by Charles Hervey.
Originally published in Longman's Magazine (Longman, Green, & Co.) vol.3 #14 (Dec 1883).
The last time I saw Mlle. Georges, some thirty years ago, her enormous corpulence reminded me of the answer made by a Turkish ambassador at the Court of Louis Philippe, who, when asked by his neighbour in the stalls to designate the handsomest of all the ladies present on a gala night at the Opera, had unhesitatingly selected the stoutest. 'Is she not a trifle too voluminous?' suggested his companion. 'Jamais trop, monsieur,' enthusiastically retorted the gallant envoy; 'jamais trop!' On the evening to which I allude the old actress played Clytemnestre in Racine's 'Iphigénie,' Mlle. Rachel representing Eriphyle; and a more interesting spectacle has rarely been offered to a Parisian audience or any other. Enfeebled as she was by age and infirmity, the great contemporary of Mlle. Duchesnois, excited by the presence of a kindred genius, summoned up all her courage, all her remaining energy, and so electrified the spectators by her impulsive bursts of passion, that in this magnificent struggle for supremacy it was impossible to say which bore away the palm.
If, however, on the occasion in question Rachel was content to share the triumph of the night with a veteran of the stage, it was not so when pitted against a rival bold enough to contest with her the sceptre of Melpomene, and too hastily proclaimed her superior by a few injudicious partisans, supported by an inconsiderable fraction of the press. Mlle. Maxime was not without talent of a certain kind, but uncultivated and totally lacking refinement; she was, moreover, plain-featured, and had a harsh, grating voice intolerable to a sensitive ear. As yet the two adversaries had not appeared together, and public opinion was still undecided as to their respective merits; the announcement, however, of Schiller's 'Marie Stuart,' in which Rachel was cast for the heroine and Maxime for Elizabeth, was accepted by the admirers of each as a decisive test of their quality, and naturally attracted an immense audience to witness the result. At length the famous scene between the Queens arrived, and Rachel, quietly biding her time, stood quivering with suppressed rage but contemptuously silent while insult after insult was heaped upon her, until the moment came when, proudly confronting her opponent with a glance of withering scorn, she overwhelmed her with a terrible outburst of electric fury, under which the discomfited Elizabeth cowered and finally collapsed, and effectually disposed of Mlle. Maxime's pretensions by significantly accentuating the line—
J'enfonce le poignard au sein de ma rivale!
A propos of Mile. Rachel, I may mention that some years later, during a starring visit to Brussels, she selected for her benefit night the tragedy of 'Phèdre,' the part of Hippolyte in which was sustained by a leading member of the regular company, more remarkable for self-conceit than talent, but a great favourite with the public of the locality. After the performance, surrounded by a circle of admirers at a neighbouring café, he received their compliments with condescending affability; and, being asked his opinion of the heroine of the evening, assumed a patronising air, and graciously admitted that 'la petite' was interesting, and acted, on the whole, fairly well. 'Of course,' he added, 'if I had chosen to exert myself, I could have played far better than I did; but'—here he paused to inhale a pinch of snuff—'it would have been hardly generous to crush her!'
She was very anxious to have her portrait taken by Ingres, and made an appointment with him at his studio to talk the matter over. In the course of conversation he remarked that in order to do justice to his model he should require at least fifty sittings of from two to three hours each. 'How long will it be before the portrait is completed?' she inquired. 'Four or five years,' was the painter's reply. 'Miséricorde!' exclaimed Rachel; 'then I must abandon the idea, for I may be dead and buried before you have immortalised me.' 'Mademoiselle,' answered Ingres, with a smile, 'I have no such pretension; your own genius has already saved me the trouble.'
Somewhere about 1849 a quarrel took place between her brother Raphael Félix, then a pensionnaire of the Théâtre Français, and the actor Brindeau, the same who, as may be remembered, played in Sardou's 'Intimes' at the Gaiety three or four years ago; the latter so far forgetting his dignity as sociétaire as to give his youthful comrade a sound box on the ear. As a necessary consequence, arrangements for a meeting on the following day were made, and seconds chosen; Brindeau, however, thinking on reflection that he might possibly have gone too far, despatched one of his témoins early next morning to his adversary with a letter of apology, after carefully perusing which the recipient replied that he would be found in the Bois de Boulogne at the appointed hour, and declined giving any further answer. Both parties were punctual at the rendezvous, and on the appearance of his antagonist, Raphael, stepping forward, addressed him as follows:—
'Monsieur, I have received your letter, and am perfectly ready to accept the apology you offer, neither wishing to kill you nor to be killed by you; but you will allow me first to ask a question. Supposing that you were in my place, would you, after a similar affront, consider yourself satisfied with a similar excuse?'
'Certainly,' replied Brindeau.
'You are quite sure?'
'Quite.'
'Delighted to hear it,' coolly retorted Raphael, at the same time administering to his astonished opponent a vigorous soufflet with one hand, and with the other presenting him with a copy of his own letter.
I once heard an old dramatist relate an anecdote, which may or may not have found its way into print. As long ago as 1788 or 1789, he was walking in the Rue St. Honoré with his-friend Talma, then at the commencement of his career, when a young officer in a shabby lieutenant's uniform met them, and said to the actor, 'Remember to-morrow.' Talma nodded assent, and the other passed on.
'Who is that?' inquired my informant.
'The torment of my life, was the reply. 'A young fellow without a sou, who is perpetually plaguing me for tickets of admission to the theatre. Not a bad judge, I must say,' he continued. 'Knows all our classics by heart, and won't listen to anything but Corneille and Racine.'
Some twenty years later, the two friends chanced to meet again in the Place du Carrousel, at the very moment when Napoleon was starting for his daily ride. On seeing Talma he stopped his horse, and spoke a few words to him. When he had left them, the tragedian, turning to his companion, asked if he recollected the young lieutenant who used formerly to bother him for tickets. On the latter's confessing that he had quite forgotten the circumstance, 'Ah,' observed Talma, 'I have more reason to remember him than you have. He is Emperor now, and I am still a poor devil of an actor; but you see that he has not forgotten me. Only,' he added with a smile, 'he has no need to ask me for free admissions now!'
In his latter days, that strange medley of bonhomie and conceit, the Vicomte d'Arlincourt, succeeded after several disappointments in persuading the manager of a minor theatre to accept a drama from his pen; which, however, failed to please the public, and did not drawa sou. During its very short run, one of the author's friends, meeting him on the Boulevard, remarked that he hoped he was satisfied, as he had been acted at last. 'Satisfied!' echoed d'Arlincourt with an indignant air; 'how can I be satisfied if they only play my piece when the house is empty?'
He it was who, when a complaisant acquaintance, after lauding to the skies one of his recent productions, concluded by saying that to do it full justice required more wit and finesse than he
possessed, replied, 'Never mind, mon bon, do your best; I shall be an indulgent critic!'
That excellent playwright Dumersan, author of 'Les Saltimbanques,' told me an anecdote of one of his colleagues, who, while suffering from an illness brought on by an over-fondness for the juice of the grape, was visited in his sick-room by his elder brother, whose sobriety was perhaps his sole virtue, and who reproached him for indulging in so disgusting a vice. 'How can I help it?' was the invalid's answer; 'it is the only one you have left me!'
One of the most entertaining men I ever met was Dr. Véron, for some years co-director with Duponchel of the French Opera, and author of that lively work the 'Bourgeois de Paris.' He had an inexhaustible fund of anecdote; and some of his managerial reminiscences were exceedingly droll. We were once talking about the extravagance of certain danseuses of the olden time, and comparing their carelessness in money matters with the prudential thriftiness of some of their modern successors, who lived quietly, and methodically invested their earnings in the best available securities. 'Ah,' said Véron, 'they are not all of that way of thinking, especially the young ones, who invariably prefer the superfluous to the necessary. Male and female, they are all alike; and I remember being once so struck with the wretched appearance at rehearsal of a rather nice-looking youth, that I gave him a piece of twenty francs, recommending him to improve his wardrobe by the purchase of a hat and a pair of shoes. "Much obliged," he replied, slipping the coin into his waistcoat pocket, "but they can wait; what I really do want is a cane."'
By way of contrast to the preceding I may as well record here a personal experience of my own. Many years ago, a friend proposed to me to accompany him on a visit to a celebrated lady vocalist, the original representative of Alice in 'Robert le Diable,' and by many degrees the best chanteuse à roulades of the Paris Opera. On arriving at her house, we were ushered into a handsomely furnished drawing-room, and requested to wait until Madame should be disengaged. In a minute or two she made her appearance, apologising for the delay by saying that she had been detained by a discussion with her cook as to the manner in which a certain joint of veal should be dressed for dinner; and while my friend was in the act of presenting me, cut short the complimentary phrase I had been rehearsing all the way upstairs by a long harangue on the unpromising prospect of the harvest, and the impending rise in the price of bread. We tried hard to give the conversation an artistic turn, but in vain; from bread we got to wine, and from that to haricot beans; and when, after a quarter of an hour's stay we took leave of her, she assumed a confidential air, and informed my companion, that in anticipation of a potato failure, she had laid in a large stock of that popular esculent, and could let him have a portion of it, if he chose, considerably under market price.
There have been few more unequal writers for the stage than Théodore Barrière; some of his pieces, and more particularly 'Les Faux Bonshommes,' and 'Les Filles de Marbre' (the triumph of Fechter and Mlle. Fargueil), having been extraordinarily successful, while others have barely weathered the first night's performance. Talking of one of the latter with old Duvert, Arnal's special fournisseur, he attributed its failure wholly to a want of intelligent construction; drily adding that Barrière always reminded him of the architect who, after the house planned by him was built, discovered, rather late in the day, that he had forgotten the staircase.
The same Duvert once assured me that Marshal St. Arnaud had been an actor in his youth, and had played at Strasburg under the name of Florville, but I never heard the statement corroborated by any one else.
When the Bouffes Parisiens first took the place of Comte's little theatre in the Passage Choiseul, I was much amused by the criticism of a rival composer on one of the operettas produced there, as we were leaving the house after the fall of the curtain. 'There are good things in it,' he said, 'and some of the ideas are new. But'—here he paused ominously—'what's good isn't new, and what's new isn't good!'
A year or two before the fall of the Second Empire, while listening at this theatre to Mme. Chaumont's delicious warbling in 'La Princesse de Trébizonde,' I recognised among the occupants of the stalls the well-known author of a popular burlesque melodiously set to music by Offenbach, his button-hole freshly decorated with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour. 'How did he get the cross?' I asked an old acquaintance sitting near me. 'Not very legitimately,' he replied; 'he is, as you are aware, one of the auditors of the Conseil d'État, and sent in a few weeks ago a political essay on a subject proposed by the administration, which was judged better than the rest, and consequently worthy of the red ribbon. He sported it for the first time last Sunday at Longchamps, and as I happen to know that the essay was written, not by him, but by his brother, I chaffed him for sailing under false colours, and told him plainly enough that he had no right to the distinction. "Perhaps not," he said with the coolest possible air; "but even if it were so, do you count for nothing the trouble of wearing it?"'
When Bouffé favoured us with his company in the foyer of the Variétés—a rare occurrence—he generally regaled us with some good story picked up in the course of his long theatrical life; and one of these, the last I ever heard from his lips, I distinctly remember. He was starring at Rouen, and on one of his off nights strolled into the theatre when Hérold's 'Zampa' was played. Among the actors was a new recruit, to whom, for some reason or other, the spectators had taken a strong dislike, and hissed him most unmercifully; until at last the poor fellow came forward, and addressed the audience as follows:—
'Ladies and gentlemen, I have a wife and three children, and, if I had been fortunate enough to please you, should have earned a yearly salary of eighteen hundred francs, which would have sufficed for us all. I do not dispute your right to reject me, but although my singing has not satisfied you, perhaps my whistling may.' Thereupon he began to whistle a popular air with, such, perfection that the whole house was in raptures, and he was unanimously accepted on the express condition that, whatever vocal parts might in future be assigned him, he should whistle instead of singing them.
Scribe once said in my hearing that he began his career as a dramatist by seeing thirteen of his pieces fail one after another, and on the first night of the fourteenth (doomed to a similar fate) felt so discouraged that he said to his collaborateur, 'I give it up; and when we have got through the half-dozen more that we have on hand, I will never write another line. Luckily,' he added, 'the fifteenth essay was more successful, and I bought a fresh packet of pens on the strength of it.' Since then, this extraordinarily prolific writer must have enriched the French stage with at least eight or nine hundred productions of more or less merit; while his son-in-law, Bayard, following his example, has contributed no fewer than two hundred and thirty.
I cannot more appropriately close these rambling reminiscences than by recording an anecdote of the author of 'Bertrand et Raton' not generally known. He was staying at a friend's house in the country during the autumn months, where for the amusement of the guests English novels were occasionally read aloud by the governess of the family, a well-educated and unassuming young woman. Compassionating her dependent position, and ascertaining in the course of conversation that her greatest ambition was to secure for herself an income of twelve hundred francs a year, the dramatist suggested to her one evening that the story she had just read contained a good subject for a comedy in one act, and proposed that they should write it together. She gladly assented, and in a fortnight's time the piece was finished and accepted by the management of the Gymnase; upon which Scribe privately gave instructions to his agent in Paris that, whether successful or not, he intended the comedy to secure to his collaboratrice twelve hundred francs a year for her life; which arrangement was duly carried into effect. Elated beyond measure by so unexpected a result, and not for a moment imagining that her share in the authorship was merely nominal, the governess considered it incumbent on her to overwhelm her unsuspected benefactor during the remainder of his stay with a deluge of fresh subjects, which he, to her great surprise and mortification, invariably declined.
'I cannot understand M. Scribe,' she petulantly remarked to a confidential friend; 'we wrote a charming piece together which had great success, and yet, strange to say, he has ever since most unaccountably refused to begin another with me!'