has no patience but displays nevertheless an incredible amount of
perseverance. She is always rehearsing with her electric apparatus,
engaged in search of new effects, and she sometimes keeps her
electricians at work until six o’clock in the morning. No one would
venture to make the slightest suggestion to her about this; overwork
seems to agree with her. She stops neither for dinner nor for supper.
She is endlessly seeking for combinations of light and colour.”
Then he added, as if aside:
“They are queer people, these Americans.”
Gab’s mother then asked about my studies and my ideas.
“She has just been interviewed on this subject, and the interview was
published this morning. Among other things she said, in speaking of
the effect that she obtains: ‘Everybody knows when it is successful,
but no one realises how one has to keep at it to succeed. That is
what I am after unceasingly.’ The interviewer asked her if there was
no established system, no books that could help her in her work.
She looked astonished and replied, ‘I do not see how any one could
use words to indicate the rays of light in their imperceptible and
unceasing interplay that is changing all the time.’”
My manager then drew the newspaper from his pocket and read this
passage from my exposition:
“‘One needs to have order in one’s thinking to be able to write. One
can feel rays of light, in disintegration or in transition only as one
feels heat or cold. One cannot tell in words what one feels. Sensations
are not thoughts.’”
“‘But music, for example, can be reduced to notation.’”
“This seemed to surprise her. She was silent, reflected a moment, and
then said:
“‘I ought to think about that, but it seems to me that the vibration
represented by sight is a finer sense, more indefinite, more fugitive,
than that of sound. Sounds have a more fixed character and they are
limited. As for sight it has no limit, or none at least that we
recognise. In any case we are more ignorant of things that concern our
eyes than those which address themselves to our ears. Perhaps this is
because our eyes from infancy are better developed at an earlier stage,
and because seeing is a faculty the young child exercises sooner than
hearing. The field of visual harmony as compared with aural harmony
is like sunshine in comparison with moonlight. That is why there took
place in the human brain a great development of the sense of sight,
long before we were able to direct it or even to understand the results
or the uses of it.’”
“Those who watch Loie Fuller during her work,” continued M. Marchand,
after he had put the paper back into his pocket, “are struck by the
transformation that takes place in her as she speaks, or as she directs
her men to try this experiment or that. In point of fact, Madame, she
has transformed the Folies-Bergère. Every evening the usual audience is
lost amid a crowd composed of scholars, painters, sculptors, writers
and ambassadors, and at the matinees there is a crowd of women and
children. All the chairs and tables of the galleries have been piled
up behind the orchestra chairs and all the people, forgetful of their
rank and dignity, climb over them like a crowd of urchins. All that for
a young girl who does not seem to suspect that she has won success.
Would you like an example? Lately my wife took her to a large store
to buy some handkerchiefs. The first thing Miss Fuller saw was some
handkerchiefs marked ‘Loie Fuller,’ and she was surprised to note that
some one had the same name as hers. When they told her: ‘Why, not at
all. It is your name that appears on these handkerchiefs,’ she replied:
“‘How can that be? These people don’t know me.’
“She did not understand and could not understand that it was on account
of her success.”
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FIRE
_Photo_ _Lafitte_]
Gab’s mother, after acknowledging the manager’s salutation as he said
good-bye, again asked the ticket office men:
“She is a proper person, then?”
“Good Heavens, yes. She is so middle class that she looks like a little
country girl. I suspect that she has never dreamed of trying to be
swell. She came here with a valise and a little steamer trunk, and
dressed as in this photograph,” he added, showing the portrait I had
given him.
This photograph depicted me in a yachting cap, a straight-cut dress of
indefinite colour, and supported by straps. A light underwaist, a short
jacket and a very simple cape completed my costume.
After seeing this Gab and her mother went home with their seats for
next day’s matinee. This matinee impressed Gab to such a degree that on
reaching home this child of fourteen wrote the following lines in my
honour:
“A luminous and impalpable shadow. Across the dark brown night flits
a pallid, palpitating reflection. And while petals fly in the air a
supernatural golden flower rises toward the sky. It is not a sister
of the terrestrial flowers which shed their dream particles upon our
aching souls. Like them the gigantic flower brings no consolation. It
grew in a strange region under the moon’s blue rays. Life beats in
its transparent stem, and its clear leaves hang loosely in the shade
like great tormented arms. Just a dream efflorescence displays itself
and meditates. It is the flower’s living poetry that sings there,
delicate, fugitive and mysterious.
