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Updated: May 13, 2025
He built a theater as an adjunct to his country house in Ireland and imported players from London and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers, to try on their various costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an oriental prince and now as a Roman emperor. In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure wherever actors or actresses were collected.
The mummers, as has been stated, were seated on a bench, one end of which extended into the small apartment, or pantry, for want of space in the outer room. Eustacia, partly from shyness, had chosen the midmost seat, which thus commanded a view of the interior of the pantry as well as the room containing the guests.
We had occasionally official banquets, but they were very dull compared to those to which we had formerly been accustomed, while no maskers or mummers were allowed to present themselves. As may be supposed, the arrival of Sir Thomas Gresham and Aveline Radford produced a very pleasant change.
It now came to the Queen of the May's turn to advance to the pole, and stationing herself beneath it, the morrice-dancers and the rest of the mummers formed a ring round her, and, taking hands, footed it merrily to the tune of "Green Sleeves." Long before this, Jocelyn and his attendant had come up, and both were so much interested that they felt no disposition to depart.
The storm-stead shows often found it easier to sink to rest in a field than to leave it. For weeks at a time they were snowed up, sufficiently to prevent any one from Thrums going near them, though not sufficiently to keep the pallid mummers indoors. That would in many cases have meant starvation.
Here one of the women, pale, trembling, and tearful, brought the ruffian his hat; and placing it deliberately on his head, and bowing with a dreadful and convulsive attempt to smile, he walked slowly away and disappeared. "What strange mummers grief makes!" said the curate. "It is an appalling spectacle when it thus wrings out feeling from a man of that mould!
Last of all the old woman speaks: The mummers' play, of which the above is a very brief résumé, lasts about half an hour, and includes many songs of a topical nature. Yes, Christmas is Christmas still in the heart of old England.
To-day I myself saw a carnival procession in the village piazza a veritable survival of the Middle Ages; a triumphal car wreathed in flowers, driven by masquerading mummers and surrounded by Pierrots and peasant buffoons, a thoroughly naive and primitive bit of religion. But it needed a perceptible effort to shake off the sense of the operatic, to accept the thing as genuine.
To-day San Francisco was replete not only with life but with wealth, talents, and every variety of enterprise; it was as full of fads and cults and artistic groups as London itself; it had sent forth authors, artists, mummers, singers and millionaires by the score.
As luck would have it, this was just the hour when the mummers, guise dancers and darkey-parties were dressing up for their Christmas rounds; and the appearance presented by the crowd in the deepening dusk would, in less serious circumstances, have been extremely diverting. He had not accomplished his purpose when I heard a shout, and, looking up the street, saw Mr. Wm.
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