XIVPRINCESS MARIEIT was the evening of my first appearance at Bucharest.Some one came to tell me that the Prince and Princess Royal were in the royal box.After the performance they sent an officer to tell me how greatly my dances had interested them. They promised to come again and, as they wanted their children to see me, they asked if I would not give a matinee.I was in the act of putting on my clothes.It was impossible for me to receive the officer, who accordingly gave the message from their Royal Highnesses to my maid.Next day I wrote to Princess Marie to thank her, and proposed to give a performance at the palace, if that seemed to her desirable.The reply came without delay. The princess sent for me.That is called a “court order,” but it came in the guise of a charming letter, which said that the princess would be very glad to see me if I was not incommoded by the hour which she set.When I arrived at the palace I was taken up agreat staircase and then introduced to a little salon, which was like every other little salon in every other palace. I thought how disagreeable it must be to live in an atmosphere that has been created by a hundred other people before your time, and in which nothing really belongs to you. I was engaged in thinking this when an official opened the door and asked me to follow him.What a change!In a most delightfully arranged room I saw a young woman, tall, slender, and extremely pretty. The surroundings, the furniture, the style, all were so personal to the young woman that the palace dropped out.I actually forgot where I was, and I fancied myself in the presence of a legendary princess in a fairy-tale-chamber.Accordingly the first words I uttered, as I took the hand which the pretty princess extended toward me, were:“Oh, how exquisite this is! It is not at all like a royal palace—any more than you seem like a princess receiving a stranger!”She began to smile and after we were seated she said:“Do you think that a princess should always be cold and ceremonious when she receives a stranger? Well, so far as I am concerned, you are not a stranger at all. After having seen you in your beautiful dances it seems to me that I amwell acquainted, and I am very glad indeed that you have come to see me.”Then she asked if I could secure all my effects in an ordinary hall. She was thinking of the performance which I was to give at the palace.I told her that this would be quite possible. Then, and almost without knowing what I was saying, I murmured: “Heavens, how pretty it is! What a wonderful view you get from these windows!”“Yes. It is chiefly on account of this view that I wanted to live here. The landscape which we overlook reminds me of England; for, as you see, standing by these windows when I look out I can fancy myself once again in the dear country in which I was born.”“Then you still love England?”“Have you ever met an Englishman yet who loved another country better than his own?”“Don’t you love Roumania?”“It is impossible to live here without loving both the people and the country.”She then showed me a big picture. It was her own portrait in the national Roumanian costume. But on account of her blonde hair and her fair complexion the contrast with the other Roumanians whom I had seen was very striking. It seemed that the picture was tinged with sadness, and I wondered whether the princess would not some day regret her enforced exile. To me shegave the impression of a lily, planted in a field of wild poppies.When we returned to our seats I looked at the princess. I admired her excellent carriage, her friendly smile.She showed me a large portfolio in which she had painted some flowers. One of these pictures represented some Chinese plants drooping in a melancholy fashion. I could not help looking at the princess as she turned the page.“I painted them one day when I was feeling very blue,” she said. “We all have such days, do we not?”“Yes, your Highness, but you ought not to have them.”“Well, let me tell you, there is no one alive who has no cause for sadness. I am certainly not exempt.”Then, changing the topic of conversation, she said:“See these chairs. Do you like them?”The chairs were exquisite. The princess had painted them. The upholstery and the woodwork were both adorned with flowers she had painted. By the fireplace the princess had arranged a little corner with divans and low seats covered with Liberty silk. The room was huge, with windows along one side. This row of windows was parallel to a sort of colonnade, which had been there before the room was transformed bythe princess, and made a kind of corridor. One might have wished it removed to enlarge the room, but the princess had it now, and, from a decorative standpoint, she had made the best of it. The ceiling was inlaid with golden panels. I am not sufficiently versed in architecture to state to what style this room would be said to belong; but nothing that I had ever seen before was just like it. It seemed to me to have originated in the brain of some one who had quite new ideas, for the arrangement was absolutely original. The room was panelled in blue faiënce and heavy oriental tapestries.I write this from memory, five years after my visit, but I am certain that I have not forgotten a single detail.Then we spoke of dancing.“Have you ever danced before my grandmother?” asked the princess.“No, never. At Nice once I was to have the honour of appearing before Her Majesty Queen Victoria, when my manager suddenly obliged me to leave for America. I have always regretted it, for a second opportunity never offered itself.”The princess then asked me if the King and Queen of England had seen me dance.“No, but I suppose they think they have seen me, for in my little theatre at the Exposition of 1900, on the days when I was engaged elsewhere, I was sometimes obliged to be represented by anunderstudy. During one of my absences the King and Queen of England, who were then the Prince and Princess of Wales, took a box to see the little Japanese tragedienne who was playing at my theatre. That day an understudy was dancing for me, but the King and Queen probably supposed it was I whom they had seen.”“Oh, well, you will have to dance for them some day.”Then she asked me if I had danced before her cousin, the Emperor of Germany.“No,” I answered regretfully.“Very well, let me know when you will be in Berlin and I will try to have him go and see you. He loves artistic things, and he is an accomplished artist himself.”Later I did dance before the Queen of England, but I was far from suspecting under what circumstances it would come to pass.I asked Princess Marie if she had ever been interested in the dances of the Hindus and the Egyptians, their funeral dances, sacred dances, dances of death and the rest. She, in her turn, questioned me as to the methods by which I thought it would be possible to reconstruct these dances.“There are very few documents treating of the subject, but it seems to me that it should be easy, if one put oneself into the state of mind that prompted the dances in times past, to reproducethem to-day with similar action and movement. If the custom still existed of dancing at funerals, a little reflection will show that the dances would have to suggest and express sadness, despair, grief, agony, resignation and hope. All this can be expressed by motions and hence by the dance. The only question is whether the dancer should express the grief she feels at the loss of a loved one, or if she should reveal to the people who are in mourning resignation and the hope of a future life. In other words, pantomime should be a sort of silent music, a harmony of motions adapted to the situation, for there is harmony in everything—harmony of sounds (which is music), harmony of colours, harmony of ideas, harmony of motions.”We talked for a long time about these dances, and the princess asked me:“Shall we be able to appreciate pictures of this kind when you come to dance at the palace?”I replied that I was thinking of dances of this sort when I wrote to her, for these reconstructions would naturally interest her beyond what she had seen at the theatre.Then the princess asked me a thousand other questions and we were so absorbed in our conversation that her luncheon waited more than an hour for her.The evening when I danced at the palace I supposed that the princess would be alone, for we had agreed, as I have already explained, thatthe children were not to be present at my performance. They were not present, as a matter of fact, but the princess had invited the King and the Queen and all their retinue, limiting the invitations strictly to habitués of the court.When I saw the crowd of guests, I could not help wondering how they were going to seat everybody.We had chosen the dining-hall in which to place an improvised stage, and I had brought two electricians in order to be prepared, if the princess wished me to do so, to present one or two of my radiant dances.The court pianist, in the meantime, had instructed me in some of Carmen Sylva’s songs. The evening entertainment began with expressions in pantomime and dance of several of those songs.It was nine o’clock. At one o’clock in the morning I was still dancing; but I felt myself so utterly exhausted that I had to stop. The princess observed my fatigue and came to me.“What selfishness on our part not to have thought earlier of how tired you must be!”“Oh, I am so pleased that it seems to me I could go on for ever, if I could only get a minute’s rest. You are the one who must be tired.”Supper had been waiting for a long time, and the performance ended then and there.The King asked, I remember, if I could dance “Home, Sweet Home.” I had never tried it, but it did not seem to me difficult—with the accompanimentof the exquisite melody—to express the words, “There’s no place like home.”DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”I had danced that evening Gounod’sAve Mariasome bacchanal dances, some other dances, based upon slow movements of Mendelssohn’s concertos for the dances of death, and on Chopin’sMarche, Funèbrefor the funeral dances. My excellent orchestra leader, Edmond Bosanquet, had, furthermore, composed some perfect music for dances of joy and of grief. In brief, I must have danced at least twenty times, and we had ended with the radiant dances, which the King had never seen. Everyone, it is needless to say, congratulated me in a most charming way, but the loveliest of all was Princess Marie, who brought me a large photograph of herself, on which she had written: “In memory of an evening during which you filled my heart with joy.”The day before our departure from Bucharest some money, which was to have been wired me, had not arrived, and I found myself in a genuine predicament. I had twelve people and several thousand pounds of baggage to get to Rome, where I was to make my first appearance on Easter Day.To arrive there in time we should have to take the train next morning. I went accordingly to the princess, who was the only person whom I knew in Roumania, to ask her if she would come to my assistance.I called on her at nine o’clock in the morning. I was taken to the second storey of the palace, to a room that was even prettier, if possible, than the one in which I had been received the first time.The princess received me. She was in her night-robe, and had put on a dressing-gown of white silk over which her beautiful dishevelled hair hung. She was still engaged in her toilet when I arrived, but in order not to make me wait, she bade me come into her little boudoir, where no one would disturb us. The room, filled with well-chosen first editions, was in charming taste. Everywhere there were little draped statuettes on pedestals. Beside the fireplace was a very comfortable corner. In the midst of all these beautiful objects one might have thought oneself in a miniature museum.I asked her what she liked best among all the things there and she replied, “the rosaries,” of which she had quite a collection. What an artist she must be to bring together all these beautiful things.“This is my room,” she said, while we were talking, “in which whatever happens no one is permitted to bother me. I take refuge here from time to time, and remain until I feel myself ready to face the world once more.”I then told her my troubles. She rang a bell, and gave an order to let M. X—— know immediately that Miss Fuller would come to see him witha card from her, and that M. X—— would kindly do everything in his power to assist Miss Fuller.I looked at her for some time and then I said to her:“I should have liked greatly to know you without being aware that you were a princess.”“But,” she said, “it is the woman whom you now know and not the princess.”And that was true. I felt that I was in the presence of some one who was really great, even if her birth had not made her so. I am certain that she would have accomplished great things if she had not found her career already mapped out for her from the day of her birth in her father’s palace.Everyone knows that a princess’ life precludes liberty, and contains no possibility of breaking with the conventions for the sake of doing something extraordinary or notable. These chains are so strong that if one contrives to break them, it generally happens under the impulse of despair, as a result of irritation and not for the sake of a purely inspired work.When I arose to take leave of the princess she kissed me and said:“If ever I come to Paris I shall call on you at your studio.”She caused an attendant to accompany me to the master of ceremonies, with whom I was to go to the bank. There the master of ceremonies communicated Princess Marie’s order to theeffect that I was to be accommodated in any way I might desire.The money I needed was advanced in return for a cheque, and I left Bucharest.The journey was full of troubles. Vexatious delays occurred. Finally I arrived at Rome, where my appearance had to be postponed until my baggage, lost in transit, had been found. Three thousand people, who had come to my first performance, went away without seeing me. That certainly was very hard luck. If I had been able to foresee all that, I should never have ventured to intrude upon the Princess.In that case I should not have discovered what an admirable woman she is.
IT was the evening of my first appearance at Bucharest.
Some one came to tell me that the Prince and Princess Royal were in the royal box.
After the performance they sent an officer to tell me how greatly my dances had interested them. They promised to come again and, as they wanted their children to see me, they asked if I would not give a matinee.
I was in the act of putting on my clothes.
It was impossible for me to receive the officer, who accordingly gave the message from their Royal Highnesses to my maid.
Next day I wrote to Princess Marie to thank her, and proposed to give a performance at the palace, if that seemed to her desirable.
The reply came without delay. The princess sent for me.
That is called a “court order,” but it came in the guise of a charming letter, which said that the princess would be very glad to see me if I was not incommoded by the hour which she set.
When I arrived at the palace I was taken up agreat staircase and then introduced to a little salon, which was like every other little salon in every other palace. I thought how disagreeable it must be to live in an atmosphere that has been created by a hundred other people before your time, and in which nothing really belongs to you. I was engaged in thinking this when an official opened the door and asked me to follow him.
What a change!
In a most delightfully arranged room I saw a young woman, tall, slender, and extremely pretty. The surroundings, the furniture, the style, all were so personal to the young woman that the palace dropped out.
I actually forgot where I was, and I fancied myself in the presence of a legendary princess in a fairy-tale-chamber.
Accordingly the first words I uttered, as I took the hand which the pretty princess extended toward me, were:
“Oh, how exquisite this is! It is not at all like a royal palace—any more than you seem like a princess receiving a stranger!”
She began to smile and after we were seated she said:
“Do you think that a princess should always be cold and ceremonious when she receives a stranger? Well, so far as I am concerned, you are not a stranger at all. After having seen you in your beautiful dances it seems to me that I amwell acquainted, and I am very glad indeed that you have come to see me.”
Then she asked if I could secure all my effects in an ordinary hall. She was thinking of the performance which I was to give at the palace.
I told her that this would be quite possible. Then, and almost without knowing what I was saying, I murmured: “Heavens, how pretty it is! What a wonderful view you get from these windows!”
“Yes. It is chiefly on account of this view that I wanted to live here. The landscape which we overlook reminds me of England; for, as you see, standing by these windows when I look out I can fancy myself once again in the dear country in which I was born.”
“Then you still love England?”
“Have you ever met an Englishman yet who loved another country better than his own?”
“Don’t you love Roumania?”
“It is impossible to live here without loving both the people and the country.”
She then showed me a big picture. It was her own portrait in the national Roumanian costume. But on account of her blonde hair and her fair complexion the contrast with the other Roumanians whom I had seen was very striking. It seemed that the picture was tinged with sadness, and I wondered whether the princess would not some day regret her enforced exile. To me shegave the impression of a lily, planted in a field of wild poppies.
When we returned to our seats I looked at the princess. I admired her excellent carriage, her friendly smile.
She showed me a large portfolio in which she had painted some flowers. One of these pictures represented some Chinese plants drooping in a melancholy fashion. I could not help looking at the princess as she turned the page.
“I painted them one day when I was feeling very blue,” she said. “We all have such days, do we not?”
“Yes, your Highness, but you ought not to have them.”
“Well, let me tell you, there is no one alive who has no cause for sadness. I am certainly not exempt.”
Then, changing the topic of conversation, she said:
“See these chairs. Do you like them?”
The chairs were exquisite. The princess had painted them. The upholstery and the woodwork were both adorned with flowers she had painted. By the fireplace the princess had arranged a little corner with divans and low seats covered with Liberty silk. The room was huge, with windows along one side. This row of windows was parallel to a sort of colonnade, which had been there before the room was transformed bythe princess, and made a kind of corridor. One might have wished it removed to enlarge the room, but the princess had it now, and, from a decorative standpoint, she had made the best of it. The ceiling was inlaid with golden panels. I am not sufficiently versed in architecture to state to what style this room would be said to belong; but nothing that I had ever seen before was just like it. It seemed to me to have originated in the brain of some one who had quite new ideas, for the arrangement was absolutely original. The room was panelled in blue faiënce and heavy oriental tapestries.
I write this from memory, five years after my visit, but I am certain that I have not forgotten a single detail.
Then we spoke of dancing.
“Have you ever danced before my grandmother?” asked the princess.
“No, never. At Nice once I was to have the honour of appearing before Her Majesty Queen Victoria, when my manager suddenly obliged me to leave for America. I have always regretted it, for a second opportunity never offered itself.”
The princess then asked me if the King and Queen of England had seen me dance.
“No, but I suppose they think they have seen me, for in my little theatre at the Exposition of 1900, on the days when I was engaged elsewhere, I was sometimes obliged to be represented by anunderstudy. During one of my absences the King and Queen of England, who were then the Prince and Princess of Wales, took a box to see the little Japanese tragedienne who was playing at my theatre. That day an understudy was dancing for me, but the King and Queen probably supposed it was I whom they had seen.”
“Oh, well, you will have to dance for them some day.”
Then she asked me if I had danced before her cousin, the Emperor of Germany.
“No,” I answered regretfully.
“Very well, let me know when you will be in Berlin and I will try to have him go and see you. He loves artistic things, and he is an accomplished artist himself.”
Later I did dance before the Queen of England, but I was far from suspecting under what circumstances it would come to pass.
I asked Princess Marie if she had ever been interested in the dances of the Hindus and the Egyptians, their funeral dances, sacred dances, dances of death and the rest. She, in her turn, questioned me as to the methods by which I thought it would be possible to reconstruct these dances.
“There are very few documents treating of the subject, but it seems to me that it should be easy, if one put oneself into the state of mind that prompted the dances in times past, to reproducethem to-day with similar action and movement. If the custom still existed of dancing at funerals, a little reflection will show that the dances would have to suggest and express sadness, despair, grief, agony, resignation and hope. All this can be expressed by motions and hence by the dance. The only question is whether the dancer should express the grief she feels at the loss of a loved one, or if she should reveal to the people who are in mourning resignation and the hope of a future life. In other words, pantomime should be a sort of silent music, a harmony of motions adapted to the situation, for there is harmony in everything—harmony of sounds (which is music), harmony of colours, harmony of ideas, harmony of motions.”
We talked for a long time about these dances, and the princess asked me:
“Shall we be able to appreciate pictures of this kind when you come to dance at the palace?”
I replied that I was thinking of dances of this sort when I wrote to her, for these reconstructions would naturally interest her beyond what she had seen at the theatre.
Then the princess asked me a thousand other questions and we were so absorbed in our conversation that her luncheon waited more than an hour for her.
The evening when I danced at the palace I supposed that the princess would be alone, for we had agreed, as I have already explained, thatthe children were not to be present at my performance. They were not present, as a matter of fact, but the princess had invited the King and the Queen and all their retinue, limiting the invitations strictly to habitués of the court.
When I saw the crowd of guests, I could not help wondering how they were going to seat everybody.
We had chosen the dining-hall in which to place an improvised stage, and I had brought two electricians in order to be prepared, if the princess wished me to do so, to present one or two of my radiant dances.
The court pianist, in the meantime, had instructed me in some of Carmen Sylva’s songs. The evening entertainment began with expressions in pantomime and dance of several of those songs.
It was nine o’clock. At one o’clock in the morning I was still dancing; but I felt myself so utterly exhausted that I had to stop. The princess observed my fatigue and came to me.
“What selfishness on our part not to have thought earlier of how tired you must be!”
“Oh, I am so pleased that it seems to me I could go on for ever, if I could only get a minute’s rest. You are the one who must be tired.”
Supper had been waiting for a long time, and the performance ended then and there.
The King asked, I remember, if I could dance “Home, Sweet Home.” I had never tried it, but it did not seem to me difficult—with the accompanimentof the exquisite melody—to express the words, “There’s no place like home.”
DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”
DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”
DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”
I had danced that evening Gounod’sAve Mariasome bacchanal dances, some other dances, based upon slow movements of Mendelssohn’s concertos for the dances of death, and on Chopin’sMarche, Funèbrefor the funeral dances. My excellent orchestra leader, Edmond Bosanquet, had, furthermore, composed some perfect music for dances of joy and of grief. In brief, I must have danced at least twenty times, and we had ended with the radiant dances, which the King had never seen. Everyone, it is needless to say, congratulated me in a most charming way, but the loveliest of all was Princess Marie, who brought me a large photograph of herself, on which she had written: “In memory of an evening during which you filled my heart with joy.”
The day before our departure from Bucharest some money, which was to have been wired me, had not arrived, and I found myself in a genuine predicament. I had twelve people and several thousand pounds of baggage to get to Rome, where I was to make my first appearance on Easter Day.
To arrive there in time we should have to take the train next morning. I went accordingly to the princess, who was the only person whom I knew in Roumania, to ask her if she would come to my assistance.
I called on her at nine o’clock in the morning. I was taken to the second storey of the palace, to a room that was even prettier, if possible, than the one in which I had been received the first time.
The princess received me. She was in her night-robe, and had put on a dressing-gown of white silk over which her beautiful dishevelled hair hung. She was still engaged in her toilet when I arrived, but in order not to make me wait, she bade me come into her little boudoir, where no one would disturb us. The room, filled with well-chosen first editions, was in charming taste. Everywhere there were little draped statuettes on pedestals. Beside the fireplace was a very comfortable corner. In the midst of all these beautiful objects one might have thought oneself in a miniature museum.
I asked her what she liked best among all the things there and she replied, “the rosaries,” of which she had quite a collection. What an artist she must be to bring together all these beautiful things.
“This is my room,” she said, while we were talking, “in which whatever happens no one is permitted to bother me. I take refuge here from time to time, and remain until I feel myself ready to face the world once more.”
I then told her my troubles. She rang a bell, and gave an order to let M. X—— know immediately that Miss Fuller would come to see him witha card from her, and that M. X—— would kindly do everything in his power to assist Miss Fuller.
I looked at her for some time and then I said to her:
“I should have liked greatly to know you without being aware that you were a princess.”
“But,” she said, “it is the woman whom you now know and not the princess.”
And that was true. I felt that I was in the presence of some one who was really great, even if her birth had not made her so. I am certain that she would have accomplished great things if she had not found her career already mapped out for her from the day of her birth in her father’s palace.
Everyone knows that a princess’ life precludes liberty, and contains no possibility of breaking with the conventions for the sake of doing something extraordinary or notable. These chains are so strong that if one contrives to break them, it generally happens under the impulse of despair, as a result of irritation and not for the sake of a purely inspired work.
When I arose to take leave of the princess she kissed me and said:
“If ever I come to Paris I shall call on you at your studio.”
She caused an attendant to accompany me to the master of ceremonies, with whom I was to go to the bank. There the master of ceremonies communicated Princess Marie’s order to theeffect that I was to be accommodated in any way I might desire.
The money I needed was advanced in return for a cheque, and I left Bucharest.
The journey was full of troubles. Vexatious delays occurred. Finally I arrived at Rome, where my appearance had to be postponed until my baggage, lost in transit, had been found. Three thousand people, who had come to my first performance, went away without seeing me. That certainly was very hard luck. If I had been able to foresee all that, I should never have ventured to intrude upon the Princess.
In that case I should not have discovered what an admirable woman she is.