In France the theatre is living; you see something really good, and
good throughout. Not one touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast
of tone, which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic
illusion, is tolerated here. For the first time in my life, I saw
something represented in a style uniformly good, and should have found
sufficient proof, if I had needed any, that all men will prefer what
is good to what is bad, if only a fair opportunity for choice
be allowed. When I came here, my first thought was to go and see
Mademoiselle Rachel. I was sure that in her I should find a true
genius. I went to see her seven or eight times, always in parts that
required great force of soul, and purity of taste, even to conceive
them, and only once had reason to find fault with her. On one single
occasion, I saw her violate the harmony of the character, to produce
effect at a particular moment; but, almost invariably, I found her
a true artist, worthy Greece, and worthy at many moments to have her
conceptions immortalized in marble.
Her range even in high tragedy is limited. She can only express the
darker passions, and grief in its most desolate aspects. Nature has
not gifted her with those softer and more flowery attributes, that
lend to pathos its utmost tenderness. She does not melt to tears, or
calm or elevate the heart by the presence of that tragic beauty that
needs all the assaults of fate to make it show its immortal sweetness.
Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some
severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements
around her. On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge.
I admired her more in Phèdre than in any other part in which I
saw her; the guilty love inspired by the hatred of a goddess was
expressed, in all its symptoms, with a force and terrible naturalness,
that almost suffocated the beholder. After she had taken the poison,
the exhaustion and paralysis of the system,--the sad, cold, calm
submission to Fate,--were still more grand.
I had heard so much about the power of her eye in one fixed look, and
the expression she could concentrate in a single word, that the utmost
results could only satisfy my expectations. It is, indeed, something
magnificent to see the dark cloud give out such sparks, each one fit
to deal a separate death; but it was not that I admired most in her.
It was the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part,
and the sustained purity with which she represented it.
The French language from her lips is a divine dialect; it is stripped
of its national and personal peculiarities, and becomes what any
language must, moulded by such a genius, the pure music of the heart
and soul. I never could remember her tone in speaking any word; it
was too perfect; you had received the thought quite direct. Yet, had
I never heard her speak a word, my mind would be filled by her
attitudes. Nothing more graceful can be conceived, nor could the
genius of sculpture surpass her management of the antique drapery.
She has no beauty, except in the intellectual severity of her outline,
and she bears marks of race, that will grow stronger every year,
and make her ugly at last. Still it will be a _grandiose_, gypsy,
or rather Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some
tragic parts. Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends
force enough upon a part to furnish out a dozen common lives.