Chapter VII: Letter XVII

The Theatres.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Théatre
Royal.--Italien.--Grisi.--Académie Royal de
Musique.--Taglioni.--Miss Fanny Elsler.--The Variètés.--The
Odéon.--Mademoiselle George.--Hamlet.--Republican Spirit of the
Age.--Character of the French Stage.--Machinery of the Drama.--The
Claqueurs.--Supply of New Pieces.--The Vaudevillists.--M.
Scribe.--The Diorama.--Concerts.--Music

Paris, December, 1835.

I will treat you this evening to the play. The bill of fare is the _Théâtre Français_, _Opera Français_, _Italien_, _Opera Comique_, _Gymnase_, _Vaudeville_, _Variètés_, _Gaité_, _Ambigù_ and _Palais Royal_, with twice as many more which we will reserve for the side dishes and the dessert.

The Post has brought me a letter from your mother, of November, which I have just read, and could not help laughing at the vanity of her fears. My morals indeed! fortified as they are by the good breeding I had from my Scotch grandmother and Presbyterian catechism.--I went last night to the play, and saw there a great many Sins, which came in their usual shape of pretty women to tempt Saint Anthony. They danced about him, and enticed him with voluptuous smiles and looks, and even set themselves at last to turn somersets to overcome his virtue, but he stuck fast to the faith.

So do I.--I should like to see all the pretty women of Paris come to tempt me. If it had not been for your mother’s letter and St. Anthony, I should not have thought of the theatre this evening.

What say you to the “Français” and Mademoiselle Mars?--Mademoiselle Mars! why she was an old thing twenty years ago; and acts yet all the charms and graces of the most amiable youth. Time flutters by and scarce breathes upon her with his wings; he is loth to set his mark upon a face which every one loves so. Why, what is younger than her voice? It is clear as the whistlings of the nightingale, or it is soft and mellow as the notes of the wood thrush; or if she pleases, it is wild as the song of the whip-poor-will, and savage as the scream of the bald-eagle.

In gesture and the dramatic graces she is no longer subject to rules, but, like Homer, gives rules to all others of her art. When you have looked upon her divine countenance, so expressive of the seriousness of age, or the vivacity of youth; when you have listened to her sweet and honied sentences, you will say, what praise can be exaggerated of such an actress? Molière could not have had a proper conception of his own genius, not having seen Mademoiselle Mars. What a crowding and squeezing we shall have for a place! I have bought this privilege often by more than two hours attendance. Lady Mars is more chary of her favours now than in her greenest age. Like the old Sibyl, she sets a higher value upon her remnants than upon the whole piece.

This theatre, with its three tiers of boxes and two of galleries, contains 1,500 persons. It is called the “_Theatre Royal_,” and is very disposed to exercise its royalty despotically. It forbids the representation of tragedy at the other theatres, and has a claim upon every _élève_ of the Conservatory; which claim it does not fail to assert as often as any one is likely to attain celebrity elsewhere; and its old actors having a monopoly of the choice parts, it prevents easily the advancement of the new aspirants, and weakens the rivalship of the other houses. Its distinguished actors, besides Mars, are Plessy, Chambaud, Dupont and Madame Volnys; its favourite writers Delavigne and Hugo.--Scribe too being now a member of the Institute and assuming a spirit equal to his new dignity, has abjured the ignoble vaudeville, and writes only five acts. In the vestibule you will see an admirable statue of Voltaire with the “sneering devil” in its marble features.

You must go two evenings of the week to the “Italien;” it commences in October. In October, Paris is repeopled with its fashionables, and the weeping country is forsaken. This Opera is crowded for the season with the choicest of Parisian beauty, with all the upper sort of folks, as high as the two Miss Princesses and their mamma the queen. A few evenings ago I saw an English woman here, prettier than them all; she, who with so much genius writes tales for the New Monthly, and poetry for the annuals--Mrs. Norton. I analysed her elegant features from the pit, and wondered how so pretty a woman could write verses. Of all the gratifications of Paris this theatre is surely the most delectable.

I went, on her first night, to see Signora Grisi, and since this first night, she is Grisi to me. Her melting voice and love-making features live in the memory always. Whilst she sings, one is all ear, all sense, and intellect is hushed; never did the quiet midnight listen to its nightingale so attentively; and as the last note expires, _brava! brava!_ exclaims the incontinent Frenchman, and a thousand _bravas_ and _bravissimas_ are repeated through the house; _O beneditto!_ just breathes the Italian expiring; _che gusto! piacer de morire!_ and the unbreathing German goes silently home and lives upon her for a week.

At the close of the last song, and as the curtain threatens to descend, the acclamation bursts into its loudest explosion, and seems for a while inextinguishable; now every one who has a white handkerchief waves it, and every one who can buy a wreath or a bouquet strews it upon the stage. On Saturdays I steal into the third tier towards heaven, and there drink the divine harmony, as one thirsty drinks the healthful stream; or sit under a shower of bright eyes in the pit. The present Italian company forms a union of talent (so say the best critics of the world) such as the world has never seen excelled. Lablache explodes as the thunder, when it mutters along the flinty ribs of the Tuscarora; Rubini out-sings the spheres, so almost Tamburini, and almost Ivanoff. But to thee, black-eyed and languishing Grisi--what are they to thee!

“Ye common people of the skies,
What are ye when the sun doth rise?”

At the risk of surfeiting you with sweetmeats, I will take you next to the grand opera--the _Académie Royale de Musique_, where the best music is Taglioni. If you have read in your Virgil of that namesake of yours, who made no impression on the dust, nor bent the light corn or blade of grass as she walked upon it; if you have seen a ghost curtseying along the flank of the Sharp Mountain, and leaving no trace of its airy feet upon the winnowed snows, then you can imagine Taglioni upon the scene of the grand opera, as she flits along the boards, with just gravitation enough to detain her upon the earth. But why absent in the very season of her triumphs?--You must content yourself with her nearest representative, Miss Fanny Elsler--second only in grace, but second to none in any thing else.

I will describe you her performance. She will curtsey to her middle, and then rise in a _pirouette_ two yards high. This is her preliminary step. She will then set off, and skip over the whole area of the stage, lighting on it only occasionally, trying her limbs, and, as it were, provoking the dance from afar, and will present herself to the spectators in all the variety of human shapes and appearances. One while you will see her, “many twinkling feet” suspended in the air, then twirling herself around till her face and hips will seem on the same side of her: at last, (and this is the epic strain of the performance, and, therefore, the last), she will poise herself upon the extremity of the left toe, and bring the right gradually up to the level of the eye (the house will hold its breath!) and then she will give herself a rotary movement, continuing it _in crescendo_ till she becomes invisible. You can no more count her legs, than the spokes of a rail waggon carrying the President’s Message.--This is Fanny Elsler. The description will seem bombast only to those who have not seen her, and to those who have, it will seem tame and inadequate. This letter has a great struggle between prose and poetry; it is like one who is set upon a gallop against his will, gets out of breath, and comes panting in at the end of the course. I should have kept Mars, Grisi, and Taglioni to make an impression in the end--but you can begin with the last page, as girls do the new novel. I was last week induced by an acquaintance to go to the Variètés. It is a merry theatre, said he--“_il provoque le rire_.” This is a kind of provocation I have had frequent need of since I came to Paris. If you think there is no place for melancholy amongst these unsighing French people, you are mistaken. I have sat in this Bastille of a hotel, grave as a bust of Seneca, for a whole week, till all the Paris blue devils ---- and so I went to the Variètés, and saw _Frederic Lemaitre_ in his own “Robert Macaire,” and, above all, the delightful _Jenny Vertprès_, and was not disappointed.

The French have a quick and lively observation, and can dress up a simple anecdote, or vaudeville, or a fancy-shop at the Palais Royal, with a prettiness no other nation need attempt to rival. There is a general good humour, too, about a French audience, which exhibits as much as the play.--There were several notable scenes in some of the pieces, which would be worth telling you, if I had time. If you are not frightened at little licenses, this is a delightful theatre. You will see here _Achard_, who both sings and acts true comedy; and _Tansez_, who “looks broad nonsense with a stare.” Brutus would have liked to have such a face when he played the fool at Rome; and, above all, you will see that exquisite rogue, _Madame Dejaret_.

I went to my next neighbour, the _Odéon_, not long ago, where I saw _Néron, l’Empereur, et Madame sa mère_, and Monsieur Britannicus. Mademoiselle George, once the delight of the capital and its emperor, is yet a well-timbered and hale old woman. She has, in her favour, the dignity of fat, and looks devil enough for Agrippina.--But the French wear the sock more gracefully than the buskin. Their tragic Muse is sublime always, and therefore always ridiculous. She puts on a _qu’il mourut_ kind of face, and carries it about through the whole five acts. She calls the dogs always with the same voice, as when she sees the game. But tragedy, it seems, is in her decrepitude all over the world; the sublime is worn out of our nature; all we can do, now-a-days, is to be beautiful. Miss George, with a little help from _Anais_ and _Dorval_, has been lugging the old cripple about Paris, for several years, on her own back. Decent comedy has nearly the same service, but with more vigour, from Mademoiselle Mars. I have got over just in time to see the fag end of the two Goddesses.

The sterling old plays of Corneille and Crebillon, which recommended dignity and energy of character, are played no more--even upon their native scene, the Théâtre Français. It is not even _bon ton_ to speak much of them, it is provincial and almost vulgar; if played at all, it is only to revive, a little, the dying embers of Miss George.--I have seen played other tragedies, and one notably called “Hamlet.” I was lured by the name. It is so pleasant to meet an old friend in a foreign country! But, alas! it was not “Hamlet the Dane,” but Monsieur Hamlet, of the Théâtre Français---- When the French get hold of a foreign author, as Shakspeare or Göethe, they civilise him a little--frenchify him. It is not to be expected that he should have all the polish and all the graces, as if he was brought up in Paris. They chasten the music, too, in the same manner; and M. Hertz, Musard, and Co. spend whole lives in adapting (as they call it) Rossini, Mozart, and other foreigners, to French ears.

But in these light productions, the vaudevilles which are played at the “Gaieté” and “Variètés,” and such theatres, and which are the fashion of the day, the acting and composition are both perfect. Ligier, Bouffé, Armand, and Pontier, and the ladies Anais, Vertprès, and Fay, are no common-rate mimics. And there are many others of nearly the same merit, seemingly all made expressly for their several parts, in this great farce of human littleness. Who was that new comer (a Yankee) who said, “They wanted to make me believe the actors on the stage were living people, but I wasn’t such a novice as they took me for?” It has not been a Parisian theatre that this incredulous man visited.

I ought to conduct you, but have not time, to some of the other theatres--to the Porte St. Martin, where Mademoiselle George looks “_Lucrece Borgia_;” to the “Gymnase,” which smells of the counting-house, and Scribe’s plays, and where Bouffé plays, as no one else can play, his “_Gamin de Paris_;” and especially to the “Vaudeville,” to see the elegant _Brohan_, the lovely _Targueil_, the sprightly _Mayer_, and tender _Thenard_, the scape-grace _Madame Taigny_, and the inimitable old woman _Guillemin_, and _Lafont_ and _Arnal_--or to the “Opera Comique,” where you would hear those two mocking-birds Mesdame _Damoreau_ and _Lavasseur_; and finally to Franconi’s, where you would see Madame Something else, on her head on horseback, and _Auriol_ on his slack rope--the rest is stupid. I have seen them all; even the Funambules and the Marionettes; I have seen Madame Saqui’s little show, for six pence; and I have cried over a melo-drama, at the “Petit Lazari,” for four sous.

If one comes to Paris, one ought to see Paris. This you cannot do in the domestic circle--the stranger is not admitted there. And certainly not in public places, for the world no more goes thither, in its natural expression and opinions, than the fashionable lady in her natural shapes. You must look at it in its looking glass. A stage, patronised by twenty-five thousand spectators, every night, cannot be a very unfaithful representation.

The dignity of human greatness; the highborn, hereditary authority, and lowly reverence, which produced strong contrasts of passion with refined and elegant manners, have withered away under the Republican spirit of the age. Kings and lords, and heroes are no more held in veneration than Pagan Gods; not so much; for these at least are poetical. And from our universal reading and the easy intercourse which follows, a great man can scarce be got up any more in the world; we are all as intimate, with the imperfections of a hero as his valet de chambre. And the mock majesty of the stage has lost its respect at the same time. _Dufresne_ used to say, “Sirrah, the hour”--to his hair dresser; who replied, “My lord, I know not.” Mademoiselle Clairon kept her train, and equipage, and her _femme de chambre_ addressed her as a queen. The patronage of a splendid court then excited a spirit of emulation among the actors, and gave them a sense of their dignity, which was sustained by the public feeling.

To-day the tragic hero lives with the common herd undistinguished; he is not even refused Christian burial when he dies. The world has been used, too, these fifty years to gross sensuality and crime beyond the example of all former times, and human sympathy has been staled by custom; matrimonial jealousy, which held the wolf’s bane and dagger, is now either comic or insipid; a Phædra excites no disgust, an Œdipus inspires no horror. The passions, which sustained the deep tragic interest, are quenched; or they have become prurient and emasculate, and require to be tickled by a vaudeville. Farce has usurped the stage, and the dwarfish imp limps, where tragedy dragged her flowing robes upon the scene.

The French, who, before their Revolution, declaimed against the murders of the English drama, now out-kill all ages and countries. Rapes and massacres have been the staple of their lower plays for many years, and are not uncommon in the best. This taste is on the decline.--The intrigues and amours of young girls in Parisian society--are almost impossible. Danaë was not so guarded in her tower, as the unwedded females in Paris. The loves of married women are therefore the common plots of the French plays, as well as of French novels, and they are publicly applauded, as in the ordinary and natural course of society.--In our cities, the stage, ill attended, and not sustained by original compositions, must be a faithless mirror; but I have no doubt that in Paris it represents the general features correctly.

Each of the French theatres has its range of pieces assigned, and cannot compete with, or injure another. Four of the principal ones, the Italian and French Opera, Théâtre Français, and Opera Comique, pay neither rent nor license, but have two hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually from government. This sum is contributed from the five and a half millions derived from the gambling houses.

They make the devil pay his own debts. The Opera alone has two hundred thousand francs. And we expect in America to support two or three, and bring all our performers and fiddlers from Europe, on the taste of the community! A single singer may make her fortune in our cities, but a company must perish. The annual receipts from all the Parisian Theatres are about one and a half million of dollars. The author retains the control of his pieces, and receives from the theatres of the capital and provinces, a share of every night’s performance during life, with a _post obit_ of ten years. Scribe’s revenue from this source is above twenty-five thousand dollars. A five-act piece pays the author at the “Théâtre Français” one twelfth.

There is a great deal of machinery about the French drama, which is but little known in countries less advanced in the art. For example, each theatre has attached to it a regular _troupe_ of applauders. These were originally got up for occasions, but in course of time they have become as an integral part of the corps dramatique;--they are called _Clacqueurs_, (Anglice _Clappers_.) Their art requires a regular apprenticeship, as the other branches of a histrionic education, though not a branch at the “Repertoire.” A person of good capacity may make himself master of it in two or three months.

They who have taken lessons in _Clacking_ under the professors, can clap louder than ordinary people, and they know where to clap, which is something. They can shew also a great deal more enthusiasm than if they were really delighted;--as they who cry at funerals can cry better than persons who are really grieved. On my first visits here, I could not help remarking how much more feeling was a French than an American audience. The Théâtre Français went off in a crash every now and then, which one could hear to the Boulevards; and I could see no great reason for the explosion. On nights of deep tragedy they bring out also the female _Clacqueurs_. These are taught, one to sob, another to feign to wipe away a tear, and another to scream when a pistol goes off, and they are distributed in different parts of the house. If you see any lady fainting on these occasions, don’t pick her up, she is getting her living by it.

No piece succeeds, or actor either, unless these salaried critics are employed. If neglected, they turn out among the hisses. Even Talma had to pay to this High Chancery his regular tribute. In some of the houses there are two rival companies, and the player is obliged to bribe both, or the rival pack will rise up and bark against him. The actor has his regular interviews with the chief officer, and they agree beforehand upon what parts are to be applauded, with the quality and quantity of the applause. “At this passage,” says Mars, “you must applaud gently, at this a little louder, and at this moderately”--_Cependant Madame_, a _beau sentiment_ like this----“_Quoi! Cependent Monsieur._--It is forty years, sir, since I have been playing in this house, and no one has dared to say to me, ‘_Cependant!_’ I tell you, you are to keep your ardour to the end of the scene. I have no notion of being blown up to heaven in the middle of a passion, and left dangling two feet in the air at the end of it. Here is the place you are to applaud; here you may give a clap and a _brava_; and here, (mark well this point,) at this finale I must have the whole strength of your company.”

“Give me your hand, M. Gigolard; here are fifty francs, and a little present for your wife. And, recollect, I must have this evening my _Grand Entrée_; I have been absent these three months, and my return requires that attention.” A _Grand Entrée_ is where the actress has a burst of acclamation just at her entrance, which is kept up afterwards louder and louder; she bows, and they applaud, and there must be a great conflict between joy and gratitude until she has exhausted a clap worth about ten francs.--These _Clacqueurs_ are, on all ordinary occasions, arbiters of the fate of a play or the actor; it is only at a new piece, and a very full house, that they are obliged to consult a little the impressions of the audience.

The Parisians require to be fed continually upon new pieces, and are seldom contented with less than three of an evening, as the epicure prefers several courses, and does not throw away a good appetite upon a single dish. This has given vogue to their short and piquante pieces, the vaudevilles, and produces them several hundred new ones each season, and the manufacture of these pieces has become a regular business on a large scale. A prime vaudevillist does not pretend to furnish his pieces single handed; he has his partners, his clerks, and his understrappers.

These last are a kind of circumforaneous wits, who frequent public places, and run all over town in search of plots and ideas, or some domestic scandal of dramatic interest, and they have their regular cafés or places of rendezvous, where they work to each other’s hands. If you have come just green from the country, and entering a café, see a number of grave and lean persons seated about at tables, seeming entire strangers to one another, and saying not a word about Louis Philipe, or the “Procès Monstre,” this is a café of the vaudevillists. They hunt particularly after persons who arrive with some originality from the Provinces. In cities men are nearly all cast in the same mould; mixing continually together, there is little departure from the fashionable opinions and expressions.--You will see each one with a newspaper, a pencil, and a bit of paper, reading and commenting.

You will see a smile sometimes crossing the serious features of the divine man, and now and then he will start--he has harpooned an idea. Soon after you enter, one will make your acquaintance, especially if you have a comic face. He will treat you to rum and coffee, he will offer you the journal, point out to you the amusing subjects, and set you talking. And you will be delighted, and you will say, not without reason, the Parisians are called the politest people upon the earth. They will not let you go until they have sucked the last drop of your blood, noted down your clownish looks, and airs, copied your features, and robbed you of your very name. At last they will make you mad; for they must see you under the influence of different passions; and if you are impudent they will kick you out of doors.

When you are gone, they will very likely quarrel over your spoils--about the right of ownership; and when the dispute is compromised, the most needy will traffic you away for a consideration. One will sell one of your _bon mots_ for a lemonade; and another one of your sheepish looks for a _riz-au-lait_ or some more expensive dish according to its dramatic interest and novelty. Some of these men keep regular offices, and sell out plots and counter-plots and _bon-mots_, as brokers do mortgages and bills of exchange. Others bring their rough materials to the great manufactory under which they are employed, and receive from Monsieur Scribe or some other master workman, their pay or an interest in the piece proportionate to the value of the contribution. I know of one who has been living upon the eighth of a vaudeville for several years; and another, who is getting along tolerably on a piece of a joke; being a partner with three or four others.

But you must not be running always to the theatre, there are other amusements which claim a share of your attention. At the _Tivoli_ you will find concerts, balls, and fire-works; and you may take an airing every fine evening in a balloon. You have only to ride up to the _Barrière de Clichy_, or it will stop for you at your garret-window. Besides, you have to see the Panoramas, Cosmoramas, Neoramas, Georamas, and the Dioramas.

The Diorama is amongst the prettiest things in Paris. But how to describe it?--You find yourself seated in an immense church, into which you have passed through a dark entry; and whilst you are contemplating its august architecture, twilight comes on imperceptibly, and you see suddenly around you a full congregation, seated, or standing and kneeling, and very intent on their prayers; all which with a little brighter light were invisible. You are then regaled with solemn church music, and assist at the vespers. It is all enchantment. You forget it is day. The voices of men and virgins die away in the distant space, like the voices of unearthly beings. The light returns gradually, the worshippers fade away into air, and you are seated as at first in the silent and lonely cathedral.

You now enter another room, and a vast prospect of beautiful Swiss scenery is opened upon your view, bounded only by the horizon. Before you is a lake, and flocks and herds feeding, and all the glowing images of a country life. How still the atmosphere, and a little hazy and melancholy, as in our Indian summer; you can almost fancy the wood-pigeon’s moan. In the mean time a storm is brewing beyond the distant mountains; you see the gleams of the lightning, and hear the muttering of the thunder. At length the storm gathers thick around you; the end of a mountain is detached from its base, and the avalanche covers the lake, the flocks, inhabitants, and huts, and you are seated amidst the desolation. You are not conscious of the presence of any painting; all is nature and reality.

A few words of the musical entertainment will fill up the measure of this sinful letter. There is a rotunda in the Champs Elysées devoted to concerts every evening from six till nine, throughout the summer season. Here are played the fashionable airs and concertos, and all the chef-d’oeuvres of Italian and German masters. The little quavers play sometimes softly among the leaves of the trees, and now and then pour down like a deluge crash upon your ears. There are sixty musicians; and for all this ravishment a gentleman pays twenty sous, and a lady half-price.

In the winter season the whole of this music and more takes refuge at Musard’s, a central part of the city. Here is a large room fitted up brilliantly with lustres and mirrors, with a gallery over-head, and a room adjoining for refreshments. The orchestra is in the centre surrounded by seats for the audience. There are seats also around the extremities, and between is a wide promenade filled up every evening with visitors all the way from Peru and Pegu; and with any quantity of Parisian fashionables, who come hither to squeeze and quizz one another, and see the music.

Only think of all this refreshment of the ears, and eyes, this gratification and improvement of the taste at twenty sous a night! There is a similar establishment in another section of the city; and these with the concerts of the Conservatory, private concerts, and operas, make up the musical entertainments of Paris.

The French are not, naturally, a very musical people. After all their fuss about a royal “_Académie de Musique_,” and their twenty or thirty pupils at the expense of government, and sent for the improvement of their voices to Rome, they have produced little music. Their Boieldieu and Auber are the only composers who can take seats (and this at some distance) with the Rossinis, Mozarts, and Webers. Their great pianists, Hertz and Kalkbrenner, are Germans; Beriot, the greatest violin, is a Belgian; Lafont only is French. Their natural music, the Troubadour and the rest, has been so wailed in the nursery, and so screamed in the theatre, that the world is sick of it. A man advertised for a servant lately, who could not sing “_Robin du Bois_.”