Near the centre of that verdant triangle formed by Saint Cloud,
Versailles, and Saint Germain lies the village of Marly-le-Roy, high up
on a slope above the lazy Seine—an entrancing corner of the earth, much
affected formerly by French crowned heads, and by the “Sun King” in
particular, who in his old age grew tired of Versailles and built here
one of his many villas (the rival in its day of the Trianons), and
proceeded to amuse himself therein with the same solemnity which had
already made vice at Versailles more boresome than virtue elsewhere.
Two centuries and four revolutions have swept away all trace of this
kingly caprice and the art treasures it contained. Alone, the marble
horses of Coustou, transported later to the Champs Elysées, remain to
attest the splendor of the past.
The quaint village of Marly, clustered around its church, stands,
however—with the faculty that insignificant things have of remaining
unchanged—as it did when the most polished court of Europe rode through
it to and from the hunt. On the outskirts of this village are now two
forged and gilded gateways through which the passer-by can catch a
glimpse of trim avenues, fountains, and well-kept lawns.
There seems a certain poetical justice in the fact that Alexandre Dumas
_fils_ and Victorien Sardou, the two giants of modern drama, should have
divided between them the inheritance of Louis XIV., its greatest patron.
One of the gates is closed and moss-grown. Its owner lies in
Père-la-Chaise. At the other I ring, and am soon walking up the famous
avenue bordered by colossal sphinxes presented to Sardou by the late
Khedive. The big stone brutes, connected in one’s mind with heat and
sandy wastes, look oddly out of place here in this green wilderness—a
bite, as it were, out of the forest which, under different names, lies
like a mantle over the country-side.
Five minutes later I am being shown through a suite of antique salons, in
the last of which sits the great playwright. How striking the likeness
is to Voltaire,—the same delicate face, lit by a half cordial, half
mocking smile; the same fragile body and indomitable spirit. The
illusion is enhanced by our surroundings, for the mellow splendor of the
room where we stand might have served as a background for the Sage of
Ferney.
Wherever one looks, works of eighteenth-century art meet the eye. The
walls are hung with Gobelin tapestries that fairly take one’s breath
away, so exquisite is their design and their preservation. They
represent a marble colonnade, each column of which is wreathed with
flowers and connected to its neighbor with garlands.
Between them are bits of delicate landscape, with here and there a group
of figures dancing or picnicking in the shadow of tall trees or under
fantastical porticos. The furniture of the room is no less marvellous
than its hangings. One turns from a harpsichord of vernis-martin to the
clock, a relic from Louis XIV.’s bedroom in Versailles; on to the
bric-à-brac of old Saxe or Sèvres in admiring wonder. My host drifts
into his showman manner, irresistibly comic in this writer.
The pleasures of the collector are apparently divided into three phases,
without counting the rapture of the hunt. First, the delight a true
amateur takes in living among rare and beautiful things. Second, the
satisfaction of showing one’s treasures to less fortunate mortals, and
last, but perhaps keenest of all, the pride which comes from the fact
that one has been clever enough to acquire objects which other people
want, at prices below their market value. Sardou evidently enjoys these
three sensations vividly. That he lives with and loves his possessions
is evident, and the smile with which he calls your attention to one piece
after another, and mentions what they cost him, attests that the two
other joys are not unknown to him. He is old enough to remember the
golden age when really good things were to be picked up for modest sums,
before every parvenu considered it necessary to turn his house into a
museum, and factories existed for the production of “antiques” to be sold
to innocent amateurs.
In calling attention to a set of carved and gilded furniture, covered in
Beauvais tapestry, such as sold recently in Paris at the Valençay
sale—Talleyrand collection—for sixty thousand dollars, Sardou mentions
with a laugh that he got his fifteen pieces for fifteen hundred dollars,
the year after the war, from an old château back of Cannes! One unique
piece of tapestry had cost him less than one-tenth of that sum. He
discovered it in a peasant’s stable under a two-foot layer of straw and
earth, where it had probably been hidden a hundred years before by its
owner, and then all record of it lost by his descendants.
The mention of Cannes sets Sardou off on another train of thought. His
family for three generations have lived there. Before that they were
Sardinian fishermen. His great-grandfather, he imagines, was driven by
some tempest to the shore near Cannes and settled where he found himself.
Hence the name! For in the patois of Provençal France an inhabitant of
Sardinia is still called _un Sardou_.
