While Lord Byron's body was being carried from Missolonghi to England, the literary movement in France was steadily progressing. M. Liadière and M. Lemercier each did their best in grappling with Shakespeare and Rowe, each produced Jane Shore; M. Liadière at the Odéon on 2 April, and M. Lemercier at the Théâtre-Français on the 1st. M. Liadière's production just managed to pay its way, while M. Lemercier's was a failure, in spite of Talma, who played two parts in it—those of Gloucester and a beggar. Talma was wonderful in this play, poor though it was. In it he attempted what was in those days looked upon as a very extraordinary thing. He, a man of fine presence, graceful in bearing, full of poetry, lofty in mind and eloquent, played the part of the hunchbacked cripple Richard. The way he managed to make his right shoulder look higher than his left and his arm appear paralysed was a miracle of skill, and the denunciatory scene was a miracle of talent. But nothing could save such a wretched piece. It is now high time some undeserved reputations, supported by fine coteries and associations of intrigue and shuffling, should be shown in their true light.
For instance, there is the author of Agamemnon and of Pinto,—he did not deserve a quarter of the reputation he received. Agamemnon is a dull, lifeless play, devoid of poetic feeling, sense, rhythm and style; what is it compared with the Orestes of Æschylus? Pinto is a drama of the school of Beaumarchais, the worst type of dramatic school I know; the play would have died a natural death at the end of eight or ten representations if the Imperial Censor had not been so stupid as to attempt to stifle it. The persecution accorded to Pinto gave it a species of celebrity, but, let it be played nowadays and one would soon see the worthlessness of the imitation of Æschylus and Seneca, the so-called original creation. And yet these two plays were the author's principal works.
Try, too, to read a number of other tragedies and dramas and poems that have fallen, buried beneath the cat-calls, laughter and hootings of the public! Try to read Méléagre or Lovelace or le Lévite d'Éphraïm; then, when you have thrown these first three works of the same author aside, and feel sufficiently recovered and can breathe freely once more, take up the task again and try to read Ophis, Plaute or la Comédie latine, Baudouin, Christophe Colomb, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, la Démence de Charles VI., Frédegonde and Brunehaut, which Mademoiselle Rachel for some unknown purpose drew from the tomb, and galvanised three or four times without being able to bring back to life. Then, what else? Stay...we should be lost on the battlefield, among the productions that did not even linger wounded, but fell stark dead—Camille and le Masque de poix, and Cahin-Caha and la Panhypocrisiade: folly succeeding mediocrity; sheer nonsense and balderdash.
And yet, although wounded by these rebuffs and completely maimed by his falls, M. Lemercier sat quietly on in his arm-chair in the Palais Mazarin—as did his colleagues, M. Droz, M. Briffaut, and M. Lebrun, one trying to make people forget that he had written a little volume on Bonheur, another that he had perpetrated a tragedy called Minus II., and the third, that he had missed fire in his le Cid d'Andalousie and mangled Schiller's Maria Stuart—he need not have troubled to say anything, the world would have let him sleep as quietly in his tomb as the spectators had fain have slept at the performance of his pieces, if hissing had never been invented. But nothing of the kind happened! When M. Lemercier perceived the literary movement of 1829 he cried out at the sacrilege, want of good taste and scandal of the thing; he signed petitions to the king to have the representation of Henri III. and of Marion Delorme stopped; he barred the entrance to the Academy when Lamartine and Victor Hugo endeavoured to gain an entrance; he set the Archbishop of Paris against the one and produced a M. Flourens to checkmate the other; he recovered the use of his legs sufficiently to run about collecting votes against them, and the use of his right hand to turn the lock against them. Thank Heaven I had very little to do with this wicked little cur, neither have I had any personal quarrel with him, as I have never had any dealings with the Academy; but since someone must rise up and speak for justice I claim the privilege of being the first to set the example.
When M. Flourens was nominated in place of Hugo, I was passing through the green-room of the Théâtre-Français. I forget what the new play was, but M. Lemercier was holding forth there against the author of Notre-Dame de Paris and of Marion Delorme and the Orientales, just as he had opposed him all day long, silently, in the Academy. I listened to his diatribe for a few minutes, then, shaking my head, I said to him—
"Monsieur Lemercier, you have refused your vote to Victor Hugo; but there is one thing you will some day be compelled to yield him, and that is your own place. Take care lest, instead of the ill-natured things you are saying against him here, he be not obliged to say a kind word for you some day to the Academy."
And it happened just as I had predicted. It was no easy matter to praise Lemercier, but Hugo accomplished the matter by describing the period instead of speaking of the man, by referring to the emperor rather than to the poet.
"Have you read my speech?" Hugo asked me the day after he had made it.