Whether either of these amiable old gentlemen received anything in return for his trouble is problematical, for Madeleine Guimard was ever fastidious; but, according to that highly unedifying work, La Police devoilée, the president did not sigh altogether in vain.
In those days there was a corps de ballet attached to the Comédie-Française, some of the performances of which, notably La Mort d’Orphée, ou les Fêtes de Bacchus (June 1759), and Vertumne et Pomone (April 1760), enjoyed a vogue comparable to the most successful ballets of the Opera itself; and it was in this corps that Madeleine Guimard, in virtue of the double protection of M. d’Harnoncourt and the Président de Saint-Lubin, made her first appearance on the stage in 1758. She was then in her sixteenth year, and is described, in the report of the police-inspector Marais already referred to, as “bien faite et déjà en possession de la jolie gorge du monde, d’une figure assez bien, sans être jolie; l’œil fripon, et portée au plaisir.”
Of her professional career at the national theatre we have, unfortunately, no details; the brilliant talents which made her so celebrated in later years were probably as yet undeveloped, or, at any rate, she was afforded no opportunity of displaying them. On the other hand, we have a good deal of information, of a somewhat unedifying nature, in regard to her private life. Her mother appears to have exercised over the young coryphée a commendable vigilance; nevertheless, in September 1760, the girl was detected in an amorous correspondence with a dancer of the Opera named Léger, whom, we learn from a Plainte rendue par la mère de Mlle. Guimard, danseuse à la Comédie-Française, contre un sieur Léger, qu’elle accusait de vouloir séduire sa fille, had introduced himself into the house, under the pretext of giving his inamorata lessons in her art.
The result of this liaison, if we are to believe the scandal-loving scribes of the time, was a child, to which the danseuse gave birth in a barn, in the midst of winter, “sans feu et sans linge.”[70] The story of the child is very probably apocryphal; at any rate, we hear nothing further about it, though, of course, it may have died in infancy. But there can be no doubt that Madeleine Guimard did live for a time with Léger, and in great poverty too; for some years later, when she had risen to fame and opulence, the poet Barthe, in his Statuts pour l’Opéra, alludes to the episode in the following verses:
“Que celles qui, pour prix de leurs heureux travaux,
Jouissent à vingt ans d’un honnête opulence,
Ont un hôtel et des chevaux,
Se rappellent parfois leur première indigence
Et leur petit grenier et leur lit sans rideaux.
Leur defendons, en conséquence,
De regarder avec pitié
Celle qui s’en retourne à pié;
Pauvre enfant dont l’innocence
N’a pas encore réussi,
Mais qui, grâce à la danse,
Fera son chemin aussi.”[71]
The “widow” Guimard—the lady gave out that she was a widow, to account for the non-appearance of the inspector of cloth manufactories—was not nearly so ferocious a guardian of her daughter’s honour when the soupirant did not happen to be a poor devil of a dancer; and when, not long afterwards, the wealthy financier, M. Bertin, of whose unfortunate connection with Sophie Arnould we have spoken in our study of that singer, appeared upon the scene and offered to furnish, for Mlle. Madeleine’s accommodation, a handsome apartment near the Comédie-Française, the fond mother seems to have regarded his advances with complacency, if not with a warmer feeling.
In 1761, Mlle. Guimard quitted the Comédie-Française and accepted an engagement at the Opera, to double Mlle. Allard, at the very modest salary of 600 livres a year. Here, on May 9, 1762, she made her first appearance, in the part of Terpsichore, in the prologue of the Fêtes Grecques et Romaines, and obtained a great success. Her nimbleness and her grace, though at that time perhaps a little affected, gained her loud applause, which never failed her during the twenty-seven years of her theatrical career.
The year which followed her début, Mlle. Guimard secured a genuine success at a performance of Castor et Pollux before the Court, at Fontainebleau. “This young person,” says the Mercure de France, “already known and applauded on the Paris stage, has given before the Court, at Fontainebleau, agreeable proofs of her progress, and particularly in the ballets of this opera, where she danced several pas de deux.”
Every year Mlle. Guimard continued to grow in favour, with both the habitués of the Opera and at the Court. As Eglé in Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou Les Talents lyriques, by Mondorge and Rameau, as Flore in Naïs, as an Amazon in Tancrède, and as the statue in Pygmalion, she was received with ever-increasing applause, and after her appearance in the last-named part, she was generally admitted to be one of the most brilliant danseuses who had ever appeared on the Paris stage.
The dance of Mlle. Guimard has been described by Noverre as the poetry of motion. It was a very simple one, consisting merely of a variety of little steps, but every movement was characterised by such exquisite grace that the public soon came to prefer her to any other performer. What, however, chiefly distinguished her from her colleagues was the fact that to her talents as a danseuse, she united all the qualities of an excellent actress; her countenance, her attitude, her gestures all spoke, and her dance seemed to be only the faithful and very animated expression of the sentiments which she experienced.[72] But let us cite on this subject, a passage from a very interesting letter written, some three years after her death, by her husband, Jean Étienne Despréaux, to a friend, who had asked him for some information about his wife and the Opera: