of his professional life, is treasured among the relics of the Théâtre
Français. It is a massive piece of oak furniture, with solid square
arms and legs; the roomy back lets down, and is held at any required
angle by an iron ratchet; there are iron pegs in front for the little
shelf, used by the sick man for his bottles and books. The brown
leather covering is time-worn and stitched in spots. It is a most
attractive relic, this simple piece of stage property. Its exact copy
as to shape, size, and color is used on the boards of the Théâtre
Français in the performances of "Le Malade Imaginaire." And, with
equal reverence, they kept for many years in the ancient village of
Pézénas, in Languedoc--where the strolling troupe wintered in 1655-6,
playing in the adjacent hamlets and in the _châteaux_ of the
_seigneurie_ about--the big wooden arm-chair belonging to the barber
Gély, and almost daily through that winter occupied by Molière. Upon
it he was wont to sit, in a corner, contemplating all who came and
went, making secret notes on the tablets he carried always for
constant records of the human document. It has descended to a
gentleman in Paris, by whom it is cherished.
The _curé_ of Saint-Eustache, the parish church, refused its sacrament
for the burial of the author of "Tartufe." "To get by prayer a little
earth," in Boileau's words, the widow had to plead with the King; and
it was only his order that wrung permission from the Archbishop of
Paris for those "maimed rites" that we all know. They were accorded,
not to the player, but, as the burial register reads, to the
"_Tapissier valet-de-chambre du Roi_." Carried to his grave by night,
he was followed by a great concourse of unhired mourners, of every
rank and condition; and to the poor among them, money was distributed
by the widow. The grave--in which was placed the French Terence and
Plautus in one, to use La Fontaine's happy phrase--was dug in that
portion of the cemetery of the Chapel of Saint-Joseph, belonging to
Saint-Eustache, that was styled consecrated by the priesthood. This
cemetery going out of use, the ground, which lay on the right of the
old road to Montmartre, was given to a market. This, in its turn, was
cleared away between 1875 and 1880, and on the site of the cemetery
are the buildings numbered 142 and 144 Rue Montmartre, 24 and 26 Rue
Saint-Joseph. Over the grave, as she thought, the widow erected a
great tombstone, under which, tradition says, Molière did not lie.
Tradition lies, doubtless, and Armande's belated grief and posthumous
devotion probably displayed themselves on the right spot. The stone
was cracked--going to bits soon after--by a fire built on it during
the terrible winter a few years later, when the poor of Paris were
warmed by great out-of-door fires. The exact spot of sepulture could
not be fixed in 1792, when the more sober revolutionary sections were
anxious to save the remains of their really great men from the
desecrations of the Patriots, to whom no ground was consecrate, nor
any memories sacred. Then, in the words of the official document, "the
bones which seemed to be those of Molière" were exhumed, and carried
for safe keeping to the Museum of French Monuments begun by Alexandre
Lenoir in 1791, in the Convent of the Petits-Augustins. Its site is
now mostly covered by the court of the Beaux-Arts in Rue Bonaparte.
Those same supposed bones of Molière were transferred, early in the
present century, to the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise, where they now lie
in a stone sarcophagus. By their side rest the supposed bones of La
Fontaine, removed from the same ground to the same museum at the same
time; La Fontaine having really been buried, twenty-two years after
Molière's burial, in the Cemetery of the Innocents, a half-mile from
that of Saint-Joseph!
Our ignorance as to whether these be Molière's bones, under the
monument in Père-Lachaise, is matched by our unacquaintance with the
facts of his life. And we know almost as little of Molière the man, as
we know of the man called Shakespeare--the only names in the modern
drama which can be coupled. We have no specimens of the actual
manuscript, and few specimens of the handwriting, of either. The
Comédie Française has a priceless signature of Molière given by Dumas
_fils_, and there are others, it is believed, on legal documents in
notaries' offices, but no one knows how to get at them.
His portraiture by pen, too, would have been lost to us, but for an
old lady who has left a detailed and vivid description of "Monsieur
Molière." This Madame Poisson was the daughter of Du Croissy, whose
name appears in the troupe's early play-bills; and the wife of Paul
Poisson, also an actor with Molière, and with his widow. Madame
Poisson died in 1756, aged ninety-eight, so that she was an observant
and intelligent girl of fifteen at the time of Molière's death. In her
recollections, written in 1740, she says that he was neither stout nor
thin; in stature he was rather tall than short, his carriage noble,
his leg very fine, his walk measured, his air most serious; the nose
large, the mouth wide, the lips full, his complexion dark, his
eyebrows black and heavy, "and the varied movements he gave
them"--and, she might have added, his whole facial flexibility--"made
him master of immense comic expression."
"His air most serious," she says; it was more than that, as is proven
by hints of his companions, and shown by strokes in the surviving
portraits. All these go to assure us of his essential melancholy. Not
only did he carry about with him the traditional dejection of the comic
actor, but he was by character and by habit contemplative--observant
of human nature--as well as introspective--peering into his own
nature. The man who does this necessarily grows sad. Molière's sadness
was mitigated by a humor of equal depth, a conjunction rare in the
Latin races, and found at its best only in him and in Cervantes. This
set him to writing and acting farces; and into them he put sentiment
for the first time on the French stage. There is a gravity behind his
buffoonery, and a secret sympathy with his butts. So, when he came to
write comedy--that hard and merciless exposure of our common human
nature, turned inside out for scorn--he left place for pity in his
ridicule, and there is no cruelty in his laughter. His wholly sweet
spirit could not be soured by the injustices and insolences that came
into his life. If there was a bitter taste in his mouth, his lips were
all honey. "_Ce rire amer_," marked by Boileau in the actor's
Alceste, was only his stage assumption for that character. The inborn
good-heartedness that made his comedy gracious and unhostile, made his
relations with men and women always kindly and generous. You see that
sympathy with humanity in Mignard's portrait, and in the bust in the
foyer of the Comédie Française, made by Houdon from other portraits
and from descriptions. Under the projecting brow of the observer are
the eyes of the contemplator, shrewd and speculative, and withal
infinitely sorrowful, with the sadness of the man who knew how to
suffer acutely, mostly in silence and in patience; and this is the
face of the man who made all France laugh!
* * * * *
PIERRE CORNEILLE stands in bronze on the bridge of his natal town,
Rouen, where he stood in the flesh of his twenty-eight years, among
other citizens who went to welcome Louis XIII. and his ruler,
Richelieu, on their visit in 1634. The young advocate by profession
and poet by predilection presented his verses in greeting and in honor
of the King, and was soon after enrolled one of the small and select
band of the Cardinal's poets. With the Cardinal's commission and a
play or two, already written when only twenty-three, he made his way
to Paris. For nearly thirty years, the years of his dramatic triumphs,
Corneille lived alternately in Paris and in Rouen, until his mother's
death, in 1662, left him free to make his home in the capital. In that
year he settled in rooms in the Hôtel de Guise, now the Musée des
Archives, whose ducal owner was a patron of the Théâtre du Marais,
close at hand. At his death, in or about 1664, Corneille sent in a
rhymed petition for rooms in the Louvre, where lodging was granted to
men of letters not too well-to-do. His claim was refused, and he took
an apartment in Rue de Cléry during that same year. It was a workman's
quarter, and none of its houses were very grand, but that of Corneille
is spoken of as one of the better sort, with its own _porte-cochère_.
Pierre's younger brother, Thomas, came to live in the same house. And
from this time on, the two brothers were never parted in their lives.
They had married sisters, and the two families dwelt in quiet
happiness under the common roof. This house in Rue de Cléry cannot be
fixed. It may be one of the poor dwellings still standing in that old
street, or it may no longer exist. It is the house famous in anecdotal
history for owning the trap-door in the floor between the
working-rooms of the brothers, which Pierre--at loss for an adequate
rhyme--would lift up, and call to Thomas, writing in his room below,
to give him the wished-for word.
This dull street formed the background of a touching picture, when, in
1667, Corneille's son was brought home, wounded, from the siege of
Douai. The straw from the litter was scattered about the street as the
father helped them lift his boy to carry him into the house, and
Corneille was summoned to the Châtelet, for breaking police
regulations with regard to the care of thoroughfares; he appeared,
pleaded his own cause, and was cast in damages!
