Nicholas Nickleby
tableau--the audience (who had by this time increased considerably) gave
vent to such a shout of enthusiasm as had not been heard in those walls
for many and many a day.
In short, the success both of new piece and new actor was complete, and
when Miss Snevellicci was called for at the end of the play, Nicholas
led her on, and divided the applause.
CHAPTER 25
Concerning a young Lady from London, who joins the Company, and an
elderly Admirer who follows in her Train; with an affecting Ceremony
consequent on their Arrival
The new piece being a decided hit, was announced for every evening of
performance until further notice, and the evenings when the theatre was
closed, were reduced from three in the week to two. Nor were these the
only tokens of extraordinary success; for, on the succeeding Saturday,
Nicholas received, by favour of the indefatigable Mrs. Grudden, no less a
sum than thirty shillings; besides which substantial reward, he enjoyed
considerable fame and honour: having a presentation copy of Mr. Curdle’s
pamphlet forwarded to the theatre, with that gentleman’s own autograph
(in itself an inestimable treasure) on the fly-leaf, accompanied with
a note, containing many expressions of approval, and an unsolicited
assurance that Mr. Curdle would be very happy to read Shakespeare to him
for three hours every morning before breakfast during his stay in the
town.
‘I’ve got another novelty, Johnson,’ said Mr. Crummles one morning in
great glee.
‘What’s that?’ rejoined Nicholas. ‘The pony?’
‘No, no, we never come to the pony till everything else has failed,’
said Mr. Crummles. ‘I don’t think we shall come to the pony at all, this
season. No, no, not the pony.’
‘A boy phenomenon, perhaps?’ suggested Nicholas.
‘There is only one phenomenon, sir,’ replied Mr. Crummles impressively,
‘and that’s a girl.’
‘Very true,’ said Nicholas. ‘I beg your pardon. Then I don’t know what
it is, I am sure.’
‘What should you say to a young lady from London?’ inquired Mr. Crummles.
‘Miss So-and-so, of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane?’
‘I should say she would look very well in the bills,’ said Nicholas.
‘You’re about right there,’ said Mr. Crummles; ‘and if you had said she
would look very well upon the stage too, you wouldn’t have been far out.
Look here; what do you think of this?’
With this inquiry Mr. Crummles unfolded a red poster, and a blue poster,
and a yellow poster, at the top of each of which public notification was
inscribed in enormous characters--‘First appearance of the unrivalled
Miss Petowker of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane!’
‘Dear me!’ said Nicholas, ‘I know that lady.’
‘Then you are acquainted with as much talent as was ever compressed into
one young person’s body,’ retorted Mr. Crummles, rolling up the bills
again; ‘that is, talent of a certain sort--of a certain sort. “The Blood
Drinker,”’ added Mr. Crummles with a prophetic sigh, ‘“The Blood Drinker”
will die with that girl; and she’s the only sylph I ever saw, who could
stand upon one leg, and play the tambourine on her other knee, LIKE a
sylph.’
‘When does she come down?’ asked Nicholas.
‘We expect her today,’ replied Mr. Crummles. ‘She is an old friend of Mrs
Crummles’s. Mrs. Crummles saw what she could do--always knew it from the
first. She taught her, indeed, nearly all she knows. Mrs. Crummles was
the original Blood Drinker.’
‘Was she, indeed?’
‘Yes. She was obliged to give it up though.’
‘Did it disagree with her?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Not so much with her, as with her audiences,’ replied Mr. Crummles.
‘Nobody could stand it. It was too tremendous. You don’t quite know what
Mrs. Crummles is yet.’
Nicholas ventured to insinuate that he thought he did.
‘No, no, you don’t,’ said Mr. Crummles; ‘you don’t, indeed. I don’t, and
that’s a fact. I don’t think her country will, till she is dead. Some
new proof of talent bursts from that astonishing woman every year of her
life. Look at her--mother of six children--three of ‘em alive, and all
upon the stage!’
‘Extraordinary!’ cried Nicholas.
‘Ah! extraordinary indeed,’ rejoined Mr. Crummles, taking a complacent
pinch of snuff, and shaking his head gravely. ‘I pledge you my
professional word I didn’t even know she could dance, till her last
benefit, and then she played Juliet, and Helen Macgregor, and did the
skipping-rope hornpipe between the pieces. The very first time I saw
that admirable woman, Johnson,’ said Mr. Crummles, drawing a little
nearer, and speaking in the tone of confidential friendship, ‘she
stood upon her head on the butt-end of a spear, surrounded with blazing
fireworks.’
‘You astonish me!’ said Nicholas.
‘SHE astonished ME!’ returned Mr. Crummles, with a very serious
countenance. ‘Such grace, coupled with such dignity! I adored her from
that moment!’
The arrival of the gifted subject of these remarks put an abrupt
termination to Mr. Crummles’s eulogium. Almost immediately afterwards,
Master Percy Crummles entered with a letter, which had arrived by the
General Post, and was directed to his gracious mother; at sight of
the superscription whereof, Mrs. Crummles exclaimed, ‘From Henrietta
Petowker, I do declare!’ and instantly became absorbed in the contents.
‘Is it--?’ inquired Mr. Crummles, hesitating.
‘Oh, yes, it’s all right,’ replied Mrs. Crummles, anticipating the
question. ‘What an excellent thing for her, to be sure!’
‘It’s the best thing altogether, that I ever heard of, I think,’ said Mr
Crummles; and then Mr. Crummles, Mrs. Crummles, and Master Percy Crummles,
all fell to laughing violently. Nicholas left them to enjoy their mirth
together, and walked to his lodgings; wondering very much what mystery
connected with Miss Petowker could provoke such merriment, and pondering
still more on the extreme surprise with which that lady would regard his
sudden enlistment in a profession of which she was such a distinguished
and brilliant ornament.
But, in this latter respect he was mistaken; for--whether Mr. Vincent
Crummles had paved the way, or Miss Petowker had some special reason for
treating him with even more than her usual amiability--their meeting at
the theatre next day was more like that of two dear friends who had been
inseparable from infancy, than a recognition passing between a lady
and gentleman who had only met some half-dozen times, and then by mere
chance. Nay, Miss Petowker even whispered that she had wholly dropped
the Kenwigses in her conversations with the manager’s family, and had
represented herself as having encountered Mr. Johnson in the very
first and most fashionable circles; and on Nicholas receiving this
intelligence with unfeigned surprise, she added, with a sweet glance,
that she had a claim on his good nature now, and might tax it before
long.
Nicholas had the honour of playing in a slight piece with Miss Petowker
that night, and could not but observe that the warmth of her reception
was mainly attributable to a most persevering umbrella in the upper
boxes; he saw, too, that the enchanting actress cast many sweet looks
towards the quarter whence these sounds proceeded; and that every time
she did so, the umbrella broke out afresh. Once, he thought that a
peculiarly shaped hat in the same corner was not wholly unknown to him;
but, being occupied with his share of the stage business, he bestowed no
great attention upon this circumstance, and it had quite vanished from
his memory by the time he reached home.
He had just sat down to supper with Smike, when one of the people of the
house came outside the door, and announced that a gentleman below stairs
wished to speak to Mr. Johnson.
‘Well, if he does, you must tell him to come up; that’s all I know,’
replied Nicholas. ‘One of our hungry brethren, I suppose, Smike.’
His fellow-lodger looked at the cold meat in silent calculation of the
quantity that would be left for dinner next day, and put back a slice he
had cut for himself, in order that the visitor’s encroachments might be
less formidable in their effects.
‘It is not anybody who has been here before,’ said Nicholas, ‘for he
is tumbling up every stair. Come in, come in. In the name of wonder! Mr
Lillyvick?’
It was, indeed, the collector of water-rates who, regarding Nicholas
with a fixed look and immovable countenance, shook hands with
most portentous solemnity, and sat himself down in a seat by the
chimney-corner.
‘Why, when did you come here?’ asked Nicholas.
‘This morning, sir,’ replied Mr. Lillyvick.
‘Oh! I see; then you were at the theatre tonight, and it was your umb--’
‘This umbrella,’ said Mr. Lillyvick, producing a fat green cotton one
with a battered ferrule. ‘What did you think of that performance?’
‘So far as I could judge, being on the stage,’ replied Nicholas, ‘I
thought it very agreeable.’
‘Agreeable!’ cried the collector. ‘I mean to say, sir, that it was
delicious.’
Mr. Lillyvick bent forward to pronounce the last word with greater
emphasis; and having done so, drew himself up, and frowned and nodded a
great many times.
‘I say, delicious,’ repeated Mr. Lillyvick. ‘Absorbing, fairy-like,
toomultuous,’ and again Mr. Lillyvick drew himself up, and again he
frowned and nodded.
‘Ah!’ said Nicholas, a little surprised at these symptoms of ecstatic
approbation. ‘Yes--she is a clever girl.’
‘She is a divinity,’ returned Mr. Lillyvick, giving a collector’s double
knock on the ground with the umbrella before-mentioned. ‘I have known
divine actresses before now, sir, I used to collect--at least I used
to CALL for--and very often call for--the water-rate at the house of
a divine actress, who lived in my beat for upwards of four year
but never--no, never, sir of all divine creatures, actresses or no
actresses, did I see a diviner one than is Henrietta Petowker.’
Nicholas had much ado to prevent himself from laughing; not trusting
himself to speak, he merely nodded in accordance with Mr. Lillyvick’s
nods, and remained silent.
‘Let me speak a word with you in private,’ said Mr. Lillyvick.
Nicholas looked good-humouredly at Smike, who, taking the hint,
disappeared.
‘A bachelor is a miserable wretch, sir,’ said Mr. Lillyvick.
‘Is he?’ asked Nicholas.
‘He is,’ rejoined the collector. ‘I have lived in the world for nigh
sixty year, and I ought to know what it is.’
‘You OUGHT to know, certainly,’ thought Nicholas; ‘but whether you do or
not, is another question.’
‘If a bachelor happens to have saved a little matter of money,’ said Mr
Lillyvick, ‘his sisters and brothers, and nephews and nieces, look TO
that money, and not to him; even if, by being a public character, he is
the head of the family, or, as it may be, the main from which all the
other little branches are turned on, they still wish him dead all the
while, and get low-spirited every time they see him looking in good
health, because they want to come into his little property. You see
that?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied Nicholas: ‘it’s very true, no doubt.’
‘The great reason for not being married,’ resumed Mr. Lillyvick, ‘is the
expense; that’s what’s kept me off, or else--Lord!’ said Mr. Lillyvick,
snapping his fingers, ‘I might have had fifty women.’
‘Fine women?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Fine women, sir!’ replied the collector; ‘ay! not so fine as Henrietta
Petowker, for she is an uncommon specimen, but such women as don’t
fall into every man’s way, I can tell you. Now suppose a man can get a
fortune IN a wife instead of with her--eh?’
‘Why, then, he’s a lucky fellow,’ replied Nicholas.
‘That’s what I say,’ retorted the collector, patting him benignantly
on the side of the head with his umbrella; ‘just what I say. Henrietta
Petowker, the talented Henrietta Petowker has a fortune in herself, and
I am going to--’
‘To make her Mrs. Lillyvick?’ suggested Nicholas.