The “Dramatist” of the present day, “stop him who can,” ever on the
alert for novelty, has seized on the “Living Skeleton.” Poor Seurat is
“as well as can be expected;” but it appears, from a “Notice” handed
about the streets, that he has a rival in a _British_ “Living Skeleton.”
This “Notice,” printed by W. Glindon, Newport-street, Haymarket, and
signed “Thomas Feelwell, 104, High Holborn,” states, that a “humane
individual, in justice to his own feelings and those of a sensitive
public,” considers it necessary to “expose the _resources_” by which the
proprietors of the “Coburg Theatre” have produced “a rival to the
Pall-Mall object.” One part of his undertaking, the “resources,” honest
“Thomas Feelwell” leaves untouched, but he tells the following curious
story:--
“A young man of extraordinary leanness, was, for some days, observed
shuffling about the Waterloo-road, reclining against the posts and
walls, apparently from excessive weakness, and earnestly gazing through
the windows of the eating houses in the neighbourhood, for hours
together. One of the managers of the Coburg theatre, accidentally
meeting him, and being struck with his attenuated appearance, instantly
seized him by the bone of his arm, and, leading him into the saloon of
the theatre, made proposals that he should be produced on the stage as a
source of attraction and delight for a British audience; at the same
time stipulating that he should contrive to exist upon but half a meal
a day--that he should be constantly attended by a constable, to prevent
his purchasing any other sustenance, and be allowed no pocket-money,
till the expiration of his engagement--that he should be nightly buried
between a dozen heavy blankets, to prevent his growing lusty, and to
reduce him to the lightness of a gossamer, in order that the gasping
breath of the astonished audience might so _agitate_ his frame, that he
might be _tremblingly_ alive to their admiration.”
If this narrative be true, the situation of the “young man of
extraordinary leanness” is to be pitied. The _new_ living skeleton may
have acceded to the manager’s terms of “half a meal” a day on the truth
of the old saying, that “half a loaf is better than no bread,” and it is
clearly the manager’s interest to keep him alive as long as he will
“run;” yet, if the “poor creature” is nightly buried between a dozen
heavy blankets “to reduce him to the lightness of a gossamer,” he may
outdo the manager’s hopes, and “run” out of the world. Seriously, if
this be so, it ought not so to be. The “dozen heavy blankets to prevent
his growing lusty” might have been spared; for a man with “half a meal a
day” can hardly be expected to arrive at that obesity which destroyed a
performer formerly, who played the starved apothecary in Romeo and
Juliet till he got fat, and was only reduced to the wonted
“extraordinary leanness” which qualified him for the character, by being
struck off the pay-list. The condition of the poor man should be an
object of public inquiry as well as public curiosity.
* * * * *