Queens of the French Stage Part 4

An event of great importance was the immediate outcome of the acquisition of this theatre. For some years past, the popularity of the Theatre du Marais had been steadily declining, a circ.u.mstance which seems to have been attributable rather to the mediocrity of the plays produced there and the fact that the district in which it was situated was no longer the centre of Parisian life, as it had been during the first half of the century, than to any lack of talent on the part of the company, which, indeed, comprised several excellent performers of both s.e.xes; and the establishment of the Opera threatened to reduce its already diminished receipts still further. Accordingly, Louis XIV.

decided that it should join forces with Mlle. Moliere's troupe, and, on June 23, 1673, an ordinance issued by Colbert closed the old playhouse in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, which had survived the theatrical vicissitudes of nearly eighty years, and granted permission to the two united companies henceforth to be known as the "_Troupe du Roi_," to perform comedies and other _divertiss.e.m.e.nts honnetes_ in the Rue Mazarine.

The new theatre, which was usually called the Theatre Guenegaud, the street of that name being close at hand, opened its doors on July 9 with a performance of _Tartuffe_. At first, it met with but indifferent success, and between that date and Easter 1674, the share of each player only amounted to 1481 livres, a striking contrast to the takings at the Palais-Royal during the last year of Moliere's life; while, on one occasion, at the beginning of the second season, _l'Avare_ was played to a house of 88 livres! However, matters steadily improved; by the following Easter the success of the company was a.s.sured, and the season of 1679-1680 was worth 1100 livres more to each of the old _Molieristes_ than the great and profitable year of _Tartuffe_ itself.

Although the perennial comedies of Moliere naturally figured frequently in the bills, Armande and La Grange had a keen eye for novelties, and did not disdain to tickle the public with melodramas and spectacular plays; and it was from these indeed that the theatre derived the greater part of its revenue. Thus _Circe_, a tragedy by Thomas Corneille, with changes of scenery, and music by Charpentier, brought in 24,000 livres in nine performances; while the _Devineresse_, a comic-melodrama, by the same playwright and Donneau de Vise, on the adventures of La Voisin, the poisoner, was played for forty-seven consecutive nights, almost a record for those days. Another success was achieved when Thomas Corneille turned Moliere's _Don Juan_ into verse, "eliminating the speeches which offended the scrupulous." Donneau de Vise, to whose "puffing" in the _Mercure_ the Theatre Guenegaud was probably indebted for not a little of its popularity, declared that in the process of transition the play "had acquired new beauties without losing any of the old," and though few will be found to agree with this p.r.o.nouncement, the new version proved exceedingly popular.

The first of the above-mentioned plays, in which Armande secured a great personal triumph in the part of the beautiful sorceress, was a.s.sociated with a singular incident.

One evening, a well-dressed man, who occupied a seat upon the stage, approached the actress, as she was standing in the wings awaiting her turn to go on, and addressed her in the manner of an ardent and favoured lover. "Never," said he, "have I seen you look so beautiful. Were it not that I am already your slave, I should be so from this moment."

Armande, who had never seen the gentleman before, turned haughtily away, without making any reply. But when the play was over, the stranger followed her to her dressing-room, and, having reproached her with her previous coldness, inquired why she had not kept an appointment which she had given him that afternoon. The lady, in profound astonishment, disclaimed all knowledge of her visitor, and angrily ordered him to leave the room. The stranger refused, insisting that she had given him "a score of rendezvous," and demanding how she could have the audacity to treat him thus after such an intimacy as had existed between them.

Armande thereupon sent her maid to summon some of her colleagues, who arrived to find their leader and the stranger almost beside themselves with pa.s.sion. As well as her outraged feelings would permit, the actress explained the situation to her friends, declaring that she had never set eyes on the gentleman before her in her life; while he, on his side, a.s.serted in the most positive manner that he knew her intimately, and that she had repeatedly met him at a house of somewhat questionable repute. "Why," cried he, "the very necklace she is now wearing is one of the presents I have made her!" and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her. Armande immediately sent for the guards attached to the theatre, who seized the stranger and held him until the arrival of a commissary of police, when he was conducted to prison.

His statement to the authorities served but to deepen the mystery. It transpired that he was a M. Lescot, a president of the Parliament of Gren.o.ble, who was on a visit to Paris. He had fallen in love with Armande after seeing her play at the Theatre Guenegaud, but, lacking courage to declare his pa.s.sion directly, and having failed to secure an introduction in the ordinary way, had had recourse to the good offices of a woman called Ledoux, "_dont le metier ordinaire etait de faire plaisir au public_," and promised her a liberal reward, if she could arrange a rendezvous. In this she had been successful; Mlle. Moliere had accepted his proposals, and they had met repeatedly at Ledoux's house.

The actress had, however, strictly forbidden him, for prudential reasons, to address, or even approach, her at the theatre, which instructions he had faithfully observed until that evening, when, as she had failed to keep an appointment to meet him after dinner, he had determined to ascertain the reason, thinking that "a little display of pa.s.sion" might not be altogether displeasing to her. As for the necklace, which, it should be mentioned, was one of a common pattern, he had purchased it at a jeweller's shop on the Quai des Orfevres, the lady being with him at the time. Let them question the jeweller, who would, no doubt, be prepared to corroborate his statement.

Matters now began to look very unpleasant for Armande, and when the jeweller of the Quai des Orfevres, without a moment's hesitation, identified her as the lady who had accompanied the president to his shop, and Ledoux was found to have left the city, she was in despair.

However, a few days later the affair was cleared up. Hunted down by the police, Ledoux confessed that she had palmed off on the credulous Lescot a young woman called Tourelle, who bore so extraordinary a resemblance to Mlle. Moliere, both in appearance and voice, that it was almost impossible for any one not personally acquainted with the latter to tell one from the other, and who had already succeeded in duping quite a number of persons. This woman was also arrested, and a decree of the Parliament of Paris, dated October 17, 1675, sentenced the two delinquents "to be flogged, naked, with rods, before the princ.i.p.al gate of the Chatelet and the house of Mlle. Moliere," and to be afterwards banished from Paris for three years. President Lescot was condemned to pay a fine of two hundred crowns, and to make "verbal reparation," that is to say, he had to declare in court, in the presence of Mlle. Moliere and any four persons whom she might select, that he had "raised his hand against her and used the insulting language mentioned in the indictment through error and inadvertence." Which done, we may presume, he lost no time in returning to Gren.o.ble, a sadder and a wiser man.

"One is struck," observes M. Larroumet, "by the singular resemblance that this affair presents to that of the Diamond Necklace, which, in 1785, involved the name of Marie Antoinette in so resounding a scandal.

After a lapse of a hundred years, the same roles are resumed, that of Armande by the queen, that of the _entremetteuse_ Ledoux by the Comtesse de la Motte, that of the woman Tourelle by the girl Oliva, finally, that of President Lescot by the Cardinal de Rohan. And that nothing may be wanting to the parallel, just as the queen was bespattered by the infamous libel of Madame de la Motte, Armande had to submit to _La Fameuse Comedienne_."

Less than a year afterwards, Armande was the victim of another scandal, even more painful than the one recorded above. The scoundrelly Guichard, the attempted poisoner of Lulli, of whom we have already spoken, did not confine his attack upon the widow of Moliere to repeating the hideous accusation of Montfleury: he calumniated her in the most shameful manner. "The Moliere," he wrote, "is infamous both in law (_i.e._ by profession) and in deed. Previous to her marriage, she lived continually in wholesale prost.i.tution; during her married life, continually in public adultery. In short, the Moliere is the most infamous of all infamous women." The obvious extravagance of these charges, and the fact that Guichard a.s.sailed with equal violence the characters of most of the other witnesses for the prosecution, no doubt robbed them of much of their sting.[38] Nevertheless, they can hardly have failed to occasion the unfortunate woman great annoyance, and, following as they did so closely upon the _affaire_ Lescot, had probably not a little influence upon a step which she took some months later.

In May 1677, Armande exchanged the glorious name of Moliere for that of Guerin d'Estriche, one of her colleagues of the Theatre Guenegaud, and, in earlier years, a member of the now defunct Theatre du Marais. For this second marriage she was severely blamed by her contemporaries,[39]

while it is the fashion among modern writers to refer to it as if it had been a species of sacrilege. In this, we are inclined to think, an injustice had been done Armande. Moliere, as one of his recent biographers reminds us, was not, during the years which followed his death, regarded as the mighty genius which he is now admitted to have been. Save to a few, like Boileau, who fully comprehended the extent of the loss which literature had sustained, he was merely an amusing actor and an excellent author, whose premature death they deplored, but whom they never dreamed of apotheosizing.[40] As for Armande, she was still young and retained all her fascination; she had not been happy in her first marriage, and may very well have felt that life owed her some compensation. Besides, a second marriage would free her from the attentions of unwelcome admirers, of whom, we may be sure, the luckless President Lescot was only one among many, and would provide her with a counsellor in business matters whose interests would be identical with her own, and of whom she must have long felt the need.

With Guerin, Armande appears to have lived very happily, and even the author of _La Fameuse Comedienne_ is compelled to recognise that her conduct was exemplary, though she hastens to qualify this reluctant admission by declaring that her second husband was a veritable tyrant, who brooked no opposition to his will and did not hesitate to enforce obedience by blows. All disinterested witnesses, however, concur in representing Guerin as an excellent man, and we see no reason to believe that the anonymous author comes anywhere nearer the truth here than in other portions of her history.

At Easter 1679, Armande and La Grange succeeded in persuading the famous _tragedienne_ Mlle. de Champmesle, who had been for nineteen years the mainstay of the Hotel de Bourgogne, to transfer her services to the Theatre Guenegaud, Armande, with rare self-denial, ceding to the ill.u.s.trious recruit the place which she herself had so long occupied.

The defection of their great actress was a paralysing blow for the players of the Rue Mauconseil, and, coupled with the death of La Thorilliere, which occurred shortly afterwards, rendered their position so precarious that, by a _lettre de cachet_ dated October 21, 1680, Louis XIV. directed that they should join forces with the Theatre Guenegaud; and the Comedie-Francaise was founded. Thus, of the three great troupes in existence at the time of Moliere's death, his own alone survived, fortified by the ruin of their rivals.

Armande continued her career as an actress for some years longer, perhaps her most successful impersonation being that of a young Italian girl in a play called _Le Parisien_, written by the husband of Mlle. de Champmesle. At the Easter recess of 1694, she retired from the stage, with a pension of one thousand livres. From that time we hear but little of her. She appears to have lived a very quiet and uneventful life, for the most part, at a charming country-house which she owned at Meudon, and which still exists, very much as the actress left it.[41] She died at Paris, in the Rue du Touraine, on November 30, 1700, at the age of fifty-eight.

Of Armande's three children by Moliere only one survived their father, a daughter, Madeleine, who, at the age of twenty, much to her mother's disgust, eloped with a M. de Montalant, a middle-aged widower with several children. Making a virtue of necessity, Madame Guerin gave her consent to her daughter's marriage, and Madeleine and her husband subsequently resided at Auteuil, where the former died in 1723. She left no children.

By Guerin, Armande had a son, to whom she seems to have been intensely devoted. In 1698, at the age of twenty, this young man published an edition of the _Melicerte_ of Moliere, which he had rendered into verse, preceded by an introduction, in which he mentioned that in the Guerin household the memory of the dramatist was held "in respect and veneration."

Armande's death certificate naturally contained no mention of the great man whose name she had once borne and whose works she had both inspired and interpreted. Nevertheless, posterity has decided to ignore her connection with the worthy Guerin, and, for us, she must always remain the "Wife of Moliere."

II

MARIE DE CHAMPMESLe

"The name of the Champmesle is inseparable from both the immortality and the frailties of the life of Racine."[42]

Marie Desmares, the actress of whom these words were written, was born at Rouen, the birthplace of the two Corneilles and other prominent figures in the dramatic history of the seventeenth century, in February 1642. Her father, Guillaume Desmares, though not, as several biographical dictionaries and works of reference state, the son of a President of the Parliament of Normandy, appears to have been a person of some social position, as his name is preceded by a _Monsieur_, a t.i.tle which in those days was generally confined to the _n.o.blesse_ and professional cla.s.ses, while her mother, Marie Marc, was also respectably connected, one of her brothers being an official of the Parliament.

Of Marie's childhood and youth we know scarcely anything. In 1653 she lost her father, very probably in an epidemic which broke out at Rouen that year; and, not long afterwards, her mother married again, her second husband being one Antoine La Guerault or Laguerault, a well-to-do landed proprietor in the neighbourhood. The girl and her brother Nicolas, who was also to achieve distinction on the boards, seem to have received a fair education; but, either because she was unhappy in the home of her stepfather, or because she saw but little chance of the indispensable _dot_ being forthcoming, at the age of twenty-three, Marie decided to tempt fortune on the stage.

At this period, there was no regular theatre at Rouen; indeed, buildings reserved exclusively for dramatic performances were hardly known outside the capital. There were, however, two large tennis-courts, one situated in the Rue des Charrettes, the other in the Rue Saint-eloi, the proprietors of which were always ready, at a few hours' notice, to convert them into temples of Thespis for the accommodation of any travelling company which happened to be visiting the town. M. Noury, the lady's latest biographer, thinks that it was in the second of these, called the _Feu de Paume des Braques_, where Moliere's troupe had played in 1643, and again in 1658, that Marie Desmares made her _debut_.

By Marie's side, a young actor from Paris, Charles Chevillet by name, made his bow to the public. This young man, who was a few months younger than his fair colleague, was the son of a worthy silk-merchant of the Rue Saint-Honore.[43] Chevillet _pere_, being of a practical turn of mind, had endeavoured to inspire his son with a taste for his own trade.

But, as ill-luck would have it, the theatre of the Pet.i.t-Bourbon, where Moliere's troupe was then established, was situated within easy distance of his shop, and, after attending the performances for some little time, Charles came to the conclusion that measuring and matching silks was altogether too prosaic a calling for him. Accordingly, one fine day he disappeared from Paris and made his way to Rouen, where, according to the custom of the time, in mounting the boards, he added to his own patronymic an aristocratic pseudonym, and became Charles Chevillet, Sieur de Champmesle.

M. de Champmesle, who is described as "a handsome man, with a distinguished air and extremely polished manners," "witty and possessed of all that is required to please and to command love," made a very favourable impression upon Mlle. Desmares. He, on his side, admired her greatly, and very possibly foresaw something of the great career which awaited her. They, therefore, determined to share each other's fortunes, and the young man, having paid a visit to Paris to obtain his parents'

consent, they were married on January 9, 1666, at the church of Saint-eloi, at Rouen.

In view of what we have already said about the practice of the Church in regard to the theatrical profession, it is not without interest to note that the _acte de mariage_ states that the parties "practised the vocation of players," and that the banns had been published, "notwithstanding the fact that they had no intention of abandoning the exercise of their profession at lawful times."

The young couple continued playing in Rouen and the neighbourhood until the summer of 1668, when, alarmed, apparently by the plague, which was devastating Normandy, they removed to Paris. Here Champmesle, who was by this time a very capable actor, was soon invited to join the company of the Theatre du Marais; and, at the beginning of the following year, his wife was offered a place in the same troupe.

Mlle. de Champmesle made her first appearance on the Paris stage on February 15, 1669, in _La Fete de Venus_, an insipid pastoral, by the Abbe Boyer, in which she impersonated the G.o.ddess and was much applauded. In the early months of 1670 she secured two other triumphs.

The first was in an "heroic comedy," called _Polycrate_, also by Boyer; and it spoke volumes for the talent and charm of the young actress that the audience should have been content to sit through and applaud five acts of what appears to have been an almost worthless play. Her second success was gained in _Les Amours de Venus et Adonis_, a tragedy by Donneau de Vise, in which she again represented the G.o.ddess, and Robinet chanted her praises:--

"La belle deesse Venus, Et dans ce role cette actrice Est une parfaite enchantrice."

But Mlle. de Champmesle was but half satisfied with such successes. She was ambitious, and felt that at the Marais her talents had not sufficient scope. The old theatre, as we have said elsewhere, had now fallen on evil days; the pieces represented there seemed sorry stuff indeed in comparison with the comedies of Moliere and the tragedies of Racine; it was the Palais-Royal and the Hotel de Bourgogne which divided the suffrages of the playgoing public; the _salle_ in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple was at times well-nigh deserted. She knew that her true vocation was in tragedy; not in tragedy such as the third-cla.s.s dramatists who wrote for the Theatre du Marais penned, but in plays like the _Cid_ and _Polyeucte_, _Alexandre_ and _Andromaque_. On first arriving in Paris, she had had the good sense to recognise that her talents were as yet insufficiently developed to allow of her attempting the great roles of Corneille and Racine; but now circ.u.mstances had changed. Her acting had had the good fortune to attract the attention of a member of the Marais troupe named Laroque, whose acquaintance she had made at Rouen. Laroque, as is not infrequently the case, though only a moderate performer, was an admirable instructor; and, perceiving in his young colleague great possibilities, had devoted much time and care to perfecting her in her art, and with the happiest results. Accordingly, at Easter 1670, Mlle. Champmesle and her husband quitted the Rue Vieille-du-Temple for the Hotel de Bourgogne. "Here she met Racine and glory."

The Hotel de Bourgogne reopened after the Easter recess with a revival of Racine's _Andromaque_ which three years before had aroused an enthusiasm the like of which had not been witnessed since the days of the _Cid_. The part of Hermione was to have been taken by Mlle. Des illets, who had created it; but she was lying ill of a malady from which she died not long afterwards, and it was in consequence decided to entrust it to Mlle. Champmesle. Racine, who knew nothing of the new recruit, and feared that such a difficult role might suffer in the hands of an actress who had never interpreted anything more important than the insipid heroines of Boyer and Vise, refused at first to attend the performance, and, though he ultimately consented to be present, did so with evident reluctance. His apprehensions were groundless. "Mlle. de Champmesle's rendering of the first two acts was very weak," relates the Abbe de Laporte in his _Annales dramatiques_. "These acts, where Hermione is in turn attracted and repelled by Pyrrhus, require a profound knowledge of the stage and great _finesse_. But in the last acts, where she is a frenzied lover, with whom jealousy carries all before it and to whom a supreme betrayal leaves nothing but vengeance to live for, she retrieved her ground so completely, threw so much fire into her acting, and rendered the pa.s.sions with such real fervour that she was enthusiastically applauded."

At the conclusion of the play, Racine, enraptured with the young actress's rendering of his heroine, hurried to her dressing-room, and, falling on his knees, overwhelmed her with compliments and thanks. A few days later, Mlle. Des illets was sufficiently recovered to pay a visit to the theatre to witness the performance of the new star; and, when the curtain fell, was seen to throw up her hands and exclaim sorrowfully: "Des illets is no more!"--words which, coming from an actress who sees herself dethroned by an understudy, are more eloquent than the most exhaustive commentary.

Overjoyed at finding that such an actress had arisen, Racine gave his new interpreter lessons in elocution, "at the same time studying her natural peculiarities, with a view to making them serviceable in any character he might wish her to represent." According to the poet's son, Louis Racine, Mlle. de Champmesle owed her subsequent successes entirely to his father's teaching. "As he had formed Baron," he says, "he formed the Champmesle, but with far more trouble. He made her understand the verses which she had to recite, showed her the gestures which were appropriate to each pa.s.sage, and dictated to her the emphasis which she must employ." There can be no doubt that Mlle. de Champmesle owed much to Racine's tuition, but it is equally certain that she had great natural gifts as an actress, the chief of which were a peculiar grace of movement and the greatest of all theatrical seductions, a most enchanting voice, which moved La Fontaine to write:--

"Est-il quelqu'un que votre voix n'enchante?

S'en trouve-t-il une aussi touchante, Un autre allant si droit au cur?"

The flexibility of her voice appears to have been quite extraordinary.

Melodious, soft, and caressing in roles like Iphigenie or Monime, it became so powerful and sonorous in such parts as Phedre, Roxane, and Hermione that, it is said, when the door of the box at the end of the _salle_ happened to be open, it could be heard at the Cafe Procope, over the way. "The recitation of actors in tragedy," says the anonymous author of the _Entretiens galants_, "is a kind of chant, and you will readily admit that the Champmesle would not please you so much, if her voice were less agreeable. But she has learned to modulate it with so much skill, and she lends to her words such natural tones, that it would seem that she really has in her heart the pa.s.sions she expresses with her mouth." In pathetic pa.s.sages, we are told, she drew tears from the eyes of the most hardened playgoers. "It was amusing to watch the ladies sighing and drying their eyes and the men laughing at them, while they themselves were hard put to restrain their emotion."

There seems to be some difference of opinion as to whether Mlle. de Champmesle was strictly beautiful. According to the Brothers Parfaict, "her skin was not clear, and her eyes were very small and round." On the other hand, she was "of a fine shape, well made and n.o.ble," and "her defects were, so to speak, counterbalanced by the natural graces spread over her whole person." Louis Racine, though he denies her talent, admits that she was handsome; while Madame de Sevigne tells us that she was "almost plain," but "adorable upon the stage." However that may be, she did not lack for admirers, and Racine, who, two years before, had lost his mistress, the beautiful Mlle. du Parc--the actress who had in turn rejected the addresses of Moliere, Pierre Corneille, and La Fontaine--speedily fell in love with her, and installed her in the vacant place in his affections, M. de Champmesle accepting his dishonour with fashionable complacency. Henceforth, as Moliere had written for his wife, Racine wrote for his mistress, who created all his great heroines, and "investing them with her own charm, became in truth the _collaboratrice_ of the poet."

"Benissons de l'amour l'influence divine, C'est a toi, Champmesle, que nous devons Racine, Il ecrivait pour toi, de te plaire occupe, Son vers coulait plus doux de son cur echappe."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JEAN RACINE

From an engraving by VERTUE]

In the early spring of 1670, Louis XIV.'s sister-in-law, the ill-fated Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I., persuaded Corneille and Racine to write each a tragedy on the story of t.i.tus and Berenice, without each other's knowledge, and consequently without the knowledge of any one else. Her object in so doing was, in all probability, merely to bring the relative merits of the two great dramatists to a decisive test, though rumour a.s.signed a romantic reason for her choice of the subject, to wit, a desire to see upon the stage a little story a.n.a.logous to that of her one-time relations with Louis XIV. _Madame's_ death, famous for its disputed causes and Bossuet's funeral oration, occurred in the following June; but this did not interfere with the completion of the plays, which were produced within a few days of one another, the secret having been so well kept that until then neither of the poets had the faintest conception that they had been simultaneously engaged on the same subject.

Racine was the first in the field, his _Berenice_ being produced at the Hotel de Bourgogne on November 21, Floridor playing t.i.tus, and Mlle. de Champmesle the beautiful Jewess. Corneille's _t.i.te et Berenice_ appeared at the Palais-Royal, eight days later, with La Thorilliere and Mlle.

Moliere in the t.i.tle-parts.

The result of the duel to which the two dramatists found themselves, all unwittingly, committed was wholly in favour of the younger, Corneille's play, notwithstanding some fine pa.s.sages, being unworthy of his reputation.[44] It was probably to this fact and to the admirable acting of Mlle. de Champmesle, rather than to any special merits of his own, that Racine was indebted for his easy triumph. Approved by the king and applauded by the public, his _Berenice_ remained in the bills until after the thirtieth performance; but it did not please the critics, Boileau declaring that had he been consulted he would have endeavoured to dissuade his friend from undertaking so poor a theme; while Chapelle, when asked by Racine for his opinion, replied in two verses of an old song:--