"orator"[37] and manager, posts which, at the time of Molière's death,
he had occupied for some six years; and there can be no doubt that much
of the success which had attended the troupe was due to his skill in
gauging the public taste, his untiring energy, and his personal
popularity. To him, too, we owe that wonderful _Registre_, a perfect
mine of accurate and detailed information about the doings of Molière's
troupe, the Hôtel Guénégaud, and the early years of the
Comédie-Française; while it was under his auspices that the first
complete edition of his old chief's works was given to the world.
On the advice of La Grange, Armande now resolved on a bold stroke. Some
years before, a play-loving nobleman, the Marquis de Sourdéac, had built
a theatre in a tennis-court in the Rue Mazarine, near the Luxembourg,
where opera had been performed, until, in March 1672, the intriguing
Lulli had succeeded in securing for himself the exclusive right of
representing musical pieces. It was a fine house, fitted up with every
convenience, "with a stage," says Samuel Chappuzeau, in his work on the
Paris theatres of the time, "large enough to allow the most elaborate
machinery to be worked." La Grange proposed that the troupe should
acquire this theatre, and himself undertook the negotiations, which
resulted in the Marquis de Sourdéac and his partner, a M. de Champeron,
ceding to Armande their lease of the property for the sum of 30,000
livres, of which 14,000 was to be paid in cash and the balance by fifty
livres on each performance given there.
An event of great importance was the immediate outcome of the
acquisition of this theatre. For some years past, the popularity of the
Théâtre du Marais had been steadily declining, a circumstance which
seems to have been attributable rather to the mediocrity of the plays
produced there and the fact that the district in which it was situated
was no longer the centre of Parisian life, as it had been during the
first half of the century, than to any lack of talent on the part of the
company, which, indeed, comprised several excellent performers of both
sexes; and the establishment of the Opera threatened to reduce its
already diminished receipts still further. Accordingly, Louis XIV.
decided that it should join forces with Mlle. Molière's troupe, and, on
June 23, 1673, an ordinance issued by Colbert closed the old playhouse
in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, which had survived the theatrical
vicissitudes of nearly eighty years, and granted permission to the two
united companies henceforth to be known as the "_Troupe du Roi_," to
perform comedies and other _divertissements honnêtes_ in the Rue
Mazarine.
The new theatre, which was usually called the Théâtre Guénégaud, the
street of that name being close at hand, opened its doors on July 9 with
a performance of _Tartuffe_. At first, it met with but indifferent
success, and between that date and Easter 1674, the share of each player
only amounted to 1481 livres, a striking contrast to the takings at the
Palais-Royal during the last year of Molière's life; while, on one
occasion, at the beginning of the second season, _l'Avare_ was played to
a house of 88 livres! However, matters steadily improved; by the
following Easter the success of the company was assured, and the season
of 1679-1680 was worth 1100 livres more to each of the old _Moliéristes_
than the great and profitable year of _Tartuffe_ itself.
Although the perennial comedies of Molière naturally figured frequently
in the bills, Armande and La Grange had a keen eye for novelties, and
did not disdain to tickle the public with melodramas and spectacular
plays; and it was from these indeed that the theatre derived the greater
part of its revenue. Thus _Circé_, a tragedy by Thomas Corneille, with
changes of scenery, and music by Charpentier, brought in 24,000 livres
in nine performances; while the _Devineresse_, a comic-melodrama, by the
same playwright and Donneau de Visé, on the adventures of La Voisin, the
poisoner, was played for forty-seven consecutive nights, almost a record
for those days. Another success was achieved when Thomas Corneille
turned Molière's _Don Juan_ into verse, "eliminating the speeches which
offended the scrupulous." Donneau de Visé, to whose "puffing" in the
_Mercure_ the Théâtre Guénégaud was probably indebted for not a little
of its popularity, declared that in the process of transition the play
"had acquired new beauties without losing any of the old," and though
few will be found to agree with this pronouncement, the new version
proved exceedingly popular.
The first of the above-mentioned plays, in which Armande secured a great
personal triumph in the part of the beautiful sorceress, was associated
with a singular incident.
