Fifteen Years of a Dancer's Life With Some Account of her Distinguished Friends

I HAD seen her only as she had been seen by multitudes from every corner of the globe, on the stage, waving her draperies in the first light, or transformed into a great resplendent lily, revealing to us a new and dignified type of beauty. I had the honour of being presented to her at a luncheon of the tour du monde at Boulogne. I saw an American lady with small features, with blue eyes, like water in which a pale sky is reflected, rather plump, quiet, smiling, refined. I heard her talk. The difficulty with which she speaks French adds to her power of expression without injuring her vivacity. It obliges her to rely on the rare and the exquisite, at each moment to create the requisite expression, the quickest and best turn of speech. Her words gush forth, the unaccustomed linguistic form shapes itself. As assistance she employs neither gestures nor motions, but only the expression of her eyes, which changes like the landscapes that are disclosed along a beautiful highway. And the basis of her conversation, now smiling and now serious, is one of charm and delightfulness. This brilliant artist is revealed as a woman of just and delicate sensibility, endowed with a marvellous perception of spiritual values. She is one who is able to grasp the profound significance of things that seem insignificant, and to see the splendour hidden in simple lives. Gleefully she depicts, with keen and brilliant stroke, the humble folk in whom she finds some ennobling and magnifying beauty. Not that she is especially devoted to the lowly, the poor in spirit. On the contrary she enters easily into the lives of artists and scholars. I have heard her say the most delicate, the subtlest things about Curie, Mme. Curie, Auguste Rodin and other geniuses. She has formulated, without desiring to do so, and perhaps without knowing it, a considerable theory of human knowledge and philosophy of art. But the subject of conversation which comes closest to her is religious research. Should we recognize in this fact a characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, of the effect of a Protestant education, or simply a peculiarity of temperament of which there is no explanation? I do not know. At all events she is profoundly religious, with a very acute spirit of inquiry and a perpetual anxiety about human destiny. Under various guises, in various ways, she has asked me about the cause and the final outcome of things. I need not say that none of my replies were couched in a manner to satisfy her. Nevertheless she has received my doubts serenely, smiling at everything. For she is distinctly an amiable being. As regards understanding?Comprehension? She is marvellously intelligent. She is even more marvellously instinctive. Rich in so many natural gifts she might have become a scholar. I have heard her employ a very comprehensive vocabulary in discussing the various subjects of astronomy, chemistry and physiology. But it is the unconscious in her that counts. She is an artist. I have been unable to resist the pleasure of recalling my first meeting with this extraordinary and delightful woman. What a rare chance! You admire afar off, as in a vision, an airy figure comparable in grace to those dancers whom one sees on Pompeiian wall paintings, moving in their light draperies. Some day you discover once again this apparition in real life, softened in colour and hidden under those thicker robes with which mortals cover themselves, and you perceive that she is a person of good mind and good heart, a soul somewhat inclined to mysticism, to philosophy, to religion, a very deep, a very cheerful and a very noble soul.

Dettagli