Yvette Guilbert.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue VIII, 25 August 1894, Page 176

Yvette Guilbert.

By

AUTOCRATIC IDLER.

„ „ The most celebrated and popular, and, in Mdle. Yvette r r ’

many ways the most extraordinary, actress Gui.bert. on the French Music Hall stage at the present moment is a Mllle. Yvette Guilbert. It suits my purpose just now to bring the young lady under notice. She is not beautiful nor yet even attractive to look at (ac cording to the Pall Mall Gazette) by any means. Her appearance, in fact, is singular and bizarre ; she has a long thin figure ; she wears black gloves reaching to the elbows, *to show oil'the skinniness of her arms her hair is fuzzy and inclined to red ; the long thinness of her neck and the flatness of her chest (of which she seems quite proud) are intentionally aggravated by the exceeding lowness of a V-shaped bodice (if that’s the proper word), her mouth is large, her features are irregular, her height is not imposing, her complexion is not that of rare pale Margaret’s. ' But a curiously novel appearance is hers, for all that,’ says the English interviewer, ‘plain, yet attractive; thin, yet imposing ; aristocratic and refined, yet full of abandon and suggestive languor in her bearing ; graphic and vivid in her diction, although hardly employing a single gesture; virginal and chaste in the sighing coyness of her delivery, as if in regret of the certainly somewhat rather decollete songs she sings—and you have one of the most singular figures that ever graced the French—or, indeed, any other stage.'

‘I am altogether plain,’says Mdlle. Yvette, Yvettes Ac- ‘ and I do not disguise the fact, and lite has count o Her b een ao hard a battle with me ! I struggled self- till I thought I was condemned by fate to bad luck— la guigne we call it. I have sold hats, I have been shopgirl at the Magasins du Printemps, I have played secondary parts at all the theatres, and was a perfect failure ; I was on tour with Jane May, but all to no purpose ; so, leaving the theatre in disgust, I thought of trying the music-hall stage. I found that the songs were idiotic and the acting most inferior, so I devoted myself to the amelioration of this state of things by a carefully practised and thought-out delivery, by distinct utterance, and principally by choosing as my speciality the cynical and graphic pourtraying of the dregs, the outcast of society, instead of the fantastical and unreal phantoms conjured up by the other performers. At first, I had my usual luck. At the Eldorado they had had enough of me after a month, and the director told me I did not use my bands enough, and was too much of a stick to suit him. But my tribulations were to end here. At the Eden, where I got my next engagement, there happened to be a performance to which all the press was invited. I sang my usual repertoire—“ Le Fiacre,” “ Les Quatres Etudiants,” and the next morning the whole of Paris rang with my performance ; every paper had columns and columns of praise, and I was famous. Fancy that, mon chcr ! I could not believe my eyes, and as I read the papers in bed that morning I bad to pinch myself to be sure that I was not dreaming, I shall never forget it I The same morning I signed a contract for 6,000 francs a month—l who had been earning 16 francs 25 cents a month the day before. Since that time I have only to chronicle success, and, as perfectly happy people are alway uninteresting, my history stops here.’

This charming Yvette with the V. shaped Yvette s bodice, and lacking all pretensions to any--Bongs. thing in the shape of bust, was n>t brought before the Graphic footlights on the present occasion to sing any song whatever. 1 understand the English people were not satisfied with the absolute propriety of the first songs the lady sang in London. They insisted on bearing the several melodies (such as that maybe rather naughty, but positively nice story of ‘the Six Little Schoolboys’) which Y vette was at first given to understand, would rather shock the polite ears of Anglicans. Not that the song, or any of Yvette's song*, are immoral, or anything of that kind. They are true to nature ; they are human—that is all. * But in France,' says Yvette, * we are not ashamed to look every existing state of things squarely in the face, on the broad principle of humanity.’ The English, it would appear, are beginning to take a look at things in somewhat the same way. Anyhow, they liked Yvette’s songs —and especially those very songs which so delighted the Parisians, but which Yvette, at the commencement, held back, as altogether too true for that side of the Channel. However, that isn’t the question just at present. The question is—who increased Yvette’s pay, in a single day, from 16 to 6,000 francs per month ? For, don’t you see that the eccentric and shabby and altogether curious little creature might have struggled all the years of a bitter life on the very edge of the Parisian gutter, and died in a St. Antoine slum, if somebody had not seen

what was in her, and given her a helping hand ’ It was that awful being the literary man, the newspaper man, who found Yvette, and rescued her. His quick appreciation of originality, and of something akin to genius, if not genius itself, told him that there were immense capabilities ; that there was astounding knowledge of human nature ; wonderful powers of mirth, mimicry, and pathos in the queer figure singing, in seedy apparel, at the ‘ Eden.’ These literary people, it is plain, have an immense power, if they use it aright, which, now and again, they sometimes do. Very often they do a good deal for the individual, and the public at large; there is but one individual they do very little for. I haveatolerableacquaintancewiththesegentlemen asa class, and 1 feel quite safe in saying that for themselves or their brethren, they do very little, under any circumstances whatever. I don’t want to be too precise about this matter at this moment—l intend to recur to it again. Yvette, I may observe —and I am pleased to record it - acknowledges deeply, and on every possible opportunity, the mighty obligations she is under to the newspaper men who have given her everything that even an ardent Frenchwoman could possibly desire. In this respect the queer little Parisian girl differs vastly from some genteel persons at Home and abroad who have mounted to fame through the existence of newspapers, but become oblivious of the fact when they attain the summit of their ambition.