Sawdust at Sadler’s Wells! What next, Mr. Merriman?
A JUDGE GOING THE CIRCUIT.
If Macready had been engaged for Clown, and set down to sing “hot codlins;” were Palmerston “secured” for Pierrot, or Lord Monteagle for Jim Crow, who would have wondered? But to saddle “The Wells” with horses—profanity unparalleled!
Spitefully predicting failure from this terrible declension of the drama, we went, in a mood intensely ill-natured, to witness how the “Horse of the Pyrenees” would behave himself at Sadler’s Wells. From the piece so called we anticipated no amusement; we thought the regular company would make but sorry equestrians, and, like the King of Westphalia’s hussars, would prove totally inefficient, from not being habituated to mount on horseback. Happily we were mistaken; nothing could possibly go better than both the animals and the piece. The actors acquitted themselves manfully, even including the horses. The mysterious Arab threw no damp over the performances, for he was personated by Mr. Dry. The little Saracen was performed so well by le petit Ducrow, that we longed to see more of him. The desperate battle fought by about sixteen supernumeraries at the pass of Castle Moura, was quite as sanguinary as ever: the combats were perfection—the glory of the red fire was nowise dimmed! It was magic, yes, it was magic! Mr. Widdicomb was there!!
Thinking of magic and Mr. Widdicomb (of whom dark hints of identification with the wandering Jew have been dropped—who, we know, taught Prince George of Denmark horsemanship—who is mentioned by Addison in the “Spectator,” by Dr. Johnson in the “Rambler,” and helped to put out each of the three fires that have happened at Astley’s during the last two centuries), brought by these considerations to a train of mind highly susceptible of supernatural agency, we visited—
THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH,
the illustrious professor of Phœnixsistography, and other branches of the black art, the names of which are as mysterious as their performance.
One only specimen of his prowess convinced us of his supernatural talents. He politely solicited the loan of a bank-note—he was not choice as to the amount or bank of issue. “It may be,” saith the play-bill, “a Bank of England or provincial note, for any sum from five pounds to one thousand.” His is better magic than Owen Glendower’s, for the note “did come when he did call it!” for a confiding individual in the boxes (dress circle of course) actually did lend him, the Wizard, a cool hundred! Conceive the power, in a metaphysical sense, the conjuror must have had over the lender’s mind! Was it animal magnetism?—was it terror raised by his extraordinary performances, that spirited the cash out of the pocket of the man? who, perhaps, thought that such supernatural talents might be otherwise employed against his very existence, thus occupying his perturbed soul with the alternative, “Your money or your life!”
This subject is deeply interesting to actors out of engagements, literary men, and people who “have seen better days”—individuals who have brought this species of conjuration to a high state of perfection. It is a new and important chapter in the “art of borrowing.” We perceive in the Wizard’s advertisements he takes pupils, and offers to make them proficient in any of his delusions at a guinea per trick. We intend to put ourselves under his instructions for the bank-note trick, the moment we can borrow one-pound-one for that purpose.