Chapter M: Groult’s Collection (3)

He brought to the theatres of his native land certain modifications, which have radically changed their dramatic methods. It is customary in Japan to begin a play at nine or ten o’clock in the morning and to make it last at least until midnight. One lunches and dines at the theatre during the intervals, which, it is needless to say, are interminable.

Kawakami changed that condition of things by beginning at half-past six or at seven o’clock in the evening and ending before midnight. And how do you suppose he managed to prevent people eating between the acts? for that was the most difficult innovation. He made the intervals so short that there was no time even to go to the refreshment-room. It was really an easy thing to compel the public to alter its habits. Instead of appealing to people’s reason, Kawakami simply made it impossible for them to continue doing what they had previously done.

European theatres are now building in Japan, in order that actors from Europe may go there and produce their plays. The Nipponese public is learning to give them a more favourable reception.

All that is due to Kawakami and to his sympathetic reception at the Society of Authors. I cannot refrain from congratulating myself on this, for, after all, it was I who “translated” the addresses and thus sealed in words this new _entente cordiale_.

That brings to mind a little story.

It happened at the Athénée in 1893. We were rehearsing the “Salome” of Armand Silvestre and Gabriel Pierné. Behind the scenes one day I encountered a man with an enormous muffler, which went several times around his neck, and a tall hat of a style that came down over his ears. I chatted with him in the indifferent French I had at command, and this without knowing who he was. While talking to him I noticed a hole in his shoe. He was aware of my discovery, I suppose, for he said to me:

“I had that hole made expressly. I prefer a hole in my shoe to a pain in my foot.”

This man was Victorien Sardou.

A word more about my Japanese friends.

Kawakami has a son who was five years old when I first saw him. He passed his time drawing everything around him.

I observed in his simple childish drawings a very peculiar manner he affected in representing people’s eyes. They were always drawn like billiard balls emerging from the face. I asked Kawakami:

“Don’t you think that it is an odd way to draw eyes?”

“Yes, but it is because the European eye is quite like the eye of a fish,” the father replied.

That aroused in me a desire to know more intimately his impressions of our race, and I asked him what Europeans look like from the Japanese point of view.

“All Europeans,” he said, “resemble pigs. Some of them look like dirty pigs, some like clean pigs; but they all look like pigs.”

I never said anything about this to M. Sardou.

XX

AN EXPERIENCE

It happened in February, 1902. I arrived at Vienna with my Japanese company, headed by Sada Yacco. We had with us an artist to whom I had been delighted to be of service. In Paris my close friend, Madame Nevada, the celebrated American singer, had presented her to me, and the dancer had given me a performance as an example of her skill. She danced with remarkable grace, her body barely covered by the flimsiest of Greek costumes, and she bade fair to become somebody. Since then she has arrived. In her I saw the ancient tragic dances revived. I saw the Egyptian, Greek and Hindoo rhythms recalled.

I told the dancer to what height I believed that she could attain, with study and persistent work. A short time after I left for Berlin, where she rejoined me. During our stay there she was ill most of the time and could do hardly any work.

Finally, on our return to Vienna, we began our studies seriously, and I decided to organise some evening affairs as a means of bringing her before an audience of people capable of appreciating and understanding her.

To this end I took her to every drawing-room that was open to me in Vienna. Our first call was upon the wife of the English ambassador, whom I had known at Brussels when her husband represented the United Kingdom there. On this day I came near going in alone and leaving my dancer in the carriage, because of her personal appearance. She wore an Empire robe, grey, with a long train and a man’s hat, a soft felt hat, with a flying veil. Thus gowned she appeared to so little advantage that I rather expected a rebuff. However, I pleaded my dancer’s cause so warmly, and I obtained a promise that both the ambassador and his wife would be present on the first evening.

I went next to see the Princess of Metternich.

“My dear Princess,” I said to her, “I have a friend, a dancer, who has not yet succeeded in coming to the front because she is poor and has no one to launch her. She is very talented, and I am anxious that Viennese drawing-rooms shall come to know her. Are you willing to help me?”

“With pleasure. What must I do?”

“To begin with, come to my hotel, and see her dance.”

“Why, certainly. You can count absolutely upon me.”

The princess is impressively simple. Where one expects to find a _grande dame_ arrayed in finery and of lofty bearing, one discovers a charming woman, receptive, simple, witty, and possessed of extraordinary youthfulness of manner. When Prince Metternich was ambassador at Paris she was given the nickname one applied to Adelaide of Savoy; she was called “the pretty, homely one.” The princess went one better by saying, “I am the best dressed ape in Paris.” I wonder if she could ever have been plain. There is such intelligence implicit in every feature of her face.

Under the light grey locks the black eyes have preserved the sprightliness, the sweetness of youth. Her smile gave me confidence. It was thus that I had always pictured the gentlewoman, revealed by everything that she is herself and not solely by the things that surround her or by the high rank she occupies in society.

I had heard it said that this woman had the greatest influence at the Austrian court, and looking at her I understood it. Her carriage, her countenance and everything else inspired respect and affection.

When I took leave her last words were:

“I shall be delighted to help your friend since I shall be thus able to please you.”

I went away, gratified and thankful on my own account as well as on my friend’s.

Then I went to the Embassy of the United States. I saw the ambassador immediately, but I was obliged to wait to see his wife. She entered breezily, bringing with her, as it were, a whiff of her own far west. Kind, energetic, jolly, she was a free born woman, cordial and sincere, and I felt at once that I could rely on her.

While I spoke of my protégée, the ambassador’s wife remembered having seen her dance at her sister’s house in Chicago some years before. The dancing, to tell the truth, had not particularly interested her, but if it would be of any help to us she would be very glad to come to our performance.

Sure of having a good audience I returned to the hotel and told my friend that the occasion she had desired so long had at last arrived.

I decided to give an evening for the press on the same day on which my friend would appear at a matinee before the Princess and members of the diplomatic corps.

I then sent invitations to the Viennese artists and art critics. When the day came everything was in readiness. I had engaged an orchestra; the hall had floral decorations; the buffet was most appetising.

The English ambassador, his wife and daughter, were among the first arrivals. There was a great gathering in front of the hotel to admire their carriage with the magnificent liveries.

Then came the turn of the American ambassador and his wife, in a black carriage, very simple, but very elegant. Finally all the others arrived. Suddenly the princess’ turnout, so well known to all Vienna, paused before the door.

After having welcomed my guests I begged them to excuse me for a minute and I went in to see the débutante.

It was half-past four. In ten minutes she was due to begin. I found her with her feet in warm water, in the act of dressing her hair, in a very leisurely manner. Startled, I begged her to hurry, explaining that she ran the risk through her negligence of offending an audience that would definitely give her her start. My words were without effect. Very slowly she continued her preparations. Feeling that I could do nothing with her I returned to the drawing-room and made the greatest effort of my life to get out of this delicate situation.

I was obliged to make a little impromptu address. What I said I have never known, but I remember having vaguely fashioned something like a dissertation on dancing and its value in relation to the other arts and to nature. I said that the young woman whom we were going to see was not an imitator of the dancers depicted on the Etruscan vases and the frescoes at Pompeii. She was the living reality of which these paintings were only an imitation. She was inspired by the spirit which had made dancers of them.

All at once she made her entrance, calm and indifferent, looking as if she did not care in the least what our guests thought of her.

But it was not her air of indifference that surprised me most. I could hardly refrain from rubbing my eyes. She appeared to me nude, or nearly so, to so slight an extent did the gauze which she wore cover her form.

She came to the front, and, while the orchestra played a prelude from Chopin she stood motionless, her eyes lowered, her arms hanging by her side. Then she began to dance.

Oh, that dance, how I loved it! To me it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I forgot the woman and all her faults, her absurd affectations, her costume, and even her bare legs. I saw only the dancer, and the artistic pleasure she was giving me. When she had finished no one spoke.

I went up to the Princess. She said to me in a low voice:

“Why does she dance with so little clothing on?”

Then I suddenly realised the strange attitude of the public, and guided by a sort of inspiration, I answered in tones loud enough so that everybody should hear:

“I forgot to tell you how kind our artist is. Her trunks upon which she relied absolutely for the day have not arrived. Accordingly, rather than give you the disappointment of not seeing her dance, she appeared before you in the gown in which she practises.”

At nine o’clock the press performance took place. Everybody was enthusiastic, but none more so than I.

Next day I arranged a third performance for painters and sculptors, and this affair was likewise a great success.

A lady finally asked my friend to dance at her house. The star demanded a very high price. Persuaded by me the lady consented to pay the big fee my dancer claimed to be worth. For several weeks her success increased day by day.

Then, all at once, people seemed to have forgotten the dancer. She was engaged only rarely, but I was not discouraged.

Meantime, I had forgotten to mention it, my friend’s mother had joined us at Vienna, and in place of one guest I now had two.

A little while after these performances we went to Budapesth, where I gave a new entertainment to launch my protégée. I invited all the best people of the city to this.

The leading actress of the Théâtre National heard of the affair, and was anxious to take part in it. I invited the theatrical managers as I had done at Vienna. This time one of them was to make up his mind regarding an engagement. The next day he came to see me, and proposed twenty performances in one of the first theatres of Budapesth. My friend was to rehearse, beginning the next day. On that same day I had an interminable rehearsal with my Japanese actors, and I was detained from home until late in the afternoon. On returning to the hotel I learned that the dancer and her mother had gone to Vienna to give there an evening performance I had arranged for her before our departure. My orchestra leader accompanied them. I was, I must confess, a little surprised at the abruptness with which they left, but I thought no more about it until my orchestra leader returned.

He came back alone. At first he evaded questions. Then he confessed that these ladies did not expect to rejoin me. I could not, and would not, believe him.

