Loie Fuller

“ Certainly the crowd of imitators who sought notoriety in this style never achieved the variety and beauty of the effects which “La Loie” obtained. Amateurs who took up the dance in the enthusiasm of the moment gave exhibitions of embarrassed entanglement that provided their audience with a more amusing entertainment than they had anticipated. I have heard of at least one lady, who elected to follow in Loie Fuller’s footsteps for the sake of charity, becoming so enveloped in her hundred yards of drapery that she had at last to be carried ignominiously from the stage in the arms ”

“ At this moment the manager, M. Marchand, who had come near the ticket office, and who fell victim to the irresistible charm of Gab’s mother, joined in the conversation.
[Pg 258]
“She is a very complex personality, Miss Loie Fuller,” he said. “She has no patience but displays nevertheless an incredible amount of perseverance. She is always rehearsing with her electric apparatus, engaged in search of new effects, and she sometimes keeps her electricians at work until six o’clock in the morning. ”

“ La Löie's early history is as remarkable as her dances: she has been a reciter, actress, singer, and play-writer, and finally, by a mere accidental circumstance, success has been thrust upon her as a dancer. With that delicate sister-feeling which makes us—providing there is no rivalry—so wondrous kind, I was not curious about Miss Fuller's present age; for, after all, paltry years count not with us, providing the heart keeps young ”

“ 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.” ”

“ At the Hague I was asked to give a performance before the Grand Duke and Duchess of Mecklenburg, Princess Victoria of Schaumburg-Lippe and their retinue.
The hall was well filled. I had the Philharmonic Society’s orchestra.
This was a gala evening, and in every way a very successful one for me.
Next day on coming down from my room I encountered on the stairway of the hotel a lady with a very sweet expression, who asked me:
“You are Miss Loie Fuller? Your dances interest me greatly. My husband has gone out on the beach. Wouldn’t you like to come and talk to him about your lighting effects. ”

“ There you have to the life this Loie Fuller, in whom our Roger Marx has hailed the chastest and most expressive of dancers, beautifully inspired, who reanimates within herself and restores to us the lost wonders of Greek mimicry, the art of those motions, at once voluptuous and mystical, which interpret the phenomena of nature and the life history of living beings. ”

“ Loie Fuller has made studies in a special laboratory of all the effects of light that transform the stage, with the Dead Sea, seen from a height, and the terraces of Herod’s palace. She has succeeded, by means of various projections, in giving the actual appearance of the storm, a glimpse of the moonbeams cast upon the waves, of the horror of a sea of blood. Of Mount Nebo, where Moses, dying, hailed the promised land, and the hills of Moab which border the horizon, fade into each other where night envelops them. The light in a weird way changes the appearance of the picturesque country. ”

“ The eighteenth century dances, the minuet in a whirl of powder; the waltz is only an embrace, the woman cult revived.
“The soul of the dance was destined to be born in this sad and feverish age. Loie Fuller modelled [Pg 265] form out of a dream. Our foolish desires, our dread of mere nothing, these she expressed in her dance of fire. To satisfy our thirst for oblivion she humanised the flowers. Happier than her brothers, the lords of creation, she caused her silent deeds to live and in the darkness, this setting of grandeur, no human defect marred her beauty. ”

“ Some years later at Brussels I learned that my dancer said to somebody who wanted to know whether she was acquainted with Loie Fuller that she did not know me.
[Pg 232]
XXI
AMERICAN AFFAIRS A STRANGER, and especially a Frenchman who has never travelled in America simply cannot imagine what our country is like. A Frenchman may get an idea of Germany without having seen it; of Italy, without having been there; of India even, without having visited it. It is impossible for him to understand America as it is. ”

“ The flames die into a single flame, which grows to immensity. You might think that human thought were rending itself in the darkness. And we await with anxious hearts the beauty that passes.
“Soul of the flowers, soul of the sky, soul of flame, Loie Fuller has given them to us. Words and phrases avail nothing. She has created the soul of the dance, for until Loie Fuller came the dance was without soul! ”

“ Every New York newspaper devoted from a column to a page to “Loie Fuller’s Wonderful Creation.” Numerous illustrations of my dances accompanied the articles.
I buried my face in my pillow and shed every tear that, for a long time, had lurked in my discouraged soul. For how many months had I waited for this good luck!
In one of these articles a critic wrote “Loie Fuller had risen from her ashes.” Next day the whole city was plastered with lithographs, reproduced from one of my photographs, representing me larger than life, with letters a foot high announcing: “The Serpentine Dance! ”

“ In addition to the purely Loie Fuller characteristic numbers, the Loie Fuller Dancers, on this tour, offered Some Dance Scenes from the Fairy Tale of Her Majesty Queen Marie’s “The Lilly of Life,” as presented at the Grand Opera, Paris.
Apart from this, the “children” had all the old Loie Fuller tricks, and a few new ones. Their dance vocabulary was far from extensive, but there was a pleasant enough quality about it.
When I made the tour, in association with Queen Marie, the “children” were, to put it kindly, on the mature side ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gleam from the [Pg 288] footlights reflected itself on the dancer’s glasses and blazed there like flame, like fugitive flashes, and nothing could be at once more fantastic and more charming than these twists of the body, these caressing motions, these hands, again, these dream hands waving there before Herod, superb in his theatrical mantle, and observing the sight of the dance idealised in the everyday costume.
“I can well believe that Loie Fuller’s Salome is destined to add a Salome unforeseen of all the Salomes that we have been privileged to see. ”

“ Just watch and you will see woman growing in influence and power; and if, as in Gladstone’s phrase, the nineteenth century was the working-man’s century, the twentieth will be the women’s century.
“I have been at the Théâtre des Arts, Boulevard des Batignolles, at a private rehearsal, which Miss Loie Fuller invited me to attend. She is about to present there to-morrow a ‘mute drama’—we used to call it a pantomime—the Tragedie de Salome, by M. Robert d’Humières, who has rivalled Rudyard Kipling in translating it. ”

“ We have formed a plan of taking the children to see you at a matinee next week. Our third, the youngest, is a little boy [Pg 138] whom 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. ”

“ When I was ready to leave the theatre, the students took my horses out of the shafts and drew my carriage themselves. At the Madeleine the crowd was so dense that the police warned us to stop. But as soon as they had learned that it was “La Loie” in whose honour the triumphal procession was decreed, we had permission to go our way without interruption. The young men drew my carriage all the way to Passy, where [Pg 185] I lived. They conscientiously awakened all the inhabitants with their outcries. ”

“ The manager of the Folies-Bergère, who had acted as intermediary between the Russian manager and myself, had come to the station to say good-bye. When he saw that I had missed the [Pg 74] train he came to our house and “showed off.” Meantime, I had called in a local physician, who could not tell me what was the trouble with my mother. As he was French I understood only that she was very ill. My mother’s condition grew worse and I made up my mind not to leave her.
Photo Falk
LOIE FULLER AND HER MOTHER
Next day M. Marchand returned, and this time with representatives of the police. ”

“ From my window looking upon the courtyard of a great hotel in London I have even been present at a dinner—such a dinner as had never before been seen there—given by this same gentleman. Caruso sang. The courtyard of the hotel had been transformed into a lake, and the host and his guests dined in gondolas. From my window I watched the banquet and I thought of the other supper to [Pg 269] which I had been invited involuntarily. The world is so small!
I did not become the well-known Loie Fuller without, as is easily realised, being involved in some little adventures. ”

“ Like them the gigantic flower brings no consolation. It grew in a strange region under the moon’s blue rays. Life beats in its transparent stem, and its clear leaves hang loosely in the shade like great tormented arms. Just a dream efflorescence displays itself and meditates. ”

“ One day we were giving some performances at Lyons. On arriving at the theatre one of my electricians said to me:
“The proprietress of the hotel where I am staying with my comrades is greatly annoyed. She says that you lived with her at the time of your last trip to Lyons. You were very well satisfied and promised to come again, and yet you have not come. She declares that it isn’t nice of you to show yourself so haughty under the pretext that now you are successful.” ”

“ It turns and twists and glows. Smoke, heavy as an incense, rises and mingles in the darkness where embers glow. In the midst of the tumult, licked by torrents of foaming fire, a mask, also a strange flame, is outlined in the reddish air. ”

“ The last time that I saw him was in Paris, Rue Ampère, where he lived in a magnificent appartement.
I remember that there was with him a certain M. Singer, an old friend of Dumas’, who asked him if he was “indiscreet” and who rose to take leave. Dumas took him by the arm and extending his free hand to me, said:
“Indiscreet! Certainly not. All my friends ought to know Loie and be fond of her.”
When I took leave of him he kissed me on the forehead and gave me a big photograph, enlarged after a portrait of him when he was a child. ”

“ Every evening the usual audience is lost amid a crowd composed of scholars, painters, sculptors, writers and ambassadors, and at the matinees there is a crowd of women and children. All the chairs and tables of the galleries have been piled up behind the orchestra chairs and all the people, forgetful of their rank and dignity, climb over them like a crowd of urchins. All that for a young girl who does not seem to suspect that she has won success. ”

“ She was inspired by the spirit which had made dancers of them.
All at once she made her entrance, calm and [Pg 228] indifferent, looking as if she did not care in the least what our guests thought of her.
But it was not her air of indifference that surprised me most. I could hardly refrain from rubbing my eyes. She appeared to me nude, or nearly so, to so slight an extent did the gauze which she wore cover her form.
She came to the front, and, while the orchestra played a prelude from Chopin she stood motionless, her eyes lowered, her arms hanging by her side. Then she began to dance. ”

“ Susan Bates answered him pantingly, all a-tremble with nervous excitement. "Mr. Bates is a just man, and not an ungenerous man, but—but"—She clasped her hands and leaned forward anxiously. "Mr. Bates and I have always stepped along together. He has always done whatever I have asked him to do. He has never disappointed me. But—oh, Roger, he never knew your father in those early days; if he had, could he stand by and see him on the edge of ruin without making some effort to save him?" She waved her hand over the disorder of Roger's desk. ”