the court, who hardly knew his face, and not at all his worth, is
shown by this extract from one of their manuscript chronicles:
"_Jeudi, le 15 Octobre, 1684. On apprit à Chambord la mort du bonhomme
Corneille._"
* * * * *
JEAN RACINE came to Paris, from his native La Ferté-Milon in the old
duchy of Valois--by way of a school at Beauvais, and another near
Port-Royal--in 1658, a youth of nineteen, to study in the Collége
d'Harcourt. That famous school was in the midst of the Scholars'
Quarter, in that part of narrow, winding Rue de la Harpe which is now
widened into Boulevard Saint-Michel. On the site of the ancient
college, direct heir of its functions and its fame, stands the Lycée
Saint-Louis. The buildings that give on the playground behind, seem to
belong to the original college, and to have been refaced.
Like Boileau-Despréaux, three years his senior here, the new student
preferred poetry to the studies commonly styled serious, and his
course in theology led neither to preaching nor to practising. He was
a wide and eager reader in all directions, and developed an early and
ardent enthusiasm for the Greeks and the Latins.
As early as 1660 he had made himself known by his ode in celebration
of the marriage of Louis XIV.; while he remained unknown as the author
of an unaccepted and unplayed drama in verse, sent to the Théâtre du
Marais.
Racine's Paris homes were all in or near the "_Pays Latin_," for he
preserves its ancient appellation in his letters. On leaving college,
in 1660-61, he took up quarters with his uncle Nicolas Vitart, steward
and intendant of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and secretary of her son
the Duc de Luynes. Vitart lived in the Hôtel de Luynes, a grand
mansion that faced Quai des Grands-Augustins, and stretched far back
along Rue Gît-le-Coeur. It was torn down in 1671. La Fontaine had
lodgings, during his frequent visits to Paris at this period, a little
farther west on Quai des Grands-Augustins, and he and Racine, despite
the eighteen years' difference of age, became close companions. La
Fontaine made his young friend acquainted with the _cabarets_ of the
quarter, and Racine studied them not unwillingly. Just then, too,
Racine doubtless met Molière, recently come into the management of the
theatre of the Palais-Royal. An original edition of "Les Précieuses
Ridicules," played a while before this time at the Hôtel du
Petit-Bourbon, bears on its title-page "_Privilège au Sr. de Luyne_."
This was Guillaume de Luyne, bookseller and publisher in the Salle des
Merciers of the Palais de Justice; and at his place, a resort for
book-loving loungers, we may well believe that the actor-manager made
acquaintance with the young poet, coming from his home with the Duc de
Luynes, within sight across the narrow arm of the river.
Not as a poet was he known in this ducal house, but as assistant to
his uncle, and the probable successor of that uncle, who tried to
train him to his future duties. Among these duties, just then, was the
construction of the new Hôtel de Luynes for the Duchesse de Chevreuse.
This is the lady who plays so prominent a rôle in Dumas's authentic
history of "The Three Musketeers." The _hôtel_ that was then built for
her stands, somewhat shorn of its original grandeur, at No. 201
Boulevard Saint-Germain, and you may look to-day on the walls
constructed under the eye of Jean Racine, acting as his uncle's
overseer. This uncle was none too rigid of rule, nor was the
household, from the duchess down, unduly ascetic of habit; and young
Racine, "nothing loath," spent his days and eke his nights in somewhat
festive fashion. His anxious country relatives at length induced him
to leave the wicked town, and in November, 1661, he went to live at
Uzés, near Nîmes, in Languedoc. Here he was housed with another uncle,
of another kidney; a canon of the local cathedral, able to offer
church work and to promise church preferment to the coy young cleric.
Racine was bored by it all, and mitigated his boredom, during the two
years he remained, only by flirting and by stringing rhymes. The
ladies were left behind, and the verses were carried to the capital,
on his return in November, 1663. He showed some of them, first to
Colbert and then to Molière, who received the verse with scant praise,
but accepted, paid for, and played "La Thébaïde"--a work of promise,
but of no more than promise, of the future master hand. It was at this
period, about 1664, that Racine, of his own wish, first met Boileau,
who had criticised in a kindly fashion some of the younger poet's
verses. Thus was begun that friendship which was to last unmarred so
many years, and to be broken only by Racine's death.
With Corneille, too, Racine made acquaintance, in 1665, and submitted
to him his "Alexandre." He was greatly pleased by the praise of the
author of the "Cid"; praise freely given to the poetry of the play,
but along with it came the set-off that no talent for tragedy was
shown in the piece. It was not long before the elder poet had to own
his error, and it is a sorrow to record his growing discontent with
the younger man's triumphs. Racine believed then and always, that
Corneille was easily his master as a tragic dramatist; a belief shared
with him by us of to-day, who find Corneille's tragedies as
impressive, his comedies as spirited, as ever, on the boards of the
Comédie Française; while Racine's tragic Muse seems to have outlived
her day on those boards, and to have grown aged and out of date, along
with the social surroundings amid which she queened it.
Racine's reverence for his elder and his better never wore away, and
on Corneille's death--when, to his place in the Academy, his lesser
brother Thomas was admitted--it fell to Racine, elected in 1673, to
give the customary welcome to the new Academician, and to pay the
customary tribute to his great forerunner. He paid it in words and in
spirit of loyal admiration, and no nobler eulogy of a corrival has
been spoken by any man.
On his return to town, in 1663, Racine had found his uncle-crony
Vitart living in the new Hôtel de Luynes, and in order to be near him
he took lodging in Rue de Grenelle. It was doubtless at the eastern
end of that street, not far from the Croix-Rouge--a step from Boileau
in Rue du Vieux-Colombier, and not far from La Fontaine on Quai
Malaquais. Here he stayed for four years, and in 1667 he removed to
the Hôtel des Ursins. This name had belonged to a grand old mansion on
the north bank of Île de la Cité, presented by the City of Paris to
Jean Juvénal des Ursins, _Prévôt des Marchands_ under Charles VI. In
the old prints, we see its two towers rising sheer from the river,
and behind them its vast buildings and spacious grounds extending far
away south on the island. According to Edouard Fournier, a painstaking
topographer, all this structure was demolished toward the end of the
eighteenth century, and over its site and through its grounds were cut
the three streets bearing its name of des Ursins--Haute, Milieu,
Basse. Other authorities claim that portions of the hotel still stand
there, among them that portion in which Racine lived; his rooms having
remained unaltered up to 1848. The street is narrow and dark, all its
buildings are of ancient aspect, and on its south side is a row of
antiquated houses that plainly date back to Racine's day and even
earlier. It is in one of these that we may establish his lodgings.
The house at No. 5, commonly and erroneously pointed out as his
residence, is of huge bulk, extending through to Rue Chanoinesse on
the south. No. 7 would seem to be still more ancient. No. 9 is simply
one wing of the dark stone structure, of which No. 11 forms the other
wing and the central body, massive and gloomy, set back from the
street behind a shallow court, between these wings. In the low wall of
this court, under a great arch, a small forbidding door shuts on the
pavement, and behind, in a recess, is an open stairway leading to the
floor above. No. 13 was undoubtedly once a portion of the same fabric.
All these street windows are heavily barred and sightless. These three
houses evidently formed one entire structure at first, and this was
either an outlying portion of the Hôtel des Ursins, or a separate
building, erected after the demolition of that _hôtel_, and taking the
old name. In either case, there can be no doubt that these are the
walls that harbored Racine. The tenants of his day were mostly men of
the law who had their offices and residential chambers here, by reason
of their proximity to the Palais de Justice. With these inmates Racine
was certainly acquainted--the magistrates, the advocates, the clerks,
of whom he makes knowing sport in his delightful little comedy, "Les
Plaideurs." It was played at Versailles, "by royal command," before
King and court in 1668. This was not its original production, however;
it had had its first night for the Paris public a month earlier, and
had failed; possibly because it had not yet received royal approval.
Molière, one of the audience on that first night, was a more competent
critic of its quality, and his finding was that "those who mocked
merited to be mocked in turn, for they did not know good comedy when
they saw it." This verdict gives striking proof of his innate loyalty
to a comrade in trade, for he and the author were estranged just then,
not by any fault of Molière, and he had the right to feel wronged, and
by this unasked praise he proved himself to be the more manly of the
two.
The piece was an immediate success at Versailles. The _Roi Soleil_
beamed, the courtiers smiled, the crowd laughed. The players,
unexpectedly exultant, climbed into their coaches as soon as they were
free, and drove into town and to Racine, with their good news. This
whole quiet street was awakened by their shouts of congratulation,
windows were thrown open by the alarmed burghers, and when they
learned what it meant, they all joined in the jubilation.
Racine lived here from 1667 to 1677, and these ten years were years of
unceasing output and of unbroken success. Beginning with his
production of "Andromaque" in the first-named year, he went, through
successive stage triumphs, to "Phèdre," his greatest and his last play
for the public stage, produced on New Year's Day of 1677, at the Hôtel
de Bourgogne. It was on these boards that almost all his plays were
first given.
Then, at the age of thirty-seven, at the top of his fame, in the
plenitude of his powers, he suddenly ceased to write for the stage.
This dis-service to dramatic literature was brought about by his
forthcoming marriage, by his disgust with the malice of his rivals, by
his weariness of the assaults of his enemies, by his somewhat sudden
and showy submission to the Church--that sleepless assailant of player
and playwright. He hints at the attitude of the godly in his preface
to "Phèdre," assuring them that they will have to own--however, in
other respects, they may or may not esteem this tragedy--that it
castigates Vice and punishes Badness as had no previous play of his.
Doubtless he was hardened in this decision, already made, by the hurt
he had from the reception of this play in contrast with the reception
of a poorer play for which his own title was stolen, which was
produced within three nights of his piece, and was acclaimed by the
cabal that damned the original. Nor was it only his rivals and
enemies who decried him. "_Racine et le café passeront_," was La
Harpe's contemptuous coupling of the playwright with the new and
dubious drink, just then on its trial in Paris. His _mot_ has been
mothered on Madame de Sévigné, for she, too, took neither to Racine
nor to coffee. And a century later it pleased Madame de Staël to
prove, to her own gratification, that his tragedies had already gone
into the limbo of out-worn things.
Racine's whole life--never notably sedate hitherto, with its frequent
escapades and its one grand passion--was turned into a new current by
his love match with Catherine de Romenet. On his marriage in June,
1677--among the _témoins_ present were Boileau-Despréaux and Uncle
Vitart, this latter then living in the same house with his
nephew--Racine ranged himself on the side of order and of domestic
days and nights. He gave proof of a genuine devotedness to his wife; a
good wife, if you will, yet hardly a companion for him in his work at
home and in the world outside. It is told of her, that she never saw
one of his pieces played, nor heard one read; and Louis, their
youngest son, says that his mother did not know what a verse was.
The earliest home of the new couple was on Île Saint-Louis. Neither
the house nor its street is to be identified to-day, but both may
surely be seen, so slight are the changes even now since that
provincial village, in the heart of Paris, was built up from an island
wash-house and wood-yard under the impulse of the plans prepared for
Henri IV., by his right hand, Sully. And in this parish church,
Saint-Louis-en-l'Île--a provincial church quite at home here--we find
Racine holding at the font his first child, Jean-Baptiste, in 1678.
Two years later he moved again, and from early in 1680 to the end of
1684 we find him at No. 2 Rue de l'Eperon, on the corner of Rue
Saint-André-des-Arts. Here his family grew in number, and the names of
three of his daughters, Marie-Catherine, Anne, and Élisabeth--all born
in this house--appeared on the baptismal register of his parish church,
Saint-André-des-Arts. This was the church of the christening of
François-Marie Arouet, a few years later. The Place Saint-André-des-Arts,
laid out in 1809, now covers the site of that very ancient church,
sold as National Domain in 1797, and demolished soon after.
This residence of Racine was left intact until within a few years,
when it was replaced by the Lycée Fénelon, a government school for
girls. There they read their "Racine," or such portions as are
permitted to the Young Person, not knowing nor caring that on that
spot the author once lived.
From here he removed, at the beginning of the year 1685, to No. 16 Rue
des Maçons. That street is now named Champollion, and the present
number of his house cannot be fixed. It still stands on the western
side of the street, about half way up between Rue des Écoles and Place
de la Sorbonne; for none of these houses have been rebuilt, and the
street itself is as secluded and as quiet as when Racine walked
through it. Here were born his daughters Jeanne and Madeleine, both
baptized in the parish church of Saint-Séverin--a venerable sanctuary,
still in use and quite unaltered, except that it has lost its
cloisters. And in this home in Rue des Maçons he brought to life two
plays finer than any of their forerunners, yet, unlike them, not
intended for public performance. "Esther" was written in 1689 to
please Madame de Maintenon, and was performed several times by the
girls at her school of Saint-Cyr; first before King and court, later
before friends of the court and those who had sufficient influence to
obtain the eagerly sought invitation. "Athalie," written for similar
semi-public production, two years later, failed to make any
impression, when played at Versailles by the same girls of Saint-Cyr.
After two performances, without scenery or costumes, it was staged no
more, and had no sale when published by the author. Yet Boileau told
him that it was his best work, and Voltaire said that it was nearer
perfection than any work of man. Indeed, "Athalie," in its grandeur
and its simplicity, may easily outrank any production of the French
pen during the seventeenth century. And, as literature, these two
plays are almost perfect specimens of Racine's almost perfect art and
diction; of that art, wherein he was so exquisite a craftsman; of that
diction, so rich, so daring, so pliable, so passionate, yet
restrained, refined, judicious.
In May, 1692, we learn by a letter to Boileau, Racine was still in Rue
des Maçons, but he must have left it shortly after, for in November of
this year he brought to be christened, in Saint-Sulpice, his youngest
child, Louis. This is the son who has left us an admirable biography
of his father, and some mediocre poems--"La Religion" and "La Grâce"
being those by which he is best known. So that Saint-Sulpice was,
already in November, 1692, the church of his new parish; and the house
to which he had removed in that parish, wherein the boy was born,
stands, quite unchanged to-day, in Rue Visconti. That street was then
named Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, having begun life as a country
lane cut through the low marshy lands along the southern shore. It
extends only from Rue de Seine to Rue Bonaparte, then named Rue des
Petits-Augustins. Near its western end, at the present number 21, the
Marquis de Ranes had erected a grand mansion; and this, on his death
in 1678, was let out in apartments. It is asserted that it is the
house of whose second floor Racine became a tenant. Within the great
concave archway that frames the wide entrance door is set a tablet,
containing the names of Racine, of La Champmeslé, of Lecouvreur, and
of Clairon, all of whom are claimed to have been inhabitants of this
house. That tablet has carried conviction during the half-century
since it was cut and set, about 1855, but its word is to be doubted,
and many of us believe that the more ancient mansion at No. 13 of the
street was Racine's home. Local tradition makes the only proof at
present, and the matter cannot be absolutely decided until the lease
shall be found in that Parisian notary's office where it is now filed
away and forgotten. We know that Mlle. Lecouvreur lived in the
house formerly tenanted by Racine, and that she speaks of it as being
nearly at the middle of the street, and this fact points rather to No.
13 than to No. 21. And we know that Mlle. Clairon had tried for a long
time to secure an apartment in the house honored by memories of the
great dramatist and the great actress; for whose sake she was willing
to pay the then enormous rental of 200 francs. But the tablet's claim
to La Champmeslé as a tenant is an undue and unpardonable excess of
zeal. Whatever Racine may have done years before in his infatuation
for that bewitching woman, he did not bring her into his own dwelling!
[Illustration: Rue Visconti.
On the right is the Hôtel de Ranes, and in the distance is No. 13.]
