said Mr. Pickwick, 'will you oblige us by proceeding with what you were
going to relate?'
The dismal individual took a dirty roll of paper from his pocket, and
turning to Mr. Snodgrass, who had just taken out his note-book, said in
a hollow voice, perfectly in keeping with his outward man--'Are you the
poet?'
'I--I do a little in that way,' replied Mr. Snodgrass, rather taken
aback by the abruptness of the question. 'Ah! poetry makes life what
light and music do the stage--strip the one of the false embellishments,
and the other of its illusions, and what is there real in either to live
or care for?'
'Very true, Sir,' replied Mr. Snodgrass.
'To be before the footlights,' continued the dismal man, 'is like
sitting at a grand court show, and admiring the silken dresses of
the gaudy throng; to be behind them is to be the people who make that
finery, uncared for and unknown, and left to sink or swim, to starve or
live, as fortune wills it.'
'Certainly,' said Mr. Snodgrass: for the sunken eye of the dismal man
rested on him, and he felt it necessary to say something.
'Go on, Jemmy,' said the Spanish traveller, 'like black-eyed Susan--all
in the Downs--no croaking--speak out--look lively.' 'Will you make
another glass before you begin, Sir?' said Mr. Pickwick.
The dismal man took the hint, and having mixed a glass of
brandy-and-water, and slowly swallowed half of it, opened the roll of
paper and proceeded, partly to read, and partly to relate, the following
incident, which we find recorded on the Transactions of the Club as 'The
Stroller's Tale.'
THE STROLLER'S TALE
'There is nothing of the marvellous in what I am going to relate,' said
the dismal man; 'there is nothing even uncommon in it. Want and sickness
are too common in many stations of life to deserve more notice than is
usually bestowed on the most ordinary vicissitudes of human nature. I
have thrown these few notes together, because the subject of them was
well known to me for many years. I traced his progress downwards, step
by step, until at last he reached that excess of destitution from which
he never rose again.
'The man of whom I speak was a low pantomime actor; and, like many
people of his class, an habitual drunkard. In his better days, before
he had become enfeebled by dissipation and emaciated by disease, he had
been in the receipt of a good salary, which, if he had been careful and
prudent, he might have continued to receive for some years--not many;
because these men either die early, or by unnaturally taxing their
bodily energies, lose, prematurely, those physical powers on which alone
they can depend for subsistence. His besetting sin gained so fast
upon him, however, that it was found impossible to employ him in
the situations in which he really was useful to the theatre. The
public-house had a fascination for him which he could not resist.
Neglected disease and hopeless poverty were as certain to be his
portion as death itself, if he persevered in the same course; yet he did
persevere, and the result may be guessed. He could obtain no engagement,
and he wanted bread. 'Everybody who is at all acquainted with theatrical
matters knows what a host of shabby, poverty-stricken men hang about the
stage of a large establishment--not regularly engaged actors, but ballet
people, procession men, tumblers, and so forth, who are taken on during
the run of a pantomime, or an Easter piece, and are then discharged,
until the production of some heavy spectacle occasions a new demand for
their services. To this mode of life the man was compelled to resort;
and taking the chair every night, at some low theatrical house, at once
put him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to
gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him;
his irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched
pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to a
state bordering on starvation, only procuring a trifle occasionally by
borrowing it of some old companion, or by obtaining an appearance at one
or other of the commonest of the minor theatres; and when he did earn
anything it was spent in the old way.
'About this time, and when he had been existing for upwards of a year
no one knew how, I had a short engagement at one of the theatres on the
Surrey side of the water, and here I saw this man, whom I had lost sight
of for some time; for I had been travelling in the provinces, and he had
been skulking in the lanes and alleys of London. I was dressed to leave
the house, and was crossing the stage on my way out, when he tapped me
on the shoulder. Never shall I forget the repulsive sight that met my
eye when I turned round. He was dressed for the pantomimes in all the
absurdity of a clown's costume. The spectral figures in the Dance of
Death, the most frightful shapes that the ablest painter ever portrayed
on canvas, never presented an appearance half so ghastly. His bloated
body and shrunken legs--their deformity enhanced a hundredfold by the
fantastic dress--the glassy eyes, contrasting fearfully with the
thick white paint with which the face was besmeared; the
grotesquely-ornamented head, trembling with paralysis, and the long
skinny hands, rubbed with white chalk--all gave him a hideous and
unnatural appearance, of which no description could convey an adequate
idea, and which, to this day, I shudder to think of. His voice was
hollow and tremulous as he took me aside, and in broken words recounted
a long catalogue of sickness and privations, terminating as usual with
an urgent request for the loan of a trifling sum of money. I put a few
shillings in his hand, and as I turned away I heard the roar of laughter
which followed his first tumble on the stage. 'A few nights afterwards,
a boy put a dirty scrap of paper in my hand, on which were scrawled a
few words in pencil, intimating that the man was dangerously ill, and
begging me, after the performance, to see him at his lodgings in some
street--I forget the name of it now--at no great distance from the
theatre. I promised to comply, as soon as I could get away; and after
the curtain fell, sallied forth on my melancholy errand.
'It was late, for I had been playing in the last piece; and, as it was
a benefit night, the performances had been protracted to an unusual
length. It was a dark, cold night, with a chill, damp wind, which blew
the rain heavily against the windows and house-fronts. Pools of water
had collected in the narrow and little-frequented streets, and as many
of the thinly-scattered oil-lamps had been blown out by the violence of
the wind, the walk was not only a comfortless, but most uncertain one. I
had fortunately taken the right course, however, and succeeded, after a
little difficulty, in finding the house to which I had been directed--a
coal-shed, with one Storey above it, in the back room of which lay the
object of my search.
'A wretched-looking woman, the man's wife, met me on the stairs, and,
telling me that he had just fallen into a kind of doze, led me softly
in, and placed a chair for me at the bedside. The sick man was lying
with his face turned towards the wall; and as he took no heed of my
presence, I had leisure to observe the place in which I found myself.
'He was lying on an old bedstead, which turned up during the day. The
tattered remains of a checked curtain were drawn round the bed's head,
to exclude the wind, which, however, made its way into the comfortless
room through the numerous chinks in the door, and blew it to and fro
every instant. There was a low cinder fire in a rusty, unfixed grate;
and an old three-cornered stained table, with some medicine bottles, a
broken glass, and a few other domestic articles, was drawn out before
it. A little child was sleeping on a temporary bed which had been made
for it on the floor, and the woman sat on a chair by its side. There
were a couple of shelves, with a few plates and cups and saucers; and
a pair of stage shoes and a couple of foils hung beneath them. With the
exception of little heaps of rags and bundles which had been carelessly
thrown into the corners of the room, these were the only things in the
apartment.
'I had had time to note these little particulars, and to mark the heavy
breathing and feverish startings of the sick man, before he was aware of
my presence. In the restless attempts to procure some easy resting-place
for his head, he tossed his hand out of the bed, and it fell on mine. He
started up, and stared eagerly in my face.
'"Mr. Hutley, John," said his wife; "Mr. Hutley, that you sent for
to-night, you know."
'"Ah!" said the invalid, passing his hand across his forehead;
"Hutley--Hutley--let me see." He seemed endeavouring to collect his
thoughts for a few seconds, and then grasping me tightly by the wrist
said, "Don't leave me--don't leave me, old fellow. She'll murder me; I
know she will."
'"Has he been long so?" said I, addressing his weeping wife.
'"Since yesterday night," she replied. "John, John, don't you know me?"
'"Don't let her come near me," said the man, with a shudder, as she
stooped over him. "Drive her away; I can't bear her near me." He stared
wildly at her, with a look of deadly apprehension, and then whispered in
my ear, "I beat her, Jem; I beat her yesterday, and many times before.
I have starved her and the boy too; and now I am weak and helpless, Jem,
she'll murder me for it; I know she will. If you'd seen her cry, as I
have, you'd know it too. Keep her off." He relaxed his grasp, and sank
back exhausted on the pillow. 'I knew but too well what all this meant.
If I could have entertained any doubt of it, for an instant, one
glance at the woman's pale face and wasted form would have sufficiently
explained the real state of the case. "You had better stand aside,"
said I to the poor creature. "You can do him no good. Perhaps he will be
calmer, if he does not see you." She retired out of the man's sight. He
opened his eyes after a few seconds, and looked anxiously round.
'"Is she gone?" he eagerly inquired.
'"Yes--yes," said I; "she shall not hurt you."
'"I'll tell you what, Jem," said the man, in a low voice, "she does
hurt me. There's something in her eyes wakes such a dreadful fear in my
heart, that it drives me mad. All last night, her large, staring eyes
and pale face were close to mine; wherever I turned, they turned; and
whenever I started up from my sleep, she was at the bedside looking at
me." He drew me closer to him, as he said in a deep alarmed whisper,
"Jem, she must be an evil spirit--a devil! Hush! I know she is. If she
had been a woman she would have died long ago. No woman could have borne
what she has."
'I sickened at the thought of the long course of cruelty and neglect
which must have occurred to produce such an impression on such a man. I
could say nothing in reply; for who could offer hope, or consolation, to
the abject being before me?
'I sat there for upwards of two hours, during which time he tossed
about, murmuring exclamations of pain or impatience, restlessly throwing
his arms here and there, and turning constantly from side to side. At
length he fell into that state of partial unconsciousness, in which
the mind wanders uneasily from scene to scene, and from place to place,
without the control of reason, but still without being able to divest
itself of an indescribable sense of present suffering. Finding from his
incoherent wanderings that this was the case, and knowing that in all
probability the fever would not grow immediately worse, I left him,
promising his miserable wife that I would repeat my visit next evening,
and, if necessary, sit up with the patient during the night.
'I kept my promise. The last four-and-twenty hours had produced a
frightful alteration. The eyes, though deeply sunk and heavy, shone with
a lustre frightful to behold. The lips were parched, and cracked in many
places; the hard, dry skin glowed with a burning heat; and there was an
almost unearthly air of wild anxiety in the man's face, indicating even
more strongly the ravages of the disease. The fever was at its height.
'I took the seat I had occupied the night before, and there I sat for
hours, listening to sounds which must strike deep to the heart of the
most callous among human beings--the awful ravings of a dying man. From
what I had heard of the medical attendant's opinion, I knew there was
no hope for him: I was sitting by his death-bed. I saw the wasted
limbs--which a few hours before had been distorted for the amusement of
a boisterous gallery, writhing under the tortures of a burning fever--I
heard the clown's shrill laugh, blending with the low murmurings of the
dying man.
'It is a touching thing to hear the mind reverting to the ordinary
occupations and pursuits of health, when the body lies before you weak
and helpless; but when those occupations are of a character the most
strongly opposed to anything we associate with grave and solemn ideas,
the impression produced is infinitely more powerful. The theatre and the
public-house were the chief themes of the wretched man's wanderings. It
was evening, he fancied; he had a part to play that night; it was late,
and he must leave home instantly. Why did they hold him, and prevent
his going?--he should lose the money--he must go. No! they would not let
him. He hid his face in his burning hands, and feebly bemoaned his own
weakness, and the cruelty of his persecutors. A short pause, and he
shouted out a few doggerel rhymes--the last he had ever learned. He
rose in bed, drew up his withered limbs, and rolled about in uncouth
