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Mr Crummles was unfeignedly glad to see him, and starting up from before a small dressing-glass, with one very bushy eyebrow stuck on crooked over his left eye, and the fellow eyebrow and the calf of one of his legs in his hand, embraced him cordially; at the same time observing, that it would do Mrs Crummles's heart good to bid him goodbye before they went.
Crummles's Infant Phenomenon in everybody's mind, can we expect the adjective to shake off the old associations of its parent noun? Last year I culled an amusing sentence from a "Standard" criticism of a tale of adventure: "The story is a well-told, and in spite of the word 'unreliable, a well-written one." Now just as many foolish persons object to "a ... one" as to "unreliable."
Crummles's pump. However, the point exactly was that we attended this spectacle just in order not to be beguiled, just in order to enjoy with ironic detachment and, at the very most, to be amused ourselves at our sensibility should it prove to have been trapped and caught.
I have taken this case of the schools as a case casual but concrete. The same, however, can be seen in any of the groups or incidents of the novels on both sides of the boundary. Mr. Crummles's theatrical company is only a society that Nicholas happens to fall into. America is only a place to which Martin Chuzzlewit happens to go. These things are isolated sketches, and nothing else.
Then, after a time, she would speak to Smike himself now and then, asking him whether he was a judge of likenesses, and whether he thought that picture in the corner was like herself, and whether he didn't think it would have looked better if she had made herself ten years younger, and whether he didn't think, as a matter of general observation, that young ladies looked better not only in pictures, but out of them too, than old ones; with many more small jokes and facetious remarks, which were delivered with such good-humour and merriment, that Smike thought, within himself, she was the nicest lady he had ever seen; even nicer than Mrs Grudden, of Mr Vincent Crummles's theatre; and she was a nice lady too, and talked, perhaps more, but certainly louder, than Miss La Creevy.
The profoundest deference was paid to Nicholas that night, and the people who had been most anxious to have his nose pulled in the morning, embraced occasions of taking him aside, and telling him with great feeling, how very friendly they took it that he should have treated that Lenville so properly, who was a most unbearable fellow, and on whom they had all, by a remarkable coincidence, at one time or other contemplated the infliction of condign punishment, which they had only been restrained from administering by considerations of mercy; indeed, to judge from the invariable termination of all these stories, there never was such a charitable and kind-hearted set of people as the male members of Mr Crummles's company.
I adored her from that moment! The arrival of the gifted subject of these remarks put an abrupt termination to Mr Crummles's eulogium.
When Nicholas Nickleby acted at Mr. Crummles's theatre, a thrill of terror ran through the unsophisticated spectators, as the wicked relation poked a sword at him in the dark in every direction except where his legs were plainly visible. But readers are more exacting now. And we are all frightfully sagacious. Long reading of novels gives a fatal skill in anticipating their issues.
"The Blood Drinker," added Mr Crummles with a prophetic sigh, "The Blood Drinker" will die with that girl; and she's the only sylph I ever saw, who could stand upon one leg, and play the tambourine on her other knee, LIKE a sylph. 'When does she come down? asked Nicholas. 'We expect her today, replied Mr Crummles. 'She is an old friend of Mrs Crummles's.
Vincent Crummles's theatre, and he remained the first walking gentleman after he had come off. Now this romantic method involves a certain element of climax which to us appears crudity.
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