1. M. Paul Bourget, the Reactionary Playwright, and M. Pataud, who put out the Lights of Paris
In a boulevard café, over his favourite, strange mixture of strawberry syrup and champagne, a well-known Paris journalist recently called my attention to the profusion of playwrights of high, indisputable ability now writing for the French stage.
“There are not enough theatres to accommodate them all,” he said. “The papers inform us that X—— has just finished a new chef-d’œuvre, but often four, six, even ten months will elapse ere the masterpiece can be produced. Why? Because there is no room for X——. He must wait his turn; and in his leisure—O admirable fertility—he writes yet another play.”
“Nevertheless you have three important répétitions générales this week,” I remarked. “Capus to-morrow, Donnay at the Français on Wednesday, and de Flers and Caillavet, the Inexhaustible, on Friday.”
“Charming Capus, delightful Donnay, amazing de Flers and Caillavet,” exclaimed my companion. “Listen; we are free for an hour. Let us run over the names of our leading playwrights—a formidable list. Garçon, another glass”—and away went the waiter in quest of more syrup and champagne.
Of course, no mere “running over” of the great name of Rostand. Both of us soon found ourselves reciting passages from Cyrano, Chantecler, La Princesse Lointaine—my friend eloquently and emotionally, myself alas! with the natural embarrassment and self-consciousness of the foreigner. “Au trot, au galop,” said my companion, glancing at the clock. And rapidly we proceeded to review the “formidable list” of France’s leading dramatists:—Paul Hervieu, the cultured, polished author of Le Dédale and La Course au Flambeau. Violent, destructive Henri Bernstein—La Griffe, La Rafale, Samson. Henri Lavedan, brilliantly audacious in Le Nouveau Jeu, delightfully ironical in the Marquis de Priola, but serious, profound (a veritable tour de force) in Le Duel. Then Capus, the tolerant, the sympathetic: Nôtre Jeunesse, Les Passagères, Monsieur Piégois. Émile Fabre, wonderful manipulator of stage “crowds,” Les Ventres Dorés. Lively, brilliant de Flers and Caillavet, Le Roi, L’Ane de Buridan, L’Amour Veille. Worldly, cynical Abel Hermant, Les Transatlantiques, Monsieur de Courpière. Jules Lemaître, tender in La Massière, tragical in Bertrad. Brieux: the amusing Hannetons, sombre, harrowing Maternité. Georges Porto-Riche, L’Amoureuse, perhaps the finest modern comedy in the repertoire of the French National Theatre. Sound admirable Donnay, Amants, Le Retour de Jérusalem. Anatole France, the incomparable Crainquebille. MM. Arquillière and Bernède, with their masterly pictures of military life, La Grande Famille, Sous l’Epaulette. Romantic, vigorous Jean Richepin, Le Chemineau. Sardonic, anarchical Octave Mirbeau, Les Affaires sont les Affaires, Le Foyer. Humane, chivalrous Pierre Wolff, L’Age d’Aimer and Le Ruisseau. Georges Ancey, earnest investigator into the hidden crafty practices of the Catholic Church, Ces Messieurs. Gentle, elegant Romain Coolus, L’Enfant chérie and Une Femme Passa. Grim, lurid André de Lorde of the Grand Guignol. Ardent, passionate Henri Bataille, Un Scandale, La Vierge Folle, La Femme Nue.
“Formidable, formidable!” exclaimed our Paris journalist, wiping his brow.
“There remains M. Paul Bourget,” I said.
“M. Paul Bourget is ponderous, prejudiced, pedantic,” objected my companion. “I have just seen his latest photograph, which shows him seated at his writing-desk in a frock coat. Novels of life in the Faubourg St Germain, such as M. Bourget has produced, may possibly be written in a frock coat—not plays.”
“No doubt the coat was only put on for the visit of the photographer,” I charitably suggested.
“M. Paul Bourget’s plays convey the impression—no, the conviction—that they were written in the conventional, cramped armour of a frock coat,” was the solemn, categorical retort.
Now for M. Bourget, on his side it would be permissible to object that a gentleman who takes thick strawberry syrup in his champagne commits no less of an enormity than the dramatist who writes his plays in a frock coat; and that therefore, he, M. Bourget, considers himself untouched by the allegations directed against him from that hostile and eccentric quarter. Nevertheless, an examination of M. Bourget’s dramatic work—Un Divorce, L’Emigré, La Barricade—compels the comparison that whereas his fellow-playwrights adopt the theatre exclusively as a sphere in which to hold up a vivid, faithful, scrupulously impartial picture of scenes from actual life—la vie vivante—M. Bourget uses the stage, ponderously, as a platform or a pulpit. His views on social questions—the dominant ideas, the passions of the hour—are well known. They are autocratic, severe: in the French sense of the word, “correct.” But it unfortunately happens that l’homme correct possesses none of those indispensable attributes required of the playwright—an open mind, imagination, a sense of humour. A firm clerical and the irreconcilable antagonist of divorce, M. Bourget naturally maintains that in a spiritual emergency, women, as well as men, are more efficaciously helped to right conduct by priestly government than by habits of self-reliance. Then his sympathies have ever rested undisguisedly with the classes he has portrayed in his novels—the languid worldling of the Faubourg St Germain, the haute bourgeoisie, the despotic châtelain.
“M. Bourget is not interested in humble people. The vicissitudes, the amours, the miseries of the lower classes, he deems beneath his notice. He concerns himself only with the emotions of the elegant and the rich,” bitter, sardonic M. Octave Mirbeau makes one of his characters remark. And, truly enough, it has to be affirmed that however hard he may have tried to repress his aristocratic proclivities and prejudices when writing for the stage, the author of Un Divorce and La Barricade has remained, despite his endeavours, l’homme autoritaire, l’homme correct.
“Je ne connais pas des idées généreuses,” he has announced. “Je ne connais que des idées vraies ou fausses, et il ne vaudrait pas la peine d’écrire si ce n’était pas pour énoncer les idées que l’on croit et que l’on sait vraies.” And in the press, in conferences, in prefaces, the “eminent Academician” (as the clerical Gaulois monotonously designates M. Bourget) has furthermore declared that Un Divorce and La Barricade were written in a rigorously impartial spirit. But other critics maintain that the controversies that have raged around M. Bourget’s dramatic efforts (started with no little pretentiousness by the author himself) establish nothing. The plays speak for themselves.
M. Bourget’s observations have persuaded him that the rebellious spirit prevailing amongst the working classes is a menace to his country:
“C’est cette sensation du danger présent que j’aurais voulu donner dans La Barricade sûr, si j’avais pu y réussir, d’avoir servi utilement ma classe, et par conséquent mon pays.”
But according to M. Pataud, the notorious ex-Secretary of the Syndicate of Electricians, M. Bourget carried away with him a totally false impression of the men and places he professes so closely, and also so impartially, to have studied.
A word about M. Pataud. It was shortly after he had ordered the Electricians’ strike that plunged Paris almost into darkness for two hours,[2] and at the zenith of his fame, that the “Roi de la Lumière” attended a performance of La Barricade at the Vaudeville Theatre. It had been reported that he had served M. Bourget as a model for the character of Thubeuf, the professional agitator in the play. This, M. Bourget emphatically denied. “Let me see for myself,” said M. Pataud. And he requested M. Bourget to send him a ticket of admission to the theatre, and humorously offered to return the compliment by placing a seat in the Bourse du Travail at the dramatist’s disposal.
Well, M. Bourget granted the request: but ignored the invitation to the Labour Exchange. And one night “King Pataud” seated himself, amidst le Tout Paris in the most fashionable of the boulevard theatres. He himself, in spite of his pink shirt, red tie, and “bowler” hat, belonged in a sense to le Tout Paris. Was he not “Le Roi de la Lumière”? There were columns about him in the newspapers; he was “impersonated” in every music-hall revue, and his picture post cards sold by the thousand. Then, pressing (and sentimental) requests for his autograph; invitations out to dinner and gifts of cigarettes and cigars; and what a stir, what excited cries of “There goes Pataud,” when the great man swaggered down the boulevards with a fine Havana stuck in a corner of his mouth, and the “bowler” hat tilted rakishly over the right eye!
Nor in the Vaudeville Theatre was his triumph less complete. The interest of the brilliant audience was centred on “Fauteuil No. 159”; not on the stage. There sat the man who had but to give the signal and—out would go the lights! So was every opera-glass levelled at him, and so—at the end of the performance—were all the reporters in Paris eager to obtain “King” Pataud’s impressions of the play. “Not bad,” he was reported to have said. “But M. Bourget’s conception of how strikes are conducted is ridiculous. And his strikers are equally absurd.”
I fancy M. Bourget must have regretted that gift of “Fauteuil No. 159” at the time. But to-day he has his revenge—for it was the free seat in the Vaudeville Theatre that led to “King” Pataud’s downfall! After the agitator’s visit to La Barricade it became the fashion amongst the managers to invite the “Roi de la Lumière” to their theatres. Behold him, actually, at the first performance of Chantecler—and at the Gymnase, the Variétés, the Palais Royal. But if the public rejoiced over “King” Pataud’s presence at the theatre, his colleagues in the labour world were to be heard grumbling. Pataud (and it was true) was “getting his head turned.” Pataud was neglecting the Bourse du Travail for theatres and brilliant restaurants. But the “Roi de la Lumière” paid no heed to these reproofs, nor to complaints and warnings vigorously expressed. And the crisis came, the storm burst, when “King” Pataud and an electrician came to blows on the boulevards, and were marched off to the police station on a charge of breaking the peace. At the station, the “Roi de la Lumière” was searched. “Ah, you do yourself well, you enjoy life, you have a gay time of it,” grinned the police commissaire, after examining the agitator’s pocket-book. It contained bank-notes for a large sum, receipted bills from luxurious restaurants and hotels, and (what of course, particularly delighted the Parisian) the autographed photograph of a certain very blonde and very lively actress. So, indignation and disgust of the Syndicate of Electricians, who had contributed to their secretary’s support. He was called upon to resign. And to-day M. Pataud is an agent for a champagne firm; and the street gamins who once cheered him, now—O supreme insult—apostrophise him as “sale bourgeois.”
Two questions remain for those whose opinion in the Amazing City counts. The first is: Does an Eminent Academician, who, whether he writes in a frock coat or no, professes the conviction that it would not be worth while to produce plays only to reveal the influence and power of men’s emotions, passions and ideals in the shaping of life, unless one had some ulterior clerical, social or political object to serve, stand in the hopeful ways of thought that distinguish the first order of Dramatists? The answer to the question is delivered with an emphatic decision. “Mais—Non”—“Mais,”—a pause and a gesture by an emphatic falling hand—“Non.” Second question: Is a social agitator, who displays himself in a pink shirt and bowler hat in the best seats of fashionable theatres, and who enjoys himself at fashionable restaurants with worldlings—whom he affects to terrorise—a satisfactory Democrat? Same answer, but the “Non” and the confirmatory gesture is more emphatic. “Mais—Non.”