Pierrot. Sir, sir, I come to tell you once for all that I am very pleased with you and that I have always loved you better than you deserve.
Cassandre. I am much obliged to you for the honour.
Pierrot. Put on your hat [i.e. don’t stand on ceremony]. You have paid me my wages promptly and I have consumed them in your service in like fashion.
Cassandre. That is not my fault. But, Pierrot, what ails you? I find you entirely changed.
Pierrot. That is not your affair. I shall be changed if I wish and I shall not be changed if I do not wish.
Cassandre. I beg you to pardon me for having presumed to take an interest in your concerns.
Pierrot. What I want to know, sir, without all this preamble, is, what do you intend to give me by way of reward?
Cassandre. But you confess, yourself, that I have paid you all your wages.
Pierrot. Agreed. But have I not also told you that I have consumed them?
Cassandre. That is not my fault.
Pierrot. Oh, sir, let us reckon up the services out of the ordinary which I have rendered you, and you will see how stupid you are. Firstly, I have not told your wife that you have a love affair in the town upon which you are spending the best part of your income. I leave it to yourself to put a price upon my discreetness.
Cassandre. It is just. That deserves something.
Pierrot. Secondly, you have been ten times drunk without my permission. I am not compelled to put up with you in such disorders.
Cassandre. That is well reasoned.
Pierrot. Thirdly, I have fallen in love whilst in your service.
Cassandre. That certainly deserves a recompense.
Pierrot. As the total sum of the extraordinary expenditure to which I have been subjected in your service, pay me ten thousand livres, and I will give you a quittance in full.
Cassandre. Your accounts seem to be in order. But whilst awaiting a settlement, go as far as the post to see if there are any letters for me.
(Pierrot goes and returns at the end of an hour. His master is busy when he enters.)
Pierrot. Yes, sir.
Cassandre. What do you want?
Pierrot. I have come to tell you, sir, that I have seen them.
Cassandre. Seen what?
Pierrot. Your letters at the post.
Cassandre. Where are they?
Pierrot. At the post.
Cassandre. And have you not brought them?
Pierrot. No. You told me only to go and see if there were any. I have seen them and I am come to tell you so.
Cassandre. Heaven give me patience with you! I should be better advised to have gone myself.
Pierrot. Really, sir, if you have not the wit to express yourself properly, what can you expect?
Again Pierrot is the valet of Cinthio (an old man) in the Cause des Femmes; he believes himself to be alone whilst, as a matter of fact, his master is finishing his supper within ear-shot close by.
Pierrot. When I come to consider what a woman is, frankly my poor wit goes all to pieces. However I may shut the door, our house is always full of counts and marquises. A lackey brings a letter; his master comes to demand an answer! All night at a ball! All day in merry-makings or at the comedy! What a life for a man of my master’s age! Ah, you may do as you like, but you will never be taken for anything but what you are.
Cinthio (rising). What do you mean, lackey?
Pierrot. I? Nothing, sir, I was not speaking.
Cinthio. How, rascal, you were not speaking? Have you not just said that I shall never be taken for anything but what I am?
Pierrot. Yes, sir.
Cinthio. Well, then, rogue, what am I?
Pierrot. Since you ask me, you are a fool to have married a she-goat of seventeen years of age who finds no house less desirable than yours, and who is for ever trailing a mob of courtiers after her.
Pierrot, like his ancestor Pedrolino, is compounded, it will be seen, of common-sense and simplicity. In him too there is something of the Sancho Pança of Cervantes, at once credulous and sceptical, the eternal type of rustic outspokenness, whom nothing astonishes; it is a type which neither passes nor changes.
The original character of Harlequin after it had been transformed by Domenico was bound to, and did, go out of fashion. Wit is a thing relative to every epoch and to every environment; the jests of that comedian do not now always seem witty to us; among those which have been collected it is impossible to cite more than a certain number. Pierrot, however, might be cited in full; for he exists, and will always exist, on the stage of life itself.
Giuseppe Giaratone, who was a native of Ferrara, had been—as we have seen—but a short while in the troupe when he had the good fortune to create his character of Pierrot on the 4th February 1673. He performed, now in Italian, now in French, until 1697—that is to say, until the suppression of the theatre. He married in France a lady of good family and he lived with her on a little estate which belonged to them in the neighbourhood of Paris. It was thither that he retired, and there that he died.
Antonio Sticotti made his début in peasant parts and as Pierrot in 1729 at the Comédie-Italienne. He retired to Meaux, where he occupied the position of postmaster. He left several comedies which were played with success.
In the theatres of the fairs the most remarkable Pierrots were Prévot in 1707 and Hamoche in 1712. The latter left his theatre to attempt to join the company of the Comédie-Italienne, but he was not received there. In 1725 he repaired to the fair of Saint-Laurent, and his introduction was couched in the following terms: Scaramouche came to announce him to a personification of the Fair and sang:
The Fair replied:
But the forain audience, by no means flattered at being looked upon as a last resource, hissed Hamoche by way of teaching him a lesson. This punishment so wounded the poor Pierrot that he withdrew from the theatre and died of grief.
From 1715 to 1721 Belloni, remarkable for the extreme simplicity of his performance and for the naïveté and truth of his diction, was another Pierrot of distinction. Then came Dujardin in 1721, Bréon, Maganox, Dourdet, in 1741, and Pietro Sodi, a native of Rome, who was a dancer and mime of very great talent, and the author of many pantomimes, in 1749.
v
The name of Giglio is mentioned for the first time in 1531 in the Italian troupe of the Intronati; but this personage, filling the rôles of servant and sometimes of lover, is but very slightly related to the Giglio played in Naples in 1701 by Filipo and Fabienti.
The French Gilles of the eighteenth century is a lineal descendant of Pierrot. His floured countenance assumes under the brush of Watteau that elegance of line and that charm at once naïve and comic with which we are all acquainted.
In 1702 Maillot, the forain actor, played, under the name of Gilles, rôles identical with those of Pierrot, but, no longer with the same simplicity and good sense with which Giaratone had equipped this character. Later, towards 1780, we see the actor Carpentier (Gilles) appropriating the scenes and the business which had been played by Carlin Bertinazzi at the Comédie-Italienne.
The Master. Hola! Gilles! Hola! I am always compelled to shout myself hoarse when I want that rascal. Gilles! Gilles!
Gilles (arriving very softly and shouting very loudly into his ear). Here I am, sir. I am not deaf.
The Master (recoiling). A plague on the rascal! Does he want to frighten me to death?
Gilles. But then, sir, you were shouting like a stick that has lost its blind man.... I was conferring with the post-man; he has just brought me a letter, and I was asking him to read it to me when you called me.
The Master. Whence is this letter?
Gilles. I don’t know. I barely had time to unseal it. Here it is, sir.
The Master (reading). “From the country.”... What country?
Gilles. Limoges, I suppose.
The Master. Then they ought to say so.
Gilles. Oh! but they are not so wise as that at Limoges. Continue to read, I beseech you.
The Master (reads). “My cousin Gilles, this is to advise you that my aunt your mother is dead....”
Gilles (weeping). My mother is dead! Oh, sir, behold me an orphan. Who will take care of me henceforth?
The Master. But you are big enough to take care of yourself. I am delighted to see your good natural feelings for your mother. But we are all mortal.... Let us proceed with the letter. (He reads.) “She has left you fifty crowns——”
Gilles. My mother has left me fifty crowns? Now that is what I call a good woman. Sir, are you quite sure that is right?
The Master. Quite sure. But it seems to me that you are very soon consoled for the loss of your mother.
Gilles. Oh, she was very old.
The Master. I understand. (He reads.) “I inform you that your little sister Catine has become a child of pleasure——”
Gilles. My sister Catine a child of pleasure! (He weeps.) I shall kill her! I love honour a hundred times better than reputation.
The Master. There, there, be comforted.
Gilles. No, sir; I refuse to be comforted.
The Master. Listen. (He reads.) “In four months she amassed six hundred livres.”
Gilles (laughing). Six hundred livres! But that is very good. My sister Catine was of a saving disposition.
The Master. It looks like it. (He reads.) “I must tell you, cousin, that in the course of a quarrel a fortnight ago she received a wound in the face which horribly disfigured her.”
Gilles (weeping). Oh, my poor little Catine, how I pity you! Alas, that is the fate of nearly all of her kind.
The Master. Wait, my friend. (He reads.) “As the wound was dangerous, she made her will, and you profit by it.”
Gilles. What a good heart that girl had!
The Master (reading). “Soon afterwards she died.”
Gilles. Oh, sir, my heart is bursting.
The Master (reading). “By this will she leaves you a house furnished in the best style.”
Gilles (laughing). A house furnished in the best style? Now that was really well done. There’s a good girl for you, a good virtuous girl!
The Master. A virtuous girl! (He reads.) “But, my dear cousin, a very great disaster followed. The house caught fire and has been burnt, together with all the furniture; what was not burnt was pillaged, and your fifty crowns were also stolen.”
Gilles. Fire! Thieves! Sir, I am ruined. Write to them quickly and bid them have recourse to all the town buckets and throw all the water available on that fire.
In the last years of his theatrical career, Carpentier, who for twenty years had been applauded as an excellent Gilles, had contracted the deplorable habit of drunkenness. His director, Barré, had endeavoured by all means to correct him of a vice which ruined his health and harmed him in his profession; but Carpentier took no notice, with the result that from year to year his memory grew more and more infirm until, having forgotten all his old rôles, he was utterly incapable of learning new ones. His director was compelled to confine him to accessory rôles in which he let him do as he liked; thus he was able to continue to allow him a salary without hurting his feelings.
A year passed without his ever appearing on the boards; then one evening, in a piece (Les Savants de Naissance) in which the whole company was engaged, Carpentier went to his dressing-room without saying a word to anyone and assumed the costume of a Gascon hairdresser, a part in which he was remarkable.
“The comb over his ear, holding a powder-box under his arm, and a razor-case in his hand, he came to the front and saluted the audience. Everyone present recognised him and universal laughter pealed from the spectators; then applause broke forth not only in front, but even in the wings. Thereupon poor Carpentier began to weep, exclaiming to his comrades, with as much joy as modesty, ‘My friends, my friends, they have recognised me.... They have recognised me!’”
A few days later he committed suicide by throwing himself from a window.
vi
Peppe-Nappa is a Sicilian personage who, save for the colour of his dress, is absolutely the same as Giglio or Gilles; and there is no Italian mask which in character so closely resembles the French Pierrot. Whilst Giglio is dressed in white flannel, like the Gilles of Watteau, Peppe-Nappa’s livery is pale blue. He does not cover his face with flour, although he is very pale; he, like Gilles, wears a white skull-cap, a white or grey hat, and shoes of white leather. He is of a surprising agility, continually dancing and bounding. His eyes and his wan countenance are extremely remarkable and expressive. He is equally lively in his gestures. Very swift in his movements and very supple, he seems, when he collapses upon himself, to be no more than a heap of garments that can never have been filled by flesh and bones.
He is nearly always a servant, sometimes, for instance, to the Barone (the Sicilian old man), upon whom he visits his stupidity. But gluttony is Peppe-Nappa’s greatest fault; he has a predilection for kitchens; if he may not always eat in such places, at least he may always inhale what to him is the most delicious of all perfumes.
In a comedy-ballet which is closely related to the Scuola di Salerno, Peppe-Nappa is the servant of a schoolmaster, a sort of doctor, who gesticulates in his chair in the course of teaching his pupils. Amongst these, on the school forms, there are some very big girls, towards whom the Doctor shows more indulgence than towards the others. The class is at an end; the schoolmaster wants to go out, and requires his black robe and his tall pointed hat. He rings for Peppe-Nappa, who, after a long delay, comes in yawning. He approaches his master to learn his orders, but falls asleep on his feet, leaning up against him. The latter withdraws and Peppe-Nappa falls down without waking. The furious pedant lifts him up by the skin of his back and, by kicks and blows, contrives to arouse him from his slumber; thereafter he sends him for his robe. Peppe-Nappa goes off and returns dragging the robe behind him; he then helps his master to assume it. Upon his master complaining that the garment is covered with dust, Peppe-Nappa goes to fetch a bucket of water and a broom, and, before the pedant is aware of his intentions, he washes him down from head to foot as he would wash a wall. This done, the good servant, worn out by so much labour, seats himself apart and fans himself with his hat. The furious schoolmaster seizes his ferrule to correct the servant, who adroitly evades the blows, causing them to fall upon the hands of the schoolmaster himself. Peppe-Nappa has a singular way of giving his master his hat. He brings a ladder and leans it against his master’s shoulders to enable him to put the hat on his head.
After the departure of the schoolmaster, the class is given over to gaiety. The little boys fight, the little girls cry, and the older girls run to the doors to admit their young lovers, who come to dance with them. But Peppe-Nappa, who has been to accompany his master to the end of the street, re-enters wearing the professor’s long black robe, with his head buried in the enormous hat. There is great terror among the youngsters, but they are quick to perceive their mistake, and they are about to fall upon Peppe-Nappa when he threatens to call the master; then two of the more astute ones bring him some macaroni and some eggs to conciliate him. Whilst he is devouring these, and contracting an indigestion, the whole class disappears, the pedant re-enters and discovers Peppe-Nappa torpid from excess of food. Hereupon follow remonstrances and discourses upon frugality, seasoned with blows. The poor servant attempts, by way of showing his repentance of his past conduct, to assist his master to rediscover his pupils. The piece ends in the marriage of all the schoolgirls with their lovers. Peppe-Nappa is the only one who can find no wife.
vii
The Théâtre des Funambules, founded in 1816 by Bertrand, presented spectacles of performing dogs, farces, rope dancers and sometimes pantomimes. The principal mime was Félix Charigny, who, under the name of Pierrot, filled the part of Gilles.
Towards 1830 the Funambules having been transformed into a pantomime and vaudeville theatre, there arose in the person of Deburau a man of genius in his own line, who for fifteen years was able to attract all the lovers of the old French and Italian farces.
In the hands of Deburau, pantomime was then all that remained of the old Italian comedy. The character of Pierrot, however, underwent a complete change. Deburau transformed it as Domenico had transformed Harlequin. By his incomparable talent, which lent itself to all the shades of the mimetic art, he made Pierrot now good, and generous out of carelessness, now a thief, false and sometimes miserly, now cowardly, now daring, and almost always poor; laziness and gluttony remained his incorrigible faults.
Deburau transformed not only the character, but the externals of this personage. His costume was based, first of all, upon that of Charigny, whom he replaced in 1825. The short woollen tunic, with its great buttons and its narrow sleeves, that overhung the hands, soon became an ample calico blouse with wide long sleeves like those of the Italian Pagliaccio. He suppressed the collar, which cast an upward shadow from the footlights on to his face, and interfered with the play of his countenance, and instead of the white skull-cap and the pointed hat of his predecessor, he emphasised the pallor of his face by framing it in a cap of black velvet. To-day Pagliaccio would rather be considered the proper name for this type; but since he was generally recognised for Pierrot, that name is to be preserved him.
“With him [Deburau],” says M. Théophile Gautier, “the rôle of Pierrot was enlarged and widened; it ended by occupying the entire piece, and, be it said with all the respect due to the memory of the most perfect actor that ever lived, by entirely departing from its origin and being denaturalised. Pierrot, under the flour and the tunic of that illustrious actor, assumed the airs of a master and an aplomb unsuited to the character; he no longer received kicks, he gave them; Harlequin now scarcely dared to touch his shoulders with his bat; Cassandre would think twice before boxing his ears. He would kiss Columbine and pass an arm about her waist like a seducer of comic opera; he caused the entire action of the piece to revolve about himself, and he attained such a degree of insolence and audacity that he would even beat his own good genius. The strong personality of the great actor overbore the type.”
M. Jules Janin has published a biography of Deburau entitled, “Deburau, Histoire du Théâtre à Quatre-Sous, pour faire suite à l’histoire du Théâtre-Français, 1833.”
“Being unable to develop enthusiasm for the Théâtre-Français,” he says, “we will become enthusiastic where we can; for instance, in the boulevard theatres. It is in one of these ignored theatres, in the meanest and the most infected, by the light of four wretched candles and in a mephitic atmosphere, situated alongside of a menagerie which bellows whilst the actors are singing, that we have discovered, admired and applauded with all our strength the great comedian, who is also the great clown, Deburau.
“The greatest comedian of our age, Jean-Baptiste Deburau, was born on the 31st July 1796. How he comes to be Deburau I cannot tell you. The fact is, that he has revolutionised his art. He has in truth created an entirely new race of clowns when it was supposed that all the possible varieties had been exhausted. He has replaced petulance by calm, enthusiasm by good sense. In him we no longer see the Paillasse agitated hither and thither, without reason and without aim; we behold instead a stoic who allows himself mechanically to follow all the impressions of the moment, an actor without passion, without words and almost without countenance; one who says everything, expresses everything, mocks everything; capable of playing, without uttering a word, all the comedies of Molière; one who is informed of all the follies of his day, and who reproduces them to the life; an inimitable genius who goes and comes, who looks, who opens his mouth, who closes his eyes, who causes laughter and tears, who is enchanting!
“His fate to-day is as brilliant as it was erstwhile sad. M. Nicolas-Michel Bertrand, the Director of the Funambules, has given his Gilles an engagement worthy of him. After many useless labours and many fruitless researches in the archives of the kingdom of Comedy, we have had the good fortune to discover the following important document bearing upon the history of this art:—
“SPECTACLE DES FUNAMBULES
“Agreement
“Between the undersigned, M. Nicolas-Michel Bertrand, of the Boulevard du Temple, No. 18, Paris, Director of the Funambules Theatre, of the one part,
“And M. Jean-Baptiste Deburau, of the Faubourg du Temple, No. 28, Paris, artist-mime, of the other part:
“It is agreed between us as follows:
“First, I, Bertrand, engage by these presents M. Deburau, to perform in the troupe the parts of Pierrot, and generally all the rôles which may be assigned to him by me or my manager.
“Second, I, Jean-Baptiste Deburau, engage myself to perform all rôles, to dance and take part in the ballets, divertissements, pantomimes and all other pieces, together with the company wherever sent for fêtes, private or public, without exacting any extras beyond the expenses of transit.
“I consent to conform to the rules established or to be established for the performances, and to content myself with such lighting, heating and costumes as may be supplied me by the administration.
“In case of illness the Director reserves himself the right to suspend the salary of the artist until the day of his reappearance.
“The artist is under obligation to supply, according to his costumes, his own linen, stockings, foot-wear, gloves and grease-paints. The administration will supply the costumes and properties, etc., etc.
“Subject to the above clause being faithfully executed, M. Bertrand undertakes to pay M. Deburau the sum of 35 francs weekly throughout the present engagement. The present engagement is for three years. It will begin on Easter Monday of 1828, and conclude on Palm Sunday, 1831.
“The parties hereunto desire mutually that this agreement shall have the same force and value as if drawn before a notary, and the first to infringe it shall pay to the other damages in the fixed sum of 1000 francs.
“Given in duplicate and in good faith, etc., 10th Dec. 1826.
“(Signed) Bertrand.
“Deburau.
“Additional clause.
“M. Deburau undertakes moreover the care of the properties of any piece performed—that is to say, he will look after them and distribute them every evening, and lock them up after the performance, etc.
“In consideration of this further clause M. Bertrand undertakes to pay M. Deburau 10 francs weekly in addition to his salary, and this is accepted by the latter.
“(Signed) Bertrand.
“Deburau.”
The spectacular pantomime-harlequinades in which Deburau was extraordinary for his spirit, his gestures, and his facial play, in which he abandoned himself to all manner of fantasies, were: Le Bœuf Enragé, Ma Mère L’Oie, La Mauvaise Tête, Le Billet de Mille Francs.
Les Épreuves, a great pantomime-harlequinade in thirteen scenes, in the English manner, by Deburau and M. Charles, was cast in the following manner:—Harlequin, Cossard; Pierrot, Deburau; Pandolphe, Laplace; Léandre, Orphée; Isabella, Mademoiselle Isménie; La Fée, Madame Lefèvre.
Isabella is the daughter of old Pandolphe. She is in love with Harlequin, who is protected by a fairy. Léandre wishes to marry Isabella, who runs away with her lover. Pandolphe, followed by his servant Pierrot and by Léandre, the possessor of a talisman, pursues them.
Pierrot is in a public place. Instead of following his master, he is sniffing round a pastrycook’s shop and at last decides to enter it; within he discovers his mistake; the shop is a milliner’s. Having no use for the bonnets that are offered him, he goes out again in quest of the pastrycook, whose shop is on the other side of the square. But the shops perform a fantastic chassé-croisée, and Pierrot discovers himself once more at the milliner’s. This being several times repeated, Pierrot is worn out and ends by being amused. He loses his head and performs incoherences. He upsets the shoemaker’s stall and then assumes such absurd and ridiculous poses before the customers of a vintner that they depart scandalised. After several pleasantries, some of them of a distinctly coarse order, he draws down punishment upon his head. His dupes unite against him and, being ten to one, they valiantly pursue Pierrot. Pandolphe and the beautiful Léandre come to his aid and a battle royal is fought with broom-sticks.
In the next scene Pierrot, to throw his enemies off the scent, conceals himself under the garments of a mountebank. He arrives in the midst of a village fête, and there, assisted by Pandolphe, who plays the fiddle, and Léandre, who plays the trombone, he beats a big drum as if his aim were to burst it. The village folk begin to dance, but presently become angry, for no apparent reason. Pierrot and his acolytes have little chance against them, and they escape before the blows that threaten.
Next, Pierrot’s head is cut off in a tavern. It is glued on again. The doctor, who is none other than Harlequin, demands his fee, but Pierrot pretends that his head is not properly re-attached, and receives a shower of blows from the false doctor.
In the following scene he is disguised as a woman, no doubt with a view to escaping from the ill intentions of Harlequin. He is about to do his washing when, after the fashion of pantomimic fantasy, an Englishman with red whiskers and an impossible collar comes to order Pierrot to wash some soiled linen. Pierrot finds the task disgusting, refuses it, and ends by throwing the Englishman into the tub, whereupon he runs away.
He is again in a tavern, and, after an adventure with a thief, he finds himself in need of a bath. He seeks the baths, but in that country there are no baths except for women. He assumes a bonnet and a petticoat, and enters one of those establishments, wherein he is badly received, for under a stroke of the fairy’s wand the baths are changed into a roasting-house and Pierrot finds himself roasting on a grille.
Delivered from this, and having no longer any garments, he enlists and becomes a soldier that he may be clothed. He quarrels with the corporal and fights a duel with pistols. Pierrot loads his own weapon with nothing but a candle, but he plants this candle full in the face of his adversary. This remarkable feat of arms causes him to be appointed drum-major on the spot. He immediately holds a review of the drummers, the oldest of whom is not four years of age.
The piece ends by an apotheosis in which we behold the rout of Léandre, who has lost his talisman. Harlequin and Isabella are united by a cupid with cardboard wings, arrayed in a garland of roses, and a sky-blue tunic: he extends his protecting arms over the two lovers and promises them a life of eternal happiness.
“It has been pretended,” says M. Champfleury, “that Deburau died as the result of a fall at the Funambules. Deburau died of asthma, which had been undermining his health for five years.
“His medical advisers had prescribed for him a long period of rest; but he thought only of his public. For five years he was afflicted by a cough that tore his lungs. But the moment he appeared on the stage the affliction would leave him; he would become once more for a quarter of an hour young, happy and healthy. The terrible disease, however, awaited him in the wings, and would lay its claws on the breast of the mime every time he made his exit.
“The cough became so tyrannical that Deburau was compelled to rest. One day he felt better. The bills announced his reappearance. At most, he had been absent for three weeks, but as a consequence there was a long impatient queue that would have filled five theatres.
“Be it noted that the performance was Les Noces de Pierrot, a farce which had been played six hundred times at the theatre of the Funambules. The shouts and roars of the spectators during the first half of the evening may be imagined. Outside, those who had been unable to enter shouted still more loudly. After the three vaudevilles the usual three knocks were heard.
“The curtain rose slowly. Deburau appeared in his white costume, a posy in his button-hole, a pretty girl on his arm. It is impossible to conceive an idea of the enthusiasm in the theatre; it was frenetic. In the gods four hundred faces were alight with joy; eight hundred eyes devoured the mime; four hundred mouths roared ‘Bravo!’ The heights of delirium were reached. Those who had been unable to enter shouted outside the door.
“Deburau quite simply placed his hand on his heart below his bridegroom’s posy. A tear ploughed through the flour on his countenance.
“A real tear is so rare in the theatre!
“A little while afterwards a slight incident proved the solemnity of this performance. At the introduction of the pantomime the peasants—boys and girls—are grouped upon the stage. Apart, the bailie, who is a traitor, plots his infamies. The orchestra plays the refrain of the dance.
“Ordinarily Deburau would now execute one of those eccentric dances the secret of which died with him; it was a mixture of the steps of the Directoire and of the more audacious steps of the cancan. More than ordinarily affected, his heart too full of joy, Deburau did not dance.
“‘The chahut!’ cried a rough voice.
“‘No, no!’ replied the whole theatre.
“The most vulgar of publics has its moments of exquisite delicacy. It had understood the emotion of the great comedian.
