1845.] HER ACCOUNT OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

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the following further extract from one of her letters to myself: "We went to Notre Dame on Christmas day, but I was too ill, not to admire, for that, I trust, I never could be, while I have a bit of life in me, but to stay for the music, which is particularly grand on that day. We were at several churches during the day, and also in my pet of all places, the Gallery of Ancient Sculpture in the Louvre. They have the glorious Venus of Milo there, which to my mind far excels in beauty the Venus dei Medici. Never was anything so simply grand, and quietly yet eloquently graceful. The attitude, if so you may call it, is perfection. The figure is much larger than life, and yet loses nothing in delicacy and chasteness. I am so delighted to find that my enthusiasm for all great things increases. When I was here last, I should have thought this impossible, for it was so abundant then, but I have now less of wonder and more of positive and appreciating enjoyment. If it did not seem presumptuous, I could say that I was conscious of a kindred spirit, which makes me open my heart to all beauty and nobleness, as I should to a dear relative and friend. Do not laugh at my folly. I am so quiet at these times, that it jars me beyond all expression, when courtesy obliges me to listen to the poor and ever-repeated sameness of expression which is applied to such subjects. Looks, hearts, can alone speak here." Some years afterwards she told her friend Miss Margaret Stokes, that after following her friends out of the hall in which the Venus of Milo then stood, she managed to slip away from them, and return for a few moments of solitude before the statue. Then, looking cautiously round to see that she was not observed, she knelt down and kissed the cold marble foot of the sublime work. In after years this statue was the first work we went to see whenever we visited the Louvre.

one.

The impression left by Miss Faucit in Paris was a very lasting For thirty years and more she was talked of in literary and theatrical circles there as Mademoiselle Helène, and she is still recognised among them as one of the greatest actresses of the century. Of this I had myself a striking experience.

In the summer of 1875 I had occasion to call at the Bibliothèque d'Arsénal, of which M. Edouard Thierry was then the librarian, in search of some publications which M. Regnier had

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M. THIERRY'S LASTING ENTHUSIASM.

[1845.

No sooner was M. Thierry aware

told me might be found there. who was my wife, than his eyes kindled, and he broke into an enthusiastic panegyric of her histrionic triumphs. To us all, he said, "elle était une veritable révelation," something of a kind they had never seen, or even dreamed. This was at least thirty years after he had written the criticisms, from which passages have been cited above.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE report of Miss Faucit's triumph in Paris quickly spread, and, before she left it, offers of engagements from all quarters poured in upon her. She gave the preference to Dublin, and agreed to appear there toward the end of the following month. Mr Calcraft, the Dublin manager, she writes from Paris, "is to be in town next week to see Antigone with me at Covent Garden, and, if I approve the part, he is to get it up in good style for me this will give me hard work."

What she saw of the Covent Garden performance made her decide to undertake Antigone. Her studies had never led her in the direction of Greek tragedy; but she was not long in making herself generally acquainted with some of its masterpieces, and also with Greek costume and the arrangements of the Greek theatre. What these preparations resulted in will best be understood from the records of her impersonations.

She made her first appearance in Dublin, on February the 17th, 1845. Before performing Antigone she played Mrs Haller, Belvidera, Julia in The Hunchback, and the Lady Mabel. Her previous appearances with Mr Macready in Dublin in 1842 were recalled by some of the journals, and spoken of as having been then only full of promise. Now, in the same characters she had then played, she is found to be "indeed perfection," and the genius they had not before recognised was acknowledged in the warmest terms. Thus The Saunders' News Letter (February 22) writes:

It is plain that in Miss Faucit's mind there exists a deep conviction of the dignity and worth of her own sex, and hence to every passage which bears on this point she gives a force and earnest truth, not intentional,

K

146

HER POWER OF DEPICTING MADNESS.

[1845.

but rather instinctive. We might instance several of the speeches in the character of Belvidera, and that in The Hunchback where Julia calls upon Clifford to be "the jealous guardian of her spotless name," in which the voice of nature and of virtue vibrates to the heart, and one forgets the actress in the instructor.

The critic then proceeds to note the singular faculty, which Miss Faucit, who had herself never seen mortal illness nor mental alienation, evinced of depicting both, always keeping within the limits of art, with a startling reality.