Here in 1671, Corneille and Molière, in collaboration, wrote the
"tragedy-ballet 'Psyche'"; this work in common cementing a friendship
already begun between the two men, and now made firmer for the two
years of Molière's life on from this date. The play was begun and
finished in a fortnight, to meet the usual urgency of the King in his
amusements. Molière planned the piece and its spectacular effects, and
wrote the prologue, the first act, and the first scenes of the second
and third acts; Corneille's share being the rest of the rhymed
dialogue and the songs. It was set to music by Lulli--"the
incomparable Monsieur Lulli," as he was called by Molière--whose
generous laudation of the musician was not lessened by his estimate of
the man. For Lulli was not an honest man, and he prospered at the
expense of his fellows. His magnificent home was built by money
borrowed from Molière, whose widow was repaid as we have seen. Lulli's
_hôtel_ is still in perfect condition as to its exterior, at the
corner of Rues des Petits-Champs and Sainte-Anne. This latter front is
the finer, with its pilasters and composite capitals, its masks carved
in the keystones of the low _entresol_ windows, and the musical
instruments placed above the middle window of the first grand floor.
They make a pretty picture, not without a touch of the pathetic--and
M. Gèrôme has put it on canvas--as they sit side by side, planning and
plotting their play: Molière at the top of his career, busy,
prosperous, applauded; Corneille past his prime and his popularity,
beginning to bend with age and to break in spirit. He had, by now,
fallen on evil days, which saw him "satiated with glory, and famished
for money," in his words to Boileau. Richelieu may not have done much
for him, but he had been at least a power in his patronage, and his
death, in 1642, had left the old poet with no friend at court, albeit
the new minister, Mazarin, had put him on the pension list. His
triumphs with "Le Cid" and "Les Horaces" had not saved him from--nor
helped him bear--the dire failures of "Attila" and of "Agésilas."
Poetry had proved a poor trade, royalty had forgotten him, Colbert's
economies had left his pension in arrears along with many others, and
finally, after Colbert's death, the new minister, Louvois, had
suppressed it entirely. Against the earlier default he had made
patient and whimsical protest in verse; each official year of delay
had been officially lengthened to fifteen months; and Corneille's Muse
was made to hope that each of the King's remaining years of reign
might be lengthened to an equal limit!
The contrast between the two figures--the King of French Tragedy
shabby in Paris streets, the King of French people resplendent at
Versailles--is sharply drawn by Théophile Gautier in his superb
verses, read at Corneille's birthday fête at the Comédie Française, on
June 6, 1851. Gautier had not been able to find any motive for the
lines, which he had promised to prepare for Arsène Houssaye, the
director, until Hugo gave him this cue.
The faithful, generous Boileau--the man called "stingy," because of
his exactness, which yet enabled him always to aid others--offered to
surrender his own well-secured and promptly-paid pension in favor of
his old friend; a transfer not allowed by the authorities, and the
King sent a sum of money, at length, to Corneille. It came two days
before the poet's death, when he might have quoted, "I have no time to
spend it!" There is extant a letter from an old Rouen friend of his
who, visiting Paris in 1679, describes a walk he took with Corneille,
then aged seventy-three. In Rue de la Parcheminerie--that ancient street
on the left bank of the Seine, which we have already found to be less
spoiled by modern improvements than are its neighbors--Corneille sat
down on a plank by a cobbler's stall, to have one of his worn shoes
patched. That cobbler's stall, or its direct descendant, may be seen
in that street, to-day. Corneille counted his coppers and found just
enough to pay the cobbler's paltry charge; refusing to accept any coin
from the proffered purse of his friend, who, then and there, wept in
pity for such a plight for such a man.
[Illustration: The Door of Corneille's Last Dwelling.
(From a drawing by Robert Delafontaine, by permission of M. Victorien
Sardou.)]
Age and poverty took up their abode with him--as well as his more
welcome comrade, the constant Thomas--in his next dwelling. We cannot
be sure when they left Rue de Cléry, and we find them first in Rue
d'Argenteuil in November, 1683, the year of Colbert's death. That old
road from the village of Argenteuil had become, and still remains, a
city street absolutely without character or temperament of its own; it
has not the merit even of being ignoble. And the Corneille house at
No. 6, as it was seen just before its destruction, was a gloomy and
forbidding building. It had two entrances--as has the grandiose
structure now standing on its site--one in Rue d'Argenteuil, on which
front is a tablet marking this historic scene of the poet's death, and
the other in Rue de l'Évêque. That street was wiped out of existence
by the cutting of Avenue de l'Opéra in 1877-8, which necessitated the
demolition of this dreary old house. Its most attractive relic is now
in the possession of M. Victorien Sardou, at his country house, at
Marly-le-Roi, in the _porte-cochère_, with its knocker. Every guest
there is proud to put his hand on the veritable knocker lifted so
often by Corneille's hand.
That hand had lost its fire and force by this time, and the poet's
last months were wretched enough in these vast and desolate rooms on
the second floor, so vast and desolate that he was unable to keep his
poor septuagenarian bones warm within them. Here came death to him on
Sunday, October 1, 1684. They buried him in his parish church,
Saint-Roch, a short step from his home; and on the western pillar
within the entrance a tablet to his memory was placed in 1821. The
church was so short a step, that, feeble and forlorn as he was, he had
found his way there early of mornings during these last years. And in
his earlier years, when living in Rue de Cléry, he had often hurried
there, drawn by the strong and splendid Bossuet, whose abode was
either in Rue Sainte-Anne hard by, or in the then new mansion still
standing in Place des Victoires. Here in the church, as we stand
between Corneille's tablet and Bossuet's pulpit, the contrast is
brought home to us of the two forms of eloquence that most touch men:
that of this preacher burning with ancient Hebraic fire, and that of
this dramatist glowing with the white-heat of classicism.
After the burial, the bereft Thomas removed to rooms in Cul-de-sac des
Jacobins, only a little way from his last home with Pierre. This blind
alley has now been cut through to the market of Saint-Honoré, and
become a short commonplace street, named Saint-Hyacinthe. Twenty years
the younger of the two, Thomas was, during his life, and has been in
his after-renown, unduly overshadowed by his imperishable brother. He
had a rare gift of versification, and a certain skill in the putting
together of plays. Of them he constructed a goodly lot, some few of
them in collaboration. His "Timocrate," played for eighty consecutive
nights at the Théâtre du Marais, was the most popular success on the
boards of the seventeenth century. His knack in pleasing the public
taste was as much his own as was his mastery of managers, by which he
got larger royalties than any playwright of his day. He was a
competent craftsman, too, in more weighty fabrications, and turned
out, from his factory, translations and dictionaries, which have
joined his plays in everlasting limbo.
All the early theatrical productions of Pierre Corneille were
originally put on the stage of the Théâtre du Marais, which had been
started by seceders from the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as has
been told in our first chapter. After a temporary lodgment in the
quarter of the Hôtel de Ville, it was soon permanently housed in the
recast tennis-court of the "_Hôtel Salé_." There it remained until
1728, when Le Camus bought the place and turned the theatre into
stables. Where stands modern No. 90 in the widened Rue Vieille-du-Temple
was the public entrance of the theatre. The "_Hôtel Salé_," the work
of Lepautre, is still in perfect condition behind the houses of Rue
Vieille-du-Temple. Its principal portal is at Rue Thorigny, 5, with a
side entrance in Rue Saint-Gervais-des-Coutures. Known at first as the
Hôtel Juigné, it was popularly renamed, in the seventeenth century,
the "_Hôtel Salé_," because its rapacious owner, Aubray de Fontenay,
had amassed his wealth by farming out the salt tax--that most exacting
and irritating of the many taxes of that time.
Through a lordly arch in Rue Thorigny, we pass into the grand court,
and find facing us the dignified façade, its imposing pediment carved
with figures and flowers. Within is a stately hall, made the more
stately by the placing at one end of a noble chimney-piece, a copy of
one at Versailles. In the centre a superb staircase rises, wide and
easy, through a sculptured cage, to the first floor; its old
wrought-iron railing is of an exquisite pattern; nothing in all Paris
is nearer perfection than this staircase, its railing, and its
balustrade. In the rooms above, kept with reverence by the
bronze-maker who occupies them, admirable panelling and carvings are
found. The façade on the gardens--now shrunk from their former
spaciousness to a small court--is most impressive, with ancient
wrought-iron balconies; in its pediment, two vigilant dogs watch the
hands that move no more on the great clock-face between them.
The Théâtre du Marais had been established here by the famous
Turlupin, made immortal in Boileau's verse, who, with his two comic
_confrères_--baker's boys, like the brothers Coquelin of our day--kept
his audiences in a roar with his modern French farces _farcied_ with
old Gaulish grossness. It was he who invented the comic
valet--badgered and beaten, always lying and always funny--who was
subsequently elaborated into the immortal Sganerelle by Molière. He,
while a boy, had sat in this theatre, watching Turlupin; and when he
had grown into a manager, he is said to have bought some of the stage
copies of these farces, when Turlupin's death disbanded his troupe.
These "_Comédiens du Marais_" were regarded with a certain
condescension not unmingled with disdain by their stately _confrères_
left at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who were shocked when Richelieu,
becoming bored by their dreary traditional proprieties, sent for
Turlupin and his troupe to give a specimen of their acting in his
palace. And the great cardinal actually laughed, a rare indulgence he
allowed himself, and told the King's Comedians that he wished they
might play to as good effect!
Still, the Théâtre du Marais was not entirely given over to farce, for
it alternated with the tragedy of the then famous Hardy; and Mondory,
the best tragedian of the day, was at one time the head of the
troupe. Mondory had brought back from a provincial tour, in 1629, the
manuscript of "Mélite," by a young lawyer of Rouen, named Corneille.
This piece was weak, but it was not a failure. And so, when the author
came to town, his tragedies were played at this theatre and drew
crowds to the house. There they first saw the true tragic Muse herself
on the French boards. Those rough, coarse boards of that early theatre
he planed and polished, with conscience and with craft, and made them
fit for her queenly feet; and through her lips he breathed, in sublime
tirades, his own elevation of soul, to the inspiration of that shabby
scene. For the first time in the French drama, he put skill into the
plot, art into the intrigue, taste into the wit; in a word, he gave to
dramatic verse "good sense"--"the only aim of poetry," Boileau
claimed--and showed the meaning and the value of "reason" on the
stage; and for the doing of this Racine revered him.
As to Corneille's personality, we are told by Fontenelle--his nephew,
a man of slight value, a better talker than writer, an unmoved man,
who prided himself on never laughing and never crying--that his uncle
had rather an agreeable countenance, with very marked features, a
large nose, a handsome mouth, eyes full of fire, and an animated
expression. Others who saw Corneille say that he looked like a
shopkeeper; and that as to his manner, he seemed simple and timid, and
as to his talk, he _was_ dull and tiresome. His enunciation was not
distinct, so that in reading his own verses--he could not recite
them--he was forcible but not graceful. Guizot puts it curtly and
cruelly, when he writes that Corneille was destitute of all that
distinguishes a man from his equals; that his appearance was common,
his conversation dull, his language incorrect, his timidity ungainly,
his judgment untrustworthy. It was well said, in his day, that to know
the greatness of Corneille, he must be read, or be seen in his work on
the stage. He has said so in the verse that confesses his own defects:
"_J'ai la plume féconde et la bouche stérile,
Et l'on peut rarement m'écouter sans ennui,
Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui._"
In truth, we must agree with Guizot, that the grand old Roman was
irrevocably doomed to pass unnoticed in a crowd. And he was content
that this should be. For he had his own pride, expressed in his words:
"_Je sais ce que je vaux._" He made no clamor when Georges de Scudéry
was proclaimed his superior by the popular voice, which is always the
voice of the foolish. And when that shallow charlatan sneered at him
in print, he left to Boileau the castigation that was so thoroughly
given. His friends had to drive him to the defence of his "Cid" in the
Academy, to which he had been elected in 1647. His position with
regard to the "Cid" was peculiar and embarrassing; it was Richelieu,
the jealous playwright, who attacked the successful tragedy, and it
was Richelieu, the all-potent patron, who was to be answered and put
in the wrong. The skirmish being ended, with honor to Corneille, he
retired into his congenial obscurity and his beloved solitude. And
there the world left him, alone with his good little brother Thomas,
both contented in their comradeship. For in private life he was easy
to get on with, always full of friendliness, always ready of access to
those he loved, and, for all his brusque humor and his external
rudeness, he was a good husband, father, brother. He shrank from the
worldly and successful Racine, who reverenced him; and he was shy of
the society of other pen-workers who would have made a companion of
him. His independent soul was not softened by any adroitness or tact;
he was clumsy in his candor, and not at home in courtier-land; there
was not one fibre of the flunky in his simple, sincere,
self-respecting frame; and when forced to play that unwonted rôle, he
found his back not limber enough for bowing, his knees not
sufficiently supple to cringe.
[Illustration: Pierre Corneille.
(From the portrait by Charles Lebrun.)]