Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

Boileau said that

 
Le Français, né malin, créa le vaudeville,
 

and Boileau was right, although, when he wrote the line, he referred to a particular style of satirical song, and not to the farces and comedies, intermixed with couplets and snatches of music, that have since borne the name. The Frenchman not only created the vaudeville, but he reserved to himself its monopoly. Essentially French, it is inimitable on any other stage. Of the many attempts made, none have succeeded in catching its peculiar spirit. The Englishman has his farce, the German his possenspiel, the Spaniard his saynete, but the vaudeville will only flourish on French soil, or, at least, in the hands of French authors and actors. Piron and Lesage were its fathers; their mantle has been handed down through succeeding generations, worn alternately by a Piis and a Barré, by a Panard, whom Marmontel called the La Fontaine of the vaudeville, and a Desaugiers, until, in the present day, it rests upon the shoulders of Scribe, and his legion of rivals and imitators. With the exception of the four theatres royal and the Italian opera, there is not a playhouse in Paris where it is not performed, although in each it takes a different tone, to which the actors, as they change from one stage to another, insensibly adapt themselves. Thus the four principal vaudeville theatres have each their own style. There is an immeasurable distance between the vaudeville grivois, the laxity, not to say the positive indecency, of the Palais Royal—supported by the double-entendres of Ravel and Madame Lemenil, and the buffoonery of Alcide Tousez—and the neat and correct little comedies of the Gymnase, so admirably enacted by a Ferville, a Numa, and a Rose Chéri. To the latter theatre, the Parisian matrons conduct their daughters; the former they themselves hesitate to visit. The substance is not invariably more praiseworthy at the one than at the other, but the form is always more decorous.

In discussing the vaudeville, the theatre bearing that name naturally claims the precedence, to which the excellence of its present company also gives it some title. Until the year 1792, there existed at Paris no theatre specially appropriated to this style of performance, which was given at the Comédie Italienne. It attracted crowds; and Sedaine, the composer, vexed to see it preferred to his comic operas, wrote a couplet against it, exhibiting more spleen than poetical merit. The attack, however, together with the refusal of a small pension which he had claimed from the Italian Comedy, to whose treasury he had brought millions of francs, irritated Piis, the vaudevilliste then in vogue, the Scribe of his day. In conjunction with Barré and a few actors, he opened a theatre in the Rue de Chartres. The enterprise was crowned with complete success, and an able company was soon assembled. Mr. Hervey has collected some droll anecdotes of the actors who flourished under this management, although they lose part of their point by translation. Chapelle, a short stout man, "with eyes that were continually opening and shutting, thick black eyebrows, a mouth always half open, and a pair of legs resembling in shape the feet of an elephant," was remarkable for his credulity, and his comrades took particular delight in mystifying him. "Seveste, who had just returned from fulfilling an engagement at Rouen, told the unfortunate dupe that, during his stay in that town, he had succeeded in taming a carp so perfectly, that it followed him about like a dog; adding, that he was much grieved at having lost it. 'How did that happen?' said Chapelle, greatly interested. 'Why,' replied Seveste, 'one evening I took it to my dressing-room at the theatre; as I was going home after the performance, a terrible storm came on, and my poor carp, in trying to leap a gutter, fell in and was drowned.'—'How very unlucky!' cried Chapelle; 'I always thought a carp could swim like a fish!' As he grew older, however, Chapelle, weary of being continually hoaxed, made up his mind to believe nothing, and carried his scepticism so far as to reply to a friend's anxious inquiries after his health, 'Ask somebody else that question, my fine fellow; you can't take me in now.'" Another of the company, Carpentier, drank away his memory, forgot his old parts, and could learn no new ones. For a long time he did not act, but at last ventured to appear in a procession, as a barber who had nothing to say. The audience immediately recognised their old favourite, and applauded him for several minutes after he left the stage. Once more behind the scenes, he exclaimed, "Ils m'ont reconnu! Ils m'ont reconnu!" and burst into tears. "In one of his parts, Carpentier had some couplets to sing, of which the first ran as follows:—

 
Un acteur,
Qui veut de l'auteur
Suivre en tout
L'esprit et le gout,
Doit d'abord,
De savoir son rôle,
Faire au moins le petit effort.
 

Here he stopped short, and repeated the verse thrice, but could get no further; from that day a settled gloom came over him, and he soon committed suicide, by throwing himself out of a window."

The great guns of the present Vaudeville company are, Arnal, Bardou, and Felix; Madame Albert, lately become Madame Bignon, by a second marriage; and Madame Doche, sister of Miss Plunkett the dancer. It would be difficult to find five better actors in their respective styles. All of them, with the exception, we believe, of Bardou, have performed in London, and been received with enthusiasm as great as the chilly audience of the St. James's theatre ever thinks fit to manifest. Arnal, although he has formidable rivals at his own and other theatres, is unquestionably the first French comic actor of the day. Farce is his forte—we ask his pardon, and would say, comedy, vaudeville, charge, extravaganza, or any other names by which it may be fitting to designate the very farcical pieces in which he usually performs. There are no farces now upon the French stage; the term is voted low. Moliere, it is true, wrote and acted farces, until he glided into a higher style; but the more genteel authors and actors of the present time, will not so far condescend. They willingly produce and perform the most pitiful buffooneries, but then it is under a better sounding title. They look to the letter and not the spirit; admit the thing, but repudiate the name. Les farceurs! Arnal, of course, follows the fashion of the times, although too sensible a fellow, we suspect, to care a rush about the matter. For the last twenty years he has been the chief prop of the Vaudeville, where he performs for ten months out of the twelve, at a salary of fourteen hundred pounds, with feux or allowances of twenty francs for every act he plays in. His first appearance was in the tragic character of Mithridates, in which he convulsed his audience with laughter. Convinced by this experiment that tragedy was not his line, he turned his attention to low comedy, and enacted Jocrisse. "In this part," he says, in a very clever poetical epistle to his friend Bouffé, "I was allowed to be tolerably amusing, but all declared that I was much more comic in Mithridates." Off the stage there is nothing particularly funny in Arnal's appearance. The expression of his face, which is much marked with the small pox, is quiet and serious, and it is by this same seriousness that he makes his hearers laugh. When acting, nothing will extort a smile from him. Gifted with extreme self-possession and a ready wit, he now and then embroiders his parts, always with the happiest effect. The excessive dryness with which he gives out his jokes often constitutes their chief merit. To enumerate his crack characters, those which he may be said to have created, would be too long a task. The Poltron is one of his best, and the story goes that his valet, who had been a soldier, having seen him perform it, gave him warning the next morning, declaring that he could not possibly remain in the service of so inveterate a coward. Some of his happiest efforts have been made in little one-act drolleries for two performers; such as Passé Minuit, where he is ably seconded by Bardou. "In private life, Arnal is grave, taciturn, and fond of study; he is said to be a regular frequenter of the Bibliothèque Royale, and has published, besides his epistle to Bouffé, a collection of prettily versified tales and fables." The letter to Bouffé is an amusing, and witty sketch of his own career.

Happening, some seven years ago, to enter the ill-lighted, low-roofed theatre of a third-rate French town, full five hundred miles from Paris, we were struck and fascinated by the exquisite grace and feeling with which an actress of the name of Albert enacted the part of a blind girl in Frederick Soulié's painful drama of Diane de Chivry. The place of so accomplished a performer was evidently on the Parisian boards, and we learned with surprise, that she was on no mere starring expedition, but had quitted the capital, where she was idolised, with a view to a long stay in the provinces. It is rare that French actors who can obtain a decent engagement at Paris, consent to waste their sweetness upon provincials for more than a few nights in the year; and at the time, the motives of Madame Albert's self-banishment, which has only recently terminated, was to us a mystery. The explanation we subsequently heard of it, agrees with that given by Mr. Hervey, and is most creditable to the delicacy and good feeling of the actress who thus abandoned the scene of her early triumphs to submit herself to the caprices and clumsy criticisms of country audiences. She wished "to spare her husband—then engaged in a subordinate capacity at the Théatre Français, and who was seldom spoken of otherwise than as 'the husband of Madame Albert of the Vaudeville'—the mortification of seeing his own efforts completely cast into the shade by those of his wife; and it was with the view of associating him in future with her own successes that she determined on refusing every proposal made to her by the different managers of the capital, a task she persevered in until his death enabled her to return without compunction to Paris, where her place had long been empty." Eclipsed and unnoticed in the metropolis, M. Albert, whose real name was Rodrigues, passed muster very well in country towns. Of his widow, who has been seen and appreciated in London, we need say nothing. All who have witnessed her delightful performances, will admit her to be one of the most charming actresses of the day. Voice, face, figure, every thing is in her favour; her popularity is as well established as her talent is versatile and perfect. "She is cited," says Mr. Hervey, "as one of those who, not more by their brilliant natural gifts than by their private worth, have become ornaments of the profession to which they belong, and who, whilst they can fairly claim universal admiration, are not less entitled to universal respect." There are few actresses upon any stage deserving of so high an encomium; there is perhaps not one of whom, as of Madame Albert, it may with truth be said, that in the several styles of comedy, vaudeville, and domestic drama, she is unsurpassed, if not unequalled.

