VI Mademoiselle Clairon
For more than seven years after the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, her place as a tragic actress remained unfilled. During these years, several capable tragédiennes appeared, notably Jeanne Gaussin, a beautiful brunette with a rich and sympathetic voice, who created the part of Zaïre in Voltaire’s tragedy of that name (August 13, 1732), and moved the delighted poet to address her in the following verses:—
“Jeanne Gaussin, reçois mon tendre hommage;
Reçois mes vers au théâtre applaudis;
Protège-les: Zaïre est ton ouvrage;
Il est à toi, puisque tu l’embellis.
Ce sont tes yeux, ces yeux, si pleins de charmes,
Qui du critique ont fait tomber les armes.”150
But beautiful as Mlle. Gaussin undoubtedly was, and excellent as was her acting in Zaïre and other pathetic parts, she fell very far short of the standard to which her gifted predecessor had attained; nor was it until August 1737 that an actress worthy to assume the mantle of Adrienne arose.
This was Marie Françoise Dumesnil, who, like Adrienne, had begun her career at theatres in the East of France, and, like her, singularly enough, had received her invitation to Paris while playing at Strasburg. Her style, which was marked by a high degree of truth to Nature, refinement, and technical skill, combined with a real enthusiasm for her art, excited general admiration, and her début was brilliantly successful. In the classic répertoire her most celebrated rôles were Cléopâtre, Clytemnestre, and Phèdre; while her most successful creation was Mérope (February 20, 1743), when, according to Voltaire, she kept the audience in tears for three successive acts.151
After this triumph—the greatest of her career—it may well have been supposed that Mlle. Dumesnil was destined to maintain her supremacy for many years to come. Nevertheless, ere six months had passed, she found her proud position challenged by a most formidable rival.
Claire Joseph Lerys—for that was the name of this rival, and of the greatest, or, at least, the most celebrated tragic actress of the eighteenth century, though she styled herself Claire Josèphe Hippolyte Lerys de Latude-Clairon, and is known to fame under the last of these names—was born at Condé, a little town of Hainaut, on January 25, 1723. Her father was one François Joseph Desiré Lerys, a sergeant in the Régiment de Mailly; her mother, a working-woman, Marie Claire Scanapiecq by name; and she was a natural child, a fact which she omits to mention in the French edition of her Mémoires, though she is more candid in the German edition.152
The circumstances attending her birth, which she has herself recounted, were, it must be admitted, highly significant of her future career:—
“It was the custom of the little town in which I was born for all persons to assemble during the carnival time at the houses of the wealthiest citizens, in order to pass the entire day in dancing and other amusements. Far from disapproving of these recreations, the curé partook of them and travestied himself with the rest. During one of the fête days, my mother, who was but seven months advanced in pregnancy, suddenly brought me into the world, between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. I was so feeble that every one imagined a few moments would terminate my career. My grandmother, a woman of eminent piety, was anxious that I should be carried out at once to the church, in order that I might there receive the rite of baptism. Not a living soul was to be discovered either at the church or at the curé’s house. A neighbour having informed the party that all the town was at a carnival entertainment at the house of a certain wealthy citizen, thither was I carried with all expedition. Monsieur le Curé, attired as Arlequin, and his vicar, disguised as Gille, imagining, from my appearance, that there was not a moment to be lost, hurriedly arranged upon a sideboard everything necessary for the ceremony, stopped the fiddle for a moment, muttered over me the consecrated words, and sent me back to my mother a Christian—at least in name.”153
When the little girl was twelve years old, she and her mother left Condé, and, after a short stay at Valenciennes, settled in Paris, where the latter found employment as a sempstress. The future queen of tragedy was at this time, according to her own account, a delicate, sensitive child, with a confirmed dislike to needlework, in consequence of which she spent the greater part of her days “trembling beneath the blows and threats of her mother,” whom she describes, rather undutifully, as “a violent, ignorant, and superstitious woman.”
However, at length Fate took pity on her. Her mother, yielding to the remonstrances of the neighbours, who had been “affected by the appearance of languor to which her misfortunes had reduced her, and her beauty, voice, intelligence, and the sweetness of her temper when she was not forced to work at the needle,” ceased to belabour her, and, by way of punishment, took to shutting her up in a room overlooking the street. Now, it happened that the house immediately opposite the Scanapiecqs was occupied by the mother of Mlle. Dangeville, the famous soubrette of the Comédie-Française, and, one day, little Claire, having mounted a chair to survey the neighbourhood, beheld the idol of the pit taking a dancing-lesson in the midst of an admiring circle of relatives and friends. “She was distinguished,” she tells us, “for every charm which Nature and youth could unite in the same person. My very being came into my eyes; not one of her movements escaped me. She was surrounded by her family, and when the lesson was over, every one applauded her, while her mother embraced her. The difference between her condition and my own penetrated me with the deepest grief; my tears would not permit me to see anything more. I descended from my chair, and, when the throbbing of my heart had subsided sufficiently for me to remount it, all had disappeared.”154
From that day, little Claire had only one desire: to be placed en pénitence at the hour at which Mlle. Dangeville was in the habit of taking her lesson; and, the moment she was alone, she would climb to her perch and remain there, a motionless and silent, but enthusiastic spectator of the movements of her fair neighbour. Soon, at first almost unconsciously, the girl began to imitate what she had seen, and with such success that those who came to her mother’s house thought that she had been provided with masters. “My manner of entering a room,” she says, “of saluting the company, of seating myself, was no longer the same; and the improvement I had acquired, added to the graces of my deportment, obtained for me even the favour of my mother.”
At length, unable any longer to keep her secret to herself, and seized with an intense curiosity to ascertain who this wonderful Mlle. Dangeville might be, she decided to take into her confidence one of her mother’s friends, who had always treated her a little less as a child than the majority of visitors to the house. This proved a fortunate step, for the person in question, pleased with the little girl’s intelligence, not only gave her a good deal of information about Mlle. Dangeville and the profession which she adorned, but obtained from her mother—not without considerable difficulty, for the sempstress “saw in theatrical performances only the road to eternal damnation”—permission to take her to the Comédie-Française to witness a representation of the Comte d’Essex and Les Folies amoureuses.
Mlle. Clairon, in her Mémoires, confesses her inability to give any account of that never-to-be-forgotten evening. She only recollects that, during the whole of the performance, her absorption was such as to prevent her uttering a single word, and that, on returning home, she neither saw nor heard any one. Angrily dismissed to her room by her mother, instead of going to sleep, she spent the whole night in recalling and repeating everything that had been said by the performers at the theatre, and every one was astonished the next day to hear her repeat, with scarcely a mistake, a hundred verses of the tragedy and two-thirds of the after-piece. But this feat of memory was less surprising than the extraordinary way in which the little girl had contrived to assimilate the peculiarities of every actor whom she had seen. She lisped like Grandval, she stammered like Poisson, she mimicked to a nicety the coquettish airs of Mlle. Dangeville, and the cold and dignified manner of Mlle. Balicourt;155 in short, she tells us, she was looked upon as a prodigy by every one, save her mother, who, frowning angrily, declared that she would rather see her make a gown or a petticoat than waste her time over such unprofitable nonsense. Claire, however, fortified by the praises which she had received, boldly declared her intention of becoming an actress, and, when the enraged sempstress threatened to starve her into submission, or “break her arms and legs,” retorted, with the air of a tragedy queen: “Ah, well! you had better kill me at once, since otherwise I am determined to go upon the stage.”
Marie Scanapiecq did not, it is hardly necessary to remark, attempt to put her threats into execution; nevertheless, for some two months, she subjected her unfortunate little daughter to a course of such rigorous discipline, in the hope of breaking her spirit, that Claire’s health became seriously affected. Then the stern mother began to relent, and, on the advice of one of her customers, to whom she had confided her trouble, finally decided to let the girl have her way, and took her to see the lady in question, who had promised to use her influence to further her ambitions. The lady presented Claire to Desheys, a prominent actor of the Comédie-Italienne, who was so favourably impressed with the little aspirant’s abilities that he presented her, in his turn, to his colleagues, and, after a course of instruction in dancing and music, she made her début at the “Italians” on January 8, 1736, in a small part in Marivaux’s Isle des Esclaves, under the name of Clairon, a variation of her Christian name of Claire.
Although not yet thirteen, she appears to have acquitted herself with credit, while the progress she made in her profession was remarkable. “My industry, my enthusiasm, my memory,” says the actress, “confounded my instructors. I retained everything, I devoured everything.” Nevertheless, whether on account of her youth, her diminutive stature—she was very short, even for her age—or, more probably, because her precocious talents had excited the apprehensions of the famous Arlequin, Thomassin, who had daughters of his own to bring forward, she did not remain long at the Comédie-Italienne, and, at the end of a year, found herself obliged to seek her fortune in the provinces.
It was to Rouen that she went—Rouen, the nursery of the Paris theatres—Rouen, which had witnessed the first efforts of Marie de Champmeslé, whose triumphs in tragedy this young girl was one day to eclipse. The principal theatre there was at this time under the joint-management of La Noue, author of La Coquette corrigée, and Mlle. Gautier, both, in after years, prominent members of the Comédie-Française; and Mlle. Clairon was engaged to dance in the ballet, sing in comic opera, and act in a few parts suited to her age, at a salary of 100 pistoles, or about 1000 livres. As some compensation for this meagre remuneration, Marie Scanapiecq, who had accompanied her daughter, and whose views with regard to the morality of dramatic performances had undergone a most surprising alteration since she had discovered that there was money to be made, was installed superintendent of the box-office.
At Rouen, little Clairon soon became a general favourite, and improved so rapidly in her acting that, by the time she was sixteen, she was pronounced to be the most charming soubrette the Norman capital had ever possessed. The Rouen ladies were very far from sharing the prejudices of most provincial dames, who believed themselves degraded if they so much as spoke to an actress, and the girl was invited everywhere. A certain Madame de Bimorel, wife of a president of the Parliament of Normandy, and an old flame of the poet Fontenelle, was particularly kind, and remained her firm friend for more than forty years.
A gay town was Rouen in those days; a place where a young and pretty actress could count on receiving almost as much admiration as in the capital itself. At the theatre they still talked of the cause célèbre arising out of an affray between the Marquis de Cony and the Président de Folleville, which had taken place some years before; how the marquis, encountering the president at the house of a certain danseuse whose heart he had until that moment fondly imagined to be his alone, had addressed him by an opprobrious name; how the president had retorted by a blow directed at the nose of the marquis, and how the infuriated nobleman had thereupon thrown his adversary into the fireplace, with such violence as to incapacitate him from administering justice for many a long day to come. Whence arose the lawsuit in question, bringing with it much glory and fame for the damsel who had been the cause of the dispute and the profession in general.
As was only to be expected, the charming impersonator of soubrettes had no lack of adorers, and she is reported to have been not altogether insensible to the devotion of a M. du Rouvray, a handsome youth of good family, whom she met at Madame de Bimorel’s house, and to the more business-like attentions of a certain rich merchant, named Dubuisson. She had also a third soupirant, whose passion was to occasion her much tribulation.
Following the example of many actresses’ mothers at this period, Marie Scanapiecq, “whose rigid morals,” says her dutiful daughter, “were now discarded for gaiety and pleasure, and who spoke of her former mode of life with derision,” had converted her house at Rouen into a kind of pension, where gambling and even more questionable practices were freely permitted, if not actually encouraged. Among those who frequented the establishment was an actor named Gaillard de la Bataille, “a poor, rather amusing devil,” who possessed that almost indispensable qualification for a vainqueur de dames in the eighteenth century, the art of celebrating their charms in verse. To Mlle. Clairon he consecrated his muse, and every day chanted her praises in couplet or in quatrain, wherein he vowed that Venus and Vesta were unworthy to be compared with this adorable, this divine young actress. But alas! he was not content with this innocent homage; he dared to love her, “and all the while that he extolled her charms and her virtue, plotted to possess himself of the first and to destroy the other.”
One summer morning, when her mother happened to be away from home, Mlle. Clairon was studying her part in bed, all unconscious of evil. Suddenly the door flew open, and her lovelorn poet, who had bribed one of the servants of the house to admit him, appeared upon the threshold, and, casting himself on his knees before her, besought her, in impassioned accents, to reciprocate the flame which was devouring him. His divinity’s only response to this appeal was to call loudly for assistance; servants and lodgers, alarmed by her cries, were quickly on the scene, and “with brooms and shovels drove the wretch into the street.” “When my mother returned home,” continues the actress, “it was resolved that we should lodge a complaint against him; he was reprimanded by the magistrate, had ballads made about him, and was for ever banished our house. But rage succeeded to his love and his desires, and he composed that atrocious libel which has been read all over Europe.”
Gaillard did indeed take a cruel revenge for the ignominious treatment he had received, for his pamphlet, which was entitled Histoire de Mademoiselle Cronel, dite Frétillon, actrice de la Comédie de Rouen, écrite par elle-même, aided by the subsequent celebrity of its victim, ran through several editions, and the sobriquet “Frétillon” stuck to her for life. Mlle. Clairon was at Havre when the libel appeared, and “her anguish was beyond all power of expression.” She returned to Rouen in fear and trembling, “imagining that every door would be barred against her, and not daring to look any one in the face.” However, the play-loving Rouennais, who were very indulgent towards the moral failings of the ladies of the theatre, appear to have been more diverted than scandalised, and she “found the same public and the same friends.”
Soon, however, trouble arose in another quarter. The troupe of La Noue and Mlle. Gautier, driven from Rouen by the competition of an opera company, went to try its fortune in Flanders. Mlle. Clairon’s mother accompanied her, and, while the troupe was performing at Lille, took advantage of the fact of her daughter being now separated from Madame de Bimorel and her other friends, to endeavour to coerce her into a marriage with one of her comrades, whom the girl cordially detested. In a curious passage in her Mémoires, Mlle. Clairon attributes to this persecution the loss of her innocence:—
“The orders of my mother, her violence, which she carried so far as to present a pistol to me, in order to obtain my consent, made me at last sensible of the necessity of having a protector, who, without appealing to the laws, might be able to restrain those about me and defend me against them. Actuated by despair alone, without any base, mercenary motive, without love, without desires, I offered and surrendered myself, on the sole condition of being protected from the marriage and death that threatened me at the same time. That moment, which, at first sight, conveys only an impression of licentiousness, is perhaps the most noble, the most interesting, the most striking of my life.”
Unhappily, the sympathy which this passage might otherwise arouse in the lady’s readers is somewhat discounted by the perusal of the following extract from an official report which the police-inspector, La Janière, sent to Berryer, the Lieutenant of Police, some years later, from which it appears that so violent and persistent was the persecution to which the unfortunate young actress was subjected by her mother and her unwelcome admirer, that not one, but three protectors were necessary for her safety:—
“After some years, having accepted an engagement with the director of the theatre at Lille, she (Clairon) appeared on the stage in that town, and did not remain long without making conquests. The Comte de Bergheick, colonel of the Regiment Royal-Wallon, the Chevalier de By, lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment, and M. Desplace, major of cavalry, were her three chief protectors.
“People are at first alarmed at the sight of three rival warriors contending for the heart of this girl, but let them be reassured, everything will pass off tranquilly. The Clairon was a careful girl, and, besides, adroit enough to keep in play half-a-dozen lovers. Thus everything worked smoothly, and all were satisfied.”156
In the spring of 1742, La Noue, whose tenancy of the Rouen theatre had not been attended with the success he had anticipated, and whom the outbreak of the Austrian Succession War had compelled to relinquish a project of taking a company to Berlin, returned to Paris, to make his début at the Comédie-Française. His troupe was in consequence dispersed, and Mlle. Clairon, finding herself without employment, joined a travelling company which had been engaged to perform at Ghent, then the headquarters of the English army. Here, she tells us, she was received with enthusiastic applause, and “my lord” Marlborough157 laid his immense fortune at her feet. But Mlle. Clairon was, above all things, a patriot, and “my lord” and his immense fortune had no attractions for her. “The contempt which the English nation affected for mine,” she says, “rendered every individual belonging to it insupportable to me. It was impossible for me to listen to them without expressing my dislike.” So strong indeed was her aversion to the enemies of her country that it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be prevailed upon to contribute to their entertainment. Finally, she could endure the situation no longer, and, in spite of the efforts of her comrades to detain her, procured a passport and escaped to Dunquerque.
After a short stay at Dunquerque, Mlle. Clairon proceeded to Paris. According to her own account, she had while there received an order from the Gentlemen of the Chamber directing her to make her début at the Opera. From La Janière’s report, however, it appears that “conscious that her talents were too sublime for the provinces, and that she was destined to shine in a greater sphere,” she came on her own initiative to the capital, where she was for some months without employment. Ultimately, continues the report, she “accepted the propositions” of the wealthy farmer-general, La Popelinière, who posed as a patron of the arts, and, through his influence, mounted the stage of the Palais-Royal.
However that may be, to the Opera she was admitted, and there, in March 1743, made her début in the rôle of Venus, in Hésione. In her Mémoires, she admits that though she had “a prodigious extent of voice,” she was but an indifferent musician, and notwithstanding the fact that the Mercure of the following May contained a poem in which the writer declared that, so long as Clairon remained on earth, he was content to renounce his hopes of Heaven, her reception by the public seems to have left a good deal to be desired. We also gather that she was dissatisfied with the treatment she received from her colleagues—a fact which can hardly occasion surprise if there be any truth in the story that, immediately upon entering the Opera, she had publicly announced her intention of soundly boxing the ears of any lady who dared to address her by the odious name of “Frétillon,”—and soon determined to seek fame and fortune on another stage. “I had,” she says, “the good fortune to succeed, but I found that so little talent was required in this theatre, in order to appear possessed of the highest abilities, there seemed to me to be so little merit in merely following the modulations of the musicians, the manners of the performers were so distasteful to me, and the smallness of the salary was so absolutely degrading, that, at the end of four months, I signified my intention of resigning.”
From the Opera, Mlle. Clairon passed to the Comédie-Française, but not without encountering many obstacles by the way. Virtue counted for very little at the Académie Royale de Musique, except as a marketable commodity; it counted for a very great deal among the Comédiens du Roi, or rather they chose to pretend that it did, which came to much the same thing where the admission of a damsel of questionable reputation was concerned. Led by her old employer, La Noue, and Mlle. Gaussin, several members of the troupe banded themselves together to oppose the admission of the now notorious “Frétillon” by every means in their power. The latter, on her side, did not lack for supporters, and, for some weeks, a war of pamphlets raged, in which the characters of the different combatants were torn to shreds, to the great delight of the town. Finally, the King’s new mistress, Madame de Châteauroux, and her sister, Madame de Lauraguais, intervened on behalf of the young actress, who made so favourable an impression upon the old Duc de Gesvres, at an interview which, in his capacity as First Gentleman of the Chamber, he had very reluctantly accorded her, that, a few days later, she received the coveted ordre de début:—
“We, Duc de Gesvres, pair de France, First Gentleman of the King’s Chamber, direct the troupe of his Majesty’s French players to cause the demoiselle Clairon to forthwith make her début in order that we may be able to judge of her abilities as an actress.
“(Signed) The Duc de Gesvres.
“Executed at Versailles, September 10, 1743.”158
In the provinces, Mlle. Clairon’s emploi had been that of a soubrette, and her experience of tragedy was as yet very slight; for, though she was acquainted with some half-dozen of the leading tragic rôles, she had never played any of them more than twice. The semainiers, as a number of players who governed the Comédie in rotation were called, were, therefore, not a little surprised when the young lady informed them that it was her intention to make her first appearance as a votary of Melpomene. But their surprise gave way to profound astonishment, when, after they had consented and suggested to her the parts of Constance in Inès de Castro or Aricie in Phèdre, the débutante replied, with a smile of disdain, that such parts were too small for her, and that it was her wish to play Phèdre herself—Phèdre, the most difficult character in the whole tragic répertoire; Phèdre, one of the most celebrated rôles of Mlle. Dumesnil!
“My proposal,” she tells us, “made every one smile; they assured me that the public would not suffer me to finish the first act. I became hot with indignation, but pride sustained me, and I replied as quietly and as majestically as I could: ‘Messieurs, you will allow me to play it, or you will not. I have the right to make my choice. I will either play Phèdre or nothing.’”
In the end, she was permitted to have her way. According to her own account, she disdained to rehearse her part, and, on the fateful evening, September 19, 1743, did not arrive at the theatre until just before the curtain rose. The house was crowded, chiefly with persons who had come thither in the confident anticipation of enjoying a hearty laugh at what they were pleased to consider the absurd pretensions of little “Frétillon.” They came to laugh and perhaps to hiss; they remained to applaud, and to applaud enthusiastically, for, long before the first act was over, it was apparent to all that a great tragédienne was before them. “It was Phèdre herself in all her sovereign splendour, in all the majesty of passion,” and seldom indeed has that immortal queen of sorrow met with so worthy a representative. “The 19th of this month,” says the Mercure, “the players have revived at the theatre Racine’s tragedy of Phèdre, in which Mlle. Clairon, a new actress, has made her début. She represented the principal personage amidst general applause. She is a young woman of much intelligence, who expresses with a very charming voice the sentiments which she has the art to understand. One may say that Nature has lavished upon her talents of the happiest order to enable her to fill all the characters suited to her youth, the agreeableness of her person, and her voice.”
A little brochure, entitled Lettre à Madame la Marquise V. de G—— sur le début de Mademoiselle Clairon à la Comédie-Française, supplies us with an interesting portrait of the actress:—
“Mademoiselle Clairon is about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. She is exceedingly fair; her head is well set. Her eyes are fine, full of fire, and sparkle with voluptuousness. Her mouth is furnished with beautiful teeth; her bosom is well formed. One gains in examining her a pleasure which the other senses share with the sight. Her figure is shapely, she carries herself very gracefully. A modest and pleasing manner interests one in her favour. Although she is not a finished beauty, one must resemble her to be charming. Her wit is sparkling, her conversation sweet and engaging. Musician and actress, lover of the arts and their pupil, she is qualified for everything, and, without making any effort, she becomes naturally whatever she wishes to be.”159
Mlle. Clairon continued her débuts with success. On the following evening, she gave an admirable rendering of the part of Zénobie, and this was succeeded by further triumphs as Ariane, Électre, and the Atalide of Bajazet. She played also several important rôles in comedy, among them the Dorine of Tartuffe. But her acting here was distinctly inferior to her performances in tragedy; a circumstance which is not a little singular when we remember that the reputation she had brought with her from the provinces had been gained entirely in the former genre. Possibly, recognising that her true vocation was tragedy, she was now somewhat careless of the impression she might make in other rôles.
On October 29, 1743, an order from the Duc de Gesvres conferred on the young débutante a demi-part in the troupe of the Comédie-Française. In the following December, she was accorded a further quarter share, and, exactly a year later, obtained a full part.
The middle of the eighteenth century was the golden era of the Comédie-Française. What a galaxy of talent do we find there! Mesdemoiselles Clairon, Dumesnil, Gaussin, and Dangeville; Grandval, Molé, Lekain, Préville, and Brizard! Never before and never since have so many celebrated players appeared together upon one stage. And of this brilliant band, Mlle. Clairon was the ruler; ruling not so much by force of talent, for Mlle. Dumesnil had greater natural talent, nor by beauty, for Mlle. Gaussin was more beautiful, but by her remarkable intelligence, her unwearying industry, and her strength of will. Only Mlle. Dumesnil could compare with her upon the stage; off it, Mlle. Clairon reigned supreme.
For nearly twenty-two years, Mlle. Clairon disputed the dramatic sceptre with her celebrated rival, inferior to the latter in parts which required the combination of tragic force with pathos and tenderness, but incomparably her superior in characters of the sterner type, especially those into which dignity and an element of lofty and inflexible pride entered.160 The methods of the two great actresses could hardly have been more dissimilar. “The one was all temperament,” says Edmond de Goncourt, “the other all study and art.” Mlle. Dumesnil frequently came upon the stage with no very definite idea as to the tone or attitude she would assume in certain passages, trusting to a happy inspiration, which, it must be acknowledged, seldom failed her.161 With Mlle. Clairon, who made her art the subject of the most profound and unremitting study, every tone and every gesture had been carefully rehearsed beforehand, and the character elaborated in its minutest details. So numerous indeed were her private rehearsals that she insensibly carried with her her theatrical air into private life, and her friends laughingly declared that she called for her fan and her coach in the tone of Agrippina, and spoke to her lackey like a queen addressing the captain of her guards.162 But this artificiality was so dexterously concealed, she possessed in such a supreme degree the art of concealing art, so dignified and graceful were her movements, and so marvellous her command of facial expression, that even the warmest admirers of Mlle. Dumesnil and her school of acting and the most captious of critics were compelled to acknowledge her charm, while the ordinary playgoer was “transported with enthusiasm.”
Tributes to her genius came from all quarters, from friend and foe, from her compatriots and from foreigners alike. Voltaire, when she performed in his little theatre at Ferney, went quite wild with enthusiasm, and declared that, for the first time in his life, he had seen perfection in any kind.163 Favart, though severely reprobating the extravagance of the admirers who had medals struck in the lady’s honour,164 cherished for her the most profound admiration. “Mlle. Clairon,” he writes to the Count Durazzo, “is raised so far above criticism by the superiority of her talents that all the remarks of the most punctilious censor can but serve to convince me that she has attained the last degree of perfection. It seems as if she owed only to Nature all that she has acquired by assiduous study. Every day we are struck with some new admiration.”
Collé, who disliked her heartily, partly no doubt on account of her friendship with the philosophers, writing in 1750, considers her inferior to Mlle. Dumesnil in sentimental scenes, but acknowledges her immense superiority to the latter “in parts requiring little energy and much dignity,” such as the heroines of Corneille and the Fulvie of Crébillon’s Catilina. He, however, severely criticises her delivery, which he describes as “artificial and inflated to the last extreme.”
But, five years later, when Mlle. Clairon had adopted the more natural method of speaking and acting of which we shall presently speak, the dramatist is all admiration:—
“I have seen L’Orphelin [Voltaire’s L’Orphelin de la Chine], and wept at the second and fifth acts. Mlle. Clairon appears to merit even more praise than she has received. It is the actress, and not the play, that has moved me. This tragedy is bad, and I do not retract a single word of what I have said about it; but the actress is admirable. She improves every day; she is ridding herself little by little of her declamatory style, and making great strides towards natural acting. If she continues, she will attain to the art of the Lecouvreur. The progress which she has made is too marked and too astonishing for us not to expect still further improvement; perhaps we may even hope for perfection.”165
The Réflexions sur la déclamation of Hérault de Séchelles contain a striking testimony to that wonderful command of expression, the result of a profound study of physiognomy, which enabled her, without opening her lips, to convey to her audience an exact impression of the different phases of emotion through which her mind happened to be passing.
“One day, Mlle. Clairon seated herself in an arm-chair, and, without uttering a single word, she painted, with her countenance alone, all the passions: hatred, rage, indignation, indifference, melancholy, grief, love, pity, gaiety. She painted not only the passions themselves, but all the shades and differences which characterise them. In terror, for example, she expressed dismay, fear, embarrassment, surprise, uneasiness. When we expressed our admiration, she replied that she had made a special study of anatomy, and knew what muscles it was necessary to call into play.”
And listen to Oliver Goldsmith’s tribute, which appeared in the second number of The Bee:—
“Mlle. Clairon, a celebrated actress at Paris, seems to me the most perfect female figure I have ever seen on any stage. Her first appearance is excessively engaging; she never comes in staring round upon the company, as if she intended to count the benefits of the house, or, at least, to see as well as to be seen. Her eyes are always at first intently fixed upon the persons of the drama, and then she lifts them by degrees, with enchanting diffidence, upon the spectators. Her first speech, or at least the first part of it, is delivered with scarce any motion of the arm; her hands and her tongue never set out together, but one prepares for the other.... By this simple beginning, she gives herself a power of rising to the passion of the scene. As she proceeds, every gesture, every look, acquires new violence; till at last, transported, she fills the whole vehemence of the play and the whole idea of the poet. Her hands are not alternately stretched out and then drawn in again, as with the singing women at Sadler’s Wells; they are employed with graceful variety, and every moment please with new and unexpected eloquence. Add to this, that their motion is generally from the shoulder; she never flourishes her hands while the upper part of the arm is motionless; nor has she the ridiculous appearance as if her elbows were pinned to her hips.”
But perhaps the most interesting of all eulogies of the actress is contained in a letter to Garrick by his Danish correspondent, Sturtz—a really masterly description, which suffers but little from the fact of the writer being a foreigner, and which we, therefore, need make no apology for producing at length:—
“In such a representing nation, I had a great opinion of their stage, and yet I was disappointed. It seems the quality has forestalled the best parts for them alone, for I saw but an indifferent medley of plays.
“There is, indeed, Mme. Clairon, standing alone amidst the ruins of the Republic, shooting for the last rays of a departing star. I have gazed on her when she trod the stage as Queen of Carthage,166 worthy that rank and above the mob of queens; she inspired every sentiment; she displays every passion, and, I dare say, she felt none: all the storm was on the surface, waves ran high, and the bottom was calm; her despair and her grief rose and died at the end of her tongue.
“...She goes through a number of opposite feelings: soft melancholy, despair, languid tenderness, raving fury, scorn, and melting love; there is not one passion absent. She is wonderful in those transitions where an inferior actress, from an intense grief, would, at some lucky event, jump on a sudden to a giddy, wanton joy. Mme. Clairon, though exulting at her new-born hope that Æneas might stay, keeps always the dark colour of sorrow; when her eye brightens through her tears, she looks, as Ossian expresses it, ‘like the moon through a watery cloud.’ Her characteristic perfection is the scornful, the commanding part; then is nobility spread about her as a glory round the head of a saint; and yet she never puts off the woman; in the midst of violent rage she is always the tender female, and a nuance of love softens the hard colour into harmony.
“...Nature has done a good deal in favour of Madame Clairon; her voice is melody, of a vast extent, and capable of numberless inflexions; however, I was sometimes unwillingly disturbed by a disagreeable shrill cry, rather expressing physical pain. As to her figure, it is not a very elegant one, her head being rather too big and her whole person too little; and yet she is great, towering amongst the crowd in the height of action;167 so as you see by the enchantment of art a colossal head of Jupiter in a cameo the size of sixpence. Were I in a temper to find fault with her, I might mention her too articulate declamation, the cadence of every motion; but then I might as well charge Raphael with having too carefully marked his contours, which are the admiration and the models of every age. True it is that compound of excellence is a mere compound of art; were it possible to note action, as music, then she would show a fortnight before every mien, the measure of every tone, the tension of every march on paper. She is else quite free from that disagreeable tragical hiccup so epidemical in France, and so awkwardly returning at the end of every verse; she never shakes so affectedly her head, as some others, in what you call the graceful style, forsooth; and she alone may venture some bold strokes, which would never do else with so well-bred, so elegant an audience.
“So when she heard that all was lost, that Æneas was gone, then, in the rage of despair, with her two hands across, she beat her forehead with such a gloomy, death-threatening look that we all stood aghast, and her cry raised horror in every breast. I cannot say that she killed herself well, though, but she died well; her weakening voice was not a childish, whining tone, but imminent dissolution altered it, convulsion raised it, and so it vanished into the air as a vapour. There, then, I have brought her to the highest pitch of glory of your tribe, self-murder; may she now quietly repose!”168
And Garrick replies, laying his finger, with unerring instinct, upon the one weak spot in Mlle. Clairon’s acting:—
“What shall I say to you, my dear friend, about ‘the Clairon.’ Your dissection of her is as accurate as if you had opened her alive; she has everything that art and a good understanding, with great natural spirit, can give her. But there I fear (and I only tell you my fears and open my soul to you) the heart has none of those instantaneous feelings, that life-blood, that keen sensibility, that bursts at once from genius, and, like electrical fire, shoots through the veins, marrow, bones, and all, of every spectator. Madame Clairon is so conscious and so certain of what she can do, that she never, I believe, had the feelings of the instant come upon her unexpectedly; but I pronounce that the greatest strokes of genius have been unknown to the actor himself till circumstances and the warmth of the scene has sprung the mine, as it were, as much to his own surprise as to that of the audience. Thus I make a great difference between a great genius and a good actor. The first will always realise the feelings of his character, and be transported beyond himself; while the other, with great powers and good sense, will give great pleasure to an audience, but never
——“‘Pectus inaniter angit,
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,
Ut magus.’
“I have with great freedom communicated my ideas of acting, but you must not betray me, my good friend; the Clairon would never forgive me, though I called her an excellent actress, if I did not swear by all the gods that she was the greatest genius too.”169
Space forbids us to give more than a brief account of the many triumphs of this superb tragédienne, who, besides worthily sustaining all the chief characters of the classic répertoire, created forty-three rôles, in not one of which did she fail to uphold her reputation, while the great majority were brilliantly successful. Among the former, she was probably seen to most advantage in Médée—in which character Carle Van Loo painted her in his celebrated portrait—Phèdre, Hermione, Zénobie, Didon, and Cléopâtre. Among the latter, taking them in chronological order, should be mentioned Arétie in the Denys le Tyran of Marmontel; Fulvie in Crébillon’s Catalina; Azéma in the Sémiramis of Voltaire; Électre in the Oreste of the same writer; Cassandre in Chateaubrun’s play, Les Troyennes; Idamé in Voltaire’s Orphelin de la Chine; Astarbé in the tragedy of that name, by Colardeau; Aménaïde in the Tancrède of Voltaire; and Aliénor in De Belloy’s Siège de Calais, during the run of which last play occurred the unfortunate incident which led to her retirement from the stage.
