Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846 - Various - Страница 2

The gay metropolis of France has not lacked chroniclers, whether indigenous or foreign. And no wonder. The subject is inexhaustible, the mine can never be worn out. Paris is a huge kaleidoscope, in which the slightest movement of the hand of time produces fantastic changes and still recurring novelties. Central in position, it is the rendezvous of Europe. London is respected for its size, wealth, and commerce, and as the capital of the great empire on which the sun never sets; Paris is loved for its pleasures and pastimes, its amusements and dissipations. The one is the money-getter's Eldorado, the other the pleasure-seeker's paradise. The former is viewed with wonder and admiration; for size it is a province, for population a kingdom. But Paris, the modern Babel, with its boulevards and palaces, its five-and-twenty theatres, its gaudy restaurants and glittering coffee-houses, its light and cheerful aspect, so different from the soot-grimed walls of the English capital, is the land of promise to truant gentlemen and erratic ladies, whether from the Don or the Danube, the Rhine or the Wolga, from the frozen steppes of the chilly north, or the orange groves of the sunny south. A library has been written to exhibit its physiognomy; thousands of pens have laboured to depict the peculiarities of its population, floating and stationary.

Amongst those who have most recently attempted the task, Mr Karl Gutzkow, a dramatist of some fame in his own land, holds a respectable place. He has recorded in print the results of two visits to Paris, paid in 1842 and in the present year. The self-imposed labour has been creditably performed; much truth and sharpness of observation are manifest in his pages, although here and there a triviality forces a smile, a far-fetched idea or a bizarre opinion causes a start. Mr Gutzkow partakes a fault common to many of his countrymen – a tendency to extremes, an aptness either to trifle or to soar, now playing on the ground with the children, then floating in the clouds with mystical familiars, or on a winged hobbyhorse. Desultory in style, he neglects the classification of his subject. Abruptly passing from the grave to the light, from the solid to the frothy, he breaks off a profound disquisition or philosophical argument to chatter about the new vaudeville, and glides from a scandalous anecdote of an actress into the policy of Louis Philippe. His frequent and capricious transitions are not disagreeable, and help one pleasantly enough through the book, but a methodical arrangement would be more favourable to the reader's memory. As it is, we lay down the volume with a perfect jumble in our brains, made up of the sayings, doings, qualities, and characteristics of actors, authors, statesmen, communists, journalists, and of the various other classes concerning whom Mr Gutzkow discourses, introducing them just as they occur to him, or as he happened to meet with them, and in some instances returning three or four times to the same individual. The first part of the book, which is the most lengthy and important, is in the form of letters, and was perhaps actually written to friends in Germany. This would account for its desultoriness and medley of matter. The second portion, written during or subsequently to a recent visit to Paris, serves as an appendix, and as a rectification of what came before. The author troubles himself little about places; he went to see Parisians rather than to gaze at Paris, to study men rather than to admire monuments, and has the good sense to avoid prattling about things that have been described and discussed by more common-place writers than himself. Well provided with introductions, he made the acquaintance of numerous notabilities, both political and literary, and of them he gives abundant details: an eager play-goer, his theatrical criticisms are bold, minute, and often exceedingly happy; an observant man, his remarks on the social condition of Paris and of France are both acute and interesting. Let us follow him page by page through his fifth letter or chapter, the first that relates to Paris. Those that precede contain an account of his journey from Hanover. On his entrance into France, he encounters various petty disagreeables, in the shape of ill-hung vehicles, sulky conductors, bad dinners, extravagant prices, and attempts at extortion, which stir up his bile, accustomed as he is to the moderate charges, smiling waiters, and snug although slow eilwagens of his own country. But he has resolved neither to grumble at trifles nor to judge hastily. A visit to France, and especially to Paris, has long been his darling project. His greatest fear is to be disappointed – imagination, especially that of a German, is so apt to outrun reality.

"Every sou upon which I read 'Republique Française,' every portrait of the unhappy Louis upon the coarse copper money, makes such impression on me, that I no longer think of any thing but the historical ground under my feet; and consoled for my trifling grievances, upon a fine spring morning I enter the great Babel through the Barrière St Denis.

"I am in France, in Paris. I must reflect, in order to ascertain what was my first thought. As a boy, I hated France and loved Paris. My thoughts clung fast to Germany's fall and Germany's greatness; my feelings, my fancy, ranged through the French capital, of which I had early heard much from my father, who had twice marched thither as a Prussian soldier and conqueror." Then come sundry reflections on the July revolution, and its effect on Europe. "These are chains of thought which hereafter will occupy us much. I must now think for a while of the France that I brought with me, because the one I have found is likely to lead me astray. Louis Philippe, Guizot, the armed peace, the peace at all price, the chamber of peers, the attempts on the king's life, the deputies, the épiciers, the great men and the little intrigues, art and science, Véry, Vefour, Musard – I am really puzzled not to forget something of what I previously knew. A hackney-coach horse, lying dead upon the boulevard, preoccupies me more than yonder hôtel des Capucins, where Guizot gives his dinners. A wood-pavement at the end of the Rue Richelieu sets me a-thinking more than the bulletin of to-day's Débats. They pave Paris with wood to deprive revolutions of building materials. Barricades are not to be made out of blocks. Better that those who cannot hear should be run over than that those who cannot see should risk to fall from their high estate."

Considering that, when this was written, all the wood-pavement in Paris might have been covered with a Turkey carpet, and that up to this day its superficies has very little increased, Mr Gutzkow's discovery has much the appearance of a mare's nest. A better antidote to the stone within Paris is to be found in the stone around it. The fortifications will match the barricades. But it would be unfair to criticise too severely the crude impressions of a novice, suddenly set down amidst the turmoil, bustle, tumult, and fever of the French capital. From the pavements we pass to the promenaders.

"Pity that black should this year be the fashion for ladies' dresses. The mourning garments clash with the freshness of spring. The heavens are blue, the sun shines, the trees already burst into leaf, the fountains round the obelisk throw their countless diamonds into the air. The exhibition of pictures has just opened. Shall I go thither, and exchange this violet-scented atmosphere for the odour of the varnish? In Paris the exhibition comes with the violets – in Berlin with the asters. I prefer the autumn show at Berlin to the spring exhibition in Paris; also intrinsically, with respect to art. Our German painters have more poetry. With us painting is lyric – here all is, or strives to be, dramatic. Every picture seems to thrust itself forward and demand applause. I see great effects, but little feeling. Religion is represented by a few gigantic altar-pieces. They are the offerings of a devotion which only thinks of the saints because new churches require new pictures. New churches consist of stone, wood, gold, silver, an organ, an altar-piece. These pictures of saints belong to the ministry of public works; it is easy to see that they have been done to order. Besides them, the gallery is full of Oriental scenes, family pictures and portraits. The first are to inspire enthusiasm for Algiers, the second illustrate the happiness of wedded life, the last are matrimonial advertisements in oil colour. In the family groups, children and little dogs are most prominent; of the male portraits the beard is the principal part. It is useless to look for men here; one sees nothing but hair. Everybody wears a beard à la mode du moyen âge – flâneurs, coachmen, marquises, artisans. On all sides one is surrounded with Vandyke and Rubens heads, poetical beards and hair, contrasting strangely with prosaic eyes, pallid lips, and the graceless costumes of the nineteenth century."

After some more very negative praise of French art, Mr Gutzkow gets sick of turpentine and confinement, and rushes out of the Louvre into the sunshine and the Champs Elysées, where the sight of the throng of dashing equipages, gay cavaliers, and pretty amazons, instead of causing him to throw up his hat and bless his stars for having conducted him into such ways of pleasantness, renders him melancholy and metaphysical. He is moralising on the Parisian ladies, when a cloud of dust and the clatter of cavalry give a new turn to his reflections. "Here," he exclaims, "comes an example of earthly happiness. Louis Philippe, King of the French, surrounded by a half squadron of his body-guard; a narrow and scarcely perceptible window in his deep six-horse carriage; a King, flying by, resting not, leaning back in his coach, not venturing to look out, breathing with difficulty under the shirt of mail which, according to popular belief, he ever wears beneath his clothes. But of this more hereafter." Quite enough as it is, Mr Gutzkow; and you are right, being in so gloomy a mood, to run off to the Theatre Français, and try to dissipate your vapours by seeing Rachel in Chimène. An unfavourable criticism of that actress, retracted at a later period, closes the chapter. Chimène is one of Rachel's worst parts, and her critic was not in his best humour. He found her cold, and deficient in voice. Subsequently, in Joan of Arc, she fully redeemed herself in his opinion, although he had seen the best German actresses in Schiller's tragedy of that name, with which the work of Soumet ill bears comparison. Here, he acknowledges, she raised herself to an artistical elevation to which no German actress of the present day can hope to attain.

The next actress of whom Mr Gutzkow records his judgment, is the queen of the vaudeville, the faded but still fascinating Dejazet. From the classic hall of the "Français" to the agreeable little den of iniquity at the other end of the Palais Royal, the distance was not great, but the transition was very violent. It was passing from a funeral to an orgie, thus to leave Phèdre for Frétillon, Rachel for Dejazet. "She performed in a little piece called the Fille de Dominique, in which she represents the daughter of a deceased royal comedian of the days of Molière. She comes to Paris to get admitted into the troop to which her father belonged. She is to give proofs of her talents, and has already done so before any one suspects it. She has been to Baron, the comedian, and presented herself alternately as a peasant girl, a fantastical lady, and as a young drummer of the Royal Guard. She is seen by the audience in all these parts. Her first word, her first step, convinced me of the great fidelity of her acting. She is no queen, no fairy, or great dame out of Scribe's comedies, but the peasant girl, the grisette, the heroine of the vaudeville. All about her is arch, droll, true. Her gestures are extraordinarily correct and steady; and in spite of her harsh counter-tenor, and of an organ in which many a wild night and champagne debauch may be traced, she sings her couplets with clearness of intonation, grace of execution, and not unfrequently with most touching effect. I am at a loss fully to explain and define her very peculiar style of acting."

Mr Gutzkow thought that the French public had become careless of Dejazet, even when he first saw her, now four years ago. We believe he is mistaken, and that she is as much appreciated as ever, in spite of her five and forty years, soon to be converted into fifty. Although haggard from vigils and dissipation, neither on the stage nor off it does she look her age. The good heart and joyous disposition that have endeared her to her comrades of the buskin, have in some degree neutralized the effects of her excesses. On his second visit to Paris, our author finds her grown exceedingly old, and depreciates as much as he before praised her – calls her a rouged corpse, and makes all manner of uncivil and unsavoury comments and comparisons. He goes so far as to style her acting in 1846, languid, feeble, and insipid. Qui trop dit, ne dit rien, and this is palpable exaggeration. We perceive scarcely any difference in Dejazet now and five years ago. Her singing voice may be a little less sure, her eyes a trifle hollower – she may need rather more paint to conceal the inroads of time on her piquante and spirituelle physiognomy, but she preserves the same spirit and vivacity, verve and vigour. Her appearance this spring at the Variétés theatre, in the vaudeville of Gentil Bernard, was a triumph of talent over time; and crowded houses, attracted not by the excellence of the piece, but by the perfection of the acting, proved that Dejazet is still, which she long has been, the pet of the Parisians. She is an extraordinary actress – so true to nature, possessed of such perfect judgment, and grace of gesticulation. Not a movement of her hand, a turn of her head, an inflexion of her voice, but has its signification and produces its effect. Her performance in the picturesque and bustling second act of Gentil Bernard is faultless. The frequenters of St James's theatre have this summer had an opportunity of appreciating it. At Paris she was better supported. Lafont makes a very fair La Tulipe, but not so good a one as Hoffmann. The inferior parts, also, were far better filled on the Boulevard des Italiens, than in King Street, St James's, where the whole weight of the protracted and not very interesting vaudeville rested upon the shoulders of Dejazet.

The success of Rachel has roused the ambition and raised the reputation of the daughters of Israel, who are now quite in vogue at the Paris theatres. Mesdemoiselles Rebecca and Worms, at the "Français," are both Jewesses; at the minor theatre of the "Folies Dramatiques," Judith delights a motley audience by her able enactment of the grisette. Instances have been known of very Christian young ladies feigning themselves of the faith of Moses, in hope that the fraud might facilitate their admission to the Thespian arena.

A severe judgment is passed by Mr Gutzkow upon the present state of musical art and representations in the French capital. The opera, he affirms, and not without reason, is on its last legs, sustained only by the ballet, by the beauty of the scenery and costumes. Duprez has had his day, Madame Stolz is among the middlings, Barroilhet alone may be reckoned a first-rate singer. Our author saw the Elísir d'Amore given by a company which he says would hardly be listened to in a German provincial town. Madame Stolz was then absent on a starring expedition. The ballet of Paquita was some compensation for the poorness of the singing. "At the 'Italiens' I heard the Barber of Seville, with Lablache, Ronconi, Tagliafico, Mario, and Persiani. This opera is considered the triumph of the Italian company; but I confess that the magnificence of the theatre, the high charge for admission, the Ohs! and Ahs! of the English women in the boxes, just arrived from London, and who had never before heard good music, were all insufficient to blind me with respect to the merits of the performance. I look upon the Italian opera at Paris as a mystification on the very largest scale, a thorough classic-Italian swindle. That a German company, composed of our best opera singers, would be infinitely superior to this Italian one, appears to me to admit of no dispute; but even at an ordinary theatre in Germany or Italy, one hears as good singing, perhaps with the exception of Lablache in Bartolo– and even he is cold and careless, devoid of freshness, and always seems to say to the audience, 'You stupid people, take that for your twelve francs a-seat!' The quackery of this theatre becomes the more intelligible when we reflect that, in all Paris, there is no other where a single note of Italian opera music can be heard, the Italians having the monopoly of the sweet melodies of their native country. The Grand Opera, and the Opera Comique, deal in French music only; and the pleasure obtainable in any small German town possessing a theatre, that, namely, of hearing Norma, the Somnambula, and other similar operas, is nowhere to be procured except by paying extravagant prices to these half-dozen Italians." This statement is not quite correct. The Opera Comique, it is true, gives nothing but French music, and poor enough it is. In this particular, the Parisians are not difficult to satisfy. A good libretto, smart scenery, a hard-handed claque, a few skilful reclames, and laudatory paragraphs in the newspapers, will create an enthusiasm even for the insipid music of Monsieur Halévy, and sustain the Mousquetaires de la Reine, or similar mawkish compositions, through a whole season. But at the Académie Royale, good operas are to be heard, although the singing be deficient. Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Donizetti are not the names of Frenchmen; and the operas of these and other foreign composers are constantly given in the Rue Lepelletier.

"Several German opera companies have visited Paris; have begun well, and finished badly. And here our most brilliant singers would meet the same fate, because they would be allowed to sing nothing but German music; and German operas are not listened to in Paris. But if it were possible, with only a moderately good German company, to give Norma, the Barber, Robert the Devil, the Huguenots, and Mozart's operas, (omitting the dialogue,) that company, supported by a good orchestra, and performing in a decent theatre, would carry all before them, and return to Germany laden with fame and gold. But that is the difficulty. In France every one must stick to a speciality. From the German they will hear nothing but German music, and the representation of other operas is positively forbidden him."

Without going the lengths that Mr Gutzkow does, or by any means coinciding in his sweeping censure of the artists who now furnish forth the Italian theatres of London and Paris, we doubt whether it is not fashion, as much as the excellence of the music, that draws the élite of French and English society to the Haymarket and the Salle Ventadour, and whether a German company of equal intrinsic merit would receive adequate patronage and encouragement in either capital, supposing even that they were allowed their choice of operas, and had the benefit of a handsome theatre and an able management. Certainly they would not get the enormous salaries which, in combination with the greediness of managers, and the manœuvres of ticket-sellers, render the enjoyment of a good opera, in London at least, a luxury attainable but by an exceedingly limited class.

Although the prices of admission to most of the Paris theatres are moderate, they are occasionally raised by illegitimate stratagems. This is especially the case when a new piece is performed from which much is expected, or concerning which, by puffery or for other reasons, the public curiosity has been greatly excited. On such occasions, the first few representations are sometimes rendered doubly and even trebly productive. The prices cannot be raised at the theatre itself without express permission from the authorities, and as this is seldom granted, another plan is resorted to. The box-office is transferred de facto from the corridor of the theatre to the open street. Whoever applies for tickets is told that there is not one left to any part of the house. Nothing then remains but to have recourse to the ticket-brokers, who carry on their disreputable commerce in the streets or at the wine-shops. In the Rue Montmartre, within a few doors of the Boulevard, there is a marchand de vin, whose establishment is a grand rendezvous of these gentry. They are the agents of the managers of the theatres. The latter sell all the tickets to themselves a fortnight beforehand, inscribing on the coupons the names of imaginary buyers, and then distribute them amongst the brokers, who sell them in front of the theatre to eager theatrical amateurs, as a great favour, and as the last obtainable tickets, at two or three times the regulation price. The theatre pockets the profits, minus a brokerage. In this manner a first representation at the large theatre of the Porte St Martin may be made to yield ten thousand francs. When a theatre is out of vogue, and filling poorly, the same system is adopted; but in the contrary sense. The marchands de billets are provided with tickets which they sell at less than the established price.

When De Balzac's drama, Les Expédients de Quinola, was brought out at the "Odeon," he compounded to receive the proceeds of the first three nights, in lieu of a share of each representation whilst the piece should run. The play had been greatly talked of, the steam had been got up in every way, and the public was in a fever. It is customary enough in Paris for dramatic authors, in order at once to get paid for their labours, to barter their droits d'auteur for the entire profits of the first representations. Scribe does it at the Français. When the tickets are sold at the usual prices, this financial arrangement is regular enough, and concerns nobody but author and manager. But that would not satisfy Balzac, who is notorious for his avarice. He set the brokers to work, and drove the prices up to the highest possible point, fifteen francs for a stall, instead of five, a hundred francs for a box and so forth. "Under such circumstances," says Mr Gutzkow, "it cannot be wondered if people forgot Eugenie Grandet and the Père Goriot, and hissed his play. To-day, nearly a hundred criticisms of Quinola have appeared. It is my belief, that, instead of reading them, Balzac is counting his five-franc pieces." The drama fell from want of merit as well as from the indignation excited by the author's greed. Although Balzac's books are read and admired – some of them at least – personally he is most unpopular. He is accused, and not without reason, of arrogance and avarice. His assumption and conceit are evident in his works. He has sacrificed his fame to love of gold; for one good book he has produced two that are trash; by speculating on his reputation, he has undermined and nearly destroyed it. Moreover, he has committed the enormous blunder of affecting to despise the press, which consequently shows him no mercy. For a fortnight after the appearance of Quinola– which, although defective as a dramatic composition, was not without its merits – the unlucky play served as a daily laughing-stock and whipping-post to the battalion of Parisian critics. Janin led the way; a host of minor wasps followed in his wake, and threw themselves with deafening hum and sharp sting against the devoted head of M. de Balzac. He bore their aggravating assaults with great apparent indifference, consoled for want of friends by well-lined pockets.

At the "Ambigu Comique," Mr Gutzkow attended a performance of the Mousquetaires, a melo-drama founded on Dumas's romance of Vingt Ans Après. Its success was prodigious; it was performed the whole of last winter and spring, upwards of one hundred and fifty nights, always to crowded houses. The novel was dramatised by Dumas himself, with the assistance of one of his literary subordinates, M. Auguste Maquet. One or two of the actors at the "Ambigu" are to form part of the troop at M. Dumas's new theatre, now erecting, and which will open, it is said, this autumn. It is built by a company, and Dumas has engaged to write for it a certain number of plays yearly. The Duke of Montpensier gives it his name.