“Very well,” he said. “These are the precise words which the mother uttered while we were on the train. ‘Now that she has started you,’ she said, to her daughter, ‘you have no more use for her.’ To which the daughter replied, ‘Well, I haven’t the least desire to go back to Loie.’”

When these ladies were ready to return to Budapesth they allowed my orchestra leader to go without sending any message to me. I telegraphed to find out if I was not to see them again. My dancer replied with a telegram so worded: “Only in case you will deposit to my credit ten thousand francs in a Viennese bank before nine o’clock to-morrow morning.”

This proceeding was all the more cruel as she knew that I had just lost more than one hundred thousand francs through a Viennese manager who had broken his contract with my Japanese company. Besides, my expenses were very heavy and I was badly embarrassed. After I left Budapesth the dancer came there to fill the engagement I had secured for her. Then she went to Vienna and gave some performances there. I have been told that she went to all the people to whom I had presented her and asked them to take tickets. She thus disposed of seats amounting to some thousands of florins. Everybody was ready to help her, including the wife of the English ambassador and the Princess of Metternich. Above all, I must have gained a reputation as an impostor, for my friend continued to appear in public in what I had called her practising gown.

Some years later at Brussels I learned that my dancer said to somebody who wanted to know whether she was acquainted with Loie Fuller that she did not know me.

XXI

AMERICAN AFFAIRS

A stranger, and especially a Frenchman who has never travelled in America simply cannot imagine what our country is like. A Frenchman may get an idea of Germany without having seen it; of Italy, without having been there; of India even, without having visited it. It is impossible for him to understand America as it is.

I had proof of the truth of this observation in certain circumstances that were altogether unexpected. This experience I recall frequently as one that was peculiarly amusing, so amusing indeed that I regard the incident as one of the most comic I have ever encountered.

The hero of the adventure was a young journalist and man about town named Pierre Mortier. One might imagine that from the fact of his profession, which usually gives those who follow it a reasonable smattering of everything, that he would be less liable to surprise and astonishment than some shop assistant or railway employee. The actual occurrences proved the contrary.

But let us view this farce from the rising of the curtain.

I embarked on a steamer at Cherbourg, with my mother and some friends, bound for New York. Pierre Mortier came on board to offer his best wishes for a delightful voyage. We made him inspect our state-rooms, my friends and I, and we shut him in one of them. In vain he battered the wooden door with fist and foot. We were deaf to his appeals, for we had decided to release him only when the boat was already out of the roadstead and bound for the shores of the new world.

At first he protested, not without vehemence, for he was not at all equipped as regards wardrobe for such a voyage, but he soon cooled off and gaily assumed his part in the rather strenuous farce into which we had precipitated him.

“Be quiet,” I said to him, “everything will come out all right.”

“But how? I haven’t even a spare collar with me.”

His appearance was so disconsolate that I began to laugh heartily. Gaiety spreads from one person to another as easily as gloom. He began, in his turn, to laugh.

Arrived in New York we went to the best hotel in Brooklyn. The first thing that caught Pierre Mortier’s eye in the hotel lobby was the unusual number of spittoons. They were everywhere, of all sizes and shapes, for Americans do not hesitate, if they have no receptacle within easy reach, to spit on the floor, and to throw the ends of their cigars anywhere, without even taking the trouble to extinguish them.

We reached our rooms. There in an array along the wall some buckets, filled with water, attracted his attention. “Some more spittoons!” cried Mortier.

Everybody laughed, and he said in a somewhat peevish tone:

“Then what are those buckets for?”

“Why, in case of fire.”

“I thought,” said Mortier, “that all American buildings were fire-proof.”

“That is what you hear in Paris, but houses of that sort are really very rare.”

“Yet you pay enough in your country to have more comfort and security than anywhere else. For instance, that carriage just now. It was nothing short of robbery. Twenty-five francs to take us from the station here. And such an old trap! I don’t understand why your laws tolerate such things.”

Already he was beginning to protest. There was sure to be something else the next day.

On awakening on the first morning he pressed once on the electric button in his bedroom. A bell-boy appeared, bringing a pitcher of ice water. Thinking this a form of cheap wit Mortier sputtered some of his worst insults, happily couched in French. The bell-boy, a huge negro, looked calmly down upon this excited little man with the fair hair and skin, and then, without asking for his tip, quietly closed the door and went away.

This attitude of unconcern was not calculated to assuage our friend’s bellicose mood. He rang the bell again, and three times instead of once. That was the summons to be made when a guest wanted a boot-black sent to take his boots. Such a personage presented himself.

The personage explained to Mortier that if he touched the bell once that brought ice water; three times a boot-black. But Mortier did not understand a word of English. Accordingly the boot-black did what the bearer of ice water had done before, quite unconcernedly he went away.

Pierre Mortier was in a furious rage when a third boy presented himself, as black as the two preceding, for all the attendants are negroes in American hotels. This fellow was willing to remove his boots. Some minutes passed. Mortier was almost apoplectic with anger. The boy reappeared. He explained to his client that he gave the boots back only in return for a dollar. Mortier was still in bed. To make him understand, the negro lifted his clothes, which were folded on a chair, and, whistling, all the while, rifled the pockets. He picked out a dollar, and put it carelessly into his own pocket. Then he left the boots on the floor and disappeared.

In a paroxysm of rage our friend dressed himself in a great hurry and went to the hotel desk, where he made the place resound with curses that no one paid any attention to since no one understood them.

On the evening of the same day Mortier put his boots outside his door in order that they might be cleaned before next morning, as is done everywhere in England and France.

In America when something is left in front of the door it is only as a sign that the object can be thrown away. Mortier never saw his shoes again.

He rang, a negro presented himself. Mortier demanded his shoes. He cried, stormed, threatened. The negro backed up against the wall and unconcernedly whistled a cakewalk.

Speechless with rage, Mortier hurled himself upon the black. The hotel negroes, especially when they are not armed, are ordinarily lacking in courage. Besides, this one had good reasons for believing that his client had gone mad. So he hastily decamped.

After that nothing could induce any one of the negroes of the establishment to enter Mortier’s room as long as he remained at this hotel.

We did our best to explain to M. Mortier that the domestics were nowise in the wrong. He would not listen to a word, but kept exclaiming, with his eyes sticking further out of his head than usual (his eyes were naturally prominent):

“No, no! In America you are savages, all savages. Yes, savages and thieves. It is much worse here than I had supposed.”

One morning he went down alone into the restaurant for breakfast. Some minutes after we saw him bounding up the stairs. He was livid and trembling with rage. On reaching the door of our apartment, he burst out:

“This time it is too much. What is the matter with these brutes here? Has some change come over me? Tell me. Am I an object of ridicule? What is the matter with me? When I entered the restaurant a great fool looked me over from top to bottom, and said something, thereupon everybody began to stare at me. What is the trouble with me? Tell me what is the matter?”

What was the matter? He wore a straw hat with very narrow brim, one of those hats called “American” in Paris and of a kind that is never worn in America. He also had “New Yorkey” trousers such as were never cut in New York. That was enough to let loose the risibilities of this Yankee public, a public that is far from being indulgent of little eccentricities in other people.

Instead of calming him our explanations exasperated him, and it was only after he had spent his violence that we succeeded in getting him down to breakfast again.

The breakfast was not extraordinarily expensive. But when he looked over his account Mortier went into a rage. He had ordered the same things that we did, and his bill was two dollars and a half, that is about twelve and a half francs, higher than ours. These twelve and a half francs represented the price of a bottle of very ordinary red wine, which he had ordered.

“Do you want me to tell you what your Americans are,” he shouted. “Well, they are, and don’t you forget it either, they are every one thieves, savages, hogs. They are hogs, hogs! That one word expresses it.”

One morning at eight o’clock, after we had had coffee together, he left us.

“I am going to take a little walk,” he said. “I shall be back in half an hour.”

The half hour lasted until seven o’clock in the evening. You can imagine how anxious we became.

This is what happened.

Seeing that everybody, almost without exception, was headed in the same direction, he followed the crowd along the side walk. Presently he found himself on Brooklyn Bridge, black with people and burdened with cars, those bound to New York filled to overflowing, the others returning to Brooklyn completely empty.

Mortier did not know that all Brooklyn goes to work on the New York side, where the business district is situated, and that everybody goes to work at the same hour in this peculiar country. Astonished, curious, a little bewildered, he followed the crowd. Once across the bridge he found himself in one of the innumerable streets of New York.

On the New York side he looked round him to establish a landmark by which he could find his way back. He did not discover one, but it seemed impossible to get lost, as he had only to return to the base of this big bridge to retrace his steps to Brooklyn. He kept on, therefore, until he had completely satisfied his curiosity. Then he retraced his steps, or at least he thought he was doing so. He looked for the bridge, but in vain. Everybody walked so quickly that his very courteous “Pardon, Monsieur,” met with no response. Once or twice he made a bad effort at asking for “Brooklyn Bridge.” This met with no better success.

All the while he was unable to find a policeman.

The idea occurred to him, a magnificent idea, of going into a shop. No one made the slightest effort to help him. The assistants were interested only in trying to sell him everything which the house contained. Finally he found himself in a street where there were only clothing merchants. Hardly had he set foot there when he was seized and dragged into a shop. An hour passed before Mortier could escape, more dead than alive, from the merchant’s clutches. The information he gave led us to suppose that this must have been the famous Baxter Street, the quarter in which Jewish second-hand dealers ply their trade. It was past five o’clock when he succeeded finally in regaining the bridge, and then it was only with difficulty that he got across, for it was already overcrowded with workers returning to their homes in Brooklyn.

Finally he found the hotel again, swearing that he was going to take the first steamer for Europe.

“Anywhere,” he would groan; “I would rather be anywhere in the world than here. I’m not going to stay another hour in such a country. A rotten country! Rotten people!”

This time, in Pierre Mortier’s eyes, we were “rotten.” It would be hard to estimate how many discourteous adjectives this young man applied to our people in a short time. He must have made a record.

However, the Brooklyn hotel at which we were staying was equipped “on the European plan” with carefully chosen menus _à la carte_.

In the city to which we went later there was a purely American hotel, at which we put up. A central plate surrounded by a dozen little plates stood in front of each guest. All these were filled simultaneously with soup, entrees, fish, meat, vegetables and fruit. The guests with hasty movements gobbled smoked salmon, roast beef, chicken, mashed potatoes, badly cooked “pie,” salad, cheese, fruit, pudding, ice-cream, with apparently no regard for the effect of the hazardous mixtures on their digestive organs.

Mortier left the table completely disheartened by this spectacle.

“What are those savages made of,” he said. “Upon my word they make me look back with regret to the thieves in New York. And when you consider that to urge down their hideous mixtures they incessantly guzzle ice water and keep chewing olives, just as civilised people eat bread!”

When we returned to New York Mortier went to the Holland House, a hotel at which French was spoken, and where things were done in a manner approximating nearer to what he was accustomed to.

America--this America which on the steamer he had assured himself would be perfect--had come to interest him only in places where it had lost its own character. He found it good only in the few spots where it resembled Paris. In this was not this young journalist, after all, like most of his compatriots when they undertake to travel even in other countries than in America?

At the Holland House Pierre Mortier relaxed a little. He even became more polite in his expressions regarding America and Americans. But an incident occurred that brought the young reporter’s distaste for the country to a head, and precipitated his departure.

One day on returning to the Holland House he forgot to pay his cabman and found him ten hours later still standing in front of the hotel. His charge was a dollar and a half an hour. That meant that Mortier had to give up fifteen dollars.

Our friend thought at first the house porter should have paid for the trip, and had the charge made on his bill. Accordingly he complained at the hotel desk regarding what he called a piece of negligence.

Although the house was conducted on the French plan they gave him a thoroughly American answer:

“Well, that has nothing to do with the porter. You ordered the carriage, didn’t you? Yes. You had the use of it, didn’t you? Yes. Well, then, what do you expect? If you don’t know what you want, it isn’t up to the employees to run after you to find out. They’ve got something else to do.”

By the next steamer Pierre Mortier left the United States for good and all, swearing never again to set foot there.

Mr. W. Boosey, the English publisher, had some very different experiences in the United States.

On board the steamer he had become acquainted with a very interesting and companionable American, who invited him to lunch at Delmonico’s.

“Thanks awfully,” said the Englishman as he accepted. “On what day?”

“Any day you please.”

That was a little vague, but Mr. Boosey assured him that he should be delighted, and would come as soon as he had a free day. He was afraid of not having said the proper thing, from the American point of view. This notion bothered him for several days.

Finally, just before sailing, he asked the American again when they should lunch together at Delmonico’s.

His friend replied: “On Thursday or Saturday, whichever suits you best.”

The Englishman decided on Thursday.

The day set for the lunch arrived and Mr. Boosey was prompt to keep the appointment. He asked for Mr. X., and they showed him to a table. Half-past one, two, half-past two, three o’clock, and still no American.

The Englishman, patient though he was, began to find time hanging heavily on his hands. He thought he must have made a mistake as to the day, and at last he sent for the manager.

“What,” said the manager, “didn’t the waiter tell you that Mr. X. had telephoned that he could not come, and that he begged you to order whatever you liked? He will attend to the account.”

Imagine what the Englishman must have thought. He had come to lunch with a gentleman, not to have his food paid for by some one. Just at that moment the American rushed into the restaurant.

“I am awfully sorry, my dear fellow, but I am glad to find you still here. I had quite forgotten about our lunch up to two o’clock, and then I telephoned. I didn’t think I could get here at all. I had a deal on, one involving a million dollars, and I simply couldn’t leave it. Have you had your bite? No? Well, I haven’t either. Well, then, let us go and sit down.”

And they sat down. Mr. Boosey will never forget his American entertainer.

The American had, it must be confessed, treated his English guest with a certain negligence. However little he may be inclined to philosophical considerations, nothing is more instructive to a thorough-going Englishman than to observe the manner in which a Yankee ordinarily observes the civilised conventions and the lofty spirit in which he also looks upon anyone who is not an American. Nothing gives him a better notion of the high opinion Americans have of themselves than to hear a Yankee say:

“Well, what are you anyway? English, I’ll bet.”

Then, after a profound sigh and with an indefinable sweep of the hand: “As for me,” with emphasis on the “me,” “I am an American.”

He seems to experience genuine annoyance at having to face a man who isn’t an American.

Every American thinks, without ever being guilty of profound reflection on the subject, that everybody, whatever his nationality, would have preferred first to see the light of day in the United States. For the United States, if one were to accept the cheerful American belief, is a free country whose parallel does not exist anywhere in the world.

The native American claims to have the advantage of being a citizen of the world’s freest country. If you were to say to most Americans that there is a great deal of liberty in England, they would think that you were trying to make fun of them, and they would tell you that they did not believe it. They admit, occasionally, that there is a little freedom outside of the United States, but they will add:

“What a pity there isn’t more of it.”

The American believes himself completely emancipated, for freedom is the passion of the whole people. He pays for this catchword, which satisfies him, for having no basis of comparison he in reality does not know what he possesses and what he lacks.

The Spanish American is not less picturesque than the Anglo-Saxon American.

I had an engagement for a season at the city of Mexico. I made my first appearance at the Grand Théâtre-National in presence of five thousand spectators. On returning to the Hotel Sands, the most beautiful hotel in the city, I found there the municipal orchestra come to serenade me.

At the end of my stay I was asked to take part in a charitable performance. The house was packed, despite the high price of the seats. After the performance a great banquet was given, under the auspices of the festival committee.

At the table I was received with an enthusiasm which was quite Mexican, and that means with an enthusiasm that could be hardly surpassed in any country of the world. Throughout the repast I kept receiving presents. Some of the women took off their bracelets, others their rings, others their brooches, and, in spite of my protestations, insisted on giving them to me.

“Absolutely at your service!”

They obliged me to take them all.

I was inexpressibly embarrassed by my booty. When I returned to the hotel I asked the clerk to put all these jewels in a safe place.

He looked at the jewels and said:

“But you will have to send them back, madam.”

“Send them back? Why, they were given me.”

“It is the custom here, madam. Presents are always returned.”

“What am I going to do? I am leaving to-morrow morning at six o’clock, and I don’t know the names of the people who have entrusted their jewels to me.”

He shook his head.

“Well, then, I don’t know what to do. After all, keep them.”

Next day, accordingly, when I departed, I took the precious package, thinking that we should return from Cuba, to which we were bound, by way of Mexico, and that I should then look up the owners of “my” jewels.

In Cuba all our plans were changed. We left directly for New York, with the object of returning at once to Europe. Consequently I have never given back the jewels.

I sometimes wonder what my friends of some hours must think of a woman who dared to accept, under protest, the presents that were tendered her.

While we were in Mexico I had occasion to offer a cheque payable in New York for some books I was buying.

No one, absolutely no one, wanted to accept it. Then I went to the Chief of Police, General Carbadjadoes, whom I knew and he telegraphed to a New York bank, from which the reply was received that, “Loie Fuller’s cheques are perfectly good.”

That put an end to any reluctance among the merchants, who afterward, on the contrary, overwhelmed me with all sorts of propositions.

My most vivid impressions of Mexico were of the abounding and well-regulated enthusiasm of the upper classes and the extraordinary insolence of the tradespeople. The whole character of the country is expressed in these two traits.

On the liner that took us to the United States Pierre Mortier, for I shall have to mention him once more, made the acquaintance of a young Roumanian, who seemed to be a well-bred man, a very well-bred man. In Mortier enthusiasm is as easily evoked as is condemnation, and he presented this man to me in a most cordial manner.

Upon our arrival the young man said to me:

“I have so many little parcels that I don’t know where to put them. Would you do me the great favour of taking care of this one?”

I gave the object to my maid, who put it in my travelling case, and it passed the inspection of the customs-house officer.

That evening at the hotel the young man called on me with Mortier, and I gave him back his package.

He opened it smiling, and showed me the contents.

I had fraudulently brought in a bag of uncut rubies.

I treated the Roumanian as a cheat and told him that if he did not make the matter right with the customs I should hand him over to the authorities. Smiling all the while he promised that, since I took the affair to heart, he would go and make his peace, and he left.

I never saw him or his rubies again, it is needless to say.

I believe that from this time forward they have been seeking me in vain to charge me with smuggling a package through the customs-house.

XXII

GAB

For eight years Gab and I have lived together on terms of the greatest intimacy, like two sisters. Gab is much younger than I and regards me with deep affection.

Often I look at her curiously. She seems to read what is in my face and replies to my mute interrogation.

“You cannot understand me. You are Saxon and I am Latin.”

When I survey her I find myself thinking as she thinks, and I wonder if there exists a way of comprehending that we Anglo-Saxons do not possess. Gab is deeply serious. She has long, black eyes which seem to slumber perpetually. When she walks, despite her youth, she proceeds with slow and protracted steps, which give you an impression that she must be of a serious and meditative nature.

When I became acquainted with her she was living in a dark little apartment, furnished in Hindu style, where in her black velvet costume she looked like some Byzantine princess. Jean Aicard, the poet, said one day that her voice is of velvet, her skin and locks are of velvet, her eyes are of velvet and her name ought to be _Velours_. If one could compare her to a living creature a boa constrictor would be most appropriate, for her movements are like those of a snake. There is nothing sinuous, nothing rampant about them, but the _ensemble_ of her motions suggests the suppleness of the young adder.

I knew Gab for at least two years before it entered into my head that she was fond of me. She was always so calm, so silent, so undemonstrative, so unlike any other human being that only a supernatural personality, it seemed, would ever be able to understand her.

Her eyes and her hair are just alike, deep black and very brilliant. In her presence people never know for certain whether she is looking at them or not. Yet nothing about them escapes her, and through her half-closed eyes she penetrates to the very depths of their souls. She is neither tall nor slight, neither plump nor thin. Her skin is like alabaster, her abundant locks are parted in the middle and brought together in a knot behind the head, just as our grandmothers did their hair. Her teeth are small, regular and white as pearls. Her nose is straight and graceful. Her face is full and her head is so large that she never finds quite hair enough to dress it with.

When Gab was a baby she had as playmates a donkey, a pony and an army of lead soldiers, including Napoleon in his various aspects, with horses, rifles and wooden cannon. When I became acquainted with her she still had with her the nurse who had taken her mother’s place. This woman told me that Gab used to make her play horse while she took the part of Napoleon, until the poor nurse staggered with fatigue. She told me again that Gab was so shy that when her mother received a visitor, if the child were in the drawing-room and there was no way of escape, the little one would hide herself behind a curtain and would not budge until the intruder went away. Her mother was so much concerned with what she called the child’s timidity that she was unwilling to force her in any way. Gab subsequently has explained to me that she was not afraid and was not timid, but the truth was she could not endure certain people and that she did not wish to be obliged to see those who annoyed her.

She is just the same to-day. For years whenever a visitor came in by one door she would go out by another, and it made no difference whether the person came for a long call or for only a single word. At lunch or at dinner nothing could, and nothing can, induce Gab to meet people.

_Photo_ _Tabler_]

Gab has an iron will. Her nurse told me that one day on a journey with her parents Gab, who was then a very small girl, wanted to have a donkey that was running along the railway track. She cried for the donkey and did not cease until they had found the beast and bought it for her.

Gab has rarely to be corrected. It seems as if some one had taught her all the politeness in the world, and all the seriousness as well. When nine years old she was reading Schopenhauer. At fourteen she was carrying on special research among the archives of the State police. At sixteen she was studying the literature of ancient India. At eighteen she published a manuscript she had found after her mother’s death. She spent her pocket money to have it published. The title of the book was _Au Loin_, and Jean Lorrain declared that it was the most beautiful book on India which he had ever read.

Gab’s mother must have written this book during her journey in India, for a short time before her death she had visited this interesting country, and had gained access to private houses and courts to which Europeans are not ordinarily admitted. She was a marvellously beautiful woman, and made a great sensation in a country in which beauty is held in high regard.

The story goes that one evening at a ball in the viceroy’s palace, to which she had been invited, her entrance made such a sensation that all the couples, forgetting that they were there to dance, stopped and came forward to admire her radiant beauty.

When she died those who attended her funeral wept like children, saying that she was too beautiful to have been an ordinary mortal, and that there was something supernatural in her countenance.

All her life she had been called the beautiful Mme. X.

At the time of my debut at the Folies-Bergère Gab was fourteen years old. One day her mother said to her: “There is a new foreign dancer whom everybody is going to see. We will see her at a matinee.”

On reaching the theatre to buy seats the day before the performance they asked about me at the ticket office. Gab’s mother, whose beauty captivated everybody, had no trouble in getting all the information she wanted. The following dialogue ensued:

“Is she pretty?” asked Gab’s mother.

“No, she is not pretty,” was the reply.

“Is she common, ordinary?”

“No, she has an individuality of her own.”

“Tall?”

“Rather slight than tall.”

“Is she young?”

“Yes, I suppose so, but I could not swear to it.”

“Is she brunette or blonde?”

“She has brown hair and blue eyes, very blue.”

“Is she smart?”

“Oh, no. Not smart. She is anything but that. She is a queer sort of girl who seems to think of nothing but her work.”

“Is she retiring?”

“Well, yes. She knows nobody and sees nobody. She has continued to be quite unacquainted in Paris. She lives on the third storey at the end of a court in a house to the rear of the Folies-Bergère, and she never goes out unless with the manager of the theatre or his wife and with her mother, who never leaves her.”

“Does her dancing weary her greatly?”

“After the dance she is so tired that they have to carry her home and she goes to bed at once. The first time she came here she stayed at the Grand Hotel, but the manager has given her the _appartement_ of which I have been speaking. He has had a door let in at the rear of the stage, so that she can return to her rooms without having to go upon the street. She remains forty-five minutes on the stage. The white dance alone lasts eleven minutes. That is very fatiguing for her; she sticks at it too long, but the public is never willing to let her stop.”

“Is she amiable?”

“Well, she does not know a word of French, but she smiles all the time, and says, ‘bong-jour’.”

At this moment the manager, M. Marchand, who had come near the ticket office, and who fell victim to the irresistible charm of Gab’s mother, joined in the conversation.

“She is a very complex personality, Miss Loie Fuller,” he said. “She has no patience but displays nevertheless an incredible amount of perseverance. She is always rehearsing with her electric apparatus, engaged in search of new effects, and she sometimes keeps her electricians at work until six o’clock in the morning. No one would venture to make the slightest suggestion to her about this; overwork seems to agree with her. She stops neither for dinner nor for supper. She is endlessly seeking for combinations of light and colour.”

Then he added, as if aside:

“They are queer people, these Americans.”

Gab’s mother then asked about my studies and my ideas.

“She has just been interviewed on this subject, and the interview was published this morning. Among other things she said, in speaking of the effect that she obtains: ‘Everybody knows when it is successful, but no one realises how one has to keep at it to succeed. That is what I am after unceasingly.’ The interviewer asked her if there was no established system, no books that could help her in her work. She looked astonished and replied, ‘I do not see how any one could use words to indicate the rays of light in their imperceptible and unceasing interplay that is changing all the time.’”

My manager then drew the newspaper from his pocket and read this passage from my exposition:

“‘One needs to have order in one’s thinking to be able to write. One can feel rays of light, in disintegration or in transition only as one feels heat or cold. One cannot tell in words what one feels. Sensations are not thoughts.’”

“‘But music, for example, can be reduced to notation.’”

“This seemed to surprise her. She was silent, reflected a moment, and then said:

“‘I ought to think about that, but it seems to me that the vibration represented by sight is a finer sense, more indefinite, more fugitive, than that of sound. Sounds have a more fixed character and they are limited. As for sight it has no limit, or none at least that we recognise. In any case we are more ignorant of things that concern our eyes than those which address themselves to our ears. Perhaps this is because our eyes from infancy are better developed at an earlier stage, and because seeing is a faculty the young child exercises sooner than hearing. The field of visual harmony as compared with aural harmony is like sunshine in comparison with moonlight. That is why there took place in the human brain a great development of the sense of sight, long before we were able to direct it or even to understand the results or the uses of it.’”

“Those who watch Loie Fuller during her work,” continued M. Marchand, after he had put the paper back into his pocket, “are struck by the transformation that takes place in her as she speaks, or as she directs her men to try this experiment or that. In point of fact, Madame, she has transformed the Folies-Bergère. Every evening the usual audience is lost amid a crowd composed of scholars, painters, sculptors, writers and ambassadors, and at the matinees there is a crowd of women and children. All the chairs and tables of the galleries have been piled up behind the orchestra chairs and all the people, forgetful of their rank and dignity, climb over them like a crowd of urchins. All that for a young girl who does not seem to suspect that she has won success. Would you like an example? Lately my wife took her to a large store to buy some handkerchiefs. The first thing Miss Fuller saw was some handkerchiefs marked ‘Loie Fuller,’ and she was surprised to note that some one had the same name as hers. When they told her: ‘Why, not at all. It is your name that appears on these handkerchiefs,’ she replied:

“‘How can that be? These people don’t know me.’

“She did not understand and could not understand that it was on account of her success.”

_Photo_ _Lafitte_]

Gab’s mother, after acknowledging the manager’s salutation as he said good-bye, again asked the ticket office men:

“She is a proper person, then?”

“Good Heavens, yes. She is so middle class that she looks like a little country girl. I suspect that she has never dreamed of trying to be swell. She came here with a valise and a little steamer trunk, and dressed as in this photograph,” he added, showing the portrait I had given him.

This photograph depicted me in a yachting cap, a straight-cut dress of indefinite colour, and supported by straps. A light underwaist, a short jacket and a very simple cape completed my costume.

After seeing this Gab and her mother went home with their seats for next day’s matinee. This matinee impressed Gab to such a degree that on reaching home this child of fourteen wrote the following lines in my honour:

“A luminous and impalpable shadow. Across the dark brown night flits a pallid, palpitating reflection. And while petals fly in the air a supernatural golden flower rises toward the sky. It is not a sister of the terrestrial flowers which shed their dream particles upon our aching souls. Like them the gigantic flower brings no consolation. It grew in a strange region under the moon’s blue rays. Life beats in its transparent stem, and its clear leaves hang loosely in the shade like great tormented arms. Just a dream efflorescence displays itself and meditates. It is the flower’s living poetry that sings there, delicate, fugitive and mysterious.

“It is the unsullied firmament, bestrewn with stars and it is the dance of fire.

“A crackling flame is kindled. It turns and twists and glows. Smoke, heavy as an incense, rises and mingles in the darkness where embers glow. In the midst of the tumult, licked by torrents of foaming fire, a mask, also a strange flame, is outlined in the reddish air. The flames die into a single flame, which grows to immensity. You might think that human thought were rending itself in the darkness. And we await with anxious hearts the beauty that passes.

“Soul of the flowers, soul of the sky, soul of flame, Loie Fuller has given them to us. Words and phrases avail nothing. She has created the soul of the dance, for until Loie Fuller came the dance was without soul!

“It had no soul in Greece when among fair wheat heads on days flooded with sunshine beautiful children danced gaily, brandishing their golden sickles. Rigid, majestic, and somewhat too formal, it had no soul under the Grand Monarch. It had no soul when it might have had one. The eighteenth century dances, the minuet in a whirl of powder; the waltz is only an embrace, the woman cult revived.