Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

And on a tablet at the base, the following verses:—

"J'ai predit que Clairon illustrerait la scène,

Et mon esprit n'a point été déçu:

Elle a couronné Melpomène,

Melpomène lui rend ce qu'elle en a reçu."

—GARRICK.

The following year, the Comte de Valbelle and a M. de Villepinte, another warm admirer of the actress, caused a gold medal to be struck in the lady's honour. On the face of this medal was Gravelot's allegorical design; while the reverse bore this inscription:—

L'Amitié
Et Melpomène
Ont Fait Frapper
Cette
MÉDAILLE
EN 1764.

The pleasure which the lady derived from this piece of adulation must have been considerably discounted by the publication of the following mordant epigram, from the pen of the dramatist Saint-Foix, of whose works she appears to have spoken slightingly:—

"Pour la fameuse Frétillon

Ils ont osé frapper un médaillon;

Mais à quelque prix qu'on le donne,

Fut-ce douze sous, fut-ce même pour un,

Il ne sera jamais aussi commun

Que le fut jadis sa personne."[195]

The pride of Mlle. Clairon, in those days, knew no bounds. "Madame de Pompadour," said she, one day, "owes her sovereignty to chance; I owe mine to the power of my genius!" She treated even the most distinguished of her colleagues with haughty disdain, and often with the grossest discourtesy; and poor Mlle. Dangeville, the object of her childish adoration and the most sweet-tempered and inoffensive of women, retired from the stage ten years earlier than she would otherwise have done, vowing that it was "impossible to live any longer with such a creature." As for the younger actresses, they positively trembled before her; while, with the exception of Voltaire, whose admiration for her she condescended to reciprocate, there is said to have been not a single dramatic author of the time whom she had not insulted. The public she appears to have regarded very much as a queen might her subjects. On the occasion of a free performance at the Comédie, given by order of the King, she came on to the stage between the two pieces and threw handfuls of silver into the pit; and the worthy Parisians, quite gulled by this piece of theatrical quackery, cried, as they scrambled for the money, "Vive le Roi et Mlle. Clairon!"

Nevertheless, in spite of her arrogance and absurd pretensions, Mlle. Clairon had the interests of her profession sincerely at heart. She was, according to her own expression, the chargé-d'affaires, the advocate, and the postillion of the Comédie-Française, and it was always to her that her comrades turned when in any difficulty or perplexity. It was through her influence, joined to that of the Comte de Lauraguais, that the absurd custom of allowing the more distinguished members of the audience seats upon the stage itself—a custom which seriously hampered the movements of the players and was utterly destructive of all scenic illusion—was finally abolished. A word from her was sufficient to secure the payment of the overdue royal pension to the Comédie, which the semainiers had vainly solicited from the Comptroller-General; and she laboured zealously, if unsuccessfully, to free her profession from the ban of the Church, which had weighed so long and so heavily upon it.

In the spring of 1761, there was published, at Amsterdam, a little volume, entitled Liberté de la France contre le pouvoir arbitraire de l'excommunication, ouvrage dont est spécialement redevable aux sentiments génereux et supérieurs de Mlle. Clai.... This book, which was the work of one Huerne de la Mothe, an advocate of the Parliament of Paris, had been inspired by Mlle. Clairon, and was preceded by a letter from the actress to the author, in which she announced to the public that she hesitated to exercise her profession any longer, owing to her fear of the excommunication to which it subjected her. The bigots, ecclesiastical and lay, who were very roughly handled in the book, were exasperated to the last degree; the Grand'Chambre issued a decree ordering the obnoxious work to be burned by the public executioner in the Place de Grève, and poor Huerne de la Mothe was struck off the roll of advocates. Mlle. Clairon, however, who felt herself to be the cause of his misfortune, did not allow him to suffer by his championship of her profession, and persuaded the Duc de Choiseul to nominate him to a lucrative post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.