An Englishman In Paris Part 11

It would be difficult to paint the contrast between two characters in fewer words. In 1845, when Mdlle. Sylvanie Plessy seceded from the Comedie-Francaise, Regnier wrote a kind epistle, recommending her to come and explain matters either personally or by letter. "Let your letter be kind and affectionate, and be sure that things will right themselves better than you expect."

Samson also wrote, but simply to say that if she did not come back _at once_ all the terrors of the law would be invoked against her. Which was done. The Comedie-Francaise inst.i.tuted proceedings, claiming two hundred thousand francs damages, and twenty thousand francs "a t.i.tre de provision."[25] The court cast Mdlle. Plessy in six thousand francs _provision_, deferring judgment on the princ.i.p.al claim. Two years later Mdlle. Plessy returned and re-entered the fold. Thanks to Samson, she did not pay a single farthing of damages, and the Comedie bore the costs of the whole of the lawsuit.[26]

[Footnote 25: Damages claimed by one of the parties, pending the final verdict.--EDITOR.]

[Footnote 26: Curiously enough, it was emile Augier's "Aventuriere" that caused Mdlle. Plessy's secession, just as it did thirty-five years later, in the case of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt.--EDITOR.]

Both Samson and Regnier were very proud of their profession, but their pride showed itself in different ways. Regnier would have willingly made any one an actor--that is, a good actor; he was always teaching a great many amateurs, staging and superintending their performances. Samson, on the other hand, had no sympathy whatsoever with that kind of thing, and could rarely be induced to give it aid, but he was very anxious that every public speaker should study elocution. "Eloquence and elocution are two different things," he said; "and the eloquent man who does not study elocution, is like an Apollo with a bad tailor, and who dresses without a looking-gla.s.s. I go further still, and say that every one ought to learn how to speak, not necessarily with the view of amusing his friends and acquaintances, but with the view of not annoying them. I am a busy man, but should be glad to devote three hours a week to teach the rising generation, and especially the humbler ones, how to speak."

In connection with that wish of Samson, that every man whose duties compelled him, or who voluntarily undertook to speak in public, should be a trained elocutionist, I remember a curious story of which I was made the recipient quite by accident. It was in the year '60, one morning in the summer, that I happened to meet Samson in the Rue Vivienne. We exchanged a few words, shook hands, and each went his own way. In the afternoon I was sitting at Tortoni's, when a gentleman of about thirty-five came up to me. "Monsieur," he said, "will you allow me to ask you a question?" "Certainly, monsieur, if it be one I can answer," I replied. "I believe," he said, "that I saw you in the Rue Vivienne this morning talking to some one whose name I do not know, but to whom I am under great obligations. I was in a great hurry and in a cab, and before I could stop the cabman both of you had disappeared.

Will you mind telling me his name?" "I recollect being in the Rue Vivienne and meeting with M. Samson of the Comedie-Francaise," I answered. "I thought so," remarked my interlocutor. "Allow me to thank you, monsieur." With this he lifted his hat and went out.

The incident had slipped my memory altogether, when I was reminded of it by Samson himself, about three weeks afterwards, in the green-room of the Comedie-Francaise. I had been there but a few moments when he came in. "You are the man who betrayed me," he said with a chuckle. "I have been cudgelling my brain for the last three weeks as to who it could have been, for I spoke to no less than half a dozen friends and acquaintances in the Rue Vivienne on the morning I met you, and they all wear imperials and moustaches. A nice thing you have done for me; you have burdened me with a grateful friend for the rest of my life!"

And then he told me the story, how two years before he had been at Granville during the end of the summer; how he had strolled into the Palais de Justice and heard the procureur-imperial make a speech for the prosecution, the delivery of which would have disgraced his most backward pupil at the Conservatoire. "I was very angry with the fellow, and felt inclined to write him a letter, telling him that there was no need to torture the innocent audience, as well as the prisoner in the dock. I should have signed it. I do not know why I did not, but judge of my surprise when, the same evening at dinner, I found myself seated opposite him. I must have scowled at him, and he repaid scowl for scowl.

It appears that he was living at the hotel temporarily, while his wife and child were away. I need not tell you the high opinion our judges have of themselves, and I dare say he thought it the height of impertinence that I, a simple mortal, should stare at him. I soon came to the conclusion, however, that if I wanted to spare my fellow-creatures such an infliction as I had endured that day, I ought not to arouse the man's anger. So I looked more mild, then entered into conversation with him. You should have seen his face when I began to criticize his tone and gestures. But he evidently felt that I was somewhat of an authority on the subject, and at last I took him out on the beach and gave him a lesson in delivering a speech, and left him there without revealing my name. Next morning I went away, and never set eyes on him again until three weeks ago, when he left his card, asking for an interview. He is a very intelligent man, and has profited by the first lesson. During the three days he remained in Paris I gave him three more. He says that if ever I get into a sc.r.a.pe, he'll do better than defend me--prosecute me, and I'm sure to get off."

I have never seen Samson give a lesson at the Conservatoire, but I was present at several of Regnier's, thanks to Auber, whom I knew very well, and who was the director, and to Regnier himself, who did not mind a stranger being present, provided he felt certain that the stranger was not a scoffer. I believe that Samson would have objected without reference to the stranger's disposition; at any rate, Auber hinted as much, so I did not prefer my request in a direct form.

I doubt, moreover, whether a lesson of Samson to his pupils would have been as interesting to the outsider as one of Regnier's. Of all the gifts that go to the making of a great actor, Regnier had naturally only two--taste and intelligence; the others were replaced by what, for want of a better term, one might call the tricks of the actor; their acquisition demanded constant study. For instance, Regnier's appearance off the stage was absolutely insignificant; his voice was naturally husky and indistinct, and, moreover, what the French call nasillarde, that is, produced through the nose. His features were far from mobile; the eyes were not without expression, but these never twinkled with merriment nor shone with pa.s.sion. Consequently, the smallest as well as largest effect necessary to the interpretation of a character had to be thought out carefully beforehand, and then to be tried over and over again materially. Each of his inflections had to be timed to a second; but when all this was accomplished, the picture presented by him was so perfect as to deceive the most experienced critic, let alone an audience, however intelligent. In fact, but for his own frank admission of all this, his contemporaries and posterity would have been never the wiser, for, to their honour be it said, his fellow-actors were so interested in watching him "manipulate himself," as they termed it, as to never breathe a word of it to the outside world. They all acknowledged that they had learned something from him during rehearsal.

For instance, in one of his best-known characters, that of the old servant in Madame de Girardin's "La Joie fait peur,"[27] there is a scene which, as played by Regnier and Delaunay, looked to the spectator absolutely spontaneous. The smallest detail had been minutely regulated.

It is where the old retainer, while dusting the room, is talking to himself about his young master, Lieutenant Adrien Desaubiers, who is reported dead.

[Footnote 27: There are several English versions of the play, and I am under the impression that the late Tom Robertson was inspired by it when he adapted "Caste." I allude to that scene in the third act, where George d'Alroy returns unexpectedly and where Polly Eccles breaks the news to her sister.--EDITOR.]

"I can see him now," says Noel, who cannot resign himself to the idea; "I can see him now, as he used to come in from his long walks, tired, starving, and shouting before he was fairly into the house. 'Here I am, my good Noel; I am dying with hunger. Quick! an omelette.'" At that moment the young lieutenant enters the room, and having heard Noel's last sentence, repeats it word for word.

Short as was the sentence, it had been arranged that Delaunay should virtually cut it into four parts.

At the words, "_It is I_," Regnier shivered from head to foot; at "_Here I am, my good Noel_," he lifted his eyes heavenwards, to make sure that the voice did not come from there, and that he was not labouring under a kind of hallucination; at the words, "_I am dying with hunger_," he came to the conclusion that it was a real human voice after all; and at the final, "_Quick! an omelette_," he turned round quickly, and fell like a log into the young fellow's arms.

I repeat, the whole of the scene had been timed to the fraction of a second; nevertheless, on the first night, Regnier, nervous as all great actors are on such occasions, forgot all about his own arrangements, and, at the first sound of Delaunay's voice, was so overcome with emotion that he literally tumbled against the latter, who of course was not prepared to bear him up, and had all his work to do to keep himself from falling also. Meanwhile Regnier lay stretched at full length on the stage, and the house broke into tumultuous applause.

"That was magnificent," said Delaunay after the performance. "Suppose we repeat the thing to-morrow?"