“Towards midnight there was a great gathering at the stage door. Deburau came forth. He had preserved, no doubt through a presentiment, his white bridegroom’s posy. It was the posy of his nuptials with Death.
“A thousand voices shouted: ‘Vive Deburau!’ But Death, that cruel ghoul, was in haste to embrace her pale bridegroom.
“He died a few days later (1846).”
A little while before this last performance of which M. Champfleury writes, an incident took place in a performance of the Épreuves which showed the public’s affection for Deburau; it was the occasion of the fall to which his death has been wrongly attributed.
At the end of the tenth scene Deburau was to disappear through a trap-door, and this was not working properly. He stamped impatiently with his foot upon the trap, and it was precisely at this moment that it gave way. His body had lost its poise and, as he went through, his head was thrown back and struck the stage. The scene being changed, the manager came forward to announce that M. Deburau was wounded. The audience was about to withdraw, after having expressed its sympathy with the mime, when Deburau himself appeared and wished to continue. “Enough! enough!” was cried on every side by the idolatrous public, but by a gesture Pierrot made them understand that he was too deeply touched not to continue, and the theatre shook with the applause and the bravos of the spectators.
George Sand, who was in one of the stage boxes, having perceived him in the wings holding his head in an attitude of pain, went on the morrow to inquire his condition. He wrote her his thanks for the inquiry and at the same time for an article in praise of him which she had published in the Constitutionnel:
“Madame,—Permit me to address you my double thanks for the interest you are kind enough to take in a little accident which has had no serious consequences for me, and for the kindly article published in the Constitutionnel, in which, concerning yourself benevolently for my future, you extol my poor talent with a warmth and a spirit that are really irresistible.
“I hardly know in what terms to express my gratitude. My pen is like my voice on the stage, but my heart is like my countenance, and I pray you to accept its sincere expression.
“I have the honour to be your servant,
“Deburau.
“P.S.—It was my intention to go to thank you in person, but rehearsals have prevented this. Be good enough, I beg you, to excuse me.
“Paris, 9 Feb. 1846.”
“Deburau was charming in all his ways. He would never be tempted to the least drop of champagne, out of fear, he said, for his nerves, and because he required the completest self-possession for his performances. I have never seen an artist who was more serious, more conscientious, more religious in his art. He loved it passionately, and spoke of it as of a grave thing, whilst always speaking of himself with the extremest modesty. He studied incessantly and was never weary, notwithstanding continued and even excessive playing. He did not trouble to think whether the admirable subtleties of his play of countenance and his originality of composition were appreciated by artists. He worked to satisfy himself and to realise his fancy. This fancy, which appeared to be so spontaneous, was studied beforehand, with extraordinary care” (George Sand: Histoire de Ma Vie).
Deburau’s son took up his father’s career in 1847. He was perhaps the handsomest and most elegant Pierrot that was ever seen. By his suppleness, his grace and charming fantasy, he rightly acquired an enormous vogue.
Paul Legrand, born at Saintes in 1820, played at first in the Théâtre des Funambules, comic parts in vaudeville and the rôles of Léandre in pantomime. It was only in 1845 that he undertook the rôles of Pierrot. A pupil of Deburau, he succeeded him in this character in 1847. He sustained in that theatre and afterwards with honour in the Folies-Nouvelles his double rivalry with the memory of Deburau and the deserved success of Deburau’s son. He was less elegant in shape than the latter, but none the less pleasing to the eye by his attitudes. He was full of resources, gifted with a handsome countenance, and a very characteristic expression, full of comical and bizarre notions and inventions, and—and this in particular distinguishes his talent—he had a peculiar power of producing pathetic and dramatic effects. Like the celebrated Thomassin, he drew laughter and tears at one and the same time; so that he may be reckoned as a mime of the very first order.
The first creations of Paul Legrand at the Funambules were: L’Œuf Rouge et l’Œuf Blanc, Pierrot Valet de la Mort, Pierrot Pendu, by M. Champfleury; Pierrot Recompensé, Pierrot Marquis, etc.
Summoned to London in December 1847 by Madame Céleste, who was managing the Adelphi Theatre, he remained for a year in England. But the English, accustomed to the much more exaggerated performances of their clowns, could make nothing of the subtle and witty expressions of the French Pierrot. Legrand returned to the Funambules in 1849, to find himself replaced there by Deburau’s son. But all Pierrots are brothers. They played concurrently together: Les Deux Pierrots, Des Trois Pierrots, with Dimier, called Calpestri; Les Deux Blancs, etc.
