Vivian Grey | Page 4

indeed, if a youth of great
talents be blessed with an amiable and generous disposition, he ought
not to envy the Minister of England. If any captain of Eton or praefect
of Winchester be reading these pages, let him dispassionately consider
in what situation of life he can rationally expect that it will be in his

power to exercise such influence, to have such opportunities of
obliging others, and be so confident of an affectionate and grateful
return. Aye, there's the rub! Bitter thought! that gratitude should cease
the moment we become men.
And sure I am that Vivian Grey was loved as ardently and as faithfully
us you might expect from innocent young hearts. His slight
accomplishments were the standard of all perfection, his sayings were
the soul of all good fellowship, and his opinion the guide in any crisis
which occurred in the monotonous existence of the little
commonwealth. And time flew gaily on.
One winter evening, as Vivian, with some of his particular cronies,
were standing round the school-room fire, they began, as all schoolboys
do when it grows rather dark and they grow rather sentimental, to talk
of HOME.
"Twelve weeks more," said Augustus Etherege; "twelve weeks more,
and we are free! The glorious day should be celebrated."
"A feast, a feast!" exclaimed Poynings.
"A feast is but the work of a night," said Vivian Grey; "something more
stirring for me! What say you to private theatricals?"
The proposition was, of course, received with enthusiasm, and it was
not until they had unanimously agreed to act that they universally
remembered that acting was not allowed. And then they consulted
whether they should ask Dallas, and then they remembered that Dallas
had been asked fifty times, and then they "supposed they must give it
up;" and then Vivian Grey made a proposition which the rest were
secretly sighing for, but which they were afraid to make themselves; he
proposed that they should act without asking Dallas. "Well, then, we'll
do it without asking him," said Vivian; "nothing is allowed in this life,
and everything is done: in town there is a thing called the French play,
and that is not allowed, yet my aunt has got a private box there. Trust
me for acting, but what shall we perform?"

This question was, as usual, the fruitful source of jarring opinions. One
proposed Othello, chiefly because it would be so easy to black a face
with a burnt cork. Another was for Hamlet, solely because he wanted to
act the ghost, which he proposed doing in white shorts and a night-cap.
A third was for Julius Caesar, because the murder scene would be such
fun.
"No! no!" said Vivian, tired at these various and varying proposals,
"this will never do. Out upon Tragedies; let's have a Comedy!"
"A Comedy! a Comedy! oh! how delightful!"
CHAPTER IV
After an immense number of propositions, and an equal number of
repetitions, Dr. Hoadley's bustling drama was fixed upon. Vivian was
to act Ranger, Augustus Etherege was to personate Clarinda, because
he was a fair boy and always blushing; and the rest of the characters
found able representatives. Every half-holiday was devoted to
rehearsals, and nothing could exceed the amusement and thorough fun
which all the preparations elicited. All went well; Vivian wrote a
pathetic prologue and a witty epilogue. Etherege got on capitally in the
mask scene, and Poynings was quite perfect in Jack Maggot. There was,
of course, some difficulty in keeping all things in order, but then Vivian
Grey was such an excellent manager! and then, with infinite tact, the
said manager conciliated the Classics, for he allowed St. Leger Smith
to select a Greek motto, from the Andromache, for the front of the
theatre; and Johnson secundus and Barlow primus were complimented
by being allowed to act the chairmen.
But alas! in the midst of all this sunshine, the seeds of discord and
dissension were fast flourishing. Mr. Dallas himself was always so
absorbed in some freshly-imported German commentator that it was a
fixed principle with him never to trouble himself with anything that
concerned his pupils "out of school hours." The consequence was, that
certain powers were necessarily delegated to a certain set of beings
called USHERS.

The usherian rule had, however, always been comparatively light at
Burnsley Vicarage, for the good Dallas, never for a moment entrusting
the duties of tuition to a third person, engaged these deputies merely as
a sort of police, to regulate the bodies, rather than the minds, of his
youthful subjects. One of the first principles of the new theory
introduced into the establishment of Burnsley Vicarage by Mr. Vivian
Grey was, that the ushers were to be considered by the boys as a
species of upper servants; were to be treated with civility,