XIIIMY DANCES AND THE CHILDRENCHILDREN brought up on fairy tales and stories of adventure, have an imagination that is easily kindled by suggestions of the supernatural. From the unearthly appearance of my dances, caused by the light and the mingling of colours, they ought particularly to appeal to the young, making them believe that the being flitting about there before them among the shadows and flashes of light belongs to the unreal world which holds sway in their lives.You can hardly conceive of the genuine enthusiasm I have aroused, or, to express it more exactly, since my personality counts for nothing, of the enthusiasm my dancing has aroused amongst children. I have only to go back in memory to see enraptured groups of children, caught under the spell of my art. I even have literary testimony to this effect, since I find among my papers this note, signed by one of my friends, M. Auguste Masure:“Dear Miss Loie: We have formed a plan of taking the children to see you at a matinee next week. Our third, the youngest, is a little boywhom you have never seen. He looks at all your lithographs and always asks to have them explained. He is only three and a half, but his brother and sister have so filled his head with Loie Fuller that when he sees you it will be worth while observing what he has to say.”If I cite this circumstance it is, let me repeat, because written testimony is involved—testimony that proves clearly the profound impression my dances make on children. Here was a little one, three and a half years old, who was possessed of a desire to see me simply through having heard my praises sung—in what language one may conjecture—by two other children.Here is a story that if not more convincing is more characteristic.One afternoon the daughter of an architect, very well known in Paris, had brought her little girl to a matinee in the course of which I came on. The child, I was told, seemed fascinated and dazed. She did not say a word, did not make the slightest noise, hardly dared to stir. I seemed to have hypnotised her.At the end of the performance the young mother, whom I knew very well, said to the little girl:“We are going to see Loie Fuller in her dressing-room.”THE DANCE OF FLOWERSPhotoMüllerTHE DANCE OF FLOWERSA light was kindled in the child’s eyes, and she followed her mother, clutching at her hand nervously. If the little girl was so visibly affected itwas not at the idea of seeing me, but of being in the presence of an extraordinary creature, a kind of fairy. The conclusion of this incident proves that.The mother and the child found their way to my dressing-room.An attendant opened the door. She asked them to be seated until I should be able to receive them. The keenest emotion was still imprinted on the child’s little features. She must have supposed that she was going to be taken into some celestial place. She looked round with restless eyes, surveying the bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, and seemed to be waiting to see the ceiling or the flooring open suddenly and permit an entrance into Loie Fuller’s kingdom.Suddenly a folding screen was drawn and a young woman came forward, who looked tired and in whose appearance there was nothing supernatural. With arms outstretched she advanced smiling.The child’s eyes opened wider and wider. The nearer I came the further she shrank away.Quite astonished her mother said:“What is the matter, dear? This is Miss Fuller, who danced for you so prettily a few minutes ago. You know you begged me so hard to bring you to see her.”As if touched by a magic wand the child’s expression changed.“No, no. That isn’t her. I don’t want to seeher. This one here is a fat lady, and it was a fairy I saw dancing.”If there is one thing in the world of which I am incapable, it is consciously to cause anyone pain, and, with my love of children, I should never have been happy again if I had caused my little visitor to be disillusioned. I endeavoured therefore to be equal to the situation, and I said to the child:“Yes, my dear, you are right. I am not Loie Fuller. The fairy has sent me to tell you how much she loves you and how sorry she is not to be able to take you to her kingdom. She cannot come. She really cannot. She told me just to take you in my arms and give you a kiss, a good kiss for her.”At these words the little one threw herself into my arms.“Oh,” she said, “kiss the pretty fairy for me and ask her if I can come again to see her dance.”There were tears in my eyes as I replied:“Come as often as you like, my dear little girl. I hear the fairy whispering in my ear that she would like to dance for you all the time, all the time.”THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLYPhotoLangfierTHE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLYAt Bucharest Princess Marie of Roumania had sent all her children to see me at a matinee. The royal box was occupied by a chattering and noisy little regiment of princes, princesses and their friends. When my turn came to go on the lights were turned down and, in the silence that ensued,one could hear distinctly, coming from the royal box, the words:“Hush. Keep quiet.”Then, when I appeared:“Oh, it is a butterfly!”All this was said in a very high voice. Then I recognised the voice of the oldest of the princesses, the one who is so remarkably like her grandmother, the late Queen Victoria. In a tone of the utmost contempt she declared: “You don’t know what you are talking about. It’s an angel.”At each change in the dance the oldest of the little princesses made some further remark, explaining everything from her point of view, as if her utterances were authoritative.Some days later I went to the palace. Princess Marie sent some one to look up the children. They came in one after the other, as timidly as so many middle-class children might in the presence of a stranger.When the princess explained to them that I was the lady whom they had seen dance at the theatre, the oldest of them did not say a word, but, despite her careful training, her face said plainly enough:“You don’t fool me. This woman is telling fibs.”I should have had to dance for them at the palace to convince them that it was really I whom they had taken for an angel. This part of theaffair, though already arranged for, was given up at my request. I wanted to avoid disillusioning these children.Accordingly, when I danced at the palace the little princes and princesses were not present at the performance. They came back, on the other hand, to the theatre, where they were confirmed in their conviction that the lady whom they had seen with their mother and who tried to pass herself off as Loie Fuller was an impostor. The eldest of the little princesses called out so loudly as to be heard all over the house:“This time it is really Loie Fuller.”She pronounced her words with a distinctness that proved clearly that the subject had been discussed at length among the children, and that this affirmation was the result of mature deliberation.M. Roger Marx has two sons, who, when they saw me for the first time, were respectively four and six years old. The elder took a notion to dance “like Loie Fuller,” using a table cloth for drapery. I gave him a robe modelled after one of mine and, before we knew it, the child was evolving new dances.The way he expressed joy, grief, ecstasy and despair was admirable. His memory of me, or rather his memory of my dances, remained so vivid and epitomised so precisely the conception he had of beauty and of art that he became a “poet.”Here are some verses which, two years later, Iinspired in this little boy, and which his mother, Mme. Roger Marx, turned over to me:Pale visionA l’horizonEn ce lieu sombreFugitive ombre ...Devant mes yeux vagueUne forme vague,Suis-je fascine?Une blanche vague.En volutes d’argentSur l’océan immense,Elle court follement,Elle s’enfuit et danseProtée reste! Ne fuis pas!Sur la fleur qu’on ne voit pasPalpite, hésite, et se poseUn papillon vert et rose:Il voltige sans aucun bruitÉtend ses ailes polychromesEt maintenant c’est un arumAu lieu d’un papillon de nuit....The little fellow ended by making wax figurines, representing “Loie Fuller,” works of art that I treasure with great care.Another curious incident is that of the daughter of Madame Nevada, the great American singer. The child always called me “ma Loie” and, after her first visit to the theatre to which she had gone to see me dance, she tried to imitate me. She was so remarkable that I had a little robe made for her. Her father, Dr. Palmer, arranged at his housea magic lantern with variable lights. The little girl danced and invented strange and remarkable forms, which she called “the birth of spring,” “summer,” “autumn,” and “winter.” She was able to make use of various expressions and to combine motions of the arms and the body harmoniously.The little dear was so successful among the few intimate friends who saw her, that Mme. Nevada was obliged to give some recitals in her luxuriousappartementin the Avenue Wagram, so that her friends might applaud the delightful child. At one of these recitals some Catholic priests were present, and when they expressed themselves as delighted by the child’s charm of manner, she said to them quickly:“Do you like these dances? Then you ought to go and see ‘My Loie.’ She dances at the Folies-Bergère!”Here is quite a different impression I once made.Long before my debut as a dancer, I was a littleingenue, and was playing the burlesque role of Jack Sheppard in the play of that name, supporting the distinguished comedian Nat Goodwin. The Editor of one of the principal papers in New York one evening brought his wife and daughter to the theatre to see me in my popular part.The Editor’s daughter became very anxious to make my acquaintance. Her father looked me up and wrote to ask me if he might bring hisdaughter, a young person six years old, to call upon me.I had succeeded so perfectly in taking a boy’s part that the little girl could not believe but that I really was one, and when she had been presented to me, she asked:“Well, why does Jack wear girl’s clothes?”That was another time when I did not undeceive a little admirer. To-day she is a fine young woman who has always been a faithful friend of mine.When I was sixteen years old I made the acquaintance of a young widow who had two sons, seven and nine years old respectively. The elder fell in love with me. In spite of everything they could do to take his mind off it he became worse and worse. He fell behind in his studies and he broke away completely from his mother’s control. Things came to such a point that it was necessary to give the child a change of scene. The widow accordingly left for England with her boy. After a little time she supposed that he had ceased to think of me.Nine years passed. In the meantime I had become a dancer and in London I happened upon the widow and her sons. Forgetting all about my little admirer’s former passion—he was now a big boy of eighteen—I engaged him as my secretary.Some days after he said to me quietly:“Do you remember, Miss Fuller, that when Iwas nine years old I told you that at eighteen I should ask you to be my wife?”“Yes, I remember it.”“Well, I am eighteen years old now and I have not changed my mind. Will you marry me?”Very lately my admirer has repeated his declaration that he will never marry. He is thirty years old to-day, and who knows, perhaps the man’s heart has remained the same as the heart of the boy of nine.
