love-affairs; Ninon has dismissed him, and Mlle. de Champmeslé is on the
point of following her example: "A word or two concerning your brother.
Ninon has given him his _congé_. She is tired of loving without being
loved in return; she has insisted upon his returning her letters, which
he has accordingly done. I was not a little pleased at the separation. I
gave him a hint of the duty he owed to God, reminded him of his former
good sentiments, and entreated him not to stifle all notion of religion
in his breast. But this is not all; when one side fails us, we think to
repair it with the other, and are deceived. The young Merveille (Mlle.
de Champmeslé) has not broken with him, but she will soon, I believe....
The poor Chimène says she sees plainly that he no longer loves her, and
has applied himself elsewhere. In short, this affair makes me laugh; but
I wish sincerely it may be the means of weaning him from a state so
offensive to God and hurtful to his own soul. Ninon told him that he was
a _pompion fricasseed in snow_. See what it is to keep good company! One
learns such elegant expressions."
Then, on April 17, Madame de Sévigné informs her daughter that the young
gentleman's health has broken down under the strain of "the abandoned
life he had led during Holy Week," and that he can "scarcely bear a
woman in his presence." Profiting by his remorse, his fond mother
becomes his confessor: "I took the opportunity to preach him a little
sermon on the subject, and we both indulged in some Christian
reflections. He seems to approve my sentiments, particularly now that
his disgust is at its height. He showed me some letters that he had
recovered from his actress. I never read anything so warm, so
passionate; he wept, he died; he believed it all while he was writing
it, and laughed at it a moment afterwards. I assure you that he is worth
his weight in gold."
Finally, on April 22, the marchioness writes that all is at an end
between her son and Mlle. de Champmeslé, and that she has been
instrumental in preventing the young man from playing a singularly mean
trick upon his former enchantress: "He has left his actress at last,
after having followed her everywhere. When he saw her, he was in
earnest; a moment later, he would make the greatest game of her. Ninon
has completely discarded him; he was miserable while she loved him, and
now that she loves him no longer, he is in absolute despair. She wished
him, the other day, to give her the letters he had received from his
actress, which he did. You must know that she was jealous of that
princess, and wanted to show them to a lover of hers, in the hope of
procuring her a few blows with a belt. He came and told me, when I
pointed out to him how shameful it was to treat this little creature so
badly, merely for having loved him; that she had not shown people his
letters, as some would have him believe, but, on the contrary, had
returned them to him again; that such treacherous conduct was unworthy
of a man of quality, and that there was a degree of honour to be
observed, even in things dishonourable in themselves. He acquiesced in
the justice of my remarks, hurried at once to Ninon's house, and, partly
by strategy and partly by force, got the poor devil's letters out of her
hands. I made him burn them. You see by this what a regard I have for
the reputation of an actress."
According to M. Gueullette (_Acteurs et Actrices du temps passé_),
Racine, though deeply in love with Mlle. de Champmeslé, supported
patiently the numerous infidelities of the lady, "so long as he believed
them to be passing fancies and that he was still beloved." But when the
actress embarked upon a more serious love-affair with the Comte de
Clermont-Tonnerre, and a wit wrote--
"À la plus tendre amour elle fut destinée
Qui prit longtemps Racine dans son coeur:
Mais, par un insigne malheur,
Le _Tonnerre_ est venu, qui l'a _déracinée_"--
he was so bitterly mortified that he left her never to return.
