Nicholas Nickleby
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