Part 8
The war past, Gabrielle, now fourteen, returned to school at the _Pension Boulet_, _Rue Pigalle_. She applied herself diligently to her somewhat neglected studies, and to such good purpose that the mistress of the school, with whom Gabrielle had become a favorite, offered her a position as an assistant with the younger pupils. She was to be paid forty francs a month, and her luncheon. To her mother this seemed to be the opening of an honorable career. Not so Gabrielle herself, who cherished constantly her already fixed ambition to be an actress. She was, however, fond of children, and to tide affairs over she took a class of the younger pupils. She got along well enough with them with their ordinary lessons, but her own instruction in sewing and embroidery had been neglected, and she had to have the help of the older of her pupils, to bridge the gap.
Occasionally, of a Sunday evening, Gabrielle was taken by her mother to the house of a friend who gathered about herself a modest _salon_. There came such men as Félicien David, the composer, Joseph Kelm, the writer, and the architect, Frantz Jourdain. Gabrielle, young as she was, with her natural gayety and spontaneity at once took her place in the circle. She would sing for the assembly the popular songs of the day--compositions often full of doubtful meanings that she very imperfectly understood. Her little successes naturally strengthened her longing to be an actress, to stir great houses as she amused this little circle of friends.
To Gabrielle’s increasing ambition her mother set herself in opposition. To her mind the forty francs per month was not lightly to be sacrificed. And she said she did not care to be the mother of an actress. She lived to own herself in the wrong.
One evening, as mother and daughter were passing the _Théâtre Français_, they saw a crowd at the stage door. They questioned a bystander and were told that this had been the farewell performance of Regnier. Gabrielle insisted on waiting to see him come out. She had never seen him, but every one knew of Regnier, great artist and lovable personality. Soon he appeared, a little, old man, who got up into his carriage and acknowledged the ovation with a modest and confused air. Gabrielle never forgot her first and touching glimpse of the man to whom she was soon to owe so much.
The struggle with her mother over her cherished plan to go on the stage went on for another year. A Mlle. Angelo, a friend of Mme. Réju, attempted to make peace by offering Gabrielle a _dot_ of 10,000 francs if she would accept a plan to marry as a solution of the difficulty. But Gabrielle refused to be bought off, and steadfastly clung to her ambition, with the result that the mother at last gave in.
The friend from whose windows Gabrielle had seen the battling Communists had returned to Paris and now took up the girl’s cause. She introduced Gabrielle to Charles Simon,[94] who knew well the actor Regnier, now an honored teacher at the _Conservatoire_. The girl was duly introduced to Regnier, who received her affably but tried to dissuade her from attempting the career of an actress. He was unable to overcome the ardent resolution of Gabrielle, and finally consented to receive her, for two months, on the condition that if at the end of the time she failed to convince him of her calling she would promise to give up the attempt for good and all. Sure of success, she promised.
Regnier’s first task was to cure his pupil of a thickness of diction. For hours every day she practiced enunciation, but found her master hard to please. Nevertheless he must have seen promise in her, for during the summer (of 1872) he wrote to Charles Simon that when classes assembled he would receive Gabrielle as a regularly enrolled pupil. When the _Conservatoire_ reopened, she passed her entrance examination by reading the rôle of Henriette in _Les Femmes Savantes_, and was admitted. Here began, when she was fifteen, the serious work of her career.
She was an ardent pupil. Not content with the regular course, she and her mother squeezed their narrow means that the girl might amplify her studies with a number of private lessons with Regnier at his house. He gave her the lessons, but when she offered to pay, he refused to accept. “One does not accept pay,” he said, “when he is privileged to deal with the temperament of an artist.” And, thus, the trial months past, Regnier, instead of sending Gabrielle packing, engaged himself to teach her as best he could, gratis, till her period as a student should end.
In January (1873), came the annual elimination examination. Gabrielle, like the rest, submitted to the test that weeded out the less promising pupils. She had a rôle--that of Agnes--not altogether suited to her, her dress was not too well chosen, she was at the most awkward of ages, and she was by no means the prettiest girl of the lot. Gazing at her, Edward Thierry, director of the _Comédie Française_, said in a doubtful tone to Regnier, “Do we keep _this_?” “Yes,” promptly replied Regnier, “she is in my class and she stays.” At the end of the school year came the annual competition. For her part in the preliminary examination Regnier chose _L’Intrigue Épistolaire_. Thierry, again one of the judges, failed to recognize her and said, “This child is charming! She is the hope of the competition.” And, imitating his colleague’s former doubting tone, Regnier now said, “We keep _this_, then?”
In the competition itself Gabrielle, in this same scene of _L’Intrigue Épistolaire_, fell just short of a prize and received a _premier accessit_, or honorable mention,--not bad for a girl just turned sixteen and a mere beginner.[95]
In this competition Mlle. Legault won the first prize in comedy and with it a post at the _Comédie Française_. Her departure left vacant a scholarship of 1,200 francs. In the same competition her successor to the scholarship was to be determined. Regnier had resolved to get the scholarship, if possible, for Gabrielle. The professors who sat in judgment were forbidden by a rule of the _Conservatoire_ to impart personally any news of the outcome. Such information was to come only from the administration. Regnier, however, conspired with his favorite pupil to relieve her of suspense. If she were the successful candidate for the scholarship he was to rub his nose as he left the building. After the meeting, therefore, she stood anxiously in the _porte-cochère_, awaiting her teacher and the behavior of his index finger. Imagine the importance of the moment to the rather shabbily dressed, not too well-fed, nervously anxious girl. To stay her hunger as she waited she was eating bits from a long loaf tucked under her arm. First came M. Legouvé, who, by a curious chance, rubbed his nose briskly as he left the building. Then came MM. Beauplan and Ambroise Thomas, and each, oddly enough, suddenly gave his nose a vigorous rub. Gabrielle wondered, but could not believe that all these demonstrations were for her. Finally, out came Regnier, smiling, and slowly rubbing his nose with the end of his forefinger. For the moment the loaf of bread had been forgotten. Now she waved it aloft, dancing about in an ecstasy of joy.
The winning of the scholarship made it possible for Gabrielle to go on with her studies in the two months’ interval that preceded the reopening of the _Conservatoire_.
Francisque Sarcey was discerning enough to note the promise in this sixteen year old girl. He said of her, in speaking to the playwright Meilhac: “She has a face you would know as Parisian a mile off ... and she is full of the devil. If this girl doesn’t make her way, I shall be much surprised.... She is charming; she is piquant; and if I were a manager I would engage her out of hand.”
To eke out the family income, Gabrielle had two pupils, youngster though she was. They were young girls from Gascony, and it was her task to cure them of their un-Parisian accent. She remembers that one day when she was on her way to her pupils, the omnibus passed a church. The crowd about the door, and the numerous flowers, denoted a funeral. “They are burying Desclée,”[96] said a fellow passenger. Gabrielle had seen Desclée in some of her notable successes:--_Froufrou_, _La Femme de Claude_, _La Princesse Georges_--and had been stirred to renewed ambition by her art. So now she was tempted to alight and pay her respects to the dead actress’ memory; but she remembered her lesson, and went on to her pupils.
Her last year (1873–4) at the _Conservatoire_ Mme. Réjane remembers not only for its months of hard study but for an incident or two that, trivial in themselves, had considerable importance in her youthfully ambitious mind. One morning Regnier called on her to recite “_La Fille d’Honneur_,” a poem she had memorized by hearing it often spoken by a fellow pupil. She was horribly nervous. Her own two pupils were present, as _auditrices_, and Gabrielle feared the usual frequent interruption of Regnier, who as a rule made his pupils repeatedly go back over imperfectly recited passages. This time, however, he allowed her to proceed to the end, which agitated her still more, and then he said in a solemn tone as if pronouncing a final judgment on her: “_C’est très bien, ma petite; descends, tu seras une grande artiste_.” Réjane says that the intense joy of that instant never was equaled afterwards, even in the moments of her greatest triumphs.
The pupils of the _Conservatoire_ were permitted to accept engagements to play on Sundays at the little theatre of the _Tour-d’Auvergne_. There it was that Gabrielle made her first public appearance. The play was _Les Deux Timides_, and in acting it she had the inexpert assistance of Albert Carré. In the middle of the piece M. Carré was seated at a desk, writing a letter, when his nose began to bleed. He bolted from the stage, leaving the _débutante_ alone to face her first audience in the midst of a staggering contretemps. Advice was hoarsely whispered from the wings to do this or that, to walk off, to sit down, to wait for Carré; Gabrielle coolly seated herself and took up the writing of the letter until, a moment later, the bleeding stopped, Carré returned.[97]
When the concours of 1874 arrived--the annual prize contest of the _Conservatoire_--Gabrielle’s progress had been such that her fellow-students and her professor all thought her sure of the first prize in comedy. Regnier chose for her one of Roxelane’s scenes in _Les Trois Sultanes_. When she had finished she felt that she had done herself scant justice. Then the unexpected happened. She was also to appear in a dialogue called _La Jeunesse_, by Emile Augier. A youthful couple met at a fountain. The young man says: “Cyprienne!” She exclaims: “Ah! Mon Dieu!” Gabrielle delivered this commonplace speech with such a sincerity and intensity of emotion that the audience broke into applause. Reassured, she played the dialogue through to the end with a command of emotional acting that surprised even her friends, for she had been thought of as only a _comédienne_, a soubrette.
When the prizes were announced, Gabrielle found that she had not only missed getting the first comedy prize, but that she was to get only a share of the second; the other half was to go to Mlle. Jeanne Samary, she “of the perfect laugh.”
Regnier was chagrined. “_Malfaiteurs_,” he called the judges. And some of the newspaper comment showed a recognition of unusual merit in the young Réjane. Sarcey, the reigning king of the Paris critics, had again been present, and _Le Temps_ rang with his praises of her. And his praises were perhaps better than official prizes. A score of years later, M. Meunier wrote:
“To-day, as then, though twenty years have passed, there is no possibility of success, no chance of getting an engagement, for a pupil on leaving the _Conservatoire_, unless a certain all-powerful critic, supreme judge, arbiter beyond appeal, sees fit to pronounce a decision confirming the verdict of the Examining Jury.... He smiles or frowns, the Jury bows its head. The pupils tremble before this monstrous Fetich--for the Public thinks with him, and sees only through his spectacles; and no star can shine till his short sight has discovered it. This puissant astronomer is Monsieur Francisque Sarcey....
“Monsieur Sarcey smiled upon and applauded Réjane’s début at the _Conservatoire_. He consecrated to her as many as fifty lines of intelligent criticism; and I pray to Heaven they may be remembered to his credit on the Day of Judgment. Here they are, in that two-penny, half-penny style of his, so dear to the readers of _Le Temps_:
“‘I own that, for my part, I should have willingly awarded to the latter (Mlle. Réjane) a first prize. It seems to me that she deserved it. But the Jury is frequently influenced by extrinsic and private motives, into which it is not permitted to pry. A first prize carries with it the right of entrance into the _Comédie Française_; and the Jury did not think Mademoiselle Réjane, with her little wide-awake face, suited to the vast frame of the House of Molière. That is well enough; but the second prize which it awarded her authorized the director of the _Odéon_ to receive her into his company; and that perspective alone ought to have sufficed to dissuade the Jury from the course it took.... Every one knows that at present the _Odéon_ is, for a beginner, a most indifferent school.... Instead of shoving its promising pupils into it by the shoulders, the _Conservatoire_ should forbid them to approach it, lest they should be lost there. What will Mademoiselle Réjane do at the _Odéon_? Show her legs in _La Jeunnesse de Louis XIV_, which is to be revived at the opening of the season? A pretty state of things. She must either go to the _Vaudeville_ or to the _Gymnase_. It is there that she will form herself; it is there that she will learn her trade, show what she is capable of, and prepare herself for the _Comédie Française_, if she is ever to enter it.... She recited a fragment from _Les Trois Sultanes_.... I was delighted by her choice. _Les Trois Sultanes_ is so little known nowadays.... What wit there is in her look, her smile! With her small eyes, shrewd and piercing, with her little face thrust forward, she has so knowing an air, one is inclined to smile at the mere sight of her. Does she perhaps show a little too much assurance? What of it? ’Tis the result of excessive timidity. But she laughs with such good grace, she has so fresh and true a voice, she articulates so clearly, she seems so happy to be alone and to have talent, that involuntarily one thinks of Chenier’s line: “_Sa bienvenue au jour lui rit dans tous les yeux_.”... I shall be surprised if she does not make her way.’”
Second prize or first, it mattered not, really; for she had, almost at once, offers from three theatres: the _Odéon_, the government theatre that by the conditions of the award had a right to her services, and also from the _Vaudeville_ and the _Gymnase_. M. Duquesnel of the _Odéon_ proposed, as Sarcey had predicted, that she take a part in the impending _La Jeunesse de Louis XIV_. Réjane, however, declined to cut short her studies at the _Conservatoire_, which had yet a few weeks to run.
Her choice fell to the _Vaudeville_, as the theatre best suiting her methods and sympathies. Also, the pay there was to be four thousand francs per year, and costumes, as against one hundred and fifty francs per month at the _Odéon_. With the directors of the _Vaudeville_ she signed a provisional contract, by the terms of which she was to join their forces if the _Odéon_ did not press home its claim to her. Weeks passed, the October openings came round, and still there was no summons. In her anxiety she went to the office of the Minister of Fine Arts and from him obtained a letter releasing her, in two days’ time, from her obligations to the _Odéon_. Before the two days were up, however, she received from Duquesnel a summons to a rehearsal of _La Jeunnesse_. Réjane hastened to see him. “Well,” he said, “we shall rehearse to-morrow at one.” Réjane replied that she had one at the _Vaudeville_ at the same hour. Duquesnel objected to the loss of his promising recruit and showed an official letter bestowing her services upon the _Odéon_. Gabrielle in turn showed the letter from the Minister. Duquesnel was forced to yield, but afterwards lodged a suit in which the _Odéon_ was awarded damages. “So,” said Réjane to Jules Huret, “if the _Odéon_ can to-day boast its velvet chairs, it has me to thank for them.”
And so Réjane began her career, when she was less than eighteen, with a two years’ engagement at the _Vaudeville_. Her first few rôles[98] were unimportant, and in them she attracted no particular notice, but in September (1875) she appeared in _Madame Lili_, a one-act play in verse, to such good purpose that Sarcey wrote of her: “Mademoiselle Réjane is charming, with her roguery, her ingenuousness, her tenderness. This pretty and piquant girl is spirited to her fingertips. What a piece of good luck it is that she cannot sing; for if she had a voice operetta would gobble her up.”
Yet Regnier wrote to her in the following April, on the day following her appearance in _Le Premier Tapis_ (in which she sang an interpolated song by Lecocq): “I was really astonished by your singing. You had better cultivate this talent, which I didn’t know you had.” Offenbach also heard her in this piece, and liked her singing so well that he offered her twenty thousand francs a year for her signature to a contract at the _Variétés_. Luckily she made no attempt to break her contract with the _Vaudeville_.
That contract she renewed again and again until she had played eight seasons at the theatre of her first choice. The best guide to her growing art, and to the beginnings of her fame, are found in her letters from Regnier, who followed her career with loving watchfulness, and often with frank, kindly comment on her work. Their correspondence forms a charming chapter of her youth.
Regnier’s birthday fell on the first of April. Every year Réjane wrote to him on March 31 and sent him some small gift. In the year when she was beginning her work at the _Vaudeville_ he wrote her:
“Ought you really send me presents, my child? Do I need assurances of your affection? Do follow my advice, dear girl, save your money and give me nothing but your friendship. That is the only present I desire from you and, I warn you, it is the only one I shall accept in the future. You hope to be able to celebrate my birthday for many years to come. I hope so too. You will never have a better friend, a better adviser, and no one, save only your mother, will ever bear your welfare more at heart. I thank you, none the less, and with all my heart I embrace you.”
At the close of a health-seeking trip she took in Holland and Belgium in the summer of 1875 he wrote: “I knew you would get many new impressions. You must always be on the search for like ones, for your spirit, your ideas, your taste, your talent will thus find themselves. Frequent our museums, stimulate your mind, read a great deal, even do a little writing. Such is the intellectual regimen that will profit your soul as the exercises I have advised will benefit your gentle body.”
Less exalted advice comes after _Le Verglas_ and _Le Premier Tapis_, besides the commendation of her singing in the latter piece: “Keep at your study and your work and let me repeat that it is the simple and the veracious that brings the true effect. But I was more than satisfied with you yesterday. _But_, please remember your carriage--don’t waddle on one leg and then on the other; don’t swallow your syllables and your words. Pronounce everything without affectation, but also without negligence. I embrace you.”
After she had been a year and a half in harness, he was still emphasizing the fundamentals. After _Le Perfide comme l’Onde_ he wrote (November 26, 1876): “You are very pretty and very amusing in your rôle.... _You are a comédienne_,--that you have proved. Between ourselves, the other young ladies frightened me a bit. Do not you allow yourself to fall into the general carelessness of carriage and pronunciation. Really talk to those to whom your words are addressed, and when your eyes peer into the auditorium remember it is a vacuum, and never talk to any one therein. You know how to avoid this fault, so look out for it, and remain natural. But you played well, were applauded, and deserved to be.”
Her work must have pleased the directors of the _Vaudeville_, for when the time came to renew her contract she signed for nine thousand francs, a considerable advance over four thousand. Her mother, however, had set her heart on nine thousand six hundred francs, and her objections threatened to break off the negotiations. Réjane promised, however, unknown to her mother, to repay the disputed six hundred francs during the engagement.
“I economized on cress,” she relates. “Instead of getting two boxes at three sous apiece, I got two boxes at five sous. From time to time I put fifteen centimes into my boots. And one fine day I carried to the managers one hundred and fifty laboriously collected francs. I must say, to their credit, that they wouldn’t take the money. But my mother never knew, and sometimes, endeavoring to crush me with the superiority of a strong-minded woman, she would say: “There now! Without me, you would never have had those six hundred francs.”
In the summer of 1877 she grew nervous over the forthcoming production of _Pierre_. She wrote Regnier from Abbeville: “If you could only give me one hour for the third act of _Pierre_. The nearer the time approaches, the more I fear that act--all sentiment. If I am unsupported by your good advice, my dear master, I cannot answer for myself.”
Regnier was eager to help her; and in his response he gives her more fatherly advice: “My greatest wish is to help you in your work.... But is it necessary for you to go to La Bourbelle, where you will stay hardly two weeks? The time seems to me much too short for serious treatment. Can’t you simply betake yourself to the waters of Enghien?
“Talk this over with your doctor: ask him if it is really good for the nerves that that abominable musk or amber odor which perfumes your letters should permeate your whole system. No doubt the odor is agreeable, but still that is a matter of taste.”
The _première_ of _Pierre_ proved the first crowning success for the young actress. Immediately after the performance, unable to restrain her overflowing joy, she wrote to Regnier this enthusiastic letter: