Reserved for the Cat

So a morning on the phone and running back and forth from the telegraph office to London netted him a brother and sister “minstrel” act from America; the idea of a woman in blackface playing a banjo and tap dancing seemed to have put some booking agents off. But on the basis of an enthusiastic report from one of his scouts, which he trusted, he pursued the lead. He learned they were starving in London; he engaged them on the spot and arranged for the agent to advance them money so that they could buy train tickets to Blackpool.

All three of the new acts were enthusiastic and terribly grateful for the opportunity to play in one of the “big” halls. All of the acts were solid, if not brilliant. By the weekend, the programme was full again, and Jonathon and Nina were able to drop their extra turns, and not a moment too soon. It was clear that the extra work had just begun to wear on them.

Nigel watched the two of them from the wings as they ran smoothly through the “evil magician” turn, feeling unspeakably grateful that they had both come through without a murmur of complaint. No matter what else could be said about this Russian girl, there was no doubt in his mind that she was willing to work, and work hard. She was an imitator rather than an original, but no one on holiday in Blackpool and spending time in a music hall was likely to have seen the originals, and the girl gave you a good show for your money. Who did it harm, that she borrowed Loie Fuller’s serpentine skirt dance without a blush of shame? How did it matter than she turned Pavlova’s “California Poppy” into her own “Water-lily”? Was Pavlova losing money by it? Had Pavlova ever even heard of Blackpool? Would Fuller ever set foot in this city? Since the answer to all of these questions was “no,” Nigel didn’t see that anyone could have any quarrel with the girl. In fact, he thought she ought to be commended. She was probably the first ballet dancer most of these people had ever seen. And having seen, the holiday-makers might choose to have a look-in on a real ballet corps. Who could tell? They might even become regulars at the theater.

It wasn’t as if she was claiming to be Pavlova, after all. In the theater, nothing was new, and the only people that ever successfully kept the secrets of how they did things were magicians.

He watched her with the eye of a critic rather than a showman as she went through her paces in Jonathon’s act. She was certainly graceful, but that went with being a dancer. She wasn’t much of an actress, but then, she wouldn’t have studied acting. Nigel didn’t know much about ballet, but he had the vague notion that the dancers were far too busy keeping track of their steps to do much acting. She didn’t have to be much of an actress anyway; the audience for Music Halls was not one for subtle nuances. They liked showy tricks, melodrama; they wanted to be thrilled and amazed; they wanted to laugh and be dazzled. The Divine Sarah and Eleanor Duse had no place in the music hall. Little Tich, however, dancing in boots that were as long as he was tall . . . that was what they wanted.

He continued to watch. She was good. The audience liked her. Part of that was her youth, part her apparent fragility, part the romance of her rescue these several weeks ago. She connected with the audience too, she had an instinct for that. Performers had been a success on that alone.

One thing he didn’t get from her was that . . . spark, that something special, that he felt from people that really were geniuses. He was hardly an ignoramus; he made a point of going to London when he could, to see what the world considered great. And there was a magic, a special something, in those for whom the stage was a kind of home, that the rest of theatrical humanity just did not possess. Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, they had it, and the audience reveled in seeing it displayed. He’d gone to ballets as well as the theater; he had seen Nijinsky, Pavlova, and Isadora Duncan too. They had it, they had it and made the stage sing beneath their feet. Eleanor Duse. The Divine Sarah, dear God, she had it, she could make you believe she was anything she chose to be, and you would completely forget that she was not fourteen years old as she spoke tremulously from her balcony to Romeo, that she was not the courtesan Marguerite Gautier and dying of consumption, that she was not even a woman, as she donned the breeches of Hamlet.

Nina Tchereslavsky did not have that gift. She had another, a gift for evoking emotion, and for giving it back, and she was good. She would never be immortal.