HER stage property and slave has taken its revenge on her. Seldom has an artist been so intimately beset by tragedy. Her two small children were killed in a car accident; her husband committed suicide. Now her own life has been ended by this object which was so indispensable to her.
On the evening before the death of her children I was in her box at the Russian ballet. She invited me to luncheon . . . the next day, but I had to refuse because I had an engagement with Hermann Keyserling. The children were supposed to dance for me after the meal . . .
In her early days I had a low opinion of her dancing and considered her awkward, amateurish, and uncultured. She knew of this . . . Later she demonstrated a dance to me, and, when I expressed my genuine admiration, said in her Americanized French, “Oui, quand vous m’avez vue avant j’étais vertueuse, je ne savais pas dancer: mais maintenant . . . !”
One day . . . she came to the ladies’ afternoon of Mme Metschnikov, wife of the famous savant. The old lady was surrounded by friends of her own sex and generation. She did not know Isadora and, on hearing her name announced, went up to her with the words, “Que puis-je faire pour vous, Mademoiselle?” The reply came like a shot from a gun: “Je voulais vous demander, Madame, si vous permettriez que Monsieur Metschnikov me fasse un enfant?” Curtain, with Mme Metschnikov in a faint . . . finally Mme Metschnikov came round and asked, her wits still shaken, “Mais, pourquois, Mademoiselle: connaissez-vous le Professeur Metschnikov?” “Oh, non, Madame! Mais je pensais que si le Professeur Metschnikov me faisait un enfant, celui-ci aurait la tête du Professeur et les jambes de moi, et que ce serait très bien.”
. . . Poor Isadora! She never could rid herself of something philistine and schoolmarmish.