Sometimes, in the evolutions of the dance, the gossamer dresses of these ballet-girls are caught in the blaze of the footlights, instantly enveloping them in fire, and burning them to a crisp,—and they are borne from the theatre to the grave. Yet these girls, thus nightly exposed to so frightful a death, are paid a third to a half less than men employed in the same vocation, and who by dress are exempt from such hazards. Moreover, the wardrobe of the men is furnished by the theatrical manager,—while the girls, those even who receive but five dollars a week, are compelled out of this slender sum to supply their own. They must change it also at every caprice of fashion or of the manager, sometimes at very short notice, and are expected, no matter how heavy the heart or how light the purse, to come before the public the impersonation of taste and elegance and happiness. A single dress will at times consume the whole salary of a month; and to obtain it even at that cost, the ballet-girl must work on it with her own hands day and night. She must submit to these impositions, or give up her occupation, when perhaps she can find nothing better to do.
The star-actor, the strutting luminary of the theatre, whether native or imported,—he who receives the highest salary for the least work,—when the performance is closed, unrobes himself and departs, with no care or oversight of the drapery in which he charmed his audience. He leaves it in the dressing-room,—it is the manager's tinsel, not his,—and the owner may see to it or not. Not so the poor ballet-girl, whose elaborate performances have been an indispensable feature of the evening's entertainment. Her gossamer dress, her costly wreaths of flowers, her nicely fitting slippers, are carefully packed up,—for they are her own, her capital in trade, and must be taken care of. The well-paid actor goes to the most fashionable restaurant, gorges himself with rich dishes and costly wines, then seeks his bed to dream blissfully over his fat salary and his luxurious supper. The ballet-girl takes up her solitary walk for the humble home in which perhaps an infirm mother is anxiously waiting her return, exposed to such libertine insults as the midnight appearance of a young girl on the street is sure to invite. It is many hours since she dined; she is fatigued and hungry, but she sups upon a crust, or the cold remains of what was at best a meagre dinner, with possibly a cup of tea, boiled by herself at midnight,—then goes wearily to bed, and sleeps as well as one so hard-worked and so poorly paid may be able to.
The gay crowds who spend their evenings at the theatres are permitted to see but one side of this tableau. The curtain lifts upon the group of smiling ballet-girls, but it never unveils their private life. The theatre is intended to amuse, not to excite commiseration for the realities of every-day life around us. Why should anything disagreeable be allowed? If it sought to make people unhappy, it would soon become an obsolete institution.
With all these impositions, actresses and ballet-girls are proverbially more tractable than actors, less exacting, more uncomplaining, more unfailingly prompt in their attendance and in the discharge of their arduous duties. Why, then, are they subjected to such grinding injustice, except because of their weakness? And who will wonder, that, thus kept constantly poor, they should sometimes fall away from virtue? Their profession surrounds them with temptations sufficiently numerous and insidious; and when to these is added the crowning one of promised relief from hopeless penury, shall Pity refuse a tear to the unhappy victims?
CASTLES.
There is a picture in my brain
That only fades to come again:
The sunlight, through a veil of rain
To leeward, gilding
A narrow stretch of brown sea-sand;
A light-house half a league from land;
And two young lovers hand in hand
A-castle-building.
Upon the budded apple-trees
The robins sing by twos and threes,
And even at the faintest breeze
Down drops a blossom;
And ever would that lover be
The wind that robs the bourgeoned tree,
And lifts the soft tress daintily
On Beauty's bosom.
Ah, graybeard, what a happy thing
It was, when life was in its spring,
To peep through Love's betrothal ring
At Fields Elysian,
To move and breathe in magic air,
To think that all that seems is fair!—
Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair,
Thou pretty vision!