ad been imported in the past without awakening undue
excitement. Did not the great Carmencita herself visit America twenty
or more years ago? These impressarii had ignored the existence of a
great psychological (or more properly physiological) truth: you cannot
mix Burgundy and Beer! One Spanish dancer surrounded by Americans is
just as much lost as the great Nijinsky himself was in an English
music hall, where he made a complete and dismal failure. And so they
would have been very much astonished (had they been present) on the
opening night to have witnessed all the scenes of uncontrollable
enthusiasm--just as they are described by Havelock Ellis, Richard
Ford, and Chabrier--repeated. The audience, indeed, became hysterical,
and broke into wild cries of _Ole! Ole!_ Hats were thrown on the
stage. The audience became as abandoned as the players, became a part
of the action.

You will find all this described in "The Soul of Spain," in
"Gatherings from Spain," in Chabrier's letters, and it had all been
transplanted to New York almost without a whisper of preparation,
which is fortunate, for if it had been expected, doubtless we would
have found the way to spoil it. Fancy the average New York first-night
audience, stiff and unbending, sceptical and sardonic, welcoming this
exhibition! Havelock Ellis gives an ingenious explanation for the fact
that Spanish dancing has seldom if ever successfully crossed the
border of the Iberian peninsula: "The finest Spanish dancing is at
once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent or
unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be
transplanted, but remains local." Fortunately the Spaniards in the
first-night audience gave the cue, unlocked the lips and loosened the
hands of us cold Americans. For my part, I was soon yelling _Ole!_
louder than anybody else.

The dancer, Doloretes, is indeed extraordinary. The gipsy fascination,
the abandoned, perverse bewitchery of this female devil of the dance
is not to be described by mouth, typewriter, or quilled pen. Heine
would have put her at the head of his dancing temptresses in his
ballet of _Mephistophela_ (found by Lumley too indecent for
representation at Her Majesty's Theatre, for which it was written; in
spite of which the scenario was published in the respectable "Revue de
Deux Mondes"). In this ballet a series of dancing celebrities are
exhibited by the female Mephistopheles for the entertainment of her
victim.