And now let us see how they do these things in France, where the cancan nourishes and the Jardin Mabille, with its high kickers, is the temple towards which pleasure-seeking pilgrims bend when they visit their Mecca—La Belle Paris. A visitor to the dancing green-room of the Grand Opera, there, will find that at night it is brilliantly lighted, and the effect of the gas-jets is greatly increased by the numerous large mirrors which almost conceal the walls. In front of each of these mirrors stands a wooden post a little higher than one's waist, and before a dancing girl sets off, she raises one foot after the other until she places it horizontally on one of these posts, where she keeps it for some time, then quitting this position and taking hold of the post with one hand she practices all her steps, and after having in this way "set herself off," she waters the floor with a handsome watering-pot, and before the large mirrors, which reach down to the mop-board, she goes through all the steps she is about to dance on the stage. The leading dancing girls commonly wear old pumps and small linen gaiters, very loose, in order to avoid soiling their stockings or stocking-net. When the call-boy gives his first notice, they hasten to throw off their gaiters and put on new pumps, chosen for their softness and suppleness, whose seams they have carefully stitched beforehand. The call-boy appears at the door, "Mesdemoiselles, now's your time! the curtain is up!" and the flock of dancing girls hasten to the stage. Among the Parisian ballet corps one sees the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, the most wonderful ups and downs of life. Some, who yesterday were glad to receive the meanest charity of their comrades, who joyfully accepted old dancing pumps, and wore them for shoes, and faded bonnets and thrice-mended clothes, appear to-day in lace, silks, cashmeres, with coachman, valet, carriage and pair. The sufferings, the privations, the fatigue, and the courage of these poor girls ere the miserable worm, the chrysalis, is metamorphosed into the brilliant butterfly, cannot be conceived. Bread and water support the life of more than half of them; many would be glad to feel sure of it regularly twice a day. A great number who live three or four miles from the Grand Opera trudge that distance almost shoeless to their morning dancing lesson, rehearsals, and evening performances, and on their return home, long after midnight, in the summer's rains and the winter's snows, nothing buoys them up but the fond hope, often delusive, that the future has a brighter and better time in store for them.
The Nautch dancers, mentioned in the preceding chapter, are consecrated to the temple from childhood, and the graceful and fascinating poses to which the people of this country have been introduced by an enterprising American, are portions of their sacred dances before the shrines of their dizzy deities. I think four of these girls came to this country originally, and all but one died. Still, there were forty so-called Nautch dancers put upon the variety stage and in specialty troupes, ordinary but clever American ballet girls being painted for the occasion, and dressed in a semi-oriental costume. They made no pretensions to do the Nautch dance, in which the swaying of the body, keeping time with the feet, and howling a lugubrious hymn are the features, there being no hopping or whirling around; but the fraudulent Nautch girls of the specialty troupes pirouetted and pranced in the steps of the old-time ballet, with which we all ought to be familiar if we are not.
CHAPTER XVII.
TRAINING BALLET DANCERS.
"Well, now, I don't think that's so awful hard," said a fellow knight of the pencil, one evening as we both leaned upon the rear row of chairs in the old Theatre Comique at St. Louis, since destroyed by fire, and bent our heads forward in an inquisitive look at the ballet of "The Fairy Fountain," or something of that sort. The remark was meant to apply to the evolutions of the premiere as she spun around on one toe and threw a graceful limb up towards the roof of the house every time she gave a whirl.
"If you don't," said I, "you just try it once, and you'll find out exactly how hard it is."
I had made this retort wildly and without knowing, myself, anything much about the difficulties of ballet dancing. It dawned on me that here was an excellent field for inquiry, so having obtained the permission of Manager W. C. Mitchell, who was running the Comique, to go behind the scenes to interview the ballet master; next evening found me early at the stage door. I was soon inside picking my way through the labyrinth of scenery, stage properties, scene shifters, supers, actors and people generally who crowd and jostle each other in this mimic world, and I was in imminent danger every now and then of an impromptu debut before the public, and of finding myself standing figuratively on my head before an unappreciative audience. At last the ballet master—Sig. J. F. Cardella, a thin, wiry man who seemed to be in the decline of life—was found in his tights, leaning in an easy attitude against one of the "wings."
"Bona sera, Signor," I said in the best Italian I could muster.
"Grazia," returned the maitre in the most welcoming manner in the world, as he invited me to a quiet corner where we sat down on a cracker-box.