Delphi complete works of.., p.292
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 292
L’Envoi. The Faded Actor
I CAN CALL him to my mind as I have seen him burlesqued and parodied a hundred times — The Faded Actor. There he stands in his bell-shaped coat drawn at the waist and ample in the skirt. The battered hat that he handles in his elaborate gestures, and holds against his heart as he bows, is but the wreck of a hat that was. His faded trousers are tight upon his leg, drawn downwards with a strap, and carrying some lingering suggestion of the days of Beau Brummel and George the Fourth. His ample buttons are pierced out with string. His frilled cuffs are ostentatious in their raggedness.
From top to toe his creators have made a guy of him, a mean parody of forgotten graces. When he speaks his voice is raucous and rotund. There is something of Shakespeare in it, and something of gin. His face is a blossom that has bloomed overmuch. His feet move in long shoes, fitless, and so worn that he slides noiselessly across the stage. Beneath his arm, as if to complete the pathos of his figure, is the rolled up manuscript of the play that he has composed and that the managers, shame be to them, refuse to produce.
In a thousand plays and parodies you shall see this figure of the Faded Actor, a stock abject of undying ridicule. It is a signal for our laughter when he takes a drink, fawning to get it and swallowing it as if into a funnel; it is a signal for our laughter when he cadges for a coin, the smallest not coming amiss; when he arranges with elaborate care upon his uplifted wrist the ruins of his cuff; and most of all when he draws forth from beneath his arm his manuscript and stands forth to read what none will hear except in mockery, with his poor self carried away unconscious with the art of it.
Mark him now as he strikes his attitude to read. Hear the full voice, deep and resonant for all the gin that is in it. No parody can quite remove the majesty of that, nor the grace that has once lived in those queer gestures. Let us temper our laughter, as we look upon him, with something kindlier than mockery, something nearer to respect; for in the Faded Actor with his strange twists and graces, his futile manuscript, his blighted hopes, his unredeemed ambitions, we are looking upon all that is best in the great traditions of the stage. That thick deep voice — comic now, but once revered — that is the surviving tradition of the Elizabethan tragedy, declaimed as a Shakespeare or a Marlowe would have had it. That sliding step so funny to our eye, is all that lingers of the dainty grace of the eighteenth century when dance and stage were one; or that dragging limp with which the poor Faded Actor crosses the stage — he does not know it, but that has come to him from Garrick; or see that long gesticulation of the hand revealing the bare wrist below the cuff; there was a time when such gesticulation was the admired model of a Fox or a Sheridan, and held, even at second hand, the admiration of a senate.
Nay more, there is a thing in the soul of the Faded Actor that all may envy who in this life are busied with the æsthetic arts. For after all what does he want, poor battered guy, with his queer gestures and his outlandish graces? Money? Not he. He has never had, nor ever dreamed of it. A coin here, and there, enough to buy a dram of gin or some broad cheap writing paper on which to enscribe his thoughts — that much he asks; but beyond that his ambition never goes, for it travels elsewhere and by another road. His soul at least is pure of the taint that is smeared across the arts by the money rewards of a commercial age. He lived too soon to hear of the millions a year that crown success and kill out genius; that substitute publicity for fame; that tempt a man to do the work that pays and neglect the promptings of his soul, and that turn the field of the arts into one great glare of notoriety and noise. Not so worked and lived a Shakespeare or a Michael Angelo; and the Faded Actor descends directly from them. Art for Art’s sake, is his whole creed, unconscious though it be. Someone to listen to his lines, an audience though only in a barn or beside the hedge row, a certain mead of praise that is the breath of art and the inspiration of effort; this he asks and no more. A yacht, a limousine, a palace beside the sea — of these things the Faded Actor has never heard. A shelter in someone else’s premises, enough gin to keep his voice as mellow as Shakespeare would have wished it, and with that, permission to recite his lines, and to stand forth in his poor easy fancy as a King of Carthage, or a Sultan of Morocco. Such is the end and aim of his ambition. But out of such forms of ambition has been built up all that is best in art.
To him, therefore, I dedicate this book. He will never read it, and I easily forgive him that. His brain has long since acquired a delicacy of adjustment that renders reading a superfluity. But I make the dedication all the same as a humble tribute to those high principles of art which are embodied in the Faded Actor.
