Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

13

By half past one in the afternoon, the crowds had begun to arrive at Blenheim Palace. The programme was due to start at three. They came through the main gate that led to Vanbrugh’s triumphal entrance and the elegant courtyard within that led onto the front of the great palace. Small groups had already taken up their position by the edge of the lake and were having a picnic. Footmen and porters were on duty to show them the way to go. The wooden platforms for the musicians and the dancers were empty, a bare stage for the glories to come. Towards two o’clock, the crowds grew thicker. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy had a place reserved for them by Fokine at the rear of the Palladian bridge. There was a sort of throne area for the Duke and his lady where they would be more visible than the dancers. Powerscourt suspected the steward must have been responsible for that part of the arrangement. He had made friends with a local reporter who was scurrying round the lake and the two entrances for information. The young man’s name was Riggs, Benjie Riggs, and he told Powerscourt that he worked as a reporter on the Oxford newspaper and that his beat included Woodstock. ‘It’s going to be amazing,’ he told his visitors. ‘People are supposed to be turning up from the little towns and villages for miles around, not to mention Oxford itself!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I am, sir. I asked in as many local pubs as I could contact last Thursday for a piece in the local paper. Some of the publicans are even thinking of closing down for the afternoon, and that’s a fact.’

‘Good God,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do they know what to expect? I mean, they aren’t going to be what you would call the usual crowd for a ballet, are they?’

‘Well, it’s free isn’t it?’ said Riggs. ‘That’s in its favour, for a start. The locals, some of them at any rate, even turn out to watch the arrivals when they have a costume ball up there in the big house, Marie Antoinette dancing with Napoleon, Nelson waltzing with Boadicea with his one arm. And that’s just a glimpse of the participants from outside the front door. The ordinary people aren’t allowed inside. Pardon me, my lord, there’s a great throng just arrived at the main gate. They seem to have come in buses. I’d better find out who they are. I’ll catch you up later.’

At two o’clock, Diaghilev himself waddled out of the main entrance to the palace. He appeared to wish to be incognito, for he had his hat pulled well down over his head. He strolled as far as the bridge and looked around. Powerscourt wondered if — even in his wildest dreams — he had ever thought of performing in such a place with such an audience. In spite of his hat over his eyes, a number of people recognized him from the newspapers.

‘That’s Mr Diaghilev!’ ‘Isn’t that Diaghilev?’ the sober whispered to each other. A rather inebriated fellow who had taken up position halfway along the lake roared out, ‘Good on you Diaghilev! Well done mate!’

Diaghilev would not have understood a word. But he raised his cane as a gesture of politeness and hurried back to the safer quarters of the palace.

By a quarter to two all the seats at the edge of the lake on both sides were full. The new arrivals pitched camp on the ground. The footmen were stressing that all the area behind the seats was for sitting; the area behind a number of posts was standing room only, rather like a football match.

Benjie Riggs was back now. ‘I’m on the way to that Palladian bridge now,’ he said. ‘It may be cut off by the crowds later on.’

‘One question,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Who will the audience be? What will they have seen that’s remotely like this before?’

‘Well, no, they certainly won’t have seen anything like this before. There’s lot of the men, maybe most of the men, certainly the football-crowd people, who believe that the stage is full of virtually naked women all the time.’

‘Just like in London at the opera house,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Behave!’

‘There’s some will have been to the circus with their children, some to the panto, a few maybe even to the theatre. For the ones from the countryside, the only thing like it will be an agricultural show with all those side stalls and jugglers and fortune tellers.’

It was now just after two fifteen. Another series of buses from Oxford deposited a hundred and fifty more.

A man in evening dress came down to the water’s edge by the bridge and held his hand up, as if testing for wind direction. The musician’s area was ready now, seats and music stands waiting for the men to play. Floating in the middle of the lake was an enormous platform for the dancers. This too, Powerscourt presumed, was secured with a series of staves to the ground at the bottom. A series of four wooden tongues, each wide enough for a couple of dancers, ran out north, south, east and west. There were two wooden bridges of boats, one for the musicians and the other for the ballet. There was one solitary boat on the far side of the bridge, furthest away from the house. Powerscourt reckoned that a giant might have been able to jump from the end of the tongue nearest the house onto dry land, but even for a giant it would have to be a prodigious leap.

At two thirty the huge crowd, increasing by the minute, had their first taste of action. The musicians, led by their conductor, the man who had tested for wind direction before, marched out of the main entrance, serenaded on their way by a couple of trumpeters on either side of the great doors. The crowd began to cheer. They carried on cheering until the musicians had negotiated their way onto their positions by the bridge. Above them was a canopy designed to stop too much of the sound disappearing into the sky above. The musicians began tuning up. On the signal from the conductor they all rose and bowed to the crowd. The cheering went on for some minutes.

‘The crowd’s well over two thousand now,’ panted Benjie Riggs, fresh from a mission to the far side of the lake, where a group of Oxford football supporters were now waving their scarves in the air and chanting some impenetrable war cry. ‘Policeman told me. The Duke and his party, including Diaghilev and his people, should be coming down about a quarter to three.’

The musicians were now playing a series of popular and patriotic airs, including a rather mangled version of ‘Jerusalem’. Each was greeted with a wave of applause and roars of encouragement.

‘I bet they learnt that on the bloody bus on the way down,’ said Benjie. ‘The footman from inside tells me they’ve hired an actor with a huge voice to be master of ceremonies. He’s going to tell the crowd what each ballet is about before it starts. That way they shouldn’t find it too confusing. My footman friend also told me he’d be able to tell them to shut up if they got out of hand.’

Just before a quarter to three, it was as if a dam had broken by the main gates. A large number of buses from Oxford brought another crowd of ballet lovers, ushered with great care to the seats on the far side of the lake. Picnics were being packed away. A small number of hardy souls came in by the rear gate, walking sticks in hand, wives and children straggling behind but still in attendance, the little ones frequently carried by a stronger parent.

The trumpets sounded again from the massive front door of Blenheim Palace. Diaghilev, wearing his best coat with astrakhan collar and what might have been a brand new cane, marched out of the main entrance, or waddled in Diaghilev’s case, and led a party of his senior staff towards their position on the bridge. The dancers made up the rear with Nijinsky at the very back. Diaghilev waved happily to the crowds on his route as if he were royalty — which perhaps, for this brief spell in the Oxfordshire countryside, he was. His companions, Benois, Bakst, Nouvel, the entire Diaghilev gang, also waved to the crowds, but without the élan of their master.

‘Go on Diaghilev! You show us mate!’ rang out from the football supporters’ end at the far side of the lake. It was acknowledged with a regal wave from the cane. As they took their places, a final burst of humanity swept through the main gates. The footmen were making valiant efforts to organize the standing sections of the crowd in order of height so everybody would be able to see. On the palace side the crowd were almost level with the path on top of the ridge that led from the end of Woodstock to the palace itself. On the far side they were almost level with the flat ground at the back as well. A couple of enterprising young men had climbed up a tree for a better view.

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were on the far side of the bridge on the palace side, with a good view of the stage. They could hear the excitement coming from the slopes around the lake.

‘For God’s sake, William, whatever you do, don’t fall asleep. I’ll have nobody to talk to about it afterwards if you do.’

‘Do you think the dancers are going to jump from the musical platform onto their own?’

‘Is it true they’ve got one dancer who could leap from one end of the Palladian bridge to the other?’

‘Have you any idea what they’re going to wear?’

‘Have you ever been to a ballet before? I expect it’ll be like a circus with the humans taking the place of the wild animals.’

At ten to three, accompanied by a fanfare of four trumpets, and with a couple of footmen behind them, the Duke and Duchess, in their finest ceremonial robes, made their way arm in arm to their elevated seat on Vanbrugh’s Palladian bridge. Behind them came a man in a lounge suit, clutching a bundle of notes. The late arrivals were shown unceremoniously to the nearest standing room to the gates they had come through.

‘Who’s that bloke with the notes? Is he another bloody duke?’

‘Can’t be. He’d have the fancy dress on.’

‘Maybe he’s one of Diaghilev’s people.’

‘Shut up, we’ll find out in a minute.’

When the official party reached their seats, they all sat down. Everything seemed to have come to a complete stop. Then the bells of Blenheim Palace and the churches of Woodstock and Blaydon all struck the hour of three, not absolutely simultaneously. The man in the lounge suit stepped onto his podium.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he paused, and said it again as the muttering died down, ‘welcome to Blenheim Palace. My name is George Foster and I am an actor from London come to act as master of ceremonies.’

It was easy to see why. The man had an enormous voice, easily capable of reaching those by the smaller gate and the football crowd on the opposite bank.

‘Let me thank, first and foremost on this glorious afternoon, the Duke and his good lady.’

Lucy Powerscourt nudged her husband in the ribs, ‘No “Her Grace”, not even today.’

‘It is thanks to their good offices,’ the master of ceremonies went on, ‘that Monsieur Diaghilev and his people are here today.’

‘Not to mention the twenty-five thousand pounds,’ Powerscourt whispered back.

‘I’m sure you all know that the Ballets Russes have already made one prodigious journey, from St Petersburg to Paris and London. They have taken another shorter journey to be here with us today.’

Foster paused and looked down at his notes. The crowd were completely silent now. ‘As most of you know, Monsieur Diaghilev and his ballet do not speak English. Let us, however, give them a very warm welcome to the heart of Oxfordshire this afternoon. And let us thank them for coming.’

Foster raised his hands as if conducting the entire crowd. Waves of applause rang out.

‘Welcome to Oxfordshire,’ they shouted.

‘Thank you for coming.’

Only one voice from the football end struck a discordant note. ‘Get on with it, mate! Bring on the naked women!’

Now George Foster turned to his right towards the palace. That seemed to be a signal. A group of footmen, stagehands and scene shifters carried a very ornate couch across a bridge of boats and placed it carefully at the very back of the ballet stage.

Foster waved a hand at the musicians. There was a long roll of drums.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from St Petersburg, the capital of Russia, I give you: the Ballets Russes!’