It is an old saying that to every womanly woman self-sacrifice is
almost a necessity of her nature. To make herself of small account as
compared with the one she loves; to give freely of herself, even though
she may receive nothing in return; to suffer, and yet to feel an inner
poignant joy in all this suffering--here is a most wonderful trait of
womanhood. Perhaps it is akin to the maternal instinct; for to the
mother, after she has felt the throb of a new life within her, there is
no sacrifice so great and no anguish so keen that she will not welcome
it as the outward sign and evidence of her illimitable love.
In most women this spirit of self-sacrifice is checked and kept within
ordinary bounds by the circumstances of their lives. In many small
things they do yield and they do suffer; yet it is not in yielding and
in suffering that they find their deepest joy.
There are some, however, who seem to have been born with an abnormal
capacity for enduring hardship and mental anguish; so that by a sort of
contradiction they find their happiness in sorrow. Such women are
endowed with a remarkable degree of sensibility. They feel intensely.
In moments of grief and disappointment, and even of despair, there
steals over them a sort of melancholy pleasure. It is as if they loved
dim lights and mournful music and scenes full of sad suggestion.
If everything goes well with them, they are unwilling to believe that
such good fortune will last. If anything goes wrong with them, they are
sure that this is only the beginning of something even worse. The music
of their lives is written in a minor key.
Now, for such women as these, the world at large has very little
charity. It speaks slightingly of them as "agonizers." It believes that
they are "fond of making scenes." It regards as an affectation
something that is really instinctive and inevitable. Unless such women
are beautiful and young and charming they are treated badly; and this
is often true in spite of all their natural attractiveness, for they
seem to court ill usage as if they were saying frankly:
"Come, take us! We will give you everything and ask for nothing. We do
not expect true and enduring love. Do not be constant or generous or
even kind. We know that we shall suffer. But, none the less, in our
sorrow there will be sweetness, and even in our abasement we shall feel
a sort of triumph."
In history there is one woman who stands out conspicuously as a type of
her melancholy sisterhood, one whose life was full of disappointment
even when she was most successful, and of indignity even when she was
most sought after and admired. This woman was Adrienne Lecouvreur,
famous in the annals of the stage, and still more famous in the annals
of unrequited--or, at any rate, unhappy--love.
Her story is linked with that of a man no less remarkable than herself,
a hero of chivalry, a marvel of courage, of fascination, and of
irresponsibility.
Adrienne Lecouvreur--her name was originally Couvreur--was born toward
the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of
Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her
father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth,
we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable
temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which,
long afterward, he died, raving and yelling like a maniac.
Adrienne was brought up at the wash-tub, and became accustomed to a
wandering life, in which she went from one town to another. What she
had inherited from her mother is, of course, not known; but she had all
her father's strangely pessimistic temper, softened only by the fact
that she was a girl. From her earliest years she was unhappy; yet her
unhappiness was largely of her own choosing. Other girls of her own
station met life cheerfully, worked away from dawn till dusk, and then
had their moments of amusement, and even jollity, with their
companions, after the fashion of all children. But Adrienne Lecouvreur
was unhappy because she chose to be. It was not the wash-tub that made
her so, for she had been born to it; nor was it the half-mad outbreaks
of her father, because to her, at least, he was not unkind. Her
discontent sprang from her excessive sensibility.
Indeed, for a peasant child she had reason to think herself far more
fortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition was
awakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began to
learn and to recite poems--learning them, as has been said, "between
the wash-tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to the
admiration of older and wiser people than she. Even at ten she was a
very beautiful child, with great lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion,
and a lovely form, while she had the further gift of a voice that
thrilled the listener and, when she chose, brought tears to every eye.
She was, indeed, a natural elocutionist, knowing by instinct all those
modulations of tone and varied cadences which go to the hearer's heart.
It was very like Adrienne Lecouvreur to memorize only such poems as
were mournful, just as in after life she could win success upon the
stage only in tragic parts. She would repeat with a sort of ecstasy the
pathetic poems that were then admired; and she was soon able to give up
her menial work, because many people asked her to their houses so that
they could listen to the divinely beautiful voice charged with the
emotion which was always at her command.
When she was thirteen her father moved to Paris, where she was placed
at school--a very humble school in a very humble quarter of the city.
