Chapter 45

Delsarte's Theatre and School.

When Delsarte had finished his studies, he entered the world unaided and alone; disarmed by the hostilities which could not fail to await him, by his very superiority, and by that honesty which refuses to lend itself to certain transactions.

At the Opera Comique, where he was engaged, he did not succeed. Exceptional talents require an exceptional public who can understand them and make them popular by applauding and explaining them.

And yet certain people, gifted with penetration, discovered under the artistic innovations peculiar to the beginner, that indescribable fascination which hovers round the heads of the predestined favorites of art.

Delsarte could not long confine himself to the stage, when everything connected with it was so far from sympathetic to him, and seemed so contrary to the true object of dramatic art. The theatre, to his mind, should be a school of morality; and what did he see? Authors--what would he say now-a-days?--absorbed in winning the applause of the masses, rather than in feeding them upon wholesome food or in preparing an antidote for vice and evil inclinations.

Whatever good intentions happened to be mingled with the play were lost in the details of the action--or in the often mischievous interpretation of the actors. With his wonderful perspicacity, Delsarte seemed to foresee all the excesses of naturalism in certain forerunners of Adolphe Belot and Emile Zola.

On the other hand, his comrades, who should have attracted him, showed themselves to be envious and malicious. To sum it all up, it was very hard for him to live with them. Some of them might please him by their simple gaiety, their childlike ease, their lack of affectation, and their amiability, but they were far from satisfying his lofty aspirations!

An occupation of a higher order, he thought, the elaboration of his method, demanded his thoughts. He seemed haunted by a desire to produce what his spirit had conceived. He longed fully to enjoy that happiness of creation that arises from useful discovery. He aspired to say: "In accomplishing the task which I set myself, I have also done much for art and artists."

Swayed by such thoughts, François Delsarte soon left the profession of actor to follow that of teacher of singing and elocution. Then he found himself in his element and, as it were, at the centre of all that attracted him. His teaching enabled him to verify the value of his axioms hourly, in the order of facts and to confirm the truth of his observations.

And yet he had not attained to the supreme beatitude. If the elect of plastic and practical art have to contend with appraisers of every degree, inventors have to deal with enemies who make up in stubborn resistance what they lack in numbers, and oppose the iron will of a rival who will not see the limit of the _ne plus ultra_ which he believes himself to have reached and even exceeded.

In every station of life, the bearers of "good news" are a prey to the tyranny of interests and established prejudices. In our time, this persecution becomes mockery or indifference. Delsarte did not escape this debt of revelatory genius. Humble in regard to art and science, as he was conscious of his strength when face to face with rivals and competitors, he sometimes felt the doubt of himself, the sudden weakness, which overtakes great minds and great hearts in the accomplishment of their mission.

A special form of torture attacked our young innovator. He had proved, connected and classed a number of psychological facts relating to the theory of art, and he did not know the special terms which would make them intelligible. Like those phenomenal children, who see countless relations before they possess the words to express them, he had discovered a law, created a science, and he was still ignorant of the language of scientists. If he tried to demonstrate the bases of his system and its rational evolution in ordinary words, the ignorant would not understand him and the learned would not deign to listen.

Sometimes he did find some one who would hear him, question him, even criticize him, and who would go away bearing a fragment of conversation or some few notes which he had copied to turn to his own profit.

At this time, there came one day to Delsarte, a pupil who--by a rare exception--had been through a course of classical studies.

"Tell me, you who have studied (asked the teacher with the affability of a great man), what is metaphysics?"

"Why ... just what you teach us!" said the astonished youth.

Delsarte was enchanted to learn, that he was only divided by words from a science which had seemed to him to dwell on inaccessible heights. The study of technical words, when intuition had provided him with important ideas and new perceptions, was child's play to him; in a short time he could teach his philosophy of art in the consecrated expressions.

His lectures grew rapidly in the Rue Montholon. A choice public soon assembled to hear them, drawn thither by the admiring cry of the first enthusiasts. At this period, the talent of the artist was enhanced by the lustre of youth. Nature had endowed him generously. His figure, which later assumed rather large proportions, was tall and elegant; his gestures were marked by grace and nobleness; his hair, of a very light chestnut, gave his face a fair softness; his brown eyes relieved this expression and allowed him to give his face--when the interpretation of the part required it--the signs of power and vigorous passion. A full length portrait painted at this time and in the possession of Madame Delsarte, gives us some idea of his grand face and form, allowing for the disadvantages of every translation. Although, in singing, the organ was often impaired, his speaking-voice was most agreeable in tone, correct and persuasive in accent.

