The Sun.
London, England, 1845-12-22 00:00:00

LYCEUM THEATRE.

After a short recess this theatre re-opened on Satur-
day evening, with a new drama, entitled The Cricket on
the Hearth; a Fairy Tale of Horne, founded on Charles
Dickens's new Christmas tale, and dramatised by Albert
Smith. Now, either Albert Smith is the most clever of
adapters, or this is the most dramatic tale that Charles
Dickens has yet written, or perchance both may
be the case, for it is certain that the drama
is a well-built, compact, interesting play, the plot
of which is developed most dramatically, and
may, consequently, be clearly understood by those
who have not yet read. Dickens's book, which is
more than can be said for the dramatic versions of the
other works of Dickens. The play, like the tale, is
divided into three " chirps," and on the curtain drawing
up at the commencement of "chirp the first,"
we find ourselves in the interior of the cottage of John
Peerybingle, the carrier. His wife, familiarly known
as Dot (Mrs. Keeley), is preparing the evening meal for
him, awaiting anxiously his return from his journey.
"Fair she was and young, though somewhat of what is
called the dumpling shape." The teapot is on the bob,
the cold knuckle of ham, the butter, and the crusty loaf
on the table; the kettle is singing on the fire, and the
cricket is chirping on the hearth. " The kettle sad the
cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some
powers of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent
each his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of
the candle that shone out through the window, and a
long way down the lane." John Peerybingle (Mr.
Emery) now enters—" That lumbering, slow, honest
John—that John so heavy, but so light of spirit ; so
rough upon the surface but so gentle at the cure ; so
dull without so quick within ; so stolid but so good."
He is warmly welcomed by his darling little wife, who
is somewhat younger than himself, and he greets her and
her baby with all the warm affection of a trueshearted
husband and father. Tele little Peervbinele is co. fi 'etl
to the e of " Tilly Slowboy" (Miss Tut-net--
thus described by Diel:este :—" She was of a
.--trtlight ',hap, this young lady, iusomiteh that
nte,ll. . caied to he in constant dangte
those ehtrp pegs her shoulders, on which they Isere
loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for t.ie par-
tial development, on all possible occasions, of some
flannel vestment of a singular structure ; also fur
affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a
corset or pair of stays, in colour a dead green."
Miss Turner " made up" the character exactly, and
acted it with the most quaint awkwardness. Verily the
baby must have been a most hard-hearted little piece of
hatnanity to have withstood the collisions with dressers,
doors, and posts, which were constantly occurrine.
John Peerybingle, before arranging his parcels for deli-
very, introduces to the cottage " a stranger" (Mr. F.
Vining), old and deaf; who had joined him on the road.
" His garb was very quaint and odd—a long,. long way
behind the time. He had long white hair; good fea-
tures, singularly bold and well-defined for an old man ;
and dark, bright penetrating eyes." "' If you please I
was to be left till called for,' said the stranger, mildly.
Do not mind me.' With that he took a pair of spec-
tacles from one of his large pockets, and a book from
the other, and leisurely began to read. The carrier and
his wife exchanged a look of perplexity." While the
stranger is thus engaged, Dot examines the parcels
which has brought home, and among them discovers
a wedding-cake for old Tackleton, a toy-maker—a hard-
hearted,' close-fisted, ill-tempered, sour old bachelor,
whose sole delight is to make every one about
him as miserable as possible. This old fel-
low is about to be married to May Field-
ing (Miss Howard), the prettiest girl in the vil-
lage, who loves him not, but who consents to accept
him as her husband, because her mother desires it, as
the old curmudgeon is rich. Tackleton (Mr. Meadows)
now enters to fetch his cake. "He didn't look much
like a bridegroom, as he stood in the carrier's kitchen,
with a twist in his dry face and a screw in his body,
and his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his
hands stuck down into the bottoms of his pockets, and
his whole sarcastic ill-conditioned self peering out of
one little corner of one little eye, like the concentrated
essence of any number of ravens." And a concentrated
essence of ravens he is, for no sooner does
the croaking old scoundrel enter this abode of
happiness, than he makes John's mind uncom-
fortable by artfully insinuating that it is impossible
a young woman can love an old man. While he is thus
playing the part of a domestic lago, Dot, into whose
ear the stranger, unperceived by John, has. whispered
one single word, gives a loud scream. This creates an
alarm, and John, and Tackleton, and Caleb Plummer
(Keeley), Tackleton's journeyman, who has come to
fetch a flower and a work-box for his poor blind daughter,
gather around her. To all John's anxious inquiries
" she only answered by beating her hands together and
falling into a wild fit of laughter. Then sinking from
his grasp upon the ground, she covered her face with her
apron, and wept bitterly." The stranger retires to his
room, and thus ends chirp the first. The scene of chirp
the second is laid in the abode of Caleb Plummer, the
toymaker. We find Caleb and his blind daughter
Bertha (Miss Mary Keeley) at work, " the blind girl
busy as a doll's dressmaker, and Caleb painting
and glazing the four-pair front of a desirable
family mansion. Caleb, poor and wretched, and
miserable—hard-worked and ill-paid by the grasp-
ing Tackleton, has determined that Bertha shall
live in a world of splendid imaginings. He took
' advantage of her blindness to make her happy—de-
scribed to her his miserable abode as a palace of rich-
ness, luxury, and splendour, and himself as young,
• joyous, and handsome. TwAleton, who came in ire-
' quently to inspect their work, was represented to her
by Caleb as the kindest of benefactors, and his rough
language as merely assumed, to prevent their offering
to him their thanks for the comforts and luxuries which
his benevolence had bestowed on them. The blind girl
grows up to womanhood in this belief, and believing
Tackleton to be all that her father had represented
him to be, she loves him. The poor girl fancies her
father is ill and low spirited. To convince her that such
is not the case, Caleb commences singing, when Tackle-
ton enters, and addresses him after this brutal fashion
"Go it—l can't sing—l can't afford to sing—l'm glad
you can—l hope you can afford to work, too—hardly
' time for both I should think ;" while Caleb, to keep up
the pleasing delusion of the blind girl, says to her, aside,
"If you'd only see him, Bertha, how he's winking at me—
such a man to joke." The blind girl greets Tackleton
affectionately, and takes his hand to kiss, while he calls
her idiot ; but at length even he becomes
somewhat softened by her tenderness, grati-
tude, and affection, but instantly relapsing, he
' mutters something about " Bedlam broke loose," and
Caleb stands stupified at his own handiwork, for it is
his handiwork that burst of affection of the blind girl
for her father's hard taskmaster. That little flower and
that work-box which Caleb had fetched from the carrier's
had been given to Bertha by him as a present from
Tackleton, that she might not suspect the privations
which he himself voluntarily endured in order to make
her happy. A merry party now assembles at Caleb's.
It is Mrs. Peerybingle 's pic-nic, which she makes once a
fortnight at Caleb Plummer's, and the bustling little Dot,
and John, and Tilly, and the baby, all arrive, and Dot
cleans up the place for poor Bertha, and makes every-
thing comfortable; and May Fielding, Tackleton's bride
elect, and her mother, Mrs. Fielding (Mrs. Woollidge), a
stately lady in a majestic cap, who tells long stories
about the indigo trade, are all there, and Bertha and
May converse together—they had played together as
children, and Bertha loved May, for she had been ever
kind to the poor blind girl. To her and to Caleb, Bertha,
in the most pathetic manner, confides the secret of her
heart. She loves Tackleton, or rather loves that being
whom her father had described to her, and implores
May's forgiveness for her love, calling heaven to wit•
ness that she could not desire to see him married to a
wife more worthy of his goodness than May. " While
speaking she had released May Fielding's hands, and
clasped her garments in an attitude of mingled supplica-
tion and love. Sinking lower and lower down, as she
proceeded in her strange confession, she drooped at last
at the feet of her friend, and hid her blind face in the
folds of her dress. Great God,' exclaimed her father,
smitten at one blow with the truth, have I deceived
her from her cradle but to break her heart at last.' "
This scene was most touchingly, most truthfully acted
by Miss Mary Keeley (who made on this occa-
sion her first appearance on the stage). It was
worthy of Miss Kelly in her best days.
The stranger joins the party, and John and Mrs. Field-
ing sit down to a hand at cribbage. The stranger and
Dot have left the room, and Tackleton calls John from
his game to look out at the window, and there he sees
' Dot locked in the arms of the stranger, who has di-
vested himself of his grey hairs, and is a stalwart hand-
some young man. " The carrier clenched his strong
right hand at first, as if he would have beaten down a
lion ; but opening it immediately again, he spread it out
before the eyes of Tackleton, for he was tender of her
even then, and fell down as weak as any infant." Emery's
acting in this scene was very fine—it was quite worthy
of the name he bears. Chirp the third takes place in
John's cottage. He is sitting at his desolate hearth
heart-broken. He thinks of his wife, of his fond love
for her, of her deceit —but still he makes excuses for
her. A darker mood comes over him—the stranger,
the destroyer of his peace, is sleeping uteler
his root. There is but a dor between them.
He glances round the room—he sees a gun—he seizes it—
t rushes towards the door—the stock of the gun is uplifted
to break it open—when he hears the chirp of the
cricket on his hearth—that sound which his wife so loved
to hear, that sound which hitherto had been to him the
harlenger of happiness—and instantly his better nature
returns , he lays aside his gun, and, sinking in a chair,
hurts into tears. The spirit of the cricket appears to
him —" for all the cricket tribe are potent spirits, even
though the people who hold converse with them do not
know it (which is frequently the case) ; and there are
not in the unseen world voices more gentle and more
true, that may be so implicitly relied on, or that are so
certain to give none hut tenderest counsel, as the voices
with which the spirits of the fireside and the hearth
address themselves to human kind." The spirit of the
cricket appears and speaks to him words of comfort,
conjuring up to him fairy visions of home which calm
his troubled spirits, and assure him that Dot is still true
and faithful. The vision has passed away, and Tackleton
enters, and endeavours to complete the work of desola-
tion which he had begun, but John, Kith that strong
faith in the good and the beautiful and the pure and the
true—for all that is good and beautiful and pure is true—
w hich constitutes at the same time the strength of the
trusting heart and its reward, resists the machinations of
the tempter. " I sat upon that hearth," he says, "last
night, all night. I called up her whole life day by day ;
I had her dear self in its every passage, in review before
me; and upon my soul she is innocent, if there is one
to judge the innocent and the guilty." Still does Tackle-
ten, who has come to bid John to his wedding, pour
" the leprous distilment" into his ear, and John, at length,
unable to deny the truth of the occular demonstration that
he had had of his wife's falsehood, determines to send her
back to her parents, but at her solicitation defers the
period of her departure for a short time. The period of
her departure approaches. Dot becomes anxious—the

4.1 and

3er g