Chapter M: And Mme. Camille Flammarion, at Juvisy 115 (2)

When I had finished the manager made me come into his private office and proposed to engage me then and there. I was to make my appearance as soon as the other dancer had ended her engagement.

“No,” I declared. “If I come to you this woman will have to go.”

“But,” he said, “I have engaged her. She cannot leave until the end of her agreement.”

“You have only to pay her for her performances and she will go.”

He objected then that lithographs, newspaper advertisements and other things had been prepared for her, and that, if she stopped dancing, the public might protest.

“Very well. In that case I will dance in her place, under her name, with her music, until you have arranged everything for my debut.”

The next day he paid my imitator and she left the theatre.

That same evening I took her place and I was obliged to repeat her dance four or five times.

Then we set ourselves at work seriously upon rehearsals for my debut, which was announced to occur a week later.

After I had danced twice under my imitator’s name the manager of the Folies-Bergère took me to the office of the Figaro.

I knew well that from the point of view of advertising this was an excellent idea, but I did not know until long after that my definite engagement had depended on the impression I created there. I have not forgotten that I owe my entire career to the memorable success I achieved on that occasion.

Eight days later the general rehearsal occurred, which ended only at four o’clock in the morning, and still I had been unable to complete my programme, comprising five dances: 1, the serpentine; 2, the violet; 3, the butterfly; 4, a dance the public later called the “white dance.” As a finale I intended to dance with illumination from beneath, the light coming through a square of glass over which I hovered, and this was to be the climax of my dances. After the fourth number my electricians, who were exhausted, left me there unceremoniously.

I was unwilling to make my appearance without my last dance, but, in the face of my manager’s threat to cancel our contract, I finally yielded.

Next day I was able, nevertheless, to rehearse this fifth dance, and at the time of the performance everything was ready for my initial appearance.

The enthusiasm of the audience grew progressively while I danced.

When the curtain fell after the fourth dance, the applause was deafening and the music that served as prelude to dance number five could not be heard. Upon the manager’s order the curtain was raised again and again, and the plaudits continued to deafen us. I had to yield to the inevitable; it was impossible, and useless, to keep on dancing. The four dances, with the encores, had lasted forty-five minutes and, despite the stimulus of great success, I had reached the limit of my strength.

I looked at the manager and asked:

“How about the last one?”

“We don’t need it. Those you have just danced have been enough to stir the audience up. Don’t you hear the cheering?”

A moment later we were surrounded by a great crowd and I was almost dragged to my dressing-room.

_Photo_ _Lafitte_]

From that day on I had adventure after adventure. Not until long afterward was I able to get the benefit of my fifth dance. Some years later I initiated at Paris the dance of the fire and the lily, and that once again at the Folies-Bergère. I remember an ovation very similar to that at my first appearance. This time, however, I was no longer an unknown performer, as in 1892. I had numerous Parisian friends in the house. Many of them came upon the stage to congratulate me, and amongst them, Calvé. She took me in her arms, kissed me and said:

“It’s wonderful! Loie, you are a genius.”

And two big tears coursed down her cheeks. I have never seen Calvé prettier than at that moment.

Well, that is the story of my first appearance in Paris.

VI

LIGHT AND THE DANCE

Since it is generally agreed that I have created something new, something composed of light, colour, music, and the dance, more especially of light and the dance, it seems to me that it would perhaps be appropriate, after having considered my creation from the anecdotal and picturesque standpoint, to explain, in more serious terms, just what my ideas are relative to my art, and how I conceive it both independently and in its relationship to other arts. If I appear to be too serious I apologise in advance.

I hope that this theoretical “essay” will be better received than a certain practical essay that I undertook, soon after my arrival in Paris, in the cathedral of Notre Dame.

Notre Dame! The great cathedral of which France is justly proud was naturally the objective of one of my earliest artistic pilgrimages, I may say of the very earliest. The tall columns, whose shafts, composed of little assembled columns, rise clear to the vaults; the admirable proportions of the nave; the choir, the seats of old carved oak, and the railings of wrought iron--this harmonious and magnificent pile impressed me deeply. But what enchanted me more than anything else was the marvellous glass of the lateral rose windows, and even more, perhaps, the rays of sunlight that vibrated in the church, in various directions, intensely coloured, as a result of having passed through these sumptuous windows.

I quite forgot where I was. I took my handkerchief from my pocket, a white handkerchief, and I waved it in the beams of coloured light, just as in the evening I waved my silken materials in the rays of my reflectors.

Suddenly a tall imposing man, adorned with a heavy silver chain, which swung from an impressive neck, advanced ceremoniously toward me, seized me by the arm and led me toward the entrance, directing a conversation at me which I appreciated as lacking in friendliness although I did not understand a word. To be brief he dropped me on to the pavement. There he looked at me with so severe an expression that I understood his intention was never to let me enter the church again under any pretext.

My mother was as frightened as I was.

Just then a gentleman came along, who, seeing us completely taken aback, asked us what had happened. I pointed to the man with the chain, who was still wrathfully surveying us.

“Ask him about it,” I said.

The gentleman translated the beadle’s language to me.

“Tell that woman to go away; she is crazy.”

Such was my first visit to Notre Dame and the vexatious experience that my love of colour and light caused.

When I came to Europe I had never been inside an art museum. The life that I led in the United States had given me neither motive nor leisure to become interested in masterpieces, and my knowledge of art was hardly worth mentioning. The first museum whose threshold I crossed was the British Museum. Then I visited the National Gallery. Later I became acquainted with the Louvre and, in due course, with most of the great museums of Europe. The circumstance that has struck me most forcibly in regard to these museums is that the architects have not given adequate attention to considerations of light.

Thanks to this defect I get in most museums an impression of a disagreeable medley. When I look at the objects for some moments the sensation of weariness overcomes me, it becomes impossible to separate the things one from another. I have always wondered if a day will not come when this problem of lighting will be better solved. The question of illumination, of reflection, of rays of light falling upon objects, is so essential that I cannot understand why so little importance has been attached to it. Nowhere have I seen a museum where the lighting was perfect. The panes of glass that let the light through ought to be hidden or veiled just as are the lamps that light theatres, then the objects can be observed without the annoyance of the sparkle of the window.

The efforts of the architect ought to be directed altogether in that direction--to the redistribution of light. There are a thousand ways of distributing it. In order that it may fulfil the desired conditions light ought to be brought directly to pictures and statues instead of getting there by chance.

Colour is disintegrated light. The rays of light, disintegrated by vibrations, touch one object and another, and this disintegration, photographed in the retina, is always chemically the result of changes in matter and in beams of light. Each one of these effects is designated under the name of colour.

Our acquaintance with the production and variations of these effects is precisely at the point where music was when there was no music.

In its earliest stage music was only natural harmony; the noise of the waterfall, the rumbling of the storm, the gentle whisper of the west wind, the murmur of the watercourses, the rattling of rain on dry leaves, all the sounds of still water and of the raging sea, the sleeping of lakes, the tumult of the hurricane, the soughing of the wind, the dreadful roar of the cyclone, the crashing of the thunder, the crackling of branches.

Afterwards the singing birds and then all the animals emitted their various sounds. Harmony was there; man, classifying and arranging the sounds, created music.

We all know what man has been able to get from it since then.

Man, past master of the musical realm, is to-day still in the infancy of art, from the standpoint of control of light.

If I have been the first to employ coloured light, I deserve no special praise for that. I cannot explain the circumstance; I do not know how I do it. I can only reply, like Hippocrates when he was asked what time was: “Ask it of me,” he said; “and I cannot tell you; ask it not and I know it well.”

It is a matter of intuition, of instinct, and nothing else.

Sight is perhaps the first, the most acute, of our senses. But as we are born with this sense sufficiently well developed to enable us to make good use of it, it is afterward the last that we try to perfect. For we concern ourselves with everything sooner than with beauty. So there is no reason for surprise that the colour sense is the last to be developed.

Yet, notwithstanding, colour so pervades everything that the whole universe is busy producing it, everywhere and in everything. It is a continued recurrence, caused by processes of chemical composition and decomposition. The day will come when man will know how to employ them so delightfully that it will be hard to conceive how he could have lived so long in the darkness in which he dwells to-day.

Our knowledge of motion is nearly as primitive as our knowledge of colour. We say “prostrated by grief,” but, in reality, we pay attention only to the grief; “transported with joy,” but we observe only the joy; “weighed down by chagrin,” but we consider only the chagrin. Throughout we place no value on the movement that expresses the thought. We are not taught to do so, and we never think of it.

Who of us has not been pained by a movement of impatience, a lifting of the eyebrows, a shaking of the head, the sudden withdrawal of a hand?

We are far from knowing that there is as much harmony in motion as in music and colour. We do not grasp the facts of motion.

How often we have heard it said: “I cannot bear this colour.” But have we ever reflected that a given motion is produced by such and such music? A polka or a waltz to which we listen informs us as to the motions of the dance and blends its variations. A clear sparkling day produces upon us quite a different effect from a dull sad day, and by pushing these observations further we should begin to comprehend some more delicate effects which influence our organism.

In the quiet atmosphere of a conservatory with green glass, our actions are different from those in a compartment with red or blue glass. But usually we pay no attention to this relationship of actions and their causes. These are, however, things that must be observed when one dances to an accompaniment of light and music properly harmonised.

Light, colour, motion and music.

Observation, intuition, and finally comprehension.

Let us try to forget educational processes in so far as dancing is concerned. Let us free ourselves from the sense that is ordinarily assigned to the word. Let us endeavour to forget what is understood by it to-day. To rediscover the primitive form of the dance, transformed into a thousand shapes that have only a very distant relationship to it, we shall have to go back to the early history of the race. We then get a notion what the origin of the dance must have been and what has made it what it is to-day.

At present dancing signifies motions of the arms and legs. It means a conventional motion, at first with one arm and one leg, then a repetition of the same figure with the other arm and the other leg. It is accompanied by music, each note calls for a corresponding motion, and the motion, it is unnecessary to say, is regulated rather by the time than by the spirit of the music. So much the worse for the poor mortal who cannot do with his left leg what he does with his right leg. So much worse for the dancer who cannot keep in time, or, to express it better, who cannot make as many motions as there are notes. It is terrifying to consider the strength and ability that are needed for proficiency.

Slow music calls for a slow dance, just as fast music requires a fast dance.

In general, music ought to follow the dance. The best musician is he who can permit the dancer to direct the music instead of the music inspiring the dance. All this is proved to us by the natural outcome of the motives which first impelled men to dance. Nowadays these motives are forgotten, and it is no longer considered that there should be a reason for dancing.

In point of fact the dancer on hearing a piece of new music, says: “Oh, I cannot dance to that air.” To dance to new music, the dancer has to learn the conventional steps adapted to that music.

Music, however, ought to indicate a form of harmony or an idea with instinctive passion, and this instinct ought to incite the dancer to follow the harmony without special preparation. This is the true dance.

To lead us to grasp the real and most extensive connotation of the word dance, let us try to forget what is implied by the choreographic art of our day.

What is the dance? It is motion.

What is motion? The expression of a sensation.

What is a sensation? The reaction in the human body produced by an impression or an idea perceived by the mind.

A sensation is the reverberation that the body receives when an impression strikes the mind. When the tree bends and resumes its balance it has received an impression from the wind or the storm. When an animal is frightened its body receives an impression of fear, and it flees and trembles or else stands at bay. If it be wounded, it falls. So it is when matter responds to immaterial causes. Man, civilised and sophisticated, is alone best able to inhibit his own impulses.

In the dance, and there ought to be a word better adapted to the thing, the human body should, despite conventional limitations, express all the sensations or emotions that it experiences. The human body is ready to express, and it would express if it were at liberty to do so, all sensations just as the body of an animal.

Ignoring conventions, following only my own instinct, I am able to translate the sensations we have all felt without suspecting that they could be expressed. We all know that in the powerful emotions of joy, sorrow, horror, or despair, the body expresses the emotion it has received from the mind. The mind serves as a medium and causes these sensations to be caught up by the body. In fact, the body responds to these sensations to such an extent sometimes that, especially when the shock is violent, life is suspended or even leaves the body altogether.

But natural and violent movements are possible only in the midst of grand or terrible circumstances. They are only occasional motions.

To impress an idea I endeavour, by my motions, to cause its birth in the spectator’s mind, to awaken his imagination, that it may be prepared to receive the image.

Thus we are able, I do not say to understand, but to feel within ourselves as an impulse an indefinable and wavering force, which urges and dominates us. Well, I can express this force which is indefinable but certain in its impact. I have motion. That means that all the elements of nature may be expressed.

Let us take a “_tranche de vie_.” That expresses surprise, deception, contentment, uncertainty, resignation, hope, distress, joy, fatigue, feebleness, and, finally, death. Are not all these sensations, each one in turn, humanity’s lot? And why can not these things be expressed by the dance, guided intelligently, as well as by life itself? Because each life expresses one by one all these emotions. One can express even the religious sensations. Can we not again express the sensations that music arouses in us, either a nocturne of Chopin’s or a sonata of Beethoven’s, a slow movement by Mendelssohn, one of Schumann’s lieder, or even the cadence of lines of poetry?

As a matter of fact, motion has been the starting point of all effort at self-expression, and it is faithful to nature. In experiencing one sensation we cannot express another by motions, even when we can do so in words.

Since motion and not language is truthful, we have accordingly perverted our powers of comprehension.

That is what I have wanted to say and I apologise for having said it at such length, but I felt that it was necessary.

VII

A JOURNEY TO RUSSIA--A BROKEN CONTRACT

Soon after I had made my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère a Russian manager, in accordance with an arrangement with my Parisian manager, M. Marchand, asked to engage me, and I signed with him for St. Petersburg.

My engagement was for the following spring.

At the end of the winter, in April, on the very day on which we were to leave for Russia, my mother tottered and would certainly have fallen if I had not been there to support her. I asked what was the matter. She didn’t know, but for some time she had been suffering. She went to bed, saying:

“I cannot go. But you take the train so as not to disappoint your people, and I will follow you to-morrow morning.”

I was unwilling, however, to leave her in such a condition. The manager of the Folies-Bergère, who had acted as intermediary between the Russian manager and myself, had come to the station to say good-bye. When he saw that I had missed the train he came to our house and “showed off.” Meantime, I had called in a local physician, who could not tell me what was the trouble with my mother. As he was French I understood only that she was very ill. My mother’s condition grew worse and I made up my mind not to leave her.

Next day M. Marchand returned, and this time with representatives of the police. They compelled me to dress myself and then took me down to the station, where, almost by main force, they put me on the train along with my electricians.

Despite my explicit resolutions of the night before, there I was on my way to Russia!

At the first stopping-place I left the train and boarded one which took me back to Paris. I found my mother much worse, and I begged the doctor to mention my name to no one.

I had engaged a nurse to watch over my mother. For two days I hid whenever anyone came, to such an extent did I feel myself in the hands of the Philistines.

When the train arrived at St. Petersburg and the electricians discovered that I was not there, more trouble ensued.

The Russian manager wired Paris, and I was unable to keep my secret any longer. This time, taking advantage of my ignorance both of the law and of the French language, they threatened to arrest me and imprison me if I did not start for Russia at once. All that was under the pretext that I had taken money in advance. I was actually accused of being a thief.

_Photo_ _Falk_]

This whole scene took place in my mother’s presence. We were both nearly dead with fright. My mother begged me to go. With my heart full of bitterness, and my eyes sore from crying, I allowed myself to be dragged away a second time and placed in the train.

After my departure a young Englishwoman, whom I had met only once or twice, came to call at our _appartement_, and finding my mother very ill, went, on her own initiative, and summoned an English physician, Dr. John Chapman, who had attended us before, and whom she had met at our house. I had not called him because I supposed that the physician whom I had engaged would be just as competent to cure my mother sufficiently for her to be able to go with me to St. Petersburg.

Dr. Chapman arrived just at the moment when the French physicians (the doctor who was attending my mother had called three of his colleagues into consultation) had decided to give her a soporific on the ground that she was dying of pneumonia and that nothing could save her. The English doctor offered to attend my mother, and the Frenchmen retired when they learned that he was our regular physician.

Dr. Chapman inquired after me, and when he was informed about what had happened wired me all along the line, at each station where the train was scheduled to stop. He maintained that they ought never to have let me go.

Just as I reached the Russian border the telegram was brought to me: “Return at once. Your mother has very little chance of recovering.”

This was the first news to reach me since my departure, forty-eight hours before. It was six o’clock in the morning and still dark. I was in bed in the sleeping car and it was cold, as it can be cold only in Russia.

The conductor knew no English and I spoke no language but my own. I was unable to make him understand that I wished to know when I could leave the train and return to Paris. I dressed myself hastily, packed my things helter skelter and, when the train arrived at the next station, I alighted with all my baggage. What a bare and desolate spot! It was a little station, with hardly a platform. Away the train went rumbling, leaving me there in that wilderness. What was I to do? I had no idea. I banged on the door of the wooden hovel that served as a station. It was closed. For a long time, a very long time, shivering with cold, grief and anguish, I walked up and down in the darkness like a caged beast. Finally a man appeared out of the night. He swung a lantern, which made a little round spot of light in the gloom. He opened the door and I followed him into the hut. I presented myself at the ticket office and tried to make him understand that I wanted a ticket for Berlin. I offered him French currency. He handed it back to me. I managed to understand that he would take only Russian money and also that the train that would get me back to Berlin was not due for three or four hours. Then I waited for day to break, hoping that perhaps some one would come who could help me. Towards nine o’clock some people arrived and among them I noticed an old fellow in whom I recognised the traditional Polish Jew, a money-lender I was sure, with his long black coat, his big round hat, his beard and his crafty smile.

I went to him and asked if he knew any English.

He did not know a word.

He tried to speak French and then German, but I failed to understand what he said. I succeeded in making him understand that I wanted to go to Berlin, and that the railway employee would not accept my French banknote. This bill of a thousand francs and a little ready money were all I had with me.

My interpreter took possession of the thousand francs, secured a ticket for Berlin for me and then disappeared for the purpose of changing my bill. I did not think of following him, although he bore my whole fortune away with him.

The man was a thief. He never came back. I realised in an ecstasy of fright, when the train arrived, that there I was without money enough to purchase a ticket from Berlin to Paris. At the first station I telegraphed to some acquaintances whom I had met in Berlin, but on whom I could hardly count and who very likely were not at the German capital just then. I begged them, at all hazards, to come to the station and bring me a little money so that I could continue my journey.

At this point begins the strange part of my adventure. I was alone in my compartment when we crossed the Russian border. Weighed down with dejection, I sat on the carpet of the carriage, with my head resting heavily on the woodwork, crying as if my heart would break. At the first stop a priest entered. Although I had quickly raised myself and wiped my face with my handkerchief, he saw at once that I was in trouble. He came and sat down opposite to me, and I noticed by his expression that he was disturbed by my suffering. Tears again flooded my cheeks and I told him that my mother was dying in Paris. He repeated the words “mother” and “ill” in German. He extended his hand to bid me not to speak for a minute. He closed his eyes and I looked at him. Everything subsided within me. I awaited for a miracle. The miracle took place.

After ten minutes, which seemed to me an age, he opened his eyes and said to me in German:

“No, no, your mother will not die.”

I understood what he said, catching the words “mother” and “not.” The frightful sense of oppression that was torturing me disappeared. I perceived that his words were not in vain, that he spoke the truth and that my mother was not going to die. I stopped crying, feeling sure that now everything would come out all right.

Presently he left me, and I understood, from his manner of speaking, that he was trying to give me courage and hope.

When he was no longer there my fears returned, and I found myself again as unhappy as before. I seemed to see my mother stretched before me in death. I saw once more the horrible men who dragged me to the station. I hated them wildly, and I fell into convulsive tremblings, which shook me from head to foot.

In this condition I reached Berlin. Luckily my friends were at the station. Before my arrival they had even telegraphed to Paris to learn the news. A reply had come to them that my poor mother was hovering between life and death. I still had twenty-four hours of waiting and anxiety.

When I arrived in Paris I perceived at once the beautiful white beard, the pale and weary face of Dr. Chapman, whose tall form rose above the crowd. He took me in his arms, and said:

“She is still alive. Come.”

In the carriage he gave me this advice:

“Enter the room and speak to your mother just as if you had never gone away. Your presence will save her.”

And that is what happened. From the moment of my return she began to improve. But this illness left her very weak. She had a first attack of paralysis and her trouble gained imperceptibly upon her, leaving each day less hope of her recovery.

She was destined, without ever being restored to health, to die in Paris in February, 1908.

In Russia they started a long lawsuit against me for not having kept my agreement, and before it was ended I lost, including other offers, which I could not accept without my electrical apparatus and my costumes that were held as security, fully 250,000 francs. During my second season at the Folies-Bergère, when, through the solicitude of M. Marchand, my dressing-room was always filled with flowers by reason of the distinguished visitors who came to see me and to whom the directors would offer champagne, an attachment was put upon my receipts and we often had hardly enough to eat. But for the manager’s wife, who at times sent us things to eat in a basket, I should often have danced on an empty stomach, and have sipped champagne in my dressing-room without having had anything to eat at home.

My work on the stage was so fatiguing that when I had finished dancing the mechanicians would carry me to my _appartement_, which was connected with the theatre. I continued this work for a whole season without being sufficiently well fed to keep up my strength, and being all the while in an _appartement_ the sanitation of which was defective. Therein, I am certain, lay one of the reasons for the progress of my mother’s illness. My health, too, was affected to such an extent that I am no longer able to endure fatigue as I once endured it.

However, it all happened as a result of circumstances, and I have no wish to blame anybody.

The manager of the theatre had given me this _appartement_ and had had it arranged specially for me in order that I might not be obliged to go out into the street, heated with dancing.

Since then I have never returned to Russia, for every time that a journey to that country was mentioned my poor mother trembled with fright, and there was never any question of my undertaking it.

This adventure at least caused me to believe in one thing--inspiration. For if the priest in the railway compartment was not inspired, then what was he?

VIII

SARAH BERNHARDT--THE DREAM AND THE REALITY

I was scarcely sixteen years old. I was then playing _ingenue_ roles on the road, when on the theatrical horizon there appeared the announcement that the greatest tragedienne of modern times, Sarah Bernhardt, the most distinguished of French actresses, was about to come to America! What an event! We awaited it with feverish curiosity, for the divine Sarah was not a human being like the rest of us. She was a spirit endowed with genius.

The circumstance which made my heart throb and caused me to shed tears copiously was that I was uncertain of being able to see this wonderful fairy of the stage. I knew beforehand that there would be no seat for one so insignificant as I was. The newspapers were printing column upon column about her, and I read everything that I could get hold of. The papers said that the seats were all bought up, and that not a hundredth part of those who wanted to see her would achieve their ambition. The box office was besieged by speculators. All that, alas! meant that there was scarcely any hope for me. I do not know whether Sarah had visited America before, for I had all along been on the road with little travelling companies in the Western States. So far as I was concerned this was positively her first visit.

At last the famous day arrived. A steamer, with delegations and an orchestra aboard, went down the bay to meet her. All that impressed me greatly. I saw in it genuine homage rendered to genius. She had come at last. She was here. If I could only see her, even from a distance--from a great distance!

But where and how? I did not know, and I kept on reading the papers, fairly intoxicating myself with the articles describing her. It seemed magic, unreality, a fairy tale.

Finally she gave her first performance. The public and critics appeared to rave over her,--absolutely to rave.

The actors and actresses of New York circulated a petition, begging her to give a matinee in order that they might honour her and observe her glorious art.

Wonder of wonders, she accepted! My mind was quickly made up.

Very recently come to New York, my mother and I were strangers in the big city. But fortunately I had plenty of courage without knowing it. When I learned that Sarah was going to play for the benefit of her fellow-artists, I said to my mother: “Well, now, I am going to see her.”

“There are so many famous artists in New York,” my mother replied, “how do you suppose that you can get seats?”

I had not thought of that, so I jumped up, saying:

“Then I had better hurry up.”

“How will you go about it?” asked my mother.

I paused a moment to think the matter over.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “but in some way or other I must see her. I am going to her theatrical manager.”

“But he won’t receive you.”

Of that I had not thought, either. But I would not hear of any obstacles. Besides, out West I had never been treated that way. I was not yet fully aware that people in the West were simpler and more approachable than in New York.

The objection, therefore, did not appear to me a formidable one, and I started out with my mother, who always went with me and who obeyed me in everything without my having the faintest idea but that I was the obedient one.

Here we were, then, on our way; and, after half an hour’s walking, we reached the theatre. The manager had not yet arrived. We sat down to wait for him. A lot of people came in. Some of them stayed for a while. Others went away at once.

They were all excited, busy and looked worried. What were they after? Were they going to get all the tickets? The crowd kept increasing to such an extent that I saw my poor tickets grow smaller and smaller in perspective and then disappear altogether. And I had counted so much on them!

Would the manager never come?

At last a great commotion was heard. A group of gentlemen rushed by like the wind and, without stopping to see what was going on, disappeared behind a door on which was written “No admission.”

None of us knew what to do after that. Everybody stared at everybody else. Most of those who were cooling their heels in the ante-chamber were men. My exhausted nerves would not let me linger any longer, and I said in a whisper to my mother:

“I am going to knock on the door.”

She turned pale, but I had no choice in the matter. This was the only way to come to something, even if I ran the risk of heart failure from an organ that was beating so loudly that I thought it was on the point of bursting.

My head was in a whirl and I saw nothing for a moment. Nevertheless I approached the door and gave a gentle knock.

I felt as if I had committed a crime, this little rap resounded so loudly in my ears. A command to enter that sounded lugubrious was the response, and I opened the door.

Mechanically I came forward and found myself in the middle of a group of gentlemen without knowing which of them to address. Overcome with embarrassment I stood erect in the centre of the room while everybody looked me over. Then I summoned all my courage and I said, to the whole circle:

“Gentlemen, I should like to see the manager of this theatre, if you please.”

When I stopped speaking my teeth began to chatter so loudly that I bit my tongue.

A gentleman who looked more important than the others came forward and said:

“What do you want of him, little girl?”

Good heavens, must I speak again before all these people? To my own astonishment, I heard, as if it were somebody else’s, my own voice saying in a firm tone:

“Well, it is this way, sir. I am an artist, and I should like to come with my mother to the matinee that Sarah Bernhardt is going to give us.”

“Who are you, and where are you playing?”

At this point the tone lost its assurance, while the voice replied:

“You probably don’t know my name, sir. It isn’t well known here. It’s Loie Fuller. I have come from the West, to try and find an engagement. I’m not playing anywhere just now, but I think that--it is of no importance anyway--and that perhaps you will let me just the same--see her--if I beg it of you.”

“Where is your mother?”

“There, outside,” and I pointed to the door.

“The pale lady, with the sweet expression?”

“Yes, sir. She is pale because she is afraid.”

“And you, are you afraid, too?”

The firm voice reappeared.

“No, sir.”

He looked at me, a slightly ironical smile played on his lips, and he said:

“Then you think that you are an artist?”

His remark cut me to the quick, but I felt that I must endure everything. I experienced, nevertheless, a great temptation to cry.

My assurance reasserted itself.

“I have never thought that,” I replied. “But I should like to become an artist, some day, if I am able.”

“And that is why you are anxious to see the great French tragedienne play?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I was thinking only of my longing to see her, and it was on that account that I came here.”

“Very well, I am going to give you seats for yourself and your mother.”

“Oh, thank you, sir.”

The manager drew a card from his pocket, wrote something on it and handed it to me. It was a permit for us to see Sarah Bernhardt play!

I looked at the card and looked at the manager. He smiled and I smiled. He extended his hand. I extended both of mine. While he held my hands he said to me:

“You have my card. Come and see me. Perhaps I can find you an engagement, little girl.”

There was a new pleasure, and not a vain pleasure, for this man’s promise was one that was destined to be fulfilled.

“Thank you, thank you very much, sir.”

I went out blinded with tears of happiness, which I could no longer restrain, and, rejoining my mother, I left the theatre.

“What’s the matter, my dear Loie? What did they say to make you cry so? What is it?”

“Mamma, mamma, I have a ticket to see her--to see her!”

“Oh, I am so pleased, my dear.”

“And I have a seat for you, too!”

