Pantomimes

Originally published in Temple Bar–A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers (Ward and Lock) vol.1 #2 (an 1861).

By the time these pages expand their contents beneath the eager paper-knives of our enlightened readers, thousands of little pairs of bright eyes will have grown brighter, and thousands of little pairs of tender hands will have clapped rapturously to greet that marvellous partie carrée, Clown, Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Columbine, as they emerge at the bidding of the retributive fairy from their chrysalis state in the "introduction," to lead henceforward bright and airy lives, released from the cares and conventionalities of this work-a-day world, which nevertheless they condescend to mix with quite familiarly. What a strange, admirable, absurd, inscrutable thing is our English Christmas Pantomime! What an intensely national affair it has grown to be! how we all have loved it in our day, and cherish it still for the sake of the mirth and delight it imparts to our little ones, and the soothing sadness with which it inspires us as it calls up our days of innocent revel! Yet strong as are its roots in the hearts and habits of Englishmen, essentially peculiar as the precise form of entertainment called a Pantomime is to ourselves, it is neither of very ancient origin, nor are its materials indigenous, though we have made them up our own way,—and a very curious way it is, when we come to consider it. The writer of the present lines is not given to antiquarian studies, and has not thought it any part of his duty, ere treating of pantomime, to hunt out the traces of the first landing of the illustrious Italians, who have since made themselves so thoroughly at home here, and so cunningly wound themselves about our affections, that it is hard to think them other than aboriginal Britons racy of the soil.
        There must, however, no doubt, have been a time when the characters of the ancient Italian comedies, from which our friends Clown, Harlequin, and Pantaloon are undoubted though degenerate descendants, were introduced to the English public by native Italians, who had to trust to gestures entirely to convey their comic intentions; and by tradition these personages on our stage have continued mute, or nearly so: for Clown without his occasional interjections and stereotyped songs of "Hot Codlings" and "Tippetywitchet" would not be recognisable; and if Pantaloon did not give vent to his fears with an occasional "Somebody coming," or to his amorous inclinations by the challenge "My Dear," his identity would be imperilled. But was ever consanguinity so belied as that between Italy—or, indeed, any thing foreign—and our English pantomime! As strange would it sound to say that plum-pudding was invented by the Gauls. To further illustrate how wonderfully remote our Christmas drolls are from their historical original, it is stated by critics and learned antiquarians that the characters of the Italian comedy were first invented to satirise the inhabitants of various towns or provinces, and thus that, these comic types were not based on personal and moral characteristics, but on national peculiarities. Thus Pantaloon is a Venetian, the Doctor is a Bolognese, Scapin Neapolitan, and Arlequin, or Harlequin, is from Bergamo. Punch too, who, before he set up a theatre of his own, as great actors and public favourites to this day are fond of doing, belonged to the troop of the ordinary comedians of Italy, is said to have originated in a caricature of the peasants of Acerra, an ancient city in the Terra di Lavoro. How such extremely restricted conceptions must have tended to entirely transform themselves when transplanted, will be evident if we bring it home to ourselves by such aparallel as that a stage Yorkshireman, Irishman, or Cockney should emigrate to the boards of the Italian theatre. How long would it be ere Tyke, or Teague, or Lubin Log, would convert themselves into gesticulating maccaroni-eating buffoni of the true Italian type?
        In fact, there is clear evidence that in Italy itself they soon enlarged themselves from their local and limited intentions to become individualities with universally intelligible characteristics. Harlequin, whatever he in the origin may have been, soon became a personage whose entertaining peculiarities could be relished by those who had never heard of Bergamo, or seen a Bergamese citizen, in their lives. The harlequin of the Italian comedies of the last century, of the French stage at the same period, and of the English stage in the days of Rich and Woodward, although in the last instance he was restricted to dumb-show, was in some sort a citizen of the world, whose humours and characteristic marks appealed to the universal sympathies and common sense of ridicule of mankind. Addison, who saw him on his native soil in his Italian travels, says, "Harlequin's part is made up of blunders and absurdities; he is to mistake one name for another, to forget his errands, to stumble over queens, and to run his head against every post that comes in his way. This is all attended with something so comical in the voice and gestures, that a man who is sensible of the folly of the part can hardly forbear to be pleased with it." How admirable, by the way, is the grave majestic dignity of this description! Who out of the age of ruffles and periwigs would have spoken of a funny fellow with such a grand, half-courtier-like, half-philosophical calmness? Addison is evidently apologising to himself for having allowed his gravity to be discomposed by the tricks of poor Arlequino.
        Marmontel, describing the same character as he saw it on the French stage, is more elaborate and subtle in his portraiture. "His character," he says, "is a mixture of ignorance, simplicity, wit, stupidity, and grace; he is a kind of half made-up man (un homme ébauché), a great child with gleams of reason and intelligence, and all whose mistakes and blunders have something arch about them. The true mode of representing him is to give him suppleness, agility, the playfulness of a kitten, with a certain coarseness of exterior, which renders his actions more absurd; his part is that of a patient faithful valet, greedy, always in love, always in trouble, either on his master's or his own account, afflicted and consoled as easily as a child, and whose grief is as amusing as his joy."
        From all accounts, there is no doubt that the Harlequin of our stage and theatrical booths in the days of Garrick, and for his impersonation of whom Rich became so famous, was a faithful impression of this curious type. In one respect Rich did not strictly follow the prescription we have given for playing Harlequin. His grief was not always laughable, and it is said of him that, "in one or two of his pantomimes, his taking leave of Columbine was at once graceful and affecting." Was ever ancestor so dishonoured in his descendants as is the eccentric but amiable sentimentalist here denoted in the gentleman with the particoloured and bespangled tights who bears his name in the present age, and who betrays no more feeling for the nominal object of his affections, nor, indeed, any more human emotion whatever, than the wooden baton passed through his girdle? In France, the character of Harlequin, which was there not condemned to the silent system, rose to a high degree of importance. Besides exciting mirth by the general absurdity of his behaviour, he was made the mouthpiece of biting sarcasms on the age and the prevailing follies of society, and in many instances his was the principal character in the piece he played in. One of the best French harlequins was Carlin, as he was called theatrically, although his real name was Carlo Bertinanzi, he being an Italian by birth. Fleury, the actor, in his amusing Memoirs, devotes a chapter to a delineation of his qualities as an actor, as well as his character in private, where he seems to have carried many of the eccentric attributes of the part he assumed in public. His chief merits were an extraordinary accent of candour and simplicity in his dialogue, and the marvellous nature of his pantomimic gestures.
        To the authors who wrote for him he was a perfect godsend, for such were his powers of humorous expression, that he invested all he said with a prestige of comicality that would make the most commonplace speech seem the acme of witticism. Harlequin was expected to amuse his audience by introducing a great deal of that practical fun which is now the principal ingredient of pantomime; and when Carlin slipped as he came on the stage, or in a night-scene stumbled over a post or ran up against a wall, it was done with such a natural air, that his audience could scarcely refrain from crying out to him to "take care." He possessed also the gift of improvisation, and would seize upon any unexpected incident during the performance to graft upon it all sorts of supernumerary drolleries. Frequently, when children were brought to the theatre to see him, they would be so impressed with the perfect good faith and reality of the droll good-tempered fellow before them, that they would address him from the boxes; and he, using the very wide privilege of his part, would enter into a colloquy with the little people, and with the greatest art would work in these digressions into the substance of his part, so as entirely to delude country-folks into the belief that the whole performance was designed, and on subsequent nights they would raise a cry for the scene of "harlequin and the children." The black mask, the white beaver hat, and the wooden sword or baton, were, as now, the indispensable insignia of the part. It would seem an important drawback to the actor's powers of expression to have to conceal the play of his features beneath an immovable mask. Such was Carlin's power of impressing his audience, however, that Fleury says it was common to find yourself fixing your eye-glass at the black senseless pasteboard, and fancying you were watching an endless succession of comical expressions upon it.
