Blanchette, and The escape

Preface

BY H. L. MENCKEN

PREFACE

"After the death of Ibsen, 55 says George Bernard Shaw, in his preface to the first English translation of Brieux's plays, "Brieux confronted Europe as the most important dramatist west of Russia. In that kind of comedy which is so true to life that we have to call it tragi-comedy, and which is not only an entertainment but a history and a criticism of contemporary morals, he is incomparably the greatest writer France has produced since Moliere."

A somewhat extravagant statement, perhaps — who, indeed, looks for restraint and niceness in a Shavian preface? — but still one with a certain unmistakable flavor of truth in it. All the acknowledged giants of the French drama since Moliere have been giants of dramaturgy rather than giants of truth. Working in series from Beaumarchais to Sardou, with Scribe as the master of them all, they have brought the form of the stage play very close to perfection, but they have not added much that is of consequence to its content. Even the younger Dumas, for all his famous revolt against the snarled conventions of

i classicism and romanticism, did no more than set up a new convention in place of the old ones. The drama of ideas that he preached quickly became, in the hands of Augier, Coppee and Feuillet, a drama of one idea only. Its sole problem was that of the woman taken in adultery. In some of these variations upon "La Dame aux Camelias," the successors to Marguerite Gautier were defended and in some they were excoriated, in some they were married and in some they were not, but the struggle depicted in every one was that between such a woman and the moral forces of society. The result was an inelastic and monotonous type of play, with the so-called drama of the triangle as its highest development. After a while, indeed, the word "eternal" came to be inserted before "triangle," as if this single situation were immutable and inevitable, and the only proper concern of a serious dramatist. Between the early 60's and the early 90's, France produced scarcely half a dozen firstrate plays in which adultery was not the leading motive. Even Brieux, as we shall see, was forced to yield something to the prevailing fashion when he began.

There were plenty of Frenchmen, of course, who saw that this tedious sounding of one note

ii was not realism in any true sense, despite its obvious superiority to the childish romanticism that had gone before it. One of them was Emile Zola, and throughout the 70's he maintained a vigorous war for what he called naturalism on the stage — that is, for an accurate and unsentimental representation of human life as it really was, with the stress laid unequally upon no one of its elements. But Zola, though a novelist of the first genius, had very little skill at playmaking, and the failure of his experiments worked serious damage to his theory. By one of the curious coincidences of literary history, the collapse of his propaganda came at the very moment another and far greater dramatist was converted to it. The convert was Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian, whose first social drama, "A Doll's House," was given to the world in the last days of 1879. Ibsen was not long in conquering Germany and his native Scandinavia, but in France, as in England and the United States, he made so little impression that he remained almost unknown for ten years. By the time "A Doll's House" got to Paris, indeed, a blow for the new naturalism had been already struck by one of Zola's countrymen. This rebel was Eugene Brieux.

iii

His "Blanchette" was done at the Theatre Libre on February 2, 1892. It was not until more than two years later — to be exact, on April 20, 1894, — that "A Doll's House" was presented at the Vaudeville by Mme. Rejane.

Just how much Brieux owes to Zola and to Ibsen it is not easy to determine with certainty, for his personal reticence is such that he has told us very little about his intellectual history, and the only forerunner he has openly praised is Augier. But it must be plain that he felt the influence of both men during his formative period, if only indirectly, for in the earliest of his serious plays one finds both the laborious accuracy of the one and the penetrating iconoclasm of the other. "Blanchette," in truth, might pass muster as an experimental work by either of them. The picture of the Rousset home in the first and second acts is thoroughly Zolaesque in its piling up of small details, and the attack upon popular education is made by the elaborate reductio ad ahsurdum which Ibsen employed so often and so devastatingly. And in the plays following, * we find Brieux making a more and more effective use of the same methods and materials. Bit by bit he moves away from the orthodox content and

