The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2

by John Sanderson

“Ye common people of the skies,
What are ye when the sun doth rise?”

At the risk of surfeiting you with sweetmeats, I will take you next to the grand opera—the Académie Royale de Musique, where the best music is Taglioni. If you have read in your Virgil of that namesake of yours, who made no impression on the dust, nor bent the light corn or blade of grass as she walked upon it; if you have seen a ghost curtseying along the flank of the Sharp Mountain, and leaving no trace of its airy feet upon the winnowed snows, then you can imagine Taglioni upon the scene of the grand opera, as she flits along the boards, with just gravitation enough to detain her upon the earth. But why absent in the very season of her triumphs?—You must content yourself with her nearest representative, Miss Fanny Elsler—second only in grace, but second to none in any thing else.

I will describe you her performance. She will curtsey to her middle, and then rise in a pirouette two yards high. This is her preliminary step. She will then set off, and skip over the whole area of the stage, lighting on it only occasionally, trying her limbs, and, as it were, provoking the dance from afar, and will present herself to the spectators in all the variety of human shapes and appearances. One while you will see her, “many twinkling feet” suspended in the air, then twirling herself around till her face and hips will seem on the same side of her: at last, (and this is the epic strain of the performance, and, therefore, the last), she will poise herself upon the extremity of the left toe, and bring the right gradually up to the level of the eye (the house will hold its breath!) and then she will give herself a rotary movement, continuing it in crescendo till she becomes invisible. You can no more count her legs, than the spokes of a rail waggon carrying the President’s Message.—This is Fanny Elsler. The description will seem bombast only to those who have not seen her, and to those who have, it will seem tame and inadequate. This letter has a great struggle between prose and poetry; it is like one who is set upon a gallop against his will, gets out of breath, and comes panting in at the end of the course. I should have kept Mars, Grisi, and Taglioni to make an impression in the end—but you can begin with the last page, as girls do the new novel. I was last week induced by an acquaintance to go to the Variètés. It is a merry theatre, said he—“il provoque le rire.” This is a kind of provocation I have had frequent need of since I came to Paris. If you think there is no place for melancholy amongst these unsighing French people, you are mistaken. I have sat in this Bastille of a hotel, grave as a bust of Seneca, for a whole week, till all the Paris blue devils —— and so I went to the Variètés, and saw Frederic Lemaitre in his own “Robert Macaire,” and, above all, the delightful Jenny Vertprès, and was not disappointed.

The French have a quick and lively observation, and can dress up a simple anecdote, or vaudeville, or a fancy-shop at the Palais Royal, with a prettiness no other nation need attempt to rival. There is a general good humour, too, about a French audience, which exhibits as much as the play.—There were several notable scenes in some of the pieces, which would be worth telling you, if I had time. If you are not frightened at little licenses, this is a delightful theatre. You will see here Achard, who both sings and acts true comedy; and Tansez, who “looks broad nonsense with a stare.” Brutus would have liked to have such a face when he played the fool at Rome; and, above all, you will see that exquisite rogue, Madame Dejaret.

I went to my next neighbour, the Odéon, not long ago, where I saw Néron, l’Empereur, et Madame sa mère, and Monsieur Britannicus. Mademoiselle George, once the delight of the capital and its emperor, is yet a well-timbered and hale old woman. She has, in her favour, the dignity of fat, and looks devil enough for Agrippina.—But the French wear the sock more gracefully than the buskin. Their tragic Muse is sublime always, and therefore always ridiculous. She puts on a qu’il mourut kind of face, and carries it about through the whole five acts. She calls the dogs always with the same voice, as when she sees the game. But tragedy, it seems, is in her decrepitude all over the world; the sublime is worn out of our nature; all we can do, now-a-days, is to be beautiful. Miss George, with a little help from Anais and Dorval, has been lugging the old cripple about Paris, for several years, on her own back. Decent comedy has nearly the same service, but with more vigour, from Mademoiselle Mars. I have got over just in time to see the fag end of the two Goddesses.

The sterling old plays of Corneille and Crebillon, which recommended dignity and energy of character, are played no more—even upon their native scene, the Théâtre Français. It is not even bon ton to speak much of them, it is provincial and almost vulgar; if played at all, it is only to revive, a little, the dying embers of Miss George.—I have seen played other tragedies, and one notably called “Hamlet.” I was lured by the name. It is so pleasant to meet an old friend in a foreign country! But, alas! it was not “Hamlet the Dane,” but Monsieur Hamlet, of the Théâtre Français—— When the French get hold of a foreign author, as Shakspeare or Göethe, they civilise him a little—frenchify him. It is not to be expected that he should have all the polish and all the graces, as if he was brought up in Paris. They chasten the music, too, in the same manner; and M. Hertz, Musard, and Co. spend whole lives in adapting (as they call it) Rossini, Mozart, and other foreigners, to French ears.

But in these light productions, the vaudevilles which are played at the “Gaieté” and “Variètés,” and such theatres, and which are the fashion of the day, the acting and composition are both perfect. Ligier, Bouffé, Armand, and Pontier, and the ladies Anais, Vertprès, and Fay, are no common-rate mimics. And there are many others of nearly the same merit, seemingly all made expressly for their several parts, in this great farce of human littleness. Who was that new comer (a Yankee) who said, “They wanted to make me believe the actors on the stage were living people, but I wasn’t such a novice as they took me for?” It has not been a Parisian theatre that this incredulous man visited.

I ought to conduct you, but have not time, to some of the other theatres—to the Porte St. Martin, where Mademoiselle George looks “Lucrece Borgia;” to the “Gymnase,” which smells of the counting-house, and Scribe’s plays, and where Bouffé plays, as no one else can play, his “Gamin de Paris;” and especially to the “Vaudeville,” to see the elegant Brohan, the lovely Targueil, the sprightly Mayer, and tender Thenard, the scape-grace Madame Taigny, and the inimitable old woman Guillemin, and Lafont and Arnal—or to the “Opera Comique,” where you would hear those two mocking-birds Mesdame Damoreau and Lavasseur; and finally to Franconi’s, where you would see Madame Something else, on her head on horseback, and Auriol on his slack rope—the rest is stupid. I have seen them all; even the Funambules and the Marionettes; I have seen Madame Saqui’s little show, for six pence; and I have cried over a melo-drama, at the “Petit Lazari,” for four sous.

If one comes to Paris, one ought to see Paris. This you cannot do in the domestic circle—the stranger is not admitted there. And certainly not in public places, for the world no more goes thither, in its natural expression and opinions, than the fashionable lady in her natural shapes. You must look at it in its looking glass. A stage, patronised by twenty-five thousand spectators, every night, cannot be a very unfaithful representation.

The dignity of human greatness; the highborn, hereditary authority, and lowly reverence, which produced strong contrasts of passion with refined and elegant manners, have withered away under the Republican spirit of the age. Kings and lords, and heroes are no more held in veneration than Pagan Gods; not so much; for these at least are poetical. And from our universal reading and the easy intercourse which follows, a great man can scarce be got up any more in the world; we are all as intimate, with the imperfections of a hero as his valet de chambre. And the mock majesty of the stage has lost its respect at the same time. Dufresne used to say, “Sirrah, the hour”—to his hair dresser; who replied, “My lord, I know not.” Mademoiselle Clairon kept her train, and equipage, and her femme de chambre addressed her as a queen. The patronage of a splendid court then excited a spirit of emulation among the actors, and gave them a sense of their dignity, which was sustained by the public feeling.