He was henceforth irrevocably committed to the theatrical cause. Nicole attacking Desmarets, who had turned prophet after the failure of his Clovis, alluded to the author’s comedies, and exclaimed with all the severity of Port-Royal, “A romance-writer and a scenic poet is a public poisoner not of bodies but of souls.” Racine took these words to himself, and he wrote in defence of the dramatic art two letters so bitter, biting, and insulting towards Port-Royal and the protectors of his youth, that Boileau dissuaded him from publishing the second, and that remorse before long took possession of his soul, never to be entirely appeased. He had just brought out Les Plaideurs, which had been requested of him by his friends and partly composed during the dinners they frequently had together. “I put into it only a few barbarous law-terms which I might have picked up during a lawsuit and which neither I nor my judges ever really heard or understood.” After the first failure of the piece, the king’s comedians one day risked playing it before him. “Louis XIV. was struck by it, and did not think it a breach of his dignity or taste to utter shouts of laughter so loud that the courtiers were astounded.” The delighted comedians, on leaving Versailles, returned straight to Paris, and went to awaken Racine. “Three carriages during the night, in a street where it was unusual to see a single one during the day, woke up the neighborhood. There was a rush to the windows, and, as it was known that a councillor of requests (law-officer) had made a great uproar against the comedy of the Plaideurs, nobody had a doubt of punishment befalling the poet who had dared to take off the judges in the open theatre. Next day all Paris believed that he was in prison.” He had a triumph, on the contrary, with Britannicus, after which the, king gave up dancing in the court ballets, for fear of resembling Nero. Berenice was a duel between Corneille and Racine for the amusement of Madame Henriette. Racine bore away the bell from his illustrious rival, without much glory. Bajazet soon followed. “Here is Racine’s piece,” wrote Madame de Sevigne to her daughter in January, 1672; “if I could send you La Champmesle, you would think it good, but without her, it loses half its worth. The character of Bajazet is cold as ice, the manners of the Turks are ill observed in it, they do not make so much fuss about getting married; the catastrophe is not well led up to, there are no reasons given for that great butchery. There are some pretty things, however, but nothing perfectly beautiful, nothing which carries by storm, none of those bursts of Corneille’s which make one creep. My dear, let us be careful never to compare Racine with him, let us always feel the difference; never will the former rise any higher than Andromaque. Long live our old friend Corneille! Let us forgive his bad verses for the sake of those divine and sublime beauties which transport us. They are master-strokes which are inimitable.” Corneille had seen Bajazet. “I would take great care not to say so to anybody else,” he whispered in the ear of Segrais, who was sitting beside him, “because they would say that I said so from jealousy; but, mind you, there is not in Bajazet a single character with the sentiments which should and do prevail at Constantinople; they have all, beneath a Turkish dress, the sentiments that prevail in the midst of France.” The impassioned loyalty of Madame de Sevigne, and the clear-sighted jealousy of Corneille, were not mistaken; Bajazet is no Turk, but he is none the less very human. “There are points by which men recognize themselves, though there is no resemblance; there are others in which there is resemblance without any recognition. Certain sentiments belong to nature in all countries; they are characteristic of man only, and everywhere man will see his own image in them.” [Corneille et son temps, by M. Guizot.] Racine’s reputation went on continually increasing; he had brought out Mithridate and Iphigenie; Phedre appeared in 1677. A cabal of great lords caused its failure at first. When the public, for a moment led astray after the Phedre of Pradon, returned to the master-work of Racine, vexation and wounded pride had done their office in the poet’s soul. Pious sentiments ever smouldering in his heart, the horror felt for the theatre by Port-Royal, and penitence for the sins he had been guilty of against his friends there, revived within him; and Racine gave up profane poetry forever. “The applause I have met with has often flattered me a great deal,” said he at a later period to his son, “but the smallest critical censure, bad as it may have been, always caused me more of vexation than all the praises had given me of pleasure.” Racine wanted to turn Carthusian; his confessor dissuaded him, and his friends induced him to marry. Madame Racine was an excellent person, modest and devout, who never went to the theatre, and scarcely knew her husband’s plays by name; she brought him some fortune. The king had given the great poet a pension, and Colbert had appointed him to the treasury (tresorier) at Moulins. Louis XIV., moreover, granted frequent donations to men of letters. Racine received from him nearly fifty thousand livres; he was appointed historiographer to the king. Boileau received the same title; the latter was not married, but Racine before long had seven children. “Why did not I turn Carthusian!” he would sometimes exclaim in the disquietude of his paternal affection when his children were ill. He devoted his life to them with pious solicitude, constantly occupied with their welfare, their good education, and the salvation of their souls. Several of his daughters became nuns. He feared above everything to see his eldest son devote himself to poetry, dreading for him the dangers he considered he himself had run. “As for your epigram, I wish you had not written it,” he wrote to him; “independently of its being commonplace, I cannot too earnestly recommend you not to let yourself give way to the temptation of writing French verses which would serve no purpose but to distract your mind; above all, you should not write against anybody.” This son, the object of so much care, to whom his father wrote such modest, grave, paternal, and sagacious letters, never wrote verses, lived in retirement, and died young without ever having married. Little Louis, or Lionval, Racine’s last child, was the only one who ever dreamt of being a writer. “You must be very bold,” said Boileau to him, “to dare write verses with the name you bear! It is not that I consider it impossible for you to become capable some day of writing good ones, but I mistrust what is without precedent, and never, since the world was world, has there been seen a great poet son of a great poet.” Louis Racine never was a great poet, in spite of the fine verses which are to be met with in his poems la Religion and la Grace. His Memoires of his father, written for his son, describe Racine in all the simple charm of his domestic life. “He would leave all to come and see us,” writes Louis Racine; “an equerry of the duke’s came one day to say that he was expected to dinner at Conde’s house. ‘I shall not have the honor of going,’ said he; ‘it is more than a week since I have seen my wife and children who are making holiday to-day to feast with me on a very fine carp; I cannot give up dining with them.’ And, when the equerry persisted, he sent for the carp, which was worth about a crown. ‘Judge for yourself,’ said he, ‘whether I can disappoint these poor children who have made up their minds to regale me, and would not enjoy it if they were to eat this dish without me.’ He was loving by nature,” adds Louis Racine; “he was loving towards God when he returned to Him; and, from the day of his return to those who, from his infancy, had taught him to know Him, he was so towards them without any reserve; he was so all his life towards his friends, towards his wife, and towards his children.”
Boileau had undertaken the task of reconciling his friend with Port-Royal. Nicole had made no opposition, “not knowing what war was.” M. Arnauld was intractable. Boileau one day made up his mind to take him a copy of Phedre, pondering on the way as to what he should say to him. “Shall this man,” said he, “be always right, and shall I never be able to prove him wrong? I am quite sure that I shall be right to-day; if he is not of my opinion,—he will be wrong.” And, going to M. Arnauld’s, where he found a large company, be set about developing his thesis, pulling out Phedre, and maintaining that if tragedy were dangerous, it was the fault of the poets. The younger theologians listened to him disdainfully, but at last M. Arnauld said out loud, “If things are as he says, he is right, and such tragedy is harmless.” Boileau declared that he had never felt so pleased in his life. M. Arnauld being reconciled to Phedre, the principal step was made next day the author of the tragedy presented himself. The culprit entered, humility and confusion depicted on his face; he threw himself at the feet of M. Arnauld, who took him in his arms; Racine was thenceforth received into favor by Port-Royal. The two friends were preparing to set out with the king for the campaign of 1677. The besieged towns opened their gates before the poets had left Paris. “How is it that you had not the curiosity to see a siege?” the king asked them on his return: “it was not a long trip.” “True, sir,” answered Racine, always the greater courtier of the two, “but our tailors were too slow. We had ordered travelling suits; and when they were brought home, the places which your Majesty was besieging were taken.” Louis XIV. was not displeased. Racine thenceforth accompanied him in all his campaigns; Boileau, who ailed a great deal, and was of shy disposition, remained at Paris. His friend wrote to, him constantly, at one time from the camp and at another from Versailles, whither he returned with the king. “Madame de Maintenon told me, this, morning,” writes Racine, “that the king had fixed our pensions at four thousand francs for me and two thousand for you: that is, not including our literary pensions. I have just come from thanking the king. I laid more stress upon your case than even my own. I said, in as many words, ‘Sir, he has more wit than ever, more zeal for your Majesty, and more desire to work for your glory than ever he had.’ I am, nevertheless, really pained at the idea of my getting more than you. But, independently of the expenses and fatigue of the journeys, from which I am glad that you are delivered, I know that you are so noble-minded and so friendly, that I am sure you would be heartily glad that I were even better treated. I shall be very pleased if you are.” Boileau answered at once: “Are you mad with your compliments? Do not you know perfectly well that it was I who suggested the way in which things have been done? And can you doubt of my being perfectly well pleased with a matter in which I am accorded all I ask? Nothing in the world could be better, and I am even more rejoiced on your account than on my own.” The two friends consulted one another mutually about their verses; Racine sent Boileau his spiritual songs. The king heard the Combat du Chretien sung, set to music by Moreau:—
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“O God, my God, what deadly strife! Two men within myself I see One would that, full of love to Thee, My heart were leal, in death and life; The other, with rebellion rife, Against Thy laws inciteth me.” |
He turned to Madame de Maintenon, and, “Madame,” said he, “I know those two men well.” Boileau sends Racine his ode on the capture of Namur. “I have risked some very new things,” he says, “even to speaking of the white plume which the king has in his hat; but, in my opinion, if you are to have novel expressions in verse, you must speak of things which have not been said in verse. You shall be judge, with permission to alter the whole, if you do not like it.” Boileau’s generous confidence was the more touching, in that Racine was sarcastic and bitter in discussion. “Did you mean to hurt me?” Boileau said to him one day. “God forbid!” was the answer. “Well, then, you made a mistake, for you did hurt me.”
Racine had just brought out Esther at the theatre of St. Cyr. Madame de Brinon, lady-superior of the establishment which was founded by Madame de Maintenon for the daughters of poor noblemen, had given her pupils a taste for theatricals. “Our little girls have just been playing your Andromaque,” wrote Madame de Maintenon to Racine, “and they played it so well that they never shall play it again in their lives, or any other of your pieces.” She at the same time asked him to write, in his leisure hours, some sort of moral and historical poem from which love should be altogether banished. This letter threw Racine into a great state of commotion. He was anxious to please Madame de Maintenon, and yet it was a delicate commission for a man who had a great reputation to sustain. Boileau was for refusing. “That was not in the calculations of Racine,” says Madame de Caylus in her Souvenirs. He wrote Esther. “Madame de Maintenon was charmed with the conception and the execution,” says Madame de La Fayette; “the play represented in some sort the fall of Madame de Montespan and her own elevation; all the difference was that Esther was a little younger, and less particular in the matter of piety. The way in which the characters were applied was the reason why Madame de Maintenon was not sorry to make public a piece which had been composed for the community only and for some of her private friends. There was exhibited a degree of excitement about it which is incomprehensible; not one of the small or the great but would go to see it, and that which ought to have been looked upon as merely a convent-play became the most serious matter in the world. The ministers, to pay their court by going to this play, left their most pressing business. At the first representation at which the king was present, he took none but the principal officers of his hunt. The second was reserved for pious personages, such as Father La Chaise, and a dozen or fifteen Jesuits, with many other devotees of both sexes; afterwards it extended to the courtiers.” “I paid my court at St. Cyr the other day, more agreeably than I had expected writes Madame de Sevigne to her daughter: listened, Marshal Bellefonds and I, with an attention that was remarked, and with certain discreet commendations which were not perhaps to be found beneath the head-dresses’ of all the ladies present. I cannot tell you how exceedingly delightful this piece is; it is a unison of music, verse, songs, persons, so perfect that there is nothing left to desire. The girls who act the kings and other characters were made expressly for it. Everything is simple, everything innocent, everything sublime and affecting. I was charmed, and so was the marshal, who left his place to go and tell the king how pleased he was, and that he sat beside a lady well worthy of having seen Esther. The king came over to our seats. ‘Madame,’ he said to me, ‘I am assured that you have been pleased.’ I, without any confusion,’ replied, ‘Sir, I am charmed; what I feel is beyond expression.’ The king said to me, ‘Racine is very clever.’ I said to him, ‘Very, Sir; but really these young people are very clever too; they throw themselves into the subject as if they had never done aught else.’ ‘Ah! as to that,’ he replied, ‘it is quite true.’ And then his Majesty went away and left me the object of envy. The prince and princess came and gave me a word, Madame de Maintenon a glance; she went away with the king. I replied to all, for I was in luck.”
Athalie had not the same brilliant success as Esther. The devotees and the envious had affrighted Madame de Maintenon, who had requested Racine to write it. The young ladies of St. Cyr, in the uniform of the house, played the piece quite simply at Versailles before Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon, in a room without a stage. When the players gave a representation of it at Paris, it was considered heavy; it did not, succeed. Racine imagined that he was doomed to another failure like that of Phedre, which he preferred before all his other pieces. “I am a pretty good judge,” Boileau kept repeating to him: “it is about the best you have done; the public will come round to it.” Racine died before success was achieved by the only perfect piece which the French stage possesses,—worthy both of the subject and of the sources whence Racine drew his inspiration. He had, with an excess of scrupulousness, abandoned the display of all the fire that burned within him; but beauty never ceased to rouse him to irresistible enthusiasm. Whilst reading the Psalms to M. de Seignelay, when lying ill, he could not refrain from paraphrasing them aloud. He admired Sophocles so much that he never dared touch the subjects of his tragedies. “One day,” says M. de Valicour, “when he was at Auteuil, at Boileau’s, with M. Nicole and some distinguished friends, he took up a Sophocles in Greek, and read the tragedy of OEdipus, translating it as he went. He read so feelingly that all his auditors experienced the sensations of terror and pity with which this piece abounds. I have seen our best pieces played by our best actors, but nothing ever came near the commotion into which I was thrown by this reading, and, at this moment of writing, I fancy I still see Racine, book in hand, and all of us awe-stricken around him.” Thus it was that, whilst repeating, but a short time before, the verses of Mithridate, as he was walking in the Tuileries, he had seen the workmen leaving their work and coming up to him, convinced as they were that he was mad, and was going to throw himself into the basin.
Racine for a long while enjoyed the favors of the king, who went so far as to tolerate the attachment the poet had always testified towards Port-Royal. Racine, moreover, showed tact in humoring the susceptibilities of Louis XIV. and his counsellors. “Father Bonhours and Father Rapin (Jesuits) were in my study when I received your letter,” he writes to Boileau. “I read it to them, on breaking the seal, and I gave them very great pleasure. I kept looking ahead, however, as I was reading, in case there was anything too Jansenistical in it. I saw, towards the end, the name of M. Nicole, and I skipped boldly, or, rather, mean-spiritedly, over it. I dared not expose myself to the chance of interfering with the great delight, and even shouts of laughter, caused them by many very amusing things you sent me. They are both of them, I assure you, very friendly towards you, and indeed very good fellows.”
All this caution did not prevent Racine, however, from displeasing the king. After a conversation he had held with Madame de Maintenon about the miseries of the people, she asked him for a memorandum on the subject. The king demanded the name of the author, and flew out at him. “Because he is a perfect master of verse,” said he, “does he think he knows everything? And because he is a great poet, does he want to be minister?”—-Madame de Maintenon was more discreet in her relations with the king than bold in the defence of her friends; she sent Racine word not to come and see her ‘until further orders.’ “Let this cloud pass,” she said; “I will bring the fine weather back.” Racine was ill; his naturally melancholy disposition had become sombre. “I know, Madame,” he wrote to Madame de Maintenon, “what influence you have; but in the house of Port-Royal I have an aunt who shows her affection for me in quite a different way. This holy woman is always praying God to send me disgraces, humiliations, and subjects for penitence; she will have more success than you.” At bottom his soul was not sturdy enough to endure the rough doctrines of Port-Royal; his health got worse and worse; he returned to court; he was re-admitted by the king, who received him graciously. Racine continued uneasy; he had an abscess of the liver, and was a long while ill. “When he was convinced that he was going to die, he ordered a letter to be written to the superintendent of finances, asking for payment, which was due, of his pension. His son brought him the letter. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘did not you ask for payment of Boileau’s pension too? We must not be made distinct. Write the letter over again, and let Boileau know that I was his friend even to death.’ When the latter came to wish him farewell, he raised himself up in bed with an effort. ‘I regard it as a happiness for me to die before you,’ he said to his friend. An operation appeared necessary. His son would have given him hopes. ‘And you, too,’ said Racine, ‘you would do as the doctors, and mock me? God is the Master, and can restore me to life, but Death has sent in his bill.’”