The younger rival, however, was the first to leave the arena. She acted in both hemispheres, led what is called a stormy life, was as eccentric as she was full of good impulses, and to the last she knew no more of the personages she acted than what she learned of them from the pieces in which they were represented. Rachel died utterly exhausted. The wear and tear of her professional life was aggravated by the want of repose, the restlessness, and the riot of the tragedy queen at home. She was royally buried. In the foyer of the Théâtre Français Rachel and Mars, in marble, represent the Melpomene and Thalia of France. They are both dead and forgotten by the French public.
For years after Mdlle. Duchesnois had vanished from the scene, Mdlle. Georges may be said to have languished out her life. One day of snow and fog, in January 1867, a funeral procession set out from Passy, traversed the living city of Paris, and entered through the mist the city of the dead, Père la Chaise. Alexandre Dumas was chief mourner. ‘In that coffin,’ said Jules Janin, ‘lay more sorrows, passions, poetry, and hopes than in a thousand proud tombs in the cemetery of Père la Chaise.’ She who had represented and felt and expressed all these sentiments, emotions, and ideas, was the last survivor of the line of dramatic queens in France.
That line had its Lady Jane Grey, its queen for an hour; one who was loved and admired during that time, and whose hard fate was deplored for full as long a period. About the year 1819-20 there appeared at the Odéon a Mdlle. Charton. She made her début in a new piece, ‘Lancastre,’ in which she acted Queen Elizabeth. Her youth and beauty, combined with extraordinary talent, took the public mind prisoner. Here was a young goddess who would shower delight when the maturer divinities had gone back to Olympus. The lithographed portrait of Mdlle. Charton was in all the shops and was eagerly bought. Suddenly she ceased to act. A jealous lover had flung into that beautiful and happy face a cup of vitriol, and destroyed beauty, happiness, and partially the eyesight, for ever. The young actress refused to prosecute the ruffian, and sat at home suffering and helpless, till she became ‘absorbed in the population’—that is to say, starved, or very nearly so. She had one poor female friend who helped just to keep her alive. In this way the once proud young beauty literally went down life into old age and increase of anguish. She dragged through the horrible time of the horrible Commune, and then she died. Her body was carried to the common pauper grave at Montmartre, and one poor actor who had occasionally given her what help he could, a M. Dupuis, followed her to that bourn.
Queens as they were, their advent to such royalty was impeded by every obstacle that could be thrown in their way. The ‘Society’ of French actors has been long noted for its cruel illiberality and its mean jealousy, especially the ‘Society’ that has been established since the Revolution—or, to speak correctly, during the Revolution which began in 1789, and which is now in the eighty-fourth year of its progress. The poor and modest Duchesnois had immense difficulty in being allowed to appear at all. The other actors would not even speak to her. When she was ‘called’ by an enthusiastic audience no actor had the gallantry to offer a hand to lead her forward. A poor player, named Florence, at length did so, but on later occasions he was compelled to leave her to ‘go on’ alone. When Mdlle. Rachel, ill-clad and haggard, besought a well-known sociétaire to aid her in obtaining permission to make her début on the stage of the Théâtre Français, he told her to get a basket and go and sell flowers. On the night of her triumph, when she did appear, and heaps of bouquets were flung at her feet, on her coming forward after the fall of the curtain, she flung them all into a basket, slung it from her shoulders, went to the actor who had advised her to go and vend flowers, and kneeling to him, asked him, half in smiles and half in tears, if he would not buy a nosegay! It is said that Mdlle. Mars was jealous of the promise of her sister, Georgina. Young débutantes are apt to think that the aged queens should abandon the parts of young princesses, and when the young débutantes have become old they are amazed at the impertinence of new comers who expect them to surrender the juvenile characters. The latest successful débutante, Mdlle. Rousseil and M. Mounae Sully, are where they now are in spite of their fellows who were there before them.
SOME ECCENTRICITIES OF THE FRENCH STAGE.
The future historian of the French Stage will not want for matter to add to a history which has already had many illustrators and writers. Just a year ago, I saw a magnificent funeral pass from the church of Notre Dame de Lorette. ‘C’est Lafont, le grand Comédien!’ was the comment of the spectators. ‘Poor Glatigny!’ said another, ‘was not thus buried—like a prince!’ Wondering who Glatigny might be, I, in the course of that day, took up a French paper in the reading-room of the Grand Hôtel, in which the name caught my eye, and I found that Glatigny had been one of the eccentric actors of the French stage. He was clever, but reckless; he had a bad memory, but when it was in fault, he could improvise—with impudence, but effect.
Glatigny once manifested his improvising powers in a very extraordinary manner. The story, on the authority of the Paris papers, runs thus:
Passing in front of the Mont-Parnasse Theatre, he saw the name of his friend Chevilly in the play-bill. Glatigny entered by the stage-door, and asked to see him. He was told that Chevilly was on the stage, and could not be spoken to; he was acting in Ponsard’s ‘Charlotte Corday.’ Glatigny, thereupon, and to the indignant astonishment of the manager, coolly walked forward to the side of Chevilly, as the latter was repeating the famous lines—