Anna Pavlovna

“ Next morning—Olga Ivanovna had only just risen from her bed—her door opened... and Anna Pavlovna appeared in the doorway. She was supported by Vassily. In silence she got as far as an arm-chair, and in silence she sat down. Vassily stood at her side. He looked composed; his brows were knitted and his lips slightly parted. Anna Pavlovna, pale, indignant, angry, tried to speak, but her voice failed her. Olga Ivanovna glanced in horror from her benefactress to her lover, with a terrible sinking at her heart... ”

“ Olga Ivanovna's room was a couple of steps from Anna Pavlovna's bedroom. Vassily cautiously sat down by Olga, kissed and chafed her hands, comforted her in whispers. She listened to him, and silently, faintly, shuddered. In the doorway stood Palashka, stealthily wiping her eyes. In the next room they heard the heavy, even ticking of the clock, and the breathing of some one asleep. Olga Ivanovna's numbness dissolved at last into tears and stifled sobs. Tears are like a storm; after them one is always calmer. ”

“ He cried like a child when the doctor told him the case was dangerous.”
“Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman.”
“You are speaking of the poor countess?” said Anna Pávlovna, coming up just then. “I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a little better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the world,” she went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. “We belong to different camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she deserves. She is very unfortunate!” added Anna Pávlovna. ”

“ Anna Pávlovna (to LEONÍD FYÓDORITCH) . There, you see! You are being made a fool of.
Tánya. Let me go home, Anna Pávlovna!
Anna Pávlovna. No, my dear! You may have caused us a loss of thousands of roubles. Land has been sold that ought not to be sold!
Tánya. Let me go, Anna Pávlovna!
Anna Pávlovna. No; you'll have to answer for it! Such tricks won't do. We'll have you up before the Justice of the Peace! ”

“ Anna Pavlovna was so lost in the dance that she did not once glance at her husband.
"Of course not! Where do we poor country bumpkins come in!" sneered the tax-collector.
"We are at a discount now.... We're clumsy seals, unpolished provincial bears, and she's the queen of the ball! She has kept enough of her looks to please even officers ... They'd not object to making love to her, I dare say!"
During the mazurka the tax-collector's face twitched with spite. A black-haired officer with prominent eyes and Tartar cheekbones danced the mazurka with Anna Pavlovna. ”

“ Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his lively little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pávlovna’s hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company. ”

“ And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
“Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,” replied Anna Pávlovna.
“You know,” said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in French, turning to a general, “my husband is deserting me? He is going to get himself killed. ”

“ Anna Pávlovna’s circle on the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients. Prince Vasíli, who still occupied his former important posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He visited his “good friend Anna Pávlovna” as well as his daughter’s “diplomatic salon,” and often in his constant comings and goings between the two camps became confused and said at Hélène’s what he should have said at Anna Pávlovna’s and vice versa. ”

“ Vassily Ivanovitch liked to enjoy life; he could not but be bored in the country; his brothers were good-natured fellows, but extremely limited people: he had nothing in common with them. His sister, Natalia, with the assistance of her husband, had brought into the world in the course of three years no less than four babies; between her and Vassily was a perfect gulf.... Anna Pavlovna went to church, prayed, fasted, and was preparing herself for death. ”

“ Moreover, when in England she was deprived of the splendid setting of the Russian décor, the backcloth at the Palace Theatre being a rather distracting and futile example of the British scene-painter’s art.
Anna Pavlova is not merely a great executive, but a creative artist. She is more than a dancer, she is a lyric poet. One feels that she might equally well have chosen any other of the media of art for the expression of her emotion, but she has chosen her body—or perhaps rather her body has chosen her. ”

“ Sometimes I tremble, Anna, to think how near I came to passing through life without a single glimpse, a moment’s revelation of this greatest and most awful of mysteries, the mystery of primaeval nature. It is a true saying that in the mountains there is peace. One’s sense of proportion, battered out of all shape in the daily life of cities, reasserts itself. I love you still, Anna, but life holds other things than the love of man for woman. Some day I shall come back, and I will show you on canvas the things which have come to me up here amongst the eternal silence. ”

“ Anna said. “I will believe you. Remember that he’s not at all a bad sort, and to speak frankly, he’s your salvation. Try and let him never regret it. There’s plenty to be got out of life in a decent sort of way. Be a good wife to him. You can if you will.”
“I promise,” Annabel declared. “He is very kind, Anna, really, and not half such a prig as he seems.”
Anna moved towards the door, but her sister detained her.
“Won’t you tell me why you have come to England?” she said. “It was such a surprise to see you. I thought that you loved Paris and your work so much.” ”

“ I do not love Anna—perhaps for a moment I thought that I did, but I know now that I was deceiving myself. She is not one who is worthy of being loved. I believed her very different when first I went to Hampstead."
"Tell me no such thing. I am an old man and I know men's hearts. What shall my daughter and her rags be to you now that you have fine clothes upon your back? You are as the others—you have knelt down at the shrine of money and there you worship. This woman in her fine clothes—she is your idol. ”

“ Among the best Russian ballet dancers of the strictly classic or, as we should say, of the Petipa school, are Kshesinskaya, Breobrashenskaya, Geltzer, Pavlova, Mordkin, Novikoff, Volinin, Kyasht and Lopokova, most of whom are known abroad. But there are quite a number of Russian prima ballerinas, who, for some reason or other, have not been able to display their art abroad, yet who rival the best we know. As with other artists, dancers all have their individual traits of superiority and weakness. ”

“ Therefore, I believe that the first appearance of Anna Pavlova at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on 28th February, 1910 is a date to remember, since it may be said to mark the beginning of the ballet era in our country.
That first visit was made possible by the generosity of a very great American Maecenas, the late Otto H. Kahn, to whom the art world of America owes an incalculable debt. The arrangement was for a season of four weeks. Her success was instantaneous. Her like never had been seen. ”

“ A great bowl of scarlet carnations gleamed from a dark corner, set against the background of a deep brown wall. A jar of pink roses upon a tiny table seemed to gain an extra delicacy of colour from the sombre curtains behind. Anna, who had thrown aside her sealskin coat, wore a tight-fitting walking dress of some dark shade. He leaned back in a low chair, and watched her graceful movements, the play of her white hands as she bent over some wonderful machine. A woman indeed this to love and be loved, beautiful, graceful, gay. ”

“ While she is conscious she is a great ballerina, one of the top-ranking artists in any art in the world today, she is equally conscious she is a human being. Basically, she is shy and quite humble. Splendidly poised, immaculately and impeccably groomed, chic in an international rather than in a Parisian sense, she is definitely an elegant person. The elegance of her private appearance she carries over into her appearance as a ballerina. Anna Pavlova, of all other dancers I have known, had this same quality. ”

“ Oh, Anna, Anna, where are your eyes, that you cannot see through this shallow, selfish pretender--a cad at heart, if ever there was one--who cares no more for you than for the flower in his buttonhole, who seeks you only for your money, and who would break your heart when once he had made you his wife, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning! ”

“ Anna comes to London. She is poor, and she will take nothing from my husband, the man she had deceived for my sake, and he, on his part, gravely disapproves of her as ‘Alcide.’ She tries every way of earning a living and fails. Then she goes to a dramatic agent. Curiously enough nothing will persuade him that she is not ‘Alcide.’ He believes that she denies it simply because owing to my marriage with Sir John, whom they call the ‘Puritan Knight,’ she wants to keep her identity secret. He forces an engagement upon her. She never calls herself ‘Alcide.’ It is the Press who find her out. ”

“ She was excellent for little fairy rôles. In this way she received a gradual training for the stage and166 had already mastered her routine when she made her real début in Drigo’s “Harlequin’s Millions.” She had personified Sylvia’s child in d’Annunzio’s Gioconda and the page in Schiller’s Don Carlos. Her dancing was so sure, her movements so graceful and her mimicry so true to life that her reputation was instantly established ”

“ I love you and I want you. Apart from loving you I like you too much to leave you to such a fate, as I like you too much to force you to anything. I like you!"
"And I like you," Anna confessed. "I like your self-confidence in imagining yourself a match for Aeneas. You protested nothing when I vilified you, but I understood you never meant to use your hundred guards against him in Magar gorge. You expected them to stand and look on. You fancied yourself capable of overcoming him with no more help from them or your armor-bearer than he would have had from Achates. ”

“ Anna was one of the most beautiful and graceful of women. And she was as tactful as she was lovely. Before many hours she had successfully played the part of peacemaker, and thanked God in her heart that she had been able to effect complete reconciliation between Stepan and his wife. That same evening Anna went to a grand ball with Kitty and her mother, where the three were quickly saluted by Vronsky. It was a most brilliant affair. But next morning Anna telegraphed to her husband that she was leaving Moscow for home. ”

“ In some dances we have seen Kshesinskaya superior to all the rest, in other rôles186 she is just a mediocrity. We can imagine nothing more inspiring and beautiful than Pavlova and Mordkin in Glazounoff’s L’Autômne Bacchanale. No Russian ballet dancers have surpassed them in this. In the same way we consider Pavlova a goddess of grace and beauty in Drigo’s Papillon and Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan.’ We measure her one of the most lyric artists of the Russian classic ballet. ”

“ But with the morning, the glorious unstained morning the passion of living would stir even the blood of a clod. It comes over the mountains, Anna, pink darkening into orange red, everywhere a wonderful cloud sea, scintillating with colour. It is enough to make a man throw away canvas and brushes into the bottomless precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist of us all a pigmy. ”

“ Anna laughed softly.
“You propose, then,” she remarked, “that I shall still be saddled with a pseudo husband. I think not, Annabel. You are welcome to proclaim yourself ‘Alcide’ if you will. I would even make over my engagement to you, if Mr. Earles would permit. But I should certainly want to be rid of Mr. Montague Hill, and I do not think that under those circumstances I should be long about it.”
Annabel sank suddenly into a chair. Her knees were trembling, her whole frame was shaken with sobs.
“Anna,” she moaned, “I am a jealous, ungrateful woman. But oh, how weary I am! I know. ”

“ Once she stopped in front of a mirror and looked at herself thoughtfully.
“I am getting plain,” she said, with a little shudder. “This life is killing me! Oh, it is dull, dull, dull!”
Suddenly an idea seemed to strike her. She went to her room and changed the loose morning gown in which she had lunched for a dark walking dress. A few minutes later she left the house on foot, and taking a hansom at the corner of the Square, drove to Anna’s flat.
Anna was having tea by herself when she entered. She rose at once with a little exclamation, half of surprise, half of pleasure. ”

“ Anything in the least irregular is like poison to him. He has no imagination, no real generosity. You might tell the truth to some men, but never to him.”
Anna was thoughtful. A conviction that her sister’s words were true had from the first possessed her.
“Annabel,” she said slowly, “if I fight this thing out myself, can I trust you that it will not be a vain sacrifice? After what you have said it is useless for us to play with words. You do not love your husband, you have married him for a position—to escape from—things which you feared. Will you be a faithful and honest wife? ”