Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843

"Impropriety, sir!" exclaimed the schemer. "Certainly not. Draw your cheque, sir. If we have not the money here, we have a heavy purse in London—and I beg you will command it."

"You think, then, that until our friend's return"——

"I am perfectly satisfied, Mr Bellamy," said Planner, with an emphasis on every word, as men will sometimes use, feeling and believing all that they assert. "I am thoroughly convinced that nothing would give Mr Allcraft greater pain than to know you had needed a temporary loan, and had not availed yourself of every opportunity that the bank affords you. I entreat you not to hesitate one instant. How much may you require?"

"Well, my dear sir—you will dine with us this evening. We will talk the matter over. Don't be late. Upon consideration, it may be quite as well, perhaps, to draw upon the bank."

"Much better, sir, I am sure, in every way. Will you walk into the private room? You'll find pen, ink, and paper there. We can accommodate you, sir—no doubt."

"Thank you, Mr Planner, thank you."

How very few of the numerous clients of Messrs Allcraft, Bellamy, Brammel, and Planner, in their worst dreams that night, dreamt of the havoc which was making with their beloved and hard-earned cash!

COLLEGE THEATRICALS

It wanted but two or three weeks to the Christmas vacation, and we—the worshipful society of under-graduates of —— College, Oxford—were beginning to get tired of the eternal round of supper parties which usually marked the close of our winter's campaign, and ready to hail with delight any proposition that had the charm of novelty. A three weeks' frost had effectually stopped the hunting; all the best tandem leaders were completely screwed; the freshmen had been "larked" till they were grown as cunning as magpies; and the Dean had set up a divinity lecture at two o'clock, and published a stringent proclamation against rows in the Quad. It was, in short, in a particularly uninteresting state of things, with the snow falling lazily upon the grey roofs and silent quadrangle, that some half dozen of us had congregated in Bob Thornhill's rooms, to get over the time between lunch and dinner with as little trouble to our mental and corporal faculties as possible. Those among us who had been for the last three months promising to themselves to begin to read "next week," had now put off that too easy creditor, conscience, till "next term." One alone had settled his engagements of that nature, or, in the language of his "Testamur"—the prettiest bit of Latin, he declared, that he ever saw—"satisfecit examinatoribus." Unquestionably, in his case, the examiners must have had the rare virtue of being very easily satisfied. In fact, Mr Savile's discharge of his educational engagements was rather a sort of "whitewashing" than a payment in full. His passing was what is technically called a "shave," a metaphor alluding to that intellectual density which finds it difficult to squeeze through the narrow portal which admits to the privileges of a Bachelor of Arts. As Mr S. himself, being a sporting man, described it, it was "a very close run indeed;" not that he considered that circumstance to derogate, in any way, from his victory; he was rather inclined to consider, that, having shown the field of examiners capital sport, and fairly got away from them in the end without the loss of his brush, his examination had been one of the very best runs of the season. In virtue whereof he was now mounted on the arm of an easy-chair, with a long chibouque, which became the gravity of an incipient bachelor better than a cigar, and took upon himself to give Thornhill (who was really a clever fellow, and professing to be reading for a first) some advice as to his conducting himself when his examination should arrive.

"I'll tell you what, Thornhill, old boy, I'll give you a wrinkle; it doesn't always answer to let out all you know at an examination. That sly old varmint, West of Magdalen, asked me who Hannibal was. 'Aha!'—said I to myself—'that's your line of country, is it? You want to walk me straight into those botheration Punic Wars, it's no go, though; I sha'n't break cover in that direction.' So I was mute. 'Can't you tell me something about Hannibal?' says old West again. 'I can,' thinks I, 'but I won't.' He was regularly flabbergasted; I spoilt his beat entirely, don't you see? so he looked as black as thunder, and tried it on in a fresh place. If I had been fool enough to let him dodge me in those Punic Wars, I could have been run into in no time. Depend upon it, there's nothing like a judicious ignorance occasionally."

"Why," said Thornhill, "'when ignorance is bliss,' (i. e. when it gets through the schools,) 'tis folly to be wise.'"

"Ah! that's Shakspeare says that, isn't it? I wish one could take up Shakspeare for a class! I'm devilish fond of Shakspeare. We used to act Shakspeare at a private school I was at."

"By Jove!" said somebody from behind a cloud of smoke—whose the brilliant idea was, was afterwards matter of dispute—"why couldn't we get up a play?"

"Ah! why not? why not? Capital!"

"It's such a horrid bore learning one's part," lisped the elegant Horace Leicester, half awake on the sofa.

"Oh, stuff!" said Savile, "it's the very thing to keep us alive! We could make a capital theatre out of the hall; don't you think the little vice principal would give us leave?"

"You had better ask for the chapel at once. Why, don't you know, my dear fellow, the college hall, in the opinion of the dean and the vice, is held rather more sacred of the two? Newcome, poor devil, attempted to cut a joke at the high table one of the times he dined there after he was elected, and he told me that they all stared at him as if he had insulted them; and the vice (in confidence) explained to him that such 'levity' was treason against the 'reverentia loci!'"

"Ay, I remember when that old villain Solomon, the porter, fined me ten shillings for walking in there with spurs one day when I was late for dinner; he said the dean always took off his cap when he went in there by himself, and threatened to turn off old Higgs, when he had been scout forty years, because he heard him whistling one day while he was sweeping it out! Well," continued Savile, "you shall have my rooms; I sha'n't trouble them much now. I am going to pack all my books down to old Wise's next week, to turn them into ready tin; so you may turn the study into a carpenter's shop, if you like. Oh, it can be managed famously!"

So, after a few pros and cons, it was finally settled that Mr Savile's rooms should become the Theatre Royal, —— College; and I was honoured with the responsible office of stage-manager. What the play was to be was a more difficult point to settle. Savile proposed Romeo and Juliet, and volunteered for the hero; but it passed the united strength of the company to get up a decent Juliet. Richard the Third was suggested; we had "six Richards in the field" at once. We soon gave up the heroics, and decided on comedy; for, since our audience would be sure to laugh, we should at least have a chance of getting the laugh in the right place. So, after long discussion, we fixed on She Stoops to Conquer. There were a good many reasons for this selection. First, it was a piece possessing that grand desideratum in all amateur performances, that there were several parts in it of equal calibre, and none which implied decided superiority of talent in its representative. Secondly, there was not much love in it; a material point where, as an Irishman might say, all the ladies were gentlemen. Thirdly, the scenery, dresses, properties, and decorations, were of the very simplest description: it was easily "put upon the stage." We found little difficulty in casting the male characters; old Mrs Hardcastle, not requiring any great share of personal attractions, and being considered a part that would tell, soon found a representative; but when we came to the "donnas"—prima and secunda—then it was that the manager's troubles began. It was really necessary, to ensure the most moderate degree of success to the comedy, that Miss Hardcastle should have at least a lady-like deportment. The public voice, first in whispers, then audibly, at last vociferously, called upon Leicester. Slightly formed, handsome, clever and accomplished, with naturally graceful manners, and a fair share of vanity and affectation, there was no doubt of his making a respectable heroine if he would consent to be made love to. In vain did he protest against the petticoats, and urge with affecting earnestness the claims of the whiskers which for the last six months he had so diligently been cultivating; the chorus of entreaty and expostulation had its effect, aided by a well-timed compliment to the aristocratically small hand and foot, of which Horace was pardonably vain. Shaving was pronounced indispensable to the due growth of the whiskers; and the importance of the character, and the point of the situations, so strongly dwelt upon, that he became gradually reconciled to his fate, and began seriously to discuss the question whether Miss Hardcastle should wear her hair in curls or bands. A freshman of seventeen, who had no pretensions in the way of whiskers, and who was too happy to be admitted on any terms to a share in such a "fast idea" as the getting up a play, was to be the Miss Neville; and before the hall bell rang for dinner, an order had been despatched for a dozen acting copies of "She Stoops to Conquer."

Times have materially changed since Queen Elizabeth's visit to Christ-Church; the University, one of the earliest nurses of the infant drama, has long since turned it out of doors for a naughty child; and forbid it, under pain of worse than whipping, to come any nearer than Abingdon or Bicester. Taking into consideration the style of some of the performances, in which under-graduates of some three hundred years ago were the actors, the "Oxford Theatre" of those days, if it had more wit in it than the present, had somewhat less decency: the ancient "moralities" were not over moral, and the "mysteries" rather Babylonish. So far we have had no great loss. Whether the judicious getting up of a tragedy of Sophocles or Æschylus, or even a comedy of Terence—classically managed—as it could be done in Oxford—and well acted, would be more unbecoming the gravity of our collected wisdom, or more derogatory to the dignity of our noble "theatre," than the squalling of Italian singers, masculine, feminine, and neuter—is a question which, when I take my M.A., I shall certainly propose in convocation. Thus much I am sure of, if a classical play-bill were duly announced for the next grand commemoration, it would "draw" almost as well as the Duke; the dresses might be quite as showy, the action hardly less graceful, than those of the odd-looking gentlemen who are dubbed doctors of civil law on such occasions; and the speeches of Prometheus, Oedipus, or Antigone, would be more intelligible to the learned, and more amusing to the ladies, than those Latin essays or the Creweian oration.

However, until I am vice-chancellor, the legitimate drama, Greek, Roman, or English, seems little likely to revive in Oxford. Our branch of that great family, I confess, bore the bar-sinister. The offspring of our theatrical affections was unrecognized by college authority. The fellows of —— would have done any thing but "smile upon its birth." The dean especially would have burked it at once had he suspected its existence. Nor was it fostered, like the former Oxford theatricals to which we have alluded, by royal patronage; we could not, consistently with decorum, request her Majesty to encourage an illegitimate. Nevertheless—spite of its being thus born under the rose—it grew and prospered. Our plan of rehearsal was original. We used to adjourn from dinner to the rooms of one or other of the company; and there, over our wine and dessert, instead of quizzing freshmen and abusing tutors, open each our copy, and, with all due emphasis and intonation, go regularly through the scenes of "She Stoops to Conquer." This was all the study we ever gave to our parts: and even thus it was difficult to get a muster of all the performers, and we had generally to play dummy for some one or more of the characters, or "double" them, as the professionals call it. The excuses for absenteeism were various. Mrs Hardcastle and Tony were gone to Woodstock with a team, and were not to be waited for; Diggory had a command to dine with the principal; and once an interesting dialogue was cut short by the untoward event of Miss Neville's being "confined"—in consequence of some indiscretion or other—"to chapel." It was necessary in our management, as much as in Mr Bunn's or Mr Macready's, to humour the caprices of the stars of the company: but the lesser lights, if they became eccentric at all in their orbits, were extinguished without mercy. Their place was easily supplied; for the moment it became known that a play was in contemplation, there were plenty of candidates for dramatic fame, especially among the freshmen: and though we mortally offended one or two aspiring geniuses by proffering them the vacant situations of Ralph, Roger, and Co., in Mr Hardcastle's household, on condition of having their respective blue dress coats turned up with yellow to represent the family livery, there were others to whom the being admitted behind the scenes, even in these humble characters, was a subject of laudable ambition. Nay, unimportant as were some parts in themselves, they were quite enough for the histrionic talent of some of our friends. Till I became a manager myself, I always used to lose patience at the wretched manner in which some of the underlings on the stage went through the little they had to say and do: there seemed no reason why the "sticks" should be so provokingly sticky; and it surprised me that a man who could accost one fluently enough at the stage door, should make such a bungle as some of them did in a message of some half dozen words "in character." But when I first became initiated into the mysteries of amateur performances, and saw how entirely destitute some men were of any notion of natural acting, and how they made a point of repeating two lines of familiar dialogue with the tone and manner, but without the correctness of a schoolboy going through a task—then it ceased to be any matter of wonder that those to whom acting was no joke, but an unhappily earnest mode of getting bread, should so often make their performance appear the uneasy effort which it is. There was one man in particular, a good-humoured, gentlemanly fellow, a favourite with us all; not remarkable for talent, but a pleasant companion enough, with plenty of common sense. Well, "he would be an actor"—it was his own fancy to have a part, and, as he was "one of us," we could not well refuse him. We gave him an easy one, for he was not vain of his own powers, or ambitious of theatrical distinction; so he was to be "second fellow"—one of Tony's pot-companions. He had but two lines to speak; but, from the very first time I heard him read them, I set him down as a hopeless case. He read them as if he had just learned to spell the words; when he repeated them without the book, it was like a clergyman giving out a text. And so it was with a good many of the rank and file of the company; we had more labour to drill them into something like a natural intonation than to learn our own longest speeches twice over. So we made their attendance at rehearsals a sine qua non. We dismissed a promising "Mat Muggins" because he went to the "Union" two nights successively, when he ought to have been at "The Three Pigeons." We superseded a very respectable "landlord" (though he had actually been measured for a corporation and a pair of calves) for inattention to business. The only one of the supernumeraries whom it was at all necessary to conciliate, was the gentleman who was to sing the comic song instead of Tony, (Savile, the representative of the said Tony, not having music in his soul beyond a view-holloa.) He was allowed to go and come at our readings ad libitum, upon condition of being very careful not to take cold.

