In the latter years of the 19th century the theatre was already the path
to fame and fortune for those who wanted to live by the pen. Toulet already
smitten by the “divine odeur des coulisses” since his days pursuing actresses
in Mauritius, and he relished the idea of a dramatic career. When he suggested
a verse play for Molière’s birthday to the the Fautrier regulars the idea was
enthusiastically adopted by Louis Martin and Antoine Cotoni. (This
collaboration foreshadowed another, longer-lasting partnership with Maurice
Sailland in Paris 15 years later.) In order to have it ready in time they agree
to share the work. They knocked off the Servante de Molière in 11 days.
This hastily constructed piece inevitably suffered from its haste, and from the
unequal talents of its three collaborators. Martin admits that only Toulet’s
lines displayed anything of real talent; “ours” (he and Cotoni) he says “were
but poor glass beads compared with Toulet’s pure crystal.” In fact, it is to
Martin’s memory that we owe what few lines exist of the piece (26 in all), the
manuscript being long lost. The Vigie Algérienne announced it for the 16th
of the month, along with Molière’s Le malade imaginaire.
It was played on Wednesday January 16th 1889, directed by
Gaston Coste, with enough acclaim to
have it re-staged on Friday 18th and Sunday 27th January.
The piece was well received and the three authors had to take a curtain call at
the end of the evening. This did not stop Toulet noting in his Journal
that his scene was poorly articulated, like verse in a foreign language. “That
offended me. I criticised the piece in the Moniteur, “(he took a whole
column to do it) “and I praised it apart from my scene, the which I took a
gleeful pleasure of savaging and rubbishing.” The theatre critic of the Vigie
wrote, on January 21st, that the three authors deserved equal credit
for braving the boards for the first time with the Servante de Molière.
Only Cotoni and Martin were accredited on the publicity, allegedly because the
youthful authors did not want it trumpeted that it took three people to compose
so minor a piece.
Martin recalled that although the original manuscript disappeared,
Cotoni took a copy with him when he departed for Lyon to continue his medical
studies, where apparently he managed to stage it again in the théâtre des
Célestins, with an actor named Duquesne playing the part of Molière. This
manuscript disappeared on Cotoni’s unexpected death in 1890, a death that
considerably upset Toulet. When he heard of it he wrote to
Martin from Caresse (in 1891): « …Mais enfin, t’expliques-tu qu’une
quantité considérable de vieillards
imbéciles continuent à vivre, et que celui-là, jeune et brillant, s’en soit
allé ? C’est la qui donne une haute idée de la Providence ! Pauvre Coto ! »
Their initial success encouraged the budding playwrights to try again
and in mid-March Toulet and Cotoni presented Martin with a new one-act piece
called Madame Joseph Prudhomme. (This time Toulet and Cotoni shared the
credits). It did not match the standard of the first, and was in prose. It was
published in the Revue Algérienne on April 1st, and dedicated
by the authors to Louis Martin, who incidentally thought it a meagre piece. The
théâtre des Nouveautés put it on on Friday April 5th, 1889, after l’Oeil crevé, an operetta by Hervé, in a
benefit for an Algerian actor called M. Hyacinthe. On this occasion, the
plaudits were reserved for the actors. It was repeated on April 6th,
then disappeared forever from the programme. This time the Vigie critic
was silent on the piece. Soon after Toulet was no longer welcome in the Nouveautés
. His ill temper was already closing doors to him. On April 16th he
had quarrelled with one Alfred Coste, the brother of the Gaston Coste, the
director. Toulet went as far as to strike him, hoping thereby to provoke a
duel. But, as he related, “Cet ignoble capon ne veut rien
savoir de duel”.
These two short works were to be Toulet’s only dramatic ventures until Le
Souper Interrompu, published posthumously by Le Divan in 1922.
We know little of Antoine Cotoni, although
Toulet dedicated a sonnet on the subject of Don Juan to him. (Vers inédits: J’ai vu Don Juan vieillard, mais touours amoureux...).
Joseph Casanova too was studying law in
Algiers. However, literature attracted him more and he settled in Paris around
1890, where he remained till his death on 26th August 1947. He contributed to many journals and if I
give special mention to the Chroniquer de Paris, that appeared weekly
for a dozen years before the Great War, it is not so much to point up the
abundance of his production as to note that it was he who brought Toulet on
board.
With time and age, a different aesthetic gradually separated Toulet and
Casanova. Their Algerian intimacy, maintained by their correspondence, was
easily re-established in Paris. But the exigencies of existence, not to mention
the clash of personalities, gradually eroded this relationship – Toulet was
quick to take offense, to Casanova’s surprised resignation. The latter never
ceased to speak of Toulet with other than admiration and respect. Toulet, on the other hand, was able to write to his friend thus to
Casanova (8th December 1910) : “ Mon pauvre Casanova, je n’ai pas à disputer de
votre mégalomanie, mais à vous rappeler seulement que, parmi d’autres choses
que vous m’avez empruntées, sinon rendues, il y a une nouvelle qui devait, m’aviez-vous
dit (mais il n’en fut rien) passer sous votre signature au « Paris-Journal » et vous
rapporter quelque argent. Vous aviez ajouté que vous ne vous sentiez pas
capable d’en faire une, ce que j’avais aisément cru. Je le voudrais encore quand vous m’affirmez, en votre français,
qu’elle est à ma disposition. Il ne
vous reste, dans ce cas, qu’à me le faire tenir, et cesser de m’écrire.”
Casanova was responsible for the A.B.C. du
soldat français, described by Martineau as a “vibrant manuel d’édification
patriotique,” and for La Tournée du Grand-Duc, (1920), that echoes the
title of La Tournée du Petit-Duc, a light frothy libertinous novel that
Toulet wrote in collaboration with Willy (only Willy’s name appeared as
author.) Casanova’s work adopted a far more moralistic tone. A decade after
Toulet’s death Casanova, in L’Etrange Confidence (1929), put some of Toulet’s verse into the mouth of
one of his characters.
