done, what you ought to have done. You should have taken Lucien
on one side, and, without worrying about the consequences,
have simply made him acquainted with the facts. He had to be
confronted with his duty. And since at heart he is, in spite of
everything, an honest man, and that the very worst actions of
his sort—and of your sort—don’t keep you from being thoroughly
kind-hearted, he would certainly have found a happier and more
consoling solution than to leave his daughter in distress. That
is what you ought to have done. And as I saw you were not going
to do it, that is what I have done.
_Chartier._ What do you say? Good God! You have seen Lucien?
_Laure._ Half an hour ago; after _déjeuner_.
_Chartier._ It is simply insane, what you have done! He must
have been utterly prostrated by such a blow, poor devil?
_Laure._ Yes. He turned very pale. Then he rushed off to
consult his father. Now what can happen to him, at the worst?
He will have to endure some hours of worry, of anxiety,
perhaps of remorse. What then? He deserves it. Lucienne is
seventeen—she has in front of her the promise of a long
existence, an existence conferred upon her by a light-hearted
gentleman in an hour of distraction. Well, it is _Lucienne_ who
interests me. You will tell me that it is not my concern—that
I am interfering in a delicate matter which is no business of
mine?
_Chartier._ Precisely. That was just what I was going to say.
_Laure._ And my answer is, that if one only occupied oneself
with one’s own concerns one would only accomplish selfish and
mediocre things.
How does Lucien act after he has received the fateful news? All
lamentations is he when he bursts into the room after his interview
with his father. Chartier, Laure and Hélène wait to learn what, by the
counsel, no doubt, of Briant _père_, Lucien proposes to do.
_Lucien._ Ah, mon ami [_addressing Chartier_], who would have
believed it? What a fatality! What a drama for my conscience!
Well, well—what one has to do is to occupy oneself with the
present and possible. You will tell Lucienne from me that she
has no longer any need to fear for the future: that shall be
_my_ charge.
_Chartier._ Well done. Well done.
_Lucien._ Yes; but upon one condition—oh, a condition of
stringent importance. The condition is that she must return
immediately to this village, near Limoges. She has lived there
up to the present hour—she can quite easily go on living
there. I will send her every month, and I will guarantee to
her in the event of my death, a yearly pension, that will be
sufficient for her support. There. Do you find that I am acting
very badly? And you, madame [_to Laure_], do _you_ think I am
behaving badly?
_Laure._ Well, not exactly bad.
_Lucien._ Well, that comforts me a little. But what a
catastrophe! Ah, if ever I have a son of my own, I shall try
that he may profit by my example.
But Lucien has not a son of his own. The only child he has is the
daughter he is going to bury alive in the village near Limoges, without
even seeing her—this, of course, by the counsel of _l’homme correct_,
Briant _père_.
But here Hélène intervenes. She has walked innocently into the trap
prepared for her by Laure. In other words, she has seen Lucienne, and
her heart has gone out to the motherless girl. Thus she has come by her
own path into Laure’s plot and plan; she is resolved to adopt Lucienne.
She urges her case, which has the independent advantage of upsetting the
counsels of Briant _père_, with warm generosity, but, at the same time,
with her usual vivacity.
_Hélène._ Lucien, you are my closest friend; and the object of
my dutiful affection, of course—but you can’t be my constant
companion and the confidante, whom I want, in sometimes empty
and tiresome hours. Understand that; and consent to what I
beg of you. Well, the companion I want _is here_; she is your
daughter. You have not given me a child; make me the present of
Lucienne. I am not a mother; but let me have the illusion of
maternity.
Firm in the belief that happiness lies before her and her husband in
the adoption of Lucienne, Hélène will hear of no other solution to the
situation. And in this she has the good genius, Laure, with her; and next
the _bonhomme philosophe_, Chartier; and finally the timid, despondent
Lucien himself, who, in the last scene, comes face to face with his
daughter.
All emotion is Lucien. And he breaks down completely when Lucienne shows
him a photograph taken of him in the Latin Quarter, when he was the
lover of Loulou, a wild figure in corduroy clothes, a long, flowing cape
and an amazing hat.
Lucienne, who imagines she is going to be sent back to the village near
Limoges, and may never possibly see her father again, does not wish to be
separated from the souvenir that stood for the image of him, in his young
days. She stretches out her hand, asking for the return of the photograph:
_Lucienne._ You will not take it away? You will leave it with
me?
