“A building facing the street contains stables and coach-houses, and above is a theatre with all its accessories.
“The garden is adorned with covered bowers. The greater part of the furniture remains in the house, having been made for the place.
“The lottery will consist of 2500 tickets, at 120 livres a ticket, of which one will be the winner.
“Immediately after the lottery has been drawn, Mlle. Guimard will transfer the contract of the sale of the house and the furniture, to the benefit of the owner of the winning lot.”
The drawing of the lottery, originally fixed for May 1, 1786, was, for some reason, postponed until the 22nd of the month, when it took place in a tent erected in the garden of the Hôtel des Menus. There were two wheels, in one of which had been placed 2500 numbered tickets, and in the other 2499 blank tickets and one bearing the word Lot. The draw began at ten o’clock in the morning; but it was not until late in the afternoon, and after 2267 tickets had been drawn, that the winning one was forthcoming, when it was found that Mlle. Guimard’s hôtel had become the property of the Comtesse de Lau, who had only purchased a single ticket. That lady subsequently sold the hôtel to the banker Perregaux, for 500,000 livres.
Mlle. Guimard was growing old; the fatal epoch when beauty is usually compelled to renounce its rights had come; but, like the wicked old Maréchal de Richelieu, she seemed to have drunk of the fountain of eternal youth, and on the boards of the Opera, environed by her cloud of gauze, she appeared as young and fresh and charming as ever. What was her secret? According to the actor Fleury it was an ingenious one. At twenty years of age, he tells us, she had had her portrait painted by a faithful hand, and now, each morning in her boudoir, with this picture on one side and her mirror on the other, she worked to assimilate the face she saw reflected in the latter to the work of the painter, nor did she desist from her labours until she felt certain of a perfect resemblance. Her admirers, it is scarcely necessary to observe, were not admitted to this function.[90]
Mlle. Guimard visited London on several occasions during the season to dance at the Opera House in the Haymarket or at Covent Garden. Three letters, two written respectively on June 20, 1784, and April 16, 1789, to the banker Perregaux, the third bearing date May 26 (probably 1787), contain some interesting details about her sojourn in England. From the first, we learn that she was engaged at a salary of 650 guineas, half of which seems to have been paid in advance and the balance on the termination of her engagement. The latter instalment she complains that she had just seen devoured by a fire which had reduced the theatre to ashes. She graciously says that she has no complaint to make of the inhabitants of London; but the Italians of the Opera—“Ah, les coquins!” They are everything that is bad. And the rest of the letter is chiefly taken up with an account of her dispute with Gallini as to whether or not her articles had been dissolved by the destruction of the theatre.
The second letter, in order of date, is more interesting. “Since my arrival in this town,” she writes, “the people have not left me a single moment to myself. I am overwhelmed by the kindness of all the great ladies and principally of the Duchess of Devonshire. I pass all my time with her, when I am not engaged at the theatre. In truth, my dear little good friend, the manner in which I am everywhere received is so flattering that a less sensible head than that of your little good friend might be turned by it.” She goes on to say that she has just been given a benefit performance, which has realised 950 guineas, and has concluded an engagement for the last five weeks of her stay in England. For this she is to receive 650 guineas, “which makes a very pretty sum for me to bring back to Paris.” “This journey has not been so unprofitable, hein! What think you about it? They love me to distraction, these good English! Voilà ce que c’est que le mérite!”
The third letter shows us that in London the ballerina was regarded as the very glass of fashion: “For the ball marchandes des modes and tailors, who had come to beg me, on the part of the ladies, to give my opinion on their costumes. You know well that I did not make the fashions.”
Of Mlle. Guimard’s visits to England there exists a weird souvenir in the form of a coloured etching entitled: