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We like to watch a regular Astley’s party in the Easter or Midsummer holidays—pa and ma, and nine or ten children, varying from five foot six to two foot eleven: from fourteen years of age to four.
Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded. How we should have liked to have seen it in the circle at Astley’s! Our life upon it, that it should have performed such evolutions as would have put the whole company to shame—Indian chiefs, knights, Swiss peasants, and all.
They always do it at Astley’s and Sadler’s Wells, and if they don’t know how to do this sort of thing, who in the world does?
Cartlitch, of Astley’s Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages, could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did now. “Take another year, Gambouge,” screamed he; “two more ten more a century; roast me on Lawrence’s gridiron, boil me in holy water, but don’t ask that: don’t, don’t bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!”
To return from this digression, we were about to say, that these are the sort of people whom you see talking, and attitudinising, outside the stage-doors of our minor theatres. At Astley’s they are always more numerous than at any other place.
The same kind of feeling pursues us in many other instances, but there is no place which recalls so strongly our recollections of childhood as Astley’s.
We defy any one who has been to Astley’s two or three times, and is consequently capable of appreciating the perseverance with which precisely the same jokes are repeated night after night, and season after season, not to be amused with one part of the performances at least—we mean the scenes in the circle.
Tibbs!’ called out Mrs. Bloss. ‘Mrs. ‘Oh, dear—dear!’ exclaimed the wretched partner of the depraved Tibbs. ‘She’s knocking at my door. We must be discovered! What will they think?’ ‘Mrs. Tibbs! Mrs. Tibbs!’ screamed the woodpecker again. ‘What’s the matter!’ shouted Gobler, bursting out of the back drawing-room, like the dragon at Astley’s. ‘Oh, Mr. Gobler!’ cried Mrs.
With a credit on Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations, exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts, with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to Astley’s.
In this case he had to pay the penalty, when he emerged from the chest in the carpenter’s shop. The men, who had complained terribly of its weight, were not inclined to allow young Astley to get off free. One of Astley’s tricks had, however, a good motive, as it was intended to cure an old woman of her besetting sin—a tendency to take a drop too much.
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