This has happened with Lady Alphonsine and the Russian Frankloff, whom we saw walking upon the water at the Neuilly fête, standing upon a ballast-tub, which he rapidly turned round with his feet. Lady Alphonsine ascended a small spiral upon her globe. It resembled the winding turn upon a screw, and was twisted round a mast fifteen or eighteen feet high. The ascension is not so bad, but I assure you that the descent gives you some trouble. It is necessary to restrain the enormous wooden ball, always on the verge of escaping, and the feet patter frantically, vibrating like the sounding-board of a mandoline. Here the effect produced is out of proportion to the exertion forced upon the artist; and this performance has another inconvenience: if [p213] it be continued for too long it spoils the shape of the leg by undue development of the calf—two reasons why the globe should not be reinstated in the esteem of the public.
THE SLACK WIRE.
However, here as elsewhere, fashion rules the world, and tight-rope dancing, after falling into abeyance for a time, is now apparently returning to favour.
If, some fine morning, we may find ourselves globe spiral ascensionists with little previous exertion, no one can become a tight-rope dancer without much patient labour. You see how easily the rope-dancer runs across her narrow path, and may feel tempted to say, “Really, it only requires nerve to do as much.” But it is a pity that, for your own edification, you were not present at the artist’s first experiments.
All the strength of the dancer lies in the back and in the rigidity of the legs. On this account children cannot be placed upon the cord before they are ten years old. The apparatus used in these performances is very simple, and has not changed since antiquity. The cord is raised upon “croisés,” two crossed sticks, at each end, which form two ╳ of different size. The ╳ at the back is the highest, so that it may support the back of the dancer during the intervals of rest. The second ╳, or “croisé de face” which bears the “guidon” or object of sight, from which the dancer never moves his eyes, is not higher than the cord, which is attached at each end by cross bars of flexible wood. In Europe we use the ash, but the Americans use a still more pliant wood, the ixry.
The whole apparatus is fixed by an arrangement called a “cadrolle” of pulleys. The first time the dancer attempts to cross the cord he is supported by straps on either side. [p214] With the balancing-pole carefully held in both hands, his eyes fixed upon the point of sight, he endeavours to turn his feet out as much as possible, treading first on the heel and then upon the great toe. After a few months’ practice he can dance the “sabotière” which does not wound his still tender feet. The other exercises which he must slowly acquire are the walk forward, the walk backward, the dangerous spring forward, the dangerous spring backward the horse spring, and the art of springing from one foot to the other.
This is the classic series of exercises. When the dancer has once mastered them his own imagination must aid his performance. He must attempt some new feat upon the cord that no one else has yet tried, and this “novelty” is [p215] more difficult to find than you would suppose. Artists like Ada Blanche, who inherit the talents of Madame Saqui and Blondin, have a right to repeat La Bruyère’s melancholy words, “We have come too late.”