CHILDREN brought up on fairy tales and stories of adventure, have an imagination that is easily kindled by suggestions of the supernatural. From the unearthly appearance of my dances, caused by the light and the mingling of colours, they ought particularly to appeal to the young, making them believe that the being flitting about there before them among the shadows and flashes of light belongs to the unreal world which holds sway in their lives.
You can hardly conceive of the genuine enthusiasm I have aroused, or, to express it more exactly, since my personality counts for nothing, of the enthusiasm my dancing has aroused amongst children. I have only to go back in memory to see enraptured groups of children, caught under the spell of my art. I even have literary testimony to this effect, since I find among my papers this note, signed by one of my friends, M. Auguste Masure:
“Dear Miss Loie: We have formed a plan of taking the children to see you at a matinee next week. Our third, the youngest, is a little boywhom you have never seen. He looks at all your lithographs and always asks to have them explained. He is only three and a half, but his brother and sister have so filled his head with Loie Fuller that when he sees you it will be worth while observing what he has to say.”
If I cite this circumstance it is, let me repeat, because written testimony is involved—testimony that proves clearly the profound impression my dances make on children. Here was a little one, three and a half years old, who was possessed of a desire to see me simply through having heard my praises sung—in what language one may conjecture—by two other children.
Here is a story that if not more convincing is more characteristic.
One afternoon the daughter of an architect, very well known in Paris, had brought her little girl to a matinee in the course of which I came on. The child, I was told, seemed fascinated and dazed. She did not say a word, did not make the slightest noise, hardly dared to stir. I seemed to have hypnotised her.
At the end of the performance the young mother, whom I knew very well, said to the little girl:
“We are going to see Loie Fuller in her dressing-room.”
THE DANCE OF FLOWERSPhotoMüllerTHE DANCE OF FLOWERS
PhotoMüllerTHE DANCE OF FLOWERS
A light was kindled in the child’s eyes, and she followed her mother, clutching at her hand nervously. If the little girl was so visibly affected itwas not at the idea of seeing me, but of being in the presence of an extraordinary creature, a kind of fairy. The conclusion of this incident proves that.
The mother and the child found their way to my dressing-room.
An attendant opened the door. She asked them to be seated until I should be able to receive them. The keenest emotion was still imprinted on the child’s little features. She must have supposed that she was going to be taken into some celestial place. She looked round with restless eyes, surveying the bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, and seemed to be waiting to see the ceiling or the flooring open suddenly and permit an entrance into Loie Fuller’s kingdom.
Suddenly a folding screen was drawn and a young woman came forward, who looked tired and in whose appearance there was nothing supernatural. With arms outstretched she advanced smiling.
The child’s eyes opened wider and wider. The nearer I came the further she shrank away.
Quite astonished her mother said:
“What is the matter, dear? This is Miss Fuller, who danced for you so prettily a few minutes ago. You know you begged me so hard to bring you to see her.”
As if touched by a magic wand the child’s expression changed.
“No, no. That isn’t her. I don’t want to seeher. This one here is a fat lady, and it was a fairy I saw dancing.”
If there is one thing in the world of which I am incapable, it is consciously to cause anyone pain, and, with my love of children, I should never have been happy again if I had caused my little visitor to be disillusioned. I endeavoured therefore to be equal to the situation, and I said to the child:
“Yes, my dear, you are right. I am not Loie Fuller. The fairy has sent me to tell you how much she loves you and how sorry she is not to be able to take you to her kingdom. She cannot come. She really cannot. She told me just to take you in my arms and give you a kiss, a good kiss for her.”
At these words the little one threw herself into my arms.
“Oh,” she said, “kiss the pretty fairy for me and ask her if I can come again to see her dance.”
There were tears in my eyes as I replied:
“Come as often as you like, my dear little girl. I hear the fairy whispering in my ear that she would like to dance for you all the time, all the time.”
THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLYPhotoLangfierTHE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY
THE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLYPhotoLangfierTHE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY
PhotoLangfierTHE DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLY
At Bucharest Princess Marie of Roumania had sent all her children to see me at a matinee. The royal box was occupied by a chattering and noisy little regiment of princes, princesses and their friends. When my turn came to go on the lights were turned down and, in the silence that ensued,one could hear distinctly, coming from the royal box, the words:
“Hush. Keep quiet.”
Then, when I appeared:
“Oh, it is a butterfly!”
All this was said in a very high voice. Then I recognised the voice of the oldest of the princesses, the one who is so remarkably like her grandmother, the late Queen Victoria. In a tone of the utmost contempt she declared: “You don’t know what you are talking about. It’s an angel.”
At each change in the dance the oldest of the little princesses made some further remark, explaining everything from her point of view, as if her utterances were authoritative.
Some days later I went to the palace. Princess Marie sent some one to look up the children. They came in one after the other, as timidly as so many middle-class children might in the presence of a stranger.
When the princess explained to them that I was the lady whom they had seen dance at the theatre, the oldest of them did not say a word, but, despite her careful training, her face said plainly enough:
“You don’t fool me. This woman is telling fibs.”
I should have had to dance for them at the palace to convince them that it was really I whom they had taken for an angel. This part of theaffair, though already arranged for, was given up at my request. I wanted to avoid disillusioning these children.
Accordingly, when I danced at the palace the little princes and princesses were not present at the performance. They came back, on the other hand, to the theatre, where they were confirmed in their conviction that the lady whom they had seen with their mother and who tried to pass herself off as Loie Fuller was an impostor. The eldest of the little princesses called out so loudly as to be heard all over the house:
“This time it is really Loie Fuller.”
She pronounced her words with a distinctness that proved clearly that the subject had been discussed at length among the children, and that this affirmation was the result of mature deliberation.
M. Roger Marx has two sons, who, when they saw me for the first time, were respectively four and six years old. The elder took a notion to dance “like Loie Fuller,” using a table cloth for drapery. I gave him a robe modelled after one of mine and, before we knew it, the child was evolving new dances.
The way he expressed joy, grief, ecstasy and despair was admirable. His memory of me, or rather his memory of my dances, remained so vivid and epitomised so precisely the conception he had of beauty and of art that he became a “poet.”
Here are some verses which, two years later, Iinspired in this little boy, and which his mother, Mme. Roger Marx, turned over to me:
Pale visionA l’horizonEn ce lieu sombreFugitive ombre ...Devant mes yeux vagueUne forme vague,Suis-je fascine?Une blanche vague.En volutes d’argentSur l’océan immense,Elle court follement,Elle s’enfuit et danseProtée reste! Ne fuis pas!Sur la fleur qu’on ne voit pasPalpite, hésite, et se poseUn papillon vert et rose:Il voltige sans aucun bruitÉtend ses ailes polychromesEt maintenant c’est un arumAu lieu d’un papillon de nuit....
Pale visionA l’horizonEn ce lieu sombreFugitive ombre ...Devant mes yeux vagueUne forme vague,Suis-je fascine?Une blanche vague.En volutes d’argentSur l’océan immense,Elle court follement,Elle s’enfuit et danseProtée reste! Ne fuis pas!Sur la fleur qu’on ne voit pasPalpite, hésite, et se poseUn papillon vert et rose:Il voltige sans aucun bruitÉtend ses ailes polychromesEt maintenant c’est un arumAu lieu d’un papillon de nuit....
