Not
that this indispensable dramatic artist shrinks from competition. But
he would not have ascribed to him the production of another
manufactory, so to say. His business is in counterfeits; he views with
some disdain a genuine article. When the famous elephant Chunee
stepped upon the stage of Covent Garden, the chief performer in the
pantomime of "Harlequin and Padmanaba, or the Golden Fish," the
creature was but scornfully regarded by Mr. Johnson, the property-man
of Drury Lane. "I should be very sorry," he cried, "if I could not
make a better elephant than that!" And it would seem that he
afterwards justified his pretensions, especially in the eyes of the
playgoers prizing imitative skill above mere reality. We read in the
parody of Coleridge, in "Rejected Addresses":
Amid the freaks that modern fashion sanctions,
It grieves me much to see live animals
Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabbit,
Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig;
Fie on such tricks! Johnson, the machinist,
Of former Drury, imitated life
Quite to the life! The elephant in Blue Beard,
Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis
As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba.
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