176
Or perhaps Miss Durable might suit your views. Such beauty on a stage is rarely seen
How well too they contrived their Crinoline! Oh! Bachelors give up your wretched lives.
And take these beauteous damsels for your wives". 85
With hindsight it is of course easy enough to see the wit and irony of these lines and for contemporaries they must have been crystal clear.
96
Not many other accounts have been left to us, but some photographs of a French amateur performance in the early seventies have been published, and there is the following amusing description of a staging on board H.M.S. Scout, when she lay in Shanghai in 1861, of J.M. Morton's farce "Lend me Five Shillings" by one of the participants:
Jimmy Towers and I, being the only ladies, had to go ashore to be measured for our clothes which we thought was great fun and I must say Towers who was a handsome boy, when made up and after judicious padding and paint made a most bewitching Julia. I, being rather thin, had to be padded up also and as the sun had taken such liberties with my complexion it required a great deal of paint and labour to make me presentable, and as it was a ballroom scene we had low-neck dresses and bare arms. However we were a success and I believe that those who came off shore never knew that Towers was not really a girl. A discussion then arose as to what to wear under our dresses, and it was decided that white duck trousers were admirably fitted to represent an important article of feminine attire. This, as the sequel proved, was quite correct. The play went on well, until getting too near the footlights I had to turn quickly to prevent my clothes catching fire [candles were used JH] and being unable to manage my crinoline properly, it flew in the air and a young wretch right behind remarked in a voice loud enough for anyone to hear: 'Look at her drawers'. This of course raised a great laugh at my expense". (see also Appendix III, p. 91-93.)
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Despite the often benevolent attitude of the local paper, the actors were well aware of their limitations, as witness the prologue by Peter Proteus on February 18, 1857:
And tho' our Acting may not be the best
Approve what's pleasing and forgive the rest
Rememb'ring what we all must e'en confess