leg, the "prima donna assoluta" was fifty- had made the acquaintance of a Milanese three years of age, and the "prima bal- banker who had a charming villa on the lerina" was slightly humped in the back, opposite side of the lake, say at Silva and was endowed with but a single eye; Selvaggia. He had a pretty yacht, in which so, as you may imagine, the Canobbiana many a time we made voyages on the idle entertainments did not draw very crowded expanse, voyages which reminded me of audiences. The garden of the usually the cruise of Sir Cymochles. My host was pleasant Caffé Cova, where we dined (chiefly an enthusiastic fresh-water sailor, so much on macaroni and fried intestines), "al so that the lake boatman used to call him, fresco," had become a nuisance, owing to "Il Signore della Vela." He was perpetuthe continual presence of noisy patriots, ally splicing his mainbrace, and reefing his smoking bad "Cavours," and screeching topsail. Sail! we did nothing but sail: that about the incapacity of General de la Mar- is to say when we were not breakfasting, mora, and the shameful tergiversation of the or dining, or smoking, or drinking "asti Emperor Napoleon the Third in the matter spumante," or dozing, or playing with a of the Dominio Veneto. The caricatures in large French poodle that was rated on the the Spirito Folletto were wofully stupid, books of the yacht, and I think did more and altogether Milan had become socially work than any of the crew (one man, very uninhabitable. Mildman and I determined like Fra Diavolo in a check shirt, and to start on a ramble. We got to Chiavenna, without shoes and stockings, and a boy and so, by Vico Soprano, to St. Moritz. who played the guitar), for he was incesThence, hiring a little "calescino," a pictu- santly racing from the bow to the stern, resque kind of one-horse chaise, we made and barking at the passing boats. We Samaden, and for three weeks or so dodged spent at least eight hours out of the in and out of the minor Alpine passes-the twenty-four on the water; and when there Bernina, the Tonale, and so forth-taking was a dead calm we lay to and went to to mule-back when the roads were im- sleep. At breakfast time the Perseveranza, practicable for the "calescino," and coming the chief journal of Lombardy, came to out into the Tyrol at last somewhere near hand, and our hostess would read out the Storo, where we rejoined our famous Hero telegrams for our edification. After that and his red-shirted army. After another we bade the Perseveranza go hang, and skirmish or so we called them battles strolled down towards the yacht. I never -there was another armistice, and back read anything, I never wrote anything, I I came to Milan, but this time alone. I never thought of anything, while I was shook hands with Mildman, and the last I floating on the Idle Lake, save of what a saw of him was his slender figure bestriding capital thing it would be to be idle for ever. a mule in a mountain gorge, and in the setting sun. He was departing in quest of windmills to charge, or forlorn Dulcineas to rescue; he was bound for Damascus, or the "ewigkeit." What do I know about it? Farewell, excellent Quixotic man.

But I went back to Mediolanum; and for the next eight weeks I was continually running backwards and forwards to the Idle Lake. I had grown to love it. I loved even the quaint old Lombard town from which the lake derives, not its sobriquet, but its real name. There are two of the dirtiest and dearest hotels in Northern Italy in that town; yet I was fond of them both. There are as many evil smells in the town as in Cologne; yet the imperfect drainage, and the too apparent presence of decaying animal and vegetable matter in the market-place, did not affect me. Was I not on the shore of the great, calm, blue lake, with the blue sky above, and the blue mountains in the distance, and the whole glorious landscape shot with threads of gold by the much embroidering sun? I

In our boating excursions we frequently landed at different points on the lake, and called upon people. They were always glad to see us, and to entertain us with fruit, wine, cigars, sonatas on the pianoforte (if there were ladies present), and perfectly idle conversation. I never yet learnt the "nice conduct of a clouded cane;" but I think that I acquired, during my sojourn on the Idle Lake, the art of twirling a fan, and of cutting paper. Had I stayed long enough I might have learned to whistle: that grand accomplishment of the perfect idler. By degrees I became conscious that my visiting acquaintance was extending among a very remarkable set of people; and that nearly everybody occupying the dainty palazzi and trim little villas nestling among the vines, and oranges, and olives of the Idle Lake was Somebody. It will be no violation of confidence I hope, and no ungrateful requital of hospitality, to hint that at Bella Riviera to the north-east was situated the charming country house of Madame la Princesse

What

a bitter sickness comes across her.
artificer likes to reflect upon his loss of
competency in his art? Are retired am-
bassadors, are generals hopelessly on half-
pay, are superannuated statesmen, or the
head-masters of public schools, who have
retired on handsome pensions, so very
happy, think you? Not so, perchance.
Ambition survives capacity very often. The
diplomatist clings to his despatch-bag, the
soldier to his bâton of command, the minis-
ter to his red box, the pedant to his rod,
the actor to his sock and buskin or his
comic mask, long after the verdict of super-
fluity has been delivered; long after the
dread fiat of inefficiency has gone forth—
the fiat proclaiming that the bellows are
burned, that the lead is consumed of the
fire, and that the founder worketh in vain.

All round the coasts of the Idle Lake there were retired celebrities. The district was a kind of prosperous Patmos, a St. Helena tenanted by voluntary exiles, a

Hatzoff, the consort, indeed, of the wellknown General Adjutant and Grand Chamberlain to His Imperial Majesty the Tsar of all the Russias. M. le Prince resides on his extensive estates in the government of Tamboff. Some say that he is sojourning in a yet remoter government, that of Tobolsk in Siberia, where he is occupied in mining pursuits in the way of rolling quartz stone in the wheelbarrow to which he, as a life convict, is chained. The Princess Hatzoff passes her winters either in Paris or Florence, her springs in England, her autumns at Homburg or Baden, and her summers on the Idle Lake. She is enormously rich, although M. le Prince, during their brief wedded life, did his best to squander the splendid fortune she brought him. She is growing old now; her clustering ringlets-she was renowned for her ringlets-are silvery white; her shoulders are arched, and her hands tremble ominously as she holds her cards at piquet; but her complexion is still ex-jovial Cave of Adullam. Here vegetated quisitely clear, and she is not indebted to art for the roses on her cheeks. Her feet are deliciously small and shapely, and she is fond of exhibiting them, in their openworked silk stockings, and their coquettish little slippers with the high heels and the pink rosettes. Forty years ago you used to see waxen models, coloured to the life, of those feet (with the adjoining ankles), ay, and of those half-paralysed hands, in the shops of the Palais Royal and Regentstreet, and the Great Moskaia at Petersburg. Forty years ago her portraits, in half a hundred costumes and a whole hundred attitudes, were to be found in every printseller's window in Europe. Forty years ago she was not Madame la Princesse Hatzoff, but Mademoiselle Marie Fragioli, the most famous opera-dancer of her age. The world has quite forgotten her, but I doubt whether she has as completely forgotten the world: nay, I fancy that in her sumptuous retreat she sometimes rages, and is wretched at the thought that age, decrepitude, and her exalted rank compel her to wear long clothes, and that in the airiest of draperies she can no longer spring forward to the footlights, night after night, to be deafened by applause, and pelted with bouquets, and to find afterwards at the stage-door more bouquets, with diamond bracelets for holders, and reams of billet-doux on pink note-paper. Those triumphs, for her, are all over. They are enjoyed by sylphs as fair, as nimble, and as caressed as she has been; and when she reads of their successes in the newspapers

an enriched director of promenade concerts; there enjoyed his sumptuous "otium" the ex-proprietor of dwarfs and giants, of learned pigs and industrious fleas; and in yonder Swiss châlet lived a lion-tamer, much famed on the Idle Lake for his proficiency in breeding rabbits. Millionaire patentees of cough lozenges, bronchitic wafers, anti-asthmatical cigarettes, universal pills, and Good Samaritan ointments, abounded on the Lake; together with a group of wealthy veteran tenors, baritones, and bassi, several Parisian restaurateurs and café keepers who had realised large fortunes; a contractor of one of the Rhine watering - place gambling tables; many affluent linendrapers and court milliners, and an English ex-butcher from Bondstreet, as rich as Croesus. All who were out of debt, and had nothing to grumble at, seemed to have gathered themselves together on these shores, leading a tranquil, dozy, dawdling kind of existence, so that you might have imagined them to be partakers before their time of the delights of some Eastern Elysium, and to be absorbed in the perpetual contemplation of Buddha.

