Part 13

Turning from eccentric actors to eccentric pieces, there may be reckoned among the latter a piece called ‘Venez,’ which was first produced, a few years ago, at Liége. A chief incident in the piece is where a pretty actress, seeking an engagement, is required by the young manager, as a test of her competency, to give to the above word as many varied intonations as might be possible. One of these proves to be so exquisitely seductive that the manager offers a permanent engagement for life, which is duly accepted. From Liége to Compiègne is a long step, but it brings us to another eccentricity. Nine years ago, at one of the Imperial revels there, certain of the courtiers and visitors acted in an apropos piece, named ‘Les Commentaires de César.’ The Prince Imperial represented the Future, without having the slightest idea of it. Prosper Mérimée, Academician, poet, and historian, acted the Past, of which he had often written so picturesquely. In the more farcical part which followed the prologue, the most prominent personage was the Princesse de Metternich (wife of the Austrian ambassador), who played the part of a French cabman out on strike. She tipped forth the Paris slang, and sang a character song, with an audacity which could not be surpassed by the boldest of singing actresses at any of the popular minor theatres. The august audience were convulsed at this manifestation of high dramatic art--in its way! These fêtes led to much extravagance in dress, and to much contention thereon between actresses and managers.

The directors of the Palais Royal Theatre have frequently been at law with their first ladies. Mdlle. Louisa Ferraris, in 1864, signed an engagement to play there for three years at a salary beginning at 2,400 francs, and advancing to 3,000 and 3,600 francs, with a forfeit clause of 12,000 francs. The salary would hardly have sufficed to pay the lady’s shoemaker. In the course of the engagement the ‘Foire aux Grotesques’ was put in rehearsal. In the course of this piece Mdlle. Ferraris had to say to another actress, ‘I was quite right in not inviting you to my ball, for you could not have come in a new dress, as you owe your dressmaker 24,000 francs!’ As this actress was really deeply indebted to that important personage, she begged that this speech, which seemed a deliberate insult to her, might be altered. Mdlle. Ferraris, in spite of the authors, who readily changed the objectionable phrase, continued, however, to repeat the original words. As she was peremptorily ordered to omit them she flung up her part, whereupon the directors applied to the law to cancel her engagement for breach of contract, and to award them 12,000 francs damages. Mademoiselle repented and offered to resume the part. On this being declined she entered a cross action to gain the 12,000 francs for breach of contract on the directors’ side. The Tribunal de Commerce, after consideration, cancelled the engagement, but condemned Mdlle. Ferraris to pay 2,000 francs damages and the costs of suit. It is to the stage, and not to the empress, that inordinate luxury in dress is to be attributed. Sardou, in ‘La Famille Bénoiton,’ has been stigmatised as the forerunner of such an exaggerated luxury that no private purse was sufficient to pay for the toilette of a woman whose maxim was, _La mode à tout prix_.

Two or three years ago there was an actress at the Palais Royal Theatre known as Antonia de Savy. Her real name was Antoinette Jathiot. Her salary was 1,200 francs for the first year, 1,800 francs for the second: not three-and-sixpence a night in English money. But out of the three-and-sixpences Mdlle. Antonia was bound to provide herself with ‘linen, shoes, stockings, head-dresses, and all theatrical costumes requisite for her parts, except foreign costumes totally different from anything habitually worn in France.’ For any infringement of these terms Mademoiselle was to pay a fine of 10,000 francs--about her salary for half-a-dozen years. Circumstances led Antonia to be wayward, and the management entered on a suit for the cancelling of the engagement on the ground of her refusing to play a particular part, and her unpunctuality. Her counsel, M. G. Chaix d’Est Ange, pleaded that the lady was a minor, that her father had not given his consent to such an engagement, and that it was an imposition on her youth and inexperience. The other side replied that Mdlle. Jathiot had ceased to be a minor since the engagement was signed; that as to her inexperience, she was a very experienced young lady in the ways of Parisian life; that the engagement was concluded with her because she dressed in the most magnificent style, and that it would be profitable to the theatre as well as to herself to exhibit those magnificent dresses on the stage; and that as to her respected sire, he was a humble clerk, living in a garret in the Rue Saint-Lazare, and had no control whatever over a daughter who lived in the style of a princess, spent fabulous sums in maintaining it, and had the most perfect ‘turn-out’ in the way of carriage, horses, and servants in the French capital. The plaintiffs asked to be relieved from this modest young lady, and to be awarded damages for her insubordination and unpunctuality. The Tribunal de Commerce ordered the engagement to be cancelled, and the defendant to pay 1500 francs damages and the costs of suit. But the Imperial Court of Appeal took another view of the case. They refused in any way to sanction such an immoral notion as that the terms of the contract were not disadvantageous for the minor because it was known that she got her living in a way that could not be avowed. They quashed the judgment of the Tribunal de Commerce, and ordered the managers of the Palais Royal to pay all the costs.

The most singular of all law cases between French actresses and managers was one the names of the parties to which have slipped out of my memory. It arose out of the refusal of a young actress, who had not lost her womanly modesty, to ‘go on’ in the dress provided for her, which would hardly have afforded her more covering than a postage-stamp. In the lawsuit which followed this act of insubordination, the modest young lady was defeated, and was rebuked by the magistrate for infringing the laws of the stage, of which the manager was the irresponsible legislator! The actress preferred the cancelling of her engagement to the degradation of such nightly exposure as was demanded by the manager and was sanctioned by the magistrate.

I have said above that the eccentric extravagance of dress--the other extreme from next to none at all--was not a consequence of an example set by the empress. But there is something to be said on both sides. Only two years ago Mdlles. Fargueil, Bernhardt, and Desclées made public protest against the _pièces aux robes_, in which they were required to dress like empresses (of fashion) at their own expense. They traced the ruinous custom to the period when the Imperial Court was at Compiègne, and when the actresses engaged or ‘invited’ to play to the august company there were required by the inexorable rule of the Court to obey the sumptuary laws which regulated costume. Every lady was invited for three days; each day she was to wear three different dresses, and no dress was to be worn a second time. Count Bacciochi, the grand chamberlain, kept a sharp eye on the ladies of the drama. Histrionic queens and countesses were bound to be attired as genuinely as the historical dignitaries themselves. The story might be romance, the outward and visible signs were to be all reality. The awful Grand Chamberlain once banished an actress from the Court stage at Compiègne for the crime of wearing mock pearls when she was playing the part of a duchess!

This evil fashion, insisted on by dreadful Grand Chamberlains, was adopted by Paris managers, who hoped to attract by dresses--the very skirt of any one of which would swallow more than a _vicaire’s_ yearly income--and by a river of diamonds on a fair neck, whatever might be in the head above it. A young actress who hoped to live by such salary as her brains alone could bring her, and who would presume to wear sham jewellery or machine-made lace, was looked upon as a poor creature who would never have a reputation--that is, such a reputation as her gorgeously attired sisters, who did not particularly care to have _any_ but that for which the most of them dressed themselves. When the empire fell the above-named actresses thought that a certain republican simplicity might properly take the place of an imperial magnificence. Or they maintained that if stage-ladies were required to find stage-dresses that cost twenty times their salary, the cost of providing such dresses should fall on the stage-proprietors, and not on the stage-ladies. It is said that the bills Mdlle. Fargueil had to pay for her dresses in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ and ‘Patrie’ represented a sum total which, carefully invested, would have brought her in a comfortable annuity! This may be a little exaggerated, but the value of the dresses may be judged of from one fact, namely, that the Ghent lace which Mdlle. Fargueil wore on her famous blue dress in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ was worth very nearly 500_l._

How the attempt to introduce ‘moderation’ into the stage laws of costume has succeeded, the most of us have seen. It has not succeeded at all. Certain actresses are proud to occupy that bad preeminence from which they are able to set the fashion. ‘_Mon chancelier vous dira le reste!_’

One of the eccentricities of the modern French stage is the way in which it deals with the most delicate, or, rather, the most indelicate subjects and people. The indelicate people and subject may indeed be coarsely represented and outspoken, but they must observe certain recognised, though undefined rules. There must be an innocent young lady among the wicked people, and the lady (the _ingénue_) and her ingenuousness must be respected. One fly may taint a score of carcases and make a whole pot of ointment stink, but one _ingénue_ keeps a French piece of nastiness comparatively pure, and the public taste for the impure is satisfied with this little bit of sentimentality. The subjects which many French authors have brought on the stage do not, it is to be hoped, hold a true mirror up to French nature. If so, concubinage, adultery, and murder reign supreme. The changes have been rung so often on this triple theme that an anonymous writer has proposed that the theme should be represented, once for all, in something of the following form, and that dramatic authors should then turn to fresh woods and pastures new: ‘Scene.--A Drawing-room; a married lady is seated, her lover at her feet; the folding-door at back opens, and discovers husband with a double-barrelled revolver. He fires and kills married lady and her lover. Husband then advances and contemplates his victims. After a pause, he exclaims: “A thousand pardons! I have come to a room on the wrong flat!” Curtain slowly descends.’ This represents quite as faithfully the iniquities which, according to the modern French drama, prevail universally in society, as the dramas of Florian achieve the mission which was assigned to him of illustrating _les petites vertus de tous les jours_--the little virtues of everyday life.

The name of Mademoiselle Aimée Desclées reminds me of our Lord Chamberlain. Extremes meet, in the mind as well as elsewhere! That actress, who, after many years of hard struggle, floated triumphantly as La Dame aux Camélias, and after a few years’ progress over sunny seas slowly sank in sight of port, was discovered and brought out by M. Dumas _fils_. A year or two ago she came to London with his plays, the above ‘Dame,’ the ‘Princesse Georges,’ the ‘Visite de Noces,’ and some others. But they stank in the nostrils of our Lord Chamberlain, and he would no more allow them to be produced than the Lord Mayor would allow corrupt meat to be exposed for sale in a City market. Great was the outcry that arose thereupon, from the French inhabitants, and some of the ignorant natives of London. The Chamberlain’s prudery and English delicacy generally were made laughing-stocks. But, gently! Is it known that the French themselves have raised fiercer outcry against plays which our Lord Chamberlain has refused to license than ever Jeremy Collier raised against that disgusting school of English comedy which Dryden founded, and the filth of which was not compensated for by the wit, such as it is, of Congreve, or the humour, if it may be so called, of Wycherly? The _Gaulois_ and the _Figaro_, papers which cannot be charged with over straitlacedness, have blushed at the adulterous comedy of France as deeply as the two harlequins at Southwark Fair blushed at the blasphemy of Lord Sandwich. A French critic, M. Fournier, referring to the ‘Visite de Noces’ of the younger Dumas, remarks that ‘the theatre ought not to be a surgical operating theatre, or a dissecting-room. There are operations,’ he adds, ‘which should not be performed on the stage, unless, indeed, a placard be posted at the doors, “Women not admitted!”’ With respect to this suggestion, M. Hostein, another critic, says: ‘People ask if the “Visite de Noces” be proper for ladies to see. Men generally reply with an air of modesty, that no woman who respects herself would go to see it. Capital puff!’ exclaims M. Hostein, ‘they flock to it in crowds!’ Not _all_, however. Not even all men. Men with a regard for ‘becomingness’ are warned by indignant French critics. The dramatic critic of the ‘France’ thus vigorously speaks to the point: ‘We say it with regret, with sadness, in no other country, no other civilised city, in no other theatre of Europe, would the new piece of M. Dumas _fils_ be possible, and we doubt whether there could be found elsewhere than in Paris a public who would applaud it even by mistake. The “Visite de Noces” has obtained a striking and decided success; so much the worse for the author and for us. If our tastes, if our sentiments, if our conscience be so perjured and perverted that we accept without repugnance and encourage with our cheers such pictures, we are truly _en décadence_.’ Such is the judgment of the leading critics. One of them, indeed, tersely said, ‘the piece will have a success of indignation and money.’ The public provided both, and the author accepted the latter. The women who were of his audience and were _not_ indignant were of the same nature as those who listen to cases in our divorce courts. But the Lord Chamberlain is fully justified in refusing a licence to play French pieces which French critics have denounced as degrading to the moral and the national character. The only fault to be found is in the manner of the doing it; which in the Chamberlain’s servants takes a rude and boorish expression. Meanwhile, let us remark that the attention of the Lord Chamberlain might well be directed to other matters under his control. If a fire, some night, break out in a crowded theatre (where, every night, there is imminent peril) he will be asked if he had officially done all in his power to prevent such a calamity. And if he were to put restraint on the performances of certain licenced places of amusement, husseydom might deplore it, but there would be one danger the less for young men for whose especial degradation these entertainments seem at present to be permitted. While this matter is being thought of, a study of that old-fashioned book ‘The Elegant Letter-Writer,’ would perhaps improve the style of the Chamberlain’s _subs_, and would not be lost on certain young gentlemen of Oxford.

If not among the eccentricities--at least among the marvels of modern French-actress life--may be considered the highly dramatic entertainments given by some of the ladies in their own homes.

Like the historical tallow-chandler, who, after retiring from business, went down to the old manufactory on melting days, the actor, generally speaking, never gets altogether out of his profession. Some who retire give ‘readings,’ or return periodically to the stage, after no end of ‘final farewells’ for positively the last time, and nothing is more common than to see concert singers (on holiday) at concerts. French actresses have been especially addicted to keeping to their vocation, even in their amusements. If they are not at the theatre they have private theatricals at home; and, if not private theatricals, at least what comes next to them, or most nearly resembles them.

In the grand old days of the uninterrupted line of French actresses there was a Mdlle. Duthé, who was first in the second line of accomplished players. She was of the time of, and often a substitute for, Mdlle. Clairon. The latter was never off the stage. She was always

## acting. When she was released from Fort l’Évêque, where she had been

imprisoned for refusing to act with Dubois, whom she considered as a disgrace to the profession, Clairon said to a bevy of actresses in her heroic way, ‘The King may take my life, or my property, but not my honour!’ ‘No, dear,’ responded the audacious Sophie Arnould, ‘certainly not. Where there is nothing, the King loses his rights!’ Mdlle. Duthé belonged to these always-acting actresses. She is the first on record who gave a _bal costumé_--a ball to which every guest was to come in a theatrical or fancy dress. This was bringing amateur

## acting into the ball-room. The invitation included the entire company

of the Théâtre Français, every one of whom came in a tragedy suit. The non-professionals, authors, artists, _abbés_, _noblesse_, and _gentils-hommes_ also donned character dresses; and ball and supper constituted a wonderful success. An entertainment similar to the above was given when Louis Philippe was king, by Mdlle. Georges, the great _tragédienne_. All who were illustrious in literature, fine arts, diplomacy, and so forth, elbowed one another in the actress’s suite of splendid rooms. Théophile Gautier, we are told, figured as an incroyable, Jules Janin as a Natchez Indian, and Victor Hugo, who now takes the ‘Radical’ parts, was present _en Palicare_. But the most striking of what may be called these amateur theatrical balls was given last April by M. and Mdme. Judic, or rather by the latter, in the name of both. According to the ‘Paris Journal,’ such things are easily done--if you are able to do them. If you have an exquisitely arranged house, though small, you may get three hundred dancers into it with facility. You have only, if your house is in France, to send for Belloir, who will clap a glass cover to your court-yard, lay carpets here, hang tapestry there, place mirrors right and left from floor to ceiling, and scatter flowers and chandeliers everywhere, and the thing is done--particularly if you have an account at your bankers’. Something like this was done on the night of Saturday, April 19, 1873, when ‘La Rosière d’ici’ invited her guests to come in theatrical array to her ball, which was to begin at midnight. According to the descriptions of this spring festival, which were circulated by oral or printed report, not every one was invited who would fain have been there. The select company numbered the choicest of the celebrities of the stage, art, and literature (with few exceptions), and _therefore_ the ‘go’ and the gaiety of the _fête_ never paused for a single instant.

As for the costumes, says Jehan Valter, they who did not see the picturesque, strange, and fantastic composition, have never seen anything. Never was coachman so perfect a coachman as Grénier. Never was waggoner more waggoner than Grévin. Moreover, there were peasants from every quarter of the world, of every colour, and of every age. There were stout market porters, incroyables, jockeys, brigands, waltzing, schottisching, and mazourkaing; for the dance went fast and furious on that memorable evening (or rather, Sunday morning). And no wonder, for among the ladies were Madame Judic, in the costume of a village bride; with Mesdames Moissier, Gabrielle Gautier, Massart, and Gérandon, as the bridesmaids. Alice Regnault was a châtelaine of the mediæval period, Hielbron and Damain (the latter, the younger of the sister actresses of that name, who played so charmingly little conversational pieces in English drawing-rooms during the Franco-German war), were country lasses; and, among others, were Blanche D’Antigny, Debreux, Léontine Spelier, Esther David, Gournay, &c., &c.--in short, all the young and pretty actresses of the capital were present. At four o’clock in the morning a splendid supper brought all the guests together, after which dancing was resumed till seven. The festival terminated by the serving of a _soupe à l’oignon à la paysanne_; this stirrup-cup of rustic onion soup was presented in little bowls, with a wooden spoon in each! The sun had been up a very long time before the last of the dancers, loth to depart, had entered their carriages on their way home.

Such is the newest form in which theatrical celebrities get up and enjoy costume-balls after their fashion.

One eccentric matter little understood in this country is co-operation, or collaboration, in the production of French pieces. There is an old story of an ambitious gentleman offering M. Scribe many thousand francs to be permitted to have his name associated with that of M. Scribe as joint authors of a piece by the former, of which the ambitious gentleman was to be allowed to write a line, to save his honour. Scribe wrote in reply that it was against Scripture to yoke together a horse and an ass. ‘I should like to know,’ asked the gentleman, ‘what right you have to call me a horse?’ This showed that the gentleman had wit enough to become a partner in a dramatic manufactory. Indeed, much less than wit--a mere idea, is sufficient to qualify a junior partner. The historian of ‘La Collaboration au Théâtre,’ M. Goizot, states that a young provincial once called on Scribe with a letter of introduction and a little comedy, in manuscript. Scribe talked with him, promised to read the piece, and civilly dismissed him. The provincial youth returned _au pays_, hoped, waited, and despaired; finally, at the end of a year, he went up to Paris, and again called on M. Scribe. With difficulty the dramatist recognised him; with more difficulty could he recollect the manuscript to which his visitor referred, but after consulting a note-book, he took out a manuscript vaudeville of his own and proposed to read it to the visitor. It was that of his popular piece ‘La Chanoinesse.’ The visitor submitted, but he became delighted as he listened. The reading over, he ventured to refer to his own manuscript. ‘I have just read it to you,’ said Scribe, ‘with my additions. Your copy had an idea in it; ideas are to me everything. I have made use of yours, and you and I are authors of “La Chanoinesse.”’