VI Madame Saint-Huberty
On a certain afternoon, early in September 1777, a rehearsal of Gluck’s Armide was about to begin at the Opera. The stage was crowded with the artistes of both sexes, their friends and their admirers, for, as we have said elsewhere, in those days it was the fashion to attend the rehearsals of any new opera or play which happened to be arousing unusual interest, and the fame of the little German composer was at its height.
It was a brilliant assembly; youth, beauty, talent, rank, and wealth were all represented there. The women especially were in full force, the queens of song and the stars of the dance: Duranceray, Beaumesnil, Sophie Arnould, Rosalie Levasseur, Laguerre, Heinel, Guimard, Peslin, Allard, Théodore, and a bevy of minor divinities, the demoiselles of the ballet and the ladies of the chorus, many of whose names, though unknown to dramatic fame, were already writ large in the annals of gallantry: the two Lilys, the blonde and the brunette; Lolotte, who had the finest horses in Paris; Droma, whose extravagance had so completely ruined a rich merchant of the Rue Saint-Honoré that nothing was left for the unfortunate man but to hang himself, and Rosette, for whose favours two abbés had recently fought.
A brilliant assembly and a bravely-dressed one too; for even the figurante drawing her eight hundred or a thousand livres a year seemed to find no difficulty in patronising the establishments of M. Pagelle, of Les Traits Galants, or M. Bertin, of the Grand Mogol. There was, however, an exception. In a remote corner sat a young woman alone, whose pale, drawn face bore the marks of cruel struggles and long suffering, and whose simple, black gown, patched in more than one place, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous toilettes around her. No one spoke to her, no one heeded her; the gay throng was too much occupied with its own affairs to have a thought to bestow on so insignificant a person, until a movement on her part happened to arrest the attention of a gorgeously-attired damsel, who, with a mocking smile, exclaimed: “Ah, tiens! voilà Madame La Ressource.”168
At these words, Gluck, who was talking with the conductor of the orchestra, abruptly terminated his conversation, and, turning round, exclaimed, in a voice which could be heard by all: “You have well named her Madame La Ressource, for one day she will be the resource of the Opera!”
This speech would appear to have been nothing more than a jest on the part of the composer; since never could he have even suspected, at that time, how fully his prediction was to be verified; never could he have foreseen the astonishing triumphs which awaited this humble coryphée, still confined to the rôles of confidante and secondary divinity. For the young woman, “thus derided by vice, thus defended by genius,” was none other than Anne Antoinette Cécile Clavel, known to fame as Madame Saint-Huberty!
The life of Antoinette Clavel had been a peculiarly sad one; one long course of privation, misfortunes, disappointments, and disillusions. Born at Strasburg, on December 15, 1756, she was now in her twenty-first year. Her father, a musician, formerly a member of a French troupe in the service of the Elector Palatine, and, at the time of Antoinette’s birth, attached to the Strasburg theatre, had commenced his little daughter’s musical education before she was well out of the nursery. The child, like Sophie Arnould, early gave promise of exceptional talent. At the age of twelve, she sang to her own harpsichord accompaniment, “with so much taste and sweetness that she excited the admiration of all who heard her.” The fame of her precocious talent quickly spread abroad, and the managers of several foreign and provincial theatres offered her engagements. But her father and mother, “cherishing in her the germ of those virtues with which they had inspired her, had no mind to deliver her youth into distant towns, to the danger of seduction by those amiable and opulent men who delight in the criminal victories they achieve over innocence,” refused to allow her to appear, except at the Strasburg theatre, where “they were able to direct at its outset a career so slippery for a young and inexperienced girl.”
Here she had the good fortune to attract the attention of the leader of the orchestra, Lemoine, a French composer who was later to achieve success in Paris. Lemoine, a kind-hearted and excellent man, gave the girl lessons and allotted her a part in a little piece of his own, Le Bouquet de Colinette. Never was there a more grateful pupil. In after years, Madame Saint-Huberty made the most heroic efforts to assure the success of the somewhat mediocre works of her first professor, of whose kindness to her when she was a child she could never speak without tears in her eyes.
“I used to go to his house in the morning,” she related to one of her friends. “As it was cold and he was not well off, he remained in bed until the morning rehearsal, in order to save wood. When I arrived to take my lesson, I used to find him rolled up in his blankets, with a great woollen night-cap on his head, which reached to his eyes. ‘Ah! there you are, little one,’ he would say to me, and would throw me one of the blankets, in which I wrapped myself as well as I could. Then I used to sing, beating time with my feet with all my strength, in order to keep them warm.
“In the evening, I accompanied my father to the theatre. Often I was a figurante, and Lemoine, who knew that we made but poor cheer at home, always contrived to give me some tit-bits, off which I might make a good supper.
“My father was indebted to him for several pupils, who paid him fairly well. Finally, he presented us to Count Branicki, an immensely wealthy nobleman, at whose house plays were frequently performed.”169
Antoinette Clavel had been engaged two or three years at the Strasburg theatre when there arrived in the city a man who described himself as director-general of the “Menus-Plaisirs” of the King of Prussia, and stated that the object of his visit was to seek for fresh talent for the French troupe at Berlin. In his presumed official capacity, he had no difficulty in procuring admission to the coulisses of the theatre, where he soon became on terms of friendly intimacy with the actors and actresses, and with Antoinette in particular. Claude Croisilles de Saint-Huberty, for by that high-sounding name was the gentleman known, was still young, but had seen much of the world, of good appearance, and a fluent talker, whose honeyed words were well calculated to excite the imagination of inexperienced women, for whom he had all the attraction of the successful adventurer.
He made such magnificent promises to Antoinette, and held out to her the hope of such a brilliant career, that, one fine day, in the spring of 1775, the young girl resolved to leave her parents secretly and follow M. Croisilles de Saint-Huberty to Berlin. Here disillusion awaited her. The pretended director of the “Menus-Plaisirs” of the King of Prussia proved to be merely the stage-manager of the French troupe, who could only very partially carry out the conditions of the engagement which had induced Mlle. Clavel to quit the paternal roof.
Whether Antoinette was Saint-Huberty’s mistress, or only, as she herself asserted, an ambitious young artiste decoyed away by the promise of an advantageous engagement is uncertain. But, however that may be, Saint-Huberty was exceedingly anxious to become her husband; nor is his motive difficult to understand. So far from having any right to the aristocratic patronymic he bore, he was the son of a merchant at Metz, named simply Croisilles, and had left home in order to gratify a passion for the stage. A needy and unscrupulous adventurer, he foresaw for the young singer a successful, and possibly a brilliant, career, upon the emoluments of which he might levy toll; while if, by chance, her success was not in accordance with his expectations, he would always be able to obtain the annulment of a marriage contracted in a foreign country and without the consent of the parents of either party. And so from morning until night he importuned Antoinette to marry him, expatiating upon the vast possessions of the house of Saint-Huberty—possessions well-nigh as boundless as his love for her—which, he declared, would one day be his, the brilliant future he could assure his wife, and so forth. Nor did he plead in vain. At the end of four or five months, the poor girl, alone in a foreign city, friendless, and almost penniless, had the weakness to consent; and the marriage was celebrated on September 10, 1775, in the parish of St. Hedgwig, the so-called Saint-Huberty being described as “native of France, stage-manager of the French troupe of his Majesty the King of Prussia,” and Antoinette as “Jungfrau Maria Antonia, native of Strasburg, actress.”170
The young bride was very speedily enlightened as to her husband’s real character and the motives which had led him to make her his wife. “The third night of our marriage,” she says, in a memoir which she subsequently drew up for an annulment of the union, “was marked by the grossest language on the part of the sieur Croisilles, accompanied by a pair of sound boxes on the ear, because the counterpane was more on my side than his.” And, a few weeks later, Saint-Huberty secretly quitted Berlin, carrying off everything of value that his wife possessed.
From Berlin, whence the too-pressing attentions of his creditors had been the cause of his abrupt departure, M. Saint-Huberty made his way to Warsaw, from which city he presently wrote to his wife, informing her that he had just formed an operatic company, whose first performance had been warmly applauded at the Polish Court, and that her assistance alone was wanting to make it worthy to perform before the sovereigns of the North.
The rascal’s pen must have been as persuasive as his tongue, since Antoinette at once decided to rejoin her husband. She arrived at Warsaw, only to find that the company which was supposed to have already achieved such great things had, as a matter of fact, never given anything but rehearsals. Finally, however, it gave its first performance in public and, thanks to the efforts of the young singer, appears to have made a very favourable impression.
Intoxicated with his success, Saint-Huberty determined to extend the scope of his operations and establish his troupe on a permanent basis. With this end in view, he started for Hamburg, “in search of suitable recruits,” after which he had the imprudence to visit Berlin. It was to venture into the lion’s den. Scarcely had he set foot in the town, than he was recognised, arrested, and thrown into prison, where his creditors announced their intention of keeping him until he should have paid the uttermost pfenning.
The troupe which he had left at Warsaw, deprived of its director and its salaries, for we may presume that M. Saint-Huberty had taken most of its available cash with him, found itself in a parlous condition. In the meantime, however, Antoinette had scored a great personal triumph in the opera of Zémire et Azor, when the reception she met with must have exceeded her fondest anticipations. Warsaw, in those days, was essentially a city of pleasure; and its upper classes prided themselves on following the manners and modes of Paris. The Opera was especially high in favour, and, as the public was not very discriminating and lavishly generous to those who earned its approbation, artistes of very mediocre talent, who in Paris would have been accounted fortunate to be received in nothing worse than silence, found themselves lauded to the skies and loaded with gifts. The enthusiasm evoked by Madame Saint-Huberty’s singing found vent in numerous valuable presents being made to the artiste, who was thus enabled to realise a sum of 12,000 livres, wherewith she proceeded to release her worthless husband from his Prussian dungeon. That gentleman, accordingly, returned to Warsaw; but his creditors in the Polish capital, encouraged by the success which had attended the proceedings of their fellow victims in Berlin, assumed so threatening an attitude that, after a brief period of repose, he judged it expedient to resume his travels, and, one fine night, suddenly disappeared.
According to his custom, M. Saint-Huberty did not depart with empty hands. This time he had carried off not only all his wife’s ready money, but even the contents of her wardrobe, including the costumes which she wore upon the stage, leaving her without resources and almost without clothes. Happily, a wealthy and generous Polish lady, the Princess Lubomirska, took compassion upon the unfortunate actress, refurnished her wardrobe, and gave her shelter for three months in her own palace.
Soon, however, difficulties arose with her husband’s numerous creditors, who endeavoured to fix upon her the responsibility for the debts which the fugitive impresario had contracted; and, in order to free herself from all responsibility in connection with his liabilities, Madame Saint-Huberty was obliged to obtain from the authorities at Warsaw a formal separation, in regard to property. And here is the declaration which she made on this occasion, bearing date March 17, 1777:
“Before the notaries and public officers of the ancient town of Warsaw, appearing in person, the noble dame Antoinette de Clavel, wife of the nobleman Philippe de Saint-Huberty, assisted for the present deed by the counsel of the nobleman Georges Godin, present and called by her to this effect: The said Antoinette de Clavel, being of sound mind and body, of her own full accord has freely and expressly declared and does declare by the present act: that having learned that the nobleman Philippe de Saint-Huberty, her husband, had quitted Warsaw, on account of the great number of debts by which he was overwhelmed, and being ignorant even of the place to which he had retired, and unwilling to be bound in any manner by the debts of her husband, which he had contracted without any participation on her part, she separates herself from all the goods and property generally of her said husband, excepting, nevertheless, the goods which she has acquired and brought with her; and the said dame de Clavel declares, moreover, by a formal declaration, that she makes no claim whatever to the said property, and approving entirely of the present separation from the goods of her husband, she has signed the present deed with her own hand.—Antoinette de Clavel, by marriage Saint-Huberty, J. Godin, as witness.”171
In the meanwhile, the “nobleman” referred to in the aforegoing document had settled in Vienna, from which city he wrote to his wife, to inform her that he had arranged to open an opera-house, which he was confident would be the means of assuring him an ample fortune, and to urge her to join him without delay. As may be supposed, after her sad experiences, the poor lady was inclined to regard these assurances with some suspicion; and, on the advice of the Princess Lubomirska, she, for some time, declined to leave Warsaw. But Saint-Huberty pleaded so eloquently in the letters which he continued to send her that ultimately she relented, and, in spite of the remonstrances of her kind-hearted patroness, took the road to Vienna.
Here she quickly found that the opera-house and the brilliant prospects had no existence, save in the imagination of M. Saint-Huberty, who was reduced to such straits as to be actually in want of bread, and had only sent for his wife in order to save himself from starvation. Happily, almost so soon as she arrived, circumstances compelled the impresario to quit Vienna in the same manner as he had quitted Berlin and Warsaw.
The young singer now found herself without an engagement, and free to go wherever she might choose. Like almost every operatic artiste, her thoughts had often turned towards the Académie Royale de Musique, where Gluck was now supreme, and she, accordingly, solicited an ordre de début. This was easily obtained, the Opera being just at that time sorely in need of fresh talent to fittingly interpret the master’s works, and, in April 1777, she set out for Paris. Arrived in the French capital, she lost no time in obtaining an introduction to the great composer, who, quick to recognise ability wherever he found it, promised to give her lessons himself,172 and recommended her for a part in his forthcoming opera.
On September 23, 1777, Madame Saint-Huberty made her début in the small part of Mélisse, in Armide, and the Mercure de France referred to her performance in the following terms:
“She has an agreeable voice. She sings and acts with much delicacy of expression. She appears to be an excellent musician, and needs only a little stage experience in order to acquire greater development for her voice and greater ease for her acting.”
In spite of this encouraging notice,173 the newcomer appears to have attracted but little attention, in the midst of an event of such importance as a new work by Gluck. Who, after all, was this modest débutante, beside such stars as Legros, Larrivée, Gélin, Rosalie Levasseur, and Mlle. Duranceray?
On first arriving in Paris, Madame Saint-Huberty had lodged in the Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, at the house of a dame Sorel, after which we find her residing successively at the Hôtel de Genève, the Hôtel de Bayonne, and the Hôtel des Treize-Provinces.174 At all these places she lived alone, for, though her worthless husband had followed her to Paris, she very prudently refused to receive him back, until she was assured that he had mended his ways. As, however, he had no means of livelihood, and she could not allow him to starve, she obtained for him, through the good offices of Gluck, the post of wardrobe-keeper at the Opera, which, as one of her biographers very sensibly remarks, was scarcely a proper appointment for a gentleman with a weakness for carrying off other people’s garments and raising money upon them. M. Saint-Huberty was, as a matter of fact, very speedily discharged, upon which he revenged himself by hawking about the streets and “reading aloud in the cafés and even in certain private houses to which he was admitted,” a libellous pamphlet against the authorities of the Opera, composed by a confederate named Dodé de Jousserand. In order to keep himself in funds, he paid frequent visits to his unhappy wife, from whom he did not hesitate, when argument failed, to extort money by threats and even blows; while, when she had nothing to give him, he would seize upon any saleable article which happened to catch his eye, and carry it off. One day, while Madame Saint-Huberty was at the theatre, he swooped down and made a clear sweep of all the portable property of the luckless singer, who was compelled to lay a complaint against him before the commissary of police of her quarter. Here is the text of this document:
“In the year seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, Friday, the thirty-first of July, at nine o’clock of the evening, in the hôtel, and before us Joseph Chesnon fils, advocate to the Parliament, counsellor of the King, commissary to the Châlelet of Paris, appeared demoiselle Anne Antoinette Clavel, called Saint-Huberty, King’s pensioner at the Opera, who informed us that the sieur de Saint-Huberty, who claims to be married to her, in virtue of a pretended act of celebration in Berlin, has abused the confidence of the complainant for nearly three years, in order to install himself in her abode and to remain there in spite of her; to make himself master there, and even to maltreat her. He, nevertheless, several times left the house, but always carried away with him jewels and other property of the complainant, which he pledged and sold. He would again force his way in, but with empty hands, and the complainant was unable to do anything against such persecution, being without her papers.175 Finally, this same day, while she was at the Opera, the sieur Saint-Huberty has again taken advantage of her confidence and her absence to carry off the goods, papers, and music of the complainant, including even music which belongs to the Opera.
“She finds herself in the greatest embarrassment, and the sieur Saint-Huberty is cunning enough to ask her, by a letter, dated Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of this month, for papers and goods which he has already taken the precaution to carry off. For which reasons, and in order that she may enjoy peace at home, of which the sieur Saint-Huberty has for a long time deprived her, and to force the said Saint-Huberty to restore to her her property, papers, and music, and, in particular, that which belongs to the Opera, she has come to lodge the present plaint against the sieur Saint-Huberty, requiring from us the act which we have given her and signing the minute in our presence.”176
On an order from the Lieutenant of Police, a portion of the stolen property was subsequently restored; but if Madame Saint-Huberty flattered herself that she was safe from further depredations, she was speedily undeceived. On August 10, she removed to a little apartment in the Rue de l’Arbre Sec, in the house of Gourdan, one of the King’s valets-de-chambre, for which she paid a rental of 490 livres and had furnished herself. Three weeks later, at seven o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping peacefully, dreaming perhaps of the time not far distant when all the musical world would be at her feet, when she was abruptly awakened by the entrance of four men, amongst whom she at once recognised the scoundrelly Saint-Huberty. That worthy, pointing to a person attired in the black garb of a commissary of police, to indicate that he had legal authority for what he was about to do, cried: “The pockets, Messieurs; search her pockets.” The hapless woman was then dragged from her bed, and, while the man in black held her in his arms, her husband showered blows upon her, after which he took a pair of scissors and cut the ribands of the pockets of her night-dress, inflicting several severe scratches in the process. Next, having possessed himself of her keys, he opened all the drawers and cupboards in the apartment, and proceeded to ransack them, at the same time addressing to his wife the most shocking language. Finally, a fifth person, also clad in black, entered, who announced himself as the procurator of the husband, but, like his fellows, only laughed at the poor actress’s distress, and declined to answer when she demanded to see his authority. When her husband and his confederates had taken their departure, Madame Saint-Huberty found that she had been robbed of a packet of twenty-two letters, “which, at first sight, appeared to be love-letters,” and a pair of diamond shoe-buckles of the value of six louis.
This outrage was, of course, made the subject of a complaint by its victim, of which the aforegoing account is a summary. But, as Saint-Huberty had really had legal authority for his proceedings, having had the audacity to declare to the police that his wife had “secretly quitted their common abode and carried away with her numerous effects belonging to him,” no steps could be taken against him. When, however, Madame Saint-Huberty threatened to retire from the Opera, “unless her personal safety were guaranteed,” she received an assurance that she need no longer fear the visits and assaults of her husband.
But, if the unhappy woman had contrived to secure herself against personal molestation, she was not yet free from trouble of another kind. Some weeks before the adventure which we have just related, she had succeeded in obtaining from Saint-Huberty, in return, we may be sure, for some pecuniary consideration, a formal renunciation of all claim to her professional earnings, whether derived from the Opera or from engagements at private concerts or other entertainments. By the law, however, she still remained answerable for his debts, and the cunning scoundrel now determined to obtain the money he required through the claims of fictitious creditors. On the demand of a certain demoiselle Guérin, who declared herself to be a creditor for the sum of 489 francs against the sieur Saint-Huberty and his wife, a formal objection was lodged to the payment of the dame Saint-Huberty’s salary; and, on October 2, 1778, the Châtelet declared this opposition good and valid, and made an order for the directors and treasurers of the Opera to deliver over to the sieur Saint-Huberty all sums due to his wife, until the debt should be liquidated.
Poor Madame Saint-Huberty was in despair. It was in vain that she protested that she knew nothing of the demoiselle Guérin, and had never been called upon by her, previous to the legal proceedings, to pay any debt. The officials of the Opera assured her that they were powerless in the matter. Deeply as they sympathised with her, they could pay her nothing, until she had obtained a recession of the order of the court.
This she, accordingly, endeavoured to procure. But the machinery of the law worked even more slowly in those days than at the present time, and it was not until March 19, 1779, that the appeal came on for hearing before the Parliament of Paris. Then, at last, Fortune declared itself on her side; for the judges, carried away apparently by the eloquence of the plaintiff’s advocate, Maître Mascassies, who, in a speech of several hours’ duration, traced the history of the stage from its origin to the middle of the eighteenth century, with special reference to the influence of the fall of Constantinople on the “Mysteries,” and the relative merits of the operas of Lulli and Rameau, reversed the decision of the Châtelet, ordered the authorities of the Opera to hand over to the singer her arrears of salary, and condemned Saint-Huberty and his confederates to pay all the costs of the proceedings.
Madame Saint-Huberty followed up this victory by another and more important one. Six months later, she instituted proceedings for a formal dissolution of her marriage on the following grounds:
(1) Omission of the publication of the banns in the parish of the father and mother of the bride.
(2) Absence of the curé of the bride’s parish.
(3) The fact that the marriage had been performed without the consent of the bride’s parents.
(4) Rape and seduction, which, without the employment of force, but merely “par mauvaises voyes et mauvaises artifices,” were held to be sufficient to invalidate a marriage.
The action was supported by Saint-Huberty’s father, the Metz merchant, an honest man, who appears to have been genuinely distressed by the misery which his son had brought upon this unfortunate girl; and, the husband himself having been induced to leave the matter to “the wisdom of the court,” on January 30, 1781, the marriage was finally annulled.177
Meanwhile, undeterred by her domestic troubles—troubles which might well have ruined the career of a less resolute and less courageous woman—Madame Saint-Huberty had been steadily working her way into the very front rank of her profession. Without friends, without a protector, but proud in her distress and sustained by an all-devouring ambition, she lived alone in her humble lodging, which she never left, save to go to the theatre for rehearsals and performances. “From morning till night she worked, studied, practised unceasingly. In time, her voice became more supple and perfectly under her control. She taught herself to move her long, thin arms with grace; she accustomed her countenance to reflect her passionate sensibility, to render her lively impressions. Finally, she got rid of her deplorable Alsatian accent.”178
Recognition, however, was slow to come. In 1778, the Mercure only mentions her as singing in unimportant parts in three or four operas, although she appears to have greatly pleased the musical critic of that journal by her rendering of an Italian arietta of Gluck, at a “concert spirituel” in December. During the whole of the following year, when the theatre was under the direction of Devismes, there is no reference to her whatever, except in a letter of Devismes’s successor, Dauvergne, in which he speaks of the young singer as weeping with despair, because she had not been allotted a part; and she seems, about this time, to have had serious thoughts of leaving the Opera altogether.179 However, her perseverance was not wasted, for, towards the end of that year, she was received as a permanent member of the company, though less, it is believed, on account of her talent, than her willingness to do whatever was required of her. This was a great step gained, and, at length, in November 1780, she reaped the reward of all her labours and self-denial by being entrusted with the part of Angélique in the Roland (Orlando) of Piccini.
No one seems to have expected this opera to succeed. The composer himself believed its failure inevitable. The evening of the first representation, when he was about to start for the theatre, his family refused to accompany him, and, aware of his extremely sensitive nature used every persuasion to induce him to remain at home. His wife, his children, his friends were in tears. “One would have imagined that he was on his way to the scaffold.”
Piccini endeavoured to reassure them. “My children,” said he, “we are not in the midst of barbarians, but of the politest people in the world. If they do not approve of me as a musician, they will at least respect me as a man and a foreigner.” And he tore himself away.
A delightful surprise awaited him. Roland, so far from being a failure, was an unqualified triumph, and, at the conclusion of the performance, Piccini was escorted home by an enthusiastic crowd of admirers. This happy result was undoubtedly due, in the first instance, to Madame Saint-Huberty’s admirable rendering of the part of Angélique. “Where is Saint-Huberty? where is she?” cried the grateful composer, as the curtain fell to the accompaniment of round upon round of applause. “I wish to see her, to embrace her, to thank her, to tell her that I owe to her my success!”
The critic of the Mercure expresses himself as follows on the acting and singing of Madame Saint-Huberty in this her first important part:
“Having spoken of Roland, we shall seize this opportunity to say something of Madame Saint-Huberty, whose progress, every day more marked, merits a special mention. We have seen her with pleasure in the rôle of Angélique, in which she has, in many respects, acquitted herself very well. We invite her only to be careful of her articulation; she neglects it so far as to cause us to lose part of what she says. The fault is common to foreign singers or to those trained abroad.”
And the critic concludes by recommending her to be less prodigal of her gestures and not to raise her arms higher than was necessary.180
A month later, the singer gained another success, as Lise, in Le Seigneur bienfaisant, an indifferent work by Rochon de Chabannes and Floquet, when she rendered with such fiery energy the despair of the heroine that she fell ill from excess of emotion and was absent from the theatre for several weeks.
On her return, fresh triumphs awaited her. After successfully impersonating Églé, in the Thésée of Quinault, which had been set to music by Gossec, she replaced Rosalie Levasseur in the name-part in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (March 10, 1782),181 in which, the Mercure declares that “she acquitted herself very well and deserved the praise which she received.” Next, she created the rôle of Laurette, in l’Inconnue persécutée, “with as much taste as intelligence,” and made an heroic, though unsuccessful, attempt to secure a favourable reception for the Électre of her old master Lemoine, the one-time conductor of the Strasburg orchestra.
Not content with doing her utmost on the stage on her old friend’s behalf, Madame Saint-Huberty employed the influence she was beginning to possess in the coulisses to compel the administration of the Opera to prolong the run of this very indifferent work, notwithstanding the unfavourable verdict of the public and the disastrous results such a course was likely to have upon the receipts. The administration resolved not to yield to such a preposterous demand, but, at the same time, unwilling to offend an actress who was becoming every day more necessary to them, had recourse to stratagem. They represented that they were perfectly willing to oblige Madame Saint-Huberty by continuing the representations of Électre; but, since the opera was not in itself a sufficient attraction to secure a full house, it would be advisable to wait for a few days, until the ever-popular ballet of Ninette à la Cour, in which Mlle. Guimard, it will be remembered, secured one of her greatest triumphs, could be given with it. Madame Saint-Huberty consented to the postponement, and the administration made use of the respite granted them to induce the Minister of the King’s Household, the supreme authority in matters concerning the Opera, “to order that the opera of Électre should be absolutely withdrawn from the theatre.”182
In those days, it was the fashion at the Opera to frequently present entire pieces composed of acts extracted from various works. These performances, called “Fragments,” were very popular with the patrons of the theatre, since they constituted but little strain upon the imagination, while the variety of their subjects and music provided an agreeable change. On September 24, 1782, four “fragments” were performed at the Opera, the most important of which was a new act by Moline and Edelmann, entitled Ariane dans l’Île de Naxos. Madame Saint-Huberty, who played the part of Ariane, had always had a strong predilection in favour of historical accuracy in stage costume, and, on the advice of the painter Moreau, who held similar views and had designed the dresses for this opera, she resolved to make a move in the direction of reform.
“We have seen, for the first time, on the stage,” says the Journal de Paris, “in the principal personage, the costume rigorously observed. These designs have been made on the advice of M. Moreau le jeune, favourably known in artistic circles by the number, the variety, and the continual beauty of his works.”
Levacher de Chamois, in his work on theatrical costume, has traced a description of the costume worn by Madame Saint-Huberty on this occasion:
“One saw this actress appear habited in a long linen tunic, fastened beneath the bosom; the legs bare and fitted with the ancient buskin. From the head descended gracefully several plaits of hair, which played about her shoulders. This costume, a novel one for the spectators and both true and elegant, was applauded with a kind of frenzy. But, in spite of the approval of the public, there arrived orders which one called ‘ministerial,’ forbidding Madame Saint-Huberty to appear in this beautiful costume, and at the second representation of the work she was obliged to resume the heavy and ridiculous accoutrements of our coquettes and prudes.”183
Notwithstanding this mortification, the actress had no reason to be dissatisfied with her performance of Ariane. It was indeed, for her, a veritable triumph. “As for Madame Saint-Huberty,” says the Journal de Paris, “we do not know which serves her the best, her face, her voice, or her acting; she knows how to give to each song inflections which occasion the most lively emotions.” And the musical critic of the Mercure writes: “Madame Saint-Huberty, in the opera of Ariane, has added yet further to the idea that one has always entertained of her intelligence and her talent. She played in a manner always animated and interesting, and sang with the greatest expression the music constantly loud and passionate of a long and difficult rôle.”
Guinguéné, in his notice on the life and works of Piccini, declares that Madame Saint-Huberty owed to the protection of the celebrated composer the fact that her name was not erased from the books of the Opera after her brilliant rendering of the part of Ariane, since she had shown on this occasion views too independent and a talent too original to suit the views of the authorities of that institution. “The success which she had obtained in it excited the petty passions of the coulisses. They were prepared to drive her from the Opera, and Piccini alone sustained her. He recalled to those who were the powers of the State the witty and sensible mot of Gluck; he predicted that they would speedily have need of her, and that they would be only too happy to have her. His selection of her for the interesting part of Sangarede and the superior manner in which she rendered not only the music, but the scenes as well, moved the entire public in her favour and gave her a settled position on the stage of which she was for ten years the glory.”184
The revival of Atys had taken place at the beginning of the year 1783, when Madame Saint-Huberty played the heroine with an enthusiasm which gave a new lease of life to that fine opera. “Thus,” says M. Jullien, “she found herself dividing her sympathies between the two hostile camps, and lending, in turn, the assistance of her great talent to the two rival composers: to Gluck, who had given her her first opportunity at the Opera, to Piccini, who had helped her to retain her position there.”185
A little time before, on November 27, 1782, the actress had given proof of a talent of rare versatility by rendering with much gaiety and charm the part of Rosette, in Grétry’s l’Embarras des Richesses.186 This piece, notwithstanding some delightful music and Madame Saint-Huberty’s successful impersonation of the heroine, failed, mainly through the ineptitude of the libretto—the production of one Lourdet de Sans-Terre, surnamed by the wits Lourdeau Sans-Tête—which contained some of the most amazing anachronisms ever perpetrated by a presumably educated writer. Thus, the inhabitants of Athens, in the time of Pericles, are made to fast during Lent, flirt with opera-girls, and pay their debts in louis d’or; while, in the ballet, dances are executed by American savages! Bad though it was, however, l’Embarras des Richesses is still remembered, having been rescued from well-merited oblivion by the following amusing epigram:
“Embarras d’intérêt,
Embarras dans les rôles,
Embarras dans ballet,
Embarras de paroles,
Des embarras en sorte
Que tout est embarras,
Mais venez à la porte,
Vous n’en trouverez pas.”
On February 28, 1783, Sacchini’s Renaud was produced, with Rosalie Levasseur in the part of Armide. Her rendering of the part, however, was not considered satisfactory, and, at the fourth representation, she was replaced by Madame Saint-Huberty, who was thus enabled to set the seal upon her reputation. For where Rosalie had been found wanting, she succeeded and succeeded brilliantly, and, by her conversion of a threatened failure into a complete triumph, saved at one stroke the poor musician and the honour of the Opera, which, in cancelling its agreement with Sacchini—about which there had been some talk after the cool manner in which Renaud had been at first received—would have lost the composer’s two masterpieces, Dardanus and Œdipe à Colone.187
Madame Saint-Huberty was not a pretty woman. She had neither the beautiful eyes nor the willowy grace of Sophie Arnould. She was short and thick-set, with long, thin arms, a large mouth and a “nez de soubrette”; in a word, an “ignoble figure,” as the ungallant art critic of the Mémoires secrets calls her, in his notice of Madame Vallayer Coster’s portrait of the actress, as Dido, exhibited at the Salon of 1785.
But it was quite another Madame Saint-Huberty who appeared on the boards of the Opera. “That metamorphosis, that transformation on the stage, which some actresses obtain in a fashion so marvellous, the Saint-Huberty pushed beyond the bounds of imagination, thanks to incredible labours, thanks to victories achieved every day over her unpleasing person, thanks to acquisitions apparently impossible, thanks to a remarkable intelligence, thanks to a very wide knowledge of the theatre and all its effects, thanks to a profound study of the characters she represented, whose sentiments and emotions of the soul she rendered, so to speak, ‘in a palpable manner,’ thanks, finally, to what her talent possessed of her heart and of the passion which dwelt in her. And she succeeded in effecting a well-nigh physical transformation; in giving to her figure nobility, elegance; in moving with gestures of pride or of touching grace. And she appeared seductive and desirable to the amorous eyes of the audience.”188
The great services which Madame Saint-Huberty had already rendered to the Opera, and the wonderful talent which she had displayed in the various difficult rôles entrusted to her, made the administration keenly alive to the importance of definitely attaching to the theatre an artiste of such exceptional ability, whose value to them was immensely enhanced by the approaching retirement of Mlle. Laguerre and the decline of Rosalie Levasseur. During the year 1782, Madame Saint-Huberty had only received 5500 livres, a very inadequate remuneration for the attraction which she exercised over the public; and, fully aware of her own value, she had been at no pains to conceal her dissatisfaction. On November 22, 1782, La Ferté, the Intendant des Menus, wrote to Amelot, the Minister of the King’s Household, pointing out the importance of having the matter settled without delay. “She (Madame Saint-Huberty) is a very troublesome person,” he says; “but we cannot dispense with her, in view of the indifferent services and the unwillingness of the demoiselle Levasseur. All that we can hope for is that the dame Saint-Huberty will make the conditions as little onerous as possible, and I suppose there will be no hesitation in according her the Court pension of 1500 livres destined at first for the demoiselle Laguerre.”
After some further correspondence on the subject, the prima donna was invited to formulate her demands. They were as follows:
(1) 3000 livres ordinary salary.
(2) Payment of firing, lights, and so forth.
(3) An annual gratification extraordinaire of 3000 livres.
(4) A pension of 1500 livres on the musical establishment of the King.
(5) A congé of two months every year, including the Easter recess. This was, of course, to enable her to “star” in the provinces.
(6) None of her rôles to be entrusted to any other actress, save at her own request.
La Ferté agreed readily enough to four of these proposals; indeed, the first two had already been accorded, while, as we have just seen, he himself had recommended the granting of the fourth. But he annotated the third: “To promise it when circumstances permit”; and he declared the sixth “impossible, as being contrary to the regulations.”
Madame Saint-Huberty’s reply was to temporarily retire from the Opera, on the plea of ill-health, and to announce that she contemplated leaving the stage altogether.
Then La Ferté submitted to Amelot an arrangement whereby the sum of 8000 livres a year was assured to the singer, independently of allowances for firing, lights, and so forth, and of a pension of 1500 livres on the musical establishment of the King, which would give her an annual income of 9500 livres. She was also to be permitted to give two private concerts every year, the expenses to be borne by the administration of the Opera. These, it was calculated, would bring her another 3000 livres. Finally, she was to be granted the congé she demanded, on condition that she should not take it at a time when her services were particularly necessary to the Opera or during the visit of the Court to Fontainebleau.
On February 27, 1783, the Minister wrote to Madame Saint-Huberty, to inform her of these proposals, as follows:
“Rendering to your talents and your zeal, Mademoiselle, all the justice that they deserve, I afforded myself the pleasure to give an account of them to his Majesty, who, in consequence, has willingly consented to authorise me to announce to you that he has placed you on his musical establishment for the sum of 1500 francs, to begin from January 1, 1782, which gives you the benefit of a year in advance. Secondly, to complete by a gratification an annual salary of 8000 francs at the Opera; that is to say that, supposing your place of first subject should only produce, for example, 7000 francs, then the Court would give you 1000 francs to make up the 8000 francs. You will also be accorded every year a congé of two months. Finally, his Majesty consents to your giving every year, if that be agreeable to you, two concerts for your own benefit. His Majesty’s intention is that ‘these particular favours should remain entirely secret.’ I am very pleased at having been able to contribute towards securing them for you. You will kindly advise me promptly of the receipt of this letter.”
To this letter Madame Saint-Huberty vouchsafed no reply; and, after waiting until the middle of March, the Minister wrote again:
“The King inquired this morning, Mademoiselle, what reply you had made to the letter which he authorised me to write to you. His Majesty was not a little surprised when I informed him that I had not yet received it. He charges me to demand of you a positive reply as promptly as possible. I do not doubt that it will be such as the King has the right to expect.”
But this letter, like the first, remained unacknowledged.
In the face of the obstinate silence of the actress, supported by public opinion, which now began to declare itself in her favour, the Minister’s position became so embarrassing that La Ferté counselled him, on the occasion of a concert given at his hôtel, in which Madame Saint-Huberty was to take part, to have recourse to the following little stratagem. He advised Amelot to speak privately to the singer before the concert began, and, in the event of his failing to obtain a satisfactory reply, all the Minister’s personal friends, by previous arrangement, should demand of Madame Saint-Huberty, after she had concluded her song, whether she had definitely decided to remain at the Opera, and that Amelot should then announce that he had done everything in his power to retain her services. The luckless Intendant des Menus saw in this species of public explanation the only way of giving the lie to the report spread everywhere by the actress that she was leaving the Opera, because she found it impossible to obtain adequate remuneration.
Finally, on March 20, 1783, the Minister, the Intendant, and the administration of the Opera were forced to capitulate and to submit to all the conditions imposed by the singer, stipulating only that Madame Saint-Huberty should maintain the strictest secrecy concerning the matter, lest the jealousy of her colleagues might lead them also to demand higher salaries, and that she should engage to remain at the Opera for eight years.189
And at the bottom of the letter in which Amelot announced their surrender, the triumphant prima donna wrote as follows:
“In conformity with the arrangements made in this letter, I engage myself to remain at the Opera for the space of eight years, to begin from the first of January, 1784.
“(Signed) De Saint-Huberty.
Executed this 22 March 1783.
Eight months after her victory over the authorities of the Académie Royale de Musique, Madame Saint-Huberty reached the apogee of her fame by her impersonation of Dido, in Piccini’s celebrated opera of that name.
When he had accepted the engagement which the Baron de Breteuil, the French Ambassador at Naples, had offered him, Piccini had fondly imagined that he would find a position at once honourable and tranquil. He came to Paris, and had no sooner arrived, than he perceived that those who had summoned him thither had been prompted by no other motive than that of pitting him against the composer who was then revolutionising the French lyric stage. The poor musician was naturally much troubled by this discovery, but all arrangements were concluded, and he had no option but to accept the situation.
Naturally amiable and modest, Piccini was the last man in the world to engage of his own free will in this miserable war, which would doubtless have speedily ceased, had it not been for the conduct of the philosophers and men of letters, many of whom knew scarcely anything of music and cared even less, but who, infected by the mania for disputation so prevalent in the eighteenth century, rushed into the contest with a violence as ridiculous as it was disastrous to the interests of Art, and envenomed it by their epigrams and recriminations.190 That the labours of Piccini were adversely effected by the false position in which he found himself there can be little doubt, and his success, under such circumstances, is, therefore, all the more deserving of admiration.
Roland and Atys had succeeded, in spite of the efforts of the Gluckists, who had combated their success by every means in their power; but Iphigénie en Tauride failed. The struggle was unequal: Piccini, though capable of contending with Gluck, was unable to conquer him. Mortified, discouraged, eager only for rest and tranquillity, he resolved to compose no more, but he had counted without his librettist and faithful ally, Marmontel. The Maréchal de Duras, Gentleman of the Chamber in waiting that year, had demanded of Marmontel an entirely new opera, to be played before the Court during its annual sojourn at Fontainebleau. Marmontel replied that he could promise nothing, unless Piccini would consent to collaborate with him again, and suggested that, in order to arouse the composer from the state of dejection into which he had fallen, the marshal should persuade the Queen to change the annual gratification which the Italian had hitherto received into a perpetual pension. And this the marshal readily promised to do.
“He asked for and obtained it,” continues Marmontel, “and when Piccini went with me to thank him: ‘It is to the Queen,’ said he, ‘that you must show your gratitude, by composing for her this year a fine opera.’
“‘I do not ask anything better,’ said Piccini, as he left us, ‘but what opera shall it be?’
“‘We must compose,’ said I, ‘the opera of Didon. I have long been revolving the plan of it. But I forewarn you that I mean to unfold my ideas at length; that you will have long scenes to set to music, and that in these scenes I shall require a recitative as natural as simple repetitions. Your Italian cadences are monotonous; the accents of our language are more favourable and better supported. I beg you to mark it down in the same manner as I repeat it.’
“‘Well,’ said he, ‘we shall see.’
“In this manner we formed the design of bestowing on recitative that ease, that truth of expression which was so favourable to the performance of the celebrated actress for whom the character of Dido was intended.
“The time was short: I wrote the poem with great rapidity, and, in order to withdraw Piccini from the distractions of Paris, I invited him to come and compose with me in my country-house, for I had a very agreeable one, where we lived as a family during the summer months. On his arrival there, he set to work, and when he had completed his task, Saint-Huberty, the actress who was to play the part of Didon, was invited to come and dine with us. She sang the part, at night, from beginning to end, and entered into the spirit of it so thoroughly that I fancied she was on the stage. Piccini was delighted.”191
At the moment when Marmontel and Piccini judged it advisable to put Didon into rehearsal, Madame Saint-Huberty was entitled to the annual congé which she had stipulated for and obtained some months previously; and she had made arrangements for a tour in Provence. She took her part with her, however, telling the authors that they could rehearse the opera without her, as they could rely upon her knowing her music quite thoroughly before she returned, and probably before any one else would be ready.
The rehearsals began at Fontainebleau, the part of the heroine being, as a rule, taken by a chorus-singer, who, without attempting to sing Madame Saint-Huberty’s music from beginning to end, read the part and did her best to replace the prima donna in the concerted pieces. On two or three occasions, however, Mlle. Maillard, a young actress, for whom the Intendant La Ferté had a very pronounced tendresse, was entrusted with the principal rôle.
The real Dido, meanwhile, was making a high successful tour in Provence, where she was everywhere received with enthusiasm. At Aix, she caught such a severe cold that for a time she lost her voice, but had, fortunately, fully recovered its use by the time she returned to Paris. “The part of Didon,” she wrote to one of her friends in Provence, “having been composed for me, for my voice, and being the only very interesting part in this piece, it will be impossible to give it anywhere without me. This looks like conceit on my part, but I will explain the matter to you. The part of Didon is all acting. The recitative is so well composed that it is impossible to sing it.
“An immense number of persons had attended the early rehearsals of Didon, and had come to the conclusion that it was one of Piccini’s worst productions. But Piccini consoled himself by saying: ‘Wait till my Didon comes!’ At the first rehearsal, which took place with myself in the part, every one said: ‘Ah! he has recomposed the greater part of his opera!’ And yet only four days had elapsed since the previous rehearsal. Piccini heard it and remarked: ‘No, Messieurs, I have altered nothing in the part. But until now Didon was being played without Didon.’”
From which letter it will be gathered that undue modesty was not one of Madame Saint-Huberty’s failings.
The day of the first representation drew near. The great singer resolved to carry out a radical change in her costume. She held, as Mlle. Clairon had held, that in order to faithfully represent the personages of antiquity, it was absolutely essential to investigate their manners and their characters, and to ascertain exactly the garments which they were in the habit of wearing.192 She regarded the theatre as a picture which cannot hope to produce illusion, save by the fortunate accord of all its elements, and she was far from meeting with this accord in tragedy, in which the verse transported the audience to Rome or Sparta, but in which one saw appear Greeks wearing brocaded robes, with turbans on their heads, and Roman ladies with long trains borne by pages.[193]
This time she succeeded better than in Ariane, and went to the extreme of simplicity. She announced that the costume she proposed to adopt was an exact copy of a design by Moreau le jeune, sent from Rome, where the artist then was. The tunic was of linen, the buskins laced on the bare foot, the crown encircled by a veil, which fell down her back, the mantle of purple, the robe fastened by a girdle below the bosom.
We may imagine the astonishment of the committee of the Opera, of La Ferté, and of Amelot, when Madame Saint-Huberty, with Moreau’s design in her hand, insisted that a costume exactly resembling it should be forthwith ordered for her. “She thus dared to patronise new ideas and to introduce to the Opera a costume designed by this reformer, whom they believed they had conquered.”194 All the authorities were up in arms against these exorbitant pretensions, but the actress’s genius had rendered her all-powerful; her wishes could no longer be ignored, and they were obliged to yield. But every day the lady became more exacting in her demands, and poor La Ferté was driven to his wits’ end to satisfy them. “I have just ordered Madame Saint-Huberty’s robe,” he writes to Amelot; “but it is terrible!” And again: “I have endeavoured to satisfy Madame Saint-Huberty’s caprices in making her decide to content herself with some changes in her robe for the part of Didon!” Unhappy Intendant! The actress was now indeed taking an ample revenge for the rebuff she had sustained in Ariane.
Didon was at length presented on October 16, 1783. It was a dazzling triumph for both composer and actress. Never had such enthusiasm been witnessed at the Court. Louis XVI., though, as a rule, he did not care for opera, was delighted and declared that “this opera had given him as much pleasure as a fine tragedy.” To mark his satisfaction, he at once decided that a pension of 1500 livres should be bestowed on the principal actress, and sent the Maréchal de Duras to compliment her and inform her of the pleasure she had afforded him.
“This,” writes one who was present, “was the finest scene of the evening. When the Maréchal de Duras arrived behind the scenes, followed by a crowd of courtiers in gala dress, Madame Saint-Huberty had not yet had time to change her costume. She was standing up, the crown on her head, draped in the purple mantle of the Queen of Carthage. Marmontel and Piccini, intoxicated with joy, had thrown themselves at her feet and were kissing her hands. One would have called them two criminals, whose lives she had just spared. They only rose when M. de Duras approached to repeat what the King had said. The actress listened to the marshal, and her countenance, still animated by inspiration, became illumined with the joy of this new triumph. The blush of pride rose to her forehead. She had so much grandeur, nobility, and majesty in her bearing, with these men at her feet, that better even than when upon the stage she conveyed the idea of the Queen of Carthage. All the great nobles present had the appearance of being only her courtiers.”
Métra describes this scene in the ironical tone characteristic of him. He represents Piccini precipitating himself at the feet of the singer, and amorously squeezing her hand. He shows us Marmontel, although more slow to bend the knee, employing vows and the most tender expressions to assure her that she arouses in his heart the most novel and the most lively emotions. And he concludes: “What a pleasing contrast to picture to oneself in this scene Saint-Huberty, still clothed in the purple of Didon, receiving with dignity the incense of great noblemen and men of letters, and to behold her, as a voluptuary of the time found her, two days later, in Paris, playing a game of piquet with her page, at the end of a table covered with a coarse and dirty dishcloth!”
In Paris, the opera and the singer obtained an even greater triumph than at Fontainebleau. The evening of the first representation (December 1, 1783) was “an evening of transports and delirium.” The public could not find means to express its admiration. At the conclusion of the impressive song,
“Ah! que je fus bien inspirée,”
the audience rose in a body and interrupted the performance with frenzied applause. At the touching air,
“Ah! prends pitié de ma faiblesse,”
there was not, we are assured, a dry eye in the whole house. “What more glorious triumph,” writes one of the actress’s biographers, “could this poor artiste in her days of toil and misery have ever dreamed of!”195
Among the critics, not a dissentient voice was heard; all joined in a chorus of praise of Didon and the great lyric tragédienne. “Madame Saint-Huberty,” wrote the Mémoires secrets, “played the part with the highest talent. She excelled even herself, and showed herself not less a great actress than an accomplished singer.” “It is the voice of Todi; it is the acting of Clairon!” cries Grimm. “It is a model which has not been seen on the stage for a long time, and will not soon be seen again.”
And Guinguéné, in his valuable study of the life and works of Piccini, writes: “The talent of this sublime actress has its origin in her extreme sensibility. An air might be better sung, but it would be impossible to give to any air, to any recitative, a truer, more passionate expression. No action could be more dramatic than hers, no silence more eloquent. One still recalls her terrible dumb-show, her tragic immobility; and the awful expression of her countenance during the long ritornello of the chorus of the priests, towards the end of the third act, and while the chorus is being sung.
“At the performance she did no more than replace herself in the position in which she had naturally found herself at the first general rehearsal. Some one spoke to her of the impression she had seemed to feel, and which she communicated to the whole audience.
“‘I really experienced it,’ she answered. ‘After the tenth bar, I felt as if I were dead.’196
“This reply,” remarks Gaboriau, “reveals the whole secret of the great lyric tragédienne’s talent. An actress of genius, she knew how to keep her head, but she surrendered her whole heart, her whole soul. She really suffered the grief which she expressed in so heartrending a manner; she really felt as if she were dying. And to such a point was this true that, after each performance, she was so ill and exhausted that she needed several hours to recover herself.”197
It has been said that Madame Saint-Huberty was an infinitely better actress than she was a singer. This, however, was certainly not the case. Castil-Blaze declares her to have been the first vocalist worthy of the name who appeared at the French Opera; while one of her biographers points out that Piccini would never have composed for her so difficult an air as that beginning: “Ah! que je fus bien inspirée,” had he not known her to possess a cultivated voice, full of charm and expression.
But the best proof that she really could lay claim to exceptional vocal as well as dramatic talent, and was not merely “an actress who spoke song”—to borrow Grétry’s definition of Madame Dugazon—is the success which attended her appearance at the “Concerts Spirituels,” where she took her place beside Mara and Todi, and acquitted herself so well that some critics went so far as to speak of her as a formidable rival to these eminent singers.
The success of Didon continued unabated. At each performance, Madame Saint-Huberty “seemed to add something to the purity of tone, to the truth of expression, to the profundity of sensibility which she had displayed on the first evening.”198 At each performance a fresh ovation awaited her. On January 14, 1784, at the twelfth representation of the Opera, she was the recipient of an honour which up to that time was absolutely without precedent in France.
“At the end of the second act,” writes Grimm, “which terminated with the pathetic trio between Énée, Didon, and her sister, a crown of laurel, badly aimed, fell into the orchestra. The person at whose feet it fell placed it on the edge of the stage. The public, with loud cries, demanded that it should be placed on Didon’s head, which was done, by the demoiselle Gavaudan, to the accompaniment of unanimous and prolonged applause. The actress, surprised and almost overwhelmed with confusion, experienced a shock so great that it was, for the moment, feared that she would be unable to finish her part.... This crown of laurel was tied with a white ribbon on which was embroidered these words: Didon et Saint-Huberty sont immortelles.”199
Apropos of this coronation, La Ferté wrote to Amelot:
“Another trouble, Monseigneur. I do not know whether you have been informed that on Friday evening last a crown, bearing the inscription: ‘À la immortelle Saint-Huberty,’ was thrown upon the stage. The actress who was playing with her picked it up and placed it on Madame Saint-Huberty’s head. This episode, apparently the result of an arrangement concerted with the demoiselle Saint-Huberty, cannot be ignored; for those who in this manner give crowns (an incident hitherto without example in the theatre in connection with an actor) might equally accustom themselves to throw baked apples and oranges, as happens in England, at an actor who does not meet with their approbation. The confusion would then be beyond remedy!”
The Intendant then goes on to say that the honour paid her had not rendered Madame Saint-Huberty more accommodating, since she had refused to play on the following Tuesday, and, as the receipts for that evening would inevitably show a great decrease, if Didon were not performed, he suggests that the prima donna should be replaced by Mlle. Maillard, whom, as we have mentioned elsewhere, M. de la Ferté honoured with his favours. The old Intendant must have been very much in love or exceedingly deaf, for he actually goes so far as to assure Amelot that Mlle. Maillard’s voice is one which may well excite the envy of Madame Saint-Huberty.
Mlle. Maillard secured the appearance she coveted, though Madame Saint-Huberty protested vigorously against her being allowed to play the part, on the ground that it was an infringement of the last clause of the agreement of the previous March, which provided that no other actress should be allowed to play any part which she had created, save at her own suggestion. But the young lady must have regretted her misplaced ambition, for the public, learning of its idol’s feeling in the matter, accorded her anything but a flattering reception.
The acclamations of Court and capital did not content Madame Saint-Huberty; she desired the applause of the whole of France, and she received it. The enthusiasm of the provinces indeed reached the point of absurdity; a royal progress could hardly have been more splendid.
At Marseilles, the first city of importance which she visited, and where she gave no less than twenty-three representations, it was resolved to organise a magnificent fête in her honour. Cannon thundered salutes, the vessels in the harbour were decorated with flags, and, in the evening, the entire city was illuminated. An eight-oared gondola, lined throughout with satin and furnished with velvet cushions, had been prepared for the occasion, in which the prima donna embarked, arrayed in a Greek costume of the most extravagant richness, the gift of the ladies of Marseilles. The gondola was then rowed out to sea, escorted by more than one hundred vessels of various kinds, including several barges filled with musicians. Aquatic sports were held, the victors in which had the felicity of being crowned by the heroine of the day.
On her return to land, the cannon again fired salutes; the whole population had flocked to the quays. The diva was conducted, through an avenue of illuminated pavilions, to a pleasure-house, where she rested for a while in a salon of verdure lighted by coloured lanterns. Then she entered a tent, in which a temporary theatre had been constructed, where an allegorical play was performed in her honour, and Apollo crowned her with laurel as the “tenth” Muse. A ball followed, during which Madame Saint-Huberty occupied a seat on a daïs between Melpomene and Thalia. Finally, a splendid supper, to which sixty of the principal inhabitants of Marseilles sat down, was served in a room protected by a wooden grill, to guard the idol against the too-pressing attentions of her worshippers. At dessert, Madame Saint-Huberty sang several couplets in the Provençal patois, the people joining in the chorus. The enthusiasm of the city on this memorable night was indescribable, and spread far into the country.
When, at length, the prima donna contrived to tear herself away from her admirers at Marseilles, an extra horse had to be harnessed to her post-chaise, to draw the trophies of her twenty-three performances, which included more than a hundred crowns.
At Toulouse, if the fêtes were less splendid, there was no diminution in the enthusiasm of the public. In the third act of Didon, the performance was suddenly stopped, while twelve young girls, dressed in white, advanced towards Madame Saint-Huberty. They carried a basket of flowers surmounted by a crown, which their leader begged the singer to accept, as “the tribute of a grateful country.”
At Strasburg—her birthplace and the town where she had made her first appearance on the stage—which she visited in the summer of 1787, the ovations continued. There, amongst a thousand other compliments in verse, of various degrees of merit, she received the following gallant madrigal:
“Romains qui vous vantez d’une illustre origine,
Voyez d’où dépendait votre empire naissant:
Didon n’eut pas de charme assez puissant
Pour arrêter la fuite où son amant s’obstine;
Mais si l’autre Didon, ornement de ces lieux,
Eût été reine de Carthage,
Il eût, pour la servir, abandonné ses dieux,
Et votre beau pays serait encore sauvage.”
These verses have been ascribed by Edmond de Concourt, Gaboriau, and several other writers to no less a personage than Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young officer of artillery. But they are in error, for M. Adolphe Jullien, who has carefully investigated the matter, points out that Napoleon passed the whole of the year 1787 not at Strasburg, but in Corsica.
Space forbids us to give more than a very brief account of the remaining triumphs of this truly great artiste, who, no matter how unfavourable the verdict of the public and the critics might be in regard to some of the works in which she appeared, was always herself assured of applause and commendation. In the title-part of the Chimène of Sacchini, as Délie, in the Tibulle et Délie of Fuzelier and Mlle. de Beaumesnil, as Hypermnestre, in that superb opera of the Danaïdes, which made the name of Salieri worthy to rank with those of Gluck, Piccini, and Sacchini, she astonished and delighted the musical world scarcely less than she had in Piccini’s masterpiece. And such was her passionate love of her art and her amazing capacity for hard work that all these four most difficult and most varied rôles—Didon, Chimène, Délie, and Hypermnestre, of which three at least are among the most beautiful figures to which the lyric art has lent life—were studied, mastered, and represented within the space of some seven months: from October 16, 1783 to April 26, 1784.200
Two years after the great success of their Didon, Marmontel and Piccini reappeared on the stage of the Opera with Pénélope. Unfortunately, the vogue which the preceding work had obtained had aroused too many expectations in regard to this new essay—author and composer, so to speak, were the victims of their own excellence—and though Pénélope was, in its way, a fine opera, it was received in comparative silence. All the critics, however, were agreed that Madame Saint-Huberty, in the part of the virtuous wife of Ulysses, was superb, and that she had seldom been heard to more advantage than in the two airs: “Je le vois, cette ombre errante,” and “Il est affreux, il est horrible,” and in the scene where Telemachus comes to announce the return of her husband.
It was Madame Saint-Huberty again who, in May, 1786, rescued from complete disaster the Thémistocle of Philidor, which, after a tolerably good reception by the Court, had been greeted, at first, by the town with marked disfavour; and it was not one of her least successes to have invested with life the inanimate figure of the heroine, Mandane.
In November of the same year, the singer was able to discharge the debt of gratitude which she owed to her first master, Lemoine. Lemoine, it will be remembered had, some years before, produced an Électre, which had failed, in spite of the heroic efforts of his former pupil. Now, however, he had composed a far more important work on the subject of Phædra, from which he expected great things; and Madame Saint-Huberty exerted all her influence to secure it precedence over the Œdipe of Sacchini, who was also impatiently awaiting his turn.
Unhappily, she succeeded. Sacchini had the Queen’s promise that his work should be the first to be performed before the Court, at Fontainebleau; but one day Marie Antoinette approached him, and said, with tears in her eyes: “M. Sacchini; it is said that I show too much favour to foreigners. I have been so earnestly solicited to allow the Phèdre of M. Lemoine to be performed, in place of your Œdipe, that I could not refuse. You see my position; forgive me.”
The poor Italian was so bitterly disappointed at the indefinite postponement of the work, upon which he had based so many hopes, that he fell ill that same evening and died, three months later, without having been able to assist at the production of the masterpiece which was to render his name immortal.201
Lemoine’s Phèdre, the precedence for which had been so dearly purchased, was coldly received by the Court, and still more coldly by the town; and it was in vain that Madame Saint-Huberty called to her aid all her genius to save the work of her old master. At the third performance the theatre was almost empty. Ultimately, however, it proved a success, thanks to the ingenious intervention of a friend of the composer.
This friend was Quidor, the police-inspector who had been charged with the pursuit of the dancer Nivelon.202 Quidor had under his professional supervision a great number of ladies of easy virtue, whom he invited, “in a manner which did not permit of any refusal,” to attend and to make their friends attend the performances of Phèdre. The theatre, deserted at the third representation, was crammed to suffocation at the fifth; dazzling toilettes appeared in all the boxes, while the applause was positively deafening; for the ingenious inspector had filled the pit and galleries with police in plain clothes, with orders not to spare their hands or voices.
This strategy was attended with complete success. The performers recovered their spirits, which had been naturally much damped by having to sing to empty boxes, and rendered full justice to what was really an admirable work; at the tenth representation the true public began to arrive, found the music charming, and joined heartily in the applause.203
The character of Madame Saint-Huberty was far less agreeable than her talent. Dauvergne, the director of the Opera, declared that she was the most abandoned woman in his theatre—which was to say a good deal—and, in a letter to Amelot, cited by Edmond de Goncourt, in his monograph on the actress, charges her with the most revolting vices—the same of which Sophie Arnould and Mlle. Raucourt had formerly been accused. Moreover, she was insolent and exacting, and wearied the administration with her caprices and pretensions.
“She is a great musician,” writes La Ferté, in 1784, to Amelot, “abounding in talent and essential to the Academy. If Nature had not lavished upon her all the necessary qualifications, Art would have created a prodigy in her favour. This artiste is too well aware that she is necessary to the Opera, in default of persons who can replace her with advantage. She is full of pretensions; she has intelligence, but a bad disposition. She must be humoured, but not spoilt, otherwise she will make herself, so to speak, the sovereign arbitrix of the Opera.”204
During a visit to Lyons, in 1785, where she was received with the same enthusiasm as elsewhere in the provinces, Madame Saint-Huberty conceived a violent fancy for the local tenor, one Saint-Aubin by name, who took the part of Énée in Didon, and did not rest content with making love to him on the stage. When her congé expired, nothing would satisfy her but that the fascinating tenor should follow her to Paris, and no sooner had she returned to the capital than she persuaded the administration to engage him for the Opera, and an ordre de début was accordingly despatched to Lyons:
“De Par Le Roi:
“The sieur Saint-Aubin, tenor of the Lyons theatre, is directed to come immediately to Paris, to make his début on the stage of the Opera.
“Executed at Paris, etc.”
In vain did the management of the Lyons theatre represent that the services of the sieur Saint-Aubin could not possibly be dispensed with; that there was no one to replace him; that he had anticipated his salary to the extent of 3433 livres, 4 sols.; that the theatre, already in a bad way financially, would be completely ruined by his departure, and so forth. The authorities in Paris, spurred on by the amorous prima donna, were inexorable, and the sieur Saint-Aubin had to obey. He made his début on December 9, 1785, as Atys, in Piccini’s opera of that name, and was pronounced by the critics a tolerably good singer, but far too stout for a lover—at least on the stage.
After a year of love duets with Madame Saint-Huberty, the passion of the stout tenor began to cool. The husband awoke in him; he remembered that he had left at Lyons a young and charming wife and two pretty children, and manifested a strong inclination to rejoin them. Fearful of losing her lover altogether, the prima donna resigned herself to sharing him with another, and a second imperious summons, in the King’s name, brought to Paris the young wife and the two children. And that is how Madame Saint-Aubin, afterwards a great attraction at the Opéra-Comique, was introduced to the Paris stage.
The arrogance and caprices of Madame Saint-Huberty increased every year; the letters of Dauvergne to La Ferté and Amelot teem with complaints in regard to her conduct. On May 22, 1785, the lady had promised the director to sing the following evening in Armide, and that opera had duly been announced. But, at eleven o’clock the next morning, a message came that Madame Saint-Huberty was not fit to sing, that she had temporarily lost her voice; but that she was about to try a remedy which she had never yet known to fail, and would let him know definitely at two o’clock whether she would appear or not. An hour later, a friend of the singer called upon Dauvergne to inform him that the remedy had not yet had the desired effect, but that, if at four o’clock the lost voice had returned, its owner would “make an effort.” Finally, almost at the last moment, Madame Saint-Huberty sent a servant to announce that it was absolutely impossible for her to appear that evening; and an actress, who was only very imperfectly acquainted with the part—for, since no one was allowed to replace the imperious prima donna, save with her own consent, it was worth no one’s while to understudy her—was compelled to sing the difficult rôle of Armide, and to be soundly hissed for her pains.
A few days later, Madame Saint-Huberty started for her annual tour in the provinces. On the eve of her departure, there was a terrible scene, in the green-room, between the actress and Dauvergne, because the latter had very properly declined to allow the lady to carry away with her ten costumes, the property of the theatre, the removal of which would have rendered it impossible to play any of the operas for which they had been designed until Madame Saint-Huberty returned or fresh ones had been made.
The arrogance and insolence of the prima donna seem to have reached a climax in the year 1787. On January 13, at a general meeting of the company, called for the purpose of examining the accounts, Madame Saint-Huberty rising from her seat, “not like a reasonable woman, but like a Fury,” denounced Vion, the conductor of the orchestra, who had apparently declined to allow her to take liberties with the time, as incapable of holding the bâton, and demanded his immediate dismissal, vowing that if he appeared again in the orchestra, she would, no matter what might be the result, refuse to sing her part.
At the end of the following March, some days before the annual closing of the theatre, and without troubling to ask permission, the actress started off for Alsace, with the view of singing at the Strasburg theatre. She was, however, speedily followed by a courier, with a letter for the director at Strasburg, forbidding him to allow her to appear, and orders for the lady to return immediately to Paris.
She obeyed, burning with indignation and resolved no longer to submit to such humiliations, and wrote to the long-suffering Dauvergne the following letter:
“The trouble, the disgust and the vexation occasioned me by the reprimands and threats which your continual complaints bring upon me from the Minister (Amelot), far from increasing my courage, affect my health and strength, and will end by bringing about what is so ardently desired: the renunciation of my engagement, which it is wished to annul, and my definite retirement from the theatre; for it is impossible for me to support any longer such vexations. You know, Monsieur, that I am not ignorant how much you hate me, and that I expect to feel all the effects of your hatred.”
However, in spite of this letter, Madame Saint-Huberty did not actually retire from the Opera until more than three years later.
Not only did Madame Saint-Huberty treat the wishes of the authorities of the Opera with contempt, but she encouraged others to follow her example. In September 1786, a certain Mlle. Gavaudan, one of her particular friends, relying on her support, refused to sing in a now forgotten opera called Le Toison d’Or, presumably because she considered the rôle of Calliope, for which she had been cast, unworthy of her talents. Thereupon, Dauvergne, according to the custom in such cases, obtained a lettre de cachet, in virtue of which the recalcitrant actress was carried off to the prison of La Force, where she would appear to have been treated as a first-class misdemeanant. Madame Saint-Huberty was furious at the punishment meted out to her protégée; threatened the director that she would employ all the influence at her command to have him driven ignominiously from his post, and demanded that Mlle. Gavaudan should be permitted to leave the prison, in order that she might dine with her and sing her part in Sacchini’s Œnone, before the general rehearsal. This request was granted; but the pleasure of the two friends was somewhat marred by the fact that a police-agent was deputed to accompany the young lady to the prima donna’s house and escort her back to prison afterwards. Madame Saint-Huberty then wrote an impertinent letter to La Ferté, insisting on the immediate and unconditional release of her friend; but failed to obtain any satisfaction in that quarter; and, shortly afterwards, Mlle. Gavaudan, having been threatened with a period of solitary confinement, if she continued contumacious, decided to capitulate, and sang the despised part of Calliope very charmingly, notwithstanding the fact that she was in a state of semi-intoxication at the time.
A prolific source of dispute between Madame Saint-Huberty and the administration of the Opera, and one in which the singer is certainly entitled to every sympathy, was her determination to wear the costumes appropriate to the parts she played. The chief objection on the part of the authorities to gratify her wishes in this respect was on the score of expense, for never was theatre conducted with such sordid, such cheeseparing, economy as the Paris Opera. In 1784, a special general meeting of the committee was considered necessary to examine the design of a costume which Madame Saint-Huberty desired for the part of Armide, and to decide whether she should be permitted to have it. “The committee,” says the report on the subject addressed to Amelot, “considering that this part, in which Madame Saint-Huberty has not yet been seen, might give to the work the charm of novelty and procure for the Opera advantageous receipts during several representations, believes that they ought to give to Madame Saint-Huberty the satisfaction she deserves, the more so since she has no objection to sharing the part with Mlle. Levasseur, it having been arranged that, in case she should be indisposed, the dress should be worn by the actresses who replace her.”
In the margin of this report, the Minister writes as follows: “Good for this time only, and without the establishment of a precedent. All the members, without distinction, must wear the costumes provided for them by the administration, so long as they are in a fit state to be worn.”205
But the authorities were seldom so complacent. Two years later, there was a sharp difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of certain costumes which Madame Saint-Huberty had demanded for the operas of Pénélope and Alceste; and La Ferté wrote to the singer the following letter:
“It is not M. de la Laistic, Madame, who decides what dresses are to be made for the performances before the Court, but the persons appointed by the King to supervise the costumes and the expenses. I cannot disguise from you that at Fontainebleau there was much displeasure about the dress which you exacted, and which, almost on your sole authority, you had caused to be made for the part of Pénélope, which appeared in no way suitable either to the position of that princess, so long afflicted, or to the magnificence of the period, fabulous though it was. You must have noticed that it was not thought becoming for you to wear it in Paris.... To-day, you demand a simpler dress for Alceste.... Finally, I am going to send your letter to M. Bocquet,206 that he may consult with M. Dauvergne and cause what is necessary to be done. You must be convinced of our desire to satisfy you in all reasonable things, and to be agreeable to you. But, at the same time, you ought to understand that you are obliged to conform, like all your comrades, and those who played the first parts before you, to the regulations and to the costumes selected for them. For, if each one desired to dress according to individual taste, the result would be inextricable confusion, and an expenditure both useless and ruinous for the King and the Opera....”207
Then, in September 1788, we find Dauvergne writing to La Ferté that fresh complications had arisen, because Madame Saint-Huberty had demanded two new dresses for the part of Chimène, in Sacchini’s opera of that name, and one for each of her four attendants. He finds comfort, however, in the reflection, that, in the event of the lady refusing to sing, owing to her request not being acceded to, he has provided himself with no less than four substitutes.
About the same time, there was a good deal of friction between Madame Saint-Huberty and the administration on the subject of a chignon, which the prima donna had taken upon herself to order, without apparently consulting the committee. The bill for this chignon, the design for which had been submitted to a number of experts, was pronounced by the committee “horribly dear,” and they unanimously decided that in future none must be ordered, unless the sketch and the estimate had first been approved by themselves.
The amours of the great actresses, danseuses, and singers of the eighteenth century occupy almost as much space in the memoirs and correspondence of the time as their professional triumphs. With a regularity and a wealth of detail which would be beyond all praise, if applied to some more worthy subject, the Bachaumonts and Métras recount day by day the private history of these courtesan-artistes, register the births and deaths of their fleeting attachments, and give us without interruption the long succession of noble and wealthy admirers who succumbed to their charms. But the career of Madame Saint-Huberty seems to have provided the chroniclers of contemporary scandal with singularly little which they deem worthy to be transmitted to posterity. Possibly, as one of the biographers suggests, this is to be accounted for by the humble social position occupied by those whom she honoured with her favours; for the Vol plus haut credits the queen of the Opera with tender relations with several third-rate financiers and obscure concert-singers, to whom, of course, must be added the tenor Saint-Aubin. However, that may be, the only lover of any social distinction that we hear of is the Marquis de Louvois,208 until, during the last years of her career at the Opera, the singer developed a sincere and lasting attachment for the Comte de Launai d’Antraigues.
Louis de Launai d’Antraigues—a very handsome man, according to Madame Vigée Lebrun—was born about 1755, at Ville-Neuve-de-Berg, in Le Vivarais. He claimed descent from the celebrated d’Antraigues, the companion-in-arms of Henri IV., to whom that monarch wrote, in 1588: “...I hope that you are by this time recovered of the wound that you received at Coutras, fighting so valiantly by my side; and, if it be as I hope, do not fail (for by God’s aid, in a little while, we shall have fighting to do, and, consequently, great need of your services) to start immediately to rejoin us.” Later, when the count was sitting in the States-General, as the representative of Le Vivarais, this claim, which would have entitled him to certain privileges, was contested; but he was indisputably of good family, and his mother was a Saint-Priest, sister to the Minister of that name. He appears to have begun life in the army in the Regiment du Vivarais, which, however, he soon quitted, according to one account, because he had declined to fight a duel. Afterwards, he spent several years in foreign travel, and on his return to France, divided his time between his country-seat and Paris, where he frequented the society of philosophers and men of science, among whom were Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Montgolfiers.
An ardent politician and possessed of considerable literary gifts, he, in 1788, made his début as a publicist by a Mémoire sur les états généraux, leurs droits et la manière de les convoquer, which showed a marked predilection for republican government, and created no small sensation. However, his opinions underwent a sudden and startling transformation soon after he had taken his seat in the States-General, and thenceforth he combated with warmth the very doctrines of which he had once been the ardent advocate. So complete a volte-face naturally excited the ridicule and contempt of his former political friends, and Mirabeau, in a published letter addressed to him, compared him to a weather-cock; but that he was animated by sincere conviction there can be no question.
At what period began the connection between the count and the singer, which was to end in so tragic a manner, is uncertain. But, according to a letter written by d’Antraigues to his wife, after their secret marriage in 1790, their first relations went back to 1783. However that may be, d’Antraigues did not immediately become the lady’s lover, for his early letters, several of which were in the possession of Edmond de Goncourt, at the time when he wrote his monograph on the actress, reveal him as still in the character of a soupirant, and a very humble one at that. “I beg you,” one of these epistles concludes, “to continue your kindness towards me, and to be well assured of the esteem and attachment with which you have inspired me.”
Gradually, however, the esteem and attachment develop into a warmer feeling, and we find him imploring her not to forget “a man who loves her heart and her virtues,” though two hundred leagues separate them. One of these later letters, written in answer to some complaints of Madame Saint-Huberty in regard to the envious and jealous persons by whom she was surrounded, is of interest, since it shows that at the height of her fame the great singer still led a simple life, and that, even if she were the abandoned woman that Dauvergne declared her to be, she did not stoop to venal amours:
“I have heard them (her enemies), it is true, seek to turn you into ridicule, accuse you of loving to save money, jeer at your simplicity, and laugh at you for driving about Paris in a hackney-coach. But I have also seen honest and excellent men love and admire you on account of this very simplicity. Do you think that one can see, without sympathy, without enthusiasm, an amiable and celebrated woman leave her house in a hackney-coach, when it would be easy for her to be drawn in the gilded chariot of vice and infamy? It is beautiful, it is noble, to exhibit honesty and virtue in the haunt of baseness, greed, and the most abject passions. It is sweet to see talent in all its brilliancy associated with the virtues of a noble soul. It is delightful, for those who can appreciate it, to be able to yield to the most true enthusiasm. It is glorious for the woman who inspires it not to excite in the heart of her admirers that regret which is occasioned by the sight of a sublime talent exercised by a man or woman who personally, is contemptible.”209
Madame Saint-Huberty, on her side, was far from insensible to the count’s devotion. Writing from Bordeaux, in September 1784, she informed him that she keeps his bust in her room, and that all the crowns she receives in the theatre from her enthusiastic admirers she places on his head. And, at length, three years later, comes a very tender and charming letter, which shows us that the thin dividing line between friendship and love has already been passed:
“Endeavour to make Cabanis love me a little, in order that he may cure me.210 I fear to die, since thou hast told me that thou dost believe that thou canst love me always. I believe thee, so far as it is in me to believe that which does not depend on ourselves. See what it is to love people for themselves or their virtues. For myself, I am well assured that I shall love thee always, whatever may happen, because before I loved thee, I desired for thee all thy good qualities.... My beloved, when I think that nothing stands in the way of our happiness, my heart thrills with pleasure; but this thought does not render the present moment very agreeable. I am working to become independent, and I am killing myself.
“If I have lost, by the constant labours and fatigues which I have undergone, the freshness of youth, in which coarse-grained men find pleasure, I hope that, in forming my heart on that of the one I love, it will take the place of all that another than thyself might desire. I love thee with passion, and it is not blind; thou canst not change thy nature, and that is all that interests me in thee.”
Madame Saint-Huberty’s assertion that she was “killing herself” was merely a figure of speech; but, at the same time, there was no disputing the fact that the immense amount of work she voluntarily imposed on herself during her provincial tours had told heavily upon her, and was gradually destroying the freshness of her voice, so that she now never sang more than twice a week, and had been compelled to abandon several of her most famous rôles, which she dared no longer attempt. “Yesterday,” writes Dauvergne to La Ferté, “the demoiselle Saint-Huberty appeared to the public to have lost much of her voice. I predicted to you that this woman would not last another two years. I am persuaded that, if she makes another provincial tour, she will finish herself altogether.” Nevertheless, she still retained her hold on the affections of the public, and, on the evenings on which she was announced to sing, all Paris flocked to the Boulevard Saint-Martin.
It was well for the administration of the Opera that, in the splendid houses which Madame Saint-Huberty never failed to draw they were able to find some compensation for the lady’s insolence and insubordination which, in these later years, passed all bounds. At the beginning of October 1789, she, as usual at the eleventh hour, declined to sing the part of Chimène, in Sacchini’s opera of that name, on the ground of feeling too fatigued. The authorities, aware that this was merely an excuse, insisted on her appearing, when she replied that she would “make an effort,” on condition that an employé of the theatre, named Parisis, who had recently been discharged for drunkenness and insolence, should be at once reinstated. This, however, was too much even for the long-suffering Dauvergne to submit to; and the threat of mulcting her in a month’s salary saved the situation.
At the weekly meetings of the company, at which it was customary to settle the répertoire for the ensuing week, and where the administrative correspondence was read, Madame Saint-Huberty never failed to create some unpleasantness or other. Now, she would encourage some unruly actress or danseuse to resist the authority of the director; now, she would punctuate the reading of the comminatory letters of La Ferté with bursts of derisive laughter (no wonder that the old Intendant alludes to her, in writing to Dauvergne as “une impudente coquine”); anon, she would object to the arrangements for the week. How was it possible, she would inquire, for her to sing Alceste on Friday, after singing Didon on Tuesday? Did they wish to kill her? Dauvergne would innocently suggest that another actress should sing Didon, and that Madame Saint-Huberty should rest, that her voice might be fresh for Alceste. What! Allow another actress to sing Didon!—her own rôle!—her own creation! No one but herself should sing it, so long as she remained a member of the company.
Finally, the unfortunate administration, for the sake of peace and tranquillity, agreed that the lady should not be required to sing more than once a week, that is to say on Fridays, the fashionable night at the Opera.
In March 1790, the Comte d’Antraigues openly accused of apostacy, denounced by the revolutionary Press to public vengeance, and the recipient, every day, of violent anonymous letters threatening assassination, deemed it prudent to quit France. On April 3, Madame Saint-Huberty obtained a passport to Geneva and, accompanied by her femme de chambre and two men-servants, set out for Switzerland, where she joined the count in the environs of Lausanne.
The two lovers remained for nearly three months at Lausanne, and then removed to a château, near Mindrisio, belonging to the Count Turconi, and here, on December 29, they were secretly married in the neighbouring church of Saint-Eusèbe.
For grave reasons known to himself, the Bishop of Como, in whose diocese the marriage took place, had granted to the officiating priest permission to perform the ceremony without inquiries or proofs, at whatever date, hour, or place the parties might select.
The day after the marriage, the count addressed to his wife the following letter:
“I may die, my dear wife, and cannot acquit myself too soon of the most sacred of duties.
“It is possible that there may be wanting to our union some of the formalities, which, according to the law of France, are required for the legalisation of marriages, and imperious circumstances may prevent me from fulfilling them for some time to come.
“If I happen to die before that time, I wish you to render to my memory the honour which you owe it, by rendering to yourself that which is due to you.
“I declare then that, after seven years of mutual confidence, I have united by marriage to my destiny the woman who has had the courage to wish to share my misfortunes; that, on December 29, 1790, after having obtained from the Bishop of Como a dispensation for the publication of banns, and permission for us to marry at any time and place that might please us, I married you in the Château of Castel San-Pietro, in the presence of two priests as witnesses.
“With several reasons for keeping this marriage secret, I did not conceal from you the most imperative of all: the grief it would cause my worthy and venerable mother. But I knew her; if she had only tears to give to my memory, she would forgive our secret union, and would see only the wife of her son in the woman who watched over his destinies, who softened their rigour, and who received the last sighs of his heart.”
Towards the end of the following year, the Comtesse d’Antraigues became enceinte. The marriage having been kept secret, the count was anxious that the birth of the child should not be known in the neighbourhood; and it was at a little village on the outskirts of Milan that, on June 26, 1792, the ex-singer presented him with a son, baptized two days later, under the names of Pierre Antoine Emmanuel Jules, born of the illustrious Emmanuel Louis Alexandre Henri de Launai, Comte d’Antraigues and of the dame Antoinette Clavel. So soon as the countess was sufficiently recovered to travel, she, with her husband and infant son, returned to Mindrisio.
From this quiet corner of Italian Switzerland, where he lived with the former queen of the Opera, the Comte d’Antraigues combated the men and things of the new France, in a series of very able brochures, wherein he constituted himself the speaking-trumpet of the counter-Revolution. But he was very far from being content with this warfare of the pen. He became the devoted servant of the Bourbons, the intermediary between them and the Courts of St. James’s, Madrid, Berlin, and Vienna, and rendered material assistance in weaving that network of secret intrigue, which, in spite of the successes of the French armies, for long rendered doubtful the establishment of the new order of things.211
In discharge of these diplomatic missions, he travelled incessantly, accompanied everywhere by his wife, who shared his fatigues and dangers, and received, in return, his full confidence. The count and countess were at Venice, in May 1795, when the city was occupied by the French troops. The count, who was at the time specially attached to the Russian legation, left with the Minister and his suite, accompanied by his wife and child; but at Trieste the party was stopped by orders of Bernadotte, who commanded the French there, and d’Antraigues arrested.
On being told that he was to be sent to Milan, the count begged the Russian Minister to take charge of Madame Saint-Huberty—for by that name she was still known—but the ex-singer insisted on sharing his captivity.
Touched by so much devotion, d’Antraigues explained to his captors that the lady was his lawful wife, and obtained permission for her to accompany him to Milan. “I declared at once to my tyrants,” he says, “that I was married, that I had a son, and that I desired to see him. They acceded to my request. She came, with that dear child of five years old, who threw himself upon me. That moment, which made her mine for ever, caused me to forget my foes, my persecutors, the future and the present. I owe that to my persecutors. To say how much I was indebted to my wife in these frightful circumstances is beyond my power. Never did there exist a courage more firm, a soul more mistress of itself, a character stronger in adversity; never did one behold more self-confidence in misfortune.”
At Milan, the count was at first imprisoned in a convent, where prisoners of war were confined, but, soon afterwards, taken to the citadel, and there placed in a dungeon, twelve feet long by six broad. Thanks, however, to the urgent representations of his wife, he was, some weeks later, liberated on parole, the understanding being that he was not to leave the city or even change his residence. But, in the early hours of the morning of August 25, he broke his parole and escaped, his flight, thanks to the ingenuity of his wife, who gave out that he was ill in bed, and went about the house preparing broth and other remedies, not being discovered till some days later.
It has been suggested that, for reasons of their own, the French authorities at Milan connived at the count’s escape; but it seems more probable that he fled through fear of being sent to Paris, where he would certainly have been brought to trial and very possibly executed. Such was undoubtedly the opinion in Royalist circles, and, to recognise the countess’s courage and devotion and her services to the “cause,” the Comte de Provence, in his theoretical character of King of France, sent her the order of Saint-Michel.212
Successively we find the adventurous couple at Vienna, Berlin, and Dresden, in which last-named city they seemed to have passed the greater part of the year 1804, the whole of the year 1805, and the first months of the year 1806, the count, who had been nominated a Counsellor of State by the Emperor Alexander of Russia, corresponding with Sweden, through Alopeus, the Swedish Minister in London, and working generally to bring about a European coalition against Napoleon. In September 1806, driven from Dresden by Napoleon’s victories, and unable to find an asylum on the Continent, they quitted Germany and established themselves in England. Here they resided in a pretty cottage at Barnes, and lived in good style on the various pensions which they had received. The count lost no time in entering into negotiations with the English Government, to whom he is said to have communicated the articles, real or imaginary, of the Treaty of Tilsit, though how he contrived to obtain particulars of a treaty drawn up with so much privacy is somewhat difficult to understand.
However, that may be, it is certain that d’Antraigues was employed by the Foreign Office in certain delicate negotiations and that he received a pension in return for his services; and it was this which, according to a legend which still finds acceptance with some French writers, brought about the tragic end of both himself and his wife, on the morning of July 22, 1812.
The story went that Fouché, desirous of discovering what was going on between d’Antraigues and the English Government, despatched two trusted agents to London, with orders at all costs to intercept the correspondence. The agents succeeded in bribing the count’s Piedmontese servant Lorenzo, to tamper with the letters which passed between his master and the Foreign Office; and that this man, finding that his treachery was certain to be discovered, through a visit which the count was on the point of making to Canning, in a moment of frenzied despair, assassinated both his master and mistress, and then took his own life. From the evidence given at the inquest, however, it would appear that Lorenzo committed the crime, in a fit of frenzy, due simply to his having received notice to leave the count’s service.
The Times of July 23, 1812, contained the following account of the tragedy:
“The Count and Countess d’Antraigues, French noblesse, and distantly related to the unfortunate family of the Bourbons, resided on Barnes Terrace, on the banks of the Thames. They lived in a style which, though far from what they had formerly moved in, yet was rather bordering on high life than the contrary. They kept a carriage, coachman, footman, and a servant out of livery. The latter was an Italian or Piedmontese, named Lawrence, and it is of this wretch that we have to relate the following particulars. The Count and Countess, intending to visit London as yesterday, ordered the carriage to be at the door by eight in the morning, which it accordingly was; and, soon after that hour, they were in the act of leaving the house to get into it, the Countess being at the door, the Count coming downstairs, when the report of a pistol was heard in the passage, which, it has since appeared, took no effect, nor was it then ascertained by whom it was fired. Lawrence was at the time in the passage, and, on the smoke subsiding, was seen to rush past the Count and proceed with great speed upstairs. He almost immediately returned, with a dirk in his hand, and plunged it up to the hilt into the Count’s left shoulder; he continued his course and made for the street door, where stood the Countess, whom he instantly despatched by plunging the same dirk into her left breast. This last act had scarcely been completed when the Count appeared also at the door, bleeding, and following the assassin, who made for the house and ran upstairs. The Count, though extremely weak and faint, continued to follow him; but so great was the terror occasioned that no one else had the same resolution. The assassin and the Count had not been upstairs more than a minute when the report of another pistol was heard, which satisfied those below that Lawrence had finally put an end to the existence of his master. The alarm was now given, and the cry of ‘Murder, murder!’ resounded from every mouth. The Countess was still lying at the front door, by which the turnpike road runs, and at length men of sufficient resolution were found to venture upstairs, and, horrible to relate, they found the Count lying across his own bed, groaning heavily and nearly dead, and the bloodthirsty villain lying by his side a corpse. He had put a period to his own existence by placing a pistol that he found in the room in his mouth and discharging its contents through his head. The Count only survived about twenty-five minutes after the fatal blow, and died without being able to utter a single word.
“The Countess had by this time been brought into the house; the wound was directly on her left breast, extremely large, and she died without uttering a single word. The servants of the house were all collected last night; but no cause for so horrid an act was at that time known; all was but conjecture.
“The following circumstance, in so extraordinary a case, may be, however worth while relating. The Count it appears, always kept a brace of pistols loaded in his bedroom, and a small dirk. About a month ago the Countess and the servants heard the report of a pistol upstairs, and were, in consequence, greatly alarmed; when one of the latter, a female, went upstairs and looked into her mistress’s room, it was full of smoke and she screamed out. On its clearing away, she saw Lawrence standing, who told her nothing was the matter: he had only fired one of his master’s pistols. It afterwards appeared that he had fired into the wainscot; it was loaded with ball, and the ball from the pistol is yet to be seen.
“The Count and Countess were about sixty years of age. The latter was highly accomplished, a great proficient in music, and greatly admired for her singing in fashionable parties. There is no reason whatever to believe that Lawrence was insane. Only about ten minutes previous to his committing this deed of blood, he went over to an adjoining public-house and took a glass of gin. He had lived only three months in the family, and, report says, was to be discharged in a few days.
“The Count and Countess had resided in Barnes for four or five years, and have left an only son, who, we understand, is at present in this country, studying the law.
“Besides his house on Barnes Terrace, Count d’Antraigues had a town establishment, No. 7 Queen Anne Street, W. He was fifty-six, and the Countess fifty-three years of age. The Count had eminently distinguished himself in the troubles which have convulsed Europe for the past twenty-two years. In 1789, he was actively engaged in favour of the Resolution, but during the tyranny of Robespierre he emigrated to Germany, and was employed in the service of Russia. At Venice, in 1797, he was arrested by Bernadotte, who pretended to have discovered in his portfolio all the particulars of the plot upon which the 18th Fructidor was founded. The Count made his escape from Milan, where he was confined, and was afterwards employed in the diplomatic mission of Russia at the Court of Dresden. In 1806 he was sent to England, with credentials from the Emperor of Russia, who had granted him a pension, and placed great dependence upon his services. He received here letters of denization, and was often employed by the Government. The Countess was the once celebrated Madame Saint-Huberty, an actress at the Théâtre-Français.213 She had amassed a very large fortune by her professional talents.”214
And the same impression of the Times contained this other account:
“The Count d’Antraigues, a very eminent political character, formerly a deputy of the nobility of Vivarais to the States-General, author of many eloquent tracts, who had married the celebrated singer and actress of the Royal Academy of Music at Paris, Madame Saint-Huberty, was murdered yesterday morning at seven o’clock, along with his lady, in their summer residence on Barnes Terrace, by one of their servants named Lorenzo, a Piedmontese, aged twenty-five years, who had been only a few months in their service, and whom they had no reason to suspect of such a diabolical design.
“Both the Count and Countess d’Antraigues were preparing to come to town, as they usually did every Wednesday. The Count had an appointment (as we understand) with his particular friend Mr. Canning, to meet him at ten o’clock, and had actually taken his papers in his hat and proceeded down the staircase from his bedroom, his lady, who went before, being at the door waiting, and calling for the servant to open the carriage. Lorenzo at that moment took from the bed of his master a pistol and a most superb Turkish poignard, which the Count d’Antraigues had brought with him from Constantinople. He discharged the pistol at his master, at six paces distance, on the staircase, and missed him, the ball passing between the Count and Countess.
“The murderer, seeing that the ball had not taken effect, took to the poignard, and stabbed his master in the shoulder. Though the blow was mortal, the Count had still strength to walk to his room. The servant then ran to the Countess, who was shrieking, and plunged, in the most audacious manner, the poignard into her breast. She fell, and died instantly, without any groans, saying only, ‘Lorenzo! Lorenzo!’
“It appears that the Count died, as soon as he re-entered his room, from an effusion of blood in his chest. The murderer, bewildered and frantic after his ferocious deed, came to the room where his master was lying, and, seizing on another of the four pistols which the Count kept constantly for his protection at his bedside, with the poignard, under the presentiment that one day or other his life would be attempted, discharged the contents into his mouth, and shattered his head in the most fearful manner. He died on the spot, and fell dead by the side of his master.215
“The alarm was given by the coachman, who was standing at the door, and the other servants. Two professional men came instantly, but no assistance could prevail. The house was besmeared with blood, and presented a most shocking spectacle, the three bodies being extended in such a small space. The coachman drove to town to fetch the doctor and the lawyer who was generally employed by the Count, and to convey the melancholy tidings to the house of the deceased in Queen Anne Street, W., where a great crowd of people were collected during the whole of the day. Dr. Chavernac of Gerrard Street, the surgeon, and Mr. Trickey, the solicitor, both the intimate friends of the deceased, went post-haste to Barnes Terrace. The papers, jewels, and other effects of the Count and Countess were put under seal in their presence, and in that of a magistrate and several respectable neighbours. A coroner’s inquest is to take place this day at Barnes on the three bodies.
“No cause is yet known for the atrocious act which has deprived of life two persons, who, by their talents, knowledge, amiable manners, and powerful connections, ranked very high in society. The Count was a man of colossal stature and imposing countenance, only fifty-eight years of age, and his lady fifty-two.
“Mr. Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the particular friend of the Count, was informed of the lamentable event early yesterday, and Lord Sidmouth commissioned Mr. Brooks of the Alien Office to take, conjointly with the Count La Châtre, Commissary of his Majesty Louis XVIII., the proper measures to secure the papers and property of the deceased, who had been formerly Commissary of his Most Christian Majesty in Italy, and till his death an agent and correspondent of the Emperor of Russia.”
Report of the Inquest.
(From the Times, July 24, 1812.)
“An inquest was held yesterday at the ‘White Hart,’ Barnes Terrace, before Charles Jemmett, Esq., Coroner for the County, after a view of the bodies of the Count and Countess d’Antraigues, and of Lawrence, who murdered them.
“Susannah Black, the first witness, deposed that, on July 22nd inst., she was ordered by the Countess, about eight o’clock in the morning, to take some books, &c., to the carriage door; that she followed the Countess to the door, and saw Lawrence near the carriage with his face to the door, and ordered him to open the carriage door for his mistress, instead of which he walked into the house, and as he passed her mistress a pistol was fired, but she did not know who discharged it. She saw the Count on the stairs, and Lawrence going up the stairs. Did not see anything in his hand. She afterwards saw Lawrence coming downstairs with a pistol in his right hand, and his left hand behind him, but could not see whether he had anything in it or not; that she ran into the garden alarmed; and that, on her return into the house by the hall, she went to the front door and saw her mistress lying on the ground, in the footpath of the street, near the carriage. She called for assistance, and another servant and the coachman, David Hebditch, came to her, and they took the Countess into the house. There was a great deal of blood about her, and she was alive, though speechless. Mr. Ball, a surgeon, was sent for, who attended immediately. But her mistress died in a few minutes after the same. Witness stated that one day, about three weeks ago, when the Count was absent, she was with the Countess in her bedroom, when they heard a loud report, and she ran downstairs, thinking it was a rap at the door. But finding no one there, she called ‘Lawrence,’ but no one answered. She then returned upstairs. The Countess met her at the door of the bedroom, and said it was the report of a pistol. Witness ran upstairs to the Count’s room, and on coming to the door, she saw some smoke issue from it, and saw Lawrence in the room. She asked him what he was doing and he answered, ‘Nothing.’ She then went to her mistress, and told her Lawrence had fired off a pistol. The Countess went upstairs, and witness followed her, and heard her talk to Lawrence very coolly, but could not tell what she said, as she spoke French or Italian; but the Countess told her afterwards that he said he had been handling the pistol and it went off. When Lawrence came to the kitchen, she asked him how he dared to meddle with his master’s pistols in his absence, and he answered it went off by chance as he was handling it. She never knew of any quarrel or anger between the Count and Lawrence. Said Lawrence was a sober man, but latterly had been more passionate than before. Yesterday morning, the wind having blown the parlour door to with a great noise, the Count spoke rather sharply to Lawrence, thinking he banged it, and would wake his mistress. Lawrence had lived in the family about three months. Believed the dagger produced to be her master’s, having many times seen it hanging in his room.
“Elizabeth Ashton, another servant of the Count and Countess, deposed that when the Countess came first downstairs, she was standing at the street door to wait on her mistress. The carriage was at the door. Her mistress passed her and went towards the carriage—the Count was coming downstairs. Witness heard the report of a pistol, was stunned by it, said she was a dead woman, turned round and said, ‘Lawrence! Lawrence!’ When, looking up, she saw Lawrence coming downstairs, with a pistol in one hand, and a dagger in the other. She screamed out, and ran into the street, crying ‘Murder murder!’ went over to the public-house to give the alarm and, on her return, found her mistress lying on the footpath of the street near the carriage, and, being so affected that she found she could not give any assistance, she went away.
“David Hebditch, coachman to the Count and Countess, deposed that he received orders from Lawrence to have the carriage ready yesterday morning, July 22, at five minutes before eight; that he was at the door with the carriage before the clock struck eight; that, as soon as he arrived there, Lawrence came to the coach, opened the door, and put into the carriage a tin can filled with oil; that he then went into the house, and soon afterwards returned; that when the Countess came down and was proceeding to the carriage, Lawrence went into the house, and soon after he passed his mistress, the report of a pistol was heard; that the Countess asked him, the coachman, what was the matter, and he answered it was from the inside of the house, that in a few minutes afterwards, as he was sitting on his box before the door, he saw Lawrence come downstairs, and, with a sharp instrument he held in his hand, which the witness believed to be a dagger, strike it into the shoulder of the Count—he saw the dagger under his shoulder; that Lawrence then passed the Count and proceeded towards the street-door; that he, the coachman got off the box as quickly as he could, and, as he was going towards his master, the Countess passed him, going towards the carriage, and, on turning round, to follow her, he saw her staggering, and she fell, exclaiming: ‘It was Lawrence! it was Lawrence!’ He saw blood about her, and some on the ground, but could not tell exactly what part it came from. Did not see Lawrence afterwards, but in about three minutes more heard report of another pistol, which appeared to come from upstairs. Soon after the Count came to the door, and blood ran out of his sleeve. Left him there, and went to assist the Countess into the house. On surgeon coming and desiring her to be stripped, went out of the room to look after his master, and found him sitting on the bed in his own room, in a reclining posture, with his feet on floor. Was then alive, but speechless. At the same time, saw Lawrence, with his face lying on the floor, apparently dead, with some blood near his mouth. Mr. King, a surgeon, then came and desired the Count might be stripped. Witness assisted to do so, and held him while they got a sponge and some water, and washed the wound. After that he went away and drove carriage to town. Believed Lawrence was sober. He spoke very correct to him, the coachman, when he gave him his order, and did not appear at all mentally deranged.
“William Hitchin, master of the ‘Sun’ public-house, at Barnes, deposed that yesterday morning, about eight o’clock, coming along the street, he saw Lawrence put a tin can into the Count’s carriage, and return into the house. When he got opposite the door, he heard the report of a pistol. Turned immediately round, and saw the Count and Countess just within the door. The Countess said something to the coachman, who answered, ‘It is indoors, my lady.’ The Count and lady returned into the house. He then heard some persons screaming, and was going to get some weapon, but coachman begged him not to go, and he did not. The coachman and he were going into the house, when the Countess came out of the house, passed them and fell down. Thought she had only fainted, and, while standing by her, saw the Count come out of the house, with blood streaming from his shoulder. The Count instantly returned into the house, and immediately afterwards witness heard the report of a pistol in one of the upper rooms; this report occurred before the Count could possibly get to his own room. Some people came up, and he accompanied them into the house. The first thing he saw on the floor of the passage was a dagger, bloody and with some silk on it, as if it came from a shawl; on desiring a person to go upstairs with him, he refused without having a weapon, on which witness gave him the dagger, and himself took a poker. The coachman followed, and the witness desired him to go first into the room, which he did. On entering the room, he saw the Count sitting on a bed, alive, but speechless, and Lawrence lying on the floor dead, with a brass double-barrelled pistol close to him.
“Matthew Ball, Surgeon, of Barnes, deposed that, about a quarter past eight o’clock in the morning, a woman came to his house, and desired him to come immediately to Count d’Antraigues, for the Count and Countess were both murdered; immediately went, and when he came into the house, saw the Countess lying on the floor of the parlour, and a great deal of blood both on the floor and on her clothes. Then examined and found a large lacerated wound on her right breast, made by a sharp instrument, which had passed through the third and fourth ribs to the cavity of the chest, from which a great effusion of blood had proceeded. As soon as he found the wound was mortal, and that she could not live many minutes, witness went up to the Count, to assist Mr. King, a surgeon, who had previously gone up to dress his wound, and found the Count had received a wound on the shoulder from a sharp instrument, which had penetrated four inches. He was motionless and speechless, and died in about a quarter of an hour after his (Mr. B.) seeing him. Saw two small leaden bullets in the string-board of the stairs, which appeared to have been shot from a pistol. When he entered the Count’s room, saw Lawrence lying on the floor on his belly, with a quantity of blood under his face; on examination, found a loaded pistol had been discharged into his mouth, the contents of which had very much lacerated and torn his mouth, and from which wound he had instantly died, the bullet being still lodged in the vertebra of the neck.
“The Coroner then told the jury that, as they had not only heard what the witnesses had sworn, but also the depositions read over to them, it was unnecessary for him to go into a recapitulation thereon. He should, therefore, leave them to determine whether, from the evidence they had heard, they believed, first that Lawrence had murdered the Count and Countess; and, secondly, whether he had committed suicide, being in his senses.
“In about five minutes, the jury returned a verdict that Lawrence had murdered the Count and Countess, and had afterwards committed suicide, being in his senses.”
“Thus perished,” says M. Adolphe Jullien, “the greatest lyric tragédienne whom France has possessed. But she did not wholly die: the recollection of her remains graven in the mind of her admirers, and she left behind her a luminous trace of her passage across the stage of the Opera. Her generous influence continued to make itself felt throughout long years; her triumphs excited many ambitions, inflamed many resolutions. She remained an object of admiration and emulation for all the artistes, for those who had seen her, as for those who, in later times, knew her only by renown. She united, in fact, in the highest degree, two qualities usually disconnected: the rarest talent of the singer and the greatest art of the tragédienne. She was in every sense of the word an artiste of genius.”216
Footnotes
1 At the time when they wrote their monograph on the singer, Sophie’s Mémoires were in possession of the Goncourts; it is uncertain where they now are.
2 Here is her acte de naissance, which also disposes of Castil-Blaze’s assertion that her real name was Anne Madeleine, and that she had adopted that of Sophie “as being more sweet and harmonious.”
“The year one thousand seven hundred and forty, 14th of February, Magdeleine Sophie, daughter of Jean Arnould, here present, and of Rose Marguerite Laurent, his wife, born yesterday, Rue Saint-Louis in this parish, has been baptized.
“Godfather: Louis Le Vasseur, manager of the King’s farms, Rue Coq-Héron, parish Saint-Eustache; godmother: Magdeleine Chevalier, spinster, Rue du Mail, of the above-mentioned parish.”
3 When the Opera-house was burned down in April 1763, a lady of the Court asked Mlle. Arnould if she could give her any particulars about Cette terrible incendie. “All that I can tell you, Madame,” replied Sophie, “is that incendie is a masculine noun.”
4 E. and J. de Goncourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 10.
5 E. and J. de Goncourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 23.
6 The song, it may be mentioned, began with the words, “Charmant amour,” a not inappropriate omen, remarks the lady’s latest biographer, Mr. Douglas, for one who was to become notorious for her gallantries.
7 The opera, or rather its libretto, was an old one, having been first produced so far back as 1690, with music by Colasse, a pupil of Lulli. Fontenelle, who lived to be nearly a hundred, was still alive when Dauvergne informed him of his intention to write fresh music for the opera. “Monsieur,” he replied, “you do me too much honour. It is now well-nigh sixty years since that opera was first performed; it was a failure, but I never heard that that was the fault of the composer.”
8 The music was by one composer, Mondonville, the choirmaster of the royal chapel at Versailles, but the three acts, which, as was not infrequently the case at this period, had little or no connection with one another, were by as many different pens; the first, entitled Vénus et Adonis, being by Collet; the second, called Bacchus et Érigone, by La Bruère; while the third, the title of which is not given, was believed to be the work of the Abbé de Voisenon.
9 Catherine Nicole Le Maure (1704-1783). She made her début in 1724, in l’Europe galante, and at once took high rank as a singer. To an admirable voice she joined unusual talent as an actress, although she had received hardly any dramatic training. In 1743 she was imprisoned in For l’Évêque, for having refused to sing when ordered to do so, and, out of pique, quitted the stage, though she consented to reappear for a few evenings during the festivities in honour of the Dauphin’s first marriage in 1745.
10 Journal et Mémoires, ii. 147.
11 E. and J. de Goncourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 33.
12 “As for my figure, truth compels me to admit that I am not tall, though I am slender and well-proportioned. I have a graceful frame, and my movements are easy. I have a well-formed leg and a pretty foot; hands and arms like a model; eyes well-set, and a frank, attractive, and intellectual face.”
13 Jeze, L’État ou le tableau de Paris, 1760, cited by E. and J. de Goncourt.
14 The Comédie-Française owed to him an improvement, the importance of which can hardly be over-estimated. He it was who first proposed the abolition of the custom of allowing the gens à la mode to occupy seats upon the stage itself, a custom which not only interfered with the movements of the actors, but was utterly destructive of all scenic illusion. The reconstruction of the auditorium which this change rendered necessary occupied nearly two months, and cost 40,000 livres, towards which the count himself subscribed 12,000 livres.
15 Lauraguais, who affected Anglomania among his other eccentricities, may be said to have introduced horse-racing into France. The first race was run on February 28, 1766, on the Plaine de Sablons, at Neuilly. It was a match between Lauraguais and Lord Forbes, the former riding his own horse, and was witnessed by an immense crowd, which had the mortification of seeing the French champion vanquished. The contest led to a great deal of unpleasantness, for, a few days later, the count’s horse died, and the surgeons whom the disconsolate owner called in to dissect it declared that the animal had been poisoned. The English visitors were, of course, suspected, and so great was the outcry against them that another match, which had been arranged between the Prince of Nassau and Mr. Forth, was forbidden by the King.
16 Collé, Journal et Mémoires, iii. 47 et seq. Collé declares that there was a scene in this play worthy of Molière himself. King Pétaud appears dressed as a cook, with a white cap on his head and a knife by his side. He has just made some pâtés, which he hands round to his obsequious courtiers, who pronounce them divine, delicious, inimitable, and so forth. One grey-haired old gentleman however refrains from joining in the general chorus of admiration, and when the King, piqued by his indifference, inquires the reason, replies: “Pardon me, Sire; the pâtés are indeed excellent. But, if your Majesty will permit me to speak without flattery, I would venture to observe that the woodcock-pie which you made the day before yesterday appeared to me infinitely superior to them.” Thereupon the King’s brow clears, and, clapping the astute old man on the shoulder, he exclaims: “That is right; I always like people to tell me the truth.” Louis XV., as every one knows, was very fond of preparing dishes with his own royal hands, and decidedly vain of his culinary skill, and no one with any acquaintance with the Court could possibly have missed the point of the satire.
17 Diderot, Mémoires et Correspondance, ii. 62.
18 Mémoires et Correspondance, ii. 42.
19 Campardon, Académie Royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article, “Arnould.”
20 Here, according to that princess, was one of le Grand Monarque’s feats in gastronomy: “Four platefuls of different soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a plateful of salad, mutton hashed with garlic, two good-sized slices of ham, and afterwards fruit and sweetmeats.”
21 Some writers declare that, in his passions, he would destroy everything breakable within his reach; others, that he went so far as to strike and even, occasionally, to bite the unfortunate Sophie.
22 He had previously written a Clytemnestre, which Diderot, having had the privilege of hearing the author read it, tells us contained some very fine verses, the work, however, not of the count, but of a “ghost” in his employ, named Clinchant. This play Lauraguais endeavoured to prevail upon the Comédie-Française to produce. The actors found themselves in a somewhat embarrassing position, as the count had just subscribed the 12,000 livres already mentioned towards the alterations in the theatre necessitated by the removal of the seats on the stage, and, from motives of gratitude, they did not like to refuse. On the other hand, the tragedy was so utterly opposed to all the canons of dramatic art that to produce it would be to court not only failure but ridicule. Eventually, however, they persuaded him to withdraw his offer. Notwithstanding its rejection by the Comédie-Française, Lauraguais thought so highly of his Clytemnestre that he caused it to be printed, and sent a copy to Voltaire, who wrote back that his own Oreste was but “une plate machine” in comparison with M. le Comte’s superb masterpiece. The noble author, says Diderot, took the poet quite seriously, and his delight and pride knew no bounds.
23 Diderot, Correspondance et Mémoires, ii. 69. Diderot, who had a high opinion of Sophie and was also a friend of Lauraguais, was much distressed by her conduct. Under date October 7, 1761, he writes to Mlle. Voland: “This affair displeases me more than I can tell you. This girl had two children by him (Lauraguais); he was the man of her choice; there had been no constraint, no self-interest, none of those things which go to make ordinary engagements. If ever there was a sacrament, this was one; so much the more so, since it is not in the nature of a man to espouse only one woman. She forgets that she is married. She forgets that she is a mother. It is not only a lover; it is the father of her children whom she is leaving. Mlle. Arnould is something more in my eyes than a little baggage.”
24 Favart, Mémoires et Correspondance, i. 195. Several writers refuse to accept this letter as genuine, believing that Favart invented it. It must be admitted, however, that its dry humour is very characteristic of Sophie.
25 Mr. Sutherland Edwards, in his “Idols of the French Stage” (vol. i. p. 181), falls into a singular error. He states that, on his return to Paris, Lauraguais found that Sophie “had placed herself under the protection of M. de Saint-Florentin, for whom, however, she had no affection.” Sophie did certainly place herself under the protection of Saint-Florentin; but it was not his private but his official protection, as Minister for Paris and Chief of the Police; a not altogether unnecessary precaution, since Lauraguais had threatened to poison her.
26 Mémoires secrets de la République des Lettres.
27 Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, iii. 297.
28 Arnoldiana. According to another account, Choiseul came to Sophie’s dressing-room, on the conclusion of the performance, to compliment her and assure her of the great pleasure she had afforded the King. “Ah well!” she replied, “tell his Majesty that, if he is satisfied with Iphise, he should restore to her Dardanus!”
29 Correspondance littéraire, v. 431.
30 Correspondance littéraire, vi. 145. Mlle. Heinel seems also to have made a very favourable impression upon Horace Walpole, who mentions her several times in his letters, and always in terms of admiration. After seeing her for the first time, on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1771, he writes to the Earl of Strafford: “There is a finer dancer [than Mlle. Guimard], whom M. Hobart is to transplant to London; a Mademoiselle Heinel, or Ingle, a Fleming. She is tall, perfectly made, very handsome, and has a set of attitudes copied from the classics. She moves as gracefully slow as Pygmalion’s statue when it was coming to life, and moves her leg round as imperceptibly as if she was dancing in the Zodiac. But she is not Virgo.” The lady came to London that same winter, and danced for some months at Covent Garden, where she created as much enthusiasm as in Paris. On April 21, 1772, Walpole writes again: “I am just going to the Opera to hear Milice sing. I do not believe he will draw such audiences as Mlle. Heinel has done. The town has an idle notion that she made so much impression upon a very high heart, that it is thought prudent to keep it out of her way. She is the most graceful figure in the world, with charming eyes, beautiful mouth, and lovely countenance; yet I do not think we shall see a Dame du Barri on this side the Channel.”
The staid Dr. Burney was another of Mlle. Heinel’s admirers, and informs us that, besides the six hundred pounds salary she received from the management of Covent Garden, she was “complimented with a regallo of six hundred more from the Macaroni Club.”
31 This prince is said to have had sixty acknowledged mistresses, besides occasional and “imperceptible” ones.
32 In her Mémoires, Sophie writes: “The prince had, for a moment, the idea of devoting himself to me. But he wished me to be entirely his own, without any distraction or reserve. I never had any taste for exaggerated grandeurs, and am of the opinion of that philosopher who said that happiness is only to be found in moderation.”
33 E. and J. de Concourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 70. According to the Chronique scandaleuse, Sophie had a daughter by the Prince de Condé, who afterwards married the Comte de R***.
34 He was the architect of Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, which he built for the Comte d’Artois, and designed the gardens of the Château de Meréville (Seine-et-Oise) and of Belœil, in Belgium, the seat of the Prince de Ligne. Extant specimens of his work are the hôtel built for Mlle. Contat, at the corner of the Rue de Berri, in the Champs-Elysées, and the dome of the old Halle aux Blés, now the Bourse du Commerce.
35 One which accused her of practising the shameful vices of antiquity. See E. and J. de Goncourt’s Sophie Arnould, p. 86 et seq.
36 Madame du Barry was, however, amply avenged. Sophie’s comrades of the theatre, scarcely one of whom but had suffered from her sarcastic tongue, were not slow to avail themselves of so excellent an opportunity of paying their tormentor back in her own coin, and, for some time afterwards, never failed to let fall the odious word “Hôpital” whenever Mlle. Arnould happened to be within earshot; a proceeding which, Bachaumont tells us, “no doubt greatly humiliated that superb queen of opera.”
37 Mémoires secrets, vi. 136.
38 Eighteenth-century composers appear to have been continually tinkering with this unfortunate opera, one of the most popular of the famous Lulli-Quinault series. When it was revived in January 1759, La Borde, Louis XV.’s musical valet-de-chambre, made various alterations in the music, “which disgusted equally the partisans of the old and the new schools.” In November 1771, Berton, one of the directors of the Opera, substituted some very inferior melodies of his own, which, if possible, were even less to the taste of the audience, and, eight years later, Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of the celebrated master, tried his hand at the score, likewise without success.
39 This was one of the most successful of Sophie’s “creations.” The piece, the libretto of which had been adapted by Sedaine from a conte of the Chevalier de Boufflers, published in 1761, was played twenty-six times in succession, an unusually long run in those days.
40 The Mercure is lavish in its praise of Sophie’s rendering of Colin, the boy’s part, in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Devin du Village, in which she appeared in December 1767. But Mr. Douglas thinks that her performance was less successful than that rather partial organ declared it to be. At all events, he says, she did not repeat the experiment, and was always extremely sarcastic if any of her fellow actresses undertook masculine parts. Mlle. Allard, whose innumerable galanteries had astonished, and almost shocked, even the nymphs of the Opera, one day happened to remark, after playing such a part, that she believed that half the audience really thought she was a boy. “But the other half knew you were not, ma chère,” observed Sophie.
41 Mr. Ernest Newman, “Gluck and the Opera,” p. 133.
42 Gluck et Piccini, p. 89.
43 Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse.
44 E. and J. de Goncourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 119.
45 Desnoiresterres, Gluck et Piccini, p. 93.
46 Mr. Ernest Newman, “Gluck and the Opera,” p. 139.
47 The Mémoires secrets attribute much of the applause to “the desire of the public to please Madame la Dauphine, who did not cease to clap her hands, and thus compelled the Comtesse de Provence, the princes, and all the boxes to do likewise.”
48 Mémoires secrets, vii. 185.
49 Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, viii. 322.
50 Métra, Correspondance secrète, i. 64.
51 Mémoires secrets, viii. 321.
52 Campardon, L’Académie royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article, “Levasseur.”
53 Gluck et Piccini, p. 132.
54 By the rules of the Opera, Sophie, as senior “actrice chantante seule” could have insisted, had she been so minded, on taking the part of Alceste. In 1774, Mlle. Duplant, who then occupied that position, claimed the title-part in Iphigénie, and considerable difficulty was experienced in persuading her to forego her claim, and be content with Clytemnestra.
55 In October of that year, two successive issues of this worthy’s organ were confiscated by the police, on account of the scandalous attacks upon certain members of the theatrical profession which they contained.
56 Mémoires secrets, ix. 230.
57 La Harpe relates that in the scene where Iphigenia says to Achilles “Vous brûlez que je sois partie,” the pit applied the words to the actress and burst into ironical applause.
58 See p. 170 infra.
59 In addition to her pensions, she had 2000 livres a year from a settlement made upon her by Lauraguais, and owned a house at Port-à-l’Anglais, which she sold, some months after her retirement from the stage, for 20,000 livres. From a letter to Alleaume, written apparently during the winter of 1775-1776, we learn that she was then in receipt of allowances from at least two more of her noble lovers; 4250 livres from the Prince de Conti, and 3250 from the Prince de Condé; but how long these payments were continued it is impossible to say.
60 The antiquary Millin, who annotated a copy of Arnoldiana which afterwards came into the Goncourts’ possession, asserts that she had had tender relations with the Comte d’Artois and “my lord” Stuart.
61 Mr. R. B. Douglas, “Sophie Arnould: actress and wit,” p. 209.
62 Cited by the Goncourts, Sophie Arnould, p. 132.
63 La Chronique scandaleuse, No. 29, cited by E. and J. de Goncourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 149.
64 According to another account, to which the Goncourts and Mr. R. B. Douglas both give credence, it was a bust of Sophie herself, by Houdon, representing her as Iphigenia; and the agents of the revolutionary committee “mistook a sky-blue band on which was painted a quarter-moon and two stars for the scarf of Marat.” But is not this making rather a severe call upon our credulity?
65 According to Castil-Blaze, during the Reign of Terror, Lauraguais disguised himself as a coachman and drove a fiacre.
66 The official Republican name for the Opera.
67 Cited by E. and J. de Goncourt, Sophie Arnould, p. 302.
68 Campardon, Académie royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article, “Guimard.”
69 Ibid.
70 Arnoldiana.
71 Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 18.
72 Castil-Blaze, Histoire de l’Académie de Musique, i. 267.
73 Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 304 note.
74 The Archbishop of Sens.
75 He was the author of Pensées et Maximes, published some years after his death, a work in the style of La Rochefoucauld, which reveals him as a keen observer of life and particularly of woman. Here are some of his reflections:
“Vouloir qu’on soit amoureux avec raison, c’est vouloir qu’on soit fou avec raison.”
“Une femme qui sait mal est moins supportable qu’une femme qui ne sait rien.”
“Le plaisir est comme une fleur, dont l’odeur est délicate, et qu’il faut sentir légèrement, si on veut toujours lui trouver le même parfum.”
“La plupart des femmes ressemblent à des énigmes qui cessent de plaire, dès qu’elles sont devinées.
“Qui aime est bien plus heureux que d’être aimé.
“On combat l’amour par la fuite et la colère par le silence.”
76 Mémoires secrets, iii. 383.
77 The titles of some of the pieces represented speak for themselves: Junon et Ganymède, comédie érotique; La Vierge de Babylone, comédie érotique; César et les deux Vestales, pièce érotique en un acte; Héloïse et Abailard, comédie érotique en un acte; Ninon et Lachatre, scène érotique; Minette et Finette, ou les Épreuves d’amour, and so forth.
78 It was composed by Armand, concierge of the Hôtel des Comédiens, and author of several dramas, at the instance of La Borde, who had recommended him to make it as salacious as possible.
79 Mlle. Guimard had, in point of fact, a third lover already, in the person of the dancer Dauberval; but he was a negligible quantity, so far as contributions to the lady’s revenues were concerned. A satirical print of the time entitled Concert à trois, shows us the ballerina holding a roll of music in her hand and about to sing, her chief protector, the Prince de Soubise, playing the violin, the sous-entreteneur, La Borde, beating time with the conductor’s bâton, and Dauberval playing the cornet.
80 The Mémoires secrets attribute another source to the 6000 livres: “This actress, very celebrated by her talents, having had a rendezvous in an isolated faubourg with a man whose robe exacted the most profound mystery, had occasion to witness the misery, grief, and despair of the people of this neighbourhood, on account of the excessive cold. Her heart was moved with compassion at such a sight, and of the 2000 écus, the fruit of her iniquity, she herself distributed a part and carried the balance to the curé of Saint-Roch, for the same purpose.”
81 Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 89.
82 Walpole, writing to Sir Horace Mann, on September 9, 1771, says of the Hôtel Guimard: “The salle-à-manger is to have des serres chaudes (sic) round it, with windows opening into the room; that it may have orange-flowers and odours all the winter.”
83 Métra, Correspondance secrète, vol. viii. Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 90.
84 See note, p. 109, supra.
85 Campardon, L’Académie royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article “Guimard.”
86 Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 226.
87 Previous to this arrangement being arrived at, the Chevalier de Saint-George, the Creole, famous as a fencer and musician, offered, with the assistance of a society of capitalists, to undertake the direction of the Opera. But Mlle. Guimard, Sophie Arnould, and certain other nymphs, jealous of the honour of their profession, addressed a petition to the Queen, representing that their honour would not allow them to submit to the direction of a mulatto.
88 Campardon, L’Académie royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article, “Dauvergne.”
89 The dancer Nivelon, who escaped across the Belgian frontier, with the intention of making his way to England, was hotly pursued by a police-agent named Quidor, with orders to arrest him and bring him back to Paris. While, however, Quidor was endeavouring to obtain an extradition warrant from the authorities at Brussels, the dancer contrived to reach Ostende and escaped across the Channel.
90 Mémoires de Fleury, ii. 119.
91 Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 254.
92 He was the son of a musician of the Opera, and was born on August 31, 1746. He became a dancer at the theatre in 1764, where he quickly distinguished himself by his skill in “la danse haute,” his performances in the ballets introduced into Les Amours de Ragonde (1773), Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), Philémon et Baucis (1774), and La Chercheuse d’esprit (1778), being particularly admired. In 1781, owing to an injury to one of his feet, he retired from the active exercise of his profession, and was appointed maître des ballets. In the following year, he received from the King a pension of 1500 livres, for his services as a dancer in ballets represented before the Court. A facile and graceful poet, Despréaux was the author of several parodies of operas: Christophe et Pierre Luc, parody of Castor et Pollux; Momi, parody of Iphigénie; Syncope, reine de Mic-Mac, parody of Pénélope, and Berlingue, parody of Ernelinde, which so pleased Louis XVI. when played before the Court, at Choisy, in 1777, that he granted the author a pension.—Campardon, Académie royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle, i. 146.
93 The marriage contract states that the property of the bride consisted of (1) an annuity of 12,000 livres; (2) a pension of 2600 livres on the King’s Privy Purse; (3) a pension of 6000 livres on the Royal Treasury; (4) a pension of 3000 livres on the treasury of the Opera; (5) a sum of 110,000 livres, partly in cash and partly in furniture, jewellery, linen, and wearing apparel.
94 In a manuscript collection of his chansons preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, he describes himself in the following terms:
“Il faut que je vous désigne
De ma taille la grandeur:
Cinq pieds, trois pouces, neuf lignes,
Voilà juste ma hauteur.
Large front, bouche moyenne,
Menton pointu, le nez long,
Les yeux gris, figure pleine,
Sourcils bruns, cheveux blonds.”
95 Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 276.
96 A. F. Didot, Souvenirs de Jean Étienne Despréaux, p. 34.
97 Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 301.
98 Among the writers who have fallen into this error may be mentioned: Lemazurier (Galerie historique des acteurs du Théâtre-Français), M. de Manne (Galerie historique de la troupe de Voltaire and Biographie générale: Article, “Raucourt”), Émile Gaboriau (Les Comédiennes adorées), Mr. Sutherland Edwards (“Idols of the French Stage”), and Mr. Frederick Hawkins (“The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century”).
99 Mlle. Clairon subsequently wrote to Larive: “Mlle. Raucourt has made her début with the greatest success. All Paris dotes on her, and, although Brizard may be her only recognised master, people name, at each verse which they hear her utter, the person of whom she has taken lessons. She is only sixteen and a half; she is beautiful as an angel, sensible, noble. She will be, I hope, a charming subject, and I dare believe that Madame Vestris will gnaw her fingers, more than once, at having disobliged me.... This woman is the first person whom I have really hated. Mlle. Raucourt is worthy of all the pains that I am taking to form her, but I confess that I find it very sweet, while serving her, to avenge myself for all the ingratitude and insolence of the other.” Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 285.
100 Brizard played the part of fidus Achates in Didon.
101 Correspondance littéraire, Supplementary volume, p. 352.
102 Mercure de France, January 1773.
103 Mémoires secrets, vi. 288.
104 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 73. Manne, Galerie historique de la troupe de Voltaire.
105 Grimm writes: “The Princesse de Beauvau, the Princesse de Guéménée, and the Duchesse de la Vallière have also made her presents of superb dresses. The greater part of those which the ladies of the Court had had made for the Dauphin’s marriage will go to enrich the theatrical wardrobe of Mlle. Raucourt, which will soon be of considerable size.”
106 The name is frequently written Saint-Val.
107 Mémoires secrets, vi. p. 297.
108 Correspondance littéraire, Supplementary volume, p. 356.
109 Mémoires secrets.
110 He was the author of a highly successful comedy, called Le Séducteur, produced at the Comédie-Française, November 8, 1783.
111 For further information concerning this unpleasant subject, into which we naturally do not care to enter, see Edmond de Goncourt’s Maison d’un artiste, ii. 60, and the same writer’s Sophie Arnould, p. 86. A similar charge was brought against Sophie Arnould, though, apparently, with less reason.
112 Correspondance littéraire, ii. 282.
113 The expelled actress may have derived some little consolation from perusing the following criticism of her successor in the Nouvelles à la main: “July 9.—Mlle. Sainval the younger made her first appearance yesterday, in Zaïre, on her return to the Comédie. She is ugly, and particularly hideous when she weeps, ungraceful, flat-breasted, and has a doleful and monotonous voice.”
114 Campardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe française, p. 251.
115 Ibid. p. 255.
116 La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, ii. 415.
117 Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” ii. 250 et seq.
118 La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, iii. 3 et seq.
119 Mémoires secrets, xiv. 214 et seq.
120 Mémoires secrets, xix. 103.
121 La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, iii. 327. La Harpe states that a rumour was current that Mlle. Raucourt had only lent her name to the play, and that it was really the work of either Durosoy or Monvel. This rumour, however, is indignantly repudiated by the Mémoires secrets, which declare it to be nothing but a malicious invention of the lady’s enemies.
122 Mercure de France, March 1782.
123 Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” 339.
124 Mémoires de Fleury, v. 228, et seq.
125 Souvenirs, i. 82.
126 M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 460 et seq.
127 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 151.
128 Campardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe italienne: Article, “Dugazon.”
129 Mes Récapitulations, i. 124.
130 Souvenirs, i. 94.
131 Thurner, Les Reines de Chant, p. 66.
132 Correspondance littéraire, xi. 417.
133 Correspondance littéraire, xii. 261. At the conclusion of the piece on the first evening, Madame Dugazon was called before the curtain, “an honour,” say the Mémoires secrets, “which had never yet been accorded to any actress at this theatre or any other.”
134 Campardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe italienne: Article, “Dugazon.”
135 Mes Récapitulations, i. 125.
136 Correspondance littéraire, xiii. 132.
137 Thurner, Les Reines du Chant, p. 65.
138 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 163.
139 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 165.
140 Madame Dugazon’s feelings were probably intensified by the fact that her husband had espoused the popular side with enthusiasm, and had been appointed aide-de-camp to the notorious Santerre. After the 9th Thermidor, the actor was, for some time, the object of hostile demonstrations whenever he appeared on the stage. But he courageously refused to bow before the storm, and, little by little, the public forgave him. In 1807 he retired from the stage, and, two years later, died, “a raving madman,” on an estate which he had bought near Orléans.
141 Souvenirs.
142 He composed three operas: Marguerite de Waldemar (1812), la Noce écossaise (1814), and le Chevalier d’industrie (1818); and two ballets: les Fiances de Caserte and Alfred le Grand. But none of these pieces seem to have been at all favourably received. He died in 1826, five years after his mother.
143 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 170.
144 In Louise Contat’s acte de naissance, which bears date June 16, 1760, her father, Jean François Contat, describes himself as “soldat de la maréchaussée et marchand de bas privilégié à Paris.”—Jal, Dictionnaire de Biographie et d’Histoire, article “Contat.”
145 Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” ii. 209.
146 Mémoires de Fleury, ii. 217.
147 The critic of the Mercure wrote: “What respect can they (men of letters) hope to inspire, when they themselves become the first to denounce their own secret vices, and, to sum up all in one word, when their mind seems to make a jest of calumniating their heart?”
148 For an account of this affair, see the author’s “Queens of the French Stage,” p. 324 et seq.
149 La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, iv. 51.
150 The friendship between Beaumarchais and the Comte de Vaudreuil had its origin in the following incident. The latter had had a dispute, at one of the Court theatres, with a M. de Miromesnil, a distinguished amateur actor, as to the manner in which drunkenness should be depicted on the stage. Some of the company jestingly ascribed the count’s remarks to personal experience. “Nay,” answered Vaudreuil, “they are not my own. I borrow the lesson from the great Garrick, who gave it on the Boulevards to Préville, who acted upon it before a few working men, and caused them to take the mimicry for reality.” Miromesnil disputed the authenticity of the anecdote, and, on being assured that it was true, offered to lay a heavy wager that a Boulevard was not the place. Beaumarchais happened to be standing by. “Take the wager,” he whispered to the count; “it is yours.” Vaudreuil did so. Beaumarchais left the theatre, and shortly afterwards returned with a letter, in which Garrick himself stated that the incident occurred on the Boulevards. From that moment, the count evinced a warm interest in the dramatist’s fortunes.—Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” ii. 291.
151 Gabriel Henri Gaillard (1726-1806). His chief works were: L’Histoire de François Ier, dit le Grand Roi et le Père des Lettres (1766-1769); L’Histoire de la Rivalité de la France et de l’Angleterre (1771-1777), which procured him admission to the Academy; and L’Histoire de la Rivalité de la France et de l’Espagne (1800).
152 Loménie, Beaumarchais et son temps, iv.
153 Souvenirs, i. 100.
154 Mémoires de Fleury, ii. 413.
155 Mémoires de Fleury, ii. 415 et seq.
156 Cited by Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 180.
157 And well he deserved his triumph, for surely never had actor been at more pains to secure a perfect resemblance to the character he was to impersonate! “In the first place,” he tells us, in his Mémoires, “I sought to imbue myself with the idea that my apartments were in Potsdam, instead of in Paris; and I resolved to retire to rest, to take my meals, to move, and speak, during two whole months, in the full persuasion that I was Frederick the Great. The better to identify myself with the character, I used every morning to dress myself in the military coat, hat, boots, &c., I had ordered for the part. Thus equipped, I would seat myself before my looking-glass, at one side of which hung Ramberg’s picture of the King. Then, with the help of hair pencils and a palette spread with black, white, red, blue, and yellow, I endeavoured to paint my face to the resemblance of the picture.”
158 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 191.
159 M. Victor du Bled, Les Comédiens français pendant la Révolution, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. cxxiv.
160 Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 194.
161 See pp. 182 et seq., supra.
162 M. Victor du Bled, Les Comédiens français pendant la Révolution, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. cxxiv.
163 M. Victor du Bled, Les Comédiens français pendant la Révolution, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. cxxiv.
164 Many amusing anecdotes are told of Lemercier’s wit. Here is one, which Ernest Legouvé relates in his Soixante ans de souvenirs: “One evening, he (Lemercier) was seated on a low stool in the gangway of the first gallery of the Théâtre-Français. Enter a young officer, making a great deal of noise, slamming the door violently behind him, and taking his stand right in front of M. Lemercier. ‘Monsieur,’ says the poet, very gently, ‘you prevent my seeing anything.’ The officer turns round and, staring from his towering height at the little, inoffensive-looking civilian, humbly seated on his low stool, resumes his former position. ‘Monsieur,’ repeats M. Lemercier, more emphatically, ‘I have told you that you prevent me from seeing the stage, and I command you to get out of the way.’ ‘You command!’ retorts his interlocutor, in a tone of contempt; ‘do you know to whom you are speaking? You are speaking to a man who brought back the standards from the army of Italy!’ ‘That is very possible, Monsieur, seeing that it was an ass which carried Christ!’ As a matter of course, there was a duel, and the officer had his arm broken by a bullet.”
165 Ducis’s adaptation—or distortion—of Othello, first produced on November 26, 1772, differed materially from the original play. “Iago’s villainy,” says Mr. Hawkins, in his “French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” “was thought too deep and patent, especially for a Parisian audience. Pesare, as the ancient is called here, is accordingly transformed into something like an ordinary confidant, to all appearance full of sincere bonhomie, and with his devilish purpose hidden until he has been seen for the last time. Ducis, it has been well remarked, was extremely afraid of arousing too much emotion among his auditors. Another essential difference lay in Cassio being really in love with Desdemona (re-named Hédelmone).” Changes of minor importance were the substitution of a letter for the handkerchief, and a poniard for the pillow. Ducis also adapted—or distorted—Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Lear.
166 Journal de Paris, March 7, 1809.
167 Antoine Dubois (1756-1837), the leading obstetric surgeon of the time. He assisted at the accouchement of the Empress Marie Louise, and was made a baron of the Empire. His son, Paul Dubois, was also a celebrated accoucheur, and the author of several able works on obstetrics.
168 A character in the Joueur of Regnard.
169 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 207.
170 Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, d’après sa correspondance et ses papiers de famille, p. 12.
171 Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, d’après sa correspondance et ses papiers de famille, p. 14.
172 If one is to believe a little brochure of the time, bearing the title of Chronique scandaleuse des théâtres, ou Aventures des plus célèbres actrices, chanteuses, danseuses, et figurantes, the lessons given by Gluck to Madame Saint-Huberty were not entirely gratuitous. “In one of those moments of incontinency to which the greatest men often yield, the celebrated Gluck recognised in her talents which had not even been suspected and which attached him to her. He resolved to make of her an actress. In like manner, the famous Champmeslé was formed by the care and counsels of Racine. However, one ought not to compare the German Orpheus to the French Euripides. Gluck sought less to teach the sentiments of which he taught her the expression, than to inspire her with the fire of his genius, and, as he had always preserved the rusticity of his German manners, he did not often fail to commit himself to it in his lessons....”
173 All the critics were not so kind as the scribe of the Mercure, and one went so far as to declare that the débutante was “very ugly, very bad,” and that “she could not possibly long retain her position on the lyric stage.”
174 Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 20.
175 It is not clear what papers are referred to, but, in all probability, they were those relating to the separation of her goods from those of her husband which she had obtained at Warsaw, in March 1777.
176 Cited by Campardon, L’Académie royale de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article, “Saint-Huberty.”
177 Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 42.
178 Émile Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 210.
179 Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 45.
180 This multiplicity and exaggeration of gestures appears to have been Madame Saint-Huberty’s principal fault in the early part of her career. On another occasion, she was reproached with her resemblance to a woman “persecuted by internal convulsions.”
181 Rosalie Levasseur had sung charmingly on the opening night; but on the second, she was so intoxicated as to be almost incapable of struggling through the part. At the conclusion of the performance she was arrested and conveyed to For l’Évêque.
182 Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
183 Recherches sur les costumes et sur les théâtres de toutes les nations, i. 35.
184 Ginguéné, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicolas Piccini.
185 L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
186 “Madame Saint-Huberty played the part of Rosette with an intelligence, a sensibility, and a fervour of expression, which proves the extent and the variety of her talent, equally well calculated to render every rôle and to sing all kinds of music.”—Mercure de France, December 1782.
187 Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
188 Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 5.
189 Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 75 et seq. Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
190 Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
191 Mémoires de Marmontel (edit. 1804), iii. 224 et seq.
192 See the author’s “Queens of the French Stage” (London: Harpers’; New York: Scribners’. 1905), p. 314 et seq.
193 The train of an ordinary actress was held by a page dressed in black and white, but actresses representing queens were entitled to two trains and two pages, who followed them everywhere they went. “Nothing is more diverting,” writes a critic of the time, “than the perpetual movement of these little rascals, who have to run after the actress when she is rushing up and down the stage in moments of great distress. Their activity throws them into a state of perspiration, whilst their embarrassment and blunders invariably excite laughter. Thus a farce is always going on, which agreeably diverts the spectator in sad or touching situations.”
194 Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
195 On December 6, which was an off-day at the Opera, Madame Saint-Huberty attended a performance of the Fausse Lord, music by Piccini, words by Piccini fils, at the Comédie-Italienne. At the conclusion of the piece, when she was leaving her box, the whole audience rose, and burst into a tumult of applause, shouting: “Vive la reine de Carthage!” If, remarks Grimm, the public had been aware that, on that very day, by the exercise of rare delicacy and tact, the artiste had succeeded in reconciling Piccini and Sacchini, who had long been at variance, their enthusiasm would have been, if it were possible, even greater.
196 Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicolas Piccini.
197 Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 217.
198 Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, xii. 10.
199 Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, xii. 10.
200 Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty. M. Jullien says “in less than five months.” He forgets that Didon, although not seen at the Opera until December 1 1783, had been performed at Fontainebleau in the previous October.
201 Adolphe Jullien, L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.
202 See p. 128 note, supra.
203 Mémoires secrets, December 20, 1786.
204 Cited by Campardon, Académie royal de Musique au XVIIIe siècle: Article, “Saint-Huberty.”
205 Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 190.
206 The superintendent of the wardrobe of the Opera.
207 Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 171.
208 It is true that Métra writes, under date March 24, 1783, as follows: “Mlle. Laguerre had been for a long time the mistress of the Duc de Bouillon. Madame Saint-Huberti has replaced her in the heart of this prince and in her rights on his fortune. He has just purchased her favours, so many times cheaply disposed of, by a contract of one hundred thousand écus.” But Edmond de Goncourt is inclined to think that Métra is here drawing upon his very vivid imagination with more than his usual freedom.
209 Cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Saint-Huberty, p. 186.
210 Cabanis was the Comte d’Antraigues’s physician in Paris. Shortly before this letter was written, Madame Saint-Huberty had placed herself under his care and presumably he was still prescribing for her.
211 All sorts of legends have gathered round the Comte d’Antraigues, who is depicted as a kind of Royalist Marat, ready to demand, on the return of the Bourbons, “his four hundred thousand heads.” One story is to the effect that, when in Venice, he had been heard to boast that he had caused several agents of the French Republic to be poisoned.
212 This was not the only reward of her services which the ex-singer received. In 1804, the Emperor of Austria accorded her a pension of 1000 ducats, “in memory of the services rendered by her to her late Majesty Marie Antoinette of France, as superintendent of the music of that august princess.” As for the Comte d’Antraigues, he was, for some years, in receipt of a handsome pension from the various European Courts, and, in May 1800, received from the king of the Two Sicilies the royal order of Constantine, together with a pension.
213 Madame Saint-Huberty had, of course, never appeared at the Théâtre-Français. Such is fame!
214 As a matter of fact, her savings only amounted to some 80,000 francs, the whole of which had been lost during the Revolution.
215 The Times of July 28, 1812, states that it had been ascertained that Lorenzo was an intimate friend of Sellis, who, after attempting to assassinate the Duke of Cumberland, committed suicide.
216 L’Opéra secret au XVIIIe siècle: Madame Saint-Huberty.