But Regnier would not hear of it; he stuck to his original conception in four tempi. He preferred trusting to his art rather than to the frank promptings of nature.

That is why a lesson of Regnier to his pupils was so interesting to the outsider. The latter was, as it were, initiated into all the resources the great actor has at his command wherewith to produce his illusion upon the public. Among Regnier's pupils those were his favourites who never allowed themselves to be carried away by their feelings, and who trusted to these resources as indicated to them by their tutor. He was to a certain extent doubtful of the others. "Feelings vary; effects intelligently conceived, studied, and carried out ought never to vary,"

he said. Consequently it became one of his theories that those most plentifully endowed with natural gifts were not likely to become more perfect than those who had been treated n.i.g.g.ardly in that respect, provided the vocation and the perseverance were there. The reverse of Samson, who was proudest of Rachel, Regnier was never half as proud of M. Coquelin as of others who had given him far more trouble. Augustine Brohan explained the feeling in her own inimitable way: "Regnier est comme le grand seigneur qui s'enamourache d'une paysanne a qui il faut tout enseigner; si moi j'etais homme, j'aimerais mieux une demoiselle de bonne famille, qui n'aurait pas besoin de tant d'enseignement."

Mdlle. Brohan exaggerated a little bit. Regnier's pupils were not peasant children, to whom he had to teach everything; a great many, like Coquelin, required very little teaching, and all the others had the receptive qualities which make teaching a pleasure. The latter, boys and girls, had to a certain extent become like Regnier himself, "bundles of tricks," and, what is perhaps not so surprising to students of psychology and physiology, their features had contracted a certain likeness to his. At the first blush one might have mistaken them for his children. And they might have been, for the patience he had with them.

It was rarely exhausted, but he now and then seemed to be waiting for a new supply. At such times there was a frantic clutch at the shock, grey-haired head, or else a violent blowing of the perky nose in a large crimson chequered handkerchief, its owner standing all the while on one leg; the att.i.tude was irresistibly comic, but the pupils were used to it, and not a muscle of their faces moved.

Those who imagine that Regnier's courses were merely so many lessons of elocution and gesticulation would be altogether mistaken. Regnier, unlike many of his great fellow-actors of that period, had received a good education: he had been articled to an architect, he had even dabbled in painting, and there were few historical personages into whose characters he had not a thorough insight. He was a fair authority upon costume and manners of the Middle Ages, and his acquaintance with Roman and Greek antiquities would have done credit to many a professor. He was called "le comedien savant" and "le savant comedien." As such, whenever a pupil failed to grasp the social or political importance of one of the _dramatis personae_ of Racine's or Corneille's play, there was sure to be a disquisition, telling the youngster all about him, but in a way such as to secure the attention of the listener--a way that might have aroused the envy of a university lecturer. The dry bones of history were clothed by a man with an eye for the picturesque.

"Who do you think Augustus was?" he said one day when I was present, to the pupil, who was declaiming some lines of "Cinna." "Do you think he was the concierge or le commissionnaire du coin?" And forthwith there was a sketch of Augustus. Absolutely quivering with life, he led his listener through the streets of Rome, entered the palace with him, and once there, became Augustus himself. After such a scene he would frequently descend the few steps of the platform and drop into his armchair, exhausted.

Every now and then, in connection with some character of Moliere or Regnard, there would be an anecdote of the great interpreter of the character, but an anecdote enacted, after which the eyes would fill with tears, and the ample chequered handkerchief come into requisition once more.

Regnier was a great favourite with most of his fellow-actors and the employes of the Comedie-Francaise, but he was positively worshipped by Giovanni, the wigmaker of the establishment. They were in frequent consultation even in the green-room, the privilege of admission to which had been granted to the Italian Figaro. The consultations became most frequent when one of the members undertook a part new to him. It was often related of Balzac that he firmly believed in the existence of the characters his brain had created. The same might be said of Regnier with regard to the characters created by the great playwrights of his own time and those of the past. Of course, I am not speaking of those who had an historical foundation. But Alceste, Harpagon, Georges Dandin, Sganarelle, and Scapin were as real to him as Orestes and Oedipus, as Augustus and Mohammed. He would give not only their biographies, but describe their appearance, their manners, their gait, and even their complexion. The first time I heard him do so, I made sure that he was trying to mystify Giovanni; but Rachel, who was present, soon undeceived me. And the Italian would sit listening reverently, then start up, and exclaim, "Ze sais ce qu'il vous faut, Monsu Regnier, ze vais faire oune parruque a etonner Moliere lui-meme." And he kept his word, because he considered that the wig contributed as much to, or detracted from, the success of an actor as his diction, and more than his clothes. When Delaunay became a societaire his first part was that of the lover in M.

Viennet's "Migraine." "Voila Monsu Delaunay, oune veritable parruque di societaire. Zouez a present, vous etes sour de votre affaire."

One day Beauvallet found him standing before the window of Brandus, the music-publisher in the Rue de Richelieu. He was contemplating the portrait of Rossini, and he looked sad.

"What are you standing there for, Giovanni?" asked Beauvallet.

"Ah, Monsu Bouvallet, I am looking at the portrait of Maestro Giovanni Rossini, and when I think that his name is Giovanni like mine, when I see that abominable wig which looks like a gra.s.s-plot after a month of drought, I feel ashamed and sad. But I will go and see him, and make him a wig for love or money that will take twenty years off his age." He went, but Rossini would not hear of it, or rather Madame Rossini put a spoke in his wheel. Giovanni never mentioned his name again. It was Ligier who brought Giovanni to Paris, and for a quarter of a century he worked unremittingly for the glory of the Comedie-Francaise, and when one of the great critics happened to speak favourably of the "make-up"

of an actor, as Paul de St. Victor did when Regnier "created Noel,"

Giovanni used to leave his card at his house. It was Giovanni who made the wigs for M. Ancessy, the musical director at the Odeon, who, under the management of M. Edouard Thierry, occupied the same position at the Comedie-Francaise. M. Ancessy was not only a good chef d'orchestre, but a composer of talent; but he had one great weakness--he was as bald as a billiard-ball and wished to pa.s.s for an Absalom. Giovanni helped him to carry out the deception by making three artistic wigs. The first was of very short hair, and was worn from the 1st to the 10th of the month; from the 11th to the 20th M. Ancessy donned one with hair that was so visibly growing as to cover his ears. From the 20th to the last day of the month his locks were positively flowing, and he never failed to say on that last evening in the hearing of every one, "What a terrible nuisance my hair is to me! I must have it cut to-morrow."

CHAPTER VII.

Two composers, Auber and Felicien David -- Auber, the legend of his youthful appearance -- How it arose -- His daily rides, his love of women's society -- His mot on Mozart's "Don Juan" -- The only drawback to Auber's enjoyment of women's society -- His reluctance to take his hat off -- How he managed to keep it on most of the time -- His opinion upon Meyerbeer's and Halevy's genius -- His opinion upon Gerard de Nerval, who hanged himself with his hat on -- His love of solitude -- His fondness of Paris -- His grievance against his mother for not having given him birth there -- He refuses to leave Paris at the commencement of the siege -- His small appet.i.te -- He proposes to write a new opera when the Prussians are gone -- Auber suffers no privations, but has difficulty in finding fodder for his horse -- The Parisians claim it for food -- Another legend about Auber's independence of sleep -- How and where he generally slept -- Why Auber snored in Veron's company, and why he did not in that of other people -- His capacity for work -- Auber a brilliant talker -- Auber's grat.i.tude to the artists who interpreted his work, but different from Meyerbeer's -- The reason why, according to Auber -- Jealousy or humility -- Auber and the younger Coquelin -- "The verdict on all things in this world may be summed up in the one phrase, 'It's an injustice'" -- Felicien David -- The man -- The beginnings of his career -- His terrible poverty -- He joins the Saint-Simoniens, and goes with some of them to the East -- Their reception at Constantinople -- M. Scribe and the libretto of "L'Africaine" -- David in Egypt at the court of Mehemet-Ali -- David's description of him -- Mehemet's way of testing the educational progress of his sons -- Woe to the fat kine -- Mehemet-Ali suggests a new mode of teaching music to the inmates of the harem -- Felicien David's further wanderings in Egypt -- Their effect upon his musical genius -- His return to France -- He tells the story of the first performance of "Le Desert" -- An ambulant box-office -- His success -- Fame, but no money -- He sells the score of "Le Desert" -- He loses his savings -- "La Perle du Bresil" and the Coup-d'etat -- "No luck" -- Napoleon III. remains his debtor for eleven years -- A mot of Auber, and one of Alexandre Dumas pere -- The story of "Ada" -- Why Felicien David did not compose the music -- The real author of the libretto.

I knew Auber from the year '42 or '43 until the day of his death. He and I were in Paris during the siege and the Commune; we saw one another frequently, and I am positive that the terrible misfortunes of his country shortened his life by at least ten years. For though at the beginning of the campaign he was close upon ninety, he scarcely looked a twelvemonth older than when I first knew him, nearly three decades before; that is, a very healthy and active old man, but still an old man. So much nonsense has been written about his perpetual youth, that it is well to correct the error. But the ordinary French public, and many journalists besides, could not understand an octogenarian being on horseback almost every day of his life, any more than they understood later on M. de Lesseps doing the same. They did not and do not know M.

Mackenzie-Grieves, and half a dozen English residents in Paris of a similar age, who scarcely ever miss their daily ride. If they had known them, they might perhaps have been less loud in their admiration of the fact.

What added, probably, to Auber's reputation of possessing the secret of perpetual youth was his great fondness for women's society, his very handsome appearance, though he was small comparatively, and his faultless way of dressing. He was most charming with the fairer s.e.x, and many of the female pupils of the Conservatoire positively doted on him.

Though polite to a degree with men--and I doubt whether Auber could have been other than polite with no matter whom--his smiles, I mean his benevolent ones, for he could smile very sceptically, were exclusively reserved for women. When he heard Mozart's "Don Juan" for the first time, he said, "This is the music of a lover of twenty, and if a man be not an imbecile, he may always have in a little corner of his heart the sentiment or fancy that he is only twenty."

There was but one drawback to Auber's enjoyment of the society of women--he was obliged to take off his hat in their presence, and he hated being without that article of dress. He might have worn a skull-cap at home, though there was no necessity for it, as far as his hair was concerned, for up to the last he was far from bald; but he wanted his hat. He composed with his hat on, he had his meals with his hat on, and though he would have frequently preferred to take his seat in the stalls or balcony of a theatre, he invariably had a box, and generally one on the stage, in order to keep his hat on. He would often stand for hours on the balcony of his house in the Rue Saint-Georges with his hat on. "I never feel as much at home anywhere, not even in my own apartment, as in the synagogue," he said one day. He frequently went there for no earthly reason than because he could sit among a lot of people with his hat on. In fact, those frequent visits, coupled with his dislike to be bareheaded, made people wonder now and then whether Auber was a Jew. The supposition always made Auber smile. "That would have meant the genius of a Meyerbeer, a Mendelssohn, or a Halevy," he said.

"No, I have been lucky enough in my life, but such good fortune as that never fell to my lot." For there was no man so willing--nay, anxious--to acknowledge the merit of others as Auber. But Auber was not a Jew, and his mania for keeping on his hat had nothing to do with his religion. It was simply a mania, and nothing more. When, in January, '55, Gerard de Nerval was found suspended from a lamp-post in the Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne, he had his hat on his head; his friends, and even the police, pretended to argue from this that he had not committed suicide, but had been murdered. "A man who is going to hang himself does not keep his hat on," they said. "Pourquoi pas, mon Dieu?" asked Auber, simply.

"If I were going to kill myself, I should certainly keep my hat on." In short, it was the only thing about Auber which could not be explained.

Auber was exceedingly fond of society, and yet he was fond of solitude also. Many a time his friends reported that, returning home late from a party, they found Auber standing opposite his house in the Rue Saint-Georges, with apparently no other object than to contemplate it from below. After his return to Paris from London, whither he had been sent by his father, in order to become conversant with English business habits, he never left the capital again, though at the end of his life he regretted not having been to Italy. It was because Rossini, who was one of his idols, had said "that a musician should loiter away some of his time under that sky." But almost immediately he comforted himself with the thought that Paris, after all, was the only city worth living in. "I was very fond of my mother, but I have one grievance against her memory. What did she want to go to Caen for just at the moment when I was about to be born? But for that I should have been a real Parisian."

I do not think it made much difference, for I never knew such an inveterate Parisian as Auber. When the investment of Paris had become an absolute certainty, some of his friends pressed him to leave; he would not hear of it. They predicted discomfort, famine, and what-not. "The latter contingency will not affect me much, seeing that I eat but once a day, and very little then. As for the sound of the firing disturbing me, I do not think it will. It has often been said that the first part of my overture to 'Fra Diavolo' was inspired by the retreating tramp of the regiment; there may be some truth in it. If it be vouchsafed to me to hear the retreating tramp of the Germans, I will write an overture and an opera, which will be something different, I promise you."

I do not suppose that, personally, Auber suffered any privations during the siege. A man in his position, who required but one meal a day, and that a very light one, was sure to find it somewhere; but he had great trouble to find sufficient fodder for his old faithful hack, that had carried him for years, and when, after several months of scheming and contriving to that effect, he was forced to give it up as food for others, his cup of bitterness was full. "Ils m'ont pris mon vieux cheval pour le manger," he repeated, when I saw him after the event; "je l'avais depuis vingt ans." It was really a great blow to him.

There is another legend about Auber which is not founded upon facts, namely, that he was pretty well independent of sleep. It was perfectly true that he went to bed very late and rose very early, but most people have overlooked the fact that during the evening he had had a comfortable doze, of at least an hour and a half or two hours, at the theatre. He rarely missed a performance at the Opera or Opera-Comique, except when his own work was performed. And during that time he slumbered peacefully, "en homme du monde," said Nestor Roqueplan, "without snoring."

"I never knew what it meant to snore," said Auber, apologetically, "until I took to sleeping in Veron's box; and as it is, I do not snore now except under provocation. But there would be no possibility of sleeping by the side of Veron without snoring. You have to drown his, or else it would awaken you."

Auber was a brilliant talker, but he scarcely ever liked to exert himself except on the subject of music. It was all in all to him, and the amount of work he did must have been something tremendous. There are few students of the history of operatic music, no matter how excellent their memories, who could give the complete list of Auber's works by heart. We tried it once in 1850, when that list was much shorter than it is now; there was not a single one who gave it correctly. The only one who came within a measureable distance was Roger, the tenor.

In spite of his world-wide reputation, even at that time, Auber was as modest about his work as Meyerbeer, but he had more confidence in himself than the latter. Auber was by no means ungrateful to the artists who contributed to his success; "but I don't 'coddle' them, and put them in cotton-wool, like Meyerbeer," he said. "It is perfectly logical that he should do so. The Nourrits, the Leva.s.seurs, the Viardot-Garcias, and the Rogers, are not picked up at street-corners; but bring me the first urchin you meet, who has a decent voice, and a fair amount of intelligence, and in six months he'll sing the most difficult part I ever wrote, with the exception of that of Masaniello. My operas are a kind of warming-pan for great singers. There is something in being a good warming-pan."

At the first blush, this sounds something like jealousy in the guise of humility, but I am certain that there was no jealousy in Auber's character. Few men have been so uniformly successful, but he also had his early struggles, "when perhaps I did better work than I have done since." The last sentence was invariably trolled out when a pupil of the Conservatoire complained to him of having been unjustly dealt with. I remember Coquelin the younger competing for the "prize of Comedy" in '65 or '66. He did not get it, and when we came out of Auber's box at the Conservatoire, the young fellow came up to him with tears in his eyes. I fancy they were tears of anger rather than of sorrow.

"Ah, Monsieur Auber," he exclaimed, "that's an injustice!"

"Perhaps so, my dear lad," replied Auber; "but remember that the verdict on all things in this world may be summed up in the words you have just uttered, 'It's an injustice.' Let me give you a bit of advice. If you mean to become a good Figaro, you must be the first to laugh at an injustice instead of weeping over it." Wherewith he turned his back upon the now celebrated comedian. In the course of these notes I shall have occasion to speak of Auber again.

Auber need not have generalized to young Coquelin; he might have cited one instance of injustice in his own profession, to which, fortunately, there was no parallel for at least thirty years. In the forties the critics refused to recognize the genius of Felicien David, just as they had refused to recognize the genius of Hector Berlioz. In the seventies they were morally guilty of the death of Georges Bizet, the composer of "Carmen."