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Title: Fifteen years of a dancer's life : With some account of her distinguished friends
Author: Fuller, Loie
Language: English
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FIFTEEN YEARS OF
A DANCER’S LIFE
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HER
DISTINGUISHED FRIENDS
BY
LOIE
FULLER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ANATOLE FRANCE
[Decorative Illustration]
“SHE OUGHT TO WRITE OUT HER MEMORIES
AND HER IMPRESSIONS.”--_Alexandre Dumas_
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
ARUNDEL PLACE, HAYMARKET
LONDON, S.W. [Decorative Illustration] MCMXIII
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER
_Photo_ _Langfier_]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN FRENCH.
LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH
INTRODUCTION
I had seen her only as she had been seen by multitudes from every
corner of the globe, on the stage, waving her draperies in the first
light, or transformed into a great resplendent lily, revealing to us a
new and dignified type of beauty. I had the honour of being presented
to her at a luncheon of the _tour du monde_ at Boulogne. I saw an
American lady with small features, with blue eyes, like water in which
a pale sky is reflected, rather plump, quiet, smiling, refined. I heard
her talk. The difficulty with which she speaks French adds to her power
of expression without injuring her vivacity. It obliges her to rely
on the rare and the exquisite, at each moment to create the requisite
expression, the quickest and best turn of speech. Her words gush
forth, the unaccustomed linguistic form shapes itself. As assistance
she employs neither gestures nor motions, but only the expression of
her eyes, which changes like the landscapes that are disclosed along a
beautiful highway. And the basis of her conversation, now smiling and
now serious, is one of charm and delightfulness.
This brilliant artist is revealed as a woman of just and delicate
sensibility, endowed with a marvellous perception of spiritual values.
She is one who is able to grasp the profound significance of things
that seem insignificant, and to see the splendour hidden in simple
lives. Gleefully she depicts, with keen and brilliant stroke, the
humble folk in whom she finds some ennobling and magnifying beauty.
Not that she is especially devoted to the lowly, the poor in spirit.
On the contrary she enters easily into the lives of artists and
scholars. I have heard her say the most delicate, the subtlest things
about Curie, Mme. Curie, Auguste Rodin and other geniuses. She has
formulated, without desiring to do so, and perhaps without knowing it,
a considerable theory of human knowledge and philosophy of art.
But the subject of conversation which comes closest to her is
_religious_ research. Should we recognize in this fact a characteristic
of the Anglo-Saxon race, of the effect of a Protestant education, or
simply a peculiarity of temperament of which there is no explanation?
I do not know. At all events she is profoundly religious, with a very
acute spirit of inquiry and a perpetual anxiety about human destiny.
Under various guises, in various ways, she has asked me about the cause
and the final outcome of things. I need not say that none of my replies
were couched in a manner to satisfy her. Nevertheless she has received
my doubts serenely, smiling at everything. For she is distinctly an
amiable being.
As regards understanding? Comprehension? She is marvellously
intelligent. She is even more marvellously instinctive. Rich in so many
natural gifts she might have become a scholar. I have heard her employ
a very comprehensive vocabulary in discussing the various subjects of
astronomy, chemistry and physiology. But it is the unconscious in her
that counts. She is an artist.
I have been unable to resist the pleasure of recalling my first meeting
with this extraordinary and delightful woman. What a rare chance! You
admire afar off, as in a vision, an airy figure comparable in grace
to those dancers whom one sees on Pompeiian wall paintings, moving in
their light draperies. Some day you discover once again this apparition
in real life, softened in colour and hidden under those thicker robes
with which mortals cover themselves, and you perceive that she is
a person of good mind and good heart, a soul somewhat inclined to
mysticism, to philosophy, to religion, a very deep, a very cheerful
and a very noble soul.
There you have to the life this Loie Fuller, in whom our Roger Marx
has hailed the chastest and most expressive of dancers, beautifully
inspired, who reanimates within herself and restores to us the lost
wonders of Greek mimicry, the art of those motions, at once voluptuous
and mystical, which interpret the phenomena of nature and the life
history of living beings.
ANATOLE FRANCE
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. MY STAGE ENTRANCE 15
II. MY APPEARANCE ON A REAL STAGE AT TWO YEARS AND A HALF 20
III. HOW I CREATED THE SERPENTINE DANCE 25
IV. HOW I CAME TO PARIS 43
V. MY APPEARANCE AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE 51
VI. LIGHT AND THE DANCE 62
VII. A JOURNEY TO RUSSIA--A BROKEN CONTRACT 73
VIII. SARAH BERNHARDT--THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 84
IX. ALEXANDRE DUMAS 101
X. M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION 111
XI. A VISIT AT RODIN’S 122
XII. M. GROULT’S COLLECTION 128
XIII. MY DANCES AND THE CHILDREN 137
XIV. PRINCESS MARIE 151
XV. SEVERAL SOVEREIGNS 165
XVI. OTHER MONARCHS 184
XVII. SOME PHILOSOPHERS 192
XVIII. HOW I DISCOVERED HANAKO 207
XIX. SARDOU AND KAWAKAMI 217
XX. AN EXPERIENCE 223
XXI. AMERICAN AFFAIRS 232
XXII. GAB 250
XXIII. THE VALUE OF A NAME 267
XXIV. HOW M. CLARETIE INDUCED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK 273
ILLUSTRATIONS
LOIE FULLER _Frontispiece_
PAGE
LOIE FULLER IN HER ORIGINAL SERPENTINE DRESS 29
THE DANCE OF FLAME 59
LOIE FULLER AND HER MOTHER 75
THE DANCE OF THE LILY 93
LOIE FULLER AND ALEXANDRE DUMAS 107
M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION, AT JUVISY 115
THE DANCE OF FLOWERS 139
THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY 143
DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA” 159
THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY 181
LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSY 193
LOIE FULLER’S ROOM AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE 211
GAB 253
THE DANCE OF FIRE 261
THE DANCE OF FEAR FROM “SALOME” 283
FIFTEEN YEARS OF A
DANCER’S LIFE
I
MY STAGE ENTRANCE
“Whose baby is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, anyway, don’t leave it here. Take it away.”
Thereupon one of the two speakers seized the little thing and brought
it into the dancing-hall.
It was an odd little baggage, with long, black, curly hair, and it
weighed barely six pounds.
The two gentlemen went round the room and asked each lady if the child
were hers. None claimed it.
Meanwhile two women entered the room that served as dressing-room and
turned directly toward the bed where, as a last resort, the baby had
been put. One of them asked, just as a few minutes before the man in
the dancing-hall had asked:
“Whose child is this?”
The other woman replied:
“For Heaven’s sake what is it doing there? This is Lillie’s baby. It is
only six weeks old and she brought it here with her. This really is no
place for a baby of that age. Look out; you will break its neck if you
hold it that way. The child is only six weeks old, I tell you.”
At this moment a woman ran from the other end of the hall. She uttered
a cry and grasped the child. Blushing deeply she prepared to take it
away, when one of the dancers said to her:
“She has made her entrance into society. Now she will have to stay
here.”
From that moment until the end of the ball the baby was the chief
attraction of the evening. She cooed, laughed, waved her little hands
and was passed round the hall until the last of the dancers was gone.
I was that baby. Let me explain how such an adventure came about.
It occurred in January, during a very severe winter. The thermometer
registered forty degrees below zero. At that time my father, my mother,
and my brothers lived on a farm about sixteen miles from Chicago.
When the occasion of my appearance in the world was approaching, the
temperature went so low that it was impossible to heat our house
properly. My mother’s health naturally made my father anxious. He
went accordingly to the village of Fullersburg, the population of
which was composed almost exclusively of cousins and kinsmen, and made
an arrangement with the proprietor of the only public-house of the
place. In the general room there was a huge cast-iron stove. This was,
in the whole countryside, the only stove which seemed to give out an
appreciable heat. They transformed the bar into a sleeping-room and
there it was that I first saw light. On that day the frost was thick
on the window panes and the water froze in dishes two yards from the
famous stove.
I am positive of all these details, for I caught a cold at the very
moment of my birth, which I have never got rid of. On my father’s side
I had a sturdy ancestry. I therefore came into life with a certain
power of resistance, and if I have not been able to recover altogether
from the effects of this initial cold, I have had the strength at all
events to withstand them.
A month later we had returned to the farm, and the saloon resumed its
customary appearance. I have mentioned that it was the only tavern in
town, and, as we occupied the main room, we had inflicted considerable
hardship upon the villagers, who were deprived of their entertainment
for more than four weeks.
When I was about six weeks old a lot of people stopped one evening in
front of our house. They were going to give a surprise party at a house
about twenty miles from ours.
They were picking up everybody _en route_, and they stopped at our
house to include my parents. They gave them five minutes in which
to get ready. My father was an intimate friend of the people whom
they were going to surprise; and, furthermore, as he was one of the
best musicians of the neighbourhood he could not get out of going, as
without him the company would have no chance of dancing. He accordingly
consented to join the party. Then they insisted that my mother go, too.
“What will she do with the baby? Who will feed her?”
There was only one thing to do in these circumstances--take baby too.
My mother declined at first, alleging that she had no time to make the
necessary preparations, but the jubilant crowd would accept no refusal.
They bundled me up in a coverlet and I was packed into a sleigh, which
bore me to the ball.
When we arrived they supposed that, like a well-brought-up baby,
I should sleep all night, and they put me on the bed in a room
temporarily transformed into a dressing-room. They covered me carefully
and left me to myself.
There it was that the two gentlemen quoted at the beginning of
this chapter discovered the baby agitating feet and hands in every
direction. Her only clothing was a yellow flannel garment and a calico
petticoat, which made her look like a poor little waif. You may imagine
my mother’s feelings when she saw her daughter make an appearance in
such a costume.
That at all events is how I made my debut, at the age of six weeks.
I made it because I could not do otherwise. In all my life everything
that I have done has had that one starting-point; I have never been
able to do anything else.
I have likewise continued not to bother much about my personal
appearance.
II
MY APPEARANCE ON A REAL STAGE AT TWO YEARS AND A HALF
When I was a very small girl the president of the Chicago Progressive
Lyceum, where my parents and I went every Sunday, called on my mother
one afternoon, and congratulated her on the appearance I had made the
preceding Sunday at the Lyceum. As my mother did not understand what
he meant, I raised myself from the carpet, on which I was playing with
some toys, and I explained:
“I forgot to tell you, mamma, that I recited my piece at the Lyceum
last Sunday.”
“Recited your piece?” repeated my mother. “What does she mean?”
“What!” said the president, “haven’t you heard that Loie recited some
poetry last Sunday?”
My mother was quite overcome with surprise. I threw myself upon her and
fairly smothered her with kisses, saying,
“I forgot to tell you. I recited my piece.”
“Oh, yes,” said the president, “and she was a great success, too.”
My mother asked for explanations.
The president then told her: “During an interval between the exercises,
Loie climbed up on the platform, made a pretty bow as she had seen
orators do, and then, kneeling down, she recited a little prayer. What
this prayer was I don’t remember.”
But my mother interrupted him.
“Oh, I know. It is the prayer she says every evening when I put her to
bed.”
And I had recited that in a Sunday School thronged by free-thinkers!
“After that Loie arose, and saluted the audience once more. Then
immense difficulties arose. She did not dare to descend the steps in
the usual way. So she sat down and let herself slide from one step to
another until she reached the floor of the house. During this exercise
the whole hall laughed loudly at the sight of her little yellow flannel
petticoat, and her copper-toed boots beating the air. But Loie got on
her feet again, and, hearing the laughter, raised her right hand and
said in a shrill voice: ‘Hush! Keep quiet. I am going to recite my
poem.’ She would not stir until silence was restored. Loie then recited
her poem as she had promised, and returned to her seat with the air of
having done the most natural thing in the world.”
The following Sunday I went as usual to the Lyceum with my brothers. My
mother came, too, in the course of the afternoon, and took her seat at
the end of a settee among the invited guests who took no part in our
exercises. She was thinking how much she had missed in not being there
the preceding Sunday to witness my “success,” when she saw a woman rise
and approach the platform. The woman began to read a little paper which
she held in her hand. After she had finished reading my mother heard
her say:
“And now we are going to have the pleasure of hearing our little friend
Loie Fuller recite a poem entitled: ‘Mary had a little Lamb.’”
My mother, absolutely amazed, was unable to stir or to say a word. She
merely gasped:
“How can this little girl be so foolish! She will never be able to
recite that. She has only heard it once.”
In a sort of daze she saw me rise from my seat, slowly walk to the
steps and climb upon the platform, helping myself up with feet and
hands. Once there I turned around and took in my audience. I made a
pretty courtesy, and began in a voice which resounded throughout the
hall. I repeated the little poem in so serious a manner that, despite
the mistakes I must have made, the spirit of it was intelligible and
impressed the audience. I did not stop once. Then I courtesied again
and everybody applauded me wildly. I went back to the stairs and let
myself slide down to the bottom, as I had done the preceding Sunday.
Only this time no one made fun of me.
When my mother rejoined me, some time after, she was still pale and
trembling. She asked me why I had not informed her of what I was going
to do. I replied that I could not let her know about a thing that I did
not know myself.
“Where have you learned this?”
“I don’t know, mamma.”
She said then that I must have heard it read by my brother; and I
remembered that it was so. From this time on I was always reciting
poems, wherever I happened to be. I used to make little speeches, but
in prose, for I employed the words that were natural for me, contenting
myself with translating the spirit of the things that I recited without
bothering much over word-by-word renderings. With my firm and very
tenacious memory, I needed then only to hear a poem once to recite it,
from beginning to end, without making a single mistake. I have always
had a wonderful memory. I have proved it repeatedly by unexpectedly
taking parts of which I did not know a word the day before the first
performance.
It was thus, for instance, when I played the part of Marguerite
Gauthier in _La Dame aux Camélias_ with only four hours to learn the
lines.
On the Sunday of which I have been speaking, my mother experienced the
first of the nervous shocks that might have warned her, had she been
able to understand, that she was destined to become the prey of a
dreadful disease, which would never leave her.
From the spring which followed my first appearance at the
Folies-Bergère until the time of her death she accompanied me in all
my travels. As I was writing this, some days before her end, I could
hear her stir or speak, for she was in the next room with two nurses
watching over her night and day. While I was working I would go to her
from time to time, rearrange her pillows a little, lift her, give her
medicine, or some little thing to eat, put out her candle, open the
window a moment, and then I would return to my task.
After the day of my debut at the Chicago Progressive Lyceum I continued
my dramatic career. The incidents of my performances would suffice to
fill several volumes. For without interruption, adventures succeeded
one another to such an extent that I shall never undertake the work of
describing them all.
I should say that when this first theatrical incident took place I was
just two and a half years old.
III
HOW I CREATED THE SERPENTINE DANCE
In 1890 I was on a tour in London with my mother. A manager engaged me
to go to the United States and take the principal part in a new play
entitled, “Quack, M.D.” In this piece I was to play with two American
actors, Mr. Will Rising and Mr. Louis de Lange, who has since then been
mysteriously assassinated.
I bought what costumes I needed and took them with me. On our arrival
in New York the rehearsals began. While we were at work, the author got
the idea of adding to the play a scene in which Dr. Quack hypnotised a
young widow. Hypnotism at that moment was very much to the fore in New
York. To give the scene its full effect he needed very sweet music and
indeterminate illumination. We asked the electrician of the theatre
to put green lamps along the footlights and the orchestra leader to
play a subdued air. The great question next was to decide what costume
I was to wear. I was unable to buy a new one. I had spent all the
money advanced me for my costumes and, not knowing what else to do, I
undertook to run over my wardrobe in the hope of finding something that
would be fit to wear.
In vain. I could not find a thing.
All at once, however, I noticed at the bottom of one of my trunks a
small casket, a very small casket, which I opened. Out of it I drew a
light silk material, comparable to a spider’s web. It was a skirt, very
full and very broad at the bottom.
I let the skirt dangle in my fingers, and before this little heap of
fragile texture I lingered in reverie for some time. The past, a past
very near and yet already far away, was summoned up before me.
It had happened in London some months before.
A friend had asked me to dine with several officers who were being
wined and dined just before leaving for India, where they were under
orders to rejoin their regiment. The officers were in handsome
uniforms, the women in low dresses, and they were pretty, as only
English women are.
At table I was seated between two of the youngest officers. They had
very long necks and wore extremely high collars. At first I felt
myself greatly overawed in the presence of people so imposing as my
neighbours. They looked snobbish and uncommunicative. Presently I
discovered that they were much more timid than I, and that we should
never be better acquainted unless one or the other of us resolved
to overcome his own nervousness and, at the same time, that of his
companions.
But my young officers were afraid only in the presence of women. When I
told them I hoped they might never be engaged in a war, and especially
that they might never have to do any killing, one of them answered me
very simply:
“I fancy I can serve as a target as well as any other man, and
certainly the people who draw on me will understand that war is on.”
They were essentially and purely English. Nothing could unsettle them,
provoke them or change them in the least. At our table they seemed
timid. They were nevertheless men of the kind who go into the presence
of death just as one encounters a friend in the street.
At this period I did not understand the English as I have subsequently
come to know them.
I left the table without remembering to ask the names of my neighbours,
and when I thought about the matter it was too late.
I recalled, however, that one of them took the trouble, in the course
of our conversation, to learn the name of the hotel at which I was
staying. I had quite forgotten the incident when, some time after, I
received a little casket, addressed to me from India.
It contained a skirt of very thin white silk, of a peculiar shape, and
some pieces of silk gauze. The box was not more than sixteen inches
long and was hardly taller than a cigar box. It contained nothing else,
not a line, not a card. How odd! From whom could it come?
I knew no one in India. All at once, however, I remembered the dinner
and the young officers. I was greatly taken with my pretty box, but I
was far from suspecting that it contained the little seed from which an
Aladdin’s lamp was destined to spring for my benefit.
This, of course, was the casket which I had just discovered in my trunk.
Deep in thought I stooped and gathered up the soft, silky stuff. I put
on the Hindu skirt, the skirt sent me by my two young officers, those
young men who must by this time have “served as targets” somewhere out
there in the jungle, for I never heard from them again.
My robe, which was destined to become a triumphal robe, was at least a
half a yard too long. Thereupon I raised the girdle and so shaped for
myself a sort of empire robe, pinning the skirt to a décolleté bodice.
The robe looked thoroughly original, perhaps even a little ridiculous.
It was entirely suitable for the hypnotism scene, which we did not take
very seriously.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER IN HER ORIGINAL SERPENTINE DRESS
_Photo_ _Sarony_]
We “tried the play on the dog” before offering it to the New York
public, and I made my debut as a dancer at a theatre in a small
city of which the average New Yorker had hardly heard. No one, I
suppose, outside its boundaries took the slightest interest in what
went on in that city. At the end of the play, on the evening of the
first presentation, we gave our hypnotism scene. The stage scenery,
representing a garden, was flooded with pale green light. Dr. Quack
made a mysterious entrance and then began his work of suggestion. The
orchestra played a melancholy air very softly, and I endeavoured to
make myself as light as possible, in order to give the impression of a
fluttering figure obedient to the doctor’s orders.
He raised his arms. I raised mine. Under the influence of suggestion,
entranced--so, at least, it looked--with my gaze held by his, I
followed his every motion. My robe was so long that I was continually
stepping upon it, and mechanically I held it up with both hands and
raised my arms aloft, all the while that I continued to flit around the
stage like a winged spirit.
There was a sudden exclamation from the house:
“It’s a butterfly! A butterfly!”
I turned on my steps, running from one end of the stage to the other,
and a second exclamation followed:
“It’s an orchid!”
To my great astonishment sustained applause burst forth. The doctor
all the time was gliding around the stage, with quickening steps, and
I followed him faster and faster. At last, transfixed in a state of
ecstasy, I let myself drop at his feet, completely enveloped in a
cloud of the light material.
The audience encored the scene, and then encored it again--so loudly
and so often that we had to come back twenty times, or more.
We were on the road about six weeks. Then came our opening in one of
the New York suburbs, where Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who has since become
a famous impresario, owned a theatre.
The play was unsuccessful, and even our hypnotism scene was not strong
enough to save it from the attacks of the critics. No New York theatre
cared to give it house room, and our company broke up.
The day after this opening at Mr. Hammerstein’s theatre a local
newspaper of the little community in which we had successfully
presented this “Quack, M.D.,” which the New York managers refused to
touch, wrote a ridiculously enthusiastic article on what it called my
“acting” in the hypnotism scene. But as the play had not “made good,”
no one thought that it would be possible to take a single scene out of
it, and I was left without an engagement.
Nevertheless, even in New York, and in spite of the failure of the
play, I personally secured some good press notices. The newspapers were
in agreement in announcing that I had a remarkable string to my bow--if
I only knew how to make the most of it.
I had brought my robe home to sew up a little tear. After reading
these comforting lines I leaped from the bed and arrayed only in my
night-gown, I put the garment on and looked at myself in a large glass,
to make sure of what I had done the evening before.
The mirror was placed just opposite the windows. The long yellow
curtains were drawn and through them the sun shed into the room an
amber light, which enveloped me completely and illumined my gown,
giving a translucent effect. Golden reflections played in the folds of
the sparkling silk, and in this light my body was vaguely revealed in
shadowy contour. This was a moment of intense emotion. Unconsciously I
realised that I was in the presence of a great discovery, one which was
destined to open the path which I have since followed.
Gently, almost religiously, I set the silk in motion, and I saw that
I had obtained undulations of a character heretofore unknown. I had
created a new dance. Why had I never thought of it before?
Two of my friends, Mrs. Hoffmann and her daughter Mrs. Hossack, came
from time to time to see how I was getting on with my discoveries.
When I found an action or a pose which looked as if it might amount
to something they would say: “Hold that. Try it again.” Finally I
reached a point where each movement of the body was expressed in the
folds of silk, in a play of colours in the draperies that could be
mathematically and systematically calculated.
The length and size of my silk skirt would constrain me to repeat the
same motion several times as a means of giving this motion its special
and distinctive aim. I obtained a spiral effect by holding my arms
aloft while I kept whirling, to right and then to left, and I continued
this movement until the spiral design was established. Head, hands
and feet followed the evolutions of the body and the robe. It is very
difficult, however, to describe this part of my dance. You have to see
it and feel it. It is too complicated for realisation in words.
Another dancer will obtain more delicate effects, with more graceful
motions, but they will not be the same. To be the same they must be
created in the same spirit. One thing original, though up to a certain
point it is not so good as an imitation, is in reality worth much more.
I studied each of my characteristic motions, and at last had twelve
of them. I classed them as Dances No. 1, No. 2, and so on. The first
was to be given under a blue light, the second under red light, the
third under a yellow light. For illumination of my dances I intended to
have a lantern with coloured glass in front of the lens. I wanted to
dance the last one in total darkness with a single ray of yellow light
crossing the stage.
When I had finished studying my dances, I went in search of a manager.
I was acquainted with them all. During my career as singer and actress
I had served all of them more or less frequently.
I was, however, hardly prepared for the reception which they gave me.
The first one laughed me in the face as he said:
“You a dancer! Well, that’s too good! When I want you for a theatrical
part I’ll look you up with pleasure; but as for dancing, good heavens!
When I engage a dancer she will have to be a star. The only ones I know
are Sylvia Gray and Lettie Lind in London. You cannot outclass them,
take my word for it. Good-evening.”
He had lost all respect for my perspicacity and he made fun of the idea
of my being a dancer.
Mrs. Hoffmann had come with me, and was waiting in the lobby, where
I rejoined her. She noted at once how pale and nervous I was. When
we left the theatre it was night. We walked in silence through dark
streets. Neither spoke. Some months later, however, my friend told me
that all that evening I never stopped emitting little groans like those
of a wounded animal. She saw that I was cut to the very quick.
Next day I had to continue my search, for necessity was spurring me on.
Mrs. Hoffmann offered me the privilege of coming to live with her and
her daughter--an offer which I accepted gratefully, not having the
faintest idea when and how I could ever repay her.
Some time later I had to give in; since I was known as an actress,
nothing could hurt me more than to try to become a dancer.
One manager went so far as to tell me that two years of absence from
New York had caused the public completely to forget me, and that, in
trying to recall myself to their memory, I should seem to be inflicting
ancient history on them. As I had then just passed my twentieth
birthday I was extremely irritated by that insinuation, and I thought:
“Would it then be necessary for me painfully to build up a reputation
and to look old to prove that I _was_ young to-day?”
Unable to restrain my feelings any longer, I told the manager what I
thought.
“Hell,” he replied, “it isn’t age that counts. It’s the time the public
has known you, and you have become too well known as an actress to come
back here as a dancer.”
Everywhere I encountered the same answer, and finally I became
desperate. I was aware that I had discovered something unique, but
I was far from imagining, even in a daydream, that I had hold of a
principle capable of revolutionising a branch of æsthetics.
I am astounded when I see the relations that form and colour assume.
The scientific admixture of chemically composed colours, heretofore
unknown, fills me with admiration, and I stand before them like a miner
who has discovered a vein of gold, and who completely forgets himself
as he contemplates the wealth of the world before him.
But to return to my troubles.
A manager who, some time before, had done his best to engage me as a
singer, and who had absolutely refused to consider me as a dancer, gave
a careless consent, thanks to the intervention of a common friend, to
an interview at which I was to show him my dances.
I took my robe, which made a neat little bundle, and I set out for the
theatre.
Mrs. Hoffmann’s daughter accompanied me. We went in by the stage
entrance. A single gas jet lighted the empty stage. In the house, which
was equally dark, the manager, seated in one of the orchestra chairs,
looked at us with an air of boredom, almost of contempt. There was no
dressing-room for my change of clothing, not even a piano to accompany
me. But the opportunity was a precious one, all the same. Without delay
I put on my costume, there on the stage and over my dress. Then I
hummed an air and started in to dance very gently in the obscurity. The
manager came nearer and nearer, and finally ascended the platform.
His eyes glistened.
I continued to dance, disappearing in the darkness at the rear of
the stage, then returning toward the gas jet. Finally I lifted a part
of my robe over my shoulders, made a kind of cloud which enveloped
me completely and then fell, a wavering mass of fluffy silk, at the
manager’s feet. After that I arose and waited in keenest anxiety to
hear what he would say.
He said nothing. Visions of success were crowding upon each other in
his brain.
Finally he broke his silence and gave my dance the name of “The
Serpentine Dance.”
“There is the name that will go with it,” he said, “and I have just the
music that you need for that dance. Come to my private office. I am
going to play it for you.”
Then for the first time I heard an air which later became very popular,
“Au Loin du Bal.”
A new company was rehearsing “Uncle Celestin” at the theatre. This
company was to go on the road for several weeks before playing in New
York. My new manager offered me, for this tour, an engagement at fifty
dollars a week. I accepted, making it a condition that I should be
featured on the placards, in order to regain in a measure the prestige
I had lost.
A few days after I joined the company and made my first appearance
at a distance from New York. For six weeks I appeared before country
audiences, feverishly counting the hours until I should at last have my
chance in the big city.
During this tour, contrary to the conditions I had imposed, I was not
featured. The posters did not even announce me, and yet my dance,
which was given during an interval and without coloured lights, was
successful from the first.
A month and a half later in Brooklyn its success was phenomenal. The
week following I made my debut in New York, at what was one of the
prettiest theatres in town.
There I was able for the first time to realise my dances just as I had
conceived them; with darkness in the house and coloured lights on the
stage. The house was packed and the audience positively enthusiastic.
I danced my first, my second, my third. When I had finished the whole
house was standing up.
Among the spectators was one of my oldest friends, Marshall P. Wilder,
the little American humourist. He recognised me and called my name in
such a way that everybody could hear it, for they had neglected to put
it on the programme! When the audience discovered that the new dancer
was its old favourite comedian, the little soubrette of a former day,
it gave her an ovation such as, I suppose, never another human being
has received.
They called out, “Three cheers for the butterfly! Three cheers for the
orchid, the cloud, the butterfly! Three cheers!” And the enthusiasm
passed all bounds. The applause resounded in my ears like the ringing
of bells. I was overcome with joy and gratitude.
Next morning I arose early to read the papers. Every New York newspaper
devoted from a column to a page to “Loie Fuller’s Wonderful Creation.”
Numerous illustrations of my dances accompanied the articles.
I buried my face in my pillow and shed every tear that, for a long
time, had lurked in my discouraged soul. For how many months had I
waited for this good luck!
In one of these articles a critic wrote “Loie Fuller had risen from
her ashes.” Next day the whole city was plastered with lithographs,
reproduced from one of my photographs, representing me larger than
life, with letters a foot high announcing: “The Serpentine Dance! The
Serpentine Dance!” But there was one circumstance came near giving me
heart failure. My name was nowhere mentioned.
I went to the theatre and reminded the manager that I had accepted the
modest salary he offered on condition that I should be featured. I
hardly understood when he remarked drily that he could not do more for
me.
I asked him then whether he supposed that I was going to continue
dancing under such conditions.
“Nothing can compel you to do so,” answered the manager. “In any case,
I have taken my precautions in case you do not care to keep on.”
I left the theatre in desperation, not knowing what to do. My head
swam. I went home and consulted my friends.
They advised me to go and see another manager, and, if I secured an
engagement, simply to drop the other theatre.
I went to the ---- Theatre, but on the way I began to cry, and I was in
tears when I arrived there. I asked to see the manager, and told him my
story.
He offered me one hundred and fifty dollars a week. I was to make my
first appearance at once, and sign a contract dating from the next day.
On reaching home I asked if nothing had come for me from the other
theatre.
Nothing had come.
That evening my friends went to the theatre, where they saw a poster
announcing, for the following evening, the initial appearance in the
“Serpentine” of Miss ---- ----. When they told me that piece of news I
understood that my six weeks on the road had been profitably employed
by my manager and one of the chorus girls to meet just this situation,
and I understood, too, why my name was not mentioned on the first
posters.
They had stolen my dance.
I felt myself overcome, dead--more dead, as it seemed to me, than I
shall be at the moment when my last hour comes. My very life depended
on this success, and now others were going to reap the benefit. I
cannot describe my despair. I was incapable of words, of gestures. I
was dumb and paralysed.
Next day, when I went to sign my new contract, the manager received
me rather coldly. He was willing to sign only if I would give him the
privilege of cancelling at his own discretion. He felt that my imitator
at the Casino, announced for the same day, would diminish greatly the
interest that would be felt in what he ironically called my “discovery.”
I was obliged to accept the conditions which he imposed, but I
experienced all the while an access of rage and grief as I saw in what
a barefaced manner they had stolen my invention.
Heartbroken, with my courage oozing, I made my appearance at the
Madison Square Theatre and, to my astonishment, to my immense
satisfaction, I saw that the theatre had to turn people away. And it
was that way as long as my engagement lasted.
As for the other theatre, after three weeks of featuring my imitator,
it was obliged to close its doors to rehearse a new opera.
IV
HOW I CAME TO PARIS
A little while after my appearance at the Madison Square Theatre I was
asked to dance for the benefit of a charity at the German theatre in
New York. I had forgotten all about my promise until the day of the
performance, when a card arrived to call it to my mind. I had neglected
to ask my manager’s permission to appear on that evening, not thinking
that he would refuse to grant the privilege of my participating in a
philanthropic affair.
A short time before there had taken place the first part of a painful
incident which was destined to rupture the pleasant relations
subsisting between the management of the Madison Square and myself. My
manager’s associate had asked me as a great favour to come to open a
ball given by some friends in his honour. Delighted to be of service
to him, I readily agreed to do so. When I asked him the date of this
affair he told me not to bother about that.
It was just then that I asked permission to dance at the German theatre
for the benefit of an actress who was ill. The manager consented. At
the German theatre they had engaged a Roumanian orchestra for me.
The leader of this orchestra, Mr. Sohmers, an enthusiastic man, as
the Roumanians are apt to be, came to see me after I had danced and
foretold for me the wonderful artistic success which I was sure to meet
with in Europe. He advised me to go to Paris, where an artistically
inclined public would give my dances the reception they deserved. From
that moment on this became a fixed idea with me--to dance in Paris.
Then the manager of the German theatre proposed to me a tour abroad,
beginning with Berlin.
I promised to think the matter over and acquaint him with my decision.
Some days later the famous ball took place which my manager’s associate
had asked me to open. I went to it.
They took us, a friend who accompanied me, and myself, into a little
drawing-room where they begged me to wait until some one should come
and fetch me for my appearance on the stage. More than an hour passed.
Finally a gentleman came to tell me that everything was ready. Through
a corridor I reached the platform, which had been erected at the top
of the ball-room. It was terribly dark, and the only light perceptible
was the little ray that filtered through from one of my lanterns that
was imperfectly closed. The hall looked totally empty. I saw, when
I had taken my bearings, that the whole audience was disposed in
the galleries, forming a balcony half-way up the room. The orchestra
finished its overture and I began to dance. After having danced three
times, as I was accustomed to do at the theatre, I returned to the
scene to acknowledge the applause and I saw before me in luminous
letters a sign with the words: “Don’t think Club.”
That looked queer to me, but I did not attach much importance to it.
I bowed again to the magnificently gowned women and the men, who were
all in sombre black, and then, walking through the same passage way, I
once more reached the dressing-room, where I put on my outdoor clothes
and left. At the door I entered the carriage that had brought me there,
and while we were on our way home I kept wondering what the Don’t Think
Club could be.
That worried me in spite of myself.
The next morning my friend brought me a newspaper, in which I found on
the first page a long article headed:
“LOIE FULLER OPENS THE DON’T THINK CLUB.”
There followed a description of the affair and of the orgies which took
place there. The article had been written with a deliberate purpose of
creating a scandal. I was exasperated beyond measure. I had gone there
merely to please my manager, and the humiliation inflicted upon me
wounded me deeply.
Possibly he thought that I would never know where I had been. A single
newspaper might print something about the affair; but most probably my
manager thought it would never come to my notice. No newspaper men had
been invited to the performance. There was one guest, a very little man
but with a great reputation, who found himself among the invited, and
he wrote the scandalous article, so I have been told.
I have since had my revenge, a terrible revenge; for this man, then
at the climax of his career, so mismanaged his affairs and those of
others, that he was imprisoned.
“Everybody is blaming him for the article,” my manager explained to me
when I reproached him for having dragged me to this club.
That was his only excuse. He thought he was lessening the insult
by offering me more money. This offer so increased my anger that I
tendered my resignation. I felt in no wise under obligation to a man
who I thought had morally lost all right to consideration. This was the
reason for my leaving, never to return.
The notion of going to Paris possessed me after that more completely
than before. I wanted to go to a city where, as I had been told,
educated people would like my dancing and would accord it a place in
the realm of art.
I was making at this time one hundred and fifty dollars a week and I
had just been offered five hundred. I decided, nevertheless, to sign
a contract with the manager of the German theatre that guaranteed me
sixty-five dollars instead of five hundred. But the objective, after a
tour in Europe, was Paris!
While I was dancing in New York I had to begin to invent special robes
for my new dances. These were just being made and, when I was about to
leave for Europe, they were ready.
The manager of the German Theatre had gone ahead and had reserved
berths for us on one of the steamers.
After taking leave of my friends I was still full of hope and ambition.
My mother in vain tried to share my feelings; she could not avoid
painful misgivings. As for me, I wanted to think only of the good
things that awaited, and to forget all the past annoyances.
During the voyage an evening entertainment was organised for the
benefit of the seamen and I agreed to dance. A stage was arranged by
the bridge. There with the sea for a background and with the coloured
lights used for signalling as the media of illumination, I tried for
the first time a series of new dances, each with a special gown.
The enthusiasm of passengers and crew knew no bounds and I felt that I
had taken my first step in the conquest of a new world.
We landed in Germany. My manager came to meet us and took us to Berlin.
But, to my great annoyance, I found that I was not to make my initial
appearance for a month, and I could not discover in what city I was to
make it.
That meant a month of inactivity.
Finally I learned that I was to make my debut, not at the Opera as my
manager had promised, but in a music hall. The Opera was closed, and
the music hall was the only place where I could dance.
In that event I would dance only my first dance and would exhibit only
a single gown, just as I had done in New York. I then chose three of
my numbers and prepared myself for my appearance. But this debut was
made without personal interest. In America the best theatres offered me
engagements on much better terms than those I had to accept in Europe.
In Berlin I was obliged to appear where my New York manager wished.
If, before signing the contract, he had told me where I should have
to dance I should have declined. But when the time for my appearance
was at hand I was without resources and quite at his mercy. To cap the
climax my mother fell seriously ill.
At the time of which I am writing cholera had just broken out at
Hamburg. My mother’s illness came on so suddenly that it was thought
she was stricken with cholera. Everybody at the hotel was frightened,
and we were obliged to take my poor mother to the cholera hospital.
All these circumstances, conjoined with frightfully trying weather,
put me in bad shape for the struggle. I renounced everything, my pride,
my highest hopes, and I started in assiduously to gain our livelihood.
But I was disabled and without courage.
After a month my German manager informed me he did not care to continue
my contract. He was going back to the United States with a company that
he had come for the express purpose of engaging in Germany. It seemed
clear to me that his only motive in bringing me to Europe had been to
procure the means with which to engage this new company and take it
back with him. He travelled with his wife, a pretty American woman, who
had become a close friend of mine, and who reproached him most bitterly
on my account.
Our manager left Berlin with his company, leaving me with only just
enough money to pay my bills at the hotel when I had completed
the contract that held me to the music hall in Berlin. I then had
absolutely no engagement in sight. I learned that he was getting ten
thousand marks--about $2,500--a month for me. And yet he had given me
only about $300 a month. What was I to do? My appearance in Berlin had
been deplorable and was likely to have an unfortunate influence on my
whole career in Europe. My purse was empty, my mother ill. We had not
the slightest hope of an engagement and we had no one to help us.
A theatrical agent, an unknown man at that time, who has since become
a theatrical manager, Mr. Marten Stein, came to see me, and I tried to
continue at the music hall where I was dancing. I was obliged to make
concessions to keep going a week or two more, to get money enough to go
away and to look for a new engagement. I kept thinking more than ever
of Paris. If I could only go there!
In these circumstances Mr. Marten Stein secured for me a dozen
performances in one of the beer gardens at Altona, the well-known
pleasure resort near Hamburg. I earned there several hundred marks,
which allowed us to go to Cologne, where I had to dance in a circus
between an educated donkey and an elephant that played the organ. My
humiliation was complete. Since then, however, occasions have not been
lacking when I have realised that the proximity of trained horses and
music-mad elephants is less humiliating than intercourse with some
human beings.
Finally I left for Paris.
To economise as closely as possible we had to travel third class. But
what did that matter? That was only a detail. I was going to Paris to
succeed there or to sink into obscurity.
V
MY APPEARANCE AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE
Paris! Paris! At last Paris!
It seemed to me that I was saved and that all my troubles were coming
to an end. Paris was the port after storm, the harbour of refuge after
the furious rage of life’s tempest. And I thought in my simplicity that
I was going to conquer this great Paris that I had so long coveted.
In America I had often danced on important stages during the intervals
between operatic acts, and I fancied that it would be the same in Paris.
Accordingly upon my arrival, which occurred in October, 1892, even
before going to my room at the Grand Hotel, I instructed my agent, Mr.
Marten Stein, to call upon M. Gailhard, manager of the National Academy
of Music and Dancing, to whom I had written from Germany to propose my
dancing at his theatre.
National Academy of Dancing!
I still believed, in my simple soul, in names. I fancied that an
institution of this sort ought to be receptive of innovations in
dancing.
My illusion, alas! was to be short-lived. Mr. Stein returned looking
very downcast. He had been received by M. Pedro Gailhard, but that
gentleman, in the deep voice which he has skilfully developed and which
for twenty-one years has awakened the echoes of the directors’ office
at the Opera, did not conceal from him the fact that he had no great
desire to engage me.
“Let her show me her dances if she cares to,” he said, “but all I
can do, in case these dances please me, would be, on condition of
her performing nowhere else, to guarantee her a maximum of four
performances a month.”
“Four performances? That is hardly enough,” my agent ventured to remark.
“It is too many for a dancer who before coming to Paris already has
imitators here.”
Influenced by the voice and bearing of a man who had formerly played
the part of Mephistopheles on the stage which he now directed, Mr.
Stein did not dare to make further inquiries.
The impression made upon me by the terms that my agent brought back
is easily imagined. To accept four appearances a month, even if M.
Gailhard actually made a proposition to that effect, was not to
be thought of. That, from a pecuniary standpoint, was altogether
insufficient. I thought the matter over. My mind was quickly made up.
After dinner I bundled my agent and my mother into a carriage and
gave the driver the address of the Folies-Bergère, for I knew that
my agent, on his own responsibility, had written to the manager of
this big music hall. On the way I explained to Mr. Stein that I was
governing myself by the advice that he had given me sometime before,
and that I was going to ask the manager of the Folies-Bergère for an
engagement.
Imagine my astonishment when, in getting out of the carriage in front
of the Folies, I found myself face to face with a “serpentine dancer”
reproduced in violent tones on some huge placards. This dancer was not
Loie Fuller.
Here was the cataclysm, my utter annihilation.
Nevertheless I went into the theatre. I stated the object of my visit.
I asked to see the manager. They told me that I could be received only
at the close of the performance, and they assigned us, my mother, Mr.
Stein and myself, seats in one corner of the balcony, whence we were
able to follow the performance.
The performance!
I could not help poking a little fun at that performance. It would be
hard to describe what I saw that evening. I awaited the “serpentine
dancer,” my rival, my robber--for she was a robber, was she not, she
who was stealing not only my dances but all my beautiful dreams?
Finally she came out. I trembled all over. Cold perspiration appeared
on my temples. I shut my eyes. When I reopened them I saw there on the
stage one of my contemporaries who, some time before, in the United
States, having borrowed money from me had neglected to repay it. She
had kept right on borrowing, that was all. But this time I had made up
my mind to force her to give back what she had taken from me.
Presently I ceased to want to do anything of the sort. Instead of
further upsetting me the sight of her soothed me. The longer she danced
the calmer I became. And when she had finished her “turn,” I began to
applaud sincerely and with great joy.
It was not admiration that elicited my applause but an entirely
opposite feeling. My imitator was so ordinary that, sure of my own
superiority, I no longer dreaded her. In fact I could gladly have
kissed her for the pleasure that her revelation of inefficiency gave me.
After the performance, when we were in the manager’s presence, M.
Marchand was then the man, I let him know how I felt, through the
intermediation of Mr. Stein, who acted as interpreter.
The hall by this time was empty. There were only six of us on the
stage; M. Marchand, his wife, the second orchestra leader, M. Henri
Hambourg, Mr. Stein, my mother and I.
“Ask M. Marchand,” I said to Mr. Stein, “why he has engaged a woman
who gives a feeble copy of my dances when you wrote him from Berlin to
propose his talking with me.”
Instead of translating my question my “interpreter” replied:
“Are you really so sure of yourself? Have you forgotten that you have
been proposing to dance at the Opera? Perhaps he knows about it.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I replied. “Put the question to him just the
same. And besides, this man doesn’t know anything.”
I learned afterwards that M. Marchand spoke English and understood
it as well as Mr. Stein and I. He must have had great difficulty,
that evening, in checking a longing to laugh. As a matter of fact he
restrained it perfectly, for we were unable to detect it, and we did
not discover that he was familiar with Shakespeare’s language.
Mr. Stein forthwith translated my question.
“I engaged this dancer,” replied M. Marchand in French, “because the
Casino de Paris is announcing a serpentine dance and because I cannot
afford to let them get ahead of me.”
“But,” I asked, “are there other dancers of this sort at Parisian
theatres?”
“No. The one at the Casino has broken her engagement. But for my part
I had already engaged your imitator. As you see, she is meeting with
no great success, and I fancy that you will hardly achieve it either.
Nevertheless, if you care to give me a rehearsal I am at your service.”
“Thank you. You would like me to give you a rehearsal so that a thief
may steal some more of my dances!”
But my agent urged me so strongly to show the manager what my dances
were like, especially as compared with those of my imitator, that I
decided to do so.
I put on my robes, one after the other, and began to dance. The
orchestra was composed of a single violin, and for illumination I had
only the footlights.
When I had finished the manager made me come into his private office
and proposed to engage me then and there. I was to make my appearance
as soon as the other dancer had ended her engagement.
“No,” I declared. “If I come to you this woman will have to go.”
“But,” he said, “I have engaged her. She cannot leave until the end of
her agreement.”
“You have only to pay her for her performances and she will go.”
He objected then that lithographs, newspaper advertisements and other
things had been prepared for her, and that, if she stopped dancing, the
public might protest.
“Very well. In that case I will dance in her place, under her name,
with her music, until you have arranged everything for my debut.”
The next day he paid my imitator and she left the theatre.
That same evening I took her place and I was obliged to repeat her
dance four or five times.
Then we set ourselves at work seriously upon rehearsals for my debut,
which was announced to occur a week later.
After I had danced twice under my imitator’s name the manager of the
Folies-Bergère took me to the office of the Figaro.
I knew well that from the point of view of advertising this was an
excellent idea, but I did not know until long after that my definite
engagement had depended on the impression I created there. I have
not forgotten that I owe my entire career to the memorable success I
achieved on that occasion.
Eight days later the general rehearsal occurred, which ended only at
four o’clock in the morning, and still I had been unable to complete my
programme, comprising five dances: 1, the serpentine; 2, the violet; 3,
the butterfly; 4, a dance the public later called the “white dance.” As
a finale I intended to dance with illumination from beneath, the light
coming through a square of glass over which I hovered, and this was to
be the climax of my dances. After the fourth number my electricians,
who were exhausted, left me there unceremoniously.
I was unwilling to make my appearance without my last dance, but, in
the face of my manager’s threat to cancel our contract, I finally
yielded.
Next day I was able, nevertheless, to rehearse this fifth dance, and
at the time of the performance everything was ready for my initial
appearance.
The enthusiasm of the audience grew progressively while I danced.
When the curtain fell after the fourth dance, the applause was
deafening and the music that served as prelude to dance number five
could not be heard. Upon the manager’s order the curtain was raised
again and again, and the plaudits continued to deafen us. I had to
yield to the inevitable; it was impossible, and useless, to keep on
dancing. The four dances, with the encores, had lasted forty-five
minutes and, despite the stimulus of great success, I had reached the
limit of my strength.
I looked at the manager and asked:
“How about the last one?”
“We don’t need it. Those you have just danced have been enough to stir
the audience up. Don’t you hear the cheering?”
A moment later we were surrounded by a great crowd and I was almost
dragged to my dressing-room.
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FLAME
_Photo_ _Lafitte_]
From that day on I had adventure after adventure. Not until long
afterward was I able to get the benefit of my fifth dance. Some years
later I initiated at Paris the dance of the fire and the lily, and that
once again at the Folies-Bergère. I remember an ovation very similar to
that at my first appearance. This time, however, I was no longer an
unknown performer, as in 1892. I had numerous Parisian friends in the
house. Many of them came upon the stage to congratulate me, and amongst
them, Calvé. She took me in her arms, kissed me and said:
“It’s wonderful! Loie, you are a genius.”
And two big tears coursed down her cheeks. I have never seen Calvé
prettier than at that moment.
Well, that is the story of my first appearance in Paris.
VI
LIGHT AND THE DANCE
Since it is generally agreed that I have created something new,
something composed of light, colour, music, and the dance, more
especially of light and the dance, it seems to me that it would perhaps
be appropriate, after having considered my creation from the anecdotal
and picturesque standpoint, to explain, in more serious terms, just
what my ideas are relative to my art, and how I conceive it both
independently and in its relationship to other arts. If I appear to be
too serious I apologise in advance.
I hope that this theoretical “essay” will be better received than a
certain practical essay that I undertook, soon after my arrival in
Paris, in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
Notre Dame! The great cathedral of which France is justly proud was
naturally the objective of one of my earliest artistic pilgrimages, I
may say of the very earliest. The tall columns, whose shafts, composed
of little assembled columns, rise clear to the vaults; the admirable
proportions of the nave; the choir, the seats of old carved oak, and
the railings of wrought iron--this harmonious and magnificent pile
impressed me deeply. But what enchanted me more than anything else
was the marvellous glass of the lateral rose windows, and even more,
perhaps, the rays of sunlight that vibrated in the church, in various
directions, intensely coloured, as a result of having passed through
these sumptuous windows.
I quite forgot where I was. I took my handkerchief from my pocket, a
white handkerchief, and I waved it in the beams of coloured light,
just as in the evening I waved my silken materials in the rays of my
reflectors.
Suddenly a tall imposing man, adorned with a heavy silver chain, which
swung from an impressive neck, advanced ceremoniously toward me, seized
me by the arm and led me toward the entrance, directing a conversation
at me which I appreciated as lacking in friendliness although I did not
understand a word. To be brief he dropped me on to the pavement. There
he looked at me with so severe an expression that I understood his
intention was never to let me enter the church again under any pretext.
My mother was as frightened as I was.
Just then a gentleman came along, who, seeing us completely taken
aback, asked us what had happened. I pointed to the man with the chain,
who was still wrathfully surveying us.
“Ask him about it,” I said.
The gentleman translated the beadle’s language to me.
“Tell that woman to go away; she is crazy.”
Such was my first visit to Notre Dame and the vexatious experience that
my love of colour and light caused.
When I came to Europe I had never been inside an art museum. The life
that I led in the United States had given me neither motive nor leisure
to become interested in masterpieces, and my knowledge of art was
hardly worth mentioning. The first museum whose threshold I crossed was
the British Museum. Then I visited the National Gallery. Later I became
acquainted with the Louvre and, in due course, with most of the great
museums of Europe. The circumstance that has struck me most forcibly in
regard to these museums is that the architects have not given adequate
attention to considerations of light.
Thanks to this defect I get in most museums an impression of a
disagreeable medley. When I look at the objects for some moments the
sensation of weariness overcomes me, it becomes impossible to separate
the things one from another. I have always wondered if a day will not
come when this problem of lighting will be better solved. The question
of illumination, of reflection, of rays of light falling upon objects,
is so essential that I cannot understand why so little importance has
been attached to it. Nowhere have I seen a museum where the lighting
was perfect. The panes of glass that let the light through ought to be
hidden or veiled just as are the lamps that light theatres, then the
objects can be observed without the annoyance of the sparkle of the
window.
The efforts of the architect ought to be directed altogether in that
direction--to the redistribution of light. There are a thousand ways
of distributing it. In order that it may fulfil the desired conditions
light ought to be brought directly to pictures and statues instead of
getting there by chance.
Colour is disintegrated light. The rays of light, disintegrated by
vibrations, touch one object and another, and this disintegration,
photographed in the retina, is always chemically the result of
changes in matter and in beams of light. Each one of these effects is
designated under the name of colour.
Our acquaintance with the production and variations of these effects is
precisely at the point where music was when there was no music.
In its earliest stage music was only natural harmony; the noise of
the waterfall, the rumbling of the storm, the gentle whisper of the
west wind, the murmur of the watercourses, the rattling of rain on
dry leaves, all the sounds of still water and of the raging sea, the
sleeping of lakes, the tumult of the hurricane, the soughing of the
wind, the dreadful roar of the cyclone, the crashing of the thunder,
the crackling of branches.
Afterwards the singing birds and then all the animals emitted their
various sounds. Harmony was there; man, classifying and arranging the
sounds, created music.
We all know what man has been able to get from it since then.
Man, past master of the musical realm, is to-day still in the infancy
of art, from the standpoint of control of light.
If I have been the first to employ coloured light, I deserve no special
praise for that. I cannot explain the circumstance; I do not know how I
do it. I can only reply, like Hippocrates when he was asked what time
was: “Ask it of me,” he said; “and I cannot tell you; ask it not and I
know it well.”
It is a matter of intuition, of instinct, and nothing else.
Sight is perhaps the first, the most acute, of our senses. But as we
are born with this sense sufficiently well developed to enable us to
make good use of it, it is afterward the last that we try to perfect.
For we concern ourselves with everything sooner than with beauty. So
there is no reason for surprise that the colour sense is the last to be
developed.
Yet, notwithstanding, colour so pervades everything that the whole
universe is busy producing it, everywhere and in everything. It is a
continued recurrence, caused by processes of chemical composition and
decomposition. The day will come when man will know how to employ them
so delightfully that it will be hard to conceive how he could have
lived so long in the darkness in which he dwells to-day.
Our knowledge of motion is nearly as primitive as our knowledge of
colour. We say “prostrated by grief,” but, in reality, we pay attention
only to the grief; “transported with joy,” but we observe only the joy;
“weighed down by chagrin,” but we consider only the chagrin. Throughout
we place no value on the movement that expresses the thought. We are
not taught to do so, and we never think of it.
Who of us has not been pained by a movement of impatience, a lifting of
the eyebrows, a shaking of the head, the sudden withdrawal of a hand?
We are far from knowing that there is as much harmony in motion as in
music and colour. We do not grasp the facts of motion.
How often we have heard it said: “I cannot bear this colour.” But have
we ever reflected that a given motion is produced by such and such
music? A polka or a waltz to which we listen informs us as to the
motions of the dance and blends its variations. A clear sparkling day
produces upon us quite a different effect from a dull sad day, and by
pushing these observations further we should begin to comprehend some
more delicate effects which influence our organism.
In the quiet atmosphere of a conservatory with green glass, our actions
are different from those in a compartment with red or blue glass. But
usually we pay no attention to this relationship of actions and their
causes. These are, however, things that must be observed when one
dances to an accompaniment of light and music properly harmonised.
Light, colour, motion and music.
Observation, intuition, and finally comprehension.
Let us try to forget educational processes in so far as dancing is
concerned. Let us free ourselves from the sense that is ordinarily
assigned to the word. Let us endeavour to forget what is understood by
it to-day. To rediscover the primitive form of the dance, transformed
into a thousand shapes that have only a very distant relationship to
it, we shall have to go back to the early history of the race. We then
get a notion what the origin of the dance must have been and what has
made it what it is to-day.
At present dancing signifies motions of the arms and legs. It means
a conventional motion, at first with one arm and one leg, then a
repetition of the same figure with the other arm and the other leg. It
is accompanied by music, each note calls for a corresponding motion,
and the motion, it is unnecessary to say, is regulated rather by the
time than by the spirit of the music. So much the worse for the poor
mortal who cannot do with his left leg what he does with his right leg.
So much worse for the dancer who cannot keep in time, or, to express
it better, who cannot make as many motions as there are notes. It is
terrifying to consider the strength and ability that are needed for
proficiency.
Slow music calls for a slow dance, just as fast music requires a fast
dance.
In general, music ought to follow the dance. The best musician is he
who can permit the dancer to direct the music instead of the music
inspiring the dance. All this is proved to us by the natural outcome of
the motives which first impelled men to dance. Nowadays these motives
are forgotten, and it is no longer considered that there should be a
reason for dancing.
In point of fact the dancer on hearing a piece of new music, says: “Oh,
I cannot dance to that air.” To dance to new music, the dancer has to
learn the conventional steps adapted to that music.
Music, however, ought to indicate a form of harmony or an idea with
instinctive passion, and this instinct ought to incite the dancer to
follow the harmony without special preparation. This is the true dance.
To lead us to grasp the real and most extensive connotation of the word
dance, let us try to forget what is implied by the choreographic art of
our day.
What is the dance? It is motion.
What is motion? The expression of a sensation.
What is a sensation? The reaction in the human body produced by an
impression or an idea perceived by the mind.
A sensation is the reverberation that the body receives when an
impression strikes the mind. When the tree bends and resumes its
balance it has received an impression from the wind or the storm. When
an animal is frightened its body receives an impression of fear, and it
flees and trembles or else stands at bay. If it be wounded, it falls.
So it is when matter responds to immaterial causes. Man, civilised and
sophisticated, is alone best able to inhibit his own impulses.
In the dance, and there ought to be a word better adapted to the thing,
the human body should, despite conventional limitations, express all
the sensations or emotions that it experiences. The human body is ready
to express, and it would express if it were at liberty to do so, all
sensations just as the body of an animal.
Ignoring conventions, following only my own instinct, I am able to
translate the sensations we have all felt without suspecting that they
could be expressed. We all know that in the powerful emotions of joy,
sorrow, horror, or despair, the body expresses the emotion it has
received from the mind. The mind serves as a medium and causes these
sensations to be caught up by the body. In fact, the body responds to
these sensations to such an extent sometimes that, especially when the
shock is violent, life is suspended or even leaves the body altogether.
But natural and violent movements are possible only in the midst of
grand or terrible circumstances. They are only occasional motions.
To impress an idea I endeavour, by my motions, to cause its birth
in the spectator’s mind, to awaken his imagination, that it may be
prepared to receive the image.
Thus we are able, I do not say to understand, but to feel within
ourselves as an impulse an indefinable and wavering force, which urges
and dominates us. Well, I can express this force which is indefinable
but certain in its impact. I have motion. That means that all the
elements of nature may be expressed.
Let us take a “_tranche de vie_.” That expresses surprise, deception,
contentment, uncertainty, resignation, hope, distress, joy, fatigue,
feebleness, and, finally, death. Are not all these sensations, each
one in turn, humanity’s lot? And why can not these things be expressed
by the dance, guided intelligently, as well as by life itself? Because
each life expresses one by one all these emotions. One can express even
the religious sensations. Can we not again express the sensations that
music arouses in us, either a nocturne of Chopin’s or a sonata of
Beethoven’s, a slow movement by Mendelssohn, one of Schumann’s lieder,
or even the cadence of lines of poetry?
As a matter of fact, motion has been the starting point of all effort
at self-expression, and it is faithful to nature. In experiencing one
sensation we cannot express another by motions, even when we can do so
in words.
Since motion and not language is truthful, we have accordingly
perverted our powers of comprehension.
That is what I have wanted to say and I apologise for having said it at
such length, but I felt that it was necessary.
VII
A JOURNEY TO RUSSIA--A BROKEN CONTRACT
Soon after I had made my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère a
Russian manager, in accordance with an arrangement with my Parisian
manager, M. Marchand, asked to engage me, and I signed with him for St.
Petersburg.
My engagement was for the following spring.
At the end of the winter, in April, on the very day on which we were to
leave for Russia, my mother tottered and would certainly have fallen if
I had not been there to support her. I asked what was the matter. She
didn’t know, but for some time she had been suffering. She went to bed,
saying:
“I cannot go. But you take the train so as not to disappoint your
people, and I will follow you to-morrow morning.”
I was unwilling, however, to leave her in such a condition. The manager
of the Folies-Bergère, who had acted as intermediary between the
Russian manager and myself, had come to the station to say good-bye.
When he saw that I had missed the train he came to our house and
“showed off.” Meantime, I had called in a local physician, who could
not tell me what was the trouble with my mother. As he was French I
understood only that she was very ill. My mother’s condition grew worse
and I made up my mind not to leave her.
Next day M. Marchand returned, and this time with representatives of
the police. They compelled me to dress myself and then took me down
to the station, where, almost by main force, they put me on the train
along with my electricians.
Despite my explicit resolutions of the night before, there I was on my
way to Russia!
At the first stopping-place I left the train and boarded one which took
me back to Paris. I found my mother much worse, and I begged the doctor
to mention my name to no one.
I had engaged a nurse to watch over my mother. For two days I hid
whenever anyone came, to such an extent did I feel myself in the hands
of the Philistines.
When the train arrived at St. Petersburg and the electricians
discovered that I was not there, more trouble ensued.
The Russian manager wired Paris, and I was unable to keep my secret any
longer. This time, taking advantage of my ignorance both of the law and
of the French language, they threatened to arrest me and imprison me if
I did not start for Russia at once. All that was under the pretext
that I had taken money in advance. I was actually accused of being a
thief.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER AND HER MOTHER
_Photo_ _Falk_]
This whole scene took place in my mother’s presence. We were both
nearly dead with fright. My mother begged me to go. With my heart full
of bitterness, and my eyes sore from crying, I allowed myself to be
dragged away a second time and placed in the train.
After my departure a young Englishwoman, whom I had met only once or
twice, came to call at our _appartement_, and finding my mother very
ill, went, on her own initiative, and summoned an English physician,
Dr. John Chapman, who had attended us before, and whom she had met at
our house. I had not called him because I supposed that the physician
whom I had engaged would be just as competent to cure my mother
sufficiently for her to be able to go with me to St. Petersburg.
Dr. Chapman arrived just at the moment when the French physicians (the
doctor who was attending my mother had called three of his colleagues
into consultation) had decided to give her a soporific on the ground
that she was dying of pneumonia and that nothing could save her. The
English doctor offered to attend my mother, and the Frenchmen retired
when they learned that he was our regular physician.
Dr. Chapman inquired after me, and when he was informed about what had
happened wired me all along the line, at each station where the train
was scheduled to stop. He maintained that they ought never to have let
me go.
Just as I reached the Russian border the telegram was brought to me:
“Return at once. Your mother has very little chance of recovering.”
This was the first news to reach me since my departure, forty-eight
hours before. It was six o’clock in the morning and still dark. I was
in bed in the sleeping car and it was cold, as it can be cold only in
Russia.
The conductor knew no English and I spoke no language but my own. I was
unable to make him understand that I wished to know when I could leave
the train and return to Paris. I dressed myself hastily, packed my
things helter skelter and, when the train arrived at the next station,
I alighted with all my baggage. What a bare and desolate spot! It was a
little station, with hardly a platform. Away the train went rumbling,
leaving me there in that wilderness. What was I to do? I had no idea.
I banged on the door of the wooden hovel that served as a station. It
was closed. For a long time, a very long time, shivering with cold,
grief and anguish, I walked up and down in the darkness like a caged
beast. Finally a man appeared out of the night. He swung a lantern,
which made a little round spot of light in the gloom. He opened the
door and I followed him into the hut. I presented myself at the
ticket office and tried to make him understand that I wanted a ticket
for Berlin. I offered him French currency. He handed it back to me. I
managed to understand that he would take only Russian money and also
that the train that would get me back to Berlin was not due for three
or four hours. Then I waited for day to break, hoping that perhaps some
one would come who could help me. Towards nine o’clock some people
arrived and among them I noticed an old fellow in whom I recognised the
traditional Polish Jew, a money-lender I was sure, with his long black
coat, his big round hat, his beard and his crafty smile.
I went to him and asked if he knew any English.
He did not know a word.
He tried to speak French and then German, but I failed to understand
what he said. I succeeded in making him understand that I wanted to go
to Berlin, and that the railway employee would not accept my French
banknote. This bill of a thousand francs and a little ready money were
all I had with me.
My interpreter took possession of the thousand francs, secured a ticket
for Berlin for me and then disappeared for the purpose of changing
my bill. I did not think of following him, although he bore my whole
fortune away with him.
The man was a thief. He never came back. I realised in an ecstasy of
fright, when the train arrived, that there I was without money enough
to purchase a ticket from Berlin to Paris. At the first station I
telegraphed to some acquaintances whom I had met in Berlin, but on whom
I could hardly count and who very likely were not at the German capital
just then. I begged them, at all hazards, to come to the station and
bring me a little money so that I could continue my journey.
At this point begins the strange part of my adventure. I was alone in
my compartment when we crossed the Russian border. Weighed down with
dejection, I sat on the carpet of the carriage, with my head resting
heavily on the woodwork, crying as if my heart would break. At the
first stop a priest entered. Although I had quickly raised myself
and wiped my face with my handkerchief, he saw at once that I was in
trouble. He came and sat down opposite to me, and I noticed by his
expression that he was disturbed by my suffering. Tears again flooded
my cheeks and I told him that my mother was dying in Paris. He repeated
the words “mother” and “ill” in German. He extended his hand to bid
me not to speak for a minute. He closed his eyes and I looked at him.
Everything subsided within me. I awaited for a miracle. The miracle
took place.
After ten minutes, which seemed to me an age, he opened his eyes and
said to me in German:
“No, no, your mother will not die.”
I understood what he said, catching the words “mother” and “not.” The
frightful sense of oppression that was torturing me disappeared. I
perceived that his words were not in vain, that he spoke the truth and
that my mother was not going to die. I stopped crying, feeling sure
that now everything would come out all right.
Presently he left me, and I understood, from his manner of speaking,
that he was trying to give me courage and hope.
When he was no longer there my fears returned, and I found myself again
as unhappy as before. I seemed to see my mother stretched before me in
death. I saw once more the horrible men who dragged me to the station.
I hated them wildly, and I fell into convulsive tremblings, which shook
me from head to foot.
In this condition I reached Berlin. Luckily my friends were at the
station. Before my arrival they had even telegraphed to Paris to learn
the news. A reply had come to them that my poor mother was hovering
between life and death. I still had twenty-four hours of waiting and
anxiety.
When I arrived in Paris I perceived at once the beautiful white beard,
the pale and weary face of Dr. Chapman, whose tall form rose above the
crowd. He took me in his arms, and said:
“She is still alive. Come.”
In the carriage he gave me this advice:
“Enter the room and speak to your mother just as if you had never gone
away. Your presence will save her.”
And that is what happened. From the moment of my return she began to
improve. But this illness left her very weak. She had a first attack of
paralysis and her trouble gained imperceptibly upon her, leaving each
day less hope of her recovery.
She was destined, without ever being restored to health, to die in
Paris in February, 1908.
In Russia they started a long lawsuit against me for not having kept
my agreement, and before it was ended I lost, including other offers,
which I could not accept without my electrical apparatus and my
costumes that were held as security, fully 250,000 francs. During my
second season at the Folies-Bergère, when, through the solicitude of M.
Marchand, my dressing-room was always filled with flowers by reason of
the distinguished visitors who came to see me and to whom the directors
would offer champagne, an attachment was put upon my receipts and we
often had hardly enough to eat. But for the manager’s wife, who at
times sent us things to eat in a basket, I should often have danced on
an empty stomach, and have sipped champagne in my dressing-room without
having had anything to eat at home.
My work on the stage was so fatiguing that when I had finished
dancing the mechanicians would carry me to my _appartement_, which
was connected with the theatre. I continued this work for a whole
season without being sufficiently well fed to keep up my strength,
and being all the while in an _appartement_ the sanitation of which
was defective. Therein, I am certain, lay one of the reasons for the
progress of my mother’s illness. My health, too, was affected to such
an extent that I am no longer able to endure fatigue as I once endured
it.
However, it all happened as a result of circumstances, and I have no
wish to blame anybody.
The manager of the theatre had given me this _appartement_ and had had
it arranged specially for me in order that I might not be obliged to go
out into the street, heated with dancing.
Since then I have never returned to Russia, for every time that a
journey to that country was mentioned my poor mother trembled with
fright, and there was never any question of my undertaking it.
This adventure at least caused me to believe in one thing--inspiration.
For if the priest in the railway compartment was not inspired, then
what was he?
VIII
SARAH BERNHARDT--THE DREAM AND THE REALITY
I was scarcely sixteen years old. I was then playing _ingenue_ roles
on the road, when on the theatrical horizon there appeared the
announcement that the greatest tragedienne of modern times, Sarah
Bernhardt, the most distinguished of French actresses, was about to
come to America! What an event! We awaited it with feverish curiosity,
for the divine Sarah was not a human being like the rest of us. She was
a spirit endowed with genius.
The circumstance which made my heart throb and caused me to shed tears
copiously was that I was uncertain of being able to see this wonderful
fairy of the stage. I knew beforehand that there would be no seat for
one so insignificant as I was. The newspapers were printing column
upon column about her, and I read everything that I could get hold
of. The papers said that the seats were all bought up, and that not
a hundredth part of those who wanted to see her would achieve their
ambition. The box office was besieged by speculators. All that, alas!
meant that there was scarcely any hope for me. I do not know whether
Sarah had visited America before, for I had all along been on the road
with little travelling companies in the Western States. So far as I was
concerned this was positively her first visit.
At last the famous day arrived. A steamer, with delegations and an
orchestra aboard, went down the bay to meet her. All that impressed me
greatly. I saw in it genuine homage rendered to genius. She had come at
last. She was here. If I could only see her, even from a distance--from
a great distance!
But where and how? I did not know, and I kept on reading the papers,
fairly intoxicating myself with the articles describing her. It seemed
magic, unreality, a fairy tale.
Finally she gave her first performance. The public and critics appeared
to rave over her,--absolutely to rave.
The actors and actresses of New York circulated a petition, begging her
to give a matinee in order that they might honour her and observe her
glorious art.
Wonder of wonders, she accepted! My mind was quickly made up.
Very recently come to New York, my mother and I were strangers in the
big city. But fortunately I had plenty of courage without knowing it.
When I learned that Sarah was going to play for the benefit of her
fellow-artists, I said to my mother: “Well, now, I am going to see her.”
“There are so many famous artists in New York,” my mother replied, “how
do you suppose that you can get seats?”
I had not thought of that, so I jumped up, saying:
“Then I had better hurry up.”
“How will you go about it?” asked my mother.
I paused a moment to think the matter over.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but in some way or other I must see her. I
am going to her theatrical manager.”
“But he won’t receive you.”
Of that I had not thought, either. But I would not hear of any
obstacles. Besides, out West I had never been treated that way. I was
not yet fully aware that people in the West were simpler and more
approachable than in New York.
The objection, therefore, did not appear to me a formidable one, and I
started out with my mother, who always went with me and who obeyed me
in everything without my having the faintest idea but that I was the
obedient one.
Here we were, then, on our way; and, after half an hour’s walking, we
reached the theatre. The manager had not yet arrived. We sat down to
wait for him. A lot of people came in. Some of them stayed for a while.
Others went away at once.
They were all excited, busy and looked worried. What were they after?
Were they going to get all the tickets? The crowd kept increasing to
such an extent that I saw my poor tickets grow smaller and smaller in
perspective and then disappear altogether. And I had counted so much on
them!
Would the manager never come?
At last a great commotion was heard. A group of gentlemen rushed
by like the wind and, without stopping to see what was going on,
disappeared behind a door on which was written “No admission.”
None of us knew what to do after that. Everybody stared at everybody
else. Most of those who were cooling their heels in the ante-chamber
were men. My exhausted nerves would not let me linger any longer, and I
said in a whisper to my mother:
“I am going to knock on the door.”
She turned pale, but I had no choice in the matter. This was the only
way to come to something, even if I ran the risk of heart failure from
an organ that was beating so loudly that I thought it was on the point
of bursting.
My head was in a whirl and I saw nothing for a moment. Nevertheless I
approached the door and gave a gentle knock.
I felt as if I had committed a crime, this little rap resounded so
loudly in my ears. A command to enter that sounded lugubrious was the
response, and I opened the door.
Mechanically I came forward and found myself in the middle of a group
of gentlemen without knowing which of them to address. Overcome with
embarrassment I stood erect in the centre of the room while everybody
looked me over. Then I summoned all my courage and I said, to the whole
circle:
“Gentlemen, I should like to see the manager of this theatre, if you
please.”
When I stopped speaking my teeth began to chatter so loudly that I bit
my tongue.
A gentleman who looked more important than the others came forward and
said:
“What do you want of him, little girl?”
Good heavens, must I speak again before all these people? To my own
astonishment, I heard, as if it were somebody else’s, my own voice
saying in a firm tone:
“Well, it is this way, sir. I am an artist, and I should like to come
with my mother to the matinee that Sarah Bernhardt is going to give us.”
“Who are you, and where are you playing?”
At this point the tone lost its assurance, while the voice replied:
“You probably don’t know my name, sir. It isn’t well known here. It’s
Loie Fuller. I have come from the West, to try and find an engagement.
I’m not playing anywhere just now, but I think that--it is of no
importance anyway--and that perhaps you will let me just the same--see
her--if I beg it of you.”
“Where is your mother?”
“There, outside,” and I pointed to the door.
“The pale lady, with the sweet expression?”
“Yes, sir. She is pale because she is afraid.”
“And you, are you afraid, too?”
The firm voice reappeared.
“No, sir.”
He looked at me, a slightly ironical smile played on his lips, and he
said:
“Then you think that you are an artist?”
His remark cut me to the quick, but I felt that I must endure
everything. I experienced, nevertheless, a great temptation to cry.
My assurance reasserted itself.
“I have never thought that,” I replied. “But I should like to become an
artist, some day, if I am able.”
“And that is why you are anxious to see the great French tragedienne
play?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I was thinking only of my longing to see her,
and it was on that account that I came here.”
“Very well, I am going to give you seats for yourself and your mother.”
“Oh, thank you, sir.”
The manager drew a card from his pocket, wrote something on it and
handed it to me. It was a permit for us to see Sarah Bernhardt play!
I looked at the card and looked at the manager. He smiled and I smiled.
He extended his hand. I extended both of mine. While he held my hands
he said to me:
“You have my card. Come and see me. Perhaps I can find you an
engagement, little girl.”
There was a new pleasure, and not a vain pleasure, for this man’s
promise was one that was destined to be fulfilled.
“Thank you, thank you very much, sir.”
I went out blinded with tears of happiness, which I could no longer
restrain, and, rejoining my mother, I left the theatre.
“What’s the matter, my dear Loie? What did they say to make you cry so?
What is it?”
“Mamma, mamma, I have a ticket to see her--to see her!”
“Oh, I am so pleased, my dear.”
“And I have a seat for you, too!”
The great day came. We were seated, my mother and I, in the orchestra
stalls. About us there were American artists. In the boxes were the
managers of all the New York theatres and their wives. The house was
filled to overflowing. The three bangs announced the rising of the
curtain. Silence ensued and the play began, I did not understand a word
and no one around me, I fancy, did, either. But everybody awaited the
culminating moment. _She_ appeared, and there was an almost painful
silence in the great overcrowded hall. Every one held his breath. She
came forward lightly, appearing barely to brush the earth. Then she
stopped in the middle of the stage, and surveyed this audience of
actors.
Suddenly pandemonium was let loose. Madness fell upon the house, and
for a quarter of an hour she stood thus, prevented from playing by the
din of the theatre, as if she were the audience. She looked round,
interested, inspired and moved. This tumultuous crowd was playing with
magnificent sincerity a part of indescribable enthusiasm.
Finally silence was restored. Sarah Bernhardt came forward and began
to read her lines. I believe I understood her soul, her life, her
greatness. She shared her personality with me!
The stage settings were lost on me. I saw and heard only her.
There was frantic applause, encore after encore following each scene.
Then the curtain fell on the final scene, only to be followed by a
great uproar. Then the audience went out slowly, as if regretting to
leave the surroundings.
While I went away a golden voice--_the_ golden voice--seemed still
to resound in my ears, uttering words which I could not understand:
“Je t’aime! je t’aime!” They were like the notes of a crystal bell
resounding in my consciousness.
Who would have thought at that time that the poor little Western girl
would one day come to Paris, would appear there on a stage, in her turn
before an audience trembling with enthusiasm, and that Sarah Bernhardt
would be in the house for the purpose of applauding this little Western
girl, just as the little Western girl had applauded her to-day?
* * * * *
I was dancing at the Folies-Bergère. At a matinee some one came to
say that Sarah Bernhardt was in a box with her little daughter. Did I
dream? My idol was there. And to see me! Could this be possible?
I came on to the stage and looked over the audience, which was filling
the hall above and below. Standing quietly, in my great white robe, I
waited for the end of the applause.
I danced and, although she could not know it, I danced for her. I
forgot everything else. I lived again through the famous day in New
York, and I seemed to see her once more, marvellous as she was at the
matinee. And now here was a matinee to which she had come for the
purpose of seeing me--_my_ idol, to see _me_.
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF THE LILY
_Photo_ _Lafitte_]
I finished.
She rose in her box, she leaned forward toward me to applaud--and to
applaud again. The curtain rose several times. My brain was in a whirl.
Was this real? Was it? Was it she?
It was my turn to become the audience and, as I saw only her,
_her_ audience. And that is how she played to my profound, my perfect
gratification, the part of the whole house.
* * * * *
One day a friend took me to Sarah Bernhardt’s house. It was a real
visit, but it seemed to me nevertheless like a dream. I was scarcely
able to speak or to breathe. I could hardly presume to look at her. I
was in the presence of my divinity.
Later she invited me to have lunch with her, as a result of my begging
her to be photographed by one of the best photographers of San
Francisco, who had crossed the ocean expressly to take Sarah Bernhardt
in her wonderful studio. She had consented. I had taken my compatriot
to her, and she had posed for him very graciously. He was so pleased
with his good luck, so grateful, the dear fellow!
Sarah had asked me to come and lunch with her on the day when he was to
show her the proofs.
Exactly at noon I made my entrance. Very shortly after she appeared in
the great studio, took me in her arms and imprinted a kiss on each of
my cheeks. All that was so simple, so natural and yet so extraordinary.
We had luncheon, Sarah at the end of the table, with her back to the
window, seated in a magnificent chair, as it were in some carved
throne, whose back overtopped her head like a halo of gold. Sarah was
my divinity once more. I was seated on her right. There were several
other invited guests whose names I have forgotten, my mind was so full
of her. Her voice rang in my ears. I understood not a word of what she
was saying, but every syllable made me thrill.
All at once the photographer was announced. Sarah bade him enter. He
was a nice elderly gentleman of about sixty, with pretty white curly
hair. He looked well pleased with himself. He approached Sarah, and
placed in her outstretched hands a packet of proofs of the photographs
he had taken. She looked at them slowly, one by one. Then, her golden
voice broke forth in shrill notes that gave me a sinking feeling. I
did not know what she was saying, but I saw her tear the photographs
into a thousand and one shreds and hurl them at the feet of my
fellow-countryman. He knew no French. Pale and disturbed, he asked me
to translate what Sarah said. But she gave me no time to reply. She
cried, this time in English: “Horrible! Horrible!”
“What does she say?” he asked, making a trumpet of his hand about one
ear.
Thank Heaven, he was deaf! I signalled to him to bend down toward me so
that I might whisper in his ear.
“She says these portraits are unworthy of your work. She has seen some
of your really wonderful photographs. You will have to come again and
make another attempt.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” he replied with a joyful smile on his lips.
“She is quite right. The photographs are not good. But the weather was
to blame. It wasn’t bright enough, and these are interiors. We shall
have to make efforts several times in order to succeed. Do you want to
make another appointment?”
I promised, but without hope, and solely because out of kindness I had
to promise.
He grasped my divinity’s hand and mine, and went away.
Sarah was destined on that day to cause me a happy surprise. She
consented, when I asked it of her, to sit again, and I was sorry that
the old man was not there, she was so grieved on account of the pain
for which she was responsible. She really was grieved, and that made
me love her all the more. Her temper, too keen, too glowing, had just
resulted in a ruinous flare-up. And now here was this same fiery
disposition manifesting itself sweet and kind.
One day in London I went to a banquet of fifteen hundred covers given
in honour of Sarah Bernhardt. I attended as one of those who were
personally acquainted with her, and who were to be seated at her table
in the centre of the great hall. She arrived nearly an hour late.
She said how sorry she was to have kept us waiting, and blamed her
coachman for the delay.
At the end of the banquet the president made a long speech. Sarah, in
reply, spoke some harmonious sentences in English. From a distance I
once more surveyed my divinity. I heard her say, in my mother tongue,
that she was happy, and I still loved her.
* * * * *
One day in Paris, very recently, Sarah Bernhardt’s business manager was
announced. I received him, all the while wondering why my divinity’s
manager had come to see me. He explained that Madame Sarah Bernhardt
wanted to know if I could give her certain hints on the subject of the
lighting of her new play, “La Belle au Bois Dormant.” I was ill enough
to be in bed, but I arose to receive him. I promised him that I would
go to see Sarah the next day. The arrangement was inaccurately reported
and she understood that I was coming the same day. When she learned
that she could count on me only for the next day, she declared that I
had fallen ill very suddenly.
This thing wounded me to the quick, for I still loved Sarah. Next day
I went to her house and she saw that I was suffering, for I could not
utter a word. She took me in her arms and called me her treasure. That
was enough. Everything that I had was at her service, and I would have
done anything or given anything to help her. I did remain at rehearsal
to familiarise myself with what she needed in the way of illumination.
In her turn she came to my theatre after the performance to see some
lighting arrangements that I had installed especially for her play,
and with the sole object of pleasing her. She brought some people with
her. For her sake I received them all cordially. Among them was her
electrician. Each time that I took the trouble to show something to
Sarah the electrician would be overheard saying:
“But I can do that. That is easy to copy. Oh, I can do that, too.
That’s nothing at all.”
As always during my performances the spectators were in darkness,
and one of my friends; who had seated herself near Sarah to hear the
admiring things she would say; was staggered by what she did hear. And
in going away Sarah thanked me as she would thank anybody, overwhelming
me with pretty speeches.
On the morning of the next day the managing director of the theatre
at which I was dancing announced in the newspapers--without having
consulted me--that Sarah Bernhardt had come to see Loie Fuller’s
lighting effects with reference to the new play by Mm. Richepin et
Cain, “La Belle au Bois Dormant.”
I sent some one to Sarah to ask which lighting apparatus she would
like.
And this was her reply.
“My electricians would go on a strike if they thought I was about to
associate any one with them. They say they can do whatever I need
to have done. Besides, it is only a matter of a gauze curtain and a
revolving lamp. A thousand thanks to Loie.”
Am I alone to blame for my disillusionment? I had pictured something
incomprehensible because Sarah Bernhardt is an inspired artist.
But she is also a woman, and it took me twenty years to find it out.
She is a woman, a fact I shall now never be able to forget, but she
remains my divinity just the same.
IX
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
One evening at the Folies-Bergère two cards were brought to me. On one
of them was engraved the name of the Minister of Finance of the island
of Haiti; on the other, that of M. Eugène Poulle, also of Haiti.
What business could these two gentlemen have with me? The minister
probably wanted me to come and dance at his house.
The gentlemen entered, and I recognised in one of them my Jamaica exile.
But that calls for an explanation.
In 1890 I was engaged by an actor named William Morris for a tour of
the West Indies. I was to be star of the company, of which he was the
leading man.
One cold winter morning we sailed out of New York harbour, and hardly
were we at sea before we fell victims to a fearful storm. For two days
and two nights the captain remained on the bridge, and it looked as
if we were destined to sink. My mother and I had never undertaken an
ocean voyage before. We were terribly sick and, shut up in our cabin,
we supposed that at sea things always went this way. All that we
regretted was that we had ever made the trip. Certainly no one would
ever induce us to do so again.
When we arrived in southern waters and the waves were still, we
appreciated what an extraordinary gale it was that had so shaken us up.
Some days later we landed at Kingston, Jamaica.
My mother, Mr. Morris and I took rooms at the same hotel, the Clarendon.
We seemed to be the only guests there. We took our meals in a great
hall on the first floor, upon which all the rooms opened.
Yet we were not the only guests, for suddenly a gentleman appeared on
the scene.
At first we paid no particular attention to him, but gradually
we observed that he seemed to be very much depressed. As it was
excessively warm he was always dressed only in his pyjamas. This is
a detail that I happen to remember, for Mr. Morris also wore nothing
else. The heat was insufferable, but I have always liked heat by reason
of the chronic tendency to colds that I have had since my birth.
One day I asked my mother and Mr. Morris to invite the newcomer to our
table. I discovered with regret that conversation between us would be
impossible because he spoke only French and we only English. By means,
however, of pantomime and much good will on both sides, we managed to
make him understand our intention.
Our polite intercourse consisted in nods and smiles and bows and in
making our hands and arms go this way and that way. As soon, however,
as we had become acquainted our relations were at once established on a
very comfortable basis.
He went with us to the theatre every time we played, that was three
times a week, and we took our meals together. During the three months
in which we were in Jamaica, I never took the trouble to find out
his name. As a general principle I am always less concerned with my
friends’ names than with my friends themselves.
After Jamaica we returned to New York and I hardly ever thought of
Kingston again.
Two years later, when I was dancing at the Folies-Bergère, an elegant
gentleman, accompanied by a friend, asked for an interview. He turned
out to be our Jamaica companion and his friend the Minister of Finance
of Haiti.
In the meantime he had learned English and was able to tell me that
the period at which we had seen him at Kingston was only a few months
after the breaking out of a revolution in Haiti. Our friend’s father,
one of the leading bankers of the island, had been assassinated, and he
himself had been obliged to escape in a small boat. He had been rescued
at sea and brought to Kingston. All the while he was in Jamaica he had
been trying to communicate with his friends, by way of New York, and he
had not been able to learn whether his mother, his brothers, and his
sisters were dead or alive.
A short time after our departure he got into communication with his
family and discovered that affairs were beginning to improve. He
returned home and found everybody safe and sound, except, of course,
his unfortunate father.
After having told me this story, which explained his sadness at the
time of our first meeting, he asked me:
“How can I be of service to you? You seem to have everything that
success can bring, but there is one thing I can do, and one which, I am
sure, will give you great pleasure. I can present you to my old friend,
Alexandre Dumas,” he added, with a pretty smile.
“Really,” I said, overcome with joy. “Are you really willing to
introduce me to the author of _La Dame aux Camélias_?”
“Yes, indeed,” he replied.
That was worth a dozen visits to Jamaica, and I thanked him effusively.
A few days later he came to take me to Marly, where the great writer
lived.
During the journey in the railway carriage M. Poulle taught me a French
phrase, which I was to say when Dumas extended his hand: “Je suis très
contente de serrer votre main” (“I am delighted to grasp your hand”).
And of course, when the psychological moment arrived, I phrased the
words all askew. Instead of taking one of his hands I grasped both
and emphatically and with stress on each word, I said: “Je suis très
contente de votre main serrée” (“I am delighted with your close-fisted
hand”). I did not understand his reply, but my friend later on told me
that Dumas had replied: “My hand is not close-fisted, but I know what
you mean, child. My friend Poulle has related to me his experiences in
Jamaica, and I open my heart and my hand in your service.”
The gesture he made is the only thing which I remember, for all the
rest was Greek to me.
From this time on a great friendship, a great sympathy, subsisted
between us, although we were unable to understand each other. Among
the important men whom I have met few have exercised upon me a charm
such as that of Dumas. At first a little cold, almost stiff in
manner, he became, on further acquaintance, exquisitely affable, and
of a gallantry suggestive of the fine manners of the old days. At
first his words continued obscure to me, but gradually, as I became
familiar with the French language, I fell under the irresistible
charm of his conversation, with its beautifully logical and rounded
phrases, enamelled as it was with sparkling flashes of wit. Dumas had
practically two voices, two styles of speech; one which he employed in
ordinary circumstances, as in asking certain questions, or in giving
orders; the other the one in which he discussed a subject that greatly
interested him.
Very tall, with a somewhat dreamy look, he would survey you for a long
time, whilst deep in his eyes there gleamed a light of profound and
intelligent good will.
His hands, well modelled and large, were very handsome, and he had an
almost feminine love of being well groomed.
At breakfast one morning some one asked me if I was very fond of
M. Dumas, and I replied in French, which I still understood only
imperfectly: “I am very fond of her.”
Dumas, convulsed with laughter, said something that I did not get, but
which was translated for me thus:
“He says that he has been taken for a whole lot of things, but never
before for a woman.”
Dumas smiled again and kissed my hand, a circumstance that I have
always remembered.
Another time we were at Marly-le-Roi and the Count Primoli took a
number of photographs of us and of the garden, in which only a single
yellow rose was left.
Dumas picked this flower and gave it to me.
“My dear sir,” I said, “it is the last one in the garden. You ought not
to give it to me.”
M. Poulle, who served as translator, rendered this reply:
“Oh, very well. Since it is so valuable, what are you going to give me
in exchange?”
I replied that a woman could give only one thing for so pretty a
thought as that suggested by the rose.
“And that is?” he asked.
I drew his face toward mine and kissed him.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER AND ALEXANDRE DUMAS
_Photo_ _Ellis_]
Just at this moment Count Primoli took a snap-shot of us, a picture
which I have never had the pleasure of owning. I have, however,
something better than a picture. I have kept the rose.
Conversing with Dumas I learned from him some things about which
I shall think as long as I live. One day, still with M. Poulle’s
assistance as interpreter, we were speaking of _La Dame aux Camélias_
and of the Demi-Monde and the character of the women who compose it. He
then said something that I shall never forget:
“When we find one of God’s creatures in whom we perceive nothing good,
the fault is perhaps in us.”
Another day I was driving two pretty Arab ponies that Dumas had bought
for his grandchildren. We had reached the bottom of a hillock, and the
horses were eager to climb it as quickly as they could.
He said to me:
“Hold them back. They will have to become of age before they will learn
that one should not go up hill on the gallop.”
When I asked, “What is it that urges them to run this way,” he replied:
“They are like men. They want to hurry and get through with whatever
annoys them.”
Once Alexandre Dumas came to call on me at the Grand Hotel, and from
that time on the people about the house looked upon me as a being
apart, for it was commonly said that Alexandre Dumas paid as few visits
as the Queen of England.
The last time that I saw him was in Paris, Rue Ampère, where he lived
in a magnificent _appartement_.
I remember that there was with him a certain M. Singer, an old friend
of Dumas’, who asked him if he was “indiscreet” and who rose to take
leave. Dumas took him by the arm and extending his free hand to me,
said:
“Indiscreet! Certainly not. All my friends ought to know Loie and be
fond of her.”
When I took leave of him he kissed me on the forehead and gave me a big
photograph, enlarged after a portrait of him when he was a child. On
the photograph were these words:
“From your little friend Alexandre.”
And this is one of my most precious souvenirs.
X
M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION
In America we have a great actress named Modjeska. She is one of the
most interesting women I have ever met. She is a Pole, exiled from her
own country and married to Count Bozenta. Although she has a title
and is very much of an aristocrat by birth, she is possessed of those
conceptions of liberty that are generally attributed to the Nihilists.
It was, indeed, on that account that her own estates and those of her
husband were confiscated, and they themselves driven into exile. That
must have occurred about 1880 or a little before.
Then they found their way to free America, established themselves
there, and the countess decided to go on the stage.
To her great astonishment, and everybody else’s, it was soon evident
that the sacred fire burned in her. She became a great actress. In
America we are as fond of her as if she were a daughter of our own land.
Shortly after my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère a lady asked
to see me. It was the Countess Wolska, likewise a Pole, and a friend
of Modjeska’s. She, too, was living in exile with her father, who had
dared to write a revolutionary book called _The Polish Jew_.
It was through the kindness of Countess Wolska that I made the
acquaintance of M. and Mme. Flammarion. I shall never forget the
impression that Camille Flammarion made upon me the first time the
countess took me to his house, Rue Cassini. He wore a lounge jacket
of white flannel, edged with red lace. He had a veritable forest of
hair, which formed as it were a bonnet around his head. This was so
remarkable that I could not repress an exclamation. Mme. Flammarion
then told me that she frequently had to cut some of the locks, for her
husband’s hair grew with such vigour that he was tormented by it. Then
she showed me a cushion on a divan, and remarked, “There is where I put
his hair after cutting it.”
To give an accurate idea of Camille Flammarion’s style of wearing his
hair, you have only to multiply Paderewski’s head of hair by twelve.
At the time of my performance of Salome at the Athénée M. and Mme.
Flammarion came one evening to my dressing-room, after the performance,
along with Alexandre Dumas. As there were many other people there I
did not notice at first that the two men did not speak to each other.
Finally I became aware of it and I asked, in great surprise, “Is it
possible that the two most distinguished personalities in Paris are
not acquainted with each other?”
“It is not so remarkable,” replied Dumas, “for, you see, Flammarion
dwells in space, and I am just a cumberer of the earth.”
“Yes,” said Flammarion, “but a little star come out of the West has
brought us together.”
Dumas began to laugh and said, “That is the absolute truth.”
I joined the conversation and declared that the little American speck
of star-dust was very proud of having the honour and pleasure of
bringing together two such bright stars of France.
Few people understand that Flammarion is not content with being an
eminent astronomer. He counts among his assets some discoveries of the
greatest interest, most of which have no relation to astronomy.
One of them in particular interested me, as was natural.
Flammarion wanted to know whether colour has a certain influence on
organisms. How greatly such studies interest me is easily appreciated,
since I am rabid on the subject of colour.
