In a boulevard café, over his favourite, strange mixture of strawberry syrup and champagne, a well-known Paris journalist recently called my attention to the profusion of playwrights of high, indisputable ability now writing for the French stage.
“There are not enough theatres to accommodate them all,” he said. “The papers inform us that X—— has just finished a new chef-d’œuvre, but often four, six, even ten months will elapse ere the masterpiece can be produced. Why? Because there is no room for X——. He must wait his turn; and in his leisure—O admirable fertility—he writes yet another play.”
“Nevertheless you have three important répétitions générales this week,” I remarked. “Capus to-morrow, Donnay at the Français on Wednesday, and de Flers and Caillavet, the Inexhaustible, on Friday.”
“Charming Capus, delightful Donnay, amazing de Flers and Caillavet,” exclaimed my companion. “Listen; we are free for an hour. Let us run over the names of our leading playwrights—a formidable list. Garçon, another glass”—and away went the waiter in quest of more syrup and champagne.
Of course, no mere “running over” of the great name of Rostand. Both of us soon found ourselves reciting passages from Cyrano, Chantecler, La Princesse Lointaine—my friend eloquently and emotionally, myself alas! with the natural embarrassment and self-consciousness of the foreigner. “Au trot, au galop,” said my companion, glancing at the clock. And rapidly we proceeded to review the “formidable list” of France’s leading dramatists:—Paul Hervieu, the cultured, polished author of Le Dédale and La Course au Flambeau. Violent, destructive Henri Bernstein—La Griffe, La Rafale, Samson. Henri Lavedan, brilliantly audacious in Le Nouveau Jeu, delightfully ironical in the Marquis de Priola, but serious, profound (a veritable tour de force) in Le Duel. Then Capus, the tolerant, the sympathetic: Nôtre Jeunesse, Les Passagères, Monsieur Piégois. Émile Fabre, wonderful manipulator of stage “crowds,” Les Ventres Dorés. Lively, brilliant de Flers and Caillavet, Le Roi, L’Ane de Buridan, L’Amour Veille. Worldly, cynical Abel Hermant, Les Transatlantiques, Monsieur de Courpière. Jules Lemaître, tender in La Massière, tragical in Bertrad. Brieux: the amusing Hannetons, sombre, harrowing Maternité. Georges Porto-Riche, L’Amoureuse, perhaps the finest modern comedy in the repertoire of the French National Theatre. Sound admirable Donnay, Amants, Le Retour de Jérusalem. Anatole France, the incomparable Crainquebille. MM. Arquillière and Bernède, with their masterly pictures of military life, La Grande Famille, Sous l’Epaulette. Romantic, vigorous Jean Richepin, Le Chemineau. Sardonic, anarchical Octave Mirbeau, Les Affaires sont les Affaires, Le Foyer. Humane, chivalrous Pierre Wolff, L’Age d’Aimer and Le Ruisseau. Georges Ancey, earnest investigator into the hidden crafty practices of the Catholic Church, Ces Messieurs. Gentle, elegant Romain Coolus, L’Enfant chérie and Une Femme Passa. Grim, lurid André de Lorde of the Grand Guignol. Ardent, passionate Henri Bataille, Un Scandale, La Vierge Folle, La Femme Nue.
“Formidable, formidable!” exclaimed our Paris journalist, wiping his brow.
“There remains M. Paul Bourget,” I said.
“M. Paul Bourget is ponderous, prejudiced, pedantic,” objected my companion. “I have just seen his latest photograph, which shows him seated at his writing-desk in a frock coat. Novels of life in the Faubourg St Germain, such as M. Bourget has produced, may possibly be written in a frock coat—not plays.”
“No doubt the coat was only put on for the visit of the photographer,” I charitably suggested.
“M. Paul Bourget’s plays convey the impression—no, the conviction—that they were written in the conventional, cramped armour of a frock coat,” was the solemn, categorical retort.
Now for M. Bourget, on his side it would be permissible to object that a gentleman who takes thick strawberry syrup in his champagne commits no less of an enormity than the dramatist who writes his plays in a frock coat; and that therefore, he, M. Bourget, considers himself untouched by the allegations directed against him from that hostile and eccentric quarter. Nevertheless, an examination of M. Bourget’s dramatic work—Un Divorce, L’Emigré, La Barricade—compels the comparison that whereas his fellow-playwrights adopt the theatre exclusively as a sphere in which to hold up a vivid, faithful, scrupulously impartial picture of scenes from actual life—la vie vivante—M. Bourget uses the stage, ponderously, as a platform or a pulpit. His views on social questions—the dominant ideas, the passions of the hour—are well known. They are autocratic, severe: in the French sense of the word, “correct.” But it unfortunately happens that l’homme correct possesses none of those indispensable attributes required of the playwright—an open mind, imagination, a sense of humour. A firm clerical and the irreconcilable antagonist of divorce, M. Bourget naturally maintains that in a spiritual emergency, women, as well as men, are more efficaciously helped to right conduct by priestly government than by habits of self-reliance. Then his sympathies have ever rested undisguisedly with the classes he has portrayed in his novels—the languid worldling of the Faubourg St Germain, the haute bourgeoisie, the despotic châtelain.
“M. Bourget is not interested in humble people. The vicissitudes, the amours, the miseries of the lower classes, he deems beneath his notice. He concerns himself only with the emotions of the elegant and the rich,” bitter, sardonic M. Octave Mirbeau makes one of his characters remark. And, truly enough, it has to be affirmed that however hard he may have tried to repress his aristocratic proclivities and prejudices when writing for the stage, the author of Un Divorce and La Barricade has remained, despite his endeavours, l’homme autoritaire, l’homme correct.
“Je ne connais pas des idées généreuses,” he has announced. “Je ne connais que des idées vraies ou fausses, et il ne vaudrait pas la peine d’écrire si ce n’était pas pour énoncer les idées que l’on croit et que l’on sait vraies.” And in the press, in conferences, in prefaces, the “eminent Academician” (as the clerical Gaulois monotonously designates M. Bourget) has furthermore declared that Un Divorce and La Barricade were written in a rigorously impartial spirit. But other critics maintain that the controversies that have raged around M. Bourget’s dramatic efforts (started with no little pretentiousness by the author himself) establish nothing. The plays speak for themselves.
M. Bourget’s observations have persuaded him that the rebellious spirit prevailing amongst the working classes is a menace to his country:
“C’est cette sensation du danger présent que j’aurais voulu donner dans La Barricade sûr, si j’avais pu y réussir, d’avoir servi utilement ma classe, et par conséquent mon pays.”
But according to M. Pataud, the notorious ex-Secretary of the Syndicate of Electricians, M. Bourget carried away with him a totally false impression of the men and places he professes so closely, and also so impartially, to have studied.
A word about M. Pataud. It was shortly after he had ordered the Electricians’ strike that plunged Paris almost into darkness for two hours,[2] and at the zenith of his fame, that the “Roi de la Lumière” attended a performance of La Barricade at the Vaudeville Theatre. It had been reported that he had served M. Bourget as a model for the character of Thubeuf, the professional agitator in the play. This, M. Bourget emphatically denied. “Let me see for myself,” said M. Pataud. And he requested M. Bourget to send him a ticket of admission to the theatre, and humorously offered to return the compliment by placing a seat in the Bourse du Travail at the dramatist’s disposal.
Well, M. Bourget granted the request: but ignored the invitation to the Labour Exchange. And one night “King Pataud” seated himself, amidst le Tout Paris in the most fashionable of the boulevard theatres. He himself, in spite of his pink shirt, red tie, and “bowler” hat, belonged in a sense to le Tout Paris. Was he not “Le Roi de la Lumière”? There were columns about him in the newspapers; he was “impersonated” in every music-hall revue, and his picture post cards sold by the thousand. Then, pressing (and sentimental) requests for his autograph; invitations out to dinner and gifts of cigarettes and cigars; and what a stir, what excited cries of “There goes Pataud,” when the great man swaggered down the boulevards with a fine Havana stuck in a corner of his mouth, and the “bowler” hat tilted rakishly over the right eye!
Nor in the Vaudeville Theatre was his triumph less complete. The interest of the brilliant audience was centred on “Fauteuil No. 159”; not on the stage. There sat the man who had but to give the signal and—out would go the lights! So was every opera-glass levelled at him, and so—at the end of the performance—were all the reporters in Paris eager to obtain “King” Pataud’s impressions of the play. “Not bad,” he was reported to have said. “But M. Bourget’s conception of how strikes are conducted is ridiculous. And his strikers are equally absurd.”
I fancy M. Bourget must have regretted that gift of “Fauteuil No. 159” at the time. But to-day he has his revenge—for it was the free seat in the Vaudeville Theatre that led to “King” Pataud’s downfall! After the agitator’s visit to La Barricade it became the fashion amongst the managers to invite the “Roi de la Lumière” to their theatres. Behold him, actually, at the first performance of Chantecler—and at the Gymnase, the Variétés, the Palais Royal. But if the public rejoiced over “King” Pataud’s presence at the theatre, his colleagues in the labour world were to be heard grumbling. Pataud (and it was true) was “getting his head turned.” Pataud was neglecting the Bourse du Travail for theatres and brilliant restaurants. But the “Roi de la Lumière” paid no heed to these reproofs, nor to complaints and warnings vigorously expressed. And the crisis came, the storm burst, when “King” Pataud and an electrician came to blows on the boulevards, and were marched off to the police station on a charge of breaking the peace. At the station, the “Roi de la Lumière” was searched. “Ah, you do yourself well, you enjoy life, you have a gay time of it,” grinned the police commissaire, after examining the agitator’s pocket-book. It contained bank-notes for a large sum, receipted bills from luxurious restaurants and hotels, and (what of course, particularly delighted the Parisian) the autographed photograph of a certain very blonde and very lively actress. So, indignation and disgust of the Syndicate of Electricians, who had contributed to their secretary’s support. He was called upon to resign. And to-day M. Pataud is an agent for a champagne firm; and the street gamins who once cheered him, now—O supreme insult—apostrophise him as “sale bourgeois.”
Two questions remain for those whose opinion in the Amazing City counts. The first is: Does an Eminent Academician, who, whether he writes in a frock coat or no, professes the conviction that it would not be worth while to produce plays only to reveal the influence and power of men’s emotions, passions and ideals in the shaping of life, unless one had some ulterior clerical, social or political object to serve, stand in the hopeful ways of thought that distinguish the first order of Dramatists? The answer to the question is delivered with an emphatic decision. “Mais—Non”—“Mais,”—a pause and a gesture by an emphatic falling hand—“Non.” Second question: Is a social agitator, who displays himself in a pink shirt and bowler hat in the best seats of fashionable theatres, and who enjoys himself at fashionable restaurants with worldlings—whom he affects to terrorise—a satisfactory Democrat? Same answer, but the “Non” and the confirmatory gesture is more emphatic. “Mais—Non.”
Through a novel published some years ago, under the title of Qui Perd Gagne, I made the acquaintance of a number of Parisians who committed all manner of faults and follies, got into all kinds of dilemmas; and yet compelled a certain sympathy by reason of their good-heartedness and good humour. Never a dull moment in this novel; never, indeed, a moment when there was not some anxious situation to face, some formidable difficulty to overcome. The leading personages were a retired blanchisseuse and her husband. Their names I cannot recall—let them be christened the Belons; and let it be admitted that the atmosphere in which they lived would most assuredly be condemned by the orthodox English critic as “unsavoury.” Laid bare before us in all its tawdriness, all its feverishness, all its swift delirious ups and downs, was the life of the adventurer. A good round dozen of these gentlemen, but the most “enterprising,” the most audacious, the most entertaining amongst them was our friend Belon, who, before becoming the husband of the blanchisseuse, and the master of the money realised by the sale of the blanchisserie, had been a seedy figure in shady newspaper offices and suspicious gambling clubs. In his unmarried days Belon rejoiced when a bet at baccarat, or a successful operation in the line of canvassing for advertisements, yielded him a louis. He was always “hard up”—always (as he described it) in a “crisis”—but adversity neither disheartened him nor turned his temper.
“Times will change,” predicted Belon, when he surveyed his shabby form in the mirror of a café.
“One of these days you will dine magnificently at Paillard’s,” Belon murmured, when he issued forth (his hunger still unsatisfied) from a greasy restaurant.
“Paris,” he soliloquised, as he swaggered along the boulevards, with a shocking little black cigar in the corner of his mouth, and his hat tilted rakishly on one side, “Paris, I know you well—know your weaknesses, your failings, your vanities. And with this precious knowledge to assist me, I shall undoubtedly succeed.”
Certainly, Belon knew Paris thoroughly—or part of it. He was full of anecdote and scandal. He had amazing stories to tell of personages high up in the grande monde, the monde d’affaires, and the demi-monde, and he told them well. He could be gallant—in a way. Also, when it served his purpose, he could feign a seriousness that inspired confidence. And it was his gaiety, his gallantry, his flashy worldliness, that fascinated the blanchisseuse—not a foolish woman by any means, but a practical, amiable soul, still in her thirties, still attractive, still (as the French novelist has it) “appétissante,” who saw in her marriage to Belon not only a means of escape from the steamy, stifling atmosphere of her laundry, but a position of importance, even of luxury and brilliancy. Belon she believed capable of great things; Belon, with his enterprise, his audacity, his knowledge of the world, needed only a small capital, such as the sale of the laundry would provide, to become a master of affaires, and a leader of men. And then—was not Belon fascinating, and ardent, and tender? Thus, half prosaically, half sentimentally, did the blanchisseuse consider Belon’s eloquently worded proposal; and the result of her deliberations was good-bye to the blanchisserie. Affectionately she embraced, liberally she rewarded, Charlotte and Amélie, her assistants. Charlotte and Amélie wept. The future Madame Belon wept. Belon himself was moved to tears by the scene.
“Adieu, mes filles,” sobbed the future Madame Belon.
