The Yellow Book Volume II Part 15

This puissant astronomer is Monsieur Francisque Sarcey.

Against his opinion the newspapers can raise no voice, for he alone edits them all. He writes thirty articles a day, each of which is thirty times reprinted, thrice thirty times quoted from. He is, as it were, the Press in person. And presently the momentous hour arrived when the delicate and sprightly pupil of Regnier was to appear before this enormous and somnolent ma.s.s, and to thrill it with pleasure. For Monsieur Sarcey smiled upon and applauded Rejane's debut at the Conservatoire. He consecrated to her as many as fifty lines of intelligent criticism; and I pray Heaven they may be remembered to his credit on the Day of Judgment. Here they are, in that twopenny-halfpenny style of his, so dear to the readers of _Le Temps_.

"I own that, for my part, I should have willingly awarded to the latter (Mademoiselle Rejane) a first prize. It seems to me that she deserved it. But the Jury is frequently influenced by extrinsic and private motives, into which it is not permitted to pry. A first prize carries with it the right of entrance into the Comedie Francaise; and the Jury did not think Mademoiselle Rejane, with her little wide-awake face, suited to the vast frame of the House of Moliere. That is well enough; but the second prize, which it awarded her, authorises the Director of the Odeon to receive her into his Company; and that perspective alone ought to have sufficed to dissuade the Jury from the course it took....

Every one knows that at present the Odeon is, for a beginner, a most indifferent school.... Instead of shoving its promising pupils into it by the shoulders, the Conservatoire should forbid them to approach it, lest they should be lost there. What will Mademoiselle Rejane do at the Odeon? Show her legs in _La Jeunesse de Louis XIV._, which is to be revived at the opening of the season! A pretty state of things. She must either go to the Vaudeville or to the Gymnase. It is there that she will form herself; it is there that she will learn her trade, show what she is capable of, and prepare herself for the Comedie Francaise, if she is ever to enter it.... She recited a fragment from _Les Trois Sultanes_.... I was delighted by her choice. The _Trois Sultanes_ is so little known nowadays.... What wit there is in her look, her smile! With her small eyes, shrewd and piercing, with her little face thrust forward, she has so knowing an air, one is inclined to smile at the mere sight of her. Does she perhaps show a little too much a.s.surance? What of it? 'Tis the result of excessive timidity. But she laughs with such good grace, she has so fresh and true a voice, she articulates so clearly, she seems so happy to be alive and to have talent, that involuntarily one thinks of Chenier's line:

_Sa bienvenue au jour lui rit dans tous les yeux._

... I shall be surprised if she does not make her way."

Praised be Sarcey! That was better than a second prize for Rejane. The Oracle gave her the first, without dividing it. She got an immediate engagement; and in March, 1875, appeared on that stage where to-day she reigns supreme, the Vaudeville, to which she brought back the vaudeville that was no longer played there. She began by alienating the heart of Alphonse Daudet, who, while recognising her clever delivery, found fault with her unemotional gaiety; but, in compensation, another authoritative critic, Auguste Vitu, wrote, after the performance of _Pierre_: "Mademoiselle Rejane showed herself full of grace and feeling. She rendered Gabrielle's despair with a naturalness, a brilliancy, a spontaneity, which won a most striking success."

Shall I follow her through each of her creations, from her debut in _La Revue des Deux-Mondes_, up to her supreme triumph in _Madame Sans-Gene_? Shall I show her as the sly soubrette in _f.a.n.n.y Lear_? as the woman in love, "whose ignorance divines all things," in _Madame Lili_? as the comical Marquise de Menu-Castel in _Le Verglas_? Shall I tell of her first crowning success, when she played Gabrielle in _Pierre_? Shall I recall her stormy interpretation of Madame de Librac, in _Le Club_? and her dramatic conception of the part of Ida?--which quite reversed the previous judgments of her critics, wringing praise from her enemy Daudet, and censure from her faithful admirer Vitu. The natural order of things, however, was re-established by her performance of _Les Tapageurs_; again Daudet found her cold and lacking in tenderness; and Vitu again applauded.

