English Nudity in 1846 Paris

by Victor Hugo
 

TABLEAUX VIVANTS.

In the year 1846 there was a spectacle that caused a furore in Paris. It was that afforded by women attired only in pink tights and a gauze skirt executing poses that were called tableaux vivants, with a few men to complete the groups. This show was given at the Porte Saint Martin and at the Cirque. I had the curiosity one night to go and see the women behind the scenes. I went to the Porte Saint Martin, where, I may add in parentheses, they were going to revive my drama, Lucrêce Borgia. Villemot, the stage manager, who was of poor appearance but intelligent, said: "I will take you into the gynecium."

A score of men were there — authors, actors, firemen, lamp lighters, scene shifters — who came, went, worked or looked on, and in the midst of them seven or eight women, practically nude, walked about with an air of the most naïve tranquillity. The pink tights that covered them from the feet to the neck were so thin and transparent that one could see not only the toes, the navel, and the breasts, but also the veins and the color of the least mark on the skin on all parts of their bodies. Towards the abdomen, however, the tights became thicker and only the form was distinguishable. The men who assisted them were similarly arranged. All these people were English.

At intervals of five minutes the curtain parted and they executed a tableau. For this they were posed in immobile attitudes upon a large wooden disc which revolved upon a pivot. It was worked by a child of fourteen who reclined on a mattress beneath it. Men and women were dressed up in chiffons of gauze or merino that were very ugly at a distance and very ignoble de prês. They were pink statues. When the disc had revolved once and shown the statues on every side to the public crowded in the darkened theater, the curtain closed again, another tableau was arranged, and the performance recommenced a moment later.

Two of these women were very pretty. One resembled Mme. Rey, who played the Queen in Ruy Blas in 1840; it was this one who represented Venus. She was admirably shaped. Another was more than pretty: she was handsome and superb. Nothing more magnificent could be seen than her black, sad eyes, her disdainful mouth, her smile at once bewitching and haughty. She was called Maria, I believe. In a tableau which represented "A Slave Market," she displayed the imperial despair and the stoical dejection of a nude queen offered for sale to the first bidder. Her tights, which were torn at the hip, disclosed her firm white flesh. They were, however only poor girls of London. All had dirty finger nails.

When they returned to the green room they laughed as freely with the scene shifters as with the authors, and talked broken French while they adjusted all kinds of frightful rags upon their charming visages. Their smile was the calm smile of perfect innocence or of complete corruption.

— From The Memoirs of Victor Hugo.

His Final Play

by Brett Rutherford

Nothing was right. The promised theater
was nothing but a drafty church, whose pews
a squirming, grumpy audience assured.

 The sets, by a master painter, were lost
when rising waters tipped a truck over
and pillars, statues, trees and all
were turned from plaster to rubbish.

 The props, the lights, the engine
made to carry the gods’ chariots
aloft, sank into a hole that suddenly
swallowed a Brooklyn warehouse.

 Costumes, at least, the actors had —
or so they thought — until the news came
of the all-day standoff between police
and terrorists, at the designer’s loft,

 nothing coming, nothing going
from Greenwich Village as sirens wailed
and helicopters circled overhead.
“No, sets, no props, no lights,”

 the prim director wailed. “How now
shall we go forward? “Street clothes!”
one actor chimed. “Naked!” said one.
“In underwear!” another insisted.

Reluctantly they all agreed to share
whatever items best suited the characters
they played, regardless of fit, like children
dressed from an attic trunk of castaways.

The audience assembled. The playwright,
afflicted with a sudden itch from knee
to ankle, kept scratching thereabouts
as he addressed the audience. Just then

the words were whispered in his ears
that two lead actors had amnesia
out of nowhere and not a word
could they speak without a script.

“A staged reading,” the playwright explained.
“You have all been invited to an intimate,
once-in-a-lifetime, behind-the-scenes
staged reading. Not to be repeated!”

They stirred, they grumbled, but they all
agreed, critics and all, to suffer out
the play’s performance. The actors
sat unmoving, except for soliloquies,

where they did dance about, and fall,
and rise again, as though possessed,
and they pulled it off – a triumph! 

Still did the playwright fuss and fidget.
The itching was unbearable, till
in the shadow of the back-of-stage
he lifted his trousers and peeked —

at stiff green stems and shiny leaves,
at sprouting yellow and purple flowers
growing this way and that from out
his living flesh. As tough as wood,

they would not break, nor would
the petals of the flower loosen.
He nearly fainted. The audience pressed
on every side, hands grasping his.

“The greatest drama ever!” a critic crowed.
“Shakespeare, Euripides, and thee!” one cried.
The beaming lead actors, their memories
now restored, fell to his arms and wept.

“Tomorrow,” a wealthy patron told him,
“we will order new sets, costumes, and all.
A theater on Broadway will be cleared for you.
This is the triumph of the era!”

The actress, Claudia, dear friend, he took aside,
and showed her the botanic horror, whose host
upon his calves and thighs had doubled.
“I need to see a doctor at once” What can this be?”

“You took a lover recently?” she asked.
He nodded. “He was special, wasn’t he?”
He nodded. “Oh, not some new disease, oh, no!”
Then Claudia took his hand and continued:

“No, not a disease, not really. Tell me of him.
Was he a lover extraordinaire?” He nodded.
“A lover surpassing all human lovers?”
Again he nodded. “Did he inspire this play?”

“Again and again yes. It was as though
his voice dictated everything. I felt as though
I had been written through, as though
I were seven feet tall and made of steel.”

“Well, then, my dear, you have been blessed
and blasted both. You have been Zeus’s lover,
and you have birthed a play with him.
All fine and good, but now Queen Hera knows.”

“He said he had a wife. I said it didn’t matter.
We were perfect together. Perfect! now this?
What have I done to merit some parasite
like mistletoe all over my beautiful legs?” —

“This is his way of saving you. You must have
read old Ovid’s stories. You’ll be dead
in twenty-four hours, transformed into
a beautiful shrub I shall plant to honor you.”

At this the playwright fainted, and the rest
remains at the Botanical Gardens to see.