occupying at the Comédie a different _emploi_ from the one I
intended for myself, permit me, through the medium of your journal,
to inform the public that I have no other ambition than to fill it
to the best of my ability; that I do not purpose playing parts of
any other kind, except when it is absolutely indispensable for the
service of the Comédie; that, far from desiring to deprive my
comrades of anything, my only wish is to understudy them; too happy
if, by my zeal, my exactitude, and my efforts, I succeed in
convincing the public of my respect and of my anxiety to please
them.
“I have the honour to be, &c.,
“DE RAUCOUR.”
This diplomatic epistle seems to have been not without its effect, and,
though her reception at the Comédie-Française still left much to be
desired, no attempt was made to repeat the violent scenes which had
marked her two first performances. On the other hand, her creditors,
urged on by her personal enemies, had again taken up arms and left her
not a moment’s peace. In order to avoid imprisonment, she was once more
on the point of expatriating herself, when a royal edict appeared which
“rendered free from all seizures, confiscations, or stoppages the wages
and appointments of the players and other persons attached to the
theatre, up to the amount of two-thirds, apart from the necessary
expenditure for board and lodging.”
It was common belief that this edict had been inspired by the Queen,
who had seen in it an economical method of settling the debts of her
favourite actress, and its appearance, while saving Mlle. Raucourt from
the necessity of choosing between imprisonment and flight, exposed her
to a fresh storm of invective. A score of pamphlets and leaflets, some
in prose, some in verse, were launched against her, in which she and her
supporters, the Duc de Duras, the Prince d’Hénin, Sophie Arnould, Madame
Vestris, and Brizard, were assailed in the most violent manner. A few
passages from one of these effusions, entitled _La Vision du prophète
Daniel_, will convey a good idea of the methods employed against
unpopular personages in the eighteenth century:
The Old Satrap [the Duc de Duras], having banished Mlle. Sainval, “to
punish her for having more talents than his concubine [Madame Vestris],”
announces his intention of recalling the Harlot of Babylon [Mlle.
Raucourt], “whom all nations have rejected,” and forcing the people whom
he governs to receive her.
“And one heard a cry: ‘Way, way for the Prince des Nains [the Prince
d’Hénin]!’
“And I looked, expecting to behold at the head of a troop of pigmies an
abortion.
“And I saw a tall, thin man, with a foolish eye and a silly smile,
affecting an air of importance; and what was my surprise to see, through
his transparent body, that, in place of blood, a black and poisonous mud
circulated in his veins...!”
“And his corrupt heart was falling into rottenness. And one saw there
none of those feelings which characterise the nobility; cowardice,
poltroonery, debauchery, infamy, deceit, avarice, and duplicity, shared
what remained of this gangrened heart.”
“And he made his way through the crowd, leading by the hand a woman,
whom I took for a man, from her impudent demeanour, her loud voice, and
her gigantic stature [Mlle. Raucourt].
“She cast around her lascivious glances.... And a voice cried: ‘Behold
her; the woman who has gone beyond all the abominations wherewith the
nations of the earth are soiled.
“‘And she is about to renew here the scenes of debauchery and
extravagance which she has given elsewhere.’”[119]
At the beginning of the following year, the _Nouvelles à la main_
announce that Mlle. Raucourt has repaid the hospitality and protection
received from Sophie Arnould by “an act of frightful ingratitude,
unhappily but too common among women,” namely, by stealing away from her
the Prince d’Hénin, “in order to rivet her fetters upon him.” The writer
adds that Sophie is furious, and that the guilty pair, fearful of the
consequences of their treachery, have fled to Bagatelle and taken refuge
with the Comte d’Artois, who is credited with a desire to participate in
the good fortune of the Prince d’Hénin.
The report that the prince had taken Mlle. Raucourt under his
protection, in the technical sense of the term, was true; but, so far
from having sought refuge with the Comte d’Artois, at Bagatelle, he
appears to have rented the château from its royal owner. Sophie Arnould,
if she cherished any animosity against the offenders--which is open to
question, the probability being that she and the prince were by this
time heartily tired of one another--would have been far more likely to
revenge herself by some biting _bon mot_ than by personal injury.
