The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1886-08-05

should have lived on and on in this fairy
realm of song, and should have found her
here after these many days" And Taglioni
should have been dancing still, floating in and
out among the lights and shadows of her gar
den on the lake. But alas! the diva long ago
| gathered the white robes of Norma about her
and passed out of mortal sight, and faded into
tradition as her glorious voice had trembled
| away into silence. A while longer the "syl-
phide" fiuttered on, but at last she too folded
her gossamer wings, and disappeared from
| the stage, the lesser and the greater. She also
has become traditional tradition of music
in motion-of grace inimitable, of lightness
lnconceivable. She was the greatest, if not
the very last of the old school of dancers.
purely artistic in style, poetic in sentiment
| and modest in dress and demeanor, Since her
time ballet dancing has become more auto
matte and acrobatic, more difficult, perhaps.
In its tense, interminable poses, its prodigious
| muscular endurance and marvellous feats of
| aglnty; but its old poetic enchantment has
changed into voluptuous bacchanal ntoxica-
Ilon, making 1t less fine art than "black
| art." Since her time the dancers smile which
used TO come and go easily and naturally,
with charming effect, has heightened and
| ughtened into grin, and her floating, airy
drapery has shortened and stitfened into
ruff, very much misplaced. On that long age
summer morning also saw Taglioni, as she
was standing on her balcony looking smil-
ingly out on the lake-a light, graceful little
figure, robed i'll white, and all a-1utter with
gay ribbons. More than a quarter of
a century later 1 again saw her,
at large and merry garden party
in London-then a little thin, bent.
sad-eyed old lady, all in black, sitting
retired from the crowd with two or three
other elderly ex-artists. Our hostess pointed
her out to me, but not till l saw her rise and
come across the lawn to take leave of that
pleasant hostess-moving with something of a
dancers elasticity of step and peculiar swing
OF the skirts, as though she were walking up
the stage-not till marked her matchless
grace of manner and the sweetness of her
parting smile could realize that before us
was indeed that dainty and airy creature who
used to float across the scene, brushing over,
but not, they said bending ferns and flowers
she whose very flesh seemed diaphanous
like her drapery, whose bones seemed filed
with air, like those of birds-she whose chaste,
tender and exquisite acting even Chateau
BRAND raved about-She who WAS LA
Sylphide."
At Cernobbia, Caroline of Brunswick, I'M
crowned Queen of England, when Princess of
Wales, sought such consolation as nature
could give, for her matrimonial troubles and
squabbles, with that "first gentleman land
brute of Europe" George w. In sight of
our windows is the Villa d'Este, now the swell
Hotel de la Refine d Angleterre," a sort of
monument of that unhappy princess as the
Oldest part was once her palace and figures in
history as the nursery of the shameful scan
dals which finally resulted in the famous
trial of Queen Caroline" Here, with court,
small but jolly, she rode, and sailed and
strolled and danced with reckless, restless
gayety, unconscious that the spies of her
royal enemies were all about her, as alert and
keen-eyed as the lizards, darting in and out
of the shrubbery and rockwork along her
garden paths Here she was served by the
handsome Italian courier, or valet, known
on the trial as "non-miricordo," he not reco-
lecting anything in the least eliminating to
himself or his mistress. Queen Caroline was
doubtless a much injured and prosecuted wo-
man, but she was not prude or Puritan
and probably was as far from being Portia
as her husband was from being Caesar, and
only by her maternal love saved from
becoming an utterly reckless royal adven-
turess, sowing Europe with scandals.
Speaking of adventuresses, am reminded
of the famous, or infamous "Fannie Lear
or Mrs. Harriet Ely Blackford, who lately
died in Paris expelled for the second time
from that gay capital, as some dozen years
before she had been expelled from st. Peters
burg, where she had melted an infatuated
lover, the Grand Duke Nicholas Constantine
witch, to the theft of his mothers diamonds;
and as, a few years later, she had been ex-
PEELED from Rome, where it was said she had
cajoled another royal or semi-royal lover,
Count Miraiori, son of the kings morganatic
wife, into raising money by clever imitation
of the signature of his revered sire. We
were at home when the scandal broke out and
the lady was moved on in such summary
manner that her maid was obliged to take
bundle of her linen, wet and dripping from
the tubs of the hotel laundry. So it seems
that she led one royal admirer to steal from
his mother, and the other from his father,
but what were those crimes to that of rob-
bling her own mother of all joy and peace in
life and dishonoring the name of her dead
father!
A short time after the expulsion from
Rome we CHANGED to see Mrs Blackford in
Naples driving alone, but with a gallant
young officer riding beside her landau. She
was then a slight, graceful, exceedingly
pretty woman, seeming still very young, and
with strange look of innocence in her beau
tiful, appealing eyes, and she was dressed with
quiet elegance. Nothing striking about her,
except her PERSONAL---VERY. something more
and rarer than beauty. BLOOD will tell"-
stories sometimes. This reckless, wicked,
abandoned adventures came of good old
New England Puritan stock. Her father
DR.. Ezra Styles Ely, of Philadelphia, dis
tinguished divine, was the son of a divine and
the grandson of other divines. I'D. D." was
a family decoration. The Ely and Styles
boys were born into pulpits and presbyteries
Good old DR.. Ely was the pastor of my father
and mother, and of the historical Trum-
bull family, in the sober, aristocratic old
town of Lebanon, Conn. A godly, proper
and infinitely respectable couple were the
parson and his wife she was a Styles,
model pair, who lived modestly and right
eously and peacefully. But ali! if they could
have had prophetic vision Of the career of
their youngest granddaughter Since their
time we have become a great country-have
developed steam, electricity, woman's rights,
and have sent out the boldest explorers and
greatest adventuresses of the world