As one half of the world is said not to know how the other half lives,
so it may be affirmed that the upper half of the world neither knows
nor greatly cares how the lower half amuses itself. Believing that it
does not care, mainly because it does not know, we purpose occasionally
recording a few facts on this subject.
The general character of the lower class of dramatic amusements is
a very significant sign of a people, and a very good test of their
intellectual condition. We design to make our readers acquainted in
the first place with a few of our experiences under this head in the
metropolis.
It is probable that nothing will ever root out from among the common
people an innate love they have for dramatic entertainment in some
form or other. It would be a very doubtful benefit to society, we
think, if it could be rooted out. The Polytechnic Institution in Regent
Street, where an infinite variety of ingenious models are exhibited
and explained, and where lectures comprising a quantity of useful
information on many practical subjects are delivered, is a great
public benefit and a wonderful place, but we think a people formed
_entirely_ in their hours of leisure by Polytechnic Institutions would
be an uncomfortable community. We would rather not have to appeal
to the generous sympathies of a man of five-and-twenty, in respect
of some affliction of which he had had no personal experience, who
had passed all his holidays, when a boy, among cranks and cogwheels.
We should be more disposed to trust him if he had been brought into
occasional contact with a Maid and a Magpie; if he had made one or
two diversions into the Forest of Bondy; or had even gone the length
of a Christmas Pantomime. There is a range of imagination in most
of us, which no amount of steam-engines will satisfy; and which
The-great-exhibition-of-the-works-of-industry-of-all-nations, itself,
will probably leave unappeased. The lower we go, the more natural it is
that the best-relished provision for this should be found in dramatic
entertainments; as at once the most obvious, the least troublesome, and
the most real, of all escapes out of the literal world. Joe Whelks, of
the New Cut, Lambeth, is not much of a reader, has no great store of
books, no very commodious room to read in, no very decided inclination
to read, and no power at all of presenting vividly before his mind’s
eye what he reads about. But, put Joe in the gallery of the Victoria
Theatre; show him doors and windows in the scene that will open and
shut, and that people can get in and out of; tell him a story with
these aids, and by the help of live men and women dressed up, confiding
to him their innermost secrets, in voices audible half a mile off;
and Joe will unravel a story through all its entanglements, and sit
there as long after midnight as you have anything left to show him.
Accordingly, the Theatres to which Mr. Whelks resorts, are always full;
and whatever changes of fashion the drama knows elsewhere, it is always
fashionable in the New Cut.
The question, then, might not unnaturally arise, one would suppose,
whether Mr. Whelks’s education is at all susceptible of improvement,
through the agency of his theatrical tastes. How far it is improved at
present, our readers shall judge for themselves.
In affording them the means of doing so, we wish to disclaim any grave
imputation on those who are concerned in ministering to the dramatic
gratification of Mr. Whelks. Heavily taxed, wholly unassisted by the
State, deserted by the gentry, and quite unrecognised as a means of
public instruction, the higher English Drama has declined. Those who
would live to please Mr. Whelks, must please Mr. Whelks to live. It
is not the Manager’s province to hold the Mirror up to Nature, but to
Mr. Whelks—the only person who acknowledges him. If, in like manner,
the actor’s nature, like the dyer’s hand, become subdued to what he
works in, the actor can hardly be blamed for it. He grinds hard at his
vocation, is often steeped in direful poverty, and lives, at the best,
in a little world of mockeries. It is bad enough to give away a great
estate six nights a-week, and want a shilling; to preside at imaginary
banquets, hungry for a mutton chop; to smack the lips over a tankard
of toast and water, and declaim about the mellow produce of the sunny
vineyard on the banks of the Rhine; to be a rattling young lover, with
the measles at home; and to paint sorrow over, with burnt cork and
rouge; without being called upon to despise his vocation too. If he can
utter the trash to which he is condemned, with any relish, so much the
better for him, Heaven knows; and peace be with him!
