It may be fairly questioned, whether a woman so refined and cultivated as Mrs. Jameson may not have judged Rachel rather by her wants as a woman than by her excellence as an artist. That the terrible last scene of "Adrienne" is a harrowing imitation of nature we have conceded. The play is, in truth, a mere melodrama. It is a vaudeville of costume, with a frightful catastrophe appended. But as an artist she seems to us perfectly to render the part. She does not make it more than it is, but she makes it just what it is—a proud, injured, and betrayed actress. Whether the accuracy of her imitation is not justified by the intention, which alone can redeem imitation, will remain a question to each spectator. Mrs. Jameson also insists that Rachel's power is extraneous, and excites only the senses and the intellect, and that she has become a hard mannerist.
In our remarks upon this celebrated actress we have viewed her simply as an artist, and not as a woman. She appeals to the public only in that way. Perhaps the sinister stories that are told of her private career only serve to confirm and deepen the feeling of the intensity of her nature, she so skilfully represents the most fearful passions, not from the perception of genius alone, but from the knowledge of actual experience. Certainly no woman's character has been more freely discussed, and no public performer of any kind ever sought so little to propitiate her audience. She has seemed to scorn the world she fascinated; and like a superb snake, with glittering eyes and cold crest, to gloat over the terror which held her captives thrall. Hence it is not surprising to one who has seen her a great deal, and has felt the peculiarity of her power, to find in Lehmann's portrait of her—which is, perhaps, the most characteristic of all that have been taken—a subtle resemblance to a serpent, which is at once fascinating and startling. Mrs. Jameson mentions that when she first saw her in Hermione, she was reminded of a Lamia, or serpent nature in woman's form. As you look at Lehmann's portrait this feeling is irresistible. The head bends slightly forward, with a darting, eager movement, yet with a fine, lithe grace. The keen, bright eyes glance a little askance, with a want of free confidence. There are a slim smoothness, a silent alertness, in the general impression—a nervous, susceptible intentness, united with undeniable beauty, that recall the deadly nightshade among flowers and Keats's "Lamia" among poems. The portrait would fully interpret the poem, She looked the lovely Lamia upon the verge of flight, at the instant when she felt the calm, inexorable eye of criticism and detection. In a moment, while you gaze, that form will be prone, those bright, cold eyes malignant, that wily grace will undulate into motion and glide away. You feel that there is no human depravity that Rachel could not adequately represent. Perhaps you doubt if she could be Desdemona or Imogen.
Rachel is great, but there is something greater. It is not an entirely satisfactory display of human power, even in its own way. Her triumph is that of an actress. It is only an intellectual success. For however subtly dramatic genius may seize and represent the forms of human emotion, yet the representation is most perfect—not, indeed, as art, but as a satisfaction of the heart—when the personal character of the artist interests those emotions to himself, and thus sympathetically affects the audience. Rachel's Mary is a perfect portrait of Mary; but it is only a picture, after all, that expresses the difference in feeling between the impression of her personation and that which will be derived from another woman. The fiercer and darker passions of human nature are depicted by her with terrible force-power. They throb with reality; but in the soft, superior shades you still feel that it is emotion, intellectually discerned.
Such facts easily explain the present defection of Paris from Rachel. Ristori has come up from Italy, and with one woman's smile, "full of the warm South", she has lured Paris to her feet. There is no more sudden and entire desertion of a favorite recorded in all the annals of popular caprice. The feuilletonists, who are a power in Paris, have gone over in a body to the beautiful Italian. They describe her triumphs precisely as they described Rachel's. The old ecstasies are burnished up for the new occasion. In a country like ours, where there is no theatre, and where the dramatic differences only creep into an advertisement, such an excitement as Paris feels, from such a cause and at such a time, is simply incredible. It is, possibly, as real and dignified an excitement as that which New York experienced upon the decease of the late lamented William Poole.
There are various explanations of this fall of Rachel, without resorting to the theory of superior genius in Ristori. Undoubtedly Paris loves novelty, and has been impatient of the disdainful sway of Rachel. Her reputed avarice and want of courtesy and generosity, her total failure to charm as a woman while she fascinated as an artist, have, naturally enough, after many years, fatigued the patience and disappointed the humane sympathies of a public whose mere curiosity had been long satisfied. Rachel seemed only more Parisian than Paris.
But when over the Alps came Ristori, lovely as a woman and eminent as an artist, then there was a new person who could make Paris weep at her greatness upon the stage, and her goodness away from it; who, in the plenitude of her first success, could shame the reported avarice of her fallen rival by offers of the sincerest generosity. When Ristori came, who seemed to have a virtue for every vice of Rachel, Paris, with one accord, hurried with hymns and incense to the new divinity. We regard it as a homage to the woman no less than a tribute to the artist. We regard it as saying to Rachel that if, being humane and lovely, she chose, from pride, to rule by scornful superiority, she has greatly erred; or if, being really unlovely, she has held this crown only by her genius, she has yet to see human nature justify itself by preferring a humane to an inhuman power. The most splendid illustration of this kind of homage was the career of Jenny Lind in America. It was rather the fashion among the dilettanti to undervalue her excellence as an artist. A popular superficial criticism was fond of limiting her dramatic power to inferior rôles. She was denied passion and great artistic skill; she was accused of tricks. But, even had these things been true, what a career it was! It was unprecedented, and can never be repeated. Yet it was, at bottom, the success of a saint rather than that of a singer. Had she been a worse or better artist the homage would have been the same. If the public—and it is a happy fact—can love the woman even more than it admires the artist, her triumph is assured.
We look upon the enthusiasm for Ristori by no means as an unmingled tribute to superior genius. We make no question of her actual womanly charms. Even if appearance of generosity, of simplicity, and sweetness were only deep Italian wile, and assumed, upon profound observation and consideration of human nature and the circumstances of Rachel's position in Paris, merely for the purpose of exciting applause, that applause would still be genuine, and would prove the loyalty of the public mind to what is truly lovely. It was our good-fortune to see Ristori in Italy, where, for the last ten years, she has been accounted the first Italian actress. She has there been seen by all the travelling world of Europe and America. It is not possible that so great a talent, as the Parisians consider it, could have been so long overlooked. We well remember Ristori as a charming, natural, simple actress; but of the surpassing power which Paris has discovered probably very few of us retain any recollection.