life, towards new times. One feels oneself leap for joy, like the dog
that precedes one in quest of the master of the house. This is the
impression that you get when you reach the gate, after having walked
along an avenue that is not very wide and is lined with newly-planted
trees. You arrive at a fence, a very ordinary fence, that incloses
nothing and which is there, I fancy, only to prevent wandering animals
from getting in and those of the household from getting out. The moment
you draw the latch, which causes a bell to resound in the distance, a
dog rushes wildly from the house and gives you a most joyous welcome.
Then Rodin appears in his turn. In his rather unwieldy body and his
features, which are a trifle heavy, great kindliness and sweetness of
disposition are evident. He walks slowly. His gestures are kindly, his
voice kindly. Everything about him breathes kindliness.
He receives you by extending both hands, very simply and with a
friendly smile. Sometimes a movement of the eyes and some words to
which you pay no great attention may hint that the moment has perhaps
not been well chosen for a visit, but his instinctive good nature gets
the upper hand. He places himself by your side and shows you the path
that leads to the top of the hill.
The panorama seems so extraordinary that you pause to take it in.
The temple stands at your right, the landscape spreads itself before
your feet, and if you turn your glance to the left you note a forest of
ancient trees.
Then we look at Rodin. He breathes deeply in silence while he admires
the landscape. He surveys everything with such an air of tender
interest that you realise he is passionately attached to this spot.
His temple, too, is wonderful, so wonderful that this accessory easily
becomes the central feature in the landscape.
Rodin opens the temple door gently and then in a friendly way bids you
enter. There truly silence is golden. Words are powerless. We know that
we are unable to express in words some of our sensations, unless as a
preliminary we have experienced them profoundly.
One ought to see Rodin at Meudon to appreciate him at his true value.
One should see the man, his surroundings and his work, to understand
the breadth and depth of his personality.
The visit of which I am writing occurred in April, 1902. I had
taken with me a well-known scholar--he has since died under tragic
circumstances, having been run over by a carriage--and his wife, who
was not less scholarly than he. They had never been at Meudon before,
and they were not acquainted with Rodin. They were just as simple as
the master himself. When I introduced them not a word passed. They
grasped each others’ hands, and looked at each other. Then, when we
left, they grasped each others’ hands again, and held them for some
little time. That was all.
Yet, no, that was not all. In the looks they exchanged there was a
world of intelligence, appreciation, comprehension. Rodin, with his
peculiar figure, his long beard, and his eyes that gaze right through
you, was matched, as regards simplicity, by this husband and wife. The
former, brown, tall, and thin, the latter, slight and blonde, had alike
a single aim, that of not making themselves conspicuous.
In the temple there was silence--a silence profound, admiring, almost
religious, the effect of which I should like to be able to reproduce.
Rodin led us to a work of which he was particularly fond. Motionless
and mute, the two visitors looked at the masterpiece before them. Rodin
in his turn looked at them, fondling the marble and awaiting from them
some sign of approbation or of comprehension, a word, a movement of the
head or the hand.
Thus, from work to work, from room to room--for there are three studios
in Rodin’s temple--we made our way, slowly, silently, our artistic
pilgrimage taking on something of the significance of a communion.
In the two hours we passed in the temple hardly ten words were spoken.
When the inspection of the three studios was finished, a gentleman and
a lady walking across the garden came towards us, and Rodin, in a very
simple way, mentioned the names of M. and Mme. Carrière, the great
painter and his wife. M. Carrière and his wife are also as free from
ostentation as Rodin himself and the pair of scholars who accompanied
me.
We left. In the carriage that took us back I asked my friends if they
could describe their impressions, their sensations. They replied in the
negative. Yet on their faces there were evidences of great happiness,
and I knew they had appreciated and understood Rodin. These two people
are known throughout the world. They are the greatest chemists of our
day, peers of the celebrated Berthelot. Since then the husband, like
Berthelot, has gone to his last rest and the wife carries on their
common activities. I would give a good deal to be able adequately to
express the admiration I feel for her, but out of deference to her own
desire for simplicity and self-effacement I must not even mention her
name.
So far as I myself am concerned, I may say that Rodin is, like the
great master, Anatole France, one of the men in France who have
impressed me most strongly.
Anatole France has been so kind as to say some things about me at the
beginning of this volume--words exquisitely expressed, and of which,
although far too laudatory, I am naturally very proud.
I am not less proud of Rodin’s good opinion. This opinion I have
noted in a letter the great sculptor wrote to one of my friends.
Not for reasons of vanity do I reproduce it here, but because of
the simplicity of its form and in grateful remembrance of the great
pleasure it caused me.
“Mme. Loie Fuller, whom I have admired for a number of years, is, to my
mind, a woman of genius, with all the resources of talent,” so wrote
the master from Meudon on January 19, 1908.
“All the cities in which she has appeared, including Paris, are under
obligations to her for the purest emotions. She has reawakened the
spirit of antiquity, showing the Tanagra figurines in action. Her
talent will always be imitated, from now on, and her creation will be
reattempted over and over again, for she has re-created effects and
light and background, all things which will be studied continually, and
whose initial value I have understood.
“She has even been able, by her brilliant reproduction, to make us
understand the Far East.
“I fall far below what I ought to say about this great personality; my
language is inept for that, but my artistic heart is grateful to her.”
Less grateful, certainly, than I am to the man who wrote these lines. I
am, nevertheless, happy to have been able to bring together on the same
page the names of two masters of form who have influenced me profoundly
and whom I revere affectionately.
XII
M. GROULT’S COLLECTION
One beautiful summer afternoon I was driven to a house in the Boulevard
Inkermann at Neuilly. From afar off I heard the sound of hunting-horns,
and I wondered in what part of Neuilly it was possible to follow the
hounds. That was certainly a novelty.
The carriage stopped.
We were at the house of the charming Rachel Boyer, of the
Comédie-Française, who had invited me to a matinee. Before reaching
the house I crossed a great garden, still pursued by the sound of
hunting-horns that were clearly coming nearer. While I was wondering
again where the huntsmen could be riding I reached the house.
The mistress of the establishment received me with the greatest
cordiality. Rachel Boyer is a charming soul. She beams like a ray of
sunlight.
She saw me pricking up my ears with curiosity, for I continued to
wonder where the huntsmen were hidden.
She smiled over and over again and with an air of mystery.
I could not restrain myself from asking her where the sounds I had
heard came from, and whether a hunting party was in progress in her
garden.
She began to laugh openly, and said:
“There isn’t any hunting. These buglers I engage to bid my guests a
harmonious and cordial welcome.”
“But I don’t see them anywhere. It is really very pretty.”
“From the moment that I have given you pleasure I have succeeded.”
On that day I made the acquaintance of two persons who were then
prominent in the first rank of Parisian notabilities. One was a man of
the world, refined, delicate, spiritual, gallant, and possessed of the
rare and subtle talent of talking on any subject without in any way
involving himself in difficulties. This was M. Cheramy. The other was
an older person, with expressive features under thick grey hair. His
manner was crabbed and gruff. He expressed himself in phrases that were
jerky and brief, but full of natural wit. It was evident that he took a
real pleasure in talking to us.
We three, M. Cheramy, he and I, were discussing artistic questions
when, in a pause of our conversation, we perceived that we were
surrounded by a considerable audience. The effect was magical. Two of
us became silent, but M. Cheramy was equal to the situation and, with
perfect calmness, put everyone at ease.
We were then in the salon. The grey-haired gentleman caught my
attention as well as that of Rachel Boyer, who was talking in the midst
of a group some distance away. He made us understand with signs that he
wished to speak with us, apart from the others. We slipped away to find
out what he wanted.
I expected--it goes without saying, considering his mysterious
manner--something extraordinary, and, from the point of view of our
companion, I was not far wrong.
“Perhaps!” he said abruptly, “you would like to look at my collection.”
While he pronounced these two words, “my collection,” an air of
self-respect shone on his face. Since then I have recalled this
experience and have understood it. But I was not at all affected by
it then, and I kept wondering what kind of queer character this was.
He seemed to me a little out of his mind. I answered him, therefore,
without disturbing myself:
“Thank you, sir. I have just seen the Louvre; and I think that is a
very pretty col--”
Rachel Boyer broke into my sentence smiling, but with a look as if she
were somewhat scandalised. Then she assured the old man that we both
were appreciative in the highest degree of the marked favour that he
had shown us.
Thereupon we made an appointment, and the little old man left us.
“Why does he want me to see his collection,” I asked Rachel Boyer.
“Why?” she replied. “For no other reason undoubtedly than that he
particularly admires you. For, you see, his collection is the most
complete of its kind, and in his eyes sacred. I cannot tell you how
surprised I was to hear him invite you. Only very rarely, as a matter
of fact, does he permit anyone to look at his masterpieces.”
“Really! But who is this gentleman? What does he do?”
“What! You don’t know him! Yet I introduced him to you.”
“You did. But I failed to catch his name.”
Rachel Boyer’s voice bore a tone of deep respect as she said:
“Why, that is M. Groult!”
For my part I was conscious of no new respect, for to tell the truth,
I was no further along than before. I did not remember ever having
heard his name, and I said so, in all honesty, to Rachel Boyer, who was
greatly astonished.
It looked as if I had committed a sacrilege.
She then informed me, that M. Groult was a man who had made an immense
fortune in business, a fact that did not leave me gasping with
admiration. She added that he was spending a great part of his fortune
upon pictures.
“M. Groult,” said Rachel Boyer ecstatically, “has brought together the
most beautiful treasures of art that a man has ever possessed.”
That was very interesting, unquestionably, but I kept thinking,
quietly, that such a hobby could hardly leave leisure to a man, however
rich, to do the good he might do with his money. I believe I should
have been much more impressed if I had heard her speak of some of his
philanthropies.
I finally concluded, however, that out of regard to my hostess, I
should have to believe the collection to be so colossal that everything
else was insignificant in comparison with it.
Some days later Rachel Boyer took me, with another of her friends, to
see M. Groult’s famous collection. The collection was far from being as
interesting to me as the collector, who, by reason of his personality,
appeared to me to be much more curious than his works of art.
He led us at first in front of a great show case and, with refined and
reverential gestures, disclosed to us the most marvellous imaginable
collection of butterflies. There were 18,000 of them. He pointed out
four in particular, and told us that he had bought the whole lot for
the sake of those, and he added, to my great confusion, that that was
because they looked like me.
“These colours are you,” he said almost crudely. “Just see what
richness. That rose, that blue, that’s you. It is really you.”
While he was saying that, he kept looking at me just as if he were
afraid I might suspect his sincerity and that I should mistake his
statements of fact for compliments.
In simple language he expressed the most intense artistic convictions.
One felt them to be innate; they came from the depths of his being, and
they transformed him to such a degree that I saw him at the moment a
transfigured soul.
He took us to another part of the hall, and showed us several panels of
something that looked to me like coloured marble, highly polished.
“Look,” he said softly. “There you are again. I bought these panels,
for they again are you.”
And turning them toward the light, he caused all the colours of the
rainbow to radiate from their surfaces.
“Is it marble?” I asked, in order to have something to say. I felt
worried by all this admiration.
He looked at me almost scornfully, and replied:
“Marble, marble, no indeed. These are slabs of petrified wood.”
I supposed that we had seen M. Groult’s collection, for there were
enough rooms in it to fit out a little museum. I discovered, however,
that we had seen nothing at all. M. Groult opened a door and bade us
enter a large gallery where sixty-two Turners awaited our attention.
He raised his forefinger to impose upon us a silence that no one had
any intention of breaking. Then he took us from one picture to another,
indicating what in his view constituted the charms of each canvas.
Finally he came near to me and then, embracing the hall with one big
sweep of the hand, said:
“These are your colours. Turner certainly foresaw you when he created
them.”
Next he showed his collection of engravings, etchings, and prints,
representing the most glorious dancers. All these, he said, were to
reveal to me what I based my art upon when I danced. He pointed to a
celebrated frieze from Pompeii and then, looking at me fixedly, said:
“Look at that. Those are your motions.”
He drew back to present the pose, and he reproduced one of the motions
very seriously in spite of his rheumatism, which hardly allowed him to
stand on his legs.
“Now,” said he, “I am going to show you the work of art I am most
attached to.”
And, in a large glass-covered recess, he showed me the thing which gave
him special pleasure. It was a basin in which a fountain was playing,
while around it numerous turtle doves were fluttering.
“It is these cooing birds that make you happy,” I cried. “It is too bad
that everybody cannot observe this beautiful and natural picture, side
by side with your wonderful collections.”
“Allow my collections to be seen?” he cried. “Never. No one would
understand them.”
I realised then to what an extent he cherished each one of these
objects, which ought, according to his view, to be regarded only with
devotion. In each visitor he saw only an inquisitive person and nothing
more. From his standpoint the creators of these masterpieces had
entrusted them to him in order that he might care for them and protect
them from profane inspection.
“I should like,” he said in his mystic way, “to burn them every one the
night before my death if I could do it. It is discouraging, is it not,
to abandon them to idle curiosity and indifference?”
M. Groult gave me a new perception of the nature of art and its
value. He was acquainted with all the circumstances that had attended
the birth of his masterpieces. He spoke of them both as a man of
sensibility and as an art critic.
As he bade us adieu he asked me to come again.
One day the curator of the museum at Bucharest came to Paris, and a
common friend brought him to my house. Among other things he spoke to
me of M. Groult’s famous collection, which no one was permitted to see.
I promised him to do my best to secure an invitation for him and I
accordingly wrote to M. Groult.
He replied at once, asking me to bring the museum curator to see him.
When the curator expressed his gratitude to M. Groult, he replied:
“It is she whom you ought to thank. I do not care to have strangers
here, but she is part of my collection. You will find her here
everywhere. Just look.”
He then told the story of the butterflies, adding:
“This is nature as no one can paint it exactly. She has succeeded in
it. She is a painter of nature.”
Then he showed the petrified wood and spoke of it, with some difference
of expression, much as he had spoken the first time in my presence.
Finally he begged his visitor to call upon him every time he came to
Paris. As we went away I was obliged to promise to visit him again
soon. But, when I had leisure to do so, M. Groult was already too ill
to receive me and I never saw him again.
I am glad to have known him, for he was an extraordinary man.
XIII
MY DANCES AND THE CHILDREN
Children brought up on fairy tales and stories of adventure, have an
imagination that is easily kindled by suggestions of the supernatural.
From the unearthly appearance of my dances, caused by the light and the
mingling of colours, they ought particularly to appeal to the young,
making them believe that the being flitting about there before them
among the shadows and flashes of light belongs to the unreal world
which holds sway in their lives.
You can hardly conceive of the genuine enthusiasm I have aroused, or,
to express it more exactly, since my personality counts for nothing, of
the enthusiasm my dancing has aroused amongst children. I have only to
go back in memory to see enraptured groups of children, caught under
the spell of my art. I even have literary testimony to this effect,
since I find among my papers this note, signed by one of my friends, M.
Auguste Masure:
“Dear Miss Loie: We have formed a plan of taking the children to see
you at a matinee next week. Our third, the youngest, is a little boy
whom you have never seen. He looks at all your lithographs and always
asks to have them explained. He is only three and a half, but his
brother and sister have so filled his head with Loie Fuller that when
he sees you it will be worth while observing what he has to say.”
If I cite this circumstance it is, let me repeat, because written
testimony is involved--testimony that proves clearly the profound
impression my dances make on children. Here was a little one, three
and a half years old, who was possessed of a desire to see me simply
through having heard my praises sung--in what language one may
conjecture--by two other children.
Here is a story that if not more convincing is more characteristic.
One afternoon the daughter of an architect, very well known in Paris,
had brought her little girl to a matinee in the course of which I came
on. The child, I was told, seemed fascinated and dazed. She did not
say a word, did not make the slightest noise, hardly dared to stir. I
seemed to have hypnotised her.
At the end of the performance the young mother, whom I knew very well,
said to the little girl:
“We are going to see Loie Fuller in her dressing-room.”
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FLOWERS
_Photo_ _Müller_]
A light was kindled in the child’s eyes, and she followed her mother,
clutching at her hand nervously. If the little girl was so visibly
affected it was not at the idea of seeing me, but of being in the
presence of an extraordinary creature, a kind of fairy. The conclusion
of this incident proves that.
The mother and the child found their way to my dressing-room.
An attendant opened the door. She asked them to be seated until I
should be able to receive them. The keenest emotion was still imprinted
on the child’s little features. She must have supposed that she was
going to be taken into some celestial place. She looked round with
restless eyes, surveying the bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, and
seemed to be waiting to see the ceiling or the flooring open suddenly
and permit an entrance into Loie Fuller’s kingdom.
Suddenly a folding screen was drawn and a young woman came forward, who
looked tired and in whose appearance there was nothing supernatural.
With arms outstretched she advanced smiling.
The child’s eyes opened wider and wider. The nearer I came the further
she shrank away.
Quite astonished her mother said:
“What is the matter, dear? This is Miss Fuller, who danced for you so
prettily a few minutes ago. You know you begged me so hard to bring you
to see her.”
As if touched by a magic wand the child’s expression changed.
“No, no. That isn’t her. I don’t want to see her. This one here is a
fat lady, and it was a fairy I saw dancing.”
If there is one thing in the world of which I am incapable, it is
consciously to cause anyone pain, and, with my love of children, I
should never have been happy again if I had caused my little visitor to
be disillusioned. I endeavoured therefore to be equal to the situation,
and I said to the child:
“Yes, my dear, you are right. I am not Loie Fuller. The fairy has sent
me to tell you how much she loves you and how sorry she is not to be
able to take you to her kingdom. She cannot come. She really cannot.
She told me just to take you in my arms and give you a kiss, a good
kiss for her.”
At these words the little one threw herself into my arms.
“Oh,” she said, “kiss the pretty fairy for me and ask her if I can come
again to see her dance.”
There were tears in my eyes as I replied:
“Come as often as you like, my dear little girl. I hear the fairy
whispering in my ear that she would like to dance for you all the time,
all the time.”
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY
_Photo_ _Langfier_]
At Bucharest Princess Marie of Roumania had sent all her children to
see me at a matinee. The royal box was occupied by a chattering and
noisy little regiment of princes, princesses and their friends. When my
turn came to go on the lights were turned down and, in the silence that
ensued, one could hear distinctly, coming from the royal box, the
words:
“Hush. Keep quiet.”
Then, when I appeared:
“Oh, it is a butterfly!”
All this was said in a very high voice. Then I recognised the voice of
the oldest of the princesses, the one who is so remarkably like her
grandmother, the late Queen Victoria. In a tone of the utmost contempt
she declared: “You don’t know what you are talking about. It’s an
angel.”
At each change in the dance the oldest of the little princesses made
some further remark, explaining everything from her point of view, as
if her utterances were authoritative.
Some days later I went to the palace. Princess Marie sent some one to
look up the children. They came in one after the other, as timidly as
so many middle-class children might in the presence of a stranger.
When the princess explained to them that I was the lady whom they had
seen dance at the theatre, the oldest of them did not say a word, but,
despite her careful training, her face said plainly enough:
“You don’t fool me. This woman is telling fibs.”
I should have had to dance for them at the palace to convince them that
it was really I whom they had taken for an angel. This part of the
affair, though already arranged for, was given up at my request. I
wanted to avoid disillusioning these children.
Accordingly, when I danced at the palace the little princes and
princesses were not present at the performance. They came back, on
the other hand, to the theatre, where they were confirmed in their
conviction that the lady whom they had seen with their mother and who
tried to pass herself off as Loie Fuller was an impostor. The eldest of
the little princesses called out so loudly as to be heard all over the
house:
“This time it is really Loie Fuller.”
She pronounced her words with a distinctness that proved clearly that
the subject had been discussed at length among the children, and that
this affirmation was the result of mature deliberation.
M. Roger Marx has two sons, who, when they saw me for the first time,
were respectively four and six years old. The elder took a notion to
dance “like Loie Fuller,” using a table cloth for drapery. I gave him a
robe modelled after one of mine and, before we knew it, the child was
evolving new dances.
The way he expressed joy, grief, ecstasy and despair was admirable. His
memory of me, or rather his memory of my dances, remained so vivid and
epitomised so precisely the conception he had of beauty and of art that
he became a “poet.”