Eventually, I got them calmed down. Fokine insisted they were all idiots; they were all ignorant. This idea leaked through to the stage-hands, and that did not help matters. I finally suggested that, since neither of them could understand the other, the best procedure would be not to scream and shout and stomp—uttering strange mixed French and Russian oaths—but to be quiet and to show by gesture and pantomime, rather than to give unintelligible verbal orders. So, with only minor subsequent scenes, the rehearsal got itself finished.
Also, in Philadelphia, we had substituted Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils, done to Glazounov’s score of the same name, in place of the “Moonlight” Sonata. It is hardly necessary to point out that the veils, all seven of them, are vastly important. Because of their importance, these had been entrusted to the keeping of Clavia, Vera’s Russian maid, instead of being packed with the other costumes. But, come performance time, Clavia could not be found. Hue and cry were raised; her hotel alerted; restaurants searched; but still no Clavia. She simply had to be found. I pressed Marie Volpe, Arnold Volpe’s singer-wife, into the breach to act as maid for Vera, and to help her dress. But only Clavia knew where Salome’s veils had been secreted. The performance started. The search continued.
Suddenly, there came a series of piercing screams emanating from an upper floor dressing-room. Haunted by visions of the Phantom of the Opera, I rushed up the stairs to find Clavia lying on the floor, obviously in pain. We managed to get her down to Fokina’s room and placed her on the couch in what was known in Philadelphia as “Caruso’s Room,” the star dressing-room Fokina was using. As we entered, Fokina stood ready to go on stage, costumed for The Dying Swan. The situation was obvious. Clavia was about to give birth to a child. The labor pains had commenced. I pushed Vera on to the stage and Marie Volpe into the room—in the nick of time. Mrs. Volpe, a concert singer, pinch-hitting as a maid for Vera, now turned midwife for the first time in her life. By the time the ambulance and the doctor arrived, mother and infant were doing as well as could be expected.
Next morning Mrs. Volpe found herself a new role. A lady of high moral scruples, herself a mother, she had realized that no one had mentioned a father for the child. Mrs. Volpe had assumed the role of detective (a dangerous one, I assure the reader, in ballet), and was determined to run down the child’s father. The newspaper stories, with the headline: “CHILD BORN IN CARUSO’S DRESSING ROOM,” had not been too reassuring to Mrs. Volpe. I counselled her that she would be well advised to let the matter drop.
On our arrival in Baltimore, I was greeted by the news that my rubber-wizard of a local manager, the bouncing Mr. K., had decamped with the box-office sale, leaving behind only some rubber cheques. This, in itself, I felt was enough for one day. But it was not to be. Vera, as curtain time approached, once again was up to her usual business of exhibiting “temperament,” spoiling her life, as she so often did in this respect, throughout her dancing career.
“What is it now?” I asked.
She waxed wroth with great volubility and at considerable length, with profound indignation that the stage floor-cloth was, as she said, “impossible.” Nothing I could say was of any avail. Vera refused, absolutely, irrevocably, unconditionally, to dance. Mrs. Volpe was to help her into her street clothes, and at once. She would return to her hotel. She would return to New York. I must cancel the engagement, the tour, all because of the stage-cloth. And the audience was already filling the theatre.
I thought quickly and went into action. Calling the head carpenter and the property man together, I got them to turn the floor-cloth round. Then, going back to the dressing-room, where Vera was preparing to leave, I succeeded in convincing her by showing her that it was an entirely new doth that we had just got for her happiness.
Vera Fokina never danced better than that night in Baltimore.
Our farewell performance, with both Fokines dancing, took place at Charles Dillingham’s Hippodrome, on Sunday evening, 29th May, 1920. For this occasion, the Fokines appeared together, by popular request, in the Harlequin and Columbine variation from his own masterpiece, Carnaval; Fokine alone danced the Dagestanskaja Lezginka, and staged a work he called Amoun and Berenis, actually scenes from his Une Nuit d’Egypte, which Diaghileff called Cléopâtre, adapted, musically, from Anton Arensky’s score for the ballet. I quote Fokine’s own libretto for the work: