U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [379]
to escape the materialism of their native America.
In London at the British Museum
they discovered the Greeks;
the Dance was Greek.
Under the smoky chimneypots of London, in
the sootcoated squares they danced in muslin tunics, they copied poses from Greek vases, went to lectures, artgal eries, concerts, plays, sopped up in a winter fifty years of Victorian culture.
Back to the Greeks.
Whenever they were put out of their lodgings for
nonpayment of rent Isadora led them to the best hotel and engaged a suite and sent the waiters scurrying for
-155-lobster and champagne and fruits outofseason; nothing was too good for Artists, Duncans, Greeks;
and the nineties London liked her gal .
In Kensington and even in Mayfair she danced at
parties in private houses,
the Britishers, Prince Edward down,
were carried away by her preraphaelite beauty
her lusty American innocence
her California accent.
After London, Paris during the great exposition
of nineteen hundred. She danced with Loïe Ful er.
She was stil a virgin too shy to return the advances of Rodin the great master, completely baffled by the extraordinary behavior of Loïe Ful er's circle of crack-brained invert beauties. The Duncans were vegetarians, suspicious of vulgarity and men and materialism. Ray-mond made them al sandals. Isadora and her mother and her brother Raymond
went about Europe in sandals and fil ets and Greek
tunics
staying at the best hotels leading the Greek life
of nature in a flutter of unpaid bil s.
Isadora's first solo recital was at a theater in
Budapest;
after that she was the diva, had a loveaffair with
a leading actor; in Munich the students took the horses out of her carriage. Everything was flowers and hand-clapping and champagne suppers. In Berlin she was the rage. With the money she made on her German tour
she took the Duncans al to Greece. They arrived on a fishingboat from Ithaca. They posed in the Parthenon
-156-for photographs and danced in the Theater of Dionysus and trained a crowd of urchins to sing the ancient chorus from the Suppliants and built a temple to live in on a hil overlooking the ruins of ancient Athens, but there was no water on the hil and their money; ran out be-fore the temple was finished so they had to stay at the Hôtel d'Angleterre and
run up a bil there. When credit gave out they took their chorus back to Berlin and put on the Suppliants in ancient Greek. Meeting Isadora in her peplum marching through the Tiergarten at the head of her
Greek boys marching in order al in Greek tunics, the kaiserin's horse shied, and her highness was thrown.
Isadora was the vogue.
She arrived in St. Petersburg in time to see the
night funeral of the marchers shot down in front of the Winter Palace in 1905. It hurt her. She was an
American like Walt Whitman; the murdering rulers
of the world were not her people; the marchers were her people; artists were not on the side of the
machineguns; she was an American in a Greek tunic;
she was for the people.
In St. Petersburg, stil under the spel of the
eighteenthcentury bal et of the court of the Sunking, her dancing was considered dangerous by the au-thorities. In Germany she founded a school with the help of her sister Elizabeth who did the organizing, and she had a baby by Gordon Craig. She went to America in triumph as she'd always
planned and harried the home philistines with a tour; her fol owers were al the time getting pinched for
-157-wearing Greek tanics; she found no freedom for Art in America.
Back in' Paris it was the top of the world; Art
meant Isadora. At the funeral of the Prince de Polig-nac she met the mythical mil ionaire (sewingmachine king) who was to be her backer and to finance her
school. She went off with him in his yacht (whatever Isadora did was Art) to dance in the Temple at Paestum
only for him,
but it rained and the musicians al got drenched.
So they al got drunk instead.
Art was the mil ionaire life. Art was whatever
Isadora did. She was carrying the mil ionaire's child to the great scandal of the oldlady clubwomen and