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MY
DEAR
MR.
CLARK:
AS I
had occasion to explain to you when you were planning
the present volume, I can see among the numerous
reasons for the success which it will achieve that it
is above all a timely book, introducing as it does the
work of Emile Augier to the American public at the
moment when the evolution of the taste of that public
is directing it precisely toward that form of dramatic
art which is exemplified by the author of "Le Gendre
de M. Poirier." No longer content merely with dramas
of adventure and plays in which sensational incidents
and arbitrary development render them closely akin to
the newspaper serial or the fairy-tale, this public
has ceased looking to the theatre solely as an
amusement, a pleasant recreation and distraction from
its daily occupations; it is now interested in more
complex problems; it is willing to listen to arguments
— a process more taxing, possibly, than the
other, but thereby only the more fascinating. Avid of
progress and bent on the quest of the most recent and
most profound manifestations of thought, it cannot
fail at this time to take an interest in the theatre
of ideas. Indeed, if the drama of Ibsen has already
attracted the attention of this public, it is certain
that there has existed some transitional form of
dramatic art between that drama and the works first
presented in America.
Each epoch has its particular way of
thinking and its particular kind of plays. Our epoch
is that of the social play.
The material progress of civilization,
reducing the distance and obstacles which hitherto
separated the nations, has resulted in bringing us
closer to one another, arousing our common interests
and stimulating those mental and spiritual qualities
which unite the Old World with the New. This art in my
opinion is only the result of that sympathetic note
which we seek in those who not many years ago were
total strangers to us.
You have made a most wise and careful
choice among the works of Emile Augier.
"Le Gendre de M. Poirier," his most
celebrated comedy, together with "Les Fourchambault"
and "Le Mariage d'Olympe," set forth and defend
principles and ideas which cannot but find favour in
the United States.
This play ["Le Gendre de M. Poirier"]
may be compared with an exciting and chivalrous
tournament, in which the contestants represent the two
forms of nobility: that of the heart or spirit,
nobility pure and simple, and that of caste. The first
triumphs over the other, yet without crushing it
— as is just and fitting. Antoinette Poirier,
having succeeded in arousing the enthusiasm and
admiration of her husband the Marquis de Presles to
the point where he renders her the highest possible
homage — he acknowledges that in her heart he has
found that of his mother the Marquise — exclaims,
wounded and yet radiantly happy in the full
consciousness of her legitimate pride: "I have my
mother's heart!"
This play then sums up in these two
speeches — one uttered by the representative of
individual pride, the other by the representative of
traditional haughtiness, which may occasionally hide
but never destroy, the essential qualities of the
aristocracy.
Here is depicted that struggle,
intelligent, courteous, tender, too, between race and
caste, with honor in the balance. In short, here we
are able to observe commonsense, sentiment, and French
good-humour finally at swords' points with traditional
pride and all its concomitant sophistry, achieving a
triumph, a triumph however over what is conventional
and superficial in this ancient pride, for it respects
and honours the prestige and greatness of the past and
even admits the charm of aristocratic idiosyncrasies.
Finally, as a sort of compensation due
us for the exaggerations of the Naturalistic School,
there is not a single odious
personage in this lively and natural comedy, for
Madame de Montjay is only a dramatic "utility," which
Augier took pleasure in relegating far into the
background.
As for the Marquis de Presles, he is
exquisitely French, and his purely superficial faults
scarcely detract from his charm in the eyes of the
Poirier-Verdelet partnership. Nor do the petty
meannesses of these old gentlemen greatly lower them
in our eyes — what a good excuse they have! After
this optimistic and charming play it was necessary to
select one showing Emile Augier under his severest
aspect. You have done this in choosing "Le Mariage
d'Olympe."
Emile Augier has always stood for the
great middle classes. Its ideals are order and
regularity, justice, the family and fireside. He
considers from a tragic viewpoint what Molière
laughed at in order not to cry over, and he stands
forth as champion against every peril which threatens
to destroy conjugal happiness.
His middle-class honesty prevented his
sentimentalising over the lot of the prostitute;
throughout his plays he shows himself her constant
enemy. His Olympe is the exact counterpart of
Marguerite Gautier in "La Dame aux camélias":
she is a cynical and insidious being, whom unhoped-for
good fortune has not succeeded in overthrowing.
Having made her way by subterfuge into
society and the intimacy of the family circle, she
does not seek real redemption. Seized with a
homesickness for her vile past, she makes use of her
position only in order to wreck the happiness of those
about her, up to the day when the gentleman of the old
school, whose nephew she has ensnared and married,
puts an end to her in an access of indignation.
In "Les Fourchambault" we observe the
struggle between ambition and the material interests
on the one hand, and natural impulse and the true
nobility of the heart on the other. In every scene
Emile Augier maintains his antipathy to fortunes
which, when they are not honourably acquired, are the
brutal weapons directed against those who are weaker,
or else when they are
utilised for ends to which our reason, our commonsense
and our desire for justice, are radically opposed.
The sordid, petty, and ambitious
Madame Fourchambault, Fourchambault, Bernard and his
mother, are synthetic figures, types of humanity at
large, thrust into the midst of social drama.
Emile Augier was great as an observer
of the society of his time. Weary of the conventional,
romantic, superannuated drama of his day, of religious
and historical themes, he preferred to treat those
questions which the life of his time furnishes every
day to the dramatist.
The powers of good and evil have since
Augier's day changed in the matter of terminology,
together with the methods of treating them as material
for drama. He was among the first to realise that an
individual face to face with questions of
physiological and social heredity was quite as
poignant a subject for study as was the legendary hero
pursued by the anañk&evacuate; of
antiquity; so that the plays of the present are more
attractive to us than those of early times by reason
of the interest aroused by the discussions to which
they give rise, discussions which we can immediately
assimilate and allow to react upon our consciousness
as living beings.
Such then are the questions treated in
the plays of Emile Augier which this volume offers to
the American public. I am delighted, Monsieur, to join
you in rendering homage to the literary memory of a
master whom I consider one of the greatest of that
line in which I am proud and happy to consider myself
as a dramatist and French writer.
EMILE AUGIER
THE
present volume is the first attempt to make known in
English something of the rich and varied genius of one
of the ablest and most influential dramatists of the
nineteenth century. Up to the present, Emile Augier
has been accessible to readers of English only through
translations of two plays, while among the rare
studies of the subject in our language the only one
that pretends to any sort of completeness is the
illuminating and sympathetic essay by Professor
Brander Matthews in his "French Dramatists of the
Nineteenth Century."
The first three plays, here translated
for the first time, are typical of three separate and
distinct manners of their author; the fourth is a
delicate and amusing trifle, serving to show rather
what he could do in an odd moment than to stand for a
different phase of his work. One of these is an
acknowledged masterpiece of the nineteenth century
drama: "Le Gendre de M. Poirier" is indubitably one of
the finest comedies since Molière, and rightly
holds a place of honour in the repertory of the
Comedie Française with "Tartufe" and "Le
Mariage de Figaro." "Les Fourchambault," too, with its
plea for family solidarity, its commonsense, its quiet
and reasoned optimism, is still deservedly a favourite
in France. "Le Mariage d'Olympe" is not often played,
but its position in French drama, its historical
importance, its significance as a social document,
containing as it does a challenge to romantic ideas
about the "rehabilitation of the courtesan," entitle
it to a position of high honour.
A volume which aimed at including all
the important and typical plays of Augier would be
three or four times the size of
the present, which seeks only to introduce three of
the best of his plays.
There is so much matter in the
dramatic works of Augier which does not properly fall
within the scope of the theatre, that the casual
reader may infer, incorrectly, that Augier was more of
a social reformer and champion of home and fatherland,
than a man of the theatre. True it is that in
practically all his plays he attacks some form of
social or political corruption, and stands forth to do
battle in behalf of the domestic virtues. He condemns
political trickery, he aims his shafts at the
prostitute regaled as a wife and mother, trying to
break her way into the homes and families of the
respectable; he ruthlessly flays all forms of marital
infidelity, and fearlessly enters the arena in
questions of divorce and marriage — but with all
this, he is primarily a dramatist. His works are
plays, as time has proved. Augier does not however
take a subject at hazard, as Pinero often does, and
then write a play; nor does he, as is usual with his
disciple Brieux, write his play to fit a thesis: his
themes evolve naturally out of the fable, with the
apparent unconsciousness of art. He is deeply
concerned with the vices and virtues of mankind, but
rarely does he allow his convictions to warp the
dramatic texture of his plays. Rarely, too, is he so
fearlessly didactic as his fellow-playwright Dumas
fils. Augier has been compared with Molière;
but it is only as a man of the theatre and a painter
of character that the analogy holds.
Augier's debut was made with a
graceful comedy in two acts: "La Cigüe" (1844).
This is in verse, and recounts the story of a
repentant debauchee. His next play, "Un Homme de bien"
(1845), likewise in verse, in spite of its hesitancy
in the development of plot and the delineation of
character, indicates the path which Augier was to
tread; here he "manifests for the first time his
intention to paint a picture of contemporary life,
attack the customs of the day, in short, to write a
social comedy."1
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1 Henry Gaillard de Champris; "Emile
Augier et la Comédie sociale" (Grasset, Paris,
1910).
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But Augier did not at once adopt and
develop his new
manner. During the next few years, he continued to
write verse plays in which the thesis was more or less
prominent.
"L'Aventurière" (1848),
"Gabrielle" (1849), "Le Joueur de Flute" (1850),
"Diane" (1852), "Philiberte" (1853), and "Paul
Forestier" (1868) are primarily comedies in which the
purely dramatic element predominates, although
"L'Aventurière" and "Gabrielle" are a closer
approximation to the later manner than the others.
"L'Aventurière" is a modern
play in spite of the fact that the scene is laid in
the Italian Renaissance. It is the story of an
adventuress who has managed to get into the good
graces of a rich merchant of Padua. He is about to
give up friends and family for the woman, when his
son, who has been away for ten years, appears upon the
scene. Assuming a disguise, he reveals the true
character of Clorinde to his father and effects a
breaking-off of their relationship. The father and
family are saved and the repentant woman goes into a
convent.
If in "L'Aventurière" Augier
was still undecided as to the means of expression best
fitted to his temperament or as to the purpose to
which his powers were to be put, in "Le Mariage
d'Olympe," six years later, he found his most forceful
and realistic manner. Meantime there is one play,
forming a connecting link between the wavering "Aventurière" and "Olympe."
"Gabrielle" (1849) is, in spite of its poetic form, a
realistic play. The husband who labours hard for wife
and family, the wife who is bored and seeks a fuller
"realisation of self" in the husband's friend —
this is a familiar situation. But it should be borne
in mind that a serious treatment of such a story was,
sixty-five years ago, something of a departure.
Scribe's stock in trade was the menage à
trois, but conjugal infidelity with him was always a
subject for comedy. Augier's play then was a
challenge, both to the Romanticists and the
Vaudevillistes. When Julien Chabrière opens the
eyes of his wife and her would-be lover to the dangers
and miseries of their projected step, the lover goes
away and Gabrielle, falling to her knees before her
husband, speaks the celebrated line:
"O père de famille! O
poète, je t'aime!"
Leaving the realm of poetic comedy,
with its attached "moral" and more or less optimistic
d&eacaute;nouement, in 1854 Augier threw the
gauntlet in the face of the Romanticists who applauded
Dumas fils' "La Dame aux camélias" —
commonly known in English as "Camille." A curious
change in public taste and manners had allowed large
numbers of demi-mondaines to assume a place of
distinction and honour in the social life of the day.
This was due perhaps to the numerous political
transformations which France was at the time
undergoing, as well as the spreading of the ideas of
the Romantic school of art and literature. When, in
1852, Dumas fils made a prostitute the sympathetic
heroine of a play, and brought forward the doctrine
that "she will be forgiven because she has loved
deeply," a feeling of revolt awoke in the breast of
Augier, and he wrote "Le Mariage d'Olympe." This is
one of the most directly didactic of all his works: it
was aimed primarily against the "reign of the
courtesan." He says, in short, that such women as
Olympe Taverny do undoubtedly exist, that the men are
at fault as much as the women for that fact; possibly
he even secretly sympathises with her, but he denies
her the right to marry into good families. When the
Marquis de Puygiron shoots Olympe, after endeavouring
to force her to give up the family name which she has
stolen, declaring that "God is his judge," Augier
issues his ultimatum on the question.
"Le Mariage d'Olympe," a play with a
purpose, stands apart from the great mass of Augier's
plays. In the three short and well built acts, the
author has merely sketched his characters: every
effort has been bent on the idea, the facts, the
thesis. Just so much of characterisation as is needed
to carry the story is given. The admirable and
disgusting scene which closes the second act is one of
the most trenchant and poignant which ever came from
this dramatist's pen. Nowadays, even after Zola and
Becque and the Théâtre Libre dramatists,
it strikes a note of horror. How it must have shocked
an audience of the 'fifties!
Although the play
failed2 it aroused considerable
discussion and a good deal of adverse criticism.
Still, its importance in the dramatic and intellectual
development of the dramatist was great. It was his
first straightforward declaration of independence.
From 1854 on, he followed the path he had himself
opened with this early play.
