by Henry James
I have mentioned the cathedral first, but the prime treasure of Milan at the present hour is the beautiful, tragical Leonardo. The cathedral is good for another thousand years, but I doubt that our children will find in the most majestic and most luckless of frescoes much more than the shadow of a shadow. Its frame for many years now has been that, as one may say, of an illustrious invalid whom people visit to see how he lasts, with deathbed speeches: The picture needs not another scar or stain, now, to be the saddest work of art in the world, and battered, defaced, ruined as it is, it remains one of the greatest. It is really not amiss to compare its decay to the slow extinction of a human organism. The creation of the picture was a breath from the infinite, and the painter’s conception not immeasurably less complex than that involved, say, in his own personality. There has been much talk lately about the irony of fate, but I doubt that fate was ever more ironical than when she led this most deeply calculating of artists to spend fifteen long years in building his goodly house upon the sand. And yet, after all, can I fancy this apparent irony but a deeper wisdom, for if the picture enjoyed the immortal health and bloom of a first-rate Titian we should have lost one of the most pertinent lessons in the history of art. We know it as hearsay, but here is the plain proof, that there is no limit to the amount of substance an artist may put into his work. Every painter ought once in his life to stand before the Cenacolo and decipher its moral. Pour everything you mentally possess into your picture, lest perchance your “prepared surface” should play you a trick! Raphael was a happier genius; you cannot look at his lovely Marriage of the Virgin at the Brera, beautiful as some first deep smile of conscious inspiration, without feeling that he foresaw no complaint against fate, and that he looked at the world with the vision of a graceful optimist. But I have left no space to speak of the Brera, nor of that paradise of bookworms with an eye for the picturesque—if such creatures exist—the Ambrosian Library; nor of that solid old basilica of St. Ambrose, with its spacious atrium and its crudely solemn mosaics, in which it is surely your own fault if you don’t forget Dr. Strauss and M. Renan, and worship as simply as a Christian of the ninth century.
It is part of the sordid prose of the Mont Cenis road that, unlike those fine old unimproved passes, the Simplon, the Splügen, and—yet awhile longer—the St. Gothard, it denies you a glimpse of that paradise adorned by the three lakes as that of uncommented Scripture by the rivers of Eden. I made, however, from Milan an excursion to the Lake of Como which, though brief, lasted long enough to make me feel as if I, too, were a hero of romance, with leisure for a grande passion, and not a hurrying tourist with a “Bradshaw” in his pocket. The Lake of Como has figured largely in fiction of the sentimental sort. It is commonly the spot to which ardent young gentlemen are wont to invite the wives of other gentlemen to fly with them, and ignore the cold obstruction of public opinion. But here is a chance for the stern moralist to rejoice; the Lake of Como, too, has been improved, and can boast of a public opinion. I should pay a poor compliment, at least, to the swarming inmates of the hotels which now alternate gracefully by the waterside, with villas old and new, to think that it could not. But if it is lost to old-fashioned romance, the unsophisticated American tourist may still find delicious entertainment there. The pretty hotel at Cadenabbia offers him at least the romance of what we call at home summer board. It is all so unreal, so fictitious, so elegant and idle, so framed to undermine a rigid sense of the chief end of man not being to float for ever in an ornamental boat, beneath an awning tasselled like a circus-horse, impelled by an affable Giovanni or Antonio from one stately stretch of lake-laved villa steps to another, that departure seems as harsh and unnatural as the dream-dispelling note of some punctual voice at your bedside on a dusky winter morning. Yet I wondered, for my own part, where I had seen it all before—the pink-walled villas gleaming through their shrubberies of orange and oleander, the mountains shimmering in the hazy light like so many breasts of doves, the constant presence of the melodious Italian voice. Where, indeed, but at the Opera, when the manager has been more than usually regardless of expense? Here, in the foreground, was the palace of the nefarious barytone, with its banqueting hall opening as freely on the stage as a railway buffet on the platform; beyond, the delightful back scene, with its operatic gamut of coloring; in the middle, the scarlet-sashed barcaiuoli, grouped like a chorus, hat in hand, awaiting the conductor’s signal. It was better even than being in a novel—this being in a libretto.
