SOON after I had made my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère a Russian manager, in accordance with an arrangement with my Parisian manager, M. Marchand, asked to engage me, and I signed with him for St. Petersburg.
My engagement was for the following spring.
At the end of the winter, in April, on the very day on which we were to leave for Russia, my mother tottered and would certainly have fallen if I had not been there to support her. I asked what was the matter. She didn’t know, but for some time she had been suffering. She went to bed, saying:
“I cannot go. But you take the train so as not to disappoint your people, and I will follow you to-morrow morning.”
I was unwilling, however, to leave her in such a condition. The manager of the Folies-Bergère, who had acted as intermediary between the Russian manager and myself, had come to the station to say good-bye. When he saw that I had missed the train he came to our house and “showed off.” Meantime, I had called in a local physician, who could not tell me what was the trouble with my mother. As he was French I understood only that she was very ill. My mother’s condition grew worse and I made up my mind not to leave her.
Photo Falk
LOIE FULLER AND HER MOTHER
Next day M. Marchand returned, and this time with representatives of the police. They compelled me to dress myself and then took me down to the station, where, almost by main force, they put me on the train along with my electricians.
Despite my explicit resolutions of the night before, there I was on my way to Russia!
At the first stopping-place I left the train and boarded one which took me back to Paris. I found my mother much worse, and I begged the doctor to mention my name to no one.
I had engaged a nurse to watch over my mother. For two days I hid whenever anyone came, to such an extent did I feel myself in the hands of the Philistines.
When the train arrived at St. Petersburg and the electricians discovered that I was not there, more trouble ensued.
The Russian manager wired Paris, and I was unable to keep my secret any longer. This time, taking advantage of my ignorance both of the law and of the French language, they threatened to arrest me and imprison me if I did not start for Russia at once. All that was under the pretext that I had taken money in advance. I was actually accused of being a thief.
This whole scene took place in my mother’s presence. We were both nearly dead with fright. My mother begged me to go. With my heart full of bitterness, and my eyes sore from crying, I allowed myself to be dragged away a second time and placed in the train.
After my departure a young Englishwoman, whom I had met only once or twice, came to call at our appartement, and finding my mother very ill, went, on her own initiative, and summoned an English physician, Dr. John Chapman, who had attended us before, and whom she had met at our house. I had not called him because I supposed that the physician whom I had engaged would be just as competent to cure my mother sufficiently for her to be able to go with me to St. Petersburg.
Dr. Chapman arrived just at the moment when the French physicians (the doctor who was attending my mother had called three of his colleagues into consultation) had decided to give her a soporific on the ground that she was dying of pneumonia and that nothing could save her. The English doctor offered to attend my mother, and the Frenchmen retired when they learned that he was our regular physician.
Dr. Chapman inquired after me, and when he was informed about what had happened wired me all along the line, at each station where the train was scheduled to stop. He maintained that they ought never to have let me go.
Just as I reached the Russian border the telegram was brought to me: “Return at once. Your mother has very little chance of recovering.”
This was the first news to reach me since my departure, forty-eight hours before. It was six o’clock in the morning and still dark. I was in bed in the sleeping car and it was cold, as it can be cold only in Russia.
The conductor knew no English and I spoke no language but my own. I was unable to make him understand that I wished to know when I could leave the train and return to Paris. I dressed myself hastily, packed my things helter skelter and, when the train arrived at the next station, I alighted with all my baggage. What a bare and desolate spot! It was a little station, with hardly a platform. Away the train went rumbling, leaving me there in that wilderness. What was I to do? I had no idea. I banged on the door of the wooden hovel that served as a station. It was closed. For a long time, a very long time, shivering with cold, grief and anguish, I walked up and down in the darkness like a caged beast. Finally a man appeared out of the night. He swung a lantern, which made a little round spot of light in the gloom. He opened the door and I followed him into the hut. I presented myself at the ticket office and tried to make him understand that I wanted a ticket for Berlin. I offered him French currency. He handed it back to me. I managed to understand that he would take only Russian money and also that the train that would get me back to Berlin was not due for three or four hours. Then I waited for day to break, hoping that perhaps some one would come who could help me. Towards nine o’clock some people arrived and among them I noticed an old fellow in whom I recognised the traditional Polish Jew, a money-lender I was sure, with his long black coat, his big round hat, his beard and his crafty smile.
I went to him and asked if he knew any English.
He did not know a word.
