M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the Paris "Temps," and the
gentleman who, of the whole journalistic fraternity, holds the fortune
of a play in the hollow of his hand, has been publishing during the last
year a series of biographical notices of the chief actors and actresses
of the first theater in the world. _Comédiens et Comédiennes: la Comédie
Française_--such is the title of this publication, which appears in
monthly numbers of the "Librairie des Bibliophiles," and is ornamented
on each occasion with a very prettily etched portrait, by M. Gaucherel,
of the artist to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of the stage in
general and of the Théâtre Français in particular the series will be
found most interesting; and I welcome the pretext for saying a few words
about an institution which--if such language be not hyperbolical--I
passionately admire. I must add that the portrait is incomplete, though
for the present occasion it is more than sufficient. The list of M.
Sarcey's biographies is not yet filled up; three or four, those of
Madame Favart and of MM. Fèbvre and Delaunay, are still wanting. Nine
numbers, however, have appeared--the first being entitled _La Maison de
Molière_, and devoted to a general account of the great theater; and the
others treating of its principal _sociétaires_ and _pensionnaires_ in
the following order:
Regnier,
Got,
Sophie Croizette,
Sarah Bernhardt,
Coquelin,
Madeleine Brohan,
Bressant,
Madame Plessy.
(This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not that of age or
of merit.) It is always entertaining to encounter M. Francisque Sarcey,
and the reader who, during a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a
Sunday evening, of unfolding his "Temps" immediately after unfolding his
napkin, and glancing down first of all to see what this sturdy
_feuilletoniste_ has found to his hand--such a reader will find him in
great force in the pages before us. It is true that, though I myself
confess to being such a reader, there are moments when I grow rather
weary of M. Sarcey, who has in an eminent degree both the virtues and
the defects which attach to the great French characteristic--the habit
of taking terribly _au sérieux_ anything that you may set about doing.
Of this habit of abounding in one's own sense, of expatiating,
elaborating, reiterating, refining, as if for the hour the fate of
mankind were bound up with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a
capital and at times an almost comical representative. He talks about
the theater once a week as if--honestly, between himself and his
reader--the theater were the only thing in this frivolous world that is
worth seriously talking about. He has a religious respect for his theme
and he holds that if a thing is to be done at all it must be done in
detail as well as in the gross.
It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to his thoroughly
businesslike and professional attitude, to his unwearying attention to
detail, that the critic of the "Temps" owes his enviable influence and
the weight of his words. Add to this that he is sternly incorruptible.
He has his admirations, but they are honest and discriminating; and whom
he loveth he very often chasteneth. He is not ashamed to commend Mlle.
X., who has only had a curtsy to make, if her curtsy has been the ideal
curtsy of the situation; and he is not afraid to overhaul M. A., who has
delivered the _tirade_ of the play, if M. A., has failed to hit the
mark. Of course his judgment is good; when I have had occasion to
measure it I have usually found it excellent. He has the scenic
sense--the theatrical eye. He knows at a glance what will do, and what
will not do. He is shrewd and sagacious and almost tiresomely in
earnest, and this is his principal brilliancy. He is homely, familiar
and colloquial; he leans his elbows on his desk and does up his weekly
budget into a parcel the reverse of coquettish. You can fancy him a
grocer retailing tapioca and hominy--full weight for the price; his
style seems a sort of integument of brown paper. But the fact remains
that if M. Sarcey praises a play the play has a run; and that if M.
Sarcey says it will not do it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey devotes
an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoiselle is
immediately _lancée_; she has a career. If he bestows a quiet "bravo" on
an obscure comedian, the gentleman may forthwith renew his engagement.
When you make and unmake fortunes at this rate, what matters it whether
you have a little elegance the more or the less? Elegance is for M. Paul
de St. Victor, who does the theaters in the "Moniteur," and who, though
he writes a style only a trifle less pictorial than that of Théophile
Gautier himself, has never, to the best of my belief, brought clouds or
sunshine to any playhouse. I may add, to finish with M. Sarcey, that he
contributes a daily political article--generally devoted to watching and
showing up the "game" of the clerical party--to Edmond About's journal,
the "XIX^{ième} Siècle"; that he gives a weekly _conférence_ on current
literature; that he "confers" also on those excellent Sunday morning
performances now so common in the French theaters, during which examples
of the classic repertory are presented, accompanied by a light lecture
upon the history and character of the play. As the commentator on these
occasions M. Sarcey is in great demand, and he officiates sometimes in
small provincial towns. Lastly, frequent play-goers in Paris observe
that the very slenderest novelty is sufficient to insure at a theater
the (very considerable) physical presence of the conscientious critic of
the "Temps." If he were remarkable for nothing else he would be
remarkable for the fortitude with which he exposes himself to the
pestiferous climate of the Parisian temples of the drama.
For these agreeable "notices" M. Sarcey appears to have mended his pen
and to have given a fillip to his fancy. They are gracefully and often
lightly turned; occasionally, even, the author grazes the epigrammatic.
They deal, as is proper, with the artistic and not with the private
physiognomy of the ladies and gentlemen whom they commemorate; and
though they occasionally allude to what the French call "intimate"
matters, they contain no satisfaction for the lovers of scandal. The
Théâtre Français, in the face it presents to the world, is an austere
and venerable establishment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs
would be almost as much out of keeping as if applied to the Académie
herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the theater, and
gives some account of the different phases through which it has passed
during these latter years. Its chief functionary is a general
administrator, or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this
right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house;
a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention
the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an absolute
but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his powers with the society
itself, which has always had a large deliberative voice.
Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light and its
inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition--from the
great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping but many
have in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which
the Théâtre Français rests are a good deal like the Common Law of
England--a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations
which time and occasion have welded together and from which the
recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful precedent.
Napoleon I., who had a finger in every pie in his dominion, found time
during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to send down a
decree remodeling and regulating the constitution of the theater. This
document has long been a dead letter, and the society abides by its
older traditions. The _traditions_ of the Comédie Française--that is the
sovereign word, and that is the charm of the place--the charm that one
never ceases to feel, however often one may sit beneath the classic,
dusky dome. One feels this charm with peculiar intensity as a newly
arrived foreigner. The Théâtre Français has had the good fortune to be
able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They have been preserved,
transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last they form the very
atmosphere, the vital air, of the establishment. A stranger feels their
superior influence the first time he sees the great curtain go up; he
feels that he is in a theater that is not as other theaters are. It is
not only better, it is different. It has a peculiar perfection--something
consecrated, historical, academic. This impression is delicious, and he
watches the performance in a sort of tranquil ecstasy.
Never has he seen anything so smooth and harmonious, so artistic and
complete. He has heard all his life of attention to detail, and now, for
the first time, he sees something that deserves the name. He sees
dramatic effort refined to a point with which the English stage is
unacquainted. He sees that there are no limits to possible "finish," and
that so trivial an act as taking a letter from a servant or placing
one's hat on a chair may be made a suggestive and interesting incident.
He sees these things and a great many more besides, but at first he does
not analyze them; he gives himself up to sympathetic contemplation. He
is in an ideal and exemplary world--a world that has managed to attain
all the felicities that the world we live in misses. The people do the
things that we should like to do; they are gifted as we should like to
be; they have mastered the accomplishments that we have had to give up.
The women are not all beautiful--decidedly not, indeed--but they are
graceful, agreeable, sympathetic, ladylike; they have the best manners
possible and they are delightfully well dressed. They have charming
musical voices and they speak with irreproachable purity and sweetness;
they walk with the most elegant grace and when they sit it is a pleasure
to see their attitudes. They go out and come in, they pass across the
stage, they talk, and laugh, and cry, they deliver long _tirades_ or
remain statuesquely mute; they are tender or tragic, they are comic or
conventional; and through it all you never observe an awkwardness, a
roughness, an accident, a crude spot, a false note.
As for the men, they are not handsome either; it must be confessed,
indeed, that at the present hour manly beauty is but scantily
represented at the Théâtre Français. Bressant, I believe, used to be
thought handsome; but Bressant has retired, and among the gentlemen of
the troupe I can think of no one but M. Mounet-Sully who may be
positively commended for his fine person. But M. Mounet-Sully is, from
the scenic point of view, an Adonis of the first magnitude. To be
handsome, however, is for an actor one of the last necessities; and
these gentlemen are mostly handsome enough. They look perfectly what
they are intended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that they
shall seem handsome, they usually succeed. They are as well mannered and
as well dressed as their fairer comrades and their voices are no less
agreeable and effective. They represent gentlemen and they produce the
illusion. In this endeavour they deserve even greater credit than the
actresses, for in modern comedy, of which the repertory of the Théâtre
Français is largely composed, they have nothing in the way of costume to
help to carry it off. Half-a-dozen ugly men, in the periodic coat and
trousers and stove-pipe hat, with blue chins and false mustaches,
strutting before the footlights, and pretending to be interesting,
romantic, pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous game. At every
turn they suggest prosaic things and the usual liability to awkwardness
is meantime increased a thousandfold. But the comedians of the Théâtre
Français are never awkward, and when it is necessary they solve
triumphantly the problem of being at once realistic to the eye and
romantic to the imagination.
