Part 7

Yvette Guilbert

"_She sings of life, and mirth and all that moves_ _Man's fancy in the carnival of loves;_ _And a chill shiver takes me as she sings_ _The pity of unpitied human things._"

Arthur Symons.

The natural evolution of Gordon Craig's theory of the stage finally brought him to the point where he would dispense altogether with the play and the actor. The artist-producer would stand alone. Yvette Guilbert has accomplished this very feat, and accomplished it without the aid of super-marionettes. She still uses songs as her medium, but she has very largely discarded the authors and composers of these songs, recreating them with her own charm and wit and personality and brain. A song as Yvette Guilbert sings it exists only for a brief moment. It does not exist on paper, as you will discover if you seek out the printed version, and it certainly does not exist in the performance of any one else. Not that most of her songs are not worthy material, chosen as they are from the store-houses of a nation's treasures, but that her interpretations are so individual, so charged with deep personal feeling, so emended, so added to, so embellished with grunts, shrieks, squeaks, trills, spoken words, extra bars, or even added lines to the text; so performed that their performance itself constitutes a veritable (and, unfortunately, an extremely perishable) work of art. Sometimes, indeed, it has seemed to me that the genius of this remarkable Frenchwoman could express itself directly, without depending upon songs.

She could have given no more complete demonstration of the inimitability of this genius than by her recent determination to lecture on the art of interpreting songs. Never has Yvette been more fascinating, never more authoritative than during those three afternoons at Maxine Elliott's Theatre, devoted ostensibly to the dissection of her method, but before she had unpacked a single instrument it must have been perfectly obvious to every auditor in the hall that she was taking great pains to explain just how impossible it would be for any one to follow in her footsteps, for any one to imitate her astonishing career. With evident candour and a multiplicity of detail she told the story of how she had built up her art. She told how she studied the words of her songs, how she planned them, what a large part the plasticity of her body played in their interpretation, and when she was done all she had said only went to prove that there is but one Yvette Guilbert.

She stripped all pretence from her vocal method, explained how she sang now in her throat, now falsetto. "When I wish to make a certain sound for a certain effect I practise by myself until I succeed in making it. That is my vocal method. I never had a teacher. I would not trust my voice to a teacher!" Her method of learning to breathe was a practical one. She took the refrain of a little French song to work upon. She made herself learn to sing the separate phrases of this song without breathing; then two phrases together, etc., until she could sing the refrain straight through without taking a breath. Ratan Devi has told me that Indian singers, who never study vocalization in the sense that we do, are adepts in the art of breathing. "They breathe naturally and with no difficulty because it never occurs to them to distort a phrase by interrupting it for breath. They have respect for the phrase and sing it through. When you study with an occidental music teacher you will find that he will mark little Vs on the page indicating where the pupil may take breath until he can capture the length of the phrase. This method would be incomprehensible to a Hindu or to any other oriental." The wonderful breath control of Hebrew cantors who sing long and florid phrases without interruption is another case of the same kind.

Mme. Guilbert finds her effects everywhere, in nature, in art, in literature. When she was composing her interpretation of _La Soularde_ she searched in vain for the cry of the thoughtless children as they stone the poor drunken hag, until she discovered it, quite by accident one evening at the Comedie Francaise, in the shriek of Mounet-Sully in _Oedipe-Roi_. In studying the _Voyage a Bethleem_, one of the most popular songs of her repertoire, she felt the need of breaking the monotony of the stanzas. It was her own idea to interpolate the watchman's cry of the hours, and to add the jubilant coda, _Il est ne, le divin enfant_, extracted from another song of the same period. With Guilbert nothing is left to chance. Do you remember one of her most celebrated chansons, _Notre Petite Compagne_ of Jules Laforgue, which she sings so strikingly to a Waldteufel waltz,

_Je suis la femme,_ _On me connait._

Her interpretation belies the lines. She has contrived to put all the mystery of the sphinx into her rendering of them. How has she done this? By means of the cigarette which she smokes throughout the song. She has confessed as much. Always on the lookout for material which will assist her in perfecting her art she has observed that when a woman smokes a cigarette her expression becomes inscrutable. Her effects are cumulative, built up out of an inexhaustible fund of detail. In those songs in which she professes to do the least she is really doing the most. Have you heard her sing _Le Lien Serre_ and witnessed the impression she produces by sewing, a piece of action not indicated in the text of the song? Have you heard her sing _L'Hotel Numero 3_, one of the repertoire of the _gants noirs_ and the old days of the Divan Japonais? In this song she does not move her body; she scarcely makes a gesture, and yet her crisp manner of utterance, her subtle emphasis, her angular pose, are all that are needed to expose the humour of the ditty. Much the same comment could be made in regard to her interpretation of _Le Jeune Homme Triste_. The _apache_ songs, on the contrary, are replete with gesture. Do you remember the splendid _apache_ saluting his head before he goes to the guillotine? Again Yvette has given away her secret: "Naturally I have deep feelings. To be an artist one must feel intensely, but I find that it is sometimes well to give these feelings a spur. In this instance I have sewn weights into the lining of the cap of the _apache_. When I drop the cap it falls with a thud and I am reminded instinctively of the fall of the knife of the guillotine. This trick always furnishes me with the thrill I need and I can never sing the last lines without tears in my eyes and voice."

It seems ungracious to speak of Yvette Guilbert as a great artist. She is so much less than that and so much more. She has dedicated her autobiography to God and it is certain that she believes her genius to be a holy thing. No one else on the stage to-day has worked so faithfully, or so long, no one else has so completely fulfilled her obligations to her art, and certainly no one else is so nearly human. She compasses the chasm between the artist and the public with ease. She is even able to do this in America, speaking a foreign tongue, for it has only been recently that she has learned to speak English freely and she rarely sings in our language. Her versatility, it seems to me, is limitless; she expresses the whole world in terms of her own personality. She never lacks for a method of expression for the effect she desires to give, and she gives all, heart and brains alike. Now she is raucous, now tender; have you ever seen so sweet a smile; have you ever observed so coarse a mien? She can run the gamut from a sleek priest to a child (as in _C'est le Mai_), from a jealous husband to a guilty wife (_Le Jaloux et la Menteuse_), from an apache (_Ma Tete_) to a charming old lady (_Lisette_).

It is easy to liken the art of this marvellous woman to something concrete, to the drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlen, the posters of Cheret ... and there is indeed a suggestion of these men in the work of Yvette Guilbert. The same broad lines are there, the same ample style, the same complete effect, but there is more. In certain phases of her talent, the _gamine_, the _apache_, the _gavroche_, she reflects the spirit of the inspiration which kindled these painters into creation, but in other phases, of which _Lisette_, _Les Cloches de Nantes_, _La Passion_, or _Le Cycle du Vin_ are the expression, you may more readily compare her style with that of Watteau, Eugene Carriere, Felicien Rops, or Boucher.... She takes us by the hand through the centuries, offering us the results of a vast amount of study, a vast amount of erudition, and a vast amount of work. In so many fine strokes she evokes an epoch. She has studied the distinction between a curtsey which precedes the recital of a fable of La Fontaine and a poem of Francis Jammes. She has closely scrutinized pictures in neglected corridors of the Louvre to learn the manner in which a cavalier lifts his hat in various periods. There are those who complain that she emphasizes the dramatic side of the old French songs, which possibly survive more clearly under more naive treatment. Her justification in this instance is the complete success of her method. The songs serve her purpose, even supposing she does not serve theirs. But a more valid cause for grievance can be urged against her. Unfortunately and ill-advisedly she has occasionally carried something of the scientific into an otherwise delightful matinee, importing a lecturer, like Jean Beck of Bryn Mawr, to analyze and describe the music of the middle ages, or even becoming pedantic and professorial herself; sometimes Yvette preaches or, still worse, permits some one else, dancer, violinist, or singer to usurp her place on the platform. These interruptions are sorry moments indeed but such lapses are forgiven with an almost divine graciousness when Yvette interprets another song. Then the dull or scholarly interpolations are forgotten.

