Rachel (1887 British Edition)/Chapter 11
GENIUS AND CHARACTER.
Rachel attained her majority in the year 1842, and became a free agent, to live where she pleased and spend her fortune as she chose. It was currently reported that, although by her genius and exertions the Félix family had been raised to a comparatively brilliant position, and though her money educated the younger children, and clothed, housed, and fed them all, "le père aux écus" only allowed her 300 francs a month for her dress, including theatrical costumes and pocket-money. This sum she found altogether inadequate, and had frequently begged her father to increase it, which he persistently refused to do. As soon, therefore, as she was legally entitled to the disposal of the large salary she was making, at the instigation of a male friend, who was then all powerful, she left her parents' house, and installed herself in an apartment on the Quai Voltaire, which she furnished at her own expense, leaving them in undisturbed possession of the apartment in the Rue du Luxembourg and all it contained.
A great deal has been said about Rachel's avarice, and many were the accusations made against her in Paris. But, before believing them, we must remember that the good and bad qualities of a woman, placed in such a position as hers, are always exaggerated by the public, and she, with her proud unyielding nature was not likely in any way to endeavour to mitigate their adverse opinion or to seek to gain a favourable one. That she inherited the great fault of her race, love of money, there is little doubt; and yet, from numerous sources, we know of instances of royal munificence shown to people who could be of no use to her, and from whom she could expect no return.
During her tour in Russia, she showed her openhanded generosity to the poor of St. Petersburg by writing to Prince Odowsky: "I took my benefit yesterday. To-day I remember the poor. Is it not the truest proof of happiness to remember the unhappy? I hope you will accept a portion of my profits for them, and, believe me, you will add to my gratitude by taking this gift from an artist who sympathises with all her heart in those sentiments which induce us to mitigate the miseries of our suffering fellow-creatures." Another to Count Pahlen is written to the same effect. It is true that she carried back from the Russian campaign profits to the extent of 300,000 francs, and that, to a certain degree, this 300,000 francs was filched from the pockets of her comrades at the Comédie Française, this congé being taken in direct opposition to their wishes and interests. "Est il gentil de M. Houssaye de me laisser faire cela, car il pourrait me le defendre!" She knew perfectly well that the new manager, Arsène Houssaye, her "directeur spirituel," as she was pleased to call him, when he allowed her to do what she liked, was completely under the sway of her fascination and despotism.
Rachel's indignant anger at the calumnies that were circulated about her avarice, was unbounded. Rothschild, her friend, tried to comfort her one day. "If I had given," he said, "to all those who have asked me, I should be obliged to borrow a hundred sous of you now." "My dear Baron, you are only importuned in Paris, since you do not go to make money in the provinces, but I am pestered all over the world with suppliants and beggars."
The following answer to one of these requests shows the dignity and directness with which she could dispose of inopportune demands:—
Mon cher Monsieur,
Si je vous envoyais ces 500 francs, je serais peut être à en avoir besoin quand nous seriez gêné de me les rendre. Si vous me permettez, de vous envoyer 100 francs, je suis, au contraire, bien certaine, qu'ils ne me feront jamais défaut, ce qui vous permettra d'en agir à votre aise. Les voici donc, comprenez moi. Mille civilités.
She wrote to a celebrated banker:—
Monsieur,
Mon ami, M. , prétend que je n'ai qu'un mot à vous écrire pour lui faire obtenir un cinquantaine d'actions des chemins de fer autrichiens. Si vous voulez bien en ajouter cinquante pour chaque mot de plus, l'excédent sera pour votre toute devouée.
Rachel left, it is true, 1,500,000 francs, but, on the other hand, she gained more than four millions; if she had spent 50,000 francs a year from 1838, she would have accumulated three millions to leave behind her. Avaricious, however, as she was reputed to be in some things, she devoted herself to her friends with almost prodigal generosity. On the day Michel Lévy lost his first action against Dumas, she sent to tell him that she had 200,000 francs at his service.
She heard of the suicide of an unfortunate man, Saint-Edmé by name, who, unable to make enough to purchase the necessaries of life for himself and his four children, committed suicide. He had begun his literary career by contributing to a collection of biographies of all the notable people of the day, and amongst others had written a sketch of Rachel. She alludes to this in the following letter:—
It would be useless to endeavour to tell you the impression that the death of poor Saint-Edmé has made upon me. I read his pitiable confession in the papers, and am grieved beyond measure that I did not know of his terrible position, for I am certain I have influential friends who would have lent him a helping hand. This sad end of my first biographer depresses me dreadfully; for the last three nights I have seen the unfortunate man hanging to the block of wood ho had saved out of his firing and placed across the doors of the library, from which all the books had gone. I have re-read in his "Biographies of Remarkable People," the praises he heaped on little Rachel Félix, and I asked myself, reproachfully, if a man who had helped me so early ought thus to perish of cold, hunger, and misery; the only excuse I can plead is entire ignorance of his state. It seems he had not even money enough to buy a pistol! These sentences in his own confession are terrible in their brevity: "Alone, without comfort or hope, pursued by misfortune, poverty, humiliated, calumniated, scorned, I saw only one mode of escape from my misery—suicide." Unfortunate man! he leaves four children, and had the courage or the cowardice to die. Find out for me where the children are; I wish to send them 500 francs, my profits yesterday in Camille. I feel sad and depressed these last few days, and should like to go away for a time.
We could multiply many other instances of Rachel's kindness of heart, particularly towards genius struggling under difficulties. On one occasion a young author, very poor, and yet enjoying a certain degree of poetical reputation, had completed a three-act comedy in verse. He presented it to the Théâtre Français and it was rejected. The poet was in despair, when Rachel took him on one side. "I know an Englishman who has a mania for unpublished manuscripts," she said to him, "will you let me have yours for a thousand francs?" The poet gladly consented; the actress gave him the money and kept him to dinner. A week later the MS. was magnificently bound and placed in her private library.
The authenticity of the following occurrence is vouched for by the Marquis de Gondrexante:—
In the month of August 1849, Mademoiselle Rachel was travelling through Brittany and Normandy, going to Caen; she stopped for a few hours at Saint Denis-le-Guast. She there remarked a peasant boy of about thirteen years of age reading the life of Arondino. She approached him and asked what he was so interested in.
"Why, is it possible those are the books they give you as prizes? What a pity to waste your time on that. Read Racine and Corneille. You have not got them?"
"No, Mademoiselle."
"What is your name?"
"Armand le Brun."
"There, go and buy some books," and she insisted on his taking two louis. "As to Corneille and Racine, I will send them to you."
Three months passed. The peasant boy no longer counted on the promise of the great lady, when he received one morning two volumes beautifully bound, his name on the cover in gilt letters, and on the first page was written, "Donné à Armand le Brun, à qui je souhaite un bel avenir, Rachel."
The tragedian loved gambling, and whenever she could would get up a game of cards or loto with her family. If she lost twenty or thirty sous, she became furious, and raged against the whole world. Then her brother would ask her for two thousand francs, of which he stood in pressing need, and she would give them without a word. The fact is that in money affairs, as in everything else, Rachel was a singular mixture of contradictions and inconsistencies. Many instances were recorded of the impulsive generosity with which she would offer or give presents to her friends, and then repent of her prodigality and retract the offer or take back the present again. "If I were obliged to give all I have ever promised," she said once, alluding to this propensity to a friend, "the whole world would not furnish me with the means."
Now and then, however, those who knew her, aware of this weakness, insisted on making her keep her word. One day a matter-of-fact friend admired a beautifully embroidered chair that stood in the actress's boudoir.
"It is my work, let me give it to you as a remembrance. I insist upon sending it to your rooms."
"I am so much obliged, but, as you do give it to me, I will take it now and not trouble you to send it."
"But," she said, perplexed, "how do you propose to take it?"
"You will see."
In a moment he ran down-stairs, and returning shortly with a commissionaire, told him to carry off the prize.
She gave a ring to Dumas the younger, who handed the gift back, with the words, "I return it, so that you may not be obliged to ask me for it." She gave a Damascus sword to Beauvallet the actor, who said immediately, "I warn you you shall not take it back again, for I will have a chain put to it."
There are many amusing anecdotes told, too, of the barefaced manner in which Rachel asked for things. Arsène Houssaye relates that one evening she was dining with the Minister of the Interior, Comte Duchâtel. She expressed her admiration of the centre-piece on the table that was decorated with flowers. M. Duchâtel immediately bent forward and despoiled it of its flowers, which he offered to the young actress.
"Oh! it was not the flowers, but the bowl I admired so much," she said with a smile.
"You shall have it, then, as well as the flowers," answered her host in a sudden fit of generosity.
"Monsieur le Comte," was the answer, "your roses and violets delight my heart, but your centre-piece will be the ornament and wonder of my dining-room."
Rachel had come in a cab to dinner; when the time for leaving approached, the Minister offered her his brougham to take her home.
"With pleasure," she said; "then I can take your present with me without fear of being waylaid and robbed."
Her host conducted her to the top of the staircase himself. "I am delighted, Mademoiselle," he said, with a sarcastic smile, as he bade her good-night, "that you should have my silver bowl; but you will send me back my brougham, will you not?"
"Often," Houssaye adds, "did I dine at Rachel's and see the bowl, made on the model of Pliny's doves in the Capitol, and smile a sympathetic smile of fellow-feeling as I remembered the story connected with it, for many were the things she had rifled me of."
She was not the daughter of the Jew pedlar, or Esther Haya his wife, seller of old clothes, for nothing. She took a childish delight in making a "good bargain," imposing too far, sometimes, on the credulity of her neighbours. We all of us know the celebrated story of the guitar. A friend of the tragedian possessed an old guitar; Rachel saw it and asked her friend for it. It was given willingly as a piece of rubbish. Achille Fould called on Rachel a few days afterwards, and noticed the guitar hanging in a silk net, through the bright meshes of which the dark wood showed to great advantage.
"That is the guitar I made a few sous by when I sang in the streets as a little beggar-girl," said Rachel, sentimentally.
"Give it to me, I will value it more than you do."
"I dare say you will, for I cannot let you have it for less than a thousand louis."
Fould, being a financier, offered half what she asked. He had reckoned without his host. Rachel would not abate one jot of her demand, and he submitted with a good grace. The new owner of the guitar showed his acquisition with pride to his friends. Unfortunately, one day the original possessor called; on hearing the romantic tale M. Fould related, she burst out laughing, and the pedigree of the guitar came out. Someone told the occurrence to Rachel, who smiled and said, "Yes, I know; poor Fould was so furious."
It is needless to say that many of the stories told against her were the outcome of the jealousy her great and unprecedented success had excited. We have already seen how Védel, the director of the Théâtre Français had been obliged, at the beginning of Rachel's career, to put down the pretensions of the other sociétaires; they still, naturally enough, perhaps, cherished a feeling of resentment, and certainly Rachel made no effort to propitiate them. They accused her of endeavouring to concentrate on herself all the attention of the public, of never playing to her fellow actors. They said she kept aloof from her companions, never answered them when the action of the play required it, or heard them when it was their turn to reply to her. Sometimes the most ridiculous contretemps occurred in consequence; she would either appear too soon, or leave the other actors on the stage, talking to space. All this naturally incensed her comrades, and made them only too anxious to join the large party of those hostile to her in their own profession, and among literary men and the public. A rival to the throne usurped (as they called it) by the despotic young queen was set up; she proved a most inadequate one in every respect, but so hot was the partisanship, that they not only applauded Mademoiselle Maxime, but dared to hiss Rachel. She expressed her offended feelings in no way, but calmly awaited her opportunity. It soon came. One evening Marie Stuart was given. Maxime was to act Elizabeth, and Rachel the part of the imprisoned Queen. The theatre was filled with an excited crowd, who had evidently come there to pass judgment on the two actresses. Maxime, at every word, at every gesture, was applauded to the echo. Rachel awaited calmly the great scene in the third act between the two rivals, and then so tremendous, so grand, was her acting, that she simply carried her audience away in a frenzy of delight, as she had done before on that celebrated evening when she played Bajazet in spite of Janin and his "clique." With a disdainful smile on her lips and a triumphant gleam in her eyes, she turned towards the supporters of Mademoiselle Maxime, with the words of Marie Stuart, "J'enfonce le poignard au sein de ma rivale."
Maxime never dared to show herself on the same stage as Rachel again, and disappeared into the secondary position from which she ought never to have been raised and to which her talents alone entitled her. Until midnight that night an impatient crowd waited for Rachel at the stage-door, and greeted her, when she appeared, with loud and prolonged cheers. During the whole of her theatrical career, Rachel boasted of her influence over the pit. She could shake them with the power of her passion. There was a perfect understanding between the actress and them—an alliance strong enough to break down any favouritism or party that either the literary or theatrical world might endeavour to use against her. On her great nights, in Camille or Phèdre, the audience, to the very lowest among the "gods," would sit gazing on the stage, scarcely daring to breathe. "On entendait voler une mouche," Jules Janin says—in the midst of the almost supernatural silence.
Many were the charges brought against Rachel's genius. She was artificial, stilted, wanting in tenderness, too fond of making points at the expense of the subtler gradations of feeling; but all were unanimous that at times she was superhuman in her passion and emotion. She tore aside the veil that hid the higher spiritual world, and appealed to sentiments so profound and primæval, that men were startled for the first time into the consciousness that they possessed them. Some will deny that the art of acting admits of original genius. They will say the actor is merely an interpreter, not a creator, and therefore must be denied the higher qualities of genius. But Rachel stepped beyond the domain of interpreter. She was never lost in her part; the part was lost in her. It was not Corneille, it was not Racine, but more than these had ever dreamt. Corneille never intended to represent all that she represented in her conception of Camille; and Racine never imagined or created anything so magnificent or soul-stirring as she imagined or created in Phèdre.
This comprehension and inspiration was not invariably with her. On the first, and even second, representation of a new rôle she often disappointed her most ardent admirers. All her study and preparation seemed in vain, and, sad and depressed, they murmured the word "failure." But, when all seemed lost, an illumination came to her. "Les dieux sont avec moi," as she herself once said; and when they were, she electrified her audience by her eloquence and power. She said to those about her, when attempting a new rôle, "I am paralysed; I feel as if I had chains on," stretching out her arms as she spoke like a bird spreading out its wings. She was always oppressed on first nights, too, by the preponderance of newspaper critics.
"Ah! once inspiration comes to me," she said one day, "I feel as joyous as a lark, that rises, and rises, and rises, ever higher, singing as it flies. I have felt drunk with success. But then the reaction comes; there is no more ascending, and I fall back tired in the grass, having failed to reach the highest point. Thus it is with everything. We aspire to everything but grasp nothing." Rachel's words are confirmed by all those who saw her act. By imperceptible degrees her passion, pitched in a low key at first, rose higher and higher, until it reached the climax, and flashed out wild and reckless in its sweep. Then her strength seemed to ebb away, leaving her exhausted, and hardly able to act to the end.
With the love of hyperbole, so common among the crowd, Rachel's want of education and literary taste has always been greatly exaggerated. A recent writer in the Nineteenth Century talks of her well-known "obtuseness of perception" and deficiency of "critical judgment." There is little doubt, as Samson tells us, that, in consequence of the poverty of her parents, her education was very much neglected, and that her success on the stage was made at too early an age to admit of regular study afterwards; but that she was "obtuse in perception" is utterly inaccurate. On the contrary, what raises both Rachel and Talma so far above all others in their profession was their extraordinary "intellectual power." The idea of her deficiency in critical faculty gained substantiality from the bad plays she accepted and the good ones she rejected. Outsiders did not see the social and expedient reasons that so often influenced her in so doing; and we must remember that her choice was by no means final, and was always ratified or rejected by the Committee of the Théâtre Français. If they, then—professionals practised in catering for the public taste—were led away, how much more must she have been, who had her friends, such as pretty and charming Madame de Girardin, to think of, and a host of other considerations?
Janin first gave currency to the exaggerated statements of her ignorance in his weekly feuilleton. He declared that he met her the day after she had taken Paris by storm in the part of Camille. "C'est moi que j'etai t'au Gymnase," was her greeting; "to which," he says, "I was obliged to answer in the same jargon, 'Je le savions.'"
Count Molé, one of the would-be connoisseurs moving in artistic society in Paris, wishing to pay the young actress a compliment, said to her one evening at a dinner at Verons, "You have saved the French language, Mademoiselle, from the hosts of barbarians who endeavour to destroy it." "Monsieur," she said, "that is the more wonderful, seeing that I never knew it."
She was the first to confess her own deficiencies and laugh at them. She writes to Madame la Comtesse Duchâtel:—
Madame la Comtesse,
You do me the honour of asking for a few lines written by my hand for your album, saying that you often applaud me with both yours! I do not know if you will approve your own idea when, in the midst of your brilliant collection, you see the scrawl of a woman who is much more capable of repeating the verses of others than of writing her own prose.
"Little pedant," she said, with an air of the utmost dignity, to Rebecca one day, when she made some observation about her great sister's grammar, "let me inform you that women like myself make and unmake grammar as they please."
On one occasion she had to write a letter of thanks to the Minister for Home Affairs, M. Baroche. Before sending it she showed it to Arsène Houssaye, who advised her to recopy it, and correct some orthographical errors.
"Ah, bah!" she replied; "let them stand. My letter will appear all the more sincere."
Collectors of autographs in Paris are said to pay from five to ten guineas for a letter of Rachel. They must, however, bear the authentic press-mark. "Un bel autograph de moi," as she says herself, "avec ou sans orthographe." In spite of her want of orthography, however, Rachel occupies a foremost place in the ranks of distinguished French letter-writers; but it is a place widely distinguished from literary women like Madame de Sevigné, George Sand, or Madame de Girardin. She was, as we have said, perfectly uneducated, knowing nothing of history, grammar, or literature; but in this, as in everything else, she showed that quick intelligence and discernment that characterised her in all she did, socially or artistically.
Her letters, written to various correspondents upon miscellaneous subjects, are delightfully sprightly and amusing, illumined every here and there by proofs of good sense, quick judgment, and nice feeling, that go far to disprove the wholesale abuse that has been heaped on the actress's private character by her contemporaries. That saving clause, love of kindred and obedient reverence for her parents, is apparent in every letter written to the different members of her family, while the delicately-veiled satire with which she makes fun of those who endeavour to utilise her genius for their own ends, and the warm gratitude with which she refers to those who have really been kind and helpful during her artistic career, speak equally well for her head and heart. The following is a good specimen of her lighter and more playful style. She had accepted a play of M. Ponsard—Charlotte Corday—and then, as was too often the case, refused to act it. This behaviour had brought down the wrath of five or six of the "ogres" of the Parisian press upon her. They must be cajoled and talked over before she dare appear again.
Diable! it seems I am in disgrace, if what Houssaye tells me is true. We are sure to appear on Wednesday. To-morrow, Monday, after the general rehearsal, I will put on my little pink bonnet, and will go and see five or six of the principal ogres, beginning by the great Janin, who, they say, is one of those who will cry out the loudest. My pink bonnet, do you hear? I tell you they are done for. I have tried it, as Cleopatra tried her poisons on her slaves. The effect is certain. When I put it on last week, with a black flounced dress, young X was quite stupified, and has remained so ever since—was so, indeed, before he saw me, for prudential motives, doubtless!
Rachel was a raconteuse of the first order. The following amusing story is told in the same letter:—
I found an old medal in a box to-day: the history of that medal is worth its weight in gold. One day in 1847, X told me he would bring Lord Granville to see me. I wanted to ask said Lord's advice about my visit to London. He did not bring him. I complained, and he swore that before three days were over he would redeem his promise. I demanded a guarantee. He offered me his watch. I refused to take it. His word was not to be depended on. As I was on the point of asking for his wig, he put his band into his pocket and found his Deputy's medal. Just the thing! I never saw Lord Granville nor X his medal. It seems he managed without it. But see what a good turn I did him by confiscating the passport with the head of poor father Louis Philippe imprinted upon it. 1848 came, then February, then all that you wot of, and many things you wot not of. Amongst others, this: On the 28th or 29th, I am not well up in my French history, said member was stopped at the door by order of the new brooms in power at the moment. "You cannot pass here without proving your identity." He looked in all his pockets, no medal. He galloped off to my house, no Rachel. He rushed to the theatre, to my mother's, to the devil: I was nowhere to be found; and, meantime, the fate of the kingdom was decided "Au pont de la discorde." In short, my friend, read the papers of the time and you will see that, thanks to my confiscation of his medal, X escaped beautifully, for, his name not having appeared amongst the others that were compromised, he passed for a fervent Republican, and you know how he has justified the opinion. This morning I found this famous medal, for keeping which, I think, my friend owes me a "candle." Inasmuch as at the time I swore I had lost it, I do not choose to send it back to him now, especially as it might recall uncomfortably the change his political opinions have undergone.
You have many curios, keep this medal belonging to a deputy of the year 1848. Some day it might amuse people to tell the story. It is rather in the style of Scribe's Verre d'Eau. After mature deliberation, I think it better to suppress names.
Rachel never abstained, for the sake of a good story, from turning the laugh against herself. Among the curious letters which she received in the course of her theatrical career, was the following one. She had complained that the chief of the claque had not awarded her enough applause, and he expostulated as follows:—
Mademoiselle,
I cannot remain under the obloquy of a reproach from lips such as yours. The following is an authentic statement of what occurred: at the first representation I led the attack in person not less than thirty-three times. We had three acclamations, four hilaritios, two thrilling movements, four renewals of applause, and two indefinite explosions. In fact, to such an extent did we carry our applause, that the occupants of the stalls were scandalised, and cried, "Turn them out!" My men were positively exhausted with fatigue, and even intimated to me that they could not again go through such an evening. Seeing this was the case, I applied for the MS., and after having profoundly studied the piece, I was obliged to make up my mind to certain curtailments in the service of my men. I, however, only applied them to MM. , and if the ad interim office I hold affords me the opportunity, I will make them ample amends. In such a situation as I have just depicted, I have only to request you to believe firmly in my profound admiration and respectful zeal; and I venture to entreat you to have some consideration for the difficulties that environ me.
When it was decided to do away with the claque of the Théâtre Français in 1871, some of the older members, "Les Romains," recalled the reminiscences of past times in conversation with the manager, and mentioned Rachel with tears in their eyes.
It is very difficult to form an accurate estimate of the personal character of Rachel, Frenchmen who, as biographers, are generally impartial and calm judging, indulge, in her case, as we said before, in inflated praise or exaggerated blame. She seems to have been endowed with the fictitious passions with which, in her imaginary creations, she swayed the public who crowded to see her. Were it not for the letters published recently by M. Heylli, we might imagine her, on the one side, to have been a Phèdre in her superhuman and violent passions, and, on the other, a Pauline in her heroism and devotion. Here, however, we see her thinking in the earlier days of the education of her little brother, and sisters, and later, when she had children of her own, occupied with the thousand and one trifles pertaining to their dress and well-being, writing to her mother to see that "Gabri" [her son Gabriel] wears his new suite, "that he may be as fine as his brother on the day of the prize-giving," telling her that there are some white trousers, a pair for each, put away in her room. "As they are only just made, I should like them sent to the wash first. I will allow you, Madame Félix, to offer a small black cravat and grey gloves to each of your grandchildren. I think Gabri wants a new cap. Your daughter, who is strong and well, thank goodness, gives you a good hug."
Later, in a letter, she shows herself solicitous about the literary attainments of her son Alexandre, and expresses a hope that she may soon receive a long letter from him.
Rachel had a horror of scandalmongers, those panderers to the morbid tastes of the crowd, who crave unceasingly to know the weaknesses and imperfections of those superior to them either in intellect or rank. Among her letters are some dashed off while she was smarting under the sting of certain cruel words or untrue statements.
On vous demande, Monsieur, si sachant Mademoiselle Rachel mariée, on en situation de permettre à un homme de prendre fait et cause pour elle, vous oseriez écrire sur elle ce qu'en a le grand tort de lui faire lire dans votre journal. Quant à l'artiste, elle serait fort lâche de vous insulter à propos des libertés de votre plume, car vous ne sauriez à qui demander raison—une raison dont vous avez besoin, Monsieur, car celui qui écrit comme vous l'avez fait est en démence.
Mademoiselle Rachel vous salue.
Charles Maurice, editor of a theatrical paper, had not only written articles against her in his paper, but had also published one or two pamphlets that were most scurrilous and abusive. She alludes to one of these, La Vérité Rachel, in the following:—
I have received the pamphlet with the lady who, her toes on a plate, represents, or is intended to represent. Truth. It is a collection of delightful and gracious things, which does not disturb my equilibrium in the least. It seems I have neither "skill nor intelligence nor taste," not even a glimmer, my dear friend! After all, why need I pay the least attention to such nonsense? I am accustomed to this sort of thing from the same gentleman; and then he who seeks to prove too much proves nothing. I will admit I am a little stupid, not very intelligent, and not gifted with exquisite taste; but to be deficient in everything, hopelessly, incurably! That, dear friend, is the reason I can afford to laugh at the pamphlet and its author. It does not prevent the fact that this tragedian, without skill, intelligence, or taste, made 5,000 francs yesterday evening. You can understand why I am perfectly indifferent to everything else.
"The only answer to be made to such a production," says Janin, alluding to the Vérité Rachel, "is that of Madame de Staël to the man who, knowing how prejudiced she was against Napoleon, once said before her that 'Napoleon Bonaparte had neither talent nor courage.' 'Monsieur,' answered the authoress of Corinne severely, 'you will find great difficulty in persuading me that Europe has remained for fifteen years prostrate at the feet of a fool and a coward.'"
A great many irrelevancies have been put forward and much bad logic perpetrated lately on the subject of the morality of the stage. On the one hand, it is maintained that very few women can preserve their modesty and virtue, subjected to the unnatural life and numerous temptations to which they are exposed in a theatrical career; on the other, it is stated that the stage is as honourable and honest a calling as man or woman can take up, and examples have been brought forward to prove the statement. But considering the numbers who throng the stage, the very persistency with which these few examples are referred to, and the smallness of their number, is rather a demonstration that the ordinary level of theatrical morality is not particularly high. "Pour juger la comédienne il ne faut pas se mettre au même point de vue que pour juger la bourgeoise," says a well-known French theatrical critic, and his opinion is endorsed by most of those who impartially consider the question. In judging the virtues and vices of those who cater for the amusement of the public as playwrights, the same code of propriety will not hold good as for men and women in the ordinary walks of life. The nervous excitable temperament is a necessary accompaniment of the dramatic one. The actress, before she can adequately portray fictitious emotion or passion of any kind, must be susceptible to emotion and passion herself. After acting one of her great parts, Rachel, unable to sleep, so great had been the mental tension, would wander about all night, sometimes going out of Paris as far as the Bois de Boulogne, where, in her childhood, she had spent so many hours robbed from school.
Intoxicated by applause, carried away by "les émotions suprêmes du théâtre" night after night, dazzled by the glare of the footlights, listening every evening to declarations of fictitious love, how is it possible the young actress should view life from the calm and temperate view of her more fortunate sisters, who live entrenched behind the barriers necessity and experience have taught mankind are necessary for the preservation of social morality.
Rachel had not passed through Saint Cyr, as she said herself. Indeed, when we remember what her early surroundings were—those corroding years of poverty and squalor, when the bloom and ingenuousness of youth were rubbed off—singing songs of doubtful morality and expression through the streets of Paris, "that great, wicked, intelligent city," as she herself calls it, and (fatal ingredient of all theatrical representation for female modesty and virtue), obliged to seek applause and popularity at all hazards, and purchase it by all concessions. Seeing little of her mother, whose time was taken up with the cares of a young family, exposed to the constant companionship of her sister Sarah, a frivolous, pleasure-loving soul, we can only wonder that she preserved as much refinement and dignity as she did.
"Rachel was not good," is the verdict passed upon her by Charlotte Brontë. According to no law, human or divine, can we, who have undertaken to write her biography, say she was good. We should not be relating a fair and impartial story if we said she was "good." We only seek to mitigate the severity of the sentence that has already been passed by endeavouring to show that, amid the passionate violences with which she now and then disfigured her life, there were noble instincts, the sentiment of great and beautiful things, and that for years of her girlhood she was animated by an ardent love for intellectual pleasures, and an unswerving aspiration towards the highest ideal her art could offer her.
Like so many women in her profession, who live on shadows and unrealities, when she did choose among the crowd of worshippers that surrounded her, she chose unwisely. Many are the different versions given o£ the affair, which threw the Paris of her day into a ferment. Suffice it to say, she found the man to whom she entrusted her heart, one of her own nationality, unworthy of her confidence, and was compelled to discard him. His method of revenge was one happily rare even among the basest of his sex. He made known the whole affair to the world, and published her letters. Many refused to believe the story of her dishonour, especially coming from such a source; but others, whom envy or interested motives had made her enemies—and they were not few—sided against the young girl (she was only twenty at the time) and gave currency to the scandal.
It is less difficult, we are told, for a woman to become famous by her genius than to be pardoned for it. Rachel did not even solicit forgiveness. With the reckless pride and almost "ferocity" of her nature, she did not attempt to defend herself, and, partly out of pique, partly because driven to bay, she cast appearances to the winds, and formed a connection with Count Walewski, a natural son of Napoleon by a Polish lady. In 1844 she bore him a son, whom the father openly acknowledged. In those days the social anomaly of Mademoiselle Rachel Félix et son fils was not permitted, and society banished her from its ranks.
She might sometimes still be met in the literary and artistic circle of the beautiful Madame de Girardin, particularly when the gifted hostess desired to obtain the inestimable benefit of the great tragedian's interpretation of her mediocre Cleopatras and Judiths; but the salons of the Faubourg were shut against her for ever, and, on her second visit to England, she found an appreciable difference in the warmth of the reception accorded to her in private circles. The critics now talked of her as grasping, sensual, and selfish. "Her grand reserved manner, snatched up as a dress," writes one, "could be flung down by her as such at any moment."
All the base envies and jealousies before and behind the scenes were used as weapons against her, and she was subjected to the basest persecution. Sometimes the young lioness rose in her wrath, and we see her retaliating on her tormentors, as in the letter given above, or using the cutting lash of irony, at which she was so skilled an adept, as in the taunts she addresses to Charles Maurice. She was generous in her animosities, however. During the coup d'état, this latter critic, who had frequently treated her with equal severity, was gravely compromised. She heard of it, and never rested for two whole days until she had restored him to liberty, "to write against her still."