CHAPTER XIX

THE HOUSE OF VESTRIS

It is recorded that during one of the many revolts indulged in by the dancers of the Paris Opera against managerial control, which incidentally meant, of course, State and Royal control, some of the leaders were sent to Fort l’Evêque--including Auguste Vestris.

So melodramatically pathetic was the farewell scene with his father, Gaetan, that even his colleagues laughed! “Go my son,” said _le Diou de la Danse_. “This is the most glorious moment of your career. Take my carriage, and ask for the cell which was occupied by my friend the King of Poland. I will meet every expense.”

And the great Gaetan is said to have added, with an air of injured dignity, that this was the first time in history that there had been “any difference of opinion between the House of Bourbon and the House of Vestris!”

What _was_ the--“House of Vestris?” Well, it was a fairly numerous one, of which, so far as our interest is concerned, Gaetan was virtually the founder. He had a father it is true, who, being employed, it is believed, in a Florentine pawnbroker’s, got into some trouble and with his young family “cleared” to Naples. There being no trains, “wireless” or Scotland Yard in those days, they stayed there in safety for a while; the children, who had been taught music and dancing, being made to exercise their talents in that direction for their general support.

Palermo was the next move, where two of the girls, Marie-Therese and Violante, with one of the sons, Gaetan, entered the Opera. After that they seem to have scattered and travelled over most of cultured Europe, appearing now in one opera house, now in another, and always deeply engaged in love affairs. It is with their arrival in Paris, and with Gaetan more especially that we now have to do.

He was one of the eight children of Thomas Vestris and his wife, _née_ Violante-Beatrix de Dominique Bruscagli, but only of three of the family have we much record, namely, Gaetan and the two sisters already mentioned.

Gaetan-Appolino Balthazar Vestris was born at Florence in April, 1729, and in importance--though far from it in physique--was the Mordkin of his era. There, however, the resemblance ceases.

He was a little man, with the biggest ideas of his own talents. But his size did not detract from his merits, his sheer style as a dancer; and from all accounts he is to be ranked as one of the finest male dancers the world has ever known. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he is one of the most important factors in the history of the modern dance and that his influence as a teacher is seen to-day in the real classic school, that is, the school which is based on ages of tradition. For Gaetan was in his time the supreme leader of the Dance, and undoubtedly gave a new standard and tradition to Paris, the influence of which spread to every Opera House on the Continent.

He is a link in a chain. One of the first dancing masters to assist Louis XIV in establishing his Royal Academy of Music and Dance--and modern theatrical dancing dates from that event--was Beauchamps, whose pupil was “the great” Dupré. _He_ taught Gaetan Vestris. Gaetan in turn taught his son Auguste, of whom, in his later years, Carlotta Grisi was a pupil, and there may be some to-day who have studied under pupils of Carlotta Grisi, who herself died comparatively recently.

According to a contemporary biographer Gaetan made his _début_ at the Royal Academy of Music and Dance “_sans retribution_,” in 1748; entered there for study in 1749, became a solo dancer in 1751, a Member of the Académie Royale de Danse in 1753; _maître de ballet_ in 1761 until 1770, and composer and master of Ballet from that year until 1776.

From time to time he visited Stuttgart--as the Russian dancers to-day have visited London--in vacation, and in the theatre there under the direction of that master of ballet-composition and stage reformer, Jean Georges Noverre, found greater scope for his artistic abilities than in the more conventional work of the Paris Opera.

We have seen that by her invention of new and rapid steps, Camargo infused new life into the technique of theatrical dancing some years before the rise of Gaetan Vestris to supremacy. He, in turn, came to bring a new influence mainly in the direction of a certain _largeur_ of movement and gesture, a certain grandiosity, as well as setting a new standard in perfection of execution.

A contemporary critic declared: “When Vestris appeared at the Opera one really believed it was Apollo who had come to earth to give lessons in grace. He perfected the art of the Dance, gave more freedom to the ‘positions’ already known, and created new ones.”

Undoubtedly he learnt much from Noverre, even as the latter had learnt much from David Garrick. Noverre conceived the idea of creating the dance with action, in short, the ballet-pantomime; at least its creation was claimed, and by some of his contemporaries, attributed to him; though we have seen that he had forerunners in the Duchesse du Maine, and, too, in Sallé, who was an ardent stage-reformer and seems to have influenced Noverre. But it was the latter who took practical steps towards instituting the real ballet in action, the true ballet-pantomime as we have seen it to-day.

Up to this time, opera-ballet had had a somewhat rigid form: there were music, singing and dancing; but the dances were detached items in the general effect. The regulation form was: _passe-pieds_ in the prologue; _musettes_ in the first act; _tambourins_ in the second; _chaconnes_ and _passacailles_ in the third and fourth.

In all this it was not the plot of the opera which decided the introduction of the dances, but quite other considerations, such as the particular excellence of particular dancers in their special dances--the best performers usually appearing last. It was routine, not the action of the story by which these things were ordered; and the poet who had provided the plot, the musician who had composed the music, the costumier and scenic artist, and even the ballet master, each worked detachedly, without regard to consultation and cooperation towards an artistic unity of effect.

The lines had been set, the routine laid down for all time; any deviation therefrom seemed impossible, a thing vainly imagined only by a heretic, who could not hope to win in a fight against the established form and authority of the Opera. Yet the reformation came. Noverre, the reformer, found in Gaetan Vestris a technical exponent who responded to his influence; and in Dauberval, another; and at Stuttgart the time and place for artistic experiment. It is to this triumvirate that credit was given in their own time for the reform of the _scène chorégraphique_, a reform which had to struggle against and overcome tradition, prejudice, ignorance and the obstinacy of authority. Slow progress was made at first. Stuttgart had its effect, but the Paris Opera still clung to the bizarre accessories which were then regarded as inherent to the dignity of the theatre--the masks, under which the faces were hidden, the towering wigs by which the heads were bowed; the absurd panniers; the puffed skirts; the great breastplates, all forming the heroic panoply by which the leading histrions were known for hero and heroine, and traces of which may be found in those spangled figures beloved of our grandfathers and grandmothers in their childhood, during the first half of last century.

Gaetan Vestris was the first dancer who dared to discard that absurd convention--the mask, and so reveal that expressive play of feature which made _acted_ ballet possible. This was in 1770, when he appeared in a ballet-pantomime on the story of _Medea and Jason_. He astonished the audience by the dramatic force of his miming and by the nobility of his physiognomical expression. One critic wrote: “_Le mérite particulier de Vestris, c’était la grâce, l’élégance et la délicatesse. Tous ses pas avaient une pureté, un fini dont on ne peut se faire une idée aujourd’hui et ce n’est pas sans quelque raison qu’on compare son talent à celui de Racine._”

For all his artistic talent as dancer and mime, however, Gaetan was practically illiterate; ignorant of all save the art in which he excelled; and his conceit was colossal.

One day, when he was coming from a rehearsal at the Opera, a somewhat ample lady happened, in passing, to tread rather heavily on one of his feet. In deep concern she apologised profusely, and expressed an earnest hope that she had not seriously hurt him.

“Hurt me, Madam!” he answered. “Me? You have merely put all Paris into mourning for a fortnight!”

His pride in his son was stupendous, and he once declared that, “If Auguste occasionally descends to touch the earth it is merely out of consideration for the feelings of less talented colleagues.” As to himself, on one occasion he volunteered the assertion that his century had produced but three really great men--Frederick the Great, Voltaire and himself!

Of the many susceptible ladies who succumbed to the questionable fascination of this “_Diou de la Danse_”--as in his Italianate-French he called himself--the most notable--apart from his legitimate wife, the beautiful _danseuse_ Heinel, whom he married in 1752--was Mlle. Allard.

Born of poor and none too honest parents, Marie Allard first drew breath on August 14th, 1742, at Marseilles, where at an early age she entered the local theatre. On the death of her mother, she decided to leave a disreputable father and made her way to Lyons, where she found another not very brilliant theatrical engagement. At the age of fourteen, tiring of Lyons, she set out to win fame in Paris, where she entered the Comédie Française. In the course of time, she came to know Gaetan Vestris, and with him she studied dancing.

She made her _début_ at the Opera in June, 1761, and delighted the audience with the verve, grace and gaiety of her dancing. Though she shone especially in comedy, she was noted as a clever actress in tragedy; and while “Sylvie,” in the comedy-ballet of that name, was one of her most successful parts, she is said to have moved beholders to tears by her performance in Noverre’s “Medea.”

In the lighter _rôles_, however, she was especially popular, and from the moment of her _entrée_ (she was the only dancer at the Opera who was allowed to compose her own _entrées_, not edible!) her gaiety of manner was such as almost to eclipse the real talent displayed in her dancing.

Unfortunately, her public career came to a close all too soon for her admirers, from a cause which even she with all her agility and incessant exercise, was unable to control--a tendency to _embonpoint_! She retired in 1781, and died in 1802; not before she had seen the success of her and Gaetan Vestris’ son, Auguste, who, known as Vestr’-Allard, seemed to combine within him the respective choreographic perfections of mother and father.

Gaetan Vestris, having retired in 1782, lived until 1808, and rejoiced to see his son acknowledged as supreme. On him he graciously conferred the title of _Le Diou de la Danse_; and he declared that it was, after all, only natural that Auguste should excel, since the young man possessed one advantage over himself--he “had Gaetan for his father!”

Auguste, or Marie-Auguste, to give his full name, was born at Paris in 1760. He made his _début_ at the age of twelve in a _divertissement_ entitled “Cinquantaine” with a _chaconne_, which he danced in a manner such as had never been seen. In 1773 he made a strikingly successful appearance as Eros in the ballet of “Endymion;” and though already recognised as a master he entered the Academy school in 1775 and the Opera in the following year. For some time he accepted subordinate _rôles_, but gradually his consummate ability in all he undertook brought him forward, and as he became more and more the pet of the ladies of the Opera and the admiration of its patrons he began to develop his father’s traits, especially conceit.

On one occasion the Director, de Vismes, annoyed at some impertinence of the young man, said, “Monsieur Vestris, do you know to whom you speak?”

“Yes,” Auguste replied, “to the farmer of my talent.”

It says much for that talent that his appearance at the Opera during some thirty-five years, under Louis-Seize, the Republic and the Empire, largely accounted for its prosperity in those amazing times.

He had his father’s grace, precision, suppleness, and style, but more spirit and vivacity; a greater gift of mime; and was as good in _genre_ as in the nobler _rôles_. He paid several visits to London, always with success.

He married in 1795, a young dancer, Anne-Catherine Augier, who had made her _début_ at the Opera two years before under the _nom de théâtre_ of _Aimée_, but his infatuation for her modesty and charm and many good qualities did not last any longer than had his other infatuations for worse qualities in less desirable ladies, and his infidelities led her to attempt suicide, with results that left her more or less an invalid until death put an end to her unhappy existence in 1809. Auguste Vestris himself died in 1842, and left one son Auguste-Armand. He made his _début_ at the Opera, as did a cousin, Charles Vestris, both being pupils of Auguste; and both went abroad; but neither added greater brilliance to the family name than had been achieved for it by first Gaetan, and then Auguste, the first and most distinguished upholders of the House of Vestris.