§10
One of the queerest incidents of my early education was when a French actor, Dalès, was invited to give me lessons in elocution.
“People pay no attention to it nowadays,” my father said to me, “but your brother Alexander practised le recit de Théramène[[20]] every evening for six months with Aufraine, the actor, and never reached the perfection which his teacher desired.”
[20]. From Racine’s Phèdre.
So I began to learn elocution.
“I suppose, M. Dalès,” my father once said to him, “you could give lessons in dancing too.”
Dalès was a stout old gentleman of over sixty; with a profound consciousness of his own merits but an equally profound sense of modesty, he answered that he could not judge of his own talents, but that he often gave hints to the ballet-dancers at the Opera.
“Just as I supposed,” remarked my father, offering him his snuff-box open—a favour he would never have shown to a Russian or German tutor. “I should be much obliged if you would make him dance a little after the declamation; he is so stiff.”
“Monsieur le comte peut disposer de moi.”
And then my father, who was a passionate lover of Paris, began to recall the foyer of the Opera-house as it was in 1810, the début of Mlle. George and the later years of Mlle. Mars,[[21]] and asked many question about cafés and theatres.
[21]. George (1787-1867) was the chief actress in tragedy, and Mars (1779-1847) the chief actress in comedy, on the Paris stage of their time.
And now you must imagine my small room on a dismal winter evening, with the water running down the frozen windows over the sandbags, two tallow candles burning on the table, and us two face to face. On the stage Dalès spoke in a fairly natural voice, but, in giving a lesson, he thought himself bound to get away as far as possible from nature. He recited Racine in a sing-song voice, and made a parting, like the parting of an Englishman’s back hair, at the caesura of each line, so that every verse came out in two pieces like a broken stick.
Meanwhile he made the gestures of a man who has fallen into the water and cannot swim. He made me repeat each verse several times and constantly shook his head: “Not right at all! Listen to me! ‘Je crains Dieu, cher Abner’—now came the parting; he closed his eyes, shook his head slightly, and added, repelling the waves with a languid movement of the arm, ‘et n’ai point d’autre crainte.’”[[22]]
[22]. From Racine’s Athalie.
Then the old gentleman, who “feared nothing but God,” would look at his watch, put away his books, and take hold of a chair. This chair was my partner.
Is it surprising that I never learned to dance? These lessons did not last long: within a fortnight they were brought to an end by a very tragic event.
I was at the theatre with my uncle, and the overture was played several times without the curtain rising. The front rows, wishing to show their familiarity with Paris customs, began to make the noise which is made in Paris by the back rows only. A manager came out in front of the curtain; he bowed to the left, he bowed to the right, he bowed to the front, and then he said: “We ask for all the indulgence of the audience; a terrible misfortune has befallen us: Dalès, a member of our company,”—and here the manager’s speech was interrupted by genuine tears,—“has been found dead in his room, poisoned by the fumes from the stove.”
Such were the forcible means by which the Russian system of ventilation delivered me from lessons in elocution, from spouting Racine, and from dancing a solo with the partner who boasted four legs carved in mahogany.