In acting various parts, Delsarte transformed himself to suit the character that he represented. He was congratulated on bringing to life for our age Achilles and Agamemnon, as Homer painted their types. Yet, I think he was sometimes told: "You paint that wretch of a Don Juan a little too faithfully." Certainly, art would never make that complaint!

If Delsarte was understood in that part of his method addressed especially to the ear and the eye, it was not so with the theory which prepared these striking demonstrations.

He was surrounded, it is true, by an assembly of men of letters, men of the world, and amateur artists, rather than by scientists and philosophers. Many in the audience and among the pupils did not pay an undivided attention to the scientific part of the instruction. Thus the first notes of the piano, announcing that the time for action had come, always caused a repressed murmur of satisfaction and pleasure.

Sometimes, after the lecture, a discussion followed, for Delsarte often left room for a controversy which was essentially incorrect and caused many misunderstandings. This was because the innovator sometimes blended with the clear hues of his art-principles certain tints of religious mysticism which had no necessary relation with the synthesis of his æsthetics.

It was one of the peculiarities of his character, amiable and benevolent as it was, to take delight in the conflict of ideas. If he saw, in the course of his lecture, a man whom he took for a philosopher or anything like it, he never failed to direct some piquant phrase, some aggressive sentence or some irritating thought that way--it was the gauntlet which he flung for the final combat.

Nor were women exempt from these humorous sallies.

Although the master loved all grandeur--the artistic sense with which he was so largely endowed inclining him that way--he had democratic, I might almost say plebeian, instincts. The poetry of simple, humble, small existences sometimes swayed him.

Thus, if among his hearers, a bright violet or an audacious scarlet gown annoyed his taste; if the reflection of a ruby or a diamond vexed his eye, he would choose that instant to improvise a rustic idyl or to intone a hymn to poverty.

But everything ended well; neither the philosopher whom he had provoked, nor the fine lady whom he had reproved, left him as an enemy. His nature with its varied riches had quite enough feminine coquetry to regain betimes the sympathy which he was on the eve of losing. A gracious word, an affectionate clasp of the hand, and all was pardoned.

The opposition manifested outside the lecture-room to his ideas and mode of instruction, was less courteous. There rival schools and jealousies, ill-disguised under an affectation of disdain, contended against him. He was accused of the maddest eccentricities; barbarous processes were imputed to him, such as squeezing the chest of singers, his pupils, between two boards--the _reason_ was hard to understand. Others claimed that before Delsarte accepted a scholar, he required a profession of the Catholic faith and an examination in the catechism.

Those were the days when the author of "Les Orientales," in his legend of the "Two Archers," spoke of

"That holy hermit who moved stones By the sign of the cross."

But if, as an artist, Delsarte loved legends and was inspired by faith, as a professor he could cut short this poetic part of his art, at the point where science and the practical side of his teaching began.

The reproach, therefore, carried no weight.

Delsarte was amused by these exaggerated accusations; in another order of criticisms, it was agreeable to him to hear "that he sang without a voice, as Ingres painted without colors." The comparison pleased him, although inexact.

Yes, I say _inexact_, Delsarte was not without a voice; he had one, on the contrary, of great strength and range; of moving tone; eminently sympathetic; but it was an invalid organ and subject to caprice. He was not always master of it, and this caused him real suffering.

Let me give you the history of his voice as Madame Delsarte herself lately told it to me. I must go back to his early days of study and débuts.

Delsarte entered the Conservatory at the age of fourteen. Too young to endure the fatigue of the regular school-exercises, his voice must have received an injury. When the singer offered his services at the Opera Comique---then Salle Vantadour--he was told that his voice was hollow, that it had no carrying power. This was perhaps partly the fault of the building, whose acoustic properties were afterward improved. However, thanks to the flexibility which his voice retained and his perfect vocalization, the pretended insufficiency was overlooked, and the young tenor was admitted.

His mode of singing pleased the skilled public, and the special abilities of this strong artistic organism--as I have already observed--did not pass unnoted.

A _dilettante_, to whom I mentioned Delsarte long after this time, said: "What you tell me does not surprise me, I heard him at his first appearance, and he has lingered in my memory as an artist of the greatest promise. He was more than a singer; he had that nameless quality, which is not taught in any school and which marks a personality; a tone of which nothing, before or since, has given me the least idea."

