Chapter M: Groult’s Collection (4)

“The soul of the dance was destined to be born in this sad and feverish age. Loie Fuller modelled form out of a dream. Our foolish desires, our dread of mere nothing, these she expressed in her dance of fire. To satisfy our thirst for oblivion she humanised the flowers. Happier than her brothers, the lords of creation, she caused her silent deeds to live and in the darkness, this setting of grandeur, no human defect marred her beauty. Providence shows itself kindly toward her. In its great secret Loie shares.

“Amorous of the resplendent beauty in nature she asks it questions out of her clear eyes. To seize the unknown her hand becomes coaxing. Her firm, precise glance penetrates the soul of things even when they have none. The inanimate becomes animate, and thinks under her magical desire, and the ‘dream pantomime’ is evolved.

“Charmingly womanly she has chosen the sweetest and finest among sleeping lives. She is the butterfly, she is the fire, she is light, heaven, the stars. Frail, under floating material, flowery with pale gold, with calcedony and beryl, Salome passed in her power. Afterwards humanity went by feverishly. To calm our frayed souls and our childish nightmares a fragile figure dances in a celestial robe.”

And now, fifteen years after, Gab still tells me, when we speak of the impression I made on her at the time she wrote these pages full of ingenuous emotion,

“I never see you exactly as you are,” she says, “but as you seemed to me on that day.”

I wonder if her friendship, so well founded and positive, is not intimately mingled with the love of form, of colour and of light, which I interpreted synthetically before her eyes when I appeared before her for the first time.

XXIII

THE VALUE OF A NAME

When in the autumn of 1892 I appeared for the first time at the Folies-Bergère I knew no one, absolutely no one, in Paris. Imagine then my surprise upon receiving one day a visiting card from one of the spectators on which these words were written in lead pencil:

“Oh, well, old girl, I am fiercely glad to see that you have tapped the till. We are here, a whole gang of us, two boxes full, and we want you to join us after the performance.

Your old pal.”

The card bore a name with which I was unacquainted.

This was some practical joke, or else the call-boy had made a slip in the address. I continued my disrobing without considering the matter further.

All at once a gentleman rushed into my dressing-room.

“Well, Mollie, my old girl, why don’t you reply to a comrade’s letter?”

But on seeing me in street costume he stopped short and cried:

“Well, but who are you? I thought you were Mollie Fuller!”

Then I understood that he had taken me for one of his old friends.

“I know whom you mean,” I answered, “but I am not Mollie Fuller. Mollie Fuller is very well known in the United States, where she is imitating my dances. We are often mistaken for each other, but you must realise that this isn’t the same person.”

The gentleman was tall, stout, very dark, of distinguished appearance, with a certain odd defect in one of his eyes. He wore a full beard.

I shall never forget his aspect as he apologised. Without asking me again to join his “gang” he disappeared even more quickly than he had entered.

I often encountered him after that, and he always greeted me very respectfully. From my window looking upon the courtyard of a great hotel in London I have even been present at a dinner--such a dinner as had never before been seen there--given by this same gentleman. Caruso sang. The courtyard of the hotel had been transformed into a lake, and the host and his guests dined in gondolas. From my window I watched the banquet and I thought of the other supper to which I had been invited involuntarily. The world is so small!

I did not become the well-known Loie Fuller without, as is easily realised, being involved in some little adventures. I had once played the part of Jack Sheppard in the drama of that name. Our company stopped in Philadelphia. My father and mother were with me, and we took our meals in a very modest boarding-house.

Some years after I returned, as a dancer, to this same city, and at the hotel at which I registered, it was one of the largest of the city, I was refused admittance. Without taking the trouble to ask why, I went elsewhere. But I thought over this irritating reception and as I could not understand it I returned to the hotel in question and asked to speak to the manager. On seeing me he looked amazed:

“But you are not Loie Fuller.”

I assured him that I certainly was Loie Fuller, and asked why he had been unwilling to receive me in his hotel.

He told me the following story.

“When you were playing Jack Sheppard one of the ladies of the company stayed here with Mr. Z. One day they had such a quarrel that I was obliged to ask them to vacate. This lady was registered under the name of Miss Fuller.”

I had absolutely no idea who the person could be and I was trying to find out when at the theatre some one brought me the card of a gentleman who wanted to see me.

His name was quite unfamiliar. This gentleman, however, might have been sent by a friend. Accordingly I received him. A tall gentleman entered, and, very much surprised, repeated the hotel man’s affirmation:

“But you are not Loie Fuller!”

I assured him that I was.

He had known the “Loie Fuller” who had been entertained in my stead at the hotel and who sang in the chorus of “Jack Sheppard,” the play of which I was playing the principal part. He wanted to see her in her new incarnation and renew his acquaintance with her. When I had at last shown him his mistake he allowed me to see the counterfeit Loie Fuller’s picture. And as a matter of fact when we were made up for the stage there was a little resemblance.

One day we were giving some performances at Lyons. On arriving at the theatre one of my electricians said to me:

“The proprietress of the hotel where I am staying with my comrades is greatly annoyed. She says that you lived with her at the time of your last trip to Lyons. You were very well satisfied and promised to come again, and yet you have not come. She declares that it isn’t nice of you to show yourself so haughty under the pretext that now you are successful.”

Everybody who is acquainted with me knows that such conduct is not at all characteristic of me. I was, therefore, very much surprised, I was unable to recall the name of the hotel the electrician mentioned. I asked him, therefore, to find out at what period I had put up at the hostelry of the good lady whose grievance he had just forwarded to me.

The next day he told me the date. Now at that period I was at Bucharest. I was, therefore, more perplexed than ever, and I asked the electrician to continue his inquiry and to do his best to straighten out the difficulty.

“My landlady,” he said, “is sure that it was you. She saw you at the theatre. It is the same dance and she bade me say again that she ‘is very much astonished at Miss Fuller’s conduct.’ You were so well satisfied with her house, both you and the gentleman with you.”

I then went to the hotel to show the landlady that she was mistaken. She then made me look at the photograph of a woman who imitates everything that I do, passes her life watching over each one of my creations and follows me everywhere, whether to London, to New York, to Paris or Berlin.

In addition to these rare adventures that come to my knowledge, how many others are there that I shall never know about?

I never arrive in a town without Loie Fuller’s having been there in advance of me, and even in Paris I have seen announced in flamboyant letters, “Loie Fuller, radiant dances,” and I have been able to see with my own eyes “la Loie Fuller” dance before my face.

When I went to South America I discovered that there, too, Loie Fuller had been ahead of me.

What I often wonder is what “imitations” in private life are perpetrated by these ladies, who are embarrassed by no scruples.

So I am not the woman, perhaps my word will be taken for it, who, of all the world, is most appreciative of the value of a name. I might add that the American chorus girl of whom I have been writing came to Paris and that one day her lover left her there. Alone, without friends, without a cent, ill, she sent for me.

Did I help her?

I am afraid I did. When we see a dog in the street dying of hunger, we give him something to eat, and not in order that he may not bite us, not in order that he may be grateful to us; we give him something to eat because he is hungry.

XXIV

HOW M. CLARETIE INDUCED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK

One evening during the Exposition of 1900 M. and Mme. Jules Claretie came to my little theatre in the Rue de Paris, to see Sada Yacco in her famous death-scene. After the performance they came behind the scenes, where I was presented to them.

Several years passed and I became interested, as I have explained, in a little Japanese artist, Hanako. I remembered how Sada Yacco had pleased the Clareties, and I asked them to come and see my new Japanese star. After the performance they came to the dressing-room of the dearest little actress in the world, and I had the pleasure of receiving them there.

Some days later I received an invitation to lunch with M. and Mme. Claretie. It was extended to little Hanako and myself. The day arrived, and we set forth. Hanako appeared to be quite unaware that she was going to lunch with a celebrated writer, and experienced no excitement at the idea of paying a visit to the director of the world’s first theatre. I had lived in Paris long enough to be able to group people according to their standing, and I was, for my part, somewhat confused. Hanako was curious only as regards the things she was going to see, since all intercourse with others was barred from the fact that she spoke only Japanese. Indeed, it was because she knew it would please me, and because I had expressly begged her to do so, was she willing to come to this lunch. She was charming, with her odd little wooden sandals, which she called her shoes, and her robes worn one over the other. She gave an impression of nothing lacking. Hanako is so exquisite that it is difficult to draw her likeness. Her stature is so slight that she barely reaches a tall man’s waist.

Mme. Claretie received us so cordially that we were at once glad we came. Then M. Claretie came in, very refined and very simple. He was accompanied by M. Prudhon, an impressive person, who did not utter a word. He was presented to me as the director’s right-hand man. I wondered how it was possible to carry on business without saying anything. From noon until three o’clock, as a matter of fact, I did not hear a single word escape his lips. At the table I asked Mme. Claretie, in an undertone in English:

“Is he dumb?”

She began to laugh in her friendly and reassuring way and replied:

“Oh, no, but he never has much to say.”

Then, thinking the ice broken, I looked at M. Prudhon smiling. He did not smile at all, and I said to him vivaciously:

“If you continue to contradict me in that way I won’t say another word to you.”

M. Prudhon, still serious, bowed and had nothing to say.

This quip, which did not even make him smile, was not an original one with me, I make haste to say. I had heard it said by a young girl who was my private secretary, and who wanted to stir up a gentleman who was unpleasantly silent. M. Prudhon reminded me of that man, and I wanted to see what effect the remark would have on him. It had no effect.

While I am speaking of this secretary I ought to devote a few lines to her, although I have no reason to remember her kindly. She was a pretty, young girl, always exquisitely gowned, although her financial resources were slight. To my extreme displeasure I found out later the explanation of the enigma.

She was my secretary, and I often sent her to place orders among all my tradespeople. At the same time that she gave orders for things that I wanted she ordered them for herself, taking care not to call for two articles of the same make. I never had gloves or veils or handkerchiefs. She always had taken the last of them. She always thought that she had ordered more of them, and would sally forth to order more.

One day I sent her to Tiffany’s, the jewellers. She added only a mere little trinket to my order, a locket with her monogram set in diamonds. I received the bill in due course, but she had left me. Previously she had gone with me to Nice, and had remained there while I was on the road in the United States. When I returned I learned that during my absence she had lived at the hotel where I left her and that her bill, charged to my account, amounted to nearly 6,000 francs.

Presently other invoices arrived from dyers and cleaners, glove makers, shoemakers, costumiers, modistes, furriers, linendrapers and finally the bill from Tiffany’s.

But the limit was reached when a student from the Beaux Arts asked me if I could not return him sixty-six francs which he had lent me two years before through the medium of my pretty secretary. Next there came a gentleman from London, one whom I held in too great esteem to go into details, who asked me for ten pounds sterling which he had loaned me, again through the medium of my clever and well-dressed secretary.

But in speaking of my troubles I am liable to forget my lunch with the Clareties.

As we were about to sit down Mme. Claretie brought in an elderly woman of very pleasant appearance. I have rarely seen motions easier, more simple or more harmonious. Leaning against each other they made a delightful picture. Mme. Claretie presented me to her mother. I asked how she was.

“Oh, I am very well,” she replied, “my eyes are my only trouble. I cannot read without glasses, and the glasses annoy me a great deal.”

She had always been very fond of reading, and could not bring herself to the idea of reading no more. I sympathised with her and told her so. Then suddenly it occurred to me to ask her how old she was.

“Ninety-five years,” she replied.

And she was complaining of not being able to read any longer without glasses!

We spoke of her grandchildren and her great grandchildren. I asked her if the happiness of being surrounded by so many affectionate people did not bring large compensation for the infirmities of age.

She replied:

“I love my children and my grandchildren, and I live in them. But that does not restore to me my eyesight. It is terrible not to be able to see.”

And she was right. Love gave her strength to bear her misfortune, but she feared that the prison of darkness would claim her as its prey. Before going to the dining-room she had taken her daughter’s arm. She had no assistance on the other hand in eating. Her good humour was unvarying.

She took some knitting from a work-basket, and said in a firm voice:

“I must work. I can no longer see well enough to be sure that my knitting is well done, but I have to keep busy, nevertheless.”

Mme. Claretie asked me if I was acquainted with Alexandre Dumas.

I told her how I had chanced to meet him. Then M. Claretie asked me numerous questions, which I tried to evade in order not to seem to talk about myself all the time. Imagine my astonishment when next morning I read in the _Temps_ an article, a column and a half long, devoted entirely to our visit at M. Claretie’s and signed by the gentleman himself.

“Mme. Hanako,” he wrote, “is in town, a little person, delightfully odd and charming. In her blue or green robes, embroidered with flowers of many colours, she is like a costly doll, or a prettily animated idol, which should have a bird’s voice. The sculptor Rodin may possibly show us her refined features and keen eyes at the next Salon, for he is occupied just now with a study of her, and I believe a statue of the comedienne. He has never had a better model. These Japanese, who are so energetic, leaping into the fray like the ants upon a tree trunk, are likewise capable of the most complete immobility and the greatest patience. These divergent qualities constitute the strength of their race.

“Mme. Hanako, whom I saw and applauded in ‘The Martyr’ at the Opera, came to see me, through the kindness of Miss Loie Fuller, who discovered Sada Yacco for us some years ago. It is delightful to see at close hand and in so attractive a guise this little creature, who looks so frightful when, with convulsed eyes, she mimics the death agony. There is a pretty smile on the lips which at the theatre are curled under the pain of hara-kiri. She made me think of Orestes exhibiting the funeral urn to Electra: ‘As you see, we bring the little remnants in a little urn.’

“Loie Fuller, who was a soubrette before being the goddess of light, an enchantress of strange visions, has become enamoured of this dramatic Japanese art and has popularised it everywhere, through Sada Yacco and then through Mme. Hanako. I have always observed that Loie Fuller has a very keen intelligence. I am not surprised that Alexandre Dumas said to me: ‘She ought to write out her impressions and her memories.’ I should like to hear from her how she first conceived these radiant dances, of which the public has never grown tired, and which she has just begun again at the Hippodrome. She is, however, more ready to talk philosophy than the stage. Gaily, with her blue eye and her faun-like smile, she replied to my question: ‘It’s just chance. The light came to me. I didn’t have to go to it.’”

I apologize for reproducing these eulogistic words. I have even suppressed certain passages, for M. Claretie was very complimentary. It was, however, absolutely necessary that I should make this citation, since out of it grew the present book.

M. Claretie had quoted Dumas’ opinion. He returned to the charge.

Soon after, in fact, I received a letter from M. Claretie urging me to begin my “memoirs.” Perhaps he was right, but I hardly dared undertake such a terrible task all alone. It looked so formidable to write a book, and a book about myself!

One afternoon I called on Mme. Claretie. A number of pleasant people were there and, after Mme. Claretie had mentioned this notion of “memoirs” which her husband, following Dumas’ lead, had favoured, they all began to ask me questions about myself, my art and the steps by which I had created it. Everyone tried to encourage me to undertake the work.

A short time after this Mme. Claretie sent me tickets for her box at the Théâtre-Français. I went there with several friends. There were twelve of us, among whom was Mrs. Mason, wife of the American Consul-General, who is the most remarkable statesman I have ever known, and the best diplomatist of the service.

In return for the Clareties’ kindness I invited them to be present at one of my rehearsals of ‘Salome.’ They were good enough to accept my invitation and one evening they arrived at the Théâtre des Arts while I was at work. Later I came forward to join them. We stood in the gloom of a dimly lighted hall. The orchestra was rehearsing. All at once a dispute arose between the musical composer and the orchestra leader. The composer said:

“They don’t do it that way at the Opera.”

Thereupon the young orchestra leader replied:

“Don’t speak to me of subsidised theatres. There’s nothing more imbecile anywhere.”

He laid great stress on the words “subsidised” and “imbecile.”

M. Claretie asked me who this young man was. I had not heard exactly what he said. Nevertheless, as I knew something embarrassing had occurred, I tried to excuse him, alleging that he had been rehearsing all day, that half his musicians had deserted to take positions at the Opera and that they had left him only the understudies.

M. Claretie, whose good nature is proverbial, paid no attention to the incident. Several days later, indeed, on November 5, 1907, he wrote for the _Temps_ a long article, which is more eulogistic than I deserve, but which I cite because it gives an impression of my work at a rehearsal.

“The other evening,” he wrote, “I had, as it were, a vision of a theatre of the future, something of the nature of a feministic theatre.

“Women are more and more taking men’s places. They are steadily supplanting the so-called stronger sex. The court-house swarms with women lawyers. The literature of imagination and observation will soon belong to women of letters. In spite of man’s declaration that there shall be no woman doctor for him the female physician continues to pass her examinations and brilliantly. Just watch and you will see woman growing in influence and power; and if, as in Gladstone’s phrase, the nineteenth century was the working-man’s century, the twentieth will be the women’s century.

“I have been at the Théâtre des Arts, Boulevard des Batignolles, at a private rehearsal, which Miss Loie Fuller invited me to attend. She is about to present there to-morrow a ‘mute drama’--we used to call it a pantomime--the _Tragedie de Salome_, by M. Robert d’Humières, who has rivalled Rudyard Kipling in translating it. Loie Fuller will show several new dances there: the dance of pearls, in which she entwines herself in strings of pearls taken from the coffin of Herodias; the snake dance, which she performs in the midst of a wild incantation; the dance of steel, the dance of silver, and the dance of fright, which causes her to flee, panic-stricken, from the sight of John’s decapitated head persistently following her and surveying her with martyred eyes.

“Loie Fuller has made studies in a special laboratory of all the effects of light that transform the stage, with the Dead Sea, seen from a height, and the terraces of Herod’s palace. She has succeeded, by means of various projections, in giving the actual appearance of the storm, a glimpse of the moonbeams cast upon the waves, of the horror of a sea of blood. Of Mount Nebo, where Moses, dying, hailed the promised land, and the hills of Moab which border the horizon, fade into each other where night envelops them. The light in a weird way changes the appearance of the picturesque country. Clouds traverse the sky. Waves break or become smooth as a surface of mother-of-pearl. The electric apparatus is so arranged that a signal effects magical changes.

“We shall view miracles of light ere long at the theatre. When M. Fortuny, son of the distinguished Spanish artist, has realised ‘his theatre’ we shall have glorious visions. Little by little the scenery encroaches upon the stage, and perhaps beautiful verses, well pronounced, will be worthy of all these marvels.

“It is certain that new capacities are developing in theatrical art, and that Miss Loie Fuller will have been responsible for an important contribution. I should not venture to say how she has created her light effects. She has actually been turned out by her landlord because of an explosion in her apparatus. Had she not been so well known she would have been taken for an anarchist. At this theatre, Rue des Batignolles, where I once witnessed the direst of melodramas that ever made popular audiences shiver, at this theatre, which has become elegant and sumptuous with its handsome, modernised decorations, at the Théâtre des Arts, she has installed her footlights, her electric lamps, all this visual fairyland which she has invented and perfected, which has made of her a unique personality, an independent creator, a revolutionist in art.

“There, on that evening when I saw her rehearse Salome in everyday clothes, without costume, her glasses over her eyes, measuring her steps, outlining in her dark robe the seductive and suggestive movements, which she will produce to-morrow in her brilliant costume, I seemed to be watching a wonderful _impresaria_, manager of her troupe as well as mistress of the audience, giving her directions to the orchestra, to the mechanicians, with an exquisite politeness, smiling in face of the inevitable nerve-racking circumstances, always good-natured and making herself obeyed, as all real leaders do, by giving orders in a tone that sounds like asking a favour.

“‘Will you be good enough to give us a little more light? Yes. That is it. Thank you.’

“On the stage another woman in street dress, with a note-book in her hand, very amiable, too, and very exact in her directions and questions, took the parts of John the Baptist, half nude, of Herod in his purple mantle, of Herodias magnificent under her veils, and assumed the function of _regisseur_ (one cannot yet say _regisserice_). And I was struck by the smoothness of all this performance of a complicated piece, with its movements and various changes. These two American women, without raising their voices, quietly but with the absolute brevity of practical people (distrust at the theatre those who talk too much), these two women with their little hands fashioned for command were managing the rehearsal as an expert Amazon drives a restive horse.

“Then I had the immense pleasure of seeing this Salome in everyday clothes dance her steps without the illusion created by theatrical costume, with a simple strip of stuff, sometimes red and sometimes green, for the purpose of studying the reflections on the moving folds under the electric light. It was Salome dancing, but a Salome in a short skirt, a Salome with a jacket over her shoulders, a Salome in a tailor-made dress, whose hands--mobile, expressive, tender or threatening hands, white hands, hands like the tips of birds’ wings--emerged from the clothes, imparted to them all the poetry of the dance, of the seductive dance or the dance of fright, the infernal dance or the dance of delight. The gleam from the footlights reflected itself on the dancer’s glasses and blazed there like flame, like fugitive flashes, and nothing could be at once more fantastic and more charming than these twists of the body, these caressing motions, these hands, again, these dream hands waving there before Herod, superb in his theatrical mantle, and observing the sight of the dance idealised in the everyday costume.

“I can well believe that Loie Fuller’s Salome is destined to add a Salome unforeseen of all the Salomes that we have been privileged to see. With M. Florent Schmitt’s music she connects the wonders of her luminous effects. This woman, who has so profoundly influenced the modes, the tone of materials, has discovered still further effects, and I can imagine the picturesqueness of the movements when she envelops herself with the black serpents which she used the other evening only among the accessories behind the scenes.”

That evening between the two scenes, M. Claretie again spoke of my book; and, to sum up, it is thanks to his insistence that I decided to dip my pen in the inkwell and to begin these “memoirs.” It was a long task, this book was, long and formidable for me. And so many little incidents, sometimes comic and sometimes tragic, have already recurred during the making of this manuscript that they might alone suffice to fill a second volume.

[Decorative Illustration]

OLD FAMILY RECORDS

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Transcriber’s Notes

Italics are indicated as _italics_.

Underlines are indicated as =underline=.

Small capitals were changed to all capitals.

Inconsistent word hyphenation and spelling have been regularized.

Apparent typographical errors have been changed.