The Mudfog Papers

by Charles Dickens

  “Supplementary Section E – Umbugology

  and Ditchwateristics.

  President – Mr Grub. Vice Presidents –

  Messrs Dull and Dummy.

  “A paper was read by the secretary descriptive of a bay pony with one eye, which had been seen by the author standing in a butcher’s cart at the corner of Newgate Market.* The communication described the author of the paper as having, in the prosecution of a mercantile pursuit, betaken himself one Saturday morning last summer from Somers Town to Cheapside; in the course of which expedition he had beheld the extraordinary appearance above described. The pony had one distinct eye, and it had been pointed out to him by his friend Captain Blunderbore, of the Horse Marines, who assisted the author in his search, that whenever he winked this eye he whisked his tail (possibly to drive the flies off), but that he always winked and whisked at the same time. The animal was lean, spavined* and tottering, and the author proposed to constitute it of the family of Fitfordogsmeataurious. It certainly did occur to him that there was no case on record of a pony with one clearly defined and distinct organ of vision, winking and whisking at the same moment.

  “Mr Q.J. Snuffletoffle had heard of a pony winking his eye, and likewise of a pony whisking his tail, but whether they were two ponies or the same pony he could not undertake positively to say. At all events, he was acquainted with no authenticated instance of a simultaneous winking and whisking, and he really could not but doubt the existence of such a marvellous pony in opposition to all those natural laws by which ponies were governed. Referring, however, to the mere question of his one organ of vision, might he suggest the possibility of this pony having been literally half asleep at the time he was seen, and having closed only one eye.

  “The President observed that, whether the pony was half asleep or fast asleep, there could be no doubt that the association was wide awake, and therefore that they had better get the business over and go to dinner. He had certainly never seen anything analogous to this pony, but he was not prepared to doubt its existence; for he had seen many queerer ponies in his time, though he did not pretend to have seen any more remarkable donkeys than the other gentlemen around him.

  “Professor John Ketch* was then called upon to exhibit the skull of the late Mr Greenacre,* which he produced from a blue bag, remarking, on being invited to make any observations that occurred to him, ‘that he’d pound it as that ’ere ’spectable section had never seed a more gamerer cove nor he vos’.

  “A most animated discussion upon this interesting relic ensued; and, some difference of opinion arising respecting the real character of the deceased gentleman, Mr Blubb delivered a lecture upon the cranium before him, clearly showing that Mr Greenacre possessed the organ of destructiveness to a most unusual extent, with a most remarkable development of the organ of carveativeness. Sir Hookham Snivey was proceeding to combat this opinion, when Professor Ketch suddenly interrupted the proceedings by exclaiming, with great excitement of manner, ‘Walker!’

  “The President begged to call the learned gentleman to order.

  “Professor Ketch – Order be blowed! You’ve got the wrong un, I tell you. It ain’t no e’d at all; it’s a coker-nut as my brother-in-law has been a-carvin’, to hornament his new baked tatur-stall wots a-comin’ down ’ere vile the ’sociation’s in the town. Hand over, vill you?

  “With these words, Professor Ketch hastily repossessed himself of the coconut, and drew forth the skull, in mistake for which he had exhibited it. A most interesting conversation ensued; but as there appeared some doubt ultimately whether the skull was Mr Greenacre’s, or a hospital patient’s, or a pauper’s, or a man’s, or a woman’s, or a monkey’s, no particular result was obtained.

  “I cannot,” says our talented correspondent in conclusion, “I cannot close my account of these gigantic researches and sublime and noble triumphs without repeating a bon mot of Professor Woodensconce’s, which shows how the greatest minds may occasionally unbend when truth can be presented to listening ears, clothed in an attractive and playful form. I was standing by, when, after a week of feasting and feeding, that learned gentleman, accompanied by the whole body of wonderful men, entered the hall yesterday, where a sumptuous dinner was prepared; where the richest wines sparkled on the board and fat bucks – propitiatory sacrifices to learning – sent forth their savoury odours. ‘Ah!’ said Professor Woodensconce, rubbing his hands, ‘this is what we meet for; this is what inspires us; this is what keeps us together, and beckons us onward; this is the spread of science, and a glorious spread it is.’”

  The Pantomime of Life

  Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess to a fondness for pantomimes – to a gentle sympathy with clowns and Pantaloons – to an unqualified admiration of Harlequins and Columbines* – to a chaste delight in every action of their brief existence, varied and many-coloured as those actions are, and inconsistent though they occasionally be with those rigid and formal rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of meaner and less comprehensive minds. We revel in pantomimes – not because they dazzle one’s eyes with tinsel and gold leaf; not because they present to us, once again, the well-beloved chalked faces and goggle eyes of our childhood; not even because, like Christmas Day, and Twelfth Night, and Shrove Tuesday, and one’s own birthday, they come to us but once a year – our attachment is founded on a graver and a very different reason. A pantomime is to us a mirror of life; nay more, we maintain that it is so to audiences generally, although they are not aware of it, and that this very circumstance is the secret cause of their amusement and delight.

  Let us take a slight example. The scene is a street: an elderly gentleman, with a large face and strongly marked features, appears. His countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is on his broad, red cheek. He is evidently an opulent elderly gentleman, comfortable in circumstances and well-to-do in the world. He is not unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly, not to say gaudily dressed, and that he indulges to a reasonable extent in the pleasures of the table may be inferred from the joyous and oily manner in which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the audience that he is going home to dinner. In the fullness of his heart, in the fancied security of wealth, in the possession and enjoyment of all the good things of life, the elderly gentleman suddenly loses his footing and stumbles. How the audience roar! He is set upon by a noisy and officious crowd, who buffet and cuff him unmercifully. They scream with delight! Every time the elderly gentleman struggles to get up, his relentless persecutors knock him down again. The spectators are convulsed with merriment! And when at last the elderly gentleman does get up, and staggers away, despoiled of hat, wig and clothing, himself battered to pieces, and his watch and money gone, they are exhausted with laughter, and express their merriment and admiration in rounds of applause.

  Is this like life? Change the scene to any real street – to the Stock Exchange, or the City banker’s, the merchant’s counting house, or even the tradesman’s shop. See any one of these men fall – the more suddenly, and the nearer the zenith of his pride and riches, the better. What a wild hallo is raised over his prostrate carcass by the shouting mob; how they whoop and yell as he lies humbled beneath them! Mark how eagerly they set upon him when he is down, and how they mock and deride him as he slinks away. Why, it is the pantomime to the very letter.

  Of all the pantomimic dramatis personae, we consider the Pantaloon the most worthless and debauched. Independent of the dislike one naturally feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in pursuits highly unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that he is a treacherous, worldly-minded old villain, constantly enticing his younger companion, the Clown, into acts of fraud or petty larceny, and generally standing aside to watch the result of the enterprise. If it be successful, he never forgets to return for his share of the spoil; but if it turn out a failure, he generally retires with
remarkable caution and expedition, and keeps carefully aloof until the affair has blown over. His amorous propensities, too, are eminently disagreeable, and his mode of addressing ladies in the open street at noonday is downright improper, being usually neither more nor less than a perceptible tickling of the aforesaid ladies in the waist, after committing which, he starts back, manifestly ashamed (as well he may be) of his own indecorum and temerity; continuing, nevertheless, to ogle and beckon to them from a distance in a very unpleasant and immoral manner.

  Is there any man who cannot count a dozen Pantaloons in his own social circle? Is there any man who has not seen them swarming at the west end of the town on a sunshiny day or a summer’s evening, going through the last-named pantomimic feats with as much liquorish energy, and as total an absence of reserve, as if they were on the very stage itself? We can tell upon our fingers a dozen Pantaloons of our acquaintance at this moment – capital Pantaloons, who have been performing all kinds of strange freaks, to the great amusement of their friends and acquaintance, for years past; and who to this day are making such comical and ineffectual attempts to be young and dissolute, that all beholders are like to die with laughter.

  Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the Café de l’Europe in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense of the young man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part at the door of the tavern. The affected warmth of that shake of the hand, the courteous nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the savoury flavour of which still hangs upon his lips are all characteristics of his great prototype. He hobbles away humming an opera tune, and twirling his cane to and fro, with affected carelessness. Suddenly he stops – ’tis at the milliner’s window. He peeps through one of the large panes of glass; and, his view of the ladies within being obstructed by the India shawls, directs his attentions to the young girl with the bandbox in her hand, who is gazing in at the window also. See! He draws beside her. He coughs; she turns away from him. He draws near her again; she disregards him. He gleefully chucks her under the chin and, retreating a few steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage. She turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a toothless chuckle. The Pantaloon to the life!

  But the close resemblance which the clowns of the stage bear to those of everyday life is perfectly extraordinary. Some people talk with a sigh of the decline of pantomime, and murmur in low and dismal tones the name of Grimaldi.* We mean no disparagement to the worthy and excellent old man when we say that this is downright nonsense. Clowns that beat Grimaldi all to nothing turn up every day, and nobody patronizes them – more’s the pity!

  “I know who you mean,” says some dirty-faced patron of Mr Osbaldistone’s, laying down the Miscellany when he has got thus far, and bestowing upon vacancy a most knowing glance, “you mean C.J. Smith as did Guy Fawkes, and George Barnwell at the Garden.”* The dirty-faced gentleman has hardly uttered the words, when he is interrupted by a young gentleman in no shirt collar and a Petersham coat. “No, no,” says the young gentleman. “He means Brown, King and Gibson, at the ’Delphi.”* Now, with great deference both to the first-named gentleman with the dirty face, and the last-named gentleman in the non-existing shirt collar, we do not mean either the performer who so grotesquely burlesqued the Popish conspirator,* or the three unchangeables who have been dancing the same dance under different imposing titles, and doing the same thing under various high-sounding names for some five or six years last past. We have no sooner made this avowal than the public, who have hitherto been silent witnesses of the dispute, enquire what on earth it is we do mean; and, with becoming respect, we proceed to tell them.