Pale visionA l’horizonEn ce lieu sombreFugitive ombre ...
Pale vision
A l’horizon
En ce lieu sombre
Fugitive ombre ...
Devant mes yeux vagueUne forme vague,Suis-je fascine?Une blanche vague.
Devant mes yeux vague
Une forme vague,
Suis-je fascine?
Une blanche vague.
En volutes d’argentSur l’océan immense,Elle court follement,Elle s’enfuit et danse
En volutes d’argent
Sur l’océan immense,
Elle court follement,
Elle s’enfuit et danse
Protée reste! Ne fuis pas!Sur la fleur qu’on ne voit pasPalpite, hésite, et se poseUn papillon vert et rose:
Protée reste! Ne fuis pas!
Sur la fleur qu’on ne voit pas
Palpite, hésite, et se pose
Un papillon vert et rose:
Il voltige sans aucun bruitÉtend ses ailes polychromesEt maintenant c’est un arumAu lieu d’un papillon de nuit....
Il voltige sans aucun bruit
Étend ses ailes polychromes
Et maintenant c’est un arum
Au lieu d’un papillon de nuit....
The little fellow ended by making wax figurines, representing “Loie Fuller,” works of art that I treasure with great care.
Another curious incident is that of the daughter of Madame Nevada, the great American singer. The child always called me “ma Loie” and, after her first visit to the theatre to which she had gone to see me dance, she tried to imitate me. She was so remarkable that I had a little robe made for her. Her father, Dr. Palmer, arranged at his housea magic lantern with variable lights. The little girl danced and invented strange and remarkable forms, which she called “the birth of spring,” “summer,” “autumn,” and “winter.” She was able to make use of various expressions and to combine motions of the arms and the body harmoniously.
The little dear was so successful among the few intimate friends who saw her, that Mme. Nevada was obliged to give some recitals in her luxuriousappartementin the Avenue Wagram, so that her friends might applaud the delightful child. At one of these recitals some Catholic priests were present, and when they expressed themselves as delighted by the child’s charm of manner, she said to them quickly:
“Do you like these dances? Then you ought to go and see ‘My Loie.’ She dances at the Folies-Bergère!”
Here is quite a different impression I once made.
Long before my debut as a dancer, I was a littleingenue, and was playing the burlesque role of Jack Sheppard in the play of that name, supporting the distinguished comedian Nat Goodwin. The Editor of one of the principal papers in New York one evening brought his wife and daughter to the theatre to see me in my popular part.
The Editor’s daughter became very anxious to make my acquaintance. Her father looked me up and wrote to ask me if he might bring hisdaughter, a young person six years old, to call upon me.
I had succeeded so perfectly in taking a boy’s part that the little girl could not believe but that I really was one, and when she had been presented to me, she asked:
“Well, why does Jack wear girl’s clothes?”
That was another time when I did not undeceive a little admirer. To-day she is a fine young woman who has always been a faithful friend of mine.
When I was sixteen years old I made the acquaintance of a young widow who had two sons, seven and nine years old respectively. The elder fell in love with me. In spite of everything they could do to take his mind off it he became worse and worse. He fell behind in his studies and he broke away completely from his mother’s control. Things came to such a point that it was necessary to give the child a change of scene. The widow accordingly left for England with her boy. After a little time she supposed that he had ceased to think of me.
Nine years passed. In the meantime I had become a dancer and in London I happened upon the widow and her sons. Forgetting all about my little admirer’s former passion—he was now a big boy of eighteen—I engaged him as my secretary.
Some days after he said to me quietly:
“Do you remember, Miss Fuller, that when Iwas nine years old I told you that at eighteen I should ask you to be my wife?”
“Yes, I remember it.”
“Well, I am eighteen years old now and I have not changed my mind. Will you marry me?”
Very lately my admirer has repeated his declaration that he will never marry. He is thirty years old to-day, and who knows, perhaps the man’s heart has remained the same as the heart of the boy of nine.