RAFAEL SABATINI AND SCARAMOUCHE

RAFAEL SABATINI AND SCARAMOUCHE

 

“... although I appreciate the artistry and skill of the producer and the actor concerned, I feel that Ramon Novarro was not quite happy in the leading rôle.  Whether due to some unsuitability of his own temperament or to the method of attack adopted, it seemed to me that he played too straight and too seriously, thereby failing to suggest the irresponsible rascal who was ‘born with a gift for laughter and a sense that the world was mad.’ [sic] 

~ Adapted From the Novel, Strand Magazine, November 1925

 

In this passage about Scaramouche, the 1923 film directed by Rex Ingram, there are three things that struck me.

*  To take the least first, the phrase “method of attack”, which reflects Rafael’s experience of hearing his parents teach vocal technique, and his experience of learning to fence.

*  The second is Rafael’s use of the words “happy” and “irresponsible rascal”.  This point will be enlarged upon.

*  The phrase “irresponsible rascal”, now in the context of its application to the character Scaramouche, (the stage role of André-Louis Moreau), as he appears in a pair of linked novels by Rafael.

 

Rafael’s formal writing in English sometimes raises the question of whether he is using a word as would an Englishman born, educated in a public school and at Oxford.  As we know, he was none of these things.  “Happy” carries other connotations, of which his writings show awareness: “well suited for a purpose”, “fortunate”, and “apt” being some.  Disconcertingly, Rafael would on occasion slip easily out of his adopted ‘English’ persona into the European, chiefly French, that was his foundation.  The novel Scaramouche itself provides a notable example: “The police will do your affair for you”, threatens the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr.  About “irresponsible” there is no ambiguity, about “rascal” there is.  If used with serious intent, it means “knave”, “scoundrel”, and so on.  But the English in particular use it with humorous, affectionate intent, as they do “imp” and “impish”, and even “rogue” and “roguishly”.

Now to the crux of the problem: the character created across two novels, partly through the evidence of his actions, partly through authorial interventions.  In the course of these two novels we see André-Louis Moreau develop, as life forces on him more and more complex questions, from his youthful self very confident in his knowledge of philosophy, logic, and law, not foreseeing what choices he will have to make, often in life-or-death matters, into the proverbial ‘sadder but wiser man’.  Is André the Scaramouche of the commedia dell’arte?  On the evidence of the novels Rafael did not intend it to be so.  André does not make mischief, merely for the pleasure it gives him, nor run away laughing from the imbroglio that he has brought about.  (To charge him with being in fact a Scaramouche because on two occasions he runs away to save his life is not just.)  Why, then, did Rafael make such a response to the question posed to him in 1925?  What follows is my understanding of the matter.

Though as time passed Rafael wrote of protagonists who were not heroic or exemplary, (King in Prussia, The Gamester) and a single out-of-character novel, The Minion, Rafael Sabatini is always either loved or criticised for the idealism that, in spite of all, survives even in late work.  In 1919, Rafael had no reason to make a hero/ protagonist of such a character as the commedia Scaramouche, in fact it went against the grain of his fiction.  (The Minion is an exception since it is an interpretation of an episode in history.)

Was this the reason for the destruction of his first manuscript, 50,000 words long?  He never explained, or even hinted at a reason, but he may have found his “method of attack” untrue to his instincts.  Yet, the ghost of a work destroyed of choice can linger.  Did something of the ur-Scaramouche, something beyond his name (compelling attention in a title, as Esther Forbes recorded) – a name which itself influences many readers’ judgement of André – remain in Rafael’s mind, causing him to put into many other characters’ mouths that very accusation of which he clears André by his authorial interventions, and by the witness of André’s actions?  It would seem that Rafael the novelist, partly mindful of his readers’ expectations, partly inclined (at that time) to the hero rather than the anti-hero, thus found a way to combine the commedia character - as an appellation misapplied to the hero of the novels, and used by André himself in irony or self-deprecation – with the actual character in his novels.

It is to be doubted that the novelist himself was able to translate the complexity of his character from the first novel into either version of his own dramatisation for the stage.  Reviews suggest (implicitly) that the role offered no scope to even a competent actor under the direct influence of Rafael to make of it both a hero and an irresponsible rascal.  This being so, how could it be expected of the film’s André to succeed even had its screenplay come from Rafael’s pen?

Was this truly Rafael’s reason for his unfavourable comment on Rex Ingram’s film?

Every viewer will have an opinion not necessarily the same as mine.  Within the limitations of a silent film, Ramon Novarro’s realisation was true enough to the novel, whose André is not an irresponsible rascal.  Could there be another reason, maybe two, for Rafael’s judgement?

 We need only recall the indignant letter in The Bookman of January 1925 (quoted in Seeking Sabatini) to find one cause for grievance.  Among the film posters I found online there was none in French – such as he would have seen in Paris.  There were a couple of posters in English (one clearly an advertisement for a film to be made), and one in Spanish which justified his ire.

But a poster in German and several in English, possibly made in response to a protest by his U.S. publisher conveying the novelist’s anger, advertise the film as “from the famous novel by Rafael Sabatini”.  Yet even the failure to give him credit, of the first announcements and posters, is not entirely as represented by Rafael.

No matter how popular Rex Ingram’s previous films might have been, we need not doubt that it was the succès fou of the novel which had the western world agog at the news of a film being made of it, and by such a director, with his customary lead actors, Ramon Novarro and Alice Terry.  Periodicals such as Motion Picture News, and Exhibitors Trade Review, gave this fact prominence in their excited reports of progress in the film’s making.  The latter even mentions Rafael’s play, due to open in New York at the same time as the film’s premiere.

Ah, the play!  We have seen that it was not only Rafael’s solo work; his guidance had been sought by producer and lead actor – coming to London themselves.  In terms of number of performances it was modestly successful, given sixty-one times over two months.  But it was not a succès d’estime.  What fault/s had the critics found?  These have been seen in an earlier section.  Among them was the choice of lead actor, as also described.  How galling, then, to find in Ramon Novarro an actor better suited to his role, although this was denied by Rafael on a charge I find specious.

The 1925 letter in The Bookman describes the novelist’s feelings about the consequence of Metro’s initial posters that did not give him credit for the novel.  In 1924 came the film of his novel, Captain Blood, another novel with resounding success.  The contrast between the deference accorded him by Albert Smith, and the failure of Rex Ingram to consult Rafael, was surely galling.  To me all this adds up to make a singular case ... the Case of Rafael Sabatini’s attitude to Scaramouche, both as character in his novels and as interpreted on screen.

First, my apologies for the strange way that BLOGGER has altered the format of my text part of the way.  There is no way I have ever found - being untutored in the use of a computer - to control & correct what has been done to my blogs ever since I started in 2006.
  

This is the concluding section of ADDENDA to ROMANTIC PRINCE: SEEKING SABATINI.

Together with the much revised & enlarged edition of the 2 vols. of ROMANTIC PRINCE, it is available to download free as a PDF file.  [Refer my earlier blog - https://attica-ruth.blogspot.com/2017/11/romantic-prince-revised-edition.html ]
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Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

Review of Scaramouche, the play

ARTISTS ALL

By Graham Sutton

The Bookman, July 1927, pp 247-48

Accident rather than design took me to two successive plays about barnstormers – Scaramouche at the Garrick and When Crummles Played at the Lyric, Hammersmith. The first, true, deals only incidentally with the old tribe. They loom largely: but they are not there so much for their own picturesque sake (though in this respect the author makes good use of them) as to provide an asylum for the hero, a young Monarchist who is induced to espouse the Republican cause for the sake of a private vengeance. The political outline of this play – one might say its ethical outline – is extremely fresh and ingenious. I am no politician; but if I were, I should be tempted to expend the rest of my article on tracing the nice vacillations of public opinion, which have resulted in the balance of this play being poised as we see it. Time was, within fairly recent memory, when the Sans-culotte was the inevitable villain of French Revolution tales. The balance shifting, Aristocrats came in for their share of stage abuse. To-day opinions are so divided that it is no longer safe to put all one’s dramatic eggs in one political basket. So here we have young André-Louis Moreau, a fervent aristocrat, driven against his logical convictions to attack the Marquis d’Azyr on a point of individual tyranny. Moreau proves such a force that he ends as one of the bright particular stars of the new Republican government; after which he sees the error of his ways, and declaring that republicanism will be only the substitution of a new tyranny for the old, resigns his portfolio and goes into voluntary exile. The whole theme is admirably handled, though it is much less stressed than my account of it may imply. I emphasize it here because in our theatre a costume-play with any genuine thought in it is so rare as to be a portent. Most costume-playwrights are content to assert themselves with a few “gadzooks” or “marrys” or “citoyens,” as the period demands, and with a rehash of stock judgements; just as most star managers are apt to insist on plays with no live parts but their own. That is not Mr. Rafael Sabatini’s way – nor Sir John Martin Harvey’s only way, either. The play is both intelligent and well written; and Sir John has surrounded himself with a capable company. Apart from his own performance as Moreau (excellent despite recent illness) there is the Marquis d’Azyr of Mr. Gordon McLeod, the finest rendering of the villain-aristocrat that I have seen since Mr. Malcolm Keen’s de Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac. Altogether, a sound and worth-while production, which provincial readers will be unwise to miss.

(The rest of the review is about some other play.)

Rafael Sabatini Book Covers

- and other mixed results

On 23 March 2015 I posted a piece here about the paintings used in covers of Rafael Sabatini’s books as published by House of Stratus.

At that time there were seven covers for which I had not traced the paintings that were their sources.  (I do not find the remaining five of any interest.)

Now I have three more sources, including an intriguing result, and an instance of frustration – a case familiar to me in the past eleven years.

Bellarion – Gerard Terborch – Gallant Conversation aka Parental Admonition, detail Photoshopped cleverly.

Love-at-Arms - Giovanni Mansueti – Miraculous healing of the daughter of Benvegnudo da San Polo (detail)

Turbulent Tales - Abraham Jansz Storck - Battle of Zuidersee, October 1573

The last took a great deal of time and effort to track down, especially as there are two paintings of the same date, and almost identical.  Who copied whom?  The one by Storck is in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. There the date given to this painting is 1663.  

Another with the same subject is so alike it might be a copy.  But is it?  This one is by Jan Theunisz Blanckerhoff, at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.  And the museum gives it the date – 1663.

*

The Sea-Hawk – The only image I can find online that exactly matches, has no source, and is part of a book cover or a poster.

*

By far more disappointing is the result reported by Stephen Wainwright of England.  He is no relative of Rafael Sabatini, but related to Rafael’s first wife through her mother.  Last October he visited the house in Maghull that once belonged to Rafael Sabatini’s grandfather, John Jelley, and is now No 1 Station Road.  A house in which the boy Rafael spent about four years as a child, and an unspecified time on his return to England at seventeen.  The present owners were friendly – then – and showed him the upstairs bedroom which had been Rafael’s as a youth.  When renovating the house the owner had found a few letters and documents written by Rafael, a cane with his initials on it, and in the stables outside some childish graffiti which it is claimed he wrote regarding a "Captain Blood".  The owners said Stephen Wainwright could organise a date with them to view all this properly.  (Quoted almost verbatim from his e-mail to me.)

But when he did try to arrange a viewing, they refused it.  The impression he got is that they feared he might “lay claim to bits and bobs”.  Quite inexplicable, and a sad ending.

*

What would compensate amply would be for someone to gain access to the correspondence between Rafael Sabatini and Houghton Mifflin that is housed in a Harvard library, especially the correspondence from 1929 to 1939.  One aim would be to look for any mention of his plans for the continuation of the Scaramouche story: any mention of the planned trilogy, of the immediate story following André-Louis’ escape over the border along with the Kercadious; of reading about François Chabot and de Batz, of the last days of the Venetian Republic, of Quiberon.  This is a matter that buzzes in my mind like an obstinate bumblebee.

In January 1930, Rafael was planning a novel taking André-Louis to Venice.  That same month he walked out on his wife and by May he was in Paris.  In November he said he had been reading about the French India Company affair.  In April 1931, the first part of Scaramouche the Kingmaker appeared (as a serial).

What options did French history offer Rafael?  By April 1794 the self-proclaimed Louis XVIII was in Verona, a part of the Venetian Republic.  He remained just over two years, and in May 1796 had to leave.  The final year of the Republic’s life offered scope for a story of adventure – but suitable for André-Louis?  What could he be doing from August 1792 until May 1796?  It is true that the disastrous landing at Quiberon Bay took place in June 1795, but Rafael would have to give it scant attention if he was to take André-Louis zigzagging across Western Europe to both Quiberon and Venice.  Besides, Venice was a byway, whereas Quiberon effectively extinguished realistic hopes of a restoration of absolute monarchy in France.

Rafael, footloose and fancy-free in Paris during the early months of 1930 (and undoubtedly in May) could spend time in the national library or in the bookshops.  The Apologia of François Chabot, the many books by G. Lenotre, were all to hand.  Is that how he found his continuation of André-Louis’ story?  Yet, at the end of this continuation, André had to return to Hamm in search of the Kercadious.  There could be no further involvement in the French Revolution’s course.  However, there remained two tempting episodes to explore: the taking of Venice, and the landing at Quiberon.

In January 1930 it was Venice that Rafael had been looking to.  And after Scaramouche the Kingmaker, in November 1931, Rafael was already telling an interviewer that there would be a third book.  Almost at once, his imagination had turned back to Venice, although in a different period.  Nevertheless, the dreaded secret tribunal had a place in his long story, together with the informers/ spies.

The novel about the French Revolution in Venice, so to speak, was ready for serial publication in August 1933.  This is where the correspondence with Houghton Mifflin would be so valuable.  It might tell us when he had first thought of writing about Quiberon.  It seems to me significant that the disaster at Quiberon comes into the beginning of Venetian Masque.  It is almost too much to expect that Rafael wrote about his plans for The Marquis of Carabas.  Yet Ferris Greenslet was a very close friend, and Dale Warren, if not as close, was another friend.

*

Dreams, dreams.  If only someone could try to read that correspondence.....

*

Meanwhile, it is worth reading straight on from the end of Scaramouche into the first few chapters of Scaramouche the Kingmaker.  André seems to carry on from what he had become by the end of the first novel; Aline appears to slip back to what she was before the ‘revelation scene’.  Then, noticeably only if one is looking close, else without a hiccup, they change into the characters they are required to be for the new story.  Or so I have found.

On Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Early in 2014, I made time to very slowly compare my printed copy of the original (that is, uncut) UK version of Scaramouche with the heavily cut and most often unnecessarily edited (meaning altered in wording and punctuation) US first edition, which was the only text to be found online. I was doing this in order to supply Project Gutenberg Australia with the UK text to add to the almost complete collection of printed Sabatini found there.

To pay sufficient attention, I emptied my mind of over fifty years' memories of the novel and started as if I were reading a book not read before. It was an illuminating experience. I played it in my head like the perfect movie no one can ever make, seeing and hearing all as if it was happening before me. One reaction I can put down to old age: I wept as the young André cradled Philippe's unresponsive head, begging him to speak. That did not happen when I was 13! I noticed small details I had missed in a score of re-readings: both André's parents have dark eyes like his own.

Then there was this:

"The surest way to the gallows of all," laughed André-Louis. At the moment Le Chapelier manifested impatience. I wonder did the phrase cross his mind that day four years later when himself he rode in the death-cart to the Grève?

The last sentence coming out of nowhere, it would seem, is like the sudden quotation of the Dies irae in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, preceded and followed by a tolling bell; it sends - as it is meant to - a shiver down the spine. That can only happen because Le Chapelier was a real person, and he is true to life in the Scaramouche novels.

In a way, Rafael Sabatini's narrative gift, the power to seize the reader's attention and take him/ her hurtling through an exciting part of the story, undoes his other gift, the wonderful ability to recount history with an eloquence whose beauties require the reader to pause and savour them.

He weaves the story of his fictional characters so skilfully into that history that the same elevated mood which is induced by his eloquence enhances their story. I am thinking of how Bertrand des Amis is caught up (and crushed) in the historical event of 12 July 1789, one among so many real people who were killed, and of the final sentence of that chapter, merging at once the bond of affection which has grown between des Amis and his assistant, the sadness of its ending, and the portentous announcement of the French Revolution:
To André-Louis, waiting that evening on the second floor of No. 13 Rue du Hasard for the return of his friend and master, four men of the people brought that broken body of one of the earliest victims of the Revolution that was now launched in earnest.

To me it resonates like music, like the end of a movement, the sad, solemn movement, of a symphony. When reading the novel for the story one might miss these effects.

I realised just how grand Rafael Sabatini can be at his grandest, and writing a history which deeply moved him, he is very grand. It is not my habit to compare novels and novelists unless - on the rarest of occasions - they cover the same ground. To a limited extent, A Tale of Two Cities bears comparison with The Trampling of the Lilies, and with Scaramouche. But I've always found Dickens' novel too nightmarish, too much outdoing Carlyle, for me to take it seriously as a novel of the French Revolution. As a novel, yes, but not as one I would recommend to a student of history. The slow transformation of André's beliefs about reform and revolution, the complexity of any great movement in history because of the complexities of human beings, the actual unfolding of events, these are so superbly blended with the fictional element. I can't go into all the details here, but in chapter after chapter - especially in the marvellous Book Three - in paragraph after paragraph, his special artistry is to be seen - this novel is an inspired work in his output of novels.

I can find only one iffy moment: the long speech in self-exculpation from La Tour d'Azyr at a tense moment when time is of the essence. But make it he must, and at what other moment could it be possible? One must take it as one takes the soliloquies in Shakespeare or the arias in Grand Opera - Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor singing a long, beautifully decorated aria with a sword stuck in his middle.

Rafael unconsciously poured much of himself into Scaramouche, possibly carried away by the power of his own story. Look again at the word placement in that sentence I quoted ("I wonder...the Grève?") Speak it and listen to the musical effect of "himself he rode" instead of "he rode himself"; to the cadence of "in the death-cart to the Grève". If the writer was himself responding to the influence of music I, being accustomed to singing, hear music in his words. There is so much music buried deep in the novel, so deep that not even he realised it was flowing underneath his writing, like a subterranean stream which feeds the greenery above, unbeknownst to any.

There is that sequence leading to a climactic moment, the duel between André and the Marquis. It builds up so tensely, there is a palpable electricity about the meeting of Mme de Plougastel and Aline at No 13 Rue de Hasard. And then they hear this:
"A raccommoder les vieux soufflets!"
As I read that, I recalled at once the cry of the toy-seller in Puccini’s La boheme, at a moment not comparable in mood but musically similar, when the many voices and the orchestra have risen to a crescendo:
“Ecco i giocattoli di Parpignol!”

I wish I could hear the trained voice of an actor of the English stage long ago declaim the grand chapter that opens Book 3. It is no wonder that Esther Forbes was so captivated by the script that she picked up and read right through, not putting it down until she had read every word.

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.