iv structure of the French drama of his time. On the one hand, he rejects all the old conventions of form, and on the other hand he works a revolution in dramatic purpose. In both directions, he has gone further than any of his countrymen, and in the case of the former, indeed, further than any other living dramatist, save perhaps Shaw and Gorky. Some of his later plays, in a current phrase, are veritable " slices of life," without either formal beginning or formal ending. He does not bring his curtain down upon an affecting reconciliation, nor even upon a thrilling tragedy; he merely brings it down. But all the while, of course, he remains too much the Frenchman ever to lose his dramatic sense entirely, and so even his most hortatory plays — for example, "Maternite" and "Le Berceau" — are occasionally enlivened by scenes which a Sardou or a Bernstein might envy. In the midst of his rebellion against empty artificiality he has managed to learn something from his opponents, and his later works, particularly "La Foi," "Les Hannetons" and the second version of "Maternite," reveal a very marked improvement in craftsmanship. You will get some measure of this progress in technical skill by putting the second of the plays in the present volume beside the first, and remembering that four years separate them. "Blanchette," for all its approval by critics and public, is still full of amateurish blemishes, but in "The Escape* ' the author keeps a firm grip upon his material.

These plays have been chosen as representative of Brieux's theatre because each marks a high point in his progress. It was the production of "Blanchette" by Andre Antoine, in 1892, that brought Brieux his first success and lifted him to a definite position among contemporary French playwrights: until "Les A varies" overshadowed it, indeed, he was chiefly known to the boulevards as Vauteur de "Blanchette" And it was "The Escape" ("L'Evasion") that opened the doors of the Theatre Frangaise to him, and won the honor of being crowned by the Academy, and paved the way for his election to the Forty fourteen years later. Both reveal very fairly his peculiar talents and his characteristic weaknesses. In each he depicts a small group of persons with Meissonier-like painstaking and realism, and in each he launches his javeline against a sham. But in each he is so deadly in earnest that he hurts his case by over-statement. After all, is there any reason to believe that Blanchette Rousset would not have obtained her teacher's

vi post in six months more? And is it fair to charge against the school system the fact that she is pursued by men wherever she goes to merchant her learning — and actually driven, in the original version of the play, to prostitution? Likewise, in "The Escape,'' isn't it true that Brieux's attack upon medical fads is hindered rather than helped by the fact that he makes his Dr. Bertry less a faddist than a downright charlatan? So in many of the later plays, the mark is overshot, the untypical is mistaken for the typical, the argument finds its answer in its unsound premises. I need cite only "Suzette," "Menages d'Artistes," "La Berceau" and "Les A varies." In each of them Brieux states a case which, in part at least, misrepresents the thing he attacks.

An even more serious charge against him is that of Philistinism: the standpoint from which he argues is not so much that of the constructive revolutionist as that of the immovable bourgeoisie. It is not to be wondered at, perhaps, that a man of his humble origin and narrow youthful associations should see life from that angle, but in more than one of his plays he reveals a complete lack of understanding of his butts as well as a complete lack of sympathy with them. This is notice-

vii able in the very first of his serious plays, "Menages d'Artists," in which his onslaught Upon the so-called symbolist movement in French poetry is quite as notable for its misconceptions as for its ferocity. It is noticeable again in "The Escape," where his attack upon the theory of inherited traits seems to be unaccompanied by any suspicion that there is, after all, a lot of support for it in demonstrable facts. And in some of his later dramas his argument against a given idea is no more than an argument for a platitude standing opposed to it. In no less than three plays, for example, he preaches the pious doctrine that a child constitutes an unbreakable bond between husband and wife, and that it is their prime duty to sacrifice all personal inclination to its welfare — a doctrine assaulted with murderous fury by August Strindberg. Here, indeed, Brieux takes his definite departure from Ibsen, and from all the acknowledged followers of Ibsen. His propaganda is not for the abandonment of an outworn morality, but for its resuscitation and reaffirmation. He has no Nietzschean doubts about the impeccability of the family, the value of the simple and lowly virtues, the moral order of the world. Even when he is most furiously assailing exist-

viii ing institutions, it is always evident that his wrath is directed, not at their ancient essentials, but at their modern embellishments. The brief that he holds is for respectability, for "sound" views, for " right-thinking " men — in M. de Segur's stealthily ironic phrase, for "decent folk." He is not the sophisticated and cynical Frenchman of the boulevards and Anglo- Saxon tradition, but the stolid and God-fearing man of the people — der Bauer im Frack.

But perhaps the best way to get to an understanding of the growth and nature of Brieux's ideas is to examine his plays seriatim — leaving out of consideration, for the sake of brevity, the two that are given here and the three printed under the imprimatur of George Bernard Shaw. They reveal, with two exceptions, a serious moral purpose, and after "Blanehette," a rapidly increasing mastery over the materials of the theatre. Whatever one may say about them, there is certainly no lack of artistic courage in them. Brieux discusses the most grave — and, inferentially, the most dull — of human problems with unfailing address and plausibility, and even when he himself seems to be puzzled by them, as in "Maternite," for example, he is yet extremely interesting. Not many French in-

ix stitutions, whether social or political, have escaped his sardonic inspection. In "Les Bienfaiteurs" he is on the trail of fashionable charity; in "Resultat des Courses" he is preaching thunderously against betting; in "L'Engrenage" he is exposing both the wiles of politicians and the credulity of their dupes; in "Les Remplagantes" he is picturing the horrors of wetnursing; in "Les Hannetons" he is directing a fire of satire at the foes of marriage; in "La Frangaise" he is defending his countrywomen — i.e., his bourgeois countrywomen — against the libellous misrepresentations of the boulevard dramatists; in "La Robe Rouge" he is bringing a terrible incitement against the French judicial system. But whether his method be that of the satirist, as in "Les Hannetons" and "Les Bienfaiteurs," or that of the grim and unpitying social vivisectionist, as in "Resultat des Courses" and "Les Avaries," he always contrives to be on the respectable side of the question, and he always keeps the fact in mind that a stage play, to hold an audience, must have action in it — that the doctrine it lays down must be presented in terms of a conflict. Brieux is a million miles from Scribe and the well-made play, despite his acknowledgments to Augier, but he never tries to

x make the drama static instead of dynamic, as Shaw does in "Married."

The first of Brieux's plays to reach the stage was "Bernard Palissy," a one-acter in verse, written in collaboration with Gaston Salandri in 1879, when the author was barely twenty-one. The central character, of course, is that Bernard Palissy (1509-1589) who invented the art of enamelling pottery, and the scene is his house at Saintes. He has been reduced to great poverty by his costly experiments, and his wife Genevieve is demanding that he abandon them and go back to his profitable glass-painting, fitienne Gautier, the fiance of his daughter, Jeanne, adds pressure to this connubial persuasion, but Jeanne herself stands by him. Jeanne, indeed, is willing to sacrifice her love to her father's dream, but a kind fate makes this unnecessary. A terrific explosion is heard in the workshop. Palissy rushes off in despair, but a moment later returns in triumph. The secret of the enamel has been found! "Bernard Palissy" had its first and only performance at the Theatre Cluny on December 21, 1879. It has never been translated into English.

"Le Bureau des Divorces," which followed, was also written in collaboration with Salandri.

xi

It was published in 1880, but has never reached the stage. P. V. Thomas, in his monograph on Brieux, dismisses it as a cheap farce, "thin, stale and not amusing," but points out that its attack upon the French divorce law shows the early bent of Brieux's mind. It was followed by an unproductive interval of nearly ten years, broken at last by "Menages d'Artistes" in 1890. Probably preceding the latter in date of composition, but reaching the stage four days later, came "La Fille de Durame," a melodrama of revolutionary days, with the usual outfit of brigands, spies and gendarmes. It was written for a Rouen audience and had its first performance at the Theatre Frangais in that city on March 25, 1890. It bears no sort of relation to the rest of Brieux's work.

"Menages d'Artistes" (1890) is important as the play which brought Brieux to the attention of Andre Antoine and gave him his first serious hearing in Paris. It is a bitter, and not always convincing satire upon the art four Vart movement of the 80's, with the symbolist poets as its targets. Jacques Tervaux, a ridiculous member of that brotherhood, is married to a simple girl who believes in his loud claims to genius. Even when he

xii launches into an undisguised affair with Emma Verner, a wealthy dilettante, poor Mme. Tervaux is unsuspecting. Not so, however, her shrewd old mother, who sees through this coalescence of soul mates at once, and presently turns Emma out of the house. Jacques follows, and the two set up a pretentious literary journal. But it suspends publication after a few numbers and Emma goes off with another man. Bankrupt in art and pocketbook, Jacques then commits suicide — a tragic ending for a somewhat rough farce. The piece has its moments, but in general its satire is hopelessly ignorant and Philistine. What it offers, indeed, is not an incisive criticism qf the symbolists, but merely an ill-natured lampoon upon them.

Two years later came "Blanchette" (Theatre Libre, February 2, 1892), and seven months afterward "M. de Reboval," or, as it was first called, "M. le Senateur" (Odeon, September 15) . It is in this piece that we first find Brieux voicing his eloquent argument for the homely virtues, the respectable point of view. Its intrigue is very simple and not at all original. M. de Reboval, a rich and powerful Senator, maintains two establishments and has two children, the one legitimate and the other

xiii by a mistress. All goes well enough so long as the children are young, but when they grow up they meet and fall in love, and Reboval has to tell them the truth. They turn upon him and favor him with virtuous denunciations in Brieux's best manner, and at the end he acknowledges the viciousness of his life and begs for pardon. Mr. Thomas professes to regard the play as an attack on the bourgeois, but in reality its moral is one that all honest bourgeois must approve. It pleads for lawful monogamy in a serious tone quite as plainly as "Les Hannetons" pleads for it in tones of raillery.

"La Couvee" (1893) shows Brieux's first interest in a theme which was later to engage him in "Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont" and other plays: to wit, the evil worked by parents who seek to determine the whole future of their children. It is, however, in a lighter vein than its successors, and is given distinction by a very amusing clash between the mothers of the young folk. This scene was afterward turned into a one-acter under the title of "L'Ecole des Belles-Meres," an English version of which was printed in the Smart Set during the summer of 1913. "La Couvee," which is in three acts, was first

xiv played by an amateur dramatic club at Rouen in 1893. Ten years later, on July 9, 1903, it was presented in Paris, again under private auspices. "L'Ecole des Belles-Meres" was done at the Gymnase on March 25, 1898.

"L'Engrenage," which followed "La Couvee" in 1894, is a three-act comedy of politics, and its two aims seem to be to expose the bribery which flourishes in France quite as balefully as in America, and to satirize the fickleness of a politician's following. Remoussin, an honest provincial, is forced into standing for the Chamber of Deputies by his ambitious wife and daughter, and is elected after an exciting campaign. Before long he is beset by lobbyists for a tunnel scheme, and one of them, a rascal named Morin, succeeds in inveigling him into taking 25,000 francs, not as a personal bribe, but as "a contribution to the charities of his district." The transaction becomes public and Remoussin throws himself upon the mercy of his constituents, pleading his lack of private profit and his good intent. What is more, he pays over the 25,000 francs to the Attorney- General. But the voters of the district denounce him as a thief, the while they give cheers for the less honest and more crafty Morin. The play

xv had its first performance at the Theatre de la Comedie Parisienne on May 16, 1894, but was moved to the Theatre des Nouveautes on June 4 following.

"Les Bienfaiteurs," which came after it, is a satire upon organized charity, showing on the one hand the pitiful insincerity of those who manage it, and on the other hand the lack of gratitude in those who benefit by it. The play is in fpur acts and had its first performance at the Theatre de la Porte St. Martin on October 22, 1896. It was followed on December 7 of the same year by "L'Evasion" ("The Escape"), which saw the light at the Theatre Frangaise, and has remained in the repertoire of that house ever since. On October 8, 1897, came "Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont" (Gymnase), a return, in serious mood, to the theme of "La Couvee." The play is printed in Shaw's volume of Brieux translations. Its successor was "Resultat des Courses" — the cry of Paris newsboys with racing extras, — which was done at the Antoine on December 9, 1898. Here we see how Arsene Chantaud,, an honest workingman, is ruined by a chance success at the races. Once he has fingered unearned money, the gambling fever has him in its clutches, and he proceeds from

xvi idleness to actual theft. In the end he is arrested for vagrancy. Brieux entered a Paris factory to get atmosphere and color fpr this piece, but the workmen quickly penetrated his disguise. It is in his most earnest manner. "Le Berceau," which had its first performance at the Theatre Frangaise on December 19, 1898, ten days after "Resultat des Courses," is the first of three plays dealing with a new "eternal triangle" — the husband, the wife and the child. Raymond Chantrel and his wife have been divorced, and Mme. Chantrel has been married again and is now Mme. de Girieu. The child of the first union, a boy called Julien, has been awarded to the mother by the court. One day he falls desperately ill at the home of her parents, and his mother and father are brought together at his bedside. They pass days and nights of anxiety there, and gradually their old love awakens. But they determine to stand firmly against it in justice to Girieu — and then the dramatist solves a knotty problem by catastrophe. That is to say, he has Chantrel and Girieu meet in physical combat and go over a precipice together. A splendid scene of the theatre, but scarcely a logical resolution of the situation. The significance of the play lies in its attack upon

xvii divorce. Its theme appears again, though with variations, in "La Deserteuse" and "Suzette."

After "Le Berceau" came "La Robe Rouge" (Theatre du Vaudeville, March 15, 1900; Theatre Frangaise, September 23, 1909), perhaps the most effective dramatically of all Brieux's plays. It is a devastating attack upon the administration of justice in the French courts, and no doubt had its inspiration in the Dreyfus case. Mouzon, a provincial magistrate, smarting under newspaper criticism for his failure to apprehend the perpetrator of a murder and eager to attract the favorable notice of his superiors, fixes upon an ignorant peasant named Etchepare as the culprit, and then proceeds, by shameless bullying, to manufacture enough evidence to convict. Among other things, he extorts from Etchepare's wife the story of a disgraceful episode before her marriage — an episode hitherto unknown to Etchepare himself. After a long trial, the man is finally acquitted, but his home is destroyed and he departs for America. Then Yanetta, the wife, driven to distraction, seizes a paper-knife on Mouzon's desk and plunges it into his heart. The role of Mouzon afforded great opportunities to the actor, Hugue-

xviii net, and his performance helped the piece to success. Brieux withdrew it from the repertoire of the Theatre Frangaise when Huguenet left the company, in July, 1911. The play was done in London as "The Arm of the Law" by Arthur Bourchier.

"La Robe Rouge" was followed by "Les Remplacantes" (Antoine, February 15, 1901), an attempt to maintain the somewhat obvious thesis that the custom of putting babies out to nurse is injurious to the chili itself and demoralizing to both the mother and the wetnurse. Lazarette Planchot, a peasant woman, goes up to Paris to nurse the baby of Mine. Denisart, a wealthy society woman, leaving her own offspring to the tender mercies of her drunken husband and her avaricious fatherin-law. One day a telegram comes from her home, telling her that her baby is very ill, but Mme, Denisart is expecting guests and so conveniently forgets to hand it to her. Next day, however, she learns its contents and at once departs for her home. There she finds that her husband is throwing away her earnings in a wine-shop and carrying on an affair with another woman. She puts this other woman to flight, brings her husband home, xrx and throws herself into a battle for her baby's life. The infant Denisart is forgotten.

"Les A varies" is next in the Brieux canon. It was written in 1901 and put into rehearsal at the Theatre Antoine in the autumn of that year, but the censor forbade its performance, and it did not actually reach the stage in Paris until February 23, 1905. But meanwhile Brieux had read it to several private audiences and it had been played at Liege and Brussels, and, if I do not err, in Switzerland also. John Pollock's English translation was published by Shaw in 1910, and on March 14, 1913, it was given a private matinee performance at the Fulton Theatre in New York, under the auspices of the Medical Review of Reviews. There was some disposition on the part of professional Puritans to object to public performances, but a number of clerical uplifters came gallantly to the rescue, and the play was soon afterward openly presented. At the conclusion of the New York run, the company proceeded to a tour, and before the end of the year "Damaged Goods" had been set before the theatre-goers of two dozen cities. Its presentation was the signal for an avalanche of so-called "sex" plays, but the majority of them were so plainly meretricious

xx that the police finally interfered, and several of the worst were either disinfected or wholly prohibited.

A year after "Les Avaries" Brieux wrote "La Petite Amie" (Theatre Frangaise, May 3, 1902), a return to the theme of "Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont," this time with a tragic ending. M. Logerais, proprietor of a large dressmaking establishment, is bent upon marrying his son Andre to a rich girl, but Andre has fallen in love with Marguerite, one of his father's shop-girls. In an American play the easy solution would be an elopement, but by the French marriage law Andre cannot marry without his father's consent until he is twenty-five. It is too long for the lovers to wait, and so they dispense with the knot. When Marguerite finds that she is about to become a mother they throw themselves into the Seine. After "La Petite Amie" came "Maternite," and as the Shaw translation shows, Brieux wrote two endings for it, the second being much superior to the first. Its successor was "La Deserteuse" (Odeon, October 15, 1904), in which Brieux had the aid of Jean Sigaux. Here we have another consideration of the effect of divorce upon the children. Forjot, the father, remarries after his wife

xxi runs off with a musician, and his daughter Pascaline is brought up in ignorance of her mother's sinning. Years later the latter returns to the scene and tries to win Pascaline's love. For jot then tells the whole story, and the broken-hearted Pascaline turns her back on her mother.

There followed " 1/ Armature " ( Vaudeville, April 19, 1905), an unimportant dramatization of a novel by Paul Hervieu, a fellow dramatist. After it came "Les Hannetons" ( Rennaissance, February 3, 1906), which has been done into English and presented in the United States by Laurence Irving, first as "The Incubus" (Hackett Theatre, New York, April 27, 1909) and later as "The Affinity" (Comedy Theatre, January 4, 1910). It deals amusingly with the adventures of Pierre Cotrel, an "advanced" thinker, who shows distrust of the tyrannies and responsibilities of marriage by setting up unofficial housekeeping with one Charlotte, a simple-minded working-girl. But, alas for poor Pierre, he quickly finds that a "free" union is quite as lacking in actual freedom as a marriage with bell and book. Charlotte henpecks him, is unfaithful to him, and finally runs away from him. He then determines to depart from the scene of their

xxii experiment himself, and gets together his small savings — 200 francs — for the purpose. But just as he is about to go, Charlotte is carried up the stairs. She has tried to commit suicide by jumping into the Seine, and Pierre, as in duty bound, pays the 200 francs to her rescuer! A grimly ironical little comedy, well voicing Brieux's Philistine distrust of the revolutionaries who propose to make over the fundamental institutions of Christian society.

"La Frangaise," which followed (Odeon, April 18, 1907) , is a defense of French womanhood against foreign, and particularly American misunderstanding. The principal personages are Mme. Gontier, the young wife of an elderly French manufacturer, and one Bartlett, an American friend and business associate of her nephew. Bartlett's notion of Frenchwomen has been gained from popular plays and novels, and so, when Mme. Gontier shows him politeness, he mistakes it for an invitation and attempts to kiss her. She quickly hauls him up, and he is later enlightened as to the true morals of French wives, and all ends happily. Brieux's secondary target in the play, of course, is the conventional drama of the boulevards, with its monotonous variations upon the theme of adultery. A bit of the dialogue between

xxiii

Bartlett and Mme. Gontier will serve to show the nature of his protest:

Bartlett. For ten years I have been reading your French novels; pictures, as I understood them, of French morals. Not one was there in which a woman did not deceive her husband. I arrive at Trouville, and everything there is most easy-going and irresponsible. At Paris I go to the theatre, four nights running to four different theatres, and yet I am hardly able to believe that I am not seeing the same play. I am not entirely correct — the last one I saw was different from the others — the heroine did not have a lover — she had three. And the women that I have met in Paris —

Mme. Gontier. You must not judge Frenchwomen by our novels nor our plays, nor yet by the Parisian ladies who have been so hospitable to you. And it is necessary that you should learn that, in spite of all that you have read, in spite or all that you have seen, you know nothing of either the literature or the women of this country. . . . Thank God that despite vilification there are honest women in France. They are those you do not see, the great majority, who live wrapped up in their husbands and their children and their homes — in those homes where you foreigners never penetrate. They are the women that you do not see on the boulevards, nor meet in promenades at concerts, nor in those centres of debauchery where you, the foreigners, are the best clients.