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I have no doubt the scientific gentlemen at the Musée will be able to tell us all about it M. de Clairon 'Not to interrupt M. le Maire, said Riou, of the octroi, 'I think there is more in it than any scientific gentleman can explain. 'Ah! You think so. But they explain everything, I said, with a smile. 'They tell us how the wind is going to blow.
She was a pupil of Mademoiselle CLAIRON, who had a numerous party, composed of Encyclopaedists, French academicians, and almost all the literati of Paris. The zeal of her friends, the youth, tall stature, and person of the debutante supplied the place of talent; and her instructress has recorded in her memoirs that all her labour was lost.
It was commenced by the celebrated Clairon, and perfected by the not less celebrated Talma.
The brothers de Goncourt, for example, wrote an account of Clairon which is a book of the first interest, while I defy any one to get through two pages of most of the fustian she was compelled to act! The reason for this is very easily formulated. Great acting is human and universal.
Garrick declared her a better actress than Clairon. She was as famous for her wit as for her singing and acting. When Mme. Laguerre appeared drunk in Iphigénie en Tauride she exclaimed, "Why this is Iphigénie en Champagne!"
Lady Craven said she was sure Clairon's nightcap must be a crown of gilt paper; and when Clairon threatened to kill herself, and the Margrave was alarmed, "You forget," said Lady Craven, "that actresses only stab themselves under their sleeves."
"My dear master," he wrote to Voltaire on the occasion of a performance of Tancred, "if you could have seen Clairon passing across the stage, her knees bending under her, her eyes closed, her arms falling stiff by her side as if they were dead; if you heard the cry that she uttered when she perceives Tancred, you would remain more convinced than ever that silence and pantomime have sometimes a pathos that all the resources of speech can never approach."
Clairon complained that, so soon as she became seriously attached to any one, she was sure to meet somebody else whom she liked better. Have human hearts," he said, "or at least, has my heart, no more stability than this?" It did not help the matter when Emilia went to stay awhile with Mrs. Meredith. The event came about in this way.
In 1803 she died obscurely; and the same year there also passed out of the world two other celebrated women, the great actress Clairon and the singer De Beaumesnil, once Sophie's rival. Lord Mount Edgcumbe, in his "Musical Reminiscences," speaks of Sophie Arnould, whom he heard in ante-revolutionary days, as a woman of entrancing beauty and very great dramatic genius.
Quinault, who had retired to enjoy her immense fortune in private life, and Mlle. Dumesnil, the great tragédienne. When Mlle. Clairon received an offer to play alternately with the favorite, Mlle. Dumesnil, she selected as her opening part Phèdre, the rôle de triomphe of her rival.
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