Since doom’d to slumber, couch’d upon the wind,
Sweet was the hour, when, tempted by your freaks,
Congenial trowels smooth’d your yellow cheeks.
Float dulcet serenades upon the ear,
Bends every atom from its ruddy sphere,
Twinkles each eye, and, peeping from its veil,
Marks in the adverse crowd its destined male.
The oblong beauties clap their hands of grit,
And brick-dust titterings on the breezes flit;
Then down they rush in amatory race,
Their dusty bridegrooms eager to embrace.
Some choose old lovers, some decide for new,
But each, when fix’d, is to her station true.
Thus various bricks are made, as tastes invite—
The red, the grey, the dingy, or the white.
Perhaps some half-baked rover, frank and free,
To alien beauty bends the lawless knee,
But of unhallow’d fascinations sick,
Soon quite his Cyprian for his married brick;
The Dido atom calls and scolds in vain,
No crisp Æneas soothes the widow’s pain.
So in Cheapside, what time Aurora peeps,
A mingled noise of dustmen, milk, and sweeps
Falls on the housemaid’s ear: amazed she stands,
Then opes the door with cinder-sabled hands,
And “Matches” calls. The dustman, bubbled flat,
Thinks ’tis for him and doffs his fan-tail’d hat;
The milkman, whom her second cries assail,
With sudden sink unyokes the clinking pail;
Now louder grown, by turns she screams and weeps—
Alas! her screaming only brings the sweeps.
Sweeps but put out—she wants to raise a flame,
And calls for matches, but ’tis still the same.
Atoms and housemaids! mark the moral true—
If once ye go astray, no _match_ for you!
As atoms in one mass united mix,
So bricks attraction feel for kindred bricks;
Some in the cellar view, perchance, on high,
Fair chimney chums on beds of mortar lie;
Enamour’d of the sympathetic clod,
Leaps the red bridegroom to the labourer’s hod:
And up the ladder bears the workman, taught
To think he bears the bricks—mistaken thought!
A proof behold! if near the top they find
The nymphs or broken-corner’d or unkind,
Back to the base, “resulting with a bound,” {79}
They bear their bleeding carriers to the ground!
So legends tell along the lofty hill
Paced the twin heroes, gallant Jack and Jill;
On trudged the Gemini to reach the rail
That shields the well’s top from the expectant pail,
When, ah! Jack falls; and, rolling in the rear,
Jill feels the attraction of his kindred sphere;
Head over heels begins his toppling track,
Throws sympathetic somersets with Jack,
And at the mountain’s base bobs plump against him, whack!
Ye living atoms, who unconscious sit,
Jumbled by chance in gallery, box, and pit,
For you no Peter opes the fabled door,
No churlish Charon plies the shadowy oar;
Breathe but a space, and Boreas’ casual sweep
Shall bear your scatter’d corses o’er the deep,
To gorge the greedy elements, and mix
With water, marl, and clay, and stones, and sticks;
While, charged with fancied souls, sticks, stones, and clay
Shall take your seats, and hiss or clap the play.
O happy age! when convert Christians read
No sacred writings but the Pagan creed—
O happy age! when, spurning Newton’s dreams,
Our poets’ sons recite Lucretian themes,
Abjure the idle systems of their youth,
And turn again to atoms and to truth;—
O happier still! when England’s dauntless dames,
Awed by no chaste alarms, no latent shames,
The bard’s fourth book unblushingly peruse,
And learn the rampant lessons of the stews!
All hail, Lucretius! renovated sage!
Unfold the modest mystics of thy page;
Return no more to thy sepulchral shelf,
But live, kind bard—that I may live myself!
XVI.
THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL.
BY THE EDITOR OF THE M. P. {81}
[MORNING POST.]
* * * * *
“Bounce, Jupiter, bounce!”—O’HARA.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
As it is now the universally-admitted, and indeed
pretty-generally-suspected, aim of Mr. Whitbread and the infamous,
bloodthirsty, and, in fact, illiberal faction to which he belongs, to
burn to the ground this free and happy Protestant city, and establish
himself in St. James’s Palace, his fellow committeemen have thought it
their duty to watch the principles of a theatre built under his auspices.
The information they have received from an undoubted
authority—particularly from an old fruit-woman who has turned king’s
evidence, and whose name, for obvious reasons, we forbear to mention,
though we have had it some weeks in our possession—has induced them to
introduce various reforms—not such reforms as the vile faction clamour
for, meaning thereby revolution, but such reforms as are necessary to
preserve the glorious constitution of the only free, happy, and
prosperous country now left upon the face of the earth. From the
valuable and authentic source above alluded to, we have learnt that a
sanguinary plot has been formed by some United Irishmen, combined with a
gang of Luddites, and a special committee sent over by the Pope at the
instigation of the beastly Corsican fiend, for destroying all the loyal
part of the audience on the anniversary of that
deeply-to-be-abhorred-and-highly-to-be-blamed stratagem, the Gunpowder
Plot, which falls this year on Thursday the fifth of November. The whole
is under the direction of a delegated committee of O. P.’s whose
treasonable exploits at Covent Garden you all recollect, and all of whom
would have been hung from the chandeliers at that time, but for the
mistaken lenity of Government. At a given signal, a well-known O. P. was
to cry out from the gallery, “Nosey! Music!” whereupon all the O. P.’s
were to produce from their inside pockets a long pair of shears, edged
with felt, to prevent their making any noise, manufactured expressly by a
wretch at Birmingham, one of Mr. Brougham’s evidences, and now in
custody. With these they were to cut off the heads of all the loyal N.
P.’s in the house, without distinction of sex or age. At the signal,
similarly given, of “Throw him over!” which it now appears always alluded
to the overthrow of our
never-sufficiently-enough-to-be-deeply-and-universally-to-be-venerated
constitution, all the heads of the N. P.’s were to be thrown at the
fiddlers, to prevent their appearing in evidence, or perhaps as a false
and illiberal insinuation that they have no heads of their own. All that
we know of the further designs of these incendiaries is, that they are
by-a-great-deal-too-much-too-horrible-to-be-mentioned.
The Manager has acted with his usual promptitude on this trying occasion.
He has contracted for 300 tons of gun powder, which are at this moment
placed in a small barrel under the pit; and a descendant of Guy Faux,
assisted by Col. Congreve, has undertaken to blow up the house, when
necessary, in so novel and ingenious a manner, that every O. P. shall be
annihilated, while not a whisker of the N. P.’s shall be singed. This
strikingly displays the advantages of loyalty and attachment to
government. Several other hints have been taken from the theatrical
regulations of the
not-a-bit-the-less-on-that-account-to-be-universally-execrated monster
Bonaparte. A park of artillery, provided with chain-shot, is to be
stationed on the stage, and play upon the audience, in case of any
indication of misplaced applause or popular discontent (which accounts
for the large space between the curtain and the lamps); and the public
will participate our satisfaction in learning that the indecorous custom
of standing up with the hat on is to be abolished, as the Bow-street
officers are provided with daggers, and have orders to stab all such
persons to the heart, and send their bodies to Surgeons’ Hall. Gentlemen
who cough are only to be slightly wounded. Fruit-women bawling “Bill of
the Play!” are to be forthwith shot, for which purpose soldiers will be
stationed in the slips, and ball-cartridge is to be served out with the
lemonade. If any of the spectators happen to sneeze or spit, they are to
be transported for life; and any person who is so tall as to prevent
another seeing, is to be dragged out and sent on board the tender, or, by
an instrument to be taken out of the pocket of Procrustes, to be
forthwith cut shorter, either at the head or foot, according as his own
convenience may dictate.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, have the committee, through my medium, set
forth the not-in-a-hurry-to-be-paralleled plan they have adopted for
preserving order and decorum within the walls of their magnificent
edifice. Nor have they, while attentive to their own concerns, by any
means overlooked those of the cities of London and Westminster. Finding
on enumeration that they have, with a with-two-hands-and-one-tongue-to
be-applauded liberality, contracted for more gunpowder than they want,
they have parted with the surplus to the mattock-carrying and
hustings-hammering high-bailiff of Westminster, who has, with his own
shovel, dug a large hole in the front of the parish-church of St. Paul,
Covent Garden, that, upon the least symptom of ill-breeding in the mob at
the general election, the whole of the market may be blown into the air.
This, ladies and gentlemen, may at first make provisions _rise_, but we
pledge the credit of our theatre that they will soon _fall_ again, and
people be supplied, as usual, with vegetables, in the
in-general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on-Saturday-night-lighted-up-
with-lamps market of Covent Garden.
I should expatiate more largely on the other advantages of the glorious
constitution of these by-the-whole-of-Europe-envied realms, but I am
called away to take an account of the ladies and other artificial flowers
at a fashionable rout, of which a full and particular account will
hereafter appear. For the present, my fashionable intelligence is
scanty, on account of the opening of Drury Lane; and the ladies and
gentlemen who honour me will not be surprised to find nothing under my
usual head!!
