THE COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF A WAR WITH RUSSIA.
After the enjoyment of nearly forty years of peace, during which two generations of men, whose fate it was to live in more troublous times, have passed to their account, we are entering upon a war which will inevitably tax all the energies of the country to conduct it to a successful and honourable conclusion. The enemy against whom our arms are directed is not one whose prowess and power can with safety be slighted. A colossal empire possessed of vast resources, wielded by a sovereign of indomitable character and vast ambition, who has for years been collecting strength for a gigantic effort to sweep away every barrier by which the realisation of that ambition has been impeded, is our opponent. The issue to him is most momentous. It is to decide whether he is hereafter to be a controlling power in Europe and Asia, to rule absolutely in the Baltic, to hold the keys of the Euxine and the Mediterranean, and to push his conquests eastwards, until he clutches Hindostan,—or to be driven back and confined within the limits of the original empire which Peter the Great bequeathed to his successors. Such a struggle will not be conducted by Russia, without calling forth all the vigour of her arm. An issue so far beyond her contemplation as defeat and extinction as a first-rate power in the world, will not be yielded until she has drained her last resources, and exhausted every available means of defence and procrastination. Russia possesses too in this, the climax of her fate and testing-point in her aggressive career, a mighty source of strength in the enthusiasm of her people, whom she has taught to regard the question at issue between herself and Europe as a religious one, and the war into which she has entered as a crusade against “the infidel” and his abettors. The result may be seen in the personal popularity which the Emperor enjoys, and the ready devotion with which his efforts are aided by the Christian portion of the population of his empire.
On the other hand, Great Britain enters into the struggle with every recognised prestige of success in her favour. She has, as her active ally, the greatest military nation in the world, whose soldiers and sailors are about, for the first time for many centuries, to fight side by side against a common enemy. Little as we are disposed to decry the strength of that navy which Russia, by her wonderful energy, has succeeded in creating during the past few years, it would be absurd to compare it with the magnificent fleets which England and France combined have at present floating in the waters of the Black Sea, and about to sail for the Baltic. A comparison of our monetary resources with those of our opponent would be still more absurd. Another feature in our position as a maritime country at present, is the vast facilities which we possess, by means of our mercantile ocean steamers, of transporting any required number of troops to the locality where their services are required, with a rapidity and comfort never dreamt of during the last European war. A veteran of our Peninsular Campaigns, witnessing the splendid accommodation provided in such noble vessels as the Oriental Company’s steamer Himalaya at Southampton, the Cunard Company’s steamer Cambria at Kingston Harbour, Dublin, and the same Company’s steamer Niagara at Liverpool, and acquainted with the fact that each of these vessels was capable of disembarking their freight of armed men within five or six days of their departure hence in any port of the Mediterranean, must have been struck by the marked difference between such conveyances and the old troop ships employed in former days. Moreover, there is scarcely a limit to the extent of this new element of our power as a military nation. We enter, too, upon the approaching struggle with Russia backed by the enthusiastic support of all classes of our population. It is not regarded with us as a religious war, or one into the incentives to which religion enters at all. It is scarcely regarded by the mass as a war of interest. With that sordid motive we cannot as a nation be reproached. It is felt only that an unjust aggression has been committed by a powerful state upon a weak one; that the tyranny of the act has been aggravated by the gross breaches of faith, the glaring hypocrisy, amounting to blasphemy, and the unparalleled atrocity, by which it has been followed up; and that we should prove ourselves recreant, and devoid of all manhood, were we to stand tamely by and see a gallant people, differing though they do from us in religion, overwhelmed by brute force, and exterminated from the face of Europe by such butcheries as Russia has shown us, in the memorable example of Sinope, that she is not ashamed to perpetrate in the face of the civilised world, and in the name of Christianity.
There is one consideration, however, connected with the present warlike temper of our population, which cannot with safety be permitted to escape remark. We have already stated that two generations of men have passed away since this country was in actual war with an enemy in Europe. The bulk of the present race of Englishmen have never experienced the inconveniences, and occasional privations, which attend upon war even in countries, like ours, which are happily free from the affliction of having an armed enemy to combat upon its own soil. We believe most firmly that we are not a degenerate people. We see evidence of this in the ready zeal with which large numbers of our hardy and enterprising youth are everywhere flocking to be enrolled under the flag of their country, both for land and sea service. We trust that this feeling will endure, and that we shall be found willing to bear up cheerfully under any temporary sacrifices which we shall be called upon to make; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that a great change has taken place in our social condition, in our traditionary instincts, in our pursuits, and in our institutions, during the forty years of peace which we have enjoyed. We have become more essentially a manufacturing and commercial people. A larger number of our population than formerly are dependent for their daily bread upon the profitable employment of capital in our foreign trade. The more extensive adaptation of machinery to manufacturing processes of every kind has led to the aggregation of large masses of our population in particular districts; and such masses, ignorant as we have unfortunately allowed them to grow up, are notoriously subject to the incendiary persuasions of unprincipled and bad men, and have been sedulously taught that cheapness of all the necessaries of life can only be secured by unrestricted communication with foreign countries. Moreover, we have had a large infusion of the democratic element into our constitution. Our House of Commons no longer represents the yeomanry and the property classes of the country; but, instead, must obey the dictates of the shopkeeping and artisan classes of our large towns. It is no longer the same body of educated English gentlemen, whose enduring patriotism, during the last war, stood firm against the clamours of the mobs of London, Manchester, and other large centres of population, and turned a deaf ear to the persuasions of faction within its own walls; but a mixed assemblage of a totally opposite, or, at all events, a materially changed character, so far as regards a considerable number of its members. We have in it now a larger proportion of the capitalist class—men suspected of being rather more sensitively alive to a rise or fall in the prices of funds, stock, railway shares, &c., than to any gain or loss of national honour; more wealthy manufacturers, who would be disposed to regard the loss of a fleet as a minor calamity, compared with the loss of a profitable market for their cottons, woollens, or hardwares; and, lastly, more Irish representatives of the Maynooth priesthood, ready to sell their country, or themselves, for a concession to Rome, or a Government appointment. The honourable member for the West Riding—Mr Cobden—showed a thorough appreciation of the character and position of a portion of the House, and of his own constituents, when he wound up his speech on the adjourned debate upon the question of our relations with Russia and Turkey, on the 20th ult., with these words, which deserve to be remembered:—“He would take upon himself all the unpopularity of opposing this war; and, more than that, he would not give six months’ purchase for the popularity of those who advocated it on its present basis.”
Under such circumstances it is material to examine what is the amount of interruption to the commerce of the country, which may be assumed as likely to occur, as the result of a state of war with Russia. What, in other words, is the amount and the nature of the pressure, to which the masses of our population may be called upon to submit, to prepare them for the purposes of those persons—happily few in number at present—whose voice is for peace at any sacrifice of the national honour, and any sacrifice of the sacred duties of humanity? We shall perhaps be excused if we examine first the nature of the pressure which is relied upon by such persons; and we cannot exemplify this better than by a quotation from the speech already referred to by the same Mr Cobden—their first volunteer champion in the expected agitation. The honourable gentleman remarked:—
“He could not ignore the arguments by which they were called upon by honourable and right honourable gentlemen to enter into a war with Russia. The first argument was one which had been a dozen times repeated, relative to the comparative value of the trade of the two countries. We were to go to war to prevent Russia from possessing countries from which she would exclude our commerce, as she did from her own territory. That argument was repeated by a noble lord, who told the House how insignificant our trade with Russia was, compared with that with Turkey. Now, that opinion was erroneous as well as dangerous, for we had no pecuniary interest in going to war. Our interests were all on the other side, as he was prepared to show. The official returns did not give him the means of measuring the extent of our exports to Russia, but he had applied to some of the most eminent merchants in the City, and he confessed he had been astonished by the extent of our trade with Russia. He used to be told that our exports to Russia amounted to less than £2,000,000. Now, Russia was still under the Protectionist delusion, which had also prevailed in this country in his recollection. (A laugh.) Russia still kept up her protective duties upon her manufactures, but he would tell the House what we imported from Russia, and they might depend on it that whatever we imported we paid for. (Hear, hear.) He had estimated the imports from Russia as of much greater value than most people thought, and he was under the impression that they might amount to from £5,000,000 to £6,000,000 per annum. Now, here was a calculation of our imports from Russia which he had obtained from sources that might be relied upon,—
| Estimated Value of Imports from Russia into the United Kingdom. | |
|---|---|
| Tallow, | £1,800,000 |
| Linseed, | 1,300,000 |
| Flax and hemp, | 3,200,000 |
| Wheat, | 4,000,000 |
| Wool, | 300,000 |
| Oats, | 500,000 |
| Other grain, | 500,000 |
| Bristles, | 450,000 |
| Timber, deals, &c., | 500,000 |
| Iron, | 70,000 |
| Copper, | 140,000 |
| Hides, | 60,000 |
| Miscellaneous, | 200,000 |
| £13,020,000 | |
Now, last year our imports from Russia were larger than usual, and another house, taking an average year, had made them £11,000,000. In that calculation, the imports of wheat were taken at £2,000,000 instead of £4,000,000, and that made the difference. He was also credibly informed that Russian produce to the value of about £1,000,000 came down the Vistula to the Prussian ports of the Baltic, and was shipped thence to this country; so that our imports from Russia averaged about £12,000,000 sterling per annum, and included among them articles of primary importance to our manufactures. How was machinery to work, and how were locomotives to travel, without tallow to grease their wheels? (A laugh.) Look, too, at the imports of linseed to the value of £1,300,000. No persons were more interested than honourable gentlemen opposite in the reduction of the price of the food of cattle. Then take the articles of flax and hemp. There were districts in the West Riding which would suffer very serious injury and great distress if we should go to war and cut off our intercourse with Russia. (Hear.) Even with regard to the article of Russian iron, which entered into consumption at Sheffield, he was told it would be hardly possible to manufacture some of the finer descriptions of cutlery if the supply of Russian iron were interfered with.”
We shall not here take the trouble of criticising Mr Cobden’s figures, but take them as they stand, although they are exaggerated enough. His argument is obviously, that we must submit to any amount of aggression which Russia may choose to make upon neutral countries, and even upon our own Indian possessions, because that country supplies us yearly with thirteen millions’ worth of raw materials and food! The same was the humiliating position which the men of Tyre and Sidon, as recorded in Scripture, occupied towards Herod, when “they came of one accord to him, and having made Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, their friend, desired peace, because their country was nourished by the king’s country.” How, asks Mr Cobden, is machinery to work without tallow to grease the wheels? We are to have an anti-war cry from the farmers for the lack of Russian linseed; the West Riding of Yorkshire is to be stirred up into insurrection by the want of flax and hemp; and the fine cutlers of Sheffield cannot get on without the £70,000 worth of iron which they import from Russia! The main reliance of the peace-at-any-price party, we have no doubt, rests upon the probability of high prices of food, and their hope of producing in the minds of the masses the impression that the cause of those high prices is mainly the interruption of our usual imports of grain from the Russian ports of the Baltic and the Black Sea.
It is rather singular that it should not have struck so astute a man as Mr Cobden, that Russia is very likely to feel the loss of so excellent a customer as England appears to have been to her, quite as much as we are likely to feel the want of her tallow, her flax and hemp, her linseed, or even her wheat. The vendor of an article is generally the party who feels most aggrieved when his stock is permitted to accumulate upon his shelves. The Russian landowners cannot very conveniently dispense with the annual thirteen millions sterling which they draw from this country. Mr Cobden may depend upon it that, if we want it, a portion of their growth of staple articles will find its way to this country, through intermediate channels, although Russian ships no longer gain the advantages derived from its transport. The fact, however, of our absolute dependence upon Russia for these articles is too palpably a bugbear, either of Mr Cobden’s own creation, or palmed upon him by his friends, the “eminent merchants of the City,” to be worthy of serious notice, did it not betray the direction in which we are to look for the agitation, by which that gentleman and his friends hope to paralyse the hands of Government during the coming crisis of the country.
In the effort to form a correct estimate of the extent of interruption to our commerce to be anticipated from the existence of a state of war between this country and Russia, we must have, in the first place, reliable facts to depend upon, instead of the loose statements of Russian merchants, who are, as a class, so peculiarly connected with her as almost to be liable to the imputation of having Russian rather than British interests nearest to their hearts. We have a right also to look at the fact that, so far at least as present appearances go, Russia is likely to be isolated on every side during the approaching struggle, her principal seaports, both in the Baltic and the Black Sea, to be commanded by the united British and French fleets; whilst that produce, by the withholding of which she could doubtless for a time, and to a certain extent, inconvenience our manufacturers and consumers, may find its way to us either direct from Russian ports in neutral vessels, or through those neighbouring countries which are likely to occupy a neutral position in the quarrel. We have also to bear in mind that, with respect to many of the articles which we have lately been taking so largely from Russia, other sources of supply are open to us. It is remarkable to observe the effect produced by even temporarily enhanced prices in this country in extending the area on every side from which foreign produce reaches us. A few shillings per quarter on wheat, for example, will attract it from the far west States of America, from which otherwise it would never have come, owing to the inability of the grower to afford the extra cost of transport. All these considerations have to be borne in mind; and although it will perhaps have to be conceded that somewhat enhanced prices may have to be paid for some of the articles with which Russia at present supplies us, we think we shall be enabled to show that the enhancement is not at all likely to be such as to amount to a calamity, or cause serious pressure upon our people.
Before proceeding further, it may be desirable to explain the mode in which our trade with Russia, both import and export, is carried on. Russia is, commercially, a poor country. The description of her given by M‘Culloch, in an early edition of his Dictionary of Commerce, published two-and-twenty years ago, is as appropriate and correct as if it had been written yesterday, notwithstanding the vast territorial aggrandisement which has taken place in the interim. Her nobles and great landowners hold their property burdened by the pressure of many mortgages; and they are utterly unable to bring their produce to market, or to raise their crops at all, without the advances of European capitalists. These consist chiefly of a few English Houses, who have branch establishments at St Petersburg, Riga, and Memel on the Baltic, and Odessa on the Black Sea. The mode of operation is the following. About the month of October the cultivators and factors from the interior visit those ports, and receive advances on the produce and crops to be delivered by them ready for shipment at the opening of the navigation; and it is stated that the engagements made between these parties and British capitalists have rarely been broken. This process of drawing advances goes on until May, by which month there are large stocks ready for shipment at all the ports, the winter in many districts being the most favourable for their transport. The import trade is carried on in a similar manner by foreign capital; long credits, in many instances extending to twelve months, being given to the factors in the interior. A well-known statistical writer, the editor of the Economist, Mr John Wilson, in his publication of the 25th ult., says, upon the subject of the amount of British capital thus embarked in Russia at the period when her battalions crossed the Pruth: “The most accurate calculations which we have been able to make, with the assistance of persons largely engaged in the trade, shows that at that moment the British capital in Russia, and advanced to Russian subjects, was at least £7,000,000, including the sums for which Houses in this country were under acceptance to Russia.” We can perfectly believe this to have been the fact, under such a system of trading as that which we have described. We can believe, too, that a considerable number of British ships and sailors were at the same time in Russian ports, and would, in case we had treated the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Russian troops as a casus belli, very probably have been laid under embargo. We could sympathise with those “persons largely engaged in the trade,” in rejoicing that, as one effect of a temporising policy, the whole of this capital, these ships, and these sailors, had been released from all danger of loss or detention. But we cannot bring ourselves to consider it decent in a gentleman holding an important office in the Government, whilst admitting, as he does, that we have been bamboozled by Russian diplomacy, to point triumphantly to this saving of “certain monies”—the property of private individuals, who made their ventures at their own risk and for their own profit—as in any sort balancing the loss of the national honour, which has been incurred by our tardiness in bringing decisive succour to an oppressed ally. Ill-natured people might suggest a suspicion that Mincing Lane and Mark Lane had been exercising too great an influence in Downing Street. And the public may hereafter ask of politicians, who thus ground their defence against the charges of infirmness of purpose and blind credulity, or “connivance,” as Mr Disraeli has, perhaps too correctly, termed it, upon this alleged saving of a few millions of the money of private adventurers—Will it balance the expenditure of the tens of millions of the public money which the prosecution of this war will probably cost, and which might have been saved by the adoption of a more prompt and vigorous policy in the first instance? Will it balance the loss of life—will it support the widows and orphans—will it lighten by one feather the burden upon posterity, which may be the result of this struggle? It would be a miserable thing should it have to be said of England, that there was a period in her history when she hesitated to strike a blow in a just cause until she had taken care that the offender had paid her shopkeepers or her merchants their debts! We pass over this part of the subject, however, as scarcely belonging to the question which we have proposed to ourselves to discuss.
Our imports from Russia, upon the importance of which so much stress has been laid, were in 1852 as given below, from official documents. We have ourselves appended the value of the various items upon a very liberal scale; and we may explain that we select that year instead of 1853, for reasons which we shall hereafter explain.
| Quantities of Russian Produce imported into Great Britain during the year 1852. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corn, wheat, and flour, | qrs. | 733,571 | value | £1,540,499 |
| Oats, | „ | 305,738 | 366,855 | |
| Other grain, | „ | 262,348 | 327,935 | |
| Tallow, | cwts. | 609,197 | 1,187,700 | |
| Linseed, and flax seed, &c. | qrs. | 518,657 | 1,125,000 | |
| Bristles, | lbs. | 1,459,303 | 292,000 | |
| Flax, | cwts. | 948,523 | 1,897,046 | |
| Hemp, | „ | 543,965 | 861,277 | |
| Wool (undressed), | lbs. | 5,353,772 | 200,390 | |
| Iron (unwrought), | tons | 1,792 | 17,920 | |
| Copper (do.), | „ | 226 | 20,000 | |
| Do. (part wrought), | „ | 1,042 | 120,000 | |
| Timber (hewn), | loads | 28,299 | 94,800 | |
| Do. (sawn), | „ | 189,799 | 759,196 | |
| £8,810,618 | ||||
We have taken for the above estimate the prices which prevailed in the first six months of 1852, after which they were raised above an average by peculiar circumstances. The year selected, moreover, was one of larger imports than usual of many articles. For example, our imports of Russian grain in 1852 amounted, in round numbers, to £2,235,300 sterling, against only £952,924 in 1850. Yet we have less than nine millions as the amount of this vaunted import trade from Russia, the interruption of which is to be fraught with such serious consequences to our internal peace, and to the “popularity” of the liberal representatives of our large towns.
But fortunately for the country, and rather mal apropos for those who would fain convert any diminution of our supplies of produce from Russia into the ground of an anti-war agitation, we have succeeded in procuring from that country during the past year supplies unprecedented in quantity. The following have been our imports from Russia in 1853, as compared with the previous year:—
| Corn, wheat, and flour, | qrs. | 1,070,909 | against | 733,571 | in 1852. |
| Oats, | „ | 379,059 | 305,738 | ||
| Other grain, | „ | 263,653 | 262,238 | ||
| Tallow, | cwts. | 847,267 | 609,197 | ||
| Seeds, | qrs. | 785,015 | 518,657 | ||
| Bristles, | lbs. | 2,477,789 | 1,459,303 | ||
| Flax, | cwts. | 1,287,988 | 948,523 | ||
| Hemp, | „ | 836,373 | 543,965 | ||
| Wool, | lbs. | 9,054,443 | 5,353,772 | ||
| Iron, | tons | 5,079 | 1,792 | ||
| Copper (unwrought), | „ | 974 | 226 | ||
| Copper (part wrought), | „ | 656 | 1,042 | ||
| Timber (hewn), | loads | 45,421 | 28,299 | ||
| Timber (sawn), | „ | 245,532 | 189,799 |
If mercantile opinions are at all to be relied upon, these extra supplies ought to have a tendency to bring down prices, which the prospect of war has enhanced beyond what existing circumstances seem to warrant, even presuming that we had no other dependence than upon Russia for the articles with which she has heretofore supplied us. For example, we have paid during the past year, if we take present prices, for our imports of wheat alone from Russia, about £6,470,000 sterling, whereas, at the prices of the early part of 1852, we should have paid for the same quantity of wheat just half the money. And at the present moment, and since war has been regarded as inevitable, we have had a downward tendency in all our principal markets. It has been discovered that we hold more home-grown wheat than was anticipated; and, with a favourable seed-time and a propitious spring, hopes are entertained that we shall not in the present year be so dependent upon the foreigner as we have been during that which has passed. Tallow also is an article for which we have been lately paying the extravagant prices of 62s. to 63s. per cwt. In the early part of 1852, the article was worth about 37s. 6d. for the St Petersburg quality. No English grazier, however, ever knew butcher’s meat or fat at their present prices; and a propitious year for the agriculturist will most probably bring matters to a more favourable state for the consumer.
It is not, however, true that a state of war with Russia can shut us out from our supply of the produce of that country. It will come to us from her ports, unless we avail ourselves of our right to blockade them strictly, in the ships of neutral countries. A portion of it—and no inconsiderable portion—will reach us overland, Russia herself being the greatest sufferer, from the extra cost of transit. There can be no doubt of every effort being made by her great landowners to make market of their produce, and convert it at any sacrifice into money; for it must be borne in mind that they are at the present moment minus some seven or eight millions sterling of British and other money, usually advanced upon the forthcoming crops. We need scarcely point at the difficulty in which this want must place Russia in such a struggle as that in which she is at present engaged. The paper issues of her government may for a time be forced upon her slavish population as money. But that population requires large imports of tea, coffee, sugar, spices, fruits, wines, and other foreign products; and it is not difficult to predict that there will be found few capitalists in Europe or Asia, willing to accommodate her with a loan wherewith to pay even for these necessaries, much less to feed her grasping ambition by an advance of money for the purchase of additional arms and military stores. Moreover, we are not by any means so absolutely dependent upon Russia for many of the principal articles with which she has heretofore supplied us, as certain parties would wish us to believe. We could have an almost unlimited supply of flax and hemp from our own colonies, if we chose to encourage the cultivation of them there. In the mean time, Egypt furnishes us with the former article; and Manilla supplies us with a very superior quality of both. Belgium and Prussia are also producers, and with a little encouragement would no doubt extend their cultivation. Our own colonies, however, are our surest dependence for a supply of these and similar articles. An advance of seeds and money to the extent of less than one quarter of the sums which we have been in the habit of advancing to the Russian cultivator, would bring forward to this country a supply of the raw materials of flax and hemp, which would be quite in time, with our present stock, to relieve us from any danger of deficiency for at least a season to come. With respect to tallow, we have a right to depend upon America, both North and South, for a supply. Australia can send us an aid, at all events, to such supply; and we may probably have next year a larger quantity within our own resources. With respect to seeds, we shall be able to derive these from the countries whence flax and hemp are cultivated for our markets; and our timber, derived at present from Russia, we can certainly dispense with. There is nothing valuable in Russian timber except its applicability for the masting and sparring of ships requiring large growth; and, with our modern method of splicing yards and masts, we can do perfectly well with the less tall timber of Norway and Sweden.
