The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1894-06-14
YVEI,TE GUILBERT.

YVElIuTE GUILBERT.
Yvette Guilbert is more than Paris
ian, she is Parisianism, the greatest
cafe chantant singer in the world to-
day, waif from the storm, a leaf
thrown up against blase Paris for her
amusement.
She sprang into favor with a grimace
directed at her companions in the vast
emporium, the "Printens." as well
known to thu modern female traveller
as the Louvre" or the bon Marche."
She was born with a knowledge of
the value IF effect as supreme and dis
tinctive as a song. A sOdden aWk-
ward droop of a woman, no grace, no
distinction, no taste; but she can be
tragic with lift Of her eyebrows,
comic with a shrug of her shoulders,
and painfully realistic with move
weakness of the greatest aristocrats Of
the day, she sticks her tongue into her
cheek, and talks boulevard slang and
twang until the oldest boulevardier is
Outdone; she initiates all the famous
actors and singers with one stroke of
her gigantic talent as clean-cut and
acute as if she had made an exhaustive
study Of her art all her life, instead
of being, as she Is, a WORKOUT shop girl,
with the odor of the streets in her
clothes, in her dyed hair, in her stock
expression. She throws sentiment to
the winds, she mocks at love, she snaps
her fingers at fate, and she defes the
higher powers with every breath she
draws and almost every note she ut
tiers. E.t
Her voice is low, and coarse and I'M
musical her lips are painted vermilion
and colored thick and out of drawing,
but she is intensely human; and that is
what the Parisians love. She is as typi-
cal child Of this generation as the dude
OR the female bicyclist an of-shoot, the
,epitome Of effete civilization, the an
:swer to the universal cry for more, a
new plat offered to the jaded palates
OF the satiated. ..-
Her length is awkward, her COM
plexion pasty. her hair champagne vel
low. She is as devoid Of chic as North
American Indian, and her toilette is as
nonsuggestive Of Paris.
1t consists Of flimsy sulphur colored
silk dress falling in unequal folds about
undaintily shod feet, her thin shoulders
and hipless sides aiding and abetting
it in it's ungraceful flop to the floor.
The yellow hair escapes in untidy
meshes at the sides of her head, her
eyes are faded her mouth droops weari-
ty a little sideways, and the long, shape
less arms fall from their sockets toward
her knees in a line which must be as
ylnstudied as it has hitherto, from it's
undesirability, been unthought Of.
Stretched from the elbows to the ends
of the long, thin fingers are the black
gloves, by which all Paris and Strang-
erdom has grown to recognize her on
the bill posters, and which are to play
OF nude facts.
The audience has shifted in and out
lazy, sleepy, summer audience. They
have been presented with the inevitable
dance and song man and the unpre-
sscntable song and dance woman. Elev-
Zen o'clock strikes, and the almost ex-
Hnguishable gas in the varied colored
bulbs bursts into new radience, club
dom and snubdom loom to the fore
and, as Yvette shutles awkwardly to
the footlights, the audience bursts into
rapt,lrous applause, which Immediately
edics away into breathless silence.
The orchestra strikes up, the strange
sa1roop of body quickens into life, the
'red-lipped mouth opens to let forth the
song, the long arms point the moral tt
the tale, and suddenly it dawns upon
us that here is tile camera of o-day
embodied in slip of a girl who is ia
mous. She rouses into speech, she
w;nks into slyness, she shrugs in con
tempt, she talks like street urchin o.
:, grand dame or a stump orator, or any
of the thousand and one types Of Paris
ianism which are so incOntestably uni
CUE and the black-gloved hands MAXI
the shadow and the yellow dress an(
Ehair the light, and she hints at untolt
depths with an "um'' and suggests un
felt heights with an "ah,' a whole life
time Of unusualness, of cunning, or o
fun in everything she says and does
Her shoulders shrug out her innuen
does her hands outline the Tilt of tn
strange measure of her song.
She pokes fun at the government an
is as full of gags as the local politician
She turns human nature inside gu
with twist Of her tongue, lift Of he
expressive brows, a droop Of her III
naturally Redeemed lips.
They recall her again and again, an
she returns to snap her fingers at the
institutions and their constitutions, 9
their love Of themselves and their Low
Of her. She is abundantly antagonist
but she idealizes effect, and she is som
thing new. When they are tired Of hi
she mods her head at them, the lin
hands fall at her sides, the flimsy,. cha
acterless gown droops into it's usual VI
graceful folds, the eyes dull the bod
.droops, the orchestra stops, and Il
curtain falls. She is her own versie
of her own life, is Yvette Guilbert, tt
spoiled child Of the French public,
happily so while it lasts, so unhappi
so when another fills her place
''You see," said she the other day
and as she talked her elbows rested {
her knees in their customary spiritle
fashion, and the long, thin hands sh
in and out to accentuate the high ligh
of her chat-"you see was born ug
and amaemic, but had a prodigio
memory. used to carry home work
great ladies' from my mother who was
poor seamstress; but my mind. ev