François Joseph Talma (1763-1826), actor

Letter to Talma in Paris from his sister Anne Gertrude Talma (1762-1806), known as Manette, in London. Among other things she asks her brother if he can obtain teeth from the public mortuary and send them to their father in England. The original letter is accompanied by some twentieth century material: three typed transcriptions and some handwritten notes, including a brief description of the letter that notes its purchase in 1956 for £25.

1782

1 letter plus 4 pieces of supporting documentation

Purchased from Bonham's, London, 10 December 2002, lot 650 (acc.1115).

François Joseph Talma was born in Paris in 1763. His father Michel François Joseph Talma practised as a dentist. As a young man Michel Talma was employed as a valet de chambre to an Englishman in Paris, rising to become a trusted factotum; in the late 1760s he moved to London, following his English master. (This figure is not conclusively identified but was probably George Simon, the second Earl of Harcourt.) From 1770 to 1780 he practised as a dentist in Cavendish Street, London, and remained in the city for the remainder of his career. Details of the early life of François Joseph Talma are unclear. He may have spent his early years with his grandparents in Poix-du-Nord or with his uncle Phillippe (also a dentist) in Paris. He joined his father in London around 1768 and probably returned to Paris for his later education in or before 1772, returning to London after this amidst a general family assumption that he would take over his father's business as a dentist. Whilst in London serving an apprenticeship, however, he became more and more involved with amateur acting. He returned to Paris in 1784 to train at the École de Médécine but also pursued his theatrical interests and in 1786, in parallel with his medical studies, became one of the first students at the newly-founded École Royale de Déclamation. In 1787 he decided to abandon dentistry and made his debut at the Comédie-Française. Talma was the dominating male actor in the French theatre during the Revolution, Napoleonic Empire and Bourbon Restoration, and a friend of Napoleon Bonaparte. He can be seen as a Romantic avant la lettre, fighting for the reforms of French drama that Stendhal and Victor Hugo were later to urge: abandonment of a stiff, literary style of acting, introduction of local colour in costumes, mingling of comedy and tragedy in the style of Shakespeare, and so forth. He continued to act, and to tour, until his death in 1826 at the age of 63. For the English-speaking reader his career is summarised in Talma: a biography of an actor by Herbert F. Collins (London, 1964).

At Wellcome Collection: Another great French actor from a slightly later period, Elisabeth Rachel (Elisa Felix) (1820-1858), is represented at MS.7460/7-10.