There was to be a first appearance on the stage of Lord Monmouth’s
theatre to-night, the expectation of which created considerable interest
in the party, and was one of the principal subjects of conversation at
dinner. Villebecque, the manager of the troop, had married the actress
Stella, once celebrated for her genius and her beauty; a woman who had
none of the vices of her craft, for, though she was a fallen angel,
there were what her countrymen style extenuating circumstances in
her declension. With the whole world at her feet, she had remained
unsullied. Wealth and its enjoyments could not tempt her, although
she was unable to refuse her heart to one whom she deemed worthy of
possessing it. She found her fate in an Englishman, who was the father
of her only child, a daughter. She thought she had met in him a hero, a
demi-god, a being of deep passion and original and creative mind; but
he was only a voluptuary, full of violence instead of feeling, and
eccentric, because he had great means with which he could gratify
extravagant whims. Stella found she had made the great and irretrievable
mistake. She had exchanged devotion for a passionate and evanescent
fancy, prompted at first by vanity, and daily dissipating under the
influence of custom and new objects. Though not stainless in conduct,
Stella was pure in spirit. She required that devotion which she had
yielded; and she separated herself from the being to whom she had made
the most precious sacrifice. He offered her the consoling compensation
of a settlement, which she refused; and she returned with a broken
spirit to that profession of which she was still the ornament and the
pride.
The animating principle of her career was her daughter, whom she
educated with a solicitude which the most virtuous mother could not
surpass. To preserve her from the stage, and to secure for her an
independence, were the objects of her mother’s life; but nature
whispered to her, that the days of that life were already numbered.
The exertions of her profession had alarmingly developed an inherent
tendency to pulmonary disease. Anxious that her child should not be left
without some protector, Stella yielded to the repeated solicitations
of one who from the first had been her silent admirer, and she married
Villebecque, a clever actor, and an enterprising man who meant to be
something more. Their union was not of long duration, though it was
happy on the side of Villebecque, and serene on that of his wife. Stella
was recalled from this world, where she had known much triumph and more
suffering; and where she had exercised many virtues, which elsewhere,
though not here, may perhaps be accepted as some palliation of one great
error.
Villebecque acted becomingly to the young charge which Stella had
bequeathed to him. He was himself, as we have intimated, a man of
enterprise, a restless spirit, not content to move for ever in the
sphere in which he was born. Vicissitudes are the lot of such aspirants.
Villebecque became manager of a small theatre, and made money. If
Villebecque without a sou had been a schemer, Villebecque with a small
capital was the very Chevalier Law of theatrical managers. He took a
larger theatre, and even that succeeded. Soon he was recognised as the
lessee of more than one, and still he prospered. Villebecque began to
dabble in opera-houses. He enthroned himself at Paris; his envoys
were heard of at Milan and Naples, at Berlin and St. Petersburg. His
controversies with the Conservatoire at Paris ranked among state papers.
Villebecque rolled in chariots and drove cabriolets; Villebecque gave
refined suppers to great nobles, who were honoured by the invitation;
Villebecque wore a red ribbon in the button-hole of his frock, and more
than one cross in his gala dress.
All this time the daughter of Stella increased in years and stature,
and we must add in goodness: a mild, soft-hearted girl, as yet with no
decided character, but one who loved calmness and seemed little fitted
for the circle in which she found herself. In that circle, however,
she ever experienced kindness and consideration. No enterprise however
hazardous, no management however complicated, no schemes however vast,
ever for a moment induced Villebecque to forget ‘La Petite.’ If only for
one breathless instant, hardly a day elapsed but he saw her; she was his
companion in all his rapid movements, and he studied every comfort and
convenience that could relieve her delicate frame in some degree from
the inconvenience and exhaustion of travel. He was proud to surround
her with luxury and refinement; to supply her with the most celebrated
masters; to gratify every wish that she could express.
But all this time Villebecque was dancing on a volcano. The catastrophe
which inevitably occurs in the career of all great speculators, and
especially theatrical ones, arrived to him. Flushed with his prosperity,
and confident in his constant success, nothing would satisfy him
but universal empire. He had established his despotism at Paris, his
dynasties at Naples and at Milan; but the North was not to him, and
he was determined to appropriate it. Berlin fell before a successful
campaign, though a costly one; but St. Petersburg and London still
remained. Resolute and reckless, nothing deterred Villebecque. One
season all the opera-houses in Europe obeyed his nod, and at the end
of it he was ruined. The crash was utter, universal, overwhelming; and
under ordinary circumstances a French bed and a brasier of charcoal
alone remained for Villebecque, who was equal to the occasion. But
the thought of La Petite and the remembrance of his promise to Stella
deterred him from the deed. He reviewed his position in a spirit
becoming a practical philosopher. Was he worse off than before he
commenced his career? Yes, because he was older; though to be sure he
had his compensating reminiscences. But was he too old to do anything?
At forty-five the game was not altogether up; and in a large theatre,
not too much lighted, and with the artifices of a dramatic toilet,
he might still be able successfully to reassume those characters of
coxcombs and muscadins, in which he was once so celebrated. Luxury had
perhaps a little too much enlarged his waist, but diet and rehearsals
would set all right.
Villebecque in their adversity broke to La Petite, that the time had
unfortunately arrived when it would be wise for her to consider the most
effectual means for turning her talents and accomplishments to account.
He himself suggested the stage, to which otherwise there were
doubtless objections, because her occupation in any other pursuit would
necessarily separate them; but he impartially placed before her the
relative advantages and disadvantages of every course which seemed to
lie open to them, and left the preferable one to her own decision. La
Petite, who had wept very much over Villebecque’s misfortunes, and often
assured him that she cared for them only for his sake, decided for the
stage, solely because it would secure their not being parted; and yet,
as she often assured him, she feared she had no predisposition for the
career.
Villebecque had now not only to fill his own parts at the theatre
at which he had obtained an engagement, but he had also to be the
instructor of his ward. It was a life of toil; an addition of labour
and effort that need scarcely have been made to the exciting exertion
of performance, and the dull exercise of rehearsal; but he bore it all
without a murmur; with a self-command and a gentle perseverance which
the finest temper in the world could hardly account for; certainly not
when we remember that its possessor, who had to make all these exertions
and endure all this wearisome toil, had just experienced the most
shattering vicissitudes of fortune, and been hurled from the possession
of absolute power and illimitable self-gratification.
Lord Eskdale, who was always doing kind things to actors and actresses,
had a great regard for Villebecque, with whom he had often supped. He
had often been kind, too, to La Petite. Lord Eskdale had a plan for
putting Villebecque, as he termed it, ‘on his legs again.’ It was to
establish him with a French Company in London at some pretty theatre;
Lord Eskdale to take a private box and to make all his friends do the
same. Villebecque, who was as sanguine as he was good-tempered, was
ravished by this friendly scheme. He immediately believed that he should
recover his great fortunes as rapidly as he had lost them. He foresaw in
La Petite a genius as distinguished as that of her mother, although as
yet not developed, and he was boundless in his expressions of gratitude
to his patron. And indeed of all friends, a friend in need is the most
delightful. Lord Eskdale had the talent of being a friend in need.
Perhaps it was because he knew so many worthless persons. But it often
happens that worthless persons are merely people who are worth nothing.
Lord Monmouth having written to Mr. Rigby of his intention to reside for
some months at Coningsby, and having mentioned that he wished a troop of
French comedians to be engaged for the summer, Mr. Rigby had immediately
consulted Lord Eskdale on the subject, as the best current authority.
Thinking this a good opportunity of giving a turn to poor Villebecque,
and that it might serve as a capital introduction to their scheme of the
London company, Lord Eskdale obtained for him the engagement.
Villebecque and his little troop had now been a month at Coningsby, and
had hitherto performed three times a-week. Lord Monmouth was content;
his guests much gratified; the company, on the whole, much approved
of. It was, indeed, considering its limited numbers, a capital company.
There was a young lady who played the old woman’s parts, nothing
could be more garrulous and venerable; and a lady of maturer years who
performed the heroines, gay and graceful as May. Villebecque himself was
a celebrity in characters of airy insolence and careless frolic. Their
old man, indeed, was rather hard, but handy; could take anything either
in the high serious, or the low droll. Their sentimental lover was
rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the audience, a fault
rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea that he was
ultimately destined to run off with a princess.
In this wise, affairs had gone on for a month; very well, but not too
well. The enterprising genius of Villebecque, once more a manager,
prompted him to action. He felt an itching desire to announce a novelty.
He fancied Lord Monmouth had yawned once or twice when the heroine came
on. Villebecque wanted to make a _coup._ It was clear that La Petite
must sooner or later begin. Could she find a more favourable audience,
or a more fitting occasion, than were now offered? True it was she had
a great repugnance to come out; but it certainly seemed more to her
advantage that she should make her first appearance at a private theatre
than at a public one; supported by all the encouraging patronage of
Coningsby Castle, than subjected to all the cynical criticism of the
stalls of St. James’.
These views and various considerations were urged and represented by
Villebecque to La Petite, with all the practised powers of plausibility
of which so much experience as a manager had made him master. La Petite
looked infinitely distressed, but yielded, as she ever did. And the
night of Coningsby’s arrival at the Castle was to witness in its private
theatre the first appearance of MADEMOISELLE FLORA.