ALL gentlemen who love the drama—and there are few gentlemen who are not
attached to the most intellectual and rational of all our amusements—do
not come within this definition. As we have no mean relish for
theatrical entertainments ourself, we are disinterestedly anxious that
this should be perfectly understood.
The theatrical young gentleman has early and important information on all
theatrical topics. ‘Well,’ says he, abruptly, when you meet him in the
street, ‘here’s a pretty to-do. Flimkins has thrown up his part in the
melodrama at the Surrey.’—‘And what’s to be done?’ you inquire with as
much gravity as you can counterfeit. ‘Ah, that’s the point,’ replies the
theatrical young gentleman, looking very serious; ‘Boozle declines it;
positively declines it. From all I am told, I should say it was
decidedly in Boozle’s line, and that he would be very likely to make a
great hit in it; but he objects on the ground of Flimkins having been put
up in the part first, and says no earthly power shall induce him to take
the character. It’s a fine part, too—excellent business, I’m told. He
has to kill six people in the course of the piece, and to fight over a
bridge in red fire, which is as safe a card, you know, as can be. Don’t
mention it; but I hear that the last scene, when he is first poisoned,
and then stabbed, by Mrs. Flimkins as Vengedora, will be the greatest
thing that has been done these many years.’ With this piece of news, and
laying his finger on his lips as a caution for you not to excite the town
with it, the theatrical young gentleman hurries away.
The theatrical young gentleman, from often frequenting the different
theatrical establishments, has pet and familiar names for them all. Thus
Covent-Garden is the garden, Drury-Lane the lane, the Victoria the vic,
and the Olympic the pic. Actresses, too, are always designated by their
surnames only, as Taylor, Nisbett, Faucit, Honey; that talented and
lady-like girl Sheriff, that clever little creature Horton, and so on.
In the same manner he prefixes Christian names when he mentions actors,
as Charley Young, Jemmy Buckstone, Fred. Yates, Paul Bedford. When he is
at a loss for a Christian name, the word ‘old’ applied indiscriminately
answers quite as well: as old Charley Matthews at Vestris’s, old Harley,
and old Braham. He has a great knowledge of the private proceedings of
actresses, especially of their getting married, and can tell you in a
breath half-a-dozen who have changed their names without avowing it.
Whenever an alteration of this kind is made in the playbills, he will
remind you that he let you into the secret six months ago.
The theatrical young gentleman has a great reverence for all that is
connected with the stage department of the different theatres. He would,
at any time, prefer going a street or two out of his way, to omitting to
pass a stage-entrance, into which he always looks with a curious and
searching eye. If he can only identify a popular actor in the street, he
is in a perfect transport of delight; and no sooner meets him, than he
hurries back, and walks a few paces in front of him, so that he can turn
round from time to time, and have a good stare at his features. He looks
upon a theatrical-fund dinner as one of the most enchanting festivities
ever known; and thinks that to be a member of the Garrick Club, and see
so many actors in their plain clothes, must be one of the highest
gratifications the world can bestow.
The theatrical young gentleman is a constant half-price visitor at one or
other of the theatres, and has an infinite relish for all pieces which
display the fullest resources of the establishment. He likes to place
implicit reliance upon the play-bills when he goes to see a show-piece,
and works himself up to such a pitch of enthusiasm, as not only to
believe (if the bills say so) that there are three hundred and
seventy-five people on the stage at one time in the last scene, but is
highly indignant with you, unless you believe it also. He considers that
if the stage be opened from the foot-lights to the back wall, in any new
play, the piece is a triumph of dramatic writing, and applauds
accordingly. He has a great notion of trap-doors too; and thinks any
character going down or coming up a trap (no matter whether he be an
angel or a demon—they both do it occasionally) one of the most
interesting feats in the whole range of scenic illusion.
Besides these acquirements, he has several veracious accounts to
communicate of the private manners and customs of different actors,
which, during the pauses of a quadrille, he usually communicates to his
partner, or imparts to his neighbour at a supper table. Thus he is
advised, that Mr. Liston always had a footman in gorgeous livery waiting
at the side-scene with a brandy bottle and tumbler, to administer half a
pint or so of spirit to him every time he came off, without which
assistance he must infallibly have fainted. He knows for a fact, that,
after an arduous part, Mr. George Bennett is put between two feather
beds, to absorb the perspiration; and is credibly informed, that Mr.
Baker has, for many years, submitted to a course of lukewarm
toast-and-water, to qualify him to sustain his favourite characters. He
looks upon Mr. Fitz Ball as the principal dramatic genius and poet of the
day; but holds that there are great writers extant besides him,—in proof
whereof he refers you to various dramas and melodramas recently produced,
of which he takes in all the sixpenny and three-penny editions as fast as
they appear.
The theatrical young gentleman is a great advocate for violence of
emotion and redundancy of action. If a father has to curse a child upon
the stage, he likes to see it done in the thorough-going style, with no
mistake about it: to which end it is essential that the child should
follow the father on her knees, and be knocked violently over on her face
by the old gentleman as he goes into a small cottage, and shuts the door
behind him. He likes to see a blessing invoked upon the young lady, when
the old gentleman repents, with equal earnestness, and accompanied by the
usual conventional forms, which consist of the old gentleman looking
anxiously up into the clouds, as if to see whether it rains, and then
spreading an imaginary tablecloth in the air over the young lady’s
head—soft music playing all the while. Upon these, and other points of a
similar kind, the theatrical young gentleman is a great critic indeed.
He is likewise very acute in judging of natural expressions of the
passions, and knows precisely the frown, wink, nod, or leer, which stands
for any one of them, or the means by which it may be converted into any
other: as jealousy, with a good stamp of the right foot, becomes anger;
or wildness, with the hands clasped before the throat, instead of tearing
the wig, is passionate love. If you venture to express a doubt of the
accuracy of any of these portraitures, the theatrical young gentleman
assures you, with a haughty smile, that it always has been done in that
way, and he supposes they are not going to change it at this time of day
to please you; to which, of course, you meekly reply that you suppose
not.
There are innumerable disquisitions of this nature, in which the
theatrical young gentleman is very profound, especially to ladies whom he
is most in the habit of entertaining with them; but as we have no space
to recapitulate them at greater length, we must rest content with calling
the attention of the young ladies in general to the theatrical young
gentlemen of their own acquaintance.