Loe raamatut: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 389, September 12, 1829», lehekülg 4

THE SKETCH-BOOK

SIGHMON DUMPS

Anthony Dumps, the father of my hero (the subject matter of a story being always called the hero, however little heroic he may personally have been) married Dora Coffin on St. Swithin's day in the first year of the last reign.

Anthony was then comfortably off, but through a combination of adverse circumstances he went rapidly down in the world, became a bankrupt, and being obliged to vacate his residence in St. Paul's Churchyard, he removed to No. 3, Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road, where Mrs. Dumps was delivered of a son.

The depressed pair agreed to christen their babe Simon, but the name was registered in the parish book with the first syllable spelt "S—I—G—H;"—whether the trembling hand of the afflicted parent orthographically erred, or whether a bungling clerk caused the error I know not; but certain it is that the infant Dumps was registered SIGHMON.

Sighmon sighed away his infancy like other babes and sucklings, and when he grew to be a hobedy-hoy, there was a seriousness in his visage, and a much-ado-about-nothing-ness in his eye, which were proclaimed by good natured people to be indications of deep thought and profundity; while others less "flattering sweet," declared they indicated naught but want of comprehension, and the dulness of stupidity.

As he grew older he grew graver, sad was his look, sombre the tone of his voice, and half an hour's conversation with him was a very serious affair indeed.

Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road, was the scene of his infant sports. Since his failure, his father had earned his livelyhood, by letting himself out as a mute, or mourner, to a furnisher of funerals.

"Mute" and "voluntary woe" were his stock in trade.

Often did Mrs. Dumps ink the seams of his small-clothes, and darken his elbows with a blacking brush, ere he sallied forth to follow borrowed plumes; and when he returned from his public performance (oft rehearsed) Master Sighmon did innocently crumple his crapes, and sport with his weepers.

His melancholy outgoings at length were rewarded by some pecuniary incomings. The demise of others secured a living for him, and after a few unusually propitious sickly seasons, he grimly smiled as he counted his gains: the mourner exulted, and, in praise of his profession, the mute became eloquent.

Another event occurred: after burying so many people professionally, he at length buried Mrs. Dumps; that, of course, was by no means a matter of business. I have before remarked that she was descended from the Coffins; she was now gathered to her ancestors.

Dumps had long been proud of gentility of appearance, a suit of black had been his working day costume, nothing therefore could be more easy than for Dumps to turn gentleman. He did so; took a villa at Gravesend, chose for his own sitting room a chamber that looked against a dead wall, and whilst he was lying in state upon the squabs of his sofa, he thought seriously of the education of his son, and resolved that he should be instantly taught the dead languages.

Sighmon Dumps was decidedly a young man of a serious turn of mind. The metropolis had few attractions for him, he loved to linger near the monument; and if ever he thought of a continental excursion, the Catacombs and Père la Chaise were his seducers.

His father died, his old employer furnished him with a funeral; the mute was silenced, and the mourner was mourned.

Sighmon Dumps became more serious than ever; he had a decided nervous malady, an abhorrence of society, and a sensitive shrinking when he felt that any body was looking at him. He had heard of the invisible girl; he would have given worlds to have been an invisible young gentleman, and to have glided in and out of rooms, unheeded and unseen, like a draft through a keyhole. This, however, was not to be his lot; like a man cursed with creaking shoes, stepping lightly, and tiptoeing availed not; a creak always betrayed him when he was most anxious to creep into a corner.

At his father's death he found himself possessed of a competency and a villa; but he was unhappy, he was known in the neighbourhood, people called on him, and he was expected to call on them, and these calls and recalls bored him. He never, in his life, could abide looking any one straight in the face; a pair of human eyes meeting his own was actually painful to him. It was not to be endured. He sold his villa, and determined to go to some place where, being a total stranger, he might pass unnoticed and unknown, attracting no attention, no remarks.

He went to Cheltenham and consulted Boisragon about his nerves, was recommended a course of the waters, and horse exercise.

The son of the weeper very naturally thought he had already "too much of water;" he, however, hired a nag, took a small suburban lodging, and as nobody spoke to him, nor seemed to care about him, he grew better, and felt sedately happy. This blest seclusion, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," was not the predestined fate of Sighmon: odd circumstances always brought him into notice. The horse he had hired was a piebald, a sweet, quiet animal, warranted a safe support for a timid invalid. On this piebald did Dumps jog through the green lanes in brown studies.

One day as he passed a cottage, a face peered at him through an open window; he heard an exclamation of delight, the door opened, and an elderly female ran after him, entreating him to stop; much against the grain he complied.

"'Twas heaven sent you, sir," said his pursuer, out of breath; "give me for the love of mercy the cure for the rhumatiz."

"The what?" said Dumps.

"The rhumatiz, sir; I've the pains and the aches in my back and my bones—give me the dose that will cure me."

In vain Dumps declared his ignorance of the virtues of "medicinal gums." The more he protested, the more the old woman sued; when to his horror a reinforcement joined her from the cottage, and men, women, and children implored him to cure the good dame's malady. At length watching a favourable opportunity, he insinuated his heel into the side of the piebald, and trotted off, while entreaties mingled with words of anger were borne to him on the wind.

He determined to avoid that green lane in future, and rode out the next day in an opposite direction: as he trotted through a village a girl ran after him, shouting for a cure for the hooping cough, a dame with a low curtsey solicited a remedy for the colic, and an old man asked him what was good for the palsy. These unforeseen, these unaccountable attacks were fearful annoyances to so retiring a personage as Dumps. Day after day, go where he would, the same things happened. He was solicited to cure "all the ills that flesh is heir to." He was not aware (any more than the reader very possibly may be) that in some parts of England the country people have an idea that a quack doctor rides a piebald horse; why, I cannot explain, but so it is, and that poor Dumps felt to his cost. Life became a burthen to him; he was a marked man; he, whose only wish was to pass unnoticed, unheard, unseen; he, who of all the creeping things on the earth, pitied the glowworm most, because the spark in its tail attracted observation. He gave up his lodgings and his piebald, and went "in his angry mood to Tewksbury."

I ought ere this to have described my hero. He was rather embonpoint, but fat was not with him, as it sometimes is, twin brother to fun; his fat was weighty, he was inclined to blubber. He wore a wig, and carried in his countenance an expression indicative of the seriousness of his turn of mind.

He alighted from the coach at the principal inn at Tewksbury; the landlady met him in the hall, started, smiled, and escorted him into a room with much civility. He took her aside, and briefly explained that retirement, quiet, and a back room to himself were the accommodations he sought.

"I understand you sir," replied the landlady, with a knowing wink, "a little quiet will be agreeable by way of change; I hope you'll find every thing here to your liking." She then curtseyed and withdrew.

"Frank," said the hostess to the head waiter, "who do you think we've got in the blue parlour? you'll never guess! I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him; dressed just as I saw him at the Haymarket Theatre, the only night I ever was at a London stage play. The gray coat, and the striped trousers, and the hessian boots over them, and the straw hat out of all shape, and the gingham umbrella!"

"Who is he, ma'am?" said Frank. "Why, the great comedy actor, Mr. Liston," replied the landlady, "come down for a holiday; he wants to be quiet, so we must not blab, or the whole town will be after him."

This brief dialogue will account for much disquietude which subsequently befell our ill fated Dumps. People met him, he could not imagine why, with a broad grin on their features. As they passed they whispered to each other, and the words "inimitable," "clever creature," "irresistibly comic," evidently applied to himself, reached his ears.

Dumps looked more serious than ever; but the greater his gravity, the more the people smiled, and one young lady actually laughed in his face as she said aloud, "Oh, that mock heroic tragedy look is so like him!"

Sighmon sighed for the seclusion of number three, Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road.

One morning his landlady announced, with broader grin than usual, that a gentleman desired to speak with him; he grumbled, but submitted, and the gentleman was announced.

"My name, sir, is Opie," said the stranger; "I am quite delighted to see you here. You intend gratifying the good people of Tewksbury of course?"

"Gratifying! what can you mean?"

"If your name is announced, there'll not be a box to be had."

"I always look after my own boxes, I can tell you," replied Dumps.

"By all means, you will come out here of course?"

"Come out? to be sure, I sha'n't stay within doors always."

"What do you mean to come out in?"

"Why, what I've got on will do very well."

"Oh, that's so like you," said Opie, shaking his sides with laughter, "you really are inimitable!—What character do you select here?"

"Character!" said Dumps, "the stranger."

"The Stranger! you?"

"Yes, I."

"And you really mean to come out here as the Stranger?" said Opie.

"Why, yes to be sure—I'm but just come."

"Then I shall put your name in large letters immediately, we will open this evening; and as to terms, you shall have half the receipts of the house."

Off ran Mr. Opie, who was no less a personage than the manager of the theatre, leaving Dumps fully persuaded that he had been closeted with a lunatic.

Shortly afterwards he saw a man very busy pasting bills against a wall opposite his window, and so large were the letters that he easily deciphered, "THE CELEBRATED MR. LISTON IN TRAGEDY. This evening THE STRANGER, the Part of THE STRANGER BY MR. LISTON." Dumps had never seen the inimitable Liston, indeed comedy was quite out of his way. But now that the star was to shine forth in tragedy, the announcement was congenial to the serious turn of his mind, and he resolved to go.

He ate an early dinner, went by times to the theatre, and established himself in a snug corner of the stage box. The house filled, the hour of commencement arrived, the fiddlers paused and looked towards the curtain, but hearing no signal they fiddled another strain. The audience became impatient; they hissed, they hooted, and they called for the manager: another pause, another yell of disapprobation, and the manager pale and trembling appeared, and walked hat in hand to the front of the stage. To Dumps's great surprise it was the very man who visited him in the morning. Mr. Opie cleared his throat, bowed repeatedly, moved his lips, but was inaudible amid the shouts of "hear him." At length silence was obtained, and he spoke as follows:—

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"I appear before you to entreat your kind and considerate forbearance; I lament as much, nay more than you, the absence of Mr. Liston; but, in the anguish of the moment, one thought supports me, the consciousness of having done my duty. (Applause.) I had an interview with your deservedly favourite performer this morning, and every necessary arrangement was made between us. I have sent to his hotel, and he is not to be found. (Disapprobation.) I have been informed that he dined early, and left the house, saying that he was going to the theatre; what accident can have prevented his arrival I am utterly unable to—"