Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
nothing, by the way, are they more remarkable than in their decency. The nudities of the present times appear to have been undreamed of in the philosophy of Versailles. That simple-hearted, though strong-minded American writer, Miss Sedgwick, who has published an account of her consternation as she sat with Mrs Jameson in the stalls of our Italian opera, might have witnessed the royal performance unabashed. On being told, as she gazed upon the intrepid self-exposure of Taglioni, "qu'il fallait être sage pour danser comme ça," Miss S. observes, that it requires to be more or less than woman, and proposes to divide the human species into men, women, and OPERA-DANCERS, little suspecting that half her readers translate such a classification into "men, women, and ANGELS;" or that they would see herself and her sister moralist go down in the President without a pang, provided Elssler and Taglioni were saved from the deep!
Natural enough! we repeat it—natural enough! To create a good dancer, requires the rarest combination of physical and mental endowments. Graceful as the forms transmitted to us by the pottery of Etruria and the frescoes of Herculaneum, she must unite with the strength of an athlete, the genius of a first-rate actress. That even moderate dancing demands immoderate abilities, is attested by the exhibition of human ungainliness disfiguring all the court balls of Europe. There may be seen the representatives of the highest nobility, tutored by the highest education, shuffling over the polished floor with stiffened arms and bewildered legs—often out of time—always out of place—as if acting under the influence of a galvanic battery. Not one in ten of them rises even to mediocrity as a dancer. A few degrees lower in the social scale, and it would be not one in twenty. Amid the shoving, shouldering, shuffling mob of dancers in an ordinary ball-room, the absence of all grace amounts even to the ludicrous. Forty years long have people been dancing the quadrilles now in vogue, which consist of six favourite country-dances, fashionable in Paris at the close of the last century, and then singly known by the names they still retain—"La Poule, L'Eté, Le Pantalon, Le Trenis," &c. &c. To avoid the monotony of dancing each in succession, for hours at a time, down a file of forty couple, it was arranged that every eight couple should form a square, and perform the favourite dances, in succession, with the same partner—a considerable relief to the monotony of the ball-room. Yet, after all this experience, if poor Monsieur le Trenis (after whom one of the figures was named, and who, during the consulate, died dancing-mad in a public lunatic asylum) could rise, sane, from the dead, it would be enough to drive him mad again to see how little had been acquired, in the way of practice, since his decease. The processes and varieties of the ball-room are just where he left then on his exit!
Previous to the introduction of quadrilles and country dances or contredanses, the inaptitude of nine-tenths of mankind for dancing was still more eminently demonstrated in the murders of the minuet. For (as Morall, the dancing-master of Marie Antoinette, used passionately to exclaim)—que de choses dans un minuet! What worlds of modest dignity—of alternate amenity and scorn! The minuet has all the tender coquetry of the bolero, divested of its licentious fervour. With the minuet and the hoop, indeed, disappeared that powerful circumvallation of female virtue, rendering superfluous the annual publication of a dozen codes of ethics, addressed to the "wives of England" and their daughters. All was comprehended in the pas grave. That noble and right Aulic dance was expressly invented in deference to the precariousness of powdered heads; and its calm sobrieties, once banished from the ball-room, revolutionary boulangères succeeded—and chaos was come again! The stately pavon had possession of the English court, with ruffs and farthingales, in the reign of Elizabeth. With the Stuarts came the wild courante or corante—
"Hair loosely flowing, robes as free"—
and if the House of Hanover, and minuets, reformed for a time the irregularities of St James's—what are we to expect now that waltzes, galops, and the eccentricities of the cotillon have possession of the social stage? WHAT NEXT? as the pamphlets say—"What will the lords do?"—what the ladies?
