The French public is cruel to its idols whose powers have passed away. The French stage is ungrateful to its old patrons who can no longer confer patronage. When the glorious three days of 1830 had overthrown the Bourbon Charles X., King of France and Navarre, and put in his place Louis Philippe, King of the French, and the ‘best of republics,’ the actors at the Odéon inaugurated their first representation under the ‘Revolution’ by acting Pichat’s tragedy of ‘William Tell’ and Molière’s ‘Tartuffe.’ All the actors were ignoble enough to associate themselves with the downfall of a dynasty many kings of which had been liberal benefactors of the drama. In ‘William Tell’ Ligier stooped to the anachronism of wearing a tri-coloured rosette on the buffskin tunic of Tell. In ‘Tartuffe’ all the actors and actresses but one wore the same sign of idiocy. Tartuffe himself wore the old white ribbon of the Bourbons, but only that the symbol which once was associated with much glory might be insulted in its adversity. Dorine, the servant, tore the white rosette from Tartuffe’s black coat amid a hurricane of applause from the hot-headed heroes of the barricades, who had by fire, sword, artillery, and much slaughter, set on the throne the ‘modern Ulysses.’ Eighteen years later, that Ulysses shared the fate of all French objects of idolatry, and was rudely tumbled down from his high estate. At the Porte St. Martin, Frederic Lemaître played a chiffonier in one of the dramas in which he was so popular. In his gutter-raking at night, after having tossed various objects over his shoulder into his basket, he drove his crook into some object which he held up for the whole house to behold. It was a battered kingly crown, and when, with a scornful chuckle, he flung it among the rags and bones in the basket on his back, the vast mob of spectators did not hiss him from the stage; they greeted the unworthy act by repeated salvoes of applause!
Turning from eccentric actors to eccentric pieces, there may be reckoned among the latter a piece called ‘Venez,’ which was first produced, a few years ago, at Liége. A chief incident in the piece is where a pretty actress, seeking an engagement, is required by the young manager, as a test of her competency, to give to the above word as many varied intonations as might be possible. One of these proves to be so exquisitely seductive that the manager offers a permanent engagement for life, which is duly accepted. From Liége to Compiègne is a long step, but it brings us to another eccentricity. Nine years ago, at one of the Imperial revels there, certain of the courtiers and visitors acted in an apropos piece, named ‘Les Commentaires de César.’ The Prince Imperial represented the Future, without having the slightest idea of it. Prosper Mérimée, Academician, poet, and historian, acted the Past, of which he had often written so picturesquely. In the more farcical part which followed the prologue, the most prominent personage was the Princesse de Metternich (wife of the Austrian ambassador), who played the part of a French cabman out on strike. She tipped forth the Paris slang, and sang a character song, with an audacity which could not be surpassed by the boldest of singing actresses at any of the popular minor theatres. The august audience were convulsed at this manifestation of high dramatic art—in its way! These fêtes led to much extravagance in dress, and to much contention thereon between actresses and managers.
The directors of the Palais Royal Theatre have frequently been at law with their first ladies. Mdlle. Louisa Ferraris, in 1864, signed an engagement to play there for three years at a salary beginning at 2,400 francs, and advancing to 3,000 and 3,600 francs, with a forfeit clause of 12,000 francs. The salary would hardly have sufficed to pay the lady’s shoemaker. In the course of the engagement the ‘Foire aux Grotesques’ was put in rehearsal. In the course of this piece Mdlle. Ferraris had to say to another actress, ‘I was quite right in not inviting you to my ball, for you could not have come in a new dress, as you owe your dressmaker 24,000 francs!’ As this actress was really deeply indebted to that important personage, she begged that this speech, which seemed a deliberate insult to her, might be altered. Mdlle. Ferraris, in spite of the authors, who readily changed the objectionable phrase, continued, however, to repeat the original words. As she was peremptorily ordered to omit them she flung up her part, whereupon the directors applied to the law to cancel her engagement for breach of contract, and to award them 12,000 francs damages. Mademoiselle repented and offered to resume the part. On this being declined she entered a cross action to gain the 12,000 francs for breach of contract on the directors’ side. The Tribunal de Commerce, after consideration, cancelled the engagement, but condemned Mdlle. Ferraris to pay 2,000 francs damages and the costs of suit. It is to the stage, and not to the empress, that inordinate luxury in dress is to be attributed. Sardou, in ‘La Famille Bénoiton,’ has been stigmatised as the forerunner of such an exaggerated luxury that no private purse was sufficient to pay for the toilette of a woman whose maxim was, La mode à tout prix.
