Queens of the French Stage Part 7

Then began for Adrienne the life of a provincial actress, which, if it had somewhat improved since the days of the Ill.u.s.tre Theatre, was still very far from being a bed of roses. "Mixture of hard work and of compulsory pleasure," says M. Larroumet, "with the companionships of the _coulisses_, the persistent attentions of young men of fashion and garrison officers, the errors of sentiment and conduct which were the consequence, and the repentance and disgust which followed, it was the most miserable and most trying to which a refined nature could submit."[64]

For ten years, that is to say, from 1706 to 1717, Adrienne exploited Flanders, Lorraine, and Alsace, now accepting a lengthy engagement at some important theatre, now journeying with some travelling company from town to town, acquiring in this rude apprenticeship a thorough knowledge of her art and a particularly cruel experience of life.

At Lille, where she appears to have remained for about three years, dramatic performances were during several weeks carried on to the accompaniment of the cannon of a besieging army, first, under the Duke of Marlborough, and, afterwards, under Prince Eugene, to whom the citadel surrendered on October 28, 1708. On one occasion, a sh.e.l.l exploded within a few paces of the theatre, notwithstanding which the performances were as well attended as in time of peace.

After leaving Lille, Adrienne accepted an engagement as "leading lady"

at the theatre at Luneville, and she is also believed to have played at Metz, Nancy, and Verdun. Finally, early in the year 1711, we find her occupying a similar position at the Strasburg theatre, one of the finest houses to be met with out of Paris, with a salary of two thousand livres, a considerable sum for those days; and here she seems to have remained until the spring of 1717, when she returned to Paris to make her _debut_ at the Comedie-Francaise.

The portrait of Adrienne Lecouvreur was painted by several of the leading artists of her time: Charles Coypel, Fontaine, H. de Troy _le pere_, Jean Baptiste Van Loo, and, it is believed, Nattier. None of these portraits, unfortunately, have come down to us, though the works of the two first painters are well known through the engravings of Drevet and Schmidt.

In regard to the merits of the two portraits, there seems to be considerable difference of opinion. Michelet, in his _Histoire de France_, speaks with enthusiasm of the painting by Coypel, reproduced in this volume, in which Adrienne is represented as Cornelie in _La Mort de Pompee_, weeping over the urn of her husband, which she holds clasped to her breast. "She must have exercised a terrible power over hearts, to have been able to transform beasts into men, to have caused the feeble and mediocre Coypel to paint such a portrait. An inspired artist of our time, our first sculptor, Preault, told me that he knew not a word of the history of Mlle. Lecouvreur when he saw this engraving. He was very affected by it, enraptured, and he seized upon it greedily.... It is more than a work of art, it is, as it were, a dream of grief. Those heavenly eyes, suffused with sublime tears, the gesture of those arms clasping the funeral urn, the grief expressed by that countenance, the silent accusation which that whole figure brings against destiny, all make of this picture a unique work, an honour alike to painter and model."

M. Larruomet agrees with Michelet: "I, for my part, am of opinion that if Charles Coypel, as a rule an artist of but moderate ability, invented the pose of this portrait, he had, by chance, an inspiration of genius, and that, if he only borrowed it from the actress, she possessed that innate sense of att.i.tude which we admire in our own day (1892), in M.

Mounet-Sully and Madame Sarah Bernhardt, and which alone would have sufficed to make of them great actors." M. Larroumet declares the portrait to possess "the incontestable merit of being a superb work of art," and greatly prefers it to the one by Fontaine, which shows us the actress "_en robe de chambre_," with her hair dressed in the fashion of the day. In the latter he can see only a "_tableau d'apparat_" of but little merit.

On the other hand, Regnier, M. Maurice Paleologue, and M. Georges Monval, to the last of whom we owe the publication of Adrienne's correspondence, give the preference to Fontaine's work. "It is a truer, a more human, a more lifelike, a more familiar Adrienne," remarks M.

Monval, who stigmatises the portrait by Coypel as "a fantastic and studied picture, a _tete d'etude_, a ba.n.a.l figure, under which one might equally well inscribe the name of Magdalene repentant, or of Sophie Arnould."

For ourselves, while on the whole inclined to endorse the high opinion which Michelet and M. Larroumet have formed of Coypel's portrait, we cannot but think that the latter has unduly depreciated that by Fontaine, which appears to us both pleasing and natural.

However that may be, the two portraits, in all essential respects, are far from dissimilar, and as they accord well with the descriptions of the actress given by contemporary writers, we see no reason to doubt the fidelity of either. In both we find a high forehead, fine eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, a well-shaped mouth, with the rather prominent lower lip which recalls the portraits of princesses of the House of Austria, and a rounded chin; in a word, the features of a very pretty woman.

In default of portraits painted or engraved, Adrienne's beauty would be amply attested by her contemporaries. Not that the testimony in her favour is altogether unanimous, as M. Paleologue rather boldly a.s.serts; to expect unanimity in regard to the appearance of a celebrated actress, whose triumphs must of necessity arouse envy and jealousy in many quarters, would be as unreasonable as to look for a general appreciation of her dramatic talent. But the number of those who decline to admit her attractiveness is very small, and not above suspicion of prejudice, while the evidence to the contrary is abundant and authoritative.

"Without being tall," wrote, in 1719, the author of _Les Lettres historiques sur tous les spectacles de Paris_, "she is very well made, and has an air of distinction, which prepossesses one in her favour; no one in the world has more charms. Her eyes speak as much as her mouth, and often supply the place of her voice. In short, I cannot do better than compare her to a miniature, since she has agreeableness, finesse, and delicacy."

The _Mercure_ confirms this portrait: "Mlle. Lecouvreur was about the middle height and admirably formed, with a n.o.ble and confident air, a well-poised head and shapely shoulders, eyes full of fire, a pretty mouth, a slightly aquiline nose, and very pleasing manners; although not plump, her face was somewhat full, with features admirably adapted to express sorrow, joy, tenderness, fear, and pity."[65]

Nature, besides endowing Adrienne with beauty, had given her an exceedingly susceptible heart. Her letters, published some years ago by M. Georges Monval, though, with one or two exceptions, none of them can be said to come within the category of love-letters, reveal an ardent and imperious need of loving and being loved. "_Que faire au monde sans aimer?_" she writes to one of her friends; and these words might very well have been taken as her motto.

With her, however, love was very far from being the consuming fire it is with so many of her s.e.x; she was of the race of tender, not of pa.s.sionate lovers; of the race, too, of those who, scorning the lighter forms of gallantry, and yet unable to preserve their virtue, are so often destined to bitter disappointment, disillusion, and remorse.

"Relative of the Monimes, the Berenices, the La Vallieres, and the a.s.ses," says M. Paleologue, in his fine study of the actress, "she has their melting tears, their touching grace, and their voluptuous modesty.

But her true originality among the women of her time lay in the conception that she formed of love. We know the singular change that this sentiment had undergone beneath the dissolving influence of the morals of the Regency; all that had made up to that time for the n.o.bility and poetry of pa.s.sion had fallen beneath the blows of the reigning philosophy and the persiflage of the salons. In this transformation the woman had lost more than the man. She had been taught that modesty and fidelity were grandiloquent words devoid of meaning, and, freeing herself from all romantic illusion, and clinging only to the positive and agreeable in her amorous intrigues, she displayed everywhere a cynical libertinism.

"It was the honour of Adrienne to resist this contagion. The gift of her person was always a pledge of the heart. She loved not by caprice, not by vanity, but by a moral inclination, with an ardour, a conscientiousness, and a gravity profound."[66]

The first of the actress's adorers was the Baron D----, a young officer of the Regiment de Picardie, which formed part of the garrison of Lille.

Of him we know nothing, save that, after the _liaison_ had lasted some months, he died suddenly, an event which occasioned his mistress such terrible grief that she is said to have seriously contemplated destroying herself. To the baron succeeded a certain Philippe Le Roy, "officer of the Duke of Lorraine," by whom, in 1710, Adrienne had a daughter, baptized as elisabeth Adrienne. M. Le Roy, however, appears to have proved fickle, for, soon afterwards, we hear of a third lover, a provincial actor named Clavel, brother of Mlle. Fonpre.

With Clavel Adrienne corresponded, and two of her letters to him have fortunately been preserved, the only love-letters of this woman who loved so much that have come down to us. It is much to be regretted that the rest of this correspondence has been lost, as they reveal the actress in a very favourable light: warm-hearted, sincere, loyal, and disinterested.

The first letter, written some time in the year 1710, is in reply to one from Clavel, which she has been impatiently awaiting:--

"I have at last received that letter so eagerly antic.i.p.ated, and for which I have been astounding Notre Dame des Carmes with my prayers. I can a.s.sure thee, my dear friend, that I have had no rest since thy departure, both on account of my uneasiness at not receiving news of thee and of finding myself inconvenienced as I am. I hope to be better now, since I have reason to believe that thou lovest me still and that thou art well. Take care of thyself, I beg of thee, since thy health is as precious to me as my own. I shall be charmed to learn that thou art enjoying thyself, provided that I lose by it nothing of what is mine, and that thou dost not write to me less often.... a.s.suredly, I believe that thou hast a kind heart, and, consequently, art faithful to thy poor Lecouvreur, who loves thee more than herself.... I embrace thee with all the tenderness of my heart, and swear to thee a constancy proof against all things."

From the second letter, which was written two years later, and which M.

Larroumet declares to be "one of the tenderest and most touching letters to be found in literature, real or imaginative, worthy of comparison with the famous letter of _Manon Lescaut_," it would appear that Clavel had promised to marry Adrienne, or, at least, given her reason to believe that such was his intention; and she refers to the matter with a frankness, a delicacy, and a forgetfulness of self rarely met with where personal interests are at stake:--

"I hardly know what I ought to think of your[67] neglect, at a time when everything ought to alarm me. Be always persuaded that I love you for yourself a hundred times more than on my own account. Time will prove to you, my dear Clavel, what I swear to you to-day. Entertain for me the sentiments that I shall entertain for you all my life, for all my ambition is bounded by that. With all the attachment that I have for you, I should be in despair if you did anything for me with repugnance.

Reflect well that you are still master. Consider that I have nothing and that I owe a great deal, and that you will find greater advantages elsewhere. For my part, I have nothing, save youth and good will, but that does not adjust matters. I speak to you plainly, as you see, and I tell you frankly things which are able to make you think of me as one whom you ought to avoid. Here is a chance to take your own part. Have no consideration. Make no promise that you do not intend to keep; were it necessary for you to promise to hate me, it seems to me that it would be easier for me to bear than to find myself deceived.... I tell you again, my dear Clavel, that your interests are dearer to me than my own.

Follow the course which will be most pleasing to you. I know you to be of a disposition which will prompt you to behave generously and perhaps to surpa.s.s me; but yet once again reflect well. Act like the honest man that you are and follow your own inclination, without troubling about the possible consequences. I shall resign myself, by some means or other, as well as I can, whether I gain or lose you. If I have you, I shall have the sorrow of not rendering you as happy as I should wish; my own happiness will perhaps make me forget the pain.... If I lose you, I shall strive at least not to do so entirely, and I shall still retain some place in your esteem. If you are happy, I shall have the pleasure of knowing that I have not prevented it; or, if you are not, I, at any rate, shall not be the cause, and I shall endeavour in some way to console myself."

The result of Clavel's reflections was that he came to the conclusion that marriage with a young woman who "had nothing and owed a great deal"

might prove but an indifferent bargain for an ambitious young actor; and Adrienne, after a somewhat lengthy period of solitude, accepted the protection of Comte Francois de Klinglin, son of the _preteur royal_, or first magistrate, of Strasburg. To him, at the beginning of the year 1717, she bore a second daughter, Catherine Francoise Ursule; but the ill-fortune which had attended her previous _liaisons_ still pursued her, for, almost immediately after this event, her lover abandoned her, in order to contract a wealthy marriage, to which he had been long urged by his family.

The marriage of the father of her child threw poor Adrienne into the depths of despair. Too proud to reproach him with his perfidy, and yet too sensitive to remain to witness its consummation, she determined to leave the city, which must henceforth have for her such painful a.s.sociations, and, having obtained permission to make her _debut_ at the Comedie-Francaise, at the close of the theatrical year, she set out for Paris. Her two children she left at Strasburg, where she had them educated with great care, and on her death, in 1730, made ample provision for them. The elder, daughter of Philippe Le Roy, afterwards married the musician Francur the younger, who, in 1757, was appointed director of the Opera; the younger, daughter of the faithless Klinglin, became the wife of a M. Daudet (or Dauvet), a magistrate at Strasburg.

It was on May 14, 1717, that Adrienne made her first appearance before the Parisian public, in the t.i.tle-part in the _electre_ of Crebillon, and as Angelique in _George Dandin_--that is to say, in both tragedy and comedy. Notwithstanding the fact that the Czar, Peter the Great, then on a visit to Paris, was to be present at the Opera that evening, the house was crowded, for the _debutante_ had brought a great reputation with her from the provinces, while not a few playgoers remembered her performances when a child at Madame du Gue's and in the Temple. The expectations of the public were not disappointed. "Her success was so prodigious," writes d'Allainval, "that it was remarked that she had begun as great actresses usually finish"; and a perfect storm of enthusiasm followed the fall of the curtain.

Nor did the heroine of the evening fail to confirm the advantage she had gained. A few days later, she gave a masterly rendering of the role of Monime in Racine's _Mithridate_, which will be remembered as one of Mlle. de Champmesle's most brilliant creations, speedily followed by other triumphs as Berenice, Irene in _Andronic_, Alcmene in _Amphitryon_, and Pauline in _Polyeucte_; and, on June 20, a vacancy having in the meanwhile arisen, she was received into the company and allotted a _demi-part_.

For thirteen years, that is to say until her death, on March 20, 1730, Adrienne reigned the almost unquestioned queen of the Comedie-Francaise, pa.s.sing from triumph to triumph, a.s.sociating her name with a great variety of characters in tragedy, and attaining a popularity with the playgoing public such as no actress had ever before enjoyed. "A lofty soul, great enthusiasm, constant study, a pa.s.sionate love for her art,"

says Sainte-Beuve, "all combined to make of her that ideal of a great _tragedienne_, which until that time does not appear to have been realised to this degree. Mlle. Duclos was only a representative of the declamatory school, and if Mlle. Desmares and the Champmesle had had great and splendid parts, they certainly never attained to the all-round perfection of Adrienne Lecouvreur. When the latter appeared, she had no other model than her own taste, and she created."[68]

As the French theatre had been founded in imitation of the ancients, without much regard for the difference of manners, in the same way, its dramatic declamation was ruled by obscure traditions, independently of the difference in languages. When at the theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, the art had hardly freed itself from its first awkwardness, some erroneous ideas of the elocution of the Greeks and the stage system of the Romans made of the actor's delivery a kind of measured chant.

Favoured by the construction of the verses of the great seventeenth century dramatists and the brilliant successes of Mlle. de Champmesle, this monotonous chant pa.s.sed from the Rue Mauconseil to the Comedie-Francaise, where, at the time of Adrienne's appearance, it had become so firmly established that to the great majority of the company and a large number of their patrons any revolt against its sway seemed something like sacrilege. So long as Baron had remained on the stage some check had been imposed on this deplorable custom, for Baron, educated in the school of Moliere, a strenuous advocate of naturalness, had remained faithful to the traditions of the Palais-Royal. But his abrupt retirement, in 1696, in the flower of his age, left the adherents of the rival school in undisputed possession of the field, and for more than twenty years nothing occurred to interfere with the reign of inflated declamation, which was carried by the successors of Mlle. de Champmesle to lengths which provoked the ridicule and disgust of foreign visitors.[69]

Adrienne's phenomenal success was, in a great measure, due to the fact that she had the courage and good sense to break with the old traditions of the theatre, and abandon this stilted and artificial style of elocution for simpler and more natural modes of speech. "The charming Lecouvreur," wrote the Italian actor Riccoboni, the _jeune premier_ of the Comedie-Italienne, in his didactic poem, _Dell' arte rappresentativa_, "is the only one who does not follow the road along which all her comrades run at full speed. If she happens to weep or complain without terrifying us, as the others do by their bawlings, she touches the heart so profoundly, that we become affected with her."[70]

This natural style of delivery seems to have been originally imposed upon Adrienne by her physique, which was more delicate than vigorous.

Her voice, though singularly pleasing, was not remarkable for extent and power, like Mlle. de Champmesle's, but she used it with such consummate skill as to vary its modulations according to the sentiments she desired to express. "Although her voice is very weak," says the author of the _Lettres historiques_, "she pleased the public at first, and continues to please it; because it finds in her a novel style, natural and the more agreeable, in that she has studied how to control it and to proportion it to her strength; and thus one might say that the weakness of her chest has contributed to this kind of perfection." The _Mercure_, of March 1730, confirms the anonymous writer: "She had not many tones in her voice, but she knew how to lend to them infinite variety." Moreover, she seems to have possessed the rare gift of clearness of p.r.o.nunciation, "the orthography of the actor's art," and seldom indeed had so pure and distinct a delivery been heard upon the stage.

For this last qualification Adrienne was indebted to the counsels of Cesar du Marsais, the grammarian-philosopher, as, when she first appeared on the stage of the Comedie-Francaise, her p.r.o.nunciation was far from perfect; she understood the true meaning of the words of her parts, but delivered them in a way which considerably discounted their value, and thus, according to Regnier, touched the hearts, and irritated the ears of the more fastidious critics at one and the same time.

D'Allainval relates that on the evening of her _debut_, while the theatre was ringing with the applause of the delighted audience, an elderly man, seated at the back of a box, refrained from joining in the general enthusiasm, and contented himself with remarking from time to time, in a low tone, "_Bon, cela!_" His behaviour was much commented upon by those who sat near him, and duly reported to Adrienne, who, on learning that it was Du Marsais, became curious to learn the reason of the qualified approval of one who appeared to be a critic of some discernment, and accordingly sent him a very courteous note inviting him to dine with her _tete-a-tete_.

Du Marsais came, but, before sitting down to table, he begged the actress to do him the favour of reciting a tirade from one of her favourite roles. Adrienne readily consented, but was not a little surprised at only obtaining for her trouble an occasional "_Bon, cela_."

Mortified by her guest's comparative indifference to her talents, she inquired in what she had failed to please him. "Mademoiselle," replied Du Marsais, "so far as my judgment goes, no actress has ever given promise of greater talents than yours, and, in order to eclipse probably all your predecessors, I will venture to promise that all that is required on your part is to give to each word the exact emphasis necessary to express its meaning."

Adrienne begged the grammarian not to be sparing of his advice, and, following it religiously, soon succeeded in correcting her faulty p.r.o.nunciation.

It must not be supposed that Adrienne was able to effect the overthrow of a style of elocution which had reigned almost unchallenged since the foundation of the Comedie-Francaise without encountering strenuous and, in some cases, acrimonious opposition from its many champions.

Mesdemoiselles Duclos and Desmares, prompted, no doubt, as much by jealousy of the newcomer as by loyalty to the traditions in which they had been trained, were particularly bitter in their resistance, and, supported by the Quinault coterie,[71] did not confine themselves to legitimate protests or to sustaining against her promising _debutantes_, but subjected the young actress to a variety of petty persecutions.

Regnier, in his _Souvenirs et etudes du theatre_, cites a number of extracts from the registers of the Comedie, from which it appears that a favourite practice of Adrienne's enemies was to cause her to be fined on all kinds of pretexts: for being late for rehearsal, for not wearing the costume prescribed for her part, and so forth. On one occasion, a kind colleague inquired if she were aware that the anagram of her name was _Couleuvre_ (viper); and during the run of Voltaire's _Herode and Mariamne_, Mlle. de Seine, who, two years later, became the wife of Quinault-Dufresne, carried her insolence so far that the Gentlemen of the Chamber, within whose jurisdiction the theatre lay, were obliged to interfere, and direct the _semainiers_, as a number of players who governed the theatre in rotation were called, "to deduct the sum of one hundred livres from the share of Mlle. de Seine, for unseemly behaviour towards Mlle. Lecouvreur, and to give her warning that she would be dismissed from the troupe in the event of a repet.i.tion of the offence."

The climax of the campaign against Adrienne had, it seems, been reached some time before this incident. In September 1723, Philippe Poisson, a retired member of the Comedie-Francaise, submitted to the company, under a _nom de guerre_, a comedy in one act, ent.i.tled _l'Actrice nouvelle_, which was nothing less than a personal satire on Adrienne, her art, and her private life. The play, in Adrienne's absence, was read to the a.s.sembled troupe by the elder Quinault, who, in the speeches a.s.signed to the heroine, imitated the voice and gestures of the _tragedienne_ so cleverly as to send the lady's enemies into convulsions of merriment. It was at once resolved to accept the play, and Mlle. Duclos and her friends doubtless indulged in much gleeful antic.i.p.ation as to what their rival's feelings would be when she found herself publicly caricatured before her admirers in the boxes and pit. Unfortunately for the success of this malicious scheme, the secret, though well kept, leaked out, and Adrienne lost no time in bringing the matter to the notice of the authorities, who issued an order forbidding the production of _l'Actrice nouvelle_.

That Adrienne should have triumphed so completely as she did over tradition and jealousy was due to two causes. In the first place, she succeeded in securing the immediate, and almost unanimous, approbation of the playgoing public, who, when afforded an opportunity of comparing the rival methods of elocution, p.r.o.nounced without hesitation, and in no uncertain way, in favour of the innovation. The second was the unexpected intervention of Baron, who, in April 1720, at the age of sixty-seven, suddenly resolved to return to the scene of his many triumphs, and, delighted to find that an actress had arisen who shared his own views on the subject of elocution, lent her all the encouragement and support in his power. Aided by this invaluable ally, Adrienne succeeded in effecting a veritable revolution; the "bawlings"

which had so disgusted the Italian actor Riccoboni were heard no more, the monotonous chant was banished, and in its place reigned "a declamation simple, n.o.ble, and natural."[72]