Queens of the French Stage Part 12

wrote Voltaire. Nevertheless, she had now to be content with a divided empire. During her long absence, a new star had arisen, in the person of a Mlle. Salle, with whom the Camargo had henceforth to share the applause of the public and the praises of the poets. Mlle. Salle's style of dancing differed widely from that of her celebrated rival. Whereas the latter danced with astonishing rapidity and rose so high from the stage that "it seemed as if she were going to touch the friezes," Mlle.

Salle danced slowly and with the minimum of exertion, relying for effect upon grace of movement and voluptuous poses.

The rivalry between the two stars was very bitter, and all attempts to promote a better understanding proved fruitless, although Voltaire himself intervened, and addressed to the ladies some graceful lines, in which he adroitly divided his praises between them:--

"Ah! Camargo, que vous etes brillante!

Mais que Salle, grands dieux! est ravissante!

Que vos pas sont legers, et que les siens sont doux!

Elle est inimitable et vous etes nouvelle.

Les Nymphes sautent comme vous, Et les Graces dansent comme elle."

In spite of the rivalry of Mlle. Salle, the fame of the elder ballerina was still sufficient to have satisfied a less exacting artiste. An air to which she danced in the first act of _Pyrame et Thisbe_ excited such enthusiasm that it became the vogue of the salons, first, as a song, and, later, as a dance, which was called after the _danseuse_, the "Camargo," and by that name was still known a century later.

Her triumphs in the dance encouraged Mlle. de Camargo to tempt fortune in another _emploi_, and, in an opera called _Les Talents lyriques_, she accordingly made her _debut_ as a singer. She had a very pretty voice, and was much applauded; but, for some reason, did not repeat the experiment.

At the age of forty-one, conscious that she no longer possessed the "_souplesse forte et legere_," which Voltaire had once celebrated, Mlle.

de Camargo decided to retire, and, at Easter 1751, quitted the scene of her many triumphs, never to return. Her popularity had endured to the last, for Casanova, who saw her dance some months earlier, declares that the public applauded her "with a kind of frenzy."

On her retirement, she received a pension of 1500 livres, instead of the usual 1000, and another pension of a like amount from the King. She had, however, little need of such a.s.sistance, as, more prudent than most of her colleagues, she had found secure investments for a considerable portion of the sums which her various admirers had lavished upon her; while, if Meusnier is correct, she was in receipt of an annual allowance of 12,000 livres from the Comte de Clermont, which would have been materially increased, but for the interference of Mlle. Le Duc.

Henceforth she ceased to interest the town. In 1753, we learn that she has taken unto herself another impecunious lover, a certain Chevalier de la Guerche, "who lived with her, and the whole of whose expenses she defrayed," after which we hear no more of her until the chroniclers record her death, which took place on April 28, 1770, at the age of sixty. She was then living in the Rue Saint-Honore, "like a respectable bourgeoise, very a.s.siduous in visiting the poor of her parish, and always surrounded by a dozen dogs, to whom she was much attached." She was nursed in her last illness by the widow of Francois Boucher, the famous painter.

The best-known portrait of Mlle. de Camargo is that by Lancret, in the Wallace Collection, at Hertford House. An original repet.i.tion of this portrait, with a marked variation in the colour scheme, is in the Museum at Nantes. The Neues Palais at Potsdam contains another portrait by Lancret, ent.i.tled _La Camargo avec son danseur_, which shows the ballerina in the act of executing a _pas de deux_ with a male dancer.[117]

V

JUSTINE FAVART

Towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., there lived in the Rue de la Verrerie, in Paris, a pastry-cook named Charles Paul Favart. No ordinary pastry-cook was Charles Paul; he was a man of parts and a poet; but a poet of an unusually practical turn of mind, inasmuch as, instead of contributing sonnets to the _Mercure_, he was in the habit of utilising his talent to advertise the excellence of his wares, with the result that his buns[118] and cakes were famed throughout the length and breadth of Paris.

The enterprising pastry-cook might have ama.s.sed a comfortable fortune, had he been content with the profits of his trade. But, unhappily, he became involved in the craze for speculating in Mississippi stock; and, on his death, his wife and two children found themselves almost unprovided for. The eldest of these children, a boy named Charles Simon, who had inherited the paternal turn for verses, was at this time pursuing his studies at the famous college of Louis-le-Grand, where he had already gained some little distinction. Forced to abandon the cultivation of the Muses to take charge of his father's business, which, though burdened with debt, still remained to them, he nevertheless contrived, in the intervals of making pastry, to compose a poem on _La France delivree par la pucelle d'Orleans_, which, in 1733, was awarded the prize of the Academie des Jeux Floraux. He had already, in collaboration with another young poet, written a piece called _Polinchinelle, comte de Paonfier_, performed at the Fair of Saint-Germain; and, in the following year, he submitted to the Opera-Comique a vaudeville, ent.i.tled _Les Deux Jumelles_, which was produced on March 22, and met with a very favourable reception.

Next day, while Favart, girt with his ap.r.o.n, his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a square cap on his head, and a larding-pin in his hand, was working in his shop in the Rue de la Verrerie, a coach drove up to the door, out of which stepped an elderly gentleman, very richly dressed, who inquired for M. Favart, the author of _Les Deux Jumelles_.

Poor Favart, ashamed for the moment of revealing his ident.i.ty, replied that he would go and summon him, and, running up to his bedroom, hastily removed the signs of his trade, rolled down his shirt-sleeves, donned his best coat, and returned to the shop to greet his amused visitor.

The latter, it transpired, was a wealthy farmer-general,[119] who had a fancy for playing the part of Maecenas. He had been present at the performance at the Opera-Comique, the previous evening, and had been so charmed with the piece that he had made inquiries concerning its author, and, on learning that he was a young man without means of his own, had resolved to offer him his protection. "I have myself," said he, "been on bad terms with Fortune; but she has ended by caressing me, and I find no better way of using her favours than to employ them to the advantage of the arts and literature."

Thanks to the a.s.sistance of the generous financier, Favart was enabled to relinquish his business and devote himself entirely to play-writing.

In the course of the next few years, he provided the lesser theatres with more than a score of pieces, one of which, _La Chercheuse d'esprit_, played at the Opera-Comique, in 1741, met with extraordinary success. Up to this time, Favart's pieces had appeared anonymously, but, encouraged by the enthusiastic reception accorded to the play in question, he now decided to emerge from his sh.e.l.l, and, in accordance with this resolution, gave a dinner to some of the most noted _beaux esprits_ and authors of the time. Among those present was Crebillon _pere_, who received, with his invitation, a delicate specimen of the dramatist's culinary skill, an attention which he acknowledged by the following quatrain:--

"Il est un auteur en credit, Dont la muse a le don de plaire: Il fit la _Chercheuse d'esprit_, Il n'en chercha point pour la faire."

Towards the end of the year 1744, Favart was entrusted by the director of the Opera, of which the Opera-Comique was a dependency, with the management of the latter theatre; and it was while occupying this post that an incident occurred which was to be the starting-point of some very surprising adventures.

One day, in the following January, Favart received a letter from a lady at Luneville, soliciting for her daughter an engagement at the Opera-Comique as singer and dancer. The writer of the letter was a certain Madame Duronceray, the wife of one of the musicians of the chapel of Stanislaus Leczinski, ex-King of Poland, to which she herself was attached. The daughter on whose behalf she wrote, Marie Justine-Benoite Duronceray, was, it appeared, now in her eighteenth year, had been educated by the most skilful masters, under the personal supervision of King Stanislaus himself, and, to judge from the fond mother's letter, was a perfect little prodigy, who united in her person every imaginable accomplishment.

The director returned an encouraging answer, and the two ladies, having obtained the necessary leave of absence from the King, started for Paris, and, on their arrival, lost no time in presenting themselves at Favart's house.

The result of the interview proved that Madame Duronceray had not exaggerated her daughter's talents. As actress, singer, and dancer, the girl showed remarkable promise, while she was as charming as she was accomplished.[120] A very brief examination sufficed to a.s.sure Favart that he had discovered a most valuable acquisition to his troupe; and it was at once arranged that Mlle. Chantilly, as Justine had decided to call herself, out of deference for a branch of the Duronceray family which lived in Paris and might conceivably have taken umbrage at one of their name appearing on the stage, should make her _debut_ in a piece from Favart's own pen, which he was then writing, in celebration of the approaching marriage of the Dauphin with the Infanta Maria Theresa. The t.i.tle of this vaudeville, _Les Fetes publiques_, has alone come down to us; but, whatever its merits may have been, it was highly successful, the new actress's piquant beauty and grace, no less than her vocal and dramatic talents, being loudly acclaimed by a succession of crowded houses.

The charms of Justine had already made a deep impression upon Favart, and, after her triumph in _Les Fetes publiques_, he became so deeply in love with the fair _debutante_ that he declared his pa.s.sion, which the young lady was pleased to reciprocate. An honest and excellent man, Favart did not attempt to take advantage of their respective positions,[121] but offered to make her his wife; and, on December 12, 1745, they were married at the Church of Saint-Pierre-aux-Bufs, a little church generally patronised by persons who wished to keep their marriages secret for a while, in the presence of only the necessary witnesses.

In view of what we shall presently relate, it is important to note that M. Duronceray, Justine's father, was not present at the ceremony, although he had given the required consent to his daughter's marriage, in writing.

The marriage took place under very inauspicious circ.u.mstances. The vogue that Favart by his operas and Justine by her singing and acting had obtained for the Opera-Comique had aroused the jealousy of the Theatre-Francais and the Comedie-Italienne; and, in the autumn of 1745, they solicited and obtained its suppression. The severity of this measure was somewhat mitigated by the permission which Favart received to open a theatre at the Fair of Saint-Laurent, whither he transferred his company, and presented, among other pieces, a pantomime, ent.i.tled _Les Vendanges de Tempe_, of which the success was a.s.sured by the charming acting of Justine. This privilege, however, was only accorded him for a very short time, with the object of allowing the troupe of the Opera-Comique leisure to make other arrangements, and, on its withdrawal, Favart and his colleagues found themselves in a very embarra.s.sing situation; and matters must have gone hardly with them, had not the poet had the good fortune to find a protector as powerful as he was unexpected.

It happened that some little time before the suppression of the Opera-Comique, Favart had met at the house of one of those leaders of the fashionable world whose whim it was to patronise actors and men of letters, Maurice de Saxe, now become the greatest soldier of his age, _Marechal de France_, and "general-in-chief of all the armies of the King." Maurice, who was as enthusiastic a patron of the drama as he had been in the days of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur, was followed in his campaigns by a troupe of actors, which gave performances wherever the army happened to be quartered, sometimes in a regular theatre, sometimes in an improvised one; and he now suggested to Favart that he should organise a second troupe and accompany him to Flanders for the campaign which was about to open.

The offer seemed like a fortune to poor Favart, in the state of poverty and uncertainty to which he was then reduced; nevertheless, he hesitated to accept it, pointing out that the formation of a second company might be regarded by the troupe already in existence as an encroachment on its privileges, and that its leader--one Parmentier, an arrogant and unscrupulous person, with whom Favart was by no means anxious to enter into compet.i.tion--would be sure to throw obstacles in his way. The Marshal, however, solved the difficulty by promising to transfer the Parmentier troupe to the division of the army commanded by Marechal Lowendal, and attach Favart's company to his own person; and, under these conditions, the poet gratefully accepted his offer.

Here are the terms in which the Marshal announced his appointment to Favart, and, at the same time, informed him of what was expected of him:--

"The favourable report that has been made to me about you, Monsieur, has induced me to choose you, in preference to all others, in order to give you the exclusive management of my comedy company. I am persuaded that you will use every endeavour to ensure its success; but do not imagine that I look upon it merely as an object of amus.e.m.e.nt; it enters into my political views and into the plan of my military operations. I will advise you what you will have to do in this respect when occasion arises, and, in the meanwhile, I count upon your discretion and punctuality. You are from this moment at liberty to make all your arrangements for opening your theatre at Brussels, in the month of April next."

As there was but little time at his disposal, Favart started at once for Brussels, where he obtained a lease of the Grand Theatre in the Rue de la Monnaie. Then he returned to Paris, and, having selected his company, which comprised all the best artistes of the deceased Opera-Comique, he and Justine set out for Flanders.

Two days after their arrival in Brussels, Maurice de Saxe made his entry into the city. The excitement was intense; an enormous crowd lined the streets through which the procession was to pa.s.s; while the windows, and even the roofs of the houses, were thronged with spectators eager to catch a glimpse of the famous general. The weather, however, was unfavourable for a public ceremony; a storm was brewing, and, as the Marshal reached the Hotel de Ville, where all the fair ladies of Brussels had congregated to receive him, a terrific peal of thunder was heard. Many persons no doubt saw in this an omen of evil for the hitherto all-conquering warrior; but Favart chose to regard it far differently, and forthwith improvised the following verses:--

"Est-ce la notre general Que ramene Bellone?

--Eh! oui, c'est ce grand marechal, C'est lui-meme en personne.

--Non; je le vois a ses regards, C'est le Dieu de la guerre, Et Jupiter annonce Mars Par un coup de tonnerre."

Copies of these verses were printed and circulated everywhere; and the Marshal, having had his attention drawn to them, as he was sitting down to dinner with his general officers, sent for the writer and complimented him upon them. One of the officers present, who did not share his chiefs pa.s.sion for the theatre, asked Favart of what use a poet like himself could be to the army. "To celebrate the exploits of our warriors and satirise the enemy," was the prompt reply, and the questioner proceeded no further.

During the afternoon, apparently at the request of some of the ladies of the city, the Marshal gave orders that part of the troops should be paraded in front of the Hotel de Ville and put through various evolutions. One of the corps selected was a contingent of Jacobite Highlanders, "who, in changing their country, had not thought it necessary to change their costume." The scantiness of the gallant Scotsmen's attire, Favart tells us, greatly shocked the Brussels ladies, to the intense amus.e.m.e.nt of the Marshal and his officers. In the evening, Favart's company gave their first performance, which was so well received as to remove all doubt as to the success of their enterprise.

Although Brussels was the centre of the Marshal's operations, and Favart had secured a lease of the Grand Theatre, the terms of his engagement obliged him to follow the army into the field, a necessity which involved him and his company in many hardships and privations. Once Favart pa.s.sed three days and three nights without sleep, except such as he could obtain leaning against a tree, with his feet in water. Often provisions ran short; bread sold at fifteen sous the pound, and sometimes the unfortunate actors were nearly starving. Nor were dangers of an even more alarming kind wanting. The country swarmed with the irregular cavalry of the enemy, who intercepted convoys, cut off stragglers, and burned and pillaged to within musket-shot of the French lines. Neither age nor s.e.x was sacred to these Croats and Pandours. A luckless troupe of actors on their way from Brussels to Cologne, to fulfil an engagement at the Elector's Court, was surprised by a body of these marauders and robbed of everything they possessed, with the exception of their theatrical costumes, in which they were compelled to trudge to Louvain, their woe-begone countenances contrasting oddly with the gay habiliments of Arlequin, Scaramouche, and the rest. Maurice de Saxe had granted Favart's company an escort of thirty men of the Regiment de Septimanie; but this force was insufficient to secure them from molestation. One day, while pa.s.sing through some wooded country between Louvain and Indiogne, they were attacked by a body of hussars, who outnumbered their little escort by as many as four to one. A sanguinary hand-to-hand conflict ensued, for the marauders were as brave as they were ruthless, while their excesses had exasperated the French to the last degree. Twice the hussars were beaten back, and, at length, reinforcements arriving for the defenders, they drew off, leaving, however, only six of the gallant escort alive, the least wounded of whom had received four sabre cuts. Favart, in a letter to his mother giving an account of this adventure, speaks with admiration of the conduct of this soldier: "Never did I see a man of such courage. He was covered with blood, which he was losing in abundance, and yet would not permit his comrades to give a thought to him until the combat was over. Then, in order to speak, he was obliged to hold up his nose and a portion of his cheek, which had been separated from the rest of his countenance by a sabre cut, and had fallen down over his mouth!"

To compensate the Favarts for the hardships and perils they were compelled to undergo, Maurice de Saxe treated them with the greatest kindness; in fact, presents were simply showered upon them. On one occasion, we find him sending them three fine horses to draw their coach; on another, "a camp-bed of red satin"; on a third, twenty-five bottles of Hungarian wine. Moreover, he gave Favart to understand that he might draw upon him freely in case of necessity, and protected him against the attacks of the jealous Parmentier, the leader of the other troupe of actors, who, not without some cause, regarded Favart as a rival, and did all in his power to annoy and discredit him. The simple-minded poet, who had as yet no suspicion as to the real object of the Marshal's attentions, seems to have been under the impression that they were intended as tributes to his literary and dramatic talents, and, in his letters to his mother, waxes quite enthusiastic over his patron's kindness and generosity.

The Marshal, in engaging Favart's services, had told him that he regarded the troupe which followed his army as something more than a means of amus.e.m.e.nt, and that it "entered into the plan of his military operations." M. Leon Gozlan makes merry over this letter, which, he thinks, was written merely to flatter the poet's vanity, and lure him and his wife to Flanders;[122] but there can be no doubt that Maurice did attach considerable importance to the provision of such entertainments for those under his command. In the first place, they served to occupy not a little of the time which would otherwise be employed in more doubtful pleasures, particularly play, which, in spite of stringent prohibitions, was very prevalent in the army among all ranks, and had a most disastrous effect on the morale of the troops, causing the officers to gamble away their pay and the men their rations, and leading to frequent quarrels and much ill-feeling. In the second place, the Marshal's knowledge of the French character had taught him that a happy _couplet de circonstance_ sung to a lively air often had more effect upon the soldiers than the most eloquent of harangues. An anecdote celebrated in the history of this campaign will show how accurately the great commander had gauged the spirit of his troops.

In the autumn of 1746, the French, after capturing Namur, had occupied Tongres, in the market-place of which Favart had constructed a theatre.

The allied army, under Prince Charles of Lorraine, was close at hand, and a decisive engagement was daily expected; but this did not prevent the improvised playhouse from being crowded every evening. Early in the afternoon of October 9, the Marshal sent for Favart to come to his quarters, and, on his arrival, dismissed the officers who were with him, and, turning to the poet, said: "To-morrow I shall give battle. As yet I have issued no orders to that effect. Announce it this evening at the conclusion of the performance, in couplets suitable to the occasion.

Until that moment let nothing transpire."

Favart obeyed, and composed the following verses, which were sung by a young and pretty actress between the two pieces of which the performance consisted:--

"Nous avons rempli notre tache, Demain nous donnerons relache; Guerriers, Mars va guider vos pas; Que votre ardeur se renouvelle: A des intrepides soldats La Victoire est toujours fidele.

"Demain bataille, jour de gloire; Que dans les fastes de l'histoire Triomphe encore le nom francais Digne d'eternelle memoire!

Revenez apres vos succes, Jouir des fruits de la victoire."

These verses caused the most unbounded astonishment. It was at first supposed that the poet had lost his head; a battle announced between two comic operas, the order of the day to the air of a popular song, seemed too absurd! Officers hastened to the Marshal's box to inquire if Favart had had any authority for his announcement; but Maurice smilingly replied that he had acted under his orders. Thereupon the astonishment changed to enthusiasm, and the theatre resounded with applause. "On all sides," writes Favart, "but two words were heard: '_Demain, bataille!

demain, bataille!_' The intoxication pa.s.sed rapidly from officers to men, and was so intense that one could not fail to see therein a presage of victory."[123]