The incompatibility of literature with riotings—La Maréchale L'Ancre—My opinion concerning that piece—Farruck le Maure—The début of Henry Monnier at the Vaudeville—I leave Paris—Rouen—Havre—I meditate going to explore Trouville—What is Trouville?—The consumptive English lady—Honfleur—By land or by sea
It was a fatiguing life we led: each day brought its emotions, either political or literary. Antony went on its successful course in the midst of various disturbances. Every night, without any apparent motive whatsoever, a crowd gathered on the boulevard. The rallying-place varied between the Théâtre-Gymnase and that of the Ambigu. At first composed of five or six persons, it grew progressively; policemen would next appear and walk about with an aggressive air along the boulevard; the gutter urchins threw cabbage stumps or carrot ends at them, which was quite sufficient after half an hour or an hour's proceedings to cause a nice little row, which began at five o'clock in the afternoon and lasted till midnight. This daily popular irritation attracted many people to the boulevard and very few to the plays. Antony was the only piece which defied the disturbances and the heat, and brought in sums of between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand francs. But there was such stagnation in business, and so great was the fear that spread over the book-trade, that the same publishers who had offered me six thousand francs for Henri III., and twelve thousand francs for Christine, hardly dared offer to print Antony for half costs and half profits. I had it printed, not at half costs by a publisher, but entirely at my own expense.
There was no way possible for me to remain in Paris any longer: riots swallowed up too much time and money. Antony did not bring in enough to keep a man going; also, I was being goaded by the demon of poetry, which urged me to do something fresh. But how could one work in Paris, in the midst of gatherings at the Grande-Chaumière, dinners at the Vendanges de Bourgogne and lawsuits at the Assize Courts? I conferred with Cavaignac and Bastide. I learnt that there would be nothing serious happening in Paris for six months or a year, and I obtained a holiday for three months. Only two causes kept me still in Paris: the first production of the Maréchale d'Ancre and the début of Henry Monnier. De Vigny, who had not yet ventured anything at the theatre but his version of Othello, to which I referred in its right place, was about to make his real entry in the Maréchale d'Ancre. It was a fine subject; I had been on the point of treating it, but had renounced it because my good and learned friend Paul Lacroix, better known then under the name of the bibliophile Jacob, had begun a drama on the same subject.
Louis XIII., that inveterate hunter after la pie-grièche, escaping from the guardianship of his mother by a crime, proclaiming his coming of age to the firing of pistols which killed the favourite of Marie de Médicis, resolving upon that infamous deed whilst playing at chess with his favourite, de Luynes, who was hardly two years older than himself; a monarch timid in council and brave in warfare, a true Valois astray among the Bourbons, lean, melancholy and sickly-looking, with a profile half like that of Henri IV. and half like Louis XIV., without the goodness of the one and the dignity of the other; this Louis XIII. held out to me the promise of a curious royal figure to take as a model, I who had already given birth to Henri III. and was later to bring Charles IX. to the light of day. But, as I have said, I had renounced it. De Vigny, who did not know Paul Lacroix, or hardly knew him, had not the same reason for abstaining, and he had written a five-act drama in prose on this subject, which had been received at the Odéon. Here was yet another battle to fight.
De Vigny, at that time, as I believe he still does, belonged to the Royalist party. He had therefore two things to fight—the enemies which his opinions brought him, and those who were envious of his talent,—a talent cold, sober, charming, more dreamy than virile, more intellectual than passionate, more nervous than strong. The piece was excellently well put on: Mademoiselle Georges took the part of the Maréchale d'Ancre; Frédérick, that of Concini; Ligier, Borgia; and Noblet, Isabelle. The difference between de Vigny's way of treating drama and mine shows itself in the very names of the characters. One looked in vain for Louis XIII. I should have made him my principal personage. Perhaps, though, the absence of Louis XIII. in de Vigny's drama was more from political opinion than literary device. The author being, as I say, a Royalist, may have preferred to leave his royalty behind the wings than to show it in public with a pale and bloodstained face. The Maréchale d'Ancre is more of a novel than a play; the plot, so to speak, is too complicated in its corners and too simple in its middle spaces. The Maréchale falls without a struggle, without catastrophe, without clinging to anything: she slips and falls to the ground; she is seized; she dies. As to Concini, as the author was much embarrassed to know what to do with him, he makes him spend ten hours at a Jew's, waiting for a young girl whom he has only seen once; and, just when he learns that Borgia is with his wife, and jealousy lends him wings to fly to the Louvre, he loses himself on a staircase. During the whole of the fourth act, whilst his wife is being taken to the Bastille, and they are trying her and condemning her, he is groping about to find the bannisters and seeking the door; when he comes out of Isabelle's room at the end of the third act, he does not reappear again on the stage till the beginning of the fifth, and then only to die in a corner of the rue de la Ferronnerie. That is the principal idea of the drama. According to the author, Concini is the real assassin of Henry IV.; Ravaillac is only the instrument. That is why, instead of being killed within the limits of the court of the Louvre, the Maréchal d'Ancre is killed close to the rue de la Ferronnerie, on the same spot where the assassin waited to give the terrible dagger-stroke of Friday, 14 May 1610. In other respects I agree with the author; I do not think it at all necessary that a work of art should possess as hall-mark, "un parchemin par crime et un in-folio par passion." For long I have held that, in theatrical matters specially, it seems to me permissible to violate history provided one begets offspring thereby; but to let Concini kill Henri IV. with no other object than that Concini should reign, after the death of Béarnais, by the queen and through the queen, is to give a very small reason for so great a crime. Put Concini behind Ravaillac if you will, but, behind Concini, place the queen and Épernon, and behind the queen and Épernon place Austria, the eternal enemy of France! Austria, who has never put out her hand to France save with a knife in it, the blade of Jacques Clément, the dagger of Ravaillac and the pen-knife of Damiens, knowing well it would be too dangerous to touch her with a sword-point.
It did not meet with much success, in spite of the high order of beauty which characterised the work, beauty of style particularly. An accident contributed to this: after the two first acts, the best in my opinion, I do not know what caprice seized Georges, but she pretended she was ill, and the stage-manager came on in a black coat and white tie to tell the spectators that the remainder of the representation was put off until another day. As a matter of fact, the Maréchale d'Ancre was not resumed until eight or ten days later. It needs a robust constitution to hold up against such a check! The Maréchale d'Ancre held its own and had quite a good run. Between the Maréchale d'Ancre and Henry Monnier's first appearance a three-act drama was played at the Porte-Saint-Martin, patronised by Hugo and myself: this was Farruck le Maure, by poor Escousse. The piece was not good, but owing to Bocage it had a greater success than one could have expected. It afterwards acquired a certain degree of importance because of the author's suicide, who, in his turn, was better known by the song, or rather, the elegy which Béranger wrote about him, than by the two plays he had had played. We shall return to this unfortunate boy and to Lebras his fellow-suicide.
It was on 5 July that Henry Monnier came out. I doubt if any début ever produced such a literary sensation. He was then about twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age; he was known in the artistic world on three counts. As painter, pupil of Girodet and of Gros, he had, after his return from travel in England, been instrumental in introducing the first wood-engraving executed in Paris, and he published Mœurs administratives, Grisettes and Illustrations de Béranger. As author, at the instigation of his friend Latouche, he printed his Scènes populaires, thanks to which the renown of the French gendarme and of the Parisian titi[1] spread all over the world. Finally, as a private actor in society he had been the delight of supper-parties, acting for us, with the aid of a curtain or a folding-screen, his Halte d'une diligence, his Étudiant and his Grisette, his Femme qui a trop chaud and his Ambassade de M. de Cobentzel.
On the strength of being applauded in drawing-rooms, he thought he would venture on the stage, and he wrote for himself and for his own début, a piece called La Famille improvisée, which he took from his Scènes populaires. Two types created by Henry Monnier have lasted and will last: his Joseph Prudhomme, professor of writing, pupil of Brard and Saint-Omer; and Coquerel, lover of la Duthé and of la Briand. I have spoken of the interior of the Théâtre-Français on the day of the first performance of Henri III.; that of the Vaudeville was not less remarkable on the evening of 5 July; all the literary and artistic celebrities seemed to have arranged to meet in the rue de Chartres. Among artists and sculptors were, Picot, Gérard, Horace Vernet, Carle Vernet, Delacroix, Boulanger, Pradier, Desbœufs, the Isabeys, Thiolier and I know not who else. Of poets there were Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Hugo, the whole of us in fact. For actresses, Mesdemoiselles Mars, Duchesnois, Leverd, Dorval, Perlet and Nourrit, and every actor who was not taking part on the stage that night. Of society notabilities there were Vaublanc, Mornay, Blanc-ménil, Madame de la Bourdonnaie, the witty Madame O'Donnell, the ubiquitous Madame de Pontécoulant, Châteauvillars, who has the prerogative of not growing old either in face or in mind, Madame de Castries, all the faubourg Saint-Germain, the Chaussée-d'Antin and the faubourg Saint-Honoré. The whole of the journalist world was there. It was an immense success. Henry Monnier reappeared twice, being called first as actor then as author. This, as I have said, was on 5 July, and from that day until the end of December the piece was never taken off the bills.