The French, by their
conduct in America, had incurred the bitterest English enmity. It is
true that Garrick had projected his spectacle months before this
feeling had arisen. He was careful so to inform the public, and
further to state that his ballet-master, M. Noverre, and his sisters
were Swiss and of a Protestant family; his wife and her sister,
Germans; and that of the whole _corps de ballet_, sixty in number,
forty were English. But this availed not. The pit would not regard it,
holding fast to their opinion that no management should bring over
parley-voos and frog-eaters to take the bread out of English mouths.
Peace was at length restored in Drury Lane, and the dancers sent back.
The management lost L4000; Garrick purchasing knowledge of his public
at rather a high rate.
And in England the ballet had other enemies than those who concerned
themselves in regard to the nationality of its professors. It was held
by many to be, if an art at all--why, then, an art of a shocking kind;
they could see nothing in it but gross impropriety and unseemliness.
Now, of course, the ballet has its vulnerable side--it almost needs,
at any rate it has always assumed, a scantier style of dress than is
otherwise in ordinary use.
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