THE GREAT CREATURE.
Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was a tall young man, a thin young man, a pale young man, and, as some of his friends asserted, a decidedly knock-kneed young man. Moreover he was a young man belonging to and connected with the highly respectable firm of Messrs. Tims and Swindle, attorneys and bill-discounters, of Thavies’-inn, Holborn; from the which highly respectable firm Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk received a salary of one pound one shilling per week, in requital for his manifold services. The vocation in which Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk laboured partook peculiarly of the peripatetic; for at all sorts of hours, and through all sorts of streets was Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk daily accustomed to transport his anatomy—presenting overdue bills, inquiring after absent acceptors, invisible indorsers, and departed drawers, for his masters, and wearing out, as he Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk eloquently expressed it, “no end of boots for himself.” Such was the occupation by which Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk lived; but such was not the peculiar path to fame for which his soul longed. No! “he had seen plays, and longed to blaze upon the stage a star of light.”
That portion of time which was facetiously called by Messrs. Tims and Swindle “the leisure” of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, being some eight hours out of the twenty-four, was spent in poring over the glorious pages of the immortal bard; and in the desperate enthusiasm of his heated genius would he, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, suddenly burst forth in some of the most exciting passages, and with Stentorian lungs “render night hideous” to the startled inhabitant of the one-pair-back, adjoining the receptacle of his own truckle-bed and mortal frame.
Luck, whether good or evil, begat Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk an introduction to some other talented young gentlemen, who had so far progressed in histrionic acquirements, that from spouting themselves, they had taken to spouting their watches, and other stray articles of small value, to enable them to pay the charges of a private theatre, where, as often as they could raise the needful, they astonished and delighted their wondering friends. Among this worshipful society was Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk adopted and enrolled as a trusty and well-beloved member; and in the above-named private theatre, in suit of solemn black, slightly relieved by an enormous white handkerchief, and a well-chalked countenance, did Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, at or about the hour of half past eight—being precisely sixty minutes behind the period announced, in consequence of the non-arrival of the one fiddle and ditto flute comprising, or rather that ought to have comprised, the orchestra—made his début, and a particularly nervous bow to the good folks there assembled, “as and for” the character “of Hamlet, the Danish Prince.”
To describe the “exclamations of delight,” the “tornadoes of applause,” the earthquakes of rapture, or the “breathless breathing” of the entranced audience, would beat Mr. Bunn into fits, and the German company into fiddle-cases; so, like a newspaper legacy, which is the only one that never pays duty, we “leave it to our reader’s imagination.”
The die was cast. Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s former avocations became intensely irksome—if he served a writ it was no longer a “writ of right.” Copies for “Jenkins” were consigned to “Tompkins;” “Brown” declined pleading to “Smith” and Smith declared off Brown’s declaration. In inquiries after “solvent acceptors,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was still more abroad. In the mystification of his brains, all answers seemed to be delivered “per contra.” Forlorn hopes on three-and sixpenny stamps were converted into the circulating medium; “good actors” were considered “good men” in the very reverse of Shylock’s acceptation of the term; and astonished indorsers succeeded in “raising the wind” upon “kites” they would have bet any odds no “wind in the world could induce to fly.” Everything in this world must come to an end—bills generally do in three months: so did these, and so did Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s responsible and peripatetic avocations in the highly respectable firm of Messrs. Tims and Swindle, attorneys, and to their cost, through the agency of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, bill-discounters, of Thavies’ Inn, Holborn; they, the said highly respectable firm of Tims and Swindle, handing over to Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk the sum of four and tenpence, being the balance of his quarter’s salary, which, so great was Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s opinion of the solvency of the said highly respectable firm, he had allowed to remain undrawn in their hands, together with a note utterly and totally declining any further service or assistance as “in” or “outdoor” or any sort of clerk at all, from Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, and amiably recommending the said Horatio to apply elsewhere for a character; the which advice Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk attended to instanter, and received, in consideration of the sum of thirty shillings, that of “Richard the Third” from the Dramatic Committee of Catherine Street. If Hamlet was good, Richard (among the amateurs) was better; and if Richard was better, Shylock (at “one five”) was best, and Romeo and all the rest better still: and it may be worthy of remark, that there is no person on earth looked upon by admiring managers as more certain of success than the “promising young man who PAYS for his parts.”
Now it so happened that Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s purse became an exceedingly “Iago”-like, “something, nothing, trashy” sort of affair—in other words, that its owner, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, was regularly stumped; and as the Amateur Dramatic Theatrical Committee “always go upon the no pay no play system,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was about to incur the fate of Lord John Russell’s tragedy, and become regularly “shelved.”