THE PARISIAN STAGE
December 7, 1872
Interior of the Comédie-Française, as originally designed in 1790.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SPEND MANY WEEKS IN PARIS WITHOUT observing that the theatre plays a very important part in French civilization; and it is impossible to go much to the theatre without finding it a copious source of instruction as to French ideas, manners, and characters. I supposed that I had a certain acquaintance with these complex phenomena, but during the last couple of mouths I have occupied a great many fauteuils d’orchestre, and in the merciless glare of the footlights I have read a great many of my old convictions with a new distinctness. I have had at the same time one of the greatest attainable pleasures; for, surely, among the pleasures that one deliberately seeks and pays for, none beguiles the heavy human consciousness so totally as a first-rate evening at the Théâtre Français or the Gymnase. It was the poet Gray, I believe, who said that his idea of heaven was to lie all day on a sofa and read novels. He, poor man, spoke while “Clarissa Harlowe” was still the fashion and a novel was synonymous with an eternity. A much better heaven, I think, would be to sit all night in a fauteuil (if they were only a little better stuffed) listening to Delaunay, watching Got, or falling in love with Mlle. Desclée. An acted play is a novel intensified; it realizes what the novel suggests, and, by paying a liberal tribute to the senses, anticipates your possible complaint that your entertainment is of the meagre sort styled “intellectual.” The stage throws into relief the best gifts of the French mind, and the Théâtre Français is not only the most amiable but the most characteristic of French institutions. I often think of the inevitable first sensations there of the “cultivated foreigner,” let him be as stuffed with hostile prejudice as you please. He leaves the theatre an ardent Gallomaniac. This, he cries, is the civilized nation par excellence. Such art, such finish, such grace, such taste, such a marvellous exhibition of applied science, are the mark of chosen people, and these delightful talents imply the existence of every virtue. His enthusiasm may be short and make few converts; but certainly during his stay in Paris, whatever may be his mind in the intervals, he never listens to the traditional toc-toc-toc which sounds up the curtain in the Rue Richelieu, without murmuring, as he squares himself in his chair and grasps his lorgnette, that after all the French are prodigiously great!
I shall never forget a certain evening in the early summer when, after a busy, dusty, weary day in the streets, staring at charred ruins and finding in all things a vague aftertaste of gunpowder, I repaired to the Théâtre Français to listen to Molière’s “Mariage Forcé,” and Alfred de Musset’s “II Ne Faut Jurer de Rien.” The entertainment seemed to my travel-tired brain what a perfumed bath is to one’s weary limbs, and I sat in a sort of languid ecstasy of contemplation and wonder—wonder that the tender flower of poetry and art should bloom again so bravely over blood-stained garments and fresh-made graves. Molière is played at the Théâtre Français as he deserves to be—one can hardly say more—with the most ungrudging breadth, exuberance, and entrain, and yet with a kind of academic harmony and solemnity. Molière, if he ever drops a kindly glance on MM. Got and Coquelin, must be the happiest of the immortals. To be read two hundred years after your death is something; but to be acted is better—at least when your name doesn’t happen to be Shakespeare and your interpreter the great American (or, indeed, the great British) tragedian. Such powerful, natural, wholesome comedy as that of the creator of Sganarelle certainly never was conceived, and the actors I have just
named give it its utmost force. I have often wondered that in the keen and lucid atmosphere which Molière casts about him, some of the effusions of his modern successors should live for an hour. Alfred de Musset, however, need fear no neighborhood, and his “II ne Faut Jurer,” after Molière’s tremendous farce, was like fine sherry after strong ale. Got plays in it a small part, which he makes a great one, and Delaunay, the silver-tongued, the ever-young, and that plain robust person and admirable artist, Madame Nathalie, and that divinely ingenuous ingènue, Mlle. Reichemberg. It would be a poor compliment to the performance to say that it might have been mistaken for real life. If real life were a tithe as charming it would be a merry world. De Musset’s plays, which, in general, were not written for the stage, are of so ethereal a quality that they lose more than they gain by the interpretation, refined and sympathetic as it is, which they receive at the Théâtre Français. The most artistic acting is coarser than the poet’s intention.
The play in question, however, is an exception and keeps its silvery tone even in the glare of the footlights. The second act, at the rising of the curtain, represents a drawing-room in the country; a stout, eccentric baronne sits with her tapestry, making distracted small talk while she counts her points with a deliciously rustic abbé; on the other side, her daughter, in white muslin and blue ribbons, is primly taking her dancing lesson from a venerable choregraphic pedagogue in a wig and tights. The exquisite art with which, for the following ten minutes, the tone of random accidental conversation is preserved, while the baronne loses her glasses and miscounts her stitches, and the daughter recommences her step for the thirtieth time, must simply, as the saying is, be seen to be appreciated. The acting is full of charming detail—detail of a kind we not only do not find but do not even look for on the English stage. The way in which, in a subsequent scene, the young girl, listening at evening in the park to the passionate whisperings of the hero, drops her arms half awkwardly along her sides in fascinated self-surrender, is a touch quite foreign to English invention. Unhappily for us as actors, we are not a gesticulating people. Mlle. Reichemberg’s movement here is an intonation in gesture as eloquent as if she had spoken it. The incomparable Got has but a dozen short speeches to make, but he distils them with magical neatness. He sits down to piquet with the baronne. “You risk nothing, M. l’abbé?” she soon demands. The concentrated timorous prudence of the abbé’s “Oh! Non!” is a master-stroke; it depicts a lifetime. Where Delaunay plays, however, it is hard not to call him the first. To say that he satisfies may at first seem small praise; but it may content us when we remember what a very loose fit in the poet’s vision is the usual jeune premier of the sentimental drama. He has at best a vast deal of fustian to utter, and he has a perilous balance to preserve between the degree of romantic expression expected in a gentleman whose trade is love-making and the degree tolerated in a gentleman who wears a better or worse made black coat and carries the hat of the period. Delaunay is fifty years old, and his person and physiognomy are meagre; but his taste is so unerring, his touch so light and true, his careless grace so free and so elegant, that in his hands the jeune premier becomes a creation as fresh and natural as the unfolding rose. He has a voice of extraordinary sweetness and flexibility, and a delivery which makes the commonest phrases musical, but when as Valentin, as Perdican, or as Fortunio, he embarks on one of De Musset’s melodious tirades, and his utterance melts and swells in trembling cadence and ringing emphasis, there is really little to choose between the performance, as a mere vocal exhibition, and an aria by a first-rate tenor.
An actor equally noted for his elegance, now attested by forty years of triumphs, is Bressant, whose name, with old Parisians, is a synonym for la distinction. “Distingue comme Bressant” is an accepted formula of praise. A few years ago comedians were denied Christian burial; such are the revenges of history. Bressant’s gentility is certainly a remarkable piece of art, but he always seems to me too conscious that an immense supply of the commodity is expected from him. Nevertheless, the Théâtre Français offers nothing more effective and suggestive than certain little comedies (the “Post Scriptum,” for instance, by Emile Augier), in which he receives the réplique from that venerable grande coquette, Mme. Plessy, the direct successor, in certain parts, of Mlle. Mars. I find these illustrious veterans, on such occasions, more interesting even than they aspire to be, and the really picturesque figures are not the Comte or the Marquise, but the grim and battered old comedians, with a life’s length of footlights making strange shadows on their impenetrable masks. As a really august exhibition of experience, I recommend a téte-à-téte between these artists. The orchestra of the Théâtre Français is haunted by a number of old gentlemen, classic playgoers, who look as if they took snuff from boxes adorned with portraits of the fashionable beauty of 1320. I caught an echo of my impressions from one of them the other evening, when, as the curtain fell on Bressant and Plessy, he murmured ecstatically to his neighbor, “Quelle connaissance de la scène . . . et de la vie!”
The audience at the Parisian theatres is indeed often as interesting to me as the play. It is, of course, composed of heterogeneous elements. There are a great many ladies with red wigs in the boxes, and a great many bald young gentlemen staring at them from the orchestra. But les honnétes gens of every class are largely represented, and it is clear that even people of serious tastes look upon the theatre not as one of the “extras,” but as one of the necessities, of life—a periodical necessity hardly less frequent and urgent than their evening paper and their demi-tasse. I am always struck with the number of elderly men, decorated, grizzled, and grave, for whom the stage has kept its mysteries. You may see them at the Palais Royal, listening complacently to the carnival of grivoiseries nightly enacted there, and at the Variétés, levelling their glasses paternally at the lightly-clad heroines of Offenbach. The truth is that in the theatre the French mind se reconnait, according to its own idiom, more vividly than elsewhere. Its supreme faculty, the art of form, of arrangement and presentation, is preeminently effective on the stage, and I suppose many a good citizen has before this consoled himself for his country’s woes by reflecting that if the Germans have a Gravelotte in their records, they have not a “Rabagas,” and if they possess a Bismarck and a Moltke, they have neither a Dumas fils nor a Schneider. A good French play is an admirable work of art, of which it behooves patrons of the contemporary English drama, at any rate, to speak with respect. It serves its purpose to perfection, and French dramatists, as far as I can see, have no more secrets to learn. The first half-dozen a foreign spectator listens to seem to him among the choicest productions of the human mind, and it is only little by little that he becomes conscious of the extraordinary meagreness of their material. The substance of the plays I have lately seen seems to me, when I think them over, something really amazing, and it is what I had chiefly in mind in speaking just now of the stage as an index of social character. Prime material was evidently long ago exhausted, and the best that can be done now is to rearrange old situations with a kind of desperate ingenuity. The field looks terribly narrow, but it is still cleverly worked. “An old theme—but with a difference,” the workman claims; and he makes the most of his difference—for laughter if he is an amateur pure and simple; for tears, if he is a moralist.