Her successes at the Vaudeville extend from 1875 to 1882; and towards the end of that period, Rejane, always rising higher in her art, created Anita in _L'Aureole_ and the Baronne d'Oria in _Odette_. Next, forgetting her own traditions, she appeared at the Theatre des Panoramas, and at the Ambigu, where she gave a splendid interpretation of Madame Cezambre in Richepin's _La Giu_; and at Les Varietes as Adrienne in _Ma Camarade_. Now fickle, now constant to her first love, she alternated between the Varietes and the Vaudeville; took an engagement at the Odeon; a.s.sisted at the birth and death of the Grand-Theatre; and just lately the Vaudeville has won her back once more.

Amidst these perambulations, Rejane played the diva in _Clara Soleil_.

The following year she had to take two different parts in the same play, those of Gabrielle and Clicquette in _Les Demoiselles Clochart_.

Gabrielle is a cold and positive character; Clicquette a gay and mischievous one. Rejane kept them perfectly distinct, and without the smallest apparent effort. In 1887, she telephoned in _Allo-Allo_, and represented so clearly, by means of clever mimicry, the absurd answers of the apparatus, that from the gallery to the stalls the theatre was one roar of laughter and applause; I fancy the salvoes and broadsides must still sometimes echo in her delicate ears.

Rejane's part in _M. de Morat_ should not be forgotten; nor above all, the inimitable perfection of her play in _Decore_ (1888). Sarcey's exultation knew no bounds when, in 1890, she again appeared in this role. Time, that had metamorphosed the lissom critic of 1875 into a round and inert ma.s.s of solid flesh, cruel Father Time, gave back to Sarcey, for this occasion only, a flash of youthful fire, which stirred his wits to warmth and animation. He shouted out hardly articulate praise; he literally rolled in his stall with pleasure; his bald head blushed like an aurora borealis. "Look at her!" he cried, "see her malicious smiles, her feline graces, listen to her reserved and biting diction; she is the very essence of the Parisienne! What an ovation she received! How they applauded her! and how she played!"

From M. Sarcey the laugh spreads; it thaws the scepticism of M. Jules Lemaitre, engulfs the timidity of the public, becomes unanimous and universal, and is no longer to be silenced.

In 1888, M. Edmond de Goncourt entrusted Rejane with the part of _Germinie Lacerteux_. On the first night, a furious battle against the author was waged in the house. Rejane secured the victory _sans peur et sans reproches_.

Everything in her inspires the cert.i.tude of success; her voice aims at the heart, her gestures knock at it. Rejane confides all to the hazard of the dice; her sudden attacks are of the most dare-devil nature; and no matter how risky, how dangerous, how extravagant the jump, she never loses her footing; her play is always correct, her handling sure, her coolness imperturbable. It was impossible to watch her precipitate herself down the staircase in _La Glu_ without a tremble.

And fifteen years before Yvette Guilbert, it was Rejane who first had the audacity to sing with a voice that was no voice, making wit and gesture more than cover the deficiency. In _Ma Cousine_, Rejane introduced on the boards of Les Varietes a bit of dancing such as one sees at the Elysee-Montmartre; she seized on and imitated the grotesque effrontery of Mademoiselle Grille-d'Egout, and her little arched foot flying upwards, brushed a kiss upon the forehead of her model; for Rejane the "grand ecart" may be fatal, perhaps, but it is neither difficult nor terrifying.

Once more delighting us with _Marquise_ in 1889; playing with such child-like grace the Candidate in _Brevet Superieur_ in 1891; immediately afterwards she took a part in _Amoureuse_ at the Odeon.

The subject is equivocal, the dialogue s.m.u.tty. Rejane extenuated nothing; on the contrary, accentuated things, and yet knew always how to win her pardon.

Now, it so happened that in 1882, after having personified the Moulin-Rouge in _Les Varietes de Paris_, Rejane was married on the stage, in _La Nuit de Noces de P. L. M._, to P. L. Moriseau. On the anniversary day, ten years later, her marriage took place in good earnest, before a real M. le Maire, and according to all legal formalities, with M. Porel, a sometime actor, an ex-director of the Odeon, then director of the Grand-Theatre, and co-director to-day of the Vaudeville.... But to return to her art.

Just as the first dressmakers of Paris measure Rejane's fine figure for the costumes of her various roles, so the best writers of the French Academy now make plays to her measure. They take the size of her temperament, the height of her talent, the breadth of her play; they consider her taste, they flatter her mood; they clothe her with the richest draperies she can covet. Their imagination, their fancy, their cleverness, are all put at her service. The leaders in this industry have hitherto been Messrs. Meilhac and Halevy, but now M.

Victorien Sardou is ruining them. _Madame Sans-Gene_ is certainly, of all the roles Rejane has played, that best suited to bring out her manifold resources. It is not merely that Rejane plays the washerwoman, become a great lady, without blemish or omission; she is Madame Sans-Gene herself, with no overloading, nothing forced, nothing caricatured. It is portraiture; history.

Many a time has Rejane appeared in cap, cotton frock, and white ap.r.o.n; many a time in robes of state, glittering with diamonds; she has worn the buskin or the sock, demeaned herself like a gutter heroine, or dropped the stately curtsey of the high-born lady. But never, except in Madame Sans-Gene, has she been able to bring all her roles into one focus, exhibit her whole wardrobe, and yet remain one and the same person, compress into one evening the whole of her life.

The seekers after strange novelties, the fanatics for the mists of the far north, the vague, the irresolute, the restless, will not easily forget the Ibsenish mask worn by Rejane in Nora of _The Doll's House_; although most of us, loving Rejane for herself, probably prefer to this vacillating creation, the firm drawing, the clear design, the strong, yet supple lines of Madame Sans-Gene.

Why has Rejane no engagement at the Comedie-Francaise? Whom does one go to applaud on this stage, called the first in France, and from which Rejane, Sarah Bernhardt, and Coquelin the elder, all are absent?

I will explain the matter in two words.

The house of Moliere, for many years now, has belonged to Moliere no more. Were Moliere to come to life again, neither he nor Rejane would go to eat their hearts out, with inaction and dulness, beneath the wings of M. Jules Claretie--although he is, of course, a very estimable gentleman. Were Rejane unmarried, Moliere to-day would enter into partnership with her, because she is in herself the entire Comedie-Francaise. I have already said she is married to M. Porel, director of the Vaudeville, where she reigns as Queen. I am quite unable to see any reason why she should soon desert such a fortunate conjugal domicile.

Notwithstanding the dryness and the rapidity of this enumeration of Rejane's roles, I hope to have given some general idea of the marvellous diversity and flexibility of her dramatic spirit and temperament; it seems to me that the most searching criticism of her various creations, would not greatly enhance the accuracy of the picture. This is why I make no attempt to describe her in some three or four parts of an entirely different character. Besides, I should have to draw on hearsay; and I desire to trust only to my own eyes, my own heart. Needless to say, I have not had the good luck to see Madame Rejane in each of her characterisations since her first appearance.

Her youthful air has never changed; but I have only had the opportunity of admiring it during the last few years. I confidently maintain, however, that she could not have been more charming in 1875 than she is to-day, with the devil in her body, heaven in her eyes.

A Girl Resting

By Sydney Adamson

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Girl Resting]

The Roman Road

By Kenneth Grahame

All the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful and friendly, having each of them pleasant qualities of its own; but this one seemed different from the others in its masterful suggestion of a serious purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart. The others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did you choose one of them; so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from this side and that. But this other was of a sterner sort, and even in its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full for the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for advent.i.tious trappings to catch the shallow-pated. When the sense of injustice or disappointment was heavy on me, and things were very black within, as on this particular day, the road of character was my choice for that solitary ramble when I turned my back for an afternoon on a world that had unaccountably declared itself against me.

"The Knight's Road" we children had named it, from a sort of feeling that, if from any quarter at all, it would be down this track we might some day see Lancelot and his peers come pacing on their great war-horses; supposing that any of the stout band still survived, in nooks and unexplored places. Grown-up people sometimes spoke of it as the "Pilgrim's Way"; but I didn't know much about pilgrims--except Walter in the Horselburg story. Him I sometimes saw, breaking with haggard eyes out of yonder copse, and calling to the pilgrims as they hurried along on their desperate march to the Holy City, where peace and pardon were awaiting them. "All roads lead to Rome," I had once heard somebody say; and I had taken the remark very seriously, of course, and puzzled over it many days. There must have been some mistake, I concluded at last; but of one road at least I intuitively felt it to be true. And my belief was clinched by something that fell from Miss Smedley during a history-lesson, about a strange road that ran right down the middle of England till it reached the coast, and then began again in France, just opposite, and so on undeviating, through city and vineyard, right from the misty Highlands to the Eternal City. Uncorroborated, any statement of Miss Smedley's usually fell on incredulous ears; but here, with the road itself in evidence, she seemed, once in a way, to have strayed into truth.

Rome! It was fascinating to think that it lay at the other end of this white ribbon that rolled itself off from my feet over the distant downs. I was not quite so uninstructed as to imagine I could reach it that afternoon; but some day, I thought, if things went on being as unpleasant as they were now--some day, when Aunt Eliza had gone on a visit--we would see.

I tried to imagine what it would be like when I got there. The Coliseum I knew, of course, from a woodcut in the history-book: so to begin with I plumped that down in the middle. The rest had to be patched up from the little grey market-town where twice a year we went to have our hair cut; hence, in the result, Vespasian's amphitheatre was approached by muddy little streets, wherein the Red Lion and the Blue Boar, with Somebody's Entire along their front, and "Commercial Room" on their windows; the doctor's house, of substantial red-brick; and the facade of the new Wesleyan chapel, which we thought very fine, were the chief architectural ornaments: while the Roman populace pottered about in smocks and corduroys, twisting the tails of Roman calves and inviting each other to beer in musical Wess.e.x. From Rome I drifted on to other cities, dimly heard of--Damascus, Brighton, (Aunt Eliza's ideal), Athens, and Glasgow, whose glories the gardener sang; but there was a certain sameness in my conception of all of them: that Wesleyan chapel would keep cropping up everywhere. It was easier to go a-building among those dream-cities where no limitations were imposed, and one was sole architect, with a free hand. Down a delectable street of cloud-built palaces I was mentally pacing, when I happened upon the Artist.

He was seated at work by the roadside, at a point whence the cool large s.p.a.ces of the downs, juniper-studded, swept grandly westwards.

His attributes proclaimed him of the artist tribe: besides, he wore knickerbockers like myself. I knew I was not to bother him with questions, nor look over his shoulder and breathe in his ear--they didn't like it, this _genus irritabile_; but there was nothing about staring in my code of instructions, the point having somehow been overlooked: so, squatting down on the gra.s.s, I devoted myself to a pa.s.sionate absorbing of every detail. At the end of five minutes there was not a b.u.t.ton on him that I could not have pa.s.sed an examination in; and the wearer himself of that home-spun suit was probably less familiar with its pattern and texture than I was. Once he looked up, nodded, half held out his tobacco pouch, mechanically as it were, then, returning it to his pocket, resumed his work, and I my mental photography.

After another five minutes or so had pa.s.sed he remarked, without looking my way: "Fine afternoon we're having: going far to-day?"

"No, I'm not going any farther than this," I replied: "I _was_ thinking of going on to Rome: but I've put it off."

"Pleasant place, Rome," he murmured: "you'll like it." It was some minutes later that he added: "But I wouldn't go just now, if I were you: too jolly hot."

"_You_ haven't been to Rome, have you?" I inquired.

"Rather," he replied briefly: "I live there."

This was too much, and my jaw dropped as I struggled to grasp the fact that I was sitting there talking to a fellow who lived in Rome. Speech was out of the question: besides I had other things to do. Ten solid minutes had I already spent in an examination of him as a mere stranger and artist; and now the whole thing had to be done over again, from the changed point of view. So I began afresh, at the crown of his soft hat, and worked down to his solid British shoes, this time investing everything with the new Roman halo; and at last I managed to get out: "But you don't really live there, do you?" never doubting the fact, but wanting to hear it repeated.

"Well," he said, good-naturedly overlooking the slight rudeness of my query, "I live there as much as I live anywhere. About half the year sometimes. I've got a sort of a shanty there. You must come and see it some day."

"But do you live anywhere else as well?" I went on, feeling the forbidden tide of questions surging up within me.

"O yes, all over the place," was his vague reply. "And I've got a diggings somewhere off Piccadilly."

"Where's that?" I inquired.

"Where's what?" said he. "Oh, Piccadilly! It's in London."