ENGLAND.
In the month of May 1841 Rachel accepted the proposal made by Mr. Lumley of Her Majesty's Theatre to act there for one month.
The frantic enthusiasm with which her performances had been received in Paris was cooling, and her father and the Director of the Comédie Française came to the conclusion that absence, and a triumphant return with fresh laurels gathered elsewhere, might reconquer the place in the affections of the public that she had lost. The young actress took London by storm. Nothing was talked of but her fascination, her genius, her beauty. The Queen had been married but a year. Prince Albert had inspired her with the love of intellectual pleasures, amongst which he included the theatre. The representations at Her Majesty's, therefore, were honoured by the presence of the Court, and crowded with all the fashionable world of London. Her first appearance was in Hermione. An amusing mistake was made by the audience, to whom the actress was as yet unknown. The part of Andromaque was filled by a Mademoiselle Larcher, a very handsome person of but mediocre talent. In Racine's play, she comes on in the scene before Hermione. The English public, seeing Mademoiselle Larcher, thought it was Rachel, and greeted her with thunders of applause, which quite bewildered the poor girl, unaccustomed to any demonstration of the kind. When the real attraction of the evening appeared, aware of their error, the audience gave her a still more enthusiastic reception, which was repeated every time she acted. By the following letter, written to M. Carré a few days after her arrival, we can see the favourable impression made by the warmth with which she was welcomed:—
Here I am in London, enjoying an unprecedented success. My first appearance was in Hermione, and I can tell you that when I first came on, my knees trembled, and I felt so shaky that I think I should have fallen, if thunders of applause had not come to encourage me, and to rouse me to fuller consciousness of all it behoved me to do to merit this reception, which was mere kindness, and nothing but kindness, since they had not yet heard me. The bravos and plaudits lasted without intermission to the end, and then I was recalled. Hats and handkerchiefs were shaken out of the boxes, and several bouquets fell at my feet. A splendid engagement has been offered to me for the season of 1842. Voilà, belle Emilie, à quel point nous en sommes.
In no particular did the actress exaggerate the success she had achieved or the enthusiasm she created. Her enemies in Paris declared her triumph to be the result of tripotage, and, in a pamphlet published about this time, called La Vérité Rachel, M. Maurice the author says:—
We will not speak of the origin of the celebrated puffs that have been sent to London. They are born in Paris, brought into the world by Papa Félix, his daughter, and M. V. M. C wrote them out, corrected them, and gave them to M. V, who paid for them, and sent them to London to a certain M. B, who translated them, or had them translated and inserted in the London papers.
There is little doubt that Laporte, real manager of the Opera House—though Lumley, his agent and solicitor, appeared in all business arrangements—used every means to make her visit a financial success. He introduced, for the first time in England, the Parisian claque, and endeavoured to conciliate the press, and obtain favourable critical notices for the tragedian who was to make his fortune. But Rachel needed no artificial aid. She became the idol of the town. The Opera House was crowded to excess. Fashion flew into the wildest raptures. The enthusiasm of Paris in 1838 was equalled and even surpassed. She was hailed with fanatical admiration. She became the rage.
It is now nearly half a century since Rachel first appeared among us. She died ere the young men of this generation were born, yet the echo of her words and the memory of her influence have been transmitted to them as a living presence by those who saw her. Philosophers, poets, critics, novelists, are unanimous. She was transcendent—a revelation! and this in spite of all she had to conquer and overcome, both in the company who supported her, and in the absolute want of sympathy felt by Englishmen for the French classic poets, with their recurrence of spoken rhymes and stiff monotony. "Comme c'est Grec," said La Harpe of Andromaque. We say, "Comme c'est Français." Orestes and Pyrrhus, Herrmone and Andromaque, are but fine gentlemen and ladies of the time of Louis XIV. Rachel, however, was of no nationality, of no age, neither Greek nor French, classical nor modern. Her genius was for all time; she unerringly interpreted human nature in its grandest and truest forms. She took the stately Alexandrines, and made them the vehicle of her own love or hate, joy or grief. She became, as it were, the abstract expression of whatever passion she sought to portray; and by that portrayal she had the power of enchaining the attention of her audience, to the forgetting of all accessories and surroundings.
Long afterwards men remembered with a thrill her speaking a certain sentence, or her look at a certain moment, when even the play itself was completely forgotten; such as her tender despair when, in Les Horaces, she utters the reproach, "Baiser une main qui me perce le cœur!" or her look when, in that terrible rôle of Roxane, she stalked silently upon the stage, approached the front, and remained gazing at the audience. A hush came over them; women involuntarily turned away from that glance; men breathed more heavily, and wished that she would break that painful silence. Subdued by the power of that fierce look, the awful reality of vengeful power which it expressed, they shivered and grew uncomfortable. Then, when the silence seemed wholly intolerable, the pent-up rage, the anger of the wronged woman, burst forth with the irresistible force of a torrent. The tall figure drawn to its utmost height, the heaving breast, the swaying arms, the pale face, the firmly-compressed mouth, were so intently fierce that the actress and her artificial surroundings were forgotten, and the audience deemed it true.
On the 31st of May she wrote to M. Carré again, to say that she has been seriously indisposed, but only stopped in bed a few days; the same feverish energy which all her life was so much greater than her strength, drove her inexorably along. At the end of her letter she adds, "Wednesday—I am engaged to the Queen (Dowager) at Marlborough House. All the Court will be there; I am so frightened. The English journalists say quantities of nice things about me, and all unsolicited (sans cartes de visites)."
When her sister Sarah came over from Paris, she wrote:—
How glad I am I made Sarah come over! I am so sad, far from all those I love, not able even to talk of them! I am sure this separation, in a great measure, caused my illness.
I was at Windsor when Sarah arrived (the day after my evening passed at Queen Victoria's). What can I tell you of the reception the English people have given me? The papers will tell you it all better than I can. I played Marie Stuart yesterday, the 14th June. My success in this new rôle was complete. Two bouquets and two crowns fell at my feet amid thunders of applause. The receipts amounted to 30,000 francs and some guineas; 4,000 were taken to pay expenses, and 13,000 were sent to me next morning. I am delighted.
I have given up private recitations, my health obliges me to; dining out only is permitted. I received a beautiful bracelet from Sa Majesté la Reine (Regent) (sic), and I supped at Windsor after a most gracious and flattering reception by Her Majesty. She was unable to honour my benefit by her presence; she expressed her regret to me. I send a rough copy of the letter I wrote her the day after the evening I spent there. My father will be in Paris on the 19th, and will give j'ou some papers to read.
Rachel.
Lord William Lennox, in his Recollections, describes the reception given by the young Queen to Rachel, to whom the Duchess of Kent presented her:—
One of the greatest dramatic triumphs I ever witnessed was achieved by Mademoiselle Rachel. Upon one occasion, when I had the honour of receiving a command to dine at Windsor Castle, during the lifetime of the Prince Consort, she was engaged to go through the principal scenes from Marie Stuart, Orestes, and Les Horaces, supported by two or three of the French Company then acting in London. There were no "accessories." no stage, no scenery, no costumes. The performance took place in an alcove in the large drawing-room, where nothing could have riveted the attention of the audience but the consummate skill of the artiste, who so thoroughly identified herself with the respective characters, that all minor details were driven out of the minds of her attentive listeners. At the conclusion Her Majesty warmly complimented Rachel on her exquisite performance. In the course of the evening I had the pleasure of being introduced to this great artiste, and conducted her to the refreshment room. That and a formal visit I paid her in London, were the only opportunities I had of conversing with her. During these brief interviews, I found her most amiable and spirituelle to the greatest degree.
It was after this wonderful evening that the Queen, as a testimony of her admiration and goodwill, presented Rachel with a bracelet, composed of two wreathed serpents with diamond heads; while graven on the inside was the simple inscription, "À Rachel, Victoria Reine."
Dr. Véron, "the Bourgeois de Paris," in his amusing Reminiscences of Rachel, from which we have already given extracts, tells a story that shows us the curious contrasts of Rachel's nature, and lets us see what a Bohemian she remained, in spite of the adulation and splendour amid which she now moved. On her return from Windsor, the day after the evening described above, she entered the sitting-room of the lodging where she and her family lived, and, throwing herself into an arm-chair, said, with a sigh, "Ah, je suis fatiguée. J'ai besoin de m'encanailler."
On another occasion during her visit to England, he tells us, "she quarrelled with me. I contradicted her; I heard her utter the word 'canaille.' We were reconciled; I complained. 'You complain, do you?' she said, laughing; 'why it is from this moment only that you belong to the family.'" And yet, he adds a little further on, in a tone of tender regret, had I written these Reminiscences in 1838, I would have had the greatest difficulty in restraining, even before the public, the frantic admiration I felt for the young Rachel; but I have become old, she has become rich, and nothing moderates mind and heart more than riches and years."
Frances Anne Kemble, in her Records of Later Life, alludes to Véron's Reminiscences. After speaking of Grisi, she goes on:—
In a woman of far other and higher endowments, that wonderful actress Rachel, whose face and figure, under the transforming influence of her consummate dramatic art, were the perfect interpreters of her perfect dramatic conception, an ignoble, low-lived expression occasionally startled and dismayed one, on a countenance as much more noble and intellectual as it was less beautiful than Grisi's—the outward and visible sign of the inward and visible disgrace, which made it possible for one of her literary countrymen, and warmest admirers, to say that she was adorable because she was so "delicieusment canaille"—Emilie, Camille, Esther, Pauline—such a "delightful blackguard!"
The outward and visible sign of her disgrace had not, however, yet dimmed Rachel's genius, and in all the great houses in London she was received as a favoured guest. When she seemed to suffer from cold on the occasion of her visit to Windsor, the Duchess of Kent took off the magnificent yellow Indian shawl she wore and wrapped it round her (a present which, by the way, was despatched to "Maman Félix," to Paris next day). The Queen threw her roses out of her own bouquet on to the stage; her every movement was chronicled. She was slightly indisposed, and frequent bulletins were issued, informing the public of the state of her health. On reappearing, she was welcomed as if she had been snatched from the jaws of death.
When she took farewell of her enthusiastic admirers on the 20th July, nothing could exceed the excitement. According to one writer, "her triumph had even extended to the heart of the manager, who was said to have offered her his hand!" This statement, however, sounds rather like one of M. Laporte's many modes of puffing.
From Frances Kemble's Records of Later Life we take the following account:—
I shall never forget the first time I ever heard Mademoiselle Rachel speak. I was acting my old part of Julia in The Hunchback, at Lady Ellesmere's, where the play was got up for an audience of her friends, and for her especial gratification. The room was darkened, with the exception of our stage, and I had no means of discriminating anybody among my audience, which was, as became an assembly of such distinguished persons, decorously quiet and undemonstrative. But in one of the scenes, where the foolish heroine, in the midst of her vulgar triumph at the Earl of Rochdale's proposals, is suddenly overcome by the remorseful recollection of her love for Clifford, and almost lets the Earl's letter fall from her trembling hands, I heard a voice out of the darkness, and it appeared to me almost close to my feet, exclaiming in a tone, the vibrating depth of which I shall never forget, "Ah, bien, bien, très bien!" Mademoiselle Rachel's face is very expressive and dramatically fine, though not absolutely beautiful. It is a long oval, with a head of classical and very graceful contour, the forehead rather narrow, and not very high; the eyes small, dark, deep-set, and terribly powerful; the brow straight, noble, and fine in form, though not very flexible.
I was immensely struck and carried away with her performance of Hermione, though I am not sure that some of the parts did not seem to me finer than the whole as a conception. That in which she is unrivalled by any actor or actress I ever saw, is the expression of a certain combined and concentrated hatred and scorn. Her reply to Andromaque's appeal to her, in that play, was one of the most perfect things I have ever seen on the stage. The cold, cruel, acrid enjoyment of her rival's humiliation, the quiet, bitter, unmerciful exercise of the power of torture, was certainly, in its keen incisiveness, quite incomparable. It is singular that so young a woman should so especially excel in delineations and expressions of this order of emotion, while, in the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears comparatively less successful. I am not, however, perhaps, competent to pronounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's Cinna, are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M saw her the other day in Marie Stuart, and cried her eyes almost out, so she must have some pathetic power. was so enchanted with her, both on and off the stage, that he took me to call upon her on her arrival in London, and I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity, the excellent bon ton of her manners and deportment. The other morning, too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my sister's first public exhibition in England, and was endeavouring, while I screened myself behind a pillar, to hide my emotion and talk with composure to Rachel; she saw, however, how it was with me, and with great kindness allowed me to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use between the declamations, and was very amiable and courteous to me.From her second expedition to London, in 1842, Mademoiselle Rachel brought back a trophy which she prized even more than the Queen's bracelet of the year before. It was a letter from the Duke of Wellington, which we must give in the original French: the grammar outrivals Rachel's own.
Le Maréchal Duc de Wellington présente ses hommages à Mademoiselle Rachel; il a fait prévenir au théâtre, qu'il desirait y retenir sa loge enfin de pouvoir y assister à la représentation pour le benefice de Mademoiselle Rachel.
Il y assistera certainement si il lui devient possible de s'absenter ce jour là de l'assemblie du parlement dont il est membre.
Il regrettera beaucoup, si il se trouve impossible ainsi d'avoir la satisfaction de la voir et l'entendre, encore une fois avant son départ de Lôndres.
She received several visits from the illustrious veteran, and a story went the rounds of fashionable society that once, in conversation with him, Rachel complained of her nerves, upon which he recommended her to employ some baths of eau sale. On Rachel inquiring what degree of saleté would be necessary, the Duke condescended to an explanation, and Rachel then discovered that he meant "salt," not "dirty" water.
We must ask the reader to forgive these numerous quotations. Alas! all we know of Rachel can only be an echo transmitted to us from those who had the privilege of hearing and seeing her. In every stroke of the brush, in every line written, the painter and the poet leave us the inheritance of their genius and inspiration. The actor's frown or smile is as transitory as its effect on the audience whom it thrills.