As the manager of the Performance sits before the
curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling
of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey
of the bustling place. There is a great quantity
of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing
and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing
and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks
ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen
on the look-out, quacks (other quacks, plague
take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels
looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged
tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating
upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is vanityfair; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry
one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of
the actors and buffoons when they come off from their
business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks
before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the
little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The
curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning
over head and heels, and crying, “How are you?”
A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through
an exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed,
I take it, by his own or other people’s hilarity.
An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses
him here and there—a pretty child looking
at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst
her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor
Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone
with the honest family which lives by his tumbling;
but the general impression is one more melancholy than
mirthful. When you come home you sit down in
a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of
mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business.
I have no other moral than this to tag to the present
story of “Vanity Fair.” Some people
consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such,
with their servants and families: very likely
they are right. But persons who think otherwise,
and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic
mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour,
and look at the performances. There are scenes
of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and
lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and
some of very middling indeed; some love-making for
the sentimental, and some light comic business; the
whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly
illuminated with the Author’s own candles.
What more has the Manager of the Performance to say?—To
acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received
in all the principal towns of England through which
the Show has passed, and where it has been most favourably
noticed by the respected conductors of the public
Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is
proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction
to the very best company in this empire. The
