blue-and-gold bonbonnière of a theater called the “Rabelais,” in
Montmartre. Here, as the title suggests, the comedies and farces are
thoroughly Rabelaisian. It might even be averred that they are more so
than elsewhere, which is saying a great deal. Here farces like “La
Vertu De Nini,” “La Journée d’une Demi-Mondaine” and “Le Corset de
Germaine” pack the small auditorium nightly. Many of these are written
to a point where the curtain discreetly drops upon the situation, but
none of them harbors a line or a gesture of vulgarity. It is not worth
while having trouble with the police, and happily the French policeman
is both broad-minded and discreet in enforcing an arbitrary rule. When
you ask a policeman here why a thing is prohibited he will shrug his
shoulders, stare at you in astonishment, and reply brusquely: “It is
prohibited because it is prohibited!”
Which settles all further argument.
There are but two things which I find absolutely interdicted: malicious
satires against the Government, and breaking the Parisian peace. The
rest, which has merely to do with “l’Amour,” seems to the policemen not
worth bothering their heads about.
A “_’Cipal_” (municipal guard) is detailed during a performance of any
kind in Paris in every theater, music-hall or _cabaret_, to jot down in
a small black-covered book anything which may offend his sense of
delicacy, but he is generally too hugely amused in watching the stage
to do so. During moments like these his ruddy visage, with its bristly
mustache, at other times so stern, is wreathed in wrinkles of delight,
and his formidable short sword sleeps peacefully in its scabbard. These
are the lighter hours of his existence; where he is needed you will
find him brave as a bulldog and quick as a cat, and intelligent and
honest as well. You cannot bribe a French policeman.
The one who generously offered me half his seat at a crowded
performance the other night poured forth his opinions _sotto voce_
during the second act of a risqué comedy. He was sincere and
enthusiastic in his praise of our President and struck his
brass-buttoned chest as he pronounced him a good man and a brave
soldier; however, I regret that some of his views of La Fayette are
unfit for publication, as he regarded him as a traitor to France.
“_Oui, monsieur_,” he said, savagely; “a man who gave his strength and
knowledge and power to another country when that man belonged to our
army was a traitor.” He said other things, too, about the gentleman,
but they will not bear a graceful translation.
Below the Rabelais, past an iron grill and at the end of a cobbled
court in the Rue Chaptal, is the “Grand Guignol.” Its oak interior in
carved Gothic was once the studio of the celebrated painter,
Rochegrosse, and resembles at first glance, except for the boxes
running beneath the low choir gallery, the lecture room of a modern
Episcopal church. The prevailing tone of the room, gray corduroy and
oak, is thoroughly restful. From the spandrelled ceiling hang iron
chandeliers of ecclesiastical design. A paneled frieze of allegorical
paintings, representing the human passions—envy, hate and
jealousy—enrich the cove. Carved angels support the corbels of the
ceiling beams, and a square of rare Gobelins tapestry enriches the wall
back of the gallery. A simple proscenium, in keeping with the rest of
this exquisite interior, fills the end of the room.
[Illustration:
Drawing by F. Berkeley Smith
PAULINE]
There is a small foyer, too, with a Gothic stairway, which contains a
unique collection of steel engravings of players of bygone days. Snug
in an alcove beside this interesting _promenoir_ there is a tiny bar.
At nine the boxes beneath the Sunday-school gallery are brilliant with
women’s toilets, framed by the white shirt-fronts and sombre black of
their well-groomed escorts. Such is this charming after-dinner theater,
which has been so appropriately named “The Big Punch and Judy,” where
very cleverly constructed short plays are presented, such as
“Scrupules,” “Une Affaire de Mœurs,” “La Coopérative” and “La Fétiche.”
They are plays of dramatic incident rather than of plots. Some of them
are as risqué as the most daring at the Rabelais. Some are full of
pathos, others screamingly funny, and still others revolting in their
realism.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
LA FÉTICHE AT THE GRAND GUIGNOL
Enter the Murderer]
Of the last class is “Une Affaire de Mœurs.” In this the identity of a
famous judge of the high court is discovered by two _demi-mondaines_
who are dining with him in a _cabinet particulier_. The judge has at
one time sentenced the lover of one of the women and she threatens to
expose him in revenge. He offers money, and finally half his fortune to
quiet her, but the woman is determined to avenge her lover. Then his
terror at the thought of scandal and disgrace brings on a stroke of
apoplexy. The two women, now thoroughly frightened, send the old waiter
out for a doctor. He hurries back with a young physician whom he finds
carousing with his friends in the café below. The young man stands
aghast as he recognizes the form in the chair; it is his father. He
listens at the heart, then buries his head in his hands. The judge is
dead. The women huddle in a corner terrified. The room is in disorder,
reeking with the odor of cigarettes and spilled wine.
“Come, monsieur,” gently urges the aged garçon. “Pull yourself
together, we must get the body into a cab unnoticed.”
The realization of the disgrace and publicity of the _affaire_ when it
will be known in the café below, braces the son to act quickly. He
suggests to the garçon that the body be removed by the back stairs.
“There is no back stairs, monsieur,” confesses the garçon. “The only
way out is by the main stairway and through the café. We will walk
monsieur out and support him between us. I have helped to do it once
before that way; no one will suspect—they will think monsieur is
drunk.”
Together they put on the Inverness and, adjusting the opera hat of the
deceased and supporting the body beneath the arms, walk slowly with it
to the door leading to the stairs, the two women preceding them,
singing hysterically the _marche des pompiers_!
As the curtain fell the audience seemed in a stupor. A woman beside me
sat staring at the floor, crying. Men coughed and remained silent. Not
until the pianist in the foyer struck up a lively polka did they leave
their seats for a little cognac and a breath of air.
Just such realism is typical of the Grand Guignol.
Even smaller than the Grand Guignol is the cozy “Théâtre des
Mathurins,” with a pretty foyer twice the size of its small auditorium,
which scarcely holds two hundred.
Here short plays like “Monsieur Camille,” “Le Quadrille” and “Les Deux
Courtisanes” are played with rare finish by De Marcy, Cora Lapercerie,
and other famous beauties of the Parisian stage.
During the _entr’actes_ a shutter over an archway of the foyer opens
and the head of a celebrated singing satirist is thrust out from the
dark closet like the punctual cuckoo in the clock. During the
intermission he sings his original songs to the listening throng, a
mixture of the _grand-_ and the _demi-monde_ promenading below.
[Illustration:
Photo by Reutlinger, Paris
CARMEN DEVILLERS
“Gil Blas,” First Prize Beauty]
Most diminutive of them all is the “Théâtre des Capucines,” whose
auditorium is no larger than a private salon. This _intime_ playhouse
is frequented by the most exclusive audience to be found in Paris.
Before the curtain rises it resembles a drawing-room filled with a
society gathering for amateur theatricals. The walls of yellow brocade,
with a delicate decoration of nasturtiums, gives it even more the air
of a private drawing-room, and the tiny stage seems to have been
erected for the occasion. Only when the curtain rises is the illusion
dispelled, for at the Capucines the short comedies are rendered by many
of the most celebrated players of the French stage.
Here the great Gémier plays “Daisy,” in which his portrayal of a
race-track thief, jealous over his sweetheart Léa (Mademoiselle
Carlier), is a masterpiece of character acting.
Other little comedies, like “Au Temps des Croisées,” by Guy de
Maupassant, with Gallo in the principal rôle, and Viviane Lavergne and
Max Dearly in “Chonchette,” with charming Thérèse Berka, leave little
to wonder that the tiny Théâtre des Capucines is crowded nightly with
the most intelligent of Parisian society.
I found my old friend the Baron after the play at Pousset’s beginning
his midnight supper of “_écrevisses_” and beer, alone and in a
grumbling mood.
“_Ah! Ah! tant mieux!_ It is you, _mon ami_,” he cried. “Good, we shall
have supper together. It is fortunate that I find you. Do you know,” he
continued, motioning me to a seat beside him, “I have this evening been
to such a bad play, _Diable!_ It is a relief to get here. To rinse the
eyes, as we say, from such a gloomy _histoire_! One goes to the theater
to laugh, is it not, eh? Not to have what you call him—zee, zee blues.
“For three hours, my friend,” he continued, frowning at the memory of
it, “for three hours, _imaginez-vous_, I have been following a lot of
unhappy people into the horrors of Siberia. Those who survived until
the last act were finally put to death or separated brutally from those
dear to them. Many of them were blind. The heroine was forced to betray
her lover, who was finally led to execution before her eyes.
_Sapristi!_” and the Baron pounded his great fist on the table. Then,
choking with laughter over the humorous side of it so that he dropped
his monocle, he continued:
“It is to this I go to be amused, _mon Dieu_! I would rathzair be at a
funeral!”
Here the garçon interrupted us with the cognac.
“Tell me, Baron,” I said, as we lighted our cigars, “what, in your
opinion, has made the _bouis-bouis_ become so popular with you
Parisians? I have just come from the Capucines. It was not gloomy
there, I assure you; the little house was as gay as a tulip patch and
bubbling over with merriment.”
“Listen,” replied the Baron, putting his forefinger to his forehead
impressively. “The success of the little theaters with short plays
comes from the fact that nowadays a crisis has been reached in
theatrical affairs. The public, as it is after all for them that plays
are given, have put the author at his wits’ end to invent something
new. The old actors who are too sure of themselves have become
careless, and the young ones, in trying to create a personal _genre_,
end in attaining a _pose_ which, through its affectation, is always
lacking in art.
“Then there are the critics, who are always watching for ‘the little
beast,’ as we say, and who seem to discover only elephantine faults,
and finally there are the directors of the theaters, who are constantly
torn between their desire to please the public, satisfy the actor,
protect art, and fill their purses.”
“It is different with us,” I replied; “we have syndicates in charge of
our amusements. The personal desires of the players are not considered,
and the managerial head of the enterprise rarely knows or cares about
art.
“It is purely a business with him, like the running of a series of big
dry-goods stores, and so he hustles out on the road his companies
number one, two and three, and sits twirling his thumbs in his office
computing how much cash they will bring him back.
“And what were the conditions which brought this crisis you speak of?”
I asked, returning to the main subject.
“Ah, then you have not heard,” he replied, “of the investigation made
by Messieurs Allard and Vauxelles, who addressed themselves to the
directors of the principal theaters: Messieurs Porel, Claretie,
Antoine, _et al._, and to authors like Brieux and Hervieu. They
explained clearly where the trouble lies. In the first place, it is a
fact that the growing popularity of outdoor sports in France
constitutes a real danger for the theater. The love of physical
exercise, of bicycling, automobiling, of field sports and ballooning,
increases daily with us.
“It is excellent for the muscles, but when one has steered one’s
“tuff-tuff” all day or been driven through the clouds in a balloon, the
tired sportsman is in no condition nor frame of mind to enjoy in the
evening a serious play. Is it not so? It is imbecile to expect it of
him.
“Notice,” he went on, “that I am speaking of the Frenchman upon whom
physical exercise has more effect than on the Anglo-Saxon who has been
accustomed to it from his youth. With our impetuosity we overdo things.
Besides, the athlete is not a good spectator, for what is won for the
biceps is lost for the brain.
“What our good man of the world returning from a hard day’s sport must
have, is either his bed, or a light, gay _revue_ with perfect brain
rest during it. So he dines late and goes to the circus, or to the
performance of a _revue_, or to one of the small theaters, or to the
_bouis-bouis_, where the lightest of farce comedies sends him home in a
good humor. These latter miniature theaters have become so popular with
us that nearly every _quartier_ now has its _bouis-bouis_. They have
sprung up like weeds and steal an important part of the audience of the
serious theaters.
[Illustration:
Photo by Stebbing, Paris
A POPULAR STAR OF A REVUE]
“Then, too, the modern comforts we find in our restaurants and other
public places are lacking in our playhouses, whose interiors have
remained unchanged for more than half a century, and where one is badly
seated or stifled in a stuffy box. Again, the theater proper, once the
most moderate-priced of amusements, has become with us so expensive
that most bourgeois families or the average Parisian cannot afford to
go.
“Besides, in the serious theaters the _entr’actes_ have become
interminably long, the acts ridiculously short. We begin to have
enough, too, of what we term _pornographie_; of plays full of salacious
intrigue and of moral degeneracy, which most of our young authors seem
to revel in, and which they call ‘a slice of life (_une tranche de
vie_).’” He added earnestly:
“The Parisian wants gay plays, clever vaudeville, or little comedies
full of sparkling wit and humorous situations. The Parisian wants it
all the more because the stage lately has been too much under the
influence of foreigners like Ibsen, Sudermann, Hauptmann, Tolstoy and
the rest.” And the Baron added, with a wink:
[Illustration: THE SETTING OF A SOCIETY PLAY]
“It is, after all, an eternal exchange. They have taken from us what we
have taken from them. The Romantic school has nourished them, Georges
Sand has deeply influenced Russian literature. The type of the Ibsenian
woman is Georges Sand’s ‘Lélia’; even the last play of Dumas, that
‘Route de Thèbes,’ shows the influence of Ibsen. Dumas imitated Ibsen,
but remained himself. These foreign writers are the sons of our French
_romantiques_, who themselves were the sons of Schiller and Goethe,
just as they in turn were the sons of the eighteenth century and were
descended from Diderot and the Encyclopedists.
“But the public revolts against all this modern pessimism,” continued
my friend—“against Monsieur Hervieu, for example, because he tries to
prove in his plays that the stage of to-day is less pessimistic than of
old. But he can say all he wishes,” affirmed the Baron, warmly, “and
the dramatic world may insist that it used to be even sadder, that the
old playwrights made people die, that Camille was dead! that the ‘Femme
de Claude’ was dead! that the theaters in bygone days were sumptuous
slaughter-houses, becoming veritable battle-fields by the fifth act, as
in ‘L’Étrangère,’ ‘La Princesse George,’ and so many others. But what
do you want?” the Baron went on. “The public like it better, for when
the people in the play are killed off once and for all, the good
spectator has no more to worry over.” And the Baron pushed aside his
_écrevisses_.
“Everything is settled! nothing to think about,” he continued. “What
fault then do the public find in the modern plays? It is not that they
finish badly, but that they do not finish at all!
“The ‘dénouement’! Ah! There is a word,” cried the Baron, “that has the
gift of exasperating all our young authors. They cannot resign
themselves like Augier, Dumas and Sardou, to see on the stroke of
midnight the hero marry the heroine and virtue get its reward.
“All this is to them old-fashioned. The dénouement of Denise makes them
smile, and Francillon, whose heroine hasn’t really deceived her
husband, seems to them a farce. So, to finish in a newer way, they do
not finish at all. _Voilà!_ It is simpler, _Hein!_ but confess that it
isn’t any more difficult!
“It is this which depresses the bourgeois, who has come to the theater
to amuse himself. He comes out at the end of the play with one more
worry on his conscience. He leaves pensive and saddened and oppressed
by the gloominess of it all.
“In ‘L’Envers d’une Sainte,’ François de Curel sends his heroine back
to her convent, and Henry Becque ends ‘Les Corbeaux’ by a marriage
which makes you foresee a loveless life of misery and oppression. And
the proof of the growing distaste for these sad plays is, that when
they played ‘Ties’ at the Français lately, they felt obliged to give at
the end a little play in one act full of gaiety, so as to dry the
eyelids and expand the chest of all those who were going to bed.”
The hour had grown late, the café was deserted, and the Baron’s
_écrevisses_ had become cold. Outside two nighthawk cabs stood waiting
for a chance trip. Fog rose from the slime of the boulevard.
“Come and dine with me to-morrow night at the Café Anglais,” said the
Baron, as he tucked up the collar of his coat and entered his cab, “and
we will go up to the Rabelais and see ‘Le Corset de Germaine.’”
You must not judge the Théâtre du Châtelet by the melodramas which
accompany the gorgeous spectacles given there; where the ballets are
superb and the arts of scenic painting and stage mechanism are seen in
their perfection.
[Illustration: AFTER THE THEATER]
The melodrama I saw at the Châtelet concurrent with the spectacle in
twelve acts and twenty tableaux, was written especially for the chief
actor. The hero finds himself, as the curtain rises, in the interior of
India, where he soon falls in love with a beautiful princess, Zuléma by
name, the only daughter of a rich sheik.
It is love at first sight with Zuléma and the hero, and, before the
orchestra had played through a dozen bars, the lovers make hasty plans
for an elopement, taking with them Zuléma’s faithful maid.
The flight of the happy pair is fraught from that time on with an
exciting series of hairbreadth escapes, but these little incidents do
not seem to trouble the hero, he being constantly occupied with his
personal appearance.
In the second act the hero led the princess, still in the jeweled
tea-gown she wore when they met, up to the last barricade of an
elaborately carved oriental city, which is besieged by the English.
Here the hero bids the princess and her maid sit down while he rolls a
cigarette, and incidentally picks off with his gun, rested on the sill
of a convenient window, the leaders of the advancing army.
[Illustration: FINALE AT THE THÉÂTRE PORTE ST. MARTIN]
During all this fighting his gray leather leggings remain as spotless
as the flowing silk scarf heaving over his manly chest, sunburned by
adventure. All of which win for him not only the heart of the beautiful
Zuléma, but of every other fellow’s sweetheart throughout the depth and
breadth of the broad gallery.
