Tragic Muse

by Rachel Brownstein

  In Summer Will Show, the performer and her admirer act together on the revolutionary, world-changing energies that Lucy Snowe experienced (and denied) as she watched and heard the actress Vashti. Because of the other woman who vividly figures the radical imagination in female form, who began by boldly imagining herself in the roles of legendary heroic women leaders, Sophia Willoughby can live as her world does not yet permit women to live, expressing transformative power and passion.

  IN A NOVEL published two years after Warner’s, Rachel made what can only be described as a cameo appearance, this time under her own name. The author of the novel was an American, Rachel Field. All This, and Heaven Too (1938) was a best-seller, a popular romantic fiction in the familiar mode derived from Charlotte Brontë, about a plain, repressed, but fiercely passionate and ambitious governess and a warped, magnetic man. Based on a scandal that had apparently touched a branch of Rachel Field’s family, in France in Rachel’s time, it vindicates a woman whom history remembers as the mistress—and the motive—of a nobleman who murdered his wife. In Field’s story, Henriette Desportes-Déluzy is fiercely virginal and honestly passionate, in Brontëesque style. The daughter of Bonapartist aristocrats fallen on hard times, she is hired as a governess by the Duc de Praslin and his wife, a languid, excessively fertile, sexually aggressive Corsican who neglects her four children. The governess is prim and competent; the children soon come to prefer her to their torpid mother; and Henriette quickly fascinates the duke, who fastidiously disdains his blowsy wife and sees in the very different, independent-minded other woman “a little glimpse of what life might have been.” Soon the two are going out together to the theater with one of the children, to see Rachel in Judith—hardly an appropriate choice for a child, Henriette remarks. (In the 1940 Hollywood film version of the novel, starring Bette Davis and Charles Boyer, the play is the more familiar Phèdre, “classic” and therefore respectable—quite as inappropriate. Rachel, by the way, appears in the movie only on a poster.) As gossips talk, and the newspapers publish hints, the charged, chaste friendship persists. The wife grows increasingly jealous, and forces the governess to leave. Poor Henriette’s reputation is ruined, and she cannot find another position. She stays on in Paris, living frugally, seeing the duke very rarely, and always in the company of his children.

  In the summer of 1847, some months after Henriette moves from the home of the Praslin family, the duchess is found murdered in her room. The duke is the chief suspect, and the woman reputed to be his mistress is suspected of complicity. Henriette is put in the Conciergerie, the prison where Marie Antoinette had been confined. Insulted and injured, she insists on her innocence, and maintains her dignity. (When Mlle Déluzy took her walks in the courtyard of the Conciergerie, Victor Hugo reported, she was conscious that all eyes, from all windows, were trained on her; she posed. Hugo judged her a clever but heartless woman, capable of a crime of egotism, not passion.)

  Popular feeling against the duke is intense: as a peer of France, he cannot be prosecuted in the ordinary way, and when he is allowed to kill himself without confessing to his crime the people are enraged, against him and Mlle Déluzy. Hatred of Louis-Philippe and his ministry, and of aristocrats generally, is focused on the woman in the prison. (From Rachel Field’s point of view, the Praslin affair helped bring down the government; and there is indeed some talk about it in Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale.) Henriette Déluzy is ultimately released for want of evidence, and she successfully escapes her questionable past by flight to democratic America, where, all passion spent, she will enjoy the calm devotion of a benign New England minister, Mr. Field.

  But she is haunted by her sensational past. When the great actress Rachel comes to America, Henriette Déluzy Field goes to see her. Rachel Field picks up the trope of the woman who sees herself reflected in the great actress: having mediated between genres, shortening the distance between tragedy and bourgeois fiction, it blurs the distinction between “high” and popular fiction here. Henriette is thrilled by watching Phèdre, and sees in the passion Rachel makes manifest a mirror of her secret self. Like Phèdre, Henriette had experienced forbidden desire, and others had died violently as a consequence of it, as in the play. The exiled Frenchwoman goes backstage, and talks with her countrywoman about the parts they both have played in tragedy. Rachel, who knows Henriette’s sensational story, says, “Drama has come to us both in different ways. Compared to what you have lived, my roles must seem like the charades of children.” Henriette demurs. “Drama has marked both our lives,” she acknowledges, but adds: “for me it took the form of a yoke; for you—wings.” Rachel’s exhausting performance has drained her; Henriette “could not help seeing how frail that body had grown.” She takes leave of the restless, risk-taking actress, who lives her passions fully and is doomed not to be saved in a bourgeois heaven on earth, in a new world. She says, “I salute your genius.” It is the tribute that Lucy Snowe could not pay her directly.

  INTRODUCTION AND CHAPTER ONE

  For stars, see Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality (London, 1972); Edgar Morin, Les Stars (Paris, 1972); Richard Dyer, Stars (London, 1979) and Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (London, 1986); Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown (New York, 1986). Morin makes the point that stars are actors who save producers from financial ruin; I borrow his Hollywood examples.

  The most useful biographies of Rachel in French and English are Sylvie Chevalley, Rachel: J’ai porté mon nom aussi loin que j’ai pu (Paris, 1989); Nicole Toussaint du Wast, Rachel: amours et tragédie (Paris, 1980); Joanna Richardson, Rachel (New York, 1957); Bernard Falk, Rachel the Immortal (New York, 1936); Louis Barthou, Rachel (Paris, 1926). M. Védel, Notice sur Rachel (Paris, 1859), is the most reliable and least tendentious work by one of her contemporaries. The book-length biographies and memoirs of Rachel also include Madame [A.] de B[arréra], Memoirs of Rachel (New York, 1858); Léon Beauvallet, Rachel and the New World (Paris, 1856; trans. Colin Clair, London, 1957); Jules Janin, Rachel et la tragédie (Paris, 1859); A.-P. Mantel, Rachel: détails inédits (Paris, 1858); Eugène de Mirecourt, Rachel (Paris, 1854); Samson, Mémoires (Paris, 1882); Mme Samson, Rachel et Samson, souvenirs de théâtre (Paris, 1898). See also Théodore de Banville, Mes souvenirs (Paris, 1882); Adolphe Crémieux, Autographes (Paris, 1885); Edmond Got, Journal (Paris, 1910); the pseudonymous Prince Georges de Hohenzollern, Mademoiselle Rachel: souvenirs d’un contemporain (Berlin, 1882); Arsène Houssaye, Les Confessions: souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, 1830–1880 (Paris, 1885); Frances Anne Kemble, Records of Later Life (London, 1882); Ernest Legouvé, Soixante ans de souvenirs (Paris, 1886; trans. Albert D. Vandam, London, 1893); Adelaide Ristori, Etudes et souvenirs (Paris, 1887); Louis Véron, Mémoires d’un bourgeois de Paris (Paris, 1856).

  For Rachel and Tragedy the loci classici are Jules Janin and Alfred de Musset, “De la tragédie, à propos des débuts de Mlle Rachel,” Revue des deux mondes, 1 November 1838; see also Musset’s review of the “Reprise de Bajazet” in the same journal, 1 December 1838. Especially useful is the drama criticism of Théophile Gautier, collected as Histoire de l’art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans (Leipzig, 1858–59; repr. Geneva, 1968), 6 vols.; see also the theater reviews reprinted in the Pléiade edition of the works of Gérard de Nerval (Paris, 1984), and Matthew Arnold’s essay “Rachel” in On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig, 1875; repr. New York, Grove Press, n.d.). For a severely critical view of Rachel, see Charles Maurice, La Vérité-Rachel: examen du talent (Paris, 1850). See also C.-A. de Chambrun, Quelques réflexions sur l’art dramatique de Mlle Rachel, ses succès, ses défauts (Paris, 1853); Etienne Léon Lamothe-Langon, Rachel (Paris, 1838); E. Masseras, “Le dernier chapître de la vie de Mlle Rachel,” in Revue de France (Paris, 1876); Auguste Vacquerie, “Mlle Rachel,” Profils et grimaces (Paris, 1856). Rachel’s influence on tragedy is considered retrospectively in André Bellessort, “Rachel et la tragédie française,” Heures de parole: sujets anciens, questions modernes (Paris, 1929).

&nbs
p; More and less “romanced” works about Rachel that have developed her myth since her death include James Agate, Rachel (New York, 1928); March Cost, I, Rachel (New York, 1957); A. de Faucigny-Lucinge (née Choiseul-Gouffier), Rachel et son temps (Paris, 1910); Hector Fleischmann, Rachel intime (Paris, 1910); Francis Gribble, Rachel: Her Stage Life and Her Real Life (London, 1911); Paul Hagenauer, Rachel, princesse de théâtre et coeur passionné (Paris, 1957); Arsène Houssaye, La Comédienne (Paris, 1884); Nina Kennard, Rachel (Boston, 1886); J. Lucas-Dubreton, Rachel (Paris, 1936); Martial-Piéchaud, La Vie privée de Rachel (Paris, 1954); and the frankly partisan but also scholarly Valentine Thomson, La Vie sentimentale de Rachel d’après des lettres inédites (Paris, 1910). There are at least two biographies of the actress in Yiddish, Abraham Cahan’s Rachel (New York, 1938) and Rachel by Ch. Korenchandler (Paris, 1958).

  The important (incomplete) collections of letters by Rachel, with interstitial commentary, are by Georges d’Heylli [Edmond Poinsot], Rachel d’après sa correspondance (Paris, 1882), and Gabriel Laplane, Rachel: lettres inédites (Paris, 1947). For other published letters, see Imbert de Saint Amand, Mme de Girardin, avec les lettres inédites de Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Mlle Rachel (Paris, 1875); Rachel, “Lettres inédites,” La Revue de Paris, 1 May 1910, and “Lettres à l’aimé,” La Revue de France, 15 December 1922; Léon Séché, “Les Amis d’Alfred de Musset: Rachel, lettres inédites,” La Revue, 1 December 1906, and “Rachel et Mme de Girardin, documents inédits,” La Revue de Paris, 1 June 1909; and Richmond Laurin Hawkins, Rachel and Arsène Houssaye: Unpublished Letters, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature XV (Cambridge, Mass., 1933).

  Rachel is one of several significant figures allotted essays in Théophile Gautier, Portraits contemporains (Paris, 1886); Sir Theodore Martin, Monographs: Garrick, Macready, Rachel, and Baron Stockmar (London, 1906); Mme [Béatrix] Dussane, Reines de théâtre 1633–1941 (Paris, 1944); Marcel Pollitzer, Trois reines de théâtre: Mlle Mars, Marie Dorval, Rachel (Paris, 1958); and especially Henry Knepler, The Gilded Stage: The Years of the Great International Actresses (New York, 1968). See also Robert Launay, Figures juives (Paris, 1921); Elizabeth Robins, Twelve Great Actresses (New York, 1900); and Marie-Louise Pailleron, François Buloz et ses amis (Paris, 1930).

  The doyenne of modern scholarship on Rachel is Sylvie Chevalley: in addition to her recent biography, see her Rachel en Amérique (Paris, 1957); “La tournée de Rachel en Russie,” Revue de l’histoire du théâtre IV, 1958; and “Rachel et les écrivains romantiques,” Romantisme 38, 1982. See also Nikolai Solnzev, “Rachel vue par les artistes et les écrivains russes,” Revue de l’histoire du théâtre IV, 1958; Lawrence Senelick, “Rachel in Russia: The Shchepkin-Annenkov Correspondence,” Theatre Research International, vol. III, no. 2, February 1978; and John Stokes, “Rachel’s ‘Terrible Beauty’: An Actress Among the Novelists,” ELH, Winter, 1984.

  I have quoted from the published collections of letters by Rachel and from letters in libraries in Paris (Bibliothèque de la Comédie-Française), Jerusalem (The Hebrew University), and Cambridge, Massachusetts (Harvard Theatre Collection). Most of the letters now in Israel are in Laplane’s collection; most of those at Harvard are reprinted by Hawkins. I know of the existence of other letters which I have not been able to consult, and regret that the long-promised edition of Rachel’s complete correspondence has not yet appeared.

  I have cited accessible English editions whenever possible. Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the French are my own, made with the help of Elizabeth Houlding.

  1 “that supreme gift”: “ce don suprême qui fait les grandes tragédiennes, l’autorité.” Théophile Gautier, Histoire de l’art dramatique en France depuis vingtcinq ans V, p. 67.

  2 “Rachel, who triumphed so magnificently”: “Rachel, qui avait obtenu de si beaux triomphes dans l’ancienne tragédie, était précisément douée de toutes les qualités modernes dans le talent comme dans la beauté.—Cette jeune fille élancée et mince, qui pourrait se faire une ceinture de son diadème, cet enfant au corps souple, aux mains fluettes, aux pied mignon, au front bombé, aux yeux pleins de sombres éclairs, à la lèvre arquée par le sneer, ne ressemble en rien aux femmes antiques, à hanches étroites, à flancs épais, à larges épaules, à front bas que nous font voir les statues grecques et romaines; toute la passion maladive du temps où nous vivons agite ces membres frêles, inquiets, nerveux et tirant de l’énergie morale la force que les anciens tiraient de l’énergie physique.—Cette fièvre moderne qui bouillonne sous toutes les froideurs de la vieille tragédie, et qui parvient toujours à trouver quelque échappement, est une des causes inconnues et inavouées du succès de la jeune tragédienne.” Gautier IV, p. 71. In a paper, “Light and the Actor,” presented at a conference, “Victorian Theater and Theatricality,” at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 8 May 1992, Michael Booth suggests that the flashing eyes of actors described by Rachel’s contemporaries seemed remarkable because they reflected limelight, an innovation which made possible a follow spot that picked out the single actor on the stage, and was reflected by eyes as well as sequins, etc.

  3 “What can I tell you”: “Que vous raconterai-je de nos triompbes? Ils sont toujours à la hauteur de nos mérites.” Rachel to Louise de Saigneville, quoted by Sylvie Chevalley, Rachel: J’ai porté mon nom aussi loin que j’ai pu, p. 276.

  4 “They wanted to orchestrate”: “On voulait un dernier triomphe pour la grande tragédienne; on n’eût qu’un immense concours de curieux.” “Rachel,” in Michaud, Biographie universelle (Paris, 1880), p. 35. “to inter the precious remains”: Mme de B., Memoirs of Rachel, p. 370.

  5 “Her acting is fascinating”: “Son jeu est fascinant; tant qu’elle est en scène, quoi qu’il se passe, vos yeux ne peuvent se détacher d’elle; cet être faible et fragile vous domine; je ne saurais estimer qui ne s’abandonnerait pas à son pouvoir pendant la représentation. Je crois voir encore cette moue orgueilleuse, ce regard rapide qui vous fouette.” Alexander Herzen is quoted by Nikolai Solnzev, “Rachel, vue par les artistes et les écrivains russes,” Revue de l’bistoire du théâtre IV (1958), p. 356. “It was a marvellous sight”: Charlotte Brontë, Villette (Harmondsworth, 1984), p. 339. All further quotations are from this edition.

  6 “those lines”: “ces phrases qui résonnent sur l’idée comme une armure d’airain sur les épaules d’un guerrier,… ce style si arrêté, si net et si magistral, qui vient en avant comme un bas-relief fouillé par le ciseau.” Gautier VI, p. 181.

  7 For the Second Funeral of Napoleon, see especially Victor Hugo, Choses vues 1830–1846, vol. 1 (Paris, 1913). Mary Shelley’s letter about the funeral was written over a year after the event; see Betty T. Bennett, ed., The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley III (Baltimore and London, 1988), p. 19.

  8 “a tall, broad-chested, dark-eyed young prince”: W. M. Thackeray, “The Second Funeral of Napoleon” (1841), in The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray XIX (Boston, 1892), p. 335.

  9 Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York, 1978), esp. pp. 25, 62, 63.

  10 For Rachel’s will and Sarah Félix’s willful or careless mismanagement, see Bernard Falk, Rachel the Immortal, p. 295 ff.

  11 “She has had the funeral”: Henry James, “Paris As It Is,” 25 December 1875, Parisian Sketches: Letters to the New York Tribune 1875–1876, edited by Leon Edel and Ilse Dusoir Lind (New York, 1957), p. 22. For Mlle Raucourt’s funeral, see Roselyne Laplane, Mademoiselle George (Paris, 1987). For the funeral of Mlle Mars, see Hugo, Choses vues I, p. 236.

  12 “Why was I chosen”: Dumas is quoted by Hector Fleischmann, Rachel intime, p. 310.

  13 “not a drop”: See André Bellessort, Heures de parole, p. 220. Joseph-Isidore Samson, according to one historian of French Jewry, was himself a Jew. See David Cohen, La Promotion des juifs en France à l’époque du second empire (Paris, 1980).

  14 “the temperament of a bureaucrat”: It is Gabriel Laplane who writes t
hat Samson “avait un tempérament de fonctionnaire … respectueux de l’autorité,” while Rachel “appartenait à la race sans racines.” Laplane, p. 64.

  15 Félix’s French is perhaps worth recording. “Vous pouvez m’en croire, Monsieur, puisque je trouve en ce moment la force et le courage de vous écrire,” he wrote, and protested that he was motivated by “un sentiment de douloureuse et haute convenance.” Letter of 8 January 1858, Laplane, pp. 63–64. “And so the history”: James Agate, Rachel, p. 174.

  16 “I had always believed that an artist’s private life”: “J’avais toujours pensé que la vie privée d’un artiste n’était pas du domaine de la publicité; telle n’est pas votre manière de voir; je ne contesterais pas avec vous sur ce point, convaincue que mieux que moi vous devez connaître les limites imposées à la critique par les lois et les convenances.” Rachel’s letter to M. Eugène Quinot of Le Siècle demanded a correction of an article announcing her conversion. Laplane, p. 126.

  17 “We talked food all the way”: “Jusqu’à Marseille nous avons alors surtout parlé cuisine; c’était un prélat gourmand.” Rachel to her mother; repr. in Chevalley, Rachel, p. 376.

  18 “All that we can say of Mlle Rachel”: quoted by Falk, p. 307.

  19 “in the half-light”: “Dans le demi-jour d’une alcôve qui ressemble à une chapelle, s’érige un lit d’albâtre … du plus étrange dessin. On dirait des tuyaux d’orgue, surmontés de masques antiques. Au pied du lit, regardant le chevet, une statue de Polymnie évoque dans les plis de sa tunique la beauté classique, égarée dans ce chefd’oeuvre de mauvais goût. C’est sur ce lit, évoquant par avance la froideur de la pierre tombale, que Phèdre s’endormit et ne se réveilla plus.” H. Clouzot in Bulletin de la société de l’histoire du théâtre (1908), p. 147.