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It was built by the two Bons, or Buons, of the Doges' Palace for Pietro Contarini in 1425. It passed through various hands, always, one imagines, declining in condition, until at the end of the eighteenth century it was a dramatic academy, and in the middle of the last century the dancer Taglioni lived in it and not only made it squalid but sold certain of its treasures.
I had an idea that a poem wrote itself, as it were, very often; that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken of it as an inspiration rather than a result of volition. Did you ever see a great ballet-dancer? I asked him. I have seen Taglioni, he answered. She used to take her steps rather prettily.
Talma, Mademoiselle Duchesnoir, Mademoiselle Mars, triumphed at the Francais; Mademoiselle Georges, at the Odeon; Nourrit, Levasseur, Madame Damoreau, Taglioni, at the Opera; Sontag, Pasta, Malibran, and Rubini at the Italiens. The Viscount de la Rochefoucauld wished in every way to raise the moral level of the theatre.
Above the dressing-table hung a mirror, diamond-scratched with hieroglyphic scrawls, among which could be discerned a transfixed heart, spitted like a lark on an arrow, and an etching of Lady Gay Spanker, with cork-screw curls. Taglioni, in pencil caricature, her limbs "divinely slender," gyrated on her toes in reckless abandon above this mute record of names now forgotten.
Old people tell us that they have seen Desclée, Taglioni; soon no one will be old enough to remember those great artists. Then, if their renown becomes a matter of charity, of credulity, if you will, it will be but equal with the renown of all those poets and painters who are only names to us, or whose masterpieces have perished.
I should have ventured out on the very point of the Projectile, and there I should have danced and postured and kicked and bobbed and capered in a style that Taglioni never dreamed of!" "Shouldn't I like to see you!" cried the Captain grimly, smiling at the idea. "You would not see him long!" observed Barbican quietly.
Certainly there are no dancers like Taglioni, and Cerito, and Fanny Elsler, and Carlotta Grisi. After the opera and the ball, one finished the night at Vauxhall or Ranelagh; then as gay, and exactly the same, as they were when Miss Becky Sharpe and fat Jos supped there only five-and-thirty years before. Except at the Opera, and the Philharmonic, and Exeter Hall, one rarely heard good music.
The libretti for the ballets of "La Sylphide," "La Tempête," "L'île des Pirates," "Le Diable Boiteux," etc., as danced by Taglioni and Fanny Elssler, were written by this versatile man, and he composed many charming songs, which are still favorites in French drawing-rooms.
Then Monsieur Gravier, in the course of a tour, had persuaded Mademoiselle Mars to write her name on this album, with Mademoiselles Georges, Taglioni, and Grisi, and some distinguished actors, such as Frederick Lemaitre, Monrose, Bouffe, Rubini, Lablache, Nourrit, and Arnal; for he knew a set of old fellows brought up in the seraglio, as they phrased it, who did him this favor.
I like that stern sectarian who wants to dress Taglioni in a stuff-gown and sabots, and set Liszt's hands to turn the machinery of a wine-press, and who yet, as he lies on the grass, finds the tears come into his eyes at the least linnet's song, and who makes a disturbance in the theatre to stop Othello from murdering Malibran!
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