Idols of the French Stage. By H. Sutherland Edwards. 2
vole. (Remington and Co.)—The. chief subjects in Mr. Sutherland
Edwards's first volume are "The Wife of Mohan," "Adrienne Lecouvreur," "Madame Favart," "Sophie Arnoultl," and " Made- moiselle de Camargo ; "but he tolls us incidentally about a number of other lights, greater or less, such as Mademoiselle du Pare, who. had Corneille, Moller% and Racine among her suitors, and chose the last ; and Mademoiselle Beauval, who married a candle-snuffer, and had twenty-four children. Moliere's wife, Armonde Bejard, was a very discreditable person, who never appears to advantage, except when she fires up at the insult offered to her dead husband by the Archbishop of Paris. (2 propos of this, Mr. Edwards tells a curious story of how, as late as 1844, the clergy of Boulogne-sur- Mer refused to allow the body of an actress of perfectly respectable character to be brought into the church.) Christian interment was also refused to the body of Adrienne Lecouvreur. But it must be confessed that she was not a model of virtue. What was probably thought a worse fault, she was a friend of Voltaire. The account of Madame Patinat gives occasion for some horrible stories of campaigning under Marshal Saxe ; and that of Sophie Arnould throws new light of a sinister kind on the ways of the old regime. Truly, when one reads these things it is impossible to wonder at the excesses of the Revolution. The second volume is devoted to eight adrenals, of whose names the average reader will probably only recognise two, Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt. To the latter of these only a few pages are given. Mr. Edwards is quite right in his reticence, a quality which he also displays in dealing with the subject of Rachel. The greater part of this section is taken up with an interesting account of how the great actress first refused and then consented to play the part of Adrienne Lecouvreur in Scribe's play. These two volumes contain a great amount of curious information, which might perhaps have been forgotten without much loss to the world, but which the author has, certainly put together with taste and skill.
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