I cannot, indeed, know where to begin to praise her or where to stop. My feelings for her performances (which I have seen and heard whenever I have been able during the past twelve years in Chicago, New York, London, and Paris) are unequivocal. There are moments when I am certain that her rendering of _La Passion_ is her supreme achievement and there are moments when I prefer to see her as the unrestrained purveyor of the art of the _chansonniers_ of Montmartre--unrestrained, I say, and yet it is evident to me that she has refined her interpretations of these songs, revived twenty-five years after she first sang them, bestowed on them a spirit which originally she could not give them. From the beginning _Ma Tete_, _La Soularde_, _La Glu_, _La Pierreuse_, and the others were drawn as graphically as the pictures of Steinlen, but age has softened her interpretation of them. What formerly was striking has now become beautiful, what was always astonishing has become a masterpiece of artistic expression. Once, indeed, these pictures were sharply etched, but latterly they have been lithographed, drawn softly on stone.... I have said that I do not know in what song, in what mood, I prefer Yvette Guilbert. I can never be certain but if I were asked to choose a programme I think I should include in it _C'est le Mai_, _La Legende de St. Nicolas_, _Le Roi a Fait Battre Tambour_, _Les Cloches de Nantes_, _Le Cycle du Vin_, _Le Lien Serre_, _La Glu_, _Lisette_, _La Femme_, _Que l'Amour Cause de Peine_, and Oh, how many others!

All art must be beautiful, says Mme. Guilbert, and she has realized the meaning of what might have been merely a phrase; no matter how sordid or trivial her subject she has contrived to make of it something beautiful. She is not, therefore, a realist in any literal signification of the word (although I doubt if any actress on the stage can evoke more sense of character than she) because she always smiles and laughs and weeps with the women she represents; she sympathizes with them, she humanizes them, where another interpreter would coldly present them for an audience to take or to leave, exposing them to cruel inspection. Even in her interpretation of heartless women it is always to our sense of humour that she appeals, while in her rendering of _Ma Tete_ and _La Pierreuse_ she strikes directly at our hearts. Zola once told Mme. Guilbert that the _apaches_ were the logical descendants of the old chevaliers of France. "They are the only men we have now who will fight over a woman!" he said. When you hear Mme. Guilbert call "_Pi-ouit!_" you will readily perceive that she understands what Zola meant.

Wonderful Yvette, who has embodied so many pleasant images in the theatre, who has expressed to the world so much of the soul of France, so much of the soul of art itself, but, above all, so much of the soul of humanity. It is not alone General Booth who has made friends of "drabs from the alley-ways and drug fiends pale--Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, unwashed legions with the ways of death": these are all friends of Yvette Guilbert too. And when Balzac wrote the concluding paragraph of "Massimila Doni" he may have foreseen the later application of the lines.... Surely "the peris, nymphs, fairies, sylphs of the olden time, the muses of Greece, the marble Virgins of the Certosa of Pavia, the Day and Night of Michael Angelo, the little angels that Bellini first drew at the foot of church paintings, and to whom Raphael gave such divine form at the foot of the Vierge au donataire, and of the Madonna freezing at Dresden; Orcagna's captivating maidens in the Church of Or San Michele at Florence, the heavenly choirs on the tombs of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, several Virgins in the Duomo at Milan, the hordes of a hundred Gothic cathedrals, the whole nation of figures who break their forms to come to you, O all-embracing artists--" surely, surely, all these hover over Yvette Guilbert.

_April 16, 1917._

Waslav Nijinsky

"_A thing of beauty is a boy forever._"

Allen Norton.

Serge de Diaghilew brought the dregs of the Russian Ballet to New York and, after a first greedy gulp, inspired by curiosity to get a taste of this highly advertised beverage, the public drank none too greedily. The scenery and the costumes, designed by Bakst, Roerich, Benois, and Larionow, and the music of Rimsky-Korsakow, Tcherepnine, Schumann, Borodine, Balakirew, and Strawinsky--especially Strawinsky--arrived. It was to be deplored, however, that Bakst had seen fit to replace the original _decor_ of _Scheherazade_ by a new setting in rawer colours, in which the flaming orange fairly burned into the ultramarine and green (readers of "A Rebours" will remember that des Esseintes designed a room something like this). A few of the dancers came, but of the best not a single one. Nor was Fokine, the dancer-producer, who devised the choregraphy for _The Firebird_, _Cleopatre_, and _Petrouchka_, among the number, although his presence had been announced and expected. To those enthusiasts, and they included practically every one who had seen the Ballet in its greater glory, who had prepared their friends for an overwhelmingly brilliant spectacle, over-using the phrase, "a perfect union of the arts," the early performances in January, 1916, at the Century Theatre were a great disappointment. Often had we urged that the individual played but a small part in this new and gorgeous entertainment, but now we were forced to admit that the ultimate glamour was lacking in the ensemble, which was obviously no longer the glad, gay entity it once had been.

The picture was still there, the music (not always too well played) but the interpretation was mediocre. The agile Miassine could scarcely be called either a great dancer or a great mime. He had been chosen by Diaghilew for the role of Joseph in Richard Strauss's version of the Potiphar legend but, during the course of a London season carried through without the co-operation of Nijinsky, this was the only part allotted to him. In New York he interpreted, not without humour and with some technical skill, the incidental divertissement from Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, _The Snow-Maiden_, against a vivid background by Larionow. The uninspired choregraphy of this ballet was also ascribed to Miassine by the programme, although probably in no comminatory spirit. In the small role of Eusebius in _Carneval_ and in the negligible part of the Prince in _The Firebird_ he was entirely satisfactory, but it was impertinent of the direction to assume that he would prove an adequate substitute for Nijinsky in roles to which that dancer had formerly applied his extremely finished art.

Adolf Bolm contributed his portraits of the Moor in _Petrouchka_, of Pierrot in _Carneval_, and of the Chief Warrior in the dances from _Prince Igor_. These three roles completely express the possibilities of Bolm as a dancer or an actor, and sharply define his limitations. His other parts, Dakon in _Daphnis et Chloe_--Sadko, the Prince in _Thamar_, Amoun in _Cleopatre_, the Slave in _Scheherazade_, and Pierrot in _Papillons_, are only variations on the three afore-mentioned themes. His friends often confuse his vitality and abundant energy with a sense of characterization and a skill as a dancer which he does not possess. For the most part he is content to express himself by stamping his heels and gnashing his teeth, and when, as in _Cleopatre_, he attempts to convey a more subtle meaning to his general gesture, he is not very successful. Bolm is an interesting and useful member of the organization, but he could not make or unmake a season; nor could Gavrilow, who is really a fine dancer in his limited way, although he is unfortunately lacking in magnetism and any power of characterization.

But it was on the distaff side of the cast that the Ballet seemed pitifully undistinguished, even to those who did not remember the early Paris seasons when the roster included the names of Anna Pavlowa, Tamara Karsavina, Caterina Gheltzer, and Ida Rubinstein. The leading feminine dancer of the troupe when it gave its first exhibitions in New York was Xenia Maclezova, who had not, so far as my memory serves, danced in any London or Paris season of the Ballet (except for one gala performance at the Paris Opera which preceded the American tour), unless in some very menial capacity. This dancer, like so many others, had the technique of her art at her toes' ends. Sarah Bernhardt once told a reporter that the acquirement of technique never did any harm to an artist, and if one were not an artist it was not a bad thing to have. I have forgotten how many times Mlle. Maclezova could pirouette without touching the toe in the air to the floor, but it was some prodigious number. She was past-mistress of the _entrechat_ and other mysteries of the ballet academy. Here, however, her knowledge of her art seemed to end, in the subjugation of its very mechanism. She was very nearly lacking in those qualities of grace, poetry, and imagination with which great artists are freely endowed, and although she could not actually have been a woman of more than average weight, she often conveyed to the spectator an impression of heaviness. In such a work as _The Firebird_ she really offended the eye. Far from interpreting the ballet, she gave you an idea of how it should not be done.

Her season with the Russians was terminated in very short order, and Lydia Lopoukova, who happened to be in America, and who, indeed, had already been engaged for certain roles, was rushed into her vacant slippers. Now Mme. Lopoukova had charm as a dancer, whatever her deficiencies in technique. In certain parts, notably as Colombine in _Carneval,_ she assumed a roguish demeanor which was very fetching. As La Ballerine in _Petrouchka,_ too, she met all the requirements of the action. But in _Le Spectre de la Rose_, _Les Sylphides_, _The Firebird_, and _La Princesse Enchantee_, she floundered hopelessly out of her element.

Tchernicheva, one of the lesser but more steadfast luminaries of the Ballet, in the roles for which she was cast, the principal Nymph in _L'Apres-midi d'un Faune_, Echo in _Narcisse_, and the Princess in _The Firebird_, more than fulfilled her obligations to the ensemble, but her opportunities in these mimic plays were not of sufficient importance to enable her to carry the brunt of the performances on her lovely shoulders. Flore Revalles was drafted, I understand, from a French opera company. I have been told that she sings--Tosca is one of her roles--as well as she dances. That may very well be. To impressionable spectators she seemed a real _femme fatale_. Her Cleopatre suggested to me a Parisian _cocotte_ much more than an Egyptian queen. It would be blasphemy to compare her with Ida Rubinstein in this role--Ida Rubinstein, who was true Aubrey Beardsley! In Thamar and Zobeide, both to a great extent dancing roles, Mlle. Revalles, both as dancer and actress, was but a frail substitute for Karsavina.

The remainder of the company was adequate, but not large, and the ensemble was by no means as brilliant as those who had seen the Ballet in London or Paris might have expected. Nor in the absence of Fokine, that master of detail, were performances sufficiently rehearsed. There was, of course, explanation in plenty for this disintegration. Gradually, indeed, the Ballet as it had existed in Europe had suffered a change. Only a miracle and a fortune combined would have sufficed to hold the original company intact. It was not held intact, and the war made further inroads on its integrity. Then, for the trip to America many of the dancers probably were inclined to demand double pay. Undoubtedly, Serge de Diaghilew had many more troubles than those which were celebrated in the public prints, and it must be admitted that, even with his weaker company, he gave us finer exhibitions of stage art than had previously been even the exception here.

In the circumstances, however, certain pieces, which were originally produced when the company was in the flush of its first glory, should never have been presented here at all. It was not the part of reason, for example, to pitchfork on the Century stage an indifferent performance of _Le Pavilion d'Armide_, in which Nijinsky once disported himself as the favourite slave, and which, as a matter of fact, requires a company of _virtuosi_ to make it a passable diversion. _Cleopatre_, in its original form with Nijinsky, Fokine, Pavlowa, Ida Rubinstein, and others, hit all who saw it square between the eyes. The absurdly expurgated edition, with its inadequate cast, offered to New York, was but the palest shadow of the sensuous entertainment that had aroused all Paris, from the Batignolles to the Bastille. The music, the setting, the costumes--what else was left to celebrate? The altered choregraphy, the deplorable interpretation, drew tears of rage from at least one pair of eyes. It was quite incomprehensible also why _The Firebird_, which depends on the grace and poetical imagination of the filmiest and most fairy-like actress-dancer, should have found a place in the repertoire. It is the dancing equivalent of a coloratura soprano role in opera. Thankful, however, for the great joy of having re-heard Strawinsky's wonderful score, I am willing to overlook this tactical error.