Part 20 (2/2)
But this enthusiasm does not last long, and, before twelve months have pa.s.sed, we find Mademoiselle complaining of everything at Ans.p.a.ch, from the air to the cooking. In one letter she tells her correspondent that ”the air of the country and _ennui_ are killing her”; in another, that she has had to send for a French cook, because the Ans.p.a.ch cooking ”displeased as much as it disagreed with her”;[207] in a third, that she has had to abandon an attempt to establish a theatre at the Court, ”because there are scarcely a dozen persons there who can carry on a conversation in French, while the rest do not understand a word of the language”; and, in a fourth, that ”the women of this country are dest.i.tute of every grace to which your eyes are accustomed.”
The fact of the matter was that the Court of Ans.p.a.ch did not approve of the advent of Mlle. Clairon; it feared that her installation would, sooner or later, be followed by an invasion of her compatriots, who would seize upon all the most lucrative posts in the State, and generally upset the established order of things. Neither had the Ministers been educated to serve under a _maitresse en t.i.tre_, as had those of France; they resented the interference of a woman--especially a foreigner--in the counsels of their master, and one of them, if Mlle.
Clairon is to be believed, actually carried his resentment so far as to conspire against her life. Moreover, although the poor Margravine herself was compelled, through fear of her husband's anger, to treat her rival with courtesy, and even to invite her to her table, the other ladies of the Margrave's family, like the d.u.c.h.esse of Wurtemburg and the Margravine of Baireuth, absolutely refused to recognise the ex-_tragedienne_, and the feminine portion of the Court seems to have taken its cue from them, rather than from its nominal head.
However, in spite of difficulties and mortifications, Mlle. Clairon remained at her post, and, according to her own account, used the influence she had acquired over the Margrave in a highly beneficent manner; destroying abuses, reforming the finances, encouraging agriculture, and so forth. She also beautified the city of Ans.p.a.ch by an ornamental fountain, established a hospital, distributed considerable sums in charity, and was very popular among the poorer cla.s.ses.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH BERKELEY, COUNTESS OF CRAVEN, AFTERWARDS MARGRAVINE OF ANs.p.a.cH
After the drawing by Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
In the course of the year 1789, Mlle. Clairon found herself called up to face a rival influence. The eccentric and ”_infinitamente_ indiscreet,”[208] but charming and accomplished Elizabeth, Countess of Craven, descended upon Ans.p.a.ch. The countess had separated from her husband in 1780, since which she had spent the greater part of her time in wandering about the Continent. In the course of her travels, she had met the Margrave, whom she had known when she was a child, and who invited her to Ans.p.a.ch. She came, and her stay was a long one. She infused new life into that dull German Court; she organised a theatre in a disused coach-house, and wrote little plays for it; she had a garden laid out in the English style, under her direction, at the Margrave's palace of Triesdorf, near Ans.p.a.ch; she founded a little academy for the encouragement of literature and the arts, and found means to amuse even the unamusable Margravine. Finally, she stole away the heart of the Margrave from his grey-haired Egeria, and wrote to her husband, with whom she still corresponded, that she was to be ”treated as a sister.”
At length, Lady Craven left for Paris. Soon afterwards, the Margrave announced his intention of visiting the French capital; Mlle. Clairon decided to accompany him. In Paris, the Margrave favoured her with so little of his company that she felt constrained to inquire the reason.
The prince returned an evasive answer; Mlle. Clairon caused a watch to be kept upon his movements, and discovered the fatal truth. So long as the Margrave remained in Paris, the deceived sultana, by a great effort of will, succeeded ”in concealing beneath a countenance always calm, and sometimes laughing, the rending tortures of mind and body.” But when the prince returned to Ans.p.a.ch, she declined to follow him, and sent instead a long and reproachful letter, wherein she informed him that ”his frenzied pa.s.sion for a woman of whose character, unfortunately, he alone was ignorant, his indifference to public opinion, the license of his new morals, his want of respect for his age and his dignity, obliged her to see in him only one who had thrown aside all restraint and decency in compliance with the dictates of a depraved heart, or as one whose disordered intellect, while it excited pity, evinced also the necessity of restraint; that the veil was now lifted, and she knew herself never to have been anything but the hapless victim of his egotism and his divers caprices; and that, therefore, with infinite pain, she laid at his feet all the boons she had received from him, and bade him adieu ...
adieu for ever.”
And so ended the last romance of Mlle. Clairon, and the only souvenir of her seventeen years' residence at Ans.p.a.ch is a kind of fancy bread, which is called ”_Clairons Weck_” unto this day.[209]
As for the faithless Margrave, he was too happy in the society of Lady Craven, who shortly afterwards took up her residence at Ans.p.a.ch, to care much what became of her predecessor in his affections; and so infatuated did he become with that lady that, on his wife's death in 1791, he married her. In the following year, the prince--in the face of an eloquent letter of remonstrance from Mlle. Clairon--sold his margravates of Ans.p.a.ch and Baireuth to the King of Prussia, and migrated, with his wife, to England, where he died in 1806. The Margravine survived her husband more than twenty years, and died, at Naples, in 1828.
In 1785, during one of the visits to Paris which she had paid in company with the Margrave, Mlle. Clairon had purchased a country-house at Issy, and it was here that she now took up her residence. She lived a very quiet life, receiving and visiting a few old friends, and occupying the rest of her time with collecting objects of natural history, which had always been one of her favourite occupations, and the writing of her _Memoires_.
Madame Vigee Lebrun, the painter, who met Mlle. Clairon soon after her return to France, at the house of her former pupil, Larive, has left us the following impression of the famous _tragedienne_ in her old age:--
”I had pictured to myself that she was very tall; and, on the contrary, she was very short and very thin; she held her head very erect, which gave her an air of dignity. I never heard any one speak with so much emphasis, for she retained her tragic tone and airs of a princess; but she gave me the impression of being clever and well informed. I sat beside her at table, and enjoyed much of her conversation. Larive showed her the greatest respect and attention.”[210]
Early in the year 1792, Mlle. Clairon completed her _Memoires_, which she entrusted to Henri Meister, the friend of Diderot and the Neckers, who was leaving Paris for Germany, on the condition, so she subsequently a.s.serted, that they should not be given to the world until ten years after her death. One day, however, in 1798, she learned, to her astonishment, through an article in a Paris journal, that they had been published in Germany, whereupon she hurriedly brought out a French edition, bearing the t.i.tle: _Memoires d'Hippolyte Clairon et Reflexions sur la declamation theatrale_.
These _Memoires_, written in an absurdly solemn and grandiloquent style, even for the time, and ”interspersed,” says the admiring editor of the English edition, ”with precepts of practical morality which would do honour to our greatest philosophers,” reveal to us a very different Clairon from the Clairon of the police-reports and of the memoirs and correspondence of her contemporaries; but, unfortunately, there can be very little doubt which portrait comes nearer the truth. Partly, no doubt, for this reason, they had only a moderate success; and though several copies bear the words ”_Seconde edition_” they were, as a matter of fact, not reprinted until 1822, when they appeared in the well-known _Collection des Memoires sur l'art dramatique_. The most interesting part of the book, in our opinion, are the chapters which the actress devotes to reflections upon her art, some of which may still be read with profit by candidates for histrionic fame. But what aroused most attention at the time the work was published was the celebrated history of the lady's ghost--the spectre of a young Breton whom she had pitilessly left to die of love, and who had vowed on his death-bed to haunt her for the remainder of her life.
Never was there so persistent and vindictive an apparition--though the term apparition is perhaps a misnomer, as the shade of the departed never actually showed itself. It was perpetually visiting her at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected places--at her _pet.i.ts soupers_, while she was riding in her coach to shop in the Rue Saint-Honore, and so forth. Sometimes its presence was announced by ”a long-continued and piteous cry,” which so terrified an elderly admirer who happened to be present on one occasion, that he ”had to be conducted to his carriage more dead than alive”;[211] sometimes by a loud report like that of a musket; at others by ”a noise like the clapping of hands”; and finally, by ”a celestial voice singing the most tender and pathetic airs.”[212] No solution of these singular phenomena was ever forthcoming, though the a.s.sistance of the police was invoked in order to probe the mystery. But the most probable explanation is a little plot on the part of some friends of the young Breton to read the lady a much-needed lesson.
On her retirement from the stage, Mlle. Clairon had been in possession of a comfortable fortune, producing an income of some 18,000 livres; and though this had been considerably reduced by the financial jugglery of the Abbe Terrai, the loss had been subsequently repaired by the sale of her jewellery, art treasures, and natural history collection, which had realised 90,000 livres. In her old age, however, she fell into great poverty, though to attribute her financial losses to the Revolution--which swept away so many fortunes--as have several writers, would appear to be without justification, as on Fructidor 26, Year III., at a time when money was exceedingly scarce, we find her writing to a M.
Perignon, advocate, requesting him to find her a secure investment for a sum of 24,000 livres; while so late as October 9, 1801, when she made her will, she would appear, to judge by the various bequests she makes, to have been still in easy circ.u.mstances.[213]
On the other hand, there can be no question that between that date and her death, fifteen months later, she was reduced to great distress, as witness the following appeal addressed to Chaptal, the Minister of the Interior, and in response to which she received an order on the Treasury for 2000 livres:--
”CITIZEN MINISTER,--For a month past I have been vainly seeking a protector to bring me to your notice; but if it be true that you are of a generous disposition, it is to you alone that I should address myself.
Seventy-nine years of age, almost in want of the necessaries of life, celebrated at one time by the possession of some talents, I wait at your door until you condescend to grant me a moment.
CLAIRON.”[214]
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