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2 Due perhaps to the fact that the
public had had enough of the subject: "La Dame aux
camélias," "Les Filles de marbre," and "Le
Demi-monde," all treated a similar theme.
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"The reign of the courtesan" was not
ended by the plays of the day, but Augier did not
cease for that reason in his attempts to check its
influence. Twelve years after "Le Mariage d'Olympe" he
wrote "La Contagion." The development of society and
its relation to the fallen woman may be clearly traced
by a comparative study of "L'Aventurière," "Le
Mariage d'Olympe," and "La Contagion." In the first
play, the woman is merely an exception, an adventuress
who happens to "break into" society and a good family.
In "Le Mariage d'Olympe" she is a demi-mondaine who
has carefully planned to obtain for herself, at any
cost, a noble name. But she is checked in time by a
pistol-shot. Twelve years later the Olympes and
Clorindes are no longer exceptions; the rehabilitated
courtesan has triumphed. By skillful manipulation she
has insinuated her way into a position of equality
similar to that of the respected mother and wife, and
has even begun to corrupt her. "The consequences" [of
this triumph of the courtesan] says De Champris, "were
deplorable. As a result of hearing of these 'ladies,'
of reading about them in the newspapers, of seeing
their gorgeous equipages, of passing their pretty
homes, applauding them on the stage or admiring their
silhouettes in the fashion magazines, society women
fell a prey to contradictory feelings and ideas: the
resentment at being occasionally deserted for these
women, the curiosity to know these enemies, so far
away yet so near, the wish to rival them, furnished
them with weapons, perhaps even a certain desire for
forbidden fruit, and gave birth to a regret at being
forced to pay for a reputation in society which
entailed so
rigid a restraint. For these various reasons, many
honest women, played the part of demi-mondaines." This
was the contagion against which Augier raised his
voice. The clever and diabolical Navarette, mistress
of a wealthy man of the world, succeeds in ruining her
lover and bringing his family to her feet. By subtle
manipulation she compromises the Baron d'Estrigaud's
married sister, is witness of her infidelity, and
finally succeeds in holding the entire family at her
mercy. A pistol-shot will do no good here: the evil
has gone too far, society itself is corrupted. The
kept woman, successfully rehabilitated, rich, held in
high esteem, has at last attained that position for
which she had striven.
The war of 1870 and the fall of the
Empire put a stop to the particular state of affairs
which Augier had fought against. Rarely in his later
plays (except in "Jean de Thommeray") did he again
attack the question. To Brieux and Hervieu and
François de Curel he left the work of analysing
deeper motives and making a study of the various
ramifications, some of which were still invisible in
Augier's day — but this is current history.
The three plays which have just been
discussed are sufficient to show that Augier is the
staunch champion of the family and the home. His
hatred of the prostitute is not so much a matter of
personal feeling as a social one. Whether or no he
believes in what is now known as segregated vice or
whether as a man he was occasionally lenient in
matters of sex, is beside the question: he saw that
the home, of all institutions in France the most
important, was threatened by a fearful invasion, and
he did his best to check it.
It will be seen that Augier's plays,
so far considered, are not in chronological order.
"L'Aventurière," "Le Mariage d'Olympe," and "La
Contagion," have been grouped together for the purpose
of observing a particular trend in the thought of the
author. Meantime, such widely different plays as
"Philiberte," "La Pierre de touche," "Le Gendre de M.
Poirier," and "Les Effrontes," made their appearance.
"Gabrielle" was the first play to
treat of a more insidious
evil, a greater danger to the home which Augier was
ever so eager to protect: conjugal infidelity. After
the comparatively timid "Gabrielle" came "Les Lionnes
pauvres" (1858), which stands in much the same
relation to the earlier play as "Le Mariage d'Olympe"
did to "L'Aventurière." Here again is the story
of a woman whom the love of luxury, too much idleness
and a natural penchant, lead to take a lover. The
honest and industrious husband is long kept in
ignorance of the fact, believing that his wife's
expensive clothes are paid for out of her savings.
Besides being deceived, in the French sense of the
word, he is being partially supported meantime by his
wife's lover. At last he learns the facts, and is even
willing to forgive his wife, but when she declares her
unwillingness to restore the money given her, on the
ground that she is "afraid of poverty," the husband
leaves her. He seeks consolation in the home of
Thérèse and Léon Lecarmier. Then
Thérèse is forced to tell him that her
husband, Léon, is Séraphine's lover.
Séraphine, then going the path of least
resistance, decides to remain a kept woman.
Thenceforth she joins the ranks of Olympe and
Navarette.
Augier's sanity, his healthy attitude
toward humanity, his belief in the eternal rightness
of things, could not long remain obscured by the
temporary pessimism incident to the writing of "Les
Lionnes pauvres." In 1858, the same year, he turned to
light comedy, and in "La Jeunesse" produced a genial
if somewhat conventional play. In spite of its thesis
— that money is an evil, especially in the case
where young people are forced into marriages of
convenience — it can scarcely be classed among
the important social plays. It marks a return to the
earlier manner.
The question of money, lightly touched
upon in "La Jeunesse," is the second of the important
problems which is intimately concerned with the
welfare of the family and the home. From this time on,
sex and money are to assume a position in the front
rank of Augier's work.
Closely allied in spirit with "La
Jeunesse" is "Un beau Mariage" (1859). The question,
Should a poor man marry a rich wife, is handled with
keen insight and answered in the
negative. Pierre Chambaud, a poor young chemist,
marries the rich Clémentine Bernier, whose
mother, possessing nearly all the money, literally
supports the daughter and her husband. Pierre soon
becomes a mere figure-head in his own house and, as a
result of the social ambitions of his wife and
mother-in-law, is forced to give up his scientific
pursuits. Soon losing the love and respect of the two
women, he complains to them, and is made to feel more
keenly than ever the utter degradation of his
position. A certain Marquis de la Roche-Pingolley has
been over-assiduous in his attentions to Pierre's
mother-in-law. When he demands that the Marquis either
marry Madame Bernier or cease his visits, he is humiliated once
again by being told by his mother-in-law that the
Marquis is in her home. Receiving no help or sympathy
from his wife, he goes to live with his friend, Michel
Ducaine; and work out an experiment which, if
successful, will revolutionise science and render him
celebrated. Fearful of the scandal and inconvenience
of a separation, Clémentine sends the Marquis
to Pierre in order to effect a reconciliation. Pierre
is willing to return to his wife, but only on the
condition that the mother-in-law is to have nothing to
do with them. Preparatory to making his final
experiment, which, we are told, will either kill or
make Pierre a successful man, he sends a letter to his
wife. Clémentine arrives at the laboratory just
in time to be with her husband in the hour of danger.
She has somehow come to see his real worth and is
willing to sacrifice comfort and luxury for his sake.
She hides during the experiment, and when the seven
minutes necessary for its consummation are at an end
she cries "Saved!" and falls into Pierre's arms:
"Oh, Pierre, my love, my life! . . .
We might have died together! . . . But you are given
to me again! What happiness! God is good! How I love
you! Forgive me! I thought you were a coward, I
thought you were base, and I hated you! Now I adore
you! Oh, courage, oh, genius! Forgive your comrade,
your handmaid!"
The last act shows a pretty picture of Pierre and
Clémentine at home: she is the incarnation of
domesticity, and he, of independence and happiness.
The mother-in-law, distracted at not being able to
help the couple, ends by purchasing Pierre's
discovery. The play's weakness is so flagrant as
hardly to call for further comment. With so good a
theme the dramatist ought surely to have developed a
more credible story, and sought a more logical
dénouement. To begin with, his thesis
was irretrievably weakened by making Clémentine
the sort of woman she was. If, during the entire
struggle with his wife and her mother, Pierre had once
received some sign of sympathy from Clémentine,
we might have hoped and looked for her ultimate
change, but when, having stood throughout against him,
she finally does go to him and at the risk of her
life, stands at his side during the experiment, and
then — after his experiment succeeds — falls
into his arms, and forever after mends his clothes, we
cannot doubt that we have to do with melodrama.
Had Clémentine at first been in
earnest and made an honest endeavour to understand
Pierre and then gradually been corrupted by her mother
and her mother's money, and eventually been made to
see the good qualities in Pierre, we might have
believed. As it is, the last two acts spoil the play.
Technically, "Un beau Mariage" is
important. A man of science as a serious stage-figure,
a hero in fact, was a decided novelty in the 'fifties,
and, if the play accomplished nothing else, it at
least opened the way for the moderns, and broadened
the field of the theatre. Possibly the doctors and
other scientists in the plays of Brieux and Hervieu
and Curel owe something to the earnest treatment of
the chemist in this early play of Augier.
