due to him from his deceased mother’s estate, and gives up his
claim to succeed his father as “valet de chambre du roi.” On
the 28th of December of the same year we learn, again from
documentary evidence, that Jean Baptiste Poquelin, with
Joseph Béjard, Madeleine Béjard, Geneviève Béjard, and
others, have hired a tennis-court and fitted it up as a stage
for dramatic performances. The company called themselves
L’Illustre Théâtre, illustre being then almost a slang word,
freely employed by the writers of the period.
We now reach a very important point in the private history of Molière, which it is necessary to discuss at some length in defence of the much maligned character of a great writer and a good man. Molière’s connexion with the family of Béjard brought him much unhappiness. The father of this family, Joseph Béjard the elder, was a needy man, with eleven children at least. His wife’s name was Marie Hervé. The most noted of his children, companions of Molière, were Joseph, Madeleine, Geneviève, and Armande. Of these, Madeleine was a woman of great talent as an actress, and Molière’s friend, or perhaps mistress, through all the years of his wanderings. Now, on the 14th of February 1662 (for we must here leave the chronological order of events), Molière married Armande Claire Élisabeth Grésinde Béjard. His enemies at that time, and a number of his biographers in our own day, have attempted to prove that Armande Béjard was not the sister, but the daughter of Madeleine, and even that Molière’s wife may have been his own daughter by Madeleine Béjard. The arguments of M. Arsène Houssaye in support of this abominable theory are based on reckless and ignorant confusions, and do not deserve criticism. But the system of M. Loiseleur is more serious, and he goes no further than the idea that Madeleine was the mother of Armande. This, certainly, was the opinion of tradition, an opinion based on the slanders of Montfleury, a rival of Molière’s, on the authority of the spiteful and anonymous author of La Fameuse comédienne (1688), and on the no less libellous play, Élomire hypochondre. In 1821 tradition received a shock, for Beffara then discovered Molière’s “acte de mariage,” in which Armande, the bride, is spoken of as the sister of Madeleine Béjard, by the same father and mother. The old scandal, or part of it, was revived by M. Fournier and M. Bazin, but received another blow in 1863. M. Soulié then discovered a legal document of the 10th of March 1643, in which the widow of Joseph Béjard renounced, in the name of herself and her children, his inheritance, chiefly a collection of unpaid bills. Now in this document all the children are described as minors, and among them is “une petite non encore baptisée.” This little girl, still not christened in March 1643, is universally recognized as the Armande Béjard afterwards married by Molière. We reach this point, then, that when Armande was an infant she was acknowledged as the sister, not as the daughter, of Madeleine Béjard. M. Loiseleur refuses, however, to accept this evidence. Madeleine, says he, had already become the mother, in 1638, of a daughter by Esprit Raymond de Moirmoron, comte de Modène, and chamberlain of Gaston duc d’Orléans, brother of Louis XIII. In 1642 Modène, who had been exiled for political reasons, “was certain. to return, for Richelieu had just died, and Louis XIII. was likely to follow him.” Now Madeleine was again—this is M. Loiseleur’s hypothesis—about to become a mother, and if Modène returned, and learned this fact, he would not continue the liaison, still less would he marry her—which, by the way, he could not do, as his wife was still alive. Madeleine, therefore, induced her mother to acknowledge the little girl as her own child. In the first place, all this is pure unsupported hypothesis. In the second place, it has always been denied that Béjard’s wife could have been a mother in 1643, owing to her advanced age, probably fifty-three. But M. Loiseleur himself says that Marie Hervé was young enough to make the story “sufficiently probable.” If it was probable, much more was it possible. M. Loiseleur supports his contention by pointing out that two of the other children, described as legally minors, were over twenty-five, and that their age was understated to make the account of Armande’s birth more probable. Nothing is less likely than that Modène would have consulted this document to ascertain the truth about the parentage of Armande, yet M. Loiseleur’s whole theory rests on that extreme improbability. It must also be observed that the date of the birth of Joseph Béjard is unknown, and he may have been, and according to M. Jal (Dictionnaire critique, p. 178) must have been, a minor when he was so described in the document of the 10th of March 1643, while Madeleine had only passed her twenty-fifth birthday, her legal majority, by two months. This view of Joseph’s age is supported by Bouquet (Molière à Rouen, p. 77). M. Loiseleur’s only other proof is that Marie Hervé gave Armande a respectable dowry, and that, as we do not know whence the money came, it must have come from Madeleine. The tradition in Grimarest, which makes Madeleine behave en femme furieuse, when she heard of the marriage, is based on a juster appreciation of the character of women. It will be admitted, probably, that the reasons for supposing that Molière espoused the daughter of a. woman who had been his mistress (if she had been his mistress) are flimsy and inadequate. The affair of the dowry is insisted on by M. Livet (La Fameuse comédienne, reprint of 1877, p. 143). But M. Livet explains the dowry by the hypothesis that Armande was the daughter of Madeleine and the comte de Modène, which exactly contradicts the theory of M. Loiseleur, and is itself contradicted by dates, at least as understood by M. Loiseleur. Such are the conjectures by which the foul calumnies of Molière’s enemies are supported in the essays of modern French critics.
Michelet accepted the scandal apparently as a buttress to his charges against Louis XIV. and Madame (Histoire de France, 1879, xv. 63, 64, 332).
To return to the order of events, Molière passed the year 1643 in playing with and helping to manage the Théâtre Illustre. The company acted in various tennis-courts, with very little success. Molière was actually arrested by the tradesman who supplied candles, and the company had to borrow money from one Aubrey to release their leader from the Grand Châtelet (Aug. 13, 1645). The process of turning a tennis-court into a theatre was somewhat expensive, even though no seats were provided in the pit. The troupe was for a short time under the protection of the duc d’Orléans, but his favours were not lucrative. The duc de Guise, according to some verses printed in 1646, made Molière a present of his cast-off wardrobe. But costume was not enough to draw the public to the tennis-court theatre of the Croix Noire, and empty houses at last obliged the Théâtre Illustre to leave Paris at the end of 1646.
“Nul animal vivant n’entra dans nôtre salle,” says the author of the scurrilous play on Molière, Élomire hypochondre. But at that time some dozen travelling companies found means to exist in the provinces, and Molière determined to play among the rural towns. The career of a strolling player is much the same at all times and in all countries. The Roman comique of Scarron gives a vivid picture of the adventures and misadventures, the difficulty of transport, the queer cavalcade of horses, mules, and lumbering carts that drag the wardrobe and properties, the sudden metamorphosis of the tennis-court, where the balls have just been rattling, into a stage, the quarrels with local squires, the disturbed nights in crowded country inns, all the loves and wars of a troupe on the march. Perrault tells us what the arrangements to the theatre were in Molière’s early time. Tapestries were hung round the stage, and entrances and exits were made by struggling through the heavy curtains, which often knocked off the hat of the comedian, or gave a strange cock to the helmet of a warrior or a god. The lights were candles stuck in tin sconces at the back and sides, but luxury sometimes went so far that a chandelier of four candles was suspended from the roof. At intervals the candles were let down by a rope and pulley, and any one within easy reach snuffed them with his fingers. A flute and tambour, or two fiddlers, supplied the music. The highest prices were paid for seats in the dedans (cost of admission fivepence); for the privilege of standing up