There is one faculty possessed by Miss Faucit which must be noticednamely, the power of depicting disease, whether of the mind or of the body. We might refer to her representation of Belvidera's madness, and to the closing scenes in The Patrician's Daughter, where slowly and gently the victim of a broken heart fades from the scenes of her sorrows and her wrongs. In the first character the transition from sanity to sudden fury, and then to a subdued and melancholy madness, was painfully true; and (in Isabella) when the image of her husband appears to her eyes, when she calls him to come to her, then loses, and again beholds him, her histrionic art must be felt by every one who has ever witnessed the hallucinations, where optical delusions come and go, to be fearfully and medically true.

"Medically true," so much so, that many, seeing her Belvidera, would not believe she had not studied madness from actual life. To this opinion they held more resolutely, when they afterwards found that the growing madness of Isabella, in Southerne's play of that name, was depicted by her with equal truth. The distinction was so marked, and the truthfulness so vivid, that her friend Dr Stokes has told me he used to tremble as he watched her acting, lest the simulated madness should become reality. He knew that what he saw was the result of a marvellous intuition, for he was well aware of Miss Faucit's creed, that, if an actor's imagination does not enable him to portray the phenomena of mental or physical maladies, the study of them from life will produce results feeble in themselves, and also incompatible with the freedom of true art.

Belvidera was for many years included in Miss Faucit's list of parts, and elicited much admirable commentary both in Ireland and Scotland. To avoid recurring to it hereafter, I will quote a good description of it, which appeared shortly after this time in the Edinburgh Scotsman:

1845.]

DUBLIN CRITICISMS.

147

Miss Faucit's Belvidera is perhaps one of her finest parts, affording, as it does, the fullest scope for the display of devoted tenderness and womanly dignity, and all those intense passions which follow upon the wrongs of both. The yearning fondness of a wife was never perhaps more perfectly expressed than in the first scene. The indignant remonstrance with Jaffier for leaving her in the custody of Renault-the exquisite delicacy of the parting adjuration to Jaffier, "Remember Twelve !"-the bound from the earth into his arms, when he offers to kill her, recur to our memory particularly amid the general excellence. Anything finer than the expression and attitude of Miss Faucit, when the death-knell of Pierre sounds, it would be hard to conceive. The vacant eye, prophetic of the unsettling brain, the dropt jaw, the death-like cheek, the dilated throat, the nerveless rigidity of the extended arms, would have immortalised a sculptor could they have been fixed in marble. The whole of the last scene of Belvidera's madness is a development of tragical power, carried to the utmost limits of which art admits. Its truthfulness becomes appalling, especially in the scream which bursts from the breaking heart of Belvidera, when, with the fine instinct which often attends madness, she knows that in the whispers of the officer and her father they are speaking of Jaffier and Pierre, both dead.

The spirit in which Miss Faucit pursued her art was very early felt by her Dublin critics. Thus, for example, the following passage in an article in the Evening Packet (February 30) sums up eloquently and briefly the qualities which then and always inspired and distinguished her impersonations :—

Miss Faucit's appearance in those characters her performance has made celebrated, affords the educated mind a treat of the purest and most exalted description. . . . Impressed evidently with a high opinion of her noble art, she seeks to raise it in the estimation of the world, and with its elevation to ascend the difficult path leading to immortality. We admire her for the ardent spirit, with which she seeks to exalt her profession to a pinnacle of greatness, such as in the time of the Siddons it attained. We love and reverence her, because she never descends to any trickery,-never indulges in any mannerism by which momentary plaudits might be gained. She despises, in fact, the practices resorted to for mere effect, "to split the ears of the groundlings"; and seeking, in her knowledge of human nature, the secret sources of its joy, its anguish, its hope, its fear, its rage, despair, remorse, she enters with her whole heart into their representation, casting at her feet the models that others have set up, and relying on her own bright genius alone. Yes, Miss Faucit is no copyist. The rarest charm of her acting is its complete originality, an attribute that of late years has almost left the stage. Those who admire the sudden and startling effects by which modern tragedians win hastily given and ill-considered applause, will not be enamoured of the acting of Miss Faucit; but the judicious few, made kin the world over by "one touch of Nature," will bow down in