Thus much in proof, that the boss of pirouettiveness is strangely wanting in human conformation, and that there is consequently all the excuse of ignorance for the wild enthusiasm lavished by London on the operative class. Ten guineas per night—five hundred for the season—is the price exacted for a first-rate opera-box; and as the exclusives usually arrive at the close of the opera, or, if earlier, keep up a perpetual babble during its performance, they clearly come for the dancing.—"On voit l'opéra, et l'on écoute le ballet," used to be said of the Académie de Musique. But it might be asserted now, with fully as much truth, of the Queen's Theatre, where the evolutions of Carlotta Grisi, Elssler, and Cerito, keep the audience in a state of breathless attention denied to Shakspeare.
In two out of these instances, it may be advanced that they are consummate actresses as well as graceful and active dancers. Elssler's comedy is almost as piquant as that of Mademoiselle Mars. Nor is the ballet unsusceptible of a still higher order of histrionic display. We never remember to have seen a stronger levée en masse of cambric handkerchiefs in honour of O'Neill's Mrs Haller, or Siddons's Isabella, than of the ballet of "Nina;" while the affecting death-dance in "Masaniello" is still fresh in the memory of the admirers of Pauline Leroux. We have heard of swoons and hysterics along the more impressionable audiences of La Scala, during the performance of the ballet of "La Vestale;" and have witnessed with admiration the striking effect of the fascinative scene in "Faust."
Of late years, the union of Italian blood and a French education has been found indispensable to create a danseuse—"Sangue Napolitano in scuola Parigiana;"—and Vesuvius is the Olympus of all our recent divinities. Formerly, a Spanish origin was the most successful. The first dancer who possessed herself of European notoriety was La Camargo, whose portraits, at the close of a century, are still popular in France, where she has been made the heroine of several recent dramas. To her reign, succeeded that of the Gruinards and Duthés—in honour of whose bright eyes, a variety of noblemen saw the inside both of Fort St Evêque and St Pelagie; the opera being at that time a fertile source of lettres de cachet. To obtain admittance to the private theatricals of the former dancer, in her magnificent hotel in the Chaussée d'Antin, the ladies of fashion and of the court had recourse to the meanest artifices; while the latter has obtained historical renown, by having excited the jealousy, or rather envy, of Marie Antoinette. Mademoiselle Duthé appeared at the fêtes of Longchamps, in the Bois de Boulogne, in a gorgeous chariot drawn by six milk-white steeds, with red morocco harness, richly ornamented with cut steel; and thus accomplished the object of incurring the resentment of the court, from the prodigality of one of whose married princes these splendours were supposed to emanate—splendours exceeding those of the Rhodopes of old.
But the greatest triumph ever achieved by danseuse, was that of Bigottini! The Allied sovereigns, after vanquishing the victor of modern Europe, were by her vanquished in their turn. At her feet, fresh trembling from an entre-chat, did
"Fiery French and furious Hun"
lay down their arms! The Allied armies appeared to have entered Paris only to become the slaves of Bigottini!
In our own country, devotees of the danseuse have done more, by promoting her to the decencies of the domestic fireside. In our own country, also, even Punch was once purchased by an eccentric nobleman for the diversion of his private life. But as Demosthenes observed of the cost of such a pleasure, "that is buying repentance too dear!"
We are perhaps offending the gravity of certain of our readers by the extent of this notice; albeit, we have striven to propitiate their prejudices by the peculiar combination and juxtaposition of professions, selected for consideration. But we are not acting unadvisedly. Close its eyes as it may, the public cannot but perceive, that the legitimate drama is banished by want of encouragement from the national theatres, and that the ballet is brandishing her cap and bells triumphantly in its room.
Such changes are never the result of accident. The supply is created by the demand. It is because we prefer the Sylphide to Juliet, that the Sylphide figures before us. Shakspeare was played to empty benches; the Peri and Gisele fill the houses.
We repeat, therefore, since such is the bent of public appetite, let it be gratified in the least objectionable way. Let us have a royal academy of dancing. We shall easily find some Earl of Westmoreland to compose