The Room! And the smoke-reek, and the gas-glare of it. The whitewash
of the walls, and the prints thereon of the actors in their
mime-robes, and stage postures; actors as far back as their own lost
Augustan era, when the stage was a real living influence on the
manners and the age. There was Betterton in wig and gown--as Cato,
moralising on the soul's eternity, and halting between Plato and the
dagger. There was Woodward as "The Fine Gentleman," with the
inimitable rakehell air in which the heroes of Wycherly and Congreve
and Farquhar live again. There was jovial Quin as Falstaff, with round
buckler and "fair round belly." There was Colley Cibber in
brocade--taking snuff as with "his Lord," the thumb and forefinger
raised in air--and looking at you for applause. There was Macklin as
Shylock, with knife in hand; and Kemble, in the solemn weeds of the
Dane; and Kean in the place of honor over the chimneypiece.
When we are suddenly taken from practical life, with its real workday
men, and presented to the portraits of those sole heroes of a
World--Phantastic and Phantasmal, in the garments wherein they did
"strut and fret their hour upon the stage," verily there is something
in the sight that moves an inner sense within ourselves--for all of us
have an inner sense of some existence, apart from the one that wears
away our days: an existence that, afar from St. James's and St.
Giles's, the Law Courts and Exchange, goes its way in terror or mirth,
in smiles or in tears, through a vague magic land of the poets. There,
see those actors! They are the men who lived it--to whom our world was
the false one, to whom the Imaginary was the Actual. And did
Shakspeare himself, in his life, ever hearken to the applause that
thundered round the Personators of his airy images? Vague children of
the most transient of the arts, fleet shadows of running waters,
though thrown down from the steadfast stars, were ye not happier than
we who live in the Real? How strange you must feel in the great
circuit that ye now take through eternity! No prompt-books, no lamps,
no acting Congreve and Shakspeare there! For what parts in the skies
have your studies on the earth fitted you? Your ultimate destinies are
very puzzling. Hail to your effigies, and pass we on!
There, too, on the whitewashed walls, were admitted the portraits of
ruder rivals in the arena of fame--yet they, too, had known an
applause warmer than his age gave to Shakespeare; the champions of the
ring--Cribb, and Molyneux, and Dutch Sam. Interspersed with these was
an old print of Newmarket in the early part of the last century, and
sundry engravings from Hogarth. But poets, oh! they were there, too:
poets who might be supposed to have been sufficiently good fellows to
be at home with such companions. Shakspeare, of course, with his
placid forehead; Ben Jonson, with his heavy scowl; Burns and Byron
cheek by jowl. But the strangest of all these heterogeneous specimens
of graphic art was a full-length print of William Pitt!--William Pitt,
the austere and imperious. What the deuce did he do there amongst
prize-fighters, and actors, and poets? It seemed an insult to his
grand memory. Nevertheless there he was, very erect, and with a look
of ineffable disgust in his upturned nostrils. The portraits on the
sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary
men--very like the motley pictures of the FAMOUS hung up in your
parlour, O my Public! Actors and prize-fighters, poets and statesmen,
all without congruity and fitness, all whom you have been to see or to
hear for a moment, and whose names have stared out in your newspapers,
O my Public!
And the company? Indescribable! Comedians from small theatres, out of
employ: pale haggard-looking boys, probably the sons of worthy
traders, trying their best to break their fathers' hearts; here and
there the marked features of a Jew. Now and then you might see the
curious puzzled face of some greenhorn about town, or perhaps a
Cantab; and men of grave age, and gray-haired, were there, and amongst
them a wondrous proportion of carbuncled faces and bottle noses. And
when John Burley entered there was a shout, that made William Pitt
shake in his frame. Such stamping and hallooing, and such hurrahs for
"Burly John." And the gentleman who had filled the great high leathern
chair in his absence gave it up to John Burley; and Leonard, with his
grave observant eye, and lip half sad and half scornful, placed
himself by the side of his introducer. There was a nameless expectant
stir through the assembly, as when some great singer advances to the
lamps, and begins "_Di tanti palpiti_." Time flies. Look at the Dutch
clock over the door. Half-an-hour! John Burley begins to warm. A yet
quicker light begins to break from his eye; his voice has a mellow
luscious roll in it.
"He will be grand to-night," whispered a thin man who looked like a
tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard.
Time flies--an hour! Look again at the Dutch clock, John Burley _is_
grand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent
drollery!--what luxuriant humor! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy
chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun, (what word else shall
describe it,) the man's intellect is as clear as a gold sand under a
river. Such wit, and such truth, and, at times, such a flood of quick
eloquence. All now are listeners, silent, save in applause. And
Leonard listened too. Not, as he would some nights ago, in innocent
unquestioning delight. No; his mind has passed through great sorrow,
great passion, and it comes out unsettled, inquiring, eager, brooding
over joy itself as over a problem. And the drink circulates, and faces
change; and there are gabbling and babbling; and Burley's head sinks
in his bosom, and he is silent. And up starts a wild, dissolute,
bacchanalian glee for seven voices. And the smoke-reek grows denser
and thicker, and the gas-light looks dizzy through the haze. And John
Burley's eyes reel.
Look again at the Dutch clock. Two hours have gone. John Burley has
broken out again from his silence, his voice thick and husky, and his
laugh cracked; and he talks, O ye gods! such rubbish and ribaldry; and
the listeners roar aloud, and think it finer than before. And Leonard,
who had hitherto been measuring himself, in his mind, against the
giant, and saying inly, "He soars out of my reach," finds the giant
shrink smaller and smaller, and saith to himself, "He is but of man's
common standard after all."
Look again at the Dutch clock. Three hour have passed. Is John Burley
now of man's common standard? Man himself seems to have vanished from
the scene; his soul stolen from him, his form gone away with the fumes
of the smoke, and the nauseous steam from that fiery bowl. And
Leonard looked round, and saw but the swine of Circe--some on the
floor, some staggering against the walls, some hugging each other on
the tables, some fighting, some bawling, some weeping. The divine
spark had fled from the human face; the beast is everywhere growing
more and more out of the thing that had been man. And John Burley,
still unconquered, but clean lost to his senses, fancies himself a
preacher, and drawls forth the most lugubrious sermon upon the brevity
of life that mortal ever heard, accompanied with unctuous sobs; and
now and then, in the midst of balderdash, gleams out a gorgeous
sentence, that Jeremy Taylor might have envied; drivelling away again
into a cadence below the rhetoric of a Muggletonian. And the waiters
choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call
cabs and coaches; and suddenly some one turned off the gas light, and
all was dark as pitch--howls and laughter as of the damned, ringing
through the Pandemonium. Out from the black atmosphere stept the
boy-poet; and the still stars rushed on his sight, as they looked over
the grimy roof-tops.