Skylark (2 page)

It is rather bold of me to call this introduction a prologue. I am an unremarkable archivist, not a performer. But since we are revealing, in these pages, the life of a hitherto forgotten theatrical artiste, you will perhaps forgive the conceit.

So imagine me, if you will, standing centre stage in the old Royal Victoria Theatre in Wellington, or even the Theatre Royal in Auckland. No, let’s say in the stuffy tented ring of Foley’s Royal Victoria Circus (to be Royal was common in those days), circa 1853, beside the Whanganui River. Foley’s Circus was, after all, where Lily met Jack. Clothe me in something splendid: top hat and tails, perhaps, or a swirling cape embroidered with thread of gold. Would a brief fanfare be overdoing things?

We’ll settle for a roll of drums.

Introducing, for the first time on the printed page, the astonishing Lily Alouette, singer, actress, acrobat,
artiste par excellence
! Star of theatres throughout the land, beloved by thousands in her day and yet, until this moment completely omitted from the history books. Her triumphs unsung. We remember the autocratic Mrs R.H. Foley, lovely Rosetta Buckingham, brilliant Annie Vitelli — if not still household names, well documented in our history books. But Lily Alouette has disappeared. No mention in the newspapers of the time. No photographs or etchings (or none that use her real name); no mention of Alouette in those ornate and fulsome playbill posters. Yet her astonishing story will overturn theatrical history in this country.

Recently, in the course of my travels as archivist, I was
entrusted
with a collection of old papers. Among them were three ledgers of the sort formerly used by businessmen: large,
hard-backed
and lined. Each contained closely written accounts in
different hands. Extraordinary accounts. The three writers lived at the same address: an isolated farmhouse, now abandoned, in the Waitotara valley. All three were intelligent, talented writers, whose versions of events dovetailed and sometimes
contradicted
. Their stories, which I have edited (I hope sensitively), were written in the winter of 1883, and were clearly intended to be read aloud in the evenings, as the Lacey family gathered around the fire. The events in the journals stretch back, in Lily’s case, to about 1843.

The three writers are Lily Alouette, writing her own story; Samuel Lacey, telling the story of his father, Jack; and Mattie, who … well, I will leave her to introduce herself, as the events she describes come later.

A true performer, Lily Alouette wrote her life as a series of dramatic scenes. Years were omitted, important details ignored. Sometimes her writing, though always vibrant, lacks cohesion or grammatical accuracy. But her words act as a powerful searchlight, illuminating other treatises on early performers in New Zealand. Long-standing theatrical mysteries are solved; gaps in the famous biographies filled in. Naturally she herself is the leading lady.

I have tried not to tidy the prose too much. Lily’s vigorous style only adds to the drama of this fascinating narrative.

Here ends the prologue. Let the play begin!

Eleanor de Mountfort, Archivist

A
N INTRODUCTION BY

Lily Alouette

J
ULY
1883

Dear Mattie has suggested I write my life.

‘Entertain us!’ she said, as we sat in miserable silence around the dinner table last night. ‘Perform for us, Lily, that is your talent. Why not write your life down and read it aloud to us? It can be our evening entertainment. Like the old days!’

She gave me a smile, the first I have received in many a long day. I looked at Jack, but he would not meet my gaze. The children paid serious attention to their plates. I am ignored by all, which is hard to bear. They blame me for Teddy.

‘I am not yet forty,’ I mumbled to Mattie. ‘Too early to write my life.’

‘Lily,’ she said, ‘you have lived enough life for eighty years. We need cheering up. We need to forget and forgive. Teddy is gone.’

Mattie is so sensible and kind. And she is right. This winter the road into the valley is blocked in three places by slips. We will be isolated for some time and must entertain ourselves. Especially now.

‘Write it like a play,’ said Mattie later, handing me one of Jack’s empty ledgers. ‘Make us laugh and gasp and hiss as you used to. Let us be your audience again.’

Well then, I must try. It will be hard to weave the old magic but I cannot live without their love.

S
CENE
:
Menton, France

A talented young child is trained in the performing arts

The street is narrow and steep, the walls on either side tall and painted a cheerful orange. Here and there a door or a window is set into those sheer walls. The cobbled steps run with water (and worse) thrown from the buildings.

Look up, look up! Higher! There, silhouetted against a patch of blue sky. What is that dark thing, moving? A seagull? No, it is little Lili Alouette (yes, me), not yet four years old, dancing on a narrow parapet.
Oh là là
, surely she will fall! Surely she will crash to the cobbles far below and her life will end before it has even begun?

But no, never once did I fall, and never once did Maman let me start my day without the morning exercises on that high narrow parapet. She would come into my tiny darkened room, fling open the shutters and sing with joy at the world outside. ‘Look, Lili, open your eyes and see!’

En France
, you understand, my name was spelled with an
i. Lili
. Our family name, Alouette, is the word for that beautiful
songbird
the skylark, who sings in the morning, singing and singing as she rises into the air. So it was with Maman: she sang me awake. ‘Open your eyes, little skylark! The good Lord has sent us another perfect day. The sky is blue, the sea sparkles! Let us be to work!’

I would stumble from bed, only half awake, praying that today would not be the day I fell.

‘Dance, dance!’ Maman would cry. ‘Point the toe, head high, sweetheart!’

The concrete parapet was only a hand-span wide. Oh how my heart would beat, as I tried not to look down at the street three storeys below, where the morning market was already being set up.

Above, seagulls screamed and dived, encouraging their own young to take their first leap into space. I wished I were the baby seagull, with fresh new wing-feathers, ready to chance the air. All spring I had watched the nest, watched the fluffy chicks hatch on Monsieur Pelier’s roof, wished I had wings and could risk leaping. Step and point, step and point; I danced stronger and more sure-footed as the days went by. Maman was so proud of me. ‘Bravo, bravo, my little songbird. Now, wave to Monsieur. Make your little curtsey.’

And there, day after day, would be hairy, bare-chested Monsieur Pelier the baker, stretching and scratching in the morning sun. His big belly looked like one of the round
boules
he baked and his dark moustaches sprang from his face like tiny furry animals.

‘Hey there my little angel!’ he would cry, and blow me kisses.

‘Dance, dance,’ whispered Maman. I smiled as I had been taught and stepped my way back and forth, arms spread wide, head high, while the old goat yawned and grinned and scratched his private parts.

Later I would skip down over the sloping flagstones in my best pinafore, a red ribbon in my dark curls, down to the
boulangerie
where Monsieur Pelier roared out his welcome. ‘Here’s my little miss! Here’s my sweetheart, my twinkle toes. Give your Uncle Pelier a kiss now!’

And I curtseyed and kissed and smiled at the people waiting to buy their morning loaf. Monsieur Pelier would lift me high and stand me on the counter among the loaves and pastries. Carefully I danced a few steps and pirouetted while the customers laughed and clapped and touched my pretty dress for luck. Sometimes I sang a little song, ‘
Alouette, Alouette
’ and Monsieur Pelier would hold me high, whirling me to imitate the spiralling flight of the skylark as she rises into the air.

Then Monsieur
le boulanger
would perch me on his beefy arm and tickle my tummy while he walked me past his array of pastries.

‘What will it be today, my songbird? A custard tart?
Baba au rhum
?
Amandine
?’ And he might pluck a succulent cherry from the top of a creation and pop it in my mouth. I would make my choice, then run back home to Maman with two long
baguettes
, ‘courtesy of the
boulangerie
’, one clutched under each little arm.

I felt such joy in earning food for our family. Joy, also, in the performance. Yes, dancing among those delicious pastries, with my friends and neighbours applauding, was a pleasure every bit as delicious as the sweets I took care not to trample.

Oh I was a pretty young thing — and I knew it. So did my mother. She took care to rinse my rich brown curls with vinegar to make them shine; to rub my arms and face with lavender water so that my pirouettes scented the air; to pinch my cheeks into a pink flush before I set out.

I loved it all: the work on balances and handstands my father taught me, and the ballet poses drummed into me by Maman. After our evening meal, Maman would pull the little overhead lamp to one side and tie it to a wall bracket, so that there would be space in the little apartment for our practice. Papa had built some kind of springboard which was slotted into the boards of our bed. He and Maman would jump and somersault, catch each other and flip to stand on their hands. Then it was my turn. When I managed to leap from the springboard onto Papa’s shoulders, I was given a piece of candied peel. We laughed and shouted as we worked: that was part of the excitement, part of the performance. Papa did not believe tumblers should work in silence.

‘This is a joyous occupation,’ he would cry. ‘The audience will loosen their purses if they see how happily we perform.’

Often the neighbours would bang on the wall or the ceiling, or shout that decent people were trying to sleep. Then, sweating and puffing, we would dismantle the springboard, return the lamp to its position and tuck down together, the three of us in the bed. We were poor, our little family; poor, yes, but proud of our skills.

The Alouettes were street performers, Papa’s parents before him also. We performed in the summertime when tourists came from the north, to sit on the beach in the sun, and eat in the cafés
— and perhaps throw a
sou
or two to the handsome couple and their charming daughter who juggled and performed acrobatics on the pavement.

The summers were golden. Such laughter! Such love. Every morning we opened the shutters to a sky as clear and blue as the Mediterranean Sea which spread to the horizon below the Old Town. The walls of the crowded apartments glowed in the morning sun — soft orange, pale lemon yellow — in honour, my papa said, of the fruit that made our city famous. It was a brave man who decorated his house any other colour, or who painted a frieze of any fruit or flower other than the bountiful orange under his eaves. Baskets of oranges and lemons adorned every stall in the market. Cartloads of citrus fruit travelled east towards Genoa and west towards Monaco.

One day, when I was perhaps five years old, my parents took me to the
Mairie
to hear the mayor announce that our city would from now on be a free state. Papa said it was to do with a tax on oranges and lemons, imposed by our ruler, the prince of Monaco. All the citizens cheered and danced. Papa, laughing, threw me high in the air; I spread my arms like a bird — like the seagulls on the rooftops — then fell back into the arms of Maman, who tossed me back: up into the golden sunlight then down into the shadowed arms of Papa. Over and over again I flew, while the people cheered again and threw money into the hat and my head spun with happiness.

In the winter, business was not so good. My two
baguettes
from the
boulangerie
were a lifeline. I would have kissed the baker all day just to see the relief in my mother’s eyes when I climbed the stairs with my loaves of bread.

Even now I find winter a sad time. All my worst disasters — and there have been many — happened in wintertime, as you shall discover.