Later Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

To appreciate the witticisms of Sophie Arnould as they deserve, they must be read in the language in which they were uttered, for, when translated, the point of many of them—plays upon names and so forth—is lost. Not a few, too, of her most pungent sayings will scarcely bear reproduction in a modern work, for her wit was essentially the wit of the coulisses, whose frequenters were seldom at any pains to curb their tongues, even in the presence of the highest in the land. Fortunately, however, there still remain a considerable number of mots which may be rendered into English with tolerable fidelity and without injuring the susceptibilities of even the most fastidious of readers.

Sophie was an inveterate punster, a form of wit more appreciated in the eighteenth century than it is to-day. Here is one, however, which most of us will find it hard not to forgive.

The Duc de Bouillon became so enamoured of the charms of a young singer named Mlle. Laguerre that, in the course of three months, he was reported to have squandered upon her no less a sum than 800,000 livres. This prodigality greatly exasperated the creditors of the duke, who complained to the King himself, with the result that the infatuated nobleman received orders to retire to his country-seat. A few days later, some one, meeting Sophie, happened to inquire after the health of Mlle. Laguerre. “I do not know how she is at present,” was the reply; “but for the last month the poor child has been living entirely on soup (bouillon).”

This same Mlle. Laguerre created the principal rôle in Piccini’s Iphigénie en Tauride, produced on January 22, 1781. At the first performance she sang admirably and contributed largely to the enthusiastic reception it received; but on the second evening her efforts were but too obviously inspired by wine. “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Sophie. “This is not Iphigenia in Tauris; it is Iphigenia in Champagne!”

Mlle. Laguerre was only one among many of Sophie’s colleagues to suffer from the sharpness of that lady’s tongue. She was particularly severe upon the famous danseuse Mlle. Guimard, the subject of our next sketch, whose many wealthy conquests would appear to have excited her jealousy. Mlle. Guimard, though the very embodiment of grace and elegance upon the stage, was slender almost to attenuation, and Sophie dubbed her “la squelette des Grâces.” Seeing her one evening performing a pas de trois with two male dancers, she declared that it put her in mind of a couple of dogs quarrelling over a bone. On another occasion, when the danseuse’s well-known liaison with Jarente, Bishop of Orléans, the holder of the feuille of benefices, happened to be the subject of conversation, she remarked: “I cannot conceive why that little silk-worm is so thin; she lives upon such a good leaf (feuille).”

Another butt of her sarcasm was Mlle. Beaumesnil, who, after gallantries innumerable, married a singer of the Opera, named Belcourt. By that time her charms were on the wane, and, making a virtue of necessity, she became a model wife. One day, some one speaking of her early career, observed that she had then been like a weather-cock, veering round to a new lover every day. “Just so,” answered Sophie, “and very like a weather-cock in this also, that she did not become fixed till she was rusty.”

But Sophie was very far from confining her witticism to her comrades of the Opera; no one was safe from her shafts. When the intriguing old Duc de la Vauguyon, the Dauphin’s governor, who had done his best to sow dissension between that prince and Marie Antoinette, died, he was regretted by no one. The day after his death, the opera of Castor et Pollux was played. In this piece there was a ballet of devils, which on this particular evening went all wrong, whereupon Sophie observed that the devils were so much upset by M. de la Vauguyon’s arrival among them that their heads were turned.

M. de Boynes, who succeeded the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin as Minister of Marine, in 1760, was an honest and well-meaning man, but entirely ignorant of the duties of that important post. One evening he appeared at the Opera, where the scene on the stage represented a ship on a stormy sea. “Oh, how fortunate!” exclaimed Sophie. “He has come here to get some idea of the Navy.”

Better perhaps was her remark about the Abbé Terrai, the detested Comptroller-General of Finance, whose expedients for raising money excited so much indignation in the last years of Louis XV. The abbé, who suffered from a defective circulation, was seen, one bitter winter’s day, with his hands hidden in a huge muff. “What need has he of a muff?” asked the actress. “Are not his hands always in our pockets?”

The Ministers, indeed, seem to have been very favourite objects of Sophie’s sarcasm. On being shown a snuff-box, with the head of the Duc de Choiseul on one side, and that of Sully, the great Minister of Henri IV. on the other, she exclaimed: “Tiens! they have put the receipts and the expenses together.”