Two or three years ago there was an actress at the Palais Royal Theatre known as Antonia de Savy. Her real name was Antoinette Jathiot. Her salary was 1,200 francs for the first year, 1,800 francs for the second: not three-and-sixpence a night in English money. But out of the three-and-sixpences Mdlle. Antonia was bound to provide herself with ‘linen, shoes, stockings, head-dresses, and all theatrical costumes requisite for her parts, except foreign costumes totally different from anything habitually worn in France.’ For any infringement of these terms Mademoiselle was to pay a fine of 10,000 francs—about her salary for half-a-dozen years. Circumstances led Antonia to be wayward, and the management entered on a suit for the cancelling of the engagement on the ground of her refusing to play a particular part, and her unpunctuality. Her counsel, M. G. Chaix d’Est Ange, pleaded that the lady was a minor, that her father had not given his consent to such an engagement, and that it was an imposition on her youth and inexperience. The other side replied that Mdlle. Jathiot had ceased to be a minor since the engagement was signed; that as to her inexperience, she was a very experienced young lady in the ways of Parisian life; that the engagement was concluded with her because she dressed in the most magnificent style, and that it would be profitable to the theatre as well as to herself to exhibit those magnificent dresses on the stage; and that as to her respected sire, he was a humble clerk, living in a garret in the Rue Saint-Lazare, and had no control whatever over a daughter who lived in the style of a princess, spent fabulous sums in maintaining it, and had the most perfect ‘turn-out’ in the way of carriage, horses, and servants in the French capital. The plaintiffs asked to be relieved from this modest young lady, and to be awarded damages for her insubordination and unpunctuality. The Tribunal de Commerce ordered the engagement to be cancelled, and the defendant to pay 1500 francs damages and the costs of suit. But the Imperial Court of Appeal took another view of the case. They refused in any way to sanction such an immoral notion as that the terms of the contract were not disadvantageous for the minor because it was known that she got her living in a way that could not be avowed. They quashed the judgment of the Tribunal de Commerce, and ordered the managers of the Palais Royal to pay all the costs.
The most singular of all law cases between French actresses and managers was one the names of the parties to which have slipped out of my memory. It arose out of the refusal of a young actress, who had not lost her womanly modesty, to ‘go on’ in the dress provided for her, which would hardly have afforded her more covering than a postage-stamp. In the lawsuit which followed this act of insubordination, the modest young lady was defeated, and was rebuked by the magistrate for infringing the laws of the stage, of which the manager was the irresponsible legislator! The actress preferred the cancelling of her engagement to the degradation of such nightly exposure as was demanded by the manager and was sanctioned by the magistrate.
I have said above that the eccentric extravagance of dress—the other extreme from next to none at all—was not a consequence of an example set by the empress. But there is something to be said on both sides. Only two years ago Mdlles. Fargueil, Bernhardt, and Desclées made public protest against the pièces aux robes, in which they were required to dress like empresses (of fashion) at their own expense. They traced the ruinous custom to the period when the Imperial Court was at Compiègne, and when the actresses engaged or ‘invited’ to play to the august company there were required by the inexorable rule of the Court to obey the sumptuary laws which regulated costume. Every lady was invited for three days; each day she was to wear three different dresses, and no dress was to be worn a second time. Count Bacciochi, the grand chamberlain, kept a sharp eye on the ladies of the drama. Histrionic queens and countesses were bound to be attired as genuinely as the historical dignitaries themselves. The story might be romance, the outward and visible signs were to be all reality. The awful Grand Chamberlain once banished an actress from the Court stage at Compiègne for the crime of wearing mock pearls when she was playing the part of a duchess!
This evil fashion, insisted on by dreadful Grand Chamberlains, was adopted by Paris managers, who hoped to attract by dresses—the very skirt of any one of which would swallow more than a vicaire’s yearly income—and by a river of diamonds on a fair neck, whatever might be in the head above it. A young actress who hoped to live by such salary as her brains alone could bring her, and who would presume to wear sham jewellery or machine-made lace, was looked upon as a poor creature who would never have a reputation—that is, such a reputation as her gorgeously attired sisters, who did not particularly care to have any but that for which the most of them dressed themselves. When the empire fell the above-named actresses thought that a certain republican simplicity might properly take the place of an imperial magnificence. Or they maintained that if stage-ladies were required to find stage-dresses that cost twenty times their salary, the cost of providing such dresses should fall on the stage-proprietors, and not on the stage-ladies. It is said that the bills Mdlle. Fargueil had to pay for her dresses in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ and ‘Patrie’ represented a sum total which, carefully invested, would have brought her in a comfortable annuity! This may be a little exaggerated, but the value of the dresses may be judged of from one fact, namely, that the Ghent lace which Mdlle. Fargueil wore on her famous blue dress in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ was worth very nearly 500l.
How the attempt to introduce ‘moderation’ into the stage laws of costume has succeeded, the most of us have seen. It has not succeeded at all. Certain actresses are proud to occupy that bad preeminence from which they are able to set the fashion. ‘Mon chancelier vous dira le reste!’