SOME ECCENTRICITIES OF THE FRENCH STAGE.
The future historian of the French Stage will not want for matter to add to a history which has already had many illustrators and writers. Just a year ago, I saw a magnificent funeral pass from the church of Notre Dame de Lorette. ‘C’est Lafont, le grand Comédien!’ was the comment of the spectators. ‘Poor Glatigny!’ said another, ‘was not thus buried—like a prince!’ Wondering who Glatigny might be, I, in the course of that day, took up a French paper in the reading-room of the Grand Hôtel, in which the name caught my eye, and I found that Glatigny had been one of the eccentric actors of the French stage. He was clever, but reckless; he had a bad memory, but when it was in fault, he could improvise—with impudence, but effect.
Glatigny once manifested his improvising powers in a very extraordinary manner. The story, on the authority of the Paris papers, runs thus:
Passing in front of the Mont-Parnasse Theatre, he saw the name of his friend Chevilly in the play-bill. Glatigny entered by the stage-door, and asked to see him. He was told that Chevilly was on the stage, and could not be spoken to; he was acting in Ponsard’s ‘Charlotte Corday.’ Glatigny, thereupon, and to the indignant astonishment of the manager, coolly walked forward to the side of Chevilly, as the latter was repeating the famous lines—
Non, je ne crois pas, moi,
Que tout soit terminé quand on n’a plus de roi;
C’est le commencement.
As Chevilly concluded these words, he stared in inexpressible surprise at Glatigny, and exclaiming: ‘What, you here!’ shook him cordially by the hand, as if both were in a private room, and not in the presence of a very much perplexed audience. The audience did not get out of their perplexity by finding that Ponsard’s play was altogether forgotten, and that the two players began talking of their private affairs, walking up and down the stage the while, as if they had been on the boulevards or in the gardens of the Tuileries. At length, said Glatigny, ‘I am afraid, that I perhaps intrude?’ ‘Not at all!’ said Chevilly. ‘I am sure I do,’ rejoined Glatigny, ‘so farewell. When you have finished, you will find me at the café, next door.’ The eccentric player had reached the wing, when he returned, saying: ‘By-the-by, before we part, shall we sing together a little couplet de facture?’ ‘With all my heart,’ was the reply; and both of them, standing before the foot-lights, sang a verse from some old vaudeville, on the pleasure of old friends meeting unexpectedly, and which used to bring the curtain down with applause.
At this duet, the public entered into the joke—they could not hiss, for laughing,—and the most joyous uproar reigned amongst them, till Glatigny retired as if nothing had happened, and Chevilly attempted seriously to resume his part in ‘Charlotte Corday.’
There was a serious as well as a comic tinge in Glatigny’s experiences. On one morning in February, 1869, some country folk, returning from the market at Tarbes, saw a man stretched fast asleep on the steps of the theatre. It was early dawn, and snow was gently falling. The peasants shook the sleeper, told him, when half awake, of the danger he was in by thus exposing himself, and asked him what he was doing there? ‘Well,’ said Glatigny, ‘I am waiting for the manager;’ he turned round to go to sleep again, and the country folk left him to his fate. Later in the day, he shook himself, by way of toilet and breakfast, and made his call upon the manager. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Albert Glatigny. I am a comedian and a poet. At the present moment, I have no money, but am terribly hungry. Have you any vacancy in your company, leading tragedian or lamp-cleaner?’ The manager asked him if he was perfect in the part of Pylades. ‘Thoroughly so!’ was the answer. ‘All the better,’ said the manager; ‘we play “Andromaque,” to-night; my Pylades is ill. You will replace him. Good morning!’
When the evening came, Glatigny put on the Greek costume, and entered on the stage, without knowing a single line of his part. That was nothing. When his turn came, he improvised a little reply to Pyrrhus. Glatigny now and then had a line too short by a syllable or two, but he made up for it by putting a syllable or two over measure in the line that followed. He knew the bearing of the story, and he improvised as naturally as if he were taking part in a conversation. The audience was not aware of anything unusual. The manager who, at first, was ready to tear his hair from his head, wisely let Glatigny take his own course, and when the play was ended he offered the eccentric fellow an engagement, at the stupendous salary of sixty francs a month!
Never was there a man who led a more unstable and wandering life. One day, he would seem fixed in Paris; the week after he was established in Corsica; and after disappearing from the world that knew him, he would turn up again at the Café de Suède, with wonderful stories of his errant experiences. With all his mad ways there was no lack of method in Glatigny’s mind when he chose to discipline it. French critics speak with much favour of the grace and sweetness of his verses, and quote charming lines from his comedy, ‘Le Bois,’ which was successfully acted at the Odéon. Glatigny had a hard life withal. It was for bread that he became a strolling player,—that he gave some performances at the Alcazar, as an improvisatore—and, finally, that he woke up one fine morning, with republican opinions.
Probably not a few play-goers among us who were in Paris in 1849 will forget the first representation of ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur,’ in the April of that year. Among the persons of the drama was the Abbé de Chazeuil, which was represented by M. Leroux, and well represented; a perfect abbé de boudoir, loving his neighbour’s wife, and projecting a revolution by denouncing the fashion of wearing patches! M. Leroux, like Michonnet in the play, was eager to become a sociétaire of the Théâtre Français, but (like poor Firmin, whose memory was not so blameless as his style and genius—and who committed suicide, like Nourrit, by flinging himself out of the window of an upper storey) Leroux was not a ‘quick study,’ and, year by year, he fell into the background, and had fewer parts assigned to him. The actor complained. The answer was that his memory was not to be trusted. He rejoined that it had never been trustworthy, and yet he had got on, in a certain sense, without it. The rejoinder was not accepted as satisfactory. The oblivious player (with all his talent) fell into oblivion. He not only was not cast for new parts, but many of his old ones that he had really got by heart were consigned to other members of the company. Leroux was, before all things, a Parisian, and yet, in disgust, he abandoned Paris. He wandered through the provinces, found his way to Algiers, and there, after going deeper and deeper still, did not forget one thing for which he had been cast in the drama of life—namely, his final exit.
Political feeling has often led to eccentric results on, and in front of, the French stage. With all the Imperial patronage of the drama, the public never lost an opportunity of laughing at the vices of the Imperial régime. When Ponsard’s ‘Lucréce’ was revived at the Odéon, the public were simply bored by Lucretia’s platitudes at home and the prosings of her husband in the camp. But when Brutus abused the Senate, and scathing sarcasm was flashed against the extravagance of the women of the court, and their costume, the pit especially, the house generally, burst forth into a shout of recognition and derision. It is to be observed that the acute Emperor himself often led the applause on passages which bore political allusions, and which denounced tyranny in supreme lords or in their subordinates. When the Emperor did not take the initiative, the people did. At the first representation of Augier’s ‘La Contagion,’ there was a satirical passage against England. The audience accepted it with laughter; but when the actor added: ‘After all, the English are our best friends, and are a free people!’ the phrase was received with a thundering Bravo! from the famous Pipe-en-bois, who sat, wild and dishevelled, in the middle of the pit, and whose exclamation aroused tumultuous echoes. At another passage, ‘There comes a time when baffled truths are affirmed by thunder-claps!’ the audience tried to encore the phrase. M. Got was too well-trained an actor to be guilty of obeying, but the house shouted, ‘Vivent les coups de tonnerre!’ ‘Thunder-claps for ever!’ and the passive Cæsar looked cold and unmoved across that turbulent pit.
