RACHEL

One evening in Paris, we were strolling through that most Parisian

spot the Palais Royal, or, as it was called at that moment, the Palais

National. It was after the revolution of February; but, although the

place was full of associations with French revolutions, it seemed to

have no special sympathy with the trouble of the moment, and was as gay

as the youngest imagination conceives Paris to be. There was a constant

throng loitering along the arcades; the cafes were lighted and crowded;

men were smoking, sipping coffee, playing billiards, reading the

newspapers, discussing the debates in the Chamber and the coming

"Prophete" of Meyerbeer at the opera; women were chatting together in

the boutiques, pretty grisettes hurrying home; little blanchisseuses,

with their neatly-napkinned baskets, tripping among the crowd; strangers

watched the gay groups, paused at the windows of tailors and jewellers,

and felt the fascination of Paris. It was the moment of high-tide of

Parisian life. It was an epitome of Paris, and Paris is an epitome of

the time and of the world.

At the corner of the Palais Royal is the Comédie Française, and to that

we were going. There Rachel was playing. There she had recently recited

the "Marseillaise" to frenzied Paris; and there, in the vestibule,

genius of French comedy, of French intellect, and of French life, sits

the wonderful Voltaire of Houdon, the statue which, for the first time,

after the dreadful portraits which misrepresent him, gives the spectator

some adequate idea of the personal appearance and impression of the man

who moulded an age. You can scarcely see the statue without a shudder.

It is remorseless intellect laid bare. The cold sweetness of the aspect,

the subtle penetration of the brow, the passionless supremacy of

a figure which is neither manly nor graceful, fill your mind with

apprehension and with the conviction that the French Revolution you have

seen is not the last.

The curtain rises, and Paris and France roll away. A sad, solitary

figure, like a dream of tragic Greece, glides across the scene. The air

grows cold and thin, with a sense of the presence of lost antiquity.

The feeling of fate, vast, resistless, and terrible, rises like a

suffocating vapor; and the hopeless woe of the face, the pathetic

dignity of the form, assure you, before she speaks, that this is indeed

Rachel. The scenery is poor and hard; but its severe outlines and its

conventional character serve to suggest Greece. The drapery which hangs

upon Rachel is exquisitely studied from the most perfect statue. There

is not a fold which is not Greek and graceful, and which does not seem

obedient to the same law which touches her face with tragedy. As she

slowly opens her thin lips, your own blanch; and from her melancholy

eyes all smiles and possibility of joy have utterly passed away. Rachel

stands alone, a solitary statue of fate and woe.

When she speaks, the low, thrilling, distinct voice seems to proceed

rather from her eyes than her mouth. It has a wan sound, if we may say

so. It is the very tone you would have predicted as coming from that

form, like the unearthly music which accompanies the speech of the

Commendatore's statue in "Don Giovanni". That appearance and that voice

are the key of the whole performance. Before she has spoken, you are

filled with the spirit of an age infinitely remote, and only related

to human sympathy now by the grandeur of suffering. The rest merely

confirms that impression. The whole is simple and intense. It is

conceived and fulfilled in the purest sense of Greek art.

Of the early career and later life of Rachel such romantic stories are

told and believed that only to see the heroine of her own life would

be attraction enough to draw the world to Paris. Dr. Vernon, in his

_Mémoires d'un Bourgeois_, has described her earliest appearance upon

the Boulevards--her studies, her trials, and her triumph. That triumph

has been unequalled in stage annals for enthusiasm and permanence. Other

actors have achieved single successes as brilliant; but no other has

held for so long the most fickle and fastidious nation thrall to her

powers; owning no rival near the throne, and ruling with a sway whose

splendor was only surpassed by its sternness.

For Rachel has never sought to ally her genius to goodness, and has

rather despised than courted the aid of noble character. Not a lady

by birth or breeding, she is reported to have surpassed Messalina

in debauchery and Semiramis in luxury. Paris teems with tales of her

private life, which, while they are undoubtedly exaggerated, yet serve

to show the kind of impression her career has produced. Those modern

Sybarites, the princes and nobles of Russia, are the heroes of her

private romances; and her sumptuous apartments, if not a Tour de Nesle,

are at least a bower of Rosamond.

As if to show the independent superiority of her art, she has been

willing to appear, or she really is, avaricious, mean, jealous,

passionate, false; and then, by her prodigious power, she has swayed the

public that so judged her as the wind tosses a leaf. There has, alas,

been disdain in her superiority. Perhaps Paris has found something

fascinating in her very contempt, as in the _Mémoires du Diable_ the

heroine confesses that she loved the ferocity of her lover. Nor is it

a traditional fame that she has enjoyed; but whenever Rachel plays, the

theatre is crowded, and the terror and the tears are what they were when

she began.

Rachel is the greatest of merely dramatic artists. Others are more

beautiful; others are more stately and imposing; others have been fitted

by external gifts of nature to personify characters of very marked

features; others are more graceful and lovely and winning; most others

mingle their own personality with the characters they assume, but Rachel

has this final evidence of genius, that she is always superior to

what she does; her mind presides over her own performances. It is the

perfection of art. In describing this peculiar supremacy of genius, a

scholar, in whose early death a poet and philosopher was lost, says of

Shakespeare: "He sat pensive and alone above the hundred-handed play

of his imagination." And Fanny Kemble, in her journal, describes a

conversation upon the stage, in the tomb-scene of "Romeo and Juliet",

where she, as Juliet, says to Mr. Romeo Keppel, "Where the devil is your

dagger?" while all the tearful audience are lost in the soft woe of the

scene.

This is very much opposed to the general theory of acting, and the

story is told with great gusto of a boy who was sent to see Garrick,

we believe, and who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing

and swagger of a supernumerary, but could not understand why people

applauded such an ordinary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a whit

from all the country boobies he had ever seen. It is insisted that the

actor must persuade the spectator that he is what he seems to be, and

this is gravely put as the first and final proof of good acting.

This is, however, both a false view of art and a false interpretation

and observation of experience. Shakespeare, through the mouth of

Hamlet, tells the players to "hold the mirror up to nature"--that is, to

represent nature. For what is the dramatic art, like all other arts, but

a representation? If it aims to deceive the eye--if it tries to juggle

the senses of the spectator--it is as trivial as if a painter should

put real gold upon his canvas instead of representing gold by means of

paint; or as if a sculptor should tinge the cheeks of his statue to make

it more like a human face. We have seen tin pans so well represented in

painting that the result was atrocious. For, if the object intended

is really a tin pan, and not the pleasure produced by a conscious

representation of one, then why not insert the veritable pan in the

picture at once? If art is only a more or less successful imitation of

natural objects, with a view to cheat the senses, it is an amusing game,

but it is not a noble pursuit.

It is an equally false observation of experience; because, if the

spectator were really deceived, if the actor became, in the mind of the

audience, truly identical with the character he represents, then, when

that character was odious, the audience would revolt. If we cannot

quietly sit and see one dog tear another, without interfering, could we

gravely look on and only put our handkerchiefs to our eyes, when Othello

puts the pillow to the mouth of Desdemona? If we really supposed him

to be a murderous man, how instantly we should leap upon the stage and

rescue "the gentle lady". The truth is, to state it boldly, we know the

roaring lion to be only Snug, the joiner.

All works of art must produce pleasure. Even the sternest and most

repulsive subjects must be touched by art into a pensive beauty, or they

fail to reach the height of great works. Goethe has shown this in the

_Laocoon_, and every man feels it in constant experience. One of the

grand themes of modern painting is the great tragedy of history, the

Crucifixion. Materially it is repulsive, as the spectacle of a man in

excruciating bodily torture; spiritually it is overwhelming, as the

symbolized suffering of God for sin. If, now, the pictures which treat

this subject were indeed only imitations of the scene, so that the

spectator listened for the groans of agony and looked to see the blood

drop from the brow crowned with thorns, how hideous and insupportable

the sight would be! The mind is conscious as it contemplates the picture

that it is a representation, and not a fact. The mere force of actuality

is, therefore, destroyed, and thought busies itself with the moral

significance of the scene. In the same way, in the tragedy of "Othello",

conscious that there is not the actual physical suffering which there

seems to be, the mind contemplates the real meaning which underlies that

appearance, and curses jealousy and the unmanly passions.

