Speaker 1: Getting up a pantomime by George Augustus Seller. Christmas is coming,
cold weather, snow in the streets, mince pies, and our
little boys and girls home for the holidays, kind hearted
people's donations for the poor, boxes turkeys from the country,
goose clubs in town, plums and candid sittern in the
windows of the grocer's shops, hot elder wine, snap dragon
hunt the slipper, and the butcher's and baker's quarterly bills.
The Great Anniversary of Humanity gives signs of its approach,
and with it the joyfulness and unbending and unstarching of
white neckcloths, and genial charity, and genial handshaking and good fellowship,
which once a year at least dispel the fog of
caste and prejudice in this land of England. And Christmas
is coming, and in his jovial train come also the pantomimes. Goodness,
though we know them all by heart, how we love
those same pantomimes still, though we have seen the same
clowns steal the same sausages, and have been asked by
the pantaloon, how are we tomorrow? For years and years,
how we delight in the same clown and pantaloon. Still,
there can't be anything esthetic in a pantomime. It must
be deficient in the unities. It has no epipere or
anything in the shape of dramatic property connected with it.
Yet it must have something good about it to make
us row at the old old jokes, and wonder at
the old tricks, and be delighted with the old spangled
fairies andaled fires. Perhaps there may be something in the
festive season, something contagious in the wintry jollity of the year,
that causes us churchwarden's householders, hard men of business, that
we may be forget parochial squabbles, taxes and water rates,
discount and adjutage for hours, and enter heart and soul
into participation and appreciation of the mysteries of Harlequin Fifo FuMB,
or the enchanted fairy of the Island of Abracadabra. Possibly
there may be something in the shrill laughter, the ecstatic handclapping,
the shouts of triumphant laughter of the little children. Yonder,
it may be, after all, that the sausages and the spangles,
the tricks and colored fires of Harlequin Fifo FuMB may
strike some long forgotten cords, rummage up long hidden sympathies,
wake up kindly feelings and remembrances of things that were
air parochial squabbles, water rates and discount had been when
we two were little children, when our jackets buttoned over
our trousers, and we wore frills around our necks and
long blue sashes round our waists. Else, why should something
like a water in us in the eye, and a
huskiness in the throat, not sorrowful though, come over us
amid the most excruciatingly comic portion of the comic business.
Else why should the lights and the music, the children's laughter,
and the spangled fairies conjure up that mind picture half
dim and half distinct, of our Christmases years ago, of
Mangnal's questions and my incipation from the cane of Grandmamma,
who always kept sweet stuff in her pockets, of Uncle William,
who was never without a store of half crowns, wherewith
to tip us of poor sister Gussie who died of
the childish joys and griefs, the hopes and fears of
Christmas in the year eighteen hundred, And never mind how
many hip hip hip for the pantomime, however, exultingly watched
the clown through his nefarious career, raw at jack pudding, tumbling,
admire the paint on his face, marvel at the halls
of splendor and glittering coral caves of the genius of
the sea. Till midnight comes and the green baize curtain
rolls slowly down, and brown Holland draperies cover the ormelou
decorations of the boxing. Then if you can spare half
an hour, send the little children home to Brompton with
the best of governesses, and tarry a while with me
while I discourse of what goes on behind that same
green curtain, of what has gone on before the clown
could steal his sausages, or the spangled fairy change an
oak into a magic temple, or the colored fires light
up the home of beauty in the lake of the
silver Swans. Let me, as briefly and succinctly as I can,
endeavor to give you an idea of the immense labor
and industry and perseverance, of the nice ingenuity and patient
mechanical skill, of the various knowledge necessary, nay indispensable. Eir Harlequin,
fie fo FuMB can be put upon the stage ere
the green bays can rise, disclosing the coral caves of
the genius of the sea. Let us put on the
cap of Fortunio, and the stilts of asthmadeus. Let us
go back to when the pantomime was but an embryo
of comicality, and in its progress towards the glory of
full blown pantomimehood. Watched the labors of the ants behind
the bays ants without exaggeration, For if ever there was
a human ant hill, the working department of a theater
is something of that sort. And mere amusement, your mere
enlightenment on a subject of which my readers may possibly
be ignorant, are not the sole objects I have in view.
I do honestly think that the theatrical profession and its
professors are somewhat calumniated. That people are rather too apt
to call theaters sinks of iniquity and dens of depravity,
and to set down all actors as a species of
diverting vagabonds who have acquired a knowledge of their calling
without study, and exercise it without labor. I imagine that if
a little more were known of how hard working, industrious
and persevering. Theatricals as a body generally, are of what
has to be done behind the scenes of a theater
and how it is done for our amusement. We should
look upon the drama with a more favorable eye, and
look upon even poor Jack Pudding when he has washed
the paint off his face, with a little more charity
and forbearance Fortunio capped. Then we stand in the green
room of the Theater Royal Hatton Garden, one bleak November morning,
while the stage manager reads the manuscript of the opening
to the new Grand Pantomime of Harlequin fief O Fum.
The dramatic performers as the pantomimists, are not present at
this reading, the lecture being preliminary and intended for the
sole behoof of the working ants of the theatrical ant Hill.
The fighting ants will have another reading to themselves this morning.
Are assembled the scene painter, an individual bespattered from head
to foot with splashes of various colors, attired in a
painted ragged blouse, a battered cap, and slipshod slippers. You
would be rather surprised to see him turn out when
his work is over dressed like a gentleman as he is,
and an accomplished gentleman to boot Near him is the
property man, also painted and bespattered and strongly perfumed with
a mingled odor of glue and turpentine. Then there is
the carpenter, who twirls a wide awake hat between his fingers,
and whose attire generally betrays an embroidery of shavings. The
leader of the band is present on the edge of
a chair. Sits the author, not necessarily a seedy man
with long hair and a manuscript peeping out of his
coat pocket, but a well to do looking gentleman, probably
with rather a nervous air just now and wincing somewhat
as the droning voice of the stage manager gives utterance
to his comic combinations, and his creamiest jokes are met
with immovable stolidity from the person's present catch them laughing.
The scene painter is thinking of heavy sets and cut
cloths instead of quips and conundrums. The carpenter cogitates on
sinks and slides, strikes and pulls. The property man ponders
ruefully on the immense number of comic masks to model
and coral branches to paint, while the master and Mistress
of the wardrobe, whom we have hitherto omitted to mention,
mentally cast up the number of elves of glazed calico, silk,
satin and velvet required, lastly enthroned in awful magnificence in
some dim corner sits the management. A portly, port wine
voiced management may be with a white hat and a
double eyeglass with a broad ribbon. This incarnation of theatrical
power throws in an occasional good at which the author
colours and sings a mental pain, varied by an ejaculation
of conbdne, at which the dramatist winces dreadfully. The reading
over a short desultory conversation follows, it would be better,
mister brush, the painter suggests to make the first scena
close in and not a sink. Mister tax. The carpenter,
a machinist, we mean, intimates in a somewhat threatening manner
that he shall want a power of nails and screws,
while the master of the wardrobe repudiates with respectful indignation
an economical suggestion of the management, touching the renovation of
some old ballet dresses by means of new spangles, and
the propriety of cutting up an old crimson velvet curtain
used some years before into costumes for the supernumerries. As
to the leader of the band, he is slowly humming
over a very little warbler of popular airs which he
thinks he can introduce, while the stage manager pencil in
hand fights amicably with the author as to the cuts
necessary to make the pantomime read with greater smartness. All, however,
agree that it will do, and to each working ant
is delivered a plot of what he or she has
to manufactor by a given time, generally a month or
six weeks from the day of reading. Mister Brush has
a plot of so many pairs of flats and wings,
so many borders and set pieces, so many cloths and backings.
Mister Tax has a similar one, as it is his
department to prepare the canvases and machinery on which mister
Brush subsequently paints. Mister Tag, the wardrobe keeper is provided
with a list of the fairies, demons, kings, guards and
slaves costumes he is required to Confexione and mister Rosin.
The leader is presented with a complete copy of the
pantomime itself, in order that he may study its principal
points and arrange characteristic music for it. As for poor
mister Gage, the property man, he departs in a state
of pitiable bewilderment, holding in his hand a portentous list
of proper is required, from regal crowns to red hot pokers.
He impetuously demands, how it all to be done? In
a month? Done it will be, notwithstanding, the stage manager
departs in a hurry in which stage managers generally are
twenty hours out of the twenty four, and entrapping the
clown in the passage, who is an eccentric character of
immense comic abilities, and distinguished for training all sorts of animals,
from the goose which follows him like a dog, to
a jackass fold which resides in his sitting room, enters
into an animated pantomimic conversation with him, discoursing especially of
the immense number of bits of fat for him clown
in the pantomime. The author's name we need not mention.
It will appear in the bill, as it has appeared
in and across many bills, stamped and unstamped, when the
officials have retired, he remains a while with the management,
the subject of conversation mainly relating to a piece of
gray paper addressed to Messrs Coots, Drummonds or Child's. For
the next few days, though work has not actually commenced
in all its vigor, great preparations are made. Forests of timber,
so to speak, are brought in at the stage door.
Also bales of canvas, huge quantities of stuffs for the wardrobe,
foil paper, spangles and Dutch metal generally furkins of size
and barrels of whitening arrive for mister brush, hundred weights
of glue and gold leaf for mister gage, not forgetting
the power of nails and screws for mister tax. Another
day and the ants are all at work behind the
bays for harlequin fee fos fum four Tunio's cap will
stand us in good stared again, and we had better
attach ourselves to the skirts of the stage manager, who
is here, there and everywhere, to see that the work
is being properly preceded with. The carpenters have been at
work since six o'clock this nice winter morning. Let us
see how they are getting on after breakfast, we cross
the darkened stage and ascending a very narrow staircase at
the back thereof mount into the lower range of flies.
A mixture this of the between decks of a ship,
a rope walk, and the old woodwork of the chain
pier at brighton. Here are windlasses, capstans, ropes, cables, chains,
pulleys innumerable. Take care or you will stumble across the
species of winnowing machine used to imitate the noise of wind,
and which is close to the large sheet of copper
which makes the thunder. The cylinder filled with peas used
for rain and hail is downstairs, but you may see
the wires or travelers used by flying fairies, and the
huge counterweights and lines which work the curtain and act.
Drop up, then again by a ladder into range of
Flies number two, where there are more pulleys, windlasses and
counterweights with bridges crossing the stage, and lines working the borders,
and gas pipes with colored screens called mediums, which are
used to throw a lurid light of a moonlight on
scenes of battles or conflagrations where the employment of colored
fires is not desirable. Another ladder, a rope one this
time has still to be climbed, And now we find
ourselves close to the roof of the theater and in
the carpenter's shop, such a noise of sawing and chopping,
hammering and chiseling. The shop is a large one, its
size corresponding to the area of the stage. Beneath. Twenty
or thirty men are at work putting together the framework
of flats and covering the framework itself with canvas. Some
are constructing the long cylinders or rollers used for drops
or cloths, while others, on their knees are busily following
with a hand saw the outline of a rock or
tree marked in red lead by the scene painter on
profile thin wood required for a set piece. Mister tax
is in his glory, with his power of nails and
screws around him. He pounces on the official immediately he
must have more nails, more hands, spreading out his own
emphatically give him hands. The stage manager, pacifiers and promises
stand by there, while four brawny carpenter rush from another
portion of the shop. With the pagoda of Arabian delights
dimly looming through canvas and whitewash. A curious race of
men are these theatrical carpenters. Some of them growl bits
of Italian operas or melodramatic music as they work. They
are full of traditional lore of the lane and the
garden in days of yore. Probably their fathers and grandfathers
were theatrical before them, for it is rare to find
a carpenter of ordinary life at stage work, or vice versa.
Malignant members of the ordinary trade whisper even that their
work never lasts and is only fit for the ideal
carpentry of a theater. There is a legend also that
a stage carpenter, being employed once to make a coffin,
constructed it after the hamlet manner and ornamented it with
scroll work. They preserve admirable discipline and obey the master
carpenter implicitly, but work once over and out of the theater.
He is no more than one of themselves, and takes
beer with Tom or Bill and the chair at their
committee and six club reunions in a perfectly republican and
fraternal manner. These men labour from six in the morning
until six in the evening, and probably as Fifo Farm
is a heavy pantomime, from seven until the close of
the performances at night, when the gas battens below, the
flies are all lighted. The heat is somewhat oppressive, and
if you lie on your face on the floor and
gaze through the chinks of the planking, you will hear
the music in the orchestra and catch an occasional glimpse
of the performers on the stage beneath, marvelously foreshortened and
microscopically diminished. The morning we pay our visit, a rehearsal
is going on below, and a horse command is wafted
from the stage to start that hammering. While Mark Antony
is pronouncing his oration over the dead body of Caesar.
The stage manager, of course, is now wanted downstairs, and
departs with an oft iterated injunction to get on, we
too must get on without him, which, still using Fortunio's invisibility,
we will endeavor to do. We enter another carpenter's shop,
smaller but on the same level, and occupying a space
above the horseshoe ceiling of the audience part of the theater.
A sort of martello of wood occupies the center of
this apartment, its summit going through the roof. This is
at once the ventilator and the chandelier house of the theater.
If we open a small door, we can disc scry
as our eyes become accustomed to the semidarkness, that it
is floored with iron in ornamented scroll work, and opening
with a hinged trap. We can also see the ropes
and pulleys to which are suspended the great center chandelier,
and by which it is hauled up every Monday morning
to be cleaned. More carpenters are busily at work at
bench and trestles, sawing, gluing, hammering, hark, we hear a
noise like an eight day clock on a gigantic scale,
running down. They are letting down a pair of flats
in the painting room. Let us see what they are
about in the painting room itself. Pushing aside a door
forever on the swing, we enter an apartment somewhat narrow
if taken in comparison with its length, but very lofty.
Half the roof at least is skylight. A longitude sudennal
aperture in the flooring traverses the room close to the wall.
This is the cut or groove half a foot wide
and seventy feet in depth, perhaps in which hangs a
screen of woodwork called a frame. On this frame, the
scene to be painted is placed, and by means of
a counterweight, and a windlass is worked up and down
the cut as the painter may require, the sky being
thus as convenient to his hand as the lowest stone
or bit of foliage in the foreground. When the scene
is finished, a signal is given to stand clear below,
and a bar in the windlass being removed. The frame
slides with immense celerity down the cut to the level
of the stage. Here the carpenters remove the flats or
wings or whatever else may have been painted, and the
empty frame is wound up again into the painting room. Sometimes,
instead of a cut, a bridge is used. In this case,
a scene itself remains stationary, and the painter stands on
a platform which is wound up and down by windless
as he may require it, a ladder being placed against
the bridge if he wishes to descend without shifting the
position of his platform. When the scene is finished, a
trap is opened in the floor and the scenes slung
by ropes to the bottom. The cut and frame are,
it is needless to say, most convenient The artist, being
always able to contemplate the full effect of his work,
and to provide himself with what colours or sketches he
may need, without the trouble of ascending and descending the ladder.
Mister Brush, more bespattered than ever, with a double tie
brush in his hand, is knocking the color about bravely.
Five or six good men and true his assistants are
also employed on the scene. He is painting the fairy
palace of Fivo Fum. Perchance. One is seated at a
table with something very like the toy theaters of our
younger days, on which we used to enact that wonderful
Miller and his men, with the famous characters, always in
one fierce attitude of triumphant defiance we remember of mister
Park before him. It is in reality a model of
the stage itself, and the little bits of pasteboard he
is cutting out and pasting together form portions of a
scene he is modeling to scale for the future guidance
of the carpenter. Another is fluting columns with a thin
brush called a quill tool, and a long ruler or
straight edge. Different portions of the scene are allotted to
different artists according to their competence, from mister Brush, who
finishes and touches up everything, down to the fustian jacketed
whitewasher who is priming or giving a preparatory coat of
whiting and size to a pair of wind If you
are at all curious to know how the brilliant scenes
you see at night are painted, you may watch the
whole process of a pair of flats growing into a
beautiful picture under mister Brush's experienced hands. First, the scene,
well primed and looking like a gigantic sheet of coarse
cartridge paper on a stretcher, is placed on the frame. Then,
with a long pole cleft at the end and in
which is stuck a piece of charcoal, mister Brush hastily
scrawls as it seems the outline of the scene he
is about to paint. Then he and his assistants draw
in a finished outline with a small brush and common ink, which,
darkening as it dries, allows the outline to shine through
the first layers of color. Then the whitewasher laborer as
he is technically called, is summoned to lay in the
great glasses of color sky wall, foreground, et cetera, which
he does with huge brushes. Then the shadows are picked
in by assistance to whom enters speedily. Mister brush with
a sketch in one hand and brushes in the other,
and he finishes. Finishes too, with a delicacy of manipulation
and nicety of touch, which will rather surprise you, previously
impressed as you may have been, with an idea that
scenes are painted with mops and that scenic artists are
a superior class of house painters. Stay here is the
straight line of a cornice to be ruled from one
part of the scene to the other. A space fifty
feet wide. Perhaps two laborers, one at either end, hold
a string tightly across where the desired line is to be.
This string has been well rubbed with powdered charcoal, and
being held up in some part for a moment between
the thumb and finger, and then smartly vibrated onto the
canvas again, leaves a mark of black charcoal along the
whole length of the line, which, being followed by the
brush and ink, serves for the guideline of the cornice. Again,
the wall of that magnificent saloon has to be covered
with an elaborate scroll work pattern is all this outlined
by the hand. Think you no. A sheet of brown paper,
perforated with pin holes with a portion of the desired
pattern is laid against the scene. The hole is then
gently beaten with a woosted bag full of powdered charcoal, which,
penetrating through the pinholes leaves a dotted outline capable of
repetition add infinitum by shifting the pattern. This is called pouncing.
Then some of the outlines of decoration stenciled. But for
foliage and rocks, flowers and water. I need not tell you,
my artistical friend, that the hand of mister Brush is
the only pouncer and stenciller. For so grand a pantomime
as fi fo fum, a scene will, probably, after artistic completion,
be enriched with foiled paper and Dutch metal. Admire the
celerity with which these processes are affected. First, an assistant
cuts the foil in narrow strips with a penknife. Another
catches them up like magic and glues them. Another claps
them on the canvas, and the scene is foiled. Then
mister Brush advances with a pot, having a lamp beneath
filled with a composition of burgundy pitch rosin glue and
beeswax called Mordant. With this and a camel hair brush,
he delicately outlined finds the parts he wishes guilt. Half
a dozen assistants rush forward with books of Dutch metal,
and three fourths of the scene are covered in a
trice with squares of glittering joss. The superfluous particles are
rubbed off with a dry brush, and amid a very
deniant shower of golden particles, the outlines of Mordant to
which the metal has adhered become gradually apparent in a
glittering network. All around this chamber of the arts are
hung pounces and stencils, like the brown paper patterns in
a tailor's shop. There is a ledge running right round
the room, on which is placed a long row of
pots filled with the colors used, which are ground in
water and subsequently tempered with size, a huge caldron of
which is now simmering over the ample fireplace. The colour
grinder himself stands before a table supporting an ample stone slab,
on which with a marble molor he is grinding Dutch
pink lustily. The painter's palett is not the oval one
used by picture painters, but a downright four legged table,
the edges of which are divided into compartments, each holding
its separate dab of colour, while the center serves as
a space whereon to mix and graduate the tints. The
whitewashed walls are scrawled over with rough sketches and memoranda
in charcoal or red lead, while a choice engraving here
and there, a box of watercolours, some delicate flowers in
a glass, some velvet drapery pinned against the wall. Hint
that in this timber roofed, unpapered, uncarpeted, size and whitewashed
smelling workshop, there is art as well as industry. Though
it is only of late years, mind you, that scene
painters have been recognized as artists at all. They were
called doorbers, whitewashers, paper hangers by that class of artists
to whom the velvet cap, the turn down collars, and
the ormeloo frame were as the air they breathed. These
were the gentlemen who thought it beneath the dignity of
art to make designs for wood engravers, to paint porcelain,
to draw patterns for silk manufacturers. Gradually they found out
that the scene painters made better architects, landscape painters, professors
of perspectives than they themselves did. Gradually, they remembered that
in days gone by such men as Salvatorerosa, in Ago
Jones and Philip de Luthborg were seen painters, and that
in our own times one Stanfield had not disdained size
and whitewash, nor a certain Roberts sought it derogatory to
wield the double tie brush scene painting. Thenceforward looked up,
and even the heavy portals of the Academy moved creakingly
on their hinges for the admittance of distinguished professors of
scenic art. We have been hindering, mister Brush, quite long enough,
I think, even though we are invisible. So let us
descend this crazy ladder which leads from the painting room
down another flight of stairs. So keep your hands out
before you, and tread cautiously, for the management is cherry
of gas, and the places pitch dark. Now as I
open this door, shade your eyes with your hand. A
moment blest, the sudden glare of light dazzle you. This
is the property room. In this vast, long, low room,
are manufactured the properties all the stage furniture and paraphernalia
required during the performance of a play look around you
and wonder. The walls and ceiling are hung, the floor
and tables cumbered with properties Shylock's knife and scales, Ophelia's coffin,
paul prize umbrella, Macbeth's truncheon, the cauldron of the Witches,
Harlequin's bat, the sickle of Norma, Mambrino's helmet, swords, lanterns, banners, belts, hats, daggers,
wooden surloins of beef, Louis Catore's chairs, papier mache, goblets,
pantomime masks, stage money, whips, spears, lutes, flasks of rich burgundy, fruit, rattles, fish, plaster, images, drums,
cocked hats, spurs, and bugle horns are strewn about without
the slightest attempt at arrangement or classification. Tilted against the wall,
on one is a four legged banqueting table, very grand, indeed,
white marble top and golden legs. At this table will
noble knights and ladies feast richly off, wooden fowls and
brown paper pies coughing. Meanwhile, deep potations of toast and
water sherry, or happily golden goblets full of nothing at all.
