“Age could not wither, nor custom staleHer infinite variety;”
“Age could not wither, nor custom staleHer infinite variety;”
“Age could not wither, nor custom staleHer infinite variety;”
“Age could not wither, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety;”
yet he trembled at his father’s knowing she was his wife.
Schoenlein, who had observed the blush on Franz’s countenance, walked up to him and, placing one hand upon his shoulder, said—
“Franz, Franz, beware! You are on the edge of an abyss: the worst temptations of our miserable profession beset you. Beware of that artful old woman:—do not frown, she is artful,—I have heard of her! She has ruined more young men than any woman now upon the stage. She has ensnared you;—do not attempt to deny it,—I see it in your countenance. She has flattered and cajoled you. She has lured you with languishing looks and sweet low words. You are already her dupe;—beware lest you become her victim!”
“I cannot,” said Franz, rising wrathfully, “I must not, I will not, hear this language of her.”
“You must and shall hear it. Why should I hesitate to utter the contempt I feel for thatrefuseof a hundred libertines!”
Franz was purple with suppressed passion, and, with terrible calmness, said:—
“You are speaking, sir, ofMY WIFE!”
Schoenlein’s lower jaw fell; his eyes became glazed, and, slowly sinking on the sofa, he waved his hand for his son to withdraw.
The following week Schoenlein was again in Berlin, and playing three nights a-week—a thing quite unprecedented with him. All his repertory was brought forward. A sort of rage possessed him. He was tormented with the idea of producing such an effect upon the public as should perfectly eclipse his rival and son.
With true actor’s ingenuity in such matters, he gave the preference to his son’s favourite parts. He hoped, by repeatedly performing them ere Franz arrived, he should weary the public of those plays, and so prevent large audiences welcoming the new actor. He hoped, also, that by this means the public would better appreciate the difference between his finished style and the crude energy of his rival. The consequence of this procedure he expected to be,—small audiences and unfavourable criticisms. By these he hoped to disgust his son, and so wean him from the stage.
Unhappily, he was so goaded by the desire to produce a greater effect than heretofore, as to act much worse than heretofore. He overdid every thing. He was too violent; his contrasts were too marked; the elaboration was painful. People lamented his exaggeration, and began to whisper that his day was gone.
Franz appeared. Young, handsome, ambitious, full of hope and energy—around him the charm which always belongs to novelty, and within him the inappreciable wealth of genius—how could he fail to produce a deep impression? The calculation of his rival turned out a mistake: so far from the public keeping away because they had so recently seen the pieces performed, they flocked to the house because they wished to compare the two rivals in the same parts. As in the case of all well-known plays, the attraction was in the actor, not in the piece.
Berlin never witnessed such a debut. Franz was called sixteen times before the curtain to receive their boisterous homage. The whole town was in a state of excitement. Every body talked about him; every body compared him with Schoenlein—to the general disadvantage of the latter; and the secret of the relationship soon transpired, which led to endless discussion. The actors mostly stood by Schoenlein: they do not like new favourites. But the public, undisguisedly, unequivocally preferred Franz.
Exasperated by what he called the fickleness of the public, Schoenlein went to Dresden, there to eclipse the remembrance of his son. He played to crowded houses. But if at Berlin he overacted, at Dresden he “tore the passion to tatters.” Instead of crushing Franz’s reputation he nearly ruined his own. One paper had the malice to recommend him to retire from the stage.
He did retire; but not till after a fearful struggle with himself, and many a bitter reflection on the world’s ingratitude, and the worthlessness of his efforts. He was deeply hurt. He secluded himself from every one. In the practices of devotion, and in brooding solitude, he endeavoured to forget the world and its frivolities. He tried to find occupation in study, and solace in religion. But to the one he did not bring a studious mind; to the other he did not bring a religious heart. Lacerated with envy and humiliation, his soul found no comfort in books. He could not forget the past; he could not shut the world from his heart. The solemn organ strains, which stirred his soul when in church, recalled to him the stage; still more so did the inflections of the preacher’s voice recall it to him; he could not refrain from criticising the preacher’s declamation.
He ceased to go to church, and tried the efficacy of lonely prayer. In vain! The stage was for ever present before his mind. He tried to renounce the world, but the world held possession of his heart. His renunciation was not prompted by weariness, but by rage: the world weighed not too heavily and sorely upon his spirit, making him weary, making him yearn “for the wings of the dove, to flee away and be at rest;” on the contrary, he was only angry at his unjust appreciation. His retreat was not misanthropy but sulking. He could not forget his defeat.
Months passed away in this unavailing struggle.
Suddenly he reappeared upon the stage. His reappearance created intense interest, and the theatre trembled with applause. The public was so glad to see its old favourite again! Schoenlein’s heart bounded, as of old, responsive to that thunder of applause; but the joy was transient: his pride was soon once more to be laid low. That very public, which had welcomed him so enthusiastically, grew indifferent by the end of the week. In truth his acting had lost its former grandeur. Flashes of the old genius there still were, from time to time, but they only served to make more obvious the indifference of the whole performance. People shook their heads, and said, “He was certainly grown too old for the stage.”
He never reappeared.
Meanwhile Franz continued his triumphant career. He played at almost every town in Germany; and even the old men thought him superior to the actors of “their day.” The greatest triumph an actor can achieve is to make the “laudator temporis acti” forget for a moment the illusions of his youth, and confess that, even seen through the magnifying mist which envelops and aggrandises the past, this living actor is as great as those who are no more.
But Franz, amidst his brilliant success, was far from happy. The stage was the scene of his triumphs, but home was the scene of his despair. He was in a false, a very false position. Petted and idolised by the loveliest women in Germany, he had learned to look upon his wife as what she was—a woman past her prime, faded in beauty, insignificant in mind. He began to blush for her! This is perhaps the cruellest torture a husband can know, because it affects his self-love as keenly as his love. It is a torture which generally results from such ill-assorted unions. Slowly had the conviction dawned upon him—but it had come. He struggled against it, but it would not be set aside; it pressed on and on, till at last it fairly gained admittance into his mind, and made him wretched.
For observe, it was not her faded beauty which made him blush—it was not that she was so much older—it was because this faded insignificant woman was fretful, jealous, ungenerous, and unprincipled. The perception of these faults of disposition opened his eyes to the perception of her faults of person; they raised the question in his mind—whois this whose jealousy irritates, whose fretfulness distresses me? He began to scrutinise her, and the scales fell from his eyes!
“My dear Clara,” he said to her one day, “what in heaven’s name has changed you so? You used to be cheerful—now you are unbearably peevish.”
“And what has changedyouso, Franz?”
“I am not aware of any change!”
“No!” she said ironically.
“In what, pray?”
“You used to be fond and attentive, and now you are cold and neglectful.”
“If I am so, whose fault is it?”
“Lieschen Flemming’s. Oh, yes! pretend astonishment; but I see clearly enough. Your tendernessonthe stage with her is so well acted, because you have so often rehearsed it in private.”
“Clara! Clara! this jealousy is insupportable!”
“Yes, yes—that is the answer I always receive; but it is no answer to my accusation.”
“Why, Lieschen is betrothed to Fechter!”
“What matters that? Areyounot married to me—and does that interfere with your making love to her?”
“This is perfectly ridiculous! Last week you were jealous of Rosa Behr, because she played Juliet; now it is Lieschen Flemming, because she plays Gretchen. I presume every actress whom I have to make love to on the stage will come under your suspicions?”
“Every one to whom I see you making evident love. I know I am old. I have lost the charm I once had in your eyes.”
“This is not the way to regain it,” he said, as he put on his hat and angrily left the room.
He that day confessed to himself that she was old, that she had lost the charm which once had captivated him! But Franz was a man of honour; and although he found himself in this false position, he resolved to support his lot with courage. He was wedded to a woman too old for him, unsuited to him; but the wedding had been his act and desire. It had been the crown upon his hopes. He had loved her—been happy with her. He could not forget that. And although divorces are easily obtained in Germany, he could not bring himself to abandon her, to separate from her, now she was past her prime. He had offered her an independence if she wished to part from him; but she did not wish to part—she still clung to the idea of regaining his lost affection—and made home miserable as a means of regaining it!
For five years did Franz drag about with him this load of wretchedness.
To render his situation still more pitiable, he became conscious that he loved another. Madame Röckel’s youngest daughter—a sweet innocent girl of eighteen—had conceived a passion for the young tragedian, which her artless nature had but ill concealed. Franz read it in her eyes, in her tones, in her confusion; and reading it, he also read in his own heart that her passion was returned.
He left Berlin in two days after the discovery, with bitter curses on his youthful error, which had yoked him to a woman he could no longer love, and which had shut him for ever from the love of another.
Then, indeed, the thought of a divorce rose constantly before him; but he wrestled with the temptation, and subdued it. He resolved to bear his fate. His only hope was that death might interpose to set him free!
If in these brief sentences I have indicated the misery of Franz’s condition—the depth of the shadows which accompanied the lustre of his success—if I have truly presented the main outlines of his domestic history, the reader will imagine Franz’s feelings when a hand as friendly as that of death did interfere to set him free.
Clara ran away with the low comedian of the troop!
She had worn away in tears and fretfulness all the affection she once had felt for Franz, and having inspired a sort of passion in the breast of this comedian, lent a willing ear to his romantic proposal of an elopement. To a woman of her age an elopement was irresistible!
She fled, and left Franz at liberty.
The very day on which Franz received this intelligence he had to perform in Kotzebue’sMenschenhass und Reue(our “Stranger.”) He went to the theatre extremely agitated. Great as was his delight at being released from his wife, and released by no act of his own—he could not think without a shudder upon the probable fate which awaited her; and a remembrance of his former love and happiness with her returned to make him sad.
It happened that old Schoenlein had that night been seized with a sudden impulse to see his son act, and had gone privately into theparterre. It was the first time he saw his son acting—for on that Dresden night hesawnothing—a mist was before his eyes. He was now sufficiently calm to be critical.
Franz played the wronged husband with such intense feeling, such depth of passion, such thrilling intonation of voice, that the old man shared the rapture of the audience, and wept tears of joy and of pride as he confessed that his son was really a great actor.
The curtain had no sooner descended than Schoenlein, hurrying out of the house, went round to the stage-door, knocked at his son’s dressing-room, and in another instant had fallen on his shoulders, sobbing—“My boy! my dear, dear Franz! you have conquered me!”
“My dear father!” exclaimed Franz, pressing him convulsively to his heart.
“Franz, I retract all that I have said. I forgive you. You have a real vocation for the stage!”
This happy reconciliation was soon followed by the betrothal of Franz Schoenlein to Matilda Röckel; and the old man had not only the delight of seeing his son wedded to a woman worthy of him, but also to hear him announce his intention of retiring for ever from the stage. He had realised an independence, and the stage was connected with too many disagreeable associations for him not to quit it on this opening of a new era in his life.