Even in a very low walk of art the same principle is manifested. A man

might not care to adorn his parlor with the carcass of an ox or a hog,

nor invite to his table boors muzzy with beer. But the most elegant

of nations prizes the pictures of Teniers at extraordinary prices, and

hangs its galleries with works minutely representing the shambles. Here,

again, the explanation is this: that the mind, rejecting any idea of

actuality in the picture, is charmed with the delicacy of detail, with

lovely color, with tone, with tenderness, and all these are qualities

inseparable from the picture, and do not belong by any necessity to the

actual carcasses of animals. In the shambles, the sense of disgust and

repulsion overcomes any pleasure in light and color. In the parlor, if

the spectator were persuaded by the picture to hold his nose, the thing

would be as unlovely as it is in nature. Imitation pleases only so

far as it is known to be imitation. If deception by imitation were the

object of art, then the material of the sculptor should be wax, and not

marble. Every visitor mistakes the sitting figure of Cobbett, in Madame

Tussaud's collection of wax-works, for a real man, and will very likely,

as we did, speak to it. But who would accost the Moses of Michael

Angelo, or believe the sitting Medici in his chapel to have speech?

There is something unhandsomely derogatory to art in this common view.

It is forgotten that art is not subsidiary nor auxiliary to nature, but

it is a distinct ministry, and has a world of its own. They are not in

opposition, nor do they clash. The cardinal fact of imitation in

works of art is evident enough. The exquisite charm of art lies in the

perfection of the imitation, coexisting with the consciousness of an

absolute difference, so that the effect produced is not at all that

which the object itself produces, but is an intellectual pleasure

arising from the perception of the mingling of rational intention with

the representation of the natural object. We can illustrate this by

supposing a child bringing in a fresh rose, and a painter his picture of

a rose. The pleasure derived from the picture is surely something better

than wonder at the skill with which the form and color of the flower are

imitated. Since imitation can never attain to the dignity and worth

of the original, and since we live in the midst of nature, it would be

folly to claim for its more or less successful copy the position and

form of a great mental and moral influence.

Of course we are not unmindful of the inevitable assertion that if

certain forms are to be used for the expression of certain truths, the

first condition is that those forms shall be accurately rendered. Hence

arises the great stress laid by the modern schools upon a rigorous

imitation of nature, and hence what is called the pre-Raphaelite spirit,

with its marvellous detail. But mere imitation does not come any

nearer to great art by being perfect. If it is not informed by a great

intention, sculpture is only wax-work and painting a juggle.

It is by her instinctive recognition of these fundamental principles

that Rachel shows herself to be an artist. She is fully persuaded of the

value of the modern spirit, and she belongs to the time by nothing more

than by her instinctive and hearty adaptation of the principles of art

which are illustrated in all other departments. There is nothing in

Millais's or Hunt's paintings more purely pre-Raphaelite than Rachel's

acting in the last scenes of "Adrienne Lecouvreur". It is the perfection

of detail. It was studied, gasp by gasp, and groan by groan, in the

hospital wards of Paris, where men were dying in agony. It is terrible,

but it is true. We have seen a crowded theatre hanging in a suspense

almost suffocating over that fearful scene. Men grew pale, women

fainted, a spell of silence and awe held us enchanted. But it was all

pure art. The actor was superior to the scene. It was the passion

with which she threw herself into the representation, with a distinct

conception of the whole, and a thorough knowledge of the means necessary

to produce its effect, that secured the success. There was a sublimity

of self-control in the spectacle, for, if she had allowed herself to be

overwhelmed by the excitement, the play must have paused; real feeling

would have invaded that which was represented, and we should, by a rude

shock, have been staring in wonder at the weeping woman Rachel, instead

of thrilling with the woes of the dying, despairing Adrienne. She seems

to be what we know she is not.

