CHAPTER XII
The French themselves think less about their music than any other of their pretensions. It is almost a sore subject with them; for it interrupts their talking, and they had rather hear nothing about it, except as an accompaniment to a jig. Their ears are, in this respect, in their heels, and it is only the light and giddy that they at all endure. They have no idea of cadence in any of the arts—of the rise and fall of the passions—of the elevations or depressions of hope or fear in poetry—of alternate light or shade in pictures—all is reduced (as nearly as possible) in their minds to the level of petty, vapid self-satisfaction, or to dry and systematic prosing for the benefit of others. But they must be more particularly at a loss in music, which requires the deepest feeling, and admits the least of the impertinence of explanation, which mounts on its own raptures and is dissolved in its own tenderness; which has no witness or vouchers but the inward sense of delight, and rests its faith on the speechless eloquence, the rich, circling intoxication of inarticulate but heart-felt sounds. The French have therefore no national music, except a few meagre chansons, and their only idea of musical excellence is either rapidity or loudness of execution. You perceive the effect of this want of enthusiasm even in the streets,—they have neither barrel-organs nor blind fiddlers as with us, who are willing to pay for the encouragement of the arts, however indifferently we may practise them; nor does the national spirit break out from every strolling party or village group, as it is said to do in Italy. A French servant-girl, while she is cleaning out a room, lays down her brush to dance—she takes it up to finish her work, and lays it down again to dance, impelled by the lightness of her head and of her heels. But you seldom hear her sing at her work, and never, if there is any one within hearing to talk to.—The French Opera is a splendid, but a comparatively empty theatre. It is nearly as large (I should think) as the King’s Theatre in the Hay-market, and is in a semi-circular form. The pit (the evening I was there) was about half full of men, in their black, dingy sticky-looking dresses; and there were a few plainly-dressed women in the boxes. But where was that blaze of beauty and fashion, of sparkling complexions and bright eyes, that streams like a galaxy from the boxes of our Opera-house—like a Heaven of loveliness let half-way down upon the earth, and charming ‘the upturned eyes of wondering mortals,’ before which the thrilling sounds that circle through the House seem to tremble with delight and drink in new rapture from its conscious presence, and to which the mimic Loves and Graces are proud to pay their distant, smiling homage? Certainly it was not here; nor do I know where the sun of beauty hides itself in France. I have seen but three rays of it since I came, gilding a dark and pitchy cloud! It was not so in Rousseau’s time, for these very Loges were filled with the most beautiful women of the Court, who came to see his Devin du Village, and whom he heard murmuring around him in the softest accents—‘Tous ces sons là vont au cœur!’ The change is, I suppose, owing to the Revolution; but whatever it is owing to, the monks have not, by their return, banished this conventual gloom from their theatres; nor is there any of that airy, flaunting, florid, butterfly, gauzy, variegated appearance to be found in them that they have with us. These gentlemen still keep up the farce of refusing actors burial in consecrated ground; the mob pelt them, and the critics are even with them by going to see the representation of the Tartuffe!
I found but little at the Royal Academy of Music (as it is affectedly called) to carry off this general dulness of effect, either through the excellence or novelty of the performances. A Mademoiselle Noel (who seems to be a favourite) made her debut in Dido. Though there was nothing very striking, there was nothing offensive in her representation of the character. For any thing that appeared in her style of singing or acting, she might be a very pleasing, modest, unaffected English girl performing on an English stage. There was not a single trait of French bravura or grimace. Her execution, however, seldom rose higher than an agreeable mediocrity; and with considerable taste and feeling, her powers seemed to be limited. She produced her chief effect in the latter and more pathetic scenes, and ascended the funeral pile with dignity and composure. Is it not strange (if contradictions and hasty caprices taken up at random, and laid down as laws, were strange in this centre of taste and refinement) that the French should raise such an outcry against our assaults at arms and executions on the stage, and yet see a young and beautiful female prepare to give herself the fatal blow, without manifesting the smallest repugnance or dissatisfaction?—Æneas and Iarbas were represented by Messrs. Mourritt and Derivis. The first was insipid, the last a perfect Stentor. He spoke or sung all through with an unmitigated ferocity of purpose and manner, and with lungs that seemed to have been forged expressly for the occasion. Ten bulls could not bellow louder, nor a whole street-full of frozen-out gardeners at Christmas. His barbarous tunic and accoutrements put one strongly in mind of Robinson Crusoe, while the modest demeanour and painted complexion of the pious Æneas bore a considerable analogy to the submissive advance and rosy cheeks of that usual accompaniment of English travelling, who ushers himself into the room at intervals, with awkward bows, and his hat twirled round in his hands, ‘to hope you’ll remember the coachman.’ The Æneas of the poet, however, was a shabby fellow, and had but justice done him.
I had leisure during this otiose performance to look around me, and as ‘it is my vice to spy into abuses,’ the first thing that struck me was the prompter. Any Frenchman who has that sum at his disposal, should give ten thousand francs a year for this situation. It must be a source of ecstasy to him. For not an instant was he quiet—tossing his hands in the air, darting them to the other side of the score which he held before him in front of the stage, snapping his fingers, nodding his head, beating time with his feet; and this not mechanically, or as if it were a drudgery he was forced to go through, and would be glad to have done with, but with unimpaired glee and vehemence of gesture, jerking, twisting, fidgeting, wriggling, starting, stamping, as if the incessant motion had fairly turned his head, and every muscle in his frame were saturated with the spirit of quicksilver. To be in continual motion for four hours, and to direct the motions of others by the wagging of a finger, to be not only an object of important attention to the stage and orchestra, but (in his own imagination) to pit, boxes, and gallery, as the pivot on which the whole grand machinery of that grandest of all machines, the French Opera, turns—this is indeed, for a Parisian, the acme of felicity! Every nerve must thrill with electrical satisfaction, and every pore into which vanity can creep tingle with self-conceit! Not far from this restless automaton (as if extremes met, or the volatility of youth subsided into a sort of superannuated still-life) sat an old gentleman in front of the pit, with his back to me, a white powdered head, the curls sticking out behind, and a coat of the finest black. This was all I saw of him for some time—he did not once turn his head or shift his position, any more than a wig and coat stuck upon a barber’s block—till I suddenly missed him, and soon after saw him seated on the opposite side of the house, his face as yellow and hard as a piece of mahogany, but without expressing either pleasure or pain. Neither the fiddlers’ elbows nor the dancers’ legs moved him one jot. His fiddling fancies and his dancing-days were flown, and had left this shadow, this profile, this mummy of a French gentleman of the old régime behind. A Frenchman has no object in life but to talk and move with éclat, and when he ceases to do either, he has no heart to do any thing. Deprived of his vivacity, his thoughtlessness, his animal spirits, he becomes a piece of costume, a finely-powdered wig, an embroidered coat, a pair of shoe-buckles, a gold cane, or a snuff-box. Drained of mere sensations and of their youthful blood, the old fellows seem like the ghosts of the young ones, and have none of their overweening offensiveness, or teasing officiousness. I can hardly conceive of a young French gentleman, nor of an old one who is otherwise. The latter come up to my ideal of this character, cut, as it were, out of pasteboard, moved on springs, amenable to forms, crimped and starched like a cravat, without a single tart ebullition, or voluntary motion. Some of them may be seen at present gliding along the walks of the Tuileries, and the sight of them is good for sore eyes. They are also thinly sprinkled through the play-house; for the drama and the belles-lettres were in their time the amusement and the privilege of the Court, and the contrast of their powdered heads and pale faces makes the rest of the audience appear like a set of greasy, impudent mechanics. A Frenchman is nothing without powder, an Englishman is nothing with it. The character of the one is artificial, that of the other natural. The women of France do not submit to the regular approaches and the sober discipline of age so well as the men. I had rather be in company with an old French gentleman than a young one; I prefer a young Frenchwoman to an old one. They aggravate the encroachments of age by contending with them, and instead of displaying the natural graces and venerable marks of that period of life, paint and patch their wrinkled faces, and toupee and curl their grizzled locks, till they look like Friesland hens, and are a caricature and burlesque of themselves. The old women in France that figure at the theatre or elsewhere, have very much the appearance of having kept a tavern or a booth at a fair, or of having been mistresses of a place of another description, for the greater part of their lives. A mannish hardened look and character survives the wreck of beauty and of female delicacy.
