Te rendent plus intéressante Qui jadis brillait dans les cieux: Qui n'a, pour plaire et pour être admiré, Du censeur de plus éclairé. De la tendre Philomèle Fel est le parfait modèle. Ses accens mélodieux Sauroient enchanter les Dieux. Musique tendre et légère, Air badin, air sérieux, Air barbare, air gracieux, Dans son gosier tout veut plaire. (Dec. 28, 1772.) Prose writers and versifiers-we dare not say poets-were thus agreed in singing the praises of the interpreter of Mouret, Mondonville and Rameau; from such concordant testimony it would appear that her histrionic ability was considerably inferior to her vocal talent, which was well suited for interpreting the music of that period—a music which, set free from the plain-chant of Lully and under Italian influence since the appearance of the Buffons in 1752, was about to bring into being that galant and peculiarly French style that dominated our music until the arrival of Gluck. After this rapid sketch of the artistic career of the cancatrice, information gathered from the most diverse sources will now reveal to us, so far as may be, her private life, her friendships, and her adventures-these latter rather infrequent, withal. "The Budget of the Actresses of the Opéra, with their ages and dwellings and the names of their Entreteneurs, for the month of September, 1752," compiled by Inspector of Police Meunier, begins with this statement: "Actrices récitantes [leading ladies]. Mlle. De Fel, age 35; rue St-Thomas du Louvre next the hotel Longueville. Lives with M. Cahuzac."-And in the three thick volumes of reports compiled by this same Inspector (which are now in the Library of the Arsenal, taken over from the Archives of the Bastille);-among the accumulations of these scandalous tales which, it is said, so greatly delighted Louis XV, the WellBeloved; among these anecdotes wherein the most brightly em blazoned names of all Europe jostle those of the most famous courtisans and the vilest prostitutes, one single page concerns "la Dlle Fel, actrice récitante à l'Opéra." Here it is: La Dile Fel, actrice récitante à l'Opéra, lives rue St-Thomas du Louvre next the hotel Longueville. She is petite, dark, 33 or 34 years old,1 dark-complexioned, ugly on the whole, although she does not think so herself; has a lovely voice. It is asserted that she is going to marry M. Cahuzac; they live next door to each other and keep house together. M. Cahuzac wrote the texts for the operas Naïs and Zoroastre. He usually works for M. Rameau.2 He is a little brown man, wears a perruque, and is about the same age as la Dlle Fel. She is a native of Bordeaux, has sung at the concerts in Amiens.3 One can judge from the pastel by La Tour (possibly idealized) whether Inspector Meunier was a good judge of the beauty of this récitante of the Opéra; in any event, her likeness surprises and discords among the doll-faces à la mode immortalized by the pastelist; and the same may be said of her mundane existence, which was, taken all in all, far less stormy than that of many another fille d'opéra. For these, in the police reports, frequently require veritable volumes of documents; Marie Fel has only this solitary mention. Hence we find some justification for the disdainful exclamation "Penelope!" once thrown in her face by her pupil, the witty and pitiless Sophie Arnould. And now let us quote, with all reserve, the following passage from the "Mémoires" of Casanova, who paid his first visit to Paris in 1750: Coming out of the Tuileries (so the celebrated Venetian relates), Patu took me to visit a famous actress of the Opéra, named Mlle. Le Fel [sic], a great favorite with all Paris and a member of the Académie royale de musique. With her were three charming children of tender years, who frolicked around the house. "I adore them," she said.-"Such lovely children deserve it," I responded, "though each differs in expression from the others."—"I believe you! The oldest is the Duke d'Annecy's; the second is the Count of Egmont's; and the youngest is the child of Maisonrouge, who recently married la Romainville."-"Ah! I beg you to excuse me; I had supposed that you were the mother of all three."-"And you were not mistaken, for I am."-So saying, she glanced at Patu, and joined him in a burst of laughter which, without causing me to blush, apprized me of my inadvertence. 'In reality, 36 or 37, as this entry was made about 1750-51. 2Louis de Cahuzac was born near the beginning of the century of a noble family of Montauban. He had been private secretary to the Count of Clermont, and had brought out several pieces at the Théâtre Français and, with Rameau, at the Opéra, Les Fêtes de Polymnie, Les Fêtes de l'Hymen, and Zaïs; furthermore, Naïs and Zoroastre (1749). and likewise a history of "La Danse ancienne et moderne.' Biblioth. de l'Arsenal, Arch. de la Bastille, MS. 10237, pp. 239–240. Being new-come, I had not yet grown accustomed to seeing women trench on the privilege of men. However, Mlle. Le Fel was not indelicate, her manners were those of good society; but she was what is termed superior to prejudice. Had I been more familiar with the morals of the time, I should have known that such matters were the regular thing, and that the grands seigneurs who thus broadcast their progeny left their children in the hands of the mothers, to whom they paid liberal allowances. Consequently, the more these ladies accumulated, the greater the affluence they enjoyed.1 Another author of scandalous chronicles, Chevrier, whose "Le Colporteur" appeared near the beginning of 1762, assumed the rôle of an echo of the malevolent gossip concerning the cancatrice. The following bit of dialogue is a specimen by which one may judge of the tone of this "moral narrative”: "You may be right, to a certain extent," said the Marquise, “but still you will admit that the fate of these Girls, of whom you fancy we are jealous, is to die in ignominy."-"I beg your pardon, Madam, if I interrupt," replied the Colporteur, "but I share your opinion. Look at la Cartout, who retired as the doyenne of the Opéra choruses; look at la Fel, who during our own time has been the glory of the Académie Royale de Musique, and whose enchanting notes long disputed the palm with the melody of the nightingale. Time was, when she imagined that she honored a Sovereign by receiving him in her embrace; she made a madman of the fond Čahuzac, who just died in his cell at Charenton, & to-day this baggage is reduced to sue for a glance, or to pervert her taste." How much of these tales ought one to believe? To what "sovereign" does Chevrier allude? It would seem difficult to find out. Cahuzac's story, however, is well known. Grimm, who was his rival for the heart of the cancatrice, thus announces his death, which occurred on June 22, 1759, in the insane asylum at Charenton: We have just lost another poet. Louis Cahuzac has died violently insane. He was a man of slight talents and vast pretentions. He wrote several operas, which owed their success in France to the music by Rameau. 1G. Capon, "Casanova à Paris," pp. 27-28. "A lyric poet enjoying an income of 8000 livres, who died of grief because he could not marry la Fel.' (Note by Chevrier.) Chevrier, "Le Colporteur. Histoire morale et critique." A Londres, chez Jean Nourse. L'an de la Vérité. Pp. 96–97. 'Masson de Maisonrouge, whose second marriage stirred up a scandal at the time, had lost his wife in December, 1751. He "had lived apart from her for a long time, says a contemporary, and was seeking a legal separation. He had always kept mistresses, the last being mademoiselle Rotisset de Romainville, an actress at the Opéra, who is neither too young nor too pretty, and who had always led a life of public libertinage." At the age of fifty-one Maisonrouge married her on February 3, 1752, this being later than the time of Casanova's visit. La Rotisset died three months afterward, in May. There were two counts d'Egmont-Pignatelli: Guy-Félix (1720-1753) and Casimir, who was maire (mayor) from 1753 to 1756. As for Grimm himself, Jean-Jacques, on the occasion of the first representation of his Devin at Fontainbleau, tells how he (Rameau) "lost sight of him altogether": Grimm (he writes in Book VIII of the "Confessions"), after having known mademoiselle Fel for some time as a good friend, all at once took a notion to fall in love with her head over heels, and sought to supplant Cahuzac. The fair one, piquing herself on her constancy, dismissed this new pretender. He took the matter tragically, and persuaded himself that it would be his death. All at once he was stricken by perhaps the strangest malady that was ever heard of. He passed his days and nights in a continuous lethargy, his eyes wide open, his pulse beating regularly, but without speaking, eating, or moving, seeming sometimes to hear, but never answering even by a sign; and all this without pain or agitation, without fever, but lying still as though he were dead. Abbé Raynal and I took turns in attending him—the Abbé, being more robust and in better health, during the night, and I in daytime, never leaving him alone, for the one did not go away until the other had arrived. Count de Frièse, in alarm, brought Senac to him, who, after examining him thoroughly, said there was nothing wrong, and prescribed nothing for him. My fear for my friend made me scrutinize the physician's face closely, and I saw him smile on going out. Still, the patient remained motionless for several days, without taking any bouillon or anything else excepting some preserved cherries which I placed on his tongue from time to time to time and which he swallowed readily. One fine morning he got up, dressed himself, and resumed his habitual course of life, without ever speaking of this singular lethargy either to me or, so far as I know, to Abbé Raynal or anybody else, nor did he ever mention the care we had taken of him during his illness. This happening did not fail to make a stir, and it would really have made an amazingly good story if a man had died of despair because of the cruelty of a fille d'Opéra. This fond passion made Grimm the man of the hour; soon he was looked upon as a prodigy of love, of friendship, of attachment of every sort. This consensus of opinion made him sought for and fêted in the highest circles, thus removing him from my sphere-in fact, I had never been anything for him but a stop-gap. As fatuous as he was vain (writes Jean-Jacques further on), with his great melancholy eyes and gangling figure, he had pretensions to the favor of the ladies, and, after his farce with mademoiselle Fel, he passed among quite a number of them for a man of lofty sentiment." Thus ended, according to Rousseau, this tale of feigned affliction ("histoire de carpe pâmée"), and the unhappy Cahuzac was quite at liberty to go mad in good earnest because of his failure to marry Marie Fel. Mme. d'Épinay, in her Mémoires, recalls in this connection her conversations with Duclos touching the passion of the German Baron for the cancatrice: 401. J.-J. Rousseau, "Confessions," édit. Van Bever, 1914, Vol. II, pp. 238–9, 899, Whether he is or is not in love with you, I can tell you that in his heart he nourishes a passion for our little Fel, who would none of it— you will have only the leavings. She dismissed him from her rooms, and that is the explanation of his last absence, of this pretended favor that he did Baron von Holbach by traveling with him-all because he lost his head over it. As for that, perhaps you will cure him, for he still loves her. And this same Duclos later returns to the same subject, which possessed a singular interest for Mme. d'Épinay, a trifle vexed at finding a rival in a fille d'Opéra: Little Fel (so he assures her) discarded Grimm because he had fomented an infernal intrigue to drive away from her those persons who had begun to see through him. Since then she cannot bear to hear his name mentioned; while he, meanly, shamefully, after having abused the ascendancy he had gained over her by the display of his lofty principles, and after making her dismiss all her servants-he has had the effrontery to complain of the hard-heartedness that this girl has shown him since the rupture. Scoundrels are clumsy; at present, while playing the game as he plays it, he acts like the devil of a fellow, but always with the soft pedal, as he needs must to approach la Fel again and merely be admitted to her presence. Is it clear? Mme. d'Epinay sought to get at the truth: "I simply had to talk the matter over with Grimm," she remarks a few pages further on, and thus reports their conversation: I told him all that I had learned from the lips of Duclos.-"Madame, I have told you the truth with regard to mademoiselle Fel; I esteemed her, I loved her, I adored her, because I thought myself loved and esteemed by her. She has treated me with such marked indifference, with such a lack of respect and with so revolting a contempt, that no consideration whatever could persuade me to see her again."1 Which was right, Duclos or Grimm? It seems likely that it was the former. However that may be, the baron had been dismissed, and the whole comedy of the discarded lover probably had no other aim than to put him in an interesting light. It is near the time of Cahuzac's disappearance that we may, presumably, place the beginnings of the liaison between Marie Fel and Quentin de la Tour-who was likewise to end as a madman— a liaison which came to an end with the departure from Paris of the pastellist and painter of the king. The famous portrait of the actress, of which we now possess only the preliminary sketches, made possibly some years previously, was displayed in the Salon du Louvre in 1757. So Mlle. Fel was about forty when La Tour did the work. In Paris at first, and later when the painter had 'Mme. d'Épinay, "Mémoires," Vol. II, pp. 32, 41–2, 56. |