Part 11

Now, at last, came Duse’s invasion of Paris. Why was it delayed so long? What were the circumstances of her going? And how did she fare there? The answers to these questions form a curious chapter in her history, and in that of a great sister artist. Duse’s few weeks in Paris in the early summer of 1897 mark the climax of her career, and may well be described in some detail.

It is an established tenet of Parisian faith that nothing in the artistic world can really be said to have won the stamp of authentic achievement until it has been seen and approved by Paris. With much justification, surely, the French are likely to consider themselves final arbiters, and they do not go out of their way to discover merit in a foreigner who has not yet shown his art in “the home of art.”

Paris had heard the echoes of Duse’s achievements, then, with the comfortable feeling that if she really amounted to anything she would come to Paris and prove it. Until then Parisians could wait. Duse was known to be the best Italian actress, Dumas’ interest in her had been evidenced years before, and her success in the large European cities and in America and England was by no means unknown. But the occasional whisper that Duse was comparable to Bernhardt herself brought only indulgent smiles. The lady evidently avoided the test.

That she had avoided the test was true. Duse had been really afraid to go to Paris. Later, after she had won the day, she admitted as much. A failure in Paris would be, she recognized, a fatal blow to her prestige and ambitions.

When Dumas had urged her to try her fortunes in the French capital, he assumed that she would act in French. But Duse knew how sensitive were French ears to the niceties of the language, how dependent on purity and beauty of speech was much of the drama to which they were accustomed, and how, she would be placing herself under a heavy handicap in acting in a strange medium.

It was not, then, until in Austria, Russia, England and the United States she had been warmly received while acting in her native tongue, that the conquest of Paris began to seem possible.

Enter now, Sarah Bernhardt. Mme. Sarah, unlike most Parisians, had seen Duse and knew her quality. She knew the truth of the growing impression that Duse was really a worthy rival. Therefore, if Duse was really coming to Paris, Sarah wished to involve herself in the proceedings, and protect her position. It was announced that where others had failed to induce Duse to come to Paris, Bernhardt had succeeded. More, she had offered Duse the use of her own theatre. Thus Duse was put at once in the position of _protégée_, and the press resounded with praises of Sarah’s magnanimity.

Duse chose _Magda_ for her first appearance. It was a part well suited to her, and in it she had less to fear in comparison with Bernhardt, who had never scored so heavily with it as with her other rôles. Bernhardt forthwith called on Duse, and the announcement at once followed that the opening performance was to be changed to _La Dame aux Camélias_ (_Camille_). Whatever the honesty of Bernhardt’s motives, she had succeeded in inducing Duse to appear first in a part that was one of Sarah’s own triumphs. One can imagine the new security that Bernhardt felt.

The house was crowded with the most brilliant audience that Paris could muster. Word had gone forth that one was to appear who had been mentioned in the same breath with the idolized Bernhardt. Rochefort was there, and so was Halévy, and Got, the _doyen_ of the _Française_, and a throng of the distinguished men and women of the Paris of the day. For the critics, Lemaître was there, and Catulle Mendes, and, most important, Francisque Sarcey. Sarah herself was there, holding court, and serene and smiling in her rôle of protecting friend.

The story of that first performance is soon told. It was a disappointment. During the first act Duse was almost painfully nervous; in the second she showed flashes of power, and won some mild enthusiasm; in the third she was listened to only with patience; in the fourth the audience took more pleasure in Ando, her “leading man,” than in Duse herself; in the fifth she played the death scene beautifully, but it was too late. “If someone had triumphed it was not Duse.”

Already Paris thought that it had taken Duse’s measure, and now that the alleged comparison with Bernhardt was disposed of settled back to enjoy her, if possible, for her own sake. _Magda_ followed. The critics were a little more impressed. Sarcey in particular--his criticism always appeared after a few days’ interval--poured balm on Duse’s feelings. He began to see that all had not yet been told. “Everyone,” he wrote, “was delighted to see so much naturalness combined with such great force of feeling.... I think I am beginning to distinguish the characteristic traits of her peculiar talent.”

After the first performance of _Magda_, Duse had been suddenly taken ill. Immediately after Sarcey’s encouraging article--whether or not it was the cause,[120]--she recovered and was ready for the lists again.

Bernhardt grew apprehensive. She proposed a gala performance in aid of the fund for a memorial to Dumas. She announced that she would give the last two acts of _La Dame aux Camélias_, and that Duse had been asked to give the second and third acts of the same play. Now the third act was the point where Duse had most signally failed to please Paris on that memorable first night. She was by now wary of Bernhardt’s “friendship,” and said that while she was eager to appear in honor of Dumas, she would substitute the second act of _La Femme de Claude_. And on this substitution she insisted in spite of all Mme. Sarah could say.

The audience had anticipated a rare feast of acting and was not disappointed. It applauded both actresses to the echo. But notice how Sarah worked into this occasion an element that had reference not so much to the glorification of Dumas as to the glorification of herself: “The curtain rises to disclose the celebrated bust of Dumas, by Carpeaux, which occupies the center of the stage. Grouped about, at a respectful distance, are all the artists who have taken part in the performance, while in advance of all, face to face with the bust itself, stands Sarah Bernhardt. She still wears the costume of Marguérite Gauthier, and is there as the accepted symbol, the unrivaled personification of Dumas’ immortal creation. Duse is in the background along with the others.

“A poem has been composed especially for the occasion by Edmond Rostand, in which Bernhardt is allowed to address Dumas in a tone of familiar grandeur, as befits one genius in the presence of another. After one expressive pause, therefore, she changes her attitude and begins.

“‘She recites these exquisite verses [the account in the _Gaulois_ said] with a charm of tenderness, an intensity of feeling, that arouse new transports of enthusiasm. The whole audience is on its feet, quivering, with arms outstretched toward the prodigious _artiste_, who makes an effort to bow, but is overcome by the force of her emotion. The curtain rises and falls an incalculable number of times, disclosing the great _tragédienne_ in her gracious attitude of homage to the great dramatist. And then, with a movement of touching spontaneity, Sarah goes to La Duse, seizes her hand, and both incline before the bust of the master. The spectacle is one that will never be forgotten.’”[121]

How very Gallic! And how extremely effective as an apotheosis of Bernhardt! With Duse triumphantly subordinated by means of Bernhardt’s apparently magnanimous demonstrations of friendship, and with the Paris season practically at an end, Mme. Sarah left town and repaired to England.

In spite of all, Duse went on. In rapid succession she played _La Locandiera_, _Sogno di un Mattino di Primavera_ (a new play by d’Annunzio), _La Femme de Claude_, and _Cavalleria Rusticana_.

A curious thing happened. Her great first-night audience Duse had not been able to overwhelm. Now, by the slow-working influence of her very genuine art, she gained a cumulative hold on the imagination and affection of the Paris public. An open letter to her, signed “Sganarelle,” appeared in _Le Temps_, appealing to her to give a final matinée especially for her brother and sister artists to whom “her methods had opened new horizons.” “Sganarelle” proved to be Sarcey. His project was taken up with an enthusiasm that told how effective, after all, had been Duse’s unobtrusive art. Lavrouniet, in _Figaro_, speaking of Bernhardt and Duse, in a few sentences admirably characterized the art of both. The former, he says, “from a constant desire to be unique, supplies all the highest and rarest expressions of art, except one--simplicity. In La Duse, we have seen on the stage a woman’s nature and that of an _artiste_ completing each other--the _artiste_ playing with all the sensitiveness of a woman, and the woman allowing herself to be entirely absorbed in the _artiste_.” Lemaître also wrote sympathetically: “She came to us, preceded by a European reputation a rival sister of the great Sarah. We were not deceived, for Duse is a dramatic _artiste_, original to the core, and of the first rank. We were told she was beyond everything an astonishing realist; that she lived her parts rather than played them, and in this way took her audience by storm. And that statement is doubtless exact.... What seems to me incontestably Mme. Duse’s is her singular charm and grace, her sweetness and tenderness. On that account her search for the truth, her solicitude to avoid the exhibition of any artifice, her realism, so very minute and so very sincere, reach even to poetry. Hers is the unique charm of a matured woman,--impassioned, bruised, suffering, nervous,--in whom, however, survives a young and ingenuous grace, almost that of a young girl, of a strange young girl.”

Duse promptly and gladly accepted the invitation to give the special matinée. Her lease of Bernhardt’s theatre had expired and it was necessary to write to England to ask the use of the house. Bernhardt tendered it gratuitously, but, wishing still to have a share in all that was going on, requested that the invitations bear her name and Duse’s side by side. Duse saw difficulties. “I could not invite my companions in France to come and admire me. That would be too presumptuous.” When Sarah could not have her way, she suggested that the performance be abandoned. Instead, the _Porte St. Martin_ was secured. The newspapers got wind of the negotiations that Duse’s manager and Bernhardt had been carrying on by telegraph, and when the latter’s motives became apparent, there was another reaction in favor of Duse. There was room in the _Porte St. Martin_ for only one-tenth of the applicants for seats, and, when the day arrived, the audience seemed to Sarcey “like a violin whose strings are tightened and ready to vibrate under the bow.” “It was the first time,” he wrote, “I have seen an audience thus formed and in such a frame of mind. There was no artificial commotion; it was expectation, full of security and joy.” Of what followed Jules Huret wrote in _Figaro_: “I am afraid of my incompetence to describe the powerful, the profound emotion of those three hours, where an entire audience composed of the flower of French comedians, of well-known writers, great painters and celebrated sculptors, honored a foreign _artiste_ with the most vibrating, the most enthusiastic, the most poignant manifestation that it is possible to witness.”

Duse played for them _Cavalleria Rusticana_, the last act of _La Dame aux Camélias_, and the second act of _La Femme de Claude_. Never had she acted better. When the curtain fell “the whole audience rose to its feet, _bravas_ and _vivats_ thundered through the house, handkerchiefs and hats were waving, flowers flew from boxes,--‘_Au revoir! Au revoir! Au revoir!_’--and ten times the curtain had to be raised before the smiling actress, who did not attempt to conceal her joy. Then the stage was immediately invaded by the crowd. Some wished only to see her once again; some must embrace her; others asked for a flower from the bunch she held in her hand. During one whole hour the procession did not cease. I saw there young actresses and rising actors, with tears in their eyes, not daring to approach her. Coquelin wishes to act with her just once and begs her to play in French.... Mme. Laurent comes also, and slowly, with sober words, expresses her admiration. The Ambassador of Italy and his wife arrive in their turn, and congratulate her with happy faces. And her troupe, who leave to-day for Italy, wait to say good-by.... She kisses them, much moved.” Next day Duse was fêted by the _Comédie Française_. What a change was this in a few short weeks! The ending was a fine outburst, of a sort possible only to the Latin races, and it marked the very zenith of Duse’s career.

Such was Duse’s progress from a poverty-stricken, obscure childhood to a place, at the age of thirty-eight, equal, to say the least, that of any actress of her day.

Duse could not fail to find deep satisfaction in her progress from triumph to triumph. But in her case one feels that biographical detail, the accidents of place and date, matter comparatively little. She was a curiously detached spirit. “If I had my will,” she once told Arthur Symons, “I would live in a ship in the sea, and never come nearer to humanity than that.” As it was, she lived only in the realm of her art. She was of infinite natural dignity, a shy, proud woman, always far removed from the petty publicities of theatrical life, like some patrician living her isolated life on a country estate. An utter simplicity and sincerity, the fruits of a fine nature and of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” attended her always.[122] Her face, pale and typically Italian, at once sad and ardent, is the face of a woman who has thoroughly lived, but whose soul is equal to great trials. Her health was never robust,[123] and bodily weakness has often interrupted her work. Her voice was sad, her habit silence, though on rare occasions she is said to talk merrily. Although Duse as an actress and as a woman gives the impression of an all-pervading sadness, of a profound thoughtfulness, “the thoughtfulness of one who comes toward us from a sanctuary of brooding on life’s eternal questions,” the more amiable and human traits are not wholly lacking in her. She is said to be quick to grasp a joke and to be fond of humorous books. She is extravagant in her delight in flowers. At her country place in Tuscany she has literally thousands of rose bushes.

Of only medium height, she somehow on the stage suggested tallness. Her hair was once of typical Italian jet-blackness, but long ago it turned quite white, and she was forced on the stage to wear wigs; off the stage, she is said to have taken pride in her white hair. For many years she appeared on the stage without “make-up” of any kind, but after about 1900 she found it necessary as a means to the appearance of youth. Among the Italians she was known as “_dalle belle mani_,” for her hands were, perhaps, her chief beauty, small and beautifully wrought; and like the Italian she was, she used them expressively and gracefully. Her reticent nature showed itself in her personal tastes. Off stage and on she dressed with great simplicity, and she disliked jewelry.[124]

She became a great reader, and though she never acquired English, Shakespeare was one of her enthusiasms. Maeterlinck was another. Cryptic sciences fascinated her. In modern art, her sympathies were with the symbolists and impressionists. It was not strange that d’Annunzio, the poet-dramatist-novelist who was making his presence felt in Italy about the time of her Paris triumph, should appeal to her as a kindred spirit. His fiery exaltation of human passions, his undoubted poetic gifts, she took for real genius, and about 1900 the world heard that Duse had forsworn all dramatists else and would act henceforth nothing but d’Annunzio’s plays. The poet and the actress formed an association that was plainly more than that of friendship or professional coöperation. That she was passionately devoted to d’Annunzio for some years, and that their friendship was broken by the publication of one of his novels--in which he made literary use of what she considered their sacred alliance--was the talk of Europe. The resulting separation she is said to have taken, as she had her earlier love affair, with tragic seriousness. How much her retirement from the stage was due to this disappointment, and how much merely to advancing age, it is difficult to say.

The d’Annunzio campaign was not a success, even in Italy. His plays were not saved by patriotic interest in the author or by affection for the actress from being thought decadent and undramatic, though everywhere the richness of their poetic strain was recognized. Duse’s faith however, until the rupture with d’Annunzio, was unreasoning and unswerving. She came to the United States again in 1902, acting in his plays.[125] She did nothing with them to add to the fame she had earlier acquired, though, in spite of d’Annunzio, her acting still retained its freedom from artificiality or exaggeration.[126]

After her return to Europe her appearances became more infrequent. In 1904 she gave a “command performance” at the English court (she had always been popular in England, which received comparatively well even the d’Annunzio plays), and in 1906 she came all the way from Italy to assist in the great testimonial to Ellen Terry. Illness, which assailed her often, and weariness of her work, herself and all things else, kept her from the stage most of the time. She continued, however, to keep her company constantly under salary and at her command, and as late as 1909 it was her custom, when at rare intervals the spirit moved her, to assemble them for brief appearances in the European capitals. Of late years she has given her energy to the founding of a home for aged actors.

By means first of vivid imagining and then by the revealing power of an unobtrusive, lucid art Duse made herself the greatest _artiste_ of her day. When the French said she had widened the horizon of her art they paid tribute to what was, after all, something akin to original genius.

“The furthest extremes of Duse’s range as an artist,” wrote Bernard Shaw, who is only one of the critics to give her the foremost place among modern actresses, “must always remain a secret between herself and a few fine observers. I should say without qualification that it is the best modern acting I have ever seen.... Duse is the first actress whom we have seen applying the method of the great school to characteristically modern parts or to characteristically modern conceptions of old parts.... In Duse you necessarily get the great school in its perfect integrity, because Duse without her genius would be a plain little woman of no use to any manager.... Duse, _with_ her genius, is so fascinating that it is positively difficult to attend to the play, instead of attending wholly to her.... Sarah Bernhardt has nothing but her own charm.... Duse’s own private charm has not yet been given to the public. She gives you Césarine’s charm, Marguérite Gauthier’s charm, the charm of La Locandiera, the charm, in short, belonging to the character she impersonates; and you are enthralled by its reality and delighted by the magical skill of the artist without for a moment feeling any complicity either on your own part or on hers in the passion represented.” Shaw did not hesitate to enter into the once popular game of comparing Bernhardt and Duse, and in his estimate Madame Sarah is indeed a bad second. “The French artist’s stock of attitudes and facial effects could be catalogued as easily as her stock of dramatic ideas: the counting would hardly go beyond the fingers of both hands. Duse produces the illusion of being infinite in variety of beautiful pose and motion. Every idea, every shade of thought and mood, expresses itself delicately but vividly to the eye.... When it is remembered that the majority of tragic actors excel only in explosions of those passions which are common to man and brute, there will be no difficulty in understanding the indescribable distinction which Duse’s acting acquires from the fact that behind every stroke of it is a distinctively human idea.”

Duse even in her early career, when she was but little more than twenty, had already broken with dramatic traditions.[127] There was a fairly definite Italian tradition which had been made familiar by Ristori and which had been fostered by Salvini. If Duse had been French instead of Italian and if she had undergone the regular training of the _Conservatoire_, she would have met with another tradition, of which at the time Bernhardt was becoming an efficient missionary, imposing its standards even outside of France. Duse in some way escaped all traditions. Her training, such as it was, had been with strolling players and in provincial theatres. What this experience did succeed in giving her was the habit of dramatic expression, a habit that, by the time she had arrived at the age when the usual stage-struck girl becomes an actress, had made her mistress of self-expression, free from self-consciousness. Added to this habit of going directly to the expression of an idea or emotion there was, in Duse’s case, besides the sheer womanliness that shone through all her work, the ardent, sympathetic imagination that enabled her to project herself into another personality, sharing its emotions and divining its experiences and actions. When these emotions and these actions reached the stage of expression there was no rigid, school-taught method to hamper her. An ingrained habit of expression, coupled with an illuminating, self-effacing imagination, formed the secret of Duse’s famed “naturalness.” Most actresses interpret or “portray” a character; Duse became the character itself, transmuted into life in terms of Duse’s own mind and spirit, and, as often as not something finer, more noble, more sensitive, than the dramatist’s conception. Such a character, with her, was “a figure designed and modeled beforehand, proportioned, poised, and polished to the finger tips with a sculptor’s patient assiduity, and then, by an ever renewed miracle endowed with ‘the crowded hour of glorious life’ at the electric touch of the artist’s imagination.”[128]

ADA REHAN

As a superbly alive, radiant personality, Ada Rehan stands out in the memory of any one who has ever seen her. She is of the great line of actresses. She is (or one should say _was_, for Ada Rehan several years ago passed from the stage) more nearly a Woffington, a Terry, than any actress America has yet produced. Like Ellen Terry, she was a miraculous blend of regal force, charm, and thoroughly grounded ability.

[Illustration: ADA REHAN]