“‘Nanti, his nabs is a keteva homer’—No, he’s a bad sort.
“‘The casa will parker our nabs multi’ means,—This house will tumble down.
“‘Vada the glaze’ is—Look at the window.
“These are nearly all the mummers’ slang words we use; but they apply to different meanings. We call breakfast, dinner, tea, supper, all of them ‘numgare;’ and all beer, brandy, water, or soup, are ‘beware.’ We call everybody ‘his nabs,’ or ‘her nabs.’ I went among the penny-ice men, who are Italian chaps, and I found that they were speaking a lot of mummers’ slang. It is a good deal Italian. We think it must have originated from Italians who went about doing pantomimes.
“Now, the way we count money is nearly all of it Italian; from one farthing up to a shilling is this:—
“‘Patina, nadsa, oni soldi, duey soldi, tray soldi, quatro soldi, chinqui soldi, say soldi, seter soldi, otter soldi, novra soldi, deshra soldi, lettra soldi, and a biouk.’ A half-crown is a ‘metsa carroon;’ a ‘carroon’ is a crown; ‘metsa punta’ is half-a-sovereign; a ‘punta’ is a pound. Even with these few words, by mixing them up with a few English ones, we can talk away as fast as if we was using our own language.
“Mumming at fairs is harder than private business, because you have to perform so many times. You only wear one dress, and all the actor is expected to do is to stand up to the dances outside and act in. He’ll have to dance perhaps sixteen quadrilles in the course of the day, and act about as often inside. The company generally work in shares, or if they pay by the day, it’s about four or five shillings a-day. When you go to get engaged, the first question is, ‘What can you do?’ and the next, ‘Do you find your own properties, such as russet boots, your dress, hat and feathers, &c.?’ Of course they like your dress the better if it’s a showy one; and it don’t much matter about its corresponding with the piece. For instance, Henry the Second, in ‘Fair Rosamond,’ always comes on with a cavalier’s dress, and nobody notices the difference of costume. In fact, the same dresses are used over and over again for the same pieces. The general dress for the ladies is a velvet skirt with a satin stomacher, with a gold band round the waist and a pearl band on the forehead. They, too, wear the same dresses for all the pieces. A regular fair show has only a small compass of dresses, for they only goes to the same places once in a-year, and of course their costumes ain’t remembered.
“The principal fair pieces are ‘Blue Beard,’ ‘Robert, duke of Normandy,’ and ‘Fair Rosamond, or the Bowers of Woodstock.’ I recollect once they played ‘Maria Martin,’ at a fair, in a company I was with, and we played that in cavalier costume; and so we did ‘The Murder at Stanfield Hall,’ Rush’s affair, in dresses of the time of Charles the Second.
“An actor’s share will average for a fair at five shillings a-day, if the fair is anything at all. When we don’t work we don’t get paid, so that if we only do one fair a-week, that’s fifteen shillings, unless we stop to do a day or two private business after the fair.
“‘Fair Rosamond’ isn’t so good a piece as ‘Blue Beard,’ for that’s a great fair piece, and a never-failing draw. Five years ago I was with a company—Star and Lewis were the acting managers. Then ‘Blue Beard’ was our favourite piece, and we played it five fairs out of six. ‘Fair Rosamond’ is too sentimental. They like a comedy man, and the one in ‘Fair Rosamond’ isn’t nothing. They like the secret-chamber scene in ‘Blue Beard.’ It’s generally done by the scene rolling up and discovering another, with skeletons painted on the back, and blue fire. We always carried that scene with us wherever we went, and for the other pieces the same scenes did. At Star’s, our scenes were somewhat about ten feet wide and eight feet high. They all rolled up, and there were generally about four in working order, with the drop curtain, which made five.