The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-18 00:00:00

company of this old play of "Belphegor" redivivus
under the new title of " The Mountebank" should
happen, as it does, by ill luck, to fol-
low just immediately upon the heels of the re-
vival there, upon those same boards, dur-
ing this very season of 1865, of the old drama of
" Robert Macaire," under its new title of
" The Roadside Inn." And simply for this reason,
let us explain at once, " unfortunate"—because
though in reality very widely contrasting as
the two plays do, the one with the other—" The
Roadside Inn," that is, and " The Mountebank,"
otherwise " Robert Macaire" and " Belphegor"—
they have about them (and it is impossible not at
once to recognise the fact that it is so) the superfi-
cial semblance of a repetition! Very soon after the
rising of the curtain upon each play one perceives
in the Lyceum cast, here of " Macaire", here
" Belphegor"—what there is in effect in those
two plays, in the way of an almost conspicuous
resemblance ! In each Mr. Moreland is a good-
natured chatter-box of a village inn-keeper !
In each Miss Leclercq is the pretty lady-heroine
of the piece, travelling under the guardianship of
the father of an inane young- stripling of a lover
—again a lover of the plum-box character im-
personated by M. Fitzpatrick! As usual, Mr. Hors-
man is the walking gentleman, and—still more—as
a matter (we had almost said) of inevitable necessity,
Mr. Ryder isthe villain of the play, with a touch of the
ruthless in the very twist of his moustache ! But—
beyond all else, as indicative of there being (at least
superficially) something really akin between the cast
of "The Roadside Inn" and the cast of " The Moun-
tebank"—there is Mr. Fechter, as the hero of each—
as RobertMacaire, and as Charles Belphegor—as an
itinerant tatterdemalion, picturesquely clad in
shreds and patches! Crowned in each instance with a
battered white hat! And faithfully followed--both as
Macaire and as Belphegor—followed, as by his own
shadow, by a grotesque but devoted attendant of his,
one who worships the very ground he treads upon,
exclaiming, in a sort of rapture, at every available
opportunity, " I adore that man 1 I perfectly idolize
him !" This same fantastic attendant--a jack-pud-
ding, in the one instance, a still more wretched
scarecrow of a tatterdemalion in the other—being
pourtrayed, with the very broadest extravagance of
low comedy humour, by the farceur of the Lyceum,
Mr. H. Widdicomb. Granting all this, however—
it is really something wonderful in its way to note
how, by the sheer force of his artistic instinct,
Mr. Fechter, through his vividly contrasted imperso-
nation of the two characters, that is, of Macaire, and of
Belphegor—similarly apparelled and similarly sur-
rounded though they are, as we have but just now
indicated—nevertheless contrives in some extraordi-
nary manner to produce upon the self-same audi-
ence a totally distinct effect, it would hardly be
extravagant to assert as much, an absolutely
and diametrically opposite impression!. Of his re-
markable impersonation of Robert Macaire we
have already in these columns, and at some con-
siderable length, expressed our opinion. It is of
his impersonation of the wandering street-tumbler
or travelling mountebank, Belphegor, that we would
here speak exclusively ! Premising only in reference
to the startling contrast presented by it as a
representation of character, when viewed for a
moment in comparison with the escaped galley
slave who was the hero of the " Roadside Inn"—
that, whereas Robert Macaire held the mastery,
in our instance, over a mingled sense of terror and
laughter, emotions almost inextricably blended
together, or, so to speak, felt simultaneously—Bel-
phegor, the mountebank, holds firmly, even in his
lightest grasp, throughout the four acts, holds, as
one may say, with the every glance of his eye, with
the every tremble of his lip, with the every intona-
tion of his voice, the mastery over our tenderest
sympathies—often, at one and the same moment, over
our sense of the ludicrous and of the pathetic !
The opening act is merely preliminary, it should be
said—it is only, in other words, the mere pic-
turesque introduction to the inner charm
and passion of the plot, the salient
incidents of which make up the three
later and more resiarkable acts of " The
Mountebank." Belphegor's appearance as an
itinerant showman in one of the village streets of
provincial France, is, in fact, the principal occur-
rence of act the first : an act which closes with the
flight of himself and his family from the threaten-
ing of a great temptation—the temptation to part
Belphegor from his wife and children, so as to
secure to the latter (Madeleine, the wife, turning
out to have been nobly born) wealth and honour,
immense riches and high rank among the nobility
of the Restoration. It is in the garret scene of the
Second Act, in the garden scene of the Third, and
in the sumptuous palatial scene of the Fourth, that
the true passion of the plot, however, is unfolded.
It is through these scenes mainly that the great
actor again seizes to himself the opportunity, by the
purest and subtlest touches of nature, rather than
by any appreciable evidence of his consummate
mastery over his art, to influence—just precisely as
he lists, it almost seems, at the mere whim and
spur: of the moment—our innermost emotions, the
emotions commonly betrayed by the trembling nerves
of the face and by brimming tears in the eyes.
Rare moments like these were appreciable to the
whole house, last evening. As, for example,
when Belphegor exclaimed in a high pitched
voice of suppressed fury to the insolent
tempter Lavarennes, ‘‘' And the husband ?"
When, hurrying out of his garret to buy the shawl
for his wife, not for fifteen hundred francs
but for fifteen, he besought Catherine not to talk
of any of those costlier shawls to Madeleine during
his absence) When on his return exultingly with
the poor tokens of his home-affection, when he
finds that Madeleine and Jeanette have both left
him during his absence, his look, his voice, " his
very heart seems breaking in the lips pressed to
those faithful ones," that is, to the lips of his little
boy Paul, the one darling of the poor ruined home,
yet left to him ! Repeatedly, during the progress
of the play, there are little trivial words,
mere monosyllables, that, as uttered by Mr.
Fechter, go straight through the ear into the
heart and then, with an electric sympathy, into the
eyes ! As, let us say—when in merely speaking of
Madeleine during her absence (it is in one of his con-
fidences with Catherine) he says, clasping his
hands, and throwing a world of tenderness into
the simple words, " I love her " An exquisite

scene is the one occurring in the very midst of the
" Arlequinade et Gallopade des Lanternes," where
the mountebank strives to go through his perform-

ances with his boy, until interrupted by the latter
fainting from the effects of sheer starvation, to his
(Belphegor's) distracted terror. The crowning touch

of all among these numerous and most subde
touches of nature in Fechter's noble and affect-
ing impersonation of Belphegor, is the very last—to
which he gives look as well as utterance—imme-

diately before the descent of the curtain.

It is

the one in which, clad though he is as a marquess,
just enrolled though he is among the ancien

noblesse by adoption, as the recognised husband

of Madeleine (and looking his new dignity
every inch !) the poor Belphegor of yesterday, out
of the very lightness of his heart, at the breaking of

-
his evil fortunes and at the restoration of all that

is dear to him in life, bursts (from the sheer force

of habit) into the itinerant showman's clamorous

appeal to the mob to gather round him ! And, then
—shamefacedly consciousness of that worse than
" gaucherie"—hushing himself into silence, with a
finger on his lip and a hist ! And so the curtain

descends ! It was another triumph for him both

as Actor and as Manager, and one all the sweeeter to
him no doubt last evening, for inasmuch as his little

son—a pretty boy not yet in his teens, yet already
evidencing a hereditary- aptitude for the histrionic

art—participated in it. The Madeleine of the cast
was Madlle. Beatrice, who shared, and not alto-

gether undeservedly, with Mr. Fechter and his son,
in the recall marking the close last night of each

one of the four acts of Belphegor. " The Mounte-
bank," let us here add, was preceded yesterday
by the charming little comedy of "Simpson and C 0.,"
charmingly performed—Simpson by that true and

skilled artist, Mr. Emery, who afterwards appeared
in the four-act drama as the Duke of Montbazon.

As usual on the first night of any new impersonation

by Mr. Fechter, the house was crowded throughout by
a brilliant audience, an audience including amongst