The real fact is, that the alleged short supply of the raw materials to be expected from Russia is a perfect bugbear. We could dispense with Russia as a country of supply, were we to employ British capital to assist our own colonists, and other countries, to provide us with such supply. There was once, however, a Russian Company; and the trade seems to have been conducted as a monopoly ever since.
But we must get rid of this strange argument, that the value of the trade with a country consists in the large amount of indebtedness which we contract with its dealers. We have now to consider the relative value of Russia and Turkey as consumers of British manufactured goods and produce. The following we find to have been the value of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported to the two countries for the five years from 1846 to 1850:—
| 1846. | 1847. | 1848. | 1849. | 1850. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey, | £2,141,897 | £2,992,280 | £3,116,365 | £2,930,612 | £3,113,679 |
| Russia, | 1,725,148 | 1,844,543 | 1,925,226 | 1,566,575 | 1,454,771 |
Turkey thus took from us in 1850 £1,658,908 in excess of Russia’s purchases, having increased that excess from £416,719 in 1846. The increased imports of the former country amounted in the five years to nearly a million sterling, or 50 per cent, whilst the imports of Russia fell off by £370,377, or above 20 per cent. There is this great difference, too, in the imports from this country of Russia and Turkey—The former takes from us raw materials, which we do not produce ourselves, deriving merely a mercantile or brokerage profit upon the supply; manufactured articles which contain the smallest amount of British labour; and machinery to aid the progress of her population as our rivals in manufacturing pursuits. The latter takes our fully manufactured and perfected fabrics. So far as our cotton and woollen manufacturers are concerned, Russia took in 1850—
| Cotton yarn, | £245,625 |
| Woollen and worsted do., | 304,016 |
| Machinery and mill-work, | 203,992 |
The remainder of her imports from us consisted of foreign produce. Turkey took from us, however, a large amount of labour and skill, or its reward, as will be seen from the following table:—
| Imports of Manufactured Textiles to Russia and Turkey in 1850. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cotton. | Woollen. | Linen. | Silk. | Total. | |
| Turkey, | £2,232,369 | £154,558 | £22,500 | £13,221 | £2,422,348 |
| Russia, | 61,196 | 66,256 | 5,414 | 8,579 | 140,455 |
| Total excess to Turkey, | £2,280,903 | ||||
Our exports to Russia have certainly increased in amount within the last two years, although our customs’ reports do not convey to us the full truth as to their character. We have been feeding that country with materials of mischief. She has had not only mill machinery, but the machinery of war-steamers from us; but most likely either Sir Charles Napier, or Admiral Dundas, will be enabled to render us a profitable account of the property thus invested.
But a comparison of our exports to Russia and Turkey respectively does not by any means meet the true facts of our position. Within the past few years we have been carrying on a vast and increasing trade with those Asiatic countries which draw their supplies of merchandise from the various ports of the Levant, and from the Adriatic. Smyrna has become a commercial station so important that we have at this moment three lines of powerful steamers running to it from the port of Liverpool alone; and a very valuable trade is also carried on by English houses in the port of Trieste. Egypt, too, is largely tributary to us commercially. There is, in fact, no portion of the world whose transactions with Great Britain have expanded so greatly in amount and value within the past few years as those very countries which Russia is seeking to grasp and bring within her own control. Our “Greek houses,” through whose agency the bulk of this trade is carried on, are now regarded throughout the manufacturing districts as second to none in the extent and importance of their business; and, what is more, that business must rapidly extend, as increased facilities of communication are provided from the shores of the Levant and the Black Sea with the interior countries of Asia. Notwithstanding all the faults of the Turkish character and rule, we are inclined to believe that from the reign of the present Sultan, Abdul Medjid, a vast amelioration of the condition of her people, and the cultivation by them of increased dealings and friendships with the more civilised communities of Western Europe will take place. Be these expectations, however, fulfilled or not, we cannot afford to lose such a trade as the following figures, which we take from Mr Burns’ Commercial Glance, show that we are at present carrying on with Turkey in the article of cotton goods alone:—
| Exports of Cotton Goods to Turkey and the Levant in 1851 to 1853. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1851. | 1852. | 1853. | ||
| Plain calicoes, | yards, | 49,337,614 | 57,962,893 | 51,224,807 |
| Printed and dyed do., | 40,433,798 | 39,394,743 | 47,564,743 | |
| Cotton yarn, | lbs. | 8,015,674 | 12,171,045 | 10,563,177 |
These markets, in fact, have taken, during the past year, one-sixteenth of our entire exports of plain calicoes, and one-eleventh of our exports of printed and dyed calicoes, whilst her imports of yarn—the article upon the production of which in this country the least amount of labour is expended—have been comparatively insignificant. The imports of cotton goods into Russia are, on the contrary, almost entirely confined to yarn for the consumption of the Russian manufacturer.
So far, therefore, as our export trade is likely to be affected during the coming struggle, we have manifestly got by the hands a more valuable customer than we are likely to lose in Russia; and we cannot discover in what way, with the means at present at her disposal, she can interrupt, or limit, that trade further than by destroying for a time the consuming power of those provinces of Turkey east of the river Pruth, which she has occupied with her troops. Our shipowners and manufacturers may lose for a time some portion of the valuable trade with the population of Wallachia and Moldavia which is carried on through the ports of Galatz and Ibrail upon the Danube. It will probably, however, be one of the earliest aims of the combined powers of England and France to clear that portion of Turkey of the presence of the invader, and to maintain the long-established inviolability of the two eastern mouths of the Danube—the St George’s and Sulina—as outlets for her commerce with neutral countries. The remainder of our trade with Turkey must remain impervious to the efforts of Russia, unless her fleet, at present shut up in Sebastopol, first achieve the exploit of destroying, or capturing, the magnificent navies which England and France have assembled in the Black Sea, or her Baltic fleet succeeds in forcing its passage through the Cattegat or the Sound, and in making its way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Neither of these contingencies can be regarded as very likely to be realised by Russia in the face of the superior power which will shortly be arrayed against her.
There is certainly the possibility that our commerce with Turkey may suffer to some extent through the drain upon the resources of her population, created by a necessarily large war-expenditure. No material symptoms of such suffering have occurred thus far, notwithstanding she has been for months past actually engaged in hostilities, the preparation for which must have been very costly. Her imports of textile fabrics fell off very little in 1853 from their amount in former years; and even this may in part be accounted for by the unsettled prices, in this country, which have resulted from strikes throughout our manufacturing districts, and other causes of an accidental or a purely domestic character. Moreover, to balance any such falling off in her ordinary imports, Turkey will most probably require from us large supplies of stores, munitions of war, arms, &c., as well as of produce of various kinds, to fill up the vacuum created by the partial interruption of her own foreign trade.
We have a further guarantee of commercial safety during this struggle, unless it should assume new features, in the fact that the commercial marine of Russia is blocked up, like her fleets, in the Baltic and the Black Sea. There is not at this moment a single Russian merchantman in the ports of Great Britain or France—the few vessels which were shut out from their usual winter quarters having been sold some time ago, to escape the risk of seizure. She is thus without the materials for inflicting the annoyance upon our colonial and foreign trade which she might have possessed, could she have armed any considerable portion of her mercantile navy for privateering purposes. It has been reported, indeed, that two of her cruisers have been met with somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Pacific, and suggested that their object may be to waylay and capture some of our gold ships. But that the report in question is not believed—and that any serious interference with our vessels engaged in the carrying trade, to and from the various ports of the world, is not feared by our best informed capitalists—is evident from the fact, that there has as yet been no marked advance in the rates of insurance upon such property. It has been reported, too, that Russian agents have been lately engaged in the United States of America in negotiating for the purchase, or building, of large ships capable of being converted into vessels of war. Be this so, although we greatly doubt the fact. We cannot be taken off our guard, in the event of any such purchase being made, or such conversion taking place. Our fast-sailing ocean steamers will bring us the necessary information quite in time to enable us to take the steps most proper for the occasion; and whilst mentioning those noble vessels, we must remark upon the important change which the application of steam to navigation will effect in all future struggles between maritime countries. We do not refer here to the power which it gives of taking fleets into action, or of making more rapid sail to the localities where their services are required, although the effect of this power is incalculable in value. We allude merely to the advantage which we shall derive in such struggles from the vastly increased rapidity and regularity with which we are at present supplied with information of an enemy’s movements, from all quarters of the world. We shall no longer have to witness the spectacle of rival fleets seeking each other in vain—proceeding from sea to sea only to discover that they have missed each other on the way. Traversed as the ocean is now in every direction by fast-sailing steamers, there can be little fear of such fleets, if their commanders are really anxious for an engagement, being unable to procure tolerably accurate information of each other’s whereabouts. We shall no longer require the aid of powerful fleets as convoys of our merchantmen, in seas where it can be so readily known that an enemy is not to be met with; and, as another result, we shall probably see an end put to the injurious system of privateering. Few parties will be found to risk life and property in assaults upon the commerce of a powerful maritime country, with the certainty before them that every movement which they make must be so promptly made known, and every offence which they commit must bring down upon them such speedy punishment.
There is, however, one element of commercial mischief which may make itself felt during the coming struggle, although such mischief, if it unfortunately should occur, could not be attributed properly to the mere fact of the existence of a state of war. It may, and very probably will, be proved that we cannot carry on a free-trade system, which involves the necessity of providing for enlarged imports concurrently with expensive military and naval operations both in the north and south of Europe, and possibly in Asia as well, with a currency restricted as ours is by the mistaken legislation of 1844. Already the note of alarm of this danger has been sounded from a quarter whose authority cannot be treated lightly on such a subject. Mr William Brown, the eminent American merchant, and member for South Lancashire, emphatically warned her Majesty’s Government, during the recent debate on the Budget, of the probability, and almost certainty, of a severe monetary crisis as the consequence of persistence in carrying out in their full stringency the measures passed, at the instigation of Sir Robert Peel, in that and the following year. But for the operation of those measures, Mr Brown contended that the calamity of 1847 would never have occurred. The country, he says, was paralysed by the effect which they produced; and the seven or eight millions sterling in bullion, held at the time in the coffers of the Bank, “might as well have been thrown into the sea,” as retained there unproductive during a period of pressure. Should the same state of things occur again, therefore, during the approaching struggle—should the commerce and industry of the country be prostrated, and the government be rendered incapable of prosecuting with the required energy a just war, to which we are bound alike by every consideration of national honour, sound policy, and good faith towards an oppressed ally—we must not be told that the suffering and degradation which will be brought down upon our heads are the results of a war expenditure merely, or have been caused by any natural interruption of our ordinary trading pursuits. The true cause of the calamity, it must become obvious to all the world, will be our dogged maintenance of an impracticable crotchet; and should the nation submit to be thus thwarted and fettered in its determination to maintain its high prestige—should it submit to sink down from its position as a leading power,—we may with reason be asked the question, “Of what avail is your possession of the noblest fleet which ever rode the seas in ancient or in modern days—of what avail is the possession of the best-disciplined and bravest soldiers which ever marched to battle—of what avail is your vast mercantile marine, your vast accumulations of capital, your almost limitless command over all the improved appliances which modern science and ingenuity have constructed for the purposes of war, if you cannot resent a national insult, or oppose the aggressions of an enemy, without commercial ruin, suspended industry, and popular disaffection and outrage being spread over the face of your whole empire?” We hope, however, for better things. We feel confident that a high-minded and honourable people will not submit to be thus stultified and degraded in the eyes of the world. We entertain, too, a reasonable hope that the unpatriotic faction, who would gladly involve the country in that degradation, will not be favoured in their unworthy efforts by the possession of the instrumentality—a suffering and dissatisfied working population—upon which they calculate to insure success. By the blessing of a bountiful Providence, clothing our fields and those of Western Europe and America with luxuriant harvests, we may this year be snatched from our position of dependence upon the growth of an enemy’s soil for the food of our people, and be enabled to enter upon a period of plenty and cheapness, instead of that scarcity and high prices of all the necessaries of life from which we have been suffering during the past twelve months—certainly without such suffering being attributable to a state of war, or to any but ordinary causes.
THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS.[[1]]
The history of Puppets and their shows may at first appear but a trivial subject to fix the attention and occupy the pen of a learned academician and elegant writer. The very word history may seem misapplied to a chronicle of the pranks of Punchinello, and of the contortions of fantoccini. Puppet-shows! it may be said; troops of tawdry figures, paraded from fair to fair, to provoke the laughter of children and the grin of rustics—is that a theme for a bulky octavo at the hands of so erudite and spirituel an author as M. Charles Magnin? Had M. Magnin chosen to reply otherwise than with perfect candour to anticipated comments of this kind—the comments of the superficial and hastily-judging—he might easily have done so by saying that, whilst studying with a more important aim—for that history of the stage of which he has already published portions—he found the wooden actors so constantly thrusting themselves into the society of their flesh-and-blood betters, so continually intruding themselves, with timber joints, invisible strings, and piping voices, upon stages where human players strutted, that, to be quit of their importunity, he was fain to shelve them in a volume. This, however, is not the motive he alleges. He boldly breasts the difficulty, and stands up for the merits of his marionettes, quite deserving, he maintains, of a separate study and a special historian. He denies that time can be considered lost or lightly expended which is passed in tracing the vicissitudes of an amusement that, for three thousand years, has been in favour with two-thirds of the human race. And he summons to his support an imposing phalanx of great men—poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians—who have interested themselves in puppets, taken pleasure in their performances, and even written for their mimic theatre. He reminds his readers how many pointed remarks and precious lessons, apt comparisons and graceful ideas, have been suggested by such shows to the greatest writers of all countries and ages, and heads the list of his puppets’ patrons with the names of Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Petronius, in ancient times; and with those of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Molière, Swift, Voltaire, and Goethe, amongst the moderns; to say nothing of Charles Nodier, Punchinello’s laureate, the assiduous frequenter of Parisian puppet-shows, who has devoted so many playful and sparkling pages to that favourite study of his literary leisure. M. Magnin begins to be alarmed at the shadows he has evoked. Is it not presumption, he asks himself, to enter a path upon which his predecessors have been so numerous and eminent? The subject, for whose frivolity he lately almost apologised, appears too elevated for his range when he reviews the list of illustrious names more or less connected with it, when he recalls the innumerable flowers of wit with which their fancy has wreathed it. So he marks out for himself a different track. Others have played with the theme; he approaches it in a graver spirit. “I am not so impertinent,” he exclaims, “as to seek to put (as the Greeks would have said) my foot in the dance of those great geniuses. Too well do I see the folly of attempting to jingle, after them, the bells of that bauble.” Following the example of the learned Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi—who wrote a valuable although a brief dissertation on the Puppets of the Ancients—but allotting to himself a much broader canvass, M. Magnin purposes to write, in all seriousness, sincerity, and simplicity, a history of the “wooden comedians,” not only of antiquity, but of the middle ages, and of modern times.
A subject of far less intrinsic interest than the one in question could not fail to become attractive in the hands of so agreeable and skilful a savant as M. Magnin. But it were a mistake to suppose that the history of the Puppet family, from Euripides’ days to ours, has not a real and strong interest of its own. The members of that distinguished house have been mixed up in innumerable matters into which one would hardly have anticipated their poking their wooden noses and permanently blushing countenances. They have been alternately the tools of priestcraft and the mouthpiece of popular feeling. Daring improvisatori, in certain times and countries, theirs was the only liberty of speech, their voice the sole organ of the people’s opposition to its rulers. Their diminutive stature, the narrow dimensions of their stage, the smallness of their powers of speech, did not always secure impunity to their free discourse, which sometimes, as their best friends must confess, degenerated into license. So that we occasionally, in the course of their history, find the audacious dolls driven into their boxes—with cords cut and heads hanging—or at least compelled to revise and chasten their dramatic repertory. Sometimes decency and morality rendered such rigour incumbent upon the authorities; but its motive was quite as frequently political. It is curious to note with what important events the Puppet family have meddled, and what mighty personages they have managed to offend. At the present day, when the press spreads far and wide the gist and most salient points of a successful play, in whatever European capital it may be performed, allusions insulting or irritating to friendly nations and governments may be fair subject for the censor’s scissors. It was only the other day that a Russian official journal expressed, in no measured terms, its high indignation at the performance, at a fourth-rate theatre on the Paris boulevards, of a drama entitled “The Cossacks,” in which those warriors of the steppes are displayed to great disadvantage. The circumstances of the moment not being such as to make the French government solicitous to spare the feelings of the Czar, the piece continued to be nightly played, to the delight of shouting audiences, and to the no small benefit of the treasury of the Gaieté. One hundred and twenty-three years ago, Russian susceptibility, it appears, was held quite as easy to ruffle as at the present day. In 1731, the disgrace of Menschikoff was made the subject of a sort of melodrama, performed in several German towns by the large English puppets of Titus Maas, privileged comedian of the court of Baden-Durlach. The curious playbill of this performance ran as follows: “With permission, &c., there will be performed on an entirely new theatre, and with good instrumental music, a Haupt-und-Staatsaction, recently composed and worthy to be seen, which has for title—The extraordinary vicissitudes of good and bad fortune of Alexis Danielowitz, prince Menzicoff, great favourite, cabinet minister, and generalissimo of the Czar of Moscow, Peter I., of glorious memory, to-day a real Belisarius, precipitated from the height of his greatness into the most profound abyss of misfortune; the whole with Jack-pudding, a pieman, a pastrycook’s boy, and amusing Siberian poachers.” Titus Maas obtained leave to perform this wonderful piece at Berlin, but it was quickly stopped by order of Frederick-William I.’s government, for fear of offending Russia. In 1794 a number of puppet-shows were closed in Berlin—for offences against morality, was the reason given, but more probably, M. Magnin believes, because the tone of their performances was opposed to the views of the government. In what way he does not mention, but we may suppose it possible that the Puppenspieler had got infected with the revolutionary doctrines then rampant in France. The Prussian police still keeps a sharp eye on exhibitions of this kind, which at Berlin are restricted to the suburbs. In France we find traces of a regular censorship of the marionette theatres. Thus, in the Soleinne collection of manuscript plays is one entitled: The capture of a company of players by a Tunis rover, in the month of September 1840. This piece, whose name, as M. Magnin remarks, reads more like the heading of a newspaper paragraph than the title of a play, was performed in 1741 at the fair of St Germains, by the puppets of the celebrated Nicolet, and annexed to it is a permit of performance, bearing no less a signature than that of Crébillon. It is not improbable that the puppet-show had fairly earned its subjection to a censorship by the irreverence and boldness with which it took the most serious, important, and painful events as subjects for its performances. In 1686, D’Harlay, then attorney-general at the parliament of Paris, wrote as follows to La Reynie, the lieutenant of police:—“To M. de la Reynie, councillor of the king in his council, &c. It is said this morning at the palace, that the marionettes which play at the fair of St Germain represent the discomfiture of the Huguenots, and as you will probably consider this a very serious matter for marionettes, I have thought it right, sir, to advise you of it, that you may so act as in your prudence shall seem fit.” It does not appear what result this advice had; but as the date of the note is little more than three months later than that of the edict of revocation, when Louis XIV. was exulting in the downfall of heresy in France, and when those who still clung to Protestantism were looked upon as hardened sinners, no better than common malefactors, it is quite probable La Reynie thought it needless to interfere with the puppet-scoffers at the Huguenots. D’Harlay, it will be remembered, was intimate with some of the chiefs of the proscribed party, and a particular friend of the Marquis de Ruvigny, although he some years afterwards betrayed, according to St Simon, the trust that friend had reposed in him. But we are wandering from our wooden play-actors.
The first two sections of M. Magnin’s work, devoted to the puppets of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, are far briefer, and upon the whole, less interesting than the portion of his volume allotted to those of modern times. All those parts display extensive reading and patient research. The author commences by defining and classing his marionettes. “Everybody knows that marionettes are small figures of wood, bone, ivory, baked earth, or merely of linen, representing real or fantastical beings, and whose flexible joints obey the impulse given to them by strings, wires, or catgut, pulled by a skilful and invisible hand.” He divides them into three classes: hierarchical, aristocratic, and popular. In ancient times and in the middle ages, the first of these classes was decidedly the most important and influential. Auguries were obtained and miracles wrought by its aid, indispensable to priestly ambition and to idolatrous or erroneous creeds, dependent upon prodigies for support. Even at the present day, and in highly civilised countries, puppets of this kind are not wholly in disrepute, nor are the services of bleeding saints and nodding madonnas uniformly declined by the pastors of credulous flocks. The practice is very ancient—if that can give it respectability. The statue of Jupiter Ammon, when carried in procession on the shoulders of priests, previously to uttering its oracles, indicated to its bearers, by a motion of its head, the road it wished them to take. The golden statue of Apollo, in the temple of Heliopolis, moved when it had an oracle to deliver; and if the priests delayed to raise it upon their shoulders, it sweated and moved again. When the high-priest consulted it, it recoiled if it disapproved of the proposed enterprise; but if it approved, it pushed its bearers forward, and drove them, as with reins. M. Magnin quotes, from the writers of antiquity, a host of instances of this kind, in which machinery, quicksilver, and the loadstone were evidently the means employed. “In Etruria and in Latium, where the sacerdotal genius has at all times exercised such a powerful influence, hierarchical art has not failed to employ, to act upon the popular imagination, sculpture with springs.” The ancient idols of Italy were of wood, like those of Greece, coloured, richly dressed, and very often capable of motion. At Præneste the celebrated group of the infants Jupiter and Juno, seated upon the knees of Fortune, their nurse, appears to have been movable. It seems evident, from certain passages in ancient writers, that the little god indicated by a gesture the favourable moment to consult the oracle. At Rome, feasts were offered to the statues of the gods, at which these did not play so passive a part as might be supposed. Religious imagination or sacerdotal address aided their immobility. Titus Livius, describing the banquet celebrated at Rome in 573, mentions the terror of the people and senate on learning that the images of the gods had averted their heads from the dishes presented to them. When we meet with these old tales of statues invited to repasts, and manifesting their good or bad will by movements, we understand by what amalgamation of antique recollections and local legends was formed, in the Spain of the middle ages, the popular tale, so touching and so dramatic, of the Convidado de Piedra. Between these tricks of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, and the devices resorted to by the Christian priests of the middle ages, a close coincidence is to be traced. M. Magnin touches but cursorily on this part of the subject, referring to the crucifix said to have bowed its head in approval of the decisions of the Council of Trent, to the votive crucifix of Nicodemus, which, according to popular belief at Lucca, crossed the town on foot to the cathedral, blessing the astonished people on its passage, and which, upon another occasion, gave its foot to kiss to a poor minstrel—perhaps himself a puppet-showman—and mentioning as a positive and undoubted fact the movement of the head and eyes of the crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, testified to by old Lambarde in his Perambulations of that county. It is to be observed that these winking, walking, and nodding images were not always constructed with a view to delude credulous Christians into belief in miracles, but also for dramatic purposes, with the object of exciting religious enthusiasm by a representation of the sufferings of the Redeemer and the martyrs, and probably, at the same time, to extract alms from the purses of the faithful. When thus employed, they may be said to form the link between mechanical church sculpture, used by priests for purposes of imposture, and the player-puppets of more modern times. It is the point where the hierarchical and the popular classes of puppets blend. Scenes from the life and passion of the Saviour were favourite subjects for such representations; but incidents in the lives of the Virgin and saints were also frequently acted, both in secular and monastic churches, and that almost down to our own times, notwithstanding canonical prohibitions. “In a synod held at Orihuela, a little Valencian bishopric, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, it was found necessary to renew the orders against the admission into churches of small images (statuettes) of the Virgin and female saints, curled, painted, covered with jewels, and dressed in silks, and resembling courtezans.” The abuse, nevertheless, continued; and we believe there would be little difficulty in authenticating instances of it in Spain within the present century. That it was an actual puppet-show which the ecclesiastical authorities thus strove to suppress, or at least to expel from churches, is clearly proved by a passage M. Magnin quotes from the proceedings of the synod: “We forbid the representation, in churches or elsewhere, of the actions of Christ, of those of the most holy Virgin, and of the lives of the saints, by means of those little movable figures vulgarly called titeres.” This last word is the exact Spanish equivalent to the French marionettes and the English puppet-show. It was a titerero who fell in with Don Quixote at a Manchegan hostelry, and exhibited before him “the manner in which Señor Don Gayferos accomplished the deliverance of his spouse, Melisendra,” and whose figures of paste were so grievously mishandled by the chivalrous defender of dames. And it may further be remarked, as a sign of the ancient alliance in Spain between the church and the theatre, that an altarpiece and the stage or theatre upon which a puppet-show is exhibited are both expressed, to the present day, by the word retablo. To the titeres, by no means the least diverting and original of the European marionette family, we shall hereafter come. The precedence must be given to Italy, the cradle and the paradise of puppets.
The eccentric and learned physician and mathematician, Jerome Cardan, was the first modern writer who paid serious and scientific attention to the mechanism of marionettes. He refers to them in two different works, and in one of these, a sort of encyclopedia, entitled de Varietate Rerum, when speaking of the humbler branches of mechanics, he expresses his surprise at the marvels performed by two Sicilians, by means of two wooden figures which they worked between them. “There was no sort of dance,” he says, “that these figures were not able to imitate, making the most surprising gestures with feet and legs, arms and head, the whole with such variety of attitude, that I cannot, I confess, understand the nature of the ingenious mechanism, for there were not several strings, sometimes slack and sometimes tight, but only one to each figure, and that was always at full stretch. I have seen many other figures set in motion by several strings, alternately tight and slack, which is nothing marvellous. I must further say that it was a truly agreeable spectacle to behold how the steps and gestures of these dolls kept time with the music.” Such variety and precision of movement prevent the possibility of confounding this exhibition with that puppet-show of the lowest class common in the streets at the present day, where a Savoyard boy makes a doll dance upon a board by means of a string fastened to his knee.[[2]] M. Magnin supposes that the single string, always at full stretch, was a little tube, through which passed a number of small strings connected with the interior of the puppet. A similar plan is general in Italy at the present day amongst the aristocracy of the marionettes—those whose performances are in regular theatres, and not in wandering show-boxes. The theatre and the mode of working of out-of-door puppet-shows is the same in most countries, and it appears more than probable, from the authorities adduced by M. Magnin, that the marionettes of Greece and ancient Italy had much the same sort of stage as that on which the pupazzi of Italian towns, the London Punch, and the Guignol and Gringalet of Paris, are to the present day exhibited; namely, a sort of large sentry-box or little fortress, called castello in Italy, castillo in Spain, and castellet in France. In Persia, in Constantinople, in Cairo, the same form prevails. In modern times the extent of the stage has been diminished, and the apparatus lightened, so as to admit of theatre, scenery, actors, and orchestra being carried long distances by two men. Formerly, in Spain, as we gather from Cervantes and other authorities, a cart was necessary to convey the theatrical baggage of a titerero, which was on a larger scale than at the present day, many more figures appearing on the stage, and the mode of working them being different from that now in use in strolling puppet-shows, where the usual and very simple process is for the showman to insert his fingers in the sleeves of the actors, only half of whose body is visible. Master Peter’s show was of a much more elevated style, and seems to have possessed all the newest improvements; as for instance, when the Moor steals softly behind Melisendra and prints a kiss in the very middle of her lips, we are told that “she spits, and wipes them with the sleeves of her shift, lamenting aloud, and tearing for anger her beautiful hair.” If the Lady Melisendra really did spit—and that the word was not a figure of speech of Master Peter’s boy, whose flippancy his master and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance had more than once to reprove—the civilisation of Spanish puppets must have been in a very forward state, for we find M. Magnin recording, as a novel triumph of puppet-mechanism, similar achievements in Germany in the present century. When Goethe’s Faust gave a fresh vogue to the marionette exhibition, from which he had derived his first idea of the subject, Geisselbrecht, a Viennese mechanician, got up the piece with those docile performers, under the title of Doctor Faust, the great Necromancer, in Five Acts, with songs, and performed it at Frankfort, Vienna, and at Weimar, Goethe’s residence. “He strove to excel Dreher and Schütz (other proprietors of marionettes) by the mechanical perfection of his little actors, whom he made raise and cast down their eyes. He even made them cough and spit very naturally, feats which Casperle,[[3]] as may be supposed, performed as often as possible. M. Von der Hagen, scoffing at this puerile marvel, applied Schiller’s lines, from Wallenstein’s Camp, to the Austrian mechanician:—
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt
Das habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;
Aber sein Genie....’”[[4]]
As regards his puppets’ expectorating accomplishments, Geisselbrecht appears merely to have revived the traditions handed down from the days of Gines de Passamonte. But we are again losing the thread of our discourse amongst those of the countless marionettes that glide, skip, and dance over the pages of M. Magnin. Having spoken in this paragraph of the general form and fashion of the ambulant puppet-show, and having in so doing strayed from Italy into Germany and Spain, we will go somewhat farther, to look at the most compact and portable of all exhibitions of the kind. This is to be found in China. There the peripatetic showman elevates himself upon a small platform, and puts on a sort of case or sheath of blue cotton, tight at the ankles, and widening as it approaches the shoulders. Thus accoutred, he looks like a statue in a bag. He then places upon his shoulders a box in the form of a theatre, which encloses his head. His hands, concealed under the dress of the puppets, present these to the spectators, and make them act at his will. The performance over, he shuts up actors and sheath in the box, and carries it away under his arm.
The higher class of marionettes, that have permanent establishments in all the towns of Italy and in various other Continental countries, and a colony of whom lately settled in London, would surely feel a thrill of indignation through every fibre and atom of their composite bodies, were they to hear themselves assimilated to the hardy plebeian puppets that pitch their tent in the gutter or by the road-side, and jest for all comers on the chance of coppers. Here you have him at the street corner—Punch, the ribald and the profligate, maltreating his wife, teasing his dog, hanging the hangman, and beating the devil himself. Or, open this portfolio, containing Pinelli’s charming collection of Italian picturesque costumes. Here is Pulcinella, with his black half-mask, his tight white jerkin, his mitre-shaped cap. What a group he has gathered around him:—idle monks, stately and beautiful Roman women, swarthy and vigorous Trasteverini, children on tiptoe with delight, a lingering peasant, who has stopped his ass to enjoy for a moment the fascinating spectacle and pungent jokes. Nor is the audience always of so humble a description. Persons of rank and education have frequently been known to mingle with it; and tradition relates that the celebrated Leone Allacci, librarian of the Vatican under Alexander VII., author of many great theological works, and of the Dramaturgia, went nightly for recreation to the puppet-show. In social position, however, the al fresco performers are necessarily far inferior to the more elegant and tender puppets who have a settled habitation, a smart and spacious stage, a fixed price, and who, instead of having their master’s hands rudely thrust under their petticoats, are decorously and genteelly manœuvred by means of springs and wires. The difference is manifest: it is Richardson’s booth to the Italian Opera; the Funambules to the Comédie Française. Moreover, the materials of the marionette aristocracy are very superior indeed to those of the common out-of-door jokers. They are by no means of the same clay or from the same mould. They are not cut out of a block, daubed with gaudy paint, and dressed in coarse and tawdry rags. M. Magnin lets us into the secret of their structure and motions. “Their head is usually of card-board; their body and thighs are wooden, their arms of cord; their extremities (that is to say, their hands and their legs) are of lead, or partially so, which enables them to obey the slightest impulse given them, without losing their centre of gravity.” From the top of their head issues a little iron rod, by means of which they are easily transported from one part of the stage to another. To conceal this rod and the movement of the threads from the spectators, the plan was devised of placing in front of the stage a sort of screen, composed of very fine perpendicular threads, drawn very tight, which, blending with those that move the puppets, deceive the most attentive eye. By another still more ingenious invention, all the strings, excepting those of the arms, were made to pass within the body and out at the top of the head, where they were assembled in a slender iron tube, which served at the same time as the rod to move the figures. A totally different system was subsequently introduced by Bartholomew Neri, a distinguished painter and mechanician. It was that of grooves, in which the marionettes were fixed. Their movements were directed by persons beneath the stage, who also pulled their strings. These various systems, sometimes combined, have produced the most astonishing results. One of our countrymen, passing through Genoa in 1834, was taken to the marionette theatre delle Vigne, and witnessed the performance of a grand military drama, The Siege of Antwerp, in which Marshal Gerard and old General Chassé vied with each other in sonorous phrases, rolling eyes, and heroism. The fantoccini of the Fiando theatre at Milan are as celebrated and as much visited by foreigners as the dome, the arch of the Simplon, or the shrine of St Charles. In 1823, a correspondent of the Globe newspaper spoke of them thus: “Such is the precision of movement of these little actors, their bodies, arms, head, all gesticulate with such judgment, and in such perfect unison with the sentiments expressed by the voice, that, but for the dimensions, I might have thought myself in the Rue de Richelieu. Besides Nebuchadnezzar, a classic tragedy, they performed an anacreontic ballet. I wish our opera-dancers, so proud of their legs and arms, could see these wooden dancers copy all their attitudes and graces.” Dancing is a department of their performances in which the Italian marionettes excel. A French author, Mr Jal, who published, nearly twenty years ago, a lively narrative of a ramble from Paris to Naples, was wonder-struck by what he saw at the Fiando. The grand romantic drama in six tableaux, Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Siege of Temeswar, which composed the bulk of the evening’s performance, astonished him much less than the ballet between its acts. “The dancing of these wooden Perrots and Taglionis,” he says, “is truly not to be imagined; horizontal dance, side dance, vertical dance, every possible dance, all the flourishes of feet and legs that you admire at the opera, are to be seen at the Fiando theatre; and when the doll has danced her dance, when she has been well applauded, and the pit calls for her, she comes out from the side scenes, bows, puts her little hand on her heart, and disappears only when she has completely parodied the great singers and the proud dancers of La Scala.” But doubtless the greatest compliment these doll-dancers ever received, was the practical one paid them by the Roman authorities, who compelled the female marionettes to wear drawers! The completeness of the illusion in the case of these puppets suggested some curious reflections to a clever French critic, M. Peisse, with respect to reality in painting, and the laws of material illusion. Speaking of the Roman burattini, “These,” he says, “are little figures worked by a man placed above the stage, which is arranged exactly like that of our theatres. For some minutes after the rising of the curtain, the puppets preserve their true dimensions, but soon they grow larger to the eye, and in a short time they have the appearance of real men. The space in which they move, the furniture, and all the surrounding objects, being in exact proportion with their stature, the illusion is perfect, and is sustained so long as the eye has no point of comparison. But if, as sometimes happens, the hand of the manager shows itself amongst the little actors, it seems that of a giant.... If a man suddenly came amongst the marionettes, he would appear a Gargantua.” Another well-known and esteemed French writer on Italy, M. Beyle (Stendhal),[[5]] tells of the realisation of this last ingenious supposition. He relates, that after the performance (at the Palazzo Fiano at Rome) of Cassandrino allievo di un pittore (Cassandrino pupil of a painter), a child coming upon the stage to trim the lamps, two or three strangers uttered a cry; they took the child for a giant. In all the principal towns of Italy through which he passed, M. Beyle waited upon the marionettes—now in theatres, then in private houses—and the pages he devotes to them are full of that fineness of observation which characterised his charming talent. We can hardly do better than extract his first impressions. “Yesterday, towards nine o’clock,” he says, “I quitted those magnificent saloons, adjacent to a garden full of orange trees, which are called the Café Rospoli. The Fiano palace is just opposite. At the door of a sort of cellar stood a man, exclaiming, ‘Entrate, ô signori! it is about to begin!’ For the sum of twenty-eight centimes (three-pence), I was admitted to the little theatre. The low price made me fear bad company and fleas. I was soon reassured; my neighbours were respectable citizens of Rome. The Roman people is perhaps in all Europe that which best loves and seizes delicate and cutting satire. The theatrical censors being more rigid than at Paris, nothing can be tamer than the comedies at the theatre. Laughter has taken refuge with the marionettes, whose performances are in great measure extemporaneous. I passed a very agreeable evening at the Fiano palace; the stage on which the actors paraded their small persons was some ten feet broad and four high. The decorations were excellent, and carefully adapted to actors twelve inches in height.” The pet character with the Romans is Cassandrino, an elderly gentleman of fifty-five or sixty years of age, fresh, active, dandified, well powdered, well dressed, and well got up, with excellent manners, and much knowledge of the world, whose only failing is, that he falls in love with all the women he meets. “It must be owned,” says M. Beyle, “that the character is not badly devised in a country governed by an oligarchical court composed of bachelors, and where the power is in the hands of old age.” I need hardly say that Cassandrino, although a churchman, is not bound by monastic rules—is in fact a layman—but I would wager that there is not a spectator who does not invest him in imagination with a cardinal’s red cap, or at least with the violet stockings of a monsignore. The monsignori are, it is well known, the young men of the papal court; it is the place that leads to all others. Rome is full of monsignori of Cassandrino’s age, who have their fortune still to make, and who seek amusement whilst waiting for the cardinal’s hat. Cassandrino is the hero of innumerable little plays. His susceptible heart continually leads him into scrapes. Disguised as a young man, he goes to take lessons of a painter, with whose sister he is in love, is detected by the lady’s aunt whom he had formerly courted, escapes from her into the studio, is roughly treated by the pupils, threatened with a dagger’s point by the painter, and at last, to avoid scandal, which he fears more than the poniard, abandons all hope of the red hat, and consents to marry the aunt. In another piece, tired of the monotony of his solitary home, he makes a journey to Civita Vecchia, and meets with all manner of ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitled Cassandrino dilettante e impresario, his too great love of music and the fair sex gets him into quarrels with tenori and bassi, and especially with the prima donna whom he courts, and with the maestro who is his rival. This maestro is in the prime of youth; he has light hair and blue eyes, he loves pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet more seductive than his person. All these qualities, and the very style of his dress, remind the audience of one of the few great men modern Italy has produced. There is a burst of applause; they recognise and greet Rossini.
Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian nobility and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain details than of those given in public. It is generally understood, however, that the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow themselves tolerable license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the house of a rich merchant, a party was assembled to witness the performance of a company of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The theatre was a charming toy, only five feet wide, and which, nevertheless, was an exact model of a large theatre. Before the play began, the lights in the apartment were extinguished. A company of twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in height, with leaden legs, and which had cost a sequin apiece, performed a rather free comedy, abridged from Machiavelli’s Mandragora.” At Naples the performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state. In pieces of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet; and as it often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with the voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the performance.
When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress, improvement, and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of this minor branch of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages, in most things so original and self-relying, was under some obligations to Italy in this respect. The first name of any mark which presents itself to the student of the history of Spanish puppet-shows is that of a skilful mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani, surnamed Gianello, of whom the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as “a second Archimedes;” adding, that this illustrious foreigner brought titeres to great perfection. That so distinguished a man should have wasted his time on such frivolities requires some explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of curious mechanism induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and Italy to apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons. Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on his entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented to him by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described circles in the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science which other authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the emperor’s favour by the construction of an admirable clock, followed him to Spain, and passed two years with him in his monastic retreat, striving, by ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his melancholy patron, depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,” says Flaminio Strada, historian of the war in Flanders, “busied himself, in the solitude of the cloisters of St Just, with the construction of clocks. He had for his master in that art Gianello Torriani, the Archimedes of that time, who daily invented new mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager and curious of all those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed upon the prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There were some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some were seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious mechanician let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in all directions, and which were constructed with such marvellous artifice that one day the superior of the convent, chancing to be present, appeared to fear that there was magic in the matter.” The attention of Charles V., even in the decline of his genius, was not, however, wholly engrossed by such toys as these. He and Torriani discussed and solved more useful and more serious problems—one, amongst others, which Gianello realised after the prince’s death, and which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus to the heights of Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful mechanician of Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon adopted by the titereros. Puppets were already a common amusement in Spain, and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs, and entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters and the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national, notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century down to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at the present day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally foreigners, including many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting naturalised under the name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does not appear ever to have played a prominent part, and probably was rather a sort of supernumerary to the show, like Master Peter’s ape. Occupation was perhaps hard to find for him in the class of pieces preferred by Spanish taste. The nature of these it is not difficult to conjecture. Spain, superstitious, chivalrous, and semi-Moorish, hastened to equip its puppets in knightly harness and priestly robes. “Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the conquerors of the Indies, the characters of the Old and the New Testament, and especially saints and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the usual actors in these shows. The titeres so frequently wear monkish garb, especially in Portugal, that the circumstance has had an influence on their name in this country, where they are more often called bonifrates than titeres. The composition of bonifrate (although the word is old, perhaps older than titere) indicates an Italian origin.” Legends of saints and the book of ballads (Romancero) supplied most of the subjects of the plays performed by Spanish puppets. Of this we have an example in the drama selected by Cervantes for performance by Master Peter’s titeres before Don Quixote. In the course of his researches, M. Magnin was surprised to find (although he ought, perhaps, to have expected it) that bull-fights have had their turn of popularity on the boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces this in a curious old picaresque romance, the memoirs of the picara Justina. This adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life of her great-grandfather, who had kept a theatre of titeres at Seville, and who put such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors that, to hear him, the women who sold fruit and chestnuts and turrones (cakes of almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods and their customers, leaving their hat or their brasero (pan of hot embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of irregular habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His money went, his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre were sold, and his health left him with his worldly goods, so that he became the inmate of an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up the ghost, his granddaughter relates, he lost his senses, and became subject to such furious fits of madness, that one day he imagined himself to be a puppet-show bull (un toro de titeres), and that he was to fight a stone cross which stood in the court of the hospital. Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “Ah perra! que te ageno!” (words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of charity, a good simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice happy man! he has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking it!” At a recent date (1808), a French savant, travelling in Spain, went to the puppet theatre at Valencia. The Death of Seneca was the title of the piece performed. In presence of the audience, the celebrated philosopher, the pride of Cordova, ended historically by opening his veins in a bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his arms were simulated cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An unexpected miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the drama. Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into heaven in a glory, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted by an anachronism.
Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and motley family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their habits may be on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become a reflex of the peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its people. Thus in Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical censors, and despotic governments, we find the burattini dealing in sharp but polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the ballet, and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or curtailment, with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers behind the scenes. The Spanish titere couches his lance and rides forth to meet the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with Cortes to the conquest of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more or less decorum, a moving incident from Holy Writ. In the Jokken and Puppen of Germany we recognise the metaphysical and fantastical tendencies of that country, its broad and rather heavy humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic sprites, and enchanted bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were early cherished, and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the people, we need not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and frivolous—modelling themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin dwells long upon the puppets of his native land, which possess, however, less character and strongly marked originality than those of some of the other countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the etymology of the word marionette—unmistakably French, although it has been of late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie, which crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon came to be applied to those little images of the Virgin that were exhibited, gaily dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the devout. In a pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty name of Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called Marion. “Several streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed images of the Virgin and saints, were called, some Rues des Marmouzets (there are still two streets of this name in Paris), others Rues des Mariettes, and somewhat later, Rues des Marionettes. As irony makes its way everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the words Marotte, Mariotte, and Marionette, was soon exchanged for a jesting and profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the streets and taverns, an unchaste ditty called the Chant Marionnette. The bauble of a licensed fool was called, and is still called, marotte; ‘by reason,’ says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say, of a little girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks irreverently called their wooden actors and actresses marmouzets and mariottes. At the end of the 16th century and commencement of the 17th, several Protestant or sceptical writers were well pleased to confound, with an intention of mockery, the religious and the profane sense of the words marmouzets and marionettes. Henry Estienne, inveighing, in his Apologie pour Herodote, against the chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the mutilation of madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the Egyptians take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has been seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated some marmouzet or marionette.’” It is curious here again to trace the connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show. The marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled robe and burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a jester’s bauble and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is only of a name, soon abandoned by the sacred images to its disreputable usurpers. But we have already seen, especially in the case of Spain, what a scandalous confusion came to pass between religious ceremonies and popular entertainments, until at times these could hardly be distinguished from those; and, as far as what occurred within them went, spectators might often be perplexed to decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a showman’s booth. With respect to the French term marionette, it had yet to undergo, after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane application, a still deeper degradation, before its final confinement to the class of puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th century it came to be applied not only to mechanical images of all kinds, sacred and profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning, to the supposed supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that sorcerers were accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From a huge quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of trials for magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin extracts a passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of “having kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses, marionettes, which are little devils, having usually the form of toads, sometimes of apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows, and the faggot were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors of these unwholesome puppets.
