United States or Benin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Paris, upstanding on its feet, and leaning over balconies and cheering, was charmed and delighted by the fable and the music, in which it found nothing but the sober and pretty elegance that it loves. And Paris applauded feverishly, and yet with a full sense of the value of its applause given there in the only French theatre where the claque has been suppressed.

There were, however, very few Legitimists among us, though Orleanists and Republicans were numerous. I have mentioned that my first article was on the Claque, that organisation established to encourage applause in theatres, it being held that the Parisian spectator required to be roused by some such method.

People read stories of scenes of "tremendous enthusiasm" on a first night, of Miss or Mrs A or Mr B receiving a dozen calls: as a rule they are absurdly exaggerated they mean that the bulk of the pit and gallery have applauded heartily and persistently, and so, too, a small proportion of people in the upper boxes, dress circle, and stalls, the ratio steadily decreasing; that the employees of "the front of the house" energetically did their duty; in many cases that the unrecognized claque has earned its fee; that the curtain has been raised and lowered with frantic energy, and that a large number of people, after some preliminary clapping, regarded the scene with curiosity and amusement, their pulses beating at quite a normal pace.

The private soldiers were almost to a man Democrats, but the chance to escape the long and irksome evenings of the camp and join the frolic and adventure of the street made most of them willing enough to play the part of claque or figurantes. Jack, of course, refused to take part in these scenic rallies, making known his sentiments in vehement disdain.

And they succeeded in packing the galleries of the Convention Hall with a perfectly organized claque-"rooters," the modern American would say. The result on the third ballot was a rush to Lincoln of all the enemies of Seward, and Lincoln's nomination amid a roaring frenzy of applause.

In spite of the applause of the philosophic claque, led by Grimm, posterity has ratified the coldness with which it was received by contemporaries. The Natural Son was written in 1757, but it was not until 1771 that the directors of the French Comedy could be induced to place it on the stage.

Is there anything in the world so disgusting as to feel one's self patronized, made capital of, enrolled in a claque? To give pleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing the ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the diversions last. There is no worse kill-joy than the ego.

Etienne and Lucien reached a handsome house in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. "Is M. Braulard in?" Etienne asked of the porter. "Monsieur?" said Lucien. "Then, is the leader of the claque 'Monsieur'?" "My dear boy, Braulard has twenty thousand francs of income. All the dramatic authors of the Boulevards are in his clutches, and have a standing account with him as if he were a banker.

The wisdom of this course became apparent when among those who left the theatre at the close of the first act he recognized an old acquaintance, who was now working on the claque, and who at once procured him a ticket of admission for nothing. "Well, it is a good thing to have friends everywhere," he muttered, as he took the seat assigned him.

Vidal, with his superior manner in all things, learned the songs right away; Manuel secretly envied him. Between the acts the members of the claque would adjourn to a tavern on Barquillo Street, varying this occasionally with a visit to another place on the Plaza, del Rey. This latter resort was the rendezvous of the claquers that worked in Price's Circus.