Part 25

I shall never forget the bright autumnal afternoon when the mail coach from Boston brought a package of books and papers to my grandfather. It was the last friendly favour, in fact the last communication, that he ever received from his old Tory friend, Mr. Barmesyde, whom I mentioned with respect in a former essay; for that genial old gentleman died in London not long after. The parcel had made a quick transit for those days, Mr. Barmesyde's letter being dated only forty-six days before it was opened by my grandsire, and we enjoyed the strong fragrance of its uncut contents together. The old gentleman seized upon a copy of Burke's splendid Essay on the French Revolution, which the package contained, and left me to revel in the newspapers, which were full of the dreadful details of that bloody Saturnalia. I got leave from my grandfather (who was so deep in Burke that he answered me at random) to sit up an hour later than usual. Terrible as all the things of which I read seemed to my young mind, there was a fascination about the details of that sanguinary orgie that completely enchanted me. My imagination was full of horrible shapes when I was obliged to leave the warm, cheerful parlour, and Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were the infernal chamberlains that attended me as I went up the broad, creaking staircase unwillingly to bed. A fresh north-west breeze was blowing outside, and the sere woodbines and honeysuckles that filled the house with fragrance, and gave it such a rural look in summer, startled me with their struggles to escape from bondage. Had it been spring, my young imagination was so excited that I should have feared that they might imitate the insurgents of whom I had been reading and begin to shoot! In the night my troubled slumbers were disturbed by a noise that seemed to me louder than the discharge of a heavy cannon. I sat up in the high, old-fashioned bed, and glared around the room, which was somewhat lighted by the beams of the setting moon. There was no mistake about my personal identity--I was neither royalist nor jacobin; there was no doubt that I was in the best "spare chamber" of my grandfather's house, and not in the Bastile, and that the dark-looking thing in the corner was a solid mahogany chest of drawers, and not a guillotine; but all these things only served to increase my terror when I noticed a dark form standing near the foot of the bed and staring at me with pale, fiery eyes. I rubbed my own eyes hard, and pinched myself severely, to make sure that I was awake. The room was as still as the great chamber in the pyramid of Cheops. I could hear the old clock tick at the foot of the stairs as plainly as if I had been shut up in its capacious case. In the midst of my perturbation it made every fibre of my frame tremble by striking _one_ with a solemn clangour that I thought must have waked every sleeper in the house. The stillness that followed was deeper and more terrifying than before. I heard distinctly the breathing of the monster at the foot of the bed. I tried to whistle at the immovable shape, but I had lost the power to pucker. At last, I formed a desperate resolution. I knew that, if the being whose big, fierce eyes filled me with terror were a genuine supernatural fiend, it was all over with me, and I might as well give up at once. But, if perchance a human form were hid beneath that dreadful disguise, there was some room for hope of ultimate escape. To settle this point, therefore, became necessary to my peace of mind, and I determined that it should be done. Bending up "each corporal agent to the terrible feat," I slid quietly out of bed. The monster was as motionless as before, but I noticed that his head was covered with a white cloth, which made his head seem ghastlier than ever. Setting my teeth firmly together, and clinching my little fists to persuade myself that I was not afraid, I made the last, decisive effort. I walked across the room, and stood face to face with that formidable shape. My grandfather's best coat hung there against the wall, its velvet collar protected from the dust by a white cloth, and the two gilt buttons on its back glittering in the moonlight. This was the tremendous presence that had appalled me. The weakness in the knees, the chattering of my teeth, and the profuse perspiration which followed my recognition of that harmless garment, bore witness to the severity of my fright. Before I crawled back into the warm bed, I resolved never in future to yield to fear, until I had ascertained that there was no escape from it; and I have had many occasions since to act upon that principle.

Speaking of fear, a friend of mine has a favourite maxim, "Always do what you are afraid to do;" to which (in a limited sense, so far as it relates to bodily fear) I subscribed even in my boyhood. I was returning one evening to my grandfather's house, during one of my vacation visits, and yielded to the base sentiment of timidity so far as to choose the long way thither by the open road, rather than to take the short cut, through the graveyard and a little piece of woodland, which was the ordinary path in the daytime. I pursued my way, thinking of what I had done, until I got within sight of the old mansion and its guardian elms, when shame for my own cowardice compelled me to retrace my steps a quarter of a mile or more, and take the pathway I had so foolishly dreaded. The victory then achieved has lasted to this hour. Dead people and their habitations have not affrighted me since; indeed, some grave men whom I have met have excited my mirth rather than my fears.

