Chapter 23 - Page 2

entertain himself with his own thoughts, until
they arrived at the drawbridge at Portsmouth, when Mr Crummles
pulled up.

'We'll get down here,' said the manager, 'and the boys will take him
round to the stable, and call at my lodgings with the luggage. You
had better let yours be taken there, for the present.'

Thanking Mr Vincent Crummles for his obliging offer, Nicholas jumped
out, and, giving Smike his arm, accompanied the manager up High
Street on their way to the theatre; feeling nervous and
uncomfortable enough at the prospect of an immediate introduction to
a scene so new to him.

They passed a great many bills, pasted against the walls and
displayed in windows, wherein the names of Mr Vincent Crummles, Mrs
Vincent Crummles, Master Crummles, Master P. Crummles, and Miss
Crummles, were printed in very large letters, and everything else in
very small ones; and, turning at length into an entry, in which was
a strong smell of orange-peel and lamp-oil, with an under-current of
sawdust, groped their way through a dark passage, and, descending a
step or two, threaded a little maze of canvas screens and paint
pots, and emerged upon the stage of the Portsmouth Theatre.

'Here we are,' said Mr Crummles.

It was not very light, but Nicholas found himself close to the first
entrance on the prompt side, among bare walls, dusty scenes,
mildewed clouds, heavily daubed draperies, and dirty floors. He
looked about him; ceiling, pit, boxes, gallery, orchestra, fittings,
and decorations of every kind,--all looked coarse, cold, gloomy, and
wretched.

'Is this a theatre?' whispered Smike, in amazement; 'I thought it
was a blaze of light and finery.'

'Why, so it is,' replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; 'but not
by day, Smike--not by day.'

The manager's voice recalled him from a more careful inspection of
the building, to the opposite side of the proscenium, where, at a
small mahogany table with rickety legs and of an oblong shape, sat a
stout, portly female, apparently between forty and fifty, in a
tarnished silk cloak, with her bonnet dangling by the strings in her
hand, and her hair (of which she had a great quantity) braided in a
large festoon over each temple.

'Mr Johnson,' said the manager (for Nicholas had given the name
which Newman Noggs had bestowed upon him in his conversation with
Mrs Kenwigs), 'let me introduce Mrs Vincent Crummles.'

'I am glad to see you, sir,' said Mrs Vincent Crummles, in a
sepulchral voice. 'I am very glad to see you, and still more happy
to hail you as a promising member of our corps.'

The lady shook Nicholas by the hand as she addressed him in these
terms; he saw it was a large one, but had not expected