Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878», sayfa 18
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP
THE HISS AND ITS HISTORY
"I warrant thee, if I do not act it, they will hiss me."
—Merry Wives of Windsor.
Hissing is a custom of great antiquity. Cicero, in his Paradoxes, says that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree, or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some of the lawyers of his day had paid applauders in court, who greeted the points of their patron's speech with an ululatus, or shrill yell. This Roman manner of denoting approval seems akin to the practice of the Japanese, who give a wild shriek as a sign of approbation, and hoot and howl to show their displeasure. But the sound of the goose—the simple hiss—is the most frequently-employed symbol of dissent. "Goose" is, in theatrical parlance, to hiss; and Dutton Cook, in his entertaining Book of the Play, remarks that the bird which saved the Capitol has ruined many a drama.
The dramatist is of all creative artists the most unfortunate. He can never present himself directly to his critics; he must be seen through a medium over which he has but slight control; he must depend wholly on the actors of his play, and too often he is leaning on a reed. Colman accused John Kemble of having been the cause of the original failure of The Iron Chest, and Ben Jonson published his New Inn as a comedy "never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the king's subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the readers, His Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631."
Nor are Colman and Jonson alone in their tribulations. Sheridan was hissed, and so were Goldsmith and Fielding and Coleridge and Godwin and Beaumarchais and About and Victor Hugo and Scribe and Sardou, and many another, including Charles Lamb, who cheerfully hissed his own Mr. H.
The operatic composer is even more unfortunate than the dramatist, for he is dependent not only on the acting but on the singing of his characters; and he is also at the mercy of the orchestra. Wagner's Tannhäuser led a stormy life at the Paris opera for a very few evenings, and its failure the composer has never been willing to let the world forget. Rossini was more philosophical. On its first performance the Barber of Seville, like the comedy of Beaumarchais, whence its libretto is taken, was a failure; and when the curtain fell, Rossini, who had led the orchestra, turned to the audience and calmly clapped his hands. The anger at this openly-expressed contempt for public opinion did not prevent the opera from gradually gaining ground, until by the end of the week it was a marked success. Had it been a failure, the composer would have borne it easily: Mr. Edwards informs us that when Rossini's Sigismondo was violently hissed at Venice he sent a letter to his mother with a picture of a large fiasco (bottle). His Torvaldo e Dorliska, which was brought out soon afterward, was also hissed, but not so much. This time Rossini sent his mother a picture of a fiaschetto (little bottle).
Nor is it, in modern times, authors or actors alone who are subject to the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so safe, nor the hissee—to coin a convenient word—so defenceless. The orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort of Coleridge under similar circumstances: "When a cold stream of truth is poured on red-hot prejudices, no wonder they hiss."
Sir William Knighton declares that George II. never entered a theatre save in fear and trembling from dread of hearing a single hiss, which, though it were at once drowned in tumultuous applause, he would lie awake all night thinking about, entirely forgetful of the enthusiasm it had evoked. He must have felt as Charles Lamb did, who wrote: "A hundred hisses (hang the word! I write it like kisses—how different!)—a hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly from the heart." It is hard to entirely agree with Lamb here. Hissing seems to me to proceed for the most part from ill-temper, or at least from the dissatisfaction of the head. Applause is often the outburst of the heart, the gush of a feeling, an enthusiasm incapable of restraint. No wonder that the retired actor longs for a sniff of the footlights and for the echo of the reverberating plaudits to the accompaniment of which he formerly bowed himself off.
Indeed, applause is the breath of an actor's nostrils. Without it good acting is almost impossible. Actors, like other artists, need encouragement. Applause gives heart, and, as Mrs. Siddons said, "better still—breath." Mrs. Siddons's niece has put on record her views, as valuable as her famous relative's: "'Tis amazing how much an audience loses by this species of hanging back, even when the silence proceeds from unwillingness to interrupt a good performance: though in reality it is the greatest compliment an actor can receive, yet he is deprived by that very stillness of half his power. Excitement is reciprocal between the performer and the audience: he creates it in them, and receives it back again from them."
To one set of actors a hiss takes the place of applause. It is the highest compliment which can be paid to a "heavy villain," for it bears witness to the truth with which he has sustained his character.
Sometimes the performer mistakes reproof for approval. An amateur singer, describing to her father the great success she had achieved at her first concert, concluded by saying, "Some Italians even took me for Pasta."—"Yes," corroborated her mother: "before she had sung her second song they all cried, 'Basta! basta!'" ("Enough! enough!")
Pasta herself is the heroine of an amusing anecdote. She gave her servant, a simple contadina, an order for the opera on a night when she appeared in one of her greatest parts. That evening the great prima donna surpassed herself; she was recalled time and again; the audience were wildly enthusiastic; almost every number was encored. Returning home, she wearily asked her maid how she had enjoyed the play. "Well, the play, ma'am, was fine, but I felt sorry for you," was the reply.—"For me, child! And why?"—"Well, ma'am," said the waiting-maid, "you did everything so badly that the people were always shouting and storming at you, and making you do it all over again."
There are situations even worse than Pasta's, as Pauline Lucca has recently discovered in Vienna, where she was fined fifty florins for violating the law which forbids the recognition of applause. It seems cruel to mulct a pretty prima donna for condescending to acknowledge an encore.
Whether or not it be law in Austria to prevent a courtesy and a smile, rewarding the enthusiasm of an audience, it is certainly law in England and France that a dissatisfied spectator shall be at liberty to express his dissatisfaction. It has been held by the Court of Queen's Bench that, while any conspiracy against an actor or author is of course illegal, yet the audience have a lawful right to express their feelings at the performance either by applause or by hisses. The Cour de Cassation of France has decided in the same way. When Forrest, therefore, hissed Macready for introducing a fancy dance in Hamlet, he was doing what he had a legal right to do, though the ultimate result of it was the Astor Place riot and the death of many. In ancient Rome the right to hiss seems also to have existed in its fulness. Suetonius in his life of Augustus informs us that Pylades was banished not only from Rome, but from Italy, for having pointed with his finger at a spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the whole audience upon him. But as time passed on, and Nero took the imperial crown and chose to exhibit it himself to the public on the stage, all the spectators were bound to applaud under penalty of death.
The French law forbids disturbance of any kind except when the curtain is up. In France the boisterousness of the Dublin gallery-boy would hardly be tolerated. The Parisians would have been amazed at a recent incident of the Irish stage. When Sophocles' tragedy of Antigone was produced at the Theatre Royal with Mendelssohn's music, the gallery "gods" were greatly pleased, and, according to their custom, demanded a sight of the author. "Bring out Sapherclaze," they yelled. The manager explained that Sophocles had been dead two thousand years and more, and could not well come. Thereat a small voice shouted from the gallery, "Then chuck us out his mummy."
There is a delicious tradition that Mrs. Siddons, when playing in Dublin, was once interrupted with cries for "Garry Owen! Garry Owen!" She did not heed for some time, but, bewildered at last and anxious to conciliate, she advanced to the footlights and with tragic solemnity asked, "What is Garry Owen? Is it anything I can do for you?"
Actors are not always willing to stand baiting quietly: they turn and rend their tormentors. Mrs. Siddons herself took leave of a barbarian audience with the words, "Farewell, ye brutes!" George Frederick Cooke, describing his own failings, said: "On Monday I was drunk, and appeared, but they didn't like that and hissed me. On Wednesday I was drunk, so I didn't appear; and they didn't like that. What the devil would they have?" Once at Liverpool, when he was drunk and did appear, they didn't like it. He reeled across the stage and was greeted by a storm of hisses. With savage grandeur he turned on them: "What! do you hiss me—me, George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters, you shall never again have the honor of hissing me. Farewell! I banish you!" He paused, and then added, with contemptuous emphasis, "There is not a brick in your dirty town but is cemented by the blood of a negro." Edmund Kean treated one of his audiences with less vigor, but with equal contempt. The spectators were noisy and insulting, but they called him out at the end of the piece. "What do you want?" he asked.—"You! you!" was the reply.—"Well, here I am!" continuing after a pause, with characteristic insolence: "I have acted in every theatre in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I have acted in all the principal theatres throughout the United States of America, but in my life I never acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I now see before me."
