FIFTEEN YEARS OF
A DANCER’S LIFE
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HER
DISTINGUISHED FRIENDS
BY
LOIE
FULLER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ANATOLE FRANCE
[Decorative Illustration]
“SHE OUGHT TO WRITE OUT HER MEMORIES
AND HER IMPRESSIONS.”--_Alexandre Dumas_
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
ARUNDEL PLACE, HAYMARKET
LONDON, S.W. [Decorative Illustration] MCMXIII
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER
_Photo_ _Langfier_]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN FRENCH.
LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH
INTRODUCTION
I had seen her only as she had been seen by multitudes from every
corner of the globe, on the stage, waving her draperies in the first
light, or transformed into a great resplendent lily, revealing to us a
new and dignified type of beauty. I had the honour of being presented
to her at a luncheon of the _tour du monde_ at Boulogne. I saw an
American lady with small features, with blue eyes, like water in which
a pale sky is reflected, rather plump, quiet, smiling, refined. I heard
her talk. The difficulty with which she speaks French adds to her power
of expression without injuring her vivacity. It obliges her to rely
on the rare and the exquisite, at each moment to create the requisite
expression, the quickest and best turn of speech. Her words gush
forth, the unaccustomed linguistic form shapes itself. As assistance
she employs neither gestures nor motions, but only the expression of
her eyes, which changes like the landscapes that are disclosed along a
beautiful highway. And the basis of her conversation, now smiling and
now serious, is one of charm and delightfulness.
This brilliant artist is revealed as a woman of just and delicate
sensibility, endowed with a marvellous perception of spiritual values.
She is one who is able to grasp the profound significance of things
that seem insignificant, and to see the splendour hidden in simple
lives. Gleefully she depicts, with keen and brilliant stroke, the
humble folk in whom she finds some ennobling and magnifying beauty.
Not that she is especially devoted to the lowly, the poor in spirit.
On the contrary she enters easily into the lives of artists and
scholars. I have heard her say the most delicate, the subtlest things
about Curie, Mme. Curie, Auguste Rodin and other geniuses. She has
formulated, without desiring to do so, and perhaps without knowing it,
a considerable theory of human knowledge and philosophy of art.
But the subject of conversation which comes closest to her is
_religious_ research. Should we recognize in this fact a characteristic
of the Anglo-Saxon race, of the effect of a Protestant education, or
simply a peculiarity of temperament of which there is no explanation?
I do not know. At all events she is profoundly religious, with a very
acute spirit of inquiry and a perpetual anxiety about human destiny.
Under various guises, in various ways, she has asked me about the cause
and the final outcome of things. I need not say that none of my replies
were couched in a manner to satisfy her. Nevertheless she has received
my doubts serenely, smiling at everything. For she is distinctly an
amiable being.
As regards understanding? Comprehension? She is marvellously
intelligent. She is even more marvellously instinctive. Rich in so many
natural gifts she might have become a scholar. I have heard her employ
a very comprehensive vocabulary in discussing the various subjects of
astronomy, chemistry and physiology. But it is the unconscious in her
that counts. She is an artist.
I have been unable to resist the pleasure of recalling my first meeting
with this extraordinary and delightful woman. What a rare chance! You
admire afar off, as in a vision, an airy figure comparable in grace
to those dancers whom one sees on Pompeiian wall paintings, moving in
their light draperies. Some day you discover once again this apparition
in real life, softened in colour and hidden under those thicker robes
with which mortals cover themselves, and you perceive that she is
a person of good mind and good heart, a soul somewhat inclined to
mysticism, to philosophy, to religion, a very deep, a very cheerful
and a very noble soul.
There you have to the life this Loie Fuller, in whom our Roger Marx
has hailed the chastest and most expressive of dancers, beautifully
inspired, who reanimates within herself and restores to us the lost
wonders of Greek mimicry, the art of those motions, at once voluptuous
and mystical, which interpret the phenomena of nature and the life
history of living beings.
ANATOLE FRANCE
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. MY STAGE ENTRANCE 15
II. MY APPEARANCE ON A REAL STAGE AT TWO YEARS AND A HALF 20
III. HOW I CREATED THE SERPENTINE DANCE 25
IV. HOW I CAME TO PARIS 43
V. MY APPEARANCE AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE 51
VI. LIGHT AND THE DANCE 62
VII. A JOURNEY TO RUSSIA--A BROKEN CONTRACT 73
VIII. SARAH BERNHARDT--THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 84
IX. ALEXANDRE DUMAS 101
X. M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION 111
XI. A VISIT AT RODIN’S 122
XII. M. GROULT’S COLLECTION 128
XIII. MY DANCES AND THE CHILDREN 137
XIV. PRINCESS MARIE 151
XV. SEVERAL SOVEREIGNS 165
XVI. OTHER MONARCHS 184
XVII. SOME PHILOSOPHERS 192
XVIII. HOW I DISCOVERED HANAKO 207
XIX. SARDOU AND KAWAKAMI 217
XX. AN EXPERIENCE 223
XXI. AMERICAN AFFAIRS 232
XXII. GAB 250
XXIII. THE VALUE OF A NAME 267
XXIV. HOW M. CLARETIE INDUCED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK 273
ILLUSTRATIONS
LOIE FULLER _Frontispiece_
PAGE
LOIE FULLER IN HER ORIGINAL SERPENTINE DRESS 29
THE DANCE OF FLAME 59
LOIE FULLER AND HER MOTHER 75
THE DANCE OF THE LILY 93
LOIE FULLER AND ALEXANDRE DUMAS 107
M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION, AT JUVISY 115
THE DANCE OF FLOWERS 139
THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY 143
DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA” 159
THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY 181
LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSY 193
LOIE FULLER’S ROOM AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE 211
GAB 253
THE DANCE OF FIRE 261
THE DANCE OF FEAR FROM “SALOME” 283
FIFTEEN YEARS OF A
DANCER’S LIFE
I
MY STAGE ENTRANCE
“Whose baby is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, anyway, don’t leave it here. Take it away.”