Rachel's earlier triumphs were in the plays of Racine. Certainly nothing

could show the essential worth of the old Greek dramatic material more

than the fact that it could be rendered into French rhyme without

losing all its dignity. If a man should know Homer only through Pope's

translations, he could hardly understand the real greatness and peculiar

charm of Homer. And as most of us know him in no other way, we all

understand that the eminence of Homer is conceded upon the force of

tradition and the feeling of those who have read him in the original.

So, to the reader of Racine, it is his knowledge of the outline of the

grand old Greek stories that prevents their loss of charm and loftiness

when they masquerade in French rhyme. They have lost their sublimity, so

far as treatment can effect it, while they retain their general form of

interest. But it is the splendid triumph of Rachel that she restores the

original Greek grandeur to the drama. We no longer wonder at Racine's

idea of Phèdre, but we are confronted with Phèdre herself. From the

moment she appears, through every change and movement of the scene until

the catastrophe, a sense of fate, the grim, remorseless, and inexorable

destiny that presides over Greek story, is stamped upon every look and

nod and movement of Rachel. It is stated that, since the enthusiasm

produced in Paris by Ristori, Rachel's Italian rival, the sculptor

Schlesinger has declared that his statue of Rachel which he had called

Tragedy was only Melodrama after all. If the report be true, it does not

prove that Rachel, but Schlesinger, is not a great artist.

It is this simplicity and grandeur that make the excellence of Rachel in

the characters of Racine. They cease to be French and become Greek. As

a victim of fate, she moves, from the first scene to the last, as by a

resistless impulse. Her voice has a low concentrated tone. Her movement

is not vehement, but intense. If she smiles, it is a wan gleam of

sadness, not of joy, as if the eyes that lighten for a moment saw all

the time the finger of fate pointing over her shoulder. The thin form,

graceful with intellectual dignity, not rounded with the ripeness of

young womanhood, the statuesque simplicity and severity of the drapery,

the pale cheek, the sad lips, the small eyes--these are accessory to the

whole impression, the melancholy ornaments of the tragic scene. Her fine

instinct avoids the romantic and melodramatic touches which, however

seductive to an actor who aims at effect, would destroy at once that

breadth and unity which characterize her best impersonations. Wherever

the idea of fate inspires the tragedy, or can properly be introduced

as the motive, there Rachel is unsurpassed and unapproachable. Her

stillness, her solemnity, her intensity; the want of mouthing, of

ranting, of all extravagance; the slight movement of the arms, and the

subtle inflections of the voice which are more expressive than gestures,

haunt the memory and float through the mind afterwards as the figure of

Francesca di Rimini, in the exquisite picture of Ary Scheffer, sweeps,

full of woe, which every line suggests, across the vision of Dante and

his guide.

There was, naturally, the greatest curiosity and a good deal of

scepticism about Rachel's power in the modern drama, the melodrama of

Victor Hugo, and the social drama of Scribe. But her appearance in the

"Angelo" of Victor Hugo and in "Adrienne Lecouvreur" of Scribe satisfied

the curiosity and routed the scepticism. It was pleasant after the vast

and imposing forms, the tearless tragedy of Greek story, to see the

mastery of this genius in the conditions of a life and spirit with

which we were more familiar and sympathetic. It was clear that the same

passionate intensity which, united with the most exquisite perceptions,

enabled her so perfectly to restore the Greek spirit to the Greek form,

would as adequately represent the voluptuous southern life. If in the

old drama she was sculpture, so in the modern she was painting, not only

with the flowing outline, but with all the purple, palpitating hues of

passion.

This is best manifested in the "Angelo", of which the scene is laid in

old Padua and is, therefore, full of the mysterious spirit of mediaeval

Italian, and especially Venetian life. Miss Cushman has played in an

English version of this drama, called the "Actress of Padua". But it is

hardly grandiose enough in its proportions to be very well adapted to

the talent of Miss Cushman. It was remarkable how perfectly the genius

which had, the evening before, adequately represented Phèdre, could

impersonate the ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. The old Italian

romances were made real in a moment. The dim chambers, the dusky

passages, the sliding doors, the vivid contrast of gayety and gloom, the

dance in the palace and the duel in the garden, the smile on the lip and

the stab at the heart, the capricious feeling, the impetuous action, the

picturesque costume of life and society--all the substance and the form

of our ideas of characteristic Italian life, are comprised in Rachel's

Thisbe and Angelo.

There is one scene in that play not to be forgotten. The curtain rises

and shows a vast, dim chamber in the castle, with a heavily-curtained

bed, and massive carved furniture, and a deep bay-window. It is night; a

candle burns upon the table, feebly flickering in the gloom of the great

chamber. Angelo, whom Thisbe loves, and who pretends to love her, is

sitting uneasily in the chamber with his mistress, whose name we have

forgotten, but whom he really loves. Thisbe is suspicious of his want of

faith, and burns with jealousy, but has had no proof.

A gust of wind, the rustle of the tapestry, the creak of a bough in the

garden, the note of a night bird, any slightest sound makes the lovers

start and quiver, as if they stood upon the verge of an imminent peril.

Suddenly they both start at a low noise, apparently in the wall. Angelo

rises and looks about, his mistress shivers and shrinks, but they

discover nothing. The night deepens around them. The sense of calamity

and catastrophe rises in the spectator's mind. They start again. This

time they hear a louder noise, and glance helplessly around and feebly

try to scoff away their terror. The sound dies away, and they converse

in appalled and fragmentary whispers. But again a low, cautious, sliding

noise arrests them. Angelo springs up, runs for his hat and cloak, blows

out the candle upon the table, and escapes from the room, while his

mistress totters to the bed and throws herself upon it, feigning sleep.

The stage is left unoccupied, while the just-extinguished candle still

smokes upon the table, and the sidelights and footlights, being lowered,

wrap the vast chamber in deeper gloom.

At this moment a small secret door in the wall at the bottom of the

stage slips aside, and Thisbe, still wearing her ball-dress, and with

a head-dress of gold sequins flashing in her black hair, is discovered

crouching in the aperture, holding an antique lamp in one hand, a little

raised, and with the other softly putting aside the door, while, bending

forward with a cat-like stillness, she glares around the chamber with

eager eyes, that flash upon everything at once. The picture is perfect.

The light falls from the raised lamp upon this jewelled figure crouching

in the darkness at the bottom of the stage. Judith was not more

terrible; Lucrezia Borgia not more superb. But, magnificent as it is,

it is a moment of such intense interest that applause is suspended. The

house is breathless, for it is but the tiger's crouch that precedes

the spring. The next instant she is upon the floor of the chamber, and,

still bending slightly forward to express the eager concentration of

her mind, she glances at the bed and the figure upon it with a scornful

sneer, that indicates how clearly she sees the pretence of sleep, and

how evidently somebody has been there, or something has happened which

justifies all her suspicion, and then, with panther-like celerity, she

darts about the chamber to find some trace of the false lover--a hat,

a glove, a plume, a cloak--to make assurance doubly sure. But there

is nothing upon the floor, nothing upon the table, nothing in the

bay-window, nothing upon the sofa, nor in the huge carved chairs; there

is nothing that proves the treachery she suspects. But her restless eye

leads her springing foot from one corner of the chamber to the other.

Speed increases with the lessening chance of proof; the eye flashes

more and more fiercely; the breast heaves; the hand clinches; the cheek

burns, until, suddenly, in the very moment of despair, having as yet

spoken no word, she comes to the table, sees the candle, which still

smokes, and drawing herself up with fearful calmness, her cheeks grow

pallid, the lips livid, the hands relax, the eye deadens as with a

blow, and, with the despairing conviction that she is betrayed, her

heart-break sighs itself out in a cold whisper, "_Elle fume encore_".

In this she is as purely dramatic as in other plays she is classical.

But neither in the one nor the other is there a look, or a gesture, or

a word, which is not harmonious with the spirit of the style and the

character of the person represented.

This is pure passion as the other is implacable fate. There is something

so tearfully human in it that you are touched as by a picture of the

Magdalen. Every representation of Rachel is preserved in your memory

with the first sights of the great statues and the famous pictures.

In the French translation of Schiller's "Mary Stuart", a character which

may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English, Rachel is

not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation, the poetic

enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the

lovely queen, are made tragically real by her representation. Perhaps it

is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one

of the characters which the imagination has chosen to take from history

and decorate with immortal grace. It cares less for what the woman

Mary was, than to have a figure standing upon the fact of history, but

radiant with the beauty of poetry. It has invested her with a loveliness

that is perhaps unreal, with a tenderness and sweetness that were

possibly foreign to her character, and with a general fascination and

good intention which a contemporary might not have discovered.

It has made her the ideal of unfortunate womanhood. For it seemed that a

fate so tragic deserved a fame so fair. Perhaps the weakness which Mary

had, and which Lady Jane Grey had not, have been the very reasons why

the unfortunate, unhappy Queen Mary is dearer to our human sympathies

than the unfortunate Lady Jane. Perhaps because it was a woman

who pursued her, the instinct of men has sought to restore, by the

canonization of Mary, the womanly ideal injured by Elizabeth.

But, whatever be the reason, there is no question that we judge Mary

Queen of Scots more by the imagination than by historical rigor; and it

is Mary, as the mind insists upon having her, that Rachel represents.

She conspires with the imagination to complete the ideal of Mary. It is

a story told in sad music to which we listen; it is a mournful panorama,

unfolding itself scene by scene, upon which we gaze. Lost in soft

melancholy, the figures of the drama move before us as in a tragic

dream. But after seeing Rachel's Mary we can see no other. If we meet

her in history or romance, it is always that figure, those pensive eyes,

forecasting a fearful doom, that voice whose music is cast in a hopeless

minor. It is thus that dramatic genius creates, and poetry disputes with

history.

Jules Janin says that Rachel is best in those parts of this play where

the anger of the Queen is more prominent than the grief of the woman.

This is true to a certain extent. It was not difficult to see that the

fierceness was more natural than the tenderness to the woman Rachel, and

that, therefore, those parts had a reality which the tenderness had not.

But the performance was symmetrical, and, so far as the mere acting was

concerned, the woman was as well rendered as the Queen. The want of the

spectacle was this, and it is, we fully grant, the defect of all her

similar personations: you felt that it was only intellect feigning

heart, though with perfect success. The tenderness and caprice of the

woman, and the pride and dignity of the Queen, are all there. She would

not be the consummate artist she is if she could not give them. But even

through your tears you see that it is art. It is, indeed, concealed

by its own perfection, but it is not lost in the loveliness of the

character it suggests, as might be the case with a greatly inferior

artist. You are half sure, as you own the excellence, that much of the

tender effect arises from your feeling that Rachel, as she represents a

woman so different from herself, regards her rôle with sad longing and

vague regret. When we say that she is the ideal Mary, we mean strictly

the artistic ideal.

The late Charlotte Brontë, in her novel of _Villette_, has described

Rachel with a splendor of rhetoric that is very unusual with the author

of _Jane Eyre_. But in the style of the description it is very easy

to see the influence of the thing described. It has a picturesque

stateliness, a grave grace and musical pomp, which all belong to the

genius of Rachel. Even the soft gloom of her eyes is in it; a gloom

and a fire which no one could more subtly feel than Miss Brontë. Her

description is the best that we have seen of what is, in its nature,

after all indescribable.

As the fame of an actor or singer is necessarily traditional, and

rapidly perishes, it is not easy to compare one with another when they

are not contemporaries, for you find yourself only comparing vague

impressions and reports. Of Roscius and Betterton we must accept the

names and allow the fame. We can see Reynolds's pictures, we can hear

Handel's music, we can read Goldsmith's and Johnson's books; but of

Garrick what can we have but a name, and somebody's account of what he

thought of Garrick? The touch of Shakespeare we can feel as well as did

our ancestors, and our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren will

feel it as fully as we. But the voice of Malibran lingers in only a few

happy memories, and we know Mrs. Siddons better by Sir Joshua's portrait

than by her own glories.

It is, therefore, impossible to decide what relative rank among

actresses Rachel occupies. Mrs. Jameson, in her _Common-Place Book of

Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies_, says some sharp things of her, and

Mrs. Jameson is a critic of too delicate a mind not to be heeded. The

general view she takes of Rachel is, that she is not a great artist in

the true sense of the word. She is a finished actress, but not an artist

fine enough to conceal her art. The last scene of "Adrienne Lecouvreur"

seems to Mrs. Jameson a mistake and a failure--so beyond the limits

of art, a mere imitation of a repulsive physical fact; and finally

she pronounces that Rachel has talent but not genius; while it is the

"entire absence of the high poetic element which distinguishes Rachel

as an actress, and places her at such an immeasurable distance from Mrs.

Siddons, that it shocks me to hear their names together".

It may be fairly questioned, whether a woman so refined and cultivated

as Mrs. Jameson may not have judged Rachel rather by her wants as a

woman than by her excellence as an artist. That the terrible last scene

of "Adrienne" is a harrowing imitation of nature we have conceded. The

play is, in truth, a mere melodrama. It is a vaudeville of costume,

with a frightful catastrophe appended. But as an artist she seems to us

perfectly to render the part. She does not make it more than it is, but

she makes it just what it is--a proud, injured, and betrayed actress.

Whether the accuracy of her imitation is not justified by the intention,

which alone can redeem imitation, will remain a question to each

spectator. Mrs. Jameson also insists that Rachel's power is extraneous,

and excites only the senses and the intellect, and that she has become a

hard mannerist.

In our remarks upon this celebrated actress we have viewed her simply

as an artist, and not as a woman. She appeals to the public only in that

way. Perhaps the sinister stories that are told of her private career

only serve to confirm and deepen the feeling of the intensity of her

nature, she so skilfully represents the most fearful passions, not

from the perception of genius alone, but from the knowledge of actual

experience. Certainly no woman's character has been more freely

discussed, and no public performer of any kind ever sought so little

to propitiate her audience. She has seemed to scorn the world she

fascinated; and like a superb snake, with glittering eyes and cold

crest, to gloat over the terror which held her captives thrall. Hence it

is not surprising to one who has seen her a great deal, and has felt the

peculiarity of her power, to find in Lehmann's portrait of her--which

is, perhaps, the most characteristic of all that have been taken--a

subtle resemblance to a serpent, which is at once fascinating and

startling. Mrs. Jameson mentions that when she first saw her in

Hermione, she was reminded of a Lamia, or serpent nature in woman's

form. As you look at Lehmann's portrait this feeling is irresistible.

The head bends slightly forward, with a darting, eager movement, yet

with a fine, lithe grace. The keen, bright eyes glance a little askance,

with a want of free confidence. There are a slim smoothness, a silent

alertness, in the general impression--a nervous, susceptible intentness,

united with undeniable beauty, that recall the deadly nightshade among

flowers and Keats's "Lamia" among poems. The portrait would fully

interpret the poem, She looked the lovely Lamia upon the verge of

flight, at the instant when she felt the calm, inexorable eye of

criticism and detection. In a moment, while you gaze, that form will be

prone, those bright, cold eyes malignant, that wily grace will undulate

into motion and glide away. You feel that there is no human depravity

that Rachel could not adequately represent. Perhaps you doubt if she

could be Desdemona or Imogen.

Rachel is great, but there is something greater. It is not an entirely

satisfactory display of human power, even in its own way. Her triumph

is that of an actress. It is only an intellectual success. For however

subtly dramatic genius may seize and represent the forms of human

emotion, yet the representation is most perfect--not, indeed, as art,

but as a satisfaction of the heart--when the personal character of the

artist interests those emotions to himself, and thus sympathetically

affects the audience. Rachel's Mary is a perfect portrait of Mary;

but it is only a picture, after all, that expresses the difference in

feeling between the impression of her personation and that which will

be derived from another woman. The fiercer and darker passions of human

nature are depicted by her with terrible force-power. They throb with

reality; but in the soft, superior shades you still feel that it is

emotion, intellectually discerned.

Such facts easily explain the present defection of Paris from Rachel.

Ristori has come up from Italy, and with one woman's smile, "full of the

warm South", she has lured Paris to her feet. There is no more sudden

and entire desertion of a favorite recorded in all the annals of popular

caprice. The feuilletonists, who are a power in Paris, have gone over in

a body to the beautiful Italian. They describe her triumphs precisely as

they described Rachel's. The old ecstasies are burnished up for the new

occasion. In a country like ours, where there is no theatre, and where

the dramatic differences only creep into an advertisement, such an

excitement as Paris feels, from such a cause and at such a time, is

simply incredible. It is, possibly, as real and dignified an excitement

as that which New York experienced upon the decease of the late lamented

William Poole.

There are various explanations of this fall of Rachel, without resorting

to the theory of superior genius in Ristori. Undoubtedly Paris loves

novelty, and has been impatient of the disdainful sway of Rachel. Her

reputed avarice and want of courtesy and generosity, her total failure

to charm as a woman while she fascinated as an artist, have, naturally

enough, after many years, fatigued the patience and disappointed

the humane sympathies of a public whose mere curiosity had been long

satisfied. Rachel seemed only more Parisian than Paris.

But when over the Alps came Ristori, lovely as a woman and eminent as

an artist, then there was a new person who could make Paris weep at her

greatness upon the stage, and her goodness away from it; who, in the

plenitude of her first success, could shame the reported avarice of her

fallen rival by offers of the sincerest generosity. When Ristori came,

who seemed to have a virtue for every vice of Rachel, Paris, with one

accord, hurried with hymns and incense to the new divinity. We regard it

as a homage to the woman no less than a tribute to the artist. We regard

it as saying to Rachel that if, being humane and lovely, she chose, from

pride, to rule by scornful superiority, she has greatly erred; or if,

being really unlovely, she has held this crown only by her genius, she

has yet to see human nature justify itself by preferring a humane to an

inhuman power. The most splendid illustration of this kind of homage was

the career of Jenny Lind in America. It was rather the fashion among

the _dilettanti_ to undervalue her excellence as an artist. A popular

superficial criticism was fond of limiting her dramatic power to

inferior rôles. She was denied passion and great artistic skill; she was

accused of tricks. But, even had these things been true, what a career

it was! It was unprecedented, and can never be repeated. Yet it was,

at bottom, the success of a saint rather than that of a singer. Had she

been a worse or better artist the homage would have been the same. If

the public--and it is a happy fact--can love the woman even more than it

admires the artist, her triumph is assured.

We look upon the enthusiasm for Ristori by no means as an unmingled

tribute to superior genius. We make no question of her actual womanly

charms. Even if appearance of generosity, of simplicity, and sweetness

were only deep Italian wile, and assumed, upon profound observation and

consideration of human nature and the circumstances of Rachel's position

in Paris, merely for the purpose of exciting applause, that applause

would still be genuine, and would prove the loyalty of the public mind

to what is truly lovely. It was our good-fortune to see Ristori in

Italy, where, for the last ten years, she has been accounted the first

Italian actress. She has there been seen by all the travelling world of

Europe and America. It is not possible that so great a talent, as the

Parisians consider it, could have been so long overlooked. We well

remember Ristori as a charming, natural, simple actress; but of the

surpassing power which Paris has discovered probably very few of us

retain any recollection.