versatile as well as the most intensively satisfying of tragedians, he became in a very short time the most talked-of actor on the Continent. His most distinguished early success was won by the creation. of the role of Charles IX, in Chenier's vigorously anti-monarchical play of that name, on the eve of the Revolution. The piece stirred up a tremendous pother for and against, Mirabeau himself took a hand, the jeune premier fought a bloodless duel over it with his confrère Naudet, the play was ordered off the stage and then ordered on again, and at last young Talma, reckoned too turbulent a character for the dignified first stage of France, was invited to go elsewhere; which he did, only to win such generous laurels that he was humbly invited back after a little, to reign henceforth more absolutely over the House of Moliere than Napoleon ever reigned over Europe. Talma's most important contribution to the history of the stage occurred in connection with a performance of Voltaire's Brutus. It had been customary to present tragedies of all ages and climes in the pretentious and foolish costume of eighteenth century France. Nero or Ulysses appeared on the stage in an enormous powdered wig, carrying a plumed hat under the left arm, with a long velvet coat, knee-breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, and a sword. Talma, who was a devoted student of historical records, medals, portraits and all possible aids to the reconstitution of his hero's exterior, took characteristic counsel with himself, and to quote Monsieur Lenotre," one fine evening, presenting the minor role of the tribune Proculus, in the tragedy of Brutus, (he) crossed the actor's foyer on his way to the stage clad in a white toga, with short hair, and with his bare feet encased in sandals. This strange apparition was met with a clamor of terror, transformed at once into bursts of laughter, then into hooting; one pretty comèdienne, shocked at his indelicacy, uttered a cry which has become classic: 'How ugly he is! He looks just like one of those old statues!' Talma went impassibly on and reached the stage, followed by the entire troupe, who were promising themselves royal sport from the reception which this bathrobe outfit would receive from the public. The hardy innovator stepped before the foot-lights. The throng fell silent as death; a silence of stupor and terror, at sight of this phantom which seemed to have stepped out of a painting of David's, appearing in the midst of Romans in wigs and lictors in the uniform of French musketeers. All at once a timid 'bravo' was heard. Then-as the audience came to understand—a thunderous outburst of applause.' It is probably not necessary to add that all the actors of Paris and of France promptly followed his example, and that the costumers were swamped with orders for togas and sandals. A philanthropist named Maillot considerately invented tights, just in time to save the theatrical population from wholesale pneumonia; and the presentation of Brutus thus marked a distinct forward step in the history of the drama. In 1791 the young actor married the beautiful and accom plished dancer Julie Careau, acquiring thus a fortune and the beginnings of a strange melancholy which haunted him all the rest of his life. His wife maintained a brilliant salon, frequented by Mirabeau, Condorcet, David, the Chéniers, Benjamin Constant, France's most remarkable statesmen, artists, philosphers, litterateurs, not to mention an eccentric young Corsican officer with the curious name of Bonaparte. This foreigner conceived for Talma an admiration and affection which he never lost; but in general, the actor cared little for his wife's salon and-little for his wife. Their divorce was followed, in 1802, by his marriage to a colleague at the Comédie, an amiable little creature named Caroline Vanhove, whom, in her turn, he tired of in a year or two. The life of this idol of the theater-going public was a dreary waste. "I am dying for sympathy," he cried one day, "and all they give me is applause!" Talma was a sick man. Talma was a sick man. Melancholia, irritability, a constant fear of some impending diaster, made his life a constant torment to him, even before an applauding audience. "When I come on the stage," he once confessed, "and see all these human beings assembled, decked out in their best and full of eager happiness, I look at them in terror when I remember that a few years they will all be in their coffins." He was pursued by the conviction that he was going blind. He would be paralyzed now and then by a premonition that he would fall dead in a moment, on the street or on the stage. His later years were one long nightmare. His brightest moments were those when he was immersed in the industrious preparation of his roles, or when he could enjoy the simple society of his humbler friends. Back in the days of his first wife's sparkling salon, he used to slip past the receptionrooms and into the kitchen, where he would sip bouillon and gossip with his old cook. The Revue de Paris published in 1829 the memories of père Louette, his old gardener, who never could un derstand how so awkward a hand with the hoe and spade could wield a sword or a scepter so effectively on the stage. The old man's record reveals a sensitive soul to which fame and fortune had brought not comfort but despair. Even from his death-bed he quarreled with his fate. "You are letting me die!" he flashed at his doctors. "If I had been an ordinary man, you would have gone to work bravely and saved me. But you were afraid to touch me; you were afraid, and fumbled Talma died on the 19th of October, 1826, of an intestinal trouble aggravated by overwork; at the same time one of the most brilliantly successful and one of the unhappiest men the world has ever known. |