After all, there is something sufficiently absurd and improbable in this play. The character from which it takes its title is not well made out. A misanthrope and a philanthropist are the same thing, as Rousseau has so well shewn in his admirable criticism on this piece. Besides, what can be so nationally characteristic as the voluntary or dramatic transfers of passion in it? Alceste suspects his mistress’s truth, and makes an abrupt and violent declaration of love to another woman in consequence, as if the passion (in French) went along with the speech, and our feelings could take any direction at pleasure which we bethought ourselves of giving them. And then again, when after a number of outrages and blunders committed by himself, he finds he is in the wrong, and that he ought to be satisfied with Celimène and the world, which turns out no worse than he always thought it; he takes, in pure spite and the spirit of contradiction, the resolution to quit her forever, unless she will agree to go and live with him in a wilderness. This is not misanthropy, but sheer ‘midsummer madness.’ It is a mere idle abstract determination to be miserable, and to make others so, and not the desperate resource of bitter disappointment (for he has received none) nor is it in the least warranted by the proud indignation of a worthy sensible man at the follies of the world (which character Alceste is at first represented to be). It is a gratuitous start of French imagination, which is still in extremes, and ever in the wrong. Why, I would ask, must a man be either a mere courtier and man of the world, pliant to every custom, or a mere enthusiast and maniac, absolved from common sense and reason? Why could not the hero of the piece be a philosopher, a satirist, a railer at mankind in general, and yet marry Celimène, with whom he is in love, and who has proved herself worthy of his regard? The extravagance of Timon is tame and reasonable to this, for Timon had been ruined by his faith in mankind, whom he shuns. Yet the French would consider Timon as a very farouche and outré sort of personage. To be hurried into extremities by extreme suffering and wrong, is with them absurd and shocking: to play the fool without a motive or in virtue of making a set speech, they think in character and keeping. So far, to be sure, we differ in the first principles of dramatic composition. A similar remark might be made on the Tartuffe. This character is detected over and over again in acts of the most barefaced profligacy and imposture; he makes a fine speech on the occasion, and Orgon very quietly puts the offence in his pocket. This credulity to verbal professions would be tolerated on no stage but the French, as natural or probable. Plain English practical good sense would revolt at it as a monstrous fiction. But the French are so fond of hearing themselves talk, that they take a sort of interest (by proxy) in whatever affords an opportunity for an ingenious and prolix harangue, and attend to the dialogue of their plays, as they might to the long-winded intricacies of a law-suit. Mr. Bartolino Saddletree would have assisted admirably at a genuine prosing French Comedy.
Mademoiselle Mars played also in the afterpiece, a sort of shadowy Catherine and Petruchio. She is less at home in the romp than in the fine lady. She did not give herself up to the ‘whole loosened soul’ of farce, nor was there the rich laugh, the sullen caprice, the childish delight and astonishment in the part, that Mrs. Jordan would have thrown into it. Mrs. Orger would have done it almost as well. There was a dryness and restraint, as if there was a constant dread of running into caricature. The outline was correct, but the filling up was not bold or luxuriant. There is a tendency in the lighter French comedy to a certain jejuneness of manner, such as we see in lithographic prints. They do not give full swing to the march of the humour, just as in their short, tripping walk they seem to have their legs tied. Madame Marsan is in this respect superior. There was an old man and woman in the same piece, in whom the quaint drollery of a couple of veteran retainers in the service of a French family was capitally expressed. The humour of Shakspeare’s play, as far as it was extracted, hit very well.—The behaviour of the audience was throughout exemplary. There was no crowd at the door, though the house was as full as it could hold; and indeed most of the places are bespoke, whenever any of their standard pieces are performed. The attention never flags; and the buzz of eager expectation and call for silence, when the curtain draws up, is just the same as with us when an Opera is about to be performed, or a song to be sung. A French audience are like flies caught in treacle. Their wings are clogged, and it is all over with their friskings and vagaries. Their bodies and their minds set at once. They have, in fact, a national theatre and a national literature, which we have not. Even well-informed people among us hardly know the difference between Otway and Shakspeare; and if a person has a fancy for any of our elder classics, he may have it to himself for what the public cares. The French, on the contrary, know and value their best authors. They have Molière and Racine by heart—they come to their plays as to an intellectual treat; and their beauties are reflected in a thousand minds around you, as you see your face at every turn in the Café des Milles-Colonnes. A great author or actor is really in France what one fancies them in England, before one knows any thing of the world as it is called. It is a pity we should set ourselves up as the only reading or reflecting people—ut lucus a non lucendo.[[27]] But we have here no oranges in the pit, no cry of porter and cider, no jack-tars to encore Mr. Braham three times in ‘The Death of Abercrombie,’ and no play-bills. This last is a great inconvenience to strangers, and is what one would not expect from a play-going people; though it probably arises from that very circumstance, as they are too well acquainted with the actors and pieces to need a prompter. They are not accidental spectators, but constant visitors, and may be considered as behind the scenes.
I saw three very clever comic actors at the Theatre des Variétés on the Boulevards, all quite different from each other, but quite French. One was Le Peintre, who acted a master-printer; and he was a master-printer, so bare, so dingy, and so wan, that he might be supposed to have lived on printer’s ink and on a crust of dry bread cut with an oniony knife. The resemblance to familiar life was so complete and so habitual, as to take away the sense of imitation or the pleasure of the deception. Another was Odry, (I believe,) who with his blue coat, gold-laced hat, and corpulent belly, resembled a jolly, swaggering, good-humoured parish-officer, or the boatswain of an English man-of-war. His éclats de rire, the giddy way in which he ran about the stage (like an overgrown school-boy), his extravagant noises, and his gabbling and face-making were, however, quite in the French style. A fat, pursy Englishman, acting the droll in this manner, would be thought drunk or mad; the Frenchman was only gay! Monsieur Potier played an old lover, and, till he was drest, looked like an old French cook-shop keeper. The old beau transpired through his finery afterwards. But, though the part was admirably understood, the ridicule was carried too far. This person was too meagre, his whisper too inaudible, his attempts at gallantry too feeble and vapid, and the whole too much an exhibition of mere physical decay to make the satire pleasant. There should be at least some revival of the dead; the taper of love ought to throw out an expiring gleam. In the song in praise of Love he threw a certain romantic air into the words, warbling them in a faint demi-voix, and with the last sigh of a youthful enthusiasm fluttering on his lips. This was charming. I could not help taking notice, that during his breakfast, and while he is sipping his coffee, he never once ceases talking to his valet the whole time. The concluding scene, in which, after kneeling to his mistress, he is unable to rise again without the help of his nephew, who surprises him in this situation, and who is also his rival, is very amusing.[[28]] The songs at this theatre are very pleasing and light, but so short, that they are over almost as soon as begun, and before your ears have a mouthful of sound. This is very tantalizing to us; but the French seem impatient to have the dialogue go on again, in which they may suppose themselves to have a share. I wanted to see Brunet, but did not.
Talma and Mademoiselle Georges (the great props of French tragedy) are not at present here. Talma is at Lyons, and Mademoiselle Georges has retired on a pique into the country, in the manner of some English actresses. I had seen them both formerly, and should have liked to see them again. Talma has little of the formal automaton style in his acting. He has indeed that common fault in his countrymen of speaking as if he had swallowed a handful of snuff; but in spite of this, there is great emphasis and energy in his enunciation, a just conception, and an impressive representation of character. He comes more in contact with nature than our Kemble-school, with more of dignity than the antagonist one. There is a dumb eloquence in his gestures. In Œdipus, I remember his raising his hands above his head, as if some appalling weight were falling on him to crush him; and in the Philoctetes, the expression of excruciating pain was of that mixed mental and physical kind, which is so irresistibly affecting in reading the original Greek play, which Racine has paraphrased very finely. The sounds of his despair and the complaints of his desolate situation were so thrilling, that you might almost fancy you heard the wild waves moan an answer to them. Mademoiselle Georges (who gave recitations in London in 1817) was, at the time I saw her, a very remarkable person. She was exceedingly beautiful, and exceedingly fat. Her fine handsome features had the regularity of an antique statue, with the roundness and softness of infancy. Her well-proportioned arms (swelled out into the largest dimensions) tapered down to a delicate baby-hand. With such a disadvantage there was no want of grace or flexibility in her movements. Her voice had also great sweetness and compass. It either sunk into the softest accents of tremulous plaintiveness, or rose in thunder. The effect was surprising; and one was not altogether reconciled to it at first. She plays at the Odeon, and has a rival at the Theatre Français, Madame Paradol, who is very like her in person. She is an immense woman; when I saw her, I thought it was Mademoiselle Georges fallen away! There are some other tragic actresses here, with the prim airs of a French milliner forty years ago, the hardiesse of a battered gouvernante, and the brazen lungs of a drum-major. Mademoiselle Duchesnois I have not had an opportunity of seeing.
CHAPTER X
Paris is a beast of a city to be in—to those who cannot get out of it. Rousseau said well, that all the time he was in it, he was only trying how he should leave it. It would still bear Rabelais’ double etymology of Par-ris and Lutetia.[[29]] There is not a place in it where you can set your foot in peace or comfort, unless you can take refuge in one of their hotels, where you are locked up as in an old-fashioned citadel, without any of the dignity of romance. Stir out of it, and you are in danger of being run over every instant. Either you must be looking behind you the whole time, so as to be in perpetual fear of their hackney-coaches and cabriolets; or, if you summon resolution, and put off the evil to the last moment, they come up against you with a sudden acceleration of pace and a thundering noise, that dislocates your nervous system, till you are brought to yourself by having the same startling process repeated. Fancy yourself in London with the footpath taken away, so that you are forced to walk along the middle of the streets with a dirty gutter running through them, fighting your way through coaches, waggons, and handcarts trundled along by large mastiff-dogs, with the houses twice as high, greasy holes for shop-windows, and piles of wood, green-stalls, and wheelbarrows placed at the doors, and the contents of wash-hand basins pouring out of a dozen stories—fancy all this and worse, and, with a change of scene, you are in Paris. The continual panic in which the passenger is kept, the alarm and the escape from it, the anger and the laughter at it, must have an effect on the Parisian character, and tend to make it the whiffling, skittish, snappish, volatile, inconsequential, unmeaning thing it is. The coachmen nearly drive over you in the streets, because they would not mind being driven over themselves—that is, they would have no fear of it the moment before, and would forget it the moment after. If an Englishman turns round, is angry, and complains, he is laughed at as a blockhead; and you must submit to be rode over in your national character. A horseman makes his horse curvet and capriole right before you, because he has no notion how an English lady, who is passing, can be nervous. They run up against you in the street out of mere heedlessness and hurry, and when you expect to have a quarrel (as would be the case in England) make you a low bow and slip on one side, to shew their politeness. The very walk of the Parisians, that light, jerking, fidgetting trip on which they pride themselves, and think it grace and spirit, is the effect of the awkward construction of their streets, or of the round, flat, slippery stones, over which you are obliged to make your way on tiptoe, as over a succession of stepping-stones, and where natural ease and steadiness are out of the question. On the same principle, French women shew their legs (it is a pity, for they are often handsome, and a stolen glimpse of them would sometimes be charming) sooner than get draggle-tailed; and you see an old French beau generally walk like a crab nearly sideways, from having been so often stuck up in a lateral position between a coach-wheel, that threatened the wholeness of his bones, and a stone-wall that might endanger the cleanliness of his person. In winter, you are splashed all over with the mud; in summer, you are knocked down with the smells. If you pass along the middle of the street, you are hurried out of breath; if on one side, you must pick your way no less cautiously. Paris is a vast pile of tall and dirty alleys, of slaughter-houses and barbers’ shops—an immense suburb huddled together within the walls so close, that you cannot see the loftiness of the buildings for the narrowness of the streets, and where all that is fit to live in, and best worth looking at, is turned out upon the quays, the boulevards, and their immediate vicinity.
Paris, where you can get a sight of it, is really fine. The view from the bridges is even more imposing and picturesque than ours, though the bridges themselves and the river are not to compare with the Thames, or with the bridges that cross it. The mass of public buildings and houses, as seen from the Pont Neuf, rises around you on either hand, whether you look up or down the river, in huge, aspiring, tortuous ridges, and produces a solidity of impression and a fantastic confusion not easy to reconcile. The clearness of the air, the glittering sunshine, and the cool shadows add to the enchantment of the scene. In a bright day, it dazzles the eye like a steel mirror. The view of London is more open and extensive; it lies lower, and stretches out in a lengthened line of dusky magnificence. After all, it is an ordinary town, a place of trade and business. Paris is a splendid vision, a fabric dug out of the earth, and hanging over it. The stately, old-fashioned shapes and jutting angles of the houses give it the venerable appearance of antiquity, while their texture and colour clothe it in a robe of modern splendour. It looks like a collection of palaces, or of ruins! They have, however, no single building that towers above and crowns the whole, like St. Paul’s, (the Pantheon is a stiff, unjointed mass to it)—nor is Notre-Dame at all to be compared to Westminster-Abbey with its Poets’ Corner, that urn full of noble English ashes, where Lord Byron was ashamed to lie. The Chamber of Deputies (formerly the residence of the Dukes of Bourbon) presents a brilliant frontispiece, but it is a kind of architectural abstraction, standing apart, and unconnected with every thing else, not burrowing, like our House of Commons (that true and original model of a Representative Assembly House!) almost underground, and lost among the rabble of streets. The Tuileries is also a very noble pile of buildings, if not a superb piece of architecture. It is a little heavy and monotonous, a habitation for the bodies or for the minds of Kings, but it goes on in a laudable jog-trot, right-lined repetition of itself, without much worth or sense in any single part (like the accumulation of greatness in an hereditary dynasty). At least it ought to be finished (for the omen’s sake), to make the concatenation of ideas inviolable and complete! The Luxembourg, the Hospital of Invalids, the Hall of Justice, and innumerable other buildings, whether public or private, are far superior to any of the kind we have in London, except Whitehall, on which Inigo Jones laid his graceful hands; or Newgate, where we English shine equally in architecture, morals, and legislation. Our palaces (within the bills of mortality) are dog-holes, or receptacles for superannuated Abigails, and tabbies of either species. Windsor (whose airy heights are placed beyond them) is, indeed, a palace for a king to inhabit, or a poet to describe, or to turn the head of a prose-writer. (See Gray’s Ode, and the famous passage in Burke about it.) Buonaparte’s Pillar, in the Place Vendôme, cast in bronze, and with excellent sculptures, made of the cannon taken from the Allies in their long march to Paris, is a fine copy of the antique. A white flag flaps over it. I should like to write these lines at the bottom of it. Probably, Mr. Jerdan will know where to find them.
‘The painful warrior, famoused for fight
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,