Roundabout Papers [35]
and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer. But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag! I remember her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in '28. I remember being behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like THAT, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell ME! A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours. Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there: when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious pupils--of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more! One much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the chief MALE dancer--a very important personage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti--your old fogy who can see no good except in his own time. They say that claret is better now-a-days, and cookery much improved since the days of MY monarch--of George IV. Pastry Cookery is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half a crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastry-cook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now? I passed by the pastry-cook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. It looked a very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have come over him--those penny tarts certainly did NOT look so nice as I remember them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning. Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's house--which on my conscience I believe was excellent and plentiful--and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of house and home. At the pastry-cook's we may have over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted half a crown's worth for my own part, but I don't like to mention the REAL figure for fear of perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous confession)--we may have eaten too much, I say. We did; but what then? The school apothecary was sent for: a couple of small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was an actual pleasure. For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty much in old times as they are now (except cricket, par exemple--and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces next), there were novels--ah! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day! O Scottish Chiefs, didn't we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said? Efforts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. "I say, old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or, "Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who had a love of drawing. "Peregrine Pickle" we liked, our fathers admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick Random" was and remains delightful. I don't remember having