This letter serves to give us both positive information concerning Talma's family and a good idea of his way of looking at things.
Talma often told me that his remotest recollections carried him back to the time when he lived in a house in the rue Mauconseil, the windows of which looked towards the old Comédie-Italienne theatre. He had three sisters and one brother; also a cousin whom his father, who was a dentist by profession, had adopted.
One day, Lord Harcourt came to Talma's father to have a troublesome tooth extracted, and he was so pleased with the way the operation was performed that he urged Talma's father to go and live in London, where he promised to procure him an aristocratic clientèle. Talma's father yielded to Lord Harcourt's pressure, crossed the Channel and set up in Cavendish Square. Lord Harcourt kept his promises: he brought the French dentist such good customers that he soon became the fashionable dentist, and included the Prince of Wales,—afterwards the elegant George IV.,—among his clients.
The whole family followed its head; but Talma's father, considering a French education better than any other, sent his son back to Paris in the course of the year 1775. He was then nine years old and, thanks to having spent three years in England at the age when languages are quickly picked up, he could speak English when he reached Paris as well as he could speak French. His father chose M. Verdier's school for him. A year after he joined the school, great news began to leak out. M. Verdier, the head of the school, had composed a tragedy called Tamerlan. This tragedy was to be played on Prize Day. Talma was hardly ten at that time, so it was probable that he would not be allotted a leading part, even if he were allowed to take any part in it at all. The assumption is incorrect. M. Verdier gave him the part of a confidential friend. It was like all such parts,—a score of lines strewn throughout the play and a monologue at the end.
In this peroration the bosom-friend expatiates on the death of his friend, who was condemned to death, like Titus, by an inexorable father. The beginning of this recitation went like a charm; the bulk of it was successfully delivered also; but, towards the end, the child's emotion grew to such a pitch that he burst into tears, and fainted away. This fainting fit marked his destiny, for the child was an artiste! Ten years later, on 21 November 1787, Talma made his first appearance at the Théâtre-Français, in the part of Séide.
On the previous day, he paid a visit to Dugazon, and Dugazon gave him a paper containing the following advice. I copy it from the original, which is now in my possession.
"Aim at greatness, from your first entry, or at any rate at something above the common. You must try to leave your mark and to make an appeal to the spirit of curiosity. Perhaps it may be better to hit straight than to strike hard; but amateurs are legion and connoisseurs are scarce. However, if you can unite both truth and strength, you will have the suffrages of all. Do not be carried away by applause; nor allow yourself to be discouraged by hissing. Only fools allow themselves to be disconcerted by cat-calls; none but idiots are made dizzy by applause. When applause is lavished without discrimination, it injures talent at the very outset of its career. Some artistes have failed, instead of having passed through their careers with distinction, because of faults which genuine criticism might have pointed out or hissing punished.
"Lekain, Peville, Fleury were all hissed and they are immortal. A. and B. and C. have succumbed beneath the hail of too much applause. What has become of them?
"Fewer means and more study, less indulgence and more discipline, are all pledges of success; if not immediate and striking, at least permanent and substantial. Do you want to captivate women and young people? Begin in the genre sensible. 'Tout le monde aime,' as Voltaire says, 'et personne ne conspire.' At the same time, what may have been good advice in his day may not be worth very much in ours. If you want chiefly to delight the multitude, which feels much and reasons but little, adopt either a magnificent or an awe-inspiring style: they will instantly take effect. How is it possible to sustain the dignified part of Mahomed, the condescension of Augustus, the remorse of Orestes? The impression to be made by such parts as Ladislas, Orosmane and Bajazet should be carefully prepared and it will then be ineffaceable.
"True talent, well supported, and a fortunate début are a guarantee of immediate popularity; but the artiste should strive to perpetuate them; he must compel the public to go on appreciating. After having applauded from conviction, people should be made to continue their applause from habit. That collective body of people whom we call the public has its caprices like any ordinary individual; it must be coaxed; and (may I go so far as to say that) if it be won over by good qualities, it is not impossible to keep its favour by faults; you may use defects, then, to that end! Nevertheless, you must be careful that they are those with which your judges will be in sympathy. Should the case be otherwise, you may still have defects; but they will be poor relations dogging the footsteps of your talent and welcomed only by reason of its greater authority. Molé stammered and slurred, Fleury staggered and I have been reproached with over-acting; but Molé had indescribable charms, Fleury an alluring delivery, and I make people laugh so heartily that the critic who tries to be solemn at my expense is never given a hearing.
"There are débutants who shoot up like rockets, shine for a few months and fall back into utter darkness. There are several causes for such disasters: their talents were either forced, or without range, or immature; as the English say, a few exhibitions have used them up; one or two efforts have exhausted them. Perhaps, too, deviating from the path trodden by the masters, they have entered the crooked labyrinths of innovation, wherein only genius can lead temerity aright. Perhaps also, and this is more hopeless still, they have been bad copies of excellent originals. And the public, seeing that they have aped defects rather than copied excellences, has taken them for parodists and called their efforts caricatures. When a comedian has reached this point, the best thing for him to do is to escape out of it by the prompters side door, and fly to Pan to amuse the Basques, or to Riom to entertain the Auvergnats. But Paris lays claim to you, my dear Talma, Paris will cleave to you, Paris will possess you; and the land of Voltaire and of Molière, of which you will become the worthy interpreter, will not be long in giving you letters of naturalisation.
"DUGAZON
"20 November 1787"
It is interesting to read the advice that Shakespeare gave two centuries before, through the mouth of Hamlet, to the players of his time. It was as follows:—
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
"Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
"And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows' a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it."
Let the successors of Lekain and of Garrick, of Molé and of Kemble, of Talma and of Kean, compare this last advice with the first, and profit by both!