many; because these men either die early, or by unnaturally taxing

their bodily energies, lose, prematurely, those physical powers on

which alone they can depend for subsistence. His besetting sin gained

so fast upon him, however, that it was found impossible to employ

him in the situations in which he really was useful to the theatre. The

public-house had a fascination for him which he could not resist.

Neglected disease and hopeless poverty were as certain to be his

portion as death itself, if he persevered in the same course; yet he did

persevere, and the result may be guessed. He could obtain no

engagement, and he wanted bread. 'Everybody who is at all

acquainted with theatrical matters knows what a host of shabby,

poverty-stricken men hang about the stage of a large establishment -

not regularly engaged actors, but ballet people, procession men,

tumblers, and so forth, who are taken on during the run of a

pantomime, or an Easter piece, and are then discharged, until the

production of some heavy spectacle occasions a new demand for their

services. To this mode of life the man was compelled to resort; and

taking the chair every night, at some low theatrical house, at once put

him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to

gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him; his

irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched

pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to

a state bordering on starvation, only procuring a trifle occasionally by

borrowing it of some old companion, or by obtaining an appearance at

one or other of the commonest of the minor theatres; and when he did

earn anything it was spent in the old way.

About this time, and when he had been existing for upwards of a year

no one knew how, I had a short engagement at one of the theatres on

the Surrey side of the water, and here I saw this man, whom I had lost

sight of for some time; for I had been travelling in the provinces, and

he had been skulking in the lanes and alleys of London. I was dressed

to leave the house, and was crossing the stage on my way out, when

he tapped me on the shoulder. Never shall I forget the repulsive sight

that met my eye when I turned round. He was dressed for the

pantomimes in all the absurdity of a clown's costume. The spectral

figures in the Dance of Death, the most frightful shapes that the

ablest painter ever portrayed on canvas, never presented an

appearance half so ghastly. His bloated body and shrunken legs -

their deformity enhanced a hundredfold by the fantastic dress - the

glassy eyes, contrasting fearfully with the thick white paint with which

the face was besmeared; the grotesquely-ornamented head, trembling

with paralysis, and the long skinny hands, rubbed with white chalk -

all gave him a hideous and unnatural appearance, of which no

description could convey an adequate idea, and which, to this day, I

shudder to think of. His voice was hollow and tremulous as he took

me aside, and in broken words recounted a long catalogue of sickness

and privations, terminating as usual with an urgent request for the

The Pickwick Papers