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!