Part 6 (1/2)
She grew gradually worse, and early in May, it was seen that her end was near. Then arose the question of the administration of the last Sacraments; but before speaking of this, it may be as well for us to glance back and see what had been the practice of the Church in regard to the theatrical profession during the quarter of a century which had elapsed since the death of Moliere.
If any hopes had existed that the distressing incidents which had accompanied the death of the great actor-dramatist had been merely the outcome of the hostility of the Church towards a particular individual, and, as such, were unlikely to be repeated, they were speedily doomed to disappointment. Henceforth, the penalties denounced against the profession by the early councils were no longer suffered to remain a dead letter, but were enforced with the most merciless severity. The actor found himself excommunicated both in life and death. Marriage, absolution, the Holy Sacrament, baptism, all were denied him; and he was even refused Christian burial. In one way, and in one way only, could he escape this infamous proscription, which was publicly proclaimed every Sunday from every pulpit in Paris, namely, by renouncing his profession, surrendering his means of livelihood, forfeiting, in the case of a member of the Comedie-Francaise, the pension to which he was ent.i.tled after twenty years' service.
In 1684, Brecourt, an actor of the Comedie-Francaise, died. On his death-bed he sent for the cure of Saint-Sulpice; but that priest refused to administer the Sacraments until the actor had executed a deed formally renouncing his profession, which was signed by him and four ecclesiastics.[56] Shortly afterwards, two other players, Raisin and Salle, were compelled to subscribe to similar doc.u.ments, in the presence of a notary.
Two years later, Rosimont died suddenly without having had time to abjure his errors. Notwithstanding a fondness for good liquor, he was a sincerely religious man, having published a translation of the Psalms in verse, and also written, or collaborated in, a _Vie des saints pour tous les jours de l'annee_. This fact, however, was not permitted to have any weight with the bigoted cure of Saint-Sulpice, and the remains of poor Rosimont were interred, without any ceremony, in a part of the cemetery reserved for unbaptized children.
It must not be supposed that, outside the capital, the proscription of the actor was general. In the provinces it varied, according to the views of the different bishops and the particular ritual observed, and in some dioceses the penalties were not enforced at all. Moreover, even among the clergy themselves, men of liberal opinions were not wanting to protest vigorously against the folly and injustice of reviving superannuated anathemas, intended to apply to the sanguinary games of the circus and the scandalous performances of the Roman theatre, against the interpreters of the tragedies of Corneille and Racine and the comedies of Moliere. In 1694, a Theatine monk, one Pere Caffaro by name, published, under the cloak of anonymity, a very able letter, ent.i.tled _Lettre d'un Theologien_, wherein he a.s.serted that ”the theatre, as it then existed in France, contained only lessons of virtue, humanity, and morality, and nothing to which the most chaste ear could not give its attention.” He further pointed out that the highest dignitaries of the Church--bishops, cardinals, and nuncios--had no scruples about visiting the theatre, and, therefore, if it was to be condemned, they must be condemned also, ”since they authorised it by their presence”; and concluded by eulogising the exemplary life led by so many members of the proscribed profession, and their abounding charity, ”to which magistrates and the superiors of convents could bear ample testimony.”
This letter made a great stir, and brought Bossuet--then regarded as the mouthpiece of the Gallican Church--into the field to crush the imprudent Theatine. The bishop called upon the monk to retract his statements, and published a treatise called _Maximes et reflexions sur la comedie_, in which, after denouncing the plays most in vogue, and in particular the comedies of Moliere, which he stigmatised as full of ”impieties and obscenities unfit for the ears of a Christian,” he maintained that it was not only ”the idolatry and the scandalous indecency” of the theatre that the Fathers of the Church had condemned, but ”its uselessness, its prodigious dissipation, the pa.s.sions which it excited, and the vanity and love of display which it aroused.” According to him, the Church would excommunicate all Christians who frequented the theatre, were the number of offenders not so great.
Bossuet also a.s.serted that actors had always been excommunicated. ”The constant practice of the Church,” he wrote, ”is to deprive those who perform plays of the Sacraments, both in life and death, unless they renounce their art; and to repulse them from the Holy Table as public sinners.” This statement, as M. Maugras points out, in his able and interesting work, _Les Comediens hors la loi_, was quite untrue. Up to the time of _Tartuffe_, the Church had shown the greatest indulgence towards the theatrical profession, and the old canons had remained a dead-letter.
Bossuet was followed in his campaign against the theatre by all the most eminent of the French clergy. Ma.s.sillon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon vied with one another in denouncing the unhappy actor in their sermons and writings.[57] Pere Caffaro was compelled by the Archbishop of Paris to publicly disavow his letter, which, in fear and trembling, he now protested had been extracted from a work of his, written ”in the levity of youth,” and published without his knowledge or consent; and the persecution, encouraged by the fact that the gloomy bigotry of the old King had led him to withdraw his protection from the theatre, grew more rigorous than ever.
Strangely enough, at the same time that the Church was mercilessly proscribing the French actors, it received with open arms the Italian players, who had definitely established themselves in Paris in 1660, admitted them to the Sacraments, allowed them to be married in church, and buried them in holy ground. This distinction appears the more inexplicable, as the French theatre was at this period as reserved and decent as the Italian was the reverse. The licence of the foreigners, indeed, knew no bounds, and finally their plays a.s.sumed so objectionable a character that, in 1697, they were expelled from France.[58] The probable explanation is, that the Gallican Church did not dare to proscribe the same persons whom the sovereign pontiffs tolerated in their realm, and whose performances were freely patronised by the Roman prelates and clergy.[59]
By another inconsistency, the indulgence shown to the Italian players was extended to the singers and dancers of the Opera. The reason given for this exemption was that the members of the Opera were not actors, as they did not bear the name. But, as we have seen, the canons of the early councils, upon which the bigots relied for their authority, made no distinction whatever between the different cla.s.ses of public performers: actors, singers, dancers, mountebanks, jugglers, and circus performers were all included in one common anathema.[60]
Mlle. de Champmesle had been greatly distressed at having to renounce her triumphs and the adulation of the public. Proud of the profession to which she owed her fame, she revolted from the idea of repudiating it, and for some time opposed a steady resistance to the solicitations of the cure of Auteuil, who besought her to make her peace with Heaven, or rather with the Church. Finally, however, she yielded, and the cure of Saint-Sulpice, to whose parish she belonged, was summoned to receive her renunciation. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, as we have seen, the unfortunate actor or actress was compelled to give this undertaking in writing duly attested before a notary; but when the priest arrived the poor woman was at the point of death, and he was therefore compelled to content himself with a verbal declaration. This formality concluded, the cure of Auteuil gave the dying actress absolution and administered the last Sacraments; and on May 15, 1698, she pa.s.sed quietly away, at the age of fifty-six.
On the morrow her body was brought to Paris, and interred at Saint-Sulpice, in the presence of the whole of the Comedie-Francaise.
That same day, Racine, now a _devot_ of the most p.r.o.nounced type, wrote to his son Louis, ”with whom,” says the poet's very candid biographer, M. Larroumet, ”he ought never to have approached such a subject”:--
”M. de Rost informed me the day before yesterday that the Champmesle was _in extremis_, about which he appeared very distressed; but what is more distressing is that which he apparently troubles little about, I mean the obstinacy with which this poor wretch refuses to renounce the play; declaring, so I am told, that she is proud to die an actress. It is to be hoped that, when she sees death drawing nearer, she will change her tone, as is the rule with the majority of persons who give themselves such airs so long as they are in good health.”
Two months later, he returns to the subject in these terms:--
”I must tell you, by the way, that I owe reparation to the memory of the Champmesle, who died in a sufficiently good state of mind, after having renounced the play, very repentant for her past life, but especially distressed at having to die.”
”There is no conversion,” very justly remarks M. Larroumet, ”that can possibly excuse such language as this.”