_Lucien._ No. I shall keep it. And that is not all, I shall
keep—I should be mad to fight any longer against my own heart;
against your youth and my own—I shall keep the picture, and
_you_ as well!
Chartier, Hélène and Laure enter and behold, with joy, Lucienne in her
father’s embrace. But now arrives the apostle of correctness, Briant
_père_. He is not so much astonished, not so much shocked as filled with
contempt, and lifted above all contact with the irregular sentiments
and ill-directed sympathies of this emotional group of people, whom
he attempts to freeze, with his superior disdain. And it is at this
moment that he utters the unforgettable sentence which is one of the
master-strokes in the play:
_Briant_ père. It is quite sufficient to-day—and believe me,
when simply stating the fact, I do not allow myself to be the
least bit in the world disturbed by it—it suffices that a child
should be illegitimate in order to find itself the object of
universal sympathy; in the same way, it suffices that a woman
is not a lawful wife to render her immediately the object of
universal respect. Let married women, and children born in
wedlock, make no mistake about it: they are going to have a bad
time.[3]
Lucien attempts to mollify his high displeasure. But Briant _père_
(happily for his family’s welfare, perhaps) insists that he must separate
himself henceforth from these offenders. He shakes hands with his son and
with Hélène—salutes, stiffly, Laure and Chartier. Then, with a curt bow
to Lucienne and the one word, “_Mademoiselle_,” he takes his departure.
_Lucienne [to Hélène]._ Qui est ce monsieur?
_Hélène._ C’est ton grand-père.
3. M. BRIEUX, “LA DÉSERTEUSE,” AT THE ODÉON
“Brieux at the Odéon? Brieux passing from the grim playhouse of M.
Antoine, to the calm, placid, highly respectable Odéon?” Such must have
been the startled exclamations of hundreds of playgoers when it was
announced that the “Second Theatre of France” had “received,” and was
actually rehearsing, a new drama by the author of _Les Avariés_ and
_Maternité_.
Amazing tidings, certainly. And especially amazing, even alarming, to
the regular mature patrons of the Odéon, whose peaceful way of life,
whose tranquil train of thought, could not but be upset by the ardent,
revolutionary M. Brieux. They desire no disagreeable awakenings, and,
above all, no “social problems.”
I fancy the neighbourhood has affected our mature ones! They live round
about the Senate, whose members, we know, are renowned for a constant
drowsiness. Is not the Upper Chamber popularly described as the “Palace
of Sleep”? The alert, frisky Parisian cannot endure the _Palais du
Sommeil_. He wants emotions, excitement—and he finds them in the Chamber
of Deputies, which never sleeps.
“A restful sanctuary” is Mr Bodley’s idea of the Senate. “It does very
little; it is not highly considered. The idea sometimes suggested is that
of a retreat for elderly gentlemen.”
Well, the regular mature patron of the Odéon may be likened to the
Senator: his intellect is impaired by the same constant drowsiness.
And the “Second Theatre of France”—most Parisians dispute its right to
that distinguished title—may be likened to the Senate. It is not highly
considered; it renders but small services to the dramatic art; and, at
times, it presents the appearance of a restful sanctuary.
But—arrives M. Brieux. Arrives, actually, upon this tranquil, drowsy
scene, the ardent, revolutionary author of _Maternité_ and _Les Avariés_.
What—oh, what—is in store for the regular mature patrons? No doubt they
were all anxiety, all indignation, until it was understood that M. Brieux
had not arrived in their demure domain alone. With him, M. Jean Sigaux.
With him, a collaborator who might be expected to exercise restraint. Has
M. Sigaux fulfilled those expectations? Is M. Brieux of the Odéon the
M. Brieux of the Théâtre Antoine? Or, has M. Brieux been intimidated by
Odéon traditions?
Not unanimous on this point are the leading French dramatic critics.
Three or four of them profess themselves disappointed with _La
Déserteuse_, because unable to recognise M. Brieux’s change of attitude.
They are still under the spell of _Maternité_, where the author so
vigorously and so ruthlessly attacked the “established morality”
and “dominant passions.” The change of attitude is undeniable. But
_La Déserteuse_ is a strong, generous, human play; and all the more
interesting from our own special point of view, as students of the French
stage in its relation to French life, because it does not represent a
dramatic exposure of injustices and impostures, prevalent (if we believe
the reformer) in all European societies, but a dramatic illustration of
universal passions and emotions, as these manifest themselves under the
influence of traditional sentiments and habits of thought and feeling
that belong essentially to France.
The French bourgeois: wherein he differs from, and as a type of humanity
is superior to, the English shopkeeper; the French _jeune fille_—and
the French sentiment about her—and wherein this sentiment explains
her jealously and tenderly guarded inferiority in attractiveness,
intelligence and independence to her English prototype—here are
the secrets which _La Déserteuse_ may assist a foreign spectator to
penetrate....
We are in the town of Nantes, in the home of Forjot, music publisher,
husband, father and confirmed bourgeois. Forjot also gives concerts, but
he himself is nothing of a musician and would regard music with contempt,
were it not a means of making money. Not so his wife, Gabrielle, young,
beautiful and vivacious, who has been assured by the director of the
local theatre that she is possessed of a rare voice. Gabrielle sings
at little Nantais concerts and is admired and applauded. Gabrielle is
told that she would triumph on the operatic stage—and sighs. She loves
excitement, she longs for fame, she is full of dreams and ambitions and
fancies—but she finds no sympathiser in the music publisher, her husband,
who, looking up impatiently from his ledgers, bids her pay more attention
to her house, her child and “the rest.”
_Gabrielle._ What do you mean by “the rest”? Do you want me to
write out the bills, for instance?
_Forjot._ Never mind the bills: my shopman does that. But I
see no reason why you should not stay in the shop and receive
clients, and, when there is a press of work, lend me a helping
hand with the correspondence.
_Gabrielle._ Don’t expect me to do anything of the sort.
It is the old story: the bourgeois husband and the beautiful,
dissatisfied, ambitious wife, who rebels at her dull surroundings, who
believes herself “wasted,” who is tempted by a sympathetic admirer; and
who falls. Rametty, director of the Nantes Theatre, is Gabrielle’s
lover. His ardent prayer that she should accompany him on one of his
tours and win the fame that inevitably awaits her, rings constantly in
her ears. She resists, chiefly for the sake of her daughter, Pascaline.
But the temptation to fly becomes irresistible when, on the night of one
of Forjot’s concerts, audience, friends, her lover, and even a popular
composer from Paris, delight, intoxicate her with their praise. Forjot,
however, stands aloof; the eulogies of the popular composer—respectfully
known as _Le Maître_—exasperate him.
_Le Maître._ Madame Forjot has sung admirably. Let me give my
testimony. I do not know anyone, you mark me, I say _anyone_,
and I am not excepting the most celebrated vocalists—I do not
know _anyone_ capable of singing this air with such mastery.
_Forjot._ Oh, you exaggerate, surely, her talent, Master. You
are too indulgent.
_Le Maître._ I am not indulgent. Madame is an incomparable
lyrical tragedian. But, madame, you must not remain _en
province_—it would be a crime.
In ecstasies is Gabrielle. In the heavens is Gabrielle. But she soon
comes to earth again, when at last she and her husband find themselves
alone. Forjot has returned to his ledgers—is making up his accounts. He
has not a word to say of his wife’s success. He is entirely absorbed in
the night’s receipts. He counts under his breath; he rustles the pages of
his ledgers; he is—to Gabrielle—exasperating, maddening, intolerable.
And the storm bursts when Gabrielle, beside herself with rage, dashes one
of the ledgers to the ground.
Now furious, now broken, now contemptuous, now with hoarse, poignant
emotion, Forjot addresses his wife.
He knows her to be the mistress of Rametty. His illness of three years
ago was due to that humiliating and horrible discovery, but he had
thought that she had sinned in a moment of madness and was repentant; and
so he resolved to pardon her, generously, without even charging her with
her crime:
_Forjot._ After I had discovered your treachery, I had that
attack of brain fever, which nearly left you free. As a result
of being brought so near to death, thoughts came to me that
I might not have had otherwise, and they ripened in the long
hours of my convalescence. When I recovered, as I was touched
by the care you had taken in nursing me, and by your grief
(which I still believe was sincere), I thought you had only
given way to a mad impulse; and I forgave you in the silence
of my heart. Yes; I know well I am not like the husbands in
the novels you are constantly reading. Those husbands are idle
men of fortune; their child’s future causes them no tormenting
anxiety; they have not the incessant preoccupations of carrying
on a large business concern, where many interests of others,
as well as one’s own are involved. With men in _my_ class, a
false wife does not mean killing someone; it means asking for a
divorce. Well, I did not want to make Pascaline the daughter of
a divorced woman; nor did I want to expose her to the sense of
disgrace of finding out her mother’s degradation. And it is on
Pascaline’s account that I am putting you to-day in a position
when you can make your choice—either become again the wife and
mother you ought to be; or else I _shall_ ask for a divorce. I
don’t want to see again what I saw to-day, Rametty embracing
_my_ child! Nor do I want that one of these days, Pascaline may
be told by some little playmate that her mother is a wanton
[which is true], and her father a man who consents to his own
dishonour—which is _not_ true.
_Gabrielle._ Well, then, ask for a divorce. Adieu.
_Forjot._ What is your decision?
_Gabrielle._ To leave you.
_Forjot._ Think well of what it means. It means throwing over,
once and for ever, a regular life.
_Gabrielle._ It bores me to death this “regular” life. And
then, do you imagine I could endure to go on living near you
when I knew that you despised me enough to hold your tongue
about what you had discovered?
_Forjot._ If you stay, I promise that, by my attitude towards
you, you may be able to suppose that everything is forgotten.
_Gabrielle._ No! I refuse to lead here the life of eternal
humiliation you offer me. Good-night.
_Forjot._ Good-night. You have given me all the pain it was in
your power to give.
But even now the music publisher does not believe that Gabrielle will
desert him. Shortly after she has left the room his little daughter
enters and asks for her mother. The servant is sent in quest of
Gabrielle, but returns to announce that she is nowhere to be found. When
Forjot realises that his wife has left him he covers his face with his
handkerchief and trembles all over and sobs.
_Pascaline [running up to him]._ Father! Father! What _is_ the
matter?
_Forjot._ Nothing, nothing. [_He uncovers his face, which is
tragic with sorrow and stained with tears._] My child, your
mother has gone away from us on a long journey.
In a former paper[4] I spoke of the prodigious importance of the child in
France; the Child, the great indestructible bond between the parents. Of
course, exceptions—as in Gabrielle Forjot’s case. But, as we shall see,
Gabrielle seeks to recover Pascaline; and it is around this struggle that
the vital interest of the play centres. It is also around this struggle,
and in the feelings, language and conduct of those engaged in it that we
realise the different conditions of sentiment, morals and manners that
characterise respectively the French bourgeoisie and the lower English
middle class.
Pascaline is the typical _jeune fille_. In the First Act she is a child
of thirteen; thirteen, _l’âge ingrat_, for at that period the French
_jeune fille_ is plain. It is considered right—imperative—that she
should be plain. If she be not so by nature she is made so. See her in
her convent dress, her “Sunday best”—the one that most successfully
conceals her natural grace—when Mademoiselle is most nearly a fright.
Pascaline, for instance, first appears before us shy, awkward, with her
hair dragged back from her forehead and falling down her shoulders in
depressing little plaits, and arrayed in a dreadful white dress which
no English girl of her age would don without a struggle and a tearful
outburst. Nevertheless, the _jeune fille_ is adored, and she knows it.
She is strictly, terribly _surveillée_—but that, after all, is a proof of
her importance. She must be protected from dangers, so precious is she.
Has she, at the age of fifteen, only to cross the street the servant (I
can see the indignant glances and hear the expressions of pity of her
English sisters) must be close at her elbow. Plenty and plenty of time
to wear fine dresses and make the first exciting bow to the world, and
to be surprised, and to wonder. Says the French mother, speaking from
experience: “It is delicious to be a _jeune fille_. And I tell my Yvonne
so, when she grumbles.” But Yvonne’s grumblings do not betray a tragic,
desperate state of mind. As a matter of fact, Yvonne, in spite of those
dresses and that constant strict, terrible surveillance, is delightfully
happy. And I expect her first bow to the world will be made all the more
exciting by that long, rigid training, and that she will don her elegant
dresses with all the more rapture, and that she will find life the more
brilliant, exhilarating and extraordinary. The parents preserve those
old, ugly dresses. When Cosette left her convent, and discarded her
depressing dress for tasteful finery, and did what she pleased with her
hair, and became all of a sudden beautiful—Jean Valjean kept the dress,
and often brought it forth in secret, and looked upon it with infinite
tenderness and emotion....
But to return to our particular _jeune fille_, Pascaline. In the Second
Act, she is seventeen and charming. Nevertheless, it is still necessary
to hide from her all dangerous knowledge, all doubts or suspicions, even
of the existence of evil outside her own experience. Father, governess,
nurse, family friends and all who approach her are in league to keep from
her the true history of her mother’s desertion. The legend, as she hears
it, is that the brilliant, captivating mother she recollects abandoned
her home in order to follow her vocation—to become a great and famous
singer. And this passionately interests Pascaline; consequently, she is
wild with excitement when, after a four years’ absence, her mother claims
the right to see her daughter, and obtains legal authorisation to do so.
Then, trouble. For, in the meanwhile, Forjot has married the excellent,
trustworthy governess, Hélène, chiefly because she was so devoted to
the little Pascaline and would make her a second mother. Pascaline at
thirteen—dazzled and overawed by the brilliant Gabrielle—had treated the
kind and homely governess as a confidante; but at seventeen—flattered,
fascinated and caressed by Gabrielle—she sees in Hélène only the
“Stranger,” who has usurped her mother’s place.
Then begins the second struggle; that is once again to make havoc of
poor Forjot’s domestic peace! The struggle of Hélène, on the one side,
to reconquer by patience and kindness, and sometimes by affectionate
reproaches, the confidence of the child she loves, and has cared for as
her own; and of Pascaline, on the other side, to resist these attentions
and appeals to her feelings and to remain true to her more brilliant
mother, who, she is convinced, has been harshly turned out of her home,
simply because she was too artistic to make a good bourgeoise housekeeper
of the usual type.
The knot in the entangled situation is that Pascaline must not be told
the truth. So that misunderstanding the position, she cannot, from her
own point of view, without disloyalty to her admired and adored mother,
recognise the interloper, Hélène, as the rightful mistress of her
father’s home, and with claims upon herself, Pascaline, for respect and
gratitude, on account of the care and affection she has shown one whom
she has robbed of her natural guardian.
Pascaline comes back from her first interview with Gabrielle fascinated
and enthusiastic, and full of anger and disdain for the homelier, much
less outwardly demonstrative Hélène. This condition of mind becomes
aggravated later on, when Gabrielle is in misfortune. Alas! her voice
has failed her. She is no longer able to follow her artistic vocation,
for the sake of which she sacrificed her home. She now is directress of
a theatrical agency, and she is no longer so gay, although still full of
noble courage. All this Pascaline confides to her old nurse, Marion, with
whom she is still able to talk about her mother.
_Pascaline._ Oh, Marion dear! When one thinks of mama coming
back; and of her having no right to enter this house, and of
someone else installed in her place! If you only could have
seen how sad she was when she left me, my poor mama, who is
generally so gay! And no wonder she is sad. All alone there at
Auteuil in a little pavilion, Rue des Martyrs, at her office, a
stuffy little place without sunshine, without air.
_The Nurse._ At her “office”?
_Pascaline._ Yes. You must know that, for some time, mama has
not been able to sing. It is all the trouble she has gone
through. You see to be constantly crying is not good for the
voice, so that now she is the directress of an agency for
theatrical tours. You can understand that, as I am no longer
a child, I have a right to know things. I _do_ know _now_ why
papa sent mama away.
_Marion._ Did your mother tell you?
_Pascaline._ Yes. Papa would not allow her to sing anywhere! So
then mama, who had an admirable voice, felt obliged to follow
an irresistible vocation.
This is the legend as Pascaline has received it from her mother. Marion
does not contradict it. Nor yet do Forjot and Hélène ever hint at the
true facts of Gabrielle’s desertion. Hélène’s reticence is heroic, for
Pascaline becomes more and more bitter against the good Hélène and defies
her to justify herself by some real fault discovered in Gabrielle, worse
than the noble ambition of a gifted artist.
_Pascaline [to Hélène]._ Of course, you are burning to tell me
all about poor mama’s divorce. Well: let me show you I know all
about it already. I know that, in spite of my father’s orders,
mama would go on singing, and then she was rather extravagant,
and, well, she was not domesticated, and chose to follow her
artistic vocation. There you have the whole story of her sins.
Oh, _if_ there _is_ anything else, I invite you, or rather, I
require you to tell me. _Was_ there anything else?
_Hélène [avoiding Pascaline’s eyes]._ There was nothing else.
_Pascaline [triumphantly]._ There, you are forced to admit it!
Mama’s _only_ fault was that she had an artistic vocation!
Again I beg you to contradict me, if you can. _Was_ there
anything else against her?
_Hélène._ No; only that—nothing else.