But my days of relaxation on the banks of the Idle Lake came, with that autumn, to an end; and away I went into the "ewigkeit," always into the "ewigkeit," to be tossed about in more wars and rumours of wars, and rebellions and revolutions. For years I have not set eyes upon the Idle Lake; but I often dream of it, and puzzle myself to determine whether it is situated somewhere between the Lake of

the audience was dismissed at the end of
the third act." Upon subsequent perform-
ances of the comedy no doubt the manage-
ment reduced the strength of the punch,
or substituted some harmless beverage,
toast-and-water perhaps, imitative of that
ardent compound so far as mere colour
was concerned. There have been actors,
however, who have refused to accept the
innocent semblance of vinous liquor sup-
plied by the management, and especially
when, as part of their performance, they
were required to simulate intoxication. A
certain representative of Cassio was wont
to take to the theatre a bottle of claret
from his own cellar, whenever he was
called upon to sustain that character. It
took possession of him too thoroughly, he
said, with a plausible air, to allow of his
affecting inebriety after holding an empty
goblet to his lips, or swallowing mere toast-
and-water or small beer. Still his pre-
caution had its disadvantages. The real
claret he consumed might make his intem-
perance somewhat too genuine and accu-"still I acted, and they hissed me.
rate; and his portrayal of Cassio's speedy
return to sobriety might be in such wise
very difficult of accomplishment. So there
have been players of dainty taste, who,
required to eat in the presence of the au-
dience, have elected to bring their own
provisions, from some suspicion of the
quality of the food provided by the ma-
nagement. We have heard of a clown
who, entering the theatre nightly to under-
take the duties of his part, was observed
to carry with him always a neat little paper
parcel. What did it contain? bystanders
inquired of each other. Well, in the comic
scenes of pantomime it is not unusual to
see a very small child, dressed perhaps as
a charity-boy, crossing the stage, bearing
in his hands a slice of bread-and-butter.
The clown steals this article of food and
devours it; whereupon the child, crying
aloud, pursues him hither and thither about
the stage. The incident always excites
much amusement; for in pantomimes the
world is turned upside-down, and moral
principles have no existence; cruelty is
only comical, and outrageous crime the
best of jokes. The paper parcel borne to
the theatre by the clown under mention
enclosed the bread-and-butter that was to
figure in the harlequinade. "You see I'm
a particular feeder," the performer ex-
plained. "I can't eat bread-and-butter of
any one's cutting. Besides, I've tried it,
and they only afford salt butter. I can't
stand that. So as I've got to eat it and
no mistake, with all the house looking at me,

I cut a slice when I'm having my own tea,
at home, and bring it down with me."

Rather among the refreshments of the side-wings than of the stage must be counted that reeking tumbler of "very brown, very hot, and very strong brandyand-water," which, as Doctor Doran relates, was prepared for poor Edmund Kean, as, towards the close of his career, he was wont to stagger from before the footlights, and, overcome by his exertions and infirmities, to sink, "a helpless, speechless, fainting, bent-up mass," into the chair placed in readiness to receive the shattered, ruined actor. With Kean's prototype in acting and in excess, George Frederick Cooke, it was less a question of stage or side-wing refreshments than of the measure of preliminary potation he had indulged in. In what state would he come down to the theatre? Upon the answer to that inquiry the entertainments of the night greatly depended. "I was drunk the night before last," Cooke said on one occasion;

Last

night I was drunk again, and I didn't act, they hissed all the same. There's no knowing how to please the public." A fine actor, Cooke was also a genuine humorist, and it must be said for him, although a like excuse has been perhaps too often pleaded for such failings as his, that his senses gave way, and his brain became affected after very slight indulgence. From this, however, he could not be persuaded to abstain, and so made havoc of his genius, and terminated, prematurely and ignobly enough, his professional career.

Many stories are extant as to performances being interrupted by the entry of innocent messengers bringing to the players, in the presence of the audience, refreshments they had designed to consume behind the scenes, or sheltered from observation between the wings. Thus it is told of one Walls, who was the prompter in a Scottish theatre, and occasionally appeared in minor parts, that he once directed a maidof-all-work, employed in the wardrobe department of the theatre, to bring him a gill of whisky. The night was wet, so the girl, not caring to go out, intrusted the commission to a little boy who happened to be standing by. The play was Othello, and Walls played the Duke. The scene of the senate was in course of representation. Brabantio had just stated:

My particular grief
Is of so flood-gate and o'erbearing nature,
That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,
And it is still itself,

Charles Dickens.]

CASTAWAY.

and the Duke, obedient to his cue, had in- maker, and are designed for what are quired:

Why, what's the matter? when the little boy appeared upon the stage, bearing a pewter measure, and explained, "It's just the whisky, Mr. Walls; and I could na git ony at fourpence, so yer awn the landlord a penny; and he says it's time you was payin' what's doon i' the book." The senate broke up amidst the uproarious laughter of the audience.

Real macaroni in Masaniello, and real champagne in Don Giovanni, in order that Leporello may have opportunities for "comic business" in the supper scene, are demanded by the customs of the operatic stage. Realism generally, indeed, is greatly affected in the modern theatre. The audiences of to-day require not merely that real water shall be seen to flow from a pump, or to form a cataract, but that real wine shall proceed from real bottles, and be fairly swallowed by the performers. In Paris, a complaint was recently made that, in a scene representing an entertainment in modern fashionable society, the champagne supplied was only of a secondrate quality. Through powerful operaglasses the bottle labels could be read, and the management's sacrifice of truthfulness to economy was severely criticised. The audience resented the introduction of the cheaper liquor, as though they had themselves been constrained to drink it.

As part also of the modern regard for realism may be noted the "cooking-scenes," which have frequently figured in recent plays. The old conjuring trick of making a pudding in a hat never won more admiration than is now obtained by such simple expedients as frying bacon or sausages, or broiling chops or steaks upon the stage in sight of the audience. The manufacture of paste for puddings or pies by one of the dramatis person has also been very favourably received, and the first glimpse of the real rolling-pin and the real flour to be thus employed, has always been attended with applause. In a late production, the opening of a soda-water bottle by one of the characters was generally regarded as quite the most impressive effect of the representation.

known as the "spill and pelt" scenes of
the pantomime. They represent juicy
legs of mutton, brightly streaked with red
and white, quartern loaves, trussed fowls,
turnips, carrots, and cabbages, strings of
sausages, fish of all kinds, sizes, and
colours; they are to be stolen and pocketed
by the clown, recaptured by the policeman,
and afterwards wildly whirled in all direc-
tions in a general "rally" of all the cha-
racters in the harlequinade. They are but
adroitly painted canvas stuffed with straw
or sawdust. No doubt the property-maker
sometimes views from the wings with con-
siderable dismay the severe usage to which
his works of art are subjected. "He's an ex-
cellent clown, sir," one such was once heard
to say, regarding from his own stand-point
the performance of the jester in question.
"He don't destroy the properties as some
do." Perhaps now and then, too, a minor
actor or a supernumerary, who has derided
"the sham wine parties of Macbeth and
others," may lament the scandalous waste
of seeming good victuals in a pantomime.
But, as a rule, these performers are not
fanciful on this, or, indeed, on any other
subject. They are not to be deceived by the
illusions of the stage; they are themselves
too much a part of its shams and artifices.
Otherwise, a
Property legs of mutton are to them not
perties," and nothing more.
even food for reflection, but simply "pro-
somewhat too cynical disposition might be
unfortunately encouraged; and the poor
player, whose part requires him to be lavish
super," constrained
of bank-notes of enormous amount upon the
stage, and the hungry
to maltreat articles of food which he would
prize dearly if they were but real, might be
too bitterly affected by noting the grievous
discrepancy existing between their private
and their public careers-the men they are
and the characters they seem to be.

66

CASTAWAY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP," "WRECKED IN
PORT," &c. &c.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER VIII. COMBINATION AND CONSPIRACY.

MRS. ENTWISTLE lying on her sofa, which

At Christmas time, when the shops are
so copiously supplied with articles of food-there being no longer anything worth

as

to suggest a notion that the world is content to live upon half-rations at other seasons of the year, there is extraordinary storing of provisions at certain of the theatres. These are not edible, however; they are due to the art of the property

looking out at-had been moved away from the window and wheeled opposite the fire, was gazing into the glowing coals, and seeing in them dreary scenes, which harmonised with the gloomy state of her mental reflection, for Mrs. Entwistle was

1

i