In August 1783, Mlle. Guimard was attacked by small-pox, to the great alarm of the patrons of the Opera, who feared that, even if she were to recover, the priests might succeed in persuading her to renounce her profession. Happily, however, the attack was a mild one, and on August 29 a fête was held at the danseuse’s hôtel, “to render thanks to her lovers for the care they had taken of her.”

In the following year, however, Mlle. Guimard did announce her intention of retiring, whereupon La Ferté wrote in hot haste to the Minister of the King’s Household, begging him to promise her an addition of one thousand livres to her retiring pension, if she would reconsider her decision. As the ballerina had already demanded this favour, it is probable that the announcement of her approaching resignation was merely a ruse on her part to force the Minister’s hand.

The Minister replied the same day to La Ferté, that, “although a favour accorded to one person opens the door to a whole crowd of pretensions,” in consideration of her long services, he promised to assure to her, when she should retire, the additional thousand livres which she demanded; but on condition that she should preserve the most profound secrecy in regard to this favour.

In the early part of the year 1785, Mlle. Guimard fell into financial difficulties and was obliged to sell the “Temple of Terpsichore,” in the Chaussée-d’Antin. Instead of putting it up to auction or inviting private offers, she decided to adopt the somewhat novel expedient of disposing of it by lottery, and, having succeeded in obtaining the permission of the authorities, or at any rate a promise that they would not offer any opposition to the scheme, caused the following prospectus to be circulated:

“Prospectus of a lottery of the house of Mlle. Guimard, of which the draw will take place in public, May 1, 1786, in a room of the Hôtel des Menus, Rue Bergère, in the presence of a public official.

“This house is situated at the entrance of the Chaussée-d’Antin, and consists of a building, with a court on one side and a garden on the other. The side facing the court is adorned by a peristyle; the rez-de-chaussée, which is raised on eight steps, is divided into an ante-chamber, dining-room, bedchamber, boudoir, a large room lighted from above, to serve as a picture-gallery, dressing-room, bathroom, &c., all richly decorated.

“Above are also private apartments very commodious, and likewise very richly decorated.

“A building facing the street contains stables and coach-houses, and above is a theatre with all its accessories.

“The garden is adorned with covered bowers. The greater part of the furniture remains in the house, having been made for the place.

“The lottery will consist of 2500 tickets, at 120 livres a ticket, of which one will be the winner.

“Immediately after the lottery has been drawn, Mlle. Guimard will transfer the contract of the sale of the house and the furniture, to the benefit of the owner of the winning lot.”

The drawing of the lottery, originally fixed for May 1, 1786, was, for some reason, postponed until the 22nd of the month, when it took place in a tent erected in the garden of the Hôtel des Menus. There were two wheels, in one of which had been placed 2500 numbered tickets, and in the other 2499 blank tickets and one bearing the word Lot. The draw began at ten o’clock in the morning; but it was not until late in the afternoon, and after 2267 tickets had been drawn, that the winning one was forthcoming, when it was found that Mlle. Guimard’s hôtel had become the property of the Comtesse de Lau, who had only purchased a single ticket. That lady subsequently sold the hôtel to the banker Perregaux, for 500,000 livres.

Mlle. Guimard was growing old; the fatal epoch when beauty is usually compelled to renounce its rights had come; but, like the wicked old Maréchal de Richelieu, she seemed to have drunk of the fountain of eternal youth, and on the boards of the Opera, environed by her cloud of gauze, she appeared as young and fresh and charming as ever. What was her secret? According to the actor Fleury it was an ingenious one. At twenty years of age, he tells us, she had had her portrait painted by a faithful hand, and now, each morning in her boudoir, with this picture on one side and her mirror on the other, she worked to assimilate the face she saw reflected in the latter to the work of the painter, nor did she desist from her labours until she felt certain of a perfect resemblance. Her admirers, it is scarcely necessary to observe, were not admitted to this function.[90]

Mlle. Guimard visited London on several occasions during the season to dance at the Opera House in the Haymarket or at Covent Garden. Three letters, two written respectively on June 20, 1784, and April 16, 1789, to the banker Perregaux, the third bearing date May 26 (probably 1787), contain some interesting details about her sojourn in England. From the first, we learn that she was engaged at a salary of 650 guineas, half of which seems to have been paid in advance and the balance on the termination of her engagement. The latter instalment she complains that she had just seen devoured by a fire which had reduced the theatre to ashes. She graciously says that she has no complaint to make of the inhabitants of London; but the Italians of the Opera—“Ah, les coquins!” They are everything that is bad. And the rest of the letter is chiefly taken up with an account of her dispute with Gallini as to whether or not her articles had been dissolved by the destruction of the theatre.

The second letter, in order of date, is more interesting. “Since my arrival in this town,” she writes, “the people have not left me a single moment to myself. I am overwhelmed by the kindness of all the great ladies and principally of the Duchess of Devonshire. I pass all my time with her, when I am not engaged at the theatre. In truth, my dear little good friend, the manner in which I am everywhere received is so flattering that a less sensible head than that of your little good friend might be turned by it.” She goes on to say that she has just been given a benefit performance, which has realised 950 guineas, and has concluded an engagement for the last five weeks of her stay in England. For this she is to receive 650 guineas, “which makes a very pretty sum for me to bring back to Paris.” “This journey has not been so unprofitable, hein! What think you about it? They love me to distraction, these good English! Voilà ce que c’est que le mérite!”

The third letter shows us that in London the ballerina was regarded as the very glass of fashion: “For the ball [a ball at Drury Lane organised by the Duchess of Devonshire and other ladies] one must have dresses, and the English ladies are as coquettish as the French. The moment I alighted from my carriage on my arrival, I was besieged by marchandes des modes and tailors, who had come to beg me, on the part of the ladies, to give my opinion on their costumes. You know well that I did not make the fashions.”

Of Mlle. Guimard’s visits to England there exists a weird souvenir in the form of a coloured etching entitled:

“The Celebrated Mademoiselle G——rd, or Grimhard, from Paris. Published by Thomas Humphrey, May 26, 1787.”

The leanness of the ballerina, of which we have spoken elsewhere, seems to have increased with years, and was the theme of jests innumerable at her expense and that of her lovers, most of them, however, good-natured enough, for Madeleine Guimard had few enemies, and even the chroniclers of contemporary scandal generally have a good word to say for her.

In the etching in question one sees, under a toque with sky-blue plumes, a woman, with a death’s head crowned with false hair, and a bony neck, raising in the air a consumptive leg and waving her arms, at the ends of which are phalanxes of little bones in place of fingers.[91]

On her return to Paris, from England, in the summer of 1789, Mlle. Guimard married Jean Étienne Despréaux, the dancing-master and poet, who had been for some years an intimate friend, though not, it would appear, a lover.[92] The marriage took place on August 14, at the church of Sainte-Marie du Temple, the age of the bride being forty-six and that of her husband thirty-one. The acte de mariage, cited by Jal, states that the two had received the nuptial benediction, “after having renounced their profession,” and, to the great sorrow of her countless admirers, the Opera knew Madeleine Guimard no more.

It is not altogether easy to determine the reasons which induced Mlle. Guimard to take this step; a step which, as we have mentioned, entailed the renunciation of her profession. Certainly it could not have been any interested motive, since Despréaux was in far from affluent circumstances, while the danseuse was in possession of a comfortable little fortune, as fortunes went, in theatrical circles, in those days.[93] Nor is it at all likely that she was consumed with any very violent passion for the dancing-master, who, on his own confession, was insignificant of figure and remarkably plain of face.[94] The probability is that she was by this time heartily tired of the stage and of a life of gallantry, and desired to spend the remainder of her days in retirement and the odour of sanctity, with a man who, if he had no physical attractions to boast of, “possessed all the little agreeable talents calculated to assure the affection of a woman of pleasure whose youth was dead.”[95]

However that may be, the ménage appears to have been a happy one, and that notwithstanding the fact that the danseuse and her husband were very far from enjoying the life of comfort and tranquillity to which they had looked forward. For the Revolution had begun; and the Revolution meant to themselves and hundreds of other pensioners of the State an abrupt descent from comparative affluence to poverty. Their circumstances were, of course, superior to most of their colleagues, as Madeleine Guimard had saved money, a very small proportion, it is true, of the enormous sums which had passed through her hands, but still sufficient to save them from actual want.

When, in 1792, the municipality entrusted the management of the Opera to Celerier and Francœur, Despréaux was nominated by them a member of the administrative council and stage-manager. These posts would have more than compensated him for the loss of his pensions, but, unfortunately, the directors were shortly afterwards accused of embezzlement and arrested; and in September 1793, Despréaux, perhaps fearful of sharing their fate, resigned.

He and his wife now retired to a little house on the summit of Montmartre, to reach which, he tells us, it was necessary to traverse a road so steep that the Jacobin patrols neglected to ascend it, and they were, in consequence, left undisturbed. Here they appeared to have lived for some three years, and it was here that Despréaux composed most of the poems which he published later, under the title of Mes Passe-Temps. “I composed these chansons,” he says, “to find some distraction from the terrible evils that beset us, and as a little surprise for my wife, whom I adored.”[96]

Notwithstanding the disparity in years between them, there can be no doubt that Despréaux was devoted to his wife, and in a poetical “bouquet” entitled Un Bon Ménage, published in 1806, he informs the world of the profound happiness which he has found in his union with the danseuse:

In 1807, Despréaux was appointed inspector of the theatres of the Opera and the Tuileries. Having religiously preserved the traditions of the ancient Court, he was often consulted in regard to the ceremonial to be observed at the fêtes of the new Court of Napoleon. He became, in fact, a kind of unofficial master of the ceremonies, and, in this capacity, assisted at all the solemn functions of the Empire, notably at the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise, of which event he has left an interesting account in his Souvenirs. When the Empire fell, he found himself out of employment; but in 1815 received the appointments of inspector-general of Court entertainments and professor of dancing and deportment at the École Royale de Musique.

The ménage Despréaux-Guimard resided, in these last years, in the Rue de Ménars, where the ex-danseuse surrounded herself with a large circle of friends. Often the conversation turned on the past triumphs of Mlle. Guimard, when the younger members of the company would express their regret that it was impossible for them to form an idea of that marvellous talent which, for a whole generation, had so enchanted the patrons of the Opera, and would beg their hostess to give them a few steps of the ballets in which she had achieved her greatest successes. At first, the ballerina refused, on the score of her age and the decline of her physical powers. But the ingenious Despréaux erected in the salon a theatre, the curtain of which was so arranged as to reveal only the knee and the legs of the actors. And here he and his wife, concealing thus all the ravages that time had wrought upon face and figure, danced with legs and feet which seemed to the delighted spectators to have preserved all the grace and suppleness of youth.

Later, when increasing years and feeble health had caused her to retire altogether from society, if one of the few intimate friends who were still admitted to the house happened to refer to her glorious past at the Opera, the old artiste would sometimes offer to amuse her visitors with what she called her theatre. With that, she would draw from under her fauteuil a little drum, which she would place between her feet on a foot-stool. Then she would join two of her fingers, bow, lift the curtain, announce some ballet, and, by a marvel of memory and agility of hand, dance with her two fingers all the steps of this ballet—her own steps, and the steps of those who preceded, and of those who had doubled her—with such correctness as to make her audience appreciate the superiority of her own dancing.[97]

On May 4, 1816, Madeleine Guimard—or rather Madame Despréaux—died at the age of seventy-three; the death of the famous danseuse of the eighteenth century passing almost unnoticed in this Paris of the Restoration, which seemed to have already forgotten her dazzling triumphs of yesterday.

III

MADEMOISELLE RAUCOURT

SEVERAL versions have at different times been current in regard to the origin of Mlle. Raucourt. According to the one which, until comparatively recent years, found almost general acceptance, her baptismal name was Françoise Marie Antoinette Clairien; she was born at Dombasle, on November 29, 1753, and was the daughter of “a poor barber overwhelmed with children,” who consigned her to the care of the village postmaster, a person called François Saucerotte, by whom she was adopted.[98] That a child of that name was born at Dombasle, on the above-mentioned date, is true enough; but she was not the future tragédienne. The actress in question was born in Paris, on March 3, 1756; François Saucerotte was her own, and not her adopted, father, and she was baptized at the church of Saint-Severin, by the name of Marie Antoinette Joseph, as witness the acte de naissance, given by Auguste Jal, in his invaluable Dictionnaire de Biographie et d’Histoire:

“Wednesday, March 3, 1756.—Marie Antoinette Joseph, born to-day, daughter of François Saucerotte, bourgeois of Paris, and of Antoinette de la Porte, his wife, residing Rue de Vieille-Bouclerie. The godfather was Julien Mérel, labourer, the godmother, Marguerite Lancelin, fille majeure, both residing Rue du Bac. The godmother has declared herself unable to sign her name. (Signed) Mérel, Saucerotte.”

What occupation was followed by François Saucerotte at the time of his daughter’s birth is uncertain—bourgeois de Paris being a trifle indefinite. But, a few years later, he was seized with an ambition to become an actor and, accordingly, applied for and obtained an ordre de début at the Comédie-Française, where he appeared under the name of Raucourt. The début, however, was not a success; and the pit intimated its sense of M. Raucourt’s shortcomings in so unmistakable a manner that, after his second appearance, that gentleman prudently decided to seek fame and fortune before a less critical audience. He accordingly retired to the provinces, and from thence migrated to Spain, as a member of a French travelling company, taking his little daughter with him. The latter, who early decided to follow her father’s profession, amply atoned for any lack of ability on his part, and showed such extraordinary precocity that at the age of twelve she was already playing with success in several tragedy parts.

From Spain the Raucourts—to give them the name by which they were henceforth known—appear to have journeyed to St. Petersburg; but, towards the end of the year 1770, returned to France, where the girl obtained an engagement at Rouen, the conservatoire of the Paris theatres. Here she acted with such success, notably as Euphémie in De Belloy’s Gaston et Bayard, that the fame of her talent soon reached the capital and she received an order from the Gentlemen of the Chamber to make her début at the Comédie-Française.

Mlle. Raucourt and her father arrived in Paris in the spring of 1772, where they rented a modest apartment in the Rue Saint-Jacques, for though rich in hopes, their purses were light. Provincial players in those days gained abundant experience, but very little money.

The young actress’s first appearance at the Comédie-Française was preceded by some months of study, under the direction of Brizard, who was as excellent a teacher as he was an actor, and, delighted with his pupil’s intelligence and industry, did not rest content until he had taught her everything he knew. In the course of a few weeks, she is said to have mastered no less than nineteen important tragedy parts. From Brizard’s hands, and at his suggestion, she passed to those of Mlle. Clairon; and the celebrated tragédienne, partly out of a real liking for the girl and partly out of a desire to set up a rival to Madame Vestris, with whom her relations were at that time very strained, spared no pains to put the finishing touch to the actor’s work.[99]

At length, towards the end of the year, Mlle. Raucourt was deemed worthy to challenge the verdict of the Parisians, and, on December 23, 1772, she made her début, as Dido, in Le Franc de Pompignan’s famous tragedy, being then within rather more than two months of completing her seventeenth year.

And what a début it was! Never in the whole history of the theatre had so young an actress secured so brilliant, so extraordinary, a triumph. “Before the tragedy began,” says Grimm, “Brizard himself harangued the pit, demanded its indulgence for a budding talent, and assured it that his pupil, formed by the criticisms of the public, would one day be its work. The pit, which loves to the point of folly actors to address it, particularly when they call it the arbiter of tastes and of talents, warmly applauded the harangue of Achates Brizard.[100] But when it beheld the most beautiful and the most noble creature in the world advance, in the character of Dido, to the edge of the stage; when it heard the sweetest, the most flexible, the most harmonious, the most impressive of voices; when it remarked a style of acting full of dignity, intelligence, and the most subtle and delicate shades, the enthusiasm of the public knew no bounds. They raised cries of admiration and applause; they involuntarily embraced one another; they were perfectly intoxicated. When the play was over, the enthusiasm spread to their houses. Those who had been present at Didon dispersed to their various quarters, arrived like men demented, spoke with transports of the débutante, communicated their enthusiasm to those who had not seen her, and at every supper-table in Paris nothing was heard save the name of Raucourt.”[101]

Mlle. Raucourt had risen that morning unknown, at least so far as Paris was concerned; she retired to bed a celebrity, the idol of the playgoing public. All the gazettes, all the journals, all the correspondence of the time, resounded with her praises. “Nature,” wrote the dramatic critic of the Mercure, “appears to have lavished its gifts upon her: she is beautiful, she is impressive in all her rôles, she possesses a kind of innate aptitude for tragedy, and the most triumphant means of giving expression to its energy, its sentiment, and its passion; a voice flexible, sonorous, and well-modulated; a physiognomy which depicts the affections of the heart in all their variations; a look eloquent and expressive, the art of speaking to the eyes and of investing her by-play with interest. This young actress has received everything from beneficent Nature, and study and experience have had little to do with perfecting and completing her talents.”[102] Grimm predicted that she would be the “gloire immortelle” of the French stage. Another critic declared the annihilation of the British fleet alone could have aroused a deeper enthusiasm than her acting; while the Mémoires secrets hailed her as a veritable prodigy: “It is impossible to describe the sensation she has created; nothing like it has been seen within the memory of living man. She is only sixteen and a half; she is a study for a painter. She has the most noble, the most dramatic face, the most enchanting voice, a prodigious intelligence; she did not make a single false intonation. Throughout the whole of her very difficult part, she did not commit the slightest error, not even an inappropriate gesture. A little stiffness and embarrassment in the movements of her arms is the only fault people have been able to find in her.”[103]

Let us here remark that all this eulogy was very far from being deserved, and that the critics ere long found reason to modify their enthusiasm. Mlle. Raucourt was unquestionably a very handsome girl, and certainly possessed many of the qualities attributed to her by her admirers; but she never attained anything like the standard of excellence of Adrienne Lecouvreur, or Mlle. Dumesnil, or Mlle. Clairon. “With a little sensibility,” remarks one of her colleagues of the Comédie-Française, “she might have been the greatest of tragédiennes; but that quality, so invaluable on the stage, was wanting.” She was wanting also in versatility; her acting was, so to speak, all of a piece; she sinned in excess of force and energy, and never mastered the art of varying her intonations, what Mlle. Clairon called “the eloquence of sounds.” No one knew better than did she how to give expression to the great passions: hatred, jealousy, revenge. She was admirable in the Agrippine of Britannicus, inimitable in the Jocaste of Œdipe. But the more human, the more tender passions: pity, tenderness, love, were unknown to her. Thus her rendering of Phèdre, the greatest character of the classic répertoire, was never more than moderately successful, and compared very unfavourably with that of Mlle. Dumesnil.[104]

However, the public having with one accord decided to place the new actress on a pedestal and fall down before her, was, for the time being, blind to her shortcomings. Its enthusiasm increased with each performance, until it reached a veritable frenzy. On the days on which she was to appear, the box-office of the theatre was literally besieged from an early hour in the morning. Servants sent by their employers to secure places discharged their mission at the risk of their lives; several were carried away in an unconscious state, and one is said to have died, as the result of the injuries he received. Tickets for the pit, costing twenty-four sous, were sold for nine or ten francs apiece, in the court of the Tuileries, by persons who had been intrepid enough to secure them; the prices of the other places rising in the same proportion. The days of the Rue Quincampoix seemed to have returned.

When the time for the performance drew near, the scene almost baffled description. All the approaches to the Comédie-Française were so blocked with people that the actors themselves could with difficulty persuade their excited patrons to make way for them. An enormous crowd surged round the theatre, forced the doors, and struggled and fought for the best places in the pit. Those who, by good fortune or superior physical strength, emerged triumphant from the mêlée, arrived panting for breath, with their clothes nearly torn from their backs, dishevelled hair, and faces streaming with perspiration. “Do you think,” inquired an old lady, in Grimm’s hearing, one evening, “that if it had been a question of saving their country, these people would have exposed themselves like this?”

The enthusiasm of the town spread to the Court, and, on January 5, the new actress was commanded to appear at Versailles, where she seems to have created a similar sensation. Louis XV., despite his indifference to tragedy, sat out Didon to the end, sent for Mlle. Raucourt and, after warmly complimenting her, presented her to the Dauphiness, as the Queen of Carthage. He also made her a present of fifty louis, and gave orders that she should be received as a member of the Comédie without being required to give any further proofs of her talent. Madame du Barry hastened to follow his Majesty’s example, and offered the young actress the choice of three dresses for her private use, or a robe de théâtre. To which the girl replied that she would prefer the stage costume, “since, in that case, the public would profit by Madame la Comtesse’s goodness as well as herself.”[105]

After appearing four times in Didon, Mlle. Raucourt played the parts of Émilie, in Cinna, Monime, in Mithridate, Idamé, in Voltaire’s Orphelin de la Chine, Hermione, in Andromaque, and, finally, that of Pulchérie, in Héraclitus, in all of which rôles, Grimm tells us, “she showed the happiest dispositions and announced the greatest talents.” The furore she excited, so far from diminishing, continued to increase, and not a day passed without some persons being more or less seriously injured in the struggle at the doors of the theatre. The climax of absurdity seems to have been reached a few evenings after her visit to Versailles, when her admirers in the pit clamoured for “a benefit performance for the new actress,” and refused to allow the play to proceed until the management had announced their willingness to accede to their patrons’ wishes, provided the Gentlemen of the Chamber would accord them permission.

In the meanwhile, the triumphs of Mlle. Raucourt, the ovations of which she was every evening the recipient, had begun to arouse the alarm and jealousy of her colleagues. The two leading actresses of the company, Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder,[106] had been for some time mortal enemies; but, in the presence of this newcomer, who had in a single night relegated them both to secondary places in the affections of the fickle public, they recognised the wisdom of forgetting their differences for the nonce and making common cause against the interloper. They organised a cabal; they filled the pit with their personal friends and with hired agents, instructed to interrupt the finest tirades of Mlle. Raucourt with jeers and hisses, and, behind the scenes, they did everything in their power to render their young rival’s life a burden to her. Their intrigues were fruitless, nay more, they recoiled upon their own heads. The voices of the malcontents were drowned in the bursts of applause, which increased in volume and frequency the moment it became known that an opposition was at work. So indignant were the audience that any shortcomings on the part of its idol were at once attributed to the machinations of her jealous rivals. One evening, when playing Monime, she forgot her part. “It is all the fault of those Sainvals,” said the indignant parterre. On another, a cat happened to stray on to the stage and interrupted the performance with plaintive cries. “I will wager that that cat belongs to Madame Vestris!” cried a wag in the pit; and the sally was followed by a roar of derisive laughter.[107] The intriguers found themselves covered with ridicule; while Mlle. Raucourt’s position grew stronger every day.

The extraordinary popularity of Mlle. Raucourt with the playgoing public was enhanced by an unsullied reputation off the stage. “I understand,” writes Grimm, “that this charming creature, so imposing on the stage, is very simple in private life; that she has all the candour and innocence of her age, and occupies with girlish amusements the time not set apart for study. Many dissertations have been written with the view of discovering metaphysically by what power a girl so young and innocent can represent with so much power on the stage the transports and the fury of love.” He adds that so determined was her father to defend her chastity that he invariably carried two loaded pistols “in order to blow out the brains of the first who should make an attempt on the virtue of his daughter.”[108]

M. Raucourt indeed followed his talented daughter about like her shadow; to the theatre, on her shopping expeditions, to the private houses to which she was invited. During the performances, he mounted sentinel in the wings, to be ready to place himself at her side the moment she made her exit. People compared him to a jealous lover keeping watch over a flighty mistress.

All these precautions, however, were quite unnecessary. Mlle. Raucourt was virtuous, or rather she was virtue itself. “In vain was her heart besieged like the box-office of the theatre on the evenings on which she was to appear; in vain her adorers prostrated themselves before her. She turned a deaf ear to the most brilliant propositions; she repulsed with horror the most tempting offers.”

Soon the virtue of Mlle. Raucourt became as celebrated as her talent; it was the talk of the town; the memoirs and correspondence of the time are full of it. “The virtue of the new actress still keeps up.” “The virtue of the new actress resists the numerous assaults to which it is subjected.” “The new actress has begun to give petits soupers, which, it is hoped, may lead to what she has hitherto escaped.” And so forth.

It cannot be said that the young woman lacked encouragement to persevere in a course which, for an actress in those days, was as laudable as it was novel. Every evening the theatre resounded with acclamations, which were intended to be as much a tribute to her exemplary conduct as to her beauty and talent. Devout ladies of the Court vied with one another in giving her good advice and in enriching her wardrobe; and all manner of flattering epithets were bestowed upon her. She was “Jeanne d’Arc at the Comédie-Française,” “the Wise Virgin in the midst of the foolish ones,” “Diana with the features of Venus.”

Nor was material encouragement wanting, as the following anecdote will show:

“January 20, 1773.—Mlle. Raucourt continues to create the greatest sensation. It is reported that the other day a man entered her dressing-room, who informed her that she could judge from his age and his appearance that he was not prompted by any unlawful motive, but that he was guided solely by a profound sentiment of admiration for her talent; that he entreated her not to be offended with one who, in his enthusiasm, desired to give her proofs of his esteem by a little tribute which he would lay upon her toilette-table; and forthwith deposited there two rouleaux of one hundred louis each.” Mlle. Raucourt, the chronicler adds, graciously replied that it was impossible for her to refuse a gift offered in such terms, and the gentleman departed, without making himself known.[109]

A few days later, the lady received an anonymous offer of 12,000 francs a year, “for so long as she remained chaste.” The writer went on to say that if she decided not to do so, and would grant him the preference, the pension should be doubled. The Nouvelles à la main, which reports this incident, informs its readers that it is not yet known which offer Mlle. Raucourt had decided to accept; but since the anonymous “benefactor” was commonly understood to be none other than a Prince of the Blood, the Duc de Bourbon to wit, it would be scarcely reasonable to expect her to continue inflexible.

The young actress, nevertheless, would accept nothing from the duke, and her refusal placed the comble upon her fame. Her enemies declared that she must be “not a woman at all, but a monster”; her idolators could find no words in which to express their admiration.

Voltaire was the first to besmirch the spotless reputation of Mlle. Raucourt. It is said that so much fuss about the virtue of an actress irritated him, and that he was annoyed because the girl’s successes in the classic répertoire had caused the production of his Lois de Minos, from which he expected great things, to be indefinitely postponed. As, however, Voltaire, with all his faults, was incapable of deliberately slandering a woman, it is probable that he acted in good faith, prompted by a desire to unmask a hypocrite. Circumstance sometimes obliged the Patriarch to play the hypocrite himself; but he hated hypocrisy in others; and the news that a young débutante, solely on account of an undeserved reputation for virtue, was being exalted above his beloved Adrienne Lecouvreur and his favourite interpreter, Mlle. Clairon, may well have filled him with righteous indignation.

However that may be, he wrote to his friend, the Maréchal de Richelieu, that he was informed, on excellent authority, that, while in Spain, the supposed immaculate Raucourt had been the mistress of a gentleman from Geneva, who had been travelling in that country.

As ill-luck would have it, when the letter arrived, Mlle. Raucourt was dining at Richelieu’s house, chaperoned, it is hardly necessary to observe, by her vigilant father; young ladies who valued their reputations did not go unprotected to visit that evergreen sinner. D’Alembert, the Princesse de Beauvau, and Mlle. Clairon’s sometime adorer, the Marquis de Ximenès, were also present. As every one was anxious to know what the great man had to say, Richelieu, without opening the letter, handed it to Ximenès, with a request that he would read it to the company. The marquis complied, and proceeded until he had uttered the fatal sentence, when he stopped abruptly and began mumbling apologies. Terrible was the commotion which ensued. Mlle. Raucourt promptly swooned away; her father drew his sword, swearing that he would proceed to Ferney and run the Patriarch through the body; the Princesse de Beauvau called the maladroit marquis a fool; while wicked old Richelieu, we may presume, looked on choking with suppressed mirth.

On the morrow, the story was all over Paris. The first feeling was one of incredulity—people are always slow to believe that idols of their own creation have feet of clay—and both Court and town took the side of the outraged actress, and declared that she had been grossly calumniated. D’Alembert reported the scene at the marshal’s house, and the feeling which his accusation had aroused, to Voltaire, who, perhaps alarmed for the future reception of his tragedies, hastened to pour the balm of his flattery upon the wound which he had inflicted: “I am the aged Æson, and you the enchantress Medea.” “I have scarcely left to me eyes to see, a soul to admire, a hand to write to you.” And then he breaks forth into verse:

But the mischief was done: no amount of epistles or madrigals could repair it. Gradually people began to think that there might have been more truth in the story about the Genevese lover than they had at first supposed; Voltaire, they reflected, lived close to Geneva, and was probably well informed. Mlle. Raucourt’s many adorers took courage; they redoubled their attentions; they refused any longer to believe her indignant protestations. Nothing, as the actor Fleury observes, is more dangerous to virtue than such incredulity, nothing more disheartening than to make sacrifices in which the world does not believe. Whether Voltaire’s accusation was true or not, certain it is that Mlle. Raucourt ere long came to the conclusion that she had made sacrifices enough, and one fine day the town “learned with stupefaction” that at Compiègne, where the troupe of the Comédie-Française was giving a series of performances before the Court, the impregnable virtue of its idol had at length succumbed.

It was at first reported that the fortress had surrendered to no less a person than the King himself. “No one expected this début,” writes a Parisian staying at Compiègne, “which is not likely to meet with the success of Didon. But she has an excuse. What woman can resist her King?”

Soon, however, this rumour was contradicted. It was not his Most Christian Majesty, but his Prime Minister, the Duc d’Aiguillon, who had triumphed over the resistance of the lady. A more unfortunate choice for an actress who wished to retain her popularity with the Parisians could not have been made. Next to the Chancellor, Maupeou, and the Comptroller-General, the Abbé Terrai, d’Aiguillon was the best-hated man in France.

Mlle. Raucourt’s intimacy with the Minister lasted but a very short time; it was merely a galanterie. But, in March 1774, we learn that she is living openly under the protection of the Marquis de Bièvre, a young officer of Musketeers, with some literary pretensions,[110] who had paid her debts, amounting, it was said, to 40,000 livres, made a settlement upon her, and allowed her a handsome sum per month, for current expenses.

The once modest and retiring young actress, as if resolved to atone for the strict decorum she had formerly imposed upon herself, now lived a life of the utmost luxury and extravagance. She had ten or twelve horses in her stables, rented two or three houses, and kept fifteen servants, while her toilettes were the envy and despair of all feminine Paris. On Good Friday, she drove to the Abbey of Longchamps, in the train of Mlle. Duthé and Mlle. Cléophile, the inamorata of the Spanish Ambassador, two of the most extravagant courtesans of the time, “in a pompous equipage drawn by four horses.” “The carriage was of an apple-green colour, encrusted with different coloured stones, the mountings of the harness were of silver, and the reins of crimson silk.” The chronicler adds that it is common belief that M. de Bièvre is not the only person who pays for these luxuries.

Soon M. de Bièvre was discarded and, “after some excursions into the Court and financial circles,” Mlle. Raucourt accepted the protection of another marquis, de Villette, the dissipated husband of Voltaire’s “Belle et Bonne.” M. de Villette’s reign was even shorter than that of his predecessor in the lady’s affections, and far from a tranquil one. Not content with doing her very best to ruin him by her extravagance, his mistress tried to inveigle him into a duel with the architect Belanger, over some epigram which Sophie Arnould had made at her expense, and was highly indignant when poor Villette, who was of a peace-loving disposition, declined to humour her. After a few weeks, they quarrelled violently over money matters and parted on very bad terms, but not before the marquis had, by a letter to the gazettes, taken the whole town into his confidence in regard to the way the lady had treated him.

MADEMOISELLE RAUCOURT

MADEMOISELLE RAUCOURT From an engraving by Ruotte after the painting by Gros in the Collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley
MADEMOISELLE RAUCOURT
From an engraving by Ruotte after the painting by Gros in the Collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley

Mlle. Raucourt’s conduct grew worse and worse; soon she had become perfectly reckless. Women like Camargo, Clairon, Guimard, Gaussin, and Sophie Arnould had been lax enough in their morals; but, at least, they had been capable of more or less disinterested attachments, and had, moreover, generally contrived to cast a veil over their worst irregularities. Mlle. Raucourt seemed as heartless as she was indifferent to public opinion. She passed from gallantry to gallantry; she ruined foolish young men and then laughed at their folly, cynically observing that “women were the most expensive of all tastes”; she flaunted her profligacy in the face of all Paris, and contracted immense debts, which there was no possibility of her being able to discharge. “In the space of a few months,” writes Grimm, “she astonished Court and town, as much by the excess of her irregularities as she had by the rare prodigy of her innocence. She scandalised even those who were least susceptible to scandal.”

The day of reckoning was not long in arriving. Her renown as a tragédienne disappeared with her reputation for virtue; and this actress who, at the time of her début, had been vaunted as the superior of Dumesnil and Clairon, was soon to become one of the most striking examples in theatrical history of the fickleness of the mob. The public decided that it had been the dupe of an unscrupulous hypocrite and burned with righteous indignation. Soon detractors arose: they declared that the young actress had no soul, no sensibility; that her delivery was stilted and artificial; that she indulged too freely in gesticulation; that her acting lacked restraint, and that her voice—that “sweetest, most flexible, most harmonious, most enchanting of voices”—was harsh and unpleasant. They found fault with her figure: her waist was too long, her arms too thin. Finally, they even denied the beauty of her face, on the ground that it was too masculine. “It was as though a bandage had fallen from the eyes of the public.”

There can be very little doubt that Mlle. Raucourt’s acting was now distinctly inferior to what it had been at the time of her first appearance at the Comédie-Française. A dissipated life does not conduce to success in any profession, and it would appear that, so far from making any progress, she had neglected her studies to the point of forgetting much of what Brizard and Mlle. Clairon had been at such pains to teach her. Still, as we have said elsewhere, her talents had been absurdly overrated, and a reaction was bound to set in sooner or later. That it came so quickly, however, and assumed so violent a form was the result of circumstances entirely unconnected with her art.

Her reception as Hermione, in Andromaque, in March 1774, was the first sign of the coming storm. According to the Mémoires secrets, the acting all round on this occasion left a good deal to be desired; but the public, who had just learned that Mlle. Raucourt was living openly with the Marquis de Bièvre, concentrated its resentment upon her, and she was loudly hissed.

The hostile demonstrations grew more frequent and more pronounced in proportion as the actress’s irregularities became more notorious. Nevertheless, so long as there was nothing worse than innumerable gallantries with which to reproach her, she was not without supporters in the pit, whose acclamations served to counteract, if not entirely to drown, the cries of the malcontents. Presently, however, ugly rumours began to spread—rumours which attributed to the young tragédienne the shameful vices of ancient Greece, and which, there is reason to believe, were but too well justified.[111] Every one now turned against her; those who had been loudest in chanting her praises were now foremost in ridicule and abuse, and such was the general odium which she had contrived to excite that she counted herself fortunate if her appearance on the stage was received in silence. “Never,” wrote Grimm, “was idol worshipped with more infatuation; never was idol broken with more contempt.”

There was, however, a slight reaction in her favour when, on October 30, 1775, she appeared as the Statue, in the Pygmalion of Jean Jacques Rousseau. “She was truly beautiful in this pose,” says the critic of the Mémoires secrets. “It is considered the most successful part she has yet undertaken.” And La Harpe writes: “This rôle, which would be suitable for so few women, is precisely that which is most becoming to Mlle. Raucourt. The only thing required of her is to be beautiful, and in that she is a complete success. It is impossible to imagine a more seductive vision than this actress, as she poses on her pedestal at the moment when the veil which has hitherto covered her is drawn aside. Her head was that of Venus, and her leg, half-discovered, that of Diana.”[112]

But this was, after all, only a respite. Soon her humiliations recommenced. Her rivals, Madame Vestris and the elder Mlle. Sainval, powerless, as we have seen, to injure her, so long as she retained her popularity, had not been slow to take advantage of the change in public feeling. A cabal was formed against her at the theatre; she was systematically entrusted with parts quite unsuited to her style of acting, and sometimes called upon, at a few hours’ notice, to appear in characters which she had only partially studied. Thus, during a revival of Britannicus, Mlle. Dumesnil, happening to fall ill, the luckless young actress found herself suddenly compelled to play Agrippine, a rôle which, though in later years one of her most successful impersonations, was at this time almost unknown to her. Before the play began, d’Auberval, who by no means approved of the proceedings of the cabal, came before the curtain, informed the pit of Mlle. Dumesnil’s indisposition, and begged its indulgence for her substitute. His request was of no avail; and poor Mlle. Raucourt met with such a reception that she fainted and had to be carried off the stage.

To the intrigues of her rivals and the insults of the pit were now added the importunities and threats of her creditors. In the four years she had been a member of the Comédie-Française she had, besides spending immense sums belonging to her infatuated admirers, contrived to run into debt to the extent of something like 300,000 livres, and went in hourly fear of arrest. At length, the situation became intolerable, and she resolved to seek safety in flight. “It was intended to produce the Zuma of M. Le Fèvre,” writes Grimm, “when the compulsory disappearance of Mlle. Raucourt, who was to have played one of the principal parts, caused the rehearsals to be suddenly interrupted. Sudden as was her disappearance, it has occasioned little surprise.”

Nothing was heard of the fugitive for six weeks, during which, it was subsequently ascertained, she had been hiding in the neighbourhood of Paris, disguised as a dragoon. A good-natured farmer, who mistook her for a young officer in trouble about a duel, had given her shelter. At the end of that time she returned, to find that her name had been struck off the books of the Comédie-Française, and her place given to Mlle. Sainval the younger, who, received with enthusiasm on her début, had been subsequently altogether eclipsed by Mlle. Raucourt, and, for some time past, had been playing at Lyons.[113]

At first, Mlle. Raucourt took refuge in the Temple, the sanctuary of insolvent debtors, while some of the few friends still left to her negotiated with her creditors, with a view to obtaining a reprieve. Perhaps the creditors thought that, if time were given to her, the lady might contrive to secure some wealthy admirer, by whom their claims would be settled. Any way, they consented to accord her a few months’ grace, and, in the autumn, Mlle. Raucourt left the Temple and went to live with a Madame Souck, “a German woman of horribly depraved morals,” in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. Madame Souck, it transpired, had introduced Mlle. Raucourt into the house in the temporary absence of the landlord, who, on his return, found her established in a vacant suite of apartments, which she firmly declined to vacate. When he ventured to remonstrate, Madame Souck’s servants threatened him with “coups de bâton et autres violences,” and also maltreated one of his tenants, who would appear to have taken the landlord’s part. So threatening, indeed, did the attitude of the two ladies and their domestics become that the poor landlord declared, in a complaint he lodged before a commissary of police, that he dared not even sleep in his own house, “for fear of accidents.”[114]

Madame Souck’s finances, like those of her friend, were in a parlous state, and, in the following spring, a firm of silk-merchants of the Rue Saint-Honoré levied an execution upon her premises, and placed one Thomas Philippe Violet and another bailiff in possession. Madame Souck, however, was not a lady to submit tamely to such inconvenience, and, on March 27, we find Thomas Philippe Violet appearing before a commissary of the Châtelet to lodge a complaint and demand protection against the dame Souck, the demoiselle Raucourt, and other persons, “their accomplices, abettors, and adherents.” In this document, he declares that, on the night of the 25th to 26th inst., at two hours after midnight, the said dame Souck and the said demoiselle Raucourt, “both dressed in men’s clothes,” arrived, accompanied by the said accomplices, abettors, and adherents, and, after creating a terrible uproar and “swearing by the Holy Name of God,” proceeded with blows and kicks to force the doors, and ejected both him and his colleague into the street.[115]

That same day, Mlle. Raucourt was arrested, at the suit of a usurer, who had grown tired of waiting for his money, and conveyed to For l’Évêque. Fortunately for her, she contrived to obtain her release before the news of her arrest had been noised abroad, in which case she would have had any number of detainers lodged against her, and might have remained under lock and key for an indefinite time. The Prince de Ligne, who had, or had formerly had, tender relations with Madame Souck, happened to be in Paris and, at the instance of that lady, intervened on the actress’s behalf. He appears to have settled the usurer’s claim and also to have encouraged a belief that he intended to pay all Mlle. Raucourt’s debts. By this means the tragédienne obtained a fresh respite, which she employed in endeavouring to gain readmission to the Comédie-Française. In this she failed and, finding that her creditors were again on the point of taking up arms, she once more took to flight, and this time left the country, accompanied by her devoted friend, Madame Souck.

The movements of Mlle. Raucourt during the next two years are shrouded in mystery. All that is known for certain, is that she exploited North Germany, Poland, and Russia, and passed some time in Berlin and Warsaw. In July 1778, the Nouvelles à la main report that, at Hamburg, both she and Madame Souck had been arrested on a charge of swindling, and, having been whipped and branded, expelled from the city. This, however, was no doubt only malicious gossip spread about by the young actress’s enemies, determined to keep not only the Comédie-Française, but France itself closed against her; and there was probably more truth in a story from Holland, to the effect that Mlle. Raucourt had become the mistress of a wealthy Russian nobleman and had “squandered in a very short time a large fortune.”

In the meanwhile, great events were taking place in Paris. The alliance between Madame Vestris and Mlle. Sainval the elder, which their common jealousy of Mlle. Raucourt had called into being, had lasted only so long as the total discomfiture of that lady had rendered necessary. Its object accomplished, it was dissolved, and the parties turned their weapons against each other. Counting upon the support of her lover, the Duc de Duras, who, in his capacity as First Gentleman of the Chamber, exercised a not altogether judicious control over the affairs of the Comédie-Française, Madame Vestris appropriated certain characters of the classic répertoire which Mlle. Sainval had hitherto regarded as her exclusive property. The latter angrily protested, and the matter was referred to the Gentlemen of the Chamber, who, at the instance of the Duc de Duras, decided in favour of Madame Vestris. This decision was followed by open war between the two actresses and their respective partisans; nothing else was talked of in the green-rooms, the cafés, and the salons of Paris, and very hard knocks were given and received.

Madame Vestris wrote to the Journal de Paris, to justify the course she had taken; Mlle. Sainval promptly replied; but the editor returned her letter, with an intimation that he had received instructions from a high quarter that no reply was to be inserted. Indignant at such injustice, the lady thereupon expanded her letter into a pamphlet, “in which M. de Duras was insulted, and the Queen even mentioned in a manner far from respectful.”[116] Marie Antoinette, who, Madame Campan tells us, was accused, by implication, of leading the King by the nose, seems to have been rather amused than otherwise; but the duke was furious. The pamphlet had contained several of his private letters, and while all playgoing Paris was indignant at the partiality which these revealed, all literary Paris was making merry at the expense of an Academician who could not write his mother-tongue with even an approach to accuracy. The angry nobleman insisted that condign and exemplary punishment should be meted out to the offender, and poor Mlle. Sainval was expelled from the Comédie-Française, prohibited from performing in any provincial theatre, and exiled to Clermont, in Beauvoisis.[117] This high-handed action was bitterly resented by the public. Mlle. Sainval had been far more popular than her rival, whose relations with the Duc de Duras had caused her to be regarded as a minion of the Court, and the habitués of the pit now, almost to a man, declared in her favour. Madame Vestris’s appearance on the stage was the signal for a storm of hisses; while, on the other hand, the younger sister of the disgraced actress was received with tumultuous cheering, and when, one evening, in the character of Aménaïde, in Tancrède, she pronounced the line,