The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh Part 31

Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes Ont verse plus de pleurs Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel ou nous sommes, Fait eclore de fleurs.

Vase d'election, etoile matinale, Miroir de purete, Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale, La supreme bonte;

A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie, Je tombe a vos genoux; Daignez donc m'ecouter, car c'est vous que je prie, Vous qui priez pour nous.

Which may be thus interpreted:--

O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught So often has been quaffed, That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us The Mother Dolorous!

Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe, Upon the earth below, Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours, Have risen flowers!

O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!

O mirror of all grace!

Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray Man's sins away;

Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!

Unto my sad complaint; Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call, Who hearest all.

She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one difficulty, or, to use her own words,--

Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voutes eternelles, Malgre moi, tend mon vol, Soufflez sur mon etoile et detachez mes ailes, Pour m'enchainer au sol;

her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) and she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!

The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coa.r.s.e blasphemy, and the vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship over public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbors across the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a vehicle for a scene-painter's skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to wear a new dress.

M. Dumas's piece of "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought out by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners.

As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you find a Countess and an Amba.s.sadress, whose conversation relates purely to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially the two present. As for the Amba.s.sadress, she prefers him to her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales!

who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation concerning Kean. "This man," says his Royal Highness, "is the very pink of fashion. Brummell is n.o.body when compared to him; and I myself only an insignificant private gentleman. He has a reputation among ladies, for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine."

This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince; the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for which the other was so notorious.

Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty combat with a notorious boxer. This scene was received by the audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals, as a faultless picture of English manners. "The Coal Hole" being on the banks of the Thames, a n.o.bleman--LORD MELBOURN!--has chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A violent tirade against n.o.blemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed, to meditate revenge. Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts: the Amba.s.sadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes furious at his ill success, and the Amba.s.sador dreadfully jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where, unluckily, the Amba.s.sadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness determines to send HIM TO BOTANY BAY. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!

This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals, success among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of virtue.

The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, figures bodily in the piece of the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, represented at Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and an ingenious fable is arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters is Jean le Precurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by orders of that sovereign.

In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem," and the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar's Feast is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower cla.s.ses delight in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St.

Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have produced.

The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles" and divine gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned. If they take a story from the sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their remarks on the circ.u.mstances of the scene.

"Ah, le gredin!" growls an indignant countryman. "Quel monstre!" says a grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying like babies, and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer--an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard. They will not consent to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against their beloved Emperor. Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.

So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened cla.s.ses, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or two favorite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La d.u.c.h.esse de la Vauballiere."

The d.u.c.h.ess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballiere, a terrible roue, the farmer's landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d'Orleans, the Regent of France.

Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and make it up.

Julie complies; but though she becomes a d.u.c.h.ess, her heart remains faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that, beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her husband and herself.

Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner: he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he determines to make away with her altogether.

For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor, bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for Madame la d.u.c.h.esse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that he has been thus committing murder on his true love!

Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and, accordingly, the d.u.c.h.ess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth, through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.

And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who, after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his dying day.

Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la Vauballiere; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not the eldest son of old La Vauballiere, the former Duke; then another deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballiere (who seems to have been a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence, the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and finally, Morisseau brings forward another doc.u.ment, which proves that the REG'LAR Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!

Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.

"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though not very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Bailey,"--a woman and the bottle have been the cause of Hermann's ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force, and not infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress's ruin, the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infame ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here ensues! Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already married, and the student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at all events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge, and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann's apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the news that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.

I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an aristocrat,--a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the theatre lives upon traditions: and don't let us be too scornful at such simple legends as are handed down by the people from race to race.

Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against the great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long, therefore, may fat epiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest proletaires shake their fists, shouting--"Gredin, scelerat, monstre de marquis!" and such republican cries.

Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding pages, a couple of specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin,) in which that great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably tricked, humiliated, and disappointed? A play of this cla.s.s, which, in the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it, was called "Le Maudit des Mers." Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers, blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding an archangel with a sword all covered with flaming resin, who told him that as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the seas until he could find some being who would pray to heaven for him!

Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro: and, in the third, a.s.sa.s.sinates the heroic William of Na.s.sau; but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make their appearance--"Treachery," says the spirit, "cannot lessen thy punishment;--crime will not obtain thy release--A la mer! a la mer!" and the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick for a hundred years more.

But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in America, where the peasants on the sea-sh.o.r.e, all dressed in Italian costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington, he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with angels on the decks and "sweet little cherubs" fluttering about the shrouds and the p.o.o.p, appear to receive him.

This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship was introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.

One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirized by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull. Two English n.o.blemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the public the philosophic observations which were made in the course of his aerial tour.

"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: lunch, bottled porter: at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity of the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below: more bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner."

The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress--

Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale, Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pale, C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard; On s'y couche a minuit, et l'on s'y leve tard; Ses raouts tant vantes ne sont qu'une boxade, Sur ses grands quais jamais ech.e.l.le ou serenade, Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter Qui pa.s.sent sans lever le front a Westminster; Et n'etait sa foret de mats percant la brume, Sa tour dont a minuit le vieil oeil s'allume, Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illumines bien plus, Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus, Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus lethargique Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!

The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months in England, as an attache to the emba.s.sy of M. de Polignac. He places the heroine of his tale in a pet.i.t reduit pres le Strand, "with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had pa.s.sed the perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!" He next places her--

Dans un square ecarte, morne et couverte de givre, Ou se cache un hotel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;

and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is truly unhappy in that village.