IV Mademoiselle de Camargo
The Abbé d’Allainval, in his Lettre à Mylord... sur Baron et la demoiselle Lecouvreur, reminds his mythical correspondent that he had found in Paris four wonders: (1) The Tuileries. (2) The acting of the demoiselle Lecouvreur. (3) The dancing of the demoiselle Camargo. (4) The voice of the demoiselle Lemaure. It is of the third of these wonders that we are now about to speak.
Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo, the most celebrated danseuse of her time, whose talents have been exalted by the chroniclers, sung by the poets, celebrated in every way in both prose and verse, and immortalised by Voltaire, was born at Brussels on April 10, 1710. On her father’s side, she was descended from “one of the noblest families in Rome,” which had given to the Church a cardinal, an archbishop, and various minor dignitaries. Through her grandmother, she was related to the Spanish house of Camargo, and it was under this name that she pirouetted into fame.
The means of Marie-Anne’s father, Ferdinand Joseph de Cupis, “seigneur de Renoussart,” were, unfortunately, very far from equal to his birth and connections; nor was his position rendered any easier by the fact that he had been imprudent enough to espouse a lady as high-born and as poor as himself, who, in default of a dot, had presented him with seven pledges of her affection. He lived at Brussels, “on the crumbs which fell from the table of the Prince de Ligne,” and the fees he received from giving music and dancing lessons, and gallantly endeavoured to bring his children up in a manner befitting those of a gentleman “who could prove sixteen quarterings on both his father and mother’s side.”
Such a treasure as Marie-Anne promised to become, however, was worthy of any sacrifice. “Hercules in his cradle,” says Castil-Blaze, “strangled the serpents who came to devour him. The talent of Mlle. de Camargo was not less precocious. While she was in the arms of her nurse, the sound of a violin reached her ears, and inspired her to gestures and movements so animated, so gay, so perfectly harmonious that it was at once perceived that this virtuoso of six months would one day be one of the first danseuses in Europe.”102 The delighted M. de Cupis thenceforth devoted every moment he could spare to the instruction of his little daughter, and at the age of ten Marie-Anne danced so charmingly in the salons of Brussels, that every one vowed that it would be nothing less than a crime to withhold from her the applause of the public. Accordingly, the noble dancing-master’s consent having been obtained, the Princesse de Ligne and some other ladies of the Court clubbed together, and sent her at their own expense to Paris, to take lessons from Mlle. Prévost, then the queen of the Opera.
After remaining in Paris for some months, and learning all that Mlle. Prévost could teach her, the little girl returned to Brussels, and made her début at the theatre with such astonishing success that, in spite of her youth, she was appointed première danseuse. This position she held for three years, when Pélissier, director of the Rouen theatre, offered her an engagement. Marie-Anne wished to accept the offer; Rouen, ever since the days of Molière, had been regarded as the conservatoire of the Paris theatres; its playgoers were not only the most enthusiastic, but the most critical in France, and the actor, singer, or danseuse who was fortunate enough to secure their suffrages might reckon with certainty on a favourable reception in the capital. M. de Cupis, however, demurred; he did not wish to allow his daughter to go alone to Rouen, neither did he see his way to leave his pupils at Brussels; and it was not until Pélissier offered him the post of ballet-master, and his eldest son, Françoise, a place in the orchestra that he gave his consent, and the whole Cupis family set out for Normandy.
Poor M. de Cupis would not have been so ready to turn his back on Brussels had he been aware that Pélissier was hovering on the verge of bankruptcy, and that his engagement of Marie-Anne was merely intended to stave off the evil day a little longer. For a time, however, all went well; Marie-Anne’s dancing delighted the critical Rouennais, even more than it had the indulgent Flemings, and the theatre was crowded every night with applauding spectators. But her triumphs came too late to save Pélissier; and one fine spring morning, in 1726, that gentleman failed, and danseuse, ballet-master, and musician found themselves out of employment.
Matters looked serious indeed for the seigneur de Renoussart and his seven children; but, happily, at that moment Fortune knocked at their door, in the shape of Francine, who was about to become Director of the Paris Opera. The fame of the little prodigy had, it appeared, reached the capital, and Francine had journeyed to Rouen to offer her a début at the Académie Royale de Musique.
The offer, as may be supposed, was joyfully accepted and Marie-Anne, with her family in her train, migrated to Paris. Here she decided to abandon her patronymic in favour of that of her grandmother, which had a more artistic sound; and on May 5, 1726, made her début under the name of Mlle. de Camargo.
Mlle. Prévost, already jealous of her former pupil, perhaps from a presentiment, had treacherously advised her to make her début in a ballet called Les Caractères de la danse, in a step so difficult that none but the most celebrated dancers ever dared to attempt it. But, to her intense mortification, Mlle. de Camargo not only performed every movement correctly, but with a brilliancy, a verve, a vivacity which far surpassed all her predecessors. “Never,” says a contemporary writer, “had the auditorium resounded with such applause as that which greeted the débutante. Such was the enthusiasm of the public that nothing else was talked about but the young Camargo.” All the new fashions were named after her: coiffures à la Camargo, gowns à la Camargo, sleeves à la Camargo, shoes à la Camargo.103 On the second night on which she appeared, there were twenty duels and quarrels without number at the doors of the Opera; all Paris was determined to get in, even at the sword-point.
Mlle. de Camargo was not beautiful; indeed some of her contemporaries go so far as to assert that she was positively ugly: “a real monster, like her predecessor Mlle. Prévost,” says one ungallant critic; while Noverre declares that “Nature had denied her every imaginable grace,” and that she was “neither tall, nor pretty, nor well-formed.” But whatever may have been her defects of face or figure, they did not interfere with her professional success. “The moment she began to dance people forgot her face. Besides, no one had time to see whether she was ugly or beautiful, so light and rapid were her movements. Her skips and twirls bewildered the audience. Then her countenance was changed, transfigured. ‘Then her black eyes were full of smiles and provocations, while her laughing lips revealed her ivory teeth.’ She did not seem to dance for the public, but for herself, for her own pleasure. Never had one imagined so many seductions, so many caprices, so much gaiety. ‘It would be vain,’ says Cahusac, ‘to seek a playfulness more frank, a vivacity more natural.’”104
Not the least important factor in the success of the young danseuse seems to have been the fashion of her skirt, which she had curtailed to a point which the most daring of her predecessors had never even dreamed of. This innovation was extremely popular with the younger patrons of the Opera, but, on the other hand, alarmed the modesty of many of the more conservative playgoers.
“Camargo,” says Grimm, “was the first who ventured to abbreviate her skirts. This useful invention, which gave amateurs an opportunity of passing judgment upon the nether limbs of a danseuse, has since been generally adopted, though, at the time, it promised to occasion a very dangerous schism. The Jansenists in the pit cried out heresy and scandal, and refused to tolerate the shortened skirts. The Molinists, on the contrary, maintained that this innovation brought us nearer to the spirit of the primitive Church, which objected to seeing pirouettes and gargouillades hampered by the length of the petticoats. The Sorbonne of the Opera held a great many sittings before it could decide which of the contending parties adhered to the orthodox doctrine. Finally, it pronounced in favour of the shortened skirts, but declared, at the same time, as an article of faith, that no danseuse should appear on the stage sans caleçon. This decision has since become a fundamental article of discipline, by the general consent of all the ruling powers of the Opera and of all the faithful who frequent these holy places.”105
The regulation respecting the wearing of a caleçon seems to have been the result of a disaster which befell a young ballerina named Mariette, who had the misfortune to have her habiliments torn away by a piece of projecting framework, “et posa pour l’ensemble devant toute la salle, pendant une bonne minute au moins.” There was considerable difference of opinion, Grimm tells us, as to whether Mlle. de Camargo conformed to this order, which would have interfered with her freedom of movement, and bets were freely made on the subject. But when, in order to decide these wagers, some one ventured to question the danseuse, the lady replied, “with a beautiful blush and her eyes modestly lowered,” that without such a “precaution” she would never have ventured to appear in public. Henceforth at the Opera the caleçon was known by the name of “precaution.”
In the meanwhile the triumphs of Mlle. de Camargo had begun to seriously alarm Mlle. Prévost, who not only saw her professional pre-eminence threatened by her former pupil, but had reason to fear that the dancing-master, Blondi, hitherto her slave, regarded the young débutante with a rather more than friendly interest. Perceiving that to attempt to eclipse her on the stage would only be to court certain defeat, she had recourse to intrigue. She refused to continue the lessons by which, she considered, the girl had already too greatly profited; she relegated her to small and obscure parts, in which she had no opportunity of displaying her talents, and even declined to allow her to appear in a dance in which the Duchesse de Berri had expressed a desire to see the young danseuse. Finally, she succeeded in banishing her to the back row of the chorus.
With so powerful and unscrupulous an enemy to contend against, poor Camargo might have remained “lost in the vulgar crowd of filles d’Opéra” for the rest of her days, had not a fortunate accident enabled her to assert her superiority again, and this time in a manner which it was impossible for the ruling powers of the Opera to ignore.
One evening she had to appear amid a group of demons, on whose entrance the dancer Dumoulin was to execute a pas de seul. The demons trooped in, and the orchestra struck up the opening bars of Dumoulin’s solo; but the dancer, for some reason, did not appear. Mlle. de Camargo saved the situation. Leaving the other figurantes, she sprang to the middle of the stage, improvised the step of the absent Dumoulin, and danced so magnificently as to send all the spectators into transports of enthusiasm. Mlle. Prévost, beside herself with passion, vowed that she would ruin her youthful rival, but it was too late; “Terpsichore was dethroned, and Mlle. de Camargo crowned queen of the Opera.”
“Yesterday,” writes Adrienne Lecouvreur to one of her friends, “they played Roland (an opera by Quinault and Lulli). Mlle. Prévost, although she surpassed herself, obtained very meagre applause in comparison with a new danseuse named Camargo, whom the public idolise, and whose great merit is youth and vigour. I doubt whether you have seen her. Mlle. Prévost protected her at first, but Blondi has fallen in love with her, and she is consequently annoyed. She appeared jealous and discontented at the applause of the public, which has now reached such a pitch of enthusiasm that the Prévost will be foolish if she does not make up her mind to retire.”
Mlle. Prévost did, in fact, retire shortly after this letter was written, and Mlle. de Camargo, left mistress of the field, used her victory to such good purpose that in two years’ time she had completely revolutionised the ballet. No longer did the spectators sit bored or indifferent through the languishing attitudes and mechanical gestures which composed the old ballet—that solemn ceremony in which le Grand Monarque and the lords and ladies of his Court had occasionally deigned to take part. “With disdainful foot she thrust into the abyss of oblivion minuet, saraband, and courant, and replaced by rapidity, agility, and lightness all the antics that had been admired before her time, but which appeared no longer endurable once one had seen her.”106 Yet she owed much to her teachers—to Mlle. Prévost, to Blondi, and to Dupré—and the style of dancing which she now brought into fashion seems to have been a combination of all that was best in their different methods, joined to a vivacity and piquancy entirely her own. She excelled in gavottes, rigaudons, and in all of what were known as the “grands airs,” and also in the graceful Basque dances, which she substituted for the gargouillade, judging the latter to be unsuitable for women. But her greatest triumph was a certain minuet step which she executed along the edge of the footlights, first from right to left, and then back again. “The public awaited it with impatience, watched it with intense interest, and applauded it rapturously.” Many persons would come to the Opera solely to witness this performance, and leave as soon as it was over.
The prestige of Mlle. de Camargo was at this time so great that the ovations she received were not confined to the theatre. One evening, while walking in the Tuileries Gardens, she was addressed by the wife of Maréchal de Villars, who engaged her in conversation “for a good quarter of an hour.” Meanwhile, all who happened to be promenading in the gardens flocked to the spot, formed a circle round the two ladies, and began to clap their hands, “as much to testify their admiration for the danseuse, as to show Madame de Villars how highly they approved of her affability.”
Like the famous Arlequin, Dominique, Mlle. de Camargo was very gay while on the stage and very reserved and quiet the moment she had quitted it. While dancing, one of her admirers declares, she seemed “the very priestess of pleasure and of love.” But no sooner had she retired into the wings, than she became “melancholy and even sad,” while her countenance was “expressive of the most profound ennui.” To her colleagues she seldom spoke, unless they happened to address her, when she responded with dignified courtesy, as became the collateral descendant of a cardinal, the niece of a Grand Inquisitor,107 and the possessor of thirty-two quarterings. However, as she was good-natured and obliging, her comrades treated the queenly airs it pleased her to assume with amused indulgence, and she was not unpopular among them.
Although, as we have mentioned, the young danseuse had no pretensions to beauty, she was nevertheless capable of arousing grandes passions, and her adorers were many. For two years, however, after her first appearance at the Opera, the “frigid dignity” of her demeanour and the unsleeping vigilance of the worthy M. de Cupis kept them at a distance, until all, save one, perceiving that their efforts were fruitless, had retired from the field. The exception was Jean Alexandre Théodose, Comte de Melun, who loved the lady with a passion which no rebuffs could extinguish, no difficulties subdue. His persistence was rewarded; Mlle. de Camargo took pity upon him, and granted him a rendezvous, which was followed by others; and, finally, one fine night, in the month of May 1728, the amorous nobleman made off with both her and her sister Sophie, aged thirteen, who also danced at the Opera, and conveyed them to his hotel in the Rue des Coutures Saint-Gervais. Sophie, it appeared, had refused to be separated from her sister, and had threatened to raise an alarm, if she were not eloped with too.
This affair caused an immense sensation; poor M. de Cupis was furious; so odious an act of violence, he considered, justified an appeal for redress to the very highest authority in the land, and, sitting down at his desk, he forthwith indited to the Prime Minister, Cardinal de Fleury, the following eloquent petition:—
“TO HIS EMINENCE, MONSEIGNEUR LE CARDINAL
DE FLEURY
“Monseigneur,—Ferdinand Joseph de Cupis, alias Camargo, écuyer, seigneur de Renoussart, represents with the deepest respect to Your Eminence, that, descended from one of the noblest families of Rome, which has given to the Roman Church an Archbishop of Trani, a Bishop of Ostia, and a Cardinal with the title of Saint-John ante Portam Latinam, doyen of the Sacred College, in the year 1577, under the pontificate of Leo X., and finding himself deprived of means, by the misfortunes, the lawsuits, and the ravages of war which his fathers had experienced, he avoided with more care than death anything derogatory to his birth and his ancestors, in whose nobility there has never been any change, not even through alliances, the petitioner being in a position to prove sixteen quarterings on both his father and mother’s side, since the family of Cupis quitted Rome....
“Unable to maintain his rank, and burdened with seven children, he has sighed, yet without murmuring, against his lot. He has striven to develop the different talents of his children, and to instruct them in those liberal arts which might enable them, without derogating from their birth, to supply the needs of life and escape from want, while awaiting more prosperous days. One he has had instructed in music, others in painting, and others again in dancing. Among the last, there are two girls, now aged eighteen and thirteen years respectively.
“As the late King, of glorious memory, decreed that any one might be connected with the Opera without loss of dignity, the petitioner, having been persuaded and even constrained by persons who had perceived the great talents of the elder, could not refuse his consent to their entering the Opera, although on condition that either he or his wife should conduct them thither, and, in like manner, resume charge of them at the conclusion of each performance. In short, the elder, who has now performed for three years,108 has always behaved with perfect propriety, and this conduct has been as universally admired as her dancing.
“But, for the last three years, M. le Comte de Melun has had recourse to the arts of seduction and of methods alike unworthy of himself and of the petitioner.... He dared to propose to the petitioner that he should be a consenting party to his daughter’s dishonour, in return for which he offered to surrender to him the salary which she received at the Opera. The petitioner, having treated such a proposition as it deserved, the count found means to introduce himself, on several nights, into his daughters’ apartment, and, finally, on the night of the 10th to 11th of the month of May, he carried them both off, and, at this moment, retains them at his hôtel in Paris, Rue de la Couture Saint-Gervais (sic).
“The petitioner, thus dishonoured no less than his daughters, would have taken proceedings in the ordinary way, if the ravisher had been a private individual; and the laws established by his Majesty and his august predecessors provide that abduction should be punished with death. It is a double crime. Two sisters are carried off, aged respectively eighteen and thirteen years.
“But the petitioner, having to deal with a person of the rank of the Comte de Melun, is obliged to have recourse to the maker of the laws, and trusts that the King in his bounty will see that he has justice, and will command the Comte de Melun to espouse the elder daughter of the petitioner and to furnish the younger with a dowry.
“In no other way can he make reparation for so terrible an outrage.”109
The only effect the recital of the noble dancing-master’s wrongs produced on the Cardinal seems to have been one of amusement; and, though, a week later, Mlle. Sophie returned to her indignant father, the elder sister, whom the rules of the Opera emancipated from parental control, remained at the Comte de Melun’s hôtel. That nobleman, however, did not long enjoy a monopoly of the lady’s favours, while her extravagance annoyed as much as it astonished him. He therefore secured to her an income of 1500 livres, and courteously intimated that they must part.
The notorious Duc de Richelieu, who regarded himself as the principal cause of the ballerina’s rupture with Melun, and desired to make amends, took the count’s place; to be, in his turn, succeeded by the Marquis de Sourdis, for whom Mlle. de Camargo is said to have conceived “une belle passion.” The marquis’s predilection for the ladies of the Opera had already made serious inroads on his patrimony; but this did not prevent him from lavishing the most costly presents upon his inamorata. Before, however, he had succeeded in quite ruining himself, he was confronted by a rival whose pretensions it was impossible for him to oppose.
The rival in question was a Prince of the Blood, Louis de Bourbon, Comte de Clermont, third son of Louis III. of that name and Mlle. de Nantes, legitimated daughter of le Grand Monarque and Madame de Montespan. Born in 1709 and destined for the Church, or, more strictly speaking, for the emoluments thereof, he had been tonsured in infancy and loaded with benefices. Before he had completed his eighth year, he found himself in possession of the revenues of the rich abbey of Bec-Hellouin, in Normandy, to which by the summer of 1733, the date when he made Mlle. de Camargo’s acquaintance, had been added some half-dozen others, with an aggregate income of over 200,000 livres.
A curious figure was this descendant of the Great Condé; “moitié plumet, moitié rabat,” monk by profession and soldier by choice; “owing two million livres in Paris and changing his mistress every day”; now regulating the affairs of one of his abbeys, now scandalising the devout by some liaison with Opera girl or courtesan, anon distinguishing himself in battle; witty, affable, generous, brave, magnificent in his pleasures, and a lover and patron of literature; the only prince of his house then living in whom could be traced a resemblance to their illustrious ancestor.
Mlle. de Camargo had by this time acquired the reputation of being a somewhat expensive luxury, even for a prince. Accordingly, before “taking her into his service,” the count-abbé desired to rid himself of two other ladies, both of whom had claims upon his attention and his purse. One was the Duchesse de Bouillon, poor Adrienne Lecouvreur’s enemy; the other, a siren of humble birth, named Quoniam, with whom he had carried on an intermittent liaison since he was sixteen. On the principle that exchange is no robbery, it was arranged that the duchess and the Marquis de Sourdis should console each other; while Clermont experienced but little difficulty in persuading his nephew, the Prince de Conti, a promising young gentleman of seventeen, to take Mlle. Quoniam off his hands. The latter arrangement led to much unpleasantness in high circles, for the Prince de Conti had two years before taken unto himself a wife, in the person of Mlle. de Chartres, daughter of the late Regent and sister of the devout Duc d’Orléans. The duke and his mother, the dowager-duchess, were furious, and it was rumoured that they had obtained a lettre de cachet, in virtue of which Mlle. Quoniam had been spirited away to a convent. “This news,” writes Barbier in his Journal, “was general in the fashionable world; however, it is not true. On Sunday, August 5, Mlle. Quoniam went to the Opera and took a seat in a box. So soon as the young men in the pit caught sight of her, they clapped their hands to show how delighted the public were to find that the rumour was unfounded. In the evening, she went to the Tuileries. All the princesses of the House of Condé were there, which caused the people to form themselves into two lines as they passed by. They did the same for Mlle. Quoniam, and congratulated her by their gestures.”110
With the Comte de Clermont, Mlle. de Camargo reached the highest point of her fortunes. Her lover could refuse her nothing. When his monastic revenues proved inadequate to satisfy her caprices, he ran into debt, and when his credit was exhausted, he had recourse to stratagems to obtain money from his mother. The Duchesse de Bourbon, having promised to settle the claims of some of his most clamorous creditors, the count instructed his steward, Moncrif, the Academician, to make out a statement showing a total liability of 80,000 livres, whereas the debts in question did not amount to much more than half that sum. The balance he was to remit to Mlle. de Camargo with his Highness’s compliments. Moncrif, however, fearing the consequences to himself should the duchess ever discover the trick which had been played her, revealed the plot to the old lady, and so the ballerina never got the money. As for the steward, he was promptly dismissed “for having abused his master’s confidence.”
Such was the count’s infatuation for his enchantress that he was “even jealous of the pleasure which the public shared with him in seeing her dance,” and, in 1736, insisted on her quitting the Opera, to the despair of all Paris. If we are to credit a report drawn up many years later by the Police-Inspector Meusnier, for the edification of Madame de Pompadour, “his passion tyrannised even over the quarter where she resided, so that the neighbours did not dare to show themselves at their windows or to glance in the direction of the Camargo’s house.”111
In July 1737, the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, with an annual revenue of 160,000 livres, became vacant, by the death of old Cardinal de Bissy. The Comte de Clermont had long had a covetous eye upon this rich prize, and a substantial addition to his income was imperatively needed, as Mlle. de Camargo’s extravagance had reduced him to such straits that, in the previous December, he had been forced to sell his duchy of Châteauroux to Louis XV., who, some years later, conferred it on his mistress, Madame de la Tournelle. Deeming, however, that, under the circumstances, some concession to public opinion might be advisable, he counterfeited a fit of devotion, separated from his mistress, who, on a sudden, disappeared from Paris, and caused a report to be circulated that she had been imprisoned by order of the King in Sainte-Pélagie. No sooner, however, had the coveted abbey been conferred upon him, than Mdlle. de Camargo reappeared upon the scene, and went to do the honours of the Château de Berny, a charming country-house situated two leagues from Paris, on the road to Orléans, which had been acquired by the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1686, with the price of the lands which they had ceded to Louis XIV. for the enlargement of the park of Versailles.
At Berny, Clermont erected a private theatre, upon whose stage the fair châtelaine, we may presume, occasionally condescended to appear, though Gaboriau is indebted to his imagination for the statement that she was in the habit of dancing “pour la plus grande joie des moines ravis,”112 as the château was the private residence of the abbot, to which his subordinates were never admitted. If they desired to see their superior on business connected with the abbey, they had to present themselves at his hôtel in the Rue de Richelieu.
Mlle. de Camargo presided over the Château of Berny for some four years, when an obscure figurante of the Opera, Mlle. Le Duc by name, “a creature without intelligence, without manners, without principles, without a soul,”113 stole away the heart of the Comte de Clermont. Mlle. Le Duc was the property of Président de Rieux, son of the celebrated financier, Samuel Bernard, who, having purchased the lady’s affections at a great price, was naturally reluctant to surrender them. To oppose himself to a Prince of the Blood in an affair of such importance was more, however, than he had the courage to do; and so, one day, while the president was dispensing justice in the Cour des Enquêtes, Mlle. Le Duc bade farewell to the luxurious nest which the luckless judge had furnished for her, and transferred herself and her belongings to Berny.
Henceforth, the president lived only for revenge, and racked his brains to discover some means whereby he might humble the pride of the Comte de Clermont, and make the faithless Le Duc bitterly rue the day on which she had so basely betrayed him. At length, he resolved upon the following plan of campaign: he would invite Mlle. de Camargo to occupy the vacant place in his affections, and surround her with such luxury, array her in such toilettes, load her with such presents as would cause Mlle. Le Duc to die of envy, and her monkish lover to gnaw his fingers with vexation. He accordingly made overtures to the deserted ballerina, which were promptly accepted; and one morning all Paris was talking of the magnificent generosity of the Président de Rieux, who had sent his new mistress a chastely-wrought bowl of solid gold, filled to the brim with double louis.
The Comte de Clermont heard of the president’s gift, and hastened to accept the challenge. In the Journal de Police, under date March 1742, we read:—
“On Thursday, March 22, 1742, the Demoiselle Le Duc, formerly mistress of the Président de Rieux, drove to the Tenebrae at Longchamps114 in a calèche of cane painted blue, with all the chains of silver, drawn by six ponies no bigger than dogs, ridden by a little postilion and a little hussar, the first in a red waistcoat all galooned with silver, and with a blue plume in his hat; the other in a blue tunic, with his sabre and cap decorated with plaques of silver. The Le Duc held the horses’ reins, and was escorted by two footmen.
“This luxurious equipage was a gallantry of the Comte de Clermont, Abbé of Saint-Germain, to flatter the vanity of the Le Duc, who occupies the post of his favourite sultana, which the Camargo enjoyed up to the end of the year 1741.
“The goddess of the fête responded to this magnificent gallantry by attire still richer and more elegant, of blue and silver; she had for companions in her calèche her sister and the Cartou.115 A number of other actresses filled three coaches in the suite of Madame l’Abbesse, and wore her colours of blue and silver.
“All the people at Longchamps, on horseback, in coaches, or in calèches, formed a procession in the rear of this troupe of vestals, through curiosity or for the sake of amusement....
“Jests and songs at the expense of the Comte de Clermont have not been wanting, and the King has intimated to him that he is displeased and scandalised.
