handling. In the second Act, where Bartholo (Pantaloon) has patched up
a reconciliation with Rosine (Columbine), whom he intends to marry, he
closes the scene like this:
“_Bartholo_: Puisque la paix est faite, mignonne, donne-moi ta
main. Si tu pouvais m’aimer, ah! comme tu serais heureuse!
“_Rosine_ (baissant les yeux): Si vous pouviez me plaire, ah!
comme je vous aimerais!
“_Bartholo_: Je te plairai, je te plairai; quand je te dis que je
te plairai! (Il sort.)”
That is very happy, because it has humour as well as wit. Pantaloon and
Columbine have become human beings.
It is not all so good as that, and some of it is not good at all. It
was written originally for an opera libretto, for which it is well
suited. It would do equally well for marionettes. To such things the
spectator can lend himself, because in the former the music, and in the
latter the puppets, take the responsibility off him; nothing of his
own is involved. But in a play the action and the dialogue perform the
resolution of life into art, with the audience as accomplice. Human
nature is implicated; if we allow the cheap, we must cheat ourselves.
If there is any resolution in the _Barbier_, it is into a jig, and
condescension is difficult. Life is only there in so far as some of the
personages wear breeches, and some petticoats. It is a mere trifle that
the scene is laid in Spain, while all the characters are Italian.
The _Mariage de Figaro_ is a more considerable work, if only because
it is much longer and more complicated. Everybody is older, including
Beaumarchais. Since the end of the _Barbier_, Count Almaviva has
pursued hundreds of ladies, Rosina has almost left off being jealous,
Figaro has become a cynic, and is inclined to give lectures. The
romance would seem to have been rubbed off seduction, as you might
expect when you consider that the Count has been at it all his life,
and is now a middle-aged man, old enough to be Ambassador. It has been
said--and Mr. Rivers says it--that Beaumarchais was deliberate in
contriving the effect of satiety, which he certainly obtains--as if
an author would set himself to work to be wearisome! Subversion, Mr.
Rivers thinks, was his aim, moral revolt. He wrote, and it was played,
on the eve of the Revolution. Was the _Mariage_ not, therefore, a
contributory cause?
“_Figaro_, soliloquising: Parceque vous êtes un grand seigneur,
vous vous croyez un grand génie!... Noblesse, fortune, un rang,
des places, tout cela rend si fier! Qu’avez-vous fait pour tant de
biens? Vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus.
Du reste, homme assez ordinaire; tandis que moi, morbleu! perdu
dans la foule obscure, il m’a fallu déployer plus de science et de
calculs pour subsister seulement, qu’on n’en a mis depuis cent ans
à gouverner toutes les Espagnes: et vous voulez jouter ...!”
Is that contributory to revolution--or revolution contributory to
it? It was surely current coin in 1784. Voltaire and Rousseau had
encouraged cats to look at kings; everybody had made fun of the
nobility. Titles of honour can have held little intimidation since
Louis XIV had had the handling of them, and turned out dukes where
his grandfather made marquises. What little there might be left to do
had been done handsomely by his grandson. It is far more likely that
Beaumarchais was easing grudges of his own, or that in the famous
flight of paradoxes aimed at “la politique” he was recalling recent
experiences in London and Vienna, where he came into collision with the
real thing. Much out of character as it is, it is a good example of
what both Figaro and Beaumarchais had become by 1784:
“Feindre ignorer ce qu’on sait, de savoir tout ce qu’on ignore;
d’entendre ce qu’on ne comprend pas, de ne point ouïr ce qu’on
entend; surtout de pouvoir au delà de ses forces; avoir souvent
pour grand secret de cachet qu’il n’y en a point; s’enfermer pour
tailler des plumes, et paraître profond quand on n’est, comme on
dit, que vide et creux; jouer bien ou mal un personnage; répandre
des espions et pensionner des traîtres; amollir des cachets,
intercepter des lettres, et tacher d’ennoblir la pauvreté des
moyens par l’importance des objets: voilà toute la politique, ou
je meure!”
Very brisk. But when Count Almaviva shortly comments, “Ah! c’est
l’intrigue que tu définis!” the criticism is final, because it is
completely just. Curious that a playwright should light up his Roman
candle, and damp it down the next moment. Such speeches imperil the
character of Figaro by making him so dominant a personality that there
can be no fun in seeing him dupe his betters. Beaumarchais, I think,
may have felt that objection, and attempted to restore the balance by
having Figaro duped himself in the last act.
The balance is really adjusted in quite another way. Two new characters
are brought in, one of whom, Marceline, a _vieille fille_, designs to
marry Figaro, but presently finds out that she is his long-lost mother!
The other is Chérubin, who saves the play, to my thinking, just as
surely as Polly Peachum saves _The Beggar’s Opera_. Chérubin--“création
exquise et enchanteresse,” says Sainte-Beuve--is the making of the
_Mariage_, partly because he keys it down to its proper pitch, which
is that of children playing grown-ups, and partly because he is truly
observed and poetically presented. I don’t see how the adage, “Si
jeunesse savait,” could be more tenderly exploited. All his scenes are
good--the first with Suzanne, in which the young scamp, after betraying
his occupation with three love affairs at once, snatches his mistress’s
hair-ribbon and dodges behind tables and chairs while the maid pursues
him; the second, with the Countess, where she is dressing him as a
girl, and discovers her ribbon staunching a cut in his arm: in each of
these scenes the delicious distress of his complaint is painted with a
subtlety and sensibility combined which are first-rate art. Delicate
provocation can go no further, or had better not. Beaumarchais’ triumph
is that he knows that, and does not add a touch in excess. The final
touch is that the Countess, instead of feigning a desire for the
restoration of the ribbon (which she did very badly), now really does
desire, and obtains it. Enough said: there is no more. “Tu sais trop
bien, méchante, que je n’ose pas oser,” says the youth to Suzanne. That
is his trouble, and a real one it is.
The imbroglio in this play is a thing of nightmare. “Que diable est-ce
qu’on trompe ici?” The answer is the audience. Everybody deceives
everybody, twice over and all the time. It surprises, if you like, by
“a fine excess.” It is not surprising, anyhow, that the last act was
too much for Sainte-Beuve, has been too much for Mr. Rivers, and is
too much for me. I do not, simply, know what is happening, but I do
know that none of it is very funny. Compare it with _Sganarelle_, and
you will see. In that little masterpiece you have four characters:
Lélie and Clélie, the lovers, Sganarelle the jealous husband, and
Sganarelle’s wife. Clélie lets drop Lélie’s portrait in the street,
Sganarelle’s wife picks it up, and is caught by Sganarelle admiring it.
Presently, when Clélie faints, and is picked up by Sganarelle, it is
his wife’s turn to be jealous. Then Lélie, overcome by his feelings, is
pitied by Madame Sganarelle and helped into her house. The fat is in
the fire. Madame Sganarelle flies at Clélie for carrying on with her
husband; Lélie believes that Sganarelle has married Clélie. Sganarelle
pursues Lélie with a sword, and when he is confronted, pretends that he
brought it out because the weather looked threatening. It is a complete
cat’s cradle of a play, and as easily untied. The action is swift, the
intrigue is easy to follow, the appositions are really comic. But who
believes that Almaviva seriously wants Suzanne, or that Figaro has
really promised Marceline, or that the Countess really loves Chérubin?
The lack of plausibility causes the _Mariage_ to turn unwillingly,
like a mangle. It took four hours and a half to play: I can hardly
believe that Figaro’s inordinate soliloquy in the last act survived
the first night. Figaro himself is overweight; Marceline is a very
bad shot. She has at first a good Polly-and-Lucy slanging match with
Suzanne; but in the discovery scene she grows serious--very serious,
and rightly serious, no doubt, in any other play but this. But to
suspend all the gallantries in progress for the sake of her diatribes
upon gallantry, to shake the head over them, to say “True,” and “Too
true”--and then immediately to resume gallantries, has the effect of
exhibiting neither gallantry nor the reprobation of it as serious;
and as something in a play must be taken seriously, the Comédie
Française, rightly deciding in favour of gallantry, cut out the whole
scene; and it is so marked in my edition of Beaumarchais. It would
have been a pleasant toil for Edward FitzGerald, who loved such work,
to hew and shape this comedy. It has fine moments, but wants both the
speed and the gaiety of the _Barbier_. Mozart gave it them--we owe to
Beaumarchais the most delightful opera in the world.
