II
MY APPEARANCE ON A REAL STAGE AT TWO YEARS AND A
HALF
WHEN I was a very small girl the president of the Chicago Progressive Lyceum, where my parents and I went every Sunday, called on my mother one afternoon, and congratulated her on the appearance I had made the preceding Sunday at the Lyceum. As my mother did not understand what he meant, I raised myself from the carpet, on which I was playing with some toys, and I explained:
“I forgot to tell you, mamma, that I recited my piece at the Lyceum last Sunday.”
“Recited your piece?” repeated my mother. “What does she mean?”
“What!” said the president, “haven’t you heard that Loie recited some poetry last Sunday?”
My mother was quite overcome with surprise. I threw myself upon her and fairly smothered her with kisses, saying,
“I forgot to tell you. I recited my piece.”
“Oh, yes,” said the president, “and she was a great success, too.”
My mother asked for explanations.
The president then told her: “During an interval between the exercises, Loie climbed up on the platform, made a pretty bow as she had seen orators do, and then, kneeling down, she recited a little prayer. What this prayer was I don’t remember.”
But my mother interrupted him.
“Oh, I know. It is the prayer she says every evening when I put her to bed.”
And I had recited that in a Sunday School thronged by free-thinkers!
“After that Loie arose, and saluted the audience once more. Then immense difficulties arose. She did not dare to descend the steps in the usual way. So she sat down and let herself slide from one step to another until she reached the floor of the house. During this exercise the whole hall laughed loudly at the sight of her little yellow flannel petticoat, and her copper-toed boots beating the air. But Loie got on her feet again, and, hearing the laughter, raised her right hand and said in a shrill voice: ‘Hush! Keep quiet. I am going to recite my poem.’ She would not stir until silence was restored. Loie then recited her poem as she had promised, and returned to her seat with the air of having done the most natural thing in the world.”
The following Sunday I went as usual to the Lyceum with my brothers. My mother came, too, in the course of the afternoon, and took her seat at the end of a settee among the invited guests who took no part in our exercises. She was thinking how much she had missed in not being there the preceding Sunday to witness my “success,” when she saw a woman rise and approach the platform. The woman began to read a little paper which she held in her hand. After she had finished reading my mother heard her say:
“And now we are going to have the pleasure of hearing our little friend Loie Fuller recite a poem entitled: ‘Mary had a little Lamb.’”
My mother, absolutely amazed, was unable to stir or to say a word. She merely gasped:
“How can this little girl be so foolish! She will never be able to recite that. She has only heard it once.”
In a sort of daze she saw me rise from my seat, slowly walk to the steps and climb upon the platform, helping myself up with feet and hands. Once there I turned around and took in my audience. I made a pretty courtesy, and began in a voice which resounded throughout the hall. I repeated the little poem in so serious a manner that, despite the mistakes I must have made, the spirit of it was intelligible and impressed the audience. I did not stop once. Then I courtesied again and everybody applauded me wildly. I went back to the stairs and let myself slide down to the bottom, as I had done the preceding Sunday. Only this time no one made fun of me.
When my mother rejoined me, some time after, she was still pale and trembling. She asked me why I had not informed her of what I was going to do. I replied that I could not let her know about a thing that I did not know myself.
“Where have you learned this?”
“I don’t know, mamma.”
She said then that I must have heard it read by my brother; and I remembered that it was so. From this time on I was always reciting poems, wherever I happened to be. I used to make little speeches, but in prose, for I employed the words that were natural for me, contenting myself with translating the spirit of the things that I recited without bothering much over word-by-word renderings. With my firm and very tenacious memory, I needed then only to hear a poem once to recite it, from beginning to end, without making a single mistake. I have always had a wonderful memory. I have proved it repeatedly by unexpectedly taking parts of which I did not know a word the day before the first performance.
It was thus, for instance, when I played the part of Marguerite Gauthier in La Dame aux Camélias with only four hours to learn the lines.
On the Sunday of which I have been speaking, my mother experienced the first of the nervous shocks that might have warned her, had she been able to understand, that she was destined to become the prey of a dreadful disease, which would never leave her.
From the spring which followed my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère until the time of her death she accompanied me in all my travels. As I was writing this, some days before her end, I could hear her stir or speak, for she was in the next room with two nurses watching over her night and day. While I was working I would go to her from time to time, rearrange her pillows a little, lift her, give her medicine, or some little thing to eat, put out her candle, open the window a moment, and then I would return to my task.
After the day of my debut at the Chicago Progressive Lyceum I continued my dramatic career. The incidents of my performances would suffice to fill several volumes. For without interruption, adventures succeeded one another to such an extent that I shall never undertake the work of describing them all.
I should say that when this first theatrical incident took place I was just two and a half years old.