This type scored its triumphs in the eighteenth century. Grimm writes of him as follows:—
“(May 1779.) A new spectacle, set up last year at the fair of Saint-Laurent, has been drawing for the past two months both the city and the court in consequence of the prodigious success of a sort of dramatic proverb whose subject it is not easy to expound. But it is impossible to forgo speaking of a work which has delighted all Paris, for which the masterpieces of Molière and Racine have been abandoned, and which, having reached its hundred-and-twelfth performance, is still drawing more than ever. The object of so great an enthusiasm, the idol of so rare and sustained an admiration, the man, in short, whom at this moment we may call the man of the nation, is a certain M. Jeannot who plays, it must be confessed, with the greatest truth, the part of a dolt, who is watered from a window like Don Japhet d’Arménie, who, upon the advice of his friends, goes to complain to the clerk of the commissary, who dupes him and who, after having fought with a view to avenging himself, is caught in the street by the watch, and finds himself in the end stripped of the little that he possessed; all of which goes to prove very clearly without doubt that it is always les battus qui payent l’amende. This proverb which serves as a moral to the piece is also its title. The author to whom we are indebted for so noble a production is M. Dorvigny. He has assembled into the rôle of Jeannot many features which, if already known, are none the less truly comical. As for the actor (le Sieur Volange), who has performed this rôle with so much success, he gives us more than hope. It is impossible to have a countenance more mobile and natural, inflexions of voice more varied and more exact, movements more simple and easy, or a gait more frank and naïve. The gentlemen of the chamber have already taken steps to bring about his appearance in a theatre more worthy of his glory.”
In January of 1780, Grimm speaks again of Jeannot:
“Jeannot, or M. de Volange, that actor so famous on the boulevards, that unique man who throughout the whole of last summer was the admiration and delight of city and court, whose portrait was engraved in twenty different manners, and was to be found in Sevres china, on the overmantels of all our pretty women, or in wax modelled in the study of the Sieur Curtius, between M. de Voltaire and M. le Comte d’Estaing—this man in short, so rare and so honoured, has thought fit to develop his great talents in the theatre more worthy of his glory than the trestles of the Variétés Amusantes. He made his début on the 22nd February 1780, a date for ever memorable, on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne, in the rôles of the triplets of Colalto.” (The three hunchbacks of Tabarin.) “Although on that day there were several other interesting spectacles, and notably the first performance of Atys, we cannot remember ever to have seen in any of our theatres on the most remarkable occasions, even during the triumph of M. de Voltaire, such a concourse of spectators. There were as many people in the wings and in the corridors as in the pit and boxes, and it was necessary to turn away at the door a number far in excess of that which was admitted. What then was the success of a first appearance which attracted such extraordinary attention? Upon what depends the most brilliant of renowns? The object of so fine an enthusiasm, the idol of the boulevards, transported into this new temple, beholds there his honours tumbling about him and his glory eclipsed. It was in vain that the crowd of his adorers whom he had dragged after him never ceased to applaud him and to shout with emotion, ‘Courage, Jeannot, courage!’
“The illusion was dissipated. The Roscius of the fair seemed here confounded in a crowd of the most ordinary actors. He was found to be out of countenance, his voice was harsh, his play not only common and trivial, but further, cold and destitute of humour. It would seem that his countenance and voice cannot lend themselves save to expressions of the lowest and most stupid; such a character he was able to portray with a very arresting naturalness, but it is the only character that fits him; in other rôles he has not even the merit of being a good caricature. Although this judgment was passed upon him at that first performance yet all Paris flocked to see him, and his mere début alone was the source of greater profit to the Comédie-Italienne than all the other novelties of the year put together. Oh, Athenians! This is not the first of your follies; and if the gods are propitious to you it will not be the last.”
“I am not acquainted” (says Mademoiselle Clairon in her memoirs) “with an actor in the forain shows known as Volange; but all Paris is unanimous on the subject of the perfection of his talent at the Variétés Amusantes. He was induced to appear at the Comédie-Italienne, where the work and the talent may perhaps not be compared with those of the Comédie-Française; but in that setting, this Volange, elsewhere so famous, was unable to sustain comparison with the least of the comedians.”
vi
The modern Jocrisse, whom the Piedmontese and the Milanese seem to have copied from their Gianduja, and who seems to be a very recent personage, dates nevertheless from the seventeenth century, for in 1625 we see him parading the trestles in all his traditional stupidity. The same is the case with Gringalet who, in 1634, at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, played the parts of servant and served as interlocutor to Guillot-Gorju when the latter desired to address the public.
Lajingeole, so well known in the marionette theatres, and in the nineteenth century restored to the proper stage in L’Ours and Le Pacha, also dates from the commencement of the reign of Louis XIII.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Boulevard du Temple had two famous dolts, Bobèche and Galimafré. Under his red coat and his grey three-cornered hat, surmounted by a butterfly, Bobèche was the king of farce. His reputation was colossal and his successes were very often due to coarse truths and to malicious allusions which several times earned him a reprimand from the police. Bobèche would frequently perform at the houses of great lords, of ministers and of bankers. He toured the provinces and in the end undertook the management of a theatre at Rouen.
Galimafré never enjoyed the fame of Bobèche; he was rather a sort of Pagliaccio, and his talent was more appreciated by the lower orders, who preferred his heavy stupidities to the subtler malice of Bobèche. Galimafré left the theatre without, however, leaving the stage. He became a stage-hand at the Opéra-Comique. In that office he was frequently treated with disdain by those who did not know that this man who turned a frame or set up a wing had held a crowd in ecstasy before him.