“It is the unsullied firmament, bestrewn with stars and it is the dance
of fire.
“A crackling flame is kindled. It turns and twists and glows. Smoke,
heavy as an incense, rises and mingles in the darkness where embers
glow. In the midst of the tumult, licked by torrents of foaming fire, a
mask, also a strange flame, is outlined in the reddish air. The flames
die into a single flame, which grows to immensity. You might think that
human thought were rending itself in the darkness. And we await with
anxious hearts the beauty that passes.
“Soul of the flowers, soul of the sky, soul of flame, Loie Fuller has
given them to us. Words and phrases avail nothing. She has created the
soul of the dance, for until Loie Fuller came the dance was without
soul!
“It had no soul in Greece when among fair wheat heads on days flooded
with sunshine beautiful children danced gaily, brandishing their golden
sickles. Rigid, majestic, and somewhat too formal, it had no soul under
the Grand Monarch. It had no soul when it might have had one. The
eighteenth century dances, the minuet in a whirl of powder; the waltz
is only an embrace, the woman cult revived.
“The soul of the dance was destined to be born in this sad and feverish
age. Loie Fuller modelled form out of a dream. Our foolish desires,
our dread of mere nothing, these she expressed in her dance of fire.
To satisfy our thirst for oblivion she humanised the flowers. Happier
than her brothers, the lords of creation, she caused her silent deeds
to live and in the darkness, this setting of grandeur, no human defect
marred her beauty. Providence shows itself kindly toward her. In its
great secret Loie shares.
“Amorous of the resplendent beauty in nature she asks it questions
out of her clear eyes. To seize the unknown her hand becomes coaxing.
Her firm, precise glance penetrates the soul of things even when they
have none. The inanimate becomes animate, and thinks under her magical
desire, and the ‘dream pantomime’ is evolved.
“Charmingly womanly she has chosen the sweetest and finest among
sleeping lives. She is the butterfly, she is the fire, she is light,
heaven, the stars. Frail, under floating material, flowery with pale
gold, with calcedony and beryl, Salome passed in her power. Afterwards
humanity went by feverishly. To calm our frayed souls and our childish
nightmares a fragile figure dances in a celestial robe.”
And now, fifteen years after, Gab still tells me, when we speak of the
impression I made on her at the time she wrote these pages full of
ingenuous emotion,
“I never see you exactly as you are,” she says, “but as you seemed to
me on that day.”
I wonder if her friendship, so well founded and positive, is not
intimately mingled with the love of form, of colour and of light, which
I interpreted synthetically before her eyes when I appeared before her
for the first time.
XXIII
THE VALUE OF A NAME
When in the autumn of 1892 I appeared for the first time at the
Folies-Bergère I knew no one, absolutely no one, in Paris. Imagine then
my surprise upon receiving one day a visiting card from one of the
spectators on which these words were written in lead pencil:
“Oh, well, old girl, I am fiercely glad to see that you have tapped
the till. We are here, a whole gang of us, two boxes full, and we want
you to join us after the performance.
Your old pal.”
The card bore a name with which I was unacquainted.
This was some practical joke, or else the call-boy had made a slip in
the address. I continued my disrobing without considering the matter
further.
All at once a gentleman rushed into my dressing-room.
“Well, Mollie, my old girl, why don’t you reply to a comrade’s letter?”
But on seeing me in street costume he stopped short and cried:
“Well, but who are you? I thought you were Mollie Fuller!”
Then I understood that he had taken me for one of his old friends.
“I know whom you mean,” I answered, “but I am not Mollie Fuller. Mollie
Fuller is very well known in the United States, where she is imitating
my dances. We are often mistaken for each other, but you must realise
that this isn’t the same person.”
The gentleman was tall, stout, very dark, of distinguished appearance,
with a certain odd defect in one of his eyes. He wore a full beard.
I shall never forget his aspect as he apologised. Without asking me
again to join his “gang” he disappeared even more quickly than he had
entered.
I often encountered him after that, and he always greeted me very
respectfully. From my window looking upon the courtyard of a great
hotel in London I have even been present at a dinner--such a dinner as
had never before been seen there--given by this same gentleman. Caruso
sang. The courtyard of the hotel had been transformed into a lake, and
the host and his guests dined in gondolas. From my window I watched the
banquet and I thought of the other supper to which I had been invited
involuntarily. The world is so small!
I did not become the well-known Loie Fuller without, as is easily
realised, being involved in some little adventures. I had once played
the part of Jack Sheppard in the drama of that name. Our company
stopped in Philadelphia. My father and mother were with me, and we took
our meals in a very modest boarding-house.
Some years after I returned, as a dancer, to this same city, and at the
hotel at which I registered, it was one of the largest of the city, I
was refused admittance. Without taking the trouble to ask why, I went
elsewhere. But I thought over this irritating reception and as I could
not understand it I returned to the hotel in question and asked to
speak to the manager. On seeing me he looked amazed:
“But you are not Loie Fuller.”
I assured him that I certainly was Loie Fuller, and asked why he had
been unwilling to receive me in his hotel.
He told me the following story.
“When you were playing Jack Sheppard one of the ladies of the company
stayed here with Mr. Z. One day they had such a quarrel that I was
obliged to ask them to vacate. This lady was registered under the name
of Miss Fuller.”
I had absolutely no idea who the person could be and I was trying
to find out when at the theatre some one brought me the card of a
gentleman who wanted to see me.
His name was quite unfamiliar. This gentleman, however, might have been
sent by a friend. Accordingly I received him. A tall gentleman entered,
and, very much surprised, repeated the hotel man’s affirmation:
“But you are not Loie Fuller!”
I assured him that I was.
He had known the “Loie Fuller” who had been entertained in my stead at
the hotel and who sang in the chorus of “Jack Sheppard,” the play of
which I was playing the principal part. He wanted to see her in her
new incarnation and renew his acquaintance with her. When I had at
last shown him his mistake he allowed me to see the counterfeit Loie
Fuller’s picture. And as a matter of fact when we were made up for the
stage there was a little resemblance.
One day we were giving some performances at Lyons. On arriving at the
theatre one of my electricians said to me:
“The proprietress of the hotel where I am staying with my comrades is
greatly annoyed. She says that you lived with her at the time of your
last trip to Lyons. You were very well satisfied and promised to come
again, and yet you have not come. She declares that it isn’t nice of
you to show yourself so haughty under the pretext that now you are
successful.”
Everybody who is acquainted with me knows that such conduct is not at
all characteristic of me. I was, therefore, very much surprised, I was
unable to recall the name of the hotel the electrician mentioned. I
asked him, therefore, to find out at what period I had put up at the
hostelry of the good lady whose grievance he had just forwarded to me.
The next day he told me the date. Now at that period I was at
Bucharest. I was, therefore, more perplexed than ever, and I asked the
electrician to continue his inquiry and to do his best to straighten
out the difficulty.
“My landlady,” he said, “is sure that it was you. She saw you at the
theatre. It is the same dance and she bade me say again that she ‘is
very much astonished at Miss Fuller’s conduct.’ You were so well
satisfied with her house, both you and the gentleman with you.”
I then went to the hotel to show the landlady that she was mistaken.
She then made me look at the photograph of a woman who imitates
everything that I do, passes her life watching over each one of my
creations and follows me everywhere, whether to London, to New York, to
Paris or Berlin.
In addition to these rare adventures that come to my knowledge, how
many others are there that I shall never know about?
I never arrive in a town without Loie Fuller’s having been there in
advance of me, and even in Paris I have seen announced in flamboyant
letters, “Loie Fuller, radiant dances,” and I have been able to see
with my own eyes “la Loie Fuller” dance before my face.
When I went to South America I discovered that there, too, Loie Fuller
had been ahead of me.
What I often wonder is what “imitations” in private life are
perpetrated by these ladies, who are embarrassed by no scruples.
So I am not the woman, perhaps my word will be taken for it, who, of
all the world, is most appreciative of the value of a name. I might add
that the American chorus girl of whom I have been writing came to Paris
and that one day her lover left her there. Alone, without friends,
without a cent, ill, she sent for me.
