Later Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

[90] Mémoires de Fleury, ii. 119.

[91] Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 254.

[92] He was the son of a musician of the Opera, and was born on August 31, 1746. He became a dancer at the theatre in 1764, where he quickly distinguished himself by his skill in “la danse haute,” his performances in the ballets introduced into Les Amours de Ragonde (1773), Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), Philémon et Baucis (1774), and La Chercheuse d’esprit (1778), being particularly admired. In 1781, owing to an injury to one of his feet, he retired from the active exercise of his profession, and was appointed maître des ballets. In the following year, he received from the King a pension of 1500 livres, for his services as a dancer in ballets represented before the Court. A facile and graceful poet, Despréaux was the author of several parodies of operas: Christophe et Pierre Luc, parody of Castor et Pollux; Momi, parody of Iphigénie; Syncope, reine de Mic-Mac, parody of Pénélope, and Berlingue, parody of Ernelinde, which so pleased Louis XVI. when played before the Court, at Choisy, in 1777, that he granted the author a pension.—Campardon, Académie royale de Musique au XVIII^e siècle, i. 146.

[93] The marriage contract states that the property of the bride consisted of (1) an annuity of 12,000 livres; (2) a pension of 2600 livres on the King’s Privy Purse; (3) a pension of 6000 livres on the Royal Treasury; (4) a pension of 3000 livres on the treasury of the Opera; (5) a sum of 110,000 livres, partly in cash and partly in furniture, jewellery, linen, and wearing apparel.

[94] In a manuscript collection of his chansons preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, he describes himself in the following terms:

“Il faut que je vous désigne
De ma taille la grandeur:
Cinq pieds, trois pouces, neuf lignes,
Voilà juste ma hauteur.
Large front, bouche moyenne,
Menton pointu, le nez long,
Les yeux gris, figure pleine,
Sourcils bruns, cheveux blonds.”

[95] Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 276.

[96] A. F. Didot, Souvenirs de Jean Étienne Despréaux, p. 34.

[97] Edmond de Goncourt, La Guimard, p. 301.

[98] Among the writers who have fallen into this error may be mentioned: Lemazurier (Galerie historique des acteurs du Théâtre-Français), M. de Manne (Galerie historique de la troupe de Voltaire and Biographie générale: Article, “Raucourt”), Émile Gaboriau (Les Comédiennes adorées), Mr. Sutherland Edwards (“Idols of the French Stage”), and Mr. Frederick Hawkins (“The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century”).