, 
 overpowered by old recollections, faints at the end of the 
 dance, and you close in with a picture." 
 
 ProlBting by these and other lessons, which were the result 
 of the personal experience of the two actors, Nicholas will- 
 ingly gave them the best breakfast he could, and, when he 
 at length got rid of them, applied himself to his task : by no 
 means displeased to find that it was so much easier than he 
 had at first supposed. He worked very hard all day, and 
 did not leave his room until the evening, when he went 
 down to the theatre, whither Smike had repaired before him 
 to go on with another gentleman as a general rebellion. 
 
 Here all the people were so much changed, that he scarcely 
 knew them. False hair, false colour, false calves, false 
 muscles — they had become different beings. Mr. Lenville 
 was a blooming warrior of most exquisite proportions; Mr. 
 Crummies, his large face shaded by a profusion of black 
 hair, a Highland outlaw of most majestic bearing; one of 
 the old gentlemen a gaoler, and the other a venerable 
 patriarch; the comic countryman, a fighting-man of great 
 valour, relieved by a touch of humour; each of the Master 
 Crummies a prince in his own right; and the low-spirited 
 lover, a desponding captive. There was a gorgeous ban- 
 quet ready spread for the third act, consisting of two paste- 
 board vases, one plate of biscuits, a black bottle and a 
 vinegar cruet ; and, in short, everything was on a scale of the 
 utmost splendour and preparation. 
 
 Nicholas was standing with his back to the curtain, now
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 153 
 
 contemi)lating the first scene, which was a Gothic archway, 
 about two feet shorter than Mr. Crummies, through which 
 that gentleman was to make his first entrance, and now 
 listening to a couple of people who were cracking nuts in 
 the gallery, wondering whether they made the whole audi- 
 ence, when the manager himself walked familiarly up and 
 accosted him. 
 
 "Been in front to-night?" said Mr. Crummies. 
 
 "No," replied Nicholas, "not yet. I am going to see the 
 
 play." 
 
 "We've had a pretty good Let," said Mr. Crummies. 
 "Four front places in the centre, and the whole of the 
 stage-box." 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" said Nicholas; "a family, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Mr. Crummies, "yes. It's an affecting 
 thing. There are six children and they never come unless 
 the phenomenon plays." 
 
 It would have been difficult for any party, family or 
 otherwise, to have visited the theatre on a night when the 
 phenomenon did not play, inasmuch as she always sustained 
 one, and not uncommonly two or three characters, every 
 night; but Nicholas, sympathising with the feelings of a 
 father, refrained from hinting at this trifling circumstance, 
 and Mr. Crummies continued to talk, uninterrupted by him. 
 
 "Six," said that gentleman; "Pa and Ma eight, aunt 
 nine, governess ten, grandfather and grandmother twelve. 
 Then, there's the footman, who stands outside, with a bag 
 of oranges and a jug of toast-and-water, and sees the play 
 for nothing through the little pane of glass in the box-door — 
 it's cheap at a guinea; they gain by taking a box." 
 
 "I wonder you allow so many," observed Nicholas. 
 
 "There's no help for it," replied Mr. Crummies; "it's 
 always expected in the country. If there are six children, 
 six people come to hold them in their laps. A family-box 
 carries double always. Ring in the orchestra, Grudden!"
 
 154 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 That useful lady did as she was requested, and shortly 
 afterwards the tuning of three fiddles was heard. Which 
 process having been protracted as long as it was supposed 
 that the patience of the audience could possibly bear it, was 
 put a stop to by another jerk of the bell, which, being the 
 signal to begin in earnest, set the orchestra playing a variety 
 of popular airs, with involuntary variations. 
 
 If Nicholas had been astonished at the alteration for the 
 better which the gentlemen displayed, the transformation of 
 thd ladies was still more extraordinary. When, from a snug 
 corner of the manager's box, he beheld Miss Snevellicci in all 
 the glories of white muslin with a golden hem, and Mrs. 
 Crummies in all the dignity of the outlaw's wife, and Miss 
 Bravassa in all the sweetness of Miss Snevellicci 's con- 
 fidential friend, and Miss Belvawney in the white silks of 
 a page doing duty everywhere, and swearing to live and die 
 in the service of everybody, he could scarcely contain his ad- 
 miration, which testified itself in great applause, and the 
 closest possible attention to the business of the scene. The 
 plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular 
 age, people, or country, and was perhaps the most delightful 
 on that account, as nobody's previous information could 
 afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come 
 of it. An outlaw had been very successful in doing some- 
 thing somewhere, and came home, in triumph, to the sound 
 of shouts and fiddles, to greet his wife — a lady of masculine 
 mind, who talked a good deal about her father's bones, 
 which it seemed were unburied, though whether from a pecu- 
 liar taste on the part of the old gentleman himself, or the 
 reprehensible neglect of his relations, did not appear. The 
 outlaw's wife was, somehow or other, mixed up with a patri- 
 arch, living in a castle a long way off, and this patriarch 
 was the father of several of the characters, but he didn't 
 exactly know which, and was uncertain whether he had 
 brought up the right ones in his castle, or the wrong ones;
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 155 
 
 he rather inclined to the latter opinion, and, being uneasy, 
 relieved his mind with a banquet during which solemnity 
 somebody in a cloak said "Beware!" which somebody was 
 known by nobody (except the audience) to be the outlaw 
 himself, who had come there, for reasons unexplained, but 
 possibly with an eye to the spoons. There was an agreeable 
 little surprise in the way of certain love passages between 
 the desponding captive and Miss Snevellicci, and the comic 
 fighting-man and Miss Bravassa; besides which, Mr. Len- 
 ville had several very tragic scenes in the dark, while on 
 throat-cutting expeditions, which were all baffled by the 
 skill and bravery of the comic fighting-man (who overheard 
 whatever was said all through the piece) and the intrepidity 
 of Miss Snevellicci, who adopted tights, and therein re- 
 paired to the prison of her captive lover, with a small basket 
 of refreshments and a dark lantern. At last, it came out 
 that the patriarch was the man who had treated the bones 
 of the outlaw's father-in-law with so much disrespect, for 
 which cause and reason the outlaw's wife repaired to his 
 castle to kill him, and so got into a dark room, where, after 
 a good deal of groping in the dark, everybody got hold of 
 everybody else, and took them for somebody besides, which 
 occasioned a vast quantity of confusion, with some pistol- 
 ling, loss of life, and torchlight; after which, the patriarch 
 came forward, and observing, with a knowing look, that 
 he knew all about his children now, and would tell them 
 when they got inside, said that there could not be a more 
 appropriate occasion for marrying the young people than 
 that; and therefore he joined their hands, with the full con- 
 sent of the indefatigable page, who (being the only other 
 person surviving) pointed with his cap into the clouds, and 
 his right hand to the ground; thereby invoking a blessing 
 and giving the cue for the curtain to come down, which it 
 did, amidst general applause. 
 
 "What did you think of that?" asked Mr. Crummies,
 
 156 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 when Nicholas went round to the stage again. Mr. 
 Crummies was very red and hot, for your outlaws are 
 desperate fellows to shout. 
 
 "I think it was very capital indeed," replied Nicholas; 
 "Miss Snevellicci in particular was uncommonly good." 
 
 "She's a genius," said Mr. Crummies; "quite a genius, 
 that girl. By-the-bye, I've been thinking of bringing out 
 that piece of yours on her bespeak night." 
 
 "When?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "The night of her bespeak. Her benefit night, when her 
 friends and patrons bespeak the play," said Mr. Crummies. 
 
 "Oh! I understand," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "You see," said Mr. Crummies, "it's sure to go, on such 
 an occasion, and even if it should not work up quite as well 
 as we expect, why it will be her risk, you know, and not 
 ours." 
 
 "Yours, you mean," said Nicholas. 
 
 "I said mine, didn't I?" returned Mr. Crummies. "Next 
 Monday week. What do you say? You'll have done it, 
 and are sure to be up in the lover's part, long before that 
 time." 
 
 "I don't know about 'long before,'" replied Nicholas; 
 "but hy that time I think I can undertake to be ready." 
 
 "Very good," pursued Mr. Crummies, "then we'll call 
 that settled. Now, I want to ask you something else. 
 There's a little — what shall I call it — a little canvassing 
 takes place on these occasions." 
 
 "Among the patrons, I suppose?" said Nicholas. 
 
 "Among the patrons; and the fact is, that Snevellicci has 
 had so many bespeaks in this place, that she wants an at- 
 traction. She had a bespeak when her mother-in-law died, 
 and a bespeak when her uncle died; and Mrs. Crummies and 
 myself have had bespeaks on the anniversary of the phenom- 
 enon's birthday, and our wedding-day, and occasions of 
 that description, so that, in fact, there's some diflBculty in
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company i57 
 
 getting a good one. Now, won't you help this poor girl, 
 Mr. Johnson?" said Crummies, sitting himself down on a 
 drum, and taking a great pinch of snuff, as he looked him 
 steadily in the face. 
 
 "How do you mean?" rejoined Nicholas. 
 
 "Don't you think you could spare half-an-hour to-mor- 
 row morning, to call with her at the houses of one or two of 
 the principal people?" murmured the manager in a per- 
 suasive tone. 
 
 "Oh dear me," said Nicholas, with an air of very strong 
 objection, "I shouldn't like to do that." 
 
 "The infant will accompany her," said Mr. Crummies, 
 "The moment it was suggested to me, I gave permission for 
 the infant to go. There will not be the smallest impropriety 
 — Miss Snevellicci, sir, is the very soul of honour. It would 
 be of material service — the gentleman from London — au- 
 thor of the new piece — actor in the new piece — first appear- 
 ance on any boards — it would lead to a great bespeak, 
 Mr. Johnson." 
 
 "I am very sorry to throw a damp upon the prospects of 
 anybody, and more especially a lady," replied Nicholas; 
 "but really I must decidedly object to making one of the 
 canvassing party." 
 
 "What does Mr. Johnson say, Vincent?" inquired a voice 
 close to his ear; and, looking round, he found Mrs. Crummies 
 and Miss Snevellicci herself standing behind him. 
 
 "He has some objection, my dear," replied Mr. 
 Crummies, looking at Nicholas. 
 
 "Objection!" exclaimed Mrs. Crummies. "Can it be 
 possible?" 
 
 "Oh, I hope not!" cried Miss Snevellicci. "You surely 
 are not so cruel — oh, dear me!^ — Well I — to think of that 
 now, after all one's looking forward to it!" 
 
 "Mr. Johnson will not persist, my dear," said Mrs. 
 Crummies. "Think better of him than to suppose it.
 
 158 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Gallantry, humanity, all the best feelings of his nature, 
 must be enlisted in this interesting cause." 
 
 "Which moves even a manager," said Mr. Crummies, 
 smiling. 
 
 "And a manager's wife," added Mrs. Crummies, in her 
 accustomed tragedy tones. "Come, come, you will relent, 
 I know you will." 
 
 "It is not in my nature," said Nicholas, moved by these 
 appeals, "to resist any entreaty, unless it is to do something 
 positively wrong; and, beyond a feeling of pride, I know 
 nothing which should prevent my doing this. I know 
 nobody here, and nobody knows me. So be it then. I 
 yield." 
 
 Miss Snevellicci was at once overwhelmed with blushes 
 and expressions of gratitude, of which latter commodity 
 neither Mr. nor Mrs. Crummies was by any means sparing. 
 It was arranged that Nicholas should call upon her, at her 
 lodgings, at eleven next morning, and soon after they 
 parted : he to return home to his authorship : Miss Snevellicci 
 to dress for the after-piece: and the disinterested manager 
 and his wife to discuss the probable gains of the forthcoming 
 bespeak, of which they were to have two-thirds of the profits 
 by solemn treaty of agreement. 
 
 At the stipulated hour next morning, Nicholas repaired to 
 the lodgings of Miss Snevellicci, which were in a place 
 called Lombard Street, at the house of a tailor. A strong 
 smell of ironing pervaded the little passage; and the tailor's 
 daughter, who opened the door, appeared in that flutter of 
 spirits which is so often attendant upon the periodical 
 getting up of a family's linen. 
 
 "Miss Snevellicci lives here, I believe?" said Nicholas, 
 when the door was opened. 
 
 The tailor's daughter replied in the aflBrmative. 
 
 "Will you have the goodness to let her know that Mr. 
 Johnson is here?" said Nicholas.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 159 
 
 "Oh, if you please, you're to come upstairs," replied the 
 tailor's daughter, with a smile. 
 
 Nicholas followed the young lady, and was shown into a 
 small apartment on the first floor, communicating with a 
 back room; in which, as he judged from a certain half- 
 subdued clinking sound, as of cups and saucers. Miss 
 Snevellicci was then taking her breakfast in bed. 
 
 " You're to wait, if you please," said the tailor's daughter, 
 after a short period of absence, during which the clinking in 
 the back room had ceased, and had been succeeded by 
 whispering — "She won't be long." 
 
 As she spoke she pulled up the window-blind, and having 
 by this means (as she thought) diverted Mr. Johnson's at- 
 tention from the room to the street, caught up some articles 
 which were airing on the fender, and had very much the 
 appearance of stockings, and darted off. 
 
 As there were not many objects of interest outside the 
 window Nicholas looked about the room with more curiosity 
 than he might otherwise have bestowed upon it. On the 
 sofa lay an old guitar, several thumbed pieces of music, and 
 a scattered litter of curl-papers: together with a confused 
 heap of play-bills, and a pair of soiled white satin shoes with 
 large blue rosettes. Hanging over the back of a chair was 
 a half -finished muslin apron with little pockets ornamented 
 with red ribbons, such as waiting-women wear on the stage, 
 and (by consequence) are never seen with anywhere else. 
 In one corner stood the diminutive pair of top-boots in 
 which Miss Snevellicci was accustomed to enact the little 
 jockey, and, folded on a chair hard by, was a small parcel 
 which bore a very suspicious resemblance to the companion 
 smalls. 
 
 But the most interesting object of all, was, perhaps, the 
 open scrap-book, displayed in the midst of some theatrical 
 duodecimos that were strewn upon the table; and pasted 
 into which scrap-book were various critical notices of Miss
 
 i6o Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Snevellicci's acting, extracted from different provincial 
 journals, together with one poetic address in her honour 
 commencing — 
 
 Sing, God of Love, and tell me in what dearth 
 Thrice-gifted Snevellicci came on earth, 
 To thrill us with her smile, her tear, her eye. 
 Sing, God of Love, and tell me quickly why. 
 
 Besides this effusion, there were innumerable complimentary 
 allusions, also extracted from newspapers, such as — "We 
 observe from an advertisement in another part of our paper 
 of to-day, that the charming and highly-talented Miss 
 Snevellicci takes her benefit on Wednesday, for which occa- 
 sion she has put forth a bill of fare that might kindle exhila- 
 ration in the breast of a misanthrope. In the confidence 
 that our fellow-townsmen have not lost that high apprecia- 
 tion of public utility and private worth for which they have 
 long been so pre-eminently distinguished, we predict that 
 this charming actress will be greeted with a bumper." "To 
 Correspondents. — J. S. is misinformed when he supposes 
 that the highly-gifted and beautiful Miss Snevellicci, 
 nightly captivating all hearts at our pretty and commodi- 
 ous little theatre, is not the same lady to whom the young 
 gentleman of immense fortune, residing within a hundred 
 miles of the good city of York, lately made honourable 
 proposals. We have reason to know that Miss Snevellicci 
 is the lady who was implicated in that mysterious and 
 romantic affair, and whose conduct on that occasion did no 
 less honour to her head and heart, than do her histrionic 
 triumphs to her brilliant genius." A copious assortment 
 of such paragraphs as these, with long bills of benefits all 
 ending with "Come Early," in large capitals, formed the 
 principal contents of Miss Snevellicci's scrap-book. 
 
 Nicholas had read a great many of these scraps, and was 
 absorbed in a circumstantial and melancholy account of the
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company i6i 
 
 train of events which had led to Miss SneveUicci's spraining 
 her ankle by slipping on a piece of orange-peel flung by a 
 monster in human form (so the paper said), upon the stage 
 at Winchester, — when the young lady herself, attired in the 
 coal-scuttle bonnet and walking-dress complete, tripped into 
 the room with a thousand apologies for having detained him 
 so long after the appointed time. 
 
 "But really," said Miss Snevellicci, "my darling Led, 
 who lives with me here, was taken so very ill in the night 
 that I thought she would have expired in my arms." 
 
 "Such a fate is almost to be envied," returned Nicholas 
 "but I am very sorry to hear it nevertheless." 
 
 "What a creature you are to flatter!" said Miss Snevel- 
 licci, buttoning her glove in much confusion. 
 
 "If it be flattery to admire your charms and accomplish- 
 ments," rejoined Nicholas, laying his hand upon the scrap- 
 book, "you have better specimens of it here." 
 
 "Oh you cruel creature, to read such things as those! 
 I'm almost ashamed to look you in the face afterwards, 
 positively I am," said Miss SnevelHcci, seizing the book and 
 putting it away in a closet. "How careless of Led! How 
 could she be so naughty!" 
 
 "I thought you had kindly left it here, on purpose for me 
 to read," said Nicholas. And really it did seem possible. 
 
 "I wouldn't have had you see it for the world!" rejoined 
 Miss Snevellicci. "I never was so vexed — never! But 
 she is such a careless thing, there's no trusting her." 
 
 The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance 
 of the phenomenon, who had discreetly remained in the bed- 
 room up to this moment, and now presented herself, with 
 much grace and lightness, bearing in her hand a very little 
 green parasol with a broad fringe border, and no handle. 
 After a few words of course, they saUied into the street. 
 
 The phenomenon was rather a troublesome companion, 
 for first the right sandal came down, and then the left. 
 
 II
 
 i62 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 and these mischances being repaired, one leg of the little 
 white trousers was discovered to be longer than the other; 
 besides these accidents, the green parasol was dropped 
 down an iron grating, and only fished up again, with great 
 difficulty and by dint of much exertion. However, it was 
 impossible to scold her, as she was the manager's daughter, 
 so Nicholas took it all in perfect good humour, and walked 
 on, with Miss Snevellicci, arm in arm on one side, and the 
 offending infant on the other. 
 
 The first house to which they bent their steps, was situ- 
 ated in a terrace of respectable appearance. Miss Snevel- 
 licci's modest double-knock was answered by a foot-boy, 
 who, in reply to her inquiry whether Mrs. Curdle was at 
 home, opened his eyes very wide, grinned very much, and 
 said he didn't know, but he'd inquire. With this, he showed 
 them into a parlour where he kept them waiting, until the 
 two women-servants had repaired thither, under false pre- 
 tences, to see the play-actors; and having compared notes 
 with them in the passage, and joined in a vast quantity of 
 whispering and giggling, he at length went upstairs with 
 Miss Snevellicci's name. 
 
 Now, Mrs. Curdle was supposed, by those who were best 
 informed on such points, to possess quite the London taste 
 in matters relating to literature and the drama; and as to 
 Mr. Curdle, he had written a pamphlet of sixty-four pages, 
 post octavo, on the character of the Nurse's deceased hus- 
 band in Romeo and Juliet, with an inquiry whether he 
 really had been a "merry man" in his lifetime, or whether it 
 was merely his widow's affectionate partiality that induced 
 her so to report him. He had likewise proved, that by alter- 
 ing the received mode of punctuation, any one of Shake- 
 speare's plays could be made quite different, and the sense 
 completely changed; it is needless to say, therefore, that he 
 was a great critic, and a very profound and most original 
 thinker.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 163 
 
 "Well, Miss Snevellicci," said Mrs. Curdle, entering the 
 parlour, "and how do you do?" 
 
 Miss Snevellicci made a graceful obeisance, and hoped 
 Mrs. Curdle was well, as also Mr. Curdle, who at the same 
 time appeared. Mrs. Curdle was dressed in a morning 
 wrapper, with a little cap stuck upon the top of her head. 
 Mr. Curdle wore a loose robe on his back, and his right 
 fore-finger on his forehead after the portraits of Sterne, to 
 whom somebody or other had once said he bore a striking 
 resemblance. 
 
 "I ventured to call, for the purpose of asking whether 
 you would put your name to my bespeak, ma'am," said 
 Miss Snevellicci, producing documents. 
 
 "Oh! I really don't know what to say," replied Mrs. 
 Curdle. "It's not as if the theatre was in its high and 
 palmy days — you needn't stand. Miss Snevelhcci — the 
 drama is gone, perfectly gone." 
 
 "As an exquisite embodiment of the poet's visions and 
 a realization of human intellectuality, gilding with refulgent 
 light our dreamy moments, and laying open a new and magic 
 world before the mental eye, the drama is gone, perfectly 
 gone," said Mr. Curdle. 
 
 "What man is there, now living, who can present before 
 us all those changing and prismatic colours with which 
 the character of Hamlet is invested?" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Curdle. 
 
 "What man indeed — upon the stage," said Mr. Curdle, 
 with a small reservation in favour of himself. "Hamlet! 
 Pooh! ridiculous! Hamlet is gone, perfectly gone." 
 
 Quite overcome by these dismal reflections, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Curdle sighed, and sat for some short time without speak- 
 ing. At length, the lady, turning to Miss Snevellicci, 
 inquired what play she proposed to have. 
 
 "Quite a new one," said Miss Snevellicci, "of which this 
 gentleman is the author, and in which he plays; being his
 
 1 64 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 first appearance on any stage. Mr. Johnson is the gentle- 
 
 man's name." 
 
 "I hope you have preserved the unities, sir?" said Mr. 
 Curdle. 
 
 "The original piece is a French one," said Nicholas. 
 "There is abundance of incident, sprightly dialogue, 
 strongly-marked character " 
 
 " — All unavailing without a strict observance of the 
 unities, sir," returned Mr. Curdle. "The unities of the 
 drama, before everything." 
 
 "Might I ask you," said Nicholas, hesitating between 
 the respect he ought to assume, and his love of the whimsi- 
 cal, "might I ask you what the unities are?" 
 
 Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. "The unities, 
 sir," he said, "are a completeness — a kind of a universal 
 dovetailedness with regard to place and time — a sort of a 
 general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an 
 expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far 
 as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and 
 I have read much upon the subject, and thought much. I 
 find, running through the performances of this child," said 
 Mr. Curdle, turning to the phenomenon, "a unity of feeling, 
 a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of colouring, a tone, 
 a harmony, a glow, an artistical development of original 
 conceptions, which I look for, in vain, among older per- 
 formers. I don't know whether I make myself under- 
 stood?" 
 
 "Perfectly," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "Just so," said Mr. Curdle, pulling up his neckcloth. 
 "That is my definition of the unities of the drama." 
 
 Mrs. Curdle had sat listening to this lucid explanation 
 with great complacency. It being finished, she inquired 
 what Mr. Curdle thought, about putting down their names. 
 
 "I don't know, my dear; upon my word I don't know,'' 
 said Mr. Curdle. "If we do, it must be distinctly under-
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 165 
 
 stood that we do not pledge ourselves to the quality of the 
 performances. Let it go forth to the world, that we do not 
 give them the sanction of our names, but that we confer 
 the distinction merely upon Miss Snevellicci. That being 
 clearly stated, I take it to be, as it were, a duty, that we 
 should extend our patronage to a degraded stage, even 
 for the sake of the associations with which it is entwined. 
 Have you got tw^o-and-sixpence for half-a-crown, Miss 
 Snevellicci?" said Mr. Curdle, turning over four of those 
 pieces of money. 
 
 Miss Snevellicci felt in all the corners of the pink reticule, 
 but there was nothing in any of them. Nicholas murmured 
 a jest about his being an author, and thought it best not to 
 go through the form of feeling in his own pockets at all. 
 
 "Let me see," said Mr. Curdle; "twice four's eight — four 
 shillings a-piece to the boxes, Miss Snevellicci, is exceedingly 
 dear in the present state of drama — three half-crowns is 
 seven-and-six; we shall not differ about sixpence, I sup- 
 pose? Sixpence will not part us, Miss Snevellicci?" 
 
 Poor Miss Snevellicci took the three half-crowns, with 
 many smiles and bends, and Mrs. Curdle, adding several 
 supplementary directions relative to keeping the places for 
 them, and dusting the seat, and sending two clean bills as 
 soon as they came out, rang the bell, as a signal for breaking 
 up the conference. 
 
 "Odd people those," said Nicholas, when they got clear 
 of the house. 
 
 "I assure you," said Miss Snevellicci, taking his arm, 
 "that I think myself very lucky they did not owe all the 
 money instead of being sixpence short. Now, if you were 
 to succeed, they would give people to understand that they 
 had always patronised you; and if you were to fail, they 
 would have been quite certain of that from the very 
 beginning." 
 
 At the next house they visited they were in great glory;
 
 1 66 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 for, there, resided the six children who were so enraptured 
 with the public actions of the phenomenon, and who, being 
 called down from the nursery to be treated with a private 
 view of that young lady, proceeded to poke their fingers into 
 her eyes, and tread upon her toes, and show her many other 
 little attentions peculiar to their time of life. 
 
 "I shall certainly persuade Mr. Borum to take a private 
 box," said the lady of the house, after a most gracious recep- 
 tion. "I shall only take two of the children, and will make 
 up the rest of the party, of gentlemen — your admirers. Miss 
 Snevellicci. Augustus, you naughty boy, leave the little 
 girl alone." 
 
 This was addressed to a young gentleman who was pinch- 
 ing the phenomenon behind, apparently with a view of 
 ascertaining whether she was real. 
 
 "I am sure you must be very tired," said the mama, 
 turning to Miss Snevellicci. ''I cannot think of allowing 
 you to go, without first taking a glass of wine. Fie, Char- 
 lotte, I am ashamed of you ! Miss Lane, my dear, pray see 
 to the children." 
 
 Miss Lane was 'he governess, and this entreaty was 
 rendered necessary by the abrupt behaviour of the youngest 
 Miss Borum, who, having filched the phenomenon's little 
 green parasol, was now carrying it bodily off, while the dis- 
 tracted infant looked helplessly on. 
 
 "I am sure, where you ever learnt to act as you do," said 
 good-natured Mrs. Borum, turning again to Miss Snevel- 
 licci, "I cannot understand (Emma, don't stare so); laugh- 
 ing in one piece, and crying in the next, and so natural in all 
 — oh, dear!" 
 
 "I am very happy to hear you express so favourable an 
 opinion." said Miss Snevellicci. "It's quite delightful to 
 think you like it." 
 
 "Like it!" cried Mrs, Borum. "Who can help liking it! 
 I would go to the play, twice a week if I could : I dote upon
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 167 
 
 it. Only you're too aflPecting sometimes. You do put me 
 in such a state; into such fits of crying! Goodness gracious 
 me, Miss Lane, how can you let them torment that poor 
 child so!" 
 
 The phenomenon was really in a fair way of being torn 
 limb from limb; for two strong little boys, one holding on 
 by each of her hands were dragging her in different direc- 
 tions as a trial of strength. However, Miss Lane (who had 
 herself been too much occupied in contemplating the grown- 
 up actors, to pay the necessary attention to these proceed- 
 ings) rescued the unhappy infant at this juncture, who, 
 being recruited with a glass of wine, was shortly afterwards 
 taken away by her friends, after sustaining no more serious 
 damage than a flattening of the pink gauze bonnet, and a 
 rather extensive creasing of the white frock and trousers. 
 
 It was a trying morning ; for there were a great many calls 
 to make, and everybody wanted a different thing. Some 
 wanted tragedies, and others comedies; some objected to 
 dancing; some wanted scarcely anything else. Some 
 thought the comic singer decidedly low, and others hoped he 
 would have more to do than he usually had. Some people 
 wouldn't promise to go, because other people wouldn't 
 promise to go; and other people wouldn't go at all, because 
 other people went. At length, and by little and little, 
 omitting something in this place, and adding something in 
 that, Miss Snevellicci pledged herself to a bill of fare which 
 was comprehensive enough, if it had no other merit (it in- 
 cluded among other trifles, four pieces, divers songs, a few 
 combats, and several dances); and they returned home, 
 pretty well exhausted with the business of the day. 
 
 Nicholas worked away at the piece, which was speedily 
 put into rehearsal, and then worked away at his own part, 
 which he studied with great perseverance and acted — as the 
 whole company said — to perfection. And at length the 
 great day arrived. The crier was sent round, in the morn-
 
 i68 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 ing, to proclaim the entertainments with sound of bells in all 
 the thoroughfares; and extra bills of three feet long by nine 
 inches wide, were dispersed in all directions, flung down all 
 the areas, thrust under all the knockers, and developed in all 
 the shops. They were placarded on all the walls too, though 
 not with complete success, for an illiterate person having 
 undertaken this office during the indisposition of the regular 
 bill-sticker, a part were posted sideways, and the remainder 
 upside down. 
 
 At half -past five, there was a rush of four people to the 
 gallery-door; at a quarter before six, there were at least a 
 dozen; at six o'clock the kicks were terrific; and when the 
 elder Master Crummies opened the door, he was obliged to 
 run behind it for his life. Fifteen shillings were taken by 
 Mrs. Grudden in the first ten minutes. 
 
 Behind the scenes, the same unwonted excitement pre- 
 vailed. Miss Snevellicci was in such a perspiration that the 
 paint would scarcely stay on her face. Mrs. Crummies was 
 so nervous that she could hardly remember her part. Miss 
 Bravassa's ringlets came out of curl with the heat and 
 anxiety; even Mr. Crummies himself kept peeping through 
 the hole in the curtain, and running back, every now and 
 then, to announce that another man had come into the pit. 
 
 At last, the orchestra left off, and the curtain rose upon 
 the new piece. The first scene, in which there was nobody 
 particular, passed off calmly enough, but when Miss Snevel- 
 licci went on in the second, accompanied by the phenom- 
 enon as child, what a roar of applause broke out! The 
 people in the Borum box rose as one man, waving their hats 
 and handkerchiefs, and uttering shouts of " Bravo ! " Mrs. 
 Borum and the governess cast wreaths upon the stage, of 
 which, some fluttered into the lamps, and one crowned the 
 temples of a fat gentleman in the pit, who, looking eagerly 
 towards the scene, remained unconscious of the honour; the 
 tailor and his family kicked at the panels of the upper boxes
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 169 
 
 till they threatened to come out altogether; the very ginger- 
 beer boy remained transfixed in the centre of the house; 
 a young officer, supposed to entertain a passion for Miss 
 Snevellicci, stuck his glass in his eye as though to hide a 
 tear. Again and again Miss Snevellicci curtseyed lower and 
 lower, and again and again the applause came down, louder 
 and louder. At length, when the phenomenon picked up 
 one of the smoking wreaths and put it on, sideways, over 
 Miss Snevellicci's eye, it reached its climax, and the play 
 proceeded. 
 
 But when Nicholas came on for his crack scene with Mrs. 
 Crummies, what a clapping of hands there was! When 
 Mrs. Crummies (who was his unworthy mother) sneered, 
 and called him "presumptuous boy," and he defied her, 
 what a tumult of applause came on! When he quarrelled 
 with the other gentleman about the young lady, and pro- 
 ducing a case of pistols, said, that if he was a gentleman, 
 he would fight him in that drawing-room, until the furniture 
 was sprinkled with the blood of one, if not of two — how 
 boxes, pit, and gallery, joined in one most vigorous cheer! 
 When he called his mother names, because she wouldn't 
 give up the young lady's property, and she relenting, caused 
 him to relent likewise, and fall down on one knee and ask 
 her blessing, how the ladies in the audience sobbed! When 
 he was hid behind the curtain in the dark, and the wicked 
 relation poked a sharp sword in every direction, save where 
 his legs were plainly visible, what a thrill of anxious fear 
 ran through the house ! His air, his figure, his walk, his 
 look, everything he said or did, was the subject of com- 
 mendation. There was a round of applause every time he 
 spoke. And when, at last, in the pump-and-tub scene, 
 Mrs. Grudden lighted the blue fire, and all the unemployed 
 members of the company came in, and tumbled down in 
 various directions — not because that had anything to do 
 with the plot, but in order to finish off with a tableau — the
 
 I70 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 audience (who had by this time increased considerably) 
 gave vent to such a shout of enthusiasm, as had not been 
 heard in those walls for many and many a day. 
 
 In short, the success both of new piece and new actor was 
 complete, and when Miss Snevellicci was called for at the 
 end of the play, Nicholas led her on and divided the 
 applause. 
 
 3. — CONCERNING A YOUNG LADY FROM LONDON., WHO JOINS 
 THE COMPANY, AND AN ELDERLY ADMIRER WHO FOLLOWS 
 IN HER train; with AN AFFECTING CEREMONY CONSE- 
 QUENT ON THEIR ARRIVAL 
 
 The new piece being a decided hit, was announced for 
 every evening of performance until further notice, and the 
 evenings when the theatre was closed, were reduced from 
 three in the week to two. Nor were these the only tokens 
 of extraordinary success; for, on the succeeding Saturday, 
 Nicholas received, by favour of the indefatigable Mrs. 
 Grudden, no less a sum than thirty shillings; besides which 
 substantial reward, he enjoyed considerable fame and 
 honour: having a presentation copy of Mr. Curdle's pam- 
 phlet forwarded to the theatre, with that gentleman's own 
 autograph (in itself an inestimable treasure) on the fly-leaf, 
 accompanied with a note containing many expressions of 
 approval, and unsolicited assurance that Mr. Curdle would 
 be very happy to read Shakespeare to him for three hours 
 every morning before breakfast during his stay in the 
 town. 
 
 "I've got another novelty, Johnson," said Mr. Crummies 
 one morning in great glee. 
 
 "What's that?" rejoined Nicholas. "The pony?" 
 
 "No, no, we never come to the pony till everything else 
 has failed," said Mr. Crummies. "I don't think we shall 
 come to the pony at all, this season. No, no, not the pony." 
 
 "A boy phenomenon, perhaps?" suggested Nicholas.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 171 
 
 <<f 
 
 'There is only one phenomenon, sir," replied Mr. 
 Crummies impressively, "and that's a girl." 
 
 "Very true," said Nicholas. "I beg your pardon. Then 
 I don't know what it is, I am sure." 
 
 "What should you say to a young lady from London?" 
 inquired Mr. Crummies. "Miss So-and-so, of the Theatre 
 Royal, Drury Lane?" 
 
 "I should say she would look very well in the bills," said 
 Nicholas. 
 
 "You're about right there," said Mr. Crummies; "and 
 if you had said she would look very well upon the stage too, 
 you wouldn't have been far out. Look here; what do you 
 think of this?" 
 
 With this inquiry Mr. Crummies unfolded a red poster, 
 and a blue poster, and a yellow poster, at the top of each of 
 which public notification was inscribed in enormous char- 
 acters "First appearance of the unrivalled Miss Petowker 
 of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane!" 
 
 "Dear me!" said Nicholas, "I know that lady." 
 
 "Then you are acquainted with as much talent as was 
 ever compressed into one young person's body," retorted 
 Mr. Crummies, rolling up the bills again; "that is, talent 
 of a certain sort — of a certain sort. 'The Blood Drinker,'" 
 added Mr. Crummies with a prophetic sigh, "*The Blood 
 Drinker' will die with that girl; and she's the only sylph 
 / ever saw, who could stand upon one leg, and play the 
 tambourine on her other knee, like a sylph." 
 
 "When does she come down," asked Nicholas. 
 
 "We expect her to-day," replied Mr. Crummies. "She 
 is an old friend of Mrs. Crummles's. Mrs. Crummies saw 
 what she could do — always knew it from the first. She 
 taught her, indeed, nearly all she knows. Mrs. Crummies 
 was the original Blood Drinker." 
 
 "Was she, indeed?" 
 
 "Yes. She was obliged to give it up though."
 
 172 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "Did it disagree with her?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "Not so much with her, as with her audiences," repHed 
 Mr. Crummies. "Nobody could stand it. It was too 
 tremendous. You don't quite know what Mrs. Crummies 
 is, yet." 
 
 Nicholas ventured to insinuate that he thought he did. 
 
 "No, no, you don't," said Mr. Crummies; "you don't, 
 indeed. 7 don't, and that's a fact. I don't think her 
 country will, till she is dead. Some new proof of talent 
 bursts from that astonishing woman every year of her life. 
 Look at her, mother of six children, three of 'em alive, and 
 all upon the stage!" 
 
 "Extraordinary!" cried Nicholas. 
 
 "Ah! extraordinary indeed," rejoined Mr. Crummies, 
 taking a complacent pinch of snuff, and shaking his head 
 gravely. " I pledge you my professional word I didn't even 
 know she could dance, till her last benefit, and then she 
 played Juliet, and Helen Macgregor, and did the skipping- 
 rope hornpipe between the pieces. The very first time I 
 saw that admirable woman, Johnson," said Mr. Crummies, 
 drawing a little nearer, and speaking in the tone of confi- 
 dential friendship, "she stood upon her head on the butt-end 
 of a spear, surrounded with blazing fireworks." 
 
 "You astonish me!" said Nicholas. 
 
 "She astonished me!" returned Mr. Crummies, with a 
 very serious countenance. "Such grace, coupled with such 
 dignity! I adored her from that moment!" 
 
 The arrival of the gifted subject of these remarks put an 
 abrupt termination to Mr. Crummles's eulogium. Almost 
 immediately afterwards. Master Percy Crummies entered 
 with a letter, which had arrived by the General Post, and 
 was directed to his gracious mother; at sight of the super- 
 scription whereof, Mrs. Crummies exclaimed, "From 
 Henrietta Petowker, I do declare!" and instantly became 
 absorbed in the contents.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 173 
 
 "Is it ?" inquired Mr. Crummies, hesitating 
 
 "Oh, yes, it's all right," replied Mrs. Crummies, antici- 
 pating the question. " What an excellent thing for her, to 
 be sure!" 
 
 "It's the best thing altogether, that I ever heard of, I 
 think," said Mr. Crummies; and then Mr. Crummies, ]\[rs. 
 Crummies, and Master Percy Crummies, all fell to laughing 
 violently. Nicholas left them to enjoy their mirth together, 
 and walked to his lodgings: wondering very much what 
 mystery connected with Miss Petowker could provoke such 
 merriment, and pondering still more on the extreme sur- 
 prise with which that lady would regard his sudden enlist- 
 ment in a profession of which she was such a distinguished 
 and brilliant ornament. 
 
 But in this latter respect he was mistaken; for — whether 
 Mr. Vincent Crummies had paved the way or Miss 
 Petowker had some special reason for treating him with 
 even more than her usual amiability — their meeting at the 
 theatre next day was more like that of two dear friends who 
 had been inseparable from infancy, than a recognition pass- 
 ing between a lady and gentleman who had only met some 
 half dozen times, and then by mere chance. Nay, Miss 
 Petowker even whispered that she had wholly dropped the 
 Kenwigses in her conversations with the manager's family, 
 and had represented herself as having encountered Mr. 
 Johnson in the very first and most fashionable circles; and 
 on Nicholas receiving this intelligence with unfeigned 
 surprise, she added, with a sweet glance, that she had 
 a claim on his good nature now, and might tax it before 
 long. 
 
 Nicholas had the honour of playing in a slight piece with 
 Miss Petowker that night, and could not but observe that 
 the warmth of her reception was mainly attributable to 
 a most persevering umbrella in the upper boxes; he saw, 
 too, that the enchanting actress cast many sweet looks
 
 174 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 towards the quarter whence these sounds proceeded; and 
 that every time she did so, the umbrella broke out afresh. 
 Once, he thought that a peculiarly shaped hat in the same 
 corner was not wholly unknown to him; but, being occupied 
 with his share of the stage business, he bestowed no great 
 attention upon this circumstance, and it had quite vanished 
 from his memory by the time he reached home. 
 
 He had just sat down to supper with Smike, when one 
 of the people of the house came outside the door, and 
 announced that a gentleman below stairs wished to speak to 
 Mr. Johnson. 
 
 "Well, if he does, you must tell him to come up; that's 
 all I know," replied Nicholas. " One of our hungry brethren, 
 I suppose, Smike." 
 
 His fellow-lodger looked at the cold meat in silent calcu- 
 lation of the quantity that would be left for dinner next day, 
 and put back a slice he had cut for himself, in order that 
 the visitor's encroachments might be less formidable in their 
 efiFects. 
 
 "It is not anybody who has been here before," said 
 Nicholas, "for he is tumbling up every stair. Come in, 
 come in. In the name of wonder! Mr. Lillyvick?" 
 
 It was, indeed, the collector of water-rates who, regarding 
 Nicholas, with a fixed look and immovable countenance, 
 shook hands with most portentous solemnity, and sat him- 
 self down in a seat by the chimney-corner. 
 
 "Why, when did you come here?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "This morning, sir," replied Mr. Lillyvick. 
 
 "Oh! I see; then you were at the theatre to-night, and it 
 was your umb " 
 
 "This umbrella," said Mr. Lillyvick, producing a fat 
 green cotton one with a battered ferrule. "What did you 
 think of that performance?" 
 
 "So far as I could judge, being on the stage," replied 
 Nicholas, "I thought it very agreeable."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 175 
 
 "Agreeable!" cried the collector. "I mean to say, sir, 
 that it was delicious." 
 
 Mr. Lillyvick bent forward to pronounce the last word 
 with greater emphasis; and having done so, drew himself 
 up, and frowned and nodded a great many times. 
 
 "I say, delicious," repeated Mr. Lillyvick. "Absorbing, 
 fairy-like, toomultuous," and again Mr. Lillyvick drew 
 himself up, and again he frowned and nodded. 
 
 "Ah!" said Nicholas, a little surprised at these symptoms 
 of ecstatic approbation. "Yes, she is a clever girl." 
 
 "She is a divinity," returned Mr. Lillyvick, giving a 
 collector's double knock on the ground with the umbrella 
 before-mentioned. "I have known divine actresses before 
 now, sir; I used to collect — at least I used to call for — and 
 very often call for — the water-rate at the house of a divine 
 actress, who lived in my beat for upwards of four years, but 
 never — no, never, sir — of all divine creatures, actresses or no 
 actresses, did I see a diviner one than is Henrietta 
 Petowker." 
 
 Nicholas had much ado to prevent himself from laughing; 
 not trusting himself to speak, he merely nodded in accord- 
 ance with Mr. Lillyvick's nods, and remained silent. 
 
 "Let me speak a word with you in private," said Mr. 
 Lillyvick. 
 
 Nicholas looked good-humouredly at Smike, who, taking 
 the hint, disappeared. 
 
 "A bachelor is a miserable wretch, sir," said Mr. Lilly- 
 vick. 
 
 "Is he?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "He is," rejoined the collector. "I have lived in the 
 world for nigh sixty year, and I ought to know what 
 
 • J. • 99 
 
 it IS. 
 
 "You ought to know, certainly," thought Nicholas; "but 
 whether you do or not, is another question." 
 
 "If a bachelor happens to have saved a little matter of
 
 176 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 money," said Mr. Lillyvick, "his sisters and brothers, and 
 nephews and nieces, look to that money, and not to him; 
 even if, by being a pubhc character, he is the head of the 
 family, or, as it may be, the main from which all the other 
 little branches are turned on, they still wish him dead all the 
 while, and get low-spirited every time they see him looking 
 in good health, because they want to come into his little 
 property. You see that?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," replied Nicholas: "it's very true, no doubt." 
 
 "The great reason for not being married," resumed Mr. 
 Lillyvick, "is the expense; that's what's kept me off, or 
 else — Lord!" said Mr. Lillyvick, snapping his fingers, "I 
 might have had fifty women." 
 
 "Fine women?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "Fine women, sir!" replied the collector; "aye! not so 
 fine as Henrietta Petowker, for she is an uncommon speci- 
 men, but such women as don't fall into every man's way, 
 I can tell you. Now suppose a man can get a fortune in 
 a wife instead of with her — eh?" 
 
 "Why, then, he's a lucky fellow," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "That's what I say," retorted the collector, patting him 
 benignantly on the side of the head with his umbrella; 
 "just what I say. Henrietta Petowker, the talented 
 Henrietta Petowker, has a fortune in herself, and I am 
 going to " 
 
 "To make her Mrs. Lillyvick?" suggested Nicholas. 
 
 "No, sir, not to make her Mrs. Lillyvick," replied the 
 collector. "Actresses, sir, always keep their maiden names 
 — that's the regular thing — but I'm going to marry her; 
 and the day after to-morrow, too." 
 
 "I congratulate you, sir," said Nicholas. 
 
 "Thank you, sir," replied the collector, buttoning his 
 waistcoat. "I shall draw her salary, of course, and I hope 
 after all that it's nearly as cheap to keep two as it is to keep 
 one; that's a consolation."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 177 
 
 "Surely you don't want any consolation at such a 
 moment?" observed Nicholas. 
 
 "No," replied Mr. Lilly vick, shaking his head nervously: 
 "no — of course not." 
 
 "But how come you both here, if you're going to be 
 married, Mr. Lillyvick?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "Why, that's what I came to explain to you," replied the 
 collector of water-rates. "The fact is, we have thought it 
 best to keep it secret from the family." 
 
 " Family ! " said Nicholas. " What family? " 
 
 "The Kenwigses of course," rejoined Mr. Lillyvick. "If 
 my niece and the children had known a word about it before 
 I came away, they'd have gone into fits at my feet, and 
 never have come out of 'em till I took an oath not to marry 
 anybody. Or they'd have got out a commission of lunacy, 
 or some dreadful thing," said the collector, quite trembling 
 as he spoke. 
 
 "To be sure," said Nicholas. "Yes; they would have 
 been jealous, no doubt." 
 
 "To prevent which," said Mr. Lillyvick, "Henrietta 
 Petowker (it was settled between us) should come down here 
 to her friends, the Crummleses, under pretence of this en- 
 gagement and I should go down to Guildford the day before, 
 and join her on the coach there; which I did, and we came 
 down from Guildford yesterday together. Now, for fear 
 you should be writing to Mr. Noggs, and might say any- 
 thing about us we have thought it best to let you into the 
 secret. We shall be married from the Crummleses' lodg- 
 ings, and shall be delighted to see you — either before church 
 or at breakfast-time, which you like. It won't be expensive, 
 you know," said the collector, highly anxious to prevent 
 any misunderstanding on this point; "just muflSns and 
 coffee, with perhaps a shrimp or something of that sort for a 
 relish, you know." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I understand," replied Nicholas. "Oh, I shall 
 
 12
 
 178 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 be most happy to come; it will give me the greatest pleasure. 
 Where's the lady stopping? With Mrs. Crummies?" 
 
 "Why, no," said the collector; "they couldn't very well 
 dispose of her at night, and so she is staying with an ac- 
 quaintance of hers, and another young lady; they both 
 belong to the theatre." 
 
 "Miss Snevellicci, I suppose?" said Nicholas. 
 
 "Yes, that's the name." 
 
 "And they'll be bridesmaids, I presume?" said Nicholas, 
 
 "Why," said the collector, with a rueful face, "they will 
 have four bridesmaids; I'm afraid they'll make it rather 
 theatrical." 
 
 "Oh no, not at all," replied Nicholas, with an awkward 
 attempt to convert a laugh into a cough. "Who may the 
 four be? Miss Snevellicci of course — Miss Ledrook " 
 
 "The — the phenomenon," groaned the collector. 
 
 "Ha, ha!" cried Nicholas. "I beg your pardon, I don't 
 know what I'm laughing at — yes, that'll be very pretty — 
 the phenomenon — who else?" 
 
 "Some young woman or other," replied the collector, 
 rising; "some other friend of Henrietta Petowker's. Well, 
 you'll be careful not to say anything about it, will you?" 
 
 "You may safely depend upon me," replied Nicholas. 
 "Won't you take anything to eat or drink?" 
 
 "No," said the collector; "I haven't any appetite. I 
 should think it was a very pleasant life, the married one, eh? " 
 
 "I have not the least doubt of it," rejoined Nicholas. 
 
 "Yes," said the collector; "certainly. Oh yes. No 
 doubt. Good night." 
 
 With these words, Mr. Lillyvick, whose manner had 
 exhibited through the whole of this interview a most extra- 
 ordinary compound of precipitation, hesitation, confidence 
 and doubt, fondness, misgiving, meanness, and self-import- 
 ance, turned his back upon the room, and left Nicholas to 
 enjoy a laugh by himself if he felt so disposed.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 179 
 
 Without stopping to inquire whether the intervening day 
 appeared to Nicholas to consist of the usual number of 
 hours of the ordinary length, it may be remarked that, to the 
 parties more directly interested in the forthcoming cere- 
 mony, it passed with great rapidity, insomuch that when 
 Miss Petowker awoke on the succeeding morning in the 
 chamber of Miss Snevellicci, she declared that nothing should 
 ever persuade her that that really was the day which was to 
 behold a change in her condition. 
 
 "I never will believe it," said Miss Petowker; "I cannot 
 really. It's of no use talking, I never can make up my mind 
 to go through with such a trial!" 
 
 On hearing this, Miss Snevellicci, and Miss Ledrook, who 
 knew perfectly well that their fair friend's mind had been 
 made up for three or four years, at any period of which time 
 she would have cheerfully undergone the desperate trial now 
 approaching if she could have found any eligible gentleman 
 disposed for the venture, began to preach comfort and firm- 
 ness, and to say how very proud she ought to feel that it 
 was in her power to confer lasting bliss on a deserving ob- 
 ject, and how necessary it was for the happiness of mankind 
 in general that women should possess fortitude and resigna- 
 tion on such occasions; and that although for their parts 
 they held true happiness to consist in a single life, which 
 they would not willingly exchange — no, not for any worldly 
 consideration — still (thank Heaven), if ever the time 
 should come, they hoped they knew their duty too well to 
 repine, but would the rather submit with meekness and 
 humility of spirit to a fate for which Providence had clearly 
 designed them with a view to the contentment and reward 
 of their fellow-creatures. 
 
 "I might feel it was a great blow," said Miss Snevellicci, 
 "to break up old associations and what-do-you-callems of 
 that kind, but I would submit, my dear, I would indeed." 
 
 "So would I," said Miss Ledrook; "I would rather court
 
 i8o Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the yoke than shun it. I have broken hearts before now, 
 and I'm very sorry for it. It's a terrible thing to reflect 
 upon." 
 
 "It is indeed," said Miss SneveUicci. "Now Led, my 
 dear, we must positively get her ready, or we shall be too 
 late, we shall indeed." 
 
 This pious reasoning, and perhaps the fear of being too 
 late, supported the bride through the ceremony of robing, 
 after which, strong tea and brandy were administered in 
 alternate doses as a means of strengthening her feeble limbs 
 and causing her to walk steadier. 
 
 "How do you feel now, my love?" inquired Miss 
 SneveUicci. 
 
 "Oh Lillyvick!" cried the bride. "If you knew what I 
 am undergoing for you!" 
 
 "Of course he knows it, love, and will never forget it," 
 said Miss Ledrook. 
 
 "Do you think he won't?" cried Miss Petowker, really 
 showing great capability for the stage. "Oh, do you think 
 he won't? Do you think Lillyvick will always remember it 
 — always, always, always?" 
 
 There is no knowing in what this burst of feeling might 
 have ended, if Miss SneveUicci had not at that moment 
 proclaimed the arrival of the fly, which so astounded the 
 bride that she shook off divers alarming symptoms which 
 were coming on very strong, and running to the glass ad- 
 justed her dress, and calmly declared that she was ready 
 for the sacrifice. 
 
 She was accordingly supported into the coach and there 
 "kept up" (as Miss SneveUicci said) with perpetual sniffs 
 of sal volatile and sips of brandy and other gentle stimulants, 
 until they reached the manager's door, which was already 
 opened by the two Master Crummleses, who wore white 
 cockades, and were decorated with the choicest and most 
 resplendent waistcoats in the theatrical wardrobe. By the
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company i8i 
 
 combined exertions of these young gentlemen and the 
 bridesmaids, assisted by the coachman, Miss Petowker was 
 at length supported in a condition of much exhaustion to 
 the first floor, where she no sooner encountered the youthful 
 bridegroom than she fainted with great decorum. 
 
 "Henrietta Petowker!" said the collector; "cheer up, my 
 lovely one." 
 
 Miss Petowker grasped the collector's hand, but emotion 
 choked her utterance. 
 
 "Is the sight of me so dreadful, Henrietta Petowker?" 
 said the collector. 
 
 "Oh no, no, no" rejoined the bride; "but all the friends, 
 the darling friends, of my youthful days — to leave them all 
 — it is such a shock!" 
 
 With such expressions of sorrow. Miss Petowker went on 
 to enumerate the dear friends of her youthful days one by 
 one, and to call upon such of them as were present to come 
 and embrace her. This done, she remembered that Mrs. 
 Crummies had been more than a mother to her, and after 
 that, that Mr. Crummies had been more than a father to 
 her, and after that, that the Master Crummleses and Miss 
 Ninetta Crummies had been more than brothers and sisters 
 to her. These various remembrances being each accom- 
 panied with a series of hugs, occupied a long time, and they 
 were obliged to drive to church very fast, for fear they 
 should be too late. 
 
 The procession consisted of two flys ; in the first of which 
 were MissBravassa (thefourth bridesmaid), Mrs. Crummies, 
 the collector, and Mr. Folair, who had been chosen as his 
 second on the occasion. In the other were the bride, Mr. 
 Crummies, Miss Snevellicci, Miss Ledrook, and the phenom- 
 enon. The costumes were beautiful. The bridesmaids 
 were quite covered with artificial flowers, and the phenom- 
 enon, in particular, was rendered almost invisible by the 
 portable arbour in which she was enshrined. Miss Ledrook,
 
 1 82 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 who was of a romantic turn, wore in her breast the minia- 
 ture of some field-officer unknown, which she had purchased, 
 a great bargain, not very long before; the other ladies dis- 
 played several dazzling articles of imitative jewellery, almost 
 equal to real; and Mrs. Crummies came out in a stern and 
 gloomy majesty, which attracted the admiration of all 
 beholders. 
 
 But, perhaps the appearance of Mr. Crummies was more 
 striking and appropriate than that of any member of the 
 party. This gentleman, who personated the bride's father, 
 had, in pursuance of a happy and original conception, 
 "made up" for the part by arraying himself in a theatrical 
 wig, of a style and pattern commonly known as a brown 
 George, and moreover assuming a snuff-coloured suit, of the 
 previous century, with grey silk stockings, and buckles to 
 his shoes. The better to support his assumed character he 
 had determined to be greatly overcome, and, consequently, 
 when they entered the church, the sobs of the affectionate 
 parent were so heartrending that the pew-opener suggested 
 the propriety of his retiring to the vestry, and comforting 
 himself with a glass of water before the ceremony began. 
 
 The procession up the aisle was beautiful. The bride, 
 with the four bridesmaids, forming a group previously ar- 
 ranged and rehearsed; the collector, followed by his second, 
 imitating his walk and gestures, to the indescribable amuse- 
 ment of some theatrical friends in the gallery; Mr. 
 Crummies, with an infirm and feeble gait; Mrs, Crummies 
 advancing with that stage walk, which consists of a stride 
 and a stop alternately; it was the completest thing ever 
 witnessed. The ceremony was very quickly disposed of, 
 and all parties present having signed the register (for which 
 purpose, when it came to his turn, Mr. Crummies carefully 
 wiped and put on an immense pair of spectacles), they went 
 back to breakfast in high spirits. And here they found 
 Nicholas awaiting their arrival.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 183 
 
 "Now then," said Crummies, who had been assisting Mrs. 
 Grudden in the preparations, which were on a more exten- 
 sive scale than was quite agreeable to the collector. " Break- 
 fast, breakfast." 
 
 No second invitation was required. The company 
 crowded and squeezed themselves at the table as well as they 
 could, and fell to, immediately : Miss Petowker blushing 
 very much when anybody was looking and eating very much 
 when anybody was 7iot looking; and Mr. Lilly vick going to 
 work as though with the cool resolve, that since the good 
 things must be paid for by him, he would leave as little as 
 possible for the Crummleses to eat up afterwards. 
 
 "It's very soon done, sir, isn't it?" inquired Mr. Folair 
 of the collector, leaning over the table to address him. 
 
 "What is soon done, sir.'" returned Mr. Lilly vick. 
 
 "The tying up, the fixing oneself with a wife," replied 
 Mr. Folair. "It don't take long, does it?" 
 
 " No, sir," replied Mr. Lilly vick, colouring. " It does not 
 take long. And what then, sir?" 
 
 "Oh! nothing," said the actor. "It don't take a man 
 long to hang himself, either, eh? Ha, ha!" 
 
 Mr. Lillyvick laid down his knife and fork and looked 
 round the table with indignant astonishment. 
 
 "To hang himself!" repeated Mr. Lillyvick. 
 
 A profound silence came upon all, for Mr. Lillyvick was 
 dignified beyond expression. 
 
 "To hang himself!" cried Mr. Lillyvick again. "Is any 
 parallel attempted to be drawn in this company between 
 matrimony and hanging?" 
 
 "The noose, you know," said Mr. Folair, a little crest- 
 fallen. 
 
 "The noose, sir?" retorted Mr. Lillyvick. "Does any 
 man dare to speak to me of a noose, and Henrietta Pe " 
 
 "Lillyvick," suggested Mr. Crummies. 
 
 " — and Henrietta Lillyvick in the same breath?" said
 
 i84 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 the collector. "In this house, in the presence of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Crummies, who have brought up a talented and virtu- 
 ous family, to be blessings and phenomenons, and what not, 
 are we to hear talk of nooses?" 
 
 "Folair," said Mr. Crummies, deeming it a matter of 
 decency to be affected by this allusion to himself and 
 partner, "I'm astonished at you." 
 
 "What are you going on in this way at me for?" urged 
 the unfortunate actor. "What have I done?" 
 
 "Done, sir!" cried Mr. Lilly vick, "aimed a blow at the 
 whole framework of society " 
 
 "And the best and tenderest feelings," added Crummies, 
 relapsing into the old man. 
 
 "And the highest and most estimable of social ties," said 
 the collector. " Noose ! As if one was caught, trapped into 
 the married state, pinned by the leg, instead of going into it 
 of one's own accord and glorying in the act!" 
 
 "I didn't mean to make it out, that you were caught and 
 trapped, and pinned by the leg," replied the actor. "I'm 
 sorry for it; I can't say any more." 
 
 "So you ought to be, sir," returned Mr. Lilly vick; "and 
 I am glad to hear that you have enough of feeling left to 
 be so." 
 
 The quarrel appearing to terminate with this reply, Mrs. 
 Lilly vick considered that the fittest occasion (the attention 
 of the company being no longer distracted) to burst into 
 tears, and require the assistance of all four bridesmaids, 
 which was immediately rendered, though not without some 
 confusion, for the room being small and the table-cloth long, 
 a whole detachment of plates were swept off the board at the 
 very first move. Regardless of this circumstance, however, 
 Mrs. Lillyvick refused to be comforted until the belligerents 
 had passed their words that the dispute should be carried no 
 further, which, after a suflBcient show of reluctance, they 
 did, and from that time Mr. Folair sat in moody silence.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 185 
 
 contenting himself with pinching Nicholas's leg when any- 
 thing was said, and so expressing his contempt both for the 
 speaker and the sentiments to which he gave utterance. 
 
 There were a great number of speeches made; some by 
 Nicholas, and some by Crummies, and some by the col- 
 lector; two by the Master Crummleses in returning thanks 
 for themselves, and one by the phenomenon on behalf of the 
 bridesmaids, at which Mrs. Crummies shed tears. There 
 was some singing, too, from Miss Ledrook and Miss 
 Bravassa, and very likely there might have been more, if 
 the fly-driver, who stopped to drive the happy pair to the 
 spot where they proposed to take steamboat to Ryde, had 
 not sent in a peremptory message intimating, that if they 
 didn't come directly he should infallibly demand eighteen- 
 pence over and above his agreement. 
 
 This desperate threat effectually broke up the party. 
 After a most pathetic leave-taking, Mr. Lillyvick and his 
 bride departed for Ryde where they were to spend the next 
 two days in profound retirement, and whither they were 
 accompanied by the infant, who had been appointed 
 travelling bridesmaid on Mr. Lilly vick's express stipulation: 
 as the steamboat people, deceived by her size, would (he 
 had previously ascertained) transport her at half-price. 
 
 OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF NICHOLAS, AND CERTAIN INTERNAL 
 DIVISIONS IN THE COMPANY OF MR. VINCENT CRUMMLES 
 
 The unexpected success and favour with which his ex- 
 periment at Portsmouth had been received, induced Mr. 
 Crummies to prolong his stay in that town for a fortnight 
 beyond the period he had originally assigned for the dura- 
 tion of his visit, during which time Nicholas personated a 
 vast variety of characters with undiminished success and 
 attracted so many people to the theatre who had never 
 been seen there before, that a benefit was considered by the
 
 1 86 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 manager a very promising speculation. Nicholas assent- 
 ing to the terms proposed, the benefit was had, and by it 
 he realized no less a sum than twenty pounds. 
 
 "You are out of spirits," said Smike, on the following 
 night. 
 
 "Not I!" rejoined Nicholas, with assumed gaiety, for the 
 confession would have made the boy miserable all night; 
 "I was thinking about my sister, Smike," 
 
 "Sister!" 
 
 "Aye." 
 
 "Is she like you?" inquired Smike. 
 
 "Why, so they say," replied Nicholas, laughing, "only a 
 great deal handsomer." 
 
 "She must be very beautiful," said Smike, after thinking 
 a little while with his hands folded together, and his eyes 
 bent upon his friend. 
 
 "Anybody who didn't know you as well as I do, my dear 
 fellow, would say you were an accomplished courtier," said 
 Nicholas. 
 
 "I don't even know what that is," replied Smike, shaking 
 his head. "Shall I ever see your sister.'*" 
 
 "To be sure," cried Nicholas; "we shall all be together 
 one of these days — when we are rich, Smike." 
 
 "How is it that you, who are so kind and good to me, 
 have nobody to be kind to you?" asked Smike. "I cannot 
 make that out." 
 
 "Why, it is a long story," replied Nicholas, "and one you 
 would have some difficulty in comprehending, I fear. I 
 have an enemy — you understand what that is?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I understand that," said Smike. 
 
 " Well, it is owing to him," returned Nicholas. "He is rich, 
 and not so easily punished as your old enemy, Mr. Squeers. 
 He is my uncle, but he is a villain, and has done me wrong." 
 
 "Has he though? " asked Smike, bending eagerly forward. 
 "What is his name? Tell me his name."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 187 
 
 "Ralph— Ralph Nickleby." 
 
 "Ralph Nickleby," repeated Smike. "Ralph. I'll get 
 that name by heart." 
 
 He had muttered it over to himself some twenty times, 
 when a loud knock at the door disturbed him from his occu- 
 pation. Before he could open it, Mr. Folair, the panto- 
 mimist, thrust in his head. 
 
 Mr. Folair's head was usually decorated with a very 
 round hat, usually high in the crown, and curled up quite 
 tight in the brim. On the present occasion he wore it very 
 much on one side, with the back part forward in consequence 
 of its being the least rusty; round his neck he wore a flaming 
 red worsted comforter, whereof the straggling ends peeped 
 out beneath his threadbare Newmarket coat, which was 
 tight and buttoned all the way up. He carried in his hand 
 one very dirty glove, and a cheap dress cane with a glass 
 handle; in short, his whole appearance was unusually dash- 
 ing, and demonstrated a far more scrupulous attention to 
 his toilet, than he was in the habit of bestowing upon it. 
 
 "Good evening, sir," said Mr. Folair, taking off the tall 
 hat, and running his fingers through his hair. "I bring a 
 communication. Hem!" 
 
 "From whom and what about?" inquired Nicholas. 
 "You are unusually mysterious to-night." 
 
 "Cold, perhaps," returned Mr. Folair; "cold, perhaps. 
 That is the fault of my position — not of myself, Mr. John- 
 son. My position as a mutual friend requires it, sir." Mr. 
 Folair paused with a most impressive look, and diving into 
 the hat before noticed, drew from thence a small piece of 
 whity-brown paper curiously folded, whence he brought 
 forth a note which it had served to keep clean, and handing 
 it over to Nicholas, said 
 
 "Have the goodness to read that, sir." 
 
 Nicholas, in a state of much amazement, took the note 
 and broke the seal, glancing at Mr. Folair as he did so, who,
 
 1 88 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play- 
 knitting his brow and pursing up his mouth with great 
 dignity, was sitting with his eyes steadily fixed upon the 
 ceiHng. 
 
 It was directed to blank Johnson, Esq., by favour of 
 Augustus Folair, Esq., and the astonishment of Nicholas 
 was in no degree lessened, when he found it to be couched 
 in the following laconic terms: — 
 
 " Mr. Lenville presents his kind regards to Mr. Johnson, 
 and will feel obliged if he will inform him at what hour 
 to-morrow morning it will be most convenient to him to 
 meet Mr. L. at the Theatre, for the purpose of having his 
 nose pulled in the presence of the company. 
 
 " Mr. Lenville requests Mr. Johnson not to neglect mak- 
 ing an appointment, as he has invited two or three profes- 
 sional friends to witness the ceremony, and cannot 
 disappoint them upon any account whatever. 
 
 *' Portsmouth, Tuesday night.'' 
 
 Indignant as he was at this impertinence, there was 
 something so exquisitely absurd in such a cartel of defiance, 
 that Nicholas was obliged to bite his lip and read the note 
 over two or three times before he could muster suflBcient 
 gravity and sternness to address the hostile messenger, who 
 had not taken his eyes from the ceiling, nor altered the 
 expression of his face in the slightest degree. 
 
 "Do you know the contents of this note, sir?" he asked, 
 at length. 
 
 "Yes," rejoined Mr. Folair, looking round for an instant, 
 and immediately carrying his eyes back again to the ceiling. 
 
 "And how dare you bring it here, sir?" asked Nicholas, 
 tearing it into very little pieces, and jerking it in a shower 
 towards the messenger. "Had you no fear of being kicked 
 downstairs, sir?" 
 
 Mr. Folair turned his head — now ornamented with
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 189 
 
 several fragments of the note — towards Nicholas, and with 
 the same imperturbable dignity, briefly replied, "No." 
 
 "Then," said Nicholas, taking up the tall hat and tossing 
 it towards the door, "you had better follow that article of 
 your dress, sir, or you may find youself very disagreeably 
 deceived, and that within a dozen seconds." 
 
 "I say, Johnson," remonstrated Mr. Folair, suddenly 
 losing all his dignity, "none of that, you know. No tricks 
 with a gentleman's wardrobe." 
 
 "Leave the room," returned Nicholas. "How could you 
 presume to come here on such an errand, you scoundrel?" 
 
 "Pooh! pooh!" said Mr. Folair, unwinding his comforter, 
 and gradually getting himself out of it. "There — that's 
 enough." 
 
 "Enough!" cried Nicholas, advancing towards him. 
 "Take yourself off, sir." 
 
 "Pooh! pooh! I tell you," returned Mr. Folair, waving 
 his hand in deprecation of any further wrath; "I wasn't in 
 earnest. I only brought it in joke." 
 
 "You had better be careful how you indulge in such jokes 
 again," said Nicholas, "or you may find an allusion to pull- 
 ing noses rather a dangerous reminder for the subject of 
 your facetiousness. Was it written in joke, too, pray.''" 
 
 "No, no, that's the best of it," returned the actor; "right 
 down earnest — honour bright." 
 
 Nicholas could not repress a smile at the odd figure before 
 him, which, at all times more calculated to provoke mirth 
 than anger, was especially so at that moment, when with 
 one knee upon the ground, Mr. Folair twirled his old hat 
 round upon his hand, and affected the extremest agony lest 
 any of the nap should have been knocked off — an ornament 
 which it is almost superfluous to say, it had not boasted for 
 many months. 
 
 "Come, sir," said Nicholas, laughing in spite of himself. 
 "Have the goodness to explain."
 
 190 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "Why, I'll tell you how it is," said Mr. Folair, sitting 
 himself down in a chair with great coolness. "Since you 
 came here Lenville has done nothing but second business, 
 and, instead of having a reception every night as he 
 used to have, they have let him come on as if he was 
 nobody." 
 
 "What do you mean by a reception?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "Jupiter!" exclaimed Mr. Folair, "what an unsophisti- 
 cated shepherd you are, Johnson ! Why, applause from the 
 house when you first come on. So he has gone on night 
 after night, never getting a hand, and you getting a couple 
 of rounds at least, and sometimes three, till at length he got 
 quite desperate, and had half a mind last night to play 
 Tybalt with a real sword, and pink you — not dangerously, 
 but just enough to lay you up for a month or two." 
 
 "Very considerate," remarked Nicholas. 
 
 "Yes, I think it was, under the circumstances; his pro- 
 fessional reputation being at stake," said Mr, Folair, quite 
 seriously. "But his heart failed him, and he cast about for 
 some other way of annoying you, and making himself popu- 
 lar at the same time — for that's the point. Notoriety, 
 notoriety, is the thing. Bless you, if he had pinked you," 
 said Mr. Folair, stopping to make a calculation in his mind, 
 "it would have been worth — ah, it would have been worth 
 eight to ten shillings a week to him. All the town would 
 have come to see the actor who nearly killed a man by mis- 
 take; I shouldn't wonder if it had got him an engagement 
 in London. However, he was obliged to try some other 
 mode of getting popular, and this one occurred to him. It's 
 a clever idea, really. If you had shown the white feather, 
 and let him pull your nose, he'd have got it into the paper; 
 if you had sworn the peace Against him, it would have been 
 in the paper too, and he'd have been just as much talked 
 about as you — don't you see?" 
 
 "Oh certainly," rejoined Nicholas; "but suppose I were
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 191 
 
 to turn the tables, and pull his nose, what then? Would 
 that make his fortune?" 
 
 "Why, I don't think it would," replied Mr. Folair, 
 scratching his head, "because there wouldn't be any 
 romance about it, and he wouldn't be favourably known. 
 To tell you the truth though, he didn't calculate much upon 
 that, for you're always so mild spoken, and are so popular 
 among the women, that we didn't suspect you of showing 
 fight. If you did, however, he has a way of getting out 
 of it easily, depend upon that." 
 
 "Has he?" rejoined Nicholas. "We will try to-morrow 
 morning. In the meantime, you can give whatever account 
 of our interview you like best. Good night." 
 
 As Mr. Folair was pretty well known among his fellow- 
 actors for a man who delighted in mischief, and was by no 
 means scrupulous, Nicholas had not much doubt but that 
 he had secretly prompted the tragedian in the course he had 
 taken, and, moreover, that he would have carried his mission 
 with a very high hand if he had not been disconcerted by 
 the very unexpected demonstrations with which it had been 
 received. It was not worth his while to be serious with him, 
 however, so he dismissed the pantomimist, with a gentle 
 hint that if he offended again it would be under the penalty 
 of a broken head; and Mr. Folair, taking the caution in 
 exceedingly good part, walked away to confer with his 
 principal, and give such an account of his proceedings as he 
 might think best calculated to carry on the joke. 
 
 He had no doubt reported that Nicholas was in a state of 
 extreme bodily fear; for when that young gentleman walked 
 with much deliberation down to the theatre next morning 
 at the usual hour, he found all the company assembled in 
 evident expectation, and Mr. Lenville, with his severest 
 stage face, sitting majestically on a table, whistling defiance. 
 
 Now the ladies were on the side of Nicholas, and the 
 gentlemen (being jealous) were on the side of the disap-
 
 192 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 pointed tragedian; so that the latter formed a little group 
 about the redoubtable Mr. Lenville, and the former looked 
 on at a little distance in some trepidation and anxiety. On 
 Nicholas stopping to salute them, Mr, Lenville laughed a 
 scornful laugh, and made some general remark touching the 
 natural history of puppies. 
 
 "Oh! said Nicholas, looking quietly round, "are you 
 there?" 
 
 "Slave!" returned Mr. Lenville, flourishing his right arm, 
 and approaching Nicholas with a theatrical stride. But 
 somehow he appeared just at that moment a little startled, 
 as if Nicholas did not look quite so frightened as he had 
 expected, and came all at once to an awkward halt, at 
 which the assembled ladies burst into a shrill laugh. 
 
 "Object of my scorn and hatred!" said Mr. Lenville, "I 
 hold ye in contempt." 
 
 Nicholas laughed in very unexpected enjoyment of this 
 performance; and the ladies, by way of encouragement, 
 laughed louder than before; whereat Mr. Lenville assumed 
 his bitterest smile, and expressed his opinion that they were 
 "minions." 
 
 "But they shall not protect ye!" said the tragedian, 
 taking an upward look at Nicholas, beginning at his boots 
 and ending at the crown of his head, and then a downward 
 one, beginning at the crown of his head, and ending at his 
 boots — which two looks, as everybody knows, express 
 defiance on the stage. "They shall not protect ye — boy!" 
 
 Thus speaking, Mr. Lenville folded his arms, and treated 
 Nicholas to that expression of face with which, in melo- 
 dramatic performances, he was in the habit of regarding 
 the tyrannical kings when they said, "Away with him to the 
 deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat;" and which, 
 accompanied with a little jingling of fetters, had been 
 known to produce great effects in its time. 
 
 Whether it was absence of the fetters or not, it made
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 193 
 
 no very deep impression on Mr. Lenville's adversary, how- 
 ever, but rather seemed to increase the good humour ex- 
 pressed in his countenance; in which stage of the contest, 
 one or two gentlemen, who had come out expressly to wit- 
 ness the pulling of Nicholas's nose, grew impatient, murmur- 
 ing that if it were to be done at all it had better be done at 
 once, and that if Mr. Lenville didn't mean to do it he had 
 better say so and not keep them waiting there. Thus urged 
 the tragedian adjusted the cuff of his right coat sleeve for 
 the performance of the operation, and walked in a very 
 stately manner up to Nicholas, who sufiFered him to approach 
 to within the requisite distance, and then, without the 
 smallest discomposure, knocked him down. 
 
 Before the discomfited tragedian could raise his head 
 from the boards, Mrs, Lenville (who, as has been before 
 hinted, was in an interesting state) rushed from the rear 
 rank of ladies, and uttering a piercing scream threw herself 
 upon the body. 
 
 "Do you see this, monster? Do you see this?'' cried Mr. 
 Len\'ille, sitting up, and pointing to his prostrate lady, who 
 was holding him very tight round the waist. 
 
 "Come," said Nicholas, nodding his head, "apologize for 
 the insolent note you wrote to me last night, and waste no 
 more time in talking." 
 
 "Never!" cried Mr. Lenville. 
 
 "Yes — yes — yes!" screamed his wife. "For my sake — 
 for mine, Lenville — forego all idle forms, unless you would 
 see me a blighted corse at your feet." 
 
 "This is affecting!" said Mr. Lenville, looking round 
 him, and drawing the back of his hand across his eyes. 
 "The ties of nature are strong. The weak husband and 
 the father — the father that is yet to be — relents. I 
 apologize." 
 
 "Humbly and submissively?" said Nicholas. 
 
 "Humbly and submissively," returned the tragedian, 
 
 13
 
 194 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 scowling upwards. "But only to save her, — for a time will 
 come " 
 
 "Very good," said Nicholas; "I hope Mrs. Lenville may 
 have a good one; and when it does come, and you are a 
 father, you shall retract it if you have the courage. There. 
 Be careful, sir, to what lengths your jealousy carries you 
 another time; and be careful, also, before you venture too 
 far, to ascertain your rival's temper." With this parting 
 advice Nicholas picked up Mr. Lenville's ash stick which 
 had flown out of his hand, and breaking it in half, threw him 
 the pieces and withdrew. 
 
 The profoundest deference was paid to Nicholas that 
 night and the people who had been most anxious to have 
 his nose pulled in the morning, embraced occasions of taking 
 him aside, and telling him with great feeling, how very 
 friendly they took it that he should have treated that Len- 
 ville so properly, who was a most unbearable fellow, and on 
 whom they had all by a remarkable coincidence at one time 
 or other contemplated the infliction of condign punishment, 
 which they had only been restrained from administering 
 by considerations of mercy; indeed, to judge from the invari- 
 able termination of all these stories, there never was such 
 a charitable and kind-hearted set of people as the male 
 members of Mr. Crummles's company. 
 
 Nicholas bore his triumph, as he had his success in the 
 little world of the theatre, with the utmost moderation and 
 good humour. The crestfallen Mr. Lenville made an expir- 
 ing effort to obtain revenge by sending a boy into the gallery 
 to hiss, but he fell a sacrifice to popular indignation, and 
 was promptly turned out without having his money back. 
 
 "Well, Smike," said Nicholas when the first piece was 
 over, and he had almost finished dressing to go home, "is 
 there any letter yet?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Smike, "I got this one from the post- 
 office."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 195 
 
 "From Newman Noggs," said Nicholas, casting his eye 
 upon the cramped direction; "it's no easy matter to make 
 his writing out. Let me see — let me see." 
 
 By dint of poring over the letter for half an hour, he con- 
 trived to make himself master of the contents, which were 
 certainly not of a nature to set his mind at ease. Newman 
 took upon himself to send back the ten pounds, observing 
 that he had ascertained that neither Mrs. Nickleby nor Kate 
 was in actual want of money at the moment, and that a time 
 might shortly come when Nicholas might want it more. He 
 entreated him not to be alarmed at what he was about to 
 say; — there was no bad news — they were in good health — 
 but he thought circumstances might occur, or were occur- 
 ring, which would render it absolutely necessary that Kate 
 should have her brother's protection, and if so, Newman 
 said, he would write to him to that effect, either by the next 
 post or the next but one. 
 
 Nicholas read this passage very often and the more he 
 thought of it the more he began to fear some treachery upon 
 the part of Ralph. Once or twice he felt tempted to repair 
 to London at all hazards without an hour's delay, but a little 
 reflection assured him that if such a step were necessary, 
 Newman would have spoken out and told him so at once. 
 
 "At all events I should prepare them here for the pos- 
 sibility of my going away suddenly," said Nicholas; "I 
 should lose no time in doing that." As the thought occurred 
 to him, he took up his hat and hurried to the green-room. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Johnson," said Mrs. Crummies, who was 
 seated there in full regal costume, with the phenomenon as 
 the Maiden in her maternal arms, "next week for Ryde, 
 then for Winchester, then for " 
 
 "I have some reason to fear," interrupted Nicholas, "that 
 before you leave here my career with you will have closed." 
 
 "Closed!" cried Mrs. Crummies, raising her hands in 
 astonishment.
 
 196 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 "Closed!" cried Miss Snevellicci, trembling so much in 
 her tights that she actually laid her hand upon the shoulder 
 of the manageress for support. 
 
 "Why, he don't mean to say he's going!" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Grudden, making her way towards Mrs. Crummies. 
 "Hoity toity! Nonsense." 
 
 The phenomenon, being of an affectionate nature and 
 moreover excitable, raised a loud cry, and Miss Belvawney 
 and Miss Bravassa actually shed tears. Even the male per- 
 formers stopped in their conversation, and echoed the word 
 "Going!" although some among them (and they had been 
 the loudest in their congratulations that day) winked at 
 each other as though they would not be sorry to lose such a 
 favoured rival; an opinion, indeed, which the honest Mr. 
 Folair, who was ready dressed for the savage, openly stated 
 in so many words to a demon with whom he was sharing 
 a pot of porter. 
 
 Nicholas briefly said that he feared it would be so, al- 
 though he could not yet speak with any degree of certainty ; 
 and getting away as soon as he could, went home to con 
 Newman's letter once more, and speculate upon it afresh. 
 
 How trifling all that had been occupying his time and 
 thoughts for many weeks seemed to him during that sleep- 
 less night, and how constantly and incessantly present to 
 his imagination was the one idea that Kate in the midst of 
 some great trouble and distress might even then be looking 
 — and vainly too — for him! 
 
 4. — FESTIVITIES ARE HELD IN HONOUR OF NICHOLAS, WHO 
 SUDDENLY WITHDRAWS HIMSELF FROM THE SOCIETY 
 OF MR. VINCENT CRUMMLES AND HIS THEATRICAL 
 COMPANIONS 
 
 Mr. Vincent Crummies was no sooner acquainted with 
 the public announcement which Nicholas had made relative
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 197 
 
 to the probability of his shortly ceasing to be a member of 
 the company, than he evinced many tokens of grief and 
 consternation; and, in the extremity of his despair, even held 
 out certain vague promises of a speedy improvement not 
 only in the amount of his regular salary, but also in the con- 
 tingent emoluments appertaining to his authorship. Find- 
 ing Nicholas bent upon quitting the society (for he had now 
 determined that, even if no further tidings came from New- 
 man, he would, at all hazards, ease his mind by repairing 
 to London and ascertaining the exact position of his sister) 
 Mr. Crummies was fain to content himself by calculating 
 the chances of his coming back again, and taking prompt 
 and energetic measures to make the most of him before he 
 went awav. 
 
 "Let me see," said Mr. Crummies, taking off his outlaw's 
 wig, the better to arrive at a cool-headed view of the whole 
 case. "Let me see. This is Wednesday night. We'll 
 have posters out the first thing in the morning, announcing 
 positively your last appearance for to-morrow." 
 
 "But perhaps it may not be my last appearance, you 
 know," said Nicholas. "Unless I am summoned away, I 
 should be sorry to inconvenience you by leaving before the 
 end of the week." 
 
 "So much the better," returned Mr. Crummies. "We 
 can have positively your last appearance, on Thursday — 
 re-engagement for one night more, on Friday — and, yielding 
 to the wishes of numerous influential patrons, w^ho were 
 disappointed in obtaining seats, on Saturday. That ought 
 to bring three very decent houses." 
 
 "Then I am to make three last appearances, am I?" 
 inquired Nicholas, smiling. 
 
 "Yes," rejoined the manager, scratching his head with an 
 air of some vexation; "three is not enough, and it's very 
 bungling and irregular not to have more, but if we can't 
 help it we can't, so there's no use in talking. A novelty
 
 198 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 would be very desirable. You couldn't sing a comic song on 
 the pony's back, could you?" 
 
 "No," replied Nicholas, "I couldn't indeed." 
 
 "It has drawn money before now," said Mr. Crummies 
 with a look of disappointment. "What do you think of a 
 brilliant display of fireworks?" 
 
 "That it would be rather expensive," replied Nicholas, 
 drily. 
 
 " Eighteenpence would do it," said Mr. Crummies. " You 
 on the top of a pair of steps with the phenomenon in an 
 attitude; 'Farewell' on a transparency behind; and nine 
 people at the wings with a squib in each hand — all the dozen 
 and a half going off at once — it would be very grand — awful 
 from the front, quite awful." 
 
 As Nicholas appeared by no means impressed with the 
 solemnity of the proposed effect, but, on the contrary, 
 received the proposition in a most irreverent manner, and 
 laughed at it very heartily, Mr. Crummies abandoned the 
 project in its birth, and gloomily observed that they must 
 make up the best bill they could with combats and hornpipes, 
 and so stick to the legitimate drama. 
 
 For the purpose of carrying this object into instant execu- 
 tion, the manager at once repaired to a small dressing-room, 
 adjacent, where Mrs. Crummies was then occupied in ex- 
 changing the habiliments of a melodramatic empress for the 
 ordinary attire of matrons in the nineteenth century. And 
 with the assistance of this lady, and the accomphshed 
 Mrs. Grudden (who had quite a genius for making out bills, 
 being a great hand at throwing in the notes of admiration, 
 and knowing from long experience exactly where the largest 
 capitals ought to go), he seriously applied himself to the 
 composition of the poster. 
 
 "Heigho!" sighed Nicholas, as he threw himself back in 
 the prompter's chair, after telegraphing the needful direc- 
 tions to Smike, who had been playing a meagre tailor in the
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 199 
 
 interlude, with one skirt to his coat, and a httle pocket 
 handkerchief with a large hole in it, and woollen night 
 cap, and a red nose, and other distinctive marks pecul- 
 iar to tailors on the stage. "Heigho! I wish all this were 
 over." 
 
 "Over, Mr. Johnson!" repeated a female voice behind 
 him, in a kind of plaintive surprise. 
 
 "It was an ungallant speech, certainly," said Nicholas, 
 looking up to see who the speaker was, and recognising Miss 
 Snevellicci. " I would not have made it if I had known you 
 had been within hearing." 
 
 "What a dear that Mr. Digby is!" said Miss Snevellicci, 
 as the tailor went off on the opposite side, at the end of the 
 piece, with great applause. (Smike's theatrical name was 
 Digby.) 
 
 "I'll tell him presently, for his gratification, that you said 
 so," returned Nicholas. 
 
 "Oh you naughty thing!" rejoined Miss Snevellicci. "I 
 don't know though, that I should much mind his knowing 
 my opinion of him; with some other people, indeed, it 
 
 might be " Here Miss Snevellicci stopped, as though 
 
 waiting to be questioned, but no questioning came, for 
 Nicholas was thinking about more serious matters. 
 
 "How kind it is of you," resumed Miss Snevellicci, after a 
 short silence, "to sit waiting here for him night after night, 
 night after night, no matter how tired you are; and taking 
 so much pains with him, and doing it all with as much de- 
 light and readiness as if you were coining gold by it!" 
 
 "He well deserves all the kindness I can show him, and a 
 great deal more," said Nicholas. "He is the most grateful, 
 single-hearted, affectionate creature, that ever breathed." 
 
 "So odd, too," remarked Miss Snevellicci, "isn't he?" 
 
 "God help him, and those who have made him so; he is 
 indeed," rejoined Nicholas, shaking his head. 
 
 "He is such a devilish close chap," said Mr. Folair, who
 
 200 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 had come up a little before, and now joined in the conversa- 
 tion. "Nobody can ever get anything out of him." 
 
 "What should they get out of him?" asked Nicholas, 
 turning round with some abruptness. 
 
 "Zooks! what a fire-eater you are, Johnson!" returned 
 Mr. Folair, pulling up the heel of his dancing shoe. "I'm 
 only talking of the natural curiosity of the people here, to 
 know what he has been about all his life." 
 
 "Poor fellow! it is pretty plain, I should think, that he 
 has not the intellect to have been about anything of much 
 importance to them or anybody else," said Nicholas. 
 
 "Ay," rejoined the actor, contemplating the effect of his 
 face in a lamp reflector, "but that involves the whole 
 question, you know." 
 
 "What question?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "Why, the who he is and what he is, and how you two, 
 who are so different, came to be such close companions," 
 replied Mr. Folair, delighted with the opportunity of saying 
 something disagreeable. "That's in everybody's mouth." 
 
 "The 'everybody' of the theatre, I suppose?" said 
 Nicholas, contemptuously. 
 
 "In it and out of it too," replied the actor. "Why, you 
 know, Lenville says " 
 
 "I thought I had silenced him effectually," interrupted 
 Nicholas, reddening. 
 
 "Perhaps you have," rejoined the immovable Mr. Folair; 
 "if you have, he said this before he was silenced: Lenville 
 says that you're a regular stick of an actor, and that it's 
 only the mystery about you that has caused you to go down 
 with the people here, and that Crummies keeps it up for his 
 own sake; though Lenville says he don't believe there's any- 
 thing at all in it, except your having got into a scrape and 
 run away from somewhere, for doing something or other." 
 
 "Oh!" said Nicholas, forcing a smile. 
 
 "That's a part of what he says," added Mr. Folair. "I
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 201 
 
 mention it as the friend of both parties, and in strict con- 
 fidence. / don't agree with him, you know. He says he 
 takes Digby to be more knave than fool; and old Fluggers, 
 who does the heavy business you know, he says that when he 
 delivered messages at Covent Garden the season before 
 last, there used to be a pickpocket hovering about the 
 coach-stand who had exactly the face of Digby; though 
 as he very properly says, Digby may not be the same, but 
 only his brother, or some near relation." 
 
 "Oh!" cried Nicholas again. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Folair, with undisturbed calmness, 
 "that's what they say. I thought I'd tell you, because 
 really you ought to know. Oh ! here's this blessed phenom- 
 enon at last. Ugh, you little imposition, I should like to 
 — quite ready, my darling, — humbug — Ring up, Mrs. G., 
 and let the favourite wake 'em!" 
 
 Uttering in a loud voice such of the latter allusions as 
 were complimentary to the unconscious phenomenon, and 
 giving the rest in a confidential "aside" to Nicholas, Mr. 
 Folair followed the ascent of the curtain with his eyes, re- 
 garded with a sneer the reception of Miss Crummies as the 
 Maiden, and, falling back a step or two to advance with the 
 better effect, uttered a preliminary howl, and "went on" 
 chattering his teeth and brandishing his tin tomahawk as 
 the Indian Savage. 
 
 "So these are some of the stories they invent about us, 
 and bandy from mouth to mouth!" thought Nicholas. "If 
 a man would commit an inexpiable offence against any 
 society, large or small, let him be successful. They will 
 forgive him any crime but that." 
 
 "You surely don't mind what that malicious creature 
 says, Mr. Johnson?" observed Miss Snevellicci in her most 
 winning tones. 
 
 "Not I," replied Nicholas, "If I were going to remain 
 here, I might think it worth my while to embroil myself.
 
 202 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 As it is, let them talk till they are hoarse. But here," 
 added Nicholas, as Smike approached, "here comes the 
 subject of a portion of their good-nature, so let he and I say 
 good night together." 
 
 " No, I will not let either of you say anything of the kind," 
 returned Miss Snevellicci. "You must come home and see 
 mama, who only came to Portsmouth to-day, and is dying 
 to behold you. Led, my dear, persuade Mr. Johnson." 
 
 "Oh, I'm sure," returned Miss Ledrook, with consider- 
 able vivacity, "if you can't persuade him — " Miss Ledrook 
 said no more, but intimated, by a dexterous playfulness, 
 that if Miss Snevellicci couldn't persuade him, nobody 
 could. 
 
 "Mr. and Mrs. Lilly vick have taken lodgings in our 
 house, and share our sitting-room for the present," said 
 Miss Snevellicci. "Won't that induce you?" 
 
 "Surely," returned Nicholas, "I can require no possible 
 inducement beyond your invitation." 
 
 "Oh no! I dare say," rejoined Miss Snevellicci. And 
 Miss Ledrook said, "Upon my word!" Upon which Miss 
 Snevellicci said that Miss Ledrook was a giddy thing; 
 and Miss Ledrook said that Miss Snevellicci needn't colour 
 up quite so much; and Miss Snevellicci beat Miss Ledrook, 
 and Miss Ledrook beat Miss Snevellicci. 
 
 "Come," said Miss Ledrook, "it's high time we were 
 there, or we shall have poor Mrs. Snevelhcci thinking that 
 you have run away with her daughter, Mr. Johnson; and 
 then we should have a pretty to-do." 
 
 "My dear Led," remonstrated Miss Snevellicci, "how you 
 do talk!" 
 
 Miss Ledrook made no answer, but taking Smike's arm 
 in hers, left her friend and Nicholas to follow at their 
 pleasure ; which it pleased them, or rather pleased Nicholas, 
 who had no great fancy for a tete-a-tete under the circum- 
 stances, to do at once.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 203 
 
 There were not wanting matters of conversation when they 
 reached the street, for it turned out that Miss SneveUicci 
 had a small basket to carry home, and Miss Ledrook a small 
 bandbox, both containing such minor articles of theatrical 
 costume as the lady performers usually carried to and fro 
 every evening. Nicholas would insist upon carrying the 
 basket, and Miss SneveUicci would insist upon carrying it 
 herself, which gave rise to a struggle , in which Nicholas 
 captured the basket and the bandbox likewise. Then 
 Nicholas said, that he wondered what could possibly be 
 inside the basket, and attempted to peep in, whereat Miss 
 SneveUicci screamed, and declared that if she thought he 
 had seen, she was sure she should faint away. This declara- 
 tion was followed by a similar attempt on the bandbox, 
 and similar demonstrations on the part of Miss Ledrook, 
 and then both ladies vowed that they wouldn't move a step 
 further until Nicholas had promised that he wouldn't offer 
 to peep again. At last Nicholas pledged himself to betray 
 no further curiosity, and they walked on: both ladies gig- 
 gling very much, and declaring that they never had seen 
 such a wicked creature in all their born days — never. 
 
 Lightening the way with such pleasantry as this, they 
 arrived at the tailor's house in no time; and here they made 
 quite a little party, there being present besides Mr. Lilly- 
 vick and Mrs. Lillyvick, not only Miss Snevellicci's mama, 
 but her papa also. And an uncommonly fine man Miss 
 Snevellicci's papa was, with a hook nose, and white fore- 
 head, and curly black hair, and high cheek bones, and alto- 
 gether quite a handsome face, only a little pimply as though 
 with drinking. He had a very broad chest had Miss Snevel- 
 licci's papa, and he wore a threadbare blue dress coat 
 buttoned with gilt buttons tight across it; and he no sooner 
 saw Nicholas come into the room, than he whipped the two 
 forefingers of his right hand in between the two centre 
 buttons, and sticking his other arm gracefully a-kimbo.
 
 204 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 seemed to say, "Now, here I am, my buck, and what have 
 you got to say to me?" 
 
 Such was, and in such an attitude sat. Miss SnevelHcci's 
 papa, who had been in the profession ever since he had first 
 played the ten-year-old imps in the Christmas pantomimes; 
 who could sing a little, dance a little, fence a little, act a 
 fittle, and do everything a little, but not much; who had 
 been sometimes in the ballet, and sometimes in the chorus, 
 at every theatre in London; who was always selected in 
 virtue of his figure to play the military visitors and the 
 speechless noblemen; who always wore a smart dress, and 
 came on arm-in-arm with a smart lady in short petticoats, — 
 and always did it too with such an air that people in the pit 
 had been several times known to cry out "Bravo!" under 
 the impression that he was somebody. Such was Miss 
 SnevelHcci's papa, upon whom some envious persons cast 
 the imputation that he occasionally beat Miss SnevelHcci's 
 mama, who was still a dancer, with a neat little figure and 
 some remains of good looks, and who now sat, as she danced, 
 — being rather too old for the full glare of the footlights, — 
 in the background. 
 
 To these good people Nicholas was presented with much 
 formality. The introduction being completed. Miss Snevel- 
 Hcci's papa (who was scented with rum and water) said that 
 he was delighted to make the acquaintance of a gentleman 
 so highly talented; and furthermore remarked, that there 
 hadn't been such a hit made — no, not since the first appear- 
 ance of his friend Mr. Glavormelly, at the Coburg. 
 
 "You have seen him, sir?" said Miss SnevelHcci's papa. 
 
 "No, really I never did," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "You never saw my friend Glavormelly, sir!" said Miss 
 SneveHicci's papa. "Then you have never seen acting yet. 
 If he had lived " 
 
 "Oh, he is dead, is he?" interrupted Nicholas, 
 
 "He is," said Mr. SneveHicci, "but he isn't in West-
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 205 
 
 minster Abbey, more's the shame. He was a . Well, 
 
 no matter. He is gone to that bourne from whence no 
 traveller returns. I hope he is appreciated there." 
 
 So saying. Miss Snevellicci's papa rubbed the tip of his 
 nose with a very yellow silk handkerchief, and gave the 
 company to understand that these recollections overcame 
 him. 
 
 •'Well Mr. Lilly vick," said Nicholas, "and how are 
 you?" 
 
 "Quite well, sir," replied the collector. "There is 
 nothing like the married state, sir, depend upon it." 
 
 "Indeed?" said Nicholas, laughing. 
 
 "Nothing like it, sir," replied Mr. Lilly vick solemnly. 
 "How do you think?" whispered the collector, drawing 
 him aside, "How do you think she looks to-night?" 
 
 "As handsome as ever," replied Nicholas, glancing at 
 the late Miss Petowker. 
 
 "Why, there's a air about her, sir," whispered the col- 
 lector, "that I never saw in anybody. Look at her, now 
 she moves to put the kettle on. There! Isn't it fascination, 
 sir.'' 
 
 "You're a lucky man," said Nicholas. 
 
 "Ha, ha, ha!" rejoined the collector. "No. Do you 
 think I am though, eh? Perhaps I may be, perhaps I may 
 be. I say, I couldn't have done much better if I had been 
 a young man, could I? You couldn't have done much bet- 
 ter yourself, could you — eh — could you?" With such 
 inquiries, and many more such, Mr. Lillyvick jerked his 
 elbow into Nicholas's side, and chuckled till his face became 
 quite purple in the attempt to keep down his satisfaction. 
 
 Next day the posters appeared in due course, and the 
 public were informed, in all the colours of the rainbow, and 
 in letters afflicted with every possible variation of spinal 
 deformity, how that Mr. Johnson would have the honour of 
 making his last appearance that evening, and how that an
 
 2o6 Mr. Dicke ns Goes to the Play 
 
 early application for places was requested, in consequence of 
 the extraordinary overflow attendant on his performances. 
 It being a remarkable fact in theatrical history, but one long 
 since established beyond dispute, that it is a hopeless en- 
 deavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be 
 first brought to believe that they will never get into it. 
 
 Nicholas was somewhat at a loss, on entering the theatre 
 at night, to account for the unusual perturbation and excite- 
 ment visible in the countenances of all the company, but he 
 was not long in doubt as to the cause, for before he could 
 make any inquiry respecting it Mr. Crummies approached, 
 and in an agitated tone of voice, informed him that there 
 was a London manager in the boxes. 
 
 "It's the phenomenon, depend upon it, sir," said 
 Crummies, dragging Nicholas to the little hole in the cur- 
 tain that he might look through at the London manager. 
 "I have not the smallest doubt it's the fame of the phe- 
 nomenon — that's the man: him in the great-coat and no 
 shirt-collar. She shall have ten pound a-week, Johnson; 
 she shall not appear on the London boards for a farthing 
 less. They shan't engage her either, unless they engage 
 Mrs. Crummies too — twenty pound a-week for the pair; or 
 I'll tell you what, I'll throw in myself and the two boys, and 
 they shall have the family for thirty. I can't say fairer 
 than that. They must take us all, if none of us will go 
 without the others. That's the way some of the London 
 people do, and it always answers. Thirty pound a-week. 
 It's too cheap, Johnson. It's dirt cheap." 
 
 Nicholas replied, that it certainly was; and Mr. Vincent 
 Crummies taking several huge pinches of snuff to compose 
 his feelings, hurried away to tell Mrs. Crummies that he had 
 quite settled the only terms that could be accepted, and had 
 resolved not to abate one single farthing. 
 
 When everybody was dressed and the curtain went up, 
 the excitement occasioned by the presence of the London
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 207 
 
 manager increased a thousand-fold. E.verybody happened 
 to know that the London manager had come down specially 
 to witness his or her own performance, and all were in a flut- 
 ter of anxiety and expectation. Some of those who were 
 not on in the first scene, hurried to the wings, and there 
 stretched their necks to have a peep at him; others stole up 
 into the two little private boxes over the stage-doors, and 
 from that position reconnoitred the London manager. Once 
 the London manager was seen to smile. He smiled at the 
 comic countryman's pretending to catch a blue-bottle, while 
 Mrs. Crummies was making her greatest effect. "Very 
 good, my fine fellow," said Mr. Crummies, shaking his fist 
 at the comic countryman when he came off, "you leave this 
 company next Saturday night." 
 
 In the same way, everybody who was on the stage beheld 
 no audience but one individual; everybody played to the 
 London manager. When Mr. Lenville in a sudden burst of 
 passion called the emperor a miscreant, and then biting his 
 glove, said, "But I must dissemble," instead of looking 
 gloomily at the boards and so waiting for his cue, as is 
 proper in such cases, he kept his eye fixed upon the London 
 manager. When Miss Bravassa sang her song at her lover, 
 who according to custom stood ready to shake hands with 
 her between the verses, they looked, not at each other but 
 at the London manager. Mr. Crummies died point blank 
 at him; and when the two guards came in to take the body 
 off after a very hard death, it was seen to open its eyes and 
 glance at the London manager. At length the London 
 manager was discovered to be asleep, and shortly after that 
 he woke up and went away, whereupon all the company fell 
 foul of the unhappy comic countryman, declaring that his 
 buffoonery was the sole cause; and Mr. Crummies said, that 
 he had put up with it a long time, but that he really couldn't 
 stand it any longer, and therefore would feel obliged by his 
 looking out for another engagement.
 
 208 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 All this was the occasion of much amusement to Nicholas, 
 whose only feeling upon the subject was one of sincere 
 satisfaction that the great man went away before he 
 appeared. He went through his part in the two last pieces 
 as briskly as he could, and having been received with 
 unbounded favour and unprecedented applause — so said 
 the bills for next day, which had been printed an hour or 
 two before — he took Smike's arm and walked home to bed. 
 
 With the post next morning came a letter from Newman 
 Noggs, very inky, very short, very dirty, very small, and 
 very mysterious, urging Nicholas to return to London 
 instantly; not to lose an instant; to be there at night if 
 possible. 
 
 "I will," said Nicholas, "Heaven knows I have re- 
 mained here for the best, and sorely against my own will; 
 but even now I may have dallied too long. What can have 
 happened? Smike, my good fellow, here — take my purse. 
 Put our things together, and pay what little debts we owe — 
 quick, and we shall be in time for the morning coach. I will 
 only tell them that we are going, and will return to you 
 immediately." 
 
 So saying, he took his hat, and hurrying away to the 
 lodgings of Mr. Crummies, applied his hand to the knocker 
 with such hearty good-will, that he awakened that gentle- 
 man, who was still in bed, and caused Mr. Bulph the pilot 
 to take his morning's pipe very nearly out of his mouth in 
 the extremity of his surprise. 
 
 The door being opened, Nicholas ran upstairs without 
 any ceremony, and bursting into the darkened sitting- 
 room on the one-pair front, found that the two Master 
 Crummleses had sprung out of the sofa-bedstead and were 
 putting on their clothes with great rapidity, under the im- 
 pression that it was the middle of the night, and the next 
 house was on fire. 
 
 Before he could undeceive them Mr. Crummies came
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 209 
 
 down in a flannel-gown and night-cap; and to him Nicholas 
 briefly explained that circumstances had occurred which 
 rendered it necessary for him to repair to London im- 
 mediately. 
 
 "So good bye," said Nicholas; "good bye, good bye." 
 
 He was half-way downstairs before Mr. Crummies had 
 sufficiently recovered his surprise to gasp out something 
 about the posters. 
 
 " I can't help it," replied Nicholas, " Set whatever I may 
 have earned this week against them, or if that will not repay 
 you, say at once what will. Quick, quick." 
 
 " We'll cry quits about that," returned Crummies. " But 
 can't we have one last night more?" 
 
 "Not an hour — not a minute," replied Nicholas, im- 
 patiently. 
 
 "Won't you stop to say something to Mrs. Crummies.'^" 
 asked the manager, following him down to the door. 
 
 "I couldn't stop if it were to prolong my life a score of 
 years," rejoined Nicholas. "Here, take my hand, and 
 with it my hearty thanks. — Oh! that I should have been 
 fooling here!" 
 
 Accompanying these words with an impatient stamp on 
 the ground, he tore himself from the manager's detaining 
 grasp, and darting rapidly down the street was out of sight 
 in an instant. 
 
 "Dear me, dear me," said Mr. Crummies, looking wist- 
 fully towards the point at which he had just disappeared; 
 "if he only acted like that, what a deal of money he'd draw! 
 He should have kept upon this circuit; he'd have been very 
 useful to me. But he don't know what's good for him. He 
 is an impetuous youth. Young men are rash, very rash." 
 
 Mr. Crummies being in a moralising mood, might possibly 
 have moralised for some minutes longer if he had not 
 mechanically put his hand towards his waistcoat pocket, 
 where he was accustomed to keep his snufiF. The absence 
 
 Z4
 
 210 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 of any pocket at all in the usual direction, suddenly recalled 
 to his recollection the fact that he had no waistcoat on; and 
 this leading him to a contemplation of the extreme scanti- 
 ness of his attire, he shut the door abruptly, and retired 
 upstairs with great precipitation. 
 
 Smike had made good speed while Nicholas was absent, 
 and with his help everything was soon ready for their de- 
 parture. They scarcely stopped to take a morsel of break- 
 fast, and in less than half an hour arrived at the coach-office : 
 quite out of breath with the haste they had made to reach 
 it in time. There were yet a few minutes to spare, so, hav- 
 ing secured the places, Nicholas hurried into a slopseller's 
 hard by, and bought Smike a great-coat. It would have 
 been rather large for a substantial yeoman, but the shopman 
 averring (and with considerable truth) that it was a most 
 uncommon fit, Nicholas would have purchased it in his 
 impatience if it had been twice the size. 
 
 As they hurried up to the coach, which was now in the 
 open street and all ready for starting, Nicholas was not 
 a little astonished to find himself suddenly clutched in a 
 close and violent embrace, which nearly took him oiff his 
 legs; nor was his amazement at all lessened by hearing the 
 voice of Mr. Crummies exclaim, "It is he — my friend, my 
 friend!" 
 
 "Bless my heart," cried Nicholas, struggling in the 
 manager's arms, "what are you about.-^" 
 
 The manager made no reply, but strained him to his 
 breast again, exclaiming as he did so, "Farewell, my noble, 
 my lion-hearted boy!" 
 
 In fact, Mr. Crummies, who could never lose any oppor- 
 tunity for professional display, had turned out for the 
 express purpose of taking a public farewell of Nicholas; and 
 to render it the more imposing, he was now, to that young 
 gentleman's most profound annoyance, inflicting upon him 
 a rapid succession of stage embraces, which, as everybody
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 211 
 
 knows, are performed by the embracer's laying his or her 
 chin on the shoulder of the object of affection, and looking 
 over it. This Mr. Crummies did in the highest style of 
 melodrama, pouring forth at the same time all the most 
 dismal forms of farewell he could think of, out of the stock 
 pieces. Nor was this all, for the elder Master Crummies 
 was going through a similar ceremony with Smike; while 
 Master Percy Crummies, with a very little second-hand 
 camlet-cloak, worn theatrically over his left shoulder, stood 
 by, in the attitude of an attendant officer, waiting to convey 
 the two victims to the scaffold. 
 
 The lookers-on laughed very heartily, and as it was as 
 well to put a good face upon the matter, Nicholas laughed 
 too when he had succeeded in disengaging himself; and 
 rescuing the astonished Smike, climbed up to the coach 
 roof after him, and kissed his hand in honour of the absent 
 Mrs. Crummies as they rolled away. 
 
 5 LONG AFTERWARDS 
 
 Long afterwards Nicholas found himself poring with the 
 utmost interest over a large play-bill hanging outside a 
 Minor Theatre which he had to pass on his way home, and 
 reading a list of the actors and actresses who had promised 
 to do honour to some approaching benefit, with as much 
 gravity as if it had been a catalogue of the names of those 
 ladies and gentlemen who stood highest upon the Book of 
 Fate, and he had been looking anxiously for his own. He 
 glanced at the top of the bill, with a smile at his own dull- 
 ness, as he prepared to resume his walk, and there saw an- 
 nounced, in large letters, with a large space between each 
 of them, "Positively the last appearance of Mr. Vincent 
 Crummies of Provincial Celebrity!!!" 
 
 "Nonsense!" said Nicholas, turning back again. "It 
 can't be."
 
 212 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 But there it was. In one line by itself was an announce- 
 ment of the first night of a new melodrama; in another line 
 by itself was an announcement of the last six nights of an 
 old one; a third line was devoted to the re-engagement of 
 the unrivalled African Knife-swallower, who had kindly 
 suffered himself to be prevailed upon to forego his country 
 engagements for one week longer; a fourth line announced 
 that Mr. Snittle Timberry, having recovered from his last 
 severe indisposition, would have the honour of appearing 
 that evening; a fifth line said that there were "Cheers, 
 Tears, and Laughter!" every night; a sixth, that that was 
 positively the last appearance of Mr. Vincent Crummies of 
 Provincial Celebrity. 
 
 "Surely it must be the same man," thought Nicholas. 
 "There can't be two Vincent Crummleses." 
 
 The better to settle this question he referred to the bill 
 again, and finding that there was a Baron in the first piece, 
 and that Roberto (his son) was enacted by one Master 
 Crummies, and Spaletro (his nephew) by one Master Percy 
 Crummies — their last appearances — and that, incidental to 
 that piece, was a characteristic dance by the characters, and 
 a Castanet pas seul by the Infant Phenomenon — her last 
 appearance — he no longer entertained any doubt; and pre- 
 senting himself at the stage door, and sending in a scrap of 
 paper with "Mr. Johnson" written thereon in pencil, was 
 presently conducted by a Robber with a very large belt and 
 buckle round his waist, and very large leather gauntlets on 
 his hands, into the presence of his former manager. 
 
 Mr. Crummies was unfeignedly glad to see him, and 
 starting up from before a small dressing-glass, with one 
 very bushy eyebrow stuck on crooked over his left eye, and 
 the fellow eyebrow and the calf of one of his legs in his hand, 
 embraced him cordially; at the same time observing, that it 
 would do Mrs. Crummles's heart good to bid him good-bye 
 before they went.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 213 
 
 "You were always a favourite of hers, Johnson," said 
 Crummies, "always were from the first. I was quite easy 
 in my mind about you from that first day you dined with 
 us. One that Mrs. Crummies took a fancy to was sure to 
 turn out right. Ah! Johnson, what a woman that is!" 
 
 "I am sincerely obliged to her for her kindness in this and 
 all other respects," said Nicholas. "But where are you 
 going, that you talk about bidding good-bye.?" 
 
 "Haven't you seen it in the papers?" said Crummies, 
 with some dignity. 
 
 "No," replied Nicholas. 
 
 "I wonder at that," said the manager. "It was among 
 the varieties. I had the paragraph here somewhere — but I 
 don't know — oh, yes, here it is." 
 
 So saying, Mr. Crummies, after pretending that he 
 thought he must have lost it, produced a square inch of 
 newspaper from the pocket of the pantaloons he wore in 
 private life (which, together with the plain clothes of several 
 other gentlemen, lay scattered about on a kind of dresser in 
 the room), and gave it to Nicholas to read: 
 
 "The talented Vincent Crummies, long favourably 
 known to fame as a country manager and actor of no ordi- 
 nary pretensions, is about to cross the Atlantic on an 
 histrionic expedition. Crummies is to be accompanied, we 
 hear, by his lady and gifted family. We know no man 
 superior to Crummies in his particular line of character, or 
 one who, whether as a public or private individual, could 
 carry with him the best wishes of a larger circle of friends. 
 Crummies is certain to succeed." 
 
 "Here's another bit," said Mr. Crummies, handing over a 
 still smaller scrap. "This is from the notices to correspon- 
 dents, this one." 
 
 Nicholas read it aloud. " * Philo-Dramaticus. Crummies, 
 the country manager and actor, cannot be more than forty- 
 three, or forty-four years of age. Crummies is not a Prus-
 
 214 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 sian, having been born at Chelsea.' Humph!" said 
 Nicholas, "that's an odd paragraph." 
 
 "Very," returned Crummies, scratching the side of his 
 nose, and looking at Nicholas with an assumption of great 
 unconcern. "I can't think who puts these things in. I 
 didn't." 
 
 Still keeping his eye on Nicholas, Mr. Crummies shook 
 his head twice or thrice with profound gravity, and remark- 
 ing, that he could not for the life of him imagine how the 
 newspapers found out the things they did, folded up the 
 extracts and put them in his pocket again. 
 
 "I am astonished to hear this news," said Nicholas. 
 " Going to America ! You had no such thing in contempla- 
 tion when I was with you." 
 
 "No," rephed Crummies, "I hadn't then. The fact is, 
 that Mrs. Crummies — most extraordinary woman, Johnson." 
 Here he broke off and whispered something in his ear. 
 
 "Oh!" said Nicholas, smiling. "The prospect of an 
 addition to your family?" 
 
 "The seventh addition, Johnson," returned Mr. 
 Crummies, solemnly. "I thought such a child as the 
 Phenomenon must have been a closer; but it seems we are 
 to have another. She is a very remarkable woman." 
 
 "I congratulate you," said Nicholas, "and I hope this 
 may prove a phenomenon too." 
 
 "Why, it's pretty sure to be something uncommon, I 
 suppose," rejoined Mr. Crummies. "The talent of the 
 other three is principally in combat and serious pantomime. 
 I should like this one to have a turn for juvenile tragedy; I 
 understand they want something of that sort in America 
 very much. However, we must take it as it comes. Per- 
 haps it may have a genius for the tight-rope. It may have 
 any sort of genius, in short, if it takes after its mother, 
 Johnson, for she is a universal genius; but, whatever its 
 genius is, that genius shall be developed."
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 215 
 
 Expressing himself after these terms, Mr. Crummies put 
 on his other eyebrow, and the calves of his legs, and then 
 put on his legs, which were of a yellowish flesh-colour, and 
 rather soiled about the knees, from frequent going down 
 upon those joints, in curses, prayers, last struggles, and 
 other strong passages. 
 
 While the ex-manager completed his toilet, he informed 
 Nicholas that as he should have a fair start in America, 
 from the proceeds of a tolerably good engagement which he 
 had been fortunate enough to obtain, and as he and Mrs 
 Crummies could scarcely hope to act for ever (not being 
 immortal, except in the breath of Fame and in a figurative 
 sense), he had made up his mind to settle there permanently, 
 in the hope of acquiring some land of his own which would 
 support them in their old age, and which they could after- 
 wards bequeath to their children. Nicholas, having highly 
 commended this resolution, Mr. Crummies went on to im- 
 part such further intelligence relative to their mutual 
 friends as he thought might prove interesting; informing 
 Nicholas, among other things, that Miss Snevellicci was 
 happily married to an affluent young wax-chandler who had 
 supplied the theatre with candles, and that Mr. Lillyvick 
 didn't dare to say his soul was his own, such was the tyran- 
 nical sway of Mrs. Lillyvick, who reigned paramount and 
 supreme. 
 
 Nicholas responded to this confidence on the part of Mr. 
 Crummies, by confiding to him his own name, situation, 
 and prospects, and informing him in as few general words as 
 he could, of the circumstances which had led to their first 
 acquaintance. After congratulating him with great hearti- 
 ness on the improved state of his fortunes, Mr. Crummies 
 gave him to understand that next morning he and his were 
 to start for Liverpool, where the vessel lay which was to 
 carry them from the shores of England, and that if Nicholas 
 wished to take a last adieu of Mrs. Crummies, he must
 
 2i6 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 repair with him that night to a farewell-supper, given in 
 honour of the family at a neighbouring tavern; at which 
 Mr. Snittle Timberry would preside while the honours of 
 the vice-chair would be sustained by the African Swallower. 
 
 The room being by this time very warm and somewhat 
 crowded, in consequence of the influx of four gentlemen who 
 had just killed each other in the piece under representation, 
 Nicholas accepted the invitation, and promised to return at 
 the conclusion of the performances; preferring the cool air 
 and twilight out of doors to the mingled perfume of gas, 
 orange-peel, and gunpowder, which pervaded the hot and 
 glaring theatre. 
 
 He availed himself of this interval to buy a silver snuff- 
 box — the best his funds would afford — as a token of remem- 
 brance for Mr. Crummies, and having purchased besides a 
 pair of earrings for Mrs. Crummies, a necklace for the 
 Phenomenon, and a flaming shirt-pin for each of the young 
 gentlemen, he refreshed himself with a walk, and returning 
 a little after the appointed time, found the lights out, the 
 theatre empty, the curtain raised for the night, and Mr. 
 Crummies walking up and down the stage expecting his 
 arrival. 
 
 "Timberry won't be long," said Mr. Crummies. "He 
 played the audience out to-night. He does a faithful black 
 in the last piece, and it takes him a little longer to wash 
 himself." 
 
 "A very unpleasant line of character, I should think?" 
 said Nicholas. 
 
 "No, I don't know," replied Mr. Crummies; "it comes off 
 easily enough, and there's only the face and neck. We had 
 a first-tragedy man in our company once, who, when he 
 played Othello, used to black himself all over. But that's 
 feeling a part and going into it as if you meant it; it isn't 
 usual; more's the pity." 
 
 Mr. Snittle Timberry now appeared, arm in arm with the
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 217 
 
 African Swallower, and, being introduced to Nicholas, raised 
 his hat half-a-foot, and said he was proud to know him. 
 The Swallower said the same, and looked and spoke remark- 
 ably like an Irishman. 
 
 "I see by the bills that you have been ill, sir," said 
 Nicholas to Mr. Timberry . " I hope you are none the worse 
 for your exertions to-night?" 
 
 Mr. Timberry, in reply, shook his head with a gloomy air, 
 tapped his chest several times with great significancy, and 
 drawing his cloak more closely about him, said, "But no 
 matter, no matter. Come!" 
 
 It is observable that when people upon the stage are in 
 any strait involving the very last extremity of weakness and 
 exhaustion, they invariably perform feats of strength re- 
 quiring great ingenuity and muscular power. Thus, a 
 wounded prince or bandit-chief, who is bleeding to death 
 and too faint to move, except to the softest music (and then 
 only upon his hands and knees), shall be seen to approach a 
 cottage door for aid, in such a series of writhings and twist- 
 ings, and with such curlings up of the legs, and such rollings 
 over and over, and such gettings up and tumblings down 
 again, as could never be achieved save by a very strong man 
 skilled in posture-making. And so natural did this sort of 
 performance come to Mr. Snittle Timberry, that on their 
 way out of the theatre and towards the tavern where the 
 supper was to be holden, he testified the severity of his re- 
 cent indisposition and its wasting effects upon the nervous 
 system, by a series of gymnastic performances which were 
 the admiration of all witnesses. 
 
 "Why, this is indeed a joy I had not looked for!" said 
 Mrs, Crummies, when Nicholas was presented. 
 
 "Nor I," replied Nicholas. "It is by a mere chance that 
 I have this opportunity of seeing you, although I would 
 have made a great exertion to have availed myself of it." 
 
 "Here is one whom you know," said Mrs. Crummies,
 
 2i8 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 thrusting forward the Phenomenon in a blue gauze frock, 
 extensively flounced, and trousers of the same; "and here 
 another — and another," presenting the Masters Crummies. 
 "And how is your friend, the faithful Digby?" 
 
 "Digby!" said Nicholas, forgetting at the instant that 
 this had been Smike's theatrical name. "Oh, yes. He's 
 quite — what am I saying? — he is very far from well." 
 
 "How!" exclaimed Mrs. Crummies, with a tragic recoil. 
 
 "I fear," said Nicholas, shaking his head, and making an 
 attempt to smile, "that your better-half would be more 
 struck with him now, than ever." 
 
 "What mean you?" rejoined Mrs. Crummies, in her most 
 popular manner. "Whence comes this altered tone?" 
 
 "I mean that a dastardly enemy of mine has struck at 
 me through him, and that while he thinks to torture me, he 
 
 inflicts on him such agonies of terror and suspense as 
 
 You will excuse me, I am sure," said Nicholas, checking 
 himself. "I should never speak of this, and never do, 
 except to those who know the facts, but for a moment I 
 forgot myself." 
 
 With this hasty apology Nicholas stooped down to salute 
 the Phenomenon, and changed the subject ; inwardly cursing 
 his precipitation, and very much wondering what Mrs. 
 Crummies must think of so sudden an explosion. 
 
 The lady seemed to think very little about it, for the 
 supper being by this time on table, she gave her hand to 
 Nicholas and repaired with a stately step to the left hand of 
 Mr. Snittle Timberry. Nicholas had the honour to support 
 her, and Mr. Crummies was placed upon the chairman's 
 right; the Phenomenon and the Masters Crummies sustained 
 the vice. 
 
 The company amounted in number to some twenty-five 
 or thirty, being composed of such members of the theatrical 
 profession, then engaged or disengaged in London, as were 
 numbered among the most intimate friends of Mr. and Mrs.
 
 The Vincent Crummies Company 219 
 
 Crummies. The ladies and gentlemen were pretty equally 
 balanced; the expenses of the entertainment being defrayed 
 by the latter, each of whom had the privilege of inviting one 
 of the former as his guest.
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens 
 
 221
 
 THE DRAMATIZATIONS OF 
 DICKENS 
 
 DE CAUSE of his great throng of tempting charac- 
 ters and because scene after scene in his tales is 
 a-tingle with the electricity of the dramatic, the novels 
 of Dickens have ever been prey to the ready playwright. 
 
 Just as no player worth his salt can follow Fagin or 
 Jingle or Sydney Carton through the pages of the books 
 without itching to embody them on the stage, so no 
 dramatist can read such scenes as the interrupted 
 Christmas dinner at Joe Gargery's or the tantalizing 
 dialogue between Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley 
 Headstone without feeling a strong impulse to put them 
 immediately into play form. 
 
 Comedies and melodramas and operettas have been 
 fashioned more or less faithfully from the Dickens 
 stories for the theatre of every country under the sun 
 and I have seen in one place or another a record of a 
 dramatization of every tale he ever told, save only 
 "Hunted Down." 
 
 John O'Toole as the Artful Dodger, Irving as Sikes 
 
 223
 
 224 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 and as Jingle, Jennie Lee as Joe, Tree as Fagin and as 
 John Jasper, Janauschek as Lady Dedlock, Lotta as the 
 Marchioness, Jefferson as Newman Noggs, W. J. Flor- 
 ence as Cuttle — these were famous performances. 
 
 Playgoers in America since 1900 might have seen the 
 stage version of "A Tale of Two Cities" which was called 
 "The Only Way" and which enlisted the services of 
 Henry Miller as Carton; Louis N. Parker's arrange- 
 ment of Copperfield, which he called "The Highway of 
 Life" and which had a brief and painful career at 
 Wallack's (the late Sir Herbert Tree played this in 
 London, doubling energetically as Peggotty and Mi- 
 cawber); a production in the grand manner of "Oliver 
 Twist," with Nat Goodwin as Fagin, Constance Collier 
 as Nancy, Lyn Harding as Bill, and Marie Doro, very 
 plaintive and feminine, as Oliver; Joseph Jefferson as 
 Caleb Plummer in a dramatization of "The Cricket on 
 the Hearth," which served him for many seasons; Lulu 
 Glaser as Dolly in "Dolly Varden," a pretty comic 
 opera made out of patches of "Barnaby Rudge," and, 
 in a musical show, none other than De Wolf Hopper try- 
 ing vainly to disguise his height and aspect behind the 
 spectacles and gaiters of Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 These, at least, I myself came across without looking 
 for them. Quite the contrary. Of an attempt to 
 search the records for a complete list of all the Dick- 
 ens plays, I am innocent. S. J. Adair Fitzgerald in his 
 book on Dickens and the stage has done that somewhat
 
 
 MADAME CEJLES'TEAwMABAMnKUIBPRAGE. 
 
 PUiiiAtci i JoLdby A.PARK . i^y Leonard I'^ .TaberiLacU WaLk. 
 
 A Dramatization of "A Tale of Two Cities," at the Lyceum Theatre, 
 
 London, i860 
 
 (From the Shaw Collection)
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens 225 
 
 ungrateful task quite sufficiently for all i,ime. Such a 
 search does, to be sure, take on the nature of a game of 
 hide-and-seek, so completely do some of the dramatiza- 
 tions lurk behind the new titles which the adaptors, for 
 one reason or another, would be pretty sure to give 
 them. 
 
 Most of us would recognize "Bleak House" in "Move 
 On: or the Crossing Sweeper" and in "Jo, the Waif: 
 or the Mystery of Chesney Wood." But would we be 
 quite so sure of "Chesney Wold," in which Janauschek 
 doubled with great gusto as Lady Dedlock and Hor- 
 tense? Most of us would recognize " The Golden Dust- 
 man," but how many would suspect "Hard Times" of 
 having inspired "Under the Earth: or Sons of Toil".'^ 
 The game grows more difficult when you go abroad and 
 must retain an unfamiliar association through transla- 
 tion into another tongue. Of course it took no great 
 penetration to detect the origins of the play called 
 "Klein Dorrit," which was running in Berlin in 1906, 
 but I vow I went to "Le Grillon du Foyer" at the Odeon 
 during the war, knowing quite well what "grillon" 
 meant and what "foyer," and yet without suspecting, 
 until the first-act was half unfolded, that I was seeing 
 my old friend Caleb Plummer again, Caleb listening 
 fondly to a cricket that was played in the fireplace by 
 an oboe, with its song written especially for the purpose 
 by Massenet. Most of us would recognize "Little 
 Em'ly" or "Lost Em'ly," but who would look for
 
 226 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Peggotty in a play called "The Deal Boatman"? And 
 who is a good enough Dickensian to detect at once the 
 novel dramatized in "Born with a Caul"? 
 
 Really, the explanation of all the Dickens plays lies in 
 the implications of that title. You trace it, of course, to 
 that second page in the first chapter of "David Copper- 
 field" where the story runs as follows: 
 
 I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in 
 the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether 
 sea-going people were short of money about that time, or 
 were short of faith and preferred cork jackets, I don't 
 know; all I know is, that there was but one solitary bidding, 
 and that was from an attorney connected with the bill- 
 broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the 
 balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from 
 drowning on any higher bargain. Consequently the adver- 
 tisement was withdrawn as a dead loss — for as to sherry, 
 my poor dear mother's own sherry was in the market then — 
 and ten years afterwards the caul was put up in a raffle 
 down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a- 
 crown a head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was 
 present myself, and I remember to have felt quite uncom- 
 fortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed 
 of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by an old 
 lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced 
 from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and 
 twopence halfpenny short — as it took an immense time and 
 a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavour without any 
 effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will be long remem- 
 bered as remarkable down there, that she was never 
 drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I 
 have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast 
 that she never had been on the water in her life, except
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens 22-] 
 
 upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was ex- 
 tremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation 
 at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the pre- 
 sumption to go "meandering" about the world. It was in 
 vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps 
 included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She 
 always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinc- 
 tive knowledge of the strength of her objection : "Let us 
 have no meandering." 
 
 Of the quality and abundance of Dickens's genius 
 there is, in all the books, no better exhibit than that one 
 paragraph, not merely because the deathless character 
 which it presents is in herself a delightful acquaintance, 
 but because his capacity to create such characters was 
 so limitless that he could afford to cast her off casually. 
 She is never named. She enters a great novel on its 
 second page, makes her exit on the same page, and is 
 never heard of again. And it is that capacity which 
 lends the greatest regret to the fact that Dickens never 
 did try hard enough to shift from his habitual medium 
 to the dramatic form, for he had the kind of gift at 
 creation of human beings which is inseparable from the 
 dramatic form and which separates the great play- 
 wrights like ^schylus and Shakespeare and Ibsen from 
 the lesser playwrights of each renaissance of the theatre. 
 
 Dickens, as has been said, did try his hand at play- 
 writing and even thought, at times, of doing his own 
 dramatizations. He had a finger, though not the con- 
 trolling one, in the "No Thoroughfare" play, of which
 
 228 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 Wilkie Collins wrote the major part and which was pre- 
 sented by Fechtef at the Adelphi in London while 
 Dickens was in America on his second visit. The play 
 had gone off the boards by the time he returned, so 
 that he had to go to Paris to see it under the title of 
 "L'Abime." Long before that, he had been quite 
 pathetically eager to be permitted to dramatize his own 
 "Ohver Twist." Under date of October, 1838, he was 
 writing confidently to Frederick Yates, the actor- 
 manager, as follows: 
 
 Supposing we arrange preliminaries for our mutual sat- 
 isfaction I propose to dramatize "Oliver Twist" for the first 
 night of next season. I have never seen Mrs. Honner, but 
 from the mere circumstance of her being a Mrs., I should 
 say at once that she was "a many sizes too big" for Oliver 
 Twist. If it be played by a female it should be a very sharp 
 girl of 13 or 14, or the character would be an absurdity. 
 I don't see any possibility of any other house doing it be- 
 fore your next opening night. If they do, it must be done 
 in a very extraordinary manner, as the story, unlike that of 
 "Pickwick," is an involved and complicated one. I am 
 quite certain that no one can have heard what I am going 
 to do with the different characters in the end, inasmuch as, 
 at present, I don't quite know myself. So we are tolerably 
 safe on that head. I am quite certain that your name as the 
 Jew and mine as the author would knock any other attempt 
 quite out of the field. 
 
 In the same year, a notation in Macready's Diary 
 reads as follows : 
 
 "Forster and Dickens called and I told them of the
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens 229 
 
 utter impossibility of 'Oliver Twist' for any dramatic 
 purpose." 
 
 The memory of which disappointment was probably 
 burning Dickens's ears that night a little later when he 
 and Forster did go to see "Oliver Twist" at the Surrey- 
 theatre, a dramatization so painful to the father of that 
 workhouse child that, as Forster tells, "in the middle 
 of the first scene he laid him down upon the floor in a 
 corner of the box and never rose from it until the drop- 
 scene fell." 
 
 Indeed, he witnessed or heard of all such stage ver- 
 sions with mingled emotions, an enormous curiosity as 
 to how it had been managed, an intense anguish when 
 the impersonations departed absurdly from the por- 
 traits he had painted, and a genuine and undying exas- 
 peration because, under the loose laws of the day, he 
 could never deflect any of the royalties or profits into 
 his own coffers. Against the pirates who swarmed 
 aboard each book of his as soon as it had appeared (or 
 even while it was in the process of appearing) he lay 
 about him with a bludgeon all his days and always 
 without the slightest effect on the pirates or on the 
 laws which permitted them to live at his expense. In 
 the middle of the farewell supper to Vincent Crummies, 
 he could not resist pausing and bidding Nicholas, of all 
 people, get up and speak his mind on this, a subject 
 which could not, by the widest stretch of the imagina- 
 tion, be supposed to interest Nicholas.
 
 230 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 This blast, seemingly, was aimed at a pot-boiling 
 playwright named William MoncriefF, whose three-act 
 adaptation called "Sam Weller; or, the Pickwickians" 
 was running in the Strand with a final scene showing 
 Sam and Mr. Pickwick at the Coronation of Victoria. 
 It was accompanied by a complacent "Advertisement" 
 in which Moncrieff said : 
 
 Some injudicious friends of Mr. Dickens, among his breth- 
 ren of the Press (preserve me from such friends say I — of 
 course I do not allude to the manly, fair-dealing, daily 
 Press, to which I am under the greatest obligations) have 
 chosen to display much soreness at the complete manner in 
 which I have triumphed over all the difficulties I had to 
 encounter in my undertaking. Every wretched mongrel 
 can, I am aware, dramatize the "Pickwick Papers" now that 
 I have shown them how, by closely copying all I have done; 
 as is the case with a low minor theatre, in the purlieus of 
 London — once respectable; but even the original author 
 will admit that he had never contemplated his matter could 
 have been so compressed, and his incidents put in so con- 
 nected a form, as they assume in "Sam Weller"! — a char- 
 acter, by the by, which I should think was only an after- 
 conception of its creator, and formed no part of his original 
 projection. Mr. Dickens has, by far, too much genius, to 
 nourish any of the petty feelings evinced by his fostering 
 friends! whose articles, being those of the "high, intellec- 
 tual" Sunday-school of criticism, are greatly too genteel and 
 abstruse for every-day reading, but must be kept for Lord's- 
 day examination only ! Why these gentry should object to 
 my having dramatised Mr. Dickens, I cannot conceive. Sir 
 Walter Scott, a name, I humbly submit, of sufficient merit 
 to be mentioned in the same page with the writer of the 
 "Pickwick Club," always looked upon Mr. Pocock's and
 
 
 
 
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 The Dramatizations of Dickens 231 
 
 Mr. Terry's stage versions of those immortal fictions, "Rob 
 Roy"and"Ivanhoe,"rather as a compliment than otherwise; 
 and I had undoubted precedent for what I did in the in- 
 stance of the first dramatic wTiter of all time — Shakespeare! 
 who has scarcely a play that is not founded on some previous 
 drama, history, chronicle, popular tale, or story. What then 
 means the twaddle of these "high intellectuals" in so pathet- 
 ically condoling with Mr. Dickens, on the penalties he pays 
 for his popularity in being put on the stage? Let these 
 "high intellectuals" speak to Mr. Dickens's publishers, and 
 they will learn it has rendered them, by increasing their sale, 
 the most fortunate of Chapmen and dealers! It is wasting 
 time to show the absurdity of these addle-pated persons, 
 for their "blow hot and blow cold" articles are as incompre- 
 hensible to themselves as they are to everybody else. In 
 one of them, I am, first of all, abused for having sacrilegious- 
 ly meddled with any of Mr. Dickens's matter; and then 
 abused for not having meddled with it enough. The reader 
 is told that everybody is pleased with my piece; and is then 
 informed that nobody should be pleased with it. Two or 
 three low scenes between Sam and his father, taken from 
 the original work, are lauded as "written in a fine spirit of 
 humanity"; while some rather polite dialogues, that I have 
 introduced, between the ladies, are blackguarded by this 
 "high intellectual" as vulgar. 
 
 As soon as the number of "Nicholas" containing 
 the Crummies dinner and the Dickens explosion was on 
 the streets, the new^spapers were all pointing slyly at 
 Moncrieff who immediately retorted in a long and furi- 
 ous proclamation, in which he issued this defi: 
 
 Let Mr. Dickens — and he has five months before him — 
 set his wits to work again and finish his" Nicholas Nickleby"
 
 232 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 better than I have done, and I shall sink into the primitive 
 mire, from which I have, for the moment, attempted to 
 emerge by catching at the hem of his garment. 
 
 And then, growing angrier and angrier because Dick- 
 ens had quoted one of his agreements to write seven 
 melodramas for five pounds, Moncrieff continued to put 
 the shoe on as follows: 
 
 Great as his talents are, he is not to fancy himself "Sir 
 Oracle," and think that when he speaks no dog should 
 "bark"; he should not attempt to "bestride us like a 
 Colossus," and grumble that we "poor petty mortals should 
 seek to creep between his legs." With all possible good feel- 
 ing, I would beg to hint to Mr. Dickens that the depreciating 
 the talents of another is but a shallow and envious way of 
 attempting to raise one's own — that the calling the offend- 
 ing party a thief, sneering at his pecuniary circumstances 
 and indulging in empty boasts of tavern treats are weapons 
 of offence usually resorted to only by the very lowest orders. 
 Nothing is more easy than to be ill-natured. I confess I 
 write for my living, and it is no discredit to Mr. Dickens to 
 say that those who know him best are aware he is as much 
 indebted to his pen for the dinner of the day as I can possibly 
 be. With respect to the "six hundred generations''' through 
 which Mr. Dickens expects his "pedestal should remain un- 
 shaken in the Temple of Fame," I can assure him I have 
 never anticipated that any credit I might derive from 
 dramatising Nicholas Nickleby would more than endure 
 beyond as many days. Having himself unsuccessfully tried 
 the Drama, there is some excuse for Mr. Dickens's petulance 
 towards its professors; but it is somewhat illiberal and 
 ungrateful that, being indebted to the stage for so many 
 of his best characters — Sam Weller, from Beazley's
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens 233 
 
 "Boarding House," for example — he should deny it a 
 few in return. 
 
 All of which hot interchange is worth going over now 
 if only to remind ourselves that it derives its grotesque 
 one-sidedness largely from our present perspective, our 
 knowledge of the stature of Dickens and of the insig- 
 nificance of his opponent. Would not some of us, at the 
 time, have watched with amusement from the sidelines 
 and, as like as not, thought that Moncrieff rather had 
 him there and there and there .'* On such incapacity to 
 judge men and matters at close range, the Moncrieffs 
 flourish, and their heirs even unto the Dr. Cooks and the 
 Hohenzollerns of our own day. 
 
 Thirty years later, Dickens was still suffering. He 
 had gone to America with the manuscript of the "No 
 Thoroughfare" dramatization tucked under his arm 
 and the incorrigible hope that he could arrange for its 
 production here before the local pirates bestirred them- 
 selves. But exactly ten days after the first number of 
 "No Thoroughfare" as a story had reached the Port of 
 Boston, behold a stage version unfolded, with mingled 
 talents for theft and prophecy, at a local theatre, of 
 which the playbill, visible now in the Shaw Collection 
 at the library in Harvard College, blandly boasted of 
 the enterprise of the management in serving its public 
 so quickly. Dickens wrote at once to Collins: 
 
 Pirates are producing their own wretched versions in all 
 directions, thus (as Wills would say) anticipating and
 
 234 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 glutting "the market." I registered our play as the prop- 
 erty of Ticknor and Fields, American citizens. But, be- 
 sides that the law on the point is extremely doubtful, the 
 manager of the Museum Theatre, Boston, instantly an- 
 nounced his version (you may suppose what it is and how 
 it is done, when I tell you that it was playing within ten 
 days of the arrival of the Christmas number). Thereupon 
 Ticknor and Fields gave him notice that he mustn't play it. 
 Of course he knew very well that if an injunction were ap- 
 plied for against him, there would be an immediate howl 
 against my persecution of an innocent, and he played it. 
 Then the whole host of pirates rushed in and it is being done, 
 in some mangled form or other, everywhere. 
 
 And later he wrote to Fechter: "WTiy should they 
 pay for the piece as you play it, when all they want is my 
 name, and they can get that for nothing?" 
 
 The most extreme use of that name which I have 
 found is in another playbill at Harvard College which 
 contains the items shown opposite: 
 
 But probably the most curious freaks in the whole 
 museum of the Dickensians are the dramatization of 
 "Nicholas Nickleby," reported by Thackeray in an 
 article in Fraser's Magazine for 1842 and another of 
 "David Copperfield," described by B. W. Matz, in a 
 playbill sent him from Winnipeg in 1906, 
 
 Thackeray was full of laughter after seeing at the 
 Ambigu-Comique in Paris a Neekolass Neeklbee, un- 
 folded at a school called "le Paradis des Enfans" in 
 "le Yorksheer." It will be noted that John Browdie, 
 described as a "drover," gives lessons on the clarionet
 
 W. 15.1 
 
 ^ftiitburati 9l^rl|it)i Cliratrr. 
 
 IN. 89. 
 
 *y Ta cmMHttr—pMiiftinj tainiiinfltfcatta»TwL»tin«fcM«tu>erwftBMtiiini nf im miii» n iii»j m imi_ j._t.^ 
 
 ^Thursday, August 30, and Saturday, September 1, lOkQ. 
 
 LAST NICHT BUT TWO OF THE PRESENT SEASON ! ! 
 
 4th ]Vi^ht of the Celebrated Serenaders from St James* Theatre, London, 
 
 G.W.PELL, IT.F.BRIG6S, 
 
 The Original ' Bones/ of St James* Theatre. 
 
 The best Banjo Player In the World, and 
 
 WHO ARE ENGAGED FOR POSITIVELY SIX MGHTS OXLY. 
 
 BOZTS JOBA. the Hero of CharlM XMckena' " A.inertcan Notes," and the only Touth of Colour ever before 
 the FubUc. He la thus described by Charles Dlckeas in his "American Notes for General Circulation."— 
 
 " — SuddenlT the Ihclv liero i1i«1ict in to the rescue. Iiwtantlv the fi.liller <»rin9 and t'oes nv it tixilh «nil nail :— There 1« new energy m 
 llic Umhnurine — new lBu;;htiT in the danceri — new bri{;bllineM in the very c.inrfles. Sin:.'le Shutfl^ ilouhle shullle. cut and lun* cut ; anap- 
 fvin); hitfinfrrra. roHinc hij eyes turning; in his knees, pmenlin^ the backs ot his lep in front, !i|>ininng abnit on hii toes anil heels like no 
 ihin/ hut the nian'a finu-eri on the tambourine : daniing with two left lees, l»o ri:;ht leifs. two wooden ii-gs. two wire V-'i*. nv.i iiprinf; legf. 
 all torts of legs ami no le),r,_Hhai is thi« to bim » AtH in what walk of liti-. or d.imc of life, does inin ever gel such sliinnUtio;; applauae as 
 Thunder* about bim, when, after having danced hit partner otTher li»e',»nd hiniM-lftoo, he finisliciibv calling for Miinething to driiik, with the 
 rDtckle Ufa million counterfeit .lim irons in one inimitable sound. ' 
 
 ■•:v<>r> l»Ad.v NliniiKI CO nnd «eo U%vm.— Tlm€>». niMo.— T»» ^nnaif*-r. 
 
 At the end of the F.r>t .\ct of -The School for Diplomacy.- .M.>srs I'l.l.l.. Jl HA. nn.I liKlGUS *M ^mvc the IIK.-T 
 
 I'.MlTr.f dicir 
 
 AMERICAN 
 
 SONO, (New.) - " "Walk along, John," 
 
 REFRAIN. - " Poor Old Ned," 
 
 SONG. - - " Negro's Courtship." 
 
 SOLO & CHORUS. (New,) " Stop Dat Knocking," - nw, o -w T»Ek.T. 
 
 SOLO. - - (on the Bones,) - - Mr O. W. FKLL 
 
 f^L^^ Festival Ociri,ce''Original''BOZ'SJUBA. 
 §3^ Plantation JDance— Original" BOX'S Jy^^;^ 
 
 BOZ'S JUBA. 
 
 Mr G. Vr. PKLL. 
 
 Mr T. F. BRIG08. 
 
 JUBA Si Company. 
 - ^l^j 
 
 \ri<M' 4li<' Olio. lh«> %«'«on<i An of lln* «oiimmI>. 
 
 liUcy Long, In Character, (Original,) Boz's JUBA. 
 
 Boz's Juba Showbill
 
 The Dramatizations of Dickens 235 
 
 at the school and that the play becomes unduly con- 
 cerned with Smike (pronounced Smeek). Smeek, hav- 
 ing been discovered to be the heir to the nearby Claren- 
 don estates, is hidden in the Cadger's Cavern a thou- 
 sand feet below the Thames, is rescued by Neekolass and 
 ultimately becomes Lord Smeek. 
 
 The discovery by Matz is that a play called "What 
 Women W^ill Do," by one Harry Jackson, contained the 
 following cast of characters : " Wilkins Micawber, Daniel 
 Peggotty, Hiram Peggotty, Uriah Heep, James Steer- 
 forth, David Copperfield, Sheriff Dudley, Em'ly, Rosa 
 Dartle, Mrs. Peggotty, Mrs. Micawber and Wilkins 
 Micawber, Jr." And the program further reveals that 
 one scene — a touch that would have brightened the eye 
 of Crummies himself — was laid in "Em'ly's Apartment 
 in Paris." 
 
 These, no doubt, were the worst of them. But surely 
 in the best of them there was something lacking — a 
 falling short that would have made not Mr. Dickens 
 alone but all of us want to lie down on the floor in the 
 corner of the box. They could make a play out of the 
 unended tale of "Edwin Drood," and indeed, in the one 
 they did make, they contrived (rather in the manner of 
 a fellow lifting himself by his own bootstraps) to prove 
 that Edwin was not murdered after all. They could 
 make a dozen plays out of the drama that is in that 
 rushing, sunlit stream of life which he called "David 
 Copperfield." But at best the maker of such drama-
 
 236 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 tizations is ever a little too much like one who comes 
 beaming from the shore with a pailful of salt water 
 and cries out in the streets: "Behold my version of the 
 Atlantic."
 
 SLEIGHT OF HAND 
 
 Dickens, who was no mean conjuror, writes his own 
 playbill. 
 
 The Unparalleled Necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos, 
 educated cabalistically in the Orange Groves of Salamanca 
 and the Ocean Caves of Alum Bay. 
 
 THE LEAPING CARD WONDER 
 
 Two cards being drawn from the pack by one of the 
 company, and placed, with the pack, in the Necromancer's 
 box, will leap forth at the command of any lady of not less 
 than eighty years of age. 
 
 i^*if. This wonder is the result of nine years' seclusion in the 
 mines of Russia. 
 
 THE PYRAMID WONDER 
 
 A shilling being lent to the Necromancer by any gentle- 
 man of not less than twelve months, or more than one 
 hundred years, of age, and carefully marked by the said 
 gentleman, will disappear from within a brazen box, at the 
 word of command, and pass through the hearts of an in- 
 finity of boxes, which will afterwards build themselves into 
 pyramids and sink into a small mahogany box, at the 
 Necromancer's bidding. 
 
 237
 
 238 Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 Five thousand guineas were paid for the acquisition 
 of this wonder, to a Chinese Mandarin, who died of grief 
 immediately after parting with his secret. 
 
 THE CONFLAGRATION WONDER 
 
 A card being drawn from the pack by any lady, not under 
 a direct and positive promise of marriage, will be immedi- 
 ately named by the Necromancer, destroyed by fire, and 
 reproduced from its own ashes. 
 
 :^,*<^ An annuity of one thousand pounds has been offered 
 to the Necromancer by the directors of the Sun Fire Office for 
 the secret of this wonder — and refused! ! ! 
 
 THE LOAF OF BREAD WONDER 
 
 The watch of a truly prepossessing lady of any age, 
 single or married, being locked by the Necromancer in a 
 strong box, will fly at the word of command from within 
 that box into the heart of an ordinary half-quartern loaf, 
 whence it shall be cut out in the presence of the whole com- 
 pany, whose cries of astonishment will be audible at a 
 distance of some miles. 
 
 THE TRAVELLING DOLL WONDER 
 
 The travelling doll is composed of solid wood through- 
 out, but, by putting on a travelling dress of the sim- 
 plest construction, becomes invisible, performs enormous 
 journeys in half a minute, and passes from visibility to 
 invisibility with an expedition so astonishing that no eyes 
 can follow its transformations. 
 
 :^*:^ The Necromancer* s attendant usually faints on behold- 
 ing this wonder, and is only to be revived by the administration 
 of brandy and water.
 
 Sleight of Hand 239 
 
 THE PUDDING WONDER 
 
 The company having agreed among themselves to offer 
 to the Necromancer, by way of loan, the hat of any gentle- 
 man whose head has arrived at maturity of size, the 
 Necromancer, without removing that hat for an instant 
 from before the eyes of the delighted company, will light a 
 fire in it, make a plum-pudding in his magic saucepan, boil 
 it over the said fire, produce it in two minutes thoroughly 
 done, cut it, and dispense it in portions to the whole com- 
 pany, for their consumption then and there; returning the 
 hat at last, wholly uninjured by fire, to its lawful owner. 
 
 ^*:^, The extreme liberality of this wonder awakening the 
 jealousy of the beneficent Austrian Government, when ex- 
 hibited in Milan, the Necromancer had the honour to be 
 seized, and confined for five years in the fortress of that city.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 605 854 9 
 
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