He began his investigations by observing plants. He took half-a-dozen
geraniums, all of the same size, and put each of them in a little
conservatory with glass of different colours. One of the conservatories
had panes of white glass, and one geranium finally he planted in the
open air.
The result was surprising, as I can testify from having seen them.
One of the plants, a very fragile one, had expanded itself entirely at
great height. Another was very small but thick set. Still another had
no leaves. A fourth had only a small stem, some leaves and no branches.
Each plant was different according to the colour that had shaded it,
and even the one he had planted under the white glass was not quite
normal. Not one was green, a fact which proves not only that colour but
that glass has an action upon the plant. The only pretty plant was the
one that had been planted in the open air. This one was normal.
Continuing his experiments on the human body, Flammarion had panes of
different colours set in the windows of his observatory. Each person
who was sufficiently interested in his experiences not to be afraid of
the annoyances of sitting still in light of a green colour for an hour
or two, was able to feel the varied influences that colour conditions
induce in the system. It is a fact, for example, that yellow causes
enervation and that mauve engenders sleep.
I asked M. Flammarion if he thought that the colours with which we are
surrounded have an effect on our characters, and he replied:
“There is no doubt, is there, that each of us is better satisfied
with his appearance in one colour than in another? That is proved
by experience, for everybody will tell you: ‘I love this colour,’ or
‘I don’t care for that one.’ Isn’t it also said that such and such a
colour ‘suits’ or ‘doesn’t suit’ on such and such a person? All that
appears to prove that colour must exert some sort of influence, moral
or physical, or perhaps both simultaneously.”
It is only when you become intimately acquainted with Flammarion that
you appreciate what a deep thinker he is.
[Illustration: M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION, TAKEN AT JUVISY
_Photo_ _Ellis_]
In all his work he is ably seconded by his wife. She, too, is a deep
thinker and a woman of remarkable initiative. She is one of the charter
members of the Association for Disarmament, and she gives a great
deal of time to other good works; yet these activities do not prevent
her from being one of the simplest of women and most accomplished of
housekeepers.
It may be interesting to describe briefly Flammarion’s country house.
They live in a château at Juvisy, in the very place where Louis XIII.
first conceived the project of building a royal palace. The terracing
was finished and the park laid out when there occurred a slight
earthquake, and Louis XIII. renounced his plan, turning his attention
to Versailles. But from that day to this no other earthquake has ever
occurred there. The remarkable situation of Juvisy merits a visit from
any one who loves natural beauty. The panorama that is unfolded from
it is one of the loveliest in France.
The château, which antedates Louis’ project, is still in existence.
There it was that Napoleon stayed for a while when on his way to
Fontainebleau. He held a council in the shade of a venerable tree,
which, from its superb height, dominates the grassy hill in front of
the château. Under the tree were installed the table and the stone
bench, which are still shown, in order that the Emperor might hold a
council of those who were faithful to him, and be free from the prying
eyes of inquisitive persons. Behind the château is the famous lane, a
great avenue completely covered by the branches of two rows of trees,
where according to tradition Napoleon passed some hours in congenial
company.
The château once became the property of an amateur astronomer. He
had an observatory built on it, and on his death he bequeathed this
wonderful estate to a man whom he had never met. This man was Camille
Flammarion.
I once attended a varnishing day with Camille Flammarion. I wanted to
do him the honour of going dressed in my best, and so I bought for the
occasion a costume which, I think, must have been very pretty. To go
with the gown I selected a hat with long ribbons hanging behind.
M. Flammarion appeared in a smoking jacket of brown velvet and a soft
hat.
Everybody in this gathering of specialists and artists was acquainted
with him. There was whispering to the effect that Loie Fuller was with
him, and soon we had around us more people than there were in front of
any single picture. I fancied that we looked very swell, but I was told
later on that we were followed principally because of our reputations,
because never a woman was arrayed as I was that day, and because M.
Flammarion’s garb was not exactly conventional.
Our success was such that one enthusiast even cut the ribbons from my
hat, probably to keep them as a souvenir of a spectacle that he thought
memorable.
In other circumstances I made a display that was not less memorable
though confined to a smaller number of spectators.
One evening I came home at eight o’clock and found my house full of
people. I had quite forgotten that I was giving a dinner party of about
forty covers. My chef had asked me, that very morning, if I would be
good enough to arrange for hiring some chairs and tables. He would take
care of the dinner without my being bothered with it further. But, as
I did not see a spare minute ahead of me that day, I requested him to
see to the accessories as well as to the menu itself, a thing that he
was very glad to do. The chairs, the tables and the dishes arrived. He
had made no terms regarding the accommodation, and had supposed that
I would be there to receive what was necessary and pay the bill. I had
not returned. They waited until seven o’clock and the chef decided as
my representative to pay the bill himself. He was asked to give three
hundred francs. The price seemed to him exorbitant, and he did not dare
to pay the bill without my consent. He was, however, so perplexed, so
afraid of seeing my dinner party a dead failure for want of chairs for
the guests to sit on, that he concluded he would advance the money.
Then he discovered that he had not enough with him, and the men from
the caterer’s went back with their chairs, tables, etc.
The chef was at his wit’s end. He did not know what to do until a
magnificent inspiration came to him. He went and told his troubles
to all my neighbours, who hastened to offer him chairs, tables,
dishes, glasses of every style and make. I made my entrance just as my
neighbours were sending in their goods, and while the invited guests
were beginning to arrive. Everybody turned to and helped lay the
tables, and I believe that I have never been present at a pleasanter
affair.
Some of the tables were high, others low. The chairs added to the
appearance of a general mix-up. Table cloths were sadly lacking, as
were knives and glasses. My chef did wonders in making us forget that
the banquet arrangements were not absolutely correct. The oddest thing
of all was that that evening, having met some friends, I had come
within an ace of not being present at my own dinner. In short, I had
forgotten all about it.
This dinner, at which there were among the guests Rodin and Fritz
Thaulow, was given in honour of M. and Mme. Flammarion.
XI
A VISIT AT RODIN’S
Most people are not acquainted with the temple of art at Meudon, which
the great sculptor, Auguste Rodin, has built near his house. The temple
is situated at the top of a little hill, and the outlook embraces one
of the most beautiful prospects around Paris.
The view to be obtained from Flammarion’s observatory at Juvisy made a
great impression on me. The view, however, which one has from Meudon,
though it is less sublime, stirs one more perceptibly. Juvisy simply
impresses through its atmosphere of grandeur, its calm, its suggestion
of the past.
At Meudon, on the other hand, everything seems to aspire towards a new
life, towards new times. One feels oneself leap for joy, like the dog
that precedes one in quest of the master of the house. This is the
impression that you get when you reach the gate, after having walked
along an avenue that is not very wide and is lined with newly-planted
trees. You arrive at a fence, a very ordinary fence, that incloses
nothing and which is there, I fancy, only to prevent wandering animals
from getting in and those of the household from getting out. The moment
you draw the latch, which causes a bell to resound in the distance, a
dog rushes wildly from the house and gives you a most joyous welcome.
Then Rodin appears in his turn. In his rather unwieldy body and his
features, which are a trifle heavy, great kindliness and sweetness of
disposition are evident. He walks slowly. His gestures are kindly, his
voice kindly. Everything about him breathes kindliness.
He receives you by extending both hands, very simply and with a
friendly smile. Sometimes a movement of the eyes and some words to
which you pay no great attention may hint that the moment has perhaps
not been well chosen for a visit, but his instinctive good nature gets
the upper hand. He places himself by your side and shows you the path
that leads to the top of the hill.
The panorama seems so extraordinary that you pause to take it in.
The temple stands at your right, the landscape spreads itself before
your feet, and if you turn your glance to the left you note a forest of
ancient trees.
Then we look at Rodin. He breathes deeply in silence while he admires
the landscape. He surveys everything with such an air of tender
interest that you realise he is passionately attached to this spot.
His temple, too, is wonderful, so wonderful that this accessory easily
becomes the central feature in the landscape.
Rodin opens the temple door gently and then in a friendly way bids you
enter. There truly silence is golden. Words are powerless. We know that
we are unable to express in words some of our sensations, unless as a
preliminary we have experienced them profoundly.
One ought to see Rodin at Meudon to appreciate him at his true value.
One should see the man, his surroundings and his work, to understand
the breadth and depth of his personality.
The visit of which I am writing occurred in April, 1902. I had
taken with me a well-known scholar--he has since died under tragic
circumstances, having been run over by a carriage--and his wife, who
was not less scholarly than he. They had never been at Meudon before,
and they were not acquainted with Rodin. They were just as simple as
the master himself. When I introduced them not a word passed. They
grasped each others’ hands, and looked at each other. Then, when we
left, they grasped each others’ hands again, and held them for some
little time. That was all.
Yet, no, that was not all. In the looks they exchanged there was a
world of intelligence, appreciation, comprehension. Rodin, with his
peculiar figure, his long beard, and his eyes that gaze right through
you, was matched, as regards simplicity, by this husband and wife. The
former, brown, tall, and thin, the latter, slight and blonde, had alike
a single aim, that of not making themselves conspicuous.
In the temple there was silence--a silence profound, admiring, almost
religious, the effect of which I should like to be able to reproduce.
Rodin led us to a work of which he was particularly fond. Motionless
and mute, the two visitors looked at the masterpiece before them. Rodin
in his turn looked at them, fondling the marble and awaiting from them
some sign of approbation or of comprehension, a word, a movement of the
head or the hand.
Thus, from work to work, from room to room--for there are three studios
in Rodin’s temple--we made our way, slowly, silently, our artistic
pilgrimage taking on something of the significance of a communion.
In the two hours we passed in the temple hardly ten words were spoken.
When the inspection of the three studios was finished, a gentleman and
a lady walking across the garden came towards us, and Rodin, in a very
simple way, mentioned the names of M. and Mme. Carrière, the great
painter and his wife. M. Carrière and his wife are also as free from
ostentation as Rodin himself and the pair of scholars who accompanied
me.
We left. In the carriage that took us back I asked my friends if they
could describe their impressions, their sensations. They replied in the
negative. Yet on their faces there were evidences of great happiness,
and I knew they had appreciated and understood Rodin. These two people
are known throughout the world. They are the greatest chemists of our
day, peers of the celebrated Berthelot. Since then the husband, like
Berthelot, has gone to his last rest and the wife carries on their
common activities. I would give a good deal to be able adequately to
express the admiration I feel for her, but out of deference to her own
desire for simplicity and self-effacement I must not even mention her
name.
So far as I myself am concerned, I may say that Rodin is, like the
great master, Anatole France, one of the men in France who have
impressed me most strongly.
Anatole France has been so kind as to say some things about me at the
beginning of this volume--words exquisitely expressed, and of which,
although far too laudatory, I am naturally very proud.
I am not less proud of Rodin’s good opinion. This opinion I have
noted in a letter the great sculptor wrote to one of my friends.
Not for reasons of vanity do I reproduce it here, but because of
the simplicity of its form and in grateful remembrance of the great
pleasure it caused me.
“Mme. Loie Fuller, whom I have admired for a number of years, is, to my
mind, a woman of genius, with all the resources of talent,” so wrote
the master from Meudon on January 19, 1908.
“All the cities in which she has appeared, including Paris, are under
obligations to her for the purest emotions. She has reawakened the
spirit of antiquity, showing the Tanagra figurines in action. Her
talent will always be imitated, from now on, and her creation will be
reattempted over and over again, for she has re-created effects and
light and background, all things which will be studied continually, and
whose initial value I have understood.
“She has even been able, by her brilliant reproduction, to make us
understand the Far East.
“I fall far below what I ought to say about this great personality; my
language is inept for that, but my artistic heart is grateful to her.”
Less grateful, certainly, than I am to the man who wrote these lines. I
am, nevertheless, happy to have been able to bring together on the same
page the names of two masters of form who have influenced me profoundly
and whom I revere affectionately.
XII
M. GROULT’S COLLECTION
One beautiful summer afternoon I was driven to a house in the Boulevard
Inkermann at Neuilly. From afar off I heard the sound of hunting-horns,
and I wondered in what part of Neuilly it was possible to follow the
hounds. That was certainly a novelty.
The carriage stopped.
We were at the house of the charming Rachel Boyer, of the
Comédie-Française, who had invited me to a matinee. Before reaching
the house I crossed a great garden, still pursued by the sound of
hunting-horns that were clearly coming nearer. While I was wondering
again where the huntsmen could be riding I reached the house.
The mistress of the establishment received me with the greatest
cordiality. Rachel Boyer is a charming soul. She beams like a ray of
sunlight.
She saw me pricking up my ears with curiosity, for I continued to
wonder where the huntsmen were hidden.
She smiled over and over again and with an air of mystery.
I could not restrain myself from asking her where the sounds I had
heard came from, and whether a hunting party was in progress in her
garden.
She began to laugh openly, and said:
“There isn’t any hunting. These buglers I engage to bid my guests a
harmonious and cordial welcome.”
“But I don’t see them anywhere. It is really very pretty.”
“From the moment that I have given you pleasure I have succeeded.”
On that day I made the acquaintance of two persons who were then
prominent in the first rank of Parisian notabilities. One was a man of
the world, refined, delicate, spiritual, gallant, and possessed of the
rare and subtle talent of talking on any subject without in any way
involving himself in difficulties. This was M. Cheramy. The other was
an older person, with expressive features under thick grey hair. His
manner was crabbed and gruff. He expressed himself in phrases that were
jerky and brief, but full of natural wit. It was evident that he took a
real pleasure in talking to us.
We three, M. Cheramy, he and I, were discussing artistic questions
when, in a pause of our conversation, we perceived that we were
surrounded by a considerable audience. The effect was magical. Two of
us became silent, but M. Cheramy was equal to the situation and, with
perfect calmness, put everyone at ease.
We were then in the salon. The grey-haired gentleman caught my
attention as well as that of Rachel Boyer, who was talking in the midst
of a group some distance away. He made us understand with signs that he
wished to speak with us, apart from the others. We slipped away to find
out what he wanted.
I expected--it goes without saying, considering his mysterious
manner--something extraordinary, and, from the point of view of our
companion, I was not far wrong.
“Perhaps!” he said abruptly, “you would like to look at my collection.”
While he pronounced these two words, “my collection,” an air of
self-respect shone on his face. Since then I have recalled this
experience and have understood it. But I was not at all affected by
it then, and I kept wondering what kind of queer character this was.
He seemed to me a little out of his mind. I answered him, therefore,
without disturbing myself:
“Thank you, sir. I have just seen the Louvre; and I think that is a
very pretty col--”
Rachel Boyer broke into my sentence smiling, but with a look as if she
were somewhat scandalised. Then she assured the old man that we both
were appreciative in the highest degree of the marked favour that he
had shown us.
Thereupon we made an appointment, and the little old man left us.
“Why does he want me to see his collection,” I asked Rachel Boyer.
“Why?” she replied. “For no other reason undoubtedly than that he
particularly admires you. For, you see, his collection is the most
complete of its kind, and in his eyes sacred. I cannot tell you how
surprised I was to hear him invite you. Only very rarely, as a matter
of fact, does he permit anyone to look at his masterpieces.”
“Really! But who is this gentleman? What does he do?”
“What! You don’t know him! Yet I introduced him to you.”
“You did. But I failed to catch his name.”
Rachel Boyer’s voice bore a tone of deep respect as she said:
“Why, that is M. Groult!”
For my part I was conscious of no new respect, for to tell the truth,
I was no further along than before. I did not remember ever having
heard his name, and I said so, in all honesty, to Rachel Boyer, who was
greatly astonished.
It looked as if I had committed a sacrilege.
She then informed me, that M. Groult was a man who had made an immense
fortune in business, a fact that did not leave me gasping with
admiration. She added that he was spending a great part of his fortune
upon pictures.
“M. Groult,” said Rachel Boyer ecstatically, “has brought together the
most beautiful treasures of art that a man has ever possessed.”
That was very interesting, unquestionably, but I kept thinking,
quietly, that such a hobby could hardly leave leisure to a man, however
rich, to do the good he might do with his money. I believe I should
have been much more impressed if I had heard her speak of some of his
philanthropies.
I finally concluded, however, that out of regard to my hostess, I
should have to believe the collection to be so colossal that everything
else was insignificant in comparison with it.
Some days later Rachel Boyer took me, with another of her friends, to
see M. Groult’s famous collection. The collection was far from being as
interesting to me as the collector, who, by reason of his personality,
appeared to me to be much more curious than his works of art.
He led us at first in front of a great show case and, with refined and
reverential gestures, disclosed to us the most marvellous imaginable
collection of butterflies. There were 18,000 of them. He pointed out
four in particular, and told us that he had bought the whole lot for
the sake of those, and he added, to my great confusion, that that was
because they looked like me.
“These colours are you,” he said almost crudely. “Just see what
richness. That rose, that blue, that’s you. It is really you.”
While he was saying that, he kept looking at me just as if he were
afraid I might suspect his sincerity and that I should mistake his
statements of fact for compliments.
In simple language he expressed the most intense artistic convictions.
One felt them to be innate; they came from the depths of his being, and
they transformed him to such a degree that I saw him at the moment a
transfigured soul.
He took us to another part of the hall, and showed us several panels of
something that looked to me like coloured marble, highly polished.
“Look,” he said softly. “There you are again. I bought these panels,
for they again are you.”
And turning them toward the light, he caused all the colours of the
rainbow to radiate from their surfaces.
“Is it marble?” I asked, in order to have something to say. I felt
worried by all this admiration.
He looked at me almost scornfully, and replied:
“Marble, marble, no indeed. These are slabs of petrified wood.”
I supposed that we had seen M. Groult’s collection, for there were
enough rooms in it to fit out a little museum. I discovered, however,
that we had seen nothing at all. M. Groult opened a door and bade us
enter a large gallery where sixty-two Turners awaited our attention.
He raised his forefinger to impose upon us a silence that no one had
any intention of breaking. Then he took us from one picture to another,
indicating what in his view constituted the charms of each canvas.
Finally he came near to me and then, embracing the hall with one big
sweep of the hand, said:
“These are your colours. Turner certainly foresaw you when he created
them.”
Next he showed his collection of engravings, etchings, and prints,
representing the most glorious dancers. All these, he said, were to
reveal to me what I based my art upon when I danced. He pointed to a
celebrated frieze from Pompeii and then, looking at me fixedly, said:
“Look at that. Those are your motions.”
He drew back to present the pose, and he reproduced one of the motions
very seriously in spite of his rheumatism, which hardly allowed him to
stand on his legs.
“Now,” said he, “I am going to show you the work of art I am most
attached to.”
And, in a large glass-covered recess, he showed me the thing which gave
him special pleasure. It was a basin in which a fountain was playing,
while around it numerous turtle doves were fluttering.
“It is these cooing birds that make you happy,” I cried. “It is too bad
that everybody cannot observe this beautiful and natural picture, side
by side with your wonderful collections.”
“Allow my collections to be seen?” he cried. “Never. No one would
understand them.”
I realised then to what an extent he cherished each one of these
objects, which ought, according to his view, to be regarded only with
devotion. In each visitor he saw only an inquisitive person and nothing
more. From his standpoint the creators of these masterpieces had
entrusted them to him in order that he might care for them and protect
them from profane inspection.
“I should like,” he said in his mystic way, “to burn them every one the
night before my death if I could do it. It is discouraging, is it not,
to abandon them to idle curiosity and indifference?”
M. Groult gave me a new perception of the nature of art and its
value. He was acquainted with all the circumstances that had attended
the birth of his masterpieces. He spoke of them both as a man of
sensibility and as an art critic.
As he bade us adieu he asked me to come again.
One day the curator of the museum at Bucharest came to Paris, and a
common friend brought him to my house. Among other things he spoke to
me of M. Groult’s famous collection, which no one was permitted to see.
I promised him to do my best to secure an invitation for him and I
accordingly wrote to M. Groult.
He replied at once, asking me to bring the museum curator to see him.
When the curator expressed his gratitude to M. Groult, he replied:
“It is she whom you ought to thank. I do not care to have strangers
here, but she is part of my collection. You will find her here
everywhere. Just look.”
He then told the story of the butterflies, adding:
“This is nature as no one can paint it exactly. She has succeeded in
it. She is a painter of nature.”
Then he showed the petrified wood and spoke of it, with some difference
of expression, much as he had spoken the first time in my presence.
Finally he begged his visitor to call upon him every time he came to
Paris. As we went away I was obliged to promise to visit him again
soon. But, when I had leisure to do so, M. Groult was already too ill
to receive me and I never saw him again.
I am glad to have known him, for he was an extraordinary man.
XIII
MY DANCES AND THE CHILDREN
Children brought up on fairy tales and stories of adventure, have an
imagination that is easily kindled by suggestions of the supernatural.
From the unearthly appearance of my dances, caused by the light and the
mingling of colours, they ought particularly to appeal to the young,
making them believe that the being flitting about there before them
among the shadows and flashes of light belongs to the unreal world
which holds sway in their lives.
You can hardly conceive of the genuine enthusiasm I have aroused, or,
to express it more exactly, since my personality counts for nothing, of
the enthusiasm my dancing has aroused amongst children. I have only to
go back in memory to see enraptured groups of children, caught under
the spell of my art. I even have literary testimony to this effect,
since I find among my papers this note, signed by one of my friends, M.
Auguste Masure:
“Dear Miss Loie: We have formed a plan of taking the children to see
you at a matinee next week. Our third, the youngest, is a little boy
whom you have never seen. He looks at all your lithographs and always
asks to have them explained. He is only three and a half, but his
brother and sister have so filled his head with Loie Fuller that when
he sees you it will be worth while observing what he has to say.”
If I cite this circumstance it is, let me repeat, because written
testimony is involved--testimony that proves clearly the profound
impression my dances make on children. Here was a little one, three
and a half years old, who was possessed of a desire to see me simply
through having heard my praises sung--in what language one may
conjecture--by two other children.
Here is a story that if not more convincing is more characteristic.
One afternoon the daughter of an architect, very well known in Paris,
had brought her little girl to a matinee in the course of which I came
on. The child, I was told, seemed fascinated and dazed. She did not
say a word, did not make the slightest noise, hardly dared to stir. I
seemed to have hypnotised her.
At the end of the performance the young mother, whom I knew very well,
said to the little girl:
“We are going to see Loie Fuller in her dressing-room.”
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FLOWERS
_Photo_ _Müller_]
A light was kindled in the child’s eyes, and she followed her mother,
clutching at her hand nervously. If the little girl was so visibly
affected it was not at the idea of seeing me, but of being in the
presence of an extraordinary creature, a kind of fairy. The conclusion
of this incident proves that.
The mother and the child found their way to my dressing-room.
An attendant opened the door. She asked them to be seated until I
should be able to receive them. The keenest emotion was still imprinted
on the child’s little features. She must have supposed that she was
going to be taken into some celestial place. She looked round with
restless eyes, surveying the bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, and
seemed to be waiting to see the ceiling or the flooring open suddenly
and permit an entrance into Loie Fuller’s kingdom.
Suddenly a folding screen was drawn and a young woman came forward, who
looked tired and in whose appearance there was nothing supernatural.
With arms outstretched she advanced smiling.
The child’s eyes opened wider and wider. The nearer I came the further
she shrank away.
Quite astonished her mother said:
“What is the matter, dear? This is Miss Fuller, who danced for you so
prettily a few minutes ago. You know you begged me so hard to bring you
to see her.”
As if touched by a magic wand the child’s expression changed.
“No, no. That isn’t her. I don’t want to see her. This one here is a
fat lady, and it was a fairy I saw dancing.”
If there is one thing in the world of which I am incapable, it is
consciously to cause anyone pain, and, with my love of children, I
should never have been happy again if I had caused my little visitor to
be disillusioned. I endeavoured therefore to be equal to the situation,
and I said to the child:
“Yes, my dear, you are right. I am not Loie Fuller. The fairy has sent
me to tell you how much she loves you and how sorry she is not to be
able to take you to her kingdom. She cannot come. She really cannot.
She told me just to take you in my arms and give you a kiss, a good
kiss for her.”
At these words the little one threw herself into my arms.
“Oh,” she said, “kiss the pretty fairy for me and ask her if I can come
again to see her dance.”
There were tears in my eyes as I replied:
“Come as often as you like, my dear little girl. I hear the fairy
whispering in my ear that she would like to dance for you all the time,
all the time.”
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY
_Photo_ _Langfier_]
At Bucharest Princess Marie of Roumania had sent all her children to
see me at a matinee. The royal box was occupied by a chattering and
noisy little regiment of princes, princesses and their friends. When my
turn came to go on the lights were turned down and, in the silence that
ensued, one could hear distinctly, coming from the royal box, the
words:
“Hush. Keep quiet.”
Then, when I appeared:
“Oh, it is a butterfly!”
All this was said in a very high voice. Then I recognised the voice of
the oldest of the princesses, the one who is so remarkably like her
grandmother, the late Queen Victoria. In a tone of the utmost contempt
she declared: “You don’t know what you are talking about. It’s an
angel.”
At each change in the dance the oldest of the little princesses made
some further remark, explaining everything from her point of view, as
if her utterances were authoritative.
Some days later I went to the palace. Princess Marie sent some one to
look up the children. They came in one after the other, as timidly as
so many middle-class children might in the presence of a stranger.
When the princess explained to them that I was the lady whom they had
seen dance at the theatre, the oldest of them did not say a word, but,
despite her careful training, her face said plainly enough:
“You don’t fool me. This woman is telling fibs.”
I should have had to dance for them at the palace to convince them that
it was really I whom they had taken for an angel. This part of the
affair, though already arranged for, was given up at my request. I
wanted to avoid disillusioning these children.
Accordingly, when I danced at the palace the little princes and
princesses were not present at the performance. They came back, on
the other hand, to the theatre, where they were confirmed in their
conviction that the lady whom they had seen with their mother and who
tried to pass herself off as Loie Fuller was an impostor. The eldest of
the little princesses called out so loudly as to be heard all over the
house:
“This time it is really Loie Fuller.”
She pronounced her words with a distinctness that proved clearly that
the subject had been discussed at length among the children, and that
this affirmation was the result of mature deliberation.
M. Roger Marx has two sons, who, when they saw me for the first time,
were respectively four and six years old. The elder took a notion to
dance “like Loie Fuller,” using a table cloth for drapery. I gave him a
robe modelled after one of mine and, before we knew it, the child was
evolving new dances.
The way he expressed joy, grief, ecstasy and despair was admirable. His
memory of me, or rather his memory of my dances, remained so vivid and
epitomised so precisely the conception he had of beauty and of art that
he became a “poet.”
Here are some verses which, two years later, I inspired in this little
boy, and which his mother, Mme. Roger Marx, turned over to me:
Pale vision
A l’horizon
En ce lieu sombre
Fugitive ombre ...
Devant mes yeux vague
Une forme vague,
Suis-je fascine?
Une blanche vague.
En volutes d’argent
Sur l’océan immense,
Elle court follement,
Elle s’enfuit et danse
Protée reste! Ne fuis pas!
Sur la fleur qu’on ne voit pas
Palpite, hésite, et se pose
Un papillon vert et rose:
Il voltige sans aucun bruit
Étend ses ailes polychromes
Et maintenant c’est un arum
Au lieu d’un papillon de nuit....
The little fellow ended by making wax figurines, representing “Loie
Fuller,” works of art that I treasure with great care.
Another curious incident is that of the daughter of Madame Nevada,
the great American singer. The child always called me “ma Loie” and,
after her first visit to the theatre to which she had gone to see
me dance, she tried to imitate me. She was so remarkable that I had
a little robe made for her. Her father, Dr. Palmer, arranged at his
house a magic lantern with variable lights. The little girl danced
and invented strange and remarkable forms, which she called “the birth
of spring,” “summer,” “autumn,” and “winter.” She was able to make use
of various expressions and to combine motions of the arms and the body
harmoniously.
The little dear was so successful among the few intimate friends who
saw her, that Mme. Nevada was obliged to give some recitals in her
luxurious _appartement_ in the Avenue Wagram, so that her friends might
applaud the delightful child. At one of these recitals some Catholic
priests were present, and when they expressed themselves as delighted
by the child’s charm of manner, she said to them quickly:
“Do you like these dances? Then you ought to go and see ‘My Loie.’ She
dances at the Folies-Bergère!”
Here is quite a different impression I once made.
Long before my debut as a dancer, I was a little _ingenue_, and was
playing the burlesque role of Jack Sheppard in the play of that name,
supporting the distinguished comedian Nat Goodwin. The Editor of one
of the principal papers in New York one evening brought his wife and
daughter to the theatre to see me in my popular part.
The Editor’s daughter became very anxious to make my acquaintance.
Her father looked me up and wrote to ask me if he might bring his
daughter, a young person six years old, to call upon me.
I had succeeded so perfectly in taking a boy’s part that the little
girl could not believe but that I really was one, and when she had been
presented to me, she asked:
“Well, why does Jack wear girl’s clothes?”
That was another time when I did not undeceive a little admirer. To-day
she is a fine young woman who has always been a faithful friend of mine.
When I was sixteen years old I made the acquaintance of a young widow
who had two sons, seven and nine years old respectively. The elder fell
in love with me. In spite of everything they could do to take his mind
off it he became worse and worse. He fell behind in his studies and he
broke away completely from his mother’s control. Things came to such a
point that it was necessary to give the child a change of scene. The
widow accordingly left for England with her boy. After a little time
she supposed that he had ceased to think of me.
Nine years passed. In the meantime I had become a dancer and in London
I happened upon the widow and her sons. Forgetting all about my little
admirer’s former passion--he was now a big boy of eighteen--I engaged
him as my secretary.
Some days after he said to me quietly:
“Do you remember, Miss Fuller, that when I was nine years old I told
you that at eighteen I should ask you to be my wife?”
“Yes, I remember it.”
“Well, I am eighteen years old now and I have not changed my mind. Will
you marry me?”
Very lately my admirer has repeated his declaration that he will never
marry. He is thirty years old to-day, and who knows, perhaps the man’s
heart has remained the same as the heart of the boy of nine.
XIV
PRINCESS MARIE
It was the evening of my first appearance at Bucharest.
Some one came to tell me that the Prince and Princess Royal were in the
royal box.
After the performance they sent an officer to tell me how greatly my
dances had interested them. They promised to come again and, as they
wanted their children to see me, they asked if I would not give a
matinee.
I was in the act of putting on my clothes.
It was impossible for me to receive the officer, who accordingly gave
the message from their Royal Highnesses to my maid.
Next day I wrote to Princess Marie to thank her, and proposed to give a
performance at the palace, if that seemed to her desirable.
The reply came without delay. The princess sent for me.
That is called a “court order,” but it came in the guise of a charming
letter, which said that the princess would be very glad to see me if I
was not incommoded by the hour which she set.
When I arrived at the palace I was taken up a great staircase and then
introduced to a little salon, which was like every other little salon
in every other palace. I thought how disagreeable it must be to live in
an atmosphere that has been created by a hundred other people before
your time, and in which nothing really belongs to you. I was engaged in
thinking this when an official opened the door and asked me to follow
him.
What a change!
In a most delightfully arranged room I saw a young woman, tall,
slender, and extremely pretty. The surroundings, the furniture, the
style, all were so personal to the young woman that the palace dropped
out.
I actually forgot where I was, and I fancied myself in the presence of
a legendary princess in a fairy-tale-chamber.
Accordingly the first words I uttered, as I took the hand which the
pretty princess extended toward me, were:
“Oh, how exquisite this is! It is not at all like a royal palace--any
more than you seem like a princess receiving a stranger!”
She began to smile and after we were seated she said:
“Do you think that a princess should always be cold and ceremonious
when she receives a stranger? Well, so far as I am concerned, you are
not a stranger at all. After having seen you in your beautiful dances
it seems to me that I am well acquainted, and I am very glad indeed
that you have come to see me.”
Then she asked if I could secure all my effects in an ordinary hall.
She was thinking of the performance which I was to give at the palace.
I told her that this would be quite possible. Then, and almost without
knowing what I was saying, I murmured: “Heavens, how pretty it is! What
a wonderful view you get from these windows!”
“Yes. It is chiefly on account of this view that I wanted to live here.
The landscape which we overlook reminds me of England; for, as you see,
standing by these windows when I look out I can fancy myself once again
in the dear country in which I was born.”
“Then you still love England?”
“Have you ever met an Englishman yet who loved another country better
than his own?”
“Don’t you love Roumania?”
“It is impossible to live here without loving both the people and the
country.”
She then showed me a big picture. It was her own portrait in the
national Roumanian costume. But on account of her blonde hair and her
fair complexion the contrast with the other Roumanians whom I had seen
was very striking. It seemed that the picture was tinged with sadness,
and I wondered whether the princess would not some day regret her
enforced exile. To me she gave the impression of a lily, planted in a
field of wild poppies.
When we returned to our seats I looked at the princess. I admired her
excellent carriage, her friendly smile.
She showed me a large portfolio in which she had painted some flowers.
One of these pictures represented some Chinese plants drooping in a
melancholy fashion. I could not help looking at the princess as she
turned the page.
“I painted them one day when I was feeling very blue,” she said. “We
all have such days, do we not?”
“Yes, your Highness, but you ought not to have them.”
“Well, let me tell you, there is no one alive who has no cause for
sadness. I am certainly not exempt.”
Then, changing the topic of conversation, she said:
“See these chairs. Do you like them?”
The chairs were exquisite. The princess had painted them. The
upholstery and the woodwork were both adorned with flowers she had
painted. By the fireplace the princess had arranged a little corner
with divans and low seats covered with Liberty silk. The room was huge,
with windows along one side. This row of windows was parallel to a sort
of colonnade, which had been there before the room was transformed by
the princess, and made a kind of corridor. One might have wished it
removed to enlarge the room, but the princess had it now, and, from a
decorative standpoint, she had made the best of it. The ceiling was
inlaid with golden panels. I am not sufficiently versed in architecture
to state to what style this room would be said to belong; but nothing
that I had ever seen before was just like it. It seemed to me to have
originated in the brain of some one who had quite new ideas, for the
arrangement was absolutely original. The room was panelled in blue
faiënce and heavy oriental tapestries.
I write this from memory, five years after my visit, but I am certain
that I have not forgotten a single detail.
Then we spoke of dancing.
“Have you ever danced before my grandmother?” asked the princess.
“No, never. At Nice once I was to have the honour of appearing before
Her Majesty Queen Victoria, when my manager suddenly obliged me to
leave for America. I have always regretted it, for a second opportunity
never offered itself.”
The princess then asked me if the King and Queen of England had seen me
dance.
“No, but I suppose they think they have seen me, for in my little
theatre at the Exposition of 1900, on the days when I was engaged
elsewhere, I was sometimes obliged to be represented by an understudy.
During one of my absences the King and Queen of England, who were then
the Prince and Princess of Wales, took a box to see the little Japanese
tragedienne who was playing at my theatre. That day an understudy was
dancing for me, but the King and Queen probably supposed it was I whom
they had seen.”
“Oh, well, you will have to dance for them some day.”
Then she asked me if I had danced before her cousin, the Emperor of
Germany.
“No,” I answered regretfully.
“Very well, let me know when you will be in Berlin and I will try
to have him go and see you. He loves artistic things, and he is an
accomplished artist himself.”
Later I did dance before the Queen of England, but I was far from
suspecting under what circumstances it would come to pass.
I asked Princess Marie if she had ever been interested in the dances
of the Hindus and the Egyptians, their funeral dances, sacred dances,
dances of death and the rest. She, in her turn, questioned me as to the
methods by which I thought it would be possible to reconstruct these
dances.
“There are very few documents treating of the subject, but it seems to
me that it should be easy, if one put oneself into the state of mind
that prompted the dances in times past, to reproduce them to-day with
similar action and movement. If the custom still existed of dancing at
funerals, a little reflection will show that the dances would have to
suggest and express sadness, despair, grief, agony, resignation and
hope. All this can be expressed by motions and hence by the dance. The
only question is whether the dancer should express the grief she feels
at the loss of a loved one, or if she should reveal to the people who
are in mourning resignation and the hope of a future life. In other
words, pantomime should be a sort of silent music, a harmony of motions
adapted to the situation, for there is harmony in everything--harmony
of sounds (which is music), harmony of colours, harmony of ideas,
harmony of motions.”
We talked for a long time about these dances, and the princess asked me:
“Shall we be able to appreciate pictures of this kind when you come to
dance at the palace?”
I replied that I was thinking of dances of this sort when I wrote to
her, for these reconstructions would naturally interest her beyond what
she had seen at the theatre.
Then the princess asked me a thousand other questions and we were so
absorbed in our conversation that her luncheon waited more than an hour
for her.
The evening when I danced at the palace I supposed that the princess
would be alone, for we had agreed, as I have already explained, that
the children were not to be present at my performance. They were not
present, as a matter of fact, but the princess had invited the King and
the Queen and all their retinue, limiting the invitations strictly to
habitués of the court.
When I saw the crowd of guests, I could not help wondering how they
were going to seat everybody.
We had chosen the dining-hall in which to place an improvised stage,
and I had brought two electricians in order to be prepared, if the
princess wished me to do so, to present one or two of my radiant dances.
The court pianist, in the meantime, had instructed me in some of Carmen
Sylva’s songs. The evening entertainment began with expressions in
pantomime and dance of several of those songs.
It was nine o’clock. At one o’clock in the morning I was still dancing;
but I felt myself so utterly exhausted that I had to stop. The princess
observed my fatigue and came to me.
“What selfishness on our part not to have thought earlier of how tired
you must be!”
“Oh, I am so pleased that it seems to me I could go on for ever, if I
could only get a minute’s rest. You are the one who must be tired.”
Supper had been waiting for a long time, and the performance ended then
and there.
The King asked, I remember, if I could dance “Home, Sweet Home.” I
had never tried it, but it did not seem to me difficult--with the
accompaniment of the exquisite melody--to express the words,
“There’s no place like home.”
[Illustration: DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”]
I had danced that evening Gounod’s _Ave Maria_ some bacchanal dances,
some other dances, based upon slow movements of Mendelssohn’s concertos
for the dances of death, and on Chopin’s _Marche, Funèbre_ for the
funeral dances. My excellent orchestra leader, Edmond Bosanquet, had,
furthermore, composed some perfect music for dances of joy and of
grief. In brief, I must have danced at least twenty times, and we had
ended with the radiant dances, which the King had never seen. Everyone,
it is needless to say, congratulated me in a most charming way, but the
loveliest of all was Princess Marie, who brought me a large photograph
of herself, on which she had written: “In memory of an evening during
which you filled my heart with joy.”
The day before our departure from Bucharest some money, which was to
have been wired me, had not arrived, and I found myself in a genuine
predicament. I had twelve people and several thousand pounds of baggage
to get to Rome, where I was to make my first appearance on Easter Day.
To arrive there in time we should have to take the train next morning.
I went accordingly to the princess, who was the only person whom I knew
in Roumania, to ask her if she would come to my assistance.
I called on her at nine o’clock in the morning. I was taken to the
second storey of the palace, to a room that was even prettier, if
possible, than the one in which I had been received the first time.
The princess received me. She was in her night-robe, and had put on a
dressing-gown of white silk over which her beautiful dishevelled hair
hung. She was still engaged in her toilet when I arrived, but in order
not to make me wait, she bade me come into her little boudoir, where no
one would disturb us. The room, filled with well-chosen first editions,
was in charming taste. Everywhere there were little draped statuettes
on pedestals. Beside the fireplace was a very comfortable corner. In
the midst of all these beautiful objects one might have thought oneself
in a miniature museum.
I asked her what she liked best among all the things there and she
replied, “the rosaries,” of which she had quite a collection. What an
artist she must be to bring together all these beautiful things.
“This is my room,” she said, while we were talking, “in which whatever
happens no one is permitted to bother me. I take refuge here from time
to time, and remain until I feel myself ready to face the world once
more.”
I then told her my troubles. She rang a bell, and gave an order to let
M. X---- know immediately that Miss Fuller would come to see him with
a card from her, and that M. X---- would kindly do everything in his
power to assist Miss Fuller.
I looked at her for some time and then I said to her:
“I should have liked greatly to know you without being aware that you
were a princess.”
“But,” she said, “it is the woman whom you now know and not the
princess.”
And that was true. I felt that I was in the presence of some one who
was really great, even if her birth had not made her so. I am certain
that she would have accomplished great things if she had not found her
career already mapped out for her from the day of her birth in her
father’s palace.
Everyone knows that a princess’ life precludes liberty, and contains
no possibility of breaking with the conventions for the sake of doing
something extraordinary or notable. These chains are so strong that if
one contrives to break them, it generally happens under the impulse of
despair, as a result of irritation and not for the sake of a purely
inspired work.
When I arose to take leave of the princess she kissed me and said:
“If ever I come to Paris I shall call on you at your studio.”
She caused an attendant to accompany me to the master of ceremonies,
with whom I was to go to the bank. There the master of ceremonies
communicated Princess Marie’s order to the effect that I was to be
accommodated in any way I might desire.
The money I needed was advanced in return for a cheque, and I left
Bucharest.
The journey was full of troubles. Vexatious delays occurred. Finally
I arrived at Rome, where my appearance had to be postponed until my
baggage, lost in transit, had been found. Three thousand people, who
had come to my first performance, went away without seeing me. That
certainly was very hard luck. If I had been able to foresee all that, I
should never have ventured to intrude upon the Princess.
In that case I should not have discovered what an admirable woman she
is.
XV
SEVERAL SOVEREIGNS
In the course of my travels about the world, east, west, north and
south, over oceans and across continents, I have had the experience of
seeing or of encountering many persons of distinction, including not a
few sovereigns and members of royal households.
It has seemed to me that it might be interesting to bring together at
this point some of the most typical of the incidents that occur to
me. Just as they come, drawn haphazard from memory, without order or
sequence, and with no thought of literary composition, I am going to
put them simply on paper, one by one.
_How I Failed to see Queen Victoria._
One day at Nice some one came and asked me to dance before Queen
Victoria. She had just arrived on the Riviera to pass the winter
months, as she was accustomed to do every year.
It may well be believed that I was flattered by such a request. I
assented, naturally, and set myself to work making all my preparations
for this important event.
There was a knock at the door. A maid brought a telegram. It was signed
by my manager, and was couched in the following words: “Take train this
evening, to sail day after to-morrow; destination, New York.”
I replied with a message pleading for a delay, for the purpose of
dancing before Queen Victoria.
I received simply the following laconic telegram:
“Impossible. Leave at once. Time is money.”
That’s why I did not dance before Queen Victoria.
_I stop the Queen of the Belgians in the Street._
I was engaged for some performances at Spa. The evening of my first
appearance the Queen and Princess Clementine were in the royal box.
That was a gala evening, one on which the hall was resplendent with
magnificent gowns and jewels.
Everything went off perfectly.
Next morning I went for a walk with my mother. We were crossing the
causeway when a carriage, drawn by two spirited horses driven by a
middle-aged woman, bore down upon us.
Frightened on account of my mother, I threw up my arms in front of the
carriage, which stopped.
The lady allowed us to pass and, while thanking her, I remarked to
myself that a woman ought not to drive such lively horses.
I had forgotten the incident when, shortly after my return to the
hotel, I saw the same carriage go by.
Two gentlemen were talking on the landing near us.
“See. There is the Queen,” said one of them.
It was the Queen whom I had stopped!
_Princely Simplicity._
At the Hague I was asked to give a performance before the Grand Duke
and Duchess of Mecklenburg, Princess Victoria of Schaumburg-Lippe and
their retinue.
The hall was well filled. I had the Philharmonic Society’s orchestra.
This was a gala evening, and in every way a very successful one for me.
Next day on coming down from my room I encountered on the stairway of
the hotel a lady with a very sweet expression, who asked me:
“You are Miss Loie Fuller? Your dances interest me greatly. My husband
has gone out on the beach. Wouldn’t you like to come and talk to
him about your lighting effects. I am sure that would prove very
interesting to him.”
I gladly acquiesced and followed her.
I was delighted to talk to this woman and her husband, who proved to be
a most delightful man. I explained to them all my schemes of lighting
and my dances. I then took my leave and joined my mother, who was
waiting for me.
When I returned to the hotel the proprietor came to me and said:
“You met with great success yesterday, Miss Fuller, and with even
greater this morning.”
“This morning?”
“Yes. Do you know who the gentleman is with whom you have just been
talking?”
“No. Who is he?”
“The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg.”
This same day I boarded a street car.
On the car several people appeared to know me. One lady came and sat
beside me and began to talk.
When we arrived at our destination I asked her if she would not tell me
her name.
“Victoria de Schaumburg-Lippe.”
One evening when I was dancing at the Hague the princess was in the
hall with Major Winslow and others of her retinue. She sent for me, and
asked me to show her one of my robes.
I brought her the robe which I put on for the butterfly dance.
She took the stuff in her hand and said:
“The robe is really wonderful, but it is after all only what you do
that counts.”
I remember that she asked me to sign a photograph for her. And when
I returned to the hotel the manager of the Kurhaus handed to me an
exceedingly pretty watch, on the cover of which were engraved these
words:
“In memory of the performance given for Princess Victoria.”
_The Curiosity of the Archduchesses of Austria._
I was once at the Swedish gymnasium at Carlsbad, where machines with
electrical vibrations shock you from head to foot. I was just about to
dress myself when one of the women of the place came to me, and said:
“Won’t you please return to the hall, and pretend to take the electric
treatment again in order that the archduchesses, who are there, with a
whole crowd of court ladies, may see you?”
I replied: “Tell the archduchesses that they can see me this evening at
the theatre.”
The poor woman then declared to me that she had been forbidden to
mention their Royal Highnesses, and that they had bidden her get me
back into the hall on some pretext or other.
She was so grieved at not having succeeded that I returned to the
machines, and had my back massaged, in order that the noble company
might look at me at their ease, as they would survey an interesting
animal.
They looked at me, all of them, smiling, and while they viewed me I
never turned my eyes away from them.
The odd thing was that they did not know that I knew them. I was,
therefore, as much amused by them, and without their perceiving it, as
they were amused by me.
_How I was not decorated with the Order of the Lion and the Sun of
Persia._
During one of the visits that the Shah of Persia pays to Paris, the
Marquis and Marquise d’Oyley, who were great friends of the Sovereign
and who were very fond of my dancing, brought the Shah to one of my
performances at Marigny.
After my appearance on the stage the Marquis and Marquise, accompanied
by some dignitaries of the sovereign’s retinue, came to my
dressing-room and brought me a Persian flag, which they begged me to
use in one of my dances.
What could I do with that heavy flag? In vain I racked my brain. I
could not discover any way. I could not refuse, and I was unable on the
other hand to convince them that it was impossible to try anything so
impromptu without running the risk of a failure.
More and more perplexed I made my entrance for the last dance. I had
the great flag in my arms. I tried to wave it gracefully, but I did not
succeed. I tried to strike a noble attitude, still holding the flag.
Again I failed. It was a woollen banner and would not float. Finally
I stood stock still, holding the staff upright, in as imposing an
attitude as possible. Then I bowed until the curtain fell.
My friends were surprised to observe that my last dance had displeased
his Majesty. The Shah finally told them that he did not see why the
Persian flag had been desecrated. No one dared to tell him that the
idea had not come from me, but from persons of his retinue, or to
inform him how I had received the flag.
My friends, the d’Oyleys, consoled me by saying that my pose had been
very noble and that even the flag, falling around me in heavy folds,
had produced a very striking effect.
The Shah decorates everybody who has attracted his attention; that is
a habit he has acquired. For my part, thanks to the brilliant idea of
the dignitaries from the court of Teheran, I have never seen either the
tail of the Lion or a ray of the Sun peculiar to Persian decoration.
I have been told on other authority that on this evening the Shah’s
first thought was of a bomb which, so it had been announced, was to be
thrown at him in the hall. He was thinking of this rather than of my
person, my dances or even of the Persian flag I “profaned.”
_My Adventure with a Negro King._
At the Colonial exposition in Marseilles in 1907 I was with some
friends in the pavilion of one of the exhibitors when a magnificent
negro, six feet high, who looked like some prince from the Thousand and
One Nights, came upon the terrace where we sat. He was accompanied by a
large retinue. The other negroes were dressed the same as he, but none
of them had his magnificent presence.
Some French officials accompanied the visitors, who, naturally,
created a tremendous effect with their costumes, which were simple but
exquisitely finished. When they came near I exclaimed:
“He might be called a king out of a fairy tale!”
They passed before us and took their places in the reception hall.
The proprietor presently came to our group, and asked us if we would
not like to assist him in receiving the King of Djoloff in Senegal.
“He is visiting the Exposition as a private citizen,” he added. “If you
would like to make his acquaintance come and I will present you.”
I was charmed.
When I was in the presence of the king, I said quietly to my friends,
in a distinct voice and in French:
“What a handsome savage; I wonder if they are all built on this model
in Africa.”
I was presented to the king. He extended his hand, and, to my
consternation, I heard him say in very good French:
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Fuller. I have
applauded you frequently. My education was gained in Paris.”
I could not repress an exclamation.
“Good heavens! Then you heard what I said, and you never raised an
eyelash!”
“No, since you did not suppose that I understood you.”
I looked at him for a minute or two to find out whether he had been
irritated or not. He smiled diplomatically and I felt that we should be
friends.
I was dancing at Marseilles at that time. He came to the theatre to see
me after the performance.
“What can we do that will give you pleasure in exchange for the great
satisfaction that your dances have just brought us?” he asked me.
I thought the matter over a minute.
“I should like it very much if I might be present at one of your
religious ceremonies.”
The black chief promised to come to my hotel, and to give me an idea of
the ritualistic practices of his country.
The next day, accordingly, I made preparations for a tea-party in the
hotel garden. Rugs were spread on the grass and everything was in
readiness to receive the monarch.
“When will the ceremony begin?” I asked the king as soon as he had
arrived.
“We shall say our prayer at six o’clock, just at sunset.”
As night came on I observed that the king and his followers began
to survey the sky in every direction, and I wondered why. Noting my
wonderment, the king told me that they were endeavouring to get their
bearings in order to be certain of the point toward which the sun was
tending at the end of his journey.
“We are required,” he said, “always to pray with our faces toward the
setting sun.”
He gave the order to begin the ceremony then and there. I wish I could
describe it as perfectly as I saw it.
The unity of the motions of all these men was simply wonderful. All
together they said the same brief prayer, and with mechanical precision
made the same movement, which, from the point of view of devotion,
seemed to have similar importance to the words of their ritual. The
large white cloaks, spread over long blue blouses, waved round their
bodies. The men prostrated themselves, touched the ground with their
foreheads and then raised themselves together. The rhythm and precision
were most impressive. It was really very, very beautiful.
After the prayers the king told me that his father had been dethroned
and then exiled from Senegal by the French Government. As for himself,
in his turn he had been nominated chief of his tribe, for in reality
there was no longer a king. He was a French subject, and in his
country, which was tributory to France, he was no more than chief of
his clan.
But the majesty remained, nevertheless, magnificently expressed in his
features.
While we were conversing I asked permission to put some indiscreet
questions. After he had consented, all the while smiling his peculiarly
winning smile, I asked him if he was married?
He replied in the affirmative. He had four wives. As I appeared to
be surprised to note that he travelled without them, especially in a
country where there are so many pretty women, he, in his turn, looked
at me for some time, and replied:
“From the point of view of my wives a white woman has neither charm nor
beauty.”
This surprised me greatly, and I asked him whether that was because
they had never seen any white women.
“Oh,” he replied, “in any case they would not be jealous of a white
woman. It seems to them absolutely impossible that a pale-faced woman
can play any part in my life.”
“And you? Are you so sure of that? If a white woman with long blonde
hair should suddenly appear in your country, among your black women,
would she not be taken for an angel?”
“Oh, no. She would be taken for a devil. Angels are black in our
Paradise.”
This, I must confess, opened new vistas in the domain of religion. It
had never before appeared so clear to me that men make their gods in
their own image, rather than that the gods make men after theirs.
_How the Empress of China Degraded a Mandarin on my Account._
I was dancing in New York when several of Li Hung Chang’s followers
came to the theatre. Some friends presented me to the American military
attaché, Mr. Church, who accompanied the Viceroy.
Thanks to Mr. Church I was able to satisfy my curiosity and become
acquainted with these high Chinese dignitaries. When they left for
their own country my manager went with them, in the hope that, through
their good offices, I might dance at the Chinese court in the presence
of the dowager Empress and her son.
As soon as my representative was in China, he cabled me that everything
had been arranged and that I was to take the first steamer leaving
Vancouver.
* * * * *
After crossing the continent I was on the point of embarking with my
mother, when the state of her health caused me the keenest anxiety. Her
prostration was so complete that I was obliged to send a message to
China, indicating the impossibility of keeping my engagement.
My manager rejoined us utterly dejected.
At Pekin a magnificent reception had been prepared for me. I was to
dance before the Emperor and Empress and then in Japan I was to appear
before the Mikado. The theatre of the best Japanese actor, Danjero,
was to be put at my disposal. And all that to no purpose whatever. My
manager brought back from this oriental country the most marvellous of
embroideries, which Li Hung Chang had sent over for me.
I experienced genuine regret at the failure of this trip, then I forgot
all about it.
One evening in London one of my friends at dinner found herself seated
next to a very high Chinese official. Apropos of the rich colouring of
the mandarin’s garments, they came to speak about me and my coloured
dances, and my friend said to her companion:
“You are acquainted with Loie Fuller, I presume.”
“Well, yes, madam,” he replied. “I am only too well acquainted with
her, if I may say so.”
“How is that?”
“I went to the United States with Li Hung Chang. Loie Fuller’s manager
accompanied us on our return to China, and, through the influence of
the Viceroy, we gained permission for Loie Fuller to appear before
the Empress. Just as she was about to leave for Pekin she broke her
agreement. It fell upon me to inform her Majesty that Loie Fuller was
unable to obey the Imperial mandate. The Empress had me degraded! That
was eight years ago. I lost my yellow jacket, which has only recently
been restored to me.”
My friend pleaded my case, alleging the condition of my mother’s
health, and the seriousness of her malady at the time of my failure to
report in the celestial empire.
I suppose that it would be too much to expect of His Excellency to ask
him to forgive my mistake. If I had known that my failure to appear
would be attended with such consequences, I should, instead of cabling
to my manager, have forwarded a long dispatch to the Empress herself,
telling her the reasons for my failure to keep an engagement. A woman
with a heart, even if she be an Empress, could not blame a daughter for
doing her duty towards her mother.
_How Queen Alexandra did not fail to see me._
One morning the papers said that the King and Queen of England were
going to spend several days in Paris.
I was then dancing at the Hippodrome and, remembering what Princess
Marie of Roumania had told me, I decided not to let this occasion slip,
and I wrote to the Queen herself, asking if she would be kind enough
to set aside an hour in which I might give a performance, at her own
convenience and whenever she chose.
I should never, indeed, have supposed it possible to ask her to come to
the Hippodrome. One of her maids of honour answered the note, saying
that Her Majesty’s stay was of limited duration, and that she had
already accepted too many invitations to undertake any new engagements.
After that I thought no more of the Queen.
Arriving at a matinee one Thursday, I noticed in front of the
Hippodrome quite an impressive line of carriages, all displaying the
royal insignia.
“The Queen has sent some one to my matinee,” I thought. “She wants to
know whether my dances are really worth seeing. If I make a pleasant
impression the Queen will perhaps some day ask me to dance before her.”
I went into my dressing-room. I had nearly finished my preparations
when the manager rushed in post haste calling out:
“It’s four o’clock and the Queen has been waiting since half-past two.”
“What! The Queen is here! Why didn’t you inform me sooner?”
He was too unnerved to make a lengthy explanation. I hurried down and
two minutes later I was on the stage.
In the middle of my dance the Queen arose and left the theatre with all
her attendants. I saw her rise and go!
I thought the floor would open and engulf me. What had I done to offend
her? Was she indignant that I had made her wait? Was this her way of
punishing me for my discourtesy, or did my dances displease her? What
was I to think?
I went home in utter despair.
I had just realised one of my dearest wishes, that of dancing before
the Queen. Never had I experienced such dejection. I should have
preferred a thousand times that she had not come.
I learned afterward at the theatre that a telephone message had come
shortly after noon to the effect that the Queen wished to see Loie
Fuller, but that she would have to leave at four o’clock.
The manager, who had supposed that the Queen was coming to see the
Hippodrome, had not attached any importance to the intimation regarding
me, and did not even take the trouble to find out whether I was there
or not.
Next morning all the papers recorded that the Queen of England had come
to the Hippodrome, despite her many appointments and engagements made
some time earlier, and so forth and so forth.
There was not a word about me.
However, as I had written to the Queen to ask her to come it seemed to
me that I ought to excuse myself for my apparent discourtesy. I wrote
to her accordingly, telling her how distressed I was at my failure to
appear earlier--a failure that would not have occurred if some one had
come to apprise me. I regretted that the message had not been forwarded
to me instead of to the manager.
That same evening one of my friends came to tell me that she had
written the day before to one of the Queen’s maids of honour, whom
she knew personally, asking her to come and see me dance at the
Hippodrome.
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY
_Photo_ _Lafitte_]
“That will make your new dances celebrated all over the world,” said
my friend. “The Queen will come, I am certain of it, if it is at all
possible.”
Overcome with surprise, I looked at my friend, and exclaimed:
“Well, then, that is why she came this afternoon!”
“Has she already come to see you? I should not have expected such
promptness.”
“She came to the matinee.”
And I told my friend the whole story in detail.
She still could not understand why the Queen had left so hastily, and
enquired into the reason.
Presently everything was explained.
The Queen had agreed to visit a painter’s studio at half-past three and
then, at four o’clock, to call upon M. and Mme. Loubet. Nevertheless
she remained at the Hippodrome until ten minutes past four. The King
went alone to the studio and the Queen arrived late at the President’s
house.
After that I fully appreciated her kindness, her patience. I still feel
endless gratitude to her for having waited so long, for not having left
the theatre without seeing, if it was only for a moment, Loie Fuller
and her dances.
As for the manager, he is still convinced that the Queen did not come
to see Loie Fuller, but the Hippodrome, and only the Hippodrome.
XVI
OTHER MONARCHS
I shall always remember with great pleasure my six hundredth appearance
in Paris.
I was then dancing at the Athénée. The whole house had been bought up
by students. When I came on the stage each spectator threw a bunch of
violets at me. It took five minutes to gather up the flowers.
When I had finished dancing, a fresh avalanche of flowers poured upon
the stage. During the performance I received from my admirers, along
with an album of sketches signed with names, several of which are now
famous, an exquisite statuette representing me in a characteristic
attitude.
When I was ready to leave the theatre, the students took my horses out
of the shafts and drew my carriage themselves. At the Madeleine the
crowd was so dense that the police warned us to stop. But as soon as
they had learned that it was “La Loie” in whose honour the triumphal
procession was decreed, we had permission to go our way without
interruption. The young men drew my carriage all the way to Passy,
where I lived. They conscientiously awakened all the inhabitants with
their outcries.
Finally we reached the house. I did not know what I was going to do
with these boys, but they themselves solved the problem without delay.
After they had rung the bell and as soon as my gate had swung on its
hinges they emitted a shout all together, and started to run away as
if possessed. I could hear them for a long time afterwards, shouting:
“Vive l’art! Vive La Loie!”
I have often wondered whether the police were as lenient on their
return.
In Marseilles, at the time of the Colonial Exposition, one of the
commissioners of fine arts asked me if I would not like to perform
out-of-doors.
That was one of my dearest wishes, and I consented readily.
Preparations were made at once for my performance, which was to be
given in the same place where we had admired the King of Cambodia’s
dancers. The stage was built opposite to the Grand Palais.
The director of the Exposition had placed behind the platform some
great plants, in order that I might be relieved against a background of
green foliage, which would be particularly favourable to the brilliancy
of the figures in the foreground. Below the stage were two little
ponds, with sparkling fountains.
The evening of my first appearance arrived. I was feverishly impatient.
Nothing had been done to advertise it to the public of Marseilles, for
we regarded this first evening as a kind of rehearsal, which we should
repeat a week later, if it met with success. It was only this next
performance that we expected to announce formally.
It was a starlight night. There were at least thirty thousand visitors
at the Exposition.
The lights were put out and the crowd rushed towards the platform.
In spite of its impromptu character the performance was a remarkable
success, and the committee decided from this time on to continue to
give outdoor performances.
During the second evening, just as the lights were about to be
extinguished, a man came and said to me as I was on my way to the stage:
“Just look, before they put the lights out, at the human wave curling
at your feet.”
I had never seen anything like it.
After the electric lights had been shut off I began to dance. The
rays of light enveloped me. There was a movement in the crowd, which
reverberated in echoes like the mutterings of a storm.
Exclamations followed, “Ohs” and “Ahs,” which fused into a sort of
roar, comparable to the wailing of some giant animal.
You can hardly imagine anything like it. It seemed to me that on my
account alone this spectacle was presented by all this moving crowd
before me.
A calm ensued. The orchestra, not a very large one, seemed to me
utterly ineffective in such a space. The audience, which was seated on
the other side of the fountains, certainly could not hear it.
The first dance came to its close. The extinguishing of my lighting
apparatus left us, the public and me, in utter darkness. The uproar of
the applause became something fantastic in the dead of night. It was
like the beating of a single pair of hands, but so powerful that no
noise in the world could be compared with it.
