They are so clean. We have seen peasantry off the stage, and it
has presented an untidy--occasionally a disreputable and
unwashed--appearance; but the stage peasant seems to spend all his wages
on soap and hair-oil.
They are always round the corner--or rather round the two corners--and
they come on in a couple of streams and meet in the center; and when
they are in their proper position they smile.
There is nothing like the stage peasants' smile in this world--nothing
so perfectly inane, so calmly imbecile.
They are so happy. They don't look it, but we know they are because they
say so. If you don't believe them, they dance three steps to the right
and three steps to the left back again. They can't help it. It is
because they are so happy.
When they are more than usually rollicking they stand in a semicircle,
with their hands on each other's shoulders, and sway from side to side,
trying to make themselves sick. But this is only when they are simply
bursting with joy.
Stage peasants never have any work to do.
Sometimes we see them going to work, sometimes coming home from work,
but nobody has ever seen them actually at work. They could not afford to
work--it would spoil their clothes.
They are very sympathetic, are stage peasants. They never seem to have
any affairs of their own to think about, but they make up for this by
taking a three-hundred-horse-power interest in things in which they have
no earthly concern.
What particularly rouses them is the heroine's love affairs. They could
listen to them all day.
They yearn to hear what she said to him and to be told what he replied
to her, and they repeat it to each other.
In our own love-sick days we often used to go and relate to various
people all the touching conversations that took place between our
lady-love and ourselves; but our friends never seemed to get excited
over it. On the contrary, a casual observer might even have been led
to the idea that they were bored by our recital. And they had trains to
catch and men to meet before we had got a quarter through the job.
Ah, how often in those days have we yearned for the sympathy of a stage
peasantry, who would have crowded round us, eager not to miss one word
of the thrilling narrative, who would have rejoiced with us with an
encouraging laugh, and have condoled with us with a grieved "Oh," and
who would have gone off, when we had had enough of them, singing about
it.
By the way, this is a very beautiful trait in the character of the stage
peasantry, their prompt and unquestioning compliance with the slightest
wish of any of the principals.
"Leave me, friends," says the heroine, beginning to make preparations
for weeping, and before she can turn round they are clean gone--one
lot to the right, evidently making for the back entrance of the
public-house, and the other half to the left, where they visibly hide
themselves behind the pump and wait till somebody else wants them.
The stage peasantry do not talk much, their strong point being to
listen. When they cannot get any more information about the state of the
heroine's heart, they like to be told long and complicated stories about
wrongs done years ago to people that they never heard of. They seem to
be able to grasp and understand these stories with ease. This makes the
audience envious of them.
When the stage peasantry do talk, however, they soon make up for lost
time. They start off all together with a suddenness that nearly knocks
you over.
They all talk. Nobody listens. Watch any two of them. They are both
talking as hard as they can go. They have been listening quite enough
to other people: you can't expect them to listen to each other. But the
conversation under such conditions must be very trying.
And then they flirt so sweetly! so idyllicly!
It has been our privilege to see real peasantry flirt, and it has always
struck us as a singularly solid and substantial affair--makes one think,
somehow, of a steam-roller flirting with a cow--but on the stage it
is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much
tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life,
and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs--such
a silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such a
beautiful waistcoat! how can she help but love him? And he is so tender
and devoted and holds her by the waist; and she slips round and comes up
the other side. Oh, it is so bewitching!
The stage peasantry like to do their love-making as much in public as
possible. Some people fancy a place all to themselves for this sort
of thing--where nobody else is about. We ourselves do. But the stage
peasant is more sociably inclined. Give him the village green, just
outside the public-house, or the square on market-day to do his spooning
in.
They are very faithful, are stage peasants. No jilting, no fickleness,
no breach of promise. If the gentleman in pink walks out with the lady
in blue in the first act, pink and blue will be married in the end. He
sticks to her all through and she sticks to him.
Girls in yellow may come and go, girls in green may laugh and dance--the
gentleman in pink heeds them not. Blue is his color, and he never leaves
it. He stands beside it, he sits beside it. He drinks with her, he
smiles with her, he laughs with her, he dances with her, he comes on
with her, he goes off with her.
When the time comes for talking he talks to her and only her, and she
talks to him and only him. Thus there is no jealousy, no quarreling. But
we should prefer an occasional change ourselves.
There are no married people in stage villages and no children
(consequently, of course--happy village! oh, to discover it and spend a
month there!). There are just the same number of men as there are women
in all stage villages, and they are all about the same age and each
young man loves some young woman. But they never marry.
They talk a lot about it, but they never do it. The artful beggars! They
see too much what it's like among the principals.
The stage peasant is fond of drinking, and when he drinks he likes to
let you know he is drinking. None of your quiet half-pint inside the
bar for him. He likes to come out in the street and sing about it and do
tricks with it, such as turning it topsy-turvy over his head.
Notwithstanding all this he is moderate, mind you. You can't say he
takes too much. One small jug of ale among forty is his usual allowance.
He has a keen sense of humor and is easily amused. There is something
almost pathetic about the way he goes into convulsions of laughter over
such very small jokes. How a man like that would enjoy a real joke!
One day he will perhaps hear a real joke. Who knows? It will, however,
probably kill him. One grows to love the stage peasant after awhile.
He is so good, so child-like, so unworldly. He realizes one's ideal of
Christianity.