Surely it cannot have been a poet who first inspired the popular mind
with that widely spread and deeply erroneous belief that "behind the
scenes" all is hollow mockery and emptiness and unsightliness;--that
the comeliness of the pliant limbs which move to music before the
starry row of shielded lights is due to a judicious distribution of
sawdust; and that our visions of fair faces are created by the magic
contained in pots of ointment and boxes of pearl powder of which the
hiding-places are known only to those duly initiated into the awful
mysteries of the Green Room.
[Illustration: _The Old Creole Opera House, New Orleans_]
No; the Curtain is assuredly the Veil which hides from unromantic
eyes the mysteries of a veritable Fairy-World--not a fairyland so
clearly and sharply outlined as the artistic fantasies of Christmas
picture-books, but a fairyland of misty landscapes and dim shadows and
bright shapes moving through the vagueness of mystery. There is really
a world of stronger enchantment behind than before the scenes; all
that movement of white limbs and fair faces--that shifting of shadowy
fields and plains, those changing visions of mountain and wold, of
towers that disappear as in tales of knight-errantry, and cottages
transformed into palaces as in the "Arabian Nights"--is but a small
part of the great wizard-work nightly wrought by invisible hands behind
the Curtain. And when, through devious corridors and dimly-lighted
ways--between rows of chambers through whose doors one catches sudden
glimpses of the elves attiring in purple and silver, in scarlet and
gold, for the gaslit holiday among canvas woods and flowing brooks
of muslin, mystic, wonderful--thou shalt arrive within the jagged
borders of the Unknown World itself to behold the Circles of bright
seats curving afar off in atmospheres of artificial light, and the
Inhabitants of those Circles become themselves involuntary Actors for
the amusement of the lesser audience, then verily doth the charm begin.
There is no disillusion as yet. The Isis of the drama has lifted her
outer veil; but a veil yet more impenetrable remains to conceal the
mystery of her face. The Heart of all that Mimic Life--mimic yet warm
and real--throbs about thee, but dost thou understand its pulsations?
Thou art in the midst of a secret, in the innermost chamber of the
witch-workers--yet the witchcraft remains. Thou hast approached too
near the Fata Morgana of theatrical enchantment--all has vanished
or tumbled into spectral ruin. Fragments of castles and antiquated
cities--torn and uneven remnants of pictures of various centuries
huddled together in mystic anachronism--surround and overshadow thee;
but to comprehend that harmonious whole, thou must retire to the outer
circles of the shining temple, before the tall Veil. About thee it is a
world wrought of many broken worlds;--a world of picturesque ruin like
the moon in heaven--a world of broken lights and shadows and haunted
glooms--a wild dream--a work of goblinry. Content thyself, seek not
disillusion; for to the gods of this mysterious sphere human curiosity
is the greatest of abominations. Satisfy thyself with the knowledge
that thou art in Fairyland; and that it is not given to mortals to
learn all the ways of elves. What though the woods be mockeries, and
the castles be thinner than Castles of Spain, and the white statues
fair Emptinesses like the elf women of Northern dreams?--the elves and
gnomes and fairies themselves are real and palpable and palpitant with
the ruddy warmth of life.
Perhaps thou thinkest of those antique theatres--marble cups set
between the breasts of sweetly-curving hills, with the cloud-frescoed
dome of the Infinite for a ceiling, and for scenery nature's richest
charms of purple mountain and azure sea and emerald groves of olive.
But that beautiful materialism of the ancient theatre charmed not
as the mystery of ours--a mystery too delicate to suffer the eye of
Day;--a mystery wrought by fairies who dare only toil by night. One
sunbeam would destroy the charm of this dusky twilight world. Strange!
how the mind wanders in this strange place! Yet it is easier to dream
of two thousand years ago than to recollect that thou livest in the
material present--that only a painted ceiling lies between thy vision
and the amethystine heaven of stars above, and that only a wall of
plastered brick separates thee from the streets of New Orleans or the
gardens westward where the bananas are nodding their heads under the
moon. For the genii of this inner world are weaving their spells about
thee. Figures of other centuries pass before thy eyes, as in the steel
mirror of a wizard: lords of Italian cities gorgeous as Emperor-moths,
captains of free companies booted and spurred, phantoms, one may fancy,
of fair women whose portraits hang in the Uffizi Gallery, and prelates
of the sixteenth century. Did Macbeth's witches ever perform greater
magic than this?--a series of tableaux after Racinet animated by some
elfish art? If the human character of the witchery does not betray
itself by a pretty anachronism!--some intermingling of the costumes of
the sixteenth century with those of the seventeenth, a sacrifice of
history to the beauty of woman--the illusion remains unbroken. Thou art
living, by magic, in the age of Lorenzo di Medici; and is it strange
that they should address thee in the Italian tongue?
There is an earthquake of applauding, the Circles of seats are again
hidden, and this world of canvas and paint is tumbling about thy ears.
The spell is broken for a moment by Beings garbed in the everyday
attire of the nineteenth century, who have devoted themselves to
the work of destruction and reconstruction--to whom dreamers are an
abomination and idlers behind the scenes a vexation of spirit. Va t'en,
inseq' de bois de lit!
Aye, thou mayst well start!--thou hast seen her before. Where?--when?
In a little French store, not very, very far from the old Creole Opera
House. This enchantment of the place has transformed her into a fairy.
Ah, thou marvelest that she can be so pretty; nor Shakespeare's Viola
nor Gautier's Graciosa were fairer to look upon than this dream of
white grace and pliant comeliness in the garb of dead centuries. And
yet another and another Creole girl--familiar faces to the dwellers
in the Quaint Places of New Orleans. What is the secret of that
strange enchantment which teaches us that the modest everyday robe of
black merino may be but the chrysalis-shell within which God's own
butterflies are hidden?
Suddenly through the motley rout of princes and princesses, of captains
and conspirators, of soldiers and priests, of courtiers and dukes,
there comes a vision of white fairies; these be the Damosels of the
Pirouette. Thou mayest watch them unobserved; for the other beings heed
them not; Cophetua-like, the King in his coronation robes is waltzing
with a pretty Peasant Girl; and like Christina of Spain, the Queen
is tête-à-tête with a soldier. The dancers give the impression of
something aerial, ethereal, volatile--something which rests and flies
but walks not--some species of splendid fly with wings half-open. The
vulgar Idea of Sawdust vanishes before the reality of those slender and
pliant limbs. They are preparing for the dance with a series of little
exercises which provoke a number of charming images and call out all
the supple graces of the figure; it is Atalanta preparing to pursue
Hippomenes; it is a butterfly shaking its wings; it is a white bird
pluming itself with noiseless skill. But when the Terpsichorean flight
is over, and the theatre shakes with applause; while the dancers shrink
panting and exhausted into some shadowy hiding-place, breathing more
hurriedly than a wrestler after a long bout--thou wilt feel grateful
to the humane spirits who break the applause with kindly hisses, and
rebuke the ignorance which seeks only its own pleasure in cries of
encore.
And the Asmodean Prompter who moves the dramatic strings that agitate
all these Puppets of mimic passion, whose sonorous tones penetrate
all the recesses of the mysterious scenery without being heard before
the footlights, resumes his faithful task; the story of harmony and
tragedy is continued by the orchestra and the singers, while a Babel
of many tongues is heard among the wooden rocks and the canvas trees
and the silent rivers of muslin. But little canst thou reck of the
mimic opera. That is for those who sit in the outer circles. The music
of the many-toned Opera of Life envelops and absorbs the soul of the
stranger--teaching him that the acting behind the Curtain is not all
a mimicry of the Real, but in truth a melodrama of visible, tangible,
sentient life, which must endure through many thousand scenes until
that Shadow, who is stronger than Love, shall put out the lights, and
ring down the vast and sable Curtain. And thus dreaming, thou findest
thyself again in the streets, whitened by the moon! Lights, fairies,
kings, and captains are gone. Ah! thou hast not been dreaming, friend;
but the hearts of those who have beheld Fairyland are heavy.