He tried to speak French and then German, but I failed to understand what he said. I succeeded in making him understand that I wanted to go to Berlin, and that the railway employee would not accept my French banknote. This bill of a thousand francs and a little ready money were all I had with me.
My interpreter took possession of the thousand francs, secured a ticket for Berlin for me and then disappeared for the purpose of changing my bill. I did not think of following him, although he bore my whole fortune away with him.
The man was a thief. He never came back. I realised in an ecstasy of fright, when the train arrived, that there I was without money enough to purchase a ticket from Berlin to Paris. At the first station I telegraphed to some acquaintances whom I had met in Berlin, but on whom I could hardly count and who very likely were not at the German capital just then. I begged them, at all hazards, to come to the station and bring me a little money so that I could continue my journey.
At this point begins the strange part of my adventure. I was alone in my compartment when we crossed the Russian border. Weighed down with dejection, I sat on the carpet of the carriage, with my head resting heavily on the woodwork, crying as if my heart would break. At the first stop a priest entered. Although I had quickly raised myself and wiped my face with my handkerchief, he saw at once that I was in trouble. He came and sat down opposite to me, and I noticed by his expression that he was disturbed by my suffering. Tears again flooded my cheeks and I told him that my mother was dying in Paris. He repeated the words “mother” and “ill” in German. He extended his hand to bid me not to speak for a minute. He closed his eyes and I looked at him. Everything subsided within me. I awaited for a miracle. The miracle took place.
After ten minutes, which seemed to me an age, he opened his eyes and said to me in German:
“No, no, your mother will not die.”
I understood what he said, catching the words “mother” and “not.” The frightful sense of oppression that was torturing me disappeared. I perceived that his words were not in vain, that he spoke the truth and that my mother was not going to die. I stopped crying, feeling sure that now everything would come out all right.
Presently he left me, and I understood, from his manner of speaking, that he was trying to give me courage and hope.
When he was no longer there my fears returned, and I found myself again as unhappy as before. I seemed to see my mother stretched before me in death. I saw once more the horrible men who dragged me to the station. I hated them wildly, and I fell into convulsive tremblings, which shook me from head to foot.
In this condition I reached Berlin. Luckily my friends were at the station. Before my arrival they had even telegraphed to Paris to learn the news. A reply had come to them that my poor mother was hovering between life and death. I still had twenty-four hours of waiting and anxiety.
When I arrived in Paris I perceived at once the beautiful white beard, the pale and weary face of Dr. Chapman, whose tall form rose above the crowd. He took me in his arms, and said:
“She is still alive. Come.”
In the carriage he gave me this advice:
“Enter the room and speak to your mother just as if you had never gone away. Your presence will save her.”
And that is what happened. From the moment of my return she began to improve. But this illness left her very weak. She had a first attack of paralysis and her trouble gained imperceptibly upon her, leaving each day less hope of her recovery.
She was destined, without ever being restored to health, to die in Paris in February, 1908.
In Russia they started a long lawsuit against me for not having kept my agreement, and before it was ended I lost, including other offers, which I could not accept without my electrical apparatus and my costumes that were held as security, fully 250,000 francs. During my second season at the Folies-Bergère, when, through the solicitude of M. Marchand, my dressing-room was always filled with flowers by reason of the distinguished visitors who came to see me and to whom the directors would offer champagne, an attachment was put upon my receipts and we often had hardly enough to eat. But for the manager’s wife, who at times sent us things to eat in a basket, I should often have danced on an empty stomach, and have sipped champagne in my dressing-room without having had anything to eat at home.
My work on the stage was so fatiguing that when I had finished dancing the mechanicians would carry me to my appartement, which was connected with the theatre. I continued this work for a whole season without being sufficiently well fed to keep up my strength, and being all the while in an appartement the sanitation of which was defective. Therein, I am certain, lay one of the reasons for the progress of my mother’s illness. My health, too, was affected to such an extent that I am no longer able to endure fatigue as I once endured it.
However, it all happened as a result of circumstances, and I have no wish to blame anybody.
The manager of the theatre had given me this appartement and had had it arranged specially for me in order that I might not be obliged to go out into the street, heated with dancing.
Since then I have never returned to Russia, for every time that a journey to that country was mentioned my poor mother trembled with fright, and there was never any question of my undertaking it.
This adventure at least caused me to believe in one thing—inspiration. For if the priest in the railway compartment was not inspired, then what was he?