and lofty, and fitted up in a style of decoration in which the Louis
Quinze contends with the Arabesque, and that again with the Cockney
Corinthian. The walls are of a pale sea-green, of the famous Almack’s
pattern; and the floor is covered with a carpet of remarkably curious
design and texture, offering some noteworthy specimens of worsted
vegetation run to seed, and rents and fissures of extraordinary polygonal
form. In one corner there is a pianoforte—a grand pianoforte; at least it
may have been at one time deserving of that high-sounding appellation;
but it is now a deplorable old music-box, with a long tail that would
be much better between its legs, and keys that are yellow and worn
down, like the teeth of an old horse. There is a cheval glass, too,
in tolerably good repair, for the _danseuses_ to arrange their skirts
withal; and over the chimney-piece there is another great glass, with a
tarnished frame and longitudinal crack extending over it, in the sides
of which—the interstices of the frame, I mean, not the crack—are stuck
notices having reference to the rehearsals to be held on the morrow.
“All the ladies of the ballet at ten;” “All the company for reading of
new piece at twelve.” So may run the wafered announcements signed in
the fine Roman hand of the prompter or stage-manager. There are varied
pilasters, in imitation of scagliola, supporting the ceiling; the doors
are handsomely panelled with gilt headings. There are four tall windows
in a row, with cornices wofully dingy, and draped with curtains of
shabby moreen. There is good store of settees and ottomans covered with
faded chintz. Everything about the place bears that “stagey,” unreal,
garish, dream-like aspect, that seems inherent to things theatrical, and
makes us, directly we pass the stage-door, look upon everything, from
the delusive banquet on the imitation marble table, to the paint on the
singing chambermaid’s cheeks, as a mockery and a delusion—as the baseless
fabric of a vision, that will soon fade and leave not a wrack behind.
And yet I have said (_vide ante et supra_) that “behind the scenes is
common-place.” And so it is; but it is the common-place of dreamland, the
every-day life of the realms of Prester John, the work-a-day existence
of the kingdom of Cockaigne, or of that shadowy land where dwell the
Anthropophagi, and men “whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.”
[Illustration: SEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: A THEATRICAL GREEN-ROOM.]
What shall I assume the first piece that is to be performed this night
to be? Will you have the “Flowers of the Forest,” the “Poor Strollers,”
“Sweethearts and Wives,” “Pizarro,” the “Padlock,” or a “Game at
Romps?” What do you say to a fine old English comedy, such as “John
Bull,” or the “School of Reform,” with a dissipated young squire,
a gouty, ill-tempered, and over-bearing old lord of the manor, an
intensely-virtuous tenant-farmer, a comic ploughman, a milkmaid with a
chintz gown tucked through the placket-holes, and a song, and a spotless
but a persecuted maiden? No; you will have none of these! Suppose, then,
we take our dear old genial friend, the “Green Bushes”—long life and good
luck to Mr. Buckstone, and may he write many more pieces as good for our
imaginary theatre. See; the green-room clock points to ten minutes to
seven—I left that out in my inventory of the furniture. The call-boy has
already warned the ladies and gentlemen who are engaged for the first
scene, that their immediate presence is required, and the erst-deserted
green-room fills rapidly.
See, here they came—the kindly old friends of the “Green Bushes”—Miami
and Jack Gong, and Master Grinnidge; and yet, dear me, what are these
strange, wild costumes mingled with them? Oh! there is a burlesque after
the drama. It is somewhat early in the evening for those who are to play
in the second piece to come down dressed; but then you are to consider
this as a special green-room, a specimen green-room, an amalgam of the
green-room element generally. This model _foyer_ is to have something
of the Haymarket and something of the Adelphi—the old by-gone, defunct
Adelphi, I mean—a spice of the Olympic, a tinge of the Lyceum, and a
dash of the Princess’s, about it. I except the green-room of Drury Lane,
which never resembled anything half so much as a family vault, and
the green-rooms of the two Operas, which, though splendidly furnished
and appointed, are almost deserted during the performances, the great
_tenori_ and _soprani_ preferring to retire to their dressing-rooms when
any long intervals of rest occur.
“Things”—to use a bit of “Green Bushes” _facetiæ_, invented, I am willing
to believe, by that incorrigible humourist, Mr. Wright, and which has
grown proverbial—“things isn’t as they used to was;” and the attractions
of green-rooms have deteriorated, even within my time. When I say “my
time,” I mean a quarter of a century; for as I happened to be almost born
in a prompt-box and weaned in a scene-painter’s size-kettle, and have
been employed in very nearly every capacity in and about a theatre—save
that of an actor, which profession invincible modesty and incurable
incompetency prevented me from assuming—I feel myself qualified to speak
about the green-rooms with some degree of authority. To have read a
three-act melodrama to a (scarcely) admiring audience, and to have called
“everybody for the last scene” in a green-room, gives a man, I take it, a
right to be heard.
But, to tell the truth, green-rooms now-a-days are sadly dull, slow,
humdrum places of resort. In a minor theatre they are somewhat
more lively, as there is there no second green-room, and the young
sylphides of the _corps de ballet_ are allowed to join the company. The
conversation of these young ladies, if not interesting, is amusing, and
if not brilliant, is cheerful. They generally bring their needle-work
with them if they have to wait long between the scenes (frequently to the
extent of an entire act) in which they have to dance, and they discourse
with much _naïveté_ upon the warmth or coldness of the audience with
reference to the applause bestowed, the bad temper of the stage-manager,
and their own temporary indisposition from corns, which, with pickled
salmon, unripe pears, the proper number of lengths for a silk dress, and
the comparative merits of the whiskers and moustaches of the musicians
in the band (with some of whose members they are sure to be in love,
and whom they very frequently marry, leaving off dancing and having
enormous families), form the almost invariable staple of a ballet-girl’s
conversation. Poor simple-minded, good-natured, hard-working little
creatures, theirs is but a rude and stern lot. To cut capers and wear
paint, to find one’s own shoes and stockings, and be strictly virtuous,
on a salary varying from nine to eighteen shillings a week—this is
the pabulum of a ballet-girl. And hark in thine ear, my friend. If
any man talks to you about the syrens of the ballet, the dangerous
enchantresses and cockatrices of the ballet, the pets of the ballet,
whose only thoughts are about broughams and diamond _aigrettes_, dinners
at Richmond, and villas at St. John’s Wood—if anybody tells you that
the majority, or even a large proportion, of our English _danseuses_
are inclined this perilous way, just inform him, with my compliments,
that he is a dolt and a teller of untruths. I can’t say much of ballet
morality abroad; of the poor _rats de l’opera_ in Paris, who are
bred to wickedness from their very cradle upwards; of the Neapolitan
_ballerine_, who are obliged to wear green _calzoni_, and to be civil
to the priests, lest they should be put down altogether; or of the poor
Russian ballet-girls, who live altogether in barracks, are conveyed
to and from the theatre in omnibuses, and are birched if they do not
behave themselves, and yet manage somehow to make a bad end of it; but
as regards our own sylphides, I say that naughtiness among them is the
exception, and cheerful, industrious, self-denying perseverance in a
hard, ungrateful life, the honourable rule.
There are yet a few green-rooms where the genus “swell” still finds a
rare admittance. See here a couple in full evening costume, talking to
the pretty young lady in the low-necked dress on the settee; but the
swell is quite a fish out of water in the green-room of these latter
days. Managers don’t care quite so much for his patronage, preferring
to place their chief reliance and dependence on the public. The actors
don’t care about him, for the swell is not so generous as of yore in
taking tickets for the benefits of popular favourites. Actresses mistrust
him, for the swell has given up raising actresses to the peerage. The
ballet-girls are half afraid of him; and when they don’t fear him,
they laugh at him. So the swell wanders in and out of the green-room,
and stares at people uneasily, and at last escapes to his brougham or
his cabriolet at the stage-door. Now and then a wicked old lord of the
unrighteous evil-living school of British peers, now happily becoming
rarer and rarer every day, will come sniggering and chuckling into a
green-room, hanging on the arm of the manager, with whom he is on the
most intimate terms, and who “My Lords” him most obsequiously. He rolls
his scandalous old eyes in his disreputable, puckered face, seeking some
pretty, timid, blushing little flower, whom he may blight with his Upas
gaze, and then totters away to his stage-box, where he does duty for the
rest of the evening with a huge double-barrelled opera-glass.
Such is the green-room of to-day, quiet, occasionally chatty (for
actresses and actors can be pleasant enough among themselves, in a
cosy, sensible manner, talking about butcher’s meat, and poor’s-rates,
and Brompton omnibuses); but not by any means the glittering Temple
of Radiant Delight that some might feel inclined to imagine it. There
have been days—and I remember them—when green-rooms were very different
places. There were women on the stage then who were Queens as well as
actresses, and had trains of admirers round their flowing robes. There
was a slight nervous man in those days—a famous writer of plays and books
that yet live, and will live while our English language is spoken—a
strange-looking, high-cheek-boned man, with long hair carelessly thrown
away from his forehead, and a piercing eye, that seemed to laugh to scorn
the _lorgnon_ dangling from its ribbon. I have seen him so, his spare
form leaning against the mantel, and he showering—yes, showering is the
word—arrowy _bon mots_ and corruscating repartees around him. He is
dead: they all seem to be dead, those brilliant green-room men—Jerrold,
Talfourd, Kenney, Haynes Bayley, Hook, A’Beckett. They have left no
successors. The modern play-wrights skulk in and out of the manager’s
room, and are mistaken at rehearsal for the property-men. They forsake
green-rooms at night for drawing-rooms, where they can hear themselves
praised, or smoking-rooms of clubs, where they can abuse one another; and
if A. says a good thing, B. books it for his next _petite comédie_, which
does not hurt A. much, seeing that he stole it from C., who translated it
hot-and-hot from Monsieur de D., that great plagiarist from Lope de Vega.
Come, let us leave the green-room to its simple devices, and see what
they are doing “Behind the Scenes.” You and I, we know, are in the
receipt of fern-seed, and can walk invisible without incommoding ourself
or anybody else, be the pressure ever so great; but I should strongly
advise all swells and other intruders, if any such remain, either to
withdraw into the shadiest recesses of the green-room, or to “get out of
that”—to use an Irishism, without the least possible delay. For “Behind
the Scenes” is clearly no place for them. If I were the manager of a
theatre, I would not admit one single person into the _coulisses_ save
those connected with the night’s performance, nay, nor allow even the
_employés_ of the theatre, till the call-boy summoned them to approach
the wing. Madame Vestris established this Spartan rule of discipline, and
found it answer in making her theatre the best-managed in Europe; but it
will be observed that no such _ordre du jour_ has been promulgated in the
theatre behind whose scenes we find ourselves to-night. What a confusion,
what a hubbub, what a throng and bustle! The _dramatis personæ_, you will
perceive, no longer contemplate the performance of the “Green Bushes.”
Hoops, powder, brocade, black-patches, high-heeled shoes, bag-wigs,
flapped waistcoats, and laced-hats prevail. This must be some Pompadour
or Beau Tibbs piece—“Court Favour,” or “Love’s Telegraph,” or some last
century dramatic conceit by Mr. Planché or Mr. Dance. How the carpenters
scuffle and stamp, entreating the bystanders, not always in the politest
terms, to get out of the way! Now and again the prompter rushes from his
box, and in a hoarse _sotto voce_, that would be a shriek if it were not
a whisper, commands silence.
[Illustration: SEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: BEHIND THE SCENES.]
Upon my word, there is that unlucky old Flathers, the heavy man, who
_never_ knows his part; there he is again, evidently imperfect, and
taking a last desperate gulp of study, sitting in the property arm-chair,
on the very brink of the stage. And see there—don’t blush, don’t stammer,
but make as polite a bow as you can—there is Mrs. Woffington Pegley,
in full Pompadour costume, and such a hoop! She is only twenty-three
years of age; has had two husbands; Count Schrechny-synesky, the
Moldo-Wallachian ambassador, is reported to be madly in love with her;
she rides in the park, she hunts, she drives, she owns a yacht, she
has more diamonds and Mechlin lace than a duchess, and she is the most
charming actress of the day. To be sure, she can’t read very fluently,
and can scarcely write her own name, but _que voulez vous_?
Don’t you know that queer, quaint passage in good old Dr. Johnson’s life,
where, soon after the production of his tragedy of “Irene,” and when the
lexicographer had even gone to the extent of appearing behind the scenes
of the playhouse in a scarlet coat and laced-hat fiercely cocked, he
suddenly told David Garrick that he could visit him behind the scenes no
more, assigning his own honest sufficient reason? The pretty actresses
were too much for Samuel. He was but mortal man—mortal man. Their rosy
cheeks—never mind whether the roses were artificial or not—their white
necks, and dainty hands and feet, their rustling brocades and laced
tuckers, disturbed the equanimity of our great moralist and scholar.
He fled from the temptation wisely. Who can wonder at it? Who, that is
not a misogynist, can sufficiently case himself in brass to withstand
the Parthian glances of those pretty dangerous creatures? Surely they
dress better, look better, walk better, sit better, stand better,
have clearer voices, cheerier laughs, more graceful curtsies, than any
other women in the world. But they are not for the likes of you or me,
Thomas. See, there is fat, handsome Captain Fitzblazer of the “Heavies,”
the Duke of Alma’s aide-de-camp, pretending to flirt with little Fanny
Merrylegs, the _coryphée_, and the rogue has one eye on Mrs. Woffington
Pegley. I wish some robust scene-shifter would tread on his varnished
toes. The Pegley is aware of the Fitzblazerian _œillade_, I wager,
though she makes-believe to be listening to young Martinmas, the walking
gentleman’s, nonsense. Come away, Thomas, come away, my friend. Let us
strive to be as wise in our generation as Sam Johnson was in his, and
write to Davy Garrick that we will come “behind the scenes” no more.
EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.—HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE, AND A PAWNBROKER’S SHOP.
I think that I have held out something like a guarantee, in the course
of these papers, that my readers shall be introduced to a fair amount
of fashionable life. How far I have performed my promise it is for them
to judge; but I am not, myself, without misgivings. True it is that,
under my guidance, they have perambulated Regent Street; have dined off
the fat of the land at a Public Dinner; have betted at Tattersall’s;
ridden in the Park; heard the band play at St. James’s; strolled through
the Pantheon Bazaar; and lounged in a theatrical green-room: but then,
have not I, discourteous _cicerone_, cajoled them into visiting strange
unlovely places, dismal to look upon; persuaded them to hang up their
harps by the willows of the Custom-house quay, and listen to the slang
of oyster-boatmen and bargees, at Billingsgate; forced them to haunt
the purlieus of police-courts, and witness the departure of prison-vans
and their felonious cargoes; to keep bad hours, and associate with
newspaper boys, market-gardeners, paupers, and common people who travel
by parliamentary train; to become acquainted, in fact, with scenes and
people distressingly low and unfashionable? It is true that I have not
taken them to the lanes of Petticoat and Field; to Duke, his Place; or
St. Mary, her Axe; or Bevis, his Marks; or Rag, its Fair; or Whitechapel,
its Butcher Row; or Ratcliff, its Highway; or Lock, his Fields; or Somers
Town, its Brill; or Rats, their Castle; or Whetstone, its Park; or
Jacob, his Island; or Southwark, its Mint; or Lambeth, its New Cut; or
St. Giles, its Church Lane and Hampshire Hog Lane. If I have not moved
them so to travel with me, it is not, I fear, through any _laches_ of
intention or deficiency of will, but simply because I have at different
seasons travelled over every inch of the road I have named with other
readers, and that I have a decent horror of repeating myself, and respect
for the maxim of _non bis in idem_.