I am speaking always of one's first impression of them. There are spots
on the sun, and you discover after a while that there are little
irregularities at the Théâtre Français. But the acting is so
incomparably better than any that you have seen that criticism for a
long time is content to lie dormant. I shall never forget how at first I
was under the charm. I liked the very incommodities of the place; I am
not sure that I did not find a certain mystic salubrity in the bad
ventilation. The Théâtre Français, it is known, gives you a good deal
for your money. The performance, which rarely ends before midnight, and
sometimes transgresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. The first
hour or two is occupied by secondary performers; but not for the world
at this time would I have missed the first rising of the curtain. No
dinner could be too hastily swallowed to enable me to see, for instance,
Madame Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little comedy of "Le
Village." Madame Nathalie was a plain, stout old woman, who did the
mothers and aunts and elderly wives; I use the past tense because she
retired from the stage a year ago, leaving a most conspicuous vacancy.
She was an admirable actress and a perfect mistress of laughter and
tears. In "Le Village" she played an old provincial bourgeoise whose
husband takes it into his head, one winter night, to start on the tour
of Europe with a roving bachelor friend, who has dropped down on him at
supper-time, after the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into
momentary discontent with his fireside existence. My pleasure was in
Madame Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go out to vespers
across the _place_. The two foolish old cronies are over their wine,
talking of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you hear the
church-bell in the distance. It was the quiet felicity of the old lady's
dress that used to charm me; the Comédie Française was in every fold of
it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut, which
looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old wardrobe
where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet, adorned with
handsome black silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had a softly
frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept breviary.
The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperance of this
costume, seemed to me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its handsome,
decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It expressed all the
rest, and you saw the excellent, pious woman go pick her steps
churchward among the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high white
cap, marched before her in sabots with a lantern.
Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, and they
are not the only ones that I remember. It used to please me, when I had
squeezed into my stall--the stalls at the Français are extremely
uncomfortable--to remember of how great a history the large, dim _salle_
around me could boast; how many great things had happened there; how the
air was thick with associations. Even if I had never seen Rachel, it was
something of a consolation to think that those very footlights had
illumined her finest moments and that the echoes of her mighty voice
were sleeping in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon the
"traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course but
a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? Who trims the undying
lamp and guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out--by sitting
in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to care to know. One may be very
fond of the stage and yet care little for the green-room; just as one
may be very fond of pictures and books and yet be no frequenter of
studios and authors' dens. They might pass on the torch as they would
behind the scenes; so long as during my time they did not let it drop I
made up my mind to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon their
not letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of Parisian
life. It became certain that the "traditions" were not mere catchwords,
but a most beneficent reality.
Going to the other Parisian theaters helps you to believe in them.
Unless you are a voracious theater-goer you give the others up; you find
they do not "pay"; the Français does for you all that they do and so
much more besides. There are two possible exceptions--the Gymnase and
the Palais Royal. The Gymnase, since the death of Mademoiselle Desclée,
has been under a heavy cloud; but occasionally, when a month's sunshine
rests upon it, there is a savor of excellence in the performance. But
you feel that you are still within the realm of accident; the delightful
security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The young lover is liable
to be common and the beautifully dressed heroine to have an unpleasant
voice. The Palais Royal has always been in its way very perfect; but its
way admits of great imperfection. The actresses are classically bad,
though usually pretty, and the actors are much addicted to taking
liberties. In broad comedy, nevertheless, two or three of the latter are
not to be surpassed, and (counting out the women) there is usually
something masterly in a Palais Royal performance. In its own line it has
what is called style, and it therefore walks, at a distance, in the
footsteps of the Français. The Odéon has never seemed to me in any
degree a rival of the Théâtre Français, though it is a smaller copy of
that establishment. It receives a subsidy from the State, and is obliged
by its contract to play the classic repertory one night in the week. It
is on these nights, listening to Molière or Marivaux, that you may best
measure the superiority of the greater theater. I have seen actors at
the Odéon, in the classic repertory, imperfect in their texts; a
monstrously insupposable case at the Comédie Française. The function of
the Odéon is to operate as a _pépinière_ or nursery for its elder--to
try young talents, shape them, make them flexible and then hand them
over to the upper house. The more especial nursery of the Français,
however, is the Conservatoire Dramatique, an institution dependent upon
the State, through the Ministry of the Fine Arts, whose budget is
charged with the remuneration of its professors. Pupils graduating from
the Conservatoire with a prize have _ipso facto_ the right to _débuter_
at the Théâtre Français, which retains them or lets them go, according
to its discretion. Most of the first subjects of the Français have done
their two years' work at the Conservatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an
actor who has not had that fundamental training which is only to be
acquired there never obtains a complete mastery of his resources.
Nevertheless some of the best actors of the day have owed nothing to the
Conservatoire--Bressant, for instance, and Aimée Desclée, the latter of
whom, indeed, never arrived at the Français. (Molière and Balzac were
not of the Academy, and so Mlle. Desclée, the first actress after
Rachel, died without acquiring the privilege which M. Sarcey says is the
day-dream of all young theatrical women--that of printing on their
visiting-cards, after their name, _de la Comédie Française_.)
The Théâtre Français has, moreover, the right to do as Molière did--to
claim its property wherever it finds it. It may stretch out its long arm
and break the engagement of a promising actor at any of the other
theaters; of course after a certain amount of notice given. So, last
winter, it notified to the Gymnase its design of appropriating Worms,
the admirable _jeune premier_, who, returning from a long sojourn in
Russia and taking the town by surprise, had begun to retrieve the
shrunken fortunes of that establishment.
On the whole, it may be said that the great talents find their way,
sooner or later, to the Théâtre Français. This is of course not a rule
that works unvaryingly, for there are a great many influences to
interfere with it. Interest as well as merit--especially in the case of
the actresses--weighs in the scale; and the ire that may exist in
celestial minds has been known to manifest itself in the councils of
the Comédie. Moreover, a brilliant actress may prefer to reign supreme
at one of the smaller theaters; at the Français, inevitably, she shares
her dominion. The honor is less, but the comfort is greater.
Nevertheless, at the Français, in a general way, there is in each case a
tolerably obvious artistic reason for membership; and if you see a
clever actor remain outside for years, you may be pretty sure that,
though private reasons count, there are artistic reasons as well. The
first half dozen times I saw Mademoiselle Fargueil, who for years ruled
the roost, as the vulgar saying is, at the Vaudeville, I wondered that
so consummate and accomplished an actress should not have a place on the
first French stage. But I presently grew wiser, and perceived that,
clever as Mademoiselle Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de Richelieu,
but for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian intonation
would sound out of place in the Maison de Molière. (Of course if
Mademoiselle Fargueil has ever received overtures from the Français, my
sagacity is at fault--I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect
she has not.) Frédéric Lemaître, who died last winter, and who was a
very great actor, had been tried at the Français and found wanting--for
those particular conditions. But it may probably be said that if
Frédéric was wanting, the theater was too, in this case. Frédéric's
great force was his extravagance, his fantasticality; and the stage of
the Rue de Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have even wondered
whether Desclée, if she had lived, would have trod that stage by right,
and whether it would have seemed her proper element. The negative is not
impossible. It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her
great charm--her intensely modern quality, her super-subtle
realism--would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even that her
strange, touching, nervous voice would not have seemed the voice of the
house. At the Français you must know how to acquit yourself of a
_tirade_; that has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would
probably have proved Desclée's stumbling-block, though she could utter
speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever done. It is true
that Mademoiselle Croizette, and in a certain sense Mademoiselle Sarah
Bernhardt, are rather weak at their _tirades_; but then old
theater-goers will tell you that these young ladies, in spite of a
hundred attractions, have no business at the Français.
In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes from that
superstitious state of attention which I just now sketched to that
greater enlightenment which enables him to understand such a judgment as
this of the old theater-goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the good
Homer sometimes nods, the Théâtre Français sometimes lapses from its
high standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks that Mademoiselle
Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious
voice, insupportable. He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy, "Rome
Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, was better
done certainly than it would have been done upon any English stage, but
by no means so much better done as might have been expected. (Here, if I
had space, I would open a long parenthesis, in which I should aspire to
demonstrate that the incontestable superiority of average French acting
to English is by no means so strongly marked in tragedy as in comedy--is
indeed sometimes not strongly marked at all. The reason of this is in a
great measure, I think, that we have had Shakespeare to exercise
ourselves upon, and that an inferior dramatic instinct exercised upon
Shakespeare may become more flexible than a superior one exercised upon
Corneille and Racine. When it comes to ranting--ranting even in a
modified and comparatively reasonable sense--we do, I suspect, quite as
well as the French, if not rather better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his
entertaining little book upon _Actors and the Art of Acting_, mentions
M. Talbot, of the Français, as a surprisingly incompetent performer. My
memory assents to his judgment at the same time that it proposes an
amendment. This actor's special line is the buffeted, bemuddled,
besotted old fathers, uncles and guardians of classic comedy, and he
plays them with his face much more than with his tongue. Nature has
endowed him with a visage so admirably adapted, once for all, to his
rôle, that he has only to sit in a chair, with his hands folded on his
stomach, to look like a monument of bewildered senility. After that it
does not matter what he says or how he says it.
The Comédie Française sometimes does weaker things than in keeping M.
Talbot. Last autumn,[8] for instance, it was really depressing to see
Mademoiselle Dudley brought all the way from Brussels (and with not a
little flourish either) to "create" the guilty vestal in "Rome Vaincue."
As far as the interests of art are concerned, Mademoiselle Dudley had
much better have remained in the Flemish capital, of whose language she
is apparently a perfect mistress. It is hard, too, to forgive M. Perrin
(M. Perrin is the present director of the Théâtre Français) for bringing
out "L'Ami Fritz" of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The two gentlemen who write
under this name have a double claim to kindness. In the first place,
they have produced some delightful little novels; everyone knows and
admires _Le Conscrit de 1813_; everyone admires, indeed, the charming
tale on which the play in question is founded. In the second place, they
were, before the production of their piece, the objects of a scurrilous
attack by the "Figaro" newspaper, which held the authors up to
reprobation for having "insulted the army," and did its best to lay the
train for a hostile manifestation on the first night. (It may be added
that the good sense of the public outbalanced the impudence of the
newspaper, and the play was simply advertised into success.) But neither
the novels nor the persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail to render
"L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, worthy of the first French
stage. It is played as well as possible, and upholstered even better;
but it is, according to the vulgar phrase, too "thin" for the locality.
Upholstery has never played such a part at the Théâtre Français as
during the reign of M. Perrin, who came into power, if I mistake not,
after the late war. He proved very early that he was a radical, and he
has introduced a hundred novelties. His administration, however, has
been brilliant, and in his hands the Théâtre Français has made money.
This it had rarely done before, and this, in the conservative view, is
quite beneath its dignity. To the conservative view I should humbly
incline. An institution so closely protected by a rich and powerful
State ought to be able to cultivate art for art.
The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I have been too long in
coming, is devoted to Regnier, a veteran actor, who left the stage four
or five years since, and who now fills the office of oracle to his
younger comrades. It is the indispensable thing, says M. Sarcey, for a
young aspirant to be able to say that he has had lessons of M. Regnier,
or that M. Regnier had advised him, or that he has talked such and such
a point over with M. Regnier. (His comrades always speak of him as M.
Regnier--never as simple Regnier.) I have had the fortune to see him but
once; it was the first time I ever went to the Théâtre Français. He
played Don Annibal in Émile Augier's romantic comedy of "L'Aventurière,"
and I have not forgotten the exquisite humor of the performance. The
part is that of a sort of seventeenth century Captain Costigan, only the
Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's sister and not his
daughter. This lady is moreover an ambitious and designing person, who
leads her thread-bare braggart of a brother quite by the nose. She has
entrapped a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature years, and he is on the
eve of making her his wife, when his son, a clever young soldier,
beguiles Don Annibal into supping with him, and makes him drink so deep
that the prating adventurer at last lets the cat out of the bag and
confides to his companion that the fair Clorinde is not the virtuous
gentlewoman she appears, but a poor strolling actress who has had a
lover at every stage of her journey. The scene was played by Bressant
and Regnier, and it has always remained in my mind as one of the most
perfect things I have seen on the stage. The gradual action of the wine
upon Don Annibal, the delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness was
indicated, its intellectual rather than physical manifestation, and, in
the midst of it, the fantastic conceit which made him think that he was
winding his fellow drinker round his fingers--all this was exquisitely
rendered. Drunkenness on the stage is usually both dreary and
disgusting; and I can remember besides this but two really interesting
pictures of intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal
tipsiness of Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor can always make
touching). One is the beautiful befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr.
Joseph Jefferson renders it, and the other (a memory of the Théâtre
Français) the scene in the "Duc Job," in which Got succumbs to mild
inebriation, and dozes in his chair just boosily enough for the young
girl who loves him to make it out.
It is to this admirable Émile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is
devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at
the Théâtre Français, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting
him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has, I
think, as much talent and as much art; as the older man Got has the
longer and fuller record and may therefore be spoken of as the master.
If I were obliged to rank the half-dozen _premiers sujets_ of the last
few years at the Théâtre Français in their absolute order of talent
(thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!) I think I should make up some such
little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Madame Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt,
Mademoiselle Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have no sooner written
it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder whether it is not a
great folly to put Delaunay after Mademoiselle Favart. But this is idle.
As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered
whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is really
a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist and his comicality is
sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the one on which M.
Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his underlying element of
manliness and melancholy, the impression he gives you of having a
general conception of human life and of seeing the relativity, as one
may say, of the character he represents. Of all the comic actors I have
seen he is the least trivial--at the same time that for richness of
detail his comic manner is unsurpassed. His repertory is very large and
various, but it may be divided into two equal halves--the parts that
belong to reality and the parts that belong to fantasy. There is of
course a great deal of fantasy in his realistic parts and a great deal
of reality in his fantastic ones, but the general division is just; and
at times, indeed, the two faces of his talent seem to have little in
common. The Duc Job, to which I just now alluded, is one of the things
he does most perfectly. The part, which is that of a young man, is a
serious and tender one. It is amazing that the actor who plays it should
also be able to carry off triumphantly the frantic buffoonery of Maître
Pathelin, or should represent the Sganarelle of the "Médecin Malgré Lui"
with such an unctuous breadth of humor. The two characters, perhaps,
which have given me the liveliest idea of Got's power and fertility are
the Maître Pathelin and the M. Poirier who figures in the title to the
comedy which Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier,
the retired shopkeeper who marries his daughter to a marquis and makes
acquaintance with the incommodities incidental to such a piece of luck,
is perhaps the actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see
how the portrayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep
and a more minute completeness. The _bonhomme_ Poirier, in Got's hands,
is really great; and half-a-dozen of the actor's modern parts that I
could mention are hardly less brilliant. But when I think of him I
instinctively think first of some rôle in which he wears the cap and
gown of a period as regards which humorous invention may fairly take the
bit in its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in Maître Pathelin, and he
leads the spectator's exhilarated fancy a dance to which the latter's
aching sides on the morrow sufficiently testify.
The piece is a _réchauffé_ of a mediæval farce which has the credit of
being the first play not a "mystery" or a miracle-piece in the records
of the French drama. The plot is extremely bald and primitive. It sets
forth how a cunning lawyer undertook to purchase a dozen ells of cloth
for nothing. In the first scene we see him in the market-place,
bargaining and haggling with the draper, and then marching off with the
roll of cloth, with the understanding that the shopman shall call at his
house in the course of an hour for the money. In the next act we have
Maître Pathelin at his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates his
trick and its projected sequel, and who greets them with Homeric
laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent draper arrives. Then
follows a scene of which the liveliest description must be ineffective.
Pathelin pretends to be out of his head, to be overtaken by a mysterious
malady which has made him delirious, not to know the draper from Adam,
never to have heard of the dozen ells of cloth, and to be altogether an
impossible person to collect a debt from. To carry out this character he
indulges in a series of indescribable antics, out-Bedlams Bedlam,
frolics over the room dressed out in the bed-clothes and chanting the
wildest gibberish, bewilders the poor draper to within an inch of his
own sanity and finally puts him utterly to rout. The spectacle could
only be portentously flat or heroically successful, and in Got's hands
this latter was its fortune. His Sganarelle, in the "Médicin Malgré
Lui," and half-a-dozen of his characters from Molière besides--such a
part, too, as his Tibia, in Alfred de Musset's charming bit of
romanticism, the "Caprices de Marianne"--have a certain generic
resemblance with his treatment of the figure I have sketched. In all
these things the comicality is of the exuberant and tremendous order,
and yet in spite of its richness and flexibility it suggests little
connection with high animal spirits. It seems a matter of invention, of
reflection and irony. You cannot imagine Got representing a fool pure
and simple--or at least a passive and unsuspecting fool. There must
always be an element of shrewdness and even of contempt; he must be the
man who knows and judges--or at least who pretends. It is a compliment,
I take it, to an actor, to say that he prompts you to wonder about his
private personality; and an observant spectator of M. Got is at liberty
to guess that he is both obstinate and proud.
In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, and there is a not
inferior mastery of his art. He is a wonderfully brilliant, elastic
actor. He is but thirty-five years old, and yet his record is most
glorious. He too has his "actual" and his classical repertory, and here
also it is hard to choose. As the young _valet de comédie_ in Molière
and Regnard and Marivaux he is incomparable. I shall never forget the
really infernal brilliancy of his Mascarille in "L'Étourdi." His
volubility, his rapidity, his impudence and gayety, his ringing,
penetrating voice and the shrill trumpet-note of his laughter, make him
the ideal of the classic serving-man of the classic young lover--half
rascal and half good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two or three
immense successes in the comedies of the day. His Duc de Sept-Monts, in
the famous "Étrangère" of Alexandre Dumas, last winter, was the capital
creation of the piece; and in the revival, this winter, of Augier's
"Paul Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young man about town,
consciously tainted with _commonness_, and trying to shake off the
incubus, seemed while one watched it and listened to it the last word of
delicately humorous art. Of Coquelin's eminence in the old comedies M.
Sarcey speaks with a certain pictorial force: "No one is better cut out
to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the old repertory,
with their boisterous gayety, their brilliant fancy and their superb
extravagance, who give to their buffoonery _je ne sais quoi d'épique_.
In these parts one may say of Coquelin that he is incomparable. I prefer
him to Got in such cases, and even to Regnier, his master. I never saw
Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But good judges have assured me that
there was much that was factitious in the manner of this eminent
comedian, and that his vivacity was a trifle mechanical. There is
nothing whatever of this in Coquelin's manner. The eye, the nose, and
the voice--the voice above all--are his most powerful means of action.
He launches his _tirades_ all in one breath, with full lungs, without
troubling himself too much over the shading of details, in large masses,
and he possesses himself only the more strongly of the public, which has
a great sense of _ensemble_. The words that must be detached, the words
that must decisively 'tell,' glitter in this delivery with the sonorous
ring of a brand-new louis d'or. Crispin, Scapin, Figaro, Mascarille have
never found a more valiant and joyous interpreter."
I should say that this was enough about the men at the Théâtre Français,
if I did not remember that I have not spoken of Delaunay. But Delaunay
has plenty of people to speak for him; he has, in especial, the more
eloquent half of humanity--the ladies. I suppose that of all the actors
of the Comédie Française he is the most universally appreciated and
admired; he is the popular favorite. And he has certainly earned this
distinction, for there was never a more amiable and sympathetic genius.
He plays the young lovers of the past and the present, and he acquits
himself of his difficult and delicate task with extraordinary grace and
propriety. The danger I spoke of a while since--the danger, for the
actor of a romantic and sentimental part, of being compromised by the
coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the current year--are reduced
by Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles in a marvelous fashion the
love-sick gallant of the ideal world with the "gentlemanly man" of
to-day; and his passion is as far removed from rant as his propriety is
from stiffness. He has been accused of late years of falling into a
mannerism, and I think there is some truth in the charge. But the fault
in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial. How can a man of fifty, to
whom, as regards face and figure, Nature has been stingy, play an
amorous swain of twenty without taking refuge in a mannerism? His
mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the spectator's attention
from certain incongruities. Delaunay's juvenility, his ardor, his
passion, his good taste and sense of fitness, have always an
irresistible charm. As he has grown older he has increased his repertory
by parts of greater weight and sobriety--he has played the husbands as
well as the lovers. One of his most recent and brilliant "creations" of
this kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le Gendre de M. Poirier"--a
piece of acting superb for its lightness and _désinvolture_. It cannot
be better praised than by saying it was worthy of Got's inimitable
rendering of the part opposed to it. But I think I shall remember
Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic comedies--as the Duc de
Richelieu in "Mlle. De Belle-Isle"; as the joyous, gallant, exuberant
young hero, his plumes and love knots fluttering in the breath of his
gushing improvisation, of Corneille's "Menteur"; or, most of all, as the
melodious swains of those charmingly poetic, faintly, naturally
Shakespearean little comedies of Alfred de Musset.
To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to Mademoiselle Favart,
who for so many years invariably represented the object of his tender
invocations. Mademoiselle Favart at the present time rather lacks what
the French call "actuality." She has recently made an attempt to recover
something of that large measure of it which she once possessed; but I
doubt whether it has been completely successful. M. Sarcey has not yet
put forth his notice of her; and when he does so it will be interesting
to see how he treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. She is
a great talent that has passed into eclipse. I call her a great talent,
although I remember the words in which M. Sarcey somewhere speaks of
her: "Mlle. Favart, who, to happy natural gifts, _soutenus par un
travail acharné_, owed a distinguished place," etc. Her talent is
great, but the impression that she gives of a _travail acharné_ and of
an insatiable ambition is perhaps even greater. For many years she
reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not having always
reigned generously. However that may be, there came a day when
Mesdemoiselles Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt passed to the front and the
elder actress receded, if not into the background, at least into what
painters call the middle distance. The private history of these events
has, I believe, been rich in heart-burnings; but it is only with the
public history that we are concerned. Mademoiselle Favart has always
seemed to me a powerful rather than an interesting actress; there is
usually something mechanical and overdone in her manner. In some of her
parts there is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. If Delaunay
is open to the reproach of having let a mannerism get the better of him,
this accusation is much more fatally true of Mademoiselle Favart. On the
other hand, she knows her trade as no one does--no one, at least, save
Madame Plessy. When she is bad she is extremely bad, and sometimes she
is interruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the revival of Scribe's
clever comedy of "Une Chaine," this winter (which, by the way, though
the cast included both Got and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to
mediocrity I have ever seen at the Théâtre Français), Mademoiselle
Favart was, to my sense, startlingly bad. The part had originally been
played by Madame Plessy; and I remember how M. Sarcey in his
_feuilleton_ treated its actual representative. "Mademoiselle Favart
does Louise. Who does not recall the exquisite delicacy and temperance
with which Mme. Plessy rendered that difficult scene in the second act?"
etc. And nothing more. When, however, Mademoiselle Favart is at her
best, she is remarkably strong. She rises to great occasions. I doubt
whether such parts as the desperate heroine of the "Supplice d'une
Femme," or as Julie in Octave Feuillet's lugubrious drama of that name,
could be more effectively played than she plays them. She can carry a
great weight without flinching; she has what the French call
"authority"; and in declamation she sometimes unrolls her fine voice, as
it were, in long harmonious waves and cadences the sustained power of
which her younger rivals must often envy her.
I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory observations without
having spoken of the four ladies commemorated by M. Sarcey in the
publication which lies before me; and I do not know that I can justify
my tardiness otherwise than by saying that writing and reading about
artists of so extreme a personal brilliancy is poor work, and that the
best the critic can do is to wish his reader may see them, from a quiet
_fauteuil_, as speedily and as often as possible. Of Madeleine Brohan,
indeed, there is little to say. She is a delightful person to listen to,
and she is still delightful to look at, in spite of that redundancy of
contour which time has contributed to her charms. But she has never been
ambitious and her talent has had no particularly original quality. It is
a long time since she created an important part; but in the old
repertory her rich, dense voice, her charming smile, her mellow,
tranquil gayety, always give extreme pleasure. To hear her sit and
_talk_, simply, and laugh and play with her fan, along with Madame
Plessy, in Moliere's "Critique de l'École des Femmes," is an
entertainment to be remembered. For Madame Plessy I should have to mend
my pen and begin a new chapter; and for Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt no
less a ceremony would suffice. I saw Madame Plessy for the first time in
Émile Augier's "Aventurière," when, as I mentioned, I first saw Regnier.
This is considered by many persons her best part, and she certainly
carries it off with a high hand; but I like her better in characters
which afford more scope to her talents for comedy. These characters are
very numerous, for her activity and versatility have been extraordinary.
Her comedy of course is "high"; it is of the highest conceivable kind,
and she has often been accused of being too mincing and too artificial.
I should never make this charge, for, to me, Madame Plessy's
_minauderies_, her grand airs and her arch-refinements, have never been
anything but the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some splendid
garden flower. Never had an actress grander manners. When Madame Plessy
represents a duchess you have no allowances to make. Her limitations are
on the side of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and I
cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But she is in the
highest degree accomplished; she gives an impression of intelligence and
intellect which is produced by none of her companions--excepting always
the extremely exceptional Sarah Bernhardt. Madame Plessy's intellect has
sometimes misled her--as, for instance, when it whispered to her, a few
years since, that she could play Agrippine in Racine's "Britannicus," on
that tragedy being presented for the _débuts_ of Mounet-Sully. I was
verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine. But M. Sarcey reminds
his readers of what he said of it the Monday after the first
performance. "I will not say"--he quotes himself--"that Madame Plessy is
indifferent. With her intelligence, her natural gifts, her great
situation, her immense authority over the public, one cannot be
indifferent in anything. She is therefore not indifferently bad. She is
bad to a point that cannot be expressed and that would be distressing
for dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck there rise
to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest qualities that
nature has ever bestowed upon an artist."
Madame Plessy retired from the stage six months ago and it may be said
that the void produced by this event is irreparable. There is not only
no prospect, but there is no hope of filling it up. The present
conditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the formation
of actresses as consummate and as complete as Madame Plessy. One may not
expect to see her like, any more than one may expect to see a new
manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried off with her
something that the younger generation of actresses will consistently
lack--a certain largeness of style and robustness of art. (These
qualities are in a modified degree those of Mademoiselle Favart.) But if
the younger actresses have the success of Mesdemoiselles Croizette and
Sarah Bernhardt, will they greatly care whether they are not "robust"?
These young ladies are children of a later and eminently contemporary
type, according to which an actress undertakes not to interest but to
fascinate. They are charming--"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric,
imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mademoiselle
Croizette; for although she has very great attractions I think she may
(by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a
less inspired and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal"
Sarah Bernhardt. (Mademoiselle Croizette's "brutality" is her great
card.) As for Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present,
in Paris, one of the great figures of the day. It would be hard to
imagine a more brilliant embodiment of feminine success; she deserves a
chapter for herself.
_December, 1876._