Lucile of the _Bourgeois gentilhomme_, in which Molière drew the
well-known portrait of his wife which we have already cited; the
title-part in the famous "tragedy-ballet" of _Psyché_, one of the most
remarkable instances of collaboration in dramatic history,[17] in which
she appeared in a different costume in each of its five acts--a very
unusual extravagance in those days--and is described by the enthusiastic
Robinet as "marvellous" and "playing divinely"; Henriette in the _Femmes
savantes_, "the model of an honest, sensible, and well-brought-up young
lady;" and finally, Angélique in Molière's swan-song, the _Malade
imaginaire_, perhaps, next to Célimène, her most finished impersonation.
* * * * *
But great as were the dramatic talents of Armande Béjart, they count for
comparatively little in the curiosity which her name arouses. It is her
moral character, her private life, her relations with her famous
husband, which have exercised the minds of the biographers of Molière
for upwards of two centuries. On these matters even more ink has been
expended than on the vexed question of her birth, and with far less
satisfactory results. To the great majority of writers Armande was an
unworthy wife, who repaid the kindness and affection lavished upon her
by the great man whose name she bore with ingratitude and contumely;
while there are not wanting those who go so far as to accuse her of the
grossest infidelity, and to assert that her misconduct was in some
measure responsible for the dramatist's untimely death. When, however,
we come to sift the evidence against her, we shall find that these
extreme views are based on very insufficient or very suspicious
testimony, and that one thing only has been clearly established, namely,
that she rendered Molière's later years very unhappy. But what was the
true cause of his unhappiness, whether occasioned by actual misconduct
on the part of Armande, or merely by an ever present dread that such
must be the inevitable termination of one or other of the very imprudent
flirtations in which she appears to have been continually indulging, is
very difficult, nay, well-nigh impossible, to determine.
It has always been a favourite practice with biographers of Molière and
historians of the French theatre to affect to discover more or less
direct allusions to the dramatist's relations with his wife in several
of his plays: the _École des femmes_, the _Impromptu de Versailles_, the
_Mariage forcé_, _George Dandin_, and, of course, the _Misanthrope_.
That this is true of the last-named play cannot, we think, be disputed;
but in regard to the others, we are inclined to believe that the
significance of the passages and episodes on which their contention
rests have been a good deal exaggerated.
Let us begin with the _École des femmes_, the first in chronological
order. Here, as in the _École des maris_, Molière turns to the ethics of
marriage for his materials. Arnolphe, a middle-aged bachelor, disgusted
by the lack of fidelity among the married women he sees around him,
comes to the conclusion that the only safeguard of a wife's honour is
extreme ignorance. No young woman should know anything beyond her
household and religious duties; her reading is to be confined to the
Bible and the Maxims of Marriage; her only objects in life are to be the
salvation of her soul and the comfort and happiness of her husband. In
order to put his theory to the test, he adopts a little girl called
Agnès, and has her carefully brought up in the most complete seclusion,
with the intention of making her his wife when she shall have reached a
suitable age. But, unfortunately for him--for he falls genuinely in love
with his ward--the damsel's very simplicity proves his undoing; she
bestows her affections upon a young gallant, Horace by name, and poor
Arnolphe is left lamenting the downfall of his hopes.
We have outlined this plot of the play, which is doubtless familiar to
many, as several writers have assumed that Molière has depicted himself
in the role of Arnolphe and Armande in that of Agnès; but beyond the
fact that both Molière and his hero themselves supervised the education
of their intended wives, there does not seem to be the slightest ground
for such a supposition. In the first place, Molière espoused the woman
of his choice; while Arnolphe sees his cherished scheme come to nothing,
through the appearance on the scene of the youthful Horace. In the
second, the brilliant and witty Armande bears as little resemblance to
the unsophisticated Agnès as does her liberal-minded husband to the
tyrannical guardian. And, lastly, to ask us to believe that only ten
months after his marriage, with the glamour of the honeymoon still upon
him, Molière could have intended an unsympathetic character like Agnès
to represent his wife, is to make too great a call upon our credulity.
In the _Impromptu de Versailles_ a good deal has been made of the little
quarrel between the author and his wife, which the former introduces at
the beginning of the play. The company is supposed to be rehearsing a
new comedy, commanded by the King at two hours' notice, and to be
causing its chief no little trouble.
_Mademoiselle Molière._--"Shall I tell you what it is? You ought to have
written a play which you could have acted all alone."
_Molière._--"Be silent, wife; you are a fool."
_Mademoiselle Molière._--"Thank you, my lord and husband; that just
shows what it is to be married, and how strangely wedlock alters people.
You would not have said that eighteen months ago."
_Molière._--"Pray be silent."
_Mademoiselle Molière._--"It is an odd thing that a trifling ceremony
should be capable of depriving us of all our good qualities, and that a
husband and a lover should regard the same person with such different
eyes."
_Molière._--"What loquacity!"
_Mademoiselle Molière._--"'Faith! if I were to write a play, it would be
upon that subject. I would justify women in many things of which they
are accused, and I would make husbands afraid of the contrast between
their abrupt manners and the courtesy of lovers."
Here, we are told by certain critics, the inference is unmistakable;
Molière clearly foresees the fate which awaits him. In our opinion, they
are wrong. In the _Impromptu de Versailles_ Molière and his wife do not,
as in an ordinary play, represent fictitious characters; they appear
under their own names. In these circumstances, it is surely
inconceivable that the dramatist should have introduced this dialogue,
if he had for one moment imagined it applicable to his own affairs! The
very fact that he was so ready to jest upon such a subject seems to us a
conclusive proof that up to that time, at least, Armande's conduct had
given him but scant cause for uneasiness.
The _Mariage forcé_ and _George Dandin_, the former produced early in
the year 1664, when the difference of age and of character between
Molière and his wife was no doubt beginning to produce its fatal
consequences, and the latter in the summer of 1667, after their
separation, of which we shall speak in due course, had actually taken
place, contain more direct allusions to their author's _ménage_.
Sganarelle, like Molière, had believed himself "_le plus content des
hommes_," only to be roughly disillusioned when the carefully brought up
Dorimène frankly avows her passion for "_toutes les choses de
plaisir_"--play, visiting, assemblies, entertainments, and so forth--at
the same time expressing a hope that he does not intend to be one of
those inconvenient husbands who desire their wives to live "_comme des
loup-garous_," since solitude drives her to despair, but that they may
dwell together as a pair "_qui savent leur monde_." Angélique, in her
turn, complains to George Dandin of the tyranny exercised by husbands
"who wish their wives to be dead to all amusements, and to live only for
them." She has no desire, she tells him, to die young, but "intends to
enjoy, under his good pleasure, some of the glad days that youth has to
offer her, to take advantage of the sweet liberties that the age permits
her, to see a little of the _beau monde_, and to taste the pleasure of
hearing her praises sung."
All this is certainly reminiscent of Armande, who, according to
Grimarest, was no sooner married than she "believed herself a duchess,"
affected a coquettish manner with the idle gallants who flocked to pay
court to her, and turned a deaf ear to the warnings of her husband,
whose lessons appeared to her "too severe for a young person who,
besides, had nothing wherewith to reproach herself." But the resemblance
in the situations goes no further. If Dorimène, in her craving for
"_toutes les chases de plaisir_" and Angélique, in her imperious temper
and cold irony, bear some relation to Armande, the foolish and cowardly
Sganarelle, who allows himself to be cudgelled by Dorimène's brother,
Lycidas, into a marriage which he knows must bring him unhappiness, has
nothing, save his age, in common with Molière; while the aspiring
farmer, George Dandin, marrying not for love, but for social position,
and deservedly punished for his snobbishness, is as far removed from his
creator as Tartuffe or Monsieur Jourdain.
When we come to the _Misanthrope_, the similarity between fiction and
reality is too striking to admit of any doubt as to the author's
intentions. It is true that a distinguished English critic[18] professes
to see in this play, as in _Don Garcie de Navarre_--Molière's one
failure, produced the year before his marriage, and withdrawn after a
run of five nights--the outcome of the actor-dramatist's "desire of
indulging his humour of seriousness and a determination to example his
elocutionary theories in verse that, without being actually tragic and
heroic, should have something in it of the tragic and heroic quality."
But, though the large number of verses from _Don Garcie_ which Molière
has incorporated with his role of Alceste would seem to lend some
confirmation to this theory, the fact remains that writers are
practically unanimous in regarding the _Misanthrope_ as, primarily, a
pathetic autobiography of its author under the cloak of fiction. "This
Célimène, so frivolous and so charming, so dangerous and so seductive,
this incorrigible coquette, who does not understand what a noble heart
she is wounding even unto death: is not this Armande Béjart,
embellished by all the love and all the genius of Molière? And Alceste;
who is he? At the first representations people believed that they
recognised the Duc de Montausier, and the Duc de Montausier remarked,
with good reason: 'I thank you; it is a great honour.' But we, for our
part, recognise Molière. This misanthrope is something more than an
honourable gentleman at odds with the world. He is a great genius
misunderstood, who endures and waits; he is a passionate sage, an honest
man with a great and excellent heart."[19]
In the _Misanthrope_, Molière has given to Célimène all the coquetry,
the egoism, and the caustic wit which belonged to Armande; to his own
rôle all the weakness of a high-minded man struggling vainly against his
passion for an unworthy object. "The love I bear for her," says
Alceste--
"Ne ferme point mes yeux aux défauts qu'on lui trouve;
Et je suis, quelque ardeur qu'elle m'ait pu donner,
Le premier à les voirs, comme à les condamner.
Mais, avec tout cela, quoi que je puis faire,
Je confesse mon foible; elle a l'art de me plaire;
J'ai beau voir ses défauts, et j'ai beau l'en blâmer,
En dépit qu'on en ait, elle se fait aimer;
Sa grâce est la plus forte, et, sans doute, ma flamme
De ces vices du temps pourra purger son âme."
There are moments indeed in the play when it almost ceases to belong to
the realm of fiction. The scene, for instance, in the fourth act, when
Alceste, holding in his hand the proof of Célimène's perfidy, the letter
written by her to his rival, Oronte, calls upon her "to justify herself
at least of a crime that overwhelms him," and to do her best to appear
faithful, while he, on his side, will do his best to believe her such;
and Célimène tartly refuses--
"Allez, vous êtes fou, dans vos transports jaloux,
Et ne méritez pas l'amour qu'on a pour vous.
* * * * *
Allez, de tels soupçons méritent ma colère,
Et vous ne valez pas que l'on vous considère:
Je suis sotte, et veux mal à ma simplicité,
De conserver, encor, pour vous, quelque bonté;
Je devrois, autre part, attacher mon estime
Et vous faire un sujet de plainte légitime,"
may well have had its parallel in their own lives. And few, again, can
doubt the sincerity with which the lover must have uttered the lines,--
"Je fais tout mon possible
À rompre de ce coeur l'attachement terrible;
Mais mes plus grands efforts n'ont rien fait jusqu'ici,
Et c'est pour mes péchés que je vous aime ainsi."
"We might well say without exaggeration of this Célimène," remarks
August Wilhelm von Schlegel,[20] "that there is not a single good point
in her whole composition." This may be so; but, as M. Larroumet is
careful to point out, there is really nothing in the _Misanthrope_ which
gives us the right to assume that Armande was anything worse than an
incorrigible coquette. "Célimène is impeccable; she has neither heart
nor feeling."[21] Nor do the remainder of Molière's plays furnish any
fresh proof against Armande; they, on the contrary, strengthen the
impression that, while he suffered much from his wife's character, he
never believed her to have been guilty of anything which might affect
his honour.
This impression seems to have been that of the poet's contemporaries.
Molière had, as we know, many enemies--unscrupulous enemies, who did not
hesitate to launch against him the most hideous of accusations. We can
hardly doubt that had there been any reasonable ground for believing
Armande guilty of something more than coquetry, the Montfleurys, Le
Boulanger de Chalussay and the rest, would have been only too ready to
avail themselves of such an opportunity of humiliating the man whom they
so bitterly hated. Yet though, like all the rest of the world, they were
aware of Molière's jealous nature, and made this weakness the object of
their unsparing ridicule, none of them went so far as to accuse him of
being that which he appears to have been in incessant dread of becoming.
At most, their works contain only vague hints and insinuations, to which
little or no attention seems to have been paid; and it is probable that
Armande's name would have gone down to posterity without any very
serious stain upon it, had she not chanced to be made the victim of one
of the most audacious and malignant libels ever penned.
Among the swarm of scurrilous brochures, fictitious histories, and
stupid romances in the French language which issued from the foreign
press during the decade which followed the Protestant emigration of
1685, was a little book, or rather pamphlet, written for the delectation
of those persons who are always ready to welcome anything calculated to
gratify their curiosity about the private affairs of stage celebrities.
This book, published anonymously at Frankfort, in 1688, by one
Rottenberg, a bookseller who made a speciality of such sensational
works,[22] bore the title of _La Fameuse Comédienne, ou Histoire de la
Guérin_, Guérin being the name of Armande Béjart's second husband, whom
she married in 1677. Although the demand for it was considerable, and
five editions were printed within ten years of the date of its
publication, the charges against Armande which it contained do not
appear to have been taken very seriously, except among the class of
readers for whom it was written, until, in 1697, it occurred to Bayle,
who had a weakness for piquant anecdotes about notable persons, to
include certain passages in his famous Dictionary, since which few of
the biographers of Molière have failed to borrow more or less freely
from its pages, with most unfortunate results to the reputation of the
dramatist's wife.
The authorship of the _Fameuse Comédienne_ remains a mystery to this
day, though contemporary gossip, or historians in search of some new
sensation, have attributed it successively to a number of persons: La
Fontaine, Racine, Chapelle, Blot, the _chansonnier_ of the Fronde,
Rosimont, an actor of the Rue Guénégaud, Mlle. Guyot, a member of the
same company, and Mlle. Boudin, a provincial actress, who would appear
to have been at one time on terms of intimacy with Armande. With regard
to the first five of these suppositions, we will merely remark that
neither La Fontaine, Racine, nor Chapelle were capable of committing
such an infamy; that Blot had been in his grave more than thirty years
at the time of the publication of the libel ascribed to him, and that
the chief argument advanced by M. Charles Livet, the editor of the
latest edition of the _Fameuse Comédienne_, in favour of Rosimont,
namely, a resemblance between the style of the book and a theological
work entitled _La Vie des Saints_, which he published in 1680, seems to
us too fanciful to merit any serious consideration. In the cases of
Mesdemoiselles Guyot and Boudin, there is again a total absence of
anything like adequate proof; nevertheless, though they are both in all
probability guiltless, strong grounds exist for believing the book to be
the work of one of Armande's professional rivals, as the intimate
acquaintance with theatrical life which it reveals precludes all doubt
as to the vocation of the writer; while the preponderating place it
allots to women, the manner in which it speaks of men, the jealous
hatred which inspires it, the _finesse_ of some of its remarks, its
style and method, all denote a feminine hand.[23]
Atrocious libel though the _Fameuse Comédienne_ undoubtedly is, it is
very far from destitute of that literary merit in which even the works
of the most obscure writers of the great epoch of French prose are
seldom lacking, and, moreover, contains not a little interesting and
authentic information about the public career of Molière and his wife.
But that is all that can be said in its favour. "Possessed," remarks M.
Larroumet, "by a ferocious hatred against Armande, hatred of the woman
and the actress, the writer has only one object--to render her odious.
What she knows of the actions of her enemy she perverts or, at any rate,
exaggerates; what she does not know she invents. He who wishes to injure
a man attributes to him acts of indecency or cowardice; he who wishes to
injure a woman gives her lovers; these are the surest means. Thus our
author makes of Armande a Messalina, and a Messalina of the baser sort,
one who sells her favours."
Unfortunately for the object which the libeller has in view, she does
not content herself with general charges; she makes formal accusations,
which she endeavours to substantiate, and the book abounds in letters,
conversations, details about matters which could not possibly have been
known, save to the parties immediately concerned, with the result that
her attack fails miserably, and the judicious reader very speedily
perceives that the work is nothing but a collection of scandalous
anecdotes, which, when not controverted by positive facts, sin
grievously against probability.
However, as all readers are not judicious, and as the book has imposed
on several historians of deservedly high reputation,[24] it may be as
well for us, in the interests of truth, to follow the example of M.
Bazin and M. Larroumet, and devote some little space to an examination
of the charges which have brought so much unmerited odium upon the
memory of Armande Béjart.
The first lover attributed to Armande is the Abbé de Richelieu,
great-nephew of the famous cardinal, a gentleman of a very gallant
disposition, with a marked predilection for actresses: "There was no one
at the Court who did not endeavour to gain her favours. The Abbé de
Richelieu was one of the first who determined to make her his mistress.
As he was very liberal, while the young lady was very fond of
expenditure, the matter was soon concluded. It was agreed that he should
give her four pistoles (about forty francs) a day, without counting
clothes and entertainments. The abbé did not fail to send her every
morning, by a page, the pledge of their treaty, and to go and visit her
every afternoon."
Now, as M. Larroumet points out, if this story is to be accepted, we
must either believe Molière to have been ignorant of the comings and
goings of the page and the abbé, or that he was aware of and tolerated
them: two suppositions equally inadmissible. Moreover, if we consult the
dates, the improbability becomes an impossibility. Armande was married
on February 20, 1662, and on January 19, 1664, she bore Molière a son.
The intrigue must then have taken place between these two periods--which
is to make her infidelity begin at a very early date--since M. Bazin
tells us that the Abbé de Richelieu left France in March 1664 with the
expedition organised to defend Hungary against the Turks, and died at
Venice on January 9, 1665. That, however, does not prevent the _Fameuse
Comédienne_ from making his _liaison_ with Mlle. Molière last until the
production of the _Princesse d' Élide_; a play which was not performed
until May 8, 1664, some weeks after his departure.
On to the supposed intrigue between Armande and the abbé, the anonymous
author next proceeds to graft a new and double adventure: "This affair
lasted for some months without trouble; but Molière having written the
_Princesse d' Élide_, in which the Molière played the princess, which
was the first important rôle she had filled, because Mademoiselle du
Parc played them all and was the heroine of the theatre, she created
such a sensation that Molière had cause to repent of having exhibited
her in the midst of the brilliant young men of the Court. For scarcely
had she arrived at Chambord, where the King gave this entertainment,
than she became infatuated with the Comte de Guiche,[25] while the Comte
de Lauzun[26] became infatuated with her. The latter spared no effort to
obtain her good graces, but the Molière, who had quite lost her head
over her hero, would listen to no proposition, and contented herself
with visiting Du Parc and weeping over the indifference of the Comte de
Guiche. The Comte de Lauzun, however, did not abandon hope, experience
having taught him that nothing could resist him. He knew, moreover, that
the Comte de Guiche was one who set but little store by woman's love,
for which reason he doubted not that his indifference would end by
repulsing the Molière, and that his own star would then produce in her
heart what it had produced in those of all the women whom he had sought
to please. He was not deceived, for the Molière, irritated by the
coldness of the Comte de Guiche, threw herself into the arms of the
Comte de Lauzun, as if desirous of seeking protection against further
suffering at the hands of a man who failed to appreciate her."
Here again we have an impossibility and an improbability. In May 1664
the Comte de Guiche was at Warsaw, having been exiled the previous year,
on account of his complicity in the "Spanish letter" plot against Mlle.
de la Vallière, and, therefore, could not have been making love--or
being made love to--at Versailles. As for Lauzun, no mention of him is
to be found among the persons who assisted at the fêtes where the
_Princesse d'Élide_ was performed, while even if he were present, it is
very unlikely that he had any attention to spare for Mlle. Molière, as
he was at this time desperately in love with the Princesse de Monaco,
who afterwards jilted him for the King himself. The fact is that the
malicious chronicler, having decided to give her victim some _grands
seigneurs_ as lovers, not unnaturally selected those most celebrated for
their gallantry, in the belief that, among their numerous mistresses,
one more would pass without difficulty; but she had little acquaintance
with the Court, and her ignorance has betrayed her.