FIFTEEN YEARS OF A
DANCER’S LIFE
I
MY STAGE ENTRANCE
“WHOSE baby is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, anyway, don’t leave it here. Take it away.”
Thereupon one of the two speakers seized the little thing and brought it into the dancing-hall.
It was an odd little baggage, with long, black, curly hair, and it weighed barely six pounds.
The two gentlemen went round the room and asked each lady if the child were hers. None claimed it.
Meanwhile two women entered the room that served as dressing-room and turned directly toward the bed where, as a last resort, the baby had been put. One of them asked, just as a few minutes before the man in the dancing-hall had asked:
“Whose child is this?”
The other woman replied:
“For Heaven’s sake what is it doing there? This is Lillie’s baby. It is only six weeks old and she brought it here with her. This really is no place for a baby of that age. Look out; you will break its neck if you hold it that way. The child is only six weeks old, I tell you.”
At this moment a woman ran from the other end of the hall. She uttered a cry and grasped the child. Blushing deeply she prepared to take it away, when one of the dancers said to her:
“She has made her entrance into society. Now she will have to stay here.”
From that moment until the end of the ball the baby was the chief attraction of the evening. She cooed, laughed, waved her little hands and was passed round the hall until the last of the dancers was gone.
I was that baby. Let me explain how such an adventure came about.
It occurred in January, during a very severe winter. The thermometer registered forty degrees below zero. At that time my father, my mother, and my brothers lived on a farm about sixteen miles from Chicago. When the occasion of my appearance in the world was approaching, the temperature went so low that it was impossible to heat our house properly. My mother’s health naturally made my father anxious. He went accordingly to the village of Fullersburg, the population of which was composed almost exclusively of cousins and kinsmen, and made an arrangement with the proprietor of the only public-house of the place. In the general room there was a huge cast-iron stove. This was, in the whole countryside, the only stove which seemed to give out an appreciable heat. They transformed the bar into a sleeping-room and there it was that I first saw light. On that day the frost was thick on the window panes and the water froze in dishes two yards from the famous stove.
I am positive of all these details, for I caught a cold at the very moment of my birth, which I have never got rid of. On my father’s side I had a sturdy ancestry. I therefore came into life with a certain power of resistance, and if I have not been able to recover altogether from the effects of this initial cold, I have had the strength at all events to withstand them.
A month later we had returned to the farm, and the saloon resumed its customary appearance. I have mentioned that it was the only tavern in town, and, as we occupied the main room, we had inflicted considerable hardship upon the villagers, who were deprived of their entertainment for more than four weeks.
When I was about six weeks old a lot of people stopped one evening in front of our house. They were going to give a surprise party at a house about twenty miles from ours.
They were picking up everybody en route, and they stopped at our house to include my parents. They gave them five minutes in which to get ready. My father was an intimate friend of the people whom they were going to surprise; and, furthermore, as he was one of the best musicians of the neighbourhood he could not get out of going, as without him the company would have no chance of dancing. He accordingly consented to join the party. Then they insisted that my mother go, too.
“What will she do with the baby? Who will feed her?”
There was only one thing to do in these circumstances—take baby too.
My mother declined at first, alleging that she had no time to make the necessary preparations, but the jubilant crowd would accept no refusal. They bundled me up in a coverlet and I was packed into a sleigh, which bore me to the ball.
When we arrived they supposed that, like a well-brought-up baby, I should sleep all night, and they put me on the bed in a room temporarily transformed into a dressing-room. They covered me carefully and left me to myself.
There it was that the two gentlemen quoted at the beginning of this chapter discovered the baby agitating feet and hands in every direction. Her only clothing was a yellow flannel garment and a calico petticoat, which made her look like a poor little waif. You may imagine my mother’s feelings when she saw her daughter make an appearance in such a costume.
That at all events is how I made my debut, at the age of six weeks. I made it because I could not do otherwise. In all my life everything that I have done has had that one starting-point; I have never been able to do anything else.
I have likewise continued not to bother much about my personal appearance.