Rachel (1887 British Edition)/Chapter 17
AMERICA.
Seven years before she actually went, the project of a tour in America had been taken into consideration by Rachel. We find her, in 1848, writing from Liège, in one of her moments of depression, to tell her faithful confidante, Sarah, that, energy and lightness of heart having forsaken her for ever, she was possessed with the idea of either retiring to Switzerland and putting her boys into a college at Geneva, or of going to the United States, making a fortune, and finishing her career as a member of the Théâtre Français with a comparatively small salary.
Art and artists had suffered severely during this year of revolution and political excitement. Rachel, by yielding to the exigencies of the moment, succeeded in filling the coffers of the Théâtre Français; but even the "Marseillaise" failed to bring the showers of gold to which the young actress was accustomed. It was certainly flattering to her professional vanity to receive exotic flowers from les enfans de la patrie; but Jacques Bonhomme's pockets were not inexhaustible mines of wealth, and Rachel soon wearied of his enthusiasm and applause. What wonder, then, that the New World on the other side of the Atlantic began to loom as a possible Eldorado through the gloom and uncertainty surrounding her in the old one.
Before the end of 1848, however, the prospect of an Empire in France improved the artistic outlook, and we find her writing again to Sarah in better spirits:—"Tell me all the fun that is going on. I long to laugh, and declare you my witty and wise buffoon; decide yourself what the salary of the appointment shall be. I have made up my mind to enjoy life as much as I possibly can before I return. Away, dull care! Forward! march to the roll of drums, and, like the clown in the pantomime, make three somersaults backwards, with a 'Here I am again!' I love you, and embrace you hurriedly, for I am off to act Camille." Though only a Frenchwoman by adoption, Rachel had much in common with that changeable, volatile race, registering like a barometer every variation in the social or political horizon.
Meantime, her brother Raphaël, once the idea of going to America had been mooted, did not allow the scheme to fall to the ground. He aspired to be the impresario of the expedition, which he felt certain would produce an incalculable pile of dollars for his own and his sister's benefit. Rachel's extraordinary success in her last dramatic campaign in Russia had fired his imagination afresh. If such a harvest were to be reaped in Europe, what might they not expect in America, where Jenny Lind, although not gifted with the world-wide fame of Rachel, had just made a fortune?
For some time the young actress did not allow herself to be persuaded by his arguments. The story went, that the only deep attachment she had ever known—which jealousy on the lover's part and mischief-making on the part of others had broken off years before—again asserted its sway over her heart, and that she could not face the thought of quitting Paris and him she loved. Whatever the real reason may have been, it evidently needed a more potent incentive than Raphaël could offer to induce her to forsake the critical and appreciative public who had applauded the little Rachel when, poor, unknown and insignificant, she had first appeared before them, and which, in spite of storms and sulks on both sides, she had ruled absolutely for seventeen years. Alas! the incentive was given by the secession of this very public whom she had tyrannised over and on whose fidelity she had relied too confidently. A beautiful young Italian actress, Adelaide Ristori, appeared on the boards of the Italian Opera House, in the part of Francesca da Rimini, on the 24th May 1855. Her success was immediate and unqualified, as great as anything Rachel herself had ever achieved, and the more wonderful, seeing that only one-fourth of the audience understood a word of the language in which she acted.
All the enemies Rachel had made in her profession—and their name was legion—sang the praises of the new star. She was not only the most admirable of actresses, but the most adorable of women, generous, considerate of her fellow actors and actresses, womanly, pure, simple—possessing every good quality, in fact, the old idol had not. Clésinger, the sculptor, said with enthusiasm, after he had seen her, "I will break the statue of Tragedy I have made, for Ristori has taught me it was only the statue of Melodrama." Rachel had been his model for the Tragic muse.
Legouvé, whom Rachel had treated so cavalierly on the subject of Medea, took the play to Ristori, who made it her greatest part. Alexandre Dumas the Elder, many of whose plays Rachel had refused to act, was one of the most enthusiastic in praise of the new tragedian. The following story was told at the time. Dumas was present at Ristori's acting of Marie Stuart, and was applauding to the echo. An individual seated beside him volunteered timidly that he did not think she was as fine an actress as Rachel.
"I tell you, Sir," answered Dumas, sharply, "to appreciate the genius of Ristori, you must know Italian thoroughly. Do you know Italian?"
"Yes, Monsieur; as well as you know French."
"I thought so," said Dumas, good-naturedly; "you do not know Italian."
Rachel went to see Ristori, and was perceptibly piqued at the applause that greeted her rival. "Rachel never applauded me once," said the Italian actress to Mr. Legouvé. "Madame," was the answer, "Rachel's jealousy was the one thing wanting to confirm your fame." Next day Ristori went to see Camille. "Ah! que cette Rachel est heureuse!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm, "les Français-là comprennent-elle!" She had no right, however, to complain; although she did not talk their language, she managed to win the hearts of that fastidious and critical public, who averred she was as fine as Rachel in tragedy, and finer in comedy. Rachel, indignant and disappointed, made up her mind to shake the dust of Paris off her feet. The fatal engagement which, filled by a strange presentiment, she had hitherto refused to ratify, was signed at last. For the space of more than a year she bound herself hand and foot to her brother, who undertook all the financing and organizing of the expedition. On the 29th April 1855 she had been appointed Professor of Declamation at the Conservatoire, and her friends urged this, among other pleas, to persuade her not to go; but in vain. Pique, jealousy, the wish to add fresh laurels to those already won, and the hope of returning triumphant to Paris, and thus regaining the position she had lost, or, as she expressed it, becoming again "La Tragédienne," not "Une tragédienne," all conspired to fortify her resolution, and make her deaf to warnings and entreaties.
Before her departure she consented to appear once more, suing for the suffrages of those who, until now, she had ruled despotically. Alas! the fickle public, like Clésinger, the sculptor, not only set np a new statue, but broke the old one. The foreigners that flocked to Paris for the Great Exhibition, and the Parisians themselves, angry with the favourite who was leaving them, and glad, as Alfred de Musset says, of a change, flocked to the Italian Opera House to hear Ristori. No longer were there queues down to the Rue du Fauboug St. Honoré; no longer struggling at the box-office for tickets. Many certainly came, but the receipts did not exceed, and in some cases were not so large as those when Rachel first appeared in 1838. Would it have been otherwise had they known that her name had appeared for the last time on the bills of the Comédie Française—that never again would they hear that musical, sad voice, or see that weary, pale face, or be moved to awe, pity, and terror by the sublimity and greatness of that genius, to which they dared to compare the artificial elaboration of her Italian rival? We, indeed, except from the fascination of Ristori's beautiful appearance and manner, find it difficult to understand how, for one moment, she can have been compared to Rachel. Time has readjusted the scales which the passions and jealousies of the moment had put so hopelessly out of gear.
On the 27th July, four days after her series of representations at the Français, Rachel left for London. To the last moment the public did not realise that she really intended leaving them. She had gone to Moscow, England, Germany, they said, but would never make up her mind to cross the Atlantic; and, indeed, she seemed of the same opinion herself, for she actually came down to the station and on the platform hesitated about going. Later in the day, however, she started, and arrived in London about the same time as the rest of the company.
On the 30th of the month she gave her first representation at the St. James's Theatre, under the direction of Mr. Mitchell. "No spark of the old fire," the English critics declared, "was wanting." No worn-out reputation did she take to the other side of the Atlantic, they averred, and they only regretted that the actress, in full perfection of her powers, should leave an appreciative public. The Duke d'Aumale, who was present at her representation of Les Horaces, said to Mr. Mitchell as he left, "Cette belle langue de Corneille, cette langue de mon pays, que je viens d'entendre, est pour moi comme une fraîche rosée dans une brûlante journée de printemps."
Rachel appeared for the last time in Europe on the boards of old Drury Lane. On the 4th August she wrote to her son Alexander:—
Dear Son,
How are you and my little Gabriel? Write and tell me you are both well and good, and you may be sure I shall keep quite strong and happy for the whole of my journey. This evening I give my fourth representation in London; by the 8th I shall have given the six evenings I promised.
I hope, dear Alexander, that while your little mother goes to gather laurels and dollars in America you will gather your laurels in the approaching examination. Think of the happiness it will be, whenever I receive a good report of you. Gabriel is still too young for much study, but his turn, I hope, will come.
Grandmamma returns to Paris as soon as we have embarked for America. She will bring you the latest news, and will give you both two tender kisses from me,
Your little Mother,
who loves you both with all her heart.
She wrote to her mother an account of the journey out. She said her health was good in spite of pains in her chest:—"The ache in my side has even disappeared for the present. I have certainly felt other pains in my back and chest; but I must never forget that my chest was always a weak one."
Her very insistance, however, on her happiness and well-being is a little suspicious:—
I should be ungrateful, indeed, did I feel the least regret at leaving the children that I adore, and a mother whom I love with all my heart. No, no! Mademoiselle, go this tour (cette gentille tournée), and then you will be able to say you have earned your daily bread. White people must do some work since "niggers" refuse it. What nonsense I am writing: but it is only to prove, dear mother, that you must not conjure up either black or blue devils. I am well. And young America only will grow older from the emotions our fine old tragedies will arouse in her.
Léon de Beauvallet, one of the troupe whom Rachel took with her, has written an account of this "Odysée," as he calls it, of French tragedy in America; it is brimful of fun, rattle-headed nonsense, and astounding caricature, but greatly offended the Americans of the day.
She arrived at New York on the 22nd and on the 3rd September, in spite of the disfigurement of the whole company, Beauvallet tells us, by mosquito bites, she gave her first representation on the boards of the Metropolitan Theatre, Broadway. The following account of it is given by a well-known pen in Harper's Magazine for November 1855:—
Rachel's first night was truly triumphant. It was a quiet, appreciative, sympathetic and intelligent audience. It was, perhaps, not more than one-third American. The rest were French, and foreigners of all nations. There were many from the South. Among the crowd, here and again, there were the faces of known and unknown poets; the editors were there. . . . There was an intellectual atmosphere of the house. "This is a service of art," seemed to be the feeling of everyone present. It had come round, in the inscrutable course of history, that Corneille and the old French drama was to make its appeal to America and a spirit the most different to its own. . . . The music ceased; there was a lull. The curtain rose and disclosed a scene in Rome. Two draped figures, like Romans in old pictures, entered and declaimed. They turned to go, but before they left the scene—before the eye was quite ready—as if she had suddenly become visible, without entering, like a ghost—there was Rachel. She stood in full profile to the audience. Her dress was a falling white cloud of grace. You have seen such drapery in your idealised remembrance of the great statues. Her left hand, which was toward the audience, hung by her side; the right was muffled in her robe. Her head was cast forward, a gold band circling her black hair. The pose, the expression, the movement, were all prelusive and prophetic; as an overture holds all the sadness of the lyrical tragedy—as a bud folds all the beauty of the flower—so that first glance of Rachel was the touch of the key-note.
The audience received her with solid applause. There was no hooting, no whistling, no tumult of any kind. One indiscreet brother tried to yelp, and was instantly suppressed. The reception was generous and intelligent. It was the right reception for a great artist. It acknowledged her previous fame by courtesy. It expressed the intelligence which could approve or revise that fame.
Yes, astonished friend, approve or revise even a Parisian decision.
Rachel was equal to that reception and to her rôle of great artist. There was not so much as the lift of an eyebrow in condescension to the audience. "I will not buy success at any easy rate," she seemed to say; "crown me for what I really am, or dethrone me. It is easy to rave and rage. Here I am, without accessory of scene or company—alone, upon a bare stage, declaiming verse in an unknown tongue—verse which you have been accustomed to consider absurd and stilted. But you show that you have right to sit in judgment on the thing itself and you shall do so."
So simply she began. The artist and the audience were mutually worthy. Her action was symmetrical throughout. No one part was more perfectly done than another; but the varied importance of the parts made the differing excellence of the acting. The applause was as discriminating. It shifted from sensation to murmur, and ran all along the line of feeling until it exploded in enthusiasm. In the extreme moment of hearing her lover's fate, Camille sinks fainting in the chair, after a pantomime of fluctuating emotion, which is the very height of her art. Just then some bewildered poet flung a huge bouquet upon the stage, which fell, shattered like a cabbage, at the very feet of the Roman who was declaiming. Perplexed for a moment—uncertain whether the laws of our theatre might not require some notice to be taken of the bouquet—unwilling, upon the first night, to do anything contrary to courtesy, the Roman faltered and paused, made a halting step towards the flowers, raised them doubtfully, and turned towards Rachel, when a sudden "No!" rang through the house like a gust, and the dismayed Thespian dropped the bouquet like a hot cannon-ball, and proceeded with his part.
For an hour and a half the curtain was up, and the eyes of the audience were riveted upon Rachel. For an hour and a half there was the constant increase of passionate intensity, until love and despair culminated in the famous denunciation; the house hung breathless upon that wild whirl of tragic force—and Camille lay dead, and the curtain was down, before that rapt and amazed silence was conscious of itself.
Then came the judgment—the verdict which was worth having after such a trial—the crown, and the garland, and the pæan. The curtain rose, and there, wan and wavering, stood the ghost of Camille, the woman Rachel. She had risen in her flowing drapery just where she had fallen, and seemed to be the spirit of herself. But pale and trembling, she flickered in the tempest of applause. The audience stood and waved hats and handkerchiefs, and flowers fell in pyramids; and that quick, earnest, meaning "Brava!" was undisturbed by any discordant sound. It was a great triumph. It was too much for the excited and exhausted Rachel. She knew that the news would instantly fly across the sea—that Paris would hear of her victory over a new continent—that, perhaps, Ristori's foot would be found too large for the slipper. She wavered for a moment. Then someone rushed forward and caught her as she fell—and the curtain came down.
There was no attempt at a recall. There was something too real in the whole scene. The audience silently arose and slowly separated. Ladies sat in groups upon the benches with white faces and red eyes. They all thought her beautiful. They all forgave everything, and they all denied everything. It was a rare triumph. We so love what we greatly admire, that we all longed to love Rachel.From Raphaël's point of view it was not a success. They made 5,016 dollars (26,334 francs), but what a falling off when compared with the 93,786 francs produced by Jenny Lind's first representation, which they had hoped to rival and even surpass. The second evening on which Phèdre was given, the receipts fell off by 7,000 francs, only 19,587 francs being made. Never again were the profits as large as the first evening.
Rachel had deceived herself, or rather her brother Raphaël had deceived her by deceiving himself. The prognostication that "Cousin Jonathan would not relish an unmusical drama not acted in his own language" was verified. They were obliged to buy a book and study the play before they went. Beauvallet tells a story of an American, on one occasion when Le Mari de la Veuve and Bajazet were being acted, reading the first through religiously, thinking it was the second. Rachel declared that the turning of the pages startled her the first evening, for it sounded on the stage like a shower of hail, and added, with a smile, that she would have all the libretti rearranged so as to bring the fine passages into the middle of the page; but the thing that tried her most was the way in which, after one or two acts, the audience disappeared. Beauvallet tells us they simply came to be able to say they had seen Rachel, and then sauntered off to enjoy the feats of the "Raval" brothers, and the man who swallowed a sword at a circus close by. She missed the appreciative, cultivated Parisian public, product of centuries, who hung en every word and gesture, and, when the curtain went down, discussed the points with sympathy and comprehension. The newspapers were full of her praises; the enthusiasm among the general public was great. A restaurant-keeper in Broadway, De Beauvallet tells us, invented a pudding "à la Rachel"; a shoemaker, "Les Guêtres à la Rachel"; ten different hair-dressers, "Les Coiffures à la Rachel"; but they did not crowd to see her, except in Adrienne Lecouvreur and Angelo, and then it was rather because of the richness and picturesqueness of the dresses and scenery than because they cared for the play. There is little doubt that, had not Rachel's state of health put an end to the representations, financial considerations would have induced her and her brother to relinquish an expedition which threatened to end in complete disaster.
At first the climate of America seemed to suit Rachel, "et j'engraisse!" she wrote to her mother, "J'espère avoir la vie aussi dure que mes vieilles tantes." She was full of vivacity and brightness in spite of the smallness of the receipts.
On the 8th September she wrote to the President, sending him 1,000 dollars for the relief of the unfortunate sufferers from yellow fever in Norfolk and Portsmouth. This gift was much laughed at in Paris; Augustine Brohan, her comrade, propounded maliciously the following riddle: "Pourquoi Rachel est-elle comme le vin de Madère?" "Parcequ'elle s'améliore en voyageant."
Shortly after her arrival in New York, Rachel was asked by the French colony there to sing the "Marseillaise." She refused, addressing the following letter to the deputation who had been commissioned to make the request:—
Dear Fellow-countrymen,
Seven years have passed since I sang the "Marseillaise." A "je ne sais quoi" gave me then the semblance of a voice, besides which my health was stronger. Now I am often completely tired out after a representation. I should be afraid, therefore, of compromising other interests than my own, if I increased the strain put upon my strength.
I trust you will accept the assurance of my sincere regret in not being able to accede to your wishes, especially when I tell you that I loved to sing the "Marseillaise" as much as to act Corneille's finest part. Accept the assurance of my distinguished sentiments.
A witty travesty of this letter was given at the time: it began—
Now the Empire is peace, and were I, dear compatriots, to make the least effort to sing the "Marseillaise" in New York, I feel that, on my return to Paris, I should be compelled to sing very small indeed. * * *
Both by hearsay and experience; the Americans had been made aware of the exacting and greedy temperament of Rachel and her brother, and many were the jokes made at their expense. It was, indeed, in this pitiless New World that Rachel was destined to test how low she had descended in her art. She was wont to say, La fortune c'est la mésure de l'intelligence"; and in the pursuit of fortune, not to advance the honour of Racine or Corneille, she had come across the Atlantic. The company of actors she had brought with her were, as one critic frankly expressed himself, "but a bundle of Hebrew sticks destined to fill the minor characters." No attempt was made to put the tragedies fittingly on the stage. Beauvallet gives a most comic account of the arrangements for the representation of Virginie:—
"No Lares or Penates to be found; the Roman forum represented by the Paris Boulevards, with 'restaurant' painted on one of the nearest houses, while a flowered carpet covered the street. The hundred lictors of Appius were represented by twenty nondescript individuals disguised in yellow coats of mail, red petticoats, blue breeches, large tin spears in their hands, old leather boots on their legs, and, to complete all, American 'goatees' on their chins. Ballet girls in muslin petticoats, men dressed as jockeys, and mediæval Spaniards, put the finishing touch to the medley."
When the curtain went up, the scene was greeted by a roar of laughter from the audience. And Appius' lictors had to submit to a continual fire of ridicule.
In the meantime, to add to her discomfiture and annoyance, came rumours, from Paris of the publicity that had been given to the non-success of the expedition. Janin, in one of his eloquent, amusing, and merciless feuilletons, rated her and the Americans soundly. He touched upon the "demande impie" that had been made to her to sing the "Marseillaise," and upon her refusal to accede to the request:—
"But Mademoiselle Rachel did not answer with the indignation justifiable under the circumstances. She said she had no voice left to sing the Marseillaise, but what she really ought to have answered was, 'What? I come to you, my brain full of chef d'œuvres, my hands full of palms and crowns; I come bringing you the miracles of three great centuries, bringing you Augustus, Pericles, and Louis XIV., and you ask me for the "Marseillaise"? I bring you Corneille and Racine, and you ask for Santerre and Danton. Go, you are unworthy of these great men. You are incapable of understanding the godlike sorrow, and heaven-born grief of these great works. . . .'
"Do not let us expose our great tragedian any longer to the contempt of a democracy. We hope, perhaps, that Mademoiselle Rachel has seen long ago that she does not speak the 'language of the country,' and let us hope she will give place to the performing bear, to the nigger preachers, to the Barnum circus, and other amusements congenial to the American people. Let her return to us; she will be still more welcome if she return before we expected her; we will console her for her neglect there; her very disappointment will increase her popularity here; and we implore her to let this be a lesson never again to leave us."
On the 17th November Rachel bade farewell to New York in Phèdre and Le Moineau de Lesbie. An ode written for the occasion by M. de Trobriand, Rachel à l'Amérique, was recited by her and received with hearty applause. From New York the company proceeded to Philadelphia, where Rachel caught a violent cold when acting in Les Horaces at the Walnut Street Theatre. She had already been coughing before she left New York; but, regardless of the most ordinary sanitary precautions, had taken no notice, and, anxious to get through her engagements as fast as she could, had acted repeatedly four nights running—a strain which the fragile body could have hardly borne in her strongest days. She now broke down utterly, and was obliged to give up all idea of appearing before the Philadelphians again.
The doctors ordered removal to a warmer climate as soon as the invalid could travel. On the 27th, therefore, she and her father and sister made their way by short stages to Charleston; the company there endeavoured to give three or four performances without her, but the theatre was quite empty. Rachel was the only attraction. A French play they could not understand was wearisome enough at all times, but without the great actress it was an infliction not to be borne. In spite, therefore, of the urgent representation of the doctor that absolute repose was necessary for her restoration to health, yielding to the persuasions of her brother, she consented to appear in Adrienne Lecouvreur.