There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce disputes between provinces or towns for the honour of having been the birthplace of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like manner, M. Magnin labours hard, and expends much erudition, to prove that the French Polichinelle, notwithstanding the similarity of name, is neither the son, nor in any way related to the Italian Pulcinella, but is thoroughly French in origin and character. That Harlequin and Pantaloon came from south of the Alps he readily admits; also, that a name has been borrowed from Italy for the French Punch. But he stands up manfully for the originality of this jovial and dissipated puppet, which he maintains to be a thoroughly Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a point to the settlement of which we will not give many lines—the arguments and facts he brings forward are ingenious and amusing. After displaying the marked difference that exists in every respect, except in that of the long hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of Paris and that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active fellow, dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock and trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different character from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach, although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I must say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature, Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in the guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As to the hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in France, of a facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Halle was called the hunchback of Arras, not that he was deformed, but on account of his humorous vein.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his spangled doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant cuirass of men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in fashion, which imitated the curve of the cuirass.[[6]] The very hat of Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern three-cornered covering, but to the beaver, with brim turned up, which he still wore in the seventeenth century), was the hat of the gentlemen of that day, the hat à la Henri IV. Finally, certain characteristic features of his face, as well as the bold jovial amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind us, in caricature, of the qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to me to be a completely national type, and one of the most vivacious and sprightly creations of French fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been handed down to posterity, were a father and son called Brioché. According to the most authentic of the traditions collected, Jean Brioché exercised, at the beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two professions of tooth-drawer and puppet-player. His station was at the end of the Pont Neuf, near the gate of Nesle, and his comrade was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With or without his consent, Polichinelle was about this time dragged into politics. Amongst the numerous Mazarinades and political satires that deluged Paris in 1649, there was one entitled Letter from Polichinelle to Jules Mazarin. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by way of signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”
It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi (who was perhaps a countryman and protégé of the cardinal’s), written with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a good advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of some political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the French Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is made to say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have always been better liked and more respected by the people than you have; for how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to an untimely end, if we are to put faith in a little book now very rare (although it has gone through several editions), entitled, Combat de Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché. This Cirano was a mad duellist of extreme susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage, “which was much disfigured, was cause of the death of more than ten persons. He could not endure that any should look at him, and those who did had forthwith to draw and defend themselves.” This lunatic, it is said, one day took Fagotin for a lackey who was making faces at him, and ran him through on the spot. The story may have been a mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the mistake he is said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we become acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey. “He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author of the Combat de Cirano; “his master had put him on an old Spanish hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck was a frill à la Scaramouche; he wore a doublet with six movable skirts, trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather the look of a lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a pointless blade.” It was this innocent weapon, according to the writer quoted from, that poor Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish against the terrible Cirano. Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises Fagotin’s tricks in his fable of The Lion and his Court, and Molière makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfois Fagotin et les marionnettes.”
Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest dramatist. It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669) that puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their popularity in France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the accounts of expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of 1365 livres “to Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at St Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and November, to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded by another puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months. The dauphin was then nine years old, and evidently very fond of Polichinelle—to whose exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of Fagotin, it is not, however, to be supposed that the attractions of Brioché’s performances were confined. He and his brother showman had doubtless a numerous company of marionettes, performing a great variety of pieces, since they were able to amuse the dauphin and his juvenile court for nearly five months without intermission. Like all distinguished men, Brioché, decidedly one of the celebrities of his time, and to whom we find constant allusions in the prose and verse of that day, had his enemies and his rivals. Amongst the former was to be reckoned no less a personage than Bossuet, who denounced marionettes (with a severity that might rather have been expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than from a prelate of Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment, calculated to counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his flock. M. Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper when thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were a few harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse and half prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England, describes the fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure of the marionettes’ transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he says, “the hero of that stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not sufficiently so to bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts by his witticisms.” We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence in such matters for more than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair share of license in the pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the jests introduced by their invisible readers; and as regards their actions, M. Magnin himself tells us of the houzarde, an extremely gaillarde dance, resembling that called the antiquaile mentioned in Rabelais. Notwithstanding which, the marionettes were in great favour with very honest people, and Charles Perrault, one of the most distinguished members of the old French Academy, praised them in verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes Brioché put into the mouths of his actors were greatly to the taste of the Parisians; so much so that when an English mechanician exhibited other puppets which he had contrived to move by springs instead of strings, the public still preferred Brioché, “on account of the drolleries he made them say.” That he was not always and everywhere so successful, we learn by a quaint extract from the Combat de Cirano, already mentioned. Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it into his head to ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop, twisting, turning, dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite marmouzet, or, better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called Polichinelle. His comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M. Magnin, the voisin, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After visiting several towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a canton where marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his phiz, as well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn sorcerers, they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared that they had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must be devils. Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of sense they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented themselves with stripping the marionettes naked. O poveretta!” The same story is told by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at Soleure, and says that Brioché owed his release to a captain of the French-Swiss regiment then recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that time had powerful protectors. Brioché’s son and successor, Francis, whom the Parisians familiarly called Fanchon, having been offensively interfered with, wrote at once to the king. It would seem that, without quitting the vicinity of the Pont Neuf, he desired to transfer his standing to the Faubourg St Germains end, and that the commissaire of that district prohibited his exhibition. On the 16th October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the lieutenant-general of police, communicating his majesty’s commands that Brioché should be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a proper place assigned to him where he might do so.
The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s reign, and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have thundered against them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards the middle of the century, a great change took place in the character of their performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of court and city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and surprises; the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French stage has long been and still is famous, were replaced by showy dramas and pièces à spectacle, in which the military element seems to have predominated, judging from the titles of some of them—The Bombardment of Antwerp, The Taking of Charleroi, The General Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the commencement of the decline of puppet performances in France; the public taste underwent a change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire were in great measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the flute-player, the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran in crowds to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in 1744, a Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical theatre, which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous show. ‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements, without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still more surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels perishing, sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these were announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild animals.” Bull and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France, just a century ago, for all the world as in England in the days of buxom Queen Bess. M. Magnin copies an advertisement of one of these savage exhibitions, which might pass for a translated placard of the beast-fighting establishment that complained of the opposition made to them by Will Shakespeare and his players. Martin was the name of the man who kept the pit at the barrière de Sèvres; and after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the tenacity of his dogs, and the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he informs the public that he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran after such coarse diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves of the puppet-show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a corner. Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years later we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united comic and Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and quitted the theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called bamboches, and which were striking likenesses of the performers at the Opéra Comique, Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself. Polichinelle appeared amongst them in the character of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and found the same sort of popularity that Cassandrino has since enjoyed at Rome. The monarchy was in its decline, the follies and vices of the courtiers of the 18th century had brought them into contempt, and a parody of them was welcome to the people. The fair over, Audinot installed his puppets in a little theatre on the boulevard, which he called the Ambigu Comique, to indicate the variety of the entertainments there given, and there he brought out several new pieces, one, amongst others, entitled Le Testament de Polichinelle. It was quite time for Punch to make his will; his theatre was in a very weakly state. It became the fashion to replace puppets by children; and one hears little more of marionettes in France until Seraphin revives them in his Ombres Chinoises. Few persons who have been in Paris will have failed to notice, when walking round the Palais Royal between two and three in the afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled weary-looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between a whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not very intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights that long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day, as long as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of years before—he has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling movement by which he endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He is identified with the railings against which he stands, and is as much a part of the Palais Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the cannon that daily fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one to discover the purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with “Les Ombres Chinoises de Seraphin”—this very drawlingly spoken—and ends with “Prrrrenez vos billets”—a rattle on the r, and the word billets dying away in a sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the ingenious Dominique Seraphin exhibited his Chinese shadows several times before the royal family at Versailles, was allowed to call his theatre “Spectacle des Enfans de France,” and took up his quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very house opposite to whose door the monotonous and melancholy man above described at the present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy years Seraphin and his descendants have pulled the strings of their puppets. But here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable sculpture, but movable painting—the shadows of figures cut out of sheets of pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their intangible nature, have passed unscathed through the countless political changes and convulsions that have occurred during the three quarters of a century that they have inhabited a nook in the palace which has been alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial—all things by turn, and nothing long. They have lasted and thriven, as far as bodiless shades can thrive, under Republic and Empire, Directory and Consulate, Restoration and Citizen Monarchy, Republic, and Empire again. We fear it must be admitted that time-serving is at the bottom of this long impunity and prosperity. In the feverish days of the first Revolution, marionettes had sans-culotte tendencies, with the exception of Polichinelle, who, mindful doubtless of his descent from Henry IV., played the aristocrat, and carried his head so high, that at last he lost it. M. Magnin passes hastily over this affecting phase in the career of his puppet friends, merely quoting a few lines from Camille Desmoulins, which bear upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,” exclaims the Vieux Cordelier, indignant at the apathetic indifference of the Parisians in presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to follow blindly the impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the Carrousel and the Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its shepherdesses and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose keen edge fell crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time, they also guillotined Polichinelle, who divided the attention of the eager crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose he was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed up, and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign shore, where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former jollity of character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is not dead, but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken him here in France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to tell us? Above all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies. You doubt it? You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes, Polichinelle will laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains vices, follies, and things to ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his death. Polichinelle is immortal!”
To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own country, and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language, literature, and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he says, had the playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been made less welcome by the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-Roman origin. The grave and more earnest temper generally attributed to the former would have accounted for their disregard of a pastime they might deem frivolous, and fail to appreciate. He was well pleased, then, to find his wooden clients, his well-beloved marionettes, as popular and as well understood on the banks of the Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples, Paris, or Seville. “In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this kind of spectacle has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly name a single poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single prose-writer, from Sir Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not to be found abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from this singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he places in the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most pathetic moments. I can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this occurs.” (The list follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this great poet—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also borrowed many moral or satirical sallies from this popular diversion. Thanks to this singular tendency of the English dramatists to busy themselves with the proceedings of their little street-corner rivals, I have found in their writings much assistance—as agreeable as unexpected—in the task I have undertaken. Deprived, as one necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources and original pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works of great writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every library, I have found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the passages so abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a collection of documents concerning English puppets more circumstantial and more complete, I venture to think, than any that have hitherto been got together by the best-informed native critics.” Others, if they please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we shall content ourselves with saying that the amount of research manifested in M. Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as much credit to his industry as the manner of the compilation does to his judgment, acumen, and literary talent. It must be observed, however, that he has not altogether limited himself, when seeking materials and authorities, to the chosen corps of English dramatists, poets, and essayists, but has consulted sundry antiquarian authorities, tracts of the time of the commonwealth, the works of Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas Wright, and other modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this portion of his book contains much that will be novel to most English readers, and abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old English character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length, it is because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention that M. Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of the origin of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from 1688, and brings him over from Holland in the same ship with William of Orange. M. Magnin takes a different view, and makes out a very fair case. He begins by remarking that several false derivations have been assigned to the name of Punch. “Some have imagined I know not what secret and fantastical connection between Punch’s name, and even between the fire of Punch’s wit, and the ardent beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us from Persia. It is going a great deal too far in search of an error. Punch is simply the name of our friend Pulchinello, a little altered and contracted by the monosyllabic genius of the English language. In the early period of his career in England we find the names Punch and Punchinello used indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that Punch came to London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I have doubts of it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces of his presence in England previous to the abdication of James II.... Certain passages of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows (Machinæ Gesticulantes) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great progress on the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.” The personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch, certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it not be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country with the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution of 1688 had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question with all diffidence, and without the slightest intention of pronouncing judgment on so important a matter. And as we have no intention or desire to take up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of that Punch, who, as the unfortunate and much-battered Judy can testify, himself handles those weapons so efficiently, we refer the reader to M. Magnin for the pros and cons of the argument, and start upon a rapid tour through Germany and northern Europe. M. Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the close of his journey, and pauses there only where his attention is arrested by some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention of which would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to write.
Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We mean not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may truly say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for which we are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of Baden and Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high degree, the mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but to look at the ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions, moving figures, crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in all parts of Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double aptitude brought about an early development of anatomical sculpture in Germany, applied, as usual, to various purposes, religious and civil, serious and recreative, wonderful images of saints, figures borne in municipal processions, and dramatic puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin as far back as the 12th century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th century he finds the word Tocha or Docha used in the sense of doll or puppet (puppa), and also in that of mime (mima, mimula). Somewhat later the word Tokke-spil (puppet-show) occurs in the poems of the Minnesingers. One of these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the Pope’s abuse of his influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”
“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating from the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number of curious miniatures, one of which, under the strange title of Ludus Monstrorum, represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armed cap-à-pie, are made to move and fight by means of a string, whose ends two showmen hold. The painting proves not only the existence of marionettes at that period, but also that they were sufficiently common to supply a symbol intelligible to all, since it is put as an illustration to a moral reflection on the vanity of human things. From the equipment of the figures it may also be inferred that military subjects were then in favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show. And M. Magnin, zealous to track his fox to its very earth, risks the word Niebelungen, but brings no evidence to support his surmise. In the 14th and 15th centuries we obtain more positive data as to the nature of the puppenspiel, and of its performances. Romantic subjects, historical fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of Aymon, Genevieve of Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her lover’s heart was given to eat, and who killed herself in her despair. The history of Joan of Arc was also a favourite subject. That heroine had an episodical part in a piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430. “There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a precious testimony to a performance of marionettes at that period. In a fragment of the poem of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century, after a Flemish translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy Oriande de Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her beloved pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle of Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for a table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male and female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell her history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der Hagen has published this fragment from the MS. preserved at Heidelberg, in Germania, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is not to be found either in the French poem or the French prose romance.” The 16th century was an epoch in the annals of German puppets. Scepticism and sorcery were the order of the day. Faust stepped upon the stage and held it long.
It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by his jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd or startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great personage—emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached to his household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first given to this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name which in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the name of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner, and that it is applied to the devil in the Breviarium Historicum of Sebald. This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or Hämmerling (the latter is now the usual orthography) has three very distinct meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer (bird). The German headsman, in former days, combined with his terrible duties the occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to remove dead horses and other carrion; hence he was commonly spoken of as Master Hämmerlein.[[7]]
It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation his name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have little information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who appears to have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the famous Hanswurst, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared Duke Henry of Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin addresses himself to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature Henry, you know, as well as all your poets and writers, that the name of Hanswurst is not of my invention; others have employed it before me, to designate those rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to exhibit finesse, commit but clumsiness and impropriety.” And that there might be no mistake as to his application of the word, he adds: “Many persons compare my very gracious lord, Duke Henry of Brunswick, to Hanswurst, because the said lord is replete and corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of Luther’s preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of his disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then very numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to dramatic church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the new doctrine, but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the performances were of the most grotesque description. They were particularly frequent in Poland, where, at Christmas time, in many churches, and especially in those of monasteries, the people were amused between mass and vespers, by the play of the Szopka or stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin, “lalki (little dolls of wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees, with their offerings of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox, the ass, and St. John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the innocents, in the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake. The wicked prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed horns, and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his pitchfork, and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange performance was continued in the Polish churches until the middle of the 18th century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled from consecrated edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present day, as a popular diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct kingdom of Poland. From Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is welcomed by both the rural and the urban population, by the peasantry, the middle classes, and even in the dwellings of the nobility.
In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century witnessed a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it should rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the former, which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant rigour of the consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A clergyman refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players. An ardent controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the Protestant clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement spread over all Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to by the comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the innocence of their profession, of which the actors themselves published sensible and judicious defences; in vain did several princes endeavour to counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration, the exaggerated severity of the theologians; the majority of the public sided with its pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds; and although, whilst condemning the performers, people did not cease to frequent the performances, a great many comedians, feeling themselves humiliated, abandoned the stage to foreigners and to marionettes. The regular theatres rapidly decreased in number, and puppet-shows augmented in a like ratio. “At the end of the 17th century,” says Flögel, “the Haupt-und-Staatsactionen usurped the place of the real drama. These pieces were played sometimes by mechanical dolls, sometimes by actors.” The meaning of the term Haupt-und-Staatsaction is rather obscure, but it was in fact applied to almost every kind of piece performed by puppets. It was bound to include a great deal of incident and show, to be supported by occasional instrumental music, and to have a comic personage or buffoon amongst its characters. The tenth chapter of M. Magnin’s fifth and final section shows us a strange variety in the subjects selected for these plays—in which, it is to be noted, each puppet had its own separate speaker behind the scenes. Weltheim, the manager of a company of marionettes in the last twenty years of the 17th century, and the beginning of the 18th, usually recruited interpreters for his puppets amongst the students of Leipzig and Jena. He was the first who performed a translation of Molière’s comedies in Germany. In 1688, we find him giving at Hamburg, a piece founded on the fall of Adam and Eve, followed by a buffoonery called Jack-pudding in Punch’s Shop. Then we come to such pieces as The Lapidation of Naboth; Asphalides, King of Arabia; The Fall of Jerusalem, and The Death of Wallenstein—a strange medley of ancient, modern, sacred and profane history. The following performance, at which M. Schütze, the historian of the Hamburg theatre, declares that he was present in his youth, must have been as curious as any we have named. “A little musical drama on the fall of Adam and Eve (performed at Hamburg rather more than a century ago), the characters in which, including that of the serpent, were filled by puppets. The reptile was seen coiled round the tree, darting out his pernicious tongue. After the fall of our first parents, Hanswurst addressed them in a strain of coarse pleasantry that greatly diverted the audience. Two bears danced a ballet, and at the end, an angel appeared, as in Genesis, drew a sword of gilt paper, and cut at a single blow the knot of the piece.” Later than this a tailor named Reibehand, who kept a puppet theatre, contrived to burlesque the touching parable of the Prodigal Son. His playbill ran thus: “The arch-prodigal, chastised by the four elements, with Harlequin, the joyous companion of a great criminal.” The merit of this most irreverent Haupt-Action consisted in the transformations it contained. Thus the fruit the young prodigal was about to eat changed itself into death’s heads, the water he was about to drink, into flames; rocks split open and revealed a gallows with a man hanging from it. The limbs of this corpse swinging in the wind, fell off one by one, then assembled upon the ground and reconnected themselves, and then the dead man arose and pursued the prodigal. A very German and not very pleasing device. When Charles XII. of Sweden fell dead in the trenches at Friedrichshall, slain, according to popular superstition, by an enchanted bullet, his death was immediately taken advantage of by the indefatigable marionettes. A great historical piece was brought out at Hamburg, in which Friedrichshall was twice bombarded. In it a soldier excited great admiration as a prodigy of mechanism, by lighting his pipe and puffing smoke from his mouth. This feat was soon imported into France, and may be seen at the present day executed in great perfection at Seraphin’s theatre in the Palais Royal.
The triviality, absurdity, and profanity that tarnished the German stage during the first half of the eighteenth century, were followed by a reaction in favour of better taste and common sense. Gottsched and Lessing gave the signal of the revival of art and poetry. The theatre resumed its importance; actors their proper place, from which they had been ousted by the intolerance of the consistories; puppets returned to the modest sphere which circumstances had permitted and encouraged them temporarily to quit, and resumed their old stock pieces, consisting of Biblical dramas and popular legends. Faust was exceedingly popular, and novelties were occasionally introduced. Lewis’s Bravo of Venice was taken for the subject of a grand drama, performed by the Augsburg marionettes, which also played, with great success, a drama founded on the well-known story of Don Juan and his marble guest. And this brings us to the time when a boy, Wolfgang Goethe by name—kept at home by his parents during certain gloomy episodes of the Seven Years’ War, when Frankfort was occupied by the French—delighted his leisure with a marionette theatre, a Christmas gift from his grandfather, and so fostered his inborn dramatic taste and genius. In his memoirs, and in Wilhelm Meister, he tells us, in some charming passages, what pleasure he took in the management of his mimic comedians.
“We are indebted,” says M. Magnin, “for what follows, to a confidential communication made by the illustrious composer Haydn, at Vienna, in 1805, to M. Charles Bertuch, one of his fervent admirers.” And he relates that when Hadyn was mâitre de chapelle to Prince Nicholas-Joseph Esterhazy, that enlightened and generous patron of art, and especially of music, he composed four little operas for a marionette theatre, which existed in the Esterhazys’ magnificent Castle of Eisenstadt in Hungary. They were written between 1773 and 1780. “In the list of all his musical works, which the illustrious old man signed and gave to M. Charles Bertuch, during the residence of the latter at Vienna, occur the following lines, which I exactly transcribe:—Operette composed for the marionettes: Philémon and Baucis, 1773; Geniêvre, 1777; Didon, parody, 1778; La Vengeance accomplie ou la Maison Brulie (no date). In the same list the Diable Boiteux is set down, probably because it was played by Prince Esterhazy’s marionettes, but it was composed at Vienna, in the author’s early youth, for Bernardone, the manager of a popular theatre at the Corinthian Gate, and twenty-four sequins were paid for it. It was thought that these curious operas, all unpublished, had been destroyed in a fire which consumed a part of the Castle of Eisenstadt, including Haydn’s apartment; but that was not the case, for they were seen in 1827 in the musical library of the Esterhazys, with a score of other pieces whose titles one would like to know.”
Goethe has told us, in an interesting passage of his memoirs, that the idea of his great work of Faust was suggested to him by the puppet-show. M. Magnin, who takes an affectionate interest in the triumphs of the marionettes with whom he has so long associated, and whose career he has traced from their cradle, exults in the claim they have thus acquired to the world’s gratitude—not always, it must be owned, shown to those who best deserve it. He concludes his history with a double recapitulation—first, of the celebrated persons who have taken pleasure in this class of dramatic performances; and, secondly, of the most distinguished of those who have wielded pen in its service. And he calls upon his readers to applaud, and upon the ladies especially to wave kerchief and throw bouquet at the graceful Fantasia, the pretty fairy, the sprightly muse of the marionettes. We doubt not but that the appeal will be responded to; although her fairyship may fairly be considered to be already sufficiently rewarded by meeting with a biographer in every way so competent.