SOPHIE ARNOULD.* THERE is a very good book to be
written upon Sophie Arnould, but Mr. Douglas has not written it. In fact, he has little quali- fication for the task save industry. He has read the scandalous memoirs of the time; he has studied the Mercure de France with exemplary patience ; he has faithfully translated the lady' letters ; and possibly no essential fact has escaped his
notice. Bat he could not give us a portrait of Sophie Arnould, for he approached his dainty subj,,ct half in the spirit of painful accuracy, half in the spirit of affronted virtue. In brief, he has thrust a wanton finger into a bowl of withered rose-leaves, whose antique charm and fragrance evaporated at the touch. So that we are glad to forget the book, and to recall for an hour the wayward heroine.
Sophie Arnould had two talents, against which time wages an inexorable war : she was a wit, and she was an actress. The moment she left the stage, her voice and carriage were but memories, which not even enthusiasm could quicken into fact, while the true essence of her wit was lost to all who did not see the flashing eye and mark the tone of kindly, half- oonscions contempt. Of her art we can only judge by the effect which it produced upon her contemporaries, and thus we judge rather by faith than knowledge. Most of the jokes, solemnly recorded in the dismal Arnoldiana, are of transitory interest, and doubtful authenticity. Truly the professed wit assumes a desperate responsibility ; in the first place, he (or she) speaks always to an audience, and in the .second, sees fathered upon him the pitiful experiments of a hundred Joe Millers. And so it has come about that not one -of the unencumbered men and women who slew their armies with a phrase has justified to posterity the terror and -admiration of their fellows.
Bat Sophie Arnould was a wit ; the whole world from Voltaire to Dorat affirmed it, and not even the jest-books, with their sorry specimens, can efface the tradition. Her gift was satirical, a gift so rare in women that it would be -difficult to discover for her a proper rival. She seems to have thought in epigram from her childhood, and it was no pose, but a necessity, which persuaded her to sacrifice truth and friendship for a bon mot. That she was unpopular at her theatre is not remarkable, for she flogged her coil eagues with an unsparing tongue, and they had not the cleverness to understand that she loved the art of repartee for its own sake, and that her hardest sayings were seasoned with no more than a pinch of malice. Her kindness and generosity are incontestable ; she wished no man ill, and few women ; but she could not blind her eyes to a ridiculous situation, and so she belied her manifest amiability with a shrewd tongue. Of the many jests assigned to her, some are no better than puns, others are mere exercises in brutality, but all, save those which we like to believe have been impiously fathered upon her, are quick to the purpose and fitted with a sting. Thus when she declared that Mdlle. Guimard, the slim and haggard ballet-dancer executing a pas de trois with Gardel and Danberval, reminded her of two dogs fighting for a bone, the insult, if bitter, is whimsical. But the jest is not first-rate, and insufficient to support a reputation. On the other hand, her reply to the coxcomb who reproached her with a pretension to wit is admirably subtle; too subtle, maybe, for the occasion. "I hear, Mademoiselle," said he, "that you pretend to be a wit." "I pretend to be a wit !" she answered ; "I assure you that I no more pretend to be a wit than you do." And when her rival, Mdlle. Heinel, complained of the rudeness of one who called her " une catin," Sophie Arnould gave her a double-edged consolation, which even to-day has not quite lost its savour. " Ah," said she,
• Sophie Arnoutcl. By B. B. Douglas. Paris: Charles Carrington.
" people have grown so rude nowadays that they even cal things by their right names." And that she could b honourably savage at need is proved by her comment upo the death of a police-spy whose business it was to send scandalous reports to his chief. There came a rumour tha he was poisoned. "Poisoned !" cried Sophie Arnould, "h must have sucked his own pen ; " and though the retort ha an ancient complexion, we are willing to give whatever credi be due to the amiable actress.
The fame of the wit has half obscured the talent of th actress, yet Garrick thought her the finest artist of her tinu and set her above the head of Mdlle. Clairon herself. For i was as an actress rather than as a singer that Mdlle. Arnoub won the praises of the world, and with regret you remembe that she wasted her gifts upon the opera of the eighteentl century. Had Gluck come a little earlier, or she a littb later, she would have achieved even greater triumphs than wer hers. Now, Gluck did not share his contemporaries' ambitioi to sacrifice drama, poetry, acting, to music. He aimed at th perfect presentation of a musical tragedy, and in Iphigeni Sophie Arnould set the fashion of the genre. But intrigni intervened, and the great actress had the misery to be sup planted by others of less talent, and to decline upon an oh age of poverty and neglect.
So she lived, and sang, and loved, and she did all with an elegance and a beauty which are more memorable even than her wit. The fantasies of her whimsical lover, M. oa Lauraguais, are duly set forth by Mr. Douglas, and they make up the strangest chapter of her history. But with all his extravagance, M. de Lauragnais was a distinguished scholar and an ingenious philosopher, and doubtless Sophie Arnould never forgot the simplicity wherewith (in the character of the poet Dorval) he had wooed and won her. The Revolution was the ruin of herself and of her lover. After the Terror her pension ceased, and she was left to face an old age of disease and difficulty. Bat she faced it with all her old gaiety and extravagance ; she was still busy with her garden and her flowers ; and when her sons, clamouring for money, found her penniless, she said: "There are two horses in the stable ; take one apiece." Whatever she touched, she enchanted ; she smiled at' adversity, and she wrote begging-letters with so unexampled a delicacy and charm, that her correspondence with her notary and M. Belanger, the most devoted of her friends, are masterpieces of pathos. In brief, she was as courageous as she was brilliant, and her last words, quia multum ametaii, whispered in the ear of her priest, are the proper apology for an adventurous, light-hearted life.
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