“I have just had a grand succès, and I don’t wish to sleep before thanking you, to whom I owe it. I have never been so happy as I am tonight, and I believe that, if such a thing is possible, even my affection for you has grown. One thing alone distresses me, and that is my inability to repay you for all you have done. At each burst of applause, I thought of you, dear master, who have given me your time and made sure for me my future. No affection has ever been more profound nor any gratitude so sincere, believe me. Without you I would have been nothing, but with you—two hours ago they told me I was an artist! I can open my heart to you. You cannot imagine how much is included in that one word “artist” especially to a young girl, who yesterday had doubts about the future and had need of reading all your letters in order to give courage.... I am doubly happy. Do not mistake for vanity the effects of the great joy I have been experiencing. How I would work, dear master, to do you the honor of registering a multitude of such nights!”
But good parts fell to Réjane’s lot only infrequently. The reigning queen of the Vaudeville was Mme. Bartet, and it was she, naturally, who got most of the leading rôles. The public had begun to like the young newcomer, whom it had come to know in her small but repeated successes; but nevertheless she was kept more or less in the background, encouraged only by Regnier and patiently waiting her opportunities.
It was in this fashion that she spent the remaining time at the Vaudeville until she left it in the spring of 1882. That period, whatever dissatisfactions it brought to her, is not without its high lights. In Le Club she has “un vrai rôle,” and played it, with gratifying success, a hundred times. In April, 1879, Mme. Bartet fell suddenly ill, and with only a few hours notice Réjane assumed the older woman’s rôle in Les Tapageurs. When Les Lionnes Pauvres was revived, in November 1879, her Séraphine aroused one of those artistic controversies which delight the French mind. Sarcey disapproved, for once. M. Defère advised her to change her costumer. M. Barbey d’Aurevilly on the other hand said she recalled Rachel and was a true artist; Augier, the author of the play, sustained her; and stanch old Regnier wrote her at length, discoursing on the art of acting and of his affection véritable. Her Mimi in La Vie de Bohème again saw the critics at odds about her.
Altogether in her eight seasons at the Vaudeville, she had played more than a score of parts, some of them genuine successes. Yet she had not won genuine recognition at the hands of the directors, and her position in the company was hardly in accord with her promise and deserts. Sardou and the others responsible for the affairs of the Vaudeville seemed strangely blind to the fact that in Réjane they had a comédienne of the first order. But though she was by her superiors much of the time either kept idle or employed in almost insignificant parts, the rest of Paris speedily knew her for what she was. She was in keen demand for all the special, semi-informal performances that make up so large a part of the artistic life of the normal Paris. The “spectacles” of the Cercle de la rue Royale, the revues at the Epatant, the dramatic trifles that were the adjuncts of authors’ readings, all found in Réjane a willing and able helper. She took these artistic informalities seriously, rehearsed for them and costumed them with care, and was so particularly well adapted to the work that she became a marked favorite with the very social and artistic circles to which the Vaudeville catered.
As the directors, however, continued to give her insignificant parts, it is not strange that she listened to those friends, like Pierre Berton, who urged her to shake the dust of Vaudeville from her feet. “You are a star,” Berton told her. It happened that a star was the quest just then of M. Bertrand of the Variétés and with him she signed a three years’ contract.
This moment may be said to mark the definite arrival of Réjane. She was no longer to cool her heels in the greenroom or at home, and henceforth she was to play, as a rule, principal parts. Moreover, the agreement with the Variétés was elastic enough to allow appearances at other theatres, often in plays of more import than the light material of which the Variétés was the avowed medium. And when she returned, on occasion, to the Vaudeville, it was not in minor rôles. Réjane had assumed her due place on the stage of Paris.
It had not been a difficult rise. Though it is not possible to overlook the elements of steadfast ambition, patience, and hard work in Réjane’s early career, it is true that her native spirits, her flair, and the training and friendship of Regnier made inevitable her right to a prominent place on the stage of Paris.
With that place assured, we see her thenceforth steadily enlarging it, progressing from part to part, appearing now in this theatre of Paris and now in that, shortly venturing into the other capitals of Europe, then making a tour—to be later repeated—in America, and finally acquiring a theatre of her own in Paris,—an international figure, a queen of comedy.
M. Porel, whom Réjane afterward married, has given a graphic account of one of her earlier triumphs—and a typical Parisian first night. The play was de Goncourt’s Germinie Lacerteux, the date, 1888; the theatre the Odéon.
“Oh, that première! The beautiful theatre was crowded to the last inch with an audience that was restless and seemed none too good-natured. The journalists were furious because the dress rehearsal had been behind closed doors. The women were puzzling themselves about the subject of the play, and some of the literary gossips were loudly telling all they thought they knew. The cafétiers of the neighborhood, disgruntled because the usual five entr’actes had been cut down to two, were protesting to the claque against the change, which interfered with the sale of the usual five bocks. Amid the confusion of the lobbies were heard remarks that the piece was impossible.