"Not yet Magdalen repentant, but already Magdalen charitable," exclaimed a preacher in allusion to Madeleine Guimard's good action, (which soon became known all over Paris, though the dancer herself had not said a word about it); and he added, "the hand which knows so well how to give alms will not be rejected by St. Peter when it knocks at the gate of Paradise."
Madeleine Guimard, with all her powers of fascination, was not beautiful nor even pretty, and she was notoriously thin. Byron used to say of thin women, that if they were old, they reminded him of spiders, if young and pretty, of dried butterflies. Madeleine Guimard's theatrical friends, of course, compared her to a spider. Behind the scenes she was known as L'araignée. Another of her names was La squelette des grâces. Sophie Arnould, it will be remembered, called her "a little silk-worm," for the sake of the joke about "la feuille," and once, when she was dancing between two male dancers in a pas de trois representing two satyrs fighting for a nymph, an uncivil spectator said of the exhibition that it was like "two dogs fighting for a bone."
MADELINE GUIMARD.
Madeleine Guimard is said to have preserved her youth and beauty in a marvellous manner, besides which, she had such a perfect acquaintance with all the mysteries of the toilet, that by the arts of dress and adornment alone, she could have made herself look young when she was already beginning to grow old. Marie-Antoinette used to consult her about her costume and the arrangement of her hair, and once when, for insubordination at the theatre, she had been ordered to For-l'Evèque, the danseuse is reported to have said to her maid, "never mind, Gothon, I have written to the Queen to tell her that I have discovered a style of coiffure; we shall be free before the evening."
I have not space to describe Mademoiselle Guimard's private theatre,[53] nor to speak of her liaison with the Prince de Soubise, nor of her elopement with a German prince, whom the Prince de Soubise pursued, wounding him and killing three of his servants, nor of her ultimate marriage with a humble "professor of graces" at the Conservatory of Paris. I must mention, however, that in her decadence Madeleine Guimard visited London (a dozen Princes de Soubise would have followed her with drawn swords if she had attempted to leave Paris during her prime); and that Lord Mount Edgcumbe, the author of the interesting "Musical Reminiscences," saw her dance at the King's Theatre in the year 1789. This was the year of the taking of the Bastille, when a Parisian artist might well have been glad to make a little tour abroad. The dancers who had appeared at the beginning of the season had been insufferably bad, and the manager was at last compelled to send to Paris for more and better performers. Amongst them, says Lord Mount Edgcumbe, "came the famous Mademoiselle Guimard, then near sixty years old, but still full of grace and gentility, and she had never possessed more." Madeleine Guimard had ceased to be the rage in Paris for nearly ten years, ("Vers 1780," says M. A. Houssaye, in his "Galerie du Dix-huitième Siècle", elle tomba peu à peu dans l'oubli"), but she was not sixty or even fifty years of age when she came to London. M. Castil Blaze, an excellent authority in such matters, tells us in his "Histoire de l'Académie Royale de Musique," that she was born in 1743.
THE VESTRIS FAMILY.
By way of contrast to Madeleine Guimard, I may call attention to Mademoiselle Théodore, a young, pretty and accomplished danseuse, who hesitated before she embraced a theatrical career, and actually consulted Jean Jacques Rousseau on the subject; who remained virtuous even on the boards of the Académie Royale; and who married Dauberval, the celebrated dancer, as any respectable bourgeoise (if Dauberval had not been a dancer) might have done. Perhaps some aspiring but timid and scrupulous Mademoiselle Théodore of the present day would like to know what Rousseau thought about the perils of the stage? He replied to the letter of the danseuse that he could give her no advice as to her conduct if she determined to join the Opera; that in his own quiet path he found it difficult to lead a pure irreproachable life: how then could he guide her in one which was surrounded with dangers and temptations?
Vestris, I mean Vestris the First, the founder of the family, was as celebrated as Mademoiselle Guimard for his youthfulness in old age. M. Castil Blaze, the historian of the French Opera, saw him fifty-two years after his début at the Académie, which took place in 1748, and declares that he danced with as much success as ever, going through the steps of the minuet "avec autant de grâce que de noblesse." Gaetan left the stage soon after the triumphant success of his son Auguste, but re-appeared and took part in certain special performances in 1795, 1799 and 1800. On the occasion of the young Vestris's début, his father, in court dress, sword at side, and hat in hand, appeared with him on the stage. After a short but dignified address to the public on the importance of the art he professed, and the hopes he had formed of the inheritor of his name, he turned to Auguste and said, "Now, my son, exhibit your talent to the public! Your father is looking at you!"
The Vestris family, which was very numerous, and very united, always went in a body to the opera when Auguste danced, and at other times made a point of stopping away. "Auguste is a better dancer than I am," the old Vestris would say; "he had Gaetan Vestris for his father, an advantage which nature refused me."
"If," said Gaetan, on another occasion, "le dieu de la danse (a title which he had himself given him) touches the ground from time to time, he does so in order not to humiliate his comrades."