BEAUMARCHAIS
I have often wondered what were the feelings of the growing boy upon whom it slowly dawned that his sponsors had had him christened Hyacinth, or Achilles. Was he conscious of inspiration or the reverse? The discovery must have been frequent in France, where the reign of Louis XV in particular was a flowering time for names. There was an Anarcharsis Klootz, there was a Maximilien Robespierre. When to the unremarkable patronym of Caron there were prefixed the resounding syllables, Pierre-Augustin, to the wearer of them at least the things became a trumpet. He shrilled himself upon them into the far corners of Europe. The Empress Catherine chuckled over him in her Winter Palace; her august neighbour had him read to her, evenings, in Vienna. Horace Walpole, while declining his acquaintance, wrote of him with astonishment to Mme. du Deffand; Voltaire at Ferney thought that there must be something in him. And there was. First and always, impudence. He would look anyone in the face, and never be discountenanced himself. Next, good humour: in his worst hours he bore no grudges, and in his best so few as make no matter. When he had his enemy face to face, and was really at grips with him, he could always hold back from the fray to let off a joke or turn an attack by a compliment. There was a Madame Goëzman with whom he was badly embroiled in civil process. When they were before the registrar, and she was asked, Did she know the plaintiff—“I neither know nor desire ever to know him,” said she. “Neither have I the honour of Madame’s acquaintance,” said Pierre-Augustin in his turn; “but having seen her, I am constrained to a desire exactly the opposite of hers.” A happy gallantry which ought to have touched the court, but did not.
Morally, he was like an india-rubber ball: the harder you hit him the higher he leapt. The Goëzman pair, husband and wife, in the legal broil just referred to, thought to crush him out of hand by scorn of his degree in the world. They more than hinted that his father had been a watchmaker, that they themselves were “noble.” Pierre-Augustin saw his chance and took it. He held up the Mémoire in which those injudicious nods and winks had appeared. “You open your chef d’œuvre by reproaching me with the fortunes of my ancestry. It is too true, Madame, that the latest of them added to other branches of industry some celebrity in the art of watchmaking. Forced as I am to suffer judgment upon that point, I confess with sorrow that nothing can cleanse me from your just reproach that I am the son of my father.... But there I pause, for I feel that he is behind me at this moment, looking at what I write, and laughing while he pats my shoulder.”
“You,” he goes on, “who think to shame me through my father, have little conception of the generosity of his heart. Truly, apart altogether from watchmaking, I have never found another for which I would exchange it. But I know too well the worth of time, which he taught me how to measure, to waste it in picking up such trifles. It is not everyone who can say with M. Goëzman:
‘Je suis le fils d’un Bailli; oui:
Je ne suis pas Caron; non.’”
And so he left it.
However high he leapt, his aims were not high. I don’t think he ever failed of his heart’s desire. He wanted a title of nobility, and obtained one, or indeed, some. He was “Ecuyer, Conseiller-Secrétaire du Roi, Lieutenant Général des Chasses, Baillage et Capitainerie de la Varenne du Louvre, Grande Vénerie et Fauconnerie de France,” which can hardly mean more, and may mean considerably less than it sounds; and all that, when he had earned a territorial name by marriage, enabled him to become Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Next, he wanted money, and had it, and lost it, many times over. Then he wanted to be talked about; and for a long time Paris, and for some time Europe, talked of little else. That was when he was conducting two interminable lawsuits, one growing out of the other, and not only conducting them with a vivacity and geniality which nothing could tire, but issuing from the press bulletins of progress of the kind I have attempted to sample above. It was those Mémoires which entertained equally Petersburg and Strawberry Hill. Delightful as they must have been to read when all the actors were alive and buzzing in the courts or on the quays, they are difficult to follow now. The original suit, which was to recover a debt on an estate from an executor, was made complex by French legal process, but the second (in which the Goëzmans were involved) was complex in itself. The exceedingly delicate point in it was that Beaumarchais had attempted to bribe a member of the Court, and actually got the money as far as his wife, where some of it remained, though the bulk was restored. To recover by law what was still held it was necessary for Beaumarchais to reject with vehemence the suggestion that he had tried to suborn justice, while bringing home the fact that Madame Goëzman had undoubtedly taken his money. He did not, naturally, succeed; but he incriminated the Goëzman pair, and with them was condemned in “infamy and civil degradation.” But in reporting his daily engagements with them, and his verbal victories, he became simply the hero of the hour, and ultimately carried his main action against the Comte de la Blache with damages and costs.
That must be a parenthesis, to show how Beaumarchais climbed to his point of desire, whatever it was at the moment, serving himself alike of disaster and success. Many were his affairs of the kind, all pursued with unflagging enjouement—as, a breach of promise in Madrid on behalf of his sister, a row with the mad Duc de Chaulnes about an “unfortunate female,” a more than dubious, a not at all dubious, plant upon Maria-Teresa, underground transactions with the Chevalier d’Eon, gun-running for the United States of America; and finally that upon which his present fame rests—two comedies which broke all the records of the theatre for anticipation and realisation. I would not go so far as to say that he engineered the repeated delays in their performance which brought expectation up to hysteria if not delirium, but have no doubt that he courted them, and deserved, if not earned, the proud result that more people were crushed to death crowding in to the Barbier de Seville than had ever been so crushed before, and that it and its sequel, Le Mariage de Figaro, ran longer on end than any such things had ever done. When they threatened to flag their author was the man to revive them. He knew as much about advertising as Mr. Selfridge, and had as little use for modesty as Mr. Bernard Shaw. Like that salient dramatist, he published his plays, and wrote prefaces to them which are better reading than the text. The pair still hold the stage, as they were written, and as opera; and I should not be surprised to hear that they and their author were as generally known as most of Molière’s and theirs. After all, the same could be said of Sheridan, with his pair, at the expense of Shakespeare.
Mr. John Rivers,[1] Beaumarchais’ first English biographer, I believe, has evidently enjoyed his work, and will be read with enjoyment. He is right in claiming the Life of his hero as a challenge to fiction. It is first-rate picaresque, nearly as good as Gil Blas, and much better than Casanova. But I think he rates him too highly as a dramatist. He considers that Figaro ranks with “Falstaff or Tartufe.” If he does, it is thanks to Rossini and Mozart: without their help the claim is surely preposterous. Luckily, he has taken the trouble to translate large portions of both plays, and so furnished the best corrective to exaggerated pretensions that we could wish to have. Taken in such liberal doses, they don’t march. In their original they are not easy reading, for Beaumarchais, though a brisk, was not a good writer. One does not ask for fine writing necessarily of a dramatist, but that he shall attend to his business. Beaumarchais conceives his to be the making of points. He is apt to be diffuse in reaching them, and to clinch them tightly when he has them. In French he is often difficult; in English he is both dull and difficult. It is like reading bad handwriting on foreign letter-paper. You never seem to get on with the thing.
The Barbier is not much more than a Commedia dell’ Arte. It is a play of manœuvring, intrigue the whole affair. Stock characters will do for that, and you can manage without humour, if you have a sufficiency of wit. There is perhaps more effervescence than wit, and what wit there is not of the best kind. It is not concerned with ludicrous appositions; rather it is paradox, verbal antithesis, the Gratiano vein. Here is an example. Figaro is reporting to Rosine that Lindor is her lover, and asks leave to tell her so:
“Rosine: Vous me faites trembler, monsieur Figaro.
“Figaro: Fi donc, trembler! mauvais calcul, madame. Quand on cède à la peur du mal, on ressent déjà le mal de la peur....
“Rosine: S’il m’aime, il doit me le prouver en restant absolument tranquille.
“Figaro: Eh! madame! amour et repos peuvent-ils habiter en meme cœur? La pauvre jeunesse est si malheureux aujourd’hui, qu’elle n’a que ce terrible choix: amour sans repos, ou repos sans amour.”
Beaumarchais can better that, though it is a fair sample of his handling. In the second Act, where Bartholo (Pantaloon) has patched up a reconciliation with Rosine (Columbine), whom he intends to marry, he closes the scene like this:
“Bartholo: Puisque la paix est faite, mignonne, donne-moi ta main. Si tu pouvais m’aimer, ah! comme tu serais heureuse!
“Rosine (baissant les yeux): Si vous pouviez me plaire, ah! comme je vous aimerais!
“Bartholo: Je te plairai, je te plairai; quand je te dis que je te plairai! (Il sort.)”
That is very happy, because it has humour as well as wit. Pantaloon and Columbine have become human beings.
It is not all so good as that, and some of it is not good at all. It was written originally for an opera libretto, for which it is well suited. It would do equally well for marionettes. To such things the spectator can lend himself, because in the former the music, and in the latter the puppets, take the responsibility off him; nothing of his own is involved. But in a play the action and the dialogue perform the resolution of life into art, with the audience as accomplice. Human nature is implicated; if we allow the cheap, we must cheat ourselves. If there is any resolution in the Barbier, it is into a jig, and condescension is difficult. Life is only there in so far as some of the personages wear breeches, and some petticoats. It is a mere trifle that the scene is laid in Spain, while all the characters are Italian.
The Mariage de Figaro is a more considerable work, if only because it is much longer and more complicated. Everybody is older, including Beaumarchais. Since the end of the Barbier, Count Almaviva has pursued hundreds of ladies, Rosina has almost left off being jealous, Figaro has become a cynic, and is inclined to give lectures. The romance would seem to have been rubbed off seduction, as you might expect when you consider that the Count has been at it all his life, and is now a middle-aged man, old enough to be Ambassador. It has been said—and Mr. Rivers says it—that Beaumarchais was deliberate in contriving the effect of satiety, which he certainly obtains—as if an author would set himself to work to be wearisome! Subversion, Mr. Rivers thinks, was his aim, moral revolt. He wrote, and it was played, on the eve of the Revolution. Was the Mariage not, therefore, a contributory cause?
“Figaro, soliloquising: Parceque vous êtes un grand seigneur, vous vous croyez un grand génie!... Noblesse, fortune, un rang, des places, tout cela rend si fier! Qu’avez-vous fait pour tant de biens? Vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus. Du reste, homme assez ordinaire; tandis que moi, morbleu! perdu dans la foule obscure, il m’a fallu déployer plus de science et de calculs pour subsister seulement, qu’on n’en a mis depuis cent ans à gouverner toutes les Espagnes: et vous voulez jouter ...!”
Is that contributory to revolution—or revolution contributory to it? It was surely current coin in 1784. Voltaire and Rousseau had encouraged cats to look at kings; everybody had made fun of the nobility. Titles of honour can have held little intimidation since Louis XIV had had the handling of them, and turned out dukes where his grandfather made marquises. What little there might be left to do had been done handsomely by his grandson. It is far more likely that Beaumarchais was easing grudges of his own, or that in the famous flight of paradoxes aimed at “la politique” he was recalling recent experiences in London and Vienna, where he came into collision with the real thing. Much out of character as it is, it is a good example of what both Figaro and Beaumarchais had become by 1784:
“Feindre ignorer ce qu’on sait, de savoir tout ce qu’on ignore; d’entendre ce qu’on ne comprend pas, de ne point ouïr ce qu’on entend; surtout de pouvoir au delà de ses forces; avoir souvent pour grand secret de cachet qu’il n’y en a point; s’enfermer pour tailler des plumes, et paraître profond quand on n’est, comme on dit, que vide et creux; jouer bien ou mal un personnage; répandre des espions et pensionner des traîtres; amollir des cachets, intercepter des lettres, et tacher d’ennoblir la pauvreté des moyens par l’importance des objets: voilà toute la politique, ou je meure!”
Very brisk. But when Count Almaviva shortly comments, “Ah! c’est l’intrigue que tu définis!” the criticism is final, because it is completely just. Curious that a playwright should light up his Roman candle, and damp it down the next moment. Such speeches imperil the character of Figaro by making him so dominant a personality that there can be no fun in seeing him dupe his betters. Beaumarchais, I think, may have felt that objection, and attempted to restore the balance by having Figaro duped himself in the last act.
The balance is really adjusted in quite another way. Two new characters are brought in, one of whom, Marceline, a vieille fille, designs to marry Figaro, but presently finds out that she is his long-lost mother! The other is Chérubin, who saves the play, to my thinking, just as surely as Polly Peachum saves The Beggar’s Opera. Chérubin—“création exquise et enchanteresse,” says Sainte-Beuve—is the making of the Mariage, partly because he keys it down to its proper pitch, which is that of children playing grown-ups, and partly because he is truly observed and poetically presented. I don’t see how the adage, “Si jeunesse savait,” could be more tenderly exploited. All his scenes are good—the first with Suzanne, in which the young scamp, after betraying his occupation with three love affairs at once, snatches his mistress’s hair-ribbon and dodges behind tables and chairs while the maid pursues him; the second, with the Countess, where she is dressing him as a girl, and discovers her ribbon staunching a cut in his arm: in each of these scenes the delicious distress of his complaint is painted with a subtlety and sensibility combined which are first-rate art. Delicate provocation can go no further, or had better not. Beaumarchais’ triumph is that he knows that, and does not add a touch in excess. The final touch is that the Countess, instead of feigning a desire for the restoration of the ribbon (which she did very badly), now really does desire, and obtains it. Enough said: there is no more. “Tu sais trop bien, méchante, que je n’ose pas oser,” says the youth to Suzanne. That is his trouble, and a real one it is.
The imbroglio in this play is a thing of nightmare. “Que diable est-ce qu’on trompe ici?” The answer is the audience. Everybody deceives everybody, twice over and all the time. It surprises, if you like, by “a fine excess.” It is not surprising, anyhow, that the last act was too much for Sainte-Beuve, has been too much for Mr. Rivers, and is too much for me. I do not, simply, know what is happening, but I do know that none of it is very funny. Compare it with Sganarelle, and you will see. In that little masterpiece you have four characters: Lélie and Clélie, the lovers, Sganarelle the jealous husband, and Sganarelle’s wife. Clélie lets drop Lélie’s portrait in the street, Sganarelle’s wife picks it up, and is caught by Sganarelle admiring it. Presently, when Clélie faints, and is picked up by Sganarelle, it is his wife’s turn to be jealous. Then Lélie, overcome by his feelings, is pitied by Madame Sganarelle and helped into her house. The fat is in the fire. Madame Sganarelle flies at Clélie for carrying on with her husband; Lélie believes that Sganarelle has married Clélie. Sganarelle pursues Lélie with a sword, and when he is confronted, pretends that he brought it out because the weather looked threatening. It is a complete cat’s cradle of a play, and as easily untied. The action is swift, the intrigue is easy to follow, the appositions are really comic. But who believes that Almaviva seriously wants Suzanne, or that Figaro has really promised Marceline, or that the Countess really loves Chérubin? The lack of plausibility causes the Mariage to turn unwillingly, like a mangle. It took four hours and a half to play: I can hardly believe that Figaro’s inordinate soliloquy in the last act survived the first night. Figaro himself is overweight; Marceline is a very bad shot. She has at first a good Polly-and-Lucy slanging match with Suzanne; but in the discovery scene she grows serious—very serious, and rightly serious, no doubt, in any other play but this. But to suspend all the gallantries in progress for the sake of her diatribes upon gallantry, to shake the head over them, to say “True,” and “Too true”—and then immediately to resume gallantries, has the effect of exhibiting neither gallantry nor the reprobation of it as serious; and as something in a play must be taken seriously, the Comédie Française, rightly deciding in favour of gallantry, cut out the whole scene; and it is so marked in my edition of Beaumarchais. It would have been a pleasant toil for Edward FitzGerald, who loved such work, to hew and shape this comedy. It has fine moments, but wants both the speed and the gaiety of the Barbier. Mozart gave it them—we owe to Beaumarchais the most delightful opera in the world.
Mr. Rivers translates the two plays freely, but I don’t think very successfully. I have said already that Beaumarchais is not a good writer—too diffuse at one time, too terse at others—but no doubt he is very difficult. Literal translation is useless. “Miss” is not a translation of “Mademoiselle.” “Mistress,” or “Young Lady” would be better—and so on. You cannot get the points sharply enough unless you translate ideas as well as idiom; and to do that you must take a wide cast. Rhetoric is rhetoric in whatever language you cast it. It has its own rules. Dialogue is another matter. There come in the familiarities, secrets of the toilette, secrets of the bower. How are these things to be done? I don’t know; but if Andrew Lang could not be natural with the 15th Idyll of Theocritus, it is no shame to Mr. Rivers to have failed with Beaumarchais.
If he desired to try his hand I wonder why he omitted one of his liveliest and wittiest sallies—the letter which he addressed to The Morning Chronicle in 1776, on one of his confidential visits to London. It is too long to give entire, but I must have a shot at pieces of it:
“Mr. Editor,” he says, “I am a stranger, a Frenchman and the soul of honour. If this will not completely inform you who I am, it will at least tell you, in more senses than one, who I am not; and in times likes these, that is not without its importance in London.
“The day before yesterday at the Pantheon, after the concert and during the dancing which ensued, I found at my feet a lady’s cloak of black taffetas, turned back with the same and edged with lace. I do not know to whom it belongs; I have never seen, even at the Pantheon, the person who wore it; all my inquiries since the discovery have taught me nothing about her. I beg of you then, Mr. Editor, to announce in your journal the discovery of the cloak, in order that I may punctually return it to her who may lay claim to it.
“That there may be no possible mistake in the matter, I have the honour to give you notice that the loser, upon the day in question, had a head-dress of rose-coloured feathers. She had, I believe, diamond ear-rings; but of that I am not so positive as of the remainder of my description. She is tall and of elegant appearance; her hair is a flaxen blonde, her skin dazzlingly white. She has a fine and graceful neck, a striking shape, and the prettiest foot in the world. I observe that she is very young, very lively and inattentive, that she carries herself easily, and has a marked taste for dancing.”
He then proceeds to deduce all these charming properties from the taffetas cloak—some from a single hair which he finds in the hood, some from minute particles of fluff and fur; others, more carefully, from measurements; others, again, from the position in which the cloak was lying—all of which led him to conclude infallibly that “the young lady was the most alert beauty of England, Scotland and Ireland, and if I do not add, of America, it is because of late they have become uncommonly alert in that particular country.” Sherlock Holmes!
“If I had pushed my inquiries,” he concludes, “it is possible that I might have learned from her cloak what was her quality and rank. But when one has concluded that a woman is young and handsome, has one not in fact learned all that one needs to learn? That at any rate was the opinion held in my time in many good towns in France, and even in certain villages, such as Marly, Versailles, etc.
“Do not then be surprised, Mr. Editor, if a Frenchman who all his life long has made a philosophical and particular study of the fair sex, has discovered in the mere appearance of a lady’s cloak, without ever having seen her, that the fair one with the rosy plumes who let it fall unites in her person the radiance of Venus, the free carriage of the nymphs, the shape of the Graces, the youth of Hebe; that she is quick and preoccupied, and that she loves the dance, to the extent of forgetting everything else in order to run to it, on a foot as small as Cinderella’s, and as light as Atalanta’s own.”
He has done it with the unfailing humour and neatness which carried him in and out of the lawcourts, took him to prison and enlarged him again. And he was then only forty-four, and had another twenty years before him. Impudence and good humour. The first was his shield and buckler—triple brass. The other enabled him to support it in all companies without offence. When at long last his suit with La Blache was ended, and in his favour, the Comte not only restored the estate without a murmur, but gave him a fine portrait of the testator. Beaumarchais may have been a bad lot; but he was evidently a good sort.