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A FABULOUS being, in an everyday human form ; a face, not
beautiful, scarcely
even pretty, which looks upon the world
with an air at once ironical and
sympathetic ; a brow that grows
broader or narrower according to the capricious
invasions of her
aureole of hair; an odd little nose, perked heavenward;
two
roguish eyes, now blue, now black ; the rude accents of a street-
girl,
suddenly changing to the well-bred murmuring of a great
lady ; abrupt, abundant
gestures, eloquently finishing half-spoken
sentences ; a supple neck — a
slender, opulent figure — a dainty foot,
that scarcely touches the earth and yet
can fly amazingly near
the ceiling ; lips, nervous, senuous, trembling, curling
; a frock,
simple or sumptuous, bought at a bargain or created by a Court-
dressmaker, which expresses, moulds, completes, and sometimes
almost unveils
the marvellous creature it envelops ; a gay, a grave
demeanour ; grace, wit,
sweetness, tartness ; frivolity and earnest-
ness, tenderness and indifference ;
beauty without beauty, im-
morality without evil : a nothing capable of
everything : such is
Woman at Paris : such is the Parisienne : and Madame Réjane
is
the Parisienne, is all Parisiennes, incarnated.
What though our Parisienne be the daughter of a hall-porter,
what though she be
a maid-servant, a courtesan, or an arch-duchess,
she goes everywhere, she is the equal of every one, she knows or
divines
everything. No need for her to learn good manners, nor
bad ones : she's born
with both. According to the time or place,
she will talk to you of politics, of
art, of literature — of dress, trade,
cookery — of finance, of socialism, of
luxury, of starvation — with the
patness, the sure touch, the absolute
sincerity, of one who has seen
all, experienced all, understood all. She's as
sentimental as a song,
wily as a diplomate, gay as folly, or serious as a novel
by Zola.
What has she read ? Where was she educated ? Who cares ?
Her book
of life is Paris ; she knows her Paris by heart ; and
whoso knows Paris can
dispense with further knowledge. She
adores originality and novelty, but she can
herself transmute the
commonplace into the original, the old into the new.
Whatever
she touches forthwith reflects her own animation, her mobility,
her
elusive charm. Flowers have no loveliness until she has grouped
them ;
colours are colourless unless they suit her complexion.
Delicately fingering
this or that silken fabric, she decrees which
shall remain in the darkness of
the shops, which shall become the
fashion of the hour. She crowns the poet, sits
to the painter,
inspires the sculptor, lends her voice to the musician ; and
not
one of these artists can pretend to talent, if it be her whim to
deny
it him. She awards fame and wealth, success and failure,
according to her
pleasure.
Madame Réjane — the Parisienne : they are interchangeable
terms. Whatever rôle
she plays absorbs the attention of all Paris.
Hearken, then, good French
Provincials, who would learn the
language of the Boulevards in a single lesson ;
hearken, also, ye
children of other lands who are eager for our pleasures,
and
curious about our tastes and manners ; hearken all people, men
and
women, who care, for once in a way, to behold what of all
Parisian things is
most essentially Parisian :— Go and see Réjane.
Don't go to the Opéra, where the music is German ; nor to the
Opéra-Comique,
where it is Italian ; nor yet to the Comédie-
Française, where the sublime is
made ridiculous, and the heroes
and heroines of Racine take on the attitudes of
bull-fighters and
cigarette-makers ; nor to the Odéon, nor to the Palais-Royal,
nor
here, nor there, nor elsewhere : go and see Réjane. Be she at
London,
Chicago, Brussels, St. Petersburg — Réjane is Paris. She
carries the soul of
Paris with her, wheresoever she listeth.
A Parisienne, she was born in Paris ; an actress, she is the
daughter of an
actor, and the niece of Madame Aptal-Arnault,
sometime
pedigree ?
Her very name is suggestive ; it seems to share in the
odd turn of her wit, the
sauciness of her face, the tang of her
voice ; for Réjane's real name is Réju.
Doesn't it sound like a
nick-name, especially invented for this child of the
greenroom ?
" Réjane " calls up to us the fanciful actress — fanciful, but
studious, conscientious, impassioned for her art ; " Madame
Réjane" has rather a
grand air; but Réju makes such a funny
face at her.
I picture to myself the little Réju, scarcely out of her cradle,
but already
cunningly mischievous, fired with an immense curiosity
about the world behind
the scenes, and dreaming of herself as
leading lady. She hears of nothing, she
talks of nothing, but the
Theatre. And presently her inevitable calling, her
manifest destiny,
takes its first step towards realisation. She is admitted into
the
class of Regnier, the famous
Thenceforth the pupil makes steady progress. In 1873, at the
age of fifteen, she obtains an honourable mention for comedy at
the
Conservatoire ; the following year she divides a second prize
with Mademoiselle
Samary. But what am I saying ? Only a
second prize ? Let us see.
To-day, as then, though twenty years have passed, there is no
possibility of
success, no chance of getting an engagement, for a
pupil on leaving the
Conservatoire, unless a certain all-powerful
critic, supreme judge, arbiter
beyond appeal, sees fit to pronounce
a decision confirming the verdict of the
Examining Jury. This
extraordinary man holds the future of each candidate in the
palm
of his fat and heavy hand. Fame and fortune are contained in
his
inkstand, and determined by his articles. He is both Pope
and King. The Jury
proposes, he disposes. The Jury reigns,
he governs. He smiles or frowns, the
Jury bows its head. The
pupils tremble before their Masters ; the Masters
tremble before
this monstrous Fetich,— for the Public thinks with him and
by
him, and sees only through his spectacles ; and no star can shine
till
his short sight has discovered it.
This puissant astronomer is Monsieur Francisque Sarcey.
Against his opinion the newspapers can raise no voice, for he
alone edits them
all. He writes thirty articles a day, each of
which is thirty times reprinted,
thrice thirty times quoted from.
He is, as it were, the Press in person. And
presently the
momentous hour arrived when the delicate and sprightly pupil
of
Regnier was to appear before this enormous and somnolent mass,
and to
thrill it with pleasure. For Monsieur Sarcey smiled upon
and applauded Réjane's
début at the Conservatoire. He conse-
crated to her as many as fifty lines of
intelligent criticism ; and I
pray Heaven they may be remembered to his credit
on the Day
of Judgment. Here they are, in that twopenny-halfpenny style
of
his, so dear to the readers of
" I own that, for my part, I should have willingly awarded to the
latter
(Mademoiselle Réjane) a first prize. It seems to me that she
deserved it. But
the Jury is frequently influenced by extrinsic and
carries with it the right of entrance into the Comédie Française ; and
the Jury
did not think Mademoiselle Réjane, with her little wide-
awake face, suited to
the vast frame of the House of Molière. That
is well enough ; but the second
prize, which it awarded her, authorises
the Director of the Odéon to receive her
into his Company ; and that
perspective alone ought to have sufficed to dissuade
the Jury from the
course it took..... Every one knows that at present the Odéon
is,
for a beginner, a most indifferent school..... Instead of shoving its
promising pupils into it by the shoulders, the Conservatoire should
forbid them
to approach it, lest they should be lost there. What will
Mademoiselle Réjane do
at the Odéon ? Show her legs in
de Louis
XIV.
A pretty
state of things. She must either go to the Vaudeville or to
the Gymnase. It is
there that she will form herself; it is there that
she will learn her trade,
show what she is capable of, and prepare
herself for the Comédie Française, if
she is ever to enter it..... She
recited a fragment from
her choice. The
What wit
there is in her look, her smile ! With her small eyes,
shrewd and piercing, with
her little face thrust forward, she has so
knowing an air, one is inclined to
smile at the mere sight of her. Does
she perhaps show a little too much
assurance ? What of it ? Tis the
result of excessive timidity. But she laughs
with such good grace, she
has so fresh and true a voice, she articulates so
clearly, she seems so
happy to be alive and to have talent, that involuntarily
one thinks of
Chénier's line :
.... I shall be surprised if she does not make her way."
Praised be Sarcey ! That was better than a second prize for
Réjane. The Oracle
gave her the first, without dividing it. She
got an immediate engagement ; and in March, 1875, appeared
on that stage where
to-day she reigns supreme, the Vaudeville,
to which she brought back the
vaudeville that was no longer
played there. She began by alienating the heart of
Alphonse
Daudet, who, while recognising her clever delivery, found fault
with her unemotional gaiety ; but, in compensation, another
authoritative
critic, Auguste Vitu, wrote, after the performance
of
and
feeling. She rendered Gabrielle's despair with a naturalness,
a brilliancy, a
spontaneity, which won a most striking success."
Shall I follow her through each of her creations, from her début
in
things," in
Castel in
when she played Gabrielle in
interpretation of Madame de
Librac, in
conception of
the part of Ida ?—which quite reversed the previous
judgments of her critics, wringing praise from her enemy Daudet,
and censure
from her faithful admirer Vitu. The natural order
of things, however, was
re-established by her performance of
Tapageurs
ness ; and Vitu again
applauded.
Her successes at the Vaudeville extend from 1875 to 1882 ; and
towards the end
of that period, Réjane, always rising higher in
her art, created Anita in
Théâtre des Panoramas, and at the Ambigu, where she gave a
splendid
interpretation of Madame Cézambre in Richepin's
Glu
fickle, now constant to her first love, she alternated between
the Variétés and
the Vaudeville ; took an engagement at the
Odéon ; assisted at the birth and
death of the Grand-Théâtre ;
and just lately the Vaudeville has won her back
once more.
Amidst these perambulations, Réjane played the diva in
Soleil
the same play, those of Gabrielle and Clicquette in
Clochart
gay and mischievous one. Réjane kept them perfectly distinct,
and without the smallest apparent effort. In 1887, she telephoned
in
the absurd answers of the apparatus, that from the gallery to the
stalls the theatre was one roar of laughter and applause ; I fancy the
salvoes
and broadsides must still sometimes echo in her delicate ears.
Réjane's part in
all, the inimitable perfection of her play in
exultation knew no bounds when, in 1890, she
again appeared
in this rôle. Time, that had metamorphosed the lissom critic
of
1875 into a round and inert mass of solid flesh, cruel Father
Time, gave
back to Sarcey, for this occasion only, a flash of youthful
fire, which stirred
his wits to warmth and animation. He shouted
out hardly articulate praise ; he
literally rolled in his stall with
pleasure ; his bald head blushed like an
aurora borealis. " Look
at her ! " he cried, " see her malicious smiles, her
feline graces,
listen to her reserved and biting diction ; she is the very
essence
of the Parisienne ! What an ovation she received ! How they
applauded her ! and how she played ! " From M. Sarcey the
laugh spreads ; it
thaws the scepticism of M. Jules Lemaître,
engulfs the timidity of the public,
becomes unanimous and
universal, and is no longer to be silenced.
In 1888, M. Edmond de Goncourt entrusted Réjane with the
part of
against the author was waged in the house. Réjane secured the
victory
Everything in her inspires the certitude of success ; her
voice aims at the
heart, her gestures knock at it. Réjane
confides all to the hazard of the dice ;
her sudden attacks are
of the most dare-devil nature ; and no matter how risky,
how
dangerous, how extravagant the jump, she never loses her
footing ; her
play is always correct, her handling sure, her
coolness imperturbable. It was
impossible to watch her precipi-
tate herself down the staircase in
And fifteen years before
Yvette Guilbert, it was Réjane who first
had the audacity to sing with a voice
that was no voice, making
wit and gesture more than cover the deficiency. In
Réjane introduced on the boards of Les
Variétés a bit of dancing
such as one sees at the Elysée-Montmartre ; she seized
on and
imitated the grotesque effrontery of Mademoiselle Grille-d'Egout,
and her little arched foot flying upwards, brushed a kiss upon the
forehead of
her model ; for Réjane the " grand écart " may be
fatal, perhaps, but it is
neither difficult nor terrifying.