THE END
The Dry Pickwick
ENGLAND’S GREATEST WRITER ADAPTED TO AMERICA’S GREATEST LEGISLATION
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE REVISED OR DRY PICKWICK
RATIFICATION OF THE NEW NAVAL DISAGREEMENT. (An Extract from the Annual Register of 1933)
A MEDIÆVAL HOLE IN ONE. WET GOLF IN DRY HISTORY
THE GREAT WAR AS RECORDED BY MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. EXTRAORDINARY WAR PLAY DISCOVERED AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON
IF THE GANDHI HABIT SPREADS. WHAT IF ALL THE POLITICIANS STRIP TO THE WAIST
IN PRAISE OF THE AMERICANS. THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY WRITING THE FIRST STORY IN THIS BOOK
ONCE TO EVERYMAN
CONFESSIONS OF A SODA FIEND. WRITTEN FROM A CONDEMNED CELL
A GUIDE TO THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. FOR THE USE OF AMERICAN TOURISTS
REVISED EDITION
WHY THE NEXT WAR DIDN’T HAPPEN. AN ATTEMPT TO REASSURE THE PUBLIC
A, B, AND C. after twenty years
BREAKFAST AT THE SMITHS’. A LITTLE STUDY IN THE BEAUTY OF CHEERFULNESS
THE PERFECT OPTIMIST. OR DAY-DREAMS IN A DENTAL CHAIR
CHILDREN’S POETRY REVISED
“TUM AND PLAY DOLF”. WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN MINIATURE GOLF GETS IN ITS EFFECT ON THE HUMAN MIND
HO FOR HAPPINESS. A PLEA FOR LIGHTER AND BRIGHTER LITERATURE
TENNIS AT THE SMITHS’. A SIMPLE STATEMENT OF THE FACTS
A BUTLER OF THE OLD SCHOOL
THE FLYING CARPET. BUT WHERE COULD IT FLY TO, NOW?
COME AND SEE OUR TOWN. HOW THE VISITOR FEELS WHEN SHOWN AROUND
INFLATION AND DEFLATION or FLATION IN AND DE
L’ENVOI: WHAT NEXT?. A GLIMPSE INTO OUR ULTIMATE FUTURE
INTRODUCTION
THE DEMAND FROM the American colleges for a revision of the works of Charles Dickens has now become so insistent that something must be done. “How can we put before the eyes of our literature classes,” writes the president of the Mush Academy, “such scenes as those of the Maypole Inn, or the taproom of the Ipswich White Horse?” “Our girls,” writes Professor Lydia Leftover, “are tough enough already. If they start to read the drinking episodes of the Pickwick Papers, we can’t hold them.” “We must have legislation in this matter,” declares a well-known Senator from a Middle West State. “Our people are accustomed to lean on legislation. They can’t progress without it. What we need is a State law to declare that Charles Dickens is not funny.”
“But would it not be the more moderate and sensible course,” so writes to me the president of a New England college, “if we could obtain a revised edition of the works of Charles Dickens, so made as to retain all the charm of character and humour and to leave out those features of social life not in harmony with our environment?”
Exactly. But can it be done? Let us take some of the most famous and typical episodes of the Dickens books and imagine them undergoing such a revision.
All the world knows, at first hand or at second or third, the Pickwick Papers. All the world has read or heard of such unforgettable episodes as the Christmas visit of Mr. Pickwick and his friends to the hospitable Manor Farm of Mr. Wardle of Dingley Dell. What would revision leave of such a page of life?
Let us recall it as Dickens wrote it.
Here is the rubicund and jovial Mr. Pickwick, together with his inimitable and immortal friends, setting out by coach to visit Dingley Dell. We recall the starting of the coach from the inn yard, the vast hampers with mysterious bottles clinking within them; the cracking of the whips of the merry postillions; the pauses by the way for a change of horses at the wayside inns where Mr. Pickwick and his friends descend from their perch to visit the bar. Here a rosy landlord behind the long mahogany dispenses sundry smoking punches and hot drinks redolent of gin and lemons. We recall the arrival at Dingley Dell with jolly old Wardle merrily greeting his friends; more punches: festivities within doors and festivities without; hot toddies, hot negus, sugar, lemons and spices — the very atmosphere of the West Indies wafted on the Christmas air of England; skating on the ice; whist, cards, and round games in the drawing-room; huge dinners and substantial suppers; the consumption of oysters by the barrel and spiced beef by the hundredweight; and through it all the soft aroma of hot punch, mulled ale, warmed claret and smoking gin and lemons; till at the end the merriment fades into somnolence and Mr. Pickwick and his friends sink into innocent slumber having broken enough laws — if the scene were in America — to have sent them all to the penitentiary for life.
