III Mademoiselle Raucourt
Several versions have at different times been current in regard to the origin of Mlle. Raucourt. According to the one which, until comparatively recent years, found almost general acceptance, her baptismal name was Françoise Marie Antoinette Clairien; she was born at Dombasle, on November 29, 1753, and was the daughter of “a poor barber overwhelmed with children,” who consigned her to the care of the village postmaster, a person called François Saucerotte, by whom she was adopted.98 That a child of that name was born at Dombasle, on the above-mentioned date, is true enough; but she was not the future tragédienne. The actress in question was born in Paris, on March 3, 1756; François Saucerotte was her own, and not her adopted, father, and she was baptized at the church of Saint-Severin, by the name of Marie Antoinette Joseph, as witness the acte de naissance, given by Auguste Jal, in his invaluable Dictionnaire de Biographie et d’Histoire:
“Wednesday, March 3, 1756.—Marie Antoinette Joseph, born to-day, daughter of François Saucerotte, bourgeois of Paris, and of Antoinette de la Porte, his wife, residing Rue de Vieille-Bouclerie. The godfather was Julien Mérel, labourer, the godmother, Marguerite Lancelin, fille majeure, both residing Rue du Bac. The godmother has declared herself unable to sign her name. (Signed) Mérel, Saucerotte.”
What occupation was followed by François Saucerotte at the time of his daughter’s birth is uncertain—bourgeois de Paris being a trifle indefinite. But, a few years later, he was seized with an ambition to become an actor and, accordingly, applied for and obtained an ordre de début at the Comédie-Française, where he appeared under the name of Raucourt. The début, however, was not a success; and the pit intimated its sense of M. Raucourt’s shortcomings in so unmistakable a manner that, after his second appearance, that gentleman prudently decided to seek fame and fortune before a less critical audience. He accordingly retired to the provinces, and from thence migrated to Spain, as a member of a French travelling company, taking his little daughter with him. The latter, who early decided to follow her father’s profession, amply atoned for any lack of ability on his part, and showed such extraordinary precocity that at the age of twelve she was already playing with success in several tragedy parts.
From Spain the Raucourts—to give them the name by which they were henceforth known—appear to have journeyed to St. Petersburg; but, towards the end of the year 1770, returned to France, where the girl obtained an engagement at Rouen, the conservatoire of the Paris theatres. Here she acted with such success, notably as Euphémie in De Belloy’s Gaston et Bayard, that the fame of her talent soon reached the capital and she received an order from the Gentlemen of the Chamber to make her début at the Comédie-Française.
Mlle. Raucourt and her father arrived in Paris in the spring of 1772, where they rented a modest apartment in the Rue Saint-Jacques, for though rich in hopes, their purses were light. Provincial players in those days gained abundant experience, but very little money.
The young actress’s first appearance at the Comédie-Française was preceded by some months of study, under the direction of Brizard, who was as excellent a teacher as he was an actor, and, delighted with his pupil’s intelligence and industry, did not rest content until he had taught her everything he knew. In the course of a few weeks, she is said to have mastered no less than nineteen important tragedy parts. From Brizard’s hands, and at his suggestion, she passed to those of Mlle. Clairon; and the celebrated tragédienne, partly out of a real liking for the girl and partly out of a desire to set up a rival to Madame Vestris, with whom her relations were at that time very strained, spared no pains to put the finishing touch to the actor’s work.99
At length, towards the end of the year, Mlle. Raucourt was deemed worthy to challenge the verdict of the Parisians, and, on December 23, 1772, she made her début, as Dido, in Le Franc de Pompignan’s famous tragedy, being then within rather more than two months of completing her seventeenth year.
And what a début it was! Never in the whole history of the theatre had so young an actress secured so brilliant, so extraordinary, a triumph. “Before the tragedy began,” says Grimm, “Brizard himself harangued the pit, demanded its indulgence for a budding talent, and assured it that his pupil, formed by the criticisms of the public, would one day be its work. The pit, which loves to the point of folly actors to address it, particularly when they call it the arbiter of tastes and of talents, warmly applauded the harangue of Achates Brizard.100 But when it beheld the most beautiful and the most noble creature in the world advance, in the character of Dido, to the edge of the stage; when it heard the sweetest, the most flexible, the most harmonious, the most impressive of voices; when it remarked a style of acting full of dignity, intelligence, and the most subtle and delicate shades, the enthusiasm of the public knew no bounds. They raised cries of admiration and applause; they involuntarily embraced one another; they were perfectly intoxicated. When the play was over, the enthusiasm spread to their houses. Those who had been present at Didon dispersed to their various quarters, arrived like men demented, spoke with transports of the débutante, communicated their enthusiasm to those who had not seen her, and at every supper-table in Paris nothing was heard save the name of Raucourt.”101
Mlle. Raucourt had risen that morning unknown, at least so far as Paris was concerned; she retired to bed a celebrity, the idol of the playgoing public. All the gazettes, all the journals, all the correspondence of the time, resounded with her praises. “Nature,” wrote the dramatic critic of the Mercure, “appears to have lavished its gifts upon her: she is beautiful, she is impressive in all her rôles, she possesses a kind of innate aptitude for tragedy, and the most triumphant means of giving expression to its energy, its sentiment, and its passion; a voice flexible, sonorous, and well-modulated; a physiognomy which depicts the affections of the heart in all their variations; a look eloquent and expressive, the art of speaking to the eyes and of investing her by-play with interest. This young actress has received everything from beneficent Nature, and study and experience have had little to do with perfecting and completing her talents.”102 Grimm predicted that she would be the “gloire immortelle” of the French stage. Another critic declared the annihilation of the British fleet alone could have aroused a deeper enthusiasm than her acting; while the Mémoires secrets hailed her as a veritable prodigy: “It is impossible to describe the sensation she has created; nothing like it has been seen within the memory of living man. She is only sixteen and a half; she is a study for a painter. She has the most noble, the most dramatic face, the most enchanting voice, a prodigious intelligence; she did not make a single false intonation. Throughout the whole of her very difficult part, she did not commit the slightest error, not even an inappropriate gesture. A little stiffness and embarrassment in the movements of her arms is the only fault people have been able to find in her.”103
Let us here remark that all this eulogy was very far from being deserved, and that the critics ere long found reason to modify their enthusiasm. Mlle. Raucourt was unquestionably a very handsome girl, and certainly possessed many of the qualities attributed to her by her admirers; but she never attained anything like the standard of excellence of Adrienne Lecouvreur, or Mlle. Dumesnil, or Mlle. Clairon. “With a little sensibility,” remarks one of her colleagues of the Comédie-Française, “she might have been the greatest of tragédiennes; but that quality, so invaluable on the stage, was wanting.” She was wanting also in versatility; her acting was, so to speak, all of a piece; she sinned in excess of force and energy, and never mastered the art of varying her intonations, what Mlle. Clairon called “the eloquence of sounds.” No one knew better than did she how to give expression to the great passions: hatred, jealousy, revenge. She was admirable in the Agrippine of Britannicus, inimitable in the Jocaste of Œdipe. But the more human, the more tender passions: pity, tenderness, love, were unknown to her. Thus her rendering of Phèdre, the greatest character of the classic répertoire, was never more than moderately successful, and compared very unfavourably with that of Mlle. Dumesnil.104
However, the public having with one accord decided to place the new actress on a pedestal and fall down before her, was, for the time being, blind to her shortcomings. Its enthusiasm increased with each performance, until it reached a veritable frenzy. On the days on which she was to appear, the box-office of the theatre was literally besieged from an early hour in the morning. Servants sent by their employers to secure places discharged their mission at the risk of their lives; several were carried away in an unconscious state, and one is said to have died, as the result of the injuries he received. Tickets for the pit, costing twenty-four sous, were sold for nine or ten francs apiece, in the court of the Tuileries, by persons who had been intrepid enough to secure them; the prices of the other places rising in the same proportion. The days of the Rue Quincampoix seemed to have returned.
When the time for the performance drew near, the scene almost baffled description. All the approaches to the Comédie-Française were so blocked with people that the actors themselves could with difficulty persuade their excited patrons to make way for them. An enormous crowd surged round the theatre, forced the doors, and struggled and fought for the best places in the pit. Those who, by good fortune or superior physical strength, emerged triumphant from the mêlée, arrived panting for breath, with their clothes nearly torn from their backs, dishevelled hair, and faces streaming with perspiration. “Do you think,” inquired an old lady, in Grimm’s hearing, one evening, “that if it had been a question of saving their country, these people would have exposed themselves like this?”
The enthusiasm of the town spread to the Court, and, on January 5, the new actress was commanded to appear at Versailles, where she seems to have created a similar sensation. Louis XV., despite his indifference to tragedy, sat out Didon to the end, sent for Mlle. Raucourt and, after warmly complimenting her, presented her to the Dauphiness, as the Queen of Carthage. He also made her a present of fifty louis, and gave orders that she should be received as a member of the Comédie without being required to give any further proofs of her talent. Madame du Barry hastened to follow his Majesty’s example, and offered the young actress the choice of three dresses for her private use, or a robe de théâtre. To which the girl replied that she would prefer the stage costume, “since, in that case, the public would profit by Madame la Comtesse’s goodness as well as herself.”105
After appearing four times in Didon, Mlle. Raucourt played the parts of Émilie, in Cinna, Monime, in Mithridate, Idamé, in Voltaire’s Orphelin de la Chine, Hermione, in Andromaque, and, finally, that of Pulchérie, in Héraclitus, in all of which rôles, Grimm tells us, “she showed the happiest dispositions and announced the greatest talents.” The furore she excited, so far from diminishing, continued to increase, and not a day passed without some persons being more or less seriously injured in the struggle at the doors of the theatre. The climax of absurdity seems to have been reached a few evenings after her visit to Versailles, when her admirers in the pit clamoured for “a benefit performance for the new actress,” and refused to allow the play to proceed until the management had announced their willingness to accede to their patrons’ wishes, provided the Gentlemen of the Chamber would accord them permission.
In the meanwhile, the triumphs of Mlle. Raucourt, the ovations of which she was every evening the recipient, had begun to arouse the alarm and jealousy of her colleagues. The two leading actresses of the company, Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder,106 had been for some time mortal enemies; but, in the presence of this newcomer, who had in a single night relegated them both to secondary places in the affections of the fickle public, they recognised the wisdom of forgetting their differences for the nonce and making common cause against the interloper. They organised a cabal; they filled the pit with their personal friends and with hired agents, instructed to interrupt the finest tirades of Mlle. Raucourt with jeers and hisses, and, behind the scenes, they did everything in their power to render their young rival’s life a burden to her. Their intrigues were fruitless, nay more, they recoiled upon their own heads. The voices of the malcontents were drowned in the bursts of applause, which increased in volume and frequency the moment it became known that an opposition was at work. So indignant were the audience that any shortcomings on the part of its idol were at once attributed to the machinations of her jealous rivals. One evening, when playing Monime, she forgot her part. “It is all the fault of those Sainvals,” said the indignant parterre. On another, a cat happened to stray on to the stage and interrupted the performance with plaintive cries. “I will wager that that cat belongs to Madame Vestris!” cried a wag in the pit; and the sally was followed by a roar of derisive laughter.107 The intriguers found themselves covered with ridicule; while Mlle. Raucourt’s position grew stronger every day.
The extraordinary popularity of Mlle. Raucourt with the playgoing public was enhanced by an unsullied reputation off the stage. “I understand,” writes Grimm, “that this charming creature, so imposing on the stage, is very simple in private life; that she has all the candour and innocence of her age, and occupies with girlish amusements the time not set apart for study. Many dissertations have been written with the view of discovering metaphysically by what power a girl so young and innocent can represent with so much power on the stage the transports and the fury of love.” He adds that so determined was her father to defend her chastity that he invariably carried two loaded pistols “in order to blow out the brains of the first who should make an attempt on the virtue of his daughter.”108
M. Raucourt indeed followed his talented daughter about like her shadow; to the theatre, on her shopping expeditions, to the private houses to which she was invited. During the performances, he mounted sentinel in the wings, to be ready to place himself at her side the moment she made her exit. People compared him to a jealous lover keeping watch over a flighty mistress.
All these precautions, however, were quite unnecessary. Mlle. Raucourt was virtuous, or rather she was virtue itself. “In vain was her heart besieged like the box-office of the theatre on the evenings on which she was to appear; in vain her adorers prostrated themselves before her. She turned a deaf ear to the most brilliant propositions; she repulsed with horror the most tempting offers.”
Soon the virtue of Mlle. Raucourt became as celebrated as her talent; it was the talk of the town; the memoirs and correspondence of the time are full of it. “The virtue of the new actress still keeps up.” “The virtue of the new actress resists the numerous assaults to which it is subjected.” “The new actress has begun to give petits soupers, which, it is hoped, may lead to what she has hitherto escaped.” And so forth.
It cannot be said that the young woman lacked encouragement to persevere in a course which, for an actress in those days, was as laudable as it was novel. Every evening the theatre resounded with acclamations, which were intended to be as much a tribute to her exemplary conduct as to her beauty and talent. Devout ladies of the Court vied with one another in giving her good advice and in enriching her wardrobe; and all manner of flattering epithets were bestowed upon her. She was “Jeanne d’Arc at the Comédie-Française,” “the Wise Virgin in the midst of the foolish ones,” “Diana with the features of Venus.”
Nor was material encouragement wanting, as the following anecdote will show:
“January 20, 1773.—Mlle. Raucourt continues to create the greatest sensation. It is reported that the other day a man entered her dressing-room, who informed her that she could judge from his age and his appearance that he was not prompted by any unlawful motive, but that he was guided solely by a profound sentiment of admiration for her talent; that he entreated her not to be offended with one who, in his enthusiasm, desired to give her proofs of his esteem by a little tribute which he would lay upon her toilette-table; and forthwith deposited there two rouleaux of one hundred louis each.” Mlle. Raucourt, the chronicler adds, graciously replied that it was impossible for her to refuse a gift offered in such terms, and the gentleman departed, without making himself known.109
A few days later, the lady received an anonymous offer of 12,000 francs a year, “for so long as she remained chaste.” The writer went on to say that if she decided not to do so, and would grant him the preference, the pension should be doubled. The Nouvelles à la main, which reports this incident, informs its readers that it is not yet known which offer Mlle. Raucourt had decided to accept; but since the anonymous “benefactor” was commonly understood to be none other than a Prince of the Blood, the Duc de Bourbon to wit, it would be scarcely reasonable to expect her to continue inflexible.
The young actress, nevertheless, would accept nothing from the duke, and her refusal placed the comble upon her fame. Her enemies declared that she must be “not a woman at all, but a monster”; her idolators could find no words in which to express their admiration.
Voltaire was the first to besmirch the spotless reputation of Mlle. Raucourt. It is said that so much fuss about the virtue of an actress irritated him, and that he was annoyed because the girl’s successes in the classic répertoire had caused the production of his Lois de Minos, from which he expected great things, to be indefinitely postponed. As, however, Voltaire, with all his faults, was incapable of deliberately slandering a woman, it is probable that he acted in good faith, prompted by a desire to unmask a hypocrite. Circumstance sometimes obliged the Patriarch to play the hypocrite himself; but he hated hypocrisy in others; and the news that a young débutante, solely on account of an undeserved reputation for virtue, was being exalted above his beloved Adrienne Lecouvreur and his favourite interpreter, Mlle. Clairon, may well have filled him with righteous indignation.
However that may be, he wrote to his friend, the Maréchal de Richelieu, that he was informed, on excellent authority, that, while in Spain, the supposed immaculate Raucourt had been the mistress of a gentleman from Geneva, who had been travelling in that country.
As ill-luck would have it, when the letter arrived, Mlle. Raucourt was dining at Richelieu’s house, chaperoned, it is hardly necessary to observe, by her vigilant father; young ladies who valued their reputations did not go unprotected to visit that evergreen sinner. D’Alembert, the Princesse de Beauvau, and Mlle. Clairon’s sometime adorer, the Marquis de Ximenès, were also present. As every one was anxious to know what the great man had to say, Richelieu, without opening the letter, handed it to Ximenès, with a request that he would read it to the company. The marquis complied, and proceeded until he had uttered the fatal sentence, when he stopped abruptly and began mumbling apologies. Terrible was the commotion which ensued. Mlle. Raucourt promptly swooned away; her father drew his sword, swearing that he would proceed to Ferney and run the Patriarch through the body; the Princesse de Beauvau called the maladroit marquis a fool; while wicked old Richelieu, we may presume, looked on choking with suppressed mirth.
On the morrow, the story was all over Paris. The first feeling was one of incredulity—people are always slow to believe that idols of their own creation have feet of clay—and both Court and town took the side of the outraged actress, and declared that she had been grossly calumniated. D’Alembert reported the scene at the marshal’s house, and the feeling which his accusation had aroused, to Voltaire, who, perhaps alarmed for the future reception of his tragedies, hastened to pour the balm of his flattery upon the wound which he had inflicted: “I am the aged Æson, and you the enchantress Medea.” “I have scarcely left to me eyes to see, a soul to admire, a hand to write to you.” And then he breaks forth into verse:
“Raucourt, tes talents enchanteurs
Chaque jour te font des conquêtes,
Tu fais soupirer tous les cœurs,
Tu fais tourner toutes les têtes.
..........
L’art d’attendrir et de charmer
A paré ta brillante aurore,
Mais ton cœur est fait pour aimer,
Et ce cœur ne dit rien encore.”
But the mischief was done: no amount of epistles or madrigals could repair it. Gradually people began to think that there might have been more truth in the story about the Genevese lover than they had at first supposed; Voltaire, they reflected, lived close to Geneva, and was probably well informed. Mlle. Raucourt’s many adorers took courage; they redoubled their attentions; they refused any longer to believe her indignant protestations. Nothing, as the actor Fleury observes, is more dangerous to virtue than such incredulity, nothing more disheartening than to make sacrifices in which the world does not believe. Whether Voltaire’s accusation was true or not, certain it is that Mlle. Raucourt ere long came to the conclusion that she had made sacrifices enough, and one fine day the town “learned with stupefaction” that at Compiègne, where the troupe of the Comédie-Française was giving a series of performances before the Court, the impregnable virtue of its idol had at length succumbed.
It was at first reported that the fortress had surrendered to no less a person than the King himself. “No one expected this début,” writes a Parisian staying at Compiègne, “which is not likely to meet with the success of Didon. But she has an excuse. What woman can resist her King?”
Soon, however, this rumour was contradicted. It was not his Most Christian Majesty, but his Prime Minister, the Duc d’Aiguillon, who had triumphed over the resistance of the lady. A more unfortunate choice for an actress who wished to retain her popularity with the Parisians could not have been made. Next to the Chancellor, Maupeou, and the Comptroller-General, the Abbé Terrai, d’Aiguillon was the best-hated man in France.
Mlle. Raucourt’s intimacy with the Minister lasted but a very short time; it was merely a galanterie. But, in March 1774, we learn that she is living openly under the protection of the Marquis de Bièvre, a young officer of Musketeers, with some literary pretensions,110 who had paid her debts, amounting, it was said, to 40,000 livres, made a settlement upon her, and allowed her a handsome sum per month, for current expenses.
The once modest and retiring young actress, as if resolved to atone for the strict decorum she had formerly imposed upon herself, now lived a life of the utmost luxury and extravagance. She had ten or twelve horses in her stables, rented two or three houses, and kept fifteen servants, while her toilettes were the envy and despair of all feminine Paris. On Good Friday, she drove to the Abbey of Longchamps, in the train of Mlle. Duthé and Mlle. Cléophile, the inamorata of the Spanish Ambassador, two of the most extravagant courtesans of the time, “in a pompous equipage drawn by four horses.” “The carriage was of an apple-green colour, encrusted with different coloured stones, the mountings of the harness were of silver, and the reins of crimson silk.” The chronicler adds that it is common belief that M. de Bièvre is not the only person who pays for these luxuries.
Soon M. de Bièvre was discarded and, “after some excursions into the Court and financial circles,” Mlle. Raucourt accepted the protection of another marquis, de Villette, the dissipated husband of Voltaire’s “Belle et Bonne.” M. de Villette’s reign was even shorter than that of his predecessor in the lady’s affections, and far from a tranquil one. Not content with doing her very best to ruin him by her extravagance, his mistress tried to inveigle him into a duel with the architect Belanger, over some epigram which Sophie Arnould had made at her expense, and was highly indignant when poor Villette, who was of a peace-loving disposition, declined to humour her. After a few weeks, they quarrelled violently over money matters and parted on very bad terms, but not before the marquis had, by a letter to the gazettes, taken the whole town into his confidence in regard to the way the lady had treated him.
Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct grew worse and worse; soon she had become perfectly reckless. Women like Camargo, Clairon, Guimard, Gaussin, and Sophie Arnould had been lax enough in their morals; but, at least, they had been capable of more or less disinterested attachments, and had, moreover, generally contrived to cast a veil over their worst irregularities. Mlle. Raucourt seemed as heartless as she was indifferent to public opinion. She passed from gallantry to gallantry; she ruined foolish young men and then laughed at their folly, cynically observing that “women were the most expensive of all tastes”; she flaunted her profligacy in the face of all Paris, and contracted immense debts, which there was no possibility of her being able to discharge. “In the space of a few months,” writes Grimm, “she astonished Court and town, as much by the excess of her irregularities as she had by the rare prodigy of her innocence. She scandalised even those who were least susceptible to scandal.”
The day of reckoning was not long in arriving. Her renown as a tragédienne disappeared with her reputation for virtue; and this actress who, at the time of her début, had been vaunted as the superior of Dumesnil and Clairon, was soon to become one of the most striking examples in theatrical history of the fickleness of the mob. The public decided that it had been the dupe of an unscrupulous hypocrite and burned with righteous indignation. Soon detractors arose: they declared that the young actress had no soul, no sensibility; that her delivery was stilted and artificial; that she indulged too freely in gesticulation; that her acting lacked restraint, and that her voice—that “sweetest, most flexible, most harmonious, most enchanting of voices”—was harsh and unpleasant. They found fault with her figure: her waist was too long, her arms too thin. Finally, they even denied the beauty of her face, on the ground that it was too masculine. “It was as though a bandage had fallen from the eyes of the public.”
There can be very little doubt that Mlle. Raucourt’s acting was now distinctly inferior to what it had been at the time of her first appearance at the Comédie-Française. A dissipated life does not conduce to success in any profession, and it would appear that, so far from making any progress, she had neglected her studies to the point of forgetting much of what Brizard and Mlle. Clairon had been at such pains to teach her. Still, as we have said elsewhere, her talents had been absurdly overrated, and a reaction was bound to set in sooner or later. That it came so quickly, however, and assumed so violent a form was the result of circumstances entirely unconnected with her art.
Her reception as Hermione, in Andromaque, in March 1774, was the first sign of the coming storm. According to the Mémoires secrets, the acting all round on this occasion left a good deal to be desired; but the public, who had just learned that Mlle. Raucourt was living openly with the Marquis de Bièvre, concentrated its resentment upon her, and she was loudly hissed.
The hostile demonstrations grew more frequent and more pronounced in proportion as the actress’s irregularities became more notorious. Nevertheless, so long as there was nothing worse than innumerable gallantries with which to reproach her, she was not without supporters in the pit, whose acclamations served to counteract, if not entirely to drown, the cries of the malcontents. Presently, however, ugly rumours began to spread—rumours which attributed to the young tragédienne the shameful vices of ancient Greece, and which, there is reason to believe, were but too well justified.111 Every one now turned against her; those who had been loudest in chanting her praises were now foremost in ridicule and abuse, and such was the general odium which she had contrived to excite that she counted herself fortunate if her appearance on the stage was received in silence. “Never,” wrote Grimm, “was idol worshipped with more infatuation; never was idol broken with more contempt.”
There was, however, a slight reaction in her favour when, on October 30, 1775, she appeared as the Statue, in the Pygmalion of Jean Jacques Rousseau. “She was truly beautiful in this pose,” says the critic of the Mémoires secrets. “It is considered the most successful part she has yet undertaken.” And La Harpe writes: “This rôle, which would be suitable for so few women, is precisely that which is most becoming to Mlle. Raucourt. The only thing required of her is to be beautiful, and in that she is a complete success. It is impossible to imagine a more seductive vision than this actress, as she poses on her pedestal at the moment when the veil which has hitherto covered her is drawn aside. Her head was that of Venus, and her leg, half-discovered, that of Diana.”112
But this was, after all, only a respite. Soon her humiliations recommenced. Her rivals, Madame Vestris and the elder Mlle. Sainval, powerless, as we have seen, to injure her, so long as she retained her popularity, had not been slow to take advantage of the change in public feeling. A cabal was formed against her at the theatre; she was systematically entrusted with parts quite unsuited to her style of acting, and sometimes called upon, at a few hours’ notice, to appear in characters which she had only partially studied. Thus, during a revival of Britannicus, Mlle. Dumesnil, happening to fall ill, the luckless young actress found herself suddenly compelled to play Agrippine, a rôle which, though in later years one of her most successful impersonations, was at this time almost unknown to her. Before the play began, d’Auberval, who by no means approved of the proceedings of the cabal, came before the curtain, informed the pit of Mlle. Dumesnil’s indisposition, and begged its indulgence for her substitute. His request was of no avail; and poor Mlle. Raucourt met with such a reception that she fainted and had to be carried off the stage.
To the intrigues of her rivals and the insults of the pit were now added the importunities and threats of her creditors. In the four years she had been a member of the Comédie-Française she had, besides spending immense sums belonging to her infatuated admirers, contrived to run into debt to the extent of something like 300,000 livres, and went in hourly fear of arrest. At length, the situation became intolerable, and she resolved to seek safety in flight. “It was intended to produce the Zuma of M. Le Fèvre,” writes Grimm, “when the compulsory disappearance of Mlle. Raucourt, who was to have played one of the principal parts, caused the rehearsals to be suddenly interrupted. Sudden as was her disappearance, it has occasioned little surprise.”
Nothing was heard of the fugitive for six weeks, during which, it was subsequently ascertained, she had been hiding in the neighbourhood of Paris, disguised as a dragoon. A good-natured farmer, who mistook her for a young officer in trouble about a duel, had given her shelter. At the end of that time she returned, to find that her name had been struck off the books of the Comédie-Française, and her place given to Mlle. Sainval the younger, who, received with enthusiasm on her début, had been subsequently altogether eclipsed by Mlle. Raucourt, and, for some time past, had been playing at Lyons.113
At first, Mlle. Raucourt took refuge in the Temple, the sanctuary of insolvent debtors, while some of the few friends still left to her negotiated with her creditors, with a view to obtaining a reprieve. Perhaps the creditors thought that, if time were given to her, the lady might contrive to secure some wealthy admirer, by whom their claims would be settled. Any way, they consented to accord her a few months’ grace, and, in the autumn, Mlle. Raucourt left the Temple and went to live with a Madame Souck, “a German woman of horribly depraved morals,” in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. Madame Souck, it transpired, had introduced Mlle. Raucourt into the house in the temporary absence of the landlord, who, on his return, found her established in a vacant suite of apartments, which she firmly declined to vacate. When he ventured to remonstrate, Madame Souck’s servants threatened him with “coups de bâton et autres violences,” and also maltreated one of his tenants, who would appear to have taken the landlord’s part. So threatening, indeed, did the attitude of the two ladies and their domestics become that the poor landlord declared, in a complaint he lodged before a commissary of police, that he dared not even sleep in his own house, “for fear of accidents.”114
Madame Souck’s finances, like those of her friend, were in a parlous state, and, in the following spring, a firm of silk-merchants of the Rue Saint-Honoré levied an execution upon her premises, and placed one Thomas Philippe Violet and another bailiff in possession. Madame Souck, however, was not a lady to submit tamely to such inconvenience, and, on March 27, we find Thomas Philippe Violet appearing before a commissary of the Châtelet to lodge a complaint and demand protection against the dame Souck, the demoiselle Raucourt, and other persons, “their accomplices, abettors, and adherents.” In this document, he declares that, on the night of the 25th to 26th inst., at two hours after midnight, the said dame Souck and the said demoiselle Raucourt, “both dressed in men’s clothes,” arrived, accompanied by the said accomplices, abettors, and adherents, and, after creating a terrible uproar and “swearing by the Holy Name of God,” proceeded with blows and kicks to force the doors, and ejected both him and his colleague into the street.115
That same day, Mlle. Raucourt was arrested, at the suit of a usurer, who had grown tired of waiting for his money, and conveyed to For l’Évêque. Fortunately for her, she contrived to obtain her release before the news of her arrest had been noised abroad, in which case she would have had any number of detainers lodged against her, and might have remained under lock and key for an indefinite time. The Prince de Ligne, who had, or had formerly had, tender relations with Madame Souck, happened to be in Paris and, at the instance of that lady, intervened on the actress’s behalf. He appears to have settled the usurer’s claim and also to have encouraged a belief that he intended to pay all Mlle. Raucourt’s debts. By this means the tragédienne obtained a fresh respite, which she employed in endeavouring to gain readmission to the Comédie-Française. In this she failed and, finding that her creditors were again on the point of taking up arms, she once more took to flight, and this time left the country, accompanied by her devoted friend, Madame Souck.
The movements of Mlle. Raucourt during the next two years are shrouded in mystery. All that is known for certain, is that she exploited North Germany, Poland, and Russia, and passed some time in Berlin and Warsaw. In July 1778, the Nouvelles à la main report that, at Hamburg, both she and Madame Souck had been arrested on a charge of swindling, and, having been whipped and branded, expelled from the city. This, however, was no doubt only malicious gossip spread about by the young actress’s enemies, determined to keep not only the Comédie-Française, but France itself closed against her; and there was probably more truth in a story from Holland, to the effect that Mlle. Raucourt had become the mistress of a wealthy Russian nobleman and had “squandered in a very short time a large fortune.”
In the meanwhile, great events were taking place in Paris. The alliance between Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder, which their common jealousy of Mlle. Raucourt had called into being, had lasted only so long as the total discomfiture of that lady had rendered necessary. Its object accomplished, it was dissolved, and the parties turned their weapons against each other. Counting upon the support of her lover, the Duc de Duras, who, in his capacity as First Gentleman of the Chamber, exercised a not altogether judicious control over the affairs of the Comédie-Française, Madame Vestris appropriated certain characters of the classic répertoire which Mlle. Sainval had hitherto regarded as her exclusive property. The latter angrily protested, and the matter was referred to the Gentlemen of the Chamber, who, at the instance of the Duc de Duras, decided in favour of Madame Vestris. This decision was followed by open war between the two actresses and their respective partisans; nothing else was talked of in the green-rooms, the cafés, and the salons of Paris, and very hard knocks were given and received.
Madame Vestris wrote to the Journal de Paris, to justify the course she had taken; Mlle. Sainval promptly replied; but the editor returned her letter, with an intimation that he had received instructions from a high quarter that no reply was to be inserted. Indignant at such injustice, the lady thereupon expanded her letter into a pamphlet, “in which M. de Duras was insulted, and the Queen even mentioned in a manner far from respectful.”116 Marie Antoinette, who, Madame Campan tells us, was accused, by implication, of leading the King by the nose, seems to have been rather amused than otherwise; but the duke was furious. The pamphlet had contained several of his private letters, and while all playgoing Paris was indignant at the partiality which these revealed, all literary Paris was making merry at the expense of an Academician who could not write his mother-tongue with even an approach to accuracy. The angry nobleman insisted that condign and exemplary punishment should be meted out to the offender, and poor Mlle. Sainval was expelled from the Comédie-Française, prohibited from performing in any provincial theatre, and exiled to Clermont, in Beauvoisis.117 This high-handed action was bitterly resented by the public. Mlle. Sainval had been far more popular than her rival, whose relations with the Duc de Duras had caused her to be regarded as a minion of the Court, and the habitués of the pit now, almost to a man, declared in her favour. Madame Vestris’s appearance on the stage was the signal for a storm of hisses; while, on the other hand, the younger sister of the disgraced actress was received with tumultuous cheering, and when, one evening, in the character of Aménaïde, in Tancrède, she pronounced the line,
“L’injustice à la fin produit l’indépendance,”
the applause absolutely shook the theatre. “Nothing was heard but cries of ‘Sainval! Sainval! les deux Sainval!’ The presence of the guard had no effect; the pit that night would have opposed a regiment.”
Alarmed by these demonstrations, the Gentlemen of the Chamber decided to mitigate the punishment inflicted upon the elder Sainval, who was, accordingly, granted permission to leave Clermont and to play in the provinces. Everywhere she was received with frantic enthusiasm. At Bordeaux, at the conclusion of the play, two cupids descended from a cloud to crown her with laurels, and the audience pelted her with flowers until the stage resembled a flower-garden.
By far the wisest course would have been to reinstate Mlle. Sainval at the Comédie-Française and thus deprive the turbulent patrons of that institution of any further excuse for demonstrations in her favour and against her rival. But, since the Gentlemen of the Chamber were of opinion that this would be too great a concession to popular clamour, it was decided to endeavour to direct public attention from Mlle. Sainval and her wrongs by recalling Mlle. Raucourt.
Madame Vestris herself seems to have been the first to suggest this step. She was, of course, well aware that if, by any chance, Mlle. Raucourt were to recover the place she had once held in the affections of the public, she herself would be completely overshadowed. But, since her own eclipse would undoubtedly be shared by Mlle. Sainval, whom she now hated far more than she ever had the younger actress, she was prepared to regard that eventuality with complacency.
Mlle. Raucourt, then at Berlin, was accordingly invited to return, and accepted the invitation readily enough, though it may be doubted whether she would have done so at all, could she have foreseen the kind of reception which awaited her. Her creditors, acting doubtless on a hint from an influential quarter, showed no disposition to molest her; but the scandals with which her name had been associated had not been forgotten. Every door was closed to her; no one could be persuaded to have any dealings with this “most compromising of women.”
Friendless and without resources, she knew not where to go, when the good-natured Sophie Arnould offered her hospitality. It was a courageous act on the ex-singer’s part, since her own and Mlle. Raucourt’s enemies did not hesitate to attribute it to the most shameful motives. The same abominable charge which had been brought against the tragédienne was now openly levelled at her.
Sophie, however, cared very little what people might say about her. Not content with extending her hospitality to the proscribed actress, she did everything in her power to interest her friends in favour of her protégée. To please his mistress, the Prince d’Hénin became one of Mlle. Raucourt’s warmest partisans, and used all his not inconsiderable influence to break down the social quarantine to which she was subjected.
Mlle. Raucourt’s reinstatement at the Comédie-Française was more easily proposed than accomplished. The majority of her former colleagues opposed it most strenuously, on the ground that their statutes prohibited the readmission of a player who had been excluded by a vote of the sociétaires, and that the misconduct of the actress in question had injured the company in the estimation of the public. The Gentlemen of the Chamber, however, turned a deaf ear to their remonstrances. Marie Antoinette, a great admirer of Mlle. Raucourt’s acting, and ever ready to take the part of any of her sex whom she considered to have been hardly treated, espoused her cause, and even talked of paying her debts, and on September 11, 1779, the Journal de Paris contained the following announcement:
“Comédie-Française.—We understand that the demoiselle Raucourt, absent from this theatre for three years, will reappear there this evening, in the rôle of Dido.”
Dido, it will be remembered, was the part in which the actress had made her sensational début, seven years before; and the recollection of the triumph she had secured on that occasion had doubtless influenced her choice of this rôle. Now, as then, the doors of the theatre were besieged, and the salle crowded to its utmost capacity. But alas! how different were the feelings which animated the expectant audience! Mlle. Raucourt had been thrust upon the town in defiance of feelings which ought to have been respected; night after night the pit had clamoured for Mlle. Sainval, and, in her stead, it had been given—Raucourt! And to make matters worse, it was an open secret that the Court intended to pay her debts “out of the people’s money.”
Long before the curtain rose, angry murmurs heralded the coming storm, and the moment Dido appeared, it burst in all its fury. The uproar was indescribable. Hisses, groans, and cat-calls came from all parts of the pit. The grossest epithets, the most shocking abuse, were showered upon the unfortunate actress. “It was impossible,” says one account, “to hear a single word of her part. The other actors were allowed to speak, but so soon as her turn arrived, the clamour began again. It is suspected that the partisans of the demoiselles Sainval are no strangers to this fermentation.”
Even more violent was the hostility displayed when, two nights later, Mlle. Raucourt appeared as Phèdre. All who are familiar with Racine’s famous tragedy know that the part of the hapless heroine contains many lines which may be readily applied to her impersonator by a hostile audience, and, in electing to play it, Mlle. Raucourt furnished her enemies with weapons of which they did not fail to make the very fullest use. The well-known lines once addressed by Adrienne Lecouvreur to her rival and would-be assassin, the Duchesse de Bouillion:
“Je sais mes perfidies,
Œnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies,
Qui, goûtant dans la crime une tranquille paix,
Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais,”
were greeted with cries of dissent and uproarious laughter. The words,
“De l’austère pudeur les bornes sont passées...”
were answered with shouts of “C’est vrai! c’est vrai! il y a longtemps!” While when she came to the passage in which Phèdre, in an agony of remorse, exclaims,
“Et moi, triste rebut de la nature entière...”
the ironical cheering, La Harpe tells us, seemed as if it would never cease. “Neither her beauty nor her sex,” writes Grimm, “could protect her any longer, and never did the public go so far in forgetfulness of its own dignity.”
For these disgraceful scenes, the Duc de Duras seems to have been, in no small measure, responsible. In his anxiety to secure a hearing for Mlle. Raucourt, this well-meaning but maladroit nobleman had foolishly endeavoured to overawe the opposition by trebling the guard and “filling the pit with policemen,” who pounced upon and conducted to prison the most prominent of the disturbers. Such tactics naturally had the effect of exasperating the malcontents to the last degree and of alienating many whose sympathies had hitherto lain with the persecuted actress. “While the Comte d’Estaing is fighting the English, to make them recognise the independence of America,” it was bitterly said, “the Duc de Duras imprisons Frenchmen for refusing to applaud Raucourt!”
Nevertheless, fair-minded persons appear to have been practically unanimous in condemning the conduct of the pit. “Nothing,” writes La Harpe, “can prove more clearly that the spirit of the parterre is changed. The excesses in which it indulges, unknown until now, show how badly composed it is. Never would an assembly of respectable persons permit itself to say to a woman, whatever she might be, that she was ‘le rebut de la nature entière.’ One can decline to listen to her, but it is shocking and abominable to go to such lengths as this.” He adds that, in his opinion, the disturbance was organised by the elder Mlle. Sainval, “who knows better than any one how to set to work the crowd of venal ruffians who compose to-day a third of the parterre, and sometimes make themselves its masters”; and declares that so disgusted is he with the cabals and acrimonious quarrels which divide the theatrical and literary worlds, that he has determined to abandon dramatic criticism altogether, and has, accordingly, resigned his post on the Mercure.118
In the face of such bitter hostility as she was called upon to encounter, Mlle. Raucourt might well have been pardoned if she had withdrawn a second time from the stage. That she declined to bow to the storm proves her to have possessed courage and pertinacity of an unusually high order. Indeed, her firmness on the night of Phèdre, when, at each hostile manifestation, she had slowly and deliberately repeated the line which had evoked it, had undoubtedly contributed to exasperate the baser kind of her persecutors. A little reflection, however, sufficed to assure her that, if she wished to regain the indulgence of the public, she must have recourse to other methods, and, accordingly, she addressed to the Journal de Paris the following letter:
“September 13, 1776.
“Unusual circumstances having placed me in the position of occupying at the Comédie a different emploi from the one I intended for myself, permit me, through the medium of your journal, to inform the public that I have no other ambition than to fill it to the best of my ability; that I do not purpose playing parts of any other kind, except when it is absolutely indispensable for the service of the Comédie; that, far from desiring to deprive my comrades of anything, my only wish is to understudy them; too happy if, by my zeal, my exactitude, and my efforts, I succeed in convincing the public of my respect and of my anxiety to please them.
“I have the honour to be, &c.,
“De Raucour.”
This diplomatic epistle seems to have been not without its effect, and, though her reception at the Comédie-Française still left much to be desired, no attempt was made to repeat the violent scenes which had marked her two first performances. On the other hand, her creditors, urged on by her personal enemies, had again taken up arms and left her not a moment’s peace. In order to avoid imprisonment, she was once more on the point of expatriating herself, when a royal edict appeared which “rendered free from all seizures, confiscations, or stoppages the wages and appointments of the players and other persons attached to the theatre, up to the amount of two-thirds, apart from the necessary expenditure for board and lodging.”
It was common belief that this edict had been inspired by the Queen, who had seen in it an economical method of settling the debts of her favourite actress, and its appearance, while saving Mlle. Raucourt from the necessity of choosing between imprisonment and flight, exposed her to a fresh storm of invective. A score of pamphlets and leaflets, some in prose, some in verse, were launched against her, in which she and her supporters, the Duc de Duras, the Prince d’Hénin, Sophie Arnould, Madame Vestris, and Brizard, were assailed in the most violent manner. A few passages from one of these effusions, entitled La Vision du prophète Daniel, will convey a good idea of the methods employed against unpopular personages in the eighteenth century:
The Old Satrap [the Duc de Duras], having banished Mlle. Sainval, “to punish her for having more talents than his concubine [Madame Vestris],” announces his intention of recalling the Harlot of Babylon [Mlle. Raucourt], “whom all nations have rejected,” and forcing the people whom he governs to receive her.
“And one heard a cry: ‘Way, way for the Prince des Nains [the Prince d’Hénin]!’
“And I looked, expecting to behold at the head of a troop of pigmies an abortion.
“And I saw a tall, thin man, with a foolish eye and a silly smile, affecting an air of importance; and what was my surprise to see, through his transparent body, that, in place of blood, a black and poisonous mud circulated in his veins...!”
“And his corrupt heart was falling into rottenness. And one saw there none of those feelings which characterise the nobility; cowardice, poltroonery, debauchery, infamy, deceit, avarice, and duplicity, shared what remained of this gangrened heart.”
“And he made his way through the crowd, leading by the hand a woman, whom I took for a man, from her impudent demeanour, her loud voice, and her gigantic stature [Mlle. Raucourt].
“She cast around her lascivious glances.... And a voice cried: ‘Behold her; the woman who has gone beyond all the abominations wherewith the nations of the earth are soiled.
“‘And she is about to renew here the scenes of debauchery and extravagance which she has given elsewhere.’”119
At the beginning of the following year, the Nouvelles à la main announce that Mlle. Raucourt has repaid the hospitality and protection received from Sophie Arnould by “an act of frightful ingratitude, unhappily but too common among women,” namely, by stealing away from her the Prince d’Hénin, “in order to rivet her fetters upon him.” The writer adds that Sophie is furious, and that the guilty pair, fearful of the consequences of their treachery, have fled to Bagatelle and taken refuge with the Comte d’Artois, who is credited with a desire to participate in the good fortune of the Prince d’Hénin.
The report that the prince had taken Mlle. Raucourt under his protection, in the technical sense of the term, was true; but, so far from having sought refuge with the Comte d’Artois, at Bagatelle, he appears to have rented the château from its royal owner. Sophie Arnould, if she cherished any animosity against the offenders—which is open to question, the probability being that she and the prince were by this time heartily tired of one another—would have been far more likely to revenge herself by some biting bon mot than by personal injury.
Paris and Versailles, we are told, laughed over this adventure till its sides ached, for a whole week. Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct was considered despicable, but there was little pity for Sophie, who, one writer declares, was justly punished “for having welcomed a woman who was the opprobrium of her sex.”
It is to be hoped that the Prince d’Hénin found in Mlle. Raucourt’s society sufficient compensation for being dragged through the same gutters as the tragédienne by the scribes who delighted to assail her, and for the fact that it was now his privilege to deal with the horde of creditors who were “perpetually howling at her skirts.” To do him justice, meanness was not one of his failings; but adversity had not taught the lady wisdom, at least so far as financial matters were concerned, and no sooner did her unfortunate lover discharge one debt than she appears to have straightway contracted another. Under date September 16, 1781, we read in the Mémoires secrets:
“Queen Melpomene is more than ever ruined by debt. The Prince d’Hénin, to aid her to escape the pursuits of her creditors, has taken over all the furniture and effects of this actress. But he is summoned to declare upon oath, before the Civil Lieutenant of Paris, whether his ostensible ownership is not simulated.”
It would be interesting to know what course the prince adopted under these somewhat embarrassing circumstances; but, unfortunately, the chroniclers do not tell us.
In the meanwhile, Mlle. Raucourt was seeking consolation for her many troubles in the cultivation of the Muses. She was at work upon “a drama in three acts and in prose,” entitled Henriette, adapted, it would appear, from a play which she had seen at Warsaw, some years before. The plot was briefly as follows:
A Prussian colonel, Stelim by name, wounded in a duel, is carried to the house of Henriette’s father and nursed by the lady, who falls deeply in love with her patient. The colonel recovers and returns to his duty, all unconscious of the passion which he has inspired. The lovelorn Henriette resolves to follow him, runs away from home, dressed as a man, and enlists in her colonel’s regiment. One day, she surprises her beloved in the act of kissing the hand of a strange lady, upon which, unaware that the latter is only his sister, she is so overcome by jealousy and mortification that she deserts. She is pursued, recaptured, tried by court-martial, and condemned to be shot; but, at the last moment, her secret is discovered, and all ends happily.
Henriette did not reach the stage of the Comédie-Française without encountering many difficulties. In the Warsaw play, Frederick the Great and his army had been treated with very scant respect; and the Prussian Ambassador now demanded that Mlle. Raucourt’s adaptation should be very strictly scrutinised, and that “all passages calculated to wound the King his master eliminated.” As there seem to have been a good many of these, it was feared, at first, that the play would be mutilated beyond recognition, even if it were not prohibited altogether. But the Prince d’Hénin left no stone unturned to rescue his mistress’s work from the claws of the censor, and, after many conferences and much correspondence, it was finally decided to spare those passages “in which the impertinence towards the King of Prussia was more remarkable for its intention than for its effect.”
The play was produced on March 1, 1782, before a densely crowded house, which the authoress, by a very adroit manœuvre, had taken care to predispose in her favour. It was then the custom on first nights to reserve a large number of the parterre tickets for distribution among the author’s friends, who, of course, applauded enthusiastically, no matter how coldly the production might be received by the general public. But Mlle. Raucourt refused to avail herself of this privilege, declaring that “if her drama were a good one, it would succeed on its own merits”; a decision which, we are told, was received with universal applause.120
On the whole, the verdict of the public was favourable. “The first act,” say the Mémoires secrets, “was thought cold, but the second excited long, frequent, and sincere applause. The third act was also applauded, though with less enthusiasm.”
The critics were, however, anything but kind. Grimm describes the subject as “monstrous”; La Harpe stigmatises the work as “an absurd and foolish rhapsody,” a striking proof of “the decadence of talents and the corruption of taste”;121 while the Mercure, after declaring that the play possesses many faults and advising Mlle. Raucourt “to treat of subjects with a truer and worthier moral end,” declines to say any more. “The author is a woman, and we do not wish to play with her the part of Diomed.”122
But whatever opinions they may have held in regard to the merits of the work itself, every one agreed that Mlle. Raucourt was charming in the uniform of a Prussian soldier; and La Harpe states that people went two or three times solely to see her masquerading as a man.
Her success in Henriette encouraged Mlle. Raucourt to undertake a real masculine part, and, two years later (March 1784), she secured a genuine triumph, as a captain of dragoons, in a play by Rochon de Chabannes, called Le Jaloux. The ease with which she wore the uniform appears to have been particularly admired, a circumstance which is not surprising when we remember that, when in hiding, in the summer of 1776, she had worn a very similar dress for more than six weeks.
“What an actor that Raucourt is!” remarked the younger Sainval, who enjoyed a not undeserved reputation as a wit. “And what a pity she persists in wishing to play women’s parts!”
Little by little the hostility of which Mlle. Raucourt had so long been the object subsided. Slowly but surely the tragédienne recovered the ground she had lost, until, in 1786, we find the Mémoires secrets declaring that “she will soon take rank with the greatest actresses,” and that “the most critical amateurs were fain to confess that she had made prodigious improvement.”
This happy result seems to have been due partly to a genuine love of her art, which led her to devote far more time to serious study than had been the case in earlier years, and partly to the exercise of a good deal of tact—willingness to understudy her former rivals, to condescend to the parts of nurse and confidante, and, in short, to do almost anything that was required of her—which had disarmed the jealousy of her colleagues and rendered her an almost popular member of the troupe. It was certainly not attributable to any change in her morals, for if scandal were no longer busy with her name, it was from no lack of material. In the years immediately preceding the Revolution, however, people had more important matters to discuss than the amours of actresses.
The Revolution very nearly proved fatal to Mlle. Raucourt. The questions which were agitating the public mind were very far from leaving the national theatre undisturbed. “Even our little green-room,” writes Fleury, “was not exempt from the invasion of the moment. Melpomene and Thalia had the mortification to see their sacred altars profaned by the party pamphlets of the day, their venerated sanctuary converted into a political club.” The house of Molière, in fact, was divided against itself. Mlle. Raucourt, Molé, Fleury, and Louise Contat had tasted too many of the sweets of Court favour not to deplore deeply the fall of the old régime; while, on the other hand, Talma, Madame Vestris, Dugazon, and Mlle. Deschamps espoused the popular side with the fervour of rooted conviction. Of the remainder, the majority were either Royalists or moderate constitutionalists.123
This divergence of political opinion soon led to angry recriminations and thence to an open rupture, and, in the spring of 1791, Talma and his friends, finding their position growing intolerable, withdrew from the company, to found, at the Palais-Royal, the Théâtre-Français de la Rue de Richelieu, which, in the following year, became the Théâtre de la République.
Having purged itself of its Republican members, the Comédie threw itself boldly into the political strife, and, throughout the terrible winter of 1792-93, allowed no opportunity to slip of advocating the restoration of order and security. On January 3, 1793, during the King’s trial, it produced a play, by Jean Laya, entitled Les Amis des Lois, in which Robespierre (under the name of Nomophage), Marat, and other Montagnards were held up to ridicule and odium. How such a play contrived to escape the vigilance of the Republican censors is not easy to understand, since so thinly veiled were the allusions that almost every passage was punctuated by the cheers and hooting of an excited audience. It was, of course, speedily suppressed, and from that moment the doings of the Comédie were closely watched by the sanguinary faction now rising to supremacy in the State, which only awaited an opportunity of closing the theatre and arraigning the whole company before the Revolutionary Court.
An adaptation of “Pamela,” by François de Neufchâteau, afterwards Minister of the Interior, which contained not a little material calculated to awaken regret for the proscribed nobility, provided the Jacobins with the pretext they desired, and, on September 3, the whole of the players, with the exception of Molé, who had contrived to effect his escape, and Des Essarts, who was taking the waters at Baréges, were arrested and conveyed to the Madelonettes, in the Quartier Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and Sainte-Pélagie, in the Rue de la Clef; the men being assigned to the former prison and the women to the latter.
That the players, or at any rate those of them who held the most pronounced counter-revolutionary opinions, were doomed, was the opinion of even their most sanguine friends. The Revolutionary Court, which had been created in the previous March, to judge without appeal conspirators against the State, still retained all the forms of justice—it was not until June 1794 that the hearing of counsel and calling of witnesses were dispensed with—but its proceedings were, in the great majority of cases, a hollow farce. The judges were appointed from the ranks of the most ruthless Terrorists; the jurymen, nominated by the Convention, were all “gens d’expédition”; while, as to give evidence on behalf of an accused person was to incur the danger of sharing his fate, witnesses for the defence could with difficulty be induced to come forward.
For some cause which is not quite certain, but was probably, as Fleury suggests, the fear of disseminating the small-pox, at that time prevailing in the Madelonettes, the case of the imprisoned players was not dealt with for more than nine months. At length, on Messidor 8, the Committee of Public Safety deliberated upon their fate; and Collot d’Herbois sent to Fouquier-Tinville the accusatory documents against Dazincourt, Fleury, Mlles. Raucourt, Louise and Émilie Contat, and Lange, who were considered the most culpable, accompanied by the following letter:
“Herewith I send you the documents relating to the actors of the Comédie-Française. In common with all patriots, you know how counter-revolutionary their conduct has been. You will bring them before the Court on Messidor 13. With regard to the others, there are some among them who may be punished with banishment. But we will see what can be done with them after the others have been tried.”
And on the margin of each of the six dossiers, Collot d’Herbois, in his own hand, had traced a capital G in red ink. For the docile Fouquier-Tinville that capital G signified: “Guillotinez!”
The trial was fixed for Messidor 13, and, on the following day, it was intended that Mlle. Raucourt and her five colleagues should make their final bow to the public, on the Place de la Révolution.
However, neither trial nor execution ever took place, for, on the morning of the 13th, it was found that the six dossiers had mysteriously disappeared, and all efforts to recover them proved fruitless.
Let us see what had become of them.
In conformity with the usual practice, the papers had been sent by Fouquier-Tinville to the Bureau des Pièces Accusatives at the dismantled Tuileries. Now, in this department there was a clerk named Charles de Labussière, who had accepted the post as a means of securing his own safety, and who at heart was a devoted Royalist. Through Labussière’s hands passed all the documents relating to prisoners awaiting trial and, whenever he could do so with but little fear of discovery, he did not hesitate to destroy them. At first, he observed great caution and confined himself to abstracting a few pages from the portfolios; but, so soon as he became aware of the reckless disorder which characterised the proceedings of the fatal committee, he enlarged the scope of his operations and is said to have saved some hundreds from the guillotine, among whom was no less a personage than Joséphine de Beauharnais, whom Fate subsequently raised to the imperial throne of France. The method he adopted was an ingenious one. As it was then summer and exceedingly hot weather, and the lighting of a fire might have attracted attention, instead of burning the papers, it was his practice to soak them in water, until the bulky parchments had become balls of soft paste, which could be stowed away in his pockets, and to await a favourable opportunity of throwing them into the Seine.
On the night of Messidor 9, Labussière abstracted the papers relating to the imprisoned actors and carried them off. He had, however, a very narrow escape of detection. On his way to the river, his movements aroused the suspicion of a patrol, by whom he was arrested; and he would undoubtedly have been searched and the papers discovered, but for the timely arrival of an official of the Committee of Public Safety, who recognised him and ordered his release.124
Thus the players were saved, for before a new brief could be prepared, came “that happiest and most genial of revolutions, the Revolution of the 9th Thermidor,” which brought the Terror to a close and freedom to so many hundreds of prisoners.
Three weeks later, the members of the Comédie-Française reappeared at their theatre in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, now called the Théâtre de l’Égalité. La Métromanie and Les Fausses Confidences composed the programme, and the players, notwithstanding the reactionary views they were known to hold, had a great reception from an immense audience, though, remarked Louise Contat sarcastically, nothing like so large a one as there would have been to see them guillotined.
The players, however, did not remain many months in their old home. The Faubourg Saint-Germain, so long the centre of rank and wealth, was being abandoned in favour of more central spots, while, as a result of the existing free trade in theatrical matters, there were now several playhouses within a narrow radius of the Palais-Royal, whose advantage of situation rendered them formidable competitors. In January 1795, accordingly, the members of the Comédie-Française, not, as may be supposed, without many regrets, migrated to the Théâtre Feydeau, a house which had been erected, some years before, for a company of Italian farceurs, and was now under the control of a speculative gentleman named Sageret.
To be the paid servant of Sageret, who does not appear to have borne the best of reputations, seemed to Mlle. Raucourt a kind of degradation—the arts and humanity, she declared, cried out against the subjection under which they had been led to place themselves; and, in the following December, that lady withdrew from the company, followed by Larive, Mlle. Joly, Saint-Prix, and several others, and took possession of a theatre in the Rue de Louvois, intending apparently to make it the central point of a reunion of the entire company.
The flower of the Comédie-Française was now divided between three playhouses: the Théâtre de la République, the Théâtre Feydeau, and the Théâtre de Louvois. Of these the latter, which was inaugurated on Nivôse 5, Year v. (December 25, 1796), with Iphigénie and a little play by Laya, entitled Les Deux Sœurs, was for a time the most successful; Mlle. Raucourt securing a great personal triumph in another masculine part—that of the hero in Legouvé’s Laurence. Laurence, it may be explained, was the young gentleman who became enamoured of Ninon de Lenclos without knowing that he was her son.
The Directory, however, like the despotism which it had succeeded, kept a jealous eye on the theatres, and was in the habit of closing them, temporarily or altogether, upon the slightest provocation; and an incident which took place during the performance of Les Trois Frères rivaux ruined all the hopes of Mlle. Raucourt. One of the characters, addressing his valet-de-chambre, by name Merlin, exclaims:
“Monsieur Merlin, you are a scoundrel! Monsieur Merlin, you will end by being hanged!”
Now Merlin de Douai, the Minister of Justice, was just then in very bad odour with the public; and the audience applied the speech to him and cheered vociferously for several minutes.
A few days later (September 9, 1797), at the moment when the curtain was about to rise on a performance of the Barbier de Seville, an order arrived forbidding all further representations at the Théâtre de Louvois.
Mlle. Raucourt made every effort to obtain a revocation of the order, but to no purpose. However, she was not long without a theatre, as, at the beginning of the following year, she contrived to secure possession of the former seat of the Comédie-Française, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, henceforth to be known as the Odéon, which she opened with a performance of Phèdre. Shortly afterwards, the Théâtre de la République shared the fate of the Théâtre de Louvois, the political opinions of Talma and his associates being too advanced to please the Government. The enterprising Sageret thereupon induced the homeless players to join forces with their former colleagues at the Théâtre Feydeau, and took over the management of the Odéon from Mlle. Raucourt, his intention being that the actors under his command should appear at either theatre in turn. But Sageret became bankrupt and disappeared; the Odéon was completely destroyed by a fire, the cause of which was never discovered, and Paris found itself without a temple of the legitimate drama.
This unfortunate condition of affairs, however, lasted but a short while. François de Neufchâteau, the author of the Paméla which had proved so fatal, was now Minister of the Interior and honestly desirous of doing everything in his power to promote the interests of the drama. Through his influence, in May 1799, a wise measure of the Consular Government reunited in a single society the scattered members of the old Comédie-Française, and placed at its disposal the salle of the Palais-Royal (formerly the Théâtre de la République), which it has not ceased to occupy to this day.
Mlle. Raucourt, to her honour be it said, never made any secret of her monarchical sympathies. During the Directory, she was a bright and shining light of what was known as “Le petit Coblentz,” an association of Royalists which held its meetings at a house in the Boulevard des Italiens and strove, by force of jests, sarcasms, and epigrams, to upset the Republic. She wore on her spencer eighteen buttons, “a delicate allusion to Louis XVIII., the legitimate sovereign.” And when she fanned herself, it was with one of those famous weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette.
Nevertheless, Mlle. Raucourt had, personally, but little cause to complain of the Directory. Her antagonism to the Government did not extend to its agents, through the good offices of some of whom she contrived to make a considerable fortune, by judicious speculation in assignats, army contracts, and confiscated estates. She now discharged her debts, and bought “a palace” in the Rue Royale, with a spacious garden attached, where she gave sumptuous fêtes, to which all fashionable Paris was invited. Nothing so delightful as her boudoir, we are assured, had ever been seen before; the fittings were of green and gold, and the chimney-piece of blue marble.
After the establishment of the Empire, Napoleon, who was a great admirer of Mlle. Raucourt’s acting, accorded her a handsome pension and engaged her to organise a troupe of French players, to travel through Italy and give performances in the principal towns, with the idea of extending French influence in that country. In Italy, Mlle. Raucourt remained several years, paying, however, occasional visits to Paris, when she appeared at the Comédie-Française, generally in the parts of mothers or queens, and always with great success. Madame Vigée Lebrun tells us that she remained to the last a great tragédienne, but that, with advancing years, her voice became so harsh that, when not looking at her, people might have imagined themselves listening to a man.125
Mlle. Raucourt retired from the stage in 1814, her farewell appearance at the Comédie-Française being as Catherine de Medicis, in the États de Blois of Raynouard. On January 15 of the following year, she died, after a short illness, “thanking God that she had been permitted to salute the return of her legitimate King.”
The funeral, which took place two days later, was the occasion of a painful scandal. From the earliest days of the Restoration, the clergy, relying on the support of the new Government, had shown themselves as intolerant towards the actor as had those of the old régime. Mlle. Raucourt’s house was in the Rue du Helder, that is to say, in the parish of Saint-Roch, and it was in that church that the service should have been held. The curé, however, flatly refused to celebrate it. “Actors,” said he, “are excommunicated, and the time has come to revert to the rigorous execution of the canons of the Church.” It was in vain that he was reminded of the never-failing charity of the deceased woman towards the poor of his parish, and the generous gift which he himself had received each year for the needs of his church. He remained deaf to all representations and entrenched himself behind the orders of the Archbishop of Paris.
To obtain justice, the members of the Comédie-Française addressed a petition to the King, but the morning of the interment came without bringing an answer from his Majesty. In the meanwhile, the news of the refusal of the curé of Saint-Roch to accord ecclesiastical burial to the remains of the great actress had become common knowledge and had aroused widespread indignation. An enormous crowd, numbering fully 15,000 persons, assembled in the Rue du Helder and the adjoining streets, among which might be observed several actors of the Comédie in the uniform of the National Guards. At the moment when the cortège left the house, the police gave the order to proceed directly to the cemetery; but the crowd interfered and compelled the hearse to drive towards Saint-Roch. On entering the Rue de la Michodière, a police-officer rushed to the horses’ heads, to turn them in the direction of the boulevard, but was roughly pushed aside; and the procession, growing in size every moment, pursued its way towards Saint-Roch.
When the church was reached, the principal door was found closed, a circumstance which threw the mob into a frenzy of anger. Some proposed to break down the door, others to carry the corpse to the Tuileries or the archbishop’s palace; while cries of “Le curé à la lanterne!” were raised, and if that intolerant ecclesiastic had had the temerity to show himself, it is to be feared that he would have been very roughly handled.
The actors in the procession, alarmed at all this uproar, the blame for which, they feared, would be laid upon them, took advantage of a moment when the more violent section of the crowd was occupied in endeavouring to force the great door of the church, to make the cortège resume its progress towards Père-Lachaise. The mob, however, gave chase, overtook the hearse at the top of the Rue Traversière, and brought it back in triumph to Saint-Roch.
In the meanwhile, a deputation had started for the Tuileries; Louis XVIII. consented to admit it to his presence, and Huet, an actor of the Opéra-Comique, harangued the monarch with so much eloquence, that, some days later, he received an intimation that a course of foreign travel might not be without benefit to his health. However, his representations had the desired effect; for the King promised to interfere without delay, sent orders to the curé to receive the body, and, for greater security, despatched his own almoner to read the service.
The orders of the King arrived only just in time to prevent a serious affray between the infuriated mob and the troops who had been summoned to quell the disturbance. The great door was then opened, and the coffin, borne on the shoulders of the crowd, was carried to the foot of the altar, where the people themselves lighted the candles. The almoner of the Court arrived, accompanied by two choristers, and performed the service, at the conclusion of which an immense concourse of people followed the cortège as far as Père-Lachaise.126