The Door of Corneille's Last Dwelling.
(From a drawing by Robert Delafontaine, by permission of M. Victorien Sardou.)
Age and poverty took up their abode with him—as well as his more welcome comrade, the constant Thomas—in his next dwelling. We cannot be sure when they left Rue de Cléry, and we find them first in Rue d'Argenteuil in November, 1683, the year of Colbert's death. That old road from the village of Argenteuil had become, and still remains, a city street absolutely without character or temperament of its own; it has not the merit even of being ignoble. And the Corneille house at No. 6, as it was seen just before its destruction, was a gloomy and forbidding building. It had two entrances—as has the grandiose structure now standing on its site—one in Rue d'Argenteuil, on which front is a tablet marking this historic scene of the poet's death, and the other in Rue de l'Évêque. That street was wiped out of existence by the cutting of Avenue de l'Opéra in 1877-8, which necessitated the demolition of this dreary old house. Its most attractive relic is now in the possession of M. Victorien Sardou, at his country house, at Marly-le-Roi, in the porte-cochère, with its knocker. Every guest there is proud to put his hand on the veritable knocker lifted so often by Corneille's hand.
That hand had lost its fire and force by this time, and the poet's last months were wretched enough in these vast and desolate rooms on the second floor, so vast and desolate that he was unable to keep his poor septuagenarian bones warm within them. Here came death to him on Sunday, October 1, 1684. They buried him in his parish church, Saint-Roch, a short step from his home; and on the western pillar within the entrance a tablet to his memory was placed in 1821. The church was so short a step, that, feeble and forlorn as he was, he had found his way there early of mornings during these last years. And in his earlier years, when living in Rue de Cléry, he had often hurried there, drawn by the strong and splendid Bossuet, whose abode was either in Rue Sainte-Anne hard by, or in the then new mansion still standing in Place des Victoires. Here in the church, as we stand between Corneille's tablet and Bossuet's pulpit, the contrast is brought home to us of the two forms of eloquence that most touch men: that of this preacher burning with ancient Hebraic fire, and that of this dramatist glowing with the white-heat of classicism.
After the burial, the bereft Thomas removed to rooms in Cul-de-sac des Jacobins, only a little way from his last home with Pierre. This blind alley has now been cut through to the market of Saint-Honoré, and become a short commonplace street, named Saint-Hyacinthe. Twenty years the younger of the two, Thomas was, during his life, and has been in his after-renown, unduly overshadowed by his imperishable brother. He had a rare gift of versification, and a certain skill in the putting together of plays. Of them he constructed a goodly lot, some few of them in collaboration. His "Timocrate," played for eighty consecutive nights at the Théâtre du Marais, was the most popular success on the boards of the seventeenth century. His knack in pleasing the public taste was as much his own as was his mastery of managers, by which he got larger royalties than any playwright of his day. He was a competent craftsman, too, in more weighty fabrications, and turned out, from his factory, translations and dictionaries, which have joined his plays in everlasting limbo.
All the early theatrical productions of Pierre Corneille were originally put on the stage of the Théâtre du Marais, which had been started by seceders from the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as has been told in our first chapter. After a temporary lodgment in the quarter of the Hôtel de Ville, it was soon permanently housed in the recast tennis-court of the "Hôtel Salé." There it remained until 1728, when Le Camus bought the place and turned the theatre into stables. Where stands modern No. 90 in the widened Rue Vieille-du-Temple was the public entrance of the theatre. The "Hôtel Salé," the work of Lepautre, is still in perfect condition behind the houses of Rue Vieille-du-Temple. Its principal portal is at Rue Thorigny, 5, with a side entrance in Rue Saint-Gervais-des-Coutures. Known at first as the Hôtel Juigné, it was popularly renamed, in the seventeenth century, the "Hôtel Salé," because its rapacious owner, Aubray de Fontenay, had amassed his wealth by farming out the salt tax—that most exacting and irritating of the many taxes of that time.
Through a lordly arch in Rue Thorigny, we pass into the grand court, and find facing us the dignified façade, its imposing pediment carved with figures and flowers. Within is a stately hall, made the more stately by the placing at one end of a noble chimney-piece, a copy of one at Versailles. In the centre a superb staircase rises, wide and easy, through a sculptured cage, to the first floor; its old wrought-iron railing is of an exquisite pattern; nothing in all Paris is nearer perfection than this staircase, its railing, and its balustrade. In the rooms above, kept with reverence by the bronze-maker who occupies them, admirable panelling and carvings are found. The façade on the gardens—now shrunk from their former spaciousness to a small court—is most impressive, with ancient wrought-iron balconies; in its pediment, two vigilant dogs watch the hands that move no more on the great clock-face between them.
The Théâtre du Marais had been established here by the famous Turlupin, made immortal in Boileau's verse, who, with his two comic confrères—baker's boys, like the brothers Coquelin of our day—kept his audiences in a roar with his modern French farces farcied with old Gaulish grossness. It was he who invented the comic valet—badgered and beaten, always lying and always funny—who was subsequently elaborated into the immortal Sganerelle by Molière. He, while a boy, had sat in this theatre, watching Turlupin; and when he had grown into a manager, he is said to have bought some of the stage copies of these farces, when Turlupin's death disbanded his troupe.
These "Comédiens du Marais" were regarded with a certain condescension not unmingled with disdain by their stately confrères left at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who were shocked when Richelieu, becoming bored by their dreary traditional proprieties, sent for Turlupin and his troupe to give a specimen of their acting in his palace. And the great cardinal actually laughed, a rare indulgence he allowed himself, and told the King's Comedians that he wished they might play to as good effect!
Still, the Théâtre du Marais was not entirely given over to farce, for it alternated with the tragedy of the then famous Hardy; and Mondory, the best tragedian of the day, was at one time the head of the troupe. Mondory had brought back from a provincial tour, in 1629, the manuscript of "Mélite," by a young lawyer of Rouen, named Corneille. This piece was weak, but it was not a failure. And so, when the author came to town, his tragedies were played at this theatre and drew crowds to the house. There they first saw the true tragic Muse herself on the French boards. Those rough, coarse boards of that early theatre he planed and polished, with conscience and with craft, and made them fit for her queenly feet; and through her lips he breathed, in sublime tirades, his own elevation of soul, to the inspiration of that shabby scene. For the first time in the French drama, he put skill into the plot, art into the intrigue, taste into the wit; in a word, he gave to dramatic verse "good sense"—"the only aim of poetry," Boileau claimed—and showed the meaning and the value of "reason" on the stage; and for the doing of this Racine revered him.
As to Corneille's personality, we are told by Fontenelle—his nephew, a man of slight value, a better talker than writer, an unmoved man, who prided himself on never laughing and never crying—that his uncle had rather an agreeable countenance, with very marked features, a large nose, a handsome mouth, eyes full of fire, and an animated expression. Others who saw Corneille say that he looked like a shopkeeper; and that as to his manner, he seemed simple and timid, and as to his talk, he was dull and tiresome. His enunciation was not distinct, so that in reading his own verses—he could not recite them—he was forcible but not graceful. Guizot puts it curtly and cruelly, when he writes that Corneille was destitute of all that distinguishes a man from his equals; that his appearance was common, his conversation dull, his language incorrect, his timidity ungainly, his judgment untrustworthy. It was well said, in his day, that to know the greatness of Corneille, he must be read, or be seen in his work on the stage. He has said so in the verse that confesses his own defects: