CHAPTER XXIV

THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

Though it had not died during the Revolutionary period, either in Paris or London, the art of Ballet, from the death of Louis XV was really of little artistic interest, and was to remain so until the famous ’Forties of last century.

The dancers were mostly mechanical; the ballets uninspired; the mounting meretricious; and it was not till the ’forties of last century that a new and all-surpassing _danseuse_, Marie Taglioni, came to infuse a new spirit into the art and found a tradition that holds to-day.

In London Ballet was in almost the same state as in Paris, but not quite, possibly because having been always imported at its best, it had had less opportunity of becoming hide-bound by tradition at its worst, as in the case of an old-established continental school. For the continued production of soundly artistic ballet the existence of a good school is a necessity, a school founded and sustained on right principles. But in its continued existence there is inevitably danger of ultimate stultification from the “setting” of the very tradition it has created, unless there is a perpetual infusion of new ideas.

In Paris the new idea was not then encouraged, if it came counter to the traditional technique of which the Vestris, father and son, were the supreme exponents.

In London there was more freedom, because there was less of tradition; and while we had to wait until the mid-’forties for the productions which were to the Londoners of the early Victorian period what the Russian ballet has been to Londoners in recent years, there was some fairly sound work being done here from 1795 to 1840.

I have, among my books, a volume of libretti of ballets composed by Didelot and produced at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, from 1796 to 1800. It contains “Sappho and Phaon,” _grand ballet érotique, en quatre actes_; “L’Amour Vengé,” _ballet épisodique, en deux actes, dans le genre anacréontique_; “Flore et Zephire,” _ballet-divertissement_, in one act; “The Happy Shipwreck, or The Scotch Witches,” a dramatic ballet in three acts; “Acis and Galatea,” a pastoral ballet in one act; and “Laura et Lenza, or The Troubadour,” a grand ballet in two acts, “performed for the first time for the benefit of Madame Hilligsberg,” who played Laura.

“Laura and Lenza,” is of particular interest to us to-day, for among the performers, in addition to M. Didelot, who played the troubadour hero, Lenza, was a M. Deshayes--a capable dancer and producer of ballet in London and Paris--and a Mr. d’Egville, bearer of a name which is well-known in both cities at the present day.

“Flora et Zephire,” was the most popular, and was frequently revived even as late as the ’thirties, when Marie Taglioni made her _début_ in it at King’s Theatre, for Laporte’s benefit, on June 3rd, 1830.

Both in Paris and London, however, during the first two decades of the nineteenth century Ballet was comparatively undistinguished and it was not really until the ’thirties that it began to assume new interest. True, there were in Paris, some remarkable exponents of advanced technique as regards dancing, but in the glamour of technical achievement the greater idea of the art of Ballet was somewhat obscured.

At the Paris Opera the _dieux de la danse_ were MM. Albert Paul and Ferdinand, all of whom visited London from time to time and the second of whom was known as _l’aérien_, a descriptive nickname emphasised by the quaint criticism of a contemporary who wrote: “Paul used to spring and bound upwards, and was continually in the clouds; his foot scarcely touched the earth or rather the stage; he darted up from the ground and came down perpendicularly, after _travelling a quarter of an hour in the air_!”

M. Paul, by the way, later became a celebrated dancing-master at Brighton, in good Queen Victoria’s early days.

Then, too, there was Paul’s sister who became Madame Montessu, hardly less celebrated than her brilliant brother. Then, too, Mlle. Brocard, who so won Queen Victoria’s girlish admiration that some of her dolls were dressed to represent the pretty dancer in character. Brocard, however, was more remarkable for her beauty than for her dancing.

Another famous artist of the period was M. Coulon, to whose careful tuition the graceful, and _élégante_ Pauline Duvernay owed much of her success, as did also the sisters Noblet--Lise and Alexandrine, the latter of whom forsook the dance to become an actress.

Of Lise Noblet a contemporary chronicler wrote in 1821: “_Encore un phénix! Une danseuse qui ne fait jamais de faux pas, qui préfère le cercle d’amis à la foule des amants, qui vient au théâtre à pied, et qui retourne de même!_” In 1828, she created, with immense success, the _rôle_ of Fenella, in _La Muette de Portici_, and was described as “_le dernier produit de l’école française aux poses géométriques et aux écarts à angle droit_”; the same critic drawing an interesting comparison between the old school and the rising new one, in adding: “_Déjà, Marie Taglioni s’avancait sur la pointe du pied--blanche vapeur baignée de mousselines transparentes--poétique, nébuleuse, immatérielle comme ces fées dont parle Walter Scott, qui errent la nuit près des fontaines et portent en guise de ceinture un collier de perles de rosée!... Lise Noblet se résolut non sans combat--à prouver qu’il y a au monde quelque chose de plus agréable qu’une femme qui tourne sur l’ongle de l’orteil avec une jambe parallèle à l’horizon, dans l’attitude d’un compas farée. Elle céda, à Fanny Elssler, ‘Fenella’ de La Muette qu’elle avait créée, et lui prit en échange--‘El Jales de Jérès.’ ‘Las Boleros de Cadiz’ ‘La Madrileña,’ et toutes sortes d’autres cachuchas et fandangos. Grâce à ces concessions, Mdlle. Noblet resta jusqu’en 1840, attachée à l’ Opéra._”

These references to contrast of styles, to Scott, and to Spanish dances are particularly interesting as illuminating the change which was coming over the Ballet about 1820-1830. Mere technique as the chief aim of Ballet was beginning to fail. It had become too academic and needed the infusion of a new spirit of grace and freedom. It came in a sudden craze for national dances, particularly Slav and Spanish, and in the craze for Scott and all his works, which undoubtedly became an influence on Opera and Ballet, as they did on the forces which led to the growth of the great Romantic movement, of which Hugo was to be hailed as leader and of which the effects passing on through the Art and Literature of the ’fifties, ’sixties, and ’seventies, can still perhaps be traced to-day.

Much of the popularity of the Spanish and Slav dances during the early part of the nineteenth century was due to their frequent performance by Pauline Duvernay, Pauline Leroux and the Elsslers. There were two Elsslers, sisters, the elder of whom, Thérèse, was born in 1808, and Fanny in 1810, both at Vienna.

Thérèse was less brilliant a dancer than her sister--whom she “mothered” always--but had a charming personality. She eventually gave up the stage to marry, morganatically, Prince Adalbert of Prussia, and was afterwards ennobled.

At the outset of her career Fanny achieved distinction, or had it thrust upon her, by becoming an object of the “grande passion,” on the part of l’Aiglon, the Duc de Reichstadt, Napoleon’s ill-fated son. But it was said that the rumour was only put about by her astute manager, in order to get the young dancer talked about, and as an advertisement the manœuvre succeeded admirably.

Both sisters, after acquiring a favourable reputation in Germany, came to London, and it was here, in 1834, that Véron, the manager of the Paris Opera, came over to tempt them to appear in Paris with a salary of forty thousand francs, twenty thousand each. Thinking to impress the young Viennese with an example of Parisian magnificence, Véron gave a dinner-party in their honour at the Clarendon, in Bond Street, to which the best available society was invited, and the menu, the wine and the equipage were of unparalleled quality. At dessert an attendant brought a silver salver piled high with costly presents for the ladies of the company--pearls, rubies, diamonds, superbly set--a miniature Golconda. But somehow it all fell a trifle flat. The Elssler girls, true to their simple German training, drank only water with their dinner, and with dessert merely accepted, the one a hatpin, and the other a little handbag; and they would not agree to sign their contract until the day of Véron’s departure!

Both in Paris and London the sisters were triumphantly successful, and when in 1841 they toured through America they met with a reception that was sensational. It was “roses, roses all the way”; and in some of the towns triumphal arches were erected. At Philadelphia their horses were unharnessed and their carriage drawn by the admiring populace, headed by the Mayor!

Fanny was an especial favourite, and when the sisters left New Orleans, some niggers, who were hoisting freight from the hold of an adjacent steamboat--and niggers are notoriously apt at catching up topical subjects--thus chanted, as the vessel bearing the dancers left the wharf:

“Fanny, is you going up de ribber? Grog time o’ day. When all dese here’s got Elssler fever? Oh, hoist away! De Lor’ knows what we’ll do widout you, Grog time o’ day. De toe an’ heel won’t dance widout you. Oh, hoist away! Day say you dances like a fedder, Grog time o’ day. Wid t’ree t’ousand dollars all togedder. Oh, hoist away!”

Fanny Elssler was at her best in the ballet of “Le Diable Boiteux,” the plot of which is founded on Le Sage’s famous romance. An enthusiastic contemporary described her in the following quaint terms: “_La_ Fanny is tall, beautifully formed, with limbs that strongly resemble the hunting Diana, combining strength with the most delicate and graceful style. Her small and classically shaped head is placed on her shoulders in a singularly elegant manner; the pure fairness of her skin requires no artificial whiteness; while her eyes beam with a species of playful malice, well-suited to the half-ironical expression at times visible in the corners of her finely curved lips. Her rich, glossy hair, of bright chestnut hue, is usually braided over a forehead formed to wear, with equal grace and dignity, the diadem of a queen, or the floral wreath of a nymph; and though strictly feminine in her appearance, none can so well or so advantageously assume the costume of the opposite sex.”

As a dancer she excelled in all spirited dances, such as the _Fandango_, and the _Mazurka_, while in the _Cachucha_ and the _Cracovienne_, she stirred her audience to a frenzy of admiration. Thérèse Elssler retired from the stage in 1850. Fanny, a year later, married a rich banker, withdrew, and died in 1884.