[In the following essay, Perret reviews the French critical reception of Séjour's plays.]

Victor Séjour (1817-1874), homme de couleur libre born in New Orleans, had two plays performed at the Comédie Française and a score at other Parisian theaters. No indication of the author's racial heritage is found in them, and religion is used to plead for tolerance. His first play at the Comédie Française was Diégarias (1844), which reads like a Hugolian version of La Juive. La Chute de Séjan (1849), his second play, was his last in verse and the last on this stage. Using a sujet d'actualité, the massacre of Maronite Christians in Syria in 1860, he showed the results of Moslem fanaticism in Les Massacres de la Syrie (1860). These same plays also show his three principal weaknesses: (1) out-of-date Romanticism bordering on melodrama, (2) indiscriminate borrowing from classical and contemporary authors, (3) adulation of Napoleon III.

Little is known of Séjour's life. His father, Jean François Louis Victor Séjour Marcou, always called himself Louis Séjour, was a native of St. Marc, Haiti, and an octoroon like Dumas fils. With the aid of newspapers we can place him in New Orleans at least as early as 1811. By 1816 he was promoting quadroon balls in the notorious Washington Ballroom at the St. Philip Street Theater in the heart of the French Quarter. Later he became a dry goods merchant with a store on the corner of St. Philip and Bourbon streets and eventually engaged successfully in real estate transactions. In the early 1850s he joined his son in Paris where he died in 1864 according to reports in the New Orleans press.

According to baptismal records of the St. Louis Cathedral, Jean Victor, natural son of M. Jean François Louis Victor Séjour Marcou and Mlle Eloïse Philippe Ferrand of New Orleans, was born 2 June 1817. (The date on his tombstone in Père-Lachaise is incorrect.) Marriage records show his parents married on 13 January 1825, thus legitimizing Victor and his elder brother Louis. His education remains a mystery. There were schools for the children of "free men of color" at the time, but the one he allegedly attended did not exist until the 1840s, at least a decade after his arrival in France in 1830. There, he presumably followed the traditional paths of aspiring writers, except that he would not have had to contend with poverty; his father, to whom he was very devoted, was alive and prosperous. The return of Napoleon's remains in 1841 inspired him to publish a long poem entitled Le Retour de Napoléon (Paris: Dauvain et Fontaine, 1841) in which the Emperor incarnated France: "Non, non, ce n'est pas moi que l'indigne Angleterre, / Comme un lion captif, retient sur cette terre / Noble France, c'est toi."

In Diégarias (Paris: César Bajat, 1844), which had its premiere on 23 July 1844 at the Comédie Francaise, we find the devices, good and bad, which Séjour will employ throughout his career: (1) melodramatic characterization, (2) excesses in language, (3) a proclivity for having parents directly or indirectly cause the death of the progeny, (4) antithesis of the Hugolian variety, (5) use of the union-in-death theme.

Considering his acknowledged masters, one could hardly expect otherwise. In the dedication of André Gérard (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1857), a melodrama exploited by the flamboyant Frederick Lemaître, he began by eschewing l'art pour l'art and putting himself unequivocally on the side of Dumas fils and Augier: "Personne plus que moi ne se préoccupe du but et de la moralité du théâtre." He concluded by naming his masters:

L'art est une succession de sommets. Je me contente d'être placé au degré le plus bas, pourvu que je puisse contempler, sur les hauteurs, mes deux maîtres Shakespeare et Victor Hugo, ces sources de grandeur et vérité. J'aime les torrents, même dans leurs plus bruyantes horreurs; je hais les filets d'eau, même dans leurs fantaisies et leurs grâces.

It is obviously the Hugo of Hernani that impressed him. Add Schiller, the elder Dumas, Byron, and one or two others, and one has a good idea of his fundamentally Romantic orientation, an orientation that never changed to accommodate itself to contemporary schools and taste.

Critical reception reflected the times; Diégarias coming fifteen months after the premiere of Les Burgraves was warmly received, as the theater-going public did not realize that the Romantic theater's day had passed. Théophile Gautier, still unabashedly Romantic, offered an encomium. Critics in the 1850s and 1860s tended to be more reserved, tempering praise with counsel. Unfortunately, Adolphe Brisson, Francisque Sarcey's son-in-law, included no entry earlier than 1867 when he condensed the latter's feuilletons into eight volumes.¹ The critic was then dealing with an author past his prime and he had few words of praise. The asperity of the tone increased with the years until after Séjour's death the mere mention of his name had an almost paroxysmal effect on the critic. Had Sarcey mentioned him more frequently, he might have conferred a kind of immortality on him as the quintessential bad playwright.

Séjour's first play epitomizes his conception of the theater. Jacob Eliacin, a fifteenth-century Spanish Jew compelled to leave Spain because he courted and married a Christian, fled to Greece where he amassed a fortune as a merchant. After an absence of fifteen years he emerges as Diégarias, the trusted minister of Henry IV of Castille, the object of his subjects' hatred and plotting. Diégarias' main concern, however, is for his daughter Inès, who has been seduced by Don Juan de Tello, a conspirator. Inès loves him and believes naïvely that a sham ceremony had joined them in marriage. At this point, a more classically inclined author would have opted for the Cornelian situation, the affair of state, or for the Racinian one, the mismatched couple of whom only one is in love. Simplicity of plot and economy of action being foreign to our author, he combined both elements with a Scribian use of péripéties. The visual takes precedence over the psychological, as it always will in Séjour's theater.

The resolution of these parallel crises affords the author free dramaturgic rein. A Moor whom Diégarias had treated harshly in Greece informs Don Juan de Tello of Diégarias' background. In a coup de théâtre, the seducer bares the secret before the court and saves himself from a forced marriage. Disgraced, stripped of title and rank, Diégarias seems to be at the nadir of his fortune. Yet, he holds the trump card—money. The king and the conspirators will both approach him for support to pay their mercenaries. From the king he demands the head of Don Juan as the price of a loan. Helping the conspirators overturn the throne will rectify the wrongs he suffered because of his religion. As he relishes the thought of this dual vengeance, he takes an oath that is derived from Othello (Act III, Scene iii):

Devant toi, nuit lugubre, et toi, pâle clarté,
Et vous, astres roulans dans votre immensité,
Je vous prends à témoin—dussé-je sur ma tête
Voir tomber en éclats la foudre et la tempête.
                                 (Act IV, Scene vi)

The king keeps his word, and Don Juan is executed. Inès becomes the first of Séjour's lovers to seek reunion in death. As her father savors his first revenge, she swallows poison and serenely awaits death: "J'irai le retrouver dans le sepulchre avare … / Le poison réunit quand l'échafaud sépare" (Act V, Scene vii).

Diégarias then tells the assembled nobles the king has traded the life of one of them for gold. He, a Jew, has toppled the throne. He becomes a sort of malevolent Ruy Blas, complete with antithesis, as he taunts the king: "Résignetoi, car ton heure est sonnée, / Le nain s'est fait géant et tient ta destinée" (Act V, Scene viii). The tocsin signaling the revolt is heard. Diégarias' triumph seems complete until he notices his daughter in her death throes. The curtain falls as he sobs: "J'ai voulu me venger … j'ai tué mon enfant."

In a review dated 29 July 1844 in Histoire de l'art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans (Paris: Edition Hetzel, 6 vols, 1859) Gautier waxed enthusiastic: "Ce drame est l'œuvre d'un débutant, et il a réussi … le public a reçu la pièce du jeune auteur avec un sentiment de bienveillance que nour voudrions lui voir plus souvent pour les essais et les débuts littéraires" (III, 236). Neither the Romantic tendencies nor the patent borrowings from Hugo were seen as faults by Gautier. On the contrary, he saw them as signs of strength:

Son drame révèle des tendances et des études romantiques; ce sera, pour beaucoup de gens, une occasion de blâme et de reproche; quant à nous qui nous faisons honneur d'appartenir comme disciple à cette école que d'autres ont rendue illustre, nous féliciterons M. Victor Séjour d'avoir imité franchement le plus grand poète de ce temps-ci. C'est déjà une preuve de talent que de savoir choisir un bon maître.

(III, 237)

After praising this "drame habilement charpenté," Gautier added: "Le style, qui pourrait être plus correct et plus poétique, a une qualité très importante au théâtre: il est clair et net, disant ce qu'il veut dire sans trop de concessions à la rime et à l'hémistiche" (III, 238).

Writing eighteen years after the play's premiere, L. Félix Savard found it "tout rouge de meurtres," boursoufflé, and completely lacking in verisimilitude: "Ce Juif devenu ministre, ce roi Henri IV de Castille n'avaient rien de bien humain.…" He pilloried the style by citing this fragment "Chaque rayon de flamme / Devrait prendre une voix pour parler à ton âme" and asking rhetorically: "Avez-vous jamais entendu parler des flammes?"²

La Chute de Séjan (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1849), whose premiere at the Comédie Française was on 21 August 1849, shows even more flagrant borrowing. Sejanus, the Roman emperor, is the first of Séjour's characters to use the monologue à la Don Carlos in Hernani. In addition, his impending doom is predicted in a style that barely paraphrases Ruggieri's warning to Saint-Mégrin in Henry III et sa cour (Act IV, Scene iii). How closely Séjour followed his master can be seen by comparing Hernani's offer to Don Ruy Gomez to one made in La Chute de Séjan:

Quand tu voudras, seigneur, quel que soit
 le lieu, l'heure,
S'il te passe à l'esprit qu'il est temps que je meure,
Viens, sonne de ce cor, et ne prends d'autres soins.
Tout sera fait.
                        Hernani (Acte III, Scene vii)

Séjour even starts with the same rhyme words:

Ce serment fait; dès lors, tu peux indiquer l'heure,
Choisir le lieu, l'instant, où tu veux que je meure,
Soit-il ici, soit ailleurs, fût-ce en un lieu sacré,
J'en atteste à mon tour les dieux, j'obéirai.
                               (Act III, Scene ix)

Before turning to Les Massacres de la Syrie (Paris: Barbré, 1860) a final word on sources. Séjour did a Richard III (1852). Les Noces vénitiennes (1855) is admittedly a sequel to Delavigne's Marino Fallero, but it opens with a hall of portraits scene straight from Hernani. Les Fils de Charles Quint (1864) owes more than a little to Schiller's Don Carlos. I have seen references to an Henri de Lorraine (1870), but I have not been able to locate a copy of it. One could assume that it is derived from Henry III et sa cour.

Even with a scant pair of racial allusions, Les Massacres de la Syrie has more than any other of his plays. While ostensibly the dramatization of an historical event, the play could be described as a protracted metonymy; Napoleon III is France and vice versa. In spite of this, the elements for a good play were not lacking: the dual tensions of the politico-religious conflict and the love of a Moslem girl for a giaour.

Ben-Yacoub, leader of the fanatical Drusian sect, plans a massacre of the Maronite Christians led by Georges de Moréac. The Druse loves Gulnare, a Moslem foundling raised by the Moréac family.³ She, however, loves Georges de Moréac. Ben-Yacoub's hatred of the giaours is thus twofold. The historical Ab-el-Kader (1807-1883), former enemy of the French, has become a staunch ally and appears in deus ex machina fashion several times at crucial points. He offers the aid of his Algerian troops to stop the massacre as word arrives that French troops are on the way. The conspirators are punished and peace restored by the timely intervention of the French.

This résumé can only suggest the multiplicity of intrigues and elaborate staging that thrilled the first-nighters until the final curtain at 1:00 A.M. Jean Rousseau, who reviewed the premiere in me 3 January 1861 issue of Le Figaro, began his critique somewhat hyperbolically: "Cinq cents figures environ,-plutôt plus que moins—traversent le drame nouveau, et l'on ne compte dans cette légion d'acteurs, que trois cent cinquante comparses!"

Rousseau recognized me popular appeal, but was not blind to the blatant propaganda. He gives Jean-François-Constant Mocquard, Napoleon Ill's personal secretary, as co-author, although Mocquard's name does not appear in the printed version of me play. While no definite play is attributed to him, me older Larousse encyclopedias note: "II passe pour avoir collaboré à plusieurs drames." Rousseau initially omitted in his plot résumé the role of Papillon, an itinerant barber in the tradition of Figaro:

Ainsi nous avons coupé tout le rôle de Papillon, un des plus jolis pourtant de la pièce, qu'il égaye de perpétuels lazzis.… Aux Druzes qui lui demandent arrogamment ce que c'est la France, il répond de son accent le plus agressif:—La France? C'est les Pyramides où quarante siècles nous contemplent.… C'est Alger que nous avons bombardé et pris.… C'est Sébastopol où l'on vous aurait éreintés sans nous … voilà ce que c'est!

It is given to Ab-el-Kader, however, to play the sycophant whose gratitude to Napoleon III is boundless. As he tries to dissuade his Moslem brothers, he evokes the emperor's name:

Malheureux! … mais vous n'entendez donc pas, du côté de l'Occident, les Francs qui s'agitent dèjà! … mais leur glorieux et puisssant souverain qui a tout quitté pour protéger un peupleétranger et ressuciter l'Italie de ses propres mains … vous demandera compte du sang des siens … Oh! je le connais … il se lèvera le premier … il appellera la civilisation contre la barbarie … il viendra … il vient peut-être!

(Tableau VI, Scene viii)

Ben-Yacoub thinks the older man wants supreme power and he offers it to him while reminding him à la Corneille: "Je suis ce que tu étais en Afrique." Ab-el-Kader spurns the offer and brandishes his sword:

Napoléon III m'a donne cette épée … je me sentais assez grand pour l'accepter; je me sens assez digne pour m'en servir! … Je prouverai au sultan de France que cette main qu'il a touchée est sienne et qu'il a un serviteur dévoué et un soldat de plus en moi.

(Tableau VII, Scene vi)

In summary, Rousseau of Le Figaro wrote:

Le fait est, bien que la pièce ait duré jusqu'à une heure du matin, que l'attention n'a pas langui un moment. On a suivi avec un intérêt croissant les aspects changeants de ce grand spectacle qui mêle la comédie à l'historie, le drame au ballet, les féeries de l'Opéra aux péripéties du boulevard.

There is a racial allusion which is not specifically applicable to Blacks, if one relies solely on the text. If refers to la D'Jemmala-D'Jezza, whom one would assume to be a gypsy firebrand because of her dress and manner. When first seen in Tableau I, Scene xi, Séjour describes her thus: "Elle est vêtue d'une façon bizarre; tout en elle provoque la surprise et même l'effroi." As the impending massacre draws near, she boasts mat she will pass unnoticed as all of her kind look the same to those outside the group: "Les visages noirs n'ont pas d'empreintes: traits effacés, œil éteint; à vingt pas, doute; à trente, confusion et ténèbres; à cinquante, nuit" (Tableau IV, Scene i). On stage, however, she is definitely a Black. Rousseau called her "une négresse furibonde."

The only other vaguely racial allusion is to slavery, and here the slaves are Caucasians. The hero's mother was captured and sold as a slave in the early stages of the Drusian attack. Upon hearing the news Georges exclaims: "Ma mère, une Moréac, une femme noble et libre vendue comme une esclave" (Tableau VI, Scene i). There is no more comment, just this indignant outburst. Though neither he nor his parents had ever been slaves, we can only guess what the author had in mind when he put these words in the mouth of a character just months before the Civil War.

Séjour had six plays staged after Les Massacres de la Syrie, but his apogee had passed. He died impoverished and tubercular on 20 September 1874. Quite fittingly for a disciple of Hugo, he was working on a Cromwell at the time of his death, and like Hugo, his play was performed after his death.

Earlier we noted Francisque Sarcey's progressively acerbic criticism. He gave some indication of what displeased him (would that he had given more); indeed, eighteen years after his death, Séjour was still serving him as a critical point de repère. Sarcey's first reference to him came in a 24 June 1867 critique of Hernani, which, for Sarcey, had value only as an iconoclasm. Of the author he wrote: "Tout ce qui est antithèse; soit de caractères, soit de passions; soit d'événements, il l'a patiemment et vigoureusement combiné, et il a ainsi abouti, à force d'application et de travail, à des situations aussi terribles qu'en ont jamais imaginé les d'Ennery et les Victor Séjour" (Vol. IV, pp. 1-2).

In an 16 April 1869 review of L'Aventurière of Augier, Sarcey admitted that he was having difficulty producing a coherent review: "Que le lecteur me pardonne … j'ai hier, durant quatre heures d'horloge, entendu la prose de M. Victor Séjour; je me débarbouille comme je peux" (Vol. V, p. 12). The unnamed Séjour play was not a premiere; he had none that year.

His last references to Séjour occur in a 15 February 1892 review of Par le glaive of Jean Richepin. If Séjour had fallen completely into oblivion, it would have been pointless to cite him, yet Sarcey does—five times. The author's name and memory must have been very much alive for the theater-going public of 1892. Richepin's play "n'est qu'un drame de Victor Séjour mis en musique par un grand virtuose." A few lines later he starts a new paragraph: "Il y a du Victor Séjour dans Richepin." Mounet-Sully et al. are praised for their fine acting in Act III, but the act itself "sent d'une lieue son Victor Séjour." The play's last two acts are abominable, or as Sarcey stated simply: "C'est du Victor Séjour dans sa mélodramtique horreur" (Vol. VII, pp. 265-77).

Le Fils de la nuit (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1856) had its premiere 11 July 1856 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin. It is the play that captured the public's imagination. The plot is typical: a mother switches babies in their cribs to ensure a better life for her own. The child is predictably killed in the place of the other, and the curtain again falls to "J'ai tué mon enfant." What raised this melodrama to new heights was the appearance of a moving ship on stage. Depending on one's judgment, it was a stroke of genius or the ruination of the theater. Savard was inclined to the latter view: "Victor Séjour ne tarda à se sacrifier au truc; c'est même lui qui, on peut le dire, l'a inventé. Que de pages il y aurait à écrire sur la détestable influence qu'a exercée le vaisseau du Fils de la nuit sur la littérature contemporaine. Tous nos maux viennent de là. Le public n'écoute plus, il regarde; il faut que sans cesse les directeurs se surpassent euxmêmes" (pp. 50-51).

If Séjour, single-handed, had indeed changed the orientation of French theater, he assumes significant proportions aside from any purely literary or esthetic values.

A word about the title of this article seems appropriate. France was represented in Les Massacres de la Syrie as the bastion of freedom and the defender of the oppressed. Louisiana Blacks of Séjour's socio-economic background did, on occasion, settle in France to avoid racial discrimination. Even those who stayed in their native state sound French in education, culture, and loyalty to a "mother country" they had never seen. The leading historian of these "Black Frenchmen" was Rodolphe Desdunes, who published their story in 1911 under the title of Nos Hommes et notre historie. He, too, was born homme de couleur libre, but when he died in 1928 the space on his death certificate following "Race" was filled with the word "French."⁴

Notes

¹See Francisque Sarcey, Quarante Ans de théâtre, 8 vols. (Paris: Bibliothèque des Annales, 1900-02). All further references to this work will appear in the text.

²L. Felix Savard, "M. Victor Séjour," Les Chroniques Littéraires, 2 (1862), 48. All further references to this work will appear in the text.

³Gulnare is also the heroine of "The Corsair" by Byron. She saves a gaiaour from death by killing a coreligionist.

⁴New Orleans Archdiocesan Cemetery Records.