“I wouldn’t undergo the operation. So I went home, and here comes fortitude. I pulled out the teeth with a pair of cobbler’s pincers, and cut open my face with a penknife to take out the bits of bone. If I hadn’t been a prudent, sober man, I should have died through it.
“There was a friend of mine who was like a brother to me, and he stuck to me every inch. There was lots of professionals I had supported in their illness, and they never come near me; only my dear friend, and but for him I should have died, for he saved up his money to get me port wine and such things.
“Many a time I’ve gone out when I was better to sing comic songs at concerts, when I could feel the bits of bone jangling in my mouth. But, sir, I had a wife and family, and they wanted food. As it was, my poor wife had to go to the workhouse to be confined. At one time I started off to do away with myself. I parted with my wife and children, and went to say good-by to my good friend, and it was he who saved my life. If it hadn’t been for him it would have been a gooser with me, for I was prepared to finish all. He walked about with me and reasoned me out of it, and says he, ‘What on earth will become of the wife and the children?’
“I’m sufficiently well now to enable me to resume my old occupation, not as Clown but as Pantaloon.
“Altogether—taking it all in all—I was three years as clown, and very successful and a great favourite with the Jews. My standing salary for comic singing and clown was eighteen shillings a-week; but then at Christmas it was always rose to thirty shillings or thirty-five shillings. Then I did the writing and painting, such as the placards for the outside; such as, ‘This saloon is open this evening,’ and such-like; and that, on the average, would bring me in eight shillings a-week.
“There was seven men and three females in my company when we played ‘Harlequin Blue Beard,’ for that’s the one I shall describe to you, and that we played for a considerable time. I was manager at the time, and I always was liked by the company, for I never fined them or anything like that; for, you see, I knew that to take sixpence from a poor man was to take a loaf of bread from the children.
“This pantomime was of my own writing, and I managed the chorus and the dances, and all. I painted the scenery, too, and moulded the masks—about six altogether—and then afterwards played clown. All this was included in my salary of eighteen shillings a-week, and that was the top price of the company.
“The first scene was with a cottage on the left hand and with the surrounding country in the back; three rows of waters, with the distant view of Blue Beard’s castle. Enters the lover (he’s the Harlequin) in a disguise dressed as a Turk; he explains in the pantomime that he should like to make the lady in the cottage his bride (which is Fatima, and afterwards Columbine). He goes to the cottage and knocks three times, when she appears at the window. She comes out and dances with him. At the end of the dance the old man comes in, to the tune of ‘Roast Beef of Old England.’ He wears a big mask, and is the father to Fatima, and afterwards Pantaloon. He drives lover off stage, and is about to take Fatima back to cottage, when castle gates at back opens and discovers Blue Beard in gondola, which crosses the stage in the waters. Blue Beard wears a mask and a tremendous long sword, which takes two men to pull out. He’s afterwards Clown, and I played the part.
“Several other gondolas cross stage, and when the last goes off the chorus begins in the distance, and increases as it approaches, and is thus:
‘In fire or in water, in earth or in air: