R STAGE LIFE 
 R REAL LIFE 
 
 
 FRANCIS GRIBBLE
 
 RACHEL 
 
 HER STAGE LIFE AND HER REAL LIFE
 
 WORKS BY FRANCIS GRIBBLE 
 
 MME. DE STAEL AND HER LOVERS 
 GEORGE SAND AND HER LOVERS 
 
 ROUSSEAU AND THE WOMEN HE 
 LOVED 
 
 CHATEAUBRIAND AND HIS COURT 
 OF WOMEN 
 
 THE PASSIONS OF THE FRENCH 
 ROMANTICS 
 
 THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF LORD BYRON
 
 .///
 
 RACHEL 
 
 HER STAGE LIFE AND HER REAL LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS GRIBBLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 'THE PASSIONS OF THE FRENCH ROMANTICS," ETC. 
 
 WITH SIX PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAITS 
 
 LONDON 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. 
 
 191 1
 
 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, K.C., AND 
 
 BUNGAY SUFFOLK.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THEATRICAL biographies, in England at all events, 
 are usually written either by actors and actresses or 
 by their stage-struck admirers. The impression which 
 they convey (whether accidentally or by design) is 
 not so much that all the world is a stage as that the 
 stage is the only part of the world which is of much 
 importance. The picture drawn is apt to lack pro- 
 portion, and to be a picture, as it were, of the theatre 
 surrounded by other things, and of actors and actresses 
 surrounded by other people. In the case of the 
 majority of actors and actresses it is, perhaps, 
 necessary to stand at the point of view from which 
 the picture assumes that shape in order to persuade 
 oneself that it is worth while to write their lives. 
 Examples illustrative of the truth of the remark 
 will occur to every one. 
 
 There have been a few actors and actresses, how- 
 ever actresses more particularly to whose case 
 the remark does not apply. They have been great 
 enough to be classed, not with public entertainers, 
 but with public institutions; their personalities as 
 well as their performances having counted in the 
 social life of their times. Rachel's personality 
 counted, beyond question, in that way. If she had 
 not the whole world for her stage, she had the greater 
 portion of the civilized world for her audience; and 
 she held her audience, not merely as an artist, but
 
 Preface 
 
 as an individual. Her contemporaries discussed her 
 caprices and her character no less eagerly than her im- 
 personations ; their descendants have not yet desisted 
 from the discussion. Her biographer, therefore, has 
 no right to flatter himself that he has finished his task 
 when he has compiled a list of her professional 
 engagements and buried her beneath a tumulus of 
 adulatory press notices. The case is one of the few 
 in which it is worth while to try to go further, 
 drawing the portrait of an actress, and composing 
 a picture of the social medium in which she moved. 
 
 To do so, indeed, is not only worth while, but may 
 even be edifying a word which an author has as 
 good a right to use as a reviewer, seeing that he, at 
 least, knows not only what he has put in his book, but 
 also why he has put it there. It is a word, at any 
 rate, which is used here for a definite reason, and 
 with a full sense of responsibility. Edification is a goal 
 which may be reached by many roads, but the road 
 of hypocrisy is not one of them; and though there 
 may be occasions on which hypocrisy should be 
 classed with the venial sins, it would be difficult to 
 prove that there is anything to be gained by adopt- 
 ing a hypocritical tone when writing about the 
 theatre. On the contrary, the advantage in that 
 case is all on the side of candour. 
 
 Let us consider. We live in an age in which the 
 theatre tends, more and more, to be regarded as 
 affording an appropriate career for the daughters 
 of professional men. Young women come to the 
 career, in increasing numbers, even from the Manse 
 and from the Rectory. Neither they nor their 
 parents know, as a rule, anything whatever about 
 
 vi
 
 Preface 
 
 the conditions of the calling. Their chief, if not 
 their only, expectation is that they will be beau- 
 tifully dressed, much admired, frequently photo- 
 graphed, and encouraged to regard themselves as 
 artists. Their picture of the life on which they are 
 about to enter is derived from theatrical novels, in 
 which the heroines are invariably as virtuous as they 
 are gifted, and from theatrical biographies in which 
 the actual facts of the case are concealed by the 
 thick smoke of ascending incense. There is no 
 edification there. Not " edifying " but " mislead- 
 ing " is the really applicable epithet for the works 
 which complacently favour such agreeable conven- 
 tions; and the matter is one on which it is exceed- 
 ingly undesirable that the Manse and the Rectory 
 should be misled. 
 
 As long as the Manse and the Rectory ignored the 
 theatre there was, perhaps, no useful purpose to be 
 served by directing their attention to its particular- 
 ities ; but the case is different now that the theatrical 
 impresario includes them in his recruiting grounds. 
 It is not to their interest to be deceived the price 
 ultimately to be paid for the pleasure of the deception 
 may be too high. It is no kindness to them (though 
 it may soothe them) to write of the life of an actress 
 as if there were nothing in it but the acting and the 
 applause. They want (or at all events they ought 
 to want) the complete picture. The details in the 
 picture of which they disapprove are precisely the 
 details of which it is most important to them to 
 inform themselves. They want to know something 
 about the theatrical atmosphere, the theatrical 
 point of view and the point of view of the admirers 
 
 vii
 
 Preface 
 
 of the actresses; something too of the effect of the 
 theatrical life in titillating vanity, subduing senti- 
 ment, and hardening the character. A theatrical 
 biography, faithfully written, may supply materials 
 for the drawing of conclusions on all these matters; 
 and the conclusions may be the more convincing if 
 the writer leaves the actual drawing of them to 
 the reader. 
 
 Three new books about Rachel have recently been 
 published in France : La Vie Sentimentale de Rachel, 
 by Mile. Valentine Thomson ; Rachel et son Temps, by 
 Mme. A. de Faucigny-Lucinge, and Rachel Intime, 
 by M. Hector Fleischmann. Each one of them 
 contains documents of interest previously unpub- 
 lished; and the author has to acknowledge obliga- 
 tions to all of them, and also to a biographical 
 study by M. Henry Lecomte, entitled Un Amour de 
 Ddjazet. 
 
 FRANCIS GRIBBLE. 
 
 vin
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Leitmotif ..... . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Rachel's birth and childhood ....... 8 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Theatrical training De'but at the Gymnase, and engagement 
 
 at the Come'die Frangaise . . . . . .16 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 De'but at the Comedie Frangaise State of the French Stage at 
 
 the time Effects of the Romantic Movement . . 28 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Rachel's reception by the public and by the critics Jules 
 
 Janin and Alfred de Musset quarrel about her . . 38 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Alfred de Mussel's description of Rachel's improvised supper- 
 party Her subsequent relations with him ... 48 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Dr. VeVon Rachel's quarrel with him Her relations with 
 
 the Faubourg Saint-Germain ...... 58 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Rachel and Cre'mieux Her first visit to London Her per- 
 formance at Windsor ....... 70 
 
 ix
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Provincial loves An offer of marriage Quarrel with Crdmieux 8 1 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Relations with the Prince de Joinville With Comte Walewski 
 
 With Alexandre Dumas ...... go 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Rachel's palatial mansion Her arrogance Her quarrel with 
 
 Walewski ......... 101 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Relations with De'jazet and with Arthur Bertrand . . .no 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 The failure of Judith and the discomfiture of Mile. Maxime . 121 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Rachel and Charlotte Bronte' Relations with Viennet and 
 
 with Lamartine . . . . . . . .130 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The singing of the Marseillaise, and the republicanizing of the 
 
 provinces . . . . . . . . -144 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Arsene Houssaye appointed, at Rachel's desire, Director of the 
 
 Comedie Francaise . . . . . . 153 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 Life behind the scenes at the National Theatre . . 162 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 Rachel's betrothal to Hector B 175 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The German Tour Quarrel with Hector B . . .184 
 
 x
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rachel and Ponsard The tour in Russia . . . . 193 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Return to Paris Death of Rachel's sister Rebecca Relations 
 
 with Legouve" Adrienne Lecouvreur .... 205 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Quarrel with Legouve" Refusal to appear in Medee Litigation 
 
 Resumption of friendship with Cre'mieux . . .214 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Failure of Rosemonde Comparative failure of La Czarine 
 Rivalry between Rachel and Ristori Rachel decides to 
 tour in the United States 223 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The American fiasco Serious illness of Rachel Her last 
 
 appearance at Charleston Her departure for Havana . 235 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Life at Havana Rachel's ill-health there Return to France 
 
 and departure for Egypt . . . . . 247 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Life at Cairo A trip up the Nile Sojourn at Montpellier . 256 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Last days in Paris Farewell to the theatre Departure for 
 
 the Riviera ......... 266 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Life on the Riviera Last illness and death . . . .271 
 
 INDEX . 275 
 
 XI
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 RACHEL Faci 
 
 frontispiece 
 (From a portrait by Muller) 
 
 RACHEL IN PHEDRE 
 
 . 48 
 RACHEL 
 
 (From a portrait by Dtveria) 
 
 MADAME DEJAZET 
 
 (Front a photograph) * IIQ 
 
 MADAME RISTORI 
 
 22 3 
 RACHEL 
 
 (From a photograph) ' 2(56 
 
 xn
 
 RACHEL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Leit-motif. 
 
 A WORD may seem to be due, at the outset, to 
 any irresolute readers who stand, as it were, titubat- 
 ing on the threshold, reluctant to pursue Rachel's 
 acquaintance until informed what sort of a person 
 she was. 
 
 To such readers it must be freely admitted that 
 Rachel did not, in conduct and deportment, con- 
 form to the ideals of certain admirable English 
 actresses admirable one means, of course, in the 
 matter of their domestic relations. The facts forbid 
 us to picture her grouping a fortunate husband's 
 children about her knees when she hears the foot- 
 fall of the photographer on the staircase. She 
 never married, and the art of the photographer 
 was in its infancy in her time. Nor was there any- 
 thing in her way of life suggestive of the Rectory, 
 the Church and Stage Guild, or even the Bedford 
 College for Women. In view of the circumstances 
 of her up-bringing there hardly could be. She 
 came, as has been said, to the stars from the 
 gutter; and she was not very careful to brush 
 the mud of the gutter from her skirts on her 
 arrival.
 
 Rachel 
 
 All that has to be granted, and will have to be 
 illustrated as we proceed, but without emphasis, 
 and in no censorious spirit. A Life of Rachel, 
 truthfully undertaken, is bound to be, in the main, a 
 book neither of blame nor of approbation, but of 
 pity. She seems to have pitied herself. ' ' La pauvre 
 Rachel!" is a refrain which runs through her 
 letters, now playfully and now pathetically uttered; 
 and the reasons for her melancholy are tolerably 
 clear. 
 
 It was something more than the melancholy of 
 the race which wandered so long in the wilderness 
 and afterwards was carried into captivity and scat- 
 tered over the face of the earth. It was also the 
 melancholy of the weak and weary, who feel that 
 their strength is inferior to their genius and fear 
 that it will prove unequal to their task. She had 
 hardly begun to taste the intoxicating joy of her 
 artistic triumph when she received her first warning 
 that her course from the dark to the dark would 
 be brief; and her life, thenceforward, was a race 
 against time : a race in which there was to be 
 little leisure for repose or contemplation. 
 
 That fact is the clue to a great deal in Rachel's 
 career and character. She was famous when she 
 was young, and was exalted to a very delirium of 
 delight; but the clouds were already stealing up, 
 foreshadowing the night when no man can work and 
 no woman can be admired. Her chilling instinct of 
 their advent grew gradually to a certain knowledge, 
 and there were times when she spoke of her terror. 
 Once, at a rehearsal of Adrienne Lecouvreur, she 
 burst, without apparent reason, into a flood of
 
 Rachel 
 
 tears. Asked why she wept, she replied that it was 
 because of her premonition that she, too, like the 
 actress whom she was impersonating, was destined 
 to die young and see the cup of rapture snatched 
 from her lips almost before she had tasted it. 
 
 And therefore she made haste, racing against 
 time, declining rest even when she was longing 
 for it. The day came when she saw her error and 
 admitted it. 
 
 She had been born in a position in which life is an 
 ignoble struggle for the means of living. She had 
 risen, almost without effort, as one who runs lightly 
 up a ladder, to a position in which every morning 
 and every evening of life might bring fresh pleasures. 
 Having achieved that position, she wanted all that 
 it could yield : glory, the homage of princes, wealth, 
 and, if not love, at least that passionate make-believe 
 which goes by the name of love. So she pursued 
 glory from Paris to St. Petersburg, and from St. 
 Petersburg to New York, and took lovers and bore 
 children to them, and having earned one fortune 
 by her talents, acquired a second by spoiling the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 Not, it may be objected, a very sympathetic person. 
 Probably, and indeed almost certainly, Rachel was 
 not sympathetic. That epithet " sweet " which 
 is deservedly applied to so many of our English 
 actresses would not have been very applicable to her. 
 For she had genius; and the temperament of genius 
 is rarely sympathetic. The essence of genius is to 
 be egoistic, if not hard, avid of experiences rather 
 than passionate, ready to drop an experience when 
 it has yielded all that can ( be got from it, and pass 
 
 B 2
 
 Rachel 
 
 on complacently to the next. That was the way, 
 for example, of Napoleon, of Chateaubriand, and 
 of George Sand. But genius, in the very eagerness 
 of its pursuit of experiences, may sometimes over- 
 shoot the mark, and miss the best experience of 
 all; and that seems to have been Rachel's case. 
 
 It is related that Rachel, in the days of her 
 glory, when she queened it at supper-parties, 
 trailing rich lace sleeves in richer sauces, once 
 confided to the company that she could not re- 
 member a time when she had been what the world 
 calls " innocent." That, one may justly say, sup- 
 posing it to be true (which is uncertain), was rather 
 her misfortune than her fault; for respect for the 
 innocence of young women is not numbered among 
 the traditions of that gutter in which she passed 
 her early years. The trouble was that, whether 
 in consequence of the premature soiling of her 
 innocence or for other reasons, no one of her love 
 affairs ever seemed to her of supreme and exclusive 
 importance. 
 
 There was a bourgeoise in her who had died young, 
 as there always is in even the most Bohemian women : 
 we shall come upon clear traces of that bourgeoise 
 when we come to examine some of her letters. But 
 there was no romance in her life, only restless 
 avidity of sensation. " I have never belonged to 
 any man/' she exclaimed, in the heat of self-defence, 
 when certain revelations (of which more hereafter) 
 decided the Faubourg Saint Germain, after taking 
 her to its bosom, to drop her like a hot potato ; and 
 the true inwardness of the boast seems to have been 
 that, though she had given herself to many men, 
 
 4
 
 Rachel 
 
 in the pursuit of pleasure or of presents, she had 
 given her heart to none. 
 
 That, truly, was not a very sympathetic way of 
 asserting the self-dependence of genius; and it is 
 by no means for the sake of such stories (though it 
 would be idle to try to avoid them altogether) that 
 one attempts a fresh book about Rachel. Equally 
 little does one assume the task on account of the 
 strength of her family affections, though it can j ustly 
 be said that she looked after the interests of the 
 Tribe of Felix as devotedly as Napoleon looked 
 after those of the House of Bonaparte. Her claim 
 on our attention is simply and solely her genius. 
 
 On the whole one hears rather more of the genius 
 of actresses than is warranted by the circumstances 
 of their case. They like the use of the word, and 
 they lay themselves out to make things pleasant 
 for those who please them; so that critics are apt 
 to sacrifice truth to them, as courtiers sacrifice 
 it to kings and queens. In the case of Rachel, 
 however, one can employ the word without any 
 sacrifice, and even without any economy, of truth. 
 Her power overwhelmed Charlotte Bronte at Brussels ; 
 poor, prim little Charlotte's only doubt being whether 
 she merited moral approval. Fanny Kemble, who 
 saw her in London, declared that neither Ristori 
 nor Madame Bernhardt was worthy of being men- 
 tioned in the same sentence with her. Yet she 
 needed praise from neither of them, for her achieve- 
 ments were definite and tangible. 
 
 Just as Napoleon, when quite a young officer, 
 restored order to a troubled France just as Chateau- 
 briand, almost with his first book, made religion 
 
 5
 
 Rachel 
 
 fashionable in a community of atheists so Rachel, 
 as a mere slip of a girl, came to the rescue of the 
 National Theatre at the darkest hour of its fortunes, 
 and restored the classical drama to favour at a time 
 when the revolt of the Romantics had almost 
 expelled it from the stage. Like Napoleon, too, 
 she triumphed early, without the help of any of that 
 mysterious " influence " which, alike on the stage 
 and in the army, is so often requisite to give the 
 young their chance. The parallel, in short, between 
 her career and Napoleon's may be made to seem very 
 close; and one is the more interested in drawing it 
 because it is through her, as will appear, that the 
 blood, if not the genius, of Napoleon has been trans- 
 mitted to an esteemed contemporary manufacturer. 
 
 Her figure, therefore, is, for these reasons, well 
 worth recalling and reviving; and it will be proper 
 to write of her real life as well as her stage life because 
 she herself drew a sharp distinction between the 
 two. She burst into tears, one day, on withdrawing 
 from the boards to the wings; and when asked the 
 cause of her trouble, she replied : " It is because I 
 have to live the life of others and not my own." 
 
 Exactly what dreams of a life of her own she cher- 
 ished it might be difficult to say. Occasionally, it 
 would seem, they were the dreams of a bo^irgeoise 
 dreams of marrying and settling down, nursing 
 babies, darning stockings, and feeding poultry, in 
 some quiet country place. Such dreams appear to 
 have visited her more particularly in the later years 
 of her brief life, when she was ill and tired, and 
 the pursuit of wealth and glory had become an 
 effort. But she never realized them; and she never 
 
 6
 
 Rachel 
 
 tried to realize them, although a simple man, who 
 was also a devout lover, offered her the opportunity. 
 She dallied with the idea, but always put it off until 
 the morrow which never came. 
 
 It was borne in upon her at last, indeed, that she 
 was a shadow pursuing shadows, but the habit of 
 the chase had hold of her, and she could not desist. 
 Always, it seems, there was to be one chase more, 
 " the best and the last "; and so she went on, with 
 the melancholy which they said was the melancholy 
 of the race upon her brow, " faint but pursuing," 
 till she fainted by the way. La pauvre Rachel/ 
 That is the Leit-motif.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Rachel's birth and childhood. 
 
 QUESTIONS having been raised as to the accuracy 
 of the register, it is uncertain whether Rachel was 
 born in 1820 or in 1821. The place of her birth, 
 however, is known to have been the village inn at 
 Munf, in the Canton of Aargau, in Switzerland; and 
 her father, Jacques (or more properly Jacob) Felix 
 was a Wandering Jew a pedlar [< un homme qui 
 colportait," as the aforesaid register describes him. 
 
 It is said that he was rather a superior person for 
 a pedlar, and that, in his promising youth, he had 
 been intended for the honourable calling of a rabbi. 
 If so, that was Rachel's nearest approach to the 
 Rectory that source from which a perennial stream 
 of highly regarded English actresses flows now-a- 
 days as from a fountain. And Jacob Felix did 
 certainly show himself a man of acute intelligence 
 in his more prosperous later life albeit mainly in 
 connection with the amassing of pieces of silver. 
 In 1820, however, he had very few pieces of silver 
 in his possession, and peddled for a precarious 
 livelihood. 
 
 His papers, including his marriage certificate, were 
 in order; and he carried his wife, Esther Haya Flix, 
 in the same cart in which he stored his soap, scent, 
 ribbons, laces, popular illustrated almanacs, and 
 other wares. Madame Felix, it appears, attended 
 
 8
 
 Rachel 
 
 to the branch of the business which concerned 
 ladies' wardrobes, laying up at an inn, from time to 
 time, to bear a child. Thus babies a perpetually 
 increasing company of babies were added to the 
 contents of the cart. When Rachel arrived, Sarah 
 was already there; and afterwards there came 
 Rebecca, and Dinah, and Leah, and Raphael a 
 considerable quiverful, and rather more than a 
 reasonable cartful. 
 
 On one occasion Rachel, happily well padded with 
 -blankets, fell backwards out of the cart, and lay, for 
 some time, in the middle of the road, without being 
 missed by either her father or her mother; but a 
 passing peasant picked her up, ran after the cart, 
 and restored her to her family. But for that peas- 
 ant's thoughtfulness, it has sometimes been said, 
 Rachel would probably have been brought up in a 
 Swiss charitable institution and begun life as a 
 general servant ; but that is as it may be, for it seems 
 a more reasonable hypothesis that her father would 
 ultimately have remarked her disappearance, and 
 returned to look for her. He was an intelligent 
 man, as has been said, and not like the birds that 
 cannot count their eggs. 
 
 That is the only story of Rachel's infancy which 
 has been preserved. Getting a little older, she is 
 said to have helped to peddle, and there are stories 
 to the effect that she and Sarah sang and danced, 
 and played the guitar, and collected coppers in the 
 country cafes to which the peddling pilgrimage 
 brought them ; also stories to the effect that she was 
 soundly slapped for begging, and that, once, having 
 lost her way in the streets of Rheims, she was brought 
 
 9
 
 Rachel 
 
 home to her parents in the basket of a tradesman's 
 errand-boy. Rachel herself used to tell such stories 
 at the supper-parties of the glorious days when, as 
 has been said, money being no object, she trailed her 
 sleeves in the sauces, regardless of expense; but it 
 would be hard to say how much of the stories was 
 remembered and how much invented or imagined. 
 Everything, in short, is vague and legendary until 
 we find the family settling at Lyon. 
 
 Jacob Felix, one may suppose, felt the need of 
 settling somewhere because his family was out- 
 growing his cart; for his wife bore him ten children 
 who died young as well as the six who grew up. 
 For what reason he chose Lyon in preference to any 
 other town one does not know ; but he soon displayed 
 there all the ingenuity of his race in devising means 
 by which every member of the family, from its head 
 to the latest baby, might do something to earn a 
 little money. He himself turned from peddling to 
 tuition, and gave German lessons to such pupils as 
 were satisfied to have an ex-pedlar for their tutor, 
 though he occasionally reverted to his old calling, 
 and hawked opera-glasses outside the cafes. His 
 wife called on the ladies of Lyon with a view 
 to purchasing, altering, and reselling their cast-off 
 clothes, offering, at the same time, to tell their for- 
 tunes with a pack of cards which she carried in 
 her corsage. The elder children were sent out to 
 sing and dance for coppers at the street corners. 
 The baby there always was a baby in that prolific 
 family was exhibited on a costermonger's barrow 
 to excite the commiseration of the charitable. 
 
 One feels the influence of a master mind in this 
 
 10
 
 Rachel 
 
 elaborate co-ordination of remunerative activities; 
 and one also feels that it would have been strange 
 if pieces of silver had not been accumulated when so 
 many tentacles were stretched out to gather them 
 in. They were accumulated, if not to any great 
 extent, at least sufficiently to pay for the removal 
 of the family to Paris, where they took a poor 
 lodging, behind the Hotel de Ville, and opposite the 
 house of the popular novelist Paul de Kock, a few 
 days after the outbreak of the Revolution of July 
 1830. 
 
 At first, however, the life at Paris was only the 
 life at Lyon over again : tuition and the hawking of 
 opera-glasses for the father; old-clothes dealing, 
 diversified by fortune-telling, for the mother; street 
 singing and entertaining for the children; poverty, 
 though not actual destitution, for all. It was in 
 those days, no doubt, that Rachel, hungry but begin- 
 ning to be conscious of the fire within her, acquired 
 some of her cynical disdain for the manners and 
 moral and social standards of a world which, as 
 she said, when explaining how she felt herself in the 
 very skin of one of Victor Hugo's heroines, " would 
 let a woman starve to death while she was pure and 
 innocent, but would overwhelm her with flattering 
 attentions after she had lost her honour." She 
 acquired it unconsciously, however, and, in the 
 meantime, she twanged her guitar and sang : 
 
 J'ai deux femmes dans mes maisons 
 Pour m'habituer aux poisons, 
 
 C'est ce qui me desole I 
 Mais pour dissiper mes ennuis 
 Je bois beaucoup de vin de nuits, 
 
 C'est ce qui me console ! 
 
 ii
 
 Rachel 
 
 Arsene Houssaye, 1 afterwards the manager of the 
 theatre at which Rachel was the leading actress, 
 quotes that as a part of her lost repertory. Prob- 
 ably it is a favourable specimen of it, for the street 
 songs of Paris are apt to plumb much lower depths. 
 The child who sang them was a pale and scraggy 
 mite, plain almost to ugliness, with thin dark hair 
 and a disproportionately large forehead, though 
 also with " certain fires of sunrise in her eyes." 
 She had a deep voice, too, which sounded absurd, 
 coming from so small a body; but, somehow or other, 
 she held her audience. There was an unusual 
 intelligence in her gaminerie. She acted while she 
 sang; so that her humble admirers offered her, not 
 only copper coins, but also sweets, oranges and fried 
 potatoes. 
 
 One day, however, there was added to the audience 
 a radiant, clean-shaven man, of quite a different class 
 from the others. He stopped to listen for a moment 
 on his quick, firm walk towards success in life, and he 
 remarked the intelligence of the child's performance. 
 He lifted her up, and kissed her on the fore- 
 head. " Little one," he said, " I love children, and 
 I love artists. Here is a piece of silver for you. 
 But you should not sing those very shocking songs. 
 Here is something better, a little piece of my own. 
 Take it and sing it to any tune you like. Good-bye, 
 my little one ! ' 
 
 Having said that, the radiant, clean-shaven man 
 
 1 La Comedienne, by Arsene Houssaye, is a fanciful biography of 
 Rachel under the name of Esther. It is not a trustworthy work. 
 The volume of reminiscences entitled Les Confessions may, however, 
 be followed with more confidence. 
 
 12
 
 Rachel 
 
 passed on, resuming his march towards success in 
 life; and the child, hugging her piece of silver, in- 
 quired whether any one knew who the kind stranger 
 was. The question was passed round the ring until 
 some one was found to answer it : " His name is 
 Hugo Monsieur Victor Hugo. He is a very clever 
 gentleman who writes books." 
 
 Such is the anecdote as Arsene Houssaye relates it. 
 We may believe it if we like; or we may believe, if 
 we prefer, that Rachel and Victor Hugo imagined 
 it in collaboration, as a happy piece of symbolism, in 
 the later years when they met as equal potentates, 
 claiming respectively to be the greatest poetical 
 creator and the greatest poetical interpreter of their 
 generation. Another street encounter of the period, 
 however, is historical, and also important, since it 
 put an end to the street singing and placed Rachel 
 on the path which was to conduct her to glory. 
 Choron, the great music teacher, and head of the 
 Conservatoire of Sacred Music, happened to pass, 
 and was so pleased with her voice that he offered to 
 take her into his school and train her. 
 
 Would she still be allowed to sing ? she asked, not 
 knowing what kind of a school he kept. Yes, he 
 replied, but she would be taught to sing psalms and 
 hymns instead of comic songs. Would there be 
 opportunities of taking up a collection ? was the next 
 question. There would be no need for that, was the 
 answer. Not only would her parents have nothing 
 to pay for her at his school, but he himself would 
 give her a piece of silver every week as pocket- 
 money. The one condition which he made was that 
 she must drop the Israelitish name of Rachel, which 
 
 13
 
 Rachel 
 
 did not become a singer of Christian music, and 
 content herself with her other name, Elisa. The 
 condition was accepted, and Rachel made her first 
 start in life. 
 
 It was a false start, though not an unhappy one 
 much better than the false start which she might 
 easily have made, under her mother's guidance, as 
 an old-clothes woman or a fortune-teller. Rachel's 
 voice, as it turned out, was only moderately good, 
 and she had no disposition to diligence. ' They 
 have nicknamed me Pierrot," she wrote home to her 
 mother, " and I deserve the name, for I am up to all 
 sorts of nonsense like a true Pierrot"; and the 
 stories preserved of her stay at Choron's school are 
 chiefly to the effect that she played truant. She 
 wrote to Choron he kept the letter on account of 
 its quaint mistakes in spelling begging him to 
 excuse her absence from his class on the ground that 
 her mother wished to take her to have a bath ; and it 
 transpired that there had never been any question 
 of a bath, but that the promising pupil had spent 
 the time in the Bois de Boulogne, where she had 
 gathered a group of strange children about her, 
 and entertained them by mimicking the methods 
 of her teacher with the conductor's baton. 
 
 Some teachers would have been angry, but Choron 
 was good-natured " has a thousand kindnesses for 
 me," she wrote in one of her letters home. His most 
 useful act of kindness was his recognition of the true 
 direction in which her talents lay, and the trouble 
 which he took to put her in the right path. He 
 met, one day, his friend Saint-Aulaire, an actor at 
 the Comedie Frangaise and a professor at the 
 
 14
 
 Rachel 
 
 Conservatoire, who also kept a private school 
 of elocution. 
 
 " Saint- Aulaire," he said, " I want you to take over 
 one of my pupils." 
 
 " My dear fellow, I have quite enough unsatis- 
 factory pupils already," the comedian objected. 
 
 " I dare say. But this is a great actress, and I am 
 going to pay her fees for her." 
 
 Perhaps he told him at the same time how Rachel 
 had sold her umbrella (informing her mother when 
 questioned on the subject that she had lost it) in 
 order to be able to purchase a copy of the works of 
 Racine a story which could not fail to melt the heart 
 of a French actor. Whether he did so or not, at all 
 events he persuaded him. Saint-Aulaire heard his 
 friend's pupil recite, thought her promising, and 
 admitted her to his class. But he made one 
 stipulation. The child must drop the name of Elisa 
 and call herself Rachel for that was the name for 
 the theatre. 
 
 The stipulation was agreed to, and Rachel, at the 
 age of fourteen, was thus started on the road to 
 glory.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Theatrical training Debut at the Gymnase, and engagement at the 
 Comedie Frangaise. 
 
 SOME of the girls at Saint-Aulaire's Dramatic 
 Academy left their teacher from time to time in 
 order to flit, gaily and gracefully, down the flowery 
 track. So Arsene Houssaye tells us, hastening to 
 add, however, that against that danger Rachel was 
 immune. 
 
 Not, indeed, that she had the temperament of 
 a nun a great actress never has. But she was ugly, 
 and she was proud; and she had the instinctive per- 
 ception belonging to genius of the goal for which 
 she was bound, and of the fact that certain roads 
 did not lead to it. The flowery track, she divined, 
 was for the thddtreuse, not for the actress. The path 
 of pleasure was r jt the way to glory, though the 
 path of glory mignt be the way to pleasure. More- 
 over, as she was a plain child, the temptations were 
 probably inconsiderable. 
 
 She wore a calico frock it was the only frock she 
 possessed of a red ground with white spots. Her 
 boots were abominably coarse and clumsy. Her 
 black hair was drawn tight, so that her huge fore- 
 head bulged, and hung, twisted into meagre pig- 
 tails, down her back. She hoped, with a longing like 
 despair, that she would grow up to be beautiful; 
 and she wondered what she could do to make her- 
 
 16
 
 Rachel 
 
 self look like one of the Greek statues in the Louvre 
 galleries. In the meantime, however, she did not 
 look in the least like any of them, but was a puny 
 freak with a voice like a big bassoon. 
 
 She was intelligent, however, and she could act; 
 and Saint-Aulaire was a teacher who found his 
 pupils opportunities of showing what they could 
 do. They gave public performances under his 
 direction in the Salle Moliere, paying him fees for 
 the privilege of appearing from one to ten francs 
 according to the importance of the part and 
 recouping themselves by selling tickets for the 
 entertainment to their fathers and mothers and 
 uncles and aunts, and, no doubt, their admirers if 
 they had any. A list has been compiled from the 
 register of the school of thirty-four roles from 
 Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Shakespeare and other 
 dramatists of the repertory which Rachel sustained 
 between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. 
 
 The bulk of the audience was doubtless ignorant, 
 if not uncritical ; but not the whole of it. It some- 
 times included the friends of trP 1 professor as well 
 as the friends of the pupils actors, theatrical mana- 
 gers, and amateurs of the arts. All of these were 
 eager to " discover " a new actress some of them for 
 purely professional reasons, others for the satisfac- 
 tion of their vanity, or in the hope that the gratitude 
 of the actress discovered might manifest itself 
 agreeably. So intense is the French interest in 
 matters of art, especially when there is a reasonable 
 chance that there will be a pretty woman in the 
 case! Rachel, as we know, was not yet a pretty 
 woman; but she nevertheless began to attract 
 c 17
 
 Rachel 
 
 attention. The list of those who remembered in 
 later days that they had conversed with her in 
 Saint-Aulaire's little theatre is rather long; and 
 she became, of course, so celebrated that the most 
 trivial incidents of the days of her apprentice- 
 ship seemed worth recalling. Even the gentleman 
 in the French consular service who recollected 
 that he had once said to her : " My dear, here 
 is a penny for you. Go and buy yourself some 
 fried potatoes ! ' came to regard himself as 
 the possessor of a valuable piece of exclusive 
 information. 
 
 One of the amateurs who remarked her was 
 Berryer, the famous orator of the French bar the 
 Sir Rufus Isaacs or Sir Edward Carson of his time 
 and country. He is said to have gone home with 
 her more than once to the fifth-floor garret in which 
 Madame Felix refurbished ladies' cast-off wardrobes, 
 in order to give her hints in elocution. Dr. Veron, 
 equally famous as a newspaper editor and a man- 
 about-town, was another who observed her. He was 
 to know her more intimately before long, but, at 
 the moment, he only noticed the profundity of the 
 voice in which, in reply to some one who asked her 
 what she was doing, she replied : " Monsieur, je 
 pours uis mes etudes." Samson, the actor, who was 
 presently to be her tutor at the Conservatoire, also 
 saw and spoke to her; but her talents seem to have 
 impressed him less than the fact that her presenta- 
 tion to him interrupted her in a game of hopscotch. 
 Spectators with more insight were Monval the actor, 
 who noted her as a possible recruit for the Gymnase, 
 and Jouslin de Lassalle, director of the Theatre 
 
 18
 
 Rachel 
 
 Francais, who ran up to Saint-Aulaire in the green- 
 room and remonstrated with him 
 
 " What on earth do you mean," he asked him, 
 " by letting that girl play soubrettes ? Can't you 
 see that the child has all the makings of a great 
 tragedienne ? " and he proposed that Rachel should 
 be transferred to the Conservatoire. 
 
 She went there, and he forgot all about her. She 
 came under the tuition, not of Samson, but of 
 Provost; and Provost was a terror to all his pupils 
 and to Rachel more than to most of them. He 
 mocked her; he bullied her; he shouted at her, as 
 some of our own stage-managers are said (no doubt 
 unjustly) to shout at awkward extra ladies at 
 pantomime rehearsals. He told her that she had a 
 voice like a costermonger, and he concluded in his 
 most magisterial manner 
 
 " Child, what were you doing before it occurred to 
 you to study for the stage ? ' 
 
 " I was selling flowers, sir," Rachel answered 
 humbly. 
 
 " Then you had better go back and sell more 
 flowers. You are far more likely to excel as a 
 flower-girl than as an actress." 
 
 The time was soon to come when he would have 
 to eat those words, pretending that he liked the 
 taste of them with profuse apologies; but, in 
 the mean time, his rasping tongue drove Rachel from 
 the Conservatoire, though it did not drive her back 
 to the street industry which he specified. Poirson 
 of the Gymnase, who had heard of her from Monval 
 of that theatre, offered her a three-years' engagement 
 at 132 a year. Her father, who was in a hurry to 
 c 2 19
 
 Rachel 
 
 see his talented daughter contributing to the sup- 
 port of her family, insisted upon her accepting 
 it. La Vendtenne a drama based on the plot of 
 The Heart of Midlothian was written for her 
 debut. She made her first appearance on July 24, 
 
 1837- 
 
 All the Children of Israel in Paris all those of 
 humble station at all events rallied to the support 
 of the Tribe of Felix on that occasion. If haute 
 finance was not in evidence in the stalls, the pit and 
 gallery, at any rate, were packed with the loyal 
 hawkers of opera-glasses and the vociferous dealers 
 in old clothes. Among them, if in no other circles, 
 the intimation had been passed round that this 
 particular daughter of Israel was destined to be one 
 of the glories of her race. They shouted themselves 
 hoarse in their enthusiasm; and the critics also 
 spoke kindly, especially Jules Janin. 
 
 He was the dramatic Aristarchus of his time. He 
 wrote for the DJbats, a journal which, in those days, 
 was quite as important as the Times', and his good 
 word carried at least as much weight as the good 
 words of Mr. William Archer and Mr. A. B. Walkley 
 combined. Moreover he cultivated a genial, friendly 
 style, aimed at the hearts rather than the heads of 
 his readers a style akin, in some respects, to that 
 of the late Clement Scott, and in others to that of 
 the friendly contributors to the dramatic columns 
 of the Referee; and he was also a critic who liked, 
 sometimes, to encourage an actress by putting his 
 arm round her waist. 
 
 His desire to encourage Rachel in that way was 
 presently to get him into trouble with a rival patron 
 
 20
 
 Rachel 
 
 of the arts; but that story belongs to a somewhat 
 later date. Rachel, as yet, was too immature to 
 attract a man of Jules Janin's extensive oppor- 
 tunities, and he took a purely professional view of 
 her. Poirson, he wrote, had introduced " a new- 
 born babe " to the public; but this new-born babe 
 was no " infant phenomenon," and there was no 
 need to " write her up as a prodigy." She had 
 " soul and heart and intelligence/' but " very little 
 skill." Her voice was "harsh;" her hands were 
 "red." She was not "pretty" but she "pleased." 
 There were "tears, interest and emotion" in her 
 acting. It seemed reasonable to predict a future of 
 some distinction for her. 
 
 And so forth with the interminable verbosity of 
 the man whose life's work is to make much ado 
 about nothing. It was a satisfactory, if not a 
 gushing, notice; and the critic remembered after- 
 wards, though he seems not to have noticed the 
 matter at the time, that the actress achieved one 
 moment of supreme triumph when she chanted, or 
 intoned, instead of singing, a lyric included in the 
 piece 
 
 Je croyais encor Vinvoquer : 
 Vers moi soudain elle s'avance, 
 Et du doigt semble m'indiquer 
 Une ville inconnue immense . . . 
 Un seul mot rompit le silence : 
 "Paris!" et puts elle ajouta, 
 Comme en reponse a ma priere: 
 " Vas-y seule, a pied . . . car c'est Id 
 Que tu pourras sauver ton pere." 
 
 ' The Marseillaise of my days of misery," Rachel 
 called that song in after years we shall see why as 
 
 21
 
 Rachel 
 
 we proceed. They tell how she recalled and recited 
 it, on a bed of sickness, in a dimly lighted room, and 
 burst into tears when she had finished, because she 
 knew that her triumphs were over, and she had 
 only to wait for death. But that is to anticipate. 
 The actual triumph of the first appearance was of 
 very brief duration. La Vendfonne failed, and had 
 to be withdrawn. Le Manage de Raison, which 
 succeeded it, was equally a failure, and afforded no 
 scope for the display of Rachel's special gifts. 
 
 It became clear that the Gymnase was not the 
 theatre for her. She was as little in her element 
 in the light pieces of its repertory as would be, 
 say, Mrs. Patrick Campbell in Pink Dominoes, or 
 Miss Lena Ash well in Charlie's Aunt. Poirson 
 recognized this, and offered to release her from her 
 engagement, while, at the same time, using his 
 influence to facilitate her admission to the Comedie 
 Franaise. Before she could enter there, however, 
 she had to go back to her lessons ; and this time she 
 asked Samson to take her as his pupil, and Samson 
 agreed to do so. 
 
 Samson was an admirable man, a good actor, a 
 true gentleman, and the greatest dramatic teacher 
 that the world has ever seen : a man of whom it 
 may justly be said that he dignified his profession 
 in the confidence that, if he did so, his profession 
 would dignify him. He had known Talma; he was 
 to be the link between Talma and Rachel the two 
 greatest tragedians of his country. He had 
 thought highly of Rachel even when Provost 
 had hustled her out of the Conservatoire with his 
 
 22
 
 Rachel 
 
 injunction to go back to her flower-selling; and he 
 had protested against her removal to the Gymnase 
 as the probable ruin of her career. When she 
 returned to him, brought back by her father, he 
 realized at once that, in training her, he would have 
 the chance of a lifetime. But he also realized 
 that he had to do with a very ignorant little girl 
 whose training must begin with the elements. 
 
 Rachel in those days could hardly read. What- 
 ever she had to read, whether it was a letter, or a 
 newspaper, or a book, she read aloud. It had not 
 even occurred to her that it was worth while to read 
 anything more of a piece than her own part in it; 
 and her parents complained that she neglected her 
 studies in order to play with a skipping-rope. 
 All these faults Samson, treating her more as a 
 daughter than as a pupil, set himself to eradicate 
 with the patient care which his widow describes 
 in her interesting volume of theatrical recollections 
 entitled Rachel et Samson. 
 
 First he insisted that the skipping-rope should 
 be destroyed. Then he showed his pupil how im- 
 possible it was for her to understand a part unless 
 she studied the play as a whole. Finally he required 
 that she should take lessons in the French language, 
 and arranged that the governess of his own children, 
 a Madame Bronzet, should instruct her at the 
 cheap charge of twenty francs a month. And all 
 this, be it observed, solely in the interest of 
 art, and without any of those " ulterior motives" 
 by which the men, whether actors or patrons of 
 the drama, who hold out helping hands to actresses 
 are sometimes influenced. 
 
 23
 
 Rachel 
 
 One feels assured of that by the absence of even 
 the faintest gleam of jealousy from Madame Samson's 
 narrative. Both she and her husband often quarrelled 
 with Rachel in later years, but they always quarrelled 
 with her simultaneously. In the meantime she was 
 their prodigy, of whom they were jointly proud. 
 They invited her to their suburban villa as well 
 as their Paris flat ; they admired her efforts, already 
 beginning to be successful, to make herself beautiful 
 by " living up to " the statuary in the Louvre; and 
 they were very sorry for her because she was so poor. 
 Two glimpses at her poverty may be taken from 
 Madame Samson's book : 
 
 " Her French governess," we read, " used to tell 
 us that she often found her sitting before a small 
 fire watching a saucepan. She sat on a small three- 
 legged stool, studying a Racine which she held on 
 her knees, while her hands were full of carrots which 
 she was scraping to put in the pot-au-feu." 
 
 And then, on another page 
 
 " It was when she was coming to our country place. 
 One day she arrived later than usual. I began to 
 reproach her, but she said naively 
 
 ' It is not my fault, madame. This is the only 
 dress I have/ and she pointed to a little gingham 
 frock, flowered with lilac. ' I had to wash it this 
 morning, and then I had to dry it and iron it, and 
 that is why I am late.' 
 
 But she was getting on; and presently Samson 
 
 24
 
 Rachel 
 
 made her recite to Vedel, 1 who was now the director 
 of the national theatre. 
 
 " After she had finished " we are still quoting 
 Madame Samson, " Samson turned to him and 
 asked him what he thought of her. 
 
 ' She is very small,' he said. ' Her physique is 
 rather fragile/ 
 
 ' ' Never mind about her physique,' replied 
 Samson. ' What do you think of her reciting ? ' 
 
 " ' Very intelligent, but hardly rich and full 
 enough as yet.' 
 
 " ' Quite so/ rejoined Samson. ' You can't expect 
 a full-blown talent at her age. But do you think 
 her good enough to be introduced at the Comedie 
 Frangaise, or, at all events to be engaged by the 
 theatre with a view to her appearance a little 
 later? '" 
 
 ' Vedel agreed that she was good enough, and 
 a few days later offered her an engagement at 
 160 a year." 
 
 Then followed a further period of probation during 
 which Rachel enjoyed the privilege of free admission 
 to the theatre. She was still so poorly dressed that 
 she sometimes had trouble at the box-office ; and she 
 complained to Samson that the clerk there tried 
 to relegate her to the pit or gallery on the ground 
 that she was not sufficiently ornamental for the 
 dress circle or the stalls. " A little girl like that ! ''' 
 the clerk objected when Samson spoke to him; but 
 
 1 Promoted from the post of treasurer to succeed Jouslin 
 Lassalle. 
 
 25
 
 Rachel 
 
 Samson warned him that that little girl would soon 
 be in a position to bring about his eviction from 
 his box-office merely by remarking that she did not 
 like the colour of his hair. 
 
 She was, too, an impatient little girl. She had 
 not associated with the Samsons without getting 
 to know how grand was the status of a leading actress 
 at the Theatre Frangais ; what praise awaited her, 
 and what presents, and what opportunities of divert- 
 ing herself in the society of the nobly born, and at 
 their charges. It seemed to her that that good 
 time could not begin too soon. Vedel, in his article 
 on Rachel in the Revue des Races Latines, tells us 
 how she tried to hasten it : 
 
 " On the loth of June," he writes, " Mile. Rachel, 
 who often used to come to see me, said to me 
 
 " ' I am tired of this sort of thing. I want to make 
 my de*but. I wish you would let me appear.' 
 
 " ' When you like,' I said. ' Will the day after 
 to-morrow suit you ? ' 
 
 " A sudden blush came over her face, and, with 
 a look of pleasure which I shall never forget, she 
 answered, in eager tones 
 " ' Yes, I shall be delighted.' 
 " ' In which of your parts would you like to 
 appear ? ' 
 
 ' In whichever you prefer.' 
 ' Camille in Horace, for instance ? ' 
 ' ' That will suit me very well.' 
 
 ' All right, my dear. Tell M. Samson, and your 
 de"but shall be advertised to-morrow for the day 
 after.' 
 
 26
 
 Rachel 
 
 " ' But I haven't the dresses ready.' 
 
 ' Never mind. I will attend to that for you/ 
 " And, on the following morning, I supplied her 
 with what she needed." 
 
 The debut duly took place on June 13, 1838, 
 with exactly 30 2s. 6d. in the house.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Debut at the Comedie Franchise State of the French stage at the 
 time Effects of the Romantic Movement. 
 
 IF Rachel had failed, or even if she had been 
 only moderately successful, the matter would have 
 concerned no one but herself. As things turned out, 
 her appearance and signal success marked an epoch 
 in the history of the French stage ; so that it will be 
 proper to interpose here some remarks on that branch 
 of the subject remarks, of course, to be passed over 
 by any reader who is only interested in the personal 
 aspects of this work. 
 
 The point to be made is that Rachel, without 
 meaning to do anything of the kind, and without 
 even knowing what she did, suddenly stemmed the 
 rising tide of the Romantic Movement in the theatre. 
 So we must go back once more to the Romantic 
 Movement. 
 
 The Romantic Movement began in prose with 
 Rousseau, and was continued by Bernardin de 
 Sainte- Pierre, Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and 
 George Sand. These writers evolved fresh harmonies 
 out of the French language, and gave a new emotional 
 turn to French literature. In the matter of romance 
 they substituted first sentiment and then passion 
 for gallantry. It was their boast that they wrote, 
 not with ink, but with tears and their hearts' blood. 
 
 28
 
 Rachel 
 
 They put themselves into their books, and sounded 
 the personal note on the house-tops. The departure 
 was one from which no return was possible. The 
 ball, once set rolling, had to roll on until the 
 Romantic Movement became the Realistic Move- 
 ment; for Realism was only, a new kind of 
 Romanticism the result, not of a counter-revo- 
 lution, but of a supplementary revolution the 
 further overthrow of certain literary conventions 
 which the Romantics had left standing and certain 
 others which they had set up. The writers of 
 the eighteenth century conventional and classical 
 schools can hardly be said even to have shown fight 
 against them. 
 
 Where the prose writers had led the way the poets 
 followed; first Lamartine, then Alfred de Vigny, 
 Alfred de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, before the poet in 
 him died young and left him a critic, and finally 
 Victor Hugo. They not only devised new metres 
 and made new music ; they also introduced new ideas, 
 new emotions, and new points of view, bidding the 
 world wake up and find itself modern, calling upon 
 it to feel instead of thinking. Their lives were, as 
 one may say, successions of nervous crises, and their 
 verses were the reflection of their lives. Between 
 them and the intellectual literature of the eighteenth 
 century the French Revolution lay like a great gulf. 
 The classical and conventional subjects of poetry 
 did not appeal to them. Such subjects, they felt, 
 were only fit for school-boys' themes the real 
 purpose of literature was self-expression. 
 
 They expressed themselves, at first in tears, and 
 afterwards in frenzy. The history of their Movement 
 
 29
 
 Rachel 
 
 can almost be summed up as the transition from the 
 tears of Lamartine to the frenzy of Victor Hugo. 
 The sobs of Alfred de Musset, the sighs of Sainte- 
 Beuve, and the spleen of Alfred de Vigny are land- 
 marks on the journey. Only, of course, neither the 
 frenzy nor the tears are of the essence of the matter. 
 The essence of it is the resolve, or the instinct, of 
 each writer to be, and to express, himself : to see life 
 with his own eyes, and feel it with his own heart, and 
 render it accordingly, without regard to the rules and 
 traditions of the men of old. 
 
