This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an instant, to the miner"s infinite amus.e.m.e.nt, in the very act of knocking away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack.
Having, however, ventured on reflection to a.s.sume the responsibility of weakening our defence against the sea, by the length and breadth of an inch, we secure our piece of copper, and next proceed to discuss the propriety of descending two hundred and forty feet more of ladders, for the sake of visiting that part of the mine where the men are at work.
Two or three causes concur to make us doubt the wisdom of going lower.
There is a hot, moist, sickly vapour floating about us, which becomes more oppressive every moment; we are already perspiring at every pore, as we were told we should; and our hands, faces, jackets, and trousers are all more or less covered with a mixture of mud, tallow, and iron-drippings, which we can feel and smell much more acutely than is exactly desirable. We ask the miner what there is to see lower down. He replies, nothing but men breaking ore with pickaxes; the galleries of the mine are alike, however deep they may go; when you have seen one you have seen all.
The answer decides us--we determine to get back to the surface.
We returned along the gallery, just as we had advanced, with the same large allowance of scrambling, creeping, and stumbling on our way. I was charitably carried along and down the platform over the pit, by my trousers, as before; our order of procession only changing when we gained the ladders again. Then, our friend the miner went last instead of first, upon the same principle of being ready to catch us if we fell, which led him to precede us on our descent. Except that one of the rounds cracked under his weight as we went up, we ascended without casualties of any kind. As we neared the mouth of the shaft, the daylight atmosphere looked dazzlingly white, after the darkness in which we had been groping so long; and when we once more stood out on the cliff, we felt a cold, health-giving purity in the sea breeze, and, at the same time, a sense of recovered freedom in the power that we now enjoyed of running, jumping, and stretching our limbs in perfect security, and with full s.p.a.ce for action, which it was almost a new sensation to experience. Habit teaches us to think little of the light and air that we live and breathe in, or, at most, to view them only as the ordinary conditions of our being. To find out that they are more than this, that they are a luxury as well as a necessity of life, go down into a mine, and compare what you _can_ exist in there, with what you _do_ exist in, on upper earth!
On re-entering the counting-house, we were greeted by the welcome appearance of two large tubs of water, with soap and flannel placed invitingly by their sides. Copious ablutions and clean clothes are potent restorers of muscular energy. These, and a half hour of repose, enabled us to resume our knapsacks as briskly as ever, and walk on fifteen miles to the town of St. Ives--our resting place for the night.
While we were sitting in the counting-house, we had some talk with our good-humoured and intelligent guide, on the subject of miners and mining at Botallack. Some of the local information that he gave us, may interest the reader--to whom I do not pretend to offer more here than a simple record of a half hour"s gossip. I could only write elaborately about the Cornish mines, by swelling my pages with extracts on the subject from Encyclopaedias and Itineraries which are within easy reach of every one, and on the province of which, it is neither my business nor my desire to intrude.
Botallack mine is a copper mine; but tin, and occasionally iron, are found in it as well. It is situated at the western extremity of the great strata of copper, tin, and lead, running eastward through Cornwall, as far as the Dartmoor Hills. According to the statement of my informant in the counting-house, it has been worked for more than a century. In former times, it produced enormous profits to the speculators; but now the case is altered. The price of copper has fallen of late years; the lodes have proved neither so rich nor so extensive, as at past periods; and the mine, when we visited Cornwall, had failed to pay the expenses of working it.
The organization of labour at Botallack, and in all other mines throughout the county, is thus managed:--The men work eight hours underground, out of the twenty-four; taking their turn of night duty (for labour proceeds in the mines by night as well as by day), in regular rotation. The different methods on which their work is undertaken, and the rates of remuneration that they receive, have been already touched on, in the chapter on the "Cornish People." It will be found that ordinary wages for mine labour, are there stated as ranging from forty to fifty shillings a month--mention being made at the same time, of the larger remuneration which may be obtained by working "on tribute," or, in other words, by agreeing to excavate the lodes of metal for a per-centage which varies with the varying value of the mineral raised. It is, however, necessary to add here, that, although men who labour on this latter plan, occasionally make as much as six or ten pounds each, in a month, they are on the other hand liable to heavy losses from the speculative character of the work in which they engage.
The lode may, for instance, be poor when they begin to work it, and may continue poor as they proceed farther and farther. Under these circ.u.mstances, the low value of the mineral they have raised, realizes a correspondingly low rate of per-centage; and when this happens, the best workmen cannot make more than twenty shillings a month.
Another system on which the men are employed, is the system of "contract." A certain quant.i.ty of ore in the rock is mapped out by the captain of the mine; and put up to auction among the miners thus:--One man mentions a sum for which he is willing to undertake excavating the ore, upon the understanding that he is himself to pay for the a.s.sistance, candles, &c., out of the price he asks. Another man, who is also anxious to get the contract, then offers to accept it on lower terms; a third man"s demand is smaller still; and so they proceed until the piece of work is knocked down to the lowest bidder. By this sort of labour the contracting workman--after he has paid his expenses for a.s.sistance--seldom clears more than twelve shillings a week.
Upon the whole, setting his successful and his disastrous speculations fairly against each other, the Cornish miner"s average gains, year by year, may be fairly estimated at about ten shillings a week. "It"s hard work we have to do, sir," said my informant, summing up, when we parted, the proportions of good and evil in the social positions of his brethren and himself--"harder work than people think, down in the heat and darkness under ground. We may get a good deal at one time, but we get little enough at another; sometimes mines are shut up, and then we are thrown out altogether--but, good work or bad work, or no work at all, what with our bits of ground for potatoes and greens, and what with cheap living, somehow we and our families make it do. We contrive to keep our good cloth coat for Sundays, and go to chapel in the morning--for we"re most of us Wesleyans--and then to church in the afternoon; so as to give "em both their turn like! We never go near the mine on Sundays, except to look after the steam-pump: our rest, and our walk in the evening once a week, is a good deal to us. That"s how we live, sir; whatever happens, we manage to work through, and don"t complain!"
Although the occupation of smelting the copper above ground is, as may well be imagined, unhealthy enough, the labour of getting it from the mine (by blasting the subterranean rock in the first place, and then hewing and breaking the ore out of the fragments), seems to be attended with no bad effect on the const.i.tution. The miners are a fine-looking race of men--strong and well-proportioned. The fact appears to be, that they gain more, physically, by the pure air of the cliffs and moors on which their cottages are built, and the temperance of their lives (many of them are "teetotallers"), than they lose by their hardest exertions in the underground atmosphere in which they work.
Serious accidents are rare in the mines of Cornwall. From the horrors of such explosions as take place in coal mines, they are by their nature entirely free. The casualties that oftenest occur are serious falls, generally produced by the carelessness of inexperienced or foolhardy people. Of these, and of extraordinary escapes from death with which they are a.s.sociated, many anecdotes are told in mining districts, which would appear to the reader exaggerated, or positively untrue, if I related them on mere hearsay evidence. There was, however, one instance of a fall down the shaft of a mine, unattended with fatal consequences, which occurred while I was in Cornwall; and which I may safely adduce, for I can state some of the facts connected with the affair as an eyewitness. I attended an examination of the sufferer by a medical man, and heard the story of the accident from the parents of the patient.
On the 7th of August 1850, a boy fourteen years of age, the son of a miner, slipped into the shaft of Boscaswell Down Mine, in the neighbourhood of Penzance. He fell to the depth of thirteen fathoms, or seventy-eight feet. Fifty-eight feet down, he struck his left side against a board placed across the shaft, snapped it in two, and then falling twenty feet more, pitched on his head. He was of course taken up insensible; the doctor was sent for; and on examining him, found, to his amazement, that there was actually a chance of the boy"s recovery after this tremendous fall!
Not a bone in his body was broken. He was bruised and scratched all over, and there were three cuts--none of them serious--on his head. The board stretched across the shaft, twenty feet from the bottom, had saved him from being dashed to pieces; but had inflicted at the same time, where his left side had struck it, the only injury that appeared dangerous to the medical man--a large, hard lump that could be felt under the bruised skin. The boy showed no symptoms of fever; his pulse, day after day, was found never varying from eighty-two to the minute; his appet.i.te was voracious; and the internal functions of his body only required a little ordinary medicine to keep them properly at work. In short, nothing was to be dreaded but the chance of the formation of an abscess in his left side, between the hip and ribs. He had been under medical care exactly one week, when I accompanied the doctor on a visit to him.
The cottage where he lived with his parents, though small, was neat and comfortable. We found him lying in bed, awake. He looked languid and lethargic; but his skin was moist and cool; his face displayed no paleness, and no injury of any kind. He had just eaten a good dinner of rabbit-pie, and was anxious to be allowed to sit up in a chair, and amuse himself by looking out of the window. His left side was first examined. A great circular bruise discoloured the skin, over the whole s.p.a.ce between the hip and ribs; but on touching it, the doctor discovered that the lump beneath had considerably decreased in size, and was much less hard than it had felt during previous visits. Next we looked at his back and arms--they were scratched and bruised all over; but nowhere seriously. Lastly, the dressings were taken off his head, and three cuts were disclosed, which even a non-medical eye could easily perceive to be of no great importance. Such were all the results of a fall of seventy-eight feet.
The boy"s father reiterated to me the account of the accident, just as I had already heard it from the doctor. How it happened, he said, could only be guessed, for his son had completely forgotten all the circ.u.mstances immediately preceding the fall; neither could he communicate any of the sensations which must have attended it. Most probably, he had been sitting dangling his legs idly over the mouth of the shaft, and had so slipped in. But however the accident really happened, there the sufferer was before us--less seriously hurt than many a lad who has trodden on a piece of orange peel as he was walking along the street.
We left him (humanly speaking) certain of recovery, now that the dangerous lump in his side had begun to decrease. I heard afterwards from his medical attendant, that in two months from the date of the accident, he was at work again as usual in the mine; at that very part of it, too, where his fall had taken place!
It was not the least interesting part of my visit to the cottage where he lay ill, to observe the anxious affection displayed towards him by both his parents. His mother left her work in the kitchen to hold him in her arms, while the old dressings were being taken off and the new ones applied--sighing bitterly, poor creature, every time he winced or cried out under the pain of the operation. The father put several questions to the doctor, which were always perfectly to the point; and did the honours of his little abode to his stranger visitor, with a natural politeness and a simple cordiality of manner which showed that he really meant the welcome that he spoke. Nor was he any exception to the rest of his brother-workmen with whom I met. As a body of men, they are industrious and intelligent; sober and orderly; neither soured by hard work, nor easily depressed by harder privations. No description of personal experiences in the Cornish mines can be fairly concluded, without a collateral testimony to the merits of the Cornish miners--a testimony which I am happy to accord here; and to which my readers would cheerfully add their voices, if they ever felt inclined to test its impartiality by their own experience.
X.
THE MODERN DRAMA IN CORNWALL.
Our walk from Botallack Mine to St. Ives, led us almost invariably between moors and hills on one side, and cliffs and sea on the other; and displayed some of the dreariest views that we had yet beheld in Cornwall. About nightfall, we halted for a short time at a place which was certainly not calculated to cheer the traveller along his onward way.
Imagine three or four large, square, comfortless-looking, shut-up houses, all apparently uninhabited; add some half-dozen miserable little cottages standing near the houses, with the nasal notes of a Methodist hymn pouring disastrously through the open door of one of them; let the largest of the large buildings be called an inn, but let it make up no beds, because n.o.body ever stops to sleep there: place in the kitchen of this inn a sickly little girl, and a middle-aged, melancholy woman, the first staring despondently on a wasting fire, the second offering to the stranger a piece of bread, three eggs, and some sour porter corked down in an earthenware jar, as all that her larder and cellar can afford; fancy next an old, grim, dark church, with two or three lads leaning against the churchyard wall, looking out together in gloomy silence on a solitary high road; conceive a thin, slow rain falling, a cold twilight just changing into darkness, a surrounding landscape wild, barren, and shelterless--imagine all this, and you will have the picture before you which presented itself to me and my companion, when we found ourselves in the village of Morvah.
Late that night, we got to the large sea-port town of St. Ives; and stayed there two or three days to look at the pilchard fishery, which was then proceeding with all the bustle and activity denoting the commencement of a good season. Leaving St. Ives, on our way up the northern coast, we now pa.s.sed through the central part of the mining districts of Cornwall. Chimneys and engine-houses chequered the surface of the landscape; the roads glittered with metallic particles; the walls at their sides were built with crystallized stones; towns showed a sudden increase in importance; villages grew large and populous; inns disappeared, and hotels arose in their stead; people became less curious to know who we were, stared at us less, gossiped with us less; gave us information, but gave us nothing more--no long stories, no invitations to stop and smoke a pipe, no hospitable offers of bed and board. All that we saw and heard tended to convince us that we had left the picturesque and the primitive, with the streets of Looe and the fishermen at the Land"s End; and had got into the commercial part of the county, among sharp, prosperous, business like people--it was like walking out of a painter"s studio into a merchant"s counting-house!
As we were travelling, like the renowned Doctor Syntax, in search of the picturesque, we hurried through this populous and highly-civilized region of Cornwall as rapidly as possible. I doubt much whether we should not have pa.s.sed as unceremoniously through the large town of Redruth--the capital city of the mining districts--as we pa.s.sed through several towns and villages before it, had not our attention been attracted and our departure delayed by a public notice, printed on rainbow-coloured paper, and pasted up in the most conspicuous part of the market-place.
The notice set forth, that "the beautiful drama of The Curate"s Daughter" was to be performed at night, in the "unrivalled Sans Pareil Theatre," by "the most talented company in England," before "the most discerning audience in the world." As far as we were individually concerned, this theatrical announcement was remarkably tempting and well-timed. We were now within one day"s journey of Piran Round, the famous amphitheatre where the old Cornish Miracle Plays used to be performed. Anything connected with the stage was, therefore, a subject of particular interest in our eyes. The bill before us seemed to offer a curious opportunity of studying the dramatic tastes of the modern Cornish, on the very day before we were about to speculate on the dramatic tastes of the ancient Cornish, among the remains of their public theatre. Such an occasion was too favourable to be neglected; we ordered our beds at Redruth, and joined the "discerning audience"
a.s.sembled to sit in judgment on "The Curate"s Daughter."
The Sans Pareil Theatre was not of that order of architecture in which outward ornament is studied. There was nothing "florid" about it; canvas, ropes, scaffolding-poles, and old boards, threw an air of Saxon simplicity over the whole structure. Admitted within, we turned instinctively towards the stage. On each side of the proscenium boards was painted a knight in full armour, with powerful calves, weak knees, and an immense spear. Tallow candles, stuck round two hoops, threw a mysterious light on the green curtain, in front of which sat an orchestra of four musicians, playing on a trombone, an ophicleide, a clarionet, and a fiddle, as loudly as they could--the artist on the trombone, especially, performing prodigies of blowing, though he had not room enough to develop the whole length of his instrument. Every now and then great excitement was created among the expectant audience by the vehement ringing of a bell behind the scenes, and by the occasional appearance of a youth who gravely snuffed the candles all round, with a skill and composure highly creditable to him, considering the pertinacity with which he was stared at by everybody while he pursued his occupation.
At last, the bell was rung furiously for the twentieth time; the curtain drew up, and the drama of "The Curate"s Daughter" began.
Our sympathies were excited at the outset. We beheld a lady-like woman who answered to the name of "Grace;" and an old gentleman, dressed in dingy black, who personated her father, the Curate; and who was, on this occasion (I presume through unavoidable circ.u.mstances), neither more nor less than--drunk. There was no mistaking the cause of the fixed leer in the reverend gentleman"s eye; of the slow swaying in his gait; of the gruff huskiness in his elocution. It appeared, from the opening dialogue, that a pending law-suit, and the absence of his daughter f.a.n.n.y in London, combined to make him uneasy in his mind just at present. But he was by no means so clear on this subject as could be desired--in fact, he spoke through his nose, put in and left out his _hs_ in the wrong places, and involved his dialogue in a long labyrinth of parentheses whenever he expressed himself at any length. It was not until the entrance of his daughter f.a.n.n.y (just arrived from London: n.o.body knew why or wherefore), that he grew more emphatic and intelligible. We now observed with pleasure that he gave his children his blessing and embraced them both at once; and we were additionally gratified by hearing from his own lips, that his "daughters were the h"all on which his h"all depended--that they would watch h"over his "ale autumn; and that whatever happened the whole party must invariably trust in heabben"s obdipotent power!"
Grateful for this clerical advice, f.a.n.n.y retired into the garden to gather her parent some flowers; but immediately returned shrieking. She was followed by a Highwayman with a c.o.c.ked hat, mustachios, bandit"s ringlets, a scarlet hunting-coat, and buff boots. This gentleman had shown his extraordinary politeness--although a perfect stranger--by giving Miss f.a.n.n.y a kiss in the garden; conduct for which the Curate very properly cursed him, in the strongest language. Apparently a quiet and orderly character, the Highwayman replied by beginning a handsome apology, when he was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of another personage, who ordered him (rather late in the day, as we ventured to think) to "let go his holt, and beware how he laid his brutal touch on the form of innocence!" This newcomer, the parson informed us, was "good h"Adam Marle, the teacher of the village school." We found "h"Adam," in respect of his outward appearance, to be a very short man, dressed in a high-crowned modern hat, with a fringed vandyck collar drooping over his back and shoulders, a modern frock-coat, b.u.t.toned tight at the waist, and a pair of jack-boots of the period of James the Second. Aided by his advantages of costume, this character naturally interested us; and we regretted seeing but little of him in the first scene, from which he retired, following the penitent Highwayman out, and lecturing him as he went. No sooner were their backs turned, than a waggoner, in a clean smock-frock and high-lows, entered with an offer of a situation in London for f.a.n.n.y, which the unsuspicious Curate accepted immediately. As soon as he had committed himself, it was confided to the audience that the waggoner was a depraved villain, in the employ of that notorious profligate, Colonel Chartress, who had commissioned a second myrmidon (of the female s.e.x) to lure f.a.n.n.y from virtue and the country, to vice and the metropolis. By the time the plot had "thickened" thus far, the scene changed, and we got to London at once.
We now beheld the Curate, Chartress"s female accomplice, f.a.n.n.y, and the vicious waggoner, all standing in a row, across the stage. The Curate, in a burst of amiability, had just lifted up his hands to bless the company, when Colonel Chartress (dressed in an old _naval_ uniform, with an opera-hat of the year 1800), suddenly rushed in, followed by the Highwayman, who having relapsed from penitence to guilt, had, as a necessary consequence, determined to supplant Chartress in the favour of Miss f.a.n.n.y. These two promptly seized each other by the throat; vehement shouting, scuffling, and screaming ensued; and the Curate, clasping his daughter round the waist, frantically elevated his walking-stick in the air. Was he about to inflict personal chastis.e.m.e.nt on his innocent child? Who could say? Before there was time to ask the question, the curtain fell with a bang, on the crisis of the first act.
In act the second, the first scene was described in the bills as Temple Bar by moonlight. Neither Bar nor moonlight appeared when the curtain rose--so we took both for granted, and fixed our minds on the story. The first person who now confronted us, was "good h"Adam Marle." The paint was all washed off his face; his immense spread of collar looked grievously in want of washing; and he leaned languidly on an oaken stick. He had been walking--he informed us--through the streets of London for six consecutive days and nights, without sustenance, in search of Miss f.a.n.n.y, who had disappeared since the skirmish at the end of act the first, and had never been heard of since. Poor dear Marle!
how eloquent he was with his white handkerchief, when he fairly opened his heart, and confided to us that he was madly attached to f.a.n.n.y; that he knew he "was nothink" to her; and that, under existing circ.u.mstances, he felt inclined to rest himself on a door step! Just as he had comfortably settled down, the valet of the profligate Chartress entered, in the communicative stage of intoxication; and immediately mentioned all his master"s private affairs to "h"Adam." It appeared that the Colonel had carried off Miss f.a.n.n.y, had then got tired of her, and had coolly handed her over to a Jew, in part payment of "a little bill."
Having ascertained the Jew"s address, the indefatigable Marle left us (still without sustenance) to rescue the Curate"s daughter, or die in the attempt.
The next scene disclosed f.a.n.n.y, sitting conscience-stricken and inconsolable, in a red polka jacket and white muslin slip. Mr. Marle, having discovered her place of refuge, now stepped in to lecture and reclaim. Vain proceeding! The Curate"s daughter looked at him with a scream, exclaimed, "Cuss me, h"Adam! cuss me!" and rushed out.
"H"Adam," after a despondent soliloquy, followed with his eloquent handkerchief to his eyes; but, while he had been talking to himself, our old friend the Highwayman had been on the alert, and had picked f.a.n.n.y up, fainting in the street. And what did he do with her after that? He handed her over to his "comrades in villany." And who were his comrades in villany? They were the trombone and ophicleide players from the orchestra, and the "Miss Grace," of act first, disguised as a bad character, in a cloak, with a red pocket-handkerchief over her head. And what happened next? A series of events happened next. Miss f.a.n.n.y recovered on a sudden, perceived what sort of company she had about her, rushed out a second time into the street, fell fainting a second time on the pavement, and was picked up on this occasion by Colonel Chartress--in the interests, it is to be presumed, of his friend, the Jew money-lender. Before, however, he could get clear off with his prize, the indefatigably vicious Highwayman, and the indefatigably virtuous Marle, precipitated themselves on the stage, a.s.saulting Chartress, a.s.saulting each other, a.s.saulting everybody. f.a.n.n.y fell fainting a third time in the street; and before we could find out who was the third person who picked her up, down came the curtain in the midst of the catastrophe.
Act the third was opened by the heroine, still injured, still inconsolable, and still clad in the polka jacket and white slip. We thought her a very nice little woman, with a melodious, genteel-comedy-voice, trim ankles, and a habit of catching her breath in the most pathetic manner, at least a dozen times in the course of one soliloquy. While she was still a.s.suring us that she felt the most forlorn creature on the face of the earth, she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of no less a person than the Curate himself. We had seen nothing of the reverend gentleman throughout the second act; but "h"Adam" had casually informed us that his time had been pa.s.sed at his parsonage, "sittun with his "ed between his knees, sobbun!" Having now wearied of this gymnastic method of indulging in parental grief, he had set forth to seek his lost daughter, and had accidentally stopped at the very inn where she had taken refuge. Nothing could be more piteous than his present appearance; he was infinitely more tipsy, infinitely more dignified, and infinitely more parenthetical in his mode of expressing himself, than when we last beheld him. A streak of burnt cork running down each side of his venerable nose, showed us how deeply grief had increased the wrinkles of age; and our pity for him reached its climax when he cast his clerical hat on the floor, sank drowsily into a chair, and began to pray in these words: "Oh heabben! hear a solemn and a solid prayer--hear a solemn heart who wants to embrace his darling f.a.n.n.y!"
All this time, the lost daughter was hiding behind the forlorn father"s chair; an awful and convenient darkness being thrown on the stage by the introduction of a plank between the actors and the tallow candles. In this striking situation, Miss f.a.n.n.y told her sad story, and pleaded her own cause as a stranger, under disguise of the darkness. Useless--quite useless! The reverend gentleman, having never turned round to see who it was that was speaking to him, and having therefore no idea that it was his own daughter, received in dignified silence the advances of a young person unknown to him. What course was now left to the unhappy f.a.n.n.y?
The old course--a rush off the stage, and a swoon in the street. As soon as her back was turned, the Parson, forgetting to take away his hat with him, staggered out at the opposite side to continue his journey. He uttered as he went the following moral observation:--"No soul so lost to Nature, but must be lost eternally--my "art is broken!"
The next moment, we were startled by a long and elaborate trampling of feet behind the scenes, and the villain Chartress, ran panic-stricken across the stage, hotly pursued by "good h"Adam Marle." In the eloquent language of virtue, thus did Adam address him:--"Stay, ruffian, stay!
Inquiring for Chartress at the bar of this inn, I found indeed that you was the very identical. You foul, venomous, treacherous, voluptuous liar, where is the un"appy f.a.n.n.y? where is the victim of your prey?--Ha!
"oary-"edded ruffian, I have yer!" (_Collars Chartress._) "But no! I will not _strike_ yer; I will _drag_ yer!" It was interesting to see Adam exemplify the peculiar distinction in the science of a.s.sault implied in his last words, by hauling Chartress all round the stage. It was awful to observe that the Colonel lost his temper at the second round, murderously snapped a pistol in "h"Adam"s" face, and rushed off in hot homicidal triumph. We waited breathless for the fall of Marle.
Nothing of the sort happened. He started, frowned, paused, laughed fiercely, exclaimed,--"The villain "as missed!" and followed in pursuit.
In the interim, Miss f.a.n.n.y had been picked up in the street, for the fourth time, by a benevolent "washerwoman," who happened to be pa.s.sing by at the moment; had been conveyed to the said washerwoman"s lodgings; and now appeared before us, despoiled, at last, of all the glories of the red polka, enveloped from head to foot in clouds of white muslin, and dying with frightful rapidity in an armchair. In the next and last scene, all that remained to represent the unhappy heroine was a coffin decently covered with a white sheet. With slow and funereal steps, the Curate, Miss Grace, "h"Adam," the Highwayman, and the "venomous and voluptuous liar," Chartress, approached to weep over it. The Curate had gone raving mad since we saw him last. His wig was set on wrong side foremost; the ends of his clerical cravat floated wildly, a yard long at least over his shoulders; his eyes rolled in frenzy; he swooned at the sight of the coffin; recovered convulsively; placed Marle"s hand in the hand of Miss Grace (telling him that now one daughter was dead, nothing was left for him but to marry the other); and then fell flat on his back, with a thump that shook the stage and made the audience start unanimously. Marle--well-bred to the last--politely offered his arm to Grace; and pointing to the coffin, asked Chartress, reproachfully, whether that was not _his_ work. The Colonel took off his opera-hat, raised his hand to his eyes, and doggedly answered, "Indeed, it is!" The Tableau thus formed, was completed by the Highwayman, the coffin, and the defunct Curate; and the curtain fell to slow music.
Such was the plot of this remarkable dramatic work, exactly as I took it down in the theatre, between the acts; noting also in my pocket-book such sc.r.a.ps of dialogue as I have presented to the reader, while they fell from the actors" lips. There were plenty of comic scenes in the play which I leave unmentioned; for their humour was of the dreariest, and their morality of the lowest order that can possibly be conceived. I can only say, as the result of my own experience at Redruth, that if the dramatic reforms which are now being attempted in the theatrical by-ways of the metropolis succeed, there would be no harm in extending the experiment as far as the locomotive stage of Cornwall. Good plays are good missionaries; and, like missionaries, let them travel to teach.
And now, having seen enough of the modern drama in Cornwall, without waiting for the songs, the dances, and the farces which are to follow the "Curate"s Daughter," let us go on to Piranzabuloe, and look at the theatre in which the Cornish of former days a.s.sembled; endeavouring to discover, at the same time, by what sort of performances the people were instructed or amused some two hundred and fifty years ago.
XI.