Paris and Versailles, we are told, laughed over this adventure till its
sides ached, for a whole week. Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct was considered
despicable, but there was little pity for Sophie, who, one writer
declares, was justly punished “for having welcomed a woman who was the
opprobrium of her sex.”
It is to be hoped that the Prince d’Hénin found in Mlle. Raucourt’s
society sufficient compensation for being dragged through the same
gutters as the _tragédienne_ by the scribes who delighted to assail her,
and for the fact that it was now his privilege to deal with the horde of
creditors who were “perpetually howling at her skirts.” To do him
justice, meanness was not one of his failings; but adversity had not
taught the lady wisdom, at least so far as financial matters were
concerned, and no sooner did her unfortunate lover discharge one debt
than she appears to have straightway contracted another. Under date
September 16, 1781, we read in the _Mémoires secrets_:
“Queen Melpomene is more than ever ruined by debt. The Prince d’Hénin,
to aid her to escape the pursuits of her creditors, has taken over all
the furniture and effects of this actress. But he is summoned to declare
upon oath, before the Civil Lieutenant of Paris, whether his ostensible
ownership is not simulated.”
It would be interesting to know what course the prince adopted under
these somewhat embarrassing circumstances; but, unfortunately, the
chroniclers do not tell us.
In the meanwhile, Mlle. Raucourt was seeking consolation for her many
troubles in the cultivation of the Muses. She was at work upon “a drama
in three acts and in prose,” entitled _Henriette_, adapted, it would
appear, from a play which she had seen at Warsaw, some years before. The
plot was briefly as follows:
A Prussian colonel, Stelim by name, wounded in a duel, is carried to the
house of Henriette’s father and nursed by the lady, who falls deeply in
love with her patient. The colonel recovers and returns to his duty, all
unconscious of the passion which he has inspired. The lovelorn Henriette
resolves to follow him, runs away from home, dressed as a man, and
enlists in her colonel’s regiment. One day, she surprises her beloved in
the act of kissing the hand of a strange lady, upon which, unaware that
the latter is only his sister, she is so overcome by jealousy and
mortification that she deserts. She is pursued, recaptured, tried by
court-martial, and condemned to be shot; but, at the last moment, her
secret is discovered, and all ends happily.
_Henriette_ did not reach the stage of the Comédie-Française without
encountering many difficulties. In the Warsaw play, Frederick the Great
and his army had been treated with very scant respect; and the Prussian
Ambassador now demanded that Mlle. Raucourt’s adaptation should be very
strictly scrutinised, and that “all passages calculated to wound the
King his master eliminated.” As there seem to have been a good many of
these, it was feared, at first, that the play would be mutilated beyond
recognition, even if it were not prohibited altogether. But the Prince
d’Hénin left no stone unturned to rescue his mistress’s work from the
claws of the censor, and, after many conferences and much
correspondence, it was finally decided to spare those passages “in which
the impertinence towards the King of Prussia was more remarkable for its
intention than for its effect.”
The play was produced on March 1, 1782, before a densely crowded house,
which the authoress, by a very adroit manœuvre, had taken care to
predispose in her favour. It was then the custom on first nights to
reserve a large number of the _parterre_ tickets for distribution among
the author’s friends, who, of course, applauded enthusiastically, no
matter how coldly the production might be received by the general
public. But Mlle. Raucourt refused to avail herself of this privilege,
declaring that “if her drama were a good one, it would succeed on its
own merits”; a decision which, we are told, was received with universal
applause.[120]
On the whole, the verdict of the public was favourable. “The first act,”
say the _Mémoires secrets_, “was thought cold, but the second excited
long, frequent, and sincere applause. The third act was also applauded,
though with less enthusiasm.”
The critics were, however, anything but kind. Grimm describes the
subject as “monstrous”; La Harpe stigmatises the work as “an absurd and
foolish rhapsody,” a striking proof of “the decadence of talents and the
corruption of taste”;[121] while the _Mercure_, after declaring that the
play possesses many faults and advising Mlle. Raucourt “to treat of
subjects with a truer and worthier moral end,” declines to say any more.
“The author is a woman, and we do not wish to play with her the part of
Diomed.”[122]
But whatever opinions they may have held in regard to the merits of the
work itself, every one agreed that Mlle. Raucourt was charming in the
uniform of a Prussian soldier; and La Harpe states that people went two
or three times solely to see her masquerading as a man.
Her success in _Henriette_ encouraged Mlle. Raucourt to undertake a real
masculine part, and, two years later (March 1784), she secured a genuine
triumph, as a captain of dragoons, in a play by Rochon de Chabannes,
called _Le Jaloux_. The ease with which she wore the uniform appears to
have been particularly admired, a circumstance which is not surprising
when we remember that, when in hiding, in the summer of 1776, she had
worn a very similar dress for more than six weeks.
“What an _actor_ that Raucourt is!” remarked the younger Sainval, who
enjoyed a not undeserved reputation as a wit. “And what a pity she
persists in wishing to play women’s parts!”
Little by little the hostility of which Mlle. Raucourt had so long been
the object subsided. Slowly but surely the _tragédienne_ recovered the
ground she had lost, until, in 1786, we find the _Mémoires secrets_
declaring that “she will soon take rank with the greatest actresses,”
and that “the most critical amateurs were fain to confess that she had
made prodigious improvement.”
This happy result seems to have been due partly to a genuine love of her
art, which led her to devote far more time to serious study than had
been the case in earlier years, and partly to the exercise of a good
deal of tact--willingness to understudy her former rivals, to condescend
to the parts of nurse and confidante, and, in short, to do almost
anything that was required of her--which had disarmed the jealousy of
her colleagues and rendered her an almost popular member of the troupe.
It was certainly not attributable to any change in her morals, for if
scandal were no longer busy with her name, it was from no lack of
material. In the years immediately preceding the Revolution, however,
people had more important matters to discuss than the amours of
actresses.
* * * * *
The Revolution very nearly proved fatal to Mlle. Raucourt. The questions
which were agitating the public mind were very far from leaving the
national theatre undisturbed. “Even our little green-room,” writes
Fleury, “was not exempt from the invasion of the moment. Melpomene and
Thalia had the mortification to see their sacred altars profaned by the
party pamphlets of the day, their venerated sanctuary converted into a
political club.” The house of Molière, in fact, was divided against
itself. Mlle. Raucourt, Molé, Fleury, and Louise Contat had tasted too
many of the sweets of Court favour not to deplore deeply the fall of the
old régime; while, on the other hand, Talma, Madame Vestris, Dugazon,
and Mlle. Deschamps espoused the popular side with the fervour of rooted
conviction. Of the remainder, the majority were either Royalists or
moderate constitutionalists.[123]
This divergence of political opinion soon led to angry recriminations
and thence to an open rupture, and, in the spring of 1791, Talma and his
friends, finding their position growing intolerable, withdrew from the
company, to found, at the Palais-Royal, the Théâtre-Français de la Rue
de Richelieu, which, in the following year, became the Théâtre de la
République.
Having purged itself of its Republican members, the Comédie threw itself
boldly into the political strife, and, throughout the terrible winter of
1792-93, allowed no opportunity to slip of advocating the restoration of
order and security. On January 3, 1793, during the King’s trial, it
produced a play, by Jean Laya, entitled _Les Amis des Lois_, in which
Robespierre (under the name of Nomophage), Marat, and other Montagnards
were held up to ridicule and odium. How such a play contrived to escape
the vigilance of the Republican censors is not easy to understand, since
so thinly veiled were the allusions that almost every passage was
punctuated by the cheers and hooting of an excited audience. It was, of
course, speedily suppressed, and from that moment the doings of the
Comédie were closely watched by the sanguinary faction now rising to
supremacy in the State, which only awaited an opportunity of closing the
theatre and arraigning the whole company before the Revolutionary Court.
An adaptation of “Pamela,” by François de Neufchâteau, afterwards
Minister of the Interior, which contained not a little material
calculated to awaken regret for the proscribed nobility, provided the
Jacobins with the pretext they desired, and, on September 3, the whole
of the players, with the exception of Molé, who had contrived to effect
his escape, and Des Essarts, who was taking the waters at Baréges, were
arrested and conveyed to the Madelonettes, in the Quartier
Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and Sainte-Pélagie, in the Rue de la Clef; the
men being assigned to the former prison and the women to the latter.
That the players, or at any rate those of them who held the most
pronounced counter-revolutionary opinions, were doomed, was the opinion
of even their most sanguine friends. The Revolutionary Court, which had
been created in the previous March, to judge without appeal conspirators
against the State, still retained all the forms of justice--it was not
until June 1794 that the hearing of counsel and calling of witnesses
were dispensed with--but its proceedings were, in the great majority of
cases, a hollow farce. The judges were appointed from the ranks of the
most ruthless Terrorists; the jurymen, nominated by the Convention, were
all “_gens d’expédition_”; while, as to give evidence on behalf of an
accused person was to incur the danger of sharing his fate, witnesses
for the defence could with difficulty be induced to come forward.
For some cause which is not quite certain, but was probably, as Fleury
suggests, the fear of disseminating the small-pox, at that time
prevailing in the Madelonettes, the case of the imprisoned players was
not dealt with for more than nine months. At length, on Messidor 8, the
Committee of Public Safety deliberated upon their fate; and Collot
d’Herbois sent to Fouquier-Tinville the accusatory documents against
Dazincourt, Fleury, Mlles. Raucourt, Louise and Émilie Contat, and
Lange, who were considered the most culpable, accompanied by the
following letter:
“Herewith I send you the documents relating to the actors of the
Comédie-Française. In common with all patriots, you know how
counter-revolutionary their conduct has been. You will bring them before
the Court on Messidor 13. With regard to the others, there are some
among them who may be punished with banishment. But we will see what can
be done with them after the others have been tried.”
And on the margin of each of the six _dossiers_, Collot d’Herbois, in
his own hand, had traced a capital G in red ink. For the docile
Fouquier-Tinville that capital G signified: “_Guillotinez!_”
The trial was fixed for Messidor 13, and, on the following day, it was
intended that Mlle. Raucourt and her five colleagues should make their
final bow to the public, on the Place de la Révolution.
However, neither trial nor execution ever took place, for, on the
morning of the 13th, it was found that the six _dossiers_ had
mysteriously disappeared, and all efforts to recover them proved
fruitless.
Let us see what had become of them.
In conformity with the usual practice, the papers had been sent by
Fouquier-Tinville to the Bureau des Pièces Accusatives at the dismantled
Tuileries. Now, in this department there was a clerk named Charles de
Labussière, who had accepted the post as a means of securing his own
safety, and who at heart was a devoted Royalist. Through Labussière’s
hands passed all the documents relating to prisoners awaiting trial and,
whenever he could do so with but little fear of discovery, he did not
hesitate to destroy them. At first, he observed great caution and
confined himself to abstracting a few pages from the portfolios; but, so
soon as he became aware of the reckless disorder which characterised the
proceedings of the fatal committee, he enlarged the scope of his
operations and is said to have saved some hundreds from the guillotine,
among whom was no less a personage than Joséphine de Beauharnais, whom
Fate subsequently raised to the imperial throne of France. The method he
adopted was an ingenious one. As it was then summer and exceedingly hot
weather, and the lighting of a fire might have attracted attention,
instead of burning the papers, it was his practice to soak them in
water, until the bulky parchments had become balls of soft paste, which
could be stowed away in his pockets, and to await a favourable
opportunity of throwing them into the Seine.
On the night of Messidor 9, Labussière abstracted the papers relating to
the imprisoned actors and carried them off. He had, however, a very
narrow escape of detection. On his way to the river, his movements
aroused the suspicion of a patrol, by whom he was arrested; and he would
undoubtedly have been searched and the papers discovered, but for the
timely arrival of an official of the Committee of Public Safety, who
recognised him and ordered his release.[124]
Thus the players were saved, for before a new brief could be prepared,
came “that happiest and most genial of revolutions, the Revolution of
the 9th Thermidor,” which brought the Terror to a close and freedom to
so many hundreds of prisoners.
