There is one note to be made upon George Sand's account of the slow
development of the puppet-show at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If
you will look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up to-day in the
toy store to tempt the eye of Young America, you will discover alongside
Mr. Punch and Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green
figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth. This verdant beast
has a body like all other Punch and Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel
to slip over the sleeve of the operator; but its head suggests the head
of an alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if you will
turn to the classic text of the English play of Punch and Judy, edited
with a learned introduction and an abundance of scholarly annotation by
John Payne Collier--at least, so it is believed, altho the rare little
book is anonymous--you will find no mention of any strange beast of this
sort. Collier's text of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations,
etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these plates will you
discover any crocodile, or alligator, or dragon. You will find Toby, the
dog, who still survives in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in
the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the gallant steed that
Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty--and it is sad to have to record that
Hector is no longer in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted
admirer of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back nearly fifty years, is
ready to declare that he has never laid eyes on Hector--except in
Cruikshank's illustrations. But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of
bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of overcoming the
green-eyed alligator.
Here we have a question of profound historic interest. Whence came the
strange beast with the wide jaws? And here is where George Sand's
pleasant paper is a very present help in time of need. She tells us that
her son besought her to make a green monster for one of the earliest
pieces he devised for her puppet-figures. She did as she was bid, and
she sacrificed a pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous
creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention to the fact
that the slippers were blue, and to the further fact that nevertheless
the strange beast was always called the Green Monster. And here may be
the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame of the puppets of
Nohant was borne abroad; they were talked about all thru France; and
they were discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. What
more likely than that one of the professional puppet players should have
seen the infinite possibilities of the Green Monster, and should have
perceived its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he borrowed it
for his own performances. Certainly it is that the Green Monster is a
character in at least one of the manuscript plays preserved in the
Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, and written out half a century
ago. Probably the Green Monster strayed from the puppet-show of the
Champs-Elysees sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the
request of some boy who desired it for his own. When the Green Monster
had elected domicile in the stores of Paris, he was soon appropriated by
the toy-makers of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United
States.
(1912.)