In 1853, a new pantomime theatre having been opened (Les Folies-Nouvelles), Legrand was engaged there, and from that day, being the master of his actions and able to give a free rein to his fancy, he invested the type of Pierrot with an originality and a unique colour of his own.
viii
The English Pierrot, or rather the English Clown, is a bizarre and fantastic creation not based upon any French type. The Florentine Stenterello alone may be compared with him by his singular methods. And what an extraordinary fancy has presided over the dressing of this personage, who seems to have been born among the savages of America! He is arrayed in a tight-fitting tunic, white, red, yellow, green, in stripes, in squares or in circles; his face is pasted with flour, set off with stripes, with moustachios, with impossible eyebrows; his cheeks are raddled with a brutal carmine; his forehead is carried up to the summit of the occiput and surmounted by a wig of a blazing red, from the height of which a little stiff queue lifts itself towards heaven. His manners are no less singular than his costume. He is not mute, like our Pierrot; on the contrary, he holds forth in an extremely buffoon manner and is in addition a very able acrobat. Kemp and Boxwell, circus clowns, were the types of this personage. It was impossible to see Boxwell without admiring his strength and his adroitness, and without laughing at his versatility and bizarre effects.
To define the English clown, M. Champfleury cites the following passage borrowed from Baudelaire:—
“The English Pierrot is by no means the personage pale as the moon, mysterious as silence, supple and mute as the serpent, lean and long as a pole, to which we were accustomed by Deburau. The English Pierrot enters like a tempest, falls like a bale, and shakes the house when he laughs. This laughter resembles a joyful thunderstorm. He is a short thick fellow, who has increased his bulk by a costume loaded with ribbons which fill upon his person the same office as the feathers on a bird, or the hair upon a Persian cat. Over the flour on his countenance he has plastered crudely, without gradation or transition, two enormous discs of pure scarlet. His mouth is increased by a simulated prolongation of the lips carried out in two carmine strokes, so that when he laughs this mouth of his seems to open from ear to ear. As for the character, at bottom it is the same as that which we know: egotistical heedlessness and neutrality; hence the accomplishment of all rapacious and gluttonous fancies, to the detriment now of Harlequin, now of Cassandre, and of Léandre. But with this difference, that where Deburau thrust in the point of his finger that he might afterwards lick it, the clown thrusts in both hands and both feet, and this may express all that he does; his is the vertigo of hyperbole. This Pierrot passes by a woman who is washing her doorstep; after having emptied her pockets he seeks to cram into his own the sponge, the broom, the soap and even the very water itself.”
This exaggerated personage of the English pantomime is a direct descendant of the clownish peasants of the theatre of Shakespeare. No dramatic author ever understood his public as did he. He knew not only how to captivate the attention of Queen Elizabeth and her court by presenting such heroes as no longer existed in his day, but he knew also how to amuse and satisfy his coarse groundlings, who drank and smoked throughout the performance. He knew how to put into the mouth of his clowns exactly what each naïve spectator would have said under similar circumstances. He knew, in short, how to adapt to the English stage the eternal type of Bertoldo.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century a dancer, acrobat and mime named Grimaldi made his appearance on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne in Paris. Dancing one day before the Turkish ambassador, he gave such a leap in honour of his Excellency that he struck his head against the crystal lustre suspended above it. One of the girandoles, detached by the blow, struck the ambassador of the Sublime Porte on the nose and narrowly missed putting out one of his eyes. The Turk in a passion laid a complaint before his ministry, demanding no doubt the bastinado as a punishment for the clumsy dancer. But the minister condemned Grimaldi merely to make a public apology to the inviolable representative of the Grand Turk.
Grimaldi had a son, Giuseppe Grimaldi, who had a long career in the fairs of Italy and France, dancing and singing in pantomime. In 1755 he went to England to play in the ballet pantomimes at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. The critics of the time found only one fault with this Italian buffoon, who became an English clown, that of being too comical. He died in 1788.
One of his sons, Joe Grimaldi, enjoyed great celebrity in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century as a mime at Drury Lane. Charles Dickens did not disdain to edit and publish his Memoirs.