Splendors and Glooms

Clara Wintermute wakes on her 12th birthday, excited for Grisini and his puppets to perform at her party that afternoon. Ever since she saw the puppet performance a few weeks ago, Clara has thought of little else. She’s most excited to meet the children who help the puppet master, as she’s starved for friendship. She begs her maid to help organize a private tea with the children: “it’s the thing I want most in all the world! And it’s my birthday!” (12). The maid is against Clara mingling with lowborn children but agrees to bring tea if Clara keeps quiet about it.

Lizzie Rose has worked with Grisini since the deaths of her parents almost two years ago. As she pushes the puppet cart through London’s streets, she worries about Parsefall (the other child who works with Grisini); he often seems bothered to the point of anguish. Parsefall is slight of frame, dirty, and rude, but Lizzie Rose “loved him, as she might have loved a small wild animal she was trying to tame” (16). Grisini and the children arrive at Clara’s home, and Lizzie Rose wonders what it would be like to live in such an amazing house.

Grisini leaves the children to set up the wagon in the Wintermute drawing room, and Parsefall marvels at the space: “[never] had he seen a house better stocked with things to steal” (19). Clara arrives with tea. Lizzie Rose and Parsefall join her, asking about a painting of Clara with her siblings. Clara is the only child left in her family. The others died seven years ago from cholera, and her house has been in mourning ever since. Clara helps Lizzie Rose finish setting up the puppets while Parsefall searches for something to steal for Grisini, settling on a photograph in a silver frame with pearls.

Clara is mesmerized by the performance of The Fantoccini, or Grisini’s puppets, which include Little Red Riding Hood, jugglers, and ballerinas. The final performance features a skeleton that breaks apart, its separate sections dancing. Clara tries but fails to suppress her laughter, which makes everyone stare at her and her mother run from the room. Clara feels badly and does her best to get herself under control, but it’s too late: “Even the smallest child knew that Clara Wintermute had disgraced herself” (31). After the guests and Grisini’s show leave, Clara is sent to apologize to her mother for laughing at death while her mother still grieves her lost children.

On her way upstairs, Clara finds a delicate gold watch on the steps. Grisini arrives, having lost such a watch. As Clara returns it to him, the watch strikes six, causing a wolf carving within it to snap at a carved swan. Much to Clara’s discomfort and astonishment, Grisini praises her for her laughter during the performance. He seems to know she keeps a secret, “[s]omething that haunts you and makes you feel you are a very wicked girl” (38). Grisini whispers something Clara doesn’t hear, then vanishes.

Dr. Wintermute, Clara’s father, goes to see Clara at the insistence of her governess because Clara won’t stop crying. Clara’s apology to her mother went poorly, her mother saying she’d never forgive Clara for her laughter. Clara wishes she had died instead of her twin brother. Though he’s ashamed of it, Dr. Wintermute silently admits he has had the same thought; unable to comfort her, he orders his daughter to stop crying. As he leaves, though, Clara looks at him with a piercing gaze, “a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come” (45).

It is also Cassandra’s birthday, though she has no visitors or parties. She holds the phoenix-stone in her mutilated hand, letting it heal the wounds. She looks to the mirror, finding an image of a woman burning at the stake. Overcome, she squeezes her eyes closed, “but the flames still danced, scarlet against the black of her eyelids” (49).

Mrs. Pinchbeck is Grisini’s landlady, and Grisini’s lodgings consist of two rooms: his bedroom and a parlor that Lizzie Rose and Parsefall share. Lizzie Rose made a room for herself in a corner of the parlor by piling up random objects, and though it’s not much, she tends to it dearly. One morning, she wakes to police downstairs and Grisini cheerily inviting them up to his rooms. Clara has run away from home, and the police ask if the children know anything. Lizzie Rose maintains they don’t, but Parsefall offers that Clara probably ran away because she lived with dead people and “she was tired of ‘em” (58).

After the police leave, Lizzie Rose goes to Mrs. Pinchbeck’s room to check on her. Mrs. Pinchbeck gives a theatrical performance about how unseemly it is for police to come to her home. In the process, she reveals the police think Clara was kidnapped because a boy similarly went missing after seeing Grisini’s show several years ago. The chapter ends with a glimpse into Clara’s perspective. Clara knows she’s in a deep sleep, and though she’d been terrified of the dark and cold the day before, “now darkness and cold claimed her, and she was not afraid” (66).

Parsefall has a nightmare, and Lizzie Rose wakes him, offering to tell him a story. Parsefall agrees, and as he makes himself comfortable, he drops the photograph he stole from Clara’s house. Lizzie slaps him and calls him a thief, and when she asks if he even knows right from wrong, Parsefall says nothing, “as if realizing that this was a dangerous question” (70).

Lizzie Rose fears the police will link Grisini to Clara’s disappearance if they find the photograph. She tells Parsefall about the missing child from years ago, and Parsefall reveals that he knows of another similar instance. Nonetheless, he begs Lizzie Rose not to go to the police. She reluctantly agrees.