I have frequently seen monarchs whose profession consisted in ruling
the crowd. I have sometimes seen crowds that appeared to me mightier
than the greatest of monarchs.
More rarely I have encountered philosophers, out of touch with
everything, who yet were able to create kingdoms within themselves.
These last have seemed to me more affecting than the proudest of
monarchs or the most impressive of crowds. Characteristic traits of
some of these are worthy of being described here. I should like to try
to do so, because of the emotions they have aroused in me.
We were living at Passy, my mother and I, in a house situated in the
centre of a garden. One day I heard some animated music coming from the
street. I ran to the gate to look at the makers of this joyful harmony.
A man and a woman were passing. The man played an accordion as he
walked with short steps. He was blind, and his wife led him. The music
was so sprightly, so different from the folk who were making it, that
I hailed the pair. I wanted the man to play in the garden, behind
the house, so that my mother, who was paralysed, might hear him. They
consented very willingly. I made them sit down under a tree, near my
mother’s chair, and the man played on the accordion until a servant
came to say that lunch was served. I asked the man and his wife if they
had eaten. When I discovered they had had nothing since the day before,
I told the maid they were going to share our meal.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSY]
At table we had a long conversation. The man had always been blind. I
asked him if he could perceive difference among colours. No. But he
was able, at least, to tell without fear of making a mistake, whether
the weather was clear or cloudy, dull or pleasant. He was extremely
sensitive to differences of texture.
I placed a rose in his hand and asked him what it was. Without
hesitation and without raising the flower to his nostrils he replied:
“It is a rose.”
Almost immediately, grasping it gently in his fingers, he added:
“It is a beautiful one, too, this rose, very beautiful.”
A little more and he would have told me whether it was a _La France_, a
_Maréchal Niel_, or some other species of rose.
As he had used the word “beautiful” I asked him what seemed to him the
most beautiful thing in the world.
“The most beautiful thing alive is woman.”
I then asked him who the person was in whose company I had found him.
His voice took on a tender tone as he said:
“It is my wife, my dear wife.”
After that I looked with more attention at the self-effacing and almost
dumb soul who accompanied the blind musician. Confused, embarrassed,
she had lowered her eyes, which she kept obstinately fixed upon an
apron, of a faded blue, on which the patches appeared to be more
extensive than the original material.
She was unattractive, poor thing, and at least twenty years older than
her companion.
Quietly, without concerning myself with the beseeching looks the poor
woman cast at me from under wrinkled and reddened eyebrows, I asked the
blind musician:
“She satisfies you, does she?”
“Certainly.”
“You find her beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
“More beautiful than other women?”
As he had peopled his darkness with beauty my optimist replied:
“I do not say that, for all women are beautiful. But she is better,
yes, better than most of them, and it is that which, in my sight,
constitutes the purest beauty.”
“What makes you think she is better than the others?”
“Oh, everything. Her whole life, her whole manner of existence as
regards me.”
And in words so convincing that for a moment I felt that he could see,
he added:
“Just look at her, my good lady. Isn’t it a fact that goodness is
written on her face?”
The woman, with her eyes lowered, kept looking at her blue apron. I
then asked the blind man how he had made his living up to this time,
and how they had become acquainted, he and his companion.
“I used to be, owing to infirmity, a real burden upon my family. I did
whatever I could but I could not do much. I washed the dishes, lighted
the fire, picked the vegetables, swept the floor, washed the windows,
made the beds--perhaps badly, but at any rate I did all that, and
although we were very poor at home they kept me. The day came, however,
when my mother died. Then it was my father’s turn. I had to leave the
empty house. I went on the road armed with my accordion, asking for
alms. My accordion became my best friend. But I blundered along the
roads. Then I met my dear companion who is with me, and I married her.”
She was a cook, the woman told me this herself in an undertone, who had
become too old to keep her place, and who consented to join her fate
with that of the wandering blind man, serving as his guide along the
roads. The blind man found this arrangement a blessing from Heaven, a
kindness bestowed upon him by Providence. They were married without
delay.
“But how do you manage to live?” I asked.
“Well, it is not always easy to make both ends meet, for alas! now and
then, one of us falls ill. We are getting old, you understand. When it
is not fatigue that gets the better of us, then there is always the
cold. There are times when we cannot go out. Then it is necessary to
take a notch in one’s girdle.”
Each day they visited one district of Paris. They had divided the city
into blocks, and they sometimes walked miles before arriving at their
destination, for they lived far from the centre, in one of the poorest
suburbs.
“What day do you go by here?”
“Every Sunday, before mass. Many people of this quarter go to church,
and we encounter them going and coming.”
“Do they give you something?”
“It is a rich neighbourhood. We have several very good clients.”
“Good what?” I asked. “Good clients?”
“Yes, good clients,” he repeated simply.
“And who are these clients?”
“They are servants of the rich.”
“Servants?”
“Yes, some of them are very good. They give us old clothes; food and
money when they can.”
“And the rich people themselves?”
“We do not see them often. This is the first time a client has ever
invited us to lunch, and we have been going through this street for
seven years. No one ever asked us to come in before.”
“What do you do when you are tired?”
“We sit down on a bench or on one of the steps, and we eat whatever we
have in our pockets. Here we eat while they are at church.”
“Very well. You will have no need to bring anything to eat the day you
come by here. I invite you for every Sunday.”
I expected impassioned thanks. The man said simply:
“We thank you very much, good lady.”
Shortly after, I left for a long tour in America, and during my absence
my domestics received them every Sunday. From their point of view I was
merely a sure client.
One day I gave them tickets for a great concert. I was in the hall and
observed them.
The woman was overcome at seeing so many fashionable people. As for
the man, his features aglow with an unearthly light, his head thrown a
little back after the way of the blind, he was in ecstasy, intoxicated
with the music.
After four years they disappeared. I never saw them again.
The man, whom I had seen to be failing, probably died, and the woman,
the poor old thing, so unattractive in her blue apron, undoubtedly did
not dare to return alone.
At Marseilles I saw another blind man, a very old man, seated on a
folding stool against a wall.
Beside him stood a basket, guarded by a very young dog, who sniffed at
all the passers-by and barked after each one. I stopped to talk to the
old man.
“Do you live all alone?” I asked him.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I have two dogs. But I cannot bring the other
one with me. He makes a continual disturbance, leaps and fidgets so
much that he never gets fat and any one would think to see him that I
don’t give him anything to eat. As a matter of fact, you see, I cannot
show him without being ashamed of him. People would suppose that I was
allowing him to die of hunger. Anyway I need only one dog here. As for
the other I leave him at the house, where he serves as watch dog.”
“Oh, you have a house,” I said.
“That is to say, I have a room, I call it my house.”
“Who does your cooking for you? Who makes the fire at your house?”
“I do,” he replied. “I light a match and then by the crackling of the
wood I know whether it has caught.”
“How do you clean your vegetables?”
“Oh, that is easy. I can tell by the feeling when the potatoes are well
peeled.”
“And the fruits and the salad?”
“Oh, that is something we do not have very often.”
“I suppose you eat meat.”
“Not very often, either. We have bread and vegetables, and when we are
rich we buy some cheese.”
“Why does your dog sniff so at every one passing by? Why does he bark
so spitefully?”
“Ah, madam, you see each time that any one hands me a sou, thanks to
his grimaces, I give him a little piece of bread. There, look at him
now.”
At this moment somebody had just thrown a coin into the blind man’s
bowl. The old man drew from his pocket a little piece of dry bread.
The animal fell upon it with such a cry of joy that one might have
supposed he had just received the daintiest titbit in the world. He
nearly devoured his master with caresses.
“At what time do you eat? Do you go home to your lunch?”
“No. I carry my lunch in a basket.”
I looked. It contained some crusts of bread and nothing else.
“Is that all that you have to eat?”
“Why, yes. Like the dog, I don’t ruin my digestion.”
“Where do you drink when you are thirsty?”
He pointed to a corner of the alley, where there was a little fountain,
alongside of which hung a goblet attached to a chain.
“And the dog?”