She had come from Rouen, a young actress looking for work, along with
her husband, a petty actor and patcher-up of plays; for whose sake she
was admitted to the Théâtre du Marais. How she made use of this chance
is told by a line in a letter of Madame de Sévigné, who had seen her
play Atalide in "Bajazet," and pronounced "_ma belle fille_"--so she
brevets her son's lady-love--as "the most miraculously good
_comédienne_ that I have ever seen." It was on the boards of the Hôtel
de Bourgogne that she showed herself to be also the finest
_tragédienne_ of her time. She shone most in "Bajazet," and in others
of Racine's plays, creating her rôles under his admiring eye and under
his devoted training. He himself declaimed verse marvellously well,
and had in him the making of a consummate comedian, or a preacher, as
you please. La Champmeslé was not beautiful or clever, but her stature
was noble, her carriage glorious, her voice bewitching, her charm
irresistible. And La Fontaine sang praises of her _esprit_, and this
was indeed fitting at his age then. She lived somewhere in this
quarter, when playing in the troupe of the widow Molière at the
Théâtre Guénégaud. When she retired from those boards, she found a
home with her self-effacing husband in Auteuil, and there died in
1698.
The first floor in the right wing of the court of both 13 and 21 is
said to be the residence of Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had appeared in
1717 at the Comédie Française, in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, and had
won her place at once. The choice spirits of the court, of the great
world, of the greater world of literature, were glad to meet in
fellowship around her generous and joyous table. Among them she found
excuse for an occasional caprice, but her deepest and most lasting
passion was given to the superb adventurer, Maurice de Saxe. His
quarters, when home from the wars--for which her pawned jewels
furnished him forth--were only a step down Rue Bonaparte from her
house, on Quai Malaquais. They were at No. 5, the most ancient mansion
left on the quay, with the exception of No. 1, hid behind the wing of
the Institute. He died at Chambord on November 30, 1750, and at this
house, May 17, 1751, there was an auction of his effects.
There came a time when the meetings of these two needed greater
secrecy, and he removed to Rue de Colombier, now named Rue Jacob. The
houses on the north side of this ancient street had--and some of them
still have--gardens running back to the gardens of the houses on the
south side of Rue Visconti. These little gardens had, in the dividing
fence, gates easily opened by night, for others besides Adrienne and
Maurice, as local legend whispers. Scribe has put their story on the
stage, where it is a tradition that the actress was actually poisoned
by a great lady, for the sake of the fascinating lover. He stood by
her bedside, with Voltaire and the physician, when she was dying in
1730, at the early age of thirty-eight, in one of the rooms on this
first floor over the court. Voltaire had had no sneers, but only
praise for the actress, and smiles for the woman whose kind heart had
brought her to his bedside, when he was ill, where she read to him the
last book out, the translation of the "Arabian Nights." He was stirred
to stinging invective of the churlish priest of Saint-Sulpice, who
denied her church-burial. In the same verse he commends that good man,
Monsieur de Laubinière, who gave her body hasty and unhallowed
interment. He came, by night, with two coaches and three men, and
drove with the poor body along the river-bank, turning up Rue de
Bourgogne to a spot behind the vast wood-yards that then lined the
river-front. There, in a hole they dug, they hid her. The fine old
mansion at No. 115 Rue de Grenelle, next to the southeast corner of
Rue de Bourgogne, covers her grave. In its garret, thrown into one
corner and almost forgotten, is a marble tablet, long and narrow, once
set in a wall on this site, to mark the spot so long ignored--as its
inscription says--where lies an actress of admirable _esprit_, of
good heart, and of a talent sublime in its simplicity. And it recites
the efforts of a true friendship, which got at last only this little
bit of earth for her grave.
Yet a few years further on, the same wing on the court of this dingy
old house sparkled with the splendid personality of Hippolyte Clairon,
who outshines all other stars of the French stage, unless it be
Rachel. Here she lived the life of one of those prodigal princesses,
in whose rôles she loved to dazzle on the boards of the Comédie
Française, where she first appeared in 1743. It was her public and not
her private performances that shocked the sensitive Church into a
threat of future terrors for her. When, in the course of a theatrical
quarrel, she refused to play, she was sent to prison, being one of
"His Majesty's Servants," disobedient and punishable. She preferred
possible purgatory to present imprisonment, and went back to her duty.
To this house again came Voltaire, as her visitor this time, along
with Diderot and Marmontel and many such men. Garrick came, too, when
in Paris--came quietly, less eager to proclaim his ardent admiration
for the woman than his public and professional acclamation of the
actress in the theatre. Her parts all played, she left the stage when
a little past forty, and, sinking slowly into age and poverty and
misery, she died at the age of eighty in 1803.