When we had become tolerably perfect in the words of our parts, it was deemed expedient to have a "dress rehearsal"—especially for the ladies. It is not very easy to move safely—let alone gracefully—in petticoats, for those who are accustomed to move their legs somewhat more independently. And it would not have been civil in Messrs Marlow and Hastings to laugh outright at their lady-loves before company, as they were sure to do upon their first appearance. A dress rehearsal, therefore, was a very necessary precaution. But if it was difficult to get the company together at six o'clock under the friendly disguise of a wine-party, doubly difficult was it to expect them to muster at eleven in the morning. The first day that we fixed for it, there came a not very lady-like note, evidently written in bed, from Miss Hardcastle, stating, that having been at a supper-party the night before, and there partaken of brandy-punch to an extent to which she was wholly unaccustomed, it was quite impossible, in the present state of her nervous system, for her to make her appearance in character at any price. There was no alternative but to put off the rehearsal; and that very week occurred a circumstance which was very near being the cause of its adjournment sine die.

"Mr Hawthorne," said the dean to me one morning, when I was leaving his rooms, rejoicing in the termination of lecture, "I wish to speak with you, if you please." The dean's communications were seldom of a very pleasing kind, and on this particular morning his countenance gave token that he had hit upon something more than usually piquant. The rest of the men filed out of the door as slowly as they conveniently could, in the hope, I suppose, of hearing the dean's fire open upon me, but he waited patiently till my particular friend, Bob Thornhill, had picked up carefully, one by one, his miscellaneous collection of note-book, pencil, penknife, and other small wares, and had been obliged at length to make an unwilling exit; when, seeing the door finally closed, he commenced with his usual—"Have the goodness to sit down, sir."

Experience had taught me, that it was as well to make one's-self as comfortable as might be upon these occasions; so I took the easy-chair, and tried to look as if I thought the dean merely wanted to have a pleasant half-hour's chat. He marched into a little back-room that he called his study, and I began to speculate upon the probable subject of our conference. Strange! that week had been a more than usually quiet one. No late knocking in; no cutting lectures at chapel; positively I began to think that, for once, the dean had gone on a wrong scent, and that I should repel his accusations with all the dignity of injured innocence; or had he sent for me to offer his congratulations on my having commenced in the "steady" line, and to ask me to breakfast? I was not long to indulge such delusive hopes. Re-enter the dean, O. P., as our stage directions would have had it, with—a pair of stays!

By what confounded ill-luck they had got into his possession I could not imagine; but there they were. The dean touched them as if he felt their very touch an abomination, threw them on the table, and briefly said—"These, sir, were found in your rooms this morning. Can you explain how they came there?"

True enough, Leicester had been trying on the abominable articles in my bedroom, and I had stuffed them into a drawer till wanted. What to say was indeed a puzzle. To tell the whole truth would, no doubt, have ended the matter at once, and a hearty laugh should I have had at the dean's expense; but it would have put the stopper on "She Stoops to Conquer." It was too ridiculous to look grave about; and blacker grew the countenance before me, as, with a vain attempt to conceal a smile, I echoed his words, and stammered out—"In my rooms, sir?"

"Yes, sir, in your bed-room." He rang the bell. "Your servant, Simmons, most properly brought them to me."

The little rascal! I had been afraid to let him know any thing about the theatricals; for I knew perfectly well the dean would hear of it in half an hour, for he served him in the double capacity of scout and spy. Before the bell had stopped, Dick Simmons made his appearance, having evidently been kept at hand. He did look rather ashamed of himself, when I asked him, what business he had to search my wardrobe?

"Oh dear, sir! I never did no sich a thing; I was a-making of your bed, sir, when I sees the tag of a stay-lace hanging out of your topmost drawer, sir—("I am a married man, sir," to the dean apologetically, "and I know the tag of a stay-lace, sir")—and so I took it out, sir; and knowing my duty to the college, sir, though I should be very sorry to bring you into trouble, Mr Hawthorne, sir"——

"Yes, yes, Simmons, you did quite right," said the dean. "You are bound to give notice to the college authorities of all irregularities, and your situation requires that you should be conscientious."

"I hope I am, sir," said the little rascal; "but indeed I am very sorry, Mr Hawthorne, sir"——

"Oh! never mind," said I; "you did right, no doubt. I can only say those things are not mine, sir; they belong to a friend of mine."

"I don't ask who they belong to, sir," said the dean indignantly; "I ask, sir, how came they in your rooms?"

"I believe, sir, my friend (he was in my rooms yesterday) left them there. Some men wear stays, sir," continued I, boldly; "it's very much the fashion, I'm told."

"Eh! hum!" said the dean, eyeing the brown jean doubtingly. "I have heard of such things. Horrid puppies men are now. Never dreamt of such things in my younger days; but then, sir, we were not allowed to wear white trousers, and waistcoats of I don't know what colours; we were made to attend to the statutes, sir. 'Nigri aut suspici,' sir, Ah! times are changed—times are changed, indeed! And do you mean to say, sir, you have a friend, a member of this university, who wears such things as these?"

I might have got clear off, if it had not been for that rascal Simmons. I saw him give the dean a look, and an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

"But I don't think, sir," resumed he, "these can be a man's stays—eh, Simmons?" Simmons looked diligently at his toes. "No," said the dean, investigating the unhappy garment more closely—"no, I fear, Simmons, these are female stays!"

The conscientious Simmons made no sign.

"I don't know, sir," said I, as he looked from Simmons to me. "I don't wear stays, and I know nothing about them. If Simmons were to fetch a pair of Mrs Simmons's, sir," resumed I, "you could compare them."

Mrs Simmons's figure resembled a sack of flour, with a string round it; and, if she did wear the articles in question, they must have been of a pattern almost unique—made to order.

"Sir," said the dean, "your flippancy is unbecoming. I shall not pursue this investigation any further; but I am bound to tell you, sir, this circumstance is suspicious—very suspicious." I could not resist a smile for the life of me. "And doubly suspicious, sir, in your case. The eyes of the college are upon you, sir." He was evidently losing his temper, so I bowed profoundly, and he grew more irate. "Ever since, sir, that atrocious business of the frogs, though the college authorities failed in discovering the guilty parties, there are some individuals, sir, whose conduct is watched attentively. Good-morning, sir."

The "business of the frogs," to which the dean so rancorously alluded, had, indeed, caused some consternation to the fellows of——. There had been a marvellous story going the round of the papers, of a shower of the inelegant reptiles in question having fallen in some part of the kingdom. Old women were muttering prophecies, and wise men acknowledged themselves puzzled. The Ashmolean Society had sat in conclave upon it, and accounted so satisfactorily for the occurrence, that the only wonder seemed to be that we had not a shower of frogs, or some equally agreeable visitors, every rainy morning. Now, every one who has strolled round Christ-Church meadows on a warm evening, especially after rain, must have been greeted at intervals by a whole gamut of croaks; and, if he had the curiosity to peer into the green ditches as he passed along, he might catch a glimpse of the heads of the performers. Well, the joint reflections of myself and an ingenious friend, who were studying this branch of zoology while waiting for the coming up of the boats one night, tended to the conclusion, that a very successful imitation of the late "Extraordinary Phenomenon" might be got up for the edification of the scientific in our own college. Animals of all kinds find dealers and purchasers in Oxford. Curs of lowest degree have their prices. Rats, being necessary in the education of terriers, come rather expensive. A pole-cat—even with three legs only—will command a fancy price. Sparrows, larks, and other small birds, are retailed by the dozen on Cowley Marsh to gentlemen under-graduates who are aspiring to the pigeon-trap. But as yet there had been no demand for frogs, and there was quite a glut of them in the market. They were cheap accordingly; for a shilling a hundred we found that we might inflict the second plague of Egypt upon the whole university. The next evening, two hampers, containing, as our purveyor assured us, "very prime 'uns," arrived at my rooms "from Mr S——, the wine merchant;" and, by daylight on the following morning, were judiciously distributed throughout all the come-at-able premises within the college walls. When I awoke the next morning, I heard voices in earnest conversation under my window, and looked out with no little curiosity. The frogs had evidently produced a sensation. The bursar, disturbed apparently from his early breakfast, stood robed in an ancient dressing-gown, with the Times in his hand, on which he was balancing a frog as yellow as himself. The dean, in cap and surplice, on his way from chapel, was eagerly listening to the account which one of the scouts was giving him of the first discovery of the intruders.

"Me and my missis, sir," quoth John, "was a-coming into college when it was hardly to say daylight, when she, as I reckon, sets foot upon one of 'em, and was like to have been back'ards with a set of breakfast chiney as she was a-bringing in for one of the fresh gentlemen. She scritches out in course, and I looks down, and then I sees two or three a' 'oppin about; but I didn't take much notice till I gets to the thoroughfare, when there was a whole row on 'em a-trying to climb up the bottom step; and then I calls Solomon the porter, and"——

Here I left my window, and, making a hasty toilet, joined a group of under-graduates, who were now collecting round the dean and bursar. I cast my eyes round the quadrangle, and was delighted with the success of our labours. There had been a heavy shower in the night, and the frogs were as lively as they could be on so ungenial a location as a gravelled court. In every corner was a goodly cluster, who were making ladders of each other's backs, as if determined to scale the college walls. Some, of more retiring disposition, were endeavouring to force themselves into crevices, and hiding their heads behind projections to escape the gaze of academic eyes; while a few active spirits seemed to be hopping a sweepstakes right for the common-room door. Just as I made my appearance, the principal came out of the door of his lodgings, with another of the fellows, having evidently been summoned to assist at the consultation. Good old soul! his study of zoology had been chiefly confined to the class edibles, and a shower of frogs, authenticated upon the oaths of the whole Convocation, would not have been half so interesting to him as an importation of turtle. However, to do him justice, he put on his spectacles, and looked as scientific as any body. After due examination of the specimen of the genus Zana which the bursar still held in captivity, and pronouncing an unanimous opinion, that, come from where he would, he was a bona fide frog, with nothing supernatural about him, the conclave proceeded round the quadrangle, calculating the numbers, and conjecturing the probable origin of these strange visitors. Equally curious, if not equally scientific, were the under-graduates who followed them; for, having strictly kept our own secret, my friend and myself were the only parties who could solve the mystery; and though many suspected that the frogs were unwilling emigrants, none knew to whom they were indebted for their introduction to college. The collected wisdom of the dons soon decided that a shower of full-grown frogs was a novelty even in the extraordinary occurrences of newspapers; and as not even a single individual croaker was to be discovered outside the walls of ——, it became evident that the whole affair was, as the dean described it, "another of those outrages upon academic discipline, which were as senseless as they were disgraceful."

I daresay the dean's anathema was "as sensible as it was sincere;" but it did not prevent our thoroughly enjoying the success of the "outrage" at the time; nor does it, unfortunately, suffice at this present moment to check something like an inward chuckle, when I think of the trouble which it cost the various retainers of the college to clear it effectually of its strange visitors. Hopkins, the old butler, who was of rather an imaginative temperament, and had a marvellous tale to tell any one who would listen, of a departed bursar, who, having caught his death of cold by superintending the laying down of three pipes of port, might ever afterwards be heard, upon such interesting occasions, walking about the damp cellars after nightfall in pattens. Hopkins, the oracle of the college "tap," maintained that the frogs were something "off the common;" and strengthened his opinion by reference to a specimen which he had selected—a lank, black, skinny individual, which really looked ugly enough to have come from any where. Scouts, wives, and children, (they always make a point of having large families, in order to eat up the spare commons,) all were busy, through that eventful day, in a novel occupation, and by dinnertime not a frog was to be seen; but long, long afterwards, on a moist evening, fugitives from the general prescription might be seen making their silent way across the quadrangle, and croakings were heard at night-time, which might (as Homer relates of his frogs) have disturbed Minerva, only that the goddess of wisdom, in chambers collegiate, sleeps usually pretty sound.