I don’t know why such things are not used as decorations for rooms. At a fête, for instance, a room thus fitted up would surely be a much greater novelty than the hackneyed ornaments of gay draperies, orange trees, and flowers.
December 8th.
On my way home from a dinner at M. de Polignac’s, a very agreeable but highly orthodox representative of ‘l’ancien regime,’ I was in time to find the celebrated Mathews “At Home” at his theatre. The curtain was dropped, and Mr. Mathews sitting in front of it at a table covered with a cloth.
He began by discursively relating to the public that he was just returned from a journey to Paris, where he had met with many original individuals and droll adventures. Imperceptibly he passed from the narrative style to a perfectly dramatic performance, in which, with almost inconceivable talent and memory, he placed before the eyes of his audience all that he had witnessed; while he so totally altered his face, speech, and whole exterior, with the rapidity of lightning, that one must have seen it to believe it possible. His outward helps consist only of a cap, a cloak, a false nose, a wig, &c., which he draws from under the table cover, and with these slender means produces an entire and instant transformation. The applause was tumultuous and the laughter incessant. The principal persons (who were introduced in various situations,) were an old Englishman, who found fault with everything abroad and praised everything at home; a provincial lady who never walked in the street without a French dictionary in her hand, worried the passers-by with incessant questions, and seized every opportunity of assisting other English people with her superior knowledge, in doing which, as may be imagined, she stumbled upon the most perverted, burlesque, and often equivocal expressions; a dandy from the city, who affected ‘le grand air;’ and his opposite, a fat farmer from Yorkshire, who played pretty much the part of farmer Feldkümmel. The most amusing thing to me was an English lecture on craniology by Spurzheim. The likeness to that person, so well known in England,—to his whole manner and his German accent,—was so perfect, that the theatre shook with incessant laughter.
I was less pleased with some other imitations; particularly that of Talma, who is far above the reach of any mere mimic, be his talents what they may. Besides, his death is too recent, and sorrow for his irreparable loss too great in the mind of every lover of art, to render such a parody agreeable.
The performance concluded with a little farce, for which the curtain was drawn up, and in which Mathews again played alone. He filled seven or eight different parts, exclusive of those of a dog and a child, which were indeed personated by puppets, but which he barked and prattled, in as masterly a manner as he spoke the others. At first he is a French tutor, who is going to travel with a little lord ten years old, whom he shuts into a guitar-case that he may save the fare of the diligence, and at the same time charge it to the papa. At every stage he takes him out, to give him air and make him say his lesson. He carries on the conversation with infinite drollery, and surprising skill as a ventriloquist. The boy’s resistance to being shut up in his box again,—the way in which his murmurs and complaints die away, like the waltz in the Freischütz, till at length the lid is clapped to, and the last tones come from the shut case like a faint echo,—are inconceivably comic.
After many adventures which beset the diligence and its passengers, an old maid (again Mathews) makes her appearance. She has a favourite lapdog, which is not suffered to travel inside, but which she is trying to smuggle in, and fixes her eye on the guitar-case as a fit hiding-place for her darling. In her hurry to accomplish her purpose she does not observe that the place is already occupied. But hardly has she laid the case out of her hand, when the dog begins to growl and bark, the boy to howl, and she to scream for help; which trio made the gallery almost frantic with delight.
The whole affair is, as you perceive, not exactly æsthetic, and rather fitted to an English stomach than to any other. It is, indeed, almost painful to see such skill devoted to such absurd buffooneries; the talent, however, is still most remarkable; and even the physical powers wonderful, which can support these efforts of acting and continual speaking, with all these fatiguing disguises, without a single slip or stumble, for hours together.
Not to require as great an exertion of patience from you, I will now conclude. I wish heartily that my display of the meagre peep-shows of the town may not tire you too much. You asked for pictures of daily life; you expect from me no statistical work, no topography, no regular enumeration of the so-called sights of London, and no systematic treatise on England; nor am I in any condition to afford you such.
Receive, therefore, the unpretending humble fare I send you, in good part. It is at all events now and then seasoned with a grain of pepper.