Note 30 — I SOPHIE ARNOULD

Correspondance littéraire, vi. 145. Mlle. Heinel seems also to have made a very favourable impression upon Horace Walpole, who mentions her several times in his letters, and always in terms of admiration. After seeing her for the first time, on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1771, he writes to the Earl of Strafford: “There is a finer dancer [than Mlle. Guimard], whom M. Hobart is to transplant to London; a Mademoiselle Heinel, or Ingle, a Fleming. She is tall, perfectly made, very handsome, and has a set of attitudes copied from the classics. She moves as gracefully slow as Pygmalion’s statue when it was coming to life, and moves her leg round as imperceptibly as if she was dancing in the Zodiac. But she is not Virgo.” The lady came to London that same winter, and danced for some months at Covent Garden, where she created as much enthusiasm as in Paris. On April 21, 1772, Walpole writes again: “I am just going to the Opera to hear Milice sing. I do not believe he will draw such audiences as Mlle. Heinel has done. The town has an idle notion that she made so much impression upon a very high heart, that it is thought prudent to keep it out of her way. She is the most graceful figure in the world, with charming eyes, beautiful mouth, and lovely countenance; yet I do not think we shall see a Dame du Barri on this side the Channel.”

The staid Dr. Burney was another of Mlle. Heinel’s admirers, and informs us that, besides the six hundred pounds salary she received from the management of Covent Garden, she was “complimented with a regallo of six hundred more from the Macaroni Club.”