‘‘Proving your folly,’ said I. ‘Why, Reymes, you must be out of your senses.’
‘‘Why, did I never tell you?’ said he. ‘Oh! then I don’t wonder at your surprise. I thought I had told you. I had an uncle, a glazier, who died, and left me twenty pounds, and this mourning-ring; and I therefore have made it a rule to break the windows of all public places ever since. The loss is not worth speaking of to the parish, and puts a nice bit of money in the pocket of some poor dealer in putty, with probably a large family to support. And now I’ve explained, I presume you have no objection to my proceeding in paying what I consider a debt of gratitude due to my dead uncle.’
‘‘Hold! Reymes,’ said I, as he was picking up a pebble. ‘How do you know but the poor fellow with the large family may not undertake to repair the windows by contract, at so much a year or month?’
‘‘Eh! egad, I never thought of that,’ said the whimsical, good-hearted creature. ‘I’ll suspend operations until I’ve made the inquiry, and if I’ve wronged him I’ll make amends.’
Mr. Cowell is a plain-spoken man, and seldom spares age or sex in his exposure of the secrets of the stage, and the appliances and means to boot which are sometimes adopted by theatrical men and women to make an old face or form ‘look maist as weel’s the new.’ The celebrated Mrs. Jordan, in performing with him, was always very averse to his playing near the foot-lights, greatly preferring to act between the second entrances. The ‘moving why’ is thus explained:
‘The fact is, she was getting old; dimples turn to crinkles after long use; beside, she wore a wig glued on; and in the heat of acting—for she was always in earnest—I have seen some of the tenacious compound with which it was secured trickle down a wrinkle behind her ear; her person, too, was extremely round and large, though still retaining something of the outline of its former grace:
‘And after all, ’twould puzzle to say where
It would not spoil a charm to pare.’
There is no calamity in the catalogue of ills ‘that flesh is heir to’ so horrible as the approach of old age to an actor. Juvenile tragedy, light comedy, and walking gentleman with little pot-bellies, and have-been pretty women, are really to be pitied. Fancy a lady, who has had quires of sonnets made to her eye-brow, being obliged, at last, to black it, play at the back of the stage at night, sit with her back to the window in a shady part of the green-room in the morning, and keep on her bonnet unless she can afford a very natural wig.’
Sad enough! sad enough! certainly, and as true as it is melancholy. But let us get on board the Yankee vessel which brings Mr. Cowell to America, and at his ‘present writing’ is lying off Gravesend. The difficulty he experienced in getting up a conversation with his fellow-passengers is a grievance still loudly complained of by his travelling countrymen: