The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (books to read this summer txt) 📕

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Not the same what?’

‘Canterbury—you know what I mean. Come here! I want to speak to you.’

But Miss Ledrook wouldn’t come to Miss Snevellicci, so Miss Snevellicci was obliged to go to Miss Ledrook, which she did, in a skipping manner that was quite fascinating; and Miss Ledrook evidently joked Miss Snevellicci about being struck with Nicholas; for, after some playful whispering, Miss Snevellicci hit Miss Ledrook very hard on the backs of her hands, and retired up, in a state of pleasing confusion.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mr Vincent Crummles, who had been writing on a piece of paper, ‘we’ll call the Mortal Struggle tomorrow at ten; everybody for the procession. Intrigue, and Ways and Means, you’re all up in, so we shall only want one rehearsal. Everybody at ten, if you please.’

‘Everybody at ten,’ repeated Mrs Grudden, looking about her.

‘On Monday morning we shall read a new piece,’ said Mr Crummles; ‘the name’s not known yet, but everybody will have a good part. Mr Johnson will take care of that.’

‘Hallo!’ said Nicholas, starting. ‘I—’

‘On Monday morning,’ repeated Mr Crummles, raising his voice, to drown the unfortunate Mr Johnson’s remonstrance; ‘that’ll do, ladies and gentlemen.’

The ladies and gentlemen required no second notice to quit; and, in a few minutes, the theatre was deserted, save by the Crummles family, Nicholas, and Smike.

‘Upon my word,’ said Nicholas, taking the manager aside, ‘I don’t think I can be ready by Monday.’

‘Pooh, pooh,’ replied Mr Crummles.

‘But really I can’t,’ returned Nicholas; ‘my invention is not accustomed to these demands, or possibly I might produce—’

‘Invention! what the devil’s that got to do with it!’ cried the manager hastily.

‘Everything, my dear sir.’

‘Nothing, my dear sir,’ retorted the manager, with evident impatience. ‘Do you understand French?’

‘Perfectly well.’

‘Very good,’ said the manager, opening the table drawer, and giving a roll of paper from it to Nicholas. ‘There! Just turn that into English, and put your name on the title-page. Damn me,’ said Mr Crummles, angrily, ‘if I haven’t often said that I wouldn’t have a man or woman in my company that wasn’t master of the language, so that they might learn it from the original, and play it in English, and save all this trouble and expense.’

Nicholas smiled and pocketed the play.

‘What are you going to do about your lodgings?’ said Mr Crummles.

Nicholas could not help thinking that, for the first week, it would be an uncommon convenience to have a turn-up bedstead in the pit, but he merely remarked that he had not turned his thoughts that way.

‘Come home with me then,’ said Mr Crummles, ‘and my boys shall go with you after dinner, and show you the most likely place.’

The offer was not to be refused; Nicholas and Mr Crummles gave Mrs Crummles an arm each, and walked up the street in stately array. Smike, the boys, and the phenomenon, went home by a shorter cut, and Mrs Grudden remained behind to take some cold Irish stew and a pint of porter in the box-office.

Mrs Crummles trod the pavement as if she were going to immediate execution with an animating consciousness of innocence, and that heroic fortitude which virtue alone inspires. Mr Crummles, on the other hand, assumed the look and gait of a hardened despot; but they both attracted some notice from many of the passers-by, and when they heard a whisper of ‘Mr and Mrs Crummles!’ or saw a little boy run back to stare them in the face, the severe expression of their countenances relaxed, for they felt it was popularity.

Mr Crummles lived in St Thomas’s Street, at the house of one Bulph, a pilot, who sported a boat-green door, with window-frames of the same colour, and had the little finger of a drowned man on his parlour mantelshelf, with other maritime and natural curiosities. He displayed also a brass knocker, a brass plate, and a brass bell-handle, all very bright and shining; and had a mast, with a vane on the top of it, in his back yard.

‘You are welcome,’ said Mrs Crummles, turning round to Nicholas when they reached the bow-windowed front room on the first floor.

Nicholas bowed his acknowledgments, and was unfeignedly glad to see the cloth laid.

‘We have but a shoulder of mutton with onion sauce,’ said Mrs Crummles, in the same charnel-house voice; ‘but such as our dinner is, we beg you to partake of it.’

‘You are very good,’ replied Nicholas, ‘I shall do it ample justice.’

‘Vincent,’ said Mrs Crummles, ‘what is the hour?’

‘Five minutes past dinner-time,’ said Mr Crummles.

Mrs Crummles rang the bell. ‘Let the mutton and onion sauce appear.’

The slave who attended upon Mr Bulph’s lodgers, disappeared, and after a short interval reappeared with the festive banquet. Nicholas and the infant phenomenon opposed each other at the pembroke-table, and Smike and the master Crummleses dined on the sofa bedstead.

‘Are they very theatrical people here?’ asked Nicholas.

‘No,’ replied Mr Crummles, shaking his head, ‘far from it—far from it.’

‘I pity them,’ observed Mrs Crummles.

‘So do I,’ said Nicholas; ‘if they have no relish for theatrical entertainments, properly conducted.’

‘Then they have none, sir,’ rejoined Mr Crummles. ‘To the infant’s benefit, last year, on which occasion she repeated three of her most popular characters, and also appeared in the Fairy Porcupine, as originally performed by her, there was a house of no more than four pound twelve.’

‘Is it possible?’ cried Nicholas.

‘And two pound of that was trust, pa,’ said the phenomenon.

‘And two pound of that was trust,’ repeated Mr Crummles. ‘Mrs Crummles herself has played to mere handfuls.’

‘But they are always a taking audience, Vincent,’ said the manager’s wife.

‘Most audiences are, when they have good acting—real good acting— the regular thing,’ replied Mr Crummles, forcibly.

‘Do you give lessons, ma’am?’ inquired Nicholas.

‘I do,’ said Mrs Crummles.

‘There is no teaching here, I suppose?’

‘There has been,’ said Mrs Crummles. ‘I have received pupils here. I imparted tuition to the daughter of a dealer in ships’ provision; but it afterwards appeared that she was insane when she first came to me. It was very extraordinary that she should come, under such circumstances.’

Not feeling quite so sure of that, Nicholas thought it best to hold his peace.

‘Let me see,’ said the manager cogitating after dinner. ‘Would you like some nice little part with the infant?’

‘You are very good,’ replied Nicholas hastily; ‘but I think perhaps it would be better if I had somebody of my own size at first, in case I should turn out awkward. I should feel more at home, perhaps.’

‘True,’ said the manager. ‘Perhaps you would. And you could play up to the infant, in time, you know.’

‘Certainly,’ replied Nicholas: devoutly hoping that it would be a very long time before he was honoured with this distinction.

‘Then I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said Mr Crummles. ‘You shall study Romeo when you’ve done that piece—don’t forget to throw the pump and tubs in by-the-bye—Juliet Miss Snevellicci, old Grudden the nurse.—Yes, that’ll do very well. Rover too;—you might get up Rover while you were about it, and Cassio, and Jeremy Diddler. You can easily knock them off; one part helps the other so much. Here they are, cues and all.’

With these hasty general directions Mr Crummles thrust a number of little books into the faltering hands of Nicholas, and bidding his eldest son go with him and show where lodgings were to be had, shook him by the hand, and wished him good night.

There is no lack of comfortable furnished apartments in Portsmouth, and no difficulty in finding some that are proportionate to very slender finances; but the former were too good, and the latter too bad, and they went into so many houses, and came out unsuited, that Nicholas seriously began to think he should be obliged to ask permission to spend the night in the theatre, after all.

Eventually, however, they stumbled upon two small rooms up three pair of stairs, or rather two pair and a ladder, at a tobacconist’s shop, on the Common Hard: a dirty street leading down to the dockyard. These Nicholas engaged, only too happy to have escaped any request for payment of a week’s rent beforehand.

‘There! Lay down our personal property, Smike,’ he said, after showing young Crummles downstairs. ‘We have fallen upon strange times, and Heaven only knows the end of them; but I am tired with the events of these three days, and will postpone reflection till tomorrow—if I can.’