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Every one has a different conception of Hell and few of us connect it with flames; but stage suppers are my idea of Hell and, with the exception of Irving and Coquelin, Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt, I have never met the hero or heroine off the stage that was not ultimately dull. The dinner where I was introduced to Henry was in the House of Commons and I sat next to him.
He was at least able to pull himself together, to become less flushed and to sit down with some approach to an air of being lightly amused at himself. "Well it is proved that I am not a great actor," he achieved. "I can't come anywhere near doing it. I don't believe Irving ever did or Coquelin. But perhaps it is one of my recommendations that I don't aspire to be great.
The Minister of Education, for example, gave a magnificent soirée at which the old dances, the stately minuet and the graceful pavane, were danced in splendid and appropriate costumes. Bernhardt, then at the height of her powers, recited one night at the Élysée; so also did Coquelin. But to Robert Hart these "crushes" were often an ordeal.
Coquelin the finest actor of Moliere that ever lived was performing in London at the time and promised he would not only coach me in my part but lend his whole company for our performance. He gave me twelve lessons and I worked hard for him. He was intensely particular; and I was more nervous over these lessons than I ever felt riding over high timber.
In the evening, in spite of my fatigue after travelling all night, I went to the Theatre Francais for the first time, and there, lost in admiration of the masterly ensemble and the natural yet passionate acting, with which I had hitherto seen nothing to compare, I saw Girardin's Le supplice d'une femme, and Beaumarchais' Le mariage de Figaro, in one evening making the acquaintance of such stars as Regnier, Madame Favart, Coquelin and the Sisters Brohan.
Sir Henry Irving and Sir Charles Wyndham in England, M. Coquelin in France, his contemporaries each had his métier. They were perfect in their art and unalike in their art. No comparison between them can be justly drawn.
At our feet, as we stood by the open window, the great square around the Arc de Triomphe lay silent and empty, its vast arch rising dimly against the night sky. As I turned to go, Coquelin took my hand and remarked, smiling: “Now you have heard the story of a genius, an actor, and a masterpiece.”
Pelisson, his head leaning on his hand, was engaged in drawing out the plan of the prologue to the "Facheux," a comedy in three acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer, the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!
When his parents died, he and his brothers sold the old place at Pont-aux-Dames to Coquelin, who was preparing to turn the historic old convent into a maison de retraite for aged actors, and he came up here on the hill and bought his present farm in this hamlet, where almost every one is some sort of a cousin of his. Oddly enough, almost every one of these female cousins has a history.
Sarah Bernhardt, Judic, Theo, Granier, and twenty others, and Mme. de Reske, Coquelin, Mounet-Sully, Paulus, etc., present, followed by concerts, the comedies of Dumas, of Meilhac, Halevy and Sardon. We had only one thing to mar it, one drama by Becque which seemed sad, but which subsequently had a great success at the Comedie-Francaise. In fact all Paris came. The enterprise was launched."
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