Part 2 (1/2)
_Mademoiselle Moliere._--”'Faith! if I were to write a play, it would be upon that subject. I would justify women in many things of which they are accused, and I would make husbands afraid of the contrast between their abrupt manners and the courtesy of lovers.”
Here, we are told by certain critics, the inference is unmistakable; Moliere clearly foresees the fate which awaits him. In our opinion, they are wrong. In the _Impromptu de Versailles_ Moliere and his wife do not, as in an ordinary play, represent fict.i.tious characters; they appear under their own names. In these circ.u.mstances, it is surely inconceivable that the dramatist should have introduced this dialogue, if he had for one moment imagined it applicable to his own affairs! The very fact that he was so ready to jest upon such a subject seems to us a conclusive proof that up to that time, at least, Armande's conduct had given him but scant cause for uneasiness.
The _Mariage force_ and _George Dandin_, the former produced early in the year 1664, when the difference of age and of character between Moliere and his wife was no doubt beginning to produce its fatal consequences, and the latter in the summer of 1667, after their separation, of which we shall speak in due course, had actually taken place, contain more direct allusions to their author's _menage_.
Sganarelle, like Moliere, had believed himself ”_le plus content des hommes_,” only to be roughly disillusioned when the carefully brought up Dorimene frankly avows her pa.s.sion for ”_toutes les choses de plaisir_”--play, visiting, a.s.semblies, entertainments, and so forth--at the same time expressing a hope that he does not intend to be one of those inconvenient husbands who desire their wives to live ”_comme des loup-garous_,” since solitude drives her to despair, but that they may dwell together as a pair ”_qui savent leur monde_.” Angelique, in her turn, complains to George Dandin of the tyranny exercised by husbands ”who wish their wives to be dead to all amus.e.m.e.nts, and to live only for them.” She has no desire, she tells him, to die young, but ”intends to enjoy, under his good pleasure, some of the glad days that youth has to offer her, to take advantage of the sweet liberties that the age permits her, to see a little of the _beau monde_, and to taste the pleasure of hearing her praises sung.”
All this is certainly reminiscent of Armande, who, according to Grimarest, was no sooner married than she ”believed herself a d.u.c.h.ess,”
affected a coquettish manner with the idle gallants who flocked to pay court to her, and turned a deaf ear to the warnings of her husband, whose lessons appeared to her ”too severe for a young person who, besides, had nothing wherewith to reproach herself.” But the resemblance in the situations goes no further. If Dorimene, in her craving for ”_toutes les chases de plaisir_” and Angelique, in her imperious temper and cold irony, bear some relation to Armande, the foolish and cowardly Sganarelle, who allows himself to be cudgelled by Dorimene's brother, Lycidas, into a marriage which he knows must bring him unhappiness, has nothing, save his age, in common with Moliere; while the aspiring farmer, George Dandin, marrying not for love, but for social position, and deservedly punished for his sn.o.bbishness, is as far removed from his creator as Tartuffe or Monsieur Jourdain.
When we come to the _Misanthrope_, the similarity between fiction and reality is too striking to admit of any doubt as to the author's intentions. It is true that a distinguished English critic[18] professes to see in this play, as in _Don Garcie de Navarre_--Moliere's one failure, produced the year before his marriage, and withdrawn after a run of five nights--the outcome of the actor-dramatist's ”desire of indulging his humour of seriousness and a determination to example his elocutionary theories in verse that, without being actually tragic and heroic, should have something in it of the tragic and heroic quality.”
But, though the large number of verses from _Don Garcie_ which Moliere has incorporated with his role of Alceste would seem to lend some confirmation to this theory, the fact remains that writers are practically unanimous in regarding the _Misanthrope_ as, primarily, a pathetic autobiography of its author under the cloak of fiction. ”This Celimene, so frivolous and so charming, so dangerous and so seductive, this incorrigible coquette, who does not understand what a n.o.ble heart she is wounding even unto death: is not this Armande Bejart, embellished by all the love and all the genius of Moliere? And Alceste; who is he? At the first representations people believed that they recognised the Duc de Montausier, and the Duc de Montausier remarked, with good reason: 'I thank you; it is a great honour.' But we, for our part, recognise Moliere. This misanthrope is something more than an honourable gentleman at odds with the world. He is a great genius misunderstood, who endures and waits; he is a pa.s.sionate sage, an honest man with a great and excellent heart.”[19]
In the _Misanthrope_, Moliere has given to Celimene all the coquetry, the egoism, and the caustic wit which belonged to Armande; to his own role all the weakness of a high-minded man struggling vainly against his pa.s.sion for an unworthy object. ”The love I bear for her,” says Alceste--
”Ne ferme point mes yeux aux defauts qu'on lui trouve; Et je suis, quelque ardeur qu'elle m'ait pu donner, Le premier a les voirs, comme a les cond.a.m.ner.
Mais, avec tout cela, quoi que je puis faire, Je confesse mon foible; elle a l'art de me plaire; J'ai beau voir ses defauts, et j'ai beau l'en blamer, En depit qu'on en ait, elle se fait aimer; Sa grace est la plus forte, et, sans doute, ma flamme De ces vices du temps pourra purger son ame.”
There are moments indeed in the play when it almost ceases to belong to the realm of fiction. The scene, for instance, in the fourth act, when Alceste, holding in his hand the proof of Celimene's perfidy, the letter written by her to his rival, Oronte, calls upon her ”to justify herself at least of a crime that overwhelms him,” and to do her best to appear faithful, while he, on his side, will do his best to believe her such; and Celimene tartly refuses--
”Allez, vous etes fou, dans vos transports jaloux, Et ne meritez pas l'amour qu'on a pour vous.
Allez, de tels soupcons meritent ma colere, Et vous ne valez pas que l'on vous considere: Je suis sotte, et veux mal a ma simplicite, De conserver, encor, pour vous, quelque bonte; Je devrois, autre part, attacher mon estime Et vous faire un sujet de plainte legitime,”
may well have had its parallel in their own lives. And few, again, can doubt the sincerity with which the lover must have uttered the lines,--
”Je fais tout mon possible a rompre de ce cur l'attachement terrible; Mais mes plus grands efforts n'ont rien fait jusqu'ici, Et c'est pour mes peches que je vous aime ainsi.”
”We might well say without exaggeration of this Celimene,” remarks August Wilhelm von Schlegel,[20] ”that there is not a single good point in her whole composition.” This may be so; but, as M. Larroumet is careful to point out, there is really nothing in the _Misanthrope_ which gives us the right to a.s.sume that Armande was anything worse than an incorrigible coquette. ”Celimene is impeccable; she has neither heart nor feeling.”[21] Nor do the remainder of Moliere's plays furnish any fresh proof against Armande; they, on the contrary, strengthen the impression that, while he suffered much from his wife's character, he never believed her to have been guilty of anything which might affect his honour.
This impression seems to have been that of the poet's contemporaries.
Moliere had, as we know, many enemies--unscrupulous enemies, who did not hesitate to launch against him the most hideous of accusations. We can hardly doubt that had there been any reasonable ground for believing Armande guilty of something more than coquetry, the Montfleurys, Le Boulanger de Chalussay and the rest, would have been only too ready to avail themselves of such an opportunity of humiliating the man whom they so bitterly hated. Yet though, like all the rest of the world, they were aware of Moliere's jealous nature, and made this weakness the object of their unsparing ridicule, none of them went so far as to accuse him of being that which he appears to have been in incessant dread of becoming.
At most, their works contain only vague hints and insinuations, to which little or no attention seems to have been paid; and it is probable that Armande's name would have gone down to posterity without any very serious stain upon it, had she not chanced to be made the victim of one of the most audacious and malignant libels ever penned.
Among the swarm of scurrilous brochures, fict.i.tious histories, and stupid romances in the French language which issued from the foreign press during the decade which followed the Protestant emigration of 1685, was a little book, or rather pamphlet, written for the delectation of those persons who are always ready to welcome anything calculated to gratify their curiosity about the private affairs of stage celebrities.
This book, published anonymously at Frankfort, in 1688, by one Rottenberg, a bookseller who made a speciality of such sensational works,[22] bore the t.i.tle of _La Fameuse Comedienne, ou Histoire de la Guerin_, Guerin being the name of Armande Bejart's second husband, whom she married in 1677. Although the demand for it was considerable, and five editions were printed within ten years of the date of its publication, the charges against Armande which it contained do not appear to have been taken very seriously, except among the cla.s.s of readers for whom it was written, until, in 1697, it occurred to Bayle, who had a weakness for piquant anecdotes about notable persons, to include certain pa.s.sages in his famous Dictionary, since which few of the biographers of Moliere have failed to borrow more or less freely from its pages, with most unfortunate results to the reputation of the dramatist's wife.
The authors.h.i.+p of the _Fameuse Comedienne_ remains a mystery to this day, though contemporary gossip, or historians in search of some new sensation, have attributed it successively to a number of persons: La Fontaine, Racine, Chapelle, Blot, the _chansonnier_ of the Fronde, Rosimont, an actor of the Rue Guenegaud, Mlle. Guyot, a member of the same company, and Mlle. Boudin, a provincial actress, who would appear to have been at one time on terms of intimacy with Armande. With regard to the first five of these suppositions, we will merely remark that neither La Fontaine, Racine, nor Chapelle were capable of committing such an infamy; that Blot had been in his grave more than thirty years at the time of the publication of the libel ascribed to him, and that the chief argument advanced by M. Charles Livet, the editor of the latest edition of the _Fameuse Comedienne_, in favour of Rosimont, namely, a resemblance between the style of the book and a theological work ent.i.tled _La Vie des Saints_, which he published in 1680, seems to us too fanciful to merit any serious consideration. In the cases of Mesdemoiselles Guyot and Boudin, there is again a total absence of anything like adequate proof; nevertheless, though they are both in all probability guiltless, strong grounds exist for believing the book to be the work of one of Armande's professional rivals, as the intimate acquaintance with theatrical life which it reveals precludes all doubt as to the vocation of the writer; while the preponderating place it allots to women, the manner in which it speaks of men, the jealous hatred which inspires it, the _finesse_ of some of its remarks, its style and method, all denote a feminine hand.[23]
Atrocious libel though the _Fameuse Comedienne_ undoubtedly is, it is very far from dest.i.tute of that literary merit in which even the works of the most obscure writers of the great epoch of French prose are seldom lacking, and, moreover, contains not a little interesting and authentic information about the public career of Moliere and his wife.
But that is all that can be said in its favour. ”Possessed,” remarks M.
Larroumet, ”by a ferocious hatred against Armande, hatred of the woman and the actress, the writer has only one object--to render her odious.
What she knows of the actions of her enemy she perverts or, at any rate, exaggerates; what she does not know she invents. He who wishes to injure a man attributes to him acts of indecency or cowardice; he who wishes to injure a woman gives her lovers; these are the surest means. Thus our author makes of Armande a Messalina, and a Messalina of the baser sort, one who sells her favours.”
Unfortunately for the object which the libeller has in view, she does not content herself with general charges; she makes formal accusations, which she endeavours to substantiate, and the book abounds in letters, conversations, details about matters which could not possibly have been known, save to the parties immediately concerned, with the result that her attack fails miserably, and the judicious reader very speedily perceives that the work is nothing but a collection of scandalous anecdotes, which, when not controverted by positive facts, sin grievously against probability.
However, as all readers are not judicious, and as the book has imposed on several historians of deservedly high reputation,[24] it may be as well for us, in the interests of truth, to follow the example of M.