Three weeks later, the members of the Comédie-Française reappeared at
their theatre in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, now called the Théâtre de
l’Égalité. _La Métromanie_ and _Les Fausses Confidences_ composed the
programme, and the players, notwithstanding the reactionary views they
were known to hold, had a great reception from an immense audience,
though, remarked Louise Contat sarcastically, nothing like so large a
one as there would have been to see them guillotined.
The players, however, did not remain many months in their old home. The
Faubourg Saint-Germain, so long the centre of rank and wealth, was being
abandoned in favour of more central spots, while, as a result of the
existing free trade in theatrical matters, there were now several
playhouses within a narrow radius of the Palais-Royal, whose advantage
of situation rendered them formidable competitors. In January 1795,
accordingly, the members of the Comédie-Française, not, as may be
supposed, without many regrets, migrated to the Théâtre Feydeau, a house
which had been erected, some years before, for a company of Italian
_farceurs_, and was now under the control of a speculative gentleman
named Sageret.
To be the paid servant of Sageret, who does not appear to have borne the
best of reputations, seemed to Mlle. Raucourt a kind of degradation--the
arts and humanity, she declared, cried out against the subjection under
which they had been led to place themselves; and, in the following
December, that lady withdrew from the company, followed by Larive, Mlle.
Joly, Saint-Prix, and several others, and took possession of a theatre
in the Rue de Louvois, intending apparently to make it the central point
of a reunion of the entire company.
The flower of the Comédie-Française was now divided between three
playhouses: the Théâtre de la République, the Théâtre Feydeau, and the
Théâtre de Louvois. Of these the latter, which was inaugurated on Nivôse
5, Year v. (December 25, 1796), with _Iphigénie_ and a little play by
Laya, entitled _Les Deux Sœurs_, was for a time the most successful;
Mlle. Raucourt securing a great personal triumph in another masculine
part--that of the hero in Legouvé’s _Laurence_. Laurence, it may be
explained, was the young gentleman who became enamoured of Ninon de
Lenclos without knowing that he was her son.
The Directory, however, like the despotism which it had succeeded, kept
a jealous eye on the theatres, and was in the habit of closing them,
temporarily or altogether, upon the slightest provocation; and an
incident which took place during the performance of _Les Trois Frères
rivaux_ ruined all the hopes of Mlle. Raucourt. One of the characters,
addressing his _valet-de-chambre_, by name Merlin, exclaims:
“Monsieur Merlin, you are a scoundrel! Monsieur Merlin, you will end by
being hanged!”
Now Merlin de Douai, the Minister of Justice, was just then in very bad
odour with the public; and the audience applied the speech to him and
cheered vociferously for several minutes.
A few days later (September 9, 1797), at the moment when the curtain was
about to rise on a performance of the _Barbier de Seville_, an order
arrived forbidding all further representations at the Théâtre de
Louvois.
Mlle. Raucourt made every effort to obtain a revocation of the order,
but to no purpose. However, she was not long without a theatre, as, at
the beginning of the following year, she contrived to secure possession
of the former seat of the Comédie-Française, in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, henceforth to be known as the Odéon, which she opened
with a performance of _Phèdre_. Shortly afterwards, the Théâtre de la
République shared the fate of the Théâtre de Louvois, the political
opinions of Talma and his associates being too advanced to please the
Government. The enterprising Sageret thereupon induced the homeless
players to join forces with their former colleagues at the Théâtre
Feydeau, and took over the management of the Odéon from Mlle. Raucourt,
his intention being that the actors under his command should appear at
either theatre in turn. But Sageret became bankrupt and disappeared;
the Odéon was completely destroyed by a fire, the cause of which was
never discovered, and Paris found itself without a temple of the
legitimate drama.
This unfortunate condition of affairs, however, lasted but a short
while. François de Neufchâteau, the author of the _Paméla_ which had
proved so fatal, was now Minister of the Interior and honestly desirous
of doing everything in his power to promote the interests of the drama.
Through his influence, in May 1799, a wise measure of the Consular
Government reunited in a single society the scattered members of the old
Comédie-Française, and placed at its disposal the _salle_ of the
Palais-Royal (formerly the Théâtre de la République), which it has not
ceased to occupy to this day.
* * * * *