The Government did this several times during the war in order to relieve a tense internal political situation. During the last German drive we had the affair of the false Rodins, and we turned to read about the new statue exposed as a fake each day before we looked for the new German advance. When the Clemenceau Cabinet was threatened, a twentieth-century Bluebeard, with the police daily discovering new wives, was dished up to us every morning in all the papers.
Back in 1910 we turned from the flood to Chantecler. After seven years of heralding and "puffing," after many mysterious delays that whetted the appetite, the management of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin announced that the curiosity of Paris would be rewarded at the end of January. The flood was the last postponement. The waters had hardly begun to recede before public interest was again centred upon Chantecler. When the répetition générale was given on February sixth, oldest inhabitants and historians of the French theatre were agreed that not even Hernani nor yet Le Mariage de Figaro had created so universal an anticipatory interest. Was Chantecler merely an eccentric literary endeavor or was it to prove a practical theatrical venture? More than any living writer Rostand had been able to win for his plays recognition as literature and recognition as "money-winners" in the theatres of foreign countries as well as his own.
Looking back over a decade I may be wrong in comparing a past with a present event. But I honestly believe that there was far more interest in Paris in what was going on at the Porte-Saint-Martin on the evening of February 6, 1910, than in what took place at Versailles on the afternoon of June 28, 1919. Interest was lost in the Treaty of Versailles before it was signed. Chantecler had a fighting chance to succeed. Just as the curtain started to rise before the cream of French literary and theatrical circles there was a cry of "Pas encore!" M. Jean Coquelin sprang up from the prompter's box in conventional evening dress. Was there to be another postponement—a fiasco in the presence of the invited guests? No: for M. Coquelin began to recite a prologue, inimitably phrased. He told the audience that they were to be introduced to a barnyard as soon as the farmer's family had gone. It was Sunday afternoon, and when the chores were finished, the animals would be left to themselves. As he spoke, numerous illustrative sounds came from the stage. We heard the young girls going off with a song on their lips, the wheels of a receding carriage, the bells of the village church, and shots of hunters out for their Sunday sport. Then M. Coquelin disappeared, and the curtain went up.
The first two acts were wildly received. The third act was too long and modernisms marred the beauty of the verse. The lyrical continuity of the play was broken by the introduction of a purely satirical effect. The real reason for lack of sustained interest was the mental confusion and weariness of having to imagine the actors as animals. The human mind is incapable of receiving through the sense of vision a representation of the unreal, where the real is at the same time glaringly evident, and keep clear, harmonious, concordant images. No ingenuity could make an actor's figure like a bird's. And then humans do not differ in size like birds. There was no way of approximating widely different proportions of the rooster, the black-bird, the pheasant and the nightingale.
In watching Chantecler I had the same painful impression of how we are handicapped by the multiplicity of necessities we have created for ourselves in modern days as I had in watching the flood. Our evolution has bound us fast with chains of our own forging. Physically and mentally, we have manufactured so many props to lean upon that we can no longer stand on our own feet. Chantecler cannot be compared with the animal plays of Aristophanes for in Greek drama there was no attempt to present to the spectators a visual image in harmony with the audile image. Nor even in Shakespeare's time was the dramatist limited by the difficulties of a mise en scène. A Midsummer Night's Dream was an easier proposition for the Elizabethan actor than for Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, despite the properties of Her Majesty's Theatre, the hidden orchestra playing Mendelssohn's music, and the magic aerial ballets.
Our next "real show" was the political campaign for the new Chamber of Deputies that was to inaugurate the fifth decade of the Third Republic on June first. Herbert spent an inordinate amount of time, I thought, in puzzling out the voting strength of the Ministerialist and Opposition groups, and patiently wrote articles for American magazines about Radical Socialists, Clemenceau and Caillaux, to vary his Turkish articles. But whether he treated of French leaders and politics or of Venizelos or of the Young Turks, his articles invariably came back with a polite rejection slip. We put them away and sold them later, when they were out of date, for more than we would have gotten then. Our money for writing came from the Herald, and we realized that if you want to make your living by writing the anchor to a newspaper is not lightly to be weighed.
But though I was not even mildly interested in Radical Socialists, Republicans of the Left, Independent Socialists, Progressists and what not, I did like to go to political meetings. They were good for your French and good for the opportunity of studying the influence of politics upon the Latin character. How the French love meetings! They use our English word instead of réunion, just as they always speak of self-government. But they are not at all like us in politics. There are as many parties as there are leaders, and their campaigns center around personalities, not principles.
In 1910, the first round of the election was on April 24, and the final round on May 8. It just happened that May first was a Sunday, and fell between the two election Sundays. Throughout the Third Republic, Labor Day has been a time of fear and trembling for the Paris bourgeoisie. The Cabinet is always anxious on May first. You never can tell what is going to happen when crowds gather in Paris: so the wise Government does not allow trouble to be started. Encouraged by the success of their Ferrer demonstration on the Boulevard de Clichy a few months before, the revolutionary elements decided to make May Day a big event with the hope of influencing the second round of the elections. Premier Briand decided there would be no May Day parade. Believing that the Government would not dare to come into conflict with them in the midst of their election struggle, workingmen's unions plastered Paris with boastful posters announcing a monster demonstration in the Bois de Bologne, followed by a parade to the Place de la Concorde. This was in open defiance to the law, which requires a permit for gatherings in the open air and for parades. But M. Briand was equal to the occasion. Saturday night he threw twenty thousand troops into Paris. They bivouacked in the Place de la Concorde, the Place de l'Etoile, and in the Bois. I took Christine to church. After the service, we went to the Bois for lunch. There were troops on every road in the part of the Bois indicated in the posters as the workingmen's rendez-vous. Here and there little tents with the Red Cross flag were pitched, and to make the picture more impressive doctors in white coats stood before the door. This scared the workingmen more than the soldiers did. We saw many of them in their blue blouses. But they took care not to stop or to walk in numbers.
The bourgeoisie were able to rest easy. Assured that order would be kept, fashionable Paris flocked in great numbers to the Longchamp races. Of course we went, too. As Herbert had a story, he bought the best seats. We were not far from President Fallières, and we saw the spring fashions. Scrappie created as much of a sensation as some of the gowns. People who frequent Longchamp are not in the habit of bringing babies with them. But with me it is always, "love me, love my child."
The unions did not have good luck in the spring of 1910. But no more did the clericals and monarchists. Hopes of a clerical reaction were dissipated. Briand was as bitter against the orders as against the unions. The royalists no longer count. We had many royalist friends. Some we knew well enough to ask, "How goes the propaganda?" And they knew us well enough to answer, "Pas de blague! C'est à rire!" "Stop teasing me: it's a joke!" The Duke of Orleans has about as much chance of being King of France as he has of being President of the United States. In our estimates of political conditions are we not too apt to judge France by her checkered past? There is no government in Europe more assured of stability than the French Republic: and this was as true in 1910 as it is in 1919.