Once more delighting us with
such child-like grace the Candidate in
immediately afterwards she took a part in
The subject is equivocal, the
dialogue smutty. Réjane extenuated
nothing ; on the contrary, accentuated
things, and yet knew
always how to win her pardon.
Now, it so happened that in 1882, after having personified the
Moulin-Rouge in
the
stage, in
On the anniversary day, ten years later, her marriage took place
in
good earnest, before a real M. le Maire, and according to all legal
formalities, with M. Porel, a sometime actor, an ex-director of
the Odéon, then
director of the Grand-Théâtre, and co-director
to-day of the Vaudeville..... But
to return to her art.
Just as the first dressmakers of Paris measure Réjane's fine
figure for the
costumes of her various rôles, so the best writers of
the French Academy now
make plays to her measure. They
take the size of her temperament, the height of
her talent, the
breadth of her play ; they consider her taste, they flatter
her
mood ; they clothe her with the richest draperies she can covet.
Their
imagination, their fancy, their cleverness, are all put at her
service. The
leaders in this industry have hitherto been Messrs.
Meilhac and Halévy, but now
M. Victorien Sardou is ruining
them.
played, that best suited to bring out
her manifold resources. It
is not merely that Réjane plays the washerwoman,
become a great
lady, without blemish or omission ; she
self, with no overloading, nothing forced,
nothing caricatured. It
is portraiture ; history.
Many a time has Réjane appeared in cap, cotton frock, and
white apron ; many a
time in robes of state, glittering with
diamonds ; she has worn the buskin or
the sock, demeaned herself
like a gutter heroine, or dropped the stately curtsey
of the high-
born lady. But never, except in Madame Sans-Gêne, has she
been
able to bring all her róles into one focus, exhibit her whole
wardrobe, and yet
remain one and the same person, compress into
one evening the whole of her
life.
The seekers after strange novelties, the fanatics for the
mists of the far
north, the vague, the irresolute, the restless,
will not easily forget the
Ibsenish mask worn by Réjane in
Nora of
for herself, probably prefer
to this vacillating creation, the
firm drawing, the clear design, the strong, yet supple lines of
Madame
Sans-Gêne.
Why has Réjane no engagement at the Comédie-Française ?
Whom does one go to
applaud on this stage, called the first in
France, and from which Réjane, Sarah
Bernhardt, and Coquelin
the elder, all are absent ? I will explain the matter in
two words.
The house of Molière, for many years now, has belonged to
Molière no more. Were
Molière to come to life again, neither
he nor Réjane would go to eat their
hearts out, with inaction and
dulness, beneath the wings of M. Jules
Claretie—although he is,
of course, a very estimable gentleman. Were Réjane
unmarried,
Molière to-day would enter into partnership with her, because
she is in herself the entire Comédie-Française. I have already
said she is
married to M. Porel, director of the Vaudeville, where
she reigns as Queen. I am
quite unable to see any reason why
she should soon desert such a fortunate
conjugal domicile.
Notwithstanding the dryness and the rapidity of this enumera-
tion of Réjane's
rôles, I hope to have given some general idea of
the marvellous diversity and
flexibility of her dramatic spirit and
temperament ; it seems to me that the
most searching criticism of
her various creations, would not greatly enhance the
accuracy of
the picture. This is why I make no attempt to describe her in
some three or four parts of an entirely different character. Besides,
I should
have to draw on hearsay ; and I desire to trust only to
my own eyes, my own
heart. Needless to say, I have not
had the good luck to see Madame Réjane in
each of her
characterisations since her first appearance. Her youthful air
has
never changed ; but I have only had the opportunity of admiring
it
during the last few years. I confidently maintain, however,
that she could not
have been more charning in 1875 than she is
to-day, with the devil in her body,
heaven in her eyes.