Tipping the Velvet Read Free

said, 'it is very strong tonight. Ah, I feel it never forget. Had we lungs? he asked. We must be prepared burning!'
    to use them! Had we feet, and hands? We must make ready After this there was an acrobatic troupe - three men in to stamp, and clap! Had we sides? They would be split!
    spangles who turned somersaults through hoops, and stood Tears? We would shed buckets of them! Eyes?
    on one another's shoulders. At the climax of their act they
    'Stretch 'em, now, in wonder! Orchestra, please. Limes-formed a kind of human loop, and rolled about the stage to men, if you will.' He struck the table with his gavel - clack!-
    a tune from the orchestra. We clapped at that; but it was too so that the candle-flame dipped. 'I give you, the marvellous, hot for acrobatics, and there was a general shuffling and the musical, the very, very merry, Merry" - he struck the whispering throughout this act, as boys were sent with table again -'Randalls!'
    orders to the bar, and returned with bottles and glasses and The curtain quivered, then rose. There was a seaside mugs that had to be handed, noisily, down the rows, past backdrop to the stage and, upon the boards themselves, real heads and laps and grasping fingers. I glanced at Alice: she sand; and over this strolled four gay figures in holiday gear: had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it, and two ladies - one dark, one fair - with parasols; and two tall her cheeks were very red. I pushed my own little bonnet to gents, one with a ukulele on a strap. They sang 'All the the back of my head, leaned upon the rail before me with Girls are Lovely by the Seaside", very nicely; then the my chin upon my knuckles, and closed my eyes. I heard ukulele player did a solo, and the ladies lifted their skirts Tricky rise and call for silence with his gavel.
    for a spot of soft-shoe dancing on the sand. For a first turn,
    'Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, 'a little treat for you now.
    they were good. We cheered them; and Tricky thanked us A little bit of helegance and top-drawer style. If you've very graciously for our appreciation.
    champagne in your glasses' - there was an ironical cheering at this -'raise them now. If you've beer - why, beer's got 11

    12

    bubbles, don't it? Raise that too! Above all, raise your It was the hair, I think, which drew me most. If I had ever voices, as I give to you, direct from the Phoenix Theatre, seen women with hair as short as hers, it was because they Dover, our very own Kentish swell, our diminutive had spent time in hospital or prison; or because they were Faversham masher . . . Miss Kitty' -clack!- 'Butler!'
    mad. They could never have looked like Kitty Butler. Her There was a burst of handclapping and a few damp whoops.
    hair fitted her head like a little cap that had been sewn, just The orchestra struck up with some jolly number, and I for her, by some nimble-fingered milliner. I would say it heard the creak and whisper of the rising curtain. All was brown; brown, however, is too dull a word for it. It unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, was, rather, the kind of brown you might hear sung about -
    and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite a nut-brown, or a russet. It was almost, perhaps, the colour forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a of chocolate - but then chocolate has no lustre, and this hair single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there shone in the blaze of the limes like taffeta. It curled at her was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! -
    temple, slightly, and over her ears; and when she turned her that I had ever seen.
    head a little to put her hat back on, I saw a strip of pale Of course, we had had male impersonator turns at the flesh at the nape of her neck where the collar ended and the Palace before; but in 1888, in the provincial halls, the hairline began that - for all the fire of the hot, hot hall -
    masher acts were not the things they are today. When