"Ceinture dorée" (1855) is
little more than an expanded fable; it might well be
termed "Tainted Money." The rich merchant Roussel has
an only daughter, Caliste, who seeks among numerous
suitors for her hand one who cares nothing for her
money. Finally, M. de Tirélan makes his
appearance, and Roussel offers to make him his
son-in-law. But Tirélan, whose father has been
ruined in business by Roussel, and who has
scruples against marrying for money, refuses. Roussel
swallows the insult, Tirélan decides to go
away, and Roussel turns to another suitor, whom
Caliste is about to accept when she learns that
Tirélan really loves her and will not ask for
her hand because of her money. Meantime, Roussel has
been particularly susceptible to allusions to the
source of his fortune, and this susceptibility finally
assumes the form of monomania. Once again Roussel
makes overtures to Tirélan and offers to
restore the money which he took from the young man's
father. He is again refused. The knot is cut at last
when it is learned that Roussel is ruined by unwise
speculation. Tirélan is at last free to declare
his love to Caliste; he can marry her now that the
barrier of fortune is removed.
The play is so light that it hardly
deserves a place among the serious plays of Augier.
Yet in its own way it stands as a further document
upon the social system in which hard cash plays so
large and important a role.
To turn from the idealistic and timid
"Ceinture dorée" to "Les Effrontés"
(1861) is to realise in the most forceful manner the
extreme poles of the genius of Emile Augier. The
earlier play appears little other than the work of a
dilettante beside the later. "Les Effrontés" is
a compact yet varied picture of manners, in which the
principal portrait is the parvenu Vernouillet, a
vulgar, unscrupulous journalist with money and a vast
amount of aplomb — "nerve." Respected by
no one, he is held in fear by all, for he is
influential and rich.
Politically, socially, dramatically,
"Les Effrontés" is a work of the first
importance. It was the first play to treat in a
realistic manner the power of the press and paint a
truly modern villain. Says Vernouillet: "I have put my
money to the only use to which it has not hitherto
been put: making public opinion. I have in my hands
the two powers which the Empire has always disputed:
money and the press! Each helps the other. I open up
new roads to them; I am in fact making a revolution."
Although "Les Effrontés" is at the same time a
comedy of character and manners with a complicated
intrigue and a love story, it was
in its day considered mainly as an attack on the
press. But what was not realised so clearly in the
many heated discussions aroused by the piece, was that
Augier was not so much concerned with the actual state
of the press — which was and is bad enough —
but with the power which the press, backed by money,
may exert. His purpose was larger, for it was
humanitarian.
Once again he enlarged the scope of
the theatre, and gave the stage a figure which is
today one of the most familiar and oftenest used.
In several of Augier's plays there is
a mingling of themes which, while it adds to the
atmosphere and interest, often renders any distinct
classification of genres, a difficult task. "Money,"
"Sex," "Politics," and such-like more or less
arbitrary headings are not sufficient to cover more
than half of Augier's plays. "Le Gendre de M.
Poirier," for example, is a comedy of character, as
well as a comedy of sentiment, a picture of the
nobility and the bourgeoisie, and a study of the money
question. "La Pierre de Touche" (1853) and "Maitre
Guérin" (1865), although they are not so
unified as "Le Mariage d'Olympe," may still be
satisfactorily classified under the heading of
"Money." The first is another of those lighter plays
with "morals"; it shows the evil results of the
acquisition of large sums of money by those who do not
know its proper uses; the second is an interesting
study in the character of a bourgeois merchant.
"Les Effrontés" has been
classed among the works of Augier in which money was
shown to be at the base of a great part of the evils
of the social system. It is likewise one of the three
political plays, of which the others are "Le Fils de
Giboyer" and "Lions et Renards."
"Le Fils de Giboyer" (1862) was for
the French of the day what was called an
"Anticlerical" play. The Jesuits as politicians were
attacked, or believed themselves to
be,3 so that
national discussions and conflicts arose, bitter
counter-attacks made on the author and what was
supposed to be his party. Augier denies (see the
foot-note) that his play is political; he declares
that it deals with society in a general way. As a
story of father and son it indubitably suffers from
what now appears as a great deal of topical and
contemporaneous discussion, but that is rather the
fault of the times and of the subject. The clever but
unscrupulous bohemian scribbler, Giboyer — who,
together with his protector D'Auberive, was one of the
principal characters in "Les Effrontés", —
has sold himself to the rich Marquis. Through
political intrigues, hypocrisy, venality of the basest
kind, Giboyer makes his way, until at last through his
love for his son, his designated successor, he
undergoes a moral "rehabilitation." The psychology of
the transformation may be true enough, and would
doubtless have been more credible had it been
developed at greater length by a novelist like Balzac
or George Eliot, but somehow we cannot believe in the
sudden change, and are prone to ask how it happens
that Giboyer can be redeemed by love for his son any
more than could Olympe because Henri once loved her.
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1 In his preface to
"Le Fils de Giboyer" Augier says: "In spite of what
has been affirmed, this comedy is not a political
piece in the current sense of the term: it is a social
play. It attacks and defends only ideas, abstract
conceptions of all sorts of government .... The
antagonism between the old and modern principles,
that, in brief, is the theme of the play. I defy
anyone to find a single word to warrant the assumption
that I have gone beyond this."
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"Lions et Renards" (1869) is valuable
and historically interesting as a comedy of manners
and character. It is another attack on the Jesuits.
But the complicated intrigue, the occasional obscurity
of the motivation, were sufficient to account for the
failure of the play.
Augier realized, as Balzac did, that
money was the root of much evil, and, in the midst of
the social readjustments which France was undergoing
in the nineteenth century, he made one of the greatest
of his protagonists. In the struggle between the
classes, in the personal relationship of the family,
the race for money and power was almost always the
prime reason for social degradation and
disintegration. Social position is mainly a question
of money. Olympe Taverny attempted to climb, and
the family suffered; Gabrielle's husband was forced to
spend the time he should have had with his wife, in
earning the money he thought was supporting her;
marriages of love and inclination are forced to give
way before marriages of convenience, which means ruin
for the home and the family; the press and the Church
strive for power, political and financial — the
very basis and sinews of politics is cash. France,
says Augier, is money-mad, and a nation which forgets
what is of supreme importance — family and home
and the virtues of old — is heading for
destruction.
The remaining important plays are all
more or less concerned with money; sometimes it hovers
in the background, is only apprehended; sometimes it
is obscured by other considerations, but it is always
present.
"Le Gendre de M. Poirier" (1855),
written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau, is
without doubt one of the finest comedies of character
ever written. The figure of the "bonhomme" Poirier is
one of the greatest in the realm of dramatic
literature. In this play Augier was less concerned
with social considerations than was his wont, although
money again is the basis of the action. The Marquis de
Presles, a ruined member of the aristocracy, has in a
way entered into a business pact with Poirier, but the
business dealings of the two have been utilised by the
authors chiefly as a frame in which to depict and
contrast the nobleman and the bourgeois. The plot is
of necessity rather thin: character is the important
consideration.
The last three important plays of
Augier, written after the war, might possibly be
classified under the general headings which we have so
far been using, but each, by reason of a comparative
novelty of theme, may well be placed apart in
different categories. The plays in question are "Jean
de Thommeray," "Madame Caverlet," and "Les
Fourchambault." Besides these, there is, however, "Le
Prix Martin," written in collaboration with
Eugène Labiche, a conventional and amusing
little comedy.
"Jean de Thommeray" (1873) —
written with Jules Sandeau,
whose novel of the same name was used as a basis
— is a patriotic piece, in which a young
aristocrat, succumbing to the demoralising influences
of the capital, finally redeems himself by fighting
for the Patrie. The value of the play lies
rather in the separate pictures of the life of the
aristocratic De Thommerays, than in the story. Jean's
redemption is not very satisfactorily explained, while
the plot is loose and our interest consequently
wavering.
"Madame Caverlet" (1876) is a strong
and passionate plea for divorce. Again it points out
an evil in the social system which militates against
the good of the family. Sir Edward Merson and his wife
have been separated for a number of years. She has
found consolation in the upright and honourable M.
Caverlet, with whom, and her two children, she has
been living in what is all but a legal status of
marriage. When the daughter, however, is about to
marry, Caverlet and "Madame" Caverlet confess to the
suitor's father the truth of the case, and the
proposed marriage is broken off without delay. Merson
then appears, demands his son and daughter, forces
Caverlet to go away, and ends by breaking up the
family until he is offered a large sum of money to go
to Switzerland and there become a citizen. This
ameliorates the situation, as the wife can then obtain
a divorce and become the lawful wife of Caverlet. But
Henri, the son, completely disillusioned, joins the
army and goes to a foreign country. The marriage then
takes place.
We cannot but feel that Augier's case
would have been stronger had he not loaded the dice.
If Merson had really cared more for his wife than for
her money, and had he insisted on his "rights," then
the injustice of the law and its bitter consequences
would have been more strikingly proved. Had Augier, as
Hervieu did in "La Loi de l'homme," pushed his thesis
to its logical conclusion, we should have had a more
touchingly poignant play, as well as a stronger plea
for divorce.
"Les Fourchambault" (1878) is the last
play of Emile Augier. In structure, in character
analysis, it shows no diminution in the dramatist's
powers; it is indeed a proof of his deepening
sympathy and broader understanding of human life, it
shows a brighter optimism and a more deep-rooted
belief in the basic goodness of humanity. Viewed from
a strictly logical angle, the play may seem
reactionary if not contradictory, yet the young man in
the early 'fifties denouncing the fallen Olympes and
Navarettes, had with increasing years come to realise
that there were exceptions in life, that human nature
cannot always be evil. Leaving aside particular
questions of the day, wishing to attack no specific
institution, law, or social wrong, he bases his play
on human frailty and human goodness, infusing the
whole with a generous portion of good and kindly
humour and gentle satire. Madame Fourchambault is
after all only silly and weak, not criminally
ambitious or vicious. Leopold, too, is weak, like his
father, and not wicked. Madame Bernard, though she
once sinned, has redeemed her error by a life of
service. Marie and Bernard are almost too good. If a
criticism may be urged, it is that the play is too
kindly and optimistic. Bernard's and Marie's rhapsody
on marriage is a little too much like a sermon. This
play is Augier's idealistic swansong. It seems, that,
tired of attacking, worn out by the sight of vice and
stupidity, he was prompted, in his old age, to raise
up an ideal of virtue, and make that ideal triumph
over evil.
Augier is the Balzac of the French
stage of the last century: his power of observation,
his commonsense, his straightforward and honest way of
speaking the truth, the great extent and variety of
his work, bring him into closer relationship with the
great novelist than any other dramatist of his time.
Considered as a moralist or social reformer, as
exponent of the domestic virtues, as champion of the
fireside, he is of great importance, but as a painter
of the life of his time, of the bourgeoisie as well as
of the aristocracy, as a literary artist depicting
living men and women, he occupies a position in French
literature and drama as sure, though possibly not so
exalted, as that of Molière or Balzac.
Biographical Note. — Emile Augier was
born in 1820. He once said that his life was devoid of
events. His first play, produced in 1844, met with
considerable success, and was followed, not long
after, with a series of plays which brought him first
esteem and finally fame. For nearly thirty-five years
he continued to put forth plays at regular and
frequent intervals. Respected and beloved in his
country, he died in 1889.
PLAYS BY EMILE AUGIER
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- La Cigüe
- Un Homme de bien
- L'Aventurière
- Gabrielle
- Le Joueur de Flute
- Diane
- Philiberte
- La Pierre de touche
- Le Mariage d'Olympe
- Ceinture doree
- Le Gendre de M. Poirier
- (In collaboration with Jules Sandeau)
- La Jeunesse
- Les Lionnes pauvres
- Un beau Mariage
- Les Effrontés
- Le Fils de Giboyer
- Maitre Guérin
- La Contagion
- Paul Forestier
- Lions et Renards
- Jean de Thommeray
- (In collaboration with Jules Sandeau)
- Madame Caverlet
- Le Prix Martin
- (In collaboration with Eugène Labiche)
- Les Fourchambault
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- 1844
- 1845
- 1848
- 1849
- 1850
- 1852
- 1853
- 1853
- 1854
- 1855
- 1855
- 1858
- 1858
- 1859
- 1861
- 1862
- 1865
- 1866
- 1868
- 1869
- 1873
- 1876
- 1877
- 1878
| La Chasse au Roman (1851), written in
collaboration with Jules Sandeau, is not included in
the "Théatre complet." L'Habit vert, in
collaboration with Alfred de Musset, and Le
Post-scriptum, are one-act plays.
Le Fils de Giboyer — as the Son
of Giboyer — is to be found in translation in The
Universal Anthology, also, translated by
Bénédict Papot, in The Drama, no. 2.
L'Habit vert is translated by Barrett H. Clark, in The
World's Best Plays Series (Samuel French); likewise Le
Post-scriptum (as The Green Coat and The
Post-scriptum).
REFERENCES
FRENCH:
- Léopold Lacour, "Trois
Théâtres." 1880.
- Edouard Pailleron, "Emile Augier." 1889.
- Parigot, "Emile Augier." 1890.
- Antoine Benoist, "Essais de critique."
- Henri Gaillard de Champris, "Emile Augier et la
comédie sociale." 1910.
- (Contains an extensive bibliography.)
-
ENGLISH:
- Brander Matthews, "French Dramatists of the
Nineteenth Century." Scribner's.
- W.N. Guthrie, in "The Drama," no. 2.
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