A few weeks ago, we went to one of Mr. Whelks’s favourite Theatres,
to see an attractive Melo-Drama called MAY MORNING, OR THE MYSTERY OF
1715, AND THE MURDER! We had an idea that the former of these titles
might refer to the month in which either the Mystery or the Murder
happened, but we found it to be the name of the heroine, the pride
of Keswick Vale; who was ‘called May Morning’ (after a common custom
among the English Peasantry) ‘from her bright eyes and merry laugh.’ Of
this young lady, it may be observed, in passing, that she subsequently
sustained every possible calamity of human existence, in a white
muslin gown with blue tucks; and that she did every conceivable and
inconceivable thing with a pistol, that could anyhow be effected by
that description of fire-arms.
The Theatre was extremely full. The prices of admission were, to the
boxes, a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the gallery, threepence.
The gallery was of enormous dimensions (among the company, in the
front row, we observed Mr. Whelks); and overflowing with occupants. It
required no close observation of the attentive faces, rising one above
another, to the very door in the roof, and squeezed and jammed in,
regardless of all discomforts, even there, to impress a stranger with
a sense of its being highly desirable to lose no possible chance of
effecting any mental improvement in that great audience.
The company in the pit were not very clean or sweet-savoured, but there
were some good-humoured young mechanics among them, with their wives.
These were generally accompanied by ‘the baby,’ insomuch that the pit
was a perfect nursery. No effect made on the stage was so curious, as
the looking down on the quiet faces of these babies fast asleep, after
looking up at the staring sea of heads in the gallery. There were a
good many cold fried soles in the pit, besides; and a variety of flat
stone bottles, of all portable sizes.
The audience in the boxes was of much the same character (babies and
fish excepted) as the audience in the pit. A private in the Foot
Guards sat in the next box; and a personage who wore pins on his coat
instead of buttons, and was in such a damp habit of living as to be
quite mouldy, was our nearest neighbour. In several parts of the house
we noticed some young pickpockets of our acquaintance; but as they
were evidently there as private individuals, and not in their public
capacity, we were little disturbed by their presence. For we consider
the hours of idleness passed by this class of society as so much
gain to society at large; and we do not join in a whimsical sort of
lamentation that is generally made over them, when they are found to be
unoccupied.
As we made these observations the curtain rose, and we were presently
in possession of the following particulars.
Sir George Elmore, a melancholy Baronet with every appearance of
being in that advanced stage of indigestion in which Mr. Morrison’s
patients usually are, when they happen to hear, through Mr. Moat, of
the surprising effects of his Vegetable Pills, was found to be living
in a very large castle, in the society of one round table, two chairs,
and Captain George Elmore, ‘his supposed son, the Child of Mystery,
and the Man of Crime.’ The Captain, in addition to an undutiful habit
of bullying his father on all occasions, was a prey to many vices:
foremost among which may be mentioned his desertion of his wife,
‘Estella de Neva, a Spanish lady,’ and his determination unlawfully to
possess himself of May Morning; M. M. being then on the eve of marriage
to Will Stanmore, a cheerful sailor, with very loose legs.
The strongest evidence, at first, of the Captain’s being the Child
of Mystery and the Man of Crime was deducible from his boots, which,
being very high and wide, and apparently made of sticking-plaister,
justified the worst theatrical suspicions to his disadvantage. And
indeed he presently turned out as ill as could be desired: getting into
May Morning’s Cottage by the window after dark; refusing to ‘unhand’
May Morning when required to do so by that lady; waking May Morning’s
only surviving parent, a blind old gentleman with a black ribbon over
his eyes, whom we shall call Mr. Stars, as his name was stated in the
bill thus * * * * * *; and showing himself desperately bent on carrying
off May Morning by force of arms. Even this was not the worst of the
Captain; for, being foiled in his diabolical purpose—temporarily by
means of knives and pistols, providentially caught up and directed at
him by May Morning, and finally, for the time being, by the advent
of Will Stanmore—he caused one Slink, his adherent, to denounce Will
Stanmore as a rebel, and got that cheerful mariner carried off, and
shut up in prison. At about the same period of the Captain’s career,
there suddenly appeared in his father’s castle, a dark complexioned
lady of the name of Manuella, ‘a Zingara Woman from the Pyrenean
mountains; the wild wanderer of the heath, and the pronouncer of the
prophecy,’ who threw the melancholy baronet, his supposed father, into
the greatest confusion by asking him what he had upon his conscience,
and by pronouncing mysterious rhymes concerning the Child of Mystery
and the Man of Crime, to a low trembling of fiddles. Matters were in
this state when the Theatre resounded with applause, and Mr. Whelks
fell into a fit of unbounded enthusiasm, consequent on the entrance of
‘Michael the Mendicant.’
