Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Thackeraythink of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere,—I sayit was a vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can’tsee now-a-days. How well I remember the tune to whichshe used to appear! Kaled used to say to the Sultan,“My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurlscalled Bayaderes approaches,” and, to the clash of cymbals,and the thumping of my heart, in she used todance! There has never been anything like it—never.There never will be—I laugh to scorn old people whotell me about your Noblet, your Montessu, your Vestris,your Parisot—pshaw, the senile twaddlers! And the impudenceof the young men, with their music and theirdancers of to-day! I tell you the women are dreary oldcreatures. I tell you one air in an opera is just like another,and they send all rational creatures to sleep. Ah,Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely one! Ah, Caradoni, thousmiling angel! Ah, Malibran! Nay, I will come to moderntimes, and acknowledge that Lablache was a very goodsinger thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy forme): and then we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, andDonzelli, a rising young singer.But what is most certain and lamentable is the decayof stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think ofSontag! I remember her in Otello and the Donna delLago in ’28. I remember being behind the scenes at theopera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashionused to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall downover her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli.Young fellows have never seen beauty like that, heardsuch a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don’t tell me! Aman who has been about town since the reign of GeorgeIV., ought he not to know better than you young ladswho have seen nothing? The deterioration of women islamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows morelamentable still, that they won’t see this fact, but persistin thinking their time as good as ours.Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was coveredwith angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I rememberthe Adelphi, and the actresses there: when Ithink of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle atSadler’s Wells, and her forty glorious pupils—of the Operaand Noblet, and the exquisite young Taglioni, and71