Franklin & Marshall College<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the early United States was forming its own cultural products, the ballet stage was dominated by French performers. The artistry, renown, and earnings of some of these imported ballerinas inspired young Americans with stage ambitions. Among these, Augusta Maywood became one of the earliest home-grown ballerinas of repute (see Fig. 1), debuting with a competitor to that title, Mary Ann Lee, in The Maid of Cashmere<\/em>, as the opera-ballet La Bayad\u00e8re<\/em> was called in their joint season (December 1837 to January 1838) at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. The young dancers\u2014Augusta was twelve, Mary Ann thirteen or fourteen\u2014appeared in the opposing roles of Zelica\/Zolo\u00e9 (Maywood) and Fatima (Lee).[1]<\/sup><\/a> For the preceding year or two, they had been students of Philadelphia dancing master P. H. Hazard, who claimed Paris Op\u00e9ra training. Both girls\u2019 tuition under Hazard was paid for by Philadelphia theatre manager Robert Maywood. Augusta, born in New York City, was his adopted daughter (he married her actress-mother after Augusta\u2019s parents divorced); she spent most of her youth in Philadelphia. Her exposure to the stage from childhood surely contributed to Augusta\u2019s theatrical savvy, compensating for her short period of formal study. Charles Durang, an astute observer, remarked on her \u201cnatural abilities for agility and grace.\u201d Another Philadelphia critic wrote that Augusta\u2019s d\u00e9but \u201ccreated quite a sensation in the public mind,\u201d owing to her \u201cprecision\u201d as a dancer, despite her youth, and her possessing \u201cthe mind and the science of the artiste.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Durang wrote, \u201cAugusta Maywood really was a prodigy. […] At one bound this talented girl stood beside the best terpsichorean artistes <\/em>that we had in the country.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a> He shrewdly added that, \u201cWith the furore this precocious child of dance had elicited, it would have proved good policy, while the excitement raged, to have starred her through the country.\u201d Instead, her parents hastened her to Paris to study at the Acad\u00e9mie Royale, \u201closing the pecuniary rewards which a tour in the United States would clearly have gained.\u201d But perhaps manager Maywood saw that, with the polish of the French academy and the lustre of a Paris Op\u00e9ra d\u00e9but, the still-malleable Augusta would be unbeatable as the first and greatest ballerina the U.S. had produced. In Paris, \u201cher improvement was wonderful,\u201d Durang wrote, and she was granted a coveted d\u00e9but<\/em> at the Op\u00e9ra, which \u201cresulted in a brilliant triumph.\u201d A reporter for Philadelphia\u2019s National Gazette<\/em> obtained entry to \u201cthe dancing room of the Grand Opera\u201d to see \u201cthe little prodigy who had aroused such just admiration\u201d in her U.S. d\u00e9but.[4]<\/sup><\/a> He praised \u201cthe exhibition of her highly developed powers, that attracted yesterday,\u201d on the Op\u00e9ra stage, \u201cthe zealous admiration of her graceful associates, and excited, naturally enough, the vanity of her skilful master, M. Corallie [sic<\/em>], principal ballet master in the Academie Royale.\u201d Perceived as a modest, dutiful American daughter, Augusta, this commentator assured readers, showed \u201cno vulgar display of person, no attitudinizing appeals to the coarse sensualist; she moves in a region far beyond this\u2014where all is grace and beauty\u2014realized as those ideas can only be, if ever, of the soft, swelling movements of a buoyant and exquisitely formed girl, whose look of youthful innocence dispels every unchaste vision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paris critic Th\u00e9ophile Gautier saw Augusta differently at her Opera debut of 25 November 1839, when she danced in the canonical ballets Le Diable boiteux<\/em> and La Tarantule<\/em>.[5]<\/sup><\/a> He noted her \u201cdistinctive type of talent,\u201d which revealed \u201csomething brusque, unexpected and fantastic that sets her utterly apart\u201d from the stars or aspirants of that theatre. She \u201chas now come to seek the sanction of Paris, for the opinion of Paris is important even for the barbarians of the United States in their world of railroads and steamboats.\u201d Americans\u2014be they \u201cIndians\u201d or entrepreneurs\u2014were all, to the refined continental viewer, savage. Still, \u201cfor a prodigy, Mlle Maywood really is very good.\u201d And, blending together his conceptions of American industrial drive and the barbaric U.S. population, Gautier found Augusta \u201cvery near to being pretty,\u201d with her \u201cwild little face, [\u2026] sinews of steel, legs of a jaguar, and agility not unlike that of a circus performer.\u201d Beyond her wild animal qualities, she faced the Paris audience with perfect tranquility: \u201cYou would have thought she was simply dealing with a pit full of Yankees.\u201d We can also gather from Gautier details of Augusta\u2019s technical accomplishment: \u201calmost horizontal vols pench\u00e9s<\/em>,\u201d turns in the air, \u201ctours de reins<\/em>,\u201d her \u201csmall legs, like those of a wild doe,\u201d striding like Marie Taglioni\u2019s. In December 1839, Augusta\u2019s name appeared on the payroll of the Paris Op\u00e9ra.[6]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The wildness Gautier perceived in La Petite Augusta won out in her nature over the \u201cinnocence\u201d American commentators initially praised as they read their desires onto the young ballerina. In 1840, still a teenager, she eloped with her Paris Op\u00e9ra partner, Charles Mabille (1816-1858), bore a child, abandoned husband and baby, and toured throughout Europe\u2014Lisbon, Vienna, Budapest, and Milan, dancing with the most renowned ballet stars in works by leading choreographers, often in starring roles. Augusta settled at La Scala, Milan, in 1849, ascending to prima ballerina assoluta<\/em> there before retiring in 1862. She often danced in other Italian cities as well in this period but, apparently, Miss Maywood kept abreast of doings back home: among her many triumphs in Italy was her balletic staging of Uncle Tom’s Cabin<\/em>, created soon after its U.S. dramatization (1853).[7]<\/sup><\/a> She also toured with her own ballet troupe and starred in her greatest hit, the ballet Rita Gauthier<\/em>, by Filippo Termanini, based on Dumas\u2019s La Dame aux cam\u00e9lias.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure 2) Maywood by Bedetti, NYPL. Public Domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Robert Maywood joined Augusta in Italy while she was touring (sometime during the period between 1852 and 1855) and lived there at her expense for a few years, she eventually sent him back to the U.S. where he died in obscurity. But long before that point, U.S. commentators had excoriated Augusta\u2019s independent streak, damning their former darling for abandoning her doting parents, then her husband and child, and yet somehow, infuriatingly, being rewarded with success. Philadelphia theatre manager Francis Wemyss wrote of his dashed hopes for an American theatrical model in Augusta: \u201cShe has deserted her husband, and the heartless letter in which she recommended her child to the care of its father, at the moment she was abandoning him for the arms of a paramour, proves that her heart is even lighter than her heels. The very brilliance of her opening in life has been her ruin; the stage again pointed at as impure and immoral\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u2014this the greatest of her sins for Wemyss. Augusta, \u201cwho would have been the pride\u201d of the stage \u201cas an American artiste\u2014who had gained the highest honors abroad\u2014has become its shame: and thus I draw the veil upon her and her crimes for ever, hoping she may never attempt to appear upon the stage of her native country again.\u201d Durang\u2019s condemnation was at least as indignant: \u201clet us draw the veil of oblivion over our regrets, over her and her crimes. In her lovely villa on the beautiful banks of the Arno, in sunny Italy, where she resides in seeming happiness, she may yet die in the conscientious throes of a guilty heart.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, Augusta retired to Vienna, where she taught dancing– later lived peacefully in a villa on Lake Como.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/sup><\/a> This season is covered in Charles Durang\u2019s History of the Philadelphia Stage, between the years 1749 and 1855, arranged and illustrated by Thompson Westcott<\/em> (Philadelphia: Thompson Westcott, 1868), vol. 4, ch. 50-51; the Public Ledger <\/em>newspaper, Philadelphia; and the same city\u2019s Weekly Messenger. <\/em>See also Costonis, Maureen, \u201c\u2019The wild doe\u2019: Augusta Maywood in Philadelphia and Paris, 1837\u20131840,\u201d Dance Chronicle<\/em> vol. 17, no. 2 (1994): 123-48; and Winter, Marian H., \u201cAugusta Maywood,\u201d 118-37 in Chronicles of the American Dance<\/em>, ed. Paul Magriel (1948; New York: Da Capo Press, 1978). Documents on Maywood are available at New York Public Library-Performing Arts, Dance Clipping File, Augusta Maywood, *MGZR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/sup><\/a> Dramatic Mirror <\/em>(20 November 1841): 113.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/sup><\/a> Durang, History<\/em>, vol. 4, ch. 51, p. 147-48.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cLa Petite Augusta,\u201d National Gazette<\/em> (18 December 1838). The reference in the next line is to renowned choreographer and dancing master, Jean Coralli, with whom Augusta studied for a year and a half in Paris, along with her classes from another great artist of the ballet, Joseph Mazilier (Costonis, \u201cThe Wild Doe,\u201d 129-30).<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/sup><\/a> Gautier, Th\u00e9ophile. Gautier on Dance<\/em>, ed. and trans. Ivor Guest(London: Dance Books, 1986), 79-80. The ballets mentioned were created for Fanny Elssler: Le Diable boiteux <\/em>(1836, Paris Opera), music by Casimir Gide, choreography by Coralli; La Tarantule <\/em>(1839, Paris Opera), libretto by Eugene Scribe, music by Gide, choreography by Coralli.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/sup> Augusta Maywood’s contract with the Paris Op\u00e9ra for the period 1st December 1839 to 30th November 1840 is preserved at the Paris Archives Nationales, AJ\/13\/195, Personal dossier, “Maywood, Mlle.” Annotations on it reveal that her core salary of 1500 francs was doubled to 300o francs during the signing session that involved Augusta, her mother Louisa Maywood and Director-Entrepreneur Henri Duponchel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/sup><\/a> Parmenia Migel Ekstrom, \u201cAugusta Maywood,\u201d in Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary<\/em>, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 518.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/sup><\/a> Wemyss, Francis. Twenty-Six Years of the Life of An Actor and Manager<\/em>, v. II (New York: Burgess, Stringer and Co., 1847), 293.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9]<\/sup><\/a> Durang, History<\/em>, vol. 4, ch. 51, 148.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fig. 1). “La petite Augusta, aged 12 years, in the character of Zolo\u00e9, in the Bayad\u00e8re,” by E. W. Clay, New York, 1838. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed 22 May 2022. https:\/\/digitalcollections.nypl.org\/items\/05fe3de0-dd5d-0132-f092-58d385a7b928<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dancebiographies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/07\/Maywood-as-Zoloe\u0301-NYPL-806x1024.jpeg\")
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