Yet even there her genius showed itself at that early age. A number of
children and young people, probably influenced by Adrienne, formed
themselves into a theatrical company from the pure love of acting. A
friendly grocer let them have an empty store-room for their
performances, and in this store-room Adrienne Lecouvreur first acted in
a tragedy by Corneille, assuming the part of leading woman.
Her genius for the stage was like the genius of Napoleon for war. She
had had no teaching. She had never been inside of any theater; and yet
she delivered the magnificent lines with all the power and fire and
effectiveness of a most accomplished actress. People thronged to see
her and to feel the tempest of emotion which shook her as she sustained
her part, which for the moment was as real to her as life itself.
At first only the people of the neighborhood knew anything about these
amateur performances; but presently a lady of rank, one Mme. du Gue,
came out of curiosity and was fascinated by the little actress. Mme. du
Gue offered the spacious courtyard of her own house, and fitted it with
some of the appurtenances of a theater. From that moment the fame of
Adrienne spread throughout all Paris. The courtyard was crowded by
gentlemen and ladies, by people of distinction from the court, and at
last even by actors and actresses from the Comedie Franchise.
It is, in fact, a remarkable tribute to Adrienne that in her thirteenth
year she excited so much jealousy among the actors of the Comedie that
they evoked the law against her. Theaters required a royal license, and
of course poor little Adrienne's company had none. Hence legal
proceedings were begun, and the most famous actresses in Paris talked
of having these clever children imprisoned! Upon this the company
sought the precincts of the Temple, where no legal warrant could be
served without the express order of the king himself.
There for a time the performances still went on. Finally, as the other
children were not geniuses, but merely boys and girls in search of fun,
the little company broke up. Its success, however, had determined for
ever the career of Adrienne. With her beautiful face, her lithe and
exquisite figure, her golden voice, and her instinctive art, it was
plain enough that her future lay upon the stage; and so at fourteen or
fifteen she began where most actresses leave off--accomplished and
attractive, and having had a practical training in her profession.
Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is one
who does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by
intellectual effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on
the stage, torn with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must
always be the cool and unemotional mind which directs and governs and
controls. This same theory was both held and practised by the late
Benoit Constant Coquelin. To some extent it was the theory of Garrick
and Fechter and Edwin Booth; though it was rejected by the two Keans,
and by Edwin Forrest, who entered so throughly into the character which
he assumed, and who let loose such tremendous bursts of passion that
other actors dreaded to support him on the stage in such parts as
Spartacus and Metamora.
It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flung
herself with all the intensity of her nature into every role she
played. This was the greatest secret of her success; for, with her,
nature rose superior to art. On the other hand, it fixed her dramatic
limitations, for it barred her out of comedy. Her melancholy, morbid
disposition was in the fullest sympathy with tragic heroines; but she
failed when she tried to represent the lighter moods and the merry
moments of those who welcome mirth. She could counterfeit despair, and
unforced tears would fill her eyes; but she could not laugh and romp
and simulate a gaiety that was never hers.
Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters in
Paris; but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into the
provinces, in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was a
leading lady there in many companies and in many towns. As she
blossomed into womanhood there came into her life the love which was to
be at once a source of the most profound interest and of the most
intense agony.
It is odd that all her professional success never gave her any
happiness. The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, the
crude and coarse experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder and
the unsettled mode of living, all produced in her a profound disgust.
She was of too exquisite a fiber to live in such a way, especially in a
century when the refinements of existence were for the very few.
She speaks herself of "obligatory amusements, the insistence of men,
and of love affairs." Yet how could such a woman as Adrienne Lecouvreur
keep herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimic
griefs satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Love
offered her an emotional excitement that endured and that was always
changing. It was "the profoundest instinct of her being"; and she once
wrote: "What could one do in the world without loving?"
Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that she
might be unhappy. There was a strange twist in her mind. Men who were
honorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly. Men
who were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed to
choose by a sort of perverse instinct. Perhaps the explanation of it is
that during those ten years, though she had many lovers, she never
really loved. She sought excitement, passion, and after that the
mournfulness which comes when passion dies. Thus, one man after another
came into her life--some of them promising marriage--and she bore two
children, whose fathers were unknown, or at least uncertain. But, after
all, one can scarcely pity her, since she had not yet in reality known
that great passion which comes but once in life. So far she had learned
only a sort of feeble cynicism, which she expressed in letters and in
such sayings as these:
"There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again. My
experiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason."
"I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more of
it for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don't wish either to
die or to go mad."