HARLEQUIN MASKS. — HAMLET THE YELLOW DWARF. — THEATER LICENSES
If the props were late to arrive, it is because this is always the case; — theaters tend to deal with details at the very last minute. Theater directors are often unable to pay the costume designer, the painter, or the decorator ahead of time. And the latter therefore often refuse to deliver their goods until they are assured that they will receive their cut of the take, — which is of course impossible to predict until opening night.
It was at these moments that poor Harel, — who was a remarkable fellow after all, for he had directed the Yellow Dwarf and been honored by the Academy for a poem in praise of Voltaire, — found himself crushed by the financial burden of having to run a theater as ill-starred as the Porte-Saint-Martin.
The theater license for the place came to fifteen thousand a year, which he had to fork over to the director of the place, — a humorous old fellow who had managed to have two theaters bestowed upon him; — one of which he owned outright and the other of which was a mere fiefdom whose paltry profits caused a smile to play across his face while slowly driving its occupant into rack and ruin.
All this feels so very Ancien Régime. But the fact of the matter remains that if Harel had had in his coffers the 150 thousand francs that he paid out to his suzerain over a period of ten years, he would not have been as financially strapped as he was back during that summer while awaiting his elephant.
Harel often had to spring for extremely expensive costumes. So one had to be careful when mentioning plays to him set during the Middle Ages or under the reign of Louis XV, — not to mention those set back in the luxuriant days of the Greeks, the Bible, or the Orientals.
One day he was offered a play set during the Regency whose success was virtually guaranteed, given the spectacular outfits of the period. Harel called up his wardrobe manager M. Dumas and asked him: « How are we doing with Regency outfits?
— Not well at all, sir! We’re out of jackets! We have a few vests and some trousses (the breeches of that era).
— Well, with a few vests and breeches, we’ll just have to add some serge jackets in eye-popping colors. If the vests are bright enough in the footlights, the audience will go home happy. »
It was thus that that La Duchesse de La Vaubelière was staged; the theater aficionados were bowled over by the Regency vests and queued up in endless lines for the show, — whose tickets cost between 50 and 65 centimes.
Harel later confessed to me: « This success was my undoing. »
And he proceeded to show me the books: an average of eight hundred francs a night for the first twenty performances.
Then the box office earnings fell off precipitously. — I said to myself: « Beware of believing that you’ll ever make a killing in the theater. »
But I was still quite worried about the props. The props in question were: sixteen student caps and sixteen masks for the scene of the Saint Wehme, — obviously black velvet masks, — such as the ones worn in the productions of Bravo, of Lucretia Borgia and a host of other dramas.
The caps finally arrived during the first intermission, but I was told: « the masks are still on their way. »
It’s quite difficult to get one’s bearings from the wings of a theater; — statesmen suffer from the same blindness. — The audience was all ears: rapt, utterly silent. The third act had just ended, and here I was, a nervous wreck because of the masks needed for the fourth act.
I climbed up to the dressing rooms in the attic. Some extras were putting on the uniforms of the German honor guard, blue with epaulettes of yellow braid. Others were slipping into the uniforms of the sicaires and trabans, — which they found most humiliating.
As for the students, they were getting outfitted with nary a care in the world, seeing as how they had been assured that their caps were about to arrive, — and blissfully oblivious to the fact that they would have to wear masks for the conspiracy scene in the fourth act.
« Where are the masks? I asked.
— The props manager has not yet distributed them. »
I went to locate Harel.
« The masks?
— They’re on their way. »
The audience was growing restless during the intermission. The theater staff had exhausted all of Harel’s standard bag of tricks in these situations, — which involved distracting the public from a late curtain by showering it with a rain of confetti during the first intermission. During the second, they would toss down a cap from the upper gallery, which would be passed around from hand to hand in the orchestra seat section. During the third intermission, they would stage a scene in one of the private boxes which would inevitably provoke heated arguments in the pit: « He’s going to kiss her! No he won’t! »
When the delay between the third and fourth act grew too protracted, they used to set a dog to barking, — or have a child start screaming. Then they’d have a bunch of kids (especially paid for the purpose) yell out: « Get that crybaby outta here. » At least the point was thereby made. If necessary, the orchestra would then strike up La Parisienne, — which was still permitted back in those days.
After ten minutes of intermission, Harel came up to me and said: « The students have their caps ... But do they absolutely need masks at this point?
— How could you dare ask me such a thing? It’s for the scene of the Secret Trial!
— Well, a mistake has been made. All they sent over were some harlequin masks. They thought it was for a masked ball scene, — these days there’s always some sort of ball scene in the fourth acts of modern dramas.
— Where are the masks? I asked Harel, heaving a great moan.
— The dresser has them. »
I entered the dressing room. All the student-stagehands were furious because I had promised them they would be playing serious parts.
« Harlequin masks! ... they complained, — What do they have to do with our roles? »
Mélingue and Raucourt, who been supplied with proper black velvet masks, were taking it easy in the green room, confident that they would not be exposed to ridicule. But the horrid harlequin masks with their pug noses and bushy moustaches caused me no end of concern. — Raucourt opined: « The solution is to cut off the moustaches. The noses may be a bit stubby, but that won’t make much of a difference. These are student conspirators, after all; — people will just say they have no nose for politics. »
In the end, in order to save the day (and the act), Mme Mélingue, Raucourt, Mélingue, Tournan and I all pitched in to snip the moustaches off the masks, — all this hair would have otherwise picked up the sheen of the footlights and entirely robbed the scene of the Night of Saint-Wehme of all its drama.
Someone called me aside and said: — « Harel has set you up. » — I have always refused to believe this.
As for the stage set which Cicéri had supposedly designed, it forced us to cut out a third of the act. — It turned out that, given the miniature dimensions of this underground cellar, it was just too difficult to move the cast around as originally blocked.
Thus reduced to these tiny proportions, the fourth act hardly justified the fears it had inspired among the government censors.
Luckily the talents of the lead actors were such that the fifth act (a difficult one, at that) proved to be a smashing success. The line in the play that was the most applauded ran as follows, spoken by one of the students: « Kings are on their way out ... Let’s give them a shove. » The thunderous applause that greeted this sequence of simple words caused Harel to comment: « They’ll shut down the play tomorrow ... but at least we will have had a splendid evening of it. » The flop of the fourth act threw cold water on his enthusiasm. He hoped that the play might be prosecuted, but no such luck.
He nonetheless demanded that the ministry pay him an indemnity, — to cover the delays that the whole censorship process had occasioned and the resultant poor showing at the box office, all of which was hardly offset by the glowing future promised by the arrival
of the elephant.
After thirty performances late that summer, it was with great interest that I observed the pachyderm honorably follow in the footsteps of my drama. The sixteen stagehands, who were quite expensive, were laid off, — and I decided to return to Germany and drown in the vineyards of the Danube all the troubles stirred up by vineyards of the Rhine.
The Rhine is treacherous: — it contains too many loreleis singing to mariners from the ruins of ancient castles at night. — The Danube, by contrast, is a dear old river, rolling sausages (wurchell) and salty pretzels in its gentle waves.
But this is a memory of Vienna. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Harel had been compensated for the losses caused by the delay in the play’s production. According to the complaint he had officially lodged, I was to receive equal compensation.
There had been a changing of the guard at the ministry; a member of the opposition had replaced the minister of the king’s party whom I have previously mentioned. I insisted on my right to indemnification. But I didn’t want the money to be disbursed to me without any return favor on my part. I promised I would churn out six hundred francs worth of newspaper copy for the sum of the same amount that was due tome.
Here is what I had to say in answer to the accusations of Le Corsaire. — Let’s return to the abbé de Bucquoy. The National Archives passed his genealogy onto me. — His patronymic is Longueval. And for particular reasons that continue to puzzle people of simple minds, this name does not occur once in the various accounts or documents that call his existence to our attention.
As concerns the Longueval family, however, the Archives contain a charming love story that I can convey to you without fear, — given that this love story is completely historical.
Angélique de Longueval was the daughter of one of the greatest nobles of Picardy. Her father, Jacques de Longueval, count d’Haraucourt, privy councilor of the King, marshal of the royal armies, was also the governor of the Châtelet and of Clermont-en-Beauvoisis. It was on the outskirts of the latter town, in the castle of Saint-Rimault, that he used to leave his wife and daughter whenever his duties called him away to court or to the army.
From the age of thirteen onward, Angélique de Longueval, whose temperament was at once dreamy and despondent, claimed that she took no interest in lovely jewels or beautiful carpets or elegant clothing and thought only of death to cure her spirits. A gentleman in the service of her father fell in love with her. He could not take his eyes off her, he attended to her slightest need, and even though Angélique had not the faintest idea what Love might be, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself the object of such assiduous attention.
When this gentleman finally declared his love to her, his words so impressed themselves on her memory that six years later, after having gone through the trials and tribulations of another love and having suffered misfortunes of every sort, she could still remember this first letter and recite it to herself word by word. Allow me to quote this curious illustration of the period style of a provincial lover in the age of Louis XIII.
DEPARTURE FOR COMPIÈGNE THE ARCHIVES AND THE LIBRARY THE LIFE OF ANGÉLIQUE DE LONGUEVAL, OF THE DE BUCQUOY FAMILY
Here is the letter written by Mlle Angélique de Longueval’s first lover:
« I am not surprised that the simples should have lost their medicinal powers in the absence of the sun’s warming rays, for I too have been unlucky enough to leave this abode without having been graced by the light of your dawn, a light which has always illuminated me and the absence of which invariably plunges me into the deepest of glooms from which my need to escape, as well as my need to see you again, has impelled me to return to your side so that I might humbly bask in the radiance of all your brilliant attributes and accomplishments, the lure of which has entirely stolen both my soul and my heart; and yet I am honored to be the victim of such larceny, for it has raised me to heights at once sacred and terrifying and has elicited from me a zeal and a fidelity in your regard equaled only by your perfection. »
This letter proved fatal to its young author. As he was trying to slip the missive to Angélique, he was caught red-handed by her father, — and died four days later, the victim of a mysterious murder.
Angélique was devastated by this death, — and discovered the meaning of Love. For two years she went on weeping. At the end of this period of mourning, claiming that she saw no other remedy for her sorrow than death or another romance, she begged her father to introduce her to society. Among all of the fine gentleman she was certain to meet, she said to herself, there would no doubt be someone who would be able to drive this dead man from her thoughts.
Judging from the evidence, the count d’Haraucourt did not respond to the request of his daughter, for among the various men who fell in love with her we only come across members of her father’s household staff. Two of these men, M. de Saint-Georges, the count’s personal assistant, and Fargue, the count’s valet de chambre, developed a shared passion for the young girl which created a rivalry whose resolution proved to be tragic. Fargue, jealous of his rival’s superior standing, had made a number of disparaging remarks. Having gotten wind of these, M. de Saint-Georges summons Fargue to his chambers, reprimands him for his insolence, and ends up striking him so many times with the flat of his sword that his weapon is entirely bent out of shape. In a blind rage, Fargue rushes about the house in search of a sword. He runs into the baron d’Haraucourt, Angélique’s brother, and rips his sword away from him which he then proceeds to plunge into the throat of his rival, wounding him mortally. The doctor arrives only in time to advise Saint-Georges: « Ask God for mercy, for you are dead. » Fargue in the meantime has fled.
Such were the tragic preambles to the great passion that was to plunge poor Angélique into a series of misfortunes.
Compiègne. — All Saints’ Day.
I have interrupted my reading of the life of that lovely adventuress, Angélique de Longueval, — while realizing that a number of other documents pertinent to her story were housed in the libraries of Compiègne. — For Compiègne is the literary center of the province where this venerable family lived, — a family whose past history it would be most interesting to recreate in the manner of Walter Scott, — if the thing were at all possible!
People tend to know very little about traditional provincial France, — particularly that area which lies just beyond the outskirts of Paris. Divided by the slow peaceful course of the Oise and Aisne, the Île-de-France, the Valois, and Picardy all flow together into a region where you can still imagine the most beautiful pastoral adventures in the world.
Even the peasants in this region speak the purest French, — except that in their local pronunciation the ends of words trail off into the sky like the songs of nightingales ... In the mouths of children, this French virtually sounds like birds warbling. The local turns of phrase also have something Italianate to them, — no doubt due to the protracted residence of the Medici and their Florentine retinue in this region of former royal and princely estates.
I arrived in Compiègne last night, pursuing the various incarnations of the Bucquoys with that dull obstinacy that comes so naturally to me. At any rate, the National Archives, where I had only been able to take a few notes so far, would be closed today for All Saints’ Day.
At the Hôtel de la Cloche, celebrated by Alexandre Dumas, there was quite a commotion this morning. The dogs were barking and the hunters were preparing their weapons; I heard a whip say to his master: « Monsieur le marquis, here is your gun. »
So marquis still exist!
But my mind was on an altogether different kind of hunt ... I inquired at what hour the local library opened.
« It’s All Saints’ Day, I was informed, so the library will obviously not open today.
— What are its regular hours?
— Evenings, from seven to eleven. »
I wouldn’t want to make myself out to be unluckier than I in fact was. I had a letter recommendin
g me to one of the librarians, a bibliophile of great renown. Not only was he willing to show me the books in the town library, but he also let me see his own private collection, — whose valuable autographs included a series of unpublished letters by Voltaire and a collection of songs set to music by Rousseau under the title New Tunes for Old Songs. The sight of these songs written out in Rousseau’s beautifully clear hand moved me no end. — The first of these songs, composed in the style of Marot, went as follows:I am not the man I once was
I shall never be myself again
My sweet summer and spring
Have now come to their end, etc.
These Rousseau manuscripts prompted me to return to Paris via Ermenonville, — which is the shortest route as the crow flies but which takes the lengthiest amount of time to cover on ground, — even though the railroad makes an enormous loop before reaching Compiègne.
One cannot get to Ermenonville, — or for that matter, leave Ermenonville, — without traveling some five miles on foot. — There is no direct coach. But tomorrow being All Souls’ Day, this is a pilgrimage I’ll gladly and respectfully undertake, — thinking of lovely Angélique de Longueval all the while.
I am sending you whatever it was I managed to dig up about her at the National Archives and at Compiègne. I have tossed the thing together on the basis of the primary documents I consulted and above all on the basis of that yellowed manuscript, composed entirely in her hand, which is perhaps even more daring (written as it is by a young woman of noble birth) than Rousseau’s own Confessions. This will at least give your readers something to do while they await the adventures of her nephew the abbé, to whom she seems to have communicated something of her own spirit of independence and adventure.
HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY
The Salt Smugglers Page 5