Thereupon one of the two speakers seized the little thing and brought
it into the dancing-hall.
It was an odd little baggage, with long, black, curly hair, and it
weighed barely six pounds.
The two gentlemen went round the room and asked each lady if the child
were hers. None claimed it.
Meanwhile two women entered the room that served as dressing-room and
turned directly toward the bed where, as a last resort, the baby had
been put. One of them asked, just as a few minutes before the man in
the dancing-hall had asked:
“Whose child is this?”
The other woman replied:
“For Heaven’s sake what is it doing there? This is Lillie’s baby. It is
only six weeks old and she brought it here with her. This really is no
place for a baby of that age. Look out; you will break its neck if you
hold it that way. The child is only six weeks old, I tell you.”
At this moment a woman ran from the other end of the hall. She uttered
a cry and grasped the child. Blushing deeply she prepared to take it
away, when one of the dancers said to her:
“She has made her entrance into society. Now she will have to stay
here.”
From that moment until the end of the ball the baby was the chief
attraction of the evening. She cooed, laughed, waved her little hands
and was passed round the hall until the last of the dancers was gone.
I was that baby. Let me explain how such an adventure came about.
It occurred in January, during a very severe winter. The thermometer
registered forty degrees below zero. At that time my father, my mother,
and my brothers lived on a farm about sixteen miles from Chicago.
When the occasion of my appearance in the world was approaching, the
temperature went so low that it was impossible to heat our house
properly. My mother’s health naturally made my father anxious. He
went accordingly to the village of Fullersburg, the population of
which was composed almost exclusively of cousins and kinsmen, and made
an arrangement with the proprietor of the only public-house of the
place. In the general room there was a huge cast-iron stove. This was,
in the whole countryside, the only stove which seemed to give out an
appreciable heat. They transformed the bar into a sleeping-room and
there it was that I first saw light. On that day the frost was thick
on the window panes and the water froze in dishes two yards from the
famous stove.
I am positive of all these details, for I caught a cold at the very
moment of my birth, which I have never got rid of. On my father’s side
I had a sturdy ancestry. I therefore came into life with a certain
power of resistance, and if I have not been able to recover altogether
from the effects of this initial cold, I have had the strength at all
events to withstand them.
A month later we had returned to the farm, and the saloon resumed its
customary appearance. I have mentioned that it was the only tavern in
town, and, as we occupied the main room, we had inflicted considerable
hardship upon the villagers, who were deprived of their entertainment
for more than four weeks.
When I was about six weeks old a lot of people stopped one evening in
front of our house. They were going to give a surprise party at a house
about twenty miles from ours.
They were picking up everybody _en route_, and they stopped at our
house to include my parents. They gave them five minutes in which
to get ready. My father was an intimate friend of the people whom
they were going to surprise; and, furthermore, as he was one of the
best musicians of the neighbourhood he could not get out of going, as
without him the company would have no chance of dancing. He accordingly
consented to join the party. Then they insisted that my mother go, too.
“What will she do with the baby? Who will feed her?”
There was only one thing to do in these circumstances--take baby too.
My mother declined at first, alleging that she had no time to make the
necessary preparations, but the jubilant crowd would accept no refusal.
They bundled me up in a coverlet and I was packed into a sleigh, which
bore me to the ball.
When we arrived they supposed that, like a well-brought-up baby,
I should sleep all night, and they put me on the bed in a room
temporarily transformed into a dressing-room. They covered me carefully
and left me to myself.
There it was that the two gentlemen quoted at the beginning of
this chapter discovered the baby agitating feet and hands in every
direction. Her only clothing was a yellow flannel garment and a calico
petticoat, which made her look like a poor little waif. You may imagine
my mother’s feelings when she saw her daughter make an appearance in
such a costume.
That at all events is how I made my debut, at the age of six weeks.
I made it because I could not do otherwise. In all my life everything
that I have done has had that one starting-point; I have never been
able to do anything else.
I have likewise continued not to bother much about my personal
appearance.
II
MY APPEARANCE ON A REAL STAGE AT TWO YEARS AND A HALF
When I was a very small girl the president of the Chicago Progressive
Lyceum, where my parents and I went every Sunday, called on my mother
one afternoon, and congratulated her on the appearance I had made the
preceding Sunday at the Lyceum. As my mother did not understand what
he meant, I raised myself from the carpet, on which I was playing with
some toys, and I explained:
“I forgot to tell you, mamma, that I recited my piece at the Lyceum
last Sunday.”
“Recited your piece?” repeated my mother. “What does she mean?”
“What!” said the president, “haven’t you heard that Loie recited some
poetry last Sunday?”
My mother was quite overcome with surprise. I threw myself upon her and
fairly smothered her with kisses, saying,
“I forgot to tell you. I recited my piece.”
“Oh, yes,” said the president, “and she was a great success, too.”
My mother asked for explanations.
The president then told her: “During an interval between the exercises,
Loie climbed up on the platform, made a pretty bow as she had seen
orators do, and then, kneeling down, she recited a little prayer. What
this prayer was I don’t remember.”
But my mother interrupted him.
“Oh, I know. It is the prayer she says every evening when I put her to
bed.”
And I had recited that in a Sunday School thronged by free-thinkers!
“After that Loie arose, and saluted the audience once more. Then
immense difficulties arose. She did not dare to descend the steps in
the usual way. So she sat down and let herself slide from one step to
another until she reached the floor of the house. During this exercise
the whole hall laughed loudly at the sight of her little yellow flannel
petticoat, and her copper-toed boots beating the air. But Loie got on
her feet again, and, hearing the laughter, raised her right hand and
said in a shrill voice: ‘Hush! Keep quiet. I am going to recite my
poem.’ She would not stir until silence was restored. Loie then recited
her poem as she had promised, and returned to her seat with the air of
having done the most natural thing in the world.”
The following Sunday I went as usual to the Lyceum with my brothers. My
mother came, too, in the course of the afternoon, and took her seat at
the end of a settee among the invited guests who took no part in our
exercises. She was thinking how much she had missed in not being there
the preceding Sunday to witness my “success,” when she saw a woman rise
and approach the platform. The woman began to read a little paper which
she held in her hand. After she had finished reading my mother heard
her say:
“And now we are going to have the pleasure of hearing our little friend
Loie Fuller recite a poem entitled: ‘Mary had a little Lamb.’”
My mother, absolutely amazed, was unable to stir or to say a word. She
merely gasped:
“How can this little girl be so foolish! She will never be able to
recite that. She has only heard it once.”
In a sort of daze she saw me rise from my seat, slowly walk to the
steps and climb upon the platform, helping myself up with feet and
hands. Once there I turned around and took in my audience. I made a
pretty courtesy, and began in a voice which resounded throughout the
hall. I repeated the little poem in so serious a manner that, despite
the mistakes I must have made, the spirit of it was intelligible and
impressed the audience. I did not stop once. Then I courtesied again
and everybody applauded me wildly. I went back to the stairs and let
myself slide down to the bottom, as I had done the preceding Sunday.
Only this time no one made fun of me.
When my mother rejoined me, some time after, she was still pale and
trembling. She asked me why I had not informed her of what I was going
to do. I replied that I could not let her know about a thing that I did
not know myself.
“Where have you learned this?”
“I don’t know, mamma.”
She said then that I must have heard it read by my brother; and I
remembered that it was so. From this time on I was always reciting
poems, wherever I happened to be. I used to make little speeches, but
in prose, for I employed the words that were natural for me, contenting
myself with translating the spirit of the things that I recited without
bothering much over word-by-word renderings. With my firm and very
tenacious memory, I needed then only to hear a poem once to recite it,
from beginning to end, without making a single mistake. I have always
had a wonderful memory. I have proved it repeatedly by unexpectedly
taking parts of which I did not know a word the day before the first
performance.
It was thus, for instance, when I played the part of Marguerite
Gauthier in _La Dame aux Camélias_ with only four hours to learn the
lines.
On the Sunday of which I have been speaking, my mother experienced the
first of the nervous shocks that might have warned her, had she been
able to understand, that she was destined to become the prey of a
dreadful disease, which would never leave her.
From the spring which followed my first appearance at the
Folies-Bergère until the time of her death she accompanied me in all
my travels. As I was writing this, some days before her end, I could
hear her stir or speak, for she was in the next room with two nurses
watching over her night and day. While I was working I would go to her
from time to time, rearrange her pillows a little, lift her, give her
medicine, or some little thing to eat, put out her candle, open the
window a moment, and then I would return to my task.
After the day of my debut at the Chicago Progressive Lyceum I continued
my dramatic career. The incidents of my performances would suffice to
fill several volumes. For without interruption, adventures succeeded
one another to such an extent that I shall never undertake the work of
describing them all.
I should say that when this first theatrical incident took place I was
just two and a half years old.
III
HOW I CREATED THE SERPENTINE DANCE
In 1890 I was on a tour in London with my mother. A manager engaged me
to go to the United States and take the principal part in a new play
entitled, “Quack, M.D.” In this piece I was to play with two American
actors, Mr. Will Rising and Mr. Louis de Lange, who has since then been
mysteriously assassinated.
I bought what costumes I needed and took them with me. On our arrival
in New York the rehearsals began. While we were at work, the author got
the idea of adding to the play a scene in which Dr. Quack hypnotised a
young widow. Hypnotism at that moment was very much to the fore in New
York. To give the scene its full effect he needed very sweet music and
indeterminate illumination. We asked the electrician of the theatre
to put green lamps along the footlights and the orchestra leader to
play a subdued air. The great question next was to decide what costume
I was to wear. I was unable to buy a new one. I had spent all the
money advanced me for my costumes and, not knowing what else to do, I
undertook to run over my wardrobe in the hope of finding something that
would be fit to wear.
In vain. I could not find a thing.
All at once, however, I noticed at the bottom of one of my trunks a
small casket, a very small casket, which I opened. Out of it I drew a
light silk material, comparable to a spider’s web. It was a skirt, very
full and very broad at the bottom.
I let the skirt dangle in my fingers, and before this little heap of
fragile texture I lingered in reverie for some time. The past, a past
very near and yet already far away, was summoned up before me.
It had happened in London some months before.
A friend had asked me to dine with several officers who were being
wined and dined just before leaving for India, where they were under
orders to rejoin their regiment. The officers were in handsome
uniforms, the women in low dresses, and they were pretty, as only
English women are.
At table I was seated between two of the youngest officers. They had
very long necks and wore extremely high collars. At first I felt
myself greatly overawed in the presence of people so imposing as my
neighbours. They looked snobbish and uncommunicative. Presently I
discovered that they were much more timid than I, and that we should
never be better acquainted unless one or the other of us resolved
to overcome his own nervousness and, at the same time, that of his
companions.
But my young officers were afraid only in the presence of women. When I
told them I hoped they might never be engaged in a war, and especially
that they might never have to do any killing, one of them answered me
very simply:
“I fancy I can serve as a target as well as any other man, and
certainly the people who draw on me will understand that war is on.”
They were essentially and purely English. Nothing could unsettle them,
provoke them or change them in the least. At our table they seemed
timid. They were nevertheless men of the kind who go into the presence
of death just as one encounters a friend in the street.
At this period I did not understand the English as I have subsequently
come to know them.
I left the table without remembering to ask the names of my neighbours,
and when I thought about the matter it was too late.
I recalled, however, that one of them took the trouble, in the course
of our conversation, to learn the name of the hotel at which I was
staying. I had quite forgotten the incident when, some time after, I
received a little casket, addressed to me from India.
It contained a skirt of very thin white silk, of a peculiar shape, and
some pieces of silk gauze. The box was not more than sixteen inches
long and was hardly taller than a cigar box. It contained nothing else,
not a line, not a card. How odd! From whom could it come?
I knew no one in India. All at once, however, I remembered the dinner
and the young officers. I was greatly taken with my pretty box, but I
was far from suspecting that it contained the little seed from which an
Aladdin’s lamp was destined to spring for my benefit.
This, of course, was the casket which I had just discovered in my trunk.
Deep in thought I stooped and gathered up the soft, silky stuff. I put
on the Hindu skirt, the skirt sent me by my two young officers, those
young men who must by this time have “served as targets” somewhere out
there in the jungle, for I never heard from them again.
My robe, which was destined to become a triumphal robe, was at least a
half a yard too long. Thereupon I raised the girdle and so shaped for
myself a sort of empire robe, pinning the skirt to a décolleté bodice.
The robe looked thoroughly original, perhaps even a little ridiculous.
It was entirely suitable for the hypnotism scene, which we did not take
very seriously.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER IN HER ORIGINAL SERPENTINE DRESS
_Photo_ _Sarony_]
We “tried the play on the dog” before offering it to the New York
public, and I made my debut as a dancer at a theatre in a small
city of which the average New Yorker had hardly heard. No one, I
suppose, outside its boundaries took the slightest interest in what
went on in that city. At the end of the play, on the evening of the
first presentation, we gave our hypnotism scene. The stage scenery,
representing a garden, was flooded with pale green light. Dr. Quack
made a mysterious entrance and then began his work of suggestion. The
orchestra played a melancholy air very softly, and I endeavoured to
make myself as light as possible, in order to give the impression of a
fluttering figure obedient to the doctor’s orders.
He raised his arms. I raised mine. Under the influence of suggestion,
entranced--so, at least, it looked--with my gaze held by his, I
followed his every motion. My robe was so long that I was continually
stepping upon it, and mechanically I held it up with both hands and
raised my arms aloft, all the while that I continued to flit around the
stage like a winged spirit.
There was a sudden exclamation from the house:
“It’s a butterfly! A butterfly!”
I turned on my steps, running from one end of the stage to the other,
and a second exclamation followed:
“It’s an orchid!”
To my great astonishment sustained applause burst forth. The doctor
all the time was gliding around the stage, with quickening steps, and
I followed him faster and faster. At last, transfixed in a state of
ecstasy, I let myself drop at his feet, completely enveloped in a
cloud of the light material.
The audience encored the scene, and then encored it again--so loudly
and so often that we had to come back twenty times, or more.
We were on the road about six weeks. Then came our opening in one of
the New York suburbs, where Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who has since become
a famous impresario, owned a theatre.
The play was unsuccessful, and even our hypnotism scene was not strong
enough to save it from the attacks of the critics. No New York theatre
cared to give it house room, and our company broke up.
The day after this opening at Mr. Hammerstein’s theatre a local
newspaper of the little community in which we had successfully
presented this “Quack, M.D.,” which the New York managers refused to
touch, wrote a ridiculously enthusiastic article on what it called my
“acting” in the hypnotism scene. But as the play had not “made good,”
no one thought that it would be possible to take a single scene out of
it, and I was left without an engagement.
Nevertheless, even in New York, and in spite of the failure of the
play, I personally secured some good press notices. The newspapers were
in agreement in announcing that I had a remarkable string to my bow--if
I only knew how to make the most of it.
I had brought my robe home to sew up a little tear. After reading
these comforting lines I leaped from the bed and arrayed only in my
night-gown, I put the garment on and looked at myself in a large glass,
to make sure of what I had done the evening before.
The mirror was placed just opposite the windows. The long yellow
curtains were drawn and through them the sun shed into the room an
amber light, which enveloped me completely and illumined my gown,
giving a translucent effect. Golden reflections played in the folds of
the sparkling silk, and in this light my body was vaguely revealed in
shadowy contour. This was a moment of intense emotion. Unconsciously I
realised that I was in the presence of a great discovery, one which was
destined to open the path which I have since followed.
Gently, almost religiously, I set the silk in motion, and I saw that
I had obtained undulations of a character heretofore unknown. I had
created a new dance. Why had I never thought of it before?
Two of my friends, Mrs. Hoffmann and her daughter Mrs. Hossack, came
from time to time to see how I was getting on with my discoveries.
When I found an action or a pose which looked as if it might amount
to something they would say: “Hold that. Try it again.” Finally I
reached a point where each movement of the body was expressed in the
folds of silk, in a play of colours in the draperies that could be
mathematically and systematically calculated.
The length and size of my silk skirt would constrain me to repeat the
same motion several times as a means of giving this motion its special
and distinctive aim. I obtained a spiral effect by holding my arms
aloft while I kept whirling, to right and then to left, and I continued
this movement until the spiral design was established. Head, hands
and feet followed the evolutions of the body and the robe. It is very
difficult, however, to describe this part of my dance. You have to see
it and feel it. It is too complicated for realisation in words.
Another dancer will obtain more delicate effects, with more graceful
motions, but they will not be the same. To be the same they must be
created in the same spirit. One thing original, though up to a certain
point it is not so good as an imitation, is in reality worth much more.
I studied each of my characteristic motions, and at last had twelve
of them. I classed them as Dances No. 1, No. 2, and so on. The first
was to be given under a blue light, the second under red light, the
third under a yellow light. For illumination of my dances I intended to
have a lantern with coloured glass in front of the lens. I wanted to
dance the last one in total darkness with a single ray of yellow light
crossing the stage.
When I had finished studying my dances, I went in search of a manager.
I was acquainted with them all. During my career as singer and actress
I had served all of them more or less frequently.
I was, however, hardly prepared for the reception which they gave me.
The first one laughed me in the face as he said:
“You a dancer! Well, that’s too good! When I want you for a theatrical
part I’ll look you up with pleasure; but as for dancing, good heavens!
When I engage a dancer she will have to be a star. The only ones I know
are Sylvia Gray and Lettie Lind in London. You cannot outclass them,
take my word for it. Good-evening.”
He had lost all respect for my perspicacity and he made fun of the idea
of my being a dancer.
Mrs. Hoffmann had come with me, and was waiting in the lobby, where
I rejoined her. She noted at once how pale and nervous I was. When
we left the theatre it was night. We walked in silence through dark
streets. Neither spoke. Some months later, however, my friend told me
that all that evening I never stopped emitting little groans like those
of a wounded animal. She saw that I was cut to the very quick.
Next day I had to continue my search, for necessity was spurring me on.
Mrs. Hoffmann offered me the privilege of coming to live with her and
her daughter--an offer which I accepted gratefully, not having the
faintest idea when and how I could ever repay her.
Some time later I had to give in; since I was known as an actress,
nothing could hurt me more than to try to become a dancer.
One manager went so far as to tell me that two years of absence from
New York had caused the public completely to forget me, and that, in
trying to recall myself to their memory, I should seem to be inflicting
ancient history on them. As I had then just passed my twentieth
birthday I was extremely irritated by that insinuation, and I thought:
“Would it then be necessary for me painfully to build up a reputation
and to look old to prove that I _was_ young to-day?”
Unable to restrain my feelings any longer, I told the manager what I
thought.
“Hell,” he replied, “it isn’t age that counts. It’s the time the public
has known you, and you have become too well known as an actress to come
back here as a dancer.”
Everywhere I encountered the same answer, and finally I became
desperate. I was aware that I had discovered something unique, but
I was far from imagining, even in a daydream, that I had hold of a
principle capable of revolutionising a branch of æsthetics.
I am astounded when I see the relations that form and colour assume.
The scientific admixture of chemically composed colours, heretofore
unknown, fills me with admiration, and I stand before them like a miner
who has discovered a vein of gold, and who completely forgets himself
as he contemplates the wealth of the world before him.
But to return to my troubles.
