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.