Do not for a moment imagine that moralists are wanting. Alexandre Dumas fils is one—he is a dozen, indeed, in his single self. M. Pailleron (whose “Hélène” is the last novelty at the Théâtre Français) is another; and I am not sure that, since “Rabagas,” M. Sardou is not a third. The great dogma of M. Dumas fils is, that if your wife is persistently unfaithful to you, you must kill her. He leaves you, I suppose, the choice of weapons; but that the thing must somehow be done, he has written a famous pamphlet, now reaching its fortieth edition, to prove. M. Pailleron holds, on the other hand, that if it was before your marriage, and before she had ever heard of you, and with her cousin, when she was a child and knew no better, you must—after terrific vitu
peration, indeed, and imminent suicide on the lady’s part—press her relentingly to your bosom. M. Pailleron enforces this moral in capitally turned verse, and with Delaunay’s magical aid; but as I sat through his piece the other evening, I racked my brain to discover what heinous offence Delicacy has ever committed that she should have to do such cruel penance. I am afraid that she has worse things in store for her, for the event of the winter (if a coup d’état does not carry off the honors) is to be the new play of Dumas fils, “La Femme de Claude.” Whatever becomes of the state, I shall go early to see the play, for it is to have the services of the first actress in the world. I have not the smallest hesitation in so qualifying Mademoiselle Desclée. She has just been sustaining by her sole strength the weight of a ponderous drama called “La Gueule du Loup,” in which her acting seemed to me a revelation of the capacity of the art. I have never seen nature grasped so in its essence, and rendered with a more amazing mastery of the fine shades of expression. Just as the light drama in France is a tissue of fantastic indecencies, the serious drama is an agglomeration of horrors. I had supped so full of these that, before seeing the “Gueule du Loup,” I had quite made up my mind to regard as an offence against civilization every new piece, whether light or serious, of which the main idea should not be pleasing. To do anything so pleasant as to please is the last thing that M. Dumas and his school think of. But Mlle. Desclée renders the chief situation of M. Laya’s drama—that of a woman who has fancied herself not as other women are, coming to her senses at the bottom of a moral abyss, and measuring the length of her fall—with a verity so penetrating that I could not but ask myself whether, to become a wholesome and grateful spectacle, even the ugliest possibilities of life need anything more than rigorous exactness of presentation. Mlle. Desclée, at any rate, was for half-an-hour the most powerful of moralists. M. Laya, her author, on the other hand, is an atrocious one. His trivial dénouement, treading on the heels of the sombre episode I have mentioned, is an insult to the spectator’s sympathies. Even Mlle. Desclée’s acting fails to give it dignity. Here, as everywhere, an inexpressible want of moral intelligence is the striking point. Novel and drama alike betray an incredibly superficial perception of the moral side of life. It is not only that adultery is their only theme, but that the treatment of it is so monstrously vicious and arid. It has been used now for so many years as a mere pigment, a source of dramatic color, a ficelle, as they say, that it has ceased to have any apparent moral bearings. It is turned inside out by hungering poetasters in search of a new “effect” as freely as an old glove by some thrifty dame intent on placing a prudent stitch. I might cite some striking examples, if I had space; some are too detestable. I do not know that I have found anything more suggestive than the revival, at the Gymnase, of that too familiar drama of the younger (the then very youthful) Dumas, the “Dame aux Camélias.” Mlle. Pierson plays the heroine—Mlle. Pierson the history of whose embonpoint is one of the topics of the day. She was formerly almost corpulent—fatally so for that beauty which even her rivals admitted to be greater than her talent. She devoted herself bravely to a diet of raw meat and other delicacies recommended by Banting, and she has recently emerged from the ordeal in sylphlike slenderness. This result, I believe, “draws” powerfully, though it seemed to me, I confess, that even raw meat had not made Mlle. Pierson an actress. I went to the play because I had read in the weekly feuilleton of that very sound and sensible critic, M. Francisque Sarcey, that even in its old age it bore itself like a masterpiece, and produced an immense effect. If I could speak with the authority of Dr. Johnson, I should be tempted to qualify it with that vigorous brevity which he sometimes used so well. In the entr’actes I took refuge in the street to laugh at my ease over its colossal flimsiness. But I should be sorry to linger on the sombre side of the question, and my intention, indeed, was to make a note of none but pleasant impressions. I have, after all, received so many of these in Paris play-houses that my stricture seems gracelessly cynical. I bear the actors, at least, no grudge; they are better than the authors. Molière and De Musset, moreover, have not yet lost favor, and Corneille’s “Cid” was recently revived with splendor and success. Here is a store of imperishable examples. What I shall think of regretfully when I have parted with the opportunity is not the tragedies bourgeoises of MM. Dumas, Feuillet, and Pailleron, but the inimitable Got strutting about as the podestà in the “Caprices de Marianne,” and twitching his magisterial train from the nerveless grasp of that delicious idiot, his valet; and Delaunay murmuring his love notes like a summer breeze in the ear of the blonde Cécile, and Coquelin as Mascarille, looking like an old Venetian print, and playing as if the author of the “Etourdi” were in the coulisse, prompting him; and M. Mannet-Sully (the ardent young débutant of the “Cid”) shouting with the most picturesque fury possible the famous sortie: