Joseph-François Talma used to say that he first heard of a theatre, from seeing and asking about the old Théâtre de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne, whose entrance was in Rue Mauconseil, opposite the place of his birth, on January 15, 1763. As he grew up he learned a good deal more about the theatre, for he went early and often. He was only fifteen when he was one of the audience in the Théâtre Français, on that night of the crowning of Voltaire, and one of the crowd that tried to unharness the horses, and drag the old man from the Tuileries to his house on the quay. By day the lad was learning dentistry, his father's profession—it was then a trade—and the two went to London to practice. For a while young Talma got experience in that specialty from the jaws of the sailor-men at Greenwich, and got gayer and more congenial experience in amateur theatricals in town. They returned to Paris, and the father's sign, "M. Talma, Dentiste," was hung by the doorway of No. 3 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, next to the corner of Rue Saint-Honoré. From the house that was there before the present modern structure, young Talma went across the river to the Comédie Française, on the night of November 21, 1787, and made his début as Seide in "Mahomet."
In our chapter on Molière, we left the Comédie Française, on its opening night in 1689, at the house in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie. There it remained for nearly a century, until forced, by overflowing houses, to find a larger hall. While this was in course of construction the company removed, in 1770, to the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries, already transformed into a theatre by the Regent for his ballets. Here the troupe played until the completion of the new theatre in 1782. That new Comédie Française is now the Second Théâtre Français, the Odéon, the second largest hall in Paris. It was burned in 1799 and again in 1818. In 1789 it took the title of Théâtre National; in 1793, Théâtre de l'Égalité was the newest name forced upon the unwilling comedians, who were, as always with that profession, fond of swelldom and favorites of princes. The house being in the very centre of the Cordeliers quarter, in la Section Marat, there was always constant friction between players and audience, and by 1793 this had so exasperated the ruling powers—the sans-culottes—that nearly the whole troupe was sent to prison, charged with having insulted the Patriots on the boards, and with having given "proofs of marked incivism." The ladies of the company, aristocrats by strength of their sex, occupied cells in Sainte-Pélagie, where we have already listened to their merriment. They escaped trial through the destruction of their dossiers by a humane member of the Committee of Safety, and the 9 Thermidor set them free. Talma had already left the troupe in April, 1791, driven away, with two or three friends, by dissensions and jealousies. They went over to the new house which had been constructed, in 1789, at a corner of the Palais-Royal, by enterprising contractors with influential politicians between them. It was called at first Théâtre Français de la Rue de Richelieu, and, in 1792, Théâtre de la République. On Talma's desertion of the old house, there began a legal process against him, exactly like that instituted by the same Comédie Française against M. Coquelin, a century later, when the theatre had for its lawyer the grandson of its advocate of 1792; and the decision of the two tribunals was the same in effect. Talma stayed at the theatre in the Palais-Royal, to which he drew the discerning public, and, after ten years of rivalry, the two troupes joined hands on those boards, and so the Comédie Française came to the present "House of Molière."
It would seem that Talma was a shrewd man of business, and drew money in his private rôle of landlord. He owned the house in which Mirabeau died, in Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and always referred to the great tribune as "mon ancien locataire, Mirabeau." Just beyond, in Rue Chantereine, Talma was attracted by the small villa built by the architect Ledoux, for Condorcet, it is said. Perhaps the actor had seen, in that street, an even more plausible actor, Giuseppe Balsamo by name, calling himself the Count Cagliostro. He had established himself in one of the villas in this street, on coming to Paris to ply his trade, toward 1784. And in 1778 the wonder-working Mesmer had set up his machinery and masqueraded as a magician in a house in the same street. Benjamin Franklin went there, one of a government commission sent to investigate the miracles.
In his new residence in Rue Chantereine, Talma welcomed his friends among the Revolutionary leaders, and gave them bouillon in the kitchen, when he came home from the theatre at night. In 1795 he sold the villa to Josephine de Beauharnais, and he always said that her first payment was made to him from moneys sent to her, by her husband, from Italy. It is not known whether Talma owned, or leased, an apartment in No. 15 Quai Voltaire, where he lived from 1802 until 1806. The house, now No. 17, one of the ancient stately structures facing the quay, is somewhat narrower than its neighbors. During the ten years between 1807 and 1817 he had an apartment at No. 6 Rue de Seine; possibly in that pavilion in the court which was built by Marguerite de Valois for her residence, and which has been heightened by having two new floors slipped between the lower and top stories, leaving these latter and the façade much as she built them. His home, from 1818 to 1821, at No. 14 Rue de Rivoli, is replaced by the new structures at the western end of that street, which is entirely renumbered. After two more changes on the northern bank, he finally settled at No. 9 Rue de la Tour-des-Dames. Until 1822 there was still to be seen the tower of the windmill owned by the "Dames de Montmartre," which gave its name to this street. At its number 3, a small hôtel, circular-fronted and most coquettish, lived Mlle. Mars, it is believed, and here she was the victim of the earliest recorded theft of an actress's jewels. The simple and stately house, of a low curtain between two wings, with two stories and a mansard roof, bearing the number 9, is the scene of Talma's last years and of his death, on October 19, 1826. His final appearance had been on June 11th of that year, in his marvellous personation of Charles VI. At this house we shall see Dumas visit the old actor, who had seen Voltaire! Dumas says that Talma spared nothing in his aim at accuracy, historic and archæologic, when creating a new rôle or mounting a new play. Indeed, we know that Talma was the first great realist in costume and scenery, as we know that he first brought the statues of tragedy down to human proportions and gave them life-blood. Dumas dwells especially on the voice of the great tragedian—a voice that was glorious and sincere, and in anguish was a sob.
There is a glowing portrait of Talma from the pen of Chateaubriand, in which he makes plain that the tragedian, while he was, himself, his century and ancient centuries in one, had been profoundly affected by the terrible scenes of the Terror which he had witnessed; and it was that baleful inspiration that sent the concentrated passion of patriotism leaping in torrents from his heart. "His grace—not an ordinary grace—seized one like fate. Black ambition, remorse, jealousy, sadness of soul, bodily agony, human grief, the madness sent by the gods and by adversity—that was what he knew. Just his coming on the scene, just the sound of his voice, were overpoweringly tragic. Suffering and contemplation mingled on his brow, breathed in his postures, his gestures, his walk, his motionlessness."
Thomas Carlyle seems strangely placed in the stalls of the Théâtre Français, yet he sat there, at the end of his twelve-days' visit to Paris in 1825. "On the night before leaving," he writes, "I found that I ought to visit one theatre, and by happy accident came upon Talma playing there. A heavy, shortish, numb-footed man, face like a warming-pan for size, and with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it. Incomparably the best actor I ever saw. Play was 'Œdipe'; place the Théâtre Français."
Monogram from former entrance of the Cour du Commerce, believed to be the initials of the owner, one Girardot.