A manager who, some time before, had done his best to engage me as a
singer, and who had absolutely refused to consider me as a dancer, gave
a careless consent, thanks to the intervention of a common friend, to
an interview at which I was to show him my dances.
I took my robe, which made a neat little bundle, and I set out for the
theatre.
Mrs. Hoffmann’s daughter accompanied me. We went in by the stage
entrance. A single gas jet lighted the empty stage. In the house, which
was equally dark, the manager, seated in one of the orchestra chairs,
looked at us with an air of boredom, almost of contempt. There was no
dressing-room for my change of clothing, not even a piano to accompany
me. But the opportunity was a precious one, all the same. Without delay
I put on my costume, there on the stage and over my dress. Then I
hummed an air and started in to dance very gently in the obscurity. The
manager came nearer and nearer, and finally ascended the platform.
His eyes glistened.
I continued to dance, disappearing in the darkness at the rear of
the stage, then returning toward the gas jet. Finally I lifted a part
of my robe over my shoulders, made a kind of cloud which enveloped
me completely and then fell, a wavering mass of fluffy silk, at the
manager’s feet. After that I arose and waited in keenest anxiety to
hear what he would say.
He said nothing. Visions of success were crowding upon each other in
his brain.
Finally he broke his silence and gave my dance the name of “The
Serpentine Dance.”
“There is the name that will go with it,” he said, “and I have just the
music that you need for that dance. Come to my private office. I am
going to play it for you.”
Then for the first time I heard an air which later became very popular,
“Au Loin du Bal.”
A new company was rehearsing “Uncle Celestin” at the theatre. This
company was to go on the road for several weeks before playing in New
York. My new manager offered me, for this tour, an engagement at fifty
dollars a week. I accepted, making it a condition that I should be
featured on the placards, in order to regain in a measure the prestige
I had lost.
A few days after I joined the company and made my first appearance
at a distance from New York. For six weeks I appeared before country
audiences, feverishly counting the hours until I should at last have my
chance in the big city.
During this tour, contrary to the conditions I had imposed, I was not
featured. The posters did not even announce me, and yet my dance,
which was given during an interval and without coloured lights, was
successful from the first.
A month and a half later in Brooklyn its success was phenomenal. The
week following I made my debut in New York, at what was one of the
prettiest theatres in town.
There I was able for the first time to realise my dances just as I had
conceived them; with darkness in the house and coloured lights on the
stage. The house was packed and the audience positively enthusiastic.
I danced my first, my second, my third. When I had finished the whole
house was standing up.
Among the spectators was one of my oldest friends, Marshall P. Wilder,
the little American humourist. He recognised me and called my name in
such a way that everybody could hear it, for they had neglected to put
it on the programme! When the audience discovered that the new dancer
was its old favourite comedian, the little soubrette of a former day,
it gave her an ovation such as, I suppose, never another human being
has received.
They called out, “Three cheers for the butterfly! Three cheers for the
orchid, the cloud, the butterfly! Three cheers!” And the enthusiasm
passed all bounds. The applause resounded in my ears like the ringing
of bells. I was overcome with joy and gratitude.
Next morning I arose early to read the papers. Every New York newspaper
devoted from a column to a page to “Loie Fuller’s Wonderful Creation.”
Numerous illustrations of my dances accompanied the articles.
I buried my face in my pillow and shed every tear that, for a long
time, had lurked in my discouraged soul. For how many months had I
waited for this good luck!
In one of these articles a critic wrote “Loie Fuller had risen from
her ashes.” Next day the whole city was plastered with lithographs,
reproduced from one of my photographs, representing me larger than
life, with letters a foot high announcing: “The Serpentine Dance! The
Serpentine Dance!” But there was one circumstance came near giving me
heart failure. My name was nowhere mentioned.
I went to the theatre and reminded the manager that I had accepted the
modest salary he offered on condition that I should be featured. I
hardly understood when he remarked drily that he could not do more for
me.
I asked him then whether he supposed that I was going to continue
dancing under such conditions.
“Nothing can compel you to do so,” answered the manager. “In any case,
I have taken my precautions in case you do not care to keep on.”
I left the theatre in desperation, not knowing what to do. My head
swam. I went home and consulted my friends.
They advised me to go and see another manager, and, if I secured an
engagement, simply to drop the other theatre.
I went to the ---- Theatre, but on the way I began to cry, and I was in
tears when I arrived there. I asked to see the manager, and told him my
story.
He offered me one hundred and fifty dollars a week. I was to make my
first appearance at once, and sign a contract dating from the next day.
On reaching home I asked if nothing had come for me from the other
theatre.
Nothing had come.
That evening my friends went to the theatre, where they saw a poster
announcing, for the following evening, the initial appearance in the
“Serpentine” of Miss ---- ----. When they told me that piece of news I
understood that my six weeks on the road had been profitably employed
by my manager and one of the chorus girls to meet just this situation,
and I understood, too, why my name was not mentioned on the first
posters.
They had stolen my dance.
I felt myself overcome, dead--more dead, as it seemed to me, than I
shall be at the moment when my last hour comes. My very life depended
on this success, and now others were going to reap the benefit. I
cannot describe my despair. I was incapable of words, of gestures. I
was dumb and paralysed.
