THE THEATRE BOOTH.
Although an open secret is now called Punch’s secret, it is certain
that the marionettes’ theatre and the puppet dance are great
mysteries in their way.
Very few people have ever penetrated behind the scenes of these
theatres. They are far better defended than the Opera, and I am not a
little proud of having been admitted one day at the Versailles Fair
behind the curtain of the Bermont Theatre during the performance of a
grand drama, in one act, _The Spanish Brigands_.
I had been attracted by a very brilliant oration from Punch,
detailing all the amusements to be found within. [p082]
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” he spluttered between his teeth in
the usual way, “this is the real society and family entertainment.
Everything is calculated, everything is arranged, to please the eye:
a review of the greatest Parisian artists, dances in character,
Icarian games held in honour both by the Greeks and Romans, a Spanish
bolero, Harlequin’s celebrated feats on a bicycle, and, lastly, the
great unpublished drama, now performed for the first time in this
town, _The Brigands_.”
We crowded in, about one hundred urchins, grandmothers, and nurses,
eyes wide open in pleasant anticipation.
A small Italian musician, his teeth gleaming like ivory from contact
with hard crusts, formed the whole orchestra. He played the accordion
on the front bench. His melody ended, some one rapped three times,
the performance commenced.
First, two Polish warriors entered and performed a military dance,
marking the time with their heels. Then followed a couple of Spanish
dancers, who executed some wonderful pirouettes and pigeons’ flights.
Then appeared the india-rubber man, who stretched and stretched
himself, and finally bent himself until his nose touched his heels,
and then he sneezed, a performance which convulsed the spectators
with delight. He was succeeded by a lawyer in a black dress, who
doubled himself, became triple and quadruple—a naïve symbol of the
craftiness of his profession—then played in each of the four corners
of the stage with his duplicates and suddenly flew through the frieze.
The curtain falls.
From every bench a sorrowful cry is heard, “Is it over?” [p083]
No. The second part is going to begin.
Rap! rap! rap!
The curtain rises upon a second curtain, which represents a forest, a
chief, two brigands, three acolytes. This is the band.
[Illustration]
THE CAPTAIN.—“My friends, I have heard from the old postillion that a
post-chaise will pass through this narrow road. You must stop it.”
THE BAND.—“Yes, captain.”
THE CAPTAIN.—“You, Pedro, must guard this defile. We, my friends,
must away to the mountains.” [p084]
(_The band disappears on the side to the court. Pedro remains alone
for one moment. A monk enters front the garden side._)
PEDRO.—“Halt there; your money or your life!”
THE MONK.—“But, my brother, I am as poor as you are. Capuchins have
no money.”
PEDRO.—“What are those twenty-five golden louis I see in this purse?
And the repeater that I see; I—”
(_Pedro attempts to rob the monk. The Capuchin falls on his knees._)
THE MONK.—“Mercy! If I go home without this money the superior will
shut me up in a dungeon.”
PEDRO.—“That’s not my business!”
THE MONK.—“At least fire into the folds of my frock without wounding
me, so that I can prove that I was attacked.”
PEDRO.—Very well. (_He fires._)
THE MONK, _springing upon Pedro, and stabbing him with a
dagger_.—“Fool! You missed me, but I shall not miss you!”
(_He disappears on the court side; the captain and his band re-enter
from the garden side._
_They pause before the body of Pedro._)
A BRIGAND.—“The coward, he is asleep!”
THE CAPTAIN.—“No, he is bathed in blood. The monk has killed him. Let
us pillage the monastery.”
The curtain falls; the show is really over this time.
I went behind the scenes to ask the _impresario_ Bermont for the name
of the author of this fine historical drama.
“I wrote it myself,” he modestly replied. “I have a book [p085]
of plays. I write them in the evenings, when they occur to
me—recollections, ideas, anything. We also play _The Passion_, _The
Temptation of Saint Anthony_, _Hell_, and _Geneviève de Brabant_. The
book is very old, and has never been printed. We repeat it through
over and over again. I also perform _Camilla Underground;_ or, the
_Dangerous Forest_. But once in that piece the ‘author’s rights’
found a pretext for coming in, but they did not recognize the piece;
I had changed it all.”
[Illustration]
His wife stood near him whilst he spoke, leaning on his shoulder,
tenderly proud of belonging to a man gifted with so much imagination.
If you should ever have an opportunity of examining the large volumes
in which the Brothers Parfaict, the Des Beulmiers, de [p086] Monnet,
and some other authors have scientifically discussed the origin of
fair theatres, you will find that they have been always forced to
contend against that hereditary enemy which the _impresario_ Bermont
now calls the “author’s rights,” and which has borne different names
in different ages.
At the epoch when the fair theatres first attracted notice, that is
to say about 1595, it might have been justly styled the “comedians’
rights.” The brotherhood of the Passion and the actors of the Hôtel
de Bourgogne would not allow any extension of theatrical performances
by their side, and as they held the power they easily obtained a rule
which restricted the comedies in a fair to wooden actors, marionettes
of Brioché, learned animals, acrobats, and juggling tricks.
But the _banquistes_ are a tenacious race, and towards 1678, in spite
of the opposition from the comedians, the fair theatres commenced to
mount a few well-seasoned farces with actors of flesh and blood. The
head of the police protested, and the managers once more pretended to
restrict themselves within the limits of the law, resorting to some
ingenious infraction of the spirit of it, which provoked laughter
and put the comedians in the wrong; for instance, the artifice used
by La Grille, who opened, in the fair of Saint Germaine, an _Opera
de Bamboche_, in which the sole actor was a huge marionette, that
gesticulated to the melodies of an invisible musician concealed in
the prompter’s box.
[Illustration]
At the same time the companies of Allard, Maurice and Bertrand,
Selle, Dominique and Octave, obtained great success in Paris and
the provinces. Conjuring tricks and [p088] feats of agility still
formed the chief part of the entertainment, but to them were added
scenes with dialogue, _comedies in song_, from which our comic operas
have developed.
[Illustration]
The _forain_ stage has retained the triple characteristics—acrobatic,
musical, and charlatan—which appear to have belonged to it from
the earliest days of its existence; but since the century in its
refinement values distinction of style, the _grande banque_ has
adapted itself to its requirements.
[Illustration: SNAKE CHARMER.] [p089]
There are three kinds of theatre booths:
Singing theatres.
Theatres with good variety performances.
Theatres with conjuring entertainments.
The theatres with operetta are the least amusing. No original work
has been produced in them for a long time, not even any new songs.
At the present moment the _café_ concerts provide the majority of
the tedious repetitions which make the tour of France. The _forain_
opera lives by spurious imitations and clumsy changes of title. All
its skill is expended in successfully defying the aforesaid “author’s
rights.” It succeeds to its own satisfaction when it advertises the
CLOCHES DE GORNEVILLE
with a large G. Its inventive power is limited to the substitution
of this one letter. And the individuals who appear upon the stages
of the booths to sing the “trial d’operette” are also the refuse of
the _café_ concerts. They can only impose upon an unsophisticated
audience. For this reason the _forain_ opera is no longer found in
the suburban fairs of Paris or other large cities. It is confined to
country fairs and provincial festivities.
[Illustration]
But the variety houses are on quite a different scale. The most
flourishing and the best known at the present time are the
establishments kept by Marquette and Emile Cocherie, who styles
himself on his programmes, “Head of the _fêtes_ of Paris.” At the
commencement of each campaign, that is to say before the Fair du
Trône, Emile Cocherie gives an audience in his villa at the Porte
de Montrouge to all the [p090] artists who aspire to enter his
troupe. In his presence the candidates must all _jouent le canevas_,
_i.e._ improvise a scene with dialogue upon a given subject. The same
old themes are used which have served ever since the origin of the
open-air [p091] stage; all the situations of the Italian comedies
and Gallic farces which amused the crowd even in the time of the
_escholiers_. A new topic is not prohibited, but there are very few
“patterers” who can _speak outside as well as inside_, as the terms
of the engagements run.
Still clever actors who can improve the performance receive extra
salaries. The illustrious Clam, who is called _the last of the
merry-andrews_, earned as much as five hundred francs a month at the
_forain_ theatres. I asked M. Cocherie, who was left inconsolable
by the departure of this whimsical performer, why he did not try to
replace him by some young student of comedy who had passed creditably
through the Conservatoire.
“He would not suit me,” replied the experienced manager. “I have
tried them, and still have one in my show, but he does not succeed.
The lads have not effective voices, they are not merry and, above
all, they have no gift for improvisation. A commercial traveller who
can push a sale well, a hawker from the street, would be much more in
my line than M. Coquelin _aîné_.”
And it is quite true, this Clam is a splendid clown. I do not
recommend you to make his acquaintance in the _Clamiana_, a
collection of jokes which seem very dull when they are read, printed
with old type in a small newspaper. Clam should be heard outside
the show in the tumult of smacks and kicks which accompanies his
improvised dialogue with his butt.
I begged this important personage to give me a few notes on his life,
and I now publish them as they were given to me. The last of the
red-tails belongs to literary history. [p092]
[Illustration]
“At noon, on the 5th June, 1837, a baby uttered its first cry. The
son of the actor Chanet entered the world in the native place of
Casimir Delavigne! Brought up in more than poverty and naturally
delicate, my childhood was passed in an asylum at Havre, about the
time of the great cholera epidemic, which spared my life; later on, I
sold [p093] checks at the theatre door, and considered myself lucky
if I occasionally managed to see one act.
“My only recreation was reading plays and acting them in a footwarmer
by means of little dolls. I was the most ignorant of the Brothers’
class. In spite of all I became errand boy and lithographer.
“In 1853 I made my _début_ as a comic singer in the Théâtre des
Familles, established in an old prison.
[Illustration]
“Some time afterwards I tired of shining in the carnaval _fêtes_
of the period and returned to Havre as a chorus-singer, under the
direction of M. Defossez.
“I sang in choruses and made floats. Some years later I returned to
the same theatre and gave some performances.
“But in spite of this success Paris has seen me almost barefooted,
ill, and homeless; my food gathered from the scraps found under the
umbrellas round the Fontaine des Innocents. My mother was poor and
could not help me, and for my own part I would not tell her of my
distress, wishing to spare her tears. By dint of struggles and of
[p094] work I distinguished myself as an actor at Nancy, Limoges,
Bordeaux, Toulouse, Havre, Rouen, Besançon, Geneva, Nantes, Paris, &c.
“I have acted with Henry Monnier, my master, Scrivaneck, Vieuxtemps,
Hoffman, Darcier, and Renard. Circumstances have forced me to give
performances in every description of city and small town. I have
played in stables and theatres, in barns, and in the Rothschilds’
drawing-rooms; I have travelled on foot, by railway, and in carts.
I journeyed through one part of France with some acrobats, with
whom I saw it through many colours and on the road I collected some
instructive and still unpublished notes, of which I am the sole owner.
“My travelling diaries are all my fortune. Afterwards I went to the
_café_ concert with the remnant of my voice, and was successively
engaged in various large cities. I know some parts of Holland and
Germany, a little of Switzerland and Prussia, a great deal of
Belgium, and something of Italy and Spain. But I know Bohemia best of
all.
“Like the late Bilboquet, I have tampered with every _banque_ except
the Banque de France, but this does not prevent me from living a
quiet, unobtrusive life; my only wish is that no one should annoy
me (this is very difficult to get), to live a long time and to die
without pain.
“I add for the edification of the reader that my sons bear my
name, an item which my father forgot to bestow upon me (he was so
heedless).”
Clam, who—as you may judge from this narrative—has some claim to be
noticed in any complete anthology of [p095] French writers in prose,
has “teased the muse” at times. But his poems echo the prevailing
note of his century—they are cynical and melancholy. You may judge
by these three verses on the death of a comrade in the show. Clam
dedicated them to me:
“Elle est morte, la cabotine,
Sans avoir essuyé son blanc,
A la bouche une cavatine,
Son bouquet de fleurs sur le flanc.
Dans sa “caravane,” on la garde
Entre un cierge et des litres bus;
Sa mère l’habille et la farde
Comme elle a fait pour ses débuts.
Elle attend qu’on lève la trappe
Et qu’on frappe au rideau trois coups,
Elle attend . . . Hélas! on les frappe,
Mais c’est sur des têtes de clous.”[4]
A man who has so many strings to his bow is not anxious about the
future. One day when I hinted before Clam that old age might surprise
him, without any provision for it, he replied:
“When I am no good for anything else my friends will [p096] make a
politician of me. But I have still some chest left, and I shall put
off the death of the show for many years yet.”
The improvements, the tricks of every kind which have destroyed
the “outside shows,” have enriched the entertainments given inside
the booths, and have most successfully transformed the conjuring
performances like those found in the establishments of Adrian Delille
and Pietro Gallici.
Since Delille bought the theatre and tricks of Laroche he is the
king of showmen conjurers. He is third representative of the name.
The first Adrian, the grandfather, was conjurer to King Charles X.,
and, since that remote date, at every fair held in Paris or any
large town, a magician bearing the name of Delille has been seen
making omelettes in hats, juggling with balls, &c., without the aid
of pointed hat, long sleeves, wand, or cabalistic words—a modern
sorcerer in evening dress and lavender kid gloves. The Delilles first
introduced the trick of the _Speaking Head_ into France. They bought
the patent for 4,000 francs, never hesitated to bring a lawsuit
against any one who infringed it, and always won their case.
The science of white magic has made great progress since that date.
There are always some means of improving an old trick, and every year
Adrian Delille spends his six months of enforced rest in preparing
for the summer season.
[Illustration]
Like all his comrades, he disbands his troupe in the month of
November, and takes up his winter quarters in Paris, where he has a
study devoted to experiments. He must [p097] be ready to renew the
campaign at Easter, to astonish the Parisians at the Fair du Trône.
In his youth the conjurer worked almost alone, and for hours he would
keep the public breathless with interest and wonder. For this he
required great facility of speech, a mind always on the alert, and
the [p098] skill to draw the eyes of the spectators in any direction
he wished away from his secret manipulations. Conjuring implies a
constant struggle against the malicious curiosity of the audience.
“I am not strong enough now,” Delille observed to me, “to bear the
strain during a succession of tricks; I was obliged to divide the
performance. Besides, now, the public like that best.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The troupe consists of forty persons. It is a little difficult to
realize the size of the establishment required to work these large
show-theatres. A booth like that of Adrian Delille can seat 1,200
people, and it is always crowded for the Sunday performances. They
cost an average of 400 francs [p100] per diem, for the principal
performers receive high salaries. Clowns, acrobats, buffoons, and
equilibrists, all these artists—and they are the same who appear in
the hippodrome and circuses—are engaged through the agencies. The
engagements are concluded for one month, but they can be cancelled at
the end of a week at the wish of the proprietor.
A good clown, a skilful gymnast, can earn in a _forain_ theatre like
that of Delille as much as at the circus—about 2,000 francs per month.
The dancers employed to pose in the _tableaux vivants_ are paid
according to their beauty and skill—180, 240, or even 500 francs per
month.
Delille paid a still higher sum to the two pretty girls who lately
posed for him as the two little combatants in Emile Bayard’s picture
_An Affair of Honour_.
It would be quite as indiscreet to ask a conjurer to explain his
tricks, as a pretty woman to tell you what scent she uses for her
toilet, and therefore I have never discussed the subject. The
exclusive ownership of a conjuring trick is difficult to defend
in law, and for this reason prestidigitators are always on their
guard against the indiscretion of their workpeople. They have been
betrayed a hundred times for a bottle of wine and a few banknotes,
and now, taught by misfortune, they surround their experiments with
as much mystery as the old Egyptian priests used in their worship
of the veiled Isis. After all, our pleasure lies in this mystery
only. “These phantasmagorias,” it has been well said by one of our
contemporaries, whom a taste for philosophic acrobatics has led to
esteem acrobats in [p101] fleshings,—“these phantasmagorias please
us like every other phenomena which seems to contradict the universal
order of things, to counteract the laws of nature. The universe being
what it is, we have no other consolation than the dream that it is
otherwise, and this is the true essence of poetry. Conjuring is
lyrical poetry—fable in action.”[5]
[Illustration] [p102]
The time has passed when conjurers were forced to ascend a woodpile
and worthy folk clung to the honour of bringing a faggot to roast
them with. Every one knows that there is nothing supernatural in the
illusions they create. Usually the explanation is one of the most
simple things in the world, but our search for it is nearly always
unsuccessful, yet whilst we persevere in it we cannot be bored, and
this is really the only aim in view.
[Illustration: M. DE KOLTA.]
There is one conjurer more modern than Delille, more ingenious than
Robert Houdin, who has carried the art of white magic to a state of
perfection unknown before. This is M. de Kolta.
This extraordinary man takes a sheet of paper, rolls it up like a
cornucopia, and from this horn of plenty he immediately pours an
avalanche of roses into a crystal cup. [p103]
The spectator is bewildered.
[Illustration]
“Where do these roses come from?” he asks. Apparently they had been
in some way concealed in the waistcoat of the thaumaturgist; but how
did they get into the horn? what pushed them? what secret spring made
them flow forth? [p104]
We must own that no one knows.
M. de Kolta then removes his coat and takes a cage containing a live
bird into his hands. One, two, three!
The cage and the bird are gone; nothing is left! The clever ones
will gravely tell you that the cage was jointed; by pressing some
secret spring it unjoints, closes or elongates itself. Most probably
it assumes the shape of a narrow cylinder, in the midst of which the
bird is imprisoned but not hurt.
That is all very well, but what becomes of the cylinder? The magician
has no accomplice; he performs the trick alone, before the eyes of
the public. It seems impossible that any movement could escape that
watchful gaze.
Lastly, M. de Kolta is not satisfied with making a bird disappear,
he causes a woman to vanish—his wife, so they say; and although he
chose one so frail, so tiny, so nearly related to the elves, that she
looks as though she might run across a meadow without bending a blade
of grass, still she is a woman of flesh and blood, who could not be
forced into the sheath of a sword.
M. de Kolta, who is cleverer than you are, spreads a newspaper upon
the floor and places a chair on the paper. Madame de Kolta seats
herself upon the chair, and her husband covers the little parcel of
lace with a red and black veil; then rapidly takes the veil off again.
The woman has gone!
Evidently the woman disappeared through a trap; but yet, whilst she
went through it, the veil never moved, and the newspaper is still
intact, though it is much larger than the [p105] edges of the veil.
We feel humiliated at being the victims of such an illusion, although
we were forewarned. And we ask ourselves with some alarm, what is,
then, the value of the feeble organs of knowledge we call our senses,
in which we so blindly place our trust?
But through this uneasiness, this distrust of our judgment, which
conjuring leaves, this entertainment becomes an excellent school
of wisdom. You may believe M. Jules Lemaître on this point, for he
first discovered the philosophical side of these performances. “M.
de Kolta,” he said, “should be a happy man. He is a true sorcerer.
He forces us to see with our eyes things which we cannot see, and
not to see things which we do see, and this is solely through the
marvellous skill of his agile fingers. In his place, I would go to
the mysterious and credulous East, where I would found a new religion
based upon miracles. M. Renan would provide a dogma suited to the
requirements of those far-distant souls, and M. de Kolta would work
the miracles. He would be a prophet during his life, a saint, perhaps
a god, after his death. . . . But one sorrowful reflection tempers
the pleasure which this idea gives me. The miracles worked by M.
de Kolta are practically injurious. Since we do not believe in the
false miracles he performs—since nothing distinguishes them from real
ones, and we have only the magician’s word to assure us they are
false, what, then, should we do if real miracles were worked in our
presence? We should say, We know all about them; it’s only conjuring!
And thus the small remnant of faith which we may still retain in the
supernatural is insidiously destroyed. [p106] When the prophet Elijah
returns to earth at the end of time he will meet other De Koltas
here; he will himself be sent to the Eden or to the Folies Bergères.
And that is how the last men will lose their souls—just like the
first, however.”
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] “She is dead, the mummer gay,
With the powder on her face,
On her lips a merry lay,
Flowers nestling in her lace.
In her “caravan” she lies
Twixt empty bottles and wax lights,
Her mother decks her, rouge applies,
As though it were for her ‘first nights.’
She waits, until they raise the trap,
Three knocks, the rising curtain hails,
She waits . . . alas! I hear them tap,
But ’tis upon the heads of nails.”
[5] Jules Lemaître, _Impressions de Théâtre_, Second Series.
[p107] [Illustration]