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genius for discovering new talent. Once,
she says, a doctor warned Nijinsky that he had a curious glandular
arrangement but she slides over this point in her effort to set up
Diaghilev as the cause of Nijinsky's madness. Diaghilev was so jealous
that he refused to let the dancer have any friends outside his own
inner circle. Wlu'le others were paid prodigious salaries, Nijinsky was
given only enough to take care of his mother in St. Petersburg. When
the Ballet started for Rio de Janeiro, Diaghilev's fear of the sea kept
him in Europe. Nijinsky had never seemed to notice the Hungarian girl
who had attached herself to the troupe, but one day on shipboard he
sent an emissary to her who said: "Romola Carlovna, as Nijinsky
cannot speak to you himself, he has requested me to ask you in
marriage." The ceremony at Buenos Aires was pronounced in Latin
and Spanish. Neither bride nor groom understood a word of it. When
Diaghilev heard the news he dismissed Nijinsky from the Ballet. A
baby was on the way. The couple, who were just learning to converse in
pidgin-French and Russian, went to Austria. There the War caught them
and the authorities refused to let them leave. They were imprisoned,
not in an army camp as other accounts have stated, but on the top floor
of Romola's mother's house. She proved a stern jailer. Nijinsky was a
hated Russian. His status as a dancer was forgotten. He had no space
to practice, spent his time working on a system for annotating the
dance. The authorities heard about his queer hieroglyphics, suspected
him of spying. Banker Otto Hermann Kahn was responsible for the
Nijinskys' release. He wanted the Diaghilev Ballet to come to New York
and he wanted Nijinsky. But Diaghilev never forgot his grudge and
Nijinsky's wife blames him for the long chain of misfortunes which so
unnerved the dancer that he was completely taken in by the mystical
doctrines preached to him constantly (his wife says) by two of
Diaghilev's henchmen.* Nijinsky's insanity showed itself when he took
his family to Switzerland to rest in 1918. He became increasingly moody
and irresponsible, took to drawing strange circular designs spotted
with eyes, fanciful butterflies with faces like his own, spiders which
suggested Diaghilev. He was found one day walking the streets with a
great cross on his chest, exhorting the villagers to seek God. His last
dance was for a society function. He made a cross on the floor, danced
with such fury that the audience sat frozen with fright. Diaghilev
visited him once after that, wept and said: "It is my fault, what
shall I do?" Madame Nijinskaya ends her book with the prayer she
said when she first saw Nijinsky dance. There follows a list of people
who have stood by him through his illness. There are only five names:
the late Paul Dupuy, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt Sr., Harpist Carlos
Salzedo, Robert Alfred Shaw and Tamara Karsavina.
*NIJINSKY, by Romola Nijinsky—Simon & Schuster
($3). *An entrechat consists of flicking the heels together in the air.
With the exception of Nijinsky, his wife says, no modern dancer has
been able to do more than eight. *Diaghilev can never prove his innocence.
He died five years ago.
