CHAPTER XVII

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.

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.