At first we referred something of the cordiality with which Michael
the Mendicant was greeted, to the fact of his being ‘made up’ with an
excessively dirty face, which might create a bond of union between
himself and a large majority of the audience. But it soon came out that
Michael the Mendicant had been hired in old time by Sir George Elmore,
to murder his (Sir George Elmore’s) elder brother—which he had done;
notwithstanding which little affair of honour, Michael was in reality
a very good fellow; quite a tender-hearted man; who, on hearing of the
Captain’s determination to settle Will Stanmore, cried out, ‘What! more
bel-ood!’ and fell flat—overpowered by his nice sense of humanity. In
like manner, in describing that small error of judgment into which he
had allowed himself to be tempted by money, this gentleman exclaimed,
‘I ster-ruck him down, and fel-ed in er-orror!’ and further he
remarked, with honest pride, ‘I have liveder as a beggar—a roadersider
vaigerant, but no ker-rime since then has stained these hands!’
All these sentiments of the worthy man were hailed with showers of
applause; and when, in the excitement of his feelings on one occasion,
after a soliloquy, he ‘went off’ _on his back_, kicking and shuffling
along the ground, after the manner of bold spirits in trouble, who
object to be taken to the station-house, the cheering was tremendous.
And to see how little harm he had done, after all! Sir George Elmore’s
elder brother was NOT dead. Not he! He recovered, after this sensitive
creature had ‘fel-ed in er-orror,’ and, putting a black ribbon over his
eyes to disguise himself, went and lived in a modest retirement with
his only child. In short, Mr. Stars was the identical individual! When
Will Stanmore turned out to be the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s son,
instead of the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, who turned out to be
Michael’s son, (a change having been effected, in revenge, by the lady
from the Pyrenean Mountains, who became the Wild Wanderer of the Heath,
in consequence of the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s perfidy to her and
desertion of her), Mr. Stars went up to the Castle, and mentioned to
his murdering brother how it was. Mr. Stars said it was all right; he
bore no malice; he had kept out of the way, in order that his murdering
brother (to whose numerous virtues he was no stranger) might enjoy the
property; and now he would propose that they should make it up and dine
together. The murdering brother immediately consented, embraced the
Wild Wanderer, and it is supposed sent instructions to Doctors’ Commons
for a license to marry her. After which, they were all very comfortable
indeed. For it is not much to try to murder your brother for the sake
of his property, if you only suborn such a delicate assassin as Michael
the Mendicant!
All this did not tend to the satisfaction of the Child of Mystery and
Man of Crime, who was so little pleased by the general happiness,
that he shot Will Stanmore, now joyfully out of prison and going to
be married directly to May Morning, and carried off the body, and
May Morning to boot, to a lone hut. Here, Will Stanmore, laid out
for dead at fifteen minutes past twelve, P.M., arose at seventeen
minutes past, infinitely fresher than most daisies, and fought two
strong men single-handed. However, the Wild Wanderer, arriving with
a party of male wild wanderers, who were always at her disposal—and
the murdering brother arriving arm-in-arm with Mr. Stars—stopped the
combat, confounded the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, and blessed
the lovers.
The adventures of ‘RED RIVEN THE BANDIT’ concluded the moral lesson
of the evening. But, feeling by this time a little fatigued, and
believing that we already discerned in the countenance of Mr. Whelks a
sufficient confusion between right and wrong to last him for one night,
we retired: the rather as we intended to meet him, shortly, at another
place of dramatic entertainment for the people.
AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF
MAD^{LLE} CLAIRON.
The occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is
a remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations
which it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and
account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brewster,
or any other English writer who has collected and endeavoured to
expound those ghostly phenomena.
Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French
stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own.
She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of effecting a
complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted
an easy, varied, and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous
declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to
consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated
by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and
she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles
which the contemporary Memoir writers describe in such glowing colours.
In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle
Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position
exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which
she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her
from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted
beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honour.
She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the
following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a
man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate
of Diderot, Grimm, D’Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the
_collaborateur_ of Grimm in his famous ‘Correspondence.’ This gentleman
was Clairon’s ‘literary executor;’ having been intrusted with her
Memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death.
With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon’s narrative, written
in her old age, of an occurrence which had taken place half a century
before.
* * * * *
‘In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round me a
good many admirers. M. de S——, the son of a merchant in Brittany, about
thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of considerable talent, was
one of those who were most strongly attached to me. His conversation
and manners were those of a man of education and good society, and
the reserve and timidity which distinguished his attention made a
favourable impression on me. After a green-room acquaintance of some
time I permitted him to visit me at my house, but a better knowledge
of his situation and character was not to his advantage. Ashamed of
being only a _bourgeois_, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under
an assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy; he knew mankind
too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to see
no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar sacrifice
of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for his own sake
as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by reducing our intercourse
to terms of less intimacy. My behaviour brought upon him a violent
illness, during which I showed him every mark of friendly interest, but
firmly refused to deviate from the course I had adopted. My steadiness
only deepened his wound; and unhappily, at this time, a treacherous
relative, to whom he had intrusted the management of his affairs, took
advantage of his helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so
destitute that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his
subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You must
feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this secret. I
respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the insulting pity of
the world. Preserve, then, the religious silence which after many years
I now break for the first time.
‘At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and
thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance from
me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or his visits.
‘Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his
death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last moments, but
I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish. He died, having
with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his sole companion for
a long time. He lodged at that time on the Rempart, near the Chaussée
d’Antin; I resided in the Rue de Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My
mother lived with me; and that night we had a little party to supper.
We were very gay, and I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck
eleven, and the sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of
unearthly horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained
for a quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason
about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to set a
watch in the street in case it were repeated.
‘It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my
neighbours, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the same
hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing to come
from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant entirely for
me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so, nothing was heard;
and several times, when I came home, and was asking my mother and
servants if they had heard anything, it suddenly burst forth, as if
in the midst of us. One night, the President de B——, at whose house I
had supped, desired to see me safe home. While he was bidding me “good
night” at my door, the cry broke out seemingly from something between
him and me. He, like all Paris, was aware of the story; but he was so
horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more dead
than alive.
‘Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue St.
Honoré, to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to Mademoiselle
de St. P——, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis. My ghost story (as it
was called) was the subject of our whole conversation. This intelligent
young man was struck by my adventure, though he did not believe there
was anything supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom,
promising to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I
complied, and suddenly the cry was heard three times with fearful
loudness and rapidity. When we arrived at our friend’s door both of us
were found senseless in the carriage.
‘After this scene, I remained for some months without hearing anything.
I thought it was all over; but I was mistaken.
‘All the public performances had been transferred to Versailles on
account of the marriage of the Dauphin. We were to pass three days
there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided for us. Madame
Grandval had no apartment; and I offered to share with her the room
with two beds which had been assigned to me in the avenue of St. Cloud.
I gave her one of the beds and took the other. While my maid was
undressing to lie down beside me, I said to her, “We are at the world’s
end here, and it is dreadful weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled
to get at us.” In a moment it rang through the room. Madame Grandval
ran in her night-dress from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody
closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, however, was the last
time the cry was heard.
‘Seven or eight days afterwards, while I was chatting with my usual
evening circle, the sound of the clock striking eleven was followed
by the report of a gun fired at one of the windows. We all heard the
noise, we all saw the fire, yet the window was undamaged. We concluded
that some one sought my life, and that it was necessary to take
precautions against another attempt. The Intendant des Menus Plaisirs,
who was present, flew to the house of his friend, M. de Marville, the
Lieutenant of Police. The houses opposite mine were instantly searched,
and for several days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was
closely examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible
disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same explosion
was heard and seen for three whole months always at the same hour, and
at the same window-pane, without any one being able to discover from
whence it proceeded. This fact stands recorded in the registers of the
police.
‘Nothing was heard for some days; but, having been invited by
Mademoiselle Dumesnil[1] to join a little evening party at her house
near the _Barrière blanche_, I got into a hackney-coach at eleven
o’clock with my maid. It was clear moonlight as we passed along the
Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded with houses.
While we were looking at the half-finished buildings, my maid said,
“Was it not in this neighbourhood that M. de S—— died?” “From what I
have heard,” I answered, “I think it should be there”—pointing with
my finger to a house before us. From that house came the same gunshot
that I had heard before. It seemed to traverse our carriage, and the
coachman set off at full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers.
We arrived at Mademoiselle Dumesnil’s in a state of the utmost terror;
a feeling I did not get rid of for a long time.’
[Footnote 1: The celebrated tragedian.]
[Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further details similar to the above,
and adds that the noises finally ceased in about two years and a half.
After this, intending to change her residence, she put up a bill on the
house she was leaving; and many people made the pretext of looking at
the apartments an excuse for gratifying their curiosity to see, in her
every-day guise, the great tragedian of the Théâtre Français.]
‘One day I was told that an old lady desired to see my rooms. Having
always had a great respect for the aged, I went down to receive her.
An unaccountable emotion seized me on seeing her, and I perceived that
she was moved in a similar manner. I begged her to sit down, and we
were both silent for some time. At length she spoke, and, after some
preparation, came to the subject of her visit.
‘“I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. de S——, and the only
friend whom he would see during the last year of his life. We spoke
of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you,—he protesting that he
would love you beyond the tomb. Your eyes which are full of tears allow
me to ask you why you made him so wretched; and how, with such a mind
and such feelings as yours, you could refuse him the consolation of
once more seeing and speaking to you?”
‘“We cannot,” I answered, “command our sentiments. M. de S—— had merit
and estimable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and overbearing temper
made me equally afraid of his company, his friendship, and his love.
To make him happy, I must have renounced all intercourse with society,
and even the exercise of my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire,
and hope I shall ever desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My
friendship for him prompted me to use every endeavour to lead him to
more just and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded
that his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than
from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to
separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last moments,
because the sight would have rent my heart; because I feared to appear
too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to make myself wretched if
I yielded. Such, madame, are the motives of my conduct,—motives for
which, I think, no one can blame me.”
‘“It would indeed,” said the lady, “be unjust to condemn you. My poor
friend himself in his reasonable moments acknowledged all that he owed
you. But his passion and his malady overcame him, and your refusal to
see him hastened his last moments. He was counting the minutes, when
at half-past ten, his servant came to tell him that decidedly you
would not come. After a moment’s silence, he took me by the hand with
a frightful expression of despair. ‘Barbarous woman!’ he cried; ‘but
she will gain nothing by her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I
shall follow her in death!’ I endeavoured to calm him;—he was dead.”
‘I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last words
had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me with terror,
but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The consideration that I
was neither the better nor the worse for all that had happened to me,
have led me to ascribe it all to chance. I do not, indeed, know what
_chance_ is; but it cannot be denied that the something which goes by
that name has a great influence on all that passes in the world.
‘Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to make it
public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the name, and the
name of the province.’
* * * * *
This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but,
at the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was
probably of little consequence.
There is no reason to doubt the entire truth of Mademoiselle Clairon’s
narrative. The incidents which she relates made such a deep and
enduring impression on her mind, that it remained uneffaced during
the whole course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of
a long life spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired
her with solemn and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely
be ascribed to delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong
and cultivated mind, not likely to be influenced by superstitious
credulity; and besides, the mysterious sounds were heard by others as
well as herself, and had become the subject of general conversation
in Paris. The suspicion of a trick or conspiracy never seems to have
occurred to her, though such a supposition is the only way in which
the circumstances can be explained; and we are convinced that this
explanation, though not quite satisfactory in every particular, is the
real one. Several portentous occurrences, equally or more marvellous,
have thus been accounted for.
Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead
Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were
terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of
Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long
afterwards discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe
Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous
‘Cock-lane Ghost,’ which kept the town in agitation for months, and
baffled the penetration of multitudes of the divines, philosophers, and
literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years
old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means,
that their remaining so long undetected is the most marvellous part
of the story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her
father, with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman
by means of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy
these persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party,
underwent the punishment of the pillory.
A more recent story is that of the ‘Stockwell Ghost,’ which forms the
subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr.
Hone in the first volume of his ‘Every Day Book.’ Mrs. Golding, an
elderly lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed
by portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread
alarm through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from
empty parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass and
earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of
the family and neighbours. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her
own dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighbouring house, and then
in another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed
that her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these
things took place, either in Mrs. Golding’s own house, or in those
of the neighbours. This girl, who had lived only about a week with
her mistress, became the subject of mistrust and was dismissed, after
which the disturbances entirely ceased. But the matter rested on mere
suspicion. ‘Scarcely any one,’ says Mr. Hone, ‘who lived at that time
listened patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole
to witchcraft.’ At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the
mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson
many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed
that she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing
wires or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were
heavy or light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally
simple, which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented
them from detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love
affair, and continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they
produced.
Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle
Clairon’s maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress
and her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally
the place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable
occasions where they happened elsewhere, it is expressly mentioned that
the maid was present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her
bed-fellow, that Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of
the way of the cry, when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She
had her maid in the carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was
immediately after the girl had asked her a question about the death
of M. de S—— that the gunshot was heard, which seemed to traverse
the carriage. Had the maid a confederate—perhaps her fellow-servant
on the box—to whom she might have given the signal? When Mademoiselle
Clairon went a-shopping to the Rue St. Honoré, she probably had her
maid with her, either in or outside the carriage; and, indeed, in
every instance the noises took place when the maid would most probably
have been present, or close at hand. In regard to the unearthly cry,
she might easily have produced it herself without any great skill in
ventriloquism, or the art of imitating sounds; a supposition which is
rendered the more probable, as its realisation was rendered the more
easy, by the fact of no words having been uttered—merely a wild cry.
Most of the common itinerant ventriloquists on our public race-courses
can utter speeches for an imaginary person without any perceptible
motion of the lips; the utterance of a mere sound in this way would be
infinitely less difficult.
The noises resembling the report of firearms (very likely to have been
unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of
the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant,
or a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming
report was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and
spies were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon’s own house
was merely ‘examined.’ It is evident that these precautions, however
effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect
whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her
own servants.
As to the maid-servant’s motives for engaging in this series of
deceptions, many may have existed and been sufficiently strong; the
lightest, which we shall state last, would probably be the strongest.
She may have been in communication with M. de S——’s relations for some
hidden purpose which never was effected. How far this circumstance
may be connected with the date of the first portent, the very night
of the young man’s death, or whether that coincidence was simply
accidental, is matter for conjecture. The old lady, his relative, who
afterwards visited Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill her
with superstitious dread, _may_ herself have been the maid-servant’s
employer for some similar purpose; or (which is at least equally
probable) the tale may have had nothing whatever to do with the sound,
and may have been perfectly true. But all experience in such cases
assures us that the love of mischief, or the love of power, and the
desire of being important, would be sufficient motives to the maid for
such a deception. The more frightened Clairon was, the more necessary
and valuable her maid became to her, naturally. A thousand instances
of long-continued deception on the part of young women, begun in mere
folly, and continued for the reasons just mentioned, though continued
at an immense cost of trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other
respects, are familiar to most readers of strange transactions, medical
and otherwise. There seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that
the maid was the principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise
supernatural part of this remarkable story.