O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught
So often has been quaffed,
That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
The Mother Dolorous!
Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe,
Upon the earth below,
Than ’neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours,
Have risen flowers!
O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!
O mirror of all grace!
Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
Man’s sins away;
Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
Unto my sad complaint;
Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
Who hearest all.
She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and
follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one difficulty, or,
to use her own words,—
Mais, comme vous savez qu’aux voûtes éternelles,
Malgré moi, tend mon vol,
Soufflez sur mon étoile et détachez mes ailes,
Pour m’enchainer au sol;
her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) and
she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!
The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be
satisfied as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter
satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the
world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the
vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and
procure reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has
re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or
alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship over
public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his
clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a
little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbors across
the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their
religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to
put sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane.
He shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails
himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a vehicle
for a scene-painter’s skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to
wear a new dress.
M. Dumas’s piece of “Kean” is not quite so sublime; it was brought out
by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit
be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and
received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners.
As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you
find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely
to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him,
especially the two present. As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to
her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more
seducing person still—no less a person than the Prince of Wales! who
presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation
concerning Kean. “This man,” says his Royal Highness, “is the very pink
of fashion. Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I myself only
an insignificant private gentleman. He has a reputation among ladies,
for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine.”
This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince;
the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for
which the other was so notorious.
Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the “Coal
Hole,” where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty
combat with a notorious boxer. This scene was received by the audience
with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals,
as a faultless picture of English manners. “The Coal Hole” being on the
banks of the Thames, a nobleman—LORD MELBOURN!—has chosen the tavern as
a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in
waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is
enamored. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time,
saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A
violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away,
disappointed, to meditate revenge. Kean’s triumphs continue through all
the acts: the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince
becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully
jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where,
unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels
ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly
insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness determines to send
HIM TO BOTANY BAY. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to
New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him,
previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!
This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the
people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral,
because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to
triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code
of morals, success among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of
virtue.
The sacred personage introduced in Dumas’s play behind a cloud, figures
bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at
Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume is
exactly that of Carlo Dolce’s Madonna; and an ingenious fable is
arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the
Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters is
Jean le Précurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is
beheaded by orders of that sovereign.
In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and
the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain
number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian
officer enters, exclaiming, “Chantez nous quelques chansons de
Jerusalem,” and the request is refused in the language of the Psalm.
Belshazzar’s Feast is given in a grand tableau, after Martin’s picture.
That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast
numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the
lower classes delight in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre
of the Porte St. Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious
success, no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other
theatres have produced.
The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will
question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom
they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion,
there is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude
moral. The Boulevard writers don’t pretend to “tabernacles” and divine
gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned. If they take a
story from the sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad
liberties with the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the
agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted
criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is
vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant
king roars out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads
for the life of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of
the scene. “Ah, le gredin!” growls an indignant countryman. “Quel
monstre!” says a grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying
like babies, and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar.
Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so
especially are the former affected, that at Franconi’s, where the
battles of the Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in
the ranks of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a
man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line,
he is promoted to be an officer—an acting officer. If he conducts
himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if
ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all,
drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the
lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these
Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers and old
guard. They will not consent to be beaten every night, even in play; to
be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against their
beloved Emperor. Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and
pleasant child-like simplicity.
So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common
people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made
notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and
kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or
two favorite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast
success at the Porte Saint Martin was “La Duchesse de la Vauballière.”
The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in
the first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballière, a
terrible roué, the farmer’s landlord, and the intimate friend of
Philippe d’Orléans, the Regent of France.
Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but
Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his
dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who
compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that,
beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her
husband and herself.
Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner:
he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters
into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he
determines to make away with her altogether.
For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor,
bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for
Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor
turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding
that he has been thus committing murder on his true love!
Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the heroine;
no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and,
accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth,
through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who,
after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge
in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous
notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his
dying day.
Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his
Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la
Vauballière; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not
the eldest son of old La Vauballière, the former Duke; then another
deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballière (who seems to have been
a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence,
the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and finally,
Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the
REG’LAR Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!
Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid
machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
“Hermann l’Ivrogne” is another piece of the same order; and though not
very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the
celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who “took to drinking ratafia, and
thought of poor Miss Bailey,”—a woman and the bottle have been the
cause of Hermann’s ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced
from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives
himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that
force, and not infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress’s ruin,
the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the
infame ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and
excellently well acted, here ensues! Hermann proposes to the Count, on
the eve of their duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse
the unhappy Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already
married, and the student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was
to restore, at all events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his
revenge, and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter
Hermann’s apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the
news that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the
policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.
I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is
similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an
aristocrat,—a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to
condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good
reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of
the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which
they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the
theatre lives upon traditions: and don’t let us be too scornful at such
simple legends as are handed down by the people from race to race.
Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against the
great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long,
therefore, may fat épiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest
prolétaires shake their fists, shouting—“Gredin, scélérat, monstre de
marquis!” and such republican cries.
Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of
dislike against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have
we (the writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding pages, a
couple of specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin,) in
which that great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be
miserably tricked, humiliated, and disappointed? A play of this class,
which, in the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of
good in it, was called “Le Maudit des Mers.” Le Maudit is a Dutch
captain, who, in the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their
knees at prayers, blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his
astonishment at beholding an archangel with a sword all covered with
flaming resin, who told him that as he, in this hour of danger, was too
daring, or too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming
the seas until he could find some being who would pray to heaven for
him!
Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this
purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts,
describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable
Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he,
in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of
Pizarro: and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau;
but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make
their appearance—“Treachery,” says the spirit, “cannot lessen thy
punishment;—crime will not obtain thy release—A la mer! à la mer!” and
the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed,
and sea-sick for a hundred years more.
But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in
America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian
costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington,
he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the
curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with
angels on the decks and “sweet little cherubs” fluttering about the
shrouds and the poop, appear to receive him.
This piece was acted at Franconi’s, where, for once, an angel-ship was
introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is
satirized by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding
us. In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal
(satires upon the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the
small theatres exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs.
Green and Monck Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter
at the expense of John Bull. Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and
Milor Hanneton, appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them
communicates to the public the philosophic observations which were made
in the course of his aërial tour.
“On leaving Vauxhall,” says his lordship, “we drank a bottle of
Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a
few biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two
hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: lunch, bottled
porter: at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold,
cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity
of the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below: more
bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near
Dunkirk,—night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night
confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The
sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle
and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded
this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for
dinner.”
The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many
better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays,
for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism,
concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man
of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress—
Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle,
C’est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
On s’y couche à minuit, et l’on s’y lève tard;
Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu’une boxade,
Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade,
Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster;
Et n’était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume,
Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil oeil s’allume,
Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus,
Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j’ai lus,
Il n’en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique
Que cette nation qu’on nomme Britannique!
The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is
Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months
in England, as an attaché to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places
the heroine of his tale in a petit réduit près le Strand, “with a green
and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied
you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the
perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!” He next places her—
Dans un square écarté, morne et couverte de givre,
Où se cache un hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is
truly unhappy in that village.
Arthur dessèche et meurt. Dans la ville de Sterne,
Rien qu’en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer
Il n’aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.
Liston ne le fait plus sourciller! Il rumine
Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier,
Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine,
Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières,
Les parieurs d’Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
Dont il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d’argent!
Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L’heureux poète!
“L’heureux poète” indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so
happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. “The
bath of Asia, with green jalousies,” in which the lady dwells; “the old
hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;”—were ever such things
heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes,
the vermin, whom he meets in the street,—how great and happy are all
these discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and
“gin,” “cokneys,” and the “quaterly” have not the least effect upon
him! And this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires
Williams Shakspear, the “grave et vieux prophète,” as he calls him, and
never, for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything
absurd!
I don’t know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England;
but his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in
Kean, the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit,
with a speech beginning, “My Lords and Gentlemen;” and a company of
Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable “Coal hole”), and they
all wear PINAFORES; as if the British female were in the invariable
habit of wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it.
There was another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the
subject of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was
made to play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a
duel with Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of
Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the
Queen’s favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from
shouting they proceeded to pelting; and pasteboard-brickbats and
cabbages came flying among the representatives of our hereditary
legislature. At this unpleasant juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the
Secretary-at-War, rises and calls in the military; the act ends in a
general row, and the ignominious fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a
brickbat from the mob!
The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of
conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the
solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the
perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them.
Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pigtail, and
spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has,
invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long
white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old
caricatures after the peace, when Vernet designed him.
And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of the
“Naufrage de la Meduse,” the first act is laid on board an English
ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue or green
coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the color
accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!
Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any
more remarks. The force of blundering can go no further. Would a
Chinese playwright or painter have stranger notions about the
barbarians than our neighbors, who are separated from us but by two
hours of salt water?