Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/558

 Humpty-Dumpty will jump. It has just been moulded, and will go through a score of other stages until completed. Take this big giant's head for instance. It is just being modelled at the far end of the room. The interior of the gigantic cranium is filled with pots, pails, and odd things to hold the clay together; then a cast will be taken of it in plaster-of-Paris. When it is thoroughly set it will be cleaned and oiled, and then layers of paper will be placed in it, on which the features are to be painted. A wonderful array of models are being dried in front of the great fires—immense kitchen grates—huge Cavaliers' hats, Crusaders' heads, interspersed with legs, while a fine punchinello is quietly resting on the ground. A woman is wiring the edges of a mask to keep it firm, whilst on a wooden support is the wonderful cranium of a Crusader, with a sensational moustache, and a worker is giving the gallant knight's nose a finishing touch. Others are "trying on" to see the effect. Pussy's head looks capital on a white-aproned worker.

"Twelve months will be occupied in making all we need for a pantomime," Sir Augustus said, handling a little toy nigger. "We have made in this room a giant's head six feet high; it needed the services of six men to creep inside and work all the machinery. It took three months to make. We use for a single pantomime five hundredweight of paper, three tons of clay, and over ten tons of plaster-of-Paris. Of course, the clay is used again and again—it may be a giant's head one week and the body of a little cupid the next.” We hurry through the great store-rooms, where are silent mementoes of many a past Christmas production. Soldiers and sailors are no bigger than the six-feet human knives and forks which tripped along so merrily last year. Here are huge plaster bouquets and dishes of fruits, cherries, strawberries, luscious pears, and bunches of grapes, gilded columns and angels, imps of mischief—in short, a wonderful olla podrida of properties. Then to the work-rooms—the dress-making departments, where altogether a hundred women are busy with the needle. The treadles of the machines are being industriously worked, thousands of spangles, heaps of glittering jewels, are being sewn on to the richest of brocades, some of which material costs as much as fifteen guineas a yard. A costumière is cutting out the patterns. She has the design of the dress painted on a small card some nine inches long by five inches wide, and her experienced eye knows exactly what to cut, to half an inch.

Then to one of the paint-rooms. The famous manager sits down in front of a little model stage—the trees, bridges, and paths are in cardboard, the very clouds of the same material. He looks at the scene. Down comes a bridge, a tree is uprooted to another position, and a cloud is moved away. From this model the artist will paint the great canvas. The palettes—set out on the bench which stretches through the centre of the room—have twenty-five or thirty different divisions filled with all the colours of the rainbow. Paint pots are