of Mr. A. M. Broadley]
Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct grew worse and worse; soon she had become
perfectly reckless. Women like Camargo, Clairon, Guimard, Gaussin, and
Sophie Arnould had been lax enough in their morals; but, at least, they
had been capable of more or less disinterested attachments, and had,
moreover, generally contrived to cast a veil over their worst
irregularities. Mlle. Raucourt seemed as heartless as she was
indifferent to public opinion. She passed from gallantry to gallantry;
she ruined foolish young men and then laughed at their folly, cynically
observing that “women were the most expensive of all tastes”; she
flaunted her profligacy in the face of all Paris, and contracted immense
debts, which there was no possibility of her being able to discharge.
“In the space of a few months,” writes Grimm, “she astonished Court and
town, as much by the excess of her irregularities as she had by the rare
prodigy of her innocence. She scandalised even those who were least
susceptible to scandal.”
The day of reckoning was not long in arriving. Her renown as a
_tragédienne_ disappeared with her reputation for virtue; and this
actress who, at the time of her _début_, had been vaunted as the
superior of Dumesnil and Clairon, was soon to become one of the most
striking examples in theatrical history of the fickleness of the mob.
The public decided that it had been the dupe of an unscrupulous
hypocrite and burned with righteous indignation. Soon detractors arose:
they declared that the young actress had no soul, no sensibility; that
her delivery was stilted and artificial; that she indulged too freely in
gesticulation; that her acting lacked restraint, and that her
voice--that “sweetest, most flexible, most harmonious, most enchanting
of voices”--was harsh and unpleasant. They found fault with her figure:
her waist was too long, her arms too thin. Finally, they even denied the
beauty of her face, on the ground that it was too masculine. “It was as
though a bandage had fallen from the eyes of the public.”
There can be very little doubt that Mlle. Raucourt’s acting was now
distinctly inferior to what it had been at the time of her first
appearance at the Comédie-Française. A dissipated life does not conduce
to success in any profession, and it would appear that, so far from
making any progress, she had neglected her studies to the point of
forgetting much of what Brizard and Mlle. Clairon had been at such pains
to teach her. Still, as we have said elsewhere, her talents had been
absurdly overrated, and a reaction was bound to set in sooner or later.
That it came so quickly, however, and assumed so violent a form was the
result of circumstances entirely unconnected with her art.
Her reception as Hermione, in _Andromaque_, in March 1774, was the first
sign of the coming storm. According to the _Mémoires secrets_, the
acting all round on this occasion left a good deal to be desired; but
the public, who had just learned that Mlle. Raucourt was living openly
with the Marquis de Bièvre, concentrated its resentment upon her, and
she was loudly hissed.
The hostile demonstrations grew more frequent and more pronounced in
proportion as the actress’s irregularities became more notorious.
Nevertheless, so long as there was nothing worse than innumerable
gallantries with which to reproach her, she was not without supporters
in the pit, whose acclamations served to counteract, if not entirely to
drown, the cries of the malcontents. Presently, however, ugly rumours
began to spread--rumours which attributed to the young _tragédienne_ the
shameful vices of ancient Greece, and which, there is reason to believe,
were but too well justified.[111] Every one now turned against her;
those who had been loudest in chanting her praises were now foremost in
ridicule and abuse, and such was the general odium which she had
contrived to excite that she counted herself fortunate if her appearance
on the stage was received in silence. “Never,” wrote Grimm, “was idol
worshipped with more infatuation; never was idol broken with more
contempt.”
There was, however, a slight reaction in her favour when, on October 30,
1775, she appeared as the Statue, in the _Pygmalion_ of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. “She was truly beautiful in this pose,” says the critic of the
_Mémoires secrets_. “It is considered the most successful part she has
yet undertaken.” And La Harpe writes: “This rôle, which would be
suitable for so few women, is precisely that which is most becoming to
Mlle. Raucourt. The only thing required of her is to be beautiful, and
in that she is a complete success. It is impossible to imagine a more
seductive vision than this actress, as she poses on her pedestal at the
moment when the veil which has hitherto covered her is drawn aside. Her
head was that of Venus, and her leg, half-discovered, that of
Diana.”[112]
But this was, after all, only a respite. Soon her humiliations
recommenced. Her rivals, Madame Vestris and the elder Mlle. Sainval,
powerless, as we have seen, to injure her, so long as she retained her
popularity, had not been slow to take advantage of the change in public
feeling. A cabal was formed against her at the theatre; she was
systematically entrusted with parts quite unsuited to her style of
acting, and sometimes called upon, at a few hours’ notice, to appear in
characters which she had only partially studied. Thus, during a revival
of _Britannicus_, Mlle. Dumesnil, happening to fall ill, the luckless
young actress found herself suddenly compelled to play Agrippine, a rôle
which, though in later years one of her most successful impersonations,
was at this time almost unknown to her. Before the play began,
d’Auberval, who by no means approved of the proceedings of the cabal,
came before the curtain, informed the pit of Mlle. Dumesnil’s
indisposition, and begged its indulgence for her substitute. His request
was of no avail; and poor Mlle. Raucourt met with such a reception that
she fainted and had to be carried off the stage.
To the intrigues of her rivals and the insults of the pit were now added
the importunities and threats of her creditors. In the four years she
had been a member of the Comédie-Française she had, besides spending
immense sums belonging to her infatuated admirers, contrived to run into
debt to the extent of something like 300,000 livres, and went in hourly
fear of arrest. At length, the situation became intolerable, and she
resolved to seek safety in flight. “It was intended to produce the
_Zuma_ of M. Le Fèvre,” writes Grimm, “when the compulsory disappearance
of Mlle. Raucourt, who was to have played one of the principal parts,
caused the rehearsals to be suddenly interrupted. Sudden as was her
disappearance, it has occasioned little surprise.”
Nothing was heard of the fugitive for six weeks, during which, it was
subsequently ascertained, she had been hiding in the neighbourhood of
Paris, disguised as a dragoon. A good-natured farmer, who mistook her
for a young officer in trouble about a duel, had given her shelter. At
the end of that time she returned, to find that her name had been struck
off the books of the Comédie-Française, and her place given to Mlle.
Sainval the younger, who, received with enthusiasm on her _début_, had
been subsequently altogether eclipsed by Mlle. Raucourt, and, for some
time past, had been playing at Lyons.[113]
At first, Mlle. Raucourt took refuge in the Temple, the sanctuary of
insolvent debtors, while some of the few friends still left to her
negotiated with her creditors, with a view to obtaining a reprieve.
Perhaps the creditors thought that, if time were given to her, the lady
might contrive to secure some wealthy admirer, by whom their claims
would be settled. Any way, they consented to accord her a few months’
grace, and, in the autumn, Mlle. Raucourt left the Temple and went to
live with a Madame Souck, “a German woman of horribly depraved morals,”
in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. Madame Souck, it transpired, had
introduced Mlle. Raucourt into the house in the temporary absence of the
landlord, who, on his return, found her established in a vacant suite of
apartments, which she firmly declined to vacate. When he ventured to
remonstrate, Madame Souck’s servants threatened him with “_coups de
bâton et autres violences_,” and also maltreated one of his tenants, who
would appear to have taken the landlord’s part. So threatening, indeed,
did the attitude of the two ladies and their domestics become that the
poor landlord declared, in a complaint he lodged before a commissary of
police, that he dared not even sleep in his own house, “for fear of
accidents.”[114]
Madame Souck’s finances, like those of her friend, were in a parlous
state, and, in the following spring, a firm of silk-merchants of the Rue
Saint-Honoré levied an execution upon her premises, and placed one
Thomas Philippe Violet and another bailiff in possession. Madame Souck,
however, was not a lady to submit tamely to such inconvenience, and, on
March 27, we find Thomas Philippe Violet appearing before a commissary
of the Châtelet to lodge a complaint and demand protection against the
dame Souck, the demoiselle Raucourt, and other persons, “their
accomplices, abettors, and adherents.” In this document, he declares
that, on the night of the 25th to 26th inst., at two hours after
midnight, the said dame Souck and the said demoiselle Raucourt, “both
dressed in men’s clothes,” arrived, accompanied by the said accomplices,
abettors, and adherents, and, after creating a terrible uproar and
“swearing by the Holy Name of God,” proceeded with blows and kicks to
force the doors, and ejected both him and his colleague into the
street.[115]
That same day, Mlle. Raucourt was arrested, at the suit of a usurer, who
had grown tired of waiting for his money, and conveyed to For l’Évêque.
Fortunately for her, she contrived to obtain her release before the news
of her arrest had been noised abroad, in which case she would have had
any number of detainers lodged against her, and might have remained
under lock and key for an indefinite time. The Prince de Ligne, who had,
or had formerly had, tender relations with Madame Souck, happened to be
in Paris and, at the instance of that lady, intervened on the actress’s
behalf. He appears to have settled the usurer’s claim and also to have
encouraged a belief that he intended to pay all Mlle. Raucourt’s debts.
By this means the _tragédienne_ obtained a fresh respite, which she
employed in endeavouring to gain readmission to the Comédie-Française.
In this she failed and, finding that her creditors were again on the
point of taking up arms, she once more took to flight, and this time
left the country, accompanied by her devoted friend, Madame Souck.
The movements of Mlle. Raucourt during the next two years are shrouded
in mystery. All that is known for certain, is that she exploited North
Germany, Poland, and Russia, and passed some time in Berlin and Warsaw.
In July 1778, the _Nouvelles à la main_ report that, at Hamburg, both
she and Madame Souck had been arrested on a charge of swindling, and,
having been whipped and branded, expelled from the city. This, however,
was no doubt only malicious gossip spread about by the young actress’s
enemies, determined to keep not only the Comédie-Française, but France
itself closed against her; and there was probably more truth in a story
from Holland, to the effect that Mlle. Raucourt had become the mistress
of a wealthy Russian nobleman and had “squandered in a very short time a
large fortune.”
* * * * *
In the meanwhile, great events were taking place in Paris. The alliance
between Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder, which their common
jealousy of Mlle. Raucourt had called into being, had lasted only so
long as the total discomfiture of that lady had rendered necessary. Its
object accomplished, it was dissolved, and the parties turned their
weapons against each other. Counting upon the support of her lover, the
Duc de Duras, who, in his capacity as First Gentleman of the Chamber,
exercised a not altogether judicious control over the affairs of the
Comédie-Française, Madame Vestris appropriated certain characters of the
classic répertoire which Mlle. Sainval had hitherto regarded as her
exclusive property. The latter angrily protested, and the matter was
referred to the Gentlemen of the Chamber, who, at the instance of the
Duc de Duras, decided in favour of Madame Vestris. This decision was
followed by open war between the two actresses and their respective
partisans; nothing else was talked of in the green-rooms, the cafés, and
the salons of Paris, and very hard knocks were given and received.
Madame Vestris wrote to the _Journal de Paris_, to justify the course
she had taken; Mlle. Sainval promptly replied; but the editor returned
her letter, with an intimation that he had received instructions from a
high quarter that no reply was to be inserted. Indignant at such
injustice, the lady thereupon expanded her letter into a pamphlet, “in
which M. de Duras was insulted, and the Queen even mentioned in a manner
far from respectful.”[116] Marie Antoinette, who, Madame Campan tells
us, was accused, by implication, of leading the King by the nose, seems
to have been rather amused than otherwise; but the duke was furious. The
pamphlet had contained several of his private letters, and while all
playgoing Paris was indignant at the partiality which these revealed,
all literary Paris was making merry at the expense of an Academician who
could not write his mother-tongue with even an approach to accuracy.
The angry nobleman insisted that condign and exemplary punishment should
be meted out to the offender, and poor Mlle. Sainval was expelled from
the Comédie-Française, prohibited from performing in any provincial
theatre, and exiled to Clermont, in Beauvoisis.[117] This high-handed
action was bitterly resented by the public. Mlle. Sainval had been far
more popular than her rival, whose relations with the Duc de Duras had
caused her to be regarded as a minion of the Court, and the habitués of
the pit now, almost to a man, declared in her favour. Madame Vestris’s
appearance on the stage was the signal for a storm of hisses; while, on
the other hand, the younger sister of the disgraced actress was received
with tumultuous cheering, and when, one evening, in the character of
Aménaïde, in _Tancrède_, she pronounced the line,
“L’injustice à la fin produit l’indépendance,”
the applause absolutely shook the theatre. “Nothing was heard but cries
of ‘Sainval! Sainval! _les deux_ Sainval!’ The presence of the guard had
no effect; the pit that night would have opposed a regiment.”
Alarmed by these demonstrations, the Gentlemen of the Chamber decided to
mitigate the punishment inflicted upon the elder Sainval, who was,
accordingly, granted permission to leave Clermont and to play in the
provinces. Everywhere she was received with frantic enthusiasm. At
Bordeaux, at the conclusion of the play, two cupids descended from a
cloud to crown her with laurels, and the audience pelted her with
flowers until the stage resembled a flower-garden.
By far the wisest course would have been to reinstate Mlle. Sainval at
the Comédie-Française and thus deprive the turbulent patrons of that
institution of any further excuse for demonstrations in her favour and
against her rival. But, since the Gentlemen of the Chamber were of
opinion that this would be too great a concession to popular clamour, it
was decided to endeavour to direct public attention from Mlle. Sainval
and her wrongs by recalling Mlle. Raucourt.
Madame Vestris herself seems to have been the first to suggest this
step. She was, of course, well aware that if, by any chance, Mlle.
Raucourt were to recover the place she had once held in the affections
of the public, she herself would be completely overshadowed. But, since
her own eclipse would undoubtedly be shared by Mlle. Sainval, whom she
now hated far more than she ever had the younger actress, she was
prepared to regard that eventuality with complacency.
Mlle. Raucourt, then at Berlin, was accordingly invited to return, and
accepted the invitation readily enough, though it may be doubted whether
she would have done so at all, could she have foreseen the kind of
reception which awaited her. Her creditors, acting doubtless on a hint
from an influential quarter, showed no disposition to molest her; but
the scandals with which her name had been associated had not been
forgotten. Every door was closed to her; no one could be persuaded to
have any dealings with this “most compromising of women.”
Friendless and without resources, she knew not where to go, when the
good-natured Sophie Arnould offered her hospitality. It was a courageous
act on the ex-singer’s part, since her own and Mlle. Raucourt’s enemies
did not hesitate to attribute it to the most shameful motives. The same
abominable charge which had been brought against the _tragédienne_ was
now openly levelled at her.
Sophie, however, cared very little what people might say about her. Not
content with extending her hospitality to the proscribed actress, she
did everything in her power to interest her friends in favour of her
_protégée_. To please his mistress, the Prince d’Hénin became one of
Mlle. Raucourt’s warmest partisans, and used all his not inconsiderable
influence to break down the social quarantine to which she was
subjected.
Mlle. Raucourt’s reinstatement at the Comédie-Française was more easily
proposed than accomplished. The majority of her former colleagues
opposed it most strenuously, on the ground that their statutes
prohibited the readmission of a player who had been excluded by a vote
of the _sociétaires_, and that the misconduct of the actress in question
had injured the company in the estimation of the public. The Gentlemen
of the Chamber, however, turned a deaf ear to their remonstrances. Marie
Antoinette, a great admirer of Mlle. Raucourt’s acting, and ever ready
to take the part of any of her sex whom she considered to have been
hardly treated, espoused her cause, and even talked of paying her debts,
and on September 11, 1779, the _Journal de Paris_ contained the
following announcement:
“Comédie-Française.--We understand that the demoiselle Raucourt, absent
from this theatre for three years, will reappear there this evening, in
the rôle of Dido.”
Dido, it will be remembered, was the part in which the actress had made
her sensational _début_, seven years before; and the recollection of the
triumph she had secured on that occasion had doubtless influenced her
choice of this rôle. Now, as then, the doors of the theatre were
besieged, and the _salle_ crowded to its utmost capacity. But alas! how
different were the feelings which animated the expectant audience! Mlle.
Raucourt had been thrust upon the town in defiance of feelings which
ought to have been respected; night after night the pit had clamoured
for Mlle. Sainval, and, in her stead, it had been given--Raucourt! And
to make matters worse, it was an open secret that the Court intended to
pay her debts “out of the people’s money.”
Long before the curtain rose, angry murmurs heralded the coming storm,
and the moment Dido appeared, it burst in all its fury. The uproar was
indescribable. Hisses, groans, and cat-calls came from all parts of the
pit. The grossest epithets, the most shocking abuse, were showered upon
the unfortunate actress. “It was impossible,” says one account, “to hear
a single word of her part. The other actors were allowed to speak, but
so soon as her turn arrived, the clamour began again. It is suspected
that the partisans of the demoiselles Sainval are no strangers to this
fermentation.”
Even more violent was the hostility displayed when, two nights later,
Mlle. Raucourt appeared as Phèdre. All who are familiar with Racine’s
famous tragedy know that the part of the hapless heroine contains many
lines which may be readily applied to her impersonator by a hostile
audience, and, in electing to play it, Mlle. Raucourt furnished her
enemies with weapons of which they did not fail to make the very fullest
use. The well-known lines once addressed by Adrienne Lecouvreur to her
rival and would-be assassin, the Duchesse de Bouillion:
“Je sais mes perfidies,
Œnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies,
Qui, goûtant dans la crime une tranquille paix,
Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais,”
were greeted with cries of dissent and uproarious laughter. The words,
“De l’austère pudeur les bornes sont passées...”
were answered with shouts of “_C’est vrai! c’est vrai! il y a
longtemps!_” While when she came to the passage in which Phèdre, in an
agony of remorse, exclaims,
“Et moi, triste rebut de la nature entière...”
the ironical cheering, La Harpe tells us, seemed as if it would never
cease. “Neither her beauty nor her sex,” writes Grimm, “could protect
her any longer, and never did the public go so far in forgetfulness of
its own dignity.”
For these disgraceful scenes, the Duc de Duras seems to have been, in no
small measure, responsible. In his anxiety to secure a hearing for Mlle.
Raucourt, this well-meaning but maladroit nobleman had foolishly
endeavoured to overawe the opposition by trebling the guard and “filling
the pit with policemen,” who pounced upon and conducted to prison the
most prominent of the disturbers. Such tactics naturally had the effect
of exasperating the malcontents to the last degree and of alienating
many whose sympathies had hitherto lain with the persecuted actress.
“While the Comte d’Estaing is fighting the English, to make them
recognise the independence of America,” it was bitterly said, “the Duc
de Duras imprisons Frenchmen for refusing to applaud Raucourt!”
Nevertheless, fair-minded persons appear to have been practically
unanimous in condemning the conduct of the pit. “Nothing,” writes La
Harpe, “can prove more clearly that the spirit of the _parterre_ is
changed. The excesses in which it indulges, unknown until now, show how
badly composed it is. Never would an assembly of respectable persons
permit itself to say to a woman, whatever she might be, that she was
‘_le rebut de la nature entière_.’ One can decline to listen to her, but
it is shocking and abominable to go to such lengths as this.” He adds
that, in his opinion, the disturbance was organised by the elder Mlle.
Sainval, “who knows better than any one how to set to work the crowd of
venal ruffians who compose to-day a third of the _parterre_, and
sometimes make themselves its masters”; and declares that so disgusted
is he with the cabals and acrimonious quarrels which divide the
theatrical and literary worlds, that he has determined to abandon
dramatic criticism altogether, and has, accordingly, resigned his post
on the _Mercure_.[118]
In the face of such bitter hostility as she was called upon to
encounter, Mlle. Raucourt might well have been pardoned if she had
withdrawn a second time from the stage. That she declined to bow to the
storm proves her to have possessed courage and pertinacity of an
unusually high order. Indeed, her firmness on the night of Phèdre, when,
at each hostile manifestation, she had slowly and deliberately repeated
the line which had evoked it, had undoubtedly contributed to exasperate
the baser kind of her persecutors. A little reflection, however,
sufficed to assure her that, if she wished to regain the indulgence of
the public, she must have recourse to other methods, and, accordingly,
she addressed to the _Journal de Paris_ the following letter:
“_September 13, 1776._