The filth and the paltry shabbiness of the entrance to the theatre
amounted to cynicism. Instead of uplifting by a foretaste of light and
magnificence, as the entrance to a theatre should, it depressed by its
neglected squalour. Twenty years earlier it might have cried urgently
for cleansing and redecoration, but now it was long past crying. It
had become vile. In the centre at the back sat a row of three or four
officials in evening dress, prosperous clubmen with glittering rakish
hats, at a distance of twenty feet, but changing as we approached them
to indigent, fustian-clad ticket-clerks penned in a rickety rostrum and
condemned like sandwich-men to be ridiculous in order to live. (Their
appearance recalled to my mind the fact that a “front-of-the-house”
inspector at the principal music-hall in France and in Europe is paid
thirty sous a night.) They regarded our tickets with gestures of scorn,
weariness, and cupidity. None knew better than they that these coloured
scraps represented a large lovely gold coin, rare and yet plentiful,
reassuring and yet transient, the price of coals, boots, nectar, and
love.
We came to a very narrow, low, foul, semi-circular tunnel which was
occupied by hags and harpies with pink bows in their hair, and by
marauding men, and by hats and cloaks and overcoats, and by a double
odour of dirt and disinfectants. Along the convex side of the tunnel
were a number of little doors like the doors of cells. We bought a
programme from a man, yielded our wraps to two harpies, and were led
away by another man. All these beings looked hungrily apprehensive, like
dogs nosing along a gutter. The auditorium which was nearly full, had
the same characteristics as the porch and the _couloir_. It was
filthy, fetid, uncomfortable, and dangerous. It had the carpets of a
lodging-house of the ‘seventies, the seats of an old omnibus, the gilt
and the decorated sculpture of a circus at a fair. And it was dingy! It
was encrusted with dinginess!
Something seemed to be afoot on the stage: from the embittered
resignation of the audience and the perfunctory nonchalance of the
players, we knew that this could only be the curtain-raiser. The
hour was ten minutes past nine. The principal piece was advertised to
commence at nine o’clock. But the curtain-raiser was not yet finished,
and after it was finished there would be the _entr’acte_--one of the
renowned, interminable _entr’actes_ of the Théâtre des Variétés.
*****
The Variétés is still one of the most “truly Parisian” of theatres, and
has been so since long before Zola described it fully in _Nana_. The
young bloods of Buenos Ayres and St. Petersburg still have visions of
an evening at the Variétés as the superlative of intense living. Every
theatre with a reputation has its “note,” and the note of the Variétés
is to make a fool of its public. Its attitude to the public is that of
an English provincial hotel or an English bank: “Come, and he d----d to
you! Above all, do not imagine that I exist for your convenience. You
exist for mine.” At the Variétés had management is good management;
slackness is a virtuous _coquetterie_. It would never do, there, to be
prompt, clean, or honest. To make the theatre passably habitable
would be ruin. Its _chic_ would be lost if it ceased to be a Hades of
discomfort and a menace to health. There is a small troupe of notorious
artistes, some of whom show great talent when it occurs to them to show
it; the vogue of the rest is one of the innumerable mysteries which
abound in theatrical life. It is axiomatic that they are all witty, and
that whatever lines they enunciate thereby become witty. They are simply
side-splitting as Sydney Smith was simply side-splitting when he asked
for the potatoes to be passed. Also the manager of the theatre always
wears an old straw hat, summer and winter. He is the wearer of an
eternal battered straw hat, who incidentally manages a theatre. You go
along the boulevard, and you happen to see that straw hat emerging from
the theatre. And by the strange potency of the hat you will be obliged
to say to the next acquaintance you meet: “I’ve just seen Samuel in
his straw hat.” And the thought in your mind and in the mind of your
acquaintance will be that you are getting very near the heart of Paris.
Beyond question the troupe of favourites considers itself to be the real
centre of Paris, and, therefore, of civilisation. Practically the entire
Press, either by good nature, stupidity, snobbishness, or simple cash
transactions, takes part in the vast make-believe that the troupe is
conferring a favour on civilisation by consenting to be alive. And the
troupe of course behaves accordingly. It puts its back into the evening
when it thinks it will, and when it thinks it won’t, it doesn’t. “_Aux
Variétés on travaille quand on a le temps._” The rise of the curtain
awaits the caprice of a convivial green-room. “Don’t hurry--the public
is getting impatient.” Naturally, the underlings are not included in the
benefits of the make-believe. “At rehearsals we may wait two hours for
the principals,” a chorus-girl said to me. “But if _we_ are five minutes
late, one flings us a fine. A hundred francs a month I touch, and it
has happened to me to pay thirty in fines. Some one gets all that,
you know!” She went off into an impassioned description of scenes at
rehearsals of a ballet, how the ballet-master, after epical outbursts,
would always throw up his arms in inexpressible disgust and retire to
his room, and how the women would follow him and kiss and cajole and
hug him, and how then, after a majestic pause, his step could be heard
slowly descending the stairs, and at last the rehearsal would resume....
The human interest, no doubt!
The Variétés has another _rôle_ and justification. It is what the French
call a women’s theatre. When I asked a well-known actress why the
_entr’-actes_ at the Variétés were so long, she replied with her air of
finding even the most bizarre phenomena quite natural: “There are
several reasons. One is, so that the gentlemen may have time to write
notes and to receive answers.” I did not conceal my sense of the oddness
of this method of conducting a theatre, whereupon she reminded me that
it was the Variétés we were talking about. She said that little by
little I should understand all sorts of things.
*****
As the principal piece progressed--it was an _opérette_--the apathy of
the public grew more and more noticeable. They seemed to have forgotten
that they were in one of the most truly Parisian of theatres, watching
players whose names were household words and synonyms of wit and
allurement. There was no applause, save from a claque which had carried
discipline to the extreme. The favourites were evidently in one of their
moods of casualness. Either the piece had run too long or it was not
going to run long enough. It was a piece brightly and jinglingly vulgar,
ministering, of course, in the main, to the secret concupiscence which
drives humanity forward; titillating, like most stage-spectacles, all
that is base, inept, and gross in a crowd whose units are perhaps, not
quite odious. A few of the performers had moments of real brilliance.
But even these flashes did not stir the public, whose characteristic
was stolidity. A public which, having regard to the conditions of the
particular theatre, necessarily consisted of simple snobbish gulls whose
creed is whatever they read or hear, with an admixture of foreigners,
provincials, adventurers, and persons who, having no illusions, go
to the Variétés because they have been to everything else and must go
somewhere! The first half-dozen rows of the stalls were reserved for
males: a custom which at the Variétés has survived from a more barbaric
age, as the custom of the finger-bowl has survived in the repasts of
the polite. The self-satisfied and self-conscious occupants of these rows
seemed to summarise and illustrate all the various masculine stupidity
of a great and proud city. To counterbalance this preponderance of
the male, I could glimpse, behind the lath grilles of the cages
called _baignoires_, the forms of women (each guarded) who I hope were
incomparable. The sight of these grilles at once sent the mind to the
seraglio, and the House of Commons, and other fastnesses of Orientalism.
The evening was interminable, not for me alone, but obviously for the
majority of the audience. Impossible to describe the dull fortitude of
the audience without being accused of wilful exaggeration! Only in the
_entr’actes_, in the amplitude and dubious mystery of the _entr’actes_,
did the audience arouse itself into the semblance of vivacity. There was
but little complaining. Were we not at the Variétés? At the Variétés,
to suffer was part of the entertainment. The French public is a public
which accepts all in Christian meekness--all! It knows that it exists
for the convenience of the bureaucracy and the theatres. It covers
its cowardice under a mantle of philosophy and politeness. Its fierce
protest is a shrug. “_Que voulez-vous? C’est comme ça_.”
*****
At last, at nearly half after midnight, we came forth, bitterly
depressed, as usual, by the deep consciousness of futile waste. I could
see, in my preoccupation, the whole organism of the Variétés, which is
only the essence of the French theatre. A few artistes and a financier
or so at the core, wilful, corrupt, self-indulgent, spoiled, venal,
enormously unbusinesslike, incredibly cynical, luxurious in the midst of
a crowd of miserable parasites and menials; creating for themselves, out
of electric globes, and newspapers, and posters, and photographs, and
the inexhaustible simplicity and sexuality of the public, a legend of
artistic greatness. They make a frame, and hang a curtain in front of
it, and put footlights beneath; and lo! the capricious manouvres
of these mortals become the sacred, authoritative functioning of an
institution!
It was raining. The boulevard was a mirror. And along the reflecting
surface of this mirror cab after cab, hundreds of cabs, rolled swiftly.
Dozens and dozens were empty, and had no goal; but none would stop. They
all went ruthlessly by with offensive gestures of disdain. Strangers
cannot believe that when a Paris cabman without a fare refuses to stop
on a wet night, it is not because he is hoping for a client in richer
furs, or because he is going to the stables, or because he has earned
enough that night, or because he has an urgent appointment with
his enchantress--but simply from malice. Nevertheless this is a
psychological fact which any experienced Parisian will confirm. On a wet
night the cabman revenges himself upon the _bourgeoisie_ though the base
satisfaction may cost him money. As we waited, with many other princes
of the earth who could afford to throw away a whole louis for a few
hours’ relaxation, as we waited vainly in the wet for a cabman who would
condescend, I could savour only one sensation--that of exasperating
tedium completely achieved.