‘I did not,’ said Oscar, ‘but now that I do, I’ll not forget it.’
19
The First Night
In Paris, that same Monday night, the La Grange company’s new production of Hamlet opened to great acclaim.
Le tout Paris was there. Henri-Clément Sanson and his nephew, Charles, the last of the celebrated Sanson line, were seated in the stalls. The First Minister of France, Charles du Clerc, was in the royal box. Anatole France was in a box as well, looking very young. Emile Zola was in the stalls, looking very old. I observed them from backstage via a spy-hole cut for the purpose into the proscenium arch. Sarah Bernhardt was among the last to take her place in the packed auditorium: she arrived with the young artist Jacques-Emile Blanche as her escort. They sat in the centre of the stalls, in the same row as Jean Mounet-Sully, reckoned by Bernhardt to have been the best Hamlet of her time, alongside the composer Charles Gounod, and the grey-faced poet Maurice Rollinat. It was Rollinat, the laureate of mortality, who thought to bring the Sansons with him. Henri-Clément Sanson looked to be near death.
‘I thought he was dead!’ exclaimed Edmond La Grange when I reported the aged executioner’s presence to the great actor a few minutes before the curtain was due to rise. ‘He came to see my Hamlet forty years ago and he was ancient then. He’s a drunkard and a bugger, but he loves the theatre.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I have met him.’
‘The Sansons were to the guillotine what the La Granges have been to the drama — but it’s over now.
‘His nephew is with him, I believe.’
‘If you believe that …’ said La Grange and he let the words trail away. He got to his feet and threw back his head and shoulders. He scanned his own reflection in the looking-glass as though he were a connoisseur inspecting an old master. ‘Claudius is in command,’ he said. ‘He has the character to be a king.’ He turned to me and held out his arms while I fastened a leather and gold belt around his waist. ‘Poor, pathetic Henri-Clément lacked the cutting edge — not helpful when you’re the public executioner. He couldn’t cope with the blood. Brought him out in a rash. He turned to drink and boys. After eighteen performances — just eighteen executions — he abandoned his calling. Hocked the guillotine to pay off his gambling debts! It’d make a great comedy if it weren’t so tragic.’
The little carriage clock that stood on the dressing-room sideboard struck the hour. ‘Elsinore calls,’ announced La Grange, inspecting his reflection in the cheval mirror one final time. ‘I was right not to wear a beard.’ As he reached for the door, anticipating the stage manager’s knock, he looked at me curiously. ‘How on earth did you come to meet Sanson?’ he asked.
I hesitated. ‘I met him with your son — and Maurice Rollinat,’ I said. ‘At Madame Bernhardt’s.’
Edmond La Grange shook his head. ‘Sarah keeps the strangest company.’ He pulled open the dressing-room door. ‘But she is a great artist and a generous woman. She will cheer tonight.’
‘All Paris will cheer,’ I said.
‘Perhaps. Unless the last of the Sansons chooses to die in the middle of the second act. That’s all we need.’ He laughed as he made his way into the darkened wings. ‘Who’d be an actor?’
‘I don’t think anyone will die tonight.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that, mon petit,’ he whispered. ‘Death is everywhere. As you’ll hear me say within the hour, “All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.”‘
There were no deaths at the Théâtre La Grange that night. Indeed, it was a night when a legend was born: the legend of ‘the perfect Hamlet’.
The phrase was Sarah Bernhardt’s. She used it in her impromptu speech, delivered from the battlements of Elsinore Castle, during the long on-stage party that followed the triumphant first performance. She declared that there had been, and would yet be, interpretations of the role of Hamlet that rivalled that of young Bernard La Grange — she singled out Jean Mounet-Sully standing somewhat sulkily in the crowd — but she doubted that there had ever been, or would ever be, a production in which all the principal roles were played at such a pitch and which revealed so completely the passion, pain, poetry, heartache, heroism and truth of the play. Bernhardt — who had played Ophelia herself and had a healthy respect for her own achievements — proclaimed that Agnès La Grange’s interpretation of the role surpassed even her own. ‘I have never known madness played with such pitiful intensity. The gods will weep for this Ophelia!’
According to Madame Bernhardt, her dear friend Edmond’s production was ‘the culmination of a great tradition, the flowering of the glory of the family La Grange. And, ladies and gentlemen, think of it: in years to come people will speak of this night — the night of the perfect Hamlet — and you will say, with a full heart and tears welling in your eyes, “I was there!”‘ Through the cheering and applause, as Jacques-Emile Blanche and Charles Gounod stepped forward to help her from the battlements, Sarah added that she herself planned to use the new and peerless La Grange/Oscar Wilde translation of the play when, in due course, the time was right for her to essay the title role.
Bernhardt’s speech eclipsed that of Edmond La Grange, who had spoken just before her, but, to my surprise, the great actor did not seem to mind. When he stood to address the company, his daughter, Agnès, sat at his feet, her arms held tight around him. He looked down at her while he spoke and gently caressed her hair. He said what was expected of him — he praised his colleagues and he thanked his friends — but he said it perfunctorily, without feeling. He spoke as if he were in another place at another time. I felt I knew the reason why. The moment that the curtain-calls had come to an end — and they were orchestrated by La Grange: it was his signal to the stage manager that set each one in train — he had swept immediately off the stage. In the wings I handed him his towel and a glass of iced champagne. He drank it in a single gulp and in the dressing room, alone, as I undressed him and sponged him down and dried and dressed him again, he demanded more champagne. He drank glass after glass, without pause.
‘He is drunk,’ muttered Carlos Branco, chuckling, as La Grange began his speech.
‘It’s allowed,’ said Dr Ferrand.
I was standing behind the two men. ‘Can I get you some champagne?’ I volunteered.
Carlos Branco turned to me, smiling, and whispered, ‘Unlike your master, I do not need to drink tonight. I am happier than I have ever been.’
It was a night for happiness. Even Maman seemed relatively content. She grumbled that Claudius had looked quite wrong without a beard and that Gertrude had been too pale to be this Hamlet’s mother, but, all in all, she conceded that the Théâtre La Grange had a triumph on its hands. ‘We’ve known a few,’ she snapped.
When the speeches were done, the gas lamps were turned low; food and wine were served and the dancing began. The chef d’orchestre played the fiddle while Laertes played the accordion, and the Princesse de Lamballe, Maman’s poodle, ran yelping through the throng. Bernard La Grange, the acknowledged hero of the night, took centre stage and danced like a dervish, mostly on his own, but now and then, when the music slowed, taking one of the assorted gentlewomen in his arms (it was Ophelia’s understudy, a green-eyed girl with soft red hair), holding her so close to him that she looked to be in danger of suffocation. Agnès La Grange danced with Jacques-Emile Blanche; Carlos Branco danced with Sarah Bernhardt; and the ancient executioner, Henri-Clément Sanson, attempted to dance with his nephew, until both men stumbled and fell over, when Maurice Rollinat, laughing and cursing, took them home.
I danced with Gabrielle de la Tourbillon. Liselotte La Grange stood with Richard Marais at the edge of the crowd, watching us in the half-light. ‘Do you see that?’ she asked contemptuously. ‘Gertrude with my son’s dresser. It’s disgusting.’ She spat out the words so that we should hear her.
‘Ignore Maman,’ whispered Gabrielle, her lips touching my ear. ‘She’s old and jealous.’
I held Ga
brielle’s body close to mine and told her that her performance that night had overwhelmed me utterly and that I loved her very much. She smiled and kissed my ear again and told me that she had the key to the rue de la Pierre Levée. I told her that I would prefer her to come to my room in the rue de Beauce. She whispered that she would.
It was gone one o’clock when we left the theatre. Sarah Bernhardt and her court had long since departed. Richard Marais had escorted Maman and the Princesse de Lamballe to their quarters. As, hand in hand, Gabrielle and I made to leave, we saw Agnès leading her father by the hand towards his dressing room. As they reached the edge of the wings he stumbled and fell forward. Dr Ferrand and Eddie Garstrang, who were nearby, ran to steady him. Garstrang caught sight of us leaving and, shrugging his shoulders, laughed in our direction —without malice.
As we slipped into the night, Hamlet was still holding Ophelia’s understudy in his arms: they were no longer dancing, but standing together, intertwined, wrapped in the black velvet drapes at the back of the stage, making love. Old Polonius appeared to have carnality in mind as well: Carlos Branco was now dancing with another of the gentlewomen (Gertrude’s understudy). He had pulled down her lace décolleté to reveal her breasts. No one noticed. Or, if they did, no one cared. This was the spring of 1883; this was the night of the perfect Hamlet; this was the Paris of ‘La décadence’.
My memory of that night with Gabrielle de la Tourbillon in the rue de Beauce is unfortunately vague. I was young and I had never before shared a bed with a woman who was not a prostitute. The details of the experience should be etched on my memory, and garlanded with tangled sunbeams of gold, as Oscar might say. Alas, they are not. It transpired that, during the party, while the speeches were being made, Bernard La Grange and Maurice Rollinat, ‘to be amusing’, had adulterated the wine with laudanum.
My recollection of the days that followed is much clearer.
On the afternoon of the day after the triumphant opening night, the company met on stage at two o’clock to be given the producer’s ‘notes’. Edmond La Grange was himself again. He began by congratulating his troops on their achievement thus far and reading out a telegram he had received from Oscar the night before:
NOT FAILURE BUT LOW AIM IS CRIME.
AIM HIGHER THAN YOU THINK YOU DARE
AND GLORY WILL BE YOURS
La Grange endorsed Oscar’s exhortation and then went through the play, scene by scene, raising specific issues of concern. The only member of the company who failed to appear for the meeting was Agnès La Grange. La Grange said it hardly mattered. Her performance was perfection. She was perfection.
When evening came and the second performance was due to begin and there was still no sign of Agnès, La Grange continued to take her absence in his stride. He instructed the stage manager to tell the understudy to ready herself, but predicted that, though late, which was reprehensible, Agnès would arrive at the theatre in time for her first entrance.
She did not do so. In her place, the green-eyed understudy went on.
The performance passed off well enough. I watched it from the wings: it lacked the fire of the first night and, backstage, there was an unspoken anxiety in the air, but, as yet, no sense of panic. Carlos Branco, as Polonius, Ophelia’s father, was the only player whose performance was obviously thrown off balance. The girl herself rose to the occasion. Understandably, Bernard La Grange, as Hamlet, was more physically engaged with her than he was with his own sister. And when the curtain fell, the audience stood in their seats and cheered, apparently unaware that anything untoward had occurred. As Richard Marais remarked, ‘One mad girl with straw in her hair is much like another.’
The stage manager, standing with Marais and Maman watching in the wings, laughed. ‘Except that one is half Indian and the other has red hair.’
Liselotte La Grange snorted, ‘And one is a La Grange and the other is not.’
On Wednesday there was still no sign of Agnès.
Edmond La Grange sent Garstrang and Marais and the doctor off in search of her. He wouldn’t call in the police — not yet. Scandal would be bad for business. The audience that evening was simply told that Mademoiselle La Grange was indisposed.
On Thursday morning, I was in La Grange’s dressing room, alone, preparing his costumes for the evening. I had just read two or three of the wonderful reviews from the first night that had begun to appear in the Paris papers. Sarah Bernhardt’s phrase — ‘the perfect Hamlet’ —was repeated in each of them. I was thinking that perhaps that morning I should send a wire to London to bring Oscar up to date with the news of Agnès’s mysterious disappearance when the door of La Grange’s dressing room opened.
‘Oscar, by all that’s … What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come back — and for a reason.’
‘What reason?’
‘I’m not sure that I know myself.’
‘You’ve heard the news?’
‘From the stage doorman, just now, yes.
Oscar came into the room. He looked so well — like a cross between a Georgian dandy and a Roman senator. I could tell that he felt well because as he passed the cheval mirror he glanced at his reflection in the glass. ‘What has happened, Robert?’ he asked. ‘Tell me everything.’
But before I could answer my friend, he spun round on the spot. He had seen Edmond La Grange coming to the door behind him. He pulled off his purple glove and held out his hand. ‘Cher maitre!’ he said.
‘Cher collaborateur!’ exclaimed La Grange.
Just then, at the very moment when the two men were about to embrace, there was a sudden, dreadful noise — a woman’s scream, following by cries of anguish and a man’s voice shouting. The furore was coming from somewhere on the stage.
Together we rushed out of the dressing room and into the darkened wings. Through the gloom we followed the frantic cries to the very back of the stage, beyond the battlements and the black drapes, to an area where the scenery was stored. There, behind the backcloth painted with the night sky of Elsinore, we found half a dozen people standing, frozen, in grotesque postures, their arms raised above their heads, like marionettes hanging in a toyshop window. Carlos Branco’s face was contorted with grief. Richard Marais was holding up a paraffin lamp. He held it high over the bier that was used in the play to carry Ophelia’s body to her grave. A stagehand was shouting hysterically. A girl from the wardrobe was alternately screaming and sobbing. Laid out on the bier was the headless body of Agnès La Grange.
20
Passy
Except, of course, that it wasn’t.
La Grange saw that at once. He turned on the stagehand and the wardrobe girl, and Marais and Branco, and told them how stupid they were. ‘How infinitely stupid.’
‘Are you blind as well as deaf?’ he demanded, angrily wrenching the paraffin lamp out of Marais’s hands and holding it low over the body on the bier.
This was not Agnès. This was a waxwork. This was the waxwork of Ophelia’s body, supplied to the Théâtre La Grange by the celebrated Musée Grévin. It was the waxwork of the drowned Ophelia used in the production every night in the graveyard scene. The head of the dead Ophelia — modelled from life on the head of Agnès La Grange — was missing for a reason. It was missing because it had been removed that morning, on La Grange’s instructions, to be taken away to the workshops of the Musée Grévin so that a second head could be sculpted to look like the head of the understudy.
‘Agnès has black hair and dark skin,’ said La Grange coldly. ‘Her understudy has red hair and pale skin. You may not have noticed this, gentlemen, but I rather think that the audience will.’ He held up one of the waxwork’s arms. ‘You see,’ he added, ‘they have removed her hands as well.’
He thrust the lamp back towards Richard Marais and turned away contemptuously. He fumbled with the black drapes as he tried to find his way back onto the stage. ‘Give me some lights!’ he roared in the darkness. ‘Away!’
Oscar and I followed
him back to his dressing room. On his dressing table were the newspapers carrying the reviews of the production. He saw them and his mood changed. He chuckled. He lifted up the bundle of papers and tucked it under his arm. ‘My apologies, gentlemen. An uncalled-for outburst. I’m surrounded by incompetents and imbeciles, as you can see. Let’s find a drink and talk.’
We caught a cab on the boulevard du Temple and, as we crossed the busy place de la République, the old actor-manager divided up the papers between us. ‘Let us read our reviews, Oscar,’ he said.
‘They are good,’ I said. ‘They are excellent. “The perfect Hamlet”.’
‘All critics can be bought,’ murmured Oscar, smoothing out the newspaper on his knee. He smiled at La Grange. ‘Judging by their appearance, they can’t be very expensive.’
When we arrived at the rue de la Pierre Levée, I was disconcerted to find that the door to the warehouse leading to La Grange’s love-nest was opened to us by Eddie Garstrang. He was carrying a box of bottles: dead ones, the debris of the night. He looked at me, bright-eyed, and laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I am alone.’
‘And he’s not been with Gabrielle,’ said La Grange. ‘That I know.’
The old actor took the door key from Garstrang and put it in his pocket. He laid a hand gently on my shoulder. ‘You will learn to be less jealous as the years go by.’
Garstrang went on his way, whistling for a moment, then calling over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be at the theatre, boss, if you need me.
‘He’s very dapper,’ said Oscar, watching him depart.
‘Is that what you call it?’ grunted La Grange, leading the way up the steep wooden steps out of the workshop to the floor above.
‘Given that he’s an American,’ explained Oscar, breathing more heavily as he climbed, ‘and a sharp-shooter. ‘We had reached the loft. It was awash with hazy morning sunlight. ‘Do you keep him busy?’ asked Oscar.
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile Page 20