Did I help her?
I am afraid I did. When we see a dog in the street dying of hunger, we
give him something to eat, and not in order that he may not bite us,
not in order that he may be grateful to us; we give him something to
eat because he is hungry.
XXIV
HOW M. CLARETIE INDUCED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK
One evening during the Exposition of 1900 M. and Mme. Jules Claretie
came to my little theatre in the Rue de Paris, to see Sada Yacco in her
famous death-scene. After the performance they came behind the scenes,
where I was presented to them.
Several years passed and I became interested, as I have explained, in a
little Japanese artist, Hanako. I remembered how Sada Yacco had pleased
the Clareties, and I asked them to come and see my new Japanese star.
After the performance they came to the dressing-room of the dearest
little actress in the world, and I had the pleasure of receiving them
there.
Some days later I received an invitation to lunch with M. and Mme.
Claretie. It was extended to little Hanako and myself. The day arrived,
and we set forth. Hanako appeared to be quite unaware that she was
going to lunch with a celebrated writer, and experienced no excitement
at the idea of paying a visit to the director of the world’s first
theatre. I had lived in Paris long enough to be able to group people
according to their standing, and I was, for my part, somewhat confused.
Hanako was curious only as regards the things she was going to see,
since all intercourse with others was barred from the fact that she
spoke only Japanese. Indeed, it was because she knew it would please
me, and because I had expressly begged her to do so, was she willing
to come to this lunch. She was charming, with her odd little wooden
sandals, which she called her shoes, and her robes worn one over
the other. She gave an impression of nothing lacking. Hanako is so
exquisite that it is difficult to draw her likeness. Her stature is so
slight that she barely reaches a tall man’s waist.
Mme. Claretie received us so cordially that we were at once glad we
came. Then M. Claretie came in, very refined and very simple. He was
accompanied by M. Prudhon, an impressive person, who did not utter
a word. He was presented to me as the director’s right-hand man. I
wondered how it was possible to carry on business without saying
anything. From noon until three o’clock, as a matter of fact, I did not
hear a single word escape his lips. At the table I asked Mme. Claretie,
in an undertone in English:
“Is he dumb?”
She began to laugh in her friendly and reassuring way and replied:
“Oh, no, but he never has much to say.”
Then, thinking the ice broken, I looked at M. Prudhon smiling. He did
not smile at all, and I said to him vivaciously:
“If you continue to contradict me in that way I won’t say another word
to you.”
M. Prudhon, still serious, bowed and had nothing to say.
This quip, which did not even make him smile, was not an original one
with me, I make haste to say. I had heard it said by a young girl who
was my private secretary, and who wanted to stir up a gentleman who was
unpleasantly silent. M. Prudhon reminded me of that man, and I wanted
to see what effect the remark would have on him. It had no effect.
While I am speaking of this secretary I ought to devote a few lines
to her, although I have no reason to remember her kindly. She was a
pretty, young girl, always exquisitely gowned, although her financial
resources were slight. To my extreme displeasure I found out later the
explanation of the enigma.
She was my secretary, and I often sent her to place orders among all
my tradespeople. At the same time that she gave orders for things
that I wanted she ordered them for herself, taking care not to call
for two articles of the same make. I never had gloves or veils or
handkerchiefs. She always had taken the last of them. She always
thought that she had ordered more of them, and would sally forth to
order more.
One day I sent her to Tiffany’s, the jewellers. She added only a mere
little trinket to my order, a locket with her monogram set in diamonds.
I received the bill in due course, but she had left me. Previously she
had gone with me to Nice, and had remained there while I was on the
road in the United States. When I returned I learned that during my
absence she had lived at the hotel where I left her and that her bill,
charged to my account, amounted to nearly 6,000 francs.
Presently other invoices arrived from dyers and cleaners, glove makers,
shoemakers, costumiers, modistes, furriers, linendrapers and finally
the bill from Tiffany’s.
But the limit was reached when a student from the Beaux Arts asked me
if I could not return him sixty-six francs which he had lent me two
years before through the medium of my pretty secretary. Next there came
a gentleman from London, one whom I held in too great esteem to go into
details, who asked me for ten pounds sterling which he had loaned me,
again through the medium of my clever and well-dressed secretary.
But in speaking of my troubles I am liable to forget my lunch with the
Clareties.
As we were about to sit down Mme. Claretie brought in an elderly woman
of very pleasant appearance. I have rarely seen motions easier, more
simple or more harmonious. Leaning against each other they made a
delightful picture. Mme. Claretie presented me to her mother. I asked
how she was.
“Oh, I am very well,” she replied, “my eyes are my only trouble. I
cannot read without glasses, and the glasses annoy me a great deal.”
She had always been very fond of reading, and could not bring herself
to the idea of reading no more. I sympathised with her and told her so.
Then suddenly it occurred to me to ask her how old she was.
“Ninety-five years,” she replied.
And she was complaining of not being able to read any longer without
glasses!
We spoke of her grandchildren and her great grandchildren. I asked her
if the happiness of being surrounded by so many affectionate people did
not bring large compensation for the infirmities of age.
She replied:
“I love my children and my grandchildren, and I live in them. But that
does not restore to me my eyesight. It is terrible not to be able to
see.”
And she was right. Love gave her strength to bear her misfortune, but
she feared that the prison of darkness would claim her as its prey.
Before going to the dining-room she had taken her daughter’s arm. She
had no assistance on the other hand in eating. Her good humour was
unvarying.
She took some knitting from a work-basket, and said in a firm voice:
“I must work. I can no longer see well enough to be sure that my
knitting is well done, but I have to keep busy, nevertheless.”
Mme. Claretie asked me if I was acquainted with Alexandre Dumas.
I told her how I had chanced to meet him. Then M. Claretie asked me
numerous questions, which I tried to evade in order not to seem to talk
about myself all the time. Imagine my astonishment when next morning
I read in the _Temps_ an article, a column and a half long, devoted
entirely to our visit at M. Claretie’s and signed by the gentleman
himself.
“Mme. Hanako,” he wrote, “is in town, a little person, delightfully odd
and charming. In her blue or green robes, embroidered with flowers of
many colours, she is like a costly doll, or a prettily animated idol,
which should have a bird’s voice. The sculptor Rodin may possibly show
us her refined features and keen eyes at the next Salon, for he is
occupied just now with a study of her, and I believe a statue of the
comedienne. He has never had a better model. These Japanese, who are
so energetic, leaping into the fray like the ants upon a tree trunk,
are likewise capable of the most complete immobility and the greatest
patience. These divergent qualities constitute the strength of their
race.
“Mme. Hanako, whom I saw and applauded in ‘The Martyr’ at the Opera,
came to see me, through the kindness of Miss Loie Fuller, who
discovered Sada Yacco for us some years ago. It is delightful to see at
close hand and in so attractive a guise this little creature, who looks
so frightful when, with convulsed eyes, she mimics the death agony.
There is a pretty smile on the lips which at the theatre are curled
under the pain of hara-kiri. She made me think of Orestes exhibiting
the funeral urn to Electra: ‘As you see, we bring the little remnants
in a little urn.’
“Loie Fuller, who was a soubrette before being the goddess of light, an
enchantress of strange visions, has become enamoured of this dramatic
Japanese art and has popularised it everywhere, through Sada Yacco and
then through Mme. Hanako. I have always observed that Loie Fuller has a
very keen intelligence. I am not surprised that Alexandre Dumas said to
me: ‘She ought to write out her impressions and her memories.’ I should
like to hear from her how she first conceived these radiant dances, of
which the public has never grown tired, and which she has just begun
again at the Hippodrome. She is, however, more ready to talk philosophy
than the stage. Gaily, with her blue eye and her faun-like smile, she
replied to my question: ‘It’s just chance. The light came to me. I
didn’t have to go to it.’”
I apologize for reproducing these eulogistic words. I have even
suppressed certain passages, for M. Claretie was very complimentary. It
was, however, absolutely necessary that I should make this citation,
since out of it grew the present book.
M. Claretie had quoted Dumas’ opinion. He returned to the charge.
Soon after, in fact, I received a letter from M. Claretie urging me to
begin my “memoirs.” Perhaps he was right, but I hardly dared undertake
such a terrible task all alone. It looked so formidable to write a
book, and a book about myself!