were there and, after Mme. Claretie had mentioned this notion of
“memoirs” which her husband, following Dumas’ lead, had favoured, they
all began to ask me questions about myself, my art and the steps by
which I had created it. Everyone tried to encourage me to undertake the
work.
A short time after this Mme. Claretie sent me tickets for her box
at the Théâtre-Français. I went there with several friends. There
were twelve of us, among whom was Mrs. Mason, wife of the American
Consul-General, who is the most remarkable statesman I have ever known,
and the best diplomatist of the service.
In return for the Clareties’ kindness I invited them to be present at
one of my rehearsals of ‘Salome.’ They were good enough to accept my
invitation and one evening they arrived at the Théâtre des Arts while I
was at work. Later I came forward to join them. We stood in the gloom
of a dimly lighted hall. The orchestra was rehearsing. All at once a
dispute arose between the musical composer and the orchestra leader.
The composer said:
“They don’t do it that way at the Opera.”
Thereupon the young orchestra leader replied:
“Don’t speak to me of subsidised theatres. There’s nothing more
imbecile anywhere.”
He laid great stress on the words “subsidised” and “imbecile.”
M. Claretie asked me who this young man was. I had not heard exactly
what he said. Nevertheless, as I knew something embarrassing had
occurred, I tried to excuse him, alleging that he had been rehearsing
all day, that half his musicians had deserted to take positions at the
Opera and that they had left him only the understudies.
M. Claretie, whose good nature is proverbial, paid no attention to
the incident. Several days later, indeed, on November 5, 1907, he
wrote for the _Temps_ a long article, which is more eulogistic than I
deserve, but which I cite because it gives an impression of my work at
a rehearsal.
“The other evening,” he wrote, “I had, as it were, a vision of a
theatre of the future, something of the nature of a feministic theatre.
“Women are more and more taking men’s places. They are steadily
supplanting the so-called stronger sex. The court-house swarms with
women lawyers. The literature of imagination and observation will soon
belong to women of letters. In spite of man’s declaration that there
shall be no woman doctor for him the female physician continues to pass
her examinations and brilliantly. Just watch and you will see woman
growing in influence and power; and if, as in Gladstone’s phrase, the
nineteenth century was the working-man’s century, the twentieth will be
the women’s century.
“I have been at the Théâtre des Arts, Boulevard des Batignolles, at a
private rehearsal, which Miss Loie Fuller invited me to attend. She is
about to present there to-morrow a ‘mute drama’--we used to call it
a pantomime--the _Tragedie de Salome_, by M. Robert d’Humières, who
has rivalled Rudyard Kipling in translating it. Loie Fuller will show
several new dances there: the dance of pearls, in which she entwines
herself in strings of pearls taken from the coffin of Herodias; the
snake dance, which she performs in the midst of a wild incantation;
the dance of steel, the dance of silver, and the dance of fright,
which causes her to flee, panic-stricken, from the sight of John’s
decapitated head persistently following her and surveying her with
martyred eyes.
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF FEAR FROM “SALOME”]
“Loie Fuller has made studies in a special laboratory of all the
effects of light that transform the stage, with the Dead Sea, seen from
a height, and the terraces of Herod’s palace. She has succeeded, by
means of various projections, in giving the actual appearance of the
storm, a glimpse of the moonbeams cast upon the waves, of the horror of
a sea of blood. Of Mount Nebo, where Moses, dying, hailed the promised
land, and the hills of Moab which border the horizon, fade into each
other where night envelops them. The light in a weird way changes the
appearance of the picturesque country. Clouds traverse the sky. Waves
break or become smooth as a surface of mother-of-pearl. The electric
apparatus is so arranged that a signal effects magical changes.
“We shall view miracles of light ere long at the theatre. When M.
Fortuny, son of the distinguished Spanish artist, has realised
‘his theatre’ we shall have glorious visions. Little by little the
scenery encroaches upon the stage, and perhaps beautiful verses, well
pronounced, will be worthy of all these marvels.
“It is certain that new capacities are developing in theatrical art,
and that Miss Loie Fuller will have been responsible for an important
contribution. I should not venture to say how she has created her light
effects. She has actually been turned out by her landlord because of
an explosion in her apparatus. Had she not been so well known she would
have been taken for an anarchist. At this theatre, Rue des Batignolles,
where I once witnessed the direst of melodramas that ever made popular
audiences shiver, at this theatre, which has become elegant and
sumptuous with its handsome, modernised decorations, at the Théâtre des
Arts, she has installed her footlights, her electric lamps, all this
visual fairyland which she has invented and perfected, which has made
of her a unique personality, an independent creator, a revolutionist in
art.
“There, on that evening when I saw her rehearse Salome in everyday
clothes, without costume, her glasses over her eyes, measuring her
steps, outlining in her dark robe the seductive and suggestive
movements, which she will produce to-morrow in her brilliant costume,
I seemed to be watching a wonderful _impresaria_, manager of her
troupe as well as mistress of the audience, giving her directions to
the orchestra, to the mechanicians, with an exquisite politeness,
smiling in face of the inevitable nerve-racking circumstances, always
good-natured and making herself obeyed, as all real leaders do, by
giving orders in a tone that sounds like asking a favour.
“‘Will you be good enough to give us a little more light? Yes. That is
it. Thank you.’
“On the stage another woman in street dress, with a note-book in
her hand, very amiable, too, and very exact in her directions and
questions, took the parts of John the Baptist, half nude, of Herod in
his purple mantle, of Herodias magnificent under her veils, and assumed
the function of _regisseur_ (one cannot yet say _regisserice_). And I
was struck by the smoothness of all this performance of a complicated
piece, with its movements and various changes. These two American
women, without raising their voices, quietly but with the absolute
brevity of practical people (distrust at the theatre those who talk too
much), these two women with their little hands fashioned for command
were managing the rehearsal as an expert Amazon drives a restive horse.
“Then I had the immense pleasure of seeing this Salome in everyday
clothes dance her steps without the illusion created by theatrical
costume, with a simple strip of stuff, sometimes red and sometimes
green, for the purpose of studying the reflections on the moving
folds under the electric light. It was Salome dancing, but a Salome
in a short skirt, a Salome with a jacket over her shoulders, a Salome
in a tailor-made dress, whose hands--mobile, expressive, tender
or threatening hands, white hands, hands like the tips of birds’
wings--emerged from the clothes, imparted to them all the poetry of
the dance, of the seductive dance or the dance of fright, the infernal
dance or the dance of delight. The gleam from the footlights reflected
itself on the dancer’s glasses and blazed there like flame, like
fugitive flashes, and nothing could be at once more fantastic and more
charming than these twists of the body, these caressing motions, these
hands, again, these dream hands waving there before Herod, superb in
his theatrical mantle, and observing the sight of the dance idealised
in the everyday costume.
“I can well believe that Loie Fuller’s Salome is destined to add a
Salome unforeseen of all the Salomes that we have been privileged to
see. With M. Florent Schmitt’s music she connects the wonders of her
luminous effects. This woman, who has so profoundly influenced the
modes, the tone of materials, has discovered still further effects, and
I can imagine the picturesqueness of the movements when she envelops
herself with the black serpents which she used the other evening only
among the accessories behind the scenes.”
That evening between the two scenes, M. Claretie again spoke of my
book; and, to sum up, it is thanks to his insistence that I decided to
dip my pen in the inkwell and to begin these “memoirs.” It was a long
task, this book was, long and formidable for me. And so many little
incidents, sometimes comic and sometimes tragic, have already recurred
during the making of this manuscript that they might alone suffice to
fill a second volume.
[Decorative Illustration]
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