The brothers Parfaict and d'Allainval assert that disgust at his
treatment at the hands of Mlle. de Champmeslé was the immediate cause of
Racine's retirement from dramatic authorship, at the age of
thirty-eight, at the height of his talent, in the heyday of his success;
for after _Phèdre_ he wrote but two more plays, _Esther_ and _Athalie_,
which were performed by the young girls of Saint-Cyr, and were not seen
upon the Paris stage until many years after his death. This, however, is
very unlikely, and it is quite possible, as M. Larroumet suggests, that
Racine, instead of abandoning the theatre, because Mlle. de Champmeslé
had discarded him, discarded the actress, because he had abandoned the
theatre. The poet's retirement indeed seems to have been attributable to
several different motives: disgust at the shameful cabal against
_Phèdre_ and the various annoyances to which it gave rise; the fear that
a repetition of such tactics might jeopardise his position as the
greatest tragic dramatist of his time; weariness of a dissipated life,
and, above all, the awakening, after a sleep of many years, of the
religious sentiments with which his old teachers of Port-Royal had
inspired him in youth. Indignation at Mlle. Champmeslé's conduct may, of
course, have had something to do with the positive antipathy to the
theatre which he manifested in his last years;[54] but to assert that it
was the cause of his renunciation of a profession which had brought him
fame and fortune is to credit him with a capacity for sincere affection
which he certainly never possessed.
With Racine departed not a little of the immense popularity which the
theatre had enjoyed during the past half-century, for though of capable
actors there was, fortunately, no lack, dramatists of even moderate
ability were few and far between. In place of _Andromaques_ and
_Iphigénies_ and _Phèdres_, Mlle. de Champmeslé had to resign herself to
appear in such deservedly-forgotten plays as the _Achille_ of Thomas
Corneille, the _Argélie_ of the Abbé Abeille, and the _Troade_ of
Pradon. Nevertheless, despite the barrenness of the field in which she
laboured, she contrived to gather fresh laurels, and her masterly
impersonation of Queen Elizabeth in Thomas Corneille's _Comte d'Essex_
(January 1678) was enthusiastically received, and secured for a mediocre
play a success out of all proportion to its merits. "One might have said
of her," remarks M. Noury, "as a critic said of Adrienne Lecouvreur,
after seeing her in the same part, 'I have seen a queen among actors.'
She possessed, in fact, majesty."
At Easter 1679, in consequence of some dissensions with their
colleagues, Mlle. de Champmeslé and her husband quitted the Hôtel de
Bourgogne, where they had played for nineteen years, for the Théâtre
Guénégaud, which, by a contract dated April 12, awarded them, "in
gratitude," in addition to a full share of the profits, an annual
allowance of one thousand livres. All her contemporaries are agreed that
this defection was the principal cause of the fusion of the two troupes
in the following year. Deprived of the services of the famous actress,
the Hôtel de Bourgogne was no longer able to cope with its powerful
rivals in the Rue Mazarine.
On the formation of the new company, the Champmeslés figured at the head
of the list of the twenty-seven players nominated by Louis XIV., and
Mlle. Champmeslé was at once recognised as the mainstay of the theatre
in tragedy, as Mlle. Molière--or rather Mlle. Guérin, as she had now
become--was in comedy. Her husband, too, proved himself well worthy of
his place, not only as an actor, but as a playwright. His _Parisien_
(produced February 5, 1682), as we have said elsewhere, provided Mlle.
Guérin with one of her greatest triumphs, and he secured another success
in his _Fragments de Molière_, an amusing piece, in which various
characters from Molière's plays were introduced.
Mlle. de Champmeslé's successes did not make her forget her relatives.
Her brother, Nicolas Desmares, was at this time acting at Copenhagen, in
the troupe subsidised by Christian V. That monarch held the actor and
his wife, Anne d'Ennebaut, in high esteem, and, in 1682, in imitation of
Louis XIV.'s conduct in regard to Molière, he and his queen stood
sponsors to their little daughter, Christine Antoinette Charlotte
Desmares, destined, in years to come, to emulate the triumphs of her
famous aunt. Three years later, Mlle. de Champmeslé persuaded her
brother to return to France, and obtained from the King permission for
him to be received into the Comédie-Française, "_sans début_." For an
actor to be admitted a member of so famous a company without being
required to give proofs of his capabilities, was a privilege which had
never yet been accorded, and the playgoing public was up in arms at what
it was pleased to consider a scandalous piece of nepotism. So great was
the indignation that when Desmares made his first appearance, on May 7,
1685, in _Téramène_, an angry scene was apprehended; but the new
_sociétaire's_ acting was so admirable that the hisses were soon drowned
in a storm of applause.
When, in 1689, the Comédie-Française, ousted from the Rue Mazarine,
migrated to its new home in the Rue Neuve-des-Fossés-Saint-Germain,
Mlle. de Champmeslé, in spite of advancing years, continued her
triumphant career, her remarkable talents and enthusiasm enabling her to
secure some measure of success for even the most insipid tragedy. Apart
from revivals of the great masterpieces of Corneille and Racine, perhaps
her most notable success was gained in the part of Judith in the Abbé
Boyer's tragedy of that name, produced in March 1795, when she was in
her fifty-fourth year. This play had a singular history. For some time
it created a perfect _furore_, and the theatre could with difficulty
accommodate the crowds which presented themselves nightly at the doors.
"The seats on the stage," says Le Sage, "had to be given up by the men
to the women, whose handkerchiefs were spread upon their knees, to wipe
away the tears to be called forth by touching passages. The usual
occupants of the seats had to be content with the wings. In the fourth
act, there was a scene which proved particularly moving, and, for that
reason, was called the '_scène des mouchoirs_.' The pit, where laughers
are always to be found, made itself merry at the expense of these
impressionable ladies, instead of weeping with them."
Intoxicated by his success, the Gascon poet, in an evil hour for
himself, determined to allow his work to be printed, and it was
published during the Easter recess. It was, of course, eagerly bought,
but no sooner did people begin to read the book, than they made the
discovery that this tragedy, which the author's indiscreet admirers had
been comparing to _Polyeucte_ and _Phèdre_, was, in truth, a most
mediocre play, which clearly owed its phenomenal success to the
religious nature of the subject and Mlle. de Champmeslé's brilliant
impersonation of the Judæan heroine. The indignation of the public
against the unhappy abbé, who, it seemed to consider, had perpetrated a
kind of fraud at its expense, knew no bounds, and it was forthwith
decided that _Judith_ must be driven with ignominy from the boards.
Accordingly, when the curtain rose on Quasimodo Sunday--the usual
evening for the reopening of the theatre--the players, whose appearance
for so many nights had been the signal for prolonged applause, were
received with a storm of hisses and derisive laughter. "Then," continues
Le Sage, "Mlle. de Champmeslé, actress worthy of eternal remembrance,
astonished to hear such a symphony, when her ears were accustomed only
to applause, addressed the pit as follows: 'Gentlemen, we are rather
surprised that you should receive so badly to-day a play which you
applauded during Lent.' To which a voice replied: 'The hisses were at
Versailles, at the sermons of the Abbé Boileau.'"[55]
Mlle. de Champmeslé continued on the stage until the end of her life,
for, with her, acting would seem to have been not only a profession, but
a passion and a delight. As she grew old, however, she naturally began
to feel the strain of such constant exertion, and the efforts she was
called upon to make in order to secure the success of Longpierre's
_Médée_, in February 1694, brought on a somewhat severe illness. She
recovered and resumed her place in the company; but, four years later,
during the run of the _Oreste et Pilade_ of La Grange-Chancel, which the
author modestly asserts "drew as many tears as the _Iphigénie_ of M.
Racine," she was taken seriously ill and ordered by the doctors a
complete rest. She retired to Auteuil, which was "already sprinkled with
fine houses and noted among suburban villages for the purity of its
atmosphere." Here Boileau had a villa, with a delightful garden
attached, in which he was in the habit of entertaining all the literary
celebrities of the day, from Racine to Madame Deshoulières; and in
summer the village was a favourite health resort of those Parisians
whose means did not permit of a visit to Dieppe.
The air of Auteuil, however, was powerless to cure Mlle. de Champmeslé.
She grew gradually worse, and early in May, it was seen that her end was
near. Then arose the question of the administration of the last
Sacraments; but before speaking of this, it may be as well for us to
glance back and see what had been the practice of the Church in regard
to the theatrical profession during the quarter of a century which had
elapsed since the death of Molière.
* * * * *
If any hopes had existed that the distressing incidents which had
accompanied the death of the great actor-dramatist had been merely the
outcome of the hostility of the Church towards a particular individual,
and, as such, were unlikely to be repeated, they were speedily doomed to
disappointment. Henceforth, the penalties denounced against the
profession by the early councils were no longer suffered to remain a
dead letter, but were enforced with the most merciless severity. The
actor found himself excommunicated both in life and death. Marriage,
absolution, the Holy Sacrament, baptism, all were denied him; and he was
even refused Christian burial. In one way, and in one way only, could he
escape this infamous proscription, which was publicly proclaimed every
Sunday from every pulpit in Paris, namely, by renouncing his profession,
surrendering his means of livelihood, forfeiting, in the case of a
member of the Comédie-Française, the pension to which he was entitled
after twenty years' service.
In 1684, Brécourt, an actor of the Comédie-Française, died. On his
death-bed he sent for the curé of Saint-Sulpice; but that priest refused
to administer the Sacraments until the actor had executed a deed
formally renouncing his profession, which was signed by him and four
ecclesiastics.[56] Shortly afterwards, two other players, Raisin and
Sallé, were compelled to subscribe to similar documents, in the presence
of a notary.
Two years later, Rosimont died suddenly without having had time to
abjure his errors. Notwithstanding a fondness for good liquor, he was a
sincerely religious man, having published a translation of the Psalms in
verse, and also written, or collaborated in, a _Vie des saints pour tous
les jours de l'année_. This fact, however, was not permitted to have any
weight with the bigoted curé of Saint-Sulpice, and the remains of poor
Rosimont were interred, without any ceremony, in a part of the cemetery
reserved for unbaptized children.
It must not be supposed that, outside the capital, the proscription of
the actor was general. In the provinces it varied, according to the
views of the different bishops and the particular ritual observed, and
in some dioceses the penalties were not enforced at all. Moreover, even
among the clergy themselves, men of liberal opinions were not wanting to
protest vigorously against the folly and injustice of reviving
superannuated anathemas, intended to apply to the sanguinary games of
the circus and the scandalous performances of the Roman theatre, against
the interpreters of the tragedies of Corneille and Racine and the
comedies of Molière. In 1694, a Theatine monk, one Père Caffaro by name,
published, under the cloak of anonymity, a very able letter, entitled
_Lettre d'un Théologien_, wherein he asserted that "the theatre, as it
then existed in France, contained only lessons of virtue, humanity, and
morality, and nothing to which the most chaste ear could not give its
attention." He further pointed out that the highest dignitaries of the
Church--bishops, cardinals, and nuncios--had no scruples about visiting
the theatre, and, therefore, if it was to be condemned, they must be
condemned also, "since they authorised it by their presence"; and
concluded by eulogising the exemplary life led by so many members of the
proscribed profession, and their abounding charity, "to which
magistrates and the superiors of convents could bear ample testimony."
This letter made a great stir, and brought Bossuet--then regarded as the
mouthpiece of the Gallican Church--into the field to crush the imprudent
Theatine. The bishop called upon the monk to retract his statements, and
published a treatise called _Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie_, in
which, after denouncing the plays most in vogue, and in particular the
comedies of Molière, which he stigmatised as full of "impieties and
obscenities unfit for the ears of a Christian," he maintained that it
was not only "the idolatry and the scandalous indecency" of the theatre
that the Fathers of the Church had condemned, but "its uselessness, its
prodigious dissipation, the passions which it excited, and the vanity
and love of display which it aroused." According to him, the Church
would excommunicate all Christians who frequented the theatre, were the
number of offenders not so great.
Bossuet also asserted that actors had always been excommunicated. "The
constant practice of the Church," he wrote, "is to deprive those who
perform plays of the Sacraments, both in life and death, unless they
renounce their art; and to repulse them from the Holy Table as public
sinners." This statement, as M. Maugras points out, in his able and
interesting work, _Les Comédiens hors la loi_, was quite untrue. Up to
the time of _Tartuffe_, the Church had shown the greatest indulgence
towards the theatrical profession, and the old canons had remained a
dead-letter.
Bossuet was followed in his campaign against the theatre by all the most
eminent of the French clergy. Massillon, Fléchier, Bourdaloue, and
Fénelon vied with one another in denouncing the unhappy actor in their
sermons and writings.[57] Père Caffaro was compelled by the Archbishop
of Paris to publicly disavow his letter, which, in fear and trembling,
he now protested had been extracted from a work of his, written "in the
levity of youth," and published without his knowledge or consent; and
the persecution, encouraged by the fact that the gloomy bigotry of the
old King had led him to withdraw his protection from the theatre, grew
more rigorous than ever.
Strangely enough, at the same time that the Church was mercilessly
proscribing the French actors, it received with open arms the Italian
players, who had definitely established themselves in Paris in 1660,
admitted them to the Sacraments, allowed them to be married in church,
and buried them in holy ground. This distinction appears the more
inexplicable, as the French theatre was at this period as reserved and
decent as the Italian was the reverse. The licence of the foreigners,
indeed, knew no bounds, and finally their plays assumed so objectionable
a character that, in 1697, they were expelled from France.[58] The
probable explanation is, that the Gallican Church did not dare to
proscribe the same persons whom the sovereign pontiffs tolerated in
their realm, and whose performances were freely patronised by the Roman
prelates and clergy.[59]
By another inconsistency, the indulgence shown to the Italian players
was extended to the singers and dancers of the Opera. The reason given
for this exemption was that the members of the Opera were not actors, as
they did not bear the name. But, as we have seen, the canons of the
early councils, upon which the bigots relied for their authority, made
no distinction whatever between the different classes of public
performers: actors, singers, dancers, mountebanks, jugglers, and circus
performers were all included in one common anathema.[60]
* * * * *
Mlle. de Champmeslé had been greatly distressed at having to renounce
her triumphs and the adulation of the public. Proud of the profession to
which she owed her fame, she revolted from the idea of repudiating it,
and for some time opposed a steady resistance to the solicitations of
the curé of Auteuil, who besought her to make her peace with Heaven, or
rather with the Church. Finally, however, she yielded, and the curé of
Saint-Sulpice, to whose parish she belonged, was summoned to receive her
renunciation. Under ordinary circumstances, as we have seen, the
unfortunate actor or actress was compelled to give this undertaking in
writing duly attested before a notary; but when the priest arrived the
poor woman was at the point of death, and he was therefore compelled to
content himself with a verbal declaration. This formality concluded, the
curé of Auteuil gave the dying actress absolution and administered the
last Sacraments; and on May 15, 1698, she passed quietly away, at the
age of fifty-six.
On the morrow her body was brought to Paris, and interred at
Saint-Sulpice, in the presence of the whole of the Comédie-Française.
That same day, Racine, now a _dévot_ of the most pronounced type, wrote
to his son Louis, "with whom," says the poet's very candid biographer,
M. Larroumet, "he ought never to have approached such a subject":--
"M. de Rost informed me the day before yesterday that the Champmeslé was
_in extremis_, about which he appeared very distressed; but what is
more distressing is that which he apparently troubles little about, I
mean the obstinacy with which this poor wretch refuses to renounce the
play; declaring, so I am told, that she is proud to die an actress. It
is to be hoped that, when she sees death drawing nearer, she will change
her tone, as is the rule with the majority of persons who give
themselves such airs so long as they are in good health."
Two months later, he returns to the subject in these terms:--
"I must tell you, by the way, that I owe reparation to the memory of the
Champmeslé, who died in a sufficiently good state of mind, after having
renounced the play, very repentant for her past life, but especially
distressed at having to die."
"There is no conversion," very justly remarks M. Larroumet, "that can
possibly excuse such language as this."
* * * * *