Can such pictures be revised? We dare not read them as they stand. They would corrupt the young. Let us see what revision can do.
So here follows: —
THE REVISED OR DRY PICKWICK
THE EVENING WAS that of the twenty-fourth of December. Mr. Pickwick had retired early to his room in the inn and had betaken himself and his night-cap early to bed, in anticipation of an early start for Dingley Dell by the coach of the morrow. Mr. Pickwick, we say, had retired early to bed, and reclined well propped up with the pillows with a bedside book open on the coverlet before him as a scarcely necessary aid in the summons of slumber. Mr. Pickwick’s night-cap, in the corporeal or, so to speak, the flannel, sense was upon his head, while his night-cap in the metaphorical sense, stood beside the bed upon the settee in the form of a tall glass of smoking toddy, from which the great man punctuated his reading from time to time with little sips. If we had looked sideways over Mr. Pickwick’s shoulder at the book before him, we could have read its title as “The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, together with the federal and state legislation for the enforcement thereof.” We would have observed, moreover, that as the great man read further and further into the volume before him his usual genial face took on a serious air which almost deepened into an expression of indignation. We should have heard Mr. Pickwick from time to time give vent to such expressions as “Most extraordinary!” “Not to be tolerated,” and various other ejaculations of surprise, indignation and protest. Nay, we should have noted that the repeated sips taken by Mr. Pickwick from the tall flagon of punch became more and more frequent and accentuated, as if assuming the form of a personal assertion of independence against an unwarranted intrusion upon the liberty of a Briton. Indeed we should have finally noted that nothing but the emptying of the flagon and the simultaneous expiration of Mr. Pickwick’s candle as if blushing for shame to have illuminated such a page, put an end to Mr. Pickwick’s reading. Indeed we may well imagine that the brain of that august gentleman, usually so well poised as to admit of a dreamless slumber, may for once have been carried into a dreamland, haunted with the uncomfortable visions called up by what he had read. Mr. Pickwick indeed slept, but ——
“Better get up,” growled a voice at Mr. Pickwick’s ear before he seemed to have slept at all; “only ten minutes to coach time.”
If that was the voice of Tracy Tupman, Mr. Pickwick’s friend and contemporary, it was greatly changed; a surly voice with no good fellowship left in it; a mean voice — reflected Mr. Pickwick, as he sadly pulled on his clothes in the chill of a winter dawn — not like Tupman’s at all. No suggestion of a morning draught of gin and bitters, or of something that might warm the system and set it all a-tune for Christmas Day! Not even a “Merry Christmas,” thought Mr. Pickwick, as he dressed and descended to the yard where the coach stood in readiness. Mr. Pickwick’s friends were already gathered. They looked blue in the jowl and mournful in the chops; a sour-looking hostler half awake fussed about beside the horses.
“Don’t tip him,” whispered Mr. Snodgrass to Mr. Tupman.
“Tip him!” replied Tupman; “a mean, disobliging fellow like that; not a farthing.”
“Don’t tip the postboys either,” added Snodgrass.
“Certainly not,” said Tupman; “such a couple of lubberly stupid fellows I never saw in my life.”
Mr. Winkle, the fourth of the party, approached Mr. Tupman. “Have you got the hooch?” he asked in a half-voice.
“For God’s sake, Winkle, not so loud,” said Snodgrass. “You can’t tell who is hearing. I’m told they’ve got spotters now in all these yards. You’re never safe.”
With a sigh Mr. Pickwick ascended to the roof of the coach. “I never realized before,” he reflected, “what dirty smelly things these coaches are, intolerable.”