Mlle. de Champmesle left behind her two brilliant pupils. The first was Mlle. Duclos, daughter of a former member of the Marais troupe named Chateauneuf, who made her _debut_ at the Comedie-Francaise in 1693, and was soon afterwards engaged to understudy the great actress in first tragedy parts. She excelled in roles requiring ”majesty of bearing and the impetuous sway of pa.s.sion,” and in such secured several notable successes; but her style both of speaking and acting seems to have been very artificial. She was, moreover, cursed with a most abominable temper, which made her a perfect terror to her colleagues at rehearsals, and which she could not always control, even before the audience. At the first performance of La Motte's _Ines de Castro_, in 1723, a scene which was intended to be intensely pathetic excited the merriment of the pit, upon which Mlle. Duclos, who was playing Ines, stopped the performance, and coming to the front of the stage, shouted angrily, ”Foolish pit! You are laughing at the finest thing in the play.” On another occasion, when Dancourt apologised to the audience for the lady's non-appearance in one of her most popular roles, at the same time indicating, by a significant gesture, the cause of her indisposition, the actress, who happened to be standing in the wings, rushed on to the stage, beside herself with pa.s.sion, and soundly boxed her facetious colleague's ears, amid roars of laughter. In 1733, when in her fifty-sixth year, Mlle. Duclos was foolish enough to marry an actor named d.u.c.h.emin, a youth scarcely seventeen! Two years later, she was compelled to obtain a separation from her juvenile husband, whom she alleged had ”maltreated her daily,” and dealt her ”_coups de pied et de poing tant sur le corps que sur le visage_.” Mlle. Duclos's most successful creation was Zen.o.bie, in the _Rhadaminthe et Zen.o.bie_ of Crebillon, and among her other impersonations were Ariane, in Thomas Corneille's play of that name, Josabeth, in _Athalie_, Herselie in La Motte's _Romulus_, and the t.i.tle-part in the _electre_ of Longpierre.
She retired, in 1733, with a pension of 1000 livres from the theatre, and another of the same amount from the court, which she enjoyed for twelve years.
The second of Mlle. de Champmesle's pupils was her own niece, Charlotte Desmares, of whom we have already spoken. After playing in child-parts for some years at the Comedie-Francaise, Mlle. Desmares made her _debut_ in 1699, the year after her aunt's death. She was an exceedingly pretty young woman, and, though inferior to Mlle. Duclos in declamatory tragedy, greatly her superior in pathetic roles. Her best tragedy parts were Iphigenie in La Grange-Chancel's _Oreste et Pilade_, which had been Mlle. de Champmesle's last creation, Semiramis in Crebillon's play of that name, Jocaste in the _dipe_ of Voltaire, and Antigone in La Motte's _Machabees_, which crowned her career. She was even more successful in comedy, and no better _soubrette_ had been seen since the days of Madeleine Bejart. In 1715, she became the mistress of the Regent d'Orleans, by whom she had a daughter. ”My son,” wrote the old d.u.c.h.esse d'Orleans, ”has been presented with a daughter by the Desmares. She tried to pa.s.s off another child on him as his, but he replied, '_Non, celui-ci est par trop Arlequin_.'”
Mlle. Desmares retired from the stage in 1721, and died in 1743 at the age of sixty-one.
Charles de Champmesle did not long survive his wife. A curious story attaches to his death. On the night of August 19-20, 1701, he dreamed that his dead mother and his wife appeared to him and beckoned him to follow them. Convinced that this dream was a warning of his approaching death, he went, early the following morning, to the church of the Cordeliers, and, handing the sacristan a thirty-sol piece, requested him to have two Requiem Ma.s.ses said for the souls of his departed relatives.
Then, as the monk was about to return him the change--the fee for a Ma.s.s was ten sols--the actor exclaimed: ”Keep the balance and say a third Ma.s.s for me; I will stay and listen to it.” On leaving the church, Champmesle made his way to a tavern adjoining the Comedie-Francaise, and sat down on a bench by the door, where he remained for some time, deep in thought. Presently he entered the theatre and walked about the _foyer_, muttering to himself the old proverb: ”_Adieu, paniers!
vendanges sont faites_” (”Farewell, baskets! the grapes are gathered”).