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Updated: June 16, 2025
An actress or a singer who left a greater reputation through her wit, the promptness and malignity of her repartee, and her extravagance, than through her voice was Sophie Arnould, the pupil of Mlle. Clairon. She was the daughter of an innkeeper; her first success was won through her charming figure and her flexible voice.
Her first one was a comic monologue which always had the wildest success in London, "Je suis veuve," beginning it with a ringing peal of laughter which was curiously contagious everyone in the room joined in. I like her better in some of her serious things. When she said "le bon gite" and "le petit clairon," by Paul Déroulède, in her beautiful deep voice, I had a decided choke in my throat.
'You have my full permission, M. le Curé said; and M. de Clairon laughed, though he was still very pale. 'You saw my name there, he said. 'I am amused I who am not one of your worthy citizens, M. le Maire. What can Messieurs les Morts of Semur want with a poor man of science like me? But you shall have my report before the evening is out. With this I had to be content.
To English ears, it was hardly an offence that she broke up the sing-song of the rhymed tirades of the old plays and gave them a more natural sound, regardless of the traditional methods of speech of Clairon, Le Kain, and others of the great French players of the past. Less success than had been looked for attended Rachel's invasion of the repertory of Mlle.
"I know not," says Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows fastened, she climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new object instantly absorbed her attention.
Between the windows, two pedestals, surmounted by busts of Mademoiselle Clairon and Mademoiselle Dangeville, stood, one on each side of the great regulator made by Robin, clockmaker to the king which dominated the bust of Moliere after Houdon seeming to keep guard over all this gathering of artistic glory.
She was the daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and the wife of Lord Craven, a sufficiently unfaithful and unworthy nobleman by her account, from whom she was living apart when the Margrave asked her to his capital. There she set herself to oust Mlle. Clairon with sneers and jests for the theatrical style which the actress could not outlive.
Mademoiselle Josephine is at this moment the glory of the French stage; without any question the most admirable tragic actress since Clairon, and inferior not even to her. The spirit of French tragedy has risen from the imperial couch on which it had long slumbered since her appearance, at the same time classical and impassioned, at once charmed and commanded the most refined audience in Europe.
No woman mounted a horse better; none captured applause more quickly than did she with her voice and instrument; none recalled in a better way the tone of Gaussin or the accent of Clairon; none could tell a story better.
Why should I have suspected him? for no harm was known of him. He was the Curé, that was all; and perhaps we men of the world have our prejudices too. Afterwards, however, as we waited for M. de Clairon for the crisis was too exciting for personal resentment M. le Curé himself let drop something which made it apparent that it was the ladies of the hospital upon whom his suspicions fell.
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