  It is very well known to all playgoers and pantomime-seers that the scenes in which a theatrical clown is at the very height of his glory are those which are described in the playbills as “Cheesemonger’s shop and crockery warehouse”, or “Tailor’s shop, and Mrs Queertable’s boarding house”, or places bearing some such title, where the great fun of the thing consists in the hero’s taking lodgings which he has not the slightest intention of paying for, or obtaining goods under false pretences, or abstracting the stock-in-trade of the respectable shopkeeper next door, or robbing warehouse porters as they pass under his window, or, to shorten the catalogue, in his swindling everybody he possibly can, it only remaining to be observed that, the more extensive the swindling is, and the more barefaced the impudence of the swindler, the greater the rapture and ecstasy of the audience. Now it is a most remarkable fact that precisely this sort of thing occurs in real life day after day, and nobody sees the humour of it. Let us illustrate our position by detailing the plot of this portion of the pantomime – not of the theatre, but of life.

  The Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, attended by his livery servant Do’em – a most respectable servant to look at, who has grown grey in the service of the Captain’s family – views, treats for and ultimately obtains possession of the unfurnished house, such a number, such a street. All the tradesmen in the neighbourhood are in agonies of competition for the Captain’s custom; the Captain is a good-natured, kind-hearted, easy man and, to avoid being the cause of disappointment to any, he most handsomely gives orders to all. Hampers of wine, baskets of provisions, cartloads of furniture, boxes of jewellery, supplies of luxuries of the costliest description, flock to the house of the Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, where they are received with the utmost readiness by the highly respectable Do’em; while the Captain himself struts and swaggers about with that compound air of conscious superiority and general bloodthirstiness which a military captain should always, and does most times, wear, to the admiration and terror of plebeian men. But the tradesmen’s backs are no sooner turned than the Captain, with all the eccentricity of a mighty mind, and assisted by the faithful Do’em, whose devoted fidelity is not the least touching part of his character, disposes of everything to great advantage; for, although the articles fetch small sums, still they are sold considerably above cost price, the cost to the Captain having been nothing at all. After various manoeuvres, the imposture is discovered, Fitz-Fiercy and Do’em are recognized as confederates, and the police office to which they are both taken is thronged with their dupes.

  Who can fail to recognize in this, the exact counterpart of the best portion of a theatrical pantomime – Fitz-Whisker Fiercy by the Clown; Do’em by the Pantaloon; and supernumeraries by the tradesmen? The best of the joke, too, is that the very coal merchant who is loudest in his complaints against the person who defrauded him is the identical man who sat in the centre of the very front row of the pit last night and laughed the most boisterously at this very same thing – and not so well done either. Talk of Grimaldi, we say again! Did Grimaldi, in his best days, ever do anything in this way equal to Da Costa?

  The mention of this latter justly celebrated clown reminds us of his last piece of humour, the fraudulently obtaining certain stamped acceptances from a young gentleman in the army. We had scarcely laid down our pen to contemplate for a few moments this admirable actor’s performance of that exquisite practical joke, than a new branch of our subject flashed suddenly upon us. So we take it up again at once.

  All people who have been behind the scenes, and most people who have been before them, know that in the representation of a pantomime a good many men are sent upon the stage for the express purpose of being cheated, or knocked down, or both. Now, down to a moment ago, we had never been able to understand for what possible purpose a great number of odd, lazy, large-headed men, whom one is in the habit of meeting here and there and everywhere, could ever have been created. We see it all now. They are the supernumeraries in the pantomime of life; the men who have been thrust into it, with no other view than to be constantly tumbling over each other, and running their heads against all sorts of strange things. We sat opposite to one of these men at a supper table only last week. Now we think
of it, he was exactly like the gentlemen with the pasteboard heads and faces who do the corresponding business in the theatrical pantomimes; there was the same broad, stolid simper – the same dull leaden eye – the same unmeaning, vacant stare; and whatever was said, or whatever was done, he always came in at precisely the wrong place, or jostled against something that he had not the slightest business with. We looked at the man across the table again and again; and could not satisfy ourselves what race of beings to class him with. How very odd that this never occurred to us before!

  We will frankly own that we have been much troubled with the Harlequin. We see Harlequins of so many kinds in the real living pantomime that we hardly know which to select as the proper fellow of him of the theatres. At one time we were disposed to think that the Harlequin was neither more nor less than a young man of family and independent property, who had run away with an opera dancer, and was fooling his life and his means away in light and trivial amusements. On reflection, however, we remembered that Harlequins are occasionally guilty of witty and even clever acts, and we are rather disposed to acquit our young men of family and independent property, generally speaking, of any such misdemeanours. On a more mature consideration of the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion that the Harlequins of life are just ordinary men, to be found in no particular walk or degree, on whom a certain station, or particular conjunction of circumstances, confers the magic wand. And this brings us to a few words on the pantomime of public and political life, which we shall say at once, and then conclude – merely premising in this place that we decline any reference whatever to the Columbine, being in no wise satisfied of the nature of her connection with her particoloured lover, and not feeling by any means clear that we should be justified in introducing her to the virtuous and respectable ladies who peruse our lucubrations.