When Victor Hugo wrote Ruy Blas he informed the director of the Renaissance—for which theatre the piece was intended—that the only actor who could play the part of Ruy was Lemaitre. The result was another of his wonderful creations, which set all Paris wild with excitement. Those who have admired Fechter in this part will perhaps be surprised to hear that in Paris his performance was pronounced but a faint imitation of Lemaitre's. Soon after this Lemaitre's despotic and ungovernable disposition began to get him into trouble with the law. He quarreled with the manager of the Renaissance, and was compelled by a judicial condemnation to play his part. Later, he threw up the principal part in Zacharie, and compelled the manager to post up an announcement, after repeated postponements and disappointments of the public, that Lemaitre refused to play, and the theatre was closed in consequence. The press took sides with the manager. Threatened again with the terrors of the law, Lemaitre consented to play. He came on the stage and was greeted with a storm of hisses. With imperturbable coolness he advanced to the footlights and with hand on heart said, "I am really confused, embarrassed, gentlemen, by the enthusiastic reception you have so kindly given me. Pray receive the expressions of my gratitude, and believe that I will place at the service of this drama all my good will and my best efforts." Thereupon the wind changed: that weather-cock, the French public, whirled around and applauded to the echo.
Lemaitre did not often speak to his audience with so much submissiveness. Sometimes he treated them to such impertinences that he brought the police on him. After these theatrical escapades he not unfrequently slept in the station-house. He once made a bet that he could take off his wig on the stage without his audience getting angry. No American play-goer, unacquainted with the temper of French audiences, their reverence for stage decorum, can fully appreciate what a defiance of public sentiment this was on Lemaitre's part. He did it, however, and the action was received in silence. This indulgence encouraging him, he took the wig off again and wiped his face with it: still no expression from the audience. Lemaitre then put the wig in his pocket: the audience remained silent. Surprised at their indulgence, the actor advanced to the prompter's hole at the front of the stage, bent down grotesquely, took out his snuff-box and offered some to the invisible functionary: the audience broke out in a fury. Lemaitre drew the wig from his pocket and threw it at the souffleur's head: a frightful tumult followed. The pit climbed over the footlights, determined to make the insolent actor offer apologies: he refused. The play was stopped, and the commissaire of the theatre sent the offending actor to prison, where he remained thirty-nine days. When he got out again Lemaitre hastened to make his peace with the public. It was easy enough. He had only to act in the superb manner of which he was master, and everything was forgiven.
The great genius of the actor finally triumphed over the erratic dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Comédie Française. He made his début at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in Frédégonde et Brunehaut. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who sit in solemn state in the orchestra-stalls of the Française, holding their seats from year to year by subscription, cabaled against Lemaitre, and endeavored to drive him from the stage. But the audience with a tumult of applause stifled the rancor of the classic phalanx of orchestra-ancients. Lemaitre afterward, in Othello, conquered even the prejudices of these stern stage-censors, and they applauded with the rest. The actor was in his place at the Comédie Française, because it is by common consent the leading theatre of the world; but the man was sadly out of his element there. In the "House of Molière" there is an atmosphere of respectability as severe among the artists as that of the most dignified college in America, and the stage is bound round with a solemn network of dignified forms and sacred traditions, amid which Lemaitre chafed and fretted like a caged lion. His strolling-player instincts, his lack of self-respect, his bacchanalian habits and his irregularities generally unfitted him for association with the scholarly and correct-lived men who for the most part formed the company. Lemaitre felt ill at ease there, and conceived the idea that the sociétaires did not respect him enough. The actors of the Comédie Française are of two bodies—the first and controlling one in the councils of the theatre being composed of men who are participators in the profits of the house as well as recipients of salaries. They are an extremely dignified body of artists, with the utmost reverence for the proprieties of life. For these sociétaires Lemaitre entertained a profound dislike, and loved to sneer at them and ridicule their dignity. One day these artists were giving a grand dinner to some manager when a knock was heard at the door of the banquet-hall. "Who is there?" cried several voices.—"A man," answered Lemaitre outside, "who wishes to have some converse with you, and tell you once for all what he has on his heart." So saying, he entered, threw off his cloak, and appeared before the company dressed simply in a shirt-collar and a pair of stockings.
Lemaitre returned to the Porte Saint-Martin, and soon after created the rôle of Don Cæsar de Bazan, a part in which he was indescribably delightful, and of which he was the real author. The play, written by Dumanoir and Dennery, was roundly condemned by the critics for its weakness, but the actor created prodigious effects, and the piece obtained a great success. In the Ragpicker of Paris, a sort of honest Robert Macaire, written by Félix Pyat for Lemaitre, this extraordinary actor went through another transformation not less striking than some which had preceded it. He engaged the lamplighter of the theatre to wear the ragpicker's costume for three weeks, so that it might be suitably dirty. He went every day into the low cabarets of the Rue Mouffetard, where ragpickers congregated in great numbers (and still do), in order to study from nature the peculiarities of the race. One day, as he was chatting with his models, familiarizing himself with their characters and manners, he was recognized by one of them, who immediately communicated his discovery to his companions. The report spread up and down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him; they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing the idea of such an ovation, Lemaitre jumped through a window and took to flight.
It was not until he had passed the age of fifty that Lemaitre began in the least to modify the excesses of his career, either on or off the stage. He still indulged in bacchanalian orgies; he still broke out at times into those violations of the stage proprieties which are so startling to any audience, but which are to a French audience something bordering on the incredible and awful. He was already an old man when he was playing one evening at Amiens, on a provincial tour, in Tragaldabas, a play written for him by M. Vacquerie, who shared Victor Hugo's exile at Jersey. At a certain point in the piece the actor is supposed to drink champagne. Now, dramatic managers are obliged to be economical about such things as food and drink, and generally replace the sparkling vintage by another liquid quite as gaseous, but less agreeable to the palate. Lemaitre put the glass to his lips, made a horrible grimace, spit out the mouthful, and to the consternation of the audience cried out, "Where is the manager of this theatre? Send me the manager instantly!" Great excitement behind the scenes: the manager arrives. "Approach," says the actor to him gravely, and he walks upon the stage in full view of the audience. "What is the meaning of this bad joke, Mr. Manager? Do you think me capable of being your accomplice in the wickedness of deceiving the public!" "Deceive the public! I!" stammers the manager.—"Yes, sir, you:" then addressing the pit, "Gentlemen, you think I am drinking champagne. No, it is seltzer-water." At this there was a roar of laughter, and the manager, deeming it wise to humor the joke, promised to go and get real champagne. During the time he was gone—when necessarily the action of the piece was brought to a standstill—Lemaitre entertained his audience with a dissertation on seltzer-water and the consciencelessness of managers.
With regard to similar stories related of the elder Booth, it is often said now-a-days that his audiences were not made up of the decorous class which attends theatres in our times, and that managers of the present day would not for a moment tolerate such insolent violations of theatrical discipline. This may be possible as regards Booth, but so far as it relates to Lemaitre it affords no explanation of the anecdotes in question. For the severest theatrical audience that can be gathered in America to-day—at Wallack's, at Booth's, or wherever decorum is supposed to be most preserved—could not for a moment compare, in the severity of its artistic judgments and the sternness of its requirements, with the audiences which Lemaitre so boldly trifled with. And the fact illustrates, as nothing else could, the prodigious popularity of the man and the marvelous power of his art. At the répétition générale of Toussaint L'Ouverture the cream of artistic Paris was present. The members of the Comédie Française came in force; Lamartine occupied a stage-box; the house was full of poets, novelists, painters, artists and authors of every description. Yet on this solemn night Lemaitre had one of his explosions of temper, and stopped the play to publicly scold the stage-carpenter for setting a scene wrong in some trifling detail. The incident was destructive to the power of the play, or would have been in an ordinary case; but before the evening was over Lemaitre regained perfect control of himself and swept his audience with him as by storm.
Before passing his sixtieth year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue. He devoted himself to his children—of whom he had four—with exemplary care and solicitude. The Antinöus of former days is now, as has been said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but voice seems hardly necessary to him, so eloquent is his pantomime, so expressive are his features, so full of fire his great black eyes when acting. Several years ago, while still in his full vigor, he sustained a loss of his teeth, which temporarily destroyed his articulation. He was playing in a piece called The Black Doctor at the time, and did not intermit his representations on account of his misfortune. But one who was present on the occasion relates that the audience heard him repeat again and again, in ever-varying tones, "Ellla mârrr montââât tojors" ("Et la mer montait toujours"—"And the sea still rose!"), and shuddered and sobbed under the pathos of his tones for more than twenty minutes without appearing to notice the absurdity of the language. And for fully fifteen years Frédéric Lemaitre has now been playing without a voice.
No stage reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's. Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile. This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations, each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face, his fiery eyes, his trembling lip, there seems still energy enough for a hundred ordinary actors of merit; and yet he gives to any part he essays the minute attention to details, the unwearying patience, which would in themselves almost win success for an incarnation of commonplace.
Wirt Sikes.