Nicholas Nickleby
‘What man indeed--upon the stage,’ said Mr. Curdle, with a small
reservation in favour of himself. ‘Hamlet! Pooh! ridiculous! Hamlet is
gone, perfectly gone.’
Quite overcome by these dismal reflections, Mr. and Mrs. Curdle sighed,
and sat for some short time without speaking. At length, the lady,
turning to Miss Snevellicci, inquired what play she proposed to have.
‘Quite a new one,’ said Miss Snevellicci, ‘of which this gentleman is
the author, and in which he plays; being his first appearance on any
stage. Mr. Johnson is the gentleman’s name.’
‘I hope you have preserved the unities, sir?’ said Mr. Curdle.
‘The original piece is a French one,’ said Nicholas. ‘There is abundance
of incident, sprightly dialogue, strongly-marked characters--’
‘--All unavailing without a strict observance of the unities, sir,’
returned Mr. Curdle. ‘The unities of the drama, before everything.’
‘Might I ask you,’ said Nicholas, hesitating between the respect he
ought to assume, and his love of the whimsical, ‘might I ask you what
the unities are?’
Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. ‘The unities, sir,’ he said, ‘are a
completeness--a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place
and time--a sort of a general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so
strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as
I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read
much upon the subject, and thought much. I find, running through the
performances of this child,’ said Mr. Curdle, turning to the phenomenon,
‘a unity of feeling, a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of
colouring, a tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical development
of original conceptions, which I look for, in vain, among older
performers--I don’t know whether I make myself understood?’
‘Perfectly,’ replied Nicholas.
‘Just so,’ said Mr. Curdle, pulling up his neckcloth. ‘That is my
definition of the unities of the drama.’
Mrs. Curdle had sat listening to this lucid explanation with great
complacency. It being finished, she inquired what Mr. Curdle thought,
about putting down their names.
‘I don’t know, my dear; upon my word I don’t know,’ said Mr. Curdle. ‘If
we do, it must be distinctly understood that we do not pledge ourselves
to the quality of the performances. Let it go forth to the world, that
we do not give THEM the sanction of our names, but that we confer the
distinction merely upon Miss Snevellicci. That being clearly stated, I
take it to be, as it were, a duty, that we should extend our patronage
to a degraded stage, even for the sake of the associations with which
it is entwined. Have you got two-and-sixpence for half-a-crown, Miss
Snevellicci?’ said Mr. Curdle, turning over four of those pieces of
money.
Miss Snevellicci felt in all the corners of the pink reticule, but there
was nothing in any of them. Nicholas murmured a jest about his being an
author, and thought it best not to go through the form of feeling in his
own pockets at all.
‘Let me see,’ said Mr. Curdle; ‘twice four’s eight--four shillings
a-piece to the boxes, Miss Snevellicci, is exceedingly dear in the
present state of the drama--three half-crowns is seven-and-six; we shall
not differ about sixpence, I suppose? Sixpence will not part us, Miss
Snevellicci?’
Poor Miss Snevellicci took the three half-crowns, with many smiles and
bends, and Mrs. Curdle, adding several supplementary directions relative
to keeping the places for them, and dusting the seat, and sending two
clean bills as soon as they came out, rang the bell, as a signal for
breaking up the conference.
‘Odd people those,’ said Nicholas, when they got clear of the house.
‘I assure you,’ said Miss Snevellicci, taking his arm, ‘that I think
myself very lucky they did not owe all the money instead of being
sixpence short. Now, if you were to succeed, they would give people to
understand that they had always patronised you; and if you were to fail,
they would have been quite certain of that from the very beginning.’
At the next house they visited, they were in great glory; for, there,
resided the six children who were so enraptured with the public actions
of the phenomenon, and who, being called down from the nursery to be
treated with a private view of that young lady, proceeded to poke their
fingers into her eyes, and tread upon her toes, and show her many other
little attentions peculiar to their time of life.
‘I shall certainly persuade Mr. Borum to take a private box,’ said the
lady of the house, after a most gracious reception. ‘I shall only
take two of the children, and will make up the rest of the party, of
gentlemen--your admirers, Miss Snevellicci. Augustus, you naughty boy,
leave the little girl alone.’
This was addressed to a young gentleman who was pinching the phenomenon
behind, apparently with a view of ascertaining whether she was real.
‘I am sure you must be very tired,’ said the mama, turning to Miss
Snevellicci. ‘I cannot think of allowing you to go, without first taking
a glass of wine. Fie, Charlotte, I am ashamed of you! Miss Lane, my
dear, pray see to the children.’
Miss Lane was the governess, and this entreaty was rendered necessary by
the abrupt behaviour of the youngest Miss Borum, who, having filched the
phenomenon’s little green parasol, was now carrying it bodily off, while
the distracted infant looked helplessly on.
‘I am sure, where you ever learnt to act as you do,’ said good-natured
Mrs. Borum, turning again to Miss Snevellicci, ‘I cannot understand
(Emma, don’t stare so); laughing in one piece, and crying in the next,
and so natural in all--oh, dear!’
‘I am very happy to hear you express so favourable an opinion,’ said
Miss Snevellicci. ‘It’s quite delightful to think you like it.’
