Part 10 (1/2)
Taylor thought he would try another chance, and was met with the reply, ”Cher baron, I am very sorry, but I have just taken five tickets from Mdlle. Rachel. It appears that she is a lady patroness, and that they burdened her with two hundred; fortunately, she told me, people were exceedingly anxious to get them, and these were the last five.”
”Then she had two hundred tickets after all,” said Baron Taylor to himself, making up his mind to find out who had been before him with Rachel. But no one had been before him. The five tickets sold to Comte Le Hon were five of the ten she had sold to Comte Walewski. When the latter had paid her, she made him give her five tickets for herself and family, or rather for her four sisters and herself. Of Comte Le Hon she only took toll of one, which, wonderful to relate, she did not sell.
This was Rachel's way of bestirring herself in the cause of charity.
”Look at the presents she made to every one,” say the panegyrists. They forget to mention that an hour afterwards she regretted her generosity, and from that moment she never left off scheming how to get the thing back. Every one knew this. Beauvallet, to whom she gave a magnificent sword one day, instead of thanking her, said, ”I'll have a chain put to it, mademoiselle, so as to fasten it to the wall of my dressing-room. In that way I shall be sure that it will not disappear during my absence.”
Alexandre Dumas the younger, to whom she made a present of a ring, bowed low and placed it back on her finger at once. ”Allow me to present it to you in my turn, mademoiselle, so as to prevent you asking for it.” She did not say nay, but carried the matter with one of her fascinating smiles. ”It is most natural to take back what one has given, because what one has given was dear to us,” she replied.
Between '46 and '53 I saw a great deal of Rachel, generally in the green-room of the Comedie-Francaise, which was by no means the comfortable or beautiful apartment people imagine, albeit that even in those days the Comedie had a collection of interesting pictures, busts, and statues worthy of being housed in a small museum. The chief ornament of the room was a large gla.s.s between the two windows, but if the apartment had been as bare as a barn, the conversation of Rachel would have been sufficient to make one forget all about its want of decoration; for, with the exception of the elder Dumas, I have never met any one, either man or woman, who exercised the personal charm she did.
I have been told since that Bismarck has the same gift. I was never sufficiently intimate with the great statesman to be able to judge, having only met him three or four times, and under conditions that did not admit of fairly testing his powers in that respect, but I have an idea that the charm of both lay in their utter indifference to the effect produced, or else in their absolute confidence of the result of their simplicity of diction. Rachel's art of telling a story, if art it was, reminded one of that of the chroniclers of the _Niebelungen_; for notwithstanding her familiarity with Racine and Corneille, her vocabulary was exceedingly limited, and her syntax, if not her grammar, off the stage, not always free from reproach.
I do not pretend, after the lapse of so many years, to give these stories in her own language, or all of them; there are a few, however, worth the telling, apart from the fascination with which she invested them.
One evening she said to me, ”Do you know Poirson?”
I had known Poirson when he was director of the Gymnase. He afterwards always invited me to his soirees, one of which, curiously enough, was given on the Sunday before the Revolution of '48. So I said, ”Yes, I know Poirson.”
”Has he ever told you why he did not re-engage me?”
”Never.”
”I'll tell you. People said it was because I did not succeed in 'La Vendeenne' of Paul Duport; but that was not the cause. It was something much more ridiculous; and now that I come to think of it, I am not sure that I ought to tell you, for you are an Englishman, and you will be shocked.”
I was not shocked, I was simply convulsed with laughter, for Rachel, not content with telling the story, got up, and, gradually drawing to the middle of the room, enacted it. It was one of those ludicrous incidents that happen sometimes on the stage, which no amount of foresight on the part of the most skilful and conscientious manager or actor can prevent, but which almost invariably ruins the greatest masterpiece. There were about eight or nine actors and actresses in the room--Regnier, Samson, Beauvallet, etc. It was probably the most critical audience in Europe, but every one shook, and Mdlle. Anas Aubert went into a dead faint.
Regnier often averred that if Rachel had been a man, she would have been the greatest comic actor that ever lived; and it is not generally known that she once played Dorine in ”Tartuffe,” and set the whole of the house into a perfect roar; but on that evening I became convinced that Rachel, in addition to her tragic gifts, was the spirit of Aristophanesque comedy personified. I am afraid, however, that I cannot tell the story, or even hint at it, beyond mentioning that Poirson is reported to have said that Rachel did not want a stage-manager, but a nurse to take care of her. The criticism was a cruel one, though justified by appearances. It was Mama Felix, and not her daughter, who was to blame. The child--she was scarcely more than that--had hurt herself severely, and instead of keeping her at home, she sent her to the theatre, ”poulticed all over,” as Rachel expressed it afterwards.
Mama Felix was the only one who was a match for her famous daughter in money matters. What the latter did with the enormous sums of money she earned has always been a mystery. As I have already said, they were not spent in charity. Nowadays, whatever other theatres may do, the Comedie-Francaise dresses its pensionnaires as well as its societaires from head to foot; it pays the bootmaker's as well as the wigmaker's bill, and the laundress's also. Speaking of the beginning of her career, which coincided with the end of Rachel's, Madeleine Brohan, whose language was often more forcible than elegant, remarked, ”Dans ma jeunesse, on nous mettait toutes nues sur la scene; nous etions a.s.sez jolies pour cela.” But Rachel's costumes varied so little throughout her career as to have required but a small outlay on her part. Nor could her ordinary dresses and furniture, which I happened to see in April, 1858, when they were sold by public auction at her apartments in the Place Royale, have made a considerable inroad on her earnings. The furniture was commonplace to a degree; such pictures and knickknacks as were of value had been given to her, or acquired in the manner I have already described; the laces and trinkets were, undoubtedly, not purchased with her own money. It is said that her brother Raphael was a spendthrift. He may have been, but he did not spend his celebrated sister's money; of that I feel certain. Then what became of it? I am inclined to think that Mdlle. Rachel dabbled considerably in stocks, and that, notwithstanding her shrewdness and sources of information, she was the victim of people cleverer than she was. At any rate, one thing is certain--she was nearly always hard up; and, after having exhausted the good will of all her male acquaintances and friends, compelled to appeal to her mother, who had made a considerable h.o.a.rd for her other four sisters, and perhaps also for her scapegrace son; for, curiously enough, with Mama Felix every one of her children was a G.o.ddess or G.o.d, except _the G.o.ddess_.
This want of appreciation on the mother's part reminds me of a story told to me by Meissonier. His granddaughter, on her fifteenth or sixteenth birthday, had a very nice fan given to her. The sticks were exquisitely carved in ivory, and must have cost a pretty tidy sum, but the fan itself, of black gauze, was absolutely plain. The donor probably intended the grandfather's art to enhance the value of the present, and the latter was about to do so, when the young lady stopped him with the cry, ”Voila qu'il va me gater mon eventail avec ses mannequins!” The irony of non-appreciation by one's nearest and dearest could no further go.
Mama Felix, then, was very close-fisted, and would never lend her daughter any money, except on very good security, namely, on her jewels.
In addition to this, she made her sign an undertaking that if not redeemed at a certain date they would be forfeited; and forfeited they were, if the loan and interest were not forthcoming at the stipulated time, notwithstanding the ravings of Rachel. This would probably account for the comparatively small quant.i.ty of valuable jewelery found after her death.
