Чарльз Диккенс
Nicholas Nickleby
‘That’ll be a double encore if you take care, boys,’ said Mr. Crummles. ‘You had better get your wind now and change your clothes.’
Having addressed these words to the combatants, he saluted Nicholas, who then observed that the face of Mr. Crummles was quite proportionate in size to his body; that he had a very full under-lip, a hoarse voice, as though he were in the habit of shouting very much, and very short black hair, shaved off nearly to the crown of his head – to admit (as he afterwards learnt) of his more easily wearing character wigs of any shape or pattern.
‘What did you think of that, sir?’ inquired Mr. Crummles.
‘Very good, indeed – capital,’ answered Nicholas.
‘You won’t see such boys as those very often, I think,’ said Mr. Crummles.
Nicholas assented – observing that if they were a little better match —
‘Match!’ cried Mr. Crummles.
‘I mean if they were a little more of a size,’ said Nicholas, explaining himself.
‘Size!’ repeated Mr. Crummles; ‘why, it’s the essence of the combat that there should be a foot or two between them. How are you to get up the sympathies of the audience in a legitimate manner, if there isn’t a little man contending against a big one? – unless there’s at least five to one, and we haven’t hands enough for that business in our company.’
‘I see,’ replied Nicholas. ‘I beg your pardon. That didn’t occur to me, I confess.’
‘It’s the main point,’ said Mr. Crummles. ‘I open at Portsmouth the day after tomorrow. If you’re going there, look into the theatre, and see how that’ll tell.’
Nicholas promised to do so, if he could, and drawing a chair near the fire, fell into conversation with the manager at once. He was very talkative and communicative, stimulated perhaps, not only by his natural disposition, but by the spirits and water he sipped very plentifully, or the snuff he took in large quantities from a piece of whitey-brown paper in his waistcoat pocket. He laid open his affairs without the smallest reserve, and descanted at some length upon the merits of his company, and the acquirements of his family; of both of which, the two broad-sword boys formed an honourable portion. There was to be a gathering, it seemed, of the different ladies and gentlemen at Portsmouth on the morrow, whither the father and sons were proceeding (not for the regular season, but in the course of a wandering speculation), after fulfilling an engagement at Guildford with the greatest applause.
‘You are going that way?’ asked the manager.
‘Ye-yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Do you know the town at all?’ inquired the manager, who seemed to consider himself entitled to the same degree of confidence as he had himself exhibited.
‘No,’ replied Nicholas.
‘Never there?’
‘Never.’
Mr. Vincent Crummles gave a short dry cough, as much as to say, ‘If you won’t be communicative, you won’t;’ and took so many pinches of snuff from the piece of paper, one after another, that Nicholas quite wondered where it all went to.
While he was thus engaged, Mr. Crummles looked, from time to time, with great interest at Smike, with whom he had appeared considerably struck from the first. He had now fallen asleep, and was nodding in his chair.
‘Excuse my saying so,’ said the manager, leaning over to Nicholas, and sinking his voice, ‘but what a capital countenance your friend has got!’
‘Poor fellow!’ said Nicholas, with a half-smile, ‘I wish it were a little more plump, and less haggard.’
‘Plump!’ exclaimed the manager, quite horrified, ‘you’d spoil it for ever.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Think so, sir! Why, as he is now,’ said the manager, striking his knee emphatically; ‘without a pad upon his body, and hardly a touch of paint upon his face, he’d make such an actor for the starved business as was never seen in this country. Only let him be tolerably well up in the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, with the slightest possible dab of red on the tip of his nose, and he’d be certain of three rounds the moment he put his head out of the practicable door in the front grooves O.P.’
‘You view him with a professional eye,’ said Nicholas, laughing.
‘And well I may,’ rejoined the manager. ‘I never saw a young fellow so regularly cut out for that line, since I’ve been in the profession. And I played the heavy children when I was eighteen months old.’
The appearance of the beef-steak pudding, which came in simultaneously with the junior Vincent Crummleses, turned the conversation to other matters, and indeed, for a time, stopped it altogether. These two young gentlemen wielded their knives and forks with scarcely less address than their broad-swords, and as the whole party were quite as sharp set as either class of weapons, there was no time for talking until the supper had been disposed of.
The Master Crummleses had no sooner swallowed the last procurable morsel of food, than they evinced, by various half-suppressed yawns and stretchings of their limbs, an obvious inclination to retire for the night, which Smike had betrayed still more strongly: he having, in the course of the meal, fallen asleep several times while in the very act of eating. Nicholas therefore proposed that they should break up at once, but the manager would by no means hear of it; vowing that he had promised himself the pleasure of inviting his new acquaintance to share a bowl of punch, and that if he declined, he should deem it very unhandsome behaviour.
‘Let them go,’ said Mr. Vincent Crummles, ‘and we’ll have it snugly and cosily together by the fire.’
Nicholas was not much disposed to sleep – being in truth too anxious – so, after a little demur, he accepted the offer, and having exchanged a shake of the hand with the young Crummleses, and the manager having on his part bestowed a most affectionate benediction on Smike, he sat himself down opposite to that gentleman by the fireside to assist in emptying the bowl, which soon afterwards appeared, steaming in a manner which was quite exhilarating to behold, and sending forth a most grateful and inviting fragrance.
But, despite the punch and the manager, who told a variety of stories, and smoked tobacco from a pipe, and inhaled it in the shape of snuff, with a most astonishing power, Nicholas was absent and dispirited. His thoughts were in his old home, and when they reverted to his present condition, the uncertainty of the morrow cast a gloom upon him, which his utmost efforts were unable to dispel. His attention wandered; although he heard the manager’s voice, he was deaf to what he said; and when Mr. Vincent Crummles concluded the history of some long adventure with a loud laugh, and an inquiry what Nicholas would have done under the same circumstances, he was obliged to make the best apology in his power, and to confess his entire ignorance of all he had been talking about.
‘Why, so I saw,’ observed Mr. Crummles. ‘You’re uneasy in your mind. What’s the matter?’
Nicholas could not refrain from smiling at the abruptness of the question; but, thinking it scarcely worth while to parry it, owned that he was under some apprehensions lest he might not succeed in the object which had brought him to that part of the country.
‘And what’s that?’ asked the manager.
‘Getting something to do which will keep me and my poor fellow-traveller in the common necessaries of life,’ said Nicholas. ‘That’s the truth. You guessed it long ago, I dare say, so I may as well have the credit of telling it you with a good grace.’
‘What’s to be got to do at Portsmouth more than anywhere else?’ asked Mr Vincent Crummles, melting the sealing-wax on the stem of his pipe in the candle, and rolling it out afresh with his little finger.
‘There are many vessels leaving the port, I suppose,’ replied Nicholas. ‘I shall try for a berth in some ship or other. There is meat and drink there at all events.’
‘Salt meat and new rum; pease-pudding and chaff-biscuits,’ said the manager, taking a whiff at his pipe to keep it alight, and returning to his work of embellishment.
‘One may do worse than that,’ said Nicholas. ‘I can rough it, I believe, as well as most young men of my age and previous habits.’
‘You need be able to,’ said the manager, ‘if you go on board ship; but you won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there’s not a skipper or mate that would think you worth your salt, when he could get a practised hand,’ replied the manager; ‘and they as plentiful there, as the oysters in the streets.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Nicholas, alarmed by this prediction, and the confident tone in which it had been uttered. ‘Men are not born able seamen. They must be reared, I suppose?’
Mr. Vincent Crummles nodded his head. ‘They must; but not at your age, or from young gentlemen like you.’
There was a pause. The countenance of Nicholas fell, and he gazed ruefully at the fire.
‘Does no other profession occur to you, which a young man of your figure and address could take up easily, and see the world to advantage in?’ asked the manager.
‘No,’ said Nicholas, shaking his head.
‘Why, then, I’ll tell you one,’ said Mr. Crummles, throwing his pipe into the fire, and raising his voice. ‘The stage.’
‘The stage!’ cried Nicholas, in a voice almost as loud.
‘The theatrical profession,’ said Mr. Vincent Crummles. ‘I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, my children are in the theatrical profession. I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour the Tartar. I’ll bring you out, and your friend too. Say the word. I want a novelty.’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ rejoined Nicholas, whose breath had been almost taken away by this sudden proposal. ‘I never acted a part in my life, except at school.’
‘There’s genteel comedy in your walk and manner, juvenile tragedy in your eye, and touch-and-go farce in your laugh,’ said Mr. Vincent Crummles. ‘You’ll do as well as if you had thought of nothing else but the lamps, from your birth downwards.’
Nicholas thought of the small amount of small change that would remain in his pocket after paying the tavern bill; and he hesitated.
‘You can be useful to us in a hundred ways,’ said Mr. Crummles. ‘Think what capital bills a man of your education could write for the shop-windows.’
‘Well, I think I could manage that department,’ said Nicholas.
‘To be sure you could,’ replied Mr. Crummles. ‘“For further particulars see small hand-bills” – we might have half a volume in every one of ‘em. Pieces too; why, you could write us a piece to bring out the whole strength of the company, whenever we wanted one.’
‘I am not quite so confident about that,’ replied Nicholas. ‘But I dare say I could scribble something now and then, that would suit you.’
‘We’ll have a new show-piece out directly,’ said the manager. ‘Let me see – peculiar resources of this establishment – new and splendid scenery – you must manage to introduce a real pump and two washing-tubs.’
‘Into the piece?’ said Nicholas.
‘Yes,’ replied the manager. ‘I bought ‘em cheap, at a sale the other day, and they’ll come in admirably. That’s the London plan. They look up some dresses, and properties, and have a piece written to fit ‘em. Most of the theatres keep an author on purpose.’
‘Indeed!’ cried Nicholas.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the manager; ‘a common thing. It’ll look very well in the bills in separate lines – Real pump! – Splendid tubs! – Great attraction! You don’t happen to be anything of an artist, do you?’
‘That is not one of my accomplishments,’ rejoined Nicholas.
‘Ah! Then it can’t be helped,’ said the manager. ‘If you had been, we might have had a large woodcut of the last scene for the posters, showing the whole depth of the stage, with the pump and tubs in the middle; but, however, if you’re not, it can’t be helped.’
‘What should I get for all this?’ inquired Nicholas, after a few moments’ reflection. ‘Could I live by it?’
‘Live by it!’ said the manager. ‘Like a prince! With your own salary, and your friend’s, and your writings, you’d make – ah! you’d make a pound a week!’
‘You don’t say so!’
‘I do indeed, and if we had a run of good houses, nearly double the money.’
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders; but sheer destitution was before him; and if he could summon fortitude to undergo the extremes of want and hardship, for what had he rescued his helpless charge if it were only to bear as hard a fate as that from which he had wrested him? It was easy to think of seventy miles as nothing, when he was in the same town with the man who had treated him so ill and roused his bitterest thoughts; but now, it seemed far enough. What if he went abroad, and his mother or Kate were to die the while?
Without more deliberation, he hastily declared that it was a bargain, and gave Mr. Vincent Crummles his hand upon it.
CHAPTER 23
Treats of the Company of Mr. Vincent Crummles, and of his Affairs, Domestic and Theatrical
As Mr. Crummles had a strange four-legged animal in the inn stables, which he called a pony, and a vehicle of unknown design, on which he bestowed the appellation of a four-wheeled phaeton, Nicholas proceeded on his journey next morning with greater ease than he had expected: the manager and himself occupying the front seat: and the Master Crummleses and Smike being packed together behind, in company with a wicker basket defended from wet by a stout oilskin, in which were the broad-swords, pistols, pigtails, nautical costumes, and other professional necessaries of the aforesaid young gentlemen.
The pony took his time upon the road, and – possibly in consequence of his theatrical education – evinced, every now and then, a strong inclination to lie down. However, Mr. Vincent Crummles kept him up pretty well, by jerking the rein, and plying the whip; and when these means failed, and the animal came to a stand, the elder Master Crummles got out and kicked him. By dint of these encouragements, he was persuaded to move from time to time, and they jogged on (as Mr. Crummles truly observed) very comfortably for all parties.
‘He’s a good pony at bottom,’ said Mr. Crummles, turning to Nicholas.
He might have been at bottom, but he certainly was not at top, seeing that his coat was of the roughest and most ill-favoured kind. So, Nicholas merely observed that he shouldn’t wonder if he was.
‘Many and many is the circuit this pony has gone,’ said Mr. Crummles, flicking him skilfully on the eyelid for old acquaintance’ sake. ‘He is quite one of us. His mother was on the stage.’
‘Was she?’ rejoined Nicholas.
‘She ate apple-pie at a circus for upwards of fourteen years,’ said the manager; ‘fired pistols, and went to bed in a nightcap; and, in short, took the low comedy entirely. His father was a dancer.’
‘Was he at all distinguished?’
‘Not very,’ said the manager. ‘He was rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had been originally jobbed out by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. He was clever in melodrama too, but too broad – too broad. When the mother died, he took the port-wine business.’
‘The port-wine business!’ cried Nicholas.
‘Drinking port-wine with the clown,’ said the manager; ‘but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the glass, and choked himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at last.’
The descendant of this ill-starred animal requiring increased attention from Mr. Crummles as he progressed in his day’s work, that gentleman had very little time for conversation. Nicholas was thus left at leisure to entertain himself with his own thoughts, until they arrived at the drawbridge at Portsmouth, when Mr. Crummles pulled up.
‘We’ll get down here,’ said the manager, ‘and the boys will take him round to the stable, and call at my lodgings with the luggage. You had better let yours be taken there, for the present.’
Thanking Mr. Vincent Crummles for his obliging offer, Nicholas jumped out, and, giving Smike his arm, accompanied the manager up High Street on their way to the theatre; feeling nervous and uncomfortable enough at the prospect of an immediate introduction to a scene so new to him.
They passed a great many bills, pasted against the walls and displayed in windows, wherein the names of Mr. Vincent Crummles, Mrs. Vincent Crummles, Master Crummles, Master P. Crummles, and Miss Crummles, were printed in very large letters, and everything else in very small ones; and, turning at length into an entry, in which was a strong smell of orange-peel and lamp-oil, with an under-current of sawdust, groped their way through a dark passage, and, descending a step or two, threaded a little maze of canvas screens and paint pots, and emerged upon the stage of the Portsmouth Theatre.
‘Here we are,’ said Mr. Crummles.
It was not very light, but Nicholas found himself close to the first entrance on the prompt side, among bare walls, dusty scenes, mildewed clouds, heavily daubed draperies, and dirty floors. He looked about him; ceiling, pit, boxes, gallery, orchestra, fittings, and decorations of every kind, – all looked coarse, cold, gloomy, and wretched.
‘Is this a theatre?’ whispered Smike, in amazement; ‘I thought it was a blaze of light and finery.’
‘Why, so it is,’ replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; ‘but not by day, Smike – not by day.’
The manager’s voice recalled him from a more careful inspection of the building, to the opposite side of the proscenium, where, at a small mahogany table with rickety legs and of an oblong shape, sat a stout, portly female, apparently between forty and fifty, in a tarnished silk cloak, with her bonnet dangling by the strings in her hand, and her hair (of which she had a great quantity) braided in a large festoon over each temple.
‘Mr. Johnson,’ said the manager (for Nicholas had given the name which Newman Noggs had bestowed upon him in his conversation with Mrs. Kenwigs), ‘let me introduce Mrs. Vincent Crummles.’
‘I am glad to see you, sir,’ said Mrs. Vincent Crummles, in a sepulchral voice. ‘I am very glad to see you, and still more happy to hail you as a promising member of our corps.’
