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LETTERS 
 
 FROM A 
 
 THEATRICAL SCENE-PAINTER; 
 
 BEING 
 
 SKETCHES OF THE MINOR THEATRES OF LONDON 
 AS THEY WERE TWENTY YEARS AGO, 
 
 Printed for Private Circulation only. 
 
 iLonlion: 
 
 MARCUS WARD & CO., 67, 68, CHANDOS STREET, 
 
 And royal ULSTER WORKS, BELFAST. 
 
 1880. 
 

En SjL 
 ISSO 
 
 y 
 
 Ci 
 
 Oi 
 
 tii 
 
 vO 
 
 a: 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 w '^HE following sketches have no intentional 
 application whatever to any persons or things 
 ^ of the present date. The theatrical profession has 
 <of late years gained, and deservedly so, a high 
 
 tV 
 
 y degree of estimation and respect, such as it never 
 
 ^before enjoyed ; and it is not unreasonable to 
 
 — suppose that some of the general improvement 
 
 ^ which was initiated by Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft 
 
 3.in Tottenham Street, and still culminates at their 
 (A 
 
 j/i house in the Haymarket, may have percolated 
 ^downwards into the New Cut and elsewhere, 
 y-and converted the transpontine theatres into 
 
4 
 
 Preface. 
 
 ‘‘ temples of the drama of the staid, orthodox, 
 and severely proper kind. The Effingham Saloon, 
 for example, of which some description is given in 
 the following pages, and which constituted the 
 most pronounced type of the Minor pure and 
 simple (if those particular terms are suitable to the 
 case), was pulled down some time ago, and the 
 theatre by which its site is occupied is of a very 
 much better class. The Marylebone, and Victoria, 
 also, and perhaps others, have been altogether 
 regenerated. Still, among the great number of 
 people who take a keen interest in the stage, there 
 will perhaps be some who may contrive to spend 
 half-an-hour not altogether unpleasantly in visiting 
 with the present WTiter some spots in the dramatic 
 world which may probably have lain outside their 
 own range of theatre-going. 
 
 While extracting amusement, but in no ill- 
 natured spirit, from some of the doings at minor 
 theatres, the Author wishes in justice to them to 
 say, that even the humblest of those places com^ 
 pared very favourably, and greatly to their credit. 
 
Preface. 
 
 5 
 
 with the more pretentious houses, in point of the 
 regard which was shown for propriety. Such may 
 still be the case. For, taking, for example, “ Her 
 Majesty’s” and Covent Garden in their characters 
 of theatres of the highest class of all, it may fairly 
 be laid to their charge that the subject matter of 
 (for instance) Rigoletto, and that of the Traviata, 
 is open to exception, as are also, on grounds of 
 another kind, scenes such as the cemetery dance in 
 Roberto, and that of the display which is some- 
 times made of six coffins on the stage in the last act 
 of Lucrezia. And in what terms can the quality 
 of Formosa, a stock piece at Drury Lane, be 
 described } 
 
 As for the feeling and demeanour of the high- 
 class and low-class audiences respectively, the 
 tempest of applause which invariably hastened to 
 drown the conclusion of the time-honoured senti- 
 ment The man who would insult defenceless 
 
 woman ” used to be a more comfortable thing 
 
 to note than the proceedings, with reference to 
 some of the humbler feminine persons on the stage. 
 
6 
 
 Preface. 
 
 of the gilded youth which filled the stalls at the 
 West End. 
 
 Also, what are, or were, commonly known as 
 
 leg-pieces ” (a term hardly requiring interpreta- 
 tion for even the most obtuse perceptions), with 
 their lean allowance of drapery, would not have 
 been at all to the taste of a Hoxton audience. 
 
 The truth is, that Mile End grows as strong a 
 crop of good fellows, in their own way, and of 
 well-disposed women, as Belgravia does ; and a 
 full and fair comparison might possibly disclose 
 the fact, that the amusements of the classes which 
 ought to be the promoters of good taste, propriety, 
 and of the wholesome forms of enjoyment, are 
 not, in every particular, so very much more 
 admirable than those of their humbler neighbours 
 after all. 
 
 T. W. ERLE. 
 
 I, Cambridge Gate, Regent’s Park, 
 
 June^ 1880 , 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ‘ Adelbert the Deserter ; or, The Robbers of the Black 
 Forest,” at the Effingham, . . - _ 9 
 
 ‘Catherine Howard; or. Woman's Ambition,” with the 
 Pantomime of “Guy Faux,” at the Royal Grecian, 22 
 ‘The Hunter of the Alps,” at the Marylebone, - 30 
 
 ‘The Beguiled One,” at the Britannia, - - - 37 
 
 ‘OCEOLA,” AT THE SURREY, - - - - “ 41 
 
 ‘Love and Crime,” at the Victoria, - - - 44 
 
 ‘ Third Class and First Class ; or. The Career of a 
 Widow’s Son,” at the Royal Britannia, - - 54 
 
 ‘ The String of Pearls ; or. The Barber Fiend of Fleet 
 Street,” at the Royal Britannia, - - - 63 
 
 ‘Destiny; or. The Broken Heart,” at the Royal 
 Victoria, -82 
 
 ‘The Foundlings of the Sea; or, The Outcast Son,” 
 
 AT THE Victoria, - - - - - - 99 
 
 ‘The Brigand of the Blind Mine,” at the Marylebone, 104 
 
*’ ' I 
 
 
 , jr - 
 
THE ROYAL EFFINGHAM. 
 
 HE performances at the ‘‘ Royal Eff.” do not 
 
 ^ begin till seven, so that, by dint of an expe- 
 ditious hansom, and leaving London early in the 
 afternoon, you may get there in time for the first 
 piece, ‘‘ The Englishman in India.” It is not, how- 
 ever, anything very startling. The funny man of 
 the Efif. is a low-comedian, who devotes his 
 energies to “doing” Buckstone, and makes up very 
 like him ; so much so indeed that his appearance is 
 suggestive of the ghost of Buckstone gone to the 
 bad, or rather, Buckstone gone to the worse, or 
 worst. However, he is such an established favourite 
 with the R. E. public, that all his points are ap- 
 plauded with cries of “ Brayvo, Simpkins!” One 
 little contretemps occurred. A lady had to fall 
 
 B 
 
lO 
 
 The Royal Effingham, 
 
 dead at some point in the piece, but the disposi- 
 tion of her drapery chancing to be unfortunate, 
 such a formidable disclosure of her legs took place, 
 that she was obliged to have a momentary resur- 
 rection in order to rectify her arrangements in that 
 quarter. 
 
 Adelbert the Deserter ; or, The Robbers of the 
 Black Forest,’' is a pleasing piece well acted, and 
 romantic withal, though written by an unhappy 
 gent (for how can he be otherwise !) of the name 
 of Smithyes. 
 
 Scene First introduces the spectator to a spot in 
 the Black Forest with an inn ; one of those inns 
 where travellers are “ taken in, and done for^ 
 Enter a soldier — Adelbert, in fact — who, as after- 
 wards transpires, has deserted from his regiment, 
 in consequence of the undue promotion to its 
 colonelcy of some sprig of aristocracy. He has 
 much difficulty in making the churlish landlord 
 give him lodging for the night. 
 
 Scene Second . — The inn parlour. The soldier 
 making merry, maliciously watched by the host 
 and hostess, who practise various devices for his 
 destruction. These are all artfully frustrated by 
 the skill of the waiting-maid Rosalie, the future 
 heroine of the piece, who has fallen in love with 
 the handsome guest. Care is taken to disclose in 
 
The Royal Effingham. ii 
 
 the course of the drama that she is an orphan, 
 since it would have detracted from the interest 
 which should attach itself to the character she 
 sustains if she had been the offspring of parties so 
 scandalously regardless of moral rectitude as the 
 innkeeper and his wife. With reference to this 
 consideration, also, she is made to take an early 
 opportunity of expressing the objection she has 
 always entertained to the murderous practices 
 which she has been compelled to witness. It must, 
 however, be admitted, that the stimulus of love has 
 proved to be necessary for evoking her intervention 
 on behalf of a victim. Eventually a second guest, 
 an old gentleman of distingue appearance, arrives, 
 and after supper he and the soldier retire to rest 
 in the same apartment. 
 
 Scene Third . — A glen in the Black Forest, in 
 which the scenic artist of the Eff. has achieved 
 effects in the “ savage gorge” line far excelling any 
 conceptions of Salvator Rosa. Here a meeting 
 takes place of the innkeeper with certain mur- 
 derous accomplices f the robbers of the Black 
 Forest,” to wit), and an agreement is come to, nein. 
 con., that the two guests are to be put out of the 
 way forthwith. The make-up of the several 
 accomplices forms each a tableau in itself. The 
 management at the R. E. obviously enjoys the 
 
12 
 
 The Royal Effingham. 
 
 advantage of a complete practical acquaintance 
 with all the attributes of ruffianism in their most 
 minute details. One of the villains displays the 
 results of a guilty mind by such dark furrows 
 across his brow, that he looks as if his forehead 
 had been subjected to the action of a dirty rake. 
 Another betokens the deep stains upon his con- 
 science by so wholesale an outlay of burnt cork 
 upon his face, that his features are almost as black 
 as those of a Christy minstrel, or of a maid-of-all- 
 work at a lodging-house, who usually, poor thing, 
 would seem from her appearance to avail herself 
 of the coal-scuttle as a pillow. Even his hands are 
 blackened also ! so that the beholder is naturally 
 enough impressed with the conviction that the 
 gentleman must have contemplated turning Ethio- 
 pian serenader, and that, upon the occurrence of 
 circumstances causing him to modify his intentions 
 in that respect, the washing of his person was inad- 
 vertently omitted. And the consumption of Berlin 
 wool, required to form the long sable locks of the 
 whole party taken together, must have been such 
 as to have imparted a feverish impulse to the 
 worsted trade. 
 
 Scene Fourth . — The bedroom in the inn. The 
 soldier communicates to the old gentleman certain 
 warnings he has received from Rosalie, which are 
 
The Royal Effingham. 
 
 13 
 
 confirmed by the discovery of the bed-pillow being 
 stained with blood on its under side. This point, 
 effectively handled as it is, constitutes an effect so 
 thrilling as to discompose the circulation of the 
 spectator for some time. Presently, the assassins 
 are heard tramping one by one up the narrow 
 stairs leading to the apartment. Seven or eight of 
 them in succession are artistically gagged by the 
 old gentleman with his pocket handkerchief, and 
 then stabbed by the soldier and thrown aside. 
 The old gentleman, being apparently of a jocular 
 turn of mind, embellishes the progress of the trans- 
 action with a little comic business, by taking a 
 sonorous pinch of snuff after polishing off each 
 man. At last one of the robbers falls backwards 
 down the staircase and thus alarms the rest, who 
 set the house on fire. Grand tableau of blazing 
 house, like the last scene in the Prophete, with 
 Rosalie in the middle, in a state of warm excite- 
 ment, brandishing about her arms amid falling 
 beams. A ruddy glow of flame, involving the 
 employment of probably a dozen or more additional 
 pipkins of fat at the wings, intensifies the effect of 
 this spectacle, which impressively concludes the 
 first act. 
 
 Act Second, Scene First . — Open country, with 
 one road leading, as denoted by a fingerpost in the 
 
14 The Royal Effingha 7 n, 
 
 foreground, to Berlin, and another in an opposite 
 direction. The landscape is, in fact, a view of 
 Runnymede, executed with commendable fidelity, 
 and bearing testimony to the care with which 
 King John must have been put upon the stage at 
 some former period in the annals of the R. E. It 
 may be observed, with reference to the general 
 subject of theatrical representation, the remark 
 applying to Her Majesty’s Theatre quite as much as 
 to the R. E. (which may be taken as the zenith and 
 the nadir respectively of the dramatic universe), 
 that far more versatility is usually exhibited by 
 the scenery than by the players. Scenery is found, 
 indeed, to be gifted with an accommodating adapt- 
 ability to the representation of all corners of the 
 globe in succession, without alteration in itself, 
 and without requiring further aid in the execution 
 of this duty than the addition to the foreground of 
 a certain number of labels in the shape of signposts 
 or otherwise, designating the particular locality to 
 which the action of the drama has shifted. It is 
 also endued with what might be described as the 
 faculty of ubiquitous representation at the same 
 moment. An example of this quality was lately 
 to be observed in a piece at the Pavilion, where 
 the action of the drama was laid in a sylvan scene 
 in the heart of Central America, the distant 
 
The Royal Effingham, 
 
 15 
 
 perspective being closed by a view of the Isle of 
 Wight. But this is digressing. 
 
 At the cross roads which we have described, a 
 parting takes place of the old gentleman with the 
 soldier, to which latter Rosalie has now attached 
 herself. The old gentleman gives them a ring, to 
 be presented to the king in the event of their 
 getting into difficulties at any time. Exit old 
 gentleman, and enter suddenly the remaining 
 unkilled assassins, who rush upon the soldier. 
 Something of this kind was to be anticipated, 
 since the soldier had been observably girt with 
 a combat sword since the beginning of the 
 scene. A terrific fight ensues, with upper and 
 undering of the most vivacious kind, the soldier 
 engaging six or eight assailants at once (they 
 don’t draw these things at all mild at the R. E.) ! 
 Just, however, as our hero is about to be over- 
 whelmed by numbers, a party of soldiers rush in, 
 who shoot down the robbers, and then take 
 Adelbert into custody as a deserter. 
 
 Scene Second , — A court martial. Adelbert tried 
 and found guilty. Powerful-emotion-business by 
 a tender-hearted sergeant, executed in the orthodox 
 fashion, namely, by putting his head against some- 
 body else’s neck and then waggling his shoulders 
 about. Adelbert is condemned to be shot, and in 
 
i6 
 
 The Royal Effingham. 
 
 order that no possible misconception may exist on 
 this point, two bags are brought in labelled ‘‘ ball 
 cartridges ” Since each of the bags contains, as 
 far as can be estimated by observation, about a 
 gallon and a-half of bullets, the ammunition pre- 
 pared for the execution would be amply sufficient 
 to supply a large party of persons for an afternoon’s 
 rifle-shooting at Hornsey Wood House. The 
 military judge takes an opportunity of giving 
 expression to the objection which he personally 
 entertains to the infliction of capital punishment 
 in any case. These sentiments are warmly 
 applauded by the house, the matter being one of 
 individual interest to a large portion of the 
 audience, seeing that every execution at the Old 
 Bailey diminishes the R. E. public by one. Adelbert 
 delivers himself of a brief sentence expressing the 
 resignation of the hero, and afterwards indulges his 
 feelings as a man by winking rapidly and wiping 
 away a supposed tear (for it is wholly imperceptible 
 to the spectator), exclaiming in agitated accents, 
 “ O Rosalie, Rosalie ! it is for thee these tears now 
 fall,” and so on. He at length calms himself 
 abruptly with “ No more,” &c. Rosalie expresses 
 her intention of saving him or perishing. The 
 latter alternative does not seem to be so probable 
 an eventuality as her friends need view with any 
 
The Royal Effingham. 
 
 17 
 
 very lively apprehension on her behalf, since the 
 presentation which she contemplates of the ring to 
 the king cannot, one would suppose, involve any 
 formidable risk to her personal security. 
 
 Scene Third . — -A tent in the Prussian camp near 
 Berlin. Old gentleman very much smartened up, 
 and sitting on a gorgeous throne, revealed in his 
 true character, that of Frederick the Great. He is 
 engaged in haranguing three supers, who, according 
 to the stage arrangements of the R. E., constitute 
 the Prussian army. The worthies in question look 
 of course as dismally awkward and uncomfortable 
 as unlucky supers, and supers only, can look, when 
 reluctantly dragged into prominence. The military 
 department of the theatrical wardrobe at the R. E. 
 would seem, as is the carse elsewhere, to consist of 
 very unaccommodating articles, since, notwith- 
 standing that the three unfortunates in question 
 are all widely different in size and height, not one 
 of them has clothes which make the faintest 
 pretence whatever of looking as if they had been 
 intended for him. 
 
 Suddenly, in rushes Rosalie in a great fuss and 
 presents the ring, exclaiming that Adelbert is 
 about to be shot as a deserter. Frederick orders 
 him to be conducted to his presence, but at this 
 moment a volley of musketry is heard, and an 
 
/ 
 
 1 8 The Royal Effingham, 
 
 aide-de-camp enters to report that our friend has 
 been already executed. Rosalie of course finds 
 “ her feelings one too many for her,” as the house- 
 maid said, and falls in a swoon, with a flop which 
 is exceedingly effective, at the feet of the king. 
 At this juncture in walks Adelbert, with a melo- 
 dramatic face on, but corporeally as right as a 
 trivet, and looking remarkably well and comfort- 
 able ! Under these circumstances Rosalie consents 
 to be resuscitated, and the king shows his gratitude 
 to the pair who saved his life, by making Adelbert 
 colonel of his regiment in the place of the unworthy 
 aristocrat, and by bestowing on Rosalie a dowry of 
 some thousands of crowns. Adelbert is so over- 
 come by the royal munificence that he can only 
 murmur in broken accents, Me kee-ying ! me 
 suvrin !” These ejaculations are accompanied by 
 divers spasmodic chokings, presumedly designed to 
 betoken a convulsive effort to gulp down emotion. 
 But it must be confessed that, without the aid 
 towards their interpretation which is supplied by 
 a knowledge of the attendant circumstances, a 
 spectator could hardly fail to foster the conviction 
 that he beheld a gentleman in the agonies of trying 
 to get down a pill too large for his swallowing 
 capabilities. 
 
 The little ambiguity which might be conceived 
 
The Royal Effingham, 
 
 19 
 
 to arise from the opportune appearance of Adelbert, 
 just after he had been riddled by the bullets of a 
 file of soldiers, and formally reported to be as dead 
 as a door-nail, has been considered, as it would 
 seem, by the author of the piece as too slight to 
 require any elaborate elucidation. The point is 
 no less easily than summarily disposed of, to the 
 satisfaction of course of any reasonable critic, by a 
 cursory allusion made by somebody or other to a 
 mistake which is to be supposed to have occurred 
 in the charging of the muskets with blank cart- 
 ridges. But in taking a course of minor-theatre 
 dramas, one soon learns to disregard such trivial 
 little difficulties as these. Sentimental tag by the 
 heroine, moral ditto by Adelbert, sententious ditto 
 by the king, and comic ditto by Simpkins, who has 
 played a small underplot by himself, unconnected 
 with anything in particular, and not characterised 
 by any so rich a vein of humour as to be worth 
 describing. 
 
 Tableau of the principal characters, Adelbert 
 and his bride forming the centre of the group, 
 while the flag of Prussia is brandished over their 
 heads by the tallest of the three supers, and 
 CURTAIN. 
 
 An expedition into the partially-explored dis- 
 tricts of Whitechapel is so serious an undertaking. 
 
20 
 
 The Royal Effingham, 
 
 that it may not be amiss to add a few details of 
 its cost and difficulties, for the use of anyone who 
 may happen to have an enterprise of the kind in 
 contemplation. What with the cab-fare thither, 
 and the cost of a disinfectant, with which prudence 
 imperatively demands that you should be furnished, 
 and the loss of half the value of your watch and 
 purse (this estimate may be taken, since it is 
 about an even chance that you are pickpocketed), 
 the expense of a sixpenny stall at the R. E. comes 
 altogether to much about the same figure as that 
 of the best box at the opera. The atmosphere is 
 very trying, the house forming a sort of eccaleobeon^ 
 where hatching by steam ” might be attempted 
 under conditions eminently favourable to the 
 success of the experiment. The bad quality of 
 the tobacco smoked, and the preponderance of 
 the Jewish element in the audience, render Eaii 
 de Cologne indispensable. It will be necessary to 
 take refreshments with you if you are likely to 
 want any, since the staple commodity of the R. E. 
 commissariat is pork pie. Hence it is to be feared 
 that the Jews who so freely partake of it are rene- 
 gades, unless indeed the alternative explanation be 
 accepted, that in the ‘‘ pork ’’ may be descried a 
 solution of the enigma as to what becomes of the 
 deceased cab horses and costermongers’ donkeys 
 
The Royal Effingham. 
 
 21 
 
 of the metropolis. The pies in question are of a 
 violently adipose character, and given to glisten in 
 a manner which is apt to overwhelm the intending 
 consumer with consternation and discomfiture. 
 Cabs are not always forthcoming so far beyond 
 the pale of civilisation, and to have to walk 
 through a sort of perambulatory market of coster- 
 mongers’ carts, which fringe the pavement in that 
 locality, is rather a formidable ordeal to encounter. 
 For the herrings are nefariously odoriferous, and 
 the meat ought peremptorily to demand instant 
 sepulture. Large quantities of cod are exposed 
 for sale. The word cod ” must be supposed to 
 be unknown to the Whitechapel vocabulary, the 
 substitutive term in use being, under all circum- 
 stances, “ live cod.” Were this otherwise, an 
 impropriety would be felt to exist in the practice 
 which prevails of ticketing mere transverse sections 
 from the middle of the fish, and those obviously 
 several weeks old, live cod.” I forbear to pursue 
 this topic. 
 
“CATHERINE HOWARD; 
 
 OR, 
 
 WOMAN’S AMBITION,” 
 
 With the Pantomime of “ Guy Faux,” 
 AT THE ROYAL GRECIAN. 
 
 T he plot of “ Catherine Howard ; or. Woman’s 
 Ambition,” is as follows. Catherine is the 
 wife of a grandee with some uncouth title, 
 which I forget. She thinks, however, that it 
 would be nicer to be queen of Henry VHI., and 
 therefore takes an early opportunity of putting her 
 husband out of the way by a dose of poison. She 
 then marries the king. When, however, she 
 flatters herself that all her arrangements are in 
 desirable trim, much to her dismay the “ pisoned 
 one” keeps turning up just exactly whenever he is 
 
Catherine Howard, 
 
 23 
 
 least wanted, and bores her horribly by continuing 
 to upbraid her with the impropriety of her conduct 
 towards him. Eventually he makes the king 
 savagely jealous, and in the result Catherine is 
 sentenced to execution. She gets hold of the 
 executioner, and bribes him with a ring to slope 
 off somewhere out of the way, so that the execution 
 may have to be deferred, and thus give time for 
 putting in practice a scheme she has for escape. 
 He honourably fulfils his engagement by retiring 
 to the wing, where he could be seen from the 
 side boxes engaged in friendly converse with the 
 injured husband. Consequently, when the hour of 
 execution arrives, the headsman is found to have 
 absquatulated. The chuckling, however, of the 
 condemned lady proves to be disappointingly 
 premature, since an amateur Jack Ketch comes 
 forward and volunteers to do the job. Just as 
 she kneels down to receive the fatal stroke, he 
 raises his mask, and discloses himself to be her 
 injured and now avenging husband. Here, how- 
 ever, his pluck fails him, so, instead of cutting off 
 his wife’s head as he had intended, he slides about 
 eighteen inches of lath and tinfoil under his left 
 armpit, and falls, this time really, as dead as a 
 door-nail. Meanwhile the professional executioner 
 has been caught, and is now brought back just in 
 
24 
 
 Catherine Hozvard ; 
 
 the nick of time, so that a blow from his axe puts 
 a conclusive end to Catherine — and the drama. 
 
 The performance of the piece is chiefly remark- 
 able from the lively interest in the individual 
 players which is evinced by the audience. Thus, 
 when the injured husband tells the guilty queen — 
 “You will wear the ker-rown, but it will scoroch 
 your brain,’' there was a general chorus of “ Brayvo, 
 Smithers !” Again, an ecclesiastic, who came to 
 confess the culprit before execution, was ad- 
 monished of his shortcomings in elocution by 
 constant calls of “ Speak up, old chap !” and when- 
 ever he waxed prosy, salutary suggestions of “ Cut 
 it short ” were freely offered. Any intensely tragic 
 effect was received with tumultuous approbation 
 and cries of “Yoiks!” “Hoo-ray!” “Tally-ho!” 
 “ Go it agin I” and shouts of laughter, the audience 
 evidently considering that the gratification intended 
 to be afforded them was in reality of a comic 
 character, and that the assumption of deep pathos 
 was only adopted as a means of further enriching 
 the humour of the whole thing. 
 
 The occasional music of the piece was not 
 calculated to remove this peculiar view of the true 
 nature of the proceedings. At one point in the 
 course of the drama two of the principal characters 
 strike what Mrs. Gamp would call a poge pladge- 
 
Or, Womaiis Ambition, 
 
 25 
 
 tiqtie, and a strain of cathedral music is heard. 
 Where the cathedral can possibly be supposed to 
 be, or why the organ should strike up at the precise 
 juncture when the pose occurs, are problems which 
 defy solution. The melody in question left much 
 to be desired, emanating as it obviously did from a 
 couple of musical pears at the wing, whose per- 
 formance, owing no doubt to some screws having 
 got loose in the mechanism of their respective 
 bowels, was somewhat wheezy and unsatisfactory. 
 The decapitation of the lady takes place to the 
 very slow twiddledumdee (no particular air) of a 
 fiddle and a clarionet, the effect of which you are 
 invited to consider as lugubrious. 
 
 It may be remarked, in a general way, that the 
 selection of properties for working a minor-theatre 
 drama invariably embraces some one or more of 
 the following articles, to wit, a dagger, a key, a 
 ring, a phial, a strawberry mark on somebody’s 
 arm, and a parchment. According to novelists 
 and playwrights, rightful heirs” monopolise all 
 the strawberry marks granted by Providence to 
 humanity, while ordinary individuals are never so 
 distinguished. Consequently, if this phenomenon, 
 on which the denouments of so many plots are 
 founded, is to be taken as presenting a true reflec- 
 tion of the actual arrangements of nature in this 
 c 
 
26 
 
 Catherine Howard ; 
 
 particular, anybody who happens to have been 
 ticketed by a label of the kind in question, may 
 consider the circumstance a sufficient ground for 
 concluding that he is the unrecognised proprietor 
 of something or other somewhere, or at all events 
 that he will turn out to be somebody else, and not 
 himself 
 
 When a parchment enters into stage proceedings, 
 the invariable rule is that some unprincipled party 
 should gain unlawful possession of it in one of the 
 earlier scenes — say about half after seven or there- 
 abouts. Thence ensue endless difficulties, consti- 
 tuting the subject-matter of a drama of palpitating 
 interest, till the thief meets his deserts somewhere 
 about the commencement of half-price by being 
 run through the body or shot. So that, when the 
 precious document is torn from his breast, it is 
 spotted with blood, and looks like a slice of currant 
 dumpling, or a piece of measly pork, or as if it 
 were labouring under an attack of nettlerash. 
 Parchments, however, are more especially peculiar 
 to dramas involving supposititious children, and 
 outcast sons, and rightful and wrongful heirs. In 
 Catherine Howard there is an active run on keys, 
 rings, and a phial of poison. The phial was easily 
 discernible to be one of those sixpenny pocket 
 inkstands, which are so constructed that they may 
 
Ory Womans Ambition. 
 
 27 
 
 be turned upside down without allowing the ink to 
 escape. 
 
 There are some points in the construction of the 
 drama which evince a practical knowledge, on the 
 part of the author, of the kind of incidents best 
 calculated to produce powerful effects. For 
 example, the appearance of the poisoned man at 
 the moment of the triumph of his murderess 
 creates a thrilling impression, which is deepened 
 by his make-up into something of the general 
 appearance of a skeleton. In addition to this, the 
 ambiguity which prevails with reference to him, as 
 to whether he is man or ghost, and the surprising 
 fact of his turning up at all, envelope him with a 
 halo of mysterious interest which is never dispelled, 
 as of course it is wholly impossible that it ever 
 could be, by any attempt at accounting for his 
 resuscitation after a heavy dose of poison. These 
 circumstances justify him in looking spectral and 
 sepulchral to the last degree, and he preserves the 
 unity of his impersonation by talking in a subter- 
 ranean voice, which seems to experience consider- 
 able difficulty in struggling aboveground at all, and 
 goes down again deeper than ever at the close of 
 each sentence. It has, too, the aggregate dreariness 
 which might be supposed to be breathed in the 
 sighs of the ghosts and ghostesses of a whole 
 
28 
 
 Catherine Howard ; 
 
 necropolis. Like other serious parties of the same 
 class, he is much addicted to saying, “ I tell thee]' 
 &c., Src. Such adoptions of the second person are 
 supposed to form the appropriate vehicle of 
 warnings and menaces and terrible sentiments in 
 general, but I should be obliged to anyone for an 
 explanation, who may be in a position to give it, 
 why a stern gentleman, who wishes to deliver him- 
 self of something extraordinarily severe, should 
 think it necessary to yield himself up pro tern, 
 to what sounds like a sudden paroxysm of 
 Quakerism. 
 
 The author has artfully ordered the action of 
 the piece, in that he makes all his characters con- 
 tinually bob up and down into and out of a vault 
 with the frequency with which some insatiable 
 persons may be observed to resort to the refresh- 
 ment dispensary at evening parties. The vault 
 cannot, by any effort of ingenuity, be connected in 
 the remotest degree with anything in the develop- 
 ment of the plot, but the aspect of it is con- 
 veniently dark and depressing, and the chilly and 
 sunless atmosphere peculiar to such places is to be 
 supposed to imbue the various characters afresh 
 from time to time with a kind of odour of melo- 
 dramatic solemnity. 
 
 It only remains to be mentioned that some 
 
Or, Woman's Ambition, 
 
 29 
 
 kissing-business, incidental to the courtship of 
 Catherine by the king, was enthusiastically ap- 
 plauded, the demonstrations of approval com- 
 mencing even as early as when the course of 
 circumstances appeared to begin to tend towards 
 the particular result. 
 
 The Pantomime of “Guy Faux’' is nothing par- 
 ticular. The only good playing in it is some 
 eccentric business, a long way after Robson. Miss 
 Montague is vivacious, and a West End future 
 may be predicted for her, if her ambition lies that 
 way. In the opening of the Pantomime there is of 
 course the usual pink-legged fairy, putting one in 
 mind of a lanky specimen of the double carrots 
 which are sometimes exhibited by greengrocers, 
 with a wand tipped with a wisp of the gold and 
 silver stuff that is used to fill drawing-room fire- 
 places in summer. There is also a juvenile cory- 
 phee, one Davis, who has plenty of dancing in her, 
 or, in the technical language of the ballerine 
 “ shows good dispositions.” 
 
‘‘THE HUNTER OF THE ALPS/’ 
 
 AT THE MARYLEBONE. 
 
 T he richness of the comicality of a minor- 
 theatre drama is in direct proportion to the 
 depth of the tragic impression which is sought to 
 be conveyed. Unfortunately, the converse of this 
 proposition is also true, so that a certain ‘‘ laugh- 
 able farce now playing at the R. M., is so over- 
 poweringly stupid that it would strain the spring 
 of animal spirits of a Mark Tapley to bear up 
 against the crushingly depressing influences of the 
 melancholy “ fun.” 
 
 There are only two characters in the piece, one 
 of which was sustained by an afiflictingly vulgar, as 
 well as drearily ugly, woman, rouged to such a 
 pitch that her cheeks glowed like a couple of 
 
The Hunter of the Alps, 
 
 31 
 
 chemists’ bottles. She evidently, however, to 
 judge from the coquettishness of her demeanour, 
 felt comfortably satisfied that she looked very 
 ravishing, but her own opinion and that of the 
 spectator could not fail to be diametrically 
 opposed, and indeed hopelessly irreconcilable on 
 this point. The male performer’s views of gesture 
 were confined to jerking his head and elbows up 
 and down like the cymbal-player in the left-hand 
 corner of the melo-dramatic scene of moving dolls 
 which is presented on the fronts of certain grinding 
 organs. In which, by the way (I have an inera- 
 dicable vice of digressing), at a particular crisis in 
 the melody, Napoleon makes a show of addressing 
 a communication to the Emperor of China, who 
 waifs till a favourable opportunity in the music 
 occurs, and then, suddenly spinning round, 
 transmits the remark through Bluebeard to Queen 
 Victoria, who waggles her head with inimitable 
 quaintness in token of commendation of the 
 soundness of the proposition which has been 
 advanced. It is strange that the nature of the 
 theme which still continues to form the subject of 
 periodical communication between so distinguished 
 interlocutors is not found to be recorded in 
 history. 
 