J. B. M.
A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION
There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities. "I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day when her bric-à-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms of a generation ago—a colorless, cold, negative background for social life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer; nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion, thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished—nothing tolerated save the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.
No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with bric-à-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and faïence, and richly-hung walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear results before many years have passed.
Enthusiasm for bric-à-brac and pottery, for embroidery and general decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative people—people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse, and is able in some way to gratify it.
The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one direction—in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned, the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.
But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the points of difference between the imitation and the real. And in glancing at his collection your tongue must not trip nor your eye confound styles. It requires a literal mind, besides a good memory and practised observation, to be an expert, and diffused and generalized knowledge amounts to little.
We have in mental view a lady who five years ago possessed apparently neither powers of thought nor capacity for expression, but who has, since she became a collector of china and antique furniture, developed into a tireless talker. Formerly she sat in her pale gray-and-blue rooms dressed faultlessly, "splendidly null," and you sought in vain for a topic which could warm her into interest or thaw out a sign of life from her. Now her rooms are studies, so picturesquely has she arranged her cabinets of china, her Oriental rugs and hangings, and her Queen Anne furniture; and she herself seems a new creature, so transfused is she by this fine fire of enthusiasm which illuminates her face and warms her tongue into eloquence. There is no dearth of subjects now. The briefest allusion to the Satsuma cup on the table beside you, and the lady, well equipped with matter, starts out on a tireless recapitulation of the delights and fatigues of collecting. She is a better woman and a much less dull one from this blossom of sympathy and interest with something outside of the old meaningless conditions of her life.
We all remember that it was a point of etiquette inculcated in our youth never to make allusion to the furniture and fittings of the houses where we paid visits. That rule is far more honored in the breach than in the observance now-a-days. It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported from Doulton.
It would, in fact, seem as if this initiation in fresh ideas and aims—which, even if trivial, are higher than the old uncreative forms of occupation and interest—was an answer to the yearning of the feminine mind for something to sweep thoughts and impulses into a current which results in action. And certainly any action which lends interest, worth and beauty to domestic life, which draws out talent and promotes culture, is deserving of all encouragement.
L. W.
THE STORY OF THE TROCADÉRO
There is no portion of the Paris Exhibition of 1878 which has excited more attention or attracted more visitors than has the Palace of the Trocadéro. Yet few of the visitors who pass beneath its lofty portals ever imagine that the site of the sumptuous edifice is haunted by historical associations of no slight degree of interest. In fact, before the palace "rose like an exhalation" at the bidding of the skilled architects employed by the government few persons knew anything about the Trocadéro at all. That lofty eminence, incomparably the finest building-site in Paris, with its graduated slopes gay with flowers and verdure, has long been a favorite lounging-place for Parisian artisans when out for a holiday, or for tourists seeking for a good view of the city and shrinking from the fatigue of climbing to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Yet no one seemed to know anything of its history, or even why a hill in Paris should bear the name of a Spanish fort. And yet, to a certain extent, the spot is one of genuine historical interest. Successively a feudal manor, a royal domain, a cloister, and the site of unrealized projects of the later monarchs of France, religion, ambition, sorrow and glory have there at different times sought a refuge or a pedestal.
The Trocadéro occupies a part of the site of the ancient village of Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there, but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen, Chaillot and its palace became the property of the President Janin, who probably tore down and rebuilt the royal abode, as he is accused in the memoirs of the time of being largely possessed by a mania for pulling down and rebuilding all the mansions in his possession. An engraving of the edifice as he left it exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It shows a very charming structure in the Renaissance style, erected, apparently, at a point halfway down the slope, since there are two lines of terraces behind it, as well as many in front.
The next owner of the domain of Chaillot was François de Bassompierre, former friend and boon-companion of Henri IV. He did not occupy it very long, being sent to the Bastile by Cardinal de Richelieu a very few years after the purchase was completed. During his imprisonment he lent Chaillot to his sister-in-law, Madame de Nemours. One day Richelieu sent to the Bastile to request his prisoner to let him occupy Chaillot as a summer abode. Bassompierre accordingly sent word to his sister-in-law that she must make way for the all-powerful minister. Richelieu remained at Chaillot for over six weeks, and declared that the furniture of the apartments was far finer than anything in that line which the king possessed.
The sad figure of Henriette Marie, the widowed queen of Charles I. of England, and youngest daughter of Henri IV., comes next upon the scene. She it was who, having purchased Chaillot after her return to France, established there the convent of Les Dames de la Visitation. A chapel was added to the extensive structure left behind by her father's old comrade, and it was in that chapel that her funeral sermon was preached by Bossuet—one of the first of those marvellous pieces of funereal eloquence which more than aught else have contributed to render his name immortal.
Next we have a vision of Louise de la Vallière, "like Niobe, all tears," flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place. It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, but not without many sad forebodings that were destined to be only too perfectly fulfilled. "When I left the king before, he came for me: now, he sends for me," she sighed. She bade farewell to the abbess, assuring her that she would speedily return. But when, after three years more of suffering and humiliation, she finally retired to a convent, she did not enter that of the Visitandines, but that of the Carmelites, then situated in the Faubourg St. Jacques.
In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city.
Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons, they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy—an extent which is about that of the present Palace of the Trocadéro. The whole of the plain of Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St. Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.
This splendid project was destined never to be realized. Hardly had the foundations of the palace been laid when the disastrous campaign of Moscow put an end to the works. Money was wanted for soldiers and ammunition more than for palaces and parks. After the battle of Leipsic, Napoleon had the idea of making of his scarcely-commenced palace a Sans Souci like that of Frederick the Great—a quiet retreat where he could escape from the toils and cares of empire. But hardly had the works been recommenced on this diminished basis when the abdication of the emperor and his exile to Elba came to put a stop to them anew, and this time a decisive one; for, though a few workmen were employed in levelling the grounds and building the walls during the Hundred Days, there was neither spirit nor conviction in the work: the illusions of other days had fled, and were not to be revived. It was impossible for even the most sanguine partisans of Napoleon to imagine that the palace would ever be completed and receive him as a tenant.
Under the Restoration it was decided to utilize the deserted foundations and to erect thereon a barrack. The laying of the cornerstone of the new edifice was made the occasion of a solemn festival in honor of the successes of the French army in Spain. The day chosen was the anniversary of the taking of the fort of the Trocadéro at Cadiz by the duc d'Angoulême, and the better to mark the occasion the height on which the new barrack was to stand was solemnly rebaptized by the name of the fort in question. The programme of the fête was long and elaborate. It consisted of a representation of the taking of the Trocadéro, a sham battle in which twenty battalions of the royal guard took part. Then came the laying of the cornerstone, which duty was performed by the dauphin and dauphiness. But the projected barrack of the Bourbons shared the fate of the palace of Napoleon. It was never built, and for nearly thirty years the ruins of the abandoned foundations and terraces were left to be picturesquely clothed with weeds and wild grasses. Only the name bestowed upon the height remained, and it was still called the Trocadéro.
Under the Second Empire the laying out of the numerous handsome avenues which extend around the Arc de Triomphe, and have it for a centre, necessitated the clearing and levelling of the deserted site. It was at first proposed to erect there a monument in commemoration of the victories of Magenta and Solferino, and the plans were actually drawn up: it was to have consisted of a lofty column, surpassing in its dimensions any similar monument in Paris. At the base of this column a fountain and a vast cascade were to be constructed, and the slope was to have been laid with turf and planted with trees. But this project, too, came to naught, and the Exhibition of 1867 only impelled the authorities into grading and laying out the ground, strengthening and repairing the flights of steps that led to the summit, and embellishing it with grass-plats and flower-beds. Later, the project was conceived by Napoleon III. of erecting on the summit of the Trocadéro a Grecian temple in white marble, destined to receive the busts of the great men of France with commemorative inscriptions—a project which the downfall of the Second Empire found unrealized. The ancient site of the village of Chaillot seemed like one of those spots of which we read in monkish legends, which are haunted by a demon that destroys the work and blights the existence of whoever attempts to build upon them. Palace, barracks, monument and temple alike never existed, and were but the shadowy precursors of disaster to their projectors. It was reserved for the Third Republic to break the evil spell, and to crown the picturesque and historic eminence with an edifice worthy of the beauty of the site and of its associations with the past.
L. H. H.
