Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess to
a fondness for pantomimes—to a gentle sympathy with clowns and
pantaloons—to an unqualified admiration of harlequins and
columbines—to a chaste delight in every action of their brief
existence, varied and many-coloured as those actions are, and
inconsistent though they occasionally be with those rigid and formal
rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of meaner and less
comprehensive minds. We revel in pantomimes—not because they dazzle
one’s eyes with tinsel and gold leaf; not because they present to us,
once again, the well-beloved chalked faces, and goggle eyes of our
childhood; not even because, like Christmas-day, and Twelfth-night,
and Shrove-Tuesday and one’s own birthday, they come to us but once a
year;—our attachment is founded on a graver and a very different
reason. A pantomime is to us, a mirror of life; nay more, we maintain
that it is so to audiences generally, although they are not aware of
it, and that this very circumstance is the secret cause of their
amusement and delight.
Let us take a slight example. The scene is a street: an elderly
gentleman, with a large face and strongly marked features, appears.
His countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is
on his broad, red cheek. He is evidently an opulent elderly
gentleman, comfortable in circumstances, and well-to-do in the world.
He is not unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly,
not to say gaudily dressed; and that he indulges to a reasonable
extent in the pleasures of the table may be inferred from the joyous
and oily manner in which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the
audience that he is going home to dinner. In the fulness of his
heart, in the fancied security of wealth, in the possession and
enjoyment of all the good things of life, the elderly gentleman
suddenly loses his footing, and stumbles. How the audience roar! He
is set upon by a noisy and officious crowd, who buffet and cuff him
unmercifully. They scream with delight! Every time the elderly
gentleman struggles to get up, his relentless persecutors knock him
down again. The spectators are convulsed with merriment! And when at
last the elderly gentleman does get up, and staggers away, despoiled
of hat, wig, and clothing, himself battered to pieces, and his watch
and money gone, they are exhausted with laughter, and express their
merriment and admiration in rounds of applause.
Is this like life? change the scene to any real street;—to the stock
exchange, or the city banker’s; the merchant’s counting house, or
even the tradesman’s shop. See any one of these men fall,—the more
suddenly, and the nearer the zenith of his pride and riches, the
better. What a wild hallo is raised over his prostrate carcase by the
shouting mob; how they whoop and yell as he lies humbled beneath
them! mark how eagerly they set upon him when he is down; and how
they mock and deride him as he slinks away. Why, it is the pantomime
to the very letter.
Of all the pantomimic dramatis personae, we consider the pantaloon
the most worthless and debauched. Independent of the dislike one
naturally feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in
pursuits highly unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot
conceal from ourselves the fact that he is a treacherous,
worldly-minded old villain, constantly enticing his younger
companion, the clown, into acts of fraud or petty larceny, and
generally standing aside to watch the result of the enterprise. If it
be successful, he never forgets to return for his share of the spoil;
but if it turns out a failure, he generally retires with remarkable
caution and expedition, and keeps carefully aloof until the affair
has blown over. His amorous propensities too are eminently
disagreeable; and his mode of addressing ladies in the open street at
noon-day is downright improper, being usually neither more nor less
than a perceptible tickling of the aforesaid ladies in the waist,
after committing which, he starts back, manifestly ashamed (as well
he may be) of his own indecorum and temerity; continuing,
nevertheless, to ogle and beckon to them from a distance in a very
unpleasant and immoral manner.
Is there any man who cannot count a dozen pantaloons in his own
social circle? Is there any man who has not seen them swarming at the
west end of the town on a sunshiny day or a summer’s evening, going
through the last-named pantomimic feats with as much liquorish
energy, and as total an absence of reserve, as if they were on the
very stage itself? We can tell upon our fingers a dozen pantaloons of
our acquaintance at this moment—capital pantaloons, who have been
performing all kinds of strange freaks, to the great amusement of
their friends and acquaintance for years past; and who to this day
are making such comical and ineffectual attempts to be young and
dissolute, that all beholders are like to die with laughter.
Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the Café de
l’Europe in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense
of the young man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part at
the door of the tavern. The affected warmth of that shake of the
hand, the courteous nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the
savoury flavour of which still hangs upon his lips, are all
characteristics of his great prototype. He hobbles away humming an
opera tune, and twirling his cane to and fro, with affected
carelessness. Suddenly he stops—’tis at the milliner’s window. He
peeps through one of the ladies within being obstructed by the India
shawls, directs his attentions to the young girl with the band box in
her hand, who is gazing in at the window also. See! He draws beside
her. He coughs; she turns away from him. He draws near her again; she
disregards him. He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and
retreating a few steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces,
while the girl bestows a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his
wrinkled visage. She turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman
trots after her with a toothless chuckle. The pantaloon to the life!
But the close resemblance which the clowns of the stage bear to those
of everyday life is perfectly extraordinary. Some people talk with a
sigh of the decline of pantomime, and murmur in low and dismal tones
the name of Grimaldi. We mean no disparagement to the worthy and
excellent old man when we say that this is downright nonsense. Clowns
that beat Grimaldi all to nothing turn up every day and nobody
patronizes them—more’s the pity!
“I know who you mean,” says some dirty-faced patron of Mr.
Osbaldistone’s, laying down the miscellany when he has got thus far,
and bestowing upon vacancy a most knowing glance; “you mean C.J.
Smith as did Guy Fawkes, and George Barnwell at the Garden.” The
dirty-faced gentleman has hardly uttered the words, when he is
interrupted by a young gentleman in no shirt collar and a Petersham
coat. “No, no,” says the young gentleman; “he means Brown, King, and
Gibson, at the Delphi.” Now, with great deference both to the
first-named gentleman with the dirty face, and the last named
gentleman in the non-existing shirt collar, we do not mean either
the performer who so grotesquely burlesqued the Popish conspirator,
or the three unchangeables who have been dancing the same dance under
different imposing titles, and doing the same thing under various
high-sounding names for some five or six years last past. We have no
sooner made this avowal, than the public, who have hitherto been
silent witnesses of the dispute, inquire what on earth it is we do
mean; and, with becoming respect, we proceed to tell them.
It is very well known to all playgoers and pantomime-seers, that the
scenes in which a theatrical clown is at the very height of his glory
are those which are described in the play-bills as “cheesemonger’s
shop and Crockery warehouse,” or “Tailor’s shop and Mrs. Queertable’s
boarding-house,” or places bearing some such title, where the great
fun of the thing consists in the hero’s taking lodgings which he has
not the slightest intention of paying for, or obtaining goods under
false pretences, or abstracting the stock-in-trade of the respectable
shopkeeper next door or robbing warehouse porters as they pass under
his window, or to shorten the catalogue in his swindling everybody he
possibly can, it only remaining to be observed that, the more
extensive the swindling is, and the more barefaced the impudence of
the swindler, the greater the rapture and ecstasy of the audience.
Now it is a most remarkable fact that precisely this sort of thing
occurs in real life day after day, and nobody sees the humour of it.
Let us illustrate our position by detailing the plot of this portion
of the pantomime-not of the theatre, but of life.
The Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, attended by his livery
servant Do’em—a most respectable servant to look at, who has grown
grey in the service of the captain’s family—views, treats for, and
ultimately obtains possession of the unfurnished house, such a
number, such a street. All the trades men in the neighbourhood are in
agonies of competition for the captain’s custom; the captain is a
good-natured, kind-hearted, easy man, and to avoid being the cause of
disappointment to any, he most handsomely gives orders to all.
Hampers of wine, baskets of provisions, cart-loads of furniture,
boxes of jewellery, supplies of luxuries of the costliest
description, flock to the house of the Honourable Captain
Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, where they are received with the utmost
readiness by the highly respectable Do’em; while the captain himself
struts and swaggers about with that compound air of conscious
superiority and general blood-thirstiness which a military captain
should always, and does most times, wear to the admiration and terror
of Plebian men. But the tradesmen’s backs are no sooner turned, than
the captain, with all the eccentricity of a mighty mind, and assisted
by the faithful Do’em, whose devoted fidelity is no the least
touching part of his character, disposes of everything to great
advantage; for, although the articles fetch small sums, still they
are sold considerably above cost price, the cost to the captain
having been nothing at all. After various maneuvers, the imposture is
discovered, Fitz-Fiercy and Do’em are recognized as confederates, and
the police office to which they are both taken is thronged with their
dupes.
Who can fail to recognize in this, the exact counterpart of the best
portion of a theatrical pantomime—Fitz-Whisker Fiercy by the clown;
Do’em by the pantaloon; and supernumeraries by the tradesmen? The
best of the joke, too is that the very coal merchant who is loudest
in his complaints against the person who defrauded him, is the
identical man who sat in the centre of the very front row of the pit
last night and laughed the most boisterously at this very same
thing,—and not so well done either. Talk of Grimaldi, we say again!
Did Grimaldi, in his best day ever do anything in this way equal to
Da Costa?
The mention of this latter justly celebrated clown reminds us of his
last piece of humour, the fraudulently obtaining certain stamped
acceptances from a young gentleman in the army. We had scarcely laid
down our pen to contemplate for a few moments this admirable actor’s
performance of that exquisite practical joke, than a new branch of
our subject flashed suddenly upon us. So we take it up again at once.
All people who have been behind the scenes, and most people who have
been before them, know that In the representation of a pantomime, a
good many men are sent upon the stage for the express purpose of
being cheated, or knocked down, or both. Now down to a moment ago, we
had never been able to understand for what possible purpose a great
number of odd, lazy, large headed men, whom one is in the habit of
meeting here, and there and everywhere, could ever have been created.
We see it all, now. They are the supernumeraries in the Pantomime of
life; the men who have been thrust into it, with no other view than
to be constantly tumbling over each other, and running theirs heads
against all sorts of strange things. We sat opposite to one of these
men at a supper-table, only last week. Now we think of it, he was
exactly like the gentlemen with the pasteboard heads and faces, who
do corresponding business in the theatrical pantomimes; there was the
same broad stolid simper—the same dull leaden eye—the same unmeaning,
vacant stare; and whatever was said, or whatever was done, he always
came in at precisely the wrong place, or jostled against something
that he had not the slightest business with. We looked at the man
across the table again and again; and could not satisfy ourselves
what race of beings to class him with. How very odd that this never
occurred to us before!
We will frankly own that we have been much troubled with the
harlequin. We see harlequins of so many kinds in the real living
pantomime, that we hardly know which to select as the proper fellow
of him of the theatres. At one time we were disposed to think that
the harlequin was neither more nor less than a young man of family
and independent property, who had run away with an opera dancer, and
was fooling his life and his means away in light and trivial
amusements. On reflection, however, we remembered that harlequins are
occasionally guilty of witty, and even clever acts, and we are rather
disposed to acquit our young men of family and independent property,
generally speaking of any such misdemeanors. On a more mature
consideration of the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion that
the harlequins of life are just ordinary men, to be found in no
particular walk or degree, on whom a certain station, or particular
conjunction of circumstances, confers the magic wand. And this brings
us to a few words on the pantomime of public and political life,
which we shall say at once, and then conclude—merely premising in
this place that we decline any reference whatever to the columbine,
being in no side satisfied of the nature of her connection with her
parti-coloured lover, and not feeling by any means clear that we
should be justified in introducing her to the virtuous and
respectable ladies who peruse our lucubrations.
We take it that the commencement of a Session of Parliament is
neither more nor less than the drawing up of the curtain for a grand
comic pantomime, and that his Majesty’s most gracious speech on the
opening thereof may be not inaptly compared to the clown’s opening
speech of “Here we are!” “My lords and gentlemen, here we are!”
appears, to our mind at least, to be a very good abstract of the
point and meaning of the propitiatory address of the ministry. When
we remember how frequently this speech is made, immediately after the
change too, the parallel is quite perfect, and still more singular.
Perhaps the cast of our political pantomime never was richer than at
this day. We are particularly strong in clowns. At no former time, we
should say, have we had such astonishing tumblers, or performers so
ready to go through the whole of their feats for the amusement of an
admiring throng. Their extreme readiness to exhibit, indeed, has
given rise to some ill-natured reflections; it having been objected
that by exhibiting gratuitously through the country when the theatre
is closed, they reduce themselves to the level of mountebanks, and
thereby tend to degrade the respectability of the profession.
Certainly Grimaldi never did this sort of thing; and though Brown,
King, and Gibson have gone to the Surrey in vacation time, and
Mr.C.J. Smith has ruralized at Sadler’s Wells, we find no theatrical
precedent for a general tumbling through the country, except in the
gentleman, name unknown, who threw summersets on behalf of the late
Mr. Richardson, and who is no authority either, because he had never
been on the regular boards.
But, laying aside this question, which after all is a mere matter of
taste, we may reflect with pride and gratification of heart on the
proficiency of our clowns as exhibited in the season. Night after
night will they twist and tumble about, till two, three and four
o’clock in the morning; playing the strangest antics, and giving each
other the funniest slaps on the face that can possibly be imagined,
without evincing, the smallest tokens of fatigue. The strange noises,
the confusion the shouting and roaring, amid which all this is done,
too, would put to shame the most turbulent sixpenny gallery that ever
yelled through a boxing-night.
It is especially curious to behold one of these clowns compelled to
go through the most surprising contortions by the irrestible
influence of the wand of office, which his leader or harlequin holds
above his head. Acted upon by this wonderful charms he will become
perfectly motionless, moving neither hand, foot, nor finger, and will
even lose the faculty of speech at an instant’s notice; or on the
other hand, he will become all life and animation if required,
pouring forth a torrent of words without sense or meaning, throwing
himself into the wildest and most fantastic contortions, and even
grovelling on the earth and licking up the dust. These exhibitions
are more curious than pleasing; indeed, they are rather disgusting
than otherwise, except to the admirers of such things, with whom we
confess we have no fellow-feeling.
Strange tricks—very strange tricks—are also performed by the
harlequin who holds for the time being the magic wand which we have
just mentioned. The mere waving it before a man’s eyes will
dispossess his brains of all the notions previously stored there, and
fill it with an entirely new set of ideas; one gently tap on the back
will alter the colour of a man’s coat completely and there are some
expert performers, who, having this wand held first on one side and
the on the other, will change from side to side, turning their coats
every evolution, with so much rapidity and dexterity, that the
quickest eye can scarcely detect their motions. Occasionally, the
genius who confers the wand, wrests it from the hand of the temporary
possessor, and consigns it to some new performer; on which occasions
all the characters change sides, and then the race and the hard
knocks begin anew.
We might have extended this chapter to a much greater length—we might
have carried the comparison into the liberal professions we might
have shown, as was in fact our original purpose, that each is in
itself a little pantomime with scenes and characters of its own,
complete; but, as we fear we have been quite lengthy enough already,
we shall leave this chapter just where it is. A gentleman, not
altogether unknown as a dramatic poet, wrote thus a year or two
ago—“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely
players:” and we, tracking out his footsteps at the
scarcely-worth-mentioning little distance of a few millions of
leagues behind, venture to add, by way of new reading, that he meant
a Pantomime, and that we are all actors in The Pantomime of Life.