Richard Holmes – Sidetracks (страница 21)

Deburau himself could hardly avoid making the transfer between the real and the stage world. The theatrical historian Paul Hugounet later published what he claimed was a letter of Deburau at this time: ‘I can’t touch a stick any more without burning my fingers … whatever I do that death will always come between me and my public. Whenever I twirl a slapstick on stage against the make-believe assailants the spectators will think of Pierrot assassin and that will turn their laughter into ice.’

Something irrevocable had indeed occurred. Poor Pierrot had killed his fellow man, his brother, his child, his mocker. The White Clown had encountered Death. Deburau had brought a tragic presence to the role. The evolution of Pierrot’s dramatic character had made one more turn in the folk memory, and gathered one more layer of historic symbolism. The naïve flour-face, the mischievous moon-face, now also contained the deathly marble-face: white with anger, white with shock, black with knowledge. Through pride perhaps, very human pride, Pierrot had lost his innocence.

The full consequences of this are a matter of theatrical, literary and perhaps psychological history. The 1840s saw the sudden development of an entire pantomime of death, more conscious and more literary, heavy with political and moral prophecy. The Marchand d’habits (1842) in which Pierrot kills an old-clothes merchant in order to enter a society ball, gradually became Deburau’s signature piece, brilliantly analysed by Gautier and a century later superbly mimed by Jean-Louis Barrault in Marcel Carné’s celebration of the Funambules, Les Enfants du Paradis (1944). The Marchand d’habits was followed by Pierrot, Valet de la Mort (1846), Pierrot Posthume (1850), and many similar black pantomimes. Nerval wrote thoughtfully, and perhaps autobiographically, of Pierrot playing music in the halls of hell. Baudelaire produced his strange reflections on the comique féroce in a classic essay The Soul of Laughter (1855); and George Sand’s stage-struck son, Maurice, turned back to Pierrot’s pre-lapsarian days in the first authoritative history of the Commedia dell’Arte (1860).

But few of these high affairs concerned Deburau then, or need concern us now. For this is simply one story of the White Faced Clown as it happened in Paris. To imagine that Deburau’s trial seriously affected his popularity would be to misunderstand his relations with the paradis. On the contrary: six months after his acquittal, Deburau signed a new ten-year contract with the management for an unprecedented fee of 250 francs a month with a 6 per cent pension scheme. He continued to dominate the stage for another nine years at the Funambules, though increasingly racked by asthma, that most psychosomatic of diseases. Accounts tell of him leaning in the wings against the woodland scenery flaps, beating his left side with his fist and gasping for air.

In February 1845, his fiftieth year, Deburau struck the back of his head badly while plunging down one of the spring-traps to the troisième dessous, traditionally associated with Hell in the theatrical world. He replied to George Sand’s anxious inquiry on this occasion with his old flourish: ‘I do not know in what terms to express my appreciation. My pen is like my voice on stage, but my heart is like my face.’ The asthma gained relentlessly on him, and on 17 June 1846, Deburau died at three in the morning.

The young Jules Champfleury had witnessed his last night at the Funambules. They were playing the Noces de Pierrot. At the final curtain it was Deburau’s turn to let fall a single tear which traced its dark line down the white enfariné. He left the theatre at midnight by the little side door into the rue Fossés-du-Temple, the white carnation of Pierrot’s wedding feast pinned bravely to his dark lapel.

INSIDE THE TOWER

A radio-drama based on the life of the poet Gérard de Nerval. All Nerval’s speeches are drawn from his own essays, letters and journals.

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