 Acting by instinct at first, by degrees they became 
 self-conscious. When they became self-conscious 
 they became militant; and when they became 
 militant the theatre was the principal object of 
 their attack just as it is the principal object of the 
 attack of certain fiery young English " intellectuals " 
 at the present time. And this for obvious reasons. 
 
 For the theatre in France occupies, or at all events 
 occupied at that date, a very different position from 
 the theatre in England. An English intellectual of 
 this age might reasonably say, if he chose to, that 
 the contemporary drama concerns him no more than 
 does contemporary ballet-dancing, or conjuring, 
 or plate-spinning. A French intellectual of the 
 Romantic School could not possibly take that line. 
 The theatre was not to be poohpoohed by him as a 
 mere place of popular entertainment. It had to 
 entertain, of course, under penalty of losing money 
 and being compelled to close its doors; but its appeal 
 was to persons of taste, and not to the vulgar herd. 
 It was, in short, a Temple of Art. The national 
 theatre was an .endowed and established Temple of 
 
 30
 
 Rachel 
 
 Art the repository of artistic traditions, officially 
 stamped as the best. The Romantics were bound, 
 therefore, to feel that, so long as the national theatre 
 upheld the classical traditions, it stood in their way, 
 and in the way of progress. They could also depend 
 upon it, as an old conservative institution, to resist 
 their attempt to overthrow it. 
 
 The fact of the matter was that French dramatic 
 literature had hardly progressed at all since 1789. 
 Stage plays like Le Manage de Figaro had helped to 
 prepare the way for the Revolution; but no new 
 dramatist of mark had come to light since Beau- 
 marchais. The best literature of the intervening 
 period had been what Professor Brandes has called 
 ;< the literature of the JmigrJs" the work of the 
 men and women who fled before the revolution- 
 ary storm and the subsequent despotism Cha- 
 teaubriand, and Madame de Stael, and Benjamin 
 Constant, and Senancour. Some of them amused 
 themselves with amateur theatricals in their exile 
 notably and chiefly at Coppet; but their real 
 interests were far removed from the theatre; and 
 the few writers who remained in Paris and wrote 
 for the stage found themselves engaged upon a 
 thankless task. 
 
 There were too many competing excitements 
 life itself competed. In the days when the guillotine 
 was " going always," and in the days when every 
 morning brought the bulletin of a fresh victory, 
 people did not need to exercise their emotions at the 
 play. The theatre retained, indeed, a certain cere- 
 monial importance because Napoleon was a playgoer 
 
 31
 
 Rachel 
 
 and was believed to have commanded Talma to 
 coach him in imperial deportment. But dramatic 
 art made no advance. The old plays were good 
 enough for the Emperor he had not an idea 
 beyond Racine, if indeed he had an idea beyond 
 Corneille ; so that tragedy, in his reign, did not pro- 
 gress beyond the point at which Voltaire had left it. 
 The revolution was not attempted until after he had 
 been sent to Saint Helena and the Bourbons had 
 come again into what they regarded as their own. 
 
 Then Stendhal began. He is not properly to be 
 classed with the Romantics ; but he did some of their 
 work for them when he wrote his pamphlet, Racine 
 et Shakespeare. His thesis was, roughly, that Shake- 
 speare, being exempt from the limitations which had 
 hampered Racine freer in his choice of subjects and 
 unfettered by any notion of dramatic " unities " 
 should be regarded as a greater man. This in the 
 city in which a play of Shakespeare's had just been 
 hooted off the stage on the ground that the author 
 was " Wellington's aide-de-camp." 
 
 Next Victor Hugo followed where Stendhal had 
 shown the way, producing, in the famous preface to 
 Cromwell, what may fairly be styled the romantic 
 dramatists' Petition of Right. There was no need, 
 he urged, for the tragedian to confine himself to 
 " noble " subjects. No subject was common or 
 unclean, and any subject could be made noble if 
 the artist knew how to treat it. And the so-called 
 " unities " were ridiculous. To confine a writer 
 within their four walls was like compelling a workman 
 to work in chains. Et cetera, et cetera, in a long and 
 furious manifesto. 
 
 32
 
 Rachel 
 
 So the new school was founded. Adherents were 
 recruited as fast as special constables are sworn in 
 on a day of riot; the militant company sallied 
 forth to war. Enthusiastic young poets began by 
 translating Shakespeare, and then proceeded to imi- 
 tate him. Alfred de Vigny's translation of Othello 
 marks a date in the movement ; but the most im- 
 portant date of all is that of the production of 
 Victor Hugo's Hernani. 
 
 Other theatres the Porte Saint-Martin and the 
 Odeon, for instance had already yielded to 
 the assault. Hernani was designed to conquer 
 the national theatre itself ; and it achieved the 
 victory in the face of opposition alike from the 
 old-fashioned players and from old-fashioned play- 
 goers. Mile. Mars, who had ruled over the theatre 
 for so long, showed, at rehearsals, a disposition to 
 " guy " her part, and was amazed to find that the 
 author had the courage to ask her to resign it if she 
 were not prepared to play it as he wished. 1 The Old 
 Brigade rallied at the premiere to boo and hiss, and 
 there ensued a battle royal between the rival claques. 
 All the world knows the story of that battle : how 
 Gerard de Nerval and Theophile Gautier raised an 
 army of Romantics in the studios; how Theo. the 
 long-haired ordered a new red waistcoat 2 for the 
 occasion; how that red waistcoat served as the 
 Oriflamme of the Hugolaters, who streamed into the 
 house with complimentary tickets; how the Hugo- 
 laters and the Old Brigade shouted against each 
 
 1 The final quarrel occurred because she presumed to amend the 
 author's text, resenting a portion of his vocabulary as unclassical. 
 2 According to some accounts he also wore green trousers. 
 D 33
 
 Rachel 
 
 other and almost came to blows; how the Hugo- 
 laters triumphed and remained in possession of the 
 field, declaring that the classical drama was " played 
 out " and that Victor Hugo was the greatest dramatic 
 author that the world had ever seen. 
 
 All the world knows, too, how the triumph of 
 Hernani was followed by the triumph of Alfred 
 de Vigny's Chatterton. 
 
 In that case also there was an Opposition to be 
 subdued an Opposition which included both Louis- 
 Philippe and his Minister of Fine Arts. These 
 objected that the national theatre was no place for 
 the emotional methods of Marie Dorval. They 
 insisted that the part of Kitty Bell ought to be played 
 in the cold-blooded classical style by the venerable 
 Mile. Mars. Their arguments were repeated, with 
 sarcastic predictions of failure, in the coulisses ; and 
 the author had to threaten that, unless he got his 
 way, he and his piece and his leading lady would be 
 transferred to the Porte Saint-Martin. 
 
 He got his way; and Chatterton was an even 
 greater success than Hernani; the upshot of the 
 matter being that the classical drama did really 
 seem to be on its last legs in France. The public 
 was not merely impatient of inferior writers of 
 the classical school such writers as Marie- Joseph 
 Chenier and 'Neopomucene Lemercier. It was tired, 
 or supposed itself to be tired, of Corneille and Racine 
 themselves. Tradition kept their works in the 
 repertory, but they ceased to draw. It looked as if 
 their removal from the repertory could only be a 
 question of time. 
 
 34
 
 Rachel 
 
 That was the state of things when Rachel made her 
 first appearance as Camille in Horace, with 30 2s 6d 
 in the house; and even with that figure the nadir was 
 not reached. On her second appearance in the same 
 part the receipts amounted only to 14 i8s. lod 
 and on her third appearance she played to a house 
 holding no more than 12 2s. 6d. Her triumph 
 was near at hand, but it was still to be delayed a 
 little longer. 
 
 So little importance had been attached to her 
 debut that the Press had not been invited to witness 
 it. It had taken place at the beginning of the dull 
 season, when the men who made public opinion in 
 Pans were all at the seaside. Or, at any rate, only 
 one of them had remained in town; and he could 
 not make public opinion by himself. 
 
 The one was Dr. Veron the inevitable man with 
 a flair for important artistic events which would 
 give him something to talk about in after-life, as keen 
 as that of the penny-a-liner for a street accident or a 
 fire. He turned into the theatre casually, he says 
 searching for a cool and quiet place in 'which to 
 spend a sultry evening, and he found only four persons 
 besides himself in the stalls. His attention was 
 drawn to the stage by " a strange and exceedingly 
 expressive countenance, a prominent brow, a dark 
 eye, deep-set and full of fire." He remembered that 
 he had seen that face before either at Saint-Aulaire's 
 Academy or at the Gymnase. He remembered a 
 certain deep voice answering the question what the 
 owner of it was doing in the words : " Je poursuis 
 mes etudes." 
 
 And now the studies had been pursued with so 
 D2 35
 
 Rachel 
 
 much success that Dr. Veron perceived the student 
 to be a prodigy of genius. If the prodigy whom he 
 had discovered had been merely a poet or a painter, 
 he might have kept his discovery to himself until he 
 had forgotten all about it. As she was an actress, 
 and of a certain haunting beauty, he felt the need of 
 telling all his friends. " When," he assured one 
 of them and probably, indeed, assured several of 
 them " the twelve or fifteen hundred men of 
 taste who make public opinion in Paris have seen 
 her and taken the measure of her talents, that 
 child will be the glory and fortune of the Comedie 
 Franaise." 
 
 A true prophecy, corroborated by an interesting 
 entry in the diary of a colleague, the actor Joanny : 
 " I played very well to-night, and that little girl, 
 Mademoiselle Rachel, seems to have the right stuff 
 in her." But not a prophecy which could be fulfilled 
 immediately. Dr. Veron, as has been said, could 
 not make public opinion by himself, though he tried 
 hard to do so. Jules Janin, who could, was taking 
 a holiday in Italy; so that Rachel went on playing 
 to empty houses. The best house which she played 
 to on the first eighteen occasions on which she 
 appeared was only 52 45. ; and the average receipt 
 was a few pence under 29. 
 
 Moreover the actress who had had to stand aside 
 in order that Rachel might appear in leading parts 
 was becoming impatient. She wished to resume 
 those parts, saying that Rachel had been favoured 
 sufficiently; Vedel had his work cut out to appease 
 her. He did appease her, however unless it was 
 that he intimidated her for he had confidence in 
 
 36
 
 Rachel 
 
 his new star, and was resolved to keep her in the 
 foreground until Jules Janin had seen her. 
 
 And now it was the middle of August; and Jules 
 Janin was on his way home; and there were people 
 waiting to tell him a few men of taste amid the 
 multitude who waited for a lead that there was a 
 little debutante at the Theatre Frangais, making a 
 curious impression there, though not yet causing a 
 furore, and that he had better make haste and inspect 
 her, and tell Paris what to think. 
 
 37
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Rachel's reception by the public and by the critics Jules Janin and 
 Alfred de Musset quarrel about her. 
 
 RACHEL, it is to be observed, though seen in leading 
 parts, was not yet definitely fixed in the position of a 
 leading lady. She was entitled, as were all debutantes, 
 to appear in such parts a certain number of times, to 
 show what she could do in them. What happened 
 afterwards would depend upon how her playing 
 affected the fortunes of the box-office ; and, for three 
 months, in spite of the plaudits of the pit and the 
 enthusiasm of two or three men of taste, the box- 
 office derived no perceptible benefit from her per- 
 formances. She was still a struggling neophyte, 
 relegated to the worst dressing-room in the theatre, 
 and so poor, Madame Samson tells us, that she had 
 to dispense with the services of a dresser or a maid, 
 carry her own chair up to it, arrange her own dressing- 
 table, and fix her own mirror in its place. 
 
 The prejudice against the classical drama was 
 strong. The Romantics were in possession, and 
 were not to be dislodged in a day. A clarion blast 
 would have to be blown on some newspaper man's 
 trumpet before the walls of Jericho would fall down 
 flat. Frdric Soulie, best known as a writer of 
 sensational stories of mystery and crime, who was 
 doing Jules Janin's work for him during his absence, 
 was committed to the Romantics, and could not be 
 
 38
 
 Rachel 
 
 expected to blow it. But Jules Janin was coming, 
 and he could do so, being committed to no party, 
 but always anxious to find something which he could 
 gush over with the fiery fluency of the late Clement 
 Scott. 
 
 He came ; he heard of Rachel ; he went to see her ; 
 and, for a moment, he hesitated to trust his judg- 
 ment. Was it possible, he asked himself, to praise 
 Rachel without affronting the great Victor Hugo ? 
 And, if not, was it right and proper that the great 
 Victor Hugo should be affronted ? He took a day 
 or two to think these questions over carefully ; but 
 then, at last, he grasped his courage in his two hands 
 and plunged. 
 
 ' Take notice " (he wrote in his weekly feuilleton) 
 u that, at the very moment of writing, at the Theatre 
 Fran^ais itself the Theatre Franpais, mark you an 
 unexpected victory is being won : one of those happy 
 triumphs of which a nation like ours is rightly proud, 
 at the hour when, brought back to honourable senti- 
 ments, noble language, chaste and self-contained love, 
 it makes its escape from nameless violences and 
 barbarisms which never end. 
 
 ' What a joy it is, indeed, for an intelligent people 
 suddenly to find itself once more in possession of its 
 masterpieces, so long and so undeservedly misunder- 
 stood ! O gods, and goddesses, be praised, you who 
 have made the masterpiece at once immortal and 
 indulgent. It is indulgent precisely because it lives 
 for ever. In vain is it overwhelmed with insults and 
 outrages. In vain is it subjected to humiliating 
 comparisons. In vain do men cease to remember 
 
 39
 
 Rachel 
 
 and admire it. It disdains insults, and despises 
 oblivion. It replies to affronts with a smile. It is 
 calm, it is patient, it is solemn; and when at last 
 we call upon it, there it is extending its royal and 
 paternal hand to the ungrateful who cried aloud 
 in their boredom : Lord, save us ; we perish ! " 
 
 So much as a prelude and a declaration of policy, 
 an intimation that the critic proposed to back the 
 dead against the living : the old Classics against the 
 new Romantics. And then : 
 
 " This time we find ourselves in possession of the 
 most astounding and amazing little girl which the 
 present generation has ever seen on the boards of a 
 theatre. This child take note of her name is 
 Mademoiselle Rachel." 
 
 And then, after reminding himself and his readers 
 that he had already discovered the child once, at the 
 Gymnase, and suggesting that he was probably 
 the only playgoer who remembered her appearance 
 there : 
 
 "And now this child is listened to, encouraged, 
 applauded, and admired. She is appearing at last 
 in the only kind of drama worthy of her precocious 
 genius. Picture it, and think of it ! A slip of a girl, 
 quite ignorant, without art, without training, drops 
 into the world of our old tragedies, blows on their 
 august ashes and makes them burn up, and compels 
 flames and life to burst from them. Oh, it is marvel- 
 lous. . . . 
 
 4 o
 
 Rachel 
 
 " Ask her no questions about Tancred, and Horace, 
 and Hermione, and the Trojan war, and Pyrrhus, and 
 Helen. She knows nothing about these things; she 
 knows nothing about anything. But she has some- 
 thing better than knowledge she has rays of light 
 emanating from her person. When she steps on to 
 the stage, inches seem to be added to her stature. 
 She is tall enough for a Homeric heroine. Her 
 head is uplifted and her bosom expands; her eye 
 is brightened, and her walk is like that of a 
 queen ; she gesticulates, and it is as if her soul spoke. 
 Her voice vibrates, swayed by the passions of her 
 heart. . . . 
 
 " Wait till she grows up, this little girl who is 
 accomplishing a revolution without knowing what 
 she does. Wait till she finds a young man as 
 inspired as herself to play with her; and then the 
 gods of poetry will come back to us, and we shall 
 see the extinguished torch of Corneille and Racine 
 rekindled. . . ." 
 
 And so on and so forth, and so forth and so on, in 
 the best Clement Scott style, with many vain repeti- 
 tions and mixed metaphors, as if the writer's pen had 
 been wound up to go, and could not stop going till it 
 ran down. 
 
 But the notice " did the trick," and the walls 
 of Jericho were levelled. Parisians returning from 
 their country houses, and from the spas and water- 
 ing-places, tumbled over each other in their hurry 
 to see and admire the new star signalled on the 
 horizon during their absence. One has to listen very 
 intently indeed to catch a jarring note in the sudden 
 
 41
 
 Rachel 
 
 chorus of delight ; but the one jarring utterance which 
 is audible may as well be preserved : 
 
 " October 20, 1838 : Yesterday I went with Pauline 
 to the Come"die Fran^aise to hear Mile. Rachel, who 
 is now causing so great a sensation. I was not 
 at all pleased. They all acted very badly, though 
 Mile. Rachel is not so bad as the rest. They played 
 Andromaque, in which she took the part of Hermione, 
 the part of irony, scorn and disdain. She went 
 through it accurately and intelligently, but there is 
 no sympathy or attraction in her acting. She has a 
 thin voice, is neither pretty nor beautiful, but very 
 young, and might become an excellent actress if she 
 had good training. I was very bored, and returned 
 home benumbed." 
 
 So the Duchesse de Dino noted in her recently 
 published Diary. But the queue at the pit door was 
 of inordinate length, and began to form hours before 
 the door was opened; and the records of the box- 
 office are eloquent. For Rachel's first eighteen 
 appearances, as we have seen, the receipts averaged 
 no more than 29 the most profitable night pro- 
 ducing 52 45., and the least profitable only 
 12 2s. 6d. ; but the next eighteen performances 
 showed very different results. The highest receipt 
 was then 256 8s. 4^., the lowest 85 35. 4^., and 
 the average 197 us. $d. 
 
 It was immense for the house and the period : a 
 veritable hail-storm of pieces of silver. The Head 
 of the Tribe of Fdix heard the grateful sound and 
 hurried to the spot . ' ' Was fur Plunder ! " he reflected 
 
 42
 
 Rachel 
 
 in the words of Blucher taking stock of London from 
 the dome of Saint Paul's. His daughter being a 
 minor, he was entitled to draw her salary for her, 
 and he was resolved that it should be a salary 
 worth drawing. 
 
 In vain did Vedel spontaneously raise her stipend 
 from 160 to 320 a year; in vain did he add per- 
 quisites bringing her total earnings to about 800 
 a year. That was not good enough for Jacob Felix. 
 He suggested a salary of 1600 a year, and he brought 
 his demands to Samson. Samson pointed out that 
 Rachel had a contract with the Comedie Frangaise; 
 but Jacob Felix laughed in his face. A contract, 
 indeed ! What was the use of a contract with a 
 minor ? Such a contract was not worth the paper 
 it was written on. He would repudiate it; he would 
 tear it up; he would go to law about it. He really 
 appeared to think that he had right and reason on 
 his side. 
 
 u For you see, Monsieur Samson, since my daughter 
 has talent, it is only just that I should make some- 
 thing out of her," was his way of putting it. 
 
 Whereupon Samson struck attitudes of noble 
 indignation. First he took a statuette which Rachel 
 had given him, as a thank-offering for his teaching, 
 from the mantelpiece, and smashed it to fragments 
 in the fire-place; and then he turned to Jacob Fe"lix, 
 saying, as only an actor of the old school could say 
 it 
 
 ' That is the way out, sir. Let your shadow 
 never darken that door again." 
 
 So the Head of the Tribe of Fe"lix withdrew. But 
 he nevertheless went to law, as he had threatened to 
 
 43
 
 Rachel 
 
 do, on his daughter's behalf, and retained Cre"mieux, 
 afterwards Governor of Algeria, and won his suit 
 got Rachel's contract declared to be void, and 
 imposed his own terms on the theatre. 
 
 That was one of the proofs which Rachel enjoyed 
 of the importance of the position to which she had 
 sprung almost in a night. Another was vouchsafed 
 when the critic who claimed to have made her, 
 seeing her again as Roxane in Bazajet, printed some 
 unkind remarks in striking contrast with his previous 
 eulogies. 
 
 " Affaire de lit et d'argent," was Sainte-Beuve's 
 brutal summary of the incident. 1 He intended, 
 apparently, to imply that it had been intimated to 
 Jules Janin that it was unnecessary for him to try 
 to encourage Rachel by putting his arm round her 
 waist that this privilege was reserved for admirers 
 who brought presents in their hands and that Jules 
 Janin had made his feuilleton the weapon of ven- 
 geance for the spretce injuria formce. The insinuation 
 cannot be verified, though one suspects that there 
 sometimes are such wheels within wheels in the 
 relations between dramatic artists and dramatic 
 critics. What we do know is that Rachel, being 
 put on her mettle, played Roxane a second time 
 and triumphed; and that she found a formidable 
 champion in an unexpected quarter. 
 
 Jules Janin was not the only critic who had praised 
 her performances. Alfred de Musset had also done 
 so in the Revue des deux Mondes ; and he now took 
 up his pen once more in a combatant and aggressive 
 mood. He said that Roxane was Rachel's best 
 
 1 In a letter to the Oliviers of Lausanne. 
 44
 
 Rachel 
 
 part. His heart had told him so, and the judgment 
 of his heart was not to be influenced by cabals. It 
 was her destiny, he felt certain, to be as great as 
 Malibran. He had observed with pain that she had 
 been attacked. He felt it his duty to defend her to 
 the best of his ability; and he was very indignant 
 against those who had " tried to destroy in the heart 
 of a child the divine seed which cannot fail to bring 
 forth good fruit." 
 
 It seemed to Jules Janin that this was meant for 
 him, and that it was incumbent on him to reply ; so 
 he, too, took up his pen, and took it up in an even 
 more angry and aggressive temper than his supposed 
 assailant. 
 
 Beginning with general principles, he soon got 
 to personalities. First he repeated his censures, and 
 said that he adhered to them " C'est mon opinion et 
 je la partage." Then he proceeded to ridicule those 
 whom he styled " the newborn babes of criticism." 
 He pictured them " spreading out their tails like 
 peacocks before a reputation which they cannot 
 even understand." He protested that such persons 
 compromised the noble art of dramatic criticism 
 by their extravagant exaggerations; and having 
 thus worked himself up into a white heat of passion, 
 he concluded 
 
 ' When I see these retired novelists and these 
 third-rate poets picking up the critic's pen with a 
 smile, I am reminded of the worthy ancient who 
 picked up a violin. * Can you play the fiddle ? ' some 
 one asked him. ' I don't know/ he answered, ' for 
 I have never tried.' " 
 
 45
 
 Rachel 
 
 Then it was Mussel's turn. He rejoined, not in 
 print, but in a private communication, which ran 
 thus : 
 
 " Saturday, Dec. 8, 1838. 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 "In the Revue des deux Mondes I expressed 
 my opinion of Mile. Rachel with politeness and sin- 
 cerity. There was no reference in my article to you. 
 You have replied to it with unbecoming violence. 
 Your article is coarse and unmannerly. In your 
 capacity of man of letters you are a child who 
 ought to be muzzled. In your personal capacity you 
 are a buffoon who ought to be forbidden to enter 
 the Theatre Frangais. Avenge yourself for this letter 
 with fresh insults if you like. I fully expect you to 
 do so, and I am quite indifferent in the matter. 
 
 " ALFRED DE MUSSET." 
 
 So that it had come to this : that, within a few 
 months of Rachel's first appearance, the greatest of 
 the French dramatic critics and one of the greatest 
 of the French poets were ready to fly at each other's 
 throats and would actually have flown at each 
 other's throats if they had not both been men of 
 peace, more skilled with the pen than with the 
 sword over the question whether she was, or was 
 not, at her best in a particular part. Even when 
 we have made every allowance for the seriousness of 
 the French in matters of art they are at least as 
 serious about art as we are about theology the 
 fact remains a striking proof of the suddenness of 
 her rise to the sublime heights of glory. 
 
 4 6
 
 Rachel 
 
 Naturally, too, she was anxious to pursue the 
 further acquaintance of the chivalrous young man of 
 letters who had come forward, uninvited, as her 
 champion ; and it was an easy thing for her to do, as 
 he was a young man who haunted theatres. So she 
 asked him to call or perhaps it was he who asked 
 permission to call and he went to see her; and then 
 she swept him up, one evening, in the galleries of 
 the Palais Royal, and carried him off to supper; 
 and his description of that improvised supper-party, 
 published in the volume of his (Euvres Posthumes, 
 is the best and most intimate picture which has 
 been preserved of Rachel in the days when, in spite 
 of her celebrity, she still lived a simple life because, 
 though her salary was large, her father drew it 
 for her, and only allowed her a small share of it as 
 pocket-money. 
 
 47
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Alfred de Musset's description of Rachel's improvised supper-party 
 Her subsequent relations with him. 
 
 THE revellers were quite young people recent 
 recruits at the theatre and the Conservatoire, and 
 competitors for the privilege of admiring them. 
 Alfred de Musset, who was eight-and-twenty, was 
 distinctly the patriarch of the party. They streamed 
 gaily up the staircase of the house in the Passage 
 Vero-Dodat in which the Tribe of Felix lived 
 on Rachel's salary. Jacob Felix had gone to the 
 opera to see the debut of a co-religionist of the 
 Tribe of Nathan, and Madame Felix was taken by 
 surprise. 
 
 She was an excellent person for an old-clothes 
 woman, with a certain measured dignity in her 
 demeanour even when she tripped and sprawled 
 over the rules of grammar; but she had the figure 
 of a mother of sixteen, and she could not be hustled 
 in her old age to wait on her daughter's friends. 
 Since Rachel insisted on sending the servant to 
 the theatre to fetch a handful of rings which she 
 had left on her dressing-table, she must get the 
 supper herself. There were steaks in the kitchen. 
 If Rachel liked to grill them, her guests were quite 
 welcome to eat them. 
 
 So Rachel put on " a dressing-gown and a night- 
 cap," and, looking " as beautiful as an angel," 
 
 48
 
 ///'/' ,^7 
 
 ///
 
 Rachel 
 
 brought in a dish of three beef-steaks which she 
 had grilled, with her own hands. " Help yourselves," 
 she said, laying the dish down; and then she retired 
 again, and presently reappeared carrying a tureen 
 of soup in one hand and a saucepan full of spinach 
 in the other. Next, she dived into a cupboard and 
 found a bowl of salad there; and finally she informed 
 her friends that, as the servant had the keys of 
 the plate cupboard in her pocket, they must be 
 satisfied to eat with the kitchen forks. 
 
 They were young and light-hearted, and had not 
 the least objection. The only objection came from 
 Rachel's elder sister Sarah, who tiptilted a disdainful 
 nose, and sniffed. For Sarah was an actress, like 
 Rachel, but a different kind of actress; not the sort 
 of actress who acts, but the sort of actress who seeks 
 invitations to supper une soupeuse is the scornful 
 French name for such. She wasn't used to that sort 
 of thing, she said she really couldn't. But the 
 others only laughed at her, and the meal proceeded 
 merrily, Rachel, in spite of the protests which Sarah 
 mumbled in German or perhaps it was in Yiddish 
 -recalling memories of the days of her early 
 struggles. 
 
 ' Imagine it ! When I began to play at the House 
 
 of Moliere I had only two pairs of stockings, and " 
 
 ' Rachel ! Rachel ! Really, Rachel ! " inter- 
 rupted Sarah. 
 
 " And I had to wash a pair every morning, and 
 hang them over the back of a chair to dry, so that 
 I might be able to play in the evening." 
 :t And the house-keeping ? " asked Musset. 
 ' Yes, I did that too. Every morning I was up 
 
 E 49
 
 Rachel 
 
 at six. By eight I had made all the beds, and then 
 I went to the market to buy the dinner." 
 
 " And were you an honest marketer ? ' 
 
 "Generally; but once I cheated, and saved up 
 until I had got three francs together ? ' 
 
 " And what did you do with those three francs, 
 miss ? ' 
 
 " Sir," broke in Madame Felix, with grammatical 
 eccentricities which it is impossible to render, " she 
 squandered her money on the works of Moliere." 
 
 At this stage the servant returned with the lost 
 bracelets and rings hundreds of pounds' worth 
 of them the gifts, no doubt, of admirers of the 
 actress's genius. Rachel scattered them carelessly 
 about the table, as if they were gauds of no 
 importance, and called for kirsch, and set to work 
 to mix a bowl of punch. The punch was set 
 alight, and the candles were put under the table, 
 so that the lurid blue flames might produce their 
 full effect; Madame Felix keeping a watchful eye 
 on Musset so Musset says for fear lest he should 
 seize the opportunity of pocketing the jewels in 
 the darkness. Then the candles were replaced and 
 the punch was distributed. Rachel drank her 
 share of it with a spoon from a soup-plate, and, 
 afterwards, borrowed Musset's sword-stick to use 
 as a tooth-pick. 
 
 That was the first phase. The second began 
 when the other guests departed, and Sarah went 
 to bed, and Madame Felix fell asleep in her 
 chair. Then the actress, finding herself alone, 
 or practically alone, with the poet, ceased her 
 nonsense and became serious. She leaned for- 
 
 5
 
 Rachel 
 
 ward, gazed eloquently into his eyes, and asked 
 the inevitable question 
 
 ' Why don't you write a play with a really good 
 part for me in it ? ' 
 
 Already ! She was only eighteen, and she had 
 only been acting for a few months; but she had 
 reached the point at which she was persuaded that 
 the greatest of the French poets could undertake 
 no nobler task than to write a play with a really 
 good part in it for her. And the poet was quite 
 of her opinion as to the essential nobility of such 
 an undertaking; and then the talk turned on the 
 iniquities of the dramatic critics whose notices had 
 been unkind, and on Rachel's ambition to show 
 what she could do in the difficult part of Phedre 
 the part which really tests the powers of a French 
 tragic actress. As for those critics 
 
 ;< They attack me in vain I will not be put down 
 by them. Instead of helping me and encouraging 
 me, they are always trying to damage me; but I'll 
 play, if I must, like four women rolled into one. 
 Oh yes, I've had some very nice notices candid 
 and conscientious they have been most useful to 
 me. But there are so many writers who use their 
 pens to lie, and destroy reputations. They are worse 
 then thieves and cut-throats. They try to kill 
 your soul with pin-pricks. How I should like to 
 poison them ! ' 
 
 Already, though so young, she had grasped the 
 theatrical doctrine that the raison d'etre of the public 
 press is to praise actresses; but she did not dwell 
 
 E 2 51
 
 Rachel 
 
 on it. Having said what she had to say, she pro- 
 posed that she and the poet should read Phedre 
 together ; and of course the proposal delighted him ; 
 so she went to fetch the book. 
 
 " Her manner and her gait have something solemn 
 and sacramental about them. She reminded me 
 of an officiating priest on his way to the altar, carry- 
 ing the sacred vessels. She sat down close to me 
 and snuffed the candle. Her mother smiled and 
 went off to sleep again." 
 
 The scene, Musset says, was like an illustration 
 by Rembrandt of a chapter from Wilhelm Meister. 
 It was, at any rate, an impression of the artistic 
 life never to be effaced from his recollection. But 
 it was an impression which was very soon dis- 
 turbed. At half-past twelve there was " noise 
 without," quickly followed by a noise within- 
 Jacob Felix was back from the opera, and in a surly 
 temper. He wanted to know what Rachel meant 
 by sitting up so late. He told her to stop reading 
 and go to bed at once. He gave her guest to under- 
 stand that it was high time for him to take his leave; 
 and Musset departed, " melted to tenderness, and 
 full of admiration and respect," not, of course, for 
 Jacob Felix, but for his daughter. 
 
 Presumably the Head of the Tribe surmised that 
 here was a suitor for his daughter's heart who came 
 wooing without any pieces of silver in his hand. If 
 so, he surmised correctly. Instead of pieces of silver 
 Alfred de Musset offered a play albeit a play which 
 
 52
 
 Rachel 
 
 he had not yet written and would never write; 
 and the play though only a fragment served his 
 purpose. As soon as Rachel had quitted the parental 
 roof to draw her salary for herself she invited her 
 poet-playwright to visit her in a villa which she 
 had acquired at Montmorency. He accepted the 
 invitation, and, for a few days, he was very happy. 
 " How charming she was ! " he exclaimed in a letter 
 to Mme. Jaubert, " running about her garden with 
 her feet in my slippers ! ''' 
 
 But she was only charming for a little while, and 
 then the inevitable quarrel occurred. What they 
 quarrelled about no deponent has related ; but many 
 causes can be conj ectured. The flock of other suitors 
 trying to unlock the door with golden keys may 
 account for a good deal; and the poet's potations 
 may account for the rest. He was not only addicted 
 to beer, to brandy, and to absinthe. It was his 
 unpleasant habit to mix the three stimulants in a 
 single tumbler; and a poet who does that sort of 
 thing cannot hope to retain any lady's favour per- 
 manently. So presently there was a wrangle as 
 to which of them had thrown the other over; 
 and the poet addressed the actress in pathetic 
 verse 
 
 Si ta bouche ne doit rien dire 
 De ces vers desormais sans prix ; 
 Si je n'ai, pour etre compris, 
 Ni tes larmes, ni ton sourire; 
 
 Si dans ta voix, si dans tes traits, 
 Ne vit plus le feu qui m'anime; 
 Si le noble coeur de Monime 
 Ne doit plus savoir mes secrets; 
 
 53
 
 Rachel 
 
 Si la triste lettre est signee; 
 Si les gardiens d'un vieux tombeau 
 Laissent leur pretresse indignee 
 Sortir, emportant son flambeau; 
 
 Cette langue de ma pensee, 
 Que tu connais, que tu soutiens, 
 Ne sera jamais prononcee 
 Par d'autres accents que les tiens. 
 
 Perissent plutot ma memo ire 
 Et mon beau reve ambitieux ! 
 Mon g6nie etait dans ta gloire ; 
 Mon courage etait dans tes yeux. 
 
 In a romance, of course, the curtain would have 
 fallen on those lines in which the poet resigns his 
 ambitions because the actress has ceased to smile. 
 In real life, equally of course, it did not. There 
 was an interval of three years during which the poet 
 and the actress did not speak when they passed by ; 
 but the poet did not consecrate the time to tears. 
 He devoted most of it to making love to Princess 
 Belgiojoso, a story which, having been related in 
 The Passions of the French Romantics, need not 
 be repeated here. At the end of the three years 
 he met Rachel again at a dinner-party given by 
 Buloz of the Revue, and she came up to him, with 
 an outstretched hand, and a pretty air of coquetry, 
 asking 
 
 " Well, are you still cross ? " 
 
 " Why didn't you ask me that question three 
 years ago ? " he replied. " I bore you no malice. 
 We should have been friends again at the end of 
 four-and-twenty hours." 
 
 " What a lot of time we have lost ! " she rejoined. 
 And then they made it up like two children; and, 
 
 54
 
 Rachel 
 
 after that, we read again of appointments in the 
 dressing-room for the indulgence of caprices; and 
 finally there comes a story of another supper-party, 
 of a very different character from the one described 
 above. 
 
 There was none of the simplicity of the improvised 
 picnic this time. Instead of the kitchen forks, 
 solid silver adorned the table; instead of steaks and 
 salad, the masterpieces of a chef were served, and 
 champagne was circulated in place of punch. Nor 
 did any dozing mother superintend propriety with 
 sympathetic somnolence, for Rachel had long since 
 passed into the world in which chaperons are not. 
 All the guests were men of fashion, and most of 
 them were men of wealth those gay and festive 
 persons whom the French call noceurs. One of 
 them, sitting next to Rachel, admired one of her 
 rings, and a happy thought occurred to her. She 
 took the ring off. 
 
 " Very well, gentlemen," she said. " Since the 
 ring pleases you, it is for sale. I put it up to auction. 
 Please to bid; " and the bidding began at once 
 
 " Five hundred francs ! ' 
 
 " A thousand ! " 
 
 " Fifteen hundred ! " 
 
 " Two thousand ! " 
 
 " Three thousand ! ' 
 
 " And you, poet ? " said Rachel, turning to Musset. 
 who, having no pieces of silver, but only genius, 
 had kept silence. "I do not hear you bidding. 
 What is your offer ? ' 
 
 " I offer you my heart." 
 
 " The ring is yours." 
 
 55
 
 Rachel 
 
 Not that she really wanted his heart any more 
 than he wanted her ring; but the gesture seemed 
 noble, and the temptation to it was not to be 
 resisted. So she placed the ring on his finger in 
 the presence of the company, saying that his 
 acceptance of it was a promise that he would 
 write a play for her. 
 
 He promised, and wrote the play or, at any rate, 
 began to write it but she never played in it, for 
 fresh quarrels quickly intervened. She heard him 
 praise the acting of her colleague, Rose Cheri, and 
 she considered that he had no right to praise any 
 one but herself. That was the beginning of the 
 second rift; and Musset seized the opportunity of 
 returning the ring before Rachel could ask for it. 
 She forgave him for that, however more or less 
 and asked him a third time for a play, which she 
 seems really to have wanted. The success of his 
 Caprice, in which Madame Allan had won golden 
 opinions, seemed to mark him out as the man to 
 work for her. He was quite willing to do so, and 
 began a piece called Faustine ; but he had reckoned 
 without her caprices. 
 
 It came to her ears that he was also working for 
 Rose Cheri. Very well, she said. Of course he 
 must write for Rose Cheri, if he wanted to, but, if 
 he did, he could not write for her. It was an ultima- 
 tum, and he accepted it, and this time they quarrelled 
 for good. 
 
 " Farewell, Rachel ! It is you whom I bury in this 
 drawer for ever," said the poet, as he locked up his 
 manuscript; and Rachel applied to another author 
 for the light comedy in which she desired to appear 
 
 5
 
 Rachel 
 
 as a relief from the perpetual recitation of Alexandrine 
 verse. 
 
 " Gozlan," she wrote to the friend who was to 
 act as her intermediary, " can knock me off what 
 I want, in a day or two, better than any one, now 
 that Musset is dead to literature." 
 
 For it had actually come to that. Literature, 
 in Rachel's view, meant dramatic literature. There 
 was no other kind of literature; and the author 
 whom she would not allow to write plays for her 
 was dead to the only sort of literature that she 
 recognized. So potent may be the effect of flattery 
 on the minds of young women who achieve glory on 
 the stage. 
 
 And that was really the end; and there was no 
 subsequent reconciliation. It seemed worth while 
 to depart from chronological order for the purpose 
 of telling a story which so clearly marks the contrast 
 between Rachel's simplicity in the days when art 
 was all in all to her, and the haughty airs and affecta- 
 tions of the time when her head was turned by the 
 homage of the illustrious and her fibre coarsened by 
 her great possessions. Now it is necessary to turn 
 back and observe how, having first won renown on 
 the stage, she became, almost as suddenly, a person- 
 age in society, yet comported herself as she chose, 
 without much regard to the accepted code either 
 of morals or of manners. 
 
 57
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Dr. Ve*ron Rachel's quarrel with him Her relations with the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain. 
 
 IT has been mentioned that Dr. Veron claimed 
 to be one of Rachel's " discoverers." It must 
 be added that she entered upon the period of her 
 splendour and grandeur under his " protection," 
 and that may possibly have been one of the reasons 
 why Jules Janin was not permitted to encourage 
 her by putting his arm round her waist. 
 
 The doctor was middle-aged and unprepossessing; 
 but he was rich. He had made a fortune in phar- 
 macy by exploiting a proprietary cough-drop, and 
 was to make another in journalism by exploiting 
 Eugene Sue's sensational stories. Moreover he was 
 a boulevardier, and he had " influence"; and it is 
 said that there is nothing like "influence" for 
 furrowing the way to the favours of an actress 
 in the morning hours of her career. An actress 
 is tempted to lay sentiment as an oblation on the 
 altar of professional ambition, and her heart, in 
 consequence, cannot always be taken seriously. 
 
 Rachel's certainly cannot at all events at this 
 period of her life. She was passionately eager to 
 succeed, and it seemed to her that the end justified 
 any means; so she first accepted protection and then 
 indulged caprices, as her cynical admirer quite 
 expected her to do. He did not love her as 
 
 58
 
 Rachel 
 
 Alfred de Vigny loved Marie Dorval blind pas- 
 sions of that sort were quite out of his line; nor 
 did he require her to love him in that grand, dis- 
 interested style for he had lived long enough in the 
 world to know that December (or even November 
 or October, for that matter) must not expect too 
 much of May. He was quite willing to shut his eyes 
 from time to time, provided that there were no too 
 shocking surprises for him when he re-opened them. 
 But he did demand that he should not be made 
 ridiculous; and it is precisely because that demand 
 was not honoured that there is a story to be told. 
 Even Sainte-Beuve, who had very few relations 
 with the theatre, was impressed by Rachel's pro- 
 ceedings, and commented on them in a letter to his 
 friends, the Oliviers of Lausanne. 
 
 " Between ourselves," he wrote to them, " Rachel 
 is behaving very badly. She is not, by any means, 
 living the simple life, but has any number of lovers, 
 and, with an income of 4,000 a year or more, finds 
 herself hard up. Still, her status in the world of 
 fashion is not affected by her conduct." 
 
 And what Sainte-Beuve observed Dr. Veron could 
 not help suspecting; and presently his suspicions 
 were strong enough to induce him to make inquiries. 
 His position in Paris was such that he could apply 
 to the police for help; and he therefore requested 
 that detectives might be set to shadow Rachel, 
 and that the results of their inquiries might be 
 reported to him. 
 
 The police were accustomed to commissions of 
 
 59
 
 Rachel 
 
 the kind reports on the private lives of actresses 
 abounded in their archives and they did what the 
 doctor asked them. Their report was to the effect 
 that his protegee, while writing him ardently affec- 
 tionate letters, was regularly making, and keeping, 
 assignations with several other men, in various 
 houses in various parts of Paris. The doctor was 
 not exactly heart-broken by the discovery; but he 
 was annoyed, and determined to avenge himself. 
 So he invited several of his friends to lunch, saying 
 that he had an interesting communication to make 
 to them; and, having thus collected an audience, he 
 first showed them Rachel's love-letters, and then 
 read them her dossier, as compiled by the detectives. 
 It would be superfluous to interrupt the narrative 
 in order to point out that his behaviour was ungentle- 
 manly. Dr. Ve"ron might have replied to that charge 
 by pleading that he did not claim to be a gentleman. 
 But in so far as his purpose was to make things 
 unpleasant for Rachel he succeeded. The position 
 which she had made for herself in the world of 
 fashion became untenable, and she fled before the 
 storm. A letter to Samson mirrors her feelings : 
 
 " I am going away," she wrote to her old teacher. 
 " A cowardly wretch has insulted me. I have not 
 the courage to take my own life, and yet despair 
 is in my soul. There is no God I do not believe 
 in Him any longer. The world is killing me. Pres- 
 ently, it may be, God will know my heart. I have 
 been silly, but I have never belonged to any man." 
 
 Thus she cried aloud under the stroke, expressing 
 
 60
 
 Rachel 
 
 disbelief in God in one sentence and appealing to 
 Him in the next; and though her triumphs at the 
 theatre soon restored her courage and her self-esteem, 
 the Faubourg Saint-Germain cast her out, and never 
 again took her to its bosom. 
 
 It was a wonder, indeed, that the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain had ever been gracious to her, for that is 
 not the Faubourg's usual way with actresses. The 
 Faubourg, as a rule, draws a sharp line of demar- 
 cation between the society in which men seek their 
 wives, and the society from which they select their 
 mistresses. It does not, like Mayfair, believe that 
 actresses are virtuous, and it does not desire them 
 to be so. Consequently while, on the one hand, 
 it does not suffer its own daughters to seek a career 
 on the boards, on the other hand it only invites 
 actresses to its receptions as hired entertainers, 
 not as guests and equals. One or two social 
 " mixers," like Madame de Girardin, whom we shall 
 meet again, might, for one reason or another, open 
 their houses to them ; but the Faubourg as a whole 
 viewed them as brazen creatures, and was only 
 distantly polite. 
 
 But though that is, and always has been, the rule, 
 the case of Rachel furnished an exception to it. 
 She was so young; she looked so innocent; she had 
 done so much for the rehabilitation of tragedy. 
 Moreover, ill-educated though she was, she con- 
 cealed her ignorance with a woman's cunning. 
 Cre"mieux, the brilliant barrister who had represented 
 her in her suit against the theatre, was privileged 
 to re-write her drafts of her letters, correcting her 
 many errors of punctuation, orthography and 
 
 61
 
 Rachel 
 
 syntax. So the Faubourg viewed her as a vestal 
 virgin, the High Priestess of her Art, and accepted 
 her in its salons, treating her as a friend, even 
 when it paid her a fee. It " adopted " her, writes 
 Alfred de Musset's friend, Alton Shee, and " titled 
 champions guaranteed her virtue " those champions 
 including the Dues de Noailles, de Fitz- James, 
 de Richelieu, and de Guiche, as well as Comte 
 Walewski, who was afterwards to acknowledge 
 himself the father of one of her children. 
 
 The accounts preserved of her behaviour in these 
 great circles and grand circumstances differ. Ac- 
 cording to some chroniclers she moved among 
 duchesses with dignity, as if she were a duchess 
 herself Theophile Gautier in particular was much 
 impressed by the aristocratic air with which she 
 held a fan. Others record acts of gaminerie, more 
 vivacious than refined. The truth seems to be that 
 she could behave perfectly when she chose, but 
 that she did not always choose, being a creature 
 of many moods, as good an actress off the stage as 
 on, and somewhat prone to what anthropologists 
 call "reversion to type." 
 
 She reverted to type, for instance, after her 
 appearance before Queen Victoria at Windsor 
 Castle. " Such a nice, modest girl," was her 
 Majesty's verdict on her deportment on that 
 occasion; but she had scarcely left the royal 
 presence when she kicked her heels into the air, 
 exclaiming, " O, mes amis, que j'ai besoin de 
 m'encanailler ! " 
 
 She reverted to type again when Ernest Legouve 
 found her dancing in her dressing-room at the 
 
 62
 
 Rachel 
 
 theatre and not dancing merely, but dancing the 
 cancan in the classical costume of Virginie. She 
 reverted a third time in her relations with Count 
 Walewski, Napoleon's natural son, subsequently 
 French Ambassador at the Court of Saint James's, 
 and already mentioned as the admitted father of 
 one of her children. He admired and respected 
 her so much that he was prepared to marry her, at 
 whatever risk to his career in the diplomatic service; 
 but he heard presently that she had said behind his 
 back, " Le comte m'embte avec son comme-il-faut;" 
 and then he did not respect her, or admire her, or feel 
 inclined to marry her any longer. 
 
 A fourth reversion to type is the subject of one of 
 the best stories in Legouve's Soixante Ans de 
 Souvenirs : 
 
 " Her fair fame" (Legouve writes) "was, as it 
 were, a sacred fire tended by the greatest ladies in 
 France. One of these and she neither the least 
 illustrious nor the least intelligent wishing to 
 demonstrate her respect for the great artist to the 
 community at large, took her for a drive to the 
 Champs Elysees, in broad daylight, in an open 
 carriage, with her own daughter sitting with her back 
 to the horses. On their return from the drive, Mile. 
 Rachel, on re-entering the drawing-room, curtseyed 
 to the duchess, and said to her, in a voice broken by 
 tears : ' Madame, this proof of your regard is more 
 precious to me than my talent.' 
 
 ' The emotion of the mother and the daughter 
 may be guessed. They raised the actress to her 
 feet, and embraced her, and, after a few more 
 
 63
 
 Rachel 
 
 moments had been consecrated to emotion, she took 
 her leave. The drawing-room, which was very 
 large, was entered by way of two much smaller 
 ante-chambers. Mile. Rachel, as she retired, passed 
 through these two rooms, without perceiving that 
 the girl was attending her, a few paces behind, to 
 show her deference and sympathy. Arriving at the 
 last door, she opened it, turned round, and believing 
 that she was alone, placed her thumb to her nose 
 and extended her four fingers, making the gesture 
 with which small children express their contempt 
 for things and persons. 
 
 " Unhappily this last door had glass panels. 
 The artist's gesture was reflected by them on to a 
 mirror in the other ante-chamber in which her 
 hostess's daughter was still waiting. She saw it, 
 and ran back, amazed, and threw herself into her 
 mother's arms, sobbing with indignation." 
 
 It is a queer story, and one which may well 
 have done quite as much to shake Rachel's position 
 in the Faubourg as Dr. Veron's exposure of her 
 promiscuous caprices. The Faubourg felt that the 
 gesture was equally unbecoming in a social debutante 
 and in a High Priestess. The Faubourg felt, most 
 justly, that Rachel might have chosen a more graceful 
 way of indicating her unworthiness of the honours 
 showered upon her. It was no wonder, the Faubourg 
 thought, that a young woman capable of such ges- 
 tures was " bored " by the " correctitude " of her 
 well-bred admirers ; and therefore the Faubourg, for 
 this reason among others, dropped Rachel like a hot 
 potato. 
 
 64
 
 Rachel 
 
 That did not happen immediately, however, 
 and, in the meantime, she enjoyed many splendid 
 moments. 
 
 It was a splendid moment when the Duchesse de 
 Noailles said to her : " Mademoiselle, before you 
 came to us we could neither read nor listen patiently, 
 but you have taught us both accomplishments." 
 And when the Duchesse d'Abrantes said, "Made- 
 moiselle, when one plays as you do, it is one's mission 
 to regenerate the French stage." And when the 
 Comte de Mole, of the French Academy, said, 
 "Madame, you have saved the French language from 
 destruction." Whereto Rachel replied: "Sir, my 
 credit is the greater in view of the fact that I have 
 never learnt it." 
 
 It was a splendid moment again when Chateau- 
 briand gave Rachel his arm, and spoke to her of his 
 approaching death, so that she was able to respond : 
 ' Ah, but there are some men who are immortal." 
 There were splendid moments, too, when the presents 
 began to pour in : bracelets, and brooches, and a 
 jewelled flask of attar of roses from the seraglio of 
 the Sultan of Turkey, and a complete library, 
 especially bound, of the masterpieces of French 
 literature. Arsene Houssaye, who was a poet, as 
 well as a theatrical manager, supplied yet another 
 splendid moment by dedicating to her the quatrain : 
 
 Champmesle, Lecouvreur, et Clairon se sont tues, 
 Mais tu regnes, Rachel, coeur qui bat, front savant ; 
 Ta grande ame domine un peuple de statues, 
 Muse des passions, coeur d'or, marbre vivant. 
 
 But the most splendid moment of all occurred in 
 Madame Recamier's salon in the Abbaye-aux-Bois. 
 
 * 65
 
 Rachel 
 
 Rachel had come there to recite, not for a fee, 
 for Madame Recamier was poor, but as a friend. 
 Chateaubriand sat on his special chair as on a throne ; 
 his court of devout women had disposed themselves 
 at his feet ; representatives of the rising literary 
 generation were grouped about the room. It had 
 been whispered that perhaps perhaps the illus- 
 trious sentimentalist who had restored religion to 
 France while Napoleon was restoring order would 
 convert the most illustrious of the daughters of 
 Israel to the Christian faith. There were those who 
 already pictured the magnificent scene in the dim 
 Gothic aisles of Notre-Dame on the occasion of 
 her reception into the bosom of the Mother of the 
 Churches ; and meanwhile Rachel declaimed appro- 
 priate lines from the part of Pauline in Polyeucte : 
 
 Mon epoux, en mourant, m'a laisse ses lumieres ; 
 Mon sang dont ses bourreaux viennent de me couvrir, 
 M'a dessille les yeux et me les vient d'ouvrir : 
 JE VOIS, JE SAIS, JE CROIS. 
 
 She had got so far when the door opened, and the 
 servant announced : 
 
 " Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris." 
 
 There was " movement " and keen expectation as 
 Madame Recamier rose and presented the actress to 
 the prelate 
 
 " Mademoiselle Rachel, monseigneur, who has 
 been so kind as to render a scene from Polyeucte." 
 
 And the prelate replied as a man of the world 
 
 " It would be very painful to me to think that 
 I had interrupted Corneille's masterpiece. Pray 
 permit me to be included in the audience." 
 
 " If I might recite some lines from Esther instead ? " 
 
 66
 
 Rachel 
 
 Rachel proposed. " I feel that that role suits me 
 better." 
 
 It washier way of intimating that even the author 
 of Le Genie du Christianisme had not persuaded 
 her to become a Christian, and that those who 
 pictured the ceremony of her conversion at Notre- 
 Dame imagined a vain thing. But the Archbishop 
 was far too good a man of the world to touch upon 
 that point. He merely paid a compliment with the 
 proper ecclesiastical turn to it : 
 
 ' It is not often the privilege of the ministers of 
 the Most High to see and hear the great artists of the 
 stage; but I myself have twice enjoyed that good 
 fortune. In a drawing-room at Florence I heard 
 Madame Malibran, and now I have to thank Madame 
 Recamier for the pleasure of hearing Mademoiselle 
 Rachel. The lips which recite those magnificent 
 lines with so much eloquence must indeed be in- 
 spired by a heart filled with the sentiment which they 
 render." 
 
 Whereupon Rachel, like a true daughter of the 
 theatre, bowed profoundly, saying " Monseigneur, 
 je crois," and leaving her archiepiscopal flatterer 
 to find out for himself how much or how little she 
 meant by it. And of course she meant nothing in 
 particular. 
 
 That moment, however, may fairly be viewed 
 as the climax of what Legouve calls Rachel's 
 "prehistoric period." In spite of her irresistible 
 disposition to " revert to type " she indisputably 
 enjoyed her social triumphs; and she sometimes 
 even philosophized about them. We find her doing 
 so in a remarkable letter to her brother Raphael. 
 
 F 2 67
 
 Rachel 
 
 Raphael, she surmises, will wish to become an 
 actor, and she proceeds to offer him some good 
 advice on that hypothesis. He must, she tells him, 
 be conscientious, and work at his art in the spirit 
 of an artist. He must be inspired, not merely by a 
 desire to get on in the world, but by " passionate 
 love for the works which nourish the intelligence and 
 guide the heart." Above all, he must educate him- 
 self; for a man needs education much more than a 
 woman does. 
 
 " A woman, no doubt, may attain an honourable 
 and respected position in society without that 
 varnish which the world rightly calls education. 
 The reason is that a woman does not lose her charm, 
 but adds to it, by being very reserved in her behavour 
 and conversation. Her business is to reply, instead 
 of leading the conversation; to listen, instead of 
 starting subjects. Her natural coquetry makes her 
 desirous of self-improvement; she remembers what 
 she is told; and so she can often acquire the varnish 
 without the solid foundation. But a man's case is 
 very different. A man needs to know, every day of 
 his life, the things which a woman is permitted to be 
 ignorant of. The knowledge of them increases his 
 pleasures and diminishes his difficulties. It enables 
 him to vary his enjoyments and pass for a wit. 
 Think of that; and if the work seems hard at first, 
 remember that you have a sister whom your success 
 will make proud and happy." 
 
 Sound sentiments, as the men and women who 
 have risen must often have realized from their several 
 points of view. It was all very well for Rachel, 
 
 68
 
 Rachel 
 
 when reading poetry, to stop to ask the meaning 
 of difficult words; but if Raphael did so he would 
 make himself a laughing-stock. Moreover, it was 
 unlikely that Raphael, albeit a personable young 
 man, would be able to find educated persons eager 
 to write his letters for him for the sake of his 
 beautiful eyes. That is the privilege of actresses, 
 but not of actors. Rachel had no need to study 
 spelling, because she could get her letters written for 
 her, in accordance with the specifications which she 
 supplied, by her excellent friend Cremieux. 
 
 69
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Rachel and Cremieux Her first visit to London Her performance 
 
 at Windsor. 
 
 ADOLPHE CREMIEUX has already been mentioned 
 as the Hebrew advocate who represented Rachel in 
 her suit for the rescission of her contract with the 
 Theatre Frangais. He was forty and serious, a 
 patron of the arts, but not a haunter of the 
 coulisses. So he invited his client to his house, with 
 the full approval of his wife, and tried to watch over 
 her welfare in a paternal way. 
 
 Rachel declared, in later life, that he was the only 
 man of her acquaintance who had never made love 
 to her. Instead of doing that he coached her in 
 ancient history and mythology, so that she might 
 understand the classical dramas in which she shone, 
 and read the Book of Genesis with her, and told her 
 the meaning of the word " firmament," and rendered 
 her a still greater service by writing her letters for 
 her at the time when she was on probation, and on 
 her best behaviour, in the Faubourg, and very much 
 afraid lest her ignorance of grammar should impede 
 her social progress. Her correspondence with him 
 is a faithful mirror of as much of her life as she chose 
 to submit to his inspection. 
 
 " My dear and tender M. Cremieux," is the nearest 
 approach to affection in her style of address. More 
 
 70
 
 Rachel 
 
 often she writes to him as " Dear papa Cremieux," 
 and subscribes herself " Your child." The diction 
 is playful, ungrammatical, and only partially punctu- 
 ated; but it draws a pleasant picture of a dazzled 
 girl, delighted at the multitudinous proofs that she 
 is getting on, but steering her course timorously 
 through the strange social waters and very glad of 
 the advice of a social pilot. 
 
 One finds an interesting illustration of the motherly 
 attitude of the Faubourg towards her in her account 
 of a party given for her by the Duchesse de Berwick. 
 Her mother, she says, took her to the house and left 
 her there ; the duchess herself drove her home in her 
 own carriage. She asked the duchess to set her 
 down at M. Cremieux's door, but the duchess refused 
 to do anything of the kind. " No, my dear," she 
 said, " your good mother entrusted you to my care, 
 and it would not do for me to resign you into any 
 hands but hers." Which, of course, is just what she 
 would have said, in similar circumstances, to a girl 
 of her own social rank, though it may also have 
 implied a fear that actresses would be actresses if 
 left to themselves, and that no barrister could safely 
 be regarded as above suspicion where they were 
 concerned. 
 
 " So don't be angry with me, but pity me," is 
 the conclusion of the letter in which Rachel tells 
 the story and there follow some letters which may 
 be allowed to speak for themselves : 
 
 " People are bombarding me with invitations and 
 it is quite impossible for me to come to see you even 
 for a moment that is very unfortunate isn't it but I 
 
 71
 
 Rachel 
 
 am going to ask you another favour. Mademoiselle 
 De"jazet has just sent me a charming letter which I 
 enclose and please write me an answer to it a very 
 polite answer please for I want to refuse her invita- 
 tion so tell her I'm very sorry but it doesn't matter 
 as I'll come another day. It must be a very nice 
 letter please because she's sure to show it round." 
 
 " My dear and amiable M. Cremieux I forgot to 
 tell you that I have received a present from M. 
 Duchatel and I want to thank him the sum is a thou- 
 sand francs, and there is the Duchesse de Berwick too 
 whom I haven't seen for several months but as she 
 hasn't been to see me in the country as she promised 
 I'm afraid she's angry with me and as I don't hear a 
 word from her I thought perhaps she thought my 
 visits a nuisance, so send me a little letter to tell her 
 all that, and send both letters at once if you possibly 
 can as I am going away at mid-day and I want to 
 write from Paris." 
 
 That is a fair reproduction of her prose style in the 
 days of her novitiate; but she took pains to improve 
 it, as if she knew that she would not always have 
 Cremieux to depend upon; and presently we find her 
 writing to him to report her progress : 
 
 " I expect you think me an awful nuisance but in a 
 few months time I shall be able to write all that sort 
 of thing for myself only my studies aren't finished 
 yet and I hope you won't drop me before they 
 are. I know now how to accept an invitation 
 to dinner and I shall soon know how to accept 
 
 72
 
 Rachel 
 
 invitations to evening parties and then my course 
 will be complete." 
 
 Queer letters truly for a Queen of Tragedy who was 
 being congratulated on having saved the French 
 language from destruction at the hands of " Victor 
 Hugo and the Vandals and the Ostrogoths " ; but then 
 the standing marvel about Rachel is that she accom- 
 plished so much with such a poor equipment. Her 
 method was to reveal the nakedness of the land to the 
 few in order that it might not be detected by the 
 many; and the few, fascinated by the thought that 
 genius leaned on them, guarded her secret jealously 
 as though they rejoiced in being parties to a pious 
 fraud. That was the state of things, at any rate, 
 when, having astonished Paris, she set out, in 1841, 
 to astonish London. 
 
 It was on that occasion that Queen Victoria 
 invited her to " declaim " at Windsor, and found her, 
 as she told the King of the Belgians, " such a nice 
 modest girl." The Duchess of Kent was equally 
 enthusiastic. An Indian shawl and a golden bracelet 
 with Queen Victoria's name on it in diamonds were 
 among the royal gifts to her. 1 Society, following 
 the royal lead, overwhelmed her with bouquets, 
 compliments and invitations. The receipts, she 
 writes, on the night on which she played Marie 
 Stuart, " amounted to thirty thousand francs and 
 a few guineas" coins which she apparently con- 
 founded with pence; and she noticed what seemed 
 to her a remarkable habit of the English journalists. 
 
 1 Rachel gave out that the inscription was " Victoria a Rachel." It 
 really ran " Victoria R. a Mademoiselle Rachel" which is different 
 
 73
 
 Rachel 
 
 They flattered her to the skies, " sans cartes de 
 visites " ; which means, of course, that they sought 
 no reward for their praise, and did not, like Jules 
 Janin, presume to encourage her by putting their 
 arms round her waist a tribute to the disinter- 
 estedness of our dramatic critics which must on no 
 account be left unrecorded. 
 
 An English witness to her triumphs in society as 
 well as on the stage may be quoted first : 
 
 " Everybody here is now raving about her. . . . 
 Her appearance is very striking ; she is of a very good 
 height, too thin for beauty but not for dignity or 
 grace; her want of chest and breadth indeed almost 
 suggest a tendency to pulmonary disease, coupled 
 with her pallor and her youth. . . . 
 
 " I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and 
 dignity, the excellent bon ton of her manners. . . . 
 
 " She is completely the rage in London now; all 
 the fine ladies and gentlemen crazy after her, the 
 Queen throwing her roses on the stage out of her own 
 bouquet, and viscountesses and marchionesses driv- 
 ing her about a I'envie I'une de I'autre, to show her 
 all the lions of the town." 
 
 So Fanny Kemble writes, recalling one of those 
 scenes of glory and enthusiasm which, for a brief 
 moment, appear to mean so much, but are found to 
 mean so little, and leave so evanescent a trace 
 when once the curtain has rung down on them. 
 And the triumph, like all her triumphs, meant an 
 immense deal to Rachel. She enjoyed as one can 
 enjoy at one-and-twenty. " Glory ! Glory ! Glory 
 is the best thing in the world next to God," she 
 
 74
 
 Rachel 
 
 exclaimed in one of her letters to Cremieux; and 
 it is from that correspondence that we can derive 
 our most vivid pictures of the visit. 
 
 Let a picture of the reception at Windsor have 
 priority : 
 
 " Yes ! Yes ! My triumph ! At nine o'clock 
 her Majesty the Queen sent a beautiful carriage to 
 convey me to the ancient and magnificent Castle of 
 Windsor. As we drove from the hotel to the Castle 
 I thought I was in a dream, but no, it was all true. I 
 was actually getting out of an equipage belonging to 
 Queen Victoria, and, in another instant, I found 
 myself in the halls of the Thousand-and-One Nights. 
 
 " The Queen had a dinner-party of a hundred 
 guests that night, so that I was left alone, for some 
 time, in the galleries which, in spite of the brilliant 
 illumination, still recall the tragic scenes which 
 have passed there. At ten the Queen is announced. 
 What a sudden change of expression on every 
 countenance one person forcing a smile, another 
 trying to remember the compliment which he com- 
 posed a week before ! All rising, the Queen enters 
 slowly, smiles charmingly on all, bows to the com- 
 pany and takes her place in the midst of the mute 
 assemblage which watches her least gesture. At 
 last all are seated, and I await the Queen's orders. 
 Presently a tall thin man came up to me. It was 
 the Lord Chamberlain, who told me, in bad French, 
 that the Queen was waiting. I was terribly fright- 
 ened, but I felt that I must conquer or die. Besides, 
 as I was to begin with the second act of Bazajet, 
 I perceived that, happen what might, I must collect 
 
 75
 
 Rachel 
 
 myself and behave like the majority of those about 
 me. 
 
 " One of my company had eagerly accepted the 
 honour of going to the English court and proving 
 his gratitude to me by giving me my cues. Roxane 
 and the scene of irony between Pyrrhus and Her- 
 mione obtained unanimous applause a thing for- 
 bidden by etiquette, only her Majesty was kind 
 enough to give the signal for it. 
 
 " I finished this brilliant evening with the third 
 act of Marie Stuart, which pleased the young queen 
 immensely. She told me so herself. She sent for 
 me, and said that she had had even greater pleasure 
 in hearing me recite at Windsor than at the house 
 of the Duchess of Kent, though she had been de- 
 lighted then, and she wound up by giving me a very 
 pretty bracelet with her name and the date on it. 
 That pleased me even more than the gift. Then, 
 it being past midnight, the Queen withdrew with 
 the same ceremony with which she had entered. 
 
 " And that was the end of this brilliant evening, 
 so full of honour for my professional career. They 
 had set out a splendid supper for me, but I was too 
 tired to touch it. ... And so you see, my dear 
 friend, at what a pinnacle I have now arrived." 
 
 A picture of the triumphs in English society may 
 come next : 
 
 " To-morrow I have promised to go to the Derby 
 with Lord Normanby. I dined with him on the 
 23rd. He is the Minister of the Interior, and he 
 is married, and his wife has been extremely kind 
 
 76
 
 Rachel 
 
 to me. Next Saturday she is going to take me 
 for a drive and introduce me to her mother. 
 
 " I have given recitations at the houses of Lady 
 Jersey, the Marchioness of Ailesbury, and Countess 
 Cadogan. As for dinners, I am refusing them right 
 and left. Ah, I forgot. I am to dine with Lord 
 Palmerston, Lord Clarendon, and Lord Lovelace 
 I forget who else has invited me. The Duke of 
 Wellington paid me many compliments at Lady 
 Jersey's party, and came to call on me the next day. 
 That is not the least of my London successes." 
 
 The Duke, indeed, not only called on Rachel, 
 but wrote her a letter which must on no account be 
 withheld, for the light which it throws on the in- 
 timacy of his knowledge of the idioms of the French 
 language is lurid : 
 
 " Le marechal due de Wellington present e ses 
 hommages a Mile. Rachel ; il a fait prevenir au theatre 
 qu'il desirait y retenir sa loge enfin de pouvoir y 
 assister a la representation pour le benefice de Mile. 
 Rachel. 
 
 ' II y assist era certainement si il lui devient 
 possible de s'absenter ce jour la de 1'assemblee du 
 Parlement dont il est membre. 
 
 " II regrettera beaucoup si il se trouve impossible 
 ainsi d'avoir la satisfaction de la voir et 1'entendre 
 encore une fois avant son depart de Londres." 
 
 Thus the victor of Waterloo to the proUgJe of 
 the proprietor of the cough-drop. It is a pretty 
 picture of the effect of limelight in distorting the 
 
 77
 
 Rachel 
 
 world's scale of values. One cannot wonder that 
 Rachel basked in her glory, and began to feel that, 
 daughter of an old clothes-woman though she was, 
 a great gulf, social no less than artistic, was opening 
 between her and ordinary theatrical people. As for 
 the members of her company, who had no such 
 social pretensions 
 
 " I have taken my precautions, and only allow 
 them to come and see me in the evening, about nine 
 o'clock, when no one in good society is likely to 
 call." 
 
 A happy instinct, too, told Rachel that her glory 
 would be greater if she refused to accept fees for 
 her appearances in the drawing-rooms of the leaders 
 of fashion. Her father, who was with her, though 
 he was not invited to accompany her into society, 
 thought the policy mistaken. Non olet was always 
 his motto where pieces of silver were concerned. 
 Rachel, however, wiser in her generation, knew what 
 she was about, and followed her own course with 
 a fine air of high-minded grandeur, drawing dis- 
 tinctions between her own position and that of 
 meaner artists who could not be expected to be so 
 magnanimous. 
 
 " I am making friends in the world of fashion, 
 not clients, as the singers do. Not that I am at 
 all surprised at the singers, but as for myself I think 
 that sort of thing is beneath the dignity of a Princess 
 of Tragedy. Don't you agree with me, my dear 
 M. Cremieux ? ' 
 
 78
 
 Rachel 
 
 Even Rachel's prose style appears to have im- 
 proved under the stimulating influence of her re- 
 nown. The letters which she wrote to Cremieux 
 from London are much more grammatical than 
 those which she wrote to him in Paris; but still she 
 did not trust herself. She seems to have provided 
 herself with formulae for accepting and declining 
 invitations; but when more difficult letters were 
 required she still sent to Paris for them. We find 
 her, for instance, appealing to Cremieux to tell her 
 how to thank Lord Normanby for giving her a ring 
 
 " you may breathe freely, for he is old and ugly," 
 she adds, to reassure him. We also find her appeal- 
 ing to him for a letter to Lady Normanby a letter 
 for which Lady Normanby has asked Mme. Felix 
 to thank her for her kindness and hospitality. We 
 find her finally soliciting his assistance on a still 
 more important occasion : 
 
 " Her Majesty the Queen has told Lord Normanby 
 that she would like to have my signature in her 
 album. I have asked several persons in the highest 
 position what I ought to do, and their advice is 
 that I should write her Majesty a letter on the 
 morning after the entertainment at Windsor. So, 
 my dear Cremieux, in spite of the great progress 
 which I am making in French composition, I must 
 once more throw myself upon your kindness." 
 
 So that if there is, in fact, any letter from Rachel to 
 Queen Victoria preserved in the royal collection of 
 autographs, the secret is now out that not Rachel 
 but her legal adviser composed it. 
 
 79
 
 Rachel 
 
 That is the end of the story of Rachel's first 
 triumphant excursion to London : a story to which 
 it only remains to be added that, in the midst of 
 her triumphs, she received her first serious warning 
 that her glory, though brilliant, would be brief, and 
 that she could only pursue fame at the peril of her 
 health. 
 
 Samson had already cautioned her, begging her 
 to reserve her strength for the theatre instead of 
 dissipating it in society whenever the theatre did 
 not claim her. She had laughed at his warning, 
 partly because she was young and eager to enjoy, 
 and partly because the gifts which society poured 
 into her lap were welcome. A fainting-fit in her 
 dressing-room, after a trying performance, had 
 proved that there was reason in what Samson said; 
 but she had recovered from it and continued to live 
 as recklessly as before. From London, however, 
 she wrote to Cremieux that she had spent four days 
 in bed, and felt very weak. 
 
 " The name of the disease," she explained, " is 
 hemorrhage"; and we all know that hemorrhage 
 is generally the prelude of pulmonary consumption.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Provincial loves An offer of marriage Quarrel with Cremieux. 
 
 RACHEL recovered from her hemorrhage, making 
 little more ado about it than if it had been a cold 
 in the head, and hurried on to fulfil an engagement 
 at Bordeaux. There also she was received with 
 as much honour as if she had been a princess, and 
 thence also she wrote to Cremieux, rejoicing in her 
 glory, and demanding drafts of letters suitable for 
 various occasions. 
 
 She had no sooner arrived, she told him, than 
 musicians appeared beneath her balcony to serenade 
 her. Whenever she descended into the streets she 
 found a crowd of cavaliers waiting to escort her. A 
 Paris deputy, Vicomte Jacqueminot Rachel spells 
 the name Jacmino happening to be staying in the 
 same hotel, had at once waited on her. A M. 
 Aguado, whoever he may have been, had driven 
 her out to his chateau, and insisted upon her carrying 
 off a case of the best wine in his cellar. It had been 
 impressed upon her, in short, not only that she was 
 the most important of the actresses, but also that 
 actresses were the most important members of 
 the community. 
 
 And that, it may be remarked in passing, was the 
 general attitude of the French provinces towards 
 her. ' The Girondins," she wrote to Dr. Veron, 
 " overwhelm me with verses, odes and sonnets.'' 
 The hotel-keepers of Marseilles competed for the 
 G 81
 
 Rachel 
 
 privilege of entertaining her gratuitously. Rouen, 
 which boasted that, in its independence, it had once 
 hissed Talma, overwhelmed her with acclamations. 
 The magnificence of her gesture in declaring that it 
 was her " sacred duty " to give her first performance 
 on the birthday of Corneille stirred an enthusiasm 
 which swept the Rouennais off their feet. A magnifi- 
 cent medallion of Corneille was at once presented 
 to her; and we must hope that there is no truth in 
 the story that she at once took it to a jeweller and 
 exchanged it for pieces of silver. At Lyon the police 
 had to take special measures to keep order at the 
 pit door. The receipts amounted to 292; and the 
 members of the Lyon Academy subscribed to offer 
 Rachel a golden crown. 
 
 " And now I am wondering," she wrote to Samson, 
 " how I ought to comport myself when I receive 
 these gentlemen, and what will be the proper reply 
 to make to their address. If only I could induce 
 you to compose a little speech for me but you 
 never write, not even to ask how I am getting on ; 
 and now I have to get out of this business with 
 honour and dignity as best I can." 
 
 The speech which occurred to Rachel's unaided 
 imagination was to the effect that she wished she 
 were already on the road to Paris with the Academi- 
 cians' golden crown safely packed among her 
 baggage. Decidedly it was a remark to be classed 
 with the things which one would rather have ex- 
 pressed differently; but the dazzled provincials, being 
 quite sure that she meant well, forgave her, and left 
 
 82
 
 Rachel 
 
 her happy in the knowledge that they placed actresses 
 on a loftier pedestal than any other artists. She 
 was only twenty, and it was not to be expected that 
 she would dispute, or even doubt, the propriety of 
 their adoration. 
 
 In the midst of the homage, however, her trouble 
 about her health continued. A letter in which she 
 boasts of 328 in the house, " an unheard of figure," 
 is quickly followed by a letter in which she complains 
 of " pain between the shoulders." 
 
 ' I cannot use my left arm without feeling it. 
 The damp, I think, makes it worse; and it has not 
 stopped raining since I have been here. It affects 
 my spirits and makes me melancholy. . . . When 
 I think that I have still eleven performances 
 to give, I am appalled by the fatigue in store for 
 me. I have to keep quiet between the performances. 
 It is a great effort to write to you, for, as I said, 
 writing makes me worse." 
 
 Thus she writes to her father in a letter in which 
 she also says that at Lyon she has passed all the 
 sorrows of her childhood in review. It is one of our 
 first glimpses at the gloom which gradually settled 
 down upon her in spite of her determination to 
 experience every kind of delight and drain the chalice 
 of pleasure to the lees. The source of the melancholy 
 beyond a doubt was the consciousness of failing 
 strength, and the perpetual conflict between the 
 passion for activity and the need for rest the strain 
 of packing the achievements of a long life into a 
 few short and feeble years. A picture of that strain 
 
 G2 8 3
 
 Rachel 
 
 and stress, which was to aggravate the melancholy 
 in the end though, at the time, it might seem to 
 offer an escape from it, may be taken from Edmond 
 Got's 1 recently published Diary. 
 
 " Here," Got writes, " is Mile. Rachel off again to 
 tour the provinces. It is to be a tour, they tell 
 me, of three months' duration, just as it was last year, 
 when she played ninety-one times in ninety days, 
 whereas in Paris we have all the difficulty in the 
 world to get her to play twice a week. 
 
 " How she sticks to it, though, and how terribly 
 it must tire her ! Starting off with a company com- 
 posed partly of members of her family and partly of 
 the youngest pensionnaires of the Comedie Fran9aise, 
 whom she thus diverts from their proper and natural 
 career crowding them all into a diligence, in the 
 coup*? of which she herself sleeps, occasionally, it 
 is said, inviting a male member of the troupe to share 
 the compartment with her packing and unpacking 
 the costumes at every stage of the journey and 
 never a moment's respite ! Sometimes they give 
 two performances a day in towns two leagues apart." 
 
 And Got proceeds to relate how, when members 
 of the company suffered from fatigue, or indigestion, 
 or caught cold, Rachel and her sister Sarah used 
 to doctor them in the diligence, dosing them with 
 homely remedies, and even applying blisters, 
 poultices and leeches with their own hands. 
 The entry belongs to a date somewhat later than 
 
 1 Ultimately the doyen of the Comedie Frar^aisc, but in Rachel's 
 time a very junior member of the company. 
 
 84
 
 Rachel 
 
 that under review, when Rachel was still more tired 
 and still more strenuous. Already in the early 
 forties, however, Rachel was weary, and nevertheless 
 was rushing through life as if a gadfly spurred her 
 on. 
 
 Already, too, she was beginning to shock and 
 surprise her serious friends, and she more particularly 
 shocked and surprised him whom she called " papa " 
 Cremieux. He had supposed himself to be com- 
 pletely in her confidence; but there were certain 
 secrets as to her way of life which she was trying 
 to keep from him, and he found them out. 
 
 Apparently he knew that the Marquis de Custine 
 had courted her pour le bon motif and made her an 
 offer of marriage. Very likely he was the author 
 of the letter in which she declined the proposal- 
 she certainly cannot have written it herself, for it 
 is cold, correct and closely reasoned. He must, 
 at any rate, have been in sympathy with the refusal, 
 for Astolphe de Custine, the only son of Chateau- 
 briand's friend Delphine de Custine, had blemishes 
 of character of the sort that neither men nor women 
 pardon. Chateaubriand himself had told him that 
 his only way of clearing his reputation would be to 
 fight duels right and left ; but he had challenged none 
 of his calumniators, and the houses of his reputable 
 acquaintances had been closed to him in consequence. 
 The kindest thing which they could be got to say 
 of him was that a blow which he had received on 
 the head from a falling picture in an Italian gallery 
 might perhaps have made him unaccountable for 
 his actions. In spite of his title, therefore, he was 
 an "undesirable"; and Cremieux may well have 
 
 85
 
 Rachel 
 
 patted Rachel on the back when he found that the 
 title did not tempt her. His emotions were very 
 different when he heard about Dr. Veron. 
 
 He had idealized Rachel as an innocent angel of 
 spotless purity; but he had no disposition to idealize 
 that fat Amphitryon with the double chin the 
 boulevardier whose chief boasts were that he had 
 drunk champagne every night of his life for thirty 
 years with impunity, and that no woman had ever 
 resisted his advances. It was incredible to him that 
 his little white dove could have let herself be 
 entrapped by the unhealthy-looking proprietor of the 
 cough-drop; but the evidence accumulated, and at 
 last he felt that he really must take notice of it. So 
 he and Madame Cremieux put their heads together, 
 and it was decided that Madame Cremieux should 
 write Rachel this letter : 
 
 " MY DEAR CHILD, 
 
 " I am heart-broken. My husband is just 
 back from Paris, where he has spent the afternoon 
 in visiting friends, and the sad certainty has been 
 borne in upon him that the rumours about which 
 we spoke to you are appallingly circumstantial. 
 Rachel, my child, you must not hesitate any longer. 
 You must break with him publicly the rumour 
 can be silenced in no other way or else you will 
 fall from your pedestal. But, no. One who has 
 climbed so high as you have cannot endure degrada- 
 tion while there is still time to avoid it, and cannot 
 afford to lose so fair a fame in a day." 
 
 M. Cremieux, the letter continues, has spent three 
 
 86
 
 Rachel 
 
 hours in discussing the matter with " honourable 
 journalists," a fact which shows to what a degree 
 the affairs of actresses may be regarded as the affairs 
 of all the world. He has asked them why Rachel 
 was coldly received on her last appearance at the 
 theatre. They have answered, with one accord, 
 that it was on account of Dr. Veron. 
 
 " Do not look for any other reason, for there is 
 none. Many great ladies had come from their 
 country houses, with flowers in their hands, to wel- 
 come you on your return. But the talk of the whole 
 house was of your disgrace. They discussed it in all 
 its details, and they retained their bouquets rather 
 than give you any proof of esteem and interest." 
 
 So Rachel must drop the doctor. Madame Cre- 
 mieux implores her to do so " with hands joined in 
 prayer." Better that she should get married to 
 some honest man, and that " this poetical name of 
 Rachel " should be exchanged for a bourgeois 
 appellation, than that it should be profaned by 
 opprobrious epithets. For every one was talking. 
 Every one was saying : " She has been to see M. V. 
 She spent whole hours alone with him. Only last 
 Sunday she took him to Montmorency, and drove 
 back to Paris with him in his carriage at the dead 
 of night." A terrible future v/as in store for Rachel 
 if she went on like that. She would have to shed 
 11 bitter tears," and therefore 
 
 ' Rachel, my dear child, if my entreaties still 
 have any influence over you, answer this letter and 
 
 87
 
 Rachel 
 
 tell me that you are going to do as I ask you. If you 
 do not answer, I shall understand the meaning of 
 your silence, and, though my heart will be broken, 
 I shall say no more. . . . But no. You do not want 
 to be merely the actress whom people go to see 
 at the theatre on account of her talents you who 
 have hitherto been so pure and so charming that the 
 highest in the land have invited you to their palaces 
 and their drawing-rooms. You do not want girls 
 of good family to avoid you you whom the girls 
 of the best families like to call their sister. 
 
 " Rachel* my child, you are on the edge of the 
 abyss. Step back from it. There is still time to- 
 day. Do not wait until to-morrow. 
 
 u I thought it better to write to you myself than 
 to leave my husband to do so. He never expected 
 this general outcry, and it has thrown him into a 
 state of consternation. On Monday at one he will 
 call for your answer. May it then be possible to 
 us to announce that you are still, as we know that 
 you are, the Rachel whom we love with all the 
 tenderness of our hearts." 
 
 A letter truly of a deep and moving pathos. 
 Madame Cremieux was one of those who saw no reason 
 why the daughters of the theatre should not cultivate 
 precisely the same virtues as the daughters of the 
 bourgeoisie. If she knew, as she must have known, 
 that some actresses did not, she believed that 
 Rachel was an exception to the rule. Or, at any 
 rate, she believed that Rachel, having been lured 
 into error, would return, a repentant Magdalen, 
 in tears, holding a candle, attired in a white sheet, 
 
 88
 
 Rachel 
 
 and promising never to offend again. Which is 
 to say that she did not understand how the theatrical 
 point of view of these matters differs from that of 
 the professional classes, and also that she did not 
 know Rachel. A bourgeoise had indeed died young 
 in Rachel; but it was dead, and was not to come to 
 life again for some years to come. 
 
 The servant who delivered the letter inquired 
 whether there was any answer to it, and was told 
 that there was none. A few days afterwards 
 Cremieux sent his messenger again. Perhaps, he 
 thought, Rachel had desired a little time to think 
 the letter over before replying to it. Surely now, 
 after reflection, she had a word to say. But no. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Rachel has already said that there 
 is no answer to the letter," was the only response 
 that he got. 
 
 That was the end of what Legouve calls Rachel's 
 " prehistoric epoch " her definite announcement 
 that, having crossed the Rubicon without the know- 
 ledge of her serious friends, she considered herself 
 better off on the further side of it, and intended to 
 remain there. 
 
 8 9
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Relations with the Prince de Joinville With Comte Walewski 
 With Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 CREMIEUX'S reason for dropping Rachel may or 
 may not have weighed with the Faubourg. The 
 Faubourg, at any rate, had also other, and graver, 
 grounds of quarrel with her. The vulgar gesture 
 with which, as has already been related, she 
 expressed her contempt for the Faubourg, was 
 one of them. Another was the strange story of 
 her relations with the Prince de Joinville. 
 
 He was Louis-Philippe's third son, thirty years of 
 age, a handsome blond, very popular with women, 
 and an admiral. His squadron had just brought 
 the ashes of Napoleon back to France from Saint 
 Helena; and he was a sailor who, as Arsene Houssaye 
 writes, " made havoc of virtue of the virtue, that is 
 to say, which only demanded that havoc should be 
 made of it." So, having admired Rachel at the 
 theatre, he proceeded with nautical directness, 
 sending up his card to her dressing-room, with a note 
 scrawled on it ; the note, which is famous, running as 
 follows : 
 
 " On ? Quand ? Combien ? " 
 And Rachel sent the card back with the reply 
 
 " Chez Toi. Ce Soir. Pour Rien" 
 90
 
 Rachel 
 
 That was one of the stories circulated. Another 
 was to the effect that Rachel, meeting the Prince de 
 Joinville for the first time at a dinner given by 
 Mole, went home with him in his carriage. Either 
 story, if believed, would have sufficed to convince 
 the Faubourg that it had erred in distinguishing 
 Rachel from other actresses ; and though no one can 
 vouch for the literal exactitude of either story, the 
 fact on which both stories are founded does not admit 
 of doubt. Rachel, it was quite clear, had invaded the 
 Faubourg, and carried off its brightest ornament, 
 not merely for a passing adventure, but for a romance 
 of some duration and that at the very time when 
 her other male admirers in the salons vied with one 
 another in guaranteeing her impeccable. 
 
 It is even said that the Prince de Joinville 
 succeeded Cre'mieux as Rachel's letter-writer in 
 ordinary. However that may have been, he was 
 for a season passionately in love with her, as is 
 proved by one of his letters, discovered in the 
 Tuileries on the day when the mob sacked that 
 Palace and sent Louis Philippe and his family about 
 their business : 
 
 "So you are ill," he wrote, "and God knows 
 what will be the end of it. I await to-morrow with 
 impatience, in the hope that my anxiety may be 
 relieved, for I have had no letter from you to-day. 
 Can it be that you are worse ? The thought pains 
 me. I cannot keep quiet any longer, and I have 
 just told my aunt that I shall start to-morrow. I 
 am leaving all my business and getting away as best 
 I can. I was in a state of fever all night long. After 
 
 9*
 
 Rachel 
 
 reading your letters, I could think of nothing else, so 
 great is my love for you." 
 
 That seems to have been written in 1843, when 
 Rachel was "curing" at Ems, "coughing," she 
 wrote, "as if I should bring the house down." 
 Whether the Prince de Joinville joined her there is 
 not known. He had, at any rate, long since passed 
 out of her life at the time when the letter was found 
 and read by eyes for which it was not intended, 
 and one only quotes it to show under what brilliant 
 auspices Rachel broke with the Faubourg and crossed 
 the Rubicon, and how splendid were the hosts who 
 delighted to entertain her after the Rubicon was 
 crossed. 
 
 The Prince de Joinville, though the first, was not 
 by any means the last. His bust, together with a 
 specimen of his handwriting one does not know 
 whether it was the famous " Ou ? Quand ? Com- 
 bien ? " or not was long one of the most admired 
 ornaments of her library in her mansion in the 
 Rue Trudon; but the rest of the furniture and 
 decorations of that mansion were provided, not 
 by any member of the House of Orleans, but by a 
 member of the House of Bonaparte. 
 
 One has named, of course, Count Walewski, the 
 son of Napoleon and his Polish mistress, Madame 
 Walewska. He was rich, and a widower, and 
 sufficiently an amateur of the arts to write a comedy 
 L'Ecole du Monde which was hissed at the 
 Theatre Francais : a circumstance which inspired the 
 ironical condolences of Thiers : " My dear friend, 
 whv on earth did vou do it ? It is so difficult to 
 
 J 
 
 92
 
 write a comedy in five acts, and it is so easy not to 
 write one." According to Arsene Houssaye, Rachel 
 won his heart by inviting him to supper, and 
 flattering him with the following Napoleonic 
 menu : 
 
 SAUCISSON A L'AIL DE TOULON 
 OMELETTE AU JAMBON DE MAYENCE 
 ANDOUILLES A LA BONAPARTE 
 POULET A LA MARENGO 
 BOMBE GLACEE A LA MOSKOWA. 
 
 Whether that story is true or only well invented 
 matters little. The woman who had to ask Cre- 
 mieux the meaning of " firmament " was certainly 
 incapable of the historical allusions ; but her friends, 
 or even her cook, may have been capable of them on 
 her behalf. In any case Rachel pleased Walewski, 
 whether by this device or by another; and he was a 
 lover who did things in a much grander style than 
 any of his predecessors. 
 
 We need not, indeed, assume that the Prince de 
 Joinville took Rachel at her word when in reply to 
 his "How much?" she answered that she would 
 make no charge. Princes cannot, and actresses know 
 that they cannot, afford to take advantage of such 
 magnanimity. But Joinville, in view of the exigencies 
 of his position, had been discreet. Though he had 
 loved Rachel, he had not called the world to witness 
 that he loved her; he had not provided her with 
 an establishment. Walewski did so. He set her 
 up in a magnificently furnished mansion the Hotel 
 of the Rue Trudon with a large staff of servants. 
 She settled down there, and bore him a child. " It 
 
 93
 
 Rachel 
 
 was only a theatrical marriage," writes Arsene 
 Houssaye, " but it was a marriage all the same." 
 Which means apparently that, when the son was 
 born, Walewski took the necessary legal steps to 
 recognize him publicly as his. And, as has been 
 already mentioned M. Leon Seche being the author- 
 ity for the story he would have gone further and 
 actually made Rachel his wife if he had not heard 
 that she had said of him behind his back : " Le 
 comte m'embete avec son comme-il-faut." 
 
 Merely as his mistress, however, she was at the 
 apogee of her social splendour. Having the public 
 as well as her lover on her side, she could snap her 
 fingers at the boycott of the Faubourg ; and we find 
 her, for a season, comporting herself with dignity, 
 as though recognizing that she had been raised to 
 an exalted rank only to be occupied by actresses 
 who were sedate in their demeanour and exclusive 
 in their affections. That was particularly the case 
 when the elder Dumas presumed, with character- 
 istic swagger, to make love to her. The story was 
 told, with documents in support, in the Gaulois, 
 about a year ago. 
 
 She was on tour, it seems, with Walewski in attend- 
 ance, and at Marseilles she met the ebullient mulatto 
 at dinner. On her departure he wrote her a letter- 
 not a brief business-like communication like that of 
 the Prince de Joinville, but a verbose effusion of seven 
 amorous pages. He addressed her as " My beautiful 
 Queen." Though he had only been two days 
 in her company, he said, those two days had set an 
 ineffaceable mark upon his life. Perhaps she had 
 not given him a second thought, but she was never- 
 
 94
 
 Rachel 
 
 theless hidden in a fold of his heart. He loved her; 
 he felt that he had always been predestined to love 
 her. Every look that she had given him had alter- 
 nately inspired him with hope and fear. She was 
 one of those queens whom one adored, and before 
 whom one trembled. Writing from a distance he 
 dared to tell his love. He doubted whether he 
 would have the courage to tell it in her presence. 
 
 And so forth, through seven pages; and when 
 there was no answer, Dumas despatched seven other 
 pages, all in the same passionate tone. " I love you, 
 Rachel," the ventripotent one declared. " I love 
 you to distraction. So passionately do I love you 
 that I am repeating the words aloud to myself as I 
 write." And he continued 
 
 " Listen to me, I implore you. A look may deceive 
 one it may be that one intercepts a look intended 
 for another. A pressure of the hand may deceive 
 one a pressure of the hand may be nothing more 
 than the expression of a condescending friendship. 
 One may be deceived even as to the signs of such 
 emotion as seemed to me to thrill through you when 
 you leant against me on that beautiful evening on 
 this beautiful beach. It may, in truth, have been 
 my own heart, and not yours, that was beating. 
 But a word, a line these things do not deceive." 
 
 So he begged Rachel to write to him. She did 
 write, but her letter was not at all the sort of letter 
 which he had expected. Rachel wrote that she had 
 hoped that her silence would have been sufficiently 
 a clear hint that Dumas' letters were unwelcome to 
 
 95
 
 Rachel 
 
 her. As it was, she must request him, in plain 
 words, to cease his annoying correspondence ; and 
 she added two stinging sentences : 
 
 " You tell me, sir, that you would not venture to 
 say in my presence the things which you write to me. 
 I can only express my regret that I do not inspire 
 you with as much respect when you are at a distance 
 as when you are near at hand. . . . 
 
 " I knew that, when one had to do with a fool, 
 it was necessary to weigh and consider the mean- 
 ing of his most casual words. I did not know that 
 there were some men of intelligence with whom the 
 same precautions were necessary." 
 
 But the mulatto was not beaten yet. He wrote, 
 for the third time, thus : 
 
 " MADAME, 
 
 Since you absolutely insist upon it, let 
 matters rest where they are. At least we have 
 accomplished a part of the journey which we may 
 complete hereafter. 
 
 Your admirer and, above all, your friend, 
 
 ~ " AL. DUMAS." 
 
 To which piece of insolence Rachel rejoined 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 I return you the brief note which you were 
 not ashamed to address to me. When a woman 
 has made up her mind not to appeal to any one 
 for help, that is her only way of replying to an 
 
 96
 
 Rachel 
 
 insult. If I have misapprehended your meaning, 
 and if you wrote these few lines through a slip 
 of the pen in the midst of your innumerable occupa- 
 tions, I am quite sure that you will be glad to recover 
 them. 
 
 " RACHEL." 
 
 Whereupon the mulatto, whose chief desire was 
 now to cover his retreat, took up his pen yet 
 again, and wrote, this time, to Walewski. 
 
 " MY DEAR COUNT, 
 
 " I have attempted the siege of a town of 
 which you are the governor, and I have been badly 
 beaten. Receive my compliments. 
 
 " I would rather that you received the news of 
 your victory from me than from any one else. Do- 
 ing so, you will have no right to bear me malice 
 for my defeat. 
 
 " Pray tell Mademoiselle Rachel that I am not 
 contented to continue to be the admirer of her 
 talents, but that I desire also to remain her 
 friend. 
 
 "Always yours, 
 
 "A. DUMAS." 
 
 Whereto Walewski, who knew his Dumas and 
 had no confidence in him, responded by enjoining 
 him to keep silence under pain of consequences : 
 
 " I should be obliged, to my great regret," (he 
 wrote, continuing the military metaphor) " to take 
 H 97
 
 Rachel 
 
 the field if the enemy, after raising the siege, should 
 change his tactics, and should either try to pene- 
 trate into the citadel by surprise or to diminish 
 the merit of the defence by circulating rumours 
 of its capitulation." 
 
 That was all. Dumas was beaten to his knees 
 and slunk away. More than ten years afterwards, 
 in circumstances which we shall come to, he avenged 
 himself by a scurrilous newspaper attack; but for 
 the moment he had nothing more to say; and the 
 Rachel who rebuffed him cuts a figure of quite 
 unusual dignity even though one feels quite sure 
 that the letters in which she put Dumas in his 
 place were not of her own, but of Walewski's 
 composition. 
 
 All through her relations with Walewski, indeed, 
 her proceedings strike one as comparatively simple 
 and sincere. She liked him, and he did things in 
 style; and the latter consideration was as important 
 to her as the former. 
 
 Perhaps that is not seldom the case with actresses. 
 They certainly give one the impression, far more 
 than any other women, when one reads their 
 biographies, of being less in love with their lovers, 
 or even with love itself, than with the splendid 
 trappings and accessories of love the bijou villas, 
 the champagne suppers, the priceless furs, and the 
 diamonds. They have an air of looking upon love 
 as a vain thing unless it leads to the acquisition of 
 such trophies. There are indications that it is a 
 maxim with them based, perhaps, upon a 
 sort of self-respect that great passions should be 
 
 9 8
 
 Rachel 
 
 reserved for men with great possessions; and great 
 passions thus discreetly regulated cannot, of course, 
 be regarded as of high sentimental value. 
 
 There have, no doubt, been exceptions to the 
 rule: Marie Dorval, for instance, who loved first 
 Alfred de Vigny and then Jules Sandeau without 
 fee or reward, but threw a flat iron at the head 
 of an elderly admirer who approached her on the 
 assumption that she put a price upon her favours; 
 and also Dejazet. But Rachel was not an exception. 
 She occasionally indulged caprices; and there are 
 letters of hers in collections of autographs in which 
 we seem to detect the genuine, though ungram- 
 matical, exclamation of the heart. An unknown 
 admirer at Rouen drew such an exclamation from 
 her. 
 
 ' Pray for poor Rachel," she cried. " You should 
 not blame but pity her." 
 
 But that was quite exceptional. In the main 
 Rachel, even while indulging her caprices, trampled 
 on feelings which threatened to seduce her from 
 the path of glory just as the wise young man 
 tramples on the passion for the barmaid or the 
 ballet-girl which threatens to compromise his career. 
 If her left-handed alliances were to be enduring, 
 they must be splendid. Splendour, she seems to 
 have felt, was due to her position, her art, and the 
 national theatre of which she was the ornament. 
 Only, as was natural, she preferred that the splen- 
 dour should be provided by an admirer who had 
 also the qualities of a lover; and Count Walewski 
 fulfilled that condition. 
 He was no double-chinned debauchee, like Dr. 
 
 H2 99
 
 Rachel 
 
 Veron, but a dashing and attractive suitor. In- 
 stead of a double chin and a protuberant stomach, 
 he had a tender and sympathetic heart. His pro- 
 ceedings were respectful as well as romantic. He 
 paid the bill without assuming the airs of the 
 man who concludes a purchase. He did the 
 thing in style because that was how he liked to do 
 it because Aristotle's " magnificent man " was 
 his model. It seems that he really tried to screw 
 his courage to the point of promoting Rachel from 
 left-handed to right-handed status. 
 
 In the end, as we know, his correctitude jarred 
 upon her, and she so acted as to divert him from his 
 intention. In the meantime, however, he loved 
 her, and she let herself be loved, and repulsed his 
 mulatto rival with a correctitude equal to his own, 
 because inspired by it, and basked, if not in senti- 
 ment, at all events in a luxury which she had never 
 previously dreamed of. 
 
 100
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Rachel's palatial mansion Her arrogance Her quarrel with 
 
 Walewski. 
 
 RACHEL had already quitted the parental roof 
 in order to " live her own life." Her flat, rented 
 at 200 a year, was in the Rue de Rivoli. She was 
 often to be seen, it is said, in the basement, gossiping 
 with the concierge, and even helping her to make 
 a salad or a stew. In that manner, and to that 
 extent, she kept herself in touch with the homely 
 habits of her early years. Now, as if she had 
 suddenly found Aladdin's lamp, she was transferred, 
 in the twinkling of an eye, to such a palace as one 
 reads of in the Arabian Nights. 
 
 The hall was paved with mosaic; the grand stair- 
 case was of white marble. The visitor ascended it 
 through an avenue of flower-pots, beneath a dome 
 embellished with arabesques in the style of the 
 Alhambra, and passed through an ante-chamber 
 panelled with white oak and hung with green and 
 gold brocade. He entered a dining-room with 
 four lofty windows, decorated with frescoes in the 
 style of those discovered at Pompeii, and admired 
 Etruscan vases on the marble mantelpiece. His 
 dinner, if he stayed to dine, was served partly on 
 solid silver plates, and partly on Sevres porcelain, 
 with a large "R" marked in gold on every piece. 
 
 Adjoining the dining-room was a boudoir, hung 
 
 101
 
 Rachel 
 
 with Persian drapings, and crowded with divans, 
 and low chairs, and whatnots, and cabinets, one 
 of ebony and one of tortoise-shell, richly stored 
 with treasures and curiosities. On a table 
 lay thirteen daggers with dazzling jewelled hilts, 
 and on the walls hung valuable pictures by De" veria, 
 Meissonier, Diaz, and other masters. Beyond 
 the boudoir was a library, with six book-cases of 
 carved oak, containing four or five thousand 
 volumes, including a graphically illustrated quarto 
 edition of La Pucelle. The principal ornament of 
 the room was the bust of the Prince de Joinville 
 Rachel's memento of the correspondence quoted 
 in the last chapter. 
 
 On the first floor was the drawing-room. A pro- 
 cession of the Nine Muses defiled along its 
 walls in white and gold; the chandelier was of 
 bronze, with little Cupids in silver; the doors 
 and windows were draped with Chinese silks. The 
 arm-chairs were of gilded wood, and covered with 
 cherry-coloured damask; the ottomans had lace 
 antimacassars. On the mantelpiece two enormous 
 blue Sevres vases flanked a gold clock designed like 
 a terrestrial globe. Close by was the bedroom, where 
 the bed, of carved and gilded wood, with a coverlet 
 of silk embroidered with gold, was overhung by a 
 baldaquin with purple curtains. On the wall hung 
 a portrait of Adrienne Lecouvreur in Beauvais 
 tapestry; and in a corner stood a piano with a 
 carved oak case, so that Rachel might be played to 
 sleep when she was restless. 
 
 The total cost of the furniture and decorations 
 is said to have been 12,000; and that estimate is, 
 
 IO2
 
 Rachel 
 
 of course, exclusive of the cost of innumerable 
 offerings in kind. To such magnificence had genius, 
 combined with a certain readiness to let herself be 
 loved, brought the daughter of the pedlar and the 
 old clothes-woman at the age of twenty-three. One 
 can quite understand that Rachel, for a while, felt 
 the need of living up to the unaccustomed grandeur, 
 and developed, under its influence, not only a kind 
 of self-respect, but even a kind of prudery. The tone 
 of her dismissal of Dumas, whose circumstances 
 were humble in comparison with hers for the days 
 of the Villa Monte Cristo were still to come was 
 only in keeping with her surroundings; and so was 
 the tone of her refusal of a valuable picture a study 
 in the nude offered to her by one of her theatrical 
 colleagues. 
 
 The picture, she wrote, was " too undraped " to 
 be admitted to her establishment. " I am no 
 prude," she protested. " But why," she asked, 
 " should I deprive you of a picture which I should 
 be obliged to hide ? ' Whereto the colleague, 
 addressing her as " dear and great comrade," 
 replied that she had been " silly, and indeed almost 
 impious," to have deemed her little picture worthy 
 of hanging-room in such a house, and continued : 
 " But, at any rate, my foolishness has supplied me 
 with really precious information concerning the 
 sincerity of your claim to modesty." 
 
 One seems to see, too, the effect of magnificent 
 surroundings on an ill-balanced mind in Rachel's 
 haughty treatment of Mademoiselle George. 
 
 George had had a brilliant past. She had been 
 at once a queen of tragedy and the mistress of an
 
 Rachel 
 
 emperor. 1 Constant, Napoleon's valet, had been 
 sent to the theatre to fetch her, and had driven her 
 to the Tuileries amid the plaudits of the populace. 
 But she had come to poverty, losing her vogue 
 together with her lovers, and needed a benefit. She 
 called on Rachel, to ask her to play at her benefit, 
 and Rachel declined to receive her, sending down 
 a message to the effect that George had better put 
 her request in writing. But George put something 
 else in writing 
 
 " No, thank you. I have not quite come to that. 
 I am as much a queen of the theatre as she is. I, 
 like her, have been a beautiful light o' love, and 
 the day will come when she will be a poor old woman 
 like me. No, I shall not write to her. I shall not 
 ask her for alms." 
 
 Thus George poured out her harrowed soul in a 
 letter to Victor Hugo, published in Choses vues, 
 continuing 
 
 " She forgets that she was once a beggar, and she 
 doesn't dream that, some day, she will be a beggar 
 again. Yes, M. Hugo, she was actually a beggar 
 in the cafes. People threw coppers to her; and now 
 she plays lansquenet at Veron's for louis points, 
 and wins or loses ten thousand francs in a night. 
 In thirty years' time she won't have six farthings, 
 
 1 Of two Emperors in fact. After Napoleon had tired of her she 
 went to Russia and was for a brief season the left-handed consort of 
 the Tsar, introduced to him by courtiers for the purpose of seducing 
 his affections from Madame Narishkine. 
 
 104
 
 Rachel 
 
 and will be in the gutter, with her boots down at 
 heel. In thirty years' time the name of Rachel won't 
 be worth as much as the name of George. Some 
 other girl, gifted with talent and youth will come 
 up and walk over her head, and we shall see her 
 prostrating herself humbly. One knows she will 
 be humble then, because one sees how insolent she 
 is now." 
 
 It was not a true prediction; for Rachel was of 
 the race which is business-like as well as artistic, 
 and her supersession by a younger rival was to find 
 her with plenty of money in the bank; but the 
 display of insolence is a shadow by no means to be 
 left out of the portrait. It shows us the living picture 
 trying to live up to the gorgeous frame in which it 
 has been placed, yet reverting to type in the very 
 act of doing so the queen of the theatre trying to 
 be grander than the grandest, yet unwittingly intro- 
 ducing the manners of the gutter into her palace. 
 
 We must let that story pass, however, for it was 
 only an episode, and carried no consequences. The 
 reversion to type which did carry consequences 
 lay in that impatient exclamation : " Le comte 
 m'embete avec son comme-il-faut." That was the 
 really symbolical and fatal utterance. Much as 
 Walewski loved Rachel, he loved correctitude more. 
 A wife thus liable to revert to type and relapse 
 from the stars to the gutter would clearly be fatal to 
 his prospects in the diplomatic service; so he broke 
 off his relations with Rachel and married Anne- 
 Alexandrine-Catherine de Ricci, a Florentine lady, 
 instead. The news of his decision reached Rachel 
 
 105
 
 Rachel 
 
 at a time when she was touring in Holland; and a 
 spectator of the comedy commented sardonically 
 
 " Comte Walewski has left her to marry a lady. 
 It is a very ordinary incident, but the actress takes 
 it seriously. She threatens to leave the stage. It 
 it said that she means to go and live in Italy. But 
 you may make your mind easy about that. She 
 will not die ; she will not go away. She will remain 
 at the service of French playgoers, and will continue 
 to attract crowds and restore the popularity of 
 Corneille and Racine by her splendid talents." 
 
 The spectator was right in his prophecies, and right 
 also in his affirmation that Rachel was seriously 
 afflicted by the rupture. Her distress appears in 
 her correspondence alike with Madame de Girardin, 
 and with Madame Saigneville a lady who some- 
 times acted as her secretary and helped her to keep 
 her theatrical accounts. ' The news which I found 
 awaiting me at Amsterdam," she wrote to the former, 
 " was such a trial to me that I forgot all about my 
 successes every evening as soon as the curtain fell;" 
 and she further spoke of an illness which nearly 
 carried her off in punishment for her faults, and 
 continued : " A strange muddle this, you will think, 
 reading my letter, but not understanding what it 
 means." To Madame Saigneville she was more 
 explicit 
 
 " I have been so overwhelmed and dazed by the 
 blow of the news of W.'s marriage that I cannot keep 
 calm enough to write to you at any length. You 
 
 1 06
 
 Rachel 
 
 will understand the depth of your poor Rachel's 
 trouble too well to be angry with her. Your letter 
 helped me, but I am not to be consoled. All the 
 fault is on my side. It was my own conduct which 
 brought about the calamity which overtakes me 
 to-day, so that I can find no peace in a clear con- 
 science. No, no. Weep for me, but do not pity me. 
 It was all my own doing, and God has punished me 
 for it. 
 
 "It is all over with me. But if I can no longer 
 live for myself and my own future, I must not forget 
 that I can still be useful to my poor child and my 
 numerous relatives. So I must put up with life for 
 their sakes. Little did I think when I took my 
 mourning with me on my tour that it was the colour 
 which I should have to wear for the remainder of 
 my existence. 
 
 " You are right to congratulate me on having 
 my brother with me. I cannot describe the devotion 
 of this boy, whom the spectacle of my trouble has 
 transformed into a man. Doubtless God sent him 
 to me to arrest the despair in my heart. God bless 
 him ! May all my friends bless him as I do. 
 
 "It is to-morrow that I am to make my first 
 appearance at the Amsterdam theatre. What 
 courage I shall need to hide my trouble from the 
 public ! 
 
 " I can hold my pen no longer. My tears 
 choke me. All my friends declare that I ought 
 to write to W. For three days I have been trying 
 in vain to do so. Whatever I write is obliterated 
 by a flood of tears. It seems to me that I am 
 speaking to him, and I fall in a fainting fit before 
 
 107
 
 Rachel 
 
 him, as poor Phedre before Minos. Tell him, if 
 you see him, the things which I cannot bring myself 
 to write. . . . 
 
 " Farewell ! Pity me ! You can never pity me 
 enough. 
 
 "RACHEL." 
 
 It is an eloquent letter, especially if one reads 
 between the lines. Two things are clear from it : 
 that Rachel had indeed hoped for and expected 
 elevation to right-handed status; and that she was 
 very conscious that her prospects had been blasted 
 by her own misconduct. One may fairly assume 
 that her expression of impatience at her lover's 
 correctitude was not her only fault, and that she 
 had reverted to type in other ways as well. She 
 had thought her position so secure that she could 
 afford to be capricious, and she had found that she 
 was mistaken. Hence those tears, which seem to 
 have been inspired by baffled ambition rather than 
 a stricken heart. 
 
 One might have expected, indeed, from the 
 eloquence of the letter to see the tears accompanied 
 by magnificent gestures of tragic indignation, and 
 a scornful return of the presents bestowed by a 
 faithless fianct; but, on the other hand, it is only 
 just to admit that the very number and bulk of the 
 presents interposed a difficulty. It is a simple matter 
 to return an engagement ring and a bundle of faded 
 letters, tear-stained, and tied up with blue ribbon. 
 When it is a question of returning pianos and dining- 
 room tables, and drawing-room and bedroom suites, 
 to say nothing of pictures, and carpets, and side- 
 
 108
 
 Rachel 
 
 boards, and stair-rods, and crockery, and cutlery, 
 and plate and linen, the case assumes a very different 
 aspect. No one desires to see an announcement 
 that a marriage which has been arranged will not 
 take place followed by the arrival of a long procession 
 of furniture vans at the front door of a faithless 
 swain. 
 
 Least of all, we may be sure, did Count Walewski 
 desire to see his liaison thus dramatically terminated. 
 Such a gesture would have been like the bursting 
 of a bomb-shell in the midst of the trim garden of 
 his admired correctitude. He much preferred that 
 the recollection of having paid nobly for his enter- 
 tainment should stand between him and any haunt- 
 ing fear that he might have behaved ill, assuring 
 him that he had as good a right to change the object 
 of his affections as to change his coachman or his 
 secretary, or his legal or medical adviser ; and that 
 was how the situation was resolved. 
 
 Walewski, having married, prospered, becoming 
 French Ambassador, under the third empire, at 
 the Court of Saint James's. Rachel's son was sent 
 to school at Geneva, and grew up to be a credit to 
 his country and his parents, holding posts in the 
 consular service successively at Salonica, Valentia, 
 Carthagena and Palermo. Rachel herself remained 
 in the lordly pleasure-house which Walewski had built 
 for her, and entertained other guests there in his 
 place. Notably, she entertained young Arthur 
 Bertrand, whom she was presently to lure, supposing 
 that she had not already done so, from his allegiance 
 to the audacious and delightful Dejazet. 
 
 109
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Relations with Dejazet and with Arthur Bertrand. 
 
 DEJAZET shone in farce outrageous ultra-modern 
 Palais Royal farce as brilliantly as Rachel in 
 tragedy. It is related by Fanny Kemble that, 
 when she performed in London, Whewell, the Master 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge, rose in his seat and 
 stalked out of the theatre, with Mrs. Whewell on 
 his arm, because it shocked and pained him to 
 behold her brazen face. It is also related that the 
 Due d'Orleans took her as his lady companion 
 to the French military manoeuvres. A few more 
 such cantinieres, commented Arsdne Houssaye, and 
 on referait la grande armJe. She appears, too, in 
 the annals of the Romantic Movement, as the lady 
 companion of Musset's friend Alfred Tattet, stock- 
 broker and man about town. 
 
 Tattet took Dejazet to Italy at the time of Musset's 
 Venetian honeymoon with George Sand, and he 
 wrote Musset a remarkable letter on the subject, 
 pointing out the particulars in which Musset's case 
 differed from his own. Stockbrokers, he argued, 
 belonged to a different amorous category from poets ; 
 and actresses did not, like woman novelists, expect 
 to be taken seriously. Musset and George Sand, 
 in short, were in love and were doomed to suffer; 
 
 no
 
 Rachel 
 
 whereas he and Dejazet were merely " indulging a 
 caprice," and would part, the best of friends, after 
 the caprice had been indulged. 
 
 It was a true prediction. The actress as well 
 as the stockbroker felt the need of indulging a series 
 of caprices as the years rolled by; but the only one 
 of her caprices which concerns us here is that for 
 Arthur Bertrand. 1 
 
 He was the son of Napoleon's Bertrand the 
 faithful companion of the emperor's last years 
 at Longwood; and he went the way of many 
 of the scions of the great imperial families, 
 squandering his substance riotously in the coulisses 
 and at the gaming table; a spoiled child, dashing 
 and handsome, but selfish and weak, winning 
 in his ways and capable of meaning well, but 
 without backbone or conscience. Dejazet's tender- 
 ness for him shines out as a streak of sincerity 
 in a miscellaneously amorous career. 
 
 She was many years his senior. Her age, when 
 they first met, was thirty-six, and his was only 
 seventeen. She loved him, she said, for his " pretty 
 face," and she threw another lover over for him; but 
 her affection was as much that of a mother as of a 
 mistress. His own mother recognized that fact, 
 and blessed the illicit union, not, of course, as an 
 ideal, or an end in itself, but as an alternative to 
 more perilous possibilities. Dejazet was presented 
 to her, at her request, and she was captivated. 
 She welcomed Dejazet, just as Madame de Musset 
 had welcomed Madame Allan-Despreaux, as an ally 
 who might help her to keep her son out of mischief. 
 
 1 See Un Amour de Dejazet, by Henry Lecomte. 
 in
 
 Rachel 
 
 She even presented her, as a pledge of her regard, 
 with a lock of Napoleon's hair 
 
 "I have the greatest pleasure, madame, in sending 
 you the precious lock of hair which you desire to 
 possess. I shall always be glad to do anything to 
 oblige you. I am grateful to you. I am attached 
 to you. I have already told you so. Receive the 
 assurance of my sentiments. 
 
 " FANNY BERTRAND." 
 
 Thus the young rake's mother wrote to the queen 
 of farce; and the actress, whose face the severe 
 Master of Trinity had found so brazen, justified the 
 confidence reposed in her or, at all events, she did 
 her best to do so. If she did not keep the boy out 
 of mischief all other mischief than his relations 
 with her, smiled on by his mother, might be held 
 to imply it was not for want of trying. A maiden 
 aunt, entrenched behind virginal innocence, could not 
 have given him better advice or more of it. Perhaps 
 she chiefly differed from such a maiden aunt in her 
 more indulgent readiness to forgive the prodigal 
 when he returned. 
 
 " Your life, my dear Arthur, for a whole month, 
 has not been what it ought to be. You are slipping 
 down the same slope as Germain, de Boigne, and 
 that set. I am the only person who can sometimes 
 check your course, and when I am no longer with 
 you, you will come to grief. You are going on like 
 a man with an income of 4,000 a year. Over and 
 over again, when you have money in your pocket, 
 
 112
 
 Rachel 
 
 you talk of losing fifty louis as if it were only a ques- 
 tion of a five franc piece. A few weeks ago you 
 were borrowing four thousand, or perhaps it was six 
 thousand, francs from your notary; to-day you are 
 borrowing another three thousand. Can your for- 
 tune stand that ? Would your father approve of 
 it if he knew ? And, even now I have said nothing 
 about the twelve thousand francs which you pro- 
 posed to spend on travelling another piece of 
 foolishness which compels me to repeat the question : 
 Can you afford it ? 
 
 ' Tedious moralizing, isn't it ? But now that we 
 are about to part, Arthur, I want to open your eyes 
 to your future, and leave you at least one proof that 
 your first love was worthy of your first sacrifices. 
 When you read this letter over again, many years 
 hence it may be, you will shed a few tears over a 
 memory of gratitude and death. . . . 
 
 " I renounce you, Arthur, because you do not 
 love me exclusively. I have seen that for the 
 last month, and your choice of this evening proves 
 it. I am no longer any more to you than an ordinary 
 mistress." 
 
 So she pleaded with him ; and when he came back 
 to her, saying he was sorry, she forgave him for 
 she also sometimes needed forgiveness for not 
 loving exclusively; and so things went on for years. 
 Decidedly, there was more of tenderness and sincerity 
 beneath the mask of that brazen face than the Master 
 of Trinity suspected. And Dejazet, it must be re- 
 membered, was not trying to introduce order into 
 the finances of a lover who might enrich her. On 
 i 113
 
 Rachel 
 
 the contrary, she was trying to protect from the 
 consequences of his own folly a lover who was not 
 ashamed to borrow from her and was in no hurry 
 to repay the loan. 
 
 " My sweet little Nini, you must really be so very 
 kind as to send me a thousand francs. The notary 
 with whom I have an appointment in two days' 
 time in Paris seems to think that I can do without 
 the money I have asked him for until then. Happy 
 as I am to be able to apply to you, my Nini, you 
 can understand how I blush to do so." 
 
 He would repay the money, he said, in two days' 
 time; but a later letter of hers shows that, eighteen 
 months afterwards, he had not yet acquitted him- 
 self of the obligation. 
 
 ' Tell me, dear ! Couldn't you manage to let 
 me have 500 francs of the small sum you owe 
 me ? There are the heavy expenses connected with 
 the New Year, and I have my rent to pay, and, if 
 you do not help me a little, I really don't know how 
 I shall get over my embarrassments. I am so hard 
 up that I could not meet a bill of 300 francs, and so 
 had to incur 80 francs costs." 
 
 But Arthur did not pay; and nine months later, 
 after some unsuccessful appearances at the Limoges 
 theatre, Dejazet wrote again 
 
 " I am furious. I haven't made a penny in this 
 confounded town. All the people have gone to the 
 
 114
 
 Rachel 
 
 country on account of the heat. On two evenings 
 the takings were only 270 francs. Nice, isn't it ? 
 It upsets me the more because I have two bills to 
 meet to-day. So, my dear boy, if you can manage 
 to let me have a few hundred francs on account of 
 our little debt, I shall be infinitely obliged to you. 
 It is very painful to me to mention the matter again ; 
 but the fact is that you forget all about it, and it 
 cuts me to the heart to hear you talk lightly of your 
 losses at play while you are so indifferent to my 
 embarrassments. To think that you have nothing 
 for me who would sell my very soul to get you out 
 of trouble ! Come, Arthur ! Leave that green 
 cloth which is absorbing the best years of your life, 
 and spare me a few parcels of that accursed metal 
 which, alas! in spite of all my contempt for it, I 
 cannot do without." 
 
 A pathetic letter truly. In spite of the Master of 
 Trinity, one feels more and more sure as one pro- 
 ceeds that the woman with the brazen face was a 
 woman with a heart of gold. If she had a multitude 
 of sins, she had also the virtue which covers them, 
 and there was really no need for Mrs. Whewell to 
 pass away from her with a lifted skirt. Madame 
 Bertrand, who perceived the good in her, and 
 appealed to it, and did not appeal in vain, had the 
 truer insight, as well as the greater charity. As for 
 Arthur . . . 
 
 But further comment on Arthur would be super- 
 fluous. The letters quoted are his sufficient con- 
 demnation. It only remains to be added that he 
 took to drink, and that Virginie Dejazet reproved 
 1 2 115
 
 Rachel 
 
 him for that fault also. " You seem to be proud 
 of your drunken habits," she wrote with a touch of 
 scorn. Poor Virginie ! For she was willing to 
 forgive Arthur for his inebriety, as she had forgiven 
 him for his infidelity; and almost before she could 
 do so, Rachel swooped down on him and swept him 
 
 off. 
 
 She and Dejazet had been friends. Dejazet^ had 
 made generous advances at the time of her debut. 
 We have seen her appealing to Cremieux, in the 
 days before the Rubicon was crossed, for a suitable 
 reply to Dejazet's " charming letter " -a reply which 
 would not make her look ridiculous by its ortho- 
 graphical irregularities if Dejazet should show it 
 to her friends. The help was the more necessary 
 in that, before providing herself with a secretary, she 
 had addressed Dejazet as " la meilleur des femmes." 
 There had been an interchange, not only of compli- 
 ments, but of hospitalities. But that made no 
 difference when there was a caprice to be indulged. 
 It may be that Rachel regarded her successful 
 raid as a fair triumph of tragedy over farce of 
 the nobler over the less noble art though it was 
 more truly a triumph of youth over middle age. 
 Both Rachel and Arthur were still in the twenties, 
 while Dejazet was getting on for fifty. Moreover, 
 Rachel was just then the special heroine of gilded 
 youth, living such a life and supported by such a 
 retinue that George could write of her : "If she 
 became a respectable woman and lived quietly, no 
 one, after a month or two, would pay any further 
 attention to her." But that was unjust and untrue. 
 Rachel's renown rested upon a more solid basis than a 
 
 1x6
 
 Rachel 
 
 reputation for loose living ; and she was, apparently, 
 more in love with Arthur Bertrand than she had 
 been with Walewski. 
 
 Arthur, at any rate, did not bore her with cor- 
 rectitude. The trouble was rather that he wanted 
 her money, just as he had wanted Dejazet's 
 money, to support him in lapses from correctitude. 
 Whether he got any of it is doubtful; but there 
 is a letter in which we see Rachel on her guard 
 against his proclivities. She reproaches him for 
 not having come to kiss her, whether in her 
 house or in her dressing-room. She signs herself 
 ' your loving little wife." But she concludes with 
 a significant postscript : "If you want to play 
 lansquenet, you must provide yourself with the 
 necessary funds. My brother has cleaned me out 
 and my purse is empty." 
 
 On the whole, that looks as though Rachel were 
 shy because she had been bitten; for it was only 
 where members of her family were concerned that 
 she esteemed it more blessed to give than to receive. 
 She generously furnished a flat for Rebecca, and she 
 repeatedly paid the debts of Sarah ;< the valiant 
 heroine of the supper parties," as she is called by 
 Arsene Houssaye; but it was no part of her pro- 
 gramme that lovers should live at her expense. 
 The wonder is that Arthur's ideas and hers on that 
 branch of the subject did not conflict sooner. There 
 can be little question that they conflicted in the 
 end. 
 
 For a while, indeed, his devotion was so conspicu- 
 ous that the newspapers remarked it. They drew 
 the attention of playgoers to Arthur admiring from 
 
 117
 
 Rachel 
 
 his box and Rachel playing up to him. They even 
 went so far as to announce an engagement of marriage 
 between the admirer and the admired. But there 
 was no foundation for their rumour. Arthur, what- 
 ever his reasons, loved and rode away, without even 
 recognizing the son whom Rachel had borne him. 
 
 A son who, be it remarked here, became, like his 
 elder brother, a credit to his country. Gabriel 
 Felix entered the French navy in 1864, fought in 
 the Franco-German war, had a part of his nose 
 carried off by a fragment of a shell at the battle of 
 Beaune-la-Rolande, was rewarded with the ribbon 
 of the Legion of Honour, and died, in 1889, as French 
 Resident at Brazzaville, in the Congo. His father, 
 who seems to have taken no further notice of him 
 after his birth, had already died, a bachelor, in 
 1871. On the whole, perhaps, it was better for 
 Gabriel to be his mother's than his father's child- 
 sealed of the Tribe of Felix, and therefore sure of 
 her affection, even though she doubted, for a moment, 
 as one of her letters shows, whether he was worthy 
 of any higher position in the world than that of his 
 brother's coachman. 
 
 As for the circumstances of her rupture with 
 Arthur, these are not known, and do not matter. 
 All that one does know is that it did not take place 
 without tears and dramatic gestures, and that the 
 Press took notice of the gestures, as it may be relied 
 upon to do when an actress strikes an attitude, and 
 attributed them to their true cause. 
 
 Mademoiselle Rachel, the newspapers wrote, was 
 quitting the stage, was leaving Paris, had some 
 thought of leaving France. The climate of Pisa 
 
 118
 
 Rachel 
 
 had suddenly become necessary to her and she was 
 going there 
 
 ' Wounded affections are conducting Melpomene 
 and her frenzies at full gallop. . . . Look out 
 for the ruts ! Nothing can arrest her progress 
 neither the tear-stained shirt-front of the respect- 
 able author of her being, nor her sister's creditors, 
 nor her brother's interests, nor the lamentations of 
 the cashier in his box-office, nor the entreaties of the 
 socie"taires, nor the humiliation of Mile. Judith, nor 
 the tears of M. Lockroy." 
 
 With a good deal more in the same strain of false, 
 and presumably assumed, alarm. For the gestures, 
 after all, were only gestures, and carried but few of 
 the consequences which they threatened. An actress 
 of genius does not retire from the stage because there 
 has been a crisis in her emotional affairs. She goes 
 on acting and acts better than before the emotional 
 crisis being a part of her education. Nor does she 
 cease from travelling to Cythera because, on one of 
 her voyages thither, she has found the weather 
 stormy. On the contrary. Such a passenger can 
 always find a captain, and therefore. . . . 
 
 And therefore Rachel not only soon returned to 
 the scene of her artistic glory, but also resumed her 
 journeys to Cythera, captained this time by Prince 
 Napoleon: Plon Plon, the son of King Jerome of 
 Westphalia, and the father of the present Bonapartist 
 claimant. 
 
 His is the last name which it is necessary to 
 mention in this particular connection; and, as for 
 
 119
 
 Rachel 
 
 the story, there is none to tell. The importance of 
 the new union was not sentimental but social. It 
 was a left-handed alliance of a splendour suitable to 
 Rachel's dignity. It introduced her to the Tuileries 
 in circumstances to be related in their place; but 
 it had no romantic significance, and there is 
 no evidence that its vicissitudes either exalted 
 Rachel or depressed her. She viewed it, so far as 
 one can judge, as a matter of course, and all in the 
 day's work an interchange of civilities meaning 
 no more to her than a good-morning or a good- 
 night. So true is it that even the voyage to 
 Cythera, if undertaken too frequently, may end by 
 becoming as unexciting and uneventful as a week- 
 end trip to the seaside. 
 
 So that we are now free to quit the theme and 
 turn to other topics, reviewing Rachel's progress in 
 her art, and remarking alike her loyalty to the Tribe 
 of Fe"lix and her thorough methods of spoiling the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 120
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The failure of Judith and the discomfiture of Mile. Maxime. 
 
 IT would be easy to fill a volume with the elabor- 
 ated record of Rachel's professional successes; but 
 to what end ? Old dramatic criticism, though by 
 Jules Janin, or even by Theophile Gautier, is insipid 
 and flavourless stuff. One cannot check it, as one 
 can check literary criticism, by turning to the thing 
 criticized; and one soon tires alike of reading and 
 relating that the house " rose," that the box-office 
 rejoiced, that bouquets abounded, and that the 
 tributes offered in the way of precious stones were 
 rich and rare. 
 
 Nor is it worth while to dwell upon the statement 
 that Rachel (or any other actress or actor for that 
 matter) " created " such and such a part. State- 
 ments of that nature sparkle through the pages of 
 Who's Who? and similar works of reference; but 
 they are inspired by vanity, and there is no other 
 foundation for them. To create means to make 
 out of nothing, and that is the author's business. 
 The player's function is the humbler one of seizing 
 the author's meaning and interpreting it. That 
 fact is not the less a fact because the interpreta- 
 tion is very far from being a mechanical process, 
 and affords scope for genius as well as talent, and 
 even for the expression, within assigned limits, of a 
 personality. 
 
 121
 
 Rachel 
 
 For the limits are always there, and the expression 
 of the personality on the stage can only be imperfect. 
 The personality over which the public waxes enthusi- 
 astic is often an entirely illusory personality, or, at 
 all events, a composite one into which the actual 
 individuality of the player enters for very little. 
 The real individual is only to be discovered after 
 the curtain has fallen and the applause has ceased. 
 So with Rachel. She imposed her glory, but 
 she did not impose her personality. Our quest is 
 for the personality behind the glory. It is because 
 of the glory that we turn to look for it ; but it is 
 not in the detailed relation of the achievements 
 which earned the glory that we shall find it, so 
 that that relation must be got over as quickly as 
 possible. 
 
 The first modern part which Rachel set herself 
 to " create " was that of the heroine of Madame 
 de Girardin's Judith ; and she got but little glory 
 out of that. Indeed, one would wonder how so 
 bad a play ever managed to get itself produced 
 if one were not able to see the " influences " at 
 work. 
 
 The fact of the matter was that Madame de 
 Girardin was a great lady with a salon and 
 an influential husband. As Delphine Gay, she 
 had been a Muse of the Romantic Movement, 
 remarked as the cleverest and most beautiful of 
 her sex at Nodier's receptions at the Arsenal, though 
 unhappily undowered and not of aristocratic birth. 
 But for those drawbacks, Alfred de Vigny would 
 have married her. Unable to secure him, though 
 
 122
 
 Rachel 
 
 she tried hard, with her mother's help, to do so, 
 she married, instead, Emile de Girardin, the founder 
 and editor of La Presse, a newspaper as " live " as 
 the Pall Mall Gazette in the days when Mr. Stead 
 was in his prime. She sometimes wrote the dramatic 
 criticism; and she " received." 
 
 Her social function a far rarer one in France 
 than in England was that of a "mixer"; the 
 representatives of Bohemia and of the Faubourg 
 meeting in her drawing-room. She took up Rachel 
 at the time of her de"but, telling Lamartine that she 
 was " charming," and had " very grand manners," 
 and that no one would ever have guessed her to be 
 " the daughter of wandering pedlars." It was 
 through her introduction that Rachel met Chateau- 
 briand and the Archbishop of Paris in Madame 
 Recamier's apartment. She still stuck to Rachel 
 after her passage of the Rubicon. She flattered 
 Rachel, humbled herself before her and made use 
 of her. She appealed to Rachel to " encourage " 
 her in dramatic composition; and Rachel replied 
 that her " dreams were of Judith and the author 
 of Judith" Pulling those wires, and pulling other 
 wires simultaneously, she got Judith accepted and 
 staged at the national theatre. 
 
 But Judith was rank rubbish, full of long and 
 tedious speeches; and neither Rachel's talents nor 
 those of the advertising department could save it. 
 It was given out that Rachel would appear covered 
 from head to foot with precious jewels, valued at 
 many millions of francs, lent to her by the Baroness 
 de Rothschild and other great Israelitish ladies; 
 that it would be necessary to fill the house with 
 
 123
 
 Rachel 
 
 policemen in order to protect her from possible 
 thieves. The announcement, as might have been 
 expected, filled the house from floor to ceiling; but 
 an inopportune and unlooked-for occurrence spoiled 
 the magnificent effect. 
 
 In the midst of one of the wearisome monologues 
 a stray cat strolled on to the stage, looked up at 
 the speaker, and began to miauw, as if in pained 
 protest against the tedium. It would not take a 
 quiet hint to go, but had to be chased away. Driven 
 behind the wings, it ran round them and reappeared 
 before the footlights, leaping over the furniture with 
 armed pursuers on its track. The spectators natur- 
 ally withdrew their interest from the tragedy and 
 concentrated it on the chase, some shouting encour- 
 agement to the pursuers and others to the cat ; with 
 the result that Judith perished amid inextinguishable 
 laughter. 
 
 It was a case in which the " creation " of a part 
 would indeed have meant making something out 
 of nothing; and Rachel discovered that that was 
 a thing which even she could not do. Her true 
 task was to interpret the creations of the classical 
 masters. In that she was supreme; and many years 
 were still to pass before the competition of any rival 
 would be formidable to her. 
 
 One rival, indeed, did appear in the person of 
 Mademoiselle Maxime; and the duel between the 
 two claimants for artistic primacy was more dramatic 
 than the piece in which they met. 
 
 Mademoiselle Maxime had come to the front during 
 Rachel's absence on one of her long tours. The 
 
 124
 
 Rachel 
 
 public were disposed to favour her because they 
 were annoyed at Rachel's frequent quests of gold 
 and glory at a distance from the capital. It was 
 a quest which Talma and Mademoiselle Mars had 
 disdained, declaring that their connection with the 
 Theatre Frangais was more to them than wealth; 
 and Rachel was reproached for not taking the same 
 high disinterested line. Jules Janin, too, had loudly 
 sounded the praises of the newcomer whether 
 because she had allowed him to encourage her by 
 putting his arm round her waist or for other reasons. 
 
 Rachel, returning from her travels, learnt what 
 had happened, and what was expected to happen. 
 It was as if an insult had been offered and a 
 gauntlet flung at her feet. The affront seemed 
 personal rather than artistic. She was very angry; 
 but she knew her power, and she was full of fight. 
 Though she was of frail health, living on her nerves, 
 yet she could trust her nerves to carry her through 
 this ordeal to yet another triumph. Wait, she said 
 to herself and to her friends, till she and Maxime 
 appeared together in the same piece ! Then it should 
 also be seen which of them, in our modern parlance, 
 could play the other's head off. 
 
 Her chance came when the bills announced 
 Marie Stuart, with Rachel as Marie and Maxime 
 as Queen Elizabeth. All Paris had been advised 
 that this was to be the night of the great duel; all 
 Paris had fought for the chance of witnessing it; 
 all Paris, with the true Parisian earnestness in 
 matters of art especially dramatic art had come 
 to the theatre prepared to take a side, and back a 
 winner. 
 
 125
 
 Rachel 
 
 Maxime had lately shown herself sublime in 
 Phedre; at all events Jules Janin had said so: 
 
 ' The very sight of her reveals the woman who 
 is courageous, energetic, passionate beyond mea- 
 sure. . . . She comes on the stage like a desperate 
 creature; nothing dazzles, nothing stops her. . . . 
 Her head is full of energy, her look, of animation; 
 she has a fine voice that no exertion wearies, ready 
 tears, simple and natural gestures. She does not 
 play with Racine's verses as a child with a hoop. . . . 
 She does not declaim, she acts. . . . We have found 
 a Phedre at last. Go and see her; go and applaud 
 her; go and defend her. She is alone, without 
 support, without coterie, without protection, left 
 to her own true instincts." 
 
 And so on in that remarkable prose style 
 which flowed interminably like a bubbling brook. 
 Decidedly, when such things could be written 
 of a debutante, Rachel must look to her laurels. 
 Jules Janin's word carried so much weight that 
 many of his readers believed, as, indeed, many of 
 them wished to believe, that Rachel would look to 
 those laurels in vain, and that her star was destined 
 to set almost before it had fairly risen. Others, 
 not seeing the theatre through the great critic's 
 glasses but preferring to judge for themselves, were 
 not so certain. But all were eager to see the contest. 
 " Amateurs," wrote Jules Janin, " imagined them- 
 selves back in the days of the memorable struggle 
 between the beauty of Mademoiselle George and 
 the talents of Mademoiselle Duchesnois." 
 
 126
 
 Rachel 
 
 So the curtain rose; and the house was a riotous 
 tribunal of divided sentiment, applauding, or with- 
 holding its applause, in support not of the per- 
 formance, but of its own preconceived opinions. 
 At first it seemed that Maxime was having every- 
 thing her own way ; and her supporters roared them- 
 selves hoarse; but old playgoers knew that the 
 test was yet to come. In the earlier acts the op- 
 portunities which the two parts offered were not 
 equal; Maxime had many opportunities and Rachel 
 very few. Rachel's great chance would not come 
 until the Third Act, in which the two queens, Marie 
 Stuart and Elizabeth, stand face to face and pour 
 the full vials of their hatred on each other's heads. 
 Rachel was waiting for that scene ; she could be seen 
 waiting for it. 
 
 It came amid a deadly silence; and Maxime entered, 
 pale, embarrassed, with insults in her mouth. She 
 was not merely the queen of England insulting her 
 Scottish rival. She was the debutante of the 
 Comedie Francaise in revolt against its sovereign, 
 committed to the task of sweeping her from her path. 
 
 ' Venom and scorn were on her lips and in her 
 look; and then it was Rachel's turn. Marie Stuart, 
 exposed to the contempt of this insolent queen, 
 had listened with quivering emotion to all her insults. 
 She had borne her disdain in silence. She had stood 
 there, with bowed head and folded hands; she was 
 waiting. But when her turn came when she was 
 free at last to utter all the bitterness of her soul ah ! 
 then, ye gods and goddesses, she was superb. It 
 seemed as though she were saying to us and saying 
 
 127
 
 Rachel 
 
 infinitely well : ' Ah, so you have set up a rival to 
 me in my absence. So you want to build altar 
 against altar; Maxime's and Rachel's altars in the 
 same high place. And you think that I shall take 
 that quietly, without any show of emotion, without 
 any attempt at revolt. You think that I am going 
 to put up with those comparisons. No, no ! You 
 shall see that I know how to defend myself, that 
 I need the support of no foreign favour, that the 
 great heart of the people is on my side, that I mean 
 to be queen of the theatre, and that no rival shall 
 divide my sovereignty with me.' J 
 
 So Jules Janin writes, won back to Rachel's side, 
 by the spirit and energy of her genius. He speaks 
 of her passion as almost delirious in its violence; 
 "it gripped one, and was superb;" and he goes 
 on to describe how Maxime was, and showed herself 
 to be, crushed by it : 
 
 " She recoiled in terror, astounded and abashed; 
 she gazed at this display of power with haggard eyes. 
 It seemed to her that she now had to do with a 
 different woman. But no, it was the same woman ; 
 and when Elizabeth, at last, baffled, humiliated, 
 panting for breath, hardly dares any longer lift her 
 head, ah ! then it was a sight to see Mademoiselle 
 Rachel turn, with a queenly gesture, towards the 
 enthusiasts who had been supporting Mademoiselle 
 Maxime, and exclaim, with contempt in her voice, 
 and fire in her eyes 
 
 " J'enfonce le poignard au sein de ma rivale." 
 128
 
 Rachel 
 
 And that, in truth, was the end of Mademoiselle 
 Maxime. Rachel had not only played her head off, 
 but had practically played her out of the theatre. 
 Jules Janin, now completely converted, writes that 
 she " disappeared from the scene for evermore." 
 The actual fact is that, after struggling on obscurely 
 as an actress for some years, she retired from the 
 stage, and took to letting furnished apartments 
 with or without board. 
 
 So that the path was once more clear. There 
 was no longer any obstacle to hinder Rachel from 
 going on from one success to another, or any grave 
 danger that the triumphs of her provincial and foreign 
 tours would imperil her place in the hearts of Parisian 
 playgoers. 
 
 129
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Rachel and Charlotte Bronte Relations with Viennet and with 
 
 Lamartine. 
 
 "La province, Rachel, c 'est quelgue chose aussi." 
 
 THUS a well-meaning Norman poet hailed Rachel's 
 first performance at Rouen; and though only 
 moderately inspired, he spoke the truth. There was 
 abundance of gold and glory to be gathered in the 
 provinces; and still more could be amassed in Eng- 
 land, Scotland, Belgium and Holland. Writing from 
 Holland, Rachel boasted that she had paid more than 
 2,000 into her bank in a fortnight. In London 
 the receipts at a single performance were 1,200. 
 The report of one of her French successes was 
 crowned by the statement that she had " taken 
 more money than Talma." One perceives from the 
 letters to Madame de Girardin that, when things 
 went wrong with her love affairs when Walewski, 
 for instance, proved untrue she derived an equal 
 comfort from the thunders of applause and from 
 the reports of the money in the house. She was 
 received, too, wherever she went, with such honours 
 as are now reserved for the President of the Republic. 
 
 The chronicle of these matters is in her letters 
 to her parents, to Dr. Veron, and to Madame de 
 Girardin. Reference has already been made to 
 them, and there is no need to go over that ground 
 again; but there is one report of the impression 
 
 130
 
 Rachel 
 
 made by her acting which must be given, because 
 it is the report of a woman whose genius was equal 
 to her own, albeit manifested in very different ways. 
 
 The place was Brussels. All that Brussels pos- 
 sessed of rank, fashion, culture and intellect 
 was in the house to salute the rising of the new 
 star; but the most important of the spectators was 
 a governess, who seemed of no particular account 
 a plain and prim little body from a Yorkshire par- 
 sonage, striving to improve her French in the hope 
 of obtaining a more profitable position as a teacher. 
 She, too, though no one knew it, was consumed by 
 sacred fire albeit not the kind of fire which blazes 
 up suddenly, making a spectacular display. She 
 had not the least idea that, for her also, a time 
 would come; and she sat humble, abashed, and 
 even a little frightened by the audacity of a sister 
 woman who dared to display passions which she 
 hardly dared to feel. 
 
 One has named, of course, Charlotte Bronte. 
 She had no knowledge of theatrical technique, and 
 very little knowledge of the French language; she 
 was the last person in the house to offer a competent 
 criticism of the actress. But she could criticize 
 the woman, and she could recreate her own emo- 
 tions; so that no one of the dramatic reviews 
 printed in the Brussels papers has half the vitality 
 of hers. It is in Villette, and Rachel is there 
 spoken of, not as Rachel, but as Vashti 
 
 ' The theatre was full crammed to its roof : 
 royal and noble were there : palace and hotel had 
 emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged
 
 Rachel 
 
 and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged 
 in having a place before that stage; I longed to see 
 a being of whose powers I had heard reports which 
 made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I won- 
 dered if she would justify her renown : with strange 
 curiosity, with feelings, yet of riveted interest, ] 
 waited. She was a study of such nature as had not 
 encountered my eyes yet : a great and new planet 
 she was : but in what shape ? I waited her rising. . . 
 " I had heard this woman termed ' plain/ and 
 I expected bony harshness and grimness some- 
 thing large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the 
 shadow of a royal Vashti : a queen, fair as the day 
 once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted 
 like wax in flame. 
 
 " For a while a long while I thought it was 
 only a woman, though an unique woman, who 
 moved in might and grace before this multitude. 
 By and by I recognized my mistake. Behold! 
 I found upon her something neither of woman 
 nor of man : in each of her eyes sat a devil. These 
 evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up 
 her feeble strength for she was but a frail creature; 
 and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how 
 wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit ! 
 They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. 
 They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They 
 writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate 
 and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood. 
 " It was a marvellous sight : a mighty revelation. 
 " It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral. . . . 
 "Suffering had struck that stage empress; and 
 she stood before her audience neither yielding to, 
 
 132
 
 Rachel 
 
 nor enduring, nor, in finite measure, resenting it : 
 she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. 
 She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique 
 folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background 
 and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, 
 white like alabaster like silver : rather, be it said, 
 like Death. . . . 
 
 ' Vashti was not good, I was told; and I have 
 said she did not look good : though a spirit, she was 
 a spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much of unholy 
 force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux 
 of sacred essence descend one day from above ? 
 
 " The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart 
 out of its wonted orbit; the sunflower turned from 
 the south to a fierce light not solar a rushing, red, 
 cometary light hot on vision and to sensation. 
 I had seen acting before, but never anything like 
 this : never anything which astonished Hope and 
 hushed Desire; which outstripped Impulse and 
 paled Conception; which, instead of merely irritat- 
 ing imagination with the thought of what might 
 be done, at the same time fevering the nerves be- 
 cause it was not done, disclosed power like a deep, 
 swollen winter river, thundering in cataract, and 
 bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the steep and steel 
 sweep of its descent." 
 
 Decidedly there is something in that piece of 
 criticism which we seek in vain in the prattling 
 prose of Jules Janin, and even in the flowing, deco- 
 rated periods of Theophile Gautier. 1 It makes no 
 
 1 Dramatic critic for many years of La Presse, 
 133
 
 Rachel 
 
 presumptuous attempt to show the reader how the 
 thing was done it was for the professional critics to 
 do that ; but it makes the reader realize, as the writings 
 of the professional critics fail to do, the nature of 
 the feeling which "got over the footlights" when 
 Rachel played; and, in doing that, it also helps to 
 explain how actresses, strutting their little hour 
 upon the stage, have, one after the other, come to 
 be acclaimed as only a little lower if at all lower 
 than the angels. 
 
 Their art is to express, as if they were their own, 
 the emotions and thoughts of the great masters of 
 thought and emotion. They have (or they would 
 not be actresses) the natural gift of expression ; 
 and they are encouraged, drilled, and trained to 
 make the most of it. So that presently there dis- 
 engages itself, and floats over the footlights, and 
 pervades the theatre, and comes to pervade the town, 
 the country, and even the continent, an impression 
 of a wonderful woman living on a higher emotional 
 plane than other women : a woman who is " sweeter," 
 or nobler, or more intense, or more passionate, or 
 more long-suffering or, perhaps, in extreme cases, 
 all these things at once than her sisters. All 
 this because the germ of emotion which is in her is, 
 by art, brought to a fine flower in her rendering 
 of it. 
 
 It is an impression which is perpetually being 
 recreated. Consequently it is an impression which 
 even those who know it to be unfounded find it 
 very difficult to escape from. It conquers and 
 reconquers men; it arouses the jealous enmity of 
 women. Especially does it stir the envious hostility
 
 Rachel 
 
 of women who are conscious that their own hearts 
 hold feelings too deep for such spectacular display. 
 To such women it is apt to seem that the impression 
 which the actress produces is an effect without a 
 cause; whereas their own emotions are causes which 
 fail to produce their due effect. It is a resentment 
 of that sort which one reads between the lines of 
 the eloquence of the pathetically proper little gover- 
 ness from the Yorkshire parsonage. 
 
 Perhaps, too, Charlotte Bronte divined as most 
 women indubitably divine that the qualities which 
 actresses express so admirably on the stage are not, 
 as a rule, qualities which they personally possess 
 in any pre-eminent degree. For though there are 
 stage-struck women just as there are stage-struck 
 men, whom the actress's art of expression convinces 
 of the virtue of her sentiments and the sublimity 
 of her character, the clever woman, knowing her 
 own heart and the tendencies and temptations of 
 her sex, looks cunningly beneath the make-believe 
 for quite other attributes, and discovers, or imagines 
 that she discovers, vanity and greed, engendered by 
 indiscriminate and excessive homage. 
 
 It may be that Rachel was rather proud than 
 vain; but to say that is only to say that, as a rule, 
 she displayed her vanity on great, in preference to 
 small, occasions. She was not in the least sensitive 
 about her humble origin. On the contrary, as has 
 already been related, she recalled the days of her 
 early struggles while trailing her sleeves in the 
 sauces at supper-parties, and got great conver- 
 sational effects out of the recollection. But she 
 liked sometimes to demonstrate her grandeur by
 
 Rachel 
 
 making the great feel small; and she generally re- 
 verted to type in the act of doing so. " Je ne 
 jouerai pas cette she said to Ernest Legouve 
 when he submitted a play to her; and she used a 
 word which Legouve, in telling the story, declines 
 to print on the ground that it is " outside the 
 classical repertory." 
 
 Still more deliberately and elaborately insolent 
 was her treatment of M. Viennet, who also wished 
 to write for her. 
 
 Viennet was hardly a great man; but he was in 
 a great position, being a member of the French 
 Academy the member whom the Academicians 
 had, for reasons of their own, preferred to Benjamin 
 Constant. He waited upon Rachel in her dressing- 
 room, and proposed to read his piece to her. She 
 said that she was only too proud to think that so 
 great a poet had desired so humble an artist as his 
 interpreter. He begged for an appointment, and 
 was requested to call at two o'clock on the following 
 afternoon ; and then the fun began. 
 
 " Madame is out," he was told when he rang 
 Rachel's bell. " Madame is ill," was the message 
 when he returned on the following day. On the 
 third day he called yet again, with results which 
 Legouve relates : 
 
 " He rang the bell in a furious passion. A man- 
 servant opened the door. 
 
 " ' Is Mademoiselle Rachel at home ? ' 
 
 ' Please come in, sir.' 
 " ' At last,' thought Viennet. 
 
 136
 
 Rachel 
 
 " He was shown into a small room in which a 
 very handsome young man, wearing a decoration, 
 was also waiting. 
 
 " ' Will Monsieur be so kind as to give me his 
 card ? ' asked the servant. 
 
 " ' You have only to mention my name : Viennet.' 
 
 " ' I will inquire whether Madame can see you.' 
 
 " ' The servant opened the door of an adjoin- 
 ing room, and the poor poet heard Mademoiselle 
 Rachel's voice replying to the question : 
 
 " ' M. Viennet ? Tell him tell him he's a nui- 
 sance.' 
 
 " The poor poet's rage may be imagined. He 
 felt capable of smashing the furniture. The young 
 man began to smile. 
 
 ' Are you laughing at me, sir ? ' said Viennet. 
 ' Perhaps you don't know that this is the third 
 time" 
 
 " But the young man continued to smile. 
 
 " ' My dear M. Viennet,' he said. ' She'd play 
 you far worse tricks than that if you were one of 
 her lovers.' 
 
 The story is quite of a piece with the haughty 
 request that Mademoiselle George would " put in 
 writing " her request for Rachel's assistance at her 
 benefit. " Put a beggar on horseback," etc. One 
 perceives how Rachel understood the obligation 
 to maintain the dignity of a high artistic office. Per- 
 haps her greed was also a perverted manifestation 
 of her self-respect ; but here it is necessary, to dis- 
 tinguish. 
 
 :< Rachel n'est pas Juive, elle est Juif," was a
 
 Rachel 
 
 character sketch of her, flashed out, under the in- 
 fluence of strong emotion, by her cousin, Mile. Judith. 
 
 " Rachel etait avide, mais elle n'e'tait pas avare," 
 was Dr. Veron's summary of her character. 
 
 The fact was that, in money matters, as in other 
 matters, she exhibited perfect Jewish loyalty to 
 her tribe. When she rose in life the entire Tribe 
 of Felix rose with her, by her help, and at her ex- 
 pense. She demanded that all its members should 
 be admitted to the Come"die Fran9aise, repeatedly 
 threatening her resignation if she did not get her 
 way, with the result that playgoers complained 
 that going to the national theatre was as good, or 
 as bad, as going to the Synagogue. She pushed 
 her brother Raphael to the front as the business 
 manager of her holiday engagements; she let her 
 father drive her through her performances when 
 she was really too ill to play. It is unnecessary to 
 repeat that she enriched Rebecca and regularly 
 paid the debts of Sarah of the Supper-parties. In 
 these relations the qualities of her heart appeared. 
 In her relations with men, however, it was her 
 head rather than her heart that was in the right 
 place ; and she sailed through life like a true Israeli- 
 tish queen, spoiling the Egyptians as she passed. 
 
 Her methods of doing so were twofold. When she 
 saw anything which she thought she would like to 
 possess, she asked for it. When it was given 
 to her, she carried it away and stuck to it. On the 
 other hand, whenever she gave a present (unless 
 it were to a member of the Tribe) it was always with 
 the mental reservation that the gift was in reality 
 a loan which might be called in at any time. So 
 
 138
 
 Rachel 
 
 when Beauvallet the actor received a gift from her, he 
 announced his intention of chaining it to the wall 
 of his apartment, in order that it might be impossible 
 for her to resume possession of it; and when in a 
 moment of effusion she presented Dumas fits with 
 a ring, he instantly replaced it on her finger saying, 
 ' That is the better way, Madame. You will now 
 be saved the trouble of asking me for it." 
 
 On the other hand, when she repented of having 
 given Samson's daughter a parasol with a jewelled 
 handle, she simply carried it off, declaring that she 
 would send it to be re-covered, and Adele Samson 
 never saw it again. 
 
 Of the same stamp are the stories told of Rachel's 
 address in extorting gifts from the reluctant. At a 
 dinner-party given by Comte Duchatel she danced 
 round a silver centre-piece until her host felt that 
 he had no choice but to lay it at her feet. He had 
 hoped, being a married man, and aware that his 
 wife valued the ornament, that Rachel would have 
 forgotten all about his offer by the morrow ; but 
 she did not wait until the morrow. Her host having 
 proposed to send her home in his carriage, she 
 accepted the suggestion, saying : " Thanks. Then 
 there will be no fear of my being robbed of your 
 present, which I will take in the carriage with me." 
 Whereto Comte Duchatel replied : " By all means, 
 mademoiselle; but I trust that it is not too much 
 to ask that you will return the carriage." 
 
 Very similar is the story told by the author of 
 An Englishman in Paris of her method of plundering 
 Dr. Veron :
 
 Rachel 
 
 " Dr. Ve"ron was despoiled with even less cere- 
 mony. Having taken a fancy to some silver saucers 
 or cups in which the proprietor of the Constitu- 
 tionnel offered ices to his visitors, she began by 
 pocketing one, and never rested until she had the 
 whole of the set." 
 
 And there is the story of the tickets for the charity 
 concert. Rachel refused to appear at it, but allowed 
 her name to be advertised on the understanding 
 that apologies should be made for her absence 
 at the last moment. She also stipulated that she 
 should be given ten tickets for herself. It was 
 assumed that she wished to give them away; but 
 not at all. She first sold the ten tickets to Walewski 
 for a thousand francs, declaring that she had paid 
 for them in the character of lady patroness. Then 
 she made Walewski give them back, and sold them 
 over again, repeating the same story, to various 
 other friends. 
 
 And, finally, there is the famous story of the 
 guitar. 
 
 Rachel first saw and admired the guitar in an 
 artist's studio. " Give it to me," she said. " I 
 want to pretend that it is the guitar on which I used 
 to strum in the days when I earned my pittance as a 
 street singer." The jest seemed a pleasant one, 
 and the artist handed over the instrument. Rachel 
 embellished it with ribbons, and hung it in her own 
 apartment, where it duly attracted the attention 
 of Achille Fould, 1 the banker. Hearing its story he 
 
 1 The story is also told of Walewski, but it is probably of Achille 
 Fould that it is true. 
 
 140
 
 Rachel 
 
 expressed the wish to possess it. " Very well," 
 said Rachel. 'It is for sale. You can have it 
 for a thousand louis." " Five hundred," proposed 
 the banker, trying to bargain. " No, a thousand," 
 repeated Rachel, expressing her disdain for those 
 who haggled; and the banker actually paid a thou- 
 sand louis for the worthless knick-knack. It is 
 said that he learnt the truth when he tried to sell 
 his treasure at the Hotel Drouot, and that the dis- 
 covery of the hoax nearly sent him into a fit on 
 the floor. 
 
 Decidedly it is proper that these stories should 
 succeed the spectacle of Charlotte Bronte dazzled 
 by Rachel's tremendous power in the interpretation 
 of sublime emotions. The contrast between the 
 stage life and the real life is better marked by them 
 than it could be in any other way. Yet, even while 
 the stories were circulating, the view prevailed that 
 the stage life represented the real woman; and the 
 light which blinded the eyes of the little governess 
 improving her French at Brussels had the same 
 effect upon the vision of no less a man than Lamar- 
 tine, who was then at the height of his renown. 
 
 He had made his first reputation long before by 
 launching the Romantic Movement in verse. He 
 had subsequently made a second reputation as one of 
 the most brilliant orators in the Chamber of Deputies. 
 He was shortly to make a third reputation as the 
 Foreign Minister of the Republic of 1848. Both 
 his personal and his political life were notoriously 
 and conspicuously pure. He never sought either 
 the favour of ministers or the favour of actresses. 
 He was austere, though a sentimentalist, pompous 
 
 141
 
 Rachel 
 
 and proud, and fifty-seven years of age. Yet he 
 approached Rachel, who was thirty years his 
 junior, as he might have approached a rival 
 potentate. He took Madame Lamartine to call 
 on her, and not rinding her at home, he wrote her 
 this letter : 
 
 " MADEMOISELLE, 
 
 " Madame de Lamartine and I have ventured 
 to present ourselves for the purpose of expressing 
 our admiration, still aglow from our experience of 
 the previous evening, and of thanking you for the 
 opportunity of applauding the genius of poetry 
 in its most sublime and touching incarnation. 
 
 " Again, this morning, I return to your door; but, 
 in the fear that you may be unable to receive me, 
 I take the liberty of leaving a visiting card in eight 
 enormous volumes. It is a modern tragedy which 
 thus approaches the tragedies of antiquity in in- 
 different prose. That tragedy will become both 
 drama and poem in its turn, and, for that reason, 
 it rightly appertains to you; for the drama is the 
 popular history of nations and the theatre is the 
 tribunal of the heart. 
 
 " Be so kind, mademoiselle, as to accept this 
 feeble act of homage to the enthusiasm which you 
 scatter broadcast, and recover wherever you go, and 
 permit me to join therewith the expression of my 
 respectful sentiments. 
 
 " LAMARTINE." 
 
 The " visiting card in eight volumes " was nothing 
 less than Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins 
 
 142
 
 Rachel 
 
 the great work in which he strove to make the. 
 Republican idea once more acceptable in France. 
 He probably expected Rachel to read it, and came 
 to believe, in due course, that she had done so 
 she who practically never read anything except 
 plays, and " notices," and the poems addressed 
 to her by admirers. What else was so vain a 
 man to think when he heard that Rachel had 
 undertaken to recite, or chant, the Marseillaise on 
 the stage of the national theatre ? 
 
 143
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The singing of the Marseillaise, and the republicanizing of the 
 
 provinces. 
 
 IT made no real difference to Rachel whether the 
 Chief of the State in France was a king, an emperor, 
 or a president. That is a fair inference from the 
 fact that her chanting of the Marseillaise was only 
 an incident of an interlude between the attentions 
 of Orleanist and Bonapartist admirers. And yet 
 one must not infer that she was altogether insincere. 
 There were certain memories. . . . 
 
 Rachel had known what it was to be poor. It 
 may be an exaggeration to say, as Mademoiselle 
 George said, that she had begged her bread. But 
 she had, at any rate, strummed a guitar though 
 not the particular guitar which she sold to Achille 
 Fould for coppers ; and baby brothers and sisters 
 had been exposed beside her on a costermonger's 
 barrow to appeal, whether dumbly or articulately, 
 for the benefactions of the compassionate. 
 
 Those had been hungry days; she had not always 
 had enough to eat. Or so she fancied, and it seemed 
 a shame. It seemed a shame, too, that she should 
 have been attired in rags while other women wore 
 silks and satins, and that her mother should have 
 had to tramp from door to door, dealing in old clothes, 
 and have been splashed with mud by the equipages 
 of the well-to-do. It had all happened too long 
 
 144
 
 Rachel 
 
 ago to matter very much. She had long since arrived 
 at splashing mud about with an equipage of her own. 
 But still she remembered. There was the germ of 
 an emotion there which might blossom into a fine, 
 and even a terrible, flower when she expressed it. 
 
 She was so little in earnest, at first, that she 
 asked the advice of a respectable man in high 
 position. Everybody, she told him, was singing 
 the Marseillaise. Lockroy, at that time Director 
 of the Frangais, had suggested that it would " amuse 
 people " if she were to sing it also. The fortunes 
 of the theatre were, just then, very far from 
 prosperous, and this demonstration might restore 
 them by the magic of actuality. What did the 
 respectable man in high position think ? 
 
 The respectable man in high position disapproved. 
 The singing of the Marseillaise, it seemed to him, 
 was an occupation fit only for the rabble. The 
 song was charged with horrible menace not only to 
 royalty, but also to property. He expected Rachel 
 to be on the side of the respectable and the well-to- 
 do. An actress in her position, he said an actress 
 who had performed under the patronage of crowned 
 heads, and been embraced by the king's son really 
 ought not, should not, could not, etc., etc., etc. But 
 he argued to deaf ears. Rachel " saw herself " in 
 her new role, and began rehearsing it in her carriage 
 while driving into Paris from the Porte Maillot with 
 Louise Colet. 1 " One felt in the air," Madame Colet 
 reported, " as it were a mighty breath of hope, bearing 
 
 1 Known to the Romantics as Sappho, and as the Tenth Muse : 
 the mistress successively of Victor Cousin, Flaubert, and Alfred de 
 Musset. She wrote novels, now forgotten, but not without merit, 
 
 L 145
 
 Rachel 
 
 all youthful hearts along with it." That, and not the 
 perusal of the eight volumes of Lamartine's History, 
 was the origin of the astonishing performance. 
 
 Jules Janin was one of those who thought it 
 objectionable. Just as it had seemed a shame 
 to Rachel that she should have been poor while 
 other people were rich, so it seemed a shame to 
 Jules Janin that the comfort of the comfortable 
 classes should be disturbed. He argued on the subj ect 
 with his usual fluent plausibility. Nobody, so far as 
 he could see, had any grievance. All was for the 
 best in the best of all possible worlds. Some people, 
 no doubt, were poor but the poor we have always 
 with us. It was a criminal act to pander to the 
 rapacity of the populace, and so set class against class. 
 Indeed it was worse than a crime to do such things; 
 it was a blunder. A great artist like Rachel really 
 ought to have known better. 
 
 So this moderate man argued, eloquently, volumin- 
 ously, interminably; but Rachel, as has been said, 
 " saw herself " in the role of political agitator, and 
 that settled it. Jules Janin went to see her in it, 
 and his sense of justice bade him give a true report. 
 He described how she picked up the tricolour flag 
 which had been left lying on a bench, stepped for- 
 ward, with head erect and eyes glowing like coals of 
 fire, and began, half to chant, and half to declaim, 
 the inexorable hymn of vengeance 
 
 " She was a Muse a Fury. She came from 
 Helicon. She came from the Champ-de-Mars. A 
 daughter of Pindar and a daughter of Rouget de 
 Lisle. She surpassed Erinnys the violent and 
 
 146
 
 Rachel 
 
 implacable; and all this mob listened, gaping and 
 amazed, to the curses uttered by the lips which, 
 a moment before, had been divinely expressing 
 the tenderness of Racine and the splendour of 
 Corneille. . . . 
 
 ' It was superb and awful. One shuddered; one 
 trembled; the fever of heroism took possession of 
 every heart. How beautiful and valiant she was at 
 this moment of her terrible task! And how danger- 
 ous ! War and peace were hidden in the folds of her 
 mantle; this flag which she held in her grip was 
 waved among the clouds. You would have said 
 that she was the living and vehement statue of 
 the heroic Muse, chanting miracles and lies to her 
 audience. . . . 
 
 " One should have called to her, with the hero of 
 the Odyssey : ' Stop ! Stop ! It is not true hospitality 
 to terrify one's guests.' But neither the terrors of 
 one half of the house nor the admiration of the other 
 half, nor the rumours of the present, nor the echoes 
 of the past availed to arrest this heroine in her 
 course. One would have said, to hear her and to 
 see her, that she was wreaking a personal vengeance, 
 assuaging a personal hatred. One could imagine 
 nothing more sincere or solemn than this Amazon 
 intoning the chaunt of death. When one tells such a 
 story of times so near to us, it is as if one were relating 
 the figments of a dream, or inventing a dazzling 
 drama without a name." 
 
 And Rachel, who produced this marvellous effect 
 of breathless hostility to kings, was the same Rachel 
 who had volunteered to be embraced, " pour rien," 
 
 L2 I 47
 
 Rachel 
 
 by the Prince de Joinville, and was presently to 
 be embraced by the Emperor's cousin. The word 
 " cabotinage " inevitably comes to the point of one's 
 pen in the connection; but not, perhaps, quite justly, 
 unless it be " cabotinage " to bring the germ of 
 a real emotion to a fine flower in the expression of 
 it. The effect of the recitation, at any rate, was 
 immense. The fortunes of the national theatre were 
 restored by the national anthem; and Rachel's 
 father, observing what had happened, had a happy 
 thought an inspiration related, it need hardly be 
 said, to the further amassing of pieces of silver. 
 
 For a heap of pieces of silver was the summum 
 bonum of Jacob Felix. As often as he perceived the 
 glint of a piece of silver, he was up and after it as a 
 terrier is after a rat. When one has related that of 
 him, one has already written his biography in brief. 
 He now realized that there were more pieces of silver 
 to be derived from Republicanism than from art. 
 It was merely a question of pulling the right strings. 
 Doing that, he might organize a great battue of 
 pieces of silver under official patronage, with the 
 Minister of Fine Arts for his beater. And this was 
 a thing which Jacob Felix, who was really a man of 
 genius in his way, contrived to do. 
 
 He, the ex-pedlar, contrived to be accorded an 
 audience by Ledru-Rollin, who was then Minister 
 of the Interior. He did not, of course, tell Ledru- 
 Rollin that there was money in Republicanism 
 that was his secret which he kept at the back of 
 his brain. What he told Ledru-Rollin was that the 
 provinces wanted " republicanizing," that they could 
 be better and more thoroughly republicanized by 
 
 148
 
 Rachel 
 
 his daughter's recitations than by any other means, 
 and that the government had nothing to lose, but 
 everything to gain, by giving Rachel's next provincial 
 tour a semi-official character. He put his case 
 so plausibly that a circular was actually addressed 
 from the Ministry to the managers of all the 
 provincial theatres in which she proposed to appear. 
 
 "CABINET OF THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR. 
 
 "Paris, April 23, 1848. 
 
 " CITIZEN MANAGER, 
 
 " Citizen Raphael Felix has formed a 
 theatrical company with which he will visit several 
 of the French Departments. 
 
 "It is his purpose to produce there the master- 
 pieces of our dramatic literature with Citizeness 
 Rachel in the leading parts. Citizeness Rachel 
 had entered into several lucrative engagements 
 with foreign countries; but she has cancelled them 
 all in order to be able to remain in France. It is 
 her wish to extend to the Departments the devotion 
 to the Republic which she displayed in Paris in 
 her admirable creation of the Marseillaise. 
 
 ' The electrical effect produced here by her 
 performances should have marvellous and salutary 
 results in the provinces. In the name, therefore, 
 of art, to which the Republic desires to accord its 
 fruitful and powerful protection, I beg you to recog- 
 nize the sacrifices which Citizeness Rachel has made, 
 to give her your support, and to afford Citizen 
 Raphael Felix every facility for organizing per- 
 formances in your town. 
 
 "ELI AS RENAULT, 
 
 " Provisional Director of Theatres and Literature." 
 149
 
 Rachel 
 
 So that it had come to this : that the anthem of 
 the Revolution itself was officially spoken of as 
 having been " created " by the actress who declaimed 
 it. In arranging that, Citizen Jacob Felix had truly 
 proved himself a great man a sort of Citizen 
 Vincent Crummies raised to the nih. Like Citizen 
 Vincent Crummies, Citizen Jacob Felix was not a 
 Prussian he was a patriot, for there was money in 
 patriotism. 
 
 And not money merely, but, as the vulgar say, "pots 
 of money." At Lyon, for example, the agreement 
 was that Rachel should receive 176 a night; and she 
 did only a little less well at Toulouse, Montpellier, 
 Nimes, Aries, Aix and Marseilles, and also visited, 
 with more or less success, Strasburg, Metz, Besangon, 
 Nancy, Dijon, Avignon, Toulon, Beziers, Cette, 
 Orleans, Tours and Blois. In Paris she had been 
 pleading ill-health and declining to play more than 
 twice a week. In the provinces, with Citizen Jacob 
 Felix standing over her, she had to play nearly 
 every night. There might not be money in patriot- 
 ism for very long, and Citizen Jacob Felix was 
 determined to make his patriotic hay while the sun 
 was shining. 
 
 Indeed the time soon came when there ceased to 
 be money in this sort of patriotism ; and then Citizen 
 Jacob Felix and Citizeness Rachel dropped it. The 
 Marseillaise came presently to be associated, not 
 with the sublime sentiments of fraternity, but with 
 the excesses of a blood-thirsty mob. Audiences 
 came to be divided in their desire to hear it, and 
 then the enthusiasts called for it in vain. The 
 Citizen Actor Manager appeared before the curtain
 
 Rachel 
 
 and announced that the Citizeness Leading Lady 
 had a bad cold, and could not comply with the 
 request. The pieces of silver being by this time safely 
 in the bank, the republicanizing of the provinces 
 ended in a diplomatic and imaginary catarrh. 
 
 Then, after a little while, occurred Napoleon's 
 coup d'dat; and it was no part of Rachel's function 
 to resist it, or to join Victor Hugo in singing 
 
 " S'il ne reste qu'un, je serai celui-la." 
 
 On the contrary. Rachel had, in Aristotelian 
 phrase, purged herself of Republican emotions by 
 means of pity and fear. She was ready, as were 
 her audiences, for the expression of quite other 
 emotions. There were those who expected, or said 
 that they expected, to see her express them by 
 declaiming Partant poitr la Syrie. It did not quite 
 come to that ; but she found other means of 
 proving her contentment with the new regime, as 
 Arsene Houssaye relates. 
 
 Arsene Houssaye, as we read in his Confessions, 
 received, one day, a mysterious summons to the 
 Elysee. He had no idea why he was wanted there; 
 but the summons was not one to be disobeyed. 
 
 ' When I arrived," he writes, " I was shown into 
 an ante-chamber. Thence I was passed on into 
 a second, and then into a third apartment, where 
 I saw Mademoiselle Rachel approaching me, wreathed 
 in smiles. She seemed quite at home there but 
 she always seemed quite at home wherever one found 
 her. Besides, she was, at that time, the ' mistress 
 of the house.' '
 
 Rachel 
 
 Which, is, of course, Arsene Houssaye's way of 
 saying that Rachel, who had so lately aroused the 
 frenzy of the populace by declaiming the impreca- 
 tions of the Marseillaise, had now reconsidered her 
 position, and improved it by responding to the 
 advances of a Prince of the House of Bonaparte.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Arsene Houssaye appointed, at Rachel's desire, Director of the 
 Comedie Frangaise. 
 
 RACHEL had run to the Elysee because there had 
 been trouble at the theatre. 
 
 Her colleagues wished to appoint their own 
 committee of management, as they had been accus- 
 tomed to do in the past, instead of being governed 
 by a nominee of the Minister of the Interior. She 
 preferred one-man government because it was easier 
 for her to get her own way with an individual than 
 with a committee. Moreover, she was aggrieved by 
 the dismissal of Lockroy, at whose instance she had 
 sung the Marseillaise. She had resigned, and with- 
 drawn her resignation, and renewed it. The air was 
 full of indignation and threats of litigation; and the 
 upshot of the matter was that, when Arsene 
 Houssaye kept the appointment made for him at the 
 Elysee, he was received, not by the Prince President, 
 but by the " mistress " of the house, who greeted 
 him with the question 
 
 ' Would you like to be Director of the Theatre 
 
 Like it ? Of course he would ; and equally, of 
 course, he displayed no surprise at being offered the 
 appointment by an actress instead of a Cabinet 
 Minister. Perhaps he was cynic enough to feel 
 none. At all events he " knew his manners " which 
 
 153
 
 Rachel 
 
 were those of an " arriviste." Though not a man 
 of genius, he was a humorist with a felicitous 
 instinct for the paths which lead to success in life. 
 So he took everything that happened for granted, 
 and clutched gratefully at the proffered petti- 
 coat. Presented, in due course, to the Prince 
 President, he thanked him for the nomination; 
 but the Prince President directed his gratitude to 
 the proper quarter. 
 
 "Don't thank me," he said. "Thank Mile. 
 Rachel. The names of ten men of letters were 
 submitted to her, and she selected you. I'm sure 
 I don't know why;" and Arsene Houssaye still 
 showed no astonishment, but merely bowed. 
 
 Then the battle began. The news of what had 
 passed at the Elysee reached the societaires of the 
 Comedie Fran9aise. They at once called an extra- 
 ordinary general meeting, as the result of which 
 they at once put on black coats and white ties, called 
 six cabs, jumped into them, drove in a procession 
 to the Ministry of the Interior, and demanded an 
 audience. They were admitted, and proceeded to 
 argue their case with glowing eloquence. This 
 interference with their rights, they said, was uncon- 
 stitutional a violation of the Decree of Moscow. 
 The Prince President had no locus standi at their 
 theatre. A Prince President, who began by upsetting 
 the constitution of the House of Moliere, would end 
 by upsetting the Republic. And so forth with such 
 persuasive vehemence that the Minister of the 
 Interior was bounced into promising to see justice 
 done, and the newspapers came out with this 
 interesting announcement 
 
 '54
 
 Rachel 
 
 " M. Arsene Houssaye Director of the Comedie 
 Franaise for five minutes." 
 
 So the socie"taires withdrew, reassured; and then it 
 was Rachel's turn to renew the battle. She first 
 threatened to leave France, taking Arsene Hous- 
 saye with her, in order that they might reap glory 
 together in a foreign land. She next remembered 
 that Dr. Veron had " influence," and besought 
 him to pull the wires. She also, at the same time, 
 set to work pulling wires with her own hands. It 
 was pointed out, at her instance, to the Minister of 
 the Interior, that the national theatre was steering 
 a straight course for the shoals of insolvency. He 
 was told of a terrible night on which there had only 
 been 2 2s. 6d. in the house. Only the return of 
 Rachel, he was assured, could avert disaster; and 
 Rachel, it was intimated, would not return unless 
 she were allowed to nominate the Director. It became 
 clear to him, therefore, that to follow her was to 
 follow the line of least resistance; and at last he 
 took up his pen and wrote 
 
 " MY DEAR MONSIEUR HOUSSAYE, 
 
 ' Your nomination, which was decided 
 upon a month ago, is at last signed; but it will not 
 be officially announced until to-morrow. Come and 
 see me about six o'clock, that we may talk the matter 
 over. 
 
 " FERDINAND BARROT." 
 
 Thus the appointment was settled; and the principal 
 thing which the Minister of the Interior had to say
 
 Rachel 
 
 at the interview was that he wished the new Director 
 joy of his job, as the comedians were terrible fellows 
 and fully resolved to make his position untenable. 
 
 And certainly the comedians tried very hard 
 to do so. 
 
 Their first step was to serve their Director with 
 a writ at the moment of his arrival in the theatre, 
 charging him with trespass and demanding damages; 
 but the Director waved the writ on one side as a 
 document which must be left to lie on his table 
 until he had leisure to attend to it. 
 
 Their second step was to appoint a Director of 
 their own M. Sevestre, of the Theatre of Mont- 
 martre. Arsene Houssaye, entering his office, found 
 M. Sevestre installed there, sitting at the mahogany 
 desk, and claiming, when questioned, that he had 
 a right to sit at it. Whereupon Arsene Houssaye 
 rang the bell. " Monsieur de la Chaume," he said 
 to the attendant who responded, " this gentleman 
 desires to do his work at this desk. Be so good as 
 to carry it into some other room for him; " and M. 
 Sevestre, being intimidated, glanced at his watch, 
 and remarked that it was time for him to go out 
 to dinner. 
 
 Their third step was to send the comedian Brindeau 
 up to talk to the Director ; for the comedian Brindeau 
 had boasted loudly, and declared his intention of 
 throwing the Director out of the window. But 
 Arsene Houssaye rose, with a smile, and offered 
 Brindeau his most comfortable arm-chair, and was 
 so polite to him that the comedian who had pro- 
 posed to throw him out of the window was won 
 over, and ended by taking his part against his milder- 
 
 '56
 
 Rachel 
 
 mannered colleagues. And then it was Arsene 
 Houssaye's turn to take the aggressive. 
 
 He boldly intimated that, if any comedian were 
 so discontented that he desired to resign his posi- 
 tion, the Director would, however regretfully, accept 
 his resignation. He could depend upon Rachel, 
 and upon Madame Plessy, who was on her way back 
 from Russia. Among the pensionnaires, whom he 
 could also depend upon, were included such ex- 
 cellent players as Got and Delaunay. Nor would 
 the introduction of a little fresh blood do the theatre 
 any harm. Bocage and Frederick Lemaitre were 
 available, and could be engaged. So, if Samson 
 and Provost really wished to retire, they had only 
 to say so. Which of them would speak first ? 
 
 But neither of them spoke first. They both still 
 thought that they could remain and freeze the 
 Director out. In order to remain, however, they 
 had to do what they were told, even though they 
 pretended that they were doing it of their own 
 accord, as the result of decisions arrived at by 
 their own committee, which still continued to meet. 
 They did this, but did not cease to intrigue. There 
 was a new Minister of the Interior M. Baroche. 
 They " got at " him, and induced him to depose 
 Arsene Houssaye and appoint a certain M. Mazeres 
 in his place. This time their triumph seemed assured ; 
 but once more they had reckoned without Rachel. 
 
 They feared her persuasive tongue, indeed; but 
 they had taken their precautions against its influ- 
 ence. Rachel presented herself at the Ministry, 
 and was told to her astonishment that the Minister 
 could not receive her. This happened not once
 
 Rachel 
 
 only but three times. Arsene Houssaye himself 
 believed that he was beaten, and prepared to 
 evacuate his office; but Rachel bade him be of good 
 courage. " Wait a bit," she said. ' I have sworn 
 that the Minister shall see me, and see me he shall." 
 So she called yet again, not at the Ministry, but 
 at the Minister's private house. 
 
 The Minister sent down word that he was dressing 
 to go out to dinner, and could see no one his 
 carriage, in fact, was at the door, waiting for him. 
 "Very well," said Rachel. "I too will wait"; 
 and she got into the carriage, and made herself 
 comfortable. The coachman recognized her, but 
 said nothing. He knew his master, and jumped to 
 the conclusion that he had arranged to take the 
 actress for a drive. As a matter of fact the Minister 
 did not even know the actress by sight; but she 
 received him in his own carriage and introduced 
 herself. " And now, M. le Ministre," she said, " we 
 can talk about this little matter of business "; and 
 she talked about it so efficaciously that the Minister 
 was not only coaxed into consenting to cancel 
 the nomination of M. Mazeres, but also begged that 
 Rachel and her Director would both dine with him 
 on the following Saturday. 
 
 That was practically the end of the opposition 
 to Arsene Houssaye's appointment. It only 
 remained for him to overcome one or two elderly 
 authors who fancied that they could browbeat the 
 youthful Director into the production of unsuitable 
 plays from their pens ; and that was a comparatively 
 simple matter. Empis, the Academician, for example, 
 insisted that a piece of his should be staged on the 
 
 158
 
 Rachel 
 
 ground that he was " one of the Forty." " Sir/' 
 replied Arsene Houssaye, " I am blond, but I am 
 determined. It is true that you are one of the 
 Forty. It is also true that Moliere, who was never- 
 theless a playwright of some merit, was not. More- 
 over, it would be all the same to me if you were 
 one of the Ten Thousand/' " Sir," said Empis, " if 
 I were not a man of great self-control I should 
 throw you out of the window." " Sir, "replied Arsene 
 Houssaye, " as I am a man of great politeness I 
 content myself with indicating the whereabouts of 
 the door." 
 
 So that was over; and Arsene Houssaye, thanks 
 partly to Rachel, and partly to his own resolute and 
 radiant character, was firmly seated in the saddle, 
 and remained in it for several years, with a free hand 
 to follow his own policy. 
 
 That policy was, broadly speaking, to modernize 
 the repertory. The classics were, of course, re- 
 tained a national theatre which ignored the classics 
 would be unthinkable in France. On the other 
 hand, the old-fashioned pieces of the day before 
 yesterday were taboo; and the younger writers 
 were given their chance, to whatever dramatic school 
 they belonged, provided that they possessed that 
 " don du theatre " without which no theory of 
 the dramatic art is of any avail. Victor Hugo, 
 Dumas, Alfred de Musset, Ernest Legouve all 
 these were included among the chosen. Madame 
 de Girardin, who had failed so lamentably in tragedy, 
 was given another chance, and succeeded in comedy 
 with Lady Tartufe. 
 
 Not all the pieces produced, of course, were of 
 
 159
 
 Rachel 
 
 equal artistic value; but the new policy was, at any 
 rate, pecuniarily successful. The day was not far 
 behind when the national theatre had played, as 
 has been stated, to a house of 2 2s. 6d., and its 
 Director had not known where to turn to borrow 
 ten thousand francs. The day soon came when it 
 actually declared a dividend; and when that hap- 
 pened the comedians were conciliated. ' We must 
 make a night of it," said Samson when he heard 
 the news; and they made a night of it. There was 
 a supper; and after the supper there was a ball; 
 and Samson, who had begun his relations with the 
 new Director by serving him with a writ, now 
 danced a gavotte in his honour : a sequence of 
 proceedings which may be taken to demonstrate 
 that even the greatest and gravest comedians are 
 very much like children. 
 
 ' The radiant period " is Arsene Houssaye's 
 name for the epoch on which the theatre now entered 
 an epoch during which Rachel triumphed in the 
 modern, as she had previously triumphed in the 
 classical drama. 
 
 A good deal of its radiance may have been due 
 to the sunniness of his own disposition. He was a 
 disciplinarian, determined to have his own way; 
 but he kept order with a pleasant smile, being 
 determined to enjoy himself, and most anxious that 
 others should enj oy themselves also. He was neither 
 a prude nor a Pasha in his relations with the 
 debutantes, but one who looked at the life of the 
 theatre and found it very good, filled with perpetual 
 hilarity by the amours of the coulisses provided 
 
 160
 
 Rachel 
 
 always that they did not interfere with business 
 and resolutely maintaining that no one had the 
 right to expect the moral standards of the green- 
 room to correspond with those of a convent school. 
 He could enter into the feelings of Got, who wrote 
 in his diary, published the other day, that he went 
 on the stage because he desired " the proximity of 
 women," and felt his pulse stirred by the spectacle 
 of " the palpitating bosom of Madame Plessy." 
 
 The Comedie Frangaise under Arsene Houssaye's 
 regime was the playground of Paris, and Paris was 
 the playground of Europe. The period was that of 
 the Third Empire the period which the philosopher, 
 looking back on it after the lamentable crash of 
 Sedan, summed up in the phrase : " Au moins on 
 s'est diablement amuse." It will be proper to pause 
 and survey the amusements in so far as the intimate 
 life of the theatre served to provide them. 
 
 M 161
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 L.fe behind the scenes at the National Theatre. 
 
 THE first thing needful, according to Arsene 
 Houssaye, was to get the mothers of the actresses 
 out of the way. 
 
 They came to the theatre, he says, ostensibly 
 to safeguard the virtue of their daughters, but in 
 reality to boast of it. " My daughter," he heard 
 one of them say, " is a vestal virgin " ; and a moment 
 later the vestal virgin entered. A false moustache 
 was adhering to her lips the obvious legacy of 
 the embrace of a comedian in the wings. It was 
 better that such a contretemps should occur off the 
 stage than on, but still . . . 
 
 Moreover, the mothers of the actresses were a 
 nuisance. They blocked gangways and interfered 
 alike with business and with gaiety. The spectacle 
 of a procession of elderly ladies going behind the 
 scenes between the acts annoyed the audience; and 
 when the ladies got behind the scenes, the actors, and 
 the actresses not to mention the admirers of the 
 actresses wished them further. So Arsene Hous- 
 saye first jestingly proposed that they should be 
 killed and that a monument should be erected in 
 the theatre to their memory, and then seriously 
 issued a decree assigning rigid limits to their move- 
 ments. They might go to their daughters' dressing- 
 rooms, and stay there, or they might sit in the front 
 
 162
 
 Rachel 
 
 of the house in an enclosure which should be appro- 
 priated to their use. But they must not pass to and 
 fro from the one place to the other, and they must 
 on no account be seen in the artists' foyer. 
 
 That was Arsene Houssaye's first great managerial 
 reform; and it made matters much pleasanter alike 
 for the players and for the privileged playgoers who 
 enjoyed their entrees. 
 
 That privilege was accorded to almost any man 
 of letters who cared to ask for it, and also to a 
 limited number of men about town. These had 
 nothing to pay, and were made equally welcome " in 
 front " and " behind." Sometimes their business 
 ;< behind " was to gossip and smoke cigars with the 
 Director. More often their purpose was to enjoy the 
 society of the actresses. Occasionally a man about 
 town, if rich enough, took an actress usually an 
 actress of more beauty than talent away from the 
 theatre and installed her somewhere as his left-handed 
 consort. The men of letters, unable to afford that 
 extravagance, kissed them, and played with them, 
 and promised each of them in turn the leading part 
 in his next new piece. 
 
 Arsene Houssaye gives a picture of Alexandre 
 Dumas, burly and boisterous, passing through a long 
 avenue of actresses, picking each of them up and 
 kissing them in turn. He also gives us this pretty 
 picture of a scene in the coulisses after a performance 
 of Marion Delorme, with Mademoiselle Judith in the 
 role of the beautiful sinner 
 
 ' Victor Hugo pays her the great compliment of 
 kissing her on the forehead, and she feels as if she 
 
 M2 I6 3
 
 Rachel 
 
 had been sanctified. Alfred de Musset happens 
 to be passing, and he kisses her on the arm. ' Who 
 wants the other arm ? ' she asks ; and the question 
 does not fall upon deaf ears. Alfred de Vigny bows 
 low, and takes her hand. Judith does not waste 
 her time. ' You'll let me play Kitty Bell, won't 
 you ? ' she demands; but Alfred de Vigny is a man 
 who never makes promises." 
 
 Then there are pictures of certain supper-parties, 
 and also of certain picnics. We read of one supper- 
 party whereat a charming actress twined a wreath 
 of roses and placed it on the brow of Alfred de 
 Musset with " a resounding kiss." He drank her 
 health so often, and so deeply, that he had to be 
 assisted to his home. At another party, at an open- 
 air restaurant in one of the parks, another actress, 
 equally charming, saved the poet from a similar 
 anti-climax. He had just mixed himself a tumbler 
 of his favourite concoction of beer, brandy and 
 absinthe, and was about to drink it, when she 
 snatched it out of his hands and threw it away. He 
 " dropped his walking-stick, threw himself at the 
 actress's feet, and kissed her hand with tears." 
 He believed, for the moment, that he loved her, and 
 she, also for the moment, believed that she had saved 
 him from himself; but nothing came of it. The poet 
 soon relapsed into his old habits, and the actress 
 diverted her affections into another channel. 
 
 Yet her endeavours were serious, and the blame 
 for the failure did not rest upon her shoulders. 
 She offered the poet the hospitality of her apartment, 
 proposing to keep him at least moderately sober 
 
 164
 
 Rachel 
 
 until he had written a play for her. He accepted 
 the offer, and began to write the play; and all went 
 well until, one evening, another actress came to visit 
 his hostess. As she lived in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood, politeness required that Musset should 
 offer to escort her home. Although, the distance 
 being short and the weather fine, he went out 
 without his hat, he did not return; and his hostess 
 had no difficulty in guessing what had become of 
 him. On the following morning, therefore, she sent 
 both his hat and his unfinished manuscript to her 
 friend's house, with an intimation that all was over 
 between them. 
 
 That picture, perhaps, is more characteristic than 
 proper. A picture which, while equally character- 
 istic, approximates more nearly to correctitude, is 
 that which Arsene Houssaye draws of the supper- 
 party given in Rachel's mansion to celebrate the 
 first night of Lady Tartufe. 
 
 The guests were hastily gathered in the coulisses, 
 and the banquet was sent in from a restaurant. 
 Madame de Girardin, of course, was there; and so 
 was Emile de Girardin " the husband of all the 
 women in Paris except his wife. ' ' The only other lady 
 present was a certain " soupeuse " of whom one 
 knows nothing except that she was also a " grande 
 amoureuse." The management was represented by 
 Arsene Houssaye himself, and criticism by Jules 
 Janin, Theophile Gautier, Paul de Saint- Viet or, and 
 Jules Lecomte the Jules Lecomte who, of old, as 
 a handsome tenor, had captivated the heart of the 
 ex-Empress Marie-Louise. And the conversation ! 
 
 It began with the inevitable congratulations on 
 
 165
 
 Rachel 
 
 the evening's successes, but soon drifted away from 
 that. Emile de Girardin was anxious to hear 
 about Jules Lecomte's successes with the Empress; 
 and the ex-tenor, now a chroniqueur, was easily 
 persuaded to tell the company all about them. He 
 used to sup Ute-a-tHe with her. It was he who 
 gave the orders and told the servants when to 
 retire and leave him alone with their mistress. 
 But he had no illusions. It was not the man of 
 brilliant intelligence that she admired in him, but 
 the tenor she absolutely doted on tenors. 
 
 Whereupon Theophile Gautier, who was in a 
 captious mood, proceeded to denounce tenors " and 
 all those who make a noise and call it singing"; 
 and that gave Madame de Girardin her opportunity 
 to chaff him in his turn : " Hush, Theo., hush ! In 
 the days when you adored Julia Grisi you would 
 have been willing to turn yourself into a nightingale 
 to please her beautiful eyes." And then, apropos 
 of nothing, there was " noise without," and in 
 bounced Clesinger, the sculptor the husband of 
 George Sand's daughter Solange and proceeded 
 to lean over the back of Rachel's chair and talk about 
 his wife. " A perfect angel," he said, " when her 
 mother isn't there"; but then he discovered that 
 there was no supper left for him and decided to 
 bounce out again, leaving Rachel to confide to the 
 company that when last he had called upon her he 
 had declined to go, but had insisted upon spending 
 the night on the sofa in the library. And so on till 
 the party broke up, some time in the small hours, 
 and Rachel's maid Rose was left exclaiming 
 
 " God of Israel, what an orgy ! They call them- 
 
 166
 
 Rachel 
 
 selves wits, but Gargantua was an angel beside them 
 for gluttony. I don't dare look at the bill. A supper 
 at twelve francs a head ! And twelve times twelve 
 is a hundred and forty-four; and they've got through 
 it all in an hour." 
 
 Such are our pictures typical pictures which 
 could be multiplied indefinitely ; and there are morals 
 to be drawn from them. The moralist, of course, 
 will draw one moral ; but the historian and the critic 
 will draw another. To them the various pictures, 
 fused together, make one composite picture of the 
 collapse of the Romantic Movement, which, in 
 fact, perished at a time when its founders were still 
 alive and flourishing. Rachel's acting, as we have 
 seen and insisted, had arrested the Movement on 
 the stage. Viewed, as we have also seen reason to 
 view it, as a new attitude towards life, and per- 
 sonality, and love affairs, it seems to vanish like 
 smoke at Rachel's supper-parties. 
 
 The note of the Romantics, in these regards, had 
 been to get back to our old formula the substitu- 
 tion of sentiment for gallantry. The step was one 
 which even actresses some actresses at all events 
 had been taught to take. They had learnt to live 
 a few of them, that is to say, had learnt to live 
 as if they, as well as their lovers, had hearts, de- 
 vastated by passions of more than religious intensity. 
 Marie Dorval had learnt intensity from Alfred de 
 Vigny, and practised it on Jules Sandeau. Neither 
 of her lovers had enriched her, and yet, for the sake 
 of one of them, she had pretended to stab herself 
 with a paper-knife. The gesture had been magnifi- 
 cent, although no harm was done. The Romantic 
 
 167
 
 Rachel 
 
 idea had inspired it ; and, in real life as on the stage, 
 Marie Dorval had gone about tearing passions to 
 rags. It had been easy for her to be fickle, but 
 impossible for her to mock at sentiment. She had 
 confused love with religion, and had died, a Catholic 
 mystic, meditating among the tombs. 
 
 No one of the guests at Rachel's supper-party, 
 one feels instinctively, was capable of that sort of 
 thing, though there were eminent Romantics among 
 them. Theophile Gautier's red waistcoat had been, 
 as we know, the oriflamme of the Romantic revolt 
 at the theatre of which Rachel was now the queen, 
 and Madame de Girardin, as Delphine Gay, had been 
 one of the Romantic Muses ; but now Delphine could 
 chaff Theo. about his passion for the singer con- 
 cerning whom he had said of old that he would gladly 
 give all his worldly wealth for the privilege of seeing 
 her emerge, undraped, from her bath; and The"o. 
 and Delphine could combine to chaff the tenor whom 
 an Empress had invited to supper and detained 
 to breakfast. We are leagues removed there from 
 the emotional expansiveness of the late twenties 
 and early thirties, when divine approval was claimed 
 for illicit love, and George Sand exhorted those about 
 to profane their marriage vows to open the proceed- 
 ings with prayer. Love, for these banqueters, was 
 not a religious exercise but a diversion they were 
 out to enjoy themselves. The atmosphere of senti- 
 ment had evaporated, and the atmosphere of 
 gallantry had reappeared. 
 
 These things being so, the members of the 
 imperial household could, and did, bear a hand in 
 the game; and there were conditions in the case 
 
 1 68
 
 Rachel 
 
 which induced them to join in it more openly and 
 with more spirit than the representatives of other 
 dynasties. 
 
 Their house was not, like that of the Bourbons, 
 of immemorial antiquity. They could not claim, 
 as Louis XVIII did, even in exile, to be compounded 
 of different clay from their subjects; nor had they, 
 in the days of adversity, lived in pretentious pomp. 
 They were only promoted bourgeois, and were 
 regarded, at the other Courts of Europe, as upstarts. 
 The Emperor himself had been one of the pillars of 
 Lady Blessington's salon, and had borrowed money 
 from a fashionable courtesan in order to defray his 
 expenses as a Pretender. The Empress was more 
 distinguished by her beauty than by her birth; and 
 the old aristocracy of France showed no disposition 
 to abase itself before her. It had slighted and 
 snubbed her up to the day when her betrothal was 
 announced; and her imperial husband was the 
 emperor of men who had been accustomed to slap 
 him on the back. 
 
 It was impossible for a Court so constituted to be, 
 as vulgar people say, " stand-offish " or " stuck-up " ; 
 and it wisely made but few attempts in that direc- 
 tion. Its atmosphere was one of equalitarian, not to 
 say Bohemian, camaraderie. The Emperor and the 
 Empress were the playfellows as well as the rulers 
 of their people. They not only took liberties, but 
 allowed liberties to be taken. In particular, they 
 encouraged men of letters and artists in general 
 as these had never been encouraged at any other 
 Court. That is to say, they did not patronise 
 them with condescending hauteur, but made friends 
 
 169
 
 Rachel 
 
 of them, and even romped with them. "Ego et 
 Imperator meus " " Ego et Imperatrix mea " was 
 the order of thought which seemed natural to the 
 great entertainers of the time. 
 
 One has an example of this democratic tone in 
 the story of Alfred de Musset's conduct when 
 summoned to the Tuileries to read one of his un- 
 acted pieces to the Empress. At first he refused 
 to go apparently on the ground that it was too 
 much trouble to keep sober. Arsene Houssaye, 
 however, over-persuaded him, and accompanied 
 him, in order, as one imagines, to make sure that he 
 did not drop into the Cafe de la Regence on the way. 
 He had avoided inebriety, and was well dressed 
 and well groomed; but his temper was the sullen 
 temper of a man who suffers from mal de cheveux. 
 It exploded when Baron James de Rothschild 
 strolled into the Empress's boudoir unannounced. 
 For Alfred de Musset as for a later critic of life, it 
 was possible, and even easy, to have " too much 
 of Lord Rothschild." 
 
 "Who is that man?" he asked sharply; and 
 the banker was presented to him. 
 
 " Very well," he said, " I shan't read any more. 
 I did not invite M. de Rothschild." 
 
 " Pray continue, M. de Musset," said the Baron; 
 but the poet folded up his manuscript, and turned 
 to the Empress with flashing eyes. 
 
 " Madame," he said, " you are as charming as 
 you are beautiful. I am very pleased to read my 
 work in the presence of your Majesty, but no power 
 on earth shall induce me to read it in the presence 
 of M. de Rothschild"; and he stuck to his point 
 
 170
 
 Rachel 
 
 so obstinately that the Emperor himself told the 
 banker to go away. 
 
 There is no gallantry in that story, of course it 
 merely shows how boldly men of letters ventured to 
 assert themselves in the imperial presence. Arsene 
 Houssaye himself had not less self respect, though 
 he was more ceremonious in the expression of it. 
 He refused point blank, for instance, to walk back- 
 wards before the Emperor, holding a silver candle- 
 stick, on the occasion of a gala performance. The 
 appeal to tradition, he said, left him unmoved; for 
 Napoleon III did not " dance in ballets, dressed up 
 as Apollo, like Louis XIV." And he continued 
 
 "When the Emperor comes to the theatre he 
 shakes me by the hand. If I were to hold the candle 
 for him I should forfeit this mark of his sympathy. 
 The Emperor often invites me to sit with him in his 
 box. Do you think he would condescend to converse 
 with one who carried a candle ? Besides, I do not 
 wish to feel that I am unworthy to converse with him 
 or with myself." 
 
 He also refused point blank to take the beautiful 
 Madeleine Brohan the latest debutante at his 
 theatre to lunch with the Emperor at the palace 
 of Saint-Cloud. He suspected, of course what any 
 other theatrical manager would have suspected in 
 his place. He was not a man who pretended to 
 specialize in virtue; but he had no intention of 
 discharging the functions of there is no need to 
 print the word. So there was silence, until the 
 Emperor begged the Director not to suppose that 
 
 171
 
 Rachel 
 
 he ever invited an actress to visit him with any 
 " arriere-pensee." Whereto Arsene Houssaye re- 
 plied that, of course, no such thought had ever 
 crossed his mind, but that he rather fancied that 
 this particular actress, if invited to lunch with the 
 Emperor, would prefer to be accompanied by her 
 mother. 
 
 And then there is yet another story which, while 
 exhibiting the Emperor and the Director on a footing 
 of democratic equality in their relations towards 
 the ladies of the theatre, brings us back to Rachel. 
 
 The hour of the Marseillaise being over, and the 
 emotions appertaining to it being extinct in her 
 breast, Rachel had proposed to habit herself as 
 the Muse of History and declaim some verses com- 
 posed by Arsene Houssaye on the topical theme : 
 " L'Empire c'est la paix." This sort of thing- 
 Grande ruche en travail, par les beaux-arts charmee, 
 Paris, une autre Athene; Alger, une autre Tyr! 
 Des landes a peupler, des villes a batir, 
 Voila les bulletins de notre Grande Armee ! 
 
 Sous le meme drapeau, vainqueur des factions, 
 Ramener les enfants de la mere patrie, 
 Consoler tes douleurs, o Niobe meurtrie ! 
 Et convier le peuple aux grandes actions. 
 
 Refaisons des tableaux dignes de la Gendse; 
 Que tout renaisse et vive, et que, de toute part, 
 Les plus dsherites puissent prendre leur part 
 A ces amples festins que peignait Veronese. 
 
 It is poor stuff; but Rachel's rendering of it 
 impressed the Emperor so favourably that he sent for 
 the Director, fell upon his neck, and kissed him, and 
 bade him " pass the kiss on " to the actress. " I 
 rather fancy," Arsene Houssaye comments, " that 
 
 172
 
 Rachel 
 
 he had long had the habit of kissing her without 
 the help of an intermediary, and I myself certainly 
 had not waited to kiss Rachel until I received the 
 Emperor's instructions to do so." 
 
 And that is credible enough ; for it appears to have 
 been the engaging custom of Arsene Houssaye to 
 kiss any actress to whom he took a fancy. His 
 great grievance in so far as that jovial man ever 
 had a grievance was that the faithful La Chaume 
 was too prone to enter his office without knocking 
 at the moments when he was doing so. 
 
 Such was the atmosphere in which Rachel flourished 
 in the early fifties : an atmosphere in which Arsene 
 Houssaye kissed all the girls, and the girls, on their 
 part, distributed their kisses generously among all 
 eligible applicants. " Sir," said one of them indig- 
 nantly to Alfred de Musset, " I hear that you have 
 boasted that you are my lover." " On the contrary, 
 madame," was the poet's crushing reply, " I have 
 always boasted that I was not your lover." " Your 
 fianct, dear," said another girl to a friend, " was 
 formerly my lover." " I dared not hope, dear," 
 was the rejoinder, " that I should ever discover a 
 man whom you had not permitted to embrace you." 
 
 Et cetera, et cetera. Such stories flow from 
 Arsene Houssaye's pen as from a fountain a new 
 fountain opened when that of Romanticism was 
 sealed. Readers who have regarded the theatre 
 as the scene of sincere and intense passion should 
 go to his book and read it from cover to cover. It 
 will instruct them; for they will find sincerity and 
 intensity precisely the attributes most conspicuously 
 lacking in the amours of the queens of his stage. 
 
 173
 
 Rachel 
 
 They appear, rather, to have let themselves be loved, 
 partly because it was " good fun " and partly because 
 it was profitable to do so ; and it was with Rachel as 
 with the others. Most of her love-affairs were either 
 passing caprices or stepping-stones to social and 
 professional advancement. The note of sincerity 
 is only heard and is not heard very loudly even 
 then when the bourgeoise who had died young in 
 her wakes up. 
 
 And that brings us to Hector B . 
 
 174
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Rachel's betrothal to Hector B- 
 
 THE discovery of Hector B is due to Mile. 
 
 Valentine Thomson. Rachel's letters to him were 
 communicated to her for publication; and a story 
 arises out of them, though the details are left 
 obscure and the name of the hero is kept secret. 
 
 He was a country gentleman, and the son of a 
 country gentleman ; not rich, one imagines, but 
 comfortably well-to-do. The whole family seems to 
 have been, not only provincial, but, as the French 
 say, " de la bonne annee " in its readiness to believe 
 any beautiful article of faith. It was an article of 
 faith with them, as it had once been with Cremieux, 
 that Rachel could be tamed and domesticated 
 that it would be gratifying to her to escape from the 
 glitter of the footlights and the frivolous round 
 of supper-parties, and be established as the Lady 
 Bountiful of a rural parish. 
 
 Rachel herself encouraged the belief, and, even 
 for a short space, shared it. Frail health, over- 
 work, and weariness of the vagrant life of a strolling 
 player, were doubtless the chief factors in her 
 feeling. Sickness of heart at the infidelity of Arthur 
 Bertrand may have been another. She was tired, 
 both physically and morally, and in a mood to long 
 for the wings of a dove that she might fly away 
 
 175
 
 Rachel 
 
 and be at rest. The dead bourgeoise coming to 
 life in her bosom, she mistook that feeling for a 
 desire to marry and settle down; and so she and 
 
 Hector B , who understood none of these things, 
 
 became engaged to be married. 
 
 How long she had been acquainted with him one 
 does not know; but the crisis occurred, and the 
 correspondence began, in the course of her provincial 
 tour in the summer of 1849. She was always more 
 sincere and tender in the provinces than in Paris. 
 The autograph hunters are perpetually bringing 
 to light some fresh provincial inconnu whom she 
 addressed, not as a princess claiming admiration, but 
 as a weak woman sincerely longing for affection. They 
 always vanished out of her life, having served their 
 turn, when she got back to the excitements of the 
 capital; but she was genuinely devoted to them for 
 the time being, though they rewarded her devotion 
 by offering her letters for sale. It was so with an 
 inconnu of Rouen; it was so with an inconnu 
 
 of London; and so it was with Hector B , though 
 
 this last case was the only one in which there was 
 any question of marriage, or any recognition of the 
 lover's family. 
 
 In this one case, however, everything happened 
 or at least began to happen exactly as in bour- 
 geois circles. Rachel wrote to M. B - senior as 
 " My dear and tender father," and signed herself 
 "your very devoted daughter." Her letters to the 
 son rain thickly, at least in the early days, and are 
 almost the letters of a jeune file, just affianced, 
 and much fluttered by strange sensations of un- 
 expected happiness. This is the first of them 
 
 176
 
 Rachel 
 
 July 2, 1849. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 ' You asked me to write to you as soon as 
 I arrived. Believe me, I made haste to do so, but 
 my heart beats so violently at the recollection of the 
 too short moments which I spent with you that my 
 trembling hand cannot hold the pen. My heart is 
 aching. I cannot live without you, and you are 
 not here. 
 
 " All that I love is far away from me. I cannot 
 describe to you to-day, dear friend, the joys and 
 struggles of my poor heart. It is speaking so fast 
 at this moment that my pen cannot follow it. I 
 am crushed and overcome. I cannot bear the im- 
 mense happiness which I have felt since you under- 
 stood my weak and impressionable nature. No, 
 the joy is too much for me. I laugh. I cry. I feel 
 as if I were going mad. My God ! My God ! 
 What will become of me ? I never knew what love 
 was before. 
 
 " Since parting from you I have felt myself alone 
 in the world. It seemed to me that I had lost you 
 for ever. Torrents of tears flowed from my eyes. 
 You were no longer with me, and yet the strange 
 effect of a delirious imagination I fancied that 
 I still saw you, and still held you pressed against 
 my heart. I found my lips uttering tender words, 
 and my heart beating as if I were still in your arms. 
 
 " I cannot go on. A terrible pain grips me in the 
 breast. The excess of happiness which I owe to 
 you makes me ill. Good-bye. Write to me every 
 day, and tell me a hundred times that you love me. 
 I need so much courage while I am away from you. 
 
 N 177
 
 Rachel 
 
 " I thought I should be able to rest this 
 evening, but the hope was vain. To-morrow at 
 Bayonne I have another rehearsal. It is not till 
 Thursday that I shall have a day and an evening 
 to myself. 
 
 " Can I not consecrate all that time to you ? 
 
 " On Sunday I shall be obliged to return to Mont- 
 de-Marsan. This last little town promises well for 
 the artist. 
 
 " You were quite poorly when I left you. Take 
 care of yourself, dearest. Remember that you no 
 longer belong to yourself. I, with more generosity, 
 declare myself yours without restriction. Speak, 
 give me your orders, I belong to you." 
 
 All this in a breathless, blundering, ungrammatical 
 style, not to be reproduced in a translation, yet 
 affording ample proof that Rachel employed no 
 secretary in this correspondence, but wrote her 
 letters with her own artless hand; the letters suc- 
 ceeding each other, as love-letters do in the early 
 stages of romance, with only the interval of a day 
 or two between them. It will be sufficient to quote 
 scraps. For instance 
 
 " I feel so strongly what I write so badly, but, 
 then, one always appears brilliant to him to whom 
 one says : ' I love you.' 
 
 " Ah, well ! I repeat it a hundred times, and yet 
 another hundred times, so that you can't fail to 
 think me the most brilliant woman in France, or 
 in Navarre. 
 
 " All my thoughts and all my being belong to 
 
 178
 
 Rachel 
 
 you. Never has God put more love in my heart 
 than I now feel for you." 
 
 " I love you. Believe in me. Believe in your 
 Rachel in your wife, as I must not fail to be. 
 Who will ever love you as I do? Who will ever 
 prove it to you better ? The future is all smiles 
 for me. It delights me so much that I say to my- 
 self : It is only in this last week that I have known 
 what it is to live." 
 
 ' Yesterday evening, after L and his wife 
 
 had left me alone in my room, I felt so clearly that 
 you were with me, and that I was your wife, that 
 I caught myself wishing good-night to your father. 
 He was leaving us, and I was calling him my father 
 too. I don't know how it was, but I was so over- 
 come that I fell backwards, dazed and unconscious 
 of everything except the happiness which awaits 
 us in the future." 
 
 " I will make you so happy when your Rachel 
 joins you, never to leave you again. Once more 
 I tell you, so emphatically that there shall be no 
 need for me ever to tell you again, that my life is 
 yours, and that my one and only thought to-day is 
 of returning to your dear family, which I already 
 love as if it were my own, and which, I am sure, 
 will love me for the love which I shall give their 
 darling child. ... I want to be your companion, 
 your wife." 
 
 " I want my love to rely on me as I rely on 
 N 2 179
 
 Rachel 
 
 him, and to know that I rely on him for the whole 
 of my life. . . . 
 
 " Observe, dear. Already I regard myself as so 
 completely yours that I talk business to you, just as 
 if we already had to think of the future of a dear 
 little Rachel, and a pretty and loving little Hector." 
 
 " Sir, when the time comes for me to belong to 
 you, and for me to make you as happy as I can, you 
 will feel very flattered to find yourself the possessor 
 of such a marvel as I am. It is not my fault if 
 my modesty is defective this morning. Everything 
 that I see, and everything that is said to me, makes 
 me conceited. Time enough to get back to the calm 
 pleasures of real life when I live under the same roof 
 as my country lover." 
 
 Such were the emotions of the first stage; and 
 
 Hector B poor Hector de la bonne annte 
 
 doubtless believed that all the fairy tales were 
 coming true and would prove to be eternal verities. 
 It had not occurred to him that a great actress may 
 be a superwoman, not only in respect of genius, but 
 also in respect of mutability. So true is it that one 
 half of life is hidden from those who always live in 
 the country. 
 
 He knew, of course, that Rachel was already the 
 mother of two children for she never made any 
 mystery about that; but perhaps he imagined that 
 they had been brought to her by the storks, or by 
 the doctor, or had been found among the cabbages 
 at the bottom of the garden. His whole conduct 
 impresses one as that of a man who would have been 
 
 1 80
 
 Rachel 
 
 likely to entertain that simple faith. He was to be 
 awakened from his dreams, however, before very 
 long he was to begin to be awakened from them 
 at the end of a few weeks when the passionate 
 letters were succeeded by a letter which was not so 
 passionate 
 
 ' To-morrow my vacation comes to an end. As 
 soon as the performance is over I shall be off to 
 Paris; but I do not wish to return before entreating 
 
 you, my dear B , not to join me in the capital 
 
 until I write and tell you the day on which I shall 
 have leisure to receive you without fear of interrup- 
 tion." 
 
 The change of tone is like the change from day 
 to night; and it would be idle to accuse Rachel of 
 insincerity either before the change or after it. 
 She had really seen herself, for a moment, in this 
 role of jeune fille, courted pour le bon motif ; and she 
 had played it charmingly; but she could not go on 
 playing it for ever. Her view of Hector was coloured 
 by the point of view from which she looked at him. 
 Seen from Paris, through the smoke of supper- 
 parties, Hector appeared bucolic. No doubt he 
 was bucolic compared with Arsene Houssaye, and 
 the Prince President, and Plon-Plon. His arrival 
 would have been as irrelevant as that of a skeleton 
 at the feast of promiscuous kisses. Hence the 
 letter quoted. 
 
 Only Rachel was not hard-hearted, or intention- 
 ally cruel. Indeed it would even be an exaggeration 
 to say that she was tired of Hector. The truth is 
 
 181
 
 Rachel 
 
 rather that two sides of her character struggled for 
 the mastery : on the one hand the longing for the 
 wings of a dove that she might fly away and be at 
 rest; on the other hand ambition, the joie de vivre, 
 and the greed for gold. There was so much to be 
 done, and so little time in which to do it. When- 
 ever she exerted herself she felt tired and ill. As 
 often as she recovered she found herself restless, 
 impetuous, impatient. Hector seemed to be offer- 
 ing her an escape from life. At certain moments 
 she thought she wanted it; but then the mood 
 changed, and the feeling was that she would want it 
 some day, but did not want it yet. To marry and 
 settle down remained the goal but a goal which 
 constantly receded. Before reaching it she wanted 
 more triumphs, more money more embraces. So 
 Hector was not dropped, but was put off. 
 
 " DEAR HECTOR, 
 
 " At last I am back with my family and 
 my children, and getting a little rest. I should be 
 perfectly happy if I could add that my dear friend 
 was near me, but he isn't, and unhappily he can't 
 be just yet. My reasons for not writing to you 
 before are quickly told. Listen. On the I5th of 
 next November I shall be free of my engagement 
 with the Comedie Fran9aise, for it is settled (in 
 spite of the magnificent offers made to me if I would 
 reconsider my decision) that I am not to reappear 
 on the stage in the Rue Richelieu until after a 
 two years' vacation, during which I shall be able 
 to secure the fortunes of those whom I love that 
 is to say you and yours." 
 
 182
 
 Rachel 
 
 One is far removed there from the passionate 
 effusiveness of the first six weeks. Hector now, it 
 is clear, is only one among many objects of Rachel's 
 interests and affections; but the engagement never- 
 theless continues. Rachel sends her " most tender 
 respects " to Hector's " noble father," and expresses 
 a desire for his " blessing." She promises to visit 
 him, saying : " My mother, who is my best friend, 
 will come with me " ; and there remain a good many 
 other letters, whether they are rightly to be called 
 love-letters or not, to be reviewed. 
 
 183
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The German tour Quarrel with Hector B . 
 
 RACHEL, as we have seen, having pulled wires 
 and nominated the Director of her choice, made 
 her peace with the Comedie Frangaise. Conse- 
 quently, instead of retiring for two years, as she 
 had threatened to do, she contented herself with 
 four months' leave of absence, which she did not 
 take immediately, consenting, in the meanwhile, 
 to appear in Dumas' Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle and 
 Victor Hugo's Angela. The former piece was a 
 failure, for which the author held her to blame. 
 The latter was only a succes d'estime, the author's 
 royalties for fourteen performances amounting to 
 no more than 144. After that came the famous 
 and successful tour in Germany; and, in the mean- 
 time, the correspondence with Hector B ran 
 
 its course, diminishing in ardour as it proceeded. 
 
 The first letter which catches the eye is one in 
 which Rachel apologizes for having let ten days 
 pass without writing, and pleads that she is too busy 
 to give full particulars of the way in which she is 
 spending her time. She will tell Hector all about 
 that when she sees him. In the meantime she 
 thanks Hector's father for having thought her worthy 
 to " throw flowers on the grave of his children," and 
 bids Hector himself " rely on me as I know that I 
 can rely on you." The next letters are filled with 
 
 184
 
 Rachel 
 
 dramatic gossip, accompanied by melancholy intima- 
 tions of weakening health : 
 
 ' Yesterday I played Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle. 
 My intelligence was up to the mark, but my physical 
 force failed me. I must not be frightened. I ought 
 to have rested a few days longer ; but my great desire 
 to reconquer my public caused me to presume on 
 my strength. . . . Prince Louis was present on 
 this solemn occasion, and I saw him applaud me over 
 and over again." 
 
 Whether Prince Louis had yet acquired that habit, 
 attributed to him by Arsene Houssaye, of kissing 
 Rachel does not appear. If so, it was not a matter 
 to be mentioned to Hector; so Rachel continues 
 
 1 To-day I feel quite exhausted, but I did not like 
 to let the day pass without writing to you. My 
 health causes me some anxiety. I cough a great 
 deal, and I am getting thin, so you may imagine 
 how bad I feel. If I am not better when the spring 
 returns it will really be the end of everything for 
 me. But life is so good, and God has made things so 
 pleasant for me, that I do hope I shall soon be as 
 well as ordinary people. ... I expect I shall have 
 four very profitable months in Germany, where I 
 have never been, though they have long wanted 
 to see me there. You, see, I am becoming quite a 
 woman of business." 
 
 And then, evidently in reply to a letter exhorting 
 her to take care of herself 
 
 185
 
 Rachel 
 
 ' Yes, my health is in a very shaky state, and if 
 I want my career to be worthy of me, to last, that 
 is to say, a few years longer, I really must be very 
 quiet and careful. Your good advice, my dear 
 Hector, will complete my cure, though I think you 
 push your melancholy predictions rather far. I for- 
 give you, however, in view of your almost paternal 
 interest in me." 
 
 She adds that she is now better than she has 
 been 
 
 " Since my last journey the pains in my chest 
 have ceased. I think this improvement must be 
 due to the warm weather which is now beginning. 
 The winter is deadly to me, and the return of 
 spring delights me, and enables me to thank God 
 for all the joys of life and all the good fortune 
 which makes life agreeable. I am going to create 
 a new part. We are rehearsing every day." 
 
 The new part was that of Tisbe in Victor Hugo's 
 play. Rachel, with professional exaggeration, speaks 
 of her appearance in it as " a veritable triumph," 
 adding that prose seems to lose its vulgarity when 
 uttered by her lips. She is, she says, " the happiest 
 of women in a world in which tears are more 
 frequent than joys " the happier because her sister 
 Rebecca has appeared with her, in a part formerly 
 taken by Marie Dorval, and acquitted herself 
 " charmingly." 
 
 Then she went off, in a blaze of glory, to Vienna, 
 and Berlin, and Potsdam. 
 
 1 86
 
 Rachel 
 
 There is no question of the reality of her triumphs. 
 The record of it is in many letters, not only in those 
 to the fianc . For instance 
 
 " My successes in Austria surpass any that I have 
 achieved since I have been on the stage. The woman 
 and the tragedienne dispute the honours. When 
 I am not playing I am invited out and made much 
 of. The greatest personages and the noblest ladies 
 in the land take me for drives and make a fuss about 
 me. The day before yesterday I dined at one of 
 the Emperor's palaces. His Imperial Majesty's 
 carriages took us for a drive in the park, and Raphael 
 has received permission to fish in the Emperor's 
 private lake. . . . To-morrow the Grand Chamberlain 
 is going to show us the crown jewels. 
 
 " Apropos of crowns I believe the excellent Vien- 
 nese are having an elegant crown made for me, only 
 they tell me that it cannot be finished until after 
 my departure." 
 
 This from Vienna to Rebecca. For the chronicle 
 of the triumph in Prussia we must turn to a letter 
 to another correspondent. Rachel tells him of a 
 performance given at Potsdam at which only " the 
 august members of the royal family and their retinue " 
 were present. " Little Rachel " was treated " as 
 if she had really been the king's guest." The Crown 
 Prince and Prince Frederick of the Netherlands 
 showed her over the palace of Sans-Souci. The 
 Empress of Russia, who was on a visit to the Prussian 
 Court, referred to the Court etiquette, which forbade 
 applause, but added : " To applaud you, however, 
 
 187
 
 Rachel 
 
 mademoiselle, would have been impossible, for my 
 emotion was too intense." The Tsar himself told 
 Rachel that she was " even greater than her reputa- 
 tion," and begged that she would honour his country 
 by visiting it. The letter proceeds 
 
 " One needs a strong head to resist such ovations. 
 All the flattering things that have been said to me, all 
 the incense I have inhaled, all the compliments and 
 bouquets I have received, and all the quaint names 
 of the heads of royal houses who have clamoured 
 to be presented to me there has been enough of 
 all this to fill the life of an ambitious artist. Talma 
 and Mars, my illustrious predecessors, never enj oyed 
 such ovations, and, in truth, I am very happy about 
 it; only it ought to make me nice to people rather 
 than proud, for, if I owe something to my own merits, 
 circumstances have also favoured me. But, stay, 
 I was forgetting the finest triumph of all; and that 
 is the best proof that my head is not too swollen. 
 Fancy that the Tsar, coming to speak to me, and 
 observing that my exertions had tired me, stood 
 while speaking, and compelled me to remain seated. 
 Respect for his grandeur made me spring out of 
 my chair, but the Emperor gallantly made me 
 sit down again, taking hold of my two hands, and 
 saying : ' Remain in your place, mademoiselle, I 
 beg you, unless you desire me to withdraw. Sove- 
 reignties such as mine pass. The kingdom of art 
 abides for ever.' ' 
 
 " Fancy that ! " those are the words which one 
 seems to hear Rachel uttering. She, the daughter, 
 
 1 88
 
 Rachel 
 
 as she exultantly exclaimed, of " father and mother 
 Felix," the daughter of the pedlar and the old 
 clothes-woman, acclaimed, in court circles, As a 
 more sublime sovereign than the Tsar of all the 
 Russias! Decidedly she had done well for herself 
 on the other side of the Rubicon. She had not 
 been educated to know that it is precisely by such 
 exaggerated politeness that royalty sometimes marks 
 its sense of its own immeasurable superiority to 
 persons born outside the magic ring; and there was, 
 at any rate, no room for doubt as to the value of 
 the gifts which royalty bestowed. The Tsar's gift 
 consisted of two magnificent opals set in brilliants. 
 The King of Prussia gave twenty thousand francs. 
 Rachel was indeed in a fair way to "secure the 
 future" of those who depended on her. 
 
 And Hector ? 
 
 Hector, it would seem, was still Hector de la 
 bonne annte, still supported by that faith which 
 is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence 
 of things not seen, still fondly hugging the belief 
 that the fairy tales would come true, if not immedi- 
 ately, at least after the delay which caprices, dis- 
 guised as necessities, imposed. Only that delay 
 promised to be long. Rachel could not bring herself 
 to assign a limit to it; and Hector could not help 
 observing that her letters were both less frequent 
 and less affectionate than of old. 
 
 It was a relief to him, no doubt, to learn that 
 Rachel had temporarily ceased to be troubled by 
 tightness of the chest. He may have been pleased 
 to read that the Comte de Chambord had paid her 
 compliments, and that the Grand Duchess Helene 
 
 189
 
 Rachel 
 
 had given her a pair of earrings. But what was he 
 to make of this ? 
 
 " I shall not draw you a picture of the capital of 
 Germany. I have not yet left my apartment except 
 to go to the theatre or to dine in town. You know 
 how lazy I am. I am a veritable bear. When once 
 I have settled down it is very difficult to get me out 
 of my retreat. I shall not quit it, my friend, until 
 the day when I take my great and solemn resolution 
 to get married; and then I shall be the most melan- 
 choly, reserved and domesticated little creature 
 that I know. 
 
 11 If you can write to me now and then and let 
 me know what you have to say about the long j ourney 
 which lies in front of me before my vacation will 
 be over, I shall be very glad to read what you write, 
 and will answer your letter as soon as possible. 
 Perhaps I shall be able to send you from here the 
 portrait which you asked for." 
 
 There was little indeed to be made of that except 
 that tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse that the flame 
 of Rachel's passion, once so fierce, was now but a 
 poor flicker that, in her real life, as in her stage 
 life, she must create a new part from time to time, 
 and that, in short 
 
 Souvent femme varie : 
 Bien fol qui s'y fie. 
 
 Hector, it would appear, drew the moral reluct- 
 antly; but he had to draw it. Exactly what passed 
 one does not know, but the following letter furnishes 
 certain indications : 
 
 190
 
 Rachel 
 
 " MY DEAR HECTOR, 
 
 " I hardly understand what N has just 
 
 told me, but he says that you are furiously angry 
 with me, and I want to see you in order to have an 
 explanation with you about a certain ball at which 
 you seem to think that I behaved in a manner in 
 which I should not have behaved in view of your 
 affectionate regard for me. I don't know what all 
 this means, but I can assure you that balls are a 
 matter of indifference to me. It is nearly three 
 years since I last went to one; and, what is more, 
 if I had been well enough to go last Thursday, and 
 if I had been silly enough to seek my pleasure in 
 such a place, it would not have been for the purpose 
 of annoying you. You are the most loyal man whom 
 I know, and I am sufficiently fond of you to be sorry 
 that you should misunderstand me. 
 
 " Come and see me to-morrow morning. You 
 ought to have been to see me two days ago. 
 
 " Alas ! my poor B . Already you are becom- 
 ing a Parisian. Already you are in a fair way to 
 lose those illusions of the heart which are the best 
 part of life." 
 
 And no doubt Hector was in a fair way to lose 
 any illusions which he had not already lost; and no 
 doubt the time was fast approaching when he would 
 be no longer Hector de la bonne annde, but a Hector 
 who had passed through the fire and emerged from 
 it, with his wings singed, but with his lesson learnt. 
 The spectacle of Rachel rebuking him for having lost 
 his faith in what she admits to have been illusion 
 adds a moving touch of irony to the narrative. 
 
 191
 
 Rachel 
 
 What happened next whether Hector fought 
 for the retention of his vanishing illusions or let 
 them go without a struggle is obscure; but there 
 is another brief note which demonstrates that he 
 did not retain them long. 
 
 " MY DEAR HECTOR, 
 
 " I am sure I am quite as anxious to see you 
 as you are to see me. 
 
 " Come and call, then. I shall be at home until 
 two o'clock." 
 
 That is all. We read between the lines that there 
 has been a lovers' quarrel, which will not easily be 
 made up for lack of any sincere desire to make it up. 
 Evidently it was not made up; for this stiff note is 
 the last of the series. The dead bourgeoise which 
 had come to life in Rachel's bosom had died its 
 second death. She had made her brief excursion 
 into sincerity a sort of vacation tour and had 
 returned from it. The nervous life of Paris once 
 more had her in its grip. Poor Hector was altogether 
 too provincial to be her partner. He must suffer, 
 and get over his suffering as best he could ; the queens 
 of the theatre being entitled to their victims. Rachel 
 wanted quite other admirers a prince who, like 
 Walewski, would do things in style for her, and an 
 amant de caeur, who was not too naive, but under- 
 stood theatrical love-making and its limitations. 
 And that, of course, brings us back to Plon-Plon 
 (of whom there is little to be said except that he 
 made love to nearly all the actresses of his period 
 in quick succession, being taken away by Rachel 
 from Judith), and also brings us on to Ponsard. 
 
 192
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Rachel and Ponsard The tour in Russia. 
 
 PONSARD, like Hector, had grown up in the pro- 
 vinces; but, unlike Hector, he had not stayed there. 
 From Vienne in Dauphind he had found his way to 
 Paris and become a dramatic author; and it was in 
 that capacity that he had first been blown about 
 by the gusts of Rachel's caprices. 
 
 He had arranged for the production of his Char- 
 lotte Corday at the Odeon. Rachel heard of it. 
 She either knew, or inquired, who Charlotte Corday 
 was ; and she demanded that the play should be 
 at once withdrawn from the Odeon and submitted 
 for her inspection, as she fancied that she " saw 
 herself " in the title role. This after the manager 
 of the Odeon had already distributed the parts 
 among the members of his company ! 
 
 The thing could only be done by permission of 
 the Minister of the Interior; but obstacles of that 
 sort were trifles to Rachel. Arsene Houssaye was 
 " her man," willing humbly to do her bidding. He 
 accepted her commission to wait upon the Minister 
 of the Interior and inform him of her desire. The 
 Minister of the Interior knew what everybody in 
 Paris knew that Rachel had influence in even higher 
 places than his office; so he not only submitted to 
 her will, but arranged a dinner-party at the con- 
 clusion of which Ponsard was to read his play.
 
 Rachel 
 
 Ponsard read it, as he supposed, amid enthusiastic 
 approbation; but, before he had finished reading, 
 Rachel had whispered to Arsene Houssaye that no- 
 thing on earth would induce her to appear in " that 
 idiotic part." She not only said this but meant it, 
 and the part was therefore given to Judith, who made 
 a great success in it. That was not what Rachel 
 had intended; so, after the third performance, she 
 called upon Ponsard and demanded that the part 
 which she had refused with scorn should now be 
 taken away from her rival and given to her. That, 
 however, was more than Ponsard could promise. 
 He undertook, instead, to write a new piece ex- 
 pressly for Rachel. He duly wrote it ; she duly 
 appeared in it; and then he underwent the charm. 
 
 But not, we may be sure, in the same way, or 
 to the same degree as Hector de la bonne ann^e; 
 for a dramatic author's attitude towards actresses, 
 however much they may charm him, can never be 
 quite that of a young man from the country. Ex- 
 perience has taught him things which a young man 
 from the country does not know. He does not 
 credit the interpreter with all the virtues of the part 
 which he has created for her to interpret, preferring 
 to reserve some of the glory for himself. He knows 
 that he must not ask an actress for more than she 
 has to give. He even knows, as a rule, that it is 
 over-sanguine to ask her for all that she has to 
 give; for he is aware that there are likely to be 
 other applications for her favours dona ferentes 
 applicants whose applications she cannot afford to 
 overlook if she desires to be more richly bejewelled 
 than her rivals. 
 
 194
 
 Rachel 
 
 So with Ponsard. He was a delightful stage lover 
 one who well understood the limitations of the art. 
 He accepted the gifts of Heaven without allowing 
 jealousy to trouble him because he was not the sole 
 recipient of them. He was not blind, but there 
 were certain things which he refused to see, because 
 he knew that they would spoil the picture. It 
 was Rachel's whim that he should meet her from 
 time to time on her travels, and he fell in with it. 
 The letters which he wrote her from his country 
 retreat at Vienne are full of charm. Though the 
 story in them amounts to nothing, one cannot 
 refrain from giving extracts : 
 
 u Dearest, here I am back again in my solitude. 
 They serenaded me delightfully. My friends have 
 shaken my hand, and my dogs have eaten me. I 
 have nothing left, except a heart to love you and 
 a hand to write to you. 
 
 ' The first two days were delightful, but I wanted 
 you there to complete the charm. On the third 
 day I felt very lonely, and now I should be bored to 
 death if it were not for my memories. You have 
 stripped my poor trees and my dear old hills of their 
 enchantment. They are insipid companions now 
 that my dreams are of my dear comrade." 
 
 " Good and dearly loved Rachel, your letter 
 was charming and brought joy to my heart. I was 
 looking out of the window, like Sister Anne, and could 
 see nothing coming; but at last the postman came 
 with a ray of sunshine for me in his pocket a 
 true ray of sunshine in the midst of unceasing rains, 
 o 2 195
 
 Rachel 
 
 I am bored. I am bored to death. It rains on 
 the fields and in my heart. The recollection of our 
 happy time makes me so sad. . . . 
 
 ". . .Yes, I believe in your affection, but I am 
 not angry when people talk to me about it. When 
 one loves, one also fears. It is quite natural that 
 I should love you because you are infinitely lovable; 
 but it is not at all natural to be loved by one of the 
 good God's most charming creatures when one is 
 cross and stupid as I too often am." 
 
 " Dear loved one, whom I love so tenderly, I 
 received at Paris the kiss which you sent to Vienne, 
 the mail having brought them to me here. I 
 keep them in my heart and on my lips in imagina- 
 tion, alas ! as a treasure ; but I shall soon come and 
 return them to you. I love you. It is not I who 
 shall cease to love you, but you, madam, who will 
 perceive, some day that your friend is not lovable 
 at all, though very loving; and when that day 
 comes there will be nothing left for me but to bury 
 myself far away in a lonely place." 
 
 " Ah ! the charming, the delightful, the ravishing 
 pilgrimage which we are to make to Spa, to Aix, 
 to Vienne. My mouth waters at the thought of 
 it, and I dream of it day and night. ' See Naples 
 and die,' says the proverb. I would gladly spend 
 my whole life in this journey and then die when 
 it was over. In the meantime I am dying I am 
 dead and I await a kiss to bring me to life again." 
 
 Those, one feels sure, were the best love-letters 
 that Rachel ever received the best and the most 
 
 196
 
 Rachel 
 
 appropriate. They are sentimental without being 
 silly ; they say a little more than the writer means 
 and yet not much more. Perhaps we may put it 
 that they say what he would have been glad to 
 mean if he had not known better. Ponsard could not 
 have been reproached, like Hector, for having lost 
 the " illusions of the heart." He knew very well 
 that they were illusions, but he clung to them and 
 enjoyed them, much in the spirit in which one enjoys 
 the illusions of the theatre. The awakening from 
 them, having been discounted, would be compara- 
 tively easy, but their charm, while they lasted, 
 was great. We need not speculate whether those 
 are happiest who take life in that temper. They 
 run, at any rate, the least risk of making shipwreck 
 of their lives. 
 
 Ponsard, at least, made no shipwreck of his life. 
 He enjoyed what he could attain, without sighing 
 for the unattainable or, at all events, without 
 screaming for it. It could not be helped so one 
 imagines him reflecting that Rachel's affectionate 
 regard for him ran concurrently with her tender- 
 ness for the Emperor's cousin. The relations of 
 the stage to society were such that coincidences 
 of the kind were not easily to be avoided; and the 
 smiles of actresses were like the rain which falls 
 equally on the just and on the unjust. So why 
 make a fuss about it ? Why not enjoy while one 
 could ? Even if love was only a game to Rachel, it 
 was very pleasant to be privileged to play with 
 her. So Ponsard wrote : 
 
 " If you are free for ten days or a fortnight 
 
 197
 
 Rachel 
 
 towards the end of July, and if you would still like to 
 see me, I might come and fetch you, and we could 
 spend four days at Aix, which is quite near Vienne, 
 and then you could come home with me. I should 
 very much prefer, though, to take you to the Swiss 
 valleys and the torrents of Mont Blanc. That, 
 too, is only a matter of four days; and four days 
 well spent are a treasure of keen emotion for the 
 present and a charming recollection for the times 
 to come. 
 
 " Farewell, dear Rachel ! I love you more than 
 you think, and I am longing to see you." 
 
 But the game was coming to an end, though with- 
 out any audible lamentations. Rachel had made up 
 her mind to accept the Tsar's invitation to play at 
 Saint Petersburg. It was not Ponsard but Plon- 
 Plon who showed sighs of agitation at her departure. 
 Plon-Plon is said even to have pulled the wires of 
 diplomacy in the hope of preventing it ; but when it 
 came to pulling wires Rachel was a match for the 
 ablest. 
 
 The Crimean war was imminent its premonitory 
 rumblings were already in the air. It was easy to 
 represent that Rachel was proposing to make sport 
 for the enemies of France; and she was, in fact, 
 accused, alike by journalists and by caricaturists, 
 of unpatriotic greed. But the charges did not 
 trouble her. There had been indications that the 
 enthusiasm of the Parisian public for her was 
 flagging. Jules Janin had accused her of play- 
 ing Phedre "as if she had had too much to 
 drink." She might hope to reconquer France in 
 
 198
 
 Rachel 
 
 Saint Petersburg, just as England had conquered 
 France in Canada and the Indies. Moreover glory 
 was more to her than patriotism and so was money. 
 So Plon-Plon pulled the wires in vain. Early in 
 1854 Rachel was off, in spite of him, for the Russian 
 Eldorado. 
 
 Her first letter (to her mother) is from Warsaw. 
 She rejoices in the weather there has been no drop 
 of rain to compel her to close the carriage window. 
 She rejoices in the Polish cuisine it reminds her 
 of her mother's cooking. She complains of the pro- 
 digious charges of the Polish hotels four francs for 
 a cutlet, three francs for a plate of soup, fourteen 
 francs for a bottle of table wine. She philosophizes 
 concerning the sorrowful fate of the Poles 
 
 " I have heard so much of this poor Poland 
 of its greatness and its fall. And then I am half 
 Polish at heart on account of my little Alexandre. 1 
 So I have looked with both eyes at all that was to 
 be seen from the windows of the railway carriage 
 and the hotel; and I have listened, with both my 
 ears, to all that I have heard; and with all my heart 
 I pity this great people deprived of its chief good 
 thing, its liberty." 
 
 Strange reflections, perhaps, for one about to 
 make sport for the conquerors of Poland ; but 
 Rachel's reflections on impersonal subjects are not, 
 of course, to be taken seriously. She may have 
 thought that it would gratify Polish patriots to 
 see her plunder their oppressors, even though she 
 
 1 Her son by Walewski. 
 199
 
 Rachel 
 
 kept the plunder for herself. It does not matter. 
 At all events she did plunder them, and they let 
 themselves be plundered gladly. 
 
 On the night of her first appearance in Phedre 
 the house held 480. The receipts of ten successive 
 performances amounted to 3,920. Within a fort- 
 night of her arrival she had sent home 3,200 to 
 her father, with instructions to invest it in house 
 property. At the end of five weeks her gains 
 amounted to 8,000. Altogether she amassed about 
 12,000, and she wrote with scorn of the Com^die 
 Fran9aise as "la grande boutique degeneree." 
 
 The presents, too, were on the same scale of magni- 
 ficence. The Tsar himself gave a ring of emeralds 
 and brilliants, a pair of earrings of rubies, emeralds 
 and brilliants, and a brooch with an opal pendant, 
 surrounded by forty-five brilliants. From the Tsar- 
 ina came a set of the most costly furs in the world. 
 Other admirers bestowed every imaginable article 
 of silver plate, from salad bowls to salt cellars. 
 And then the Tsarina supplemented her original 
 gifts with a casket of malachite and gilded bronze, 
 and a she-ass, so that Rachel might sustain her 
 health with asses' milk. 
 
 Ponsard, though, as has been said, the game which 
 she played with him was practically over, was still 
 in her confidence. She boasted to him of the bene- 
 factions showered upon her, and he applauded her 
 determination thus to accumulate wealth. It was 
 right, he said, that she should be rich. It was 
 right that she should leave a great fortune to her 
 children, so that she might never be brought to 
 begging her bread miserably like poor George. 
 
 200
 
 Rachel 
 
 And he made her a present of a precedent for 
 her conduct : 
 
 " My friend Voltaire, who was common sense 
 incarnate, often used to say : ' I came early in life 
 to the conclusion that a man of letters without 
 money would have no real consideration paid to 
 him. So I began by making my fortune, and, 
 after I had made it, I wrote as I chose, and was 
 able to impose my ideas on the world. My riches 
 have given authority to my writings.' 
 
 " That is what Voltaire did. That is what I 
 should have done if I had been able to. That is 
 what Rachel is able to do, and Rachel is quite right 
 to do it." 
 
 Ponsard was also informed that a swarm of ad- 
 mirers had arisen, as usual, and that several of them 
 had offered marriage. Madame Fe"lix was told of 
 the crowds which followed her daughter through the 
 streets, and crowning glory of the banquet given 
 in her honour at the Imperial Palace : " Fancy that ! 
 Me ! The daughter of father and mother Felix ! ' 
 And then the letter speaks of the plush and powder 
 of the lackeys who took Rachel's cloak from her, 
 and bawled out her name ; and it continues : 
 
 " There were only thirty guests ! But what 
 guests they were ! The imperial family, the grand 
 dukes, the archdukes, the little dukes ! And all this 
 medley of princes and princesses, inquisitive and 
 attentive, devouring me with their eyes, watching my 
 least movement, listening to my least word, observ- 
 
 201
 
 Rachel 
 
 ing my smiles, never taking their eyes off me. But 
 don't imagine that I felt embarrassed. Not the least 
 bit in the world. I behaved just as usual, at all events 
 until the middle of the banquet every one seeming 
 to be much more interested in me than in the menu. 
 Presently they proceeded to drink my health, and 
 then there was a most extraordinary spectacle. 
 In order to get a nearer view of me the young 
 archdukes left their places, climbed on to their 
 chairs, and even put their feet on the table, and 
 almost in the dishes, without seeming to shock any 
 one, for even the princes in this country are still 
 rather like savages. Then they shouted their bravos 
 loud enough to deafen me, and called upon me to 
 respond. To respond to a toast by reciting a frag- 
 ment of a tragedy was rather a strange idea, but I 
 was not to be disconcerted by such a trifle as that. 
 I rose and, pushing back my chair, assumed the 
 most tragic gesture in my repertory, and gave them 
 the great scene in Phedre. Then there was a silence 
 like death you could have heard a pin drop. 
 All my auditors listened religiously, leaning forward, 
 gaping at me, contenting themselves with stifled 
 cries and gestures of admiration. Then, when I 
 had finished, there were fresh cheers and fresh 
 toasts and clinking of glasses which, for an instant, 
 quite bewildered me. Presently I too got excited 
 by the wine and the flowers and the enthusiasm, 
 which was very pleasing to my pride, and I rose 
 again and chanted the Russian national anthem. 
 Then enthusiasm was no longer the word it was 
 a case of delirium. They thronged round me, and 
 shook my hands, and thanked me. I was the 
 
 202
 
 Rachel 
 
 greatest tragedienne in the world the greatest 
 tragedienne of the present, the past and the 
 future and so on for a whole quarter of an hour. 
 
 " But there comes an end even to the best of 
 things, and the hour for retiring had struck. I 
 withdrew with the same queenly dignity with which 
 I had arrived, escorted to the grand staircase by 
 the same grand duke, who was very gallant though 
 very ceremonious. Then there arrived gigantic 
 powdered valets, one of them carrying my cloak. 
 I put it on, and they escorted me to my carriage, 
 which was surrounded by other footmen, holding 
 torches to illuminate my departure." 
 
 So she rattled on, breathlessly and ungrammatic- 
 ally as usual, confusing archdukes and grand-dukes 
 with artless ignorance, and obviously intoxicated 
 with delight. Of all her triumphs this was un- 
 questionably the most spectacular. One can imagine 
 her reflecting, if she had been capable of such 
 reflections, that art has no nationality and that 
 posterity begins at the frontier; for the men who 
 thus worshipped her as a goddess were the men 
 who were presently to be the enemies of her country, 
 and they knew it, and made no secret of their know- 
 ledge. They boasted to her that they expected 
 presently to be drinking the French champagne in 
 France. She had wit enough to reply that she 
 hardly thought the French Government was likely 
 to supply champagne to prisoners of war; but she 
 had not wit enough to perceive that the speech 
 was an affront which effectually cancelled all the 
 remarkable homage paid to her. 
 
 203
 
 Rachel 
 
 France, at any rate, did not consider that her 
 repartee redeemed her unpatriotic conduct in mak- 
 ing sport for the enemies of France. Nor was 
 France favourably impressed by her description 
 of her profits as " spoils of war taken from the 
 enemy." That sentiment had too Hebrew a ring to 
 gain the applause of the French. It was counter- 
 balanced by stories to the effect that Rachel was 
 the last Frenchwoman to leave Russia before the 
 war, and that she had been inclined to smile on 
 the proposal that the Tsar should detain her as a 
 hostage. 
 
 So that, at the very acme of her glory, Rachel's 
 position was beginning to be undermined. She went 
 back to a Paris which, if not yet hostile, was, at 
 least, disposed to be hostile; and she awakened 
 from her dream of fame and diamonds to find cer- 
 tain grave realities awaiting her illness in her family, 
 dramatic authors in a quarrelsome mood, and a young 
 and formidable rival aspiring to supplant her. 
 
 204
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Return to Paris Death of Rachel's sister Rebecca Relations with 
 Legouve Adrienne Lecouvreur. 
 
 REFERENCE has already been made, more than 
 once, to Rachel's undeviating loyalty to her Tribe; 
 and there can be no question that it was a loyalty 
 based upon affection. In her relations with her 
 family we always find her confidential and sincere, 
 dropping the artifices of the actress, and revealing 
 a woman who was really womanly. She was never 
 capricious with them, as with her lovers, her 
 colleagues, the dramatists and Samson. 
 
 No doubt there are one or two strange stories 
 afloat on this branch of the subject. It is related, 
 for instance, that, at times of embarrassment due to 
 extravagance, Rachel borrowed from her mother, and 
 that Madame Felix did not think it safe to lend to 
 her without requiring some valuable article of 
 jewellery to be deposited with her as a pledge; but 
 what of that ? Old clothes-women, whether of the 
 Hebrew or any other race, are apt to acquire such 
 cautious habits; and the money which Rachel bor- 
 rowed on these terms was, after all, money which she 
 herself had earned and given. 
 
 And she gave freely, quite falling in with 
 the view which her father, the ex-pedlar, had 
 expressed to Samson, that, as his daughter had talent, 
 he ought to make something out of her. There was 
 
 205
 
 Rachel 
 
 no member of her family, indeed, who did not make 
 something out of her. It was she who paid for the 
 education which enabled her younger sisters to earn 
 a living for themselves, and then pushed them into 
 positions which their attainments hardly qualified 
 them to occupy. Year after year she paid the debts 
 of her elder sister, Sarah of the Supper-parties; and 
 the necessity of doing so never estranged her from 
 Sarah, who remained her confidential correspondent 
 until the last; and we have seen her anticipating 
 Arthur Bertrand's demands for help by the plea that 
 her brother Raphael had " cleaned her out." But 
 the one really deep and enduring affection of her 
 life was for Rebecca. She had insisted, holding out 
 the threat of her own resignation if she did not get 
 her way, that Rebecca should be admitted to the 
 Comedie Frangaise; and we may borrow a story, 
 illustrative of her playful fondness for her sister, 
 from Madame Faucigny-Lucinge's Rachel et son 
 Temps 
 
 " One evening, when the two sisters had been 
 playing in Victor Hugo's Angela, and Rebecca 
 had been received with enthusiasm in the part of 
 Catarina Bragadini, Rachel said to her 
 
 " ' My dear child, you played like an angel. I 
 want to reward you. Take me to supper at your 
 flat.' 
 
 " ' At my flat ! ' exclaimed the young actress, 
 still in a flutter at her triumph and her ovations. 
 ' You mean to say at home ! ' 
 
 " ' Not at all ! At your flat ! Here is the key/ 
 rejoined Rachel. 
 
 206
 
 Rachel 
 
 "And Tisbe handed Catarina a key, which was 
 not the key entrusted to her by Angelo in the play; 
 and they started off Rebecca immensely puzzled. 
 Rachel's coupe set them down at the door of a 
 pretty house in the Rue Mogador, a few yards from 
 the tragedienne's magnificent mansion in the Rue 
 Trudon, where she had surrounded herself with all 
 the splendours and refinements of luxury. Rebecca 
 thought she must be dreaming, or that this was some 
 fantastic comedy in which she was being made to 
 play a part. They went up the stairs to the second 
 floor. 
 
 " ' Here we are,' said Rachel. ' Open the door ! ' 
 
 " Rebecca was about to do so; but the door was 
 already opening in answer to the bell, and there 
 appeared a housekeeper of benevolent aspect, with 
 a candle in her hand. 
 
 ' ' What ! It is Marguerite ! ' exclaimed the 
 young actress, astounded to meet an old friend of 
 her childhood. 
 
 " ' Yes, come in/ said Rachel." 
 
 The flat, fully furnished, was her gift to her 
 favourite sister, and she had sprung it on her as 
 a happy theatrical surprise. Her life contains many 
 scenes more splendid, but none more pleasing. 
 Sincerity and theatricality meet in it. And now, 
 at the hour of Rachel's acclamation by the grandest 
 of the grand dukes of Russia, she heard bad news 
 about Rebecca. 
 
 " Je vous laisse Rebecca," had been Rachel's 
 last words to her comrades of the theatre when they 
 reproached her for leaving them for so long. " C'est 
 
 207
 
 Rachel 
 
 le trait des Parthes," had been their answer. It 
 indicated, of course, a very poor opinion of Rebecca's 
 acting; but that did not matter to Rachel. She had 
 placed Rebecca at the Theatre Franais in the 
 interest of the Tribe of Felix, not in the interest of 
 dramatic art. But Rebecca had had typhus fever, 
 and, in the course of her convalescence, the symptoms 
 of consumption had declared themselves; and we 
 find Rachel writing from Warsaw to Sarah 
 
 "My mother writes to me that her health is quite 
 re-established. You know how glad I am. But it 
 seems that it is by no means the same with poor 
 Rebec, and that is a terrible trouble to me. I shall 
 certainly go and spend a week with her at Pau after 
 the I3th of May, for I am sure my dear little sister 
 will be glad to see me. I have told my mother that 
 I am astounded that she should have been allowed 
 to go alone with her maid. What is a family for 
 it if does not show its devotion at such a time as 
 that ? " 
 
 So Rachel hurried off to the Pyrenees, and found 
 Rebecca fighting for her life. " I want to live," 
 she said. " One does not die at twenty when one 
 is the sister of the great Rachel "; and the delusive 
 malady gave, as it so often does, the false promise 
 of yielding to climate and treatment. Rachel set 
 out to return to Paris, deceived by the apparent 
 improvement; but the news of a relapse followed 
 only a stage or two behind her, and when it overtook 
 her she hurried south again. When next she came 
 north it was to bring her sister's body for burial in 
 
 208
 
 Rachel 
 
 a Paris cemetery. The principal speech over the 
 grave was made by Jules Janin; and it was character- 
 istic of that fluent, inadequate man that his long 
 discourse was not a cry of grief for the dead, 
 but an elaborate eulogy of Rachel's genius and 
 devotion. Samson, who followed him, spoke from 
 the heart; but Rachel, whom some theatrical 
 quarrel had estranged from him, offered him no 
 word of thanks. Let us hope that theatrical 
 quarrels are not often so bitter, or so infected with 
 false pride. 
 
 Such was the first of the grievous realities to which 
 Rachel returned. The second was the dispute, 
 ending in a fierce trial of strength, with Ernest 
 Legouve, whom success had made sensitive and 
 arrogant, and who felt himself in a position to 
 boast that, if he had not made Rachel's reputation, 
 at all events he could do a good deal towards 
 unmaking it. 
 
 His first relations with her had been due to 
 Scribe. She had asked Scribe for a play, and Scribe 
 had been alarmed by the commission. He dared not, 
 he said, enter into competition with Corneille and 
 Racine; but Legouve laughed at his timidity. 
 " Have you the courage, yourself," asked Scribe, 
 ' to write prose for the interpreter of Phedre and 
 Camille ? ' " Most certainly I have," Legouve 
 answered. ' Very well. Find me a subject, and 
 we will collaborate." "Agreed." 
 
 The subject which Legouve found was Adrienne 
 Lecouvreur; and Scribe bounded out of his chair in 
 his delight. " Good," he exclaimed. " That will 
 p 209
 
 Rachel 
 
 run a hundred nights to houses of six thousand 
 francs." " You think so ? ' "I don't think so. 
 I am sure of it. Your subject is a veritable treasure- 
 trove. You have discovered the only means of 
 making Rachel speak in prose. We'll set to work 
 to-morrow." So the appointment was kept, and 
 the piece was written; and the next thing that hap- 
 pened was that Rachel capriciously decided that she 
 did not want it. Some one had whispered to her that 
 the interpreter of Racine must not stoop to be the 
 interpreter of Eugene Scribe. When the play was 
 read, therefore, she listened with a face as expression- 
 less as marble, and announced that she did not think 
 the part would suit her. 
 
 In private she expressed herself even more vigor- 
 ously. She did not like, she said, to say " no " 
 to M. Legouve, but nothing should induce her to 
 
 play that . " I hesitate," Legouve writes, " to 
 
 print the word she used, for it was very energetic 
 and quite outside the classical repertory." Scribe, 
 in the circumstances, proposed to accept an offer 
 which had been made to stage the piece at another 
 theatre; but Legouve, unwilling to admit himself 
 beaten, undertook to talk Rachel over. He per- 
 suaded her to hear the piece read again. On the 
 previous occasion Scribe had read it, and he read 
 badly. This time Legouve read it, and he read 
 brilliantly. Rachel listened, at first with impatience, 
 but soon with keen and eager interest. " What a 
 fool I was ! " she cried at last; and she threw her 
 arms round the reader's neck, and embraced him 
 in her best theatrical style. 
 
 So Adrienne Lecouvreur was produced, and made 
 
 210
 
 Rachel 
 
 the great success which Scribe had predicted for it; 
 with the result that the creator and the interpreter 
 were, for a long time, the best friends in the world. 
 It was at one of the rehearsals that there occurred 
 a certain pathetic scene to which reference has 
 already been made. This is Legouve's account of 
 it- 
 
 ' ' My dear/ I said to her, ' you played that 
 fifth act as you will never again play it in your life.' 
 
 1 I believe I did/ she answered. ' Do you know 
 why ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, I know. Because there was no one there 
 to applaud you. You were not thinking of the 
 effect, and so you became, in your own eyes, 
 the poor Adrienne herself, dying at midnight 
 in the arms of her friends.' 
 
 ( ' She was silent for a moment. Then she replied 
 
 ' No, you are quite wrong. A very strange 
 thing happened. It was not for Adrienne that 
 I wept, but for myself. I suddenly had a strange 
 premonition that I should die young like her. It 
 seemed to me that I was in my own room, at my 
 last hour, a spectator of my own death. And so 
 when I came to that phrase, ' Farewell to my 
 triumphs at the theatre ! Farewell to the intoxi- 
 cations of the art which I have loved so well ! ' 
 the tears which you saw me shed were real tears. 
 I was thinking that time would soon carry away 
 every trace of my talent, and that nothing would 
 remain of what had once been Rachel/ " 
 
 That is the typical story which gives us our most 
 
 P 2 211
 
 Rachel 
 
 vivid glimpse of Rachel's melancholy, and the 
 reason for it. Life was so good but so short; and 
 the warnings had been so clear that it would be 
 shorter for her than for others. The thought was 
 always recurring, however hard she tried to subdue 
 it with work and pleasure; and she had neither a 
 religion nor a philosophy which could help her to 
 face the prospect without fear. With what gestures 
 she did sit down to wait for death, when its immi- 
 nence was obvious, we shall see very soon there is 
 no need to anticipate. 
 
 Another confidence of which Legouve was the 
 recipient related to her moral conduct. She gave 
 him half-a-dozen reasons why she had submitted 
 to be the mistress of a man whom she " hated 
 and despised " meaning, as one supposes, that 
 unpleasant voluptuary, Veron. She seemed to 
 think that Legouve would be surprised to learn 
 that Veron's "influence" had weighed with her; 
 for she prefaced the confession with the statement 
 that the heart of an actress was a riddle which 
 the wisest of men could not read. More than once, 
 she said, she had been tempted to shoot Veron from 
 the stage while he was applauding her from his box, 
 and had even gone so far as to make her entrance 
 with a loaded pistol in her pocket a pistol which, 
 if fired, would probably have been a source of 
 danger to any one rather than the person aimed at. 
 " What a scene it would have been ! " she exclaimed, 
 with the inevitable professional touch; and she went 
 on 
 
 ' What would you say if I revealed my inner 
 
 212
 
 Rachel 
 
 thoughts to you ? You admire me, I believe. You 
 are in ecstasies when I play. Well, I assure you, 
 there is a Rachel in me ten times superior to the 
 Rachel whom you know. I have not been one 
 quarter as great as I might have been. I have talent, 
 but I might have had genius. Ah, if only I had 
 been brought up differently ! If I had had different 
 friends around me ! If I had lived a better life ! 
 What an artist I should have been in that case ! 
 When I think of it such a regret steals over me ..." 
 
 She ceased, burying her face in her hands, to hide 
 her tears. ' There," she said, when she looked up, 
 " you know me better now than the people who 
 think they know me best." Legouve was cynic 
 enough to wonder whether she had deceived herself 
 or was consciously playing a comedy. He could not 
 decide, and her biographer need not pretend to be 
 able to decide on his behalf. Three days later, 
 however, she struck the first hard blow in the 
 quarrel with him which was not to end until he had 
 set up a rival to supersede her. 
 
 213
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Quarrel with Legouve Refusal to appear in Medee Litigation 
 Resumption of friendship with Cremieux. 
 
 THE causa teterrima belli was Legouve's new play. 
 
 Rachel had asked him to write a piece specially 
 for her. " If you will," she had said, "I'll promise 
 to write you a letter of thanks without a single 
 mistake in spelling." He had accepted the promise 
 as the " valuable consideration " of an agreement, 
 and had set to work upon Mddte. Euripides had 
 dealt with the theme before him, but he was con- 
 vinced that he could improve upon Euripides. 
 Where Euripides had contented himself with relating, 
 he would present. Medea should not kill her children 
 behind the scenes, but on the stage. There should be 
 other horrors of the sort which Horace deprecates but 
 modern taste accepts; and these should furnish 
 Rachel with unique opportunities for the display 
 of her intensity. 
 
 It seemed all right. Until she was brought right 
 up against the details of her part Rachel was most 
 amiable about it. Legouve went to see her in a 
 villa which she had taken at Auteuil, and found her 
 in the garden, picking flowers, and in a mood to 
 entertain him with confessions. She was ready for 
 hard work, she said, because she felt so well. Health 
 was the best thing in the world. She had done with 
 the follies of her youth. They were amusing, but 
 
 214
 
 Rachel 
 
 they had to be paid for, and the price exacted was 
 too high. The pleasure of feeling well and strong 
 was much better than any of the pleasures of 
 dissipation. 
 
 But when Legouve began to read his piece Rachel's 
 mood changed, and she showed herself, first critical, 
 and then dissatisfied. This, that and the other 
 scene would not do, and must be cut out. The author 
 had to argue, now giving way, and now insisting. 
 He was a plausible and persuasive dialectician; 
 Rachel, in that respect, was no match for him. He 
 believed that Rachel's success in Mtdte would secure 
 his election to the Academy ; and he therefore 
 reasoned with her, insidiously and energetically. 
 Rachel could only adopt an attitude of passive resist- 
 ance, affecting to yield, but determined to get her 
 own way, and making her plans accordingly. 
 
 All her objections being met, she could not prevent 
 the piece from being put in rehearsal. The first 
 rehearsal took place on September 2, 1853. There 
 were eight rehearsals in all. "I was full of hope," 
 writes Legouve, " and believed that I was at the 
 end of my troubles." But, in fact, he was only at 
 the beginning of them. The rehearsals were sud- 
 denly suspended ; and on September 17 Legouve 
 received the explanation in a letter from Rachel's 
 secretary 
 
 u Do not be alarmed at seeing my handwriting. 
 All is well; but I have to explain the adjournment 
 of the rehearsals. Mile. Rachel has been indisposed, 
 and her doctor ordered her to spend four days in bed. 
 Since then she has had other engagements, but she 
 
 3I 5
 
 Rachel 
 
 instructs me to say that she will write to you as 
 soon as she feels able to resume." 
 
 Rachel's promised letter quickly followed. It 
 made some suggestions as to the distribution of the 
 parts in Mdctte, and continued 
 
 " My health is still very shaky. I have just spent 
 four days in bed. To-day I am going back to the 
 country. I need the fresh air badly. I shall be 
 back on Tuesday to play Cinna. 
 
 Your invalided Medea." 
 
 Rachel was always ill enough, at this date, to have 
 the right to say that she was ill if she chose. Legouve, 
 whether he believed the statement or not, had no 
 choice but to accept the excuse and wait. Instead 
 of the resumption of the rehearsals there was a bolt 
 from the blue, in the shape of another letter from 
 Rachel's secretary, dated October 5 : 
 
 " You will have learnt from the papers, sir, the 
 fabulous offer which the Emperor of Russia has 
 caused to be made to our Rachel. The Government 
 has concluded that it ought not to deprive the great 
 artist of the opportunity of making a fortune in six 
 months. 
 
 " Rachel will return on May 15. She will arrive 
 with Mtdte in her head, and the piece will be put on 
 immediately. I enclose a letter which she instructs 
 me to forward to you as proof of her good will." 
 
 The letter enclosed told the same story, embroi- 
 dered with the expression of the hope that Legouve 
 
 216
 
 Rachel 
 
 would not bear malice, but would keep his play 
 for Rachel. " You have often," she wrote, " spoken 
 of your friendship for me. Here is your oppor- 
 tunity of proving it." 
 
 She was playing with him, however, and he knew 
 it. At the very time when she had pleaded that 
 she was ill and unable to rehearse she had been 
 engaged in negotiations for her Russian tour; and 
 now she wanted to make sure that no one else 
 should reap in her absence the laurels which she 
 declined. It is not surprising that he was angry. 
 
 " I went at once to see her," he relates, " and was 
 told that she was out. That was what I had expected. 
 I called again in the evening and was told that she 
 was ill. That also I had expected. On the following 
 evening, however, she was playing Polyeucte. When 
 she returned to her dressing-room, after the fall of 
 the curtain, she found me installed there, waiting 
 for her." 
 
 At last they were face to face, arguing, altercating 
 the author peremptory and the actress haughty. 
 Their voices rose in anger. An ultimatum was 
 presented and rejected 
 
 ' Will you or will you not resume the rehearsals 
 of M4de ? " 
 
 " I most certainly will not." 
 
 ;< Very well. Henceforth it is war between us." 
 
 But the war, though declared, was not yet waged. 
 Legouve ran to his lawyer, but the lawyer counselled 
 
 217
 
 Rachel 
 
 patience. Rachel, he urged, had changed her mind 
 so often that she might change it yet again. In 
 any case no effective steps could be taken until after 
 her return from Russia. Better wait and see what 
 happened then. 
 
 Legouv6 agreed to wait, but ultimately wrote a 
 letter which Rachel received at Warsaw on her way 
 home. This time she was polite but determined. 
 She said (untruly) that she was meaning to leave 
 the Theatre Frangais, and wished to appear, before 
 retiring, in the whole of her classical repertory. To 
 do so would take up all the time at her disposal. 
 She did not care to imperil " seventeen years of 
 success" by rash experiments; and she must 
 therefore resign her part in Mtdte to some other 
 actress. 
 
 The answer to that was a writ which was served 
 on Rachel on the morning after her return to Paris. 
 It caused her to assume the tone of one who had been 
 injured, but would be magnanimous. She insisted 
 upon addressing her persecutor as " My dear M. 
 Legouve." A pretty idea, she protested, that she 
 should play Mtctte " by order of the court ! ' The 
 piece might fail, and then every one would say that 
 she had wrecked it to avenge herself. Still, if 
 he insisted, he should have his way. She would 
 study her part while nursing Rebecca in the Pyrenees, 
 and be ready to play it on her return. 
 
 She seems to have meant what she said partly, 
 if not altogether. At all events she took the tone 
 of one who proposes a bargain with Omnipotence, 
 speaking as if the Almighty were a playgoer and her 
 particular admirer. If God would spare her sister, 
 
 218
 
 Rachel 
 
 then she would consent to appear in Legouv6's 
 piece. But that was not good enough for 
 Legouve, who tried, before making further applica- 
 tion to the courts, to bring other influence to bear. 
 He wrote to Madame Cremieux the same Madame 
 Cremieux who had broken off relations with Rachel 
 when she crossed the Rubicon. The letter has been 
 published in L' Amateur d'autographes. 
 
 Rebecca's illness, Legouve represented in this 
 letter, was no excuse for Rachel's conduct. It was 
 not an acute but a chronic illness it might last for 
 months. Would Madame Cremieux be kind enough 
 to tell her so, and to urge her to return to the path 
 of duty ? He would be very reluctant to " draw 
 the sword against a lady at once so sublime and so 
 capricious;'' but what was he to do? She had 
 tantalized him for fifteen months with procrastina- 
 tions and excuses. He had asked her to see him on 
 the subject, and she had refused. Might he, there- 
 fore, rely upon the kind offices of a common friend ? 
 
 Apparently he might not. Whether Madame 
 Cremieux intervened in the matter is uncertain; 
 but, if she did, she intervened in vain. Rebecca's 
 death released Rachel from the obligations of her 
 vow. Most likely she resented Legouve's lack of 
 sympathy with Rebecca's illness, for her devotion 
 to Rebecca was unquestionably the deepest senti- 
 ment of her life. At all events, she made up her 
 mind at last beyond the possibility of changing it, 
 and bade her secretary communicate her definite 
 decision. 
 
 She dared not write herself, she said. She was 
 afraid Legouve would come banging at her door and 
 
 219
 
 Rachel 
 
 making a scene; and she did not feel well enough 
 to listen to his reproaches. In a sense, she knew, 
 she was in the wrong. There was no denying that 
 she had accepted the part, and even rehearsed it. 
 But she could not bring herself to play it. She was 
 convinced that it would not suit her, and it was too 
 much to ask her to risk a failure at the moment of 
 her retirement from the stage. She could only hope 
 that Legouve would not be very cross. She could 
 not bear that. Her poor nerves were in such a 
 shocking state. . . . 
 
 Legouve, however, was much too angry to be 
 moved by references to Rachel's nerves or appeals 
 to his own better feelings. He bade his lawyer 
 proceed, and Rachel called upon her old friend 
 Cremieux to defend her. 
 
 Already, in 1848, she had tried to renew her friend- 
 ship with him and his wife. Cremieux had been 
 Minister of Justice during a part of that eventful 
 year, and she had called upon him several times in 
 his office and had been affably received. Perhaps 
 it was not the best means she could have chosen to 
 conciliate Madame Cremieux ; and Madame Cremieux 
 certainly had not been conciliated. Rachel had 
 appealed to her to " open her arms " as a " tender 
 mother"; but Madame Cremieux had replied that 
 she believed neither in Rachel's penitence nor in her 
 desire to alter her mode of life, and did not desire her 
 company until she had altered it. Whereto Rachel 
 had rejoined that, if only she had known how shame- 
 fully she had been calumniated, she would never 
 have " lowered herself " by writing to Madame 
 Cremieux, but that she still clung to the hope that, 
 
 220
 
 Rachel 
 
 somewhere in the world, it might be her privilege 
 to encounter " indulgent hearts and elevated souls." 
 
 That letter closed the door with a bang, and it 
 remained closed for six years; but now, in 1854, it 
 was once again thrown open. " Yes, she can come 
 and see me," Cremieux said to Madame Fe"lix, who 
 had appealed to him. " A visit from her will make 
 me feel ten years younger "; and Madame Cremieux 
 said the same, and fell upon Rachel's neck and kissed 
 her; and they all supped together after the play, 
 and Cremieux undertook the case. 
 
 It was a cause cdebre\ and the arguments, as 
 usually happens in a French cause cdebre, travelled 
 far away from the point nominally at issue. The 
 question whether Rachel had broken her contract 
 with Legouve was quickly entangled with the 
 question whether Rachel cared more for art or 
 for gold, and then with the further question 
 whether it was right and reasonable that the 
 interests of French dramatic literature should lie 
 at the mercy of an actress's caprice. Even the 
 personal appearance of the advocate appears to 
 have been regarded as relevant to the rights 
 of the dispute. " The legendary ugliness of M. 
 Cremieux," writes Legouve, " caused the judges 
 to shake with laughter on the bench." Their 
 verdict for the plaintiff, he seems to have thought, 
 was largely ascribable to their amusement at the 
 grimaces of the defendant's advocate. 
 
 Very possibly he was right, for almost anything 
 is possible in a French cause cdlebre. Be that as 
 it may, at any rate they gave judgment in his 
 favour. Rachel was ordered by the court either 
 
 221
 
 Rachel 
 
 to play the part or to pay damages. After appeals 
 and rehearings, into the details of which we need 
 not trouble to enter, the damages were assessed 
 at 12,000 francs. Rachel paid, and Legouve divided 
 the money among various literary and theatrical 
 charities. 
 
 'Twas well, 'twas something; but it was not enough 
 for him. What he wanted was to see Rachel's legal 
 defeat followed by her artistic humiliation; and 
 circumstances were to favour him. Rachel was 
 destined to fail in the play which she had preferred 
 to his; and a rival was destined to triumph in the 
 piece which she had rejected with contumely. 
 Rachel's star, in short, was about to set, and that 
 of Adelaide Ristori was already rising. 
 
 222

 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Failure of Rosemonde Comparative failure of La Czarine Rivalry 
 between Rachel and Ristori Rachel decides to lour in the 
 United States. 
 
 THE piece which Rachel preferred to Legouve's 
 Mddde was Rosemonde by Latour Saint Ybars. It 
 was a tragedy in one act a feast of horrors, as 
 it were, compressed into a tabloid, analogous to those 
 nerve-wracking melodramatic sketches which are 
 popular in our own music-halls at the present time. 
 It failed, and was withdrawn after a week's run, 
 helped to its end by an epigram launched anony- 
 mously, but attributed to Samson 
 
 " Pourquoi nomme-t-on ce drame Rosemonde ? 
 Je n'y vois plus de rose et n'y vois pas de monde." 
 
 Rachel, disconcerted by the failure, went into 
 hysterics in her dressing-room, tearing the veil 
 which she had worn in her part to tatters, and 
 throwing the dagger which she had carried on to 
 the floor. There had been applause indeed; but 
 she had had to " work hard " for it. It was not 
 the sort of applause that she was used to; and she 
 felt the difference. It did not betoken enthusiasm, 
 but only courteous consideration for the feelings 
 of an old favourite. Her public, which had once 
 exalted her as a goddess, was now " letting her down 
 gently." Hence the painful scene which Jules 
 
 223
 
 Rachel 
 
 Janin that lively weathercock now once more 
 veering round to sympathy, describes 
 
 u It was," he writes, " a sad and touching spectacle 
 which I shall never forget as long as I live. She 
 crouched in a corner of that historic dressing- 
 room, still fragrantly reminiscent of Mademoiselle 
 Mars. She was panting for breath, dazed, motionless 
 and mute. No sight could have been more eloquent 
 or more melancholy. Alas ! the daughter of the 
 Muses was giving way beneath the burden of her 
 task. She felt all its weight, and she was van- 
 quished. Her spirit was restless, her mind was ill 
 at ease, her health was broken. She had lost her 
 courage and her hope. She pushed the bitter cup 
 from her, weary of the pains due to her own past 
 triumphs, which carried with them the imperious 
 obligation to succeed. 
 
 " And so she began to cry. Her beautiful great 
 eyes filled with tears; and when a rash friend tried 
 to comfort her, she rent the drapery which wrapped 
 her bosom, exclaiming : ' There ! Look at me ! 
 You can see that my tears are the tears of a dying 
 woman ! ' 
 
 " We went out, despairing for her. It was the 
 true beginning of her death agony her first step 
 on the straight road which was to lead her to the 
 grave." 
 
 Truly there was more poignant tragedy in that 
 scene than in all the emphatic violence of Latour's 
 poor play the peculiar tragedy of the calling in 
 which achievement is evanescent as a perfume and 
 
 224
 
 Rachel 
 
 failure seems painfully degrading because of its pub- 
 licity. The failure was partially redeemed, after a 
 rest, by a comparative success in Scribe's La Czar- 
 ine. But only partially. Such vogue as the piece 
 enjoyed was far more due to Rachel's costumes and 
 jewels than to her acting. These, on one occasion, 
 drew more money to the house than the house 
 could nominally hold; but that, of course, was not 
 the kind of success that Rachel sought or was 
 accustomed to. She was even ashamed of it as a 
 demonstration of her decline; and a dinner-party 
 given to celebrate it by Dr. Veron, whom she still 
 acknowledged as her friend in spite of the hard 
 things she said of him, was a pathetic failure. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Prosper Merimee, Aubert, Halevy, 
 and Scribe were among the guests; but Rachel 
 could not be cheered. She tried to enliven herself 
 by drinking two glasses of that champagne which 
 the doctor had drunk every night for thirty years 
 without visible injury to his constitution; but it only 
 gave her a headache. She said she must retire 
 and lie down on the sofa. She dissolved on to the 
 sofa in tears, and only rose from it to get into her 
 carriage and drive home. A few nights afterwards 
 La Czarine was withdrawn; and then, after a 
 few appearances in her classical repertory, Rachel 
 remembered a vow which she had made. 
 
 " If my popularity should ever diminish," she 
 had once told Madame Samson, " I shall instantly 
 retire from the stage" ; and though she had never 
 seriously anticipated that contingency, she now 
 found herself face to face with it. 
 
 She had two rivals. Madame Arnould's successes 
 
 Q 225
 
 Rachel 
 
 in comedy were surpassing her own successes in 
 tragedy; and on the horizon of tragedy itself the 
 star of Madame Ristori had appeared. 
 
 Ristori has been styled "the Italian Siddons"; 
 but designations of that sort are not very illumi- 
 nating. Fanny Kemble, who had seen them both 
 in their best days, declared, as has been already 
 mentioned, that she could not hold a candle to 
 Rachel ; but, at the moment when comparison was 
 challenged, Rachel was in her decadence and Ristori 
 was in her prime. Moreover, she was sufficiently 
 different from Rachel to make comparison interesting. 
 
 Rachel, as we have seen, was a child of the 
 gutter, endowed with genius, admirably trained 
 in the technique of her art, but, in all other 
 respects, inadequately educated. She had lived as 
 she liked, made herself notorious, squandered her 
 own health and her admirers' substance in riotous 
 living, and treated dramatic authors and her fellow- 
 players with capricious contempt ; but she had never, 
 or hardly ever, posed as the possessor of an artistic 
 soul. One might almost say that she had gone 
 through life with the inevitable directness and 
 simplicity which appertain to genius. Ristori, on 
 the other hand, better born than Rachel, much 
 better brought up, and thoroughly soaked in a 
 kind of culture, had far less than Rachel's natural 
 gifts, but went through life posing as if she had been 
 a Fine Arts Ministry of All the Talents. 
 
 She was an actress who wrote, taking the public 
 into her confidence, telling them what she thought 
 about her parts and about the masterpieces of 
 
 226
 
 Rachel 
 
 dramatic literature, affecting to know what the 
 authors meant better than they knew themselves. 
 She was an actress who studied with the limelight 
 turned on her before appearing as Marie-Antoin- 
 ette, for instance, she let it be known that she had 
 spent two days working up appropriate emotions 
 in the cell which Marie-Antoinette had occupied in 
 the Conciergerie prison. She was, finally, an actress 
 who prayed it was said that she always closed her 
 eyes and offered up a silent petition for divine 
 guidance while awaiting the cue for her entrance. 
 Altogether she was a very original, and individual, 
 though stagy, figure stagy, one may say, with an 
 intellectual kind of staginess. Madame Duse has 
 been compared to her. 
 
 Like Madame Duse, at any rate, she first achieved 
 fame in Italy, and then came to Paris to have the 
 seal set upon her reputation; and Paris felt that 
 it could not do her adequate honour without de- 
 throning her rival. It is not thought necessary to 
 pit poets or painters against each other as if they were 
 competing for gold medals at exhibitions; but on 
 the stage such jealousies and rivalries are normal, 
 and playgoers are apt to back their respective 
 favourites very much in the spirit of those who 
 encourage dogs to fight. 
 
 So it happened now. The question was passed 
 round : " Which is the greater, Rachel or Ristori ? " 
 Samson was almost the only man who declined to 
 answer it, saying that he could judge Rachel, but 
 could not judge Ristori because he did not know 
 Italian. To the rest of Paris ignorance of Italian 
 was no obstacle to the forming of an opinion; and 
 
 Q 2 227
 
 Rachel 
 
 all those who, for one reason or another, considered 
 that they had grievances against Rachel made the 
 rise of Ristori an occasion for humiliating, and even 
 for insulting her. 
 
 Clesinger, the sculptor, affronted her with a 
 dramatic gesture, which indicates that he had 
 missed his vocation. He destroyed his statue of 
 her, and made a statue of Ristori in place of it, 
 declaring that the revelation of Ristori' s acting had 
 taught him that his statue of Rachel was not the 
 image of drama, but only of melodrama. This 
 without any visible motive beyond the desire of 
 swimming theatrically with the tide. Alexandre 
 Dumas was still more venomous. 
 
 He, unlike Clesinger, had grievances which rankled. 
 Rachel had rejected some of his plays, and she had 
 also rej ected his admiration. If she had declined the 
 former politely, she had declined the latter with 
 scorn, in circumstances which have been related. 
 He had neither forgotten nor forgiven; and now he 
 saw his opportunity to punish. He was editing, 
 at the time, his vivacious paper Le Mousquetaire, 
 and he used its columns to praise Ristori at Rachel's 
 expense, and to depreciate Rachel for Ristori's 
 greater glory. This is how he apostrophized Rachel 
 in a review of Ristori's performance of Myrrha 
 
 " Go and see Myrrha. Go and study Myrrha. 
 Try to add to the qualities which you possess one 
 quarter of the qualities displayed by Madame 
 Ristori, and, if a shower of gold then falls upon you, 
 beautiful Danae, we will admit that justice has 
 been done." 
 
 228
 
 Rachel 
 
 A few days later, having heard the report that 
 Rachel was about to leave Paris, he wrote as 
 follows 
 
 " Enough of all this to-do about Mile. Rachel's 
 departure ! What does it matter whether Mile. 
 Rachel goes or stays whether her requests for 
 vacations are granted or refused. Like Ingres at 
 the picture exhibition, she has the house to herself, 
 the house of the dead. Let her remain in it ! ' 
 
 And so on, day after day, until, at last, he 
 delivered this sledge-hammer blow under the title 
 of "A Dramatic Challenge" 
 
 " We are authorized to make the following 
 proposal for the performance which is to be given 
 for the Benefit of the Authors' and Actors' 
 Benevolent Fund. 
 
 ' The Opera House to be hired for the occasion; 
 the prices to be doubled; Mile. Rachel to play 
 Phedre and Mme. Ristori to play Myrrha. 
 
 " Lots to be drawn to decide which of the two 
 performances shall precede the other. 
 
 ' The receipts will not amount to less than 20,000 
 francs. 
 
 "It is a matter of course that Mme. Ristori 
 agrees. 
 
 "A. D." 
 
 It would indeed have been difficult, with this 
 noise of battle in the air, for the two actresses to 
 love each other, or for either of them to take an 
 
 229
 
 Rachel 
 
 artist's delight in a fellow artist's success. Ristori, 
 with the big battalions at her back, might indeed 
 affect to do so. Rachel, deserted by her supporters, 
 unnerved by the failure of her health, fighting with 
 her back to the wall, could hardly even pretend. 
 
 And she did not pretend. In so far as the contest 
 was one of politeness, Mme. Ristori certainly got the 
 better of it, as indeed was natural, seeing that she had 
 had a better early training in manners, had not been 
 provoked, and knew that she was winning. ' Lucky 
 Rachel ! " she exclaimed. " The French can under- 
 stand her"; and she invited Rachel, with many 
 compliments, to come and see her play. But Rachel's 
 manner of responding to these advances was un- 
 gracious, and savoured of "cabotinage." 
 
 It was what one would have expected, for the 
 traditions of the stage, in her case, were grafted 
 upon the traditions of the gutter, and not upon those 
 of a finishing school for the daughters of gentlemen. 
 We have seen her treating Mile. George as a beggar 
 on the occasion of her benefit, and exulting vindic- 
 tively over the failure of Mile. Maxime to supplant 
 her she was not likely, therefore, to be complacent 
 towards Madame Ristori's usurpation of her popu- 
 larity. What she did was to sit through her rival's 
 performance with no more show of interest or emotion 
 than if she had been listening to the recital of a 
 lesson, and to leave the theatre before it was over; 
 and, of course, Paris remarked her action and 
 commented on it. 
 
 Dumas gloated over it as an admission of defeat. 
 Others suggested that perhaps Rachel had been 
 " applauding inwardly." Madame Ristori herself 
 
 230
 
 Rachel 
 
 felt that she ought to make some dignified artistic 
 observation. She said, therefore, that it had struck 
 her as "curious" that Mile. Rachel had refrained 
 from applauding her. Whereupon Legouve saw his 
 opportunity. " Madame," he exclaimed, with that 
 air of idolatrous deference which some clever men 
 think it proper to adopt towards actresses whom 
 they desire as their interpreters, " the jealousy of 
 Mile. Rachel was the one thing needful to set the 
 coping-stone upon your fame." 
 
 Legouve received his reward for his compliment. 
 Madame Ristori consented to appear in an Italian 
 version of MJdJe, which was specially translated 
 for her ; and she triumphed in it, winning both 
 renown and wealth, and wearing, as if they were her 
 own, the laurels which her rival had disdained. It 
 was the culminating blow; and Rachel had not 
 waited for it, but had already made her plans. She 
 feared the fate of Mile. Maxime, who had fallen from 
 the estate of a queen of the theatre to that of the 
 landlady of a lodging-house; and she would not 
 remain to be the witness of her own discomfiture. 
 Elsewhere, if not in Paris, she could still trade upon 
 her reputation. The proposals poured upon her 
 from abroad were sufficient proof of that. The 
 voice of America was inviting her. Like Canning 
 (of whom there is no reason to suppose that she had 
 ever heard) , she could call the new world into being 
 to redress the balance of the old. 
 
 The reputation of the United States as the land 
 of dollars, almighty and innumerable, had already 
 reached the ears of European entertainers. Dollars, 
 like the sands of the sea for multitude, had been 
 
 231
 
 Rachel 
 
 gathered in there by entertainers as diverse as 
 Dickens, Fanny Elssler, and Jenny Lind; but the 
 supply was inexhaustible, and another might still 
 delve profitably in the same rich mine. Rachel's 
 family, for whose profit, as well as for her own, she 
 worked, emphatically urged the enterprise, dinning 
 into her ears the eloquent fact that Jenny Lind 
 had taken 68,000 in thirty-eight nights. The fact, 
 she was assured, that the Americans were mostly 
 ignorant of her language would make no difference. 
 She had succeeded in London, though the English 
 did not know French. Ristori had succeeded in 
 Paris, though the French did not know Italian. 
 So, in spite of the long voyage, and in spite of her 
 weak health, she made up her mind to go. 
 
 Efforts were made in certain quarters to dissuade 
 her. It was said that she was offered a piece of 
 jewellery worth 4,000, on condition that she would 
 promise to remain in France. It was said that she 
 accepted the present, and gave the promise, and 
 broke it. It is impossible to tell whether that piece 
 of gossip was true or not. What is certain is 
 that her enemies, having insulted her while she 
 stayed, heaped fresh insults on her when she 
 departed. 
 
 Dumas offered the genial prediction that she would 
 die of fatigue in America, and that her brother, 
 with his happy Hebrew instincts, would make a huge 
 fortune by having her body embalmed and exhibit- 
 ing it in a Dime Museum. Cayla wrote 
 
 " If the artist carries out her designs she will 
 have justified the reproaches of ingratitude and 
 
 232
 
 Rachel 
 
 cupidity which tarnish her renown; and history, 
 forgetting the artist, will only remember the Jewess." 
 
 Auguste Vacquerie expressed himself with even 
 more spiteful virulence 
 
 " So now she is in America," he wrote. " I hope 
 she is going to stay there. I hope she will succeed 
 there, and be overwhelmed with dollars, and enjoy 
 herself, and fall in love with Racine, and marry 
 him, and bear and bring up a large family of 
 tragedies." 
 
 It was very brutal the atmosphere of the theatre 
 seems favourable to this kind of brutality. Rachel 
 herself, as we have seen, was capable of it. But all 
 our sympathies must, this time, be with her, if only 
 because she was now a dying woman, awakening 
 from illusion to reality, breaking her head against 
 a fresh reality every day, and fighting her last fight 
 in adverse circumstances. Whether she fought for 
 gold or for glory, the fight itself was brave ; and one is 
 glad to think that the kindness of London did some- 
 thing to redeem the cruelty of Paris, and so to 
 comfort her. 
 
 She played six times at the St. James's Theatre 
 before embarking at Southampton. Her contract 
 guaranteed her a minimum emolument of 200 a 
 night, and on one of the nights the receipts amounted 
 to 400. The English critics declared that she had 
 lost nothing of her old powers, and the Due d' Aumale, 
 who was present at her first performance, paid her 
 a compliment similar to one she had received from 
 
 233
 
 Rachel 
 
 Mole at the very beginning of her career. ' This 
 beautiful language of Corneille," he said, " this 
 language of my country, which I have just listened 
 to, is to me like the fresh dew which falls on a 
 scorching day in spring." 
 
 And so, at last, to New York, on board the 
 Pacific, commanded by Captain Nye. 
 
 234
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The American fiasco Serious illness of Rachel Her last appearance 
 at Charleston Her departure for Havana. 
 
 RACHEL, it must be repeated, was, by this time, 
 a dying woman. 
 
 Rest, perhaps, might still have saved her rest, 
 and pure air, and bright sunshine; but she was 
 restless the laurels of Madame Ristori did not 
 suffer her to rest. Applause was as the breath of 
 life to her she felt that she could not live without 
 it. She was avaricious, too, valuing money still 
 more than she valued the good things which money 
 could buy; and she was encouraged in her avarice 
 by a family which desired to grow rich at her 
 expense. 
 
 Her brother and sisters had begun by admiring 
 her, and now they had arrived at exploiting her. 
 Mrs. Pitt Byrne, in her Gossip of the Century, relates 
 how she happened to sit in the midst of the Tribe of 
 Felix at the theatre in the days when Rachel was still 
 a debutante, and how she got into conversation with 
 them, and how they boasted, saying: "C'est la notre 
 jeune soeur; n'est-ce pas qu'elle sera la plus grande 
 tragedienne du siecle ? " She had fulfilled their pre- 
 diction to their great advantage, paying the debts 
 of Sarah of the Supper-parties, procuring lucrative 
 engagements for Dinah and Leah, and putting 
 Raphael in the way of wealth as her business 
 
 235
 
 Rachel 
 
 manager. It is hardly too much to speak of 
 Raphael as a gadfly, driving her till she dropped. 
 
 He had computed his American gains with 
 elaborate particularity. The takings were expected 
 to amount to exactly 102,184. Rachel's share of 
 them was to be 48,000. Each of her sisters was to 
 receive 6,800. He himself was to keep whatever 
 remained after expenses had been paid. His calcula- 
 tions were based upon the fact that Jenny Lind 
 had taken nearly 4,000 at her first performance, 
 and had garnered, as has been said, 68,000 from 
 thirty-eight performances. Rachel, he argued, being 
 more famous than Jenny Lind, would draw still 
 larger houses. So he applied the spur, just as his 
 father had applied it before him, and urged his 
 sister on. 
 
 A note in Charles Greville's Diary is one of our 
 indications of the state of health in which she started. 
 " Rachel," he says, " when called on at the end 
 of the piece, was so overcome that she nearly fainted, 
 and would have fallen had not some one rushed 
 on the stage to support her." Another indication 
 is in a letter which she wrote to her mother, just 
 before landing in New York. She speaks in it of 
 " a pain in the side." It had disappeared, but, in 
 its place, there had appeared " pains in the back 
 and the chest," reminding her that her chest had 
 always been weak. She made light of them, declin- 
 ing to give way to " blue devils "; but we can see 
 under what difficulties she was engaging in her last 
 fight for gain and glory. 
 
 During the greater part of the voyage she remained 
 in her cabin, much depressed by the death of a 
 
 236
 
 Rachel 
 
 fellow-passenger from her own malady, hardly 
 emerging except to receive a magnificent box of 
 perfumes, presented by Captain Nye on behalf 
 of an American admirer who modestly withheld his 
 name, and to lay the foundations of popularity by 
 accepting the captain's invitation to dinner and 
 begging him to distribute two thousand francs on 
 her behalf among the crew. A proposal that she 
 should make the occasion memorable by reciting 
 poetry was met with a cold refusal ; while an attempt 
 on the part of her fellow-guests to distinguish it 
 by singing the Marseillaise came ludicrously to grief 
 through their inability to remember the words of 
 that patriotic hymn. 
 
 It was not the best of omens; and another 
 unfavourable omen was the fiasco of the arrange- 
 ments which agents in advance had made for 
 Rachel's reception. The band of the Lafayette 
 company of the New York Militia, composed of 
 American citizens of French birth, was to have 
 escorted her to her hotel; but the Pacific came in 
 three hours before its time, and the musicians were 
 not ready. They did their best by fetching their 
 instruments and serenading her after she had gone 
 to bed; but the necessity of resuming the clothes 
 which she had just taken off, in order to bow her 
 acknowledgments from the balcony, can hardly 
 have been agreeable to a weary woman. 
 
 About ten days later the campaign began; and 
 the illusions on which Raphael had based his 
 arithmetical calculations evaporated. Rachel, it 
 became clear, was not destined to achieve Jenny 
 Lind's success, or anything resembling it, for 
 
 237
 
 Rachel 
 
 reasons which might perfectly well have been 
 foreseen. 
 
 One reason was that Jenny Lind had been "run" 
 by Barnum; and Barnum was a showman by whose 
 side Raphael was but an ignorant child groping 
 in the dark. The other reason was that American 
 playgoers were, with rare exceptions, ignorant of 
 the French language and indifferent to the master- 
 pieces of French dramatic literature. They had 
 no more needed to know the language of Jenny Lind 
 than to know the language of the nightingale, and 
 had been delighted to listen to her night after night. 
 They only wanted to hear Rachel once, in order to 
 be able to boast of having heard her. And this 
 difference of attitude towards the two artists was 
 inevitably reflected in the receipts. Rachel's first 
 house was her best at the Metropolitan Theatre, 
 on September 3, she drew 1,053 75. 2d. But Jenny 
 Lind's first performance had drawn no less than 
 3,751 8s. gd. 
 
 Artistically, it is true, the beginning seemed to 
 be good. The few who understood were rapturous 
 in their applause; and the many who did not under- 
 stand took their hint from the leaders of taste, and 
 applauded also. There is a pen picture of the scene 
 in Harper's Magazine for November, 1855, from 
 which an extract may be taken 
 
 " The audience received her with solid applause. 
 There was no hooting, no whistling, no tumult of 
 any kind. One indiscreet brother tried to yelp, 
 and was instantly suppressed. The reception was 
 generous and intelligent. It was the right reception 
 
 238
 
 Rachel 
 
 for a great artist. It acknowledged her previous 
 fame by courtesy. It expressed the intelligence 
 which could approve or revise that fame. 
 
 ' Yes, astonished friend, approve or revise even 
 a Parisian decision." 
 
 That when the curtain rose. Then, afterwards 
 
 " For an hour and a half the curtain was up, and 
 the eyes of the audience were riveted upon Rachel. 
 For an hour and a half there was the constant in- 
 crease of passionate intensity, until love and despair 
 culminated in the famous denunciation; the house 
 hung breathless upon that wild whirl of tragic force 
 and Camille lay dead, and the curtain was down, 
 before that rapt and amazed silence was conscious 
 of itself. 
 
 ' Then came the judgment the verdict which 
 was worth having after such a trial the crown, and 
 the garland, and the paean. The curtain rose, and 
 there, wan and wavering, stood the ghost of Camille, 
 the woman Rachel. She had risen in her flowing 
 drapery just where she had fallen, and seemed to 
 be the spirit of herself. But, pale and trembling, 
 she flickered in the tempest of applause. The audi- 
 ence stood and waved hats and handkerchiefs, and 
 flowers fell in pyramids; and that quick, earnest, 
 meaning ' bravo ' was undisturbed by any discordant 
 sound. It was a great triumph. It was too much 
 for the excited and exhausted Rachel. She knew 
 that the news would instantly fly across the sea 
 that Paris would hear of her victory over a new 
 continent that, perhaps, Ristori's foot would be 
 
 239
 
 Rachel 
 
 found too large for the slipper. She wavered for 
 a moment. Then some one rushed forward and 
 caught her as she fell and the curtain came down. 
 " There was no attempt at a recall. There was 
 something too real in the whole scene. The audience 
 silently arose and slowly separated. Ladies sat 
 in groups upon the benches with white faces and red 
 eyes. They all thought her beautiful. They all 
 forgave everything, and they all denied every- 
 thing. It was a rare triumph. We so love what 
 we greatly admire that we all longed to love 
 Rachel." 
 
 Decidedly a " notice " to be treasured in a press- 
 cutting album. If everybody had been of the same 
 mind as the writer, Rachel would decidedly have 
 scaled loftier heights of glory in the new world 
 than in the old. But the voice was the voice of 
 the elect, not of the multitude. The multitude 
 shouted with the elect because it seemed the correct 
 thing to do; but in selecting the entertainments for 
 which it would " keep its money," it consulted its 
 own tastes. And this in spite of the fact that the 
 name was good enough for tradesmen to use it for 
 purposes of reclame. Puddings "a la Rachel" ap- 
 peared in the restaurants; ices "a la Rachel" were 
 sold by the confectioners; gaiters " a la Rachel " 
 figured in the boot-makers' windows; the green- 
 grocers offered melons " a la Raphael Felix." But 
 these devices were more effective in advertising the 
 shopkeepers' wares than in advertising Rachel's 
 entertainment. The receipts had touched high-water 
 mark, and were never to touch it again. On the 
 
 240
 
 Rachel 
 
 second night they fell to 792 95. 8^; on the third 
 night to 724 is. 8d. 
 
 In part, it may be, the decline was due to the 
 fact that Rachel was poorly supported and that 
 her pieces were cheaply staged. Beauvallet, her 
 leading man, who afterwards wrote a relation of 
 the adventure, was the only one of her company 
 who counted. The others, especially Dinah and 
 Leah and Sarah of the Supper-parties, were spoken 
 of disdainfully as " Hebrew sticks." The supers, 
 recruited on the spot, excited even greater derision. 
 Habited as Roman lictors, they showed their 
 Republican independence by declining to shave, but 
 strutted their little hour upon the stage, embellished 
 with goatees, saluted by a sputtering fire of chaff 
 from friends and acquaintances in the cheaper seats. 
 
 Rachel was advised to court popularity by sending 
 a large subscription for the relief of the sufferers 
 from an epidemic of yellow fever then raging at 
 Norfolk and Portsmouth. It was a counsel of 
 despair; and she was soon complaining that for all 
 the good the investment had done her she might 
 just as well have thrown her money into the sea. 
 There were playgoers who wanted to see the jewels 
 which she wore in Adrienne Lecouvreur, and playgoers 
 who were eager to hear her sing the Marseillaise ; 
 but the number of playgoers who desired to follow 
 her in her classical repertory was limited and tended 
 continually to diminish. 
 
 Moreover, there were dissensions, feuds and 
 disagreeables of various kinds. There was an occa- 
 sion on which Sarah of the Supper-parties slapped 
 little Dinah's face, and another occasion on which 
 R 241
 
 Rachel 
 
 Raphael told Sarah that the sooner she returned 
 to Europe the better he should be pleased. Raphael, 
 too, got into trouble with the critics by curtailing 
 their privileges, and with the public by speculating 
 in the seats. The strangers were denounced as 
 "European blood-suckers"; and a boycott was 
 organized, with the result that, one night, the 
 receipts fell to 168. Raphael only partially saved 
 the situation by offering humble apologies and 
 promising never to offend again. 
 
 At Boston, however, Rachel, on the whole, did 
 fairly. It was on her return to New York that she 
 became fully conscious that she was ceasing to 
 attract. She appeared, this time, at the Academy 
 of Music a bare, ugly and unpopular house; and 
 there the receipts melted rapidly; Adrienne Lecouv- 
 reur drawing only 345, and Lady Tartu fe only 
 344 125. Raphael made haste to transfer his 
 company to another house a music hall known as 
 Niblo's Garden; but though they did better there 
 they were very far from realizing their dreams of 
 wealth. Angela drew 560 6s. 6d.', Virginie 517 
 I2s. iod; Mile, de Belle-Isle 630 45. Not until the 
 farewell performance did the figures rise to 824; 
 and against this gain there was quickly to be placed 
 a drop at Philadelphia to 395 8s. lod. 
 
 The end was now near, however, for Rachel was 
 already ill, and was rapidly getting worse. On 
 September 25 she had written to her mother to say 
 that she was eating and sleeping well and " getting 
 fat," and that it suited her better to be braced up 
 in New York than to be sent south in search of 
 sunshine. She had not understood, however, the 
 
 242
 
 Rachel 
 
 danger of the sudden changes of temperature to which 
 New York is liable. Early in October a sharp 
 east wind caught her and gave her a cold. She 
 neglected it, in order to accept an invitation to a 
 reception given in her honour, and made it worse. 
 She continued to neglect it, and the climax came 
 when, at Philadelphia, she played in a theatre which 
 had not been warmed. 
 
 She coughed painfully all through the perform- 
 ance, took to her bed, and did not leave it until 
 she left the town. Raphael made the company 
 play without her; but the results were disastrous. 
 For the four nights on which they appeared the 
 takings only averaged 40 a night. It was decided 
 to cut the tour short and go at once to Charleston, 
 and thence to Havana, where the climate might 
 be expected to be kinder. Rachel was so weak that 
 she would willingly have gone home, but Raphael 
 would not hear of it. She could only bear the 
 fatigue of the journey by taking it in easy stages; 
 and the first thing which she did on her arrival was 
 to call in a doctor. 
 
 It is not certain whether the physician told her 
 all that he diagnosed. If so, he was a bad blunderer; 
 but it is more likely that he thought it discreet to 
 spare her the full truth. His prescription, at any 
 rate, was six months' absolute rest; and she would 
 not take it perhaps Raphael would not let her take 
 it. The frame of mind in which she faced her illness 
 at this stage is shown in a letter addressed to her 
 mother from Boston 
 
 " If laurels preserve one from lightning, they do 
 
 R 2 243
 
 Rachel 
 
 not protect one from colds in the head. ... I caught 
 cold in the train; and since I have been here I have 
 been coughing like a consumptive, though I am 
 nothing of the kind, as I beg you to believe, in spite 
 of the fact that I am looking pale and thin." 
 
 Her company at Charleston had been billed to 
 appear without her; and the fiasco had been even 
 worse than at Philadelphia. A big fire had happened 
 to break out at the hour announced for the per- 
 formance; and the inhabitants of Charleston had 
 thought that the fire would be a more attractive, as 
 well as a cheaper, entertainment than the play. 
 They ran to see the fire, and the box-office took no 
 money that night. That was on December 10. A 
 week later Rachel herself her passage to Cuba 
 already booked was billed to make her " last 
 appearance in America " in Adrienne Lecouvreur. 
 
 Her last appearance in America was, in fact, 
 to be her last appearance on any stage ; and there 
 was a pathetic propriety in her selection of her piece 
 and part. Adrienne was an actress like herself, 
 cut off, like her, in her prime. In representing 
 her, she enacted, as it were, a scene from her personal 
 life. She had never been able to render the part 
 without feeling the sensation of her mortality and 
 the presage of her death. It has already been told 
 how she dissolved in tears when she rehearsed it. 
 She could only struggle through it now her lines 
 punctuated with a hacking cough; but her pain and 
 her feebleness only made the rendering more realistic. 
 
 " Ah, quelles souffrances . . . ce n'est plus ma 
 
 244
 
 Rachel 
 
 tete, c'est ma poitrine qui est brulante . . . j'ai 
 la comme un brazier . . . comme un feu devorant 
 qui me consume. . . . 
 
 " Ah ! Le mal redouble. . . . Vous qui m'aimez 
 tant, sauvez moi, secourez moi . . . je ne veux pas 
 mourir ... a present je ne veux pas mourir. . . . 
 
 " Mon Dieu, exaucez moi ! Mon Dieu, laissez moi 
 vivre . . . quelques j ours encore. . . . Jesuissi jeune, 
 et la vie s'ouvrait pour moi si belle ! 
 
 " La vie ! La vie ! Vains efforts ! Vaine priere ! 
 Mes jours sont comptes ! Je sens les forces et 1'exist- 
 ence qui m'echappent ! 
 
 " O triomphes du theatre ! mon coeur ne battra 
 plus de vos ardentes emotions ! Et vous, longues 
 etudes d'un art que j'aimais tant, rien ne restera de 
 vous apres moi. Rien ne nous survlt a nous autres 
 . . . rien que le souvenir." 
 
 It was her own case to an iota. The theatre 
 was all in all to her; and she clung to its 
 pleasures and triumphs, frantically and frenziedly, 
 as _she saw them escaping from her, having no 
 inner life, whether of religion or of philosophy, to 
 fall back upon no contentment in the thought of 
 continuing to live in the life of the Universal Spirit, 
 of which she had been the transient, ebullient 
 manifestation. And therefore she played to a thin 
 and almost indifferent house as she had never 
 played before. 
 
 Among the few who saw, there were some who 
 understood. Her fellow player, Che"ri, who took 
 the part of Michonnet, did so for one. " I had a 
 niece," he said, " who died of consumption, and 
 
 245
 
 Rachel 
 
 I know the signs. So mark my words. Rachel, 
 I tell you, will never play again." 
 
 But she meant to. In spite of the Charleston 
 physician's warning she would not give up the fight 
 yet ; and it was with the firm intention of continuing 
 to play that she embarked for Havana on December 
 19. 1855. 
 
 246
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Life at Havana Rachel's ill-health there Return to France and 
 departure for Egypt. 
 
 IF Rachel had been able to play at Havana 
 the profits would have been great. For the per- 
 formances announced, tickets were sold to the value 
 of 2,400. Her " benefit," too, would have been 
 very lucrative if she had conformed to the custom 
 of the place. It was expected that she would pay 
 a round of visits to the notables of the city, and 
 would afterwards sit, attended by one of them, in 
 front of the house, with money-boxes or trays 
 before her, to receive offerings and oblations. She 
 found it physically impossible, however, to do 
 anything of the kind; and her position was made 
 more painful by the unsympathetic scepticism of 
 those about her. 
 
 Every physician whom she consulted ordered her 
 to rest ; but she had so often pleaded indisposition 
 as an excuse for evading engagements that neither 
 the Havaneros nor her company believed that she 
 was really as ill as she said ; and there was a good 
 deal of bad feeling when she announced that the 
 tour was over, that the money taken must be re- 
 turned, that salaries must cease, and that the troupe 
 must go back to Europe, while she remained to bask 
 in Cuban sunshine. She insisted, however, being 
 not only ill but frightened; and as Beauvallet puts 
 
 247
 
 Rachel 
 
 it, " the shores of two continents were strewn with 
 the wreckage of the expedition." 
 
 Even her sisters did not remain with her. Dinah 
 and Leah went to New York, and Sarah repaired 
 to Charleston, where, no doubt, there were supper- 
 parties at which .she was made welcome. Some of 
 the others, after arranging to give performances on 
 their own account, were alarmed by reports of an 
 epidemic of yellow fever, and booked their passages 
 to Europe. Rachel herself wrote pathetic letters 
 home, constrained at last to admit the truth about 
 her health 
 
 " I am ill, very ill indeed equally broken down 
 in body and mind. I shall never play at Havana; 
 but, as I have come here, the manager of the theatre, 
 standing on his rights, demanded 7,000 piastres 
 damages. I paid him, and I have paid my company 
 up to date. I have to bring my poor army back, 
 routed, to the banks of the Seine; and perhaps I 
 shall myself, like another Napoleon, come to the 
 Invalides to die, and beg for a stone on which to 
 rest my head. But no not that. There are my two 
 guardian angels, my two sons. I hear them calling 
 me. I have been too long away from their kisses, 
 their caresses, their dear little arms. And God, 
 who protects my angels, compels me to return 
 home. I no longer regret the money I have lost; 
 I no longer regret my fatigue. I have carried my 
 name as far as I could, and I bring back my heart 
 to those who love me." 
 
 " My dear father, I am so glad that I stayed at 
 
 248
 
 Rachel 
 
 Havana. Such motherly care is being taken of 
 me in a new family which has adopted me that I 
 really ought to be well towards May, when I hope 
 to return to France. Next week we are setting 
 out for a sugar plantation an immense estate, 
 two and a half days' journey from Havana. They 
 have their own doctor on the estate, and he is said 
 to be very good. I still cough rather often, but my 
 spirits are better than they were. I am doing my 
 best to forget this terrible journey to America 
 and the two thousand leagues which separate me 
 from my children and my parents. I get through 
 the time without boring myself too much. God 
 grant that I may continue to do so. I read, I 
 write, I do needlework, I lunch at ten, and I dine 
 at six. As I have to dress twice a day, that task 
 occupies a good deal of my time. In the evening 
 the young people give us a little music, and the ladies 
 chatter to me and try to prevent me from talking. 
 The interest that they take in me is incredible. 
 Reports of the state of my health are published 
 daily in the papers. It is at night that I feel tired. 
 I sleep very little, and such sleep as I get is troubled. 
 It is thought that I may cure my insomnia by means 
 of baths." 
 
 A fortnight later there is a complaint of pain in 
 the left side an old pain returning, and not to be 
 exorcised by blisters, or any other of the old remedies : 
 also complaints of cold feet, and nightly perspirations 
 which, though not painful, were exhausting. The 
 modern reader knows the symptoms at a glance 
 as those of pulmonary consumption; but Rachel 
 
 249
 
 Rachel 
 
 was not so certain. She could still fluctuate between 
 despair and hope, persuading herself that she felt 
 well when, in truth, she was only feeling warm, 
 mistaking every rally for recovery, still hugging 
 the intention of returning to the theatre when she 
 had rested a little longer. 
 
 She remitted her profits about 6000 to France, 
 and presently she followed the money which she was 
 now too ill to care about. The term of the vaca- 
 tion accorded to her by the Comedie Fra^aise not 
 having expired, she settled down to rest in a 
 country house at Meulan, where several of her 
 friends visited her. Her letters to some of them, 
 though little more than notes, give glimpses of her 
 life, and show us how her cheerfulness still 
 flickered, from time to time, into a flame. For 
 instance : 
 
 " If you really want to see me at Meulan, take 
 the Rouen train at Saint Lazare, two steps from 
 your own door. You like the country sunshine, 
 don't you ? Very well. Take the eleven-thirty, 
 and you will be here at one; and since I am piti- 
 lessly forbidden to have more than two hours of 
 your conversation, you shall leave me at three and 
 get home in time for dinner. I never go out, so 
 you may choose your own day. 
 
 " When the north-east wind stopped blowing on 
 the banks of the Seine I felt better for a day or 
 two. Unhappily the improvement did not continue. 
 During the last three days I have felt quite knocked 
 up. You can boast that you have a battered old 
 hulk for a friend." 
 
 250
 
 Rachel 
 
 " Nothing would please me better than to dine 
 with you and the very amiable and gracious Niche 
 (Mme. Doche) ; but, my poor friend, I am not yet fit 
 to go to Paris. In order that I may convince you 
 of that, you must come and dine with me at Meulan, 
 in a charming farm, in which I am practically at 
 home. The hospitable proprietor receives my friends 
 as if they were his own. . . . 
 
 " If you bite at this proposal, name your day, 
 and arrive in the country at sunrise. The weather 
 is marvellously fine and warm, and I want you to 
 give me a long day." 
 
 " I have been better since I have followed 
 the treatment prescribed by Dr. Rayer. I cough 
 less, and that is a great improvement. I shall take 
 the waters somewhere in June. The Faculty of 
 Medicine, more serious than in Moliere,and assembled, 
 if I may say so, for a sadder case than that of Argan, 
 advises me to spend a season at Ems. At first 
 they wanted to send me to Eaux Bonnes; but I 
 could never recover my health in the place in which 
 I saw my dear sister Rebecca die/' 
 
 And then to Arsene Houssaye : 
 
 " My dear Conversationalist (for all the others are 
 mere babblers), come here and gossip with me under 
 the trees of the days that are past. Sometimes 
 I really think I have had no past. .Life is a dream 
 following a dream. We are never quite awake to 
 the realities."
 
 Rachel 
 
 Arsene Houssaye accepted the invitation. Rachel 
 played billiards with him for five-franc pieces, and 
 won. Then she talked of the old days when she 
 had strummed the guitar for coppers. She took 
 the instrument down, and struck a few notes, and 
 then dropped it, and pretended to chase a butter- 
 fly, pirouetting like a ballet-girl as if reaching out 
 for it. And then 
 
 "It has flown away," she said. "Alas! Life slips 
 away, running after butterflies love, happiness, 
 glory; but who catches them ? ' 
 
 Who, indeed ? Or rather, who, having caught 
 them, holds them ? Not those assuredly who only 
 seek them on the glittering surface of things; for 
 to such accident is cruel, and illness and age are 
 pitiless. 
 
 A report circulated, at about this date, that 
 Rachel was going to be married. The author of 
 it was Jules Lecomte the tenor beloved by Marie- 
 Louise, whom we last met at a supper-party where 
 Rachel and the other guests chaffed him about 
 the Empress's favours. Rachel charged him with 
 having invented the rumour and with trying to amuse 
 the Parisians at " poor Rachel's " expense. '" Why," 
 she asked, " do you credit me with any such absurd 
 intention ? ' And then she went on 
 
 " I have two sons whom I adore. I am thirty- 
 two, and I look fifty. Eighteen years of passionate 
 tirades on the stage, mad expeditions to the ends of 
 
 252
 
 Rachel 
 
 the earth, winters at Moscow, treasons of Waterloo, 
 perfidious seas and ungrateful lands all these things 
 have aged the poor weak little woman that I am. . . . 
 " By Jupiter, I think it is very nice of me to write 
 to you like this; for my letter certainly is not from 
 the pen of a great tragedienne, but from that of 
 the good-hearted girl whose name is RACHEL." 
 
 One can trace the slow progress of the relentless 
 malady in these letters the tide rising continually 
 in spite of the constant illusion that it is turning. 
 It was quite clear nothing could be clearer that 
 Rachel could not go back to the theatre for the 
 present. It was, no doubt, quite clear to every one 
 but herself that she would never go back to it at 
 all. But she still persisted in hoping, and still re- 
 fused to do more than postpone the date of her 
 return. To that end she wrote to Achille Fould, 
 the Minister of Fine Arts the same Achille Fould 
 to whom she had sold for a thousand louis the guitar 
 on which she had not strummed for coppers in her 
 childhood asking for an extension of her leave 
 of absence 
 
 " My health, which was already impaired when 
 my leave of absence began, has obliged me to return 
 to France. For ten months I have been taking 
 care of myself, solely in the hope of resuming my 
 place at the Come"die Fran^aise on the day fixed by 
 you. 
 
 " It is with grief, as you may suppose, that I find 
 myself compelled to postpone my reappearance, 
 as the state of my health does not allow me to think 
 
 253
 
 Rachel 
 
 of playing on November i. Dr. Rayer, however, 
 having assured me that I may hope for a complete 
 recovery if I spend a few months in a warm climate, 
 I have consented, without hesitation, to expatriate 
 myself, in order that I may be able, at the earliest 
 possible date, to demonstrate my eagerness once 
 again to receive the applause of my public." 
 
 The permission which she sought was granted. 
 She decided to sell her mansion in the Rue Trudon, 
 together with its art treasures, and she set out for 
 Egypt. Jules Janin, who had lately denounced her 
 with indignation for singing the Marseillaise to an 
 American audience, now sped her on her way with 
 a friendly letter : 
 
 " My DEAR CHILD, 
 
 I cannot let you depart without sending 
 you my best, my most sincere, my most paternal 
 expressions of tenderness. I regard you as my 
 child. I saw your artistic birth, and watched you 
 grow up and set out for your goal and reach it. 
 At present a little fatigue, a great distress, and your 
 regrets for the theatre from which you are absent, 
 are a cruel trial to you. But you must be strong 
 and of a good courage. Fill your soul with hope, 
 and entrust your body to the warm and favourable 
 winds, to your journey, to the Orient, to the sun, 
 to the clement stars which await you, and will give 
 you back, happy and inspired, to us who love 
 you, and to the great art of tragedy which you 
 have revived, and which has no future save in 
 you." 
 
 254
 
 Rachel 
 
 It was well meant, albeit a little overdone; but 
 that could not be helped, for Jules Janin always over- 
 did things. No doubt he knew better, but thought 
 that Rachel wished to be deceived. Her letter to 
 her mother, written on board the steamer, shows that 
 she deceived herself. She had sat next to the cap- 
 tain, she wrote, and had managed to eat a little; 
 and she coughed less at sea than on land. The 
 Mediterranean was beautifully blue; she felt her 
 lungs expanding; she had no doubt that her journey 
 would do her the good she hoped from it. 
 
 And so to Cairo. 
 
 255
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Life at Cairo A trip up the Nile Sojourn at Montpellier. 
 
 THE journey into Egypt was, naturally, devoid 
 of incident. One can make no incident out of the 
 fact that Rachel drank asses' milk, or out of the 
 fact that a necklace was discovered for her in an 
 Egyptian tomb, and that the discoverer attached 
 to it a legend of his own invention to the effect that 
 it had been worn by Cleopatra a legend to which 
 Jules Janin devoted a paragraph of his dramatic 
 gossip. The story that she offered Sarah 15,000 
 francs to go home and leave her alone, and that 
 Sarah refused to depart for less than 20,000 francs 
 is probably a legend also. Certainly it has all the 
 marks of one. 
 
 In truth there is nothing to be recorded except 
 that Rachel, failing to get better at Cairo, hired a 
 dahabeah and travelled up the Nile, attended by 
 a private physician; and that she slowly got worse 
 instead of better, and came back again. Beyond 
 that one has only the chronicle of her alternating 
 hopes and fears the invariable accompaniments 
 of her malady set forth in her letters to her family 
 and her friends. " In the shadow of the Pyramids," 
 for instance, she wrote to Arsene Houssaye 
 
 " I chose to live like a gourmande. In the course 
 of a few years I devoured my days and my nights. 
 
 256
 
 Rachel 
 
 But the thing is done, and I am not going to say, 
 like the penitents : ' It was my fault; it was all 
 my own fault.' 
 
 " When one has not kindled one's heart to warmth 
 in one's best days, one cannot make the flame blaze 
 up at thirty-five. No, no. It is over. Ah ! if I 
 had not two sons, who are all that I love in the world, 
 I should not be sorry to die. But I shall come back. 
 The God of Israel will permit me, in the entr'actes 
 above, to come to earth again and kiss my children 
 and revisit my friends at the Theatre Frangais which 
 I have loved so well. 
 
 " You live in the Champs Elysees. Every day 
 you pass the Obelisk. Think then of the poor 
 exile. 
 
 " At the foot of the Pyramids I look upon twenty 
 centuries buried in the sands. Ah, my friend, I 
 clearly see here how a tragedienne must disappear 
 into nothingness. I thought myself like a pyramid, 
 and, behold, I am no more than a shadow which 
 passes which has passed. I came here to find 
 a fresh hold on the life which is escaping from me, 
 and, all around me, I see nothing but death. When 
 one has known what it is to be loved at Paris it 
 is time to die. Dig me a little hole at Pere Lachaise 
 and in your memory. Have you forgotten ? I, at 
 any rate, remember. 
 
 r< I write this without really knowing what I say; 
 but I use the dust of the queens of Egypt to dry 
 my ink. That dust is the most eloquent thing in 
 my letter. 
 
 " The departing 
 
 RACHEL." 
 
 s 257
 
 Rachel 
 
 She was to meet Arsene Houssaye once again, 
 and to boast to him that the letter " wasn't so bad." 
 It was self-conscious perhaps; but the writer never- 
 theless had made a little literature without knowing 
 it, her correspondent being a more inspiring man 
 than the majority of the managers of theatres, and 
 with something of the sincerity of a guardian angel 
 hidden only a little way beneath the exterior of 
 a man of pleasure. Other letters, less literary, 
 exhibit her fluctuating expectations. 
 
 ' The weather continues to be splendid, and I 
 write to you from the midst of a fairy-like garden. 
 Fancy that, on the I4th of November! I am no 
 worse. I hope to see you again. I embrace you. 
 If that does not please you, send my kiss back to 
 me. My remembrances to your neighbour." 
 
 That is to a friend whose name is not given. On 
 her way up the Nile we find her writing cheerfully 
 to her boy Gabriel 
 
 " I continue to improve, thanks to the continual 
 warmth of this beautiful climate. ... I am sitting 
 in my little bed, in my little cabin, with the windows 
 open. 
 
 ' The Nile is like a lake. Not a breath of wind 
 ruffles the surface. The sun itself, as if it were 
 too hot, plunges its rays into the water. ... I am 
 filling my lungs with the life-giving air of Upper 
 Egypt. I still cough; but instead of growing weaker 
 I am gaining strength. My appetite is always good; 
 my nights are more comfortable, though I am still 
 
 258
 
 Rachel 
 
 feverish this evening. My doctor does not appear 
 in the least anxious about me, but every day gives 
 me the best possible report of my health. . . . 
 
 " Good-bye, dear. Take care of the kisses which 
 I send to the family and to our friends. It will be 
 a double pleasure to them if I make you my 
 messenger. 
 
 ' For yourself, dear, I send you all the love of 
 my heart there will always be love there for my 
 sons. So great are the joys which God bestows 
 on the mothers who love their little ones! " 
 
 From Thebes she writes to her mother, whom 
 she tells that her doctor feels her pulse five or six 
 times a day, but has nothing else to do except to 
 pace the deck of the dahabeah with his hands in 
 pockets. She adds, however, that her cure is a 
 " martyrdom," and continues 
 
 " God is taking pity on me. My health is not 
 getting any worse. I have been a little feverish; 
 and, for two nights, my cough kept me awake; but 
 the doctor assures me that that is only a temporary 
 inconvenience, and that I shall soon be convalescent. 
 It was rather cold all through February at Thebes, 
 and the wind made it impossible for me to leave 
 my room. My appetite is not so good as it was, 
 but I still have all the appetite I need; and 
 though I have to admit that I am dreadfully bored, 
 my spirits are tolerably good, and I can laugh." 
 
 One easily reads between the lines and sees that 
 the note of cheerfulness is being forced. The proof, 
 
 S 2 259
 
 Rachel 
 
 if proof be needed, is in a letter written a few days 
 later to a friend to whom it was easier to tell the 
 truth. Rachel writes that she can hardly stand on 
 her feet, and is longing for the day when she will lie 
 down for ever. 
 
 " I am not yet dead, but I am almost as good as 
 dead. I no longer wish for anything or expect 
 anything, and I am tired of the merely animal life 
 which I have been leading ever since this long and 
 painful illness attacked me. Better a hundred 
 times to be nailed up within four boards, and treated 
 as they treat the Egyptian mummies. If I do not 
 die of consumption, I shall assuredly die of bore- 
 dom. . . . 
 
 "... I received your letter of the 8th of Septem- 
 ber just as I was being put on board for Alexandria. 
 You would have shed a real tear for me if you had 
 seen me then. They had to carry me on to the boat. 
 Really I do not know what my poor fragile body 
 is made of. What a lot it takes to kill me ! I did 
 not think one could suffer so much without dying 
 a thousand times over. 
 
 " And now I must leave off. My cough it makes 
 me first hot and then cold." 
 
 One would not have expected her to rally and 
 recover her spirits after that; but she did so. The 
 next letter shows her once more making plans- 
 looking, in fact, quite a long way ahead. 
 
 " I am coming back to Cairo for April and May, 
 and then I shall embark on the Mediterranean. 
 
 260
 
 Rachel 
 
 I shall be at Marseilles in the first fortnight of June, 
 and shall go on to Montpellier, a place equally 
 renowned for its warm climate and its doctors. I 
 shall spend a portion of my children's holidays at 
 Paris, winding up some business which requires 
 attention, and then, at the first sign of cold, I shall 
 go south. Perhaps I shall return to Egypt; or per- 
 haps I shall pass a month or six weeks at New York, 
 and the rest of the time at Charleston, where, I 
 remember, the climate was so agreeable." 
 
 So she proposed; and the end was not even yet 
 so near but that it was possible for her to carry 
 out a part of the programme. She pulled herself 
 together and appeared bright and even coquettish 
 on board the steamer which brought her home; 
 but the truth about her condition is in a letter 
 from Joseph Autran, who saw her land, to Pont- 
 martin 
 
 " Ah ! My dear friend ! What a power have 
 suffering and misfortune to tame the haughtiest 
 pride ! I saw the poor woman in a state which left 
 no room for any emotion but pity shrivelled to 
 a skeleton, livid, hollow-eyed, unable to speak four 
 words without a fearful fit of coughing. Who would 
 believe that that voice, which issues with effort 
 from her breast like a last sigh, is the same voice 
 which made the rafters of the theatre ring and kept 
 the most brilliant assemblages in Europe hanging 
 on its words! " 
 
 And so to Montpellier ! 
 
 261
 
 Rachel 
 
 A house had been taken for her there belonging 
 to a M. Coffinieres, an advocate practising at the 
 Montpellier court. With her were her maid Rose, 
 her physician, Dr. Farrat, and Dr. Farrat's brother- 
 in-law, Lieutenant Aubaret of the French navy. 
 
 The last-named was the last of the men who fell 
 under the spell of her charm or perhaps it was of 
 her fame ; a simple honest man, without any sort 
 of guile or subtlety, who not only sentimentalized 
 at her feet, but laid plans for the salvation of her 
 soul. If only she would become a Catholic ! he urged. 
 If only she, a Jewess, would be born again of water 
 and the spirit ! 
 
 The idea, as we know, was not quite new to her. 
 She had toyed with it sufficiently to set the theatre 
 and the boulevard talking. Her reception into the 
 Church, it had been rumoured, was to be of the 
 most ornate character, attended by a choral service 
 and a gift of j ewellery from a devout admirer. ' ' May 
 I ask, madame," some mocker had inquired, " for 
 whose benefit the performance is to be given ? ' 
 But it was not to be given for any one's benefit, or 
 at all. There had been nothing but reclame in the 
 rumours then, and there was nothing whatever in 
 them now. The only reference to the subject in 
 Rachel's letters is an account of her presentation 
 to a bishop on her way home from Egypt. 
 
 The bishop, we gather, said a mass for Rachel's 
 recovery. She thanked him, but, at the same time, 
 dropped a hint that she desired no religious dis- 
 cussions. He took the hint and changed the subject, 
 talking thereafter only of food and the best way of 
 cooking it. 
 
 262
 
 " He was a regular glutton of a prelate. One 
 day he asked me point-blank alluding no doubt 
 to my first appearances on the stage whether I 
 had even eaten the Gymnase sweetmeats. ' I never 
 fail to fill my pockets with them when I go there,' 
 I replied. That, I admit, was somewhat of the 
 nature of a confession; but it is the only time in 
 my life that I have had anything to do with the 
 Catholic ritual." 
 
 Possibly she became more disposed to have some- 
 thing to do with it a little later. It is said, at any 
 rate, that Lieutenant Aubaret nearly persuaded 
 her to become a Christian, but that his counsel was, 
 in the end, overruled by that of her friend Plon- 
 Plon; but that is doubtful. All that is certain is 
 that a Rabbi boasted over her grave that she 
 had been " too intelligent not to die in the religion 
 of her fathers " as if " intelligent " meant " im- 
 pervious to argument," or as if it were possible 
 to arrange the different sectarians in order of 
 intelligence. 
 
 Nor can it be said that Rachel's life at Montpellier 
 was the life of a woman who accepted without demur 
 the teachings of her experience concerning the vanity 
 of terrestrial things. She spent the long days 
 basking in the sun on the terrace of her villa, occasion- 
 ally playing backgammon with her brother, but more 
 often emptying her jewels out of their cases, running 
 them through her fingers, spreading them on the 
 table, passing them in review. 
 
 They were her trophies, won in all the capitals 
 of Europe trophies of her art and of her charm 
 
 263
 
 Rachel 
 
 the gifts of emperors and empresses, and kings and 
 queens, and princes and princesses, and admirers, 
 rich and poor, titled and undistinguished. They 
 bound her with gold chains to the glorious days 
 when the joy of living and triumphing had at once 
 delighted and surprised her. They mocked her, 
 doubtless, with the memories which they evoked; 
 for she had lived no inner life, independent of inci- 
 dents and gauds. She could not even find comfort 
 and repose in the thought of enduring achievement 
 and a great work done which would survive her. 
 Her glory had been the most evanescent kind of glory. 
 Already it was becoming a memory; and these 
 precious stones which she had not brought into 
 the world and could not take out of it were all that 
 remained to her. 
 
 Yet not quite all for there were also certain 
 friendships. Arsene Houssaye, to whom she had 
 written that, after flattering herself that she was as 
 firmly established as the pyramids, she had learnt 
 that she was only a shadow " which was passing 
 which had passed," was her very good friend still. 
 So was Ponsard, who had loved her, and to whom 
 she had written that, seeing life about to escape 
 from her, she clung to it with desperation. The 
 two men took a journey to see her, and lunched 
 with her, and spent an afternoon with her, pretend- 
 ing to believe that she was getting better, and talking 
 in epigrams, just as in the old days of the suppers 
 after the play. 
 
 It seemed as if their talk galvanized her back to 
 life. She dragged herself out of her chair and made 
 plans. She would go back to Paris; her mother 
 
 264
 
 Rachel 
 
 must take a house for her one of the houses in the 
 Rue de la Pompe at Passy would suit her. 
 
 " I intend to start on June 18. It would be useless 
 and tiring for you to come to me here. As soon 
 as my business is wound up you shall follow me 
 wherever my health compels me to go. 
 
 " I shall see you soon. My kisses to my father 
 and yourself. 
 
 RACHEL." 
 
 And so once more to Paris ! 
 
 265
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Last days in Paris Farewell to the theatre Departure for the 
 
 Riviera. 
 
 THE last sojourn in Paris was of brief duration. 
 It was a period of farewells, more or less formal and 
 final. Rachel spoke of the house in which she stayed 
 as a station on the road to Pere Lachaise. It was 
 a spacious house in the Place Royale, to which all 
 her personal effects which had not been brought to 
 the hammer had been removed; and she smiled and 
 said, with a flicker of playfulness, that there would 
 be plenty of room there for the funeral feast. Then 
 she made her preparations to depart some of 
 them on the assumption that she would return, 
 but most of them in the belief that she would not. 
 A letter to Empis, who had succeeded Arsene 
 Houssaye as Director of the Comedie Frangaise, 
 finally severed her long connection with the theatre 
 
 "It is with deep regret that I inform you that 
 the state of my health forbids me to hope that I 
 shall be able to return to the Theatre Francais in 
 the immediate future. I will accept, therefore, any 
 decision that the committee may arrive at with 
 regard to my resignation." 
 
 The letter covered Dr. Rayer's medical certificate, 
 couched, with kind intentions, in phrases which, 
 
 266
 
 Rachel 
 
 while hardly encouraging hope, did not quite 
 exclude it 
 
 " Mile. Rachel is ill. She is better than she has 
 been, but it is imperative that she should leave 
 Paris, and winter in the South. Her physician 
 could not think of allowing her to reappear on the 
 stage before June i, 1858." 
 
 The next thing was to sort and docket her corre- 
 spondence, so that every letter might be returned 
 to its writer after her death an injunction duly 
 obeyed. Then, with a weakening hand which did 
 not easily hold the pen, she wrote her own letters 
 of farewell : letters which seem to be punctuated by 
 tears letters in which the writer cries out against 
 the cruelty which snatches her away prematurely 
 from the world which she has found so good 
 
 " Dear friend, I am very ill; and I am taking my 
 departure, not yet for the other world, but for 
 a better climate, to which they are sending me for 
 the sake of the warmth which is lacking here. My 
 spirits are as much broken as my health; and the 
 whole of my poor body needs rebuilding supposing 
 that it is not too late. Sometimes I fancy that night 
 is suddenly falling, and I feel, as it were, a great void 
 in my head and in my mind. Of a sudden, all the 
 light goes out, and your poor Rachel quite ceases to 
 exist. Alas ! poor me ! the poor me that I was so 
 proud of too proud, perhaps it is so feeble now 
 hardly anything is left of it. So this letter, my 
 friend, is to wish you good-bye. . . . 
 
 ' What things have happened, my friend, since 
 
 267
 
 Rachel 
 
 our last meeting ! And what a cruel journey was 
 mine ! Even now I cannot speak of it without 
 tears, and without reminding myself of its deceptions 
 and delusions, due to the terrible illness which is 
 so fast breaking me up. But how could I foresee 
 this melancholy end to an enterprise which began so 
 prosperously and only failed at the hour when success 
 seemed assured? And this pitiless disease this 
 shirt of Nessus which I cannot tear off how easily 
 I might have prevented it ! But I trusted my 
 strength too much I believed too confidently in my 
 star and, without taking any precautions, I started 
 on that interminable journey from New York to 
 Havana, the last stage of my fatal odyssey. And 
 now, my friend, I do not know whether I shall ever 
 return from the country to which I am going. I do 
 not know whether God will take pity for me for the 
 sake of my poor dear children and my friends, or 
 whether He will call me to Himself. 
 
 " Farewell, my friend. Very likely this will be 
 the last letter which you will receive from me. 
 You who have known Rachel so brilliant you 
 have seen her in luxury and splendour who have 
 so often applauded her triumphs it would be very 
 hard for you to recognize her to-day in the skeleton 
 which she has become and the spectre which attends 
 her wherever she goes." 
 
 Simultaneously she wrote to her colleague, Augus- 
 tine Brohan, who had been too jealous of her ever 
 to be her friend, and had said many bitter things at 
 her expense, but was none the less moved to com- 
 miseration now 
 
 268
 
 Rachel 
 
 " Patience and resignation that is my motto in 
 these times. I am very grateful to you, dear Mile. 
 Brohan, for the kind interest which you take in me; 
 but only God can help me now. I am just starting 
 for the South. I hope the pure air and the warmth 
 may do something to ease my sufferings." 
 
 And so to Cannet, on the Riviera though there 
 was one more farewell to be said first. 
 
 On the day fixed for her departure all the grey 
 gloom and clammy damp of November were in the 
 air; but Rachel rose early and came down, dressed 
 to go out. They told her that it was too soon to 
 start. She replied that she knew it, but that she 
 had an expedition to make before starting, in 
 fulfilment of a vow, and wished her carriage fetched. 
 They offered to accompany her, but she put them 
 off, insisting that she must go alone. They wondered, 
 but let her have her way. She got into the carriage 
 and drove off. 
 
 It was the pale hour of a November dawn, and the 
 streets were empty. " Drive slowly," Rachel said. 
 " First to the Gymnase, then to the Frangais." 
 Before each of these theatres in turn she halted for 
 a few silent minutes, abandoning herself to the 
 thoughts which came and went ; and truly there was 
 much there for meditation as well as tears. In the 
 former house she had emerged from the gutter, 
 proving her great gifts, complimented and encouraged 
 by those patrons of the arts in whose power it was 
 to make reputations. In the latter she had found 
 herself famous at an age when most girls are still 
 at school the acknowledged queen of the greatest 
 
 269
 
 Rachel 
 
 theatre in the world. For eighteen years she had 
 reigned there without a rival, rejoicing in her glory 
 and her power to please; the multitude applauding, 
 while princes laid their hearts and their diamonds 
 at her feet. And now it was all over, so soon, so 
 completely, so irrecoverably. Another had suc- 
 ceeded to the glory. The flames of the passions of 
 her lovers had burnt themselves out, even faster 
 than the fire of her own energies had failed. The 
 jewels, indeed, remained; but though these had 
 once meant much to her, they could mean very 
 little now. There were mockery and irony in their 
 cold glitter; and they could only give point and 
 poignancy to the reflection : "What shadows we are ! 
 What shadows we pursue! " 
 
 The particular shadow that was Rachel, however, 
 had ceased the pursuit of shadows, and was not to 
 resume it. She lay back in her carriage, indulging 
 the luxury of regret and grief, and not unconscious 
 of the drama of it, until the cold of the early morning 
 began to chill her through her furs. Then drying 
 her eyes 
 
 "It is enough," she said. " Drive on to the 
 Gare de Lyon." 
 
 She was so weak when she got there that she had 
 to be helped, and even lifted, into the train. 
 
 And so southwards, with Rose, and Sarah of the 
 Supper-parties, on the last of all her journeys; 
 Plon-Plon, who had been her lover, and was still 
 her friend, having promised to send his yacht to 
 pick her up at Marseilles. 
 
 270
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Life on the Riviera Last illness and death. 
 
 THE villa prepared for Rachel was at Cannet, 
 near Cannes, with a view of the blue sea on one side, 
 and of the blue Esterel hills on the other. It belonged 
 to Professor Sardou, the uncle of Victorien Sardou, 
 then a young man whose first play had just failed 
 ignominiously at the Od^on. The bedroom to 
 which the invalid was shown was furnished in 
 strangely chilling taste. The bed was of alabaster, 
 the sort of bed on which it seemed less natural 
 for the living to sleep than for the dead to lie in 
 state. 
 
 " Not yet," Rachel shuddered with a cough. 
 She added that she had dreamt, when in Russia, 
 that she would die in such a bed, and that the 
 recollection of the dream had haunted her ever 
 since. She fell asleep in it, but awoke at midnight, 
 shrieking for help. 
 
 She knew that she was dying all the world 
 knew it. All the world seemed to have paused in 
 its work to watch her die to beg a souvenir, or 
 to offer comfort or counsel. Strangers begged for 
 her autograph, and she gave it them, writing 
 
 " Dans huit jours d'ici je commencerai a etre 
 Mangee par les vers et par les biographes." 
 
 All the amateur and quack physicians of Europe 
 
 271
 
 Rachel 
 
 and America proposed remedies which they believed 
 might succeed where those of the orthodox practi- 
 tioners had failed. Milk, in which a calf's foot had 
 been boiled, sweetened and flavoured with orange 
 flowers, to be sipped from a teaspoon continually, 
 was one suggestion. Roasted chestnuts, pounded 
 to a powder, were recommended by another coun- 
 sellor. A third thought that iron pills would be 
 efficacious. A fourth declared that it would be a 
 good idea to sleep with the cows in a stable, and 
 offered to lend his own stable for the purpose. 
 A fifth advised baths of gelatine. A sixth wrote, 
 with pompous imbecility 
 
 ' Believe me, mademoiselle, the doctors of to- 
 day care nothing about healing their patients. 
 Their one idea is to enrich themselves at their 
 expense. As nothing is impossible to God, you had 
 better consult a somnambulist if there is a good 
 one in your neighbourhood. If not, send a lock 
 of your hair to Mme. Morelle, at Niort (Deux- 
 Sevres), who, last August, cured a young soldier 
 of the Army of Africa, who had only one lung 
 left. She gave him a prescription which she had 
 written in her sleep." 
 
 And so on, and so forth, for even this list of 
 medical recommendations is incomplete. Every 
 post brought a handful of them, each more fatuous 
 than the one which had preceded it; but Rachel 
 wasted away without being deluded into false hope 
 by any of them. 
 
 She only once got beyond the grounds of the villa 
 on an occasion on which the peasants organized a 
 country dance for her amusement. She sent for 
 
 272
 
 Rachel 
 
 the photographer, and had her portrait taken in 
 the garden it is the likeness of a withered old 
 woman, though in truth she was only thirty-seven. 
 She returned some of her friends their letters, packed 
 in baskets of fruit or flowers, as offerings for the 
 New Year, post-dated because, as she wrote to Plon- 
 Plon, " it seems as if that would give me strength 
 to live until the date I have put on them." 
 
 A few friends called among others Legouve", 
 with whom she had made her peace. She told him 
 how she passed the time : " For six hours of the 
 day I hope, and the rest of the time I despair." 
 She also complimented him on the dramatic char- 
 acter of the women in his plays, adding that she 
 hoped he would write a piece for her return to the 
 stage; but that can only have been said in playful- 
 ness, and for the sake of saying something. Three 
 days after she had said it she was dead. 
 
 The only regular visitor was Lieutenant Aubaret, 
 who was then stationed at Toulon, whence he 
 journeyed to Cannet as often as his duties suffered. 
 He had not even yet abandoned the hope of per- 
 suading the Jewess to become a Christian. It 
 is said that he nearly succeeded that preparations 
 were actually made for her private baptism, but 
 were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Prince 
 Napoleon, and were not resumed. But that is 
 uncertain, and hardly matters ; for it is only because 
 the Truth is hidden in mystery, that death-bed con- 
 versions are possible. The essence of all religions 
 is, after all, the same : that death is not the end 
 that the shadows pass not into nothingness, but to 
 new conditions; that the seen and the unseen are 
 one in spite of the curtain between them, the causes 
 
 273
 
 Rachel 
 
 on one side producing effects upon the other and 
 that our unfulfilled resolutions will still have their 
 chances of fulfilment. And therefore, for this solemn 
 moment of transition, every religion provides its 
 ritual. 
 
 And so, as the hour approached, it was felt that 
 Rachel must die in accordance with the ritual of 
 her forefathers. Sarah, who had so often been 
 the companion of her frivolities, now hurriedly set 
 the telegraph wires in motion and summoned 
 Hebrew functionaries from Nice to chant psalms 
 in the dying woman's ear. 
 
 " Listen, Israel, the Eternal, our God, the Eternal 
 is One. 
 
 " Go, then, whither the Lord calleth thee. Go, 
 and may His mercy assist thee. May the Eternal, 
 our God, be with thee. May His immortal angels 
 guide thee to Heaven, and may the righteous re- 
 joice when the Lord receiveth thee in His bosom ! 
 
 " God of our fathers, revive in Thy mercy this 
 soul that goeth to Thee; unite it to those of the holy 
 patriarchs, amid the eternal joys of the heavenly 
 Paradise ! Amen ! ' 
 
 So they intoned. Perhaps Rachel understood 
 more probably she did not. It does not matter; 
 for the great use of ritual lies in its power to soothe 
 the ears even of those who do not understand it. 
 But the course was run; the vigil between the two 
 sleeps was over; the sojourn in Vanity Fair, where 
 no man has an abiding habitation, had reached its 
 end. Rachel had passed through Vanity Fair, 
 and learnt its lesson, and passed on. 
 
 274
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abrantes, Duchesse d', 65 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur, 209-210 
 Aubaret, Lieutenant, 262-263, 273 
 Aumale, Due d', 233 
 Autran, Joseph, 261 
 
 B , Hector, 175-192 
 
 Barnum, P. T., 238 (mentioned) 
 Bertrand, Arthur, 109, m-ii8 
 Bertrand, Fanny, 111-112, 115 
 Berwick, Duchesse de, 71-72 
 Brohan, Augustine, 268 
 Brohan, Madeleine, 171 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 131-135 
 Byrne, Mrs. Pitt, 235 
 
 Charlotte Corday, 193-194 
 
 Chateaubriand, 65-66, 85 
 
 Choron, Alexandre-Etienne, 13-14 
 
 Clesinger, Jean-Baptiste, 228 
 
 Colet, Louise, 145 
 
 Cremieux, Adolphe, 61, 70-71, 79-80, 
 
 85, 220-221 
 
 Cremieux, Madame, 86-88, 219 
 Custine, Marquis de, 85 
 
 Dejazet, Virginie, 110-113 
 Dickens, Charles, 232 (mentioned) 
 Dorval, Marie, 167-168 
 Duchatel, Comte, 139 
 Dumas, Alexandre, pere, 94-98, 163, 
 228-230, 232 
 
 Elssler, Fanny, 232 (mentioned) 
 Eugenie, Empress, 170 
 
 Faubourg, Saint-Germain, 61, 90-91 
 Felix, Dinah, 9, 248 
 Felix, Esther Haya, 8-9 
 Felix, Gabriel, 118 
 Felix, Jacob, 8-9, 42-43, 48, 148, 150 
 Felix, Leah, 9, 248 
 
 Felix, Rachel. See Rachel, Made- 
 moiselle 
 Felix, Raphael, 9, 68, 149, 236-237, 242 
 
 Felix, Rebecca, 9, 117, 206-208 
 Fe"lix, Sarah, 9, 49, 117, 206, 208, 
 
 248, 256, 274 
 Fould, Achille, 140-141, 253 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 62, 165-166 
 George, Mile., 103-105 
 Girardin, Emile de, 165-166 
 Girardin, Madame de, 106, 122, 165- 
 
 166, 1 68 
 
 Got, Edmond, 84 
 Greville, Charles, 236 
 
 Houssaye, Arsene, 12-13, 65, 151- 
 
 *75> r 93> 251-252, 256, 264 
 Hugo, Victor, 13, 39, 104, 163 
 
 Janin, Jules, 20-21, 36-39, 44-45, 
 125, 146, 165, 198, 209, 224, 254, 
 256 
 
 Joinville, Prince de, 90-92 
 
 Judith, 122-124 
 
 Kemble, Fanny, 74 (mentioned) 
 
 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 141-143 
 Lassalle, Jouslin de, 18 
 Lecomte, Jules, 165-166, 252 
 Legouve, Ernest, 209-222, 231, 273 
 Lind, Jenny, 232, 236-238 
 
 Marie-Louise, Ex-Empress, 165 (men- 
 tioned) 
 
 Marie Stuart, 76, 125-129 
 
 Marseillaise, 144-152, 237 
 
 Maxime, Mile., 124-129 
 
 Medee, 214, 218 
 
 Merimee, Prosper, 225 
 
 Mole, Comte de, 65 
 
 Mussel, Alfred de, 44, 46, 48-57, no, 
 164, 170 
 
 Napoleon III, 171, 172 
 Napoleon, Prince, 199, 192, 263, 
 270 
 
 275
 
 Index 
 
 Noailles, Duchesse de, 65 
 Nye, Captain, 234, 237 
 
 Plessy, Madame, 157, 161 
 Poirson, Auguste, 19, 21-22 
 Ponsard, Frar^ois, 193-198, 200, 264 
 Provost, Jean Baptiste Fransois, 19 
 
 Rachel, Mademoiselle, introductory 
 survey of her character, 1-9 ; birth, 
 parentage, and childhood, 10-15 5 
 theatrical training, 16-26; \ivcdebut, 
 26-27 > reception by public and 
 critics, 38-45 ; quarrel of Janin and 
 Mussel over her, 45-47 ; her im- 
 promptu supper-party, and subse- 
 quent quarrels with Musset, 48- 
 57 ; quarrel with Dr. Veron, 58- 
 60 ; her relations with the Fau- 
 bourg, 61-62 ; her disposition to re- 
 vert to type, 62-64, IO 5 ! perform- 
 ance at Windsor, 73-76; reception 
 in London society, 76-80 ; symptoms 
 of pulmonary disease, 80 ; quarrel 
 with Cremieux, 86-89 relations 
 with the Prince dejoinville, 90-92 ; 
 with Walewski, 92-94, 97-100 ; 
 with Dumas, pert, 94-98 ; her pala- 
 tial mansion, 101-105 5 quarrel with 
 Walewski, 105-109 ; relations with 
 Dejazetand with Bertrand, 110-119 > 
 failure of Judith, 122 ; appears with 
 Mile. Maxime in Marie Stuart, 
 125-129 ; Charlotte Bronte's criti- 
 cism in Villette, 131-135 ; relations 
 with Viennet, 136-137 ; her methods 
 of plundering, 138-141 ; Larmar- 
 tine s appreciation of, 141-143 ; her 
 singing of the Marseillaise, 144- 
 152 ; secures for Houssaye director- 
 ship of Comedie Fran9aise, 153-161 ; 
 betrothal to and quarrel with Hector 
 
 B , 175-192; her German and 
 
 Austrian tour, 184-190 ; relations 
 with Ponsard, 193, 198 ; tour in 
 Russia, 198-204 ; return to Paris, 
 205 ; death of her sister Rebecca, 
 
 208 ; relations with Legouve, and 
 subsequent quarrel, 209-222 ; refusal 
 to appear in Medtt, 217-222 ; re- 
 sumes friendship with Cremieux, 
 220; litigation with Legouve, 221- 
 222 ; failure of Rostrnonde, 223-224 ; 
 rivalry of Ristori, 226-232 ; Dumas' 
 onslaughts, 228-230; decides to go to 
 America, 232 ; reception in London, 
 2 33 indifferent reception in New 
 York, etc., 237, et seq. ; illness, 242, 
 et seq. ; at Havana, 246-249 ; re- 
 turn to France, 250 ; departure for 
 Egypt, 2 55 5 return to France, 262 ; 
 last days in Paris, 266, et seq. ; fare- 
 well to the 'theatre, 269; departure 
 for the Riviera, 270-271 ; last ill- 
 ness and death, 271 to end 
 
 Recamier, Madame, 65 (mentioned) 
 
 Ristori, Adelaide, 222, 226-232, 235 
 
 Romanticism, 28-37, 167 
 
 Rosemonde, 223 
 
 Rothschild, Baron James de, 170 
 
 Sainte-Aulaire, 14-17, 19 
 Sainte-Beuve, Charles- Augustin de, 44, 
 
 59. 225 
 Samson, Joseph Isidore, 18, 22-25, 
 
 43, 80, 209 
 
 Samson, Madame, 23-24 
 Scribe, Eugene, 209-211, 225 
 Soulie, Frederic, 38 
 
 Talma, Franfois Joseph, 22 (men- 
 tioned ) 
 Tattet, Alfred, no 
 
 Vacquerie, Auguste, 233 
 
 Veron, Dr., 18, 58-60, 86 - 87, 140, 
 
 155, 212, 225 
 Victoria, Queen, 73 
 Viennet, Guillaume, 136-137 
 Vigny, Alfred de, 164, 167 
 Villette, 131-135 
 
 Walewski, Comte, 62-63, 92-94, 97- 
 100, 105-109, 140 
 
 Richard Clay &" Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.
 
 University of Ca" 1 !""" 
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