But professional zeal carried our friend Jonah just one step too far, and then it was that he fairly put my back up. Some time before the institution of our surpliced choir, Miss Caroline Ives, having, I presume, duly reached high Cit might have been high Z for all that I knew-gave vent to such ear-splitting shrieks that she routed me from my old seat in our church. I never, even as a boy, thoroughly enjoyed hearing a pig killed, and therefore was totally unable to appreciate the beauty of the young lady's vocal efforts, and preferred taking her, like the pig, at a safe distance. So, having negotiated a change with a deaf old party in a red cloak and poke - bonnet, I had ensconced myself in a seat at the bottom of the church, where I could enjoy comparative peace and the privilege of finding myself in the vicinity of Jonah. It sometimes amused me to watch our clerk's attitude during the sermon. If the rector preached, Jonah Jonah condescended to listen to the sermon-listening, however, I could not but note, with the air of a man conscious that, if he had the chance, he could make a far better job of it himself. Probably a good many other men besides Jonah have had this feeling. Like Galba, we are many of us in theory the best possible emperors, so eminently worthy of that imperial purple which we never get the opportunity of wearing. But when it fell to the lot of the curate to give us his views upon doctrinal mat ters, Jonah folded his arms, closed his eyes, and slept, or professed to sleep, aggressively; and there was that on his countenance which seemed to say, "I suppose you must preach when you are told to preach, but you really cannot expect a parish clerk to listen to a curate. Sus Minervam, indeed!" sermon, I woman But in these latter days, when the parish clerk had become an undertaker, there was no sleeping in the sermon. Jonah was very much wideawake, and intensely interested not in the fear, but in the backs even more than in the faces of his fellow - parishioners. He used to take them in rows and study them attentively, now and again uprising from his seat in his eagerness to ascertain whether a man or a some three or four pews off was really quite so tall or short as he or she looked, or whether the appearance of the stature was deceptive, owing to the different ways different people have of sitting. Having satisfied his curiosity as to this point, he would purse his lips and appear to calculate, and even surreptitiously write figure on his shirt-cuff before passing on to the next figure in the row. For two or three Sundays I watched him with some curiosity to know the why and the wherefore of this unusual proceeding; but at last I gave it up as a bad job, and elected to mind my own business. But there came a Sunday when a child would persist in coughing, and I, looking a measure. Now, I do not know that I altogether appreciate the situation of being measured by my tailor, who, as the years roll by, makes what he possibly means to be complimentary remarks upon the alteration of my figure, and kindly suggests to his assistant that he should allow an inch or so in the waistcoat. Most certainly I had every reason for objecting to being deliberately measured by that ghoul Jonah, a considerably older man than myself. He caught my eye, the beast, and at once closing his own affected to be asleep; but I watched him intently till I saw the tell-tale colour overspread even that coarse red face and mount to the tips of the protruding ears. And I saw his evil piglike eyes half open, and then hurriedly close again when he saw that I was watching him, and I knew that Jonah Binns, parish clerk and undertaker, felt that I had found him out. round suddenly to see where have been the man to hear him, the noise came from, caught and how unlucky the whole inJonah's eye fixed upon myself, cident! There was to be a and distinctly saw his lips particularly smart funeral, with frame the words "Six feet," a possibility of baked meats and and in the instant grasped the sweet wines, and Jonah had got fact that he was taking my himself up in the most correct and lugubrious attire for the occasion-in short, he was wearing his very best undertaker's costume, donned with more than ordinary care and precision. And his pet cat had come to the garden-gate to see him off, and purred and rubbed itself against his master's glossy legs, and behaved as an undertaker's well-fed cat should behave. But Jonah was in a hurry and paid little heed to that cat- -so little heed, in fact, that forgetting, as he turned to latch the garden-gate, that the cat was there, he fell right over the animal, plop on to a mighty mud-heap at the side of the road. And the mud was soft, and Jonah a man of some weight, and the result of that fall was disastrous, extremely so, and Urijah had to act as undertaker that day. The cat uttered a ghastly yell and fled incontinently, having taken the previous precaution of clawing Jonah. And Jonah picked himself up, and when he had inspected his hat, which had rolled off on to the road, and when he had looked at his waistcoat, which was an inch. deep in mud, and when the thought of that funeral banquet came over him, he lifted up his voice, and for the benefit of society at large said the one word "Damn!" Fortunately for him, society at large was not present to hear him and be Once, a few weeks later, I caught friend Jonah tripping tripping, I will in all fairness to the man say, in a manner to him wholly unusual, and under circumstances where the lapsus linguæ might almost be held excusable. In short, he used a bad word beginning with a big, big D. Poor Jonah, how unfortunate that I should shocked; but I had the good luck to come round the corner at the critical moment to witness the catastrophe and to overhear the remark. And I will admit that I was rather pleased than shocked. "Summat like a peony, I reckons, mister," he said. "And why like a peony, Job?" "Grate red face and not much count on asides," he replied. And I, seeing that the man Even then Jonah tried to Job was, which he commonly is shuffle out of it. "It is damp, sir," he said with a sickly smile. "Yes, damp without the p, Binns," I answered with purposed brutality. I was not going to let off a beast of an undertaker who had had the impudence to take my measure. Alas for the fallibility of human hopes! There reigns in our village now, no longer as understudy but as legitimate proprietor of the double part of parish clerk and undertaker, Urijah, the son of Jonah, who at once marked his accession to that high dignity, and gave a notable proof of his filial affection, by gracefully and successfully "undertaking" his father. "The flower fadeth" is what they put on Jonah's tombstone. Being somewhat dense in these matters, I could not see the exact application. Nor yet, I think, did Job Billing, who does see most things-when he is sober. not, in such condition of mind or body that he might be able to give me further information, did then question him on that other point, which had long vexed my mind. "Can you tell me the origin of these names, Job? Why were they all called by Bible names? "Whoy, don't yer know, mister?" "No," I replied, and I pulled out my notebook, not always having a ready memory. "Then I'll tell yer, then. This is how it wor. There were moy grandmother, as were Jonah's grandfather's sister; so as his'n grandfather and my grandmother were brother and sister belike. Do yer see?" "Yes," I said. "And his'n name were Job, weren't it? Well, that were how I came to be christened Job myself," and with that he gave his second cousin's grave a pat with his spade and walked away. VOL. CLXVII.-NO. MXI. G THE VICTORIAN DRAMA. THE year 1841 will always be marked with a white stone. Quietly enough it was ushered in upon the world; but as it declined towards the winter, its sky was illuminated by monstrous comets. All men wondered what these appearances might portend, one declaring that Armageddon was at hand, another foreseeing the near approach of a golden age. On the 6th of October, in our annus mirabilis, it was evident that the expected was about to happen; shooting - stars were observed in every quarter of the heavens; a flaming tiger walked unharmed down Fleet Street; a strange luminosity flashed over the "dear old Lyceum theatre." Yet none was found wise enough to explain these sudden marvels. "Was it that it preceded by a very few weeks the date of the birth of that eminent patron of the theatre, was his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales?" Or " it that about this time were produced in London close upon sixty years ago two plays that have remained stage classics to this hour" "Money" and "London Assurance"? No; neither of these events, momentous as they were in our national history, was sufficient to explain the miracles of that auspicious day. But we are in doubt no longer. At last we know why that tiger wandered down Fleet Street, and paused somewhat furtively at No. 141. At last we know why the swift effulgence lit up the good old house in Wellington Street." On October 6, 1841, Clement Scott was born. Unhappily he came into being a few months late. Two days before he was born "Macready announced that Drury Lane would reopen under his management on the 27th of December." Well, he missed that pronouncement, and the passage of time can never cure the eating regret. Nor is the worst yet told: "at Covent Garden," says the great man, "just when I opened my eyes in this wonderful world I might have seen in one cast Charles Mathews and old Farren, Mrs Glover, and Mrs Humby!" But, alas! his eyes were not opened quite wide enough, and as he could not be taken to Covent Garden, he dreamed play - bills in his cradle, and saw vague visions of Edmund Kean. After such a birth, it is small wonder that he grew up "a strange, rather silent, introspective, and thoughtful boy." But 'twas ever thus: genius does not gladly join in the rough sports of childhood; rather it sits apart, like Eugene Aram, brooding over the misunderstanding of the present, and the horrid torment of the future. But Clement Scott's character was secluded from the beginning. With such a destiny as his, he was misunderstood in the very places where he looked most eagerly for sympathy at home and at school. This is the more strange, because not only was his father a man of letters, but Arthur Sketchley was his father's curate. Moreover, at Marlborough his headmaster was Archdeacon Farrar, a distinguished writer, to whom his impassioned style is more profoundly indebted than to any other. But genius must pay its penalty, and Clement Scott was soon to emerge from the shadow of neglect to the full sunlight of public appreciation. As Horace was born a poet, as Marlborough was born a born a soldier, so Clement Scott was born a dramatic critic. The vocation would not be denied, and a brief sojourn in the War Office did but serve to make the critic acquainted with his fellow-craftsmen. Of course, like many another hero, who persists in the course marked out by genius, his determination was opposed. His mother, for instance, "knew, none better, the pain that would be in store for him, and she feared that the slightest shock to so sensitive a nature would stifle ambition altogether." But he triumphed in the end: his sensitive nature was determined to stand the racket, or, in his own phrase, he "took up the reins of that fatal charger, dramatic criticism." Why the charger is fatal we are not told; we are told that during the last forty years Mr Scott has performed prodigies of valour. "I had no grey hairs then," he writes pensively; "but I know I went into the battle with my life in my hand: fighting for a good cause, and fighting I think to secure the victory.' If we knew not better, we might have believed that Clement Scott had freed the oppressed, and drawn a valiant sword wherever tyranny raised its head. However, it is not in the tented field that he received the scars which honourably disfigure him. His blood was shed, with many a bottle of ink, in the gutters of Fleet Street. Until we read Mr Scott's book,1 we had no notion that dramatic criticism involved such desperate risks to life and limb. We have known peaceful, amiable critics who have spent years in the theatre without so much as breaking a leg. But Mr Scott is not of their kind. He has suffered! O how he has suffered !—“I hope," to quote his own words, "with some advantage to the art that I loved in boyhood, and love better still in the evening of my life." There speaks the true hero: so long as the battle is won, what cares the soldier for the limbs he leaves upon the field? Unfortunately for us, Mr Scott, being a modest gentleman, nowhere in his two ample volumes discloses the risks and sufferings which have already grizzled his hair. We know that he has praised more actors and actresses than any man of his generations, that he has strained a naturally generous vocabulary to express the inexpressible-the infinite-glory of our British Stage. But to 1 The Drama of Yesterday and To-day. By Clement Scott. London: Macmillan. |