One evening, a well-dressed man, who occupied a seat upon the stage,
approached the actress, as she was standing in the wings awaiting her
turn to go on, and addressed her in the manner of an ardent and favoured
lover. "Never," said he, "have I seen you look so beautiful. Were it not
that I am already your slave, I should be so from this moment."
Armande, who had never seen the gentleman before, turned haughtily away,
without making any reply. But when the play was over, the stranger
followed her to her dressing-room, and, having reproached her with her
previous coldness, inquired why she had not kept an appointment which
she had given him that afternoon. The lady, in profound astonishment,
disclaimed all knowledge of her visitor, and angrily ordered him to
leave the room. The stranger refused, insisting that she had given him
"a score of rendezvous," and demanding how she could have the audacity
to treat him thus after such an intimacy as had existed between them.
Armande thereupon sent her maid to summon some of her colleagues, who
arrived to find their leader and the stranger almost beside themselves
with passion. As well as her outraged feelings would permit, the actress
explained the situation to her friends, declaring that she had never set
eyes on the gentleman before her in her life; while he, on his side,
asserted in the most positive manner that he knew her intimately, and
that she had repeatedly met him at a house of somewhat questionable
repute. "Why," cried he, "the very necklace she is now wearing is one of
the presents I have made her!" and he snatched it from her. Armande
immediately sent for the guards attached to the theatre, who seized the
stranger and held him until the arrival of a commissary of police, when
he was conducted to prison.
His statement to the authorities served but to deepen the mystery. It
transpired that he was a M. Lescot, a president of the Parliament of
Grenoble, who was on a visit to Paris. He had fallen in love with
Armande after seeing her play at the Théâtre Guénégaud, but, lacking
courage to declare his passion directly, and having failed to secure an
introduction in the ordinary way, had had recourse to the good offices
of a woman called Ledoux, "_dont le métier ordinaire était de faire
plaisir au public_," and promised her a liberal reward, if she could
arrange a rendezvous. In this she had been successful; Mlle. Molière had
accepted his proposals, and they had met repeatedly at Ledoux's house.
The actress had, however, strictly forbidden him, for prudential
reasons, to address, or even approach, her at the theatre, which
instructions he had faithfully observed until that evening, when, as she
had failed to keep an appointment to meet him after dinner, he had
determined to ascertain the reason, thinking that "a little display of
passion" might not be altogether displeasing to her. As for the
necklace, which, it should be mentioned, was one of a common pattern,
he had purchased it at a jeweller's shop on the Quai des Orfévres, the
lady being with him at the time. Let them question the jeweller, who
would, no doubt, be prepared to corroborate his statement.
Matters now began to look very unpleasant for Armande, and when the
jeweller of the Quai des Orfévres, without a moment's hesitation,
identified her as the lady who had accompanied the president to his
shop, and Ledoux was found to have left the city, she was in despair.
However, a few days later the affair was cleared up. Hunted down by the
police, Ledoux confessed that she had palmed off on the credulous Lescot
a young woman called Tourelle, who bore so extraordinary a resemblance
to Mlle. Molière, both in appearance and voice, that it was almost
impossible for any one not personally acquainted with the latter to tell
one from the other, and who had already succeeded in duping quite a
number of persons. This woman was also arrested, and a decree of the
Parliament of Paris, dated October 17, 1675, sentenced the two
delinquents "to be flogged, naked, with rods, before the principal gate
of the Châtelet and the house of Mlle. Molière," and to be afterwards
banished from Paris for three years. Président Lescot was condemned to
pay a fine of two hundred crowns, and to make "verbal reparation," that
is to say, he had to declare in court, in the presence of Mlle. Molière
and any four persons whom she might select, that he had "raised his hand
against her and used the insulting language mentioned in the indictment
through error and inadvertence." Which done, we may presume, he lost no
time in returning to Grenoble, a sadder and a wiser man.
"One is struck," observes M. Larroumet, "by the singular resemblance
that this affair presents to that of the Diamond Necklace, which, in
1785, involved the name of Marie Antoinette in so resounding a scandal.
After a lapse of a hundred years, the same rôles are resumed, that of
Armande by the queen, that of the _entremetteuse_ Ledoux by the Comtesse
de la Motte, that of the woman Tourelle by the girl Oliva, finally, that
of Président Lescot by the Cardinal de Rohan. And that nothing may be
wanting to the parallel, just as the queen was bespattered by the
infamous libel of Madame de la Motte, Armande had to submit to _La
Fameuse Comédienne_."
Less than a year afterwards, Armande was the victim of another scandal,
even more painful than the one recorded above. The scoundrelly Guichard,
the attempted poisoner of Lulli, of whom we have already spoken, did not
confine his attack upon the widow of Molière to repeating the hideous
accusation of Montfleury: he calumniated her in the most shameful
manner. "The Molière," he wrote, "is infamous both in law (_i.e._ by
profession) and in deed. Previous to her marriage, she lived continually
in wholesale prostitution; during her married life, continually in
public adultery. In short, the Molière is the most infamous of all
infamous women." The obvious extravagance of these charges, and the fact
that Guichard assailed with equal violence the characters of most of the
other witnesses for the prosecution, no doubt robbed them of much of
their sting.[38] Nevertheless, they can hardly have failed to occasion
the unfortunate woman great annoyance, and, following as they did so
closely upon the _affaire_ Lescot, had probably not a little influence
upon a step which she took some months later.
In May 1677, Armande exchanged the glorious name of Molière for that of
Guérin d'Estriché, one of her colleagues of the Théâtre Guénégaud, and,
in earlier years, a member of the now defunct Théâtre du Marais. For
this second marriage she was severely blamed by her contemporaries,[39]
while it is the fashion among modern writers to refer to it as if it had
been a species of sacrilege. In this, we are inclined to think, an
injustice had been done Armande. Molière, as one of his recent
biographers reminds us, was not, during the years which followed his
death, regarded as the mighty genius which he is now admitted to have
been. Save to a few, like Boileau, who fully comprehended the extent of
the loss which literature had sustained, he was merely an amusing actor
and an excellent author, whose premature death they deplored, but whom
they never dreamed of apotheosizing.[40] As for Armande, she was still
young and retained all her fascination; she had not been happy in her
first marriage, and may very well have felt that life owed her some
compensation. Besides, a second marriage would free her from the
attentions of unwelcome admirers, of whom, we may be sure, the luckless
Président Lescot was only one among many, and would provide her with a
counsellor in business matters whose interests would be identical with
her own, and of whom she must have long felt the need.
With Guérin, Armande appears to have lived very happily, and even the
author of _La Fameuse Comédienne_ is compelled to recognise that her
conduct was exemplary, though she hastens to qualify this reluctant
admission by declaring that her second husband was a veritable tyrant,
who brooked no opposition to his will and did not hesitate to enforce
obedience by blows. All disinterested witnesses, however, concur in
representing Guérin as an excellent man, and we see no reason to believe
that the anonymous author comes anywhere nearer the truth here than in
other portions of her history.
At Easter 1679, Armande and La Grange succeeded in persuading the famous
_tragédienne_ Mlle. de Champmeslé, who had been for nineteen years the
mainstay of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, to transfer her services to the
Théâtre Guénégaud, Armande, with rare self-denial, ceding to the
illustrious recruit the place which she herself had so long occupied.
The defection of their great actress was a paralysing blow for the
players of the Rue Mauconseil, and, coupled with the death of La
Thorillière, which occurred shortly afterwards, rendered their position
so precarious that, by a _lettre de cachet_ dated October 21, 1680,
Louis XIV. directed that they should join forces with the Théâtre
Guénégaud; and the Comédie-Française was founded. Thus, of the three
great troupes in existence at the time of Molière's death, his own alone
survived, fortified by the ruin of their rivals.
Armande continued her career as an actress for some years longer,
perhaps her most successful impersonation being that of a young Italian
girl in a play called _Le Parisien_, written by the husband of Mlle. de
Champmeslé. At the Easter recess of 1694, she retired from the stage,
with a pension of one thousand livres. From that time we hear but little
of her. She appears to have lived a very quiet and uneventful life, for
the most part, at a charming country-house which she owned at Meudon,
and which still exists, very much as the actress left it.[41] She died
at Paris, in the Rue du Touraine, on November 30, 1700, at the age of
fifty-eight.
Of Armande's three children by Molière only one survived their father, a
daughter, Madeleine, who, at the age of twenty, much to her mother's
disgust, eloped with a M. de Montalant, a middle-aged widower with
several children. Making a virtue of necessity, Madame Guérin gave her
consent to her daughter's marriage, and Madeleine and her husband
subsequently resided at Auteuil, where the former died in 1723. She left
no children.
By Guérin, Armande had a son, to whom she seems to have been intensely
devoted. In 1698, at the age of twenty, this young man published an
edition of the _Mélicerte_ of Molière, which he had rendered into verse,
preceded by an introduction, in which he mentioned that in the Guérin
household the memory of the dramatist was held "in respect and
veneration."
Armande's death certificate naturally contained no mention of the great
man whose name she had once borne and whose works she had both inspired
and interpreted. Nevertheless, posterity has decided to ignore her
connection with the worthy Guérin, and, for us, she must always remain
the "Wife of Molière."
II
MARIE DE CHAMPMESLÉ
"The name of the Champmeslé is inseparable from both the immortality and
the frailties of the life of Racine."[42]
Marie Desmares, the actress of whom these words were written, was born
at Rouen, the birthplace of the two Corneilles and other prominent
figures in the dramatic history of the seventeenth century, in February
1642. Her father, Guillaume Desmares, though not, as several
biographical dictionaries and works of reference state, the son of a
President of the Parliament of Normandy, appears to have been a person
of some social position, as his name is preceded by a _Monsieur_, a
title which in those days was generally confined to the _noblesse_ and
professional classes, while her mother, Marie Marc, was also respectably
connected, one of her brothers being an official of the Parliament.
Of Marie's childhood and youth we know scarcely anything. In 1653 she
lost her father, very probably in an epidemic which broke out at Rouen
that year; and, not long afterwards, her mother married again, her
second husband being one Antoine La Guérault or Laguérault, a well-to-do
landed proprietor in the neighbourhood. The girl and her brother
Nicolas, who was also to achieve distinction on the boards, seem to have
received a fair education; but, either because she was unhappy in the
home of her stepfather, or because she saw but little chance of the
indispensable _dot_ being forthcoming, at the age of twenty-three, Marie
decided to tempt fortune on the stage.
At this period, there was no regular theatre at Rouen; indeed, buildings
reserved exclusively for dramatic performances were hardly known outside
the capital. There were, however, two large tennis-courts, one situated
in the Rue des Charrettes, the other in the Rue Saint-Éloi, the
proprietors of which were always ready, at a few hours' notice, to
convert them into temples of Thespis for the accommodation of any
travelling company which happened to be visiting the town. M. Noury, the
lady's latest biographer, thinks that it was in the second of these,
called the _Feu de Paume des Braques_, where Molière's troupe had played
in 1643, and again in 1658, that Marie Desmares made her _début_.
By Marie's side, a young actor from Paris, Charles Chevillet by name,
made his bow to the public. This young man, who was a few months younger
than his fair colleague, was the son of a worthy silk-merchant of the
Rue Saint-Honoré.[43] Chevillet _père_, being of a practical turn of
mind, had endeavoured to inspire his son with a taste for his own trade.
But, as ill-luck would have it, the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon, where
Molière's troupe was then established, was situated within easy distance
of his shop, and, after attending the performances for some little time,
Charles came to the conclusion that measuring and matching silks was
altogether too prosaic a calling for him. Accordingly, one fine day he
disappeared from Paris and made his way to Rouen, where, according to
the custom of the time, in mounting the boards, he added to his own
patronymic an aristocratic pseudonym, and became Charles Chevillet,
Sieur de Champmeslé.
M. de Champmeslé, who is described as "a handsome man, with a
distinguished air and extremely polished manners," "witty and possessed
of all that is required to please and to command love," made a very
favourable impression upon Mlle. Desmares. He, on his side, admired her
greatly, and very possibly foresaw something of the great career which
awaited her. They, therefore, determined to share each other's fortunes,
and the young man, having paid a visit to Paris to obtain his parents'
consent, they were married on January 9, 1666, at the church of
Saint-Éloi, at Rouen.
In view of what we have already said about the practice of the Church in
regard to the theatrical profession, it is not without interest to note
that the _acte de mariage_ states that the parties "practised the
vocation of players," and that the banns had been published,
"notwithstanding the fact that they had no intention of abandoning the
exercise of their profession at lawful times."
The young couple continued playing in Rouen and the neighbourhood until
the summer of 1668, when, alarmed, apparently by the plague, which was
devastating Normandy, they removed to Paris. Here Champmeslé, who was by
this time a very capable actor, was soon invited to join the company of
the Théâtre du Marais; and, at the beginning of the following year, his
wife was offered a place in the same troupe.
Mlle. de Champmeslé made her first appearance on the Paris stage on
February 15, 1669, in _La Fête de Vénus_, an insipid pastoral, by the
Abbé Boyer, in which she impersonated the goddess and was much
applauded. In the early months of 1670 she secured two other triumphs.
The first was in an "heroic comedy," called _Polycrate_, also by Boyer;
and it spoke volumes for the talent and charm of the young actress that
the audience should have been content to sit through and applaud five
acts of what appears to have been an almost worthless play. Her second
success was gained in _Les Amours de Vénus et Adonis_, a tragedy by
Donneau de Visé, in which she again represented the goddess, and Robinet
chanted her praises:--
"La belle déesse Vénus,
Et dans ce rôle cette actrice
Est une parfaite enchantrice."
But Mlle. de Champmeslé was but half satisfied with such successes. She
was ambitious, and felt that at the Marais her talents had not
sufficient scope. The old theatre, as we have said elsewhere, had now
fallen on evil days; the pieces represented there seemed sorry stuff
indeed in comparison with the comedies of Molière and the tragedies of
Racine; it was the Palais-Royal and the Hôtel de Bourgogne which divided
the suffrages of the playgoing public; the _salle_ in the Rue
Vieille-du-Temple was at times well-nigh deserted. She knew that her
true vocation was in tragedy; not in tragedy such as the third-class
dramatists who wrote for the Théâtre du Marais penned, but in plays like
the _Cid_ and _Polyeucte_, _Alexandre_ and _Andromaque_. On first
arriving in Paris, she had had the good sense to recognise that her
talents were as yet insufficiently developed to allow of her attempting
the great rôles of Corneille and Racine; but now circumstances had
changed. Her acting had had the good fortune to attract the attention of
a member of the Marais troupe named Laroque, whose acquaintance she had
made at Rouen. Laroque, as is not infrequently the case, though only a
moderate performer, was an admirable instructor; and, perceiving in his
young colleague great possibilities, had devoted much time and care to
perfecting her in her art, and with the happiest results. Accordingly,
at Easter 1670, Mlle. Champmeslé and her husband quitted the Rue
Vieille-du-Temple for the Hôtel de Bourgogne. "Here she met Racine and
glory."
The Hôtel de Bourgogne reopened after the Easter recess with a revival
of Racine's _Andromaque_ which three years before had aroused an
enthusiasm the like of which had not been witnessed since the days of
the _Cid_. The part of Hermione was to have been taken by Mlle. Des
OEillets, who had created it; but she was lying ill of a malady from
which she died not long afterwards, and it was in consequence decided to
entrust it to Mlle. Champmeslé. Racine, who knew nothing of the new
recruit, and feared that such a difficult role might suffer in the hands
of an actress who had never interpreted anything more important than the
insipid heroines of Boyer and Visé, refused at first to attend the
performance, and, though he ultimately consented to be present, did so
with evident reluctance. His apprehensions were groundless. "Mlle. de
Champmeslé's rendering of the first two acts was very weak," relates the
Abbé de Laporte in his _Annales dramatiques_. "These acts, where
Hermione is in turn attracted and repelled by Pyrrhus, require a
profound knowledge of the stage and great _finesse_. But in the last
acts, where she is a frenzied lover, with whom jealousy carries all
before it and to whom a supreme betrayal leaves nothing but vengeance to
live for, she retrieved her ground so completely, threw so much fire
into her acting, and rendered the passions with such real fervour that
she was enthusiastically applauded."