Acrobatess

“T l k’s? true lover’s knots! none of my business, of course, but the professor appears to be interested in the fair acrobat—acrobatess—acrobatia—what you will! Give you my word, when he came round the corner and saw her coming down that rope, I thought he would curl up into knots himself. Jolly stunt! when I first came I was awfully afraid—” Gerald pulled himself up suddenly, and blushed scarlet.

Many persons were interested in the antics of a well-dressed brunette on the Bowery last night. She was leaping awkwardly over small obstructions, essaying somersaults, and anon playing the game of tag with herself. / It was thought by some that she was a real acrobatess a little under the weather. / A policeman arrived at the height of her fun, and inquired what she was doing.

I won’t go through the whole list of standard stunts: the girl with the Southern accent that sings pathetic ballads of the lost cause, and then coon songs for her recalls; the tramp-magician that praises and blames himself with “Oh, pretty good! oh, pretty rotten!” the tremendously fashionable comedy sketch, all butlers and footmen, and criss-cross love-making between Jack and some one else’s wife so as to cure Jack’s wife of making love with the other lady’s husband and convince her that there is nobody like Jack; the Viennese dancers, and the German acrobats and acrobatesses; the colored monologuist, and the man in a high hat and long overcoat, unbuttoned to show his evening dress, who balances feathers on the point of his nose and keeps a paper wad, an open umbrella and a small dinner bell tossing in the air: they were all there and more too, and nothing that any of them said or did was lost upon Essie Baysley.

What I’m going to say is, they think I’m a peasant or something. Imagine a peasant at second-base for the Cardinals! But that’s not the big thing. The big thing is she doesn’t want to be an acrobat or an acrobatess or whatever you call them. She can’t be. She’s ticklish.

So far only two or three of Shaw’s manly women have been recognizable human beings; the rest have been burlesques. Lina Szczepanowska, the Polish acrobatess who steps calmly out of the wreckage of John Tarleton’s glass pavilion and Joey’s Percival’s aeroplane in Misalliance, falls somewhere in between, but Shaw’s conception of her is basically serious.

I tumble to her and throw off the covers. Ivory, apple peel pure, breasts hinting (breasts of an acrobatess), hips rounding — someday, I always thought, after retirement: children — strong legs tapering and her left foot, water.