I danced four times, and the different sensations expressed by the
audience were most remarkable. They gave me the most vivid impression I
have ever experienced. It was something immense, gigantic, prodigious.
That day I had a feeling that the crowd was really the most powerful of
monarchs.
There are other monarchs as well as kings and crowds. Certain emotions
are kings, too.
At Nice, at the Riviera Palace Hotel, I noticed one day at a table
near mine a young man of distinguished appearance whose glance met
my own several times successively, almost, one would fancy, in spite
of himself. During the following days we surveyed each other again
and again at meal times, but without progressing further towards
acquaintance.
I had a number of friends with me. He was alone. Gradually my heart
went out to him, although we had never exchanged a word. I did not
know who he was, and I had no notion of seeking his acquaintance. Yet
his brown eyes and his type of personality, calm and simple, exerted
a sort of fascination over me. A week later I discovered, to my great
confusion, that I was perpetually haunted by his eyes and that I could
not forget his smile.
One evening there was a ball at the hotel. I was invited, of course.
As I have already said, I had a great many friends there. All at once,
in a corner, I noticed my neighbour of the dining-hall. He spoke to no
one. He was not dancing. I began to feel sorry to see him so entirely
alone. My sympathy went out more than ever towards him.
Some days later I was engaged for a performance that was to take place
at the hotel in honour of a Russian grand duke, two kings and an
empress.
I remember that Patti was in the front row. When I appeared before this
choice assembly, a single figure persisted in detaching itself from
the rest of the crowd. It was the figure of my unknown young man. Who
could he be to be noted thus, in the role of an invited guest, among
these princes and princesses? He rested his elbow on the back of his
chair. His hand was under his chin. His legs were crossed with easy
negligence. He looked at me continuously. Everybody applauded over and
over again. He alone did not lift a finger.
Who was this man? Why did his countenance haunt me? Why did he watch me
so insistently? Why did he not join in the applause?
The next day, on the verandah, I was comfortably seated in a
rocking-chair, all the while wondering who my handsome dark man could
be. Coming back to earth I saw him there by my side, ensconced in one
of those odd willow seats that enclose you as in a sentry box.
His eyes again met mine. We did not speak, but both of us experienced
a deep desire to exchange greetings. Just at that moment the hotel
manager came up and began to talk to us. Then, observing that we were
not acquainted, he introduced us. I learned then that he was son of an
industrial leader of international standing--one of the best known in
Paris as well as St. Petersburg and Vienna. Immediately I wanted to
know everything about him. He on his side wished me to tell him all
sorts of things of which I had never even dreamed. We were at once on
terms of delightful intimacy.
A short time after I was obliged to leave Nice. Just as my train was
about to go, my good friend jumped into my carriage and accompanied me
as far as Marseilles. There he bade me adieu and returned to Nice.
Letter writing followed, in the course of which he told me how highly
he regarded my friendship--more highly in fact than anything else in
the world. For my part I thought of him more often than I should care
to confess, but I had my wits about me sufficiently to announce to him,
at the cost of a great effort of will, that he was too young for our
feelings of regard for each other to continue without danger to both,
and that he ought to forget me.
Just at this time there was presented to me a viscount, who laid claim
to my heart and hand. Need I confess that, with my eyes still filled
with pictures of the other man, I could not endure his assiduous
importunity. No one is deafer, says a French proverb, than who he is
unwilling to hear. And the viscount would not listen to my discouraging
remarks.
He seemed to have imposed upon himself, in spite of my rebuffs, which
were often severe and always discourteous, the task of bringing me
to terms. Undoubtedly, in spite of my reserve and coldness, he might
eventually have succeeded if one fine evening he had not dropped out
altogether under threat of legal proceedings. He had a well-established
reputation as a swindler.
During the time when the viscount was playing his game to win my
affections, my good friend’s communications stopped coming. I wrote
him several letters. They were never answered.
Some years later, in 1900, I had installed my theatre, as is perhaps
still remembered, at the Universal Exposition in Paris.
One day as I was on my way to the theatre I saw at a distance my lover
of the days at Nice. My heart began to beat violently.
My friend approached. We were going to pass each other. He had not
yet seen me; for he was walking with his eyes on the ground. Standing
still, with my left hand restraining the beating of my heart, I waited,
feasting my eyes upon him. He turned his head and passed me.
I was destined not to see him again for a long time.
Meantime, indeed, I learned through a third person that he had told his
father of his desire to marry me. A violent scene took place between
the two men. The father threatened to disinherit him. The poor boy was
sent away, almost by main force, on a voyage round the world.
I have frequently reflected since then on the part the “viscount”
played in all this affair, and I should not be astonished to learn that
he led some artful embassy against His Majesty King Love.
XVII
SOME PHILOSOPHERS
I have frequently seen monarchs whose profession consisted in ruling
the crowd. I have sometimes seen crowds that appeared to me mightier
than the greatest of monarchs.
More rarely I have encountered philosophers, out of touch with
everything, who yet were able to create kingdoms within themselves.
These last have seemed to me more affecting than the proudest of
monarchs or the most impressive of crowds. Characteristic traits of
some of these are worthy of being described here. I should like to try
to do so, because of the emotions they have aroused in me.
We were living at Passy, my mother and I, in a house situated in the
centre of a garden. One day I heard some animated music coming from the
street. I ran to the gate to look at the makers of this joyful harmony.
A man and a woman were passing. The man played an accordion as he
walked with short steps. He was blind, and his wife led him. The music
was so sprightly, so different from the folk who were making it, that
I hailed the pair. I wanted the man to play in the garden, behind
the house, so that my mother, who was paralysed, might hear him. They
consented very willingly. I made them sit down under a tree, near my
mother’s chair, and the man played on the accordion until a servant
came to say that lunch was served. I asked the man and his wife if they
had eaten. When I discovered they had had nothing since the day before,
I told the maid they were going to share our meal.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSY]
At table we had a long conversation. The man had always been blind. I
asked him if he could perceive difference among colours. No. But he
was able, at least, to tell without fear of making a mistake, whether
the weather was clear or cloudy, dull or pleasant. He was extremely
sensitive to differences of texture.
I placed a rose in his hand and asked him what it was. Without
hesitation and without raising the flower to his nostrils he replied:
“It is a rose.”
Almost immediately, grasping it gently in his fingers, he added:
“It is a beautiful one, too, this rose, very beautiful.”
A little more and he would have told me whether it was a _La France_, a
_Maréchal Niel_, or some other species of rose.
As he had used the word “beautiful” I asked him what seemed to him the
most beautiful thing in the world.
“The most beautiful thing alive is woman.”
I then asked him who the person was in whose company I had found him.
His voice took on a tender tone as he said:
“It is my wife, my dear wife.”
After that I looked with more attention at the self-effacing and almost
dumb soul who accompanied the blind musician. Confused, embarrassed,
she had lowered her eyes, which she kept obstinately fixed upon an
apron, of a faded blue, on which the patches appeared to be more
extensive than the original material.
She was unattractive, poor thing, and at least twenty years older than
her companion.
Quietly, without concerning myself with the beseeching looks the poor
woman cast at me from under wrinkled and reddened eyebrows, I asked the
blind musician:
“She satisfies you, does she?”
“Certainly.”
“You find her beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
“More beautiful than other women?”
As he had peopled his darkness with beauty my optimist replied:
“I do not say that, for all women are beautiful. But she is better,
yes, better than most of them, and it is that which, in my sight,
constitutes the purest beauty.”
“What makes you think she is better than the others?”
“Oh, everything. Her whole life, her whole manner of existence as
regards me.”
And in words so convincing that for a moment I felt that he could see,
he added:
“Just look at her, my good lady. Isn’t it a fact that goodness is
written on her face?”
The woman, with her eyes lowered, kept looking at her blue apron. I
then asked the blind man how he had made his living up to this time,
and how they had become acquainted, he and his companion.
“I used to be, owing to infirmity, a real burden upon my family. I did
whatever I could but I could not do much. I washed the dishes, lighted
the fire, picked the vegetables, swept the floor, washed the windows,
made the beds--perhaps badly, but at any rate I did all that, and
although we were very poor at home they kept me. The day came, however,
when my mother died. Then it was my father’s turn. I had to leave the
empty house. I went on the road armed with my accordion, asking for
alms. My accordion became my best friend. But I blundered along the
roads. Then I met my dear companion who is with me, and I married her.”
She was a cook, the woman told me this herself in an undertone, who had
become too old to keep her place, and who consented to join her fate
with that of the wandering blind man, serving as his guide along the
roads. The blind man found this arrangement a blessing from Heaven, a
kindness bestowed upon him by Providence. They were married without
delay.
“But how do you manage to live?” I asked.
“Well, it is not always easy to make both ends meet, for alas! now and
then, one of us falls ill. We are getting old, you understand. When it
is not fatigue that gets the better of us, then there is always the
cold. There are times when we cannot go out. Then it is necessary to
take a notch in one’s girdle.”
Each day they visited one district of Paris. They had divided the city
into blocks, and they sometimes walked miles before arriving at their
destination, for they lived far from the centre, in one of the poorest
suburbs.
“What day do you go by here?”
“Every Sunday, before mass. Many people of this quarter go to church,
and we encounter them going and coming.”
“Do they give you something?”
“It is a rich neighbourhood. We have several very good clients.”
“Good what?” I asked. “Good clients?”
“Yes, good clients,” he repeated simply.
“And who are these clients?”
“They are servants of the rich.”
“Servants?”
“Yes, some of them are very good. They give us old clothes; food and
money when they can.”
“And the rich people themselves?”
“We do not see them often. This is the first time a client has ever
invited us to lunch, and we have been going through this street for
seven years. No one ever asked us to come in before.”
“What do you do when you are tired?”
“We sit down on a bench or on one of the steps, and we eat whatever we
have in our pockets. Here we eat while they are at church.”
“Very well. You will have no need to bring anything to eat the day you
come by here. I invite you for every Sunday.”
I expected impassioned thanks. The man said simply:
“We thank you very much, good lady.”
Shortly after, I left for a long tour in America, and during my absence
my domestics received them every Sunday. From their point of view I was
merely a sure client.
One day I gave them tickets for a great concert. I was in the hall and
observed them.
The woman was overcome at seeing so many fashionable people. As for
the man, his features aglow with an unearthly light, his head thrown a
little back after the way of the blind, he was in ecstasy, intoxicated
with the music.
After four years they disappeared. I never saw them again.
The man, whom I had seen to be failing, probably died, and the woman,
the poor old thing, so unattractive in her blue apron, undoubtedly did
not dare to return alone.
At Marseilles I saw another blind man, a very old man, seated on a
folding stool against a wall.
Beside him stood a basket, guarded by a very young dog, who sniffed at
all the passers-by and barked after each one. I stopped to talk to the
old man.
“Do you live all alone?” I asked him.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I have two dogs. But I cannot bring the other
one with me. He makes a continual disturbance, leaps and fidgets so
much that he never gets fat and any one would think to see him that I
don’t give him anything to eat. As a matter of fact, you see, I cannot
show him without being ashamed of him. People would suppose that I was
allowing him to die of hunger. Anyway I need only one dog here. As for
the other I leave him at the house, where he serves as watch dog.”
“Oh, you have a house,” I said.
“That is to say, I have a room, I call it my house.”
“Who does your cooking for you? Who makes the fire at your house?”
“I do,” he replied. “I light a match and then by the crackling of the
wood I know whether it has caught.”
“How do you clean your vegetables?”
“Oh, that is easy. I can tell by the feeling when the potatoes are well
peeled.”
“And the fruits and the salad?”
“Oh, that is something we do not have very often.”
“I suppose you eat meat.”
“Not very often, either. We have bread and vegetables, and when we are
rich we buy some cheese.”
“Why does your dog sniff so at every one passing by? Why does he bark
so spitefully?”
“Ah, madam, you see each time that any one hands me a sou, thanks to
his grimaces, I give him a little piece of bread. There, look at him
now.”
At this moment somebody had just thrown a coin into the blind man’s
bowl. The old man drew from his pocket a little piece of dry bread.
The animal fell upon it with such a cry of joy that one might have
supposed he had just received the daintiest titbit in the world. He
nearly devoured his master with caresses.
“At what time do you eat? Do you go home to your lunch?”
“No. I carry my lunch in a basket.”
I looked. It contained some crusts of bread and nothing else.
“Is that all that you have to eat?”
“Why, yes. Like the dog, I don’t ruin my digestion.”
“Where do you drink when you are thirsty?”
He pointed to a corner of the alley, where there was a little fountain,
alongside of which hung a goblet attached to a chain.
“And the dog?”
“He leads me to the fountain when he is thirsty and I give him his
share.”
“Do you come here every day?”
“Yes. This is the entrance to the baths. We do a good business here.”
“How much do you make a day?”
“Twenty sous, sometimes thirty. That depends on the day. There have
been times when we have made more than two francs. But that is rare. I
have my rent to pay and three mouths to feed, my two dogs and myself.”
“Where do you get your clothes?”
“They are given me by one and another. The butcher, the grocer, the
cabinetmaker, these are very kind to me.”
“Are you happy all alone so?”
“I am not all alone. I have my dogs. The only thing I lack is my
eyesight. But I thank Providence every day for keeping me in good
health.”
It was in consequence of a malignant fever that he had lost his
eyesight, for unlike my blind man at Passy, this man was not born
blind. Formerly he had been able to admire nature, to see pretty girls
in a country flooded with sunlight, to enjoy with his own eyes the
smile in other eyes, in eyes tender and well loved. In short he had
seen. What sadness his must be, to be unable to see again!
With much diplomacy I asked him about this.
He had far less difficulty in answering me.
“I used to admire many pretty things,” he said. “I still have them
carefully enclosed under my eyelids. I see them again whenever I
wish, just as if they were there before me once again. And so, you
see, as these are things of my youth it seems to me that, in spite of
everything, in spite of being such an old hulk as I am, I have remained
young. And I thank the dear Lord for having been kind enough not to
have made me blind from birth.”
“And how old are you?”
“Eighty years, madam.”
This old man had a long walk before him to get back to his residence.
As I commiserated him regarding this, he replied:
“There is no reason for complaining, madam, I have such a good guide,
such a brave little comrade!”
He made an almost theatrical gesture, and said, in a voice filled with
emotion:
“My dog!”
“Does he guide you through the streets of Marseilles?”
“He does!”
“And no accident happens to you?”
“Never. One day I was crossing a street. My dog pulled at me so hard
from behind that I fell backward. I was just in time. A step more and
I should have been crushed by a tramcar, which grazed me. I am mighty
lucky, come now, to have a dog like that.”
In all circumstances this old man was willing to see only the
favourable side of things. That side, at least with the eyes of
imagination, the blind man could see.
One day the charwoman who came to our house at Passy to help the
servants arrived very late.
As she was ordinarily exceedingly punctual, I reproached her in a way
I should not have done if she had been habitually unpunctual. Here is
what I found out about this brave woman.
Three years before one of her neighbours, a working woman, had had an
attack of paralysis. This neighbour was poor, old, without relatives
and no one would bother with her. The poor little charwoman, encumbered
with a drunken husband and six children, agreed to take care of the
paralytic and her home if the other neighbours would be willing to
provide the bare necessities of life. She succeeded in overcoming the
selfishness of each and every one in the warmth of her kindness. From
that time on she never ceased in the rare hours when she was free to
look after the paralytic. She attended to the housework, the cooking,
the washing. The neighbour’s condition grew worse. The case was one
of complete paralysis. The assistance which she had to give to this
half-dead woman was often of the most repulsive kind. Always smiling,
always tidy, always cheerful, she gave to the human hulk she had taken
under her protection the most thorough and intelligent care.
My little charwoman had always, at all times, been cheerful. I wondered
what kind of gaiety she would exhibit when at last the paralytic’s
death should free her from the load with which she had benevolently
burdened her life. This morning, the morning on which she came late,
she was crying. She wept warm tears.
I supposed that my reproach had caused this tearful outpouring. But not
at all. She said to me between sobs:
“I am crying--crying--because--she’s dead--the poor woman.”
It was her neighbour the paralytic for whom she wept.
In the north of Ireland I once saw some children barefooted in the
snow, during an intensely cold February. With some friends I visited
the poor quarter of a provincial city, where, I was told, people
working in the mills lived twelve or even more in cabins containing but
two rooms.
We placed no especial credence in these stories and we decided to look
into the matter for ourselves. It was all true, nevertheless. In some
cases the conditions were even worse.
On reaching the district in question we noticed that a little boy
had followed our carriage. At a trot sharp enough to run his little
legs off he continued for about a mile and a half, all in the hope of
getting twopence.
The small boy came forward to open the door of our carriage. The
coachman rebuked him brutally. The child had so odd an expression that
I began to talk to him. He had five brothers and sisters. He did the
best he could to pick up something in the streets, and he made from
sixpence to eightpence a day. Just at present he was trying to get a
little money to buy some coal for his mother.
I, doubting the truth of these statements, made him take me to his hut,
which he had pointed out to us.
“That is where I live, madam.”
Certainly there was no coal in the house, but there were three sick
people. The father swept snow in the streets to make a few pennies, for
in this cold weather the mill where he worked was not running.
There was complete wretchedness, frightful wretchedness, irreparable
wretchedness. And yet our little lad sang while he trotted behind our
carriage, just as his father whistled as he swept the snow.
Is not misery the school, the sadly sovereign school, of philosophy?
XVIII
HOW I DISCOVERED HANAKO
Everything that comes from Japan has always interested me intensely.
Consequently it is easy to understand with what pleasure I came into
relationship with Sada Yacco, and why I did not hesitate to assume
financial responsibility for her performances when she decided to come
to Europe with her whole company.
Sada Yacco had brought with her a troupe of thirty people. These
thirty cost me more than ninety of another nationality would have
done; for apart from everything that I was obliged to do to entertain
them, I had constantly to go down on my knees to secure permission
to attach to each train that carried them an enormous car laden with
Japanese delicacies, rice, salted fish, mushrooms and preserved
turnips--delicacies were necessary to support the existence of my
thirty Japanese, including Sada Yacco herself. During one whole season
I paid the railway companies 375,000 francs for transportation, but
that cost me much less than to pay all the debts I should have been
obliged to assume from Lisbon to St. Petersburg if I had decided to
send my Japanese home.
I tried for a long time to get my money back by transporting my
Nipponese and their viands up and down the earth, but, weary of the
struggle, I finally assembled another troupe, which was as good as the
first one and which was willing to travel without a cargo of rice and
salted fish.
“Business is business” I am well aware. I decided, therefore, to endure
bravely the losses I had incurred, and I was thinking of quite another
subject when fortune appeared to smile on me again.
In London there was a Japanese troupe looking for an engagement. The
actors came to see me. They made some ridiculous claims and I sent
them away. But as they did not find an engagement, we came to an
understanding, and I found an impresario for them, who took them to
Copenhagen.
I went to Denmark, too, and I expected to look after the affairs of
these Japanese and attend to my own business as well.
When they arrived at Copenhagen I saw the whole troupe for the first
time. They all came to greet me at my hotel and played some piece or
other of their own invention.
I noticed at that time, among the comedians, a charming little Japanese
woman, whom I should have been glad to make the star of the company.
Among these Japanese, however, women did not count for much, all the
important roles being taken by men. She was, nevertheless, the only one
who had attracted my attention. She played a minor part, it is true,
but very intelligently, and with the oddest mimicry. She was pretty
withal, refined, graceful, queer, and so individual as to stand out,
even among those of her own race.
When the rehearsal was over I gathered the actors together and said to
them:
“If you are going to remain with me you will have to obey me. And
if you do not take this little woman as your star you will have no
success.”
And as she had a name that could not be translated, and which was
longer than the moral law, I christened her on the spot Hanako.
To make a long story short they assented to my request, and lengthened
out my protégée’s role. In reality the play had no climax. I therefore
made one for it then and there. Hanako had to die on the stage. After
everybody had laughed wildly at my notion, and Hanako more than all the
others; she finally consented to die. With little movements like those
of a frightened child, with sighs, with cries as of a wounded bird,
she rolled herself into a ball, seeming to reduce her thin body to a
mere nothing so that it was lost in the folds of her heavy embroidered
Japanese robe. Her face became immovable, as if petrified, but her
eyes continued to reveal intense animation. Then some little hiccoughs
convulsed her, she made a little outcry and then another one, so faint
that it was hardly more than a sigh. Finally with great wide-open eyes
she surveyed death, which had just overtaken her.
It was thrilling.
The evening of the first appearance came. The first act was successful.
The actors acquired confidence and entered into the spirit of their
parts, a fact which caused them to play wonderfully well. I was obliged
to leave after the first act, for I was dancing at another theatre,
but some one came to tell me at the close of the performance that
Hanako had scored more than a success; it was a veritable triumph.
To her it came as a genuine surprise, but one that was not more
extraordinary than the anger provoked by her success among the actors
of the company. The box office receipts, however, somewhat assuaged
their sensitiveness, and I was able to give to the feminine member of
the troupe a longer part in the new play, rehearsals of which were just
beginning.
From this time on Hanako was in high favour. Everywhere she was obliged
to double the number of her performances. After Copenhagen she made
a nine months’ tour of Europe. Her success in Finland bordered upon
popular delirium. Finland, it is interesting to note, has always
evinced the greatest sympathy for Japan. This was during the time of
the Russian-Japanese War.
She played in all the royal theatres of Europe. Then after a tour in
Holland she came finally to Paris.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER’S ROOM AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE]
The Japanese and Hanako stayed with me for nearly a year. At the
close of their contract they gave some performances at Marseilles and
then dispersed. Some of them went home, others proceeded to Paris or
elsewhere. Time passed, and I heard nothing more about my Japanese,
when one day I received a letter from Hanako, who told me that she was
at a cheap concert hall at Antwerp, where she had to sing and dance
for the amusement of sailors, patrons of the place. She was all alone
among strangers, and the man who had brought her to this degrading
pursuit inspired her with mortal terror. She wrote me that she wanted
at all costs to be saved from her fate, but that, without assistance,
the thing was utterly impossible. She had gone from Marseilles to
Antwerp with other actors of the troupe to take a steamer for Japan. At
Antwerp she and her travelling companion had fallen into the hands of a
low-lived compatriot, and she called me to her rescue.
One of the actors of the company happened to be in Paris, and I sent
him to Antwerp with two of my friends. After numerous difficulties and
thanks to the police, they were able to enter into communication with
Hanako and tell her that they had come to take her away.
One evening she succeeded in escaping with her companion, and, with no
baggage except the little Japanese robes which they wore, they took the
train for Paris.
Hanako had been obliged to leave behind her little pet Japanese
dog, lest by taking it away from the house she should arouse the
proprietor’s suspicion. They reached Paris shrouded in the European
cloaks I had sent them, which were far too long, and hid them
completely.
Presently I found myself in Paris, manager of one of the most gifted
Japanese artists, but, alas! with no company to support her. I was
puzzled to know what to do with and what to do for a kind, gentle,
sweet little Japanese doll.
I first tried to find out if some one would not engage Hanako, then an
entire stranger to Paris, and a small, a very small company for one of
the minor theatres.
I received from one of the managers a remarkable answer. If I could
guarantee that the play which Hanako would present was a good one he
would engage her.
The play? Why there was no play. But I was not bothered by a little
detail like that, and I explained that Hanako would offer a wonderful
play, one that was easy to understand whether you knew Japanese or not.
Then I signed a contract for ten performances on trial. A contract?
Yes, it was a contract. And I had not secured my actors yet. And I had
no play yet. I had, altogether, Hanako, her maid and a young Japanese
actor. I was not discouraged, however. I undertook to find another
actor. I secured one in London, thanks to an agent. Then I went to work
to construct a play for four characters. There were two major roles and
two supernumeraries. The result of my efforts was “The Martyr.”
A great difficulty now arose. The question came up of procuring wigs,
shoes, costumes and various accessories. But here again luck helped
me out. They made a very successful first appearance at the Théâtre
Moderne in the Boulevard des Italiens. The play was given thirty
presentations instead of ten and twice a day, at a matinee and in the
evening. Presently the manager said to me:
“If your actors have another play as good as that one I would keep them
a month longer.”
Naturally I declared they had another play, a better one than the
first, and I signed a new contract.
New stage settings, new costumes and new accessories were necessitated.
The result was a new tragedy called “A Drama at Yoshiwara.”
While the new play was running the manager of the Palais des Beaux-Arts
at Monte Carlo made a very important offer for my Japanese, for three
performances. I accepted. The troupe left for Monaco, where they gave
twelve performances instead of three. In the meantime a small theatre,
that of the Musée Grevin, proposed to engage my Nipponese for a month
in a new play which was to be a comedy. To suit the purposes of this
theatre we wrote “The Japanese Doll.” Next the Little Palace offered
a month’s engagement for a play that was to be a tragi-comedy. There
my Japanese played the “Little Japanese Girl.” Finally they went to
the Treteau Royal, where Mr. Daly engaged them for their six plays,
a circumstance that compelled me to increase their _repertoire_ by
three new pieces, “The Political Spy,” “The Japanese Ophelia,” and “A
Japanese Tea House.”
Hanako finally began a tour of Switzerland with the company. Mr. Daly
suddenly wanted Hanako to appear in New York, and to break off this
trip I needed more imagination and took more trouble than in writing a
dozen plays. Then I was obliged, still on Mr. Daly’s account, to break
an agreement for a tour in France.
Such is the history of my relations with Hanako, the great little
actress from Japan. As it is always fitting that a story of this kind
shall end with a wedding, I may say that, conforming to the tradition,
the actor Sato, whom I sent to release Hanako at Antwerp, is now the
husband of the little Japanese doll.
XIX
SARDOU AND KAWAKAMI
“Who is author of the play that Sada Yacco is playing?” a writer friend
asked me one day.
“Kawakami, her husband.”
“Really. Well, then he ought to belong to the Society of Authors.”
And we proposed his name.
On the appointed day I took him to the Society of Authors. I was quite
surprised to note that the gentlemen of the committee had turned out to
a man to receive him.
We were ushered into the committee room, where these gentlemen awaited
us, seated round a large table.
Sardou, who presided, received us with a very appropriate address. He
greeted Kawakami as the man who first forged a literary bond between
France and Japan. He warmly congratulated Kawakami on having been the
first manager who had the courage to bring a company from his distant
native land to a city where no one understood a word of Japanese. He
complimented Kawakami and complimented him again, and ended by calling
him his “dear comrade.”
After which he sat down.
There was silence, and I knew that they were expecting some response
from Kawakami. But he seemed in no wise to suspect that he had
furnished the theme for the discourse just ended. He remained calmly in
his seat and surveyed the gentlemen one by one.
I realised the necessity for immediate action. Some one must sacrifice
himself. In the present crisis, cost what it may, it devolved on me
to intervene. Turning toward Kawakami, I asked, in pantomime: “Do you
understand?”
He shook his head to say no.
Thereupon M. Sardou added:
“Speak to him, Miss Fuller. Translate to him what has just been said.”
Finally, since there was nothing else for it, I summoned all my
strength, and at some length I explained in good English to Kawakami,
who did not understand a syllable of it, that this speech Sardou
had prepared expressly for him because he was a Japanese author,
and because the French were greatly pleased that he had brought his
Japanese company to Paris, and that the Society of Authors received him
with pleasure. I then explained to Kawakami, with the indispensable
assistance of appropriate gestures, that the time had arrived for him
to get up and say something in Japanese.
Was it not the essential fact that these gentlemen believed that M.
Sardou’s words had been translated?
Kawakami immediately arose and delivered an address which must have
been most carefully thought out. To judge from the seriousness of
the orator’s aspect, and from the length of his harangue Kawakami is
a great political orator. When he had finished he sat down, while
everybody looked at him admiringly, with beaming faces.
No one, however, had understood a single word of what he said. I,
naturally, was in the same plight as the others. There ensued a second
somewhat painful silence, broken by Sardou asking:
“What did he say, Miss Loie?”
That was a poser. For there was no reason why I should understand
Japanese any better than these gentlemen of the Society of Authors.
As, however, I had a feeling that I was a little responsible for what
took place, in order not to cause them any disappointment I screwed
my courage up again, rose and began to make a speech. Those who know
me can fancy what this speech was like. It was in French, but I
would take my oath that it was as hard to understand as Kawakami’s
Japanese. However, I managed to ring the changes on the words “Japanese
gratitude, Japanese pride,” and I did my best to paint in glowing
colours Kawakami’s joy at having established a bond between the
theatrical worlds of the two countries.
My speech was only a bad imitation of what M. Sardou had said, and what
I had vaguely understood of Kawakami’s views. I tried, in fact, to say
what Kawakami would have said in my place and, with as much emphasis
and big sincere words, I came to a close. Then before sitting down I
asserted once more: “There, gentlemen, that is what he said.”
My role of being an interpreter without understanding the language was
finished. There was a storm of hurrahs and the ice was broken. The
conversation became general, and the meeting ended in being a great
success so far as Kawakami was concerned. It was Kawakami’s day. As for
me, I was not in it.
The result of this meeting was that Kawakami played Sardou’s _La
Patrie_ in Japan, obtaining for this work a success as great as for
the Shakespearean plays he likewise represents there, and whose parts
he plays with such truth that he is called at home, “the Japanese Mark
Antony.”
He brought to the theatres of his native land certain modifications,
which have radically changed their dramatic methods. It is customary in
Japan to begin a play at nine or ten o’clock in the morning and to make
it last at least until midnight. One lunches and dines at the theatre
during the intervals, which, it is needless to say, are interminable.
Kawakami changed that condition of things by beginning at half-past six
or at seven o’clock in the evening and ending before midnight. And how
do you suppose he managed to prevent people eating between the acts?
for that was the most difficult innovation. He made the intervals so
short that there was no time even to go to the refreshment-room. It was
really an easy thing to compel the public to alter its habits. Instead
of appealing to people’s reason, Kawakami simply made it impossible for
them to continue doing what they had previously done.
European theatres are now building in Japan, in order that actors from
Europe may go there and produce their plays. The Nipponese public is
learning to give them a more favourable reception.
All that is due to Kawakami and to his sympathetic reception at the
Society of Authors. I cannot refrain from congratulating myself on
this, for, after all, it was I who “translated” the addresses and thus
sealed in words this new _entente cordiale_.
That brings to mind a little story.
It happened at the Athénée in 1893. We were rehearsing the “Salome”
of Armand Silvestre and Gabriel Pierné. Behind the scenes one day I
encountered a man with an enormous muffler, which went several times
around his neck, and a tall hat of a style that came down over his
ears. I chatted with him in the indifferent French I had at command,
and this without knowing who he was. While talking to him I noticed a
hole in his shoe. He was aware of my discovery, I suppose, for he said
to me:
“I had that hole made expressly. I prefer a hole in my shoe to a pain
in my foot.”
This man was Victorien Sardou.
A word more about my Japanese friends.
Kawakami has a son who was five years old when I first saw him. He
passed his time drawing everything around him.
I observed in his simple childish drawings a very peculiar manner he
affected in representing people’s eyes. They were always drawn like
billiard balls emerging from the face. I asked Kawakami:
“Don’t you think that it is an odd way to draw eyes?”
“Yes, but it is because the European eye is quite like the eye of a
fish,” the father replied.
That aroused in me a desire to know more intimately his impressions of
our race, and I asked him what Europeans look like from the Japanese
point of view.
“All Europeans,” he said, “resemble pigs. Some of them look like dirty
pigs, some like clean pigs; but they all look like pigs.”
I never said anything about this to M. Sardou.
XX
AN EXPERIENCE
It happened in February, 1902. I arrived at Vienna with my Japanese
company, headed by Sada Yacco. We had with us an artist to whom I had
been delighted to be of service. In Paris my close friend, Madame
Nevada, the celebrated American singer, had presented her to me, and
the dancer had given me a performance as an example of her skill. She
danced with remarkable grace, her body barely covered by the flimsiest
of Greek costumes, and she bade fair to become somebody. Since then she
has arrived. In her I saw the ancient tragic dances revived. I saw the
Egyptian, Greek and Hindoo rhythms recalled.
I told the dancer to what height I believed that she could attain, with
study and persistent work. A short time after I left for Berlin, where
she rejoined me. During our stay there she was ill most of the time and
could do hardly any work.
Finally, on our return to Vienna, we began our studies seriously, and
I decided to organise some evening affairs as a means of bringing her
before an audience of people capable of appreciating and understanding
her.
To this end I took her to every drawing-room that was open to me in
Vienna. Our first call was upon the wife of the English ambassador,
whom I had known at Brussels when her husband represented the United
Kingdom there. On this day I came near going in alone and leaving my
dancer in the carriage, because of her personal appearance. She wore an
Empire robe, grey, with a long train and a man’s hat, a soft felt hat,
with a flying veil. Thus gowned she appeared to so little advantage
that I rather expected a rebuff. However, I pleaded my dancer’s cause
so warmly, and I obtained a promise that both the ambassador and his
wife would be present on the first evening.
I went next to see the Princess of Metternich.
“My dear Princess,” I said to her, “I have a friend, a dancer, who has
not yet succeeded in coming to the front because she is poor and has no
one to launch her. She is very talented, and I am anxious that Viennese
drawing-rooms shall come to know her. Are you willing to help me?”
“With pleasure. What must I do?”
“To begin with, come to my hotel, and see her dance.”
“Why, certainly. You can count absolutely upon me.”
The princess is impressively simple. Where one expects to find a
_grande dame_ arrayed in finery and of lofty bearing, one discovers
a charming woman, receptive, simple, witty, and possessed of
extraordinary youthfulness of manner. When Prince Metternich was
ambassador at Paris she was given the nickname one applied to Adelaide
of Savoy; she was called “the pretty, homely one.” The princess went
one better by saying, “I am the best dressed ape in Paris.” I wonder if
she could ever have been plain. There is such intelligence implicit in
every feature of her face.
Under the light grey locks the black eyes have preserved the
sprightliness, the sweetness of youth. Her smile gave me confidence.
It was thus that I had always pictured the gentlewoman, revealed by
everything that she is herself and not solely by the things that
surround her or by the high rank she occupies in society.
I had heard it said that this woman had the greatest influence at the
Austrian court, and looking at her I understood it. Her carriage, her
countenance and everything else inspired respect and affection.
When I took leave her last words were:
“I shall be delighted to help your friend since I shall be thus able to
please you.”
I went away, gratified and thankful on my own account as well as on my
friend’s.
Then I went to the Embassy of the United States. I saw the ambassador
immediately, but I was obliged to wait to see his wife. She entered
breezily, bringing with her, as it were, a whiff of her own far west.
Kind, energetic, jolly, she was a free born woman, cordial and sincere,
and I felt at once that I could rely on her.
While I spoke of my protégée, the ambassador’s wife remembered having
seen her dance at her sister’s house in Chicago some years before. The
dancing, to tell the truth, had not particularly interested her, but
if it would be of any help to us she would be very glad to come to our
performance.
Sure of having a good audience I returned to the hotel and told my
friend that the occasion she had desired so long had at last arrived.
I decided to give an evening for the press on the same day on which my
friend would appear at a matinee before the Princess and members of the
diplomatic corps.
I then sent invitations to the Viennese artists and art critics. When
the day came everything was in readiness. I had engaged an orchestra;
the hall had floral decorations; the buffet was most appetising.
The English ambassador, his wife and daughter, were among the first
arrivals. There was a great gathering in front of the hotel to admire
their carriage with the magnificent liveries.
Then came the turn of the American ambassador and his wife, in a black
carriage, very simple, but very elegant. Finally all the others
arrived. Suddenly the princess’ turnout, so well known to all Vienna,
paused before the door.
After having welcomed my guests I begged them to excuse me for a minute
and I went in to see the débutante.
It was half-past four. In ten minutes she was due to begin. I found
her with her feet in warm water, in the act of dressing her hair, in a
very leisurely manner. Startled, I begged her to hurry, explaining that
she ran the risk through her negligence of offending an audience that
would definitely give her her start. My words were without effect. Very
slowly she continued her preparations. Feeling that I could do nothing
with her I returned to the drawing-room and made the greatest effort of
my life to get out of this delicate situation.
I was obliged to make a little impromptu address. What I said I have
never known, but I remember having vaguely fashioned something like a
dissertation on dancing and its value in relation to the other arts
and to nature. I said that the young woman whom we were going to see
was not an imitator of the dancers depicted on the Etruscan vases and
the frescoes at Pompeii. She was the living reality of which these
paintings were only an imitation. She was inspired by the spirit which
had made dancers of them.
All at once she made her entrance, calm and indifferent, looking as if
she did not care in the least what our guests thought of her.
But it was not her air of indifference that surprised me most. I could
hardly refrain from rubbing my eyes. She appeared to me nude, or nearly
so, to so slight an extent did the gauze which she wore cover her form.
She came to the front, and, while the orchestra played a prelude from
Chopin she stood motionless, her eyes lowered, her arms hanging by her
side. Then she began to dance.
Oh, that dance, how I loved it! To me it was the most beautiful thing
in the world. I forgot the woman and all her faults, her absurd
affectations, her costume, and even her bare legs. I saw only the
dancer, and the artistic pleasure she was giving me. When she had
finished no one spoke.
I went up to the Princess. She said to me in a low voice:
“Why does she dance with so little clothing on?”
Then I suddenly realised the strange attitude of the public, and guided
by a sort of inspiration, I answered in tones loud enough so that
everybody should hear:
“I forgot to tell you how kind our artist is. Her trunks upon which she
relied absolutely for the day have not arrived. Accordingly, rather
than give you the disappointment of not seeing her dance, she appeared
before you in the gown in which she practises.”
At nine o’clock the press performance took place. Everybody was
enthusiastic, but none more so than I.
Next day I arranged a third performance for painters and sculptors, and
this affair was likewise a great success.
A lady finally asked my friend to dance at her house. The star demanded
a very high price. Persuaded by me the lady consented to pay the big
fee my dancer claimed to be worth. For several weeks her success
increased day by day.
Then, all at once, people seemed to have forgotten the dancer. She was
engaged only rarely, but I was not discouraged.
Meantime, I had forgotten to mention it, my friend’s mother had joined
us at Vienna, and in place of one guest I now had two.
A little while after these performances we went to Budapesth, where I
gave a new entertainment to launch my protégée. I invited all the best
people of the city to this.
The leading actress of the Théâtre National heard of the affair, and
was anxious to take part in it. I invited the theatrical managers as
I had done at Vienna. This time one of them was to make up his mind
regarding an engagement. The next day he came to see me, and proposed
twenty performances in one of the first theatres of Budapesth. My
friend was to rehearse, beginning the next day. On that same day I had
an interminable rehearsal with my Japanese actors, and I was detained
from home until late in the afternoon. On returning to the hotel I
learned that the dancer and her mother had gone to Vienna to give there
an evening performance I had arranged for her before our departure.
My orchestra leader accompanied them. I was, I must confess, a little
surprised at the abruptness with which they left, but I thought no more
about it until my orchestra leader returned.
He came back alone. At first he evaded questions. Then he confessed
that these ladies did not expect to rejoin me. I could not, and would
not, believe him.
“Very well,” he said. “These are the precise words which the mother
uttered while we were on the train. ‘Now that she has started you,’
she said, to her daughter, ‘you have no more use for her.’ To which
the daughter replied, ‘Well, I haven’t the least desire to go back to
Loie.’”
When these ladies were ready to return to Budapesth they allowed my
orchestra leader to go without sending any message to me. I telegraphed
to find out if I was not to see them again. My dancer replied with
a telegram so worded: “Only in case you will deposit to my credit
ten thousand francs in a Viennese bank before nine o’clock to-morrow
morning.”
This proceeding was all the more cruel as she knew that I had just lost
more than one hundred thousand francs through a Viennese manager who
had broken his contract with my Japanese company. Besides, my expenses
were very heavy and I was badly embarrassed. After I left Budapesth the
dancer came there to fill the engagement I had secured for her. Then
she went to Vienna and gave some performances there. I have been told
that she went to all the people to whom I had presented her and asked
them to take tickets. She thus disposed of seats amounting to some
thousands of florins. Everybody was ready to help her, including the
wife of the English ambassador and the Princess of Metternich. Above
all, I must have gained a reputation as an impostor, for my friend
continued to appear in public in what I had called her practising gown.
Some years later at Brussels I learned that my dancer said to somebody
who wanted to know whether she was acquainted with Loie Fuller that she
did not know me.
XXI
AMERICAN AFFAIRS
A stranger, and especially a Frenchman who has never travelled in
America simply cannot imagine what our country is like. A Frenchman may
get an idea of Germany without having seen it; of Italy, without having
been there; of India even, without having visited it. It is impossible
for him to understand America as it is.
I had proof of the truth of this observation in certain circumstances
that were altogether unexpected. This experience I recall frequently as
one that was peculiarly amusing, so amusing indeed that I regard the
incident as one of the most comic I have ever encountered.
The hero of the adventure was a young journalist and man about town
named Pierre Mortier. One might imagine that from the fact of his
profession, which usually gives those who follow it a reasonable
smattering of everything, that he would be less liable to surprise and
astonishment than some shop assistant or railway employee. The actual
occurrences proved the contrary.
But let us view this farce from the rising of the curtain.
I embarked on a steamer at Cherbourg, with my mother and some friends,
bound for New York. Pierre Mortier came on board to offer his best
wishes for a delightful voyage. We made him inspect our state-rooms,
my friends and I, and we shut him in one of them. In vain he battered
the wooden door with fist and foot. We were deaf to his appeals, for we
had decided to release him only when the boat was already out of the
roadstead and bound for the shores of the new world.
At first he protested, not without vehemence, for he was not at all
equipped as regards wardrobe for such a voyage, but he soon cooled off
and gaily assumed his part in the rather strenuous farce into which we
had precipitated him.
“Be quiet,” I said to him, “everything will come out all right.”
“But how? I haven’t even a spare collar with me.”
His appearance was so disconsolate that I began to laugh heartily.
Gaiety spreads from one person to another as easily as gloom. He began,
in his turn, to laugh.
Arrived in New York we went to the best hotel in Brooklyn. The first
thing that caught Pierre Mortier’s eye in the hotel lobby was the
unusual number of spittoons. They were everywhere, of all sizes and
shapes, for Americans do not hesitate, if they have no receptacle
within easy reach, to spit on the floor, and to throw the ends of their
cigars anywhere, without even taking the trouble to extinguish them.
We reached our rooms. There in an array along the wall some buckets,
filled with water, attracted his attention. “Some more spittoons!”
cried Mortier.
Everybody laughed, and he said in a somewhat peevish tone:
“Then what are those buckets for?”
“Why, in case of fire.”
“I thought,” said Mortier, “that all American buildings were
fire-proof.”
“That is what you hear in Paris, but houses of that sort are really
very rare.”
“Yet you pay enough in your country to have more comfort and security
than anywhere else. For instance, that carriage just now. It was
nothing short of robbery. Twenty-five francs to take us from the
station here. And such an old trap! I don’t understand why your laws
tolerate such things.”
Already he was beginning to protest. There was sure to be something
else the next day.
On awakening on the first morning he pressed once on the electric
button in his bedroom. A bell-boy appeared, bringing a pitcher of ice
water. Thinking this a form of cheap wit Mortier sputtered some of his
worst insults, happily couched in French. The bell-boy, a huge negro,
looked calmly down upon this excited little man with the fair hair and
skin, and then, without asking for his tip, quietly closed the door and
went away.
This attitude of unconcern was not calculated to assuage our friend’s
bellicose mood. He rang the bell again, and three times instead of
once. That was the summons to be made when a guest wanted a boot-black
sent to take his boots. Such a personage presented himself.
The personage explained to Mortier that if he touched the bell once
that brought ice water; three times a boot-black. But Mortier did not
understand a word of English. Accordingly the boot-black did what the
bearer of ice water had done before, quite unconcernedly he went away.
Pierre Mortier was in a furious rage when a third boy presented
himself, as black as the two preceding, for all the attendants are
negroes in American hotels. This fellow was willing to remove his
boots. Some minutes passed. Mortier was almost apoplectic with anger.
The boy reappeared. He explained to his client that he gave the boots
back only in return for a dollar. Mortier was still in bed. To make
him understand, the negro lifted his clothes, which were folded on a
chair, and, whistling, all the while, rifled the pockets. He picked out
a dollar, and put it carelessly into his own pocket. Then he left the
boots on the floor and disappeared.
In a paroxysm of rage our friend dressed himself in a great hurry and
went to the hotel desk, where he made the place resound with curses
that no one paid any attention to since no one understood them.
On the evening of the same day Mortier put his boots outside his door
in order that they might be cleaned before next morning, as is done
everywhere in England and France.
In America when something is left in front of the door it is only as a
sign that the object can be thrown away. Mortier never saw his shoes
again.
He rang, a negro presented himself. Mortier demanded his shoes. He
cried, stormed, threatened. The negro backed up against the wall and
unconcernedly whistled a cakewalk.
Speechless with rage, Mortier hurled himself upon the black. The hotel
negroes, especially when they are not armed, are ordinarily lacking
in courage. Besides, this one had good reasons for believing that his
client had gone mad. So he hastily decamped.
After that nothing could induce any one of the negroes of the
establishment to enter Mortier’s room as long as he remained at this
hotel.
We did our best to explain to M. Mortier that the domestics were nowise
in the wrong. He would not listen to a word, but kept exclaiming, with
his eyes sticking further out of his head than usual (his eyes were
naturally prominent):
“No, no! In America you are savages, all savages. Yes, savages and
thieves. It is much worse here than I had supposed.”
One morning he went down alone into the restaurant for breakfast. Some
minutes after we saw him bounding up the stairs. He was livid and
trembling with rage. On reaching the door of our apartment, he burst
out:
“This time it is too much. What is the matter with these brutes here?
Has some change come over me? Tell me. Am I an object of ridicule?
What is the matter with me? When I entered the restaurant a great
fool looked me over from top to bottom, and said something, thereupon
everybody began to stare at me. What is the trouble with me? Tell me
what is the matter?”
What was the matter? He wore a straw hat with very narrow brim, one
of those hats called “American” in Paris and of a kind that is never
worn in America. He also had “New Yorkey” trousers such as were never
cut in New York. That was enough to let loose the risibilities of this
Yankee public, a public that is far from being indulgent of little
eccentricities in other people.
Instead of calming him our explanations exasperated him, and it was
only after he had spent his violence that we succeeded in getting him
down to breakfast again.
The breakfast was not extraordinarily expensive. But when he looked
over his account Mortier went into a rage. He had ordered the same
things that we did, and his bill was two dollars and a half, that is
about twelve and a half francs, higher than ours. These twelve and a
half francs represented the price of a bottle of very ordinary red
wine, which he had ordered.
“Do you want me to tell you what your Americans are,” he shouted.
“Well, they are, and don’t you forget it either, they are every one
thieves, savages, hogs. They are hogs, hogs! That one word expresses
it.”
One morning at eight o’clock, after we had had coffee together, he left
us.
“I am going to take a little walk,” he said. “I shall be back in half
an hour.”
The half hour lasted until seven o’clock in the evening. You can
imagine how anxious we became.
This is what happened.
Seeing that everybody, almost without exception, was headed in the
same direction, he followed the crowd along the side walk. Presently
he found himself on Brooklyn Bridge, black with people and burdened
with cars, those bound to New York filled to overflowing, the others
returning to Brooklyn completely empty.
Mortier did not know that all Brooklyn goes to work on the New York
side, where the business district is situated, and that everybody goes
to work at the same hour in this peculiar country. Astonished, curious,
a little bewildered, he followed the crowd. Once across the bridge he
found himself in one of the innumerable streets of New York.
On the New York side he looked round him to establish a landmark by
which he could find his way back. He did not discover one, but it
seemed impossible to get lost, as he had only to return to the base
of this big bridge to retrace his steps to Brooklyn. He kept on,
therefore, until he had completely satisfied his curiosity. Then he
retraced his steps, or at least he thought he was doing so. He looked
for the bridge, but in vain. Everybody walked so quickly that his very
courteous “Pardon, Monsieur,” met with no response. Once or twice he
made a bad effort at asking for “Brooklyn Bridge.” This met with no
better success.
All the while he was unable to find a policeman.
The idea occurred to him, a magnificent idea, of going into a shop.
No one made the slightest effort to help him. The assistants were
interested only in trying to sell him everything which the house
contained. Finally he found himself in a street where there were only
clothing merchants. Hardly had he set foot there when he was seized and
dragged into a shop. An hour passed before Mortier could escape, more
dead than alive, from the merchant’s clutches. The information he gave
led us to suppose that this must have been the famous Baxter Street,
the quarter in which Jewish second-hand dealers ply their trade. It was
past five o’clock when he succeeded finally in regaining the bridge,
and then it was only with difficulty that he got across, for it was
already overcrowded with workers returning to their homes in Brooklyn.
Finally he found the hotel again, swearing that he was going to take
the first steamer for Europe.
“Anywhere,” he would groan; “I would rather be anywhere in the world
than here. I’m not going to stay another hour in such a country. A
rotten country! Rotten people!”
This time, in Pierre Mortier’s eyes, we were “rotten.” It would be hard
to estimate how many discourteous adjectives this young man applied to
our people in a short time. He must have made a record.
However, the Brooklyn hotel at which we were staying was equipped “on
the European plan” with carefully chosen menus _à la carte_.
In the city to which we went later there was a purely American hotel,
at which we put up. A central plate surrounded by a dozen little plates
stood in front of each guest. All these were filled simultaneously with
soup, entrees, fish, meat, vegetables and fruit. The guests with hasty
movements gobbled smoked salmon, roast beef, chicken, mashed potatoes,
badly cooked “pie,” salad, cheese, fruit, pudding, ice-cream, with
apparently no regard for the effect of the hazardous mixtures on their
digestive organs.
Mortier left the table completely disheartened by this spectacle.
“What are those savages made of,” he said. “Upon my word they make me
look back with regret to the thieves in New York. And when you consider
that to urge down their hideous mixtures they incessantly guzzle
ice water and keep chewing olives, just as civilised people eat bread!”
When we returned to New York Mortier went to the Holland House, a hotel
at which French was spoken, and where things were done in a manner
approximating nearer to what he was accustomed to.
America--this America which on the steamer he had assured himself would
be perfect--had come to interest him only in places where it had lost
its own character. He found it good only in the few spots where it
resembled Paris. In this was not this young journalist, after all, like
most of his compatriots when they undertake to travel even in other
countries than in America?
At the Holland House Pierre Mortier relaxed a little. He even became
more polite in his expressions regarding America and Americans. But an
incident occurred that brought the young reporter’s distaste for the
country to a head, and precipitated his departure.
One day on returning to the Holland House he forgot to pay his cabman
and found him ten hours later still standing in front of the hotel. His
charge was a dollar and a half an hour. That meant that Mortier had to
give up fifteen dollars.
Our friend thought at first the house porter should have paid for the
trip, and had the charge made on his bill. Accordingly he complained at
the hotel desk regarding what he called a piece of negligence.
Although the house was conducted on the French plan they gave him a
thoroughly American answer:
“Well, that has nothing to do with the porter. You ordered the
carriage, didn’t you? Yes. You had the use of it, didn’t you? Yes.
Well, then, what do you expect? If you don’t know what you want, it
isn’t up to the employees to run after you to find out. They’ve got
something else to do.”
By the next steamer Pierre Mortier left the United States for good and
all, swearing never again to set foot there.
Mr. W. Boosey, the English publisher, had some very different
experiences in the United States.
On board the steamer he had become acquainted with a very interesting
and companionable American, who invited him to lunch at Delmonico’s.
“Thanks awfully,” said the Englishman as he accepted. “On what day?”
“Any day you please.”
That was a little vague, but Mr. Boosey assured him that he should be
delighted, and would come as soon as he had a free day. He was afraid
of not having said the proper thing, from the American point of view.
This notion bothered him for several days.
Finally, just before sailing, he asked the American again when they
should lunch together at Delmonico’s.
His friend replied: “On Thursday or Saturday, whichever suits you best.”
The Englishman decided on Thursday.
The day set for the lunch arrived and Mr. Boosey was prompt to keep
the appointment. He asked for Mr. X., and they showed him to a table.
Half-past one, two, half-past two, three o’clock, and still no American.
The Englishman, patient though he was, began to find time hanging
heavily on his hands. He thought he must have made a mistake as to the
day, and at last he sent for the manager.
“What,” said the manager, “didn’t the waiter tell you that Mr. X. had
telephoned that he could not come, and that he begged you to order
whatever you liked? He will attend to the account.”
Imagine what the Englishman must have thought. He had come to lunch
with a gentleman, not to have his food paid for by some one. Just at
that moment the American rushed into the restaurant.
“I am awfully sorry, my dear fellow, but I am glad to find you still
here. I had quite forgotten about our lunch up to two o’clock, and then
I telephoned. I didn’t think I could get here at all. I had a deal on,
one involving a million dollars, and I simply couldn’t leave it. Have
you had your bite? No? Well, I haven’t either. Well, then, let us go
and sit down.”
And they sat down. Mr. Boosey will never forget his American
entertainer.
The American had, it must be confessed, treated his English guest
with a certain negligence. However little he may be inclined to
philosophical considerations, nothing is more instructive to a
thorough-going Englishman than to observe the manner in which a Yankee
ordinarily observes the civilised conventions and the lofty spirit in
which he also looks upon anyone who is not an American. Nothing gives
him a better notion of the high opinion Americans have of themselves
than to hear a Yankee say:
“Well, what are you anyway? English, I’ll bet.”
Then, after a profound sigh and with an indefinable sweep of the hand:
“As for me,” with emphasis on the “me,” “I am an American.”
He seems to experience genuine annoyance at having to face a man who
isn’t an American.
Every American thinks, without ever being guilty of profound reflection
on the subject, that everybody, whatever his nationality, would have
preferred first to see the light of day in the United States. For the
United States, if one were to accept the cheerful American belief, is a
free country whose parallel does not exist anywhere in the world.
The native American claims to have the advantage of being a citizen of
the world’s freest country. If you were to say to most Americans that
there is a great deal of liberty in England, they would think that you
were trying to make fun of them, and they would tell you that they
did not believe it. They admit, occasionally, that there is a little
freedom outside of the United States, but they will add:
“What a pity there isn’t more of it.”
The American believes himself completely emancipated, for freedom is
the passion of the whole people. He pays for this catchword, which
satisfies him, for having no basis of comparison he in reality does not
know what he possesses and what he lacks.
The Spanish American is not less picturesque than the Anglo-Saxon
American.
I had an engagement for a season at the city of Mexico. I made my first
appearance at the Grand Théâtre-National in presence of five thousand
spectators. On returning to the Hotel Sands, the most beautiful hotel
in the city, I found there the municipal orchestra come to serenade me.
At the end of my stay I was asked to take part in a charitable
performance. The house was packed, despite the high price of the seats.
After the performance a great banquet was given, under the auspices of
the festival committee.
At the table I was received with an enthusiasm which was quite Mexican,
and that means with an enthusiasm that could be hardly surpassed in any
country of the world. Throughout the repast I kept receiving presents.
Some of the women took off their bracelets, others their rings, others
their brooches, and, in spite of my protestations, insisted on giving
them to me.
“Absolutely at your service!”
They obliged me to take them all.
I was inexpressibly embarrassed by my booty. When I returned to the
hotel I asked the clerk to put all these jewels in a safe place.
He looked at the jewels and said:
“But you will have to send them back, madam.”
“Send them back? Why, they were given me.”
“It is the custom here, madam. Presents are always returned.”
“What am I going to do? I am leaving to-morrow morning at six o’clock,
and I don’t know the names of the people who have entrusted their
jewels to me.”
He shook his head.
“Well, then, I don’t know what to do. After all, keep them.”
Next day, accordingly, when I departed, I took the precious package,
thinking that we should return from Cuba, to which we were bound, by
way of Mexico, and that I should then look up the owners of “my” jewels.
In Cuba all our plans were changed. We left directly for New York, with
the object of returning at once to Europe. Consequently I have never
given back the jewels.
I sometimes wonder what my friends of some hours must think of a woman
who dared to accept, under protest, the presents that were tendered her.
While we were in Mexico I had occasion to offer a cheque payable in New
York for some books I was buying.
No one, absolutely no one, wanted to accept it. Then I went to the
Chief of Police, General Carbadjadoes, whom I knew and he telegraphed
to a New York bank, from which the reply was received that, “Loie
Fuller’s cheques are perfectly good.”
That put an end to any reluctance among the merchants, who afterward,
on the contrary, overwhelmed me with all sorts of propositions.
My most vivid impressions of Mexico were of the abounding and
well-regulated enthusiasm of the upper classes and the extraordinary
insolence of the tradespeople. The whole character of the country is
expressed in these two traits.
On the liner that took us to the United States Pierre Mortier, for I
shall have to mention him once more, made the acquaintance of a young
Roumanian, who seemed to be a well-bred man, a very well-bred man.
In Mortier enthusiasm is as easily evoked as is condemnation, and he
presented this man to me in a most cordial manner.
Upon our arrival the young man said to me:
“I have so many little parcels that I don’t know where to put them.
Would you do me the great favour of taking care of this one?”
I gave the object to my maid, who put it in my travelling case, and it
passed the inspection of the customs-house officer.
That evening at the hotel the young man called on me with Mortier, and
I gave him back his package.
He opened it smiling, and showed me the contents.
I had fraudulently brought in a bag of uncut rubies.
I treated the Roumanian as a cheat and told him that if he did not
make the matter right with the customs I should hand him over to the
authorities. Smiling all the while he promised that, since I took the
affair to heart, he would go and make his peace, and he left.
I never saw him or his rubies again, it is needless to say.
I believe that from this time forward they have been seeking me in vain
to charge me with smuggling a package through the customs-house.
XXII
GAB
For eight years Gab and I have lived together on terms of the greatest
intimacy, like two sisters. Gab is much younger than I and regards me
with deep affection.
Often I look at her curiously. She seems to read what is in my face and
replies to my mute interrogation.
“You cannot understand me. You are Saxon and I am Latin.”
When I survey her I find myself thinking as she thinks, and I wonder
if there exists a way of comprehending that we Anglo-Saxons do not
possess. Gab is deeply serious. She has long, black eyes which seem to
slumber perpetually. When she walks, despite her youth, she proceeds
with slow and protracted steps, which give you an impression that she
must be of a serious and meditative nature.
When I became acquainted with her she was living in a dark little
apartment, furnished in Hindu style, where in her black velvet costume
she looked like some Byzantine princess. Jean Aicard, the poet, said
one day that her voice is of velvet, her skin and locks are of velvet,
her eyes are of velvet and her name ought to be _Velours_. If one
could compare her to a living creature a boa constrictor would be most
appropriate, for her movements are like those of a snake. There is
nothing sinuous, nothing rampant about them, but the _ensemble_ of her
motions suggests the suppleness of the young adder.
I knew Gab for at least two years before it entered into my head
that she was fond of me. She was always so calm, so silent, so
undemonstrative, so unlike any other human being that only a
supernatural personality, it seemed, would ever be able to understand
her.
Her eyes and her hair are just alike, deep black and very brilliant.
In her presence people never know for certain whether she is looking
at them or not. Yet nothing about them escapes her, and through her
half-closed eyes she penetrates to the very depths of their souls. She
is neither tall nor slight, neither plump nor thin. Her skin is like
alabaster, her abundant locks are parted in the middle and brought
together in a knot behind the head, just as our grandmothers did their
hair. Her teeth are small, regular and white as pearls. Her nose is
straight and graceful. Her face is full and her head is so large that
she never finds quite hair enough to dress it with.
When Gab was a baby she had as playmates a donkey, a pony and an army
of lead soldiers, including Napoleon in his various aspects, with
horses, rifles and wooden cannon. When I became acquainted with her she
still had with her the nurse who had taken her mother’s place. This
woman told me that Gab used to make her play horse while she took the
part of Napoleon, until the poor nurse staggered with fatigue. She told
me again that Gab was so shy that when her mother received a visitor,
if the child were in the drawing-room and there was no way of escape,
the little one would hide herself behind a curtain and would not budge
until the intruder went away. Her mother was so much concerned with
what she called the child’s timidity that she was unwilling to force
her in any way. Gab subsequently has explained to me that she was
not afraid and was not timid, but the truth was she could not endure
certain people and that she did not wish to be obliged to see those who
annoyed her.
She is just the same to-day. For years whenever a visitor came in by
one door she would go out by another, and it made no difference whether
the person came for a long call or for only a single word. At lunch or
at dinner nothing could, and nothing can, induce Gab to meet people.
[Illustration: GAB
_Photo_ _Tabler_]
Gab has an iron will. Her nurse told me that one day on a journey with
her parents Gab, who was then a very small girl, wanted to have a
donkey that was running along the railway track. She cried for the
donkey and did not cease until they had found the beast and bought it
for her.
Gab has rarely to be corrected. It seems as if some one had taught
her all the politeness in the world, and all the seriousness as well.
When nine years old she was reading Schopenhauer. At fourteen she was
carrying on special research among the archives of the State police. At
sixteen she was studying the literature of ancient India. At eighteen
she published a manuscript she had found after her mother’s death. She
spent her pocket money to have it published. The title of the book was
_Au Loin_, and Jean Lorrain declared that it was the most beautiful
book on India which he had ever read.
Gab’s mother must have written this book during her journey in India,
for a short time before her death she had visited this interesting
country, and had gained access to private houses and courts to which
Europeans are not ordinarily admitted. She was a marvellously beautiful
woman, and made a great sensation in a country in which beauty is held
in high regard.
The story goes that one evening at a ball in the viceroy’s palace, to
which she had been invited, her entrance made such a sensation that all
the couples, forgetting that they were there to dance, stopped and came
forward to admire her radiant beauty.
When she died those who attended her funeral wept like children, saying
that she was too beautiful to have been an ordinary mortal, and that
there was something supernatural in her countenance.
All her life she had been called the beautiful Mme. X.
At the time of my debut at the Folies-Bergère Gab was fourteen years
old. One day her mother said to her: “There is a new foreign dancer
whom everybody is going to see. We will see her at a matinee.”
On reaching the theatre to buy seats the day before the performance
they asked about me at the ticket office. Gab’s mother, whose beauty
captivated everybody, had no trouble in getting all the information she
wanted. The following dialogue ensued:
“Is she pretty?” asked Gab’s mother.
“No, she is not pretty,” was the reply.
“Is she common, ordinary?”
“No, she has an individuality of her own.”
“Tall?”
“Rather slight than tall.”
“Is she young?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I could not swear to it.”
“Is she brunette or blonde?”
“She has brown hair and blue eyes, very blue.”
“Is she smart?”
“Oh, no. Not smart. She is anything but that. She is a queer sort of
girl who seems to think of nothing but her work.”
“Is she retiring?”
“Well, yes. She knows nobody and sees nobody. She has continued to be
quite unacquainted in Paris. She lives on the third storey at the end
of a court in a house to the rear of the Folies-Bergère, and she never
goes out unless with the manager of the theatre or his wife and with
her mother, who never leaves her.”
“Does her dancing weary her greatly?”
“After the dance she is so tired that they have to carry her home and
she goes to bed at once. The first time she came here she stayed at the
Grand Hotel, but the manager has given her the _appartement_ of which I
have been speaking. He has had a door let in at the rear of the stage,
so that she can return to her rooms without having to go upon the
street. She remains forty-five minutes on the stage. The white dance
alone lasts eleven minutes. That is very fatiguing for her; she sticks
at it too long, but the public is never willing to let her stop.”
“Is she amiable?”
“Well, she does not know a word of French, but she smiles all the time,
and says, ‘bong-jour’.”
At this moment the manager, M. Marchand, who had come near the ticket
office, and who fell victim to the irresistible charm of Gab’s mother,
joined in the conversation.
“She is a very complex personality, Miss Loie Fuller,” he said. “She
has no patience but displays nevertheless an incredible amount of
perseverance. She is always rehearsing with her electric apparatus,
engaged in search of new effects, and she sometimes keeps her
electricians at work until six o’clock in the morning. No one would
venture to make the slightest suggestion to her about this; overwork
seems to agree with her. She stops neither for dinner nor for supper.
She is endlessly seeking for combinations of light and colour.”
Then he added, as if aside:
“They are queer people, these Americans.”
Gab’s mother then asked about my studies and my ideas.
“She has just been interviewed on this subject, and the interview was
published this morning. Among other things she said, in speaking of
the effect that she obtains: ‘Everybody knows when it is successful,
but no one realises how one has to keep at it to succeed. That is
what I am after unceasingly.’ The interviewer asked her if there was
no established system, no books that could help her in her work.
She looked astonished and replied, ‘I do not see how any one could
use words to indicate the rays of light in their imperceptible and
unceasing interplay that is changing all the time.’”
My manager then drew the newspaper from his pocket and read this
passage from my exposition:
“‘One needs to have order in one’s thinking to be able to write. One
can feel rays of light, in disintegration or in transition only as one
feels heat or cold. One cannot tell in words what one feels. Sensations
are not thoughts.’”
“‘But music, for example, can be reduced to notation.’”
“This seemed to surprise her. She was silent, reflected a moment, and
then said:
“‘I ought to think about that, but it seems to me that the vibration
represented by sight is a finer sense, more indefinite, more fugitive,
than that of sound. Sounds have a more fixed character and they are
limited. As for sight it has no limit, or none at least that we
recognise. In any case we are more ignorant of things that concern our
eyes than those which address themselves to our ears. Perhaps this is
because our eyes from infancy are better developed at an earlier stage,
and because seeing is a faculty the young child exercises sooner than
hearing. The field of visual harmony as compared with aural harmony
is like sunshine in comparison with moonlight. That is why there took
place in the human brain a great development of the sense of sight,
long before we were able to direct it or even to understand the results
or the uses of it.’”
“Those who watch Loie Fuller during her work,” continued M. Marchand,
after he had put the paper back into his pocket, “are struck by the
transformation that takes place in her as she speaks, or as she directs
her men to try this experiment or that. In point of fact, Madame, she
has transformed the Folies-Bergère. Every evening the usual audience is
lost amid a crowd composed of scholars, painters, sculptors, writers
and ambassadors, and at the matinees there is a crowd of women and
children. All the chairs and tables of the galleries have been piled
up behind the orchestra chairs and all the people, forgetful of their
rank and dignity, climb over them like a crowd of urchins. All that for
a young girl who does not seem to suspect that she has won success.
Would you like an example? Lately my wife took her to a large store
to buy some handkerchiefs. The first thing Miss Fuller saw was some
handkerchiefs marked ‘Loie Fuller,’ and she was surprised to note that
some one had the same name as hers. When they told her: ‘Why, not at
all. It is your name that appears on these handkerchiefs,’ she replied:
“‘How can that be? These people don’t know me.’
“She did not understand and could not understand that it was on account
of her success.”
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FIRE
_Photo_ _Lafitte_]
Gab’s mother, after acknowledging the manager’s salutation as he said
good-bye, again asked the ticket office men:
“She is a proper person, then?”
“Good Heavens, yes. She is so middle class that she looks like a little
country girl. I suspect that she has never dreamed of trying to be
swell. She came here with a valise and a little steamer trunk, and
dressed as in this photograph,” he added, showing the portrait I had
given him.
This photograph depicted me in a yachting cap, a straight-cut dress of
indefinite colour, and supported by straps. A light underwaist, a short
jacket and a very simple cape completed my costume.
After seeing this Gab and her mother went home with their seats for
next day’s matinee. This matinee impressed Gab to such a degree that on
reaching home this child of fourteen wrote the following lines in my
honour:
“A luminous and impalpable shadow. Across the dark brown night flits
a pallid, palpitating reflection. And while petals fly in the air a
supernatural golden flower rises toward the sky. It is not a sister
of the terrestrial flowers which shed their dream particles upon our
aching souls. Like them the gigantic flower brings no consolation. It
grew in a strange region under the moon’s blue rays. Life beats in
its transparent stem, and its clear leaves hang loosely in the shade
like great tormented arms. Just a dream efflorescence displays itself
and meditates. It is the flower’s living poetry that sings there,
delicate, fugitive and mysterious.
“It is the unsullied firmament, bestrewn with stars and it is the dance
of fire.
“A crackling flame is kindled. It turns and twists and glows. Smoke,
heavy as an incense, rises and mingles in the darkness where embers
glow. In the midst of the tumult, licked by torrents of foaming fire, a
mask, also a strange flame, is outlined in the reddish air. The flames
die into a single flame, which grows to immensity. You might think that
human thought were rending itself in the darkness. And we await with
anxious hearts the beauty that passes.
“Soul of the flowers, soul of the sky, soul of flame, Loie Fuller has
given them to us. Words and phrases avail nothing. She has created the
soul of the dance, for until Loie Fuller came the dance was without
soul!
“It had no soul in Greece when among fair wheat heads on days flooded
with sunshine beautiful children danced gaily, brandishing their golden
sickles. Rigid, majestic, and somewhat too formal, it had no soul under
the Grand Monarch. It had no soul when it might have had one. The
eighteenth century dances, the minuet in a whirl of powder; the waltz
is only an embrace, the woman cult revived.
“The soul of the dance was destined to be born in this sad and feverish
age. Loie Fuller modelled form out of a dream. Our foolish desires,
our dread of mere nothing, these she expressed in her dance of fire.
To satisfy our thirst for oblivion she humanised the flowers. Happier
than her brothers, the lords of creation, she caused her silent deeds
to live and in the darkness, this setting of grandeur, no human defect
marred her beauty. Providence shows itself kindly toward her. In its
great secret Loie shares.
“Amorous of the resplendent beauty in nature she asks it questions
out of her clear eyes. To seize the unknown her hand becomes coaxing.
Her firm, precise glance penetrates the soul of things even when they
have none. The inanimate becomes animate, and thinks under her magical
desire, and the ‘dream pantomime’ is evolved.
“Charmingly womanly she has chosen the sweetest and finest among
sleeping lives. She is the butterfly, she is the fire, she is light,
heaven, the stars. Frail, under floating material, flowery with pale
gold, with calcedony and beryl, Salome passed in her power. Afterwards
humanity went by feverishly. To calm our frayed souls and our childish
nightmares a fragile figure dances in a celestial robe.”
And now, fifteen years after, Gab still tells me, when we speak of the
impression I made on her at the time she wrote these pages full of
ingenuous emotion,
“I never see you exactly as you are,” she says, “but as you seemed to
me on that day.”
I wonder if her friendship, so well founded and positive, is not
intimately mingled with the love of form, of colour and of light, which
I interpreted synthetically before her eyes when I appeared before her
for the first time.
XXIII
THE VALUE OF A NAME
When in the autumn of 1892 I appeared for the first time at the
Folies-Bergère I knew no one, absolutely no one, in Paris. Imagine then
my surprise upon receiving one day a visiting card from one of the
spectators on which these words were written in lead pencil:
“Oh, well, old girl, I am fiercely glad to see that you have tapped
the till. We are here, a whole gang of us, two boxes full, and we want
you to join us after the performance.
Your old pal.”
The card bore a name with which I was unacquainted.
This was some practical joke, or else the call-boy had made a slip in
the address. I continued my disrobing without considering the matter
further.
All at once a gentleman rushed into my dressing-room.
“Well, Mollie, my old girl, why don’t you reply to a comrade’s letter?”
But on seeing me in street costume he stopped short and cried:
“Well, but who are you? I thought you were Mollie Fuller!”
Then I understood that he had taken me for one of his old friends.
“I know whom you mean,” I answered, “but I am not Mollie Fuller. Mollie
Fuller is very well known in the United States, where she is imitating
my dances. We are often mistaken for each other, but you must realise
that this isn’t the same person.”
The gentleman was tall, stout, very dark, of distinguished appearance,
with a certain odd defect in one of his eyes. He wore a full beard.
I shall never forget his aspect as he apologised. Without asking me
again to join his “gang” he disappeared even more quickly than he had
entered.
I often encountered him after that, and he always greeted me very
respectfully. From my window looking upon the courtyard of a great
hotel in London I have even been present at a dinner--such a dinner as
had never before been seen there--given by this same gentleman. Caruso
sang. The courtyard of the hotel had been transformed into a lake, and
the host and his guests dined in gondolas. From my window I watched the
banquet and I thought of the other supper to which I had been invited
involuntarily. The world is so small!
I did not become the well-known Loie Fuller without, as is easily
realised, being involved in some little adventures. I had once played
the part of Jack Sheppard in the drama of that name. Our company
stopped in Philadelphia. My father and mother were with me, and we took
our meals in a very modest boarding-house.
Some years after I returned, as a dancer, to this same city, and at the
hotel at which I registered, it was one of the largest of the city, I
was refused admittance. Without taking the trouble to ask why, I went
elsewhere. But I thought over this irritating reception and as I could
not understand it I returned to the hotel in question and asked to
speak to the manager. On seeing me he looked amazed:
“But you are not Loie Fuller.”
I assured him that I certainly was Loie Fuller, and asked why he had
been unwilling to receive me in his hotel.
He told me the following story.
“When you were playing Jack Sheppard one of the ladies of the company
stayed here with Mr. Z. One day they had such a quarrel that I was
obliged to ask them to vacate. This lady was registered under the name
of Miss Fuller.”
I had absolutely no idea who the person could be and I was trying
to find out when at the theatre some one brought me the card of a
gentleman who wanted to see me.
His name was quite unfamiliar. This gentleman, however, might have been
sent by a friend. Accordingly I received him. A tall gentleman entered,
and, very much surprised, repeated the hotel man’s affirmation:
“But you are not Loie Fuller!”
I assured him that I was.
He had known the “Loie Fuller” who had been entertained in my stead at
the hotel and who sang in the chorus of “Jack Sheppard,” the play of
which I was playing the principal part. He wanted to see her in her
new incarnation and renew his acquaintance with her. When I had at
last shown him his mistake he allowed me to see the counterfeit Loie
Fuller’s picture. And as a matter of fact when we were made up for the
stage there was a little resemblance.
One day we were giving some performances at Lyons. On arriving at the
theatre one of my electricians said to me:
“The proprietress of the hotel where I am staying with my comrades is
greatly annoyed. She says that you lived with her at the time of your
last trip to Lyons. You were very well satisfied and promised to come
again, and yet you have not come. She declares that it isn’t nice of
you to show yourself so haughty under the pretext that now you are
successful.”
Everybody who is acquainted with me knows that such conduct is not at
all characteristic of me. I was, therefore, very much surprised, I was
unable to recall the name of the hotel the electrician mentioned. I
asked him, therefore, to find out at what period I had put up at the
hostelry of the good lady whose grievance he had just forwarded to me.
The next day he told me the date. Now at that period I was at
Bucharest. I was, therefore, more perplexed than ever, and I asked the
electrician to continue his inquiry and to do his best to straighten
out the difficulty.
“My landlady,” he said, “is sure that it was you. She saw you at the
theatre. It is the same dance and she bade me say again that she ‘is
very much astonished at Miss Fuller’s conduct.’ You were so well
satisfied with her house, both you and the gentleman with you.”
I then went to the hotel to show the landlady that she was mistaken.
She then made me look at the photograph of a woman who imitates
everything that I do, passes her life watching over each one of my
creations and follows me everywhere, whether to London, to New York, to
Paris or Berlin.
In addition to these rare adventures that come to my knowledge, how
many others are there that I shall never know about?
I never arrive in a town without Loie Fuller’s having been there in
advance of me, and even in Paris I have seen announced in flamboyant
letters, “Loie Fuller, radiant dances,” and I have been able to see
with my own eyes “la Loie Fuller” dance before my face.
When I went to South America I discovered that there, too, Loie Fuller
had been ahead of me.
What I often wonder is what “imitations” in private life are
perpetrated by these ladies, who are embarrassed by no scruples.
So I am not the woman, perhaps my word will be taken for it, who, of
all the world, is most appreciative of the value of a name. I might add
that the American chorus girl of whom I have been writing came to Paris
and that one day her lover left her there. Alone, without friends,
without a cent, ill, she sent for me.
Did I help her?
I am afraid I did. When we see a dog in the street dying of hunger, we
give him something to eat, and not in order that he may not bite us,
not in order that he may be grateful to us; we give him something to
eat because he is hungry.
XXIV
HOW M. CLARETIE INDUCED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK
One evening during the Exposition of 1900 M. and Mme. Jules Claretie
came to my little theatre in the Rue de Paris, to see Sada Yacco in her
famous death-scene. After the performance they came behind the scenes,
where I was presented to them.
Several years passed and I became interested, as I have explained, in a
little Japanese artist, Hanako. I remembered how Sada Yacco had pleased
the Clareties, and I asked them to come and see my new Japanese star.
After the performance they came to the dressing-room of the dearest
little actress in the world, and I had the pleasure of receiving them
there.
Some days later I received an invitation to lunch with M. and Mme.
Claretie. It was extended to little Hanako and myself. The day arrived,
and we set forth. Hanako appeared to be quite unaware that she was
going to lunch with a celebrated writer, and experienced no excitement
at the idea of paying a visit to the director of the world’s first
theatre. I had lived in Paris long enough to be able to group people
according to their standing, and I was, for my part, somewhat confused.
Hanako was curious only as regards the things she was going to see,
since all intercourse with others was barred from the fact that she
spoke only Japanese. Indeed, it was because she knew it would please
me, and because I had expressly begged her to do so, was she willing
to come to this lunch. She was charming, with her odd little wooden
sandals, which she called her shoes, and her robes worn one over
the other. She gave an impression of nothing lacking. Hanako is so
exquisite that it is difficult to draw her likeness. Her stature is so
slight that she barely reaches a tall man’s waist.
Mme. Claretie received us so cordially that we were at once glad we
came. Then M. Claretie came in, very refined and very simple. He was
accompanied by M. Prudhon, an impressive person, who did not utter
a word. He was presented to me as the director’s right-hand man. I
wondered how it was possible to carry on business without saying
anything. From noon until three o’clock, as a matter of fact, I did not
hear a single word escape his lips. At the table I asked Mme. Claretie,
in an undertone in English:
“Is he dumb?”
She began to laugh in her friendly and reassuring way and replied:
“Oh, no, but he never has much to say.”
Then, thinking the ice broken, I looked at M. Prudhon smiling. He did
not smile at all, and I said to him vivaciously:
“If you continue to contradict me in that way I won’t say another word
to you.”
M. Prudhon, still serious, bowed and had nothing to say.
This quip, which did not even make him smile, was not an original one
with me, I make haste to say. I had heard it said by a young girl who
was my private secretary, and who wanted to stir up a gentleman who was
unpleasantly silent. M. Prudhon reminded me of that man, and I wanted
to see what effect the remark would have on him. It had no effect.
While I am speaking of this secretary I ought to devote a few lines
to her, although I have no reason to remember her kindly. She was a
pretty, young girl, always exquisitely gowned, although her financial
resources were slight. To my extreme displeasure I found out later the
explanation of the enigma.
She was my secretary, and I often sent her to place orders among all
my tradespeople. At the same time that she gave orders for things
that I wanted she ordered them for herself, taking care not to call
for two articles of the same make. I never had gloves or veils or
handkerchiefs. She always had taken the last of them. She always
thought that she had ordered more of them, and would sally forth to
order more.
One day I sent her to Tiffany’s, the jewellers. She added only a mere
little trinket to my order, a locket with her monogram set in diamonds.
I received the bill in due course, but she had left me. Previously she
had gone with me to Nice, and had remained there while I was on the
road in the United States. When I returned I learned that during my
absence she had lived at the hotel where I left her and that her bill,
charged to my account, amounted to nearly 6,000 francs.
Presently other invoices arrived from dyers and cleaners, glove makers,
shoemakers, costumiers, modistes, furriers, linendrapers and finally
the bill from Tiffany’s.
But the limit was reached when a student from the Beaux Arts asked me
if I could not return him sixty-six francs which he had lent me two
years before through the medium of my pretty secretary. Next there came
a gentleman from London, one whom I held in too great esteem to go into
details, who asked me for ten pounds sterling which he had loaned me,
again through the medium of my clever and well-dressed secretary.
But in speaking of my troubles I am liable to forget my lunch with the
Clareties.
As we were about to sit down Mme. Claretie brought in an elderly woman
of very pleasant appearance. I have rarely seen motions easier, more
simple or more harmonious. Leaning against each other they made a
delightful picture. Mme. Claretie presented me to her mother. I asked
how she was.
“Oh, I am very well,” she replied, “my eyes are my only trouble. I
cannot read without glasses, and the glasses annoy me a great deal.”
She had always been very fond of reading, and could not bring herself
to the idea of reading no more. I sympathised with her and told her so.
Then suddenly it occurred to me to ask her how old she was.
“Ninety-five years,” she replied.
And she was complaining of not being able to read any longer without
glasses!
We spoke of her grandchildren and her great grandchildren. I asked her
if the happiness of being surrounded by so many affectionate people did
not bring large compensation for the infirmities of age.
She replied:
“I love my children and my grandchildren, and I live in them. But that
does not restore to me my eyesight. It is terrible not to be able to
see.”
And she was right. Love gave her strength to bear her misfortune, but
she feared that the prison of darkness would claim her as its prey.
Before going to the dining-room she had taken her daughter’s arm. She
had no assistance on the other hand in eating. Her good humour was
unvarying.
She took some knitting from a work-basket, and said in a firm voice:
“I must work. I can no longer see well enough to be sure that my
knitting is well done, but I have to keep busy, nevertheless.”
Mme. Claretie asked me if I was acquainted with Alexandre Dumas.
I told her how I had chanced to meet him. Then M. Claretie asked me
numerous questions, which I tried to evade in order not to seem to talk
about myself all the time. Imagine my astonishment when next morning
I read in the _Temps_ an article, a column and a half long, devoted
entirely to our visit at M. Claretie’s and signed by the gentleman
himself.
“Mme. Hanako,” he wrote, “is in town, a little person, delightfully odd
and charming. In her blue or green robes, embroidered with flowers of
many colours, she is like a costly doll, or a prettily animated idol,
which should have a bird’s voice. The sculptor Rodin may possibly show
us her refined features and keen eyes at the next Salon, for he is
occupied just now with a study of her, and I believe a statue of the
comedienne. He has never had a better model. These Japanese, who are
so energetic, leaping into the fray like the ants upon a tree trunk,
are likewise capable of the most complete immobility and the greatest
patience. These divergent qualities constitute the strength of their
race.
“Mme. Hanako, whom I saw and applauded in ‘The Martyr’ at the Opera,
came to see me, through the kindness of Miss Loie Fuller, who
discovered Sada Yacco for us some years ago. It is delightful to see at
close hand and in so attractive a guise this little creature, who looks
so frightful when, with convulsed eyes, she mimics the death agony.
There is a pretty smile on the lips which at the theatre are curled
under the pain of hara-kiri. She made me think of Orestes exhibiting
the funeral urn to Electra: ‘As you see, we bring the little remnants
in a little urn.’
“Loie Fuller, who was a soubrette before being the goddess of light, an
enchantress of strange visions, has become enamoured of this dramatic
Japanese art and has popularised it everywhere, through Sada Yacco and
then through Mme. Hanako. I have always observed that Loie Fuller has a
very keen intelligence. I am not surprised that Alexandre Dumas said to
me: ‘She ought to write out her impressions and her memories.’ I should
like to hear from her how she first conceived these radiant dances, of
which the public has never grown tired, and which she has just begun
again at the Hippodrome. She is, however, more ready to talk philosophy
than the stage. Gaily, with her blue eye and her faun-like smile, she
replied to my question: ‘It’s just chance. The light came to me. I
didn’t have to go to it.’”
I apologize for reproducing these eulogistic words. I have even
suppressed certain passages, for M. Claretie was very complimentary. It
was, however, absolutely necessary that I should make this citation,
since out of it grew the present book.
M. Claretie had quoted Dumas’ opinion. He returned to the charge.
Soon after, in fact, I received a letter from M. Claretie urging me to
begin my “memoirs.” Perhaps he was right, but I hardly dared undertake
such a terrible task all alone. It looked so formidable to write a
book, and a book about myself!
One afternoon I called on Mme. Claretie. A number of pleasant people
were there and, after Mme. Claretie had mentioned this notion of
“memoirs” which her husband, following Dumas’ lead, had favoured, they
all began to ask me questions about myself, my art and the steps by
which I had created it. Everyone tried to encourage me to undertake the
work.
A short time after this Mme. Claretie sent me tickets for her box
at the Théâtre-Français. I went there with several friends. There
were twelve of us, among whom was Mrs. Mason, wife of the American
Consul-General, who is the most remarkable statesman I have ever known,
and the best diplomatist of the service.
In return for the Clareties’ kindness I invited them to be present at
one of my rehearsals of ‘Salome.’ They were good enough to accept my
invitation and one evening they arrived at the Théâtre des Arts while I
was at work. Later I came forward to join them. We stood in the gloom
of a dimly lighted hall. The orchestra was rehearsing. All at once a
dispute arose between the musical composer and the orchestra leader.
The composer said:
“They don’t do it that way at the Opera.”
Thereupon the young orchestra leader replied:
“Don’t speak to me of subsidised theatres. There’s nothing more
imbecile anywhere.”
He laid great stress on the words “subsidised” and “imbecile.”
M. Claretie asked me who this young man was. I had not heard exactly
what he said. Nevertheless, as I knew something embarrassing had
occurred, I tried to excuse him, alleging that he had been rehearsing
all day, that half his musicians had deserted to take positions at the
Opera and that they had left him only the understudies.
M. Claretie, whose good nature is proverbial, paid no attention to
the incident. Several days later, indeed, on November 5, 1907, he
wrote for the _Temps_ a long article, which is more eulogistic than I
deserve, but which I cite because it gives an impression of my work at
a rehearsal.
“The other evening,” he wrote, “I had, as it were, a vision of a
theatre of the future, something of the nature of a feministic theatre.
“Women are more and more taking men’s places. They are steadily
supplanting the so-called stronger sex. The court-house swarms with
women lawyers. The literature of imagination and observation will soon
belong to women of letters. In spite of man’s declaration that there
shall be no woman doctor for him the female physician continues to pass
her examinations and brilliantly. Just watch and you will see woman
growing in influence and power; and if, as in Gladstone’s phrase, the
nineteenth century was the working-man’s century, the twentieth will be
the women’s century.
“I have been at the Théâtre des Arts, Boulevard des Batignolles, at a
private rehearsal, which Miss Loie Fuller invited me to attend. She is
about to present there to-morrow a ‘mute drama’--we used to call it
a pantomime--the _Tragedie de Salome_, by M. Robert d’Humières, who
has rivalled Rudyard Kipling in translating it. Loie Fuller will show
several new dances there: the dance of pearls, in which she entwines
herself in strings of pearls taken from the coffin of Herodias; the
snake dance, which she performs in the midst of a wild incantation;
the dance of steel, the dance of silver, and the dance of fright,
which causes her to flee, panic-stricken, from the sight of John’s
decapitated head persistently following her and surveying her with
martyred eyes.
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FEAR FROM “SALOME”]
“Loie Fuller has made studies in a special laboratory of all the
effects of light that transform the stage, with the Dead Sea, seen from
a height, and the terraces of Herod’s palace. She has succeeded, by
means of various projections, in giving the actual appearance of the
storm, a glimpse of the moonbeams cast upon the waves, of the horror of
a sea of blood. Of Mount Nebo, where Moses, dying, hailed the promised
land, and the hills of Moab which border the horizon, fade into each
other where night envelops them. The light in a weird way changes the
appearance of the picturesque country. Clouds traverse the sky. Waves
break or become smooth as a surface of mother-of-pearl. The electric
apparatus is so arranged that a signal effects magical changes.
“We shall view miracles of light ere long at the theatre. When M.
Fortuny, son of the distinguished Spanish artist, has realised
‘his theatre’ we shall have glorious visions. Little by little the
scenery encroaches upon the stage, and perhaps beautiful verses, well
pronounced, will be worthy of all these marvels.
“It is certain that new capacities are developing in theatrical art,
and that Miss Loie Fuller will have been responsible for an important
contribution. I should not venture to say how she has created her light
effects. She has actually been turned out by her landlord because of
an explosion in her apparatus. Had she not been so well known she would
have been taken for an anarchist. At this theatre, Rue des Batignolles,
where I once witnessed the direst of melodramas that ever made popular
audiences shiver, at this theatre, which has become elegant and
sumptuous with its handsome, modernised decorations, at the Théâtre des
Arts, she has installed her footlights, her electric lamps, all this
visual fairyland which she has invented and perfected, which has made
of her a unique personality, an independent creator, a revolutionist in
art.
“There, on that evening when I saw her rehearse Salome in everyday
clothes, without costume, her glasses over her eyes, measuring her
steps, outlining in her dark robe the seductive and suggestive
movements, which she will produce to-morrow in her brilliant costume,
I seemed to be watching a wonderful _impresaria_, manager of her
troupe as well as mistress of the audience, giving her directions to
the orchestra, to the mechanicians, with an exquisite politeness,
smiling in face of the inevitable nerve-racking circumstances, always
good-natured and making herself obeyed, as all real leaders do, by
giving orders in a tone that sounds like asking a favour.
“‘Will you be good enough to give us a little more light? Yes. That is
it. Thank you.’
“On the stage another woman in street dress, with a note-book in
her hand, very amiable, too, and very exact in her directions and
questions, took the parts of John the Baptist, half nude, of Herod in
his purple mantle, of Herodias magnificent under her veils, and assumed
the function of _regisseur_ (one cannot yet say _regisserice_). And I
was struck by the smoothness of all this performance of a complicated
piece, with its movements and various changes. These two American
women, without raising their voices, quietly but with the absolute
brevity of practical people (distrust at the theatre those who talk too
much), these two women with their little hands fashioned for command
were managing the rehearsal as an expert Amazon drives a restive horse.
“Then I had the immense pleasure of seeing this Salome in everyday
clothes dance her steps without the illusion created by theatrical
costume, with a simple strip of stuff, sometimes red and sometimes
green, for the purpose of studying the reflections on the moving
folds under the electric light. It was Salome dancing, but a Salome
in a short skirt, a Salome with a jacket over her shoulders, a Salome
in a tailor-made dress, whose hands--mobile, expressive, tender
or threatening hands, white hands, hands like the tips of birds’
wings--emerged from the clothes, imparted to them all the poetry of
the dance, of the seductive dance or the dance of fright, the infernal
dance or the dance of delight. The gleam from the footlights reflected
itself on the dancer’s glasses and blazed there like flame, like
fugitive flashes, and nothing could be at once more fantastic and more
charming than these twists of the body, these caressing motions, these
hands, again, these dream hands waving there before Herod, superb in
his theatrical mantle, and observing the sight of the dance idealised
in the everyday costume.
“I can well believe that Loie Fuller’s Salome is destined to add a
Salome unforeseen of all the Salomes that we have been privileged to
see. With M. Florent Schmitt’s music she connects the wonders of her
luminous effects. This woman, who has so profoundly influenced the
modes, the tone of materials, has discovered still further effects, and
I can imagine the picturesqueness of the movements when she envelops
herself with the black serpents which she used the other evening only
among the accessories behind the scenes.”
That evening between the two scenes, M. Claretie again spoke of my
book; and, to sum up, it is thanks to his insistence that I decided to
dip my pen in the inkwell and to begin these “memoirs.” It was a long
task, this book was, long and formidable for me. And so many little
incidents, sometimes comic and sometimes tragic, have already recurred
during the making of this manuscript that they might alone suffice to
fill a second volume.
[Decorative Illustration]
OLD FAMILY RECORDS
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* * * * *
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=DIRECTORS=: =ADDRESS=:
SIR GEORGE H. CHUBB, BT. HERBERT JENKINS LTD.
ALEX W. HILL, M.A. 12 ARUNDEL PLACE,
HERBERT JENKINS. HAYMARKET, LONDON.
Transcriber’s Notes
Italics are indicated as _italics_.
Underlines are indicated as =underline=.
Small capitals were changed to all capitals.
Inconsistent word hyphenation and spelling have been regularized.
Apparent typographical errors have been changed.
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