MADAME VESTRIS AND THE GERMAN PRINCE.
THE German Prince, who has illuminated the English public on numerous points relative to themselves, has also favoured us with -
some theatrical critiques. He speaks of his astonishment, in - 1828, at seeing old BRAHAM still on the stage, and calls him the Everlasting Jew. Prince Pucii LER Muslim", it seems, came over- with the Conquerors after the fall of NAPOLEON: he then found BRAHAM in his high and palmy state; and when, on his subse- quent visit, he found him more than the same man,—shouting louder, roulading longer, and heaving his little bosom with an energy savouring more of one score years than three,—his great: German heart was naturally filled with mystic horror ; he saw the ever-burning cross upon his brow, and went home reflecting upon the Curse of being condemned to eternal song. Won and. his wheel, Sisyphus and his rolling stone (the antique tread- mill), are but trivial inventions when you consider the awfulness of BRAHMA'S doom: an immortal nightingale, for ever thrusting his sad breast upon the thorn of a difficult passage—his throat for - ever gurgling with an infinite series of trillade—with what de- spair must he watch his notes as they ascend to heaven ! No youthful fowler, intent upon a soaring lark, as he watches him float and flutter, mount and sing, and utterly disappear in the illimitable sky, ever felt half the heart-sinking that the BRAHAM must experience, as he feels his ribbony airs wind from him far beyond the chandelier of gas, the gallery of gods, the square win- dows of the ceiling, yea, into the very murky incubating nimbus that overshadows, like a guardian dremon, the Great Wen of Earth. "Shall I ever get it back?" we see him whispering to his heart ; "or is it my doom thus to spend myself on air—to be drawn out in a never-ending string of voice?
But is BRAHAM the Wandering or the Warbling Jew ? We see nothing excessive in his age: his performance is surprising, and we should never think him getting old, if we did not wonder to see so much fire animating a chest that doubtless in another century felt a flame that glows not in the cradle.
But this German Prince seems to fancy that we must have all grown old in his absence. A German Prince is not absolutely ne- cessary to our juvescence, though we will allow we have flourished tolerably under one. This Prince PUCHLER Musx.au calls VESTRIS pantie !—Oh that we could see her reading that fatal passage to his well-born highness! what lightning of eyes, what glancing of nails, what scintillation of fairy foot, what an ocean of white distress under that undulating bosom! Would showers have come to her relief? would rain have extinguished her wrath? would the democratic aristocrat have been reduced to ashes by the elec- tric lightning, or inundated by the floods, of her indignant eye ? But V.EsraispassOe—the idea is ridiculous. We waive all allu- sion to the Annual Register : whether it would tell for us or against us, we know not, we care not. Look at her—listen to her: if she be not young, then Venusis not an ever-enduring vision, and Echo is decrepid with age. Our high-born PUCHLER is nearer the truth when he says she belongs to all Europe.
"It may truly be said, in every sense of the words, that Madame Vestria belongs to all Europe. Her father was an Italian; her mother a German, and .
a good pianoforte player; her husband, of the illustrious dancing family of France • and herself an Englishwoman : any, chasms in her connexion with
other
Prance; nations are more than filled up by hundreds of the most mar-
at lovers. She also speaks several languages with the utmost fluency. In' character of the German broom girl, she sings Ach, du lieber Augustin' with.a perfect pronunciation, and with a very piquant air of assurance,': . • But how ill-natured is this illiberal allusion to her lovers ! what have we to do with them? Have they diminished the grace and the exhaustless spirit and wit of her playing, which he describes as so enchanting ? have they destroyed her magnificent voice ? have they even impaired the form of that leg, which he calls a standing article in the theatrical criticisms of the day, or diminished the beauty of her form, or detracted from the fascination of her snide; or have they prevented her rivalling, in the charms of per- son and personation, hundreds of others, with all advantages of greater youth, warmer friends, and newer prospects—and ulti- mately beating them all out of the field ? We aver, that we would take the physical construction of such a case before a whole world of scandal. We know of what rumour is made : we know that, in all female matters, it is give an inch and take a HELL—such is our version of an old proverb applicable to the case. Listen to that voice ! observe the firmness of that tread ! examine the fulness and firmness of that form ! Do they not give in a glance the lie prac- tical to very much slander?—A Circe is quickly turned into one of her own swine.
Prince PUCHLER MUSKAU reproaches VESTRIS (at least it is a quasi reproach) with her frequent assumption of male attire : he says, coarsely enough, it is to show her leg. VESTRIS'S leg is not, in the eye of a statuary, more perfect than the rest of her form; and the rest of her form and its beauties are perhaps more promi- nently displayed in the draperies of a lady of fashion than in those of a classical fiddler or a Venetian roue—Orpheus or Don Juan. And yet it is singular, and has by us often been remarked, that as a youth, VESTRIS is full of ease—as a female, unable to dispense with her portion of affectation. Why is this ? How nobly and firmly she treads when her gender is announced in the gram- mar of the theatre or its accidence, (the playbill), as masculine, or at least epiccene! and yet, as a lady, what mopping and mowing • we have! She is for ever bobbing and bowing, the elbows are struck up, the body is twisted, the expression of the countenance oonstrained, and in spite of her exquisitely-built dresses, she shows a form in trammels.
They say LISTON is great in Liston. True—how great! how rare! he is LISTON, and nothing but LISTON; and we trust never will be any thing else. But VEsTais—she may be great in Ves- tris, but we never saw it—it is in Don Giovanni, or in Apollo, or in Orpheus ; and then—affectation avaunt ! she steps from her pedestal, a walking deity. By her step, by her air, by her limbs, by her face, by her form, we know her for the true god, or goddess --angels are of no sex. Talking of Madame VESTRIS, we think her theatre extremely well conducted—her pieces witty and (except such as the Wo- man's Revenge) clever, and well adapted to the taste of the times. There is assuredly no theatre in London which so completely an- swers to the notion of a true Minor.
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