VESTRIS, GAETANO APPOLINO BALDASSARE (1729–1808), French ballet dancer, was born in Florence and made his début at the Opera in 1749. By 1751 his success and his vanity had grown to such a point that he is reported to have said, “There are but three great men in Europe—the king of Prussia, Voltaire and I.” He was an excellent mimic as well as dancer. From 1770 to 1776 he was master and composer of ballets, retiring, in favour of Noverre, with a pension. Two other pensions fell to him, when he gave up his positions of first dancer and of first dancer of court ballets, amounting in all to 9200 livres. Vestris married a dancer, Anna Heinel (1753-1808), of German origin, who had a wonderful success at the Opéra. He reappeared at the age of seventy-one On the occasion of his grandson's début. By the dancer Mile. Allard, Vestris had a son, Marie Auguste Vestris Allard (1760–1842), also a ballet dancer, who surpassed his father, if possible, in both talent and vanity. His son, Auguste Armand Vestris (b. c. 1795), who took to the same profession, made his début at the Opéra in 1800, but left Paris for Italy and never reappeared in France. Gaetano's brother, Angelo Vestris (1730-1809), married Marie Rose Gourgaud, the sister of the actor Dugazon (q.v.).
VESTRIS, LUCIA ELIZABETH (1797-1856), English actress, was born in London in January 1797, the daughter of Gaetano Stefano Bartolozzi (1757-1821) and granddaughter of Francesco Bartolozzi, the engraver. In 1813 she married Auguste Armand Vestris (see above), who deserted her four years later. With an agreeable contralto voice and a pleasing face and figure, Madame Vestris had made her first appearance in Italian opera in the title-role of Peter Winter's Il ratto di Proserpina at the King's Theatre in 1815. She had an immediate success in both London and Paris, where she played Camille to Talma's Horace in Horace. Her first hit in English was at Drury Lane in James Cobb's (1756-1818) Siege of Belgrade (1820). She was particularly a favourite in "breeches parts," like Cherubino in the Marriage of Figaro, and in Don Giovanni, and with such introduced songs as "Cherry Ripe," "Meet me by moonlight alone," "I've been roaming," etc. In 1831, having accumulated a fortune, she became lessee of the Olympic Theatre, and began the, presentation of a series of burlesques and extravaganzas for which she made this house famous. She married Charles James Mathews in 1838, accompanying him to America and aiding him in his subsequent managerial ventures. Her last appearance (1854) was; for his benefit in an adaptation of Madame de Girardin's La Joie fait peur, called Sunshine through Clouds, and she died in London on the 8th of August 1856. Her musical accomplishments and education were not sufficient to distinguish her in grand opera, and in high comedy she was only moderately successful. But in plays like Loan of a Lover, Paul Pry, Naval Engagements, etc., she was delightfully arch and bewitching.
VESTRY (O. Fr. vestiaire, Lat. vestiarium, a wardrobe), a place or room adjoining a church, where the vestments of the minister are kept. Hence the name applied to an assembly of the parishioners, usually convened in the vestry, to transact the business of the parish. In populous parishes it obtains by custom in some, and by the “Adoptive” Vestries Act 1831 in others, to choose yearly a select number of parishioners, called a “select vestry,” to manage the concerns of the parish. (See Parish.)
VESUVIANITE, a rock-forming mineral of complex composition. It is a basic calcium and aluminium silicate containing small amounts of iron, magnesium, water, fluorine, etc., and sometimes boron; the approximate formula is H2Ca6(Al,Fe)3Si5O18.
It crystallizes in the tetragonal system, but often exhibits optical anomalies, and the optical sign varies from positive to negative. Well-developed crystals are of frequent occurrence. They usually have the form of four- or eight-sided prisms terminated by the basal planes (c) and pyramid-planes (p in fig.); the prism-planes are vertically Striated and the basal planes smooth and bright. Crystals are transparent to translucent, vitreous in lustre and vary in colour from brown to green; a sky-blue variety, called cyprine, owes its colour to the presence of a trace of copper. The specific gravity is 3.4 and the hardness . The name vesuvianite was given by A. G. Werner in 1795, because fine crystals of the mineral are found at Vesuvius; these are brown in colour and occur in the ejected limestone blocks of Monte Somma. Several other names have been applied to this species, one of which, idocrase of R. J. Haiiy (1796), is now in common use.
Vesuvianite is typically a mineral of contact-metamorphic origin, occurring most frequently in crystalline limestones at their contact with igneous rock-masses; it also occurs in serpentine, chlorite-schist and gneiss, and is usually associated with garnet, diopside, wollastonite, &c. Localities which have yielded fine crystallized specimens are the Ala valley near Turin, Piedmont, Monte Somma (Vesuvius), Monzoni in the Fassa valley, Tirol, Achmatovsk near Zlatonst in the Urals, the River Wilui district near Lake Baikal in Siberia ("wiluite"), Christiansand in Norway, &c. When found in transparent crystals of a good green or brown colour it is occasionally cut as a gem-stone. A compact variety, closely resembling jade in appearance, has been used as an ornamental stone.
(L. J. S.)
VESUVIUS (also Vesevus in ancient poets), a volcano rising from the eastern margin of the Bay of Naples in Italy, about 7 m. E.S.E. of Naples, in the midst of a region which has been densely populated by a civilized community for more than twenty-five centuries. Hence the mountain has served as a type for the general popular conception of a volcano, and its history has supplied a large part of the information on which geological theories of volcanic action have been based. The height of the mountain varies from time to time within limits of several hundred feet, according to the effects of successive eruptions, but averages about 4000 ft. above sea-level (in June 1900, 4275 ft., but after the eruption of 1906 considerably less). Vesuvius consists of two distinct portions. On the northern side a lofty semicircular cliff, reaching a height of 3714 ft., half encircles the present active cone, and descends in long slopes towards the plains below. This precipice, known as Monte Somma, forms the wall of an ancient prehistoric crater of vastly greater size than that of the present volcano. The continuation of the same wall round its southern half has been in great measure obliterated by the operations of the modern vent, which has built a younger cone upon it, and is gradually filling up the hollow of the prehistoric crater. At the time of its greatest dimensions the volcano was perhaps twice as high as it is now. By a colossal eruption, of which no historical record remains, the upper half of the cone was blown away. It was around this truncated cone that the early Greek settlers founded their little colonies.
At the beginning of the Christian era, and for many previous centuries, no eruption had been known to take place from the mountain, and the volcanic nature of the locality was perhaps not even suspected by the inhabitants who planted their vineyards along its fertile slopes, and built their numerous villages and towns around its base. The geographer Strabo, however, detected the probable volcanic origin of the cone and drew attention to its cindery and evidently fire-eaten rocks. From his account and other references in classical authors we gather that in the first century of the Christian era, and probably for hundreds of years before that time, the sides of the mountain were richly cultivated, as they are still, the vineyards being of extraordinary fertility. The wine they produce is known as Lacrimae Christi. But towards the top the upward growth of vegetation had not concealed the loose ashes which still remained as evidence of the volcanic nature of the place. On this barren summit lay a wide flat depression, surrounded with rugged walls of rock, which were festooned with wild vines. The present crater-wall of Monte Somma is doubtless a relic of that time. It was in this lofty rock-girt hollow that the gladiator Spartacus was besieged by the praetor Claudius Pulcher; he escaped by twisting ropes of vine branches and descending through unguarded fissures in the crater-rim. A painting found in Pompeii in 1879 represents Vesuvius before the eruption (Notizie degli scavi, 1880, pl. vii.).
After centuries of quiescence the volcanic energy began again
