A FRENCH DANCER IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON
We have seen that the state of dancing in England was nothing to
boast of in the early eighteenth century. We have seen that London
had not yet what Paris had had some fifty years--State-aided Opera
and Ballet.
But the public appreciation of art was there all the same, and an
astute manager of that day was as capable of realising, quite as
well as any modern, that where there was no home supply it might be
profitable to import foreign talent.
Strange, is it not, that there was not then, any more than to-day,
anyone clever enough, apparently, to realise that since foreign
talent would prove attractive to a dance and spectacle-loving
public (had not the English proved their innate love of spectacle
in Elizabethan times?) it _might be less expensive and still more
profitable, to encourage native talent_. Still that is our way.
We let the foreign artist discover England, and then discover the
foreign artist. We never seem to discover ourselves. We shirk the
horrible revelation that the English really are an artistic, an
art-loving nation. But whatsoever the foreigner may have or have
had against us, he can never accuse us of lack of enthusiasm, of
indifference to his efforts to please.
In the early eighteenth century--French actors, dancers, and
acrobats; in the later eighteenth and mid-nineteenth--Italian
opera singers and ballet; in the later nineteenth--light French
Opera (at the Criterion, Gaiety and Opera Comique); and in the
twentieth--Russian Opera and Ballet; these London has had, and more,
and always greeted with generous praise and enthusiastic approval.
Whatsoever may be said of the English as a nation of “shopkeepers”
slow to adopt new ideas, there is nothing small or hesitating about
their adoption and praise of foreign art and artists; and so it was
that the delectable French dancer Mlle. Marie Sallé, one of the two
chief pupils of the famous Prévôt, found a warm welcome when she
visited London in the reign of George I.
Mlle. Sallé, born in 1707, was the daughter of one minor theatrical
manager, niece of another, and made her first appearance at the age
of eleven in an opera-comique by Le Sage--author of the lively “Gil
Blas”--entitled “La Princesse de Carisme,” at the St. Laurent Fair,
in Paris, in 1718. She spent the next few years in touring, or, when
not on tour, in playing at the Fair theatres in Paris. It is just
possible that Watteau may have seen her as a young girl at the Fair
theatres before he died in 1721. That, however, though pleasant
to contemplate as a possibility, is less our concern than the
circumstances of her _début_, and her subsequent appearance in London.
“La Princesse de Carisme,” a romantic-satirical, three-act musical
comedy, dealt with the love-affairs and adventures of a Persian
Prince and his boon companion and “confident”--Arlequin. There was
some charming music in it, and so great was its success at the
theatre of the St. Laurent Fair that it was put on at the Opera in
Paris by Royal command.
By the year 1718, it will be remembered, old Christopher Rich had
died, leaving his theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London to his
son John Rich, who made himself famous and increased his wealth
by producing the first pantomimes ever seen in the great metropolis,
which were mounted on the stage with all the attractions of gorgeous
scenery and dresses, grand “mechanical effects,” appropriate music,
and striking ballets; the various acts of the spectacle being
interspersed with a comic or serio-comic element, supplied by the
eternal love-affairs of Arlequin and Columbine.
[Illustration: Marie Sallé
(_From an engraving by Petit after a picture by Fenouil_).]
This form of entertainment became so popular as to rival seriously
the power of London’s two chief theatres, Drury Lane and Haymarket,
mainly through Rich’s enterprise in securing all the best
opera-singers, dancers, acrobats and other performers from the
Continent. In fact, he may fairly be described as London’s earliest
music-hall manager, for the entertainment provided at the Lincoln’s
Inn Fields theatre was much like that of a modern variety house. It
was thus he came to engage Mlle. Sallé and her brother, who made
their first appearance here as dancers in an English comedy, “Love’s
Last Shift,” in October, 1725.
Next year also they appeared in London, and in April, 1727, Mlle.
Sallé was given a complimentary benefit, in which she and her brother
introduced some of their youthful pupils. In that same year she made
her _début_ at the Paris Opera, where she remained till, for some
obscure reason, she broke therefrom, and in October returned to
London, once more under John Rich’s management.
The reason for the break may have been that professional jealousy did
not give her the place which her talents should have justified; or
may have been over the question of costume-reform, which was a matter
of burning interest to some of the younger spirits in those days.
Or it may have been merely as the result of managerial changes at
the Opera in 1728. But whatsoever the reason, what Paris lost London
gained, and her greatest triumph here came at the end of 1733, when
she made her first appearance at Covent Garden, following it up with
still greater success in the spring of the following year, when she
achieved a striking success in a classic ballet, “Pygmalion,” in
more or less correct costume, instead of in the absurdly befrilled
garb, with laced cuirasse, powdered hair and plumed helmets, which
were considered _de rigueur_ on the stage at that absurdly artificial
period.
Marie Sallé was not only a dancer of exquisite lightness and grace,
she was a woman of taste and sense, and, forestalling Noverre’s fight
on the same ground, had tried to bring about costume-reform at the
_Académie Royale_ in Paris, only to find that those in authority were
strong in--authority, _and_ convention! She rejoiced, therefore, in a
return to London, that gave her more scope for the expression of her
artistic ideas, and two ballets of her own composition, “Pygmalion”
(February, 1734) and “Bacchus et Ariane” (March, 1734), were mounted
with more regard for classic feeling. Her appearance in both caused
a furore. Royalty came to Covent Garden on the nights she danced.
The whole town flocked to see her, and numerous duels were fought by
ardent young gentlemen who trod on each other’s toes when jammed in
the crowds that endeavoured to enter the theatre.
Mlle. Sallé must have been a woman of character. In a loose era she
was cordially detested by her stage colleagues in Paris for her
virtue! It was such a reflection on them that one should not be as
they!
Another aspect of her is revealed in a significant little anecdote.
The great Handel, having admired her in Paris, had offered her three
thousand francs to appear at Covent Garden, and specially composed
for her a ballet, “Terpsichore.” Hearing of this, Porpora, Handel’s
great rival and manager of the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, promptly
offered her three thousand guineas, and had the tact to suggest that
she might accept it as she had not yet signed a contract with Handel.
To which proposal Sallé replied with quiet scorn: “And does my word
then count for nothing?”
London was delighted with the novelty of Mlle. Sallé’s ideas in the
production of Ballet, and with the personal grace of the young dancer
herself. One of the older historians of the dance has described her
in the following glowing terms: “_Une figure noble, une belle taille,
une grâce parfaite, une danse expressive et voluptueuse, tels étaient
les avantages de Mademoiselle Sallé, la Taglioni de 1730._”
As an influence in the revolution of the Dance and Ballet she might
perhaps not incorrectly be described as the Isadora Duncan of her
period. True, she did not dance barefoot, but she came to loosen the
bonds of tradition, and to free the spirit of the Dance from the
stiffening conventionalities which had grown up around Ballet as seen
at the Paris Opera. In London she had greater freedom, and--greater
success; indeed, so triumphant was her final season that when she
did return to Paris she was welcomed by Voltaire with the following
verses:
“Les Amours, pleurant votre absence,
Loin de vous s’étaient envolés;
Enfin les voilà rappelés
Dans le séjour de leur naissance.”
In yet another poem he pays tribute to her virtue in describing her
thus:
“De tous les cœurs et du sien la maîtresse,
Elle alluma des feux qui lui sont inconnus.
De Diane c’est la prêtresse
Dansant sous les traits de Vénus.”
Later there was to come a change and the idealistic young dancer was
to be attacked for the very virtues her adoring poets--for Voltaire
was not the only one--had celebrated. Her austerity got on the
Parisian nerves! A more modern scribe has pictured her thus:
SALLÉ
“The perfect dance needs music sweet
As dreams; seductive, so the feet
Are led to move as by some spell;
Or music as of murmuring shell.
True dance shows naught of haste or heat,
Nor trick, nor any kind of cheat.
Beauty and Joy, twin souls, should meet
To make that lovely miracle,
The perfect dance.
“A field of wind-kissed waving wheat;
A swaying sea, scarce waked to greet
The dawn; clouds drifting; these things tell
What dance may be--if it excel.
Men said they saw in hers complete,
The perfect dance!”
But if the Parisians did not quite appreciate her as they should have
done at first, her return to Paris after her London successes was
triumphant. Her portrait was painted by Lancret; her every appearance
was greeted with enthusiasm.
She remained at the Opera for some years, retired therefrom in
1740, but made frequent appearances after, at Versailles and at
Fontainebleau, until a few years before her death in 1756.
It is interesting to think that her personal dignity had won her
the respect, and her beauteous art the homage of London before her
qualities came to be recognised in Paris. It is possibly just the
suggestion of austerity about her performance that appealed to the
London audience. She had a poetic distinction above the average.
She was an expressive _mime_, and her dancing was marked by supreme
refinement, a magnetic reserve, a strange suggestion of pictured
stillness, an exquisite simplicity and grace.