The children of Dickens

IN our day the moving picture and the radio have made it possible for the people who live in the city and the people who live in the country to see and hear the same things. Our amusements are very much alike. But it was not so in Dickens’s day. The great actors were in the theatres of the large cities; but companies of strolling players were on the roads. They carried their stage scenery with them and did their own advertising. They did not have to compete with those who could act better.

Dickens enjoyed these cheerful wanderers who went about giving entertainments to people who were easily pleased. When Nicholas Nickleby and his friend Smike were trudging along on the road from London to Portsmouth they fell in with Mr. Vincent Crummles and his dramatic company. Nicholas had almost come to the end of the little money with which he started, and he was very glad when Mr. Crummles invited him to share his supper at the inn. When Nicholas had told Mr. Crummles his story he was invited to join the company, at a salary which while not large was sufficient to keep him from starving. In this way he became acquainted with the Infant Phenomenon. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Crummles and was the pride of the family. Nicholas was introduced to her when they came to the theatre in the next town. It was a very dingy little theatre on a back street. Mrs. Crummles led the way to the stage.

There bounded on to the stage from some mysterious inlet, a little girl in a dirty white frock with tucks up to the knees, short trousers, sandled shoes, white spencer, pink gauze bonnet, green veil, and curl-papers; who turned a pirouette, cut twice in the air, turned another pirouette, then, looking off at the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to within six inches of the footlights, and fell into a beautiful attitude of terror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of buff slippers came in at one powerful slide, and chattering his teeth, fiercely brandished a walking-stick.

“They are going through the Indian Savage and the Maiden,” said Mrs. Crummles.

“Oh!” said the manager, “the little ballet interlude. Very good, go on. A little this way, if you please, Mr. Johnson. That’ll do. Now!”

The manager clapped his hands as a signal to proceed, and the savage, becoming ferocious, made a slide toward the maiden; but the maiden avoided him in six twirls, and came down at the end of the last one upon the very points of her toes. This seemed to make some impression upon the savage; for, after a little more ferocity and chasing of the maiden into corners, he began to relent, and stroked his face several times with his right thumb and forefinger, thereby intimating that he was struck with admiration of the maiden’s beauty. Acting upon the impulse of this passion, he (the savage) began to hit himself severe thumps in the chest, and to exhibit other indications of being desperately in love, which being rather a prosy proceeding, was very likely the cause of the maiden’s falling asleep; whether it was or no, asleep she did fall, sound as a church, on a sloping bank, and the savage perceiving it, leaned his left ear on his left hand, and nodded sideways, to intimate to all whom it might concern that she was asleep, and no shamming. Being left to himself, the savage had a dance, all alone. Just as he left off, the maiden woke up, rubbed her eyes, got off the bank, and had a dance all alone too—such a dance that the savage looked on in ecstasy all the while, and when it was done, plucked from a neighboring tree some botanical curiosity, resembling a small pickled cabbage, and offered it to the maiden, who at first wouldn’t have it, but on the savage shedding tears relented. Then the savage jumped for joy; then the maiden jumped for rapture at the sweet smell of the pickled cabbage. Then the savage and the maiden danced violently together, and, finally, the savage dropped down on one knee, and the maiden stood on one leg upon his other knee; thus concluding the ballet, and leaving the spectators in a state of pleasing uncertainty, whether she would ultimately marry the savage, or return to her friends.

“Very well indeed,” said Mr. Crummles; “bravo!”

“Bravo!” cried Nicholas, resolved to make the best of everything. “Beautiful!”

“This, sir,” said Mr. Vincent Crummles, bringing the maiden forward, “this is the Infant Phenomenon—Miss Ninetta Crummles.”

“Your daughter?” inquired Nicholas.

“My daughter—my daughter,” replied Mr. Vincent Crummles; “the idol of every place we go into, sir. We have complimentary letters about this girl, sir, from the nobility and gentry of almost every town in England.”

“I am not surprised at that,” said Nicholas; “she must be quite a natural genius.”

“Quite a—!” Mr. Crummles stopped; language was not powerful enough to describe the Infant Phenomenon. “I’ll tell you what, sir,” he said; “the talent of this child is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir—seen—to be ever so faintly appreciated. There; go to your mother, my dear.”

“May I ask how old she is?” inquired Nicholas.

“You may, sir,” replied Mr. Crummles, looking steadily in his questioner’s face, as some men do when they have doubts about being implicitly believed in what they are going to say. “She is ten years of age, sir.”

“Not more?”

“Not a day.”

“Dear me!” said Nicholas, “it’s extraordinary.”

It was; for the Infant Phenomenon, though of short stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had moreover been precisely the same age—not perhaps to the full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but certainly for five good years. But she had been kept up late every night, and put upon an unlimited allowance of gin and water from infancy, to prevent her growing tall, and perhaps this system of training had produced in the Infant Phenomenon these additional phenomena.

Nicholas was invited to dinner with the Crummles family at their lodgings. Mrs. Crummles, who always talked as if she were on the stage, received him in a most dignified way.

“You are welcome,” said Mrs. Crummles, turning round to Nicholas when they reached the bow-windowed front room on the first floor.

Nicholas bowed his acknowledgments, and was unfeignedly glad to see the cloth laid.

“We have but a shoulder of mutton with onion sauce,” said Mrs. Crummles, in the same charnel-house voice; “but such as our dinner is, we beg you to partake of it.”

“You are very good,” replied Nicholas, “I shall do it ample justice.”

“Vincent,” said Mrs. Crummles, “what is the hour?”

“Five minutes past dinner-time,” said Mr. Crummles.

Mrs. Crummles rang the bell. “Let the mutton and onion sauce appear.”

The slave who attended upon Mr. Bulph’s lodgers disappeared, and after a short interval reappeared with the festive banquet. Nicholas and the Infant Phenomenon opposed each other at the pembroke-table, and Smike and the Master Crummleses dined on the sofa-bedstead.

“Are they very theatrical people here?” asked Nicholas.

“No,” replied Mr. Crummles, shaking his head, “far from it—far from it.”

“I pity them,” observed Mrs. Crummles.

“So do I,” said Nicholas; “if they have no relish for theatrical entertainments, properly conducted.”

“Then they have none, sir,” rejoined Mr. Crummles. “To the Infant’s benefit, last year, on which occasion she repeated three of her most popular characters, and also appeared in the Fairy Porcupine, as originally performed by her, there was a house of no more than four-pound-twelve.”

“Is it possible?” cried Nicholas.

“And two pound of that was trust, pa,” said the Phenomenon.

“And two pound of that was trust,” repeated Mr. Crummles.

The public did not always appreciate the genius of the Infant Phenomenon, but that made no difference to the admiring father. When Nicholas suggested that perhaps a boy phenomenon might be added to the company, Mr. Crummles answered solemnly: “There is only one Phenomenon, sir, and that is a girl.”