Next day, when I went to sign my new contract, the manager received
me rather coldly. He was willing to sign only if I would give him the
privilege of cancelling at his own discretion. He felt that my imitator
at the Casino, announced for the same day, would diminish greatly the
interest that would be felt in what he ironically called my “discovery.”
I was obliged to accept the conditions which he imposed, but I
experienced all the while an access of rage and grief as I saw in what
a barefaced manner they had stolen my invention.
Heartbroken, with my courage oozing, I made my appearance at the
Madison Square Theatre and, to my astonishment, to my immense
satisfaction, I saw that the theatre had to turn people away. And it
was that way as long as my engagement lasted.
As for the other theatre, after three weeks of featuring my imitator,
it was obliged to close its doors to rehearse a new opera.
IV
HOW I CAME TO PARIS
A little while after my appearance at the Madison Square Theatre I was
asked to dance for the benefit of a charity at the German theatre in
New York. I had forgotten all about my promise until the day of the
performance, when a card arrived to call it to my mind. I had neglected
to ask my manager’s permission to appear on that evening, not thinking
that he would refuse to grant the privilege of my participating in a
philanthropic affair.
A short time before there had taken place the first part of a painful
incident which was destined to rupture the pleasant relations
subsisting between the management of the Madison Square and myself. My
manager’s associate had asked me as a great favour to come to open a
ball given by some friends in his honour. Delighted to be of service
to him, I readily agreed to do so. When I asked him the date of this
affair he told me not to bother about that.
It was just then that I asked permission to dance at the German theatre
for the benefit of an actress who was ill. The manager consented. At
the German theatre they had engaged a Roumanian orchestra for me.
The leader of this orchestra, Mr. Sohmers, an enthusiastic man, as
the Roumanians are apt to be, came to see me after I had danced and
foretold for me the wonderful artistic success which I was sure to meet
with in Europe. He advised me to go to Paris, where an artistically
inclined public would give my dances the reception they deserved. From
that moment on this became a fixed idea with me--to dance in Paris.
Then the manager of the German theatre proposed to me a tour abroad,
beginning with Berlin.
I promised to think the matter over and acquaint him with my decision.
Some days later the famous ball took place which my manager’s associate
had asked me to open. I went to it.
They took us, a friend who accompanied me, and myself, into a little
drawing-room where they begged me to wait until some one should come
and fetch me for my appearance on the stage. More than an hour passed.
Finally a gentleman came to tell me that everything was ready. Through
a corridor I reached the platform, which had been erected at the top
of the ball-room. It was terribly dark, and the only light perceptible
was the little ray that filtered through from one of my lanterns that
was imperfectly closed. The hall looked totally empty. I saw, when
I had taken my bearings, that the whole audience was disposed in
the galleries, forming a balcony half-way up the room. The orchestra
finished its overture and I began to dance. After having danced three
times, as I was accustomed to do at the theatre, I returned to the
scene to acknowledge the applause and I saw before me in luminous
letters a sign with the words: “Don’t think Club.”
That looked queer to me, but I did not attach much importance to it.
I bowed again to the magnificently gowned women and the men, who were
all in sombre black, and then, walking through the same passage way, I
once more reached the dressing-room, where I put on my outdoor clothes
and left. At the door I entered the carriage that had brought me there,
and while we were on our way home I kept wondering what the Don’t Think
Club could be.
That worried me in spite of myself.
The next morning my friend brought me a newspaper, in which I found on
the first page a long article headed:
“LOIE FULLER OPENS THE DON’T THINK CLUB.”
There followed a description of the affair and of the orgies which took
place there. The article had been written with a deliberate purpose of
creating a scandal. I was exasperated beyond measure. I had gone there
merely to please my manager, and the humiliation inflicted upon me
wounded me deeply.
Possibly he thought that I would never know where I had been. A single
newspaper might print something about the affair; but most probably my
manager thought it would never come to my notice. No newspaper men had
been invited to the performance. There was one guest, a very little man
but with a great reputation, who found himself among the invited, and
he wrote the scandalous article, so I have been told.
I have since had my revenge, a terrible revenge; for this man, then
at the climax of his career, so mismanaged his affairs and those of
others, that he was imprisoned.
“Everybody is blaming him for the article,” my manager explained to me
when I reproached him for having dragged me to this club.
That was his only excuse. He thought he was lessening the insult
by offering me more money. This offer so increased my anger that I
tendered my resignation. I felt in no wise under obligation to a man
who I thought had morally lost all right to consideration. This was the
reason for my leaving, never to return.
The notion of going to Paris possessed me after that more completely
than before. I wanted to go to a city where, as I had been told,
educated people would like my dancing and would accord it a place in
the realm of art.
I was making at this time one hundred and fifty dollars a week and I
had just been offered five hundred. I decided, nevertheless, to sign
a contract with the manager of the German theatre that guaranteed me
sixty-five dollars instead of five hundred. But the objective, after a
tour in Europe, was Paris!
While I was dancing in New York I had to begin to invent special robes
for my new dances. These were just being made and, when I was about to
leave for Europe, they were ready.