Be my demerits granted or disallowed, I have still some time left to me
wherein to make amends. Though it may be my duty, ere we have finished,
to lead you again into dismal and wretched places, you shall have at
least an instalment of fashionable life now; and—follow honest Sancho’s
advice as to not looking the gift-horse in the mouth; be satisfied with
my assurance that this present one is of the pure Godolphin Arabian
lineage, elegant in form, unquestionable in mettle, electrical in
swiftness. The next may be but a sorry nag, spavined, blown, wind-galled,
and sprung. You must take the bad with the good, in this world, and in
all things.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to the Opera—to her Majesty’s Theatre
in the Haymarket; and by eight o’clock it behoves us all to be in our
seats, if we wish to hear the first bars of the overture. It is true that
if we are so fortunate as to possess, or to hire, or to have opera-boxes
given to us, we do not, frequently, make our appearance in the theatre
till past nine o’clock; and that, if we are lessees or renters of stalls,
the ballet has frequently commenced before we condescend to occupy our
seats; but if the pit or the amphitheatre be our destination, we had much
better present ourselves at the entrance immediately the doors open,
and secure seats with what speed we may. It is a peculiarity of her
Majesty’s Theatre that whether the “house” be a good one or a bad one,
there are always, before the termination of the first act of the opera,
some occupants of the pit who are compelled to content themselves with
standing-room.
Opinions are divided as to the place in the _enceinte_ of the magnificent
theatre where the greatest enjoyment of the performance can be obtained.
To some, a box on the grand tier—vast, roomy, with space for six to sit
abreast—is considered the superlative of operatic felicity. Others hold
out stoutly for the artistic fourth tier, where, they declare, they can
hear and see better than their lowly-placed neighbours. There are many
who abide by the stalls, despite of those who declare that in the front
rows thereof the voices of the singers are drowned by the contiguity of
the braying band. The pit has its defenders, who allege that distance
not only “lends enchantment to the view,” but chastens the instrumental
exuberances of the orchestra; but perhaps the most energetic advocates of
the merits of their own particular seats are the dwellers in the high-up
amphitheatre or gallery, who boldly declare that it is in that elevated
position alone, that you can enjoy, in the full extent of their beauty,
the gems of the opera, and that the sole place fit for the presence
of the genuine amateur is the operatic paradise, ascent to which is
permitted for the sum of three-and-sixpence or half-a-crown.
Be our election, however, the stalls. From those comfortable _fauteuils_
let us explore the ample field—see what the open, what the covert yield;
and, as we expatiate over this scene of Man, own that, though “a mighty
maze,” it is “not without a plan.” For there is a plan of her Majesty’s
Theatre in the box-office.
Am I treading on any one’s toes, disturbing any one’s prejudices,
predilections, or pre-formed opinions, in asseverating that the interior
of Mr. Lumley’s establishment offers, with one exception, the most
magnificent _coup-d’-œil_ of any Opera in Europe that I have seen? Mark
the cunning qualification! I say, _that I have seen_; for they tell me
that there is an Opera at Barcelona (which nutty sea-port I have never
visited), a theatre surpassing in grandeur, and richness of decoration,
all the lyric temples of the continent or of these isles; and so far
as mere _size_ is concerned, the palm must, I believe, be yielded to
Parma, in which caseous Italian city there exists—yet unexplored by
me—a huge tumble-down, ruinous, leaky, mildewed _salle_, which is as
the Tower of Babel of Opera-houses the Great Bonassus of theatres. I
speak of the houses which these weak eyes, in the course of many years’
wandering, have surveyed, through powerful-lensed lorgnettes. Give
me her Majesty’s. Above the dreary Scala, with its naked tiers above
tiers, its _sediti chuisi_, and the three reserved front rows of the
pit, where the authorities were compelled to put the white-blanketed
Austrian officers, lest they should come to blows (they often squabbled
in the lobbies even) with the spiteful Milanese; the ghastly, dingy,
ill-lighted Scala—(it is bigger by far than her Majesty’s, though)—with
its rabbit-hutch-like private boxes, whose doors are scrawled over with
the penny plain and twopence coloured-like coats of arms of the effete
and decadent Lombardian nobility. Above the boasted Grand Opera at Paris,
tawdry, inconvenient, and chopped up into unreasonable sections. Above
the Burg Theater, at Vienna; the Theatre de la Monnaie, at Brussels.
Above, even, the superb little Opernhaus, at Berlin, which, though a gem
in its way, is but as a diamond _aigrette_ to the Koh-i-noor. Above the
late Royal Italian Opera House, in Bow Street, Covent Garden, London,
which was simply a big theatre, ill-built, and undecorated. For the
solitary exception I have hinted at you must go north, very far north
into Europe, and in the city of Moscow, in the empire of Holy Russia, you
shall find an Italian Opera House unprecedented, I verily believe, for
size, for splendour, for comfort, for elegance, and for taste. It was
not my fortune to be present in Moscow on the occasion of the coronation
_fêtes_, when the theatre I speak of was opened to the public preparatory
to the regular winter season; but for a description of its glories I must
refer those curious in operatic matters to my friend Mr. Henry Sutherland
Edwards, who was resident many months in the city of the Kremlin, and
whom I sincerely wish I could persuade to do, in better part, for Moscow
the holy that which I have myself endeavoured, according to my lights, to
do for St. Petersburg the mundane.
Look around you, in the vast arena of her Majesty’s. Wonder and admire,
for such a sight it is not permitted to you often to behold. Look around,
and around again, the enormous horseshoe; look from base to summit, at
this magnificent theatre, glorious with beauties and with riches. Here
are gathered the mighty, and noble, and wealthy, the venerable and wise,
the young and beauteous of the realm. The prime minister seeks at the
opera a few hours’ relaxation from the toils of office; the newly-married
peeress there displays the dazzling diamonds custom now, for the first
time, permits her to wear; the blushing maiden of seventeen, “just
out”—that very day, perhaps, presented at Court—smiles and simpers
in a shrine of gauze and artificial flowers. Mark yonder, that roomy
box on the grand tier, which a quiet, plainly-dressed party has just
entered. There is a matronly lady in black, with a few bugle ornaments
in her _coiffure_. She ensconces herself in a corner, her back towards
the audience, screens herself with a curtain, and then calmly proceeds
to take a review of the front rows of the stalls, and the occupants
of the proscenium boxes. It is not considered etiquette to take more
than a cursory glimpse of the matronly lady in black through _your_
opera-glass. Presently there sits down by the matronly lady’s side, a
handsome, portly, middle-aged gentleman, in plain sober evening dress,
and with a very high forehead—so high, indeed, that I don’t think that
the assumption that the middle-aged gentleman’s head inclined to baldness
would be unreasonable. In the opposite angle of the box sits a demure
young lady—sometimes a couple of demure ones—who doesn’t move much or
speak much; and at the back of the _loge_ are two gentlemen in white
waistcoats, who never sit down, and, from the exquisitely uncomfortable
expression of their countenances, would appear to be standing on one
leg. Now, take the hat of your heart off, for your head, according to
operatic sumptuary laws, must be already uncovered, and with your spirit
salaam thrice three times, for the matronly lady is Victoria Queen of
England, and the middle-aged gentleman, inclined to corpulence and
baldness, is his Royal Highness the Prince Consort. The demure ones are
maids of honour or ladies in waiting; and as for the white-waistcoated
uncomfortables (seemingly) on one leg, one may be the tremendous Gold
Stick himself, and the other—who shall say I—the ineffable Phipps, pride
of chivalry and pearl of privy purses.