 The concluding piece was “ The Hunter of the 
 
32 
 
 The Hunter of the Alps. 
 
 Alps,” which might just as well have been called 
 “The Sea Serpent,” or “The Electric Telegraph,” or 
 anything else, for aught which the suggestions of 
 the title had to do with the business of the 
 play. 
 
 Scene the First introduces a Count entering on 
 the possession of a new estate. The tableau is of 
 the orthodox type, comprising the Count, old 
 steward, and leading male and female tenants. 
 The party are hedged in by a pink fence of silk 
 tights appertaining to the female part of the 
 virtuous peasantry who are supposed in romantic 
 dramas to attend on such occasions, with inter- 
 vening disclosures of the green legs of the supers 
 who constitute the male representatives of the 
 agricultural rectitude of the vicinity. The Count 
 of course has to be richly attired, and this circum- 
 stance affords an opportunity of showing how 
 magnificently the Royal Marylebone can turn out 
 its characters. The R. M., like Todgers’, can do 
 it when it chooses, mind that!’' A very tall man 
 is cast for the Count in order that a large area of 
 body may thus become available for the exhibition 
 of gold lace and similar braveries. The leading 
 peasantess is all curl and ribbons, and generally 
 radiant with a combination of such vivid colours 
 as to convey the impression of a minced rainbow. 
 
The Hunter of the A Ips. 
 
 33 
 
 She does a good deal of smiling and curtseying 
 business, which is acknowledged on the part of 
 the Count by demonstrations of condescending 
 affability. Then (by way of a rigid adherence to 
 the usual procedure on occasions of this descrip- 
 tion in real life !) the leading peasant advances to 
 the footlights, and sings a song embodying his 
 reflections on mountain tops and a few other 
 natural objects which have happened to attract his 
 more particular observation. It would, however, 
 have been of advantage had the melodist on this 
 occasion arrived at a fixed decision beforehand as 
 to what particular air was to become the vehicle of 
 his remarks, since any vacillation at the foot- 
 lights on points of this kind, such as that which 
 was evinced by him, is harassing to the audience. 
 
 Scene Second , — A cottage on the Count’s estate, 
 occupied by a poverty-stricken family consisting of 
 a husband and wife and two children. That the 
 husband has seen better days is indicated (to those 
 at least to whom a revelation of the conventional 
 significance attached to various properties at 
 minor theatres has been vouchsafed) by his 
 envelopment in a long black cloak, which imparts 
 to his general effect the appearance of an animated 
 extinguisher. Dialogue between husband and wife 
 expressive of the uncomfortable tightness affecting 
 
34 
 
 The Hunter of the Alps. 
 
 the family exchequer, with ejaculations of “ h^I'm 
 so ungry!'’ shot in at intervals by the children 
 alternately. Great pathetic force is considered, as 
 it seems, to reside in this expression of anguish on 
 the part of the juveniles, and they therefore fire it 
 off at all points when the pathetic colouring of the 
 scene appears to admit of intensification. The 
 father leaves nothing to be desired in point of 
 abject dismalness, since he begins with exclaiming 
 ‘‘Misery! contempt! des — pair!’' by way of 
 startling gently ! upon the exposition of his woes. 
 The wife’s observations are in a similar key, so 
 that the pair revel together in a sort of orgy of 
 desponding sentiments. 
 
 It may be observed that the tragediennes of 
 minor theatres make a point of pronouncing every 
 separate syllable of all they utter with elaborate 
 distinctness, as if they had learnt their parts out of 
 one of those books in which the words are divided 
 into bits by bars for the purpose of mitigating the 
 difficulties presented by the text to incipient 
 readers. 
 
 Dismal husband at length prepares to go out in 
 quest of food, giving at the same time obscure 
 intimations of doing something desperate in the 
 event of no victuals being forthcoming. This gives 
 the wife an opportunity for the delivery of a series 
 
The Hunter of the Alps, 
 
 35 
 
 of choice moralities, concluding with “ Still be 
 virtuous, and we may still be hap-py !” Embracing 
 business, and tableau indicative of the departure 
 of the husband laden with the blessings of the 
 wife. Here, however, occurred an unseasonable 
 manifestation of that perversity of disposition 
 inherent in the nature of scenes, which impels 
 them at the most inconvenient junctures to jerk up 
 and down, and tumble forwards, and perform other 
 evolutions achievable only by themselves, instead 
 of meeting. The result was that the dismal 
 husband, having struck an attitude, was obliged to 
 maintain it like a pose plastique, and gradually a 
 very palpable smile broke upon and illumined the 
 gloom of his countenance. The wife, too, hid her 
 face, and appeared to be shaken by emotions not 
 altogether of an unmixedly tragic nature. 
 
 Scene Third . — The Count lost in a wood. Enter 
 dismal husband, remarking in an agitated whisper, 
 “A Sterr- ranger ! richly habited! and alone!'' 
 and then, yielding to the temptation to which 
 these circumstances give rise, presents a pistol and 
 demands money. Here, however, the moral con- 
 siderations which had been submitted by his wife 
 are supposed to come into operation, so he flings 
 away the pistol, and the Count makes him a 
 present of his purse. Exit dismal father O.P., and 
 
36 
 
 The Hunter of the A Ips. 
 
 enter dismal children P.S., who conduct the Count 
 to their parents’ cottage. 
 
 Scene Fourth , — The Cottage. Enter husband, 
 no longer dismal, with provisions bought with the 
 money just given him, but followed shortly after- 
 wards by the retainers of the Count, who, having 
 lost their master, and having heard of the purse 
 seen in possession of the starving man, suspect 
 that robbery and murder have been committed. 
 A general denoument is thus induced, in the result 
 of which the dismal man turns out to be the 
 Count’s long-los.t ber-rruther !” Here of course 
 an impressive exhibition of fraternisation ensues, 
 with plenty of powerful-emotion business, which is 
 all very touching. The difficulty which presents 
 itself, of elucidating how it comes to pass that the 
 rich brother turns up so opportunely, is successfully 
 encountered and overthrown by a statement from 
 himself that he is “ a creature of che-yeance,” and 
 this explanation appears to be considered by all 
 parties as perfectly satisfactory. Enter the pink 
 and green legs for the purpose of adding the 
 necessary picturesque element to the final tableau, 
 and so ends what the bills call “ The beautiful and 
 romantic drama of The Hunter of the Alps.” 
 
‘^THE BEGUILED ONE," 
 
 AT THE BRITANNIA. 
 
 L ast night to the Britannia. It is a new and 
 ' handsome building, and everything there is 
 delightfully clean, including even the performers’ 
 faces, which is a particularly remarkable circum- 
 stance. 
 
 The first piece was ‘‘ The Beguiled One.” What 
 the plot was I am not in a position to state, not 
 having arrived at the faintest glimmer of a notion 
 of what it was all about. But there was an 
 enigmatical man in a black costume, whom I 
 apprehended to be Guy Faux. Something, how- 
 ever, in the progress of the piece satisfied me that 
 my first impression had been an erroneous one, 
 and that my friend was, in fact, Robin Hood. An 
 
38 
 
 The Beguiled One. 
 
 affable young lady who sat next to me, and with 
 whom I had some conversation, entertained a 
 profound conviction throughout that he was 
 Hamlet. This state of circumstances of course 
 necessitated a bet, and much excitement prevailed 
 with reference to the result ; but the black gent 
 utterly falfisied our respective expectations, and 
 indeed artfully dodged any reasonable conjecture 
 which could by possibility have been hazarded in 
 connection with him, by the emphatic declaration 
 of ‘‘I am Cardinal Richelieu!” It quite took 
 my breath away, and in the secondary result 
 tickled the risible faculties of myself and neighbour 
 so irresistibly, that we both behaved excessively 
 ill. 
 
 I anticipated that he would have considered it 
 desirable to stamp the characteristic identity of the 
 Cardinal’s part in an irrefragable manner by 
 warbling a comic song! but any projects which he 
 may have entertained in that direction were 
 “ singed in the bud,” as the Irishman said, by the 
 exigencies of accurate historical representation, in 
 compliance with which he was skewered Britannia- 
 fashion {i.e., not run through the chest, but 
 subjected to the operation of having a sword of 
 much about the length of an ordinary spit slid 
 under his left armpit) by a truculent party de- 
 
The Beguiled One. 
 
 39 
 
 scribed as “The Regent/’ No very distinct 
 conclusion appeared to have been arrived at in 
 any quarter as to what the Regent was supposed 
 to be Regent of — an arrangement which preserved 
 to his highness the convenient liberty of dressing 
 in any manner which he might consider most 
 becoming, without risk of violating historical 
 propriety, and of which he availed himself by 
 assuming the costume of Oliver Cromwell with 
 commendable accuracy of detail. 
 
 The afterpiece was a tragedy, with the orthodox 
 amount of powerful effects. It does not call for 
 any particular remark, except that from the 
 personal appearances of the supers who “ do ” the 
 virtuous peasantry in the background, the critic 
 must pronounce that the aborigines of Hoxton do 
 not embody one’s notions of the perfection of 
 agricultural humanity, physiognomically viewed. 
 There is a particular party, in dirty white trousers, 
 whom I undertake to say, from the experience and 
 sagacity that I have acquired in that peculiar 
 branch of information, employs his moments of 
 comparative retirement from the public eye in the 
 professional pursuit of dog-stealing. 
 
 Altogether, it was an amusing evening, but I 
 tremble to think of the probably drooping condi- 
 tion of my fair neighbour to-day, after rashly 
 
40 
 
 The Beguiled One, 
 
 embarking, as she did, on 'am sandwidges ” and 
 open tarts, with a glass of gin and treacle impu- 
 dently called sherry. It is a misfortune that the 
 cold pease pudding, which used to be offered as an 
 aristocratic delicacy to the occupants of the 
 private boxes and dress circle at the old Britannia, 
 is now, under mistaken notions of progress in 
 refinement, witheld from them. 
 
" O C E O L A," 
 
 AT THE SURREY. 
 
 ‘‘^CEOLA/' forming, as it is intended to do, 
 ^ only a sort of moving panorama of Indian 
 scenery, life, and character, can hardly be con- 
 sidered as a drama. The leading part is exceed- 
 ingly well played by Creswick, and his harangues 
 to his tribe are quite impressive. The make-up of 
 the tribe in question as Indians has been success- 
 fully elaborated. This matter must have involved 
 some degree of difficulty, or at least the exercise 
 of a certain amount of care and ingenuity, since to 
 convert half-a-dozen beery-looking and vulgar 
 small tobacconists (small, that is, not in size, but 
 in respect of their sphere of commercial action) 
 with whom the region adjacent to the Surrey does 
 
 D 
 
42 
 
 Oceola. 
 
 much abound, and whence probably the supply of 
 supers is derived, into a band of Indians, without 
 making them too ridiculous, was a task sufficiently 
 arduous. Of course the brown tights which form 
 the distinguishing characteristic of these dark- 
 skinned sons of the forest'’ don’t fit ; for when was 
 anything ever known to fit a super ? I entertain 
 the conviction that a super, as such, is endowed 
 with a Protean versatility of anatomical structure, 
 which, in defiance of the professions of advertising 
 tailors about guaranteeing a fit in all cases, would 
 enable him to elude the adaptation to his person 
 of any garment devisable by human ingenuity. 
 The tights therefore were all in rucks, presenting 
 that rippled appearance which characterises a 
 dumpling about the parts where the cloth in which 
 it has been boiled was tied. Even Oceola looked 
 as if the calves of his legs had got rumpled some- 
 how. One can hardly believe that Creswick, when 
 he breaks out into a profuse eruption of beads, and 
 shows his teeth Ojibbeway-fashion, is by daylight 
 a steady and quiet gentleman of mature age, 
 usually attired in the soberest Oxford mixture, 
 and a resident in Bloomsbury Square, W.C. 
 
 The moral of the play is intended to be good, 
 since the final tableau exhibits all the good 
 characters with knives at the throats of all the bad 
 
Oceola. 
 
 43 
 
 ones respectively. Since, however, this desirable 
 arrangement is precisely reversed in all the 
 previous situations throughout the piece, the 
 reflection on the part of the spectator is inevitable 
 that in default of the actual and practical scrunch- 
 ing of the bad people beyond possibility of resur- 
 rection being visibly consummated on the stage, a 
 recurrence of embarrassment must be conceived as 
 likely to arise after the period at which the curtain 
 falls. 
 
 The scenery is extremely pretty. The bills, as 
 you will observe, vaunt the impressive effect of the 
 concluding tableau of a burning forest. It was 
 indeed a spectacle of much — pungency, since the 
 profuse combustion of some peculiar stage-fire 
 induced a general paroxysm of winking and 
 sneezing. 
 
‘‘LOVE AND CRIME," 
 
 AT THE VICTORIA. 
 
 “T OVE and Crime'’ can hardly be considered as 
 a drama. It would be defined with more 
 accuracy as ‘‘a couple of hours of dramatic business 
 of the most startling kind." They “ cut it reether 
 fat," to use the metaphorical expression invented 
 by some figurative butcher, in situations and 
 effects. Victorian dramas are never what the 
 same butcher would call “ lean," in these respects. 
 In the language of that gentleman's violently 
 professional style of imagery, Love and Crime 
 might perhaps be said to be like the Effingham 
 pork pies, which are nothing but adipose matter, 
 “ a trifle too rich " in its ingredients. 
 
 There is no plot. At least if there is, my 
 
Love and Crime. 
 
 45 
 
 penetration failed to detect it. It ‘might, indeed, 
 possibly be contended that there is an exuberant 
 redundancy of plot ; but if such be the case, the 
 thread of incidents which go to compose it are so 
 varied, and of such bewildering intricacy, that no 
 single unaided human intellect could exercise a 
 grasp sufficiently comprehensive to weave them 
 together into one. Anybody, indeed, who tried to 
 do so, would fall into much about as abject and 
 hopeless a state of intellectual entanglement and 
 general mystification as would be the lot of a 
 person who, in consequence of a succession of 
 failures to obtain the books he asked for at Mudie’s, 
 were to read a series of first volumes only of 
 different novels, and the succeeding ones promis- 
 cuously, as they happened to be obtainable. 
 In which course — what with the difficulty of 
 remembering which was which of an army of 
 romantic walking gentlemen, all speaking, like 
 rusty ophicleides, or the rumbling of trains in 
 tunnels, in “ deep low tones (why in the world is 
 the score for such characters always written in the 
 dismalest abysses of the base clef i^), and an equally 
 perplexing multiplicity of first leading ladies, all, 
 of course, with pensive expressions and hectic 
 flushes — his ideas would get, as Mrs. Gamp said, 
 into such a nice state of confugion, that half-a- 
 
46 
 
 Love and Crime. 
 
 dudgeon fresh young lively leeches on his temples 
 wouldn’t be too much to clear his mind.” The 
 only chance of successfully encountering such 
 perplexities as these, would be to go a large party, 
 each member of it agreeing to devote his attention 
 to tracing the links of one particular chain of 
 incidents exclusively, and an effort might after- 
 wards be made to combine the whole. 
 
 There are about fifteen acts in “ Love and 
 Crime,” and five or six dozen scenes, all different. 
 The cast of character embraces the whole strength 
 of the company, and a large proportion of the 
 population of the New Cut would appear to have 
 been enlisted for the occasion. The demand for 
 extra supers must have been, in the language of 
 the markets, feverish. 
 
 The action of the piece is of the following 
 nature : — Everybody concerned entertains an un- 
 requited ” attachment for somebody else, and in 
 the conflict of interests arising from so infelicitous 
 a state of circumstances, combined with a lament- 
 table deficiency of moral restraint which is found 
 to prevail among the parties, everybody shoots 
 everybody else, so that a brisk fusillade of 
 “ hateful rivals ” is sustained throughout the piece. 
 
 The play may be regarded as in some degree a 
 melodrama, since the effect of every situation is 
 
Love and Crime. 
 
