superb and extraordinary Experience of the dialogue between
Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in
the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the grove, and the
Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals.' All this done, and well
done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-
Maker bursts in, as if his retiring-room were a mile long instead
of a yard. A corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with
a comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand. Irreverent
disposition to laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous gravity
of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect that
sort of thing we are mistaken. A very little shaving-glass with a
leg behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the
Face-Maker. 'Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance than
this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a
thousand characters.' As a preparation, the Face-Maker with both
hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. He then
becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, 'I am
ready!' Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and
announces 'The Young Conscript!' Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind
side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a
conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I
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should think the State would never get any good of him. Thunders
of applause. Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings his
own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. 'A
distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.' Face-Maker
dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless,
slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.
'The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the fete-day of his
master.' Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on one side, has
become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it is clear)
would lie frightfully about his past achievements, if he were not
confined to pantomime. 'The Miser!' Face-Maker dips, rises,
clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to express that
he lives in continual dread of thieves. 'The Genius of France!'
Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat, little
cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it, Face-
Maker's white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker's left hand in
bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand behind his back.
Thunders. This is the first of three positions of the Genius of
France. In the second position, the Face-Maker takes snuff; in the
third, rolls up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable armies
through that pocket-glass. The Face-Maker then, by putting out his
tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the
Village Idiot. The most remarkable feature in the whole of his
ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise
himself, has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself
than he was at first.
There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of
recognising several fields of glory with which I became well
acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as
Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by some extra
smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free
range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As
no British troops had ever happened to be within sight when the
artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately that
none were in the way now.
The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the particular night of
the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself;
merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close
to the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire
to it. (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.) There, in
a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy
flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive
recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady
sum fivepence was reclaimable for 'consommation:' which word I
venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at
the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in
it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment,
though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the
fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.
In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to
this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple
enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.
How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering - when the
Fair was over - when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the
windows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held - when
the windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time - when
the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle -
when the two paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving
population of the town, were ramming down the stones which had been
pulled up for the erection of decorative poles - when the jailer
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had slammed his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his
charges. But then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of
the departed hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind
how long some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways,
and how difficult they are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a
goodly sight. I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing
the Place together, in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the
town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not
belonging to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas,
another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock,
the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made
out of old umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured shoes. My heart beat
high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless
and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy.
Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful
smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a
'Whitechapel shave' (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously
applied to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them.
As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly
Cabaret, the excellent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with the words, 'The soup
is served;' words which so elated the subject in the canvas suit,
that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with
his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers,
after the Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw
of him was, that he looked
in through a window (at the soup, no
doubt) on one leg.
Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town,
little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. But more was in
reserve. I went by a train which was heavy with third-class
carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn
unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to
a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military
material is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been
sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with
their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and
clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of
them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts
and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayest
spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their
walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at every
station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest
hilarity. After a while, however, they began to leave off singing,
and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled with their
laughter the barking of a dog. Now, I had to alight short of their
destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended with a
Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to
reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go
forward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits,
whose heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like
delighted children. Then I perceived that a large poodle with a
pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the cause of
their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme
verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the train went off.
This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very
much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the
regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a
little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect
attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior
officer, who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that,
when the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of
the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which
struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained
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staunch on his post, until the train was gone. He then resigned
his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over
it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the
absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the
platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding
great extent. It struck me that there was more waggery than this
in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get
through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily
as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets
some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to
the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker!
Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the
military poodle's Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with
a small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an
umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the
poodle went their mysterious way.
CHAPTER XXVIII - MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION
My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for
reflection at home. It is curious to trace the savage in the
civilised man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on
conditions of society rather boastful of being high above them.
I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never
to be got rid of, out of the North American country? He comes into
my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest
'Medicine.' I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find
it simply impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal
'Medicine' he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and
plasters the same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a
gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe. For
his religious 'Medicine' he puts on puffy white sleeves, little
black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless
coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters
and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal
hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On
occasions when the Medicine Men in general, together with a large
number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male
and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native
'Medicine' is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of
traders) and new things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red
cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white and red and
blue paint for the face. The irrationality of this particular
Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the
squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not observe how
unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James's Palace.
The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my
Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and mourning under
his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by
his preposterous enchantments. He is a great eater and drinker,
and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.
His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for
which he charges very high. He impresses on the poor bereaved
natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such
scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw
the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his
decease), the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead.
The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an
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expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of
birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with
black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one
understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the
grave, and are then brought back again.
In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that
when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, 'His immortal part
has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.' This belief
leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some of
his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike
implements, must be broken and buried with him. Superstitious and
wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of
antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere
belief.
Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on
some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American
Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not
to be.
Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a
while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no
discretion. This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning
over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a solitary
cottage among the vineyards of an outlying village. The
circumstances of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and
the survivor, new to the peasants and the country, sorely needed
help, being alone with the remains. With some difficulty, but with
the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested,
and determined, my friend - Mr. Kindheart - obtained access to the
mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial.
There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as
Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the
spot. He was always highly flushed when rendering a service
unaided, and I knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from
his ministration. But when at dinner he warmed with the good
action of the day, and conceived the brilliant idea of comforting
the mourner with 'an English funeral,' I ventured to intimate that
I thought that institution, which was not absolutely sublime at
home, might prove a failure in Italian hands. However, Mr.
Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that he presently
wrote down into the town requesting the attendance with to-morrow's
earliest light of a certain little upholsterer. This upholsterer
was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his own)
in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.
When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the
upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and
when I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking
phrases into very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in
the unknown Tongues; and when I furthermore remembered that the
local funerals had no resemblance to English funerals; I became in
my secret bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kindheart informed me at