        As for the hat, he seems to have turned it to the most marvellous account as a means of denoting the various moods of his changeful spirit. When it was placed straight upon his head, with the edges turned up all round in the manner of a diadem, it gave him an air of audacious defiance. A little on one side, with one corner drawn down towards the shoulder, it gave him a tender graceful air, and signified that he was waiting for Columbine, and that love was busy with his thoughts. If both corners hung like drooping ears on each side of his mask, he had encountered or was anticipating some misfortune, and the spectator might fancy tears rolling down his black cheeks; but if his spirit was elated with joy, both corners were cocked up, with a swaggering triumphant twist that seemed to throw scorn in the teeth of fate. Surely never was so much got out of a hat, even by Herr Frikell himself. The fascination exerted by one gifted with such a keen instinct for natural and quaint expression is easy to be understood; and Carlin continued to act and command the public favour till he was seventy-six; and though he grew fat and globular in shape, he retained to the last the suppleness, agility, and cat-like grace proper to the part with which he had identified himself. It befell him sometimes, as it has done many another great man, to find himself suddenly deserted by the public, or at least to see his audience reduced to a very select few. On one occasion there were actually only two persons present in the theatre, which in France is the number strictly requisite to form a quorum; so Carlin played his part to them with as much spirit as might be expected under the circumstances. At the close of the performance he advanced to the foot-lamps, and beckoned one of the two spectators to come closer; and when the latter had reached the orchestra, Carlin stooped down and said quite confidentially to him: "Monsieur. comme je vois que l'autre moitié de notre public est partie, si vous rencontrez quelqu'un en sortant d'ici, faites-moi le plaisir de lui dire que nous donnerons demain 'Arlequin ermite.'" Such was the French Arlequin, who, in his double capacity of humorist and satirist, merged into the roguish and witty valets of the more modern comedy, and not a few of whose features may be recognised in the Figaro of Beaumarchais.
        How different has been the fate of the English version of the pleasant Italian buffo! Instead of losing himself in the heroes of comedy, he has preserved his identity, but dwindled into an inane dancer and posture-maker, with no more humour than a barber's pole. It is true, if he is not funny himself, he is the cause of fun in others, by being the whetstone on which the Clown occasionally sharpens his humour. But he is not a good butt either; for he assumes a supercilious superiority over Clown and Pantaloon, who, with all their depravity and weakness, are, I suspect, far better fellows than himself, although he evidently goes in for respectability, and wields the power which that attribute, or the appearance of it, carries with it in this world. The degeneracy of Harlequin must evidently have been subsequent to Rich's time; for we have seen that, though employing only pantomimic gesture, he made him both humorous and pathetic; and yet Rich is said to have originated the Christmas Pantomime, such as we know it. But if we look a little further into the matter, it is evident that his pantomimes were very different affairs from ours; in some respects, I imagine, not nearly so good, in others better. The account Davies gives of them is this: "To retrieve the credit of his theatre, Rich created a species of dramatic composition unknown to this and, I believe, to any other country, which he called a Pantomime: it consisted of two parts—one serious, the other comic. By the help of gay scenes, fine habits, grand dances, appropriate music, and other decorations, he exhibited a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, or some other fabulous writer. Between the pauses, or acts, of this serious representation he interwove a comic fable, consisting chiefly of the courtship of Harlequin and Columbine, with a variety of surprising adventures and tricks, which were produced by the magic wand of Harlequin, such as the sudden transformation of temples and palaces," &c. &c. Now we certainly see here the germ of modern pantomimes; but we also see, from the serious element it contained, and the dramatic intention given to Harlequin's portion of the entertainment, that it was a very different affair indeed; and that, in fact, the modern pantomime, which is grotesquely comic throughout, and in the harlequinade mere mad foolery, tumbling, and dancing, is a burlesque or a travestie of Rich's invention. I suspect that the great change in pantomime, which brought it to its present shape, and so completely transmogrified the original characteristics of Harlequin, dates from the day Grimaldi's genius burst upon the world. He it was who raised the part of "the Clown" to its prominence, and made him, from a subordinate, one of a group of satellites round Harlequin, the effulgent centre of the pantomimic firmament. The very dress with which the character is identified he invented; and by absorbing so large a share of the humour and fun which it had once been Harlequin's office to produce, forced the other to restrict himself to dancing and dangling about Columbine, and employing the magic properties of his wand to perplex or punish his followers.
        The writer of these remarks is too young to have seen Grimaldi; but from the lively accounts he has heard and read, in common with most of his readers, by those who had, he is forced to believe that he must have had a power of drollery and a histrionic faculty capable of moving the older part of his audience directly, and not, as with most of his successors, by a reflex of his effect on the younger branches. He seems to have possessed the talent for pantomimic expression so eminently the gift of the Italian race, allied to a strong sense of popular English humour. The happy combination of the fine perception and impulsive dexterity due to his southern blood, with the breadth and high colouring which suits John Bull's blunter sense of the ridiculous, has vanished with him. No clown since has approached the tradition left us of the excellence of the great original; and, indeed, it has always seemed to me, since the intoxication of childish joy caused by a pantomime subsided sufficiently to allow me to be critical, that there was an ideal in the very character of Clown which no performer I ever saw attained, though they gave occasional glimpses of it. One clown is a clever acrobat, another an agile dancer and amusing mimic of choregraphic graces, a third has the true twang and grimace for "Hot Codlings" and "Tippetywichet;" but none impress you with the idea of a decided grotesque individuality, whose knavish tricks, comical perplexities, and reckless adventures, we follow with a true dramatic interest; and such Grimaldi's Clown appears to have been. A description I have before me of this actor's peculiarities shows that he must have exactly taken up the notion of the old Harlequin, and reshaped it for his own use. "The hopelessness of one who knows not what to do next," this writer says, "he hits off to a nicety; he always appeared to us to represent a grown child waking to perception, and wondering at every object he beholds." This is very like the account already given of the Harlequin of the French stage, and explains why our Harlequin has sunk to such insignificance; although it is abundantly evident he was formerly the central and important figure of our pantomimes, as his name invariably figures in the title, which is always Harlequin this, or Harlequin that.
        The pantomime in which Grimaldi took his final leave of the stage, in 1828, was called "Harlequin Hoax;" yet certainly the chequered lover of Columbine could not have been the hero of that performance. In these days, alas, though Clown is nominally the chief object of interest, we have no pantomimist who has been able to render him sufficiently so in reality to bind together the chaotic jumble of what are technically called the "comic scenes," in opposition to the "introduction," which is nevertheless now, with its big masks and burlesque characters, by far the more prominent part of the entertainment. The absence of a real hero from our present pantomimes, caused by the deficiency of true genius and genuine gesticular humour in the mimics of our stage, has forced up gorgeous scenery into the chief attraction of Christmas mummeries. But however lovely and graceful are the conceptions of Messrs. Beverley, Telbin, Callcott, as to the abodes of fairies, and whatever sums a manager may be inclined to expend to present us with seraphic groups of floating fairies, shimmering with tinsel in an empyrean of liquid light, all this is but a poor compensation for the mirth,—the downright, hearty, side-shaking mirth,—which the exquisite foolery of such a great master-mummer as Grimaldi afforded a legitimate excuse for indulging in. We want a fool, a motley fool,—one who, like him Jaques met "i' the forest," will make our "lungs to crow like chanticleer," and at whom we shall laugh "sans intermission an hour by the dial"—"a noble fool, a worthy fool!" Sensible of this vast hiatus in the attraction of a Christmas pantomime, a manager of recognised shrewdness devised the notable expedient of remedying the defect by giving the public two clowns, two harlequins, two pantaloons, &c., &c., for one of each; thinking apparently that, by doubling the dose of dullness, he was presenting them with double their money's worth. It was a naïveté worthy of the elder Harlequin himself.
        But is this a tone to be writing of pantomime in? Is it with this whining about degenerate days, and these sour gimaces at the probable fare in store for us, that we should anticipate the glorious advent of Clown, Pantaloon, and Co.? What hypocrisy is this! I admit I never saw Grimaldi, that I have taken his supposed excellence clean upon faith; what right have I, therefore, to complain, and make odious comparisons, and throw a wet blanket on those who are inclined to enjoy themselves with the sport of our Deulins and Leclercqs and Bolenos—poor Flexmore, alas, has danced the inevitable dance of death—and Paynes? Pray is not Mr. W.H. Payne as great a pantomimist as ever lived? Have you seen him, as the Earl of Mercia, receive the petition of his overtaxed vassals in Lady Godiva, and after superciliously glancing at it through an enormous eye-glass, contemptuously wipe his feet on it? Have you seen him retire to rest in the Great Bed of Ware, or rise in the morning and go through the ordinary operations of the toilet? You say you have, and the force of pantomimic humour can go no further; but still he is not a Clown, and a good Clown makes a good pantomime. Sophistry! The fact is, my dear fellow, you are no longer a boy. That bloom of real enjoyment for practical fun and downright mad frolic, of wild delight at tumbling and wry faces,—that bloom is brushed away from your heart for ever. You had no business to take up this subject, and give us your dry retrospects of what you never saw,—disquisitions about the real character of Harlequin, and that sort of thing,—when your heart should have been bounding and your brain swimming with bright images of delight at the very thought that, in a few short weeks, would come the Christmas Holidays; and the day after eating a roaring Christmas dinner, you would go and see that glimpse of Elysian felicity, a grand comic Christmas Pantomime! The writer admits that nothing worth reading about pantomimes can be written but by a boy—an innocent guileless boy, such as is taken out of the streets by the Egyptian magician to see wondrous visions in a drop of ink; and the writer, moreover, sincerely wishes he himself were the boy to do it.