‘Like it!’ cried Mrs. Borum. ‘Who can help liking it? I would go to the
play, twice a week if I could: I dote upon it--only you’re too affecting
sometimes. You do put me in such a state--into such fits of crying!
Goodness gracious me, Miss Lane, how can you let them torment that poor
child so!’
The phenomenon was really in a fair way of being torn limb from limb;
for two strong little boys, one holding on by each of her hands, were
dragging her in different directions as a trial of strength. However,
Miss Lane (who had herself been too much occupied in contemplating the
grown-up actors, to pay the necessary attention to these proceedings)
rescued the unhappy infant at this juncture, who, being recruited with
a glass of wine, was shortly afterwards taken away by her friends, after
sustaining no more serious damage than a flattening of the pink gauze
bonnet, and a rather extensive creasing of the white frock and trousers.
It was a trying morning; for there were a great many calls to make, and
everybody wanted a different thing. Some wanted tragedies, and others
comedies; some objected to dancing; some wanted scarcely anything else.
Some thought the comic singer decidedly low, and others hoped he would
have more to do than he usually had. Some people wouldn’t promise to go,
because other people wouldn’t promise to go; and other people wouldn’t
go at all, because other people went. At length, and by little and
little, omitting something in this place, and adding something in
that, Miss Snevellicci pledged herself to a bill of fare which was
comprehensive enough, if it had no other merit (it included among other
trifles, four pieces, divers songs, a few combats, and several dances);
and they returned home, pretty well exhausted with the business of the
day.
Nicholas worked away at the piece, which was speedily put into
rehearsal, and then worked away at his own part, which he studied with
great perseverance and acted--as the whole company said--to perfection.
And at length the great day arrived. The crier was sent round, in the
morning, to proclaim the entertainments with the sound of bell in all
the thoroughfares; and extra bills of three feet long by nine inches
wide, were dispersed in all directions, flung down all the areas,
thrust under all the knockers, and developed in all the shops. They were
placarded on all the walls too, though not with complete success, for an
illiterate person having undertaken this office during the indisposition
of the regular bill-sticker, a part were posted sideways, and the
remainder upside down.
At half-past five, there was a rush of four people to the gallery-door;
at a quarter before six, there were at least a dozen; at six o’clock the
kicks were terrific; and when the elder Master Crummles opened the door,
he was obliged to run behind it for his life. Fifteen shillings were
taken by Mrs. Grudden in the first ten minutes.
Behind the scenes, the same unwonted excitement prevailed. Miss
Snevellicci was in such a perspiration that the paint would scarcely
stay on her face. Mrs. Crummles was so nervous that she could hardly
remember her part. Miss Bravassa’s ringlets came out of curl with the
heat and anxiety; even Mr. Crummles himself kept peeping through the hole
in the curtain, and running back, every now and then, to announce that
another man had come into the pit.
At last, the orchestra left off, and the curtain rose upon the new
piece. The first scene, in which there was nobody particular, passed
off calmly enough, but when Miss Snevellicci went on in the second,
accompanied by the phenomenon as child, what a roar of applause broke
out! The people in the Borum box rose as one man, waving their hats
and handkerchiefs, and uttering shouts of ‘Bravo!’ Mrs. Borum and the
governess cast wreaths upon the stage, of which, some fluttered into the
lamps, and one crowned the temples of a fat gentleman in the pit, who,
looking eagerly towards the scene, remained unconscious of the honour;
the tailor and his family kicked at the panels of the upper boxes
till they threatened to come out altogether; the very ginger-beer
boy remained transfixed in the centre of the house; a young officer,
supposed to entertain a passion for Miss Snevellicci, stuck his glass
in his eye as though to hide a tear. Again and again Miss Snevellicci
curtseyed lower and lower, and again and again the applause came down,
louder and louder. At length, when the phenomenon picked up one of the
smoking wreaths and put it on, sideways, over Miss Snevellicci’s eye, it
reached its climax, and the play proceeded.
But when Nicholas came on for his crack scene with Mrs. Crummles, what
a clapping of hands there was! When Mrs. Crummles (who was his unworthy
mother), sneered, and called him ‘presumptuous boy,’ and he defied her,
what a tumult of applause came on! When he quarrelled with the other
gentleman about the young lady, and producing a case of pistols, said,
that if he WAS a gentleman, he would fight him in that drawing-room,
until the furniture was sprinkled with the blood of one, if not of
two--how boxes, pit, and gallery, joined in one most vigorous cheer!
When he called his mother names, because she wouldn’t give up the young
lady’s property, and she relenting, caused him to relent likewise,
and fall down on one knee and ask her blessing, how the ladies in the
audience sobbed! When he was hid behind the curtain in the dark, and the
wicked relation poked a sharp sword in every direction, save where his
legs were plainly visible, what a thrill of anxious fear ran through the
house! His air, his figure, his walk, his look, everything he said or
did, was the subject of commendation. There was a round of applause
every time he spoke. And when, at last, in the pump-and-tub scene, Mrs
Grudden lighted the blue fire, and all the unemployed members of the
company came in, and tumbled down in various directions--not because
that had anything to do with the plot, but in order to finish off with a