University of Virginia Library

6. LETTER VI.

I went last night to the French opera, to see the
first dancer of the world. The prodigious enthusiasm
about her all over Europe had, of course, raised my
expectations to the highest possible pitch. “Have you
seen Taglioni?” is the first question addressed to a
stranger in Paris; and you hear her name constantly
over all the hum of the cafés, and in the crowded resorts
of fashion. The house was overflowed. The
king and his numerous family were present; and my
companion pointed out to me many of the nobility,
whose names and titles have been made familiar to our
ears by the innumerable private memoirs and autobiographies
of the day. After a little introductory
piece, the king arrived, and, as soon as the cheering
was over, the curtain drew up for “Le Dieu et la Bayadere.”
This is the piece in which Taglioni is most
famous. She takes the part of a dancing girl, of
whom the Bramah and an Indian prince are both enamored;
the former in the disguise of a man of low
rank at the court of the latter, in search of some one
whose love for him shall be disinterested. The disguised
god succeeds in winning her affection, and after
testing her devotion by submitting for a while to the
resentment of his rival, and by a pretended caprice in
favor of a singing girl, who accompanies her, he marries
her, and then saves her from the flames as she is
about to be burned for marrying beneath her caste.
Talioni's part is all pantomime. She does not speak
during the play, but her motion is more than articulate.
Her first appearance was in a troop of Indian
dancing girls, who performed before the prince in the
public square. At a signal from the vizier a side pavilion
opened, and thirty or forty bayaderes glided out
together, and commenced an intricate dance. They
were received with a tremendous round of applause
from the audience; but, with the exception of a little
more elegance in the four who led the dance, they were
dressed nearly alike; and, as I saw no particularly conspicuous
figure, I presumed that Taglioni had not yet
appeared. The splendor of the spectacle bewildered
me for the first moment or two, but I presently found
my eyes riveted to a childish creature floating about
among the rest, and, taking her for some beautiful
young elève making her first essays in the chorus, I
interpreted her extraordinary fascination as a triumph
of nature over my unsophisticated taste; and wondered
to myself whether, after all, I should be half so much
captivated with the show of skill I expected presently
to witness. This was Taglioni! She came forward
directly, in a pas seul, and I then observed that her
dress was distinguished from that of her companions
by its extreme modesty both of fashion and ornament,
and the unconstrained ease with which it adapted itself
to her shape and motion. She looks not more than
fifteen. Her figure is small, but rounded to the very
last degree of perfection; not a muscle swelled beyond
the exquisite outline; not an angle, not a fault. Her
back and neck, those points so rarely beautiful in woman,
are faultlessly formed; her feet and hands are in
full proportion to her size, and the former play as freely
and with as natural a yieldingness in her fairy slippers, as
if they were accustomed only to the dainty uses of a
drawing-room. Her face is most strangely interesting;
not quite beautiful, but of that half-appealing, half-retiring
sweetness that you sometimes see blended with
the secluded reserve and unconscious refinement of a
young girl just “out” in a circle of high fashion. In
her greatest exertions her features retain the same
timid half smile, and she returns to the alternate by
play of her part without the slightest change of color,
or the slightest perceptible difference in her breathing,
or the ease of her look and posture. No language
can describe her motion. She swims in your eye like
a curl of smoke, or a flake of down. Her difficulty
seems to be to keep to the floor. You have that feeling
while you gaze upon her, that if she were to rise
and float away like Ariel, you would scarce be surprised.
And yet all is done with such a childish unconsciousness
of admiration, such a total absence of
exertion or fatigue, that the delight with which she
fills you is unmingled, and, assured as you are by the
perfect purity of every look and attitude, that her hitherto
spotless reputation is deserved beyond a breath of
suspicion, you leave her with as much respect as admiration;
and find with surprise that a dancing-girl,
who is exposed night after night to the profaning gaze
of the world, has crept into one of the most sacred
niches of your memory.

I have attended several of the best theatres in Paris,
and find one striking trait in all their first actors—nature.
They do not look like actors, and their playing is not
like acting. They are men, generally, of the most
earnest, unstudied simplicity of countenance; and
when they come upon the stage it is singularly without
affection, and as the character they represent
would appear. Unlike most of the actors I have seen,
too, they seem altogether unaware of the presence of
the audience. Nothing disturbs the fixed attention

they give to each other in the dialogue, and no private
interview between simple and sincere men could be
more unconscious and natural. I have formed consequently
a high opinion of the French drama, degenerate
as it is said to be since the loss of Talma; and it
is easy to see that the root of its excellence is in the
taste and judgment of the people. They applaud judiciously.
When Taglioni danced her wonderful pas
seul, for instance, the applause was general and sufficient.
It was a triumph of art, and she was applauded
as an artist. But when, as the neglected bayadere,
she stole from the corner of the cottage, and with her
indescribable grace, hovered about the couch of the
disguised Bramah, watching and fanning him while he
slept, she expressed so powerfully by the saddened
tenderness of her manner, the devotion of a love that
even neglect could not estrange, that a murmur of delight
ran through the whole house; and when her silent
pantomime was interrupted by the waking of the
god, there was an overwhelming tumult of acclamation
that came from the hearts of the audience, and as
such must have been both a lesson, and the highest
compliment to Taglioni. An actor's taste is of course
very much regulated by that of his audience. He
will cultivate that for which he is most praised. We
shall never have a high-toned drama in America, while,
as at present, applause is won only by physical exertion,
and the nice touches of genius and nature pass
undetected and unfelt.

Of the French actresses I have been most pleased
with Leontine Fay. She is not much talked of here,
and perhaps, as a mere artist in her prefession, is inferior
to those who are more popular; but she has that
indescribable something in her face that has interested
me through life—that strange talisman which is linked
wisely to every heart, confining its interest to some
nice difference invisible to other eyes, and, by a happy
consequence, undisputed by other admiration. She,
too, has that retired sweetness of look that seems to
come only from secluded habits, and in the highly-wrought
passages of tragedy, when her fine dark eyes
are filled with tears, and her tones, which have never
the out-of-doors key of the stage, are clouded and imperfect,
she seems less an actress than a refined and
lovely woman, breaking through the habitual reserve
of society in some agonizing crisis of real life. There
are prints of Leontine Fay in the shops, and I have
seen them in America, but they resemble her very
little.