Pencil Sketches: or, Outlines of Character and Manners

"How do you like that scarlet and gold dress?" said Mrs. Dodcomb.

"Oh! it's beautiful!" replied Mrs. Jones, "and he's a beautiful man that wears it! What handsome legs he has? – and what a white neck for a man! – and such fine curly hair – "

"You would not say so," said Mrs. Dodcomb, "if you were to see him in daylight without his paint, and without his chestnut wig (they have all sorts of wigs, even flax, tow, and yarn). His natural face and hair are both of the same clay-colour. As to his neck, it's nothing when it is not coated all over with whitening – and then his stage legs are always padded."

"Mr. Jones, you are a judge of those things – what do you suppose that man's dress is made of?" asked Mr. Dodcomb.

"Scarlet cloth and gold lace."

"Fudge! it's only red flannel, trimmed with copper binding."

"I'm sorry to hear that," observed Mrs. Jones – and during the remainder of the piece she designated him as "the man in the flannel jacket."

"That's a pretty hat of his sweetheart's," she remarked, "that gauze hat with the long white feathers – how light and airy it looks!"

Miss Flimbrey now giggled. "I made it myself, this morning," said she, "it's only thin catgut, with nothing at all outside – but at a distance, it certainly may be taken for transparent gauze."

From this time Mrs. Jones distinguished the actress as "the woman with the catgut hat."

The hero of the piece appeared in a new and magnificent dress, which was very much applauded, as new and showy dresses frequently are. It was a purple velvet, decorated profusely with gold ornaments, somewhat resembling rows of very large buttons; each button being raised or relieved in the centre, and having a flat rim round the edge. They went up all the seams of the back, and down the front of the jacket, and round the cuffs; and, being very bright and very close together, the effect was rich and unique. Also, one of them fastened the plume and looped up the hat, and two others glittered in the rosettes of the shoes.

"Oh! how grand! – how very grand!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones. "This dress beats all the others!"

"Upon my word, that trimming is fine," said Peter.

"Ain't they big gold buttons, put very close together?" asked his wife.

"Why, no," replied Peter. "They ain't buttons at all – not one of them. Surely I ought to know buttons, when they are buttons. I can't make out these things exactly. But they're handsome, however."

Mr. Dodcomb now began to laugh. "I'll tell you," said he, "the history of these new-fashioned ornaments. It was a bright idea of the actor's own when he was planning his new dress. He went to one of the great hardware stores in Market Street, and bought I don't know how many gross of those shining covers that are put over the screw-holes of bedsteads to hide the screws, and that are fastened on by a small thing at the top of each, like a loop, having a hole for a little screw, to fix them tight in their places. And these holes in the loops were just convenient for the needle to go through when they were sewed on to the dress. So you see what a good show they make now."

"Of all contrivances!" exclaimed Peter. "To think that bed-screw covers should trim so well!"

"Wonders will never cease!" ejaculated Mrs. Jones. And whenever the actor reappeared, she jogged her husband, and reminded him that "here came the man all over bed-screws."

"What beautiful lace cuffs and collars all those gentlemen have, that are gallanting the ladies to the feast!" said Mrs. Jones.

"Cut paper, my dear – only cut paper," replied Mrs. Dodcomb. "Sally Flimbrey cuts them out herself – don't you, Sally?"

Miss Flimbrey (who was not proud), nodded in the affirmative – "You would never guess," said she, "my dear Mrs. Jones, what odd contrivances they have – did you observe the milk-maid's pail in the cottage scene?"

"Yes – it was full to the brim of fine frothy new milk – I should like to have taken a drink of it."

"You would have found it pretty hard to swallow, for it was only cotton wadding," said Miss Flimbrey.

"Well now! if ever I heard the beat of that!" interjected Mrs. Jones.

"How do you like the thunder and lightning?" said Mr. Dodcomb to Mr. Jones.

"It's fine," replied Peter, "and very natural."

"I'll tell you what it is," replied Dodcomb, "the lightning is made by sprinkling a handful of powdered rosin into a ladle heated over a pan of charcoal. A man stands between the scenes and does it whenever a flash is wanted. The thunder is produced by a pair of cannon balls joined across a bar to which is fixed a long wooden handle like the tongue of a child's basket wagon, and by this the balls are pushed and hauled about the floor behind the back scene."

"Astonishing!" exclaimed Mr. Jones. "But the rattling of the rain —that sounds just as if it was real."

"The rain!" answered Mr. Dodcomb. "Oh, the rain is done by a tall wooden case, something on the plan of a great hour glass, lined with tin and filled half full with small shot, which when the case is set on end, dribbles gradually down and rattles as it falls."

"Dear me," ejaculated Mrs. Jones, "what a wonderful thing is knowledge of the stage! I never shall see a thunder-gust again (at the play-house, I mean) without thinking all the time of rosin and ladles, and cannon balls with long handles, and the dribbling of shot."

"Then for snow," pursued Mr. Dodcomb, "they snip up white paper into shreds, and carry it up to the flies or beams and rafters above the stage, and scatter it down by handfuls."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones —

"Well – now the storm is over," said Mrs. Dodcomb, "and here is a castle scene by moonlight."

"And a very pretty moon it is," observed Mrs. Jones, "all solemn and natural."

"Not very solemn to me," said Mr. Dodcomb, "as I know it to be a bit of oiled linen let into a round hole in the back scene, with a candle put behind it."

"Wonders will never cease!" ejaculated Mrs. Jones. "And there's an owl sitting up in that old tumble-down tower – how natural he blinks!"

"Yes," said Mr. Dodcomb, "his eyes are two doors, with a string to each; and a man climbs up behind, and keeps jerking the doors open and letting them shut again – that's the way to make an owl blink. But here comes the bleeding ghost, that wanders about the ruins by moonlight."

The children all drew back a little, and looked somewhat frightened; it happening to be the first ghost they had ever seen.

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Jones, drawing her shawl closely round her, "what an awful sight a ghost is, even when we know it's only a play-actor! This one seem to have no regular clothes, but only those white fly-away things – how deadly pale it is – and just look at the blood, how it keeps streaming down all the time from that great gash in the breast!"

"As to the paleness," explained Miss Flimbrey, "it's only that the face is powdered thick all over with flour; and as to what looks to you like blood, it's nothing but red ribbon, gathered a little full at the top where the wound is, and the ends left long to flow down the white drapery."

"Why this beats all the rest!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones, "Well – I never shall see a bloody ghost again without thinking of meal and red ribbon."

Previous to the last act of the melo-drama, a man belonging to the theatre came and called Mr. Dodcomb out of the box to ask him if he would be so obliging as to go on the stage for a senator in the trial scene, one of the big boys that usually assisted in making out this august assemblage having unexpectedly run away and gone to sea. Mr. Dodcomb (who was not entirely unused to lending himself to similar emergencies) kindly consented; and, after returning to whisper the circumstance to his wife, he slipped out unobserved by the rest of the party. When the drop-curtain again rose, eight or ten senators, with venerable white wigs, were seen sitting in a sort of pews, and wearing pink robes and ermine capes; which ermine, according to Miss Flimbury, was only white paper spotted over with large regular splotches of ink at equal distances.

Presently, on recognising their beloved parent among the conscript fathers, the Dodcomb children became rather too audible in expressing their delight, exclaiming: "Oh! there's pappy. Only see pappy on the stage. Don't pappy look funny?"

The pit-people looked up, and the box-people looked round, and Mrs. Dodcomb tried to silence the children by threats of making them go home. Peter Jones quieted them directly by stopping their mouths with cakes from his well-stored pocket; thus anticipating the treat he had provided for them as a regale between the play and after-piece.

The scene over, Mr. Dodcomb speedily got rid of his senatorial costume, and returned to the box in propriâ personâ, where he was loudly greeted by his children, each insisting on being "the one that first found out their pappy among the men in wigs and gowns."

"Well if ever!" exclaimed Mr. Jones. "There's no knowing what good's before us! Little did we expect when we came here to-night, that we should be sitting here in the same box with anybody that ever acted on the stage. I am so glad."

The after-piece was the Forty Thieves, which Peter and Mrs. Jones had never seen before, and which had extraordinary charms for the old man, who in his youth had been well versed in the Arabian Tales. Giving himself up, as he always did, to the illusion of the scene, he could well have dispensed with the explanations of the Dodcombs, who began by informing Mrs. Jones that the fairy Ardanelle, though in her shell-formed car she seemed to glide through the water, was in reality pulled along by concealed men with concealed ropes.

When the equestrian robbers appeared one by one galloping across the distant mountains, and Mrs. Jones had carefully counted them all to ascertain that there was the full complement of exactly forty, Miss Flimbrey laughed, and assured her that in reality there were only three, one mounted on a black, one on a bay, and one on a white horse, but they passed round and appeared again, till the precise number was accomplished. "And the same thing," said she, "is always done when an army marches across the stage, so that a few soldiers are made to seem like a great many."

"You perceive, Mrs. Jones," said Mr. Dodcomb, "these robbers that ride over the distant mountains are not the real men; but both man and horse is nothing more than a flat thin piece of wood painted and cut out."

On Peter remarking that there was certainly a look of life or reality in the near leg of each rider as it was thrown over the saddle, Mr. Dodcomb explained that each of these equestrian figures was carried by a man concealed behind, and that one arm of the man was thrust through an aperture at the top of the painted saddle; the arm that hung over so as to personate a leg, being dressed in a Turkish trowser, with a boot drawn on the hand.

"Do you mean," said Peter, "that these men run along the ridge, each carrying a horse under his arm?"

"Exactly so," replied Dodcomb, "the horse and rider of painted board being so arranged as to hide the carrier."

"Well – I never did hear anything so queer," said Mrs. Jones, "I wonder how they can keep their countenances. But, there are so many queer things about play-acting. Dear me! what a pug-nose that cobbler has! Let me look at the bill and see who he is – why I saw the same man in the play, and his nose was long and straight."

"Oh! when he wants a snub nose," replied Miss Flimbrey, "he ties up the end with a single horse-hair fastened round his forehead, and the horse hair is too fine to be seen by the audience."

During the scene in which Morgiana destroys the thieves, one at a time, by pouring a few drops of the magic liquid into the jars in which they are hidden, Mrs. Jones found out of her own accord that the jars were only flat pieces of painted board; but Mrs. Dodcomb made her observe that as each of the dying bandits uttered distinctly his own separate groan, the sound was in reality produced from the orchestra, by he of the bass viol giving his bow a hard scrub across the instrument.

"Well," said Mrs. Jones on her way home, "now that my eyes are opened, I must say there is a great deal of deception in plays."

"To be sure there is," replied Peter, "and that we knew all along, or might have known if we had thought about it; but people that go to the theatre only once a year are quite willing to take things as they see them; and they have pleasure enough in the play itself and in what passes before their eyes, without wondering or caring about the contrivances behind the scenes. I never supposed their finery to be real, or their handsome looks either; but that was none of our business, as long as they appeared well to us – I said nothing to you, for I know if you were once put on the scent, you would be the whole time trying to find out their shams and trickeries."

Next morning, while talking over the play in Peter's shop, Mr. Dodcomb kindly volunteered to procure for him and Mrs. Jones, bones or orders from the managers or chief performers, that would insure a gratuitous admission. Peter, much as he liked plays, demurred awhile about availing himself of this neighbourly offer, but the urgency of his wife prevailed on him to consent; and a day or two after, Mr. Dodcomb put into his hand two circular pieces of lettered ivory, which on giving them to the doorkeeper admitted Mr. and Mrs. Jones to the house for that evening; and thus, for the first time in their lives, they found themselves at the theatre twice in one week.

In this manner they went again and again; and a visit to the theatre soon ceased to be an event. It was no longer eagerly anticipated, and minutely remembered. The sight of one play almost effaced the recollection of another. The edge of novelty was fast wearing off, and the sense of enjoyment becoming blunted in proportion. Weariness crept upon them with satiety, and they sometimes even went home before the concluding scene of the farce, and at last they did not even stay to see the first. Often they caught themselves nodding shamefully during the most moral and instructive dialogues of sentimental comedy, and they actually slept a duett through the four first acts of the Gamester, in which, however, they were accompanied by a large portion of the audience.

Their friends the Dodcombs escorted them one afternoon all through the interior of the theatre, so that they obtained a full comprehension of the whole paraphernalia, with all its illusions and realities; and of this knowledge Mrs. Jones made ample use in her comments at night during the performance.

As Peter's enjoyment of the drama grew less, he became more fastidious, particularly as to the ways and means that were employed to produce effect. He now saw the ridicule of the armies of the rival roses being represented by half a dozen men, who when they belonged to King Richard were distinguished by white stockings, but clapped on red ones when, in the next scene, they personated the forces of Richmond. The theatrical vision of our hero being cleared and refined, he ceased to perceive a moving forest when the progress of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane was represented by six or seven men in plaid kilts, each holding up before his face, fan-wise, a little bunch of withered pine twigs. He now discovered that the proper place for the ghost of Banquo was a seat at the table of his murderer, in the midst of the company, and not on a modern parlour chair, set conspicuously by itself near one of the stage doors. He also perceived that in Antony's oration over Cæsar, the Roman populace was illy represented by one boyish-looking, smooth-faced young man (plebeians must have been strangely scarce) who at the words, "Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up to sudden mutiny" – always made sundry futile attempts to look mutinous.76

To conclude – in the course of that season and the next, Peter Jones and his wife by dint of bones and Dodcombs, became so familiar with theatricals that they ceased entirely to enjoy them; and it finally became a sort of task to go, and a greater task to sit through the play.

Mrs. Jones thought that the old actors had all fallen off, and that the new ones were not so good as the old ones; but her more sagacious husband laid the fault to the right cause, which was, "that plays were now a drug to them."

The Dodcombs removed to New York, and the Joneses gave up without regret the facilities of free admission to the theatre. After a lapse of two years, they determined to resume their old and long-tested custom of seeing one single play at the close of the season, and on the anniversary of their wedding. But the charm was broken, the illusion was destroyed; the keenness of their relish was palled by satiety, and could revive no more.

In a less humble sphere of life, and in circumstances of far greater importance than the play-going of Peter Jones, how often is the long-cherished enjoyment of a temperate pleasure destroyed for ever by a short period of over-indulgence!