The Cercle Funambulesque (1888–1898)—roughly translatable as "Friends of the Funambules"The funambule of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a rope-dancer and sometimes, as in the case of Madame Saqui, a mime. But by the late nineteenth century, the word would have conjured up specifically the old Théâtre des Funambules, where Jean-Gaspard Deburau forged his career (see next section).—was a Parisian theatrical society that produced pantomimes inspired by the commedia dell'arte, particularly by the exploits of its French Pierrot. It included among its approximately one hundred and fifty subscriber-members such notables in the arts as the novelist J.-K. Huysmans, the composer Jules Massenet, the illustrator Jules Chéret, and the actor Coquelin cadet. Among its successes was L'Enfant prodigue (1890), which was filmed twice, first in 1907, then in 1916, making history as the first European feature-length movie and the first complete stage-play on film.
Background
From about 1825 to 1860, the theater-goers of Paris were witness to a Golden Age of Pantomime. At the Théâtre des Funambules, Jean-Gaspard Deburau, called by the eminent poet and journalist Théophile Gautier "the most perfect actor who ever lived",In La Presse, January 25, 1847; tr. Storey (1985), p 111. created, in his celebrated mute Pierrot, a legendary, almost mythic figure, immortalized by Jean-Louis Barrault in Marcel Carné's film Children of Paradise (1945).Deburau reigned as the star of the Funambules from about 1825 to his death in 1846; on his pantomime, see Storey (1985), pp. 3-35. After his death, his son Charles, playing at the same theater, revived for the grateful enthusiasts of the genre his father's agility and gaity;His tenure at the theater was, however, short-lived: he left it in 1855 (see Hugounet , p. 107). and Charles's rival Paul Legrand, who reinvented Pierrot as the sensitive soul so familiar to post-nineteenth-century devotees of the figure, earned warm admiration from his public (including Gautier) for his performances at the Folies-Nouvelles.He débuted at the Funambules in the same year, 1847, as Deburau fils, who soon saw him as a rival. Legrand left for the Folies-Nouvelles in 1853, where he performed until 1859. For a detailed account of his career, see Storey (1985), pp. 37-71, 304-305. But, by the early 1860s, interest in the pantomime, at least in the capital, had begun to flag, and both Legrand and Deburau fils had to seek out audiences elsewhere. Deburau died young, in 1873, having taken his art to Marseille and Bordeaux, where he founded a so-called school of pantomime.On the founding of this school, see the section devoted to Charles Deburau in Hugounet (1889), and also Séverin, pp. 36ff. Legrand, after working in Bordeaux and abroad, found employment in the 1870s at the Tertulia, a Parisian café-concert, and in the late 1880s, at the end of his career, at a children's theater, the Théâtre-Vivienne.See Storey (1985), pp. 71, 304-305. Both venues represented a considerable step down from the Folies-Nouvelles. One of the historians of French pantomime, Robert Storey, writes that Legrand, in these years, "seems to have been forgotten by his public, the pantomime itself suffering death-throes at the capital while struggling for rebirth in the south of France."Storey (1985), p. 71. When the mime made an appearance, around 1880, in a pantomime at the Variétés, he struck Paul and Victor Margueritte, rare admirers of his art, as "a survivor of a quite distant epoch".Quoted in Storey (1985), p. 181.
It would be the self-assumed task of one of those brothers, Paul Margueritte, to revive the pantomime. In 1882, Paul sent his just-published Pierrot assassin de sa femme (Pierrot, Murderer of His Wife), a pantomime he had devised the previous year for the audiences of his amateur theatricals in Valvins, to several writers, hoping to renew interest in the genre.Paul Margueritte, p. 77. It apparently found a receptive spirit in Jean Richepin, whose Pierrot assassin, also a pantomime, appeared at the Trocadéro in 1883Storey (1985), p. 283. (it would hardly go unnoticed: Sarah Bernhardt was its titular Pierrot). And other forces were at work to promote the pantomime with the general public. In 1879, the Hanlon-Lees, a troupe of English acrobatic mimes, had performed to great acclaim at the Folies-Bergère, inspiring J.-K. Huysmans, the Naturalistic novelist and future creator of the arch-aesthete Des Esseintes, to collaborate on a pantomime with his friend Léon Hennique.O.R. Morgan, "Huysmans, Hennique et 'Pierrot sceptique'", Bulletin de la Société J.-K. Huysmans, No. 46 (1963), 103; cited in Storey (1985), pp. 217-218. Their Pierrot sceptique (Pierrot the Skeptic, 1881) presented its readers with a dandified Pierrot even more savage than Margueritte's or Richepin's assassin: for he not only murders his tailor and executes a mannikin he has lured to his chambers, but also sets fire to the rooms themselves to obliterate all evidence of his crimes.A fairly detailed synopsis in English can be found in Storey (1985), pp. 219-221. Such waggish ferocity delighted the young Jules Laforgue, who, upon reading the pantomime, produced his own Pierrot fumiste (Pierrot the Cut-up, 1882), in which Pierrot is guilty of similar (if not homicidal) enormities.See Storey (1978), pp. 145, 154.
While these writers were refining an art that elevated Pierrot to criminal heights, others were imagining a pantomime animated by a much more conventional Pierrot. The Petit Traité de pantomime à l'usage des gens du monde (1887), by the mime and scenarist Raoul de Najac, championed the pantomime as a recreation for the salons—and reminded its readers that, in devising such an entertainment, "One must ... not forget that one is in good company."Najac (1887), p. 27; tr. Storey (1985), p. 290. Najac's ideal Pierrot, consequently, is innocent of all "indecent or funereal ideas", like those that motivate Pierrot sceptique. Such also had been the pure-hearted Pierrot of Legrand, a collection of whose pantomimes was published—in the same year as Najac's treatise—by two fraternal men of the theater, Eugène and Félix Larcher.Félix was at the time a drama critic; Eugène was the director of the Théâtre de la Renaissance: see Storey (1985), p. 285. In undertaking their collaboration, the Larchers discovered talents and ambitions in themselves, vis-à-vis the pantomime, that neither knew he possessed. Eugène, in incarnating the Pierrot of one of Legrand's pantomimes, Le Papillon (The Butterfly), found that he was a more-than-competent mime, and Félix was inspired by his brother's performance to conceive the Cercle Funambulesque.Storey (1985), p. 286.
Founding, statutes, and first productions Through friendships and professional contacts, Félix was introduced to Najac, Paul Margueritte, and Fernand Beissier, a colleague of Margueritte's who had written the preface for Pierrot assassin de sa femme.For a detailed account of the founding of the Cercle, see Storey (1985), pp. 285-286. He persuaded them to join him as founding members of the Cercle and drew up the goals of the society. Paul Hugounet, whom Storey calls the "most energetic publicist and chronicler" of the Cercle,Storey (1985), p. 288. summarized those goals in his Mimes et Pierrots of 1889: 1. To revive the classical pantomime [i.e., the pantomimes of the Deburaux and their successors].2. To encourage the development of the modern pantomime by providing authors and musical composers the opportunity of producing publicly their works in this genre, whatever the artistic tendencies of those works may be.3. To return to the stage the parades and farces of the old Théâtre de la Foire, as well as the works known as improvised comedies.4. To present the plays of the Comédie-Italienne.5. To stage, eventually, new comedies, in verse or in prose, on the formal condition that these works have some express and relationship, in their general makeup, to the old Italian comedies or the commedia dell'arte.Hugounet (1889), p. 238.
The Cercle grew rapidly. By the time of its first constitutive assembly in February 1888, it boasted seventy-five members, including many of the leading celebrities of the day, among them actors (Paul Legrand, Coquelin cadet), playwrights (Jules Lemaître, Jacques Normand, Paul Eudel, Félix Galipaux), novelists (Champfleury, J.-K. Huysmans, Léon Hennique, Jean Richepin), painters (Jules Chéret, Jules Garnier), composers (Jules Massenet, Francis Thomé), and critics and historians of the theater (Léopold Lacour, Arthur Pougin, Edouard Stoullig).Hugounet (1889), pp. 238-239. Its first evening of performances, in May 1888, at a small concert hall at 42, rue de Rochechouart,Hugounet (1889), p. 239; Levillain, p. 278. consisted of a prologue with verses by Jacques Normand accompanied by the miming of Paul Legrand; a pantomime, Colombine pardonée (Columbine Pardoned), written by Paul Margueritte and Beissier, its Pierrot mimed by Paul himself; Najac's pantomime L'Amour de l'art (The Love of Art), with Eugène Larcher as Harlequin; and a parade of the boulevards, Léandre Ambassadeur (Ambassador Leander), starring Félicia Mallet, who would later create memorable Pierrots for the Cercle.Hugounet (1889), pp. 241-242.Storey (1985) notes that a scene from the théâtre-italien of Jean-François Regnard, Arlequin Barbier (Harlequin-Barber), "was announced on the program for the first soirée, but the reviews make it clear that the piece was omitted" (p. 287, n. 11). Almost all subsequent performances would be held at the small Théâtre d'Application, later called La Bodinière.Hugounet (1889), p. 239.
Dissentions, defections, and "the Wagnerian tradition"
As Tristan Rémy has pointed out, "each of the promoters"—that is, the founders of the Cercle— "had personal projects, projects that were disparate, that were even opposed to one another".Rémy (1954), p. 212; tr. Storey (1978), p. 120. Margueritte was doubtful that any "society", such as the Cercle aspired to be, could appreciate the kinds of pantomime that he had written or wished to write. His ideal was what he called the "Théâtre-Impossible": On the elastic boards of a house with scenery painted by the most fervid colorists and pervaded by strains of the "enervating and caressing" music of the most suave musicians, it would charm me if, for the amusement of a few simple—or very complicated—souls, there could be presented the prodigious and tragicomic farces of life, love, and death, written exclusively by authors who had no connection whatsoever with the Society of Men of Letters.Paul Margueritte, "Eloge de Pierrot", La Lecture, February 25, 1891; tr. Storey (1985), p. 291.