“He leads me to the fountain when he is thirsty and I give him his
share.”
“Do you come here every day?”
“Yes. This is the entrance to the baths. We do a good business here.”
“How much do you make a day?”
“Twenty sous, sometimes thirty. That depends on the day. There have
been times when we have made more than two francs. But that is rare. I
have my rent to pay and three mouths to feed, my two dogs and myself.”
“Where do you get your clothes?”
“They are given me by one and another. The butcher, the grocer, the
cabinetmaker, these are very kind to me.”
“Are you happy all alone so?”
“I am not all alone. I have my dogs. The only thing I lack is my
eyesight. But I thank Providence every day for keeping me in good
health.”
It was in consequence of a malignant fever that he had lost his
eyesight, for unlike my blind man at Passy, this man was not born
blind. Formerly he had been able to admire nature, to see pretty girls
in a country flooded with sunlight, to enjoy with his own eyes the
smile in other eyes, in eyes tender and well loved. In short he had
seen. What sadness his must be, to be unable to see again!
With much diplomacy I asked him about this.
He had far less difficulty in answering me.
“I used to admire many pretty things,” he said. “I still have them
carefully enclosed under my eyelids. I see them again whenever I
wish, just as if they were there before me once again. And so, you
see, as these are things of my youth it seems to me that, in spite of
everything, in spite of being such an old hulk as I am, I have remained
young. And I thank the dear Lord for having been kind enough not to
have made me blind from birth.”
“And how old are you?”
“Eighty years, madam.”
This old man had a long walk before him to get back to his residence.
As I commiserated him regarding this, he replied:
“There is no reason for complaining, madam, I have such a good guide,
such a brave little comrade!”
He made an almost theatrical gesture, and said, in a voice filled with
emotion:
“My dog!”
“Does he guide you through the streets of Marseilles?”
“He does!”
“And no accident happens to you?”
“Never. One day I was crossing a street. My dog pulled at me so hard
from behind that I fell backward. I was just in time. A step more and
I should have been crushed by a tramcar, which grazed me. I am mighty
lucky, come now, to have a dog like that.”
In all circumstances this old man was willing to see only the
favourable side of things. That side, at least with the eyes of
imagination, the blind man could see.
One day the charwoman who came to our house at Passy to help the
servants arrived very late.
As she was ordinarily exceedingly punctual, I reproached her in a way
I should not have done if she had been habitually unpunctual. Here is
what I found out about this brave woman.
Three years before one of her neighbours, a working woman, had had an
attack of paralysis. This neighbour was poor, old, without relatives
and no one would bother with her. The poor little charwoman, encumbered
with a drunken husband and six children, agreed to take care of the
paralytic and her home if the other neighbours would be willing to
provide the bare necessities of life. She succeeded in overcoming the
selfishness of each and every one in the warmth of her kindness. From
that time on she never ceased in the rare hours when she was free to
look after the paralytic. She attended to the housework, the cooking,
the washing. The neighbour’s condition grew worse. The case was one
of complete paralysis. The assistance which she had to give to this
half-dead woman was often of the most repulsive kind. Always smiling,
always tidy, always cheerful, she gave to the human hulk she had taken
under her protection the most thorough and intelligent care.
My little charwoman had always, at all times, been cheerful. I wondered
what kind of gaiety she would exhibit when at last the paralytic’s
death should free her from the load with which she had benevolently
burdened her life. This morning, the morning on which she came late,
she was crying. She wept warm tears.
I supposed that my reproach had caused this tearful outpouring. But not
at all. She said to me between sobs:
“I am crying--crying--because--she’s dead--the poor woman.”
It was her neighbour the paralytic for whom she wept.
In the north of Ireland I once saw some children barefooted in the
snow, during an intensely cold February. With some friends I visited
the poor quarter of a provincial city, where, I was told, people
working in the mills lived twelve or even more in cabins containing but
two rooms.
We placed no especial credence in these stories and we decided to look
into the matter for ourselves. It was all true, nevertheless. In some
cases the conditions were even worse.
On reaching the district in question we noticed that a little boy
had followed our carriage. At a trot sharp enough to run his little
legs off he continued for about a mile and a half, all in the hope of
getting twopence.
The small boy came forward to open the door of our carriage. The
coachman rebuked him brutally. The child had so odd an expression that
I began to talk to him. He had five brothers and sisters. He did the
best he could to pick up something in the streets, and he made from
sixpence to eightpence a day. Just at present he was trying to get a
little money to buy some coal for his mother.
I, doubting the truth of these statements, made him take me to his hut,
which he had pointed out to us.
“That is where I live, madam.”
Certainly there was no coal in the house, but there were three sick
people. The father swept snow in the streets to make a few pennies, for
in this cold weather the mill where he worked was not running.
There was complete wretchedness, frightful wretchedness, irreparable
wretchedness. And yet our little lad sang while he trotted behind our
carriage, just as his father whistled as he swept the snow.
Is not misery the school, the sadly sovereign school, of philosophy?
XVIII
HOW I DISCOVERED HANAKO
Everything that comes from Japan has always interested me intensely.
Consequently it is easy to understand with what pleasure I came into
relationship with Sada Yacco, and why I did not hesitate to assume
financial responsibility for her performances when she decided to come
to Europe with her whole company.
Sada Yacco had brought with her a troupe of thirty people. These
thirty cost me more than ninety of another nationality would have
done; for apart from everything that I was obliged to do to entertain
them, I had constantly to go down on my knees to secure permission
to attach to each train that carried them an enormous car laden with
Japanese delicacies, rice, salted fish, mushrooms and preserved
turnips--delicacies were necessary to support the existence of my
thirty Japanese, including Sada Yacco herself. During one whole season
I paid the railway companies 375,000 francs for transportation, but
that cost me much less than to pay all the debts I should have been
obliged to assume from Lisbon to St. Petersburg if I had decided to
send my Japanese home.
I tried for a long time to get my money back by transporting my
Nipponese and their viands up and down the earth, but, weary of the
struggle, I finally assembled another troupe, which was as good as the
first one and which was willing to travel without a cargo of rice and
salted fish.
“Business is business” I am well aware. I decided, therefore, to endure
bravely the losses I had incurred, and I was thinking of quite another
subject when fortune appeared to smile on me again.
In London there was a Japanese troupe looking for an engagement. The
actors came to see me. They made some ridiculous claims and I sent
them away. But as they did not find an engagement, we came to an
understanding, and I found an impresario for them, who took them to
Copenhagen.
I went to Denmark, too, and I expected to look after the affairs of
these Japanese and attend to my own business as well.
When they arrived at Copenhagen I saw the whole troupe for the first
time. They all came to greet me at my hotel and played some piece or
other of their own invention.
I noticed at that time, among the comedians, a charming little Japanese
woman, whom I should have been glad to make the star of the company.
Among these Japanese, however, women did not count for much, all the
important roles being taken by men. She was, nevertheless, the only one
who had attracted my attention. She played a minor part, it is true,
but very intelligently, and with the oddest mimicry. She was pretty
withal, refined, graceful, queer, and so individual as to stand out,
even among those of her own race.
When the rehearsal was over I gathered the actors together and said to
them:
“If you are going to remain with me you will have to obey me. And
if you do not take this little woman as your star you will have no
success.”
And as she had a name that could not be translated, and which was
longer than the moral law, I christened her on the spot Hanako.
To make a long story short they assented to my request, and lengthened
out my protégée’s role. In reality the play had no climax. I therefore
made one for it then and there. Hanako had to die on the stage. After
everybody had laughed wildly at my notion, and Hanako more than all the
others; she finally consented to die. With little movements like those
of a frightened child, with sighs, with cries as of a wounded bird,
she rolled herself into a ball, seeming to reduce her thin body to a
mere nothing so that it was lost in the folds of her heavy embroidered
Japanese robe. Her face became immovable, as if petrified, but her
eyes continued to reveal intense animation. Then some little hiccoughs
convulsed her, she made a little outcry and then another one, so faint
that it was hardly more than a sigh. Finally with great wide-open eyes
she surveyed death, which had just overtaken her.
It was thrilling.
The evening of the first appearance came. The first act was successful.
The actors acquired confidence and entered into the spirit of their
parts, a fact which caused them to play wonderfully well. I was obliged
to leave after the first act, for I was dancing at another theatre,
but some one came to tell me at the close of the performance that
Hanako had scored more than a success; it was a veritable triumph.
To her it came as a genuine surprise, but one that was not more
extraordinary than the anger provoked by her success among the actors
of the company. The box office receipts, however, somewhat assuaged
their sensitiveness, and I was able to give to the feminine member of
the troupe a longer part in the new play, rehearsals of which were just
beginning.
From this time on Hanako was in high favour. Everywhere she was obliged
to double the number of her performances. After Copenhagen she made
a nine months’ tour of Europe. Her success in Finland bordered upon
popular delirium. Finland, it is interesting to note, has always
evinced the greatest sympathy for Japan. This was during the time of
the Russian-Japanese War.
She played in all the royal theatres of Europe. Then after a tour in
Holland she came finally to Paris.
[Illustration: LOIE FULLER’S ROOM AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE]
The Japanese and Hanako stayed with me for nearly a year. At the
close of their contract they gave some performances at Marseilles and
then dispersed. Some of them went home, others proceeded to Paris or
elsewhere. Time passed, and I heard nothing more about my Japanese,
when one day I received a letter from Hanako, who told me that she was
at a cheap concert hall at Antwerp, where she had to sing and dance
for the amusement of sailors, patrons of the place. She was all alone
among strangers, and the man who had brought her to this degrading
pursuit inspired her with mortal terror. She wrote me that she wanted
at all costs to be saved from her fate, but that, without assistance,
the thing was utterly impossible. She had gone from Marseilles to
Antwerp with other actors of the troupe to take a steamer for Japan. At
Antwerp she and her travelling companion had fallen into the hands of a
low-lived compatriot, and she called me to her rescue.
One of the actors of the company happened to be in Paris, and I sent
him to Antwerp with two of my friends. After numerous difficulties and
thanks to the police, they were able to enter into communication with
Hanako and tell her that they had come to take her away.
One evening she succeeded in escaping with her companion, and, with no
baggage except the little Japanese robes which they wore, they took the
train for Paris.
Hanako had been obliged to leave behind her little pet Japanese
dog, lest by taking it away from the house she should arouse the
proprietor’s suspicion. They reached Paris shrouded in the European
cloaks I had sent them, which were far too long, and hid them
completely.
Presently I found myself in Paris, manager of one of the most gifted
Japanese artists, but, alas! with no company to support her. I was
puzzled to know what to do with and what to do for a kind, gentle,
sweet little Japanese doll.
I first tried to find out if some one would not engage Hanako, then an
entire stranger to Paris, and a small, a very small company for one of
the minor theatres.
I received from one of the managers a remarkable answer. If I could
guarantee that the play which Hanako would present was a good one he
would engage her.
The play? Why there was no play. But I was not bothered by a little
detail like that, and I explained that Hanako would offer a wonderful
play, one that was easy to understand whether you knew Japanese or not.
Then I signed a contract for ten performances on trial. A contract?
Yes, it was a contract. And I had not secured my actors yet. And I had
no play yet. I had, altogether, Hanako, her maid and a young Japanese
actor. I was not discouraged, however. I undertook to find another
actor. I secured one in London, thanks to an agent. Then I went to work
to construct a play for four characters. There were two major roles and
two supernumeraries. The result of my efforts was “The Martyr.”
A great difficulty now arose. The question came up of procuring wigs,
shoes, costumes and various accessories. But here again luck helped
me out. They made a very successful first appearance at the Théâtre
Moderne in the Boulevard des Italiens. The play was given thirty
presentations instead of ten and twice a day, at a matinee and in the
evening. Presently the manager said to me:
“If your actors have another play as good as that one I would keep them
a month longer.”
Naturally I declared they had another play, a better one than the
first, and I signed a new contract.
New stage settings, new costumes and new accessories were necessitated.
The result was a new tragedy called “A Drama at Yoshiwara.”