rhapsodic description of her as “amazingly and diabolically beautiful,”
she really has no quarrel with the fate that made her as she is.
Comedy was to be her mission, and if Wilde was right in his dictum
that “what serves its purpose is beautiful,” beautiful she is, after
all. For plain though it be, her face is a true comedy mask. “There
is comedy in every line of her face, in the arched eyebrows, the well
opened, dancing eyes, the tip-tilted nose, and the wonderful, mobile,
expressive mouth,” says William Archer. “This mouth is unquestionably
the actress’ chief feature; it conditions her art. With a different
mouth she might have been a tragedian or a heroine of melodrama, which
would have been an immense pity. It is not a beautiful feature from
the sculptor’s point of view; even from the painter’s it is not so
much a rose-bud as a full-blown rose. It has almost the wide-lipped
expansiveness of a Greek mask, but it is sensitive, ironic, amiable,
fascinating.”
To others, her eyes have been her chief charm. They are large and gray,
changeful with the flexibility of Réjane’s whole nature, surmounted by
extraordinarily lofty and expressive brows, and often half covered by
eyelids almost languorous. Her hair is, or at least was, golden brown.
She is not tall. She is by no means commanding in figure. There is
nothing of the imposing stage queen about her; yet, in figure, as in
face, she has been perfectly equipped for her work as _comédienne de
Paris_. Being just that, she makes her hands and her body means to her
histrionic ends. Those who have repeatedly studied her art have found
the subtlety, the distinction, and the perfect command of her gestures
and her poses more than a match for even the brightness, or the sadness
or the tenderness of her face. In every critique of Réjane there crops
out a pointed reference to her wonderful fluency and flexibility of
style, her fertility of invention of expressive detail, the naturalness
of her transitions of mood. “Elasticity, dexterity and rapidity she has
in a superlative degree, and with them grace and geniality, together
with simple pathos and honest heat of temper. And of course she
possesses that peculiar fineness of taste which belongs to her nation
and which is very apparent in _Madame Sans-Gêne_, whose heroine may be
crude and uncultivated, but is never boorish or clownish, is awkward
but not ugly. Her voice is clear and pleasant, but her elocution is
less distinct than that of many other French artists, although her
tones mark unmistakably the spiritual and intellectual differences
which fluctuate through her speeches. She has an unfailing regard for
the proportions of her scenes, and never obtrudes herself into a
prominent place just because she is the star of the company.”[100]
We have heard much of the comic finesse of Réjane’s _Madame Sans-Gêne_.
Now listen to one acute observer (Arthur Symons) of another side of
her genius: “Réjane can be vulgar, as nature is vulgar; she has all
the instincts of the human animal, of the animal woman, whom man will
never quite civilize.... Réjane, in _Sapho_ or _Zaza_ for instance,
is woman ... loving and suffering with all her nerves and muscles,
a gross, pitiable, horribly human thing, whose direct appeal, like
that of a sick animal, seizes you by the throat at the instant in
which it reaches your eyes and ears. More than any actress she is the
human animal without disguise or evasion; with all the instincts, all
the natural cries and movements. In _Sapho_ or _Zaza_ she speaks the
language of the senses, no more.... In being _Zaza_, she is so far
from being herself (what is the self of a great actress?) that she
has invented a new way of walking, as well as new tones and grimaces.
There is not an effect in the play which she has not calculated; only,
she has calculated every effect so exactly that the calculation is not
seen.”
M. Filon confessed himself baffled by the question of whether Réjane’s
marvelous liquidness of mood and method is due to something essential
in her nature, or merely to an incomparable power of imitation. “If
I shut my eyes,” he says, “I sometimes think I can hear the nasal
intonation, the little squeaky voice which belonged to Céline Chaumont.
A minute later this voice has the cadence, the sustained vibration,
the artistic break with which Sarah Bernhardt punctuates her diction,
and the transition is so skillfully managed that all these different
women--the woman who mocks, the woman who trembles, the woman who
threatens, the woman who desires, the woman who laughs, and the woman
who weeps--seem to be one and the same woman. For the matter of that, I
have set myself a problem which I should not be able to solve even with
the help of Réjane herself. Let us be content with what lies on the
surface. I am inclined to think that her resources consist of a host of
petty artifices, each more ingenious and more imperceptible than the
last. If one studied her secret one might draw up a whole set of rules
for the use of _comédiennes_.”
With _Sans-Gêne_ among her achievements, more and more word of her
became known outside of France. Unmitigatedly French though she was,
though there was little in her to suggest the universal appeal that
has made world artists of other actresses, by the sheer merit of the
thing she did, and because she was so complete an epitome of one phase
of her nation’s art, she was bound to become an international figure.
Her first appearance in London was in June, 1894. Her _Sans-Gêne_ there
instantly won her the recognition she deserved. America had not long
to wait. On February 27, 1895 she appeared in _Madame Sans-Gêne_ in
New York. She remained there several weeks, playing in _Divorçons_,
_Sapho_, _Ma Cousine_, the one act play _Lolotte_, and _Maison de
Poupée_ (Ibsen’s _A Doll’s House_), besides _Sans-Gêne_. Ten years
later[101] she made her second and last tour in America. In the
meantime Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Russia, Austria, Roumania,
Italy, Spain and Portugal had all seen her. Regnier’s nose rubbing had
assuredly been to good purpose.
One may as well admit at once that Réjane’s tours in the United States
were not successful, in the sense that continuously crowded houses
indicate success. The language was, of course, one stumbling block, for
a keen understanding of the foreign tongue was more necessary for a
taste for Réjane than for the broad effects, say, of a Bernhardt or a
Salvini. And if the language fell on baffled ears, the essence of the
plays, in some cases, antagonized the more puritanical of our public.
For the pieces Réjane played reflected a society and a point of view
for which many Americans found it hard to muster much sympathy. So
meager was the American response to Réjane’s art during her first visit
that she forswore us forever. Nine years sufficed to make her change
her mind. “But now (1904) as then,” said the New York _Times_, “she
is hampered by the moral bias of American audiences, and by the fact
that the manners she so searchingly studies and exquisitely depicts are
exotic--foreign alike to our sympathies and our experience.”
Whatever her popular success in America may or may not have been,
Réjane--in some of her parts at least--won the enthusiastic praise of
the critics and of the restricted public that knew its French well
enough to meet her on something like Parisian terms. The _pièce de
résistance_ of the first tour was _Madame Sans-Gêne_. Like most of
Sardou’s later dramas, it was a “tailor-made” play, written to suit
the personality and methods of its principal actress.[102] A secondary
object was evident in the effort to take advantage of the revival of
interest in Napoleon that marked, for no evident reason, the early
nineties. Technically the play was interesting chiefly as showing
the author in a new phase, for it was surprising to find Sardou, a
notorious disciple of Scribe, writing a piece that was little more
than a series of sketches. But Réjane lifted the whole affair to a
height at which it could be regarded only as one of the triumphs of the
nineteenth century theatre.
Réjane’s freshness, naturalness, tenderness, and charmingly subtle
sense of comedy as Catherine Hubscher in _Madame Sans-Gêne_ was
instantly recognized and celebrated in every American city that she
visited. In _Ma Cousine_, a light farce, she acted the soubrette
_Riquette_ with an abandon, a cleverness, a joyousness, that emphasized
her new public’s admiration of her. Her Nora, however, in _Maison de
Poupée_ (Ibsen’s _A Doll’s House_), revealed her in a new and more
serious light, demonstrating at once her genuine versatility and her
considerable emotional power. Even the unsavory _Sapho_ she made
something new and different, “moderating its excesses and enhancing
its better moods. Less pathetic directly than by suggestion, she often
moved by simple means a sympathy which _Sapho_ ill deserved.”
Just before Réjane began her second American tour she had an unhappy
experience in Havana. She gave there a series of eight performances,
the total result being chronicled in the American papers as a “fiasco.”
She had a welcome such as no actor or actress had ever before received
in Cuba. Thousands gathered at the pier as a private steamer went out
to meet her and bring her ashore; formal addresses of welcome and
bouquets were showered on her; and the Havana papers were full of odes
and eulogies. The first-night audience that gathered to see _Sapho_ was
the most brilliant ever seen in Havana, and the applause that greeted
Réjane’s entrance was prolonged and hearty. But the audience grew
colder and colder as the play progressed. The next day began a festival
period for the dramatic critics of Havana. They pounced upon _Sapho_
and Daudet, its author, and declared that while his sort of “esoteric
rot” might be what Frenchmen regard as the product of genius, they
rejoiced that such stuff could not pass as art in Havana.[103] Matters
grew worse with _La Pétite Marquise_ and _Zaza_, the company and the
mediocre productions were abused (“What did the actress mean by leaving
everything except her costumes in New York?” the papers asked. “Does
she believe that ‘any old thing’ is good enough for Havana?”), and the
young ladies of Havana were all kept away from Réjane’s improper plays.
Personalities became frequent in the papers, and one critic boldly
asserted that Réjane’s star had set. Her manager made matters worse
by revoking the passes of one paper, the lady herself provoked more
criticism by her refusal to be a guest at a reception at the Athenæum,
and altogether affairs reached such a pass that every one was immensely
relieved when Réjane and her company sailed away for New York. The
whole incident indicated more than anything else the narrow outlook
of the Cubans. “We are making our political independence apply to
everything,” wrote one of the critics. “America for the Americans, and
Cuba for the Cubans! Let the foreigner get out!”
When Réjane reached America her audiences found that she could not
altogether conceal the traces left by the flight of time--she was now
forty-seven--but that she had suffered no loss of her vivacity and
power. The tour of 1904–05 was not, however, the improvement over
that of ten years earlier that had been hoped for. The enthusiasm of
American audiences was not to be won over by the cynicism and frankness
of such pieces as _Amoureuse_, though the critics were not slow to
recognize the subtle and convincing quality of Réjane’s work even in
that play, which Mr. Winter gently characterized as “filthy trash.”
An unexpected circumstance gave new emphasis to the half-heartedness
of her welcome in the United States. It was simply a bit of bad luck
for Réjane, an injustice to a distinguished woman and artist, and
an illustration of the influence of American newspaper publicity.
James Hazen Hyde, then in the public eye because of his share in the
insurance scandals, was--as he has always since been--a generous patron
of the American study of French literature. He gave a dinner in New
York to honor the actress whose claim to honor none knew better than
he. It was said that on behalf of himself and his guests he gave her
a diamond crown. Accurately or not, it was reported next day--and
the news was not slow in traveling,--that Réjane’s gratefulness and
Gallicism took the form of her doing a sprightly dance on the table.
The incident was not important, but the wide publicity given it did not
tend to increase Réjane’s hold on that part of the public to which she
had, on her merits, so good a claim.
To get all the scandal over with at once, let us dispose of Réjane’s
husband. In 1892 she had married M. Porel, who had been an actor, then
director of the _Odéon_, and then of _Grand-Théâtre_. Soon after the
marriage he became co-director of the _Vaudeville_ and the _Gymnase_.
Early in the marriage there were two children, a daughter and a son. On
more than one occasion Madame Réjane began divorce proceedings, which
were halted when friends intervened and kept the couple together in
the interest of the children or of the parents’ professional welfare.
Finally both sued for divorce. After many preliminaries the husband was
granted the decree, though, eventually at least, the children were left
with the mother.
Naturally, the _Vaudeville_ was no longer open to her. But, as
Arnold Bennett (then not yet the distinguished novelist) wrote in
_P. T. O._,[104] though “Réjane may now and then suffer a brief
eclipse, she can be absolutely relied upon to emerge in a more blinding
glory. Exiled from her proper home, the _Vaudeville_, she naturally
wanted a theatre. She has got it. She took hold of the _Nouveau
Théâtre_, the unlikeliest and one of the most uncomfortable theatres in
Paris--the Lamoureaux concerts alone have succeeded there. She removed
everything from within its four walls, and presently frequenters of
the _Rue Blanche_ observed that the legend _Théâtre Réjane_ had been
carved on its façade. Last week she announced to her friends (that is
to say, to Paris) that she would be ‘at home’ on such and such a night.
The invitation added, ‘Comedy will be played.’ Her friends went, and
discovered the wonderfullest theatre in the town, incredibly spacious,
with lounges as big as the auditorium, wide corridors, and a scheme of
decoration at once severe and splendid. Réjane was written all over
it, even in the costumes of the women attendants. Paris was charmed,
astounded, electrified; and now Réjane flames a more brilliant jewel
than ever in the forehead of the capital.”
There, during the past ten years, she has appeared in more than a score
of new plays, none of them, perhaps, a new _Sans-Gêne_ or _Marquise_,
but each serving to keep in vigorous use one of the rarest talents
of the time. During this time, too, she has acted in South America
(1909), and occasionally, and as recently as the spring of 1915, she
has gone to London, where she has always been appreciated, sometimes to
act in the regular theatres, and sometimes to give in the music halls
one-act pieces like _Lolotte_, and scenes from the longer plays.[105]
“Madame Réjane long since announced to the world, by publicly going
about with a grown-up daughter, that she meant no more to depend for
even the smallest part of her charm and her power upon the semblance of
youthfulness,” wrote Mr. Bennett in 1906. “She is a middle-aged woman,
and she doesn’t care who knows it.” She is now even more certainly a
middle-aged woman, but she still has much of her essential vitality,
and of the force of a distinguished personality.
Off the stage Madame Réjane has always been a gracious and likable
woman, of a gentle, polished manner and lovable disposition that do
not always go with a pronounced and much applauded personality. She
has a summer place, “_Petit Manoir_,” a large, semi-Elizabethan villa
at Hennequeville, near Trouville, on the Normandy coast. There it has
been her habit to live quietly whenever her engagements permitted, with
her daughter Germaine and her son Jacques. She has always indulged a
taste for _objets de vertu_. “When not with her children or at the
theatre,” says Huret, “she is likely to find time to go in search of
paintings, or books or fine fabrics, a curious old fan, a bit of unique
lace, or a rare flower or jewel, with the joyous ardor that she puts
into everything and, as in her art, spending immense energy to achieve
the exquisite and the delicate, in a word, everything that makes for
the joy of working and of life.” The “_joie de travaille_” is one
characteristic of the great _comédienne_ that is likely to escape the
casual public. But work hard she did, and she made her company work
hard. “On the road” it was the regular thing to have daily rehearsals,
no matter what familiarity with the plays had been attained.
“The amazing variety of her artistry has been expressed,” says Huret,
“by two famous portraits of her, one by Chartran, the other by Besnard.
You could paint nothing more strikingly truthful than these portraits,
yet you cannot dream how unlike they are.... Besnard has retained
only those traits of his sitter which give her an expression that is
energetic, even a little brutal and sensual,--the popular Réjane, the
Réjane of the _Ambigu_, of realistic drama, the Réjane of _La Glu_ and
_Germinie Lacerteux_. Despite her silk gown and all her finery, Besnard
has seen her with the down-at-heel cloth boots that Germinie wore to
third-rate balls, and in the white floss-silk gloves which, to get a
realistic touch, she had borrowed from her servant-maid. That Réjane he
has caught admirably!
“But it is not thus that she has appeared to Chartran. He has seen her
in a dainty lace head-dress adorned with a rose-colored ribbon, her
hair loose over her eyes, her mobile mouth, her gracious oval face.
Above all he has seen her extraordinary and complex eyes, now quick,
now velvety, now perverse beneath their large, languorous eyelids: eyes
that are mocking, ardent, sparkling and dreamy. This is the Réjane
of Meilhac’s plays, the Réjane who is of the line of _comédiennes_
of the eighteenth century; it is _Ma Cousine_ who is about to become
_Amoureuse_.
“And this astonishing complexity of temperament is reflected in her
childhood, in her life, and in her tastes to-day. The youngster who
passed her evenings in the balcony of the _Ambigu_ sucking an orange,
who stood in ecstasy before the glass of Adèle Page, and who for years
dreamed of such a life as the acme of luxury,--her one sees in the
portrait by Besnard. But the young lady of the _Conservatoire_, the
favorite pupil of Regnier, who won her first success in _L’Intrigue
Épistolaire_, the elegant and finished interpreter of the life of the
_salons_ and _cercles_, the full-grown _artiste_ of _Marquise_: all
these live in the painting of Chartran.”
“_Ces deux jolis noms d’une seule et même personne: Réjane, Madame
Sans-Gêne_”; thus one of her countrymen happily characterized her.
But another was just as right when he called her “the innumerable
Réjane.”
ELEONORA DUSE
When the American papers announced, in the spring of 1914, that
Eleonora Duse had recovered her health and was contemplating a return
to the stage, the news had a curious effect, somewhat as if the New
York press had casually said that “Ada Rehan and Mr. Daly’s company
are to play _The Taming of the Shrew_ next Monday.” A little later
the cable brought the announcement that Bernhardt was thinking of
coming again to America, and though Mme. Sarah is almost old enough
to be Duse’s mother, the news of her coming had not the same effect
of turning the clock backward. For Bernhardt is apparently one of the
earth’s permanent phenomena, like the return of vegetation in the
spring; while the tragic figure of Duse, though she played in America
only a dozen years ago, seems somehow to belong to the last generation.
[Illustration: ELEONORA DUSE]
She is, however, not yet really an old woman, for she was born October
3, 1859. The genius of strange and hard experience, which has attended
her all her life, was present even at her birth, for it occurred in
a third-class carriage of a railway train, near Vigevano, while her
parents, the members of a band of actors, were on their way from
Venice to Milan. A troubled life then began.
For two generations, at least, her forebears had been player-folk,
of a rather humble station, most of them. An uncle was a player
differing greatly in kind from his famous niece, for he was known
throughout Northern Italy as an uproariously funny comedian.[106] Her
grandfather, Luigi Duse, was of a somewhat more serious turn, and
of a more important rank in the profession, for he is said to have
founded the Garibaldi Theatre at Padua. He founded also a troupe of
Venetian dialect comedians which was famous for many years. His four
sons were all actors, and one of them, Eleonora Duse’s father, was a
painter as well. Ultimately he left the stage to devote himself to
that art. Duse’s mother, too, was an actress, and, after her child was
baptized[107] and had attained the age of ten days, resumed her place
in the company, which now had another prospective member added to its
roster. Literally Duse knew the theatre and its people from the first
day of her life, and was forced into its service as a matter of course.
The father and mother were humble strolling players who wandered about,
often on foot, making a scanty living. The young Eleonora’s childhood
was thus filled on the one hand with poverty, often hunger, and on the
other hand, with the actor’s trade under her observation and a part of
her daily instruction.[108] Hers was really not a childhood at all, a
fact that helps to explain the note of melancholy and tragedy that has
pervaded her whole life.
A career as a stage child, however, seems to be the thing that produces
the notable actress,--the Siddons, the Terry, the Mrs. Fiske,--if only
the added something is present to endow the unconsciously absorbed
technique with the significance of personality and high intelligence.
At seven Eleonora was the prompter of the company. But she soon began
to absorb the words and something of the meaning of certain rôles.
At ten she was playing Cosette in _Les Misérables_. By the time she
was twelve she was regularly appearing on the rustic stages, often
impersonating characters far older than herself. There was much in the
old life of the strolling players that made for joyousness--witness
Modjeska’s tribute to her early experience of such life--and the young
Duse was not without her gay moods, in those days, but responsibility,
hard work and the impersonation of adult and much-troubled women, while
she was still in her middle ’teens, inclined her toward the seriousness
that has characterized her life. When she was fourteen her mother
died, and her duties as _tragédienne_ were supplemented by the care of
younger children. Is it any wonder that she soon seemed to be “walking
through life like a somnambulist”?[109]
Before she was sixteen she had acted a round of tragic parts, among
them Doña Sol, Francesca da Rimini (in the play by Pellico) and
Caverina, the heroine of Victor Hugo’s _Angelo_. When she was just
over sixteen she played Juliet, in Verona itself. The theatre--it was
the “Arena,” an open-air theatre--was crowded, and the actress roused
the assembly to enthusiasm by a Juliet that was girlish, beautiful and
natural.
But her term of what we would call “barnstorming” was not to end yet.
The vagabondage continued, varied first with a tour of Dalmatia, and
then by an occasional engagement, in small rôles, apart from the family
company.