Some of the ornaments I have seen her wear had an artistic value utterly apart from their cost, others were so commonplace and such evident imitations as to have been declined by the merest grisette. One day I noticed round her wrist a peculiar bracelet. It was composed of a great number of rings, some almost priceless, others less valuable but still very artistic, others again possessing no value whatsoever, either artistically or otherwise. I asked her to take it off and found it to be very heavy, so heavy that I remarked upon it. ”Yes,” she replied, ”I cannot wear two of the same weight, so I am obliged to wear the other in my pocket.” And out came the second, composed of nearly double the number of rings of the first. I was wondering where all those rings came from, but I refrained from asking questions. I was enabled to form my own conclusions a little while afterwards, in the following way:
While we were still admiring the bracelet, Rachel took from her finger a plain gold hoop, in the centre of which was an imperial eagle of the same metal. ”This was given to me by Prince Louis Napoleon,” she said, ”on the occasion of my last journey to London. He told me that it was a souvenir from his mother, and that he would not have parted with it to any one else but me.”
I cannot remember the exact date of this conversation, but it must have been shortly after the Revolution, when the future emperor had just landed in France. About three or four weeks afterwards we were talking to Augustine Brohan, who had just returned from London, where she had fulfilled an engagement of one or two months. Rachel was not there that night, but some one asked her if she had seen Prince Louis in London.
”Yes,” she replied; ”he was going away, and he gave me a present before he went.” Thereupon she took from her finger a ring exactly like that of Rachel's. ”He told me it was a souvenir from his mother, and that he would not have parted with it to any one but me.”
We looked at one another and smiled. The prince had evidently a jeweller who manufactured ”souvenirs from his mother” by the dozen, and which he, the prince, distributed at that time, ”in remembrance of certain happy hours.” The multiplicity of the rings on Rachel's wrist was no longer a puzzle to me. I was thinking of the story in the ”Arabian Nights,” where the lady with the ninety-eight rings bewitches the Sultans Shariar and Shahzenan, in spite of the jealousy and watchfulness of the monster to whom she belongs, and so makes the hundred complete.
Among the many stories Rachel told me there is one not generally known--that of her first appearance before Nicholas I. Though she was very enthusiastically received in London, and though she always spoke gratefully of the many acts of kindness shown her there, I am inclined to think that she felt hurt at the want of cordiality on the part of the English aristocracy when they invited her to recite at their entertainments. This may be a mere surmise of mine; I have no better grounds for it than an expression of hers one day when we were discussing London society. ”Oui, les Anglais, ils sont tres aimables, mais ils paraissent avoir peur des artistes, comme des betes sauvages, car ils vous parquent comme elles au Jardin des Plantes.” I found out afterwards that it was a kind of grudge she bore the English for having invariably improvised a platform or enclosure by means of silken ropes.
Certain is it that, beyond a few casual remarks at long intervals upon London, she seemed reluctant to discuss the subject with me. Not so with regard to Potsdam after her return whence in August, '51. In the beginning of July of that year she told me that she had a special engagement to appear before the court on the 13th of that month. I did not see her until a few weeks after she came back, and then she gave me a full account of the affair. I repeat, after the lapse of so many years, I cannot reproduce her own words, and I could not, even half an hour after her narrative, have reproduced the manner of her telling it; but I can vouch for the correctness of the facts.
”About six o'clock, Raphael [her brother], who was to give me my cues, and I arrived at Potsdam, where we were met by Schneider, who had made the engagement with me. You know, perhaps, that Schneider had been an actor himself, that afterwards he had been promoted to the directors.h.i.+p of the Royal Opera House, and that now he is the private reader to the king, with the t.i.tle of privy or aulic councillor.
”Schneider is a very nice man, and I have never heard a German speak our language so perfectly. Perhaps it was as well, because I dread to contemplate what would have been the effect upon my nerves and ears of lamentations in Teutonized French.”
”Why lamentations?”? I asked.
”Ah, nous voila!” she replied. ”You remember I was in mourning. The moment I stepped out of the carriage, he exclaimed, 'But you are all in black, mademoiselle.' 'Of course I am,' I said, 'seeing that I am in mourning.' 'Great Heaven! what am I to do? Black is not admitted at court on such occasions.' I believe it was the birthday of the Czarina, but of course I was not bound to know that.