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After the Last Bow: The Fate of Superannuated Actors in Nineteenth-Century France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
One of the incidental attractions of joining the Comédie-Française had always been that the Society could be relied on to look after the well-being of its veteran members even after they had left the stage, provided that they had given it a full twenty years' service counting from the date of their promotion to the rank of societaire. The policy of paying retirement pensions to superannuated actors at the royal theatre antedates even the coming into being of the Comédie-Française. In his Théâtre françois of 1674, Chappuzeau mentions the custom which had already grown up at that time for a new entrant to pay the older one whom he was replacing ‘une pension honnête’ out of his own earnings, so as to provide the retired actor with an income permitting him to live out his remaining days without falling into destitution. On 17 May 1728 the system was regularized by a proclamation to the effect that ‘les acteurs et actrices qui se retireraient jouiraient à l'avenir d'une pension viagère de mille livies, soit qu'ils eussent eu part entière, demi-part ou même un quart de part’; and although these arrangements fell into abeyance during the Revolution, causing acute distress to several former sociétaires who had only their personal savings to fall back on, they were reinstated by the Act of Association which all members of the Society were required to sign in 1804: clause 12 laid it down that ‘le sociétaire qui se retirera après vingt ans de service aura droit à une pension viagère de 2000 francs de la part du Gouvernement et à une pension égale de la part de la Société’. Even if they had no other resources, 4000 francs a year would relieve an ex-actor of serious financial anxieties; and since they might still be in their early forties when they took retirement, there was nothing to prevent them starting a business if they wished or cultivating a small farm in the country.
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References
Notes
1. Essarts, Des, Les Trois Théâtres de Paris (Paris: Lacombe, 1777), pp. 56–7.Google Scholar
‘actors and actresses who retire will in future be paid an annual pension of 1000 livres, whether they hold a whole share, a half share or even a quarter share’.
2. Quoted in Constant, Ch.-F., Code des théâtres à l'ausage des directeurs, des artistes etc. (Paris: Durand, 1876), p. 10.Google Scholar
‘every sociétaire who retires after twenty years' service will have the right to an annuity of 2000 francs payable by the government and to an equal sum from the Society’.
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‘In spite of this evening's triumph, you will see me leave the théâtre as forsaken and solitary as a queen returning to exile.’
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‘I am a tragedy queen as she is, I've whored it as she does now, and one day she'll be a poor old woman like me. No, I shan't write to her, I shan't beg charity of her, I shan't cool my heels waiting on the pleasure of that hussy. Has she forgotten how once she begged her bread? doesn't she see she will come to it again by and by? (…) There'll be some talented strumpet with youth on her side who'll walk all over her and she'll be flat on the floor, you'll see (…) I've had to let the pawnbrokers sell two diamond studs the Emperor presented me with; I act in suburban fleapits, at Saint-Marcel, at the Batignolles, I haven't even the 25 sous to pay my cab-fare home, but I'm damned if I'll write to Rachel, I'd sooner throw myself into the river and be done with it.’
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‘She is acting God knows where, at Toulouse, at Carpen-tras, in barns, to earn her living. Like me, she has been reduced to dragging her poor old carcass over badly planed boards, on a stage lit by four tallow candles, with a company of strolling players straight from the hulks or who deserve to be there! Oh, M. Hugo, you have your health, you don't care, but we are poor wretched creatures.’
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‘He stoops, his hair is white, his gaze, no longer sardonic, has gained in depth, in his brow one reads melancholy instead of pleasure, and his voice that once rang out so imperiously is a mere feeble echo of past battles.’
18. ‘you could hardly hear a word and the unhappy man, conscious of his loss of power in this respect, made painful efforts to speak that were sometimes quite horrible; his genius showed only now and again when, by an astonishing gesture, an inspired piece of dumb show, this actor suffering the torments of the damned could still reach his moments of sublimity.’
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‘Those who were there have retained a painful impression of the occasion which will not easily fade. What they saw, coming on from the wings, was a distraught, stammering figure; but, such affectations having always been one of his means of provoking laughter, no one was greatly surprised. Gil-Pérès played the first scenes mechanically, like an automaton or a sleepwalker. Then suddenly, in the middle of the play, he stopped, stared at the audience, opened his mouth, but uttered not a word. He carried his hand to his forehead and took a few stumbling steps. This time, it was impossible to suppose a deliberately grotesque effect. The complete disorder of the poor fellow's mental faculties was only too obvious. He was incapable of continuing, unable to do anything but wring his hands and exclaim in a heart-rending voice: “I can't, I can't!” The curtain was immediately lowered, to the stupefaction of the audience; but they could still hear, to their horror, behind the curtain, Gil-Pérès's repeated and anguished cry as he was dragged away: “I can't? I can't!”’
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26. Cf. Keim, Albert, Le Demi-siècle, souvenirs de la vie littéraire etpolitique 1876–1946 (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1950), pp. 173–4.Google Scholar
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‘And to say that at 73, hard at work since 1868, I look like ending up with nothing at all! If it is true that God cares for us, dear friend, I must be very guilty for him to abandon me in this way.’
28. On the last years of Mlle Flore, see de Manne, E. D. & Ménétrier, C., Galerie historique des acteurs français (…) des scènes secondaires (Lyon: Scheuring, 1877), p. 164Google Scholar: of Mézeray, see de Manne, E. D., Galerie historique des comédiens de la troupe de Talma (Lyon: Scheuring, 1866), p. 152Google Scholar; of Augustine Brohan, see Gaulot, Paul, Les Trois Brohan (Paris: Alcan, 1930), pp. 83–6Google Scholar; of Mme Thénard, see Prost, J. C. Alfred, Famille d'artistes: les Thénard (Paris: Leroux, 1900), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar
29. Héros, Eugène, Le ThéâTre anecdotique (Paris: Jorel, 1912–1913), I, 67Google Scholar: from the article entitled ‘Les Casernes artistiques’, dated 31 05 1911.Google Scholar
‘They are excusable, for nature never intended them to live together; talented or not, they are artists, and therefore independent; they are the house-sparrows of the dramatic art and cannot live caged up. The shade of spreading boughs, the running water—they would exchange all that for the benches on the terrace of the Café de Suede or the Cafe de l'Ambigu.’