The French public is cruel to its idols whose powers have passed away. The French stage is ungrateful to its old patrons who can no longer confer patronage. When the glorious three days of 1830 had overthrown the Bourbon Charles X., King of France and Navarre, and put in his place Louis Philippe, King of the French, and the ‘best of republics,’ the actors at the Odéon inaugurated their first representation under the ‘Revolution’ by acting Pichat’s tragedy of ‘William Tell’ and Molière’s ‘Tartuffe.’ All the actors were ignoble enough to associate themselves with the downfall of a dynasty many kings of which had been liberal benefactors of the drama. In ‘William Tell’ Ligier stooped to the anachronism of wearing a tri-coloured rosette on the buffskin tunic of Tell. In ‘Tartuffe’ all the actors and actresses but one wore the same sign of idiocy. Tartuffe himself wore the old white ribbon of the Bourbons, but only that the symbol which once was associated with much glory might be insulted in its adversity. Dorine, the servant, tore the white rosette from Tartuffe’s black coat amid a hurricane of applause from the hot-headed heroes of the barricades, who had by fire, sword, artillery, and much slaughter, set on the throne the ‘modern Ulysses.’ Eighteen years later, that Ulysses shared the fate of all French objects of idolatry, and was rudely tumbled down from his high estate. At the Porte St. Martin, Frederic Lemaître played a chiffonier in one of the dramas in which he was so popular. In his gutter-raking at night, after having tossed various objects over his shoulder into his basket, he drove his crook into some object which he held up for the whole house to behold. It was a battered kingly crown, and when, with a scornful chuckle, he flung it among the rags and bones in the basket on his back, the vast mob of spectators did not hiss him from the stage; they greeted the unworthy act by repeated salvoes of applause!
Turning from eccentric actors to eccentric pieces, there may be reckoned among the latter a piece called ‘Venez,’ which was first produced, a few years ago, at Liége. A chief incident in the piece is where a pretty actress, seeking an engagement, is required by the young manager, as a test of her competency, to give to the above word as many varied intonations as might be possible. One of these proves to be so exquisitely seductive that the manager offers a permanent engagement for life, which is duly accepted. From Liége to Compiègne is a long step, but it brings us to another eccentricity. Nine years ago, at one of the Imperial revels there, certain of the courtiers and visitors acted in an apropos piece, named ‘Les Commentaires de César.’ The Prince Imperial represented the Future, without having the slightest idea of it. Prosper Mérimée, Academician, poet, and historian, acted the Past, of which he had often written so picturesquely. In the more farcical part which followed the prologue, the most prominent personage was the Princesse de Metternich (wife of the Austrian ambassador), who played the part of a French cabman out on strike. She tipped forth the Paris slang, and sang a character song, with an audacity which could not be surpassed by the boldest of singing actresses at any of the popular minor theatres. The august audience were convulsed at this manifestation of high dramatic art—in its way! These fêtes led to much extravagance in dress, and to much contention thereon between actresses and managers.
The directors of the Palais Royal Theatre have frequently been at law with their first ladies. Mdlle. Louisa Ferraris, in 1864, signed an engagement to play there for three years at a salary beginning at 2,400 francs, and advancing to 3,000 and 3,600 francs, with a forfeit clause of 12,000 francs. The salary would hardly have sufficed to pay the lady’s shoemaker. In the course of the engagement the ‘Foire aux Grotesques’ was put in rehearsal. In the course of this piece Mdlle. Ferraris had to say to another actress, ‘I was quite right in not inviting you to my ball, for you could not have come in a new dress, as you owe your dressmaker 24,000 francs!’ As this actress was really deeply indebted to that important personage, she begged that this speech, which seemed a deliberate insult to her, might be altered. Mdlle. Ferraris, in spite of the authors, who readily changed the objectionable phrase, continued, however, to repeat the original words. As she was peremptorily ordered to omit them she flung up her part, whereupon the directors applied to the law to cancel her engagement for breach of contract, and to award them 12,000 francs damages. Mademoiselle repented and offered to resume the part. On this being declined she entered a cross action to gain the 12,000 francs for breach of contract on the directors’ side. The Tribunal de Commerce, after consideration, cancelled the engagement, but condemned Mdlle. Ferraris to pay 2,000 francs damages and the costs of suit. It is to the stage, and not to the empress, that inordinate luxury in dress is to be attributed. Sardou, in ‘La Famille Bénoiton,’ has been stigmatised as the forerunner of such an exaggerated luxury that no private purse was sufficient to pay for the toilette of a woman whose maxim was, La mode à tout prix.
Two or three years ago there was an actress at the Palais Royal Theatre known as Antonia de Savy. Her real name was Antoinette Jathiot. Her salary was 1,200 francs for the first year, 1,800 francs for the second: not three-and-sixpence a night in English money. But out of the three-and-sixpences Mdlle. Antonia was bound to provide herself with ‘linen, shoes, stockings, head-dresses, and all theatrical costumes requisite for her parts, except foreign costumes totally different from anything habitually worn in France.’ For any infringement of these terms Mademoiselle was to pay a fine of 10,000 francs—about her salary for half-a-dozen years. Circumstances led Antonia to be wayward, and the management entered on a suit for the cancelling of the engagement on the ground of her refusing to play a particular part, and her unpunctuality. Her counsel, M. G. Chaix d’Est Ange, pleaded that the lady was a minor, that her father had not given his consent to such an engagement, and that it was an imposition on her youth and inexperience. The other side replied that Mdlle. Jathiot had ceased to be a minor since the engagement was signed; that as to her inexperience, she was a very experienced young lady in the ways of Parisian life; that the engagement was concluded with her because she dressed in the most magnificent style, and that it would be profitable to the theatre as well as to herself to exhibit those magnificent dresses on the stage; and that as to her respected sire, he was a humble clerk, living in a garret in the Rue Saint-Lazare, and had no control whatever over a daughter who lived in the style of a princess, spent fabulous sums in maintaining it, and had the most perfect ‘turn-out’ in the way of carriage, horses, and servants in the French capital. The plaintiffs asked to be relieved from this modest young lady, and to be awarded damages for her insubordination and unpunctuality. The Tribunal de Commerce ordered the engagement to be cancelled, and the defendant to pay 1500 francs damages and the costs of suit. But the Imperial Court of Appeal took another view of the case. They refused in any way to sanction such an immoral notion as that the terms of the contract were not disadvantageous for the minor because it was known that she got her living in a way that could not be avowed. They quashed the judgment of the Tribunal de Commerce, and ordered the managers of the Palais Royal to pay all the costs.
The most singular of all law cases between French actresses and managers was one the names of the parties to which have slipped out of my memory. It arose out of the refusal of a young actress, who had not lost her womanly modesty, to ‘go on’ in the dress provided for her, which would hardly have afforded her more covering than a postage-stamp. In the lawsuit which followed this act of insubordination, the modest young lady was defeated, and was rebuked by the magistrate for infringing the laws of the stage, of which the manager was the irresponsible legislator! The actress preferred the cancelling of her engagement to the degradation of such nightly exposure as was demanded by the manager and was sanctioned by the magistrate.
I have said above that the eccentric extravagance of dress—the other extreme from next to none at all—was not a consequence of an example set by the empress. But there is something to be said on both sides. Only two years ago Mdlles. Fargueil, Bernhardt, and Desclées made public protest against the pièces aux robes, in which they were required to dress like empresses (of fashion) at their own expense. They traced the ruinous custom to the period when the Imperial Court was at Compiègne, and when the actresses engaged or ‘invited’ to play to the august company there were required by the inexorable rule of the Court to obey the sumptuary laws which regulated costume. Every lady was invited for three days; each day she was to wear three different dresses, and no dress was to be worn a second time. Count Bacciochi, the grand chamberlain, kept a sharp eye on the ladies of the drama. Histrionic queens and countesses were bound to be attired as genuinely as the historical dignitaries themselves. The story might be romance, the outward and visible signs were to be all reality. The awful Grand Chamberlain once banished an actress from the Court stage at Compiègne for the crime of wearing mock pearls when she was playing the part of a duchess!
This evil fashion, insisted on by dreadful Grand Chamberlains, was adopted by Paris managers, who hoped to attract by dresses—the very skirt of any one of which would swallow more than a vicaire’s yearly income—and by a river of diamonds on a fair neck, whatever might be in the head above it. A young actress who hoped to live by such salary as her brains alone could bring her, and who would presume to wear sham jewellery or machine-made lace, was looked upon as a poor creature who would never have a reputation—that is, such a reputation as her gorgeously attired sisters, who did not particularly care to have any but that for which the most of them dressed themselves. When the empire fell the above-named actresses thought that a certain republican simplicity might properly take the place of an imperial magnificence. Or they maintained that if stage-ladies were required to find stage-dresses that cost twenty times their salary, the cost of providing such dresses should fall on the stage-proprietors, and not on the stage-ladies. It is said that the bills Mdlle. Fargueil had to pay for her dresses in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ and ‘Patrie’ represented a sum total which, carefully invested, would have brought her in a comfortable annuity! This may be a little exaggerated, but the value of the dresses may be judged of from one fact, namely, that the Ghent lace which Mdlle. Fargueil wore on her famous blue dress in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ was worth very nearly 500l.
How the attempt to introduce ‘moderation’ into the stage laws of costume has succeeded, the most of us have seen. It has not succeeded at all. Certain actresses are proud to occupy that bad preeminence from which they are able to set the fashion. ‘Mon chancelier vous dira le reste!’
One of the eccentricities of the modern French stage is the way in which it deals with the most delicate, or, rather, the most indelicate subjects and people. The indelicate people and subject may indeed be coarsely represented and outspoken, but they must observe certain recognised, though undefined rules. There must be an innocent young lady among the wicked people, and the lady (the ingénue) and her ingenuousness must be respected. One fly may taint a score of carcases and make a whole pot of ointment stink, but one ingénue keeps a French piece of nastiness comparatively pure, and the public taste for the impure is satisfied with this little bit of sentimentality. The subjects which many French authors have brought on the stage do not, it is to be hoped, hold a true mirror up to French nature. If so, concubinage, adultery, and murder reign supreme. The changes have been rung so often on this triple theme that an anonymous writer has proposed that the theme should be represented, once for all, in something of the following form, and that dramatic authors should then turn to fresh woods and pastures new: ‘Scene.—A Drawing-room; a married lady is seated, her lover at her feet; the folding-door at back opens, and discovers husband with a double-barrelled revolver. He fires and kills married lady and her lover. Husband then advances and contemplates his victims. After a pause, he exclaims: “A thousand pardons! I have come to a room on the wrong flat!” Curtain slowly descends.’ This represents quite as faithfully the iniquities which, according to the modern French drama, prevail universally in society, as the dramas of Florian achieve the mission which was assigned to him of illustrating les petites vertus de tous les jours—the little virtues of everyday life.
The name of Mademoiselle Aimée Desclées reminds me of our Lord Chamberlain. Extremes meet, in the mind as well as elsewhere! That actress, who, after many years of hard struggle, floated triumphantly as La Dame aux Camélias, and after a few years’ progress over sunny seas slowly sank in sight of port, was discovered and brought out by M. Dumas fils. A year or two ago she came to London with his plays, the above ‘Dame,’ the ‘Princesse Georges,’ the ‘Visite de Noces,’ and some others. But they stank in the nostrils of our Lord Chamberlain, and he would no more allow them to be produced than the Lord Mayor would allow corrupt meat to be exposed for sale in a City market. Great was the outcry that arose thereupon, from the French inhabitants, and some of the ignorant natives of London. The Chamberlain’s prudery and English delicacy generally were made laughing-stocks. But, gently! Is it known that the French themselves have raised fiercer outcry against plays which our Lord Chamberlain has refused to license than ever Jeremy Collier raised against that disgusting school of English comedy which Dryden founded, and the filth of which was not compensated for by the wit, such as it is, of Congreve, or the humour, if it may be so called, of Wycherly? The Gaulois and the Figaro, papers which cannot be charged with over straitlacedness, have blushed at the adulterous comedy of France as deeply as the two harlequins at Southwark Fair blushed at the blasphemy of Lord Sandwich. A French critic, M. Fournier, referring to the ‘Visite de Noces’ of the younger Dumas, remarks that ‘the theatre ought not to be a surgical operating theatre, or a dissecting-room. There are operations,’ he adds, ‘which should not be performed on the stage, unless, indeed, a placard be posted at the doors, “Women not admitted!”’ With respect to this suggestion, M. Hostein, another critic, says: ‘People ask if the “Visite de Noces” be proper for ladies to see. Men generally reply with an air of modesty, that no woman who respects herself would go to see it. Capital puff!’ exclaims M. Hostein, ‘they flock to it in crowds!’ Not all, however. Not even all men. Men with a regard for ‘becomingness’ are warned by indignant French critics. The dramatic critic of the ‘France’ thus vigorously speaks to the point: ‘We say it with regret, with sadness, in no other country, no other civilised city, in no other theatre of Europe, would the new piece of M. Dumas fils be possible, and we doubt whether there could be found elsewhere than in Paris a public who would applaud it even by mistake. The “Visite de Noces” has obtained a striking and decided success; so much the worse for the author and for us. If our tastes, if our sentiments, if our conscience be so perjured and perverted that we accept without repugnance and encourage with our cheers such pictures, we are truly en décadence.’ Such is the judgment of the leading critics. One of them, indeed, tersely said, ‘the piece will have a success of indignation and money.’ The public provided both, and the author accepted the latter. The women who were of his audience and were not indignant were of the same nature as those who listen to cases in our divorce courts. But the Lord Chamberlain is fully justified in refusing a licence to play French pieces which French critics have denounced as degrading to the moral and the national character. The only fault to be found is in the manner of the doing it; which in the Chamberlain’s servants takes a rude and boorish expression. Meanwhile, let us remark that the attention of the Lord Chamberlain might well be directed to other matters under his control. If a fire, some night, break out in a crowded theatre (where, every night, there is imminent peril) he will be asked if he had officially done all in his power to prevent such a calamity. And if he were to put restraint on the performances of certain licenced places of amusement, husseydom might deplore it, but there would be one danger the less for young men for whose especial degradation these entertainments seem at present to be permitted. While this matter is being thought of, a study of that old-fashioned book ‘The Elegant Letter-Writer,’ would perhaps improve the style of the Chamberlain’s subs, and would not be lost on certain young gentlemen of Oxford.
If not among the eccentricities—at least among the marvels of modern French-actress life—may be considered the highly dramatic entertainments given by some of the ladies in their own homes.
Like the historical tallow-chandler, who, after retiring from business, went down to the old manufactory on melting days, the actor, generally speaking, never gets altogether out of his profession. Some who retire give ‘readings,’ or return periodically to the stage, after no end of ‘final farewells’ for positively the last time, and nothing is more common than to see concert singers (on holiday) at concerts. French actresses have been especially addicted to keeping to their vocation, even in their amusements. If they are not at the theatre they have private theatricals at home; and, if not private theatricals, at least what comes next to them, or most nearly resembles them.
In the grand old days of the uninterrupted line of French actresses there was a Mdlle. Duthé, who was first in the second line of accomplished players. She was of the time of, and often a substitute for, Mdlle. Clairon. The latter was never off the stage. She was always acting. When she was released from Fort l’Évêque, where she had been imprisoned for refusing to act with Dubois, whom she considered as a disgrace to the profession, Clairon said to a bevy of actresses in her heroic way, ‘The King may take my life, or my property, but not my honour!’ ‘No, dear,’ responded the audacious Sophie Arnould, ‘certainly not. Where there is nothing, the King loses his rights!’ Mdlle. Duthé belonged to these always-acting actresses. She is the first on record who gave a bal costumé—a ball to which every guest was to come in a theatrical or fancy dress. This was bringing amateur acting into the ball-room. The invitation included the entire company of the Théâtre Français, every one of whom came in a tragedy suit. The non-professionals, authors, artists, abbés, noblesse, and gentils-hommes also donned character dresses; and ball and supper constituted a wonderful success. An entertainment similar to the above was given when Louis Philippe was king, by Mdlle. Georges, the great tragédienne. All who were illustrious in literature, fine arts, diplomacy, and so forth, elbowed one another in the actress’s suite of splendid rooms. Théophile Gautier, we are told, figured as an incroyable, Jules Janin as a Natchez Indian, and Victor Hugo, who now takes the ‘Radical’ parts, was present en Palicare. But the most striking of what may be called these amateur theatrical balls was given last April by M. and Mdme. Judic, or rather by the latter, in the name of both. According to the ‘Paris Journal,’ such things are easily done—if you are able to do them. If you have an exquisitely arranged house, though small, you may get three hundred dancers into it with facility. You have only, if your house is in France, to send for Belloir, who will clap a glass cover to your court-yard, lay carpets here, hang tapestry there, place mirrors right and left from floor to ceiling, and scatter flowers and chandeliers everywhere, and the thing is done—particularly if you have an account at your bankers’. Something like this was done on the night of Saturday, April 19, 1873, when ‘La Rosière d’ici’ invited her guests to come in theatrical array to her ball, which was to begin at midnight. According to the descriptions of this spring festival, which were circulated by oral or printed report, not every one was invited who would fain have been there. The select company numbered the choicest of the celebrities of the stage, art, and literature (with few exceptions), and therefore the ‘go’ and the gaiety of the fête never paused for a single instant.
As for the costumes, says Jehan Valter, they who did not see the picturesque, strange, and fantastic composition, have never seen anything. Never was coachman so perfect a coachman as Grénier. Never was waggoner more waggoner than Grévin. Moreover, there were peasants from every quarter of the world, of every colour, and of every age. There were stout market porters, incroyables, jockeys, brigands, waltzing, schottisching, and mazourkaing; for the dance went fast and furious on that memorable evening (or rather, Sunday morning). And no wonder, for among the ladies were Madame Judic, in the costume of a village bride; with Mesdames Moissier, Gabrielle Gautier, Massart, and Gérandon, as the bridesmaids. Alice Regnault was a châtelaine of the mediæval period, Hielbron and Damain (the latter, the younger of the sister actresses of that name, who played so charmingly little conversational pieces in English drawing-rooms during the Franco-German war), were country lasses; and, among others, were Blanche D’Antigny, Debreux, Léontine Spelier, Esther David, Gournay, &c., &c.—in short, all the young and pretty actresses of the capital were present. At four o’clock in the morning a splendid supper brought all the guests together, after which dancing was resumed till seven. The festival terminated by the serving of a soupe à l’oignon à la paysanne; this stirrup-cup of rustic onion soup was presented in little bowls, with a wooden spoon in each! The sun had been up a very long time before the last of the dancers, loth to depart, had entered their carriages on their way home.
Such is the newest form in which theatrical celebrities get up and enjoy costume-balls after their fashion.
One eccentric matter little understood in this country is co-operation, or collaboration, in the production of French pieces. There is an old story of an ambitious gentleman offering M. Scribe many thousand francs to be permitted to have his name associated with that of M. Scribe as joint authors of a piece by the former, of which the ambitious gentleman was to be allowed to write a line, to save his honour. Scribe wrote in reply that it was against Scripture to yoke together a horse and an ass. ‘I should like to know,’ asked the gentleman, ‘what right you have to call me a horse?’ This showed that the gentleman had wit enough to become a partner in a dramatic manufactory. Indeed, much less than wit—a mere idea, is sufficient to qualify a junior partner. The historian of ‘La Collaboration au Théâtre,’ M. Goizot, states that a young provincial once called on Scribe with a letter of introduction and a little comedy, in manuscript. Scribe talked with him, promised to read the piece, and civilly dismissed him. The provincial youth returned au pays, hoped, waited, and despaired; finally, at the end of a year, he went up to Paris, and again called on M. Scribe. With difficulty the dramatist recognised him; with more difficulty could he recollect the manuscript to which his visitor referred, but after consulting a note-book, he took out a manuscript vaudeville of his own and proposed to read it to the visitor. It was that of his popular piece ‘La Chanoinesse.’ The visitor submitted, but he became delighted as he listened. The reading over, he ventured to refer to his own manuscript. ‘I have just read it to you,’ said Scribe, ‘with my additions. Your copy had an idea in it; ideas are to me everything. I have made use of yours, and you and I are authors of “La Chanoinesse.”’
Collaboration rarely enables us to see the share of each author in the work. The bouquet we fling to the successful pair is smelt by both. The lately deceased Mr. P. Lébrun made the reception speech when M. Émile Angier was admitted to one of the forty seats of the French Academy. There was a spice of sarcasm in the following words addressed to one of the two authors of ‘Le Gendre de M. Poirier:’ ‘What is your portion therein? and are we not welcoming, not only yourself, to the Academy, but also your collaborateur and friend?’ The fact is that in the highest class of co-operative work the work itself is founded on a single thought. The thought is discussed through all its consequences, till the moment for giving it dramatic action arrives, and then the pens pursue their allotted work. There is, however, another method. MM. Legouvé and Prosper Dinaux wrote their drama of ‘Louise de Lignerolles’ in this way. The two authors sat face to face at the same table, and wrote the first act. The two results were read, compared, and finally, out of what was considered the best work in the two, a new act was selected with some new writing in addition. Thus three acts were really constructed to build up one. This ponderous method is not followed by many writers. Indeed, how some co-operative dramatists work is beyond conjecture. A vaudeville in one act sometimes has four authors; indeed, several of these single-act pieces have been advertised as the work of a dozen; in one case, according to M. Goizot, of sixteen authors, who probably chatted, laughed, drank, and smoked the piece into existence at a café; and the piece becoming a reality, the whole company of revellers were named as the many fathers of that minute bantling.
Undoubtedly the most marvellous example of dramatic eccentricity that was ever put upon record is the one which tells us of a regular performance by professional actors in a public theatre, before an ordinary audience, who had extraordinary interest in the drama. The locality was in Paris, in the old theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin. The piece was the famous melodrama, ‘La Pie Voleuse,’ on which Rossini founded ‘La Gazza Ladra,’ and which, under the name of ‘The Maid and the Magpie,’ afforded such a triumph to Miss Kelly as that lady may remember with pride; for we believe that most accomplished and most natural of all actresses still survives—or was surviving very lately—with two colleagues at least of the olden time, Mrs. W. West and Miss Love. When ‘La Pie Voleuse’ was being acted at the above-named French theatre, the allied armies had invaded France; a portion of the invading force had entered Paris. The circumstance now to be related is best told on French authority. An English writer might almost be suspected of calumniating the French people by narrating such an incident, unsupported by reference to the source from which he derived it. We take it from one of the many dramatic feuilletons of M. Paul Foucher, an author of several French plays, a critic of French players and play-writers, and a relative, by marriage, of M. Victor Hugo. This is what M. Paul Foucher tells us: ‘On the evening of the second entry of the foreign armies into Paris, the popular melodrama “La Pie Voleuse,” was being acted at the Porte Saint-Martin. There was one thousand eight hundred francs in the house, which at that time was considered a handsome receipt. During the performance the doors were closed, because the rumbling noise of the cannon, rolling over the stones, interrupted the interest of the dialogue, and it rendered impossible the sympathetic attention of the audience.’ Frenchmen there were who were ashamed of this heartless indifference for the national tragedy. Villemot was disgusted at this elasticity of the Parisian spirit, and he added to his rebuke these remarkable words:—‘I take pleasure in hoping that we may never again be subjected to the same trial, and that, in any case, we may bear it in a more dignified fashion.’ How Paris bore it, when the terrible event again occurred, is too well known to be retold; but the incident of ‘La Pie Voleuse’ is perhaps the most eccentric of the examples of dramatic and popular eccentricity to be found in the annals of the French stage.