The
hypnotized audience, crowded tier above tier of the dark theatre, held itself
strained and intent in its anxiety not to miss one gyration, one least
movement, of the great dancer [Adeline Genée] – that dancer who had enslaved
not only New York and St Petersburg but Paris itself. Swaying incorporeal, as
it were within a fluent dazzling envelope of endless drapery, she revealed to
them new and disturbing visions of beauty in the union of colour and motion.
She hid herself in a labyrinth of curves
which was also a tremor of strange tints, a tantalising veil, a mist of iridescent
light. Gradually her form emerged from this riddle, triumphant, provocative,
and for an instant she rested like an incredible living jewel in the deep gloom
of the stage. Then she was blotted out, and the defeated eye sought in vain to
penetrate the blackness where but now she had been . . .
It was a marvellous and enchanting performance. Even the glare
of the electric clusters and the gross plush of the descending curtain could
not rob us all at once of far-off immaterial things which it had evoked in our
hearts. We applauded with fury, with frenzy; we besieged the floor with sticks
and heels, and clapped till our arms ached. . . . At length she came before the
footlights and bowed and smiled and kissed her hand. We could see she was a
woman of 30 or more, rather short, not
beautiful. But what dominion in the face, what assurance of supreme
power! It was the face of one surfeited with adoration, cloyed with praise.
While she was
humouring us with her fatigued imperial
smiles, I happened to look at a glazed door separating the auditorium from the
corridor. There, pressed against the glass, was another face, the face of a
barmaid, who, drawn from her counter by the rumour of this wonderful novelty,
had crept down to get a glimpse of the star’s triumph.
Of course I was
struck by the obvious contrast between these two creatures. In a moment the
barmaid had departed, but the wistfulness of her gaze remained to me as I
listened to legends of the dancer - her
whims, her diamonds, her extravagances, her tyrannies, her wealth. I could not
withhold from it my sentimental pity.
Later I went up into
the immense gold refectory. Entrenched behind a magnificent counter of carved
cedar flanked on either side by mirrors and the neat apparatus of bottles and
bonbons, the barmaid stood negligently at ease, her cheek resting in the palm
of one small hand as she leaned on the counter. I noticed that she had the
feeble prettiness, the voluptuous figure, the tight black bodice inexorably
demanded of barmaids. In front of her were three rakish youths whom I guessed
to be of the fringe of journalism and the stage. They talked low to her as they
sipped their liqueurs, frankly admiring, frankly enjoying this brief intimacy.
As for her, confident of her charms, she was distantly gracious; she offered a
smile with a full sense of its value; she permitted; she endured. These youths
were to understand that such adulation was too her an everyday affair.
In the accustomed
exercise of assured power her fare had lost its wistfulness, it was the
satiated face of the dancer over again, and so I ventured quietly to withdraw
my sentimental pity.
Arnold Bennett's Journal: 19 February 1899
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