In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France

by J. A. Hammerton

Pitched close to such a circus stands a large wooden opera-house, capable of holding from six to eight hundred people, the seats being arranged on an inclined plane, the higher priced ones as substantial and comfortable as the stalls of one of our provincial theatres. The stage is commodious, and the performers as accomplished as any touring company that visits the second-class English towns. Indeed, their performance of "Les Cloches de Corneville" was given with a verve and a finish not seldom lacking in more ambitious opera companies one has seen at home. Instead of an orchestra, a very clever and good-looking young lady pianist played the accompaniments throughout the entire performance.

The travelling theatres, too, force comparison with the regular playhouses in the smaller English towns, rather than with the wretched "tuppenny" shows that represent the drama at an English fair. Like the opera-house just described, they are fitted up substantially, and in good taste, the charges for admission ranging from half a franc to three or four francs. Many notable French actors have graduated from these portable theatres, and, indeed, those who perform in them are of a class considerably above the mummers who exhibit in our "fit-ups"; they are the best type of "strolling-players."

One of the most detestable features of an English fair is the appalling noise created by mechanical organs. This is happily absent from the French fête, and of the few contrivances of the kind which I remember at Orleans there was only one designed solely for the sake of noise. Perhaps the most remarkable of these orchestrions was a real triumph of musical machinery, around which, and contained within an immense and brilliantly lighted wooden building, whirled an endless chain of fairy coaches, hobby horses, swan boats, and other fantastic vehicles, eminently contrived for the purpose of producing giddiness. This was truly the pièce de résistance of the Orleans Fair, and it would be impossible to conceive a more striking contrast than that between this really magnificent construction and the familiar English merry-go-round. Externally the building would have borne favourable comparison with a "Palace of Electricity" at some of our international exhibitions. The façade was of Byzantine style, and myriads of beautifully-coloured electric lamps picked out the design, two huge peacocks with outspread tails, also composed of coloured lights, being introduced with most artistic effect on each side of the glittering archway. Inside, the decorations were gorgeous "to the nth degree," as Mr. W. E. Henley might have said, but the scheme of colours was in perfect harmony, the whole making up a veritable feast of light that must dazzle and fascinate the simple country-folk wherever this wonderful merry-go-round is set up. At a moderate estimate, I should name £10,000 as the cost of this single show, and perhaps that will indicate the lavish way in which the French are catered for by their travelling showmen.

Cinematographs there were in profusion, most of them exhibiting scenes of a kind which would speedily be suppressed on this side the Channel; shooting galleries galore, exactly like our own; peep-shows, marionette theatres, panoramas; a booth with a two-headed bull and other monsters, a Breton bagpiper playing his instrument outside being worthy of inclusion in the list; but one saw no "fat women"—possibly because they are such common objects of French life! A large switchback railway seemed to be very popular, and, like all the rival attractions, its proprietors claimed for it the distinction of having come "direct from the Paris Exhibition," where it had been awarded first prize. The smallest side-shows, consisting of perhaps a few distorting mirrors, had all been "exhibited at Paris," and the two-headed bull was advertised by a huge painting showing all the crowned heads of Europe and President Loubet examining the beast, which, on inspection, turned out to be only a little removed from the normal by having a head slightly broader than usual, with the incipient formation of a third eye in its forehead, and a muzzle remotely suggestive of two joined together.

V.

A performance which I enjoyed not a little was given by a quack doctor. An enormous carriage, resembling in outline an old stage-coach, but decorated with much carved moulding and thickly covered with gilt and crimson, which produced a most bizarre effect, stood in an open space. Seated on the roof was a boy, who turned a machine which emitted the only hideous noise to be heard at the fair. In the open fore-part, richly cushioned, a man stood dressed in a dazzling suit of brass armour, his glittering helmet lying in front of him, and in his hand a small bottle of clear liquid. He was of the southern type, swarthy, wonderfully fluent of speech. He assured a gaping crowd that his medicine could cure any disease from toothache to tetanus, and he invited any sufferer to step up. Immediately one did so, the boy ground out the hideous din above, and the doctor sat for a few noisy seconds while his patient told him his trouble! Then the racket was stopped with a wave of the quack's hand, and he explained for five minutes, in vivid words, the terrible nature of the patient's disease, and invited the poor wretch to pick any bottle from the stock in front of him. This done, he had to open his waistcoat and shirt—for it was a severe pain in the left side from which he suffered—and the quack in armour struck the bottom of the bottle on his knee, thus causing the cork to pop out. He now shook the bottle vigorously with his forefinger on the neck, and the fluid changed into green, brown, and finally black, whereat the simpletons around marvelled, as they were meant to do. The comic practitioner next thrust the bottle into the open shirt-front of his patient, and shook the contents of it against the victim's skin, pressing his hand for a few moments on the part. Then he asked the fellow to step down as cured, and go among the crowd "telling his experience." A dozen cases were treated in less than half an hour—people with neuralgia, sprained wrists and ankles—and always the same formula as to consultation, explanation, application! A handful of liquid applied to a man's cheek evaporated mysteriously and worked wonders. Intending patients were told that the doctor could be consulted at the hotel near by during certain hours each day, and many must have gone to him there, for the fluent humbug had every appearance of driving a prosperous practice.

VI.

But the feature of this fair which, more than any other, distinguished it sharply from anything to be seen in our country, was "The Grand Theatre of the Walkyries and of the Passion of N. S. J. C." The mysterious initials stand for the French of "Our Lord Jesus Christ." A gentleman with a shaggy head of hair, dressed in a well-fitting frock-coat, and possessed of an excellent voice, stood on the platform outside, surrounded by oil paintings of sacred pictures and a dozen or more performers in the costumes of Roman soldiers, apostles and other Biblical characters. Judas was readily distinguished by his red hair, Mary by her nunlike garb. The showman announced that the performance was "about to commence," and urged us to walk up and witness the most pleasing spectacle of the fair. A hand-bill distributed among the crowd described the entertainment as a "mimodrame biblique" of the Passion, played, sung, enterpreted and mimicked by forty persons! "This spectacle, unique in France, will leave in the minds of the inhabitants of this town an unforgettable memory. It is not to be confounded with anything else you may have seen; it is no mere series of living pictures. At each performance M. Chaumont, the originator, will present twenty-one tableaux, three hundred costumes will be used, and three apotheoses will be shown. The establishment is comfortable, lighted by electricity from a plant of thirty-horse power. It is a spectacle of the best taste, pleasing to everyone, and families may come here with the fullest confidence. Balloons will be distributed to the children every Thursday." So ran the circular, which also contained the information (mendacious, I doubt not) that the entertainment was the property of a limited company with a capital of £20,000.

When the signal to begin was given the place was not more than half filled, and the audience seemed in no reverential mood. A pianist began to play on a very metallic piano, and outside the voice of the manager was still heard urging the crowd to "walk up" and "be in time." The drop-curtain was rolled up, and the manager stepped inside the building as a number of characters in the sacred drama filed on to the stage. He explained, in a rapid torrent of words, what they were supposed to be doing, but Judas jingled the filthy lucre so lustfully that the pantomime was very obvious in its purport. The curtain fell again, and the manager stepped outside to harangue the crowd while the second tableau was being prepared; but the ringing of a bell brought him in again, and so on through the whole series.

It must be confessed that the performance was carried out with no small dramatic ability, and M. Chaumont gave a wonderfully realistic interpretation of the rôle of Christ, some of the tableaux being strikingly conceived, as, for examples, the kiss of Judas and Christ before Pilate, the latter character being admirably represented by a performer who looked a veritable Roman proconsul, and washed his hands with traditional dignity. The Crucifixion, too, was represented with vivid reality; but the audience was disposed to laugh at the writhing of the malefactors on their crosses, and did indeed giggle when the soldier held up the sponge of vinegar to the dying Saviour. It was obvious that the whole performance, although really discharged by the actors with remarkable fidelity to tradition, and a commendable assumption of reverence, was more amusing than impressive to the spectators, who, though moved to laughter when St. Veronica pressed her handkerchief to the face of Christ and, turning to the audience, displayed the miraculous impression of His features, applauded the more dramatic scenes liberally. What interested me personally was M. Chaumont's idea of a miracle. Save that of St. Veronica, I have forgotten the others enacted; they were quite unfamiliar to me, but in the instant of each miracle a limelight was flashed for two or three seconds from "the flies," and this was supposed to betoken the super-natural character of the affair.