Part 4 (2/2)
Of Marie's childhood and youth we know scarcely anything. In 1653 she lost her father, very probably in an epidemic which broke out at Rouen that year; and, not long afterwards, her mother married again, her second husband being one Antoine La Guerault or Laguerault, a well-to-do landed proprietor in the neighbourhood. The girl and her brother Nicolas, who was also to achieve distinction on the boards, seem to have received a fair education; but, either because she was unhappy in the home of her stepfather, or because she saw but little chance of the indispensable _dot_ being forthcoming, at the age of twenty-three, Marie decided to tempt fortune on the stage.
At this period, there was no regular theatre at Rouen; indeed, buildings reserved exclusively for dramatic performances were hardly known outside the capital. There were, however, two large tennis-courts, one situated in the Rue des Charrettes, the other in the Rue Saint-eloi, the proprietors of which were always ready, at a few hours' notice, to convert them into temples of Thespis for the accommodation of any travelling company which happened to be visiting the town. M. Noury, the lady's latest biographer, thinks that it was in the second of these, called the _Feu de Paume des Braques_, where Moliere's troupe had played in 1643, and again in 1658, that Marie Desmares made her _debut_.
By Marie's side, a young actor from Paris, Charles Chevillet by name, made his bow to the public. This young man, who was a few months younger than his fair colleague, was the son of a worthy silk-merchant of the Rue Saint-Honore.[43] Chevillet _pere_, being of a practical turn of mind, had endeavoured to inspire his son with a taste for his own trade.
But, as ill-luck would have it, the theatre of the Pet.i.t-Bourbon, where Moliere's troupe was then established, was situated within easy distance of his shop, and, after attending the performances for some little time, Charles came to the conclusion that measuring and matching silks was altogether too prosaic a calling for him. Accordingly, one fine day he disappeared from Paris and made his way to Rouen, where, according to the custom of the time, in mounting the boards, he added to his own patronymic an aristocratic pseudonym, and became Charles Chevillet, Sieur de Champmesle.
M. de Champmesle, who is described as ”a handsome man, with a distinguished air and extremely polished manners,” ”witty and possessed of all that is required to please and to command love,” made a very favourable impression upon Mlle. Desmares. He, on his side, admired her greatly, and very possibly foresaw something of the great career which awaited her. They, therefore, determined to share each other's fortunes, and the young man, having paid a visit to Paris to obtain his parents'
consent, they were married on January 9, 1666, at the church of Saint-eloi, at Rouen.
In view of what we have already said about the practice of the Church in regard to the theatrical profession, it is not without interest to note that the _acte de mariage_ states that the parties ”practised the vocation of players,” and that the banns had been published, ”notwithstanding the fact that they had no intention of abandoning the exercise of their profession at lawful times.”
The young couple continued playing in Rouen and the neighbourhood until the summer of 1668, when, alarmed, apparently by the plague, which was devastating Normandy, they removed to Paris. Here Champmesle, who was by this time a very capable actor, was soon invited to join the company of the Theatre du Marais; and, at the beginning of the following year, his wife was offered a place in the same troupe.
Mlle. de Champmesle made her first appearance on the Paris stage on February 15, 1669, in _La Fete de Venus_, an insipid pastoral, by the Abbe Boyer, in which she impersonated the G.o.ddess and was much applauded. In the early months of 1670 she secured two other triumphs.
The first was in an ”heroic comedy,” called _Polycrate_, also by Boyer; and it spoke volumes for the talent and charm of the young actress that the audience should have been content to sit through and applaud five acts of what appears to have been an almost worthless play. Her second success was gained in _Les Amours de Venus et Adonis_, a tragedy by Donneau de Vise, in which she again represented the G.o.ddess, and Robinet chanted her praises:--
”La belle deesse Venus, Et dans ce role cette actrice Est une parfaite enchantrice.”
But Mlle. de Champmesle was but half satisfied with such successes. She was ambitious, and felt that at the Marais her talents had not sufficient scope. The old theatre, as we have said elsewhere, had now fallen on evil days; the pieces represented there seemed sorry stuff indeed in comparison with the comedies of Moliere and the tragedies of Racine; it was the Palais-Royal and the Hotel de Bourgogne which divided the suffrages of the playgoing public; the _salle_ in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple was at times well-nigh deserted. She knew that her true vocation was in tragedy; not in tragedy such as the third-cla.s.s dramatists who wrote for the Theatre du Marais penned, but in plays like the _Cid_ and _Polyeucte_, _Alexandre_ and _Andromaque_. On first arriving in Paris, she had had the good sense to recognise that her talents were as yet insufficiently developed to allow of her attempting the great roles of Corneille and Racine; but now circ.u.mstances had changed. Her acting had had the good fortune to attract the attention of a member of the Marais troupe named Laroque, whose acquaintance she had made at Rouen. Laroque, as is not infrequently the case, though only a moderate performer, was an admirable instructor; and, perceiving in his young colleague great possibilities, had devoted much time and care to perfecting her in her art, and with the happiest results. Accordingly, at Easter 1670, Mlle. Champmesle and her husband quitted the Rue Vieille-du-Temple for the Hotel de Bourgogne. ”Here she met Racine and glory.”
The Hotel de Bourgogne reopened after the Easter recess with a revival of Racine's _Andromaque_ which three years before had aroused an enthusiasm the like of which had not been witnessed since the days of the _Cid_. The part of Hermione was to have been taken by Mlle. Des illets, who had created it; but she was lying ill of a malady from which she died not long afterwards, and it was in consequence decided to entrust it to Mlle. Champmesle. Racine, who knew nothing of the new recruit, and feared that such a difficult role might suffer in the hands of an actress who had never interpreted anything more important than the insipid heroines of Boyer and Vise, refused at first to attend the performance, and, though he ultimately consented to be present, did so with evident reluctance. His apprehensions were groundless. ”Mlle. de Champmesle's rendering of the first two acts was very weak,” relates the Abbe de Laporte in his _Annales dramatiques_. ”These acts, where Hermione is in turn attracted and repelled by Pyrrhus, require a profound knowledge of the stage and great _finesse_. But in the last acts, where she is a frenzied lover, with whom jealousy carries all before it and to whom a supreme betrayal leaves nothing but vengeance to live for, she retrieved her ground so completely, threw so much fire into her acting, and rendered the pa.s.sions with such real fervour that she was enthusiastically applauded.”
At the conclusion of the play, Racine, enraptured with the young actress's rendering of his heroine, hurried to her dressing-room, and, falling on his knees, overwhelmed her with compliments and thanks. A few days later, Mlle. Des illets was sufficiently recovered to pay a visit to the theatre to witness the performance of the new star; and, when the curtain fell, was seen to throw up her hands and exclaim sorrowfully: ”Des illets is no more!”--words which, coming from an actress who sees herself dethroned by an understudy, are more eloquent than the most exhaustive commentary.
Overjoyed at finding that such an actress had arisen, Racine gave his new interpreter lessons in elocution, ”at the same time studying her natural peculiarities, with a view to making them serviceable in any character he might wish her to represent.” According to the poet's son, Louis Racine, Mlle. de Champmesle owed her subsequent successes entirely to his father's teaching. ”As he had formed Baron,” he says, ”he formed the Champmesle, but with far more trouble. He made her understand the verses which she had to recite, showed her the gestures which were appropriate to each pa.s.sage, and dictated to her the emphasis which she must employ.” There can be no doubt that Mlle. de Champmesle owed much to Racine's tuition, but it is equally certain that she had great natural gifts as an actress, the chief of which were a peculiar grace of movement and the greatest of all theatrical seductions, a most enchanting voice, which moved La Fontaine to write:--
”Est-il quelqu'un que votre voix n'enchante?
S'en trouve-t-il une aussi touchante, Un autre allant si droit au cur?”
The flexibility of her voice appears to have been quite extraordinary.
Melodious, soft, and caressing in roles like Iphigenie or Monime, it became so powerful and sonorous in such parts as Phedre, Roxane, and Hermione that, it is said, when the door of the box at the end of the _salle_ happened to be open, it could be heard at the Cafe Procope, over the way. ”The recitation of actors in tragedy,” says the anonymous author of the _Entretiens galants_, ”is a kind of chant, and you will readily admit that the Champmesle would not please you so much, if her voice were less agreeable. But she has learned to modulate it with so much skill, and she lends to her words such natural tones, that it would seem that she really has in her heart the pa.s.sions she expresses with her mouth.” In pathetic pa.s.sages, we are told, she drew tears from the eyes of the most hardened playgoers. ”It was amusing to watch the ladies sighing and drying their eyes and the men laughing at them, while they themselves were hard put to restrain their emotion.”
There seems to be some difference of opinion as to whether Mlle. de Champmesle was strictly beautiful. According to the Brothers Parfaict, ”her skin was not clear, and her eyes were very small and round.” On the other hand, she was ”of a fine shape, well made and n.o.ble,” and ”her defects were, so to speak, counterbalanced by the natural graces spread over her whole person.” Louis Racine, though he denies her talent, admits that she was handsome; while Madame de Sevigne tells us that she was ”almost plain,” but ”adorable upon the stage.” However that may be, she did not lack for admirers, and Racine, who, two years before, had lost his mistress, the beautiful Mlle. du Parc--the actress who had in turn rejected the addresses of Moliere, Pierre Corneille, and La Fontaine--speedily fell in love with her, and installed her in the vacant place in his affections, M. de Champmesle accepting his dishonour with fas.h.i.+onable complacency. Henceforth, as Moliere had written for his wife, Racine wrote for his mistress, who created all his great heroines, and ”investing them with her own charm, became in truth the _collaboratrice_ of the poet.”
”Benissons de l'amour l'influence divine, C'est a toi, Champmesle, que nous devons Racine, Il ecrivait pour toi, de te plaire occupe, Son vers coulait plus doux de son cur echappe.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: JEAN RACINE
From an engraving by VERTUE]
In the early spring of 1670, Louis XIV.'s sister-in-law, the ill-fated Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I., persuaded Corneille and Racine to write each a tragedy on the story of t.i.tus and Berenice, without each other's knowledge, and consequently without the knowledge of any one else. Her object in so doing was, in all probability, merely to bring the relative merits of the two great dramatists to a decisive test, though rumour a.s.signed a romantic reason for her choice of the subject, to wit, a desire to see upon the stage a little story a.n.a.logous to that of her one-time relations with Louis XIV. _Madame's_ death, famous for its disputed causes and Bossuet's funeral oration, occurred in the following June; but this did not interfere with the completion of the plays, which were produced within a few days of one another, the secret having been so well kept that until then neither of the poets had the faintest conception that they had been simultaneously engaged on the same subject.
Racine was the first in the field, his _Berenice_ being produced at the Hotel de Bourgogne on November 21, Floridor playing t.i.tus, and Mlle. de Champmesle the beautiful Jewess. Corneille's _t.i.te et Berenice_ appeared at the Palais-Royal, eight days later, with La Thorilliere and Mlle.
Moliere in the t.i.tle-parts.
The result of the duel to which the two dramatists found themselves, all unwittingly, committed was wholly in favour of the younger, Corneille's play, notwithstanding some fine pa.s.sages, being unworthy of his reputation.[44] It was probably to this fact and to the admirable acting of Mlle. de Champmesle, rather than to any special merits of his own, that Racine was indebted for his easy triumph. Approved by the king and applauded by the public, his _Berenice_ remained in the bills until after the thirtieth performance; but it did not please the critics, Boileau declaring that had he been consulted he would have endeavoured to dissuade his friend from undertaking so poor a theme; while Chapelle, when asked by Racine for his opinion, replied in two verses of an old song:--
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