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Updated: June 16, 2025
When composers began to set dramatic texts to music trouble immediately appeared at the door. For example, the contemporaries of Sophie Arnould, the "creator" of Iphigénie en Aulide, are agreed that she was greater as an actress than she was as a singer. David Garrick, indeed, pronounced her a finer actress than Clairon.
The town did not like him in Hotspur, and yet I don't know whether he did not succeed in it beyond all the rest. Sir Charles Williams and Lord Holland thought so too, and they were no bad judges. I am impatient to see the Clairon, and certainly will, as I have promised, though I have not fixed my day. But do you know you alarm me!
Clairon, the great French tragedienne, whom he met in Paris, and whom he persuaded to come and make her home with him in Ansbach. She lived there seventeen years, and though always an alien, she bore herself with kindness to all classes, and is still remembered there by the roll of butter which calls itself a Klarungswecke in its imperfect French.
Clairon had been for some years the most admired tragic actress in France. In that age actors and actresses in France were exposed to singular insults.
The piece, which was of no great merit as a tragedy, was at first played before the Duchesse de Villeroy and her friends, with great applause, Mdlle. Clairon playing the principal female part. Saint-Florentin prohibited the playing of the piece in public, protesting to the last against the work and the author.
When LEKAIN rose into fame, there were not, I have been told, any male performers who went as far as himself, though several possessed separately the qualifications necessary for that line. However, there was Mademoiselle DUMESNIL, a pupil of nature, from whom he might learn to express all the passions; while from Mademoiselle CLAIRON he might snatch all the secrets of art.
We could not flatter ourselves now that it was a trick or a deception. M. le Clairon stood there like the rest of us, staring at the closed gates which science could not open. And there stood M. le Curé, which was more remarkable still. The Church herself had not been able to do anything.
She betrayed in the common intercourse of life, all the graces she had taught herself; she charmed her friends, and even softened her barbarous mother; in a word, the enthusiastic girl was an actress without knowing what an actress was. In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude that the accidental view of a young actress practising her studies imparted the character of Clairon?
I was thankful, however, that neither my mother nor my wife had seen anything; and though they were anxious to know why I was so serious, I succeeded fortunately in keeping the secret from them. M. de Clairon did not appear till late, and then he confessed to me he could make nothing of it. For my part, I was not surprised.
This scene was a discovery; from that moment Clairon knew no rest, and rejoiced when she could get her mother to confine her in that room. The happy girl was a divinity to the unhappy one, whose susceptible genius imitated her in every gesture and every motion; and Clairon soon showed the effect of her ardent studies.
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