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Updated: June 16, 2025
In 1774, he took up his abode at Schwabach, in Germany, under the name of Count Tzarogy, which is a transposition of Ragotzy, a well-known noble name. The Margrave of Anspach met him at the house of his favorite Clairon, the actress, and became so fond of him, that he insisted upon his company to Italy.
Pensions became a serious drain on the revenue and rapidly grew to over 50 millions a year at the end of the reign of Louis XVI. They were not infrequently granted for ridiculous or scandalous reasons, as in the case of Ducrest, hairdresser to the eldest daughter of the Comtesse d'Artois, who was granted an annual pension of 1,700 francs on her death; the child was then twelve months old; or that of a servant of the actress Clairon, who was brought into the Oeuil de Boeuf one morning to tell Louis XV a doubtful story about his mistress; the King laughed so much that he ordered the fellow to be put down for a pension of 600 francs!
"What is it, Esperance?" "Nothing, nothing." "Was that not Talma, down there, and Mlle. Clairon and Mlle. Mars, and Rachel, that magnificent, expressive masque there ... look?" Mounet-Sully came in. Esperance still seemed in a dream. "Your pardon, master, the atmosphere of glory that one breathes here has intoxicated me a little."
She drove Clairon from Ansbach, and the great tragedienne returned to Paris, where she remained true to her false friend, and from time to time wrote him letters full of magnanimous counsel and generous tenderness.
I arrived in Paris to admire Sarrazin, La Dangeville, La Dumesnil, La Gaussin, La Clairon, Preville, and several actresses who, having retired from the stage, were living upon their pension, and delighting their circle of friends. I made, amongst others, the acquaintance of the celebrated Le Vasseur. I visited them all with pleasure, and they related to me several very curious anecdotes.
Clairon, before she saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre for she had never entered one had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, "I could not have thus personified her!"
In the house opposite she observed a celebrated actress amidst her family; her daughter was performing her dancing lesson: the girl Clairon, the future Melpomene, was struck by the influence of this graceful and affectionate scene.
The famous French actress, Mlle. Clairon, recalled, for the pleasure of some foreign royal personage passing through Paris, for one night to the stage, which she had left many years before, was extremely anxious to recover the pattern of a certain cap which she had worn in her young days in "La Coquette corrigée," the part she was about to repeat. The cap, as she wore it, had been a Parisian rage; she declared that half her success in the part had been the cap. The milliner who had made it, and whose fortune it had made, had retired from business, grown old; luckily, however, she was not dead: she was hunted up and adjured to reproduce, if possible, this marvel of her art, and came to her former patroness, bringing with her the identical head-gear. Clairon seized upon it: "Ah oui, c'est bien cela! c'est bien l
M. de Clairon, who was by my side, murmured something about a magnetic current; but when I asked him sternly by what set in motion, his voice died away in his moustache. M. le Curé said very little: one saw his lips move as he watched with us the passage of those boats. He smiled when it was proposed by some one to fire upon them. He read his Hours as he went round at the head of his patrol.
The French stage is fallen off, though in the only part I have seen Le Kain I admire him extremely. He is very ugly and ill made, and yet has an heroic dignity which Garrick wants, and great fire. The Dumenil I have not seen yet, but shall in a day or two. It is a mortification that I cannot compare her with the Clairon, who has left the stage.
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