NYMPHS OF THE BALLET

Just four months after her husband Texas Jack Omohundro died of pneumonia in Leadville, his widow was training ballerinas in Philadelphia. This Philadelphia Record dispatch—reprinted in the New Orleans States and New Orleans Item on November 17, 1880—finds Mlle. Morlacchi at the stage door of the National Theatre, sorting some eighty hopefuls into Amazons for the spectacular drama Esmeralda. The reporter, taking her exclamations at face value, files her accent as French. She was Milanese, trained at La Scala—still to this day the most exacting ballet academy in the world. Retirement would come slowly. Over the course of the year she worked her way back east from Leadville to the Billerica, Massachusetts farmhouse she and Jack had shared, but on this November afternoon she had a baton in hand and a column of novices to wheel into formation.

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From the Philadelphia Record (reprinted in the New Orleans Daily City Item, November 17, 1880)

The Eighty “Young and Good-looking Ladies” Who Wanted to Figure in Gauze and Tights.

Some seventy or eighty girls and women were grouped around the stage door of the National Theatre an hour before noon Wednesday. They were there in response to a notice calling for a hundred ladies for the spectacular drama “Esmeralda, or the Street Dancer of Paris,” dramatized from Victor Hugo’s novel of that title, which opens at the theatre on Monday night. The notice stipulated that the applicants should be both “good looking” and “young,” but fully one-half of the gathering failed to fill this bill, although probably it would not have been well to have given them a gentle intimation of the fact.

In the group there were all kinds of girls. Here was a vivacious lass of sixteen; there a “Miss Primp,” who was every day of thirty, and every article of whose attire had been adjusted “just so” before she ventured out in the street. There was a reduced empress in bleached bangs, Cape May diamonds and fingers peeping at the daylight from the tips of her kid gloves, and a damsel who in avoirdupois and circumference would rival the buxom Aimée. On the edge of the group was a girl who had so adjusted her felt hat that its brim nearly rested on the tip of her turned-up nose, and with her was a companion with as many hair “scallops” to the square inch on her forehead as a bowl of gum tragacanth could possibly produce.

Of the whole crowd not more than ten had ever exhibited their acquirements on the stage. These could easily be detected, as they hummed and whirled themselves with an air which seemed to say to their more sedate companions: “We have been through this racket before and rather get the best of you.” Among the others there were some stage-struck damsels, many who had come down just to see what they would have to do, and a few who had been driven to apply from dire necessity. One of the latter, a pleasant-faced girl of sixteen, with a poor but very neat attire, stood aloof from the general crowd and manifested a timorous disposition, which attracted to her more attention than if she had joined in with the flow of gossip. She was a Jersey girl of good family, who, recently bereft of her parents, had come to this city to find a home with a sister. So far she had failed to find a situation, and unknown to her relative she had determined to apply in the hope of earning even a few dollars. Her manner gained her success, while some of the more confident ones went away rejected.

Presently a lady in deep mourning, with clear-cut features, a wealth of chestnut-brown hair, sparkling brown eyes and a subdued vivacity of manner, came on the stage. This was Mlle. Morlacchi, the celebrated premier danseuse. Her black habiliments reminded those around of the recent death of Texas Jack, her husband. Her eyes shot over the line of girls which had been drawn up in front of her, and in less than two minutes she had directed four of the tallest and thinnest to stand aside. Then she selected a similar number of buxom ones. The few lookers on supposed that the four thin ones had been vetoed. Not so, however.

“Those thin faces mean good legs,” said Mademoiselle, in reply to a question. “They will make the best Amazons of the whole group. Four thin and four stout—see how they will match!” And up went the shoulders in an impressive French shrug.

To select the next eight took the danseuse some time. Then the balance were told that their services were not needed for the present. The rejected ones were the possessors of some of the prettiest faces. This fact was remarked upon to Morlacchi. Another shrug of the shoulders. “We look out for form, and not for looks. Paint and powder will make a good face, but not a fine form. It is art versus nature.”

After this the circus began. A baton was hunted up for Mademoiselle, and she made it heard before the afternoon was over. The Amazons formed two, four and eight deep, and were marched east and west, right and left, for two hours. Every few minutes Morlacchi’s patience would be sorely tried. At first it seemed impossible for the novices to keep correct step. Then, when they had mastered this feat, the leader of a column would wheel to the right instead of the left and come in violent collision with the other column. Again, in marching single file the centre would bulge out a couple of feet in advance of the wings. Sometimes the two platoons would go just the opposite way to which they were directed, and the result would be a scene of confusion worse confounded.

Advertisement for Esmerelda starring the Peerless Morlacchi in the Nov 16, 1880 Philadelphia Times

All the time Morlacchi’s baton and foot would be beating, and the French accent would be ejaculating: “Mercy! mercy! Not that way, ladies. There, now.” “You have got a long foot, why don’t you make a long step?” Finally, after about two hours of marching and countermarching, Morlacchi was satisfied, and, with the remark: “Now, my dears, that is beautiful,” the Amazons were dismissed for the day. Before they left their names were taken, and the result was a collection of fancy appellatives. There was a St. Clair and a Vere de Vere, two Mamies, one Olivia, a couple of Mays, a Theresa, but not an Annie, Mary, Susan or Bridget among the lot.