The Mississippi Bubble, Emerson Hough [best historical biographies .txt] 📗

‘I cannot,’ says our talented correspondent in conclusion, ‘I cannot close my account of these gigantic researches and sublime and noble triumphs without repeating a bon mot of Professor Woodensconce’s, which shows how the greatest minds may occasionally unbend when truth can be presented to listening ears, clothed in an attractive and playful form.  I was standing by, when, after a week of feasting and feeding, that learned gentleman, accompanied by the whole body of wonderful men, entered the hall yesterday, where a sumptuous dinner was prepared; where the richest wines sparkled on the board, and fat bucks—propitiatory sacrifices to learning—sent forth their savoury odours.  “Ah!” said Professor Woodensconce, rubbing his hands, “this is what we meet for; this is what inspires us; this is what keeps us together, and beckons us onward; this is the spread of science, and a glorious spread it is.”’

Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess to a fondness for pantomimes—to a gentle sympathy with clowns and pantaloons—to an unqualified admiration of harlequins and columbines—to a chaste delight in every action of their brief existence, varied and many-coloured as those actions are, and inconsistent though they occasionally be with those rigid and formal rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of meaner and less comprehensive minds.  We revel in pantomimes—not because they dazzle one’s eyes with tinsel and gold leaf; not because they present to us, once again, the well-beloved chalked faces, and goggle eyes of our childhood; not even because, like Christmas-day, and Twelfth-night, and Shrove-Tuesday, and one’s own birthday, they come to us but once a year;—our attachment is founded on a graver and a very different reason.  A pantomime is to us, a mirror of life; nay, more, we maintain that it is so to audiences generally, although they are not aware of it, and that this very circumstance is the secret cause of their amusement and delight.

Let us take a slight example.  The scene is a street: an elderly gentleman, with a large face and strongly marked features, appears.  His countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is on his broad, red cheek.  He is evidently an opulent elderly gentleman, comfortable in circumstances, and well-to-do in the world.  He is not unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly, not to say gaudily, dressed; and that he indulges to a reasonable extent in the pleasures of the table may be inferred from the joyous and oily manner in which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the audience that he is going home to dinner.  In the fulness of his heart, in the fancied security of wealth, in the possession and enjoyment of all the good things of life, the elderly gentleman suddenly loses his footing, and stumbles.  How the audience roar!  He is set upon by a noisy and officious crowd, who buffet and cuff him unmercifully.  They scream with delight!  Every time the elderly gentleman struggles to get up, his relentless persecutors knock him down again.  The spectators are convulsed with merriment!  And when at last the elderly gentleman does get up, and staggers away, despoiled of hat, wig, and clothing, himself battered to pieces, and his watch and money gone, they are exhausted with laughter, and express their merriment and admiration in rounds of applause.

Is this like life?  Change the scene to any real street;—to the Stock Exchange, or the City banker’s; the merchant’s counting-house, or even the tradesman’s shop.  See any one of these men fall,—the more suddenly, and the nearer the zenith of his pride and riches, the better.  What a wild hallo is raised over his prostrate carcase by the shouting mob; how they whoop and yell as he lies humbled beneath them!  Mark how eagerly they set upon him when he is down; and how they mock and deride him as he slinks away.  Why, it is the pantomime to the very letter.

Of all the pantomimic dramatis personæ, we consider the pantaloon the most worthless and debauched.  Independent of the dislike one naturally feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in pursuits highly unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that he is a treacherous, worldly-minded old villain, constantly enticing his younger companion, the clown, into acts of fraud or petty larceny, and generally standing aside to watch the result of the enterprise.  If it be successful, he never forgets to return for his share of the spoil; but if it turn out a failure, he generally retires with remarkable caution and expedition, and keeps carefully aloof until the affair has blown over.  His amorous propensities, too, are eminently disagreeable; and his mode of addressing ladies in the open street at noon-day is down-right improper, being usually neither more nor less than a perceptible tickling of the aforesaid ladies in the waist, after committing which, he starts back, manifestly ashamed (as well he may be) of his own indecorum and temerity; continuing, nevertheless, to ogle and beckon to them from a distance in a very unpleasant and immoral manner.

Is there any man who cannot count a dozen pantaloons in his own social circle?  Is there any man who has not seen them swarming at the west end of the town on a sunshiny day or a summer’s evening, going through the last-named pantomimic feats with as much liquorish energy, and as total an absence of reserve, as if they were on the very stage itself?  We can tell upon our fingers a dozen pantaloons of our acquaintance at this moment—capital pantaloons, who have been performing all kinds of strange freaks, to the great amusement of their friends and acquaintance, for years past; and who to this day are making such comical and ineffectual attempts to be young and dissolute, that all beholders are like to die with laughter.

Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the Café de l’Europe in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense of the young man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part at the door of the tavern.  The affected warmth of that shake of the hand, the courteous nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the savoury flavour of which still hangs upon his lips, are all characteristics of his great prototype.  He hobbles away humming an opera tune, and twirling his cane to and fro, with affected carelessness.  Suddenly he stops—’tis at the milliner’s window.  He peeps through one of the large panes of glass; and, his view of the ladies within being obstructed by the India shawls, directs his attentions to the young girl with the band-box in her hand, who is gazing in at the window also.  See! he draws beside her.  He coughs; she turns away from him.  He draws near her again; she disregards him.  He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and, retreating a few steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage.  She turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a toothless chuckle. The pantaloon to the life!

But the close resemblance which the clowns of the stage bear to those of every-day life is perfectly extraordinary.  Some people talk with a sigh of the decline of pantomime, and murmur in low and dismal tones the name of Grimaldi.  We mean no disparagement to the worthy and excellent old man when we say that this is downright nonsense.  Clowns that beat Grimaldi all to nothing turn up every day, and nobody patronizes them—more’s the pity!

‘I know who you mean,’ says some dirty-faced patron of Mr. Osbaldistone’s, laying down the Miscellany when he has got thus far, and bestowing upon vacancy a most knowing glance; ‘you mean C. J. Smith as did Guy Fawkes, and George Barnwell at the Garden.’  The dirty-faced gentleman has hardly uttered the words, when he is interrupted by a young gentleman in no shirt-collar and a Petersham coat.  ‘No, no,’ says the young gentleman; ‘he means Brown, King, and Gibson, at the ’Delphi.’  Now, with great deference both to the first-named gentleman with the dirty face, and the last-named gentleman in the non-existing shirt-collar,