slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our
pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like
eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of
sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheekbone
with a slight Thief-flavour in it. Besides prowlers and
idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty
tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders,
slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred highways and byways. Many
of us – on the whole, the majority – were not at all clean, and not
at all choice in our lives or conversation. But we had all come
together in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening’s
entertainment in common. We were not going to lose any part of
what we had paid for through anybody’s caprice, and as a community
we had a character to lose. So, we were closely attentive, and
kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise
instantly get out from this place, or we would put him out with the
greatest expedition.
We began at half-past six with a pantomime – with a pantomime so
long, that before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling
for six weeks – going to India, say, by the Overland Mail. The
Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in the Introduction,
and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the globe,
glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly.
We were delighted to understand that there was no liberty anywhere
but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the agreeable fact.
In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other way, we and
the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and
found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their
old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if
the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the
leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina,
and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout
father and three spineless sons. We all knew what was coming when
the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a big face, and His
Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying himself behind,
with his big face all on one side. Our excitement at that crisis
was great, and our delight unbounded. After this era in our
existence, we went through all the incidents of a pantomime; it was
not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning or
boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting them up;
was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly
presented. I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who
represented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had
no conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real thing
– from which I infer that you may take that audience in (if you
wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such
like, but they are not to be done as to anything in the streets. I
noticed, also, that when two young men, dressed in exact imitation
of the eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audience, were
chased by policemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being
caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen to tumble
over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps – as though it
were a delicate reference to something they had heard of before.
The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama. Throughout the
evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she
usually is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so. We
all agreed (for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and we
were as hard as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn’t hear of Villainy
getting on in the world – no, not on any consideration whatever.
Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed.