Rachel (1887 British Edition)/Chapter 12
VASHTI.
In the year 1842, Rachel went, for the first time, to Belgium. Her stay there only lasted a month—from the 22nd of July to the 29th of August. It was then that the pale, insignificant school-girl from the Rue d'Isabey looked at her, with eager hazel eyes, seeking to read the riddle of her life, and listened to her with a heart throbbing to every heart-throb of the actress; for did not the star of genius shine on her brow also? and, diverse as were their lives, and far apart as lay the paths they each of them trod, had not the same "efflux of sacred essence" descended on them both from above? "Vashti was not good, I was told, and I have said she did not look good," writes demurely the daughter of the Yorkshire clergyman; and yet, in spite of this judgment, how instinct with comprehension and appreciation is every line of the following description, one of the most eloquent Charlotte Brontë ever wrote:—
Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown; with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet; a great and new planet she was, but in what shape? I waited her rising.
She rose at nine that December night; above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment day. Seen near, it was a chaos—hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing—half lava, half glow. I had heard the woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness—something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.
For a while—a long while—I thought it was only a woman, though a unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognised my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man; in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength—she was but a frail creature; and, as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote "Hell" on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Fate and murder and madness incarnate she stood.
It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation. Suffering had struck that stage empress, and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor, in finite measure, resenting it; she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background, and entourage, and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster—like silver: rather, be it said, like death. Wicked, perhaps, she is; but also she is strong, and her strength has conquered beauty, has overcome grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each varied movement royally, imperially, exceedingly upborne. Her hair, flying loose in revel or war, is still an angel's hair, and glorious under a halo.
Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she rebelled. Heaven's light, following her exile, pierces its confines and discloses their forlorn remoteness. Vashti was not good, I was told, and I have said she did not look good: though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred essence descend one day from above? The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart out of its wonted orbit; the sunflower turned from the south to a fierce light, not solar—a rushing, red, cometary light, hot on vision and to sensation. I had seen acting before, but never anything like this: never anything which astonished Hope and hushed Desire; which outstripped Impulse and paled Conception; which, instead of merely irritating Imagination with the thought of what might be done, at the same time fevering the nerves because it was not done, disclosed power like a deep, swollen winter river, thundering in cataract, and bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the steep and stately sweep of its descent.When it was all over, the prim little body—as instinct, under her plain, colourless exterior, with real passion and genius as the woman on whom she had looked—turned to her companion to seek his opinion. "He judged her as a woman, not an artist. It was a branding judgment."
There are two letters of Rachel (published by M. Heylli), written shortly after this, which, perhaps, had she seen them, might have mitigated the judgment pronounced by the authoress of Jane Eyre against her wayward, passionate sister—for sisters these letters prove them to have been, in the sisterhood of suffering and of love. "My voyage begins auspiciously, that is to say, health and money are forthcoming. The heat is not too oppressive, so that I do not knock up so soon. My success is wonderful; but purchased at what a price? The price, alas! of my health and life. The intoxication of applause passes into my blood and burns it up. Do you think, after it is over, it is pleasant to return home prosaically, take my cup of soup, and go to bed, with despair and misery gnawing at my heart? No, I can assure you it is not; but I am obliged to! The public, the world, see the artist, but they forget the woman."
She writes to her mother from Liège, after her visit to Holland, where the King and Queen had heaped civility and presents on her:—"But all this has not brought joy, or even eaten into my heart. I am sad about many things, and a thousand times sad not to be with my dear little child. One day I shall see all those I love again, and perhaps the sincere and intense joy of that meeting will help me to forget the sorrows that pursue me since I left Paris. Write me a long letter about my little Alexander and everyone. Tell Papa, also, to keep a little corner for me in his immense property. I foresee that the wanderers will all return to the fold. I kiss you tenderly."
"Heureusment qu'il reste à tout, mortel une certaine dose d'esperance," she says a little further on. Rachel had her roses bleues, like the rest of us. The one thing she sighed for all her life, and never obtained, was rest. To "return to the fold" and live quietly and calmly in the midst of her children and those she loved, was the illusion she cherished during all her wanderings over the face of the globe. To save a little more money, to make her children a little richer, to buy a larger house, or invest in a choicer property than the one she possessed—to surround herself and them with a little more luxury—this was the bright-hued bubble she pursued and seized, only to find it break in her hand, its brilliant colours disappearing with the health and strength that gave them consistency. In the whole history of art there is no tragedy sadder than this poor Rachel longing for the tranquil joys of life, but never attaining them, until her very aspiration became a stimulus to restlessness and greed, weeping and complaining that she led other people's lives, and yet staggering on to the bitter end, only borne along at last by the intoxication of applause and the love of gain.