Mr. Rivers translates the two plays freely, but I don’t think very
successfully. I have said already that Beaumarchais is not a good
writer--too diffuse at one time, too terse at others--but no doubt he
is very difficult. Literal translation is useless. “Miss” is not a
translation of “Mademoiselle.” “Mistress,” or “Young Lady” would be
better--and so on. You cannot get the points sharply enough unless you
translate ideas as well as idiom; and to do that you must take a wide
cast. Rhetoric is rhetoric in whatever language you cast it. It has its
own rules. Dialogue is another matter. There come in the familiarities,
secrets of the toilette, secrets of the bower. How are these things to
be done? I don’t know; but if Andrew Lang could not be natural with the
15th Idyll of Theocritus, it is no shame to Mr. Rivers to have failed
with Beaumarchais.
If he desired to try his hand I wonder why he omitted one of his
liveliest and wittiest sallies--the letter which he addressed to _The
Morning Chronicle_ in 1776, on one of his confidential visits to
London. It is too long to give entire, but I must have a shot at pieces
of it:
“Mr. Editor,” he says, “I am a stranger, a Frenchman and the soul
of honour. If this will not completely inform you who I am, it
will at least tell you, in more senses than one, who I am not; and
in times likes these, that is not without its importance in London.
“The day before yesterday at the Pantheon, after the concert and
during the dancing which ensued, I found at my feet a lady’s cloak
of black taffetas, turned back with the same and edged with lace.
I do not know to whom it belongs; I have never seen, even at the
Pantheon, the person who wore it; all my inquiries since the
discovery have taught me nothing about her. I beg of you then, Mr.
Editor, to announce in your journal the discovery of the cloak, in
order that I may punctually return it to her who may lay claim to
it.
“That there may be no possible mistake in the matter, I have
the honour to give you notice that the loser, upon the day in
question, had a head-dress of rose-coloured feathers. She had, I
believe, diamond ear-rings; but of that I am not so positive as
of the remainder of my description. She is tall and of elegant
appearance; her hair is a flaxen blonde, her skin dazzlingly
white. She has a fine and graceful neck, a striking shape, and the
prettiest foot in the world. I observe that she is very young,
very lively and inattentive, that she carries herself easily, and
has a marked taste for dancing.”
He then proceeds to deduce all these charming properties from the
taffetas cloak--some from a single hair which he finds in the hood,
some from minute particles of fluff and fur; others, more carefully,
from measurements; others, again, from the position in which the cloak
was lying--all of which led him to conclude infallibly that “the young
lady was the most alert beauty of England, Scotland and Ireland, and
if I do not add, of America, it is because of late they have become
uncommonly alert in that particular country.” Sherlock Holmes!
“If I had pushed my inquiries,” he concludes, “it is possible that
I might have learned from her cloak what was her quality and rank.
But when one has concluded that a woman is young and handsome, has
one not in fact learned all that one needs to learn? That at any
rate was the opinion held in my time in many good towns in France,
and even in certain villages, such as Marly, Versailles, etc.
“Do not then be surprised, Mr. Editor, if a Frenchman who all
his life long has made a philosophical and particular study of
the fair sex, has discovered in the mere appearance of a lady’s
cloak, without ever having seen her, that the fair one with the
rosy plumes who let it fall unites in her person the radiance of
Venus, the free carriage of the nymphs, the shape of the Graces,
the youth of Hebe; that she is quick and preoccupied, and that
she loves the dance, to the extent of forgetting everything else
in order to run to it, on a foot as small as Cinderella’s, and as
light as Atalanta’s own.”
He has done it with the unfailing humour and neatness which carried
him in and out of the lawcourts, took him to prison and enlarged him
again. And he was then only forty-four, and had another twenty years
before him. Impudence and good humour. The first was his shield and
buckler--triple brass. The other enabled him to support it in all
companies without offence. When at long last his suit with La Blache
was ended, and in his favour, the Comte not only restored the estate
without a murmur, but gave him a fine portrait of the testator.
Beaumarchais may have been a bad lot; but he was evidently a good sort.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] “Figaro: the Life of Beaumarchais,” by John Rivers. Hutchinson. 18s.
THE CARDINAL DE RETZ
No student of France and literature can afford to neglect this gay and
hardy little sinner, though the use of that very word might show that
I was not fitted to expound him. It has here, however, an æsthetic
significance and not an ethical. Poets and moralists have this in
common that, owing their power to the strength of their prejudice, they
make bad historians. Carlyle, very much of a poet, illuminating his
heroes with his own fire, did no harm to Cromwell, whose wart was a
part of his glory; but Frederick the Great showed up oddly. The higher
the light rayed upon him the more ghastly stared his gashes under the
paint. Michelet was a good deal of a poet too, and rootedly a moralist.
Naturally he came to blows with the history of his country. The Fronde
made him angry, the _grand siècle_ shocked him. Edification may be
served that way, not truth. It is, I grant, difficult to read the
History of France as that of a sane, hard-working, penurious people;
difficult to decide why the Revolution, instead of coming in 1789, did
not come in 1689; or why, having begun in 1649, it did no more, as
Bossuet said, than “enfanter le siècle de Louis.” To understand that
would be to understand the Fronde, but not how the state of things
which evoked the Fronde and made possible the Memoirs of de Retz,
could have come about. A royal minority, a foreign regent, a foreign
minister, and a feudal aristocracy will account for a good deal--not
for all. The Italianisation of manners which began with the last
Valois kings, and was renewed by Henry’s Florentine wife, has to be
reckoned up. To a nobility convinced of privilege it opened the ways of
_Il Talento_.
_Il Talento_ is the Italian description of the state of mind induced by
desire and the means to gratify it on the spot. Iago is the standing
type; but Cæsar Borgia is a better. For him and his likes, _The
Prince_ of Machiavelli was the golden book. In France the princely
families--those of Lorraine, Bouillon, Condé and Savoie--found it a
kindly soil; and one of its best products was naturally the Cardinal
de Retz, whose memoirs are as good as Dumas, very much like him, and
the source of the best chapters of _Vingt Ans Après_. Here was _Il
Talento_ in fine flower, existing for its own sake; whereas Mazarin hid
it in avarice, and Richelieu had lost it in statecraft. You cannot read
Retz with pleasure, to say nothing of profit, if you do not allow for
the point of view--which you will have no difficulty in doing if you
remember that, less than a hundred years before the Cardinal’s day, his
ancestor, Alberto Gondi, had been as familiar with the Ponte Vecchio as
he himself was with the Pont-Neuf.
In his “portrait” of Mazarin, Retz accused his brother-cardinal of
common origin, but if you went back to his own family’s beginnings I do
not know that the Gondis were more than respectable according to French
standards. But the future Cardinal, Jean-Francois-Paul, was born the
son of a Duc de Retz, a great man of Brittany, was a Knight of Malta in
the cradle, and when, later, it was thought well to make a churchman
of him, tumbled into abbacies as became a young prince, and had a
bishopric as soon as he cared. He says of Mazarin’s youth that it was
shameful, that he was by bent and disposition a cardsharper. He might
have said worse and not been wrong; yet the account he gives of himself
is so frank, shameless and extremely flagrant that the reproof has an
odd sound.
“I did not affect devotion,” he says of himself as Abbé, “because
I could never be sure that I should be able to keep up the cheat.
But I had great consideration for the devout, and from their point
of view that is in itself a mark of piety. I suited my pleasures
to the rest of my habits. I could hardly get on without gallantry,
but I continued it with Madame de Pommereux, young and a coquette,
whose ways suited me because, as she had all the young people not
only about her but in her confidence, her apparent affairs with
them were a mask for mine with her.”
This equivocal conduct so far succeeded that the pious agreed with St.
Vincent de Paul that, though the Abbé de Retz was not truly religious,
he was “not far from the Kingdom of Heaven”--quite as near, in fact, as
the young gentleman desired to be. And then he tells a story which he
thinks is to his credit:
“A short time after I left college, my governor’s valet, who was
my humble servant, found living with a wretched pin-maker a niece
of hers, fourteen years old and of remarkable beauty. After he had
shown her to me, he bought her for one hundred and fifty pistoles,
took a little house for her at Issy, and put his sister in to
look after her. I went there the day after she was installed, and
found her extremely cast down, but attributing it to her modesty,
was not at all surprised. She was still more so the next day, a
fact about her even more remarkable than her good looks, which
is saying a great deal. She talked with me straightforwardly,
piously, without extravagance, and cried no more than she could
possibly help. I saw that she was so much afraid of her aunt that
I felt truly sorry for her, admired her disposition, and presently
her virtue. I tested that so far as it could be done, and took
shame to myself. I waited till it was dark, then put her into my
coach and took her to my aunt de Meignelais. She put the child
into a convent of religious, where eight or ten years later she
died in the odour of sanctity.”
One must not expect too much from a _grand seigneur_ in a cassock. The
story has more implication than he was able to perceive; but at least
it shows that he had pity in him, if not piety.
In time he was appointed coadjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of
Paris, with a promise of survivorship, and a fancy title of Archbishop
of Corinth. He tells us that he took six days to consider how he should
regulate his conduct, how restore the credit of the archiepiscopate
(which was very necessary) without losing any of his pleasures. “I
decided to do evil with deliberation--no doubt the most criminal course
in the eyes of God, but no doubt also the most discreet in those of the
world.” In his opinion that was the only way open to him of avoiding
“the most dangerous _absurdity_ which can be met with in the clerical
profession, that of mixing sin and devotion.” “Absurdity” is remarkable.
His first duty as coadjutor was a severe trial to his fortitude. It was
necessary to make a Visitation of the Nuns of the Conception; and as
the convent held eighty young ladies, “of whom several were handsome
and some adventurous,” he had many qualms about exposing his virtue
to such a test. “It had to be done, though; and I preserved it to the
edification of my neighbour. I did not see the face of a single one,
and never spoke to one unless her veil was down. This behaviour, which
lasted six weeks, gave a wonderful lustre to my chastity. I believe,
however, that the lessons which I received every evening from Madame de
Pommereux strengthened it materially against the morrow.”
Such was the Coadjutor-Archbishop of Paris, and such his efforts to
restore the credit of that see. He did not continue them long. Other
things engrossed him, one being to obtain from Mazarin a recommendation
to the Cardinalate, another by all, or any, means to obtain his
benefactor’s disgrace. Before the first could take effect, or the
second be effected, the parliamentary Fronde began, and Retz was in
it to the neck. What he wanted, except to enjoy himself, is not at
all clear. He despised rather than hated Mazarin; he forsook the only
man--Condé--for whom he seems to have had any real regard; he invited
his country’s enemies to Paris; and he got nothing out of it. But I am
sure he enjoyed himself.
His strong card was his popularity with the Parisians. He earned that
partly by hard money--the Barricades, he says, cost him some thirty-six
thousand _écus_--and somewhat on his own account too. After he had
been enthroned as Coadjutor, he gave himself no airs. On the contrary,
“Je donnai la main chez moi à tout le monde; j’accompagnai tout le
monde jusqu’au carrosse.” Then, when he was firmly established as the
most affable seigneur in the city, suddenly he jumped in a claim for
precedence before M. de Guise, and had it adjudged him. It enhanced
his prestige incalculably. “To condescend to the humble is the surest
way of measuring yourself against the great,” is the moral he draws,
but another is that if you aim at popularity, you should stand up to a
great man, and beat him. Retz had courage, and the Parisians loved him
for it. So did the Parisiennes, according to his own account, though
many things were against him. He was an ugly little man, a little
deformed, black man, Tallemant reports him, very nearsighted, badly
made, clumsy with his hands, unable to fasten his clothes or put on
his spurs. No matter. Whatever he could or could not do, there is no
doubt he could give a good account of himself in the world, upstairs
and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. Not only does he say so in
Memoirs, written, as he is careful to say, for the instruction of
Madame de Caumartin’s children, but his enemies allowed it. It may
even be that Mazarin paid him the compliment of being jealous of his
midnight conferences with Anne of Austria; at any rate, Retz seriously
thought of cutting him out. Then he was a good preacher, a ready
debater, and a born lobbyist to whom intrigue was daily bread. Those
were his cards for beggar-my-neighbour with Mazarin, and not bad ones.
The weakness of the hand resided in the player. He had as little heart
as conscience. He cared nothing for his country, for his friends or
for his mistresses when their interests conflicted with what for the
moment were his. If he had an affection for anyone it was for Condé.
Yet he was against him all through, and chose rather to back the poor
creature, Monsieur--to his own undoing, as he must have foreseen if he
had given it a moment’s thought. Gaston simply let in Mazarin again,
through mere poltroonery; and Mazarin once in, Retz must be out. And so
he was.