In this dilemma Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk addressed all sorts of letters to all sorts of managers, offering himself for all sorts of salaries, to play the best of all sorts of business, but never received any sort of answer from one of them! Returning to his solitary lodging, after a fortnight’s “half and half” of patience and despair, and just as despair was walking poor patience to Old Harry, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk encountered one of his histrionic acquaintance, who did the “three and sixpenny walking gents,” and dramatic general postmen, or letter-deliverers, at “the Private.” In the course of the enlightened conversation between the said friend, Mr. Julius Dilberry Pipps, and Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, Julius Dilberry Pipps expressed an earnest wish that he “might be blowed considerably tighter than the Vauxhall balloon if ever he see such a likeness of Mr. Hannibal Fitzflummery Fitzflam,” the “great actor of the day,” as his “bussom and intimate,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk! A nervous pressure of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s “pickers and stealers” having nearly reduced to one vast chaos the severely compressed digits of the enthusiastic Julius Dilberry Pipps, the invisible green broad-cloth envelopments and drab lower encasements, crowned with gossamer and based with calf-skin, wherein the total outward man of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was enrobed, together with his ambulating anatomy, evanished from the startled gaze of the deserted and finger-contused Julius Dilberry Pipps! Having asserted the entire realisation of his hastily-formed wish, in the emphatic words, “Well, I am blowed!” and a further comment, stating his conviction that “this was rayther a rummy go,” Mr. Julius Dilberry Pipps reduced his exchequer the gross amount of threepence, paid in consideration of the instant receipt of “a pint o’porter and screw,” to the fumigation of which he applied with such excessive vigour, that in a few moments he might be said, by his own exertions in “blowing a cloud,” to be corporeally as well as mentally “in nubibus.”
To account for the rapid departure of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, we must inform our readers the supposed similarity alluded to by Julius Dilberry Pipps, between the “great creature,” Hannibal Fitzflummery Fitzflam, and Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, had been before frequently insisted upon: and this assertion of the obtuse Julius Dilberry Pipps now seemed “confirmation strong as proof of holy writ.” Agitated with conflicting emotions, and regardless of small children and apple-stalls, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk rushed on with headlong speed, every now and then ejaculating, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it!” A sudden overhauling of his pockets produced some stray halfpence; master of a “Queen’s head,” a sheet of vellum, a new “Mordaunt,” and an “envelope,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, arrived at his three-pair-back, indited an epistle to the manager at the town of ——, with extraordinary haste signed the document, and, in “the hurry of the moment,” left the inscription thus—H.F. FITZFLAM! The morrow’s post brought an answer; the terms were acceded to, the night appointed for his opening; and Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk found, upon inspecting the proof of the playbill, the name in full of “Mr. Hannibal Fitzflummery Fitzflam,” “the great tragedian of the day!”
Pass we over the intervening space, and at once come to the momentous morning of rehearsal. The expected Roscius arrived like punctuality’s self, at the appointed minute, was duly received by the company, who had previously been canvassing his merits, and assuring each other that all stars were muffs, but Fitzflam one of the most impudent impostors that ever moved. “I, sir,” said the leader of the discontented fifteen-shillings-a-week-when-they-could-get-it squad, “I have been in the profession more years than this fellow has months, and he is getting hundreds where I am neglected: never mind! only give me a chance, and I’ll show him up. But I suppose the management—(pretty management, to engage such a chap when I’m here)—I suppose they will truckle to him, and send me on, as usual, for some wretched old bloke there’s no getting a hand in. John Kemble himself (and I’m told I’m in his style), I say, John Kemble, my prototype, the now immortal John, never got applause in ‘Blokes!‘—But never mind.” As a genealogist would say, “Fitz the son of Funk” never more truly represented his ancestral cognomen than on this trying occasion. He was no longer with amateurs, but regulars,—fellows that could “talk and get on somehow;” that were never known to stick in Richard, when they remembered a speech from George Barnwell; men with “swallows” like Thames tunnels: in fact, accomplished “gaggers” and unrivalled “wing watchers.” However, as Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk spoke to none of them, crossed where he liked, cut out most of their best speeches, and turned all their backs to the audience, he passed muster exceedingly well, and acted the genuine star with considerable effect. So it was at night. Some folks objected to his knees, to be sure; but then they were silenced—“What! Fitzflam’s knees bad! Nonsense! Fitzflam is the thing in London; and do you think Fitzflam ought to be decried in the provinces? hasn’t he been lithographed by Lane? Pooh! impudence! spite!” The great name made Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk “the great man,” and all went swimmingly. On the last night of his engagement, the night devoted to his benefit, the house was crammed, and Mr. [pg 170]Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, reflecting that all was “cock sure,” as he should pocket the proceeds and return to London undiscovered, was elevated to Mahomet’s seventh heaven of happiness, awaiting with impatience the prompter’s whistle and the raising of the curtain: where for a time we will leave him, and attend upon the real “Simon Pure”—the genuine and “old original Hannibal Fitzflummery Fitzflam.”
(To be continued.)
ATRY-ANGLE.
SIR R. PEEL has been recently so successful in fishing for adherents, that, since bobbing so cleverly for Wakley, he has baited his hook afresh, and intends to start for Minto House forthwith; having his eye upon a certain small fish that is ever seen Russelling among the sedges in troubled waters. We trust Sir Bob will succeed this time in
FISHING FOR JACK.