The great day came. We were seated, my mother and I, in the orchestra stalls. About us there were American artists. In the boxes were the managers of all the New York theatres and their wives. The house was filled to overflowing. The three bangs announced the rising of the curtain. Silence ensued and the play began, I did not understand a word and no one around me, I fancy, did, either. But everybody awaited the culminating moment. _She_ appeared, and there was an almost painful silence in the great overcrowded hall. Every one held his breath. She came forward lightly, appearing barely to brush the earth. Then she stopped in the middle of the stage, and surveyed this audience of actors.

Suddenly pandemonium was let loose. Madness fell upon the house, and for a quarter of an hour she stood thus, prevented from playing by the din of the theatre, as if she were the audience. She looked round, interested, inspired and moved. This tumultuous crowd was playing with magnificent sincerity a part of indescribable enthusiasm.

Finally silence was restored. Sarah Bernhardt came forward and began to read her lines. I believe I understood her soul, her life, her greatness. She shared her personality with me!

The stage settings were lost on me. I saw and heard only her.

There was frantic applause, encore after encore following each scene. Then the curtain fell on the final scene, only to be followed by a great uproar. Then the audience went out slowly, as if regretting to leave the surroundings.

While I went away a golden voice--_the_ golden voice--seemed still to resound in my ears, uttering words which I could not understand: “Je t’aime! je t’aime!” They were like the notes of a crystal bell resounding in my consciousness.

Who would have thought at that time that the poor little Western girl would one day come to Paris, would appear there on a stage, in her turn before an audience trembling with enthusiasm, and that Sarah Bernhardt would be in the house for the purpose of applauding this little Western girl, just as the little Western girl had applauded her to-day?

* * * * *

I was dancing at the Folies-Bergère. At a matinee some one came to say that Sarah Bernhardt was in a box with her little daughter. Did I dream? My idol was there. And to see me! Could this be possible?

I came on to the stage and looked over the audience, which was filling the hall above and below. Standing quietly, in my great white robe, I waited for the end of the applause.

I danced and, although she could not know it, I danced for her. I forgot everything else. I lived again through the famous day in New York, and I seemed to see her once more, marvellous as she was at the matinee. And now here was a matinee to which she had come for the purpose of seeing me--_my_ idol, to see _me_.

_Photo_ _Lafitte_]

I finished.

She rose in her box, she leaned forward toward me to applaud--and to applaud again. The curtain rose several times. My brain was in a whirl. Was this real? Was it? Was it she?

It was my turn to become the audience and, as I saw only her, _her_ audience. And that is how she played to my profound, my perfect gratification, the part of the whole house.

* * * * *

One day a friend took me to Sarah Bernhardt’s house. It was a real visit, but it seemed to me nevertheless like a dream. I was scarcely able to speak or to breathe. I could hardly presume to look at her. I was in the presence of my divinity.

Later she invited me to have lunch with her, as a result of my begging her to be photographed by one of the best photographers of San Francisco, who had crossed the ocean expressly to take Sarah Bernhardt in her wonderful studio. She had consented. I had taken my compatriot to her, and she had posed for him very graciously. He was so pleased with his good luck, so grateful, the dear fellow!

Sarah had asked me to come and lunch with her on the day when he was to show her the proofs.

Exactly at noon I made my entrance. Very shortly after she appeared in the great studio, took me in her arms and imprinted a kiss on each of my cheeks. All that was so simple, so natural and yet so extraordinary.

We had luncheon, Sarah at the end of the table, with her back to the window, seated in a magnificent chair, as it were in some carved throne, whose back overtopped her head like a halo of gold. Sarah was my divinity once more. I was seated on her right. There were several other invited guests whose names I have forgotten, my mind was so full of her. Her voice rang in my ears. I understood not a word of what she was saying, but every syllable made me thrill.

All at once the photographer was announced. Sarah bade him enter. He was a nice elderly gentleman of about sixty, with pretty white curly hair. He looked well pleased with himself. He approached Sarah, and placed in her outstretched hands a packet of proofs of the photographs he had taken. She looked at them slowly, one by one. Then, her golden voice broke forth in shrill notes that gave me a sinking feeling. I did not know what she was saying, but I saw her tear the photographs into a thousand and one shreds and hurl them at the feet of my fellow-countryman. He knew no French. Pale and disturbed, he asked me to translate what Sarah said. But she gave me no time to reply. She cried, this time in English: “Horrible! Horrible!”

“What does she say?” he asked, making a trumpet of his hand about one ear.

Thank Heaven, he was deaf! I signalled to him to bend down toward me so that I might whisper in his ear.

“She says these portraits are unworthy of your work. She has seen some of your really wonderful photographs. You will have to come again and make another attempt.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” he replied with a joyful smile on his lips. “She is quite right. The photographs are not good. But the weather was to blame. It wasn’t bright enough, and these are interiors. We shall have to make efforts several times in order to succeed. Do you want to make another appointment?”

I promised, but without hope, and solely because out of kindness I had to promise.

He grasped my divinity’s hand and mine, and went away.

Sarah was destined on that day to cause me a happy surprise. She consented, when I asked it of her, to sit again, and I was sorry that the old man was not there, she was so grieved on account of the pain for which she was responsible. She really was grieved, and that made me love her all the more. Her temper, too keen, too glowing, had just resulted in a ruinous flare-up. And now here was this same fiery disposition manifesting itself sweet and kind.

One day in London I went to a banquet of fifteen hundred covers given in honour of Sarah Bernhardt. I attended as one of those who were personally acquainted with her, and who were to be seated at her table in the centre of the great hall. She arrived nearly an hour late. She said how sorry she was to have kept us waiting, and blamed her coachman for the delay.

At the end of the banquet the president made a long speech. Sarah, in reply, spoke some harmonious sentences in English. From a distance I once more surveyed my divinity. I heard her say, in my mother tongue, that she was happy, and I still loved her.

* * * * *

One day in Paris, very recently, Sarah Bernhardt’s business manager was announced. I received him, all the while wondering why my divinity’s manager had come to see me. He explained that Madame Sarah Bernhardt wanted to know if I could give her certain hints on the subject of the lighting of her new play, “La Belle au Bois Dormant.” I was ill enough to be in bed, but I arose to receive him. I promised him that I would go to see Sarah the next day. The arrangement was inaccurately reported and she understood that I was coming the same day. When she learned that she could count on me only for the next day, she declared that I had fallen ill very suddenly.

This thing wounded me to the quick, for I still loved Sarah. Next day I went to her house and she saw that I was suffering, for I could not utter a word. She took me in her arms and called me her treasure. That was enough. Everything that I had was at her service, and I would have done anything or given anything to help her. I did remain at rehearsal to familiarise myself with what she needed in the way of illumination.

In her turn she came to my theatre after the performance to see some lighting arrangements that I had installed especially for her play, and with the sole object of pleasing her. She brought some people with her. For her sake I received them all cordially. Among them was her electrician. Each time that I took the trouble to show something to Sarah the electrician would be overheard saying:

“But I can do that. That is easy to copy. Oh, I can do that, too. That’s nothing at all.”

As always during my performances the spectators were in darkness, and one of my friends; who had seated herself near Sarah to hear the admiring things she would say; was staggered by what she did hear. And in going away Sarah thanked me as she would thank anybody, overwhelming me with pretty speeches.

On the morning of the next day the managing director of the theatre at which I was dancing announced in the newspapers--without having consulted me--that Sarah Bernhardt had come to see Loie Fuller’s lighting effects with reference to the new play by Mm. Richepin et Cain, “La Belle au Bois Dormant.”

I sent some one to Sarah to ask which lighting apparatus she would like.

And this was her reply.

“My electricians would go on a strike if they thought I was about to associate any one with them. They say they can do whatever I need to have done. Besides, it is only a matter of a gauze curtain and a revolving lamp. A thousand thanks to Loie.”

Am I alone to blame for my disillusionment? I had pictured something incomprehensible because Sarah Bernhardt is an inspired artist.

But she is also a woman, and it took me twenty years to find it out. She is a woman, a fact I shall now never be able to forget, but she remains my divinity just the same.

IX

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

One evening at the Folies-Bergère two cards were brought to me. On one of them was engraved the name of the Minister of Finance of the island of Haiti; on the other, that of M. Eugène Poulle, also of Haiti.

What business could these two gentlemen have with me? The minister probably wanted me to come and dance at his house.

The gentlemen entered, and I recognised in one of them my Jamaica exile.

But that calls for an explanation.

In 1890 I was engaged by an actor named William Morris for a tour of the West Indies. I was to be star of the company, of which he was the leading man.

One cold winter morning we sailed out of New York harbour, and hardly were we at sea before we fell victims to a fearful storm. For two days and two nights the captain remained on the bridge, and it looked as if we were destined to sink. My mother and I had never undertaken an ocean voyage before. We were terribly sick and, shut up in our cabin, we supposed that at sea things always went this way. All that we regretted was that we had ever made the trip. Certainly no one would ever induce us to do so again.

When we arrived in southern waters and the waves were still, we appreciated what an extraordinary gale it was that had so shaken us up. Some days later we landed at Kingston, Jamaica.

My mother, Mr. Morris and I took rooms at the same hotel, the Clarendon.

We seemed to be the only guests there. We took our meals in a great hall on the first floor, upon which all the rooms opened.

Yet we were not the only guests, for suddenly a gentleman appeared on the scene.

At first we paid no particular attention to him, but gradually we observed that he seemed to be very much depressed. As it was excessively warm he was always dressed only in his pyjamas. This is a detail that I happen to remember, for Mr. Morris also wore nothing else. The heat was insufferable, but I have always liked heat by reason of the chronic tendency to colds that I have had since my birth.