The tenor, from the Comic Opera, went to the Ambigu Theatre, and thence to the Variétés, where an attempt was being made to introduce lyric works. François Delsarte's dramatic career did not, however, last more than two years. During these various changes--I cannot give the exact dates--this artist, on his way to glory, was forced to gain a living by the least aristocratic of occupations. If he did not go so far as Shakespeare in humility of profession (the English poet was a butcher's boy), he strangely stooped from that native nobility--great capacity,--which must yet have claimed, in his secret soul, its imprescriptible rights.

If this was one more suffering, added to all the rest, it had its good side. It was, perhaps, the source of the artist's never failing kindness, of that gracious reception which he never hesitated to bestow on anyone--from the Princess de Chimay and many other titled lords and ladies, down to Mother Chorré, the neighboring milk-woman, whom he held, he said, "in great esteem and friendship."

I return to his teaching. His lectures were given in Rue Lamartine and Rue de la Pépinière. There was always--aside from the school--an audience made up of certain never failing followers and of a floating population. The birds of passage sometimes came with a very distinct intention to criticise; but if they did not readily understand the learned deductions, they went away fascinated by what the professor had shown them of his brilliant changes into every type of the repertory which he held up as a model. Enthusiasm soon triumphed over prejudice. Envy, alone, persisted in hostility.

These meetings were genuine artistic feasts. They were held at night, at the same hour as the theatres, and no play was preferable to them in the eyes of the truly initiated. They were a transcendent manifestation of all that is most elevated, which art can produce.

Here is an extract from a newspaper, which I find among the notes sent me:

"I heard him repeat, one evening, 'Iphigenia's Dream,' at the request of his audience. All were held trembling, breathless by that worn and yet sovereign voice. We were amazed to find ourselves yielding to such a spell; there was no splendor and no theatric illusion. _Iphigenia_ was a teacher in a black frock coat; the orchestra was a piano striking, here and there, an unexpected modulation; this was all the illusion--and the hall was silent, every heart throbbed, tears flowed from every eye. And then, when the tale was told, cries of enthusiasm arose, as if _Iphigenia_, in person, had told us her terrors."

These lines are signed "Laurentius." I am very glad to come across them just as I am giving vent to my own feelings. I also find that Adolphe Guéroult, in his paper, the "Press," calls Delsarte _the matchless artist_, and recognizes _a law_ in his æsthetic discoveries. I shall have occasion to set down, as opportunity offers, a string of testimonies no less flattering and no less sincere; but I hasten to produce these specimens, lest the suspicion of infatuation follow me.

How was it that amidst such warm plaudits, Delsarte failed to win that popularity which, after all, is the supreme sanction? It must be acknowledged that he took no great pains to gain the place which was his due. If he loved glory like the true artist that he was, "he never tired himself in its pursuit." Perhaps he had an instinctive feeling that it would come to him some day unsought.

He might, in this regard, be reproached for the tardiness of his successes; he himself made difficulties and obstacles which might be considered as the effects of extreme pride.

Halévy once suggested his singing at the Tuilleries before King Louis Philippe and his family.

"I only sing to my friends," replied the artist.

"That is strange," said the author of "The Jewess," "Lablache and Duprez go whenever they are asked."

"Delsarte does not."

"But consider! This is to be a party given by the Crown Prince to his father."

This last consideration touched the obstinate heart.

"Well! I will go," he said, "but it is only on three conditions: I must be the only singer; I am to have the chorus from the Opera to accompany me; and I am not to be paid."

"You will establish a dangerous precedent."

"Those are my irrevocable terms."

All were granted.

From his youth up Delsarte manifested this, perhaps excessive, contempt for money. On one occasion it was quite justifiable. Father Bambini had taken him to a party where he was to sing on very advantageous terms. The scholar was treated with deference; but the teacher who had neither a fine face nor the claims of youth to shield him against aristocratic prejudice, was received much as a servant would have been who had made a mistake in the door.

The young singer felt the blood mantle his brow, and his heart rebelled.

"Take your hat and let us go!" he said to his old master.

"But why?" replied the good man. He had heeded nothing but his pupil's success.

Delsarte dragged him away in spite of his protests, and lost by his abrupt departure the profits of the evening.