Let us here remark that all this eulogy was very far from being deserved, and that the critics ere long found reason to modify their enthusiasm. Mlle. Raucourt was unquestionably a very handsome girl, and certainly possessed many of the qualities attributed to her by her admirers; but she never attained anything like the standard of excellence of Adrienne Lecouvreur, or Mlle. Dumesnil, or Mlle. Clairon. “With a little sensibility,” remarks one of her colleagues of the Comédie-Française, “she might have been the greatest of tragédiennes; but that quality, so invaluable on the stage, was wanting.” She was wanting also in versatility; her acting was, so to speak, all of a piece; she sinned in excess of force and energy, and never mastered the art of varying her intonations, what Mlle. Clairon called “the eloquence of sounds.” No one knew better than did she how to give expression to the great passions: hatred, jealousy, revenge. She was admirable in the Agrippine of Britannicus, inimitable in the Jocaste of Œdipe. But the more human, the more tender passions: pity, tenderness, love, were unknown to her. Thus her rendering of Phèdre, the greatest character of the classic répertoire, was never more than moderately successful, and compared very unfavourably with that of Mlle. Dumesnil.[104]
However, the public having with one accord decided to place the new actress on a pedestal and fall down before her, was, for the time being, blind to her shortcomings. Its enthusiasm increased with each performance, until it reached a veritable frenzy. On the days on which she was to appear, the box-office of the theatre was literally besieged from an early hour in the morning. Servants sent by their employers to secure places discharged their mission at the risk of their lives; several were carried away in an unconscious state, and one is said to have died, as the result of the injuries he received. Tickets for the pit, costing twenty-four sous, were sold for nine or ten francs apiece, in the court of the Tuileries, by persons who had been intrepid enough to secure them; the prices of the other places rising in the same proportion. The days of the Rue Quincampoix seemed to have returned.
When the time for the performance drew near, the scene almost baffled description. All the approaches to the Comédie-Française were so blocked with people that the actors themselves could with difficulty persuade their excited patrons to make way for them. An enormous crowd surged round the theatre, forced the doors, and struggled and fought for the best places in the pit. Those who, by good fortune or superior physical strength, emerged triumphant from the mêlée, arrived panting for breath, with their clothes nearly torn from their backs, dishevelled hair, and faces streaming with perspiration. “Do you think,” inquired an old lady, in Grimm’s hearing, one evening, “that if it had been a question of saving their country, these people would have exposed themselves like this?”
The enthusiasm of the town spread to the Court, and, on January 5, the new actress was commanded to appear at Versailles, where she seems to have created a similar sensation. Louis XV., despite his indifference to tragedy, sat out Didon to the end, sent for Mlle. Raucourt and, after warmly complimenting her, presented her to the Dauphiness, as the Queen of Carthage. He also made her a present of fifty louis, and gave orders that she should be received as a member of the Comédie without being required to give any further proofs of her talent. Madame du Barry hastened to follow his Majesty’s example, and offered the young actress the choice of three dresses for her private use, or a robe de théâtre. To which the girl replied that she would prefer the stage costume, “since, in that case, the public would profit by Madame la Comtesse’s goodness as well as herself.”[105]
After appearing four times in Didon, Mlle. Raucourt played the parts of Émilie, in Cinna, Monime, in Mithridate, Idamé, in Voltaire’s Orphelin de la Chine, Hermione, in Andromaque, and, finally, that of Pulchérie, in Héraclitus, in all of which rôles, Grimm tells us, “she showed the happiest dispositions and announced the greatest talents.” The furore she excited, so far from diminishing, continued to increase, and not a day passed without some persons being more or less seriously injured in the struggle at the doors of the theatre. The climax of absurdity seems to have been reached a few evenings after her visit to Versailles, when her admirers in the pit clamoured for “a benefit performance for the new actress,” and refused to allow the play to proceed until the management had announced their willingness to accede to their patrons’ wishes, provided the Gentlemen of the Chamber would accord them permission.
In the meanwhile, the triumphs of Mlle. Raucourt, the ovations of which she was every evening the recipient, had begun to arouse the alarm and jealousy of her colleagues. The two leading actresses of the company, Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder,[106] had been for some time mortal enemies; but, in the presence of this newcomer, who had in a single night relegated them both to secondary places in the affections of the fickle public, they recognised the wisdom of forgetting their differences for the nonce and making common cause against the interloper. They organised a cabal; they filled the pit with their personal friends and with hired agents, instructed to interrupt the finest tirades of Mlle. Raucourt with jeers and hisses, and, behind the scenes, they did everything in their power to render their young rival’s life a burden to her. Their intrigues were fruitless, nay more, they recoiled upon their own heads. The voices of the malcontents were drowned in the bursts of applause, which increased in volume and frequency the moment it became known that an opposition was at work. So indignant were the audience that any shortcomings on the part of its idol were at once attributed to the machinations of her jealous rivals. One evening, when playing Monime, she forgot her part. “It is all the fault of those Sainvals,” said the indignant parterre. On another, a cat happened to stray on to the stage and interrupted the performance with plaintive cries. “I will wager that that cat belongs to Madame Vestris!” cried a wag in the pit; and the sally was followed by a roar of derisive laughter.[107] The intriguers found themselves covered with ridicule; while Mlle. Raucourt’s position grew stronger every day.
The extraordinary popularity of Mlle. Raucourt with the playgoing public was enhanced by an unsullied reputation off the stage. “I understand,” writes Grimm, “that this charming creature, so imposing on the stage, is very simple in private life; that she has all the candour and innocence of her age, and occupies with girlish amusements the time not set apart for study. Many dissertations have been written with the view of discovering metaphysically by what power a girl so young and innocent can represent with so much power on the stage the transports and the fury of love.” He adds that so determined was her father to defend her chastity that he invariably carried two loaded pistols “in order to blow out the brains of the first who should make an attempt on the virtue of his daughter.”[108]
M. Raucourt indeed followed his talented daughter about like her shadow; to the theatre, on her shopping expeditions, to the private houses to which she was invited. During the performances, he mounted sentinel in the wings, to be ready to place himself at her side the moment she made her exit. People compared him to a jealous lover keeping watch over a flighty mistress.
All these precautions, however, were quite unnecessary. Mlle. Raucourt was virtuous, or rather she was virtue itself. “In vain was her heart besieged like the box-office of the theatre on the evenings on which she was to appear; in vain her adorers prostrated themselves before her. She turned a deaf ear to the most brilliant propositions; she repulsed with horror the most tempting offers.”
Soon the virtue of Mlle. Raucourt became as celebrated as her talent; it was the talk of the town; the memoirs and correspondence of the time are full of it. “The virtue of the new actress still keeps up.” “The virtue of the new actress resists the numerous assaults to which it is subjected.” “The new actress has begun to give petits soupers, which, it is hoped, may lead to what she has hitherto escaped.” And so forth.