But overcome our fears and our propensity to borrow trouble, as we may,--in spite of all our philosophy, life is a severe task. I have heard of a worthy Connecticut parson of the old school, who enlarged upon the goodness of that Providence which dealt out time to a man, divided into minutes, and hours, and days, and months, and years, instead of giving it to him, as it were, in a lump, or in so large a quantity that he could not conveniently use it! Laugh as much as you please, gentle reader, at the seeming absurdity of the venerable divine, but do not neglect the great truth which inspired his thought. Do not forget what a great mercy it is that we are obliged to live but one day at a time. Do not overlook the loving kindness which softens the memory of past sorrows, and conceals from us those which are to come. I have no respect for that newest heresy of our age, which pretends to read the secrets of the unseen world, nor any sympathy with those morbid minds that yearn to tear away the veil which infinite wisdom and mercy hangs between us and the future. With all our boasted learning we know little enough; but that little is far too much for our happiness. How many of our trials and afflictions could we have borne, if we had been able to foresee their full extent and to anticipate their combined poignancy? Truly we might say with Shakespeare,--

"O, if this were seen, The happiest youth--viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue-- Would shut the book, and sit him down and die."

He only is the true philosopher who uses life as the usurer does his gold, and employs each shining hour so as to insure an ever-increasing rate of interest. He does not bury his gift, nor waste it in frivolity. Like the old Doge of Venice, he grows old but does not wear out: _Senescit, non segnescit_. And he truly lives twice, as an old classical poet expresses it, inasmuch as he renews his enjoyment of the past in the recollection of his good actions and of pleasures "such as leave no sting behind."

BEHIND THE SCENES

There is no pleasure so satisfactory as that which an old man feels in recalling the happiness of his youthful days. All the woes, and anxieties, and heart-burnings that disturbed him then have passed away, and left only sunshine in his memory. And this retrospective enjoyment increases with every repeated recital, until the scenes of his past history assume a magnificence of proportion that bewilders the narrator himself, and sets the principles of optics entirely at defiance. It is with old men looking back on their younger days very much as it is with people who have travelled in Italy. How do the latter glow with enthusiasm at the mere mention of the "land of the melting lyre and conquering spear"! How do their eyes glisten as they tell of the time when they mused among the broken columns of the Forum, or breathed the air of ancient consecration under the majestic vaults of the old basilicas, or walked along the shores of the world's most beautiful bay, and watched the black form of Vesuvius striving in vain to tarnish with its foul breath the blue canopy above it! They have forgotten their squabbles with the _vetturini_, the draughtless chimneys in their lodgings, and the dirty staircase that conducted to them; the fleas, with all the other disagreeable accompaniments of Italian life, have fled into oblivion; and Italy lives in their memories only as a land of gorgeous sunsets, and of a history that dwarfs all other human annals. And so it is with an old man looking back upon his youth: he forgets how he cried over his arithmetic lessons; how unfilial his feelings were when his governor refused him permission to set up a theatre in the cellar; how sheepishly he slunk through all the back alleys on the day when he first mounted a tail-coat and a hat; how unhappy he was when he saw his heart's idol, Mary Smith, walking home from school with his implacable foe, Brown; how his head used to ache after those _noctes coenaeque deum_ with his club at the old Exchange Coffee House; and what a void was created in his heart when his crony of cronies was ordered off by a commission from the war department. There is no room in his crowded memory for such things as these. Sitting by his fireside, as I do now, he recalls his youth only as a season of bats and balls, and marbles, of sleds, and skates, and bright buttons, and clean ruffled collars, of Christmas cornucopias of hosiery, and no end of Artillery Elections and Fourths of July, with coppers enough to secure the potentiality of obtaining egg-pop to an alarming extent.

How he fires up if you mention the theatre to him! He will allow that Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Warren are most excellent in their way; but bless your simple heart, what is the stage now compared to what it was in the first part of this century? And he is about right. It is useless for us, who remember the old Federal Street playhouse, and the triumphs of Cooke and the great Kean, to try to go to the theatre now. Our new theatre is more stately and splendid than Old Drury was, but our players do not reach my youthful standard. I miss those old familiar faces and voices that delighted me in times long past, and the stage has lost most of its charms. I can find my best theatrical entertainment here at home. I call up from among the shadows that the flickering firelight casts upon the wall, the tall, knightly figure of Duff, the brisk, busy, scolding Mrs. Barnes, the sedate and judicious Dickson, the grotesque Finn, the stately and elegant Mrs. Powell, looking like the personification of tragedy, and bluff old Kilner, fat and pleasant to the sight, and with that hearty laugh that made all who heard it love him.

What is the excitement occasioned by the Ellsler or Miss Lind compared to that which attended the advent of the elder Kean? What crowds used to beset the box office in the ten-footer next to the theatre, from the earliest dawn until the opening! I often think, when I meet some of our gravest and grayest citizens in their daily walks, what a figure they cut now compared with the days when they were fighting their way into the box office of the old theatre! Talk of enthusiasm! What are all our political campaigns and public commemorations compared with that evening during the last war with Great Britain, when Commodore Bainbridge came into Boston Bay after his victory over the Java! That admirable actor, the late Mr. Cooper, was playing Macbeth, and interrupted his performance to announce the victory.

But, pardon me, I did not sit down here to lose myself in the reminiscences of half a century ago. Let me try to govern this truant pen, and keep it more closely to my chosen theme. Do you remember, beloved reader, your second visit to the theatre? If you do, cherish it; let it not depart from you, for in the days that are in store for you, when age and infirmity shall stand guard over you, and you are obliged to find all your pleasures by your fireside, the memory of your second play will be very precious to you. You will find, on looking back to it through a vista of sixty years or more, that all the pleasure you then enjoyed was placed on the credit side of your account, and has been increasing by a sort of moral compound interest during the long years that you have devoted to delights less innocent, perhaps, and certainly less satisfactory, or to the pursuit of objects far more fleeting and unreal than those which then fascinated your youthful mind. I say your "second play," for the first dramatic performance that the child witnesses is too astonishing to afford him its full measure of gratification. It is only after he has told his playmates all about it, and imitated the wonderful hero who rescued the beautiful lady in white satin, and dreamed of the splendour of the last great scene, when all the persons of the drama stood in a semicircle, and the king, with a crown of solid gold upon his head, addressed to the magnanimous hero the thrilling words,--

"It is enough: the princess is thine own!"--

and all the characters struck impressive attitudes, and the curtain descended upon a tableau lighted up by coloured fires of ineffable brilliancy,--it is only after all these things have sunk deep into the young mind, and he has resolved to write a play himself, and never to rest satisfied until he can bring down the house with the best of the actors he has seen, that he fully appreciates the entertainment which has been vouchsafed to him.

What a charm invests the place where we made our first acquaintance with the drama! It becomes an enchanted spot for us, and I doubt if the greatest possible familiarity in after life can ever breed contempt for it in our hearts. For my own part, I regarded the destruction of the old theatre in Federal Street, and the erection of warehouses on its hallowed site, as a positive sacrilege. And I cannot pass that spot, even at this late day, without mentally recurring to the joys I once tasted there. Perhaps some who read this may cherish similar sentiments about the old Tremont Theatre, a place for which I had as great a fondness as one can have for a theatre in which he did not see his first play. The very mention of it calls up its beautiful interior in my mind's eye,--its graceful proscenium, its chandeliers around the front of the boxes, its comfortable pit, where I enjoyed so much good acting, and all the host of worthies who graced that spacious stage. Mr. Gilbert was not so fat in those days as he is now, nor Mr. Barry so gray. What a picturesque hero was old Brough in the time when the Woods were in their golden prime, and the appearance of the Count Rodolpho on the distant bridge was the signal for a tempest of applause! Who can forget how Mr. Ostinelli's bald head used to shine, as he presided over that excellent orchestra, or how funny old Gear's serious face looked, as he peered at the house through those heavy, silver-bowed spectacles? Perhaps for some of my younger readers the stage of the Museum possesses similar charms, and they will find themselves, years hence, looking back to the happy times when Mr. Angier received their glittering quarters, and they hastened up stairs, to forget the wanderings of AEneas and the perplexities of arithmetic in the inimitable fun of that prince-regent among comedians, Mr. William Warren.

But wherever we may have commenced our dramatic experience, and whatever that experience may have been, we have all, I am sure, felt the influence of that mysterious charm which hangs over the stage. We have all felt that keen curiosity to penetrate to the source of so much enjoyment. Who has not had a desire to enter that mysterious door which conducts the "sons of harmony" from the orchestra to the unknown depths below the stage? It looks dark and forbidding, but we feel instinctively that it is not so, when we see our venerated uncle Tom Comer carrying his honest and sunshiny face through it so often. That green curtain, which is the only veil between us and a world of heroes and demigods,--how enviously do we look at its dusty folds! With what curiosity do we inspect the shoes of varied make and colour that figure in the little space between it and the stage! How do we long to follow the hero who has strutted his hour upon the stage into the invisible recesses of P. S. and O. P., and to know what takes the place of the full audience and the glittering row of footlights in his eyes when he makes his exit at the "upper entrance, left," or through the "door in flat" which always moves so noiselessly on its hinges! I think that the performance of the "Forty Thieves" awakened this curiosity in my mind more than almost any other play. I longed to inspect more closely those noble steeds that came with such a jerky gait over the distant mountains, and to know what produced the fearful noise that attended the opening of the robbers' cave. I believed in the untold wealth that was said to be heaped up in those subterranean depths, but still I wished to look at the "cavern goblet," and see how it compared with those that adorned the cases of my excellent friends, Messrs. Davis and Brown. I can never forget the thrill that shot through me when Morgiana lifted the cover of the oil jar, and the terrible question, "Is it time?" issued from it, nor my admiration for the fearlessness of that self-possessed maiden when she answered with those eloquent and memorable words, "Not yet, but presently." I believed that the compound which Morgiana administered so freely to the concealed banditti was just as certain death to every mother's son of them as M. Fousel's _Pabulum Vitae_ is renewed life to the consumptives of the present day; and, years after I had supposed my recollections of the "Forty Thieves" to have become very misty and shapeless, I found myself startled in an oriental city by coming upon several oil jars of the orthodox model, and I astonished the malignant and turbaned Turk who owned them, and amused the companion of my walks about Smyrna, by lifting the lid of one of them, and quoting the words of Morgiana. My superstitions concerning that pleasant old melodrama of course passed away when I became familiar with the theatre by daylight, and was accustomed to exchange the compliments of the morning with the estimable gentleman who played Hassarac; but the illusion of its first performance has never been entirely blotted from my mind.

Some years ago it was my privilege to visit a place which is classical to every lover of the drama and its literature. Drury Lane Theatre, now that its ancient rival, Covent Garden, has passed away, and been replaced by a house exclusively devoted to the lyric muse, is the only theatre of London which is associated in every mind with that host of geniuses who have illustrated dramatic art from the times of Garrick to our own. That gifted and versatile actor, Mr. Davenport, who stands as high in the favour of the English as of the American public, conducted me through that immense establishment. We entered the door, which I had often looked at with curiosity as I passed through the long colonnade of the theatre, encountering several of those clean-shaven personages in clothes that would be much refreshed if they were allowed to take a nap, and, after traversing two or three dark corridors, found ourselves upon the stage. The scene of so many triumphs as have there been achieved is not without its attractions, even though it may look differently _en deshabille_ from what it does in the glitter of gaslight. The stage which has been trod by the Kembles, the Keans, Siddons, Macready, Young, Palmer Dowton, Elliston, Munden, Liston, and Farren, is by no means an ordinary combination of planks. We know, for Campbell has told us, that

"----by the mighty actor brought, Illusion's perfect triumphs come; Verse ceases to be airy thought, And sculpture to be dumb."

Yet what a shadowy, intangible thing the reputation of a great actor would seem to be! We simply know of him that in certain characters his genius held the crowded theatre in willing thraldom, and made the hearts of hundreds of spectators throb like that of one man. Those who felt his wondrous power have passed away like himself; and all that remains of him who once filled so large a space in the public eye is an ill-written biography or a few hastily penned sentences in an encyclopaedia.

I was too full of wonder at the extent of that vast stage, however, to think much of its ancient associations. Those lumbering stacks of scenery that filled a large building at the rear of the stage, and ran over into every available corner, told the story of the scenic efforts of Old Drury during nearly half a century. How many dramas, produced "without the slightest regard to expense," and "on a scale of unparalleled splendour," must have contributed to the building up of those mighty piles! The labyrinthine passages, the rough brick walls, darkened by time and the un-Penelope-like spiders of Drury Lane, were in striking contrast to the stage of that theatre as it appears from the auditorium. The green-room had been placed in mourning for the "goodlie companie" that once filled it, by the all-pervading, omnipresent smoke of London. Up stairs the sight was still more wonderful. The space above the stage was crowded full of draperies, and borders, and dusty ropes, and wheels, and pulleys. Davenport enjoyed my amazement, and led me through a darksome, foot-wide passage above the stage, through that wilderness of cordage to the machinists' gallery. Take all the rope-walks that you have ever visited, dear reader, and add to them the running gear of several first-class ships, and you may obtain something of an idea of the sight that then met my view. I have often heard an impatient audience hiss at some trifling delay in the shifting of a scene. If they could see the complicated machinery which must be set in motion to produce the effects they desire, their impatience would be changed to wonder at the skill and care which are so constantly exerted and make so few mistakes. A glance into two or three of the dressing-rooms, and a hasty visit to the dark maze of machinery beneath the stage for working the trapdoors, completed my survey of Old Drury, and I left its ancient walls with an increased respect for them, and a feeling of self-gratulation that I was neither an actor nor a manager.