“Adieu, Madame,” sobbed back Charlotte and Amélie.
“Allons-nous-en, allons-nous-en,” said Belon huskily. And so—in this touching fashion—farewell to the blanchisserie.
What changes, when next we beheld the Belons! Madame dressed attractively; and Monsieur, when he went a-gambling, was an ornament of brilliant, if not exclusive, clubs, and a power in busy, handsome newspaper offices. There were, as Belon prophesied, “magnificent dinners” at Paillard’s. There were constant visits to race-courses, theatres and music-halls, and he played high, and he conceived colossal “business” schemes, and he mixed familiarly with personages high up in the monde d’affaires, and in the demi-monde; one even had des relations with certain personages in the veritable monde. But the reader, as he followed Belon et Cie here, there and everywhere, still found himself in a whirl of adventurers, and the adventurers (despite their display) were still surrounded by difficulties. For Belon was too audacious, too “enterprising.” Wonderfully ingenious were his schemes, but their fate was disastrous.
In a word, Belon, with all his knowledge of Paris, overestimated the credulity of the Parisians, and was brought face to face with that unimaginative, relentless personage, the Commissaire de Police. Happier had been Madame Belon in the steamy days of the blanchisserie; happier had been Belon when he surveyed his shabby form in the café mirror, saying: “Times will change.” In the Belon ménage, not only a constant dread of M. le Commissaire de Police, but bitter, domestic quarrels, even infidelities. But the quarrels were “made up,” the infidelities were pardoned—for, as the troubles thickened, as the situation grew increasingly alarming, so did the Belons become drawn closely together; so did they display many, yes, admirable, yes—even heroic qualities. And when at last the “crisis” arrived, and when the practical, amiable, retired blanchisseuse saved her husband from a disgraceful fate, it was the good heart and good humour that had lived through, and survived, these difficulties which made the point—the very un-English moral—of the story! Thus, after discussing their short, stormy married career in every detail, and with the utmost candour, the Belons agreed that no great harm had been done, since they were better friends than ever! But Paris had become distasteful to them; what a blithe, refreshing change, then, to take up their abode in a quiet villa on the outskirts of the city! A little villa with a porch! A little villa with a garden! A little villa where one would be entirely chez soi. “We will plant cabbages,” cried Madame Belon enthusiastically. “We will be happy,” responded Belon, with emotion. So, another and a final change of scene. Behold—as a last tableau—the Belons installed tranquilly, comfortably and affectionately on the outskirts of Paris in a neat, innocent little villa.
Thus, very briefly, the story of Qui Perd Gagne. The author, I need scarcely say, was M. Alfred Capus; for who but that inimitable dramatist would have discovered good-heartedness and good humour as underlying qualities in such shady people as the Belons; and who but that genius at clearing up awkward, anxious situations could have got the retired blanchisseuse and her husband so generously and unexpectedly out of their moral, as well as their practical, scrapes?
Thus, a good many years ago, M. Capus, then a comparatively unknown journalist, already possessed those qualities which have made him by far the most popular playwright of to-day: a wonderful tolerance, a wonderful bonhomie, and a wonderful and incomparable talent at finding a way of carrying the treasure of faith in human goodness safely through perilous circumstances! As a consequence of these qualities M. Capus has been called an “optimist.” We are always and always hearing of the “optimism” of M. Capus; but if I may be permitted to differ from the vast majority of his admirers, I would suggest that, so far from being an optimist, M. Capus is, from the ideal point of view, a cynic. True, an amiable cynic. He regards mankind with a smile—not of mockery, because there is nothing unkind in it; a smile of raillery at the idealist’s effort to take the mote out of his brother’s eye and to afflict himself too seriously in his endeavour to get rid of the beam out of his own eye. From the point of view of M. Capus, motes and beams, big faults as well as little ones, belong to human nature. It is a pity, but it cannot be helped. “C’est la vie”—and so let us make the best of it.
And it might be worse! Mankind might be cruel, whereas the average man, the average woman, is kind—the hearts of average men and women are in the right place. Thus, let mankind not be judged too harshly. Since we are what we are, it is inevitable we should commit follies. But let us see to it that our hearts are in the right place, and when the moment arrives we shall know how to make atonement for those follies and pass on undisgraced. “Amusez-vous bien, soyez gais; mais soyez bons.” Such might be M. Capus’ message to mankind; and that message, indeed, he has delivered from the stage. For amongst French playwrights who bring home to us vividly, by means of illustration, French ways of feeling and methods of judgment that are not English methods, M. Alfred Capus stands out as the efficient interpreter of the typical personage recognised by general consent in France as “l’homme qui est foncièrement bon.”
Do not, however, let us suppose that we are in any way helped to a correct understanding of this personage by makers of dictionaries, who tell us that “l’homme qui est foncièrement bon” is a “thoroughly good man.” No. If we leave the thoroughly bad man out of account, no two more opposite types of human character can be compared with one another—no two worthy men can be brought together more certain to quarrel, and mutually to dislike and condemn each other than the “thoroughly good man,” approved by the English standard, and “l’homme qui est foncièrement bon,” recognised as such by general consent in France. Nor is this all. Not only have we here two worthy human beings who, by reason of the different directions wherein the special worthiness of each of them displays itself, cannot agree as friends, but for the services of friendship also their qualifications are so different that upon the occasions when one can help us the other will get us into trouble; and in the moods when we should cleave to the one, we should indubitably avoid the other. The cause of this essential difference is not entirely explained when the fact is stated that righteousness constitutes the predominant characteristic of goodness in England, and kindliness the predominant characteristic in France, because the Englishman is kind also—in his own way. In other words, his righteousness does exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and the Frenchman who is foncièrement bon has virtues also of his own; he has not merely the good nature of the easy-going publican. What these special virtues really are, and how, whilst they do not make “l’homme qui est foncièrement bon” a “thoroughly good man,” in the English sense of the term, they do make him a lovable and sympathetic human character, one can discover by passing an evening in the society of Chartier, Lucien Briant, Hélène and Laure of Nôtre Jeunesse, Monsieur Piégois of the delightful comedy of that name, and Montferrand—the amazing Deputy Montferrand—of L’Attentat.
The bonhomie of M. Capus represents a life philosophy as well as a dramatic method, that might not be applied with equal success to British institutions. But used among French social conditions, it demonstrates how neglect of logic, and force of good feeling, may help an intelligent and a humane people to render faulty systems habitable, and make good nature serve as a substitute for, and even as a corrective of, a rigid, an unheroic, an unchristian worship of “respectability” at the expense of human kindness—that is to say, a form of respectability which does not necessarily mean a very ardent love of virtue.
The characters of Nôtre Jeunesse are essentially French. Take Chartier, for instance, the bonhomme philosophe par excellence. Chartier, at forty years of age, amused by his own past; tranquil as to the future; well satisfied, in the present, to make the best of his life upon a moderate income—the quarter of a once handsome fortune, considerately left him by a former mistress, the then famous “Pervenche,” who, after she had cost him a million and a half, herself broke off their liaison, in the amiable and reasonable fashion related by the Forsaken One himself thus:
Chartier. One evening she said to me: “Mon chéri, I have been looking into things. You have spent upon me three-fourths of your fortune. It is as much as any woman should expect from any gallant man. I am contented; and grateful to you. I have come across a man who is in love with me; and I am going to be married to him.”... She married an employé at the Louvre. It is an excellent ménage.
Take Laure de Roine, Chartier’s sister, the good genius of the play—bonhomie, not only personified, but idealised, invested with all the liveliness and fascination that belong to delightful French womanhood. Laure, some years older than her brother, left a widow, also with a quarter of her handsome wedding portion, remaining through the opportune decease, in the very hour when he seemed bent upon ruining her, after himself, of a husband given to gambling on the Stock Exchange.
Take Madame Hélène Briant, the very charming, vivacious wife of M. Lucien Briant, a lady approaching the perilous age—i.e. nearly thirty—reasonably attached to, but not passionately in love with, an amiable but despondent husband, who has become despondent under the authoritative rule of M. Briant père, a superior man, and master of the “correct,” frock-coated attitude towards life. Briant père is the tyrant of the Briant household. Hear the charming Hélène in active revolt against this insupportable father-in-law, and her husband’s despondency, as a result of his filial docility, exposing her own case, half playfully, half seriously, to Laure de Roine, everyone’s good genius:
Hélène. When I try to react against this general depression; when, in spite of them both, I make it my task to find something cheerful, and worth taking pleasure in, I find myself treated by both Father and Son as a frivolous worldling. Add on to that that I have no children, and live in this deadly provincial atmosphere, full of spiteful gossip, scandal, and vanity. And then try, if you can, to imagine my condition of mind—not forgetting that I am an “honest” woman—and that I am beginning to realise it.
Laure. And when a woman begins to realise that she is “honest”——
Hélène. Yes; the case is grave.
All these personages explain themselves to us, and claim us, by reason of their vivid humanity, as intimate acquaintances, in the play. Yet not one of them has his or her exact counterpart in English society, for the simple reason that their choice qualities, and entertaining defects, not only belong to the French temperament but are the result of manners, conventions, prejudices and sentiments that do not enter into our actual experiences, although we are in a position to judge, or at any rate correctly to appreciate them, when we have studied them in this dramatic picture....
And now for the situation of the play. It is also essentially French; what the orthodox English critic would probably describe as “disagreeable” and “painful.” But with that neither M. Capus nor ourselves are concerned. Our playwright, true to the canons of his art, has aimed at no more than selecting an episode from la vie vivante, and revealing it in its most vital and human moments, and the episode he has chosen is one that has its counterpart, year in, year out, in the gay, irresponsible land peopled by the jeunesse of Paris and the provinces. “Nôtre Jeunesse”—that period, in France particularly, of extravagances and follies; “Nôtre Jeunesse”—those years in the Latin Quarter when irregularity of conduct does not appear reprehensible even to the parental eye.
“C’est de leur âge,” says the bourgeois indulgently, thinking, no doubt, of his own jeunesse, when he meets a band of students rejoicing riotously in their corduroy clothes, long, flowing capes and amazing hats. And such wild figures were Chartier and Lucien Briant some twenty years before we meet them. And it is of those days that they are speaking, when M. Capus introduces them to his audience in the Chartier Villa at Trouville. Chartier, of course, is in excellent spirits. But Lucien is nervous and despondent, and becomes still more troubled when his friend reminds him of his liaison with Léontine Gilard, a charming and light-hearted girl, whose pet name Chartier forgets.
Lucien helps his memory; the name was “Loulou.” Let me quote the passage:
Lucien [with emotion]. Loulou.
Chartier. That’s it! I can see Loulou now: fair hair, blue eyes, very pretty hands. You made a charming couple, the two of you! Well—there you have a memory which shouldn’t be disagreeable, surely.
Lucien. Ah, mon ami, one never knows the end of adventures of that sort!
Chartier. The end? Why didn’t the thing end naturally?
Lucien. What do you mean by ending naturally?
Chartier. When you left the Latin Quarter, you made Loulou a handsome present? She took another lover? or, perhaps, she got married? To-day, if you met each other in the street, you wouldn’t recognise each other? That is what I call a natural ending.
Lucien. Yes; that is the way things happen with you, and with almost everybody. But not with me. I ask myself, What may not still come of it?
Lucien’s forebodings are prophetic. Soon after, Chartier is told by his sister Laure that a young girl (très jolie, très convenable) has called to see him. It turns out that the young girl visitor (très jolie, très convenable) is Lucienne. In other words, she is the visible and terrifying proof of the unlucky Lucien Briant’s conviction that he is not to be permitted, like other men, to bury under the flowers of sentimental memories the irregularities of his Latin Quarter days.
Still, Lucienne had no intention of troubling her father. She was trained to believe that she had no legitimate, no righteous claim on him. Poor Loulou was true to the rule of the game that, for her, had had lifelong seriousness. Even on her death-bed she has kept faithfully to the terms of the unequal bargain. She had told Lucienne that her father had behaved “generously,” that she has no further legitimate claim on him. But she remembers Chartier’s kindness of heart and recommends her daughter to apply to him for advice and recommendations helpful in the way of finding her honest employment. So that this is the reason why Lucienne has sought out Monsieur Chartier. She is now alone in the world—poor “Loulou’s” savings nearly exhausted. Can Monsieur Chartier, perhaps, amongst his friends, find her a situation as secretary or companion, where she may earn an honest livelihood?
Touched to the heart by Loulou’s good remembrance and confidence in him is Chartier, and at once interested in Lucienne’s case.
Chartier. Yes, yes, certainly—you did well, mademoiselle, to come to me! I shall at once make inquiries amongst all my acquaintances. We shall find you a charming post; I give you my promise, to set about it at once.
Although the good Chartier is perfectly sincere in his desire and resolution to find Lucienne a “charming post,” he does not feel that there is any need to distress and upset the nervous and despondent Lucien by telling him about the appearance upon the scene of Loulou’s daughter (and his own) and of her need of assistance. But he has no secrets from Laure, and he at once consults his resourceful sister and confides to her his charming and discreet plan of finding Lucienne a pleasant situation as the companion of a lady who travels a great deal; thus Lucienne will see different countries, have a good salary and be as happy as the day is long—also, she will be kept out of the way of upsetting the nerves of the timorous Lucien.
Laure, however, the “good genius,” takes another view of the case. It is Lucienne’s homelessness, not Lucien’s nerves, that appears to her the chief question. She remembers, too, the “grave” state of mind of Hélène Briant, the result of her ineffectual efforts to react against her depressing environment—most repugnant to a charming woman still young but arrived at an age when she is forced to realise that one is not always going to be young and charming, and who has no children, and no congenial companionship, and who, nevertheless, is “honest”—so far, Laure then forms her own plan. And the first step is to make known the facts of Lucienne’s identity, situation and presence at Trouville to Lucien, and to Hélène also. This is how she announces what, to him, at first appears a desperately indiscreet proceeding, to Chartier, who, ultimately, becomes a convert to her scheme.
Laure begins by assuring her brother that an excess of discretion condemns those who make it their rule to fail in friendly services.
Laure [to Chartier]. Let me tell you what you should have done, what you ought to have done. You should have taken Lucien on one side, and, without worrying about the consequences, have simply made him acquainted with the facts. He had to be confronted with his duty. And since at heart he is, in spite of everything, an honest man, and that the very worst actions of his sort—and of your sort—don’t keep you from being thoroughly kind-hearted, he would certainly have found a happier and more consoling solution than to leave his daughter in distress. That is what you ought to have done. And as I saw you were not going to do it, that is what I have done.
Chartier. What do you say? Good God! You have seen Lucien?
Laure. Half an hour ago; after déjeuner.
Chartier. It is simply insane, what you have done! He must have been utterly prostrated by such a blow, poor devil?
Laure. Yes. He turned very pale. Then he rushed off to consult his father. Now what can happen to him, at the worst? He will have to endure some hours of worry, of anxiety, perhaps of remorse. What then? He deserves it. Lucienne is seventeen—she has in front of her the promise of a long existence, an existence conferred upon her by a light-hearted gentleman in an hour of distraction. Well, it is Lucienne who interests me. You will tell me that it is not my concern—that I am interfering in a delicate matter which is no business of mine?
Chartier. Precisely. That was just what I was going to say.
Laure. And my answer is, that if one only occupied oneself with one’s own concerns one would only accomplish selfish and mediocre things.
How does Lucien act after he has received the fateful news? All lamentations is he when he bursts into the room after his interview with his father. Chartier, Laure and Hélène wait to learn what, by the counsel, no doubt, of Briant père, Lucien proposes to do.
Lucien. Ah, mon ami [addressing Chartier], who would have believed it? What a fatality! What a drama for my conscience! Well, well—what one has to do is to occupy oneself with the present and possible. You will tell Lucienne from me that she has no longer any need to fear for the future: that shall be my charge.
Chartier. Well done. Well done.
Lucien. Yes; but upon one condition—oh, a condition of stringent importance. The condition is that she must return immediately to this village, near Limoges. She has lived there up to the present hour—she can quite easily go on living there. I will send her every month, and I will guarantee to her in the event of my death, a yearly pension, that will be sufficient for her support. There. Do you find that I am acting very badly? And you, madame [to Laure], do you think I am behaving badly?
Laure. Well, not exactly bad.
Lucien. Well, that comforts me a little. But what a catastrophe! Ah, if ever I have a son of my own, I shall try that he may profit by my example.
But Lucien has not a son of his own. The only child he has is the daughter he is going to bury alive in the village near Limoges, without even seeing her—this, of course, by the counsel of l’homme correct, Briant père.
But here Hélène intervenes. She has walked innocently into the trap prepared for her by Laure. In other words, she has seen Lucienne, and her heart has gone out to the motherless girl. Thus she has come by her own path into Laure’s plot and plan; she is resolved to adopt Lucienne. She urges her case, which has the independent advantage of upsetting the counsels of Briant père, with warm generosity, but, at the same time, with her usual vivacity.
Hélène. Lucien, you are my closest friend; and the object of my dutiful affection, of course—but you can’t be my constant companion and the confidante, whom I want, in sometimes empty and tiresome hours. Understand that; and consent to what I beg of you. Well, the companion I want is here; she is your daughter. You have not given me a child; make me the present of Lucienne. I am not a mother; but let me have the illusion of maternity.
Firm in the belief that happiness lies before her and her husband in the adoption of Lucienne, Hélène will hear of no other solution to the situation. And in this she has the good genius, Laure, with her; and next the bonhomme philosophe, Chartier; and finally the timid, despondent Lucien himself, who, in the last scene, comes face to face with his daughter.
All emotion is Lucien. And he breaks down completely when Lucienne shows him a photograph taken of him in the Latin Quarter, when he was the lover of Loulou, a wild figure in corduroy clothes, a long, flowing cape and an amazing hat.
Lucienne, who imagines she is going to be sent back to the village near Limoges, and may never possibly see her father again, does not wish to be separated from the souvenir that stood for the image of him, in his young days. She stretches out her hand, asking for the return of the photograph:
Lucienne. You will not take it away? You will leave it with me?
Lucien. No. I shall keep it. And that is not all, I shall keep—I should be mad to fight any longer against my own heart; against your youth and my own—I shall keep the picture, and you as well!
Chartier, Hélène and Laure enter and behold, with joy, Lucienne in her father’s embrace. But now arrives the apostle of correctness, Briant père. He is not so much astonished, not so much shocked as filled with contempt, and lifted above all contact with the irregular sentiments and ill-directed sympathies of this emotional group of people, whom he attempts to freeze, with his superior disdain. And it is at this moment that he utters the unforgettable sentence which is one of the master-strokes in the play:
Briant père. It is quite sufficient to-day—and believe me, when simply stating the fact, I do not allow myself to be the least bit in the world disturbed by it—it suffices that a child should be illegitimate in order to find itself the object of universal sympathy; in the same way, it suffices that a woman is not a lawful wife to render her immediately the object of universal respect. Let married women, and children born in wedlock, make no mistake about it: they are going to have a bad time.[3]
Lucien attempts to mollify his high displeasure. But Briant père (happily for his family’s welfare, perhaps) insists that he must separate himself henceforth from these offenders. He shakes hands with his son and with Hélène—salutes, stiffly, Laure and Chartier. Then, with a curt bow to Lucienne and the one word, “Mademoiselle,” he takes his departure.
Lucienne [to Hélène]. Qui est ce monsieur?
Hélène. C’est ton grand-père.
“Brieux at the Odéon? Brieux passing from the grim playhouse of M. Antoine, to the calm, placid, highly respectable Odéon?” Such must have been the startled exclamations of hundreds of playgoers when it was announced that the “Second Theatre of France” had “received,” and was actually rehearsing, a new drama by the author of Les Avariés and Maternité.
Amazing tidings, certainly. And especially amazing, even alarming, to the regular mature patrons of the Odéon, whose peaceful way of life, whose tranquil train of thought, could not but be upset by the ardent, revolutionary M. Brieux. They desire no disagreeable awakenings, and, above all, no “social problems.”
I fancy the neighbourhood has affected our mature ones! They live round about the Senate, whose members, we know, are renowned for a constant drowsiness. Is not the Upper Chamber popularly described as the “Palace of Sleep”? The alert, frisky Parisian cannot endure the Palais du Sommeil. He wants emotions, excitement—and he finds them in the Chamber of Deputies, which never sleeps.
“A restful sanctuary” is Mr Bodley’s idea of the Senate. “It does very little; it is not highly considered. The idea sometimes suggested is that of a retreat for elderly gentlemen.”
Well, the regular mature patron of the Odéon may be likened to the Senator: his intellect is impaired by the same constant drowsiness. And the “Second Theatre of France”—most Parisians dispute its right to that distinguished title—may be likened to the Senate. It is not highly considered; it renders but small services to the dramatic art; and, at times, it presents the appearance of a restful sanctuary.
But—arrives M. Brieux. Arrives, actually, upon this tranquil, drowsy scene, the ardent, revolutionary author of Maternité and Les Avariés. What—oh, what—is in store for the regular mature patrons? No doubt they were all anxiety, all indignation, until it was understood that M. Brieux had not arrived in their demure domain alone. With him, M. Jean Sigaux. With him, a collaborator who might be expected to exercise restraint. Has M. Sigaux fulfilled those expectations? Is M. Brieux of the Odéon the M. Brieux of the Théâtre Antoine? Or, has M. Brieux been intimidated by Odéon traditions?
Not unanimous on this point are the leading French dramatic critics. Three or four of them profess themselves disappointed with La Déserteuse, because unable to recognise M. Brieux’s change of attitude. They are still under the spell of Maternité, where the author so vigorously and so ruthlessly attacked the “established morality” and “dominant passions.” The change of attitude is undeniable. But La Déserteuse is a strong, generous, human play; and all the more interesting from our own special point of view, as students of the French stage in its relation to French life, because it does not represent a dramatic exposure of injustices and impostures, prevalent (if we believe the reformer) in all European societies, but a dramatic illustration of universal passions and emotions, as these manifest themselves under the influence of traditional sentiments and habits of thought and feeling that belong essentially to France.
The French bourgeois: wherein he differs from, and as a type of humanity is superior to, the English shopkeeper; the French jeune fille—and the French sentiment about her—and wherein this sentiment explains her jealously and tenderly guarded inferiority in attractiveness, intelligence and independence to her English prototype—here are the secrets which La Déserteuse may assist a foreign spectator to penetrate....
We are in the town of Nantes, in the home of Forjot, music publisher, husband, father and confirmed bourgeois. Forjot also gives concerts, but he himself is nothing of a musician and would regard music with contempt, were it not a means of making money. Not so his wife, Gabrielle, young, beautiful and vivacious, who has been assured by the director of the local theatre that she is possessed of a rare voice. Gabrielle sings at little Nantais concerts and is admired and applauded. Gabrielle is told that she would triumph on the operatic stage—and sighs. She loves excitement, she longs for fame, she is full of dreams and ambitions and fancies—but she finds no sympathiser in the music publisher, her husband, who, looking up impatiently from his ledgers, bids her pay more attention to her house, her child and “the rest.”