Mark Edward Perugini

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CHAPTER XII
SOME EARLY STARS AND BALLETS

For some time after the founding of the King’s Dancing Academy the French Opera stage was ungraced by the feminine form, though women took part in the performance at some of the minor theatres, such as the famous Theatres of the Fair in Paris.

For the entertainment of the more exalted sections of Society the more exalted ladies themselves performed; at Court, however, not on the public stage, where, as in our own theatre in Elizabethan times, youths played the women’s rÔles.

Such was the case in the production of a ballet by Lulli and Desbrosses in 1672, “Les FÊtes de l’amour et de Bacchus,” in which M. le Duc de Monmouth, M. le Duc de Villeroy, M. le Marquis de Rassen, and M. Legrand, executed various dances “supported” by Beauchamps, M. AndrÉ, Favier and Lapierre, professional male dancers at the Opera.

Of these the leader was Beauchamps, director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, composer of, and superintendent of, the Court Ballets of Louis XIV in 1661, and made maÎtre des ballets to the Academy in 1671. He danced with the king in the entertainment at Court, and though La BruyÈre says of him, “qu’il jetait les jambes en avant, et faisait un tour en l’air avant que de retomber À terre,” showing that even in those days the public loved “sensation,” he was ordinarily a grave and dignified executant. He was one of the first experimentalists in the direction of inventing a system of Choreography, or the writing down of dances in a kind of shorthand, so that a dance once designed should never be lost, but could be read and repeated as easily as a piece of music. In this he was only following on the track of old Arbeau, but his system was different, and, if not ideal, at least it paved the way to a better. Beauchamps died in 1705.

PÉcourt, who was “premier danseur et maÎtre des ballets de l’OpÉra,” made his dÉbut only in 1672. His style was what is known as “demi-caractÈre,” and he is said to have had notable effect on the ladies of his day, his amazing lightness fairly turning their heads.

Blondi, a nephew of Beauchamps; Ballon, who became maÎtre À danser to Louis XV; Baudiery-Laval, a nephew of Ballon, who succeeded his uncle as dancing-master to the Royal Family and maÎtre des ballets at Court; Michel-Jean Baudiery-Laval, son of the last-named, who was not only a maÎtre À danser, but is said to have been the first stage manager to have used lycopodium powder, which used to be the chief means of producing stage lightning; these were some of the lesser stars of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries in France, and they were to be followed by Louis-Pierre DuprÉ, who came to be known as Le Grand DuprÉ, and who surpassed all his forerunners by the grace and the dignity of his dancing, and the noblesse of his poses. He made his dÉbut in 1720, was long the premier danseur at the Opera, and did not retire till 1754.

To hark back, however, to 1672, when there were only men to play the women’s parts. The reason for the dearth of feminine stars was quite simple. The Academy was in its infancy. There were no properly qualified professional danseuses, and the courtly amateurs were too courtly—and too much amateurs—to appear to advantage on the stage. The Academy came to alter all that.

It revived a genuine interest in dancing as an art worthy of serious consideration; and Lulli, that inspired monkey of a dancing-musician, did the rest; for it was his opera-ballet, “Le Triomphe de L’Amour,” produced on May 16th, 1681, which brought the presence of women dancers to the boards.

Various high ladies of the Court, the Dauphine, la Princesse de Conti, Mlle. de Nantes, and others, formed a useful background, but the entire feminine personnel of the dancing school numbered only four—Mlle. Lafontaine, Mlle. Le Peintre, Mlle. Fernon, and Mlle. Roland, the first-named being the leader, the premiÈre des premiÈres danseuses, and accorded the title so often granted to successive premiÈres since then, of Reine de la Danse.

That admirable historian of French opera, Castil-Blaze, has given excellent account of the state of affairs towards the end of the seventeenth century.

“The lack of good dancers,” he says, “was doubtless an obstacle in the way of the introduction of grand ballet at the Royal Academy. ‘Les FÊtes de L’Amour et de Bacchus,’ ‘Le Triomphe de L’Amour,’ and all productions of the same kind commonly called at that time Ballets, were really nothing less than Operas treated in such a way as to give a little more freedom for the introduction of dances, the singing being nevertheless still the main object. PÉcourt, who made his dÉbut in ‘Cadmus,’ shared the honours of the dance with Beauchamps, with Dolivet, a capital mime, and another good dancer named L’Etang. The company of singers also included some notable personalities, and though the functions of singer and dancer were usually kept pretty well apart, one actress, Mlle. Desmatins, managed, in the opera of ‘Perseus,’ to score a double success as singer and dancer, a very unusual combination, as it is seldom indeed that a dancer is good for much as a vocalist. Vigarani, an Italian theatrical machiniste, of great talent, had charge of the theatres of the Court; and another Italian, Rivani, and Francis Berein, fulfilled a similar function with regard to the Opera.”

Italian ballets, executed by Italian dancers, were among the favourite diversions of the French Court towards the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, which accounts for the frequency with which they appear in the paintings of Watteau, Lancret, and other artists of the period. That of “L’Impatience” had been partly translated into the French in order that Louis XIV might take part in it, and was, like all the comedy-ballets of the time, a series of detached scenes quite independent of each other, merely depicting the various amusing examples of impatience which one usually finds—in other people!

The taste, however, for the Italian ballet, by no means interfered with the development of the native type, which received not only the support of the nobility, but increasing support on the professional and technical side, for authors, musicians, and dancers were beginning to realise that ballet was a form of art which had long been too neglected, and that it was worthy of attention.

“Le Temps de la Paix,” represented at Fontainebleau, was given by the corps de ballet of the newly founded AcadÉmie Royale, illustrious dancers and scions of the nobility all taking their share in the production. The women dancers from the theatre, who mingled with the princesses and ladies of the Court, were termed femmes pantomimes, in order to distinguish them from the titled dilettanti. Among the amateurs one finds the name of the Princesse de Conti; Duchesse de Bourbon; such good old names as Mlle. de Blois, D’Armagnac, de Brienne, D’UzÈs, D’EstrÉes; on the theatrical side such artists as Hardouin, ThÉvenard, and the amazing Mlle. de Maupin—heroine of a hundred wild and questionable adventures—were among the more illustrious of the singers; while Ballon, whom we have already named, won applause for the energy and vivacity of his dance, and Mlle. Subligny was equally admired for the grace and dignity of hers.

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CHAPTER XIII
PANTOMIME AT SCEAUX: AND MLLE. PRÉVÔT

The mention of Subligny recalls the interesting fact that during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV of France there was a considerable importation of French and Italian actors, singers, dancers, and musicians into England.

We all know the complaints in The Spectator and other journals of the period against the craze for Italian opera.

A little earlier than that Cambert, who had been Director of the King’s Music to the Court of Louis-Quatorze and organist at the Church of St. HonorÉ in Paris, and who, after breaking fresh ground in French opera, was also one of the first to experiment with Ballet, became attached to the Court of our own Charles II in 1677. He died in London, whence he had withdrawn out of jealousy towards his pushing young rival Lulli.

Desmarets, Campra, Destouches, Rebel, Bourgeois, Mouret and Monteclair are also names of French composers of opera and ballet, from about 1693 to 1716, well known to students of musical history, perhaps their only successor worthy of mention being Quinault, until all, from Lulli onwards, were to be eclipsed by the greater Rameau, who was composer of nearly a score of notable ballets, and who made his appearance on the musical horizon in the ’thirties of the eighteenth century.

To return, however, to the dancers. Nivelon was one of the more famous French dancers who visited London towards the end of the seventeenth century, and had considerable success; as did another of the early danseuses, Mlle. Subligny, who came to London with influential introductions to John Locke, of all people in the world, author of the famous but soporific Essay on the Human Understanding, which, however, omits any reference to that of the charming dancer.

It can readily be imagined that the introduction of women to the French stage made for improvement in many directions besides access of grace. The little rivalries and successes of women dancers induced a general spirit of emulation that had its effect on technique.

Now, following on the introduction of women dancers to the stage, we come to another interesting point in the history of the dance and ballet; for, once again, it was due to a woman that we had the invention—or rather the revival—for it had not been seen since the days of Bathyllus and Pylades in Augustan Rome—of ballet-pantomime, a ballet acted entirely pantomimically, or in dumb-show.

It was the happy idea of the learned and extravagant Duchesse du Maine, whose Nuits de Sceaux have been chronicled by that fascinating bluestocking, Mlle. Delaunay, who was later to become famous as Madame de StaËl.

Among the endless round of fÊtes and entertainments at Sceaux, at the little theatre in which she took such prominent part, the ever-restless Duchess never presented her guests with a greater novelty. Day and night—and especially night—they had all been requisitioned to invent ingenious amusements. Sleep had been banished from the exigent little Court. Dialogues, “proverbs,” “literary lotteries,” songs and comedies had been turned out without cessation as from a literary factory. Always it had been “words, words, words,” and play on words. Now, for the first time for centuries—as it was, in fact, and must certainly have seemed to the Duchess’s house-parties!—there was to be silence on the stage at Sceaux.

The Duchesse du Maine

Having chosen the last scene of the fourth act of Corneille’s “Horace,” the Duchess commanded the composer Mouret to set it to music as if it were to be sung. The words were then ignored, the music was played by an orchestra, and the two well-known dancers, M. Ballon and Mlle. PrÉvÔt, of the Royal Academy, mutely mimed the actions and emotions of the leading characters, so dramatically and with such intensity of feeling that, it is said, both they and their audience were moved at times to tears!

FranÇoise PrÉvÔt, or PrÉvost, was born about 1680, made her dÉbut at the age of eighteen, and when Subligny retired in 1705, took her place as premiÈre danseuse. For some twenty odd years she was the joy of all frequenters of the Opera, for her grace and lightness of style. She retired in 1730, and died eleven years after. Among the more famous of her pupils were Marie SallÉ and Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo, of both of whom there will be more to say in due course. Meanwhile, among the dances mainly in vogue during PrÉvÔt’s earlier period were the Courantes, Allemandes, Gigues, Contredanses; and in her later years, Chaconnes, Passacailles, and Passepieds. For the dancing of the last PrÉvÔt was especially famed.

In the preface to his “MaÎtre À Danser,” published four years after the dancer’s retirement, Rameau describes her in the following terms: “Dans une seule de ses danses sont renfermÉes toutes les rÈgles qu’aprÈs de longues mÉditations nous pouvons donner sur notre art, et elle les met en pratique, avec tant de grÂce, tant de justesse, tant de lÉgÈretÉ, tant de prÉcision qu’elle peut Être regardÉe comme un prodige dans ce genre.”

Again, Noverre, in his Lettres sur la Danse, published later, makes graceful reference to PrÉvÔt in recalling his impressions of famous dancers whom he had seen in earlier years, and gives us, too, an interesting criticism of the methods of the composers of ballet in the mid-eighteenth century. “La plupart des compositeurs,” he says, “suivent les vieilles rubriques de l’opÉra. Ils font des passe-pieds parceque Mdlle. PrÉvÔt les courait avec elegance; des musettes parceque Mdlle. SallÉ et M. Dumoulin les dansaient avec autant de grace que de voluptÉ; des tambourins parceque c’Était le genre oÙ Mdlle. de Camargo excellait; des chaconnes et des passacailles parceque le cÉlÈbre DuprÉ s’Était comme fixÉ À ces mouvements; qu’ils s’ajoustaient À son goÛt, À son genre et À la noblesse de sa taille. Mais tous ces excellents Sujets n’y sont plus; ils ont ÉtÉ remplacÉs et au-delÀ, dans des parties et ne le seront peut Être jamais dans les autres....”

Though Noverre was writing this about 1760, we have to remember that he cannot actually have seen PrÉvÔt, since he was only born 1727, and she retired in 1730. But he records an interesting tradition in complaining that the greater number of the composers of his time still followed the older canon of the opera, and composed passepieds because “Mdlle. PrÉvÔt les courait”; for it shows that the technique of the dance had already begun to outgrow that of the composer. Musicians were following in their forerunner’s tracks; dancers were advancing on the road of invention. Indeed, we shall see that this was so when we come to consider the differences between the styles of PrÉvÔt and her later successors. For the moment it suffices to record that PrÉvÔt, star of the French opera from about 1700 to 1730, was famous for her elegance, for her “grace,” “lightness,” “precision,” as revealed in the comparatively slow dances of her period, when the technique was obviously not immature (or Rameau could not have noted such qualities in her dancing), but evidently had not yet developed in the direction of speed, or of tours de force such as some of the later dancers were to exhibit. The passepied, of which an old French dancer-poet wrote:

“Le lÉger passe-pied doit voler terre À terre,”

was a dance in three-four time, a species of minuet, performed, as the poet records, “terre À terre,” hence Noverre’s description:

“Mdlle. PrÉvÔt les courait avec elegance.”

A modern versifier has—perhaps presumptuously—put the following lines into the dancer’s mouth:

PRÉVÔT SPEAKS

“Though others by Courante may swear

Or some the grave Allemande prefer,

Or vow for Gigues alone they care,

Or Contredanse’s vulgar stir:

For me—who am no villager!—

I love not dances rough and free,

Nor yet too slow! Without demur

The Passepied’s the dance for me.

“Hark to its gentle, plaintive air!

Was music ever mellower,

More full of grace, more sweetly fair?

No dancer, sure, could wish to err

From the staid rhythms that recur—

As softly as a breath may be—

With base like a pleased kitten’s purr:

The Passepied’s the dance for me!

“No other music now may share,

With this my favour, or could spur

My feet new measures now to dare.

What of Camargo? As for her—

(Of passing fancies harbinger!)

Quickness, but naught of grace has she.

She dance? That plain, fast foreigner?

The Passepied’s the dance for me!”

ENVOI

“Lovers of dance, let naught deter

Your love from graces all can see

In Passepied! And all aver

The Passepied’s the dance for me!”

Of the jealousy which might have impelled Mlle. PrÉvÔt to speak thus of her young rival Camargo and her quicker style there will be more to say presently. It is necessary for a while to turn aside (even to hark back a little, perhaps, since in dealing with a period of transition there must be several threads to trace back and gather up), and to glance at another phase of theatrical history than that of the premiÈre danseuse and the august Royal Opera, namely, the less exalted—and more popular—theatre; one which proved often the antechamber to the greater stage and Royal favour, to wit—the Italian Comedy and the Theatres of the Fair.

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CHAPTER XIV
ITALIAN COMEDY AND THE THEATRES OF THE FAIR

Humanity, like history, repeats itself in its recurring moods. Some years ago London playgoers went rather mad over what was a comparatively new thing to that period, the production of a delightful play without words, namely, MM. CarrÉ and Wormser’s “L’Enfant Prodigue,” acted to perfection by a cast headed by Mlle. Jane May, as Pierrot, with Mlle. Zanfretta as Pierrette.

About two thousand years ago the playgoers of ancient Rome began to go mad about what was then thought to be a really new thing—pantomime acting without words.

The two pantomimists, Bathyllus and Pylades, then set a standard in mimetic representation never achieved before. The two Roman actors were “dancers,” but it was because they were panto-mimes of such brilliant quality that they became famous. Had they been merely dancers they would hardly have made the impression they did.

The modern ballet-dancer—as we understand the word—knows, or should know, that dancing without the ability to mime is not enough to win the fame of a Taglioni, a Grisi, GÉnÉe or Karsavina, in ballet.

In opera a voice of the loveliest tone, together with an acquired technical excellence in the use of it, has not the power to move the hearers if expression is lacking. It is the art of the mime which gives expression and significance to the art of the dancer; and it was as dancer-mimes that Pylades and Bathyllus moved their audience to something like worship.

It is, of course, a pretence, this doing without words. I say “pretence” because you cannot do away with words. You may have a “wordless” play, but behind the dumb-show there are still the words. It is so in life. Behind all things is—the Word. Things are only representative of thoughts; and thoughts are inconceivable without words. We may not always speak with tongue and voice; but, if we have the impulse to speak, the instrument matters not, and we may “speak” with our hands. So doing, a look or gesture becomes a word, a series of gestures a sentence.

Now, in ancient Roman days when the ordinary spoken comedy merged first into a sort of musical comedy, and then, at the dawn of the Christian era, into unspoken comedy or pantomime; and when, in addition, all the Greek plays and stories of the Greek and Latin myths were drawn upon for pantomime, some of the original characters stayed and others were incorporated in the general make-up of the purely wordless play as this form of entertainment grew increasingly popular; and among the new-comers was probably Mercury, who became a sort of Harlequin, with gift of invisibility and magic wand.

The spoken comedy of ancient Rome becoming superseded, first by the pantomimes and secondly by the craze for the circus, finally died down with the fall of the Empire itself, and did not revive for some hundreds of years, until the world’s great reawakening, in the Middle Ages, to the wonders of the classic past. But it is more than probable that this dumb comedy, or panto-mime, any more than dancing, did not die.

In Sicily and Southern Italy more especially it would have survived; for expressive pantomime was always as much a means of speech among the Southern Latins as verbal language itself.

In the old Latin Comedy the same set of characters were often made to appear in other guises, and in different comic situations. Maccus, for instance, though still called so, would appear at one time as an old maid, at another as a raw soldier: Pappus would be a doting old husband, or father whose daughter was abducted: and he was usually outwitted whatever the situation he was in. These and various other types, and this custom of making them each a kind of “quick-change” artist, survived, or at least revived.

In Italy, as time went by, various local types were added to the original cast of the pantomime. The old man would be a Venetian; the Doctor, from Bologna, famous for its University and—poisons; the Clown would be a peasant-servant from Bergamo; the braggart soldier, a “Capitan,” would be from Spain; sometimes they would each speak in their own particular dialect, and fun would be made thereof. Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries the fame of the Italian comedians spread throughout the world.

Troupes found their way to Paris and London, and no slight traces of their influence are to be found in Shakespeare and MoliÈre. Pre-Shakespearean comedy in England was often impromptu and pantomimic; and the actors worked much as the Italian players had always done.

In 1611 a well-known Italian comedian, Flaminio Scala, printed a book of plays performed by his company. There was no dialogue! They were simply something like what we know as “plots,” though the French word “canevas” expresses it better. It was merely the outline of the play, entrances, exits, “business” written on canvas and hung up in the wings as a reminder to the actors, who “gagged” the play throughout, each usually introducing his own stock tricks or business (lazzi was the Italian word) as the play proceeded. In one of the Flaminio Scala’s plots we find a Pantalon, a Dottore or Doctor, a Captain (a braggart such as Pistol), a Pedrolino, later to become better known to us after various changes of spirit as Pierrot.

In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Paris the Italian players had a sensational success, being honoured by Louis XIV and his successor; and were regularly introduced into the lighter operas, were copied by the players in the Paris Fair Theatres, and were often the subject of the brush of Watteau and other artists.

In a little volume I have, Le ThÉÂtre Italien (published 1695), by the famous actor, Evariste Gherardi, the author explains that “the reader must not expect to find in this book entire comedies, because the Italian plays could not be printed, for the simple reason that the players learn nothing by rote, and it suffices for them merely to have seen the subject of the comedy a moment before stepping on the stage.” He says that “the charm of the pieces is inseparable from the action, and their success depends wholly on the actors, who play from imagination rather than from memory, and compose their comedy while playing.”

Among the titles of the plays we find: “Arlequin, Emperor in the Moon”; “Colombine, Advocate”; “Arlequin Proteus”; “Arlequin Jason”; “The Cause of Woman”; “Divorce”; and “Arlequin, Man of Fortune.” In most we find Arlequin assuming various disguises—“Arlequin en More,” “Arlequin deguisÉ en Baron,” “Arlequin deguisÉ en Comtesse” being among stage directions, for instance, to “The Cause of Woman.”

By the early eighteenth century the leading characters had become Arlequin, Pantalon, Punchinello, the Doctor, the Captain, Scaramouche, Scapin, Leandre, and Mezzetin; and women had become incorporated in the generally enlarged cast, the chief being Isabelle, Octavie and Colombine.

Reference has already been made to the Duchesse du Maine, who in 1708 revived the art of pure pantomime by producing an act of Corneille’s “Horace,” which was performed entirely in dumb show by the dancer-mimes, Mdlle. PrÉvÔt and Monsieur Ballon, to music by Mouret.

Soon after, Nivelon, and other dancers who were also mimes, such as SallÉ, began to come to London; and in the early eighteenth century was seen the birth of the first real English pantomime, which bore some resemblance to that of ancient Rome, owed something to the Italian comedy and to the more recent French theatre, with certain new ideas of its own—especially in the way of costume and elaborate staging. This was due to the enterprise of John Rich.

By Rich’s time Arlequin had become the all-important character of the French comedy-stage, and he followed a then recent custom (also the ancient Latin custom) of placing one character in various sets of circumstances. His first production at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1717 was “Harlequin Sorcerer,” which was followed by several others with Harlequin as the hero. Their form was always much the same. A serious, classic or fabulous story, such as one from Ovid, was the basis of the work; while between the serious scenes, and partly woven into them, ran a lighter story, consisting mainly of Harlequin’s courtship of Columbine, with interference from other characters, on whom in turn Harlequin played tricks with his magic wand. Rich played Harlequin, and made him dumb, for the simple reason that, though a clever actor, he could not speak well enough for the stage. Thus he gave us once again the ancient classic art of pantomime, which now became the true wordless English Harlequinade; and he taught his players of the other parts, Pantaloon, Pierrot, Clown, Columbine, an art of wordless acting equal to his own. He realised the value of fine mounting, and his productions were gorgeously staged and almost invariably successful.

It would be interesting, of course, to trace with some detail the history of Italian comedy and its influence on the French and English stage; indeed, to go fully into the vexed question of its origin. Certain modern scholars, such as Miss Winifred Smith in her extremely able and interesting volume on the Commedia dell’ Arte, issued by the Columbia University of America, holds the view that it was not derived from the classic stage at all, but was a spontaneous growth of fifteenth-century Italy.

Another view is that there was an unbroken thread of tradition from Greece, through Sicily and the Greek settlements in south-eastern Italy, and that when the Commedia attained its great vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, spreading through Italy and thence through western Europe, the charm and complexity of its texture was due to the numerous strands that had been gathered up from various localities in the progress of years.

Yet another possibility is, that this central idea of pantomime, or dumb acting, may merely have occurred again and again through the centuries, as a “new” idea, without direct impulse from tradition.

Personally I feel that acting without words implies a greater technical advance in the art of representation than acting with them, for it makes the actor more than merely repeater, or even interpreter, of an author; it makes him partly creator, or author. It is impossible, however, to go fully now into the question of the origin of the art of pantomime. Whatsoever diverse theories students may hold, the fact remains that it was known in classic days, and that the form of it which we know under the Italian title of the Commedia dell’ Arte flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and certainly had its influence on the French and English stage, literature and art, and also on Ballet.

The Duchesse du Maine in her pantomime production of Corneille’s “Horace” was deliberately harking back to a form of entertainment which she believed had held the classic stage; and the production was not without effect on the history of Ballet. The appearance of Italian pantomime actors in Paris had additional influence.

Look at some of the pictures of Watteau, Lancret and Fragonard. You will see there the types of the Italian Comedy; turn to the scores of the opera-ballets of the early eighteenth century and you will note that, more often than not, the Italian players were introduced; just as we to-day, in our revues, have introduced Russian dancers, or English players impersonating, or parodying, the Russians—simply because the Russians have in recent years attained a vogue similar to that attained by Italian singers in the ’forties of last century, and to that attained by the Italian comedy troupes of two centuries ago. These things are introduced into current dramatic productions just because they have their vogue, just because they are “topical.” Equally they influence art and literature.

Even the French critics seem hardly to have realised the extent to which French art of the early eighteenth century was influenced by the contemporary stage. All can see, of course, that it was influenced, to the extent of introducing the types of Italian comedy. One has only to glance at Watteau’s “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre Italien” to see that patent fact. But the fact also that, except for his earlier landscapes and camp scenes, several of Watteau’s pictures were, in all probability, derived from ballets actually seen on the French stage seem to have been overlooked.

One of the earlier works attributed to Watteau is a picture representing the “Departure of the Italian Comedians.” The engraving of it by L. Jacob in the wonderful Jullienne collection of engravings from Watteau’s works plainly gives the date of the incident as 1697. Watteau, however, did not arrive from Valenciennes to take up his abode in Paris until after 1702, when he came to reside and work with Claude Gillot, the engraver.

So either this seems a mistake on Jullienne’s part, or the picture is not by Watteau, but is worked up from sketches and descriptions by Gillot or some other person who was an eyewitness of the incident; for it is quite obvious that Watteau cannot have seen what took place in Paris before he arrived there, and when he was only thirteen years old, as he would have been in 1697.

Let us turn aside for a while from this minor problem and consider who, exactly, were these Italian comedians. From the sixteenth century, in 1570 as a fact, when Catherine de Medici invited a company of Italian players to Paris, there had been several troupes arriving from time to time, under Court patronage. One of the earliest of importance came in 1576, and were known as Gli Gelosi, Les Jaloux, that is, according to one authority, folk jealous of pleasing; though they may also have been so called from the fact that they achieved their success first in a comedy of that name, Gli Gelosi, or Les Jaloux.

Nearer the dates which are our concern was Fiorelli’s troupe, which in 1660 was properly established at the Palais Royal, where they played alternately with MoliÈre’s company, and received the title of “ComÉdiens du Roi de la troupe Italienne.”

In 1684 it was established by order of the Dauphin that the troupe should always be composed of twelve members, four women and eight men, made up as follows: two women for “serious rÔles,” two for comic, two men for lovers, two for comic parts, two “pour conduire l’intrigue,” and two to play fathers and old men generally. These kept the traditional names respectively of: Isabelle, Eularia; Columbine, Marinette; Octave, Cinthio; Scaramouche, Arlequin; Mezzetin, Pascariel; Pantalon, and the Doctor.

In 1697, however, the Italian comedians, who by now had begun to develop, from the Commedia dell’ Arte, or purely improvised dumb show play of an earlier period into a more or less written “literary” comedy, had the audacity to produce under the title of “La Fausse Prude,” a play, the title of which seemed to suggest foundation on a novel (published in Holland) which had attacked the King’s mistress, Madame de Maintenon. For this they were banished, and were not recalled to Royal favour until 1716.

Hence the problem of deciding Watteau’s connection with the painting of an incident that occurred in 1697, five years before he can have reached Paris; and also of “placing” the rest of his avowedly theatrical pictures, when apparently the Italian comedians were not to be seen, or if seen, not until 1716; thus giving Watteau only five years before his death in 1721 to account for the fairly extensive collection of works dealing expressly with these stage types.

Speaking of the period shortly after Watteau arrived in Paris, one critic has declared (though it in no way lessens the value of his decisions concerning Watteau’s art): “Indeed, during these early years Watteau could have had no opportunity of studying the Italian comedy, otherwise than through the works of his new preceptor and friend”: this “preceptor and friend” being, of course, Gillot, by whose enthusiasm for the stage Antoine’s own was unquestionably awakened.

The same writer goes on to say: “It can hardly be doubted that from him—and not, as legend has it, from the stage itself—Watteau obtained his first peep into the strange realms of the Commedia dell’ Arte.”

But the plain fact is that there was every opportunity, despite this earlier banishment of the Royal troupe of Italian comedians, for Watteau to have obtained not only his first peep into the realms of the Commedia dell’ Arte and to have been influenced throughout his Paris life, especially by Ballet.

From the time Antoine reached the city in 1702 until his death in 1721 there were four marked opportunities for stage influence, namely, the legitimate and royally patronised French comedians; the Opera, still flushed with Lulli’s magic, and not despicably illumined by Campra; the Ballet, then finding wings to soar; and finally, the Theatres of the Fair, which, with their gay quarrel against authority, with their reckless parodies and splendid spectacles, have been strangely neglected by Watteau’s biographers as a contributory influence on his choice of subject.

Let us consider first the Theatres of the Fairs. The fairs themselves, of St. Germain and St. Laurent, were of ancient institution, and from early times they had their side-shows of tumblers, rope-dancers, trained animals, such as performing bears, monkeys, and white mice, as well as balladists and marionettes, which were the chief attraction by the middle of the seventeenth century.

Towards the end of the century each Fair had one or more troupes of actors, especially Italian, who played improvised pieces in dumb-show, as well as written farces, vaudevilles and parodies in Italian, French, and sometimes a mixture of both languages. These troupes were quite apart from those which from time to time had been brought from Italy by special invitation from the French Court.

It was the Royal Troupe only that was expelled in 1697, for its performance of “La Fausse Prude”; and it was really their expulsion which aroused the Theatres of the Fair to a new and more vigorous life.

The Fair of St. Germain was open from February 3rd to Easter Sunday; the Fair of St. Laurent began at the end of June and closed in October, so that for the greater part of the year both offered opportunities for amusement of a less expensive and more popular sort than did the aristocratic ComÉdie FranÇaise and ComÉdie Italienne; in fact, so popular were they that, on suppression of the ComÉdie Italienne, the aristocracy themselves patronised the foreign troupes of the Theatres of the Fair.

From the dawn of the eighteenth century, however, this very popularity became a source of worry to the managers of the troupes at the Fairs, for it involved the jealousy of the ComÉdie FranÇaise and the still youthful Opera; and the attempts of grandiose Authority to smother these minor theatres (which had public sympathy wholly on their side) and the amazing resource shown by their managers in meeting each fresh legal thunderbolt by some new and more hilarious evasion, is a veritable comedy in itself, but must not detain us now. All we need to consider at the moment is that, despite attempts to suppress them there were these troupes, at the Theatres of the Fair, from before 1702, when Watteau came to Paris, until after 1721, the date of his death.

There was the troupe of Madame Jeanne Godefroy, widow of Maurice Von der Beck, from 1694 to 1709; that of Christopher Selles, from 1701 to 1709; that of Louis Nivelon (who, by the way, was a theatrical visitor to London), from 1707 to 1771; that of Saint-EdmÉ from 1711 to 1718; and, most important of all, that of Constantini, known as Octave, from 1712 to 1716.

Thus from the time he arrived in Paris Watteau could, for a few pence, have seen any of these companies, and in view of the fact that the first thing any young man up from the country usually does is to see the “sights” of the town, and more especially in view of the fact that soon after his arrival Watteau was in the studio of Gillot—popular engraver of such popular subjects, and himself a lover of the stage—what was more probable than that Antoine did include the Theatres of the Fair among the sights he saw, and so was influenced to choose, as some of the earlier subjects of his brush, the Italian players he could see there.

CHAPTER XV
WATTEAU’S DEBT TO THE STAGE

The stage has from time to time been indebted to Watteau for costume and dÉcor. But Watteau’s debt to the stage of his period, to the Opera, to the Italian Comedy, and to the Theatres of the Fair, has hardly been considered sufficiently. Here is not the place to bring forward all the evidence that could be produced. Only an indication of some of the leading possibilities can be given. But while the subject has an interest of its own, on the purely critical side, it is also of interest to students of the ballet, for they may trace in some of the famous French pictures of the early eighteenth century the influence of ballet on contemporary art. Again, history “repeats itself” to-day, for have not many artists of our own time found inspiration in many of the productions of the Russian ballet?

It is interesting first to compare Watteau’s picture of “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre Italien” with the reproductions given here from an old volume in my possession, Riccoboni’s Histoire du ThÉÂtre Italien, which was not published until six years after Watteau’s death, but which may be regarded as a contemporary work since it describes the stage of his time.

These prints represent the various types of the Italian comedy as they were actually costumed, and comparing these with the figures in Watteau’s group, one sees in their close resemblance proof that the master was painting from things seen, from life itself (albeit stage life), not some graceful creations of his own imagination, as some of us to-day have been too apt to think.

In “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre Italien” we have a faithful record of costumes actually worn; but the whole attitude of the group of figures suggests something vastly more than merely an artist’s study of costume. The figures are alert, the moment dramatic. Something is happening, or rather has happened, and there is a suggestion of culmination, as if the interruption of a song by the entry of a character had called forth, or was about to call forth, some whimsical comment from Pierrot, the singer. It seems a captured moment in a comedy.

Comparing it with the obviously companion picture, “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre FranÇais,” one might well be somewhat puzzled by the title, since in neither is there any apparent love-scene taking place. The one suggests an interruption in a comedy, the other—a dance in progress.

Beneath the engravings of these two by C. N. Cochin in the Jullienne collection, however, are inscribed a couple of six-line stanzas, one beneath each, in which the treatment of love themes in Italian and French comedies respectively is contrasted.

L’AMOUR AU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS

M. Roy.”

L’AMOUR AU THÉÂTRE ITALIEN

M. Roy.”

These stanzas are by Roy, a contemporary poet who was a librettist for the Opera, two of whose operas were produced in 1712.

One thing is certain, that Watteau’s own eyes must have noted the contrast between the Italian and French comedy to have painted such pictures. He could not have painted them without being an observant theatre-goer. What, then, did he see, and when could he have seen such productions as might suggest such works? While acknowledging that positive evidence is still to be sought, I cannot help feeling that these two pictures, and one or two others, could fairly safely be placed as work done about 1711-1712.

In 1709 Antoine, still with Audran at the Luxembourg, competed for entry, and was admitted with four other students, for the Academy. Then he left Paris for Valenciennes, defraying expenses by selling a military picture, “DÉpart des Troupes,” to the dealer, Sirois, who urged him to paint a similar picture, which he did at Valenciennes.

There is no direct evidence that Watteau painted any stage-pictures before this period; and it would seem that his work in the country was mainly on military and naturalistic subjects. We do know that he was again in Paris at a date uncertain in 1712, and went to live with a Monsieur Crozat, by whom he was engaged to paint a series of panels of The Seasons. It is extremely likely that he would have returned to Paris refreshed by his country sojourn and with a new zest for work, and for theatre-going, which was then beginning to be particularly interesting, a crisis in the Fair Theatre troubles being over by 1710, and some new productions there as well as at the opera being well worth seeing.

As I would trace his movements, still admitting that positive evidence is required, Watteau returned to Paris early in 1711, took up his quarters for a time with Sirois the dealer, who would have the disposing of work done at Valenciennes. One of his first pictures of this period was probably “Gilles and his Family,” in the Wallace collection, which is supposed to be a portrait of Sirois dressed as a Pierrot or Gilles (the names being synonymous at the period) in a costume supplied by Watteau’s own wardrobe.

Then would come visits to the Fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent, whence he would return reinspired with a love for the gay, reckless, satiric Italian comedy.

One has only to compare the Hertford House “Gilles” with the central figure of Pierrot in the “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre Italien” to see that one is an earlier work and is the figure of a man somewhat self-conscious and not quite used to the clothes he is wearing; the other a maturer work, representing a vivid impression of a born comedian, momentarily master of the scene. Doubtless at this time, too, would be done some, but only some, of the remaining works dealing with the Italian stage types, such as “Les Jaloux,” “Arlequin Jaloux,” “ComÉdiens Italiens,” and “Pierrot Content.” A little after, I think, would come such works as “Arlequin et Colombine,” (in the Wallace collection), “Mezzetin,” and the maturer “Gilles,” in the Louvre.

In 1712 there were at the Theatres of the Fair in Paris two famous players of Gilles or Pierrot, namely, Hamoche, who made his dÉbut in that year with the St. EdmÉ troupe; and Belloni, who was also a lemonade-seller, quite a popular character, notable, as one chronicle tells us, “for the grand simplicity of his acting and for his naÏve and truthful speech.”

The most famous of the players of Arlequin was Pierre-FranÇois (otherwise Domenique) Biancolelli, who was also of the St. EdmÉ troupe, somewhere between 1710-1712.

Thus it was not unlikely that Watteau saw these actors, as he may have seen another, Delaplace, as Scaramouche, and Desgranges, who came to Paris from Lyons, in 1712, as “the Doctor”; though the Mezzetin offers a minor problem in that Angelo Constantini, the most famous impersonator of the character, after suffering banishment with the Italian comedians in 1697, went to Poland, where an intrigue with the Queen resulted in his imprisonment for twenty years, by which time Watteau was no more. Him, therefore, Watteau cannot have seen. But the character was a familiar one on the stage at the time, 1710-1712, and must have been played by other popular actors, even if not of sufficient note to be chronicled.

To turn from the Italian actors to other theatrical characters which form the subjects of some of Watteau’s pictures, it is of interest to note that one of the engravings in the Jullienne collection represents “Poisson en habit de paysan.” Poisson was a familiar name in the annals of the French stage, for it was borne by three generations of Parisian actors, Raymond Poisson, who died in 1690, Paul, his son, and FranÇois, grandson. Watteau’s picture is presumably that of the second, Paul.

Another interesting point to note is that a portrait of Raymond Poisson, painted by Netscher, was engraved by Edelinck (who was employed by Watteau’s employer—Audran) and represents the actor in the character of Crispin, one of his most famous parts (that of a sort of black-dressed Pierrot, a messenger distinguished by his long boots, worn by Raymond Poisson to increase his stature), which was successively played by his son Paul, and grandson FranÇois, and became a traditional type.

Watteau cannot have seen Raymond, who died twelve years before the artist came to Paris, but he may well have seen Paul, and it is significant that he should have drawn a figure representing not “Poisson en habit de Crispin” (whose costume was now a tradition) but “en habit de Paysan” as if it was the very fact that the part was one different from that especially associated with the Poisson family which made it of interest to Watteau.

In connection with the same portrait there is one point that is particularly noteworthy, namely, that it is exactly like the central figure in “Le Concert,” or “Les Charmes de la Vie” in the Wallace collection; and close consideration of the latter inclines me to the belief that the picture represents—as certain others not unusually so considered may well do—a scene from an opera.

Another of the engravings in the Jullienne collection of “Mdlle. Desmares en habit de Pelerine.” Mlle. Desmares was a well-known Danish actress; and “pelerines” appear in Watteau’s “L’Embarquement pour l’Ile de CythÈre.”

One has only to pass in review a succession of Watteau’s works, or reproductions thereof, to notice how very frequently he repeats himself in matters of detail. In a general way, for instance, it is curious to note how frequently dancing and music are repeated in the course of his life’s work. In “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre FranÇais” is a couple dancing; in the “Bal sous une Colonnade” another; in “Le Contrat de Mariage” and its variants—another, and very similar; in “Le Menuet” (at the Hermitage, Petrograd) another; in “Amusements ChampÊtres” (Chantilly), and in the “FÊtes VÉnitiennes” (Edinburgh) are more such couples; while there is, of course, the dainty single figure of the child in “La Danse,” in the Royal Palace, Potsdam; and the famous “L’IndiffÉrent,” in the Louvre, also represents a young man dancing. Dancers and musicians are thus a constant theme for Watteau’s brush.

There are, however, more distinctive and more curious repetitions to note than these obvious evidences of a general taste for music and the dance; the repetitions of figures or groups in particular positions, and of details in mise en scÈne.

The well-known “Joueur de Guitare,” in the MusÉe CondÉ, reappears in almost exact facsimile in “La Surprise” (in Buckingham Palace) and also in the “FÊte Galante,” or “FÊte ChampÊtre,” in the Royal Gallery, Dresden.

The couple in “La Gamme d’Amour” is simply a detail from the centre of the “AssemblÉe dans un Parc,” in the Royal Gallery at Berlin. The musician in “La LeÇon de Musique” (Wallace collection) is repeated in “Le Concert,” also in the Wallace collection.

To turn now to details of mise en scÈne, it is curious to note that the pillars seen in the last-named picture also occur in the “Bal sous une Colonnade,” in the Dulwich Gallery.

The reclining statue to the right of the picture, known as “Les Champs ElysÉes,” in the Wallace collection, is another, presumably an earlier version of the “Jupiter and Antiope,” in the Louvre.

The statuette and amorini in the “FÊte d’Amour” at the Dresden Royal Gallery are variants of those in the “Embarquement pour l’Ile de CythÈre”; while the terminal statue of Pan seen in the “Arlequin et Colombine,” in the Wallace collection, reappears again and again in the Italian Comedy series.

To some, unaware, perhaps, of the influence which the stage of Watteau’s time was exerting in other directions, these comparisons may possibly seem unnecessary. But in considering the extent to which that influence may have expressed itself in the painter’s work, it is just these details which, taken in conjunction with the trend of theatrical taste at that time, are likely to be of importance. There was never an artist yet—whether in colour, sound, or spoken or written word—who created a new world out of nothing. The spirit of art can only find its expression in the manipulation of existing material. Every work of art must surely be the culmination of a long series of impulses due to external stimuli the connection of which, perhaps over a lengthy period, consciousness has failed to analyse and memory to record.

Now Watteau’s work as a whole exhibits the frequent repetition of certain motifs, but they were never of something he can never have seen in reality. It was not automatic reiteration of some pictured or imagined type, group or material object. His earliest impressions of stage-life, it is true, may well have been those conveyed by the prints or paintings of his master Gillot. But there was no necessity for him to subsist for the rest of his life for inspiration on second-hand impressions.

When, therefore, we find in works other than those avowedly theatrical, a repetition of certain details which are found in those dealings obviously with the theatre, it may be conceded, perhaps, that the direct influence of stage scenes and stage effects upon his art was somewhat more extensive than might be thought merely from a study of those pictures which are ostensibly studies of dramatic types and subjects; and for an instance we may take the introduction of a group of Italian comedians among the bystanders in the “Bal sous une Colonnade,” already referred to. They need a little looking for amid so many figures, but when discovered one might question what Pierrot, Arlequin and their fellows are doing “dans cette galÈre.”

When we come, again, to consider the picture called “Le Concert” (in the Wallace Collection) and find, in the central figure, a striking likeness to another picture by Watteau of “Poisson” in the costume of a peasant: and observe also a repetition of a scenic detail such as the terrace-columns, which are similar to those of the Colonnade: further noting that the treatment of the distance between these same columns is strangely suggestive of the flatness of a stage “back-cloth,” it begins to seem not improbable that we have here a pretty faithful translation of actual stage scenes.

In one of these, the “FÊtes ChampÊtres,” also known as “Les FÊtes VÉnitiennes” (in the National Gallery, Edinburgh), it is possible that we have a clue.

Can it be mere coincidence that from 1710—the year after Watteau had become a student at the Academy—one of the most popular and most frequently revived ballets at the Opera was Campra and Danchet’s “Les FÊtes VÉnitiennes?”

True, Watteau must be presumed to have been at Valenciennes from about the end of 1709 until shortly before 1712, when he took up his abode with Crozat, but the ballet was revived again in 1712; not to mention a pastiche called “Fragments de Lulli,” which included an entrÉe entitled “La VÉnitienne,” produced in January, 1711, which, as has already been suggested, was the more likely time than 1712 for Watteau’s return to town after his stay at Valenciennes.

At this time, in any case, there were several productions at the Opera which may have easily proved an influence in the thoughts of an impressionable young artist. It was in 1712 that two operas were produced, namely, “CrÉÜse l’AthÉnienne” and “CallirhoÉ,” the libretti of which were by Roy, whose stanzas form the inscriptions already referred to as appearing under the engravings of “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre FranÇais” and “L’Amour au ThÉÂtre Italien.”

In one of the few of Watteau’s letters quoted by the Goncourts is one to Gersaint in which Antoine accepts an invitation to go “avec Antoine de la Roque,” and dine next day. It is not insignificant that the first opera of which De la Roque was librettist was produced in April, 1713, and entitled “MÉdÉe et Jason.”

To return, however, to “Les FÊtes VÉnitiennes.” The score of this ballet, or rather “opera-ballet,” was published by the great French printer Ballard in 1714, and an examination of it reveals further possibilities of its having influenced not only the picture of the same name, but the “Bal sous une Colonnade,” “Le Concert,” and possibly others of Watteau’s composition, just as yet others might have been partly inspired by Monteclair’s ballet “Les FÊtes de l’EtÉ,” published in 1716, and Bertin’s “Les Plaisirs de la Campagne,” published in 1719.

“Les FÊtes VÉnitiennes” was in four acts or entrÉes, with a prologue. The third act was entitled “De l’OpÉra,” and opens with a music-lesson, practically the rehearsal of a duet between LÉontine, the prima-donna, and her music master, just before the production of a miniature opera; and the fourth is headed “Du Bal.” The stage directions for this are: “Le ThÉÂtre reprÉsente un lieu prÉparÉ pour un Bal”; and in a bragging duel between the music-master and the dancing-master the latter boasts:

which the other counters by saying that he can raise a storm musically, which he proceeds to do, giving a musical representation of the rising wind, of thunder, and so on. This, however, is by the way. The one thing important is that there are these two acts devoted to illustrating the charms of music and the dance, that the opera contains an “air pour les Arlequins,” an “air des Polichinelles,” an “air ChampÊtre,” and closes, as several other ballets of the period also did, with a sort of divertissement, introducing the Italian players, and a general gathering of all the dramatis personÆ on the stage while the dances of this divertissement final are in progress; all of which suggests the “Bal sous une Colonnade” of Watteau.

Monteclair’s “Les FÊtes de l’EtÉ” is of special interest in that it was produced in 1716. In 1717 Watteau, after requests from the Academy authorities, painted his diploma picture, the immortal “Embarquement pour CythÈre.” It would seem that Monteclair’s ballet contains the first suggestions which culminated in that picture.

It is in three acts, with a prologue, and the stage directions for this are: “Le ThÉÂtre reprÉsente une Campagne dont les beautÉs commencent À fletrir: Le Printemps y paroit environnÉ d’Amants et Amantes qui lui font la cour.” In the course of the act one of the lovers, expatiating on this charm of their surroundings, sings: “Et la mÈre du Dieu des Amants a quittÉ CythÈre pour ces lieux charmÉs.”

The second act has the following stage directions at the start: “Le ThÉÂtre reprÉsente un relais de chasse, on y voit un char dorÉ, une Meute et une partie de l’equipage des Chasseurs.” One of the characters introduced is a young man, Lisidor, who is remarkable for his indifference to feminine charms, and might well be the origin of Watteau’s exquisite “L’IndiffÉrent.” Another of the characters, Dorante, is counselled to imitate him; and in a discussion between Agatine and Cephise, the former is advised by the latter “pour s’assurer de ce qu’on aime, la feinte indiffÉrence est d’un puissant secours.”

In 1730, by the way, a play was produced at the theatre of the St. Laurent Fair called “L’IndiffÉrence,” in which the hero preaches the doctrine of indifference to love! Watteau, of course, cannot have seen this play, but it is significant that both in 1716 and 1730, the stage should be found dealing with what was evidently a current type of character.

In the third act of Monteclair’s ballet, the opening directions are: “Le ThÉÂtre reprÉsente les Rives de la Seine. On voit le soleil prÊt À se coucher” (which might possibly account for the soft, warm tone of Watteau’s Embarquement) and one of the characters comes to warn some lovers with a song: “Tendres amants, la Barque est prÊte”; and the ballet concludes with a dance divertissement, as was usual at the period.

One cannot dogmatically assert that these operas did directly inspire the pictures named, but that Watteau caught his first suggestion of some from such performances as his own taste and his association with a theatrical and musical set would have led him to frequent, must seem, at the least, probable.

CHAPTER XVI
THE SPECTATOR AND MR. WEAVER

Queen Anne had long been dead, but she can never have been very lively when alive, for her period was one when political intrigue, theological controversy, and the War of Spanish Succession were the chief subjects that occupied everybody’s attention, especially her own, and—could anything be duller? Moreover, she was of somewhat portly proportions, had a solemn husband, and—unlike Queen Elizabeth—was really no dancer.

With such a queen on the throne, at such a time of stress, can it be wondered at that theatrical dancing was at a comparatively low ebb? Why, there were only two theatres, Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields! and they were striving hard to outdo each other—in dullness.

Indeed, it was not until practically the close of Queen Anne’s reign that stage-dancing began to come to its own; for though the craze for pantomimes (and his importation of French dancers) started by John Rich in Anne’s last year, were mainly responsible for this, I cannot help thinking that Steele and Addison’s ever lively Spectator, together with the works of Mr. John Weaver, had considerable effect in rousing the attention of playgoers as to the possibilities of dancing on the stage; for while there are four papers in The Spectator in which dancing as a social accomplishment is discussed, Steele, in one of them, makes the interesting suggestion that “It would be a great improvement, as well as embellishment to the theatre, if dancing were more regarded, and taught to all the actors”; and another calls special attention to An Essay towards an History of Dancing, by John Weaver (a 12mo. volume published in 1712), who was also author of a very interesting History of Pantomimes. These literary efforts cannot have been without their influence on current taste in things theatrical.

Before the appearance of The Spectator, however, Addison had made amusing reference to a dancing-master in one of his papers for The Tatler. The date is 1709. He heads it as written “From my own Apartment, October 31,” and goes on: “I was this morning awakened by a sudden shake of the house; and as soon as I had got a little out of my consternation, I felt another, which was followed by two or three repetitions of the same convulsion. I got up as fast as possible, girt on my rapier, and snatched up my hat, when my landlady came up to me and told me that the gentlewoman of the next house begged me to step thither, for that a lodger she had taken in was run mad; and she desired my advice; as indeed everybody in the whole lane does upon important occasions,” he slyly adds.

With much detail and delightful humour Addison goes on to describe his adventure, at greater length than can be given here. Suffice it to say that he went in next door and upstairs, “with my hand upon the hilt of my rapier and approached this new lodger’s door. I looked in at the keyhole and there I saw a well-made man look with great attention at a book and, on a sudden, jump into the air so high that his head almost touched the ceiling. He came down safe on his right foot, and again flew up, alighting on his left; then looked again at his book and, holding out his right leg, put it into such a quivering motion that I thought he would have shaken it off.”

Eventually, of course, he discovers the lodger is a dancing-master, and on asking to see the book he is studying Addison “could not make anything of it.” Whereupon the maÎtre explains that he had been reading a dance or two ... “which had been written by one who taught at an academy in France,” adding the interesting comment “that now articulate motions, as well as sounds, were expressed by proper characters; and that there is nothing so common as to communicate a dance by a letter.” Ultimately Addison begs him to practise in a ground-room, and returns to his own residence “meditating on the various occupations of rational creatures.”

To return, however, to the later publication, The Spectator, in which Addison was also assisted by Steele and other writers of such varied character as Motteaux (debauchee, tea-merchant and translator of Don Quixote), Ambrose Philips (whom Swift nicknamed “Namby Pamby”), and Isaac Watts—the famous hymn-writer. In a comparatively early number a short note introduces in very learned fashion a quaint letter purporting to be from “some substantial tradesman about ‘Change,’” in which the writer grows querulous over the way in which his daughter (who “has for some time been under the tuition of Monsieur Rigadoon, a dancing-master in the city”), has been taught to behave at a ball he takes her to.

With some of the dancing the old man is delighted, as he is with the art generally, but presently he has to complain: “But as the best institutions are liable to corruptions, so, sir, I must acquaint you that very great abuses are crept into this entertainment. I was amazed to see my girl handed by and handing young fellows with so much familiarity,” and he finds that fault especially with “a most impudent step called ‘Setting.’”

There can be little doubt, however, that the good citizen was shocked by a dance that was probably quite innocuous, and only seemed to suggest a familiarity of behaviour unusual to his prim eyes, viewing a ball-room for the first time.

Almost the whole of one issue of The Spectator is taken up with a letter from John Weaver, to whom Steele gives a fine advertisement by not only printing the letter in extenso, but introducing it with sapient comments from himself. One point he makes somewhat recalls to mind the complaint of Arbeau’s young friend, the law-student Capriol, who had grown dusty over his studies.

Speaking of dancing, Steele says: “I know a gentleman of great abilities, who bewailed the want of this part of his education to the end of a very honourable life. He observed that there was not occasion for the common use of great talents; that they are but seldom in demand; and that these very great talents were often rendered useless to a man for want of small attainments.” One can hardly perhaps consider dancing to-day as a “small attainment,” however it may have been considered in the reign of Queen Anne.

Weaver’s own letter is too long to quote in its entirety, but I cannot refrain from giving at least the following, since, while speaking of his own work, he offers incidentally several peculiarly interesting glimpses as to the state of the art in 1712.

All modern students of dancing will be interested especially in the passages I have italicised in the foregoing excerpt, for one gets a significant glimpse as to the state of theatrical dancing (they had no native ballet) in London during the reign of Anne; such a contrast to Paris, where Louis XIV’s AcadÉmie Royale de la Danse was beginning to bring forth “rare and refreshing” fruit and the Ballet was beginning to be understood as a genuine work of art.

“The art is esteemed only as an amusing trifle!” In an earlier paper had not “Mr. Spectator” introduced the subject with a little apology for dealing at all with a reputedly trivial theme, and had he not backed himself up with scholarly reference to classic writers on the Dance, such as Lucian?

Oh! Anne! That the art should have been, in your reign, “esteemed only as an amusing trifle!” And when you might have followed a royal example and, emulating your contemporary Louis, ennobled the art by founding an English “Royal Academy of Dancing.”

Well, Weaver, at any rate, knew that the art was something more than an “amusing trifle” when he wrote almost prophetically: “If some great genius after this would arise and advance this art to that perfection it seems capable of receiving, what might not be expected from it.” What would he have said had he lived to see the triumphs of Noverre, of Blasis, and of the British, French or the Russian Ballet of modern times?

CHAPTER XVII
A FRENCH DANCER IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

We have seen that the state of dancing in England was nothing to boast of in the early eighteenth century. We have seen that London had not yet what Paris had had some fifty years—State-aided Opera and Ballet.

But the public appreciation of art was there all the same, and an astute manager of that day was as capable of realising, quite as well as any modern, that where there was no home supply it might be profitable to import foreign talent.

Strange, is it not, that there was not then, any more than to-day, anyone clever enough, apparently, to realise that since foreign talent would prove attractive to a dance and spectacle-loving public (had not the English proved their innate love of spectacle in Elizabethan times?) it might be less expensive and still more profitable, to encourage native talent. Still that is our way. We let the foreign artist discover England, and then discover the foreign artist. We never seem to discover ourselves. We shirk the horrible revelation that the English really are an artistic, an art-loving nation. But whatsoever the foreigner may have or have had against us, he can never accuse us of lack of enthusiasm, of indifference to his efforts to please.

In the early eighteenth century—French actors, dancers, and acrobats; in the later eighteenth and mid-nineteenth—Italian opera singers and ballet; in the later nineteenth—light French Opera (at the Criterion, Gaiety and Opera Comique); and in the twentieth—Russian Opera and Ballet; these London has had, and more, and always greeted with generous praise and enthusiastic approval. Whatsoever may be said of the English as a nation of “shopkeepers” slow to adopt new ideas, there is nothing small or hesitating about their adoption and praise of foreign art and artists; and so it was that the delectable French dancer Mlle. Marie SallÉ, one of the two chief pupils of the famous PrÉvÔt, found a warm welcome when she visited London in the reign of George I.

Mlle. SallÉ, born in 1707, was the daughter of one minor theatrical manager, niece of another, and made her first appearance at the age of eleven in an opera-comique by Le Sage—author of the lively “Gil Blas”—entitled “La Princesse de Carisme,” at the St. Laurent Fair, in Paris, in 1718. She spent the next few years in touring, or, when not on tour, in playing at the Fair theatres in Paris. It is just possible that Watteau may have seen her as a young girl at the Fair theatres before he died in 1721. That, however, though pleasant to contemplate as a possibility, is less our concern than the circumstances of her dÉbut, and her subsequent appearance in London.

“La Princesse de Carisme,” a romantic-satirical, three-act musical comedy, dealt with the love-affairs and adventures of a Persian Prince and his boon companion and “confident”—Arlequin. There was some charming music in it, and so great was its success at the theatre of the St. Laurent Fair that it was put on at the Opera in Paris by Royal command.

By the year 1718, it will be remembered, old Christopher Rich had died, leaving his theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London to his son John Rich, who made himself famous and increased his wealth by producing the first pantomimes ever seen in the great metropolis, which were mounted on the stage with all the attractions of gorgeous scenery and dresses, grand “mechanical effects,” appropriate music, and striking ballets; the various acts of the spectacle being interspersed with a comic or serio-comic element, supplied by the eternal love-affairs of Arlequin and Columbine.

This form of entertainment became so popular as to rival seriously the power of London’s two chief theatres, Drury Lane and Haymarket, mainly through Rich’s enterprise in securing all the best opera-singers, dancers, acrobats and other performers from the Continent. In fact, he may fairly be described as London’s earliest music-hall manager, for the entertainment provided at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre was much like that of a modern variety house. It was thus he came to engage Mlle. SallÉ and her brother, who made their first appearance here as dancers in an English comedy, “Love’s Last Shift,” in October, 1725.

Next year also they appeared in London, and in April, 1727, Mlle. SallÉ was given a complimentary benefit, in which she and her brother introduced some of their youthful pupils. In that same year she made her dÉbut at the Paris Opera, where she remained till, for some obscure reason, she broke therefrom, and in October returned to London, once more under John Rich’s management.

The reason for the break may have been that professional jealousy did not give her the place which her talents should have justified; or may have been over the question of costume-reform, which was a matter of burning interest to some of the younger spirits in those days. Or it may have been merely as the result of managerial changes at the Opera in 1728. But whatsoever the reason, what Paris lost London gained, and her greatest triumph here came at the end of 1733, when she made her first appearance at Covent Garden, following it up with still greater success in the spring of the following year, when she achieved a striking success in a classic ballet, “Pygmalion,” in more or less correct costume, instead of in the absurdly befrilled garb, with laced cuirasse, powdered hair and plumed helmets, which were considered de rigueur on the stage at that absurdly artificial period.

Marie SallÉ was not only a dancer of exquisite lightness and grace, she was a woman of taste and sense, and, forestalling Noverre’s fight on the same ground, had tried to bring about costume-reform at the AcadÉmie Royale in Paris, only to find that those in authority were strong in—authority, and convention! She rejoiced, therefore, in a return to London, that gave her more scope for the expression of her artistic ideas, and two ballets of her own composition, “Pygmalion” (February, 1734) and “Bacchus et Ariane” (March, 1734), were mounted with more regard for classic feeling. Her appearance in both caused a furore. Royalty came to Covent Garden on the nights she danced. The whole town flocked to see her, and numerous duels were fought by ardent young gentlemen who trod on each other’s toes when jammed in the crowds that endeavoured to enter the theatre.

Mlle. SallÉ must have been a woman of character. In a loose era she was cordially detested by her stage colleagues in Paris for her virtue! It was such a reflection on them that one should not be as they!

Another aspect of her is revealed in a significant little anecdote. The great Handel, having admired her in Paris, had offered her three thousand francs to appear at Covent Garden, and specially composed for her a ballet, “Terpsichore.” Hearing of this, Porpora, Handel’s great rival and manager of the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, promptly offered her three thousand guineas, and had the tact to suggest that she might accept it as she had not yet signed a contract with Handel. To which proposal SallÉ replied with quiet scorn: “And does my word then count for nothing?”

London was delighted with the novelty of Mlle. SallÉ’s ideas in the production of Ballet, and with the personal grace of the young dancer herself. One of the older historians of the dance has described her in the following glowing terms: “Une figure noble, une belle taille, une grÂce parfaite, une danse expressive et voluptueuse, tels Étaient les avantages de Mademoiselle SallÉ, la Taglioni de 1730.”

As an influence in the revolution of the Dance and Ballet she might perhaps not incorrectly be described as the Isadora Duncan of her period. True, she did not dance barefoot, but she came to loosen the bonds of tradition, and to free the spirit of the Dance from the stiffening conventionalities which had grown up around Ballet as seen at the Paris Opera. In London she had greater freedom, and—greater success; indeed, so triumphant was her final season that when she did return to Paris she was welcomed by Voltaire with the following verses:

In yet another poem he pays tribute to her virtue in describing her thus:

Later there was to come a change and the idealistic young dancer was to be attacked for the very virtues her adoring poets—for Voltaire was not the only one—had celebrated. Her austerity got on the Parisian nerves! A more modern scribe has pictured her thus:

SALLÉ

But if the Parisians did not quite appreciate her as they should have done at first, her return to Paris after her London successes was triumphant. Her portrait was painted by Lancret; her every appearance was greeted with enthusiasm.

She remained at the Opera for some years, retired therefrom in 1740, but made frequent appearances after, at Versailles and at Fontainebleau, until a few years before her death in 1756.

It is interesting to think that her personal dignity had won her the respect, and her beauteous art the homage of London before her qualities came to be recognised in Paris. It is possibly just the suggestion of austerity about her performance that appealed to the London audience. She had a poetic distinction above the average. She was an expressive mime, and her dancing was marked by supreme refinement, a magnetic reserve, a strange suggestion of pictured stillness, an exquisite simplicity and grace.

CHAPTER XVIII
LA BELLE CAMARGO

Some say that Camargo had no right to be described “La Belle.” Contemporary accounts of her appearance differ. It was a time when people took sides, and duelled for their opinions.

It is a curious fact that several famous dancers have been of questionable beauty—at least, as to face, and when in repose; for it is another curious thing that no dancer ever did or possibly ever could, look plain when dancing, that is, if dancing really well. The animation or gentle grace of the dance, whether quick or slow, seems inevitably to confer a beauty that otherwise might not be apparent. This fact in itself would appear to suggest that in dancing, as in other arts, and in life itself, it is the “spirit which quickeneth”; and, where that sufficiently illumines the body, what the body itself may otherwise be profits little.

But if some of her more jealous colleagues may have found Camargo too dark for their taste—“swarthy,” said some—you may in turn criticise her critics and see for yourself what she was like if you go to view her portrait by Lancret, in the Wallace collection in Hertford House.

Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo was born at Brussels early in April, and baptised in the parish of St. Nicholas—it is well to be exact in matters of such importance!—on the 15th of that month, in 1710.

She was the daughter, and first child, of a gentleman who had “seen better days”—and, through his daughter, was to see them again. At the time of her birth he was a teacher of music and dancing, and was employed by, or dependent on, the Prince de Ligne. Through her father the little dancer claimed descent from an exalted Roman family, which from time to time had given a bishop, an archbishop, and a cardinal to Holy Church; while on her mother’s side she was descended from a famous and ancient Spanish house.

Romance was ever ready to find in the earliest years of a popular star predictions of future fame, and it is probably only romance that tells how Camargo danced, on hearing a violin played, when she was but six months old!

It is rather more certain, though, that her first lessons were from her father, and that under his tuition she did well enough, by the time she was nearly ten, to deserve the patronage of the Princesse de Ligne, when that lady paid the expenses of some few months’ study under the then famous Mlle. PrÉvÔt.

Even so she must have been remarkably precocious, for before she was eleven she had returned to Brussels finished enough to achieve a remarkable success on her first appearance. An auspicious dÉbut was followed by an engagement at Rouen, but, through no fault of Marie-Anne be it said, the manager failed.

As the Camargo luck would have it, however, there was a new director at the AcadÉmie Royale in Paris, by name Francine, and from him the little dancer received the welcome chance of appearing at the Opera, where she made her Paris dÉbut on May 5th, 1726, in “Les CaractÈres de la Danse,” and achieved an instant and emphatic success.

Over the new-comer the impressionable capital fairly lost its head, and soon every fashion—shoes, hats, fans, coiffures, everything—was “À la Camargo,” of which craze relics survive, for even to-day we have Camargo shoes. Such a threatened eclipse of her own popularity not unnaturally made poor PrÉvÔt—now about forty-six, and having been before the public over twenty years—furiously jealous, and for the next year or so Marie-Anne’s progress was made difficult by intrigue, and ere Paris set its seal of favour on her art by imitating her fashions, the young dancer had to find herself more than once occupying the comparative obscurity of the “back row.”

Her chance came, though, when one of the famous male dancers, Dumoulin, for some reason failed to make his entry, and Camargo, in a sudden devil-may-care mood, taking up his cue, leapt forward and went through his dance with such dazzling brilliance and won such universal acclaim that henceforth any intrigue for the suppression of the youthful artist was impossible, and it was PrÉvÔt, not Marie-Anne, who eventually had to go.

While SallÉ—also a pupil of PrÉvÔt—was making a bid for fame in London, Camargo was taking Paris by storm, and creating another of which she was temporarily the unhappy centre. Furious at this second obtrusion on the public notice Mlle. PrÉvÔt bitterly upbraided her pushing young pupil, refused to give her any more lessons, and even to dance with her in an entrÉe in which the Duchesse de Berri had asked her to appear.

A well-known male dancer of the Opera, seeing Camargo in tears, said to her: “Leave this severe and jealous mistress, who seeks only to mortify you. I will give you lessons, and will compose the entrÉe which the Duchesse requires and you shall dance in it.” Under the careful direction of Blondi the young dancer—then only sixteen—made rapid progress. She combined noblesse and brilliance of execution, with grace, lightness, and a gaiety which was natural to her—on the stage. One who had seen her described her in the following terms: “C’Était une femme d’esprit; fort gaie sur la scÈne et fort triste À la ville; qui n’Était ni jolie ni bien faite, mais lÉgÈre, et la lÉgÈretÉ Était alors un mÉrite fort rare. Elle exÉcutait avec une extrÊme facilitÉ la ‘royale’ et ‘l’entrechat’ coupÉ sans frottement....”

There was for a little time considerable rivalry between SallÉ, Camargo and a third young dancer named Roland, of whose record history has been neglectful. But the rivalry was testified by an anonymous scribe whose verses may be translated as follow:

There was of course the inevitable tribute from Voltaire, whose poem, apart from the ingenuity with which he divides his favours between the rival stars, is of unusual interest, since it gives a useful impression of their contrasted styles in apostrophising the dancers thus:

It is all safe praise of course, but when we separate the qualities one finds that he is only versifying the current opinion—Camargo is “brillante,” her steps are “lÉgers,” and the “nouvelle” refers less to her than to the novelty of her steps, with the clever invention of which she delighted her audience; and the nymphs, you observe, “sautent comme vous,” an appropriate phrase for one whose entrechats amazed a generation to which such things were new. On the other hand, SallÉ was “ravissante,” her steps were “doux”; she was “inimitable,” and “les GrÂces dansent comme elle,” a point of special significance when we recall the historic distinction between the words sauter and danser.

Voltaire’s admiration was not exactly fevered—could the icy “intellectual” ever have been that? Not so the rest of Paris. Rumour soon gave her countless lovers—as it will a pretty actress to-day?—but history does not record that she succumbed to their protestations. Certainly duels were fought on her behalf; but probably she was unaware that she was the cause; and certainly she did not provoke them. Was she a pretty actress? Setting aside the opinion of her feminine contemporaries, unbiased colleagues thought not. Yet painters such as Lancret, Vanloo, and Pater sought for the honour of depicting her graceful figure and—was it her face? Well, as to actual features perhaps she was not faultlessly beautiful, but with that mingled Italian and Spanish blood, even if she were swarthy as some said, she must have been striking, temperamental, full of fire and “interesting” as we might say to-day. Much of her fascination must have been in expression, and one feels that she had that quality which often makes a dancer—sheer joy in dancing.

Her style was noted by contemporaries as combining quickness with grace to a degree not previously achieved, and she won special credit for her invention of new steps. Her improvisation of new dances was remarkable, and it is important to note that she was the first to perform an entrechat, which, only for the benefit of non-dancing readers, may be described as the step in which a dancer actually crosses her feet rapidly while in mid-air. This historic innovation took place in 1730, and she could make four crossings; while eight are said to be as many as any dancer has since performed.

Another interesting point to note is that until the advent of Camargo the ballet skirts reached nearly, or quite, to the ankles. She was the first to shorten it, not, of course, to the brevity one can only regret has been too often seen since, but to such degree as to enable the steps to be better seen and the dancer to have greater freedom of movement. Her favourite dances were the Tambourin, Gavotte, and Rigaudon, or Rigadoon, as it is known in English. But for all the shortening of the skirt and the rapidity of her steps, Marie-Anne was never accused from departing from modesty, grace, and refinement of deportment.

A curious personal characteristic was, that while on the stage she was the incarnation of gaiety, yet in private life she was for the most part strangely grave, and even sad; though, with all the advantages of talent, position, and wealth of which she was possessed, it might have been expected she should be quite otherwise. No one ever discovered the reason. One imagines it to have been that modern disease, “the artistic temperament,” and a steady perception of the pitiful fact that all stage triumphs are but transient; and that, popular as she might be, and was, on her retirement in 1751, her fame would not long endure after her death, which actually occurred in 1770. Yet to-day she lives for us in Lancret’s exquisite picture, for all to see who visit Hertford House.

CAMARGO SPEAKS

ENVOI

CHAPTER XIX
THE HOUSE OF VESTRIS

It is recorded that during one of the many revolts indulged in by the dancers of the Paris Opera against managerial control, which incidentally meant, of course, State and Royal control, some of the leaders were sent to Fort l’EvÊque—including Auguste Vestris.

So melodramatically pathetic was the farewell scene with his father, Gaetan, that even his colleagues laughed! “Go my son,” said le Diou de la Danse. “This is the most glorious moment of your career. Take my carriage, and ask for the cell which was occupied by my friend the King of Poland. I will meet every expense.”

And the great Gaetan is said to have added, with an air of injured dignity, that this was the first time in history that there had been “any difference of opinion between the House of Bourbon and the House of Vestris!”

What was the—“House of Vestris?” Well, it was a fairly numerous one, of which, so far as our interest is concerned, Gaetan was virtually the founder. He had a father it is true, who, being employed, it is believed, in a Florentine pawnbroker’s, got into some trouble and with his young family “cleared” to Naples. There being no trains, “wireless” or Scotland Yard in those days, they stayed there in safety for a while; the children, who had been taught music and dancing, being made to exercise their talents in that direction for their general support.

Palermo was the next move, where two of the girls, Marie-Therese and Violante, with one of the sons, Gaetan, entered the Opera. After that they seem to have scattered and travelled over most of cultured Europe, appearing now in one opera house, now in another, and always deeply engaged in love affairs. It is with their arrival in Paris, and with Gaetan more especially that we now have to do.

He was one of the eight children of Thomas Vestris and his wife, nÉe Violante-Beatrix de Dominique Bruscagli, but only of three of the family have we much record, namely, Gaetan and the two sisters already mentioned.

Gaetan-Appolino Balthazar Vestris was born at Florence in April, 1729, and in importance—though far from it in physique—was the Mordkin of his era. There, however, the resemblance ceases.

He was a little man, with the biggest ideas of his own talents. But his size did not detract from his merits, his sheer style as a dancer; and from all accounts he is to be ranked as one of the finest male dancers the world has ever known. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he is one of the most important factors in the history of the modern dance and that his influence as a teacher is seen to-day in the real classic school, that is, the school which is based on ages of tradition. For Gaetan was in his time the supreme leader of the Dance, and undoubtedly gave a new standard and tradition to Paris, the influence of which spread to every Opera House on the Continent.

He is a link in a chain. One of the first dancing masters to assist Louis XIV in establishing his Royal Academy of Music and Dance—and modern theatrical dancing dates from that event—was Beauchamps, whose pupil was “the great” DuprÉ. He taught Gaetan Vestris. Gaetan in turn taught his son Auguste, of whom, in his later years, Carlotta Grisi was a pupil, and there may be some to-day who have studied under pupils of Carlotta Grisi, who herself died comparatively recently.

According to a contemporary biographer Gaetan made his dÉbut at the Royal Academy of Music and Dance “sans retribution,” in 1748; entered there for study in 1749, became a solo dancer in 1751, a Member of the AcadÉmie Royale de Danse in 1753; maÎtre de ballet in 1761 until 1770, and composer and master of Ballet from that year until 1776.

From time to time he visited Stuttgart—as the Russian dancers to-day have visited London—in vacation, and in the theatre there under the direction of that master of ballet-composition and stage reformer, Jean Georges Noverre, found greater scope for his artistic abilities than in the more conventional work of the Paris Opera.

We have seen that by her invention of new and rapid steps, Camargo infused new life into the technique of theatrical dancing some years before the rise of Gaetan Vestris to supremacy. He, in turn, came to bring a new influence mainly in the direction of a certain largeur of movement and gesture, a certain grandiosity, as well as setting a new standard in perfection of execution.

A contemporary critic declared: “When Vestris appeared at the Opera one really believed it was Apollo who had come to earth to give lessons in grace. He perfected the art of the Dance, gave more freedom to the ‘positions’ already known, and created new ones.”

Undoubtedly he learnt much from Noverre, even as the latter had learnt much from David Garrick. Noverre conceived the idea of creating the dance with action, in short, the ballet-pantomime; at least its creation was claimed, and by some of his contemporaries, attributed to him; though we have seen that he had forerunners in the Duchesse du Maine, and, too, in SallÉ, who was an ardent stage-reformer and seems to have influenced Noverre. But it was the latter who took practical steps towards instituting the real ballet in action, the true ballet-pantomime as we have seen it to-day.

Up to this time, opera-ballet had had a somewhat rigid form: there were music, singing and dancing; but the dances were detached items in the general effect. The regulation form was: passe-pieds in the prologue; musettes in the first act; tambourins in the second; chaconnes and passacailles in the third and fourth.

In all this it was not the plot of the opera which decided the introduction of the dances, but quite other considerations, such as the particular excellence of particular dancers in their special dances—the best performers usually appearing last. It was routine, not the action of the story by which these things were ordered; and the poet who had provided the plot, the musician who had composed the music, the costumier and scenic artist, and even the ballet master, each worked detachedly, without regard to consultation and cooperation towards an artistic unity of effect.

The lines had been set, the routine laid down for all time; any deviation therefrom seemed impossible, a thing vainly imagined only by a heretic, who could not hope to win in a fight against the established form and authority of the Opera. Yet the reformation came. Noverre, the reformer, found in Gaetan Vestris a technical exponent who responded to his influence; and in Dauberval, another; and at Stuttgart the time and place for artistic experiment. It is to this triumvirate that credit was given in their own time for the reform of the scÈne chorÉgraphique, a reform which had to struggle against and overcome tradition, prejudice, ignorance and the obstinacy of authority. Slow progress was made at first. Stuttgart had its effect, but the Paris Opera still clung to the bizarre accessories which were then regarded as inherent to the dignity of the theatre—the masks, under which the faces were hidden, the towering wigs by which the heads were bowed; the absurd panniers; the puffed skirts; the great breastplates, all forming the heroic panoply by which the leading histrions were known for hero and heroine, and traces of which may be found in those spangled figures beloved of our grandfathers and grandmothers in their childhood, during the first half of last century.

Gaetan Vestris was the first dancer who dared to discard that absurd convention—the mask, and so reveal that expressive play of feature which made acted ballet possible. This was in 1770, when he appeared in a ballet-pantomime on the story of Medea and Jason. He astonished the audience by the dramatic force of his miming and by the nobility of his physiognomical expression. One critic wrote: “Le mÉrite particulier de Vestris, c’Était la grÂce, l’ÉlÉgance et la dÉlicatesse. Tous ses pas avaient une puretÉ, un fini dont on ne peut se faire une idÉe aujourd’hui et ce n’est pas sans quelque raison qu’on compare son talent À celui de Racine.”

For all his artistic talent as dancer and mime, however, Gaetan was practically illiterate; ignorant of all save the art in which he excelled; and his conceit was colossal.

One day, when he was coming from a rehearsal at the Opera, a somewhat ample lady happened, in passing, to tread rather heavily on one of his feet. In deep concern she apologised profusely, and expressed an earnest hope that she had not seriously hurt him.

“Hurt me, Madam!” he answered. “Me? You have merely put all Paris into mourning for a fortnight!”

His pride in his son was stupendous, and he once declared that, “If Auguste occasionally descends to touch the earth it is merely out of consideration for the feelings of less talented colleagues.” As to himself, on one occasion he volunteered the assertion that his century had produced but three really great men—Frederick the Great, Voltaire and himself!

Of the many susceptible ladies who succumbed to the questionable fascination of this “Diou de la Danse”—as in his Italianate-French he called himself—the most notable—apart from his legitimate wife, the beautiful danseuse Heinel, whom he married in 1752—was Mlle. Allard.

Born of poor and none too honest parents, Marie Allard first drew breath on August 14th, 1742, at Marseilles, where at an early age she entered the local theatre. On the death of her mother, she decided to leave a disreputable father and made her way to Lyons, where she found another not very brilliant theatrical engagement. At the age of fourteen, tiring of Lyons, she set out to win fame in Paris, where she entered the ComÉdie FranÇaise. In the course of time, she came to know Gaetan Vestris, and with him she studied dancing.

She made her dÉbut at the Opera in June, 1761, and delighted the audience with the verve, grace and gaiety of her dancing. Though she shone especially in comedy, she was noted as a clever actress in tragedy; and while “Sylvie,” in the comedy-ballet of that name, was one of her most successful parts, she is said to have moved beholders to tears by her performance in Noverre’s “Medea.”

In the lighter rÔles, however, she was especially popular, and from the moment of her entrÉe (she was the only dancer at the Opera who was allowed to compose her own entrÉes, not edible!) her gaiety of manner was such as almost to eclipse the real talent displayed in her dancing.

Unfortunately, her public career came to a close all too soon for her admirers, from a cause which even she with all her agility and incessant exercise, was unable to control—a tendency to embonpoint! She retired in 1781, and died in 1802; not before she had seen the success of her and Gaetan Vestris’ son, Auguste, who, known as Vestr’-Allard, seemed to combine within him the respective choreographic perfections of mother and father.

Gaetan Vestris, having retired in 1782, lived until 1808, and rejoiced to see his son acknowledged as supreme. On him he graciously conferred the title of Le Diou de la Danse; and he declared that it was, after all, only natural that Auguste should excel, since the young man possessed one advantage over himself—he “had Gaetan for his father!”

Auguste, or Marie-Auguste, to give his full name, was born at Paris in 1760. He made his dÉbut at the age of twelve in a divertissement entitled “Cinquantaine” with a chaconne, which he danced in a manner such as had never been seen. In 1773 he made a strikingly successful appearance as Eros in the ballet of “Endymion;” and though already recognised as a master he entered the Academy school in 1775 and the Opera in the following year. For some time he accepted subordinate rÔles, but gradually his consummate ability in all he undertook brought him forward, and as he became more and more the pet of the ladies of the Opera and the admiration of its patrons he began to develop his father’s traits, especially conceit.

On one occasion the Director, de Vismes, annoyed at some impertinence of the young man, said, “Monsieur Vestris, do you know to whom you speak?”

“Yes,” Auguste replied, “to the farmer of my talent.”

It says much for that talent that his appearance at the Opera during some thirty-five years, under Louis-Seize, the Republic and the Empire, largely accounted for its prosperity in those amazing times.

He had his father’s grace, precision, suppleness, and style, but more spirit and vivacity; a greater gift of mime; and was as good in genre as in the nobler rÔles. He paid several visits to London, always with success.

He married in 1795, a young dancer, Anne-Catherine Augier, who had made her dÉbut at the Opera two years before under the nom de thÉÂtre of AimÉe, but his infatuation for her modesty and charm and many good qualities did not last any longer than had his other infatuations for worse qualities in less desirable ladies, and his infidelities led her to attempt suicide, with results that left her more or less an invalid until death put an end to her unhappy existence in 1809. Auguste Vestris himself died in 1842, and left one son Auguste-Armand. He made his dÉbut at the Opera, as did a cousin, Charles Vestris, both being pupils of Auguste; and both went abroad; but neither added greater brilliance to the family name than had been achieved for it by first Gaetan, and then Auguste, the first and most distinguished upholders of the House of Vestris.

CHAPTER XX
JEAN GEORGES NOVERRE

Supreme above all other writers on the dance and ballet is Jean Georges Noverre, whose genius has been praised by Diderot, Voltaire, by D’Alembert, Dorat, and by David Garrick, the last of whom described him as “the Shakespeare” of the dance.

Born at Paris in April, 1727, he was the son of a distinguished Swiss soldier, who had served as an adjutant in the army of Charles XII, and intended his son for a military career.

Jean, however, early developed a passion for the stage, and especially for dancing, so was apprenticed by his father to the famous Parisian dancer and maÎtre de ballet, DuprÉ.

In August, 1743, young Noverre made his dÉbut at the Court of Louis-Quinze in a fÊte at Fontainebleau, but with only moderate success. Not discouraged, however, he went a little later to the Court of Berlin, where he became a favourite with Frederick the Great and his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia.

He returned to France in 1747, and two years later obtained the post of maÎtre de ballet at the OpÉra Comique, where the success of his “Ballet Chinois” aroused considerable jealousy among his colleagues and brought him some distinction in the art world. But the success was not great enough for his ambitious spirit, and he again travelled, and did not return to Paris for nearly twenty years. Noverre and such are seldom recognised as prophets in their own country, until their genius has received recognition abroad. As Castil-Blaze, the historian of opera in France, has neatly expressed it: “Noverre and the two Gardels effected in the dance the same revolution that Gluck and Sacchini achieved some years later in French music.” But Noverre was unable to do this as a young man in Paris fighting against the sheer dead weight of convention and hide-bound authority. He was unable to do it until he had won his laurels abroad.

SallÉ, one of the most exquisite and “intellectual” of danseuses, had left Paris for a more appreciative audience in London because the Paris Opera disliked her attempts to discard the ridiculous conventions of stage costumes then ruling and to “reform it altogether” in favour of something more congruous.

Noverre visioned to himself a theatre devoted to a kind of ballet as different from that he saw in Paris, as the Russian ballet we have seen to-day differs from that which London had seen in the ’thirties of last century; a ballet that should be informed by a technique so perfect as to be unobtrusive, and combining the arts of dance, pantomime, music and poesy into a new, subtle, resourceful and comprehensive means of artistic expression.

He wanted to see swept away all the mechanical rules of ballet composition, the stereotyped and unimaginative story, the conventional arrangement of stage groups, the stilted “heroic” style of the dancers, the formal sequence of their entrÉes, and above all, the bizarrerie of their masks, their panniers and helmets with waving, funereal plumes. He wanted to infuse a new spirit of art and efficiency into what he found about him and—he had to go elsewhere! An invitation from the Duke of WÜrtemberg to become maÎtre de ballet at the luxurious Court of Stuttgart gave him his chance, and he founded here the school which was to influence European Ballet in that and the successive generation, as the school of Petrograd seemed like to do to-day.

The publication of his Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets, in 1760, dedicated by permission to this same Duke of WÜrtemberg and Teck, caused a sensation among dancers in Paris and other capitals, and having produced ballets in Berlin, London (1755), Lyons (1758), and Stuttgart, he was reintroduced to Paris by Vestris (who had been in the habit of visiting Stuttgart every year to dance during his vacations) in 1765, when he achieved a success with his tragic ballet of “Medea.”

Later he was to visit Vienna, to superintend the fÊtes on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduchess Caroline (Queen of Naples), produce there a dozen ballets, and become appointed Director of Court fÊtes and MaÎtre de Danse to the Empress Maria Theresa and Imperial Family, the Empress heaping favours upon him and granting a lieutenancy to his son.

From Vienna he went to the Court of Milan, where he was created Chevalier of the Order of the Cross; then to the Courts of Naples and Lisbon; then to London, and finally again to Paris, in 1775, on the invitation of his old pupil, Marie Antoinette, who made him MaÎtre des Ballets en Chef at the Imperial Academy of Music, and Director of the fÊtes at the Petit Trianon; finally retiring at the outbreak of the French Revolution, to London, where it is possible—or, at any rate, in England—some of his descendants may yet be living.

A translation of these wonderful Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets was published in London in 1780, and was dedicated to the then Prince of Wales, later George IV. In the preface the anonymous translator says: “The works of Monsieur Noverre, especially the following letters, have been translated into most of the European languages and thought worthy of a distinguished place in the libraries of the literati.” To which, let me add, they should be so thought to-day, at least in their original French form, for they are of uncommon interest and literary charm.

In the somewhat stiff manner of the English of the late Georgian period, his translator remarks of Noverre’s work in the original: “His manner of writing is chaste, correct and elegant; perfectly master of his subjects, he treats of them with the utmost perspicuity; and by the connection which he proves to exist between the other arts, and that of dancing, the author lays down rules and precepts for them all; so that the poet, the painter and the musician may be greatly benefited by the perusal of his works.”

The translator follows with a short history of dancing, and three extremely interesting epistles to Noverre from the great Voltaire, in the first of which, apropos the publication of Noverre’s Lettres, he says: “I have read, sir, your work of genius: my gratitude equals my esteem. You promise only to treat of dancing, and you shed a light on all the arts. Your style is as eloquent as your ballet is imaginative.” In another he remarks: “I have for admiring you, a reason personal to myself; it is that your works abound with poetical images. Poets and painters shall vie with each other to have you ranked with them.” Again he says: “I am surprised that you have not been offered such advantages as might have kept you in France; but that time is no more when France sets the example to all Europe”; but elsewhere remarks, curiously enough: “I believe that your merit will be fully recognised in England, for there they love Nature.”

It was just this love of Nature and “natural” acting which brought Noverre and Garrick together in mutual admiration and friendship, to the latter of whom, by the way, the French maÎtre pays the highest tribute in his tenth letter. To turn, however, to the first: “Poetry, painting and dancing are, or ought to be, the faithful copy of Nature ... a ballet is a piece of painting, the scene is the canvas; in the mechanical motions of the figures we find the colours ... the composer himself is the painter.

“Ballets have hitherto been the faint sketch only of what they might one day be. An art entirely subservient, as this is, to taste and genius, may receive daily variations and improvements. History, painting, mythology, poetry, all join to raise it from that obscurity in which it lies buried; and it is truly surprising that composers have hitherto disdained so many valuable resources.... If ballets are for the most part uninteresting and uniformly dull, if they fail in their characteristic expression which constitutes their very essence, the defect does not originate from the art itself, but should be ascribed to the artists. Are then the latter to be told that dancing is an imitative art? I am indeed inclined to think that they know it not, since we daily see the generality of composers sacrifice the beauties of the dance and forego the graceful naÏvetÉ of sentiment, to become servile copyists of a certain number of figures known and hackneyed for a century or more.... It is uncommon and next to impossible now to find invention in ballets, elegance in the forms, neatness in the groups, or the requisite precision in the means of introducing the various figures.”

“Ballet masters should consult the productions of the most eminent painters. This would bring them nearer to Nature and induce them to avoid as often as possible that symmetry of figures which, by repeating the object, presents two separate pictures on one and the same canvas. A ballet, perfect in all its parts, is a picture drawn from life, of the manners, dresses, ceremonies and customs of the various nations. It must be a complete panto-mime and through the eyes speak, as it were, to the very soul of the spectator. If it wants expression, if it be deficient in point of situation and scenery, it degenerates into a mere spectacle, flat and monotonous.

“This kind of composition will not admit of mediocrity; like the art of painting it requires a degree of perfection the more difficult to attain in that it is subordinate to a true imitation of Nature, and that it is next to an impossibility to achieve that all-subduing truth which conceals the illusion from the spectator, carries him, as it were, to the very spot where the scene lies; and inspires him with the same sentiments as he must experience, were he present at the events which the artist only represents.

“Ballets, being regular representations, ought to unite the various parts of the drama. Most of the subjects, adapted to the dancer, are devoid of sense, and exhibit only a confused jumble of scenes, equally unmeaning and unconnected; yet it is in general absolutely necessary to confine oneself within certain rules. The historical part of a ballet must have its exposition, its incidents, its dÉnouement. The success of this kind of entertainment chiefly depends on choosing good subjects, and dealing with them in a proper manner.”

The above brief quotations are all of interest as bearing on particular points in dancing and ballet-composition, but I cannot refrain from giving one more and a lengthier excerpt, the sound common sense of which applies to-day and will appeal to all modern dancers who realise that the finest opportunities of displaying their skill are, and can only be, found in ballets worthy of their art.

“Every ballet,” he says, “complicated and extensive in its subject, which does not point out, with clearness and perspicuity, the action it is intended to represent, the intrigue of which is unintelligible, without a program or printed explanation: a ballet, in fine, whose plan is not felt, and appears deficient in point of exposition, incident and dÉnouement; such a ballet, I say, will never rise, in my opinion, above a mere divertissement of dancing, more or less commendable from the manner in which it is performed. But it cannot affect me much, since it bears no particular character, and is devoid of expression.

“It may be objected that dancing is now in so improved a state that it may please, nay, enchant without the accessory ornaments of expression and sentiment.... I readily acknowledge that, as to mechanical execution, the art has attained the highest degree of perfection: I shall even confess that it sometimes is graceful: but gracefulness is but a small portion of the qualities it requires.

“What I call the mechanical parts of dancing are the steps linked to each other with ease and brilliancy, the aplomb, steadiness, activity, liveliness, and a well-directed opposition between the arms and legs. When all these parts are managed without genius, when the latter does not direct these different motions, and animate them by the fire of sentiment and expression; I feel neither emotion nor concern. The dexterity of the dancer obtains my applause; I admire the automaton, but I experience no further sensation. It has upon me the same effect as the most beautiful line, whose words are uncouthly set asunder, producing sound, not sense. As for instance, what would a reader feel at hearing the following detached words: Fame-lives-in-dies-he-cause-who-in-virtue’s? Yet these very words aptly joined by the man of genius, by Shakespeare, express the noblest sentiment:

‘He lives in Fame who dies in Virtue’s cause.’

“From the above comparison we may fairly conclude that the art of Dancing has in itself all that is necessary to speak the best language, but that it is not enough to be acquainted only with its alphabet. Let the man of genius put the letters together, form the words, and from these produce regular sentences; the art shall no longer be mute, but speak with true energy, and the ballets will share with the best dramatic pieces the peculiar advantage of exciting the tenderest feelings; nay, of receiving the tribute of a tear; while, in a less serious style, this art will please, entertain and charm the spectators. Dancing thus ennobled by the expression of sentiment, and under the direction of a man of true genius, will, in time, obtain the praises which the enlightened world bestows on poetry and painting, and become entitled to the rewards with which the latter are daily honoured.”

The closing lines of the above are so curiously prophetic one questions whether we have not already reached the period when an “enlightened world” bestows on dancing—at any rate on dancers—the “rewards” with which poetry and painting have been (or ought to have been) hitherto honoured.

CHAPTER XXI
GUIMARD THE GRAND: 1743-1816

For some thirty of Madeleine Guimard’s seventy-three years of life she was the idol of Paris, having risen from obscurity to power, and returned again from a joyous life set in high places to a lonely death in obscurity.

Authorities differ, as authorities so often do over the advent of new stars in the firmament of life, as to the date of Guimard’s birth. One says the 2nd, and another the 10th, and yet a third the 20th of October. Edmond de Goncourt—not infallible on other points—gives the date of her baptism correctly as December 27th, 1743.

She made her dÉbut before the Parisian public when she was about sixteen, at the ComÉdie FranÇaise. She was received into the Academy in 1762, at the age of nineteen, and at a salary of six hundred livres.

In face she was not beautiful; some have described her even as ugly. She certainly had not Sophie Arnould’s shrewish wit, though she had humour; but her gestures, her face, above all her expressive eyes spoke eloquently, her dancing seemed ever the true and spirited expression of sentiments really felt, and in whatsoever rÔle she was always brilliant, entrancing. She had that glamour which makes up for lack of looks, and had, too, caprice of mood and a commanding manner, both qualities which susceptible men find adorable.

Her historians have not always been kind. A contemporary wrote: “La Guimard a des caprices entre nous. On ne peut compter sur elle.... Son arrogance n’a pas de nom.... Ce que la Guimard veut, bon grÉ, mal grÉ, il faut qu’on le veuille.” And there you have it! “What Guimard wishes, willy-nilly one must wish.” That is a touch that tells; the words ring true. Intriguing, capricious—masterful! What wonder, then, that she came to rise by her own buoyancy, of manner and morals, and sought the rarefied, but, in the days of Louis XV, far from inaccessible atmosphere of Court circles.

Guimard made her dÉbut at the Opera in May, 1762, as Terpsichore in a ballet called “Les CaractÈres de la Danse,” and achieved a triumph. From that time until she retired from the stage she was practically without a rival in the affections of the Parisian audiences. One testimony to her popularity is found in the promptitude with which she was nicknamed. Guimard, if not beautiful in face, had, nevertheless, a beautiful figure, was quite unusually graceful, carried herself nobly, was altogether a commanding and magnetic personage, but for all her beauty of figure Guimard was amazingly slim.

Seeing her in a classical ballet dancing as a nymph between two fauns—impersonated by the celebrated male-dancers Vestris pÈre and Dauberval—Sophie Arnould said it reminded her of “two dogs fighting for a bone.” Another of her footnotes on Guimard was her description of her as “Le Squelette des GrÂces,” which also had the saving grace of being partly a compliment, and it was by this nickname that Madeleine was generally known throughout Paris.

To judge from this insistence on Madeleine’s thinness one might imagine that she could not be as attractive, certainly hardly as graceful as has been said. But such nicknames are, though emphasising some special characteristic, usually only marks of popularity, and that Guimard really was graceful can be gathered from the summing-up of Noverre who had seen her dance for years and knew, as only a great ballet-master could, what he was talking about when he said that “... from her dÉbut to her retirement she was always graceful, naturally so. She never ran after difficulties. A lovable and noble simplicity reigned in her dance; she designed it with perfect taste, and put expression and sentiment into all her movements.”

Of her performance in Gardel’s ballet, “La Chercheuse d’Esprit,” in which she played the title-rÔle, a contemporary wrote that “her eloquent silences surpassed the vivid, easy and seductive diction of Mme. Favart;” and he mentions one point that is of interest when he remembers that the struggle that Noverre had had to achieve some reform of costume on the opera-stage, namely, that Guimard, “following the example of Mme. Favart, discarded the panniers and the cuirasse of conventional costume.”

In the ballet of “Les FÊtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour,” in 1766, Guimard had the misfortune to have one of her arms broken by a piece of falling scenery. Such was her place in public regard even at this time, that a Mass was said at Notre-Dame for her recovery.

It was not long after success came to her that Guimard accepted the protection of the notorious Prince de Soubise. One of her first acquisitions, in 1768, was a superb residence at Pantin, just outside Paris, which was decorated by Fragonard. It was visited by everybody who was anybody, for, apart from the charms of its mistress, there was a theatre in the mansion, where entertainments of a very special kind were staged, little poetic trifles or risky comedies, which while delighting a circle of appreciative connoisseurs would not have been staged in the ordinary way, as being caviare to the general.

The place at Pantin, however, did not suffice the exigent Madeleine, and a town-house was taken also in the ChaussÉe d’Antin,—next to that of Sophie Arnould by the way—where another theatre was built and where even more festive entertainments were provided, a theatre which could seat five hundred persons (only present by invitation) which received the name of The Temple of Terpsichore. It was designed by the architect Ledoux, decorated by Fragonard, who did numerous lovely panels in which Guimard appeared; and by David, then a youthful assistant, whom Madeleine’s generous aid is said to have sent to Rome for the furtherance of his art education.

Here in the course of time all Paris came. Here Guimard held her famous receptions—three a week, to the first of which were invited members of the Court circles, the aristocracy of the aristocracy; to the second—artists, actors, actresses, musicians, poets, the aristocracy of the world of intellect; to the third—all the polished rakes and rouÉs, with their attendant Phrynes, the aristocracy of vice.

There seem to have been wild times in the ChaussÉe d’Antin HÔtel, and some of Madeleine’s private theatrical productions must have been worthy of tottering Rome. Well might discreet AbbÉs, and reputedly virtuous ladies of the Court hide behind the curtains of the darkened and mysterious boxes with which her theatre was provided. Not be seen while seeing was their only chance to retain a virtuous reputation! It was now doubtless that after having long danced le genre sÉrieux, Guimard abandoned it as one record says for the genre mixte, and was “inimitable” in “les ballets AnacrÉontiques!”

One example of the sort of dramatic fare Madeleine was giving her guests on occasion at Pantin, or at the ChaussÉe d’Antin residence, will suffice. In 1721 at the ChÂteau of St. Cloud, in the presence of the Duc d’OrlÉans as Regent, there had been given a ballet called “Les FÊtes d’Adam.” Some of her friends suggested that Madeleine should go one better and produce a ballet on a classic subject with herself as Venus rising from the sea. But the Archbishop of Paris got news of the affair and managed to nip the suggestion in the bud. Perhaps it was never seriously intended; it may have been “merely a suggestion—nothing more.”

One of her first lovers was Delaborde the financier, poor only as an amateur musician, who directed her theatre at Pantin till it was closed in 1770; and only of greater importance in her life, financially, was Soubise. But Madeleine had a particular penchant for bishops it seems, and incidentally some of her later and most devoted friends were De Jarente, Bishop of Orleans, De Choiseul, the Archbishop of Cambrai, and Desnos, Bishop of Verdun.

The first-named of these clerical worthies had the disposal of a whole sheaf of livings, that is to say, he was supposed to have, but it was really Madeleine who allotted them—abbeys, priories, chapels and so forth. She did not forget her friends, and De Jarente found himself unable to resist. “What Guimard wishes one must wish!” It was this allotment of the bishops’ feuille des bÉnÉfices which drew from Sophie Arnould the whimsical remark that “Ce petit ver À soie (Guimard) devrait Être plus gras. Elle ronge une si bonne feuille.”

Another favour which, through the Prince de Soubise, Madeleine was able to dispense among her friends was permission to hunt in the Royal forests, and it led to trouble on more than one occasion—her friends were so much of a genre mixte.

But if men were weak where Guimard was concerned, there is no need to consider her as infamous. There is so often a tendency among chroniclers to consider that because a pretty woman, with every inducement to succumb to temptation, had a “protector,” all her men friends found her equally ready to receive their attentions. Nothing could be more unjust. There may have been reasons why Madeleine did not marry sooner than she did, and she may not have been quite that paragon of virtue our present time prefers, but in an age notorious for its callousness and cruelty as well as for its moral laxity she was distinguished as a woman not merely of fascination but of good heart and generous impulses.

Did not one writer say of her that “En quittant le thÉÂtre, cette virtuose emporta le genre agrÉable avec elle?” Did not Marmontel, referring to her well-known acts of charity, write of her the poem beginning:

Did not a preacher speak of her in the pulpit as “Magdalen not yet repentant, but already charitable?” and add, too, that “The hand which gives so well will not be refused when knocking at the gates of Paradise?” And why? Because all who were in trouble had but to turn to Guimard for help—poor players, artists, poets, all. Because, though every year she received a handsome present from Soubise, one year, in 1768, when the winter had dealt cruelly with the Paris poor, she begged that instead of sending her jewellery, the Prince would send her the equivalent in money, and when she received it she added more, and herself went to all the poor folk in her neighbourhood and fed the starving; went unostentatiously, from simple good-heartedness and sympathy; and it was the populace who spoke of it, not she.

She had her foibles, her little vanities perhaps, as when at Longchamps one summer she appeared in an equipage most gorgeously embellished with somewhat startling arms—mistletoe growing out of a gold mark, which glowed in the middle of a shield, the Graces serving as supports, with a group of Cupids as a crown.

Guimard could be jealous on occasion. A Mlle. Dervieux, appearing as a singer at the Academy without success, had the audacity to reappear as a dancer and triumph. This Madeleine would possibly not have minded, but her own pet poet Dorat celebrated Mlle. Dervieux’s success in verse, and this poetic infidelity was more than Madeleine could stand, with the consequence that all the pamphleteers of Paris were forthwith ranged on sides and a paper war took place between the rival supporters of the two fair dancers, characters were torn to rags, and in the course of time the battle burnt itself out, as such usually do, without anyone being seriously the worse.

Strangely enough it was just at this time that Guimard herself elected to make an appearance as a singer. When there was a revival of some of the old pieces in the repertoire of the Royal Academy, including “Les FÊtes d’HÉbÉ ou les Talents Lyriques,” for which Rameau had written the music, Guimard appeared in this as Aglaia, one of the three Graces—“with song and dance,” as one might say to-day. But it was, as so often the case in modern days, only the charm of the dance that made it possible to forgive the disillusion of the song, for Madeleine’s voice was thin and hard.

It was as a dancer and always as a dancer that Guimard excelled. It was as a dancer she won her chief successes in the ballets “La Chercheuse d’Esprit” (1778), “Ninette À la Cour” (1778), “Mirza” (1779), “La RosiÈre” (1784) and “Le Premier Navigateur” (1785), all of which, by the way, were by Maximilien Gardel. Of her work in these one historian has written: “Her dance was always noble, full of life, light, expressive and voluptuous; her acting naÏve, gay, piquante, tender and pathetic.” Connoisseurs reproached her at times for having grown a little “mannered,” but she always preserved in her dance that finish, even preciosity, and those delicate nuances of style of which later times have proved the rarity.

It was as a dancer she had the good fortune to please the King who, always a generous patron of the arts—with the nation’s money!—gave her for one dance she performed before him and the Queen, a pension of six thousand livres a year, giving at the same time a pension of one thousand a year to the man who danced with her, DesprÉaux, who later became her husband. This pension came to her the year following her appearance in “Le Premier Navigateur,” in 1786, apparently just at a time she was much in need of money. One may believe that Madeleine’s impulsive generosity had helped to bring about that need, as well as her known extravagance. For one thing, apart from her being ready to assist less fortunate artists, she had been the prime mover in an act of wholesale renunciation.

The Prince of Soubise, in the manner of his King, a generous patron of the arts, had been allowing a handsome annual pension to a number of dancers at the Opera, as well as treating them all to periodical supper-parties of most sumptuous kind. Suddenly the supper-parties ceased, the Prince was no longer seen among the audiences at the Opera and it came to be known that his son-in-law, the Prince de GuemÉnÉ, had become bankrupt, disastrously so, and that the entire family were doing their best to meet the creditors honourably. When this was known all the dancers foregathered in Madeleine’s loge at the Opera and a stately, kindly, tactful letter was drawn up and signed by all the pensionnaires, some thirty or more, headed by Guimard. The length of it precludes entire quotation in a chapter all too short to cover Madeleine’s crowded seventy-three years, but after referring to their regret at the Prince’s absence, to a delay in approaching him due to fear lest they be thought wanting in consideration, and to the urgent motive which had overcome such delicate scruples on hearing the news of the bankruptcy confirmed on all sides, the writers of the letter proceed that, finding there can be no prospect of the position improving, they feel they would be guilty of ingratitude were they not to imitate the Prince’s exemplary renunciations on behalf of his relative, and restore the pensions with which his generosity had provided them. “Apply,” the letter continues, “these revenues, Monseigneur, to the relief of so many old soldiers, poor men of letters, and such unhappy retainers as the Prince de GuemÉnÉ draws with him in his downfall. As for us, other resources remain. We shall have lost nothing, Monseigneur, if we retain your esteem. We shall even have gained if in refusing to-day your kindly gifts we force our detractors to acknowledge that we were not unworthy of them. We are, with deep respect, Monseigneur, your Serene Highness’s very humble servants, Guimard, Heinel, Peslin, Dorival, etc., etc.” The letter is dated 6th December, 1782.

It was now that Guimard was paying periodical summer visits to London for the Opera seasons. Edmond de Goncourt in his monograph on the dancer gives two very interesting letters written by Guimard apropos to these London sojourns, one to Perregaux the Banker, dated 20th June, 1784, the other to M. de la FertÉ, Director of the AcadÉmie, dated 26th May, (1786) and both addressed from No. 10, Pall Mall.

In the former she gives a spirited and amusing account of the way in which Gallini and Ravelli, then directing the Opera in London, had sought to take advantage of a fire at the old Opera House in order to break through the contract with Guimard by which she was to receive six hundred and fifty guineas for the season. The fire seemed at first likely to put a closure on the season, but Covent Garden was placed at the disposal of the Opera. Gallini, making alleged losses the excuse, tried to persuade Madeleine to lower her terms for the rest of the season. Finding she would only agree to providing her own costumes—no light consideration—he pretended satisfaction and departed. Ravelli, however, followed and, evidently by arrangement, informed her that Gallini was several kinds of idiot, and that he had been deposed in favour of Ravelli who, as the new stage-manager, came to offer her fresh terms—twenty-five louis a performance, on behalf of Gallini.

Guimard smiled and expressed astonishment that Ravelli should make such propositions from Gallini since the latter was no longer in power, and added that she held them to her contract. When she turned up at rehearsal with a couple of witnesses and having consulted solicitors, Ravelli “looked green” and Gallini “stupefied.” They offered fresh proposals and tried hard to wriggle out of their contract but Guimard won, of course, and the more so in that though her chief friends among the English aristocracy, notably the Duchess of Devonshire, were out of town, enough were left to make things uncomfortable for Gallini, who found his conduct the talk of the town.

The second letter, to M. la FertÉ, is mainly good advice on the direction of the Opera and encouragement of rising talent, and for this giving of counsel she begs that he will excuse her since it is out of friendship for him and also on account of her desire, in her own words, “ne pas voir dÉtruire entiÈrement la belle danse, que j’ai vu exister À l’OpÉra.” In both letters she sends—in the inevitable postscript!—charming messages to the wives of her correspondents and mentions some little commissions with which they had entrusted her.

That she did not have a bad time in London may be gathered from the fact that she excuses herself for not having written sooner because since she arrived in town she had not been left a minute to herself by “les plus grandes dames,” and principally by the Duchess of Devonshire with whom she spent most of the time that she had away from the theatre; and of the London audiences generally she remarks: “Ils m’aiment À la folie, ces bons Anglais!” Not the first time a charming foreign dancer has been beloved of “ces bons Anglais!”

But with all the friendship of the great and the love of the populace and her six hundred and fifty guineas for the London season, Guimard’s financial position was not what it had been. The Soubise pension had been relinquished; that she received from the King in view of twenty years’ service at the Opera hardly sufficed her rather magnificent requirements, and the time came, in 1786, when she found it convenient to dispose of her mansion in the ChaussÉe d’Antin. This she did by arranging, without police sanction, a lottery, the tickets for which numbered two thousand five hundred, at a hundred and twenty livres each, a total sum of three hundred thousand livres. There was a fierce demand for the tickets, and twice the number could have been sold. The drawing took place in a salon of the HÔtel des Menus-Plaisirs, Rue BergÈre, on the 1st of May, 1786, and Madeleine’s mansion with all its furniture went to the Comtesse du Lau, who, by the way, had only taken one ticket!

It is worth noting now that Madeleine had reached the age of forty-three, that she had never been pretty and that she was marked with smallpox, with which—a current danger at those times—she had been attacked in 1783. To a clever and magnetic personality age matters not, nor do looks mean everything since in any case they are bound to alter in the course of a few decades; and even smallpox is not fatal to fascination. But these things, nevertheless, have to be admitted when one comes to years of discretion, and forty-three may be accounted such. One wonders whether Madeleine, who was eminently a woman of sense, began about now to face facts and the future, and whether the doing so, or else mere circumstances, political and social, impelled her to the next step in her career.

People had wondered how Guimard had managed to keep exactly the same appearance for so many years. This was the secret! When she was twenty she had a portrait painted that was true to life and afterwards, for some twenty years or so, every morning she would study this and make herself up to resemble it exactly; and neither lover nor friend was ever admitted to this toilette.

This was an ingenious idea, but it could not last for ever. It is all the more interesting then to note the next important incident in Guimard’s career. Ninon de l’Enclos, acting on the principle that it’s never too late to have a lover, flirted when she was ninety. Guimard gave up lovers when she was past forty and took a husband, a man, moreover, whom she had known for years.

In 1789, Guimard retired from the Opera; in 1789 she married Jean DesprÉaux, dancer and poet; and in 1789 the gathering storms of Revolution broke and Paris, smitten first by famine, became for the next few years a hell, in which strangely enough, there was still a demand for entertainment lighter and less fervid than massacre.

When Guimard and DesprÉaux—comrades for at least twenty-five years—married, they settled down, on a fairly comfortable income, derived from their pensions and acquired property, at Montmartre and one of Jean’s poems gives a charming picture of their retreat in those troubled times. But during the Revolution, State finances were in disorder, and pensions were curtailed or discontinued and all the old favourites of the Opera were more or less involved in difficulties. In 1792, the city of Paris having confided the care of the Opera to Francoeur and Celerier, they nominated DesprÉaux director of the theatre and a member of the administrative committee, but this did not last. The following year Francoeur and Celerier were imprisoned, the actors were authorised to manage the theatre themselves and DesprÉaux—whose father, by the way, who had been leader of the orchestra at the Opera, killed himself the same year from despair at the general ruin around him—was allotted some part in the management of the public fÊtes.

In 1796—the year of the establishment of the Directory—Madeleine made a reappearance at a benefit given on January 23rd for the veteran performers at the Opera who had all suffered grievous losses in the Revolution. In 1807, three years after the crowning of Napoleon, by which time the national ferment had begun to settle down a little and the languished arts to take hope again, an Imperial decree dated July 29th, reduced the number of theatres in Paris to eight, and the AcadÉmie ImpÉriale de Musique—as it was now called—had for Director, Picard, the comic poet, and for “inspecteur”—DesprÉaux.

But these casual and precarious employments were not enough to remedy the losses that husband and wife sustained in the lean and fevered years from 1789, when they settled down in their high-perched nest overlooking all Paris in Montmartre until 1807, when DesprÉaux became again attached to the Opera, and that this employment too did not last we know from a letter which Madeleine wrote to a friend in 1814 imploring him to use his influence with people at Court to obtain from Louis XVIII some position for her husband, a letter in which she mentions the loss of their entire fortune owing to the Revolution and pleads that “nos besoins sont bien urgents.”

There is then every probability that their needs really were urgent. Guimard had never been charged with thrift; and DesprÉaux was a poet. Both started married life with a fair capital—all things henceforth held in common of course, according to the law—but fortune was against them, and though they might perhaps have weathered the storm had they been twenty years younger, it was almost inevitable that, their pensions gone, their capital diminishing, they should find the struggle growing yearly harder and their chances of replenishing their coffers less and less. De Goncourt gives what one cannot but feel is a too idyllic picture of the last years of the old couple, mainly on the basis of Jean’s poems (and he was ever an optimist!) but he also gives us one true, interesting, and poignant glimpse of Madeleine as an old lady who, with her toy theatre, would, for the amusement of friends who chanced to drop in, go through the scenes of former splendour and with her frail fingers perform the steps that had made her famous in many a ballet of the past.

Apparently Madeleine’s appeal to friends at Court must have had some success for DesprÉaux. In the following year, 1815, he was appointed inspector-general of the Court entertainments, and professor “de danse et de grÂces” at the Conservatoire. But it is probable that only the last three or four years of their married life brought them any return of fortune.

Madeleine died on May 4th, 1816, and, for years out of sight of a public which had long had other and less gracious objects for thought, her death passed almost unnoticed by the populace for whose amusement she had worked so loyally in her prime. Four years later, on March 26th, 1820, DesprÉaux followed her who had been his adored comrade for the greater portion of their lives. He had seen her, as little more than a child, win her earliest triumphs at the Opera, had seen her growing splendour as a woman of fashion, watched her through many years, danced with her, written for her and about her, seen her worst and best, and loved her well enough all through to wait till she would consent to marry him and with him retire from the stage they had so long adorned; and through the years, troublous for no fault of theirs, which followed their marriage, he cheered and consoled her for all she had relinquished, for the public worship all foregone, and for the neglect of the rising generation.

He it was who, though their means can hardly have permitted it, instituted the little dÉjeuners and supper-parties of kindred spirits, where songs were written and ballads sung in praise of love and wine and “la Gloire”—the one cry of the French Romanticists; all, one may well think, to cheer his beloved whose charm and goodness, poet himself, he never ceased to sing.

All this could not have been had not Guimard, with all her faults had more reserves of goodness than her earlier circumstances can have given opportunity for developing. Guimard had been grand; Guimard had been gay; but through it all Guimard must have been good in heart, full of sympathy and courage and generous charities of mind and soul; and DesprÉaux, gentle, wise, humorous, idealistic, honest, must have found her so, to speak and write of her as he always did, with ardour and a kind of boyish awe, even after she had passed away. No note of discord marred their married years, and when Guimard came to make her exit from the stage of life, silently, with nothing but ghostly memories of applause, her comrade, well we may be sure, waited only with impatience for his cue to follow her.

GUIMARD SPEAKS

(Ætat. 70)

ENVOI

CHAPTER XXII
DESPRÉAUX, POET AND—HUSBAND OF GUIMARD

There can be nothing more irksome to a man than to be known merely as the husband of his more famous wife.

In speaking, however, of DesprÉaux as “husband of Guimard,” it is not my intention to cast any slight on an estimable and, in his own time, well-known personality; but I do so merely that the reader will thereby be able to “place” her genial and accomplished husband, M. DesprÉaux to whom reference has already been made. He was born in 1748, five years after Mlle. Guimard, and was the son of a musician at the Paris Opera, where he himself was entered as a supernumerary-dancer in 1764. He made rapid progress in the art of his choice and won increasing reputation until, unhappily a wound in the foot completely closed his career as a “star,” and being a man of much theatrical experience and general culture, he then became a maÎtre de ballet and also gave dancing lessons. In 1789 he married Madeleine Guimard, whom he had long worshipped, and the two retired, as we know, at the opening of the Revolution to a cosy nest on the heights of Montmartre. So high, indeed, were they and so steep was the roadway approaching their dwelling, that the patrols refrained from troubling them, and save for financial losses, and rumours of revolution and distant guns, the couple remained untroubled by the red and raging Anarchy in the city stretched at their feet.

Edmond de Goncourt makes out—on what authority I cannot fathom—that DesprÉaux was born in 1758, and not 1748, thus making him out to be fifteen years the junior of Guimard when they married in 1789. As on other points he writes with such accuracy and copious wealth of detail one might suppose him to be correct, but seeing that DesprÉaux was undoubtedly entered a supernumerary-dancer in the Opera in 1764, and could hardly have been so at the age of six, one can only infer a slip of the pen, and that Goncourt really meant 1748, which would make the young male dancer’s age the likelier one of sixteen on appearing at Opera as a super, although he would, of course, have been training earlier.

The question of age, however, is comparatively small. The thing that matters for us is that DesprÉaux, following modestly in the footsteps of his far greater predecessor Boileau-DesprÉaux (not an ancestor, by the way) had cultivated a taste for poetry, and during his retirement at Montmartre, divided his time between amusing his wife and friends with cutting silhouettes—at which he was an expert—and singing songs and parodies which he wrote himself.

It seems an odd thing, does it not? that a man should be thus amusing himself and his friends—should be sufficiently undistracted to do so—while the greatest revolution then known to history should be in progress. But what could he do? He was a dancer, a singer, an artist; and could have had little weight had he meddled in the risky game of politics. As it was, perhaps, he chose the saner course, and when most were losing their heads he kept his own, and, as Richard Coeur de Lion had when in prison, wiled away the hours in song.

His poems were collected and published in two volumes under the title: “Mes Passe-Temps: Chansons, suivies de l’Art de la Danse, poÈme en quatre chants, calquÉ sur l’Art PoÉtique de Boileau DesprÉaux.” They were “adorned” with engravings after the design of Moreau Junior, and the music of the songs appears at the end of the second volume.

The work was published after the Revolution fever had subsided, in 1806, and perhaps the very strangest comment on the Revolution is implied in DesprÉaux’s preface, which calmly opens with the following: “In 1794 I suggested to a number of friends that we should meet once or twice a month to dine together, under the condition that politics should never be mentioned, and that each should bring a song composed upon a given word. My proposition was taken up; we decided that the words should be drawn by lot, after being submitted to the judgment of the gathering, in order to eliminate subjects which might only present needless difficulties.”

And so the year 1794, being one of the worst of all those red years of Revolution, this little centre went placidly through it, dining and wining and rhyming, as if there were nothing worse than a sham fight raging round the distant horizon. It positively makes one wonder if there was a French Revolution after all. But no, there evidently was, for our author had a nice little library, and in the following year, owing to monetary losses occasioned by the general dÉbÂcle, had to sell many of his beloved volumes. Of course he made song about it—“Ma BibliothÈque, ou Le Cauchemar”—in which he pictures the spectre of want asking him what he will do, and urging him to sell his books for food. “Que feras-tu, DesprÉaux?” the nightmare questions:

The spectre points out that the prospect of having to do so is no mere dream and urges him to sell “tous tes auteurs fameux,” pointing out that he could live on the “divine” Homer for at least a day or two, while on the “pensif” Rousseau he could exist a long time. He could count on his precious Virgil for the rent, while the translation “de Delille” should yield his old gardener’s wages. Among the many works mentioned in indiscriminate order are Plutarch, La Fontaine, Don Quichotte, Anacreon, Newton, Milton, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Boccaccio, Erasmus, Montesquieu, Boileau, Corneille, Voltaire, Racine, Favart, MoliÈre, Plato, Dorat, Seneca, and a set of the British Drama!

It should be noted, by the way, that DesprÉaux had some knowledge of English and had paid occasional visits to London with his wife, who was rather a favourite of the then Duchess of Devonshire, and in one of his poems he gives an amusingly bitter “Tableau de Londres,” in which he complains of—

speaks of the lower classes as “insolent” and chaffs the English taste for beer and the eternal “roast-biff” (sic); while as to the English Sunday, the stanza must really be given in full:

Our poet’s range of subject was remarkable—high philosophy, discussed with smiling raillery; curious life-contrasts, like that of his wife being a popular dancer and his sister a nun; charades, dialogues, charming and pathetic little word-pictures like “La Neige,” a “Bacchic” song on “The End of the World,” and so forth, nothing seemed to come amiss that could be turned into song. Throughout his varied work there runs a consistent strain of Gallic gaiety—itself a form of bravery; and if his Muse has not the hard, biting intensity of a Villon, nor the lofty rhetoric of a Victor Hugo, it manages to keep a middle course of sanity and pleasantry with invariable success and an infallible though limited appeal.

Among his many ingenious poems are two of special interest to stage-folk of all time, one “Le Langage des Mains,” Chanson Pantomime, the other “Le Langage des Yeux”; both of which require to be illustrated by the actor who sings them and emphasise the need of facial and manual expression. As he truly says:

In one of the poems appears the phrase, “La Walse (sic) aux mille tours,” while among the notes at the end of the volume is a definition which may be translated as follows: Walse—a Swiss dance the music of which is in 3-4 time; but it has only the value of two steps. It is done by a couple pirouetting while circling round the salon. It has nothing in it of complexity; it is the art in its infancy. When its rhythm is in 2 time it is called “sauteuse.” The word “sauteuse” suggests the ordinary polka in 2-4 time, in the customary manner, for any dance described as “sauteuse” means one in which the feet are raised from the ground, or in which leaping is indulged in, not when the feet glide on the ground, as in the modern waltz. The old volta, from which the modern waltz is derived, was, it will be remembered, a leaping dance.

The greater part of the second volume is mainly devoted to his lengthy paraphrase of the great Boileau’s “L’Art PoÉtique,” under the title of “L’Art de la Danse,” which is full of sound instruction to dancers and interesting criticism of his contemporaries.

CHAPTER XXIII
A CENTURY’S CLOSE

We have lingered somewhat over these sketches of the eighteenth century; let us hasten over that century’s close, for was it not steeped in blood?

“Revolution,” did they not call the madness which seized France? Heralded by fair promises of universal brotherhood, what did all the fine talk of her “intellectuals” and “philosophs” end in? A state of anarchy, national madness; in which no man’s life was safe, and no woman’s honour.

War is horrible enough between nations. What, then, is universal war between individuals, “men, brother men?”

Strange, is it not, that while the dying century was performing its dance of death, theatres should be open; operas, comedies, and ballets be performed.

Before Guimard and her literary husband had begun to find their fortunes affected by the advent of the popular madness called Revolution, there were few theatres in Paris. Indeed, there were only five of any importance giving daily performances in 1775 and of these the Opera was of course the leading house as of old—the work of Gluck, GrÉtry, Piccinni and Sacchini holding the bill in Opera, for a period of some thirty years onward, the work of ballet composition being mainly in the hands of Noverre and the brothers Maximillian and Pierre Gardel.

It was from the end of that year, too, when Noverre’s “MÉdÉe et Jason” was produced that the novelty of ballet-pantomime, having come to replace the earlier opera-ballet, now became generally known simply as ballet.

In 1781 the Paris Opera was the scene of a tremendous conflagration, in which, owing to the presence of mind of Dauberval, one of the leading dancers, in quickly lowering the curtain, during a performance of the ballet, the audience were able to escape, but several of the dancers were burnt, and Guimard herself, discovered cowering in one of the boxes clad only in her underwear, was rescued by one of the stage hands. The famous house was ruined, and the company removed to a provisional house erected by the architect Lenoir by the Porte St. Martin.

Ten years later, in 1791, a Royal decree establishing the freedom of the drama did away with the former paucity of Paris in regard to places of amusement, and in that year alone eighteen new theatres were added to those already in existence, and old ones sometimes changed their names.

The Opera was known as L’AcadÉmie Royale de Musique. Then the King having displeased his people and fled to Varennes, it became simply the Opera. Then the King having pleased his subjects they graciously permitted a return to L’AcadÉmie Royale. Then, a month later, in October, 1791, it became the Opera-National; and later the ThÉÂtre des Arts, all of which changes foreshadowed in a way the advent of blind Revolution; and the next change of title to ThÉÂtre de la RÉpublique et des arts; which yet was not its final title. Meanwhile, what of the dancers?

Guimard had left the stage in 1790. Two years later the leaders of the ballet were Mlle. Miller (later to become Madame Pierre de Gardel), Mlle. Saulnier, Mlle. Roze, Madame PÉrignon, Mlle. Chevigny.

Pierre Gardel, born in 1758 at Nancy, had been maÎtre de ballet at the Opera from 1787, and had produced “TÉlÉmaque,” “PsychÉ,” and other ballets out of which he made a fortune. “PsychÉ” alone was given nearly a thousand times! In most of them Madame Gardel appeared and with remarkable success. At fifty, as at twenty, she was still admired. She was an excellent mime, a graceful dancer in all styles, seemed in each new rÔle to surpass herself, and Noverre, describing her feet, said “they glittered like diamonds.”

Then there were the brothers Malter, the one known as “the bird,” the other as “the Devil,” because he usually played the rÔles of demons.

Madame PÉrignon, who succeeded Madame Dauberval (nÉe Mlle. Theodore), was a dancer of talent, but was considerably surpassed by Mlle. Chevigny of whom an eyewitness of her dancing remarked: “Quelle verve! quelle gaÎtÉ dans le comique! dans les rÔles sÉrieux, quelle chaleur! quel pathÉtique! Tout le feu d’une vÉritable actrice brillait dans ses beaux yeux.”

Then there were Miles. Allard, Peslin, Coulon, Clotilde, BeauprÉ, Brancher, Chameroy; Gosselin, who was, despite embonpoint, so supple as to win the nickname “the Boneless”; Fanny Bias, and Bigottini; and M. Laborie, who in 1790 had “created” the title-rÔle in “Zephyre;” Messieurs Lany, Dauberval; Deshayes, a marvel of soaring agility; Henry, whose mobile figure recalled “le grand DuprÉ”; Didelot, Duport; Auguste Vestris, with whom we have already dealt; and Lepicq, known as the Apollo of the Dance.

Throughout the Revolution the theatres had been open, and had been full. The people had gone mad with lust of blood and lust of power; but the dancers continued to maintain their aplomb in difficult poses, and pick their steps, more carefully amid the lit and flowered splendours of the theatre, than statesmen could theirs upon the blood-stained slippery mire of current “politics.”

France might hold its fantastic State ballet, the FÊte of the Supreme, indeed might go stark mad, and all Law and Order and Reason be overthrown, but one man, the greatest world-man known to history, was gathering strength to bring order out of chaos, to remake a nation and a nation’s laws; to set the world a-wondering if he should master it.

Strangest of all, perhaps, that he, the great Napoleon, should have found time to flirt with a ballet-dancer—the famous Bigottini, of whom the Countess Nesselrode in her letters said that the effect she produced with her dancing and miming was so moving as to make even the most hardened man weep.

But she seemed rather to have amused Napoleon, more especially when, having told the President of the Legislative Chamber, Fontanes, to send her a present, she received a collection of French classics; and on being asked later by Napoleon—unaware of the nature of the gift—if she was content with Fontanes’ choice, she exclaimed that she was not entirely.

“How so?” asked Napoleon.

Bigottini’s reply must be given in the original.

“Il m’a payÉe en livres; j’aurais mieux aimÉ en francs.”

In spite of the library, Mlle. Bigottini became a millionaire—in francs.