Part 23 (2/2)
Her art and life inspired respect and admiration; we have nothing to regret, nothing to conceal; we desire to love her for her animals, and we must esteem her for her grand devotion to her art and family, for her purity and charity, for her kindness to and love for those in the lower walks of life, for her goodness and honesty. An ill.u.s.tration of the last quality may be taken from her dealings with art collectors.
After having offered her _Horse Fair_, which she desired should remain in France, to her own town for twelve thousand francs, she sold it for forty thousand francs to Mr. Gambert, but with the condition which she thus expressed: ”I am grateful for your giving me such a n.o.ble price, but I do not like to feel that I have taken advantage of your liberality. Let us see how we can combine matters. You will not be able to have an engraving made from so large a canvas; suppose I paint you a small one of the same subject, of which I will make you a present.” Naturally, the gift was accepted, and the smaller canvas now hangs in the National Gallery of London.
In all her dealings she showed this kindness and uprightness, sympathy and honesty. Although numberless orders were constantly coming to her, she never let them hurry her in her work. She was, possibly, the highest and n.o.blest type--certainly among great French women--of that strong and solid virtue which const.i.tutes the backbone and the very essence of French national strength. The reputation of Rosa Bonheur has never been blemished by the least touch of petty jealousy, hatred, envy, vanity, or pride--and, among all great French women, she is one of the few of whom this may be said. She won for herself and her n.o.ble art the genuine and lasting sympathy of the world at large.
The only woman artist in France deserving a place beside Rosa Bonheur belongs properly under the reign of Louis XVI., although she lived almost to the middle of the nineteenth century. At the age of twenty, Mme. Lebrun was already famous as the leading portrait painter; this was during the most popular period of Marie Antoinette--1775 to 1785.
In 1775, but a young girl, admitted to all the sessions of the Academy as recognition of her portraits of La Bruyere and Cardinal Fleury, she made her life unhappy and gave her art a serious blow by consenting to marry the then great art critic and collector of art, Lebrun. His pa.s.sion for gambling and women ruined her fortune and almost ended her career as an artist. Her own conduct was not irreproachable.
Mme. Lebrun will be remembered princ.i.p.ally as the great painter of Marie Antoinette, who posed for her more than twenty times. The most prominent people of Europe eagerly sought her work, while socially she was welcomed everywhere. Her famous suppers and entertainments in her modestly furnished hotel, at which Garat sang, Gretry played the piano, and Viotti and Prince Henry of Prussia a.s.sisted, were the events of the day. Her reputation as a painter of the great ladies and gentlemen of n.o.bility, and her entertainments, naturally a.s.sociated her with the n.o.bility; hence, she shared their unpopularity at the outbreak of the Revolution and left France.
It is doubtful whether any artist--certainly no French artist--ever received more attention and honors, or was made a member of so many art academies, than Mme. Lebrun. It would be difficult to make any comparison between her and Rosa Bonheur, their respective spheres of art being so different. Only the future will speak as to the relative positions of each in French art.
In the domain of the dramatic art of the nineteenth century, two women have made their names well known throughout Europe and America,--Rachel, and Sarah Bernhardt, both tragediennes and both daughters of Israel. While Rachel was, without question, the greatest tragedienne that France ever produced, excelling Bernhardt in deep tragic force, she yet lacked many qualities which our contemporary possesses in a high degree. She had constantly to contend with a cruel fate and a wicked, grasping nature, which brought her to an early grave. The wretched slave of her greedy and rapacious father and managers, who cared for her only in so far as she enriched them by her genius and popularity, hers was a miserable existence, which detracted from her acting, checked her development, and finally undermined her health.
After her critical period of apprentices.h.i.+p was successfully pa.s.sed and she was free to govern herself, she rose to be queen of the French stage--a position which she held for eighteen years, during which she was wors.h.i.+pped and petted by the whole world. As a social leader, she was received and made much of by the great ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Her taste in dress was exquisite in its simplicity, being in perfect harmony with the reserved, retiring, and amiable actress herself.
Possibly no actress, singer, or other public woman ever received such homage and general recognition. With all her great qualities as an actress, vigor, grandeur, wild, savage energy, superb articulation, irreproachable diction, and a marvellous sense of situations, she lacked the one quality which we miss in Sarah Bernhardt also--a true tenderness and compa.s.sion. As a tragedienne she can be compared to Talma only. Her greed for money soon ended her brilliant career; unlike her sister in art, she ama.s.sed a fortune, leaving over one million five hundred thousand francs.
Compared with Bernhardt, Rachel is said to have been the greater in pure tragedy, but she did not possess as many arts of fascination.
There are many points of similarity between the two actresses: Rachel was at times artificial, wanting in tenderness and depth, while at times she was superhuman in her pa.s.sion and emotion, and often put more into her role than was intended; and the acting of Sarah Bernhardt has the same characteristics. Rachel, however, was much more subject to moods and fits of inspiration than is Bernhardt--especially was she incapable of acting at her best on evenings of her first appearance in a new role. Her critical power was very weak in comparison with her intellectual power, the reverse being true of her modern rival. Rachel's greatest inspiration was _Phedre_, and in this role Bernhardt ”is weak, unequal. We see all the viciousness in _Phedre_ and none of her grandeur. She breaks herself to pieces against the huge difficulties of the conception and does not succeed in moving us.... Rachel was the mouthpiece of the G.o.ds; no longer a free agent, she poured forth every epithet of adoration that Aphrodite could suggest, clambering up higher and higher in the intensity of her emotions, whilst her audience hung breathless, riveted on every word, and dared to burst forth in thunders of applause only after she had vanished from their sight.”
Both of these artists were children of the lower cla.s.s, and struggled with a fate which required grit, tenacity, and determination to win success. The artist of to-day is no social leader--”never the companion of man, but his slave or his despot.” It is entirely her physical charms and the outward or artificial requisites of her art that make her what she is. According to Mr. Lynch, her tragedy ”is but one of disorder, fury, and folly--pa.s.sions not deep, but unbridled and hysterical in their intensest display. Her _forte_ lies in the ornate and elaborate exhibition of roles,” for which she creates the most capricious and fantastic garbs. She is a great manager,--omitting the financial part,--quite a writer, somewhat of a painter and sculptor, throwing her money away, except to her creditors, adored by some and execrated by others. Her care of her physical self and her utter disregard for money have undoubtedly contributed to her long and brilliant career; rest and idleness are her most cruel punishments.
All nervous energy, never happy, restless, she is a true _fin de siecle_ product.
Among the large number of women who wielded influence in the nineteenth century, either through their salons or through their works, Mme. Guizot was one of the most important as the author of treatises on education and as a moralist. As an intimate friend of Suard, she was placed, as a contributor, on the _Publiciste_, and for ten years wrote articles on morality, society, and literature which showed a varied talent, much depth, and justness. Fond of polemics, she never failed to attack men like La Harpe, De Bonald, etc., thus making herself felt as an influence to be reckoned with in matters literary and moral.
As Mme. Guizot, she naturally had a powerful influence upon her husband, shaping his thoughts and theories, for she immediately espoused his principles and interests. In 1821, at the age of forty-eight, she began her literary work again, after a period of rest, writing novels in which the maternal love and the ardent and pious sentiments of a woman married late in life are reflected. In her theories of education she showed a highly practical spirit.
Sainte-Beuve said that, next to Mme. de Stael, ”she was the woman endowed with the most sagacity and intelligence; the sentiment that she inspires is that of respect and esteem--and these terms can only do her justice.”
Mme. de Duras, in her salon, represented the Restoration, ”by a composite of aristocracy and affability, of brilliant wit and seriousness, semi-liberal and somewhat progressive.” Her credit lies in the fact that, by her keen wit, she kept in harmony a heterogeneous mixture of social life. She wrote a number of novels, which are, for the most part, ”a mere delicate and discreet expression of her interior life.”
