Whatever rôle she plays absorbs the attention of all Paris. Hearken,
then, good French Provincials, who would learn the language of the
Boulevards in a single lesson; hearken, also, ye children of other
lands who are eager for our pleasures, and curious about our tastes
and manners; hearken all people, men and women, who care, for once in
a way, to behold what of all Parisian things is most essentially
Parisian:--Go and see Réjane. Don't go to the Opéra, where the music
is German; nor to the Opéra-Comique, where it is Italian; nor yet to
the Comédie-Française, where the sublime is made ridiculous, and the
heroes and heroines of Racine take on the attitudes of bull-fighters
and cigarette-makers; nor to the Odéon, nor to the Palais-Royal, nor
here, nor there, nor elsewhere: go and see Réjane. Be she at London,
Chicago, Brussels, St. Petersburg--Réjane is Paris. She carries the
soul of Paris with her, wheresoever she listeth.
A Parisienne, she was born in Paris; an actress, she is the daughter
of an actor, and the niece of Madame Aptal-Arnault, sometime
_pensionnaire_ of the Comédie-Française. Is it a sufficient pedigree?
Her very name is suggestive; it seems to share in the odd turn of her
wit, the sauciness of her face, the tang of her voice; for Réjane's
real name is Réju. Doesn't it sound like a nick-name, especially
invented for this child of the greenroom? "Réjane" calls up to us the
fanciful actress--fanciful, but studious, conscientious, impassioned
for her art; "Madame Réjane" has rather a grand air; but Réju makes
such a funny face at her.
I picture to myself the little Réju, scarcely out of her cradle, but
already cunningly mischievous, fired with an immense curiosity about
the world behind the scenes, and dreaming of herself as leading lady.
She hears of nothing, she talks of nothing, but the Theatre. And
presently her inevitable calling, her manifest destiny, takes its
first step towards realisation. She is admitted into the class of
Regnier, the famous _sociétaire_ of the Théâtre-Français. Thenceforth
the pupil makes steady progress. In 1873, at the age of fifteen, she
obtains an honourable mention for comedy at the Conservatoire; the
following year she divides a second prize with Mademoiselle Samary.
But what am I saying? Only a second prize? Let us see.
To-day, as then, though twenty years have passed, there is no
possibility of success, no chance of getting an engagement, for a
pupil on leaving the Conservatoire, unless a certain all-powerful
critic, supreme judge, arbiter beyond appeal, sees fit to pronounce a
decision confirming the verdict of the Examining Jury. This
extraordinary man holds the future of each candidate in the palm of
his fat and heavy hand. Fame and fortune are contained in his
inkstand, and determined by his articles. He is both Pope and King.
The Jury proposes, he disposes. The Jury reigns, he governs. He smiles
or frowns, the Jury bows its head. The pupils tremble before their
Masters; the Masters tremble before this monstrous Fetich,--for the
Public thinks with him and by him, and sees only through his
spectacles; and no star can shine till his short sight has discovered
it.
This puissant astronomer is Monsieur Francisque Sarcey.
Against his opinion the newspapers can raise no voice, for he alone
edits them all. He writes thirty articles a day, each of which is
thirty times reprinted, thrice thirty times quoted from. He is, as it
were, the Press in person. And presently the momentous hour arrived
when the delicate and sprightly pupil of Regnier was to appear before
this enormous and somnolent mass, and to thrill it with pleasure. For
Monsieur Sarcey smiled upon and applauded Réjane's début at the
Conservatoire. He consecrated to her as many as fifty lines of
intelligent criticism; and I pray Heaven they may be remembered to his
credit on the Day of Judgment. Here they are, in that twopenny-halfpenny
style of his, so dear to the readers of _Le Temps_.
"I own that, for my part, I should have willingly awarded to the
latter (Mademoiselle Réjane) a first prize. It seems to me that
she deserved it. But the Jury is frequently influenced by
extrinsic and private motives, into which it is not permitted to
pry. A first prize carries with it the right of entrance into the
Comédie Française; and the Jury did not think Mademoiselle
Réjane, with her little wide-awake face, suited to the vast frame
of the House of Molière. That is well enough; but the second
prize, which it awarded her, authorises the Director of the Odéon
to receive her into his Company; and that perspective alone ought
to have sufficed to dissuade the Jury from the course it took....