There were several other passengers on the Muggleton coach that morning. It had been Mr. Pickwick’s agreeable custom, hitherto, to invite conversation with his fellow-passengers, in whom he was accustomed to find a mine of interest and information. But the passengers of this morning — silent, muffled and mournful, their noses red with the cold, their hearts heavy with depression — inspired no such invitation to social intercourse. Mr. Pickwick left them alone. “They are a pack of bums,” he murmured, unconsciously making use of a word not known until fifty years after his own demise, “not worth talking to.” And then, as it were, suddenly taken with surprise at his own lack of urbanity: “I wish, Winkle,” he said behind his hand, “I wish I could get a gin and bitters.”
“Shut up!” said Mr. Winkle.
Mr. Pickwick looked down from the coach roof at a mournful-looking man who was helping to adjust the luggage into the boot. “Is everything there all right, Sam?” he inquired.
“Eh, what?” replied the man in a surly tone. “I guess it is. Get down yourself and see, if you doubt it.”
“Surly fellow,” murmured Mr. Pickwick to Mr. Tupman, and he added with a sigh, “How I ever could have thought that fellow Sam Weller obliging and amusing, passes my belief.”
“Why not get rid of him?” said Mr. Tupman in the same cautious whisper.
“Can’t,” said Mr. Pickwick, emphatically, “he belongs to the union.”
At length, with no more delay than coaches usually take in starting at such a season of the year, the coach with a fierce cracking of the whips and with sundry snarls from the postboys was off upon its way. “Mean, nasty weather,” muttered Mr. Snodgrass, shivering into the collar of his overcoat.
“What you can expect,” rejoined Mr. Winkle in a tone of equal complaint, “at this time of the year. It’s, let me see, the twenty-fifth of December: always rotten weather then.”
“Dear me!” murmured Mr. Pickwick, “Christmas!” and he repeated as if lingering on the sound of a remembered melody, “Christmas!”
“What’s that?” said Mr. Tupman.
“Nothing,” said Mr. Pickwick.
It would be too painful to trace the slow progress of the coach along miry roads, down muddy lanes with ragged snow in the hedgerows and past gaunt trees shivering in the winter gloom. There was no gleam of sunlight. A chill east wind flaked with sleet, blew in the faces of the travellers, while the sky darkened almost to the point of night. Conversation survived only in a few muttered imprecations at the weather, couched rather in the form of profane soliloquy than in that of mutual intercourse. Even the heart of the noble Mr. Pickwick sank within him. “I wish I had a drink,” he murmured from time to time. “Winkle, don’t you think we might take a sip out of the bottle?”
“Too dangerous,” replied Mr. Winkle with a guarded look at the other passengers. “One of those men,” he whispered behind his hand, “is evidently a clergyman. You can’t trust him. But wait awhile,” he added. “There’s an inn a little farther on, the Blue Boar. We can get in there and take a drink.”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Mr. Pickwick, “the Blue Boar!” and at the very name of that comfortable hostelry such a flood of recollections poured into his mind — memories of blazing fires and smoking viands, of hot punches and warm brandies, that for a moment the countenance of the great man resumed its usual aspect of serene good nature. “The Blue Boar,” he kept repeating to himself, “the Blue Boar,” and with his hat, face and spectacles well drawn within the folds of his collar and muffler, Mr. Pickwick was able, in spite of all discomforts, to relapse into something like a doze, in which no doubt his mind passed once more in review those pleasant scenes and episodes which had made his name famous throughout the civilized world.
“Get down here for awhile if you want to. We’re changing horses.” It was the voice of the guard which had rudely broken in on the somnolence of Mr. Pickwick.
He sat forward with a start. “Where are we?” he murmured, looking through the sleet at a large building, its main door boarded up, its windows for the most part shuttered and the swinging sign in front of it painted over with white-wash. “Where are we?”
“The Blue Boar, coach-stop number six,” said the guard. “Get down if you like. You have four minutes.”
Mr. Pickwick looked in silent dismay at what had once been the spacious and hospitable hostelry of the Blue Boar. Where now was the genial landlord of the bygone days, and where the buxom landlady, bustling about the inn, with a swarm of pretty chambermaids busy at her bidding, with serving-men stirring up huge fires, dinners on vast trays moving to private dining-rooms, with activity, happiness, merriment everywhere, whither had it fled? This gloomy shuttered building with makeshift stables at the back, the bar boarded up, the licence painted out, the chimneys almost smokeless! Mr. Pickwick sat motionless, scarce able to credit the transformation of the world he had once known.
