On the steamship La France, now sailing back and forth across the ocean, one may find a little theatre for Guignol in the children’s room. It is operated every day by Paul Boinet who is considered one of the best Guignol experts in France and was specially engaged by the French Line for that reason. He operates plays, we are told, in which there are sometimes as many as fifteen actors and to each puppet’s voice he manages to give a different intonation. The children’s room of the steamer holds about fifty people and is filled to capacity at each performance not only with children but with grown-up people.
Meanwhile literary puppets continue to afford pleasure in the artistic salons or in semi-public productions throughout Paris. It would be vain to attempt to mention them all. They are of every type. The artists of France have the habit of the marionette, they express themselves spontaneously and gladly in this métier and hence we find them giving more or less informal presentations of poetic or satiric drama here and there, from year to year. M. Émile Renie had le théâtre des marionettes de la Rue des Martyrs; Cayot established a théâtre des pupazzi in his photographic studio. At the Paris Exposition of 1900 there flourished a marionette theatre with a troupe of 4,000 dolls of whom the leading actors were marvels of mechanical perfection. Quite recently a show was installed at the Musée Grevin with decorations by Jules Cheret. It was not a great financial success and was obliged to close its doors. In 1896 in the Salons of la Plume, Lugné Poë (Director of L’Œuvre) produced a marionette play of Alfred Jarry and Claude Terrasse entitled Ubu Roi. The former also made the drawings for two programmes, the latter was the leader of his orchestra.
Jules Lemaître in his Impressions de Théâtre portrays with great interest several puppet productions witnessed by him. One was the chic Revue in four tableaux given in 1889 at the Salon de Helder by the well known authoress, Gyp. It was called Tout à l’égout, a very clever and original parody of the season past. There Gyp had represented the type for which she has grown famous, Lou-lou the pert little French miss as seen on the Champs Élysées. There also promenaded the literary and political celebrities satirized in the inimitable style of the keen-eyed Gyp. The parts were read by amateurs, effectively but with no attempt at eloquence.
Guignol and Gnafron
Presented by Pierre Rousset, French showman
[From Ernest Maindron’s Marionettes et Guignols]
Very different in spirit was the puppet drama, Noël ou le Mystère de la Nativité, by the poet Maurice Bouchor who had been active also in the Erotikon theatron and that of M. Signoret. It was written in four tableaux, in verse. The music for this delicate little mystery was composed by Paul Vidal, the dolls were designed by MM. Henri Lombard and J. Belloc, scenery by Félix Bouchor, brother of the poet, Henri Lerolle and Marcelle Rieder. Lemaître described the performance as a masterpiece of grace and beauty, particularly the last tableau of the Adoration. “The music of the lullaby, rarely exquisite, soft and celestial, etc. The Virgin puppet, almost immobile, merely inclining slightly forward toward the Infant while singing, had the candor of a lily and appeared as beautiful in the light in which she was bathed as the purest and most naïve Virgin of the primitive painters.” Another play by the same poet was given in 1894. It was in verse, five tableaux. M. Lemaître considered it even superior as a drama to Noël though possibly a bit strong for the puppets in its philosophy. It was the last performance, unfortunately, of the “delicious marionettes of Maurice Bouchor.”
The latest word I have heard of French puppets comes from the war zone. Mr. Henry S. West has written in a recent number of the Literary Digest of French troops in the forests of Champenoux and Parroy who had taken an oath “never to retreat from Lorraine.” Hence they have made themselves a comfortable park with flower beds, gravel paths, rustic bench, all in their Parc des Braves. Most diverting, however, are their elaborately constructed scenes of puppet warfare. The most famous of these is The Seven Chasseurs of Domèvre. It appears that seven French soldiers at Domèvre held a bridge against a small horde of Germans. It was a brave deed which resounded through Lorraine. Some clever lad wrote several stanzas about it and tacked them up on trees. This gave the idea to a dramatic critic who was off active duty for the time. He and his friends worked together and in a week completed the little show and placed it where it could be seen by every soldier passing on his way to battle.
A grassy knoll was chosen. An arched bridge of two feet was erected under which real water was made to flow. On one side of the bridge were piled tiny logs and trees behind which were the seven Chasseurs eight inches high dressed in the old red and blue French uniform, little caps on their heads, wooden guns in their hands. Twenty Germans in real field-grey were attempting to charge. Some were dead, others falling, three running away, all with scared expressions carved upon their little wooden faces. The verses were nailed up near by: