The other evening I went to a little theatre in Montmarte. The theatre which I visited is called, rather grandiosely, "The Theatre of the People", and it lies on the very confines of 'Parisianism', just at the point where the Avenue de Clichy ceases to be anything but a gaunt suburban thoroughfare. It is something rather wonderful is The Theatre of the People, one of those enterprises at once glorious and forlorn whose aim is to bring Art and the People together. The programme set before me included a two act masterpiece of Moliere, a one act comedy by that truly great humourist George Courteline, and Heyermans' famous three act tragedy of fisher life, "The Good Hope". It was the last named piece that I really went to see having missed it when the Stage Society did it last year. I was anxious to witness the gloomy spectacle which has desolated every drama critic in London.I came away from the theatre thoroughly and superbly depressed, an emotion not to be despised by the discerning person of thoughtful disposition. The Good Hope is probably unrivalled for sheer gloom in the whole range of modern drama, almost Greek in its tragic quality. But it was not The Good Hope that depressed me. It was the forlornness of the whole enterprise. The theatre was not half full; it was not a third full; and when we clapped as we did often, our applause resounded as the voices of house-hunters resound in an empty house. And all the people connected with the enterprise seemed to be wondering how long this Art-and-People game would last, and where their next meal was coming from. I felt profoundly sorry for the whole pathetic crew; I became sentimental - and it is not often that I get sentimental.
One actress, a certain Claire Mars, stuck obstinately in my mind. She was not beautiful, but she was a star (of The Theatre of the People), and she could act, and she was intensely, too intensely, alive. And she was very young. She had the peculiar 'yearning' eyes which always mean martyrdom, either for their owner or for some man. And the next night I returned but The Theatre of the People was closed. I admit that I wanted to see Claire Mars again. I even had a sort of thought of making her acquaintance. And the next day I read in the paper: "Suicide of a young actress of the Theatre du Peuple. Mdlle. Lion, aged 23, committed suicide yesterday in her rooms, No. 40 Rue des Martyrs, by shooting herself in the right temple with a revolver. Under the name of Claire Mars she had won applause in Therese Raquin and The Good Hope."
Of the reasons for this self-extinction I have no knowledge. Nor does the reason much matter. It is the raw event that counts. We were separated, she and I, only by a few feet and a line of electric light, and perhaps a few hours. Of course the affair is useless to me as a novelist. But, as a human being, I allowed myself to think those well-known, banal and commonplace thoughts about life and death which, despite their banality and commonplaceness, remain amongst the most precious and valuable of our emotions. And, in addition, I wondered how many people would not, at some moment or other commit suicide if suicide could be committed instantaneously, without enterprise, sustained resolution, trouble or mess. Especially mess.And it occurred to me that it is not death that most persons fear, but the business of dying.
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