At last the trio reach a ravine. As yet none of the princess’s jewels
have been stolen; she still wears the décolleté tea-gown and keeps
her manicured nails well polished. In the ravine, behind a
papier-maché rock, Zuléma discovers her irate father, who, having
been hot-footed up hill and down dale by the bloodthirsty _Anglais_,
is glad enough to come out of his hiding place to give his blessing
to the eloping pair, and bestow upon the powdered neck of his only
child a talisman—whereupon our hero pounds his chest and swears to
revenge their pursuers.
An old friend of mine who knows Fourteenth street better than I do
tells me that most of the spirit mediums who rent a residence along it
during the season when Coney Island is frozen over, never call upon a
lesser personage for a spirit answer than Napoléon Bonaparte! For who
would pay two dollars to hear Uncle John’s opinion of his only living
relative? It is surprising that the great Napoléon should make a
beeline for Fourteenth street before even going to wash up at the club.
But he does. “Ting-a-ling-a-ling,” goes the bell, and the head of the
First Empire tells from behind a turkey-red curtain all he knows as
precisely as a museum dwarf does his age. And so it is with our hero
when he stumbles across a witch in the ravine, who happens to be
occupied at the time in boiling a purée of certain poisonous herbs. She
gives him a morsel of her stew, which he straightway puts in his upper
pocket, and becomes as invulnerable against the bullets of the popping
enemy as a Sandy Hook target in front of a popgun. They fairly rattle
off him. The princess thinks it nothing short of Providence, and says
so. She and her serving-maid occupy themselves with their fancy work at
the bottom of the secret fastness while our hero with the magnetic eye
peers over an adjoining rock, and the father of the fair Zuléma up
stage keeps sharp watch of the enemy from beneath the folds of his
voluminous cloak.
And so the day passes and night comes on apace and the stars glitter in
pairs in the canvas heavens. No sound breaks the stillness of the night
save the creepy titter of violins in the orchestra.
[Illustration:
Photo by Reutlinger, Paris
MLLE. YAHNE OF THE THÉÂTRE ATHÉNÉE]
Now the ravine goes black as a solio print in the sun, and then pales
to violet. The ballet has begun. In swinging rhythm a hundred shapely
_coryphées_ glide and pirouette towards the footlights, withdrawing
among the pillars of a golden temple to give place to a hundred others
advancing.
These ballet girls are French and can dance.
Calcium lights sizzle and hiss from the gallery and from the upper
boxes. Simultaneously, their violet screens change with a click to
azure, now to gold. Carmanillo, the _première danseuse_, is whirling in
a circle as Amardi taught her to do so well years ago in Milan. When
Carmanillo dances she scarcely seems to touch the stage, but when she
walks on the flat of her feet, as all ballet women do, she has the
awkward gait of an acrobat.
A veil midway down the vast stage lifts, disclosing an oriental city. A
cortège of slaves advances, followed by another line of _coryphées_.
Behind this barrier of grace and color, come the retinue of a barbaric
court, gorgeously costumed, and headed by white Arabian horses,
caparisoned in turquoise and gold. The favorite of the Sultan is borne
past, reclining on a crimson velvet litter.
A second veil lifts, disclosing in the hazy distance the limits of the
city; spires, domes and minarets are bathed in a glow of golden light.
The depth of the great stage has been reached, and in reality it is
nearly the length of a Parisian block. Upon the topmost pinnacle of
this apotheosis of color stands a woman, nude, her hair glittering in
jewels.
In the royal box before which the cortège has passed rests the hero for
whom the fête has been given. He is still in his spotless leggings. He
accepts the homage of the conquered city condescendingly. With him it
is a nightly matter of fact. The fair Zuléma is by his side. Her maid
has had time to don a Paris hat, but Zuléma clings to her tea-gown and
gazes in adoration at the hero. A delicious waltz swells up from the
orchestra. The stage is swarming now with whirling, kicking
_coryphées_; more horses clatter in over planking, followed by more
swaying palanquins; the scene resembles a kaleidoscope of ever changing
color, costume and light.
Trumpets blaze from the ramparts of the city, a red fire burns in the
wings, and down comes the curtain.
Such is the Châtelet.
As a spectacle it is as perfect as the best choreographic brains can
make it.