The manager of the German Theatre had gone ahead and had reserved
berths for us on one of the steamers.
After taking leave of my friends I was still full of hope and ambition.
My mother in vain tried to share my feelings; she could not avoid
painful misgivings. As for me, I wanted to think only of the good
things that awaited, and to forget all the past annoyances.
During the voyage an evening entertainment was organised for the
benefit of the seamen and I agreed to dance. A stage was arranged by
the bridge. There with the sea for a background and with the coloured
lights used for signalling as the media of illumination, I tried for
the first time a series of new dances, each with a special gown.
The enthusiasm of passengers and crew knew no bounds and I felt that I
had taken my first step in the conquest of a new world.
We landed in Germany. My manager came to meet us and took us to Berlin.
But, to my great annoyance, I found that I was not to make my initial
appearance for a month, and I could not discover in what city I was to
make it.
That meant a month of inactivity.
Finally I learned that I was to make my debut, not at the Opera as my
manager had promised, but in a music hall. The Opera was closed, and
the music hall was the only place where I could dance.
In that event I would dance only my first dance and would exhibit only
a single gown, just as I had done in New York. I then chose three of
my numbers and prepared myself for my appearance. But this debut was
made without personal interest. In America the best theatres offered me
engagements on much better terms than those I had to accept in Europe.
In Berlin I was obliged to appear where my New York manager wished.
If, before signing the contract, he had told me where I should have
to dance I should have declined. But when the time for my appearance
was at hand I was without resources and quite at his mercy. To cap the
climax my mother fell seriously ill.
At the time of which I am writing cholera had just broken out at
Hamburg. My mother’s illness came on so suddenly that it was thought
she was stricken with cholera. Everybody at the hotel was frightened,
and we were obliged to take my poor mother to the cholera hospital.
All these circumstances, conjoined with frightfully trying weather,
put me in bad shape for the struggle. I renounced everything, my pride,
my highest hopes, and I started in assiduously to gain our livelihood.
But I was disabled and without courage.
After a month my German manager informed me he did not care to continue
my contract. He was going back to the United States with a company that
he had come for the express purpose of engaging in Germany. It seemed
clear to me that his only motive in bringing me to Europe had been to
procure the means with which to engage this new company and take it
back with him. He travelled with his wife, a pretty American woman, who
had become a close friend of mine, and who reproached him most bitterly
on my account.
Our manager left Berlin with his company, leaving me with only just
enough money to pay my bills at the hotel when I had completed
the contract that held me to the music hall in Berlin. I then had
absolutely no engagement in sight. I learned that he was getting ten
thousand marks--about $2,500--a month for me. And yet he had given me
only about $300 a month. What was I to do? My appearance in Berlin had
been deplorable and was likely to have an unfortunate influence on my
whole career in Europe. My purse was empty, my mother ill. We had not
the slightest hope of an engagement and we had no one to help us.
A theatrical agent, an unknown man at that time, who has since become
a theatrical manager, Mr. Marten Stein, came to see me, and I tried to
continue at the music hall where I was dancing. I was obliged to make
concessions to keep going a week or two more, to get money enough to go
away and to look for a new engagement. I kept thinking more than ever
of Paris. If I could only go there!
In these circumstances Mr. Marten Stein secured for me a dozen
performances in one of the beer gardens at Altona, the well-known
pleasure resort near Hamburg. I earned there several hundred marks,
which allowed us to go to Cologne, where I had to dance in a circus
between an educated donkey and an elephant that played the organ. My
humiliation was complete. Since then, however, occasions have not been
lacking when I have realised that the proximity of trained horses and
music-mad elephants is less humiliating than intercourse with some
human beings.
Finally I left for Paris.
To economise as closely as possible we had to travel third class. But
what did that matter? That was only a detail. I was going to Paris to
succeed there or to sink into obscurity.
V
MY APPEARANCE AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE
Paris! Paris! At last Paris!
It seemed to me that I was saved and that all my troubles were coming
to an end. Paris was the port after storm, the harbour of refuge after
the furious rage of life’s tempest. And I thought in my simplicity that
I was going to conquer this great Paris that I had so long coveted.
In America I had often danced on important stages during the intervals
between operatic acts, and I fancied that it would be the same in Paris.
Accordingly upon my arrival, which occurred in October, 1892, even
before going to my room at the Grand Hotel, I instructed my agent, Mr.
Marten Stein, to call upon M. Gailhard, manager of the National Academy
of Music and Dancing, to whom I had written from Germany to propose my
dancing at his theatre.
National Academy of Dancing!
I still believed, in my simple soul, in names. I fancied that an
institution of this sort ought to be receptive of innovations in
dancing.
My illusion, alas! was to be short-lived. Mr. Stein returned looking
very downcast. He had been received by M. Pedro Gailhard, but that
gentleman, in the deep voice which he has skilfully developed and which
for twenty-one years has awakened the echoes of the directors’ office
at the Opera, did not conceal from him the fact that he had no great
desire to engage me.
“Let her show me her dances if she cares to,” he said, “but all I
can do, in case these dances please me, would be, on condition of
her performing nowhere else, to guarantee her a maximum of four
performances a month.”