Another pretty woman and excellent actress is the Belgian beauty, Madame Doche, to whose personal attractions the lithograph prefixed to her memoir does less than justice. She made her first appearance at the early age of fourteen, at the Versailles theatre, under the assumed name of Fleury. She is now only three-and-twenty, but her reputation as a first-rate actress has been established for the last half-dozen years. Of her it was said, when she acted at Brussels, her native city, that she was pretty enough to succeed without talent, and had enough talent to dispense with beauty. She was one of the first who, with Felix for her partner, danced the Polka upon the Paris stage, in the piece called La Polka en Province. The dance was then new, and her graceful performance of it excited enthusiastic applause.

From the Vaudeville to its neighbour and rival, the Variétés, the distance is short; to choose between them, in respect of excellence of acting, and amount of amusement, is very difficult. The founder of the Variétés was the witty Mlle. Montansier, who, previously to the first French Revolution, had the management of the Versailles theatre, as well as of several of the principal provincial ones. In 1790, she opened the house now known as the Palais Royal, for mixed performances, tragedy, comedy, and opera. There Mlle. Mars commenced her career. The prosperity of the company dates from 1798, when the celebrated Brunet joined it. Brunet was the theatrical joker of his time; and all stray puns and witticisms, good, bad, and indifferent, were attributed to him as regularly as, at a later day, and in another country, they have, been fathered upon a Jekyll and a Rogers. Many of his jests had a political character, and got him into serious scrapes. This, Mr. Hervey appears to doubt, but without reason. In various memoirs and reminiscences of the early years of the present century, we find recorded Brunet's stinging sarcasms, and the consequent reprimands and even imprisonments be incurred. "L'Empereur n'aime que Joséphine et la chasse!" was his exclamation when Napoleon's project of divorce was first bruited about; and for days Paris rang with the sharp jest. "Le char l'attend!" he cried, pausing before the triumphal arch on which stood the horses and empty chariot, the spoils of Venice. But the license of Monsieur Brunet's tongue was little relished by the imperial charlatan,—le claqueur de la Grand Armée, as he has been called. Corsican though he was, he had a thorough French susceptibility of ridicule, and well knew that, with his laughter-loving subjects, wit carried weight. The actor was summoned before the prefect of police, severely lectured, and admonished to abjure puns, if he would escape punishment. "Mais que voulez vous que je fasse," replied poor Brunet, in piteous accents, "c'est mon metier de faire des calembourgs, j'y gagne ma vie. Voulez vous donc que je scie du bois?"¹⁵ And, in spite of menaces and imprisonment, he continued each evening to delight the audience of the Variétés with his highly spiced allusions to the men and events of the day. His reputation was European. "Brazier, in his Histoire des Petits Théatres de Paris, relates that, being one day, (March 31st, 1814) on guard at the Barrière St. Martin, a young Calmuck officer, who could hardly speak a word of French, asked him the way to Brunet's theatre." Aided by Tiercelin, the popular actor of the time, who took his types from the lowest classes of the people, Brunet ensured the prosperity of the theatre, until at last the actors at the Français, who had long complained of the preference accorded by the public to Brunet's performances, addressed repeated remonstrances to government, and declared that the taste of the nation was becoming corrupted, and the classic drama of Corneille and Racine despised. They were supported by Fouché and a section of the press, until at last Napoleon, who meddled greatly in theatrical matters, and one of whose sayings was, that if Corneille had lived in his time, he would have made him a prince, thought proper to interfere. Brunet's company was ejected from the Palais Royal, and took refuge, whilst the present theatre on the Boulevard Montmartre was building, in the Théatre de la Cité, on the left bank of the Seine. On the last night at the Palais Royal, (31st December, 1806,) the actors and actresses took their leave of the public on that side the river, in a series of appropriate couplets. One of these ran as follows:—

 
Vous que l'tambour et tambourin
A la gloir', au plaisir entraine;
Quand vous avez passé le Rhin,
Craindrez vous de passer la Seine?
 

This reference to the martial prowess of the "grande nation," of course nearly brought down the house, but it did not carry the audience over the water, at least for some time. At last a new and successful play proved a magnet of irresistible attraction, and produced a receipt of twelve thousand pounds in three months.

In June, 1807, the new Théatre des Variétés opened. Its situation, on a crowded central boulevard, is excellent, and its vogue, with a few brief intervals, has been constant. A large proportion of the best French comic actors of the present century have acted there during the thirty-nine years that have elapsed since its inauguration. Amongst these are reckoned Bosquier Gavaudan, the best couplet singer of his day,—remarkable for his distinct articulation, and who, "from constantly personating officers of rank, grew so accustomed to wear a red ribbon in his coat, that, even when sitting in his dressing-gown at home, he did not feel comfortable without one in his button-hole;" Mme. Barroyer, a flame of Charles X. before the Revolution, the protectress and one of the teachers of Mlle. Mars; Potier, pronounced by Talma to be the most consummate actor he ever knew; Vernet, the admirable comedian; and Odry, who has been called the French Liston, but who is preferred, by most of those whom a thorough knowledge of both languages renders capable of equally appreciating French and English farce, even to the great Paul Pry himself. Then came Frederick Lemaitre, the hero of the melodrama, and sometimes of the more elevated class of drama. He was ill supported at the Variétés, and consequently proved less attractive than he has since been at the Porte St. Martin. He is remarkable for the care with which he studies every detail of his characters, even to the most trifling points of dress and accessories. His love of consistency betrays him, at times, into what may be termed the pedantry of costume. "When playing Buridan, in the Tour de Nesle, he appeared as prime minister in the fourth act, clad in velvet, but with a plain woollen shirt, whereas the courtiers around him wore fine linen garnished with lace. On his being asked the reason of this apparent inconsistency, he replied, that he did not wear a linen shirt because at the epoch referred to in the piece, they were not in common use; 'Nay, more,' added he, 'a century afterward, Isabel of Bavaria was reproached with extravagance for having too much of linen in her trousseau." He was once hissed at Orleans, when performing the part of a starving and destitute man, for taking snuff out of a bit of paper. He had thought it improbable that the needy wretch he represented would carry a snuff-box. Guessing the cause of the public disapprobation, he produced a gold one, which was vehemently applauded.

Jenny Vertpré the miniature Mars, as she has been called, in compliment to her talent, and with reference to her diminutive stature, held more than one engagement at the Variétés. She has been a great rambler, having acted in Germany, Holland, and Belgium, and visited England as manager of a French company. She married Carmouche, a writer of vaudevilles, has left the stage, and teaches young actresses.

The present company at this pleasant theatre is rich in talent. It includes seven or eight actors and actresses, who may be justly termed excellent in their respective styles. At the top of the list stand Bouffé and Déjazet. Respecting the latter, we have but little to add to the opinion we expressed in a recent number of this Magazine. After a long and fatiguing career, and at an age when most actresses have either left the stage, or dwindled into duennas and other subordinate parts, she still affords more pleasure by her performances than nine-tenths of her youthful contemporaries. Her making-up, is admirable, and she and Madame Doche divide between the honour of being the best dressed women on the French stage. In the ball-room or the street she still looks young; for although her face depends upon paint, her figure is erect and juvenile, and one would hardly suspect her of being the mother of "Monsieur Eugene Déjazet, who has attained some celebrity as a musical composer, and of a daughter who appeared at the St. James's theatre, in 1844, under the name of Mademoiselle Herminie." Her generosity and excellent heart have endeared her to her comrades. Her wit and ready repartee are proverbial. Mr. Hervey quotes a few of her bon mots, but he might have made a better selection. It is true that, besides the difficulty of translation, he may have been hampered by the latitude the lady allows herself. He regrets that a collection of her smart sayings is not made, to be called Déjazetiana; and opines that it would rival in merit, and far surpass in bulk, the volume containing the sallies of the famous Sophie Arnould. Something of the sort has been published, under the title of the "Perroquet de Mademoiselle Déjazet," but to its authenticity or value we are unable to speak.

In the year 1821, a young man in his twenty-first year, by trade a carver and gilder, was engaged to act at the new theatre of the Panorama Dramatique, at the enormous salary of twelve pounds per annum. To augment this pittance, and to please his father, who was averse to his new profession, he employed himself between the acts in gilding frames in a small workshop behind the scenes. This ill-paid aspirant to histrionic fame was Marie Bouffé, "the most perfect comedian of his day," says Mr. Hervey, and we fully coincide in the verdict. Bouffé, is one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and agreeable actors we ever saw; subtle and delicate in his conceptions of character, energetic without rant, ever true to Nature, and of a rare versatility of talent. We have known several persons who fancied, partly perhaps on account of his name, that he only acted comic parts: they should see him obtain a succès de larmes, throw a whole theatre into tears, by his exquisite feeling and pathos in serious ones. No actor more thoroughly makes his audience forget that he is one. His identification with his part is complete. The two lines of characters he usually takes are old men and lads, even very young boys. And in both he perfectly succeeds. We are doubtful in which to prefer him. As the noisy, lively, mischievous urchen in the Gamin de Paris, and as the griping old miser in the Fille de l'Avare, he is equally excellent. His countenance is remarkable. A clever critic has said of him, that he has the physiognomy of a Mephistopheles and the eye of an angel. The observation is singularly happy. There is something Mephistophelian in the curve of his nose, and in the lines around his mouth. His command of expression is extraordinary; his eyes, especially, alternately flash fire and grow dim with melancholy or tenderness. His figure is short, thin, and frail; his general appearance sickly, and not without cause, for poor Bouffé is consumptive, and, to judge from his looks, not long for this world. The only actor upon the French or English stage with whom we can compare him is the veteran Farren. But the comparison is to the advantage of the Frenchman, whose chief characteristic is his entire freedom from mannerism and stage trick. Mr. Farren is of the old and sterling school of actors, of which, unfortunately, so few remain. He stands first in his line upon the English boards, and deserves to be spoken of with all respect. Would that we had a dozen as good. But he has his faults, and the chief one is mannerism, certain peculiar ways that prevent the spectator from forgetting the actor in the person he represents, trifles, which it may be hypercritical to cavil at, but which nevertheless spoil the illusion, and compel the exclamation, "There is Farren." Take for example his favourite trick of scratching his upper lip with his forefinger. We have seen Bouffé many times—less frequently, certainly, than we have Farren—but we never perceived in him any of these peculiarities. His creations are original and new throughout; the mime disappears, and we have before as the gossiping old man, the rough shipboy, the simple-hearted recruit. We are really at a loss to point out a fault or suggest an improvement in Bouffé's acting. "If the public," says M. Eugene Briffault, "finds that he makes but little progress in the course of each year, it is because he is as near perfection as an actor can be." Many of Mr. Hervey's criticisms are excellent; none more so than the following:—"Bouffé's gaiety is frank and communicative, his pathos simple, yet inexpressibly touching; the foundation of his character is sensibility; he feels all he says. He never employs any superfluity of action for the purpose of producing effect, nor does he seek, by first raising his voice almost to a shriek, and then lowering it to a whisper, to startle his audience into a fit of enthusiasm; on the contrary, a studied sobriety, both of speech and gesture, is one of the peculiar features of his acting." When Bouffé visits England, we recommend some of our actors, who at present "imitate humanity so abominably," to attend his performances, and strive to profit by his example.

We have lingered at the Variétés, and must move onwards, rather against our will, and although much remains to be said concerning that amusing theatre and its actors. Hyacinthe's nose, alone, would furnish materials for a chapter, and of alarming longitude, if in proportion with the feature. The two Lepeintres would fill an article. They are brothers and rival punsters. The jokes of Lepeintre, Jenue have been printed and sold at the theatre door. His senior, who is no way inferior to him, either as a wit or an actor, said, with reference to himself, that he carried abundance, wherever he went, "puisqu'on y voyoit le pain trainer (Lepeintre âiné.)"

On the site of an old cemetery stands the theatre known as the Gymnase Dramatique. A suggestive fact for the moralist. Death replaced by Momus; the mourner's tears succeeded by the quips and cranks of an Achard, by the wreathed smiles of a Rose Chéri. Where the funeral once took its slow and solemn way, rouged processions pass, tinsel heroes strut, and vapour. Thousand-tinted garlands supplant the pale immortelles that decked the graves; the sable cloak is doffed, and motley's the only wear. Surely actors must be bold men to tread a stage covering so many mouldering relics of mortality. Not for Potosi, and the Real del Monte to boot, would we do it, lest, at the witching hour, some ghastly skeleton array should rise and drive us from the Golgotha, or drag us to the charnel-house beneath. But we forget that the good old days are gone when such things were, or were believed in, and that superstition is now as much out of date as a heavy coach upon the Great North Road. Spectres may occasionally be seen at the Gymnase, but they are very material, flesh-and-blood sort of goblins, well known as impostors, even to the scene-shifters. This need not prevent any aspiring young novelist, desirous of coming out in the ghastly and ghostly line, from profiting by our hint, and producing, after a little preparatory cramming with Mrs. Radcliffe and the Five Nights of St. Albans, what the newspapers call "a romance of thrilling interest" on the subject of the gay Gymnase and its grave foundation.

Built in 1819, the Gymnase "was originally intended, as its name denotes, to be a kind of preparatory school for dramatic aspirants, whence the most promising actors and actresses were to be occasionally transferred to the different royal theatres." For some years—from 1824 till the July Revolution—it was known as the Théatre de Madame, and was under the special patronage of the Duchess of Berri, whom the manager had propitiated by sending a part of his company to amuse her when bathing at Dieppe. At that time it ranked immediately after the theatres royal, taking the precedence of the Vaudeville and other minors. Shorn by the Revolution of its honours and privileges, its favour with the public suffered little diminution. For many years Bouffé performed there, and there achieved his greatest triumphs. At the Variétés he has not been so well catered for by the dramatists. The present company at the Gymnase is very good. Bressant, Ferville, Numa, Klein, and Achard, are excellent actors. In actresses, also, the theatre is well provided, and the whole tone of its company and performances is such as to render it one of the most correct and agreeable in Paris. But the gem of the Gymnase, its grand attraction, to our thinking, is that delightful little actress, Rose Chéri. Never, assuredly, was a pretty name more appropriately bestowed. Her plump, fresh, pleasant little face, reminds one of the Rose, and chérie she assuredly is by the hundreds of thousands whom her graceful and tasteful performance has enchanted. Mademoiselle Chéri, who is only one-and-twenty, made her "first appearance upon any stage" at the somewhat early age of five years. "She acted the part of Lisette, in the Roman d'une Heure, for the amusement of her parents, (the other two characters being sustained by two of her playmates;) and the talent displayed by her was so remarkable, that she was encouraged to repeat the essay in public at the theatre of Bourges, on which occasion her infant exertions were rewarded by the enthusiastic applause of the audience, and—which was probably still more to her taste—by a shower of bonbons." Either the applause or the bonbons, or both, decided her vocation, and she continued to act from time to time, until at length she became a regular member of a provincial company, whose manager was her father. In 1842, she went to Paris, where she soon took rank with the best jeunes premières of the capital. She has been justly called the most loveable actress upon the French stage; so graceful, so soft and womanly, displaying alternately such genuine feeling and nature, and such arch coquetry of manner; always such great freshness of style. We were pleased to see her properly appreciated during her last visit to London, both by press and public. Trained to the stage from so early an age—although not, as Mademoiselle Déjazet is said to have been, born in a theatre—it is not surprising that Rose Chéri is in the highest degree self-possessed and at her ease. But if she is sans peur on the boards, she is also—most rare commendation for a French actress—sans reproche in private life. Such a Rose as this is indeed the pride of the garden.