Mme. Ackermann, German in her entire make-up, was, among French female writers, one of the deepest thinkers of the nineteenth century. A true mystic, she was, from early youth, filled with ardent, dreamy vagaries, to which she gave expression in verse--poems which reflect a pessimism which is rather the expression of her life's experiences, and of twenty-four years of solitude after two years of happy wedded state, than an actual depression and a discouraging philosophy of life. Her poetry shows a vigor, depth, precision of form, and strength of expression seldom found in poetry of French women.
One of the most conspicuous figures in the latter half of the nineteenth century is Mme. Adam,--Juliette Lamber,--an unusual woman in every respect. In 1879 she founded the _Nouvelle Revue_, on the plan of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for which she wrote political and literary articles which showed much talent. In politics she is a Republican and something of a socialist, a somewhat sensational--but modestly sensational--figure. She has been called ”a necessary continuator of George Sand.” Her salon was the great centre for all Republicans and one of the most brilliant and important of this century. In literature her name is connected with the movement called neo-h.e.l.lenism, the aim of which seems to have been to inspire a love and sympathy for the art, religion, and literature of ancient and modern Greece. In her works she shows a deep insight into Greek life and art. Her name will always be connected with the Republican movement in France; as a salon leader, _femme de lettres_, journalist, and female politician, no woman is better known in France in the nineteenth century.
A woman who might be called the rival of Mme. Adam, but whose activity occurred much earlier in the century, was Mme. Emile de Girardin,--Delphine Gay,--who ruled, at least for a short time, the social and literary world of Paris at her hotel in the Rue Chaillot.
Her very early precocity, combined with her rare beauty, made her famous. In 1836, after having written a number of poems which showed a weak sentimentality and a quite mannered emotion, she founded the _Courrier Francais_, for which she wrote articles on the questions of the day--effusions which were written upon the spur of the moment and were very unreliable. Her dramas were hardly successful, although they were played by the great Rachel. Her present claim to fame is based upon the brilliancy of her salon.
The future will possibly remember Mme. Alphonse Daudet more as the wife of the great Daudet than as a writer, although, according to M. Jules Lemaitre, she possessed the gift of _ecriture artiste_ to a remarkable degree. According to him, sureness and exactness and a striking truth of impressions are her characteristics as a writer. She exercised a most wholesome power over Alphonse Daudet, taking him away from bad influences, giving him a home, dignity, and happiness, and saving him from brutality and pessimism; she was his guardian and censor; she preserved his grace and n.o.ble sentiments. The nature of her relations to him should ensure the preservation of her name to posterity.
We are accustomed to give Gyp--Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville--little credit for seriousness or morality, a.s.sociating her with the average brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the knack of writing in a brilliant style. Her object is to show that man, in a civilized state in society, is vain, coa.r.s.e, and ridiculous. She paints Parisian society to demonstrate that the apparently fortunate ones of the world are not to be envied, that they are miserable in their so-called joys and ridiculous in their pleasures and their elegance. She has described the most _risque_ situations and the most delightful women, but she gives us to understand that the latter are not to be loved. The vanity of the social world might be called her text.
Mme. Blanc--Therese de Solms--is known to us to-day as the first woman to reveal English and American authors and habits to her contemporaries. By advocating American customs she has done much to ameliorate the condition of French girls, by giving them a freer intercourse with young men and permitting them to see more of the world before entering upon married life.
Mme. Greville, who died recently, deserves a place among the prominent women writers of France. No _femme de lettres_ ever received more honors, prizes, and decorations than she; a number of her writings were crowned by the Academy. A member of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, with all her literary work she was a domestic woman, keeping aloof from all feminist movements. Her husband, Professor Durand, to show his esteem and admiration for her, adopted her name--a wise act, for it may preserve his name with that of his talented wife.
Many other names might be cited, but, as the list of prominent women is practically without end, owing to the indefiniteness of the term ”prominent,” we shall close with these names, which have become familiar in both continents.
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