The lady shook Nicholas by the hand as she addressed him in these terms; he saw it was a large one, but had not expected quite such an iron grip as that with which she honoured him.
‘And this,’ said the lady, crossing to Smike, as tragic actresses cross when they obey a stage direction, ‘and this is the other. You too, are welcome, sir.’
‘He’ll do, I think, my dear?’ said the manager, taking a pinch of snuff.
‘He is admirable,’ replied the lady. ‘An acquisition indeed.’
As Mrs. Vincent Crummles recrossed back to the table, there bounded on to the stage from some mysterious inlet, a little girl in a dirty white frock with tucks up to the knees, short trousers, sandaled shoes, white spencer, pink gauze bonnet, green veil and curl papers; who turned a pirouette, cut twice in the air, turned another pirouette, then, looking off at the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to within six inches of the footlights, and fell into a beautiful attitude of terror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of buff slippers came in at one powerful slide, and chattering his teeth, fiercely brandished a walking-stick.
‘They are going through the Indian Savage and the Maiden,’ said Mrs Crummles.
‘Oh!’ said the manager, ‘the little ballet interlude. Very good, go on. A little this way, if you please, Mr. Johnson. That’ll do. Now!’
The manager clapped his hands as a signal to proceed, and the savage, becoming ferocious, made a slide towards the maiden; but the maiden avoided him in six twirls, and came down, at the end of the last one, upon the very points of her toes. This seemed to make some impression upon the savage; for, after a little more ferocity and chasing of the maiden into corners, he began to relent, and stroked his face several times with his right thumb and four fingers, thereby intimating that he was struck with admiration of the maiden’s beauty. Acting upon the impulse of this passion, he (the savage) began to hit himself severe thumps in the chest, and to exhibit other indications of being desperately in love, which being rather a prosy proceeding, was very likely the cause of the maiden’s falling asleep; whether it was or no, asleep she did fall, sound as a church, on a sloping bank, and the savage perceiving it, leant his left ear on his left hand, and nodded sideways, to intimate to all whom it might concern that she was asleep, and no shamming. Being left to himself, the savage had a dance, all alone. Just as he left off, the maiden woke up, rubbed her eyes, got off the bank, and had a dance all alone too – such a dance that the savage looked on in ecstasy all the while, and when it was done, plucked from a neighbouring tree some botanical curiosity, resembling a small pickled cabbage, and offered it to the maiden, who at first wouldn’t have it, but on the savage shedding tears relented. Then the savage jumped for joy; then the maiden jumped for rapture at the sweet smell of the pickled cabbage. Then the savage and the maiden danced violently together, and, finally, the savage dropped down on one knee, and the maiden stood on one leg upon his other knee; thus concluding the ballet, and leaving the spectators in a state of pleasing uncertainty, whether she would ultimately marry the savage, or return to her friends.
‘Very well indeed,’ said Mr. Crummles; ‘bravo!’
‘Bravo!’ cried Nicholas, resolved to make the best of everything. ‘Beautiful!’
‘This, sir,’ said Mr. Vincent Crummles, bringing the maiden forward, ‘this is the infant phenomenon – Miss Ninetta Crummles.’
‘Your daughter?’ inquired Nicholas.
‘My daughter – my daughter,’ replied Mr. Vincent Crummles; ‘the idol of every place we go into, sir. We have had complimentary letters about this girl, sir, from the nobility and gentry of almost every town in England.’
‘I am not surprised at that,’ said Nicholas; ‘she must be quite a natural genius.’
‘Quite a – !’ Mr. Crummles stopped: language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. ‘I’ll tell you what, sir,’ he said; ‘the talent of this child is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir – seen – to be ever so faintly appreciated. There; go to your mother, my dear.’
‘May I ask how old she is?’ inquired Nicholas.
‘You may, sir,’ replied Mr. Crummles, looking steadily in his questioner’s face, as some men do when they have doubts about being implicitly believed in what they are going to say. ‘She is ten years of age, sir.’
‘Not more!’
‘Not a day.’
‘Dear me!’ said Nicholas, ‘it’s extraordinary.’
It was; for the infant phenomenon, though of short stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had moreover been precisely the same age – not perhaps to the full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but certainly for five good years. But she had been kept up late every night, and put upon an unlimited allowance of gin-and-water from infancy, to prevent her growing tall, and perhaps this system of training had produced in the infant phenomenon these additional phenomena.
While this short dialogue was going on, the gentleman who had enacted the savage, came up, with his walking shoes on his feet, and his slippers in his hand, to within a few paces, as if desirous to join in the conversation. Deeming this a good opportunity, he put in his word.
‘Talent there, sir!’ said the savage, nodding towards Miss Crummles.
Nicholas assented.
‘Ah!’ said the actor, setting his teeth together, and drawing in his breath with a hissing sound, ‘she oughtn’t to be in the provinces, she oughtn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the manager.
‘I mean to say,’ replied the other, warmly, ‘that she is too good for country boards, and that she ought to be in one of the large houses in London, or nowhere; and I tell you more, without mincing the matter, that if it wasn’t for envy and jealousy in some quarter that you know of, she would be. Perhaps you’ll introduce me here, Mr. Crummles.’
‘Mr. Folair,’ said the manager, presenting him to Nicholas.
‘Happy to know you, sir.’ Mr. Folair touched the brim of his hat with his forefinger, and then shook hands. ‘A recruit, sir, I understand?’
‘An unworthy one,’ replied Nicholas.
‘Did you ever see such a set-out as that?’ whispered the actor, drawing him away, as Crummles left them to speak to his wife.
‘As what?’
Mr. Folair made a funny face from his pantomime collection, and pointed over his shoulder.
‘You don’t mean the infant phenomenon?’
‘Infant humbug, sir,’ replied Mr. Folair. ‘There isn’t a female child of common sharpness in a charity school, that couldn’t do better than that. She may thank her stars she was born a manager’s daughter.’
‘You seem to take it to heart,’ observed Nicholas, with a smile.
‘Yes, by Jove, and well I may,’ said Mr. Folair, drawing his arm through his, and walking him up and down the stage. ‘Isn’t it enough to make a man crusty to see that little sprawler put up in the best business every night, and actually keeping money out of the house, by being forced down the people’s throats, while other people are passed over? Isn’t it extraordinary to see a man’s confounded family conceit blinding him, even to his own interest? Why I know of fifteen and sixpence that came to Southampton one night last month, to see me dance the Highland Fling; and what’s the consequence? I’ve never been put up in it since – never once – while the “infant phenomenon” has been grinning through artificial flowers at five people and a baby in the pit, and two boys in the gallery, every night.’
‘If I may judge from what I have seen of you,’ said Nicholas, ‘you must be a valuable member of the company.’
‘Oh!’ replied Mr. Folair, beating his slippers together, to knock the dust out; ‘I CAn come it pretty well – nobody better, perhaps, in my own line – but having such business as one gets here, is like putting lead on one’s feet instead of chalk, and dancing in fetters without the credit of it. Holloa, old fellow, how are you?’
The gentleman addressed in these latter words was a dark-complexioned man, inclining indeed to sallow, with long thick black hair, and very evident inclinations (although he was close shaved) of a stiff beard, and whiskers of the same deep shade. His age did not appear to exceed thirty, though many at first sight would have considered him much older, as his face was long, and very pale, from the constant application of stage paint. He wore a checked shirt, an old green coat with new gilt buttons, a neckerchief of broad red and green stripes, and full blue trousers; he carried, too, a common ash walking-stick, apparently more for show than use, as he flourished it about, with the hooked end downwards, except when he raised it for a few seconds, and throwing himself into a fencing attitude, made a pass or two at the side-scenes, or at any other object, animate or inanimate, that chanced to afford him a pretty good mark at the moment.
‘Well, Tommy,’ said this gentleman, making a thrust at his friend, who parried it dexterously with his slipper, ‘what’s the news?’
‘A new appearance, that’s all,’ replied Mr. Folair, looking at Nicholas.
‘Do the honours, Tommy, do the honours,’ said the other gentleman, tapping him reproachfully on the crown of the hat with his stick.
‘This is Mr. Lenville, who does our first tragedy, Mr. Johnson,’ said the pantomimist.
‘Except when old bricks and mortar takes it into his head to do it himself, you should add, Tommy,’ remarked Mr. Lenville. ‘You know who bricks and mortar is, I suppose, sir?’
‘I do not, indeed,’ replied Nicholas.
‘We call Crummles that, because his style of acting is rather in the heavy and ponderous way,’ said Mr. Lenville. ‘I mustn’t be cracking jokes though, for I’ve got a part of twelve lengths here, which I must be up in tomorrow night, and I haven’t had time to look at it yet; I’m a confounded quick study, that’s one comfort.’
Consoling himself with this reflection, Mr. Lenville drew from his coat pocket a greasy and crumpled manuscript, and, having made another pass at his friend, proceeded to walk to and fro, conning it to himself and indulging occasionally in such appropriate action as his imagination and the text suggested.
A pretty general muster of the company had by this time taken place; for besides Mr. Lenville and his friend Tommy, there were present, a slim young gentleman with weak eyes, who played the low-spirited lovers and sang tenor songs, and who had come arm-in-arm with the comic countryman – a man with a turned-up nose, large mouth, broad face, and staring eyes. Making himself very amiable to the infant phenomenon, was an inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness, who played the calm and virtuous old men; and paying especial court to Mrs. Crummles was another elderly gentleman, a shade more respectable, who played the irascible old men – those funny fellows who have nephews in the army and perpetually run about with thick sticks to compel them to marry heiresses. Besides these, there was a roving-looking person in a rough great-coat, who strode up and down in front of the lamps, flourishing a dress cane, and rattling away, in an undertone, with great vivacity for the amusement of an ideal audience. He was not quite so young as he had been, and his figure was rather running to seed; but there was an air of exaggerated gentility about him, which bespoke the hero of swaggering comedy. There was, also, a little group of three or four young men with lantern jaws and thick eyebrows, who were conversing in one corner; but they seemed to be of secondary importance, and laughed and talked together without attracting any attention.
The ladies were gathered in a little knot by themselves round the rickety table before mentioned. There was Miss Snevellicci – who could do anything, from a medley dance to Lady Macbeth, and also always played some part in blue silk knee-smalls at her benefit – glancing, from the depths of her coal-scuttle straw bonnet, at Nicholas, and affecting to be absorbed in the recital of a diverting story to her friend Miss Ledrook, who had brought her work, and was making up a ruff in the most natural manner possible. There was Miss Belvawney – who seldom aspired to speaking parts, and usually went on as a page in white silk hose, to stand with one leg bent, and contemplate the audience, or to go in and out after Mr. Crummles in stately tragedy – twisting up the ringlets of the beautiful Miss Bravassa, who had once had her likeness taken ‘in character’ by an engraver’s apprentice, whereof impressions were hung up for sale in the pastry-cook’s window, and the greengrocer’s, and at the circulating library, and the box-office, whenever the announce bills came out for her annual night. There was Mrs. Lenville, in a very limp bonnet and veil, decidedly in that way in which she would wish to be if she truly loved Mr. Lenville; there was Miss Gazingi, with an imitation ermine boa tied in a loose knot round her neck, flogging Mr. Crummles, junior, with both ends, in fun. Lastly, there was Mrs. Grudden in a brown cloth pelisse and a beaver bonnet, who assisted Mrs. Crummles in her domestic affairs, and took money at the doors, and dressed the ladies, and swept the house, and held the prompt book when everybody else was on for the last scene, and acted any kind of part on any emergency without ever learning it, and was put down in the bills under any name or names whatever, that occurred to Mr. Crummles as looking well in print.
