And a special license in my chest—
I’m going to Bombay!
“THE COURT OF AN INDIAN PRINCE.”
“LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP.”
“Fallen, fallen, fallen.”—DRYDEN.
MY father being what is called a serious tallow-chandler, having supplied the Baptist Meeting-house of Nantwich with dips for many years, intended to make me a field-preaching minister. Alas! my books were plays, my sermons soliloquies. You would not have wondered, had you seen me then, with my large dark eyes, my permanent nose, and a mouth to which my picture does but scanty justice. In large theatres these may be but secondary considerations; but a figure symmetrical as mine must have been seen through all space. Accordingly, I eloped with the young lady who used to rehearse my heroines with me, and came to London, where, after we had studied together till I was in debt, and she, as “ladies wish to be who love their lords,” I began applying to the managers for leave to make my debût. I will not describe to you the neglect and rudeness I experienced! It did not abate my enthusiasm: but so true it is, “while the grass grows”—the proverb is somewhat musty,—that I had soon nothing but musty bread on which to feed my hopes, and hopeful wife. One burning spring day I roved as far as the fields near Greenwich, and, book in hand, went through Romeo, though but to a shy audience, for the sheep all took to their trotters, and the crows to their wings, and not without caws. (That joke was mine, let who will have claimed it.)