Lecture
Delivered by Mme. Géraldy at the Berkeley Lyceum, New York, February 6, 1892.
Ladies:
When I made up my mind to come to this country it was not with the object of exhibiting myself, but to speak to you of my father. In your country my father is much talked of. In my country, unfortunately, he is forgotten. My father did not write anything--that is a terrible thing! He expected to do so some day, but he always put it off. At last he decided to do so during the war--our unfortunate war! He did not have many lessons to give at that time, for nobody thought of taking any. This gave him leisure to write. His work was to have borne the title, "My Revelatory Episodes." He had only written five chapters when he died. It was to bring to you these five chapters that I came to America. But as soon as I began to speak of them I was stopped. "Why do you tell us this?" they said; "we know all this already." I then discovered that the books written on my father by the Abbé Delaumosne and by Mme. Angélique Arnaud had been translated and published in this country. Mme. Arnaud's book is the better of the two, but it is not practical--not at all practical.
I have gathered together what I remember in the form of lectures, which I offer to you. I have been asked for examples; I shall give you examples. I will begin, however, by giving you a little biographical sketch of my father, and by telling you how he happened to make his discovery. He was the son of a country doctor, a man poor but original. My father was still a very little boy when his father sent him and his younger brother to Paris. There they were apprenticed to a jeweler and made bands of gold. Soon the little brother died, and my father was the only one to follow him to the cemetery. On his way back, after the burial, he fell fainting on the plain. When he regained consciousness he heard music in the distance, and, not knowing whence it came, thought it was the music of the angels. Since then he dreamed of nothing but music; he wanted to hear all he could; he longed to study it. One day he heard two little urchins singing in the street. He asked them: "Do you know music?" The urchins replied: "Yes!" "Will you teach it to me?" "Yes, certainly," and they sang a scale for him. "Is that all there is of music?" "Why, yes."
Not long after, he made the acquaintance of an old musician, who became interested in him, gave him a few lessons, and entered him at the Conservatoire. There he attended the elocution classes, and a role was given to him to learn in which he had to say: "How do you do, Papa Dugrand!" He had no success with this sentence. Each of his four professors told him a different way of saying it, and he wondered: "How is this? Are there, then, no principles to go by?" One day a cousin of his arrived unexpectedly from the country. "How do you do, my dear cousin!" And immediately after this warm greeting he ran away from his cousin, crying, excitedly, "I have it! I have it!" and did not stop until he got to his room and in front of a looking-glass. What he had was the right attitude and way to say, "How do you do, Papa Dugrand!" and this way was diametrically opposed to the instruction his professors had given him on the subject.
My father spent forty-five years in observing. He was the king of observers. What remains to us is but one-quarter of all his observations. My father's method is comprehensive; it can be applied to the arts, to the sciences. His pupils were orators, painters, sculptors, comedians, lawyers, doctors, society amateurs.
My father had read in the first chapter of Genesis that God made man in His image. God is Trinity. Trinity is the criterion of my father.
Raymond Brucker was an old friend of my father's. "What is this method of your friend Delsarte?" was a question often put to him. "Delsarte's method," he would reply, "is an orthopedic machine to straighten crippled intellects."
My father considered man as the principle of all arts. He used three terms to express man: Life, mind and soul. He would compare man to a carriage occupied by a traveler. In front sits a coachman, who drives the horse. The carriage is the body of man; the horse that makes it move is life; the coachman who drives the horse is the mind; the occupant of the carriage, who gives orders to the coachman, is the soul. Man feels, thinks and loves.
My father made use of three terms to express three states: Concentric, normal and excentric. These he would combine with each other. I will show you, for example, the three concentric attitudes of the hand: The concentro-concentric, expressing struggle; the concentro-normal, meaning power; the concentro-excentric, showing convulsion. [Illustrates.] In the same way we have the combinations of the eyes and eyebrows, and, again, those of the head. The head is concentro-concentric when the eyes look in the same direction as that toward which the head inclines; this expresses veneration. Notice how different the words, "I love him!" sound when said first with the head inclined from and then inclined toward the object.
An interesting series of movements for the arms that my father used to give is the following: "It is impossible;" "It is not so;" "It is improbable;" "Maybe;" "It is so;" "It is evident;" "There is no doubt whatever about it." [Illustrates.] This series is equally applicable to affirmation and to negation. For example, you can begin by, "It is impossible that it is not true!" and continue with that meaning.
I have been requested to give the attitudes of the feet. I do not like to give them because they are not feminine, and I abhor all that is not feminine. However, as I have been asked for them, and as I wish to prove that my father had also given his attention to their study, here they are: (1) The attitude of little children and of old men, expressing weakness; (2) that of absolute repose; (3) vehemence; (4) prostration; (5) transitory attitude, preparatory to (6) reverential walk; (7) vertigo, intoxication, which is an ignoble vertigo, or familiarity; (8) the alternative between the positions of offensive and defensive; (9) defiance. [Applause.] Oh! I beg of you! [Deprecatingly.] It is horribly ugly in me; but in a man it is all right.
I shall now speak of the interesting role that the shoulder plays in the expression of emotions. My father called the shoulder "the thermometer of passion." Indeed, the shoulders rise with every strong emotion. If I say, "Oh! how angry I am!" without raising the shoulders, it sounds if not false at least weak; but listen, when I raise my shoulders: "Oh! how angry I am!" Again, if I say, "How I love you!" the words are cold; but, with shoulders raised, listen, "How I love you!" Thus we see actors every day who portray different passions, but whose shoulders remain "cold;" they do not move us.
There is a very pretty observation to make about the elbow. My father called it the "thermometer of pride and humility," and used to call our attention to the different ways the soldiers carry their elbows. You know we have a great many soldiers in France and we have a good, chance to observe them. A corporal--that is, nothing at all--carries his elbows like this [elbows turned outward]. A sergeant, whose rank is a little higher than that of a corporal, carries them this way [elbows slightly drawn in]. By the time he becomes lieutenant he is used to authority, and does not have to show it off so much [elbows drawn in still more]. As for a general, one whose rank is the highest in the army, he walks with his arms hanging naturally at his sides.
Now let me tell you about the thumb. My father being the son and the nephew of doctors, was interested enough in the science to enter, at one time, the school of medicine. Here, while dissecting, he noticed that the thumb of a dead man falls inward toward the palm. This led him to study the attitude of the thumb in life. He would pass days in the garden of the Tuileries watching the nurses and the mammas carrying their babes, noting how their thumbs spread out to clasp the precious burden, and how the mothers' hands spread wider open than those of hired servants; so he called the thumb "the thermometer of life."
My father always used to say to his pupils: "Be warm outwardly, cold inwardly." He wanted them to pass suddenly from one great emotion to another. All great actors do so. He would point to a portrait of Garrick, representing the great actor with one-half of his face laughing, the other half weeping. He himself, in his lessons, after having given expression to some pathetic sentiment, would become immediately his own kind self again. He insisted on self-possession. Often when I was a little girl, and would slip into the room during his lessons, for I loved to listen to them, and would find him portraying some terrible passion, he would stop suddenly, seeing the expression of horror on my face, and would burst out laughing and catch me in his arms, saying: "Poor little one, are you frightened?"
"The artist," said my father, "must move, interest and convince." Gesture is the agent of the heart. Gesture must always precede speech. "Make me feel in advance," he used to say; "if it is something frightful, let me read it on your face before you tell me of it." To illustrate the practice of gesture before speech, I will now recite the fable of "The Cock, the Cat and the Mouse." [Here followed the recitation of the fable.]
My father once held his whole audience under a spell, showing them, through the medium of a little girl of eight, a hundred different ways of saying, "That dog is pretty." I will show you one or two ways If I really think the dog is pretty, I will say it in this tone, "That dog is pretty." If the dog's coat is soiled, I will say in a different tone, "That dog is pretty." And if the dog has rubbed against my dress, there will be a vexed tone, "That dog is pretty!"
My father used to divide orators into "artists in words and artists in gesture." Those who are simply artists in words are those who do not move you. Lamartine said of my father, "He is art itself." Théophile Gautier said of him that he "took possession" of his public.
In 1848 the National Guard was appointed to guard the public monuments. My father, who was a member of the Guard, had his station near an archbishopric. A poor fellow was arrested one day who looked suspicious; he was searched and a chaplet was found on him. The cry arose immediately that he should be drowned. The poor man was being hustled off when my father stopped them, saying that he claimed his part of the punishment, and he drew from his own pocket a chaplet and showed it to them. Oh! my father was kind. He was goodness itself. He was often asked to give lectures at the court, but he would answer: "I do not sell my talent, I give it." He was especially fond of his poor pupils, those who did not pay him; he would often invite them to dine with him.
And now let me show you a series of lines which my father called the inflective medallion. Imagine a circle [describing a circle in the air with her hand]. Within this circle a vertical line, a horizontal line, and two oblique lines, all intersecting each other. At both ends of the vertical and horizontal lines are small curved lines, the whole forming the medallion. This medallion contains all necessary gestures. If the vertical line is made from on high downward ↓ [Illustration], it means affirmation; if made from below upward ↑ [Illustration], it means hope. The horizontal line means negation. One oblique line means simple rejection ↙ [Illustration]; the other ↗ [Illustration] means rejection with scorn, as in a line from Lafontaine's fable, "The Lion's Court:" "The monarch, vexed, sent him to Pluto." The little curve at the top of the vertical line ⌣ [Illustration] expresses ease, repose; it has the form of a hammock. The opposite curve ⌢ [Illustration] means secrecy and mystery. This curve ([Illustration] means amplitude. The other one, when made in this direction ⤶ [Illustration] expresses admiration for physical beauty, and in the other direction ⤴ [Illustration], admiration for moral beauty. The entire circle ○ [Illustration] expresses glorification. These gestures can be made with the whole arm, with the forearm only, or simply with the waving hand; the degree of expression varies accordingly.
Lastly, I will speak about the law of opposition. The arm and the head should move in inverse directions [illustrating]; also the arm and the hand. The statue of the Gladiator is a beautiful example of this law of opposition. He is what we French call "well based;" you cannot overthrow him. In contrast to him, my father used to cite Punchinello, the children's toy, an object of ridicule. Punchinello, when the string is pulled, raises his right arm and his right leg at the same time.
Notice the different ways in which people scold. The schoolmaster moves his head from above downward; the boy threatens back, tossing his head upward.
And now, ladies, I hope that what I have said will move you to take a deeper interest in my father's work, and enable you to understand his methods better than heretofore. I shall then feel, when I return to my country, that I have not crossed the Atlantic in vain.