[Illustration: PLEASE, SIR! HERE’S MR. GRIMALDI!!!!]
I have always considered the above physiognomical miracle--the lighting up of that seemingly impracticable countenance--as the best criticism I have ever _seem_ of the performances of the great Pan of Pantomime:--a most eloquent retrospective review of the triumphs of his genius. It was a glorious illustration of the Pleasures of Memory, to behold that face so like the stain a dead calm on a dull day burst suddenly into ripples and radiance, like the brook that laughs in the sun. What recollections of exquisite fooling must have rushed into her fancy to convert that Quakerly maiden, as by a stage metamorphosis, into a perfect figure of fun! What grotesque fantastic shapes must have come tumbling, rolling, crawling, dangling, dancing, prancing, floundering, flopping, striding, sliding, ambling, shambling, scrambling, stumbling, bundling, and trundling into her mind’s eye, to so startle her features from their propriety! What face-making faces, with telegraphic brows--rolling, reeling, goggling, ogling, hard-winking, and soft-blinking eyes--and grinning, gaping, pinching, puckering mouths must have grimaced at her to put her steady countenance so out of countenance! What is there in a name? Why magic! A serious, quiet, decrepid man had but to announce himself, and Presto! Prestissimo! before an engineer could cry “Ease her! stop her! back her!” our Sarah had retraced her course up the stream of time to the bright wintry gallery nights at the Lane, or the Garden, or the Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Wells. Talk of magnetisers! when did Baron Dupotet, or any of his sect, without pass or manipulation, thus throw a sedate, orderly maiden, into an ecstasy, and set her looking through the back of her head at the pantomimical experiences of the past? Talk of Laughing Gas! when was there a facetious fluid so potent that the mere sight of the empty bottle--(for such, alas! the ex-clown was become)--could throw the ticklesome muscles into merry convulsions?
I have often speculated since on Sarah’s deportment, when, having ushered “Mr. Grimaldi, alias Joe,” into the drawing-room, she returned to her kitchen. Of course, in the first flutter and frisk of her animal spirits, she postponed all domestic duties; or, at best, obliviously broke the eggs into the flower tub, popped the lump of butter into the oven, and secured the rolling-pin in the safe. More probably she dropped herself into the first chair that offered; and throwing her apron over her head to shut out the daylight, indulged in a lamplight vision of the drolleries of Mother Goose, or the Sleeping Beauty; when the frolics of funny Joe had cheated her for awhile of the sorrows of servitude, low wages, a crustaceous mistress, a _perfidus_ young man, and a hard place, with perhaps the bodily pains of a recent scald, a bad bruise, and tight shoes. No doubt it had been one of her wishes, born of wonder and curiosity, to see the popular Motley off the stage “in his habit as he lived;” and lo! beyond her hope, she had met him face to face without his paint, and been on speaking terms with that marvellous voice, so sparingly heard, even on the stage.