A New Sensation. Albert Ross
her accidental fall.
Next, with a bit of pantomime which indicated that concealment of her charms was useless after what had happened, "Charmion" stood up on the trapeze and began deliberately to disrobe, in full view of the audience, composed nearly equally of well garbed men and women, and completely filling the house.
She took off first her immense "picture hat," black with great ostrich plumes, and let it fall into a net spread beneath her. Then she slowly unbuttoned her basque and removed it, exposing some very shapely arms and shoulders. Next came the corset, followed by a delicious rubbing with the hands where the article had closed too tightly around the form. The skirts tumbled to the feet, then the remaining garments, and the woman stood in her long black stockings, blue garters encircling the lower portion of the thighs.
At this stage I noted a special expectancy in the occupants of the front seats—men leaning forward, with outstretched hands—the cause of which was soon apparent. The fair occupant of the trapeze seated herself, untied her garters and, with a moment of hesitation, cast them, one after the other, into the crowd, where they were seized by the most agile or most lucky of the spectators, and retained as souvenirs. Then came, last of all, the hose themselves, and the actual work of the performer as a trapeze artist began in earnest.
I will do Charmion the credit of admitting that her act was truly wonderful. Suspended first by the insteps and then by nothing, apparently, but her heels, she passed easily from one round of a horizontal ladder to another, backward and forward, hanging head down in mid-air.
But it was easy to see that the marvellous exhibition of skill was not what had drawn the immense audience. It was the risqué undressing which had done that. So far as I can learn, she had gone several paces beyond anything in this line hitherto permitted in any reputable American theatre.
For myself I am glad I saw it, though I would not care to see it again. I was like the young lady who consented after some demur to take a ride on a very steep toboggan slide. "I wouldn't have missed it for a thousand dollars!" she exclaimed to her escort. "Let us try again," he suggested. "Not for a million!" she responded, with equal fervor.
If such things are to be allowed in metropolitan theatres, I want to "size up," by that means, the taste of what are called the respectable men and women of my time. But I certainly felt a dizziness in the brain when that corset came off in the presence of a thousand individuals who seemed to represent a fairly average respectability of our women.
I saw young girls of seventeen or eighteen there, middle-aged matrons and several elderly ladies, and I did not detect in a single face the agitation I knew showed in my own. Perhaps I may ascribe my extra nervousness to the neurasthenia from which I had so recently recovered.
While at this point I hope I may be pardoned a word in reference to the growing taste among our theatrical audiences for what was once called indecent exposure. Our elders relate that New York nearly had a fit when, in the late sixties, the first "Black Crook" company opened its doors at Niblo's. To see women in flesh-colored tights reaching to the hips was so awful that only eye-witnesses would believe it possible, and to make sure it actually occurred, everybody had to go. Then came the "British Blondes," who wore longer tights, and filled them in a more satisfactory manner than those who had preceded. Soldene followed, with a new and startling sensation, in Sara, the skirt dancer, who pulled her underclothing up to her forehead, to the delight and scandal of the bald-headed row—just as a hundred others do now without attracting special attention.
The demand kept ahead of the supply of indelicacy. Dancers vied with each other in so garbing their lower limbs as to give the impression that they were partially nude, and Mrs. Grundy merely bought spectacles of increased power and engaged a front seat.
Then came the "Living Picture" craze. As Clement Scott said in his London paper, "We are told that these women are covered with a tightly fitting, skin-like gauze, but this is a matter of information and belief and not of ocular demonstration." The nymph at the fountain stood night after night, like her marble prototype, with the water running down her breasts and dropping from the points thereof. She refused to follow Beaumont and Fletcher's advice, to—
"Hide, oh, hide those hills of snow
That thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears."
Venus rose from the sea, with all the appearance of absolute nudity. The glorious curves of the tempter of Tannhauser were revealed in their fullness to cultured audiences. The North Star came down that men might admire her shapeliness, while the three Graces proved Byron's words:—
"There is more beauty in the ripe and real
Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal."
And then a daring manager went all this one better. He posed his women as bronze figures, with nothing between them and the gaze of the audience but bronze powder. The sensation lasted but a short time, spectators not caring for mulatoes when there were white forms to be seen at the same price. Next came the "Wedding Night," which I saw in Paris, and which still seems to me comparatively sweet and innocent—and it was suppressed, perhaps for that very reason. And now we have "Charmion"—meat for strong minds, but not, I fear, for the average young man.
What will come next? I would not dare predict, but really within ten years we may expect anything. "The leaves are falling—even the fig leaves," says George Meredith. They have fallen long ago from most of the male statues in European galleries, and there at least I am in accord with the sculptors. Perfect nudity never stirred the beast in any sane man. Why should we not have afternoon or evening receptions by professional models in their native undress? It would be better for morality than the ingenious titillation of the senses induced by your Edwinas and your Charmions!
Confound Charmion, any way! She spoiled a night for me that I needed for refreshing sleep. In my brief snatches of slumber I was with those silly fellows in the front rows, clutching wildly in the air for the garters she flung from her perch above our heads.
CHAPTER IV.
YOU ARE A HOPELESS SCAMP.
Without even waiting for letters at the Herald office, in answer to my advertisement, I went on Saturday morning to Cook & Son's, on Broadway, and engaged two staterooms on the steamship "Madiana," of the Quebec SS. Company's line, to sail January 12. I found that I could secure both rooms, and, if it proved that I needed but one, the amount of passage money paid in advance—one hundred dollars—could be applied to mine alone. This pleased the remnant of Scotch blood left in my veins, for my relations have always said I "favored" my mother's side of the family, and she was a native of France. Though careless enough with money, I did not wish to pay for a stateroom that nobody would occupy, and there was a possibility that I would go alone, after all. The clerk, an affable fellow, promised to hold the extra room until the 5th of January, and to write me when it became necessary to put up the balance of the price or surrender the rights I had in it. I thought, on the whole, it was a sensible business transaction.
"What name shall I register for the lady's room?" he asked, taking up a pen.
"I am uncertain," I said, hesitating. "There are several of the family, and I don't know which it will be finally."
"I will call it 'Miss Camran,' then," he said.
There seemed no objection to this, and he wrote the name in his book.
Arming myself with a handful of literature about the Islands, that he gave me, and which contained little information I was not already possessed of, I went back to my rooms and took a look at my wardrobe. I decided that I should want one or two new suits, of the very coolest texture, besides thin underclothing, some outing shirts, a couple of pairs of light shoes, etc. On Monday I began a search for these things, and found them with more difficulty than I anticipated. In midwinter few New York tradesmen are able