Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Revenge for a lady
REVENGE FOR A LADY.
A certain German, some years ago, gave much offence in France by gravely propounding the question “Is a Frenchman a responsible being?” The impertinent demand was made, be it repeated, some time ago, and of course before a sudden thought struck France, and she proposed to swear Eternal Friendship with Germany. It was met in various ways, but whether the point was solved to the satisfaction of the Teuton mind is not clear. When private unions are contemplated, it is held meet and right to be quite satisfied upon the subject of sanity, and we will hope that the fair-haired Germania, now so assiduously courted by her dark-eyed neighbour, has ascertained that he is quite competent to manage his own affairs, and has been so from December, 1852.
The German’s question occurred to the mind of the present writer as he was refreshing himself at the Café Cardinal, the other evening, after a visit to the theatre of the Palais Royal. Such a thought was a poor return for the un-English comfort of a cool lounge on the Boulevard, some excellent coffee, some indifferent cognac, and an atrocious cigar; but we, nous autres Anglais, do behave badly abroad, and there is some merit in the Englishman on the Boulevard who only insults his hosts mentally, and dresses himself as they dress, or a little better. At all events, the thought came, induced by a retrospective review of a piece which had been played that evening at the Palais Royal, and is still drawing Paris. The writer is not throwing away a chance of his own, or injuring the chances of any of his British fellow dramatists, by describing this drama, for it was unanimously decided by a small but competent committee of English theatrical writers, who sat the evening in question, with adjournments to the Rotund Caffy and elsewhere, that the piece was quite impossible here. Even with Pluto and Proserpine, who, of course, offered themselves as substitutes for the principal personages hereinafter named, it was felt that the thing would not do. Otherwise, one would have been glad to promote the pecuniary interests of MM. Eugene Grangé and Lambert Thiboust, it being formally announced to the dramatic authors of France that the Adelphi Theatre is prepared to follow the example of Mr. Palgrave Simpson and Mr. Charles Reade, in paying French authors for aught that may be taken from them; and as, of course, other managements will show themselves equally honest. But no francs will accrue to MM. Eugene Grangé and Lambert-Thiboust in respect of an English adaptation of “La Beauté du Diable.” We have not even an equivalent for their title.
“But why ‘responsibility,’ Mr. Wild?” Simply thus. There is one form of responsibility which it would seem that the Frenchman delights in having kept before him. His dramatist, his satirist, his caricaturist, never omit an opportunity of reminding him that mankind hath a certain Enemy, who is always seeking to do mischief, and against whom it behoves Frenchmen—and Frenchwomen—to be perpetually on guard. The name of that Enemy is never out of sight or out of hearing in France. The French teacher is not of those who never mention Him to ears polite. You may see Him in bronze on the Fountain of St. Michael, but prostrate; but, in revenge, you may see Him, nine times as large and ugly, sprawling against the side of a house opposite, erect, and loudly proclaiming where you may purchase what he first made necessary—namely, garments that provoke our pride. But he is chiefly brought to your notice on the playbills. An industrious friend of ours has compiled the following list of pieces which have had the greatest success in Paris, and which, consequently, have incessantly reminded the Parisian of his responsibility:
| At the Grand Opera, | “Robert le Diable.” |
| Opera Comique, | “La Part du Diable.” |
| Theatre Lyrique, | “Fra Diavolo.” |
| Porte St. Martin, | “Les Pilules du Diable.” |
| Varietés, | “Les Biblots du Diable.” |
| Vaudeville, | “La Fille du Diable.” |
| Bouffes Parisiennes, | “Orphée aux Enfers.” |
| Gymnase, | “Les Memoires du Diable.” |
| Cirque Imperial, | “Le Diable Boiteux.” |
| Palais Royal, | “La Beauté du Diable.” |
The list could easily be quadrupled, if one had one of the advertisement sheets of the French Mr. Lacy at hand; but ex pede diabolum. It will be allowed that “retro!” is understood in France in a non-natural sense, and that Frenchmen gallantly echo the cry of Marlborough’s soldiers in the smoke, “Let us see the Enemy.”
The special memorandum of responsibility which was offered at the Palais Royal for the first time on the 20th of August last, and is still offered, to the delight of the Palais Royalists, is opened with a prologue, which might just as well be called a first act. Now, as either combination of five letters by which the Enemy is indicated in English is an uglyish word, suppose, without an affectation which might not sit well on countrymen of Milton, Defoe, and Byron, we use the substitutes that were suggested in the Rotund Caffy. Suppose that we speak of Pluto and Proserpine, as, before the modification of the game laws, landlords offered you lion or ostrich, meaning the legally forbidden hare or pheasant. But you will understand that no such disguise is used on the French stage, as will clearly appear presently, and that the first character on the list of the male dramatis personæ is Satan, and that the second in the lady-list is Madame Satan, an excellent place for inscribing a tribute to the humour of M. Hyacinthe and the pleasant effrontery of Madame Thierret.
The first scene is the bath-room of Sat—of Pluto. He is now in his bath, and unseen; but six demons are arranging his toilette-table, and they sing a little chorus in which they express an affectionate hope that by the aid of the curling-irons, Macassar oil (yes, does Mr. Rowland pay for the advertisement?), and perfumes, they shall be able to transform Him en vrai chérubin. Pluto’s voice is heard, bawling for more hot water, and the curtains of the bath being pulled apart, he is seen in his bath, and does not look in the least like the Pluto whom we have seen in our youth, in the furtively inspected cut of the lesson-book, listening to Orpheus, and weeping iron tears. He is “made up” with a faithful attention to the dramatist’s duty to remind Frenchmen of their responsibilities. His attendants send in the water too fast, upon which he flies into a dreadful rage, asks whether they regard him as a lobster, and demands milk of almonds. This, poured into the water, restores him to a better temper, and he expresses a hope that his Beauty, which has for a long time disappeared, will be restored by the magical effect of his bath. Soothed and flattered, he disappears, and presently comes in dressed, and eager to see himself in the glass. The trembling attendants present one, and the rage of Pluto, when he discovers that he is as ugly as ever, is something preternatural. He abuses the demons, and then—“Mabu” being quite a gentleman, apologises to himself, for having been betrayed into the use of objectionable language, but continues to rave, declares that he has tried everything that is advertised, vinaigre de Bully, at un franc cinquante, vinaigre Leotard (quoting the puffs), qui raffermit l’epiderme sans l’irriter, and heaps of other cosmetics; but that he is still almost as ugly as—himself. His want of attraction for the ladies of those parts—for he is a French Pluto—is his special grief, and he describes himself as having been much hurt by the rudeness of a little lady-fiend, to whom he paid a compliment, and who recommended him to go home and go to bed. The demons still endeavour to console him, by reminding him that whatever may be the bad taste of other ladies, his wife still adores him, a suggestion that puts him into a greater rage than ever. Madame Sat—that is to say Proserpine, has outlived her beauty, and he detests her. Then he reads the newspaper, “L’Opinion Tnfernale,” and passing over the doings of certain kings and princes, with a remark that he will have plenty of time to talk to them one of these days, he comes to the announcement that the Acheron, Captain Ashtaroth, has arrived, with a great number of lady-passengers, chiefly opera-dancers. These ladies he declares he must and will see, and he commands the demons, on pain of the most exceptional torments, to make him look captivating. While they are doing their best, the voice of Madame is heard, and Pluto, grumbling that he cannot be let alone, even in his bath-room, shouts out that he is not at-home.
Proserpine, however, stands no nonsense, boxes the ear of an unlucky demon who tries to stop her, and proceeds to scold her husband mightily, and to ridicule him for his attempts to beautify himself. He is clearly hen-pecked, but he remonstrates with her upon the vulgarity of her language, and upon her making a scandal. Let us behave properly, he urges, “hatred in the heart, a smile on the lip, à l’ Anglaise,” But the lady’s anger is demonstrative, and it is perfectly clear that she is intensely jealous, and not to be duped by Pluto’s protestations that he was not even aware of the arrivals that had been announced. A grand quarrel is interrupted by the news that an actor has arrived. Madame adores actors, and wants to see him. But Pluto plucks up a spirit, demands whether he is king in those parts or not, and sends Madame away that he may receive the condemned actor. She departs, but hints to the audience that she has taken such precautions as will prevent her lord from going very far wrong. Pluto demands his wings, and prepares to receive the new guest in the most imposing manner.
Enters, bodily, M. Brasseur, the favourite actor of the Palais Royal, He is not in the least frightened, and being recognised by everybody, Pluto remarking that he has got Brasseur’s photograph, explains that having had a quarrel with his managers, it was followed by a fit of apoplexy, and—of course—there he is, having come by the Barrière d’Enfer, a joke about as hackneyed as our “way to turn ’em green,” but which French wits seem to consider undying fun. The actor is extremely well received, but does not much like certain adjuncts of costume which suddenly grow out of his head, and is consoled by being told that they are the fashion. Henceforth he is called Belphegor, and becomes the accomplice of his new sovereign in his iniquitous plans for the recovery of his lost beauty, a loss made still more clear to Pluto by the way he is treated at a wild dance which follows in the next scene, amid a crowded orgy of the inhabitants of Tartarus. None of the ladies will have anything to say to the old dandy. His fury boils over, and he menaces everybody with the most tremendous chastisement if he is not informed what has become of son ancienne Beauté. He will put them into caldron number three, the one where the vipers are, he will
Then the secret is forced from the terrors of the demons. The disappearance of Pluto’s beauty is a trick of Madame Pluto’s.
Brasseur-Belphegor shows himself worthy the indulgence of his distinguished friend. He throws Madame into a magnetic sleep, and extorts from her an admission of the fact, that eighteen years ago, being very jealous of her Theodore—as she calls Pluto (and if one could suspect a French dramatist of thinking of derivatives, the selection of the name would be charming), she gave away his beauty to a little newborn girl of Madame’s own native country, a child of the village of Bolbec, on the Great Western Railway. A vision is raised, and the girl in question, now of course grown up, is seen as a handsome peasant-girl, surrounded by turkeys, to whom she sings a rustic song. Her name is Fanchette.
Pluto rages once more, and is about to put his wife into a sack, and throw her into the Styx, but is luckily reminded that she is immortal. His second thought is better. He resolves to regain his beauty. He will take Brasseur with him to Normandy. But Brasseur will not go, unless Pluto promises to send him back to life, ensure him a splindid re-engagement at the Palais Royal, the right to refuse to play in the first piece, and the second piece, and the last piece (all good hitting at the demands of favourite actors), and a three months’ congè. Which being agreed to, off they go, leaving Mrs. Pluto in hysterics.
Usually, the slightest French pieces are constructed with the logical carefulness which often elevates the merest bagatelle into a work of art. Unnecessary scenes and unnecessary dialogue are ruthlessly excluded, the end is held steadily in view by the author, and everything is designed to lead up to it. A French dramatist would twist his moustache in bewilderment and horror at a drama of the kind that satisfied our fathers, and satisfies some of their children, with its “carpenter’s scenes” (scenes of talk, in the front of the stage, while the carpenters are preparing to disclose a show), its unhesitating changes from locality to locality, and its thread of a plot, dropped when the author sees good incidental “business,” or thinks of good irrelevant conversation, and occasionally resumed in order to make the audience think that they are assisting at a play. But in this responsibility piece, the writers, bent upon fun, have forgotten to rest their fun upon any clear basis, and the committee at the Rotund Caffy, who had studied construction from the French stage, repaid the lesson by grumbling that MM. Eugene Grangé and Lambert-Thiboust had left part of the story of “La Beauté” in an Anglican fog. Madame Pluto, in her trance, stated that she had conferred the gift upon the young peasant, whose name is Fanchette (and again be it said, by interpolation, that Madame Schneider is the charm of the piece), but when Pluto and M. Brasseur arrive, it turns out, somehow, that the beauty of the former has been distributed among eight young ladies—or rather peasants—and the unfortunate Pluto is like Kehama, and has to make his way through eight doors at once. The Beauté du Diable—the freshness, naïveté, purity—of all the girls must be taken away from them before it can revert to Pluto. The action of the piece, thenceforth, arises out of the means he employs to demoralise the eight peasantesses. It is hardly necessary to say that he does Paris the justice of at once deciding that in Paris is the atmosphere in which the object can be most readily accomplished. Brasseur is an invaluable aid, and he and Pluto make their way into the school where a worthy old country schoolmaster teaches the girls the old-fashioned lessons of virtue. Pluto passes himself off as an Inspector of Schools, and Brasseur takes the dress and character of the old man, and preaches the most objectionable but most delightful doctrines, assuring the readily-convinced pupils that joy and pleasure are the only objects of life. Seven of the girls are the thoughtless, or selfish, or impressionable young women likely to be found in a country village, but the eighth, of course Fanchette, is of a better nature, and moreover, has her nature awakened by love for a nice little rustic lover.
So the ladies are brought to Paris, and we find them in another act revelling at the Moulin Rouge, where Pluto, disguised as a waiter, watches their proceedings, and introduces a good deal of fun on his own account, and cries “Boum” as well—indeed he piques himself on the accomplishment—as if he had been jerking a coffee-pot all his life. In the following act the girls are taken to Baden, by way of completing their education, and it need not be said that ample scope is given, in both acts, to Brasseur, for displaying his special talent, that of assuming a diversity of characters in rapid succession. Towards the end of the piece an opportunity is afforded him of delighting the Parisians by appearing as the conventional English lady of the French stage. She is not the least in the world like any Englishwoman ever seen in Paris or anywhere else, and some of our countrywomen are ridiculous enough to afford material for a legitimate caricature. But the French, with all their esprit, are easily pleased, and it is not worth while for an author or artist to take the trouble of being original or truthful, while the public is content to laugh at an old and silly type of a foreigner. Up to this time, when the “Charivari” has a fling at an English member of parliament, he is placed in the tribune, and “porter-beer” is asked for in an English ball-room. The English dramatist, who should make a Frenchwoman clamorous for frogs, would be hissed even in these days, when the patrons of the theatre are chiefly of the less educated class; but a French author is encouraged by the applause of the critical Parisians to put this kind of thing into the mouth of an English lady, who wears long red curls to her waist, and spectacles, and courts a young Frenchman in bad French, which frequently becomes double entendre. The song shall be translated exactly, but the false tenses and distorted pronunciation must be imagined:
Air.—Quadrille des Rifflemen (sic).
I have an hotel in the quarter of Westminster,
I have a chateau near Manchester,
I have money in the railroads.
Also I have
A box at the Opera,
And a cottage,
And a brilliant equipage
With gilded pannels,
And two tall powdered lacqueys,
Embroidered
Like noblemen.
I give dinners, and I give balls,
More “comfortable” than at the Crystal Palace.
During the evening we dance the Schottische,
And drink porter, and eat sandwich (rhyme).
As regards my powers of entertainment,
I have enormous ones,
Miousique,
And also gymnastics,
And I can also dance
The Scottish jig,
I waltz,
And I can even box,
I have an hotel, &c, &c.
That is the English lady’s song. We do our friendly allies more justice upon our boards. An amiable commentator might add that we do not, perhaps, render their peculiarities less ridiculous by transcribing them faithfully.
But Madame Pluto, awakened from her trance, is upon her husband’s track, and there is a sort of leaning to virtue in the fable of the “Beauté du Diable. Seven of the young ladies become no better than they should be, but Fanchette holds out, and preserves her character, until a diabolical stratagem makes her believe her lover false to her. Then her freshness and beauty begin to abandon her, feminine vanity awakens, and she accepts a gift of Rouge!
“Victory all along the line,” cries Belphegor-Brasseur. Re-appear Pluto, young and blooming, light-haired and loveable. Le Beauté du Diable has returned to him, and, as the Postillion of Longjumeau, he dances and exults in his recovered powers of fascination. The game is won.
But the French Pluto is not quite so bad as the English one. At least he is enough of the Mahu, the gentleman, to avoid causing scandals, or giving a lady, even if she is only his wife, unnecessary annoyance. Madame Pluto is furious at the restoration of his beauty, and is about to proceed to scratching, when he mollifies her by the most emphatic declaration that if he wished for personal graces, it was only that he might be more pleasing to her, that he had always been a conscientious husband, and that, if he had occasionally manifested a little levity, it was nothing; and on revient toujours à ses premières amours. He even presents her with the latch-key of his private apartments, but mentions, in an “aside,” that he will have the lock changed at the earliest opportunity. Madame pouts, and then pets him, and only asks what is to become of her poor little protégées. Pluto replies that they have nothing to complain of—they have lost the beauty of the Devil, which is that of mere girls, but they have gained the beauty of the Woman. A sign by his hand, and we have the Normandy village again, all the seven young ladies are home once more, joyously singing, and all declare that they have husbands—and all show that they have babies. Fanchette is absent; but her lover, who had behaved singularly ill under the tuition of his fiendly friends, repents, and cries out for her, and, as her offence was very small, her beauty is restored to her, and she is restored to her lover. M. Brasseur then insists upon being sent back to the Palais Royal, and Pluto keeps his word, wishing the actor un succès d’enfer. A dance and chorus of course finish the Memorandum of Responsibility.
Well, the report of the committee of the Rotund Caffy, that the piece could not be “done” for the English stage, will probably be confirmed by the English reader. Any way, we have told the story of the drama that delights Paris, and humbly venture to think that we have taken some little revenge for M. Brasseur’s English Lady.
S. B.