[CHAPTER V]
The drawbacks to theatres which have the monopoly of a great actor—Lafond takes the rôle of Pierre de Portugal upon Talma declining it—Lafond—His school—His sayings—Mademoiselle Duchesnois—Her failings and her abilities—Pierre de Portugal succeeds
The great day for the representation of Pierre de Portugal came at last. Talma, preoccupied with his creation of the part of Danville in the École des Vieillards, had declined to take the rôle of Pierre de Portugal. Lafond had accepted it, and he and Mademoiselle Duchesnois had to bear the brunt of the whole play. Herein lay the indisputable test pointed out by Lassagne: could the play possibly succeed without Talma? The great inconvenience of that rara avis, as Juvenal puts it, or, in theatre parlance, the actor who brings in the receipts, is that on days when he does not play the theatre loses heavily; plays in which he does not figure are judged beforehand to be unworthy of public notice, since they have not been honoured by the actor's concurrence.
At the time to which we are referring the Théâtre-Français was better off than it is now. One day it made money by Talma's tragic acting; the next, it made money by Mademoiselle Mars in comedy. Casimir Delavigne began its downfall by making the two eminent artistes appear together in the same play and on the same day. As for Lafond and Mademoiselle Duchesnois, neither apart nor together did they bring in sufficient receipts.
Lafond would be about forty then: he came out first in 1800, at the Théâtre-Français, in the part of Achilles. Later, when supported by Geoffroy, in Tancrède, in Adélaïde Duguesclin and in Zaire, he became as successful as Talma. The scurvy race of sheep which we have always with us, which takes its nutriment in the pastures of poetry and which is too feeble to form its own opinion based on its own mental capacity, adopts a judgment ready made wherever it can. It bleated concerning Lafond, "Lafond is inimitable in the rôle of French cavalier."
There was always, at this period of the drama, a part called the French cavalier. This part was invariably played by a person decorated with a plumed toque, clad in a yellow tunic braided with black, ornamented with representations of the sun, or of golden palms when the cavalier was a prince, and wearing buff-leather boots. It was not imperative that the hero should be French, or wear golden spurs, to be a French cavalier: the rôle was designed on well defined lines, and belonged to a particular school. Zamore was a French cavalier, Orosmane was a French cavalier, Philoctètes was a French cavalier. The only distinctions between them were as follows: Zamore played in a cap decorated with peacock feathers, and in a cloak of parrot's feathers, with a girdle of ostrich plumes. Orosmane played in a long robe of white taffeta dropping with spangles and trimmed with minever, in a turban opening out wide like a blunderbuss and decorated with a crescent of Rhine stones, in red foulard trousers and yellow slippers. Philoctètes played in a loose coat of red horse-hair, a cuirass of velvet embroidered with gold, and was furnished with a warlike sword.
Vanhove, in order to play Agamemnon, had a cuirass which cost him a small fortune, two hundred louis, I believe; it was ornamented by two trophies, hand-worked—a magnificent bit of work, representing cannons and drums.
I once said to Lafond—