PUPPETS FOR GROWN GENTLEMEN.
“They do lie in a basket, Sir; they are o’ the small players,—and as good as any, none dispraised, for dumb shows.”—Ben Jonson: Bartholomew Fair.
Madame de Puysieux was a witty and vivacious lady. Among her recorded sayings is one that exceedingly well suits me for the nonce. “I would rather,” she said, “be occasionally found looking at puppets than listening to philosophers.”
There was doubtless some reason in this; but the fact is also indubitable, that puppets and philosophy are not so far apart. The latter has often condescended to illustrate the former. The learned and serious Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi, devoted his brief leisure to writing upon them. The great mathematicians, Commendino d’Urbino and Torniano di Cremona, stooped to play with and perfect them. Le Sage and Piron wrote plays for them. Ben Jonson brought them on the stage. Addison has immortalized them in stately verse; and Haydn seriously addressed himself to composing exquisite music, wherewith to grace their motion. These are but modern illustrations. We shall however presently discover, that the great and gifted men of a very remote antiquity were wont also to turn from the consideration of mighty problems, and carve puppets that should excite ecstasy in the wide world of “the little people.”
Surely there is dignity in a subject treating even of toys that have been in fashion for three thousand years, and have afforded amusement to two-thirds of the human race. The subject was largely discussed in France not many years since, by M. Charles Magnin, a gentleman who, in love with his plaything, had recourse to every source of information, and who brought away from all something worth knowing. M. Magnin shows that the gravest of authors are at issue as to the origin of the puppet race. Charles Nodier, however, traces it to the doll that lies in unconscious felicity in the arms of youthful and precocious maturity. M. Magnin maintains, on the other hand, that the puppet does not spring from the hearth, but from the altar. The rude god whittled out of a gnarled bough is, with him, the undoubted sire of the universe of dolls. The puppet served for pious, before it was suited to domestic, purposes; and it excited awe long before it won laughter or excited admiration. It lived in a wood, and ruled savages. As civilization advanced, it changed its habits, form, and features; and, ceasing to affright man, undertook the happier task of amusing him.
Such is the legendary record of puppets. We must turn over the graphic pages of the ‘Father of History,’ to find the first authentic mention of their employment. The guests at an Egyptian feast, when they grew hilarious, were called back to sober propriety by the exhibition of a little skeleton, and the admonition to reflect upon the lesson it conveyed. The British Museum possesses many of these figures, as well as others which appear to be toys that have been buried with their loved little owners. There is some uncertainty on this point, however; for it is known that on diseased persons it was the custom to place little figures, supposed to represent the deity which had particular influence over the part whereon the image was laid. I believe that the liver was the only portion of the body that had not its peculiar divinity. That obstinate organ has always defied gods and men. “In jecore nigro nascuntur domini;” and over these even the Egyptian Pantheon availed nothing.
Whether the figures in our Museum be actual toys, or counterfeit presentments of very swarthy gods, it is not in every instance easy to determine. From conjecture however we can turn to Herodotus; and certainly that worthy Halicarnassian tells us, in his second book, that in Egypt, on the festival of Osiris, or Bacchus, a puppet figure of the joyous god, a cubit in height, with some indecent mechanism moved by the pulling of a string, was carried in procession by the women. When previously speaking of the figure of Pan, he says, that the deity in question is worshiped under a form known not to be his real one, for a reason, he adds, which he “had rather not mention.” So, in the case of Bacchus, he confines himself to stating that there were “sacred and mysterious reasons” for the same. We are now aware that the unseemly practice was really a species of invocation that the earth might be impregnated with prolific virtue.
We next arrive at articulated figures. The statue of Jupiter Ammon nodded to the attendant priests when he was about to prophesy. So Apollo, at Heliopolis, would not open his lips till his ministers had carried him whither he would go. Aloft on the shoulders of his bearers, he guided them as with reins. On being questioned, he graciously bowed his head, if he approved; or fell back, if he dissented. When placed on the ground of his temple, he was seen to ascend, without aid, till his head touched the roof; and there he remained fixed till prayers brought him down again. It is suggested that the magnet may have been employed to accomplish the feat. How this may have been defies aught but conjecture.
Voluntary motion of inanimate objects was always an evidence of their divinity. When Juno paid her celebrated visit to Vulcan, she found him engaged in the manufacture of tripods, which moved about and performed their office with a bustling air of the most zealous assiduity.
“Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed,
That, placed on living wheels of massy gold,
Wondrous to tell, instinct with spirit, roll’d
From place to place around the blest abodes,
Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods.”
We have here in England, if not tripods, at least bipeds, who can
“instinct with spirit roll
From place to place.”
And this subject reminds me of Bacchus, generally. Now, my readers know that there were of old not less than ten cities known by the name of Nysa. At two of these, Nysa in India and Nysa in Ethiopia, Bacchus (Dio Nysus) was held in extreme reverence. In the last-named city, Ptolemy Philadelphus manifested his veneration for the god, by honouring the deity’s great festival after a pleasing fashion. The King had a figure of the joyous divinity made expressly for the occasion. It was eight cubits in length, and was drawn through the city, attired in a tunic of yellow and gold, with a Macedonian mantle hanging from the shoulders. The god was seated in a car, and as he passed through the gazing crowds, he ever and anon majestically arose, poured out, not wine, but milk, from a bowl, and then solemnly re-seated himself.
Among the Greeks, Dædalus is famous, in legend at least, as the founder of the art of figure-making. He is said to have flourished about a thousand years before Christ; and despite what is generally told of him, he was probably but a rude craftsman. He was the first who introduced quicksilver into figures, and by this process he lent a sort of Chinese-tumbling motion to a wooden image of Venus. Some of his figures were so given to activity as to require being made fast when not wanted to move, without which precaution they would, like the leg in the legend, have continued running about without intermission.
All the Greek puppets belong to the Dædalus school; they were generally of wood or baked clay, were set in motion by strings, and were invariably of the feminine gender. It was customary to place them in the coffins of young girls. M. Magnin quotes from Xenophon’s graphic description of the banquet in the house of Callias, to demonstrate that the noblest Athenians condescended to be amused with representations by puppets. There is however not a word touching puppets throughout the lively narrative of the learned and gallant Greek. The Syracusan showman therein introduced exhibits a living boy and girl, who go through some rather dangerous gymnastic exercises, which excite considerable disgust in the mind of Socrates. That sage is much better pleased when the graceful pair represent in his presence the ballet of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne.’ These children not only danced but sang; and if it be suggested that the feat of singing might easily be contrived for a puppet by a clever stage-manager, we may also suggest that the Syracusan speaks, on one occasion, in answer to Socrates, so plainly as to leave no doubt that “flesh, blood, and blue veins” entered into the composition of his elegant little slave.
Antiochus Cyzenicus, half-brother to Antiochus Grypus—the huge-nosed Antiochus—was celebrated as the inventor of puppets as well as of larger machines; and his counterfeit animals, whose limbs simulated motion, were as agreeable to his friends, as his engines, with unpronounceable names, were horridly distasteful to his enemies.
In Greece again, Archytas the mathematician constructed for his young acquaintances a hollow pigeon that could fly,—the original Montgolfier. In like manner, Dædalus, who made quicksilvered tumblers, also discovered the use of the wedge and the science of sailing; while Cnidus, the great astronomer, not only regulated the year and brought the celestial sphere from Egypt, but made all his little cousins glad by the excellence of the puppets he invented, and the fantasticness of their movements.
The public puppet-plays were fashionable in Greece after the theatres had been suppressed by the Puritan Macedonian faction. The method of representation was, in many respects, like that still followed by the itinerant managers of wooden companies in our own days. The like permanence of fashion has clung to our childish games. The old Muinda is the modern Blind-Man’s-Buff; Chytrinda is Hot Cockles; Trigodiphasis is Bob-Cherry; and Scriblerus, we remember, permitted his illustrious son to play at Puss-in-the-Corner, for the sufficient reason that it was the Apodidascinda of the ancients. There is one classical game that has gone out of fashion, and I am not altogether surprised at it, seeing that it consisted in one of the players standing on a round ball, with his neck in a noose hung from above; in one hand he held a knife. It was the part of his opponents to kick the ball from under his feet. If, when this was done, he succeeded in cutting the rope, he won the game; if not, he lost it, and got hanged.
To return to our figures, we may state that the Italian temples were celebrated for their moving gods. In the fane of the two Fortunes at Antium, the goddess moved both arms and head when that solemnity was required. So at Præneste, the figures of the youthful Jupiter and Juno, lying in the lap of Fortune, moved, and excited awe thereby. The marble Servius Tullius is said to have shaded his eyes with his cold hand whenever that remarkably strong-minded woman, his daughter and murderess, passed before him.
It was a common thing for the images of the gods to turn away their heads when displeased with the meats placed before them. This act filled a whole district with terror, and excited a desire in the people to do whatever the priests enjoined. When the Athenians were slow to desert their capital and take to their ships, the sacred wooden dragon of Minerva not only refused to eat his cakes, but rolled himself out of the temple and down into the sea, as though to indicate to the people the direction in which resided safety. As for the huge puppets used in religious processions, nothing now exists like them, save in some of the festival processions in Flemish towns. Our venerable city brethren, Gog and Magog, are the ancient freemen of that guild. In some of the smaller images our worthy friend Punch figures with his wonted éclat. M. Magnin holds that the French Polichinelle is not a descendant of the puppet with the Phrygian bonnet, but an image caricaturing some old boasting cuirassed captain of Gascony. The breast protuberance he considers to be merely an exaggeration of the bowed cuirass,—an explanation which I am far from feeling bound to honour with acceptance.
Puppets found favour at the hands of the early Fathers of the Church: perhaps for the reason that more decency was observed in the speeches of the shows than in those of the stage. The Fathers however were divided on the point. Some advocated the use of every and any means whereby religion could be furthered; others declared that nothing was lawful but what was in itself holy. The fashion nevertheless prevailed, and allegorical figures became common. The Fish, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and similar representations gladdened the hearts of simple people, till the Church planted her canons against them exclusively, and insisted upon the adoption of figures of the Saviour in his human form.
The command was but slowly complied with. In the fourth century artists had not got beyond the bust of Jesus. By the end of the seventh century, we meet with the sacred figure in slight relief carved on the wooden cross. It required full another century before the reluctant or incapable artists achieved the complete anatomical figure hanging from the cross. But when this was once accomplished, progress was soon made beyond it; and images of the Saviour and the Madonna, with movable limbs, set in motion by strings, became common throughout Europe. We hear of one gravely moving through Lucca on foot, and gravely blessing the people as he passed along: this was the counterpart of the Bacchus at Nysa.
The Boxley Madonna was long the glory of Kent. It not only moved the head, but opened and closed the eyes; and I would tell its story here, as apt to the subject, but that I have already narrated it at some length in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’
The Rimini Madonna is but a poor plagiarism of Our Lady of Boxley. Maundrill, at the end of the seventeenth century, saw an image of Christ, so flexible, that it was difficult to distinguish, at a distance, between it and a dead body. These figures were so often used to deceive the people, that the employment of them was forbidden by several Councils; but in vain. Some of them were of such exquisite workmanship, that their makers were taxed with having the devil for an ally; and the figure-makers generally were consigned to infamy.
One day, in the year 1086, the holy Abbot Thergius, attending at Cluny to give investiture to some half hundred novices, refused conferring the benediction upon one of them, under the plea, “Mechanicum ilium esse et necromantiæ deditum.” And yet the abbot artists were among the priests themselves; nay, were sometimes to be found among the Popes. Sylvester II. is said to have constructed a brazen head. Roger Bacon and Robert Greathead were celebrated for the same achievement; while Albertus Magnus has the reputation of having constructed an android or semblance of a man, of such perfection, that it would support an argument with satisfaction to itself and discomfort to its opponents. Thomas Aquinas, when young, ventured to enter upon a discussion with this figure; when the androide so perplexed the priest with his shower of syllogisms, that the latter broke his head for his pains, and ruined his argumentative powers for ever.
The ecclesiastical puppets were probably productions with more than mere pretensions to rank among objects of art and science. The semi-religious and popular puppets were too gross to deceive; and yet the great dragon of Paris, slain by St. Marcel, whose simulacrum dragged itself through the city during the Rogation Days, was probably contemplated with as much awe by the youthful beholders, us the sacred dragon of Minerva was at Athens, by such of the citizens as lived before the innovating period of the free-thinking Anaxagoras.
Galen speaks of puppets so anatomically perfect, that Heaven might have taken a hint therefrom. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, too, referring to effects following at long intervals, the impelling cause divinely given, stumbles upon an unprofitable simile, and compares such effects to the motion in the limbs of the puppet long after the showman has ceased to pull the strings.
If our little actors fell into disuse from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, it was only to reappear in Italy with an éclat which they never previously enjoyed. Of modern puppets, Italy is the birthplace and permanent home. In front of a puppet-show exists an equality of all classes, who fraternize for the moment to enjoy the liberty which puppets alone in the peninsula appear to possess. These imitate nature with such perfection as to confer on their constructors the name of artists. In the regular puppet-theatre, where none but wooden actors appear on the stage, the scenery and accessories are in such due proportion with the performers, that the eye yields ready consent to the illusion. Burlettas, sparkling extravaganzas, melodramas, and even grand operas are represented. In the latter case, the mute prima donna on the stage invariably answers by her expressive pantomime to the voice which is uttered for her behind the scenes. And when a bouquet is flung to her, her grateful emotion is, as Mr. Carlyle would say, “a noticeable thing.”
The puppet ballet-dancers are even more wonderful than their vocal brethren. Rome extends to them the privilege of playing in the capital, even in solemn seasons. Church-censorship is however strict, as might be expected; and it evidences its care for the proprieties by requiring that no female puppet shall appear on the stage without a pair of light blue silk drawers! This is something to smile at; for morality at Rome is not of a high character, and female immodesty there is almost as disgustingly offensive as it is on our Ramsgate sands at the height of the bathing season. Even Rome cannot beat that.
The private puppet-actors in Italy indulge in political allusions, to the delight of an audience invited for the express purpose of enjoying satirical allusions against the Government. In Florence, the private companies are remarkable for their coarseness, to which they who pay for the same do not object. In Milan, the fool of the puppet-stage is invariably a native of Turin; while among the Piedmontese puppets, the fool of the farce and the villain of the melodrama are of course of Lombard origin.
The Spanish puppets are of Italian derivation. Torriani invented many in order to amuse Charles V. in his retirement among the monks of St. Just. These were so clever that the brotherhood suspected the artist of being leagued with evil powers; but the uses to be drawn from these figures were so apparent, that the Church of Spain employed them largely in the working of miracles. The modern prince of puppets, our friend Punch, never got thoroughly naturalized in Spain. The fact is, the unscrupulous fellow is of Neapolitan descent; and since Naples revolted against the Spanish government, Pulcinello is looked upon as a very dangerous person. Seneca, on the other hand, being a native of Cordova, is a great favourite. His history is faithfully represented, with an addition that reminds one of the new act put by the modest M. Dumas to one William Shakspeare’s tragedy of Hamlet. This addition consists in the ascent of the heathen philosopher to heaven; where, at the feet of the figure of the Saviour, he recites the creed, and professes himself a Christian.
After all, this is not more absurd than the act of that Pope who converted Trajan to Christianity three hundred years after that Emperor’s death; and who had nearly canonized him to boot, in spite of the remonstrance of the astounded College of Cardinals.
Although Punch was not originally French, he has always been greatly esteemed in France. He was a highly honoured puppet, as the registers of the royal treasury certify; ex. gr., “Paid to Brioché, the puppet-player, for sojourning at St. Germain-en-Laye, during September, October, and November, 1669, to divert the royal children, 1365 livres.” The royal children of France must have had enough of this sort of amusement, the Dauphin particularly, who had already had two months of puppet-playing before Brioché came, as is shown by the same registry:—“Paid to François Daitelin, puppet-player, for the fifty-six days he remained at St. Germain, to amuse Monseigneur le Dauphin (July and August, 1669), 820 livres.”
Bossuet, the Dauphin’s tutor, persecuted both puppets and Protestants, which, and especially the latter, were reckoned for a time among the things that were reprobate and abominable. Brioché himself was suppressed; but he had friends at court; and the King, who would execute a Protestant for preaching, signed a decree which authorized the mountebank to continue playing. Due gratitude was shown in return; and among the favourite pieces represented at the famous fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent, was ‘The Destruction of the Huguenots.’
The puppet-plays at the fairs in Paris were got up with much magnificence, and were wittily written,—but with as much indecency as wit; particularly during the last years of Louis XIV. and the time of the Regent. The puppets alone had full liberty of speech, when every other sort of liberty was extinct. Le Sage and Piron, as I have said, wrote pieces expressly for them. And while plays in France were acted in puppet-shows, puppet-shows in England were introduced into plays. Of this the ‘Bartholomew Fair’ of Jonson is a sufficient example. The vogue of the French puppets is proved by the fact that the Regent Duke of Orléans, with his company of roués, often remained in the fair till long after midnight, to witness representations where the coarser the wit the more it was enjoyed.
All the chefs-d’œuvre of the French stage were immediately parodied on the puppet-boards; and saving the license of speech, the parody was often superior to the original. It was so attractive that the regular actors complained, and sought for the suppression of their wooden rivals. But Punch and his brethren pleaded for their ancient privilege, “de parler et de p⸺r.” The plea was held good, and the puppets triumphed over the Thespians. The quarrel being a family one, it was of course carried on with undying hostility. The puppet-players took every opportunity of ridiculing the extravagances of the more serious stage. When the custom of calling for “the author” of a successful new piece was established, upon the example set of calling for Voltaire after the first representation of ‘Merope,’ the puppets availed themselves of the opportunity for caricaturing. “Le compère pressait Polichinelle de lui faire entendre une de ses œuvres; et après avoir reçu une réponse très-incongrue, le compère s’empressait de demander l’auteur! l’auteur! satisfaction que s’empressait de lui donner Polichinelle, aux grands éclats de rire de l’assemblée.”
The contrast with this will call up but a ghastly smile when we find that while the crowd on the Place Louis XV. was waiting to witness the execution of the King, Punch was being serio-comically guillotined in one corner of the square, to the great delight of the spectators. Indeed the ‘Vieux Cordelier’ tells us, that Punch daily filled up the intervals of executions; and so varied the pleasures of the humane but impatient multitude. But what neither the ‘Vieux Cordelier,’ nor M. Magnin tells us, is the fate of this very Punch, or rather of the man and his wife who exhibited the popular puppet. Their fate is recorded by the Marquis de Custine. Punch, it appears, ventured on some jokes against the Terrorists. His master and mistress were thereupon seized. They bore their brief imprisonment with heroism, and they were executed on the spot whereon had perished their sovereign and queen.
The puppets went down in the general hurricane of the Revolution, and they only partially came again to the surface. To their ancient shows on the Boulevard du Temple has succeeded a line of theatres; and the chief resulting difference is, that very awkward men and women now enact the most sacred subjects where puppets once did the same office less revoltingly.
If a popular movement finally declared that the puppet dynasty had ceased to reign, it was a despotic will that abolished the use of such effigies in church spectacles. Louis XIV., on witnessing one of those sights at Dieppe, was so shocked thereat that he ordered their general suppression. The French word for puppet, Marionnette, applied originally only to figures of the Virgin Mary; but, like the Catrinette of the little Savoyard, it has ceased to have an exclusive application.
With regard to puppets in England, those wooden ladies and gentlemen once figured largely in our church-shows, interludes, and pageants. The names of the puppet masters have come down to us, from Pad, Cookley, Powell, and the daughter of Colley Cibber, to no less a man than Curran, who, taking upon himself, in sport, the charge of a show for one night, found it so easy when speaking for the mute actors to maintain both sides of an argument that he was therefore convinced of his excellent aptitude for the law.
Pepys, as usual, affords us again illustrations of the fashion which attached to puppets in his day. From his brief journalizing we obtain a world of information on this matter. Thus we find him recording:—“12th Nov. 1661. My wife and I to Bartholomew Fayre, with puppets (which I had seen once before, and the play without puppets often); but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening of it.” On the 9th May, in the following year, we find him in Covent Garden, “to see an Italian puppet-play, that is within the rayles there,—the best that ever I saw, and great resort of gallants.” In a fortnight he takes poor Mrs. Pepys to the same play. In October, he says:—“Lord Sandwich is at Whitehall, with the King, before whom the puppet-plays I saw this summer in Covent Garden are acted this night.” On the 30th August, 1667, being with a merry party at Walthamstow, he left his wife to get home as well as she could; he “to Bartholomew Fayre, to walk up and down, and there, among other things, find my Lady Castlemaine at a puppet-play, ‘Patient Grizell,’ and the street full of people expecting her coming out. I confess I did wonder at her courage to come abroad, thinking the people would abuse her; but they, silly people, do not know the work she makes; and therefore suffered her with great respect to take coach, and so away without any trouble at all.”
The last allusion made by Pepys on this subject forms an admirable commentary on the approving ecstasy expressed by the royalists at the lashing which the “Precisians” received at the hands of Lantern’s puppets in Jonson’s comedy. On the 5th September, 1668, Pepys is again on the old ground, “to see the play ‘Bartholomew Faire,’ and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only” (he adds) “the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest.”
I began this chapter with a quotation from Puysieux—I may end it with that just cited from Pepys; and therewith, lowering the curtain of my little theatre, I beg the indulgence of my audience for the succeeding portions of what I have respectfully to bring before them; something more especially touching Tailors, and the Man whose making is to Tailors due! First, however, to treat the matter reverently, let us inquire what influenced the ancient corporation in their selection of a protecting Saint.