I am Led into the Theatre--I Attend Rehearsals--I am Made Acquainted
with the Vagaries of Tights.
I was approaching my thirteenth birthday when it came about that a
certain ancient boarding-house keeper--far gone in years--required
someone to assist her, someone she could trust entirely and leave in
charge for a month at a time; and I, not being able to read the future,
was greatly chagrined because my mother accepted the offered situation. I
was always happiest when she found occupation in a house where there was
a library, for people were generally kind to me in that respect and gave
me the freedom of their shelves, seeing that I was reverently careful of
all books; but in a boarding-house there would be no library, and my
heart sank as we entered the gloomy old building.
No, there were no books, but among the boarders there were two or three
actors and two actresses--a mother and a daughter. The mother played the
"first old women"; the daughter, only a year or two older than I was,
played, I was told, "walking-ladies," though what that meant I could not
imagine.
The daughter (Blanche) liked me, while I looked upon her with awe, and
wondered why she even noticed me. She was very wilful, she would not
study anything on earth save her short parts. She had never read a book
in her life. When I was home from school I told her stories by the hour,
and she would say: "You ought to be in a theatre--you could act!"
And then I would be dumb for a long time, because I thought she was
making fun of me. One day I was chewing some gum she gave me--I was not
chewing it very nicely, either--and my mother boxed my ears, and Blanche
said: "You ought to be in a theatre--you could chew all the gum you liked
there!"
And just then my mother was so cruelly overworked, and the spring came in
with furious heat, and I felt so big and yet so helpless--a great girl of
thirteen to be worked for by another--and the humiliation seemed more
than I could bear, and I locked myself in our dreary cupboard of a room,
and flung myself upon my knees, and in a passion of tears tried to make a
bargain with my God! I meant no irreverence--I was intensely religious. I
did not see the enormity of the act--I only knew that I suffered, and
that God could help me--so I asked His help! But, instead of stopping
there, I cried out to Him this promise: "Dear God! just pity me and show
me what to do! Please--please help me to help my mother--and if you will,
I'll never say 'No!' to any woman who comes to me all my life long!"
My error in trying to barter with my Maker must have been forgiven, for
my prayer was answered within a week, while there are many women
scattered through the land who know that I have tried faithfully to keep
my part of that bargain, and no woman who has sought my aid has ever been
answered with a "No!"
One day Blanche greeted me with the news that extra ballet-girls were
wanted, and told me that I must go at once and get engaged.
"But," I said, "maybe they won't take me!"
"Well," answered she, "I've coaxed your mother, and my mother says she'll
look out for you--so at any rate go and see. I'll take you to-morrow."
And so dimly, vaguely, I seemed to see a way opening out before me, and
again behind the locked door I knelt and said: "Dear God! dear God!" and
got no further, because grief has many words and joy has so few.
The school term had closed on Friday, and on Saturday morning, with my
heart beating almost to suffocation, I started out to walk to the theatre
with Blanche, who had promised to ask Mr. Ellsler (the manager) to take
me on in the ballet. When we reached the sidewalk we saw the sky
threatened rain and Blanche sent me back for an umbrella. I had none of
my own, so I borrowed one from Mrs. Miller (our landlady), and at sight
of it my companion broke into laughter. It was a dreadful affair--with a
knobby, unkind handle, a slovenly and corpulent body, and a
circumference, when open, that suggested the idea that it had been built
to shelter not only the landlady, but those wise ones of the boarders who
had paid up before the winds rose and the rain fell. Then we proceeded to
the old Academy of Music on Bank Street, and entering, went upstairs, and
just as we reached the top step a small dark man hurried across the hall
and Blanche called quickly: "Oh, Mr. Ellsler--Mr. Ellsler! wait a moment,
please--I want to speak to you!"
I could not know that his almost repellent sternness of face concealed a
kindness of heart that approached weakness, so when he turned a frowning,
impatient face toward us, hope left me utterly, and for a moment I seemed
to stand in a great darkness. I think I can do no better than to give Mr.
Ellsler's own account of that, our first meeting, as he has given it
often since. He says: "I was much put out by a business matter and was
hastily crossing the corridor when Blanche called me, and I saw she had
another girl in tow; a girl whose appearance in a theatre was so droll I
must have laughed, had I not been more than a little cross. Her dress was
quite short--she wore a pale-blue apron buttoned up the back, long braids
tied at the ends with ribbon, and a brown straw hat, while she clutched
desperately at the handle of the biggest umbrella I ever saw. Her eyes
were distinctly blue and were plainly big with fright. Blanche gave her
name and said she wanted to go on in the ballet, and I instantly answered
she would not do, she was too small--I wanted women, not children, and
started to return to my office. Blanche was voluble, but the girl herself
never spoke a single word. I glanced toward her and stopped. The hands
that clutched the umbrella trembled--she raised her eyes and looked at
me. I had noticed their blueness a moment before--now they were almost
black, so swiftly had the pupils dilated, and slowly the tears rose in
them. All the father in me shrank under the child's bitter
disappointment; all the actor in me thrilled at the power of expression
in the girl's face, and I hastily added: 'Oh, well! You may come back in
a day or two, and if anyone appears meantime who is short enough to march
with you I'll take you on,' and after I got to my office I remembered the
girl had not spoken a single word, but had won an engagement--for I knew
I should engage her--with a pair of tear-filled eyes."
The following Tuesday, under the protection of the ever-faithful Blanche,
I again presented myself and was engaged for the term of two weeks, to go
on the stage in the marches and dances of a play called "The Seven
Sisters," for which service I was to receive three dollars a week, or
fifty cents a night, as there were no matinees then, and so I entered,
with wide-astonished eyes, into that dim, dusty, chaotic place known as
"behind the scenes"--a strange place, where nothing _is_ and everything
_may be_.
In the daytime I found the stage a thing dead--at night, with the blazing
of the gas, it lived! for light is its life, music is its soul, and the
play its brain.
Silently and cautiously I walked about, gazing curiously at the "scenes,"
so fine on one side, so bare and cheap on the other; at the tarlatan
"glass windows"; at the green "calico sea," lying flat and waveless on
the floor. Everything there pretended to be something else, and at last I
said solemnly to Blanche: "Is everything only make-believe in a theatre?"
And she turned her gum to the other side and answered: "Yes, everything's
make-believe--except salary day!"
Then came the rehearsal--everything was military just then--and there was
a Zouave drill to learn, as well as a couple of dances. The women and
girls who had been engaged were not the very nicest people in the world,
though they were the best to be found at such short notice; and Mrs.
Bradshaw told me not to stand about with them, but to come to her as soon
as my share in the work was over. "But," said this wise woman, "don't
fail in politeness to them; for nothing can hold a person so far off as
extreme politeness."
To me the manual of arms was mere child's play, and the drill a veritable
delight. The second day I scribbled down the movements in the order that
they had been made, and learned them by heart, with the result that on
the third day I sat aside chewing gum, while the stage-manager raved over
the rest. Then the star--Mr. McDonough--came along and furiously demanded
to know why I was not drilling. "The gentleman sent me out of the ranks,
sir," I answered, "because he said I knew the manual and drill!"
"Oh, indeed! well, there's not one of you that knows it--and you never
will know it! You're a set of numbskulls! Here!" he cried, catching up a
rifle, "take hold of this--get up here--and let's see how much you know!
Now, then, shoulder arms!"
And standing alone--burning with blushes, blinded with tears of
mortification--I was put through my paces with a vengeance; but I really
knew the manual as thoroughly as I knew the drill, and when it was over
Mr. McDonough took the rifle from me, and exclaimed: "Well, saucer-eyes,
you do know it! I'm d----d if you don't! and I'm sorry, little girl, I
spoke so roughly to you!"
He held out his fat white hand to me, and as I took it he added: "You
ought to stay in this business--you've got your head with you!"
It was a small matter, of course, but there was a faint hint of triumph
in it, and the savor was very pleasant to me.
Naturally, with a salary of but three dollars a week, we turned to the
management for our costumes. I wonder what the _danseuse_ of to-day
would think of the costume worn by her sister of the "sixties"? Now her
few gauzy limb-betraying skirts reach but to the middle of the thigh; her
scrap of a bodice, cut far below the shoulder blades at the back, being
absolutely sleeveless, is precariously held in place by a string or two
of beads. To be sure, she is apt to wear a collar of blazing diamonds,
instead of the simple band of black velvet that used to be sufficient
ornament for the peerless Bonfanti and the beautiful and modest Betty
Rigl, who in their graceful ignorance of "splits" and athletic "tours de
force," managed in their voluminous and knee-long skirts to whirl, to
glide, to poise and float, to show, in fact, the poetry of motion.
But we, this untrained ballet, were not Bonfantis nor Morlachis, and we
wore our dancing clothes with a difference. In one dance we were supposed
to be fairies. We wore flesh-colored slippers and tights. It took one
full week of our two weeks' engagement to learn how to secure these
treacherous articles, so that they would remain smooth and not wrinkle
down somewhere or twist about. One girl never learned, and to the last
added to the happiness of the public by ambling about on a pair of legs
that looked as if they had been done up in curl papers the night before.
We each had seven white tarlatan skirts, as full as they could be
gathered--long enough to come a little below the knee. Our waists were
also flesh-colored, and were cut fully two or three inches below our
collar-bones, so you see there was plenty of cloth at our backs to hook
our very immature wings to. We had wreaths of white roses on our
heads--Blanche, who was very frank, said they looked like wreaths of
turnips--and garlands of white roses to wave in the dance. I remember the
girl with the curled legs was loathed by all because she lassoed everyone
she came near with her garland--so you see we were very decorous fairies,
whether we were decorative or not.
Of course we were rather substantial, and our wings did seem too thin and
small to sustain us satisfactorily. One girl took hers off in the
dressing-room and remarked contemptuously that "they couldn't lift her
cat even!"
But another, who was dictatorial and also of a suspicious nature,
answered savagely: "You don't know nothing about wings--and you haven't
got no cat, nohow, and you know it--so shut up!" and the conversation
closed.
In our second costume we were frankly human. We still wore dancing
skirts, but we were in colors, and we had, of course, shed our
wings--nasty, scratchy things they were, I remember. Then for the drill
and march we wore the regular Fire Zouave uniform.
It was all great fun for me--you remember I was not stage-struck.
Dramatically speaking, I was not yet born--I had neither ambition nor
fear--I was simply happy because I was going to earn that, to me, great
sum of money, and was going to give it to my mother, and planned only
what I should say to her, and had no thought at all of the theatre or
anything or any person in it.
The donning of fleshings for the first time is an occasion of anxiety to
anyone, man or woman. I, however, approached the subject of tights with
an open mind, and Blanche freely gave me both information and advice. She
chilled my blood by describing the mortifying mishaps, the dread
disasters these garments had brought to those who failed to understand
them. She declared them to be tricky, unreliable, and malicious in the
extreme.
"There's just one way to succeed with 'em," she said, "and that's by
bullying 'em. Show you're afraid and they will slip and twist and wrinkle
down and make you a perfect laughing-stock. You must take your time, you
know, at first, and fit 'em on very carefully and smoothly over your feet
and ankles and up over your knees. See that they are nice and straight or
you'll look as if you were walking on corkscrews, but after that bully
'em--yank and pull and drag 'em, and when you have 'em drawn up as tight
as you can draw 'em, go at 'em and pull 'em up another inch at least.
They'll creak and snap and pretend they're going to tear, but don't you
ever leave your dressing-room satisfied, unless you feel you can't
possibly get down-stairs without going sideways."
"But," I remonstrated, "they'll break and let my knees through!"
"Oh, no they won't!" she cheerfully answered. "They'll make believe
they're going to split at the knee, of course, but instead they'll just
keep as safe and smooth as the skin on your arm. But, for Heaven's sake,
don't be afraid of 'em!"
And I gravely promised to be as bold as I possibly could in my first
encounter with the flesh-colored terrors.