Chapter V: Introduction (4)

“The fourth animal is mounted on a fiery dragon, that, belching flames, kindles forests, fires towns, dries rivers, blasts harvests, and swallows men, women, and sucking babes. Look to the left, and the dragon is turned to a something no bigger than a mouse, and with its stinted rations of butter and cheese.

“In the fifth and last view you see ten thousand of these animals ferociously killing, biting, tearing another ten thousand, whom they never saw till a few minutes ago, and with whom they have no quarrel. But they kill one another because they are tickled to do so. That is, certain animals go about with tickling wands called ‘glory,’ ‘deathless renown,’ ‘laurel,’ and other titillating syllables, poking in the ribs of the poor benighted creatures.”

I took my eye from the glass: “My good man, what have you shown me?”

“Fleas, sir.”

“Fleas!—nonsense; the fleas are shown above.”

“Yes, sir; but mine are the fleas with two legs; though, _if_ I must be honest, I can’t say I see any difference between the fleas in my show-box and the fleas above.”

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THE MANAGER’S PIG

“Some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have
daily seen and been acquainted with whilst they were alive.... In
this behaviour, methinks there appears something like a
consciousness of guilt; it looks as if they endeavoured to save
themselves from the imputation of a crime (which they know sticks
somewhere) by removing the cause of it as far as they can from
themselves.”—MANDEVILLE.

ARISTIDES TINFOIL, it is our fixed belief, was intended by nature either for lawn sleeves or ermined robes; he was, we doubt it not, sent into this world an embryo bishop, or a lord-chief-justice _in posse_. Such, we are convinced, was the benignant purpose of nature; but the cruel despotism of worldly circumstance relentlessly crossed the fair design; and Tinfoil, with a heart of honey and a head of iron, was only a player—or, we should rather say, a master among players. Tinfoil might have preached charity-sermons till tears should have overflowed the pews; no matter, he acted the benevolent old men to the sobs and spasms of a crowded audience: he might, with singular efficacy, have passed sentence of death on coiners and sheep-stealers; circumstances, however, confined his mild reproofs to scene-shifters, bill-stickers, Cupids at one shilling per night, and white muslin Graces.

“Where is Mr Moriturus?” asked Tinfoil, chagrined at the untoward absence of his retainer. “Where is he?”

“Ill, Sir,” was the melancholy answer, “very ill.”

“Ill!” exclaimed Tinfoil, in a tone of anger, quickly subsiding into mild remonstrance. “Ill!—why—why doesn’t the good man _die at once_?”

A pretty budding girl had, unhappily, listened to the silvery tongue of a rival manager. “Take her from the villain!” exclaimed Tinfoil to the sorrowing parent; “bring her here, and then—then I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

“Dear, kind Mr Tinfoil, what will you do!”

“I’ll bring her out, Sir—bring her out in—” and here the manager named a play in which the horrors of seduction are painted in bold colours for the indignant virtuous. “I’ll bring her out in that, Sir, as a particular favour to you, and sympathising as I must with the affliction you suffer, I—I myself will play the injured father, Sir.”

These, however, are but faint lines in the strongly-marked character of Tinfoil, and merely displaying them to awaken the attention of the reader to what we consider a most triumphant piece of casuistry on the part of our hero—to an incident which admits of so many hundred worldly illustrations—we shall proceed to the pig. The subject, we own, may appear unpromising from its extreme homeliness; yet, as the precious bezoar is sought for in deer and goats, so may a pearl of price be found even in a pig.

It is our fervent wish to be most exact in every point of this little history; yet cannot we remember the exact year in which Tinfoil, revolving in his managerial mind the very many experiments made under his government on the curiosity and sensibilities of the public, determined in a golden moment, upon the introduction of a pig, in a drama to be expressly written for the animal’s capacities. In the slang of the craft, the pig was to be measured for his part.

We cannot take it upon ourselves to avow, that an accident of late occurrence to a brother actor, did not, at least remotely, influence the choice of Tinfoil. The mishap was this. A few miles from London—for the sake of unborn generations we conceal the name of the town—the dullard denizens had manifested an extraordinary apathy to the delights of the drama. In the despairing words of one of the sufferers, “nothing could move ’em.” However, another of more sanguine temperament resolved to make a last bold effort on their stubborn souls, and to such high end, set a pig at them. Mingling the blandishments of the lottery with the witcheries of the drama, he caused it to be printed in boldest type to the townspeople of ——, that a shower of little bits of paper would take place between the play and farce, and amidst this shower a prize would descend, conveying to the lucky possessor the entire property of a real China-bred porker! Inconceivable as to us it is the scheme failed—the pig remained live stock upon the hands of the projector, who, the next morning, walked to town; and recounting his adverse fortune to the calculating Tinfoil, supplicated any employment.

“And you still possess the pig? Humph!” mused Tinfoil; “perhaps we may come to some arrangement.”

In few words the applicant was admitted among Tinfoil’s troop; the pig, at a nominal price, passing into the hands of the manager.

The pig was no sooner a member of the company than the household author was summoned by Tinfoil, who, introducing the man of letters to the porker, shortly intimated that “he must write a part for him.”

“For a pig, Sir?” exclaimed the author.

“Measure him,” said Tinfoil, not condescending to notice the astonishment of the dramatist.

“But, my dear Sir, it is impossible that——”

“Sir! impossible is a word which I cannot allow in my establishment. By this time, Sir, you ought to know that my will, Sir, is sufficient for all things, Sir—that, in a word, Sir, there is a great deal of Napoleon about me, Sir.”

We must admit that the dramatist ought not to have forgotten this last interesting circumstance, Mr Tinfoil himself very frequently recurring to it. Indeed, it was only an hour before that he had censured the charwoman for having squandered a whole sack of sawdust on the hall floor, when half a sack was the allotted quantity. “He, Mr Tinfoil, had said half a sack; and the woman knew, or ought to know, there was a good deal of Napoleon about him!” To return to the pig.

“Measure him, Sir,” cried Mr Tinfoil, the deepening tones growling through his teeth, and his finger pointing still more emphatically downwards to the pig.

“Why,” observed the author, “if it could be measured, perhaps——”

“_If_ it could! Sir,” and Mr Tinfoil, when at all excited, trolled the monosyllable with peculiar energy—“Sir, I wouldn’t give a straw for a dramatist who couldn’t measure the cholera-morbus.”

“Much may be done for an actor by measuring,” remarked the dramatist, gradually falling into the opinion of his employer.

“Everything, Sir! Good God! what might I not have been had I condescended to be measured? Human nature, Sir—the divine and glorious characteristic of our common being, Sir—that is the thing, Sir—by heavens! Sir, when I think of that great creature, Shakespeare, Sir, and think that he never measured actors—no, Sir——”

“No, Sir,” acquiesced the dramatist.

“Notwithstanding, Sir, we live in other times, Sir, and you must write a part for the pig, Sir.”

“Very well, Sir; if he must be measured, Sir, he must,” said the author.

“It is a melancholy thing to be obliged to succumb to the folly of the day,” remarked Mr Tinfoil, “and yet, Sir, I could name certain people, Sir, who, by heavens! Sir, would not have a part to their backs, Sir, if they had not been measured for it, Sir. Let me see: it is not three o’clock—well, some time to-night you’ll let me have the piece for the pig, Sir.”

Now whether the writer addressed was by his “so potent art” enabled to measure a pig—to write a perfect swinish drama in a few hours—or whether, knowing the Buonapartean self-will of the manager, the dramatist thought it wise to make no remonstrance, we cannot truly discover: certain it is, with no objection made, he took his leave.

“An extraordinary young man, Sir—I have brought him out, Sir—a wonderful young man, Sir,” observed Mr Tinfoil to a friend and neighbour, a dealer in marine-stores. “Only wants working, Sir—requires nothing but being kept at it, Sir.”

“Well, it must be a puzzling trade,” remarked the dealer.

“Puzzling, Sir! By heavens! Sir, my heart bleeds for men of letters, Sir—they are great creatures, Sir—wonderful natures, Sir—we cannot think too highly of them, Sir—cannot sufficiently reward them, Sir! Now, Sir, it is perfectly unknown my liberality towards that young man! But then, Sir—it is my delight, Sir, when I find real genius, Sir—when I meet with a man of original mind, Sir—by heavens! Sir,” again cried Mr Tinfoil, resorting to the exclamation as an outlet for his overcharged feelings.

The pig was duly measured—the piece prepared—and, having been produced at enormous expense, was sealed with the unqualified approbation of a discerning public.

The pig-drama had been represented about twenty nights, when the author of the piece, in friendly converse with his patron manager, remarked “that the porker had been a most profitable venture.”

“Why, Sir,” replied Mr Tinfoil, “tolerably well; but the fact is, I am obliged to bolster him. He has had the advantage of three new afterpieces, and therefore can’t complain that he has been let down. Still, the pig has done very well, and perhaps may run a fortnight more.” Saying this Tinfoil quaffed from a brimming glass of his chosen fluid.

“At all events,” remarked the author, “the pig possesses one advantage not to be found in any other of your actors.”

“And what, Sir,” asked Mr Tinfoil, “what may that be?”

“Why, after the pig has done his work, and the piece is put by, you may eat the pig.”

The manager started from the inhuman man of letters with a look of mingled horror, disgust and pity. When he had somewhat recovered from his amazement he asked with evident loathing, “What did you say, Sir?”

“I said,” replied the insensible author, “that when the pig had played out his part you might eat him.”

Mr Tinfoil, gently stirring his brandy-and-water, fixed an eye, like that of death-darting cockatrice, upon the author, and after swallowing the liquor, and thereby somewhat regaining his self-possession, he addressed the thoughtless dramatist in words and tones that, as he has since declared, can never cease to vibrate in his memory.

“Sir!” thus spoke Mr Tinfoil. “I regret—much regret, Sir, that anything in my conduct could have induced you, Sir, to think so uncharitably of my disposition, Sir.”

“I assure you, Sir——”

“Hear me out, Sir. What, Sir! think me capable of feeding upon an animal that I have played with—a creature, whose sagacity has almost made it my humble friend—a pig that has eaten from my hand—that knows my voice—that I—I eat that pig—good heavens, Sir!”

“I’m sure I didn’t mean——”

“No, Sir,” cried Tinfoil, “not were I starving, Sir—not were I famishing, Sir, could I be brought to taste that pig.”

Much more did Mr Tinfoil deliver declaratory of his horror at the bare idea of setting his teeth in the flesh of his quadruped actor, and the rebuked man of letters quitted the manager with an exalted notion of his sensibility.

The pig-drama continued to be played to the increasing satisfaction of the public; the audience, however, only being admitted to view the professional abilities of the animal; his suppers—from some extraordinary omission of Tinfoil—not being eaten before the curtain. Great, however, as was the success of the pig, at about the fortieth night his prosperity began to wane—he was withdrawn, and passed into oblivion.

A few weeks had elapsed, and the author was summoned to the dwelling of his manager, to write a play for a stud of horses. Tinfoil was at dinner, whereto he courteously invited his household scribe.

“You oughtn’t to refuse,” said one of the diners, “for this,” and the speaker pointed to some pickled pork in the dish, “this is an old friend of yours.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the dramatist, looking reproachfully at Tinfoil. “Why, not the pig?”

Tinfoil somewhat abashed coughed and nodded.

“Why, you said that nothing on earth would tempt you to eat that pig.”

“No more it could, Sir,” cried the assured manager, “no, Sir—no more it could—_unless salted_!”

Of how many applications is this casuistry of the manager susceptible?

“When, Sir,” cried the pensioned patriot, “I swore that no power in the universal world could make me accept a favour at the hands of such men—I meant——”

“_Unless salted!_”

How often is it with men’s principles, as with the manager’s pig; things inviolable, immutable—_unless salted_?

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SOME ACCOUNT OF A STAGE DEVIL

THE “principle of evil,” as commonly embodied in the theatre, has been a sorry affair; the stage devil, in a word, a shabby person. From the time of the mysteries at Coventry to the melodramas of the phosphoric pen of the blue-fire dramatists, the father of iniquity has made his appearance in a manner more provocative of contempt than of peace; a candidate for our smiles, rather than a thing of terrors; we have chuckled where we should have shuddered.

That the stage devil should have been so commonplace an individual, when there were devils innumerable where-from an admirable selection of demons might be “constantly on hand,” made it the more inexcusable on the part of those gentlemen invested with the power of administering to, and in some measure forming, public taste. What a catalogue of devils may be found in the Fathers! Let us particularise a few from the thousand of demons with which the benevolent imaginations of our ancestors have peopled the air, the earth, and the flood. Poor humanity stands aghast at the fearful odds of spiritual influences arrayed against it; for it is the fixed opinion of Paracelsus, that “the air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible devils”; whilst another philosopher declares that there is “not so much as an hairbreadth empty in earth or in water, above or under the earth!” Cornelius Agrippa has carefully classified devils, making them of nine orders. The first are the false Gods adored at Delphos and elsewhere in various idols, having for their captain Beelzebub; the second rank is of “liars and equivocators,” as Apollo—poor Apollo!—“and the like”; the third are “vessels of anger, inventors of all mischief,” and their prince is Belial; the fourth are malicious, revengeful devils, their chief being Asmodeus; the fifth are cozeners, such as belong to magicians and witches, their prince is Satan; the sixth are those aerial devils that corrupt the air, and cause plagues, thunder, fire, and tempests—Meresin is their prince; the seventh is a destroyer, captain of the fairies; the eighth is an accusing or calumniating devil; and the ninth are all these in several kinds, their commander being Mammon. Of all these infernal creatures Cornelius Agrippa writes, with the confidence and seeming accuracy of a man favoured with their most intimate acquaintance.

In addition to these we have, on the authority of grave philosophers, legions of household devils, from such as “commonly work by blazing stars,” fire-drakes, or _ignes fatui_, to those who “counterfeit suns and moons, and oftentimes sit on ship masts.” Their common place of rendezvous, when unemployed, is Mount Hecla. Cardon, with an enviable gravity, declares that “his father had an aerial devil bound to him for twenty and eight years.” Paracelsus relates many stories, all authenticated, of she-devils, “that have lived and been married to mortal men, and so continued for certain years with them, and after for some dislike have forsaken them.” Olaus Magnus—a most delightful liar—has a narrative of “one Hotheius, a king of Sweden, that, having lost his company as he was hunting one day, met with these water-nymphs and fairies, and was feasted by them”; and Hector Boethius of “Macbeth and Banquo, two Scottish lords, that, as they were wandering in the woods, had their fortune told them by three strange women!” For the “good people,” the wood-nymphs, foliots, fairies, they are, on the best authority, to be seen in many places in Germany, “where they do usually walk in little coats some two feet long.” Subterranean devils are divided by Olaus Magnus into six companies; they commonly haunt mines, “and the metal-men in many places account it good luck, a sign of treasure and rich ore, when they see them.” Georgius Agricola (_de subterraneis animantibus_) reckons two more kinds, “that are clothed after the manner of metal-men, and will do their work.” Their office, according to the shrewd guess of certain philosophers, “is to keep treasure in the earth that it be not all at once revealed.”

On the 20th of June 1484, it is upon record that the devil appeared “at Hamond, in Saxony,” in the likeness of a field-piper, and carried away a hundred and thirty children “that were never after seen!” I might fill folios with the pranks and malicious mummeries of the evil spirit, all, too, duly attested by the most respectable witnesses, but shall at once leave the demons of the philosophers for the spirits of the playmongers, the devils of the world for the devils of the stage.

Why is it that, nine times out of ten, your stage devil is a droll rather than a terrible creature? I suspect this arises from the bravado of innate wickedness. We endeavour to shirk all thoughts, all recollections of his horrible attributes, by endowing him with grotesque propensities. We strive to laugh ourselves out of our fears: we make a mountebank of what is in truth our terror, and resolutely strive to grin away our apprehensions. Surely some feeling of this kind must be at the bottom of all our ten thousand jokes at the devil’s expense—of the glee and enjoyment with which the devil is received at the theatre; where, until the appearance of Mr Wieland, he had been but a commonplace absurdity, a dull repetition of a most dull joke.

Wieland has evidently studied the attributes of the evil principle; with true German profundity, he has taken their length, and their depth, and their breadth, he has all the devil at his very finger ends, and richly deserves the very splendid silver-gilt horns and tail (manufactured by Rundell and Bridges) presented to him a few nights since by the company at the English Opera-house; presented with a speech from the stage-manager, which, or I have been grossly misinformed, drew tears from the eyes of the very scene-shifters.

Can anybody forget Wieland’s devil in the _Daughter of the Danube_? Never was there a more dainty bit of infernal nature. It lives in my mind like one of Hoffman’s tales, a realisation of the hero of the nightmare, a thing in almost horrible affinity with human passions. How he eyed the Naiades, how he laughed and ogled, and faintingly approached, then wandered round the object of his demoniacal affections! And then how he burst into action! How he sprang, and leapt, and whirled, and, chuckling at his own invincible nature, spun like a teetotum at the sword of his baffled assailant! And then his yawn and sneeze! There was absolute poetry in them—the very highest poetry of the ludicrous: a fine imagination to produce such sounds as part of the strange, wild, grotesque phantom—to give it a voice that, when we heard it, we felt to be the only voice such a thing could have. There is fine truth in the devils of Wieland. We feel that they live and have their being in the realms of fancy; they are not stereotype commonplaces, but most rare and delicate monsters, brought from the air, the earth, or the flood; and wherever they are from, bearing in them the finest characteristics of their mysterious and fantastic whereabouts.

Wieland’s last devil, in an opera bearing his fearful name, is not altogether so dainty a fellow as his elder brother of the Danube, whose melancholy so endeared him to our sympathies, whose lackadaisical demeanour so won upon our human weakness. In _The Devil’s Opera_ the hero is more of the pantomimist than of the thinking creature; he is not contemplative, but all for action; he does not, like the former fiend, retire into the fastness of his infernal mind to brood on love and fate, but is incessantly grinning, leaping, tumbling; hence he is less interesting to the meditative part of the audience, though, possibly, more attractive to the majority of playgoers, who seem to take the “evil principle” under their peculiar patronage, laughing, shouting, and hurrahing at every scurvy trick played by it on poor, undefended humanity; though, with a bold aim of genius on the part of the author, the devil, in the opera, is made the ally of love and virtue against blind tyranny and silly superstition. The devil is changed, bound, the bond-slave of the good and respectable part of the _dramatis personae_, to the confusion of the foolish and the wicked. This is certainly putting the “evil principle” to the very first advantage. The best triumph of the highest benevolence is, undoubtedly, to turn the dominating fiend into the toiling vassal, and in the new opera this glory is most unequivocally achieved.

To Wieland we are greatly indebted for having reformed the “infernal powers” of the theatre; for having rescued the imp of the stage from the vulgar commonplace character in which he has too long distinguished himself, or, I ought rather to say, exposed himself; for there was no mystery whatever in him: he was a sign-post devil, a miserable daub, with not one of those emanations of profound, unearthly thought—not the slightest approach to that delicacy of colouring, that softening of light into shade, and shade into light, that distinguish the devil of Wieland. No: in him we have the foul fiend divested of all his vulgar, Bartlemy Fair attributes; his horns, and tail, and saucer-eyes, and fish-hook nails, are the least part of him; they are the mere accidents of his nature, not his nature itself; we have the devil in the abstract, and are compelled to receive with some consideration the popular and charitable proverb that declares him to be not quite so black as limners have shadowed him.

By the rarest accident I have obtained some account of the birth and childhood of Wieland. It appears that he is a German born, being the youngest of six sons of Hans Wieland, a poor and most amiable doll-maker, a citizen of Hildesheim. When only four years old the child was lost in the Hartz Mountains, whither his father and several neighbours had resorted to make holiday. The child had from his cradle manifested the greatest propensities towards the ludicrous; it was his delight to place his father’s dolls in the most preposterous positions, doing this with a seriousness, a gravity, in strange contrast with his employment. It was plain to Professor Teufelskopf, a frequent visitor at the shop of old Wieland, employed by the professor on toys that are yet to astound the world—being no other than a man and wife and four children, made entirely out of pear-tree, and yet so exquisitely constructed, as to be enabled to eat and drink, cry, and pay taxes, with a punctuality and propriety not surpassed by many machines of flesh and blood—I say it was the opinion of Professor Teufelskopf that young Wieland was destined to play a great part among men, an opinion we are happy to say nightly illustrated by the interesting subject of this memoir. We have, however, to speak of his adventures when only four years old, in the Hartz Mountains. For a whole month was the child missing, to the agony of its parents, and the deep regret of all the citizens of Hildesheim, with whom little George was an especial favourite. The mountains were overrun by various parties in search of the unfortunate little vagrant, but with no success. It was plain that the boy had been caught away by some spirit of the mines with which the marvellous districts abound, or, it might be, carried to the very height of the Brockenberg, by the king of the mountains, to be his page and cup-bearer. The gravest folks of the Hildesheim shook their heads, and more than two declared that they never thought George would grow up to be a man—he was so odd, so strange, so fantastic, so unlike any other child. The despair of Hans Wieland was fast settling into deep melancholy, and he had almost given up all hope, when, as he sat brooding at his fireside one autumn night, his wife—she had quitted him not a minute to go upstairs—uttered a piercing shriek. Hans rushed from the fireside, and in an instant joined his wife, who, speechless with delight and wonder, pointed to the nook in the chamber where little George was wont to sleep, and where, at the time, but how brought there was never, never known, the boy lay in the profoundest slumber; in all things the same plump, good-looking child, save that his cheek was more than usually flushed. Hans Wieland and his wife fell upon their knees and sobbed thanksgivings.

I cannot dwell upon the effect produced by this mysterious return of the child upon the people of Hildesheim. The shop of Hans Wieland was thronged with folks anxious to learn from the child himself a full account of his wanderings, of how he happened to stray away, of what he had seen, and by what means he had been brought back. To all these questions, though on other points a most docile infant, George maintained the most dogged silence, several of the church authorities, half a dozen professors, nay, the great Teufelskopf himself, questioned the child; but all in vain, George was resolutely dumb. It was plain, however, that he had been the playfellow, the pet of supernatural beings; and though there can be but little doubt that his friends and devils as shown upon the stage are no other than faithful copies of the grotesque originals at this moment sporting in the neighbourhood of the Brockenberg, Mr Wieland, as I am credibly informed, though a gentle and amiable person in other respects, is apt to be ruffled, nay, violent, if impertinently pressed upon the subject of his early wanderings. When, however, we reflect upon the great advantages obtained by Mr Wieland from what is now to be considered the most fortunate accident of his childhood, we must admit that there is somewhat less praise due to him than if he appeared before us as a great original. Since I have commenced this paper, I have been informed by Mr Dullandry, of _The Wet Blanket_, that the goblin in _The Daughter of the Danube_, a touch of acting in which Mr Wieland gathered a wreath of red-hot laurels, is by no means what it was taken for, a piece of fine invention on the part of the actor, but an imitation, a most servile copy of the real spirit that carried George away from his father and friends, tempting the little truant with a handful of the most delicious black cherries, and a draught of kirschen-wasser. That every gesture, every movement, nay, that the leer of the eye and the “villainous hanging of the nether lip,” the sneeze, the cough, the sigh, the lightning speed, the

“_Infernal_ beauty, melancholy grace,”

all the attributes of mind and body of that most delicate fiend of the Brockenberg, were given in the hobgoblin of the Danube. Hence, if Mr Wieland be not, as we thought him, a great original, he is most assuredly the first of mimics, and has turned a peril of his childhood to a golden purpose. Dullandry declares upon the best authority—doubtless his own—that the devil of the Brockenberg, when little George cried to go home to his father and mother, his brother and sister, would solace the child by playing upon a diabolic fiddle, the strings of wolf’s gut and the bow-string from the snowy hair of the witch of the Alps, dancing the while, and by the devilish magic of the music bringing from every fissure in the rocks, every cleft in the earth, and from every stream, their supernatural intelligences to caper and make holiday, for the especial delight of the poor, kidnapped son of the doll-maker of Hildesheim. If this be true, and when Dullandry speaks it is hard to doubt, his words being pearls without speck or flaw—if this be true, we here beg leave to inform Mr Wieland that from this minute we withdraw from him a great part of that admiration with which we have always remembered the spasmodic twitch of his elbow, the self-complacency about his eyes and jaws, the lofty look of conscious power, the stamping of the foot, and the inexhaustible energy of _bowing_ which marked his _Devil on Two Sticks_, all such graces and qualifications being, as from Dullandry, it now appears, the original property of the devil of the Brockenberg. However, to return to our narrative, which, as I am prepared to show, has in these days of daring speculation the inestimable charm of truth to recommend it to the severest attention of my readers.

Little George remained a marvel to the good citizens of Hildesheim, few of whom, for certain prudential reasons, would any longer permit their children to play with him; fearing, and reasonably enough, some evil from contact with a child who was evidently a favourite with the spirits of the Hartz Mountains. However, this resolution had no effect on George, who more than ever indulged in solitary rambles, becoming day by day more serious and taciturn. His little head—as Professor Teufelskopf sagaciously observed—was filled with the shapes and shadows haunting the Brockenberg. Many were the solicitations made by Teufelskopf and rival professors to Hans Wieland, to be permitted to take little George and educate him for a philosopher, an alchemist, in fact for anything and everything, the boy displaying capacities, as all declared, only to be found in an infant Faust. To all these prayers Hans Wieland was deaf. He resolved to bring up his son to the honest and useful employment of doll-making; keeping, if possible, his head from the cobwebs and dust of the schools, and making him a worthy minister to the simple and innocent enjoyments of baby girls,[9] rather than consenting to his elevation as a puzzler and riddler among men. Thus our hero, denied to the scholastic yearnings of the great Teufelskopf, sat at home, articulating the joints of dolls, and helping to make their eyes open and shut, when—had his father the true worthy ambition in him—the boy would have been inducted into knowledge that might have given him supernatural power over living flesh and blood, bending and binding it to his own high, philosophic purposes. Hans Wieland, however, was a simple, honest soul, with a great, and, therefore, proper sense of the beauties and uses of the art of doll-making. Glad also am I to state that little George, with all his dreaminess, remained a most dutiful, sweet-tempered boy; and might be seen, seven hours at least out of the twenty-four, seated on a three-legged stool fitting the arms and legs of the ligneous hopes of the little girls of Hildesheim, his thoughts, it may be, far, far away with the fiddling goblin of the Brockenberg, making holiday with the multitude of spirits in the Hartz Mountains.

Footnote 9:

One of the most touching instances of the “maternal instinct,” as it
has been called, in children, came under my notice a few months ago. A
wretched woman, with an infant in her arms, mother and child in very
tatters, solicited the alms of a nursery-maid passing with a child,
clothed in the most luxurious manner, hugging a large wax doll. The
mother followed the girl, begging for relief “to get bread for her
child,” whilst the child itself, gazing at the treasure in the arms of
the baby of prosperity, cried, “Mammy, when will you buy me a doll?” I
have met with few things more affecting than the contrast of the
destitute parent begging her bread (the misery seemed real) and the
beggar’s child begging of its mother for a “doll!”

“Would solace the child by playing upon a diabolic fiddle”
]

This mental abstraction on the part of little George was but too often forced upon the observation of the worthy Hans, the young doll-maker constantly giving the looks and limbs of hobgoblins to the faces and bodies of dolls, intended by the father to supply the demand for household dolls of the same staid and prudish aspect, of the same proportion of members, as the dolls that had for two hundred years soothed and delighted the little maidens of Hildesheim. It is a fact hitherto unknown in England, that in the Museum of Hildesheim—a beautiful, though somewhat heavy building of the Saxon order—there are either eleven or twelve (I think twelve) demon dolls made by young Wieland, and to this day shown to the curious—though the circumstance has, strangely enough, remained unnoticed by the writers of Guide Books—as faithful portraits of the supernatural inhabitants of the Hartz Mountains. I am told, however, that within the last three years, one of the figures has been removed into a separate chamber, and is only to be seen by an express order from the town council, in consequence of its lamentable effects on the nerves of a certain German princess, who was so overcome by the exhibition, that it was very much feared by the whole of the principality—extending in territory at least a mile and a quarter, and containing no less than three hundred and twenty subjects—the territory would pass to a younger brother, or, what is worse, be the scene of a frightful revolution, an heir direct being wanted to consolidate the dynasty. This unfortunate event, though, possibly, fatal to the future peace of the said principality, is nevertheless a striking instance of the powerful imagination or rather of the retentive memory of the young Wieland. The doll, like all the others, is a true copy from diabolic life. How the painful story attached to it should have escaped all the foreign correspondents of all the newspapers is a matter of surpassing astonishment.

We have now arrived at an important change in the life of our hero. His father had received a munificent order for three dolls from Prince Gotheoleog, a great patron of the fine arts in all their many branches. The dolls were intended by the prince—he was the best and most indulgent of fathers—as presents for his daughters; and, therefore, no pains, no cost, were to be spared upon them. After a lapse of three months the order was completed; and young Wieland, then in his seventh year, was dressed in his holiday suit, and—the dolls being carried by Peter Shnicht, an occasional assistant of Hans Wieland—he took his way to the palace of the prince. It was about half-past twelve when he arrived there, and the weather being extremely sultry, George sat down upon the palace steps to rest and compose himself before he ventured to knock at the gate. He had remained there but a short time, when he was addressed by a tall, majestic-looking person clothed in a huntsman’s suit, and carrying a double-barrel gun, a weapon used in the neighbourhood of Hildesheim in boar-shooting, who, asking our hero his name and business, was struck with the extraordinary readiness of the boy’s answers, and, more than all, with a certain look of diabolic reverence peeping from his eyes, and odd smiles playing about his mouth. The stranger knocked at the gate, gave his gun to a servant, and bade the little doll-maker follow the domestic, who showed him into a sumptuous apartment. The reader is prepared to find in the man with the gun no other person than Prince Gotheoleog himself, who in a few minutes reappeared to George, asked him in the most condescending manner various questions respecting his proficiency in reading and writing, and finally dismissed him with ten groschen for his extraordinary intelligence. Six months after this Prince Gotheoleog was appointed ambassador to the court of St James’s, and young Wieland attended him in the humble, yet most honourable capacity of page. This appointment Hans Wieland, in his simplicity, believed would effectually win his romantic son from his errant habits, would cure him of day-dreaming, by plunging his neck deep into the affairs of this world. Alas! it had precisely the reverse effect upon the diplomatic doll-maker. From the moment that he found himself associated, though in the slightest degree, with politics, the latent desire to play the devil burst forth with inextinguishable ardour. A sense of duty—a filial regard for the prejudices of his father—did for a time restrain him from throwing up his very lucrative and most promising situation in the household of Prince Gotheoleog, and kept him to the incessant toil, unmitigated drudgery of diplomatic life; but having one luckless night gained admission into the gallery of the House of Commons on the debate of a certain question, to which I shall not more particularly allude, and there having seen and heard a certain member, whose name I shall not specify, sway and convulse the senate, George resolved from that moment to play the devil, and nothing but the devil, to the end of his days. He immediately retired to Bellamy’s, and penned his resignation to Prince Gotheoleog, trusting, with the confidence of true genius, to fortune, to his own force of character, or, what is more likely, without once thinking of the means or accidents, to obtain the end of his indomitable aspirations—an appearance as the devil. Unrivalled as Wieland is as the representative of the fiend in all his thousand shapes—to be sure the great advantages of our hero’s education in the Hartz Mountains are not to be forgotten—it is yet to be regretted that he ever

“To the playhouse gave up what was meant for mankind.”

It is, and must ever be, a matter of sorrow not only to his best wishers, but to the friends of the world at large, that those high qualifications, those surpassing powers of diabolic phlegm, vivacity and impudence, which have made Mr Wieland’s devils the _beau idéal_ of the infernal, had not been suffered to ripen in the genial clime of diplomacy. In the full glow of my admiration of his diabolic beauties—that is, since the facts above narrated have been in my possession—I have often scarcely suppressed a sigh to think how great an ambassador has been sacrificed in a play-house fiend. Indeed, nothing can be more truly diplomatic than the supernatural shifts of Wieland. Had he acted in France, in the days of Napoleon, he had been kidnapped from the stage, and, _nolens volens_, made a plenipotentiary.

It is a painful theme to dwell upon the strugglings of modest, and, consequently, unsupported genius. Therefore I shall, at least for the present, suppress a very long and minute account of the trials that beset our hero in his attempts to make known the wonders that were in him. I shall not relate how he was flouted by one manager, snubbed by another, derisively smiled upon by a third; how, at length, he obtained a footing in a theatre, but was condemned to act the minor iniquities, less gifted men being promoted to play the devil himself. In all these trials, however, in all these disappointments and occasional heartburnings, the genius of our hero continued to ripen. His horns still budded, and his tail gave token of great promise; and, at length, he burst upon the town, from top to toe, _intus et in cute_, a perfect and most dainty devil. Great as his success has been, I should not have thus lengthily dwelt upon it, were I not convinced of its future increase. There are grand mysteries in Wieland—part of his infant wanderings in the Hartz—yet to be revealed. I feel certain from the demoniacal variety of his humour, that there are a legion of spirits, fantastic and new, yet to be shown to us; all of them the old acquaintance of our hero’s babyhood, all from the same genuine source of romance as his _Devil on Two_ _Sticks_, his _Devil of the Danube_, and his _Devil of the Opera_.

Having discussed the professional merits of Mr Wieland, the reader may probably feel curious respecting the private habits of a man so distinguished by his supernatural emotions. I am enabled, it is with considerable satisfaction I avow it, to satisfy the laudable anxiety of the reader, and from the same authentic materials that have supplied the principal part of this notice.

Mr Wieland is a gentleman of the most retired and simple manners. After the severest rehearsals of a new devil he has been known to recreate himself in the enclosure of St James’s Park; and further, to illustrate his contemplative and benevolent habits, by flinging to the various water-fowl in the canal—by-the-way, in imitation of a great regal authority—fragments of cake and biscuits. His dress is of the plainest kind, being commonly a snuff-coloured coat buttoned up to the neck; a white cravat, drab small-clothes, and drab knee-gaiters. A gold-headed cane, said to have been in the possession of Cornelius Agrippa, is sometimes in his hand. He is occasionally induced to take a pinch of snuff, but was never seen to smoke. His face is as well known at the British Museum as are the Elgin Marbles, Mr Wieland having for some years been employed on a new edition of the _Talmud_. Although a German by birth, Mr Wieland speaks English with remarkable purity, having had the advantage of early instruction in our language from a British dramatist, who, driven from the stage by the invasion of French pieces, sought to earn his precarious bread as a journeyman doll-maker with Mr Wieland, senior. We could enter into further particulars, but shall commit a violence upon ourselves, and here wind up what we trust will henceforth prove a model for all stage biographers.

The inquiring reader may possibly desire to learn how we became possessed of the valuable documents from which the above narrative is gathered. To this we boldly make answer; we blush not, while we avow, that our dear friend Dullandry has a most careless habit of carrying his most valuable communications for _The Wet Blanket_ in his coat pocket; and that only on Thursday last we overtook him, with his papers peeping from their sanctuary, when—when, in a word, the temptation was too much for us, and the consequence is, that the reader has “some account of a stage devil.”

Why should all dramatic truths be confined to the impartial and original pages of _The Wet Blanket_?

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Saint Patty
]

FIRESIDE SAINTS

ST DOLLY

AT an early age St Dolly showed the sweetness of her nature by her tender love for her widowed father, a baker, dwelling at Pie Corner, with a large family of little children. It chanced that with bad harvests bread became so dear that, of course, bakers were ruined by high prices. The miller fell upon Dolly’s father, and swept the shop with his golden thumb. Not a bed was left for the baker or his little ones. St Dolly slept upon a flour sack, having prayed that good angels would help her to help her father. Now sleeping, she dreamt that the oven was lighted, and she felt falling in a shower about her raisins, currants, almonds, lemon peel, flour, with heavy drops of brandy. Then in her dreams she saw the fairies gather up the things that fell and knead them into a cake. They put the cake into the oven, and dancing round and round, the fairies vanished, crying, “_Draw the cake, Dolly—Dolly, draw the cake!_” And Dolly awoke and drew the cake, and, behold, it was the first twelfth cake, sugared at the top, and bearing the images of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Now this cake, shown in the window, came to the king’s ear; and the king bought the cake, knighted the baker, and married Dolly to his grand falconer, to whom she proved a faithful and loving wife, bearing him a baker’s dozen of lovely children.

ST PATTY

St Patty was an orphan, and dwelt in a cot with a sour old aunt. It chanced, it being bitter cold, that three hunters came and craved for meat and drink. “Pack!” said the sour aunt, “neither meat nor drink have ye here.” “Neither meat nor drink,” said Patty; “but something better.” And she ran and brought some milk, some eggs, and some flour, and, beating them up, poured the batter in the pan. Then she took the pan and tossed the cake over; and then a robin alighted at the window, and kept singing these words—_One good turn deserves another_. And Patty tossed and tossed the cakes; and the hunters ate their fill and departed. And next day the hunter-baron came in state to the cot; and trumpets were blown, and the heralds cried—_One good turn deserves another_; in token whereof Patty became the baron’s wife, and pancakes were eaten on Shrove Tuesday ever after.

ST NORAH

St Norah was a poor girl, and came to England to service. Sweet-tempered and gentle, she seemed to love everything she spoke to. And she prayed to St Patrick that he would give her a good gift that would make her not proud but useful: and St Patrick, out of his own head, taught St Norah _how to boil a potato_. A sad thing, and to be lamented, that the secret has come down to so few.

ST BETSY

St Betsy was wedded to a knight who sailed with Raleigh and brought home tobacco; and the knight smoked. But he thought that St Betsy, like other fine ladies of the court, would fain that he should smoke out of doors, nor taint with ’bacco-smoke the tapestry. Whereupon the knight would seek his garden, his orchard, and in any weather smoke _sub Jove_. Now it chanced as the knight smoked St Betsy came to him and said, “My lord, pray ye come into the house.” And the knight went with St Betsy, who took him into a newly-cedared room, and said, “I pray, my lord, henceforth smoke here: for is it not a shame that you, who are the foundation and the prop of your house, should have no place to put your head into and smoke?” And St Betsy led him to a chair, and with her own fingers filled him a pipe; and from that time the knight sat in the cedar chamber and smoked his weed.

ST PHILLIS

St Phillis was a virgin of noble parentage, but withal as simple as any shepherdess of curds and cream. She married a wealthy lord, and had much pin-money. But when other ladies wore diamond and pearls, St Phillis only wore a red and white rose in her hair. Yet her pin-money brought the best of jewellery in the happy eyes of the poor about her. St Phillis was rewarded. She lived until fourscore, and still carried the red and white rose in her face, and left their fragrance in her memory.

ST PHŒBE

St Phœbe was married early to a wilful, but withal a good-hearted husband. He was a merchant, and would come home sour and sullen from ’change. Whereupon, after much pondering, St Phœbe in her patience set to work and, praying the while, made of dyed lambswool a door-mat. And it chanced from that time, that never did the husband touch that mat that it didn’t clean his temper with his shoes, and he sat down by his Phœbe as mild as the lamb whose wool he had trod upon. Thus gentleness may make miraculous door-mats!

ST SALLY

St Sally, from her childhood, was known for her inner-most love of truth. It was said of her that her heart was in a crystal shrine, and all the world might see it. Moreover, when other women denied, or strove to hide their age, St Sally said, “I am five-and-thirty.” Whereupon next birthday St Sally’s husband, at a feast of all their friends, gave her a necklace of six-and-thirty opal beads; and on every birthday added a bead, until the beads mounted to four-score and one. And the beads seemed to act as a charm; for St Sally, wearing the sum of her age about her neck, age never appeared in her face. Such, in the olden time, was the reward of simplicity and truth.

ST BECKY

A very good man was St Becky’s husband, but with his heart a little too much in his bottle. Port wine—red port wine—was his delight, and his constant cry was—bee’s-wing. Now as he sat tipsy in his arbour, a wasp dropped into his glass, and the wasp was swallowed, stinging the man inwardly. Doctors crowded, and with much ado the man’s life was saved. Now St Becky nursed her husband tenderly to health, and upbraided him not; but she said these words, and they reformed him:—“_My dear, take wine, and bless your heart with it—but wine in moderation: else, never forget that the bee’s wing of to-day becomes the wasp’s sting of to-morrow._”

ST LILY

St Lily was the wife of a poor man, who tried to support his family—and the children were many—by writing books. But in those days it was not as easy for a man to find a publisher as to say his paternoster. Many were the books that were written by the husband of St Lily; but to every book St Lily gave at least two babes. However, blithe as the cricket was the spirit that ruled about the hearth of St Lily. And how she helped her helpmate! She smiled sunbeams into his ink bottle, and turned his goose pen to the quill of a dove! She made the paper he wrote on as white as her name, and as fragrant as her soul. And when folks wondered how St Lily managed so lightly with fortune’s troubles, she always answered, that she never heeded them, for _troubles were like babies, and only grew the bigger by nursing_.

ST FANNY

St Fanny was a notable housewife. Her house was a temple of neatness. Kings might have dined upon her staircase! Now her great delight was to provide all things comfortable for her husband, a hard-working merchant, much abroad, but loving his home. Now one night he returned tired and hungry, and, by some mischance, there was nothing for supper. Shops were shut; and great was the grief of St Fanny. Taking off a bracelet of seed pearl she said, “_I’d give this ten times over for a supper for my husband._” And every pearl straightway became an oyster, and St Fanny opened—the husband ate—and lo! in every oyster was a pearl as big as a hazel nut; and so was St Fanny made rich for life.

ST FLORENCE OR ST NIGHTINGALE

St Florence, by her works, had her lips blessed with comforting, and her hands touched with healing; and she crossed the sea, and built hospitals, and solaced, and restored. And so long as English mistletoe gathers beneath it truthful hearts, and English holly brightens happy eyes, so long will Englishmen, at home or abroad, on land or on the wave—so long, in memory of that Eastern Christmas, will they cry—_God bless St Florence! Bless St Nightingale!_

ST JENNY

St Jenny was wedded to a very poor man; they had scarcely bread to keep them; but Jenny was of so sweet a temper that even want bore a bright face, and Jenny always smiled. In the worst seasons Jenny would spare crumbs for the birds, and sugar for the bees. Now it so happened that one autumn a storm rent their cot in twenty places apart; when, behold, between the joists, from the basement to the roof, there was nothing but honeycomb and honey—a little fortune for St Jenny and her husband, in honey. Now some said it was the bees, but more declared it was the sweet temper of St Jenny that had filled the poor man’s house with honey.

Saint Jenny
]

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CAT-AND-FIDDLE MORALITIES

The Tale of a Tiger