Part 16

“M. Deburau undertakes moreover the care of the properties of any piece performed—that is to say, he will look after them and distribute them every evening, and lock them up after the performance, etc.

“In consideration of this further clause M. Bertrand undertakes to pay M. Deburau 10 francs weekly in addition to his salary, and this is accepted by the latter.

“(_Signed_) BERTRAND. “DEBURAU.”

The spectacular pantomime-harlequinades in which Deburau was extraordinary for his spirit, his gestures, and his facial play, in which he abandoned himself to all manner of fantasies, were: _Le Bœuf Enragé_, _Ma Mère L’Oie_, _La Mauvaise Tête_, _Le Billet de Mille Francs_.

_Les Épreuves_, a great pantomime-harlequinade in thirteen scenes, in the English manner, by Deburau and M. Charles, was cast in the following manner:—_Harlequin_, Cossard; _Pierrot_, Deburau; _Pandolphe_, Laplace; _Léandre_, Orphée; _Isabella_, Mademoiselle Isménie; _La Fée_, Madame Lefèvre.

Isabella is the daughter of old Pandolphe. She is in love with Harlequin, who is protected by a fairy. Léandre wishes to marry Isabella, who runs away with her lover. Pandolphe, followed by his servant Pierrot and by Léandre, the possessor of a talisman, pursues them.

Pierrot is in a public place. Instead of following his master, he is sniffing round a pastrycook’s shop and at last decides to enter it; within he discovers his mistake; the shop is a milliner’s. Having no use for the bonnets that are offered him, he goes out again in quest of the pastrycook, whose shop is on the other side of the square. But the shops perform a fantastic _chassé-croisée_, and Pierrot discovers himself once more at the milliner’s. This being several times repeated, Pierrot is worn out and ends by being amused. He loses his head and performs incoherences. He upsets the shoemaker’s stall and then assumes such absurd and ridiculous poses before the customers of a vintner that they depart scandalised. After several pleasantries, some of them of a distinctly coarse order, he draws down punishment upon his head. His dupes unite against him and, being ten to one, they valiantly pursue Pierrot. Pandolphe and the beautiful Léandre come to his aid and a battle royal is fought with broom-sticks.

In the next scene Pierrot, to throw his enemies off the scent, conceals himself under the garments of a mountebank. He arrives in the midst of a village fête, and there, assisted by Pandolphe, who plays the fiddle, and Léandre, who plays the trombone, he beats a big drum as if his aim were to burst it. The village folk begin to dance, but presently become angry, for no apparent reason. Pierrot and his acolytes have little chance against them, and they escape before the blows that threaten.

Next, Pierrot’s head is cut off in a tavern. It is glued on again. The doctor, who is none other than Harlequin, demands his fee, but Pierrot pretends that his head is not properly re-attached, and receives a shower of blows from the false doctor.

In the following scene he is disguised as a woman, no doubt with a view to escaping from the ill intentions of Harlequin. He is about to do his washing when, after the fashion of pantomimic fantasy, an Englishman with red whiskers and an impossible collar comes to order Pierrot to wash some soiled linen. Pierrot finds the task disgusting, refuses it, and ends by throwing the Englishman into the tub, whereupon he runs away.

He is again in a tavern, and, after an adventure with a thief, he finds himself in need of a bath. He seeks the baths, but in that country there are no baths except for women. He assumes a bonnet and a petticoat, and enters one of those establishments, wherein he is badly received, for under a stroke of the fairy’s wand the baths are changed into a roasting-house and Pierrot finds himself roasting on a grille.

Delivered from this, and having no longer any garments, he enlists and becomes a soldier that he may be clothed. He quarrels with the corporal and fights a duel with pistols. Pierrot loads his own weapon with nothing but a candle, but he plants this candle full in the face of his adversary. This remarkable feat of arms causes him to be appointed drum-major on the spot. He immediately holds a review of the drummers, the oldest of whom is not four years of age.

The piece ends by an apotheosis in which we behold the rout of Léandre, who has lost his talisman. Harlequin and Isabella are united by a cupid with cardboard wings, arrayed in a garland of roses, and a sky-blue tunic: he extends his protecting arms over the two lovers and promises them a life of eternal happiness.

“It has been pretended,” says M. Champfleury, “that Deburau died as the result of a fall at the Funambules. Deburau died of asthma, which had been undermining his health for five years.

“His medical advisers had prescribed for him a long period of rest; but he thought only of his public. For five years he was afflicted by a cough that tore his lungs. But the moment he appeared on the stage the affliction would leave him; he would become once more for a quarter of an hour young, happy and healthy. The terrible disease, however, awaited him in the wings, and would lay its claws on the breast of the mime every time he made his exit.

“The cough became so tyrannical that Deburau was compelled to rest. One day he felt better. The bills announced his reappearance. At most, he had been absent for three weeks, but as a consequence there was a long impatient queue that would have filled five theatres.

“Be it noted that the performance was _Les Noces de Pierrot_, a farce which had been played six hundred times at the theatre of the Funambules. The shouts and roars of the spectators during the first half of the evening may be imagined. Outside, those who had been unable to enter shouted still more loudly. After the three vaudevilles the usual three knocks were heard.

“The curtain rose slowly. Deburau appeared in his white costume, a posy in his button-hole, a pretty girl on his arm. It is impossible to conceive an idea of the enthusiasm in the theatre; it was frenetic. In the gods four hundred faces were alight with joy; eight hundred eyes devoured the mime; four hundred mouths roared ‘Bravo!’ The heights of delirium were reached. Those who had been unable to enter shouted outside the door.

“Deburau quite simply placed his hand on his heart below his bridegroom’s posy. A tear ploughed through the flour on his countenance.

“A real tear is so rare in the theatre!

“A little while afterwards a slight incident proved the solemnity of this performance. At the introduction of the pantomime the peasants—boys and girls—are grouped upon the stage. Apart, the bailie, who is a traitor, plots his infamies. The orchestra plays the refrain of the dance.

“Ordinarily Deburau would now execute one of those eccentric dances the secret of which died with him; it was a mixture of the steps of the Directoire and of the more audacious steps of the _cancan_. More than ordinarily affected, his heart too full of joy, Deburau did not dance.

“‘The _chahut_!’ cried a rough voice.

“‘No, no!’ replied the whole theatre.

“The most vulgar of publics has its moments of exquisite delicacy. It had understood the emotion of the great comedian.

“Towards midnight there was a great gathering at the stage door. Deburau came forth. He had preserved, no doubt through a presentiment, his white bridegroom’s posy. It was the posy of his nuptials with Death.

“A thousand voices shouted: ‘Vive Deburau!’ But Death, that cruel ghoul, was in haste to embrace her pale bridegroom.

“He died a few days later (1846).”

A little while before this last performance of which M. Champfleury writes, an incident took place in a performance of the _Épreuves_ which showed the public’s affection for Deburau; it was the occasion of the fall to which his death has been wrongly attributed.

At the end of the tenth scene Deburau was to disappear through a trap-door, and this was not working properly. He stamped impatiently with his foot upon the trap, and it was precisely at this moment that it gave way. His body had lost its poise and, as he went through, his head was thrown back and struck the stage. The scene being changed, the manager came forward to announce that M. Deburau was wounded. The audience was about to withdraw, after having expressed its sympathy with the mime, when Deburau himself appeared and wished to continue. “Enough! enough!” was cried on every side by the idolatrous public, but by a gesture Pierrot made them understand that he was too deeply touched not to continue, and the theatre shook with the applause and the bravos of the spectators.

George Sand, who was in one of the stage boxes, having perceived him in the wings holding his head in an attitude of pain, went on the morrow to inquire his condition. He wrote her his thanks for the inquiry and at the same time for an article in praise of him which she had published in the _Constitutionnel_:

“MADAME,—Permit me to address you my double thanks for the interest you are kind enough to take in a little accident which has had no serious consequences for me, and for the kindly article published in the _Constitutionnel_, in which, concerning yourself benevolently for my future, you extol my poor talent with a warmth and a spirit that are really irresistible.

“I hardly know in what terms to express my gratitude. My pen is like my voice on the stage, but my heart is like my countenance, and I pray you to accept its sincere expression.

“I have the honour to be your servant,

“DEBURAU.

“_P.S._—It was my intention to go to thank you in person, but rehearsals have prevented this. Be good enough, I beg you, to excuse me.

“PARIS, _9 Feb. 1846_.”

“Deburau was charming in all his ways. He would never be tempted to the least drop of champagne, out of fear, he said, for his nerves, and because he required the completest self-possession for his performances. I have never seen an artist who was more serious, more conscientious, more religious in his art. He loved it passionately, and spoke of it as of a grave thing, whilst always speaking of himself with the extremest modesty. He studied incessantly and was never weary, notwithstanding continued and even excessive playing. He did not trouble to think whether the admirable subtleties of his play of countenance and his originality of composition were appreciated by artists. He worked to satisfy himself and to realise his fancy. This fancy, which appeared to be so spontaneous, was studied beforehand, with extraordinary care” (George Sand: _Histoire de Ma Vie_).

Deburau’s son took up his father’s career in 1847. He was perhaps the handsomest and most elegant Pierrot that was ever seen. By his suppleness, his grace and charming fantasy, he rightly acquired an enormous vogue.

Paul Legrand, born at Saintes in 1820, played at first in the Théâtre des Funambules, comic parts in vaudeville and the rôles of Léandre in pantomime. It was only in 1845 that he undertook the rôles of Pierrot. A pupil of Deburau, he succeeded him in this character in 1847. He sustained in that theatre and afterwards with honour in the _Folies-Nouvelles_ his double rivalry with the memory of Deburau and the deserved success of Deburau’s son. He was less elegant in shape than the latter, but none the less pleasing to the eye by his attitudes. He was full of resources, gifted with a handsome countenance, and a very characteristic expression, full of comical and bizarre notions and inventions, and—and this in particular distinguishes his talent—he had a peculiar power of producing pathetic and dramatic effects. Like the celebrated Thomassin, he drew laughter and tears at one and the same time; so that he may be reckoned as a mime of the very first order.

The first creations of Paul Legrand at the Funambules were: _L’Œuf Rouge et l’Œuf Blanc_, _Pierrot Valet de la Mort_, _Pierrot Pendu_, by M. Champfleury; _Pierrot Recompensé_, _Pierrot Marquis_, etc.

Summoned to London in December 1847 by Madame Céleste, who was managing the Adelphi Theatre, he remained for a year in England. But the English, accustomed to the much more exaggerated performances of their clowns, could make nothing of the subtle and witty expressions of the French Pierrot. Legrand returned to the Funambules in 1849, to find himself replaced there by Deburau’s son. But all Pierrots are brothers. They played concurrently together: _Les Deux Pierrots_, _Des Trois Pierrots_, with Dimier, called Calpestri; _Les Deux Blancs_, etc.

In 1853, a new pantomime theatre having been opened (Les Folies-Nouvelles), Legrand was engaged there, and from that day, being the master of his actions and able to give a free rein to his fancy, he invested the type of Pierrot with an originality and a unique colour of his own.

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The English Pierrot, or rather the English CLOWN, is a bizarre and fantastic creation not based upon any French type. The Florentine Stenterello alone may be compared with him by his singular methods. And what an extraordinary fancy has presided over the dressing of this personage, who seems to have been born among the savages of America! He is arrayed in a tight-fitting tunic, white, red, yellow, green, in stripes, in squares or in circles; his face is pasted with flour, set off with stripes, with moustachios, with impossible eyebrows; his cheeks are raddled with a brutal carmine; his forehead is carried up to the summit of the occiput and surmounted by a wig of a blazing red, from the height of which a little stiff queue lifts itself towards heaven. His manners are no less singular than his costume. He is not mute, like our Pierrot; on the contrary, he holds forth in an extremely buffoon manner and is in addition a very able acrobat. Kemp and Boxwell, circus clowns, were the types of this personage. It was impossible to see Boxwell without admiring his strength and his adroitness, and without laughing at his versatility and bizarre effects.

To define the English clown, M. Champfleury cites the following passage borrowed from Baudelaire:—

“The English Pierrot is by no means the personage pale as the moon, mysterious as silence, supple and mute as the serpent, lean and long as a pole, to which we were accustomed by Deburau. The English Pierrot enters like a tempest, falls like a bale, and shakes the house when he laughs. This laughter resembles a joyful thunderstorm. He is a short thick fellow, who has increased his bulk by a costume loaded with ribbons which fill upon his person the same office as the feathers on a bird, or the hair upon a Persian cat. Over the flour on his countenance he has plastered crudely, without gradation or transition, two enormous discs of pure scarlet. His mouth is increased by a simulated prolongation of the lips carried out in two carmine strokes, so that when he laughs this mouth of his seems to open from ear to ear. As for the character, at bottom it is the same as that which we know: egotistical heedlessness and neutrality; hence the accomplishment of all rapacious and gluttonous fancies, to the detriment now of Harlequin, now of Cassandre, and of Léandre. But with this difference, that where Deburau thrust in the point of his finger that he might afterwards lick it, the clown thrusts in both hands and both feet, and this may express all that he does; his is the vertigo of hyperbole. This Pierrot passes by a woman who is washing her doorstep; after having emptied her pockets he seeks to cram into his own the sponge, the broom, the soap and even the very water itself.”

This exaggerated personage of the English pantomime is a direct descendant of the clownish peasants of the theatre of Shakespeare. No dramatic author ever understood his public as did he. He knew not only how to captivate the attention of Queen Elizabeth and her court by presenting such heroes as no longer existed in his day, but he knew also how to amuse and satisfy his coarse groundlings, who drank and smoked throughout the performance. He knew how to put into the mouth of his clowns exactly what each naïve spectator would have said under similar circumstances. He knew, in short, how to adapt to the English stage the eternal type of Bertoldo.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century a dancer, acrobat and mime named Grimaldi made his appearance on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne in Paris. Dancing one day before the Turkish ambassador, he gave such a leap in honour of his Excellency that he struck his head against the crystal lustre suspended above it. One of the girandoles, detached by the blow, struck the ambassador of the Sublime Porte on the nose and narrowly missed putting out one of his eyes. The Turk in a passion laid a complaint before his ministry, demanding no doubt the bastinado as a punishment for the clumsy dancer. But the minister condemned Grimaldi merely to make a public apology to the inviolable representative of the Grand Turk.

Grimaldi had a son, Giuseppe Grimaldi, who had a long career in the fairs of Italy and France, dancing and singing in pantomime. In 1755 he went to England to play in the ballet pantomimes at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. The critics of the time found only one fault with this Italian buffoon, who became an English clown, that of being too comical. He died in 1788.

One of his sons, Joe Grimaldi, enjoyed great celebrity in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century as a mime at Drury Lane. Charles Dickens did not disdain to edit and publish his Memoirs.

VI

LELIO

In our theatres to-day the part of the lover may be the great leading rôle, or it may fall to the lot of the juvenile lead, or even to that of the comedian. But in the old Italian comedy the lover was just the lover; as it happened, however, that he almost invariably found himself in a comic situation he was nearly always what to-day we should call the comic lover. The endowments required were a fine figure, a handsome face, an agreeable voice, and the elegant manners of a gentleman of the great world. The portraits which have survived show us handsome men dressed in the latest mode of their day.

But the lover, playing sometimes in two different styles of piece, was a serious comedian. Ordinarily this part was undertaken by the chief of the troupe, like Flaminio Scala, who, under the name of Flavio, was an illustrious comedian.

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FLAVIO was a name that had already served to qualify lovers on the Italian stage before Flaminio Scala.

The young Flavio of Ruzzante in _La Vaccaria_ (1533) is thus described by his rival, the rich Polidoro:

“Because he is beautiful, gallant, fecund in sonnets, because he knows music and takes his manners from the court, Flavio imagines that he will be able to hold the love of Fiorinetta! But what will he do when he perceives that money conquers everything? He will curse the contrariness of Fate and the mercilessness of Heaven.”

Polidoro represents the rich, discourteous and overbearing lover. But the beautiful, the elegant gentleman of this epoch, he who, without money, pleases women, who is the mirror of fashion and the flower of wit, is not without being ridiculous upon occasion, and we suspect Ruzzante of having designedly shown him under an effeminate aspect in his comedy _Anconitana_.

Two young gallants of the epoch, sons of a good Sicilian family, are reduced by romantic vicissitudes to the necessity of earning their living, and all that they are capable of doing is to seek service with some noble lady. One of them does so in the capacity of a poet, promising to praise her eternally in prose and in verse:

“I shall study how to sing the praises of her charms in choice rhymes, and I shall laud, I shall extol adoringly, now her enchanting eyes, now her blond tresses, now her lovely neck, now her white hand, now her soft glance, her words, her gestures, her grace, her virtues, her garments, her movements; and that in various manners, in chapters, in epistles, in epilogues, in eclogues, in songs, in impromptus, in sonnets, in madrigals, in stanzas, in odes, and in ballads.”

The other brother, contemning the frivolity of such employment, offers himself in the capacity of a valet and perfumer:

“The ladies to whom I shall give my services need not fear those pomades and unguents which are plastered on to the lips of their husbands when they kiss them. I know how to distil perfumes from plants and trees which not only beautify the face and neck, but further steep the flesh in sweet odours; I can distil waters to render tresses curly and golden, waters to smooth the brow, waters to darken the eyebrows, waters to tint the cheeks, waters to render the lips rosy, the teeth dazzling, the neck white, the hands soft. Their virtues, employed on the different parts of the body, will last three days and three nights, and they will not be succeeded, as is the case with vulgar unguents, by that pallor mottled with various colours which disfigures the countenance on the morrow. I have scents of musk, of ambergris, of lavender, of styrax, with which I mingle the juices of certain other herbs or flowers, producing essences so sweet that I consider these aromas capable of preserving body and soul. Waters of jasmine, of orange flowers, of citron, I repute of no account because I shall distil essences from unknown plants which will be infinitely preferred to all those that are considered most admirable and most precious to-day.”

In 1576 Flaminio Scala (Flavio), _comico acceso_ (impassioned comic, or lover), being then in the prime of youth and the fulness of his talent, placed himself at the head of the _Gelosi_ troupe and, for twenty-eight years, was able to command the applause of Italy and France. This troupe, reconstituted in Venice in 1576, went to Blois in 1577 to perform before King Henry III.; later the company was seen at the Hôtel de Bourbon, which at the time was no more than a chapel with a gallery where a theatre was set up upon occasion for the court fêtes. The ordinary headquarters of the _Gelosi_ company were in Florence. Thence it went out to tour the principal cities of Italy and of France.

From 1576 to 1604 the actors playing the rôles of lover in this remarkable troupe were: Flavio (Flaminio Scala), Oratio (Orazio Nobili, born at Padua), Cinthio (Cintio Fidenzi), Fabrizio, and Aurelio (Adriano Valerini, a Veronese gentleman, doctor of law and a fairly good Latin poet). Valerini left the _Gelosi_ troupe in 1579 to undertake the direction of the _Comici uniti_. At the head of this troupe he was received in 1583 by Cardinal Carlo Borromeo in Milan.

The leading ladies (or _amoureuses_) in the _Gelosi_ during that period were: Isabella (Isabella Andreini), Flaminia, Ardelia, Lidia (second wife of G. B. Andreini) and Laura.

The soubrettes were Franceschina (Silvia Roncagli), Vittoria (Antonella Bajardi), Ricciolina (Maria Antonazzoni), Olivetta, Ortensia, and Nespola. The old women were played under the name of Pasquella.

The lackeys were Pedrolino, Arlecchino, Burattino, Grillo, Mezzetino, Cavicchio (a peasant), Ciccialboncio (a peasant), Bigolo, Memmei, Piombino.