Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire[A] and began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du Crime, called the Variétés Amusantes—a theatre long since dead. They were playing a piece with three actors, called Pyramus and Thisbe. As in the Babylonian anecdote, the lovers of the play agreed to meet under a mulberry tree at some distance from the town. Thisbe, who arrived first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody jaws. The lion was Frédéric Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got into a dispute in a neighboring café, and could not appear on account of the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state of mind. "Who the devil will play my Pyramus?" he cried. Whereupon the lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you like."—"You?"—"I, who know the part."—"Well roared, lion!" quoth the manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a speaking part. It was greeted by the indulgent audience with cries of indignation, peltings of apples, insults, hisses, whatever could most energetically express disapprobation of the lion turned lover. The next night Lemaitre resumed his dramatic career as a wild beast.
Yet he was at this period as handsome as Antinöus, with an elegant and slender but powerful figure, waving black hair, expressive and noble features, a beautiful complexion, wide forehead, flashing dark eyes, and a carriage full of grace and poetry. Rare personal beauty and extraordinary strength were striking physical advantages for the stage: the mental qualities were as yet but faintly shadowed forth.
On the conclusion of his studies at the Conservatoire young Lemaitre sought admission to the classic Odéon Theatre, and would have failed had not the tragedian Talma perceived what others could not, and insisted that the young man had in him the making of a great actor. He made his "serious" début at the Odéon, and remained at this theatre five months, but without producing any special impression as an actor. Then removing to the Ambigu, he suddenly achieved a startling and brilliant success, and created the first of that long list of parts which have since won worldwide celebrity, and been played in every polite tongue, in every civilized land. This was Robert Macaire in L'Auberge des Adrets. It is no exaggeration to say that Lemaitre created this part, though this verb is used in our day in very slipshod fashion. Robert Macaire was the creation of Lemaitre, and not of the authors of the play. At the rehearsals he repeatedly declared that the part was "impossible," and that the public would never receive it as the authors had written it. The event justified his opinion: the piece was hissed outrageously. But it was redeemed on the second night through the audacity of Lemaitre, who, in strolling about the streets during the day in no very pleasant frame of mind, racked his brains for an expedient for saving the fortunes of the theatre. Suddenly he perceived a strange creature standing before the open-air shop of a cake-seller—an outré individual, clad in indescribable clothing. In some former day the man's garments had been elegant and fashionable, but they were now dropping to pieces. Misery and debauchery could be read in every stain upon them, but the wearer seemed not to have lost a particle of his self-esteem. Standing proudly in a pair of boots all run down at the heel and riddled with holes, a greasy and misshapen felt hat perched on one ear, he daintily broke with the extreme tips of his fingers a piece from a penny cake, carried it to his lips with the delicate air of a dandy, and ate it as if he were an Epicurean philosopher. His collation over, he drew from the pocket of his coat a torn rag, wiped his hands elaborately upon it, dusted his costume airily and then resumed his leisurely promenade up the boulevard. "I've got him!" cried Lemaitre; for here he saw the flesh-and-blood reality of the conception of Robert Macaire which had been running through his brain during the rehearsals of the new piece. That evening the actor appeared on the stage with a coat, hat and boots modeled on those of the man on the boulevard. He reproduced the manner of this ragged fashionable, his grotesque calm, his ridiculous dignity; and having induced his fellow-actor, Serres, to get up a like metamorphosis for the part of Bertrand, the piece obtained a marvelous success.
The management of the Ambigu, appreciating the service Lemaitre had rendered the theatre, immediately raised his salary to a high figure, and from that day, as the saying is, his fortune was made. Saturday is the usual pay-day in French theatres, and it was one of the first illustrations of the eccentricity of Lemaitre's character that he took a whim to have himself paid every Saturday in silver five-franc pieces. Then throwing over his shoulder the bag of money, he would walk proudly through the crowd which was waiting to see him at the door of the theatre.
One of the earliest developments of Lemaitre's independence of spirit and contempt of the honeyed adjectives of critics was displayed in his refusal to pay those amiable taxes which are so much the rule in Paris, if not in all European cities. Generous enough in his own way with the abundant earnings of his art, Lemaitre declined to pay for puffery. A well-known journalist of the time, counting on his success with less eccentric artists, called one day at Lemaitre's residence and suggested that the actor should smooth over the rough places of criticism by a liberal douceur. Lemaitre refused. "It is but a small matter to you," said this gentle literary bandit: "a thousand or twelve hundred francs a year—what does so trifling a sum signify to one who has your splendid income? And thanks to this modest subvention you will be constantly well treated in my columns." To which Lemaitre replied, "Monsieur, I will not be eulogized for gold: other eulogies or none." Two days later a slashing article against Lemaitre appeared in the columns over which the blackmailer had control. Lemaitre made no complaint, but knowing that it would not be long ere his assailant would visit the green-room of the theatre according to French custom, he waited in patience. A night or two later the critic appeared. Lemaitre walked up to him, made a low bow, and while the crowd in the green-room were attending to see what would follow, slapped the fellow's face. Naturally, this liberty was resented by the journalist, who struck back at Lemaitre; but the actor, who was gifted with extraordinary muscular power, took both the man's hands in one of his own, and holding him thus, said to the witnesses of the scene, "To-morrow, if it is necessary, I will fight this misérable; but before all I desire to treat him in your presence as he merits—that is to say as a vulgar scoundrel." With this he dragged the blackmailer to the door and kicked him out.
The part of Georges de Germany, which Dickens saw played in 1856, was Lemaitre's second great creation. Those who saw him in this part in his younger days so rave about it that even Dickens's warm eulogy seems cool in comparison. Such unheard-of developments of passion and disorder! such incredible fire and magnetism! such subjugation of a vast audience to his will!—language fails to express the rapturous accounts which those old Frenchmen now living who saw him then will give you with many a roll upward of the eyes, many a hopeless shake of head and shrug of shoulder and agitation of outstretched hand.
Boiling over with health, radiant with youth, full of vigor, Lemaitre now began to lead a life of extravagance which would almost have given Bacchus the delirium tremens and driven Hercules into a consumption. But his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which the coddlings of a young English unmarried curate are as nothing. Nor can it be said that the actor was quite an anchorite: few French bachelors are. It is not meet to dwell on this phase of Lemaitre's character at length, perhaps; but I should hardly envy the old man's feelings in these days when, sitting by his lonely hearth, he lets his fancy wander among the ruins of the dead past, if he ever does such a thing.
There is a gray-haired and toothless old woman at present engaged in that menagerie of old women, the old-clo' market of the Temple in Paris, who might go wandering back with Lemaitre into that dead past of his if he wanted company. Fifty years ago she was a ruddy-cheeked young girl from the provinces, who had come up to Paris with a little fortune of thirty thousand francs, which a relative had left her. Going one night to the theatre where Lemaitre was playing, she became fascinated with Georges de Germany, and went to see him evening after evening. Forty-five nights in succession she attended the theatre to weep, to shudder and to admire, and ended by offering the actor her heart, her hand and her fortune. Lemaitre accepted the heart, but declined the hand; and as for the fortune, pooh! What did he want of the lady's pin-money? Nevertheless, six weeks saw the end of her little fortune, and left her with a quantity of elegant dresses and a few diamonds. Waking up one morning from her dream, she betook herself to the old market of the Temple, and began to try and get her money back. She is said to be worth a good deal more to-day than Lemaitre is.
In the drama of Faust Lemaitre's genius took a new development in creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the passers-by in the street. A woman who chanced to look up at him while he stood there grinning fell to the ground in a swoon. "Good!" said the artist, turning away from the window: "I have succeeded at last."
It does not seem wonderful at the present day that Robert Macaire or Mephistopheles should be played in the manner which all play-goers are so familiar with, and recognize as the correct mode of embodying the part; but he who creates the idea that is afterward accepted as a matter of course is a very different being from him who repeats it. In our day and country the actor who creates one rôle in the way Lemaitre created a score is a made man in his profession. Jefferson created Rip Van Winkle—Sothern created Dundreary. But Lemaitre, in addition to the parts already named, created Ruy Blas, Don Cæsar de Bazan, Gennaro, Corporal Cartouche, and a host of others familiar as household words to American play-goers through the grand army of his imitators who have played them since.