“Here is a placard which has been composed on the matter:—
‘“The
Triumph OF Vice
At the Theatre of Longchamps,
By Mlle. Le Duc.
‘“The first representation given on Holy Wednesday, March 21.
On Friday the Theatre will be closed.”’116
The duel between the abbé and the judge and their respective sultanas continued until both gentlemen were nearly ruined; but victory ultimately rested with the Church, as Mlle. de Camargo and the Président de Rieux soon grew tired of one another and agreed to separate, the latter making the ballerina a present of 40,000 crowns out of what was left of his fortune. After this adventure, according to the report drawn up by Meusnier, of which we have already spoken, Mlle. de Camargo’s old inclination for the Marquis de Sourdis revived and they resumed their interrupted liaison. Their respective positions were now, however, reversed, as the Marquis had fallen on evil days, and become so poor that his mistress had to pledge her earrings and necklace to enable him to live in a manner befitting his rank.
In the meanwhile, the danseuse had returned to the Opera, where she, of course, met with an enthusiastic reception.
“Légère et forte en sa souplesse,
La vive Camargo sautait,”
wrote Voltaire. Nevertheless, she had now to be content with a divided empire. During her long absence, a new star had arisen, in the person of a Mlle. Sallé, with whom the Camargo had henceforth to share the applause of the public and the praises of the poets. Mlle. Sallé’s style of dancing differed widely from that of her celebrated rival. Whereas the latter danced with astonishing rapidity and rose so high from the stage that “it seemed as if she were going to touch the friezes,” Mlle. Sallé danced slowly and with the minimum of exertion, relying for effect upon grace of movement and voluptuous poses.
The rivalry between the two stars was very bitter, and all attempts to promote a better understanding proved fruitless, although Voltaire himself intervened, and addressed to the ladies some graceful lines, in which he adroitly divided his praises between them:—
“Ah! Camargo, que vous êtes brillante!
Mais que Sallé, grands dieux! est ravissante!
Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux!
Elle est inimitable et vous êtes nouvelle.
Les Nymphes sautent comme vous,
Et les Grâces dansent comme elle.”
In spite of the rivalry of Mlle. Sallé, the fame of the elder ballerina was still sufficient to have satisfied a less exacting artiste. An air to which she danced in the first act of Pyramé et Thisbé excited such enthusiasm that it became the vogue of the salons, first, as a song, and, later, as a dance, which was called after the danseuse, the “Camargo,” and by that name was still known a century later.
Her triumphs in the dance encouraged Mlle. de Camargo to tempt fortune in another emploi, and, in an opera called Les Talents lyriques, she accordingly made her début as a singer. She had a very pretty voice, and was much applauded; but, for some reason, did not repeat the experiment.
At the age of forty-one, conscious that she no longer possessed the “souplesse forte et légère,” which Voltaire had once celebrated, Mlle. de Camargo decided to retire, and, at Easter 1751, quitted the scene of her many triumphs, never to return. Her popularity had endured to the last, for Casanova, who saw her dance some months earlier, declares that the public applauded her “with a kind of frenzy.”
On her retirement, she received a pension of 1500 livres, instead of the usual 1000, and another pension of a like amount from the King. She had, however, little need of such assistance, as, more prudent than most of her colleagues, she had found secure investments for a considerable portion of the sums which her various admirers had lavished upon her; while, if Meusnier is correct, she was in receipt of an annual allowance of 12,000 livres from the Comte de Clermont, which would have been materially increased, but for the interference of Mlle. Le Duc.
Henceforth she ceased to interest the town. In 1753, we learn that she has taken unto herself another impecunious lover, a certain Chevalier de la Guerché, “who lived with her, and the whole of whose expenses she defrayed,” after which we hear no more of her until the chroniclers record her death, which took place on April 28, 1770, at the age of sixty. She was then living in the Rue Saint-Honoré, “like a respectable bourgeoise, very assiduous in visiting the poor of her parish, and always surrounded by a dozen dogs, to whom she was much attached.” She was nursed in her last illness by the widow of François Boucher, the famous painter.
The best-known portrait of Mlle. de Camargo is that by Lancret, in the Wallace Collection, at Hertford House. An original repetition of this portrait, with a marked variation in the colour scheme, is in the Museum at Nantes. The Neues Palais at Potsdam contains another portrait by Lancret, entitled La Camargo avec son danseur, which shows the ballerina in the act of executing a pas de deux with a male dancer.117