 47 
 
 heightened by music. For example, at “ Heaven 
 give her tears!” a soft murmur rises with an im- 
 perceptible swell from the orchestra, gradually 
 shaping itself into the Varsoviana. “ Proceed we 
 to the trial” is accompanied by a subdued and un- 
 certain strain, eventually crashing out into Suoni 
 la tromba.” Then as often as anybody has pinked 
 anybody else, in rush a crowd of supers who “ do” 
 a tableau, each forming a pose as if he had been 
 suddenly petrified or subjected unexpectedly to 
 mesmeric agencies. Each of them also displays an 
 expression of strong emotion (though of what 
 precise character it is not easy to decipher) de- 
 picted on his countenance, while a few bars of some 
 soft melody, subsequently developed into “ Wait 
 for the Waggon” or the like, are played pianissimo. 
 This statuesque grouping is maintained for half-a- 
 minute or so with rigid immobility, affecting the 
 spectator with tendencies which, in the case of a 
 person so discreditably irreverent as myself, it will 
 be more seemly to abstain from subjecting to too 
 inquisitive an analysis. Of course all this sort of 
 business is, or ought to be, highly affecting ; but if 
 the drama do indeed “ hold the mirror up to 
 nature,” it must be admitted that situations are in 
 the habit of taking place in the world which do 
 not fall within ordinary experience. 
 
48 
 
 Love and Crime. 
 
 The leading characters of the piece are the 
 following : — 
 
 First, as a matter of course at the R.V., a villain. 
 There are two kinds of villain known to minor 
 theatres, which may be distinguished as the black 
 and white respectively. The black is the strong- 
 minded and bold villain. A personage of this 
 class is corked up to such a pitch that his face 
 rivals in blackness that of a metropolitan statue, 
 or a Hyde Park sheep s, or the looks of a quarrel- 
 some gentleman when you put him out. His 
 forehead is ploughed with such prodigious 
 wrinkles, indicative of his “ haggard mind,” that it 
 resembles the leather of a pair of bellows, or the 
 creases in a fat gentleman’s waistcoat. His 
 countenance is steeped in gloom, and if he ever 
 does manage to achieve a laugh, it is not by any 
 means a satisfactory kind of transaction, being 
 either demoniacal, or defiant, or dreary, or derisive, 
 or has some other uncomfortable quality about it. 
 His voice is a basso profundo, or rather profun- 
 dissimo, emanating apparently from a depth coin- 
 ciding in latitude with about the middle button of 
 his waistcoat. It is as gruff as the sound of a 
 Christmas wait’s trombone* when the catarrhal 
 
 Not by any means “ Spirantia molli/^r aera.” 
 
Love and Crime. 
 
 49 
 
 affection to which performers of that class are 
 subject, in consequence of their exposure to the 
 inclemency of midnight fogs, has communicated 
 itself, as commonly seems to be the case, to the 
 instrument. His gait is a combination of the strut 
 of a bantam with the hop-over-nothing of a string- 
 halt horse, and consists of alternate brandishings 
 of his legs, each of which manoeuvres constitutes in 
 itself a separate and distinct gymnastic exploit. 
 His strides are so high as to remind one of the 
 mode of progression which people are driven to 
 adopt who will perversely persist in walking on 
 the margins of the paths in Hyde Park, and who 
 consequently have to keep on stepping over those 
 arched institutions which are put to protect the 
 grass. 
 
 The other style of villain is the cowardly or 
 white-livered villain. He has pink, bloodshot eyes 
 like a white mouse's, and on every alarm of detec- 
 tion they start out of his head like a scared 
 rabbit's or a prawn's. He is as pale, through 
 guilty apprehension, as plaster of Paris, or a 
 parsnip indisposed, or as the face of a belle after a 
 ball when she reaches home in the morning con- 
 temporaneously with the milk. His gushes of 
 merriment, when any such occur, are not roughly 
 explosive like those of his black compeer, but 
 
Love and Crime. 
 
 SO 
 
 forced and faint, and they sound hollow and 
 unreal. I don’t remember having ever happened 
 to hear a man with a helmet on and the vizor 
 down give way to a burst of merriment, but should 
 imagine that under those circumstances the sound 
 of his laugh would be such as to fulfil the defini- 
 tion of a hollow one. The voice, too, of the white- 
 livered villain has no comfortable heartiness in it, 
 but reminds one of that of a certain demon who, 
 according to Scott, uttered such observations as it 
 occurred to him to offer in a tone 
 
 Like wind in the porch of a ruined church.” 
 
 Lastly, the poignant anguish which racks our 
 miscreant’s guilty breast is indicated by sighs as 
 deep drawn and laboured as the convulsive sobs of 
 a locomotive straining up the Lewisham incline. 
 The villain of Love and Crime” is of this latter 
 class. 
 
 The walking gentleman or “swain” of the piece 
 is not a success. Fancy a very fat man, as soft 
 and heavy in substance as a cold mufifin, with 
 about as much intelligence ; and with cheeks so 
 plump that he looks like a cathedral cherub, or 
 what a fancy portrait of the mumps would be, or 
 the prints of QEolus in old editions of Virgil. He 
 is also nefariously dull and flagitiously ugly, and 
 
Love and Crime. 
 
 SI 
 
 has a squeaky voice like a very young fife. His 
 costume bears internal evidence of having been his 
 own conception. It consists of a red coat, par- 
 taking equally of the beef-eater and general post- 
 man, “cut very saucy” (to adopt the vulgar tongue 
 of cheap outfitters), with two-inch tails like a half- 
 fledged sparrow's, or those of the jacket Mr. Tup- 
 man wore at Mrs. Leo Hunter’s. 
 
 I forbear to enlarge on the particular portion of 
 our friend’s attire whose sphere of usefulness 
 extends from his waist to his ancles. His hat is of 
 the Savoyard type, but since the part he sustains 
 is supposed to have a spice of the “gay Lothario” 
 in it, he bedizens the felt flowerpot in question 
 with various ribbons, with the design of thus im- 
 parting something of a free and festive character 
 to the general effect of his appearance. The result 
 actually achieved is merely to convey an indistinct 
 suggestion of recruiting sergeantry, so that alto- 
 gether he is rather a bewildering party. 
 
 There is another member of the corps dramatique 
 worthy of notice, an actor of the Ryder stamp, 
 who, if transferred to the cispontine boards, would 
 take a high place in his profession. He has a 
 certain pleasing action of the hand from the wrist, 
 which, as far as my experience goes, is peculiar 
 solely to himself and Cardinal Wiseman. He 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
52 
 
 Love and Crime. 
 
 plays a monk, and makes up for the purpose in a 
 long brown dress and cowl, so as altogether to 
 resemble an animated stick of chocolate. 
 
 The leading female part is sustained by a strik- 
 ingly handsome woman, so much so that it is a 
 pity she should array herself in a satin dress so 
 draggle-tailed and sluttish that one might suppose 
 its original sphere of utility to have lain in some 
 domestic scene as a curtain, and that it must since 
 have become the victim of every form of calamitous 
 vicissitude best calculated to reduce it to the 
 lowest depths of shabbiness and dirt. In its 
 present condition it would more properly form 
 the attire of one of the Topsies, which are 
 suspended over rag-and-bone shops. The cha- 
 racter she has to sustain does not impose upon 
 her the duty of “ clothing any author's dry bones 
 with flesh,” as the saying is. All the business, 
 indeed, of the part, or at any rate all she takes the 
 trouble to do, is to turn herself into a nearly 
 passive effect, looming forth silently ‘‘ like a swart 
 thundercloud” fraught with mischief, occasionally 
 scathing somebody with a glance of the flash-of- 
 lightning genus. 
 
 Some kind or other of formal conclusion to the 
 piece being of course indispensable, the oppor- 
 tunity is embraced of pointing the moral of the 
 
Love and Crime, 
 
 S3 
 
 whole proceedings, and illustrating the same by a 
 working diagram. With this object the final scene 
 exhibits the villain of the piece dead on a stretcher, 
 forming a sort of cold collation of deceased mis- 
 creant. The monk then advances to the foot- 
 lights, and delivers himself of some purely general 
 remarks, applicable to nothing in particular, but 
 pervaded by a fine healthy tone of moral senti- 
 ment, quite Martin Tuppery in fact, which com- 
 mand of course unqualified acquiescence on all 
 hands. The curtain then falls on a tragedy of such 
 irresistible drollery, that the present writer, when 
 enabled at length to give vent to his accumulated 
 emotions, became limp with laughing, and in that 
 condition lolled in an imbecile manner over the 
 front of the box like Punch does. With a view to 
 the better maintenance in public of the staid 
 decorum of behaviour which propriety demands, 
 he judged it expedient to remain in the box and 
 have his laugh out before retiring. 
 
‘‘THIRD CLASS AND FIRST CLASS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE CAREER OF A WIDOW’S SON," 
 
 AT THE ROYAL BRITANNIA. 
 
 Y esterday evening, although we are in the 
 focus of a blazing August, I betook myself to 
 the Royal Britannia. 
 
 A “lever de rideau" was supplied by a mild 
 little drama called “ Third Class and First Class ; 
 or, The Career of a Widow’s Son.’’ August being 
 the height of the excursion season, and the action 
 of the play having, according to the intimation of 
 its title, some connection or other with railway 
 travelling, the precise nature of which, however, 
 did not transpire, the drama was probably to be 
 considered as in some degree a “piece de circon- 
 stance.’’ 
 
 The first scene was occupied by the heartrending 
 
Third Class and First Class, 
 
 55 
 
 parting of a widow from her only son who was 
 going to sea. The son evinced as much conscious 
 embarrassment and awkwardness in his sailor's 
 clothes as youths may be observed to do at the 
 momentous crisis in their history when they put 
 on jackets for the first time, and imagine the 
 attention of the general public to be rivetted on 
 the circumstance. By the way, I inadvertently did 
 the author great injustice ; the piece really had, 
 after all, a sufficiently close connection with rail- 
 way travelling to entitle it to its name, for I now 
 remember that the widow concluded her remarks 
 with the consolatory assurance that “ Doubtless 
 'Eaven will smee-yeile upon ye, though ye travel 
 in a third class carriage.” On the delivery of this 
 affecting sentiment, the first few bars of ‘‘ Old 
 Towler” were played pianissimo, in gentle har- 
 mony, as it was to be supposed, with the emotions 
 which so eloquent an expression of tenderness and 
 resignation was calculated to induce. It afforded 
 me time for the reflection that whatever “ 'Eaven” 
 may be disposed to do in the way of “smee- 
 yeiling” upon third class passengers, certainly 
 railway porters, who cherish no hopes of tips from 
 such quarters, don't shed any particular benignity 
 upon them. 
 
 Scene the second disclosed a ship battling with 
 
56 Third Class and First Class ; 
 
 the waves. Stephan danced a hornpipe in the 
 foreground. At least I don’t at all remember that 
 she did not. The presumption is therefore irre- 
 sistible that she did. Were a principal scene in a 
 Britannia drama to be achieved without an 
 apropos performance by Stephan, the circum- 
 stance would constitute a phenomenon “ unparal- 
 lelled in the recollection of the oldest playgoer.” 
 The tableau was backed by several sailors 
 arranged in a semicircle, each with a damsel upon 
 his arm. These young ladies were distinguished 
 by the very full development of bust, and that 
 juicy succulence, and ruddy and luscious ripeness 
 of general effect, which are so ravishing to the 
 Hoxton eye. So much so, that the possession of 
 these qualities in a marked degree by the Houris 
 in question appeared to have been the guiding 
 principle of their selection. Each of them might 
 have been described as ‘‘ a fruity, full-bodied 
 article,” as the advertising wine merchants say of 
 their gummiest brews of port. They were dressed, 
 alternately, as Vivandieres and Swiss peasants. 
 Exclusively ornamental effects would therefore 
 seem to have been contemplated in their introduc- 
 tion, since the enjoyment of such varied and 
 picturesque society is an advantage not commonly 
 incident to life at sea. 
 
or, The Career of a Widow’s Son. 57 
 
 The sailors, in addition to that air of general 
 discomfiture which betrays the super under all 
 disguises, had a sort of fixed and desperate 
 rigidity and stoniness about them which was most 
 intensely and deplorably unnautical. So that 
 there would have been considerable danger lest in 
 their white jackets and broad brimmed straw hats 
 they should have been taken as intended to repre- 
 sent Jamaica planters in their more amiable 
 moments. The judicious foresight, however, of 
 the Stage Management had carefully provided 
 against the occurrence of any erroneous impres- 
 sions of this nature by a direction to the sailors in 
 question, which they fulfilled with unceasing 
 assiduity, to keep on hitching up their — well — 
 their never-mind-whats. 
 
 A general utility, too, was introduced in the 
 shape of a captain, who exhibited sufficient reck- 
 lessness of demeanour to make up for any amount 
 of apathetic tameness on the part of a whole crew, 
 however numerous. And he delivered himself of 
 a considerable vocabulary of miscellaneous nautical 
 expressions with so much seamanlike breadth of 
 tone, and betraying so little indication of being 
 perfectly ignorant what any of them meant, that 
 at the conclusion of the scene little doubt remained 
 on my mind that he was intended to be viewed as 
 
 E 
 
58 Third Class and First Class ; 
 
 a sailor. It must be conceded that my own con- 
 victions on this point may not have been shared 
 by others, because after long experience of Minor 
 Theatre dramas one gains a special adroitness in 
 detecting what characters are intended to be 
 represented from symptoms which have no 
 language for the uninitiated. This display of 
 nautical characteristics served an analogous 
 purpose to that of our old familiar friend the um- 
 brella in the penny show of “ Daniel in the lion’s 
 den,” where the prophet is provided with the 
 article in question to distinguish him, as though 
 by a sort of label of humanity, from the lions. 
 The respective identities of the prophet and the 
 wild beasts are by this very necessary element in 
 his make-up placed beyond the reach of con- 
 troversy. 
 
 The third scene disclosed a storm at sea. The 
 solemn impressions which attend elemental war- 
 fare were a little weakened at the first moment by 
 the detection of the hinder portion of a belated 
 stage carpenter, who scuttled off to the wing as 
 the tableau opened. There was no lack of 
 lightning. It worked away indefatigably. But 
 gleaming, as it did, through a transparent jag in 
 the background, it necessarily seemed to be the 
 self-same individual flash repeating itself an inde- 
 
or^ The Career of a Widow's Son. 59 
 
 finite number of times. So that at last one almost 
 felt inclined to exclaim Aha ! there you are 
 again, my friend.” Then came a shipwreck, after 
 which, as I need hardly say, the people saved were 
 drawn up from the deep in white dresses, which a 
 livid light, resulting, no doubt, from the combina- 
 tion of a sheet of green silver paper with a bull's 
 eye lantern, brought out into startling relief. Is it 
 an absolute dogma among the traditions of the 
 stage that people are invariably wrecked in their 
 nightgowns ? Or are they always deliberately got 
 up in white for the occasion, in accordance with 
 the principle which is impressed upon Ninette in 
 Mr. Byron's edition of “ The Maid and the Mag- 
 pie,'' namely, 
 
 ‘‘ When led to execution, pray take care 
 To dress in white, and let down your back-hair.” 
 
 The different scenes which go to compose a drama 
 at a minor house hang together as loosely as the 
 pieces of an Irishman's coat, in which portions of 
 old potato sacks, irregular fragments of horse- 
 cloth, and scraps of flannel, seem to have come 
 together in as promiscuous a manner as what 
 Cicero calls “ a fortuitous concurrence of atoms,” 
 and which appear to be imbued with the unani- 
 mous desire of being released from one another’s 
 society at the earliest possible opportunity. For 
 
6o 
 
 Third Class and First Class ; 
 
 where in the world will it be supposed that the 
 last scene of Third Class and First Class was laid ? 
 In Japan! It really was. The characters in this 
 part of the piece, as copied from the bill, were as 
 follows : — 
 
 Japanese. 
 
 The Ziogoon, or military emperor, disguised as the 
 
 Prince of Fisen's Fool Mr. Bunting. 
 
 The Prince of Fisen Mr. Callow. 
 
 Nagazami Miss Dumsday. 
 
 Toda and Zammassira... Messrs. Price & Partridge. 
 
 It was not desirable that any explanation should 
 be offered as to how the action of the drama could 
 have contrived to shift itself to Japan. For puzzles 
 which defy solution are the order of the day. If 
 this were not so, the sale of Bradshaw’s Railway 
 Guides would be an unaccountable phenomenon, 
 and the popularity of ‘‘spasmodic poetry” wholly 
 unsusceptible of explanation. Of course there was 
 a Japanese dance by Stephan. It was very pretty, 
 being, in point of fact, the dear old Truandaise. 
 A favourite dance has one peculiar quality in 
 common with some long rivers, in that it is known 
 by different names according to the scenes in 
 which it is found. Thus, a Highland fling becomes 
 in succession, in compliance with the varying 
 exigencies of dramatic representation, a Spanish 
 
or, The Career of a Widow's Son. 6i 
 
 Bolero, or a Rigadoon, or a Fandango, or is 
 executed by a party of theatrical dancing 
 Dervishes as their characteristic performance. 
 
 After the short divertissement referred to, there 
 was a sonorous blast of a trumpet, and “ Envoys 
 from Ricardo!'' were announced. Thereupon 
 entered a procession of supers, bearing flags. The 
 artfulness with which they kept the sides of their 
 banners which were enriched with heraldic em- 
 blazonments always turned to the spectators, was 
 admirable. Their example is followed by many 
 people off the stage, who judiciously present to the 
 eyes of the world the smooth front of their 
 character, which has the very deuce of a seamy 
 back to it. Then somebody or other turned out 
 to be an Emperor, and the circumstance was con- 
 sidered to be so remarkable that its occurrence 
 was properly to be attended by an earthquake. 
 The knowledge that the agonised groans of nature 
 accompanying the convulsions of the terrestrial 
 sphere which thereupon ensued were not altogether 
 unconnected with a small boy waggling about a 
 sheet of some metallic substance in the immediate 
 vicinity of the Prompter’s box, prevented one’s 
 being caught up and carried away by a whirlwind 
 of mad excitement, as must otherwise, in so elec- 
 trifying a succession of stirring events, have been 
 
62 
 
 Third Class and First Class. 
 
 the case. Then a volcano burst forth so fiercely 
 that it was obvious that in the event of the piece 
 having any prolonged run, the demand for sulphate 
 of copper and lycopodium, for coloured fires, would 
 spur the trade in those articles into a feverish state 
 of animation. Volcanoes in the economy of nature 
 seem to fulfil in some respects the uses of eruptive 
 tumours in the human subject. In the stage 
 arrangements of the R. B. this volcano was 
 obviously introduced for supplying a considerable 
 body of red flame, the management having con- 
 sidered that the Japanese dresses were likely to 
 light up particularly well. It is unnecessary to 
 say that a profuse cascade of sparks brought the 
 scene, and the piece, to a triumphant conclusion. 
 
‘‘THE STRING OF PEARLS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE BARBER FIEND OF FLEET STREET/’ 
 AT THE ROYAL BRITANNIA. 
 
 A n evening at the Britannia during the run of 
 “ The String of Pearls ; or, The Barber Fiend 
 of Fleet Street,” was to sup full of horrors. In the 
 vulgar tongue of Hoxton and elsewhere, a full 
 supper is called a “ tightener.” The expression is 
 coarse, no doubt, yet suggestive. Abominably so. 
 Going to see The Barber Fiend was a tightener 
 of horrors, like a visit to the small room at 
 Madame Tussaud's. 
 
 The plot was as follows. The Barber Fiend 
 murders in succession all his customers who come 
 
64 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or, 
 
 to him to be shaved, and then, by way of utilising 
 them to the utmost possible extent, as well as of 
 conveniently disposing of their bodies, makes them 
 into pies, upon which such of the characters as are 
 left to carry through the business of the piece, are 
 regaled. A series of effects is produced by 
 successive discoveries in the pies of what may be 
 called internal evidence of the true nature of 
 their ingredients. Thus, one of the consumers 
 finds in the first instance a woman’s hair. This is 
 not viewed as a circumstance of much gravity, 
 since it is a matter of common experience that 
 long hairs have an intrusive tendency which induces 
 them to present themselves in combination with 
 most alimentary substances. From buns, for 
 example, they are as inseparable as grit. Lodging- 
 house butter is usually fraught with them, and a 
 marked affinity is developed in their constitution 
 for London bread. Their frequent manifestation 
 in mutton pies is natural enough, since it may so 
 easily occur that the stumps of the horses’ tails 
 which supply the meat, may, on the occurrence of 
 any press of business in the trade, be incompletely 
 divested of them. This specific class of mutton is 
 also distinguished by a wiry tenacity of fibre and 
 sinew such as an advocate of ‘‘muscular Christianity” 
 might envy. It is attributable to the fact that the 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 65 
 
 particular kind of ''sheep’^ which supplies it forms 
 the source of motive power in the cab system of 
 the metropolis. 
 
 But to return to the Barber’s pies. The discovery 
 of the hair is followed by that of a thumb nail, 
 which appears to give rise to some indistinct, but 
 uneasy, misgivings in the breast of the consumer. 
 He pursues his meal with reflective hesitation, and 
 with a zest which has now been obviously impaired 
 by the operation of disquieting mental influences. 
 The startling revelation of a brass button attached 
 to a fragment of material substance of some kind 
 or other which bears the aspect of having once 
 formed a constituent portion of somebody or other’s 
 leather breeches, proves what is called ‘‘ a staggerer,” 
 and brings the repast to an abrupt and uncomfort- 
 able conclusion. The terrors of the scene cul- 
 minate in the discovery of a full and detailed 
 account of the whole matter set forth on the paper 
 in which the pies had been wrapped. The narra- 
 tive in question is accompanied by strictures on 
 the conduct of the murderer, ably drawn up by his 
 victims, and a free and explicit confession by him- 
 self is also appended to the document. At this 
 point a torrent of fiddles is let loose, which rasp 
 away for some moments with an energy worthy of 
 the crisis. 
 
66 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or, 
 
 The Barber is then taken into custody. But 
 not by policemen. Not a bit of it ! The R. B. 
 management knows better than that. Police con- 
 stables, no doubt, constitute a highly respectable 
 and estimable body of men. Still, when they 
 march in with the mechanical precision of automata, 
 as stiff as a procession of animated lamp-posts, and 
 with countenances fraught with utter unmeaning- 
 ness, they present, it must be confessed, the very 
 essence of the unpicturesque in effect. And their 
 plain, matter-of-fact, truncheons are but silent and 
 ineffective accessories to a situation. No. A party 
 of supers rush in, attired in the uniforms in which 
 they are accustomed to ‘‘do’’ the Swedish army in 
 Charles the Twelfth, and let off their muskets with 
 signal intrepidity, firing earnestly upwards, as 
 though anxious to hit some bird or other object 
 which they must be supposed to have descried 
 flitting about up among the gas battens. This 
 light fusillade incidentally brings about the desir- 
 able result of creating a strong smell of gunpowder, 
 and the noise throws a collection of urchins at the 
 door of the theatre, who cannot muster their six- 
 pence for the gallery, into paroxysms of excite- 
 ment to know what is going on inside. Of all the 
 various sad forms of human destitution, perhaps 
 the most affecting to contemplate is that of small 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 67 
 
 boys who hang night after night about the doors 
 of theatres but can’t afford to go in. 
 
 The apprehension of the wicked barber neces- 
 sarily brings the drama to its conclusion, and at 
 this point, therefore, all the murdered characters 
 reappear. If it be objected that the supposition of 
 his guilt is weakened by, not to say is absolutely 
 inconsistent with, the bodily presence of his 
 victims — the ipsissima corpora delictorum — all as 
 right and tight as can be, the answer is that the 
 claims of the final tableau are paramount. The 
 scene is then illuminated with red fire. An 
 explanation of the propriety of this enrichment of 
 the tableau is probably to be sought in the notion 
 of its being in some degree typical of the subject- 
 matter of the piece, since it is not within ordinary 
 experience that the action of retributive justice is 
 attended by any such meteoric phenomena. The 
 whole of the characters then join in a patriotic 
 song, in which the invasion panic, and the discom- 
 fiture of the enemy by the gallantry of the Hoxton 
 volunteers, together with any other points which 
 may happen to be of general interest to the com- 
 munity at the particular moment, are very neatly 
 and happily touched off. 
 
 Now if that isn’t a ‘^strong” piece, pray what is } 
 If the reader does not agree with me in so charac- 
 
68 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or, 
 
 terising it, I should then be glad to be put in 
 possession of his views as to what is a strong piece. 
 Surely the conversion of one half of the characters 
 in the drama into animal sustenance for the other 
 half is an incident of a complexion sufficiently 
 decided to arrest attention. In the ultimate 
 denoument of the plot more formidable and per- 
 plexing difficulties have to be encountered than 
 even in the case of a certain novel which was pub- 
 lished in parts in one of the penny awfuls some 
 time ago. In that instance, the author, on getting 
 into a tiff with the editor of the periodical, brought 
 the story which was in course of publication to an 
 abrupt and absurd conclusion by taking all his 
 characters out in a boat to a spot about midway 
 between Dover and Calais, and there upsetting 
 them into the sea, and drowning them like a litter 
 of mongrel puppies. Subsequently, however, being 
 desirous to publish his work in a separate form on 
 his own account, he became obliged to fish them 
 all up again from the bottom of the sea, and set 
 them to work out a proper conclusion as best the}^ 
 might. But in The Barber Fiend half the dramatis 
 personae have to be resuscitated after mastication 
 and digestion by the other half. 
 
 It was a disappointment that there was no call for 
 the author, as I should have liked to have seen the 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 69 
 
 party. His cast of mind must be a sort of com- 
 bination of Lady Macbeth’s with that of the editor 
 of the Newgate Calendar. He must reside in some 
 spectral and gloomy scene, such as Gower Street, 
 or the immediate vicinity of Cold Bath Fields’ 
 Prison, where the picture of desolate and dreary 
 waste which is ever presented to his view is 
 unrelieved by any stray gleam of a cheerful tint. 
 Moreover, the conception and composition of The 
 Barber Fiend must have taken place in his 
 moments of acute indigestion. Perverted fancies 
 of the imagination like this are usually the result 
 of functional disorder in the system. 
 
 Joking apart, I think that the representation of 
 such a mass of unnatural and repulsive horrors is 
 extremely wrong and pernicious, and the subse- 
 quent astonishing resuscitation of the victims does 
 little to rectify it. If the Drama be ‘‘holding the 
 mirror up to nature,” it should also be remembered 
 that there is such a thing, and a very real and 
 common thing too, as holding nature up to the 
 mirror. For the contemplation, or vivid descrip- 
 tion, of an act of wickedness, frequently, as is 
 perfectly well known, inoculates weak minds with 
 an irresistible impulse to do the same kind of 
 thing. It was in this course that Courvoisier, who 
 murdered his master. Lord William Russell, declared 
 
70 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or. 
 
 himself to have been brought to the gallows, and 
 there have been many similar instances. Besides 
 which, it isn’t the pleasantest thing in the world to 
 sit for an hour or two looking at murders, although 
 they are but sham ones, nor is it in good taste to 
 have too many of them on the stage. 
 
 Horace, who is a good authority in such matters, 
 doesn’t at all approve of the conversion of the stage 
 into an abattoir. He says 
 
 Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet,’* 
 
 which means, being translated, Medea shouldn’t 
 put her children to death before the eyes of the 
 people.” And he adds, as if with express reference 
 to The Barber Fiend, 
 
 Aut humana palam coquat exta nefarius Atreus,'^ 
 
 ^‘nor should wicked Atreus cook human flesh in 
 public.” Of course neither Horace, nor anyone 
 else, would be so absurdly over-particular as to 
 forbid the doing of any deeds of blood whatever on 
 the stage, as, for example, that in the last scene in 
 Rosmunda where Ristori corkscrews her hand and 
 wrist into Mademoiselle Picchiotino’s back hair, 
 and then dabs a nasty-looking dagger into the 
 small of her back. Of all situations on the stage 
 that one is the finest and most terrific. It makes 
 the heart of any impressionable spectator give such 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 
 
 71 
 
 knocks against the inside of his waistcoat as a 
 peremptory ghost might be supposed to do on 
 getting impatient when the bad man whom it had 
 come to terrify wouldn’t wake to be lectured. 
 
 But at the Britannia, where the victims are 
 worked off in a mere business-like way by a com- 
 monplace dab with a knife, and where the butcher- 
 ing process is not relieved or embellished by any 
 grandeur of attitude or tableau, it would be much 
 better that some such expedient should be made 
 use of as that adopted in the old Greek plays, 
 where the chorus came in and described in chrono- 
 logical order what was to be supposed to have 
 already taken place elsewhere. Or else that 
 Horace’s suggestion should be adopted that these 
 little matters should be attended to privately 
 behind the scenes, and that somebody on the stage 
 should state to the audience what he is to be 
 conceived as actually witnessing. If the latter 
 plan were resorted to, a murder would be sufficiently 
 represented by any character in the piece keeping 
 his eyes rivetted on the wing, and preserving a 
 display of hot excitement sustained during the 
 delivery of some such interjectional exclamations 
 as the following : — “ See ! he relieves him of his 
 head.” “ Now he lets a little daylight into his 
 windpipe!” “By Jove if he hasn’t been and 
 
72 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or. 
 
 whipped a long knife into his heart/’ '' Now he 
 fetches him a crack on his skull !” That last dig 
 in the eye was a nasty one !” and so on. 
 
 Before dismissing the subject of stage murders, 
 one perplexing feature in the mode of their actual 
 perpetration may be adverted to, which is this. 
 When the intending assassin seems to be on the 
 point of putting his purpose into execution, it is 
 often the case that he is standing immediately 
 behind, or close by the side of, his unsuspecting 
 victim, in so very comfortable and convenient a 
 position for sliding a knife cosily in between his 
 ribs, or otherwise surreptitiously administering to 
 him his quietus, that one could almost fancy that 
 a man of infirm moral principle, on finding himself 
 so circumstanced, might actually be impelled to 
 commit a murder which he had not previously 
 contemplated by the mere irresistible temptation 
 of so brilliant an opportunity for working off his 
 man with tastefulness and despatch. It is easy 
 to conceive his deploring in all sincerity the 
 lamentable necessity, imposed upon him by the 
 simple force of circumstances, of knocking on 
 the head the object, possibly, of his cordial esteem, 
 and towards whom he maintains the whole time, 
 without suspension, a feeling of the most genial 
 kindness. 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 73 
 
 Yet your stage assassin is never found to avail 
 himself of any such advantageous opening thus 
 presenting itself. Instead of that, he makes off to 
 the third entrance, where he pokes his head and 
 body forward, as coarse women do when in a 
 violent paroxysm of scolding, and then hisses forth 
 hostile sentiments, for the express purpose, as it 
 would seem, of putting the subject of his intended 
 operations thoroughly on his guard. The natural 
 consequence of this is that he becomes involved in 
 a course of wrestling with a desperate man before 
 the accomplishment of his purpose, and he is 
 thereby rendered so breathless that the emphasis of 
 the final dai \ ” is much impaired by lack of steam. 
 
 The proceedings on the stage, of a midnight 
 assassin who finds his victim asleep, are no less 
 inscrutable. He looks at him — starts — recoils — 
 then turns to the audience, and in a whisper 
 fraught with tremendous significance puts them in 
 possession of a circumstance which they have 
 already had abundant opportunity of observing for 
 themselves, namely, that “he sleeps!'^ He then 
 proceeds to execute a series of brisk, but elaborate, 
 manoeuvres about the stage, comprising a body of 
 tactics sufficient to carry a small army through an 
 ordinary campaign. I have never enjoyed the 
 advantage of witnessing the perpetration of a 
 
 F 
 
74 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or, 
 
 murder off the stage, but it would seem to be 
 unlikely that when such transactions take place in 
 real life they are attended by the complicated 
 evolutions above described. They correspond in 
 point 6f eccentricity to the funny things which 
 some people do on receiving a letter whose con- 
 tents they are dying to know. They contemplate 
 it externally in every possible point of view, and 
 the aspect which it presents when held topsy turvy 
 would appear to be a source to them of the most 
 animated interest. It is subjected to a protracted 
 course of manipulation, and in that process is done 
 everything in the world to but read. 
 
 By the way, I used the word ‘‘enjoy” just now, 
 with reference to witnessing a murder, in the con- 
 ventional sense in which one occasionally represents 
 oneself to have “ much pleasure ’’ in accepting 
 somebody or other’s “ kind invitation,^’ although 
 feeling all the time that it would be a far less 
 severe penance to go and have a tooth out, or 
 listen to a sermon a whole blessed hour long, and 
 scrupulously purged from the slightest semblance 
 whatever of any meaning, than fulfil the engage- 
 ment. Similarly, it is a common expression among 
 Sussex rustics that So and So “ enjoys” very bad 
 health. 
 
 The consummation of a tragical situation at the 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 75 
 
 R. B. is usually intensified by the tune of “ I loves 
 a drop of good beer,’’ played pensively. Objections 
 might of course be made by tiresome rigorists to 
 the adoption of so genial and festive an air as an 
 accompaniment to proceedings partaking in no 
 degree of a convivial spirit. But those who resort 
 to a theatre in a mean and nasty spirit of petty 
 captiousness are in no proper frame of mind for 
 appreciating the pathetic and touching effects 
 which the management has had an eye to. For 
 my own part, I can conscientiously affirm, in the 
 beautiful kind of language used by speakers at 
 public dinners, that on all these occasions “ my 
 emotions are of such a character as to be unlike 
 anything which they do not resemble.” 
 
 The Barber was well played by a Mr. B. Savile. 
 Dramatic impressions are so strong with me that I 
 should not go out of my way to get my hair cut 
 in Fleet Street just at present. The uncomfortable 
 atmosphere of suspicion and distrust which already 
 envelops the rations of opaque slime and gristle 
 conventionally known as mutton pies is amply 
 sufficient of itself, without the addition of any 
 further unpleasant misgivings which might be 
 suggested by The Barber Fiend, to discourage 
 one from partaking of those ambiguous delicacies. 
 When I was at school, a man who sold mutton 
 
/ 
 
 76 The String of Pearls ; or, 
 
 pies to the boys went the way of all piemen, and 
 his son succeeded to the business. It was currently 
 reported and believed that no funeral ever took 
 place. This, under the circumstances, was a 
 tremendous fact. For it afforded room for sur- 
 mising that the expression that the deceased had 
 “ gone the way of all flesh ” was pregnant with 
 unusual significance. If it had been stated that 
 he had ‘‘gone to his last home,” his place of final 
 rest and his son’s mutton pies, might, not im- 
 possibly, under the particular conditions of his 
 disappearance, have proved to be convertible terms. 
 
 Stephan played a dumb black boy. Her panto- 
 mime was very graceful and pretty, but her 
 appearance in such a character seemed rather like 
 the case of a star fallen from its sphere and turned 
 rushlight. She reversed the ordinary course of 
 Nature by converting herself from a butterfly into 
 a grub. It is a sad misfortune to know that 
 Stephan is not only married, but that her husband 
 has a close interest in cabs. The halo of poetry 
 which encircles a graceful danseuse is rudely 
 dispelled by an acquaintance with such abominably 
 prosaic circumstances as these. 
 
 Let me see — who else was there worthy of men- 
 tion } There was a beefeater who played a con- 
 spicuous part. This, I apprehend, was because, 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street. 77 
 
 th'C scene being laid in Fleet Street, the colour 
 of the costumes and accessories was unavoidably 
 cold and sombre. This drawback was rectified by 
 the artful expedient of introducing a beefeater, and 
 thus supplying in the most compendious form 
 possible a considerable body of warm colour. 
 Under the circumstances of his appearance, the 
 remarks which were assigned to him were of course 
 on purely general topics, and wholly divested of 
 any connexion whatever with the business of the 
 piece. I was pained to observe the embarrassment 
 to which he was subjected, arising from the obvious 
 fact of his having taken more than was good for 
 him to drink before coming upon the stage. He 
 clutched his halbert convulsively, under the impres- 
 sion that it was a fixed object. His gait, for the 
 same reason, was somewhat devious and uncertain. 
 And in walking he planted each foot down, 
 alternately, with a laboured stamp, as though his 
 path were beset by a series of blackbeetles which 
 he was bent on exterminating by scrunching. 
 
 The leading lady in the play was doubtless 
 introduced with a corresponding view to exclusively 
 spectacular effects, since how she was supposed to 
 connect herself with anybody or anything else in 
 the drama was wholly unsusceptible of explanation. 
 She was got up as a shepherdess, or what is known 
 
78 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or, 
 
 as a fidele Bergere/’ Now a shepherdess is 
 clearly a Harris. Who ever saw one out of a 
 picture, or off a piece of china } Since her duty 
 was simply to form an embellishment of the stage, 
 and to be wholly independent of the transactions 
 which took place there, it was judiciously con- 
 sidered that she might as well be put into the 
 most ornamental guise which suggested itself. 
 She looked, therefore, as if she were a coloured 
 illustration to Theocritus galvanised into vitality, or 
 as if she had stepped out of a book of Swiss costumes. 
 
 A low comedian, whose name I didn’t attain the 
 advantage of discovering, got a reception, and 
 forthwith addressed himself to give divers sly 
 winks, and execute a series of convolutions of his 
 person, which appeared to be considered as power- 
 ful strokes of pleasantry, and brought down the 
 gods. The entertainment was of so rare and subtle 
 a quality that it eluded my best efforts to detect 
 the secret of it, or to participate in its relish. The 
 only notion which his gesticulations conveyed to 
 my mind was that, like Miss Pross, in Dickens' 
 ‘‘ Tale of Two Cities," he was labouring under an 
 acute attack of “ the jerks." 
 
 It is desirable that the practice adopted by 
 Hoxton mothers of taking their babies to the 
 theatre should be discontinued. The small miser- 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street, 79 
 
 ables are brought out at the end of the evening 
 with their feathers all rumpled, and their poor 
 little eyes all glazed and fishy like those of old 
 debauchees. Their general effect, too, conveys 
 the impression of their having been sat upon, and 
 otherwise exposed to gross personal contumely. 
 
 In the Biglow papers, some slaveholder or other 
 talks of wishing to purchase a low-priced baby ” 
 to bring up. Some of these embryo members of 
 the R. B. public could only, if offered for sale, be 
 got off at a wretchedly low figure, as damaged 
 articles. Besides, too, their own personal sufferings, 
 they are very undesirable neighbours to sit by. 
 For, in the first place, they are apt to be — well — 
 I forbear to press the details with unpleasant 
 explicitness, and will therefore only say, in general 
 terms-^damp. 
 
 An artless and impulsive girl, all poetry, warmth, 
 and sensibility, a fresh and fervent product of 
 Nature with the first bloom and gloss still on it, 
 is usually spoken of (and the expression is used 
 in a perfectly commendatory spirit) as “ a gushing 
 young thing.” But when the young thing” in 
 question is a baby, and the gushing ” consists 
 in a profuse secretion of moisture arising from 
 an over-industrious action of the salivatory glands, 
 wherewith the producer slobbers and bedabbles 
 
8o 
 
 The String of Pearls ; or. 
 
 itself till it presents a slimy and gelatinous appear- 
 ance, which is anything but alluring, one is natur- 
 ally desirous to keep safely out of the range of 
 contact. Babies, too, as has been observed by 
 somebody or other, in one of their worst failings, 
 resemble Cherubim — namely, that they ‘‘contin- 
 ually do cry.'’ 
 
 These little weaknesses, which seem to be 
 inherent in their constitution, naturally prove the 
 source of obloquy and objection to them in the 
 judgment and feeling of the general public. And 
 it is in these considerations, no doubt, that one 
 may descry the grounds of the hard-hearted com- 
 placency, not to say satisfaction, with which the 
 various indignities and vicissitudes to which sham 
 babies in pantomimes are subjected, are viewed by 
 the spectators. For it is some slight gratification 
 to the vindictive feelings with which people are 
 apt to regard infants, to see their little tormentors 
 of real life thoroughly well battered and bullied in 
 effigy. It is for similar reasons that a clown, when 
 he accomplishes the discomfiture of policemen, is 
 always secure of the genuine and hearty sympathies 
 of the turbulent and disorderly spirits in the gallery, 
 who regard the officers of the law as their natural 
 enemies and oppressors. The exclusion, therefore, of 
 babies from theatres should be rigid and imperative. 
 
The Barber Fiend of Fleet Street, 8 1 
 
 Very different from the condition of the poor 
 babies is that of the youths in the gallery, who are 
 gifted with a flow of exuberant animal spirits 
 which find a safety-valve in shrill whistlings, 
 reminding one of Virgil’s account of the storm, 
 where QEolus lets loose the wind, and 
 
 “Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt,” &c., &c. 
 
 Since the temperature up in their sixpenny heaven 
 is so high (there was a fat little boy up there who 
 I thought would have been melted and had to be 
 taken home in a gallipot), they find it “ cool and 
 convanient” to sit without their coats. They 
 evince, too, a noble independence of bearing and 
 sentiment towards the swells in the body of the 
 house (who are in this case the counter-skippers of 
 Kingsland and Dalston) by turning their backs to 
 the chandelier, and sitting along the gallery rail 
 like a row of sparrows on a telegraph wire. In 
 this position they confront their friends in the 
 back settlements, and exchange with them a light 
 fusillade of badinage, principally couched in idio- 
 matic expressions of remarkable vigour and terse- 
 ness, which is sustained with much animation 
 during the time that the curtain is down between 
 the pieces. 
 
‘‘DESTINY; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE BROKEN HEART,” 
 
 AT THE VICTORIA. 
 
 T his is a stirring piece. So much personal 
 collision takes place between the characters 
 that “ Destiny ; or, the Broken Head ” would be a 
 very proper modification of the title. Its subject 
 matter is as follows. 
 
 Luke Meadows, a labouring man, is in difficulties 
 from having been caught poaching on the land of 
 the Squire of the Parish. The Squire in question 
 happens to be abjectly spoony upon Fanny 
 Meadows, Luke’s daughter. She, however, will 
 not listen to his advances, since she is already 
 provided with quite a model walking gentleman 
 all of her own, in turn-down collars and patent- 
 leather boots, and whom, therefore, she finds 
 
Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart. 83 
 
 pbrfectly satisfactory in all respects. The Squire 
 consequently proposes to her father to release him 
 from prison, and give him a large sum of money, if 
 he will insist upon Fanny’s becoming Mrs. Squire. 
 Luke consents, to the great dissatisfaction, of 
 course, of his daughter. At this point, certain 
 supers who are present as retainers, or peasants, or 
 in whatever characters you may please to ascribe 
 to them, are all suddenly struck by so absolute an 
 identity of feeling with reference to the depravity 
 of the father, that they exclaim in concert He 
 has sold his daughter for gold !” and the gravity of 
 this allegation is marked by a general striking of 
 attitudes which are sustained for some moments. 
 Exit the Squire, Luke, and the supers, and enter 
 the walking gentleman, who embraces and comforts 
 Fanny. 
 
 The words “ enter the walking gentleman who 
 embraces,” &c., are a compendious mode of describ- 
 ing a considerable and interesting course of 
 dramatic business, which is repeated at intervals 
 throughout the piece. For the walking gentleman 
 (who in this instance hardly complies with the 
 suggestions of his title, since he is continually 
 scudding in at full gallop) darts from the second 
 entrance to within about a yard of the lady. Then 
 they both recoil for a few paces backwards, as if 
 
84 Destiny ; or. The Broken Heart. 
 
 there had been some mistake about their being the 
 right couple. One’s anxiety on this point, how- 
 ever, is conclusively set at rest by the lady’s, 
 after a moment’s scrutinising gaze, exclaiming 
 ‘^’Tis — a — hee-e!” They then rush into one 
 another’s arms with such impetuosity that appre- 
 hensions are naturally enough excited lest their 
 bosoms should be respectively stove in by the 
 collision. 
 
 The walking gentleman lavishes his caresses 
 upon his sweetheart in the orthodox style, that is 
 to say, by nervously fumbling about her shoulder- 
 blades, and by several times flattening his nose 
 down on the crown of her head. These blandish- 
 ments are accompanied by interjectional and 
 fragmentary endearments of language, pitched in 
 the plaintive key of tenderness. Calmer moments 
 succeed, and the lady then tells her lover how 
 shabbily her papa has behaved in desiring to 
 purrchase the tinsel advantages of rrank at the 
 expense of a daughter’s honour,” and so on. He 
 implores her to be “ gee-yeided ” by him, and to 
 seek safety in “ flee-ight.” She, however, peremp- 
 torily declines to accede to any such proposal, 
 since of course it would never do for the hero and 
 heroine of a drama to whisk themselves away 
 clean out of sight, for good and all, in the very 
 
Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart, 85 
 
 second scene. While the point is still under 
 discussion, footsteps are heard, so the walking 
 gentleman, after one more kiss (which was too 
 hurried to be as protractedly dwelt upon as such 
 transactions should be to get their full goodness 
 out of them), retires, the lady elapsing in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 It may be observed, incidentally to the matters 
 we are describing, that the distinguishing marks 
 and properties of the walking gentleman of the 
 stage form a somewhat curious subject of con- 
 sideration. When his lot is cast in smooth 
 and agreeable circumstances, and the course of 
 affairs moves pleasantly onwards towards the 
 consummation which is the end and aim of a 
 walking gentleman’s being (for after marriage, he 
 walks, of course, no more), he is apt, it must be 
 confessed, to be a somewhat insipid character, his 
 mission on the stage being, as it would seem, 
 merely to supply a certain amount of simpering 
 inanity for the purpose of throwing out the more 
 vigorous personages of the drama into forcible 
 relief The walking gentleman, however, like the 
 virtue of resignation, shines brighter in adversity, 
 because then he sometimes becomes the prominent 
 character of strong situations, and not unfrequently 
 gets an opening for bringing his stock of powerful- 
 
86 Destiny ; or^ The Broken Heart. 
 
 emotion business into play. On such occasions as 
 
 these he speaks in a voice of cavernous tone, recurs 
 
 frequently to the subject of his ter-rewth,'' and is 
 
 very particular in his injunctions to Providence to 
 
 “gee-yard the woman of his harrt.” When the 
 
 object of his affections smiles upon him, he 
 
 \ 
 
 becomes rapturous in satisfaction. When, on the 
 other hand, she is a little cross with him, he sighs 
 as heavily as a paviour does when he thumps down 
 his rammer on a stone ; and on all occasions when 
 his feelings come into play, his utterance is broken 
 by emotion, so that it struggles out by gulpy inter- 
 jections, like fluid from a narrow-necked bottle. 
 
 His title of walking gentleman is a misnomer in 
 one respect, inasmuch as he never walks, in the 
 ordinary sense of the term. He has under all 
 circumstances a peculiar method of progression of 
 his own which can only be accurately described by 
 the French expression of a “ pas cadence.” The 
 walking gentleman is never so exulting as when 
 his sweetheart’s name is Susan, because then when 
 he has to deliver the time-honoured speech of “ In 
 the old kee-yabinet of nature’s gee-yems there is 
 none arruf so bee-yeautiful as the lovely Zoozan,” 
 the “ Zoozan ” affords him an opening for what 
 may be called “intense syllabification,” which he 
 lingers upon with infinite relish. 
 
Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart. 87 
 
 ' The chief feature in the appearance of a walking 
 gentleman is the bran-new hat which he carries in 
 his hand, as ladies do lace pocket handkerchiefs, 
 with a view to decorative effect only, since he 
 never puts it on. A new hat with spotless lining 
 would form a very appropriate crest for the walking 
 gentleman family. His face is as luminously clean 
 as that of a wax doll at a bazaar ; his coat is fresh 
 and glossy, and his boots polished to that degree 
 that they form a pair of lustrous mirrors, so that 
 the wearer bears about with him two little inverted 
 images of himself reflected in each instep. 
 
 For this embodiment of the popular conception 
 of a model lover are we indebted to theatrical 
 costumiers, or to the wax figures put forth at 
 the doors of cheap outfitters, or to the pictorial 
 illustrations on valentines } I am disposed to 
 think that the artists who embellish valentines 
 resort to the stage for their inspirations. For it will 
 be remembered that in days of old the decorations 
 which they introduced were of a quiet character, 
 as, for example, a Cupid sailing in a blue boat on 
 a pink sea, or the like. But since the general 
 prevalence of gorgeous transformation scenes, a 
 corresponding introduction into valentines of gold 
 and silver tinfoil has taken place. The favourite 
 design nowadays seems to be a goldfinch with a gold 
 
88 Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart. 
 
 beak, poised vertically in a sort of pose plastique, 
 with his wings parallel to the plane of the paper, 
 in a cavern of silver stalactites. The violent 
 peculiarity in the relation of the different objects 
 to one another in this scene, in point of their 
 respective and comparative magnitudes, seems to 
 have escaped the observation of the designer. For 
 it will be remarked that the bird is represented of 
 such a size, as compared with the cavern, that the 
 mutual proportions of the different parts of the 
 tableau are precisely such as would be found to 
 exist were an ostrich to be seen hovering in the 
 doorway of a sentry box. 
 
 The subject of walking gentlemen leads me by a . 
 very natural transition to a closely cognate theme, 
 that is to say the distinguishing features in the 
 physiology of walking ladies, as seen at minor 
 theatres. The first quality that is absolutely indis- 
 pensable to a walking lady at a minor theatre 
 seems, to judge from the uniform results of obser- 
 vation under this head, to be a very full bust, the 
 effect of which is heightened by her bosom’s pride 
 being somewhat inadequately veiled. It is not, 
 however, to be imagined from this circumstance 
 that the walking lady is at all free or indecorous in 
 manner or language. She is always emphatically 
 and invariably the reverse, being perhaps, at times, 
 
Destiny ; or. The Broken Heart. 89 
 
 even a shade too oppressively virtuous in senti- 
 ment. Indeed, she is apt to lapse into what might 
 be described as a feebly sententious, not to say 
 maudlin, strain of moralising, such as might be 
 conceived to emanate from Martin Tupper when 
 slightly fuddled. 
 
 In the earlier scenes, before the course of her 
 true love begins to run crooked, she is “ powerfully’^ 
 dressed. I saw a walking lady at the Pavilion in 
 a bonnet so dazzlingly yellow that it would (meta- 
 phorically speaking) have put a sunflower’s nose 
 out of joint in intensity of colour. Subsequently, 
 however, when a screw has come loose in her 
 arrangements with her walking gentleman, a notable 
 change of her attire ensues. She is then frequently 
 to be seen upon the sea-shore in a white evening 
 dress and copper-coloured prunella boots, these 
 latter, as everybody knows, being the chaussure in 
 which ladies who are bent upon tramping through 
 wet shingle do usually attire themselves. The 
 bonnet has disappeared, and her back hair is now 
 only held up by a catch, ready to be let down at 
 any juncture, so that it may be said to be kept at 
 full cock. We would respectfully, but earnestly, 
 protest against the unhappy practice to which so 
 many ladies on the stage, walking and otherwise, 
 are addicted, of making their hair artificially wavy, 
 
 G 
 
90 Destiny ; or. The Broken Heart, 
 
 thus imparting to it the peculiar rippled appear- 
 ance which is so characteristic of the heads of very 
 old negresses. A head thus doctored always 
 reminds one of Mrs. Seacole of Crimean celebrity. 
 The rippling utterly spoils the repose of black 
 hair, which, to produce the full effect of its beauty, 
 should lie at rest in grand, dark, heavy masses. 
 There is not so much objection to the little flat 
 one-turn-of-a-corkscrew curls just in front of each 
 ear which coquettes do so much affect, and which 
 are known as “ C Cs,’’ or “ coaxers,” or “ kiss-me- 
 quicks.” Still, in this case, it is to be regretted 
 that the regular gaol-birds of Whitechapel should 
 have adopted the very same garniture of their faces, 
 as their own special embellishment, distinctive of 
 their class and craft. The curl is identically the 
 same in pattern in the case of the ladies and that 
 of the roughs. At Newgate, however, it is known 
 under the less euphemious name of an ‘‘aggravator.” 
 
 But to return to the walking lady. Being on 
 the sea-shore, she addresses various observations, 
 replete with intense pathos, to the sea or surge, 
 which latter she accosts as “ the boiling sur-udge.” 
 It may be remarked, in conclusion, with reference 
 to walking ladies, that their “walking” is very 
 frequently indeed that peculiar pigeon’s run in 
 which the experienced eye infallibly detects the 
 
Destiny ; or^ The Broken Heart. 91 
 
 ci-devant danseuse. But it is high time to get back 
 to Destiny and the Victoria. 
 
 The next scene is a double scene, divided down 
 the middle, and disclosing on the right a plain 
 room in which Luke is recruiting his system with 
 pipes and beer, while on the left is a luxuriously- 
 furnished lady's boudoir in which Fanny is lying 
 asleep on a sofa. Luke has by this time come to 
 a sense of the turpitude of his conduct, and indi- 
 cates his repentance by gushes of remorseful senti- 
 ment, the pauses intervening between these being 
 filled by short musical interludes on the part of the 
 orchestra, consisting of snatches from Old Dog Tray. 
 
 Enter the Squire into the boudoir. On observing 
 Fanny, he goes through a pantomime of rapturous 
 admiration, as much as to say, if one were to put 
 it into R. V. language, Crikey ! don’t she look 
 nice though!” and so on. Presently, a movement 
 of her arm gives him the cue for saying “ Soft ! 
 she wakes !” He then throws himself into the 
 most impressive pose indicative of admiration 
 which is comprised within his repertoire of atti- 
 tudes, and awaits the result. Fanny rubs her eyes, 
 and expresses her perplexity at finding herself in 
 a strange apartment by the inquiry, addressed 
 apparently to the general public, for the Squire has 
 not yet caught her observation, of “ what place is 
 
92 Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart. 
 
 this heere V The Squire replies by making violent 
 love, which she inflexibly declines to listen to. As 
 he becomes more and more pressing, Luke, who 
 overhears it all through the keyhole, gets corres- 
 pondingly more and more excited, and manipu- 
 lates a poker with such ominous symptoms of 
 feverish agitation as any well-wishers of the Squire 
 would regard as fraught with an uncomfortable 
 significance with reference to that gentleman’s 
 personal security. And just as the Squire is rush- 
 ing violently upon his prey, Luke batters down 
 the door and confronts him. The Squire then 
 intimates that he considers himself to have grounds 
 for dissatisfaction at having been ‘‘de-uped,” to 
 which Luke replies, “der-rive me not mad!” The 
 scene is brought to a conclusion by a tableau, the 
 Squire huddled up and shrinking into himself in 
 complete discomfiture, and Luke, defiant and sub- 
 lime, with Fanny in a faint hung over his arm 
 after the manner of a waiter’s napkin, like Virginius 
 with the dead body of Lucretia. 
 
 At this point a scene from Grand Cairo, with a 
 comic duet and dance by Mr. George Barker and 
 Miss Pettigrew, agreeably relieves the severe 
 tension of feeling which a too protracted course of 
 highly-wrought pathos would otherwise have 
 induced. 
 
Destiny ; The Broken Heart. 
 
 93 
 
 The next scene is a quadruple one, disclosing 
 the inside of four rooms of a house. This arrange- 
 ment is a favourite one at the R. V., since it affords 
 extra capabilities for piling up effects. Such a 
 multiplicity, however, of tableaux presented simul- 
 taneously is perplexing to the spectator. So I do 
 not remember what they were all about, except 
 that at the top was the Squire, with a party of 
 burglars, trying to get in somewhere, with the view, 
 as it may be surmised, of carrying Fanny off. And 
 in one corner was a comic scene with Miss Petti- 
 grew in bed. Presently the house catches fire, and 
 then ensues a general throttlement of all the male 
 characters by one another, in pairs, the female 
 characters wildly brandishing their arms, and other- 
 wise making a great to-do, in the intervening 
 spaces. Shortly afterwards the walls crack and 
 tumble in ruins, and Miss Pettigrew, who had 
 stuck to her comic business up to this point, has 
 to leap out of bed (fully attired N. B.) and scud 
 away, screaming shrilly. 
 
 Various scenes succeed, too numerous to par- 
 ticularise here. In one of them, however, an 
 incident occurs which demands mention, namely, 
 that the ruffian of the piece, one ‘‘ fierce Rob,’' 
 waylays the Squire in a wood, and shoots him as 
 dead as a doornail. Rob’s face is coloured up 
 
94 Destiny ; ofy The Broken Heart. 
 
 with ruddle to the orthodox murky tint by which 
 the R.V. marks its ruffians of the more rugged 
 and violent class. The hue is the same as that 
 of the unpleasant mixture of blood and brick-dust 
 of which London-made “ chocolate ” is composed. 
 It does not appear why fierce Rob was so bent 
 upon working off the Squire. One is left to infer 
 that there must have been some uncomfortable 
 feeling between them, arising perhaps from one of 
 those unfortunate misunderstandings or little cool- 
 nesses which are apt to occur between the best- 
 intentioned of friends, and which are compatible 
 with a sincere and cordial feeling of general 
 regard. Luke is accused of the murder, and taken 
 into custody on the charge, and in the last scene 
 he is tried. Rob is the witness against him. 
 Robert appears to be animated with very un- 
 amiable sentiments towards the whole of the other 
 characters, since he exclaims in a sort of husky 
 roar which sounds like a cracked gong, “ I dl 
 
 hurrrl such destruction on ye all as shall ” 
 
 The conclusion of the sentence is lost in abysses 
 of sepulchral pathos. 
 
 Luke is found guilty, and is about to be sen- 
 tenced, when the proceedings are arrested by the 
 wholly unexpected reappearance of the Squire, 
 who enters attired in full evening dress, as though 
 
Destiny ; or, The Broken Hea^^t. 95 
 
 b^nt on winding up the proceedings with a little 
 social gaiety. His sentiments, too, have experi- 
 enced as complete a change as his costume, since 
 he expresses his intention of making matters all 
 square for Fanny and her walking gentleman, and 
 of doing the handsome thing by Luke. The 
 walking gentleman, who has been eagerly awaiting 
 these announcements at the wing, shoots in at this 
 juncture, and then the whole of the characters 
 (including fierce Rob, who has undergone a com- 
 plete and very desirable revulsion of feeling during 
 the last two minutes, with an express view to the 
 final tableau) bow and smile to the audience, as 
 the curtain descends, with the expression of all 
 that amiable interest which gentlemen are enjoined 
 by the Handbook of Etiquette to display to their 
 partners in quadrilles. 
 
 I do not remember that a Squire has occurred 
 in any of my previous theatrical sketches, and the 
 character, as represented at a minor theatre, calls 
 for some remark. The traditional idea of a country 
 gentleman of property which is cherished at the 
 R. V. is as peculiar as the French conception of 
 John Bull. Every Englishman, as is well known, 
 is supposed by our neighbours over the water to 
 wear a white hat stuck on at the back of his head, 
 and to be attended by a bull-dog. At the Royal 
 
g6 Destiny ; or, The B^^oken Heart, 
 
 Victoria every country Squire is conceived to be 
 so wholly surrendered to the excitements of the 
 chase that his habitual costume of ordinary life is 
 a red coat and top boots. And a certain rough 
 and impatient brusquerie of language and 
 demeanour, savouring of the hunting field, con- 
 tributes to heighten the impression of rustic 
 bluntness which his outward appearance suggests. 
 After observing this congruity of sentiment and 
 attire, one easily catches the idea that the Squire's 
 eventual change to pumps and a dress shirt is 
 intended to intimate a softening of disposition 
 which has taken place in him, and an improved 
 conformity to the social amenities of the domestic 
 circle. 
 
 His resuscitation after having his brains blown 
 out reminds one of the Russian conjuror Frikell's 
 trick with the pigeon. He gives you a live pigeon 
 to hold, and desires you (very much a la Frikell) 
 to “ vasten im ai !" (‘Hasten him high"), which may 
 be conjectured perhaps to be likely to mean “ hold 
 him tight." He then deliberately cuts off his head. 
 After a certain amount of hocus-pocus business, 
 he reproduces the pigeon all right and jolly, and 
 apparently rather invigorated than otherwise by 
 the little incident of decapitation. The most 
 prominent quality of Frikell’s entertainment is 
 
Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart, 97 
 
 also characteristic of a minor theatre drama. For 
 the entertainment and drama are both in a great 
 measure made up of a series of surprises. Frikell, 
 for example, guillotines a pigeon, and brings him 
 to life again, as has been described, and then, 
 while you sit staring in amazement, he takes the 
 opportunity of relieving you of a canary bird 
 which you were unaware was on the nape of 
 your neck, or extracts an eel from your waistcoat 
 pocket which you had no recollection of having 
 placed there, or picks an egg out of the corner of 
 your eye. A Victoria dramatist introduces you 
 to some exciting phase of metropolitan life, then 
 whisks you away to a pastoral scene in Switzer- 
 land, and eventually pops you down in bewildered 
 amazement at Pekin. And it is as likely as not 
 that any one of his dramatis personae will turn 
 out to be the Pope in disguise, or Boadicea, or 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, or any other utterly unex- 
 pected personage. 
 
 As for deaths and resurrections, the characters 
 in a minor drama would be eminently qualified to 
 become members of that society whose bond of 
 union sounds so dismal, namely, the association 
 which is advertised as '‘The Mutual Burial Society.'' 
 Except, indeed, for the circumstance that there 
 would be no keeping the stage characters from a 
 
98 Destiny ; or, The Broken Heart. 
 
 minor theatre down underground, since with that 
 obstinate tenaciousness of vitality which distin- 
 guishes them, they would always be popping up 
 again as fast as they were earthed. 
 
 Thus, in “ Destiny,” it transpired that the heroine 
 had taken poison at some period or other anterior 
 to the commencement of the action of the play. 
 One constantly expected, therefore, all the way 
 through the piece, to see her taken unwell, as 
 indicated by her goggling her eyes, or staggering, 
 or turning blue, or by her at least intimating that 
 she didn’t altogether feel quite the thing. None, 
 however, of these anticipated effects did actually 
 ensue, and the poison, indeed, seemed to have 
 rather brisked her up than otherwise. It may 
 therefore be considered that the notion of her 
 having completed the preliminaries of suicide was 
 conveyed merely for the purpose of imparting an 
 increased impressiveness of solemnity to her obser- 
 vations, as being those of a person already darkened 
 by the shadow of impending death. This result 
 having been achieved, and the Squire having put 
 everything nice and straight, it became of course 
 unnecessary that the circumstance of the poison 
 should be further adverted to. 
 
"THE FOUNDLINGS OF THE SEA: 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE OUTCAST SON,’’ 
 
 AT THE VICTORIA. 
 
 W HATEVER defects may be alleged against 
 "The Foundlings of the Sea ; or, The Outcast 
 Son,” now playing at the Victoria, a scantiness of 
 plot cannot be laid to its charge. There is indeed 
 a plethora of that. The first scene represents a 
 street with sectional views of the interiors of the 
 ground and first floor in each of two opposite 
 houses. Dramatic action goes on in all of these 
 at the same time as well as in the street, so that 
 in fact five plots are started concurrently, and the 
 spectator is called upon to yield himself up to five 
 different illusions at the same moment, and to 
 entertain a corresponding number of appropriate, 
 and perhaps conflicting, emotions. The incidents 
 
lOO 
 
 The Foundlings of the Sea ; 
 
 of the separate scenes, if conceived to be combined 
 into a plot, are wholly irreconcilable with any 
 continuous chain of circumstances which could by 
 possibility have existence. So that neither I, nor 
 anyone else, can explain the course of action of 
 the drama. 
 
 It is a very languid piece, offering nothing 
 worthy of remark. There is, indeed, a vagabond 
 who is presented with an elaborate completeness 
 of detail, as well as vividness of general effect, 
 which shows how powerful and comprehensive is 
 the grasp of his subject by the impersonator. The 
 result is, in truth, the successful embodiment of a 
 masterly conception. His hat alone constitutes in 
 itself a powerful effect. Considering, however, the 
 peculiar advantages which the artists of the Victoria 
 enjoy in respect of facility of access to the most 
 distinguished living models in this line, it would be 
 inexcusable if the delineations of scoundrels which 
 are presented were to fall short of absolute perfec- 
 tion. So conversant indeed must the members of 
 the establishment be with the ragamuffin aspect of 
 humanity, that there can be no one from the 
 manager to the callboy who would not be com- 
 petent to undertake a part of the kind at the 
 shortest notice and feel comfortably at home in it. 
 The Victoria audiences are competent critics in a 
 
ory The Outcast Son. 
 
 lOI 
 
 case of this description, since the house is largely 
 graced by the presence of embryo and mature 
 convicts, and of gentlemen on tickets of leave 
 during their transient intervals of sojourn in the 
 bosom of Lambeth society. 
 
 The “profligate aristocrat” of the piece is of 
 course distinguished by the accredited tokens of a 
 peer as known to minor theatres, among which a 
 glossy white hat, a light paletot with sky blue silk 
 cuffs, and a pink satin cravat are the more pro- 
 minent. The heroine forms a brilliant spectacle 
 of milliners’ architecture and floral embellishment, 
 presenting herself of course in complete ball 
 costume. This puzzling view of propriety in the 
 make-up of an orthodox heroine obtains no less, 
 as every body knows, in the cispontine temples of 
 the drama than in those across the water. 
 
 The lady who plays the leading female part in 
 “The Foundlings of the Sea” is of so limited 
 personal attractiveness as to remind one of a story 
 in the Arabian Nights, where it is related that the 
 Sultan’s guards captured a Moor who was so ugly 
 that they were obliged to avert their heads while 
 bearing him off to prison, as the hideousness of his 
 face was too much for their nerves. The type of 
 female beauty which obtains the warmest com- 
 mendation at such establishments as the Victoria 
 
102 
 
 The Foundlings of the Sea ; 
 
 is that which marks those gross and flaunting 
 specimens of female humanity which are to be 
 observed behind the bars of taverns, and whose 
 bloated and unctuous personalities appear to 
 harmonise with the surroundings by which they 
 are environed in such resorts, and with the gin- 
 and-watery atmosphere and odours in which they 
 thrive. There is also among the dramatis personae 
 a polished, but desperate and bloody, villain, 
 carrying a concealed dagger which he plunges 
 unhesitatingly into every body whose continuance 
 on the scene he considers likely to operate disad- 
 vantageously upon his private arrangements. The 
 dagger itself forms of course a strong point for 
 effect of which the management have properly 
 availed themselves, since the article used is of 
 much about the same size as the boiled-beef 
 carvers which may be seen in eating-houses. Con- 
 sequently, were such a weapon to be employed in 
 serious duty off the boards, it would require a party 
 of unusual depth of bust to afford accommodation 
 to the blade in its entire length within his person. 
 
 The tenacity of life evinced by the hero (the 
 ‘‘ outcast son’') is astonishing, since after having had 
 somewhere about nine inches of the dagger above 
 described inserted into his person, he is yet enabled 
 to present himself at the final tableau (like the 
 
or, The Outcast Son. 
 
 103 
 
 plates at Todgers’ in Martin Chuzzlewit, ‘‘up to 
 the mark and true to time’’), to all appearance as 
 right as a trivet. This point reminds one of the 
 parallel case of the duke in Rigoletto, for when 
 you think he has been skewered by Sparafucile, 
 and you grieve for his — that is, the leading tenor s 
 — abstraction from the scene, you are relieved to 
 find, by hearing “La donn’ e mobile,” Sz:c., once 
 more, that your apprehensions were unfounded. 
 A Victoria pistol is correspondingly effective in 
 appearance, being of such a size as to look like a 
 seedling blunderbuss. 
 
 The pantomime is called “True Blue and Queen 
 Britannia ; or. The Demon Zabulus and the Fairy 
 of the Silver Waters.” A ballet in the opening is 
 rather pretty, although the principal danseuse is 
 heinously awkward and vulgar, and plops about 
 the stage with ponderous plumps which are fraught 
 with danger to the timber work beneath her. 
 
 The libretto of the Pantomime contains some 
 poetry by a Lambeth author, breathed in the spirit 
 of his native “New Cut.” Legitimate exception 
 however may be taken to the outrageous violence 
 to the drum of the public ear of which he is guilty 
 in attempting to make “ I wish to ask” rhyme with 
 “ Atlantic telegraph.” 
 
 The commissariat department of the Victoria is 
 
104 
 
 The Foundlings of the Sea. 
 
 worthy of all praise, since a cup of feasible tea is 
 to be got in the saloon. A debate took place 
 among a party of girls just behind me upon the 
 question of retiring or no for refreshment between 
 the pieces. It was eventually settled that one of 
 them should be dispatched as emissary on a 
 foraging expedition. It became evident from the 
 result of her mission that she had resorted to a 
 perambulating refectory at the corner of the street, 
 for she returned laden with a lapful of baked 
 potatoes smoking hot, each of them with a circular 
 aperture excavated in it for salt, and garnished 
 with a cube of vividly yellow butter. A palefaced 
 youth next to me in the stalls, yielded to the 
 solicitations of a tempter with a basket, and 
 partook of some “ royal Victoria Lemonade.” I 
 observed him afterwards winking dejectedly, and 
 seemingly a prey to internal pangs of a spasmodic 
 character. 
 
THE LAST NEW PIECE AT THE 
 MARYLEBONE. 
 
 T he Marylebone, and that delicious temple of 
 the illegitimate drama, the Queen's,^ are the 
 only theatres conveniently accessible to the in- 
 habitants of the N.W. postal district, so that the 
 production of a new piece at either house is an 
 event of lively interest to the theatrically-inclined 
 portion of that community. There is, to be sure, 
 the Princess’, but Kean’s supporters there are so 
 carefully divested of all individuality as to resemble 
 a file of policemen who are distinguishable only by 
 their numbers. They always put one in mind of 
 Virgil’s heroes “ fortemque Gyan, fortemque Clo- 
 anthum” & Co., who are turned out, like the 
 
 * The “Queen’s” has been the theatre of a wonderful “trans- 
 formation scene,” as it is now the “ Prince of Wales’.” 
 
 II 
 
io6 
 
 The Last New Piece 
 
 corresponding bits of any number of Government 
 rifles, with a mathematical precision of uniformity. 
 And it may truly be said of — (take any pair of 
 names you please, male or female, out of Kean’s 
 bills) — that they bear to one another, in respect of 
 their mutual accordance in a dull and common- 
 place mediocrity, a parallel relation to that of the 
 Ethiopian Pompey and Caesar of whom “ both 
 were so like either that you couldn’t tell t’other 
 from which.” 
 
 The last new piece at the Marylebone is called 
 The Brigand of the Blind Mine.” No explana- 
 tion is offered on the bills as to what a “ blind 
 mine” may be. The principle pursued in the 
 christening of plays at minor theatres appears to 
 be to select some noun substantive whose associa- 
 tions are of a wild and romantic character, such as 
 a cave, or a glen, or a torrent, or a vault, and then 
 tack to it any chance adjective out of the repertoire 
 of those whose meaning is connected with the 
 pathetic or tragic. A title compounded on the 
 above recipe is calculated to prove an attractive 
 magnet to people who find pleasure in subjecting 
 themselves either to emotional or to imaginative 
 impressions. In the present instance, perhaps, the 
 result of the mode of christening which has been 
 described might be considered to be somewhat 
 
at the Marylebone. 
 
 107 
 
 Jnfelicitous, as being wholly void of any possible 
 meaning ; but these things should never be 
 criticised. 
 
 Scene First introduces a heavy father supposing 
 himself wronged in respect of his daughter. The 
 “ destroyer of his child’s honour” comes to put up 
 for the night at his house, which, in the absence of 
 any sufficient reason alleged for so indiscreet a 
 proceeding, strikes one as a very weak thing to do 
 on the part of the destroyer. When the profligate 
 party has retired to rest, the heavy father discovers 
 from his portmanteau who he is, and of course 
 gets into a great taking on the subject, his wrath 
 finding expression in such language as “ The 
 villin — the destroyer of my che-yeild is here — is in 
 my power — ven-geance shall be mine — I ’ll have 
 his life — I’ll have his bludd!” The phonetic 
 orthography of the concluding word of the last 
 sentence is adopted, since the “bludd” of the 
 minor theatre vernacular is quite another thing 
 from the “blood” of ordinary colloquy. At this 
 point the heavy mother delivers herself of a series 
 of moral platitudes having reference to the duty of 
 abstaining from revenge, and forming quite a small 
 compendium of ethical philosophy, but somewhat 
 overmuch cut and dried. Heavy father gradually 
 descends from rampancy to simple obduracy, and 
 
io8 
 
 The Last New Piece 
 
 at length under the influence of plaintive music (a 
 few bars, in fact, of the popular air of ^‘Joe 
 Buggins” played very softly) melts sufficiently to 
 allow himself to be coaxed off O.P. by the heavy 
 mother in a state of tearful submissiveness. 
 
 Scene Second , — The blind mine. Soliloquy by 
 the heroine, but in consequence of some misunder- 
 standing in the back settlements of the gallery, the 
 din of battle overpowered all other sounds, and it 
 could only be gathered from the expression and 
 gestures of the lady, that she considered herself to 
 be in a position of some embarrassment. Enter a 
 character, or rather, an object, all black beard and 
 dark lantern, who advances with a series of strides 
 as though his path were intersected by a system of 
 transverse ditches, and remarks in what may be 
 described as an ‘‘intense whisper” “Now for it! 
 luvv and ven-ge-ance urrudge me forrward!” He 
 is met however on the part of the lady with 
 “ Monster I now as ever the object of my supreme 
 contempt ; I laugh at thy arts, and defy thy direst 
 malice 1” In the result, of course, the calm state- 
 liness of female resolution quells the audacity of 
 vice, and the “baffled villin” exudes in abject dis- 
 comfiture by the orthodox staccato method of 
 progression. 
 
 The drop scene here recalls one’s perceptions to 
 
at the Marylebone. 
 
 109 
 
 the realities of ordinary life, since it has been 
 judiciously converted into a source of emolument 
 by being let as an advertising medium. Hence, 
 one’s fancy is violently dragged from the regions 
 of romance by the display of notices such as 
 
 Inderwick’s pipe warehouse” 
 
 ‘‘Shipping to the colonies” 
 “Tobacconists supplied with fancy goods at the 
 lowest prices, &c.” 
 
 And 
 
 “ The great philanthropic discovery of the 
 nineteenth century” 
 
 “ Old Dr. Jacob Townsend’s Original American 
 Sarsaparilla, &c.” 
 
 The latter advertisement is embellished with a 
 medallion portrait of the great philanthropist in 
 question with an appropriate expression of the 
 sweetest urbanity, a perfect dairy, in fact, of the 
 milk of human kindness, and “ flowing,” to con- 
 tinue the same metaphor, “ with milk and honey.” 
 And 
 
 “ Lea and Company’s ” 
 
 “ Lambton and Hetton’s ” 
 
 “ Direct from the collieries.” 
 
 &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Scene Third , — Same as the preceding, with the 
 H 2 
 
no 
 
 The Last New Piece 
 
 addition of a gory corpse ” at the back of the 
 stage. How it came there, or who it had been in 
 life, was shrouded in impenetrable mystery, but 
 the latter point received due elucidation subse- 
 quently. Heroine on the stage. Soliloquy ex- 
 pressive of distraction of mind, with frequent 
 employment of hapless and “ wretched,” which 
 are favourite adjectives in the vernacular of the 
 illegitimate drama, since they are susceptible of 
 such intense articulation. Enter the brigand, who, 
 from his demeanour, appears to be exulting at 
 having replaced his arrangements on a satisfactory 
 basis. This is intimated by a swagger mainly 
 executed by a series of alternate swoops of his 
 shoulders as he steps. He points to “yon corse,” 
 and addresses the heroine in a strain of malicious 
 bantering, from which it is to be gathered that the 
 “ cropse,” as such things are called by the profane, 
 is that of the “ destroyer,” &c., of the first scene, 
 and that the heroine’s parents are accused of the 
 murder. A good deal of melodramatic business 
 ensues, marked of course on the part of the brigand 
 by a tone of sneering triumph, and on that of the 
 lady by an acrimonious bitterness of repartee. 
 Matters are on the point of coming to some crisis 
 or other to the probable disadvantage of the weaker 
 party, when up pops the corpse ! which, to argue 
 
at the Marylebone. 
 
 Ill 
 
 from this circumstance, can’t have been killed 
 quite entirely dead, and fights a lively duel with 
 the bandit, striking a profuse cascade of sparks out 
 of the combat swords. Eventually the resuscitated, 
 and now surprisingly vivacious, corpse goes up 
 with the lady in the miner’s basket, firing from it 
 a pistol at the bandit, who tumbles with a stifif 
 back fall, that is to say with an emphatic plop, flat 
 on his back, and down comes old Doctor Townsend 
 with the Lambton and Hetton’s to restore to us a 
 consciousness of the actual world, that of orange 
 peel and sawdust. 
 
 Scene Fourth , — Tribunal of justice, presided over 
 by a stern-featured super in a military uniform, the 
 impressiveness of whose appearance was somewhat 
 qualified by the circumstance that (owing probably 
 to the confusion attending a first representation) 
 his wig had been inaccurately adjusted. So that 
 his head exhibited the phenomenon of two crops 
 of hair occupying areas whose external boundaries 
 were not precisely coincident. To these was also 
 added the unintentional garniture of a tag of tape, 
 connected probably with the interior fastening of 
 the upper wig, and looking rather like a stray root 
 of seacale, sprouting out from between the two 
 strata of hair. 
 
 The court being set, a ballet de folie ” takes 
 
II2 
 
 The Last New Piece 
 
 place in front of the bench, executed by a party of 
 young ladies inserted in silk tights, and presenting 
 the usual voluptuous exhibition of pink legs. The 
 introduction of this episode might be considered 
 liable to the strictures of captious critics, as forming 
 a spectacle not usually incident to the administra- 
 tion of justice as ordinarily conducted in real life. 
 It is probably to be defended on the ground of its 
 relieving the otherwise oppressively severe illusions 
 of the judicial scene. On its conclusion the heavy 
 father and mother are brought in for trial, both 
 of course in extreme dejection under the cir- 
 cumstances, but teeming unabatedly with moral 
 reflections upon the unfailing interposition of 
 providence on which they rely for deliverance. 
 Evidence against them both is given by a false 
 witness, a party with an appropriately infelicitous 
 expression of countenance, such as is known to 
 the vulgar tongue as a hangdog face. The 
 make-up of a thorough-paced rascal is a matter 
 which is eminently well understood at the minor 
 theatres, but supereminently so, as may be 
 observed any day, at those in Norton Folgate ; a 
 circumstance from which an abundance of first 
 class living models in that vicinity may be inferred. 
 The more mitigated rascal however of the Maryle- 
 bone leaves little to be desired. 
 
at the Marylebone. 113 
 
 The prisoners having been of course convicted, 
 are led off to execution under an accompaniment 
 of lugubrious music, but at this juncture, as was 
 to be anticipated, in dashes the heroine in a state 
 of hot excitement, and exclaims “ Stay ! Hearr, 
 oil ! My father is eenocent ! There stands the 
 Murderer!’' (this with a look at the wicked 
 witness calculated to pulverise him). The exig- 
 encies of the final tableau require that the murdered 
 man, as also the bandit who was shot, should 
 re-appear, and the seemingly desperate complica- 
 tion of circumstances which is thus induced, is 
 judiciously left untouched by any ill-advised 
 attempts at satisfactory elucidation. All difficul- 
 ties of the kind are successfully evaded by the 
 whole of the characters displaying manifestations 
 of having suddenly got on the best possible terms 
 with one another. The funny man of the piece 
 here delivers himself of certain jocularities, which 
 are received as usual with uproarious gratification 
 by the gods. I have forborne to repeat the jeux 
 d’esprit of depressing dreariness with which he 
 occasionally embellished the previous course of 
 the dialogue, consisting as they did of such jests 
 as my indelicate institution ” for delicate con- 
 stitution,” and the like, which were however hailed 
 with cheerful gushes of merriment from the gallery. 
 
ii6 
 
 At the Marylebone^ 
 
 A conciliatory address is then made to the 
 audience by the heroine, and the curtain descends 
 amid the plaudits (and the. gratification of the 
 Marylebone patrons of the drama is somewhat 
 actively demonstrative) of the house, or, as will 
 probably be stated in the bills, “ amid the booming 
 halos of applause of an enthusiastic and enraptured 
 audience.” 
 
 Marcus Ward & Co., Printers, Royal Ulster Works, Belfast. 
 
/ 
 
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