But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, and his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr M.in private life-- about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and general history, and I daresay was forming a picture of those in my mind: -- wife cooking the mutton;children waiting for it; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth; during which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and heels.Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish them: Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they utter them.All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly, and out of his uniform: that preacher, and why in his travels this and that point struck him; wherein lies his power of pathos, humour, eloquence; -- that Minister of State, and what moves him, and how his private heart is working; -- I would only say that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest: but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing? Poems are written, and we cease to admire.Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned.The last time I saw a ballet at the opera -- oh! it is many years ago -- I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant.Ah, I remember a different state of things! Credite posteri.To see these nymphs -- gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of time -- that an opera-dancer? Pooh! My dear Walter, the great difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody can like to look at them.And as for laughing at me for falling asleep, I can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise.In my time, a la bonne heure.In the reign of George IV., I give you my honour, all the dancers at the opera were as beautiful as Houris.Even in William IV.'s time, when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere, -- I say it was a vision of lovelinesssuch as mortal eyes can't see nowadays.How well I remember the tune to which she used to appear! Kaled used to say to the Sultan, "My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping of my heart, in she used to dance! There has never been anything like it -- never.There never will be -- I laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your Montessu, your Vistris, your Parisot -- pshaw, the senile twaddlers! And the impudence of the young men, with their music and their dancers of to- day! I tell you the women are dreary old creatures.I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they send all rational creatures to sleep.Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely one! Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel! Ah, Malibran! Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for me): and they we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer.
But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage beauty since the days of George IV.Think of Sontag! I remember her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in `28.I remember being behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli.Young fellows have never seen beauty like that, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes.Don't tell me! A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours.
Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang, acted, and danced.When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there: when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious pupils -- of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more! One much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the chief male dancer -- a very important personage then,with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap- door for ever.And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti -- your old fogey who can see no good except in his own time.
They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much improved since the days of my monarch -- of George IV.Pastry Cookery is certainly not so good.I have often eaten half-a- crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now? I passed by the pastrycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school.It looked a very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have come over him -- those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I remember them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning.