Attegrat, February 13th.
Our grand Christmas farcio-pantomime, entitled “Harlequin and the Magic
Durbar; or the Ambassador, the Archbishop, and the Barbarian Cortege,” has
been played to an immensely amused and numerous audience. The title had
been advertised as “The King, the Archbishop, &c.;” but, owing to the
unavoidable absence of the principal actor, the Ambassador was at the last
moment substituted for the King. The opening scene may be described as
“The camp of the Knight Errant, Sir Robert Napier, with Bluebeard’s Castle
in the middle distance, and the town of Attegrat and the mountains in the
background.” Flourish of trumpets! A herald arrives, the part being
enacted by Major Grant, who states that the King is unable to come in
person to wait upon the valiant Knight, but that he had sent his dear
brother, the Grand Vizier, together with his Archbishop, to assure the
Knight of his friendship. Bustle and excitement in the camp. A pause.
Sound of strange and barbaric music in the distance. This gradually
approaches, and then, from the rear of Bluebeard’s Castle—of which a full
description was given in my last—enter the head of procession, consisting
of—three men blowing upon cow-horns. These were inserted into the ends of
long sticks, and in appearance were very like the long horns used by
heralds of old. Their sound is lugubrious in the extreme. Next follows a
man of tall stature, beating violently upon a tom-tom. Next follow the
musqueteers of the body-guard; dress—dirty clothes miscellaneously draped;
bare heads frizzled and oiled; arms—any stage-properties which might come
conveniently to hand; old Portuguese match-locks, and new fowling-pieces
from Liège; double-barrelled guns, and guns with one long and frequently
crooked barrel, the large proportion quite incapable of being fired. Next
follows the Ambassador of the King on a mule, with gorgeous caparisons of
stamped green and red leather, bearing the tiger rampant, the arms of the
great potentate his master. The Ambassador is clothed like his body-guard,
in whity-brown cloth of coarse cotton, with red ends. With this, as a sign
of his dignity, he envelopes not only his body, but his mouth and chin, as
do the chiefs behind him. He wears round his neck a fur collar with long
tails. The Ambassador of the great King is bareheaded. His hair is
arranged, as is the manner of the chiefs of his people, in a series of
little plaits, which run in parallel lines from his forehead over the head
to the nape of the neck. This style appears to be copied from the Assyrian
bas-relievos in the British Museum. Next to the Ambassador of the great
King rides the Archbishop, upon a mule similarly caparisoned. The
Archbishop is clothed in absolutely white robes, with turban to match.
These dignitaries have both stirrups to their saddles, in which the
great-toes only are placed, to, I should say, the imminent danger of those
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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