The almost fanatical admiration which Voltaire cherished for the actress was no doubt, in part, due to the fact that she had contributed so largely to the success of his plays. If Collé is to be believed, she “made” his Orphelin de la Chine, while as the tender and fiery Aménaïde of Tancrède (September 3, 1760), she appears to have held the audience absolutely enthralled. “Ah! mon cher maître,” writes Diderot to the exile of Ferney, “if you could see her crossing the stage, half-leaning upon the executioners who surround her, her knees giving way beneath her, her eyes closed, her arms hanging down, as though in death; if you could hear her cry on recognising Tancrède, you would be convinced, more than ever, that silence and pantomime have sometimes a pathos which all the resources of oratory cannot attain. Open your portfolios and look at Poussin’s Esther paraissant devant l’Assuérus: it is Clairon on her way to execution.”170
The Mercure—the staid Mercure, so chary of its praise—can find no word to describe her acting but that of sublime. The advocate Barbier, voicing the opinion of the average playgoer, declares that “Mlle. Clairon carried the talent of tragic declamation to a point which had never been witnessed before”; while d’Alembert writes: “Mlle. Clairon has been incomparable and beyond anything that she has yet attained to.”
To the great disappointment of the public, the health of Mlle. Clairon necessitated the temporary withdrawal of the play after the thirteenth performance, and, when it was revived in the following January, the enthusiasm with which it was received was almost indescribable.
Simultaneously with her celebrity as an actress, Mlle. Clairon enjoyed a celebrity of another, and far less enviable, kind. “Love,” she remarks, in her Mémoires, “is one of Nature’s needs; and I satisfied it.” She did indeed. “Hardly had she appeared on the [Paris] stage,” writes La Janière to the Lieutenant of Police, in the report to which we have already had occasion to refer, “than every one began to fight for her, and the crowd of lovers was so great that, in spite of her inclination towards gallantry, she was embarrassed to choose among them.” There were princes and dukes; there were marquises, and barons, and counts; there were impecunious chevaliers and wealthy farmer-generals; there were dashing cavalry-officers and sober presidents of the Parliament; there were actors and men of letters. And few indeed—that is to say, few who possessed any passport to her favour: high rank, a handsome presence, a pretty wit, or, best of all, a well-lined purse and a disposition to empty it at her feet,171 seemed to have sighed in vain.
Poor M. de la Popelinière, to whose good offices Mlle. Clairon had owed her admission to the Opera, did not long retain his proud position of amant en tître. He was speedily abandoned for the Prince de Soubise, who, however, was only accorded a fourth share of the lady’s heart, the remainder of that priceless organ being divided between three other high and puissant seigneurs, the Ducs de Luxembourg and de Bouteville and the Marquis de Bissy. Next Mlle. de Camargo’s old lover, the Président de Rieux, succeeded in securing a monopoly of the tragédienne’s affections, only to lose them, however, the moment he showed a disinclination to loosen his purse-strings. Then came an assortment of admirers, drawn from the nobility, the Parliament, financial circles, the stage, the army, and foreign visitors to Paris, and including the “Baron de Kervert,” who is described as a rich Englishman, but whom we have failed to identify; a Polish nobleman, the Comte de Brotok, “who made a brave show before he became acquainted with her, but, in less than four months, had lost coach, diamonds, and snuff-box, and was obliged to pretend that he was in mourning for one of his relations, in order to appear without shame in a black coat;” the actor Grandval, who had had more bonnes fortunes than he could count, but who proved so accommodating an admirer that, after a few months of the lady’s society, “his colleagues had to accord him a benefit performance in order to reestablish his affairs, which had fallen into a disastrous condition;” and, finally, the Baron de Besenval, whose reputation for gallantry was, in later years, to compromise Marie Antoinette, and “with whom,” says La Janière, “she became infatuated.”172
For Besenval indeed, with whom she had had a previous liaison during her career in the provinces, Mlle. Clairon, to judge by her letters, appears to have entertained a genuine affection. In one epistle, “she conjures him to love her for ever”; in another, she informs him that a letter which she has just received from him has “restored her to life,” and that, however much he may love her, his passion must of necessity be inferior to hers; and, in a third, declares that the devotion she feels for him has “spoiled her taste” for other admirers, and that she “experiences more pleasure in being true to him, whether he desires it or not, than she formerly had in being unfaithful.”173
But let us listen to some of the reports of the Arguseyed agents of the Lieutenant of Police, which prove what an important personage a fashionable actress was in those days:—
“Saint-Marc to Berryer.
“June 14, 1748.
“I have the honour to report to you that the trustworthy person whom I introduced into Mlle. Clairon’s house assures me that the Prince de Monaco, since his return to his regiment, has not allowed a single day to pass without writing to Clairon; he shows much affection for her, and, among other things, he begs her constantly not to return to the stage until her health is perfectly re-established, and to remember that she has promised to take every care of her life, in order to prolong his....
“D’Hugues de Giversac, who is very much in love with Clairon, and is reputed to have enjoyed her favours, has made all sorts of attempts to gain admission to the house, but I am assured that there is no possibility of his succeeding, and that Clairon’s door is closed to him. It has been remarked that, since the departure of the prince, she has not received any one, except actors and actresses and, frequently, an old attorney, who is a friend of Clairon’s father. Moreover, she does not go out, except to Mass, and, since her illness, it does not appear that the prince has any rivals. It has been said that D’Hugues was one, but the demoiselle’s conduct for some time past renders that improbable.
“It has been remarked that Clairon only goes out with her father and sister, or some actors. She always makes great cheer and spends large sums on her table. She is daily expecting the arrival of the prince and his money. I continue the precautions necessary to enable me to operate successfully the moment the prince appears.”
“Saint-Marc to Berryer.
“June 23, 1748.
“I have the honour to report to you that Mlle. Clairon received yesterday evening a letter from the Prince de Monaco, in which he informs her that he will arrive without fail at the end of next week. But Clairon considers that this is a feint on his part, and that he will arrive sooner, in order to surprise her. Apart from that, nothing of importance has happened at this house. The demoiselle does not go out, nor does she receive any one, save the members of her troupe and the old person of whom I have spoken.”
“Saint-Marc to Berryer.
“August 10, 1748.
“I have the honour to report to you that nothing likely to be of interest to you is taking place at the house of the demoiselle Clairon. She often sees her comrades of the Comédie, with whom she always makes good cheer.
“There is a foreigner whose name I have not been able to ascertain, who has employed a woman called Caron, formerly an entremetteuse, to speak in his favour. This foreigner, although he is not acquainted with her, has sent to Clairon a piece of Indian taffeta, a great quantity of chocolate and champagne, and a service of porcelain encrusted with gold, which presents were entrusted to one of Clairon’s servants, with a letter from the foreigner, promising her a considerable allowance, if she will become his mistress. The story goes that she wrote to the Prince de Monaco, to inform him of the advantageous proposal she had received from this foreigner. The prince despatched, on the instant, an old confidential servant, with instructions, in writing, enjoining on the demoiselle Clairon to return everything which she had received from this foreigner. The demoiselle found herself in an exceedingly embarrassing position, inasmuch as she had disposed of more than half the presents, having converted them into cash. Since then, the prince’s confidential servant has remained in Paris, to keep an eye upon her behaviour, until the moment of the arrival of his master, who has been very impatiently expected for more than a month.”174
“Meunier to Berryer.
“September 18, 1748.
“The demoiselle Clairon has for a long time been the mistress of [the Marquis] de Cindré. At the end of the month of August, she asked him for a sum of 2000 livres,175 of which she stood in pressing need. He gave her this sum.
“Some days later, she demanded of M. de Cindré a country-house. He could refuse her nothing, and rented one for her at Pantin, which he furnished magnificently.
“M. de Cindré went to visit her one evening, and, to give her an agreeable surprise, entered by a back door, and found the demoiselle Clairon with a young man.... He withdrew, without speaking to any one, and without his presence being discovered. The following day, he sent and removed the furniture which he had placed in the house, and abandoned Mlle. Clairon.
“The young man in question is M. de Jaucourt, an officer of dragoons, who, about two months ago, was arrested for being absent from his regiment without leave.”
Under date October 23, 1748, we come to an entry of considerable interest:—
“The demoiselle Clairon has dismissed the Marquis de Thibouville. She has replaced him by the sieur Marmontel, author of Denis le Tyran. He is not recognisable since he has devoted himself to amusing this girl.”176
The beginning of the liaison between Mlle. Clairon and the author of the Contes moraux, which the latter relates, with much complacency, in his ever-delightful Mémoires, written, by the way, “for the instruction of his children,” is distinctly amusing.
Marmontel had been in love with a certain Mlle. Navarre, whose heart he had stolen away from Maurice de Saxe, much to the indignation of the famous Marshal,177 and who had made of him “the happiest of lovers and the most miserable of slaves.” One day, he learned that his enchantress had jilted him, in his turn, for the Chevalier de Mirabeau, upon which he went home, “fell down like a sacrificed victim,” and was for some time alarmingly ill. Mlle. Clairon came to console him, when the following conversation took place:—
“‘My friend,’ said she, ‘your heart needs some object of love; you feel listless, because it is empty. You must interest; you must fill it. Is there not a woman in the world whom you can think agreeable?’
“‘I know,’ said I, ‘only one who could comfort me if she chose, but would she be so generous.’
“‘We must see as to that,’ replied she, with a smile. ‘Am I acquainted with her? I will endeavour to assist you.’
“‘Yes, you know her, and have great influence over her.’
“‘Well, what is her name? I will speak to her in your favour; I will say that you love with ardour and sincerity; that you can be faithful and constant; that she is sure of being happy in your love.’
“‘So you really believe all this?’
“‘Yes; I am fully persuaded of it.’
“‘Be so good as to say it to yourself.’
“‘To myself, my friend?’
“‘To yourself.’
“‘Ah! then it shall be my pride to comfort you.’”178
A connection was thus formed, which, though it did not last very long—at least the love-affair did not179—was not without its influence upon the professional careers of both. Marmontel tells us that his passion for the actress had the effect of “rekindling his poetical ardour”; while, on her side, Mlle. Clairon was induced by the representations of the young author to adopt a more natural style of acting, which may be said to have given the finishing touch to an art which came nearer perfection than anything yet seen on the French stage, and, moreover, opened the door for a reform the importance of which can scarcely be over-estimated.
Marmontel had repeatedly urged upon the tragédienne the advisability of aiming at greater simplicity, pointing out that her acting was “too splendid, too impetuous,” and was wanting in suppleness and truth. “You possess,” said he, “every means of excelling in your art, and yet, great as you are, you might easily rise above yourself, purely by using more temperately those powers of which you are so prodigal. You cite to me your own brilliant successes and those which you have gained for me; you cite the opinion and the advice of your friends; you cite the opinion of M. de Voltaire, who himself recites his lines with emphasis, and who pretends that declamation requires the same pomp as style; while I, in return, can only urge an irresistible feeling that declamation, like style, may be dignified, majestic, tragic, and yet simple; that tones, in order to be animated and deeply affecting, require gradations, shades, unforeseen and sudden transitions, which they can never have when strained and laboured.”
Mlle. Clairon laughingly replied that she saw plainly that he would never let her alone until she had adopted a tone and manner more suited to comedy than to tragedy. To which Marmontel rejoined that this she could never do, since her voice, her look, her pronunciation, her gestures, her attitudes, were all instinctively dignified and majestic, and that, if she would but consent to be natural, her tragic powers could not fail to be enhanced.
For a long while, the actress refused to be persuaded; but, finally, in 1752, after Marmontel had, for some time, ceased to urge her, she resolved to follow his counsels. Judging it best to make her first essays in the new method before a public less critical and less conservative than that of Paris, she obtained permission to visit Bordeaux, where, in addition, she would have the advantage of performing in a theatre more suited to the style she proposed to adopt than the large salle of the Comédie-Française. On her first evening at Bordeaux, she appeared as Phèdre, and played the part in the way she had always been accustomed to perform it in Paris, that is to say, with much extravagance of tone and gesture. She was, of course, loudly applauded. The next day, she appeared as Agrippine, and played the character from beginning to end in conformity with the ideas which she had recently adopted.
“This simple, easy, and natural style of acting,” she tells us, “at first surprised them. An accelerated mode of utterance at the end of each couplet, and a regular gradation of vehemence had been usually the signals for applause; they knew that it had only been usual to applaud such passages; and, as I did not resort to the style to which they had become accustomed, I was not applauded.” As the play proceeded, however, the attitude of the audience underwent a change; murmurs of “Mais cela est beau! Cela est beau!” began to make themselves heard; and, when the curtain fell, the actress received a perfect ovation.
“After this,” she continues, “I represented thirty-two of my different characters, and always in my newly-adopted style. Ariane was of the number, and the authors of the Encyclopédie, under the subject Déclamation, have been kind enough to transmit to posterity the very marked and flattering homage which I received. However, being still fearful, and doubting the judgment of the public, as well as my own, I determined to perform Phèdre as I had played it at first, and I saw, to my delight, that they were dissatisfied with it. I had courage enough to say that it was an experiment which I had believed it to be my duty to make, and that I would play the same character differently, if they would grant me the favour of a third performance. I obtained permission, adopted the style which was the result of my studies as completely as I could, and every one agreed that there was no comparison.”
Encouraged by the success which had attended her experiments at Bordeaux, Mlle. Clairon forthwith determined to try the effect of the new method upon Paris and Versailles.
One day, when she was to play Roxane in the little theatre at Versailles, Marmontel, happening to come to her dressing-room, was surprised to find her attired like a sultana, without panier, her arms half-bare, and, in short, in correct Oriental costume. He complimented her upon her appearance, upon which she told him of her experience at Bordeaux, adding: “I am going to try it again in this small theatre. Come and hear me, and if it be as successful here, adieu to the old declamation!”
The result, Marmontel tells us, exceeded their most sanguine anticipations. “It was no longer the actress, but Roxane herself, who was seen and heard.” The aristocratic audience were delighted, and applauded her warmly. After the play, her friend went to congratulate her upon her success. “Ah!” said she, “don’t you see that I am undone? In all my characters the costume must now be observed; the truth of dress must be conjoined with that of acting. All my costly theatrical wardrobe must from this moment be changed; I lose clothes to the value of 10,000 crowns; but the sacrifice is made. You shall see me within a week perform Électre as naturally as I have just played Roxane.”
She was as good as her word. It was the Électre of Crébillon. “In place of the ridiculous panier and wide mourning gown which she had been accustomed to wear,” says Marmontel, “she appeared in the simple dress of a slave, with her hair dishevelled, and long chains upon her arms. She was admirable, and, some time afterwards, she was still more sublime in the Électre of Voltaire. Voltaire had made her recite this part with an unvaried and doleful monotony; but, when spoken naturally, it acquired a beauty unknown to himself. On hearing it acted at his theatre at Ferney, where she went to visit him, he exclaimed, bathed in tears and transported with admiration, ‘It is not I who am the author of that—it is herself; she has created the part.’ And, indeed, the infinity of shades which she introduced, and the manner in which she expressed the passions, rendered it perhaps, of all others, that in which she was the most astonishing.”180
Paris, as well as Versailles, was quick to recognise in this change the genuine tragic tone, and the enormously increased appearance of probability which theatrical performances derive from a due observation of costume. Thus, from one reform sprang another, and, warmly supported by the celebrated actor Lekain,181 who was keenly alive to the absurdity of dressing the characters of ancient Greece and Rome in a half-modern fashion, Mlle. Clairon was able to effect a veritable revolution. Henceforth, the actors were forced to abandon their tonnelets, their fringed gloves, their voluminous periwigs, their plumed hats, and all the rest of the trappings which one sees in Liotard’s engraving of Watteau’s picture, Les Comédiens Français; and this new desire for truth ere long extended to the scenery and all the accessories.
Voltaire’s Orphelin de la Chine, produced on August 20, 1754, where, in the part of Idamé, Mlle. Clairon secured one of her most brilliant triumphs,182 was the first play in which they ventured to act on their ideas. “On returning from Fontainebleau,” writes Collé, “this tragedy has been revived, and has had nine representations. I omitted to mention that the players have been put to some expense. They have had a scene painted, or, to speak more correctly, a palace, in the Chinese fashion; they have also observed the costumes of the country in their dress. The women wore Chinese gowns, were without paniers and ruffles, and had their arms bare. Clairon even affected foreign gesticulations, placing frequently one hand or both on her hips; holding for some moments her clenched fist to her forehead, and so forth. The men, according to the characters they represented, were attired as Tartars or Chinamen.183 The effect was excellent.”184
Mlle. Clairon was not content with restoring to the figures of the past their correct costume; she sought to make them live again in all the distinctiveness of their times, their countries, and their nationality. To be a great tragic actor or actress, it was not enough, in her opinion, to have a sonorous voice, a majestic presence, a dignified carriage, enthusiasm, and dramatic intelligence; it was necessary for the player “to transport himself into the times and the places where the characters which he was representing had lived,” to recover, in fact, a little of the spirit of Rome, Sparta, or Athens. “Not only,” says she, in her Mémoires, “ought one to acquaint oneself with the history of all the peoples of the world, but to investigate it thoroughly; to render oneself familiar with it, even in the minutest details; to adapt to each rôle the peculiarities which the nation to which the character belonged ought to exhibit.”
Such a result could, of course, only be attained by constant study; and she herself was an indefatigable student of historical works and the classics, as well as of statues, monuments, and portraits; and unsparing in her condemnation of those members of her profession who were too indolent or too careless to follow her example. Grimm relates an imaginary conversation between Mlle. Clairon and a young actor, which Mme. d’Épinay declared that she had dreamed, and which, no doubt, correctly illustrates the tragédienne’s views on this subject.
The young actor has come to enlist Mlle. Clairon’s good offices to secure him a début at the Comédie-Française, and the following conversation takes place:—
“Have you yet appeared at any theatre?”
“No, Mademoiselle.”
“Well! no matter; your face interests me. Be seated, Monsieur, and let us talk.... Ah! go and fetch me my work-basket from yonder console, at the end of the room, so that I may see you walk, if you please—over there, near that Japanese ornament.... Monsieur, I thank you. That is satisfactory; your movements are easy; you have no stiffness, nor ungainliness; but you have no distinction. Have you never had occasion to observe men of quality in society? What, Monsieur, are the characters in which you are most proficient, and which you propose that I should listen to?”
“Mademoiselle, that of Nero in Britannicus.”
“Is that the only one? Well, Monsieur, before I listen to you, have the kindness to tell me who Nero was.”
“Mademoiselle, he was an emperor who lived at Rome.”
“That he lived at Rome is correct. But was he a Roman emperor, or did he reside at Rome for pleasure? How did he rise to be emperor? What were his claims, his birth, his parents, his education, his character, his inclinations, his virtues, his vices?”
“Mademoiselle, the rôle of Nero answers some of your questions, but not all.”
“Monsieur, it is necessary to answer not only these questions, but all the further ones that I shall ask you. And how can you play the part of Nero, or any other that you wish to, unless you are as well acquainted with the life of the personage whom you are representing as with your own?”
“I was under the impression, Mademoiselle, that in order to grasp the sense of his rôle, it was quite sufficient to be acquainted with the play.”
“And you were under a wrong impression, Monsieur.”185
In the midst of her histrionic triumphs, Mlle. Clairon continued her career of gallantry. To Marmontel succeeded the Bailli de Fleury, “understudied” by a M. de Villeguillon, an officer of Musketeers. Soon both these gentlemen were discarded in favour of the Marquis de Ximenès, a young man of twenty-five, with a considerable fortune. The marquis, who was by way of being a poet, began his wooing by inditing sonnets to the lady’s eyes, which, however, were very coldly received. Thereupon, changing his tactics, he sent her a Périgueux pâté, in which he had caused to be inserted, in the guise of truffles, six rouleaux of fifty louis each. The rouleaux were much more to Mlle. Clairon’s taste than the verses had been, and, when her generous admirer presented himself that evening, her door was no longer closed to him.
The marquis loved the lady very dearly. For her sake, he abandoned a former enchantress of the name of Mainville, “who had already plucked some of his feathers.” For her sake, he parted with a fine estate in Champagne and laid the proceeds at her feet. And every day he came to visit her “in an equipage of the most brilliant description, with two tall lackeys in the rumble, and a running footman preceding it, all superbly habited.”186
Finally, however, she killed his love with a bon mot. A fair colleague in the green-room, with whom she was having words, happened to remark that Monsieur le Marquis had turned Mademoiselle’s head. “Yes,” snapped the actress, “away from him.” M. de Ximenès, be it said, was not an Adonis.
This injudicious speech was duly reported to the marquis, who, stung to the quick, quitted the lady for ever. Mlle. Clairon wrote demanding the return of a portrait of herself which she had given him. It came, and, with it, these cruel verses:—
“Tout s’use, tout périt, tu le prouves, Clairon;
Ce pastel dont tu m’a fait don,
Du temps a ressenti l’outrage
Il t’en ressemble davantage.”187
To M. de Ximenès succeeded a gentleman who, for some time, baffled the curiosity of Berryer’s inspectors by invariably visiting the actress under cover of night, in a hackney-coach, and with his features concealed by a cloak. Ultimately, it transpired that the mysterious admirer was the Marquis de Bauffremont, who having recently married—and not for love—a lady of a very jealous disposition, had strong reasons for desiring to hide his identity.188
The discreet M. de Bauffremont was followed by yet another marquis; he of Rochechouart—Mlle. Clairon appears to have been extremely partial to noblemen of this particular rank—and, finally, the lady formed a liaison with Joseph Alphonse Omer, Comte de Valbelle d’Oraison, “who had received from Nature all the graces that go to the making of an amiable man, and whom Chance had made the richest noble in Provence.”189
Let us hasten to add that here, at any rate, Mlle. Clairon seems to have experienced a genuine passion, which was undoubtedly reciprocated; for her liaison with the Comte de Valbelle lasted for nineteen years, and, as we shall presently see, might have been regularised, had the actress been so disposed.
With her triumph in the Aménaïde of Tancrède, of which we have spoken elsewhere, Mlle. Clairon reached the height of her fame. She ruled with despotic sway not only the theatre, but the world of fashion as well. At her house, in the Rue des Marais—the same house which had been successively occupied by Marie de Champmeslé, Racine, and Adrienne Lecouvreur—she received the cream of the society of both Court and capital:190 Mesdames d’Aiguillon, de Villeroi, de la Vallière, de Forcalquier, and others; and in turn, was a frequent guest at their tables and also at that of Madame du Deffand. The Princess Galitzin, wife of the Russian Ambassador at the Court of Vienna, formed so deep an attachment for the actress that she “could not spend two hours without seeing her or writing to her.” It was she who commissioned Carle Van Loo to paint his celebrated portrait of Mlle. Clairon as Medea,191 and presented it to the actress. It was she, too, who, in 1759, persuaded the Russian Court to invite the great actress to leave France and take up her residence at St. Petersburg. The terms offered were extremely tempting,192 and Mlle. Clairon hesitated long before refusing them. But her passion for the Comte de Valbelle was then at its height, and she could not reconcile herself to the idea of being separated from her lover. Then the count offered to make her his wife, and accompany her to Russia, and so anxious was the Czarina Elizabeth to secure the services of the tragédienne, that she promised, through the Princess Galitzin, to accord him the same rank as he held in France, “and the emoluments necessary to sustain it.” Mlle. Clairon, however, fell ill, and illness gave her time for reflection. She remembered that she was seven years older than her lover, who was a very gallant gentleman indeed, and very far from an example of fidelity; as her charms waned, she could hardly flatter herself that he would become more constant. She remembered, too, the difference in station; she thought of the indignation of the count’s family, and she asked herself whether, in years to come, he would not reproach her with having taken him at his word.
Finally, she came to the conclusion that “the soul capable of rejecting all the advantages which are offered is a thousand times more noble than the one that accepts them,” and declined to expatriate herself.193 The Princess Galitzin was not the only distinguished foreigner to seek to perpetuate the genius of Mlle. Clairon. Garrick, who had seen her act at Lille, during his first visit to France in 1742, and prophesied a great future for her,—though this, of course, was in comedy—came to Paris, with his wife, after the conclusion of peace in 1763, on their way to Italy. A warm friendship sprang up between the great English actor and the Queen of the French stage, and so delighted was Garrick with the tragédienne’s talent that he commissioned Gravelot to engrave a design, representing Mlle. Clairon “in all the attributes of Tragedy,” her arm resting on a pile of books, on which might be read the names of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, and Crébillon.194 By her side stood Melpomene crowning her with laurel. At the top of the frame, on a ribbon encircled by an olive branch, one read:—
“Prophétie Accomplie.”
And on a tablet at the base, the following verses:—
“J’ai predit que Clairon illustrerait la scène,
Et mon esprit n’a point été déçu:
Elle a couronné Melpomène,
Melpomène lui rend ce qu’elle en a reçu.”
—GARRICK.
The following year, the Comte de Valbelle and a M. de Villepinte, another warm admirer of the actress, caused a gold medal to be struck in the lady’s honour. On the face of this medal was Gravelot’s allegorical design; while the reverse bore this inscription:—
L’Amitié
Et Melpomène
Ont Fait Frapper
Cette
MÉDAILLE
EN 1764.
The pleasure which the lady derived from this piece of adulation must have been considerably discounted by the publication of the following mordant epigram, from the pen of the dramatist Saint-Foix, of whose works she appears to have spoken slightingly:—
“Pour la fameuse Frétillon
Ils ont osé frapper un médaillon;
Mais à quelque prix qu’on le donne,
Fut-ce douze sous, fut-ce même pour un,
Il ne sera jamais aussi commun
Que le fut jadis sa personne.”195
The pride of Mlle. Clairon, in those days, knew no bounds. “Madame de Pompadour,” said she, one day, “owes her sovereignty to chance; I owe mine to the power of my genius!” She treated even the most distinguished of her colleagues with haughty disdain, and often with the grossest discourtesy; and poor Mlle. Dangeville, the object of her childish adoration and the most sweet-tempered and inoffensive of women, retired from the stage ten years earlier than she would otherwise have done, vowing that it was “impossible to live any longer with such a creature.” As for the younger actresses, they positively trembled before her; while, with the exception of Voltaire, whose admiration for her she condescended to reciprocate, there is said to have been not a single dramatic author of the time whom she had not insulted. The public she appears to have regarded very much as a queen might her subjects. On the occasion of a free performance at the Comédie, given by order of the King, she came on to the stage between the two pieces and threw handfuls of silver into the pit; and the worthy Parisians, quite gulled by this piece of theatrical quackery, cried, as they scrambled for the money, “Vive le Roi et Mlle. Clairon!”
Nevertheless, in spite of her arrogance and absurd pretensions, Mlle. Clairon had the interests of her profession sincerely at heart. She was, according to her own expression, the chargé-d’affaires, the advocate, and the postillion of the Comédie-Française, and it was always to her that her comrades turned when in any difficulty or perplexity. It was through her influence, joined to that of the Comte de Lauraguais, that the absurd custom of allowing the more distinguished members of the audience seats upon the stage itself—a custom which seriously hampered the movements of the players and was utterly destructive of all scenic illusion—was finally abolished. A word from her was sufficient to secure the payment of the overdue royal pension to the Comédie, which the semainiers had vainly solicited from the Comptroller-General; and she laboured zealously, if unsuccessfully, to free her profession from the ban of the Church, which had weighed so long and so heavily upon it.
In the spring of 1761, there was published, at Amsterdam, a little volume, entitled Liberté de la France contre le pouvoir arbitraire de l’excommunication, ouvrage dont est spécialement redevable aux sentiments génereux et supérieurs de Mlle. Clai.... This book, which was the work of one Huerne de la Mothe, an advocate of the Parliament of Paris, had been inspired by Mlle. Clairon, and was preceded by a letter from the actress to the author, in which she announced to the public that she hesitated to exercise her profession any longer, owing to her fear of the excommunication to which it subjected her. The bigots, ecclesiastical and lay, who were very roughly handled in the book, were exasperated to the last degree; the Grand’Chambre issued a decree ordering the obnoxious work to be burned by the public executioner in the Place de Grève, and poor Huerne de la Mothe was struck off the roll of advocates. Mlle. Clairon, however, who felt herself to be the cause of his misfortune, did not allow him to suffer by his championship of her profession, and persuaded the Duc de Choiseul to nominate him to a lucrative post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mlle. Clairon had many enemies: enemies in her own profession, enemies in the fashionable world, and enemies in the Republic of Letters. Two of the most formidable among the last-named were La Harpe and Fréron, the critic, the sworn foe of the philosophers. La Harpe hated her, it is said, because she had contemptuously refused to act in his plays; Fréron, because of her friendship with the elders of the Holy Philosophical Church, and, more especially, with its Patriarch, Voltaire, under whose blistering ridicule he had long writhed. La Harpe contented himself by making epigrams about her in society; but Fréron went further, and dared to attack her in print.
There had recently appeared at the Comédie a young, charming, accomplished, and, mirabile dictu, virtuous actress, named Mlle. d’Oligny, best remembered in theatrical history as the original representative of Rosine in Beaumarchais’s Barbier de Seville.196 Fréron, who prided himself on being one of the first to discover the talent of this lady, could not resist the temptation of contrasting her blameless life with that of Mlle. Clairon, and proceeded to do so in a remarkably effective manner.
In his Année littéraire, under date January 17, 1765, appeared an éloge in verse of Mlle. d’Oligny, “who had never consented to listen to any proposition of fortune, at the expense of her innocence,” followed by a paragraph written by Fréron himself, which, although she was not actually mentioned by name, no one could have the least doubt referred to Mlle. Clairon:—
“One will be grateful to the author for having laid stress, in his just éloge of Mlle. d’Oligny, on her irreproachable conduct up to the present. May we always bear in mind that the Muses are chaste, and that they ought never to sing of libertinism and prostitution! Talents of the rarest order, or regarded as such, do not efface the opprobrium of a dissolute life. One may accord a certain measure of esteem to the performance of the actress, but the seal of contempt is always stamped upon her person. It is in vain that, after having acquired a disgraceful celebrity through vice, she affects a grave and reserved manner. This tardy and false decorum only serves to form a revolting contrast with a youth of infamy, and I do not know whether one does not prefer that a creature of this species should constantly show herself what she has been, rather than appear what she is not. The frankness of libertinism is, in point of fact, less shocking than the mournful simulation of dignity.”197
Terrible was the wrath of the insulted actress. To the Gentlemen of the Chamber she flew, and announced her intention of quitting the stage forthwith, and for ever, unless condign punishment was immediately inflicted on this vile scribbler who had dared to traduce her.
To pacify her, an order was issued for the arrest of Fréron and his incarceration in For l’Évêque. But when the police proceeded to his house to execute it, they found the critic in the agonies of gout: agonies so acute that it was impossible, he declared, to move a step without enduring torments; and his friends contrived to obtain a suspension of his sentence until he should be in a fit state to leave his bed. As may be supposed, this was not for some days, and, in the meantime, the devout Queen, Marie Leczinska, whose father had stood sponsor to one of Fréron’s children, and who regarded that worthy as the champion of the Faith against the attacks of the philosophers, intervened on his behalf and obtained a further respite.
Mlle. Clairon refused to abide by the Queen’s decision, reiterated her determination to retire from the stage if Fréron were not punished, and demanded an audience of the Prime Minister, the Duc de Choiseul.
“Justice!” cried she, in tragic accents, the moment she was ushered into his presence. “Justice, Monsieur le Duc!”
“Mademoiselle,” replied the Minister, with mock gravity, “you and I both perform on a stage, but there is this difference between us: you choose the parts which you prefer, and are sure of the applause of the public. There are only a few persons of bad taste, such as this wretched Fréron, who refuse you their suffrages. I, on the contrary, have often a very disagreeable task; I strive to do my best, and am criticised, condemned, hissed, and ridiculed; yet, I remain at my post. Let us both of us sacrifice our private resentments to the good of our country, and serve it, each in our own way, to the best of our ability. And, besides, the Queen having pardoned, you can, without compromising your dignity, imitate her Majesty’s clemency.”
Mlle. Clairon, far from mollified by this badinage, returned home, and called a meeting of her friends and the members of the Comédie, presided over by the Duc de Duras, at which it was determined that the Comte de Saint-Florentin, Commandeur des Ordres to the King, should be threatened with the desertion of the entire troupe, unless speedy justice were done to the modern Melpomene. “This line of conduct,” writes Bachaumont, “has greatly disturbed M. de Saint-Florentin. This Minister has written to the Queen, stating that the affair has become one of the vastest importance; that for a very long time no matter of such serious import has been discussed at Court; that, in fact, the Court is divided into two factions on the question; and that, despite his profound respect for the commands of her Majesty, he much fears that he will be compelled to obey the original orders of the King.”
However, eventually, the matter was allowed to rest, and, by the irony of Fate, barely two months had passed before Mlle. Clairon herself was sent to For l’Évêque. And this was how it came about.
After the Easter recess of that year, the Comédie-Française was announced to open with De Belloy’s phenomenally successful tragedy, Le Siège de Calais, then at the height of its popularity. All the boxes had been engaged for several performances, and there was every indication of a most successful season. An unexpected incident ruined everything. “An actor named Dubois, who,” says Grimm, “had for the last twenty-nine years enjoyed the confidence of all the tragic heroes,” had a dispute over a bill with a surgeon named Benoît, whose professional services he had had occasion to seek, under somewhat discreditable circumstances. Dubois declared that he had paid the bill; Benoît was equally positive that he had not, and commenced proceedings to recover the amount owing. The actor’s colleagues, annoyed to find one of their number mixed up in such an affair, brought the matter to the notice of the Gentlemen of the Chamber, who gave them permission to decide upon it themselves. They, accordingly, held an inquiry, found that Dubois had lied—indeed, he confessed as much—and, at the instigation of Mlle. Clairon, and with the approval of the Gentlemen of the Chamber, expelled him and another actor named Blainville, who had given evidence in his comrade’s favour, from the troupe.
Now, it happened that Dubois had a very pretty daughter, “who possessed the power,” says Mlle. Clairon, “of rendering the Gentlemen of the Chamber as happy as they could desire to be.” Like a dutiful child, she warmly espoused the cause of the cashiered actor, and, rushing, with dishevelled hair, into the presence of the Duc de Fronsac—son of the Maréchal de Richelieu—who in days gone by had been in the habit of paying her matutinal visits, disguised as a coffee-house waiter, besought his intervention on behalf of her unhappy father, the innocent victim, she declared, of the machinations of Mlle. Clairon.
The young duke, who still retained for the lady some remains of affection, promised to do what he could, with the result that on April 15, about three hours before the play was announced to begin, an order arrived from Versailles, to the effect that Dubois was to be allowed to take his usual part, until the King should decide on his fitness to remain a royal player.
A meeting of the company was hurriedly summoned, and a deputation sent to one of the Gentlemen of the Chamber who happened to be in Paris, to endeavour to obtain a rescission of the order, for that evening at least. But the deputation returned and reported the failure of its mission; the “Gentleman” had professed himself unable to do anything without consulting his colleagues. Thereupon, five members of the troupe, Mlle. Clairon, Lekain, Brizard, Molé, and d’Auberval, declared their intention of refusing to play. Cost them what it might, they were absolutely determined never to appear upon the stage with Dubois again. Such was the position of affairs, when, at half-past five, the Comédie opened its doors. Let us listen to Collé’s account of the scene which followed:—
“The audience assembled to witness Le Siège de Calais; it had been impossible to change the bills announcing the performance. When half-past five came, Lekain, Molé, and Brizard had not arrived. Mlle. Clairon had shown herself, but, perceiving and knowing that these gentlemen had no intention of appearing, did not take the trouble to dress, and went home in the sedan-chair which had brought her to the theatre. The remainder of the players, who were very reluctant to acquaint the public with this unwelcome news, were at a loss what to do. Ultimately, towards six o’clock, one of them left his comrades, went on to the stage, and began, in trembling accents, to address the audience with: ‘Messieurs, we are in despair—’ He was interrupted by some one in the pit, who shouted, ‘We want no despair! Calais!’ And, in an instant, the entire public took up the cry and shouted: ‘Calais! Calais!”
“After this first tumult had somewhat subsided, the actor wished to commence his speech, but the audience declined to hear any more. Some minutes passed thus, and then the actor briefly explained the impossibility of performing the tragedy in question, and proposed to play Le Joueur in its place, or to return the public their money; only to be received with renewed cries, more violent than before, of ‘Calais! Calais!’
“A moment later, Préville, the idol of the public, came on to the stage and endeavoured to begin the first scene of Le Joueur, but was interrupted, hooted, and hissed by the audience, who cried in a kind of frenzy: ‘Calais!’ Several persons in the pit, who were aware that it was through the intrigues and machinations of Mlle. Clairon that the players had so signally failed the public, shouted: ‘Calais, et Clairon en prison! Frétillon à l’hôpital!198 Frétillon aux cabanons!’
“No doubt the majority of those who uttered these blasphemies were partisans of the Dubois, who had been posted by her and her father in the pit. This pandemonium, which might have become a scene of bloodshed, if the Guards on duty had chosen to interfere, lasted until seven o’clock, when the audience had their money returned to them.”199
The following morning, there was a consultation between Sartines, the Lieutenant of Police, and the Gentlemen of the Chamber, when it was decided to make an example of Mlle. Clairon and the other recalcitrant players. The actress, who happened to be unwell, was in bed, and her friend Madame de Sauvigny, wife of the Intendant of Paris, was nursing her, when an inspector of police arrived and intimated that he had an order from the King to conduct Mlle. Clairon to For l’Évêque. Madame de Sauvigny protested against the arrest of her “best friend,” but the exempt was inexorable, and Mlle. Clairon informed him that she would submit to the orders of the King. “All that I have,” cried she, in her best stage manner, “is at his Majesty’s disposal—my property, my person, and my life are in his hands. But my honour is untouched, and of that not even the King can deprive me.”
The man of law bethought him of an old legal maxim. “Very true, Mademoiselle,” he replied, “for where there is nothing, the King loses his rights.”
Madame de Sauvigny insisted that Mlle. Clairon should proceed to For l’Évêque in her own carriage and announced her intention of accompanying her. But, as the carriage in question happened to be a vis-à-vis, and the exempt refused to lose sight of his prisoner, the noble lady was constrained to seat her friend upon her knees, and in this singular fashion they traversed the streets of Paris.200
At For l’Évêque, the famous actress was treated more like a distinguished guest than a prisoner. The most comfortable room available was allotted her, and furnished in luxurious fashion by her sympathising friends, the Duchesses de Duras and de Villeroi and Madame de Sauvigny; the courtyard of the fortress was crowded every day by the carriages of those who came to offer her their sympathy, and she was permitted to give delightful little supper parties. In less than a week, a complaisant physician having certified that further detention would be prejudicial to the lady’s health, she was permitted to return home, under certain conditions, which she alludes to in a letter to Garrick, in answer to one of sympathy from the English actor:—
“Paris, May 9, 1765.
“My soul, penetrated by a treatment as barbarous as it is unjust, had need, my dear friend, of the pleasure that your letter has brought to it. This letter has interrupted for some moments the indignation and grief which consume me. Never has my health occasioned me so much anxiety, never have the mischances to which I am subjected been so multiplied, so violent. But be tranquil; my courage is superior to all my misfortunes.
“Will you credit it? my comrades are still in prison! I myself was released the fifth day, but have been placed under arrest at my house, and prohibited from receiving more than six specified persons. It is said that Dubois has tendered his resignation; it is to be hoped that it will be accepted, and that we shall be at liberty this evening or to-morrow; it is time we were! As they have refused to permit any of my comrades to come and see me, I am in ignorance of what they think and what they intend to do.
“I am resolved not to give them any advice, but to occupy myself only with my own position, and, above all, with the esteem of honest people; I dare to be confident that I shall obtain that. I shall not share with you my reflections on the past, the present, and the future; not that I fear to submit them to your intelligence and your friendship, but because my letter might be opened, and they might misinterpret me; and I do not wish to afford them any pretext for persecution. Embrace Madame Garrick for me, and rest assured both of you that I love, esteem, and regret you as much as possible, and as you have the right to expect from the most sensitive and grateful of hearts.
CLAIRON.”201
After about three weeks of seclusion, Mlle. Clairon was permitted to resume her ordinary life, and as Dubois, the cause of all the trouble, had now resigned, it was anticipated that she would appear again upon the stage. On the plea of ill-health, however, she declined to return to the theatre, and, about the middle of June, it was common knowledge that the actress had requested permission to retire from the stage. The Maréchal de Richelieu, First Gentleman of the Chamber, refused her request, asserting that he would never consent to sign her ordre de retraite during his year of office, but offered to grant her leave of absence till the following Easter—that is to say, until the end of the theatrical year, in order that she might have time to go to Geneva and consult the celebrated doctor, Tronchin.
To Geneva she accordingly went, and obtained the advice she came to seek; Tronchin, who, great man though he was, was not above humouring the whims of his distinguished patients, assuring her that he would not answer for the consequences if she returned to the stage.
From Geneva she proceeded to Ferney, in response to a pressing invitation from its master, who assured her that it was “a temple where incense was burning for her,” and that “to see and hear her would be his Fountain of Youth.”
When she reached Ferney, Voltaire was ill, but no sooner had she declaimed her part in his Orphelin de la Chine, than he professed himself completely cured. During her stay, she performed several times in the little theatre of the château, playing Aménaïde in Tancrède and Électre in Oreste, and the delighted poet wrote to d’Argental that in the latter character “she had shaken the Alps and Mont Jura”; while, in a letter to Monnet, he declared that she had “made him feel twenty years younger.”202
On leaving Ferney Mlle. Clairon went to Provence, to visit the Comte de Valbelle. While there, she attended the theatre at Marseilles, and, on being recognised, was loudly cheered by the occupants of the pit, who cried: “Le Siège de Calais et Mlle. Clairon!” and refused to desist until the governor of the province, the Duc de Villars, had promised to do all he could to persuade the actress to gratify them.
At the beginning of November, she was again in Paris, where great pressure was brought to bear upon her to induce her to reconsider her determination to retire from the stage. On one condition only would she consent to forget the horrors of For l’Évêque, namely, that the Comédie-Française should be erected into a Royal Academy of the Drama, which would have the effect of giving a legal status to its members, and would pave the way for the removal of the ecclesiastical ban. A petition was accordingly drawn up, which had the support of the Duc de Duras, the Duc d’Aumont, and several other important personages, and submitted to the King. But, owing apparently to the maladroit way in which the Duc de Duras, who had charge of the memoir, presented his case, it was refused; and, at the following Easter, Mlle. Clairon demanded her congé, which was accorded her. Here is the ordre de retraite:—
“We, Maréchal Duc de Richelieu, pair de France, First Gentleman of the King’s Chamber;
“We, Duc de Duras, pair de France, First Gentleman of the King’s Chamber;
“Mlle. Clairon, after having served the King and the public for twenty-two years with the greatest assiduity and the greatest attention, finding herself compelled, on account of her health, to quit the theatre, we have accorded her leave to retire, with the pension in conformity with the regulations.
“(Signed)
“The Maréchal Duc de Richelieu.
“The Duc de Duras.203
“Executed at Paris, April 23, 1766.”
For some years after her retirement from the stage Mlle. Clairon resided in a house near the Pont-Royal, where Marmontel speaks of her receptions as “numerous and brilliant.” She frequently consented to recite some of her famous rôles at the houses of her aristocratic friends, and Horace Walpole writes, under date August 23, 1767: “Arrived in Paris at a quarter before seven; at eight to Madame du Deffand’s; found the Clairon acting Agrippine and Phèdre; not tall, but I like her acting better than I expected. Supped with her and the Duchesses de Villeroi and d’Aiguillon.”
Although she never again appeared on the boards of the Comédie-Française, the great tragédienne performed on several occasions in private theatres. On February 19, 1767, she played Zelmire in De Belloy’s tragedy of that name, at the Hôtel d’Esclapon, Rue de Vaugirard, at a performance arranged for the benefit of Molé.204 Again, in December 1768, she appeared as Dido and Roxane in Bajazet, at the little theatre belonging to the Duchesse de Villeroi, before the King of Denmark and the Prince of Saxe-Gotha. Grimm writes:—
“The Duchesse de Villeroi has reserved to herself the right of doing the honours to Mlle. Clairon in her little theatre. This celebrated actress played there twice, in the presence of the King of Denmark, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Gotha, and a little chosen company, for the theatre can only accommodate a hundred and ten persons. The first time, she played the part of Dido, and the second, that of Roxane, in the tragedy of Bajazet. After the play, she was presented by Madame de Villeroi to her august spectator, who drew a ring from his finger and placed it on the finger of the actress; but I know that, in spite of this royal courtesy, he had not the happiness to succeed with the illustrious Clairon. In her quality of Dido, she will not have found him tender enough; in her quality of Roxane, she will not have found him sufficiently humble; in her quality of Clairon, she will not have found him sufficiently penetrated with admiration. In fact, notwithstanding the infatuation of the Court and the town for the young monarch, he has had the misfortune to displease the heroine of the Théâtre-Français.”205
Finally, on the occasion of the fêtes at Versailles, in honour of the marriage of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette, in the spring of 1770, Mlle. Clairon appeared as Athalie and Aménaïde. But five years of retirement had naturally not been without their effect upon her powers, and her acting seems to have caused general disappointment. Perhaps her unfortunate choice of a gown, “half-brown, half-yellow, which gave her the appearance of a shrivelled-up old woman,” had not a little to do with her comparative failure as Voltaire’s heroine.
An impression prevailed at this time that had Louis XV. only condescended to express a desire that Mlle. Clairon should return to the Comédie-Française she would have consented to do so. But Louis XV. was not such an admirer of the lady’s acting as Voltaire—indeed, he seems to have preferred Mlle. Dumesnil—and when, three years before, Mlle. Clairon had caused him to be informed that she was prepared to play at Versailles as often as his Majesty might command he had replied, to her intense chagrin, that he found the other actresses very capable.206
On her retirement from the theatre, Mlle. Clairon had opened a kind of dramatic academy. Here she trained a number of aspirants to histrionic fame, several of whom were destined to make their mark in years to come. Among these may be mentioned the beautiful Mlle. Raucourt, herself, in her turn, the Queen of the Comédie-Française, and that excellent actor, Larive.
For Larive, the ex-tragédienne appears to have conceived an almost maternal affection, leaving no stone unturned to ensure his success upon the stage, and corresponding with him regularly for many years. Her early letters are chiefly of a professional kind: advice as to the way in which certain parts are to be played, as to the costumes suitable to those parts, and so forth. But occasionally we find her descending to more personal matters, rallying him on his bonnes fortunes, and moralising in the style of an indulgent elder brother.
“You have then made a conquest,” she writes, “and of a fine lady, you say? I am not astonished, since you are a very handsome man. But I cannot prevent myself from telling you that you are a great imbecile. If she is a woman who makes a profession of gallantry, or a marriageable girl, you ought certainly to refuse to have anything to do with her. A man should avoid the first, for fear of accidents, and never have to reproach himself with having corrupted the other. But if she be a married woman or a widow, that is current coin, the property of every one, and you will be doing wrong not to make use of it. No engagement, no prejudice, need restrain you. You are a man, young; you are bored. Guarantee yourself a serious attachment; that is an excellent thing; but why refuse to your senses, and to the necessity of diverting your mind, the tribute which both demand?”
In a letter, which, like the above, bears no date, but which was probably written in the summer of 1772, we find a person mentioned who was to play a very important part in Mlle. Clairon’s future life:—
“You have extended your hospitality to a dog; I have extended mine to a little boy. Molé sent me an unhappy widow with six children in want of bread. I have taken charge of one, and am busying myself in finding means to allow the rest to live. I shall not keep the child at my house; he is a little devil, and that annoys and wearies me. But since he bears a close resemblance to the Margrave (of Anspach), whom I am expecting to see arrive here this autumn, I have taken the child, in the hope of sending him to Germany. If that plan falls through, I shall put him to a trade, and pay his apprenticeship to whatever one his mother may choose.”
Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, Margrave of Anspach, Baireuth, and Brandenburg, Duke of Prussia, Count of Sayn, was the son of Frederick the Great’s sister, Frederika Louise, and that potentate’s favourite nephew. Born in 1736, and married, against his will, by his father, to a princess of Saxe-Coburg, “who resembled a faded lily which had begun to grow yellow,” he spent the greater part of his time in travelling in Italy, Holland, and France, and “gratifying his tastes for the arts and feminine society.”
The Margrave was not handsome, in fact, his appearance was distinctly unprepossessing. He had “a retreating forehead, sunken eyes, a nose like a trumpet, an enormously long peaked chin, and a long ungainly neck.” On the other hand, he was well-educated, sensible, and good-natured; “the best prince in Germany,” said the Austrian Chancellor, Kaunitz, who was certainly in a position to judge.
The Margrave fell in love with Mlle. Clairon, who, though nearly old enough to be his mother, was still pretty; and, on the occasion of one of his frequent visits to Paris, invited her to return with him to Anspach and be his Margravine of the left-hand. To the ex-tragédienne, who had so often played the queen upon the stage, the prospect of occupying a quasi-royal position at this little German court was not without its attractions; perhaps ere long, she thought, the faded-lily princess might wither away altogether, in which event the consort of the left-hand might become the consort of the right. Moreover, her vanity was naturally flattered by the homage of a man twelve years her junior, and that man a Serene Highness! And, finally, it happened that she had just quarrelled violently with the Comte de Valbelle, who, not content with an occasional infidelity, as had been the case in the early days of their connection, had become a sort of professional Don Juan, who “brought daily pretty girls into his park,” outraged husbands, supplanted lovers, and, in short, misconducted himself in so shocking a manner that, according to his disgusted mistress, “every one detested him from the bottom of their hearts.”
And so it came about that, one fine day in the spring of 1773, Mlle. Clairon bade farewell to all her friends in Paris, and set out for Anspach, whence she wrote to the faithless Valbelle that it was her intention “to consecrate the remainder of her days” to the Margrave.
At Anspach, Mlle. Clairon remained for seventeen years. Our chief source of information in regard to this period of her career are her own letters to her old pupil, Larive, with whom she continued to correspond regularly. In the earliest of these, she can hardly find words to describe the joys of her new life.
“I am very well,” she writes, shortly after her installation, “and taking into consideration the care, the homage, the comforts, the kindnesses, and the marks of attachment that are lavished upon me, it would be impossible for my heart and my vanity not to be satisfied. My house does not grow less full; the greatest ladies do me the honour of supping with me. You cannot form any idea of the position I occupy in this country. I believe that I am in a dream. Sometimes I am tempted to imagine myself a personage....”
And again, under date October 15, 1773:—
“Would to Heaven, my dear child, that I had you near me! I should then be able to say that never had I been so happy. Every comfort, no kind of vexation, consideration, a commodious and beautiful house, a well-ordered, pleasant, and honourable life independent of the caprices which formerly troubled me, the impossibility of meeting ungrateful people, of seeing or hearing anything which recalls them, the opportunity of doing good—all this renders my life infinitely sweet. Add to all these blessings the certainty of making the happiness of the sweetest and kindest being I have ever known. After you had seen him, you would love him: that is nothing; one cannot form any idea of this good prince, unless you live with him. I see him every day, and am equally astonished at his frankness and the noble simplicity that characterises all his actions. It is for such sovereigns that it is just and right to sacrifice one’s life, and I feel no regret at having sacrificed mine to him.”
But this enthusiasm does not last long, and, before twelve months have passed, we find Mademoiselle complaining of everything at Anspach, from the air to the cooking. In one letter she tells her correspondent that “the air of the country and ennui are killing her”; in another, that she has had to send for a French cook, because the Anspach cooking “displeased as much as it disagreed with her”;207 in a third, that she has had to abandon an attempt to establish a theatre at the Court, “because there are scarcely a dozen persons there who can carry on a conversation in French, while the rest do not understand a word of the language”; and, in a fourth, that “the women of this country are destitute of every grace to which your eyes are accustomed.”
The fact of the matter was that the Court of Anspach did not approve of the advent of Mlle. Clairon; it feared that her installation would, sooner or later, be followed by an invasion of her compatriots, who would seize upon all the most lucrative posts in the State, and generally upset the established order of things. Neither had the Ministers been educated to serve under a maîtresse en titre, as had those of France; they resented the interference of a woman—especially a foreigner—in the counsels of their master, and one of them, if Mlle. Clairon is to be believed, actually carried his resentment so far as to conspire against her life. Moreover, although the poor Margravine herself was compelled, through fear of her husband’s anger, to treat her rival with courtesy, and even to invite her to her table, the other ladies of the Margrave’s family, like the Duchesse of Würtemburg and the Margravine of Baireuth, absolutely refused to recognise the ex-tragédienne, and the feminine portion of the Court seems to have taken its cue from them, rather than from its nominal head.
However, in spite of difficulties and mortifications, Mlle. Clairon remained at her post, and, according to her own account, used the influence she had acquired over the Margrave in a highly beneficent manner; destroying abuses, reforming the finances, encouraging agriculture, and so forth. She also beautified the city of Anspach by an ornamental fountain, established a hospital, distributed considerable sums in charity, and was very popular among the poorer classes.
In the course of the year 1789, Mlle. Clairon found herself called up to face a rival influence. The eccentric and “infinitamente indiscreet,”208 but charming and accomplished Elizabeth, Countess of Craven, descended upon Anspach. The countess had separated from her husband in 1780, since which she had spent the greater part of her time in wandering about the Continent. In the course of her travels, she had met the Margrave, whom she had known when she was a child, and who invited her to Anspach. She came, and her stay was a long one. She infused new life into that dull German Court; she organised a theatre in a disused coach-house, and wrote little plays for it; she had a garden laid out in the English style, under her direction, at the Margrave’s palace of Triesdorf, near Anspach; she founded a little academy for the encouragement of literature and the arts, and found means to amuse even the unamusable Margravine. Finally, she stole away the heart of the Margrave from his grey-haired Egeria, and wrote to her husband, with whom she still corresponded, that she was to be “treated as a sister.”
At length, Lady Craven left for Paris. Soon afterwards, the Margrave announced his intention of visiting the French capital; Mlle. Clairon decided to accompany him. In Paris, the Margrave favoured her with so little of his company that she felt constrained to inquire the reason.
The prince returned an evasive answer; Mlle. Clairon caused a watch to be kept upon his movements, and discovered the fatal truth. So long as the Margrave remained in Paris, the deceived sultana, by a great effort of will, succeeded “in concealing beneath a countenance always calm, and sometimes laughing, the rending tortures of mind and body.” But when the prince returned to Anspach, she declined to follow him, and sent instead a long and reproachful letter, wherein she informed him that “his frenzied passion for a woman of whose character, unfortunately, he alone was ignorant, his indifference to public opinion, the license of his new morals, his want of respect for his age and his dignity, obliged her to see in him only one who had thrown aside all restraint and decency in compliance with the dictates of a depraved heart, or as one whose disordered intellect, while it excited pity, evinced also the necessity of restraint; that the veil was now lifted, and she knew herself never to have been anything but the hapless victim of his egotism and his divers caprices; and that, therefore, with infinite pain, she laid at his feet all the boons she had received from him, and bade him adieu... adieu for ever.”
And so ended the last romance of Mlle. Clairon, and the only souvenir of her seventeen years’ residence at Anspach is a kind of fancy bread, which is called “Clairons Weck” unto this day.209
As for the faithless Margrave, he was too happy in the society of Lady Craven, who shortly afterwards took up her residence at Anspach, to care much what became of her predecessor in his affections; and so infatuated did he become with that lady that, on his wife’s death in 1791, he married her. In the following year, the prince—in the face of an eloquent letter of remonstrance from Mlle. Clairon—sold his margravates of Anspach and Baireuth to the King of Prussia, and migrated, with his wife, to England, where he died in 1806. The Margravine survived her husband more than twenty years, and died, at Naples, in 1828.
In 1785, during one of the visits to Paris which she had paid in company with the Margrave, Mlle. Clairon had purchased a country-house at Issy, and it was here that she now took up her residence. She lived a very quiet life, receiving and visiting a few old friends, and occupying the rest of her time with collecting objects of natural history, which had always been one of her favourite occupations, and the writing of her Mémoires.
Madame Vigée Lebrun, the painter, who met Mlle. Clairon soon after her return to France, at the house of her former pupil, Larive, has left us the following impression of the famous tragédienne in her old age:—
“I had pictured to myself that she was very tall; and, on the contrary, she was very short and very thin; she held her head very erect, which gave her an air of dignity. I never heard any one speak with so much emphasis, for she retained her tragic tone and airs of a princess; but she gave me the impression of being clever and well informed. I sat beside her at table, and enjoyed much of her conversation. Larive showed her the greatest respect and attention.”210
Early in the year 1792, Mlle. Clairon completed her Mémoires, which she entrusted to Henri Meister, the friend of Diderot and the Neckers, who was leaving Paris for Germany, on the condition, so she subsequently asserted, that they should not be given to the world until ten years after her death. One day, however, in 1798, she learned, to her astonishment, through an article in a Paris journal, that they had been published in Germany, whereupon she hurriedly brought out a French edition, bearing the title: Mémoires d’Hippolyte Clairon et Réflexions sur la déclamation théatrale.
These Mémoires, written in an absurdly solemn and grandiloquent style, even for the time, and “interspersed,” says the admiring editor of the English edition, “with precepts of practical morality which would do honour to our greatest philosophers,” reveal to us a very different Clairon from the Clairon of the police-reports and of the memoirs and correspondence of her contemporaries; but, unfortunately, there can be very little doubt which portrait comes nearer the truth. Partly, no doubt, for this reason, they had only a moderate success; and though several copies bear the words “Seconde édition” they were, as a matter of fact, not reprinted until 1822, when they appeared in the well-known Collection des Mémoires sur l’art dramatique. The most interesting part of the book, in our opinion, are the chapters which the actress devotes to reflections upon her art, some of which may still be read with profit by candidates for histrionic fame. But what aroused most attention at the time the work was published was the celebrated history of the lady’s ghost—the spectre of a young Breton whom she had pitilessly left to die of love, and who had vowed on his death-bed to haunt her for the remainder of her life.
Never was there so persistent and vindictive an apparition—though the term apparition is perhaps a misnomer, as the shade of the departed never actually showed itself. It was perpetually visiting her at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected places—at her petits soupers, while she was riding in her coach to shop in the Rue Saint-Honoré, and so forth. Sometimes its presence was announced by “a long-continued and piteous cry,” which so terrified an elderly admirer who happened to be present on one occasion, that he “had to be conducted to his carriage more dead than alive”;211 sometimes by a loud report like that of a musket; at others by “a noise like the clapping of hands”; and finally, by “a celestial voice singing the most tender and pathetic airs.”212 No solution of these singular phenomena was ever forthcoming, though the assistance of the police was invoked in order to probe the mystery. But the most probable explanation is a little plot on the part of some friends of the young Breton to read the lady a much-needed lesson.
On her retirement from the stage, Mlle. Clairon had been in possession of a comfortable fortune, producing an income of some 18,000 livres; and though this had been considerably reduced by the financial jugglery of the Abbé Terrai, the loss had been subsequently repaired by the sale of her jewellery, art treasures, and natural history collection, which had realised 90,000 livres. In her old age, however, she fell into great poverty, though to attribute her financial losses to the Revolution—which swept away so many fortunes—as have several writers, would appear to be without justification, as on Fructidor 26, Year III., at a time when money was exceedingly scarce, we find her writing to a M. Pérignon, advocate, requesting him to find her a secure investment for a sum of 24,000 livres; while so late as October 9, 1801, when she made her will, she would appear, to judge by the various bequests she makes, to have been still in easy circumstances.213
On the other hand, there can be no question that between that date and her death, fifteen months later, she was reduced to great distress, as witness the following appeal addressed to Chaptal, the Minister of the Interior, and in response to which she received an order on the Treasury for 2000 livres:—
“Citizen Minister,—For a month past I have been vainly seeking a protector to bring me to your notice; but if it be true that you are of a generous disposition, it is to you alone that I should address myself. Seventy-nine years of age, almost in want of the necessaries of life, celebrated at one time by the possession of some talents, I wait at your door until you condescend to grant me a moment.
CLAIRON.”214
In good truth, an object-lesson for the moralist to dilate upon! Clairon, the haughty, the incomparable Clairon, the idol of town and theatre; Clairon, to have met whom in society was the proudest boast of the braggart in Candide; Clairon, for whose smiles a King (according to Grimm) had sighed in vain, and a Serene Highness—not in vain; Clairon, whose classic features had been painted by Van Loo and sculptured by Lemoine; Clairon, in whose honour gold medals had been struck, and whose praises “bards sublime” had chanted—forced to beg her bread at the door of a Minister!
At the time when the above letter was written, the old actress had removed from Issy, and was living in the Rue de Lille with a Madame de la Rianderie,215 the widow of an officer in the Gardes-Françaises. Here she was visited by Lemontey, who describes her as a little, withered old woman, feeble and sickly, but still retaining something of her majestic manner, and who spoke to him in a voice which had lost but little of its power and sweetness. Observing a little boy who had accompanied the historian, she motioned him to approach, saying: “Make that child come here. He will be very pleased to be able to say one day that he has seen and spoken to Mlle. Clairon.”
Another of her visitors was the English actor John Kemble, to whom she recited a scene from Phèdre with a majesty and fire truly astonishing in one so old and frail.
Mlle. Clairon died on January 31, 1803, six days after completing her eightieth year.
Animated to the last by the pride which had dominated her whole life, Mlle. Clairon bequeathed to the nation her marble bust by Lemoine and the gold medal which Valbelle and Villepinte had caused to be struck in her honour; but, for some reason, these souvenirs were not accepted. The native town of the great actress showed itself less indifferent than the State, and placed a commemorative tablet on the house in which she had been born. In 1876, however, the house collapsed beneath the weight of years, and the tablet was buried under its ruins.216
The remains of Mlle. Clairon were interred in the cemetery of Vaugirard, where they remained until its suppression in April 1837, when, escorted by a deputation from the Comédie-Française, they were transferred to Père-Lachaise, and there re-interred, Samson pronouncing an éloge over the grave. In 1889, at the solicitation of M. Caille, an inhabitant of Condé, the sociétaires of the Comédie-Française decided that the tomb of the famous tragédienne should be completely restored, and voted for that purpose a sum of one thousand francs.
Notes
1 Their real names were Hugues Guéru, Robert Guérin, and Henri Legrand. Apprenticed to bakers in the Faubourg Saint-Laurent, they deserted their masters to play in a tennis-court near the Estrapade, a machine invented, in the days of François I., for the benefit of heretics. Turlupin usually played a roguish valet, Gros-Guillaume a pedant, and Gaultier-Garguille a supremely stupid old man. They eventually joined the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, whose popularity was immensely strengthened by their inclusion.—Hawkins, “Annals of the French Stage,” i. 51.
2 The Civil Lieutenant was, after the Provost of Paris, the first magistrate of the Châtelet; to him belonged, among other functions, the supervision of guardians and trustees of children under age and of conseils de famille.
3 He was a child of seven or eight, and his father’s object in inserting his name in the acte de naissance was probably to annoy his unfortunate wife.
4 This is Jal’s conclusion. While compiling his famous Dictionnaire critique de Biographie et d’Histoire, he made an exhaustive search of the registers of all the old parishes of Paris—there were sixty-eight—but failed to discover either the acte de naissance of Armande or the death certificate of Joseph Béjart, which two events must have taken place within a few days of each other.
5 Jal, Dictionnaire critique de Biographie et d’Histoire, Article “Béjart.”
6 His real name was Zacharie Jacob. A gentleman by birth, he had been educated for the army and had served the Duc de Guise as page, but his passion for the theatre led him to become an actor. In spite of the ridicule to which he was subjected by Molière, he was an excellent tragedian, and in parts made up of “transports and bursts of rage” much admired. His death, which occurred in 1668, is said to have been caused by over-exertion as Orestes in Racine’s Andromaque.
7 Œuvres complètes de J. Racine (édit. d’Aime-Martin), vi. 136.
8 See p. 33, infra.
9 M. Gustave Larroumet, La Comédie de Molière, l’auteur et le milieu, p. 85.
10 Hawkins, “Annals of the French Stage,” ii. 61.
11 They were both married women and the wives of actors, who joined Molière’s company at the same time. At this period, and indeed for long afterwards, actresses bore officially the title of “demoiselle,” as did all women other than the wives of the nobility, or of ennobled citizens, or daughters of noble parents who had married citizens: these were styled “dame” and “madame.” Thus, we find Colbert, before he rose to fame, “offering a coach to Mademoiselle, his wife;” the mother of La Bruyère described in a legal document as a “demoiselle veuve”; while La Fontaine, in his correspondence, invariably refers to his wife as “Mademoiselle.” People spoke also of la Du Parc, la de Brie, la Béjart, la Molière, and so forth, a custom which has continued to this day. This la, which appears so contemptuous, was not the exclusive property of actresses or of women of the people. Madame de Sévigné and Saint-Simon employ it for ladies of the fashionable world, but, by preference, for those of medium virtue: la Beauvais, la Montespan, &c.; and eighteenth century writers frequently make use of it in referring to the mistresses of Louis XV.: la Châteauroux, la Pompadour, la Du Barry. Nowadays, however, it is no longer a term of contempt; “it has become a particle which confers nobility and immortality on great singers and tragédiennes, if the race is not extinct.”—M. J. Noury, La Champmeslé, p. 94.
12 M. Henri Chardon, Nouveaux documents sur la vie de Molière: M. de Modène, ses deux femmes, et Madeleine Béjart.
13 Jal, Dictionnaire critique de Biographie et d’Histoire: Article “Béjart.”
14 M. Henri Chardon, Nouveaux documents sur la vie de Molière: M. de Modène, ses deux femmes, et Madeleine Béjart.
15 M. Larroumet, La Comédie de Molière, 105 et seq.
16 La Comédie de Molière, p. 134.
17 Molière was responsible for the plot, the prologue, the first act, and the first scenes of the second and third acts; Quinault contributed all the lyrical matter, with the exception of the Italian plainte, which, like the music, was by Lulli; Pierre Corneille wrote the rest.
18 Mr. W. E. Henley in the Cornhill Magazine, xli. 445.
19 Gaboriau’s Les comédiennes adorées, 269.
20 “Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature.”
21 La Comédie de Molière, p. 146.
22 The first edition, now very rare, a copy of which is in the possession of the British Museum, contains a “foreword” from the bookseller to the reader, which is so curious that we make no apology for transcribing it:
“I know neither the author of this history, nor the hand from whence it came to me. A courier who, in passing through this town, purchased some books at my shop, made me a present of it, and assured me that it is true in every detail. I believe it to be incumbent upon me to give this present to the public, in order that it may share the principal adventures of this famous actress, as celebrated by her coquetry as by the reputation of the late Molière, her first husband.
“The same courier assured me that the author of this history has included therein only the chief adventures which happened to this actress, having passed over an infinity of other little amorous incidents, as trifles unworthy of his book or his heroine. I am persuaded that there is not an actress in France whose career would not afford sufficient material for a similar history. But, while we await their appearance, I give you this one, precisely as it came into my hands, without adding or subtracting anything. May it afford you diversion! Adieu.”
23 M. Gustave Larroumet, La Comédie de Molière, p. 149.
24 Among the writers who accept wholly, or in part, the statements of La Fameuse Comédienne may be mentioned Grimarest, Taschereau, M. Loiseleur, and Gaboriau, though the last-named writer ought not perhaps to be taken very seriously. The article on Armande in Mr. Sutherland Edwards’s “Idols of the French Stage”—hitherto, we believe, the only attempt to give any detailed account of the actress in English—is admittedly largely based on the information contained in this libel.
25 Armand de Gramont, Comte de Guiche, brother of Philibert de Gramont, the hero of Count Hamilton’s Memoirs.
26 Antoine Nompar de Caumont, Comte, and afterwards Duc, de Lauzun, the beloved of la Grande Mademoiselle, who so nearly succeeded in securing the hand and vast possessions of that princess, and who, in November 1671, was imprisoned at Pignerol, where he remained ten years. For an account of his adventures, see the author’s “Madame de Montespan” (London, Harpers: New York, Scribners: 1903).
27 When Molière married, he went to live in the Rue de Richelieu. In the following year, however, he removed to the Béjarts’ house situated at the corner of the Rue Saint-Thomas du Louvre and the Place du Palais-Royal. It was a very large house, capable of accommodating two or three families, and Mlle. de Brie had for some time occupied part of it. Molière’s object in residing there seems to have been to allow his young wife to enjoy the society of her family, but there can be no doubt that he committed a very grave mistake in residing under the same roof as a woman with whom he had formerly had a liaison.
28 Études sur la vie et les œuvres de Molière.
29 La Comédie de Molière, p. 158.
30 Molière’s troupe only played three times a week, on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays; on the other days, the theatre was occupied by the Italian comedians. Friday was the favourite day for the production of new plays. The playhouses were also frequently closed: during Holy Week and the week following Easter, during the illness of a member of the Royal Family, on public fête days, and also, occasionally, when any particularly notorious criminal was to be executed in the Place de Grève. Thus, there were no performances on July 17, 1676, the day on which Madame de Brinvilliers, the poisoner, paid the penalty of her crimes. The play began at four o’clock and was always over before seven. Early in the century, the curtain, in winter, seems to have risen at two o’clock, in order to allow of the audience reaching their homes before the footpads were abroad.
31 Grimarest places Molière’s income as high as 30,000 livres, a sum, according to M. Larroumet’s computation, equal to 150,000 francs to-day.
32 Cited by M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 122.
33 Under the term actor, the early Fathers seem to have included not only actors in the modern acceptation of the word, but mimes, jugglers, acrobats, gladiators, chariot-drivers, and, in fact, almost all public performers.
34 M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, passim.
35 M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 124.
36 “It is true that the loss of Molière is irreparable,” writes the Comte de Limoges to Bussy-Rabutin on March 3, 1673. “I believe that no one will be less affected than his wife; she acted in comedy yesterday.” And Bussy answers: “So far as I can see, her mourning will not cost her much.”
37 It was the “orator’s” duty to come before the curtain to make announcements or crave the indulgence of the audience in a neat little speech, flowered with compliments and sparkling with witty allusions. It was a very important post and was always filled by an actor of distinction. Thus Bellerose and Floridor were the orators of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Mondory of the Marais, while Molière was for some years his own bellman. La Grange, however, appears to have excelled them all. “Although,” says Chappuzeau, “he is but of middle height, his presence is good, and his air easy and elegant. You are charmed before he opens his lips. As he has a great deal of fire and of the decent boldness an orator should have, it is a pleasure to listen to him when he comes on to speak the compliment. That one with which he regaled his audience at the opening of the theatre of the Troupe du Roi (Hôtel Guénégaud) was in the best imaginable taste. What he had excellently contrived he spoke with marvellous grace.”
38 Guichard was convicted of the charge of attempted poisoning, declared “infamous,” and sentenced to the amende honorable and to pay a heavy fine, while the printers of the memoir in which he had libelled Armande and others were also punished. He appealed against the sentence, which, in the following year, was quashed, a result undoubtedly due to the fact that he had powerful protectors at Court.
39 An epigram ran:—
“Elle avoit un mari d’esprit, qu’elle aimoit peu,
Elle en prend un de chair, qu’elle aime d’avantage.”
40 M. Larroumet, La Comédie de Molière, p. 174.
41 No. 11 Rue des Pierres. See Arsène Houssaye’s interesting account of a visit paid to it, in his beautifully illustrated work, Molière: sa femme et sa fille (Paris: Dentu, 1880), p. 129 et seq.
42 Paul Foucher, Les Coulisses du Passé.
43 And not of a marchana des rubans, of the Pont-au-Change, as so many writers state, so that the epigram of Le Noble:—
“Tu les as mesuré sans doute [tes vers] à l’aune antique
Dont jadis ton papa mesurant ses rubans,”
loses its point.
44 It was performed twenty-one times, and the average receipts were 680 livres. But for twenty-four representations of Molière’s comedy, the Bourgeois gentilhomme, which was played concurrently with Tite et Bérénice, the average takings were 1000 livres. Corneille received 2000 livres for his play, the same amount as Molière had paid him for Attila.
45 See p. 108 infra.
46 Letter of January 13, 1673.
47 Letter of March 1673.
48 Letter of April 1673.
49 Letter of February 24, 1673.
50 Les divertissements de Versailles donnez par le roy à toute sa cour, au rétour de la conqueste de la Franche-Comté, en l’anneé 1674: Paris, 1676, folio. A copy of this very rare and valuable work, with its beautiful engravings by La Paute and Chauveau, is in the possession of the British Museum.
51 Hawkins, “Annals of the French Stage,” ii. 116.
52 M. J. Noury, La Champmeslé, p. 193.
53 Letter of Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, March 13, 1671.
54 “You know,” he wrote to his son, Louis Racine, “what I have said to you about operas and plays; there will probably be some performances at Marly; the King and the Court are aware of the scruples which I entertain about attending them, and they will have a poor opinion of you, if you show so little regard for my sentiments. I know that you will not be dishonoured before men should you go to the play, but do you count it nothing to be dishonoured before God?”
55 Charles Boileau, Abbé of Beaulieu, and a member of the Academy.
56 Here is the renunciation: “In the presence of M. Claude Botte de la Barondière, priest, doctor of theology of the Sorbonne, curé of the church and parish of Saint-Sulpice, at Paris, and the witnesses hereinafter named, Guillaume Marconnau de Brécourt has declared that, having formerly followed the profession of an actor, he renounces it, and promises, with a true and sincere heart, to exercise it no more, even if restored to full and complete health.”—Extract from the Register of Saint-Sulpice, cited by M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 154 note.
It appears also to have been customary in the case of an actor to pin to the register of deaths the following paper: “The said person was not absolved and received into holy ground until after having publicly renounced the profession he had formerly exercised, by an act before the notaries.”
57 Among Bossuet’s supporters was Père Lebrun, of the Oratory, who published a Discours sur la comédie. One of this good father’s chief objections to the theatre was “because it is perpetually turning into Ridicule parents who strive to prevent their children from contracting love-matches.”
58 According to Saint-Simon, the immediate cause of their expulsion was the representation of a licentious comedy, called La Fausse Prude, in which character Madame de Maintenon was easily recognised.
59 In 1696, the French actors, desirous of testing the legality of the attitude of the Church towards them, addressed a petition to Innocent XII., in which, after representing that they performed in Paris “none but honest plays, purged of all obscenities, and more calculated to influence the faithful for good than for evil, and inspire them with a horror of vice and a love of virtue,” they besought him to inform them if the bishops had the right to excommunicate them. The Holy See, however, unwilling to provoke a conflict with the independent French bishops, who, it well knew, would not hesitate to resist its orders, if it took the part of the actors, referred the petitioners to the Archbishop of Paris, “that they might be treated according to the law.” A similar fate awaited a second appeal to Clement XI. in 1701.
60 M. Gaston Maugras, Les Comédiens hors la loi, p. 154 et seq.
61 Adrienne Lecouvreur, by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé, first represented at the Théâtre de la République, April 1849.
62 It was only when she became an actress that Adrienne prefaced her patronymic by the article “Le,” in order to give it a more artistic sound. For a long time she wrote her name as two words.
63 Several writers have stated that she was his mistress, but this is incorrect. It was her cousin, the laundress’s daughter, who occupied that position.
64 Études de littérature et d’art: Adrienne Lecouvreur, p. 124.
65 Le Mercure de France, March 1730.
66 Profils de Femmes: Adrienne Lecouvreur.
67 Note the change from the familiar and affectionate “ton” of the previous letter to the formal “votre.”
68 Causeries du Lundi, I. 161.
69 Lemontey, Notice sur Adrienne Lecouvreur.
70 Cited by M. Georges Monval, Lettres d’Adrienne Lecouvreur.
71 There were, at this period, four members of the Quinault family in the troupe of the Comédie-Française: two brothers, Jean Baptiste Quinault and Abraham Alexis Quinault-Dufresne, and two sisters, Marie-Anne Quinault and Jeanne Françoise Quinault.
72 Mercure de France, March 1730.
73 In Thomas Corneille’s tragedy, Le Comte d’Essex.
74 According to another version of this affair, it was the challenge, and not the quarrel, which took place in Adrienne’s dressing-room.
75 Études du littérature et d’art: Adrienne Lecouvreur, p. 141.
76 Lettres d’Adrienne Lecouvreur, by M. Georges Monval, p. 252.
77 The acceptance of this charge must have required some little courage on the good councillor’s part, since rumour credited him with being something more than a friend to the actress, which is perhaps not altogether a matter for surprise, seeing that he was so frequent a visitor in the Rue des Marais that he “passed for the master of the house, and was addressed by the servants as ‘Monsieur’ only, without the addition of his name.”
78 M. Paléologue, Profils de femmes: Adrienne Lecouvreur.
79 For a specimen of Maurice’s orthography, see page 240, note, infra.
80 And not £30,000, as Carlyle and so many writers have stated.
81 Carlyle’s “History of Frederick the Great,” ii. 160.
82 Louise Henriette Françoise of Lorraine (Mlle. de Guise), daughter of the Prince and Princesse d’Harcourt, and fourth wife of Emmanuel Théodose de la Tour d’Auvergne, Duc de Bouillon, whom she married in 1725. Here is a contemporary portrait of her: “Very pretty; rather tall than short; neither stout nor slender; an oval face; a broad forehead; black eyes and eyebrows; brown hair; very wide mouth and very red lips.”
83 She numbered among her lovers the Comte de Clermont, a Prince of the Blood, the actors Quinault-Dufresne and Grandval of the Comédie-Française, and a singer of the Opera, named Tribou.
84 The real obstacle was probably an Opera girl named Cartou, of whom Maurice was desperately enamoured. According to Grimm, this young lady followed her lover to the famous Camp of Mühlberg, in Saxony, where she had the honour of supping with two kings, Augustus II. of Poland and Frederick William of Prussia, and two future kings, Augustus III. and Frederick the Great.
85 His name was Bouret, and he was the son of a government official at Metz. He was at this time nineteen years of age, and had come to Paris, some months before, to study painting.
86 The Duchesse and her stepson’s wife, the Princesse de Bouillon (Marie Charlotte Sobieska), wife of Charles Godefroi de la Tour d’Auvergne, Prince de Bouillon, whom she married in 1724. Several writers have confounded the two ladies, and Scribe and Legouvé, in their tragedy, Adrienne Lecouvreur, make the princess, and not the duchess, the rival and murderess of the heroine.
87 Lettres de Mademoiselle d’ Aïssé à Madame Calandrini (edit. 1846), p. 230 et seq.
88 The points in which Mlle. Aïssé’s story and Bouret’s evidence differ are as follows:—
(1) Bouret was acquainted with the Duchesse de Bouillon prior to his adventure, having been employed by her to paint her portrait. (2) He had not one, but several interviews with her two emissaries, who, he stated, wore masks. (3) He received the suspicious lozenges after, and not before, warning Adrienne. (4) It was not the Lieutenant of Police, Hérault, but the Chemist Geoffroy, of the Académie des Sciences, who made the experiment on the dog. He reported that some of the lozenges appeared suspicious, but that their number was insufficient to permit of his conducting experiments and forming a definite opinion. This, as M. Larroumet remarks, is the language of a man who is unwilling to compromise himself.
89 Scribe and Legouvé make this incident one of the principal scenes of their tragedy.
90 Lettres d’Adrienne Lecouvreur, p. 51.
91 Cited M. Georges Monval, Lettres d’Adrienne Lecouvreur, p. 57.
92 Marie-Anne Mancini, Racine’s enemy.
93 Marie Magdeleine de la Vieuville, Comtesse de Parabère (1693-1750). On her husband’s death, in 1716, she became maîtresse en tître of the Regent d’Orléans, which exalted position she occupied for five years, when the prince, wearying of her caprices, replaced her by Madame Ferrand d’Averne.
94 That of Hortense. According to Titon du Tillet, Adrienne had never been surpassed in this character.
95 This is not the case.
96 Lettres de Mademoiselle d’Aissé à Madame Calandrini, p. 234 et seq.
97 Voltaire wrote and signed the following note: “She died in my arms of an inflammation of the intestines, and it was I who caused an autopsy to be performed. All that Mlle. Aïssé says on the subject are only popular rumours which have no foundation.”—Cited by M. Monval.
98 Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, i. 174. This letter formed part of the last dossier.
99 The spot where Adrienne was buried was discovered, in 1786, by d’Argental. It was at the south-east angle of the Rues de Grenelle and de Bourgogne, on ground now occupied by No. 115 in the former street. The old man erected a marble tablet, inscribed with some rather indifferent verses of his own composition, to the memory of the actress on an adjoining wall. “This tablet,” says M. Monval, “is still preserved by Madame Jouvencel, the present (1892) owner of No. 115 Rue de Grenelle.”
100 Two years before Adrienne’s old teacher, Le Grand, had died, also without renouncing his profession. He was, of course, denied Christian burial, but no objection was raised by the curé of Saint-Sulpice to his interment in the unconsecrated portion of the cemetery.
101 Lettres d’Adrienne Lecouvreur, by M. Georges Monval, p. 67.
102 La Danse et des Ballets, p. 190.
103 Her shoemaker, one Choisy by name, found himself on a sudden overwhelmed with customers. All the ladies of the Court and the town wanted to be shod by the man who made such divine little shoes.
104 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 128.
105 Correspondance littéraire, vi. 42.
106 Gaboriau, Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 131.
107 “While Mlle. de Camargo delighted the Parisians with her dancing, her uncle, Don Juan, employed his time in causing Jews and sorcerers to be burned. Don Juan de Camargo, Bishop of Pampeluna, succeeded Don Diego d’Astorga y Cespedes on July 18, 1720, and was the thirty-fifth Inquisitor-General in Spain.”—Castil-Blaze, La Danse et les Ballets, p. 196.
108 This is no doubt a slip of the pen. Mlle. de Camargo had only been two years on the Paris stage.
109 Revue rétrospective, Série I. tom. 1. (1833), p. 401. The original letter was, at this time, in the possession of Beffara.
110 Journal de Barbier, ii. 416.
111 She was then living in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs.
112 Les Comédiennes adorées, p. 144.
113 Collé, Journal (edit. 1868), i. 317. We fear that Collé, who is very severe upon the lady, is hardly an impartial witness, as elsewhere, in his Journal, we read that Mlle. le Duc “meddled with everything, and prevented the Count using his influence except on behalf of herself and her base vassals.” As the dramatist was a protégé of Clermont, this would seem to point to some private grievance against her.
114 The Tenebrae service at the Abbey of Longchamps on Wednesdays and Thursdays in Holy Week was a fashionable function at this period. Its popularity dated from 1727, when the famous singer, Mlle. Lemaure, took the veil, and transferred her services from the stage of the Opera to the abbey choir.
115 See p. 180, note, supra.
116 Cited by Jules Cousin, Le Comte de Clermont, sa cour et ses maîtresses.
117 Catalogue of the Wallace Collection.
118 Favart is said to have claimed that he had invented the bun. But, as several learned writers assert that it was in vogue in the time of the Crusades, he probably only meant that he had perfected it. See Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 182.
119 We are not told the name of the farmer-general. In Favart’s Mémoires he is referred to merely as M. B***.
120 Justine’s portraits, the most pleasing of which is perhaps Flipart’s engraving of the drawing by Charles Nicolas Cochin fils, reproduced in this volume, show us a pretty and vivacious-looking young woman, but with features somewhat too irregular for beauty. It is probable, however, that the attraction which she possessed for her contemporaries was, like that of Mlle. Molière, of the kind in which Nature plays the lesser part, and the desire to please the greater.
121 A document found in the Bastille on its capture in July 1789, written by one Meusnier, an inspector of police who was employed by Maurice de Saxe in his persecution of the Favarts, and published the same year, under the title of Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (signé Meusnier) concernant deux lettres-de-cachet lâchées contre Mlle. de Chantilly et M. Favart par le Maréchal de Saxe, asserts that for some time Justine lived with Favart, as his mistress, in a house in the Rue de Buci. But in the opinion of Desnoiresterres, the best informed of the poet’s biographers, this charge is sufficiently controverted by the following letter written by Favart to his fiancée: “Take care of your health; remember that mine is involved in it. You will take more care of yourself, if you have any regard for me, who love you more than life; though do not take offence, for my very sentiments are your eulogy. Your talents seduce me, but your virtue binds me. If your thoughts were in contradiction to your actions, you would be worthy neither of my esteem nor my love.... I am speaking to you against the interests of my heart; but I, at the same time, prove to you that I am the sincerest and the best of your friends.”—Favart, Mémoires et correspondance littéraire (edit. 1808), i. 20. Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 196 et seq.
122 Madame Favart et le Maréchal de Saxe.
123 Mémoires et Correspondance (edit. 1808), i. 25.
124 Marie Rinteau, the great-grandmother of George Sand.
125 Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 215.
126 “...Je vous dires en outre que je suis amoureu depuis trois ans d’une petite Gelan(?) qui me joue des mauves tour et qui ma penses faire tourner la servelle; je vous en ay écrit quelque chosse lanée passé, elle ait possede du démon de l’amour conjugal.... J’ay etes tente deux ou trois foy de la noier.”—Letter of Maurice de Saxe to his sister, the Princess von Holstein, March 10, 1747. We hesitate to produce the remainder of this letter, of which, as Desnoiresterres very justly remarks, the orthography is the least enormity, even in the original; but the curious reader will find it in Les Lettres du Maréchal de Saxe à la Princesse de Holstein (p. 20), published by the Société des Bibliophiles Français in 1831. A copy, presented by T. J. Dibdin to the Hon. Thomas Grenville, is in the possession of the British Museum.
127 This is really very amusing. These pretty verses had been addressed, many years before, by Voltaire, to Adrienne Lecouvreur; and the Marshal not only coolly appropriates them, but adds insult to injury by calling them “rhymed prose”! One can imagine the indignation of the poet had this letter, by any chance, fallen into his hands. This was not the first time, however, that Voltaire’s verses had been purloined by an unscrupulous lover. The charming lines, in English, which he addressed to Lady Hervey, beginning—
“Hervey, would you know the passion
You have kindled in my breast,”
were subsequently transcribed by the lover of a Mrs. Harley, the wife of a London merchant, and formed part of the evidence on which her husband based his claim for a divorce.
128 Nouveaux Lundis (1869), xi. 106-108.
129 Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (1789), p. 5.
130 We might add the testimony of Marmontel, who, from his very intimate relations with two prominent members of Maurice’s seraglio, Mlles. Navarre and de Verrières, was without doubt well informed in regard to the Marshal’s love-affairs. “He (Maurice de Saxe) always kept an opéra comique in his camp. Two performers belonging to this theatre, called Chantilly and Beaumenard, were his favourite mistresses; and he declared that their rivalry and caprices plagued him more than the Queen of Hungary’s Hussars. I have read these words in one of his letters. For them it was that he neglected Mlle. Navarre.”
131 This was, of course, incorrect.
132 Favart, Mémoires et Correspondance (edit. 1808), i. 30.
133 A military surgeon at Brussels.
134 The Marquis Dumesnil, afterwards Lieutenant-General of Dauphiné.
135 Correspondance littéraire, vii. 464, cited by Desnoiresterres.
136 Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (1789), p. 6.
137 Collé, Journal et Mémoires (edit. 1868), i. 99. Collé, like Grimm, shows himself very severe on Justine, whom almost all other contemporary writers agree in representing as a charming woman and an actress of remarkable talent. He describes her as “an impudent creature, without intelligence or skill, who sings vaudevilles with repulsive indecency, and dances with movements which seem suggestive and disgusting to persons of the smallest delicacy.”
138 Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (1789) p. 8.
139 Mlle. Rivière, one of Maurice’s numerous mistresses.
140 The Marquis de Paulmy, son of the Marquis d’Argenson, and afterwards Minister for War.
141 Without doubt, Maurice de Saxe.
142 Letter of December 6, 1749; Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille, p. 36 et seq.
143 Allusion to Justine’s stage name of Chantilly, which the Marshal spelt Jantilly.
144 Cited by Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et lettrés, p. 253.
145 Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (1789), p. 15.
146 Œuvres de l’Abbe de Voisenon (edit. 1781), iv. 70.
147 According to the official version, of a malignant fever: according to local rumour, of wounds received in a duel with the Prince de Conti, with whom he had a long-standing quarrel. The Marshal’s biographer, M. Saint-René Taillandier, inclines, we observe, to the latter view; but the evidence he adduces does not seem to us altogether satisfactory.
148 Compardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe italienne, ii. 210.
149 Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 315.
150 Cited by Gueullette, Acteurs et Actrices du Temps passé, p. 260.
151 Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” i. 355.
152 Edmund de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 4.
153 Mémoires de Mademoiselle Clairon (edit. 1799), p. 235.
154 Mémoires de Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 166 et seq.
155 Mlle. Balicourt played queens and princesses, and had probably impersonated the Queen Elizabeth of Thomas Corneille’s play on the evening when Clairon visited the Comédie. She made her début in 1727, and retired in 1738, on account of ill-health.
156 Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, xii. 348.
“Mlle. Clairon contrived, during the early part of her career, to have three lovers at a time constantly in her train—one whom she deceived, one whom she received à la derobée, and one who lived on sighs.”—“Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach,” i. 220.
157 Charles Spencer, third Duke of Marlborough, and fifth Earl of Sunderland (1706-1758). He was, at this time, colonel of the 28th Foot, and, the following year, commanded a brigade at the battle of Dettingen. The name is written Mar*** in the French edition of Mlle. Clairon’s Memoirs, but in full in the German.
158 Cited by Campardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe française.
159 Cited by Edmond de Goncourt.
160 Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” i. 375.
161 If Marmontel and Bachaumont are to be believed, this inspiration was as often as not aided by wine, and a servant, glass and bottle in hand, was always in attendance in the wings.
162 Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 134.
163 See p. 334 infra.
164 See p. 322 infra.
165 “Journal et Mémoires,” ii. 33.
166 In Le Franc de Pompignan’s Didon.
167 Madame Vestris, when a girl, was taken to visit Mlle. Clairon, who appeared to her “a little woman about forty years of age, who had once been pretty.” Some days later, she went to the Comédie-Française to witness a performance of Andromaque, and, when she saw the celebrated actress in the part of Hermione, cried in astonishment: “That is not Mlle. Clairon!” She was assured that it was, but flatly refused to believe, saying: “See how tall that actress is! I have seen Mlle. Clairon at her house; she is a very little woman.” It was Mlle. Clairon none the less.—Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 171.
168 “Private Correspondence of David Garrick,” i. 356.
169 “Private Correspondence of David Garrick,” ii. 359.
170 Cited by Adolphe Jullien, L’Histoire du costume au Théâtre.
171 In her Mémoires, Mlle. Clairon has the effrontery to declare that she never had any cause to be ashamed of her love-affairs, and defies any one to name “a single man who had purchased her favours.”
172 Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, xii. 348.
173 Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 43 et seq.
174 Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, xii. 292 et seq.
175 Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, xii. 295. From the same report we learn that the Prince of Würtemberg, then on a visit to Paris, had fallen violently in love with Mlle. Gaussin, “et qu’il a commencé par lui faire un présent de 200 louis pour souper avec elle.” Mlle. Clairon was probably no worse than the other divinities of the Comédie.
176 Archives, xii. 295.
177 This was not the only occasion upon which Marmontel trespassed upon Maurice’s preserves. He took a similar liberty with the heart of Mlle. de Verrières, “on learning which the Marshal fell into a passion unworthy of so great a man.”
178 Mémoires de Marmontel (edit. 1804), i. 266.
179 Marmontel tells us that Mlle. Clairon made “a very desirable mistress.” “She had,” says he, “all the charms of an agreeable character without any mixture of caprice; while her only desire, her most delicate attentions, were directed towards rendering her lover happy. So long as she loved, no one could be more faithful or more tender than she.... I left her charming, I found her equally, and, if possible, still more charming. What a pity that with so seductive a character so much levity should be joined, and that love so sincere, and even so faithful, should not have been more constant!”
180 Mémoires de Marmontel (edit. 1804), ii. 41 et seq.
181 Lekain had made his début at the Comédie-Française on September 14, 1750, as Titus in the Brutus of Voltaire. His admission into the company was bitterly opposed by Mlle. Clairon, who gave no other reason for her hostility than that his personal appearance—he was a remarkably plain man, short and thick-set, with a harsh voice and rough manners—was displeasing to her. Lekain retaliated by giving publicity to certain episodes in the lady’s private life which did not redound to her credit. To which Mlle. Clairon rejoined by addressing him before the assembled company as follows: “I was well aware, Monsieur, that you were a man of repulsive appearance, but I did not know that you possessed a soul a thousand times more hideous than your person.” Lekain left the theatre in a towering passion, and, with the assistance of another enemy of Mlle. Clairon, the Chevalier de la Morlière, composed a letter, “the most insulting, the most atrocious, that it was possible to conceive,” which he sent to the actress. For this he was expelled from the Comédie, but subsequently, on writing another letter, this time of apology, reinstated. Soon after this affair, which was common knowledge, Lekain happened to be playing Æneas to the Dido of Mlle. Clairon, in Le Franc de Pompignan’s tragedy. In one of the most touching passages of the play, the ill-fated queen, addressing her faithless lover, exclaims:—
“Je devrais te haïr, ingrat! Et je t’adore.”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than the whole pit burst into such peals of merriment that it was fully five minutes before the performance could be continued.
182 See p. 294 supra.
183 Grimm says that Voltaire surrendered to the players his share of the profits, in order to help them to defray the expense of the costumes.
184 Journal et Mémoires, ii. 33.
185 Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, cited by Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, 131 et seq.
186 “Report of Meunier to the Lieutenant of Police;” Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, xii. 367.
187 Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, i. 377.
188 Report of Meunier to Berryer, Lieutenant of Police, Archives de la Bastille, xii.
189 Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 170.
190 We read in Mlle. Clairon’s Mémoires: “‘The walls alone of this house,’ I said to myself, ‘ought to make me feel the sublimity of the poet, and enable me to attain the talent of the actress. It is in this sanctuary that I ought to live and die.’” We fear that the sanctuary was, on occasion, somewhat profaned, since the lady was in the habit of entertaining here not only dames of high degree, but some of the most dissolute members of Paris society.
191 “M. Carle Van Loo’s picture, in which Mlle. Clairon is painted as Medea, had a great reputation while it was still unfinished. Hardly had the artist opened his studio, than all Paris crowded to admire his chef d’œuvre. Never did work obtain more unanimous praise.”—Le Tableau de Mlle. Clairon, par M. Carle Vanloo, a manuscript document cited by Edmond de Goncourt. When it was nearly completed, Louis XV. expressed a wish to see it, and came to Van Loo’s studio, while the actress was sitting to him. “You are indeed fortunate,” said he to the painter, “to have been inspired by such a model;” and, turning to the lady, added: “And you, Mademoiselle, have reason to congratulate yourself on being immortalised by such an artist.” He then announced his intention of defraying the cost of the frame, which came to 5000 livres.
192 Forty thousand francs a year, a house, a coach, and a table for six persons.
193 Mémoires de Mademoiselle Clairon (edit. 1799), 307 et seq.
194 In reference to the arrangement of these names, Monnet wrote to Garrick: “The drawing you gave Mlle. Clairon is engraved; it is now on sale, and M. de Crébillon is annoyed because they have placed his father after Voltaire, that is to say, below him: it is the last of the volumes on which Mlle. Clairon is leaning. I have thrown the blame on M. Gravelot, telling him that you held too high an opinion of his father’s talent to commit such an error.”—“Private Correspondence of David Garrick,” ii. 442.
195 Collé, Journal et Mémoires, iii. 6. Collé was himself intensely disgusted by the conduct of Mlle. Clairon’s fanatical admirers, and declares that if medals were to be struck in honour of an actress, who, after all, was nothing but a parrot, then statues—nay, pyramids—ought to be raised to the authors whose works she interpreted.
196 She refused first, the protection, and, afterwards, the hand of the Marquis de Gouffier, the latter on the ground that “while esteeming herself too much to be his mistress, she esteemed herself too little to be his wife.” On her retirement from the stage in 1783, Louis XVI. granted her a special pension, “as if to show that virtue under his reign was as profitable as vice had been under his predecessor.”—Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” ii. 107 and 299.
197 L’ Année Littéraire par M. Fréron, Lettre V. Janvier 17, cited by Edmond de Goncourt.
198 To which institution women of loose character who had misbehaved themselves were sent.
199 Collé, Mémoires et Journal, iii. 27 et seq.
200 Collé, Mémoires et Journal, iii. 31.
201 “Private Correspondence of David Garrick,” ii. 432. Soon after this, Garrick very generously offered Mlle. Clairon a loan of 500 guineas, which, however, was not accepted.
202 It seems to have been as a kind of return for the homage paid her at Ferney, that, towards the end of 1772, Mlle. Clairon organised, at her house in Paris, the apotheosis of Voltaire, “in which she displayed all the riches of her imagination.” “The bust of Voltaire,” says Bachaumont, “was placed pompously in the midst of the assembly, when M. Marmontel, the coryphée of the house, presented an ode, composed by himself, in honour of the new god of Pindar. Mlle. Clairon, habited as a priestess of Apollo, placed a crown of laurel on the bust, and recited the ode with the most vehement enthusiasm. The assembly applauded loudly.” This piece of adulation, grotesque though it was, seems to have been far from displeasing to the Patriarch, who returned thanks in a letter in verse, wherein he assured the lady that “his glory was entirely her work.”—Gueullette, Acteurs et Actrices du Temps passé, p. 316.
203 Mlle. Clairon had demanded a pension of 1500 livres, though thirty years’ service was required to entitle her to this. It is probable, however, that her request would have been granted, but for the opposition of Lekain, who had not forgiven her for her treatment of him in years gone by.
204 The takings, at a louis a head, amounted to 24,000 livres, which sum, if we are to believe Bachaumont, was spent by Molé, not in paying his debts, but in buying diamonds for his mistress.
205 Correspondance littéraire, vi. 75.
206 Letter of Madame Riccoboni to Garrick, January 29, 1767.
207 “During this time, Mlle. Clairon was living at the Margrave’s expense, with four French servants in livery, Madame Senay, her femme-de-chambre, and a lackey, besides a French cook. The Margrave supplied her with the best wines from his cellar. Her expenses were enormous, and all paid from the Chamber of Finances of Anspach. These facts I had from the Maréchaux of the Court.”—“Memoirs of Elizabeth Berkeley, Margravine of Anspach,” i. 210.
208 Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, March 7, 1785.
209 Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 385.
210 Souvenirs de Madame Vigée Lebrun, i. 83.
211 Its effect was less terrifying upon “an amorous and jealous intendant,” who mistook the ghostly visitant’s cry for that of a lover in the flesh, and had the bad taste to remark to Mlle. Clairon that “the signals of her rendezvous were somewhat too noisy.” And this after the poor lady had just recovered from a swoon lasting nearly a quarter of an hour!
212 Mémoires de Mademoiselle Clairon (edit. 1799), p. 1 et seq.
213 Edmond de Goncourt, Mademoiselle Clairon, p. 466.
214 Gueullette, Acteurs et Actrices du Temps passé, p. 320.
215 Marie Pauline Ménard. Mlle. Clairon had adopted her when a little girl and provided her dot, which led to a widespread belief that she was her natural daughter. This, however, was not the case.
216 Gueullette, Acteurs et Actrices du Temps passé, p. 321.