XVII.
THE THEATRE.
BY THE REV. G. C. {85}
[THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE.]
[Mr. Crabbe died 3rd February, 1832, in his 78th year.]
* * * * *
“Nil intentatum nostri liquêre poetæ,
Nec minimum meruêre decus, veetigia Græca
Ausi deserere, et celebrare domestica facta.”
HOR.
A PREFACE OF APOLOGIES.
IF the following poem should be fortunate enough to be selected for the
opening address, a few words of explanation may be deemed necessary, on
my part, to avert invidious misrepresentation. The animadversion I have
thought it right to make on the noise created by tuning the orchestra
will, I hope, give no lasting remorse to any of the gentlemen employed in
the band. It is to be desired that they would keep their instruments
ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accommodation to
many well-meaning persons who frequent the theatre, who, not being blest
with the ear of St. Cecilia, mistake the tuning for the overture, and
think the latter concluded before it is begun.
—“One fiddle will
Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still,”
was originally written “one hautboy will;” but, having providentially
been informed, when this poem was on the point of being sent off, that
there is but one hautboy in the band, I averted the storm of popular and
manageria indignation from the head of its blower: as it now stands, “one
fiddle” among many, the faulty individual will, I hope, escape detection.
The story of the flying play-bill is calculated to expose a practice much
too common, of pinning play-bills to the cushions insecurely, and
frequently, I fear, not pinning them at all, if these lines save one
play-bill only front the fate I have recorded, I shall not deem my labour
ill employed. The concluding episode of Patrick Jennings glances at the
boorish fashion of wearing the hat in the one-shilling gallery. Had
Jennings thrust his between his feet at the commencement of the play, he
might have leaned forward with impunity, and the catastrophe I relate
would not have occurred. The line of handkerchiefs formed to enable him
to recover his loss, is purposely so crossed in texture and materials as
to mislead the reader in respect to the real owner of any one of them:
for, in the statistical view of life and manners which I occasionally
present, my clerical profession has taught me how extremely improper it
would be, by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness,
however trivial, to any individual, however foolish or wicked.
G. C. {88}
THE THEATRE
Interior of a Theatre described.—Pit gradually fills.—The
Check-taker.—Pit full.—The Orchestra tuned.—One fiddle rather
dilatory.—Is reproved—and repents.—Evolutions of a Playbill.—Its final
Settlement on the Spikes.—The Gods taken to task—and why.—Motley Group of
Play-goers.—Holywell Street, St. Pancras.—Emanuel Jennings binds his Son
apprentice—not in London—and why.—Episode of the Hat.
’Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six,
Our long wax-candles, with short cotton wicks,
Touch’d by the lamplighter’s Promethean art,
Start into light, and make the lighter start;
To see red Phoebus through the gallery-pane
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane;
While gradual parties fill our widen’d pit,
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit.
At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease,
Distant or near, they settle where they please;
But when the multitude contracts the span,
And seats are rare, they settle where they can.
Now the full benches to late-comers doom
No room for standing, miscall’d _standing-room_.
Hark! the check-taker moody silence breaks,
And bawling “Pit full!” gives the check he takes;
Yet onward still the gathering numbers cram,
Contending crowders shout rise frequent damn,
And all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, and jam.
See to their desks Apollo’s sons repair—
Swift rides the rosin o’er the horse’s hair
In unison their various tones to tune,
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon;
In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute,
Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute,
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp,
Winds the French horn, and twangs the tingling harp;
Till, like great Jove, the leader, figuring in,
Attunes to order the chaotic din.
Now all seems hush’d—but no, one fiddle will
Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still.
Foil’d in his crash, the leader of the clan
Reproves with frowns the dilatory man:
Then on his candlestick thrice taps his bow,
Nods a new signal, and away they go.
Perchance, while pit and gallery cry “Hats off!”
And awed Consumption checks his chided cough,
Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love
Drops, reft of pin, her play-bill from above;
Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap,
Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap;
But, wiser far than he, combustion fears,
And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers;
Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl,
It settles, curling, on a fiddler’s curl,
Who from his powder’d pate the intruder strikes,
And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes.
Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues?
Who’s that calls “Silence!” with such leathern lungs?
He who, in quest of quiet, “Silence!” hoots,
Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes.
What various swains our motley walls contain!—
Fashion from Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane;
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort,
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court;
From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain,
Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane;
The lottery-cormorant, the auction-shark,
The full-price master, and the half-price clerk;
Boys who long linger at the gallery-door,
With pence twice five—they want but twopence more,
Till some Samaritan the twopence spares,
And sends them jumping up the gallery-stairs.
Critics we boast who ne’er their malice balk,
But talk their minds—we wish they’d mind their talk;
Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live—
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give;
Jews from St. Mary Axe, {91} for jobs so wary,
That for old clothes they’d even axe St. Mary;
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate,
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait;
Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse
With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house.
Yet here, as elsewhere, Chance can joy bestow,
Where scowling Fortune seem’d to threaten woe.
John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polish’d Stubbs’s shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter—a safe employ;
In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred
(At number twenty-seven, it is said),
Facing the pump, and near the Granby’s Head:
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down.
Pat was the urchin’s name—a red-hair’d youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.
Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongues in awe,
The Muse shall tell an accident she saw.
Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat,
But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat
Down from the gallery the beaver flew,
And spurn’d the one to settle in the two.
How shall he act? Pay at the gallery-door
Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four?
Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait,
And gain his hat again at half-past eight?
Now, while his fears anticipate a thief,
John Mullens whispers, “ Take my handkerchief.”
“Thank you,” cries Pat; “but one won’t make a line.”
“Take mine,” cried Wilson; and cried Stokes, “Take mine.”
A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties,
Where Spitalfields with real India vies.
Like Iris’ bow down darts the painted clue,
Starr’d, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue,
Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new.
George Green below, with palpitating hand,
Loops the last ’kerchief to the beaver’s band—
Uproars the prize! The youth, with joy unfeign’d,
Regain’d the felt, and felt what he regain’d;
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat
Made a low bow, and touch’d the ransom’d hat.
XVIII. XIX. XX.
TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF THE NEW DRURY LANE THEATRE. {93}
GENTLEMEN,
Happening to be wool-gathering at the foot of Mount Parnassus, I was
suddenly seized with a violent travestie in the head. The first symptoms
I felt were several triple rhymes floating about my brain, accompanied by
a singing in my throat, which quickly communicated itself to the ears of
everybody about me, and made me a burthen to my friends and a torment to
Doctor Apollo; three of whose favourite servants—that is to say, Macbeth,
his butcher; Mrs. Haller, his cook; and George Barnwell, his
book-keeper—I waylaid in one of my fits of insanity, and mauled after a
very frightful fashion. In this woeful crisis, I accidentally heard of
your invaluable New Patent Hissing Pit, which cures every disorder
incident to Grub Street. I send you inclosed a more detailed specimen of
my case: if you could mould it into the shape of an address, to be said
or sung on the first night of your performance, I have no doubt that I
should feel the immediate effects of your invaluable New Patent Hissing
Pit, of which they tell me one hiss is a dose.
I am, &c.,
MOMUS MEDLAR.
CASE, No. I.
MACBETH.
[_Enter_ MACBETH _in a red nightcap_. PAGE _following with a torch_.]
GO, boy, and thy good mistress tell
(She knows that my purpose is cruel),
I’d thank her to tingle her bell
As soon as she’s heated my gruel.
Go, get thee to bed and repose—
To sit up so late is a scandal;
But ere you have ta’en off your clothes,
Be sure that you put out that candle.
Ri fol de rol tol de rol lol.
My stars, in the air here’s a knife!
I’m sure it cannot be a hum;
I’ll catch at the handle, add’s life!
And then I shall not cut my thumb.
I’ve got him!—no, at him again!
Come, come, I’m not fond of these jokes;
This must be some blade of the brain—
Those witches are given to hoax.
I’ve one in my pocket, I know,
My wife left on purpose behind her;
She bought this of Teddy-high-ho,
The poor Caledonian grinder.
I see thee again! o’er thy middle
Large drops of red blood now are spill’d,
Just as much as to say, diddle diddle,
Good Duncan, pray come and be kill’d.
It leads to his chamber, I swear;
I tremble and quake every joint—
No dog at the scent of a hare
Ever yet made a cleverer point.
Ah, no! ’twas a dagger of straw—
Give me blinkers, to save me from starting;
The knife that I thought that I saw
Was nought but my eye, Betty Martin.
Now o’er this terrestrial hive
A life paralytic is spread;
For while the one half is alive,
The other is sleepy and dead.
King Duncan, in grand majesty,
Has got my state-bed for a snooze;
I’ve lent him my slippers, so I
May certainly stand in his shoes.
Blow softly, ye murmuring gales!
Ye feet, rouse no echo in walking!
For though a dead man tells no tales,
Dead walls are much given to talking.
This knife shall be in at the death—
I’ll stick him, then off safely get!
Cries the world, this could not be Macbeth.
For he’d ne’er stick at anything yet.
Hark, hark! ’tis the signal, by goles!
It sounds like a funeral knell;
O, hear it hot, Duncan! it tolls
To call thee to heaven or hell.
Or if you to heaven won’t fly,
But rather prefer Pluto’s ether,
Only wait a few years till I die,
And we’ll go to the devil together.
Ri fol de rol, &c.
CASE, No. II.
THE STRANGER. {96}
WHO has e’er been at Drury must needs know the Stranger
A wailing old Methodist, gloomy and wan,
A husband suspicious—his wife acted Ranger,
She took to her heels, and left poor Hypocon.
Her martial gallant swore that truth was a libel,
That marriage was thraldom, elopement no sin;
Quoth she, I remember the words of my Bible—
My spouse is a Stranger, and I’ll take him in.
With my sentimentalibus lachrymæ roar ’em,
And pathos and bathos delightful to see;
And chop and change ribs, à-la-mode Germanorum,
And high diddle ho diddle, pop tweedle dee.
To keep up her dignity no longer rich enough,
Where was her plate?—why, ’twas laid on the shelf;
Her land fuller’s earth, and her great riches kitchen-stuff—
Dressing the dinner instead of herself.
No longer permitted in diamonds to sparkle,
Now plain Mrs. Haller, of servants the dread,
With a heart full of grief, and a pan full of charcoal,
She lighted the company up to their bed.
Incensed at her flight, her poor Hubby in dudgeon
Roam’d after his rib in a gig and a pout,
Till, tired with his journey, the peevish curmudgeon
Sat down and blubber’d just like a church-spout.
One day, on a bench as dejected and sad he laid,
Hearing a squash, he cried, Damn it, what’s that?
’Twas a child of the count’s, in whose service lived Adelaide,
Soused in the river, and squall’d like a cat.
Having drawn his young excellence up to the bank, it
Appear’d that himself was all dripping, I swear;
No wonder he soon became dry as a blanket,
Exposed as he was to the count’s _son_ and _heir_.
Dear Sir, quoths the count, in reward of your valour,
To show that my gratitude is not mere talk,
You shall eat a beefsteak with my cook, Mrs. Haller,
Cut from the rump with her own knife and fork.
Behold, now the count gave the Stranger a dinner,
With gunpowder-tea, which you know brings a ball,
And, thin as he was, that he might not glow thinner,
He made of the Stranger no stranger at all.
At dinner fair Adelaide brought up a chicken—
A bird that she never had met with before;
But, seeing him, scream’d, and was carried off kicking,
And he bang’d his nob ’gainst the opposite door.
To finish my tale without roundaboutation,
Young master and missee besieged their papa;
They sung a quartetto in grand blubberation—
The Stranger cried Oh! Mrs. Haller cried Ah!
Though pathos and sentiment largely are dealt in,
I have no good moral to give in exchange;
For though she, as a cook, might be given to melting,
The Stranger’s behaviour was certainly strange,
With this sentimentalibus lachrymæ roar ’em,
And pathos and bathos delightful to see,
And chop and change ribs, à-la-mode Germanorum,
And high diddle ho diddle, pop tweedle dee.
CASE, No. III.
GEORGE BARNWELL. {98}
George Barnwell stood at the shop-door,
A customer hoping to find, sir;
His apron was hanging before,
But the tail of his coat was behind, sir.
A lady, so painted and smart,
Cried, Sir, I’ve exhausted my stock o’ late;
I’ve got nothing left but a groat—
Could you give me four penn’orth of chocolate?
Rum ti, &c.
Her face was rouged up to the eyes,
Which made her look prouder and prouder;
His hair stood on end with surprise,
And hers with pomatum and powder.
The business was soon understood;
The lady, who wish’d to be more rich,
Cries, Sweet sir, my name is Milwood,
And I lodge at the Gunner’s in Shoreditch.
Rum ti, &c.
Now nightly he stole out, good lack!
And into her lodging would pop, sir;
And often forgot to come back,
Leaving master to shut up the shop, sir.
Her beauty his wits did bereave—
Determined to be quite the crack O,
He lounged at the Adam and Eve,
And call’d for his gin and tobacco.
Rum ti, &c.