My Life (1928)

I found my copy of Isadora Duncan's autobiography My Life (1928) on the two dollar shelf outside Carson Books last week. Had to look twice to see that it was what it was, and not a Harold Robbins romance. The cover of this edition is the movie tie-in for Isadora (1968), starring one of the leading actors of her day, Vanessa Redgrave.

Although I am only on Page 60, it is apparent that Duncan (1878-1927) was a highly motivated individual who, like another Bay Area raised self-starter, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), believed in her genius, and fuck off if you didn't. At this point in the book (1900), Duncan, her mother and her brother Raymond are in Paris, after leaving San Francisco for Chicago, New York and London, all at under Isadora's command.

Here are a couple of paragraphs early in the Duncans' time in London, after they are taken up by yet another society woman, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who saw Isadora and her brother Raymond dancing within the gates of Kensington Square and, based on Mrs.Campbell's impressions ("Where on earth did you people come from?"), referred Isadora to Mrs. George Wyndham, in whose home she danced and, at the end of the evening, met New Gallery director Charles Hallé, with whom she formed an attachment:

There is something about an open fire, bread and butter sandwiches, very strong tea, a yellow fog without, and the cultural drawl of English voices which make London very attractive, and, if I had been fascinated before, from that moment I loved it dearly. There was in this house a magic atmosphere of security and comfort, of culture and ease, and I must say I felt very much at home as a fish that has found the water to which it belongs. The beautiful library, too, attracted me very much.

It was in this house that I first noticed the extraordinary demeanour of good English servants, who move about with a sort of assured aristocratic manner of their own, and, far from objecting to being servants, or wishing to rise in the social scale as they do in America, are proud of working "for the best families." Their fathers did it before them, and their children will do it after them. This is the kind of thing that makes for the calm and security of existence. (48)