In January the bill was changed to Diana and the Nymphs. The fact that some of the "Nymphs" supporting the star adopted a costume a little suggestive of modern nudism appears to have upset a feminine critic.

"When," was her considered opinion, "a certain piece first presented a partly unclothed woman to the gaze of a crowded auditory, she was met with a gasp of astonishment at the effrontery which dared so much. Men actually grew pale at the boldness of the thing; young girls hung their heads; a death-like silence fell over the house. But it passed; and, in view of the fact that these women were French ballet-dancers, they were tolerated."

To show that she was properly qualified to express her views on such a delicate matter, this censor added: "Belonging, root and branch, to a theatrical family, I have not on that account been deemed unworthy to break bread at an imperial table, nor to grasp the hand of friendship extended to me by an English lordly divine."

By the way, on this subject of feminine attire (or the lack of it) a rigid standard was also applicable to the audience's side of the curtain, and any departure from it met with reprisals. This is made clear by a shocked paragraph chronicling one such happening at another theatre: "During the evening of our visit there transpired an occurrence to which we naturally have some delicacy in alluding. Since, however, it indicates a censorship in a quarter where refinement is perhaps least to be expected, it should not be suffered by us to pass unnoticed. In the stalls, which were occupied by a number of ladies and gentlemen in full evening costume, and of established social position, there was to be observed a woman whose remarkable lowness of corsage attracted much criticism. Indeed, it obviously scandalised the audience, among the feminine portion of which a painful sensation was abundantly perceptible. At last, their indignation found tangible expression; and a voice from the pit was heard to utter in measured accents a stern injunction that could apply to but one individual. Blushing with embarrassment, the offender drew her shawl across her uncovered shoulders. A few minutes later, she rose and left the house, amid well merited hisses from the gallery, and significant silence from the outraged occupants of the stalls and boxes."

Decorum was one thing; décolletage was another. In the considered opinion of 1851 the two did not blend.

A certain Dr. Judd, who, in the intervals of his medical practice, was managing a Christy Minstrels entertainment at this period, has some recollections of Lola Montez. "Many a long chat," he says, "I had with her in our little bandbox of a ticket-office. Thackeray's Vanity Fair was being read in America just then, and Lola expressed to me great anger that the novelist should have put her into it as Becky Sharp. 'If he had only told the truth about me,' she said, 'I should not have cared, but he derived his inspiration from my enemies in England.'"




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