M. Filon confessed himself baffled by the question of whether Réjane’s marvelous liquidness of mood and method is due to something essential in her nature, or merely to an incomparable power of imitation. “If I shut my eyes,” he says, “I sometimes think I can hear the nasal intonation, the little squeaky voice which belonged to Céline Chaumont. A minute later this voice has the cadence, the sustained vibration, the artistic break with which Sarah Bernhardt punctuates her diction, and the transition is so skillfully managed that all these different women—the woman who mocks, the woman who trembles, the woman who threatens, the woman who desires, the woman who laughs, and the woman who weeps—seem to be one and the same woman. For the matter of that, I have set myself a problem which I should not be able to solve even with the help of Réjane herself. Let us be content with what lies on the surface. I am inclined to think that her resources consist of a host of petty artifices, each more ingenious and more imperceptible than the last. If one studied her secret one might draw up a whole set of rules for the use of comédiennes.”
With Sans-Gêne among her achievements, more and more word of her became known outside of France. Unmitigatedly French though she was, though there was little in her to suggest the universal appeal that has made world artists of other actresses, by the sheer merit of the thing she did, and because she was so complete an epitome of one phase of her nation’s art, she was bound to become an international figure. Her first appearance in London was in June, 1894. Her Sans-Gêne there instantly won her the recognition she deserved. America had not long to wait. On February 27, 1895 she appeared in Madame Sans-Gêne in New York. She remained there several weeks, playing in Divorçons, Sapho, Ma Cousine, the one act play Lolotte, and Maison de Poupée (Ibsen’s A Doll’s House), besides Sans-Gêne. Ten years later[101] she made her second and last tour in America. In the meantime Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Russia, Austria, Roumania, Italy, Spain and Portugal had all seen her. Regnier’s nose rubbing had assuredly been to good purpose.
One may as well admit at once that Réjane’s tours in the United States were not successful, in the sense that continuously crowded houses indicate success. The language was, of course, one stumbling block, for a keen understanding of the foreign tongue was more necessary for a taste for Réjane than for the broad effects, say, of a Bernhardt or a Salvini. And if the language fell on baffled ears, the essence of the plays, in some cases, antagonized the more puritanical of our public. For the pieces Réjane played reflected a society and a point of view for which many Americans found it hard to muster much sympathy. So meager was the American response to Réjane’s art during her first visit that she forswore us forever. Nine years sufficed to make her change her mind. “But now (1904) as then,” said the New York Times, “she is hampered by the moral bias of American audiences, and by the fact that the manners she so searchingly studies and exquisitely depicts are exotic—foreign alike to our sympathies and our experience.”
Whatever her popular success in America may or may not have been, Réjane—in some of her parts at least—won the enthusiastic praise of the critics and of the restricted public that knew its French well enough to meet her on something like Parisian terms. The pièce de résistance of the first tour was Madame Sans-Gêne. Like most of Sardou’s later dramas, it was a “tailor-made” play, written to suit the personality and methods of its principal actress.[102] A secondary object was evident in the effort to take advantage of the revival of interest in Napoleon that marked, for no evident reason, the early nineties. Technically the play was interesting chiefly as showing the author in a new phase, for it was surprising to find Sardou, a notorious disciple of Scribe, writing a piece that was little more than a series of sketches. But Réjane lifted the whole affair to a height at which it could be regarded only as one of the triumphs of the nineteenth century theatre.
Réjane’s freshness, naturalness, tenderness, and charmingly subtle sense of comedy as Catherine Hubscher in Madame Sans-Gêne was instantly recognized and celebrated in every American city that she visited. In Ma Cousine, a light farce, she acted the soubrette Riquette with an abandon, a cleverness, a joyousness, that emphasized her new public’s admiration of her. Her Nora, however, in Maison de Poupée (Ibsen’s A Doll’s House), revealed her in a new and more serious light, demonstrating at once her genuine versatility and her considerable emotional power. Even the unsavory Sapho she made something new and different, “moderating its excesses and enhancing its better moods. Less pathetic directly than by suggestion, she often moved by simple means a sympathy which Sapho ill deserved.”
Just before Réjane began her second American tour she had an unhappy experience in Havana. She gave there a series of eight performances, the total result being chronicled in the American papers as a “fiasco.” She had a welcome such as no actor or actress had ever before received in Cuba. Thousands gathered at the pier as a private steamer went out to meet her and bring her ashore; formal addresses of welcome and bouquets were showered on her; and the Havana papers were full of odes and eulogies. The first-night audience that gathered to see Sapho was the most brilliant ever seen in Havana, and the applause that greeted Réjane’s entrance was prolonged and hearty. But the audience grew colder and colder as the play progressed. The next day began a festival period for the dramatic critics of Havana. They pounced upon Sapho and Daudet, its author, and declared that while his sort of “esoteric rot” might be what Frenchmen regard as the product of genius, they rejoiced that such stuff could not pass as art in Havana.[103] Matters grew worse with La Pétite Marquise and Zaza, the company and the mediocre productions were abused (“What did the actress mean by leaving everything except her costumes in New York?” the papers asked. “Does she believe that ‘any old thing’ is good enough for Havana?”), and the young ladies of Havana were all kept away from Réjane’s improper plays. Personalities became frequent in the papers, and one critic boldly asserted that Réjane’s star had set. Her manager made matters worse by revoking the passes of one paper, the lady herself provoked more criticism by her refusal to be a guest at a reception at the Athenæum, and altogether affairs reached such a pass that every one was immensely relieved when Réjane and her company sailed away for New York. The whole incident indicated more than anything else the narrow outlook of the Cubans. “We are making our political independence apply to everything,” wrote one of the critics. “America for the Americans, and Cuba for the Cubans! Let the foreigner get out!”
When Réjane reached America her audiences found that she could not altogether conceal the traces left by the flight of time—she was now forty-seven—but that she had suffered no loss of her vivacity and power. The tour of 1904–05 was not, however, the improvement over that of ten years earlier that had been hoped for. The enthusiasm of American audiences was not to be won over by the cynicism and frankness of such pieces as Amoureuse, though the critics were not slow to recognize the subtle and convincing quality of Réjane’s work even in that play, which Mr. Winter gently characterized as “filthy trash.”
An unexpected circumstance gave new emphasis to the half-heartedness of her welcome in the United States. It was simply a bit of bad luck for Réjane, an injustice to a distinguished woman and artist, and an illustration of the influence of American newspaper publicity. James Hazen Hyde, then in the public eye because of his share in the insurance scandals, was—as he has always since been—a generous patron of the American study of French literature. He gave a dinner in New York to honor the actress whose claim to honor none knew better than he. It was said that on behalf of himself and his guests he gave her a diamond crown. Accurately or not, it was reported next day—and the news was not slow in traveling,—that Réjane’s gratefulness and Gallicism took the form of her doing a sprightly dance on the table. The incident was not important, but the wide publicity given it did not tend to increase Réjane’s hold on that part of the public to which she had, on her merits, so good a claim.
To get all the scandal over with at once, let us dispose of Réjane’s husband. In 1892 she had married M. Porel, who had been an actor, then director of the Odéon, and then of Grand-Théâtre. Soon after the marriage he became co-director of the Vaudeville and the Gymnase. Early in the marriage there were two children, a daughter and a son. On more than one occasion Madame Réjane began divorce proceedings, which were halted when friends intervened and kept the couple together in the interest of the children or of the parents’ professional welfare. Finally both sued for divorce. After many preliminaries the husband was granted the decree, though, eventually at least, the children were left with the mother.
Naturally, the Vaudeville was no longer open to her. But, as Arnold Bennett (then not yet the distinguished novelist) wrote in P. T. O.,[104] though “Réjane may now and then suffer a brief eclipse, she can be absolutely relied upon to emerge in a more blinding glory. Exiled from her proper home, the Vaudeville, she naturally wanted a theatre. She has got it. She took hold of the Nouveau Théâtre, the unlikeliest and one of the most uncomfortable theatres in Paris—the Lamoureaux concerts alone have succeeded there. She removed everything from within its four walls, and presently frequenters of the Rue Blanche observed that the legend Théâtre Réjane had been carved on its façade. Last week she announced to her friends (that is to say, to Paris) that she would be ‘at home’ on such and such a night. The invitation added, ‘Comedy will be played.’ Her friends went, and discovered the wonderfullest theatre in the town, incredibly spacious, with lounges as big as the auditorium, wide corridors, and a scheme of decoration at once severe and splendid. Réjane was written all over it, even in the costumes of the women attendants. Paris was charmed, astounded, electrified; and now Réjane flames a more brilliant jewel than ever in the forehead of the capital.”