Many Things

THE Walrus undoubtedly was a property man, and it was the stage carpenter he was walking with, that day that ended so tragically for the young oysters. Perhaps oyster shells were on the list for the next production. Of all the professions, there is none that engenders greater familiarity with such a host and variety of ‘ many things.’ If, as I suspect, the Walrus was a property man, it was natural and normal for him to speak of shoes and ships and sealing wax in conjunction, and he had probably, at odd and crowded moments, made cabbages stand for kings. At any rate being property man for the Green Mask Players is being second cousin to the Walrus. When their third season closed with a bill of three one-act plays, the property man’s shopping-list read as follows: —

A cuckoo — other birds
A book
A Welsh dresser
Old pewter
Windsor chairs
A raisin cake, and other wedding gifts
Pots of geraniums
Church chimes (which doubled in ‘The Boy Jones’ as a palace clock)
An old and magnificent cradle
Ermine-trimmed robe for same
A Paisley shawl
Victorian furniture
A large gilt mirror
Girandoles
Two hoop-skirts
Wax flowers under glass
A mantel and its appurtenances
The baby clothes of 1843
A baby!

And many other things.

Now began the great hunting.

The cuckoo and the other birds were easy: they were snared in a music shop together with the chimes. The old pewter was looted from the homes of long-suffering friends, as were the girandoles and the Paisley shawl. But it was seemingly the closed season for Welsh dressers, so the P.M. and the A.A. doubled as carpenters, and evolved quite a charming dresserette, to hold the pewter and pots of geraniums that brightened ‘the Davis cottage in the hill country, England.’

There were daily rumors of Windsor chairs roosting in strange parlors, which proved, on investigation, to be Chippendales or Sheratons. At last came authentic word of two genuine, armless Windsors of the required age in the wood-type. They were on top of the H——building! Fifteen stories above the city street, we found the perfect Windsors. They were conveyed to our Ford, waiting fifteen stories below, by a Chestertonian colored porter, who assured us that ‘Anything we-all has as you-all wants we ‘d be proud to lend it to you.’

Then we played a game of hoopskirt, hoop-skirt, who has the hoopskirt? A lady in the Heights had a splendid pair, but she was brought up on the Polonian principle and refused firmly to lend them. The windowdresser at L——’s had two that he offered with his usual affability, for window-dressers are only another kind of property men; but so generous their circumference, had the queen worn one, our limited stage could have held no other actor and no further properties. An adequate hoop-skirt was finally secured for Nurse Bunton, and at the eleventh moment an attic-cleaning neighbor discovered aged and dainty hoops, with a lovely bustle effect , which set off the queen’s purple dressing-gown to perfection.

Brightest of bright deeds in the property man’s world, a magnificent cradle, a gem of antiquity, with a tester top, was offered to us, so that ‘Pussy’ might rest in proper royal state.

No one would own to having baby robes of so remote a period; but a Green Masker of the eighteen-eighties produced a christening robe of the required prodigious length.

The price of even near-velvet for a regal cradle robe was so prohibitive that, for a time, Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa was threatened with having to repose under the most plebeian of blankets. But as we were passing a wall-paper store, a draped piece of royal-blue velvet, used to dress the window, caught our eyes, and, charming with smiles, we succeeded in borrowing it.

Searching an antique-shop for wax flowers under a glass bell, we unearthed two guaranteed souvenirs of ‘the dear Queen’: one a quaint little leatherbound, brass-studded chest, given by Queen Victoria to a cousin setting forth on a journey to Martinique; and the other a slender and wicked swordcane, with which the gentleman armed himself for the adventure. Beautiful bits, deserving of fine parts in the play! We never could understand the perversity of the author, who refused to write them into her plot. Our idea of the really proper procedure in playwriting is the same as Mr. Vincent Crummles’s — first get your properties, and then build the play around them. We have at present in our attic a stuffed peacock, a gilt ladder, a tiny 1860 lace-and-chiffon parasol, and two negro wigs, waiting for an intelligent author.

I believe that the Walrus felt much the same about it, and that, when recounting the list of his properties on hand, he was hoping that the Carpenter would knock together a first-rate play, calling for shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings.