Transcription
ASTLEY’S AMPHITHEATRE.
Mademoiselle Clémentine Soullier, an equestrian artiste who has created a great sensation in France, made her first appearance in London last night in the arena of Astley’s. Her entrance was distinguished by a somewhat imposing ceremony, all the Messrs. Cooke and the assistant riding masters stationing themselves at each side of the gate as a sort of guard of honour. Her delicate features and her truly feminine demeanour seems scarcely to belong to a proficient in gymnastic art, and she looked more like an elegant lady about to float through a waltz than an Amazon venturing on a break-neck pastime. But when once her feats began, it was the immensity of her courage that most commanded admiration. In her endeavours to leap over ropes and through hoops (both of roses), she occasionally made a hitch, and on one occasion nearly fell to the ground, but these mischances were rather beneficial than otherwise, for every one was amazed at the perfect coolness with which she disentangles her foot from some intrusive garland, and flung back, almost disdainfully, the hoop that had dared to settle on her shoulders. Her attitudes, which are of a novel kind, are as much marked by grace as by audacity, and she certainly introduces a poetry of motion into her horsemanship which few equestrians have attained. At the end of her performance she was twice called, amid acclamations of applause.