Some of the goblets, together with elaborate flasks of exhilarating
emptiness and dishes of rich fruit, more deceptive than dead
sea apples, for they have not even got ashes inside them,
are nailed to the festive board itself. On very great occasions,
the bowl is wreathed with cotton wool, and the irons
smoke with a cloud of powdered lime. Dreadfully deceptive are
these stage banquets and stage purses. The haughty hospited aar
of hungary drinks confusion to bold bandit of Bulgaria in
a liquorless cup, vainly thirsting meanwhile for a pint of
mild porter from the adjacent Hostelry deep are his retainers
in the enjoyment of warden pies and lusty capons, while
they're too often empty interiors cry dolorously for three pennece
of cold boiled beef. Liberal is he also of broad
florins and purses of moy doors, accidentally drawing, perchance at
the same time a Lombardian debenture for his boots from
the breast of his doublets. The meat is a sham,
and the wine is a sham, and the money a sham.
But are there no other shams, o, brothers and sisters
besides those of the footlights. Have I not dined with
my legs under sham mahogany illuminated by sham wax lights?
Has not a sham ghostairs helped me to sham boiled turkey?
Has not my sham health been drunk by sham? Friends?
Do I know no haughty hospitedar of Hungary myself? There
is one piece, and one piece only on the stage
in which a real banquet, a genuine spread is provided.
That piece is no song, no supper, however small may be.
The theater, however low the state of the finances, the
immemorial tradition is respected, and a real leg of mutton
graces the board once the chronicle goes. There was a
heartless monster in property man's shape who substituted a dish
of mutton chops for the historical jiggot execration. Abhorrence expulsion
followed his iniquitous fraud, and he was from that day
a property man accursed curiously enough, While the leg of
mutton in no song, no supper is always real. The
cake introduced in the same piece is as invariably a
counterfeit the old stock wooden cake of the theater. When
it shall be known why waiters wear white neckcloths and
dustman shorts and ankle jacks, the proximate cause of this
discrepancy will perhaps be pointed out. To return to the
property room of the theatre, Royal Hatton Garden. Mister Gorge,
the property master, as he is called, is working with
almost delirious industry. He has an imperial crown on his head,
recently gilt the crown, not the head, and placed there
to dry. While on the table before him lies a
mass of modeling clay on which his nimble fingers are
shaping out the matrix of a monstrous human face for
a pandomimic mask. How quickly and with what facility he
molds the hideous physiognomy into shape, squeezing the eyelids, flattening
the nose, elongating the mouth, furrowing the cheeks. When this
clay model is finished, it will be well oiled, and
a cast taken from it in plaster of Paris. Into
this cast oiled again strips of brown paper, well glued
and sized, will be pasted till a proper thickness is obtained.
When dry, the cast is removed and the hardened paper
mask ready for coloring. At this latter process, an assistant,
whose nose and cheeks are plentifully enriched with Dutch metal
and splashes of glue, is at work. He is very liberal,
with rose pink to the noses, black to the eye,
and white to the eye. Then missus Gage, a mild
little woman who has been assiduously spangling a demon's helmet,
proceeds to ornament the masks with huge masses of oakum
and horsehair, red brown and black, which are destined to
serve as their coiffure. Busily other assistance of painting tables,
gilding goblets, and manufacturing the multifarious and bewilderingly miscellaneous articles
required in the comic business of a pantomime. The sausages
which the clown purloins, the bustle he takes from the
young lady, the fish, eggs, poultry, warming pans, babies, pint pots,
butchers trays, and legs of mutton incidental to his checkered career.
Others Besides, adults are useful in the property room. A
bright eyed little girl, mister Gorges's youngest, is gravely speckling
a place pudding, while her brother, a stalwart rogue of
eleven sits on a stool with a pot full of
yellow ochre in one hand and a brush in the other,
with which he is giving a plentiful coat of bright
yellow color to a row containing a dozen pairs of
hunting boots. These articles of costume will gleam to night
on the legs and feet of the huntsmen of His Highness,
the hospitar with whom you are already acquainted. Their wearers
will stamp their souls on the merry green sword Ha ha,
waving above their heads, the tin porringers supposed to contain
Riine wine or Birisher beer. Mister Gorge will have no
easy task for the next three weeks. He will have
to be up early and late until fi Fo FuMB
is produced. The nightly performances have meanwhile to be attended to,
and any new properties wanted must be made, and any
old one spoilt must be replaced. In addition to what
is required for the pantomime, and something more than common
abilities must have abiding place in a property man, although
he does not receive uncommonly liberal remuneration. He must be
a decent upholsterer, a carpenter, a weak maker, a painter,
a decorator accurate as regards historical propriety, a skillful modeler,
a facile carver, a tasteful embroiderer, a general handyman and
jack of all trades. He must know something of pyrotechnics,
a good deal of carving and gilding, and a little
of mechanics. For this he gets perhaps fifty shillings a week.
Let us come away from the property room, giving a
glance into that grim, cavernous coal holy place on the left,
where all the broken up, used out properties are thrown,
and is a sort of limbo of departed pantomime, and
peeping curiously also into the room where on racks and
on hooks are arranged the cuirasses, muskets, swords, spears, and
yeomanry helmets which form the armory of the theater. Time presses,
and we must have a look at the proceedings. In
the wardrobe, mister Baster is busily stitching with many other stitches.
Females all of a row. His place of work is
anything but large, and movement is rendered somewhat inconvenient moreover,
by a number of heavy presses crammed to repletion with
the costumes of the establishment. Mister Baster has been overhauling
his stock to see what he can conveniently use again
and what is really wanted new. He has passed in
review the crimson velvet noblemen, the green surge retainers, the
spangled courtiers, the glazed calico slaves, the shirts, shapes, Rimaldi's
and strips of other days. He has held up to
the light last year's clowns dress, and shakes his head
ruefully when he contemplates the rents and writhings, the rags
and tatters into which that once brilliant costume is reduced.
Clown must evidently be new. All over his forewoman is
busy as spangling Harlequin's patchwork dress, while in the hands
of his assistants, sprites and genii slaves and evil spirits
are in various stages of completion. So in the lady's wardrobe,
where mister Lodgy and her assistants are stitching for dear
life at sea, nymphs and sirens and Elfin's costume, and
where Miss Mezzanine, who is to play Columbine, is agonizingly
inquisitive as to the fit of her skirt and spangles.
Work work everywhere in the bleak morning, and playgoers of
the previous night have scarcely finished their first sleep at
night to the music of the orchestra below, and amid
the hot glare of the gas, mister Tax carries screws
in his waistcoat pockets and screws in his mouth. Mister
Gagey grows absolutely rigid with glue, while his assistants heads
and hands are unpleasantly enriched with Dutch metal and foil paper,
and the staircase is blocked up with frantic waiters laden
with chops and stout. For mister Brush and his assistants,
the management smiles approvingly and winces uneasily. Occasionally as boxing
day draws near, the stage manager is unceasing in his
get ons All day long. The private door of the
management is assailed by emissaries from mister Tax for more nails,
from mister Brush for more Venetian red and burnt Siena
from mister Baster for more velvet from mister Gorge for
more glue. The management moves uneasily in its chair. Great expense,
it says, if it should fail, give us more nails, hands,
Venetian red velvet and glue, and will not fail. Chorus
the ants behind the bays normost you suppose that the
pantomimists clown, Harlequin, pantaloon and Columbine, nor the actors playing
in the opening, nor the fairies who fly, nor the
demons who howl, nor the sprites who tumble, are idle.
Every day the opening and comic scenes are rehearsed every day.
A melancholy man called the Repetiteur takes his station on
the stage, which is illumined by one solitary gas jet,
and to the dollar music he cans from his fiddle.
The pantomimests in oversuits, of course, linen, tumble, dance, jump,
and perform other gymnastic exercises in the gloom until their
bones ache and the perspirations streams from their limbs. Work, work, work,
and Christmas Eve is here. Nails, hammers, paint brushes, needles,
muscles and limbs going in every direction. Mister Brush has
not had his boots cleaned for a week and has
forgotten what sheets and counterpanes mean. No snap dragon for
mister tax, no hunt the slipper for mister Gorge. Pleasant
Christmas greetings and good wishes, though, and general surmises that
the pantomime will be a stunning one Christmas Day and alas,
and a lack no Christmas beef and pudding save that
from the bookshop and for chance. The sphare repassed in
the covered basin which little poly brugs bring stalwart Bill Brugs,
a carpenter who is popularly supposed to be able to
carry a pair of wings beneath each arm. Incessant fiddling
from the repetiteur trip, rally and jump for the Pantomimeists
work on the stage, which is covered with canvas and
stooping painters working with brushes stuck in bamboo walking sticks,
work in the flies, and work underneath the stage on
the umbrageous mezzanine floor, where the celamen are busily slinging
sinks and rises and greasing traps. An overflow of properties
deluges the green room. Huge masks leer at you in
narrow passages. Pantomimic wheelbarrows and barrel organs beset you at
every step. So all Christmas night, Hurrah for Boxing Day,
the compliments of the season, and the original dustman. Tommy
and Billy, suffering slightly from indigestion, stand with their noses
glued against the window panes at home, watching anxiously the
rain in the puddles or the accumulating snow on the housetops.
Little Mary's mind is filled with radiant visions of the
resplendent sashes she is to wear, and the gorgeous fairies
she is to see. John the Footman is to escort
the housemaid into the pit. Even Joe Barrikin of the
New Cut, who sells us our Cauliflowers, will treat his
misses to a seat in the gallery for the first
performance of Harlequin Fie faux fum. There the last clink
of the hammer is heard, the last stroke of the brush,
and the last stitch of the knee. The management glances
with anxious approval at the elaborately funny bill prepared of
the evening's entertainment. It is six o'clock in the evening.
The clown signor Braunarini, of the theater's royal has a
jug of barley water maid his only beverage during his tumbling,
and anxiously assures himself that there is a red hot
poker introduced into the comic business. Else says he the
pantomime is sure to fail. It is astonishing what a
close connection there is between the success of a pantomime
and that red hot poker. Seven o'clock and one last
frantic push to get everything ready. Tommy, Billy, Mary, Papa
and Mamma arrive in flies, brooms or cabs. The footman
and housemaid are smiling in the pit, and Joe Barrikinism
amazingly jolly and thirsty with his missus in the gallery.
Now then music play up, order order and throw him
over George Barnwell or Jane Shaw inaudible, of course, and
then Harlequin, Fie fo FuMB or the enchanted Fairy of
the Island of Abra Cadabra, Fun, frolic and gaiety, splendor,
beauty and blue fire, Hey for fun, How are you tomorrow?
And I hope success and crowded houses till the middle
of February. Both for the sake of the author, the
management and the Theater, Royal Hatton Garden. Generally, the ants
behind the base have worked well, but they have their
reward in the gloryious success of the pantomime they have
labored so hard at They may wash their faces and
have their boots cleaned now, And who shall say that
they do not deserve their beer tonight and their poor
salaries next Saturday. Dear readers, as Christmas time comes on,
poorse a little ere you utterly condemn these poor play
acting people as utter profligates, as irreclaimable rogues and vagabonds.
Consider how hard they work, how precarious is their employment,
how honestly they endeavor to earn their living and to
do their duty in their state of life. Admit that
there is some skills, some industry, some perseverance, in all
this not misdirected, if promoting harmless fancy and innocent mirth.
End of Getting Up a Pantomime by George Augustus Sala