There were a few protestations, but her beauty, her distinction, and her modest charm won the day with every one, and Marie Lloyd was cheered. She passed me on her return, and kissed me affectionately. We were great friends, and I liked her very much, but I considered her a nullity as a pupil. I do not remember whether she had received any prize the previous year, but certainly no one expected her to have one now. I was simply petrified with amazement.
“Second prize for comedy: Mademoiselle Bernhardt.” I had not heard, and was pushed forward by my companions. On reaching the stage I bowed, and all the time I could see hundreds of Marie Lloyds dancing before me. Some of them were making grimaces at me, others were throwing me kisses; some were fanning themselves, and others bowing. They were very tall, all these Marie Lloyds, too tall for the ceiling, and they walked over the heads of all the people and came towards me, stifling me, crushing me, so that I could not breathe. My face, it seems, was whiter than my dress.
On leaving the stage I went and sat down on the bench without uttering a word, and looked at Marie Lloyd, who was being made much of, and who was greatly complimented by every one. She was wearing a pale blue tarlatan dress, with a bunch of forget-me-nots in the bodice and another in her black hair. She was very tall, and her delicate white shoulders emerged modestly from her dress, which was cut very low ... but in her case this was without danger. Her refined face, with its somewhat proud expression, was charming and very beautiful. Although very young, she had more of a woman’s fascination than any of us. Her large brown eyes shone with dilating pupils; her small round mouth gave a sly little smile at the corners, and her wonderfully shaped nose had quivering nostrils. The oval of her beautiful face was intercepted by two little pearly, transparent ears of the most exquisite shape. She had a long, flexible white neck, and the pose of her head was charming. It was a beauty prize that the jury had conscientiously awarded to Marie Lloyd.
She had come on to the stage gay and fascinating in her rôle of Célimène, and in spite of the monotony of her delivery, the carelessness of her elocution, the impersonality of her acting, she had carried off all the votes because she was the very personification of Célimène, that coquette of twenty years of age who was so unconsciously cruel.
She had realised for every one the ideal dreamed of by Molière. All these thoughts shaped themselves later on in my brain, and this first lesson, which was so painful at the time, was of great service to me in my career. I never forgot Marie Lloyd’s prize, and every time that I have had a rôle to create, the personage always appears before me dressed from head to foot, walking, bowing, sitting down, getting up.
But that is but the vision of a second; my mind has been thinking of the soul that is to govern this personage. When listening to an author reading his work, I try to define the intention of his idea, in my desire to identify myself with that intention. I have never played an author false with regard to his idea. And I have always tried to represent the personage according to history, whenever it is a historical personage, and as the novelist describes it if an invented personage.
I have sometimes tried to compel the public to return to the truth and to destroy the legendary side of certain personages whom history, with all its documents, now represents to us as they were in reality, but the public never followed me. I soon realised that legend remains victorious in spite of history. And this is perhaps an advantage for the mind of the people. Jesus, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, the Virgin Mary, Mahomet, and Napoleon I. have all entered into legend.
It is impossible now for our brain to picture Jesus and the Virgin Mary accomplishing humiliating human functions. They lived the life that we are living. Death chilled their sacred limbs, and it is not without rebellion and grief that we accept this fact. We start off in pursuit of them in an ethereal heaven, in the infinite of our dreams. We cast aside all the failings of humanity in order to leave them, clothed in the ideal, seated on a throne of love. We do not like Joan of Arc to be the rustic, bold peasant girl, repulsing violently the hardy soldier who wants to joke with her, the girl sitting astride her big Percheron horse like a man, laughing readily at the coarse jokes of the soldiers, submitting to the lewd promiscuities of the barbarous epoch in which she lived, and having on that account all the more merit in remaining the heroic virgin.
We do not care for such useless truths. In the legend she is a fragile woman guided by a divine soul. Her girlish arm which holds the heavy banner is supported by an invisible angel. In her childish eyes there is something from another world, and it is from this that all the warriors drew strength and courage. It is thus that we wish it to be, and so the legend remains triumphant.