Fanny Elssler
(From an old engraving).
Carlotta Grisi
(From a lithograph).
At the outset of her career Fanny achieved distinction, or had it thrust upon her, by becoming an object of the “grande passion,” on the part of l’Aiglon, the Duc de Reichstadt, Napoleon’s ill-fated son. But it was said that the rumour was only put about by her astute manager, in order to get the young dancer talked about, and as an advertisement the manœuvre succeeded admirably.
Both sisters, after acquiring a favourable reputation in Germany, came to London, and it was here, in 1834, that Véron, the manager of the Paris Opera, came over to tempt them to appear in Paris with a salary of forty thousand francs, twenty thousand each. Thinking to impress the young Viennese with an example of Parisian magnificence, Véron gave a dinner-party in their honour at the Clarendon, in Bond Street, to which the best available society was invited, and the menu, the wine and the equipage were of unparalleled quality. At dessert an attendant brought a silver salver piled high with costly presents for the ladies of the company—pearls, rubies, diamonds, superbly set—a miniature Golconda. But somehow it all fell a trifle flat. The Elssler girls, true to their simple German training, drank only water with their dinner, and with dessert merely accepted, the one a hatpin, and the other a little handbag; and they would not agree to sign their contract until the day of Véron’s departure!
Both in Paris and London the sisters were triumphantly successful, and when in 1841 they toured through America they met with a reception that was sensational. It was “roses, roses all the way”; and in some of the towns triumphal arches were erected. At Philadelphia their horses were unharnessed and their carriage drawn by the admiring populace, headed by the Mayor!
Fanny was an especial favourite, and when the sisters left New Orleans, some niggers, who were hoisting freight from the hold of an adjacent steamboat—and niggers are notoriously apt at catching up topical subjects—thus chanted, as the vessel bearing the dancers left the wharf:
“Fanny, is you going up de ribber?
Grog time o’ day.