Of all things that I see here, it surprises me the most that the French should fancy they can dance. To dance is to move with grace and harmony to music. But the French, whether men or women, have no idea of dancing but that of moving with agility, and of distorting their limbs in every possible way, till they really alter the structure of the human form. By grace I understand the natural movements of the human body, heightened into dignity or softened into ease, each posture or step blending harmoniously into the rest. There is grace in the waving of the branch of a tree or in the bounding of a stag, because there is freedom and unity of motion. But the French Opera-dancers think it graceful to stand on one leg or on the points of their toes, or with one leg stretched out behind them, as if they were going to be shod, or to raise one foot at right angles with their bodies, and twirl themselves round like a te-totum, to see how long they can spin, and then stop short all of a sudden; or to skim along the ground, flat-footed, like a spider running along a cobweb, or to pop up and down like a pea on a tobacco-pipe, or to stick in their backs till another part projects out behind comme des volails, and to strut about like peacocks with infirm, vain-glorious steps, or to turn out their toes till their feet resemble apes, or to raise one foot above their heads, and turn swiftly round upon the other, till the petticoats of the female dancers (for I have been thinking of them) rise above their garters, and display a pair of spindle-shanks, like the wooden ones of a wax-doll, just as shapeless and as tempting. There is neither voluptuousness nor grace in a single attitude or movement, but a very studious and successful attempt to shew in what a number of uneasy and difficult positions the human body can be put with the greatest rapidity of evolution. It is not that they do all this with much more to redeem it, but they do all this, and do nothing else. It would be very well as an exhibition of tumbler’s tricks, or as rope-dancing (which are only meant to surprise), but it is bad as Opera-dancing, if opera-dancing aspires to be one of the Fine Arts, or even a handmaid to them; that is, to combine with mechanical dexterity a sense of the beautiful in form and motion, and a certain analogy to sentiment. ‘The common people,’ says the Author of Waverley, ‘always prefer exertion and agility to grace.’ Is that the case also with the most refined people upon earth? These antics and vagaries, this kicking of heels and shaking of feet as if they would come off, might be excusable in the men, for they shew a certain strength and muscular activity; but in the female dancers they are unpardonable. What is said of poetry might be applied to the sex. Non sat[is] est pulchra poemata esse, dulcia sunto. So women who appear in public, should be soft and lovely as well as skilful and active, or they ought not to appear at all. They owe it to themselves and others. As to some of the ridiculous extravagances of this theatre, such as turning out their toes and holding back their shoulders, one would have thought the Greek statues might have taught their scientific professors better—if French artists did not see every thing with French eyes, and lament all that differs from their established practice as a departure from the line of beauty. They are sorry that the Venus does not hold up her head like a boarding-school miss—
‘And would ask the Apollo to dance!’
In three months’ practice, and with proper tuition, Greek forms would be French, and they would be perfect!—Mademoiselles Fanny and Noblet, I kiss your hands; but I have no pardon to beg of Madame Le Gallois, for she looked like a lady (very tightly laced) in the ballet, and played like a heroine in the pantomime part of La Folle par Amour. There was a violent start at the first indication of her madness, that alarmed me a little, but all that followed was natural, modest, and affecting in a high degree. The French turn their Opera-stage into a mad-house; they turn their mad-houses (at least they have one constructed on this principle) into theatres of gaiety, where they rehearse ballets, operas, and plays. If dancing were an antidote to madness, one would think the French would be always in their right senses.
I was told I ought to see Nina, or La Folle par Amour at the Salle Louvois, or Italian Theatre. If I went for that purpose, it would be rather with a wish than from any hope of seeing it better done. I went however.
‘Oh for a beaker full of the warm South!’
It was to see the Gazza Ladra. The house was full, the evening sultry, a hurry and bustle in the lobbies, an eagerness in the looks of the assembled crowd. The audience seemed to be in earnest, and to have imbibed an interest from the place. On the stage there were rich dresses and voices, the tones of passion, ease, nature, animation; in short, the scene had a soul in it. One wondered how one was in Paris, with their pasteboard maps of the passions, and thin-skinned, dry-lipped humour. Signora Mombelli played the humble, but interesting heroine charmingly, with truth, simplicity, and feeling. Her voice is neither rich nor sweet, but it is clear as a bell. Signor Pellegrini played the intriguing Magistrate, with a solemnity and farcical drollery, that I would not swear is much inferior to Liston. But I swear, that Brunet (whom I saw the other night, and had seen before without knowing it) is not equal to Liston. Yet he is a feeble, quaint diminutive of that original. He squeaks and gibbers oddly enough at the Théâtre des Variétés, like a mouse in the hollow of a musty cheese, his small eyes peering out, and his sharp teeth nibbling at the remains of some faded joke. The French people of quality go to the Italian Opera, but they do not attend to it. The tabbies of the Court are tabbies still; and took no notice of what was passing on the stage on this occasion, till the tolling of the bell made a louder and more disagreeable noise than themselves; this they seemed to like. They behave well at their own theatres, but it would be a breach of etiquette to do so anywhere else. A girl in the gallery (an Italian by her complexion, and from her interest in the part) was crying bitterly at the story of the Maid and the Magpie, while three Frenchmen, in the Troisième Loge, were laughing at her the whole time. I said to one of them, ‘It was not a thing to laugh at, but to admire.’ He turned away, as if the remark did not come within his notions of sentiment. This did not stagger me in my theory of the French character; and when one is possessed of nothing but a theory, one is glad, not sorry to keep it, though at the expense of others.[[35]]