Every one knows that at present the Odéon is, for a beginner, a
most indifferent school.... Instead of shoving its promising
pupils into it by the shoulders, the Conservatoire should forbid
them to approach it, lest they should be lost there. What will
Mademoiselle Réjane do at the Odéon? Show her legs in _La
Jeunesse de Louis XIV._, which is to be revived at the opening of
the season! A pretty state of things. She must either go to the
Vaudeville or to the Gymnase. It is there that she will form
herself; it is there that she will learn her trade, show what she
is capable of, and prepare herself for the Comédie Française, if
she is ever to enter it.... She recited a fragment from _Les
Trois Sultanes_.... I was delighted by her choice. The _Trois
Sultanes_ is so little known nowadays.... What wit there is in
her look, her smile! With her small eyes, shrewd and piercing,
with her little face thrust forward, she has so knowing an air,
one is inclined to smile at the mere sight of her. Does she
perhaps show a little too much assurance? What of it? 'Tis the
result of excessive timidity. But she laughs with such good
grace, she has so fresh and true a voice, she articulates so
clearly, she seems so happy to be alive and to have talent, that
involuntarily one thinks of Chénier's line:
_Sa bienvenue au jour lui rit dans tous les yeux._
... I shall be surprised if she does not make her way."
Praised be Sarcey! That was better than a second prize for Réjane. The
Oracle gave her the first, without dividing it. She got an immediate
engagement; and in March, 1875, appeared on that stage where to-day
she reigns supreme, the Vaudeville, to which she brought back the
vaudeville that was no longer played there. She began by alienating
the heart of Alphonse Daudet, who, while recognising her clever
delivery, found fault with her unemotional gaiety; but, in
compensation, another authoritative critic, Auguste Vitu, wrote, after
the performance of _Pierre_: "Mademoiselle Réjane showed herself full
of grace and feeling. She rendered Gabrielle's despair with a
naturalness, a brilliancy, a spontaneity, which won a most striking
success."
Shall I follow her through each of her creations, from her début in
_La Revue des Deux-Mondes_, up to her supreme triumph in _Madame
Sans-Gêne_? Shall I show her as the sly soubrette in _Fanny Lear_? as
the woman in love, "whose ignorance divines all things," in _Madame
Lili_? as the comical Marquise de Menu-Castel in _Le Verglas_? Shall I
tell of her first crowning success, when she played Gabrielle in
_Pierre_? Shall I recall her stormy interpretation of Madame de
Librac, in _Le Club_? and her dramatic conception of the part of
Ida?--which quite reversed the previous judgments of her critics,
wringing praise from her enemy Daudet, and censure from her faithful
admirer Vitu. The natural order of things, however, was re-established
by her performance of _Les Tapageurs_; again Daudet found her cold and
lacking in tenderness; and Vitu again applauded.
Her successes at the Vaudeville extend from 1875 to 1882; and towards
the end of that period, Réjane, always rising higher in her art,
created Anita in _L'Auréole_ and the Baronne d'Oria in _Odette_. Next,
forgetting her own traditions, she appeared at the Théâtre des
Panoramas, and at the Ambigu, where she gave a splendid interpretation
of Madame Cézambre in Richepin's _La Giu_; and at Les Variétés as
Adrienne in _Ma Camarade_. Now fickle, now constant to her first love,
she alternated between the Variétés and the Vaudeville; took an
engagement at the Odéon; assisted at the birth and death of the
Grand-Théâtre; and just lately the Vaudeville has won her back once
more.
Amidst these perambulations, Réjane played the diva in _Clara Soleil_.
The following year she had to take two different parts in the same
play, those of Gabrielle and Clicquette in _Les Demoiselles Clochart_.
Gabrielle is a cold and positive character; Clicquette a gay and
mischievous one. Réjane kept them perfectly distinct, and without the
smallest apparent effort. In 1887, she telephoned in _Allô-Allô_, and
represented so clearly, by means of clever mimicry, the absurd answers
of the apparatus, that from the gallery to the stalls the theatre was
one roar of laughter and applause; I fancy the salvoes and broadsides
must still sometimes echo in her delicate ears.
Réjane's part in _M. de Morat_ should not be forgotten; nor above all,
the inimitable perfection of her play in _Décoré_ (1888). Sarcey's
exultation knew no bounds when, in 1890, she again appeared in this
rôle. Time, that had metamorphosed the lissom critic of 1875 into a
round and inert mass of solid flesh, cruel Father Time, gave back to
Sarcey, for this occasion only, a flash of youthful fire, which
stirred his wits to warmth and animation. He shouted out hardly
articulate praise; he literally rolled in his stall with pleasure; his
bald head blushed like an aurora borealis. "Look at her!" he cried,
"see her malicious smiles, her feline graces, listen to her reserved
and biting diction; she is the very essence of the Parisienne! What an
ovation she received! How they applauded her! and how she played!"
From M. Sarcey the laugh spreads; it thaws the scepticism of M. Jules
Lemaître, engulfs the timidity of the public, becomes unanimous and
universal, and is no longer to be silenced.
In 1888, M. Edmond de Goncourt entrusted Réjane with the part of
_Germinie Lacerteux_. On the first night, a furious battle against the
author was waged in the house. Réjane secured the victory _sans peur
et sans reproches_.
Everything in her inspires the certitude of success; her voice aims at
the heart, her gestures knock at it. Réjane confides all to the hazard
of the dice; her sudden attacks are of the most dare-devil nature; and
no matter how risky, how dangerous, how extravagant the jump, she
never loses her footing; her play is always correct, her handling
sure, her coolness imperturbable. It was impossible to watch her
precipitate herself down the staircase in _La Glu_ without a tremble.
And fifteen years before Yvette Guilbert, it was Réjane who first had
the audacity to sing with a voice that was no voice, making wit and
gesture more than cover the deficiency. In _Ma Cousine_, Réjane
introduced on the boards of Les Variétés a bit of dancing such as one
sees at the Elysée-Montmartre; she seized on and imitated the
grotesque effrontery of Mademoiselle Grille-d'Egout, and her little
arched foot flying upwards, brushed a kiss upon the forehead of her
model; for Réjane the "grand écart" may be fatal, perhaps, but it is
neither difficult nor terrifying.
Once more delighting us with _Marquise_ in 1889; playing with such
child-like grace the Candidate in _Brevet Supérieur_ in 1891;
immediately afterwards she took a part in _Amoureuse_ at the Odéon.
The subject is equivocal, the dialogue smutty. Réjane extenuated
nothing; on the contrary, accentuated things, and yet knew always how
to win her pardon.
Now, it so happened that in 1882, after having personified the
Moulin-Rouge in _Les Variétés de Paris_, Réjane was married on the
stage, in _La Nuit de Noces de P. L. M._, to P. L. Moriseau. On the
anniversary day, ten years later, her marriage took place in good
earnest, before a real M. le Maire, and according to all legal
formalities, with M. Porel, a sometime actor, an ex-director of the
Odéon, then director of the Grand-Théâtre, and co-director to-day of
the Vaudeville.... But to return to her art.
Just as the first dressmakers of Paris measure Réjane's fine figure
for the costumes of her various rôles, so the best writers of the
French Academy now make plays to her measure. They take the size of
her temperament, the height of her talent, the breadth of her play;
they consider her taste, they flatter her mood; they clothe her with
the richest draperies she can covet. Their imagination, their fancy,
their cleverness, are all put at her service. The leaders in this
industry have hitherto been Messrs. Meilhac and Halévy, but now M.
Victorien Sardou is ruining them. _Madame Sans-Gêne_ is certainly, of
all the rôles Réjane has played, that best suited to bring out her
manifold resources. It is not merely that Réjane plays the
washerwoman, become a great lady, without blemish or omission; she is
Madame Sans-Gêne herself, with no overloading, nothing forced, nothing
caricatured. It is portraiture; history.
Many a time has Réjane appeared in cap, cotton frock, and white apron;
many a time in robes of state, glittering with diamonds; she has worn
the buskin or the sock, demeaned herself like a gutter heroine, or
dropped the stately curtsey of the high-born lady. But never, except
in Madame Sans-Gêne, has she been able to bring all her rôles into one
focus, exhibit her whole wardrobe, and yet remain one and the same
person, compress into one evening the whole of her life.
The seekers after strange novelties, the fanatics for the mists of the
far north, the vague, the irresolute, the restless, will not easily
forget the Ibsenish mask worn by Réjane in Nora of _The Doll's House_;
although most of us, loving Réjane for herself, probably prefer to
this vacillating creation, the firm drawing, the clear design, the
strong, yet supple lines of Madame Sans-Gêne.
Why has Réjane no engagement at the Comédie-Française? Whom does one
go to applaud on this stage, called the first in France, and from
which Réjane, Sarah Bernhardt, and Coquelin the elder, all are absent?
I will explain the matter in two words.
The house of Molière, for many years now, has belonged to Molière no
more. Were Molière to come to life again, neither he nor Réjane would
go to eat their hearts out, with inaction and dulness, beneath the
wings of M. Jules Claretie--although he is, of course, a very
estimable gentleman. Were Réjane unmarried, Molière to-day would enter
into partnership with her, because she is in herself the entire
Comédie-Française. I have already said she is married to M. Porel,
director of the Vaudeville, where she reigns as Queen. I am quite
unable to see any reason why she should soon desert such a fortunate
conjugal domicile.
Notwithstanding the dryness and the rapidity of this enumeration of
Réjane's rôles, I hope to have given some general idea of the
marvellous diversity and flexibility of her dramatic spirit and
temperament; it seems to me that the most searching criticism of her
various creations, would not greatly enhance the accuracy of the
picture. This is why I make no attempt to describe her in some three
or four parts of an entirely different character. Besides, I should
have to draw on hearsay; and I desire to trust only to my own eyes, my
own heart. Needless to say, I have not had the good luck to see Madame
Réjane in each of her characterisations since her first appearance.
Her youthful air has never changed; but I have only had the
opportunity of admiring it during the last few years. I confidently
maintain, however, that she could not have been more charming in 1875
than she is to-day, with the devil in her body, heaven in her eyes.
A Girl Resting
By Sydney Adamson
[Illustration: A Girl Resting]
The Roman Road
By Kenneth Grahame
All the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful and friendly, having
each of them pleasant qualities of its own; but this one seemed
different from the others in its masterful suggestion of a serious
purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart. The
others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the
rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a
field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were
pushed at you through gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did
you choose one of them; so many were the tiny hands thrust out to
detain you, from this side and that. But this other was of a sterner
sort, and even in its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched
straight and full for the open downs, it seemed to declare its
contempt for adventitious trappings to catch the shallow-pated. When
the sense of injustice or disappointment was heavy on me, and things
were very black within, as on this particular day, the road of
character was my choice for that solitary ramble when I turned my back
for an afternoon on a world that had unaccountably declared itself
against me.
"The Knight's Road" we children had named it, from a sort of feeling
that, if from any quarter at all, it would be down this track we might
some day see Lancelot and his peers come pacing on their great
war-horses; supposing that any of the stout band still survived, in
nooks and unexplored places. Grown-up people sometimes spoke of it as
the "Pilgrim's Way"; but I didn't know much about pilgrims--except
Walter in the Horselburg story. Him I sometimes saw, breaking with
haggard eyes out of yonder copse, and calling to the pilgrims as they
hurried along on their desperate march to the Holy City, where peace
and pardon were awaiting them. "All roads lead to Rome," I had once
heard somebody say; and I had taken the remark very seriously, of
course, and puzzled over it many days. There must have been some
mistake, I concluded at last; but of one road at least I intuitively
felt it to be true. And my belief was clinched by something that fell
from Miss Smedley during a history-lesson, about a strange road that
ran right down the middle of England till it reached the coast, and
then began again in France, just opposite, and so on undeviating,
through city and vineyard, right from the misty Highlands to the
Eternal City. Uncorroborated, any statement of Miss Smedley's usually
fell on incredulous ears; but here, with the road itself in evidence,
she seemed, once in a way, to have strayed into truth.
Rome! It was fascinating to think that it lay at the other end of this
white ribbon that rolled itself off from my feet over the distant
downs. I was not quite so uninstructed as to imagine I could reach it
that afternoon; but some day, I thought, if things went on being as
unpleasant as they were now--some day, when Aunt Eliza had gone on a
visit--we would see.
I tried to imagine what it would be like when I got there. The
Coliseum I knew, of course, from a woodcut in the history-book: so to
begin with I plumped that down in the middle. The rest had to be
patched up from the little grey market-town where twice a year we went
to have our hair cut; hence, in the result, Vespasian's amphitheatre
was approached by muddy little streets, wherein the Red Lion and the
Blue Boar, with Somebody's Entire along their front, and "Commercial
Room" on their windows; the doctor's house, of substantial red-brick;
and the façade of the new Wesleyan chapel, which we thought very fine,
were the chief architectural ornaments: while the Roman populace
pottered about in smocks and corduroys, twisting the tails of Roman
calves and inviting each other to beer in musical Wessex. From Rome I
drifted on to other cities, dimly heard of--Damascus, Brighton, (Aunt
Eliza's ideal), Athens, and Glasgow, whose glories the gardener sang;
but there was a certain sameness in my conception of all of them: that
Wesleyan chapel would keep cropping up everywhere. It was easier to go
a-building among those dream-cities where no limitations were imposed,
and one was sole architect, with a free hand. Down a delectable street
of cloud-built palaces I was mentally pacing, when I happened upon the
Artist.
He was seated at work by the roadside, at a point whence the cool
large spaces of the downs, juniper-studded, swept grandly westwards.
His attributes proclaimed him of the artist tribe: besides, he wore
knickerbockers like myself. I knew I was not to bother him with
questions, nor look over his shoulder and breathe in his ear--they
didn't like it, this _genus irritabile_; but there was nothing about
staring in my code of instructions, the point having somehow been
overlooked: so, squatting down on the grass, I devoted myself to a
passionate absorbing of every detail. At the end of five minutes there
was not a button on him that I could not have passed an examination
in; and the wearer himself of that home-spun suit was probably less
familiar with its pattern and texture than I was. Once he looked up,
nodded, half held out his tobacco pouch, mechanically as it were,
then, returning it to his pocket, resumed his work, and I my mental
photography.
After another five minutes or so had passed he remarked, without
looking my way: "Fine afternoon we're having: going far to-day?"
"No, I'm not going any farther than this," I replied: "I _was_
thinking of going on to Rome: but I've put it off."
"Pleasant place, Rome," he murmured: "you'll like it." It was some
minutes later that he added: "But I wouldn't go just now, if I were
you: too jolly hot."
"_You_ haven't been to Rome, have you?" I inquired.
"Rather," he replied briefly: "I live there."
This was too much, and my jaw dropped as I struggled to grasp the fact
that I was sitting there talking to a fellow who lived in Rome. Speech
was out of the question: besides I had other things to do. Ten solid
minutes had I already spent in an examination of him as a mere
stranger and artist; and now the whole thing had to be done over
again, from the changed point of view. So I began afresh, at the crown
of his soft hat, and worked down to his solid British shoes, this time
investing everything with the new Roman halo; and at last I managed to
get out: "But you don't really live there, do you?" never doubting the
fact, but wanting to hear it repeated.
"Well," he said, good-naturedly overlooking the slight rudeness of my
query, "I live there as much as I live anywhere. About half the year
sometimes. I've got a sort of a shanty there. You must come and see it
some day."
"But do you live anywhere else as well?" I went on, feeling the
forbidden tide of questions surging up within me.
"O yes, all over the place," was his vague reply. "And I've got a
diggings somewhere off Piccadilly."
"Where's that?" I inquired.
"Where's what?" said he. "Oh, Piccadilly! It's in London."
"Have you a large garden?" I asked; "and how many pigs have you got?"
"I've no garden at all," he replied sadly, "and they don't allow me to
keep pigs, though I'd like to, awfully. It's very hard."
"But what do you do all day, then," I cried, "and where do you go and
play, without any garden, or pigs, or things?"
"When I want to play," he said gravely, "I have to go and play in the
street; but it's poor fun, I grant you. There's a goat, though, not
far off, and sometimes I talk to him when I'm feeling lonely; but he's
very proud."
"Goats _are_ proud," I admitted. "There's one lives near here, and if
you say anything to him at all, he hits you in the wind with his head.
You know what it feels like when a fellow hits you in the wind?"
"I do, well," he replied, in a tone of proper melancholy, and painted
on.
"And have you been to any other places," I began again presently,
"besides Rome and Piccy-what's-his-name?"
"Heaps," he said. "I'm a sort of Ulysses--seen men and cities, you
know. In fact, about the only place I never got to was the Fortunate
Island."
I began to like this man. He answered your questions briefly and to
the point, and never tried to be funny. I felt I could be confidential
with him.
"Wouldn't you like," I inquired, "to find a city without any people in
it at all?"
He looked puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said he.
"I mean," I went on eagerly, "a city where you walk in at the gates,
and the shops are all full of beautiful things, and the houses
furnished as grand as can be, and there isn't anybody there whatever!
And you go into the shops, and take anything you want--chocolates and
magic-lanterns and injirubber balls--and there's nothing to pay; and
you choose your own house and live there and do just as you like, and
never go to bed unless you want to!"
The artist laid down his brush. "That _would_ be a nice city," he
said. "Better than Rome. You can't do that sort of thing in Rome--or
in Piccadilly either. But I fear it's one of the places I've never
been to."