Part 5 (1/2)
At last one day her friends said (knowing nothing of all this), ”Miriam, you must go with us to an undress rehearsal. We have got tickets, and you must go.” Then beginning to answer the objections they expected--”It is only undress,” they said; ”the house half lighted, and the actors not in costume. Anybody might go,--and you _must_.”--”It's a very moral opera,” began another. ”Of course we would never take you to see anything else.”
Miriam was too ignorant of the world and its theatres to fairly understand all these advantages,--indeed I fancy longing made such a din in her ears that she paid but little attention. For a while she withstood--then desire rose up like a whirlwind and carried all before it. They had tickets for that very night,--her friends, said one morning,--a ticket for her also--and an escort. She yielded and went.
Went first to take tea with her friends, on the way; and I have heard her speak of the thrilling, pent-up excitement of that hour or two before it was time to set out:--Excitement that made her as still as a mouse, and the careless chatter of her friends incomprehensible!--that made cake into plain bread and b.u.t.ter, and bread and b.u.t.ter into--chips, for all she knew. Whether the excitement was all pleasure I doubt if she could tell; yet if you think Miriam knew she was doing wrong, you would be mistaken. Perhaps it was with her, in the tumult of longing, as Fenelon says: ”O how rare it is to find a soul still enough to hear G.o.d speak!” Or perhaps the Lord, in his wisdom, chose this time to let her set her own lesson. I can only vouch for the dream in which she sat at tea, and walked along the street, and entered the Opera House; glad to get out into the starlight, almost awe-struck to find herself at last within those walls.
The rehearsal was very ”undress” indeed. The house, not half lighted, had yet fewer spectators than jets of gas,--a handful of shadowy figures, hid away by twos and threes in the dim boxes; which were almost too dark for the reading of libretti. However eyes were young, and the party put their heads together and began to study out the coming opera, and so get a taste of the pleasure beforehand.
Until--Well, as I said, Miriam was young and ignorant of the World, but a woman's instincts (if they have not been tampered with) outgrow her years and are independent of her experience. And as the girl bent over the libretto, some of these instincts took fright. She found out suddenly that those small pages were not just the reading she liked, with a gentleman looking over her shoulder; and instantly sat back, leaving the rest to their studies, and read not another word that night. She kept still, waiting for the music,--and then the music began.
You who see such places only with all the conjuring power of light and dress upon them, have no idea how they look when things are transformed back again, and Cinderella has lost her gla.s.s slippers, and the coach is a pumpkin, and the coachman is a rat. This night the actors came on the stage in more--or less--than ordinary dress; as men look when they have put on their dowdiest, for bad weather or dirty work: and these men wore their hats. Only the young Prima Donna was bare-headed, and of course (being a woman) had not made herself a fright. ”Can a maid forget her ornaments?” And this just touched off the effect of all the rest. But the music!--
The many discords and melodies of life since then have at last confused in Miriam's recollection the sounds she listened to that night; but for years liter she could hear them almost as distinctly as at first; and the _picture_ has never faded. The slim, fair girl; the rough, unwashed, unkempt-looking men; men whom (had she been _your_ sister) you would not have let touch her--as we say--”with a pair of tongs.”
The play went on. Perhaps the libretto had given an uneasy stir to Miriam's satisfaction, for as she sat now entranced with the music, suddenly there came to her the astounding revelation that this young girl on the stage, was singing those very words which the other young girl in the boxes had not quite liked to read. Singing them at the top of her sweet voice,--trying to bring them out distinctly and with full effect. It was only a queen, to be sure; but somehow (missing the royal robes) Miriam could see only a woman. Close upon this came another shock. These dingy, untidy, soiled-looking men were now making love to the young Prima Donna,--first one and then another; this one in ba.s.s, and that one in baritone, and she answering in her clear soprano.
Answering,--sometimes _responding_. Then they touched her, and handled her, and drew her about, as the exigencies of the piece demanded. And there was no glitter of dress to turn the one into a kingly suitor and the other into a faithful knight; the tarnished men were but men; and she--poor little uncrowned princess--was but a woman among them all; rubbing off the bloom and reserve of her woman's nature with every touch.
Miriam could never tell how sick hearted she grew as she looked.
_That_ was this girl's livelihood; to go through all sorts of situations, with all sorts of men, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of other people.
O yes, it paid well. Had she been a teacher,--had she painted cups or st.i.tched seams for a living,--her salary, her wages, would have been brought down to the lowest figure; but on the stage, at _that_ work, give her what she asks!--or make her so popular that the manager will.
Does she not ”amuse” us all?
If ever anybody was thoroughly cured of theatre going, that was Miriam.
It had been the greatest temptation of her life; but now a great recoil came over her, so that from that day, the mere thought of the stage brought only loathing and disgust. And so all women, _as_ women, should set their faces against it in every shape; even down to the most ”private” of private theatricals. There cannot possibly be a wholesome imitation of a bad thing.
I know it is very unfas.h.i.+onable doctrine. I know that even while I write, the newspapers set forth an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a play, prepared by a clergyman, to be acted by Sunday Schools in this sweet Christmas time. Alas poor Sunday Schools!--in full training for service under ”the world, the flesh, and the devil.”--”Feed my lambs,” the Lord Jesus said,--and between meals you give them whiskey and water! Nor is it the children only who suffer. I could tell of one lady in that very man's church, who being much delighted with some such performance in the Sunday School, went off the very next night to a theatre, to see the same thing _done better_.
N. B.--She had never been before.
”I will have dances at home for my children, lest they seek them elsewhere.”--
”I will take my boys to the theatre, because I do not want them to go anywhere without me.”--
Real sayings, of real mothers, church members both. Which sayings, in everyday English, read thus, ”Since I want my children to keep out of the world, I will bring the world to them at home.”--”Since my boys will do what I do not approve, I will guard them by doing it too.” Far different from the strong stern-words of Scripture:
”Come out of her, my people.”
”Touch not the unclean thing.”
And then the wonderful sayings of Psalm i. 1.
If anybody thinks I have given an unfair instance, or that I characterize it unfairly, let them take other testimony where no prejudice can be supposed. Read Mrs. Kemble's ”Journal” of her stage life. Read the opinion she gives of it all in her later ”Recollections.” Yet from childhood some of her nearest and dearest she had known as actors.
I have spoken first as to people bound by the Golden Rule, and forbidden therefore to help anybody even to get a living in an evil way. For the work the theatre does upon yourselves, you know it, if you will be honest. People answer: ”O if it hurt me, of course I would give it up.” Be honest with yourself, and you will come out of that delusion. You _know_ it does not make love to Christ warmer, or thoughts of heaven sweeter; or the atmosphere of your everyday life more wholesome and sound. You know it leaves a restless craving for excitement,--you know it exalts the world before your eyes; and if you think a little you will find that, like my poor young friend in her dancing, you are not edified, not built up, but pulled down. Let me tell you of one case where the mother was a Church member, and had prayers regularly every morning with her family, But the command to _watch_ as well (_i.e._, ”keep awake”) she had forgotten. And the desire seized her to see--I will not write the name down here, but it was one of those foreign importations which have beguiled thousands.
She did not want her son to know of her going, and so went with her young daughter for escort! But she found her son already there, and for twenty-eight nights running he was there again. Why not?--if his mother went once? And as might be expected, the daughter has become (as people say) ”wild for the theatre.”
Among the people who loved Mr. Lincoln best, and could best understand the semi-official way in which he went to the theatre that fatal night, there was not one, I fancy, who did not feel an added shock at learning where he was when the messenger came, and who did not wish that he had been almost anywhere else. Yet why? If the theatre is a proper place for Christians to enter, it is as good a place as any other to be