The sun is off the front of the house by this time, so we migrate to a
shady corner of the lawn for our _apéritif_, the inevitable vermouth or
“bitters” which Frenchmen take at five o’clock. Here another surprise
awaits the visitor, who has not realized, perhaps, to what high ground
the crawling local train has brought him. At our feet, far below the
lawn and shade trees that encircle the château, lies the Seine, twisting
away toward Saint Germain, whose terrace and dismantled palace stand
outlined against the sky. To our right is the plain of Saint Denis, the
cathedral in its midst looking like an opera-glass on a green table.
Further still to the right, as one turns the corner of the terrace, lies
Paris, a white line on the horizon, broken by the mass of the Arc de
Triomphe, the roof of the Opéra, and the Eiffel Tower, resplendent in a
fresh coat of yellow lacquer!
The ground where we stand was occupied by the feudal castle of Les Sires
de Marly; although all traces of that stronghold disappeared centuries
ago, the present owner of the land points out with pride that the
extraordinary beauty of the trees around his house is owing to the fact
that their roots reach deep down to the rich loam collected during
centuries in the castle’s moat.
The little château itself, built during the reign of Louis XIV. for the
_grand-veneur_ of the forest of Marly, is intensely French in type,—a
long, low building on a stone terrace, with no trace of ornament about
its white façade or on its slanting roof. Inside, all the rooms are
“front,” communicating with each other _en suite_, and open into a
corridor running the length of the building at the back, which, in turn,
opens on a stone court. Two lateral wings at right angles to the main
building form the sides of this courtyard, and contain _les communs_, the
kitchen, laundry, servants’ rooms, and the other annexes of a large
establishment. This arrangement for a summer house is for some reason
neglected by our American architects. I can recall only one home in
America built on this plan. It is Giraud Foster’s beautiful villa at
Lenox. You may visit five hundred French châteaux and not find one that
differs materially from this plan. The American idea seems on the
contrary to be a square house with a room in each corner, and all the
servants’ quarters stowed away in a basement. Cottage and palace go on
reproducing that foolish and inconvenient arrangement indefinitely.
After an hour’s chat over our drinks, during host has rippled on from one
subject to another with the lightness of touch of a born talker, we get
on to the subject of the grounds, and his plans for their improvement.
Good luck has placed in Sardou’s hands an old map of the gardens as they
existed in the time of Louis XV., and several prints of the château
dating from about the same epoch have found their way into his
portfolios. The grounds are, under his care, slowly resuming the
appearance of former days. Old avenues reopen, statues reappear on the
disused pedestals, fountains play again, and clipped hedges once more
line out the terraced walks.
In order to explain how complete this work will be in time, Sardou
hurries me off to inspect another part of his collection. Down past the
stables, in an unused corner of the grounds, long sheds have been
erected, under which is stored the débris of a dozen palaces, an
assortment of eighteenth-century art that could not be duplicated even in
France.
One shed shelters an entire semicircle of _treillage_, pure Louis XV., an
exquisite example of a lost art. Columns, domes, panels, are packed away
in straw awaiting resurrection in some corner hereafter to be chosen. A
dozen seats in rose-colored marble from Fontainebleau are huddled
together near by in company with a row of gigantic marble masques brought
originally from Italy to decorate Fouquet’s fountains at his château of
Vaux in the short day of its glory. Just how this latter find is to be
utilized their owner has not yet decided. The problem, however, to judge
from his manner, is as important to the great playwright as the plot of
his next drama.
That the blood of an antiquarian runs in Sardou’s veins is evident in the
subdued excitement with which he shows you his possessions—statues from
Versailles, forged gates and balconies from Saint Cloud, the carved and
gilded wood-work for a dozen rooms culled from the four corners of
France. Like the true dramatist, he has, however, kept his finest effect
for the last. In the centre of a circular rose garden near by stands,
alone in its beauty, a column from the façade of the Tuileries, as
perfect from base to flower-crowned capital as when Philibert Delorme’s
workmen laid down their tools.
Years ago Sardou befriended a young stone mason, who through this timely
aid prospered, and, becoming later a rich builder, received in 1882 from
the city of Paris the contract to tear down the burned ruins of the
Tuileries. While inspecting the palace before beginning the work of
demolition, he discovered one column that had by a curious chance escaped
both the flames of the Commune and the patriotic ardor of 1793, which
effaced all royal emblems from church and palace alike. Remembering his
benefactor’s love for antiquities with historical associations, the
grateful contractor appeared one day at Marly with this column on a dray,
and insisted on erecting it where it now stands, pointing out to Sardou
with pride the crowned “H,” of Henri Quatre, and the entwined “M. M.” of
Marie de Médicis, topped by the Florentine lily in the flutings of the
shaft and on the capital.
A question of mine on Sardou’s manner of working led to our abandoning
the gardens and mounting to the top floor of the château, where his
enormous library and collection of prints are stored in a series of
little rooms or alcoves, lighted from the top and opening on a corridor
which runs the length of the building. In each room stands a
writing-table and a chair; around the walls from floor to ceiling and in
huge portfolios are arranged his books and engravings according to their
subject. The Empire alcove, for instance, contains nothing but
publications and pictures relating to that epoch. Roman and Greek
history have their alcoves, as have mediæval history and the reigns of
the different Louis. Nothing could well be conceived more conducive to
study than this arrangement, and it makes one realize how honest was the
master’s reply when asked what was his favorite amusement. “Work!”
answered the author.
Our conversation, as was fated, soon turned to the enormous success of
_Robespierre_ in London—a triumph that even Sardou’s many brilliant
victories had not yet equalled.
It is characteristic of the French disposition that neither the author
nor any member of his family could summon courage to undertake the
prodigious journey from Paris to London in order to see the first
performance. Even Sardou’s business agent, M. Roget, did not get further
than Calais, where his courage gave out. “The sea was so terrible!”
Both those gentlemen, however, took it quite as a matter of course that
Sardou’s American agent should make a three-thousand-mile journey to be
present at the first night.
The fact that the French author resisted Sir Henry Irving’s pressing
invitations to visit him in no way indicates a lack of interest in the
success of the play. I had just arrived from London, and so had to go
into every detail of the performance, a rather delicate task, as I had
been discouraged with the acting of both Miss Terry and Irving, who have
neither of them the age, voice, nor temperament to represent either the
revolutionary tyrant or the woman he betrayed. As the staging had been
excellent, I enlarged on that side of the subject, but when pressed into
a corner by the author, had to acknowledge that in the scene where
Robespierre, alone at midnight in the Conciergerie, sees the phantoms of
his victims advance from the surrounding shadows and form a menacing
circle around him, Irving had used his poor voice with so little skill
that there was little left for the splendid climax, when, in trying to
escape from his ghastly visitors, Robespierre finds himself face to face
with Marie Antoinette, and with a wild cry, half of horror, half of
remorse, falls back insensible.
In spite of previous good resolutions, I must have given the author the
impression that Sir Henry spoke too loud at the beginning of this scene
and was in consequence inadequate at the end.
“What!” cried Sardou. “He raised his voice in that act! Why, it’s a
scene to be played with the soft pedal down! This is the way it should
be done!” Dropping into a chair in the middle of the room my host began
miming the gestures and expression of Robespierre as the phantoms (which,
after all, are but the figments of an over-wrought brain) gather around
him. Gradually he slipped to the floor, hiding his face with his
upraised elbow, whispering and sobbing, but never raising his voice
until, staggering toward the portal to escape, he meets the Queen face to
face. Then the whole force of his voice came out in one awful cry that
fairly froze the blood in my veins!
“What a teacher you would make!” instinctively rose to my lips as he
ended.
With a careless laugh, Sardou resumed his shabby velvet cap, which had
fallen to the floor, and answered: “Oh, it’s nothing! I only wanted to
prove to you that the scene was not a fatiguing one for the voice if
played properly. I’m no actor and could not teach, but any one ought to
know enough not to shout in that scene!”
This with some bitterness, as news had arrived that Irving’s voice had
given out the night before, and he had been replaced by his half-baked
son in the title rôle, a change hardly calculated to increase either the
box-office receipts or the success of the new drama.
Certain ominous shadows which, like Robespierre’s visions, had been for
some time gathering in the corners of the room warned me that the hour
had come for my trip back to Paris. Declining reluctantly an invitation
to take potluck with my host, I was soon in the Avenue of the Sphinx
again. As we strolled along, talking of the past and its charm, a couple
of men passed us, carrying a piece of furniture rolled in burlaps.
“Another acquisition?” I asked. “What epoch has tempted you this time?”
“I’m sorry you won’t stop and inspect it,” answered Sardou with a twinkle
in his eye. “It’s something I bought yesterday for my bedroom. An
armchair! Pure Loubet!”